Hello everybody. If you've been reading other forums you may already know this, but for the past year I've been trying to read and review every single physical issue of Dragon Magazine. While still nowhere near finishing, I've come a long way, and learned a lot about the history of our hobby. And since it's so much work, obviously I want to share this with as many people as possible. So now it's your turn. I look forward to seeing what opinions and insights are generated here, free of the oppressive hand of no personal attacks moderation.
The strategic review 1: Spring 1975
So here we are, right back at the dawn of D&D periodicals. First impressions are that they tried to do it in a newspaper style, with a baroque heading and captioned sections. My second is on how short and succinct it is. Only 6 pages long, with a price of 50 cents, no artwork, and obviously typewritten, it gets right to the point, explaining what they are trying to do with the zine (and apologizing for the lack of stuff, as its their first issue, and they don't have any letters or advertisers. )
The rest of the issue contains the following:
An advert for new editions of their wargames (3rd edition chainmail, now featuring the fighting men of the east! And people complain about the animeisation of games now. Says it all really.)
Mind flayers! Their first appearance. Still recogniseably the same basic monster, with almost impenetrable magic resistance, and quick kill brain eating, although they lack the later depth and descriptive detail. Their mind blast is a classic of idiosyncratic OD&D design, with a unique saving throw based off the victims intelligence, rather than level.
Edition change stuff for Tractics (which I've never heard of before, by by implication is another miniatures game, so people who already have the previous edition don't have to buy a whole new copy. How nice of them.
Gary Gygax talking about the underpoweredness of spears in Chainmail, saying people shouldn't complain about it because it is Historically Accurate :D , and also that they intend to introduce expanded details on polearms, rather than just having one generic entry for them. I think most of us know how that one pans out in the future. Oh yes.
2 pages of random dungeon generation tables, easily making up the biggest section. Shows where their priorities are. They would later be revised and expanded and appear in the AD&D 1st ed DMG. These are probably still usable today, as very little is system specific, and what is is easily convertible. Maybe I will use them at some point.
More adverts on the final page.
Funny how many of the things here would go on to be significant later on in the game. There is very little flavour text anywhere, and you are obviously expected to take things and make them your own. They also don't have the skill with layout and making things stand out that they would later develop. Despite its smallness, there is a tendency towards block of textiness. But It was still an entertaining and informative read, and the lack of padding could be seen as a benefit, because it does allow you to get right to the important stuff.
Quote from: (un)reason;293076Mind flayers! Their first appearance. Still recogniseably the same basic monster, with almost impenetrable magic resistance, and quick kill brain eating, although they lack the later depth and descriptive detail.
I didn't really like them when they appeared here. Their revision in EW made them more usable for me, but even then I didn't use them all that much. I really did not like the way their Mind Blast worked.
QuoteI think most of us know how that one pans out in the future. Oh yes.
Yes indeed, Gary's obsession with pole arms just seemed to grow with time. I lrearned a lot about very obscure pole arms, however.
Quote2 pages of random dungeon generation tables, easily making up the biggest section.
The best thing in the issue as far as I was concerned. I used these to start new levels or to randomly generate small dungeons during play.
Quote from: (un)reason;2930762 pages of random dungeon generation tables, easily making up the biggest section. Shows where their priorities are. They would later be revised and expanded and appear in the AD&D 1st ed DMG. These are probably still usable today, as very little is system specific, and what is is easily convertible. Maybe I will use them at some point.
speaking of which I've automated these tables here-
http://www.hackslash.net/?page_id=437
I've been reading these on TBP. Thanks for them.
Seanchai
I've enjoyed the hell out of your work reviewing these things. Can't say I read every word (Mostly ignore the fiction reviews and whatever rules rulings that come up.), but its interesting and it must be a shitload of work.
I look forward to when you hit the 1988 era issues which is when I read the magazine first.
The strategic review 2: Summer 1975
We're up to 8 pages in this one. They start off with an obituary for Donald Kaye, the forgotten third co-founder of TSR. Ironicaly, he was only around the same age as Gary Gygax, who of course went on another 32 years. Rather a shame, really. TSR's history would probably have developed quite differently if he'd been around. Already they seem a little more aware of what they are doing, and how to go about it. We get the disclaimer about unsolicited material, and adverts. There is the persistent sense of a company that is expanding as fast as they can create and print new stuff, and still building up the infrastructure needed to do it. There is also plenty of reminders that the 1970's were a slower age, with talk of distribution times and the like. The internet has enabled us to send things out across the whole world as soon as it is done, which is pretty cool. They also say that D&D is not intended to simulate reality but to primarily just be a fun game. Yeah, its pretty clear where the original designers intentions fall on the GNS model. We don't want none of those poncy narrativists or boring simulationists around here.
Other stuff:
Errata for Cavaliers and Roundheads. Another historical period that seems to have fallen out of fashion.
Stuff on the upcoming conventions.
Lots of clarifications for D&D. I suppose this is the first ancestor of what would become Sage Advice. Very dry, point by point stuff, as you would expect. Already people were discontented with the spell memorisation system, but they stuck with it as the main option for another 25 years.
Ropers! Another new introduction that continues to annoy to this day, although they never became iconic like illithids. Very archaic sounding intro.
Rangers. The very first instance of a twinktastic new class being introduced in the magazine! They only go to level 13, and lack the rogue abilities and two weapon fighting that they would later get, but are deadly against giants, can track, and become pretty decent spellcasters in both wizard and cleric lists at high level. I certainly recognise the AD&D 1st ed ranger in these, but they are almost completely different to the 4th ed ranger. Once again we see an influx of fiddly social restrictions that have since disappeared, and a tendency towards static abilities with an arbitrary chance of success. Unified mechanics, where are you?
Some really primitive line art, little more than a napkin scribble. Still, the first issue had no art at all, so its progress I guess.
Polearms! A whole page on polearms! Getcha dozen varieties of polearms here. All of the names are familiar sounding, and I think this is most of the ones that would be a staple of both 1st and 2nd ed AD&D. Much pointless minutinae contained within.
Some bitching about printing and dice costs, and saying they may have to raise prices. Yeah, thats a familiar story whatever the era. This is a reminder that before D&D, dice other than 6 siders were exceedingly rare, and they had to get up a distribution chain to get a regular supply of them.
Expansion for Panzer warfare. Again, we don't see enough rules for playing with tanks these days. Damn narrativists and their focus on feelings. We want more tanks!
1st D&D supplement Greyhawk out now. Boot hill coming soon.
In some ways this is less familiar than the 1st issue, as it really points out how the organisation of gaming has changed with the internet. Still, I can see things are already developing, such as variable damage for weapons, power creep, and the start of the first D&D setting. And its certainly a much lighter read than modern stuff. I'm definitely enjoying things so far, and I can see why it took off so fast.
Quote from: mhensley;293089speaking of which I've automated these tables here-
http://www.hackslash.net/?page_id=437
Ooh. Shiny. Bookmarked. Hopefully I'll get the chance to use this to speed along my dungeon creation at some point.
Quote from: (un)reason;293199
Expansion for Panzer warfare. Again, we don't see enough rules for playing with tanks these days. Damn narrativists and their focus on feelings. We want more tanks!
Unless you are making the funny, this one is way not true. Tanks are all over the place in gaming. (Even if SJGames who has the the best hex and chit tank game ever (Ogre) is sitting on it because they can make more money with more cruddy Munchkin expansions.)
Heck, Flames of War is doing rather well and its all about 15mm tanks. Warhammer 40K is tank heavy now to the point the newest edition made them REALLY viable as opposed to the easily killed by random luck things they were before. AT 43 and Warmachine are both heavily using of tanks, though theirs usually have 2 feet as opposed to some nice realistic militarily viable treads.
I myself am looking into Cold War Commander (Or Future War Commander so I can make use of all my Epic minis!) for 2mm (1/600 scale) so I can have lots of AH 64s and Hinds vs M1 Abrams and whatever tanks those Commies used that my Hellfires always took out in Gunship...
The love of tanky warfare has not gone away. Its just generally not in the RPG sector.
Oh yeah, Ill be playing some Ogre/GEV tomorrow using the Deluxe maps and minis. (I sometimes use Heroscape terrain but I am in a lazy mood and don't feel like setting up 100s of plastic hexes for a quick battle.)
TANKIN STILL LIVES!
The strategic review 3: Autumn 1975
Still only 8 pages long, but the typeface is smaller. We kick off with an editorial blasting an unfavourable reviewer and his flawed reviews, and asking the readers to send in reviews of his new games in return. We get a lovely mix of high-handedness and petty vindictiveness as Gary asks the enraged letter senders to put their money where their mouth is, while feigning impartiality himself. Yeah, this is all very familiar from the internet. Goes to show, people haven't really changed. This issue feels a lot more commercial than the last two, with more adverts, and an explicit focus on stuff for their shiny new supplements, and making you aware of them. We also see the first joke submissions here, starting the long tradition of poking fun at gamer stereotypes. Again, these have changed surprisingly little with the passing of time.
Stuff within:
9 monsters, all of which have survived to the modern day, including those soon to be classic annoyances the shrieker and piercer, and nagas, which are also recogniseably similar to their modern form. There is a definite emphasis on tricksy stuff, camouflage, aging, attacks from above, ethereality and other annoying stuff the players have to think about to counter. These would never make it into the current ruleset as they were.
Joke monsters based on gamer stereotypes as mentioned above, plus the mess they are wont to make, and hippys. Jokes about narrative combat abound. Could such a thing become reality. I think we know the answer to that. Funny how things that start off as a parody can later go on to be things in their own right you're expected to take seriously.
The battle of the ebro river. More really primitive line art.
The Conan line of miniatures becomes the Sword and Sorcery line, as they learn about brand name stuff the hard way. (although this is not the last time they make that mistake, as the cthulhu stuff in deities and demigods showed. )
Stuff on the history of gunslinging for boot hill. Fanning is declaimed as flashy stuff that's not effective in a real combat. And we get a reminder from real life how dangerous the life of an adventurer would actually be. And a case of designer hubris, saying they would never have made Boot Hill if they listened to surveys, but they made it anyway, because they are their own market and know what they like. Um, yeah. Again, hindsight shows how that one turns out.
Our first case of joke poetry. Names involving geographic features and animals are so easy to parody. How they took it seriously 20 years later in W:tA I'll never know.
Fluff and a random generation table for deserted cities of mars, which is pretty cool.
Percentile dice sets are now available separately. I note that they don't have 10 sided dice yet, and instead use 20 siders numbered twice when they have too. I guess it'll take white wolf and their exclusive use of 10 siders to really make those non platonic interlopers take off.
Quote from: Captain Rufus;293320Unless you are making the funny, this one is way not true. Tanks are all over the place in gaming.
The love of tanky warfare has not gone away. Its just generally not in the RPG sector.
TANKIN STILL LIVES!
I guess this is sample selection. I've never really been into wargaming and minis, so I've missed all this stuff out. This is what I get for being a dirty narrativist myself a lot of the time, and buying games which don't focus on the guns and gear. :p :o So it goes.
The strategic review 4: Winter 1975
Up to 12 pages now, and they open saying SR is moving from quarterly to bi-monthly next issue. The price also undergoes a 50% increase to 75 cents (shocking, shocking i say!) Yeah, they really are expanding fast. They talk about new employees, and there's quite a bit about gencon. The snark of last issue is followed up on, with them apologising that no-one has sent in any reviews. As these are expanding so fast, I doubt I'll be able to keep commenting on everything within each issue for long. We shall see.
We see that they are now getting lots of submissions. Which I guess means they can afford to pick and choose what actually gets published. And also that people apart from the core designers will start to diversify the tone and focus of the game. Which, as we know will have results both good and bad over the years.
Stuff in this issue:
More stuff on polearms. Gary really liked them, didn't he.
A case of someone trying to make oriental weapons nastier than their western equivalents. And this time the editors stop them. Hey, thats refreshing. :D How long can they keep the orientophiles at bay?
More impenetrable tables for Panzer Warfare, and errata for Tractics. I really must do some research on these old wargames so I can comment critically on them.
Illusionists! Yes, its the first more power by restricting their scope class. (as contrasted with rangers, which are fighters+, only with behavioural restrictions. ) Still only 13 levels long with 5th level spells the highest covered. ( was that the standard coverage limit in OD&D?) They manage to fit a list of 40 spells, 25 of which are new, onto a single page. Overall, I think they are probably better balanced than rangers were, but don't have as much flavour.
The first D&D comic. By a Marc Miller (I assume not that one, but I cant be certain) apparently. Pretty basic trope joke, if a dated one (who bothers spiking doors open these days?)
A name and pronunciation guide for tekumel. This is some seriously detailed stuff, with quite a bit of setting and personal history in with the tables. Definately a lot more setting depth and intricacy there than there was in early D&D, and its interesting to see them covering games by other creators.
Clay golems! IOUN STONES! (squee) With personal permission from Jack Vance himself. So already proper published authors were becoming aware of D&D. Another sign of how quickly the game actually spread through certain social circles, with people actively involving their friends in general with it rather more than they do so now.
A profile of "DOC" Holiday for boot hill. Pretty cool stuff that gives you a nice feel for the topic in a single page.
Supplement II Blackmoor now out. Still a slow progression compared to the several titles per month of their heyday, but the D&D train is definitely building speed. I also noted a little caption simply saying "the dragon is coming!" Looks like they had already realized the limitations of their current format, and were planning for its replacement.
Quote from: (un)reason;293596The strategic review 4: Winter 1975
The first D&D comic. By a Marc Miller (I assume not that one, but I cant be certain)
The comic's author gives credit to noted future Traveller author Loren Wiseman. So my guess is it was indeed that Marc Miller.
Quote from: The_Shadow;293599The comic's author gives credit to noted future Traveller author Loren Wiseman. So my guess is it was indeed that Marc Miller.
Interesting. If he had personal contacts with the magazine staff even before it became a proper magazine, that would certainly help explain how Traveller become the non TSR gameline with the most coverage in the magazine.
well done for attempting this, but I have a feeling my life is going to be empty when you come to the end...
Quote from: (un)reason;293199Lots of clarifications for D&D. I suppose this is the first ancestor of what would become Sage Advice. Very dry, point by point stuff, as you would expect. Already people were discontented with the spell memorisation system, but they stuck with it as the main option for another 25 years.
Some people liked it, some didn't. Those who didn't wrote there own house rules for other systems of spell-casting. These was considered okay and quite normal at the time. The rules, after all, were just guidelines.
Ropers! Another new introduction that continues to annoy to this day, although they never became iconic like illithids. Very archaic sounding intro.
QuoteOnce again we see an influx of fiddly social restrictions that have since disappeared, and a tendency towards static abilities with an arbitrary chance of success. Unified mechanics, where are you?
Thankfully absent. Unified mechanics are generally good, but some times a mechanic that exactly fits the need is better. I realize that unified mechanics are the current holy grail, but games work fine without them.
QuoteMuch pointless minutinae contained within.
Unless one happens to be interested in polearms. Gary was. It did get old for those of us who weren't. However, this early in the game, it was just quirky.
QuoteExpansion for Panzer warfare. Again, we don't see enough rules for playing with tanks these days. Damn narrativists and their focus on feelings. We want more tanks!
Wargaming, both minis and boardgames was much more common back in the 1970s. Tractics was a decent minis game. And its fans complained about all the effort and space TSR wasted on D&D. :)
QuoteIllusionists! Yes, its the first more power by restricting their scope class.
In play, OD&D Illusionists were weak, even with the additional spells added in TD #1. Few people played them as they were even harder than Magic-users to keep alive at low level and not as powerful at high level. I had an Illusionist who made it to 10th level -- which was considered amazing by just about everyone.
The strategic review 5: December 1975
Up to 16 pages, and we have a proper cover this time, plus a coming next at the end. Its starting to look more and more like the format that they would have for Dragon. More organisational bitching and corresponding price raises. Lankhmar is hinted at, (god, was it really that soon after D&D's release?) as is Gods, Demigods and Heroes. The art hasn't improved in quality that much, but there is considerably more of it. They're definitely still improving every issue at the moment.
This issue contains:
Biographies of the TSR staff. Interesting that Gary is noticeably older than the rest of them. Self depreciating humour abounds.
Crossover time: Nazis vs Necromancers. Not that surprising, really, given the topics they've been covering. If anything, I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. This is primarily an actual play, but also tells you how to do it yourself with the existing games. The longest article yet, at 4 pages long.
Robe of scintillating color. Prayer beads. More soon to be classic magical items. As ever, they are considerably less balanced than they would later become.
Commiserations on another magazine folding. I get the impression that they may be being sarcastic. Miniatures gaming was a cutthroat business ;)
The battle of the nile refought. Another increasingly detailed article. At this rate there might be more pages, but less interesting articles in this one.
More stats for tractics. If other people were getting as bored of this as I am, its no wonder they split the roleplaying stuff from the wargaming bits.
Another gunslinger profile for Boot Hill.
Rakshasas, Slithering trackers, Trappers. Less iconic monsters maybe, but still ones that I remember, and have survived in various incarnations to today. Rakshasas in particular have the same tremendously annoying traits that they retained all the way to 3rd edition.
The amount of padding and advertising is definitely increasing. Maybe it's just because I did these first five issues in a single day, and I'm flagging, but this one feels less interesting than the previous ones. If slithering trackers had been introcudced in the 1st issue, would they have become iconic in the way mind flayers did? Who can say. At this point I'm becoming interested in seeing things I don't remember, that got overlooked and might need reappraisal, because remember virtually everything I've seen so far making it into future books in various forms.
The Strategic Review 6: February 1976
For the first time, this issue remains almost the same in format to the previous one. However, but the matters within feel more significant somehow. Its the first issue that feels like business as usual, in a way. The organisational hassles of previous issues have become more manageable, which means they can actually get more stuff done. Much of this can probably be credited to their new member of staff Tim Kask, who takes over editing, leaving Gary to concentrate on the creative stuff. Good for them.
Contained within:
Alignment starts its change from the single law/chaos (with law strongly associcated with good and chaos with evil) axis, to the nuanced field of morals and ethics that we know and love (or in many cases hate ;) ) from every subsequent edition until the latest. (grumble mutter mutter) There's still some serious kinks in it. There's only 5 proper alignments, with true neutrality presented as rare, and primarily only inhabited by druids, animals, and other amoral creatures. Meanwhile, the other alignments get a more complex grading that never caught on, with 16 different ratings of good/evil and 22 of law/chaos that all have proper nouns rather than numbers, and allow you to move up and down gradually. Elysium is the plane of ultimate chaotic good, while Humanity in Gygax's mind is a largely lawful race, not the unaligned occupiers of every alignment equally or mostly neutral with a significant minority of other alignments (depending on who you listen to) they would later be presented as. As someone who takes great interest in questions of both game and real world ethical constructs, this is very interesting stuff indeed, worthy of a thread in itself. One of the reasons I started this was to find forgotten gems that show the alternate ways the game could have gone, and this system makes me want to run a campaign featuring it's quirks and the logical extensions of those quirks as strong features.
A review of fanzines. We get a shout-out to Games Workshop, still distributing RPG's themselves at this point, and another annoying rating system using titles rather than numbers, yet is still effectively a numerical rating system.
Our first piece of actual fiction. The quest for the vermillion volume by Rob Kuntz. We get a case of wizard that is aware of modern day earth pop culture via their plane scrying/hopping antics (something I seem to remember Ed Greenwood becoming very fond of in his Elminster tales later on. ) In less than 2 pages it manages to be a fairly entertaining little story, in which an elf is very much not a mysterious uberbeing but instead gets outclassed and humiliated at every turn.
A piece pimping Fight in the skies, another wargame.
A list of DMs, to help people find a game. The kind of thing that would be handled by the internet now much faster and more conveniently. Makes me vaguely curious how many of these people are still alive, at the same address, and gaming. Not that I'm gonna get on a plane and try and find out, as that would just be creepy.
Bards! Oh yes, We're cooking with class bloat now. While they don't have the weird prerequisites to get into the class that they will in 1st ed AD&D, and the ability score requirements are less stringent and absolute, they are otherwise pretty similar in most respects, with about half strength thieving and magic-user (not druid, for some reason, despite their social connection being explicitly spelled out) abilities, decent fighting skills, plus their own lore and charm abilities, and the odd college system where they get a new title every 3 levels. Unlike the classes introduced in previous issues, they go all the way to 25th level, and get extensive detail on their followers. Like rangers, they probably are a bit overpowered, especially as they lack the strong behavioural restrictions rangers have to put up with. The various magical instruments that correspond with the colleges get introduced here as well, which is convenient.
Optional nerves rule for boot hill. Seems like another case of extra modifiers that would add realism at the expense of fun and speed of play.
Sage Advice gets its name, and becomes a formal column. Only small so far, and not in the answers to letters format that would become more familiar, but still fulfilling the same basic function.
Another familiar refrain, that that modern games are too big and complex for the casual gamer, and that their new game (Ancient conquest) cuts through all that and combines simplicity with emergent complexity. To which I am torn between smirking and sighing, knowing how much D&D will bloat over coming decades.
This is a lot more interesting than the last issue, and presents a lot of stuff that would have controversial reprecussions in the future. While still tiny, they're now making those tentative steps towards becoming a proper professional organization producing prolific amounts of product. (use a pop shield if saying that into a microphone :D ) Which is enjoyable to see.
Quote from: (un)reason;293876A list of DMs, to help people find a game. The kind of thing that would be handled by the internet now much faster and more conveniently. Makes me vaguely curious how many of these people are still alive, at the same address, and gaming.
I was listed in one of the early lists and was at that address listed (and gaming) until I moved in 2004. I actually got couple of inquiries based on that listing right after TSR released the Dragon CD-ROM collection. I was amazed that people would try a 20+ year old address. LOL.
Quote from: RandallS;293886I was listed in one of the early lists and was at that address listed (and gaming) until I moved in 2004. I actually got couple of inquiries based on that listing right after TSR released the Dragon CD-ROM collection. I was amazed that people would try a 20+ year old address. LOL.
Somebody needs to do a mail-out to all the addresses. Enclose a SSAE and just ask a few questions about their gaming. Even one response could make for an interesting story.
The strategic review 7: April 1976
The last issue. We get our first taste of colour on the cover, and the size and price increases again, to 24 pages and $1. A 4fold increase in only a year. I find it amusing that if you put all 7 strategic review issues together, they are still smaller than a single issue of dragon at its heyday (for those of you who are wondering, the largest issue ever is 170 pages long. Which one it is, I shan't reveal yet though.)
They start off by announcing the demise of TSR ( ;) ) and its successors, Dragon, and Little Wars (whatever happened to that? Oh well, I guess I'll probably find out in a while) to be published on alternating months, and their new staff. (Dave Sutherland, oh yes, we're talking iconic here) This is exciting stuff, and I have to wonder how people reacted at the time. Hopefully the letters page will be apprearing soon so I can find out. Anyone who was there at the time, I want to hear your comments as well.
This issue also contains.
Gary explaining the vancian magic system, why he designed it that way, and taking potshots at powergamers and people who don't use the rules as written. He admits that despite attempts to balance them, magic users are probably still the most powerful class in the game, especially once they get magic items. I get the impression I'm going to be seeing a lot more of this. Oh well, I knew what I was getting myself into.
Snark between the various companies at gencon and origins. Ahh, dirty laundry, how we love to see thee aired.
A full page advert. Supplement III eldritch wizardry coming soon, featuring druds, (ha ha, they misspelled the advert) psionics, new monsters and lots of other stuff. Doing this is really giving me a picture of the order the D&D classes appeared.
Stats for lots of TV gunslingers for boot hill. Another thing that would be harder to get away with today, thanks to copyright shit.
A comic, Dirt. Simple little 3 panneler. Meh.
Wouldya like to take a survey. There's a $1 store credit slip in it for you. Things weren't that cheap even then so you'd have to spend more money to take advantage of it. Nice work if you can get it.
Gencon 1976, special guest Fritz Lieber. Not surprising, since they're making a game of his books. Still, 2 full page ads in quick sucession, they're really upping the commercial content.
Fiction: What price gold and glory, by Jim Hayes. An unremarkable little encounter tale featuring a werebear and a pixie as the protagonists.
GM advice on town building. This is system free, and the kind of stuff that is still relevant today.
Magical items: The cup and talisman of akbar (no al yet, curiously) staff of the priest kings and the brazen bottle. All familiar to me, and are the sort that seriously change the power dynamics in the game. Give to your players with caution.
Centerfold spread of the Dungeon game store. There really ought to be a way to format pdf's as two page spreads, as it makes things like this a hassle to view properly.
More on the conflict between origins and gen con, and about attempts from the established wargaming crowd to marginalize the new pen & paper gaming style. Another case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. And once again there's the air of you can't stop the new ideas. We know we've got something good and are going to spawn lots of imitators oh baby :D
Finally, a monster I don't recognize. The denebian slime devil. I can see why this one never caught on, as it's basicaly an unkillable comic relief annoyance monster. The catoblepas, I do recognize however, with its weird combination of weak neck and instakill gaze. Goes to show what players and GM's prefer. DEATH BEFORE HUMILIATION!!!
A third page full of adverts.
A boring essay on the use of missile weapons in historical warfare.
Optional rules giving thieves 18% dexterity scores(a la fighters exceptional strength) which give them bonuses to their thieving skills. Another one I've never seen before and obviously didn't catch on. Frankly 18% strength was arbitrary and dumb enough. We don't need it applied to other abilities as well.
Lots of tekumel stuff. Interesting that easily the best setting stuff in the early days is coming from here. Whatever happened to M.A.R Barker?
An essay by Gygax on what constitutes successful gamemastering. As expected it is quite oriented towards competitive play, chastising GM's who let their players advance level too quickly, and encouraging strict enforcement of timekeeping rules. We also get our first estimation of proper advancement time. According to Gary, it should take about a year of weekly gaming to get to name level, and then characters should gain around 2-3 levels a year after that, so overall, getting to 20th level should take around 4-5 years. So yeah, things have definitely got a lot more slanted in the players favour since then. I suppose since they make up more than 80% of the group at any one time, social pressure would make it happen sooner or later.
With the rapid expansion, there's finally room for things to slip between the cracks, and me to see stuff I haven't before. As a result, this issue definitely feels less consequential, despite (or perhaps because) its the last one. But It's a good deal less dull than issue 5, and as the intermediate between formats, it feels significant historically.
This makes me happy. I thought there'd be at least one or two people out there who'd fit the bill, simply due to statistics. It's just a matter of casting my net wide enough that they become aware of this project.
Quote from: RandallS;293886I was listed in one of the early lists and was at that address listed (and gaming) until I moved in 2004. I actually got couple of inquiries based on that listing right after TSR released the Dragon CD-ROM collection. I was amazed that people would try a 20+ year old address. LOL.
:D Now, the big question is, did you reply? And did you get to do any gaming as a result of it.
Quotegary explaining the vancian magic system, why he designed it that way, and taking potshots at powergamers and people who don't use the rules as written.
n.b. – 1976
Quote from: (un)reason;294066:D Now, the big question is, did you reply? And did you get to do any gaming as a result of it.
I replied but never heard back.
The Dragon issue 1: June 1976
So here we are. The prelude is over, the warming up has finished, It's time to begin running this marathon in earnest. At 32 pages and $1.50, they expand yet again. Some terrible color choices here. Pale yellow-green text on bright pinky-orange background does not make for legible teaser text. While the art is better than the last SR issue, there is still extensive amounts of white space on the cover, and the dragon looks somewhat cartoonish. But then again, I seem to remember seeing early 80's books with similar art, so I suspect that style will be with us for quite a while.
It opens with an editorial spelling out their new intentions - to cease being a house organ (which of course they did successfully for over 20 years before WotC swallowed them up again) but instead to cover the whole roleplaying scene. Rates for articles and artwork coming next issue. Another massive historical change is the need for stamped self addressed envelopes. In this era of ubiquitous computers and quick easy copying, we forget that only a few decades ago, you had to make every copy of an amateur work yourself, and often people would send off their only copy to places.
In this issue:
Fafhrd and the grey mouser give their idiosyncratic opinion on roleplaying and the idea of other people playing in their world. A classic of the "pretend that characters are real in another dimension, and the author is merely writing down their stories" trope that would be used by many D&D authors in the future.
Dirt comic continues.
Converting the battle of the 5 armies from the hobbit to chainmail.
A decidedly arcane method of determining odds of success at a general task based on your attribute. Yeah, I can see why this one never caught on, compared to the simple roll d20 under attribute, possibly with modifiers, that most of us used.
Putting superscience into D&D: No real discussion of logistics or the cool issues that could arise from this here. Essentially just an excuse for jim ward to give us a load of *cough*magic*cough technological devices with a vague backstory about atlanteans. Hey, its a trick that'll work three decades later in Mage. Don't knock it. ;)
Some discussions on language in D&D. Does feel very dated, and suffers somewhat from the humans are the only race with different languages problem. Features a cleric who was granted the ability to speak Were-St-Bernard, but who has never actually met a Were-St-Bernard to speak it too, which says it all really.
Fiction: The search for the forbidden chamber by Jake Jaquet. The trope of wizards with metaawareness continues in this silly little tale, featuring a recyclosarus, and whole load of other references and in-jokes.
A 4 page spread of tournament rules for Gen-con 9 by Len Lakofka.
Bullettes! Another monster that barely changed at all throughout editions, Cause what's not to love about a shark that can burrow through the ground with its fin out and then leap out and rip you to shreds. Plus it doesn't have any mechanical kinks that need nerfing, just straightforward combat skills.
Hints on mapping wilderness areas. Another thing that seems to have reduced in focus in recent years, but is still good advice that is still valid now.
An expansion for illusionists by Peter Aronson, bringing them up to 14th level and 7th level spells. Introduces those lovely annoyances color spray, phantasmal killer and dispel exhaustion, among others. Now you know who to blame.
Expansions for Royal armies of the hyperborean age, and Dungeon!
Pimping for "Classic warfare", "Citadel", and "White bear and Red Moon".
Fiction: The Gnome Cache by Garrison Ernst. The first piece of fiction set in Oerth, and immediately I learn some stuff about it I never knew before. Ends on a too be continued, and I'm already interested in seeing what happens next, how Greyhawk developed while it was still young and vital.
An attempt to convert LOTR elves to D&D. Sylvan elves are common and magically nerfed, sindar are equal to standard D&D elves, while Noldor are twinked out. As you may gather, there is no attempt at balance at all.
The number of adverts continues to increase, but more welcomingly, the amount of fiction has as well. With the use of articles by freelancers, the tone definitely feels a lot more diverse. There is a quite substantial quotient of silliness, and it's obvious that many readers found the tropes of the day as lampoonable as we do. The days when things like the ecology of monsters and realistic ramifications of spells on society would become discussed are still some time away.
The Dragon issue 2: August 1976
Another step upwards in production values takes place here, a full color cover, and the first internal color art as well. Along with that, the confidence of the editorial staff seems to be growing. They've found a basic formula, and now they're refining it. Quite a few of the regular features are still missing, but they're putting more articles that span multiple issues in now, with the expectation that people are buying multiple successive issues to get the full story. Which means those bugbears Continuity and Metaplot begin their slow growth into the monsters that would entwine their tentacles around and inside the 90's, violating so many peoples play experiences, here.
In this issue.
A formal arena fighting system for monks. Essentially an entirely different system of combat based around selecting a sequence of fighting moves (6 in a row, which reminds me of burning wheels scripted combat.) and then consulting a table which makes certain moves effective or useless against other ones, rock paper scissors stylee, and seeing how each sequence turns out. This is basically its own self contained minigame, and looks like it could be quite fun, as it involves far less luck than regular D&D combat, but more ability to second guess your opponent, and is a lot more tactical. I'd definitely like to try it sometime.
The second installment of The Gnome Cache and the conclusion of the Search for the Forbidden Chamber. The contrast between these two stories is quite striking, when looked at in succession and shows that people were already playing the game with very different tones.
Hints for dungeon construction, with a particular emphasis on traps and tricks. Adventurers should never trust magic items in old-school games. You never know when one of them is going to explode or curse you with something embaressing.
Fiction: Shadow of a demon by Gardner F Fox. Some very old skool (and rather mysogynistic) swords and sorcery, with some wonderfully florid prose. A real guilty pleasure to read. Their habit of continuing articles several pages away in odd columns becomes really irritating when reading in .pdf, however.
Some stuff on Queztalcoatal and aztec culture. Completely systemless, and rather dry.
Remorhaz! With classic Erol Otus artwork! Another iconic weird D&D monster gets its start here.
Finally, a new class that never caught on. The alchemist. That perennial problem of being too dependent on downtime and components makes them ill suited to adventuring (although someone really could do something that does for alchemists what indiana jones did for archeology, as seeking out rare formulae and components is a very adventurable process) and so that is quite understandable.
More Dirt.
A weapons specialisation and two weapon fighting system. Oh yes, another optional rule granting additional powers with no drawbacks. Not that it really balances fighters in comparison to all the amazing things spellcasters can do at high levels. But we've got to give the fighter players some choice to keep them from getting bored. Otherwise we'd lose our meat shields, and that would be no good now, would it ;) .
An advert for Gods, Demigods and Heroes, billed as "The Last D&D Supplement!?!" (Ahahahahaha!!!!! ahem) Already feel like your're scraping the bottom of the barrel folks? Fear not. You will scrape many a barrel more before your time is up.
Lots of good fiction in this one, but the rules stuff isn't as well integrated as in previous issues. Still not a lot of actual setting, just whatever is nececary for the adventure.
The Dragon Issue 3: October 1976
At last! We have a table of contents! Hooray hooray caloo calay! Truly, advancement is made of things that seem utterly obvious and indispensable once you have them. We also have the first letters page actually containing letters from the public, not just more stuff from Gary. However, as a result of these letters they decided that the amount of fiction was too high in the last couple of issues, so they're going to cut down. Have we already seen the high watermark in terms of systemless fiction ratio in Dragon? That was surprisingly quick, since its only been 4 issues since the first story. Or will it creep up again? We shall see.
In this issue:
An article of the death of War of the Empires, a play by post (that's snail mail, not internet message board, just to be absolutely clear) that died abruptly when the creator lost interest and simply stopped answering messages. (an all too familiar tale.) and his attempts to revive it. A reminder that many things we take for granted required huge amounts of effort to make work back then.
Our first Women in D&D article. This one is disastrously snigger-worthy. Typical of the time, there are no roleplaying notes at all, merely a load of tables detailing how female characters differ statistically from male ones. Attractive female characters get "seduction magic" regardless of class among other things, (including the potential for ugly witches to scare their target to death when they try and use it) which I think says it all. Yeah, they'd never have got away with this one even 10 years later, let alone now. Include in your game at your peril.
The search for the gnome cache continues.
Birth tables for D&D. No, not that kind, don't snigger, although given the previous article I wouldn't have been surprised at that. This is just for random generation of social class, siblings, parents occupation and other mundane stuff for people who can't be bothered to make a background themselves, or want to leave it up to chance. Nothing wrong with it, but not particularly brilliant and detailed either.
Comic: The adventures of Finieous Fingers and Fred and Charly by JD. Considerably larger and more detailed than Dirt, but still a pretty simple self-contained premise. We've still got a way to go before we get demented metaplot and in-joke filled stuff like Yamara.
Wargaming world, a collection of miniatures reviews. As I remember seeing those when I was reading first time round, I presume this also becomes a regular feature.
We're starting to get international DM listings in Mapping the Dungeons. Which I guess is significant.
The letters are interesting. We have our first case of fan copying being stamped down upon, (and the resultant outrage) and a tremendously long and pedantic letter about the unbalancedness of an article in a previous issue. Already business as usual then :D .
6 new classes, including 2 joke ones: Healers, Scribes, Samurai, Berserkers, Idiots and Jesters. In addition, they expand on dwarves abilities and abilities to enter classes. A good reminder of just how low demihuman limits were at this point, even compared to 2nd ed AD&D. The classes are typically wonky, with the healer unable to do any healing until they get to 3rd level, but able to raise dead from 3rd level up as well, Scribes having a monopoly on spellbook copying, which forces every wizard to pay them exorbitant amounts if they want new spells, and Berserkers having a requirement of an intelligence less than 9. These could definitely have done with some more playtesting and consideration of their ramifications on the world.
Dirt continues.
As you may have gathered, there is a lot of crap in this issue. Fortunately, it's still entertaining crap, that wouldn't make it into future books (as dragon continues to expand, I expect that this will become the norm, and its the stuff that does influence future canon that will become noteworthy.) and so only cause problems for the kind of groups that throw every optional rule in there for the hell of it. And the format continues to grow ever more familiar.
Quote from: droog;294147n.b. – 1976
He grew out of it. When will you?
RPGPundit
This shot is just too easy – so I'm not going to take it.
Instead, Poobutt, I'll leave it up to you to think about what manhood and maturity really mean.
The Dragon issue 4: December 1976.
Empire of the petal throne special issue.
Our first themed issue, this expands to 36 pages. As you may have noticed tekumel's setting detail has shown to be easily the best available in a game (well, it was still a small field) at this time. The people back then noticed it as well, and the editor goes as far as to call it "superior to middle-earth in matters that concern gamers". Which may be hyperbole, but hey.
This issue contains:
Reports submitted to the petal throne. We see our first case of attempting to integrate peoples campaigns into a larger universe, and the inherent problems that generates with continuity, particularly when some GM's are "overly generous" with advancement. (M.A.R's opinion on this is pretty similar to Gary's, the players should have to work hard for every level they get, and the journey is more interesting than the destination, as high level characters acquire responsibilities with their power that make further adventuring difficult ) He concludes that the simplest solution is to consider all campaigns equally valid parallel universes.
From this point we get lots of adventure hooks and setting detail, presented as reports to the petal throne, and the emperor's reaction to these reports. Which is an interesting way of doing it, and makes it easy for GM's to turn them into adventures. Pretty good stuff overall.
Metamorphosis Alpha! TSR's first science fiction RPG starts here. Vat grown Androids have inflitrated the human tribes. They could be anyone, including the leaders. Only pink fuzzy balls can detect the interlopers and ensure the freedom of humanity! There's a bit more depth than that, but yes, this is a silly setting. Lets not go there. (cue camelot)
A random encounter table for tekumel.
The battle of the temple of Chanis. More dense, information heavy stuff combining setting overview with in character narration to give you an excellent snapshot of an event and the culture that surrounds it.
Monsters for Tekumel. The inscrutable, hermaphroditic, shapechanging Mihalli, and the Viragga, which are essentially organic squid/tank hybrids with lots of tentacles. As with other stuff, a lot more attention is placed upon their behaviors and place in the world than contempory D&D monsters.
An update on the joke monsters described in SR3. Beware the ring of wedding and Bi-labial fricative. Really. Don't say you weren't warned.
Fiction: Roads from Jakalla by Jerry Westergaard. Nice to see some tekumel stuff that isn't by M.A.R, as his distinctive tone does get a bit dull in large quantities.
They said Dirt was cancelled for space reasons in the editorial, and yet here it is. Guess there was a bit more room at the last minute than they expected.
Wargaming world: Lots of staple low level D&D monsters this time around.
A recommended reading by Gary Gygax. Poul Anderson, Tolkien, Lovecraft, Vance, Weinbaum; you ought to know the score by now. Go read them. It'll explain a lot.
Finieous fingers & fred & charly continues to entertain.
Magical Eyes for Tekumel.
The temple of Vimuhla for tekumel. A detailed set of photographs of its construction as a miniatures battleground. This suffers from the poor resolution of the .pdf scans, preventing me from looking as closely as I'd like. I suspect this problem will become more frequent in later issues as the amount of higher quality color artwork increases. Which is a shame.
After this issue, I definitely have a decent idea of what the setting of tekumel was like. Which is a lot more than can be said for greyhawk. Whatever happened to it? When and why did it descend into its current state of publishing limbo. Hopefully I'll find out as I read onwards.
The Dragon issue 5: March 1977
Another year, another change in publishing schedule. Due to it's considerably greater sales, Dragon is moving up to being published 8 times a year, while Little Wars is relegated to quarterly. How long before it reaches the full monthly schedule most of us remember? How long can Little Wars hang on? Do you already know? Will you find out yourself, or wait and discover it with me. They also ask for more articles on other new RPG's out there, particularly the science fiction ones, as they try and expand. Which reminds me, its almost time for the cultural phenomenon that was Star Wars. The plot thickens.
Anyway. In this issue:
An article on witches. Mentioned in a previous issue, this was sent in without a name or return address, and attempts to establish who it was by failed. Despite this they must have liked it quite a lot, (or been short of decent submissions) as they decided to publish it anyway. It pushes the envelope of the current spell system, but in doing so also shows just how much only having one magic system to work from limits the imagination.
More articles on Metamorphosis alpha. Setting and equipment stuff that was left out of the book due to editing snafus. We'll be seeing more of this in the future as well. Before you had the internet for eratta, you had to go to the magazines, and if you missed the issue, well, hard luck to you.
Ankhegs! Whosa classic little digestive acid spitting worm thing. Yes you are, yesu yesu R! :tickles chin: Ahem. Sorry about that ;) Like the bullette, this is one creature that never fails to provide a fun fight. Strike from below and let them quail in terror.
The letters page is particularly entertaining today. We have a hopelessly ambitious GM seeking 55 sub GM's, each to control 20 players, to run his epic campaign world idea. Yeah, that one's never going to work out. The pedantry about converting tolkien elves to D&D continues, and I suspect, would do so forever if the editors let it.
Dirt is atrociously scanned to the point of being illegible this issue. This is no good at all.
Appearance table for metamorphosis alpha. If you want your characters to look weird in a random fashion, this will do the job, although it doesn't give any mechanical modifiers for these changes.
Beyond the Wizard Fog by Gardner F Fox. The adventures of Niall the barbarian and his mighty thews continue. And he slips further into the power of the demon goddess he interacted with in the last issue. I'm definitely interested in seeing how this develops further
Wizard research rules: These are the sort which make researching a single 9th level spell the kind of thing that would bankrupt a kingdom. I suspect we'll be seeing level advancement training rules which are similarly economically unfeasible sometime soon. Its the kind of thing they liked to invent (and then be ignored by most people) back then. Still it includes rules for making The One Ring, so its not a complete wash.
Gandalf was only a 5th level magic-user. Ah, yes, I know of this one by reputation. Still seems somewhat specious, and relies on the argument that the magical effects that don't have D&D equivilants would translate into low level spells just because they don't seem that powerful. It concludes that D&D is not actually that well suited to emulating Tolkien's world, so its not as if we're dealing with a mad one true wayer here.
The Gnome Cache continues. It is increasingly starting to feel like an actual D&D adventure turned into a story, given the way the plot progresses from one point to another.
They seem to be chugging along nicely here. How quickly will the schedule change to monthly, and the page count bloat to the hundred plus issues that were standard in the 90's? How long before I'm forced to slow down posting due to the bulk of stuff I've got to get through each issue? Will I be able to find decent copies of all the issues I'm missing in time? Lets press onwards, deeper into the adventure.
The Dragon Issue 6: April 1977.
We learn this issue that they have quadrupled their circulation in the past year. Which doesn't surprise me, but it's nice to see concrete figures. Its pretty much business as usual for the magazine. The usual mix of fiction, articles and adverts. No letters pages this time, and more significantly, No more Dirt. I suppose there's only so long you can keep two pairs of eyes talking to each other interesting. What will replace it? That would be telling.
In this issue:
An alternate character background for metamorphosis alpha. Instead of being wild decendants of the people on the ship, the characters are clones imprinted with memories, grown to repair the ship as an emergency procedure. As you would expect, it is heavily dependent on luck what abilities you get, which range from food service technician (go red dwarf!) to immortal.
Sea trade in D&D campaigns: Creates a nice little greater risk/greater profit gambling game for managing your high level characters trade in the background. It doesn't have any real element of skill, and so it a little dated, but seems like it would do the job quickly for players who have reached high level and want to own companies while still going out adventuring. Also interesting because it references a particular players campaign, which is always revealing, as it is more evidence that people were trying things beyond the scope of the rules and playing in styles not spelled out by the designers.
Legions of the petal throne painting guide: More of the tremendous attention to detail and inventive creatures we've come to expect from professor Barker.
Fiction: The forest of flame by Morno. A wizards apprentice learns about hubris and not trying spells beyond your power the hard way. Or does he?
An advert for dragonewt figures. I've seen nothing on runequest in the magazine so far, but this means that glorantha is already out there, developing. Was there a boardgame set in it before the RPG? Why, I do believe there was. More on this when it becomes significant.
More extra rules and errata for Metamorphosis alpha. They really didn't make it as self-contained as they should. I suppose when you're dealing with characters that diverse, its hard to be comprehensive in the little booklets they used then.
From the Fantasy Forge reviews a load more monster figurines.
Another interesting advert. Monsters! Monsters!, the game of gribleys from the dungeon wreaking havoc on villages of innocent humans. Turnaround is fair play, I suppose.
The Gnome Cache continues.
Ral partha. Another familiar face starts advertising in Dragon.
Optional expansions for psionic abilities and morale.
Angels of Death. You know the drill, relentless and virtually impossible to get rid of permanently, they seek out those who's time has come and take them away. The Bastards. ;)
As you may have noticed, the number of adverts by recognisable companies is increasing rapidly at this point. The magazine's been around long enough, and achieved enough of a reputation that we're seeing other significant companies spring up and follow in their tracks. Still no book reviews though. I wonder how long it'll take before they get round to that?
A lot of the early articles covered so far get collected in the "Best of The Dragon Volume 1", which before the days of PDFs was pretty much the only way some of us saw those.
Anyone else notice that the random dungeon tables from SR #1 have a problem - there's no result on Table I for a die roll of 12-13, and this error got repeated when the tables were reprinted in the DMG.
Damn, every time I read that early article on Witches it makes me want to run an OD&D campaign with them. I like how they were specifically created to kick the asses of high-level characters.
The article on "Traps" encouraged me to track down Clark Ashton Smith's story "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan", primarily since I thought that the title HAD to be a typo. The author's right, though - there's a lot of inspiration for D&D nastiness in CAS stories like "The Last Heiroglyph" and "The Ice Demon" and "The Seven Geases".
the very first copy of dragon I bought was iss 28. The only place I could find them in my area was a little tiny game shop in Crystal City Underground near DC...(my mom worked in one of the offices in the towers) Since I would meet her after having my braces worked on every week, I was able to pick up each issue as they hit the shelf.
then we moved and I wasn't able to get them as reliably...so my collection has some gaps in the 50's and 60's...but after complaining about it loudly and often for a few years, my family got me a subscription and I kept it for many years...basically until 3rd Ed came out and 2nd Ed material became as rare as a unicorn.
Later, I bought the Dragon Archive, which covers the first 250 issues. That filled in the material I didn't have very nicely. If you're wanting material from those old issues, it's definately the way to go; 250 ish's of material for less than $50, not a bad deal really...may be hard to find these days though....
Even though I haven't bought an issue in years, I've still toted my collection around every time I move....recently, my new wife (who is a big comic book fan) bought me the collectors boxes, bags and boards to fight the harsh treatment some of them have gotten.
I've been tempted a few times to see how well the collection might sell...my wife says I shouldn't even think of parting with them, and instead should try to find the issues I'm missing to make it a continuous collection.
It was always a tremendous resource for me; everything from treasure tables, new monsters, new campaign angles, and such, to answers to specific rules clarifications and whole modules. Even the "extra" games that were occasionally included were really great.
The thing is....you could tell exactly when WotC took over....the magazine got a slick, shiny new feel to it, but it was just that....totally cosmetic. The substance dwindled away more and more, becoming almost a faint shadow of it's former self....sorta like a old western movie storefront, with nothing behind the door/window....looks great, until you walk around to find more..and there isn't any. Didnt come as too much of a surprise to me when they announced they were shutting down the paper publication and becoming a web-zine. But, that seems to be the way of WotC; they don't seem to understand (or just don't care) what the gaming community wants....
Dragon was past its prime long before WoTC took over. Basically, it stopped being any good when they stopped doing the Princess Ark supplement in it.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Pere Ubu;295424Anyone else notice that the random dungeon tables from SR #1 have a problem - there's no result on Table I for a die roll of 12-13, and this error got repeated when the tables were reprinted in the DMG.
Not until I actually tested it out :o (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=446645) Goes to show what you can gloss over.
Quote from: WindWolf;295449The thing is....you could tell exactly when WotC took over....the magazine got a slick, shiny new feel to it, but it was just that....totally cosmetic. The substance dwindled away more and more, becoming almost a faint shadow of it's former self....sorta like a old western movie storefront, with nothing behind the door/window....looks great, until you walk around to find more..and there isn't any. Didnt come as too much of a surprise to me when they announced they were shutting down the paper publication and becoming a web-zine. But, that seems to be the way of WotC; they don't seem to understand (or just don't care) what the gaming community wants....
Quote from: RPGPundit;295511Dragon was past its prime long before WoTC took over. Basically, it stopped being any good when they stopped doing the Princess Ark supplement in it.
RPGPundit
I do hope my opinion of that era isn't quite as negative as that. I'd hate to have to plug through the last third of this hating every bit of it. Personally, I found it went crap at the end of 1995, when they started to panic about their declining sales, and did a major "refocussing", which ironically removed a huge chunk of the bits that I liked, and IMO just hastened their decline. Which is where I got off first time round. But let's not get miles ahead of ourselves.
(un)reason: That was around the same time I'm talking about, a couple of years later, but to me by then they were already in decline compared to what they once were.The early 90s was the last great period for Dragon.
RPGPundit
(un)reason: That was around the same time I'm talking about, a couple of years later, but to me by then they were already in decline compared to what they once were.The early 90s was the last great period for Dragon.
RPGPundit
The Dragon Issue 7: June 1977
So its a year since Dragon started. They're pretty happy with what they've achieved, but still have bigger ambitions. Already they can look back at their old issues and cringe at the quality. But as we know, there are still substantial improvements coming ahead. Still, lets see what the present contains.
In this issue:
How to vote for the third annual strategists club awards. Gives me a pretty good idea of what was released and did well this year, as well as what authors are currently popular.
What to do when the dog eats your dice: Pretty self explanatory. shows how to use other common methods of generating random numbers to substitute for dice rolling. Most notable for including mexican jumping beans as one of the options, among other joke options.
Gary talks about the origins of TSR and D&D. Most of this is pretty familiar, particularly as its only a short article. But as their fanbase is expanding so quickly, I guess he gets asked it a lot. Rest assured, you have many long years of answering that question ahead of you.
Mapping the dungeon now includes entries for australia and germany.
Mystery hill - Americas stonehenge: Manages to cover several different ancient conspiracy theories in a couple of pages. Lots of stuff thats transplantable to virtually any setting here.
Fiction: The journey most alone, by morno. This continues the journey of the wizard from the forest of flame. It's a bit late, but I can't help thinking that this story makes an excellent example of a seeking for mage: the ascencion.
Military Formation stuff for tekumel. Making battles look like advanced geometry lessons with florid titles from above since 1977. This is really more aimed at the wargamers among the audience, and I found it pretty dull.
More Finieous Fingers
Monster: The prowler. Another worse than death inflicting creature who can makes life a nightmare for dumb or unlucky PC's. More nice errol otus artwork depicting it.
The gnome cache continues, with the situation going from bad to worse for our protagonist, with the ready promise of getting worse still. Will there ever be a happy ending to this story? No, because this is the last installment before it simply gets dropped unceremoniously. So much for that then.
Pretty dull issue really. Doesn't seem to be anything historically significant or hugely entertaining or thought-provoking in this one.
Quote from: (un)reason;295553 Not until I actually tested it out :o (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=446645) Goes to show what you can gloss over.
Is the errata for that article available anywhere? I mean, I've been assuming the missing result for Table 1 should be something like "11-13: Turn (see Table IV)" but it'd be nice to know for sure.
Just posting to say that I'm enjoying this thread! :)
The Dragon Issue 8: July 1977
Oohh. Several very cool things here. We get fiction from the co-creator of Lankhmar, harry fischer, plus the first proper map of the planar cosmology. We also get lots of hints on upcoming games. It seems that they are planning something big in the near future, putting a whole game into issue 11. We'll see how that one pans out. We also get a case of the disappearing freelancer, as the creator of finieous fingers goes AWOL. Again, I look forward to seeing how that turns out.
But enough of the future/distant past (we have got to invent better time travel tenses) In this issue:
The great wheel cosmology that has defined D&D all the way through 1st and 2nd edition, and still got plenty of coverage in 3rd, with various variations and additions; gets its first outing. It's still the same basic setup: 6 inner planes representing building blocks of reality in a sphere, 16 outer planes representing moral positions in a big ring, ethereal and astral planes to connect them to the prime material. There's still a few differences to the final model, the upper planes are in a different order, and there's no Outlands or demi/quasiplanes. What upheaval could move them to the classic form most of us are familiar with? As a longtime planescape fan, any further developments on this front will be reported with great enthusiasm.
The development of towns in D&D. Looks like we're starting to get thoughts on realism and worldbuilding. Guess sharing a magazine with professor barker all this time is starting to rub off. ;) Includes a whole bunch of implicit suggestions about the average level of characters and distribution of alignments that you may want to take or leave, but thats implicit setting stuff in general for you. You have to watch out for it and know how to change it for your own game.
The Finzer Family - A tale of modern magic, by Harry. O. Fischer, the co-creator of lankhmar (Who's books are all out of print, it seems while fritz lieber continues to sell nicely. Quite shocking. ) This is a long story, taking up a full third of the issue, and ends on a too be continued. I won't spoil you on this one.
Gamma World! Coming soon, they give us a sneak preview. Seems a bit odd to release two gonzo sci-fi games within a few months of each other. And I can't say I'm overly inspired by the teaser either. I guess I've just seen these tropes done too many times, often better.
A set of tables for those of you who want more detailed gems and jewelry, measured in carats, and their respective value in GP. Pretty dull stuff, only for hose of you crave detail in everything.
So, you want realism in D&D. A joke article on how to translate youself into D&D ability scores. Most notable for its wisdom entry. Calculate the average number of hours in a week you spend playing D&D and working on your D&D campaign, and subtract it from 20 ;) Which also becomes a subtle dig at how often the writer actually gets to play, thanks to being a tsr staffer. Ahh, turning your hobby into your job. Destroying the joy you take in life since the age of 18. ;)
From the Fantasy Forge continues to point out miniatures for us. Not much reviewing this time though, just straight out pimping, which isn't briliant.
Name that monster! They give us a picture and then ask readers give a name and stats for it. Best entry gets published plus other prizes. I'll report how this one turns out.
Yet more stuff on Metamorphosis alpha by jim ward. He really is plugging this for all he's worth. I suppose it is his creation and all, so he has a strong stake in its success.
An odd little comic on the creation of the world.
This ones a mixed bag, going from the very interesting ( the planes and the fiction) to very dull with little in between. It's nice to see their imaginations are expanding along with their ambitions, but there's still something missing as far as consistency goes. Once again, due to their limited page count, they've bumped their "regular" features out the way to make space for the special stuff. Since they've only been going a few issues, that stops them from feeling regular, and letting people get a feel for their format. Which is a bit annoying. Still, I know they got there in the end. I just have to keep following the path to find out when.
Quote from: Pere Ubu;295788Is the errata for that article available anywhere? I mean, I've been assuming the missing result for Table 1 should be something like "11-13: Turn (see Table IV)" but it'd be nice to know for sure.
Not as far as I can see. It wasn't in any of the official erratas they did back in the day. Your houserule's probably as good as any, since it's a fairly simple system.
How the hell you getting these articles? Thundercats can do anything!
The Dragon Issue 9: September 1977
Once again the fiction eats up a huge portion of this issue, possibly even more than in issue 2. We also see the start of a proper comics section, instead of putting them throughout the magazine. Most significantly, Wormy! Yes, many peoples favourite flat-capped dragon and his demonic pal with a brooklyn accent get their debut here. Now I know.
Also in this issue:
Mixing alignments in D&D. Gary reminds us that even in D&D, everyone doesn't automatically know each others alignment and try to kill each other because of it. It is often more profitable to tolerate people different from you, and take advantage of those different outlooks. Particularly among humans, who span a range of alignments, this is simply not viable, and you have to think politically to survive and achieve your ambitions. Which is important to reminds people. This may be a fantasy, but it's not totally unrealistic (and will continue to get less so, in many ways.)
The finzer family story takes a sharp right angle, and turns into a "time travelers who go to observe an event wind up making it happen" story. Only without the horrible ending in something like Behold the Man. But then, this is a family friendly magazine.
Seal of the imperium: A Q&A column by MAR Barker about tekumel. Lots of boring little rules niggles that I shan't go into, but we do get one very valuable bit of advice. The tekumel that exists in the game is not the same as the one in the books. If every event and item was incorporated, then any semblence of realism and sanity would soon go out the window. Advice which was never heeded by D&D settings like athas and krynn later. Oh well. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. And we're certainly learning quite a lot of history here.
The fastest guns who never lived part 2: More boot hill stats for fictional cowboys, including luminaries such as Tom mix and Lee van cleef. Still not familiar enough with the shows or the rules to comment on how good they are, but there certainly seems to be a good selection of genre emulating abilities there.
Tombs and crypts: Another set of random tables for determination of monsters, should players decide to do a little unplanned graverobbing. Like PC's do.
An Elric boardgame being advertised. I guess this means Moorcock already knows about D&D now, and a RPG will be along soon. Iiinteresting
The comics section. We get Floating in timeless space, Wormy and Finieous fingers. All seem to involve ongoing storylines.
The first issue of White dwarf magazine is released around this time, and they put an advert here. I was going to ask if someone wanted to take that job on, but since they already have, I don't need too. Which is nice.
More building up of detail here, but nothing else stands out. Still, surely wormy is enough for you. If they crammed all new stuff into every issue it'd be a nightmare to keep track of.
Quote from: Jim Profit;296049How the hell you getting these articles? Thundercats can do anything!
O_o (http://therpgsite.dreamhosters.com/images/icons/icon5.gif)
The Dragon Issue 10: October 1977
Going up to 36 pages long, this includes a full boardgame with it, as they hinted at earlier. We'll see several more of those over the years. Such a shame I'm reading in .pdf and can't make proper use of it. Oh well. We also see another development. In an attempt to stem the cries of canonwankers, they're going to clearly mark which new articles are "official" and which are optional variants. Will, it work? It wasn't around by the time I started reading, so it can't have lasted too long. I'll let you know when it stops.
Also in this issue:
Orgies, inc: Changing the rules to make the game more S&Sish, characters using this variant gain experience by blowing their money instead of earning it. Wait a minute. Didn't I see this rule in Iron Heroes recently, where it was hailed a a rather good idea. And do we not also know that mike mearls is still partial to a little OD&D. Not that I'm implying anything, oh no. There are fewer truly original ideas than you would think. Includes some rather NSFW artwork by Dave Trampier. Someones certainly willing to push the family friendly line most of this stuff sticks too.
Designing for unique wilderness encounters: More random tables full of stuff to let you build areas quickly when out of ideas. System free, and so still useful today. It'd be cool to design a world using only the tables in these issues.
Random Monsters: Another set of tables, literally allowing you to build a monter by rolling on them to determine its appearance and stats. Handy (as they say) when dealing with players who already know all the monsters in the books, and have strategies for how to best fight them all worked out. Dontcha just hate that. ;)
Let there be a method to your madness: The worldbuilding continues with this essay on how to create logical dungeons by working from principles such as who built it, why, and what resources they had. This is madness! It'll never catch on!
Snit Smashing! A fun little game of hunting and reproducing, leading on from the floating in timeless space comic.
An article on why males should be stronger than females in D&D, because of things like weight, height and differences in build, along with "realistic" tables for the determination of these factors. As I don't want to annoy the PC among you, I shall say no more apart from to mention that this is another thing which would spawn an analogue much later on, with the height influencing weight multiplication method used in 3rd edition.
Gaining a new experience level: This starts off as a serious article about making gaining a level an ordeal in itself (as people were wont to do back then with training house rules), and then turns into a joke, as the requirements grow ever more ludicrous and arbitrary, ending up with the great pink elephants granting the character his new level while he lies in a drunken stupor. Read as satire, this is a great article, and amongst the jokes are some sound mechanical suggestions, such as allowing magic-users to forget spells that are no longer useful so they can learn new lower lever ones that do have use at higher level, and make the most of their spells known limit. Which as we know, became an invaluable ability for sorcerers in 3.5.
The tactics of diplomacy in Stellar Conquest: Advice on how to play a game where you can't communicate directly and indicate lack of hostility, as well as general tactical advice for the game such as exploration and supply lines. Pretty standard stuff, really.
Wormy and fineous fingers continue.
This has quite a fun issue. There have been several cool new developments, with a higher than usual level of ideas that will be reused in the future, and a proper sense of history is starting to grow.
The Dragon Issue 11: December 1977
38 pages. The board game fun continues in this issue, with snit smashing getting a sequel. Even more importantly, we get the first rumblings about AD&D, with the monster manual coming soon, and lots of resulting promotion for it. (odd that the monster book should be released before the players and DM's books. Still, I guess all the monsters were compatible with OD&D rules. ) On top of that, we have the first official D&D novel coming soon, by Andre Norton! (excuse me while I have a fanboy moment here) of all people. On top of that, they have new staff, and thanks to that, and their still increasing sales, dragon will be going monthly very shortly. That was quick. Just 3 years to go from quarterly to the monthly schedule most of us remember. Now the only way up is in the page count.
In this issue:
View from the telescope: Gary blasts people trying to copy their work, or produce material compatible with D&D without permission. (a bit rich when you consider the hassle they had with hobbits and cthulhu) Quality control must be maintained! We do not produce shoddy rushed work just to make a quick buck! (yeah, I know. How long was the publishing gap between the 3 AD&D corebooks? :D ) AD&D will be a massive improvement over the previous edition of the game! I think most of you are familiar with the flow of high Gygaxese by now, so I'll stop here before we die laughing. On the other side of the page an advert for Judges Guild Officially Approved D&D compatible licenced products. See, we're not monsters. You can do business with us.
Brawling! As ever they make it far more complicated than armed combat, for far less benefit unless you are specifically intending not to kill. Which I guess is important sometimes, particularly when low level characters are so fragile. Given the way the D&D hit point system worked at that time, capturing and imprisoning people would be virtually impossible unless you used magic, or they surrendered. And some people want more options.
Defending against the OGRE: Tactical advice for the boardgame of the same name. Can't really comment on this one.
The Play's the thing: A little article encouraging people to think up backgrounds and personalities for their characters. Along with the worldbuilding stuff in the last issue, it seems that D&D is starting to seriously move beyond its wargaming roots and involve actually viewing characters as roles rather than just pieces to explore, fight, level up and die with. Betcha we'll be seeing a roleplayers vs rollplayers quip within a few issues.
Seal of the Imperium: More Tekumel Q&A by Professor Barker. Mostly setting stuff this time round, clearing things up and expanding on stuff in the books, rather than rules niggles.
From the sorcerers scroll: More teasers on the upcoming AD&D products. The monster manual, and a big outdoor map by Brian Blume. Also notable is an offhand comment about Chivalry and Sorcery, as D&D's closest rival yet. So we know thats out now. Ends by asking the readers to rate what they want more of in order of importance.
Sea magic: More Fafhrd stuff by fritz lieber. Our barbarian learns to shoot bows around corners, despite having recently lost a hand. Truly he is pretty badass. Meanwhile the Grey mouser has acquired a whole ship full of followers. Definitely has the feel of a high level later story, and makes me wish I had the intervening stories. Which is a good thing from the writers perspective, isn't it.
Quarterstaff fighting rules: Another completely disconnected fighting subsystem is introduced. And promptly ignored. Also featuring incredibly twinked out stats for robin hood and his men, who all have all physical attributes at 15 or above. Yeah, not very impressed with this one.
More Wormy and Fineous Fingers.
A review of the Rankin-Bass cartoon of The Hobbit. A very scathing one. Good to see that people realised just how crap those cartoons were even back then. Shame that didn't stop them from producing crap cartoons all through the 80's and making huge amounts of money doing so. Oh well.At least we have a pretty good movie version of LotR now, hopefully with the hobbit to come.
Snits Revenge! A second boardgame continues the story of the timeless space setting. A whole new game, plus errata for the first one.
All in all, this has been a pretty good issue. A few duff articles, but the combination of good ones, and the extensive amount of teasers for the future has made it feel pretty significant in general. This is the first time most of the players at the time would have heard of AD&D, and we know how well that one worked out. Which is nice.
The Dragon Issue 12: February 1978
Another year, another reason for celebration, as Dragon finally gets 2nd class mailing approval. Another step away from being a hobby towards becoming a smoothly running industrial machine (well, as close as you get where artists are involved ;) ) This also gives us a chance to see the proper figures due to the business requirements. Still nowhere near the numbers that they would attain in its heyday, but still more than equal to most RPG supplements these days. Oh well. Times be hard for poor game designer. Old man row 'cross the river each day. The same number that seemed good on the way up can feel oh so small on the way down. Or something.
Also in this issue:
They shoot hirelings, don't they: A tale of player's cruelty to the NPC's under their control, and general evil imaginations. The kind of thing that would spawn an epic thread these days, because loads of people can tell a story like this. And people always want to hear drama and gossip. So fun all round.
A new look at illusionists: Yet more buffs and rules clarifications for this class. I can see why specialist wizards of so many stripes were introduced in later editions, the magic user always got loads of attention and cool toys.
The Persian Mythos and the lovecraft mythos (oh yes, you know how this story ends) get writeups, (including stats for the gods, so you can kill them, as we are, after all, kickin it old skool style. ) Fairly short entries, (tiny by modern standards) that remind us how rules light D&D was back then.
Some thoughts on the speed of a lightning bolt: Another bait and switch, as this actually has to do with the optional action speed and round segment rules, and how much of an advantage they give wizards, due to their lack of armor to slow them down. As a result, if you use them wizards are even more likely to be able to waste their enemies before they can react. As if they needed any more advantages after the first couple of levels.
Ship's Cargo: Does exactly what it says on the tin. If you have players of a piratical disposition, you'll need to determine randomly what treasure the ships they raid contain. This helps you do that.
The druids: Druids weren't bloody sacrificers of men, that was merely a vile roman slander. They were doctors, philosophers and teachers. Ahh, the joys of neopaganism. Really, given the scarcity and bias of records from that time, can we ever know for sure what they were really like. Most of it's just literary invention and deeply tiresome.
An excerpt from the first ever D&D novel, Quag Keep by Andre Norton. Hews surprisingly closely to the spirit of the game (particularly that of the actual plays by Gary and co that I've read. Andre has definitely done her research and tried to emulate the feel of those games), unlike many later D&D novels. Of course, that spirit is somewhat whimsical and has strong character as playing piece metagameing elements, but that doesn't detract from the entertainment. I wonder how hard it would be to get a copy of this book now. It's probably long out of print.
Wormy and fineous fingers continue to develop their respective plots.
The fantasy trip!: The ancestor of what would become GURPS starts here. Also, their back page is no longer filled with a placeholder saying this space for sale, or ads from TSR themselves. That is a definite step up in terms of looking professional.
Another mixed bag of good and bad, important and inconsequential here. They're still trying lots of new things, to see what works. And quite a bit of it is. Which is nice for us.
The Dragon Issue 13: April 1978
The announcement of monthly printing has finally caught up with them. From here on in, the years will seem to go by a lot slower, especially as the page count ramps up as well. This is also the first proper april fools issue, starting up the tradition of filking that would become a regular feature of these. In addition to the increase in publishing rate, they are also moving to bigger offices, as the company in general expands. So its still a meteoric rise then. Which is nice.
In this issue:
How heavy is my Giant: This is pretty self explanatory, as they do lots of maths to determine how heavy a giant of a particular size should be, and how much they should be able to lift. Relys on the laws of physics not being the same as here, as people of over 10 foot or so would need some serious structural redesign and reinforcement to stand upright without breaking their backs with the strain. Includes lots of weights for various materials, for those of you inclined to build a creature out of gold or something (as wizards will)
Tolkien in D&D: Yeah, D&D is heavily influenced by tolkien. No, that is not it's only influence, we like other stuff as well. Yes, we know some things are different from their source, it is a game after all. Now please stop sending us tedious knit-picking (sic) letters. Please?! Anyone listening? Bueller? Yeah. internet forums haven't changed people at all, they've just given them a new avenue to express themselves.
The bionic supplement: Yeah. Thiiss iiiss the seventiiiiieees! More toys for metamorphosis alpha. Has both advantages and problems, obviously.
Demon generation: Another treat for those DM's who's players have memorised the entire monster manual already. Can create some obscenely powerful creatures, particularly if you take the safety checks off. Still, you need them that powerful to challenge the players.
The japanese mythos: Another pantheon detailed for you to worship or kill, as your players choose. As japan has a larger selection of kami who operate on a near human scale, there are a greater number of gods here that are on a reasonably defeatable scale than average. Nothing too surprising here.
The filks page: Lets not go there, shall we. I may have filked before, I may do so again. But it still makes me squirm to see popular songs so abused ;)
Errata for Warlord: Another game I don't remember, I'm afraid.
The winner of the stat that monster competition from issue 8, plus a new competition. This time you need to work from a description, rather than a picture.
Fiction: The stolen sacrifice. A third Niall story from Gardner F Fox, and we go increasingly epic in it. At the end of it, he manages to overthrow a kingdom and become a general. Is this a happy ending, or will the story continue? We shall see.
Fineous fingers and wormy continue.
Notes from a semi-sucessfull D&D player: A whole range of tricks for players, such as the now ubiquitous continual light on an object so you can carry it one, and the enormous usefulness of polymorph, plant growth and permanency spells. Tactical solutions are generally more effective than straight attacks, and this is particularly true back then before they nerfed most of the buff and utility spells. Lets face it, when the GM is against you, you need to use every trick you have to survive.
An ok issue, not as interesting as the last couple, but not bad. I guess it is significant because it starts the monthly circulation and the april fools thing, but it still feels like business as usual. Which I suppose is testament to the hard work of the writers and editors.
Quote from: (un)reason;294221Some discussions on language in D&D. Does feel very dated, and suffers somewhat from the humans are the only race with different languages problem.
Quote from: (un)reason;297086Tactical solutions are generally more effective than straight attacks, and this is particularly true back then before they nerfed most of the buff and utility spells.
I was reading the article on languages the other day and I suddenly realized something important beyond the Were-St. Bernard and talking walls. The example at the end is of a group of PCs who ran into a overwhelming number of Morlocks and were faced with a probable TPK - until the "Caveman Cleric of great Charisma" (I love that line for some reason!) realized she could communicate in Cavish with the Morlocks enough to parley safe passage for the party's stash of wine. Which ties in with the point from the second article thusly-
That encounter wasn't "balanced" for the party's level in any way. No "suitable CR". If the party had just fought straight-out, they would have been slaughtered, and I'm sure the local terrain would have mattered only minimally. Point is,
they got past it. Without DM fudging. Now, maybe if they hadn't had the Cleric with them, they would have had a harder time - but they didn't have to rely entirely on combat to get them through.
Quote from: Pere Ubu;297101I was reading the article on languages the other day and I suddenly realized something important beyond the Were-St. Bernard and talking walls. The example at the end is of a group of PCs who ran into a overwhelming number of Morlocks and were faced with a probable TPK - until the "Caveman Cleric of great Charisma" (I love that line for some reason!) realized she could communicate in Cavish with the Morlocks enough to parley safe passage for the party's stash of wine. Which ties in with the point from the second article thusly-
That encounter wasn't "balanced" for the party's level in any way. No "suitable CR". If the party had just fought straight-out, they would have been slaughtered, and I'm sure the local terrain would have mattered only minimally. Point is, they got past it. Without DM fudging. Now, maybe if they hadn't had the Cleric with them, they would have had a harder time - but they didn't have to rely entirely on combat to get them through.
Interesting thought. This probably ties in with the general greater prevailance of random encounters. When you often wind up facing creatures substantially more or less powerful than you, and don't have the luxury of knowing they're being tailored to your level, it makes you more likely to try and negotiate before attacking.
The Dragon Issue 14: May 1978
36 pages. Quite a bit of sci-fi stuff in this one, both in articles and in adverts. If anything, it seems like Sci-fi held a bigger market share in gaming then than it does now. (on the other hand, modern setting games were virtually nonexistant, so I guess they had to push something out the way) We also get to see the start of one of the classic bits of gaming lingo. Keep reading to find out what I'm on about.
In this issue:
We get to see the actual stats from the winners of the Name that monster competition. This is of course interesting because people have inferred quite different stats and backstories from the same picture. The amount of setting stuff in the entries is rather higher than that of official D&D monsters at the time. Really folks, you're being shown up by amateurs. You need to step up your game.
Space Marines commentary and Errata by the designer. Rather a lot of it. Another case where I don't feel qualified to comment, other than to say that this looks like one rules heavy game.
Nomad gods: The second boardgame set in Glorantha is now out. (this is still pre Runequest, remember) The themes and characters that would become important in Heroquest, much later, are still evident here. Greg is already showing plenty of ability as a game designer. This is another thread of history I will comment upon with interest.
A review of the boardgame Cosmic encounter. A pretty favourable one. But then, self selection means most of the reviews here will be fairly positive. The frequency with which they talk about boardgames at this time reminds you just how much computer games have edged out boardgames and other more bulky forms of entertainment now. Tempus fugit, and all that.
Robots as players in Metamorphosis Alpha: Another article that does exactly what is says on the tin, opening up a new player type, and corresponding playstyle, due to their different abilities. Uses one of the earliest point buy systems to create their stats, rather than the random generation more common in this era, which is nice. I don't think this is the very first instance of point buy character creation, but it'd be funny if it was.
Fiction: An interview with a rust monster. A tale of adventurers being rather stupid, as is not uncommon. You don't mess with the rust monster, even if that rust monster is a polymorphed adventurer.
Gary Gygax explaining what the difference and relationship between the new (john holmes edition) basic set and AD&D is, and how they relate to OD&D, as well as why they chose to do it this way. He says that he intends to keep the original version in print as well. (yeah, how long is that going to last) At this point, it's pretty obvious that after getting through the 3 levels in the basic set, you need to go on to AD&D. The days when BECMI would make BD&D become its own branch of the game with slightly different advancement styles and tropes are still in the future.
Monty HAUL!: That old chessnut of the joke campaign where the characters are obscenely overpowered and the DM is incredibly generous with rewards gets its slang name here. This is the ultimate wargame of ultimate destiny, featuring the norse gods, a battalion of platinum dragons, T-rex's and martians. Much fun was had by all, and many game rules were broken.
Hastur is the KING OF AIR!! Another entertainingly pedantic letter by a viewer who thinks that something in a previous issue was innacurate, in this case the lovecraft mythos stuff from a couple of issues ago. The great old ones should be more powerfull, so powerfull no mortal can touch them! Yeah, whatever you say mate. Now calm down, put the pen down and walk away. Its only a game.
Yet another expansion for metamorphosis alpha. Was it really that popular back then, or was jim ward just a one-man creative pimp-house arsenal for his game?
Wormy and Fineous Fingers continue.
Lycanthropy, the progress of the disease: How infected characters manage to gain control of themselves after the change, what abilities they lose (mostly spellcasting ability), and how PC's advance. Also includes stuff on the social ramifications of becoming a werecreature. As this is long before Ravenloft, horror is not on the agenda. Lycanthropes in standard D&D at this time seem to be fairly easy to identify, even in human form, and quite family oriented. How things have changed. Still quite an entertaining article, and it makes more sense of early mystara stuff.
Quite a good issue, overall. We've seen both a decent amount of new things that would be used again later, and generally amusing stuff.
Great thread. Keep it up!
The Dragon Issue 15: June 1978
36 pages. Dragons 2nd birthday. We start with another burst of bitching at the post office. As ever their reliability is seriously random. Always the case, and probably always will be the case. What are you to do. This also starts the period in which their page count starts expanding consistently, as opposed to just for the occasional special issue. I'll keep track of this, and as soon as I have reliable data for the whole run I intend to do a graph, so we can get a proper visual image of the rise and fall of the magazine.
In this issue:
The start of another tradition, although I don't think they know it yet, that of having Dragon related articles on every birthday issue. This time, its a set of new spells for dragons, to supplement their spell lists and increase their versatility. Surprisingly few of them would go into general use, and get converted to later editions, and so these still feel fresh and idiosyncratic. Which means they're ideal for screwing your players over with. ;)
Pits! You never know what you might find at the bottom of them. And if the DM doesn't know either, he can roll on this random table. Just leave the loan sharks IN the pit please.
Random events table for settlements: Something that would become important later on, in the domain management system in the Companion set. Like PC's, settlements need to face adversity on a regular basis to keep things from getting dull. Unfortunately, they didn't think ahead enough to include mechanical ramifications for these disasters, but the domain management stuff was a bit vague and heavily fiated anyway. We can do so much better nowadays.
Monty haul and the German high command: The tales of insane twinkery and crossover madness continue. Epic lulz are had by all, and the legendary meme continues to spread through the gaming populace.
More stuff on wandering monsters, how to decide on them, and how they should react to the players.
Notes from another barely successful D&D player. This one has a lot of elements of using mundane techniques to simulate magical abilities, and other such trickery. A good reminder that often the best way to win in those days was to avoid rolling the dice at all costs. And creative thinking is more interesting than straight-up fights in any game. So this is still valuable advice for anyone who's GM will accept solutions based upon real world physics.
The gospel of benwa: A joke story of the creation of the world, how it came to be, and how it was divided into law and chaos. Feels veeery dated, I'm afraid.
D&D ground and spell scale area: Some stuff from Gary on why they used different scales of movement for indoor and outdoor stuff, how to reconcile them with miniatures, and spell effects, and the proper size of miniatures to mesh with the inches scale used. Rather dry stuff, with a distinct air of high gygaxese to it, but informative in revealing some implicit assumptions about the game. Particularly interesting is the fact that despite being adapted from a miniatures game, they used them very little in the first two years of the original group, before it was published. So though miniatures and their sale were intimately connected with the first few years of D&D as a published game, and would be so again, there had already been a certain amount of ebb and flow in that area.
Weather in the wilderness: More random tables full of stuff that can be ported to any game with earthlike weather. If you can't be bothered to think up weather to suit the plot, and your players care, just roll here.
Examining movement tactics in Stellar Conquest. Mobility, proper exploration, outmaneuvering your opponent in combat. All the usual things that should be common sense in any wargame. Another unremarkable article.
Fiction: The green magician by L. Sprague deCamp. Another proper author who was a big influence on the game gets a story published in Dragon. A fairly entertaining time-travel story, this time involving interfering in the legend of Cuchulainn. Too be continued.
Fineous fingers is illegible this issue, while wormy is just filler art. This isn't very good.
More random encounters, this time for boot hill.
Another fairly average issue, with good articles, bad articles and dull articles. As it's an anniversary issue, it feels like they've tried to get some big guns in, but the overall effect is just more business as usual. I'm starting to get a bit fed up with all these random tables. Still, quite a bit of that stuff is still usable now, this issue is still useful as a resource, and I've got another hint into D&D's early history, so it's not exactly a waste.
The Dragon Issue 16: July 1978
40 pages
Once again, the editor tries to remind people it's just a game, and their readers shouldn't take roleplaying so seriously. Don't confuse fantasy with reality, don't throw tantrums when your character dies, don't try and assign some deep cosmic meaning to everything we write. All things that you would suppose are common sense. But there's always a few who don't listen, and those are the ones sending poorly written vitriolic letters to the magazine. It's no job for the sensitive, being an artist ;) No wonder they have such a high turnover. Your biggest fans become your worst enemies. In the blink of an eye they're saying you've sold out or lost it, and bitching as if they'd been personally betrayed by you.
In this issue:
More arguments about the cthulhu mythos' stats and fluff, as some people draw upon various authors, while others are lovecraft purists, and the details in stories contradict one-another. Another argument that could go on forever if the editors didn't step in and stop it. And they are noticeably more partisan than most forum moderators in doing so, as they have only limited space, and a personal connection to many of the columnists. Another way in which the internet is a vast improvement, despite its flaws.
The Sumerian pantheon. (ishtar, nergal, etc.) Another deity list. Most notable in that it introduces Tiamat, who would go on to become a D&D regular, and develop into a character quite different from her source mythology; and scorpion men, who would be a staple mystara monster.
Ninjas! Our first new class in well over a year. Some people might have been complaining about class bloat already, but others will always want more, no matter how much they get. This one is very very badly designed indeed. Both overpowered, overcomplicated and stupidly specific in a lot of ways, they specifically say it should be used for NPC's only. (particularly if players are getting overconfident, another case of Gm/player antagonistic assumptions) I think I just won't bother using it at all, thank you very much.
The adventures of the monty haul crew continue: This time Monty gets to GM, and the players have to marshall all their overpowered characters to survive. Also notable because it features the first mention of Drow in dragon magazine, some time before their first iconic adventure and subsequent fame.
Why magic-users and clerics cannot use swords: A typical old skool solution. It's because of a magical curse apprentices have to accept before they can be trained. Which is about as workable as the scribe monopoly on copying magical spells, and its not surprising it never made it into common use.
Realism vs game logic.........: A rather longwinded rant by Gary on a whole number of topics, including spell point systems, people demanding realism in fantasy games, (particularly realistic magic) people trying to coattail on D&D's success by producing unauthorised supplements, critical hits, special weapon expertise powers, spell point systems, people who resent them for making money off their creativity, and people who are incapable of accepting that they are wrong, even when presented with concrete evidence against them. Yeah, thats a lot of vitriol. Public relations were not his speciality. Since a lot of the things that he railed against here made their way into 3rd edition, I can see why he ended up dissatisfied with it. This definitely qualifies as a classic rant.
More metamorphosis alpha expansions and charts, this time focusing on using mutant animals as PC's.
Runequest! King arthurs knights! We're really cooking with classic chaosium products now. Which means BRP, and all the mechanical design advances that come with it. Another important part of RPG history starts here.
The conclusion to the green magician. Once again, the heroes wind up making history happen the way it did. Bit of a lazy way of making a plot, really. Still, I suppose it educates people who can't be bothered to read the originals.
Fineous fingers and wormy are particularly amusing this issue.
Game balance: Jim ward presents a different face to it, reminding us that characters can be obscenely powerful and the game remain fun, as long as they are up against challenges commensurate with their abilities. It is after all, a game, and if you make it too much of a grind, it ceases to be fun. Which is a nice contrast with gygaxian antagonistic GM'ing.
Quite an entertaining issue. We see a lot more of the personalities behind the game, and their interactions and differences than usual. A reminder that this is just a bunch of people who had a cool idea, and were now watching it blow up around them and trying to ride the wave, not always perfectly. They still have quite a lot to learn. And so do we. Maybe some day, I'll wanna settle down. Untill that day, I'll just keep movin' on. (cue banjo solo. )
The Dragon Issue 17: August 1978
40 pages. They maintain their increased size despite not being a special issue, which means they have lots of articles in this one. Despite this, they don't feel they are getting enough good ones, and exhort their readers to send more stuff in. After all, to expand, you need more material. The printing presses are a never sated monster. A feeling I'm starting to know all too well.
In this issue:
Vampires in the dungeon: Yeah, vampires have a whole range of cool powers. So play them smart. Make the characters suffer, hitting and running from cracks in the floor, constantly watched and harassed by vermin, never knowing if some of their number are charmed and will turn on the others at a crucial point, etc etc. Now isn't that much more fun than I roll to hit, roll for damage, he rolls for hit and damage, back and forth until someone dies. And if you kill them all, you can make them roll up new characters, and have them face their old ones, now among the ranks of the undead. Isn't that nice. ;)
Jousting in D&D: Another little independent subsystem based upon an attack and defense type matrix. Not too bad a one, and it helps in fighting without killing each other, which would otherwise be very likely in D&D.
Review: Dragonlord. A pretty favourable review of the wargame, with an extensive explanation of how to play it.
Faceless men & clockwork monsters: A an actual play of a D&D/metamorphosis alpha crossover run by Gary. Lengthy and quite gonzo, with a pretty happy ending, as the adventurers find their technological opponents have no defense against their magic, and wind up becoming heroes in short order.
A wizard with a difference: A set of variant specialist wizard types. Not particularly balanced, I'm afraid. Interesting though, as instead of restricting the more powerful spells by level, they can pick any spell on their list at any level, but the more powerful the spell is, the harder it becomes to cast them. An approach which would be adapted to 2nd ed AD&D psionics, and become standard in some other games, such as the Buffy RPG. Definitely an interesting new bit of design technology, even if you should be cautious about allowing players to play one.
The AD&D players handbook! The second part of the trinity is now with us. Soon the new game will be complete.
Sights and sounds in D&D: More random tables, this time for adding visual flavour to your dungeons. Another sign that they're starting to pay more attention to the setting, even if it's expressed in a different way to modern games.
Another set of joke monsters: unkillable joke annoyance, the munchkin; plus scholars and crs'tchen. My eyes, oh how they are rolling.
The monk and bard in Dungeon!: An expansion for the boardgame. Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Tesseracts: Building hypercubic and other non-euclidian dungeons, making Escher proud, and mapmakers very confused, while maintaining internal consistency in your areas. Yeah, this is cool stuff, particularly to someone mathematically inclined like me. Its a fantasy game. Of course you should make the laws of physics suffer.
Another article full of tactical advice for OGRE: Detailed breakdowns of how to use each unit make this a pretty good one.
Boredom and the average D&D dungeon: Another sign of their growing attention to setting, they advise you to do things like themed dungeons full of monsters and items derived from particular cultures and creature types, to stop it from getting samey. Ok, so its hardly an "ecology of", but it's definitely further advancement in that direction.
A short history of admanite (sic) Yes, its the even more uber than mithril metal, yet to be spelled the way it will in later years. Has a generic backstory of how it was discovered that you can drop into your game. Ahh, power creep, how easy it is to recognise thee in retrospect.
Angels in D&D: Bears little relation to what would become D&D's angel analogues, the devas, apart from having pretty much the spells you would expect from bibilical angels. Encourages you to treat them with the respect they deserve, not just as another monster. Not the most scintillating or original of articles. Still, good to see they're not avoiding christian themes outright. (I look forward to seeing the BADD controversy as reflected through the eyes of the magazine)
Natural armor for monsters in Monsters! Monsters! Another miscellaneous expansion that mostly adds extra power to the creatures involved. Ho hum.
Fineous fingers and Wormy continue their respective plots.
Review: Warp war. Another review that reads more like an advert. They really do need to get hold of some more analytical reviewers. This is definitely an area that needs improvement.
Another issue that among the dross, has quite a bit of really good stuff, and shows definite pointers for the direction that D&D would go in the future, and the setting/rules tropes that would come to define it. Overall, quite a good issue.
The Dragon Issue 18: September 1978
36 pages. Despite being smaller than the previous couple, this is a very full issue, with more articles than any previous issue. This fits in with the general feeling that the roleplaying industry is growing rapidly, with talk about the size of origins and the things that happened there.
In this issue:
Lots of talk about the Origins convention that year, including a list of the awards winners, apologising for the drunken mess the designers caused, and a rundown of the Avalon Hill vs SPI staff softball game. Lots of interesting historical detail here.
Traveller! The strategy of survival: Another classic game gets its first mention in Dragon. As many of you know, in classic traveler you could die in the process of character creation. This article gives you a good run through the generation of a lifepath for a sample character, to whet your appetite for the game. Yeah, this is another big step up for character depth. By making it integral to the chargen process, they make it easy to build characters with depth to their personalities and attachment to the setting around them, and encourage you to do the same with NPC's and the world around.
A review for traveller as well: Between the two, we get a good idea of what the game is like, how the rules work, and the kind of game you play with it. And for a brand new game like this, good publicity in its early months is important to its success.
More reviews: The emerald tablet, Imperium, Pelic Quest (our first computer game review, which I guess is appropriate to the issue.) , and Cosmic Encounter. More sci-fi stuff of various kinds, which are also pretty favourably received by the reviewer.
Insanity! Another weird save based off your ability scores rather than your class & level. As usual, this can be both a real nuisance to players, and an endless source of perverse fun. Unfortunately, the list of insanities isn't that big, and lacks both distinctive quirky insanities, and politically incorrect "insanities" that could make this a classic article. A wasted opportunity.
A load of new spells. Most of these are probably Sllllliiiiightly overpowered, and none of them made it into general use in future books. Most notable for the introduction of metamagic spells, which alter the parameters of other spells cast immediately after them. Not sure if future instances of metamagic draw from this or developed it independently, since they were worded quite differently. But I guess this is still a significant article, since it shows the beginning of people treating spells as combinable and customisable building blocks rather than just discrete effects, which would eventually result in spell construction systems like Mage, instead of endless spell lists.
Magic governed by laws of theory: Once again we see two related articles put next to each other. We see lots of real world magical principles such as sympathy & contagion, and the balance of the universe talked about. More thoughts on how to build an internally consistent world with reasons behind what happens on it working the way it does.
How to design a town in boot hill: More thoughts on building a logical setting for your game. Yep. I guess that world-building has well and truly arrived now, and its just a matter of refining the idea.
The chamber of the godgame: Ahh, the old impossible choice. Sacrifice one of the adventurers lives to solve the puzzle and escape. Maybe they won't really die. Maybe the right choice is find your way around the puzzle. Maybe its on the level, and you're screwed. Yeah, the PC's'll hate you if you use variants on this one repeatedly.
Notes on the design of Gamma world. Yet more thoughts on how to design a map and its inhabitants, as well as their relationships to one-another, resources, and so forth. Another so-so article, but it reinforces that this issue is very much about settings.
Birth tables for boot hill: See above, only for a different topic. Yet more random tables for determining background stuff like social class and job.
Crossover rules for transporting D&D characters to MA, and vice versa. We could have done with this last issue, along with the actual play. You'll still have to wing it quite a bit though, as there are now far too many fiddly bits in both games for a 1 page article to cover.
Monk weapons & monk vs monk combat: Yes, its another badly integrated subsystem.
Effective use of poison: We see the first use of alphabetical identification of poison types with various effects. Which of course is a lot more preferable than save or instant death. Another thing that would be expanded upon and go on to be a staple of 2nd ed AD&D.
Wormy and Fineous fingers continue. A little cartoon takes the piss out of the D&D level titles.
The childhood and youth of the grey mouser: Yet another significant article by a prroper author, this gives a good idea of the not exactly kid-friendly childhood of lankhmars famous rogue.
Random tables for determining the ego and greed of NPC's in D&D, and the effect this has upon their cost and reliability. Another tool for the GM in a hurry.
The super snit revue: A load of entertaining looking new pieces for the snit games. Nice to see them continuing support for this, given its controversial reception.
After reading this issue, I feel a little overloaded. So many significant articles, overlapping and supporting one-another. I'll definitely be rereading this one. Catering to a wide set of games, while maintaining a consistent theme for the issue, this is what a good Dragon issue should be like.
The Dragon Issue 19: October 1978
36 pages. The price goes up to $2.00. Which is vaguely sucky, but thats economics for you. Convention season continues, with Gen Con. Gen con turned out to be less impressive than origins this year. Still, it also expanded quite a bit, and also had to face up to the logistical problems in feeding and accommodating that many people. I suppose that's another drawback of being an expanding hobby. It's interesting to note that the term "hack and slash gaming" hasn't been invented yet, with the editor using "hack and chop" instead. The stereotypes of gamer play might be pretty similar to modern day, but the vocabulary and in jokes to describe them still haven't built up properly yet.
In this issue:
The battle for Snurre's hall: Mentioned last issue, this is the actual play for the Origins tournament that would be developed into the GDQ adventures. As has been hinted, this relied heavily on tactical thinking for survival, as giants are rather powerful, while maintaining the kill everything ethos.
An advert for the previously mentioned Giant modules. Were these the first TSR module adventures ever? It's certainly an epic way to start off the concept, even if the individual modules are only 16 pages long. Oh well, like everything else good, there would be plenty of mediocre imitations to follow.
How many ettins is a fire giant worth: Yet another perspective on the epic module series, this time focussing on the scoring aspect of competitive tournament gaming. So much for there's no winners and losers as long as everyone has fun. We also see the beginning of the regulations to ensure consistent GM'ing in tournament play that would go on to stifle the RPGA in future years. Still, at this point, its obvious they are needed, as con games are quite a different experience to regular campaigns.
Player personalities: After that burst of new epic articles, we go back to the old trope of what kind of players have you got? Not a very good one, as it tries to distill everything down to 8 archtypes, without the nuance to make this model properly all-inclusive.
"Treasures" for gamma world: Another random roll table, largely comprised of modern stuff that would seem rare, valuable and strange in a postapocalyptic setting. A good reminder that a big chunk of modern electronic commodities such as CD's, mobile phones, laptops, etc hadn't been invented back then. Ahh, retro-futurism. How strange you can seem.
More of the history of gamma world, both in and out of game. Another article that does about what you'd expect.
The lowdown on wishes: You give PC's ultimate power, they will abuse it, or at least use it in a way that the GM considers detrimental to the overall fun of the game. So having put wishes into the game, people immediately set out to put limitations and risks on them. You really ought to think these things over before you put them in the game, so you don't have to nerf them later.
Planning creative treasurers: More common sense setting development, such as giving creatures treasures that they can actually use, and are appropriate to their nature. It seems elementary today, yet you'd be surprised how often this advice isn't used.
The mythos of Australia: Yet another expansion for G:DG&H. I suppose its one of those things that are easy to do, and is always in demand, so they'll keep making them until they run out of real world mythologies to cover. Since they haven't invented splatbooks yet, so they need something else to fill the pages.
Systematic Magic: A second attempt to divide spells up according to theme and effects. Not the same set that specialist wizards would later be divided into, although since it's working from first principles, there are some similarities, and they make the same mistake that 3.0 psionics would later, by assigning different prime requisites to different fields. Overall, this particular article is a failed experiment, since it was never taken up, and is notable largely as a curiosity of history and parallel evolution in the way that trilobites are.
The fastest guns that never lived part III: More TV gunslingers for boot hill. As with anything of this type, the law of diminishing returns sets in, and these guys are considerably less famous than the ones in the first article. Keep this up, and you'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel in no time.
A review of gamma world: Most notable for digressing into an extensive rant against the kind of people who think that magic and technology should remain separate in literature, citing Arthur C Clarke, and lots of other examples to show that the line between advanced technology and magic in books is a very tenuous one, particularly in terms of their position in the plot. He does like the game, by the way, and intends to incorporate its ideas extensively into other RPG's. An all the more entertaining review for its slightly unprofessional tone.
Spell determination for hostile magic-users: Spellcasters shouldn't just unleash their highest level damaging spells one after another in a fight. They ought to mix high and low level ones, and damaging and utility ones intelligently. After all, if they blow their wad straight away, they might be caught with their pants down in a later encounter that day. (its pleasing that the idea of the 15 minute workday then rest doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone yet) It makes things much more fun if each enemy uses different tactics. And if you have to resort to randomising this every once in a while, so be it.
Determining the location of treasure: Another random table for when you don't want another boring treasure chest in the middle of the room, and are out of ideas.
Fiction: Footsteps in the sky. A supernatural coming of age story in which everyone in the protagonists family has better special powers than him, and his attempts to prove himself regardless. You've probably read something like it before, and its pretty meh.
Fineous fingers and Wormy are both particularly climactic this issue.
A fairly good issue. Going to the recent conventions and getting a visceral sense of how the hobby is expanding, and how many fans they have seems to have infused the writing staff with a greater level of excitement than usual. This really carries through: despite a few duff articles, their confidence has once again increased, as they produce work that would be remembered well 30 years later. How long before that turns into arrogance and hubris, which is somewhat less likeable to read about? We shall have to see.
Quote from: (un)reason;298192Spell determination for hostile magic-users: Spellcasters shouldn't just unleash their highest level damaging spells one after another in a fight. They ought to mix high and low level ones, and damaging and utility ones intelligently. After all, if they blow their wad straight away, they might be caught with their pants down in a later encounter that day. (its pleasing that the idea of the 15 minute workday then rest doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone yet) It makes things much more fun if each enemy uses different tactics. And if you have to resort to randomising this every once in a while, so be it.
This seems like a really good idea to me. Strange that they didn't pick it up.
Quote from: (un)reason;297818Tesseracts: Building hypercubic and other non-euclidian dungeons, making Escher proud, and mapmakers very confused, while maintaining internal consistency in your areas. Yeah, this is cool stuff, particularly to someone mathematically inclined like me. Its a fantasy game. Of course you should make the laws of physics suffer.
I realize that I'm late in saying this, but I just want to mention how much I love this idea.
The Dragon Issue 20: November 1978
36 pages. The aftermath of con season continues to cast a shadow over this issue, with talk of awards, corrections, and other stuff filling up the issue. They also apologise for having to raise prices again. Other than that, they have the usual selection of stuff on D&D and other games.
In this issue:
Imperium: A profile of the winning game of the strategists club outstanding game award by marc miller. Lots of cool stuff on his design process, including a few things that he would do differently in hindsight.
Errata for the last issue of dragon :D They had left out pieces of both the editorials, and as they were covering the same topic, people got confused. Nice to see them admitting to and fixing their errors quickly, unlike certain other companies.
A job advert, hiring a new editor to work for TSR. Seems amusingly appropriate given the preceding article. ;)
Another random table, reorganising the frequency of magical eyes and amulets in tekumel to a level more to the liking of this particular GM. Yawn.
Star trek miniatures! Another important IP makes its first expedition into the gaming world. Not exactly where no-one has gone before, but ..... Wait a minute, what exactly was the first licenced RPG of a previously famous property? (cthulhu doesn't count, as it was largely derived from open works anyway) Another question I'll hopefully be able to answer sometime soon.
Polynesian mythos stats for G:DG&H: Scrape out the barrel, Scrape out the barrel. We will not stop, until its cleaned of every single drop. And when its clean, we'll make our own to fill it up again. So endlessly we can pour and scrape the barrel once more. Not impressed? Yeah, same here.
Witches as PC's: Somewhat more acessable than the previous article on this subject, this new character class is admittedly slightly overpowered, but with its very high xp advancement probably isn't too broken. One of the first examples of the "give them something cool at every level" philosophy that only now is becoming the standard in class design, and so is prophetic in some small way.
Demonology made easy: The first mention in Dragon of Orcus, Asmodeus, demogorgon, jubilex, and lots of the other fiendish personalities that would be a staple of adventures throughout the rest of D&D's life. Lots of fun rules stuff that unfortunately, most players will never get to use. Because doing so is eeeeeevil, despite the fact that most adventurers are mass murderers for fun and profit anyway .:rolleyes:
A centerfold spread of photos from Gen con. No, not that sort you perv. Lots and lots of seventies hair on display. No, not chest hair. Honestly, can't I take you people anywhere?
A review (and rewrite) of Source of the Nile by Gary. Surprisingly I think that with these alterations the game would wind up less lethal than by the RAW. I suspect the way this game worked would be in inspiration to the way the Isle of Dread adventure worked later. Like the one of gamma world last issue, this is all the more entertaining for not technically being primarily a review, and is still pretty informative as it deconstructs the game.
The asimov cluster: Stats for the worlds in the Foundation series for Traveller. They admit that they had to make big chunks of this stuff up, because the books don't have enough detail. Pretty dry stuff, really.
A preview of the LotR animated film, along with lots of talk of the hassle they went through filming it, and the techniques they used. How well will it be recieved. I look forward to seeing how they react to it in an issue or two's time.
Death statistics: In 4 years of play, one particular gaming group has racked up a body count of over a thousand deaths (counting hirelings, of course). Thats something like an average of 5 deaths a week. (is this the most lethal campaign EVAR!) For the past 2-3 years, they have been compiling statistics of how, and they present them here. Unsurprisingly, other humans come in top, with more than 20% when all types of them are added up, with goblinoids coming in a distant second, and dragons third. Absolutely classic, and an excellent example of how you can take antagonistic GM'ing to the X-treme, and still have a long running and enjoyable campaign. Take note, all those of you who's games have fewer deaths in a year than these guys had in a week, and feel that even a slight risk of unexpected mortality spoils your fun.
A variant rule for War of the Ring, making the pieces truly hidden, battleship stylee. Not a bad idea, even if it does add some complexity.
Fineous fingers and wormy continue.
Demonic posession in the dungeon: A second demonic article in the same issue. this time slanted towards the GM making life a nightmare for the players. Ahh, the excorcist. You have much to answer for.
The space gamer: An advert for a sci-fi gaming magazine. I don't remember this one. Anyone have any info on it?
A less exceptional issue than the last couple. While they hint at upcoming changes, this issue is pretty much business as usual. Another step on down the road that leads to the present.
The Dragon Issue 21: December 1978
30 pages. Dragon is rushed to the printers this month, and consequently, is cut down in size slightly. The amount of articles is still about the same, just of shorter average length than the last few issues. With paper prices up, they hint that they may have to raise prices again soon. All in all, it puts a bit of a damper on what should have been a christmas special.
|n this issue:
Garys review of Search for the Nile gets a prompt reply from the creator. This is pretty dull, and has the danger of turning into an academic love-fest. Another example of things that would never make it in now, as it would be handled via the intarweb.
The Tomb of horrors! Another classic module gets its release now. Prepare to die horribly, again, and again, and again.
You don't kill too many characters, do you: A textbook example of a GM being a complete arbitrary bastard, changing things on a whim to amused themself and keep the players from ever winning. Another case of things that were laughed off then, but would cause massive amounts of complaining these days. Have we all gone soft, or it this a sign of improvement? Who can really say?
What do you call a 25th level wizard? Eventually, the level tables run out of titles for class levels. Which means you're badass enough to make your own title. The longer and more floridly descriptive, the better. Another tremendously amusing article that seems very dated now.
Review: The Dragonlords. Another review that is mostly description.
Cure for the same old monster blues: A reminder that real animals, particularly insects and deep sea creatures have more than enough incredibly weird stuff to match the stuff from fiction. Just do a little research and stat it up if you're short of ideas.
Inflation in D&D: Another thing that has always been a problem, particularly as these are before the days of treasure guidelines for level. If players come to expect a certain amount, it becomes increasingly difficult to take it away. So be carefull. Nothing unusual, really.
Prophet Proofing: Another problem that has always been the case, and probably always will be. That of divination spells spoiling the surprise. This article is once again written from a very antagonistic viewpoint, where it is assumed that the players and GM will be using every resource to beat each other.
Sensible sorcery. Another article on the same theme as the last 2, encouraging the GM to be carefull what they allow with spell research. Spells should always be equal or weaker than published spells of the same level, otherwise balance goes out the window. They really are pushing the player disempowerment this issue.
More random encounters for boot hill.
Encounters with personality: Finally, a wandering monsters table with individual characters with distinct personalities. Many of them are joke characters, so this may not be suitable for some campaigns. Still, its another sign of the penetration of roleplaying into RPG's.
Review: Olympica. Another wargame, involving the elimination of a martian hivemind. Mostly a description, it does give me a pretty good idea what the game is like.
The hall of mystery: A mini adventure (well, dungeon is still 8 years away, so I won't be surprised if we see more stuff like this for a while.) full of puzzles. Another thing that can be dropped into an existing game easily. Plus bad poetry.
An extensive article for Rail Baron by Gary. Very heavy on the statistics, which makes it pretty impenetrable for those of us who don't know the rules of the game.
Review: King arthurs knights! ( quite a while after its release, but hey, this was probably before comp copies became common, plus they had a several month lead-in time.) The direct boardgame ancestor of Greg Staffords pendragon. (another bit of history I am looking forward to eagerly) Another review that is mostly just a description, but still gives you an idea of the tactical setup of the game.
Our first reprint (sigh, already.) The new character classes for Dungeon! get a recap, due to being used in the gen con tournament. I suppose they have increase circulation quite a lot in the past 2 years, so at the time most people wouldn't have them. Still feels odd for me to be seeing reprints only 3 weeks in. Does include some new material as well.
Review: The Muthafuckin SILMARILLION! bitch!! Let me rephrase that. In the beginning, Tolkien, the one, made middle earth of his thought, and so inspired an army of imitators. I'd forgotten that this was only published after Tolkiens death. Funny to think he died just around the time D&D was first published. If he had been around a decade or two more to see this and correspond with its creators, how different would the game, and middle earth be now? Not too surprisingly they complain its a bit dense, which you really should expect from a bible analogue. Really, there's no way I can give this one an objective review, so I'm not even going to try.
Monty strikes back: The GM overpowers the ridiculously twinked characters, and sends them on a metamorphosis alpha crossover. Yeah. No matter how powerful your characters, if the GM really wants to they can just kill or ruin them without a roll. (unless you play something like burning wheel, or god help you, synibarr, that explicitly forbids GM fiat and has rules backing that up.) Bitter? Moi? Nah, I won't tell that story, because I know members of that group are registered here, and I have no desire to cause a flamewar by airing that bit of dirty laundry.
Fineous fingers continues, but no wormy. I guess something else had to be cut to make pagecount, and that was it. Or Trampier was otherwise occupied that month.
Not an exceptionally good issue, but a distinctive one, nonetheless. With big names, tons of reviews, a proper dungeon area and loads of stuff going on, they are certainly trying, but it isn't quite working for me. Maybe next year.
Quote from: (un)reason;298451
The space gamer: An advert for a sci-fi gaming magazine. I don't remember this one. Anyone have any info on it?
It was Metagaming's house organ at first, then was taken over by Steve Jackson. Lasted right into the late 80s. It had a lot of fantasy material as well as SF and is something I remember almost as fondly as
Dragon.
The Dragon Issue 22/Little wars 13: February 1979
56 Pages. Due to Tim the editor requiring surgery, and being incapacitated for quite a while after, the schedule is thrown into disarray, and we miss january's issue. (this is the last time that they would miss a month up till the collapse of TSR and takeover of WotC, as soon after this their staff expanded and they became less dependent on any single person.) As a result, they've thrown together Dragon and Little wars this issue. Which results in a considerably larger page count than any previous issue. If they get a positive response they intend to merge the two for good, and cover both RPG's and wargames in a single magazine again. I know that doesn't stick, but it should make the next few months pretty interesting. Lets see what the response is.
In this issue:
The first assassins: Go go arabian adventures. A load of real world history stuff, well presented and condensed. Shame we have yet to see any adventures covering that style. And curious that assassins don't get the same kind of flak as monks for not being drawn from medieval european archetypes. Oh well, the first problem will be rectified in time. The second, who can say.
Gary goes back to his roots, and writes an article on the rise and fall of the swiss confederation. Another historical essay, this time more slanted towards wargaming. Cavalry has its problems when faced with rugged terrain and people with pikes. But pikes don't really work against heavy artillery. And if you don't adapt, you lose. Another pretty interesting and well thought out article, which incidentally reveals that gygax actually means seesaw in macedonian. Just in case you were wondering. :D
Armies of the renaissance: A third historical article in a row. This one is neither as good or long as the previous two, being very vague, and trying to cover too much in a page. It does have a good sized bibliography though, so if you want more info, you have better places to go.
Reviews: Up scope! a submarine boardgame, The face in the frost, a book. Panzerkrieg, another wargame. And two magazines, Apprentice and pheonix, get very scathing reviews from Gary. He does so love blasting the competition. I suppose when you are the creator of the best selling game and magazine in your field, you can justify saying that you are better than them. But it would show more grace to not be so crass about it.
Mapping the dungeons gets by far its most comprehensive listing yet, 9 full pages long. Of course, it's still a small percentage of the people that have actually bought the game, which the editor complains about. Maybe some people just don't want a bunch of strangers inviting themselves to their D&D game.
What is D&D, and where is it going? Gary goes into an explanation of where D&D is coming from, and where he sees it going. Most interesting is that he doesn't see D&D changing that much after the DMG is published, apart from minor errata and revisions, because it is good enough as it is. Like chess or monopoly, it doesn't need more stuff to retain a decent market position. Constant barrages of supplements would only deter casual gamers. Man, he really got the direction wrong. But as D&D sold more copies under that policy than its current several splatbooks a month schedule, I'm not so sure he was philosophically wrong. But that's something we could debate forever. (and indeed, have recently done here. )
4th dimension: A new boardgame from TSR, intended to rival chess or something like that. So much for that plan. I wonder how long it lasted?
An extensive preview of the AD&D DMG, including lots of tables that really are needed to play the game properly. This is the problem with staggering your releases of corebooks. It stops people from playing the game properly for a while. We see that the Great Wheel has now been organised into the order that it would retain for the forseable future, but there is still no outlands. Lots of other classic magical items also make appearances.
SPI on D&D: Gary attacks a reviewer from another magazine who dared to be unimpressed with AD&D. Comes very close to descending into personal attacks. I know people get attached to their creations, but really, this is a bit much.
Stalemate at kassala: Another wargaming actual play, and a pretty fun one, making little attempt at historical accuracy, while still giving plenty of tactical variation.
Fineous fingers takes the piss out of gollum this issue.
Gary reiterates his love for polearms again, in even greater detail. Just when you thought that topic was finished, he trots it out again for all the new readers that have come along in the last couple of years.
In search of the unknown! Another classic adventure out now. Any month now, people are going to start complaining about the glut of modules. ;)
A hell of a lot of controversial stuff this issue, mostly coming from Gary. Agree or disagree with him, his opinions are always entertaining to read, and you can see how he managed to get people to follow him. Having a strong identity makes you more interesting to be around than the average person. Which is something we can all aspire too. Now, how do you do it and not have a big proportion of people consider you annoying? Not by snarking about the hero and founder of the hobby you're playing, I'll wager ;)
Quote from: (un)reason;298451The Dragon Issue 20: November 1978
The space gamer: An advert for a sci-fi gaming magazine. I don't remember this one. Anyone have any info on it?
.
I was a huge fan of Steve Jackson's Space Gamer (I beieve he took over from Metagaming around issue 25 or so)
. Had a huge impact on my approach to doing a gaming magazine when I started Shadis. Good mix issue to issue.
IT popped up gain under a different publisher around '93 (in name only).
Sad. Back in the day it was a great zine.
I still have two issue covers framed and hanging on my game room wall.
The Dragon Issue 23 : March 1979
The page count returns to 32 pages briefly, for the last time. From next month on, Dragon's expansion of size really starts in earnest. I guess they managed to solve their paper shortage. This issue starts with a blast at the running of origins, calling it inherently faulty and self-serving, only concerned with the profits of the manufacturers. An accusation which would be leveled at T$R as well, but there you go. There's always going to be organizational and financial problems, and people are always going to complain about them.
In this issue:
En garde in solitare: Does what it says on the tin, providing a system by which you can run opponents for yourself without scripting, which wouldn't work in solitare. A short but sweet article, which looks like it would work quite well.
Gary lists the gaming companies that were present at the Hobby industry Convention that year, and talks about how much of an improvement that is over 10 years ago. Another sign of the wave that they were riding, but also of how many of the big players of the 80's and 90's hadn't even been founded yet. We're still a long way from the present.
Fiction: The thing from the tomb, by Gardner F Fox. Niall returns for a fourth time. Increasingly, it seems like he's never in any real danger, thanks to his demonic patroness. Which does detract from the tension somewhat. Plus, for the same reasons, he grows decreasingly tactically intelligent and proactive. Yeah, I'm not enjoying this as much as I used too. If it continues like this, he'll be an unstoppable gary-stu in a few episodes time.
Mind wrestling: An alternate system for psionic combat, trying to make it model the visuals of psychic fights in movies better. Not sure how well this would work, as I never read the 1st ed psionic rules, but it does substantially change the tactical considerations of the game. It certainly looks like another fun little system I wouldn't mind trying out.
Water adventures for Metamorphosis alpha: Lots of new monsters, plus a little bit of game advice. Typically weird mutations make this a pretty entertaining read, as well as driving home how huge the starship warden is. If only red dwarf had though of doing a flooded level episode at some point during their run.
It weighs What?!!!: Armor and weapons were designed for effectively fighting in and with. Any game designer or GM (yes, you SPI) saying otherwise and trying to stop you from doing basic things like stand up from lying down or getting on and off a horse on grounds of "realism" is being silly. I suspect that they'll have to debunk this persistent myth again, since it showed up here recently as well. When will people learn.
Random generation of creatures from the lower planes: No, not a reprint. Gary liked the idea so much that he decided to do his own take on it (plus, that means he doesn't have to pay the original writer royalties). This would be incorporated into the DMG, and later on become the basis for the hordlings. Lovely stuff, although not quite as overpowered or gonzo as the original. Includes some sample illustrations, which really help you visualize how to take these fucked up combinations of random rolls, and turn them into creatures.
Fineous fingers is on vacation. Wormy is also still absent. Dear oh dear.
Damage Permanency: Ahh, attempts to introduce realism into D&D. How we laugh at ye. Involves lots of tables that are not always entirely sensical, such as losing levels in spellcasting ability because your arm was damaged. I think we'll avoid using this one. Long experience has shown that people react to their character getting random crippling injuries even worse than they do to their being killed. When the rules governing it aren't that good, (FYI, the only crippling injury rules that I've seen that I actually like are the ones from Savage Worlds) its even less desirable.
Imprisoning Characters: Another badly thought out article based on the principles of antagonistic GMing and players with multiple characters being common. Doing stuff like this may be fun for the GM, but having your character put out of play, but not killed for extended periods of time can quite justifiably induce frustration. Or are we just too soft these days?
A very advert heavy issue this time, which combined with its page count, makes this issue feel a little light on content. The article quality is about average, but the overall product feels a little subpar, with the artwork below standard as well. Guess they were gearing up for the big changes coming shortly, and not putting quite as much effort into this issue.
The Dragon Issue 24: April 1979
48 pages. Well, they didn't exactly solve the paper shortage, merely shift their supplies around a bit, and put them where they sold most. So long Little Wars, we barely knew thee. However, having got rid of the division between RPG'ing and wargaming again, they feel more free to address other forms of gaming as well, as we will see later. There are other changes in format as well. which I'll cover as we get to them. Plus, what would an april be without joke articles. Yeah, there's all the stuff you would expect, plus quite a bit that you wouldn't.
Anyway, in this issue:
Lost civilizations in Source of the nile: A big add-on to the game, increasing its pulpy feel, and carrying with it a whole new set of risks and rewards for the players. Seems pretty well done, although I can't be sure how well balanced it is with other challenges in the game. It certainly seems to support outcomes where everyone but the main explorer dies. (bah, they're only natives. :waves hand: )
Keeping the magic-user in his place: A whole bunch of suggested nerfs for those of you that are finding that magic-users dominate the game. Includes several ideas that would become much more frequent in later editions, such as concentration disruption, and reducing the general duration of spells. I have never been a fan of nerfing, so I shall merely sigh and move on.
Chinese Dragons: Its hard to get a build a consistent mythology of a place when the stories from it are inconsistent and contradictory. (real life, unlike fiction, is under no obligation to make sense) So here's another interpretation of chinese dragons for D&D. Another article that feels like filler material. Still at least we are seeing a bit more on the personality and ecology of monsters here.
Another look at lycanthropy: A more comprehensive article than the previous one, covering the full gamut of willing/unwilling/physical/mental changes found in literature. Which is even better than Ravenloft managed to do later. A well thought out article, that seems to be quite mechanically sound. I approve all around.
Roman military organisation in Classic Warfare: Gary talks about some minutinae of this topic for his old game. Like the stuff on polearms, you'll either love it or be baffled by it, and I'm afraid I fall into the latter camp.
Fineous fingers is still on vacation, the lazy bugger. Honestly, they're monthly strips. How hard is it to get a decent buffer up? Many comics of similar size manage daily or several times weekly schedules for years with no trouble. Ok, we have copypasta techniques now that they didn't then, but really, this isn't good enough. Still, its better than Wormy, who hasn't even made an excuse for his absence.
A viking campaign in the caspian sea: Now this is a fun war story. Vikings vs Arabs! What a culture clash. Based on real 10th century hisorical accounts, this shows that it wasn't just the european costal towns that got raped and pillaged. Includes Classic warfare stats for the scenario. A pretty good article.
The Melee in D&D: Gary defends the level of abstraction in the D&D combat system, that even though you may only be rolling to hit once per minute (ahh, AD&D, why, why why? BD&D got it closer to right with 10 second rounds, and yet you still stuck with it for 20 years in the face of many complaints.) this represents an entire exchange of lots of individual actions. (And yet you could still only move 40' in that time. ) Plus, in a game with magic and dragons, what's realism anyway. And my system is still more realistic than any other out there at the moment, so ner. You can change it if you want, but keep in mind that then you won't be playing proper D&D, and anyway, you'll probably find its not as fun, because you've thrown off my carefully considered game balance. I don't think I need to comment any more on this one.
Jean Wells and Lawrence Shick join the TSR staff. Go them. Cue typical comment about needing to bring a female perspective to the magazine. :rolleyes:
Out on a limb returns after a lengthy absence, due to lack of decent letters. Demanding that letters be typewritten isn't helping this (ahh, once again, how times change.) We get one calling them out on Gary being allowed to make personal attacks, while anyone else writing in isn't. (which pleases me because it shows that there were people who felt that he was turning into a bit of a dick at the time as well. Becoming a star does horrible things to even the nicest of people.) A person complaining about the merger of dragon and LW, and two people complaining about their religion being satireised in a recent article (the Crs'Tchen) So despite the absence, it's pretty much business as usual here.
Lotsa house rules for Dungeon!
Armies of the Renaissance - the Swiss: This is pretty similar to the article a couple of issues back, only a little more general and condensed. Entirely fluff, and not hugely interesting.
Narcicistics: Ahh, joke monsters. We never tire of reading of thee. (and then never use you in our games either, I hope, as the stats do not work under the rules) This time, the popular crowd gets to be the butt of the joke.
Psionics revisited: A set of modifications for the psionics rules in EW. These make little sense to me, but I gather that those rules weren't the most well constructed anyway, so its all good/bad.
Disease: A set of random tables for determining the symptoms and lethality of a random disease. As is often the case for this period, the mechanical ramification of certain symptoms goes unexplained. Still, it is pretty amusing, and hardly useless.
Bergenhone '77: Modern war training. The american army gets its ass kicked at tank gun target practice by the canadians. We'll be ready for this years competition, and beat them into the ground. Now that's real life wargaming. :D
The return of Conan Maol: A little more distant history, here, as we get a story of another ancient irish hero to use as we see fit. Another so-so article.
The ramifications of alignment: Another attempt to make the moral/ethical conflict in D&D make a little more sense. This one works by separating out what the author considers the 6 main manifestations of each alignment (examples: seeker of knowledge or military discipline for law, the balance must be preserved or personal ambition over principles for neutrality, fertility or destruction of everything for Chaos, and allowing you to focus on one. Something like this would have made the irreconcilability of alignment debates caused by people being unable to agree on what actions actually are lawfull/chaotic/good/evil considerably less of a problem. A good article, (apart from the very bad deity names, which seem to have been spewed from a generic fantasy random syllable generator) and one I wish had been picked up and run with by the game.
Speaking of random syllable generators, we get one for naming things in tekumel.
The results of the second featured creature competition. It seems that there aren't that many decent artists among dragon's readership, as only the number 1 entry shows any real signs of professionalism. They do recognize that art is the area that they need to improve on the most, and we know they do improve on that front. But how soon? How much longer will scrappy black and white line art be a regular feature of the magazine?
Monty haul and the best of Freddie: More silliness, including what would later become serious artifacts the ring of Gax, and the Rod of 7 parts. These are the stories that would later be adapted into Greyhawks epic lejends ;) and characters. Kinda takes the aura of wonder away, doesn't it.
The Society for creative anachromism: Now here we see another great advantage of the remerging of the magazines. They cover topics that would previously have been unsuitable for either. Tabletop roleplaying, meet LARPing. (god, 4 years, and this is the first time they've mentioned it here.) I hope you'll be the best of friends, and not look down on each other and go around taking the piss. We're all just gamers, trying to have some fun. Futile hope? Oh well. Hopefully we'll see more on this topic before the magazine turns inward and becomes a D&D house organ again.
All in all, its a very full issue, the biggest change in format since the move from SR to dragon. They've definitely put a lot of effort into this one, and I'm pleased to see that they want to expand their scope. If they increase their standards and production values I can see how they can soon reach the golden years that so many people have spoken of nostalgically. The rollercoaster is definitely going up at the moment.
Thanks for the reviews, keep em coming.
The Dragon Issue 25: May 1979
48 pages. A gamma world special (the first explicitly topic focussed issue since TD4), they continue their drive to improve and reorganise the magazine. Even the editor is not immune to having his friends and family feel that working in gaming is a bit childish. He wants to prove them wrong, and he wants to do it well, because its a fun job to do, instead of some boring office work. Ahh, stereotypes. You don't change much, do you. Just get applied to different groups as they rise and fade.
In this issue:
A part of gamma world revisited: jim ward revisits the section of north america he seeded with factions in a previous article, expanding on their histories, philosophies, bases, significant NPC's, etc etc. A fairly good article that helps give GW games direction and setting, instead of just being one gonzo encounter after another.
Judging and you!: Jim ward gives his philosophy on proper gamemastering. You've got to be able to improvise, don't be afraid to change things. Don't let characters know how to do things just because their players do. Don't kill characters without a chance, but don't save them if they rush in like idiots. It all seems pretty sensible, noncontroversial stuff, amazingly.
The Armada Disasters: This is something most of us (or at least the brits, cant say for the rest of the world) learnt in high school. The spanish got their asses kicked and then sunk, and as a result there are huge wodges of sunken treasure to be found. Or in other words, a stonking great real world adventure hook. Not a brilliant article, but it does the job.
The place of social class in D&D: Gary thumbs his nose at the concept of tables for social class and occupation, and the implicit generic medieval setting they contain. He then goes on to encourage you to create your own systems of government for the various places in your world, including ones that do not exist in the real world such as magocracies, and defining their class structures and relationships to one-another. Another strong article that shows that larger considerations of setting were really starting to become an issue for the TSR guys.
The writing of the DMG is now mostly done. So it'll still be quite a few months before we get to see it in the shops :p
Out on a limb: We get a whole page letter viciously slating the Bakshi version of LotR, which then ends with the editor agreeing and saying that if anything he'd have been even harsher. Man, they really dropped the ball on that one. A half page letter defending Alpha Omega from its review here. And another letter complaining extensively about how badly run a tournament was, which recieves a personal apology from gary, which is nice of him.
Comic: The westminster wargaming society, by Tom Wham. Aww. lookita keetom. They like to play with miniatures and dice too.
Armies of the renaissance part 3: Another too short and general article on real world military stuff.
Would the real orc please step forward: An article on the proliferation of goblinoids and their different appearances. We see the start of the goblin/hobgoblin vs orc/ogre partitioning that would become more pronounced as the years went on, along with some bits that weren't picked up, such as gnolls and trolls being related (well they do rhyme. Whatever happened to Thouls? They were cool.) and kobolds being part of the same family as orcs. Has a huge chunk of miniatures reviews as well, with strong opinions on which ones most suit the writers vision of orc. I like this article a lot, it manages to be both informative and amusingly opininated, adding quite a bit to D&D's implied setting.
The Traveler navy wants to join YOU!: More character path stuff for traveler. Pretty dry stuff. But people always want more options. I just hope the ones here aren't broken, as I can't tell.
Gamma world artifact use chart: More advice on future characters using modern devices, and how to handle it. Don't let them do things just because their players can, and vice versa. Includes some random failure fun for if they get overconfident.
Fiction: An alien in a strange land, by Jim Ward. We see one of the big backstory events of the gamma world setting through the eyes if its instigator, the lifeforce sucking mutant Blern. Doesn't really work, as It never really gives him a personality beyond the desire to kill and smash everything he comes across. (ahh, the 70's and 80's, when you could get away with characters who's only motivation is doing evil because they are evil. ) We are not impressed.
Fiction: An interview with an iron golem, by Michael McCrery: A follow-up to the one with the rust monster. And oh god, it the holy hand grenade of antioch. Yet again, the adventurers own idiocy is their undoing. Frankly, anyone acting that dumb deserves to die.
War of flowers: An article on the political and religious structure of the aztec city-states, and the way they waged war on one-another. Includes a complete little war game. A very high quality and entertaining article.
Fineous fingers finally finds his way back.
Varieties of Vampires: Ahh, the insanity of real world mythology. Still despite in many cases being incredibly stupid, your players will soon stop laughing once they face their special abilities. They want to suck your ....... eeech, lets not go there.
To select a mythos: More stuff on world design. All a bit dull and platitudinous really. My philosophy of world design is very much not rocked.
Arms and armor of the Conquistadores: More historical fluff for your wargames. Another article that fails to really distinguish itself.
Another fairly good issue, with several really good articles, some fun ones, and some dull ones, but no really bad ones. Once again, I'm feeling more than a little full up after reading this one. There's no way I'm going to remember everything reading at this rate. There's going to be enough stuff in the run that you could never really use it all, and that's really hitting me now. Still, the only way out is forward, so on with the adventure.
Quote from: (un)reason;298739What is D&D, and where is it going? Gary goes into an explanation of where D&D is coming from, and where he sees it going. Most interesting is that he doesn't see D&D changing that much after the DMG is published, apart from minor errata and revisions, because it is good enough as it is. Like chess or monopoly, it doesn't need more stuff to retain a decent market position. Constant barrages of supplements would only deter casual gamers. Man, he really got the direction wrong. But as D&D sold more copies under that policy than its current several splatbooks a month schedule, I'm not so sure he was philosophically wrong. But that's something we could debate forever. (and indeed, have recently done here. )
Far from wrong, he was dead right, including in his prediction about what would happen if you created a supplement mill.
RPGPundit
Quote from: (un)reason;299095The Dragon Issue 25: May 1979
This was the first issue of
TD I owned. The Phil Foglio cover is still one of my favorites. :)
Quote from: (un)reasonThe Armada Disasters: This is something most of us (or at least the brits, cant say for the rest of the world) learnt in high school. The spanish got their asses kicked and then sunk, and as a result there are huge wodges of sunken treasure to be found. Or in other words, a stonking great real world adventure hook. Not a brilliant article, but it does the job.
Quote from: (un)reasonArmies of the renaissance part 3: Another too short and general article on real world military stuff.
Quote from: (un)reasonWar of flowers: An article on the political and religious structure of the aztec city-states, and the way they waged war on one-another. Includes a complete little war game. A very high quality and entertaining article.
Quote from: (un)reasonArms and armor of the Conquistadores: More historical fluff for your wargames. Another article that fails to really distinguish itself.
I really appreciate all the historical articles - I still do, actually. Lots of good ideas for both real-world and fantasy or sci-fi gaming.
Quote from: (un)reasonThe place of social class in D&D: Gary thumbs his nose at the concept of tables for social class and occupation, and the implicit generic medieval setting they contain. He then goes on to encourage you to create your own systems of government for the various places in your world, including ones that do not exist in the real world such as magocracies, and defining their class structures and relationships to one-another. Another strong article that shows that larger considerations of setting were really starting to become an issue for the TSR guys.
I always appreciated advice on world-building. Still do, come to think of it.
Quote from: (un)reasonWould the real orc please step forward: An article on the proliferation of goblinoids and their different appearances. We see the start of the goblin/hobgoblin vs orc/ogre partitioning that would become more pronounced as the years went on, along with some bits that weren't picked up, such as gnolls and trolls being related (well they do rhyme. Whatever happened to Thouls? They were cool.) and kobolds being part of the same family as orcs. Has a huge chunk of miniatures reviews as well, with strong opinions on which ones most suit the writers vision of orc. I like this article a lot, it manages to be both informative and amusingly opininated, adding quite a bit to D&D's implied setting.
The illustration that comes with this is great.
Quote from: (un)reasonThe Traveler navy wants to join YOU!: More character path stuff for traveler. Pretty dry stuff. But people always want more options. I just hope the ones here aren't broken, as I can't tell.
I may have generated characters using these tables, but I'm not sure.
High Guard was out the next year, so that quickly replaced them if I did.
Quote from: (un)reasonGamma world artifact use chart: More advice on future characters using modern devices, and how to handle it. Don't let them do things just because their players can, and vice versa. Includes some random failure fun for if they get overconfident.
Iirc, this was very similar to the ones in
Metamorphosis Alpha. They made a fun little mini-game to play.
Quote from: (un)reasonFiction: An alien in a strange land, by Jim Ward. We see one of the big backstory events of the gamma world setting through the eyes if its instigator, the lifeforce sucking mutant Blern. Doesn't really work, as It never really gives him a personality beyond the desire to kill and smash everything he comes across. (ahh, the 70's and 80's, when you could get away with characters who's only motivation is doing evil because they are evil. ) We are not impressed.
I don't think it's that bad. We're introduced to Blern after he's set up an organization that will keep a group alive until he returns to re-establish his rule, so he's clearly planning ahead. He uses his powers in interesting ways.
Quote from: (un)reasonVarieties of Vampires: Ahh, the insanity of real world mythology. Still despite in many cases being incredibly stupid, your players will soon stop laughing once they face their special abilities. They want to suck your ....... eeech, lets not go there.
I used ideas from this article to mess with . . . uh. CHALLENGE . . . my players.
The Dragon Issue 26: June 1979
52 pages. Finally, the editor gets an assistant, the lovely Mr Jaquet, who's first name changes unpredictably from article to article. Now their staff is big enough to withstand one person getting knocked out temporarily, so we won't be losing months because of that. We also see a spate of new running articles start here. Mighty Magic Miscellany, Dastardly deeds and devious devices, Bazaar of the Bizarre. Ahh, alliteration, how you help make things memorable. What would we do deprived of opportunities to twist the lexicon of language in disturbing directions. They also say that this is your last chance as readers to save the letters page, as they still aren't getting regular letters, and they're tired of asking. You do know what a can of worms you're opening here, don't you?
In this issue:
Miniatures, meet boards: Tim Kask talks about his first experiences in wargaming, and recalls the problems with miniatures gaming in general. This then segues into talking about a new game, System 7, and how using cardboard chits makes things so much more accessable than shelling out for and painting hundreds of miniatures. He goes on to say he hopes it revolutionizes wargaming the way D&D did. But miniatures make up most of the companies profit. Yeah, so much for that idea.
Napoleonics no longer mean a second mortgage: A proper review of system 7, with a pretty good assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. This is pretty good, not just a promo for the game.
Necessity is the mother of invention: The designer of system 7 weighs in on the design process for the game, and the compromises they had to make in doing so. Another solid article that adds to this issue's big topic.
The designer responds to first volley: Lotsa players questions, and the corresponding clarifications and errata. Again, this is a solid article, and rounds out this issues main feature. After this, you'll have a pretty good idea if you want to buy System 7 or not.
Giants in the earth: Another article that is intended as a recurring one, this is where they stat out characters from various books for D&D. Of course, as D&D cannot properly emulate them, they have to break the rules that PC's are limited too to represent them. They are also disgustingly overstatted, with not a single attribute below 13. I just have to sigh at this.
And what of the skinnies? An add-on to the Starship troopers wargame, giving the humanoids a power boost so they can match up to the humans and bugs, instead of being stuck in the middle getting slaughtered. Not sure how well this holds up mechanically, but it seems a decent enough article. Hopefully it was of use to someone.
The placement of castles: A tactical guide for Lords and Wizards. More rules stuff that I can't really comment on, but seems decent enough.
35th aniversary of d-day remembered: Lest we forget. Of course back then, there were considerably more people who saw it in person still alive. A good reminder that behind the games, there were serious historical events, with people getting killed, and the same cannot be said for fantasy games. But lets not stay on a downer for too long, shall we.
The solitary berserker for william the conquerer - 1066: Another fun rules expansion. Play Harold Hardrada smashing his way through the english. Maybe you'll even win this time around. Another article that seems ok to me.
Chinese Undead: I think you know what to expect from this. Has a bit of crossover with the vampires around the world article from last issue, but not enough to be useless. And as ever real world mythology is easily as strange and considerably less optimised towards ass-kicking abilities than D&D monsters.
A load of general stuff for boot hill. This is stuff that'll mostly benefit players, at the cost of adding extra mechanical gewgaws to remember. All in all, this is pretty meh.
Another view on D&D alignments: This one doesn't really add much to the pot, merely being a list of what individuals of a particular alignment probably would or wouldn't do. Which is not the best way to go about it, as it lumps a bunch of unrelated traits together, and thus adds to the perspective of alignment as restriction, rather than monitoring device. Which is not the way to go about things, in my opinion. I do not approve.
Deck of fate: Tarot cards for D&D. Draw one of these, and stuff will happen, maybe good, maybe bad. Either way, it keeps things interesting, doesn't it. Not nearly as comprehensive or mechanically sound as the later bag of beans one, this is still an entertaining article, that I have no problem with.
D&D meets the electronic age: Using a computer with an amazing 4K of memory! ( Damn, A page or so of typing here eats up that much, they must have been far more efficient with it back then.) to assist in the mechanical side of running a game, building to hit matrixes, monster stats and dungeon layouts. Goes to show, computers were coming into the range of affordability to ordinary people, and you could already do quite a bit with them back then. But if they weren't, they wouldn't have developed as quickly as they have, as there wouldn't be the money to put into development. It's like evolution. Creationists ask what use half an eye is, but even a single photosensitive cell offers considerable advantages to an organism. And if something offers an advantage, it rapidly spreads and gets built on and refined.
Hirelings have feelings too: A little reminder that hirelings need paying, and will desert if treated badly. If your adventures are getting dull, a little NPC friction can liven them up.
Notes from a very successful D&D moderator: More gaming advice heavily slanted towards the adversarial mold. It encourages finding new inventive ways of countering the players stratagems, so they never get overconfident. Which isn't very nice behaviour, is it now. Still, lots of people had fun playing like that, so who's to say its bad.
D&D, AD&D and gaming: Gary talks about the origins of D&D, and then goes on to talk about the difference between D&D and AD&D. This is where the division between the freewheeling, make it up yourself D&D style, and the standardised, comprehensive, tournament oriented, you've got to play it by the rules in the book or you aren't doing it right AD&D style is spelled out in detail to everyone, and is quite representative of Gygax's opinion on why the games needed to be separated. His focus is also clearly going to be with AD&D from this point on, as that's the one he wants to promote as more important as a game. Which is very informative, if slightly amusing in hindsight. He also defends his rather venomous reviews of a few issues ago, essentially saying that they deserved it for being crap, and if they aren't told so, they'll never improve. And lots of good gaming material is what he wants. So that's ok then ;) :rolleyes:
Mugger! A somewhat humourous D&D mod, in which the players play muggers trying to rob as much stuff as possible while avoiding the arm of the law. Fun as a one-shot, and as it's encounters are by random table, it looks like it would work well as a solitaire game. Which is neat. Bring on the violence.
Birth and social status tables for tekumel: Random tables, random tables, la la la la. Don't we already have a set of these? Forgive me if I lose interest.
Blueprint for a lich: Another familiar idea gets its first expression. Becoming a lich takes quite a bit of work, and this article lays out the steps. It has a few bits that later versions would omit (maybe they'd developed more refined transformation rituals) but is still the basic form that would hold throughout 1st and 2nd edition, and be adapted to create dracoliches. Which is nice, I guess.
Putting together a party on the spur of the moment: Gary talks about generating parties quickly for con games. As you might expect, luck is involved quite heavily, which may result in you being twinked or screwed. Such is the fate of the unplanned game. Still, I'm sure that with gary as the GM, it'd still be fun.
Strength comparison table: Various monsters strength scores, using them as characters, strength without proper leverage. This article tries to do too much, and as a result, fails to do anything very well. Don't try and cram a load of scattershot ideas into a single article next time. Leave that to the professionals.
Reviews: Tribes of crane, Ice war, Mercenary, The Battle of monmouth, Grenadier figure packs, Battle sphere. All are solidly written, with mention of both merits and flaws to the works, with no raving fanboyism.
Dragons bestiary: Barghests! Another classic and rather dangerous monster appears in recognizable form. It grows in power as it eats people, then goes back to gehenna once fully grown. Has a rather sinister looking set of small print at the bottom, whereby all monsters published become the intellectual property of TSR. I guess they really are wising up when it comes to legal crap. Very interesting, for the changes in presenting style it represents with plenty of description and ecological stuff.
Fineous fingers continues.
The thief - A deadly annoyance: While thieves might be useful in dungeoneering, where they really shine is in the city. Another article that feels rather dated, as it actively encourages thief PC's to sneak off and take loot without telling other players, steal from their companions, and otherwise behave in a manner detrimental to party trust and unity. Ahh, competitive play, how we miss thee. I must run a game like this at some point.
Another busy issue full of interesting stuff, which offers many pointers as to the way the magazine and game would develop in the future. As they expand, they have to become increasingly professional. And as their readership expands, the base of competent people to hire and freelance from expands as well. They'll be changing some more in the near future, so don't think that they're content with this issue's innovations.
Quote from: RPGPundit;299134Far from wrong, he was dead right, including in his prediction about what would happen if you created a supplement mill.
RPGPundit
And yet, a few years later he created UA. (albeit, as a response to financial mismanagement while he was off in hollywood) The temptation for short term profit over long term stability is a dangerous thing, that affects our entire economy. Not an easy problem to solve.
Quote from: (un)reason;298192The Dragon Issue 19: October 1978
The lowdown on wishes: You give PC's ultimate power,
they will abuse it, or at least use it in a way that the GM
considers detrimental to the overall fun of the game. So
having put wishes into the game, people immediately set
out to put limitations and risks on them. You really ought
to think these things over before you put them in the game,
so you don't have to nerf them later.
Or better yet, they could have had more openness to free-form
rules of various kinds, not just for magic, but for all sorts of
things. Traveller, for example, has very open guidelines for
starship design -- within the limits of a few equations, players
can go nuts.
The article on wishes is why I often found myself hating Dragon.
The writer sounds like he drank a bottle of paint thinner to get his creative juices flowing. He will conclude the article with two phrases that give me great comfort, namely:
QuoteRemember, you don’t have to obey this word for word.
...The feel of the rules is the most important thing.
But until I made it to those blessed sentences, I was feeling a great deal of antipathy for the writer.
Okay, I admit that his breezy style does contain some actual humor:
QuoteMost DM’s want to be fair about wishes but don’t want Player-
characters to take undue advantage. So they kill them. (It’s only natural)
Well, because of this, I’ve developed a background to help judge which
wishes should be granted totally, dropped entirely, or partially granted in
one form or another. (For the more sadistic of our fold, don’t worry!
This doesn’t mean you can’t kill them any more, just that you’ll have a logical
reason for doing it.)
Okay, I didn't laugh, but the punchy style reads well. It would be funny if he said it in person.
QuoteThe first thing to consider is how these wishes came to be. To start
from the beginning, it is common knowledge that wizardry is every bit as
much a science as physics and chemistry (to which it is closely related).
Through various gestures, utterances and chemicals, wizards are able to
tap the free, natural, invisible forces that give power and substance to
their spells. It’s no more mysterious to them than it is to us when we plug
in the toaster. We’re tapping another natural, invisible force. (It’s just not
free.) Those wizards of much learning and wisdom (hence, wizards) were
able to develop for themselves an all-purpose spell that could do many
diversified things. These are called WISHES. (Actually, what they
created was a WISH SPELL-WS - it’s the use of a WS that is called a
WISH. A DM’s gotta know things like that!)
At this point, the conversational style is making the article less readable; I begin to suspect he was paid by the word and the extra eight cents he earned for throwing in "hence, wizards" was making little $ signs pop up in his eyes as he typed. "Diversified" for "diverse" is forgivable.
"It is common knowledge" is one of those rulings that irks me. Perhaps he means "it's common knowledge in any campaign run according to the background I've developed."
I like to think that I can comprehend fairly abstruse English, but the following passage is horrible:
QuoteActually, what they
created was a WISH SPELL-WS - it’s the use of a WS that is called a
WISH.
Am I meant to read "WS" as "wish spell"? Was the writer simply sitting too close to an open jar of rubber cement and getting high off the fumes? The 1970s were horrifically primitive times -- people had to use things like rubber cement to just do a bit of simple text-pasting...
QuoteNext, the wizards created objects that could enable the person with
little or no experience in sorcery to accomplish the feats of high level
sorcerers. These were rings, staves, and even things less conventional
where a WS had been transferred to them from the wizard himself. What
a breakthrough! Keep in mind, though, that the WS couldn’t possibly be
any more powerful than the wizard who created it. Less so, in fact, as
some of the power is lost in the transference.
An artifact can't be more powerful than the person who creates it, even when used for a specialized purpose?
Does that mean that if I can lift 250 pounds with unaided muscle, and I make a lever-and-fulcrum, that lever-and-fulcrum can only lift 250 pounds?
QuoteThere is usually a relation
between the ability of the WS to grant a more difficult wish (the WS
strength) and the object that is endowed with it. Why bother to put a weak
spell in an object that will last forever? Who would put a powerful spell in
something that is easily destroyed? Of course, there are always
exceptions, but usually a weak wish spell would be in something flimsy,
like a ring or a piece of apparel. The stronger an object is, like a sword or
armour or a stone orb, the stronger the WS in it probably is. This also
applies to objects that are more gawky or cumbersome, as a staff or a
drum or a sofa.
I don't believe I have ever played a game in which we discovered a
sofa of wishes.
QuoteJust as there are matters to help determine the strength of a WS,
there are also problems in determining the effectiveness of the wish.
Foremost of these is the alignment of the WS compared to that of the
possessor of the object. A lawful Wizard would generally empower an
object with a lawful or neutral WS. A chaotic wizard would empower an
object with a neutral or chaotic WS. A neutral wizard would just
empower an object with a neutral WS. As you can see, the odds are
stacked in favor of a neutral Wish Spell. This is because there is more
versatility in neutral than in lawful or chaotic WS’s. A lawful WS only
fully grants those wishes within its power that encourage leadership,
justice, loyalty, heroism, generosity, and creativity. It strives to have you
struggle against the chaotic. A chaotic WS only fully grants those wishes
within its power that promote tyranny, deceit, greed, laziness,
mercilessness, and cleverness in struggles against ANYONE. It is for the
DM to decide, without consulting any of the players, what the motive
behind the wish is. Take into account what they say they’re going to do
with whatever they’ve wished for, but don’t be fooled by a hoax! If you
don’t believe that the players actual motives suit the listing above, crack
down on them!!! (Please excuse me for yelling; I get so excited!)
It's not the yelling-- it's not even the grammar-- it's the
rule design that I find hard to forgive.
QuoteThe way
to get those bozos (bozettes; the bozettes are often sneakier than the
bozos) is to twist their wish right around, making things a little more. . .
er, difficult. If the players give you any flack, just say, “Lookit here,
buddy (or buddess), I play the gods in this game. You gonna argue with
the gods? We’ll stike you down! We don’t have to take none of this.” If
that doesn’t work, you can always blame it on the dice.
Somehow I get the impression that the writer advises similar tactics when he is instructing his employees at the used car sales lot. This sounds like sales training.
QuoteFor some of
you, this will make handling wishes easier. For others, it may be a little
confusing. Remember, you don’t have to obey this word for word. Get the
feel of these ideas and you won’t even have to refer to this article very
often. The feel of the rules is the most important thing. Wishes should be
great news, but yet a harrowing experience. Handle them well!
Quote from: (un)reason;297086The Dragon Issue 13: April 1978
Notes from a semi-sucessfull D&D player: A whole range of tricks for players, such as the now ubiquitous continual light on an object so you can carry it one, and the enormous usefulness of polymorph, plant growth and permanency spells. Tactical solutions are generally more effective than straight attacks, and this is particularly true back then before they nerfed most of the buff and utility spells. Lets face it, when the GM is against you, you need to use every trick you have to survive.
The tactics are somewhat interesting, especially the ones I hadn't heard before.
What I find
*very* interesting about that article is that it shows how original D&D rules seem to have accumulated like English common law, with hundreds of small disputes and contradictory judgements eventually adding up to a precedent. Jim Ward was offering things that his DMs had let him get away with. This added up to a truly useful body of precedents. Of course, any DM could say that those precedents are not binding precedents in his campaign, but the power of the centralized media meant that hundreds of DMs in those information-starved 1970s were forming opinions based on what Jim Ward had written.
By contrast, I came into the hobby around 1981, with the tournament-adventure culture well underway, and Gygax's AD&D rulebooks. Those books repeated that there was only one way to play the game -- Gygax's way was the right way.
It's probably impossible for any historian of wargaming to definitively say what the culture of wargaming was like before Wesley's Braunstein, but I suspect it was slightly more orderly than Arneson's "game master with a whip and a chair." If my suspicion is right, then Gygax's attempt to impose some order (with AD&D) was a correction of the 1970s trend toward disorderly gaming. Disorder can produce freedom and creativity, but it can also produce very dreary monotony; what is more monotonous than a DM who always rules against the players' creative ideas?
Quote from: (un)reason;299286The Dragon Issue 26: June 1979
You missed one of the highlights of the issue: the color ad for
Divine Right inside the back cover!
I loved that game.
Quote from: (un)reasonGiants in the earth: Another article that is intended as a recurring one, this is where they stat out characters from various books for D&D.
I really like this series, not so much for the characters themselves (which I don't remember actually using at all) but because of the exposure to the different fantasy authors.
Quote from: (un)reasonAnd what of the skinnies? An add-on to the Starship troopers wargame, giving the humanoids a power boost so they can match up to the humans and bugs, instead of being stuck in the middle getting slaughtered. Not sure how well this holds up mechanically, but it seems a decent enough article. Hopefully it was of use to someone.
It was to me.
Quote from: (un)reasonChinese Undead: I think you know what to expect from this. Has a bit of crossover with the vampires around the world article from last issue, but not enough to be useless. And as ever real world mythology is easily as strange and considerably less optimised towards ass-kicking abilities than D&D monsters.
I remember using the vampire-spectre in a game, and I recall at least one character being turned into a weretiger as a result.
What I love most are the stat blocks: one line each. Those were the days . . .
There's also a fun cartoon on the same page: "Close ranks, men, and brace yourselves for wandering monsters. I hear the sound of six-sided dice rolling!"
Quote from: (un)reasonA load of general stuff for boot hill. This is stuff that'll mostly benefit players, at the cost of adding extra mechanical gewgaws to remember. All in all, this is pretty meh.
The "running a horse to death" rule proved very helpful in a situation where the player-character posse was chasing a pair of NPC bandits in one of my games.
Quote from: (un)reasonMugger! A somewhat humourous D&D mod, in which the players play muggers trying to rob as much stuff as possible while avoiding the arm of the law. Fun as a one-shot, and as it's encounters are by random table, it looks like it would work well as a solitaire game. Which is neat. Bring on the violence.
Played this numerous times, using the city board from
Squad Leader as our urban jungle.
Quote from: (un)reasonBlueprint for a lich: Another familiar idea gets its first expression. Becoming a lich takes quite a bit of work, and this article lays out the steps. It has a few bits that later versions would omit (maybe they'd developed more refined transformation rituals) but is still the basic form that would hold throughout 1st and 2nd edition, and be adapted to create dracoliches. Which is nice, I guess.
This article, and others like it, went a long way toward helping me figure just what a wizard was likely to have on the shelves and in the tuns and urns of her laboratory.
Dragon #19
"Planning Creative Treasures" by Dave Schroeder
QuoteOne of my favorite treasure-making plans is to roll up a moderate to
high level character, give him or her a few personal quirks, and go from
there. One high-level magic-user was so paranoid that his best magical
item was a necklace of gems of detection — detect Magic, Evil, Good,
Weres, Gold, Secret Doors, Invisible, you name it. A bishop with a
fondness for little boys had dozens of bottles of "Youth Potion". The
possibilities are endless. Enjoy creating creative treasures!
I wasn't there for that campaign, but I imagine Schroeder's creativity went like this:
"So you see that the Archbishop you just killed was raping little boys. Not teenagers, not seventeen-year-olds who called themselves 'boys,' but *little* boys.
They were powerless to grow up in order to resist, because he kept dosing them with youth potions. And those potions last for years, so he was raping them, over and over, for years. And the Archbishop wouldn't get impotent from old age, because he could use the youth potions on himself, too."
I don't think Schroeder was trying to make a statement that rape is trivial. I think the whole idea of rape just wasn't very real to him. It was all a game of endless possibilities and endless creativity. Maybe Schroeder was used to saying a lot of things at the game table, where there was no tape recorder running, and he decided to see how far he could push it by making the same rape jokes in print.
The problem I have with a lot of original D&D is that most of the designers seem to have felt no responsibility whatsoever. They didn't seem to really think anything through, or think about any kind of connections their ideas might have with other ideas. Their endless possibilities don't seem to have been much constrained by demands for consistency.
Quote from: riprock;299306The tactics are somewhat interesting, especially the ones I hadn't heard before.
What I find *very* interesting about that article is that it shows how original D&D rules seem to have accumulated like English common law, with hundreds of small disputes and contradictory judgements eventually adding up to a precedent. Jim Ward was offering things that his DMs had let him get away with. This added up to a truly useful body of precedents. Of course, any DM could say that those precedents are not binding precedents in his campaign, but the power of the centralized media meant that hundreds of DMs in those information-starved 1970s were forming opinions based on what Jim Ward had written.
And when we take into account that Jim is the guy personally responsible for the term Monty haul campaigns, I think it's safe to say we can probably get away with more than we could if he or someone like him hadn't been part of the original crew.
Quote from: The Shaman;299312You missed one of the highlights of the issue: the color ad for Divine Right inside the back cover!
Don't worry, divine right gets plenty of love over the next couple of years.
QuoteWhat I love most are the stat blocks: one line each. Those were the days . . .
Now that's a statement I can agree with.
Quote from: riprock;299315The problem I have with a lot of original D&D is that most of the designers seem to have felt no responsibility whatsoever. They didn't seem to really think anything through, or think about any kind of connections their ideas might have with other ideas. Their endless possibilities don't seem to have been much constrained by demands for consistency.
Yup. It is a source of irritation. Of course, it is rather harder to check all the existing stuff and see if someone has already done anything like what you're trying when you don't have internet fora, searchable .pdf's, etc.
Quote from: (un)reason;299287And yet, a few years later he created UA. (albeit, as a response to financial mismanagement while he was off in hollywood) The temptation for short term profit over long term stability is a dangerous thing, that affects our entire economy. Not an easy problem to solve.
Yes, he realized the danger and yet he fell for it, in part because of financial emergency, but also because the uber-nerds were screaming out for it.
RPGPundit
The Dragon Issue 27: July 1979
52 pages. So its their third birthday, and they are now firmly established as the premier magazine in their field. A pretty good place to be in. So they're looking back a bit. And the thing they're most proud of, oddly enough is the snits games. Life is full of amusing oddities. But that doesn't mean they've taken their eye off the ball. They intend to advance with the times, instituting a computer game column, and more increases in size. Which is nice, I guess. More work for me. We also get a new logo, losing the ooziness of the old one for a more easily legible angular script. All things must change, I suppose.
In this issue:
Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited. (unless you're the kind of person who enjoys playing something like chess as a hobby in itself, rather than boardgames as a whole) I guess that was their analog of indie games like my life with master. Digression aside, it's a very well written review, that comprehensively covers both its good and bad points, and examines the historical accuracy of the game. Guess it was up to the editor to show up all those freelancers submitting shoddy reviews.
Agincourt designers notes: I guess this is this issues big topic then. The designer talks about his design choices, and fills in more details about the historical context of Agincourt. Not quite as interesting as the review, this is still a solid article, which combined with the previous should give you more than enough information on if you want to buy the game.
The effects of agincourt on the hundred years war: A third article, this time focusing on the political situation surrounding the battle, what happened before and afterwards. A tale of madness, famine, bankruptcy, treachery and technology. If anyone says history is boring, they've had the wrong teacher.
Elementals and the philosophers stone: An interesting article, drawing upon greek theories of matter to create an alternate cosmology based upon a cubic structure, with the 4 elements and good and evil arranged in a cube, with 12 other physical and emotional states being formed by the combinations between them. An idea that would of course later be paralleled in the demi and quasielemental planes, with the overt morality stripped out. I quite like this, and like the alternate alignment systems presented in earlier issues, would very much like to try it out in game sometime. After all, anything, even a cosmology as cool as the great wheel, gets dull eventually with overuse.
What judges guild has done for D&D: By publishing officially licenced products for D&D, both it, we, and you have benefited. In addition, we have encouraged the practice of GM's treating players fairly, not as antagonists to be tricked and slaughtered at every opportunity, and playing by the rules, as this messes up the game balance. We also encourage realistic world building. Ooookay. Permit me to have a degree of skepicism. Not sure how to feel about this article.
Cangames '79: Gary reviews the convention, giving it good marks, and saying he hopes to visit again next year. Not much more to say on this one.
Out on a limb: A veeeeeeeeery long letter rebutting the scathing attack on bakshi's LotR. A quite short letter attacking the mountain of supplements for D&D, and the expense of keeping up with the game. (excuse me while I snigger for a moment) Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.
Tesseracts - A traveller artifact: The idea presented for D&D a few issues back gets adapted to traveler, with similarly fun results. Hyperdimensional stuff is always so much fun.
A new comic, The voyages of exploration ship znutar: Another silly little B&W number that looks like it's leading into something.
Star system generation for Traveller: You know the drill by now, random tables, usefull stuff for when the GM is short of ideas. I ought to make a random table of comments to make for when an article is too dull to form a strong opinion on it. It'd certainly get a lot of use over the course of this.
Design notes for Divine Right:
A quick look at dwarves: Thoughts on the organisations of dwarven armies. My god, it actually has some D&D stuff in. There's been surprisingly little of that this issue. An ok article, with lots of ideas that make sense, but nothing truly ground-breaking.
The emerald tablet design notes: I think you know what to expect here. They talk about the mechanical problems they faced in designing a game that covered a wide variety of fantasy mileus, and the solutions they came up with, plus the inspirations behind the game, such as Kaballa (before sephiroth was appropriated by angsty fangirls) and goetic magic. A rather long-winded article, that nonetheless carries some interesting information. (not least that the preferred spellings of the translations of these terms have changed in recent years) Another amusing historical footnote.
An advert for Best of The Dragon. Only 4 years in and they're already releasing their first retrospective. Not a very good showing. Even most boybands take 5 (but then, I'm of the opinion that band shouldn't release a greatest hits until they've been around at least a decade, and had enough hits that some of them can be considered greatest and the rest left out. ) I thoroughly disapprove of this development.
Giants in the earth: Durathror, Fafhrd and the grey mouser, and john carter of mars. Like last issue, all are ridiculously twinked to a degree that few players will be able to match, and none by purely random generation. Where are our everyman heroes who win by luck and courage, not disgusting amounts of power?
Review: The english civil war. Price complaints due to the weakness of the dollar to the pound. My, have times changed ;) A pretty well balanced review, covering both the good and bad sides of the game.
Expanding Imperium: Several interesting optional rules drawing on various sci-fi shows. Another one that I can't comment on, but the article seems pretty well written, so they'd probably be fun to try.
Review: MiG Killers. Another air fighting game. Now there's a genre that's pretty much disappeared these days, due to computer games doing it better, more easily, providing a visceral experience. Oh well. Another pretty positive review.
The mythos of africa for G: DG&H: And I thought this barrel was empty already. Guess I forgot about these guys. (and it's normally Australia that winds up being the last one picked for the team) Rather a mash-up, given the size and diversity of Africa. No great surprises here to anyone with any mythological studies experience.
Dragons bestiary: The Horast. I don't remember this one. Which is a shame, as it's not a bad monster.
Fineous fingers continues.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: The bag of wind. An item that I remember. A good set of synergistic themed abilities, plus a bit of classic mythological reference. Quite a nice article, overall.
Possibly the most D&D light issue I've yet read. Which does present a few problems, when so much of the content is wargames that I don't know. I guess I should appreciate it now, because I've got many years ahead where it'll be nothing but D&D all the way through. Too much, too little, both can be annoying. What are you gonna do?
Quote from: RPGPundit;299379Yes, he realized the danger and yet he fell for it, in part because of financial emergency, but also because the uber-nerds were screaming out for it.
RPGPundit
From the moment she walked into the office, I knew that dame was gonna be trouble. Gotta little job for you, she said, revealing all the latest equippment, and new splats that just wouldn't quit. Now me, I'm just a poor little corebook. Times had been tough recently, what with all the other games competing for people's attention, but I was scraping by. Next thing you know she's got me working day and night. And sure, it seemed good at first. Money was rolling in, and I got to really expand the business. But it got to the point that I was so busy trying new things, I barely got to see the inside of a dungeon anymore. Or something. I'm pretty sure someone has already done this particular comedic riff before and better.
Quote from: (un)reason;299483Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited.
Refer to many Forger or other small games. They take what is essentially a single adventure scenario and try to make a whole game out of it; extending the rules for that one game into other scenarios gives less than brilliant results.
Wargames, rpgs, the same trends pop up - arguing over "realism" and quibbling over details which have no effect on the end result, vanity press microgames, a trend towards glossy colour and endless minutae of rules to keep the cashflow up, and so on.
QuoteI really appreciate all the historical articles - I still do, actually. Lots of good ideas for both real-world and fantasy or sci-fi gaming.
Curious how the D&D hobby diverged enough from the historical wargaming hobby that Dragon stopped publishing historical hobbies altogether. My recollection is that happened around '81-'82, when D&D began to really take off.
I know I grew up in the transition period when historical and sci-fi fell by the wayside and fantasy came to be the overwhelming gaming genre. Guys older than me tend to be into historical wargaming. Everyone younger will hardly touch a game unless it has a fantasy theme.
I wonder why, sociologically, fantasy became the overwhelming escapist/gaming genre? When I was a teenager, Dune and Lord of the Rings were neck and neck in popularity. It's hard to imagine a genuinely sci-fi book rivalling LotR in today's pop culture.
Quote from: (un)reason;299483Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited.
The board wargame hobby really took off with games depicting single battles or campaigns: Gettysburg, Battle of the Bulge, Afrika Korps, etc. This trend continues to this day. It's nothing at all like "Forger crap" or anything that parallels the RPG hobby.
Most board wargame designs, especially back then, shared many of the same rules, with a few special cases to capture the "flavor" of the specific battle/campaign being depicted. So you could (and still can, though the variety in rules systems is much greater these days) move from one game to another with little trouble.
As for replay value, there's a reason that the same few battles (Bulge, Gettysburg, Waterloo) are depicted over and over: they're very wide-open situations in terms of what each side can do, and allow for a multitude of different tactics, starting from set-up and on. Throw in randomization in the form of a d6-based CRT, and you've got a game that never plays the same way twice. I've played dozens of games of Russian Campaign to completion, and will probably play many dozens more before I'm dead and gone, and I'll bet every play will be a completely new experience.
The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979
56 pages, plus an extra 3 of boardgame. (ha, I knew it. When I saw the comic last issue, I though that this was leading into another cool little game included with the magazine. ) The editor talks about the geeky stigma of wargaming, and encourages people not to act ashamed of what they do, but explain it sensibly to their friends and family. And don't get confused between reality and fantasy. Oh, if only more people had listened.
In this issue:
The politics of hell: How Asmodeus got to be the 3rd supreme leader of hell, after satan and beelzebub got overthrown. Decidedly non-canonical, and also very based upon earthly history and judeo-christian mythology. Still a high quality and entertaining article, that would make a good alternative to the standard D&D backstory. Interesting to note that the 4th ed devil origin story bears more resembalance to this than the last one. Could this have been an influence on Mearls and co?
At last, the DMG is finished! So we get an interview with gary on it, plus commentary from the rest of the TSR staff. It is intended to be the definitive tome on everything the GM needs to run the game, a huge leap up from OD&D in comprehensiveness, so houseruling is no longer neccecary or desirable to run the game. This is the culimination of years of hard work and the game is now complete. And dwarven women have beards with a vote of 12 to 1. Yeah, this is an epic article full of great quotes, many of which are rather amusing in light of what's happened since. Yeah, the hubris has set in a bit. When you think your work needs no further improvement, thats when stagnation starts. And if you stagnate, you set yourself up for a fall, when things change around you and you fail to adapt. But I'll stop moralising now. Honestly, at this rate, I'll turn into as big a windbag as Gary. ;)
A short course in D&D: An entire school gets taught how to play the game in short order. Very interesting, as it shows both the lack of social stigma the game had at the time, and the logistical problems that large groups with lots of new people and turnover present. Has plenty of tips that are still relevant today.
The cavalry plain at austerlitz: A system free historical article. One of those ones that tries to condense a topic that could cover an entire book into a couple of pages, and fails to be interesting in doing so.
Simulating the cavalry plain: The crunchy partner to the previous article.
Evil - Law vs Chaos: Which basically, in Gary's mind boils down to Domination of everything vs smashing shit for kicks. Hey, another thing that 4th ed has boiled things back down to again. Now that is interesting to note. One of those articles that will be polarising, because it oversimplifies the myriad of facets that can contribute to a persons position in the alignment field.
Six guns & Sorcery: Official crossover rules for boot hill and AD&D. Niiiiice. Given the recent talk of how D&D politics is modelled on the old west ideals, this seems curiously appropriate. Ahh, the joy of gonzo crossovers. And as we know, there would be several more of these. And what's wrong with that? A well chosen crosover can really inject excitement. Its only when you try and throw everything into the pot at once that it just gets confusing and tedious.
Fantasysmiths notebook: Choosing miniatures to represent characters and monsters in your game. Solid advice like focus on getting ones for players and common monsters, otherwise you'll skew the campaign by wanting to show off your dragon miniature too often. Ends with a list of recommended companies. A pretty solid article, as long as you're not the kind of person who rejects the idea of using miniatures in your RPGing. And if you are, clear off and play with the LARPers. We don't want your kind around here ;)
Armies of the rennaisance part 4 - the english. Longbows kick your ass, bitch! And then firearms kick your ass again a few centuries later. Phear our naval supremacy. Another rather too condensed article for the amount of ground it tries to cover.
Elvish tactics in fantasy miniatures: Following on from the dwarven tactics last issue (but will we see halfling battle tactics anytime soon? :D ) Longbows (kick your ass again) light horses, light armour, harrying tactics, generally being complete bastards. Nothing you wouldn't expect. Ahh, stereotypes.
Conventions - The manufacturers view: Gary talks about the logistical problems involved in attending conventions, and how it really doesn't generate them as much profit as you'd think. Really. they're mostly doing it because they love what they do, and attending is good for the industry as much as it is for them personally. If they were in it for the money, they'd be doing something else. Which all seems pretty reasonable.
Out on a limb: A letter bitching at them for not offering reprints. (frankly my dear, it's just not profitable) A letter giving big chunks of errata for Cross of Iron. Talk of mutant animals in MA. And an epic rant from marc jacobs covering a whole bunch of percieved flaws in the system. That hit points inflate but healing is linear, and how annoying and unrealistic this is. Stupid results created by random generation, forgetting spells, ripping off ideas from other systems. Oh, and the use of goblinoids as a racial metaphor. Yeah, sounds like you shouldn't be playing D&D at all, if you have this many problems with the system and premise. But then they had far fewer systems to choose from back then. The rebuttal to this goes all over the shop, forward to page 46, then back to 11. It's all a bit silly really.
The voyages of the ship znutar continue
And yeah, here's the rules for the acompanying game. More amusing Tom Wham art abounds. This game is somewhat bigger than the snits one, as obviously they've had more practice in the last couple of years, and their design skills have grown accordingly. Looks like it should be fun.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Lots of stuff I remember, including that lovely joke item the apparatus of spiky owns. Most notable, though for introducing Leomund to us. One of the iconic old wizards who would put their names to a whole bunch of spells and magic items does so here.
Level progression for players and DM's: Oh dear. This is one of those articles that would come back to bite them in the ass later. Each game you play in and things you do in them give you a certain amount of XP. You can then use this to determine your real world level as a player and DM. It's all presented pretty seriously, enough so that even I'm not sure if the original writer intended it as a joke. Which is a bit worrying. If this had made it into the DMG, how many people would have wound up ranking themselves officially. Ahh, hindsight. How very tiresome you are.
Giants in the earth: More overpowered statting outs of literary characters, in this case Eric John Stark, and the ghost of Welleran. I'm really not liking this section at all, and hope it doesn't stay as a regular article for long.
Monty strikes back: More epicness featuring the original obscenely overpowered D&D group getting challenges commensurate with their power (which of course includes plenty of the artifacts that would later become D&D legends. ) And when they beat even that, Monty throws a snit and kills them all by plant rape. Uh huh huh huh huh. ;)
Reviews: Divine right, America BC, Sorcerer (they oughta sue Ron Edwards) All are primarily desriptive reviews, with little personal judgement in them. Which makes them a little dull. You have enough adverts. You need to make your reviews more opinionated, otherwise what's the point.
An advert for a game set in the Dune universe. Iiinteresting
Dragon's Bestiary - the Slinger. Little lizards that use the manticore trick of throwing their poisonous spines at people. Another monster that never made it to the official bestiaries, despite being one of the more realistic and ecologically integrated monsters they've come up with. Oh well, Can't win 'em all.
Fineous fingers continues.
Another high quality issue, with lots of cool articles, but curiously enough also many indicators of the things that would later contribute to D&D's stigmatism and decline. Again, hindsight reveals plenty of ways that things could have been changed if they'd been done differently, but fails to be particularly helpfull in dealing with our present problems. Still at least 4e is adapting, not stagnating. If the changes they're making work in the long run or not remains to be seen, but at least they're not pretending that their new edition is the perfect version of D&D, never to be changed or bettered again.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;299489Wargames, rpgs, the same trends pop up
This is about
Kriegsspiel, which the Prussian army used to train officers in the 1800s:
"Eventually so many rules sprang up, as each regiment improvised their own variations, two versions came into use. One, known as 'rigid Kriegspiel', was played by strict adherence to the lengthy rule book. The other, 'free Kriegspiel', was governed by the decisions of human umpires. Each version had its advantages and disadvantages: rigid Kriegspiel contained rules covering most situations, and the rules were derived from historical battles where those same situations had occurred, making the simulation verifiable and rooted in observable data, which some later American models discarded. However, its prescriptive nature acted against any impulse of the participants towards free and creative thinking. Conversely, free Kriegspiel could encourage this type of thinking, as its rules were open to interpretation by umpires and could be adapted during operation. This very interpretation, though, tended to negate the verifiable nature of the simulation, as different umpires might well adjudge the same situation in different ways, especially where there was a lack of historical precedent. In addition, it allowed umpires to weight the outcome, consciously or otherwise."
(Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_simulation))
Quote from: Haffrung;299493I wonder why, sociologically, fantasy became the overwhelming escapist/gaming genre? When I was a teenager, Dune and Lord of the Rings were neck and neck in popularity. It's hard to imagine a genuinely sci-fi book rivalling LotR in today's pop culture.
This question is worthy of its own set of threads.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14074
One big trend was a growing set of feminist book-buyers. Both males and females were buying escapist fiction with very powerful heroines. The cultural trend toward feminism may have rejected sci-fi as too male-dominated, despite great names like C.L.Moore, Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett.
So in the 1950s there were cookie-cutter heroes with rayguns, and in the 1960s there were cookie-cutter heroes with swords, and by the time the 1970s rolled around, the time was ripe for a number of prominent women writers who wrote great stories, with and without fantasy, with and without female leads.
To drop just a few good names:
C.J.Cherryh
Tanith Lee
(Rest assured I have a much longer list of female fiction authors whom I despise, cough cough, Marion Zimmer Bradley, cough cough, and a vast list of authoresses who leave me mostly, if not entirely cold, cough cough Ursula K. LeGuin.)
However, Sturgeon's Law ensured that there were vast amounts of derivative pablum. As the 1970s moved onward, the ripoffs went from a muscular man with a sword to a lingerie model in a chainmail bikini with a sword.
And then the breakthrough came when the lingerie model swordswoman was replaced by a New Age woman with long hair and a giant quartz crystal. Anne McCaffrey's 1982 opus, _
Crystalsinger_, is typical of this period.
http://www.geocities.com/asfrlist/books/crystalsinger.jpg
The linked cover art is not typical. Most of them had loose-robed, dreamy eyed girls posing against beautiful landscapes.
This really needs to be a better organized essay on trends in late twentieth century pop fiction. (And such a thread belongs on the pop culture board, "Inspiration"...) If I promise to participate in such a thread, will the rest of you fill in the gaps in my knowledge?
Quote from: (un)reason;299616The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979
Monty strikes back: More epicness featuring the original obscenely overpowered D&D group getting challenges commensurate with their power (which of course includes plenty of the artifacts that would later become D&D legends. ) And when they beat even that, Monty throws a snit and kills them all by plant rape. Uh huh huh huh huh. ;)
Hmm...
The text mentions "wolfoids."
Does Jerry Holkins have these on CD? He probably does ... but did he intentionally copy this in his recent strips, or is it just a term so generic that it keeps getting re-used?
Also, this came out in August, 1979 and "The Empire Strikes Back" wasn't out until 1980 ... did the title get leaked?
Quote from: (un)reason;299483The Dragon Issue 27: July 1979
The emerald tablet design notes: I think you know what to expect here. They talk about the mechanical problems they faced in designing a game that covered a wide variety of fantasy mileus, and the solutions they came up with, plus the inspirations behind the game, such as Kaballa (before sephiroth was appropriated by angsty fangirls) and goetic magic. A rather long-winded article, that nonetheless carries some interesting information. (not least that the preferred spellings of the translations of these terms have changed in recent years) Another amusing historical footnote.
I found it more painful than amusing. It combines in-game creations, general New Age philosophy, and medieval details.
I don't think they *read* the sources they cite, they just fed them into a paper shredder, mixed the strips and paper, and copied words at random from the waste bin.
QuoteThe High
Magic Circle should have a small Triangle of the Art to the east to serve
as an astral locus but we did not have room to include it.
...
For a month before making any of these symbols, the magic user must
refrain from any sex and he must fast, maintaining a ritual purity. The
Seals may only be made when the Moon is rising in Virgo and only on a
Saturday or Tuesday night. Certain incenses — alum, cedar wood,
aloes and resinous gum — correspond to the suitable time and are to be
burned while creating these symbols. The Pentagram is usually worn
during an evocation on one side of the front of the magic user's robe.
...
Bibliography
David Conway. Magic, an Occult Primer. E.P. Dutton: New York,
1973. This is a "how-to" book written by a practicing adept.
Conway is very serious, eminently sensible (if you grant him his
premise that magic is "real") and a good writer.
Selections from European grimoires, with introductions.
Citadel: Secaucus, NJ, 1961. Selections from European
grimoires, with introductions. Waite is a bit opaque in his writing.
historical account of magic and the occult. Wilson is as con-
cerned, however, with such things as spiritualism as magic. He
presents a fascinating theory to "explain" magic and occult
phenomena in general.
Idries Shah. The Secret Lore of Magic. Citadel: Secaucus, NJ, 1958.
Arthur E. Waite. The Book of Ceremonial Magic, a Complete Grimoire.
Colin Wilson. The Occult. Random House: New York, 1971. The best
The triangle is essential, so they omitted it.
The astrological timing andthe incenses must be done specifically -- so they just mentioned in the most general way possible.
The sexual abstinence is the only sexual angle they could find, so they threw it into the mix....
Why bother opening the source material if you're not going to *read* it?
Quote from: riprock;299639I found it more painful than amusing. It combines in-game creations, general New Age philosophy, and medieval details.
I don't think they *read* the sources they cite, they just fed them into a paper shredder, mixed the strips and paper, and copied words at random from the waste bin.
The triangle is essential, so they omitted it.
The astrological timing andthe incenses must be done specifically -- so they just mentioned in the most general way possible.
The sexual abstinence is the only sexual angle they could find, so they threw it into the mix....
Why bother opening the source material if you're not going to *read* it?
:D Ahh, the David Bowie method of research and emulation. I must confess to having used it myself in the past. Of course, I'm generally trying to avoid imitating the original sources too closely.
Quote from: (un)reason;299616The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979
Wow, that Gary interview is great material, especially in light of the rants on this site.
What Gary is effectively saying is that D&D is too accessible and is appealling to all the wrong people. In his elitism, he wants to cater to a "higher" breed of gamer. He flatly admits the original D&D game is a redheaded stepchild played by undesirables. Mainstream gaming is AD&D and elitism.
The whole Player/DM level thing is more of the elitism of the era, just more funny this time. Check out the greater experience playing or running AD&D gives you (and the DMG either isn't even out yet or is barely in anyone's hands). Notice how "Basic" D&D is explicitly marked as inferior to "Original" D&D. Also, the awards depend much more on what game you play rather than advancement/how well you play.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299677Wow, that Gary interview is great material, especially in light of the rants on this site.
What Gary is effectively saying is that D&D is too accessible and is appealling to all the wrong people. In his elitism, he wants to cater to a "higher" breed of gamer. He flatly admits the original D&D game is a redheaded stepchild played by undesirables. Mainstream gaming is AD&D and elitism.
I think part of it is that his awkward wargaming friends are starting to get noticed by more respectable people. He was expecting the game to be played by college students, Vietnam veterans, and other adults. Suddenly he's getting bad publicity and parents are asking him why their ten-year-old sons are asking about decapitation... and that's just part of it. Gary wasn't crazy about 3 a.m. phone calls from total strangers, but it got worse.
The more important part is that his Vietnam veteran friends are saying, "Hey, Gary, I went to New York City and they were playing as lizardmen cleric-magic-users. We killed Odin on the third round." *That* kind of thing seemed to drive him nuts.
QuoteI looked at
D&D and said, "This is a game form designed for a
much different audience than is actually playing
D&D." So what we want to do is to provide a
quarter-million, or a half-million, or whatever the
number of players and referees is, with a game
form that is really usable to them. D&D is only a
loose structure and doesn't answer many of the
needs of the DM.
With D&D, the DM can find that unless he or she
had been extremely careful, one winds up with a
campaign that lasts six weeks, or maybe even six
months, but then everybody is beyond the para-
meters of the rules. With AD&D, growth is slower,
it's more structured, and it's designed so that you
won't run out of game in six weeks, or six months.
---
Q.:One of the raps against D&D was that it was too
flexible, and one of the great difficulties, particular-
ly in going to conventions or tournaments and
such, was: anyone could say, "I'm having a D&D
game, and a person from one side of the country
would go, he'd sit down at the table, and within ten
minutes, he knew he was in trouble, because he
didn't recognize it as any kind of D&D he had ever
played. How flexible, or how inflexible, is AD&D in
this regard, compared to D&D? Can a player from
California go and find a group in New York and at
least have some reasonable assurance that he or
she is at least going to understand the guidelines
and the framework?
...
I think his "paternal" pride was threatened when he saw the massive Monty Haul-ism. On a more practical note, as D&D got more chaotic, he might have been worried about copyright law. Perhaps he feared a lawyer would say that because D&D was so adaptable, TSR no longer had the rights to it, because they couldn't defend the copyright.
The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979
56 pages. This issue marks the arrival of Kim Mohan, who's role is listed simply as staff. Keep an eye on the boy, because he's going to go a long way soon. There's also plenty of other less significant new staff. Their influence will be felt soon. Interesting times indeed.
In this issue:
Of the Gods: Thoughts on creating your own pantheon for your games. As is common in this era it includes random tables for generating your own deities when inspiration runs dry, plus a sample pantheon. A well thought out and written article that nevertheless feels a bit tacky and mechanical. If you can't come up with a decent set of gods without recourse to tables, what hope for the rest of your setting?
Source of the nile flow charts: A play aid that pretty much tells me how to play the game. Which obviously means it's a good one that does its job well. I quite approve of this.
A ounce of preparation is worth a ton of paint: Lotsa tips on how to properly set up and paint miniatures so they'll make good gaming tools. Another article that is well enough explained to be useful to a complete beginner. Is this the start of a new degree of accessabilty in the magazine?
Half ogres as an official D&D race, by Gary himself. They have very restricted options, being pretty much forced into THOG SMASH! by their ability range. He also talks about the idea of allowing other various halfbreeds, and the problems that this would cause to game balance. Another bit of evidence why 3rd edition was not to his taste, the proliferation of racial templates is precisely the opposite of what he espouses here. You know, if you bow to pressure and allow this, then people are going to just keep on pushing. You've got to be firmer with all those twinks and monsterphiles. Human supremacy 4eva! ;)
Curses: An article on the proper use of these lovely little implements of magical vengance, as well as their removal. Be ironic, tailor them to the curser and the crime, and let people pervert the letter of them to get around them or profit from them. Yeah, I like this kind of thinking. It brings an element of mythology into the game that may require some thought to handle, but makes the game deeper than just another hack and slash dungeon.
Out on a limb: Lots of varied commentary on the last few issues. Quite a bit of it concerns Gary's recent controversial statements. The column is finally picking up, thanks to the increased readership and threats of being shut down. Pretty soon they'll be able to pick and choose which letters to include and which to ignore.
Giants in the earth: This month the characters given disgustingly twinked stats are Roger Zelazny's Shadowjack, and Jack Vance's Iucounu. You know my opinion of this by now, so I shall refrain from further grumbling on this topic unless things change in some way.
Rewarding heroism in D&D: Our first attempt at proper narrative reinforcement, a set of optional rules giving the characters benefits for behaving in a properly heroic manner. Which is nice, and another article that is historically significant for introducing that kind of thinking to the game. Shame it would take so long to become common though.
Inns and Taverns: A little article on the setup of historical inns and taverns. Neither brilliant or particularly bad, this is just one of those articles that helps fill space in an expanding magazine like this.
Air war - North vietnam: A load of new scenarios for the game based upon that common thread. A short but sweet article that looks like it does what it says on the tin.
Smaller than man sized weapons: Another little article that does what it says it does. The setup they use here is somewhat more complex than the 3rd ed version, with individual alterations for every weapon for two different smaller sizes. Oh, for standardisation.
The sleep war: An SCA actual play, this shows that politics there can be easily as ludicrous as in real life. Much fun in cold and muddy fields was had.
Origins of the Norse pantheon: Not quite what the label indicates. There is much talk on Berserking, and a little on the origins and geographic ranges of the original Aesir and Vanir religions. One of those articles that feels woefully short for the depth of its topic.
The mythos of Oceania: Yet more G,DG&H stats. We get the usual mix of concept embodiers, wierd critters, great heroes and their relations. Are there any more pantheons I've forgotten about, because damned if I can think of any they haven't covered yet.
Strain and spellcasting: A spell point system that substantially depowers magic-users. Well, plenty of people were sending them in, so I suppose they had to publish one. So by choosing one that weakens them, the people at TSR make it unlikely anyone will actually use it. Thus keeping vancian magic supreme. How clever of them. :rolleyes:
Trained animals: What, they didn't include rules for something as important as this in the DMG anyway? Shocking. So much for it being complete.
Aging in D&D: Take my previous statement and make it double. Oh yeah, they did, just simpler ones. This version uses a random roll per 2 years to determine if you lose points in your physical stats. Which of course is dreadfully unpredictable. Which is probably more realistic, but less fair and fun for the game than the 3rd ed way of doing things.
Nonplayer characters have feelings too: Need random personality traits for your NPC's and hirelings. Roll here. I ought to make an index of all these random tables, so people can use them more efficiently later.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Two classic items this time. The ring of the necromancer (using the term in the proper sense, rather than just as the title for an 8th level magic user.) And the binary stop design for determining the results of Hewards mystical organ. Very pleasing indeed. Can I have some more please sir.
Jim Ward reports on Origins 1979. Despite some organisational hassles, and a lack of air conditioning, it was in general a success. So they'll be going again next year then.
The reviews section gets a proper title this issue, The Dragons Augury. Wonder how long that'll stick? Anyway, this issue they review Reich, a wargame. Raiders and traders, another war/strategy game Panzer colors II, a book. I, Kubelwagon, a book. Desert tracks, a book. The tolkien quiz book, pretty self explanatory, plus a whole host of mini-reviews I can't be bothered to list individually. The profesionality has definitely taken a step up here. Which is nice.
Fineous fingers goes on vacation again. But wormy is Baaack, if only with a recap of the story so far.
Dragons Bestiary: the whiz-bang beetle. An amusing little low level monster that takes the prospensity of real insects to fly into flames and glass, and extrapolates it to a creature that has the power to punch through walls by flying into them repeatedly. Which should be fun for adventurers to face. Shame this one never made it into common use.
Another sign of their increasing professionalism, Dragon finally gets a proper classified ads section. Another thing that I wonder whether it will take off or not, given the trouble they had with the letters page.
Another significant issue with several innovations that would make it into future products (but plenty more that wouldn't) this marks the start of another leap in professionalism. Looks like 1979 was a real turning point in D&D's fortunes in many ways. And we've still got 3 months to go. What further surprises could they spring on us before the year is out? Lets keep going and see.
Quote from: (un)reason;299711The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979
Strain and spellcasting: A spell point system that substantially depowers magic-users. Well, plenty of people were sending them in, so I suppose they had to publish one. So by choosing one that weakens them, the people at TSR make it unlikely anyone will actually use it. Thus keeping vancian magic supreme. How clever of them. :rolleyes:
They must have had a *lot* of people who believed that mages were stronger than clerics.
When I was playing and running a lot of AD&D in the 1980s, our consensus was that magic-users were weak since they usually died long before they got powerful, and that clerics would be the strongest class if it were possible to really test them all. Of course lack of long-running campaigns made it difficult to test such claims.
Quote from: (un)reason;299711The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979
Thumbing through with ya...
This Divine Right advertisement catches my attention. Checking out brief descriptions of it on Boardgame Geek makes me think it would have been a good fit for my gaming group in the late 80s. A shame I never heard about it until now. (I've had the Dragon Anthology CDs for a good while now, but I seldom look back before issue 70 or 80 because all that is before my time.)
The Sorcerors Scroll has the wonderful quote of: "but any player selecting a non-human character does not have any real advantage." That's probably true from the perspective of the canon AD&D level limits and long term campaign play. The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB. I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule. Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap. Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play. The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem." They only came out in very extended campaigns. For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.
Moving on to the Out on a Limb section, the AD&D vs T&T letter caught my eye. Apparrently I missed yet another one of those instances where Gary Gygax bashed another game. I guess I need to go back and check issue 25.
There's another letter in the Out on a Limb section which I found interesting, but purely for the heading the editor decided to assign. A RPGer is seeking advice on how to find other RPGers to play with. The advice he receives is completely separated from the modern mantra of "visit the LGS." But then there's the heading. It says, "Finding Opponents." At this time, at least to the editor, finding new RPG players was the same as "Finding Opponents." I find that a fascinating observation into the world of pre-80s gaming.
The Smaller Than Man Sized Weapons Table article is another interesting one for a reason completely outside the scope of the article. As the article describes, the inspiration for these lower damages was a player who wanted to play a Hobbit who was not a thief or assassin. This was against the GM's sensibilities, as all Hobbits MUST be one of those two classes. So he started nerfing the weapons.
Ah, classic gaming. Play to type or get the fuck out!
I can't resist it. I have to say it. This 30 year old Dragon Magazine is very similar in format to a modern Palladium book. The main difference is that Dragon occasionally ventured into the realm of 3 columns, and had nicely formatted tables. Dragon 30 years ago had a better layout than a post-2000 Palladium book.
The Reviews section continues to remind me that this magazine was from 2-3 years before I knew anything about gaming. The only names I recognize in that section are Starfire, Star Fleet Battles, and Circus Maximus. And I have a feeling the Circus Maximus described has no relation to the late 80s game I'm familiar with.
It's kind of funny. Star Fleet Battles was already being called complicated and the Commanders Edition is still several years away. Since this is 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture should be hitting theaters soon. I guess that will give SFB a little boost.
MY GOD! That has to be the densest Wormy I've ever seen. Did Chris Claremont write it?
All in all, this Dragon is one which I wouldn't have found much use for. Not a very good issue at all.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299746The Sorcerors Scroll has the wonderful quote of: "but any player selecting a non-human character does not have any real advantage." That's probably true from the perspective of the canon AD&D level limits and long term campaign play. The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB. I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule. Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap. Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play. The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem." They only came out in very extended campaigns. For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.
Gygax was doing something that had never really been done before, so he had no realistic way to estimate what would be dropped and what would be obeyed.
Considering the wide extent of disobedience, though, it looks like his hope of standardizing by means of AD&D was misguided. Of course, that's because the tabletop requires so much active cooperation from customers.
If WotC could actually sell a functioning electronic gametable, it might require a lot more effort to houserule, and that could standardize the game.
Alternately, they could just teach people how to recognize and enumerate houserules. That would be better IMHO.
Quote from: (un)reason;299483The Dragon Issue 27: July 1979
I love the armor on the cover.
Quote from: (un)reasonTesseracts - A traveller artifact: The idea presented for D&D a few issues back gets adapted to traveler, with similarly fun results. Hyperdimensional stuff is always so much fun.
My favoritist
Traveller artifact evah. This is one of the holy grail items in my TU.
Quote from: (un)reasonStar system generation for Traveller: You know the drill by now, random tables, usefull stuff for when the GM is short of ideas. I ought to make a random table of comments to make for when an article is too dull to form a strong opinion on it. It'd certainly get a lot of use over the course of this.
Given that we're still a few years away from the release of
Scouts and
Grand Census/
Grand Survey, stuff like this came in very handy at the time.
Remember the context in which these articles are released.
Quote from: (un)reasonDesign notes for Divine Right:
"Oh boy, isn't this great!?!"
Quote from: (un)reason;299616The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979
Armies of the rennaisance part 4 - the english. Longbows kick your ass, bitch! And then firearms kick your ass again a few centuries later. Phear our naval supremacy. Another rather too condensed article for the amount of ground it tries to cover.
I'm actually enjoying re-reading these.
Quote from: (un)reasonGiants in the earth: More overpowered statting outs of literary characters, in this case Eric John Stark, and the ghost of Welleran. I'm really not liking this section at all, and hope it doesn't stay as a regular article for long.
I take back what I said last time: I did use the ghost of Welleran in a game, or at least his similarly powered cousin.
These characters inspired me to consider dual-classing my human characters.
The Dragon Issue 30: October 1979
48 pages. Geeks, cults, and disappearances, oh my! So this is when the first D&D player takes things too far headline hit the news, and the tabloids start printing ridiculous misconceptions about the nature of the game. Well, its another thing I was curious about. Remember everyone, It's your job to present yourself to the world as well adjusted people, so these unfortunates do not tarnish the name of the hobby as a whole. Of course, any publicity is good publicity in a way, and we know that sales would still increase considerably after this point, so this is not the BADDness you're looking for.
In this issue:
Kim Mohan gives us his first article, which is also a report of the first ever convention he attended. Talk about jumping in at the deep end. He gets star struck meeting the other D&D writers, worn out dealing with the endless public demand, amazed how nice virtually everyone is, and takes lots of photos. His huge amount of enthusiasm for his new job shows through, and is pretty infectious. This is why you need new people every so often. All the skill in the world means nothing without the energy to back it up.
Where the Orcs are: An epic miniatures castle and its inhabitants gets a several page, full color spread of photos showing it off. Truly, an awe inspiring example of the ridiculous lengths people are willing to go for their hobbies. Mind you, given the amount of time and effort I'm putting into this thread, maybe its not such an unachievable standard after all.
Leomund's tiny hut: Another new regular column starts. This particular one goes into extensive detail on the powers and limitations of vampires, extrapolating on their MM entry, and delivering rules expansions and errata. There is a certain amount of nerfing going on here, as Len tends to rule in a conservative way, but even so, vampires are still disgustingly powerfull and able to screw your characters for ages with a single hit. And if they were played intelligently, they would be able to take over the world with worrying ease. Ahh, spawning monsters. How you mess with the idea of a workable ecology.
Another persons perspective on this years Origins. Lots of cool specifics and a well written article.
White plume mountain! Another classic module out now. Isn't this the one with the crashed spacecraft? Or was that expedition to the barrier peaks? Ahh, silly crossovers. You don't get anything like that in modern adventures.
New settings for the adventure. Gary talks on stuff in general. First, he talks about the difference between a publisher and an editor, and how much input he has on the contents of the magazine. Notable here is that he says he is trying to keep the amount of articles he submits each month to a reasonable amount, so as not to overdominate the magazine. When I consider how slow his C&C output was in the last few years of his life, this just makes me sad. When you consider the risks and costs in transhumanism, and then compare them to what age does to people, frankly I think I'm willing to face those drawbacks. But anyway. He also criticises the Giants in the earth column for overpowering the characters, and talks about the new modules out soon. All in all, a very informative column this issue.
The new improved Ninja!: As if they weren't twinked enough, this article gives ninjas a whole slew of new weapons and powers. Not very well integrated with the D&D ruleset, nor particularly imaginative, this is just not very good in general. This is why we needed feats. It stopped characters from being able to pick up every special power given to their class in various supplements.
The formative years of Fafhrd and the Mouser: The guy who introduced Harry and Fritz to one-another, and is thus indirectly responsible for lankhmar, talks about their high school and university years, how they influenced one-another, and their collective creation. Another extremely informative article about the roots of the hobby.
Boot hill, What scale?: Ahh, miniatures, and the hassle of using them when there isn't a standardised ratio. Lots of talk on the various companies producing miniatures at the time, and their respective merits. One of those articles I can't really form an opinion on.
Designers notes for Flattop: Another case of the compromises that have to be made in game design, and the neccesity for playtesting. Which is what every good designer should go through. Hopefully it produced a good game, but I can't tell just from this article.
Standardisation vs playability: Thoughts on variation in populations of various creatures, creating a realistic world that has powerful monsters, yet humans are still supreme as a race, language barriers, the amount of the world you actually flesh out and allow the PC's to explore. Lots of tricky thoughts for the GM to chew over, and even if the answers aren't brilliant, at least it gets you working on the right questions.
Armies of the rennaisance part 5 - Eastern europe: Nick Nascati continues his whizz speed synopses of battle strategies. Cossacks, ponies, muskets, treachery and a good bibliography at the end, oh my.
Tournament success in six steps: You wanna kick ass at conventions? Lots of good advice here. A short sweet article.
Out on a limb: This month, we get a letter asking the people at TSR to co-ordinate all the people playing high level druids, so they can be challenged, and there only be the right number in the campaign and real world :D
Someone attacking Gygax's statement that he intends to focus on AD&D, taking that as an insult to D&D and everyone who still plays it.
Another attack on bakshi's LotR.
A basic question on the function of a magical item.
Ohh, oh, this one's important! A suggestion that to reduce things getting lost, D&D create loose leaf supplements that can then be rearranged and put into a ring binder. Which of course they would take up in the moldvay basic set and lots of the monstrous compendia. Stuart Malone, nice idea, but not functional in practice. Still, have a shout out for introducing them to the concept and influencing future product.
A straightforward letter praising them, and asking for more fiction.
A letter attacking jim ward for inconsistency in his descriptions of a gamma world group, which he defends by saying not all members of a group are identical, which makes sense.
A correction of a review.
Another load of general questions.
And someone asking why they changed the logo on the front cover. (the answer is to make it more legible at a distance.) Definitely the busiest issue yet on this front.
Giants in the earth: This issue, we have Piers Anthony's Sol of all weapons, Tanith Lee's Zorayas and Clark Ashton Smith's Maal Dweb. The twinkedness continues, despite the complaints.
Reviews: Spellmaker, A boardgame. Black hole, another boardgame. Down styphon, a wargame. The quality of reviews from last issue is maintained.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: The extraneous inventions of Orlow the indolent. I remember the stuff in here from the old 4 volume magic item compendium they released near the end of 2nd ed. Lots of highly amusing stuff in here. I wonder if we'll see Orlow again? I don't remember any of his spells making it into the main books, which is a shame.
Wormy returns in a rather tangental fashion, introducing an entirely new set of characters. What's all that about then? Fineous fingers also returns.
Dragons bestiary: Curst. Say hello to the very first contribution by Ed Greenwood. You'll have to get used to him, because he ain't going away any time soon. These are the ultimate angstbunnies, humans cursed so they can never die, and spend eternity in a halflife state, becoming more and more insane. Seems cliche now, but compared to the way they've been handling vampires, these guys are full of personality. I remember them from my forgotten realms boxed set, so obviously he gets a good response to them and keeps them.
Once again, this issue sets a new high watermark in terms of overall quality of production. With an above average number of good articles as well, several big names making their first contributions, and the comics back in full flow, this is definitely a classic issue. The shit may be hitting the fan in the media at the moment, but the internal situation in the company has never looked better. How long before that runs into trouble and we see the conflicts between Gygax and Arneson that resulted in AD&D and BD&D being branded as completely different games? As ever, on with the adventure. It's all uphill from here.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299677The whole Player/DM level thing is more of the elitism of the era, just more funny this time.
I don't think it was elitism so much as a need to assess the difficulty of adventures. This was before CRs and CLs. And with so much of the game open to player improvisation, the skill of the players was almost as important as PC power.
For example, in the intro of the Caverns of Thracia the author kind of hems and haws over the difficulty of the dungeon, saying low-level characters can survive if run by experienced players.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299746The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB. I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule. Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap. Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play. The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem." They only came out in very extended campaigns. For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.
Yep. We played 2-3 times a week, and with character mortality being what it was, and large parties (6-8 PCs) dividing up the EXP, it took about two years for our PCs to reach the levels where demi-human racial limits kicked in. At that point, we weren't about to retire our 8th level halfling fighter or half-elf ranger. So we just ignored them. That meant human PCs were uncommon - maybe a quarter of PCs.
I think Gygax had a tough time getting his head around how all those 10-16 year-olds who made him rich were actually playing D&D, as opposed to how him and his wargamer buddies played it.
Quote from: (un)reason;299794The Dragon Issue 30: October 1979
Not much to say about this one. This is yet another Dragon mag which (had I been gaming at this point) wouldn't have had any appeal for me.
It's interesting to read between the lines of this issue's editorial. It seems clear that even at this point RPGers have a reputation of being disturbing "intellectuals." Kask is using the words as they were in the headlines of the day, and it's clearly meant to be sinister. How little the world has changed.
The date acquires a new significance in these modern times too.
Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny. It's a completely nonsensical dungeon. It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts. I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things. Nope. It was their star module for several months.
The Ninja article would have bored me to death, even at the height of my ninja fandom.
"Boot Hill? Sure! But what scale?" I'm almost frightened to imagine what kind of bizzaro world would have to exist to cause gamers to utter that phrase. In the real world it was more like, "Boot Hill? Uhm, can we play russian roulette instead?"
Overall, a very dull issue with dry articles.
I'm tempted to make a comment about miniatures, because last issue had an extensive painting guide and this one has a nifty pictorial. But I figure there will be a better feature somewhere down the line for me to open that can of worms.
The Dragon Issue 31: November 1979
56 pages. Yet more format changes show up this issue. The style of credits becomes the layout that would be familiar to all of you who read it during the 80's and early 90's, positioned on the far right column of the contents spread, along with cover to cover. Which definitely draws more attention to the people responsible. Ahh, cult of personality. How easy it is to be drawn into you. Meanwhile the controversy of last month has already died down, with the guy who was missing found, and it turning out D&D had nothing to do with it. Still, the tabloid sharks have the scent of your blood now. They'll be back.
In this issue:
Trollshead: An excerpt from the second D&D novel, by John Holmes the Basic set designer. A lot less meta than quag keep was, and less funny as well, (aside from having a protagonist named Boinger, which doesn't quite work for me) I suppose that's what you get when the writer isn't a proper author. Still, D&D will inspire far worse later on in its history.
Jungle Fever: 2 articles on adventuring in tropical regions. The first covers the natives, and their societies, while the second covers the flora and fauna. As these are the main topic of the issue, both articles are pretty good,and should help you spice up your adventures. By now you should be getting tired of dungeons and ready to see the world beyond as well.
Pics of the gencon winners for various best games and miniatures categories.
D&D is alive and well in houston: A review of NANCON, and the D&D tournament therein. Another fairly functional article, albeit one that devotes quite a bit of time towards praising the sponsors of the con. Still, these things cost money, so I suppose someone has to help with it. Not that we have to like the capitalist setup.
T1, the village of hommlet out now. Another classic module series starts here. And gets stalled for ages, but hey. :p
Will jason destroy the flagship?: A set of variant rules for Alpha Omega, based upon the recent TV mini-series. Major spoilers contained herein ;) Seems a little too reliant on each scenario ending the right way, so you progress onto the next one. Such is the danger of trying to represent a linear narrative on a game which can go lots of ways.
Spicing up stellar conquest: Generating alien life for the planets you visit in the game. One of those random table based ones that so speed things up by cutting down your choices drastically. If you've read traveller, this stuff should be pretty familiar to you.
How tall is a giant: Converting various creatures to the correct size and scale of miniature and movement rate, using 25mm scale as the human standard. A fairly math heavy article that nonetheless clarifies quite a bit on D&D's implied setting. Good to see someone bringing a bit of science to selecting our miniatures purchases.
Armor of the far east: Another historical article covering a wide range of time and geography. A good reminder that there is more than one path to building a good suit of protective materials, and it's not just a matter of armor class bonuses vs encumbrance decisions. Shame most of use are forced into the leather/chain/plate paradigm by designer familiarity and habit, even when it's not always culturaly appropriate.
Sage advice! Last seen over 3 years ago in the strategic review 6, this finally becomes a regular column in the format most of us remember, with readers questions answered by a designer.This first column is headed by Jean Wells. In this we have errata on monks fighting prowess. talk of longbows clearance, and using them as melee weapons, a reminder that torturing things is not allowed for paladins, no matter what weasel excuses the player tries to give. Someone boasting about their thousand+ level characters, which isn't really a question. A ruling that Orcs are mammals, and hence do not spawn. Stuff about spells known by magic users and rangers. A question as to how long before Q1 is released. A reminder that you can't program magic mouths to cast spells. And a reminder that the GM is the boss. A pretty solid start, even if a few of the questions don't really fit the format properly.
The Adventurer, A new profession for tekumel: Essentially introducing jacks of all trades, for those of you who don't want to be bound strictly to the primary archetypes. Can't be sure of the balance compared to the other classes, but I suspect it may be slightly overpowered, particularly if you use the other alternate rules in this article.
From the sorcerers scroll: Gary reminds us that the requirements of what makes a good game, and what makes a good novel, are very different, and you shouldn't try and make your games emulate novels, as you'll be disappointed. Well you certainly will if you try and use D&D rules, and indie games where the rules are specifically designed to encourage play that resembles a genre are still a long way off. So much for lets pretend and tell a story like the books you read, it's troupe play or embarrassing death before you get to do anything really heroic. Which shows his calcification somewhat. You've got to change to suit the game, because I don't want you changing the game to suit yourself. AD&D should be played the way it was designed, and not be changed and added too willy-nilly. Together we sigh.
Leomunds tiny hut: Some official house rules on hit points, permanent injury and death by Len Lakofka. Includes one that would later become canon in 3rd ed, that of allowing characters to automatically have maximum hit points at 1st level, so as to be less likely to die from a single hit. Which is one way of handling it. The mutilation rules definitely fall into the category of lots of work for negative reward, and so are far less likely to be adopted. Demand from a few strident letter senders is not the same thing as genuine public demand.
Frederick Macknight continues his story on the formative years of Harry Fischer and Fritz Lieber. This time, he focusses mostly on the differences in setting and rules between the first two boardgames set in lankhmar. Which still reveals some cool things about the setting. Not quite as interesting as the last installment though.
The nazis get even nazier: Tactical thoughts for 3rd Reich. The second world war could have taken some very different directions. Here are some of them. Be afraid.
Out on a limb: A much smaller column this issue. We get a second case of a person trying to weasel around the paladins code and getting slapped down for it. When will these people learn? You don't tug on supermans cape, and you can't rules-lawyer your way around the paladins code. Plus a load of revisions for WRG, which the staff recieve pretty well. Are they going to have to beg for more letters again soon?
A request for women players to send in their stories for use in a future article. Well, it's been more than 3 years since the last one, and that was incredibly bad, so I suppose it makes sense to do this now.
Reviews: The creature that ate sheboygan, Indian ocean adventure, 4th dimension, Battle of Maiwand, plus lots of mini reviews derived from short impressions at gen con. All are pretty good. They seem to be maintaining their standards in this area as well.
Dragons bestiary; The Ukuyatangi. A giant hydra in the real world sense, this is a slightly meh monster who's ecological position would be taken up by the roper. Grapple with tentacles, pick up, swallow, repeat. You know the score.
Wormy continues. Fineous fingers is absent, because it's creator is busy with his day job in the air force.
The overall quality of production values continues its rapid rise at this point. However, I am less than enthralled with the majority of individual articles this issue. Hopefully this is just a minor blip, and they'll have better ones next time. And maybe you found them more entertaining than I did. So much of these things are subjective, after all. See you next installment.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299922Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny. It's a completely nonsensical dungeon. It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts. I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things. Nope. It was their star module for several months.
Well, like all their S modules, it was a tournament one, debuted at the conventions a few months before. That obviously gave it some pretty substantial promotion, as people killed horribly there wanted to see behind the scenes, and inflict it on their own groups.
Quote from: Gabriel2;299922Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny. It's a completely nonsensical dungeon. It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts. I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things. Nope. It was their star module for several months.
We played White Plume mountain when it came out, and it's a great dungeon. The encounters aren't random at all - they were clearly placed to maximize fun and challenge. The giant crab in the volcano caldera, the vampire guarding Whelm, the Efreeti doormen - this is all great fun to play. And every other group I knew at the time did play it and have fun.
Quote from: (un)reason;299971[Gary reminds us that the requirements of what makes a good game, and what makes a good novel, are very different, and you shouldn't try and make your games emulate novels, as you'll be disappointed. Well you certainly will if you try and use D&D rules, and indie games where the rules are specifically designed to encourage play that resembles a genre are still a long way off. So much for lets pretend and tell a story like the books you read, it's troupe play or embarrassing death before you get to do anything really heroic. Which shows his calcification somewhat. You've got to change to suit the game, because I don't want you changing the game to suit yourself. AD&D should be played the way it was designed, and not be changed and added too willy-nilly. Together we sigh.
But he was right, wasn't he? D&D
isn't very good at emulating a novel. Just look at how traumitized the Forge folks were by their attempts to make D&D run the kinds of games it wasn't designed to run - they have had a hate-on for D&D ever since.
But the Forgites are right; better to make a new system from the ground up that supports narrative gaming than try to twist and bend D&D into something fundamentally different.
Quote from: Haffrung;299979We played White Plume mountain when it came out, and it's a great dungeon. The encounters aren't random at all - they were clearly placed to maximize fun and challenge. The giant crab in the volcano caldera, the vampire guarding Whelm, the Efreeti doormen - this is all great fun to play. And every other group I knew at the time did play it and have fun.
My game group and I played it as the 80s were winding down. It was probably the last module we played before 2nd edition came out. I had Realms of Horror, or whatever the S-series supermodule was. A friend borrowed it and off to the mountain we went. It was so completely random that everyone longed for the logic of Castle Amber. It stands to this day as the only module where a player actually critiqued the environment as completely illogical.
I remember the inverted ziggurrat with the random monsters on each level. Wasn't there a chessboard room in this one too? Tournament modules always had the motif where each room was some kind of puzzle/test. White Plume took it to an extreme. I think we used to call it Pop Quiz Mountain because of the arbitrary nature of the tests.
I have some fond memories of it, but I certainly don't remember it as a well designed and engaging dungeon. ;)
Quote from: (un)reason;299971The Dragon Issue 31: November 1979
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.....
huh, what?
Oh, sorry. I fell asleep reading this one. Even Gary ranting about his one-true-wayism couldn't keep me interested.
If this issue could have looked a little over a decade into the future, they would have had a much better tagline for their cover courtesy of Guns N Roses.
The issue has a couple of features about minis, but I'm still saving that rant.
Sage advice is sorta amusing. However the condescension shown in the bow damage question is a bit much.
I guess the Alpha Omega article adapting the game to play a Jason of Star Command game is kind of interesting. Although, the fact I never heard of this game before kind of dulls the impact. Hell, I barely remember Jason of Star Command. Imagine that. People in the late 70s were using games to play out Saturday morning TV shows!
Quote from: Haffrung;299980But he was right, wasn't he? D&D isn't very good at emulating a novel. Just look at how traumitized the Forge folks were by their attempts to make D&D run the kinds of games it wasn't designed to run - they have had a hate-on for D&D ever since.
But the Forgites are right; better to make a new system from the ground up that supports narrative gaming than try to twist and bend D&D into something fundamentally different.
That's not what the Forgies are doing though; they're creating something totally different, but CALLING it RPGs, and CLAIMING that this is what RPGs were always somehow "meant" to do but had till now failed to do.
In other words, they are trying to bend ALL OF THE RPG HOBBY into something fundamentally different.
RPGPundit
The Dragon Issue 32: December 1979
64 pages. As it's christmas, they've got a special present for us. However, the price goes up to $2.50, to pay for the extra size this time round. They say If they shrink again they intend to reduce the price again. What an incentive for them to keep their page count up. Will they let it drop again? (Not a hope, from this point on, every single issue is 64 pages or longer. More work for me.) But anyway, let's unwrap our presents, see what we have.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: This moves to the front of the magazine, just after the main contents and editorials. We get one letter dispairing of the overpowered twinks who play characters that they couldn't possibly have acquired legally and played up from 1st level. Two about peoples struggles to find a good gaming group, and problems with age gaps, Three snarking back at Marc Jacob's letter in TD28. And some more general comments and requests, including one for a collection of covers. We're finally starting to see the letters page used as a forum, with people replying to one-another through it. Which is most bodacious, and another step towards the Dragon I was familiar with.
Poisons from AA to XX: Ahh, the weirdness of D&D's implied setting, where characters are heavily restricted on what they can make, buy and use by class restrictions, and there are powerful trade monopolies of level 20+ Alchemists and Assassins ready to stamp on any PC who tries to break them. Yeah, this is one of those articles entirely devoted to nerfing and adding additional risks to an otherwise too powerful option, that any rational PC who isn't concerned with paltry matters like honour would use the hell out of, given it's effectiveness under the current rules.
Weapons of the far east: Ahh, orientophillia, one of the things that's changed very little over the years in adventuring circles. A system free article that doesn't really tell me anything new. I must say meh.
Sinister seaweed: Adventures in the air filled cavities of giant underwater plants. A truly inventive idea, with tons of different adventure seeds within. This puts a whole new slant on the dungeon concept that looks like great fun to play through. I like this article very much, and hope to use it at some point.
Playing on other planes of existence: Unfortunately, we don't get any concrete information yet, but Gary assures us that he is working hard to flesh out this important part of the D&D metasetting, and he hopes to provide modules set in other planes soon, so you can get info on them. Hopefully we'll be seeing more articles on this in the near future, since it's still a good half a decade before the full-on Manual of the Planes gets released, and I'm sure lots of people don't want to wait that long. He also talks a little about putting alternate dimension crosssovers with other games, but decides to hold back from putting official links in supplements, as it would be bad for the tone of the game if characters regularly went to gamma world or modern day earth. As ever, developments on this thread of history will be reported with great enthusiasm.
Sage advice: Jean Wells' lone voice campaigning for the depilliation of dwarven women has not gone unnoticed by the general public. And as is often the case, it's the little things that spark fiercest debate, with plenty of people on both sides
of the fence. (for the record, I'm in the let them grow beards camp, as it makes good dramatic symmetry with elven men not being able to grow facial hair, as well as making them seem more like a different race, not just short long-lived humans. Plus if you don't want your female dwarf to have a beard, all they need to do is shave.) Anyway, this issue, the questions settled are:
What the monster on the cover of the DMG is (an efreeti)
Can paladins catch lycanthropy (they can)
Can a ring of telekinesis can make an object spin at the speed of light (It can't)
What happened to Asmodeus after I beat him (It's up to the DM, but watch out, because it might be a trick, and the rest of hell will be after you.)
How do I stop the fighters from hiding behind me and my magical shielding (stand up for yourself man!)
Will a wand of fireballs release all its charges at once if you break it (no)
Can a god allow an elf to become a druid (only by turning them into another race which can be one)
How do I handle pregnancy in the game (dear god, this is too complicated a topic for this article, and I'm going to address that properly in a later issue)
How do I divorce my husband so I can have a romance with a god. (Headesk headesk headesk, any GM that allows a character to get into a scenario like this ought to remove the character from play, as having the personal favour of a god is totally unbalancing to the game and unfair to the other players) Yeah, there were quite a few ridiculous twinks around back then that needed keeping in check. This is the good part of the character optimisation boards. They channel that urge to legitimate ends.
Leomunds tiny hut: A selection of crossbreeds between goblinoids and insects, for those of you who tire of the same old mooks. Not updated, but given the template system of 3rd ed, it would be simplicity itself to do so. Ahh, mad wizards. Is there anything you won't make?
Some Spells for the very Smart Sorcerer: A load of extra spells for the game WIZARD. All are directly nicked from D&D, which is a bit cheeky really. Where is your imagination?
The druid in fact and fantasy: This again? Still, this time there's lots of interesting D&D specific material, so it's better than last time. But is it really worth eating Satans Feces to protect yourself from devils? Man, what a decision.
The traveller politician: An additional set of career paths for those of you who don't want to join the military. Obviously, you'll get rather more opportunities to hone your social skills, and less combat ability, so it's not a good option for purely hack and slash games. Still, I hope we're far enough into roleplaying teritory that there are people who want to try a less combat focussed game once in a while. And it's certainly no Ninja in terms of brokenness. So I give this article my approval.
The fantasysmiths notebook: The writer attempts to persuade those of us who play without miniatures of the advantages of doing so, plus a bit of info on how to get started for the complete amateur. Buy more stuff. Come on, you know you want too. As someone who has played games both with and without miniatures, I simply say meh. I have other things to spend my money on.
WRG rules modifications for modern combat: A pretty substantial rewrite of the game. Rather dry and dense stuff, and since I don't know the game, I can't comment on how broken it is. Such a pain in the derrierre.
Reviews: Samurai, a wargame. Middle sea, A boardgame, plus mini reviews of Ironclad and Sandalot Football. Rather a short section this month. I guess people are holding off on new stuff until christmas day or something. Still better to only have a few and maintain quality control than let any old drek be printed.
Dragons bestiary: Another familiar Ed Greenwood offering this month, the Crawling Claw. AKA thing from the Addams family with the serial numbers filed off. ;) Also features the first mention of Nulathoes Ninemen (really, what was all that about? What's his problem with the self explanatory spell names everyone else uses. ) which would also be instrumental in the creation of Bone Bats. So he's snuck quite a bit of implied setting into this monster description. What are we to do with this upstart freelancer? ;)
A typical night in the life of nine ordinary people: A little piece of fiction on the strangeness of gamers to the uninitiated, with a distinct horror slant. Reminds me of something else I've read, but can't place at the moment. (edit: of course! They're made of meat. That's the one) Pretty cool, anyway.
Wormy continues, and we get the start of another persistent piece of formatting, that of the dragonmirth section. Beware the carnivorous commode.
And your big christmas present, a complete 16 page module, The Fell Pass by Karl Merris. Well, it is still nearly 7 years until Dungeon starts up. I suspect we'll be seeing a few more adventures in here before then. This is a pretty old school plotless location based module with several horribly unfair death traps and challenges way above the average level of the encounters. Still, at least they're inventively evil death traps, so your players won't be bored as they die.
Once again they've continued to put out a quality product, and made noticeable steps towards becoming the magazine I remember. I guess the second half of 79 is where things really become a professional operation. Which puts them in a good position to expand further and capitalise on this. So lets step from the 70's, leave behind disco, punk, economic troubles and stupid hair for synths, shoulderpads, excess and er, more stupid hair. Lets hope you enjoy my trek through the next decade even more than you enjoyed this one.
The Dragon Issue 33: January 1980
64 pages. Hello again everybody. Welcome to the 80's, where everything is bigger and better. The glory days of D&D.The only decade in which dragon was published continously, with no interruptions. The smallest issue in this decade is equal to the largest issue of the last decade. More color, more developments, more writers, more setting stuff, more roleplaying, more changes. In other words, it's going to take a lot longer to get through this decade than it did the 70's. And the 90's may take longer still, as despite a few interruptions, the average page counts were considerably higher, so there was probably more actual material released then. But lets not get too far ahead of myself. Gotta keep my eye on the part of the race I'm running at the moment, or I'll stumble and fall.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: Tim takes the time to acknowledge the things all the new staff have done for the running of the magazine. Particular Kudos is given to Jake, who has pretty much taken over as editor, and they intend to formally alter peoples job titles accordingly soon. They also let us know that they intend the size and price increases to be permanent, as it is more economical for them to run things this way. How long will it be before the next price increase? We shall see.
Out on a limb: A letter from the submitter of an article, complaining that the editing job that they did on it made it not entirely sensical. A letter from Ed Greenwood complaining about spelling errors, and also asking about white dwarf and lifelong subscriptions. And a request for a picture of gary, which they provide, but in rather cryptic fashion, with heavy shadowing. All rather interesting stuff that reveals more to me about their current modus operandi. Also on this page is their 2nd class mailing thingy, with the circulation numbers for last year, but unfortunately the scanning resolution makes that illegible. Anyone able to fill in the numbers for us?
Paradise for painterly people: Talk on how to paint large numbers of miniatures in a short amount of time, while retaining decent quality, instead of the painstaking methods employed by most people. Which is Veeery iiiiinteresting. There's usually a quicker and easier way of doing things, if you're willing to swallow your pride, and its nice to see trade secrets revealed.
Fiction: The eyes of Mavis Deval, by Gardner Fox. The fifth Niall story. Niall smartens up a little, but not enough to escape being dragged into the plot against his better judgement. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and him to get bitten for being a demon's pawn, but it has yet to happen. Still, who can say what the future holds. (well anyone, if it's also the past, but I don't want to spoil myself)
A cau for NPC's: Adding an additional stat, caution, to your NPC's to determine how likely they are to act impulsively. Also notable for including a libido table, for quick determination of your success in seduction. Yeah, this article is pretty funny, but perhaps not something you want to incorporate into a serious game.
From the sorcerers scroll: Gary talks about the development of the D&D magic system, and its further refinement in AD&D, and the sources he drew from in creating it. This includes much talk on the separation of components, and the logistical tricks that spells missing one or more allow. Still a far cry from the days of regular metamagic though.
The third installment of Frederick MacKnights tales of the creation of Lankhmar. This time, it's mostly full of conversion notes between the editions of the boardgame, which is a bit dull really.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len gives his house rules and clarifications on lots of D&D spells. Most of them are common sense and/or nerfs, many of which would be adopted in later editions. Particularly notable, though is where he failed. Magic missile. Apparently Len and Gary have a quite substantial disagreement over the appropriateness of a spell with no save or to hit roll, even if it isn't that damaging. Which is interesting to know. More evidence in support that D&D really needed a from the ground up revision to make character classes remotely balanced.
Oooh. An advert for Adventures in Fantasy, Dave Arneson's own new roleplaying game. This is a very interesting development. Would someone care to fill us in on how this came about, and in what ways it differed from D&D?
No swords means No Swords!: Stop trying to get around your class restrictions folks. Its Not Allowed, and your god will be very pissed off at you. Ahh, the joy of the old arbitrary restrictions that paid no attention to what god you actually worship. 2nd edition can not come fast enough in this respect.
Mapping the dungeons gets this years entry, which is a quite frightening 13 pages long. Well, it's good for the page count, I suppose. Not every issue can have an adventure to make up its size.
Days of the Dragon, the D&D calendar full of spiffy old artwork out now.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: It uses the lotion or it gets the cane again. Yeah, this time, we get tons of magical lotions, many of which are stat buffs. Each of them only gets a line or two, allowing them to include a hundred different lotions in only 2 pages. Which is pretty useful, and should keep your players from finding the same treasure repeatedly too often.
Sage Advice: Business as usual here. How much is the DMG, and what the hell is a Dungeon masters screen (ahh, the innocence of the past) What do you do to get rid of a 34th level character with 86 magic items. (Give them a managerial job that stops them from adventuring, so the player has to make a new character, otherwise make him retire that character.) What level do rangers and paladins cast spells at (= to their level, and I agree that that shouldn't be the case) Are multiple faerie fire spells cumulative? (no) Can dispel magic negate multiple spells with one casting (yes) Do longevity potions affect both natural and magical aging (well duh, wouldn't be much point to them otherwise) Is invisibility cancelled by tripping over (No) Is a curse removed when you die (It depends) What happens if you try and resurrect a lich. (you get a very pissed off magic user to deal with) Can thieves use bows (no, oddly enough. ) Can humans be multiclassed (no, they can be dual classed, they are completly different things, you doofus.) Can elves and half orcs be raised with raise dead (no, because they don't have souls :o ) As ever, this is very handy in revealing the weirdness in these old rules, and design thoughts behind them.
The electric eye:Appropriately for the new decade, they've decided to turn their attention to the (not so) new technology of computers. This is basically an explanation of what a computer actually is, aimed at the complete newbie. Some of them enjoy sales in the hundreds of thousands, and can hold up to 64 kilobytes of memory these days. Man, this really takes me back to my first computer, to the incredible annoyance of the zx spectrum 48k. 8 color graphics, several minute loading times with frequent tape errors. I do not miss it one bit.
Reviews: This month we have Wizard, an RPG, and part of the fantasy trip, which would later evolve into GURPS. Wizards quest, a boardgame that has nothing to do with the previous review. The apprentice, Not the TV show, but a magazine. Gamelog, another magazine. Invasion of the air eaters, a boardgame. The average length of reviews is definitely increasing, but they're still mostly description.
Dragons bestiary: Frosts, aka snow pixies. The first contribution to the magazine by Roger Moore, another writer who would go on to play a big part in the development of the magazine. Like regular pixies, they have spell abilities far in excess of their hit dice, and are tricksy bastards. The illustration is particularly large, which is handy, because he skimps a bit on the ecological stuff. Unlike Ed, there's no obvious signs of the greatness he would eventually attain.
Wormy and fineous fingers are firing on all cylinders this issue.
Quality is maintained this issue, with the average length of articles being fairly high, and yet more new developments that would become regular features. They're still far from stable in their structure and all the more interesting for it.
Quote from: (un)reason;293199Rangers. The very first instance of a twinktastic new class being introduced in the magazine! They only go to level 13, and lack the rogue abilities and two weapon fighting that they would later get, but are deadly against giants, can track, and become pretty decent spellcasters in both wizard and cleric lists at high level. I certainly recognise the AD&D 1st ed ranger in these, but they are almost completely different to the 4th ed ranger. Once again we see an influx of fiddly social restrictions that have since disappeared, and a tendency towards static abilities with an arbitrary chance of success. Unified mechanics, where are you?
Just for historical interest, Joe Fisher was 17 or 18 at this time. The idea of "professional game designer" did not exist. Gary Gygax was still a part time shoemaker, and Dave Arneson was a parking lot attendant.
We knew the idea of what would later be called "unified mechanics", we just didn't care. Mileage, vary, yours.
At this point, TRACTICS had sold more copies than Dungeons and Dragons by a long site, so it does not seem strange to me at all that they'd think a hot new historical miniatures game to use these new-fangled microtanks could be The Next Big Thing. Fantasy gaming was still a small ancillary to wargaming, and D&D was a small ancillary to fantasy gaming in general.
Quote from: (un)reason;300248The Dragon Issue 33: January 1980
Leomunds tiny hut: Len gives his house rules and clarifications on lots of D&D spells. Most of them are common sense and/or nerfs, many of which would be adopted in later editions. Particularly notable, though is where he failed. Magic missile. Apparently Len and Gary have a quite substantial disagreement over the appropriateness of a spell with no save or to hit roll, even if it isn't that damaging. Which is interesting to know. More evidence in support that D&D really needed a from the ground up revision to make character classes remotely balanced.
I find this whole bit here indicative of a disease many gamers have: "You're using the rules to your advantage, so the rules must be changed."
Magic Missile was neatly useful in the narrow instance described. It could be used to to interrupt the casting of a lengthy spell. But most times it wasn't worth memorizing it for that narrow application. Seriously, for a 1st level mage is was a once per day ability to cause 1d4+1 damage. You couldn't even kill a kobold with it a lot of the time. It came into it's own once you hit 7th level with an awe inspiring 3d4+3 of unavoidable damage, but by then you had much better options. (and soon enough, everything else will have magic resistance, rendering your magic user useless anyway)
Sleep was a MUCH better choice for a low level mage to spend slots on. I don't see any complaints about that one in the article.
I really read the entire bit about Magic Missile as:
"Waaaaa! The magic missile screwed up my big bad magic user's spell, and I didn't screen him with enough minions to prevent the fighters from mobbing him. I'm going to change the rules to make sure such an intelligent plan doesn't work again rather than building my boss encounters better."
I'm not familiar with Lakofka's stuff, although I'm sure I've probably read a lot of his work over the years. From this he definitely seems to be in love with crapshoot saving throws.
The Dragon Issue 34: February 1980
73 pages. This issue is a Divine Right special, with a whole slew of articles based upon the boardgame. In addition, they also feature their second full module. Not your average issue, in other words. Which is pretty cool.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: Once again, tim talks about the oddness of writing for several months in the future. A feeling I am also starting to really understand. He also talks about the next big growth spurt for the magazine and industry, as it looks like D&D is about to be picked up much more by mainstream toy stores. Which will of course coincide with the creation of the moldvay basic set, leading to the biggest period of sales to new players in D&D's history. Next years calendar is also going to have a print run 10 times this years one did. They might be expanding still, but he does definitely seem a little tired of his job. I suppose it's better for him to move on to other things while still excited about gaming in general, than to run it into the ground.
Out on a limb: We get another letter encouraging the idea of loose leaf books that you can take apart and rearrange. A letter praising Mohan's introductory article in issue 30. A letter picking apart the math in How tall is my giant. A letter complaining about the lack of traveller related supplementary material. And a letter complaining about all the articles nerfing magic-users, to which they remind that all the articles in Dragon are optional, and not designed to be used all at once.
Divine right changes from the designer, and The official changes to 2nd ed divine right: two articles that partly complement and partly complete with each other, showing how the creative process can work in a company environment.
The history of Muetar: The original writer of Divine Right expands upon its setting. Like Greg Stafford's boardgames set in Glorantha, it seems likely that the place had been a rich playground for its creators imaginations long before any games were published. And of course we're only seeing a small fraction of it. Oh well. Such is life.
Ambassador cards for Divine Right: Giving your ambassadors personalities like your monarchs. Includes 12 sample cards with various amusing personality and ability quirks.
Sieges in Divine Right: Commentary, plus an optional rule on exactly that topic.
Tom Wham talks about the design process of Divine Right, and gives his own set of variants that hit the cutting room floor. Looks like this game really did go through the committee design process, with everyone at TSR lending their own viewpoints at one point or another.
Nine ways to change the game: Ed Greenwood gives a whole load of ways to tinker with the rules of Divine Right. These really play up just how complex the setting is, and how many different places and people are in the game. It looks like it would be pretty easy to adapt to an RPG setting. Did anyone try this?
Pirates, Ogres and other variations: A bunch of optional rules for Divine Right introducing new power blocs to fight and negotiate with. Again, If you've played it several times and are getting bored of the basic setup, these'll keep things interesting for a while longer.
Up on a soapbox: Don't just recreate historical battle scenarios in your wargaming, invent your own. There are plenty of places in history, where if things had gone a little differently, there would have been some quite interesting match-ups. It then goes on to give plenty of examples. Which span a pretty good range of alternate history from the probable to the fantastical.
Sage advice: Taking a mule into the dungeon? Not a good idea. All sorts of comical but inconvenient stuff could happen. Anyway, on with the rulings.
Can a thief wear studded leather (no, (a ruling they would later change))
What the hell are all those weird weapon names. (ahh, polearms, see TD22 for a full guide)
Can a periapt of wound closure heal damage from a sword of wounding. (no, only natural rest can, so there healbot.)
Are the rules for gods in G,DG&H correct for AD&D (no, we're creating a conversion now.)
How do you do mass combat in AD&D? (you can't yet, again, we're working on it. Use Chainmail for now)
Can Humans be multiclassed? (no, they can only be dual classed. Do I have to explain the difference to you again)
Will this column answer questions for games other than D&D. (no, I do not feel qualified to do so.)
Can evil clerics heal their allies? (Yes. Good people can kill their enemies, so of course they can. Alignment is about context as much as actual deeds.)
Are there such things as anti rangers and paladins(not officially, and not in my game either.)
Are the softcover supplements and the new hardbacks different games? (yes, AD&D and OD&D (and yes, she actually calls it that) are indeed different games) More stuff that shows just how dramatically the game has changed since then, largely towards permitting things.
In defense of the poor magic-user: This article argues that magic-users are not overpowered, their low hit points and equipment restrictions make up for their power, plus they will often be in trouble from using up their spells or not having selected the right one for the challenge today. Yeah, this writer has never heard of the 15 minute adventuring day tactic. And thank god for that, because as soon as it gets into Dragon, everyone'll know about it and want to use it.
For familiar but fearsome fiends: Dungeon building without needing a shitload of supplements. Ahh, the days when you had to regularly run from opponents or die, particularly in the first few levels. Of course you'll still need to determine stats for the multitude of human opponents of various class and level you'll encounter using this table.
Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.
From the fantasysmiths notebook: Creading our own custom foam padding to protect your miniatures in transit, so they don't get all dented and bent from jostling against one-another. Which is neat. Plus the article has some amusing illustrations, so I give it high marks for both usefulness and creativity.
D-day, A more accurate variation: House rules for the wargame. Entirely crunch, and so I can't really comment on how good or bad they might be.
Dastardly deeds and devious devices lives up to its name, with 4 nasty variations on blades and pit traps that'll have your players screaming in the aisles as their characters are hit on the head, hamstringed, and then split off from one another so the healbot/cleric can't fix them. Muahahahahaha.
A general knowledge quiz for tekumel. Please do not write on the magazine, whatever they suggest in the article. You'll ruin the fun for everyone else reading it later.
Bolotomus' Revenge: Lotsa neat houserules for the game from issue 11, mostly revolving around making each organ more individual. Nice to see people are still playing it, more than 2 years later.
Whats in a name? Random generation of those pretentious descriptive fantasy names based off elements, animals, weather etc. They're silly enough anyway. When you string two or three descriptive words together by random roll, the potential for ludicrity gets pretty high.
Taking the sting out of scoring: Standardising scoring for tournament play by using a formula for determining the points awarded. Encourages the avoidance of GM fiat wherever possible, by making the categories as specific as possible, so that different groups can be scored fairly, and you can thus get a good benchmark of how good your team was compared to others playing the same module across the world. Which all makes sense, when playing from that kind of viewpoint. I can't fault their logic.
Beware of quirks and curses: Cursed magic items are no fun because players will immediately do anything in their power to get rid of them. Far more interesting are items that have useful abilities, but also have a price or drawback (which can also sometimes be turned into an advantage in its own right) as well, such as making animals afraid of you, or compulsive gambling. That way, it becomes a real choice deciding if they're worth the hassle. Another cool idea that would later be used to great effect in Iron Heroes, and one I thoroughly recommend trying in your games.
Frederick Macknight continues his conversion notes, this time going back the other way. What started out fascinating is rapidly growing very dull. Virtually everyone is interested in gossip about people. Very few are interested in minutinae of rules.
Leomunds tiny hut: Variant combat rules taking greater account of AD&D's system of breaking rounds into segments. As is frequently the case for precision systems like this, it adds huge amounts of extra work keeping track of things. Which as you ought to know by now, is one of my least favourite types of add-on. People forget things, and you have to keep going back to get it right, or just skip over the details, so they don't get used properly anyway.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magic fountains. Another one of the classic random screwage items. Do you dare to drink. Are you so thirsty after weeks of dungeoneering that you don't really have a choice. Will the DM even lock you in until someone takes a drink, a tactic they recommend against overcautious players. And you can't even take it with you and use it when better prepared, unlike the bag of beans. Well, as long as everyone has fun, why not use it anyway.
Yay, we finally have actual classified ads coming through.
Reviews: Bushido, a roleplaying game. Hammers Slammers, a book. The Wolfen, A book. The spacefarers guide to alien monsters, a cross-system roleplaying supplement. This issue has a greater amount of criticism of the reviewed products than usual, including one that is completely panned. Which is something I thoroughly approve of. We know that over 90% of everything is crap, but it's your job to tell us what is so we can avoid wasting our money. Only printing positive reviews does not help in that.
Dragons bestiary: the Vilkonnar. A bunch of energy sucking humanoids that make a decent mid range challenge, while not being as annoying as level drainers.
Dragonmirth isn't just a bunch of pics this issue, it also includes an amusing article on degrees of disasters based upon the exclamation used upon encountering them. Which is dreadfully bowdlerised, as they are trying to be a family friendly magazine. :D Life is strange.
Wormy is here this month. Fineous fingers is not.
Aaand finally, the big tournament module, DOOMKEEP! Fear the cliched name, Ahahahaha!!!!! As this is a tournament module, it is full of horribly tricky puzzles, inventive monsters I've never seen before and killer encounters, including double fakeouts that'll have your players screaming bloody murder. It also gives a proper scoring system, so if people survive you can calculate the winner, and lists the rankings from the convention it was originally played in.
A very full issue, as not only is it the biggest I've faced yet, but it has lots of little articles in addition to the very big one at the end. They continue their policy of having lots of wargaming articles as well as the RPG stuff. I guess there's still quite a bit of demand for that stuff. As ever, there are some bits which are rather dull, but there's still plenty of interesting stuff to discover, particularly in sage advice, which is rapidly becoming very useful to me.
This is great stuff!
Just wanted to thank you for the effort of your reviews. :)
Quote from: (un)reason;300441The Dragon Issue 34: February 1980
Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.
Basically the only really cool article so far. Supremacy is still 4 years away. There are some small similarities to the rules, but I think that's just the subject matter rather than Supremacy being inspired by this article.
The Dragon Issue 35: March 1980
64 pages. A particularly cool cover this issue, Phil Foglio's snowmen of doom. This issue, Traveler gets focused upon, with 5 new articles for it.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: This issue marks the retirement of Tim Kask as the main editor, with Jake Jaquet taking over that job. It also marks the point where RPG's really start making it into mainstream toy stores. Having been to the trade convention mentioned last month, it seems that lots of people want in on the action.
Out on a limb: This month we have a letter complaining about character inflation. Two letters about agism in gaming groups, from opposite sides of the spectrum. And an extensive letter justifying the unrealism of simply scaling up human proportions to create giants weights and strengths in the recent article. Once again we see the battle between the people constantly picking unrealistic stuff apart, and the "its just a game" guys, with the TSR staff pretty firmly in the just a game camp.
Errata for AD&D: All three corebooks get extensive goings over, with the changes to be incorporated into the next printings. Also includes stats for those magic items we would have had if the typos hadn't been spotted, such as the Cube of Farce and Manual of Gollums. Goes to show what cabin fever can make seem funny.
Fiction: Oasis, by Cynthia Frazer. A little D&D meets cthuluesque horror adventure. One of those stories that feels like the start of a series.
Jobs, profit and peril: Joining the Interstellar bureau of internal security. Yes, instead of being a military guy, now your PC can be an ex spy with retarded aging. Which means you'll be pretty badass, if you survive to play.
Usefull Skills: Expansions to the traveller skill system. The kind that divides broad skills into more specialist subjects, reducing their individual usefulness, and making it harder to build a well rounded character. Also includes huge anachronisms such as tape recorders which remind me how much real technology has overtaken the visions of technological advancement back then.
The "Other" Options: Creating a civilian character in traveller. Obviously, you'll have more financial and social abilities, and less combat ones, but that doesn't mean you won't be a viable character. And more variety in your team is always a good thing.
More Clout for Scouts: Another traveller article focussed on enhancing the options of a particular character type. I think you can work out which one.
Black Holes! The final traveller article, this of course focusses on the havoc you can cause with black holes providing rules for placing them, spotting them and escaping them. You'd better roll well, because failure means death for the whole crew. God, traveller could be brutal. Seems like death awaits you at every turn ;)
From the Sorcerers Scroll: Gary once again talks about where D&D is going. Demonweb pits and caverns of tsjocanth are coming soon, and they're planning on producing expert and master (but not companion, yet) sets for D&D, to make it into a separate game, intended to be friendly to people who have never played wargames, let alone RP'd before; instead of just something that leads off AD&D. AD&D is getting lots more modules, plus a second book of monsters (although they haven't decided on the name yet) And possibly an AD&D computer game. So lots of stuff is in the pipeline. How long will it take to get it all sorted out? Watch this space. But not too hard, otherwise you'll get very bored. I guess even with their expanding staff, the number of people working for them was still somewhat lower than the amount working for hasbro now.
Leomunds tiny hut: Another set of training rules. This one isn't a joke like the last ones, but is rather time consuming, both in and out of game. Can't people figure out stuff on their own? If only characters of the level needed or higher were able to teach people how to advance in levels, then you would rapidly suffer generational degradation until there were only 1st level characters left. It just doesn't work. Still, if you want to keep players dependent on staying on the good side of your annoying uber NPC's, no matter how powerful they get, this is one way to go about it. (sigh)
Sage advice: No preamble this time, just straight into the questions. Can magic users cast spells one handed? (yes, unless the GM rules otherwise for individual spells)
Can a character who can't be raised normally be brought back by a wish (yes)
Can you shoot arrows in hand to hand combat (no)
How do I stop the assassins guild going after me for something I didn't do? (that, my dear, is up to the GM)
Do druids automatically know speak with animals? (druids and clerics don't need spellbooks, they can pray for any spell on their list)
Can evil characters cast protection from evil (oh yes)
How do you deal with an annoying, treasure grabbing, bossy tantrum throwing player (Lay down the law, and stick to it, bitch! The rules can't solve this one for you)
Do you have to read scrolls aloud to cast them (yes)
I'm bored with dungeon delving. How do I spice up my game (start putting proper plots in it. Ask your players what they want to do.)
Can you stack multiple armour types(no)
Can thieves be chaotic good (no) Man, they really were harsh on thieves in those days, seems like every issue we have someone trying to question limitations on them that now don't exist anymore.
Up on a soap box: Wargaming, a moral issue? Wargaming is a threat to the morals of our youth. If they play it they'll grow up thinking that fighting and killing is a perfectly normal thing to do. Classic. Is there a form of popular entertainment or technology that moralizing reactionary fearmongers haven't turned their sights upon in the history of creating stuff. Pay them no attention. A decade or two later their worries usually seem pretty comical.
Angels in AD&D: Another attempt at this topic. This is pretty elaborate, and draws heavily on real world mythology. They have pretty much the abilities you'd expect. Nothing particularly exceptional to see here. Move along.
Giants in the Earth: This time, the disgustingly twinked characters for your delectation are Cecelia Holland's Muirtagh the bowman, H. Rider Haggard's Umslopogaas, and Henry Kuttner's Edward Bond and Ganelan.
Dastardly deeds and devious devices: A particularly elaborate set of traps this issue, two of which will cause you more harm if you take the obvious route to try and solve or get around them. No wonder adventurers who survived for any length of time became so paranoid. This is nasty stuff. I love it ;)
The AD&D national player rating system: More stuff supporting the use of AD&D as a tournament system, allowing you to work out how good a player you are compared to everyone else who's played in a particular con module. Includes the top 50 rankings from the recent tournaments, which of course has most of the TSR staff in fairly high places. No 1 ranking player in the world at the moment, however is Kristine Bailey, with the highest tsr staffer at 3rd, and Gary coming 47th, Oh, the woes of other people beating you at the game you invented.
The mystery of the bow: Another one of those historical articles explaining the real world history of stuff. Seems very hung up over the handedness of bow firers, and the historical accuracy of various miniatures because of it. Which is a rather petty thing to spend so much time writing about. Worse things happen in academia.
The History of Hothior: More cool stuff on the setting of Divine Right by its original creator.
A big double page advert for citadel miniatures in the middle of the magazine. Someone's got money to spend. :p
Simulation Corner: The history of wargaming company SPI. One of those potted history bits that presents the topic in a very positive light, focussing largely on their achievements, and saying the future looks great, without revealing any of the drama and work behind the products. Which is the most interesting part. :( So not a particularly interesting article.
Reviews: Gangster, an RPG. Titan strke, a wargame. Double star, another sci-fi wargame. War in the Ice, a wargame. Plus lots of minireviews.
Classified ads continue.
TOP SECRET!!!! (shhhh). Having done fantasy, cowboys, and two gonzo sci-fi games, TSR moves into the spy adventure genre as well. I suspect we'll be seeing articles for this in the near future.
Dragonmirth gets both pics and a joke article on the way the rules of the universe change with new editions. Even the most mighty character can be unexpectedly nerfed by the AD&D rules revision.
Fineous fingers gets all 4th wall breaking in a double page finale.
Errata for Quirks and Curses from last issue, that arrived just after printing. Ahh, deadlines. How many mistakes are not fixed properly because of them.
Despite not being as long as last issue, this one has been a real slog to get through. All the articles start blurring into one after a while, which frankly is no fun at all. I shall have to develop a mental sorting method to keep my mind from getting overcluttered with the new information.
Quote from: Gabriel2;300649Basically the only really cool article so far. Supremacy is still 4 years away. There are some small similarities to the rules, but I think that's just the subject matter rather than Supremacy being inspired by this article.
I played Nuclear Risk. It was better than the standard game.
And better than Supremacy.
Quote from: Haffrung;300755I played Nuclear Risk. It was better than the standard game.
And better than Supremacy.
Well, yeah. Because a Supremacy game never ended with a victor. The game started with a collapse of the market, and always ended in nuclear winter.
The Dragon Issue 36: April 1980
72 pages. Another april fools issue gets an extensive collection of joke articles, gathered into a mini magazine within the magazine. Nice to see they're taking their humour seriously. Or something like that. Apart from that, there's no particular theme to this month's issue. The regular columns continue, and there are articles aplenty on games of all sorts. To the specificsmobile.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: Once again we deal with the tricky issue of playing in groups of different ages, and the conflicts this causes. D&D was originally intended as a game for adults, or at least people with adult attention spans, and the ability to play games without being disruptive and throwing tantrums when they lose. And as it increasingly attracts a younger audience, this becomes more of a problem. We've already seen gary's statement of intent to make basic D&D more friendly to newcomers. Its obvious that some assistance is needed with this. And quite a bit of it needs to come from the current players, as D&D is a bitch to learn on your own.
Out on a limb: A letter complaining about the magical plusses given to Fafhrd and the mouser's weapons, and pointing out that their weapons were given the same names no matter what weapons they had. To which the writer of the piece replies that they had the bonuses to reflect how badass they were and make them superior to regular characters of the same level. To which I say, Isn't level supposed to be the determiner of personal skill? Why not just make them higher level then? They're already around 20th level. What's a few more levels? So much for logic.
A letter praising most of the dragon's content, and complaining about the temporary dropping of Giants in the earth, and also that their shop sells out of issues too quickly. Which seems to be a common complaint. Guess readership is increasing faster than the circulation increases can keep up with at this point.
Three letters on monty haul and the problem overpowered characters present. Overinflation is always a problem. There comes a point when you just have to retire characters and start again. A philosophy they seem to be hard-coding into 4th edition. And finally, another letter of generalised praise. They seem to be printing letters that fit a theme this issue. I guess they have enough to pick and choose from now.
Fiction: The cube from beyond, by Gardner F Fox. A 6th niall story. And he actually gets to do something significant without his demon goddess patron, and be the primary driver of the plot again. But he's still seriously non politically correct. What is the attraction in forcibly taking someone, and why was it so common in books by writers of both genders?
The perseid war: A new Scenario for stellar war, by Steve Jackson (yes, that one. He already seems to be a pretty big player in gaming by now) Designed to support a style of play that is hard to manage in most scenarios, and also includes some new rules. Which is cool. He's the original designer, so the new rules should be well thought out and properly balanced.
Painted ladies and potted monks: Prostitutes and drugs in gaming, and the ramifications of exposing ....... younger players to them. Do you teach them that sex and drugs are bad things to be feared, even in a fantasy world, or a perfectly natural and healthy form of recreation? How much do the games that children play shape their attitudes in adulthood? Will presenting characters of religion or color in the game positively or negatively influence their prejudices with respect to real people. Heavy questions, presented with a light and humorous touch, without the oh noes hysteria that so often acompanies this topic. And they even mention homosexuality positively. (although its the first time they have at all, as far as I can recall.) Overall, this is a very good article indeed, promoting positive liberal attitudes and social responsibility without getting too preachy about it. (Which is a good example of the neutral good way and how it can be distinguished from lawfull or chaotic good, for those of you still involved in that debate.)
From the sorcerers scroll: Gary gives the stats of Conan at various ages, from teenager to ancient king. As is the case for virtually every character published here, he is not a legal character by D&D rules, developing in a decidedly odd way in two different classes simultaneously, and having a whole bunch of special abilities PC's can't acquire. You decry twinks and rulebreakers, and then turn around and present us with overpowered and illegal characters of your own, What kind of an example is that to set us? Ends with a blatant begging bowl asking for freebies in exchange for reviews. Which is pretty distasteful all round really.
Sage advice: As this is getting increasingly lengthy, I'm gonna break up the questions into new lines from here on, to make it easier to read.
Must spellcasters use books to store their spells? (only magic-users and illusionists, but yes, they MUST. (The days of alternate methods of recording spells are still quite a way away))
Can paladins condone or participate in suicide and euthanasia? (Hell no, not even tacitly. There is always a reason to live and keep fighting, and you've got to do your best to convince them of that or lose your specul powerz. Of course, it helps when you have magical healing and disease curing to back up this conviction.)
Must paladins be celibate. (Depends on their religion and the DM, but I personally encourage it. No sexx041ng for you when I'm DMing.)
How do 1st level magic users get their spells(from the person who apprenticed them, silly)
Why can't demihumans be sages (they can actually, they just aren't very often. Also, don't try and send me money. I don't work in the right department, and it won't help you get better rulings.)
Can you recharge charged items or not? (only as long as they still have at least one charge in them. (What's all that about then?))
Will you become permanently invisible if you overuse a ring of invisibility. (no, this ain't middle earth, and you ain't a slave of sauron.)
Can you automatically tell if an item is magical (no, unless it's glowing or something like that.)
What am I to I do with this pesky lawfull gooder in my party not letting me attack wounded creatures without provocation? ( I fail to see the problem :D And if there is one it is purely a roleplaying matter, not a rules one, so it's not my business anyway.)
Does being resurrected make you lose constitution (yes)
Why cant half orcs be raised? (Once again, they have no SOULS!! Don't believe me, ask Gary. Gary, do half orcs have souls? Gary: Bitch be hollow and empty inside. Jean: See. Get that through your stupid heads. Unless they go all little mermaid on you (which would make a cool story, actually, ) they simply die when they die. Do not pass go, do not get reincarnated, do not get an afterlife. Are we crystal clear, or are you going to keep fighting? Krusk:That's right. ;) )
Honorable designer Speaks! The designer of Samurai gives us a brief runthrough of his game. An article that reads like a combined advert and history lesson, trying hard to convince people that the game is cool so they buy it. Ah so. You must learn greater subtlety, Mr Campagna.
Leomunds tiny hut: How to make a pantheon you can have faith in. AKA I don't like the idea of PC's killing gods, so I'm going to beef up their powers when they aren't on the prime material, reduce your powers when you are on a different plane of existance, and take a potshot at Jim Ward's GMing style while I'm at it. Now try and kill those gods. Truly Len, you are a visionary. (all of these optional rules would later become canon in Planescape) But the god slayers will rise again come 3rd edition. And then go even further in 4th ed. One of those things that obviously comes in cycles.
Minarian legends: More cool setting stuff for Divine Right, this time covering the history of the kingdom of Immer, and the old empire it was built upon.
Dragon Grumbles: Ok, welcome to this years comedy central. They're sick of doing this, so its time to sell up and head to the bahamas. April fool.
Out on a limbo: Joke letters. Stupid arguments, stupid suggestions, and political potshots. Probably not real.
Enjoying your Dragon: How to properly take care of a baby dragon, so it'll take care of you when you're old and grey. (and it's still a baby.) This may be a joke article, but it isn't entirely useless in game terms.
New joke monsters, the DM, and the keebler: the first is not statistically legal, while the second is. I don't think I have to explain these to you.
The tax man cometh: I think the title says it all. Take their money, more than all of it, and leave them in debt to an organisation that doesn't play fair, and never stops taking. Just like real life. I fail to see the joke here.
Meeting demogorgon: You say demogorgon's name. He appears. What do the NPC's in the party do? Roll on this random table to find out. Not that it matters, because you're all going to die anyway. Even converting to worshiping him won't save you. Because our double headed demon lord friend is an admiral crankypants when he's just got out of the abyss in the morning.
Bazaar of the ordinary: Another set of 4 ordinary items presented as magical ones, just to confuse people.
This months module, a 10 by 10 room. No orc, no pie, just a 10 by 10 room. That's your lot.
Leomund's in a rut: Jokes about footwear.
Sage advice: Jokes about the aforementioned herb, in Q&A form. Much eyerolling punnery here.
A visit to an interesting place: The best excuse for not handing your homework ever. I'm a D&D character who wished I was somewhere interesting, and found myself in the real world.
Campaign mixing sure stirs things up! Another story of a gonzo crossover game. Not sure if this one is based on real events or not, since if anything it's less over the top than the monty haul games. The line between excess and parody of that excess is a thin line indeed.
The mongols: Another one of those system free historical articles that seems to be in vogue in this period. And as ever, the most useful thing in it is the bibliography, as there's no way you'll get enough depth in a few pages to do justice to it.
The fantasysmiths notebook: Modifying and painting skeletons. Oooogie boogie boo. They're always going to be a staple of your undead armies, so if you like undead you'll be seeing a lot of these. This article shows you how to make the best of them while keeping the figures anatomically accurate. Which is pretty nice.
Giants in the earth: This month, the fictional characters overtwinked Aaaaaaaare. Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood. H.P.Loveraft's Richard Upton Pickman, and Thomas Burnett Swann's Silverbells.
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Fighting in the streets: A new scenario for Squad Leader, the German sieges of russian cities in 1942. A short but sweet article that does exactly what it sets out to do.
Experience points to ponder: A system of awarding XP by the amount of damage inflicted, so as to make shares more fair, and allow you to learn from fighting even if you failed to kill them. Which of course takes tons of bookkeeping. I think you know my position on articles of this sort by now. It just isn't worth the bother.
Simulation corner: An essay on the development of wargames, from their simple and sketchy beginnings, to increasing crunch as they attempt to be comprehensive and also keep making money out of supplements, to finding out that too much crunch just slows things down and makes things less fun, and creating games designed to be elegantly simple and/or do one very specific thing very well. Which is also an evolution roleplaying games have gone through as well, in the last 3 decades. I wonder, it this one of those natural developmental paths that a media has a tendency to take, like the carnivore vs herbivore size, weaponry and armor race that has taken place at least 5 times in the past? And does the way wargames declined in the past few decades hold clues into the way RPG's will go, and what we could do to stop a similar slide into increasing obscurity, with the exception of 1 big company (games workshop). I think this deserves it's own thread.
The DM's right hand man? Once again we look at the subject of using a computer to aid in the bookkeeping for your gaming. This article is written by a (self proclaimed) computer science expert, and goes into a detailed look at just what a computer can and can't do to help you. Obviously it cannot substitute for creativity, and the visuals will be a bit crap. And you have to watch out that it doesn't use up more time working it than it saves. A pretty well thought out and informative article, which neither exaggerates or understates the benefits and problems. I quite approve.
The fastest guns that never lived parts I-IV: All the previous articles on this subject collected, plus a few new entries. As they point out, they, like the D&D characters in GitE, are tremendously powerful compared to an ordinary PC, sometimes have special abilities that we have no way of getting, (sigh) and should be used with caution.
Maclankhmar - A compromise game: More rather tedious houseruling minutinae by Mr MacKnight. You should have quit this series while you were ahead, instead of overburdening us with detail and running them into the ground.
The electric eye: A second computer article in the same magazine. This one focusses on the software aspect of computing. Another article aimed at the absolute beginner, and a reminder that they didn't really have dedicated computer shops yet, plus programs were small enough that their code could fit in a few pages of a magazine and be input by you personally. Which would also remain true for almost a decade yet. Yeah, things have really changed here. I wonder how long it'll be before the first mention of the internet in the magazine. Not until the 90's, I'll wager.
Dragons bestiary - The krolli: Ooh. writing and art by Todd Lockwood. I remember that name. He'll be doing plenty of cool stuff in the future. A fairly badass race of flying lizard men.
Reviews: Starship troopers (yes, I know the game's been out for a few years, and already got an article here) Mech war 2, a (very crunchy indeed) wargame. And our first computer game review, of Trek-80, a star trek tactical shoot-em-up. A very interesting set of reviews this issue, and nice to see them spreading out into new avenues. I wonder when computer reviews will get their own separate column? And how long it'll be before the magazine stops covering them, for that matter (sigh)
Wormy continues.
It's becoming pretty obvious at this point that the magazines are now too big for me to properly digest them mentally in a single sitting. (And they're still only going to get bigger, as well.) So from here on in, I'm going to stop trying to form an opinion on everything, and just concentrate on the articles that I do find interesting (be it because they are good or bad), useful, or parodyable. The magazine is still full of cool stuff, and it would be a shame if I missed stuff or got jaded with it from pushing through it all too fast.
Quote from: (un)reason;300929The Dragon Issue 36: April 1980
Can paladins condone or participate in suicide and euthanasia? (Hell no, not even tacitly. There is always a reason to live and keep fighting, and you've got to do your best to convince them of that or lose your specul powerz. Of course, it helps when you have magical healing and disease curing to back up this conviction.)
Surely that's not historically accurate, even if you treat paladins as specifically European knights?
Quote from: (un)reason;300929The Dragon Issue 36: April 1980
Can paladins condone or participate in suicide and euthanasia? (Hell no, not even tacitly. There is always a reason to live and keep fighting, and you've got to do your best to convince them of that or lose your specul powerz. Of course, it helps when you have magical healing and disease curing to back up this conviction.)
Must paladins be celibate. (Depends on their religion and the DM, but I personally encourage it. No sexx041ng for you when I'm DMing.)
I call bullshit on this one. "Depends on their religion and the DM" clearly means "paladins don't have to be specifically Galahad-like pseudo-Christian knights", and there are lots of 'heroic holy warrior' types who would have considered suicide permissable or even required in various circumstances (ancient Romans and samurai for example).
And that's ignoring the slightly thin distinction between evil 'suicide' and noble 'martyrdom'.
Quote from: (un)reason;300929The Dragon Issue 36: April 1980
72 pages. Another april fools issue gets an extensive collection of joke articles, gathered into a mini magazine within the magazine.
I've always found these kind of issues utterly pointless, regardless of the magazine.
Quote from: Age of Fable;300962I call bullshit on this one. "Depends on their religion and the DM" clearly means "paladins don't have to be specifically Galahad-like pseudo-Christian knights", and there are lots of 'heroic holy warrior' types who would have considered suicide permissable or even required in various circumstances (ancient Romans and samurai for example).
And that's ignoring the slightly thin distinction between evil 'suicide' and noble 'martyrdom'.
I mostly agree, which is why I paraphrased Jean's answer in such a snarky manner. It's easy to exaggerate for comical intent when the source material is already fairly contentious.
The Dragon Issue 37: May 1980
72 pages. Yet another price increase this issue, to $3.00. Dear oh dear. It's been under half a year. Still, I suppose in percentages it's nothing compared to the increases they underwent in the first year.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles is presented by jake this issue, as tim has quit to get a new job. No, there's nothing acrimonious about the split, he's just tired and just wants to try new things. (is that true, or were there backstage shenanigans we're not hearing about?) There are two new additions to the staff, so its not as if they're tightening their belts. They also deny being funded by TSR, and encourage people to send in stuff on systems other than D&D, so they can cover them. Yeah, if they weren't profitable, they would be dropped. Why do people find that hard to believe? They aren't headed by someone willing to pump money into their own vanity projects and run the company into the ground ;) .
Out on a limb: A particularly long letters section this issue. Two rather lengthy ones on realism in gaming, which recieves an equally lengthy reply.
A letter saying age is not a reliable indicator of maturity and ability to play well with others, and recommending against making listing age mandatory in classified ads. An article of generalized praise, but particularly pointing out the modules as cool and asking for more.
A letter complaining about how the magazine is too male oriented. To which they reply, when 98% of the submissions are by men, its pretty hard not for it to wind up being male oriented. We have a female rules lawyer on the team, and we've published stuff by women before (more on this later on) and will do so in the future if its good. But if you want more stuff, get off your ass and send it in. We can only work with the material we have. Amusingly enough, only recently we had someone else pleased that there were more women into roleplaying than there were into wargaming. I suppose everything's relative. Even when white wolf brought in a big load of new blood, the gender demographics never really reached parity. But I digress.
We also have another letter of generalised praise and commentary, and two letters commenting on the article on angels a couple of months ago. As is their wont, they provide a contrasting pair, one criticising them for being frivolous with the word of god, and one praising them for doing a good job on the topic. I suppose it's those kind of conflicting demands from both sides that would lead them to file the serial numbers off D&D angels and call them Devas and Archons.
The theory and use of gates: General talk of planeshifting (including the first mention of the city of brass.) and how to incorporate it into your games. Another Ed greenwood article, this mentions tons of popular authors, plus most of the RPG's around at the time, showing how well steeped in the culture he is. He encourages keeping things unpredictable, as the laws of physics change from universe to universe, and you should never be sure which bits of your powers and equipment are going to work the way you expect, or at all for that matter. Which is realistic, and keeps even disgustingly overpowered characters from getting complacent, but would never be allowed under current popular design philosophy for being biased and deprotagonising. Meh. Who gives a damn about fashion. This is good stuff.
The Gem dragons! Finally, neutrality gets it's own set of iconic dragons. They have the same iconic traits that they maintain all through the editions, Relatively low physical power, but high intelligence and charisma, and kickass psionic abilities. Includes their own singular high end badass to complement Bahamut and Tiamat, Sardior the ruby dragon. Who I don't remember seeing before, so he must not have caught on. But the dragon deities in 2nd ed were more interesting anyway.
A random event table for urban encounters. How often you'll encounter significant stuff in an urban setting, and what type and level they'll be. Does exactly what it says on the tin, even if it only works in D&D's standard implied pseudomedieval setting.
Cities can help make characters more real: Talk of how to run adventures set in cities, and which classes are most suited to them (rogues get to shine, oh yeah baybey) You can't just go around killing everything that moves. You need to set yourself goals and negotiate with people. Nothing new now, but for people who'd just spent 5 years down a pit in the ground, I guess this is valuable advice.
From the sorcerers scroll: Greyhawk moves into the AD&D realm, with the release of World of Greyhawk coming very soon. Which means lots more setting detail, including our first mention of Iuz. Plus there's lots of modules in the pipline, including lots set on other planes (we also see our first mention of the quasiplane of shadow here.) Deities and Demigods, and the Fiend Folio. Plus basic stats for Bigby and Robilar and their armies. Lots of stuff seen for the first time here that would show up again and again. Nice to see Gary's still busy buzzing away shaping the setting.
Sage advice: One letter that is simply mind breaking in the number of dodgy rules and stupid questions it presents, sending Jean and Skip (looks like he's part of the team as well now) running in terror and urging the writer to retire the character.
How do I deal with characters who gain 10+ levels in a day in someone else's game and then want to play in mine? (make them play separate characters for each game. )
Must someone know a person's language to command them when they are charmed? (yes, charming does not give you any special ability to understand each other)
Can I reuse the jeweled sticks that are the components for augury.(no. You need to shell out each time you cast any spell with material components. Yes, that can get expensive. Suck it up. You should get enough treasure in your adventuring for expenses like that.)
How long does ghoul paralysis last? (you know, it doesn't say officially. We'd better do something about that. I've always used 24 hours in my games.)
How do I deal with characters who have illegal ability scores. (either raise them to the minimums, or make the player roll up a new character)
Minarian Legends: The history of the elven lands in Divine Right. Not all happy shiny dancing, with meteor strikes, racial supremacy movements, and lots of wars detailed. Oh, and terrible terrible poetry. Yeah, this is pretty entertaining.
Simulation corner: Talk of the development of randomisers as a means of adding possibilities to wargames. Interesting as it notes that dice other than 6 siders are still considerably harder and more expensive to get hold of. Also in that the concept of dice pool as binary curve generator rather than roll and add seems to not have occurred to them yet. Another bit of historical minutinae that gives me a better impression of how things have developed in recent years.
Leomunds tiny hut: The Monties. Another potshot at Jim Ward, presenting a pantheon based upon the events therin. Ironically enough, these guys are less overpowered than the average deity. Len, you just don't get it, do you? Well, he invents the tiny hut, while mordenkainen creates the magnificent mansion. I guess thinking small comes naturally to him. ;)
Miniature Spotlight: Instructions on how to make your own spears and lances using just little bits of wire, basic tools, and some paint. If you've mastered basic miniature painting, this looks like a good way to branch out and try something a bit more complicated.
Up on a soapbox: Talk of magic as a science, and magic-users as researchers in the field. And of course how to ensure it doesn't just become another bit of the mundane, predictable physics of the universe. Which involves allowing chaotic characters having a natural instinctive understanding of how magic works that allows them to keep up with and surpass their more lawful counterparts. Another eyerolling inducing article that doesn't really add anything to the game.
Armies of the Renaissance: Part 6, Landsknecht and Reiters. Nick Nascati continues his little potted histories on the wars of that period. Having exhausted countries, he turns to one of the prominent mercenary companies of the era. Another pretty blah article.
Squad Leader part 2, large scale streetfighting: A second article expanding on last months one, and giving tactical advice for it. Another short, sweet and effective article.
Spell research, the hard way: Oh, not another one of these. Go away, annoying nerfers. :waves hand: We do not want more pointless bureaucracy and expense attached to the process of developing new cool powers.
Libraries: Players want to look in a library and you haven't prepared details on every book in the world? Use the same solution they always used back then. Roll it randomly. :) Another one to add to the list of still useful today articles to plunder.
Eye of the dragon: Yay, a new regular feature. This is where they look at new releases and happenings. TSR has UK offices now, Tekumel has been sold to Gamescience (what's the betting we'll see far fewer articles for it from this point on) and avalon hill are making computer games. I look forward to getting a better picture of what going on in gaming through this.
Giants in the Earth: No particular characters detailed in this issue. We get a statement that they're not going to do characters from LotR here, because the flamewars they'd have to deal with for not doing it right, no matter how they did it, would be too much bother to deal with. They also talk about the difference between D&D and AD&D levels in terms of actual power and in game position, in which AD&D levels above 8 or so count as around 2.5 D&D levels. And finally, they give lots of suggestions for future articles. Which is interesting, because its a taking stock situation that gives us insight into the way they think. I still disagree with many of their design decisions though.
Frederick Macknight is still waffling on about his houserules. Bored now. Make it go away.
Mapping the dungeons II: This is only 4 pages long this time, thank god, with only the new additions. I guess not that many people want to advertise for players in here.
Reviews: This is a rather short column this issue. We have Pearl Harbor, a strategy game. Magic Wood, (don't snigger) a boardgame. And Belter, a game of war, diplomacy and economics set in the asteroid belt in the future. As a big Larry Niven fan, I say yay to them for trying to make playable a topic as sophisticated as that. But unfortunately the reviewer seems less than enthralled with the execution. Oh well. Those are the risks of trying something different. Often it's hard to accomplish.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A bunch of magic items I don't remember. Yefars magic mirrors, the rod of singing, and the discus shield. Two are exceedingly useful, one is cursed and a right pain in the ass. Can you guess which one?
Dragons Bestiary: Vulturehounds. Another one of those lovely D&D hybrids that is exactly what you'd expect. A dog with vultures wings, talons and head, they can be trained, and are worth quite a lot if you do so. One of the more sensible monsters around, in ecological terms.
Dragonmirth is back.
How to tell if you're in or out of love: That old chessnut of GM favouritism towards your significant other gets a lighthearted look at here (only of course it's not an old chessnut yet) And of course they automatically assume that the man will be the GM :rolleyes: I was never a fan of those twee Love Is comic thingies (what's the technical term for one frame comics, as strip seems inappropriate) anyway, so forgive me if I don't laugh.
Jasmine, by Darlene: And once again, we see the way they pick their letters and articles to complement one-another. Somewhere between fiction and comic, this new story is so blatantly an attempt to appeal more to the female demographic that it's funny. A princess as the protagonist, check. Soft pastel colours, Check. No-one understands me and my visions, check. A handsome prince, check. Lets just hope the story can transcend the cliches in later issues, otherwise my eyes will be doing much revolving in the near future.
And finally, another 16 full page module, The pit of the Oracle. One of those modules that gives you a small village, a dungeon, a host of plot hooks, and sets the players free to roam and solve those problems. Which I have no objection to at all, as no railroading is involved, and if they players want, they can bugger off to try something else elsewhere.
A fairly significant issue, given the change in staff, two new regular features, a general increase in social awareness, and the reveal of lots of upcoming products. And I get the impression that with Tim's departure, more things are likely to change in the next few issues, as his influence disappears, and Mohan becomes ever more significant to the running of the magazine. Interesting times indeed.
Quote from: (un)reason;301088The Dragon Issue 37: May 1980
The Gem dragons! Finally, neutrality gets it's own set of iconic dragons. They have the same iconic traits that they maintain all through the editions, Relatively low physical power, but high intelligence and charisma, and kickass psionic abilities. Includes their own singular high end badass to complement Bahamut and Tiamat, Sardior the ruby dragon. Who I don't remember seeing before, so he must not have caught on. But the dragon deities in 2nd ed were more interesting anyway.
I've always been fond of the idea of Gem Dragons, but I've also always thought it was a mistake to tie them to the psionic system. It more or less guaranteed no one would ever use them and they'd never appear in modules.
The Dragon Issue 38: June 1980
74 pages. A particularly amusing cover painting this issue, combining obvious attempt at sexing it up, with bad hair and somewhat incongrous facial expressions. Plus John Barnes ought to sue the creators of he-man for plaglarism. This isn't right, not right at all.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: The company changes it's name from TSR periodicals to Dragon publishing, in an attempt to further separate themselves from their parent company. We also have a new addition to the staff, and Kim is compiling an index to every issue of the magazine so far. How nice of him. So things are chugging away nicely, not standing still, but not changing too fast either at the moment.
Out on a limb: A letter from Gary "correcting" lots of recent articles. Four letters on the subject of overpowered characters and peoples different opinions on how to keep the game fun despite them. And a letter praising them for publishing errata for their books in a fairly timely fashion. When are they going to get those twinks under control?
Fiction: The cup of golden death, by Gardner F Fox. The 7th niall story, and the 3rd this year. They seem to have decided that he's in demand, so we get more of him. The deific manipulations continue, and we get to see some more of the politics of his world.
Leomunds tiny hut: Talk of dragons. As with his stuff on gods recently, these are generally more power-ups to make them more trouble for players to face. It also includes brown, orange and yellow dragons, (none of which are the same species that would appear in future products, weirdly enough) and a new set of stats for tiamat, now in her familiar 5 heads, 1 for each major chromatic dragon type, form. Another rather underwhelming article. Why did he get to be one of the major columnists of this period?
The Fantasysmiths notebook: Two different articles under this ageis this issue. Talk of the founding of a new award, the Fantasysmith Wings. And more tips for customising your miniatures, with pictures of how to turn your miniatures into frankensteinian constructs without looking too obviously piecemeal.
Which way is up?: A further expansion on the possibilities of tesseract dungeons, and their escheresque properties. Even a tiny area becomes an enormous dungeoneering prospect when each room can be encountered from 6+ different orientations. This is awesome. If only it were easier to map for the DM though.
The rasmussen files: After being advertised 3 months ago. Top secret gets it's first article. with talk of how it was written, and came to be published. As is often the case it's a story of persistence, with the writer sending regular submissions of his ideas for years before being published. Take that in mind. No matter how good your ideas are, if you don't have the persistence to keep spreading them when they're ignored or criticized, they'll never reach their full potential.
Minarian Legends: The history of mivior. More Divine Right goodness for those of you who like their boardgames with extensive setting history.
From the sorcerers scroll: Just because you're good, doesn't mean you have to act stupid. And the same applies to evil guys too. (not that you'd know it from the cartoons of the era) In amongst the common sense stuff, this also features the classic statement that the best thing for paladins to do with goblinoids is to give them a swordpoint conversion, and then kill them so they can go to heaven before they backslide. Oh, and female dwarves definitely have beards. Ahh, gary gary gary. Always the idiosyncratic ideologue. What are we to do with you?
Its about time: Tactical advice for 4th dimension. Damn, this is making me want to play the game, as despite being a small area, it looks like the amount of emergent tactics are quite considerable. A pretty good article.
The seven magical planets: One of those extensive lists of real world magical correspondences. Obviously not useful unless playing in the real world or something close. Now, when will Ed Greenwood publish something similar for Toril's solar system? ;) That'd be far more interesting.
Frederick Macknight finally finishes his series on a slightly higher note, with an interestingly S&Sish 20 questions puzzle.
It's the little things that count: A funny story of using magical shrinking mirrors of opposition and geases to create tons of pint sized high level magic-users for sale. The kind of thing that the rules would never let you get away with nowadays. Still, I'm sure we'll find new broken rules exploits to mess the setting up with.
Spelling out a strategy for hostile magic-users: An update of the system in TD19 for AD&D. As the number of spells has increased and isn't the same for every level, they move into percentiles. Of course, even that wouldn't be enough for modern days. Obviously, you need to apply common sense to the results here, so enemies don't use useless spells in combat. Still, a little randomness can make sure players don't become too able to predict your monster's tactics.
An advert for tunnels and trolls. I know its been out for a bit, but nice to see they have the money to advertise here now. Along with the request for more variety in articles from last issue, hopefully we'll be seeing some stuff for this game here soon.
Simulation corner: Talk about the founder of avalon hill, Charles Roberts, and the award he lent his name too, the charlies. As ever, accusations of fixing and favouratism bedevil them. Such is the nature of awards. Hopefully they'll be able to convince people of their integrity in the future.
The electric eye: Text and ascii games, multi platform programming and strategy games get a look at. We're finally getting into subjects that assume a reasonable level of computer awareness. Which means they rapidly become impenetrable, because the specifics of how computers work has changed a lot over the years. Still I'll soon figure it out. And of course as we get closer to the present, this'll become less of a problem anyway
Reviews: Only one review this issue, that of Freedom in the galaxy. It is, however an extremely long and extensive one, by someone who is obviously thoroughly enamored with the game. Designed to model the theme of star wars, with a wider strategic scope and potential for lots of different scenarios, it seems to live up to this reviewer's expectations. And who am I to begrudge that?
Dragons bestiary: The Flolite. Little strength draining tentacled glowing lights that live in deserts, and occupy the same ecological niche will o the wisps do in marshes. As is often the case, their body parts can be harvested to the benefit of adventurers. An entry full of cool little bits of flavour.
Jasmine continues, in changelingesque fashion. Fineous fingers restarts, introducing a new character, and promptly putting him in serious trouble.
And we get another full game. Ringside, a boxing simulator, by Brian Blume. Feel like pitting Muhammed ali against Mike Tyson or Rocky. Go for it. A simple game that still has quite a bit of tactical thought involved and the potential for extended play of a fighters career. This definitely goes on the list of things from here I'd like to try at some point.
Another mixed issue, with both good and bad stuff aplenty. Still, the increases in size and scope of the issues mean that there should be at least some good articles every issue. Particularly nice is the decision to experiment with non D&D adventures and games some more. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of that in the future.
The tesseract dungeon is a peek into a style which is thankfully no more. That being the trick map dungeon.
As the 80s wore on, this trick wore out it's welcome. I caught the tail end of it, and saw many dungeons with invisible teleporters, curved hallways which were supposed to look straight to observers, pressure plates which activated shifting passages half the dungeon away, and any number of tricks with the lone purpose of screwing up any map the adventurers were making of the dungeon. The kicker is they were hardly ever used in anyplace where they might make sense.
This also crept into the videogames of the time like Wizardry and Bard's Tale.
The map was the thing. Everything was secondary to making that goddamn map on the graph paper.
I'm so glad that shit isn't the norm nowadays.
Dragon Issue 39: July 1980
part 1/2
78 pages. So its their 4th birthday. Notice something different? Yes, folks, you knew it was coming, even if you didn't know when. This is the point that Dragon Magazine loses the definite article from its cover. It continues inside for a few more issues, but the knell has sounded for it. Not that it saves me much time, because I'm copypastaing that stuff in advance anyway. It also marks yet another high (and new minimum) point in size, and changes in formatting. The magazine now has a computer, and a UK office. But does the UK office also have a computer? Probably not. How long before computers become integral to their operation, as they are for almost every business in the world today? I doubt we'll know exactly, as these things creep up on you. And then you're a slave to the machine. ;)
They're also auctioning off a complete set of back issues. Which is nice for those completists out there. Ahh, the hassle of getting hold of old issues before the electronic age. Ebay and .pdf's really have been a godsend. Also, ask for The Wargamer at your local store, because we're distributing that magazine in america now. Busy beavers build bigger businesses. (as the zoologist said to the gynacologist)
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A rather strident little letter accusing them of being afraid of covering Runequest, because it is so much better than D&D and they'd go out of business if it got the popularity it deserves. To which they calmly explain, yet again, that they are not a house organ, or dependent on TSR, and if another RPG became more popular than D&D they'd switch to primarily covering that. And they can't publish articles on a game if no-one sends them in. (anyone listening, bueller?)
A letter supporting the recent article on angels, saying that they don't seem to have a problem with demons in the game, why should angels be one? They're the good guys.
A letter of generalised praise from a self proclaimed Charismatic and Spirit-filled Christian, saying he doesn't think they're doing anything wrong by depicting angels, plus commentary on other matters.
A request for binders, to store the magazine in and protect it from the ravages of time. To which they respond they don't think the readership is large enough to do this profitably, but maybe some day
And finally a request for an updated version of the MM with the various monsters from Dragon issues in. To which they respond that they aren't doing so, but the fiend folio will be out soon, with all manner of new nasties within for your enjoyment.
The fantasysmiths notebook: On one one side, an illustration showing you how to cover up a naked miniature, attiring it so it doesn't offend the feminists or make the moralists go into think of the children mode when fielding it in your army at a con. On the other page, an article about increasing your speed and efficiency via production line techniques and doing things in batches instead of working on one miniature until its done, then moving on to the next one. This becomes particularly helpful if several people work in a team, each concentrating on a particular aspect of the job. All seems pretty common sense to me.
Antipaladins! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (cough, wheeze, hack) Ahem. Yes folks, one of our oft-mooted annoyances finally gets (semi)official rules. And heavens to betsy, they're pretty solid ruleswise, if a little overpowered, and entirely recognisable as the inspiration to 3e Blackguards in the specifics of their special abilities. Hell, their 5th level title is Blackguard ;) Of course they are not recommended as PC's, because they refuse to accept anyone as their equal (under pain of losing their powers), so if they're not in charge of the party, they'll spend the whole time scheming to backstab whoever is and get in charge. Which may not be good for group dynamics.
Up on a soap box: The problem of morality in fantasy. A direct rebuttal to the article in issue 36, attacking the use of modern moral relativism in fantasy and playing up the use of the heros journey as a means of defining the moral trials that adventurers should go through. Which as they were designed for dramas with a primary protagonist, not troupe dungeoneering, might not work too well in D&D, in my opinion. But the point that morality is not relative in D&D, and you shouldn't be able to get out of it by arguing cultural exemptions or other rules lawyerish behaviour is a good one. As ever, defining what good and evil is in the game needs to fall to the GM, and then they need to be consistent. Otherwise, you end up with a situation like modern day earth, with loads of different people arguing which rules are more important than others and what god really meant, because he isn't around to explain and enforce them. ;)
Minarian Legends: The history of Divine Right barbarians, and their greatest hero, Juulute Wolfheart. A cool story involving animism and people breeding with spirits. In fantasy games, people like this can be real living legends, instead of just myths distorted and magnified by time.
Women want equality: The long advertised article by Jean Wells finally arrives. And is a little underwhelming really, given the build-up. Sexist crap happens, and this, along with the way that RPG's are marketed in hobby stores that have previously catered almost entirely to men, does put quite a lot of women who would be interested in roleplaying off gaming. (if RPG's had evolved primarily from amateur dramatics rather than wargaming, the demographics of gaming might well have been very different) Women want different things from their gaming, like romance (but only on their own terms, not being used as sex objects) and talking to NPC's instead of fighting straight away. Oh, and the first use of hack and slash as the primary derogatory term for players who are only interested in the fighting side of gaming, rather than actually playing a role. (Which I guess is pretty significant. Now we know who to attribute the popularising of that phrase to.) Chesecake outfits are annoying, and decidedly unpractical for adventuring purposes. Lots of stuff that is still an issue today, in other words, if maybe not quite as frequently. Human nature is a pain in the ass to change. But we've got to try, otherwise we're no better than animals. And I guess they've already come quite a way since the first time this topic was covered in issue 3. That was ....... not good.
Points to Ponder: Female fighters can kick much ass as well as male ones, and there are plenty of historical and mythological examples. Don't underestimate them. Women are both more agile and better at withstanding pain than men, and this should be reflected in their stats.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len talks about designing a party and an adventure for that party. An interesting article because it reveals his assumptions about proper party size, ability score ranges, amount of control players should have in creating their characters, and similar matters of demographics. Which is always useful, as it allows me to get points of data on how the game, and attitudes to it have changed over the years.
Fiction: Next time, try a cleric, by Tom Armstrong. A short story poking fun at D&D ressurection, where a character can be restored to life several times in one day if things aren't going well. Which kinda takes the threat out of death, doesn't it. Nice to see people back then were realizing it as well.
Of staves, strings, and other things: Talk of the construction process of various types of bows. and their advantages and disadvantages. Yawn.
Giants in the earth: This month they decide to go all Sagaical, with Bodvar Bjarki, and Egil Skallagrimson from norse stories. Slightly less twinked than most previous entries, they still both have abilities that PC's can't have. Business as usual then.
Dragon Issue 39: July 1980
part 2/2
Sage advice returns, after a months break, with more rules quibbles and enforcement. Can I use a potion of gaseous form to get cursed magical items off me? (No. You can't get around curses that easily. You are now naked when you reform, with only the cursed item on. (Now, is it worth it wearing cursed robes or armour just for that minor benefit?))
Is there such a thing as a lawful neutral dwarven paladin? (no, stop breaking the rules immediately.)
Is a ranger in violation of his alignment for breaking a written contract? (That depends, is it an evil contract? If so, then he can and indeed should break it. )
Does every weapon require a separate proficiency slot, even really similar ones? (yes. Suck it up. This ain't the complete fighters handbook. You can't get benefits by appealing to realism here.)
Why can elven fighter/magic users wear armor and cast spells, when full MU's can't. (There is no in game reason, it's entirely an out of game balancing rule. Someone'll invent some stupid justification for it sometime, I'm sure. And then It'll be an article in here. Betcha ten dollars.)
Page 10 and 26 contradict one another on how many spells a magic user can have (there is a difference between how many spells they can know it total, and how many they can have memorized at one time. Is that so hard to understand? A brain's a brain, and it does what it can. If you don't like it, play a cleric instead.)
If I change my alignment to chaotic neutral good will I lose a level? (There is no such alignment. You could however be Chaotic neutral (good tendencies) and as long as you don't push over the actual boundary, you won't suffer any xp penalty. )
Can any race have psionics? (no, only humans, dwarves and halflings)
I've found the duration for ghoul paralysis. In T1, it says it lasts 3-12 turns (well spotted. Carrion crawler paralysis lasts the same amount of time, and ghast paralysis lasts twice as long. )
If someone is killed by poison, does have to be neutralised before you try and raise them? (no)
Which weapons are two-handed (here's the list(no, I can't be bothered to type it out))
Can centaurs read scrolls, have psionics, and be raised? (possibly, no, and hell no, do I have to give the whole no fucking souls screed again for you people?)
Can a ring of regeneration regrow limbs lost before you found it? (no, your body matrix is already fixed in its new form if you've already healed the hit point damage, or some such crap, so it can't fix old wounds. You'll have to keep your eyepatch and pegleg, I'm afraid)
Good hits and bad misses: Ahh, critical hits. How many attempts at putting you in D&D will we see before 3rd edition makes them stick in a form most people were happy with? This is one of those ones that involves several extra dice rolls, and then consulting a table for the specific effect the crit has. Increased complexity for decreased fun, in other words. Meh, meh ah say.
Uniformity, conformity, or neither?: A look at how D&D has increased in complexity over the years and editions, and looks like it's only going to get more complex and diverse, until it's impossible for any one person to keep track of, yet alone use all the options. Which means it's up the GM to ensure their campaign doesn't get bloated beyond their ability to handle. Welcome to the upward part of the complexity cycle. It's gonna be quite a while before D&D gets its first spring cleaning and streamlining. You'll just have to live with it.
Fiction(ish) The aliens frombeyond (sic) by Bryce Knorr: An exaggerated account of the dragon magazine research process, as the staff race to find out the origin of a particular set of miniatures before the magazine deadline hits. Which is amusing.
What are the odds: The probability of rolling a particular ability score using 3d6, and thus how common each one should be among the general population. A simple bit of statistics I calculated myselfages ago, but nice to see it here.
The electric eye: A computer terminology glossary. Which weirdly enough, gives me WoD corebook flashbacks. ;) Funny how unrelated things can have stylistic connections.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Lots of cool items this time around, from Cloud castles to Red dragon scale armor. And Ed Greenwood once again sneaks in some realmsian setting detail, with Laeral's storm armor. As does Richard Forsten for whatever his own setting was. (not that we're likely to ever know what that was, unfortunately.) Stuff that's usefull for every class here.
Research in Imperium: A table based system for modeling scientific research that realistically reflects how slow, tedious, expensive and unpredictable this process can be. File this under the same category as all those annoying spell research systems for D&D.
Reviews: The Beastlord, a fantasy boardgame. Intruder, a solo sci-fi boardgame based off Alien, where you hunt down an increasingly deadly metamorphosing monstrosity. They seem to have stopped doing little single line summaries of a load of further games along with the full reviews. Hopefully that'll return sometime.
Simulation Corner: The importance of graphics to a games success. Ahh, another classic refrain that never changes. Some companies put more emphasis on pretty cover pictures and miniatures than they do in making a game play well. And you can only tell if the game plays well after already buying it, so they've already made money off you. Includes plenty of specifics and information on how design technology has improved in recent years. One of those articles that gives me a good sense of history, and how it has and hasn't developed.
City state of the world emperor. The legendary Duck tower! (snerk) Hooray for interesting adverts.
Dragons bestiary: the Groundsquid. A good compliment to the landshark, this is an example of a real world monster adapted to the weirdness of the fantasy world. It has a very long and extensive desription, with lots of stuff on both its hunting tactics, and the uses its various organs and byproducts have. A very well written entry that could well become a major sideplot in a game to exploit. (trained groundsquid would be exceedingly useful in dungeon construction)
Yay for dragonmirth.
Fineous fingers, Wormy and Jasmine are together in the same issue for the first time. How often will that be the case, since neither JD or Tramp have been that consistent with their contributions.
Top secret gets a module, The Missile Mission. Eeexcelllllent :steeples fingers: Two teams of competing commies from russia and china try and get the scoop on a secret missile program simultaneously. Fun stuff happens, hopefully. As is typical for modules of this period, this is more location than plot based, which feels a little odder in a modern setting. But this still looks like it has the potential for much spy vs spy goodness.
They really pulled out all the stops for this one. Both size and quality are at a high, and despite its size, I don't feel the exhaustion and boredom I have getting through some of the recent issues. Hopefully that will continue to be the case, even as the issues get even bigger and more detailed. After all, I'm still only a small fraction of the way through this endeavour. The idea of spending 8/9ths of it bored out of my skull is not an appealing one.
Quote from: (un)reason;302104Dragon Issue 39: July 1980
Good hits and bad misses: Ahh, critical hits. How many attempts at putting you in D&D will we see before 3rd edition makes them stick in a form most people were happy with? This is one of those ones that involves several extra dice rolls, and then consulting a table for the specific effect the crit has. Increased complexity for decreased fun, in other words. Meh, meh ah say.
This article appearred in a Best of Dragon which I owned. My AD&D1 group adopted the first half of the rule, namely a the difference between the target number and the actual roll provided a percentage chance of a critical hit or fumble. We quickly eliminated fumbles, but we kept criticals and assumed any critical would do double damage.
It worked well enough as long as you always rolled percentile dice with your strike roll.
We abandoned it as soon as AD&D2 came out and offered the critical hit rule where a natural 20 entitled you to a bonus attack roll. Keep rolling attacks as long as you roll 20s. That one was much better.
Dragon Issue 40: August 1980
part 1/2
86 pages. Convention season is upon them again, and that means we'll be seeing articles about them, and how they went in the next few issues. The convention circuit continues its rapid expansion in venue size and professionalism, mirroring the rise in the hobby in general. What new releases will be making the big buzz in the rumor mill this year? We shall see.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: We have one letter bitching about all the modules they print, asking for less filler and more fiction. One mans cheese is another mans rancid milk m'dear. They can't please everyone.
A letter complaining about the price increases, and also about the joke article on taxes in issue 36. Someone needs to learn to laugh at their problems. Yes, that particular article wasn't very funny, but that doesn't mean the principle behind it is wrong.
A letter complaining about the inconsistency between restricting PC's levels and the presenting super-powerfull characters in GitE. Yeah, I'm in agreement with you on that one.
A letter complaining that the dragon accompanying the gem dragon article in issue 37 has only 2 legs. To which they quite rightly reply don't be such a pedant.
And finally, a letter saying that people shouldn't complain about high level characters so much, and there ought to be more adventurers catering to them. Go you, I quite agree.
Sage advice is missing. Booo.
The dueling room: Sometimes you don't want the sembelance of plot. Sometimes you just want a one-one arena fight to determine who is the superior character. Another one of those anachronisms of D&D like alchemists and scribe monopolies, where it is assumed that there are high level NPC's there readily available just to maintain conventions like this, yet the main setting remains pseudo medieval. If you want a white room fight, just make it happen out of continuity. A silly but fun article, and it's good to see PvP get a little love instead of being roundly discouraged.
Fantasy has reality: Douglas Bachman expands on his piece in up on a soapbox last issue. He goes into a complex explanation of his vision of the fantasy realm, the moral quests and questions it ought to pose, the difference between the realms of adventure and the places where people actually live. This includes such tricky subjects as characters gaining incredible power in the magical realms, but then becoming regular people again on returning home; dooms and destinies, and the world becoming unbalanced because of the sins of the heroes. This is the kind of article which if used, would completely alter the character of the game, slanting it towards a very particular type of Campbellian high fantasy. I'm really not sure if I like this or not. It has some ambitious ideas, but implements them in a heavy handed way, and would only be fun if the players actively bought into the principles espoused.
Funerals and other deathly ideas: Looting the bodies of the things you've just killed, and then leaving them to rot really isn't a very nice thing to do, particularly for supposedly heroic adventurers. Similarly, just divvying all your own fallen comrades stuff with no regard for supporting their family shows rather a disregard for societial mores. Your players may complain when you introduce the ideas from this article, but they do help make the world seem more like a real place, not just a game where you kill with no reprecussions. One of those ideas you shouldn't overuse, as too much realism spoils the fun.
Wham's revenge - his games: A history and profile of the Gratefull Dead of RPG artists, Tom Wham. An unpredictable and eccentric designer, with a tendency to get sidetracked, he seems like the kind of person who is fun to be around, but a nightmare to employ. Still, this is another interesting insight into TSR's inner workings and the people who make it up. Hopefully we'll be seeing more profiles soon.
Don't drink this cocktail - Throw it!: Many people had realized that using flaming oil was considerably more tactically advantageous than fighting with conventional weapons. This article examines this more closely, including figuring out ways to keep players who overuse it under control. One of those cases where emergent rules turn out to be far more deadly than a fair fight, and another thing that would never work in 4th edition (do they even give stats and costs for flaming oil in 4th ed?) File this under muahahaha.
The wolf in your paint pot: Advice on painting wolf and werewolf miniatures. A fairly detailed article that does exactly what is says it does.
The fatal flaws of Crane: A bored player drops out of a play by mail game because the cost to fun ratio was rather too low. This article describes how the game was skewed towards people willing to spend more money on their characters and empires, the cost for playing each turn went up, odd social conventions grew up as people learned to exploit the rules of the game, and the gamemasters failed to provide new material for higher level characters. Which shows how many parallels old play by post games have with modern MMORPGS, in the problems they have to deal with. And that is very interesting indeed. One case of there's nothing new under the sun I wasn't expecting to see. A very thought provoking article.
Artifacts of Dragon pass: I guess someone's finally paid attention to the repeated requests for Runequest stuff. This is a big load of magic items, each with their own big chunk of history, and full integration into the setting in a way that contrasts sharply with D&D's vague hints of ancient wizards and curses. Like tekumel, Glorantha seems to attract people with a greater love of worldbuilding than D&D at the moment. Its nice to see it arrive in Dragon at last, and I'm guessing there'll be plenty more articles on this game in the future.
The other were? Right here!: 10 new types of lycanthropes for your game. Some of which are rather silly, such as weresloths and bison. As is the norm for this period of D&D, they seem to present an implied setting where after being infected, people lose interest in mortal society, and wander off into the wilderness and form little tribes of lycanthropes, spending most of their time in hybrid form. What's all that about then and where did it come from?
Dragon Issue 40: August 1980
part 2/2
Squad leader: Scenarios 3 and 4, the battle for warsaw. I've figured out what I like about these. The articles for this game really do feel like a throwback to the strategic review days, given how compact yet full of interesting little details they are. Which as the issues and articles around them bloat in size, makes them feel like a little breath of fresh air.
Giving the undead an even break: A revised undead turning table based on hit dice rather than just undead type. Which of course makes scaling encounters easier and more sensical. While it wouldn't be used directly in future editions, its a good example of an early attempt to put more joined up thinking into D&D. Which is pleasing, in a way.
The Rasmussen files: More writing from Merle Rasmussen on the design process of top secret. As is often the case, the name was derived from an offhand comment during design that stuck. And there were vast amounts of things that were cut from the rules (some of which may reappear in future supplements, if you ask nicely, hint hint ;) )
And from Sprechenhaltestelle to?: Getting away from the introductory setting and going globetrotting in Top Secret. Includes a random table to determine what city the next clue to your mission will be found in. A fun concept, but rather dully handled in this article. A good GM should already have realised that to make top secret more james bondesque, you need more globetrotting, cinematics and explosions. Now, did the rules support such behaviour, or would that have been a losing battle anyway?
The miniature spotlight: Filling in holes in your miniatures. One of those jobs you gotta learn sometime,and this ought to help.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A bunch of oriental themed magic items, several magic helms, plus two wands by Ed Greenwood, in which he sneaks in yet more little realmsian setting tidbits. How long before it is first mentioned officially, instead of snuck into ostiensably generic creature and item entries? Having just seen the runequest entries, the limitations of this format are thrown into stark relief.
The electric eye: Basic programming in BASIC ;) Now this is a real nostalgia trip. All these PRINT and IF THEN GOTO commands. Now that's how you construct a computer program. If you have the time. Ahh, the days where you could understand the workings of a program without years of training and edit it for yourself without breaking everything.
Simulation Corner: This month the spotlight falls upon West End Games, a plucky new arrival in the wargaming arena starting to make waves. We'll be hearing more about them in the future. Another article that gives me historical perspective, and shows how much more in touch with the rest of the gaming scene the magazine was back then.
An advert for real life clergy of various religions to give their opinions on D&D. I suppose they covered women last issue, so they feel like tackling another big society defining topic soon.
Reviews: Annihilator, a mini board game, gets a rather negative review.
High guard, a supplement for Traveller, expands on making big ships, and gets a particularly clever review, with lots of comparisions to other games that tackle similar topics.
Sword quest, a boardgame, shamelessly rips of the plot of LotR, but reasonably well.
The drawing of the dark, a novel, fails to realistically represent the period it is supposed to be set in, but still manages to be an entertaining tale anyway.
The reviews this issue seem to have taken a huge leap upwards, in both opinionatedness, and sense of perspective. Which is a good thing, because the old dry descriptive reviews were rather tedious. Long may it continue.
Dragons bestiary gets 4 monsters this time. The fire eyed lizard, the Flitte, the Wingless wonder, and the Huntsmen. All are pretty interesting, with setting details and quirks that make them more than just another creature to kill and take the stuff of. Ok, so two of them boil down to a wizard did it, (clerics get no love in the monster creation leagues) but that just means players can learn how to do it as well (muahahaha) And isn't having spells named after you and/or monsters made by you make it into common circulation one of the highest things a wizard can aspire to.
Jasmine recaps already. The voyages of the exploration ship znutar gets another comic.
A 7 page index of all the articles from Issues 1-40. Nice to see them taking stock of what they've done so far. How long before they do it again. And how long before it becomes impossible to do.
And two more pieces of Tom Wham foolery. Outside the znutar, an expansion for Awful green things from outer space, and runngus' game, a whole new little board game based upon dropping your pieces on a board and seeing where they land. I guess that'll provide another few hours of diversion before you get bored of it and play something else.
Another strong issue in general, as while it hasn't innovated as much as recent issues, the overall quality and diversity of articles is particularly high. They seem to have an increasing base of enthusiastic freelancers to draw from, and aren't afraid to try new things and explore controversial topics. And they will be rewarded for this.
Dragon Issue 41: September 1980
part 1/2
80 pages. A particularly amusing cover this issue, as lizard boy goes to school. This issue, they focus on the fantasy trip, with 4 articles for melee and wizard. Computers also get an increasing amount of coverage, reflecting their new popularity at the moment.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Two more letters from the opposing sides of the fence of the dwarven beard debate. Gary once again chips in to provide evidence for his rightness. This one just won't die, will it?
Another letter on the age debate, from a 15 year old boy who feels himself more than mature enough to play and run D&D in a responsible fashion.
A letter of support for giants in the earth, offering lots of suggestions for future issues.
A letter in support of including angels in the game and against too much realism.
A letter from Gary with some rather snarky opinions on many recent articles in the magazine. This stuff is not official and never will be (as long as I'm in charge) As amusing as ever.
And finally, a very long letter about the weapon and armor restrictions faced by clerics and magic-users, with lots of real world references. Yeah, this stuff was really easy to pick apart when you started using real world logic rather than game balance considerations. But the designers have said many a time that realism was not one of their design goals. Take that in mind.
Reflections of a real life cleric: Another of our "issues" articles, this examines the power creativity and fantasy has to enrich our lives, as well as the obvious matters that everyone needs entertainment and outlets of some kind, and that being good is supposed to be fun. (the biggest trick evil pulled is making people think that being bad was more fun than being good, when it very much is not, once the concequences are factored in) Of course, like any tool, it can be used for evil, or you can get too caught up in the means, and forget the proper ends, and you need to be wary of that. But you can't spot that stuff unless you're part of the community. Once again, this is a far cry from the hysteria that would later engulf the game several times.
Playing the numbers: Talk of combat optimization for The Fantasy Trip, with detailed analysis of hit probabilities multiplied by average damage capacity, and the corresponding expected output. Ahh, twinking. I guess any game with tactical decisions will attract mathematicians who pore over stuff like this. And that will be continue to be the case as the fantasy trip becomes GURPS and goes through 4 editions. How does steve jackson deal with it? (publishing munchkin, perhaps ;) )
All fighters are not created equal: More Fantasy trip stuff, as they discuss the unfairness of recieving the same amount of XP, no matter how powerful each combatant is. You know what we need? A challenge rating system, whereby you get more by beating stronger foes, and less from beating weaker ones. Now that's what you call progress. Now, how long will it take for other games to pick up on this?
Dueling dragons: Adapting Melee to model combat between dragons, rather than human fighters. This obviously involves changing the tactics weapons, and stat ranges quite a bit. Because after all, dragons are absolutely brutal. I quite approve of this, as it pushes the games envelope, yet the game adapts fairly well too it. I guess the system was already fairly robust, even back then.
Ready, aim, firearm: Rules for firearms in Melee. Which are out of date already, as official rules for them were released just recently enough that they could mention it, but not cancel the article. Oh well. As is often the case when they have a themed issue, they put the worst article furthest in, so as to hook you into the magazine. But that's a common trick in any media. Put the best bits at the beginning and end, where people'll remember them, and squash the filler in the middle. And it must work, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Cut the page count instead you say? Nahh. We couldn't possibly do that ;)
Giants in the earth: This months exceedingly powerful fictional characters (with atrocious artwork by Roger Raupp that doesn't fit the descriptions and makes them all look the same) are C.L. Moores Jirel of Joiry, H Rider Haggard's Ayesha, and Robert E Howards Valeria. Oh, and sigurd fafnirsbane and Starkad from norse myth, who get slightly better treatment.
Dragon's blood: The norse theme continues in this pair of articles on the benefits of being exposed to dragons blood, again mentioning Sigurd and Fafnir. One of those things that they admit has the ability to unbalance the game, given the importance of AC to combat, and the way it is tuned in general. You'd think that getting a dragon's treasure hoard would be enough. Nah, We won't stop until we've made swords from it's talons, clubs from it's teeth, armor from it's scales, and heaven knows what magical gubbins with it's internal organs. Honestly, it's worse than buffalo. No wonder dragons are extinct in the modern day. ;)
For appearance's sake: The appearances of the various demihuman races are expanded upon, with guess what? Random tables to roll for eye, hair, skin color, unusual features, etc etc. :rolleyes: Truly this is for the uninspired gamer. Still, it does contain quite a bit of implied setting stuff. File under rather average.
Minarian legends: The creation legends of Divine Right Trolls. They do fall a little into the noble savage cliche, but are still given enough of a spin to avoid human in funny suits, thanks to they way their society adapts to their regenerative properties. The general quality of this series continues.
Dragon Issue 41: September 1980
part 2/2
Up on a soap box: Good generalship involves tactics. In real life, the best way to win is to not fight, or let nature do your fighting for you, hitting them in the supply lines, as demonstrated by the russians. Of course, doing that in a wargame would make the game not fun, but you still need to consider tactics and psychology, as well as winning through unconventional means. As ever, the most common sense things are the easiest to overlook, like plan your tactics to account for the terrain and weather.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magical doors for your amusement and the players frustration (particularly the intelligent talking ones, which are always a pain in the ass.) plus three interesting (and rather powerful) multipurpose Ed Greenwood items.
Simulation corner: The spotlight again turns upon Avalon Hill, and their past, present and future business plans. Which seem to be pretty solid and well organized, if this article is to be believed. They may have found that the things that sell most were not their personal favourites as products, and had to adapt to the changing market. But they have done so, (although it's interesting to note that they are still supporting those less popular lines, which may or may not be a good thing in the long run.) and things seem to be going pretty well. Of course, they would say that, particularly in an official interview, because they want to make more money. Forgive me if maintain my sense of skepticism.
AH meets the computer: Tom Wham comments on the processes of computer gaming, and it's ability to augment regular gaming. (with an optimism that has proved rather unfounded in hindsight, particularly in the speed and degree with which computers would become able to handle complex stuff like RPG's. Even now, the DDI is just about managing it, in the face of considerable amounts of apathy. ) We also get 4 reviews, B1 Nuclear Bombers, Planet Miners, Midway campaign, and Nukewar. These get considerably better quanititative evaluations than the regular reviews, with ratings out of 10 in a range of categories, plus solid info on what computer and memory size is required, loading time, etc. Which is a very good thing, in my opinion. Solid charted info is much quicker to evaluate, compare and digest than stuff put throughout the review as the author sees fit. It's now fairly standard in computer gaming magazines, but never caught on here. Which is a shame.
Yet more reviews: Having done the computer reviews, they now move on to the physical products. Perilous encounters, a mini's gaming system, gets a pretty positive review. Dark nebula, a boardgame gets a slightly more ambivalent one. The company TA-HR gets generalized praise for the quality of their miniatures, and hope that more stores will stock them (and a wink from a magazine's worth a good few sales in the field, isn't it.) And The Golden Horde, a wargame modeling Gengis Khan's sweep across the known world, also gets a mostly positive review. Nothing hugely noteworthy here.
Having talked about women and roleplaying, and clergy and roleplaying, they now want teachers to talk about roleplaying, particularly if they have used it in a positive manner as part of their lessons. Who next? (betcha "gamers of color" for 10 dollars) How long before this line of topics starts scraping the bottom of the barrel? As ever, time shall tell.
Dastardly Deeds and Devious Devices: Transformation, drowning, one way doors. More fun ways to screw your party over, two impossible to avoid except by very paranoid players, and one literally impossible to deal with, except by luck. And where's the fun in that? I suppose it depends.
The electric eye: Three awesome little programs to calculate stuff that would be rather lengthy to do manually. That is, if they work, and you don't spend more time trying to adapt it to your own system than you would making the stuff in the first place. Unfortunately, this is another area where I can't test these things out see how well they work. Still, good to see them supporting weird peripheral stuff like this anyway.
Eye of the Dragon: Lots of new miniatures for sale this month. On top of that, there is a silver dragon hidden somewhere in america with a $10,000 prize for finding it. Oh, and Tim Kask is selling an issue of dragon no 1. Read into that what you will. Did he just have a spare? Nothing hugely classic coming soon this time.
Guerilla warfare, Napoleonic style: A complete minigame, including an actual play scenario, in just 4 pages. Whoa. Obviously pretty simple, given the size, and very lethal indeed, so games won't last too long. Still, I must say I'm pretty impressed at the writer for managing to condense an entire game in this fashion. It looks like it should handle large scale battles in decent amounts of time. I thoroughly laud this article.
Yay! another snits comic.
Dragons bestiary: The silkie (more fruit tigra? Muahahahaha! I think you meant selkie) The classic skin shedding seal shapeshifter gets a D&D writeup that does pretty much what you'd expect, albeit with very ...... elaborate implied setting stuff that reminds us that even good faerie creatures aren't always very nice by human standards, as well as being insufferable munchkins. And the Tomb Tapper, another intriguingly alien Ed Greenwood monster, which has a believable set of motivations and proper integration with its ecological neighbours. With a bit of adaption, they would be entirely PCable.
Jasmine continues, guess what, the heroine is the chosen one. Fineous fingers starts building up again. 10,000 Chinese peasants! What will he think of next?
And finally, we have another full 16 page module, The halls of Beol-Dur. Another instance of ad hoc ability based saving throws appears here. We see a certain amount of plot, adaptive time responsive monsters, and unfortunately, a certain amount of railroading. Which is certainly a development from the first few modules. There's also quite a bit of stuff which'll permanently boost your attributes, which is quite progressive of them. Pretty intriguing.
Another jam packed issue full of quality product, plus a certain amount of dross. No huge changes here, but fashion continue to turn, and the encroachment of computers onto every aspect of our life continues. The 70's already seem like a distant memory, as they produce issues both faster and larger. And the decade has still barely started. Oh well, onward we go.
Quote from: (un)reason;302998The electric eye: Three awesome little programs to calculate stuff that would be rather lengthy to do manually. That is, if they work, and you don't spend more time trying to adapt it to your own system than you would making the stuff in the first place. Unfortunately, this is another area where I can't test these things out see how well they work. Still, good to see them supporting weird peripheral stuff like this anyway.
The other time-sucker is when the program is great, but it'd be even better if it could do this as well, and what about this...
Dragon Issue 42: October 1980
part 1/2
80 pages. This is where Dragon completely shakes itself free of its The. How does it feel, being liberated? Not that different, really. No one's even remarked upon it yet. I wonder if they will. Lets look inside and see, shall we.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter complimenting them on the women in fantasy article in issue 39, with particular emphasis on the cheescake is annoying and should be stopped aspect, and also expressing bafflement with the cover of issue 38 (yeah, I quite agree with that one, that's some equal opportunites WTFery there. )
A letter expressing discomfort with dragon putting a sports game (ringside) in a magazine primarily devoted to fantasy and sci-fi. To which they reply that roleplaying doesn't always have to have supernatural elements, and they'd like to see RPG's that tackle other mileu as well.
A letter complaining about the existance of gem dragons, calling them unneccecary. Its a game dear, the whole thing is unneccecary.
And a letter complaining at the rules for "equalizing" the sexes in issue 39, saying they now grossly unbalance the game in favour of female characters. 1: it was tongue in cheek, and 2: does the word optional mean anything to you people? Once again the editorial staff sigh, and wonder how to get out of this pile of flaming letters. After all, they can't simply ban people from the board yet.
Demons, devils and spirits: It's halloween. And that means scary stuff. This year, they seem to have decided to focus more on the fiendish side of things than the undead. Our first article introduces 4 quirky new extraplanar monsters, the saraph, apollyon, asperim, and Orcus' horse, the Hacamuli. (be very afraid of this last one in particular, as it has triple energy draining, aging and disease as a result of its various attacks.) An interesting set of monsters, none of which I've seen before, and which will probably be just as surprising to the characters when faced with them.
The posessors: An attempt to model the mileu of The Exorcist in a D&D monster. This really really doesn't work, as the success of the creatures hinges on the PC's behaving in a genre appropriate way, which is very unlikely indeed. Nice idea, but sorry, you'll need some other game to properly take advantage of it.
Patron demons: Mmmm, demonic pacts. A risky business, as demons are not particularly reliable at keeping long-term bargains. But as long as you keep a steady stream of sacrifices coming their way, most demon princes'll be pretty happy to send some monsters back the other way who'll (probably) do your bidding, or at least go off and kill your enemies, and not you. It may bite you in the ass sometime, but your odds of avoiding an eternity of slavery and torture are probably better than if you signed a deal with devils. (as long as you're willing to become the one doing the torturing once you die) Lots of random rolls are involved in this article, as you'd expect. I quite approve, as it plays up the differences between having a lawful evil and chaotic evil patron, while not making it a just plain worse option.
Restless dead: A follow up on the funerals article a couple of months ago. Bury your enemies and companions properly, and don't nick all their stuff. Or they'll be back, going woogie woogie woogie, and getting ectoplasm all over your nice new armour. Which does not make you popular with women, children or animals, and may be hazardous to your hairline. Yet another thing that's cool if used occasionally, but'll really get tiresome if overdone, unless you're playing in Ravenloft, where shit like this is to be expected. Oh, but Ravenloft hasn't been invented yet. Another bit of history that's still miles ahead. Look forward to it. :evil grin:
From the sorcerer's scroll: Gary encourages you to play monsters intelligently, so they don't get walked over by sneaky players, do stuff between encounters, and have properly thought out relationships with other groups of monsters in the same area. They should not simply sit in their room, waiting for PC's to turn up, then attack until they die. Which he would of course explore again in Keep on the borderlands. All good stuff, if still presented somewhat antagonistically. And two spells that were cut from the PHB because they didn't have an appropriate dice type :D Crystalbrittle and Energy Drain. Which would both make it into the 2nd edition corebook, when they stopped trying to make spell lists geometrically pleasing in the number of spells each level had.
Minarian Legends: The lands of Pon are the pat of the game that gets an extensive historical write-up this issue. I must say, I'm starting to get a bit bored of these. Just how many different countries and cultures are there to cover in Divine Right?
Sage advice returns after a couple of months absence with new people answering the questions, Jim Ward and Will Niebling. Jean Wells may help out, but she has other jobs as well, and these will be occupying more of her time. And as Jim and Jean have the same initials, and that's all they sign the answers with, you can't tell who did which. Anyway, back to the questions.
Can telekinesis shift a blade barrier (no)
Is the holy water sprinkler a gun (WTF? No, it's a big ball with spikes. Your research is seriously erroneous.)
Can a cleric attack while turning undead (no, it uses up his attack action for the round, like casting a spell. However, unlike spellcasting, it isn't disrupted if you are hit)
What is the "life force" drained by a 9 lives stealer sword. (character levels, just like undead. Do we have to spell everything out for you?)
Can you use an amulet of the planes as much as you like?(yes, but you never know where on the plane you'll end up, and you may appear somewhere that pisses off something powerfull. )
Can an evil cleric turn holy lawful good monsters like paladins and lammasu (er, maybe. I know we made an offhand mention of that, but the rules were never fleshed out, cos we are dumb. If you do allow it, use the same probabilities as an undead of the same hit dice.)
I don't understand the surprise procedure (read the goddamn rules again. Step by step, it's not that hard)
You said a few issues ago that elves can't have psionics, but it says they can in the monster manual. Do I have to remove them from my character? (that depends on your GM, but we strongly reccomend it. Otherwise, you are not an Official AD&D Character. So there. Yes, we changed our minds. Suck it up. )
Why is the gauntlet of ogre strength worth so much more than the various girdles of giant strength? (Because it gives you the proper protection and leverage to really take advantage of that strength. If you try superman shit with the girdles, you'll rip your flesh and break your bones. (and look stupid, because lets face it, you're wearing a girdle. Nothing can make that cool) Yes, this is bloody stupid, particularly in light of our previous statements that D&D isn't supposed to be realistic, and I'm probably pulling excuses out of my ass. Once again, suck it up.)
If a spell has a range of touch, does that touch need to be with your hands? (Yes. No feet, no headbutts, no goddamn prehensile penii. And before you ask, no, you can't play a deepspawn magic-user. Just no :D)
Dragon Issue 42: October 1980
part 2/2
Leomunds tiny hut: Woo!! An extensive article on the workings of the inner planes, and traveling too and from them. I've been looking forward to this. As is often the case, Len's conception of the subject differs substantially from Gary's on several points. (and interestingly, while Gary's vision would take precedence in AD&D, and on to the planescape setting, this version would be a substantial influence upon the one in the Companion set of BD&D) Most notable is that the positive and negative planes are referred to as material ones, not energy ones, and both they and the plane of fire can be entered without an immediate horrible death. Plus each plane has planetary systems that roughly correspond to those on the prime material, and if a plane is missing a corresponding planet, then the planet on the prime material parallel to that position will lack that element. To go with this, it also includes a basic system for interplanetary travel in D&D, so it's the first hint towards the spelljammer setting as well. A very interesting article, that despite being light on smaller scale details, goes a long way towards making the inner planes playable. Like the alignment article way back in SR6, this provides hints at the other ways the game could have gone, and makes me rather want to explore those alternatives.
Giants in the earth: This months characters are Poul Anderson's Tauno Kraken's-Bane, Robert Adams' Sir Geros Lahvohettos, and Gordon R Dickenson's James Eckert, plus two more Norse heroes I've never heard of, Orvar-Odd, and Heidrek. I really should do some more research into scandinavian mythology, since Tolkien apparently drew on it heavily, and it seems to one of the closer ancestors to the fantasy gaming mileu.
Readers react to Ringside: Brian Blume talks about the reaction to his game, with rules clarifications, justifications and possible improvements to the game. It all seems pretty reasonable. From this showing, I can't see why he's the one who gets painted as the villain in the Gary leaving TSR conflict, when it's Gary who showed the tendencies towards hyperbole, one true-wayery and unpleasant rants towards things that displeased him. Oh well. I guess that's still to come, and I shouldn't make that decision based on just two article.
Simulation corner: This time, they talk about the concept of "state of the art" as it pertains to wargaming, that it, the new innovations and refinements that are made in the field of game design, and filter outwards to most future games, as their utility is recognized. Games can be objectively better designed, and these guys believe they have become so in recent years. I am skeptical of this. Whether that makes them more fun to play is another matter altogether, as is demonstrated in many modern computer games.
The electric eye: Oh, god. Text command based adventure games. I remember those with horror. Fucking limited vocabularies and grammatical nitpicking that made getting anything done a nightmare. May they remain in the past where they belong.
Dragons bestiary:gets 5 monsters this issue, the Quatsch, Necroton, Well Spirits, plus sand and swamp bats. As with the articles, these may not be what is immediately thought of when horror is mentioned, but these guys are pretty freaky. The respective creators certainly have twisted imaginations (or have read books by twisted authors, as many of the ideas behind the monsters are familiar to me)
Barsoom in a box: A big review of John Carter, Warlord of mars, a game based upon the books. Considerably more than a wargame, with dueling, scouting, and some social stuff involved, but not quite a full RPG (although like the old Heroquest board game you could probably use this as the framework for combat, and roleplay the events) this sits between firm classifications in an interesting way. It has its flaws, but many of those are simply because it emulates the source material a little too well. Which is interesting, and something to keep in mind when designing your own games. Sometimes perfection makes things less true.
Reviews: The other reviews this month are Swashbuckler, another sorta wargame that works on an individual level and could be adapted to roleplaying. Time tripper, a wargame in the Quantum Leap/Sliders mould, where you play a soldier randomly bouncing through time with an experimental device trying to get home, facing enemies in each period. And Starmaster, a computer based play by mail game (my head hurts, these people need several thousand cc's of internet, Stat) that costs $2.50 per turn. Jesus. I think I'll skip that one, thank you very much. Not that it's still available anyway, as like anything that needs an external infrastructure to play, once the company stops supporting it, you're screwed.
The day of the Dwarf: Fiction (possibly based off an actual play) by Roger Moore in the monty haul tradition. Mad crossovers happen, and Asmodeus gets shown up in a rather amusing fashion. Which is pretty cool, particularly as the whole thing is quite well written. But you probably wouldn't want to actually play in a game that featured this much GM favouratism.
Jasmine and Wormy continue.
And the modulicious fun continues with another halloween flavoured goodie, The Mansion of Mad Professor Ludlow. A decidedly odd module that is technically a D&D one, but does not fit in D&D at all, being designed for the players to be a bunch of modern day children, and making huge adaptions to the rules and tone to more properly emulate that kind of boys own/famous five style. Another ambitious piece of work that really throws the horrible limitations in the D&D ruleset into stark relief. I'm slightly surprised that this never got converted to ravenloft, since they drew on many old modules when making it. I guess they wanted to forget about the failed experiments, and concentrate on the ones that worked.
Another issue that really felt bulky to mentally digest. But it has had more significant stuff that would go on to be developed later than most recent issues, and it's nice to see them do a halloween episode that doesn't focus on the undead. That kind of switching things around is neccecary to keep things interesting.
Dragon Issue 43: November 1980
part 1/2
80 pages. The theme of this issue, if any, seems to be assessment and examination. Editing gets a good look at, as do DM styles, the latest conventions, and the rules of the game. Lets see if they come out of it with ideas on how games should be better done.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: A very interesting introduction this month, as they talk about the editing and rejections process. Lots of people send in crap. And lots of people send in stuff that isn't crap, but they don't feel is appropriate to the remit of the magazine. Pay attention to this, and maybe you've get a slightly better chance of being published. And don't be discouraged if you get rejected. Just read the feedback, pick yourself up and try again. After all, we've got a big magazine to fill every month, plus we want to publish other stuff as well. Your odds aren't that bad (yet)
Out on a limb: Lots of stuff this issue. A letter of commentary, mostly positive, apart from some minor caveats on len lakofka's generous treasure awarding policy.
A letter questioning why the angels in issue 35 have no psionic ability detailed, which recieves a reply from the original author that promptly gives them plenty of extra abilities, plus takes the opportunity to get some supplemental roleplaying advice in.
A letter from Roger Moore questioning Len's decision to make cold magic work less well on the negative material plane. Which is replied with the question of whether something should be more or less effective in an area where it is common, and if immunities or vulnerabilities take precedence over one another. Ahh, philosophy. How abstract issues suddenly become deadly serious when it's a question of double-or nothing to damage, or somesuch.
A letter objecting to the characterization of anti-paladins as cowardly treacherous assholes, by someone who would prefer them as dark noble anti-heroes with their own twisted sense of honour and loyalty to their dark masters. (and soulfull eyes, impossibly huge swords, and long hair that flows in the wind, I'll wager :rolleyes: ) To which they reply meh, they aren't official anyway, do what you like.
A letter commenting on the misconceptions about the game that many gamers seem to have, and requesting that they make the game more friendly to newcomers. To which they reply that a new basic set is in the works, and hopefully it'll satisfy you. Remember, D&D and AD&D are different games, and should be treated as such.
A letter from Gary that is generaly positive about articles in recent issues, in diliberate contrast with his brutal snark a few issues ago.
Another letter of praise, this time from one of the playtesters at SPI, for giving them this wonderfull hobby.
And finally, a letter questioning Gary's refusal to allow angels into the game officially when he is quite happy to have devils, demons and hells, and his apparent contradictions on if you should change the game to suit your needs or not. To which he actually gives a good reply. D&D is the one you can house rule to suit your needs. AD&D is the one that must be played exactly as written, otherwise characters cannot be scored and given worldwide rankings in tournament modules fairly. And he doesn't want to stat up angels while being perfectly happy doing so to demons, because if you stat something up, then people can kill it. And while he is happy to facilitate people killing demons in their imagination, he doesn't want them killing angels in his game. Which I guess has a certain logic behind it. (I seem to remember he was a Jehovah's witness, or some such.) And I guess this is where the "if it has stats, it can be killed" meme gets it's first airing. Nice to be able to pinpoint another piece of history.
What? A third Witch class? :rolleyes: Well, it has been two years, and as they say, the last issue that covered this is long out of stock, but still, I find this bit of topic recycling tiresome. Particularly in the Old D&D mileu, I fail to see why you need to distinguish them from any other magic-user. And I think they realize that as well, as they've put a lot of effort into editing and refining this article. As with the anti-paladin, they do not recommend letting them be used as PC's, but they are mechanically robust enough to be used as such. Although they will overpower regular magic-users almost as much as rangers and paladins outclass regular fighters. ;) Still, even if you don't use the class, they also have lots of new spells to pilfer for your game. At least they aren't printing overpowered classes every other issue like they did back in the strategic review days :D
The "real" witch: Tom Moldvay talks historical crap, and about his design goals in making this class. A very meh article that fails to give any insights we didn't know already.
Conventions 1980: Origins gets 5/10, hampered as it was by overcrowding and unofficial hawkers squatting outside. Gencon gets 8/10, while pacificon gets 7/10, as both were rather better organized. All once again suffered from the demand rather exceeding the supply, as the hobby grows rapidly. Nice to see them putting an actual scoring system in, instead of just descriptions. Hopefully that'll be repeated next year.
Survival tips for the slave pits: Another con tournament over, another set of classic modules gets unleashed upon the general public. The slaver series. (A) Oh yeah. This article gives some hints about them, and names the winners, as well as general tips on how to excell in a con gaming situation. Think fast, think smart, and work together well with your team to get as far as you can in the time limit. Remember, this is a competition, and there are winners and losers. And the GM shouldn't forget it either, he should be playing the monsters as smart as they should be, not pulling any punches. Yet another reminder that AD&D was originally designed to be played competitively, and this could easily spill over into full on antagonism. Maybe we should stick to normal D&D. :D
He's the top Dungeon Mentzer: A profile of Frank Mentzer, the winner of the 4th AD&D DM's tournament. Another name we'll be seeing again in the future. Good to see someone getting noticed and employed primarily through talent than because they know friends of friends.
Sage advice: Looks like they realized their mistake of last issue, and are now using surnames to differentiate who answered each question. Ha. Anyway. Ton's of questions this issue, so let's not waste time.
Is a paladins protection from evil aura 1 inch or 10 foot in radius? (Both. It's 1 inch in miniatures measurement, which equals 10 feet inside, or 10 yards outside in game. How does that happen? I dunno. Maybe the ambient evil of the dungeon is pushing against the aura and compressing it. )
Can lawful good characters use poisoned weapons? (it depends on your DM, but we reccommend if they do so regularly they cease to be lawful good.)
Issue 35 said that thieves cannot be neutral good, but the PHB says they can. What gives? (Yeah, Jean was wrong about that one. Bad Jean. I cast Drawmij's instant spanking on you.)
Do you get the same XP whether you kill something with a weapon, spell or psionics.(did we ever say anything that suggests otherwise?)
We had a bad adventure where one of the characters got level drained, and then next session he tried to pretend that adventure never happened. What should we do. (Enforce continuity properly. He know the risks when he started playing. No retcon's. He should count himself lucky he didn't get killed outright.)
Can magic-users take their spellbooks with them on adventures? (both a good and bad idea. They need them to recharge their spells, but they are also heavy and expensive, and if they get lost or damaged you're screwed. Decisions, decisions. )
Do giants get a save when you hit them with a hammer of thunderbolts. (no, but you still can't instakill giant gods with this trick)
Do you get a saves vs energy draining and arrows of slaying. (no on both counts. Surely the fact they have to roll to hit in the first place is enough of a chance for you. )
What happens if a 2nd level illusionist casts color spray at 2 bugbears. (read the spell again. This one is perfectly clear)
Is a cleric making a personal request to their deity every time they recharge a 3rd level+ spell (since they can withhold it, yes. Omnimultitasking is a pretty handy power deities have.)
Do I need to make multiple saving throws if hit by the same type of attack more than once in a round.(Yes. Yes, this makes carrion crawlers a pain in the ass with their 10 paralyzing tentacles. Attack them at range or something instead of trying to fight them head on.)
Dragon Issue 43: November 1980
part 2/2
Sage advice continued:
Can a paladin initiate a fight? (If the opponent is evil, yes. They are holy warriors, and good does not mean stupid. This is why they get detect evil as an innate power in the first place.)
If I get polymorphed into a human, can I surpass my level limits? (no, its only a temporary magic change, not a real change of species. You'd need to die and be reincarnated in a new race, or something else permanent for that to work.)
Can dispel magic dispel anti magic shell(no)
How can I optimize my characters to win in tournaments? (You can't. You get given pregens so everyone starts on an equal footing. We don't trust you enough to let you use your regular campaign characters. )
Can I become dual class if I find an item that raises my stats to meet the requirement? (no, it needs to be an innate boost.)
What level does the hand of vecna cast at (over niiine thouuusand!!!! Sorry, 21st actually)
Are multiple haste spells cumulative (hell no, neither additive or multiplacative. That would just be totally broken.)
Can I cast spells that only require a pointed finger as a somatic component while entangled (No. Stop trying to weasel your way around the general rules by using the specifics of flavour text. )
If you raise a baby dragon, will it have your alignment. (no. Nature is stronger than nurture when it comes to morals in D&D. )
What is the flying creature on the MM's cover ( a red dragon. Would we so dumb as to have a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual that didn't have a dragon on the cover?)
What are the stats of the snakes created by sticks to snakes (here you go. No, they don't get poisonous bites. No swarms of instakill monsters for you. That would be too powerfull for a 2nd level spell. )
Larva and su monsters have incomplete alignments. (oops. neutral evil, and chaotic neutral, respectively)
The text and statblock of the mind flayers entry contradict each other. (So they do. Looks like more bloody errata to sort out for the next printing. The text is the right one, by the way)
What is the difference in tracking ability between a 1st and 12th level ranger? (None. Ha ha.)
Do you always lose a level when you change alignment (Yes. Consistency in holding a wrong position will get you further than being a flip-flopper. Just like real world politics. ;) )
D&D in Germany: A very interesting article, particularly as it's published entirely unedited, to keep all the original author's idiosyncratic phrasings. And it looks like roleplaying has a small but exceedingly enthusiastic following there. You ought to pay more attention to translating and promoting your games over there. Before you know it, they'll be producing their own games, so they don't have to deal so much with translations, import times and costs. And then one of their homegrown games'll overtake D&D in popularity. ;) But that's enough smug hindsight for now.
How do you rate as a GM? Find out by letting your players fill out this feedback form. Very specific to the tropes of D&D, and quite comprehensive, this feels a bit anachronistic, but if you're dungeoncrawling, it should certainly give you plenty of feedback on your GM'ing style, and if you need to change anything. Just don't try and use it in a Vampire game.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len attempts to clear up the question of exactly how many and what types of actions are allowed each combat round. As he has done several times already, he overcomplicates things somewhat, putting in tons of dull clauses and clarifications, and the rules certainly don't have the elegance of the 3rd ed full/standard/move system. I guess someone's got to do the experimenting and find out what doesn't work, so the rest of us can benefit in the future. But unlike last month, this bit of work in progress fails to hold my interest.
Dragons bestiary: This month we have Amazons, which do exactly what you'd expect, with extra helpings of mysandry. Tolwar, trunkless elephants who instead use telekinetic powers to manipulate things. (and throw waterballs at you, just for fun.) and Lythlyx, another strange Ed Greenwood monster that will make it into the forgotten realms setting.
Now you see it...: Talk of illusions and D&D's disbelief rules. They point out phantasmal force was not the best name for an illusion spell, creating false expectations in the minds of some gamers of what it was capable of. And leaving making disbelief up to the declarations of the players is very subjective. And not really fair when it's NPC's being subjected to illusions. (one reason I love PvP) A reminder that there are some things that are pretty much impossible to balance against everything else in an open ended social system, and trying too hard to do so will only make the game horribly restrictive, as 4e shows.
A 12 page Traveller Adventure, Canard, put in the middle of the magazine. Unlike their usual custom, they do not interrupt their normal page numbering for this one. Which is vaguely awkward, but these things happen. A pretty standard location based dungeon crawl transplanted to a sci-fi setting.
Reviews: Azhanti high lightning, a Traveller supplement, looks pretty spiffy, with tons of colour foldout extras, and an improved system for shipboard combat.
Dragonquest, The first RPG from SPI arrives and gets reviewed, after being previewed a few months ago. Pretty favourable, albeit with a big editing error in the review where they lost the start of a sentence. They seem to think it's more refined than either D&D or runequest. But refinement does not equal long term commercial success. Oh, reviewers. How much influence do you really have on the commercial success of a product?
Hero, (not to be confused with the movie or the system that is currently in it's fifth edition) a mini-game where you brave a dungeon and rescue the princess, gets a short but sweet review. They seem to be putting more emphasis into making each review stand out this issue, with big captions and clearer divisions between each one. Not a bad idea.
Squad Leader: Another article that compresses a full scenario into half a page. Which is nice. But doesn't leave me with much more to say about it.
Up on a Soap box: Larry DiTillio replies to Doug Bachmanns reply to his article from issue 36 about morality in fantasy. Which is exactly the kind of thing this forum should be about. Unfortunately, the argument itself degenerates into didacticism and ends with the trite old "there's room for both playstyles as long as everyone has fun, no-ones really right or wrong" saying. Put some fire into your argument, ya damn dirty liberal. ;) I started reading this magazine for the flamewars.
Hate orcs? You'll love this campaign: Advice on running a campaign where everyone is of the same race, in this case dwarves. You may want to loosen the racial class restrictions a little, and of course, tailoring the encounters and plot appropriately is a must. One of those bits of advice that seems rather sketchy and superfluous these days, as entire splatbooks have since been written on individual races and classes. Still, I guess that stuff had to start from somewhere.
The electric eye: Space games 3, one of those cassettes with 4 games on it, gets reviewed. With two star trek games, plus a star wars one, I wonder about if it was properly licensed. There did seem to be quite a bit more of that stuff happening then. But then, games were cheaper to produce then. An oddly large amount of attention is being paid to the average playing times of the various games. Not as good as tom's reviews a few issues ago.
Dragonmirth is here, and Znutar, Fineous fingers, Wormy, and Jasmine are all present and firing on all cylenders. How pleasing and unusual.
Another very bulky feeling issue indeed, with several more things that will be developed on and go on to bigger things in the future. Unfortunately, the interesting articles are broken up by quite a lot of tedious stuff, including lots of overcomplicated rules bloat. Still, I only have to read the crap once, and then I'll be able to look at the good bits as many times as I like.
Dragon Issue 44: December 1980
part 1/2
110 pages. Holy crap, they've really pushed the envelope on this one. Now this is what a christmas special should be. Man, this is gonna take a while. We start off with another phil foglio cover (he is so instantly recognizable) which hints at the mayhem inside.
In this issue:
Iron crown enterprises starts advertising here, with arms law and the iron wind. Still hitching onto other peoples products, they have yet to create their own full system.
Out on a limb: Three more letters on the female dwarven beards debate. This is the absolute last word on it, they say (again) Will they stick to that promise this time, or will continued public pressure force them to bring it out again? We shall see.
A letter praising them, and asking them to keep on covering lots of different systems. To which they promise that they will never limit themselves to covering only one system. (Aww, how sweet. Ha :sneers:)
A letter calling out a bad GM at their school, and asking Dragon to publicly chastise him. Which, errr, they do. Take that, teenage fool. I hope you're sorry now. :D
And finally a letter from someone complaining that their DM doesn't allow them to read the magazine, because he's afraid it'll spoil the modules, monsters and stuff for their game. To which they tell him, change the stuff. Players shouldn't be able to memorize every detail of these things anyway, and if they do, you can still catch them out, because it's your game and you are god. But you are not god of this world, so stop trying to deprive us of revenue.
Niall's 8th story, The lure of the golden godling. And he's still an overmuscled dick with no discernable strategic thinking power. If it weren't for Emelkartha he'd have been dead long ago. I really don't know.
Oohh. An advert for a Logan's Run play by mail game. Intriguing.
The super spies: As they have done with boot hill and are continuing to do for D&D, this is a big load of stats of famous characters from the genre, such as James Bond, Emma Peel and Number 6. And what are the odds that they're also disgustingly twinked out? Pretty good, I'd say. You'll never get characters as awesome as these unless you cheat your dice rolls. Back to the 48 hour surveillance grinds in the back of a black (or disguised as a pizza one if you're more sensible.) van with you, lowly agents. (sigh)
King of the mountain, a strategy game by Mark Simmons, gets a fairly substantial promo piece. Hmm. I am reminded of the first episodes of Visionaries. Interspersing commentary of the rules with flavour vignettes, this does a pretty decent job of getting me interested in the game, if not the best job of explaining exactly how you actually play it. I suppose you'll have to buy it if you want to find that out. Hopefully there'll be a more objective review sometime soon.
Fantasy genetics I: Humanoids in review. Yay. A whole slew of articles on one of my favourite avenues of real life study. I'm gonna enjoy this. This first one simply lists most of the demihuman races, plus some of the more likely humanoids to be able to engage in a little cross breeding (although they forget halflings for no apparent reason) This includes bad latin names for each race (homofaber? really? :rolleyes:) and some speculation on their ancestral relationships with one-another. I find myself surprisingly unenthralled. Maybe I'm just spoiled when it comes to this stuff, and these searchings towards a richer setting seem a bit primitive and obvious. They're still another important step forward towards the present in the overall scheme of things.
Fantasy genetics II: Half orcs in a variety of styles. Does exactly what it says on the tin, offering stats for orc hybrids with all the other types of goblinoid. Which in practice, just gives you an increasingly fine-grained set of statistics for when 1 hit die monsters are too weak, and 1+1 hit die monsters are too strong. It's amusing, in a way. That's what happens when you can't gain class levels. And it's another good bit of evidence of just how annoyingly fecund orcs are, even compared to other goblinoids. Nice to see that bit of D&D mythology gathering weight.
Fantasy genetics III: What do you get when you cross. Nerfed monsters with the worst abilities of both races, plus some additional disadvantages to boot, if you listen to this writer. Which is ..... not pleasing to me. You know the evolutionary drill. The good (or at least, empowering) articles get used in peoples games, while the bad ones get ignored. You just failed that test.
Fantasy genetics IV: half and half isn't always full. What happens when you cross two halfbreeds? Not always more halfbreeds. Lets pull out that old mendelian genetics example, that of pink roses. (frankly, I would prefer my genetics Lamarkian, thank you very much.) Which does make for more interesting families than the straight add and divide by two method, and reduces the problem quarter, eighth, etc breeds present in terms of rules. Probably the most interesting of these articles, as while it might be a little too based in real world science for some people, it does raise both questions and solutions that would be interesting to deal with in play. Which is nice.
Sage advice: A much shorter column this issue. It's christmas. Now is not the time for quibbling. Let us get the formalities over and get back to the celebration.
Can magic raise your abilities above their racial maximums?(yes, unless stated otherwise in the specific power)
Can you use your spellbook like a scroll and cast the spells without memorising them by reading them aloud? (no)
Is it OK for a lawful neutral character to sneak up and backstab someone(only if they know for certain they're an enemy and need to die)
How do you determine if a character is subdued?( if it's an npc you use the implied damage system, while PC's always get to choose if they're subdued or not. They shouldn't be slaves to dice rolls unless actually possessed or something.)
Do bards get bonus spells for high wisdom( Why yes. Isn't that nice of us)
Can you use bows underground (depends how narrow the corridors are. Your GM should use their common sense. If your GM has no common sense, I guess it sucks to be you then. )
If you're in a dungeon, but take a character out of action to do downtime stuff, does time pass as if they're not in a dungeon (no. Learning new languages and training to go up levels is not a good idea when wandering monsters could butt in any second. Unless you're stuck in the worlds largest dungeon, you should get out first.)
Dragon Issue 44: December 1980
part 2/2
Giants in the earth: Your christmas twinkies this year are reepicheep, (surely I don't need to remind you where he comes from) a mouse with 18/01 strength; and Professor Challenger.
Leomunds tiny hut: The strength's of lots of monsters, and some talk of exactly where they come from, if they use weaponry, how likely they are to grapple you, and other things that add more depth to dealing with them. This is useful stuff, since it forces you to think more about creatures actions in battle, and what it really would be like fighting them. But it does involve some rather long and tedious tables, as it covers lots of creatures. File under mediocre, as it's neither as good as the planar stuff or as dull as the combat timing pontifications.
Simulation corner: Another article that throws into relief how much harder doing research was before the internet, as they talk about the difficulties involved in getting a good large scale picture of the history of wargaming, and how rules design has developed through the years. Which is ironic for a genre so devoted to historical recreations. How can the hobby advance and learn from it's mistakes if it doesn't know it's own history? A very good point really. Someone ought to write a book on it. Tell me, did they?
Food Fight! Another complete game occupying both the centre and the end of the magazine. This comes in basic and advanced versions. Like Ringside, this is primarily a bit of light entertainment. but has the potential for slipping some roleplaying in. A very customisable game, and therefore with plenty of replay potential. Plus some pretty good and amusing artwork. I think this works pretty well as our primary christmas present, and is obviously where most of the extra pages went. Their ambition on this front is definitely growing as well.
The reviews this month concentrate on judges guild products. Once again, we see a degree of joined-up thinking lacking in D&D, as they explicitly tie most of their products for a line into a single larger setting. They also talk about the history of the company as a whole, their magazines (as ever, anyone willing to tackle the archive of these would be given a warm welcome) and their relationships with other companies, that allow them to produce officially licensed products for them. Which include:
Modron: Nothing to do with the exemplars of law from mechanus, this is a town in the wilderlands near to tegel manor, and has lots of colorful NPC's.
Escape from Astigar's lair: A tournament module designed for a druid and ranger. Which makes a nice change from the usual fighter/mage/cleric/thief + hirelings team, but might make it a bit tricky to incorporate into a regular game without being too easy for the party.
The treasure vaults of lindoran is most notable for having the first mention of Kevin Siembida (on artwork) in the magazine. Yeah, we'll be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
Inferno is module set in a hell based on Dante's vision of it. This is obviously a very high level module, but also has lots of artifact level items to reward those of you who are up to the challenge. Sounds like my kind of game.
Portals of Torsh provides an entire planethopping setup for your adventuring fun, with an entire continent detailed. Without the 32 page limitation TSR set for themselves, they can really go to town with their settings.
Spies of lightelf and wilderlands of the fantastic reaches further build upon their main D&D setting with more places, plots, and maps.
Duck tower ..... Yeah. You know the drill. Abandoned city previously occupied by anthropomorphic ducks. Treasure and troubles aplenty for your players to explore.
City of Lei Tabor is another runequest module. Does a bad oriental analogue really have a place in glorantha. I don't remember seeing it in Heroquest. Did it get "Gregged"?
Minarian legends: The Black Knight. Yeah, you know you're reaching the end of the series, because they've finished off the countries, and moved on to the independent guys who have the potential to shift the balance of power in the game. The immortal tragedy of the black knight, geased to be unable to die until he completes a virtually impossible quest. Only it's not as tragic as you'd think as he tricked the high priests into giving him immortality in the first place. Which is a pretty cool spin on the trope. The high standard of most of this series is maintained. What will it's creators do next? Its getting pretty obvious they need to move on to new grounds sometime soon.
The electric eye: Three reviews in this column this issue, plus some miscalanea. Which includes errata for a program they gave us in a previous issue. Because patching computer games is a lot more urgent than fixing RPG's, where people can work around the problems themselves. Bah.
Dungeon of Death: Yeah, its a dungeon crawl. Get experience, penetrate the lower levels and find the holy grail. Seriously limited compared to what real RPG's are capable of.
Android Nim: A quick little multiplayer puzzle game. But at least it has sound, which most games of this era don't.
Time Traveller: An adventure game involving ..... guess what. As this is a beta copy, it has some serious bugs. But it still involves a pretty big set of adventures as you try and recover the 14 rings of whatever. As ever, there are complaints about the price of stuff.
Dragon's bestiary: This months monsters have an arctic theme, for some reason. (let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ;) )The Koodjanuk, Cryoserpents and Ice golems all prefer colder climates, but are otherwise pretty different, in both personalities and roles. If you're characters are traveling up north, at least one of them should be useful.
Nothing but the Ho-ho-ho Truth: What exactly is Santa claus in D&D terms. Now there's a character who's not suitable for shoehorning into the roles and abilities PC's have. Their rough answer is that he's an exceedingly high level elf/halfling hybrid magic user/cleric with tons of followers. Which of course beaks several rules, but hey, that's standard for characters printed in the magazine. Has the feel of something put in at the last moment to make up page count. Well, they did have a lot of pages to fill this time. I guess it was inevitable that there would be some filler material.
Wormy and Jasmine are here. ZOMG implied raep. Oh noes. Fineous fingers and the rest of dragonmirth is not.
An advert for next years calendar. Well, they have been talking it up since the start of the year. It'd be just dumb if they were late releasing it.
This is what a christmas issue should be. A massive pushing of the envelope in size and ideas, hopefully giving us at least one thing that we'll continue to use well into the future. The decade seems to be going pretty well so far. Lets see what next year holds.
Dragon Issue 45: January 1981
part 1/2
96 pages. A new year, new staff. Lots of new staff in fact. Roger Moore and Ed Greenwood both get official jobs with the company, having both had tons of articles published over the past year. Quality and quantity will have an impact, and be recognized. Circulation has once again increased around fourfold in the last year, and obviously they can now afford considerably more. Just how much bigger can they get? Hopefully quite a bit.
In this issue:
An advert for Fantasy Modelling magazine. Featuring Boris Vallejo. Snerk. Look at the muscles.
Out on a limb: Another letter complaining about the horrendous character inflation the GM's in his area practice, and asking the magazine to do more to sort them out.
A letter grumbling about Ringside, Traveller and other obscure games getting so much space in the magazine when they want more AD&D. To which they reply only catering to the most popular crowd and neglecting everyone else is how governments lose support and magazines descend into irrelevance. Which is not a good idea. Variety is important.
And someone's finally noticed the magazine losing its The. And they are not happy. They also have lots of other complaints about the recent "kiddiefication" of the magazine in general. The professor ludlow module sucked, the new cover format sucks, you're running too many adverts, and Kim Mohan sucks for trying to cater to a younger audience. Charming. Kim takes the ranting with good humour, and points out that the proportion of advertising they carry has not, in fact, increased, it's just kept pace with their page count expansion. This is accompanied by hard statistics on the percentages other magazines devoted to ads. Most of their rivals are around 20-30% ads, apart from White Dwarf, who are at over 40%, which is an interesting thing to know.
Ha. Look the part you play. Another amusing advert, this time for a costumes company. Well, it's appropriate, I guess. Lets just hope we don't get too many fat unwashed creepy guys dressing up as princesses.
Gas 'em up and smoke 'em out: Muahahaha. Another weapon that bypasses the combat scenario to great effectiveness, at least the first few times you face it. Players getting overcocky with their flaming oil? GM's get poison gas. Nothing to show them who's boss like having to save or die every single round while trying to escape, with no-one to fight (or possibly lots of level draining undead, if you want to be extra mean. :D). Includes proper formulae for determining rates of dispersal and stuff. I like this, as it's a good reminder that life isn't fair, and you shouldn't make the game strictly fair all the time either. After all, what evil overlord worth their horns would intentionally leave a weakness in their defenses? (unless it was as a trap to lure the heroes into a false sense of security)
Dungeon ventilation clears the air: The complimentary article to the previous one. In a real underground setting, without any airflow system things get pretty manky pretty quickly. And yet players rarely encounter this little problem. Yet the solutions to it, such as chimneys and mechanical pumping systems, can add considerable tactical options to your game which are pretty fun to take advantage of. More fun stuff you usually forget, and which I would rather like to use in the future.
Two more NPC classes. The alchemist (Again. Honestly, they're like wizards useless kid brother who you just can't get rid of. Can I come on an adventure this time? No.) and the astrologer. Neither of them are very useful, really. If it weren't for D&D's artificial trade monopolies, they'd be screwed next to wizards and clerics.
Magic items for everyman (sic): Ahh, determining how many magic items characters of a particular level are supposed to have. Another persistent problem that 3rd edition just about managed to solve. This is a pretty reasonable stab at dealing with it, but doesn't have the simplicity of the final solution. Another think we'll probably be seeing several more tries at over the years.
Up on a soap box: Two smaller rants under this ageis this issue. The first involves creative use of real world principles to strategically counter monsters, such as pouring cold water down the throat of a red dragon. Not sure how much leeway you should give to stuff like that, as D&D shouldn't use real world physics too much. The second is about dealing with high level characters. Retirement, wish wars, way too many save or die effects, deity stalemate, and a constant influx of young guns trying to take on the guys with the big reputations are all ways to keep them from getting complacent. This is why keeping the party together is still useful when at high level. One high level character can still get splatted by a bad save, even if they have 2's in every category, while a team can raise each other and form a multiversal political bloc that keeps the dreaded stasis of competing powers from making things dull. Can't say I'm particularly enthused about either of these articles.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Bell of pavlov? Really. Someone in editing was too busy laughing to realize how dumb that is. Lots of other quirky and jokey items as well, including pet rocks, ruby slippers (a la wizard of oz) and the ring of oak, which is pretty useless to PC's, because all it does is allow dryads to roam beyond the usual distance from their trees. Still, I suppose it's better than only listing items and abilities with a direct combat application. That would get tedious even faster.
The write way to get published: Robert Plamondon and Kim Mohan provide a humorously illustrated example of the submission and editing process, following up on issue 43's Dragon Rumbles. Even experienced authors who've been professionally published regularly need multiple drafts and an editor to produce work of truly great quality. And once again, the virtues of persistence, revision, and making sure you get paid are emphasized. Being a professional artist is no job for the undisciplined. Once again, this is pretty good advice, regardless of the job. I certainly intend to heed it.
The Rasmussen files: Merle gives us some feedback, rules clarifications, and new stuff on training characters up. Nothing particularly revolutionary here, just the usual sound of a developer chugging away, trying to keep his work growing and promoted.
Quote from: (un)reason;304434Dragon Issue 45: January 1981
A letter grumbling about Ringside, Traveller and other obscure games getting so much space in the magazine when they want more AD&D. To which they reply only catering to the most popular crowd and neglecting everyone else is how governments lose support and magazines descend into irrelevance. Which is not a good idea. Variety is important.
It will only take about 60 issues for the magazine to change it's mind and start cutting all the non-D&D material. And after that it did indeed become irrelevant.
Quote from: (un)reason;304299Dragon Issue 44: December 1980
part 2/2
Giants in the earth: Your christmas twinkies this year are reepicheep, (surely I don't need to remind you where he comes from) a mouse with 18/01 strength.
:confused: Is there anything in any of the Narnia books which implies that he has great physical strength?
Quote from: Age of Fable;304495:confused: Is there anything in any of the Narnia books which implies that he has great physical strength?
Not as far as I recall. Another of their annoying tendencies to give characters well above average stats in everything, even things that in the actual books, they were actually pretty crap at. (wisdom, of course, is a particular benificiary of this. If I were rating the wisdom of most fictional characters in light of their choices, I would not be generous. )
Dragon Issue 45: January 1981
part 2/2
Leomund's tiny hut: Len talks about missile fire, and includes a new sub-class specializing in them, the Archer. As ever, D&D does not accurately represent reality, and he would like to make it a bit closer. Ranges, cover, rates of fire and disruption of spellcasting all get mentions. And once again, once he starts discussing minutinae, I start zoning out. As you might expect, the new class is an excuse to give loads of bonuses that circumvent the penalties he's just introduced for everyone else. Which is not the kind of behaviour I approve of.
The Dragon Dungeon Design kit: Our big centrepiece this month is lots and lots of cardboard components that you are supposed to cut out and use to make dungeons with. Walls, stairs, treasure chests, tables, torches, lots of things that you'll use again and again. Plus both hex and grid paper for laying your new labyrinths out on. Another thing that's a bit problematic in .pdf, but if you can solve the sizing issues and need for cardstock, you can now print as many copies of this bit as you like, circumventing the limitations they had back then. Which is very nice indeed. More stuff that would still be rather useful today, and if I ever get to run a campaign based around stuff from the magazine, this'll be one of the things I'll use in it.
Minarian Legends: The spotlight this issue falls upon the Dwarves. Their history, their (not particularly nice ) deities, and their conquests and defeats. As ever from Glen, this is a pretty nuanced portrayal, which neither mary-sues them, nor villainises them, and gives their setting individuality without going too far from established fantasy tropes to be unrecognisable. So the usual good quality stuff then.
Simulation Corner: This time, the talk is on how a game can be objectively badly designed. Inconsistencies in the rules, poor organization, tedious and impenetrable legal speak, failure to explain technical terms, and outright errata can all make a game more problematic to play than another. And that even before we get into subjective stuff like catering to particular playstyles. The writer seems to have their head screwed on properly. Now, if they could just apply those principles to D&D :D
Squad Leader: The Germans invaded the Russian cities earlier on in these articles. Turnabout is fair play, as they push back in 1945. More close fighting fun.
Castles Castles Everywhere: Not just a medieval invention, there were tons of castles in roman and older periods too, including plenty of bibilical examples. This article goes into more detail on this matter. As with many things designed for war, they were often kludged designs started in a rush using whatever they had at the time, and then refined into lethally efficient forms. Which conflicts with the tendency of D&D worlds to be stuck in technological pseudo-stasis. Which raises more awkward world design issues you may or may not want to address in your game. Sorry, my mind seems to have drifted, as this is another not particularly good article.
The Electric Eye: More build it yourself programming fun, this time showing you how to create your own random number generator to take the place of physical dice. So long, being restricted to the standard range of platonic solids (and d10's) for your number ranges. If only more games had taken advantage of this. I would like to see more d13 rolls. But then, computer and RPG integration is still an iffy subject, 27 years later. What are we to do.
Hop Hop Hooray: Woo! An article for Bunnies and Burrows. You get an "I've been wondering if they'd mention this" Point, Mr Maxfield. Hmm. Some rather odd ideas here. Rabbits riding hares? Wouldn't that be like humans riding gorillas? With these extras, a well organised team has a good chance of taking on a human and winning. Was this really the intent of the designers? I know rabbits can be pretty vicious, but that may be taking player empowerment at the expense of emulation a little too far. Still, I guess imitating real rabbits too accurately wouldn't be fun.
How to have a good time being evil: Sometimes you don't want to be a hero, you just want to kill stuff and get treasure. Ok, so good adventurers do that as well, but this way you get to ride nightmares, torture your prisoners and stab each other in the back for bigger shares of the loot. Just watch out for hordes of angry villagers. Kill too many, and you won't be able to eat them all. ;) Not a particularly great article of its type, but I'm sure we'll see plenty better as the years go by.
You can jump how far?: Rules for determining exactly how far and high you can jump. A percentile system with a whole load of modifiers, this is another classic D&D example of inventing a whole new subsystem for each special case. Not that it's a bad subsystem in this case, but that's not the point. It still means you have to look the damn thing up.
Reviews: Bloodtree rebellion is a game of guerilla warfare on a far planet. And a pretty good one. But of course, games of asymmetic warfare are not particularly popular, partially due to the shadow of vietnam over american society. Will it be able to overcome that? We shall see.
Space Marines: The second edition of this game is a substantial improvement over the first in terms of rules, but still hampered by uninspired fluff. It's certainly no WH40K, for good or bad. ;)
Grail quest. Arthurian legend gets an adaption for the fantasy trip. Designed for solitare play, this seems to do a pretty good job of providing a thematically appropriate set of encounters for a group of questing knights. But as a solitare game it is a little too heavily dependent on random rolls to create a challenge over tactics.
Dragons bestiary: Last month it was arctic monsters, this time, all the creatures prefer more arid climes. Skyzorr'n are a race of giant anthromorph ants that would make good rivals to thri-kreen, Sand lizards and dust devils are pretty self explanatory. Being grappled by multi-tailed reptiles and suffocated by an annoying elemental that then takes your stuff should keep the characters busy for a while.
Dragonmirth is present. Fineous fingers is not only here, he also gets an advert for a big compilation of all his early issues, plus a new exclusive one. Jasmine's eponymous character finally reveals herself, and has to be rescued straight away.
While the overall product remains pretty well done, the average quality of articles this month doesn't seem to be very good. Maybe they blew all their energy on the christmas one, and so this was filled with the leftovers. Oh well. There's plenty more where this came from.
Dragon Issue 46: February 1981
part 1/2
80 pages. A very interesting cover this issue, as Steve Swentson creates an intriguing set of anthromorphs to grace the front pages. They also change their typeface and go from two to three columns per page. Not sure why. No more mapping the dungeons in here, because that job has been taken up by the RPGA and polyhedron. The second best of the dragon will be out soon. And their distribution is expanding again. Which should mean lots more new readers. All pretty positive, despite the rather bad weather.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Is it ok to photocopy the DM evaluation form? The answer is yes. I know we don't normally allow stuff like that.
A letter correcting the top secret article in issue 44, saying that the name agent 99 gave was just another pseudonym. Hmm. Looks like their reaction time between publishings is getting shorter. You never used to see commentary on things less than 3 months ago.
A letter asking how dwarven paladins are possible, as they gave an example of one in GitE. Answer: they aren't in AD&D, if players were allowed to be one it would unbalance the game. But NPC's can break the rules that the PC's have to stick too. And another person misunderstands the term "The exception that proves the rule." Sigh.
A letter expressing appreciation for the anti-paladin article and asking for more of its type, in particular asking for a bounty hunter class, and mass combat rules. What are the odds someone'll follow up on those requests?
Two letters confirming that contrary to sage advice's statement in issue 42, holy water sprinklers were both maces and guns at times. So there, Mr Niebing. You're the one who needs to do better research. (You still can't have guns in D&D though.)
And finally a letter asking for more clarification on illusion spells, as it's still not clear just how effective belief in an illusion is.
Fiction: The Sorceror's jewel, by John Holmes. The unfortunately named Boinger gets another story. One of those stories that reads like the adaption of an actual play, being pretty faithful to the game rules, and using lots of classic D&D monsters like yellow mold and grey ooze. Fairly amusing, overall.
Crane is what you make of it: A rebuttal to the article in issue 40 on Tribes of Crane, saying that he would have enjoyed it more if he'd engaged in private correspondence with the other players, and done more fighting. Essentially, a case of I'm a satisfied customer, and if you didn't enjoy the game, It's because you were playing it wrong. Which is a refrain I've seen plenty of times on the internet as well, and I'm pretty sure I've used a few times myself. He probably has valid points. But still, $2.50 a move, plus whatever you spend in sending private letters. I'd be leery about that now, even before inflation is factored in. I'm really not convinced it's worth it, particularly compared to the cost of tabletop games.
Mightier than the pen: Magic swords shouldn't just be nameless bonuses, they ought to have proper histories and names, and unique abilities. This article is mostly a list of the usual legends, such as beowulf, arthurian legend, and the edda. Honestly, it's as if we haven't been reading the past issues and don't already know all this stuff. Oh well, I guess many of the new readers didn't. We can't all be high level cynics.
Minarian variants: 6 more optional rules for Divine Right. Sieges, Ambushes, Treasure, leadership skill, forced marches, and barbarian tribalism. Most are of pretty good quality. If you've been playing the game regularly over the past year, I'm sure they will come as a welcome way to spice up the game again. Will there be a new edition, and will they get incorporated into it? Or will they publish supplements to it. Because the writers certainly seem to have no shortage of further ideas for the game.
Minarian Legends: Speaking of more stuff for divine right. This month's setting elaboration focuses upon The black hand (probably no relation to the V:tM black hand), a powerful lich, and commander of undead armies. Really, he just wants to be left alone to continue his experiments. But for some reason, people have this ..... prejudice against the undead. Particularly when you turn people they used to know in life into one of them. So sometimes he has to fight the various countries of minaria. What a pain in the ass for him. Is any side presented as the bad guys in this game? I guess not. It's certainly a lot more progressive than D&D will ever be in that respect.
Dragons Bestiary: Just one creature this month, the reptilian gaund, another Ed Greenwood creation. Another one of those creatures with a quite extensive set of abilities, weaknesses and ecological stuff that far outstrips the stuff in the actual books.
This Here's Tyranosarus Tex: A scenario for boot hill that pits the characters against a recently freed carnivorous dinosaur. Er, ok then. A pretty cheesy bit of crossover. Can people not play these games without introducing supernatural (well, technically not, but you know what I mean) elements. Fantasy is not the be all and end all of roleplaying.
How to ease the boot hill identity crisis: Another one of those random generation tables to find out what your characters job is/was. Didn't they already have one of these for the game? Eh, doesn't matter. There's always room for more random tables.
Quote from: (un)reason;304788Dragon Issue 46: February 1981
Mightier than the pen: Magic swords shouldn't just be nameless bonuses, they ought to have proper histories and names, and unique abilities. This article is mostly a list of the usual legends, such as beowulf, arthurian legend, and the edda. Honestly, it's as if we haven't been reading the past issues and don't already know all this stuff. Oh well, I guess many of the new readers didn't. We can't all be high level cynics.
Dragon was a magazine which cycled through the same topics every year or so. However, this was one of the more notable recurring articles.
At first, I thought the one referred to above was the article I had read on the subject of named swords, and which had inspired me to be much more detailed with my campaign setting. I figured it must have been in one of the two Best of Dragons I owned. Yet, when I looked at the article, it wasn't the one I remembered.
In searching the 80-116 range of issues (the period where I was a regular reader), I came across two other sword articles before I finally found the one I remembered. It appears in issue number 109, Blades With Personality.
Dragon Issue 46: February 1981
part 2/2
The temple of poseidon: This month's module. Looks like leaving them in the middle, rather than interrupting the page count is the new standard for these things. I preferred the previous way, but oh well, its not a huge problem. This is a heavily lovecraft inspired work, with lots of water related stuff to deal with, designed for a large high level party (they recommend the team has at least 70 total levels between them.) So don't expect stopping the devil priests from unleashing the ancient monstrosity ythog-nthtei to be easy. But then again, you'd get more XP for letting him get unleashed then killing him, than stopping them before that point. What a dilemma for an ambitious group of adventurers.
Reviews: World of greyhawk. The long awaited new D&D book gets a pretty substantial bit of promotion, with two different reviews devoted to it. Both are fairly satisfied with it, apart from a few quibbles, such as map inaccuracies, an accusation of anthropological insensitivity, and lack of information on the gods. And it is still only 32 pages, not really enough to go into more than a few paragraphs of detail on each country. But I guess it still has a lot more setting stuff than the original Greyhawk supplement from 6 years ago. D&D's gradual steps towards a proper shared setting continue, even if they are still well behind Runequest and Tekumel. They'll get there in the end.
The complete book of wargames attempts to provide a newbie friendly introduction into the principles and tropes of the genre, along with an introductory game.
The nine doctrines of darkness,Temple to athena and Mountain of Mystery are a trio of system free RPG adventures by Dimension Six, designed to be adapted to whatever game you might be playing. Which of course means they don't have to bother developing their own system or liscencing fees. Seems like stuff like that was more common back then. I guess not so many people were willing to take on the challenge of designing their own system.
Giants in the earth is no longer Moldvay and Schick's private twinkfest, and is now accepting submissions from freelancers. Maybe new entries'll be a little less overpowered and more faithfull to the D&D rules. But I'm not going to bet on it.
Sage advice: If a wizard shapechanges into a dragon, does his breath weapon do damage equal to his own current hit points.( Yes, and he doesn't get any more hp either. )
Why can druids wear leather armor. You have to kill animals to make it. ( animals kill and eat each other normally. Druids can do the same True neutral + respect for nature =/= namby pamby ecopacifists.
Do you get experienced points for doing something you were geased/quested to do. (yes. Being forced to do it does not stop you from learning normally from the experience. )
What happens if turned undead can't escape you? (they cower in the corner, as far away as they can get. )
Who can have 18% strength? (only fighters, and not girls) Because boys are stronger than girls, so ner.
Does a luck blade give you a bonus to attack rolls? (not nececarily. The luck bonus is to your saving throws, and that's independent of any enhancement bonus to hit and damage it may have.
What happens if you put a bag of holding into another one. ( It probably shouldn't work properly, otherwise it would be horribly breakable. Not sure how to enforce that yet. (they obviously have yet to think of the rule that multiple nested extradimensional spaces cause a rip that sends all the contents to the astral plane. ))
The Quasit entry says they can be cleric's familiars. How do clerics get familiars? (ask their deity extra nicely. Do we have to give rules for everything?)
Do paladins and rangers need to pray to a special patron god to get their spells?(No, they can devote themselves to any god of an alignment that fits their class restrictions. )
What does vorpal mean? (nothing, really. It was a bit of nonsense from a poem. But in D&D it just means really really sharp. Mmm, severed heads. Pike 'em and roast 'em and put an apple in their mouth and serve 'em up for dinner. Its nutritious and delicious and you have good odds of being cursed to become a vampire when you die. Hey, immortality. A plan with no drawbacks.)
Simulation Corner: A look back at last year from a wargamers perspective. The recent trend towards microgames seems to be ebbing. There was quite a large number of civil war based games, for some reason. Sci fi and fantasy continue their gradual takeover of the market. West end games failed to release anything new this year, which can't be good for them. One of those cool historical perspective articles that helps me see what things were like back then.
Pinsom: May I just say WTF? Oh, they're Elves. Certainly an interesting artistic take on them. Reminds me of the Raccoons cartoon. (Run with us. We've got everything you need. Run with us, we are free. Great, now I've got that song stuck in my head.) Which is no bad thing, once the shock faded. How will this little story progress in future issues? I look forward to seeing.
The electric eye: An assessment of the current top companies in the market, Radio shack, Apple, and Commodore, and their respective products, plus honorable mentions for Atari and APF. As this gives me a good idea of how much power computers had then, and how expensive they were, this is another neat historical footnote that I rather enjoyed reading.
Jasmine's plot thickens. Another stereotypical female character type is introduced, that of the witch queen who'll do anything to remain young and beautiful looking forever. Fineous and Wormy are not present.
Slightly more interesting than last issue, with several interesting new developments and historical footnotes. Still quite a few dull moments, but not enough to ruin the whole thing. They're still covering a wide range of topics for many different systems and styles of play.
Dragon Issue 47: March 1981
part 1/2
80 pages Once again, the D&D setting takes several steps forward this issue, with both planar and torillian stuff featured within. We also get another complete game, plenty of different topics covered. Oh, and a particularly blatant bit of cheesecake on the front cover. You might want to put some chaps on luv. Those scales'll chafe your legs something fierce if you ride at any speed. And you don't want to back up onto those spines.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: The editing stuff from issues 43 & 45 gets another followup, with bit of mock bickering between Robert Plamodon and Kim Mohan about Kim's savage editing job. Highly amusing and rather meta stuff. He does have a point though, that by doing things like this, Kim is setting himself up as a frontline performer who everyone reading knows about in his own right, rather than just a backstage worker who helps the writers shine brighter. (did I ever tell you you're my heeeero. Oh god, another song stuck in my head.) Still, If it gets him a better paid job and more chicks at cons, I guess it's a good strategy. ;)
Out on a limb: A letter expressing outrage at the Gm who doesn't let his players buy the magazine, telling him to go kiss an otyugh.
A letter praising Gary for encouraging people to play monsters intelligently.
A letter complaining about several flaws in some recent reviews.
A letter encouraging the retirement of high level characters so you can start again with something new.
Another letter complaining about GM's running horrifically overpowered games in their area, encouraging people to boycott games like that.
A letter complaining about the Top Secret stats of various fictional characters in issue 44, quibbling about perceived inaccuracies. Yawn.
A reply from the author of said article to the quibbling on it from last issue. Whch is amusing.
And a letter defending the Professor Ludlow Module from the roasting it recieved a couple of months ago, saying it was a nice change of pace from standard gaming, and a good roleplaying challenge.
Take the AD&D exam: A big questionaire on the AD&D rules, to see how good your mastery of their finer details is. Which of course involves some stupid and somewhat subjective questions, as many of the puzzles have more than one solution. FWIW, I got 43 out of 50. Which isn't bad, particularly as I don't own AD&D 1st ed, and was working off my memory of BECMI and 2nd edition.
Elemental ideas for elemental adventuring: Like GitE last month, they've decided to accept stuff from freelancers on the nature of the planes. Which hey, means dilution of concept. Lets hope they keep editorial control over this stuff, otherwise there's going to be lots of articles that have inconsistencies with one another. The first article seems to promote a slightly more hostile view of the elemental planes than Len's, making them all innately harmful to creatures from the prime material and each other, and being far more restrictive on elemental spells from elsewhere. It does, however, include some cool ideas on the nature of the native flora and fauna of the planes, and how they will interact with adventurers. The second article doesn't actually have much to do with planar travel, but is actually about the probablity of finding someone with astral scanning and the time taken, given the size of the area scanned. Which involves some mildly complex mathematical formulae. Neither are particularly brilliant, overall.
Creatures from elsewhere: The extraplanar theme continues with a load of new monsters. Wirchler are from gehenna, look like mouths with arms coming out their sides, and have a nasty no save power that's an instawin against anyone who can hear. Take them out hard and fast, or you'll watch your characters slowly die, and even if they're rescued, their ability scores'll be permanently reduced.
Aruchai are from Limbo, and have a lot in common with chaos beasts, but are way way cooler, having an awesome plot hook that makes being killed by one both better and far worse than just dying, while not taking the characters out of play they way being undeadified would. These guys are worth the whole magazine.
The Pheonix is .... You know what it is. Bloody immortal mary-sue bird with the favor of the gods. Virtually impossible to kill, and if you do, you get tortured by the gods, then geased to go back in time and make sure you don't kill it after all. Thankfully they got rid of that bit in the 2nd ed MM entry.
Again, you ought to know what the furies are. They live in tartarus, and torture people who pissed off the olympian gods. They're pretty powerful too, so careful when you mess with them.
Mapmakers are surprisingly adorable. Reptilian creatures from pandemonum, they have a fetish for maps, and their whole existance revolves around making and obtaining them. Which means they can be useful for trading with, but also might nick your stuff showing the way out if you aren't careful. And they are from pandemonium, so chances are the maps they make are oddly designed and filled with elaborations that may not be strictly accurate. Another really cool creature that I wish had made it into future books.
Flard are from nirvana, and exist only to answer questions. Ahh, the omniscient monolith, such an overused archetype.
Sugo were originally created by jubilex, but rebelled and now live in acheron, and show that the conception of this plane still hadn't reach its current state, still being much closer to it's original greek source. Essentially malevolent flumphs, they live in marshy areas, and try and eat passers by. Meh.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: The planar theme continues here. The flute of dismissing gets rid of summoned gribleys, which can be pretty darn usefull.
The staff of ethereal action allows you to hit ethereal creatures, and use Blink as well for some reason. Good for getting rid of those pesky phase spiders.
Horeseshoes of hades turn a normal mount into a Nightmare. Which is not a good thing, unless you have some means of subduing the nasty bugger quickly.
Syrar's silver sword (another Ed Greenwood mage gets a namecheck.) is another weapon for dealing with those pesky creatures who lurk on co-existant planes and attack you while you can't hit them back. Because everyone hates them, don't they. All in all, this has been a well above average set of items.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len takes a closer look at thief abilities, and their proper application. Thieves should be able to make traps as well as disarm them, sneaking into place is a good way to make maps, so when the full party comes in, they can have more effective plans on how to clear place out. The rest of the stuff isn't very useful, but those two cool bits make up for it.
Giants in the earth: Two women from greek myth get the twinktastic treatment this issue. Camilla from the Aeneid, and Medea from Jason & the argonauts. Although they do both have several abilities at average or below, so I guess opening this series up to the floor has helped a little.
QuoteThe Pheonix is .... You know what it is. Bloody immortal mary-sue bird with the favor of the gods. Virtually impossible to kill, and if you do, you get tortured by the gods, then geased to go back in time and make sure you don't kill it after all.
Players: "..."
GM: "What?"
Players: "If we go back in time and save it, do we still get xp for having killed it?"
Dragon Issue 47: March 1981
part 2/2
The merry month of mirtul? The Forgotten Realms gets it's first proper named mention as Ed Greenwood talks about the calendar in his own game. He also talks about tailoring the setting in general to be more suitable for creating opportunity for adventures, by making the weather more extreme than on earth, with periods of rapid growth, technological/magical advancement and prosperity, regularly interrupted by freezing winters that cut off any large scale communication or travel for several months a year, and frequent (not so) natural disasters that kill off entire towns or even civilisations, leaving plenty of ruins to investigate. Looks like something close to points of light was part of the Realm's original design. So much for that being a new idea. Now this is a very interesting article, both in its own right and from a historical point of view. And it shows that despite becoming a full setting later, FR had a considerably longer history in the pages of the magazine than dragonlance did. We'll be seeing considerably more on this in the future.
The rasmussen files: Multiclass characters and their titles and positions in a group. Get levels in all 4 roles, and you can become an Administrator, and start setting missions for other groups. As this offers advice on how to design and run a team of characters as a proper team, this is another article that feels fairly familiar in light of recent events.
Crimefighters: A complete game by David Cook, this is based upon pulp comics and novels, with a particular emphasis on detective stuff. A rather fast and loose system, as you would expect given the theme and space available, with some big rules holes. But still, it's more suited to being bent to various situations than Ringside and Food Fight. At 21 pages, counting the introductory adventure, this is another pretty cool special feature, taking up more than a quarter of the magazine. I suspect we may see a few complaints about this, but I have to applaud them for pushing the envelope again.
The pulps - Paper heroes: Bryce Knorr defends the often shallow and two dimensional characterization in pulp magazines. They may have been mass produced, primarily commercial products, that imitated one another quite a lot, but they still managed to produce lots of cool stuff along the way. And there are substantial cultural parallels betwen the 1930's, and the start of the 80's. Which may explain Indiana Jones' success. A bit of an anticlimax after the last article.
Sage advice: Can paladins associate with neutral goods? (yes, they have good in the description, don't they, ya twit)
How does the range of stuff in inches translate to real distances (1 inch = 10 foot inside or 10 yards outside. But spell areas of effect should stay the same inside or out.)
Is everything in the monster manual a monster, and therefore you can't use speak to animals on it. (No. But giant versions of animals don't count as normal. )
Do PC gnomes get the poison resistance mentioned in the MM? (yes)
I don't understand how shields interact with the armor/to hit table (headdesk headdesk headdesk. How do these people remember to breathe?!)
Can PC's be grey elves or drow? (if your DM allows it. )
Is torture ok for chaotic good characters? (No. If you've got a good reason, (such as if they killed the pheonix :rolleyes: damn deities and their double standards) you might get away with it once or twice, but doing so with any regularity will stop you being good pretty damn quick. )
Reviews: The tendency to put more emphasis on each individual review continues. Robots! is a game of resource management and combat set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of earth, and gets a pretty positive review.
Fast attack boats is a game of er, the 1973 arab-israli naval war, and gets a rather less positive review, with the reviewer critisizing it's dull counters and small play field.
Starfire gets a new edition, which builds nicely on the previous one.
Across the bright face and mission on mithril are a paired set of traveller adventures, set in the spinward marches. One is a planet based trek, while the other is a scout ship based mission. Which gives you a nice set of choices for directions to take your game in.
Research station gamma is another traveller supplement. (they did seem to be releasing quite a lot of them at this point) It's basically a location based module, as was common in this era. Of course, a space station is somewhat different from a dungeon, but I'm sure the overall experience won't be that different.
Figuratively speaking: A new column covering miniatures to replace the fantasysmiths workshop, with more emphasis on reviews, and less on customisation. Unfortunately, the bad contrast on the scanning makes most of the photos virtually illegible, which sucks. This month, we get some stuff from Martian metals, a whole load of arthurian models, some dungeon walls, and an evil wizard carried on a litter. Afraid I can't really comment more than that. Hopefully they'll move to colour soon, so I can get decent looks in.
Simulation corner: More on the history of SPI. This focusses on the managerial changes they went through in the past year, and the changes in direction that resulted from that. As in previous articles, they try their best to put a positive spin on everything. Yes, they've cut the number of products they're making in half, but they intend to develop and playtest each one more thoroughly. Whatever you say. I'll be here in pessimist land, because I know you haven't survived to the present day. It's just a question of when you go under. And I won't spoil myself on that just yet.
Squad leader: The 1945 scenarios continue on from last issue, as the russians rape and pillage berlin. Pull out the stops and invoke a whole bunch of special rules, because this is gonna be an epic one. Yet it still fits on half a page. Which is nice for the editors when they need a little something to complete the issue.
The electric eye: This month, they focus on sports video games. Real time joystick controlled games, and strategic simulations both get examined, and several specific examples and companies get mentioned. Not my personal cup of tea, but still quite a well written article. I don't have a problem with this.
Pinsom and jasmine continue to develop. Wormy returns after quite a bit with a fantasy sequence thing unconnected to the main storyline.
A particularly cool back cover this month from Martian Metals, a mini's company, disguised as a newspaper cover. I am quite amused.
This one's pretty good, although not in the articles I was expecting. Funny that, the ones I most enjoyed were the ones they didn't hype so much. Likes and dislikes are subjective things, and obviously I'm not entirely in tune with Kim's mind. But would you want that, anyway? Probably not. If I didn't have my own opinions, this would be a duller series.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;305149Players: "..."
GM: "What?"
Players: "If we go back in time and save it, do we still get xp for having killed it?"
The you who killed it keep the XP, the you from the new timeline prime never killed it, so they never got the XP. If whatever method of travelling back in time you found doesn't allow for return trips, things are about to get a little awkward. :D
Dragon Issue 48: April 1981
part 1/2
96 pages. Another april, another load of comic stuff in issue 48+1/2. Phil foglio does another tremendously entertaining cover piece. Meanwhile, the serious special topic this issue is underwater adventuring. But it only has three articles on it. You'd think they could have kept the adventure from number 46 for later, as it would have fit in better here. I guess long term planning is tricky when you've got to make pagecount for a deadline every month. We also see more signs of kim's growing dominance in the editing department, as Jake starts deferring to him, even if it is in jest. Verrry interesting.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: We start with a letter of generalised praise, with particular emphasis on the value for money of getting a whole module, plus loads of other stuff in each issue, especially when compared to the cost of most of the modules currently out there.
A letter criticising the fact that the scale in the Dungeon design kit is not the same as the 1 inch = 10 foot scale that most of the miniatures and game rules use, hurting it's compatibility.
A letter by someone bemoaning the over $400 they've spend on gaming over only 6 months. And that's even before the supplement treadmill became standard. Silly person. You need more willpower.
A letter offering a balanced view on the power gaming debate, saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with high level characters, but they ought to work up to it properly, otherwise they won't be able to use their powers to full efficiency, or have well rounded personalities to match. And in his experience, maturity has surprisingly little correlation with age.
Watery words to the wise: Lots of cool stuff on running coastal and underwater campaigns, and the challenges and opportunities that these present. 3d combat, a fun but tricky business. But for those monsters used to it, land combat would seem horribly constricting tactically, previously easy obstacles becoming insurmountable problems. Which is why sahuguin haven't scoured every coastal village clean. A pretty cool article, well deserving of being this months lead-in one, that reminds you that you don't have to go to other planes to have a very different adventuring experience.
Dragons bestiary continues the underwater theme, with the water horse, (arthurian stickybacked breed) Golden ammonite (no relation to gold dragons, I hope) and sea demons, which aren't actualy demons, just intelligent malevolent giant octopi. No spectacular standout monsters here.
Bazaar of the Bizarre also provides lots of water focused items as well, with 5 boring weapons with extra pluses against some water creature or other, the necklace of air breathing (don't put this on if you can already breathe air, because death by drowning often offends.) and the periapt of protection against vampiric Ixitachital (now how often are you going to encounter one of those) Oh and spongestone, which adds quite a few quirks to the real world item. A decidedly low interest article this time round, given the amount of recycled adaptions in it compared to actual ideas.
Issue 48+1/2
Dragon mumbles: Our joke articles begin with some incomprehensible gibberish from the editor. Some of it I can translate, but some of it is just stupid for stupids sake. Meh.
Out in limbo: 4 comedy letters. There are no saving throws in school. And someone's found the wand of orcus and would like to return it to its proper owner. Yeah, that'll go well. ;)
Red dragon blues: The filking returns. Please don't sue us, Johnny Cash.
A class that really counts: The accountant. Be very afraid. Thankfully, the rules for it aren't complete, or indeed entirely legitimate, so your players can't ask to play one. Which means you can relax, sorta.
Real life: A minigame. I think the rules for this just about hold together. But you don't want to play it, because it's a very depressing game indeed. Everyone loses. Its just a matter of how long you can keep playing for. Guess that makes it a pretty accurate emulation then.
Saturday morning monsters: Bugs bunny and daffy duck, Popeye, Rocky and bullwinkle, and dudley do-right. Just about statistically legitimate, you still don't want to use these guys in your game unless you want your players to hate you forever. Because they're bigger pains in the ass to defeat than the denebian slime devil.
The various Dragon comics crossover in puntacular fashion.
The druid and the DM: Back to the serious stuff. This discusses the various abilities of druids, and how they can be applied. It also trys to dispel misconceptions. Druids are not all misanthropes, in fact, with their high charisma and powers useful to everyday life they can be quite politically powerful. And there are plenty of molds and oozes and other creatures in dungeons that stop them from being useless down there. It also includes some optional rules and abilities, that amazingly enough, spice things up without making the class more overpowered. Which makes it a pretty good article, overall.
The druid and the dungeon: More druid stuff, this concentrates on how to optimize them for dungeoneering. Make sure you pack plenty of mistletoe, and pick up some hirelings and befriended animals, because you'll need all the help you can get. Work as part of a well oiled team that can cover your weaknesses, and you should be fine, after all, you have a decent weapon selection, attack rolls and hit points, plus quite a few spells that are still applicable down there. You're hardly a sitting duck. (unless you choose to shapechange into one) And they haven't even realized how effective a swiss army knife shapechanging is, even when you don't have feats, and therefore have to stick strictly to mundane animals. Useless in dungeons, I think not.
Dragon Issue 48: April 1981
part 2/2
Up on a soapbox: Two rants under this ageis this issue.
When choosing a DM, be choosy considers the problem of finding a fun game to play in. How do you spot a good GM before you start playing, and so avoid wasting time with a crap or creepy group. This article gives you lots of good hints that are still relevant today, and can also be pretty easily turned round for when a GM is assessing prospective players. Not even vague wishy washy ones either, but some tight quantifiable guidelines. So I like it quite a lot, and have added it to my list of thing I intend to use next time it comes up.
What is gaming's role in life continues the morality in fantasy debate. And is dull. After the cool of the last one, this is rather a letdown. I shall say no more.
Minarian Legends: The Mercenary ships of minaria. Pirates, privateers, and navies, plus the obligatory named character in charge of them, the Bilge Rat. Good guy, bad guy, not really either guy? You ought to know the formula of these entries by now.
The floating island mission: This month's module is a second Top Secret one. Can you thwart the evil plans of the mysterious Dr Yes? You'd better be considerably above starting ability to do so. (see, vagueness like this this is why D&D is so much more friendly for casual GM's. The level system makes it easy to create pregenerated adventures for characters of different power levels, with an easy gauge. Which means you can continue to use modules beyond the starting level) The underwater fun continues, as you'll have to do some diving to infiltrate the island. And then you get to face Bruce Nee, Chuck Morris, and "Sweetbeam" Leotard, the good doctor's amusingly named henchmen. And I think that's enough spoilers for now. A pretty decent adventure overall.
Carrying a heavy load? Mules. The benefits and drawbacks to bringing an extra loadbearer such as this into the dungeon with you. Encumbrance is a bitch, and there's always something extra you wish you'd brought. But the more you have, the more it costs, the more you're slowed down, and the more you have to lose if things go wrong. Really, It'd be better to get yourself a bag of holding as soon as possible. Then you can laugh and stroll past all the low level adventurers struggling with their mules. Also introduces Black Bart to us, who I vaguely remember, so I think we'll see him again in the future.
Giants in the earth: This month's statistical impossibilities by the D&D rules as written are Ursula le guins Sparrowhawk, and Andrew Offut's Tiana Highrider.
Sage advice: Can a dual classed character switch back and advance in a previous class if they have high enough stats? (no)
Can clerics and paladins heal themselves (yes)
Do spellcasters get XP for casting spells. (only if they actually accomplish something with that casting)
Can a neutral good bard backstab (if it's in a good cause, just like any thief.)
Does power word kill destroy the bodies of the creatures it kills? (Entirely up to you. But yeah, it does kill in a way that prevents ressurection. Ahahahahaha)
Can magic resistance negate magic weapon's plusses? (no)
Instant adventures: Random plothooks, random plothooks. We can always do with more random plothooks. Spin the wheel, roll the dice, and lets see what fate'll throw at the players tonight.
Leomund's tiny hut: Once again, Len pushes at redesigning the system, this time looking at balance in encounter design and treasure awards. Which again turns into 7 pages of complicated math that have some good ideas that would be refined and used again in later editions, but are currently way too clunky. I really ought to give him more credit for doing this stuff, so the rest of us don't have too anymore.
Figuratively speaking reviews 21 mini's in 2 pages, which means there isn't much detail on each one. Once again, the picture shading is too bad for me to make my own judgments. Which is a shame.
GenCon South: A review of the con's new franchise. (with gencon east to follow in july) Not as big as the main one, this still had a quite extensive and exciting tournament schedule, headed up by the Champions of DM's, Frank Mentzer, and administered by the TRS-80 computer program they've been talking about in recent issues. Seems pretty positive, and they intend to do it again next year. Soon there'll be gencon's everywhere.
New orders for Russian Campaign: The wargame gets the Historically Accurate treatment in this article, with the author claiming the revised figures he's giving are the real ones from the official documents. Maybe, but will this make the game more fun to play, or unbalance it further in favour of the RL winners? I couldn't say, having never seen the game. As ever, clarification on matters like this would be welcomed.
Adding airpower options: More Russian Campaign stuff, this optional rule increases the randomness of the amount of airpower each side has. Again, I can't comment on if that would improve the game or not.
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Reviews: Asteroid is a quick game of saving the earth from an approaching, well, you know. (I don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep) Individual games may be short, but the amount of customisability in both character and adversary design should keep replays interesting for a while.
Titan is a fantasy wargame, that may be cheaply produced, but contains a sophistication in rules design that is better than many games produced on a far bigger budget.
Space fighters is a game of star warsesque dogfights, albeit with the serial numbers filed off. Like the film, the games action style is strongly reminicent of WWII dogfight games. It also seems to please the reviewer. Frankly, I would prefer my reviews more critical. It's more fun to read, and gives me more to comment on.
Pinsom, wormy, jasmine and fineous are all here. Quite the turnout. I guess they needed all the artists for the crossover issue.
Who's bright idea was it to put the ad on the back page upside down? They've been doing that quite frequently, but I never got round to mentioning it. Were they that way on the original mags, or is this scanning wierdness?
The upward slope in overall quality continues again. Kim's stronger hand on the editing process seems to be resulting in a better overall quality of articles. How long is it before he takes over again?
Dragon Issue 49: May 1981
part 1/2
96 pages. Speak of the devil. (I wasn't looking ahead when I wrote last issue's postscript, honest) This issue is the one where Gary steps down as publisher of the magazine. Jake Jaquet moves up to fill his place, while Kim Mohan becomes editor in chief. Which mean's Gary's taking his hands off the reins of the company and going off to LA to negotiate with ghastly executives, and the D&D cartoon will be along soon, if my memory serves me correctly. Oh god. I look forward to seeing how that's treated in the magazine. (particularly in light of the roasting they gave bakshi's LotR) :eek: Should be amusing.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: Oohh. Looks like their readership is now exceeding 150,000. Quite a growth from their humble beginnings. But they still aren't immune to delays. Nor are they ignoring the competition. It's a big responsibility, running a magazine of this size. Lets hope Kim and co are up to it.
Out on a limb: A letter with some quite substantial (and quite well substantiated) complaints directed at Len Lakofa's Archer article from issue 45. They counter with the same old canard, that it's all optional, D&D is not realistic, and D&D halflings are not LotR hobbits. Doesn't come off very well this time Kim.
A letter from someone writing a book on miniatures painting, asking for ideas and opinions to help him develop it further. I wonder if anything'll come of this.
A letter praising the magazine's recent increases in quality, and also in accesability to newcomers. The hobby needs new blood to expand, which means it needs to be easy for new people to pick up gaming. Which means keeping the number of articles using impenetrable gamespeak and discussing tedious rules minutinae down.
A letter complaining at the size of many recent articles, wondering why they don't break them up into smaller parts over several issues. They'd get more complaints if they did it that way, trust me. Plus lots of other commentary.
A letter praising them for publishing top secret modules, and asking people to send in more articles for it, as he likes the game, and knows it's quite popular in his area. As they've said before, they can't publish what they don't get.
In the interest of fairness: An article about arbitrary and bad GM decisions in tournament play, and how more needs to be done to prevent it. Cue lots of stuff about establishing standards, and objective scoring systems for acts that are easily adjudicated, as well as establishing what behaviour should lead to instant disqualification and ejection from the tournament. Not that even the strictest rules'll prevent a bad GM from making it a crap experience. But you've gotta be seen to be doing something. Once again, the serious problems with the tournament playstyle are thrown into sharp relief, as the compromises needed to make it work strike directly at the unique strengths of tabletop roleplaying as an entertainment form, openended storytelling and story creation where everyone wins as long as they have fun. This sucks.
The slave pits revisited: More thoughts on the A series, and tournament modules in general. The author reccomends that in future years they design the modules for smaller groups of players, as that reduces the difficulties in social dynamics, allowing groups of people who already know each other to join as a team and avoid the odds that your team will have some random asshat put in it who ruins things for everyone else. It then goes into a load of mathematics and logicistical discussion, proving that this would work better than the current system. Which is also tedious.
It isn't that easy: Frank Mentzer rebutts the previous article. Training up DM's to the standard needed to apply all your would be rules is not an easy task. Plus, it's hard to predict how many you'll need, particularly with the speed the hobby is expanding at. If you want to help with this, apply to become a GM at the next con you go too. We can always use the help. Ahh, reality, always getting in the way of our best laid plans.
God, that's a lot of cons coming up this year. Bigger and more frequent, the upswing in their popularity continues. Competitions, seminars, tournaments, famous people talking, exclusive stuff, they've got it all.
The samurai: Yes folks, its a second attempt at this class, (honestly. Three witch classes, two alchemist and samurai ones. Can't people come up with something more original) This bears little relation to the OA samurai, being an unarmoured fighter as comfortable with unarmed fighting as with katana, and getting stealth, supernatural illusion powers and psionic ability. Like druids, they have an overarching organization with a limited number of top level characters, so you'll need to fight your former master to get there. Really, they're more monk/ninja variants than fighter ones. But if you can get over that naming disconnect, in terms of rules they are fairly solid, and not too overpowered. (at least, compared to cavaliers, rangers, druids, and the other upper tier classes; they'll still make fighters look like the one trick ponies they are) I wouldn't say no to a player using them if I was running an old skool game.
The rasmussen files: Lots of nasty little new rules this month, mostly revolving around gun fire and its unfortunate concequences. One of those ones that includes lots of random tables to determine just what unpleasant side effects result from your hit location. Which isn't very cinematic, but can be amusingly gruesome, as rolemaster afficionados know. Still, 'tis the kind of thing I would rather not incorporate into my games.
Getting a world into shape: Now this is a fun one. Karl Horak talks about choosing a shape for your world as a whole, be it spherical like earth, an endless flat map, or some kind of more interesting shape, (such as any of the polyhedrons that we use for dice ;) ) and then goes into detail on how to create maps that accommodate these odd geometries. Includes a neat little cut-out that can be used to make your world. Cool stuff. And yet all the canon D&D worlds apart from Ravenloft fell into the bog-standard spherical planet model (although Mystara had it's hollow interior, which added a neat spin to things) What happened? :shakes head: Bloody design by committee. We want weirdness. We want weirdness.
Giants in the Earth: This month's characters without a single below average stat between them are Poul Anderson's Holger Carlsen (now there's a character you'd think could be converted to D&D without any rules breaking, but no. :sighs heavily:) and Hugi, and T.J. Morgan's Ellide.
Historical names make for better games: Glenn Rahman takes time out from his Divine Right writings to offer a big load of historical names from various cultures, to aid you in naming your characters. Just pick an appropriate culture and roll d20, if you're short of ideas. Much mehness.
Monster Mixing: Adapting D&D monsters to chivalry & sorcery. 23 classic monsters get conversion, including the full range of idiosyncratic fungi, slimes and oozes that were popular back then. Plus two new monsters, the mind thorns, and lemex, get stats for both systems. Pretty decent, as it also goes into some interesting discussion on fitting the monsters together into an ecology, including food chains (umber hulks like to eat ankhegs) Once again we see how other systems were ahead of D&D in quite a few ways. But it'll catch up with a vengance eventually, with the ecology of articles. Come on, any issue now.
This month, instead of a module, we have an extensive interview of painter Tim Hildebrandt. With lots of color photos and pics of him and his his creations. Which makes a nice change. Having produced illustrations for both lord of the rings and star wars, he's in a pretty enviable position. Still, he had to pay his dues with 16 hour a day work stints for readers digest, and other crappy jobs. And no matter how big you get, you still have to deal with executive meddling and media stupidity. Another good example of just how hard being a professional artist is, and how mad you'd have to be to do it if you didn't enjoy it. And these are the lucky ones. A bit depressing, isn't it.
Dragon Issue 49: May 1981
part 2/2
Dragon's bestiary: The Nogra. Didn't we already have this in a previous issue. I'm gonna have to start keeping an index so I can quickly check questions like this. :Sigh: More bloody work. (quite a bit of checking later) No, I must be premembering things, or I've seen this guy elsewhere in mythology, only exactly where has slipped my concious mind. Anyway, tis a creepy felinoid that is constantly enveloped in darkness. Quite possibly a distant relative of the displacer beast, as they have a similar appearance and schtick.
Leomunds tiny hut: What was I just saying about too much recycling? Len takes another shot at the alchemist. Not that they're badly done, like the other recent classes, they have definitely improved on their previous versions in the design stakes. They're still poor cousins to the wizard though. Frankly, the frequency with which they come up baffles me.
Legendaria. A new magazine devoted to a specific FRP campaign? Yeah, that'll last long.
Best Wishes: Another attempt at keeping Wishes from completely breaking the game. The author introduces the Ten Principles of wishing, that are his vision of what even wishes should no be able to do. Oh, nerfers, nerfers nerfers. Bored now. Make them go away.
Wishing makes it so: A short story by Roger Moore. If you had a wish in real life, would you wish you were your character? If you did, would that character notice the difference afterwards? Uh, yeah. I guess you end up better off than the D&D character who wished they were god and found themself the Dungeon master in this world. Not much more to this one. I guess it follows up the last one ok.
Travel & threads for Dragonquest: A short article expanding on Dragonquest, introducing overland travel rules, and adding some extra bits of clothing to the equipment list. Well, I guess D&D didn't add that until the expert set, so why should other rpg's put it in the corebook? One of those short articles that does what it does with a minimum of fuss, and a little humour in the process. (mm, chainmail bikinis. How much should one cost.)
Simulation corner: This month they tackle the tricky question of if it is preferable for a writer to be a freelancer, or fully employed by a particular company. The usual question of assured income or freedom to write for who you chose. They seem to think that things are on the up for freelancers, but it's still hardly a certain thing. Well the hobby is expanding, so that means talent is wanted and the number of companies you have to choose from is increasing. But still, don't ever think it'll be easy. It never will be.
Squad leader: This months scenario is the russian siege of budapest. 17.01.1945. They do seem to be concentrating on WW2, don't they. Was that an explicit part of the game as written, or is it just this authors area of expertise?
Minarian Legends: Glenn turns the spotlight on the magical order, the eaters of wisdom. With aspects of wizards, priests and martial artists, they're a pretty versatile bunch. And as educators of nobles from many countries, they have their fingers in many political pies. Like everyone else in the setting, they've made mistakes and had setbacks, but come through them. But the big question is, can they survive the actual play. Only you can answer that one.
The electric eye: A rather dry article this month, as they give us the code for programing a D&D combat sequence into the computer, allowing you to keep track of everyone's actions right down to the segment, in two different types of code. I didn't enjoy this when Len was doing it, and its not much more interesting here now computers involved, save as an intellectual exercise to prove they can do it.
Oi. Don't disguise your adverts as comics! You had me fooled there for a minute, Jeff & Ernies Dungeon Hobby Shop.
Up on a soapbox: Now this is classic topic. Ed Greenwood floats the idea that players don''t need to know the rules of the game, and in some ways it can be advantageous for the roleplaying aspect if they don't, as they are more likely to play a character concept, rather than fitting the concept around a min-maxed optimized build based more around rules quirks than literary concepts. Which can work, and make for a fun game, as I know from experience. But how can you be sure the GM isn't cheating on his end if you don't know the rules. What's to stop it from turning into freeform? What if you enjoy the tactical side of things, and feel out of control without access to it it. I predict some heated rebuttals to this from the gamist crowd. Which is exactly what this column should be doing, provoking debate and making you think.
Figuratively Speaking: This month, they concentrate on minis that work as PC classes. Wizards, fighters, thieves, even bards and druids, plus generic hirelings to carry your crap. But clerics get no love. ( and neither do mules. (Damn sheep stealing all the good guys away with their pretty eyes and pert fluffy swaying backsides( er, I think I'll stop now, I'm creeping myself out here (plus, way too many nesting brackets)))) That's no good, is it? How are you going to have a complete party (for long) without a healer? You'll have to improvise something.
Reviews: The hammer of Thor is an exceedingly crunchy card game, that is almost more fun to read than it is to play. Too many shiny bits can get in the way, not make things better.
Assault on leningrad is one of those wargames that concentrates on doing one single battle and nothing else. But it is not a particularly good emulation of even that, and would need some reworking to accurately simulate the supply lines and armoured vehicles that were important in that scenario.
World Campaigns is a play by mail game. As with all play by mail games it has a turn rate measured in weeks, so you've got to do lots of planning ahead and stuff in one go. But it's GM gets lots of praise, for being friendly, fair, and willing to talk about the rationale behind the game, as well as tinker with it to improve it.
Wohrom is a game of battle for the throne in a mythical land. While high quality, it is rather expensive $50? Wouldn't that be equivilant to more than $200 nowadays, and the translation of the rules from the original italian is not the greatest.
They really need to standardize the review format. Each of the reviews was done by a different person, and it really did show this time, to the point of being jarring.
Dragonmirth is present, and gets some colour stuff as well.
Whats new? This is! Phil Foglio finally gets his own regular comic strip, having been pretty popular for quite some time. And it is rather silly. I suppose the two newer ones have both been more serious, so they feel the need to introduce another lighter one to redress the balance. Is authorial self-insertion really the way to go? And who is Dixie based off? Does it matter? How long before they start teasing about doing a sex in D&D strip? How long before they actually follow through on that promise.
Wormy and Fineous Fingers are also here. Jasmine and Pinsom are not, having been unceremoniously cancelled mid-storyline without notice. Not that most people'll realize they're gone for good for a few months, as they don't even mention their absence. What brought that decision on? Were they unpopular, did the artists do something wrong, did they quit in response to having their characters used by J.D in the crossover last issue without permission, did Kim decide to throw his new weight around with some arbitrary sackings? Anyone have any idea at all? Well, I guess 5 different comic strips in the same magazine would be pushing it a bit, wouldn't it. Maybe sometime, when it's a bit bigger.
As often seems to be the case, oddly enough, its the issues with significant changes in staff that feel most similar to their recent precursors, as they don't get to stamp their own personality on the running process until they really know the ropes. This is also one of those issues that was really hard to finish, with some really dull bits in it I struggled to find anything to say about. But any job like this is at least 90% perspiration, so I persevered. And if common wisdom is to be believed, things are about to get even better soon, now kim's officially in charge. Lets see if thats true.
Quote from: (un)reason;306055As often seems to be the case, oddly enough, its the issues with significant changes in staff that feel most similar to their recent precursors, as they don't get to stamp their own personality on the running process until they really know the ropes.
I don't know about
Dragon in this period, but in magazines generally, they often have articles written up about six months in advance. Only the editorial and credits get written a couple of weeks before it's all sent to the printers. So with new staff, it can be some months before anything they write gets into print.
Most magazines also have a list of topics for articles which they have a two-year cycle for. That's because few people read a single magazine for more than two years, so nobdoy will complain... except years later when they're ploughing through them all on CD ;)
Dragon Issue 50: June 1981
part 1/2
80 pages. Welcome to a landmark issue, in more ways than one. Both their 50th issue, and their 5th birthday, this means it's time to do a little looking back. My, hasn't the time just flown by. They also have another slew of dragon related articles, as is their habit, and most of the usual suspects show their faces.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter criticizing them for not offering enough material useful to D&D players in issue 46. They also want more wilderness and urban adventures.
Another letter asking for reprints. Which they deny. Even with the massive increase in readership, the logistics involved in reprints make it still not profitable. Just go buy the best ofs instead.
A letter telling a story of another monty haul DM. They aren't going away.
A letter complaining that recent centerpieces have sometimes been off center, so you can't remove them from the magazine cleanly. They apologize, give us permission to photocopy those pages, so you don't have to ruin your magazine to extract them, and promise to do better in the future. How nice of them.
Another letter complaining about how expensive gaming can become.
A letter criticizing the Top secret Module Dr Yes from issue 48. Oh well, can't please everyone.
We also get a nice birthday piccie and get to see the story behind its creation.
Self defense for dragons: Ha ha! This is an article that'll have quite a substantial impact on next edition's dragons. Wing buffets! Kicks! Tail lashes! Scaling damage based upon size. Watch out adventurers, the namesake of the system just got a hell of a lot more badass.
True dragons: Lew Pulsipher also believes dragons as presented in the rules are insufficiently mysterious, magical and badass, and has his own suggestions on how to beef them up and give them more variety. Polymorphing, supernatural terror aura, magic resistance, invisibility detection, again, all suggestions that got incorporated into the next editions dragons. Plus several that didn't, such as anti-magic breath, truenames and custom spell lists. Reminds me of arcana evolved in the way it posits a single race of dragons, each of which has individual powers, rather than dozens of subraces that could never maintain viable breeding populations in an ecology. Again, I quite like most of this.
Hatching is only the beginning: Want to raise a baby dragon? This gives you lots of help, by giving the probabilities that various things will happen, based on how you treat the little nipper. Teach it how to fly and wash itself properly when its young, or it'll have bad habits in those areas for the rest of its life. And watch out, because if you treat it badly, it'll turn on you pretty quickly. Without the inherent sociability of humans, they aren't the kind of creature to put up with abusive relationships. Obviously, using this puts in quite a bit of implied setting and ecology, but I guess you have to make decisions on matters like that. Still, another high quality article, that can be adapted to later editions without too much problem.
The kzinti: They got into the Star trek cartoon. Now Larry Niven's misogynistic alien felines make their way into the D&D multiverse (as usual, a wizard did it.) They go into a lot of detail on their social structure and ecology (because as prime predators, they need quite an infrastructure to support them. If worst come to worst, they can just butcher their troll slaves and eat them repeatedly and let them regenerate.) A well written article, although it does come a little close to mary-sueing its subject as badasses. Still, they did end up losing to humans in the original stories, and he doesn't forget why. You'll just have to make sure the PC's work hard so they don't get outshone by the antagonists.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Only one item this month. However, it is an exceedingly powerful item, with a long and interesting history and set of powers. Barlithian's Magical Mirror. Like many artifacts, though, it'll often be more trouble than it's worth to own, with all manner of strange creatures coming to look at their reflections in it. Maybe it would be best to sell it on. After all, there'll be no shortage of creatures willing to pay ridiculous prices for it, not know what they're getting themselves into.
The 'zines: A big load of fanzines get reviewed this month. Which is intriguing. Nice to see them acknowledging the other people trying to get into their field. I wonder if this'll become a regular feature. Like the computer game reviews, they use a system where each magazine gets marks out of 10 in 4 different fields, allowing you to make a better value judgement than just reading the descriptions.
Abyss is a short AD&D focussed zine with a tendency to go into arcane and complex subjects that they can't really do justice to in the time they have. Still, that does mean they're enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subjects. But when you get too geeky, its hard to get mass appeal.
Alarums and Excursions is the top amateur press association zine, with a circulation of around 500, and regular monthly issues. Obviously pretty well produced, its main flaw is a tendency towards smugness and back-patting commentary between the regular writers. To cover their costs, they charge the writers to get their stuff published in it. Which does suck a little, but thats working in the amateur world for you. :(
The beholder is a D&D zine that is good on campaign building, but lacks exceptional standout articles.
The lords of chaos has lots of cool ideas from enthusiastic writers, but most of it is from peoples home campaigns, and may not be that adaptable to your game.
Morningstar is from australia, and is consistent and reliable, but not exceptional.
Pandemonium is a magazine based in new york, with lots of communication between industry insiders in it that will probably be impenetrable to an outsider looking in.
Quick quincy Gazette (a rather silly name) is largely written and run by its editor. While short, it packs lots of little tidbits within to snack upon and put in your campaign.
The stormlord is a small magazine that probably isn't quite worth its cost.
Trollcrusher is a british magazine that is organized as a series of columns, largely written independently by its various writers.
The wild hunt is a debate focussed magazine, doing the kind of thing that would be handled by forums nowadays in terms of critical scrutiny of products and ideas. Which means it may be a bit highbrow for the average reader.
Zeppelin has been around even longer than Dragon itself (1974). Made in canada, it covers a wide range of stuff in both wargaming and roleplaying, and is fairly professionally produced.
Don't look! Its A...: Lew Pulsipher gets another article published this month, this time on the intricacies of adjudicating gaze attacks. The principle of firghting them while not looking directly at them is an old one, as old as the idea of monsters with gaze attacks itself. So he creates a fairly simple formula that determines the odds of accidentally looking at at their face when trying to fight them based on ability scores, level, distance, equipment, etc. In this case it's a d20, roll under one. Most of it seems pretty reasonable, although I'd put more emphasis on level and less on dexterity. But thats the kind of tedious quibbling I sneer at in the letters page, so I won't dwell on that.
Dragon Issue 50: June 1981
part 2/2
The glyphs of Cerilon: Another regular writer gets another article published. Larry DiTillio expands on the list of effects available to glyphs of warding. This also includes quite a bit of implied setting, as he also gives them flavourful names and pictures of what the various glyphs look like. As is often the case, it's better to go for the more inventive effects than the straight damaging ones, as they are substantially more dangerous overall, plus the players reactions will be more amusing than if it were just a bit of burning they can heal no trouble. (disintegrate all paper items on in their possession. Muahahahaha. Now you have no map of the way out, and no spellbook. Shrunken to 6 inches tall. Random teleportation. Memory loss.) They'd never allow much of this stuff in more recent editions. Oh well, nothing's stopping me from playing older ones save finding a group of players. I know there's still plenty of people around who enjoy this stuff, especially when their players can learn it as well.
Thieves do it in the shadows? Someone's using that joke in an actual advert?! Man, that is such a cheap shot. My eyes, they are rolling.
The Chapel of Silence: This month's module is only 8 pages long, a bit of a letdown after the more epic recent features. Designed for low level characters, it's the kind of 1-3 session dungeon you can drop pretty much anywhere. They forgot to clear out the railroady tournament intro that forces the players into the plot, and there are are several horrible no save effects, and monsters which a party of the suggested level won't be able to beat by straight combat, instead having to use the items found earlier on in the adventure cleverly to have a decent chance. So another frustrating dungeon that you have to really work at to survive and solve then, because they wanted a big chunk of the people attempting it to fail outright. It also has several awkwardly written bits that leave it unclear as to what the author actually intended for certain sections. So all in all, it is not a very good module, for either the players or the DM. I think you can safely skip this.
Minarian legends: Gobins! Even these guys get a balanced account in Minaria. Yes, they do eat people from other races. But they also love their children, and have a fascinating cultural and economic setup (which includes democratic elections in a world still largely governed by heriditary monarchies.) And really given the things humans eat if we have the chance, are we actually any better? Another high quality article full of setting ideas to steal.
The ups and downs of riding high: Flying mounts! One of the things that really changes the overall tone of a campaign, moving it from the mundane towards the awesome. Of course, there are quite substantial logistical issues in obtaining and caring for a flying mount, and that's what this article is here to help with. Intelligent vs nonintelligent mounts. One big mount for everyone or smaller ones for each person, good or evil, each has their own advantages and disadvantages, and optimal ways of caring for them. A solid, but not exceptional article that seems pretty well thought out.
Up on a soapbox: One of those articles that attempts to define the proper way a GM should run their game. This particular soapboxer seems to fall on the firm side of things, encouraging making a ruling and sticking to it, ignoring all further complaints from the players, letting the dice fall as they may, so people know that their life is always on the line, but the GM isn't cheating to make it easier or harder than it should be, and making sure that digression and messing around while the game is on is kept to a minimum. Oh, and don't run games way into the night. Tired players and GM's get cranky and make mistakes. One of those articles that generally seems reasonable, but every now and then throws up something that makes me go man what, and reminds me that the fashion for what is commonly considered good GM'ing has changed quite a bit since then, particularly as regards frequency of character death and use of preprepared modules. They may be starting to build familiar settings, but we're still very much in old skool territory in many ways.
Figuratively speaking only gets a single page this month. And once again, the scanning leaves me unable to really get a good picture of the models. You could definitely have done a better job of this, WotC.
Reviews: The fury of the norsemen is a fun little boardgame of rape and pillaging. Slightly stacked in the favour of the viking players, but you'd expect that, wouldn't you.
The morrow project is another post-apocalyptic game where you play cryogenically frozen soldiers trying to reclaim an earth full of mutants and shit. Technically a roleplaying game, it seems more oriented towards tactical combat situations than character development, with a heavy emphasis on realistic weaponry. Still, if you want a less zany post apoc game than gamma world, this could do the job. After all, roleplaying is more a matter of a good group than system.
Dragons bestiary: Giant vampire frogs! Adapted from an article in OMNI magazine. And definitely not written by PETA girl. :D Man, these things are pains in the ass. One of those monsters which grabs onto you, meaning any attacks against it have a good chance of hitting the victim instead. And there are few things more annoying than being accidentally killed by another PC. One of those monsters designed to annoy players as much as they are to fight characters.
Simulation Corner: More talk on the cold hard economics of being a professional game designer, this time from the perspective of a company owner. The need for starting capital to get the first games designed and advertised, the question of mail order vs retail distribution, and the respective benefits and drawbacks of each. ( a question that is being seriously revisited in the modern day, as the internet makes direct ordering a far more viable option. ) The problem of offering too many discounts and freebies and undercutting your profits. All stuff that is relevant for virtually any business in any field. Just because this is a labour of love, don't get the idea that working in gaming won't be bloody hard work.
The electric eye: More on choosing your computer properly. Computers are changing rapidly, and dropping in price, even though virtually everything else is going up, so you might want to hold off on buying one until the market is a little more stable (but don't keep doing it, or you'll be waiting 30 years at least ;) ) Look out for hidden costs, and don't buy any old books about computers, because they'll be useless. Once again we are reminded how much things have changed in this area. But other things are still the same, such as the tricks people try to sell you things.
Dragonmirth is here, and really rather amusing. What's new has a failure of artwork, and resorts to the old tricks Dirt used, turning out the lights, and recycling pictures. Fineous fingers gets King Kong in to help him flush out those halflings. And Wormy reveals the secret of how he got his treasure hoard. And it's a doozy of a revelation that'll be important for the rest of the run. Feel the meta.
I think they've just about pulled off making this a proper celebratory issue. A combination of looking back, bringing in familiar faces, and trying new things. There are still a few dull articles, but I suspect that'll be the case for the rest of the run, as they're too big and diverse now for every article to please everyone.
Dragon Issue 51: July 1981
part 1/2
100 pages. Shouldn't you have done the beefing of the page count last issue? Oh well. Better late than never. This issue is a second traveller special, with 7 articles devoted to it. (which has absolutely no connection to the fact that The Space Gamer's most recent issue was also a traveler special, honest. We're not taking bribes from GDW and Marc Miller either) Plus another wonderfully weird game from Tom Wham. Lots of other returning things this issue. The band is all together, and they're playing some pretty tight grooves. So lets let them rock.
In this issue:
The D&D computer labyrinth game from mattel now available in all good toy stores. Batteries not included. Pieces not edible. Please do not introduce my little pony crossovers to the game.
Out on a limb: Len rebutts the letter in issue 49 attacking his archer class. It turns out he's a longbow fanboi and crossbow h8er, which is why he doesn't give halflings a bonus as archers.
Two letters, (plus plenty more that weren't printed) criticizing the samurai article from issue 49. Why am I not surprised. Yeah, they weren't what you would expect to go under that name, are they. Which Kim does acknowledge. But they stand by it in terms of quality and playability.
A letter from the designer of fury of the norsemen comments on last issues review (man, they really are speeding up their turnaround time) of his game. And he also takes the time to give us some errata. How nice of him.
Two letters commenting on the AD&D exam from issue 46.
And finally, a letter requesting that they go back to giving modules separate page numberings, so they can be removed without the magazine looking messy. Yeah, I'd prefer that as well.
Make your own aliens: yay. Yet more random generation tables. What a wonderful and original idea [/sarcasm] Still like regular character generation in traveller, half the fun is seeing what you end up with and trying to make sense of it. And playing a three armed, two headed, parthenogenic creature with ultraviolet vision, eyes on its hands, ears on its legs, sonar, perfect memory, and a fetching red and yellow scale pattern could be pretty fun, in the right kind of game. But watch out for those damn speciesists. Its not always easy being green.
Plotting a course for choosy players: Part of the idiosyncratic fun of traveller was its lifepath system. But some people would prefer more choice over their character development. This system doesn't eliminate the randomness, but does give you the ability to sway the crucial dice rolls at times. The odds of getting everything you want are still stacked against you though, just like real life. Lots of dull tables in here.
New ideas for old ships: Sometimes you can't afford to buy exactly the ship you want, so you get what you can and then jury rig it to your needs. Sometimes a pre-owned ship'll come with some of these modifications. Roll on these tables if you want to add a little unpredictability to your second hand purchases. Yes, more random tables. It is Traveller. What were you expecting, chicken marengo? A nice shower and a jog before brunch at a little restaraunt I know? No, you'll have random tables, and you'll like it.
In defense of computers: Man traveller computers really do look anachronistic these days. And it looks like even back in the day, people were picking holes in what their reasonable capabilities should be. And this article tries to defend this. And does a reasonable job, given what they knew at the time. In hindsight though, this is pretty laughable. Reality has simply moved on too much.
Planet parameters: Guidelines for determining a planets approximate gravity, mass, rotational period, size, etc, based on real world figures. Of course, you are free to deviate from that if it would make things more interesting, as planets are hardly homogenous. But at least this'll give you a solid grounding in real world physics to work from.
Masers and cameras: Stats for a couple of new pieces of equipment that you may find useful in combat and reconnaissance. I think they're starting to struggle a bit and are just putting any old submission they can get to fill out the page count.
The miller milk bottle: Ookay. We've reached the final article in the traveller section at last . And it looks like they're really reaching to think of things to put in there. This final article covers the many uses of the humble milk bottle, for some reason. (Yeah, I'm baffled too) Almost as many as those douglas adams found for the towel. So remember to bring one with you, mmkay. It could save your life.
The winged folk: Oh man. Now here's a classic example of a mary sue race if ever there was one. The winged folk, also known as Al karak elam, long lived prettyboys and girls with minimum attributes of 12 or higher in every single ability score, pretty good level limits for the era, and lots of general niftyness without many drawbacks. Any DM who lets their players play one deserves everything they get. Thank god wingfic has ruined my ability to ever take stuff like this seriously again.
Leomund's tiny hut: This month, len gives us rules for playing 0th level characters, and the training they need to go through to reach 1st level. In multiple stages, covering every special ability, each of which requires months of training. For when playing 1st level characters trudging through the mud and facing goblins in dank little moldy caves isn't disempowering enough for you. A far cry from the later BD&D approach (as soon as an 0th level hireling earns an experience point, they get to choose a class straight away) I don't disapprove of this as much as I thought I would, as it is pretty well done. But I still wouldn't want to play in a game that includes this stuff for more than a one-shot. 1st level characters are more than weak enough for my tastes.
The worshippers of Ratar: A Runequest article about the aforementioned god. A somewhat secretive cult of magic, they seem designed as antagonists, as the default setup has them infiltrating the government of a city and taking it over covertly. Yes, it might be an old chessnut, but thats because its a good one. Mechanically it seems reasonable, as far as I can tell.
Dragon Issue 51: July 1981
part 2/2
A new breed of bug: A new unit for Metagaming's Chitin, the wargame of competing bug hives. The low hacker, designed to increase the role of stealth, defense and reconnaissance. Another article that seems reasonable enough from what I can tell without knowing the precise details of the rules.
It's not easy being good: Ahh, paladins. One of the most problematic classes in the game. Unless the GM and player are on the same page when it comes to what behaviour constitutes lawful good, there will be problems. Because being stripped of your powers when you don't feel you deserve it sucks. That and its a hard line between don't be stupid and foolhardy, and you must spend your existence promoting law and good and smiting evil wherever it may be found. Roger Moore's opinion on this subject is that moral relativism does not have a place in D&D, drugs and casual sex are not lawful good behaviour, full stop, as they can have unfortunate concequences that gets in the way of being ready to go out and do good at all times; and the paladins code should be pretty strictly enforced. (and so should the anti-paladins, by the way. One act of genuine generosity, selflessness or compassion, and you're out. ) If they look like they're about to stray, heavy handed hints from the GM should be used to make sure they realize their god disapproves. And if they go through with it, sometimes they'll just be smitten and killed outright on top of losing their powers. Which isn't very nice, is it.
Thou shalt play this way: The paladin pontification continues. Robert Bezold is rather more constructive in his approach to defining what paladins should and shouldn't do, setting out a sample paladins code in the form of the ten commandments. Yes, it may be another cliche, but drawing on the christian tradition is easy to relate to, even for those of us who don't subscribe to it, simply because of familiarity via exposure. You want to invent a whole pantheon of religions and their customs that have nothing in common with real world ones, be my guest.
Search for the emperor's treasure: Tom Wham presents this months centerpiece, a somewhat comical fantasy boardgame. Will you return the emperors treasure to him, or keep it for yourself? Where could it be hidden? etc etc. Once again he's come up with the goods. If only he'd managed to come up with them a month earlier, so we could have a proper birthday game instead of a half-assed railroady module.
A part of the game: A piece of fiction by Darren Schweitzer. Never trust the things you see in desert oases. Even if the illusion doesn't fade straight away, you never know what horrible stuff might really be behind the pretty image. A nicely dark little story I thoroughly enjoyed.
Con season is coming up, so we get lots of stuff on what's happening and when.
Figuratively speaking is back to two pages this issue. To go with the theme, they're concentrating on sci-fi appropriate mini's such as spaceships and soldiers.
The electric eye: Wouldya like ta take a survey? It'll help us know what to put in future issues. Aw, go on, goon goan gowan Go ON!
The world of beysycx? I don't remember that one. Looks like another advert for a D&D compatible 3rd party product. Anyone got any info on this?
The rasmussen files: Lots of new courses and a few new traits this month. Although do you really want to be colour-blind, deaf, know what your blood group is, etc? I think those definitely fall under the category of unnecessary crunch. Having to spend months of downtime learning new things does rather get in the way of adventuring. Did len and merle work together at some point, as they seem to be of similar minds on the matter of additional crunch.
Dragon's bestiary: Two rather unimaginatively named monsters this issue. Darkdwellers are basically smart trolls with the special mining powers of dwarves who ride carnivorous dinosaurs into battle. Whether that is awesomely metal or deeply cheesy and unimaginative is for you to decide. Pirahna bats are another D&D hybrid monster in classic format, and do exactly what you would expect given their component creatures, fly around, swarm you and strip all the flesh from your body. What a lovely way to go. Lets hope they don't learn how to hide in shadows and develop a communal hive mind. ;)
Minarian legends: A story of the fairies of minaria, the Golglio favre and Ta-botann, and how schardenzar, a half-fae, became another great hero and sorcerer. Full of classic tropes such as the stolen fairy bride who leaves her husband if he violates a particular commandment, and enemies who lose their power if prevented from touching the element they are bonded with, this is another strong addition to the mythology of Divine Right.
Reviews: The sci-fi theme continues in this section, with lots of traveller focussed stuff. Triplanetary is a board game of interplanetary conflict, with a exceedingly good system for handling the way space travel works in a form that is realistic, but not too complicated to make a fun game, and can handle a wide range of scenarios, including plenty of scope for player designed ones.
Traders and gunboats is another traveller supplement (the 7th official one, man, marc could really churn them out back in the day) focussing upon more starships, and the things they get up to as they explore the universe.
Ley sector is a judges guild supplement for Traveller detailing an area of space and the planets and creatures within. Which like any module, is pretty usefull for when the players want to go somewhere you haven't detailed yourself yet.
Fenris and Tethys are two starship plans by FASA, also intended for use with Traveller. Looks like lots of companies were producing supplements for the game. They have detailed ship plans and sample NPC's running them, so they can also be dropped into your game to fight, buy or negotiate with easily enough.
Whats new is starting to get into its stride. Fineous racks up the tension another notch. Wormy gets spectacularly extraplanar. The rest of dragonmirth trundles onwards.
An issue that has considerably more for other systems than D&D, and makes me wonder how long they keep that policy up for. They still had lots of non D&D stuff when I started reading, which means they're likely to keep this policy for at least the rest of the 80's. Which is pleasing. While I might not know all the systems, concentrating on one game and nothing else for years would get rather dull. Variety is the spice of life and all that.
Dragon Issue 52: August 1981
part 1/2
84 pages. This month, clerics get the spotlight upon them. And I'm guessing they'll be running through the other classes in the near future, as its the kind of topic that's always good to fill out a load of articles with every few years, like women in gaming.
In this issue.
A Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Oh god, I remember seeing these adverts being mocked. A jackalwere! Don't look in it's eyes or you'll sleep forever! So this is when they start. I get the impression that we'll be seeing more in this series in the near future. Honestly, this is preaching to the choir. You do not need to run these adverts in this magazine. Concentrate more on TV and stuff, getting it out there.
Out on a limb: A letter criticizing issue 49 for putting a big interview in the middle, rather than more modules. You ain't gonna be happy with this months issue either then.
Another letter criticizing issue 49, this time for focussing too much on convention stuff.
A letter praising the interview from issue 49, and asking for more. Because they do so love presenting contrasting viewpoints.
A letter from someone who worked his characters up to high level the hard way, and resents being lumped in with the monty haul crowd, or being asked to retire their character. They also object to making deities untouchably powerful, particularly considering the number of real world myths where a mortal manages to somehow get the better of a god. It makes for better stories when gods aren't untouchable, as comparing greek and norse myth to the bible demonstrates.
A letter from someone who wants articles to be less DM focussed, and more useful to the players. After all, they make up a far bigger proportion of people roleplaying.
The role of the cleric: Or, Verily, Archbishop Turpin kicketh righteous posterior. Why should D&D clerics not behave likewise? Know they not the tales of heroic priests to draw from? Or those of adventurous shamen who outsmarted the spirits and monsters bedeviling their lands. It is most demeaning to see the glorious servants of gods treated as mere medics and second string fighters or wizards. Be we weak? Be we restricted to pseudochristian dogma? I say thee NAY! We will have respect as befits our station. We will smite those who oppose us. We will not rest until it is proven that clerics are deserving of a place in adventuring parties to a degree matching any fighter or thief. Did I mention the massive hard-on for Archbishop Turpin, by the way? As usual, the themed section comes out with its biggest gun first. And quite an impressive ...... weapon it is too. Ok, you can put it away now. No, Really. Put it away. I don't care how much epic poetry you read me, I don't swing that way. Thank you.
This land is my land: Hmm. This is very interesting. Should the power of a cleric be influenced by the amount of power his deity has in an area? Quite possibly. But probably not quite to the extent this article posits, as it'd mainly benefit stay at home clerics and hinder adventuring ones. Which would not be useful or fun from a PC's point of view. This kind of thing is ok when you're going extraplanar, at which point things should be epic, weird and stacked against you, but not for normal adventures.
The sense of sacrifices: Even good gods like receiving gifts. (including sacrifices of sentient beings it seems, as long as they're of an alignment opposed to the deities. That's a little dubious. Another example of the double standards applied to the morals of deities.) If you give them something special, they might do so in return, granting a miracle above and beyond the usual spells. Don't take it for granted though, and don't give them the wrong stuff. You are their servant, they are not yours. A bit of a filler article, really.
Sage advice is back again, after 3 months off, and is joining in on the cleric theme. Exactly who is responsible for answering the questions is no longer clear, however.
How many spells should starting clerics know and where do they learn them from (clerics can automatically access any spell on their list that they are of a high enough level to cast, unless they piss off their god. )
If you attack a monster you turned, can it fight back? (yes)
Can a cleric appeal again in a day if their god does not grant their request the first time (yes, but it's not a good idea. Do not take your deities generosity for granted for a smiting often offends. )
How much area is covered in darkness by the reverse of the light spells (the same as for the normal version)
How long does the paralyzation caused by a glyph of warding last (Godammnit. Did the writer for get to put a duration for this stuff again? We recommend 1-6 turns)
Can good clerics cast cause wounds and evil ones cast cure (yes, on both counts)
Do morally neutral clerics turn or command undead? (Depends on the deity. Use your common sense. )
Since elves and half-orcs have no souls, does that mean they are immune to the reversed forms of the raising spells which kill you instantly (No. One form of a reversible effect not applying does not mean the other does not as well. Quite the opposite in fact, in most cases.)
What happens when you attempt to resurrect an undead creature? (it'll work if it has a body present to raise and died within your time limit, but you need to touch it, and suffer the concequences of doing so before the spell takes effect. Depending on how it became undead, it may still be pissed off at you once raised, or of dubious sanity if it was undead for quite a while.)
If a spawning undead under your control creates a spawn, is that spawn also automatically under your control (No. Beware the chain of command, because it can get out of control very easily as you add more links to it. )
What level does a cleric have to be to become a saint (becoming a saint is a level independent process that is entirely up to the GM's adjudication. We don't want to give rules for everything. )
Basic D&D points of view: John Holmes and Tom Moldvay talk about the new basic set, (yay!) and how it has improved on both OD&D, and the first edition of the basic set. Making it clearer for people who've never roleplayed before, and don't have someone else to explain the game to them is of paramount importance. The plethora of random tables and advice on how to use them make it easy for both players and DM's to start playing quickly, with no experience of the game. The new module, the keep on the borderlands, is a massive improvement on the previous one. But the dice still suck. Horrible little blue things with no marking of the numbers to make them easier to read. And beware the d4. You don't want to tread on that baby. Very interesting because it reveals that John, like so many people grappled with infravision and alignments, what exactly they mean, and how they should be applied. If even he had problems, then maybe the new edition's designers were right in stripping these right back. Still, they didn't seem to stop this edition becoming the biggest selling one ever, and I certainly had no problems understanding the concepts at the age of 8, so they must have been doing a lot more right than they did wrong.
Leomund's tiny hut: This month, we get lots of stuff for greyhawk, with Gary's official seal of approval. Random tables for determining birthplace and languages spoken are more interesting than they first appear, as they also give secondary details such as the most common alignments in these various countries, and the appearances of people from various regions. This is important, because it reveals that the humans of oerth have ethnic groupings not found on earth. (brown skinned redheads, gold and bright yellow (as opposed to RL oriental colouring) skinned people, coppery and bronzed tones, amber coloured eyes.) Which is something I rather approve of, as it's an easy way to make the world more fantastic without having to alter things stats. I wonder if they'll remember to portray them like that in future art?
The undercover job guide: A little Top Secret article expanding on good jobs for undercover agents to get, and how much you can expect to get paid for them given your skill level in the appropriate abilities. Obviously, this stuff is well out of date now, due to inflation, but it seems like a good time saver if you want to add a little more depth to your character without doing all the research yourself.
Dragon Issue 52: August 1981
part 2/2
Another artist profile is this months centrefold. Boris Vallejo. And he is...... certainly under no illusions as to the level of his abilities and achievements. Once again we see that attaining fame isn't just about talent, but also a willingness to both work your ass off, and not being ashamed to negotiate prices and sell yourself successfully. And yet like many workaholics, he still sees himself as lazy, and has not forgotten his insecurities from when he was poor and skinny. Which as ever, is pretty interesting to me.
Giants in the earth: This month's munchkins are shakespeare's Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban (who is represented as a half-orc. Hmm. What does that remind me of?) and Greek Myth's Circe.
Cavern of the sub-train: Oooh. Looks like we have a second big feature this month. This is a gamma world module, another case of taking a perfectly ordinary 20th century invention and making it into a mysterious adventure for the mutants of the future to deal with. A pretty short scenario that can be used as a throwaway, or expanded into a whole series of adventures as the characters explore the underground tunnels and find things lurking beneath in various places.
Dragon's bestiary: This months monsters are the rhaumbusun, rocky lizards with a paralyzing gaze, possibly related to basilisks, and pelins, which are essentially organic zeppelins, and therefore inherently utterly awesome, especially once you factor in the ecological stuff which tries to put a logical slant on how such a creature could exist (ha). Any player with any imagination would want to capture a baby one and train it. Another creature I'd really like to put in a game.
The history of siege warfare: A system free historical article (is it just me, or have they been doing less of those lately?)
Following the request for a bounty hunter, they have been inundated by submissions. So they present us with three of the best of them (immediately catching them up with alchemists, samurai and witches in number of versions :D ) so you can choose which one(s) to allow into your game. Number 1 is probably somewhat overpowered, with powers drawn from the assassin, thief and ranger lists at pretty good levels. Only the fact that it is limited to 13th level, and the highest one is restricted to a single master bounty hunter that you have to kill to take the job of, druid stylee, keeps it from getting too out of hand. Number 2 is basically a ranger plus a bit and minus a bit, which is mainly useful if you want to skip the supernatural powers, fluff and restrictions of the standard ranger, and just play an outdoors huntery type. Number 3 is probably my favourite, as it has the greatest number of unique abilities, rather than just recycling preexisting powers in a new combination, and has more focus on the social sleuthing and subdual side of their job than the other two. All are pretty well written, and I'd probably allow them in my game, apart possibly from the 1st one if I wanted a more serious game. (there can be only one style classes have their place, and that is not for when I'm trying to be realistic. )
Up on a soapbox: Another Lew Pulsipher article, as he talks about the problem of fixing mistakes in your game, particularly when it comes to rulings that have proved to be bad for the game, and magical items and abilities that have unbalanced a character relative to the rest of the group. How do you keep this from spoiling the game, and sort out the problem without creating resentment in the player who got the shiny overpowered toys? He reccomends admitting you made a mistake, and not trying to fix a metagame issue by in game vendettas. Open talking about problems is the way to solve them.
Also on the soapbox this month is Tom Armstrong, giving us another reminder that players will read the rulebooks, even the ones they aren't supposed to, so you shouldn't hesitate to create new monsters and items, or alter existing ones. Never let the rules lawyers take over your game, and turn it into a mere tactical exercise. As ever, they probably put the better article first.
Minarian legends: The southern city-states get their day in the sun. Defined by a cycle of conquest, spoiled offspring, descent into decadence, and subsequent fall, the deserts and savannas offer their own distinctive spin on the dramas of fantasy history. Can they secure a lasting place on the world stage, for a change. The answer, as ever, is in your hands.
Simulation corner: They start an extended series on game design this month, talking about the process you go through to get from that first idea to a finished product. Mostly a checklist of common sense stuff that is applicable to nearly any creative project, this is the kind of thing that is really rather helpful, and often gets forgot about. Creating virtually anything is going to involve more perspiration than inspiration, and while you might not be able to control the inspiration part, you can definitely set things up so you accomplish more for your effort with good organizational thinking.
Figuratively speaking: Lots of big minis (oh, the irony) this month. Giants, huge birds with riders, an ogre, a spider, a beholder, a dragon, and a castle. The pics are actually legible this time as well, which is nice.
The dragon's augury: As they're seriously starting to split the reviews up into various categories now, I guess I shall have to start calling this by its given name, to prevent confusion.
BRP gets its first release as a generic system, separate from Runequest. In only 16 pages, it gives a complete basic system, plus (and here's the important part) it presents it in a clear, friendly fashion designed to get complete newcomers to roleplaying going quickly, with examples, and advice on how to find more players and other peripheral stuff. Another great example of how much lower the bar for entry to the hobby was then. It's no wonder far more people were trying it without any help from current gamers at that point.
Timewarp is a sci-fi wargame who's primary distinctive point is a strong attempt to model the time dilation fast sub-light travel results in. With turns 5 years long, it does cover quite an impressive scope in that respect, modeling wars that cover generations with different participants aging at different rates. But unfortunately, apart from that one gimmick, it's not that a great a system, and has limited replay value.
Dungeon tiles do exactly what you'd expect, provides an easy to assemble set of underground geography for your minis to inhabit, for those of you like to keep precise track of where everyone is.
Off the shelf: Another new feature that looks like it's going to be a regular. Fiction books are now given a separate section to be reviewed in from the RPG's, boardgames and suchlike. Which is a nice development.
Dream park is a Larry Niven and Steven Barnes' take on virtual reality games, and therefore has a lot of relevance to roleplayers. Just how far can the line between fantasy and reality be blurred, and how far is a company willing to take these things when large amounts of money is involved.
Dragonslayer, by Wayland Drew manages to add considerably more depth to the characters than the movie did.
Sunfall, by C.J Cherryh is a strong selection of short stories set in the decline of the earth, as resources are exhausted and the sun slowly dies. Which may be a bit depressing, but hey.
Horseclans Odyssey, by Robert Adams, is another postapocalyptic future novel, that is part of a larger series, with lots of well done technical detail and strong characterization (at which point the reviewer takes a snipe at Lin Carter) that leaves the reviewer consistently entertained and wondering what happens next.
Dragonmirth is here, and joining in with the clerical theme. What's new and Wormy are also here. We see our first mention of the long to be delayed sex in D&D issue. (next month, we promise.) Meanwhile, in Wormy, we get a hilarious demonstration of just how stupid goblins are, and how seductive the lure of wargaming is. How much must this strip have shaped peoples conception of the various D&D races at the time.
Well, it looks like D&D is back in the majority with a vengance. But they're still putting in plenty of stuff for lovers of other systems as well. And with sex in D&D and Off the Shelf, we get to see two more things that will be significant right down the rest of the run start. Another busy month that took quite a lot of effort to get all the way through. But I think it was worth it. Not long now until D&D really goes critical, now the red box set is unleashed on the market.
Dragon Issue 53: September 1981
part 1/2
84 pages. The class series continues, with monks getting their turn in the spotlight this month. We also get a particularly iconic bit of cover art, that I remember being reprinted in future books several times, most of the usual suspects, and a new column. Just another busy day at dragon publishing. Onward we go.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: Oookay. We have a rather interesting editorial from Jake here where he goes to some length to distance tabletop roleplaying from LARPing, and especially Steve Jackson's new game KILLER, in the classic "we have no connection to those wierdos, and do not want to be associated with anything they do" stylee. So much for geek solidarity. And this magazine and LARPing got off to such a nice start. Yes, I know people dressing up and running around in public can be a bit embaressing, but they're no more likely to engage in genuine psychotic stuff than tabletoppers. And they get considerably more girls. So stop kvetching.
Out on a limb: Another letter asking for reprints, which forces kim to make another frustrated lengthy reply as to exactly why this would not be economical or ethical.
A letter complaining about the plethora of new classes being presented as NPC's, not PC classes. They reply that they do this so that the default answer for if they're allowed is no. This is because if PC's are nonstandard classes, they can't be transferred from one campaign to another as easily. Remember, AD&D is a tournament system, so variants must be removable if you're to properly synch with other GM's who don't have access to the same stuff as you. To do otherwise would be high-handed and elitist. Er, ok then. (man what)
A letter from someone who claims not to like the company, yet most of his specific statements about their content are complementary. This confuses the editors as well as me. Normally it's the other way round, with people who mostly like stuff picking at the little flaws.
He's got a lot to kick about: An extensive article about the flaws of the monk, exactly how and why he is underpowered compared to other character classes, and then setting out to fix this. Hey, power creep! Next thing you know, everyone'll want some. Another example of give them a new power at every level based design, that I'm pretty sure overcompensates, making them too powerful. I am rather dubious about this one.
Defining and realigning the monk: More monk related pontification, this time focusing more on their position in the game world. Particular attention is given to the problem of how they should behave, and the logistics of their upper heirachy, how the upper level monks are supposed to deal with both training new monks, and getting more experience so they can challenge their superiors and move upwards. The author use some decidedly dubious statistics to try and justify how this could work. Which really just proves how full of holes the D&D implied setting was. Its no wonder they got rid of monks in 2nd edition if they were this problematic to deal with.
Sage advice is also answering monk related questions this month.
If my party faces another group of monks, would my monk character have to side with them against my own party. (No. )
How do I make sure a lawful evil monk doesn't cheat when I challenge him for his position? (You don't have too. Even evil monks have to abide by the monks code of honour or lose their abilities. If the GM forgets that, cite this article at him. )
If a monk stops being lawful, does he become a thief (no, he loses all his monk levels, and has to start a new class from scratch. And you thought paladins had it hard. However, that can be any class you qualify for, not just thief)
Can a human fighter become a monk (yes, if they have the ability scores. But remember, humans become dual-classed, demihumans become multiclassed. There is a distinct difference, which we will explain to you once again, because it's obvious from your letters that way too many of you still don't get it.)
If I lose the ability scores neccecary for my class, do I have to abandon it and lose all my abilities from it. (No. And from the sounds of things, your GM is being rather unpleasant and cheaty in the way they implemented this, and may have a vendetta against you or the class in general. Characters should never suffer ability damage from simple standard damaging attacks, as this goes against the abstract hit point system.)
Once I get to 8th level+ do I have to play out all the challenges for higher levels? Will I also have to put up with lower level characters challenging me? (yes, and that's up to the DM, but we strongly reccommend it, as it would be unrealistic if you were the only one moving up the heirachy at that point. This is not a computer game, there should be other people doing stuff in the world at the same time. )
Can monks unarmed attacks hurt creatures that need magical weapons to hit them (no. You'll just have to sit those fights out. Doesn't that suck.)
Another new class, The Oracle, gets a writeup. (well, its a bit too soon for a fourth witch or alchemist class) Another one that seems rather unsuited to adventuring, given the nature of their powers, and involves a load of implied setting stuff that falls apart all too easily if looked at hard. Frankly, given how much more specific and reliable the divination powers PC spellcasters have are, this is rather pointless. Vague predictions of the future don't work well in RPG's anyway, given how big a part randomness plays in the outcome. I really don't approve.
Understanding Armory: Iiiits Mr Pulsipher again! He is getting a lot of articles published lately. This time, he's talking about heraldry. It's development, conventions, and the legalities around it. Which could be a dull topic, but lew manages to keep it interesting. It's just another part of making a rich detailed world that feels real.
Some universal rules: Speaking of creating your own world, Roger Moore goes into some more general discussion on doing just that. Interestingly, it seems like playing the same characters under different DM's, who would then take the game in very different directions, was more common back then. He's not that keen on that, and would prefer characters who are properly integrated into a single world, playing a consistent storyline. Of course, to achieve that, you need to make up a world. The rest of the article is devoted to details on one of his own recent campaign worlds, (Well, Ed's doing it, so why shouldn't Roger?) and ways of getting characters from one universe to another. Another perfectly decent article from another of our reliable regulars.
Up on a soapbox: Oooh. Disabilities and roleplaying. A pretty important topic I'm surprised it's taken them this long to get around to covering. (and they still haven't got around to race and gaming. What's up with that?) A person with cerebral palsy gives her account of becoming a gamer, and the difficulties she faces in things other people take for granted, such as rolling dice and writing stuff on the character sheet. Man, escapism is harder than you think, when your body doesn't work properly. (And even that's not as big a problem as trying to play with the mentally disabled, as I know from personal experience) A pretty strong article which gives us a good picture of the problems some people have to face, and how lucky the rest of us are.
Dragon Issue 53: September 1981
part 2/2
Giants in the earth is replaced by Larger than life, which seems to do much the same thing, only in a more compact format, and focussing on even more overpowered characters, as they are explicitly intended to be on a deity level of power. They start by giving us the Bogatyrs of the Russian Byliny stories, and many of their enemies, including one would go on to enjoy solo success in future products. Baba Yaga. This is intriguing, because it's a set of myths I was entirely unaware of before now. Not sure if I support the overall idea of this, but at least they've got off to a strong start.
The Garden of Nefaron is this month's centerpiece module. We're back to a full 16 pager here. And very distinctively, it's an around name level module aimed at evil and neutral parties, rather than the usual do-gooders, featuring heavy use of psionics. Which is interesting. Nice to see them catering to a different kind of party, for a change. Modules should have plenty of variety.
The rasmussen files: Merle gives us a load of Gming advice, in response to letters recieved. How to deal with players who treat missions like a dungeon crawl, rather than an espionage mission, and start killing everything in sight; and how to keep players from just having whatever equipment they can afford, regardless of its appropriateness to the current mission. Yeah, he really isn't into the cinematic approach, is he.
Dragon's Bestiary: This months monsters are the Argas, super lawful good lizard creatures who eat precious metal and drain magic items. Good thing they're on our side, because you'd hate to have them as enemies. Narra are also exceedingly moral, close relations of shedu and lammasu, only with bulls bodies instead, they can be both effective guards and healers, and are quite happy to do so if asked nicely by people of the right alignment. Nice to see a few more additions to the forces of good, they're so outnumbered in D&D. Our final monster this month is the oculon, a weird rubbery construct, with an eye on a long stalk. Don't ask me why a wizard would want to make something like that? I suspect by the time you get to 18th level you've long exhausted mundane forms of entertainment, and need to go for ever more esoteric things just to get any pleasure out of life. :eyelid twitches:
Leomund's tiny hut: Len looks at another part of D&D design that he considers flawed, that of opening doors. It makes no sense for all doors to be just as easy to open. The solution he comes up with is fairly elegant. Give doors a strength rating, and compare it to the strength of the person trying to open it to determine the odds. He also looks at the magical means of penetrating (and reinforcing) a stronghold. To top it off, he also gives us the method for building a teleport pod network, for those wizards who want to get around their home faster, and drop unwanted guests who try to use it in the shark pit. Which is all pretty neat, and the kind of stuff that can be applied to actual play quite easily.
How to give disease a fighting chance: Clerics curing any diseases you're confronted with too easily? Make the diseases so badass that only a cleric of high enough level can fix them. Another generic nerfbat article. Yawn.
The ways of the Triffids: John Wyndhams classic plant monsters get the D&D treatment. Like the kzinti one a few months ago, this is a pretty detailed account from an obvious fanboy. Instant death and blinding if they hit you requiring separate saves to avoid? That's rather a lot of overkill, and would result in quite a lot of unhappy players. But not as many as a properly played beholder ;) Don't mess with them.
Merchants deserve more too: Oh noes. All the other traveller career paths have got expansions in supplements by now, but merchant's haven't. We must rectify this forthwith! And lo, it was done. On to the next article.
Simulation corner: part 2 of the game design series talks about building a model of whatever it is you want to emulate, and how to go about this. How much compromise between accuracy and speed of play are you willing to make? Is game design primarily an art or a science? Are you sure you want to go for realism anyway? Careful you don't delve into too much theory wank and get nothing done.
Junta needs more instability: The game of corrupt african dictators looting their country and bringing it to ruin (my, how topical. Another thing that's changed depressingly little in 30 years) gets a load of houserules from Glenn Rahman, in an attempt to make things more dynamic. As this is another game I've never heard of before, I can't comment on their effectiveness, but since this is Glen we're talking about, they're probably pretty well thought out. The writing is certainly as high quality as ever from him.
The electric eye: My god. Computer controlled models being used in movies for quicker, more realistic effects. New home computers with 16k of memory! Three inch thick tv screens! You could almost carry these things around. Maybe you could sit them on your lap. Hmmm. This has definite potential. ;) Oh, and here's some errata. At only half a page, this months column feels a bit underdone. Well it is just a load of random bit's he couldn't fit in other articles. Still more entertaining than many long pontifications on single subjects, though.
Coppercon, urcon, rheincon, babel conference. That's a lot of amusingly named conventions in the near future. :D
The dragon's augury: Stalin's Tanks is yet another WWII game, based around the eastern front, and as you might guess, primarily focussing on individual level combat between armoured vehicles. Not particularly realistic, and plagued by typos, it still manages to be a fairly fun game.
Warlock, a card game of dueling wizards, gets avery short and not particularly impressed review. It's probably too expensive for the amount of entertainment provided to be worth it.
A house divided is based around the american civil war, and it yet another reasonably fast moving game to spend an evening on.
Dragonmirth is here. Fineous fingers and what's new are present. Sex and D&D is once again cancelled, this time due to dragon infestation. How are they going to get out of this one? Wormy is absent, obviously superfluous to requirements with this many other dragons around.
The D&D adventure continues. Meet auric, the fighter, Tirra, the elf, and Khellek, the wizard. No cleric or thief? This group is doomed. Well, they are fighting hoards (sic) of creatures, so I guess their enemies they aren't as mobile as they should be. ;)
One of those issues with more than its fair share of forgettable articles. But there's still plenty of interesting stuff in it, particularly in the smaller articles that don't get so bogged down in dull details. And its also nice to see them starting to seriously consider that AD&D might be flawed and need redesigning in some respects. Now all they need to do is convince the rest of the company. ;)
Quote from: (un)reason;307423And this magazine and LARPing got off to such a nice start. Yes, I know people dressing up and running around in public can be a bit embaressing, but they're no more likely to engage in genuine psychotic stuff than tabletoppers. And they get considerably more girls. So stop kvetching.
Minor grammar point: it should be "they get considerably
bigger girls"
Dragon Issue 54: October 1981
part 1/2
84 pages. So its another october. However, this time they've mostly skipped the horror theme for business as usual. Several other significant things take place in this issue, however. Read on and discover, my friends.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter supporting their decision to do artist profiles and asking people to not expect every article to please them, as they are covering a pretty wide range of stuff.
A letter criticizing issue 52, saying it had hardly anything of use to him. Contrasting opinions as ever.
A letter asking for more articles on medieval weaponry. Don't get them started. Do we really need to hear about the dozens of different kinds of polearms again in exquisite detail?
A long and detailed rant on the lack of realism in the modules they've been publishing, criticizing the fact that they seem to be designed entirely to create a challenge to adventurers and could never exist as a functioning location with a proper ecology. Oh man, you're opening a can of worms here. A battle that will wage throughout the decades, and consume many in its throes. One of the most fiercely fought fronts of the war of gamism vs simulationism. One that still wages to his day. Which side will you join?
A letter criticizing them for not publishing their so called regular articles regularly enough, as they frequently skip months. They respond by saying if things were too regular, they'd get bored. And they don't want that.
Down-to-earth divinity: Well hello again, Mr Greenwood. What have we here? The very first mention of Elminster the sage in these hallowed pages? The second mention of the forgotten realms by name, and the details of the Torilian pantheon. (who are mostly as they have remained, deaths, usurpations, and metaplot silliness aside, but also includes several extra guys from preexisting sources, such as Aslan (yeah, there's no way that's going to make it into the official books) at this point.) This is a very significant article indeed in historical terms, revealing tons of stuff about the current state of the D&D multiverse as a whole, and Ed's own world (drow are legendary and virtually unknown on the surface world in the Realms? Ahahahahaha. Robert Salvadore has a lot to answer for. ) It's also pretty good on its own merits, offering you solid advice on how to create a pantheon for your own game. Portfolios, racial demographics, relationships with other deities. You've got to consider this stuff. Ed obviously has, and that's why his world managed the depth it has.
Ruins: The midpoint between dungeoneering and wilderness adventuring, ruined cities provide a rich seam of places to explore (and loot) in their own right. But you do need to design them quite differently from dungeons. This article contains an extensive list of the things and monsters you're most likely to find there. With a few random tables, of course. While technically system free, it is heavily tied into D&D's implied setting, with sages, assassins, and wizards towers. Still, seems like it should be usefull.
These are the Breaks: Weapon breakage rules. Another thing that'll mostly irritate your players if you introduce it. Will you hurt yourself? Will it fly off and hit another PC. Oddly enough, it's got no chance of hurting a member of the other side, which seems a little weird. Combined with the probabilities. (4% chance of something going horribly wrong every single attack) I really don't think this is very well designed, and would make combat altogether too farcical. Do you really want the benny hill theme music to be the most appropriate scene setter to your dramatic battles?
Larger than Life: This month's near pantheon is the righteous robbers of Liang shan po. Led by sung chiang, the 36 stars of heaven, and the 72 stars of earth, 5 of which are fully statted up; they seem occupy a similar place to robin hood and his men, only with more wuxia special powers. A little less overpowered than last issue, they still all have several stats at 18 each. Facing them would be a serious challenge for even the most powerful party.
Sage advice is the only column giving a token nod to the usual october horror theme.
If a golem is decapitated, is it still functional (oh yes. It can even breathe on you. Be very afraid)
How exactly do you become a lich ( there are plenty of variants on the process. You don't have to use Len's version. Larva are not neccecarily essential. )
What undead are harmed by sunlight (vampires are the only ones destroyed by it. Others are just weakened by it, and avoid it where possible. )
Can detect evil detect a polymorphed demon. (evil things still show up as evil, no matter what shape they use. ) You need other spells to hide or disguise your spiritual nature.
Are asmodus' rod or geryons horn artifacts? How many charges do they have? (no, they aren't. The usual number, but they can recharge them, so if you don't take them down in one encounter, you're in the shit.
Can magic resistance be reduced to a negative number if your level is high enough. If so what effects would that have? (No. Zero is as low as you can go.)
How do you kill a vampire with wooden stakes? Can you kill them without them? (through the heart, you dolt. Have you learned nothing from pop culture. That or sunlight. Conventional weapons will not stop them for good. And no, you can't create holy water inside another creatures body. )
Do undead breathe? (no)
Can paladins and high level monks get lycanthropy (yes. Magical diseases can overpower magical resistances. )
Do iron/silver weapons damage demons/devils even when they need pluses to hit them (yes. It's a special vulnerability. Take advantage of it, because you'll need it with all the powers they have. )
(when someone with a strength bonus attacks a skeleton with a piercing weapon, do they add their strength(yes, but before the halving takes place)
Are fiends immune to sleep and charm (most of them aren't technically, but your odds of actually getting through their resistances are pretty slim)
What happens when a succubus drains an energy level (same thing that happens when undead drain an energy level. Kiss goodbye to all that experience, those spells, those hit points. )
Giants in the earth: What?! Oookay, looks like they haven't replaced giants in the earth, but supplemented it. Which means double the dose of overpowered mythological and fictional characters this month. Man, this is irritating. Anyway, this months characters are E.R. Eddison's four lords of demonland, and Ursula LeGuin's Gaveral Rocannon.
Dragon Issue 54: October 1981
part 2/2
Dragons's bestiary: Boggarts (are missing their name at the top, so you have to read the description to figure it out. Probably another prank on their part) are the usual malicious faerie types. Not particularly dangerous in combat, but a pain in the ass to catch up too and hit.
Stroan are weird insect thingies with several interesting special powers. Another thing with an extensive amount of ecology, and even religion, they seem a prime subject for developing further. Shame that never happened.
Incubi are another monster that should be completely obvious, and are just an excuse to give us succubi with slightly higher combat stats. Demons are not an equal rights society. :rolleyes:
Beware the Jabberwock: Ha. D&D stats for this particular fictional monster. Which obviously requires a bit of extrapolation by the developer. And as ever, once you've given something stats, it seems a good deal less scary (apart from hecatoncheires) and wondrous. The designer seems unsure if he should be explaining the surreality of the original source, or exploiting it. And as a result, it fails to enthrall.
Thieves guild designers notes: The creators of the system and magazine talk about their intents for the system and plans for future products. Loose leaf books that you reassemble yourself? Another experiment that will pass into history unlamented. Another bit of interesting historical perspective here.
The dragon's augury: Thieves guild also gets reviewed here. Focussed around, well, the class that you would expect, and scenarios for them, it is both more and less complex than D&D in various ways. I suppose it might not be as focussed as some modern indie games, but it's certainly a step down that path.
Barbarian prince is a solo adventure game in which you reclaim your kingdom. It offers rather more freedom of choice than most pick your path games, and offers a rather more badass protagonist. The reviewer seems to rather like it.
Cavern quest is this months module, a 14 page solo tournament adventure. And it is a horrible railroad, in which you can't help taking damage, it's just a matter of how much. I suppose when there's no GM, you can't manage the same freedom of choice.
Fiction: Abomination, by D. Aaron Achen. A great story of the healing of a corrupted swamp, from the point of view of the sentient patch of land. Some great imagery here, and a real sense of atmosphere and dynamic tension, as you're never sure who you should be supporting. I really like this one.
Minarian Legends: This month, Glenn talks about the pirates of Rombune. More interesting setting detail in what is becoming one of the most filled-in settings of the era.
Cash and carry for cowboys: Glenn Rahman gets a second article published straight away, expanding on the equipment list for boot hill. Because players always want things that the rulebooks don't think of. This'll take you all the way from derringers to tombstones. (because you wouldn't just leave dead PC's to rot, would you, and burials are expensive. ) Another one of those articles that may be useful, but still makes for dry reading.
Simulation corner: Part 3 of their series on game design. They further tackle the subject of realism, and how to apply it. Obviously true realism is impossible. And a lot of the time people synonymize realism with quality when reviewing games, even though that is not the case. Historical accuracy and realistic physics are also not neccecarily linked. I am not overly enthralled.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: 13 more Quaals feather tokens. Quite the useful little pieces of kit, aren't they. People ought to appreciate them more. Plus two magical maces, and an undead trapping bottle. Careful with the last one. Letting things out without the power to control them is always problematic.
The electric eye: Another quiz this month, this time about the history of computers and how they work. As ever, much of this stuff is seriously outdated. Which is only interesting if you care about the minutinae of old computers.
Whats new's infestation of dragons has spilled over into the entire damn issue, amusingly. How many are there lurking throughout the magazine? Try and figure it out. Growf growf.
Orcwardness: Another parody article about the more irritating idiosyncracies of certain gamers. Nothing you haven't seen already, probably.
Dragonmirth has more dragon related jokes.
Wormy introduces the book-eating pterodactyl, another character who would somehow become a regular in this crazy soap opera. How did Dave Trampier come up with this stuff?
Fineous fingers' plot is brought to a rather abrupt close as JD leaves for Adventure Gaming magazine, to work with Tim again. Everyone sighs, some with disappointment, some with relief that they no longer have to deal with such a flaky columnist. At least he gets the chance for a proper goodbye, unlike the other comics that were unceremoniously cut. (yeah, I'm still not amused about that) His story isn't over yet.
A purple worm busts into A D&D Adventure this month.
Another issue with articles ranging from the sublime to the utterly tedious. One thing's for sure, with JD gone, and Elminster on board, its not going to be the same from now on. We've just taken a big step away from old skool to, if not the current generation, a different one anyway. How soon these things happen. Soon we'll be nostalgic for the old ways, even with all their flaws and unreliability.
Dragon Issue 55: November 1981
part 1/2
84 pages. We get another look at their second class mailing figures this month. And this time the scan is legible. Their current circulation is up to 60,000 as of last month, with average printings per magazine over the last year of 45,000. Which means they've approximately doubled their readership again. Pretty good. They also welcome a new addition to the staff, congratulate another one on getting married, and look forward to the D&D sales blitz this christmas. It should be a good one for TSR. How many of you guys got your roleplaying start as part of a christmas present?
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter criticizing the monk articles in issue 53, and asking for more separation between roleplaying fluff and design crunch.
A letter complaining about all the errors and inconsistencies in the D&D books, but also wishing that people wouldn't argue so much about which game was best or worst.
A letter of generalized praise. Always room for one of them to get published.
A letter encouraging playing with players expectations, not letting them know exactly what is going on statistically with their characters and the things that they face.
Another letter decrying ridiculously overpowered characters. Rather a stock selection this month, isn't it.
Fiend folio Findings: Ed Greenwood expresses his disappointment with the latest tome of monsters, calling it inconsistent in tone, lacking in setting integration, full of silly names, unclear in description on many monsters, and a whole bunch of other unappealing things. Alan Zumwalt is a somewhat more satisfied customer, enjoying the illustrations, but wishing there were more extra planar monsters, stuff from magazines made official, and fewer rehashed hybrids. Finally, Don Turnbull, the guy primarily responsible for the book, gives his rebuttal. He didn't put monsters from recent Dragon or White Dwarf issues in because the book has been completed and in legal limbo for 2 years before they could get it published. Some of the things that you found unclear are in there, you just needed to look closer. And monsters with unpronouncable names are perfectly justifiable, particularly if it's what they call themselves. But yeah, there are some things he wishes he'd done better. Pleasing to see Dragon isn't afraid to call out the flaws in TSR's products. It's good evidence that they still aren't just a house organ.
New theories for old monsters: Dinosaurs! One of those things that blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy when included. This article gives stats for lots of them, including all the usual suspects, revised in light of new scientific discoveries. What, you want realisticaly accurate dinosaurs in your magical fantasy? I think that should be the least of your worries.
From the sorceror's scroll returns after quite a substantial absence. Gary apologizes for this, and lays out his plans for the future. The temple of elemental evil is delayed again, because he's been busy making this year's tournament module (the lost caverns of tsojcanth. Another one many of you will remember fondly) Lost of other greyhawk stuff is in the works, including city and castle of greyhawk. Lets hope you don't suffer so many delays on those. ;) :( We also get a reiteration of the Oerth racial groups from issue 52, with some more stuff on their favoured dress and other little details. Which is pretty interesting. Looks like he's finally realized there's a market for full-on world building, and is working to make up for lost time.
Robin hood and his merry men get statted up. Not under the Giants in the earth or the Larger than life banner, curiously enough. I wonder if that means we'll be getting three helpings of twinked-out NPC's this month? That would be rather excessive, and not pleasing at all.
The coming of the sword: Niall's 9th story in the magazine is a prequel, telling the tale of how he acquired his signature sword. Which means no dubious demon goddess to tell him what to do, and no army to help him out when things go south. Instead, he falls in with an also pretty dubious mage-queen, ands goes adventuring in search of her ancient abandoned kingdom. Is this commentary on his personality or a persistent psychological quirk of the author behind him? Either way, it's fairly amusing.
The creature of rhyl: This month's mini-module is our first that is explicitly for basic D&D rather than AD&D. Not that it makes that much difference really. This is a rather odd module, in that the dungeon complex is largely abandoned, yet there are tons of magical items hidden around the place. This means that as long as they can survive (or avoid) the rather tough final encounter, this is a good place for low level characters to power up. It'll definitely be a change of pace compared to the caves of chaos. But if more dungeons were like this the game would get dull very quickly.
The electric eye: Another really short article from mark this month, as he gives the answers to last months quiz. So short, in fact, that I have nothing else to say on the matter.
Martian metals' advert is upside down (ie, the right way up) this month. Blame Tim Kask for that, as they say in the advert itself.
Quote from: (un)reason;298818The Dragon Issue 23 : March 1979
It weighs What?!!!: Armor and weapons were designed for effectively fighting in and with. Any game designer or GM (yes, you SPI) saying otherwise and trying to stop you from doing basic things like stand up from lying down or getting on and off a horse on grounds of "realism" is being silly. I suspect that they'll have to debunk this persistent myth again, since it showed up here recently as well. When will people learn.
[singing]
C'est moi, c'est moi, I'm forced to admit,
'Tis I I humbly reply...
[/singing]
The answer to your question, by the bye, is "never". I wrote this article before I learned the awful truth that, in all but a very tiny number of exceptional cases, people believe whatever the hell they want to believe.
Apparently 'platemail' isn't meant to be 'knight in armour' armour. The Rules Cyclopedia has 'suit armour', which it says is "the type of armour associated with the knights of high romance" and has great restrictions on movement (specifically standing up from lying down and getting on a horse, as it happens).
However I don't know if they made that clear before then, so possibly their own fault.
Dragon Issue 55: November 1981
part 2/2
The many ways of getting away: Yes, you can't win every fight. So sometimes, even the best adventurers have to retreat, if they want to live to advance another level. This article is mainly a list of the various magical items that increase your mobility, and their varying optimality in aiding your escape attempts. Will you run, fly, climb, swim, teleport, or even go extraplanar? Best to have as many options as possible, because you know some monsters'll be able to bypass each of those methods. And remember, a party is only as fast as its slowest member, unless you don't mind leaving them behind to be eaten. A fairly well thought out article, that properly considers the range of special abilities available to D&D characters. Not much use for other games though, considering how tied to D&D physics its calculations are.
Filling in skills: Someone has noticed how glacial the rate of advancement in play is in traveller, and how rigid the career system is. And discontented with the situation, they set out to fix it. So he steals and adapts the check rules from BRP to create a system which allows for a decent advancement rate, but gets harder the higher your current skill is. He also discusses going from one service to another, and which ones make logical sense to be combined. A pretty good article that I would probably allow in a game, as it seems to open up quite a lot of options to the game, and fixes a serious problem in the original design.
Minarian Legends: This months legends is indeed rather legendary, focusing on the various mysterious ruins scattered throughout minaria. Dare you go to the altars of greystaff and invoke forbidden magics there? Or summon the ghost troops from the lost city of Khos. Or brave the curses of the tombs of olde to get the treasures within. A bit of a grab bag of short articles, this goes several more steps towards establishing just how full a setting minaria is. It certainly seems to cover all the fantasy bases.
Dragon's bestiary: Devil spiders are another monster that is not actually from another plane, but are still pretty damn annoying. Still, at least they don't have an instadeath bite. That would ruin the fun of trying to rescue your companions from their web traps.
Surchur are tentacle headed monsters. Thankfully, all their tentacles are resolved as a single hit, rather than getting 8 separate attacks like certain monsters (yes, you, carrion crawlers) so they shouldn't be too much trouble for a well equipped party to deal with.
Dyll are bloodsucking swarms of flying leeches. I'm sure they'd get on great with pirahna bats. Use your area effect attacks to take them down, because they sure do come in large swarms. Swatting them will not work well.
Poltergeists are the ghost of gnomes coming back from Limbo to cause chaos. Ok, that's one way to tie them into the D&D cosmology a bit more. It won't stick, though.
Simulation corner turns its eye on the concept of State of the Art again. Should this be used to define the current limits, or the present standard? This gets bogged down in niggling. As is often the case in these extended series, it seems to be sagging in the middle. You could have cut this out and we wouldn't have missed it. We don't need more pontification about the non linear method of advancement in technologies based upon subjective judgements.
The Dragon's Augury: Universe is a new sci-fi roleplaying game. While not bad, it is probably too complex, and not rich enough in setting to supplant traveller.
Third reich gets a third edition. Rather a bigger change this time around than the switch from 1st to 2nd. Covering both small scale tactics and large scale strategy and logistics, it covers the entire flow of WWII without forcing games to all go the way of the real history. With clearer writing and heavily reworked airial combat, the reviewer seems to think that most of the changes are good ones.
Kim also turns his eye to a bunch of general gaming accessories. Spellbinders are designed for storage of your character sheets and stuff. Magne=Melee is a magnetic grid marker system. (I don't really think they explain this properly. I'd have to see this to properly make sense of this. ) Dragonbone is an electronic random die roller, that seems to be pretty reliable. And finally, we have an official AD&D paint set, composed of 54 official AD&D colours, so you can paint your monsters in exactly the same hues that the designers intended. Er, right. Thanks for that, I guess. (Way to restrain our creativity.)
Figuratively speaking: Dragons, doors, a manticore. spaceships, aliens and gorillasaurs. This is what's on show this month, in the column on miniatoures. (ow, that's a terrible rhyme.)
Da letter: A comic strip by Larry Elmore, in the same style he would later use for Snarfquest. Is he going to get properly paid? Or will he get what he deserves? Don't expect to see, because this is just a one-shot. You'll have to wait a little longer for something to replace Fineous Fingers to show up.
Wormy, What's new and the rest of dragonmirth are present. Once again, Sex and D&D is postponed. Don't try and fight a mini's battle on a waterbed, because leaks will ruin your game.
My, what a wholesome looking family that is advertising the Dungeon! boardgame. :) I bet they sit down together and eat a proper roast dinner every sunday.
A very easy to get through issue, with a low ratio of duff articles. (normally, I wind up spending loads of time trying to finish the dullest few articles in an issue. Not this time, thankfully.) The D&D supplement mill has had another classic book added to its list, although they certainly don't seem to think so at the time. Hindsight is a funny thing. Can they top this for their christmas issue? Lets see.
Quote from: (un)reason;308403Minarian Legends: This months legends is indeed rather legendary, focusing on the various mysterious ruins scattered throughout minaria. Dare you go to the altars of greystaff and invoke forbidden magics there? Or summon the ghost troops from the lost city of Khos. Or brave the curses of the tombs of olde to get the treasures within. A bit of a grab bag of short articles, this goes several more steps towards establishing just how full a setting minaria is. It certainly seems to cover all the fantasy bases.
According to Wikipedia, there's supposed to be a new edition of Divine Right coming out which will include all the Dragon articles. but I'm not sure how firm a plan it is.
Quote from: Age of Fable;308489According to Wikipedia, there's supposed to be a new edition of Divine Right coming out which will include all the Dragon articles. but I'm not sure how firm a plan it is.
It's been out for a while. IRC BoardGameGeek has some info on the new edition.
Dragon Issue 56: December 1981
part 1/2
84 pages. Phil and Dixie make it onto the cover this issue, in another amusing christmas themed cover. Growf. Apart from that, it's curiously low on festivity this year, with no page expansion, and only a couple of remotely connected articles. Actually, they've been a bit sloppy about their event celebrations in general this year. I guess they think we'll get bored if they cover the same topics every year. Still, it's not as if they're actually short on stuff. Lets see what we have got instead of griping about what we haven't.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A pretty short letters section this issue. We start with two contrasting letters as often, one approving the changes made to the monk in issue 53, and the other disapproving, saying the changes were unneccecary.
A letter saying Dragon is over priced, and they ought to split it into a D&D magazine and a non D&D magazine. Yeah, that'd make them more money :rolleyes:
A letter engaging in minor quibbles about Lew Pulspher's article on heraldry in issue 53.
Singing a new tune: Looks like this month it's bards turn to get a good looking over. This article essentially presents a new bard class, without the weird class switching baggage. The author eschews thieving abilities in exchange for illusionist magic, and adds a whole bunch of other little tweaks that he hopes will make the class a better designed one. I'd be quite interested in testing if he succeeded. It certainly seems pretty well written and thought out. It may well be overpowered, though.
Sage advice is also concentrating on bard rules this month, as they seem to like joining in with the issues theme.
Can rangers, paladins or assassins become bards (No. When we say fighter then thief, we mean fighter, then thief. No other combinations. Not the other way round, no diversions.)
Are fighters who intend to become bards limited in their choice of armour (not yet)
Do bards suffer a penalty to thieving abilities when using armour and weapons thieves can't? (Nope. Isn't that cool.)
Can bards use weapons they were allowed to by previous classes, but not as bards (No. Druidic shit forbids it. You wanna keep your spells, stick to your new restrictions. Plan your weapon proficiency selection ahead so you don't waste any. )
How can a bard have 8th level fighting skills as it says in page 181 of the DMG. (if they read that magical manual that increases your fighter level after they switched classes, thus getting round the normal limits. That, and NPC's don't have to abide by the rules PC's do. If your DM wants to make a bard who is also a 27th level half dwarf half githyanki fighter, he is entirely within his rights to do so, so ner. )
Do fighters who dual class keep their exceptional strength.(No. They don't have time to work out enough to keep it anymore. Or something. :waves hand: I can't even be bothered to rationalize this one.)
What are the maximum fighter and thief levels for bards (this is clearly in the books, you morons)
What level do bards cast spells at (= to their level)
Do bards get shapeshifting (Why yes! And all the other druidic special powers at the appropriate level too. How many people remember that? Which is odd given how scary druid special powers are. )
Which is right, the bard class in the best of the dragon, or the one from the players handbook, as they're so different. ( The one from TBOTD was originaly from SR6, more than 3 years before AD&D was published. The new one is the right one, although you could use the old version in a BD&D game if you like. )
Songs instead of spells: Another bardic article. This presents the idea that it would be more thematic for bards to create magical effects via playing and singing music, rather than the boring casting methods employed by other spellcasters. What a revolutionary idea ;) This article also gives them a custom spell list with a few new spells to replace the straight druid one. They really could do with a few more sound related spells. I guess they have yet to be invented. A fairly decent article, if still rather hampered by the limitations in scope of the era. It is so hard to really think outside the box.
Map hazard, not haphazard: Want more realistic geography in your games? (no thanks) Steal it from the real world! Take proper topographic maps, do a bit of rotating and resizing, and move the buildings around. They'll be more realistic than you could manage without an advanced degree in geophysics. And more detailed than any ordinary map you could create. Yeah, I can see that working. And even great creatives such as tolkien er, borrowed from the real world extensively. The important thing is knowing how to mix and hide your sources. Personally, I'd still prefer to custom create everything myself, but I recognize the practical impossibility of that.
From the sorceror's scroll: Iuz! Hello and welcome back to Dragon. What has that diabolical half-demon been up too? Same thing he's up to every year. Trying to take over Oerth. Ahh, metaplot. Gary fills us in on the geopoltics of years 575-9 of the oerdian calendar. That's a lot of warring going on. I suppose that's one of the things that makes Greyhawk a more gritty setting than the Forgotten Realms. Once again, Gary introduces a lot of interesting things that will continue to have an impact for the rest of the setting's history.
Minarian Legends: Dragons and sea serpents and ogres, oh my! The giant monsters of minaria, and their place in the world. Which side are they on, and what part will they play in your game? With so many different factions, no one side, even ones as individually powerful as this, can win on their own. There certainly must be a LOT of different ways they could be combined.
Dragon Issue 56: December 1981
part 2/2
Mad Merc: Our Christmas module this year is a Top Secret one that goes to a full 20 pages. A sequel to Dr Yes, this is another semi-aquatic mission. With jetpacks, more bad pun names, and some terrible fashion choices, this is definitely on the more lighthearted end of the gritty/cinematic scale. Of course, that doesn't neccecarily mean it isn't a challenge. But I can't properly judge that. As ever, any stories of actual play from any of these modules would be welcomed.
Fiction: The doctor, by Robert Dunkle: Oookay. Now that's just nasty. Well done to you Robert, you've just told a genuinely creepy story in just a page and a half. Don't explain why, just show and tell, and present us with a concept that seems all too plausible from a twisted angle and goes right to the bottom of my mental uncanny valley. I seriously hope that this one doesn't give me nightmares.
Ral partha take out a full page colour advert just to wish us merry christmas, without even showing any products. That's ..... nice of them.
Figuratively speaking: This months miniatures are a troll, an ent, a storm giant, and an evil wizard. All get pretty average marks, nothing below 5 or above 8. How am I supposed to think of something interesting to say when the reviewer is being so conservative?
Dragon's bestiary: Shroom are annoying dog-bear things that like to kidnap people and ransom them for honey or whatever else they feel like at the time. Use them if you want a slightly more lighthearted break in your adventuring.
Colfel are weird looking creatures from the negative material plane. Which means they get energy draining attacks. So beware. Another interesting creature that would fill out the ecology of an underinhabited plane. At least, if they had shown up again. :(
Gem vars are another construct created by wizards. One of those creatures that eschews the standard hit point system in favour of exception based design that makes them a nuisance to kill. And careful how you do it, otherwise you'll damage the valuable materials they're made of, and won't be able to sell them for so much. They probably would be /nerfed/ standardised in later editions.
The dragon's augury: Survival/The barbarian is a packaged set of two short board games, that can be played solitare or in a small group. Both are fairly high on randomness, and probably won't hold up to lots of repeated play.
Dawn of the dead is a board game based off George Romero's movies. You know the drill. Find weapons, kill zombies, avoid having your brain eaten.
The argon gambit/Death station is another double adventure set for traveller. Both are fairly short, and offer a nice range of challenges within their scenarios. Either can be thrown in fairly easily to an established game when the GM is short of ideas for a session.
Fighting ships provides lots of really big spaceships for traveller. Unfortunately most of them will be out of the price range of PC's. Still, it gives both players and GM's something to drool over. And trying to get the money for one (or steal one) is the stuff adventures are made of, isn't it.
Off the shelf returns, at last (obviously they needed to build up the supply of submissions for the new column)Other stories and the attack of the giant baby by Kit Reed is nowhere near as silly as its name implies, with lots of darkness mixed with the humour and only one of the stories fails to entertain the reviewer.
Sharras exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley is another novel in the Darkover series. The reviewer is decidedly unamused by her continual denigration and mistreatment of her male characters, but still recognizes the quality of her storytelling.
Too long a sacrifice by Mildred Downey Broxon is a story of two people stolen away by the faeries centuries ago returning to earth .... right in the middle of ireland during the Troubles. (my god, how long ago that seems) Tragedy ensues, as they try to make sense of this new world. No easy solutions through magical macguffins here, in a story that sounds like it would be a good inspiration for Changeling:the Lost.
When trouble beckons by Mike McQuay is a sci-fi detective novel in the raymond chandler mold, with convoluted plot and plenty of internal monologue. It also receives a pretty positive impression from the the reviewer.
A holiday gift guide to lots more books, giving us brief descriptions of 20 recent releases from popular authors. Many of which are still familiar to me now, so I guess they've stood the test of time fairly decently. Others are limited editions, and would have been hard to get hold of even back then. Who'd get those as a present for someone else, unless they were stupidly rich?
Simulation Corner finishes off its series on game design by talking about design philosophy. This is of course, one of the most annoyingly nebulous subjects in existence, along with "where does your inspiration come from?" Still, it is important to be able to apply some level of critical rigour to the design process, particularly where it involves mathematical probabilities and sequences of calculations. I suppose taking the time to think up a philosophy can't hurt. Still, if it doesn't produce playable fun games, all that thinking has gone to waste. Better learn from your mistakes and do better next time.
Thieves guild disguises another advert as a comic. Cheeky.
Wormy meets something that can scare even creatures from hell and god knows where. Whats new gets to go colour. Dragonmith misses the opportunity to make christmas related jokes.
Another issue packed full of useful stuff. The reviews in particular are definitely improving again, now they've widened their scope, and there are more RPG things being released for them to compare and contrast. This gives me a better idea of the subculture outside RPG's and the related things they thought gamers would be reading and playing. The amount of wargaming stuff seems to be gradually going down though. Do they ever make an active decision to cut it out, or is this just a gradual loss of interest that reflects the market shift in general. I guess I'll find out soon enough. On to the next year.
Dragon Issue 57: January 1982
part 1/2
84 pages. Welcome to another year. Once again, they seem to be jiggling up the issue format to keep things fresh. We say goodbye to one long-running column, hello to a few more, and the running order seems to be different this year. Gary is really at the reins again, there's far more concrete setting details, and wargames are fading into the background. Still plenty of stuff on other RPG's, though. Lets enjoy that while we can.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Ha. A player who independently played a winged character is somewhat peeved about the winged folk, as there are lots of other similarities between his character and them, and he doesn't want to be accused of being a copycat. They tell him not to be ashamed, as the stuff from Dragon is meant to be used anyway.
A letter criticizing the editing and design errors in Cavern Quest. One of which they admit, but the rest they poohpooh, saying he's the one in error.
And that's your lot. Only 2? You people are slipping. Come on, we need more rants.
Modern monsters: Ooh. Welcome to our first attempt at D&D modern, courtesy of Ed Greenwood. He gives us lots of conversions of modern stuff: weaponry, cars, people. Neither side has it too easy, as the adventurers won't know how to use modern equipment, which is considerably more dangerous than medieval weapons, while the modern people have no access to spells. If the adventurers behave as adventurers stereotypically do, there are likely to be a lot of casualties on both sides. As with most of Ed's work, this is very well researched and considered, with proper footnotes and everything. He does err a little on the side of realism over game workability, and concepts such as abstracting machine gun fire don't seem to be common design parlance. But these are minor quibbles in the face of the overall quality.
Leomund's tiny hut: Ha. Len just went to the SCA. Len just went to the SCA. [/taunt] Which means he's back, all bright eyed, bushy tailed and eager to give us new, more "realistic" house rules based upon his observations there. New rules for shields and weapon proficiency training. With lots of tables. Seems pretty similar to his usual modus operandi. Pass me the glasses with eyes painted on so I can snooze through this one.
From the Sorceror's scroll: Gary continues his trip round the greyhawk map, updating us on current events. Another 10 nations get synopses of the recent geopolitical happenings between them. Ice barbarians, snow barbarians, frost barbarians? I guess he can't be accused of creating a monoculture for an area. Even the monsters get to be, if not equal players in D&D geopolitics, important and not all divided up by species.
In search of a james bond: What Top Secret class would James Bond have been in? Multiclassed between three of them actually. Yes, that is distinctly suboptimal by the current rules. I guess he's just that badass. This writer wants to see more of that in his games, so he introduces rules that make that kind of build a bit easier. Which includes an early instance of dramatic editing rules. Very interesting, if of course somewhat overpowering compared to standard characters. But if you want cinematic in a game not equipped for it, I guess you've got to be prepared to make rules hacks if you want to change a game's play experience. I can't really begrudge them this one, when they're trying so hard. (what was the first canon appearance of a metagame luck/fate mechanic? ) Plus it makes running a game for smaller groups easier, and that's always handy.
The rasmussen files is imitating sage advice this month, with merle answering questions about the rules in general.
How do you raise your language fluencies? (as you advance in other Areas Of Knowledge. Or take a course)
When your life is reduced to 0 by a limb shot, do you die (you're unconcious and die from bleeding if not treated in 5 minutes.
How do you determine if a lie to other PC's succeeds? (by roleplaying. No-ones thought of social conflict mechanics yet, and I don't think I'd like that idea anyway. If I'd heard of it, which I haven't.)
How do you maintain continuity when handling multiple teams (with a good deal of personal effort, and possibly some notekeeping. There's no magic secret to it.)
How do you have PC's communicate without revealing their identities? (secret notepassing to and from the GM)
Why don't shots that miss hit bystanders (frankly, my dear, I couldn't be arsed. Here's a rough kludge of a rule if you're really keen to try it.)
Where and what is the Intercept chart (something we cut at the last minute and forgot to remove all the references to. We may put it in Dragon in a future issue.)
What happens if you shoot an unconcious person ( You scumbag. Anyway, if their non-subdual hit points are reduced to 0, they die if not treated, just like normal.)
Can a spy be affiliated with a foreign agency (yup. If they're caught, they're in the shit. But you knew that when you signed up anyway. It's just a matter of which side wants to kill you. )
What's the purpose of each bureau(to use a metaphor, they are all like the various parts of a human body. I'm sure you can work out which. )
What is point blank range (a meter or less)
Should you keep a low profile, or go in guns blazing(Up to you, but we reccomend using intelligence. It is a spy game, after all)
Will top secret get more stuff published (I certainly hope so. I have no shortage of ideas.)
What's thermite (nasty stuff that flares really bright for several seconds. Good for both distractions and melting through solid steel)
What are light intensifier goggles? ( amplifiers for any existing light in the area, so you can see clearly when it's almost dark. Watch out for sudden bursts of light though. )
What are the stats for Shuriken? (:rolleyes: Bloody ninja wannabes. Oh alright, here you go.)
How much damage do knives do? (look at the special knife-fighting rules. Yes, this is exception based design. )
How do you determine animal's offence ratings(you don't. They just have flat to hit and damage bonus'. See the table.)
Quote from: jrients;308581It's been out for a while. IRC BoardGameGeek has some info on the new edition.
Interesting. Those Minarian Legends articles in Dragon always fascinated me, even though I have yet to actually lay eyes on an actual copy of the game. The setting would make for a good old-school RPG background.
Dragon Issue 57: January 1982
part 2/2
Random magic items: Ever thought it a bit odd that only certain shapes of magic item have certain powers? Want a bit more unpredictability in that area. This bunch of tables decouples item type and powers, so you can determine both randomly. Of course, since they have to be generic, the list of powers isn't the greatest. This could have been better, but it still adds a decent selection to my list which should keep players from finding the same old bits of treasure for a few more sessions. Just watch out for the cursed stuff, as ever.
The versatile Magician: A generalist spellcaster for DragonQuest with access to spells from all three colleges, only not to such great ability. This is the problem with games with rigid class roles. First thing gamers try to do when making new classes is to blur the existing ones in various combinations. Before you know it, you might as well have gone for point buy in the first place. This is not as well done as the Top Secret one above.
Giants in the earth: This months characters converted are C.J Cherryh's (she seems to be quite popular with the GitE authors. What's with that?) Morgaine and Vanye, Lynn Abbey's Rifkind, and Robert E Howard's Belit and Dark Agnes.
The Wandering Trees: Another 16 page tournament module, this is obviously a wilderness one, which means druids and rangers get a chance to shine. Watch out for the phucking phooka, because trickster fae aren't funny when you're the butt of their jokes. Nice to see them once again expanding their repetoire and giving regular readers more options to challenge their players with.
Up on a soapbox engages in epic fail this month, with two laughable articles.
Brian Blume falls flat on his face at understanding human nature, and tells us that evil behaviour is completely ineffective in both real life and adventuring because no-one would trust that character, or continue to associate with them. They'd end up alone and friendless, if not locked up or dead. No-one intelligent could possibly enjoy playing an evil character. Er, yeah. Thats as dumb as the people who believe that good would never work because they'd help everyone who asked, even those who took advantage of them, never kill diliberately, and always forgive and give mercy to their enemies, no matter how obviously that would be a bad idea. Oh, and nice guys can't get chicks. ;) No-one could possibly get any success or pleasure out of acting like that. Everyone would hate such an insufferable holier than thou prig. :rolleyes: Sometimes I dispair at people, I really do. Still, I suppose it's more entertaining than another bland common sense article.
Like this one. Roger Moore reminds us again that sexism and rape are bad things, mmmkay, even in fantasy worlds, and putting them in may cause discomfort in female gamers, and discourage girls from joining your group in the first place. No shit sherlock. The only people who don't know that already are candidates for the creepiest gamer thread, and they're unlikely to take it in, even if they do read this magazine fanatically every month and can quote every single optional rule from it.
Having been one of our most consistently entertaining regular faces for the past couple of years, Minarian Legends finally comes to an end. (or at least, says it does. We'll see if it stays gone.) I wonder what Glenn'll do next? He finishes off with an extensive chronology of everything since the great cataclysm, so you can see exactly when all the events detailed in previous issues occurred in relation to one another. Farewell. It's been interesting finding out about you.
The history of the shield: Another system free real world historical article. They've had a pretty wide range of shapes and construction materials over the years, as people look for the optimum compromise of protection against whatever weaponry is popular at the time, and mobility. Very little of which is reflected in the rules for games, unlike weaponry, which gets all manner of neat custom effects in some games. I guess offense is more interesting than defense. This article is certainly pretty inoffensive. Actually, that's doing it a disservice, as it is very comprehensive and well researched. But it is the kind of article you need to be in the right mindframe to enjoy.
Send in your entries for the 5th invitational AD&D tournament now! This year, it's the quality of your custom creations such as spells, monsters and magic items that are being tested.
The dragon's augury: Star viking is a tactical boardgame of interstellar raiding and pillaging. While high quality in components and appearance, it suffers from the fatal flaw that the sides are seriously unbalanced, making it virtually impossible for the vikings to win. Which is a bit rubbish, since they're the namesakes. The reviewer suggests some house rules to fix this, which adds a different spin to the article's purpose. Not sure if I should approve of that or not, but it certainly adds interest.
Champions is one of the first iterations of the Hero system. And it's only around a tenth the size of the bullet-stopping brick 5th edition would become. Which means there are still significant gaps in the powerset and some point cost to effectiveness issues. But even so, the effort to fun ratio might still be higher than more recent comprehensive versions. Hard to say.
Simulation corner: The importance of illustration in game design. This can have more impact on the comprehensibility of a game than you might think. It certainly has a big impact on popularity, as good graphic design is crucial in making first impressions. Of course, being able to afford good artwork is one of the things that sets the professionals apart from the enthusiastic amateurs. Another fairly common sense article with several good examples from the actual era.
The electric eye: We get the results from the survey a few issues ago. Unsurprisingly, it is very male and teen oriented, with quite a high percentage of people who program their own games. Apple is the most popular company (hah. D&D players are artistic types. How little things have changed in that respect. ) And cassettes are just beating disks as the preferred method of storing and loading programs. They'd like to see more programs and reviews in the future. Interesting. But only if you enjoy statistics.
Dragonmirth is here. Wormy expands on the wargaming theme that would become significant later. Still no sex in D&D in What's new, but we do get a little cheesecake for your enjoyment.
Even with the changes, this still feel very much like business as usual. They haven't dropped a beat.
Dragon Issue 58: February 1982
part 1/2
88 pages
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: Oh dear oh dear. We have our second RPG controversy making the news. Someone LARPing was shot by the police, who believed their fake gun was real. This is why you should use cards if playing around non-participants who don't know what's going on. And once again Jake seems more concerned with the damage by association that this could do to tabletop gaming than extending any sympathy to the LARP community. There is a definite air of "I told you so" to this entry, which I find a bit disturbing. This would be a very different editorial if Tim was still in charge. It is a shame that the TT and LARP communities got so separated, and I wonder how much of that is the fault of the people in charge of TSR in these early days. White wolf might have done quite a bit to bring them back together, but the damage was already done. It's silly to over fragment in an already niche market.
Out on a limb: A letter spotting the editing errors in Mad Merc 2 issues ago, which they admit too, and add further corrections of their own.
A letter telling them that they are too scathing in their rebuttals to many of the letters they get. They reply that they aren't half as scathing as some of the ones they get in. And at least they don't swear or use bad spelling and grammar.
A letter asking them how the hell to handle premonitions of death when you don't know what's going to happen in game. They tell him just to fudge it and use your own guesswork. Sigh.
Another letter weighing in on the high level character debate, in support, and wishing they'd post more support for high level games. Which gets a strangely scathing reply in response. Kim obviously isn't a fan of high level games.
A letter asking for more house-rules and clarifications to the official rules, as for all its claims of mechanical rigour, there are still substantial amounts of vagueness and incompleteness. Next thing you know, people'll be asking for a new edition ;)
Leomund's tiny hut: Len gives us a bunch of new cleric spells, as he and Gary felt they were still a little lacking in some respects. As this is done by official sanction, most of these made it into future books, such as water walking, dust devil, meld into stone and negative energy protection (at last, we have a counter to energy drainers). Yeah, this is a needed add-on. And it's nice enough to add a bunch of spells that are primarily useful for non-adventuring clerics, and an early synergistic metamagic spell, Combine. This is a definite step forward in terms of spell technology. Of course, that means wizards are likely to get a load of extra spells too soon. (Actually, I'm surprised they haven't thought of publishing those as regular articles before. It's certainly the kind of thing there's always demand for.) How are they going to keep fighters and thieves up? (oh, yeah, they aren't ;) )
Dragon's bestiary: Sull are another floating jellyfish creature. A surprisingly popular D&D ecological niche, really. These ones are psionic, and fight by ramming rather than stinging. Interesting.
Beguilers are kyoot little magical mammals. Which I guess is the point. They're also pretty magically powerful, and their parts are useful in making magical items. But how could you be so cruel as to hunt something this adorable down. You'd get far more benefit keeping one as a familiar.
Magenta's cats are another wizard creation. Yay. Intelligent psionic cats. Now there's a rare and original idea :rolleyes: You can have one as a familiar too. It'd probably be more useful than another party member at low level as well.
Blood of medusa: Nice. One of the more intricate pieces of greek mythology gets another look at. When the original medusa was killed, pegasus and chrysaor sprang from her blood. And descended from them in various ways are the hydra, chimera, sphinx, and quite a few monsters that don't have D&D versions such as echidna and the blatant beast. This gives stats for quite a few of them, and is in general a good sparker of imagination on how to create your own set of unique monsters for your own campaign. Which is a pretty good thing, as it makes monsters more mythic, and not just another faceless challenge to kill for XP and loot. Bringing family into it always makes things more interesting, as Grazzt, Iggwilv and Iuz demonstrate. I very much approve.
Four myths from greece: The greek theme continues, and they give us stats for Atalanta, Daedalus, Deiphobe the sybil, and Chiron the centaur. Despite not being under any of the regular columns devoted to this kind of thing, they are all as disgustingly high in every stat as ever, even the ones not connected to their legendary accomplishments.
The dwarven point of view: Looks like it's that time again. They've been doing themed issues for the classes recently. Now they're starting on the various races as well. This is an official article by Roger Moore, and goes quite a way towards filling in D&D's implied setting. Yes, dwarven females do have beards. But there's a whole lot more to them as a race than just that. Why do dwarves become thieves? Why are they so obsessed with craftmanship? Why can't they become wizards? All these and more answered here.
Bazaar of the Bizarre continues the dwarven theme. The high anvil of the dwarves is a general craftmanship booster, as if they needed it. Still, you've gotta have dwarven made magical items, and they need help for that. The helm of subterranean sagacity does the same for their mining abilities. Pretty dull pair really. Don't you have anything more inventive?
Sage advice also gets in on the act with the short bearded folk.
Why don't ettins suffer a penalty to hit dwarves (they have two heads)
Can an ioun stone increase your stats above 18. Would this allow a demihuman to exceed their maximum level. (no and no)
Do dwarves have alignment restrictions (no, just tendencies)
What are the chances of my character being a sub-race. (If your DM allows it, you can be. Your race is one thing you don't have to roll to determine.
What's the maximum level dwarf clerics can be? (8th with wis 18, 7th with less)
How come dwarves can be psionic when their god isn't. (Good question. Perhaps the psionic ones have some human blood)
What does Moradin's worhipper alignment entry Lawful good (dwarves) mean? ( he might prefer his worshippers good, but he's a magnaminous deity who will tolerate dwarves of other alignments. )
Can dwarves use long or bastard swords one-handed? ( That's your DM's decision. I'm not going to give a ruling on this (how odd))
The gods of the dwarves: Ahh. Now this is a bit of canon that sticks for ages. Clangeddin, Dumathoin, Vergadain, Berronar, Abbathor! (unite and form!) The rest of the dwarven pantheon. Plus minor dwarven deities, and a new monster connected with them. Nice. If they keep this up for all the other races, 1982 is going to be a very big year in terms of building D&D's setting up. And we'll get to see tons of it first right here in the magazine. This makes me very happy.
This era of the magazine had a lot of art by Roger Raupp, one of, if not the, most underrated of D&D artists. His art defined a certain part of D&D to me - a more realistic take on the default milieu. He actually posted to this very message board not too long ago, and got knocked around. I was pretty disappointed by that, as I'd like to have seen some insight from him on the early-80s era of D&D, and Dragon in partiuclar.
Dragon Issue 58: February 1982
part 2/2
Fiction: In the bag by John Holmes. Boinger's back! Boingers Back! So lame I had to exclaim it twice. What's he up to this time? Having fun with a bag of holding. Some very creative application of D&D rules quirks here that I quite approve of. Wouldn't be surprised if this was another converted actual play, as it feels very much like a D&D adventure.
Spellminders: This months special feature. A nice little set of cut-out playing aids. When you cast a spell, just flip it over. Saves you scribbling on your sheet every time. Plus, by putting them in piles and picking them out, you can generate spell lists for NPC's quickly. But they are rather easy to lose. I guess that's not a problem for me though, as I can just print more.
Aiming for realism in archery: Oh, not this one again. Yes, the D&D to hit probabilities and weapon ranges aren't realistic. Will it help to introduce new longer ranges if you have to measure the chances to hit with d% and completely rejig the combat system. Frankly, at that point, you're better off writing your own system. You're never going to be satisfied with D&D's rules.
Bowmanship made more meaningfull: More of this as well? This is focussed on strength limits. A topic only Homer could make interesting. It seems like the original crowd of writers who knew D&D wasn't supposed to be realistic are getting crowded out by annoying newcomers. This is the problem with having to fill 80+ pages every month. Anyone with decent writing skills and persistence can get in.
Slicing into a sharp topic: An article on the history of swords to go with the one on shields last issue. And like that, it's pretty comprehensive, going from BC to the modern day, with plenty of details on how their construction evolved. But no bibliography this time. Oh well. It's still more interesting than the last two weaponry articles.
Being a bad knight: Glenn Rahman turns his eyes upon Knights of Camelot. Maybe you don't want to join the ranks of the round table. Maybe you want to play one of the dastards who laughs at honour and chivalry, and instead loots and kidnaps. This of course isn't supported by the current rules, so you need a new scoring system and victory conditions. This completely changes the game in a way that looks like fun, particularly if some players are good guys, and others aren't.
Anything but human: Can you guess what this is? Yup, it's a second set of charts for generating alien creatures in Traveller. Like the last one, this results in a wide selection of different body shapes, limb configurations, senses, and various special abilities. Which means in terms of actual power, races rolled will vary considerably, and many will need serious help fitting in on a spaceship. Just hope you get shapeshifting, because that covers up a multitude of problems ;) Pretty much what I expected.
The dragons augury: Griffin mountain is a huge runequest supplement with tons of adventure ideas and setting detail contained within. Clearly written and well integrated, it's pretty handy, overall.
Star patrol is another sci-fi RPG. (there do seem to have been rather more of them around those days. ) It fails to be particularly standout, with several noticable flaws in the rules.
Trillion credit squadron is a traveller supplement that has rather a larger scale than most of their adventures. It provides rules for being at the head of your own muthafucking star navy! Plus mass combat rules, and more prosaic large scale details such as supply line stuff, taxation, maintenance and upkeep costs. Essentially, it's the traveler equivalent of the D&D Companion set domain management stuff. Which is something I strongly approve of.
Beyond and Vanguard Reaches are two more traveller supplements. Seems like traveller is getting more products than D&D is at this point. It's certainly getting more reviews. What went wrong?
Off the shelf has lots of short reviews this issue: The pride of chanur by C.J.Cherryh sees her back and firing on all cylinders.
Guardsman of Gor by John Norman is, er, no better or worse than any of the other books in the series. You'll like it or you won't, and the reviewer definitely doesn't.
The death of a legend by Robert Adams is another book in the Horseclan series. Once again the reviewer seems pretty fond of his output.
The dark between the stars by Poul Anderson is a compilation of his short stories. Full of shocks and twists, it gets plenty of praise.
Whispers III (edited) by Stuard David Schiff is a compliation of the best stories from the magazine. Like the last 2 editions, it has a pretty good selection to choose from, so quality is not an issue.
Fantasy annual IV by Terry Carr is another compilation of various writer's work, from both the high, and horrific side of the fantasy genre.
Scarlet Dream by C.L Moore is another compilation. Focussing on her Northwood Smith stories, it takes what she considers to be the 10 best ones, and gives them some illustrations as well.
What's new tackles Love in D&D (but is saving sex in D&D until next month) for valentines day. Wormy picks up a plot thread that's lain dormant for quite a while.
Looks like we're starting another significant phase in the development of the D&D game. The official staff members are putting much more emphasis on building up a proper setting for everyone to play in, taking the sketchy descriptions in the rulebooks and giving them full-on motivations and histories, plus serious thoughts on their physiology and ecology. They've also realised that the AD&D corebooks they put so much effort into a couple of years ago aren't complete, there are plenty of things that the rules still need. I expect in a few years and supplements time, the game will have a quite different flavour if this goes on. 2nd edition's changes didn't come out of nowhere, and I expect we'll see many of them foreshadowed in the magazine quite some time before they go into common use.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309554This era of the magazine had a lot of art by Roger Raupp, one of, if not the, most underrated of D&D artists. His art defined a certain part of D&D to me - a more realistic take on the default milieu. He actually posted to this very message board not too long ago, and got knocked around. I was pretty disappointed by that, as I'd like to have seen some insight from him on the early-80s era of D&D, and Dragon in partiuclar.
Can't say I've found myself that keen on his contributions. They sometimes seem a bit unfinished, the faces in particular often just don't look quite right to me. But then, he also became the art director. That probably meant he had to whip up stuff quickly to fill in a gap when the other artists didn't have anything appropriate, or were late. And since the visual presentation of the magazine improved quite a bit under his tenure, I have to give credit to his directorial skills.
The vast majority of early Sci-Fi games just plain sucked.
Star Patrol is almost purely a lame Sci-fi personal combat system.
The two "standout" sci-fi games of the era are Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Starships & Spacemen... because they actually have rules for both ships and people, and more than just combat. Most of the rest got the obscurity they deserved.
Going through and looking at SF ads:
Logan's Run: PBM game
Star Rovers: RPG... Traveller heartbreaker...
Federation Space: board game; SFB universe. My copy is 4' away.
Asgard Minis: has some Travelleresque minis.
Traveller: It's amazing CT sold about a quarter million units with ads like p58...
Star Warrior: Computer RPG....
Quote from: (un)reason;309596Can't say I've found myself that keen on his contributions. They sometimes seem a bit unfinished, the faces in particular often just don't look quite right to me. But then, he also became the art director. That probably meant he had to whip up stuff quickly to fill in a gap when the other artists didn't have anything appropriate, or were late. And since the visual presentation of the magazine improved quite a bit under his tenure, I have to give credit to his directorial skills.
I can see what you mean by some of his stuff looking unfinished. However, he produced some spectacular stuff, such as a cover for Dragon 125 of the Battle of Camlann. His work had a look to it that was decidedly more grounded in the real world than other D&D artists - his work in the various green covered "HR" series of sourcebooks makes for a good example of what I'm talking about. I've seen his work turn up in other places, such as one or two of the modules for TSR's Conan RPG, and his abilities gradually improved with time. Now, he seems to be doing stuff quite different from his RPG days - http://www.wokendreams.com/index.html
By the way, the next issue you're due to cover - 59 - is one of my all-time favorite issues of Dragon. Matter of fact, it may well be my favorite Dragon issue of all of them. The Traveller adventure is so good, it still makes me wish Dragon had never shifted to being just a TSR house organ in later years. The cover is pretty blah, though.
Dragon Issue 59: March 1982
part 1/2
84 pages. Another traveller heavy issue here, with a new adventure and more articles and reviews. It is easily taking second place in terms of coverage at the moment. Was this reflected in it's general sales at that point?
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Another letter on the overpowered characters debate. While not overly in favor of that kind of ridiculous twinkery, the sender does think that getting XP for being hit isn't such a bad idea. After all, you learn as much from failure as success in real life.
A letter rebutting Brian Blume's soapbox piece about the undesirability of evil. Go you. We can't leave stupid statements like that unchallenged.
A letter in favour of weapon specialization. Proficiency shouldn't just be a binary thing.
A letter saying that dragon isn't overpriced for what it delivers. Have you compared the page count to cost ratio with actual modules and stuff?
Another letter asking for reprints, preferably in themed anthology form, collecting say, monsters, NPC's new classes, optional rules, etc in groups. They say they might consider that if there seems to be enough demand.
From the sorcerors scroll: Cantrips! Gary introduces 0th level spells to the game. These are exceedingly useful little effects, very open to creative use. Which is symptomatic of how powerful even 1st level spells can be, compared to magic of literature, but there you go. Another cool thing that would have a strong influence on later editions, making low level wizards more than just one shot and they're empty spellcasters. He also includes a new spell, Advanced illusion, and a new magic item, the philosophers stone, as they have been referenced in the fiend folio, but not printed yet. Man, this game really was stuck together randomly in some ways. An article that is both enjoyable, usefull, and influential. You can't have much better than that as a lead in.
Giants in the earth: This month's rather highly statted characters are Poul Anderson's Sir Roger de Tourneville, L Sprague de Camp's Harold Shea, Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers and Torve the Trog; and Clifford D Simak's Mark Cornwall and Sniveley. That's quite a large turnout.
Gypsies! Looks like someone was separating them from normal humans and giving them a whole slew of special powers long before the world of darkness did. (well, D&D had an entire campaign setting revolving around the buggers, I guess.) Fortunately, their powers here are vague enough that you can't make them into a PC race without a bit more work. Which just makes me sigh. If you're going to be tasteless, you could at least do so with a little discipline and consistency. Like the nazi's ;) I do not approve.
Dragon's bestiary: The bleeder, a bloodsucking beholder variant that would make it into future monster manuals, gets introduced here. Frankly, most players would rather face this that a real beholder, as 10 straight attacks are far less dangerous than a host of instakills and subverters.
Stymphalian birds are another greek mythical monster. Vicious, with flight, hideous stench and disease spreading effects, they're the kind of creature that'll continue to be a problem even if you kill them.
Spriggans are odious little gnomes which can enlarge themselves. Another monster that makes into future official books, they are probably derrived from the same mythological source as duergar. Anyway, they make both nasty combatants and good tricksters, so watch your stuff around them.
The great kingdom and the knights of doom: Rob Kuntz gives us more official Greyhawk setting stuff. The demonic Knights of Dooooooom!, elite servants of Irvid (sic) the undying. Beware. The state has been taken over by evil of the worst sort. Anyone speaking out is a traitor. and must be eliminated, post-haste. Send help, urgently. No chance. There have to be evil states, otherwise what would the PC's have to kill? This is another plot thread that's going to developed further in the future. Are the demons and undead really neccecary though? Humans are quite capable of being complete bastards on their own.
Skitterbugging: Fiction by Gene O'Neill about a group of planetary surveyers. Aka those who go boldly where no-one has gone before, exploring new worlds, cataloguing new forms of life, etc. A rich seam of plots for adventurers, in other words. You never know what challenges you'll face each time. And they can be pretty weird, as in this case. They then put traveller stats for the characters and creatures in the story. A pretty good setup really. I quite enjoyed this one.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309628I can see what you mean by some of his stuff looking unfinished. However, he produced some spectacular stuff, such as a cover for Dragon 125 of the Battle of Camlann. His work had a look to it that was decidedly more grounded in the real world than other D&D artists - his work in the various green covered "HR" series of sourcebooks makes for a good example of what I'm talking about. I've seen his work turn up in other places, such as one or two of the modules for TSR's Conan RPG, and his abilities gradually improved with time. Now, he seems to be doing stuff quite different from his RPG days - http://www.wokendreams.com/index.html
Interesting. He's certainly got quite an experimental side. Yeah. There are plenty of examples of artists producing stunning work, but not having the time to do so usually. Just look at the difference between Larry Elmore's covers, and his snarfquest work, or the amount of fine detail between Floyd & Nodwick.
Dragon Issue 59: March 1982
part 2/2
Exonidas spaceport: This month's module is a 16 page traveller one. This is less an adventure than a setting, giving you a location, and populating it with NPC's, but leaving it up to the GM to put an actual adventure in. Which is a bit annoying if you're used to using fully ready to go dungeons, but I suppose its another example of how they're trying to present different types of adventure. Whether it becomes just a slightly better fleshed out stop off point on route to somewhere else, or a new home base depends on your GM.
The halfling point of view: Part two of our demi-human series. Halflings at this point are pretty similar to the original Tolkien hobbits, with three subraces, and a strong love of security and comfort. Adventurers are very much a minority amongst them, but as they are tougher than they seem, they're hardly unsuccessful. Very little is added to their characterization by this article. I'm not very impressed.
The gods of the halflings: Halfling gods have never been as interesting as the dwarven ones. Blame Roger Moore for being short of ideas. Or blame the original source for not having as much depth and variety as the many myths of dwarves. Anyway, Sheela Peroyal, Arvoreen, Cyrollalee and Brandobaris all get their first airing here. One big happy family, even if some of them do wander off once in a while. Pass the pillow and wake me up when dinner's ready. There's no danger here.
The toxins of Cerilion: Larry DiTillio takes a leaf from Ed Greenwood's book, and gives us stuff on what he's done in his own world. By giving poisons descriptions, onset times, and more inventive effects, things get a lot more interesting than just save or die, and players have a chance to recognize them by description without having to roll some kind of knowledge check. Which is good, because there aren't any in 1st edition. ;) This is a pretty useful and entertaining article,
Make monsters, not monstrosities: From one regular writer to another. Lew Pulsipher gives us another article on ecology. Monsters ought to make sense in light of the rest of the world. So here's another basic primer on concepts such as the food chain, reproductive rates, and designing creatures powers to suit their tactics. And he does a pretty good job of it, not sticking too closely to real world stuff, and recognizing there are tons of fun different ways the ecology could work when magic is brought into the equation. Plus an adorable new monster, the starkhorn. Whosa tubby little telekinetic bloodsucker then. A pretty good article all round.
Figuratively speaking's photo's are rather larger this month, which is nice. We have a griffon, a paladin, a monk, some spies, warriors and wizards. Business as usual then.
The dragon's augury: Starfire III is another game in a returning franchise (if you want to look them up, starfire 1 was reviewed in issue 29, while starfire 2 was reviewed in issue 47, ) It builds upon the previous two to allow you to handle larger matters of economics and political maneuvering. This makes for quite an extended, open-ended game, which can go on for a long time, as you discover new worlds, face new challenges and deal with other players. Are you prepared to put that time and effort in?
Demonlord is a wargame of magic and conquest. It gets high praise for the quality of it's visuals, and generally seems fairly good.
Off the shelf: The best of Randall Garrett, edited by Robert Silverberg, is another compilation that does exactly what it says on the tin. 12 stories, each introduced by another famous author who likes his work (including issac asimov and philip jose farmer), should give you a good idea if you like him or not.
Fuzzy bones by William Tuning is a continuation of H. Beam Piper's fuzzy series. Posthumous pastiches can go oh so very wrong, but this one seems to be respectful and interesting enough to please this reviewer.
The essential guide to home computers by Frank Herbet (yeah, that one) is a how too guide on buying, setting up, and starting to program them. He predicts that by the end of the decade, virtually everyone will have one. Pretty visionary, really.
In iron years by Gordon Dickinson is a compliation of short stories from throughout his career. While individualy entertaining, they don't seem to have any particular common setting or theme. This keeps it from being a brilliant collection.
The art of Leo and Diane Dillon is given a full page colour spread of art from the book. Not just a load of pretty pictures, it also includes a history of the artists, and plenty of behind the scenes details on how they were made. It gets pretty high praise for this.
What's new is the only comic present this month, and is focussing on mini's. And I don't think we want those in our sex in D&D, do we. Dragonmirth is also rather small. What's up with that?
Another fascinating issue full of stuff that would make it into future books. There is a slight caveat in that an increasing amount of the articles are being done by house staff rather than freelancers. But I guess that's the way you maintain theme and editorial consistency. It's easier to work with people you know and can contact easily than strangers.
Exonidas Spaceport was one of the first "fully statted" highports in Traveller. It's one of about 5... total... in traveller's canon.
Dragon Issue 60: April 1982
part 1/2
87 pages. They did dwarves and halflings, now elves get their turn at having a special all about them. Surprised they weren't first really. Anyway, they have several other treats for us. It's april, and that means another april fools mini-issue. Plus we're served with another complete game. Amazing just how much they fit into these things. However will I get through it all? Same way I get through every issue. One page at a time.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: We start with a rather long and impassioned letter from Lew Pulsipher that was originally intended as an appendix to last issues article. In it, he rebutts the statement (from issue 54) that pelins are useless for a campaign. Damn well right. Just because they don't fit in a dungeon, does not make them useless as monsters. They have all manner of uses another generic humanoid can't compete with.
A letter from Gary sneering at recent attempts to make archery more "realistic", as that stuff does not improve the game's actual fun quotient.
A letter from Roger Moore pointing out a bunch of errors in recent issues.
A letter complaining about the publishing of multiple monsters with the same name, and repeating fictional characters with different stat's, as this prevents players from knowing what they're dealing with. Silly person. Players shouldn't know the stats and motivations of every monster anyway. That way lies excessive gamism and rules lawyering.
The elven point of view: Ahh, D&D's longest lived PC race. How they contrast with the second longest lived one. The usual tropes such as seeming aloof and whimsical because they are aware of impermanence of other things, connection to nature, magical skill, you know the drill. I have no desire to regurgitate it again.
The gods of the elves: Say hello to the rest of the seldarine. One of the largest and most complex nonhuman pantheons. Hanali Celanil, Aedrie Faenya, Erevan Ilesere, Labelas Enorath, Solonor Thelandria. All have pretty well defined portfolios beyond simply being elven, and showcase the wide range of concepts and associations the race can accomodate. They're as strong as I remember them being.
Sage advice continues its own contributions to the themed series.
What spells are considered charm spells? (spells with charm in their name, plus bards power of the same name, plus magic items with the same effects.)
Why are elven thieves always children?(That's errata. We've fixed it in later printings of the DMG)
Is Shield cumulative with mundane armour, or do you take the best. (you take the best of the two. You can't get AC-5 that easily)
If I'm reincarnated, can I keep my current class abilities. (Not if they're illegal for the new race.)
The half-elven point of view: Half-elves get a (rather half-assed) personality of their own. Given that they're more varied than even humans, due to their split heritage, this is rather a pointless task. Notable, however, at this point is the emphasis on half-elves as thieves, (what was with giving them unlimited advancement in this class?) and the floating of the concept of quarter, eighth and more diluted elven bloodlines. But Roger can't be bothered to write those up at this time. This article feels like wasted potential in general. They could have given half-elves a much stronger identity.
From the sorcerors scroll: Gary continues his extensive list of cantrips from last issue. He manages to finish off the list of wizard ones, but its still not over. Illusionists will get their turn next month. And then will we be seeing clerics get orisons, or is that a 3rd ed thing only? I guess we'll find out soon enough. As amusing as the last article.
Firearms: Ed Greenwood gives us more conversions of modern stuff to D&D rules, plus a history of firearms throughout the ages. Guns may be more powerful than swords and stuff, but for a long time they were rather unreliable. If you enforce that, It should keep things from getting out of hand. Plus it makes wizards less crucial to a party, when other people can supply the artillery. I think ed managed to strike the right balance here on an often tricky subject to integrate into the game.
Fiction: Wearwolf by David Rosenberg. A very funny little short story that sets up the premise of a world where loup-garouesque animal suits are commercially available, introduces a twist, and then knocks it down again, all within 2 pages. Quite the classic.
A quiz about the nature of D&D science. This takes the D&D rules and assumes that apart from that, real world physics applies. Amusing resultant effects happen. Actually, they aren't very amusing, because they're generally pretty dull. This is not a world of cinematics, it's a world where meticulous resource management is rewarded. Do we really want that? I certainly don't.
Quote from: (un)reason;310094(what was with giving them unlimited advancement in this class?)
While at that time I understood the reasoning behind level limits for non-humans (though I thought even then it was a crappy way to handle the problem of non-humans having powers and abilities humans don't have, and hated using it), I never understood, and still don't understand, why pretty much every race had unlimited advancement in the thief class. Halflings I could see, but why weren't dwarves or half-orcs given fighter (for example) as their unlimited class, or elves given magic-user? Perhaps the thief class wasn't seen by Gary as a campaign-wrecker at higher levels?
I've read the theory that high-level thieves, or non-human leaders of a group of their own species, aren't 'main characters' in the same way that a high-level warrior or wizard is. They'll be important in one city, or 'off to one side' in the mountains or the deep forest, but they won't be very involved in the D&D world's version of 'international politics'. And, supposedly, Gary Gygax only wanted humans to be 'lords' in this way.
Quote from: (un)reason;310094The elven point of view: Ahh, D&D's longest lived PC race. How they contrast with the second longest lived one. The usual tropes such as seeming aloof and whimsical because they are aware of impermanence of other things, connection to nature, magical skill, you know the drill. I have no desire to regurgitate it again.
If only this lack of desire was more widely felt. "You know Lord the Rings? Do you want me to tell you about it for ten pages?"
Quote from: Age of Fable;310146I've read the theory that high-level thieves, or non-human leaders of a group of their own species, aren't 'main characters' in the same way that a high-level warrior or wizard is. They'll be important in one city, or 'off to one side' in the mountains or the deep forest, but they won't be very involved in the D&D world's version of 'international politics'. And, supposedly, Gary Gygax only wanted humans to be 'lords' in this way.
Yeah, I remember Gygax talking about wanting humans to be the focus of the game - he even repeated it in recent years at places like EN World. I vaguely recall the theory about thieves you cite, so thanks for jogging my memory and relating it clearly.
Quote from: Age of Fable;310146I've read the theory that high-level thieves, or non-human leaders of a group of their own species, aren't 'main characters' in the same way that a high-level warrior or wizard is. They'll be important in one city, or 'off to one side' in the mountains or the deep forest, but they won't be very involved in the D&D world's version of 'international politics'. And, supposedly, Gary Gygax only wanted humans to be 'lords' in this way.
Given AD&D 1/2/HM combat capabilities, your best elven combatants are thieves of high level 25th+... not fighters.
Given the 1/2 THAC0 advancement of thieves, vs 1/1 for fighters... a 16th level Halfling thief is as dangerous as an 8th level Halfling fighter. Better HP, even.
Dragon Issue 60: April 1982
part 2/2
Gaming magazine. This years april fool is presented as a generic alternative to Dragon. It's rather more sensible than the previous couple, with most of the content still useful for a game despite its flavour. No filking, either. Maybe next year.
Flight of the boodles: Another complete little game. While humorous in its visuals, this is a perfectly playable little game for one or two players. Yet another fun thing to try out if I get the chance.
The jester: Oh dear god no. Not another version of this class. Be very very afraid, because these ones are statistically legal, and really rather scary. I guess they have to be to survive, given the suboptimal tactics they have to use. Use one as the big bad if you want your players to enjoy beating them way too much.
Darmuids last jest: Heard the saying I died laughing. Well, now you can make it happen, with this optional special bard power. Not recommended for use in actual play.
Midgets in the earth: Ha. This month's generic parody characters, not based on real people or tv shows at all, no siree bob; are Idi Snitmin the kobold commando, Eubeen Hadd the halfling thief guildmaster, and Morc the orc. These guys are far less twinked than their serious offerings, which I find very ironic. Idi in particular is a good example of how even kobolds can be pretty terrifying if they have the right equipment and tactics. We'll be seeing that topic again several times, only taken seriously.
Artist of the month: Phil Foglio gets fulsome praise from Kim. Which is then immediately undermined. ;) Nice to see they can still poke fun at their own reputations.
Dragon's bestiary: More cartoon creatures to give your players nightmares. The green giant, (who could be absolutely horrifying if played straight) Donald duck, Taz, Marvin the Martian, Baseball Bugbears, and the dreaded Werebeaver (with Wally) Most are just about statistically usable, as long as you can stand the things your players'll throw at you for inflicting them upon their characters.
Outfitting the new agent: Back to the serious stuff. Or is it? I can't be sure with Gary's writing. This could almost be a parody of the standard questions list you ask about your character, such as eye colour, hair, date of birth, etc. It is rather dry. This is the kind of stuff people should do automatically if they like roleplaying. And if they just play to kill stuff, they don't need to go to all the effort of thinking up details like this. Meh.
The trojan war: Glenn Rahman gives us a slew of variants for his new game. He is a busy bunny lately. More flexibility is often a good thing, and this is as well thought out as most of his offerings.
Pooka: Oh god. Speaking of bunnies. Not another unkillable pain in the ass trickster monster. If you're gonna give us these, you could at least stat them out fairly, not make them more powerful than most gods. And they bring time travel into it as well, which is also a massive pain in games. Make it go away.
Figuratively speaking gives us three dragons, plus a set of elementals, Orcs, lizard men, dwarves, and buildings. Nothing scores below 5 as usual, but they are generous enough to give out one 9 this month.
A view of the nine philosophies: Is it that time again? Yes, it is. What time is it? It's chico:bang!: You die now! :sound of record player being smashed, crickets chirping:
Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. It's alignment debate time. This is the one that delineates the Good-evil axis as the moral one, and the law-chaos one as the ethical one. Which I guess is fairly significant. This is a fairly non controversial article as they go. It's most controversial point is probably that specific laws are not neccacarily Lawful, (and indeed, a badly designed legal system can actively result in a chaotic society) and breaking external laws is therefore not neccacarily chaotic. It also subscribes more toward the neutral as balance seeking rather than neutral as disinterest in moral matters or self-interest. But it does not view alignment as a straightjacket, and actively promotes the idea that most people are not going to perfectly fit into one. It's a measurement of the sum of their actions, not a set of sides people actively choose. I don't have a problem with this.
The dragon's augury: Spawn of fashan! Oh boy, this is a doozy of a review that I remember seeing reprinted elsewhere. The reviewer winds up concluding that this game is a diliberate parody of RPG's, as that's the only way it could make any sense. Reading the actual play is far more fun than actually trying to play the game. Comedy gold, if not in the same league as F.A.T.A.L. (but then again, Darren's review would eat up a whole issue. I don't think they'd allow that.)
Wormy once again goes off on a completely insane tangent. What's new summons cthulhu. Dragonmirth is missing, but not missed as they have more than enough jokes in the rest of the magazine, thank you very much.
A slightly understated issue compared to some april fools ones. But it does have some genuinely funny stuff, such as the fiction and the review. Plus more official stuff that would continue to be used in many books to come. It's certainly not a bad one for the period.
Quote from: aramis;310228Given AD&D 1/2/HM combat capabilities, your best elven combatants are thieves of high level 25th+... not fighters.
Given the 1/2 THAC0 advancement of thieves, vs 1/1 for fighters... a 16th level Halfling thief is as dangerous as an 8th level Halfling fighter. Better HP, even.
Depends if you allow unlimited scaling of the combat tables. The 1st ed ones had some kinks in them, and stopped between 17-21st level, depending on the class. Still, even with that caveat, the fact that thieves had easily the lowest XP requirements meant they'd actually have a bit better than 1/2 the bonus of a fighter of the same XP.
Another interesting factoid I've unearthed recently is that in the 1st ed PHB, it takes pains to point out that even when you've maxed out a class, an equal fraction of your XP is still being put into it, so if you are a multiclassed demihuman thief, you'll be advancing at 1/2 or 1/3 the rate a single classed one would at high levels. That makes it a tricky choice between whether you want to be more effective in the early or later stages of the game.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;310223Yeah, I remember Gygax talking about wanting humans to be the focus of the game - he even repeated it in recent years at places like EN World. I vaguely recall the theory about thieves you cite, so thanks for jogging my memory and relating it clearly.
No worries. It seems like there was an ongoing issue of Gary Gygax wanting a far more human-centred world than most players did.
Quote from: Age of Fable;310292No worries. It seems like there was an ongoing issue of Gary Gygax wanting a far more human-centred world than most players did.
Yep, I think that was one of the disconnects people often had with Gygax. He assumed a humanocentric world, so he made humans "better" in the long run, while others wanted all the races to be equal, in a game mechanic sense. As much as I liked most of the stuff he did for D&D, I have to admit that this was always one of the things I was always disappointed by - I'd have liked to see what he could have come up with as an alternative to level limits to keep humans a viable race in the game.
EDIT: To get this back on topic, I'd like to say that run of Dragon from the 50s through the 70s was what I considered to be Dragon's "Golden Age." The "point of view" articles were some of my very favorites, and Gygax's rules tweaks and additions were really giving my game group shots of energy, with stuff like the introduction of the barbarian in issue 63 hitting like a bolt of lightning.
In my opinion, Gygax's almost constant presence in Dragon in this era was what drew me to the mag the most; after his ouster at TSR, the magazine began to decline - in my opinion, I must stress. Regardless, the material Gygax was introducing in this run of Dragon, and which eventually ended up in Unearthed Arcana, was some of my favorite stuff in the magazine.
Plus, Dragon still had a wide variety of articles, from reviews to the bizarre April Fool's material (which I usually liked, because it was a shot of self-deprecation that made the mag and the game even more endearing). Book, game, and mini reviews were much appreciated by me at that time, since i didn't really have a local game shop then, and the only bookstores of note nearby were Waldenbooks, and there weren't many places to get info about what was worthwhile and what was not. A good, solid run of a good, solid magazine that cemented Dragon's place on my "must buy" list until it ceased paper publication.
Dragon Issue 61: May 1982
84 pages
part 1/2
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: Oh dear. SPI is in trouble. TSR is buying them out. Jake also comments on the purchase of AMAZING magazine. Looks like they're expanding their properties in more ways than one. But can they make any profit out of these, or will it just be throwing good money after bad? I'm sure we'll get more news on this as it happens.
Out on a limb: A letter on Spellbinders by a rival manufacturer, refuting both their originality and their profitability. Which sucks a little. Not every experiment can be a success.
A letter commenting on Jake's KILLER editorials. Yeah. People ought to try and avoid doing things that give roleplaying a bad name, particularly when they involve bystanders. Avoiding the worried parent brigade is a good idea.
Another letter engaging in archery quibbles, and asking for a full book devoted to weapons and optional weapon rules. Eeek. Well, I suppose it'll make some people happy.
A letter asking all those people who dislike high level play, if the game wasn't intended for it, why did they give rules for it in the first place? What's wrong with playing the game until you become a god?
A letter of generalized praise, apart from a few more stupid archery quibbles.
A letter griping about the new cleric spells len gave us in issue 58, saying that many of them are useless to adventurers. Len quite rightly rebutts this. Not all clerics are adventurers, and even the ones that are won't neccacarily want to memorize all combat spells, all the time. Some players have in-game romances between characters and stuff, y'know, actual roleplaying.
From the sorcerors scroll: Gary moves on to illusionist cantrips. This is considerably shorter than the wizard one, as illusionist spells are more versatile, but less useful in a lot of ways. This is pretty much as you'd expect it to be. I think we've exhausted this avenue of expansion for now.
Giants in the earth: This month's characters with percentile ability scores where they shouldn't be are C.J Cutliffe Hyne's Deucalion, John Norman's Tarl Cabot, and Charles R Saunders' Dossouye. Nothing unusual here either.
Without any weapons: Ha. Someone's unhappy with the way unarmed combat is so much more complex than armed, for less effect. So they're trying to streamline it. But it's still way more complex, especially if you don't precalculate all these modifiers. Most adventurers'll still just go for the kill, even if it might be more advantageous to subdue the enemy. That wasn't much help.
Or with a weird one: And here's the other side of the coin. Funny foreign weaponry. Tiger claws, Boomerangs, bullwhips (which paladins are forbidden to use :D ), caltrops. The mancatcher! ( now that's a far more efficient way of subduing an enemy than unarmed combat.) We'll be seeing quite a few of these again in official supplements. There is a certain amount of special effects creep here, but thankfully damage creep has been avoided. It would be bad for verisimilitude if all the indigenous cultures had better weaponry than the european analogues. (although if you're playing D&D, that should be the least of your worries) I'm sure some of you had lots of fun with these little babies.
The gnomish point of view: And so we reach the last of the common PC races. Quite a bit of attention is put on their tendency to be practical jokers. This may not have been the wisest decision, in hindsight. They also hate kobolds. Apart from that, they do seem to struggle to find a strong identity, having a bit of elves nature love, dwarves skill at crafting and underground stuff, and halflings sneakiness and love of community and food. They are pretty adaptable little creatures. But that's not good enough to get them in the A list, is it. You need a proper archetype. They should have given this to Ed instead of Roger. He'd (make a plan and he'd follow through, that's what Edward Greenwood would do) have figured something out.
The gods of the gnomes: And after the racial description, come the extra gods. Baervan wildwanderer, Sejolan earthcaller, Flandal Steelskin, All faced up against the crawler below, Urdlen. Well, the gnome deities are considerably more interesting than the halfling ones anyway, with their spread of portfolios, companions, and rather distinctive evil god. They certainly serve to flesh out what gnomes are and the ingredients that go into making them better than the previous article did. But will people take in that implied setting stuff? Hard to say. Probably not enough, considering the way they've been treated in 3rd and 4th edition. Which is a shame, really.
The "Funky Foreign Weaponry" had been a staple of T&T for some time by 1982; my copy of T&T 5th ed (©1979) has well over a dozen strange weapons. That article was just TSR "keeping up with FBI"... not that they'd ever admit it.
Runequest also had some odd weapons.
Dragon Issue 61: May 1982
part 2/2
Quest for the midas orb: The third place module in the IDDC competition is only a 10 pager. Another location based adventure, this is actually fairly nice as adventures from that period go, with only a couple of arbitrary screwage attacks and boss monsters way above the average challenge rating. And the screwage is predictable enough that you could probably work out how to avoid it. In any case, the writing style is quite good. All in all, I quite enjoyed reading it, and wouldn't mind using it.
Dragon's bestiary: Firetails are unpredictable little snaky things from the elemental plane. They could be friendly, or they could curse you and burn your stuff up. Best to banish them home to be sure.
Umbrae are shadows that attack your shadow. To beat them, you'll have to get used to the idea of attacking them with your own shadow. Or just turn the lights out, so you don't have a shadow for them to attack. Just don't mistake them for undead shadows.
Light worms take the hypnotic legends of snakes and take them literally, as they generate glowing mesmerizing patterns of light.
Tybor are exeedingly badass magical birds that have quite a bit in common with ki-rin, of all things. You probably don't want to provoke them.
Monster cards: Another innovation that'll show up quite a few times through the years. Condense monster stats onto little cards, and it can speed up play quite a bit. Buy them now! Get all the sets! Speed up the time when collectible card games will become a genre in their own right, and play a big part in RPG's mid-90's decline. Or something. I don't really have much of an opinion on this one.
Rules for aging in Ringside: My god, an article for this after all this time. And not by the original author either. I'm vaguely surprised. As you might expect from rules for aging, this is pretty brutal stuff, that'll take all but the best fighters out son after they hit 30. Which is realistic, I guess, but depressing. Hey, it's only a game. At least you can start a new character, which is more than you can say for real life.
Jo-ga-oh: Ooh. Native american myths. Fae/ nature spirit analogues get everywhere, don't they. Only the names and specific powers and taboos change. These are some of the more benevolent examples of this group, and will only be a problem if you provoke them. Of course if your adventurers are foreigners who just blunder in killing things and taking stuff, they deserve what they get.
Special knowledge and a bureau for infiltrators: Gary gives us a new class and skills for Top Secret. Do you want to go into deep cover and spend months or years trying to get close to your enemies so they can be taken. This is the bureau for you then. They might not play well with a regular group, unless they're actually an agent from another country in deep cover amongst them. Pretty solid stuff ruleswise. Whether it's actually good for making the game more fun, I'm not so sure.
The dragon's augury: Call of Cthulhu gets a pretty negative review. There are substantial flaws and holes in the rules, and the setting book just sucks. Interesting. While not quite an outright slating, this is definitely a lot harsher than most reviews in this magazine. I get the impression the reviewer is big lovecraft fan, and is judging things on that basis. They definitely don't know the game'll go on far longer than most of the things appearing here.
Hitlers war is, you've guessed it, another WWII wargame. The reviewer compares it quite heavily to third reich. But it is a somewhat shorter and more tactically zoomed out game than that one. Still, it seems to be worth it's price, with several different levels of complexity to choose from, depending on how long you want to play.
Off the shelf has a particularly high quotient of genuinely famous authors this month: Fall into darkness by Nicholas Yermakov Berkley puts a russian spin on the humans in space trope, which puts both american and russian tropes and politics into relief.
The deadliest show in town by Mike McQuay is another futuristic detective novel.
The claw of the conciliator by Gene Wolfe is another time and space spanning epic in the new sun series.
The restaraunt at the end of the universe by Douglas Adams is immediately recognized as an absolute classic, even more entertaining than the first book in this reviewers opinion. But I think most of you already have your own opinions on Mr Adams' work, so you don't need telling that.
The book of philip jose farmer is a well done compilation of his stories, with introductions to the stories, plus several new ones, and a great cover. Snap it up before it goes out of print. ;)
Durandal by Harold lamb is a pseudohistorical epic, telling the story of what happened to Roland's sword after he died. Much bloodyness and intrigue happens.
Beneath an opal moon by Eric van Lustbader is as predictably unpredictable and full of depth as most of his work.
What's new is contracturaly obliged to put off sex in D&D for another month while they tackle actual new games. Incidentally, did Ed Greenwood and Bryce Knorr really look anything like that? Wormy gets three whole pages, plus a cameo in what's new. Pretty decent.
One of the less interesting issues of this period. Apart from the gnomes and the reviews, not much has stuck in my mind. They can definitely do better than this.
Dragon Issue 62: June 1982
part 1/2
84 pages Another birthday issue, more stuff on dragons old and new. Plus regular features, new games, and a certain amount of recycled ideas. Hey, Originality aint easy. They need something to go between the big ideas.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: Ooh. We have the results from their recent survey in. 95% male, average age of 16 and a half, no great surprises there. What is more interesting is how small the proportion of games are that play using the rules as written. They really ought to do something about that.
Out on a limb: A letter praising the second best of, and asking for more classes, as they're getting bored with playing the same old bunch. Kim responds by saying that the current game is not imbalanced, and so doesn't need any more classes, (ha) so they want to keep any further ones they introduce strictly optional.
A letter engaging in some eyerolling at the science article in issue 60, saying such over literal application of real world physics shouldn't be used in a game.
As ever in anniversary issues, they put dragon related stuff in. This time, that is three new dragon types. Faerie dragons are the same type that made it into future editions, with euphoria gas, and quite considerable spell-casting abilities. Grey and steel dragons, on the other hand, are not. A unique named pair of twins, they are opposites in terms of behaviour in nearly every way. But curiously enough, they're not hugely powerful. Interesting. They'd certainly make a good mid-level plot for your players to deal with.
Bazaar of the bizarre: Dragonscale armour. Harvesting body parts for magical components. What a lucrative trade. And dragons are one of the biggest monsters so of course they get special attention here. You'd think the results would be more powerful, given how hard it is to get hold of. And indeed, later versions of it would be. I'm curious as to why roger made it so weak and hard to make. Rather disappointing, really.
Gangbusters: Designers notes on one of the less well remembered games of that era. The pulp crimehunting game which takes the cops and robbers analogy so often used to describe RPG's to its logical conclusion, with rules for public opinion, finance, investigation, and fast and furious action. Or so they say. Did it flop deservedly, or simply because both the pulp era and non-supernatural games tend not to sell very well? I wonder if we'll see any more articles on it in here?
From the sorceror's scroll: Spell books! An important item for every wizard (they'd be impotent without it ;) ) Gary fills in a load more of D&D's implied setting. What they look like, (chunky) how much they cost (loads) How much spell casters charge to cast spells for hire (again, loads). Becoming a wizard is not cheap or easy, and with these costs, they could never be common. You'd have to do quite a bit of monkeying around to get a genuinely high fantasy game out of D&D as written at this point.
Pages from the mages: Well well. Looks like the start of another classic series, one of those that went a long way towards cementing Elminsters place in the D&D mythology. We get several new spells, including nulathoes ninimen, (which I'm sure some people have been wondering about for a good 2 and a half years now) but that's not as important as the tons of weird little details he puts in, from histories of the wizards that made the spellbooks, to the ingredients used to make the ink that inscribes the spells. This really is rather fascinating, as no-one else is writing anything like this stuff. He seems to be capturing the tolkienesque spirit of putting details on everything from languages to cooking as part of his worldbuilding, far better than fantasy certain novels that just imitate the obvious tropes of the LotR and completely miss the point. This is indeed the kind of article that would change a young person's perspective on gaming and I look forward to seeing more in the series.
Scribes? Again?! Jesus H, what is with these people? Scribes are not interesting. Oh well, I guess even Ed has his off articles. We really do not need to know exactly how noncombatant NPC classes earn their xp in this much detail. It does not make our world richer, as the players will never get to see it.
Sage advice is also focussing upon spellcasting this month. The answers are exceedingly verbose as well. Hopefully I can compress them without losing too much:
Can clone restore you to life. How many times can a character be cloned. (As long as the tissue sample was taken while you were alive. Remember, the clone only has the memories from when the sample was taken. Whether it's actually you or not is a complicated debate for metaphysicians. You can make lots of clones, but bad things tend to happen, as they go insane and try to kill you and each other. Someone ought to work on an upgraded version of the spell. )
Why can you teleport into gas or liquid but not solids. Can you teleport your weapon into another creature (because gasses and liquids can displace easily. Solids cant, so kablooey stuff happens. No, you can't dilliberately teleport items into others, because the spell isn't that precise. )
Affect normal fires doesn't seem to make sense if you use it to try and increase blazes brighter than a torch. (nope, you can't. It just isn't strong enough to make them brighter than that. )
What happens if you bring an object enchanted with continual light into an area of magical darkness? ( they cancel each other out as long as they are in the same area, then both come into play again after moving out. You need to cast the opposing spell directly at the other one to cancel it permanently.
Can you talk while Held (no. )
If you're energy drained and get back the experience, can restoration restore you to an even higher level (no)
Dragon Issue 62: June 1982
part 2/2
Half-orcs: Ahh, the other second stringer PC race. Good to see them getting the spotlight as well. This is as much about orcs as it is about half-orcs. Their culture, their likely upbringing, the predjudices they have to face. They don't have an easy life. Is is any wonder they resent elves so much? This article completely glosses over the rape issue, but goes into considerable detail about the inherent sexism in orc society. (Because it's perfectly fine to depict your villains as sexist, and casual killers, but as rapists? That's going too far :rolleyes: ) It also goes into a quite good explanation of why they are suited to certain classes and not others. All, in all, it is probably an above average installment of this series. Unlike halflings and gnomes, they seem perfectly comfortable inventing all kinds of little details. But then, it is easier to tell interesting stories about bad guys than good guys.
The gods of the orcs: :groans: Dear oh dear. Slipping a sly muppets porn reference in? You get two demerits for that, Roger. The rest of the pantheon is serious enough. Luthic, Bahgtru, Ilneval, Shargaas and Yurtrus. A lovely family and bunch of hangers-on. You really really don't want to go if they invite you for dinner. Once again, this article is considerably more useful and entertaining than the halfling or gnomish one.
The jaded temple: A 14 page Top Secret module is this month's centerpiece. Spy movie, meet martial arts movie. Includes special rules for making expert martial artists more badass, plus a pretty decent bit of starting fiction, plus campaign rules make this a very ambitious module that is almost a full-on supplement. Apart from the usual slightly dodgy names for the bad guys, I'm very impressed by this one.
Fiction: The feline phantom by Gordon Linzer. Tigers can astrally project too. An amusing little tale, if not as striking as some of the recent ones. Still, it's a pretty solid addition to the list, with a protagonist I wouldn't mind seeing again sometime.
Leomund's tiny hut: Len goes goes into some detail on the mercantile guilds, and the precautions they go too to avoid being robbed in a world full of untrustworthy adventurers and monsters. A lot of this involves low level spells, which they seem to be able to pick up with considerably less time and expense than PC magic-users (and of course, their spells are in a different secret language, so if PC's kill them and take their stuff they won't be able to use them) This assumes a rather more high (or at least common) magic setting than Gary's article above, which is interesting to note in itself. I'd think very carefully about using this in a game, but as a historical footnote, this is interesting and informative.
Zadron's pouch of wonders: Oooh. A random item producing magic item. One of those things that are great fun, but virtually impossible to balance in XP/Challenge terms, precisely because they're so unpredictable. Will you get something badass, something quirky but useful if you're clever, or something that's a pain in the ass? Anyway, I'm sure you'll have hours of fun with this, particularly as it is one of the more lenient examples of its kind, with well over half of its products being useful ones. Will it save you in a tight spot, or just make everyone groan in exasperation when you get the rabbit in an egg again. (don't ask)
The mount st helens dragon, who's goal is to burn up all the pollution threatening earths atmosphere?! :rolleyes: That's rather captain planet, isn't it. Leave it out. It's too early for this eco-crap.
The dragon's augury: Fifth frontier war is a largescale wargame set in the traveller universe. Can the zhodani conquer the spinward marches? It'll certainly be an epic conflict, whichever side wins. Question is, will you enjoy it enough to play it all the way to it's conclusion? And will you lose a load of the 720 pieces after playing it a few times? That's the problem with epics, they do take quite a bit of effort to get through.
The free city of haven is a city for Thieves Guild. Well, a third of a city, as they plan to come out with two more volumes on it. This pisses off the reviewer, especially as the fact that it is incomplete isn't clear on the cover, so you're suckered into buying the others to get the full picture. However it is good enough that that is a real temptation. While it might not be a Ptolus, it is certainly one of the most detailed fantasy cities yet made.
Off the shelf: Revenge of the horseclans by Robert Adams is another strong adventure in this series, which seems to be a reviewer favourite.
Rite of passage by Alexi Panshin is a coming-of-age story, albeit set on another world in the far future. While some things may change, human nature remains the same wherever you put it.
War of omission by Kevin O'Donnel. Ahh, bureaucracy. Ghastly stuff. Now there's something I can get behind a war on. Combine that with a good bit of speculative sci-fi, and I think we have a winner on our hands. Congratulations. You get the first distinction of first review that really makes me seriously want to buy the book reviewed.
The gray prince by Jack Vance may be a reprint from quite a while ago (what, can't even authors as well known as him keep their books in print consistently) but it still outclasses more recent books in terms of plot and characterisation.
The napoleons of eridanus by Pierre Barbet puts an amusing spin on the alien abduction trope, with several twists along the way.
The warlock unlocked by Christopher Stasheff Shows what happens when a real wizard starts gaining powers on a planet founded by the SCA. If that's as amusing as the premise, I'm not sure, but it certainly sounds interesting.
Wormy doesn't have the patience to play Expanded Grottos and Goblins properly. Once again we see how odd it is dealing with sentient creatures of different sizes and shapes. What's new reminds us just how much physical exertion actual adventuring would be. Dragonmirth has the usual punnery and witticism.
In general, this has been quite a good issue. Both entertaining and informative, it has once again revealed a bit more of the TSR staff's conception of D&D, and some of the context surrounding it. Maybe not quite a full birthday spectacular, but they can't have one every year, especially now they're past 5. They can save that for the big numbers.
As I recall, Gygax wrote a letter (or maybe op-ed piece would be a better term) criticizing the article about dragonscale armor. To this day, I don't know why that would have been something to motivate him to write critical letter. I can't recall him ever doing so again.
By the way, the next issue in the queue, 63, is another of my all-time favorites, specifically because of the first appearance of the Barbarian class. It blew my mind, even though I could see the problems with it as presented then. Still, it sticks out in my memory as one of the high points of D&D for me. I still think it would be interesting to try and update that class into 3e or 4e. Matter of fact, it could very well work in 4e, with the de-emphasis on magic items. Anyway, I treasured issue 63 for years, even after Unearthed Arcana. Gygax would write an article in a couple issues hence correcting and clarifying a few things, but I don't recall which issue (65? 66?).
Dragon Issue 63: July 1982
part 1/2
84 pages
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: Ha. We get a lecture on copyright and trademark issues, prompted by a recent lawsuit which GDW won against a computer game company. They must proclaim their ownership of these registered trademarks loud and proud, or they could lose them to any upstart who thinks they would also make a cool name for their product. I am thoroughly amused.
Out on a limb: A letter expressing horror at Ed Greenwood's firearms article, saying it would destroy both the balance and the spirit of the game. Guns have no place in D&D. (oh noes)
A letter about errors they spotted in flight of the boodles. These are admitted too and corrections given.
A letter very strongly complaining about the characterisation of Tarl Cabot of the Gor books, saying he isn't evil. Just because he's presented fairly unambigously as the hero by the author, doesn't mean his morals aren't utterly wrong by the standards of many readers. This is Gor we're talking about.
A letter desiring a system to represent the sixth sense that many characters have in fantasy books. You may want to start with a more simulationist system in the first place, instead of trying to adapt D&D.
A letter of generalized praise. Again.
Featured creatures: Gary decides he's too important to put his monsters in the dragon's bestiary with everyone else's. No, these are Official AD&Dtm Monsters, approved for use in Official AD&Dtm Games. Anyway. He's finally got round to filing the serial numbers off angels to his own satisfaction, (lest we forget, he forbade putting actual angels in D&D while allowing devils because he knew if you give something stats, players will kill it, and he didn't like the idea of people even imagining killing angels.) and gives us the astral, movanic and monadic devas, winged servants of good throughout the universe. All are pretty powerful for their hit dice, with a ridiculous array of spell-like abilities, other powers, and immunities that take up most of their descriptions, and virtually no ecological or roleplaying stuff. I am not impressed.
From the sorceror's scroll: Barbarians! This month, Gary also introduces a new Official AD&Dtm Character Class. And dear god they are twinked. Best 3 of 9d6 for strength rolls?! Hiding as a thief of their level+3? Save bonuses up the wazoo. This is very definite power creep. Plus their refusal to use magic items, or even associate with wizards means they'll be useless in some encounters (well, I guess that makes it alright then) and may not play nice with many parties. What was he thinking? How in the world these guys ever got past the editors and playtesters I'll never know. (unless someone involved enlightens me) Were the UA version an improvement from this mess?
Smile! You're on fantasy camera: Another little artist profile. Darlene Blanchard engages in miniature photography. With filters, a little dry ice, and some backdrops, you can achieve surprisingly effective results on a limited budget. Just goes to show, just how many ways you can express your creative and artistic impulses.
Where the bandits are: A little one-pager giving us the borders of the various teritories in the Bandit kingdoms and who's in charge of them. So if your players want to clear out this place, you know how much they have to face (usually in the hundreds. ) It's going to take more than just storming in, swords swinging to sort this lot out.
Greyhawk's world: More political machinations, focussed upon the southeast, and Ivid the overkings plots. At the moment, he rather seems to be winning, bringing even people who should know better under his power. Looks like it's up to the PC's to sort things out again, because the NPC's have no chance.
Pirates & Plunder! (now there's an obvious rip-off name) Swashbuckling on the high seas. Buy it now! Interesting advert. Anyone remember this one?
Leomund's tiny hut: Len turns his attention to what was definitely the dump stat pre 3rd edition. Charisma. So often, people just ignored the henchman stuff, and purely roleplayed any interactions with NPC's, making it useless in play. Shock, horror, this will not do, etc, etc. We need more subsystems! We must define exactly how your charisma is expressed! Once again, I yawn. Nothing much to see here.
Bandits: Speaking of bandits, looks like we have another new class for you to try out this month. Another wilderness focussed fighter/thief hybrid, (which means they have a lot in common with their logical enemy, the bounty hunter ;) ) they aren't particularly over or underpowered, but also don't have any particularly imaginative new abilities. So they're merely a bit meh, as compared with the utter embaressment that are barbarians.
The guns of navarone adventure from FASA. Hmm. Interesting.
... But not least: Roger finishes off the races series with a grab-bag of short articles on the common humanoids. Kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls each get a few paragraphs plus a new god. (one of which I've never seen before, and so must have not gone into common use. ) The shorter word count means he gets to the point, really focussing on what makes the various humanoid races different from one another apart from hit dice and power level. Kobolds are cowardly gang fighters and trappers. Goblins are bootlickers and users of other races to get what they want. Hobgoblins are status obsessed stoic disciplinarians, while gnolls are lazy scavengers. Which is nice. All in all, a good way to end what has been a pretty informative series that's influence is still seen today.
Quote from: (un)reason;311014From the sorceror's scroll: Barbarians! This month, Gary also introduces a new Official AD&Dtm Character Class. And dear god they are twinked. Best 3 of 9d6 for strength rolls?! Hiding as a thief of their level+3? Save bonuses up the wazoo. This is very definite power creep. Plus their refusal to use magic items, or even associate with wizards means they'll be useless in some encounters (well, I guess that makes it alright then) and may not play nice with many parties. What was he thinking? How in the world these guys ever got past the editors and playtesters I'll never know. (unless someone involved enlightens me) Were the UA version an improvement from this mess?
The UA version was pretty similar, with the magic item prohibition worked around a bit with some tweaks that Gary introduced in the next couple of issues of Dragon.
All in all, the class always struck me as intending to be a lone wolf, which, given the attention focused on "solo dungeons" in earlier eras of D&D (see the appendix on random dungeon generation in the 1e DMG) seems like something Gary had some interest in. Given D&D's emphasis on teamwork, though, the class stuck out like a sore thumb. It seems like something from a much later era that hadn't been playtested thoroughly yet. I found it to not be all that powerful in play; a lot of the various gewgaws it had - "spidey sense," jumping - was stuff we'd always kinda handwaved before for any character, so they didn't add much to the game, for us. In general, I found a general apathy towards the class in the groups I gamed with back then. While I loved its potential, I eventually gave up on it after a fairly short time.
I'm tempted to say this class hadn't really been playtested, but I'm sure someone will correct me on that.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;311045The UA version was pretty similar, with the magic item prohibition worked around a bit with some tweaks that Gary introduced in the next couple of issues of Dragon.
All in all, the class always struck me as intending to be a lone wolf, which, given the attention focused on "solo dungeons" in earlier eras of D&D (see the appendix on random dungeon generation in the 1e DMG) seems like something Gary had some interest in. Given D&D's emphasis on teamwork, though, the class stuck out like a sore thumb.
Ironically, it kinda reverses the usual trend, where the characters stick together less at higher levels as they're off running domains and spending months creating new spells and items. Barbarians and Rangers start off as lone wolves, and then gradually learn the joys of working with others better.
Dragon Issue 63: July 1982
part 2/2
Chagmat (what? Not quite the dumbest monster name evar, but not far off.) is this months adventure, another 16 pager. That aside, it's a pretty interesting one, with a combination of small encounters and a full dungeon at the end. Plus the monsters get plenty of depth of history and setting of their own. They could probably even be turned into a PC race without too much trouble.
Plan before you play: Hello again Mr Greenwood. More campaign building advice from the master? Railroading (although that term still hasn't been invented yet) is bad, and players like to feel that they have choices, and the world exists beyond just something to challenge them. He then goes into his world building technique, one again including stuff that would appear later (with some alterations ) in the forgotten realms. While creating political situations and relationships might be a bit of effort, once you have done, the story virtually writes itself from there, as the NPC's make their moves and give the players tons of stuff to do on whichever side they choose. Once again, his passion and dedication to the art of storytelling and worldbuilding shines through, keeping things interesting that could be (and have been under lesser writers) dull all too easily. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Do you dare to try and keep up with him?
The RPGA posts a bulletin that is both an advert, and an example of content, with some special rulings about how Official RPGAtm Games are run. Because they have to standardize, so adventures can be run fairly and consistently throughout the world. Ho hum.
This year, Gary has taken the trip to england, courtesy of Don Turnbull, to attend games fair 82. And it seems he finds english players quieter and better organised than american ones. Do stereotypes have some basis in reality then. He also takes the time to review a couple of fanzines, Dragonlords and Thunderstuck. Both get rather less scathing reviews than the ones he has delivered in the past. He must be enjoying himself.
Computer games have a way to go: More interesting historical stuff on the nature and use of computers, and the logistics of creating a game at that time. Most games are way too short and lacking in depth. He looks forward to the days when memory and processing power is no longer the primary limiter on what people can make. Reality, as ever, will be less impressive than your optimistic predictions. Still interesting though. Particularly interesting is how much less simulationistic computer games have become, despite being able to model reality more accurately. Genres such as platformers are still in their infancy, and many games are simply computerised versions of board and puzzle games. i guess they still have yet to build their own identity and subculture.
The electric eye: A program to generate characters for Top Secret. Well, someone probably got some use out of it. (if it wasn't errata ridden like many of them) Rem, gosub, goto, and other familiar old commands are there in all their glory.
For the sake of Change: Where does money come from? In reality, money comes in many forms, each region with its own, and substantial fluctuations in prices and exchange rates. Should you adopt some of this in your game? Given how complicated economics can get, too much would seriously derail a D&D game. Just like everything, you'll have to find your own balance between reality and usability.
Once again, Gary refuses to put his reviews in with everyone else's. He is really rather scathing of Conan the barbarian, calling it Conan meets the flower children of Set (he has a point there). The sorceror and the sword is also called pretty mediocre. All these bad fantasy movies will put people off the idea of making and watching them. This simply will not do! I shall create a D&D movie, and it will blow these amateurs out of the water! If I fail, I shall roast the incompetents responsible and apologize to you personally! This is entertaining. He's certainly in fine form this month.
The dragon's augury: Simba Safari is a traveller adventure of, yeah, big game hunting. Travel from planet to planet, killing stuff, and intriguing with the other people on the cruise. Well, It'd certainly be a change of pace from most adventures, if a rather politically incorrect one. Not sure what to make of this, although the reviewer seems to like it.
Wild west. Looks like fantasy games unlimited is trying to compete directly with boot hill. Anyone remember this one?
What's new faces the danger of computers taking over. Wormy should feel lucky he's out when the shadowcat comes calling. Dragonmirth reminds us that when dealing with undead, your expected level at the end may be substantially lower than at the beginning.
Seems we have another case of when designers attack this month. Gary delivers one of his largest broadsides in a long time, consisting largely of things I found rather unpalatable. Still, even when I disagree with him, he's always interesting, and never mediocre. This stuff should have reprecussions in following magazines. Also notable is the number of interesting adverts in this one. Seems like lots of games are coming out now, people are jumping on the bandwagon, and the amount of adverts is increasing. Even the second stringers have half-decent budgets to work with. What will happen next?
Having recently read Howard's Conan, Arnie was a bad choice... entirely the wrong body type. The guy playing Angel, David Boreanaz, is far closer to the described physique. The real irony? The magic-distrusting Movie Conan is a good match for the magic-paranoid Barbarian class... and neither is a match to Howard's conan.
As for Simba Safari: Quality adventure, crappy materials to print it on. Judges Guild did good stuff for Traveller... but everything from JG was on cheap paper. Some of my most used traveller stuff was from JG...
EGG's comments about the fanzines are interesting... Marc Gascoigne later went on to pen stuff for Games Workshop.
Quote from: (un)reason;311161Once again, Gary refuses to put his reviews in with everyone else's. He is really rather scathing of Conan the barbarian, calling it Conan meets the flower children of Set (he has a point there).
The 'cult leader' element seems to have been an original idea of the movie makers. Not sure why that's a bad thing though.
Side note: the Settites in Vampire seem to be based on Thulsa Doom in this movie.
Quote from: aramis;311166Having recently read Howard's Conan, Arnie was a bad choice... entirely the wrong body type. The guy playing Angel, David Boreanaz, is far closer to the described physique. The real irony? The magic-distrusting Movie Conan is a good match for the magic-paranoid Barbarian class... and neither is a match to Howard's Conan.
Regarding Conan, I remember Gary's review as echoing very much how I felt about the movie, and I also remember some fellow Howard fans feeiling the same way.
The casting question is very subjective, but I agree that Arnold wasn't the perfect choice for the character, but he was perhaps the perfect choice for a movie like that. I don't see Boreanaz being the right fit, either, but I can see why you'd tap him for the role.
I grew up reading Marvel's Conan, so John Buscema and Ernie Chan's depiction of the Cimmerian looms over almost any other...except, of course, for Frazetta's version. But even Frazetta seemed to depict Conan (or at least, a barbarian hero that could very well be Conan) in different ways - the Conan we see desperately clinging to the back of a red-cloaked ape-man (a scene from
Rogues in the House, as I recall) is a lot more limber and less musclebound than other Frazetta depictions, and seems more in line with Howard's description for Conan as a young man.
I would excuse the extreme "arcanophobia" of Gygax's Barbarian class as understandable from the standpoint of Gygax being a Howard fan. Howard did make a point of telling us about Conan's instinctual fear of such stuff, and it seems it left much more of an impression on Gary than the instances where Howard had Conan show a pragmatic side when magic was needed. The best example is from
Beyond the Black River, when he inscribes a rune to ward off a demon. One also can imagine Howard's Conan having no trouble using an enchanted sword if need be.
Regardless, the extreme aversion to all magic seems to have derived from a wider variety of sources than Conan, such as the various Conan knock-offs from the 60s and 70s. Still, even many of them would pick up a magic sword if it was laying there. I think, in the end, Gary was trying to balance the class with the magic hatred. However, we see those restrictions loosened a bit in UA, and somewhere in the next couple of issues of Dragon he provided a fix to allow the Barbarian to remain viable in fights against creatures only vulnerable to magic weapons.
Quote from: Age of Fable;311180The 'cult leader' element seems to have been an original idea of the movie makers. Not sure why that's a bad thing though.
Side note: the Settites in Vampire seem to be based on Thulsa Doom in this movie.
The cult itself is a redress of a cult from a Howard story. Book was a library book, so I can't look it up right now. But it wasn't whole cloth...
And I can see the Settite connection.
Dragon Issue 64: August 1982
part 1/2
87 pages
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: We get some clarification on the situation between SPI and TSR. TSR loaned them lots of money, with their copyrights as collateral. When SPI collapsed, that means that TSR got the properties, but not the liabilities. That's their justification for screwing over the subscribers anyway. Sneaky. So what are they going to do with them? Try and make some money! Look forward to new games and magazines soon.
Out on a limb: An article expressing displeasure at gary's introduction of traveling spellbooks, saying they make playing magic-users too easy. Hmm. With those prices? Okay then.
A letter complaining about all the optional rules in the magazine going out of print, and asking them to release revised editions compiling the relevant stuff from the magazine.
Another letter of generalized (and quite fulsome) praise.
A letter complaining about the bad advice some Sage Advices give us. Your rules lawyers suck. I could do better.
From the sorceror's scroll: Once again, Gary decides not to use a prexisting article, but make his own Official AD&Dtm Expansion. This time, it's weapons that he's turning his eyes too. From aklys to whip, we have 17 new weapons, including two new polearms (oh yes, it's been a long time.) Even he doesn't seem that enthralled with this topic. He'd much rather be designing new twinked out classes and spells. Is it any wonder fighters ended up so underpowered.
Featured creatures continues to fill out the I can't believe it's not Angelic Heirarchy, with Planetars and Solars (I see what you did there.) Once again, their entire description is a rather excessive laundry list of powers that would be virtually impossible to keep track of and apply to maximum tactical effect in actual play. While I might not agree with the extent which 4th ed trimmed back creature's noncombat powers, after being reminded of these pains in the ass, I have better appreciation of why they made that decision. Once again we can see how many of the flaws in the game's design can be traced right back to the top.
Greyhawk's World: A third article from Gary straight away. He elaborates on the gods of the humanoids, and introduces a new one, Raxivort, the god of the Xvarts. Yet more setting building. Nice to see the various races getting their own gods and spellcasting abilities.
Giants in the earth: This month's characters are Taith Lee's Myal Lemyal, John Henry the railroad legend, and Finn MacCumhal. Rather an odd grab-bag, really. I suppose they publish what they're given.
Sage advice: What are the odds if multiple characters try and open a door together (figure it out yourself, based on size of the door, number of handholds, etc. We can't be arsed to even give you guidelines.)
What are the odds for non-thieves to climb walls. (zero. We like our classes rigid in old skool land. )
Does a multiclassed character have to abide by both sets of weapon and armour restrictions? (if they want to use the powers of a class, they need to be abiding by its restrictions at the time.)
Do all the required attributes of a class count as principal attributes for multiclassed characters. (not quite)
If a follower gets higher level than the master, do they continue to serve (probably not, unless you pay them very well. Watch out for them trying to kill you and take your stuff.)
What level do paladins and rangers cast spells at (they cast at 1st level when they first get spells, then gain 1 caster level per level after that)
Do rangers, paladins, bards, or druids get bonus spells for high ability scores (Only druids)
How do racial limits apply to multi-classed characters (divide XP equally between classes. The limits don't change. But even after you've reached max level in a class, it still eats up half your xp, slowing down your advancement in other classes. Because we have to gimp multi-class characters somehow.)
What happens if your ability scores are too low to qualify for any class (roll a new set. Only the cruelest GM would force you to play a character with multiple 3's)
The assassins guild: Ahh, the joy of D&D organizations. Simultaneously monolithic and untouchable, and yet unable to clear a simple 1st level dungeon. This sets out the rules any successful assassins guild needs to follow in a place with ordinary law enforcement. There are a few D&D'isms, such as assassins and thieves guilds always being separate, and never the twain shall exchange skills, and freelancers being caught easily and stamped down hard. But the rest of the rules make sense, basically boiling down to don't shit where you eat. It certainly doesn't have the cleverness of the ankh morporkian guild system. A pretty middle of the road article overall. (great, now I have an image of assassins listening to Boston while on a stakeout)
The assassins run: Following on, we have an assassin based adventure. And Ed Greenwood immediately breaks one of the rules from the previous section, making the thieves and assassins guild in the forgotten realms completely integrated, and giving us a load of realmsian backstory about the lords of waterdeep forcing their thieves guild out, and the survivors plotting revenge. Not that it really matters to the module, as you can insert it pretty much anywhere there's a group that likes to test it's members fitness in a sadistic fashion. You probably won't die doing this, but you may well lose and get seriously humiliated if you aren't ready for anything. Still, if you can't take the training, you've got no chance out there in real dungeons where they're actually trying to kill you. So if you're planning to run your team through an old skool killer dungeon, put them through this as an in game warm up to get them in properly paranoid mood. They'll thank you for it afterwards.
Dragon Issue 64: August 1982
part 2/2
Planet Busters: Yay! Another Tom Wham game! This is more complex than his previous games, with a large number of different pieces allowing for lots of different strategies, particularly if you play the advanced version. It almost seems like a precursor to CCG's, as it has plenty of room for expansion. Not sure if I like this one or not. I guess I'd have to play it to find out.
Robots for Traveller: I think you can guess what this one does. As they did in gamma world, they eschew random generation for a point based creature building system. And building one that can match up to a human PC in terms of versatility and power would be exceedingly expensive. Still, there are worse ways to spend your money. And having a robot sidekick or character can be amusing, and do things a human can't. Obviously I can't tell if this is broken, but it seems fairly well thought out.
Fiction: The next-to-last mistake by Paul McHugh. A rather meta story of drama at a fantasy LARP, with archery, chess, romance, moral lessons, and twists, oh my. Reminds me quite a bit of the arabian nights style of storytelling, although without the excesses of story nesting that style can fall into. Another strong bit of fiction that fully justifies it's place here, even without any actual supernatural elements. Two thumbs up. Please don't shoot an arrow through them, even if you can.
Why gamers get together: A bit of a misnamed article, as it's more about the benefits conventions bring to individual gamers. By getting to talk too and play with people from other places, you pick up new tricks, find out about new products, and learn how to work the rules better. Another article that strongly reminds me how much harder it was to disseminate ideas between groups before the internet. Before, if it wasn't on TV, it'd take years to get around, now, ideas can be sent across the world by ordinary people.
Championship Sumo wrestling: Another sports game from Brian Blume. Hmm. This doesn't even pretend to be roleplaying or wargaming related like Ringside. It's just an excuse to get a cool little design he made published, regardless of it's appropriateness to the magazine's theme as a whole. I am somewhat dubious as to how much he gets it. Still, at only a page long, it doesn't matter that much. It's his financial choices we really need to worry about.
The dragon's augury: OGRE gets a new edition, expanding the game to cover a greater range of scenarios, some not even using the eponymous ubertank. Production values have been increased, optional rules from magazine articles have been compiled, and the rules have in general been tightened up. Probably worth making the upgrade, in other words.
Worlds of Wonder takes the BRP system, and applies it to three different settings, a fantasy past, superheros in the present, and future one. Essentially, its both a semi-generic toolbox, and a bunch of example settings with their own genre rules added in to use or raid for parts. While there are some minor design errors, this is a laudable effort, as it shows that the company has realized one size does not fit all games, and you can adapt your rules to better simulate a genre, rather than sticking to an imitation of real life. Game design has come quite a way since the start of the decade.
Off the shelf: The dying earth by Jack Vance is a reprint. As it started one of his ongoing series, it's good to have it available again.
The goblin reservation by Clifford D Simak is also a reprint.
Honeymoon in hell by Frederic Brown is a collection of his short stories from the 40's and 50's. Full of puns and other fun, it's a good bit of light reading from a more wholesome age. ( ;) )
The complete robot by Isaac Asimov is a large collection of his short stories on that theme, building a consistent universe, and going to a good length to shape people's perception of robots. Obviously a classic.
Blade Runner by Philip K Dick (not it's original title, but there's a film out, doncha know, so we'll put that in big letters and only put Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as a little subtitle underneath) is of course a classic. The reviewer once again recommends it heartily.
Outward bound by Juanita Coulson is part two of another series. Sci-fi with a strong element of human drama, it is big without being slow or dull.
Castaways in time by Robert Adams is not part of the horseclans series, instead focussing on a group of modern people swept back to an alternate history england. Much less comedy ensues than you might think.
Warlocks gift by Aradath Mayhar gets a rather negative review, as it contains a mary-sue protagonist, and lots of pointless distractions.
Elephant song by Barry B Longyear follows the story of a troupe of circus performers stranded on a uninhabited planet, and learning to survive. A depressing prospect, entertainers with no-one to entertain. But therein lies the drama.
What's new gives us it's own take on women in gaming. But still no sex. Indeed, much of the strip is involved in preventing it. Wormy continues, with drama meeting comedy, and drama winning for a change.
Ooohh. I.C.E proudly presents the arrival of Middle Earth Roleplaying next month on the back cover. This is a big deal. One of the primary inspirations for the hobby enters that hobby. They must have high hopes for its sales potential, as they're already planning an extensive line of supplements. I guess if any licence could make a profit from RPG's, It'd be this one. I wonder if we'll be seeing articles for the game in the magazine?
Another issue I'm a bit dubious about. With the increase in both advertising and stuff from in-house writers, they are definitely becoming more blatantly commercially driven. Their coverage of games by other companies has dropped dramatically, and it doesn't look like that trend'll be reversing any time soon. If I were a young reader at that point I'd be considering sending them a letter saying pandering only to your core audience is not the way to expand your fanbase. Don't say the halcyon days where the magazine was a centreground for the entire hobby are already over.
Robots in Traveller
The Robots in Traveller article was recently discussed on COTI... in general, it's still the standard for some, and is better received than the official Book 8 version, nd the version in JTAS.
I used it for about 10 years, in preference to the official ones.
Championship Sumo
Championship Sumo was fun enough to while away a couple dozen hours over the years.
We played Planet Busters a number of times. I don't remember much about it, but I remember it being fun and fast to play.
As for MERP...I'm trying to recall seeing articles for it in ANY magazine. I get the feeling that licensing issues prevented it from happening. Regardless, it would've been interesting to see Middle-earth material in Dragon, but alas...unless someone remembers something I don't?
I don't recall any more articles of consequence for Traveller ever appearing in Dragon. There may have been some, but I recall being disappointed that coverage for that game began to dry up in Dragon (as well as support for any non-TSR game).
At this time, Dragon was the only game magazine that I could find with any regularity. White Dwarf's availability was spotty, at best, and I never saw any other game mag anywhere until much later. Dragon tried covering a lot of bases on its own, with book reviews being perhaps my favorite non-game-article material. Other venues for such stuff - Starlog, the various digest-sized science fiction magazines - didn't cover books that might appeal specifically to gamers, and Dragon's efforts were appreciated in this department.
Dragon Issue 65: September 1982
part 1/2
86 pages. It's convention season again. Which means off they trot to meet up with the growing legions of fans. What stories will they have to tell this year? What backstage shenanigans will take place. Things are already getting interesting in that respect. We have some stuff on that, and it looks like there's more to come. Plus another full helping of crunch, reviews and games. The D&D train chugs onwards.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter defending Ed's firearms article, pointing out that the weapons in it are still far less damaging and reliable than spells, so the game is hardy broken by their inclusion.
A letter pointing out a bunch of errors in the jester class. It was a joke. Do you really expect perfect mechanical rigour?
A letter expressing confusion at the D&D is satanic crowd. This gets a long-winded reply from kim. You don't have to explain it to us. We're on your side.
A letter talking about the troubles they had with using the umbra as a monster, and the logical problems shadow-fighting presents.
A letter saying ecological stuff, particularly dietary information, should be mandatory for monster descriptions.
Dragon rumbles is written by Gary this issue. It is a fairly lengthy piece about the competition between Gen con and Origins. So you're now the head of by far the most successful company in your field, to the point where other companies are simultaneously sniping at you and imitating you. Just because you've been overtaken that's no reason to pull out and only go to other conventions. That's not a way to produce a unified hobby, or to make money from the conventions. PS. Boycott them if you agree with me ;) So it's another classic Gary editorial full of hyperbole and hypocrisy. What would we do without them? :D
Blastoff!: TSR's got a new game out, Star frontiers. Which means it's promotion time. This is their attempt to do for space opera sci-fi what the basic D&D set did for fantasy gaming, making a more accessable and less gonzo game than their previous two attempts. Which means it's doomed to failure, as this smacks of a game developed around marketing decisions, rather than love. I could be wrong. It could enjoy years of decent sales and play. But Gamma world and Metamorphosis Alpha certainly seem to be remembered more often these days. That's what happens when you forget to put the fundamental weirdness as the foundation for the gloss. You can't make a pearl without grit, after all.
From the sorceror's scroll: Gary turns his eye towards new classes. He has quite a number planned for inclusion in future issues, some which made it (cavalier, thief-acrobat) some which didn't. (savant, mountebank) He also reveals what's at the top of the druid heirachy. (The grand druid, the only 15th level druid in the entire world, with huge personal powers, plus 12 special followers, who's job it is to look after the balance of nature over the entire planet. Now there's a job that would get in the way of regular adventuring. Still, it's not as if you'd be short of things to do in that situation.) He also gives barbarians a new special power so they have a fighting chance against magical creatures, encourages giving your characters proper personalities, and gives Frank Mentzer a promotion. Plus more bitching about the competition. So, he's still got lots of big plans. But how long before he finishes them, flitting between so many projects at once? This is why creative types need a firm editorial hand and deadlines.
Greyhawk's World: This month, the spotlight goes on the south-east and the lendore islands. What lies beyond the limits of the known map? All sorts of legends of dooooom, for none have returned to tell the tale. Meanwhile, Nyrond masses it's army to defend against Ivid's depredations. How much success will they have? Wait a few years for the next edition to come out and we'll see. Nothing special to see here.
Leomund's tiny hut: Weapon quality. Another experiment in differentiating weapons and armour by minute amounts based upon how well they were made. Which involves lots of tedious tables, and even the best ones provide less benefit than a simple +1 weapon. As is often the case with his rules mods, this is really not worth it and needs some serious refining and streamlining.
Weapons wear out, not skills: Weapon proficiency groups. A good idea they really need to get round to implementing canonically. This article make another attempt to generally improve the proficiency system. It does, but not nearly enough. And I suspect we'll be seeing many more of these attempts before third edition. Hopefully some'll be weird enough to be interesting.
Featured creatures is introducing more good guys to the game roster: Baku are magical mini elephants from elysium. But as they have planar travel, they can turn up in the oddest of places. And frankly, the thought of an invisible elephant in the room should scare most evildoers.
Phoenix are thankfully no longer singular, nor do you get tortured to death and sent back in time to stop yourself by the gods for killing one. They're even more disgustingly powerful though, with another laundry list of powers that'll rarely be used properly in play. Gary does love overpowered good guys, doesn't he. If only he could find a more elegant way of making them so.
The missing dragons: The colour wheel theory. Now there's a dumb idea. Well, if you lived in the D&D universe, where attempts at rigorous science fall apart as the researchers go insane trying to make sense of the results, it'd seem like a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. So anyway, we get another set of yellow, orange and purple nurple dragons. Which bear no relation to the previous set, or future sets. Well, they are pretty lame. Is it any wonder people thought they could do better. We also get more "sages believe" pontification. We want names, damnitt. Academics is all about individuals seeking knowledge, not some nebulous monolithic collective. I think we can consign this one back to the shelves of history without regret.
The RPGA bulletin advertises the R series of modules, only available to members. This includes R2, which is the module Frank Mentzer designed, that won him the the 1980 dungeon masters competition. So it ought to be pretty good. Anyone played these?
Timelords: Ahh, doctor who. You have a lot to answer for. Not that these guys have much to do with the Dr who conception of them, being more like specialist psionicists with lots of different time manipulation powers, powered by a point expenditure system. (Proper stimulation of the chronal glands? Really? How do you do that then? ) Fortunately, Lew avoids giving them powers that break the game, such as traveling back in time and stopping aging, and while certainly not weak, there's no way they can compete in overall versatility and blasting power with standard clerics and wizards. I doubt they'd ruin the game if they were allowed as PC's, although they might upset the tone a little, especially if the other players kept making jokes. Still, more options are rarely a bad thing, especially when they're ones that break new ground, rather than just being hybrids and variants of existing roles like bounty hunters or swashbucklers. Once again, Mr Pulsipher wins me over with the quality of his writing.
Dragon Issue 65: September 1982
part 2/2
Monsters of the Midway: Football. Of the american variety, just to ensure no confusion amongst our international readers. Played by D&D monsters, each with their own stats and special powers. I seem to remember Games Workshop doing something similar. Unfortunately, contrary to the (rather good) illustration, hydra is not one of the character choices. And we seem to be missing the stats for satyrs. I'm a bit iffy on this one. The rules don't quite seem to add up, and I can't really visualize how the game plays. It could definitely have been better written and edited.
Tuatha de Danaan: Sigh. It's another article quibbling over the precise stats of a pantheon of deities, based on different sources, readings and translations. Experts in a field are like watches. If you have one, you know what's going on. If you have several, you're never sure. (and disagreeing experts are considerably more annoying than watches that are out by a few minutes.) I might prefer my deities statted, but if I'd had to deal with 10 years of this, I'd throw my hands up and say "Fine, you can't agree on deities stats? They have no stats. They are all beyond mortal reckoning! Are you happy now?!" as well. It might not completely stop the whining, but at least that'd save hours trying to figure out what they ought to have and add up all the math.
Law of the Land: Ed Greenwood gives more setting building advice, once again using examples from the forgotten realms. Shadowdale is now ruled by a PC in his game, and so that means he has to defend his teritory. This is another sortie in his battle to get everyone building their own worlds full of depth and constant evolution, that feel like living places that don't just exist for adventurers to kill and loot. A war as unwinnable as the war against drugs. Anyway, this is about laws, customs, and punishments for breaking them. Differentiating between places in this respect is a good way to make them all distinctive, not just the same old pseudomedieval mishmash. You can even put a few utterly ridiculous laws in there. It's not as if you can think of any more stupid than the ones you can find in real life. As ever, he cites plenty of sources, and writes in an entertaining manner. I can't really fault him on this.
War!: Lew gets a second article published in one magazine. He is pretty prolific. This is about creating in-game justification for conflicts. These things don't just happen for no reason, and discovering and dealing with these can create a whole load of plot hooks above and beyond those simply caused by the fighting and destruction itself. Economics, ambition, religion, race can be complex issues, and solving them a protracted problem. Or it could be as simple as the groups being of opposing alignment and therefore conflict being inevitable and eternal. Either way, it not only keeps the PC's busy, it keeps the world evolving as well. This complements the previous article nicely. When the conflict comes out of the dungeon, the players really have to decide how it affects their characters.
That's no pizza - it's the pong papers: Assassination advice for top secret. As ever, players are often not very clever or subtle, and need to be taught how to avoid detection better. bursting in shooting gets you killed, and it gets innocents killed, while if you plan things properly, no-one will ever expect your involvement.Sniping, Bombs, poison, mechanical "accidents", blackmailing other people into doing the dirty work. All good options bloodthirsty players neglect. The better you do at getting things done smoothly and covering your tracks, the less drama you'll have to deal with later. Surely that's what any professional wants. Only a fool fights when they don't have too.
Up on a soapbox: My god. Lew scores a hat trick for the magazine with this article. Another piece about playstyles, primarily focussing on the risktaking/caution axis of player tendencies, but also with some stuff on the logic/intuition one. Correctly judge your opponent's tendencies, and you'll be at an advantage. Fail, and the reverse is true. It's hard to encompass everything in a little article, and he doesn't even try, but he does put a distinctive spin on the subject. This is less boring than most articles of this type.
The dragon's augury decides to do a whole bunch of computer games this month: Wizardry is an adventure game wih a lot in common with D&D. Generate you characters stats, choose classes, and put together a party. The dungeons are large, pretty, and filled with all kinds of imaginative monsters (creeping coins) Of course, due to memory limitations, this means you have to keep the disk in and do lots of mid game loading, which slows things down a lot. If only they would do something about that in the future. ;)
Akalabeth is a randomly generated adventure game. It takes a different tack, and fails to overcome the information limitations in old computers, so all the locations and adventures look and play the same, and there is no sense to the monster and treasure distribution. Which makes it boring.
Crush, crumble and chomp is an arcade game of giant monsters rampaging a city. It's fairly fun, but there's no way of winning, so its just a matter of how much you can smash and how long you survive to get as high a score as possible before being worn down. Which was often the case in those old games. You'll get bored sooner or later.
The chamax plague/Horde is another Traveller double bill. A pair of adventures that can be run separately or interlinked, they also provide an alien adversary with plenty of bite and ecology. Can you figure them out well enough to use good tactics against them?
Empire builder gives Gary a rare opportunity to indulge his love of railroad games. (no, not that sort ;) ) Build your network and compete with your opponents to make as much money as possible. Maybe not for everyone, but he certainly enjoys it. And as we know, he's not one to sugar-coat things and say so when he doesn't mean it. So that's a pretty good recommendation.
What's new sees dixie playing the pedant. Wormy fits a couple more plot twists in. Dragonmirth only gets half a page, which is a bit half-assed.
Gangbusters gets a cool newspaper style advert on the back page. Yes, I know it's been done here before. It works, ok.
I hope you've enjoyed the Lewis Pulsipher special. ;) Honestly, at this rate, he ought to have a permanent job along with Roger and Ed. Whatever happened to him? I don't remember seeing any stuff from him during the 90's. More questions that I hope our Loyal Readers ( ;) ) can answer. See you next time.
Quote from: (un)reason;311886I hope you've enjoyed the Lewis Pulsipher special. ;) Honestly, at this rate, he ought to have a permanent job along with Roger and Ed. Whatever happened to him? I don't remember seeing any stuff from him during the 90's. More questions that I hope our Loyal Readers ( ;) ) can answer. See you next time.
I just did a quick Google search about him. He's still around:
http://pulsiphergames.com/gameindex.htm
He's been around longer than I imagined.
Dragon Issue 66: October 1982
part 1/2
84 pages. They moved into new buildings recently. Bigger, shinier, and more consolidated, this'll hopefully make things more convenient for everyone on the team. And they certainly won't miss the mice. Language is this month's special theme, with a whole bunch of related articles. We also, as promised, get more stuff for illusionists, and plenty of returning series. Even big upheavals like moving house no longer stop them from putting out a full sized quality product on time. So lets see what else they've managed to squeeze in.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Glenn Rahman defends his villainisation of the protagonist of the Gor novels. He has read them properly, and can cite extensive quotes to support his choice. One wonders why he kept reading them.
Roger Moore also gives a load of commentary and corrections.
Gary writes in to say that the reasons firearms are not found in Official AD&D Worlds is because the physics of the universe do not allow for gunpowder and similar explosives. Burning stuff simply burns, it doesn't exert outward pressure. (so steam power won't work either) Experiments on those lines will simply do sod-all. If you want blasting effects, you'll have to use magic. And that's final. ;)
And finally we get an actual letter from a reader, saying that is a held creature literally couldn't move any muscles at all, they'd die from suffocation in a few rounds. Kim follows Gary's lead, and reminds him that spells completely bypass real life physics. They can be completely unable to even blink or breathe, and not suffer the ill-effects they normally would. (yes, this contradicts the ruling about held creatures in water, but hey, even a master editor can't remember everything, and if magic can break the rules of the universe, that means they don't have to be internally consistent anyway.)
Should they have an edge: The class weapon restrictions debate gets reopened. Well, it has been a couple of years. You've gotta trot out the old perrenials for the new readers. John Sapienza floats the idea of detaching the damage dice from the weapon used, so cosmetically, they can be using any weapon, but due to lack of training they'll still be limited to d4 or d6, which will preserve the intended game balance. Which is pretty innovative, really. They'll make narrativists out of these guys yet. Bruce Humphrey provides the predictable counter of no is no, and that's final argument. Which is considerably less interesting, as it's just reiterating the status quo. And we all know that drama is found in pushing and breaking the rules. So it goes. I'm sure we'll see this one again in the future.
Elfquest's characters get converted to D&D. Cutter, Skywise, Leetah, Rayek and Picknose. These guys are less twinked than most of these articles, with not a single 18, and relatively few abilities that are illegal for regular PC's. A fluke, or is this a good sign? Lets hope.
Sage advice seems to be stuck in the past this month, focussing on demihumans:
Can demihumans make magical items (yes, within the limits of their class restrictions. They can also make some special items humans with the same skills can't, because their gods are nice like that.)
How do you make elven chain. (Its a secret alloy. You don't think they'd give away trade secrets, do you. You'll be lucky to get hold of some if they like you. )
Why can't elves be rangers, when they're so nature oriented. (because the gods say so. They gave humans ranger abilities as a direct way to deal with giants and other wilderness threats. For whatever reason, elven deities aren't so generous, despite the fact that they have ranger abilities themselves. Maybe if you pray enough, they'll change their minds someday. ;) )
Featured creatures: This month, Gary fills out the genie races, so now there's one for every element. Dao, Marids and Jann. How symmetrical of him. These are pretty much as they remain for the next few editions, giving us a wide range of power levels and morals for our genies. You'll still want efreet for the full-on wish granting stuff though. Rather a mixed blessing really, that power.
From the Sorceror's scroll: Lots of new spells in Gary's other contribution this month. This includes both future staples like alter self and shadow walk, and forgettable stuff like read illusionist magic and phantom wind (fnarr) These are generally pretty solid. As is often the case, he follows up the game material with some general chatter about events. A certain ex-editor of the fiend folio gets snarked at for something he wrote in a rival publication (can someone fill me in on the other side of this, as it is annoyingly vague.). He talks a little more about their move to new premises. And he promises to fill in details on the deities of greyhawk sometime soon. Once again, he's produced a pretty interesting, if not always the most organized set of stuff for our perusal.
Is it really real?: To complement the illusionist spells, we get another nature of illusions essay. Why can illusion spells really hurt if you believe in them, but not heal? How much does repeated exposure make spotting illusions easier. How inaccurate do things created from descriptions look? In some respects more lenient, and in some less than things would later be, this is another article that shows up repeatedly, and is useful in gauging how fashions change over the years. Which is interesting from a statistical and sociological point of view.
I always loved Giants in the Earth. While I understand what you mean by saying the characters are often twinked out, my attitude on it is that most of these characters are truly exceptional. Otherwise, why read about them? True, many of the write-ups did, indeed, go a bit overboard, and are obviously a product of sheer enthusiasm for the subject. But this enthusiasm was infectious. It made me want to read books more closely, which is saying something, since I was already a voracious reader.
Most importantly, though, Giants in the Earth introduced me to a lot of books I might never have read otherwise - the one that leaps to mind is Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade," a very fun book with a memorable premise.
The downside to GitE was it often pointed up just how inadequate D&D was at modeling anything but D&D. Too often exceptions had to be made to make these characters fit. I guess I could use my own reasoning and say these characters were exceptional. However, one does have to wonder why characters from the genre that inspired a game were often so hard to stat up in that game.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;312108I always loved Giants in the Earth. While I understand what you mean by saying the characters are often twinked out, my attitude on it is that most of these characters are truly exceptional. Otherwise, why read about them? True, many of the write-ups did, indeed, go a bit overboard, and are obviously a product of sheer enthusiasm for the subject. But this enthusiasm was infectious. It made me want to read books more closely, which is saying something, since I was already a voracious reader.
Most importantly, though, Giants in the Earth introduced me to a lot of books I might never have read otherwise - the one that leaps to mind is Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade," a very fun book with a memorable premise.
The downside to GitE was it often pointed up just how inadequate D&D was at modeling anything but D&D. Too often exceptions had to be made to make these characters fit. I guess I could use my own reasoning and say these characters were exceptional. However, one does have to wonder why characters from the genre that inspired a game were often so hard to stat up in that game.
It's not just that they tend to have exceedingly high stats in everything, it's that they often do so even in the areas that the original source material specifically describes them as deficient in. (and that's not counting the poor life decisions many of them make, that seriously imply low wisdom.) Along with the constant need to break the rules to properly emulate their powers, it's all a bit irritating. They're failing to either properly emulate the character, or produce something that'll actually be useful in most people's games. (you'd need to be seriously high level to viably fight them, and if they were on your side, the danger of them overshadowing the party would be considerable. )
It would probably be easier to simulate a lot of these characters if D&D had Luck and/or Courage attributes (I know saving throws were largely meant to be luck, but they were fixed for a given class/level).
Dragon Issue 66: October 1982
part 2/2
A primer for the language of larceny: A dictionary for thieves cant, so if you want to learn the basics of it and incorporate some of this stuff into your in character speech, you can. Since its only 8 pages, plus a couple of pages on grammar, it's hardly complete. Unfortunately, I suck at learning other languages, so this makes my eyes glaze and brain squeek. You'll have to get someone else to judge its quality and usefulness as a language and shorthand for communicating larcenous acts.
And a second article on languages. The author creates a possible language tree to show how the various D&D languages could be related.
Fantasy philology: And another one, which also gives various eases of learning related languages to your current ones. Like weapon proficiency groups, this may be realistic, but it's also a considerable amount of extra crunch which you only want to use in a game focussed upon the subject.
Old dwarvish is still new to scholars: Another article that gives us some specific details on a fantasy language. The writer steals liberally from tolkien to give us the basics of dwarvish grammar. Which is pretty much as you would expect, given their established personality traits. Meh.
Leomund's tiny hut: This month, Len gives us stats for a load more (almost) natural animals. Compsognathus and euparkia, adorable mini dinosaurs. Vultures and hawks. A whole host of stats for miniature animals, to counterbalance all the dire ones and give low level characters a fair chance. Skeletons for the above. And in a stroke of genius, the carnivorous flying squirrel. Combined with the amusing illustration, this is the best thing he's come up with ever. What's more terrifying than a swarm of these leaping onto you, each taking off a little chunk of flesh and then scurrying away with it? The only thing that's really in the same league are giant space hamsters. I an definitely using these when I get a chance.
Up on a soapbox: Individuals are important, and can make a difference to the flow of world history. While the truth of this statement can be debated in the real world, it should definitely be the case in your games, particularly for the PC's. Otherwise what's the point in playing? So let them rock. Not a particularly exceptional or controversial position, really.
Off the shelf: The coming of the horseclans by Robert Adams is a reprint of the first book in what sems to be the reviewers favourite series. It goes without saying that he wants you to get it.
The iron dream by Norman Spinrad is another reprint. It tells the story of what could have happened if hitler had decided to become a novelist and emigrated to america instead of taking over germany. Which certainly sounds interesting.
Mallworld by Somtow Sucharitkul (now there's a hard name to write right. ) pokes fun at humanities current foibles via extrapolative sci-fi.
The earth-shaker by Lin Carter is another novel in the Prince zarkon series. The liberal stealing from various pulp stories continues.
The wrath of khan by Vonda N McIntyre is of course the novelisation of the latest star trek movie. Of course, the novel format means you get to see inside the characters heads, as well as some stuff that was cut from the final version of the movie. Which makes it a worthwhile complement to the film.
Collected fantasies by Avram Davidson is a collection of whimsical short stories. Can dentists save the world from alien invaders? Stranger things have happened.
Bolo by Keith Laumer is another load of short stories, this one telling the tales of giant, self powered super-tanks and what happens when they refuse to be shut down after the war is over.
Erasmus Magister by Charles Sheffield blends real history and fiction cleverly, making legends seem plausible.
Death, edited by Stuart David Schiff is a compilation of stories from Whispers magazine about , well, you can guess from the title. It goes from comedy to horror, as real deaths do.
Black easter and The day after judgement by James Blish are two books in a series. Bored billionaire unleashes all the demons of hell. Concequences happen. No-one ends up happy. You'd think people would learn from other peoples mistakes. But no. Still, it makes for entertaining reading, and gets praise for the consistency of its science and magic.
Merchanters luck by C.J. Cherryh follows on from downbelow station. Once again, this reviewers favourite gets plenty of praise for its characterization and plotting.
The dragon's augury: Star Smuggler is a solo sci-fi adventure game. Can you make enough to pay off the loan on your starship before it gets reposessed. You'll have to work fast and take risks. This is obviously in the same vein as the fighting fantasy books, if a bit more complex. The reviewer certainly seems to like it. We'll be seeing plenty more of these in the coming years.
An open letter to rick loomis: Ahh, joy. It's another amusing case of Gary airing his dirty laundry in public. (or quite possibly the same one referred to obliquely earlier) This is amusing. What are we to do with these bickering games companies? Not much we can do really unless we invent time travel, so lets just enjoy the show and see how it gets followed up on.
Friends in high places: A jokey minific from Roger Moore. What is the ultimate source of ultimate power that nothing else in the game can match up to? Read on to find out. And then bitch about it in forums, because it's so unfair. ;)
What's new talks about building your own dungeon in real life. Wormy has lots of arcane language stuff that is diliberately incomprehensible.
Seems to be a lot of articles on recurring themes and series this month. Combined with the continuing real life drama, this makes it most interesting in context, particularly since a big chunk of the issue was pretty dull on its own merits. The average quality definitely seems to be on a downswing at the moment. Lets hope they can pull out of this soon.
Quoten open letter to rick loomis: Ahh, joy. It's another amusing case of Gary airing his dirty laundry in public. (or quite possibly the same one referred to obliquely earlier) This is amusing. What are we to do with these bickering games companies? Not much we can do really unless we invent time travel, so lets just enjoy the show and see how it gets followed up on.
No, it's EGG spleening about GAMA taking over Origins... from AH & SPI. And basically trying to Intimidate GAMA leadership via Rick Loomis. Who has been active in GAMA since the start.
Quite obviously, it failed, as Origins is going strong, Rick is Again GAMA president, and TSR is gone the way of the Dodo, whilst Flying Buffalo is still doing business.
I suspect the foreclosure upon SPI was an attempt to kill Origins... it failed, since GAMA stepped up as TSR killed SPI. And quite obviously, EGG was pissed...
Quote from: aramis;312316No, it's EGG spleening about GAMA taking over Origins... from AH & SPI. And basically trying to Intimidate GAMA leadership via Rick Loomis. Who has been active in GAMA since the start.
Quite obviously, it failed, as Origins is going strong, Rick is Again GAMA president, and TSR is gone the way of the Dodo, whilst Flying Buffalo is still doing business.
I suspect the foreclosure upon SPI was an attempt to kill Origins... it failed, since GAMA stepped up as TSR killed SPI. And quite obviously, EGG was pissed...
"AN open letter to Rick Loomis" is, for me, one of the most memorable things Gygax ever wrote. Not for its actual content, but for just how angry Gygax seemed to my 15-16 year old self, over something of which I had no clue. It seemed like it was a big deal, given that such stuff had never really shown up in Dragon before. Looking back on it now, I'm still unclear as to why such an amount of space was justified in being devoted to the matter. Sure, I get that Dragon was the biggest soapbox in the RPG realm, and that Gary was using it as his own bully pulpit to further his goals in this case, but why was this matter such a big deal to him? This was certainly the high point for his spleen-venting in Dragon; it would not be until he started posting to various internet forums that I would see its like again.
Gygax's stake in the matter was actually quite large.
TSR was probably trying to kill Origins in order to make GenCon significant enough for getting the "big names" (Mattel, Hasbro, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, etc) to take notice, and pay TSR for their attendance.
With 2 major cons, neither was "big enough" to get the big guys to spend significant money on either. Further, Origins attendance was pretty much expected of TSR, despite their competing con.
Dragon Issue 67: November 1982
part 1/2
84 pages. Another personell change this issue, as Jake is off to crystal publications. Instead of promoting upwards like they have in the past, they airdrop Mike Cook into the job. (wonder what changes he'll make) Poor Kim. Guess he's stuck with his editing job for a while longer. We also get another second class mailing thingy (illegible again. ) Can someone help me with that?
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Not a lot here this month. One letter pointing out an error in the weapon proficiency system a couple of months ago. And another from Len complaining about nebulous sages (good, someone realized how silly that was at the time) and the inconsistency in levels of realism between articles, and calling for more editorial rigor. Kim reminds him that most of the stuff in here is explicitly optional, and people should be able to pick and choose. If we tried to make everyone play the same, they'd just go and play other games.
TSR wants a japanese translator. Apply now! Interesting. Looks like they want to expand into the asian market.
From the sorceror's scroll delivers us more Official AD&Dtm spells. Once again, we get a load of future staples such as Melf's acid arrow, grease, stoneskin and Evard's black tentacles, plus quite a few forgotten ones like ultravision, run and cloudburst. We also get plenty more comments about events in general. They're improving their dice, so we get decent translucent colored ones rather than the horrible little blue uninked ones. We get some more talk about the minute long melee round, and how each attack is an abstraction of events over that time, justification of his hatred of the conan film, and lots of other little tidbits. thrown in without any apparent pattern other than what was on his mind at the time. Once again, this is pretty interesting stuff, and he's as entertaining as ever to read. Whether it improves the game, or just makes wizards even more powerful compared to other classes, is another matter altogether.
Features creatures is in an elven mood this month. We get the Grugach, or wild elves, and Cooshee, aka elven dogs. Plus another elven subrace that thankfully never made it into common use, the valley elf. I guess that name just has too many wrong connotations for people to put into their games without players having giggles. A far more serviceable contribution than his celestial creations.
Spy's advice: What is wrestling value ( A stat that we dropped in 2nd edition. Don't worry about it. Use your regular HtH rating)
Can you conceal an uzi (With a trenchcoat!)
What are the Xp costs for the tech bureau (see below, and refer to issue 45 for more detail. )
Why isn't the british secret service listed (it is. You just need to look under its proper name, not its nickname. )
Do you only get bureau bonuses if you are of the right bureau (usually, yes)
Should the admin figure out XP before or after the mission (after)
What are your odds of picking pockets (compare surprise values and roll. Here are the odds of them spotting you)
Who is james pong (One of the PC's from my own game, originally. He's a 6th level Killer. Watch out)
Which dragon issues have top secret articles (here's the list)
why does some big ammo have less stopping power than it's lower category. (because after a certain size, it starts going straight through you. Oooh, matron. )
Is J.B in Dr Yes James bond (maybe)
Why do silencers weaken guns (because they reduce the blowback and bullet speed, thus making them less accurate. Concealment comes at a cost.)
How do you determine skiing chances. ( Its an area of knowledge. Roll against it like any other)
Whats the difference between regular and fragmentation grenades (Damage. Mainly we just want to make a fun game. We can't be bothered to include dozens of realistic varieties of grenades, with their own varieties of specific injury. )
What does X for weapon speed mean (That's a mistake. It should be VS. Or possibly XX ;) )
Souping up the spider: 11 new varieties of giant spider for your pleasure. With a whole bunch of clever different hunting methods, these guys really don't get enough credit. Monsters like this are an excellent reason why adventurers should travel in parties. One person on their own could easily get webbed up and eaten with just a moments carelessness. After all, your attributes don't scale in OD&D, so if you can't cast spells or reach your weapon, you're screwed. Who's gonna cut you loose, baby?
The deities and demigods of greyhawk: More official stuff from Gary, as he promised. We get Heroneous and Hextor, the rival brothers of martial discipline. Mmm, slashy ;) . Iuz, the withered demonspawn. And St Cuthbert, the ascended mortal who seems to take on the evangelical christian role in Greyhawk. More stuff that would continue in much the same form editions later. We also see the start of giving clerics of specific gods special abilities to differentiate them, which is nice. Of course, at the moment, there is absolutely no balance between them, which isn't so good. Still, it's pretty interesting to see another bit of D&D canon start. I wonder how it'll develop in the next few issues.
Quote from: (un)reason;312527Features creatures is in an elven mood this month. We get the Grugach, or wild elves, and Cooshee, aka elven dogs. Plus another elven subrace that thankfully never made it into common use, the valley elf. I guess that name just has too many wrong connotations for people to put into their games without players having giggles. A far more serviceable contribution than his celestial creations.
For those who don't know, the Valley Elf appeared in module S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. They weren't used in the adventure itself, but in the rather substantial rules supplement that was something like a proto-Unearthed Arcana. The Cooshee also appeared there.
The Valley Elf would return in a fairly prominent role in module WG12: Vale of the Mage, which was really a setting sourcebook. The name was unfortunate for the time period in which it appeared, because it distracted from the fact that these elves were a departure from the D&D paradigm. They were a taller, much less friendly type of elf. The only downside, which could be ignored pretty easily, was that they were close allies and servants of the ruler of the Valley of the Mage from the Greyhawk setting. As far as I know, there was never a really good explanation as to why they were so closely aligned with the Mage, who was often characterized in a way that made him seem pretty uninteresting to me.
The Grugach were even more interesting - a xenophobic elf race, much more wild and capricious than the elves we were used to seeing in D&D. Unfortunately, they never really made an impact anywhere else in D&D, although I think there are echoes of them in the way Birthright's elves were portrayed, and in the elves of 4e.
Quote from: (un)reason;312527The deities and demigods of greyhawk: More official stuff from Gary, as he promised. We get Heroneous and Hextor, the rival brothers of martial discipline. Mmm, slashy ;) . Iuz, the withered demonspawn. And St Cuthbert, the ascended mortal who seems to take on the evangelical christian role in Greyhawk. More stuff that would continue in much the same form editions later. We also see the start of giving clerics of specific gods special abilities to differentiate them, which is nice. Of course, at the moment, there is absolutely no balance between them, which isn't so good. Still, it's pretty interesting to see another bit of D&D canon start. I wonder how it'll develop in the next few issues.
This was one of my favorite Greyhawk articles. It brought to life an aspect of the setting that had never really been addressed before. It was interesting to see Iuz, as there were few, if any, instances of stats for any comparably powerful Greyhawk personality showing up anywhere else that I know about. St. Cuthbert was equally as interesting to me, as there was little revealed about him beyond the description of a church in the Village of Hommlet (module T1), and a mention or two in the 1e DMG.
Dragon Issue 67: November 1982
part 2/2
An extensive set of articles on the astral plane takes the crucial center spot this issue. 13 pages of general stuff on the description and physics, plus a 5 page mini adventure. This makes me very happy indeed. Because I'm a huge planes fan, and because it's such a big part of this issue, I'm going to break it down into it's subsections.
The preface gives us a basic description. Silvery weightless place with conduits, psychic wind, occasional bits of debris. Not that dissimilar to later developments, apart from the lack of dead gods.
Astral encounters is still a bit vague, as they still don't have many creatures to populate the place with. Again, the chances of meeting a god passing through are rather higher than later fluff would indicate. Most of the creatures will be rather powerful, but that's ok, as you'll probably be pretty high level too if you're there.
Astral traveling reiterates the common ways to get there. Will you project, or go there bodily? Either way, you don't need to worry about food, drink, sleep, aging, etc, because time passes at the rate of one day per thousand years. But it does catch up after you leave, so be prepared.
Encounter checks and the psychic wind elaborates on the chances of running into trouble. This should have been condensed with astral encounters, as this positioning is not very good organization.
Movement and combat establishes the intelligence powered flight that people in astral space use to get around. Watch the wizard doesn't leave everyone else behind. Fun stuff, because it requires very different tactics to be successful in to regular battles.
Magical alterations is mostly a list of spells that don't work, (druids in particular are rather screwed) but there are also some ones with weird effects. This eats up a lot of space, as they tackle every spell individually, rather than giving general formulae organized by school and stuff, as they would later in planescape. This could definitely do with some refinement.
Fedifensor is the module. Recover a powerful magical sword from a githyanki fortress. Just another day for seasoned adventurers. This one involves a lot of luck, as if you roll badly, you may might meet a demon prince or greater titan along the way, while the final fortress would be a walkover for anyone strong enough to face down things that powerful. Don't think attacking everything you see head-on is the best course of action.
I've quite enjoyed this, as it feels familiar, but is still noticeably missing several elements that would be crucial to the later planescape portrayal. It's nice to know which bits were part of the original conception and what's changed since then. And as this is one of the few planes that's survived to 4th edition fairly unscathed, it can't have been bad. There's certainly already room for plenty of adventures here. Now all we need is a good set of articles on the ethereal and outer planes. Sometime soon, hopefully.
Fiction: King of the cats by Gillian Fitzgerald. Ahh, romance. What a wonderful thing. But where fae are involved, it never turns out well for the humans involved. A nicely mythical feeling little story.
Loyal readers: More talk from Gary. He comments on the various character classes he's thinking of developing, and the feedback he's received upon them. He once again strongly rejects the idea of anti-paladins, and talks about demoting the monk to an optional class. On the plus side, they're considering making a full oriental variant of D&D with all new classes. Yay. More foreshadowing. Another thing that it'll take them years to actually get round to publishing, but that's interesting in itself. On the negative side, he introduces one of the dumber mid 1st edition optional rules. Comeliness. Separating physical attractiveness and social skill and presence is not an inherently bad idea, as the WoD system shows, but doing so in this kludgy way mid edition just turns the two into even greater dump stats, given how few are the number of things that they are used for. What was he thinking?
Poker, chess, and the AD&D system: A fifth piece from gary this month (whatever happened to his promise not to write too much and monopolize the magazine? I guess the same thing that happened to their promise to always cover a wide range of games. :( ) Once again, he reminds people that the AD&D rules are official, and owned soley by TSR. If you add to, subtract from or alter them, you are no longer playing an Official AD&Dtm Game. On the other hand, I as the creator and head of the company, can create Official AD&Dtm Material as I choose. It is a duty I take on with a heavy heart, and a determination to make the game more fun for you, loyal readers! This is primarily him commenting on and justifying the recent stuff such as barbarians and devas, and their oddities when compared to the standard rules. All of this was well thought out! You can rely on my judgement! I roll my eyes. He really really needs an editor who'll say no to him.
The role of books: Lew gives us a group of big reference books containing the catalogue of myths and fairytales in condensed form. Any one of these contains enough plots to keep you going for centuries, if you file off the serial numbers and mix them together. Of course they're probably not easy to find these days, and the internet is more comprehensive than even the thickest book can manage. But there's a lot to be said for editorial oversight. You'll have to decide for yourself if you can search out stories individually and tolerate reading it all on a screen.
Reviews: Trollpak is a runequest supplement, giving us plenty of detail on the Uz, as they call themselves, including makng them available as PC's, plus a bunch of different adventures based around them. Readable, comprehensive, and not forgetting the gloranthan sense of humour. Just be careful not to overpower the PC's, especially when using them in large groups.
Wormy gets back home and has to defend his horde. What's new gets Sooooo close to doing sex in D&D this time before being interrupted.
So it looks like we get to see the seed of the plans that would eventually grow into Oriental Adventures. Probably the biggest variant made on 1st edition AD&D, showing how you can completely rework the classes and monsters while keeping the same basic framework. This is rather a divided issue. On one hand we have tons of cool stuff on the planes, and several other good articles. On the other hand, Gary is continuing his unchecked rampage through the magazine, adding on stuff all over the place seemingly at random, while insulting anyone who gets in his way. What is up with that? I seriously hope they'll start putting more freelancer articles in again soon.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;312579The Grugach were even more interesting - a xenophobic elf race, much more wild and capricious than the elves we were used to seeing in D&D. Unfortunately, they never really made an impact anywhere else in D&D, although I think there are echoes of them in the way Birthright's elves were portrayed, and in the elves of 4e.
Yeah, Forgotten realms and Dragonlance both had wild elves, but they took rather different roles in the setting. Interesting, that.
Quote from: (un)reason;312760Yeah, Forgotten realms and Dragonlance both had wild elves, but they took rather different roles in the setting. Interesting, that.
It shows how little impact they had, that I can't for the life of me remember anything about either. In Birthright, while I guess they weren't really "wild," the followers of Rhuobhe Manslayer were a hostile presence haunting the woods and forests. The Grugach Gygax presented in the article we're discussing were even more distinct, and while they obviously had a place in Greyhawk, they never got the attention they deserved.
Dragonlance wild elves were always being repressed by the other two subraces as part of their aesops about the good guys frequently being jackasses too. I remember one story about a half-breed hiding her wild-elf heretage. I'm currently drawing a blank on stories or adventures involving FR wild elves too.
Course, in Athas, all elves are wild elves by the standards of any other elf. ;)
Dragon Issue 68: December 1982
part 1/2
104 pages. Another extra large christmas episode. Nice. After more than a year of 84 pagers, I was starting to wonder when there would next be a size increase. The cover's nothing much to shout about this time, however. Oh well, hopefully the contents'll make up for that.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A contrasting pair of letters, as is their wont, one praising the language stuff in issue 66, and asking for more of it, and more attention paid to it in official modules; and the other saying that actually putting fantasy grammars and vocabularies in is a waste of space, and too much attention to pointless detail that hardly anyone will actually use in a game. Ahh, the usual can't please everyone problem. No getting around that one.
A letter on the great how illusions should work debate, adding their own opinions and houserules.
A letter rubbishing the idea that all clerics should be forbidden edged weapons, regardless of alignment or their deities creed and culture. We have to break out of the medieval european mold.
A letter pointing out how inconvenient digging the right bit of equipment out of your pack is in the heat of battle, and the effect this has on wizards trying to cast from their spellbook. If you take that into account, you'll find it's not unbalanced at all :rolleyes:
Featured creatures gives us lots of fungal, er, fun this month. Ascomids, phycomids and basidronds. Some seriously freaky looking and acting things. I suspect that like bug and deep sea fish based monsters, this may be another case of things based on reality being stranger than ones just invented wholecloth. In any case, these are worthy additions to the D&D dungeon ecology, fitting in perfectly with the array of slimes, oozes and things like gelatanous cubes and carrion crawlers. Take them out from a distance, because otherwise you'll get gunk all over you.
Be a two-fisted fighter: Roger Moore turns his eye on two weapon fighting, one of the more problematic little tricks in the game. This is mostly clarifications and semi-official houserulings, not really adding much to the rules as a whole. It points out just how dangerous high dex characters are if they choose to become two weapon fighters, as they nearly double their damage output. Thanks for that, roger. Now every unimaginative twink'll want to play one. (the smart ones, of course, will keep on playing wizards and druids.) I suppose it would have happened sooner or later, he just helped it along. Are the crimes of the proletariat the fault of the proclamations of the elite? Did this open the door for drizzt and his clones? Is it way past midnight, and I'm reaching for things to say to finish this issue off? Who can say.
The gen con mini's competition this year gets a good looking over. They give us the winners and runners up in the various categories, and show us photos of the dioramas. The legibility of the photos still isn't perfect, but is an improvement on most of their attempts in earlier magazines.
Up, up and away: Looks like TSR has another new game to promote. Dawn patrol is actually a new version of Fight in the Skies, a game that has been mentioned in this magazine a few times. Obviously, they think the new edition is a substantial improvement. No great surprises here. I'll reserve judgement for a more impartial review.
Beg, borrow or steal: An article for Barbarian Prince, of all things. Which is pretty cool really, given how much they've ossified in recent issues. This gives you a load of extra options for making a little money, most of them on the larcenous side. Well, Glenn does enjoy his shades of grey. I rather like this. It adds lots of options without reducing the danger, and gives me lots of clues as to how the rules work in play. Which does a far better job of selling me on the game than the straight promo piece above. Anyone know if this is available in pdf anywhere?
Thrills and chills: Ooh. This is cool. (literally) Adventuring in the ice age. A rather harsher environment than usual, given that getting hold of enough food is trickier, and there are huge swathes of technology that haven't been developed yet. Just surviving is an adventure in itself, given the creatures out there in a D&D world. The author really does play up the degree of hardship involved, expanding on the cold rules, and giving us a whole new set of encounter tables. If you liked dark sun, and gritty survivalist fantasy in general, this should be fun to play with.
From the sorceror's scroll gets a new, more dignified header, and gives us lots more official high level spells, including quite a few named ones such as Otiluke's telekinetic sphere and Mordenkainen's disjunction. The length of each description is considerably longer than in previous entries. We also get to find out who played the various named wizards that made the spells, which is neat. As in the last issue, we get quite a few spells that would become staples of play, such as chain lightning, contingency, and teleport without error, but also some that didn't, including a whole range of spells for dealing with extraplanar creatures such as binding, truename and dolor. This is pretty useful stuff, that once again boosts the power and versatility of wizards quite a bit. And thankfully, his spleen seems vented after last months outburst, so he stays on topic this time. What a relief. We wouldn't want to spoil christmas by fighting, would we?
Leomund's tiny hut also gets a pretty new colour header. He introduces the cloistered cleric, the wimpy non-adventuring variant who stays at home healing people and copying books. So your characters can be ordered around by people who's asses they could kick no trouble, with the threat of withholding their magical healing and training. :sigh: We don't need this, the game doesn't need this. Still, at least we get some new spells out of the deal, which is always useful. As ever, you've got to seriously filter lens output for the useful bits, because big chunks of it are not, and some are actively detrimental to your fun quotient.
The adventure is yours! Not a very good pic as they advertise the basic and expert sets, with very two-dimensional looking characters. If you were feeling uncharitable, you might suspect them of mispromoting it, because the high-ups want AD&D to sell better than BD&D.
What's in the water: The fiend folio forgot to put expanded tables for underwater encounters. So its up to the magazine, as usual, to cover for their mistakes and omissions. What a job to have. This is pretty much as you'd expect, lots of tables, plus some expansion on the aquatic versions of various monsters. Not that interesting, but you'd miss it if it wasn't there. After all, in a long running game, chances are you'll spend some time adventuring underwater.
Weather in the world of greyhawk: This month centerpiece is a strange one. A detailed system for determining what the weather will be like, based upon your latitude, terrain and time of year. Which I guess will work for any roughly earth sized and structured world. They've certainly put plenty of research into it, with citations and a bibliography. And Gary approves. So even if it might be a bit dull, all the really dull stuff's already been done for you. Just roll on it and enjoy the results. Or decide on weather based on plot. Or completely ignore the weather, as far too many of us do. The choice is yours (or at least, your GM's), as ever.
Quote from: (un)reason;312992Beg, borrow or steal: An article for Barbarian Prince, of all things. Which is pretty cool really, given how much they've ossified in recent issues. This gives you a load of extra options for making a little money, most of them on the larcenous side. Well, Glenn does enjoy his shades of grey. I rather like this. It adds lots of options without reducing the danger, and gives me lots of clues as to how the rules work in play. Which does a far better job of selling me on the game than the straight promo piece above. Anyone know if this is available in pdf anywhere?
For free right here. (http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_barbarianprince.html)
Dragon Issue 68: December 1982
part 2/2
Gaming by mail can be nice: Yeah yeah. You would say that, wouldn't you. A rundown of the pro and cons of PbM games. As we have seen, this has a lot in common with modern MMO's, apart from the massively slower response times between turns, and corresponding effort you need to put in to keep the game going. They can also get pretty expensive, especially if you start privately corresponding with other players. Still, at least you're in no danger of being glued to your computer for 20 hours solid. Sorry, I'm afraid that you can't tempt me with this one. I have no craving for another nonproductive time-eater in my life.
Deities and demigods of greyhawk: Several more familiar faces are introduced to us, plus a couple of unfamiliar ones as well. Celestian, Fharlanghn, Ehlonna, Pholtus and Tritherion. Once again, clerics worshipping them get extra benefits, ranging from a single extra spell to a whole array of neat tricks. Ahh, power creep. Pretty soon, no-one'll want to play a standard cleric. I'm divided by this. One on hand, inflation is bad, especially as clerics are pretty powerful already, but on the other hand, properly differentiating clerics mechanically is cool. Oh well. They solved the problem eventually. I just need to get through the next 18 years.
The dragon's augury: Robert Plamodon gives us a review that is technically one of High fantasy, but is actually more focussed upon the solo adventure that comes with it, plus the idea of solo games in general. Which is certainly a topic that deserves examination, as the Fighting Fantasy series gains popularity, and plenty of other companies try to get in on the market as well. How do you ensure that they retain interest through multiple plays, and keep the reader from cheating? Several other books and their quirks and merits are also mentioned. Whatever happened to these? Another genre killed by the rise of computer games. Still that's quite a few years in the future, and hopefully we'll be seeing more reviews in the meantime.
Borderlands is a runequest supplement. It gives details of both the area, and 7 scenarios for the players to adventure in. It gets plenty of praise for both the quality of its writing and visual design. Once again Glorantha beats Greyhawk in terms of setting depth, character characterisation and integration with the rules.
Elric: Battle at the end of time, is a strategy game based loosely on the novels. While it does have quite a number of features that emulate it's source material, it still leaves the reviewer cold, feeling it lacks depth and direction. Try harder next time guys.
You've always got a chance: Ahh, using attribute rolls as a catch-all for anything the rules didn't cover. It's been a couple of years since we've seen that suggested. And it's still the best solution that doesn't involve ripping the system apart to implement a proper skill system. Nothing particularly controversial or innovative here.
Off the shelf covers tons of books this month. Obviously they want you to have plenty of options to spend your money on.
Voyage from yesteryear by James P Hogan tells the story of the conflict between the first and second wave of colonists at Alpha Centauri.
Confessions of a crap artist by Philip K Dick is not an autobiography, nor does it have supernatural elements. It does, however have an intricate narrative that shifts points of view in a clever way, and is highly recommended.
Light on the sound by Somtow Sucharitkul tells another story of mans inhumanity to other creatures and each other in the pursuit of precious things. Which may be a grim topic, but that doesn't make it a bad read.
Crystal singer by Anne McCaffrey has no tentpegs. But is does have lots of crystals. And the usual large cast full of conflicting motivations.
The darkling by David Kesterton has more crystals. While it includes lots of pulp adventure tropes, the characters are not two-dimensional heroes and villains.
The white plague by Frank Herbert is of course the story of how a mad biologist wipes out all the women. Lots of grim drama full of social commentary ensues.
Shadows of sanctuary, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin is a third collection of stories from the thieves world setting. They get some pretty big authors in to flesh it out, so the quality is quite high. More evidence that there were plenty of authors already aware of and approving of RPG's (or at least, willing to learn and write about their settings to get some money ;) )
The battle of forever by A.E van Vogt is a reprint of one of his old books. No further details are given, apart from it supposedly being a classic.
Outpost of jupiter by Lester del ray is another reprint. Solid pulpy fun rather than anything deep and philosophical, it still provides good light entertainment the reviewer.
Psycho II by Robert Bloch is the long awaited (and much demanded, thanks to the movie) sequel, revealing what happens next after Norman Bates' release. Lots of social commentary takes place as he notes the insanity of modern liberal laws and social policies. Oh, and we mustn't forget the tabloids either. Seems like another case of things have changed less than people think they have.
The last man on earth, edited by Isaac Asimov & co, is a compilation of short stories bout that very topic. I think I've actually read this one, and yeah, it is a pretty tight collection.
Clique by Nicholas Yermakov tells the story of a future where anyone can look how they like, and the resulting rebellious underground that develops in response. As with much speculative fiction, this is merely the macguffin that drives the human drama.
Journey to the center by Brian Stableford is a story of people exploring an alien planet, and the weird things they find along the way.
The best from FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, edited by E.L. Ferman is the 24th compilation from the magazine. Not just fiction, this also collects essays and scientific articles as well, with plenty of commentary from the editor to tie it all together. So you get plenty of education with your entertainment.
Strange eons By Robert Bloch Is the one where Cthulhu gets nuked and it doesn't stop him. :rolleyes: A bit of a power-up from his first appearance, where a steamboat puts him off long enough for the protagonist to get away. That's the problem with pastiches. They can wind up being overly reverential of the source material.
AMAZING magazine is now published by TSR. Subscribe now!
Wormy harks back to it's very first issue, as it's riddle time again. What's new helps relations of gamers shop for them this christmas. Dragonmirth is fairly amusing this month.
Lots more adverts at the end. In fact, this seems to have been a very ad heavy issue in general, even above the general upward trend at the moment. I guess it's important for sales to really push these things at christmas.
While not as bad as some of the recent issues, all in all, this year has been the first one in which they not only haven't improved substantially in size and quality, but actually got worse in some respects. Which is a bit worrying. They definitely don't have the innocent enthusiasm that they used to. Even if the meteoric rise is over now, hopefully they'll figure out how to gradually refine things and pull upward again next year. After all, there's still a long way to go before they reach the production values of their last few years. Lets hope the quality to drek ratio isn't too low these next few years.
Dragon Issue 69: January 1983
part 1/2
103 pages. Looks like Gary's recent outbursts have once again provoked a rash of critical responses. And once again, they proclaim their independence. The reason they're covering D&D more is because it's popularity relative to everything else has increased so much, so they're going where the money is. Which is a bit depressing in itself, but that's the nature of an expanding outlier. It takes a while for that success to trickle down to the rest of the industry, if it ever does. Economics sucks. Lets try and get back to the escapism.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter calling out the idiocy of making thieves cant an actual language, rather than a set of jargon, like it is in reality. Frankly, if you can accept the concept of alignment languages, you can accept the concept that thieves and druids have their own language that's the same all over the world. But of course so many people couldn't, which is why they got rid of them in 3e.
A letter saying that read illusionist magic contradicts earlier statements that illusionists don't need spells to read their books. They reply that yes, that was the case, but newest rules supercede earlier ones. It's their game, and they can change the rules any time they want. And then you have to change them too, otherwise you are no longer playing an Official AD&Dtm Game. So there.
Two more letter pointing out errors. Again, they reply. Some of them were indeed errors, but others were actual changes to the rules. But how can we be sure which is which, when it seems like every few issues, we have Gary apologizing for an error that was in a previous one.
A letter saying that Nystuls magic aura should be an illusionist spell, because, y'know, it makes an illusion. A valid point.
A letter engaging in lots of quibbling about the language articles a few issues ago, with a particular focus on the prevailance of literacy in D&D's world. Yes, not being able to read has quite a few drawbacks. But even now, there are big chunks of the world where a substantial percentage of the population can't read. Still, I suppose modern D&D is even more unrealistic in that respect.
Another letter quibbling about the amount of psychosomatic effect illusion spells can have. They quote real life examples of hypnotism and placebo effects. This can't end well. We also get yet more comments on the language articles. They really are proving surprisingly controversial.
And finally a bit of errata. Seems like David Megarry was left out of the credits for the Dungeon computer game. Guess he'll just have to settle for a mention here.
Runes: Ancient languages. Now there's a fitting topic for a D&D game. Lots of real world history, plus some advice on how to incorporate it into your game. Which mainly amounts to window dressing on the current system. Not the most spectacular starter feature ever. But it's to early in the morning for a whole new magic system anyway.
Runestones: Hello again Elminster. What are you talking about this time? Dethlek, the dwarven rune language. What a co-incidence. This is of course a good example of how to apply a real world idea to the game, changing it just enough that it doesn't feel like a total rip-off. Of course, he slips in more realms setting details along the way, and we get more of an idea of elminsters personal voice as contrasted with Ed's. Actually, the framing is more interesting than the subject. I'm not sure that's such a good thing. Oh well, it's more entertaining than the previous article anyway.
Fiction: Be Quest by Atanielle Annyn Noel. Vaguely connected to first two articles in that it's set in a kinda scandinavian mileu, this is basically a little story of overcoming your own fears. No real supernatural element, very little setting, only two pages long. Feels a bit insubstantial really.
From the Sorceror's scroll: Anotther official class introduced this month. The thief-acrobat. Another proto-prestige class like the bard, this allows you to specialize in certain functions of your class at the expense of the others. Which is certainly a development. Albeit one with some precedent, in the illusionist. Now, if only they could apply that principle in an organized fashion to all the classes. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. This seems to be designed for people who want more cinematic, mobile combats. While certainly not at wuxia levels of jumping ability, they are substantially better than most characters. Course, someone buffed with fly and haste'll beat even that no trouble, just as knock beats any lockpicker. This certainly isn't as problematic as the barbarian, in any case. A fairly middle of the road article in terms of quality.
Ha. Despite economic downturns, TSR is hiring 160 new staff. Is that really wise? S'not a good idea to expand beyond your limits and get into debt. ;)
Fiction: Everybody eats everybody on sunday's planet by Jeff Swycaffer. Yay. After a load of mediocre articles, we finally have a kickass bit of sci-fi, setting up a story, an ecology and a fairly convincing alien psychology and using it to make a sociopolitical point, all in three pages. Very nice indeed. And to think some authors would take multi-hundred page trilogy to get to the same point.
Deities and demigods of greyhawk: This month's addition to the pantheon are Istus and Obad-hai. Plus we get stats for time elementals, which are a lot smarter than regular elementals, and get time manipulation powers that make them a pain in the ass to deal with. Bow down and worship, because the alternative is not a good one. No great surprises here.
Charting the classes: Roger Moore gets all statistical on us. Mmm. Just how I like it baby. He analyses relative power level at various XP levels. And we discover that druids and bards rock, monks suck, and illusionists are surprisingly well balanced. Gee, that's a surprise. He then suggests a bunch of stuff to fix these problems. He also turns his eye to Gary's new introductions, and is distinctly critical of them. He obviously put in rather more thought, particularly in terms of mathematical rigour, than the original writer. This is why it's good to have a mathematician on the team. If you don't the game you design will have substantial imbalances, no matter how hard you try. Okay, so it won't be perfect even with one, but you can get a lot closer.
Featured Creatures is still in a fungible mood, with the ustilagor and zygom. Psychic fungus that promotes paranoia, and parasitic fungus that grows inside you and takes you over. Both are pretty gross, and should make for interesting conflicts that go beyond straight-up battles. Especially when they turn PC's against one another. That's always fun.
Quote from: (un)reason;312992
Thrills and chills: Ooh. This is cool. (literally) Adventuring in the ice age. A rather harsher environment than usual, given that getting hold of enough food is trickier, and there are huge swathes of technology that haven't been developed yet. Just surviving is an adventure in itself, given the creatures out there in a D&D world. The author really does play up the degree of hardship involved, expanding on the cold rules, and giving us a whole new set of encounter tables. If you liked dark sun, and gritty survivalist fantasy in general, this should be fun to play with.
This article is one of my favorites and is one of the three things from Dragon that I can really remember- the other two being the
Crimefighters RPG which we played the hell out of, and an article on transcontinental subways in Gamma World.
I have
Crimefighters, but I'm going to have to find a way to get my hands on the other two. I have no idea which issue the Gamma World thingy is in.
Quote from: (un)reason;312992Dragon Issue 68: December 1982
As ever, you've got to seriously filter lens output for the useful bits, because big chunks of it are not, and some are actively detrimental to your fun quotient.
.
I know a lot of folks will disagree with me , but This seemed to me, at the time, to be a common problem with the game in and out of the magazine. There semed to be a concerted push from TSR to nail things down and limit things so the fun didn't get out of hand. It's what drove me away from the game, really.
Quote from: Aos;313367I know a lot of folks will disagree with me , but This seemed to me, at the time, to be a common problem with the game in and out of the magazine. There semed to be a concerted push from TSR to nail things down and limit things so the fun didn't get out of hand. It's what drove me away from the game, really.
That's a really cogent point. I hadn't quite thought about it that way before. It did seem that as time went along, D&D became more and more insular, drawing more and more upon itself rather than outside influences. It created its own canon, and eschewed all others.
Even when it finally began to draw from other sources, it went to history, straight up, with little or no embellishment. The green Historical Reference series, while very well done, and one of my favorite D&D supplement series, was pretty underwhelming in making the various eras of history it dealt with
fun to play in.
Say what you want about Gygax, at least he did provide some over-the-top nuttiness that the game needed to be fun. The Barbarian class is a good example. After his ouster, we saw 2e come along and get rid of the Barbarian, rather than revising it. When the class finally reappeared in its own "Complete" book, towards the end of 2e's run (and TSR's existence), it had been broken up into a number of different classes or kits, all of them uninspiring. 2e, as originally presented in its core books, was a rather dull iteration. The potential for fun as hinted at by the Barbarian or Unearthed Arcana in general dissipated. Oriental Adventures was another bright spot, but it, too, was neutered later in 2e's "Complete" series.
It does seem like TSR's design team began to see problems in the offing and tried some new stuff late in the 2e era, ranging from the Player's Option books to interesting settings like Dark Sun (which I didn't like much, but I recognized it was different), Birthright (one of my favorite D&D settings), or the sublime Al-Qadim. Still, it seemed it was all too little, too late. However, a lot of those guys went on to deign 3e, which actually gave the game a jolt of fun it had been missing for years.
Even so, even 3e showed a markedly conservative side in some instances. The Epic Level Handbook is my favorite example. It's not as bad as some have made it out, but the problem with it is that the designers erred on the side of conservatism, rendering a lot of the book bland. After reading the way characters advanced after 20th level, my reaction was "that's it?" It almost seemed as though characters got less interesting in the epic range. The occasional glimmer of "wahoo" ("Nailed to the Sky") was far outnumbered by simple, and very blah, +1's to various things.
Dragon went through what I felt was a "lost era" during the late 1e/most of 2e era. I never stopped buying the mag, but it never again came close to being as fun as in its earlier era during Gygax's tenure at TSR. With Gygax gone, also gone was the potential of seeing fiery diatribes from him, or rambling additions to the game. Say what you want, I found that potential to be fun.
Dragon did have some fun articles during the 3e era, but even during that time, I never expected it be as fun or to have something unexpected in it. Which is sad.
I see where you're coming from. It almost seems though that the design choices were guided by a split personality of conflicting "wahoo" and control freak tendencies. For me it seems like this split was personified by EGG. It's your game do what you want... but do it our way or you're not playing AD&D...
I didn't make it to 2e.
Quote from: Aos;313364This article is one of my favorites and is one of the three things from Dragon that I can really remember- the other two being the Crimefighters RPG which we played the hell out of, and an article on transcontinental subways in Gamma World.
I have Crimefighters, but I'm going to have to find a way to get my hands on the other two. I have no idea which issue the Gamma World thingy is in.
Issue 52.
Quote from: Aos;313394I see where you're coming from. It almost seems though that the design choices were guided by a split personality of conflicting "wahoo" and control freak tendencies. For me it seems like this split was personified by EGG. It's your game do what you want... but do it our way or you're not playing AD&D...
I didn't make it to 2e.
It is very interesting to see how his opinions change from article to article. I do wonder how much of it was his genuine feelings, how much was just him being a mouthpiece for company decisions, particularly in the later bits where the Blumes were exerting their power; and how much was him playing to the crowd, being diliberately contentious to provoke debate and get publicity.
Dragon Issue 69: January 1983
part 2/2
Caped crusaders and masked Marvels: More analytical stuff from Roger. He turns his attention to the superhero genre and the innate problems that making a game for them presents. Killing is not de rigeur and the rules need to support this, because damage systems where characters are fragile (yes, you aberrant) will result in people dying a lot even if you try and play nice. Physics are exceedingly loose, and the range of powers characters can have very wide. Keeping a team together and following the adventure you had planned may be a problem. All of which are surmountable problems, but it does mean the games are easier to break than D&D. While this points out the problems, it doesn't do a lot to solve them, particularly on the mechanical side. You'll still have to convince your players to play along with the genre conventions, which might not be easy. This is definitely an area that needs improving.
Of course there is some themed advertising adjacent to the above article.
Arakhar's Wand: Another complete boardgame. We are building up quite a substantial selection of these. The good guys hunt for the wand before the evil side can amass enough monsters to take over the world (Muahahahaha!) Some very dry point by point rules make the system pretty clear, but feel rather mechanical to read. The number of variations it has should make for a reasonable amount of replay value. Another solid bit of design.
We get another food fight illustration, apropos of nothing.
Leomund's tiny hut: Len gives us another unofficial class, the Entertainer. Are bards and jesters not enough for you? This seems to be designed to make their progression a whole new gamestyle in itself, with an incredibly idiosyncratic advancement structure with multiple forking advanced class paths. Given their variety, I could easily imagine a whole party comprised mainly of entertainers working as a troupe. This is almost as big a departure from the original milieu as the attempt to twist D&D into boys own adventure in the professor ludlow module. I have to applaud him for the bravery of his attempt. On the other hand, I have no idea how well these guys would work out in actual play with a normal team. Does anyone have any actual play experiences to supply, because I'm really rather curious. This doesn't quite top carnivorous flying squirrels for sheer entertainment, but it comes pretty close. I guess they'll have to train some and use them in their act if they want to reach that elusive 12th level. ;)
Ready for anything: Lew reminds us that you should be prepared for anything when dungeoneering. Which of course means big heavy packs full of just in case shit like wolfsbane, holy water, and climbing equipment. They don't have those encumbrance rules for nothing, you know. This is solid advice for anyone engaged in old skool dungeoneering, because you know the DM won't pull punches, and if you forgot to pack something, chances are you'll wind up wishing you had it. Another solid article from him, that's still useful today. Hell, the basic principles are applicable to real life, if you change the specifics. Fill your jacket or handbag with things you've needed in the past, and probably will again in the future, and you'll avoid so many crises and become the envy of all your friends. (Which means they'll be constantly coming to you for help, but that's a price I'm willing to pay. ;) )
Buy the Fantasia strategy game now! No comment needed.
More pages from the mages: Ha. We get the first hint as to the extent of Elminsters wizardry (and letchery) skills. Well, he is capable of interplanar travel fairly easily, so he can't be a slouch at magical knowledge. We get four spellbooks, and seven new spells, six of them named, plus 16 poisons, 4 new glyphs of warding, and tons of realms tidbits. We're starting to see place names and people show up more than once. It still isn't nearly enough to piece the world behind the hints together, but it is more than enough to intrigue. Before you know it, people'll be bombarding him with questions, and he'll have to reveal ever more. It's a nice way to build a world really. Make up whatever stuff seems fun at the time, and then figure out how to piece it together afterwards. He's certainly doing a better job of it than Gary at the moment.
Words of wisdom about weapon statistics: This is actually a spy's advice under different name. Because lots of people have questions about weapons. Remember folks, know what your weapons can do. They could save someone's life. ;)
Why aren't official guns stats calculated using the formulas in the gun design section. (Lots of reasons. But mainly because we know better than to follow the rules we impose on you. Plus custom guns are designed by amateurs, not pros.)
How are range modifiers designed (more complicated formulae based on examination of real world guns, then modified as we choose)
How did you choose which weapons to include in the book. (we cut ones that were too vaguely described, or statistically too similar to other ones, so you had good choices. Here's some of the ones that were cut)
The reviews section has dropped it's header. Well, it's a new year, they've got to change the format somehow. Anyway, this month's reviews AAAAaaaaare.....
United nations is a game of global politics. Which power bloc will TAKE OVER THE WORLD! first? It seems simple at first, but there's plenty of strategy to be found in it's rules.
Jasmine, battle for the mid-realm takes the characters and world from the story, and lets you resolve the conflict yourself with a strategy card game. After all, they never did get a chance to finish it in the magazine. It has plenty of depth and some features that make it not just about luck and tactics, but also your own skills at negotiating with other players. And obviously the art is pretty good. Someone put a lot of care and attention into this. So the reviewer likes it then
The role of books: Lew continues to gives us books that will help us with our worldbuilding. Cities, castles, other cultures. You'll be able to build better ones in your game if you know how the real ones work. Plus some advice on how to get hold of rare and out of print books. This isn't that interesting, but hopefully the things it points you too will be.
What's new tackles what to do with your christmas presents, Wormy finally gets to the fighting. Dragonmirth is hungover from the christmas celebrations and doesn't get there in time.
Lots and lots of adverts, including a clearance sale of some out of print OD&D stuff. That'll be worth a good deal more in a few years time.
Not a very good issue to start the year off with, with tons of dull stuff, particularly near the beginning where it's most crucial to make a good impression. Looks like the slide in quality control is continuing, and however much they may protest that they are not a house organ, they do seem very much beholden to their masters whims at this point. They really could be doing better.
Quote from: (un)reason;313429It is very interesting to see how his opinions change from article to article. I do wonder how much of it was his genuine feelings, how much was just him being a mouthpiece for company decisions, particularly in the later bits where the Blumes were exerting their power; and how much was him playing to the crowd, being diliberately contentious to provoke debate and get publicity.
After reading his various online postings in recent years, and engaging him directly on sites like EN World and Dragonsfoot, I would discount the latter two motivations. He was certainly contentious, but this seemed much more like he just had a very definite, strong opinion about...well, just about everything, and wasn't shy about stating that opinion. My impression was that he was like that in his personal life, but I'm sure there are people on this site right now who could tell us for sure, having dealt with him in person.
Actually, I'll take part of that back. He definitely played to the crowd, but I don't think he was insincere in anything he said concerning these subjects. He just happened to have some contradictory opinions about some things, or at least they may seem contradictory to others. For example, he still was discussing the seeming dichotomy of "your game, your call" and "you're either playing AD&D as written, or you're not playing AD&D" pretty recently online. His opinions seemed pretty consistent with what he'd said back during the era of Dragon we're discussing, and this was long after he had any stake in anything related to D&D.
He did say a couple of things online that surprised me in recent years. One was that he seemed...unhappy with Unearthed Arcana, and said it had been done in a rush to infuse TSR with some needed cash. I'd heard such rumors throughout the years, but it surprised me to see him discussing it. If anyone else remembers those discussions (or knows where to look in the various archived message board "Ask Gygax" threads at EN World), and can correct me if I'm misremembering, I'd appreciate it. The other thing that surprised me was that he was now a fan of rules-light RPGs, and really didn't play AD&D anymore. His taste had changed over the years, which is not surprising, but what was surprising is that he apparently wasn't playing the game as written back in the day, either! He specifically said how he never used Weapon Speed Factors, and had written them as a "sop" to war gamers who'd been clamoring for such stuff. It makes me wonder exactly what he had in mind when he was delivering broadsides about what was and wasn't AD&D.
I remember that thread, Hardisson... much linking to it ensued.
Dragon Issue 70: February 1983
part 1/2
84 pages
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter complementing them on the weather article, and also providing some minor errata.
A letter asking them to cover other games more. They reply that they would if they were more popular. But they aren't. So there. This is the magazine for the cool geeks. ;)
A letter asking them to use a better form of binding than staples. But then how could people remove the adventures in the center? :) Plus it'd cost more. They don't want to raise prices.
Another article pointing out the flaws in their thieves cant article. Using so many sibilants would not be a good idea when trying to communicate quietly in a dangerous area, as they're incredibly noticable to anyone who might be listening, even at very low levels. A very valid point indeed. You should pay more attention to the specific sounds that make up a language and their voicing qualities when designing them. If only people did that in real life. Then maybe we wouldn't get languages that you need several pounds of phlegm in your throat to pronounce properly. ;)
The smith: Another NPC class for you to ponder the use of. Well, I guess it'll make players thing twice about killing NPC's instead of paying for new stuff. This is another example of new experiments in class design, giving them unique benefits when combined with PC classes. Since their XP costs are pretty low, this might actually be viable for a PC. One of the better examples of profession classes we've seen.
The hull truth about speed: A big correction here. For whatever reason, the people designing the ship rules in the DMG made larger ships slower than small ones. This is rubbish! Though they may have higher inertia, in reality, the longer a ship is, the faster it can go. It'll just take a while to start, stop or turn. Glad that's sorted out then. Now, will they remember this when designing the rules for the next edition? Previous experience points to unlikely.
From the sorceror's scroll: Oh boy, social status. One of those annoying things that crops up every now and then. Since these are Official AD&Dtm Tables, I assume they apply to greyhawk. So lets see what they reveal about the setting assumptions. If characters are too low in status, they can't get the training to qualify for many classes. There is a quite substantial middle class, and adventurers often hail from it. Most people still go in for official weddings. Half-orcs have about a 1 in 20 chance of being from a stable loving family. First and second children either die a lot, or are discouraged from becoming adventurers, as they are less common as adventurers than 3rd-6th children. (also, orcs apparently don't go for virgins, because a half-orc PC generated by these tables has no chance of being a first child. That generates interesting quips. :p ) Hmm. I get the impression that these may not have been thought through too well, as they fail to build a cohesive picture. But then, when has D&D's socioeconomic structure ever made sense? Depressing to realize that's par for the course.
A caste of realistic characters: Frank Mentzer gives his own contributions on the topic. Thinking about social classes in your game is another important part of worldbuilding. And that's something you shouldn't skimp on, unless you like endless one dimensional dungeon crawls. Relationships between people and monsters (not that sort, this isn't third edition) are important, and you ought to think about them. Yeah, we get it already. Tell us something new.
Falling damage: Belated errata, what an annoying phrase. Belated errata, aint no passing craze. It means the rules suck, and you'll have to cut out this page. Its the rarely seen, revisioning. Belated errata. When I was a young games player. (When he was a young games PLAYER!) I thought that for things to ever be published, they'd be examined until they were perfect. But no, when I grew up you shattered my dreams. And the fall was much more painful than you might think. From linear to geometric, we must put a harsher yardstick. To make things more realistic. So even high level characters fear the reaper, turning them into pizza when they jump off a rooftop with no magic to stop them going SPLAT! :extended silence: Another Official AD&Dtm Rules Correction that most of you probably ignored.
Giants can be awful or awe-full: Nothing to do with actual giants, this is about using characters from the Giants in the Earth series in your own game. Putting the characters in as they are may provoke a certain amount of protest and incredulity from your players, particularly if they've actually read the magazine and know what they're up against. You may want to adapt them to your campaign, changing their statistics, or filing the serial numbers off and using their stats for a different character. Along with the advice we get an index of all the fictional characters statted in the magazine, including those under different titles. A nice way to cap off the series, before it takes an extended break. Actually, they have stopped quite a few of their old regulars over the past year or so. What's up with that?
Deities and demigods of greyhawk: This month's objects of worship are Boccob the uncaring and his servant Zagyg (nudge nudge wink wink), and Olidammara the laughing rogue. (so if you need a healer for your all entertainer party, he'll be the guy for the job.) More ones that continued on to 3rd edition. Their cleric's special powers are fairly muted this issue, so the game will not be broken by permitting them.
Figure feature: Once again they've changed the title and format of the mini's column. Proper categorized grading is out. This is totally dumbing down. I disapprove. All the minis this issue have a knightly theme. Well, it's a good staple. How will they meddle with this next?
Dragon Issue 70: February 1983
part 2/2
Dwarves in Space: Ahem, surely you mean DWARVES IN SPAAAAAACE!!!!!, Mr Moore. This is crossover advice on how to put D&D stuff in a sci-fi setting, with a particular focus on Traveller. Just how liberal are you prepared to be with the laws of physics? In any case, it's not that hard, unless you want to make them available as PC's. In which case you need to build career and aging stuff. Thankfully he does just that. And the tables seem pretty decent. Not bad at all.
A second Volley: Ed Greenwood returns to the idea of putting firearms in D&D. Having done cannons and muskets last time, this time it's handgun's turn. Remember, old guns sucked. It took several minutes to reload, and there was a substantial risk of hurting yourself if you loaded it wrong. Still, at this point wizards took 10 minutes per level of the spell to memorize each one. (yeah, like any of you really enforced that one) A fireball represents 30 minutes work in the morning. Comparing damage outputs by that metric, they don't seem that unbalanced. As ever, Ed does a sterling job of both research and writing the piece.
Mehica: Another module that takes AD&D to new places, this time mesoamerican jungle. Which means step pyramids, human sacrifice, werejaguars, and lots of stuff to loot. Sound like fun to you? A 12 pager, this still finds the space to introduce a variant character class ( a neutral ranger type) and plenty of twisted setting detail. As is often the case in this era, there are several challenges that are way out of the league of the stated party level, that the group is expected to avoid rather than fight. (what 7th level group would have a chance against a 26th level cleric?) A pretty solid module that shows once again, dungeoncrawling does not have to involve literal dungeons, and humans can be just as monstrous as any actual monster.
How to make the most out of FRP tournaments: Hmm. Seems like we have a returning article theme. How do you do well in tournament games? Since it's been a few years, this has evolved a bit. A very long article (11 pages, although after removing ads, probably only 8 pages of writing.) this goes into quite a lot of detail on the process of preparation for a game and advantageous ways to behave during play. Learn the rules, figure out what kind of GM and module you're up against and adapt your play accordingly. Sort out who's boss in the team and work together efficiently. Keep things moving because you only have a limited amount of time. Don't walk into obvious traps. And try to have fun through all this. Not an easy task, by any metric. Seems like playing to win that hard would suck the fun out of gaming. You certainly won't get the chance to do much roleplaying in any case.
The game within a game: Ahh, another perennial question. How do you represent skill in something in game without bringing player skill into the equasion but also allow for some measure of personal choice. Skill rolls modified with rock/paper/scissors general strategy list selections isn't a bad way to go about it. Now, if only AD&D had a proper skill system. But that's not the fault of this article is it? They're doing the best with what they have.
Off the shelf: The book of the dun cow by Walter Wangerin Jr is a story involving speaking animals. Thankfully, they aren't disneyfied talking animals, as that would be a bit crap.
Special Deliverance by Cliford D Simak is a supernatural mystery story. Can the protagonists survive and solve it? Read it and see.
The man who had no idea by Thomas M Disch is a collection of his short stories. Both comedy and horror are well catered for, and none of them outstay their welcome.
Magician by Raymond Feist is a novel by a gamer. But that does not make it bad by any means. Quite the opposite. The reviewer hails it as a classic, putting together an intricate and epic plot and resolving it nicely, but still leaving the world open for further books.
The odds are murder by Mike McQuay is another featuring his future-noir detective, Matthew Swain. Having hit rock bottom, and lost his license, he's got to claw his way back up again, and take out the people who put him down there. The author convincingly captures the emotional journey he goes through using real life study.
The secret, (by an entire writing team) is both a book about fae stuff and a competition. Hidden in the book are clues to 12 treasures, buried somewhere in America. Can you figure out where the hell they are before anyone else does. No chance by now, given how long it's been. There've been several books like this since then, because I remember seeing this gimmick used a few times. Anyone remember how this turned out?
The venetian court by Charles L Harness is rather simplistic, with 2 dimensional characters, and fails to please the reviewer.
Manshape by John Brunner is another tale of sci-fi drama and confusion, with a well developed setting and characters.
Reviews: Citybook I is a generic RPG supplement to help you build your own urban areas. Obviously you'll have to do quite a bit of adapting to the quirks of your own campaign, but it'd probably still be quicker than creating everything wholecloth. The reviewer is as usual, pretty positive about this.
Civilization is a boardgame that does pretty much what the computer game would later do. Develop your technology, grow your population, and beat all the other players to become the ultimate empire in the world. It goes surprisingly quickly given its scope, and would make a good way to spend an evening for the whole family.
Daredevils is of course a 30's pulp adventure game. This of course means it's in direct competition with TSR's Gangbusters. The reviewer finds the level of crunch in it rather impenetrable, and therefore it's only recommended to hardcore gamers. Reservations aside, it is one of the most comprehensive modern games out there, with interesting mechanics for things beyond just combat. If you want to run an investigation centered game, this could be one for you.
What's new posits the future when gamers are grown up. Reality is less impressive. Wormy uses up his breath weapon.
Another issue that starts off annoyingly and then improves as it goes along. Still, at least they can justify the changes they're making at the moment, even if I might not agree with them. You do have to do a certain amount of dumbing down to maximize popular appeal. But not too much, otherwise people feel patronized, and it doesn't work. Come on, we need a new editorial policy. I'm getting tired of this one.
Dragon Issue 71: March 1983
part 1/2
84 pages Ha. We get one of the reminders that behind the scenes, there is legal crap going on. Gary Gygax might be the creator of AD&D, but he's only the CO-creator of D&D. :D We apologize for implying otherwise. Please don't sue us again Dave. That little gem aside, there's plenty more official stuff in this issue, plus a few unofficial bits. Once again, it's nearly all AD&D, and that doesn't look like changing. I guess I'll have to stop complaining.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter asking for articles on psionics, as it is currently grossly underrepresented. They reply that as with most things of this sort, that's up to you freelancers (hint hint)
A letter decrying the inaccuracy of Mazes and Monsters, afraid that it'll give gamers a bad reputation. Hey, at least they're acknowledging your existence.
A letter asking for more photos of mini's especially painted ones.
From the sorceror's scroll delivers some more spells. This month, It's druids turn again. Such useful staples as flame blade, goodberry, spike stones and changestaff. Plus, temple of elemental evil is considerably nearer completion, (ha) we have french translators hard at work now, and our sales are up 70% on last year. We expect to gross 30 million dollars. Pay no attention to the naysayers. He's certainly as confident as ever. For now, anyway. Never trust disco stu's financial projections. ;)
Fiction: The blink of a wizard's eye by Joel Rosenberg. Another interesting little story. Two wizards can overcome the problems that one can't, if they could just work together long enough to figure it out. But what are the odds of that? Not great, but in an infinite universe, everything happens eventually. A fairly entertaining little tale, but not a classic one.
Mind of the monster: A treatise on monster intelligence, encouraging you to play your monsters as intelligently as their statistics say they are. Even animals can pull off some basic tactics. Orcs and things should at least know about ambushes, traps, flanking and when retreating would be a good idea. And it only gets better from there. Things with genius intelligence and lots of special powers like mind flayers and greater demons ought to have all manner of tricks prepared to take you down. And remember that they ought to have personalities as well. Members of a race are not just a hivemind monoculture. Lots of solid advice here. Just remember not to make them too infallible, or the players will die all the time, while the survivors give up adventuring or turn into ultracautious tacticians. And that playstyle isn't fun for everyone.
Greyhawk's world: Stats for some of the guys who's names fill the spell and magic item lists of the D&D books. Heward, (bard 20, Magic-user10, Illusionist10) Keoghtom (bard 20, Magic-user 18, Illusionist 16, Cleric 14, monk 10) Murlyand (paladin 12, magic-user 12, illusionist 12, plus six-shooters and techie skills) and Kelanen (fighter 20, Thief-acrobat 10, Magic-user 5, Illusionist 5) So yeah, you won't be beating these guys in a fight any time soon, unless you're willing to break the rules as much as they do. They also have quite a high level of scientific knowledge, more reminders that there were plenty of modern and futuristic crossovers in Gary's original games. So like Elminster, don't be surprised if they start dropping modern cultural references.
Who gets the first swing?: A new, more realistic initiative system? :rolleyes: Here we go again. 12 pages of experimental rules and modifiers. Well, it's definitely more realistic, and adds more tactical options for fighters, which is to be lauded. The quantity of tables on the other hand, is not, and despite what they say, using this does look like it would slow down play. I really don't think I can be bothered to test it, and see if it does work out in actual play. Any feedback from actual experiences with this would as ever, be welcomed.
The taming of brimstone is this month's adventure, A boot hill (it's been a while since we saw anything for that in here) 12 pager, (although 2 of those are left blank so you can cut out the map) It's your job to become the law in a frontier town, and make it safe for peaceful folks. (Why would you want to do that? That's destroying your source of adventure hooks. ;) ) Certainly an interesting change of pace from dungeoncrawling, this forces players on the defensive, waiting for trouble and then reacting to it as fast as possible. There's also tons of opportunity for roleplaying, as just shooting anyone who you suspect of being a troublemaker is not the way to make a safe neigbourhood, and there's always some detective work that needs doing. This actually seems pretty nice, and it's definitely good to see them trying new things. And the only railroading involved is the literal kind, which is especially pleasing, since so many roleplay heavy adventures fall into that trap. Thumbs up.
Dragon Issue 71: March 1983
part 2/2
Sage advice is following up on the astral plane article 3 months ago. The information given just raised more questions, as there's no way you could satisfy everyone in 13 pages, and you couldn't anticipate what holes they'll pick in it anyway. So lets see what else we find out here.
Does the astral plane connect with the elemental ones (not usually. You'll have to create a relay or use powerful gating effects)
How do you drink potions in a weightless environment. (use a straw, squeezable bottle, or some other inventive means. There are plenty of tricks to solve this one)
Why can creatures drown if they don't need to breathe there (because it blocks the astral "air" from getting to their system. (I know they changed that one later. because they had the whole astral ocean thing in planescape.))
Can you talk normally while astral (yes)
How are psionics changed while astral (here's the list)
What races are the wizards traveling the astral (nearly all human. Other races just can't get high enough to learn the magic, apart from by using scrolls.)
What's this about creatures going insane when lost in the astral (Exactly that. Stranded creatures may be of dubious sanity, due to sensory deprivation and the strangeness of not needing to eat, sleep, and stuff. Watch out.)
How do lycanthropes cope (they can't change while astral, because there's no moon, no night, and virtually no time. I doubt they'd spend much time there unless they were an unwilling one looking to get away from their curse.)
Can a cleric bring their holy symbol along with them (If they enchant it somehow. A simple light spell should be enough.)
Can astral travelers adjacent to another plane be seen by creatures further into the plane (yes, with some caveats)
How fast can a magic-user's familiar move (if within 12" of its master, it can use it's master's intelligence, if not, it uses it's own)
Do you automatically heal any damage your astral form has when you return to your real body (no)
I don't like the rules for adapting to missile fire in weightless conditions (that is not a question. You can houserule it if you like)
Why aren't the missile ranges infinity if there's no friction (because it still gets harder to hit further away targets. After a while it's just ridiculously improbable.)
Since you move by thought, can't you just dodge by thinking yourself out the way (Reaction times still depend on dexterity. Stop trying to break the system)
Why is grappling allowed, but overbearing isn't (because there's no surface to push you onto)
Can intelligent magic items move while astral? (theoretically, but they won't think of it on their own as they're used to being passive partners. Plus, they have no senses apart from the magic ones they're specifically given unless being held, in which case they share yours. They're unlikely to wander off.)
Do magical items from other planes lose power on the prime material (yes)
Do swords of life stealing lose their special power when astral (only if their plusses are reduced to zero)
How long does it take spellcasters to recover spells (the usual. Even if they don't sleep, they still have to spend 8 hours doing nothing before studying. And they can only do so once per journey, unless their god lives on the astral plane, or they're a native. (now that's another bit they would later drop))
Man, that's a lot of questions. And it's not over yet, as they expand on the spell changes as well. This has certainly been informative (and a lot of typing)
Deities and demigods of greyhawk: This month's creatures that you may choose to worship are Erythnul, Incabulos, Nerull, Ralishaz and Wastri. A pretty unpleasant lot, running the gamut of evil alignments and goals, from human supremacy to slaughtering everything. (funny just how much of nerull's portfolio vecna stole in 3rd edition. You'd think they'd conflict more.) Weirdly enough, more attention seems to be paid to balance their cleric's powers with each other. Either gary's getting more practiced now, or they're making sure all the players don't defect to the side with the better toys.
The dragon subscription page is particularly amusing this issue, thanks to tom wham.
Reviews: Swordbearer is a fantasy RPG. With an abstracted wealth system rather than coin-counting, an interesting magic system, and skill development rather than rigid classes, it's certainly a step upwards in overall design sophistication. Can it survive against the current harsh competition for any amount of time though? Our reviewer is not optimistic. It may be too sophisticated ( ie, complex) for the proletariat. Plus it's silly to try to get into an already occupied niche.
Dunzhin is a text based adventure game. Explore, kill beasties, find treasure, hope your stuff doesn't run out at a bad moment, wrestle with the simplistic parsing system; unless you're too young, you'll remember the drill. Thankfully, it's all randomly generated dungeons, so there's plenty of replay value, and you don't have to worry about trying to hold conversations with NPC's And if you manage to finish this one, you can buy more games in the series, and transfer your leveled up character between them. Isn't that nice.
An advert for plattermania is on the same page. How many spinning plates can you keep up for how long? Sounds like an interesting little computer game. Definitely not worth $39.95 on its own though. That'd be a single minigame on one of the modern wii party games. (actually, is there one, as that seems like it would be very well suited to the controller system. )
What's new covers lycanthropes. Dave Sim approves. Wormy features holy mackerel (sorta) Dragonmirth has a million reindeer. It'll make more sense if you actually read it.
A very fast-paced issue, with relatively few articles, none of which held me up. This is a definite improvement over the last couple of issues. Lets hope that's a trend, not a fluke.
Dragon Issue 72: April 1983
part 1/2
88 pages. Yet another dragon on the cover of this one. At least this time the female adventurers are sensibly dressed. And that's not an april fool. But they haven't skimped on that stuff inside. We have both ridiculous stuff, and things that are humorous but still useful. And they've got some pretty big changes in store, like bringing in drag-racing to the magazine. ;) I hope you'll enjoy their new direction.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter complementing them on the chess article, and suggesting some ways it could be further added too.
A letter critisizing the erratad version of falling damage, saying the normal version is both more realistic and better for the game, as while the distance fallen in a time may increase geometrically, the speed you are falling at increases linearly.
A letter engaging in much quibbling about maximum speeds for ships and boats.
Five letters asking for more/less inclusion of games other than D&D, which the editor uses to illustrate the impossible line they have to walk in terms of meeting demand and pleasing everyone.
A letter complementing them on using the original version of historical names rather than modernized ones. Kim comments that he likes to get this right, because so many people falsely assume about his gender. (cue That's not my name)
A letter complaining that the magazine is so expensive.
From the sorceror's scroll: Ahh, the cavalier. One of the more hated second wavers of 1st edition AD&D. What was Gary thinking when we already have the paladin? Roughly the same thing as when he made the barbarian, probably. Lets make up some cool stuff, and worry how it fits in with everything else later. And although they occupy the same thematic niche as the paladin, that of the chivalrous mounted fighter, the specifics of their powers are quite different. They really do push the mounted warrior schtick, which of course may cause some problems when dungeoneering. So like the barbarian, they are exceedingly powerful when dealing with problems suited to their powerset and mentality, and a pain in the ass outside them. This probably is not conducive to a good gaming experience, and their failure to make it to 2nd edition seems pretty reasonable, considering.
The ecology of the piercer: Woooo! This series has finally started. This makes me very happy. We've been having too few developments that I can be unreservedly positive about. We start with a monster that really needs it, D&D's ceiling hanging gastropods of dooooom. The fiction part isn't as good as most of the later installments, but it includes a very nice full page diagram of their internal structure. Overall, it's definitely a solid start to a series that will give us lots of inspiration over the years. I look forward to seeing what they cover next.
Gems Galore: Now this is something that's all too easy to ignore. Gems and jewelery turn up in a lot of treasure hordes, and often get viewed as just more money with less encumbrance worries. Given the variety they come in, and how tricky it can be to value them and sell them, getting maximum profit from your hauls could become an adventure in itself. As usual, Ed has both done his homework, and not been afraid to add things that he found cool. We get plenty of realmsian setting detail worked in, much of it pure fluff. Even if it's not that useful, it's very interesting to see what superstitions the members of a imaginary world have. Some may find it too much detail, but I'm still hungry. It's going to take till the mid-90's to satiate my hunger for more and more little world details.
The real barbarians: Ahh, the old misrepresentation of the natives screed. We had it with druids, and now we have it with barbarians. Honor, adherance to taboos, actually more sexually progressive than the so-called civilized people, rich oral tradition, blah blah blah, wake me when it's over. This stereotype and overgeneralization does no more favours to them than the other one.
The PbM scene: Another long article, this is an overview of the Play by mail games that are currently big, with quite well thought out descriptions of all the major games, and the differences between them. If you did want to pour you money into that stuff, at least you're now a good deal better equipped to choose ones that you'll like. I'm still not convinced enough to try one, (not that I could now) but I'm not going to knock the skill of it's advocate.
File 13: Tom Wham gets all meta on us, giving us a game about the process games go after being written to get to being a completed project. And like movies, computer games, or anything else creative, once it goes into committee process, everyone wants to monkey around with it. Which a lot of the time, doesn't help. One wonders how much editing work went into the game's design ;) You can play this one solo, or compete against others. Not that it matters, because victory and defeat is mostly a matter of luck. Just like real life soliciting ;) Seems like a pretty quick game that you could play a few rounds of between other things, but not the most amazing thing he's ever come up with.
Figure feature gives us 4 different dragon mini's to peruse this month. Nothing particularly unusual here.
The true story of file 13: And most of my questions from the game are answered. Kim gives us a rather funny recounting of his part in the game's production. They've got to make sure it's all suitable for a family magazine. As is often the case, I'm not sure how much of this is true and how much is invented for comedic effect. But it makes for an amusing read anyway, which seems to have been their primary intention anyway. And if they can make their april fool section useful as well as funny, that's all to the good.
Valley elves get filked. They like, so deserve it. I mean, they think they're cool, but they're totaly not. Plus they're, like, old. They might look young, but they're totally older than your mom. I mean how eww would that be, going out with one, and then they start talking about your grandparents. Grody.
Duh Jock: Ahh, mocking the popular crowd. Now there's something we've seen before. We get another joke class, with maximums to many ability scores. Just about legal, they probably won't be functional in a dungeonering game, because so many of their powers are non-combat based (oh, the irony) Unless you want to play a highschool drama game (not beyond the bounds of possibility), you should give this one a miss. Or you derive some sadistic pleasure from throwing a team of jocks against D&D monsters and seeing how long it takes them to all die horribly. I can see how that would appeal to some people.
Spells for everyone: Oh, this joke again as well. Nonmagical "spells" with obvious material components. Like throwing a dead slug at someone for taunt (oh, wait ;) ) They diliberately mess up the format, just to confuse us. Come on, the joke articles should at least be as imaginative as the normal stuff. You only have to fill this once a year. You shouldn't be recycling themes yet.
Ha. We get a sex in AD&D article this year. What's new must be kicking themselves that someone else beat them too it. Roger Moore covers the mating habits of woodland creatures, sphinxes, succubi, minotaurs, and almost hydras ( yeah, like they're really going to let tentacle rape into the magazine. ) Then it all goes downhill and they have to drag him away from the typewriter. I suppose it's a better way than most to finish off our joke section. I'm certainly amused, anyway.
Quote from: (un)reason;314826Ha. We get a sex in AD&D article this year. What's new must be kicking themselves that someone else beat them too it. Roger Moore covers the mating habits of woodland creatures, sphinxes, succubi, minotaurs, and almost hydras ( yeah, like they're really going to let tentacle rape into the magazine. ) Then it all goes downhill and they have to drag him away from the typewriter. I suppose it's a better way than most to finish off our joke section. I'm certainly amused, anyway.
Apparently the future authors of the Book of Erotic Fantasy didn't get the joke.
I was quite enamored of the cavalier. It didn't seem all that hated in my neck of the woods. The barbarian didn't make it into 2e, either, but that didn't mean it was hated. I suspect it was more a matter of the added complexity of both classes, or the fact that the cavalier is, indeed, pretty limited when unhorsed. It would have been nice to see them end up in a "Pendragon" style supplement for D&D, where the class (with some modifications; they weren't perfect, and I know - I played cavaliers quite a bit back then, and through the late 1e era) could have come into its own.
The paladin never seemed to fit the knight paradigm, beyond a very, very few characters from legend - mostly, just Galahad. The cavalier seemed much closer to most of the knights described in legend. Still, the class wasn't well-suited for dungeoncrawling. The class made it into 3e as a Prestige class in a splatbook, or rather "classes," since their powers and abilities were divvied up into a few Prestige class, and into the Knight class of 3e's PHB2. The knight class was, and still is, one of my favorites of late 3e, and seems the truest 3e heir of the cavalier as presented in issue 72 of Dragon. In 4e, it seems there could be a number of ways to construct such a character.
Cavalier and Barbarian both made it into 2E as kits for all warrior classes.
Quote from: aramis;314898Cavalier and Barbarian both made it into 2E as kits for all warrior classes.
Yeah, I remember that now. Pretty lame stuff.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;314914Yeah, I remember that now. Pretty lame stuff.
I disagree. I still remember the cavalier kit and thought it was great. A paladin with it needed a huge stat line: 15 15 15 10 13 17... that's hard core when you actually have to role for stats.
Dragon Issue 72: April 1983
part 2/2
Up on a soapbox: Oh, this is good. Someone's realized that hardly anyone uses the level titles in actual play, for quite a number of reasons. They're a cultural mishmash, and imply things about your social status that may not be true. They eat up synonyms that could be used for other classes. (this must have made D&D a real pain in the ass to translate to languages that don't steal liberally from other cultures. ) All in all, they cause more trouble than they bring benefit, especially if used as in game terms. Which is probably true. But of course the designers still have to stick with their current choice until the next edition at least. Such is the nature of progress.
A new name? It's elementary: Want a flavourful name for something in the game? Use ye olde english. Still stuck, roll on this random table to generate appropriate sounding names. If you want names that sound like a different culture, go somewhere else. Not really much to say about this one. Just another way to fill up a couple of pages.
Spy's advice: Can you stop someone from attacking you with a ranged weapon by attacking them hand to hand (Yes, by a strict reading of the rules. Hmm. Maybe we should do something about that.)
Should players be allowed to see the combat tables (yes)
How far do you move when you retreat (10 feet)
Can you keep from being hurt by clinching. (as long as they're trained and roll well. )
How do you get a HtH weapon value above 250 (dual weapon wielding. Twinktastic!)
How did you extrapolate the extra damage in the combat example (see the injury modifiers table)
Can you convert semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic ones (yes, but it'll cost ya. )
Who pays for food and stuff when you're on a mission (normally the agency, within reason, unless you're deep undercover and have to fend for yourself)
Do you get XP for rescuing someone during the course of an assassination mission (no)
How do you learn a new language ( do a course, or treat it as an area of knowledge)
When an agent switches bureaus, do they lose their raised ability scores (no, general experience counts for something. )
Can you describe the social special powers (surely they should be self-explanatory. Oh, alright then, here's a few lines)
Do you get xp for using fake money if you don't know it's fake (no. You aren't honing your lying skills if you think you're telling the truth. )
What do you classify rolling as (Crawling for movement rate, running and dodging for penalties to hit.)
What's with the modifiers for called shots (I have my reasons. You can change them if you don't like them)
Do distractions work in ranged combat (not very well)
What's the damage for a hollow point bullet filled with mercury (same as for a Dumdum bullet)
Are the new bureaus in dragon magazine legal (They aren't official yet. We have tournament compatibility to consider. You are encouraged to try them, if your GM will let you. )
Off the shelf: Once again, the entire conan series is getting reprinted. You'd think they could keep such a big author in print continously, but no. Besides. If you put different covers and running orders on the collections you can scam people out of more money. Anyway, the books given full reviews this month are
Out of their minds by Clifford D Simak tells the story of a person finding his way into the place imaginary creatures live. The results are both amusing and scary.
We can build you by Philip K Dick is another of his books with a strong message about technology and the way humanity can be blurred by it. Yes, it has dangers, but we still ought to try and improve ourselves. The world will only last so long, and becoming inhuman is better than going extinct.
Elfquest by Wendy & Richard Pini is a novelisation of the first 5 issues of the comic. This means they can retell it with a different perspective and fill in some details. So they can sell it again to the diehard fans for minimal extra effort. ;)
Elfquest II by Wendy & Richard Pini is not a novelisation, merely the trade collection of issues 6-10. I hope that's not confusing.
The making of the wrath of khan by Allan Asherman is an in-detail look behind the scenes, with lots of photos from the set and conceptual art. If it details all the production shenannigans I don't know, but I doubt it.
Myth directions by Robert Asprin is the third in a series, but that doesn't matter too much, as its mostly about the humour rather than the plot. With illustrations by Phil Foglio, it's certainly well served in the visual area. File under light reading.
Misplaced persons by Lee Harding is one of those stories about a person who suddenly finds the whole world starts ignoring him. Why? How does he escape this condition? Read it and see, because the review doesn't spoil us.
Retief to the rescue by Keith Laumer is the first new book in the series for 10 years. But It's another strong entry, not a cynical cash-in. Much bureaucratic comedy occurs.
A world called camelot by Arthur H Landis puts sci-fi up against magic, and turns the offworlder into an unsuspecting epic hero in Edgar rice Burroughesque fashion. Good triumphs (at a cost) evil is defeated in the end, everyones happy.
Fantasy annual V, edited by Terry Carr is another returning series that the reviewer rather likes. Get the earlier ones as well, You won't regret it.
The wind from a burning woman (ew) by Greg Bear is an innovative collection of short stories from a brand new author. The ideas are interesting, and the book looks good as well. I wonder if we'll see him again.
The role of books continues to give us more potentially helpful guides to help us make our own worlds and mythology. I'm afraid even Lew can't keep this interesting. I think that's enough installments. If we spend all the time reading other people's stuff we'll never get the chance to make our own.
Reviews: Questworld takes the runequest system and turns it towards more generic game settings. Why am I getting a sense of deja vu? ;) It still has a default setting, and is slanted heavily towards fantasy gaming, so it's hardly a universal system yet. Baby steps, I guess. Those reservations don't mean its a bad game, by any means, and it's adventures are useful to both Gloranthan adventurers and people making their own homebrews. A pretty reasonable review, really.
Whadaya know, What's new almost manages sex in D&D, but gets distracted by jesters. Haven't you cleared them out from last year yet? Dragonmirth references pac-man. You'll never clear out that dungeon, ever. Wormy is mostly in foreign this month. Great Harold, what are they talking about?
A pretty good issue, overall. They're introducing cool new cool stuff, and seem to be pulling out of the new year slump. Lets hope they keep their promises to put Monster trucks and other new topics into the magazine. ;) We could do with the variety.
Quote from: Cranewings;314916I disagree. I still remember the cavalier kit and thought it was great. A paladin with it needed a huge stat line: 15 15 15 10 13 17... that's hard core when you actually have to role for stats.
I think the cavalier/paladin also appeared in 1e first - maybe even in the next few issues of Dragon to be reviewed. Still, I'm glad someone enjoyed all that material. I thought the kits, in general, were lame - either they imparted nothing at all beyond a name change and some fluff text - the "Complete Thief" book has the most egregious examples - or were overpowered. One of the things I disliked the most was how 2e "kitted" stuff like the barbarian and spread its abilities out across a number of kits, which made it feel very diluted, and worse, a lot less fun.
Dragon Issue 73: May 1983
part 1/2
100 pages They change not only their format, but their typeface and column layout this month. Very interesting. I expect we'll soon take it for granted, like most little changes of this sort. But they haven't made the changes they said they would last issue. April fool :D In fact, they've actually increased their size, and intend to keep this up. Great. More work for me. We have several old things elaborated upon, plus the usual array of new stuff and returning features. On with the show.
In this issue:
Hmm. A Harn advert. Interesting. Another long running setting gets added to the list of arrivals.
Out on a limb: Two letters asking some questions about the attack priority system in issue 71. Kim does his best to help, as usual.
Two letters commenting on and complaining about the social class articles. People really don't like the idea of being unable to get into a class because they're too low on the totem pole. And if every other PC is going to try and break the rules just because they're there, why have them at all?
A letter filling us in on the effects of extreme cold (or at least, canadian temperatures. :) ) and asking for a better article on the effects of temperature in general. They reply that since the writer seems so knowledgable, perhaps they should write it. :p
A letter engaging in some mathematical quibbling.
A letter telling us more about tides around the world. As usual, things are never as simple as they first seem, and there are a bunch of variations and exceptions. Fascinating.
A letter praising their humble artists. They really don't get enough credit for their part in making the magazine look good. Damn right. Good to see a purely positive letter once in a while.
Another new class this month, The Duelist. Designed to put a little more drama into D&D combat, they are exceedingly good at one-on one battles, but not so much at facing monsters, spellcasters and other stuff. While more powerful than straight fighters, they still can't hold a candle to a properly designed druid or wizard. They would make a perfectly legitimate character as long as you weren't facing nothing but humans in your adventures. I quite like this, even though they might outshine the other fighting classes a bit, it's well written and has a strong sense of flavour and thematics. But then, I always had love for the Swashbuckler kit in 2nd ed as well.
From the sorceror's scroll: Oooh. The planes take another big step forward, as Gary introduces the para and quasielemental planes. Ooze, magma, radiance, vacuum, and all the rest in their instadeath inflicting glory. Plus we get the code for the colour curtains when engaged in ethereal and astral travel. Every planar traveller ought to know them, because ending up in a place that'll kill you instantly when unprepared is not a good idea. As ever, it's fascinating to discover how this stuff started and evolved. That he gives us several alternatives that he tried and rejected as well is a definite plus. After all, even if they're not canonical, you could still use them in your own games. It keeps players who've read the books from knowing all the answers.
We also end with another blatant plug for money, as Gary mentions the TSR scholarship fund for gamers (?!) and encourages people to both donate to it and apply for it. Ookay. That's a bit of a sour note. He could definitely have phrased that a bit better.
The solo scenario: Katherine Kerr considers the benefits and difficulties in one-on-one play. You have to put in rather more effort to tailor the adventure to both the abilities of the character and the personality of the player if you want it to work well. However, it does offer substantial benefits in terms of attention, you're free to have extensive attention on emotional matters that would result in big chunks of the group doing nothing for parts of the session, and you don't have to worry about splitting the party. She quotes plenty of personal experiences and her advice seems sound, particularly if you want to do more roleplaying than dungeon crawling. She also digresses onto how to introduce a new player to the game, and how to integrate a newly joined player into an established group. This is a very strong article indeed, and really stands out from the crowd. I get the impression that this inspired quite a few people to develop their playstyle beyond team based dungeoncrawling. Which is good.
The ecology of the catoblepas: Looks like this series has been taken up eagerly and is already in full swing. They have entries lined up for the rest of the year. And why not. Who doesn't love ecology (apart from the current D&D developers). This month's entry takes a particularly strange tack in inventing and rationalizing it's subjects powers and mating procedure. The catoblepas we see are the females, and the males are pathetic little grazing things that have to run up behind her and get their end away without being looked at and dying. (so many comments I could make here but won't :D ) Their death attack is due to their breath, rather than an actual gaze. (grody) And the fiction ends with an amusing twist. Even if you don't use the changes and additions it makes, its still an entertaining article. The antics of the sages in it jive well with my view of D&D sage groups of this period's implied setting. Lets hope the next few entries in the series keep up this strong showing.
The whole half-ogre: Roger Moore reiterates and expands upon the half-ogre. (from all the way back in issue 29. That's quite the gap) Yes, they are quite limited in a lot of ways. You'll just have to accept that if you play one and concentrate on the good parts. Low stats do not neccecarily make a character not fun to play. Not an exceptional article, especially as so much of it is rehash. I wonder why they decided to do that now. Seems like the sort of thing that would be more appropriate for the best ofs than here.
Relief for traveller nobility: Oh joy. Another article offering extra detail (and more importantly, extra powers) for a particular career path. [/sarcasm] Yeah, I'm recycling my material. So are they. You want to be a noble who actually has the money to own an estate or a full-on ship, rather than just being some hanger-on relation, use these. Seems pretty self explanatory.
Lights, camera, life!: Having done several artist profiles. they're now showing you some hints on how to make your own dramatic images from miniatures. Basic set-up, how to make simple special effects, and lots of sample pictures. Once again I am reminded just how much computers have revolutionized the editing process, allowing even amateurs to achieve results that would take tons of equipment and training years ago. This is one of those articles that feels woefully short, as you could fill whole books on this subject, and he's got only a page or so of writing to give to us. But at least they're trying to cover other topics.
Figure feature has lots of ridable stuff this issue. Dinosaurs, elephants, big cats, wyverns, griffons. Quite the selection for your character to choose from. Hopefully the figure on top will also suit your conception of your character.
When it gets hit, it gets hurt: Equipment damage and maintenance rules. No thanks. Particularly when they happen every time you roll a 1 or 20. While I don't inherently object to realism, those odds are just bastardliness masquerading as realism, and would not make for better games. On the plus side, they're simple, so if you want to set your game in a universe where entropy has a far more brutal hand on the balls of reality than this one, it won't slow the game down too much. You can still expect complaining from the players, unless they get a chance to escape and kick entropies ass at some point.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;314954I think the cavalier/paladin also appeared in 1e first - maybe even in the next few issues of Dragon to be reviewed.
It was part of the same article, in which Gary said that all paladins now also had to retroactively be Cavaliers as well. Another of the reasons why UA was controversial and often ignored. Retconning existing things annoys people a lot more than adding new ones.
QuoteStill, I'm glad someone enjoyed all that material. I thought the kits, in general, were lame - either they imparted nothing at all beyond a name change and some fluff text - the "Complete Thief" book has the most egregious examples - or were overpowered. One of the things I disliked the most was how 2e "kitted" stuff like the barbarian and spread its abilities out across a number of kits, which made it feel very diluted, and worse, a lot less fun.
No win situation, isn't it. If they don't make enough of a change, you might as well not have them at all. If they make too big a change, there is the big danger of them being over or underpowered, and in many cases, it would be better to make a whole new class.
Quote from: (un)reason;315066It was part of the same article, in which Gary said that all paladins now also had to retroactively be Cavaliers as well. Another of the reasons why UA was controversial and often ignored. Retconning existing things annoys people a lot more than adding new ones.
Agreed.
I didn't remember the paladin/cavalier things was in the same article. I seem to recall at some point it being retconned
again so that it was optional for a paladin to be a cavalier, so there would be "classic" paladins, cavaliers, and cavalier/paladins. Maybe that was UA, but I'd have to dig out my copy.
Quote from: (un)reason;315066No win situation, isn't it. If they don't make enough of a change, you might as well not have them at all. If they make too big a change, there is the big danger of them being over or underpowered, and in many cases, it would be better to make a whole new class.
Again, agreed. To me, one of the problems of late 1e, which made a new edition desirable, was how there were a lot of cool
concepts being floated in Dragon and UA, but those efforts seemed at times to be kludged together. When 2e was announced, I had hoped to see the classes retooled and balanced against each other. What actually resulted was very disappointing to me. It seemed like the design team made the classes very bland - they weren't very different from those of 1e, but the presentation and general lack of anything new and cool really was a damper. That's why I liked what Gary presented in Dragon and UA, and what was later done in Oriental Adventures - say what you will about them, they were something new and different, and tried building upon cool concepts. I wanted a bit more of the "wahoo" attitude.
Dragon Issue 73: May 1983
part 2/2
Non-violent magic items: Well, this is nice. One hundred new items, all of which aren't combat focussed, and many of which are very handy for everyday living. Thank you very much Mr Pulsipher. These'll definitely come in handy for when I want to award treasure. We can always do with a little more general setting depth. I'm sure some of these items could be put to broken purposes in the hands of devious players, but they'd have to think about it. And since that kind of ingenuity is something I encourage, I may well choose some of these over another +1 item if I get the chance.
Forest of Doom: Another module of Dooooooooooooom!? I guess the cliches become cliches because they work. A 16 pager, this is not a wilderness adventure as you might expect, but a dungeon set inside a giant tree. Which is a cool idea, albeit one we've seen quite a few times since then. (especially in zelda games) It's not quite as impressive as giant underwater plants, but it beats another miserable cavern. Course, at this level, a smart party with enough spells to spare could fly up to the top level and face the bosses, skipping everything else. Not a perfect module, but at least it tries to tie it's disparate monsters together with a plot rationale. Overall, neither brilliant or dreadful. Eh, it'll fill up a session or two.
New tools of the trade: More cool bits of gear for top secret, with a particular emphasis on concealment. From acid to wigs, this is mostly stuff that'll get you in, help you see, and generally get you more info on whatever you're investigating. Because lists of weaponry, no matter how extensive, can't solve all your problems as a spy. Many of these things should really have been in the corebook. I mean, grappling hooks, glass cutters. Where would a spy be without basic like that? Stuck on the outside, that's where. Another useful but not brilliant article.
Thief's climb should be leveled out: Not about their wall climbing percentages. An article criticizing the kinks in their xp scale, which means that sometimes they're better and sometimes they're worse. Ho hum. Yes, the rules might need some fixing, but a basic mathematical uneveness is not a game breaker. Bored now.
A rare way of viewing the wish: Another dull single page article. Lew Pulsipher tries to limit the power of wishes (again) by asking the question. Who's granting them? what do they want in return? How will they screw the characters over if they ask the wrong thing? Nothing of note here. We'll probably see these ideas regurgitated again several times before the run's over.
Forever War, the game. Fight those Taurans as a mech suited superwarrior. Seems like rather missing the point of the original book. Show people a grim tale of the futility and ugliness of war, and there's always a few idiots who say cool, I want to do that! Anyway, was it a good game?
Patching the cracks in Champions: One of those articles that does exactly what it says on the tin. A lot of people are having trouble generating a character from concept up, as they're so used to random generation (Now that's amusing) So roll up a character in V&V, and then convert it. We also get some social advantages that seem pretty sensible. Good to see them catering to different games in here, even if it is just a one-off.
Fiction: The sagittarian by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Ahh, poetic justice. Such a lovely phrase. What better kind is there. It makes for far more entertaining stories than the regular variety. Shame there's not enough mischevious gods and whimsical wizards around to enforce it properly. Anyway, man gets turned into stagtaur. (someone figure out the proper greek) Wackiness does not ensue, unless it happens in a follow-up story. Googling is unhelpful. More info would be good.
Up on a soapbox: Oh, for gods sake. Roger Moore goes on about how players should always work together as a team to complete their mission. If they don't they will fail miserably. Infighting and selfishness has no place in gaming. Fuck off. Did you not read the intro to every roleplaying game ever, where it says there's no winners and losers. It's not about the mission, it's about the fun you have playing your characters on the way. (ha) Okay, so if you're going to have a game with PvP and intrigue, you should establish that beforehand, so there's no OOC hard feelings when people get screwed over. But for a lot of us, that drama is a huge part of the fun, and something to be actively sought out. Maybe I'm just too new skool for these guys. But this shows a tremendous amount of blinkeredness about what roleplaying can be.
....... Well. That was an unexpectedly vehement reaction. As you may gather, I disapprove of this article. YMMV, of course, since this is very much a matter of personal preference.
Time, money, and the goon show: Tom wham gives us some extra stuff for file 13, for those of you who'd played it a few times, and need to put variations in to stay interested. This makes winning and losing much more definite, as there is a stronger scoring system. He also takes the time to point out the errors in kim's making of. Which isn't quite as funny as the original article, but still amusing.
Reviews: Moon base clavius is set in 1996. Ha. Its a military boardgame with a bunch of little scenarios. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to its promise and gets a poor to mediocre rating. As disappointing as the monorail. ;)
Grav armor is a futuristic tank wargame. It's sequence of play results in some unusual tactics being optimal, and it has good graphics, but otherwise is unexceptional. Another solid game you'd probably play a few times, and then lose interest in.
Dragonmaster is a card game. And once again, the reviewer is in a rather vicious mood this month, calling it bland and simplistic underneath it's pretty visuals and high production values. What's eating him? Oh well, I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts, because I'll probably be seeing lots more dull moderately positive ones in the future.
Mercinaries, spies and private eyes. That's quite a cool name for a game. And it sounds like it has more scope than top secret or gangbusters. Anyone remember this one?
Palladium! Their very first advert in the magazine. But not their last by a long shot. Weapons and armour and castles and assassins, oh my. No system though. It'll be interesting to see when they start developing their own setting stuff.
Gamers guide: Looks like their extra size comes at a cost. But thankfully that'll be taken up by extra advertising. Hey, at least they're putting it at the back so you don't have to wade through it if you don't want too. This is a commercial operation, you know. Don't worry. I'll still be keeping my eyes out for interesting adverts, and thinking about what they reveal about the scene at the time.
What's new and wormy are unfortunately illegible this issue. Suckitude. Dragonmirth is as entertaining as ever.
A very good issue indeed. With both excellent articles for D&D that move the games setting and agenda forward, and a reasonable quotient of articles for other games, plus quite a few cool and significant adverts, this is one of the best overall packages they've released in a long time. Still a few articles I don't agree with, but I'd probably get bored if I agreed with everything anyway. Lets hope they keep this style up for a bit, as I already like it more than last years one.
The paladin was made a subclass of Cavalier in UA. any reretconing would have to have been later.
Re MSPE
Yes, my copy is 4' away. It's a T&T 5 variant, adding a skill system and firearms.
Quote from: aramis;315227The paladin was made a subclass of Cavalier in UA. any reretconing would have to have been later.
I finally dragged out my copy of UA. Now I'm wondering where I saw the paladin, cavalier, and cavlier-paladin distinction? Was it in the original Dragon article? Or was it my own house rule to make the paladin a bit more reasonably attainable? I'd have sworn it was something that came from TSR originally.
Dragon Issue 74: June 1983
part 1/2
87 pages. Welcome to another birthday issue. We have more dragons, more cool stuff from Ed, Lew, Roger, Len, and plenty of other articles. Also, Roger is now a full member of the editorial team, working in the same building rather than sending in articles from god knows where. Unfortunately, the pull-out extra pages on gen con do not appear to have been included in the scan, so I can't comment on them, which sucks. Oh well, there's plenty of other things still to do. Like spying. This issue has an unusually high number of top secret articles as well. Lets see what they've crammed in, and see if I can fit it into my already bulging skull.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter defending giving each level a title. There's always going to be some reactionaries.
A letter complaining about the statistical analyses of classes, as well as their recent revisions and additions, saying that this does not help roleplaying, and boiling things down to the numbers discourages creativity and treating them as personalities. Kim gives a rather lengthy reply to this, and seems a bit baffled as they do also have plenty of articles of how to build personalities and background details.
A letter complaining about how male oriented the magazine is, and wondering why there's no incubi in the game. This gets the stock response of well, we're trying, but when the vast majority of submissions are by male writers and artists, of course it's going to be skewed to that viewpoint. (oh, and they did do incubi, back in issue 54, but kim forgets to point that out) You want to change that, send stuff in.
From the sorceror's scroll: Horseys! Gary gives us info on warhorses, barding, and how much of an expense it is to get hold of them. You may want to use that, because it is pretty helpful for your overland adventures.
More importantly, we get another talk about their current plans for the future. And this one's a doozy. They're planning on releasing more minis and constructable environments for them. The D&D movie has a script (written by an academy award winner, what the hell happened there?) now we just need someone to make it. The D&D cartoon is done, and will be sharing airtime with the smurfs and pac-man. (tee hee. Family friendly show) and he's working with Flint Dille to create another D&D TV show. (And so another seed of his downfall was sown) Very interesting indeed. So many big plans, to have so many crushed hopes and unexpected ramifications resulting from them. You think you can play with the big boys in hollywood and come out ahead? Oh boy. You will learn. Lets hope we get to see some more of the backstage drama unfold here in the future, because this is important stuff, and I don't want to miss these big events in their zenith years.
James bond, 007 gets a big full colour advert. Another big licence gets a game based upon it. Will we see more stuff on this soon?
Leomund (and Nystul's) tiny hut: We get a contribution that seems to have been misplaced from the april issue. The bureaucrat and politician classes, more ones that are technically functional, but completely unsuited for adventuring. This is about as interesting and funny as spending time around real bureaucrats. Next please.
Landragons: Ahh, this is more like it. Three new dragon types, with a common theme running through them, and a load of implied setting stuff attached (the ubiquitous nebulous sages strike again!) Wingless compact dragons which are closer to being standard apex predators than the magically mighty supra-intelligent all rounders that make up the standard selection. And their breath weapons are pretty interesting as well. With plenty of info on their tactics, life cycle and ecology, this is a solid article that'll give you foes to challenge your players at a wide range of levels.
The electrum dragon: And a 4th dragon, unconnected to the previous three. This is not the product of gold and silver dragons mating, (although it probably ought to be) but a brand new metallic dragon species. They are a bit poncey, and not very considerate parents, but as we know, even good dragons aren't saints. This certainly isn't Ed's best contribution ever.
Seven swords: On the other hand, this is certainly a contender, if you go by the number of people who remember it fondly. Hello again, Elminster. Having been extensively regailed with stories of this world's magical swords, he condescends to reveal a little about the realms' most famous magical weapons in return. Adjatha, Albruin, Ilbratha, Namara, Shazzelim, Susk and Taragarth. Each has interesting powers beyond just being good at kicking butt, from monumental to quirky; and a history that spans many locations and multiple adventurers lives. Obviously, Ed is leading by example, and hopes to inspire other people to write stuff in the same vein, because at this stage, it'd still be a bit tricky to use them direct, given that our info on the realms is still in the form of tidbits with not enough joined up info to see the world beneath. Course, you could just nick the powers but replace or ignore the fluff. So it's useful even if you're lazy. Don't be lazy folks. Put in the effort to make your own world and make Ed proud.
The ecology of the bulette: Now why doesn't it surprise me that these are another of the first monsters to be ecologicaly examined. We see the return of the guild of naturalists, and their attempts to understand the creatures of the world around them. While a fun story, this one doesn't reveal that much about their general place in the world. Still, if not brilliant, it's a solid addition to their latest new series.
Tracing THRUSH's nest: A villainous organization for your top secret games. Formed from the ashes of professor Moiarty's criminal network, the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity (man, that is a terrible acronym. ) is let by a supercomputer and has it's own flying mobile city. That's ..... Pretty far out, man. Introducing that would definitely raise a few eyebrows in all but the most gonzo game. I'm really not sure what to make of this.
In trouble? Say UNCLE: Ahh. Now it all makes sense. It's all the fault of 60's tv. Man, they came up with some utter tosh for their backstories. Most rpg settings seem like models of logical design and consistency by comparison. This does what you'd expect, compiling the hints from the shows to build up a setting for your PC's to use. If they're ON DRUGS! No, sorry, I cant suspend my disbelief long enough to take this seriously as a workable setting. It's like 60's batman. The holes and stylistic weirdness are just too big and obvious for me to deal with. You'll have to get someone else to try it.
I've never been a fan of the Realms, or of much of anything else Greenwood has written, though the original FR boxed set interested me for a short while. That said, I found "Seven Swords" and the "Pages from the Mages" (that was the title of the article series about spellbooks, right?) articles to be really very nifty, and easy to use in any campaign. A lot of this stuff made its way into the 4 volume Encyclopedia Magica, which remains one of the best products ever produced for D&D.
Dragon Issue 74: June 1983
part 2/2
Spying on the spies: The writer of the previous two articles gives their designers notes, revealing the extrapolations and decisions they had to make to build the organizations into remotely consistent creations to use in your game. Which even they admit did take quite a bit of work, given the amount of contradictory material in the TV show and comics. Lets hope someone got some use from this stuff, because I can't see myself doing so, and they did put quite a bit of work into it.
The vicarious participator: Ahh joy. A roleplaying vs rollplaying piece. Lew tries to spread the idea of compromise between the people who just want to stomp shit and the persona building obsessives. Because we're all in the same hobby, and fighting over this stuff is just stupid. He also draws the distinction between those people who really want to create fictional characters with their own likes, dislikes and personalities, and those who basically play themselves if they were a whatever in the game. Neither is really wrong, and the line between can be quite blurred. And now you know about it, you can figure out where you fall on this scale and consciously choose to change it. Not his best work, and he's trying too hard to be noncontroversial IMO, but still a solid piece of writing with some insights into the roleplaying condition that don't seem obvious and stale. He always has a good spin on things that would be dull in lesser hands.
It's the combat computer: This months special feature is a cut-out wheel which is supposed to help you with your calculations. Not a bad idea. But make sure you cut it out correctly, otherwise it won't work. Notable also for being the first appearance of Tracy Hickman (unless I missed an earlier one) in the magazine. Another name we'll see going on to bigger and better (well, bigger anyway :p ) things. Another decent entry to add to their list of helpful creations.
What do you get when you cross a dungeon master with a computer: And here's another spin on the same subject. This provides you with a quick way of generating new characters. (at least, once you've entered the program into your computer ;) ) As befits the expansion in computers capacities, this is rather longer than earlier programs, with several interesting little subtleties which reflect the authors biases. Obviously, you won't be able to get any use out of it now, (unless you can point us towards a retro code environment emulator) but It's nice to see them putting some of this stuff in the magazine again. And if it doesn't do what you want, you can rewrite it yourself, which is more than we can say for the modern crop of digital aids.
A player character and his money: A second article from Lew this month. He attempts to restore some sanity to the economic situation in your game. A difficult task, as this is D&D, but hey, you gotta try. Remember, characters have to spend money just to live. And any place with lots of adventurers will suffer high inflation. (an excellent reason for you to keep heading for farther off continents or even extraplanar instead of settling down. You get higher level challenges, and don't ruin your home's economy and devalue your money there.) He tackles the other things that can eat up your funds; taxes, followers, building projects, equipment, influence etc. Unless they're being deliberately miserly, there are plenty of ways to keep them from being able to live off their current funds for the rest of their lives without them hating you for it. And several that will make you hate them, from thievery to being transported to another world without their stuff, or where it's not valued. Once again he's both full of ideas, and a catalyst for ideas in my head. Which is pretty nice, really.
Reviews: Star Frontiers is the only review this month, but is a bumper sized one. This is one of those reviews that winds up feeling more like a promotional piece than an objective assessment. That's the problem with reviewing games by the same company that's printing the reviews. Even if your enthusiasm is entirely genuine, your opinion still doesn't carry the weight of someone not in the employ of the creators. That said, it still goes into a good deal of detail on the specifics of the mechanics and contents, so it should still be useful in determining if you want to buy it or not.
Off the shelf: D'arc tangent no 1 by Freff & phil foglio is a comic with quite a bit of depth to it. About the search to discover why some races choose violence over empathy, it manages humour, detail and character development. Unfortunately, a quick search reveals that this is the only issue that ever got published, so the story is incomplete. Doesn't that just suck.
Prelude to chaos by Edward Llewellyn is a romance set against the collapse of civilization. Eventually, anyway, as both it's protagonists are hard-headed independent types. Big questions are raised, moral ambiguities presented,
The three legged hootch dancer by Mike Resnick is a story of an interstellar traveling circus, and the fun and trials they face along the way. This is primarily a humorous book, which is unusual for sci-fi.
The walls of air by Barbara Hambly is another story that transports earth natives to a fantasy world, and has them wind up saving it. But the characters and world are well built enough that you care about them anyway.
Orion shall rise by Poul Anderson is a postapocalyptic tale that spans an entire generation, and their attempts to regain power. We get to see how backroom politics and conflicts have very real effects on the world around. And some eco-crap. Not that that's a bad thing, as good sci-fi should throw a lens on real world issues.
The mists of avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is a retelling of arthurian legend from the PoV of Morgan de fay. Intrigue, lust, incest, battle and magic ensue, as you might expect. The druidic side gets considerably better press than the christian one. I don't need to sell this one to you, as it is fairly well known.
What's new is in code this month, going with the spy theme. Wormy faces the wizard.
Not quite as good as last issue, this is still full of many memorable moments and several things that would go on to be significant later. They may have built up a bit of history, but they can still add on a lot more before it starts to collapse under it's own weight and needs rebooting. So lets add a few more pieces to this jenga tower, see what shapes it makes next as it builds up to it's full height.
Thanks for this thread, btw.
Also some really nice commentary in here- especially from the Colonel.
Dragon Issue 75: July 1983
part 1/2
100 pages. Its a devil special! The nine hells and their occupants get an extensive look over, courtesy of Ed Greenwood. This is nice. Another plane is now described enough to be playable. And because it's so big, they've cut it in half, so there's still plenty of unrelated stuff in this magazine. Sweet! I can't wait to get my fangs into this one. Should I have saved that joke for the halloween issue? Maybe. Eh, it matters not. There are plenty more where that came from.
In this issue:
Harn, rolemaster and middle earth are once again occupying both the inside front and back covers. That's quite the saturation of advertising. They must be shelling out a lot to get the premium positions every time.
Out on a limb: Two letters correcting some out of date and incorrect information in the PbM article a couple of issues ago. Its a fast changing world.
A letter criticizing the champions article and the way it handled it's rules changes. Frankly, my dear, you should be grateful for getting anything at all.
A letter praising the first ecology article, and asking for lots more, with more details about their lifecycles and dietary habits. Sounds good to me.
A letter asking how you use the cavalier with the attack priority system. They reply that you'll have to figure that out yourself. As most of the articles are unofficial and by different people, there are bound to be some that are incompatible.
Hmm. Looks like they're looking for a japanese translator. Does that mean Oriental adventures'll be along in a year or so? Does that mean it'll be properly researched? We shall see.
The ecology of the mimic: The magazine finally starts producing homegrown articles for this series, instead of recycling them from Dragonlords. And it seems like Ed is quite taken with the concept, as this is the first of many that he'll contribute over the years. We get descriptions of the way mimic's internal structure produces various textures and colours, probably drawn from real life examples such as octopi. We also get some tactical ideas, including an amusing story of a mimic living in waterdeep disguised as a statue. Still feels a bit short, but it does manage to fit a good deal into a single page. Another article that's well up to his usual standard. Looks like the series is in safe hands.
From the sorceror's scroll gives us an extensive list of the dukes of hell, plus several other devils, including abishai and barbazu. As you would expect, they are rather scary, and have extensive lists of powers. A lot of information is given about exactly who is in charge of what. Which makes sense. It is the plane of lawful evil. Having a precise hierarchy to present your players with adds to the sense of solidity of the world. Of course, details may differ from source to source. Chalk it up to the devils lying. Wheels within wheels, muahahahahaha! Anyway, this is indeed a pretty useful article, although it feels a bit weird having Gary be the warm-up act for Ed. There is a bit of illegible scanning, but I think I can figure out roughly what's on it, since I have plenty of planar stuff from other sources. So lets not worry about that, and get to the main course.
The nine hells: Ed greenwood once again shows that when it comes to prose, there are few that can rival him in skill and attention to detail in this era. This first installment covers the first five layers, plus huge quantities of their inhabitants. Considerable amounts of research has gone into collating all the hints from various monster descriptions and providing a home for them, without any contradictions. And so far, he's done a great job. Hell under him is indeed pretty hellish, with each level having it's own distinctive flavour of environmental and social nastiness to negotiate your way through. Pity tha foo paladin that decides to just wade in and smite as much evil as he can. Chances are you won't even get a dignified death, instead being drowned in the eternal fetid swamp, enslaved, or starving, as everything is tainted. Lest we forget, lawful evil is not necessarily polite or negotiable with. If you're not useful, don't have the right permissions to be in a place, or are simply the "wrong kind of person", you can get summarily stomped. And if you're a living human, you can be sure you're breaking tons of regulations just by being there, unless you filled out the forms in triplicate and signed them in blood (yeah, like you really want to do that) before you even entered. If you're coming here, you'd better have a plan, a realistic goal, and several escape methods if you're to have any chance of coming out ahead. Or, given the power level of the princes, princesses and dukes as statted here, if you could gather a few hundred level 20+ characters, you could probably take down the entire devilish hierarchy in one fell swoop in the most epic endgame raid ever. (yes, badwrongfun, I know, but it does have a certain appeal, seeing level 20 characters having to fight to their limits, attacking swarms of pit fiends, dropping like flies and being rezzed (and possibly reincarnated if they run out of rez'es :evil: ) several times per battle by the clerics.) Anyway, I'm sure many of you had fun with this, and I hope some of you will in the future as well. Because it's definitely some pretty impressive work, and t'would be a shame if it just disappeared into history unused.
Dragon Issue 75: July 1983
part 2/2
Mutants, men? and machines: A load of gamma world monsters. All have rather silly names. Hydragen are fire breathing snakes. Raydiums are flying telekinetic manta rays. Cycloptrons are metal boned giants which shoot lasers from their eye. Cyber-netters are giant robot spiders. And nitrodjinn are atomic powered weather spirits. Yes, gamma world can be a silly game at times. Funny how you can accept these things in a fantasy world, but as soon as they stick pseudoscience explanations on, it rings false. Not the greatest monster article ever.
Beyond the rule book: More Gming advice from Lew Pulsipher. First he gives 10 guidelines that should be good for virtually everyone, whatever the game. Then he gives 10 that are slightly more specific, based upon his own style. While he does have a tendency towards the conservative, these are generally pretty solid too. Once again, he's played his part in making the magazine as good as it is.
Can seapoint be saved: Having already served us with a huge special feature, this month's module is only an 8 pager. But it is a pretty neat open-ended one as you figure out a way to protect a town from pirates. Will you wait for them to attack, set some bait, or hunt them down? A scenario that has plenty of opportunities for tactical thinking and roleplaying, its another example of the fun you can have with town and wilderness adventures that dungeoncrawling simply can't do. You need more DM effort to run these scenarios, but it's well worth it. And this gives you a good framework to start from.
Even orcish is logical: Another attempt to create a fictional language for D&D. Hmm. What would you say orcish sounds like? Functional, gutteral and ugly, with lots of words for weapons and hurting stuff. Makes sense. The rest of the article gives us a basic grammar and language list for an orcsh language that looks very much like Tolkien's. Well, it's easier to get people to accept it. It certainly shouldn't provoke the controversy that thieves cant did, anyway.
All games need names: We've had contributions from Gary, Ed and Lew. Now Katherine Kerr (who it also seems is one of the few writers smart enough to retain their own copyright on their articles.) takes her turn this month. We get more info on the proper construction of your own language, including the sounds you choose to make them up (bi-labial fricatives strike again) and avoiding unpronouncable or silly names in your settings. Gender descriptives, morphemes, agglutinative and fusional languages, and tons of other geeky details. I would enjoy that, but once again I am reminded how crap I am at playing with and within the rules of even one language, let alone other ones. I'll never be a Tolkien. I might be able to work up detailed physics, ethics, psychologies, societies, music, and statistical data for my worlds and stories, but languages? Sorry. I'll leave that to someone else.
Figure feature: This month's mini's are humans of all kinds, from medieval to futuristic. Oh, and a grim reaper. Good guys, bad guys, shoot you in the eye guys. Just buy em. Otherwise the companies'll go out of business, and we'll have to stop doing features on them.
Reviews: The runequest companion is a grab-bag of stuff for glorantha fans, from a whole load of different writers. Essentially, this replaces having a magazine, and they intend to publish further editions of it later. Which I suppose is one way to go about it. As long as consistency is maintained, and it sells well, there's nothing wrong with a good periodical, under whatever name you choose to call it.
The solomani rim is yet another traveller supplement. (the 10th official one) And we finally get to see the homeworld of humanity in the traveller universe. Once again, there is plenty of setting detail, as entire star systems and their histories are filled in.
Oh dear. And now we see some more of the D&D backlash. Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe, and Hobgoblin by John Coyne are both novels where roleplaying is used as a symptom of an underlying personality problem in the characters. Because no normal, well adjusted person would ever do something as weird as that. Issues are examined, emotional dilemmas are had, and in both cases, they give it up in the end and become happy well adjusted adults. :rolleyes: Thank you for that, sensationalist hack writers.
UK revisited: games fair 83. Gary's back in the UK. And once again he has a pretty good time, as does his kid. Well, when you're guest of honour, it's relatively likely things'll go smoothly. Lets hope this continues next year.
What's new gets superheroic. Featuring gazebo boy! Wormy illustrates one of the more amusing aspects of dimensional travel, as well as the fact that dragons are smarter than cyclopses.
Snarfquest! Larry Elmore gets his own comic. Interesting. And this is before thundercats also used the name. Where did it come from? Looks like this is another largely humorous strip. Can snarf get enough treasure over the next year to become leader of his tribe. Will he fail. Will the plot drift until the original reason he left on his adventures becomes completely irrelevant. Keep reading and find out.
A very strong issue indeed, with not only the epic centerpiece, but plenty of other really good stuff in there as well. And the great thing is, next issue is almost guaranteed to have a load of stuff of the same quality. Which is reassuring. After all, you never know when things might go south because they're not getting any decent stuff in, or editorial policy changes for the worse. So lets enjoy what is definitely one of the classic runs of the magazine, that would still hold up today.
Dragon Issue 76: August 1983
part 1/2
100 pages. Lots of big features in this one, too. Our second big index, and the conclusion of the nine hells article. Unfortunately, they're stopping doing sci-fi stuff for the forseeable future, as they want to give Ares magazine some room and set different niches for the two. After all, they have to do something with all those SPI properties they have lying around. Which means while they may be devoting more space to it somewhere, I'm not going to get to see it. As ever, anyone else who wants to start a reading thread on that would be welcomed.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Another letter saying the computer program they gave us doesn't work on their machine. Given how many variations on computer code there are running around at the moment, that's understandable. Maybe we ought to give this one up. It really doesn't seem worth the effort.
A letter criticizing their language articles. Real languages aren't remotely as logically derived (see, I told you so) from culture. Plus even 8 pages is nowhere near enough to make a language properly usable. The vocabulary just isn't there.
A letter by michael gray further following up on the PbP clarifications he received last issue. Correspondence has been sent. Misconceptions cleared up. Isn't that great.
Two letters criticizing the amount of advertising and promotional material in the magazine. Kim of course reminds them they need that stuff so they can afford to fill the rest of the pages with useful stuff, and the amount of that each issue is expanding as well. You'll have to tolerate the commercial considerations, because there's no getting away from them. We are not a charity.
The ecology of the beholder: Now here's a monster that certainly needs some rationalizing. And as it's such a big task, both Ed and Roger contribute to it. The results are not as impressive as you'd think, they obviously were not very inspired when they wrote this one. Oh well. You can't hit a home run every time. It's still fairly solid as a piece of fiction. And the amount of actual ecology is increasing as well, with dietary, reproductive, and tactical considerations mentioned. Because if any creature will slaughter a bunch of adventurers that just wade in with swords swinging and spells blasting, it's a beholder. You want lots of hirelings with ranged attacks to take the brunt of those rays. You need to take advantage of your superior speed. You need to surround them so they can't anti-magic everyone. Etc etc. And you should still expect to lose quite a few people in the battle. Just be thankful there aren't any social beholder variants like the ones that'll turn up in spelljammer yet.
Leomund's tiny hut: Len gives us a new NPC class, the death master. Necromancy specialists, and all that goes with it, plus some amusing experience tables (gaining xp for digging graves and embalming bodies, fnarr.) For all his exhortations about never allowing it as a PC, it's probably actually less powerful than a regular wizard or druid. But then, this isn't about power, it's about morals. Len seems to be part of the brigade that thinks PC's should never be evil, and assassins shouldn't be allowed as a PC class. Which surprises me less than you might think. My love of PvP is pretty public, so this is one thing I'll probably have to complain about quite a bit, particularly when the morals brigade really take over around the 2nd ed changeover. But then, they did a lot of stupid things then. Thankfully I can pick the bits I like and ignore the ones I don't.
Figure feature gives us a titan, elves riding bumblebees, a bard, an assassin, a magic-user, a barbarian riding a giant owl, and a demon rising from a well this month. You'll be unlikely to get to use those in a game too often, unless you skew the encounter tables a bit.
The nine hells: Layers 6-9 get the spotlight upon them in the second part of this feature. Once again, Ed's descriptions of both the landscape and denizens are exemplary, giving us a great picture of just how unpleasant an afterlife there is for pretty much everyone, even the high-ups. As these are the lower levels, there is less focus on the tormenting of damned souls, and more on the devilish inhabitants, and the way they treat one-another here. Everyone is subject to seemingly arbitrary shit in the name of various schemes, or sometimes just out of general sadism. There is also a surprising amount of sexism, as all the Lords are male, and have female consorts. (all statted out, yay, but relatively weak for the political power they wield, hmm.) I guess that's what they consider the proper order of things, since gender for beings like that is interchangeable as part of their promotions and demotions anyway. And you know they're big on order. Discipline me now mistress. :)
It ends with spells in the hells, another tedious list of how magic spells, items, character abilities, etc etc are changed while you're there. So it's still not perfect, being very much a product of its times. But it is a fascinating read, that is in many ways better than the Baator book in Planes of Law. This is definitely stuff I'd use in game, as it provides the rich cast that a place full of scheming politickers with a web of alegences and grudges between them needs. Can you figure out how to take advantage of their personal quirks and come out ahead? Have fun trying, and don't take it too hard if your characters get sent to eternal torment. It's just a game, and you can't win all the time.
The dragon index gets it's second epic outing, filling up the middle of the issue. They've altered the format a bit to keep it from getting too large, but there's still several different ways you can find each thing. And it looks nice as well. That should come in handy.
The palladium fantasy roleplaying game. Over 20 classes, 290 spells, 13 races, etc etc. Only their second advert, and they're already pretty close to the style and layout that they use to this day. Some things just never change. Kinda reassuring, really.
Saved by the cavalry!: Even having excised the sci-fi stuff, at least they still fit some non D&D bits in the magazine, thankfully. We get info on the cavalry and other soldiers for boot hill, in case lone cowboys are getting boring. This includes rules for making them available as PC's, who have both advantages and disadvantages compared to regular PC's. Not sure if they balance out, and the social restrictions of being under command by high ranking NPC's may cause problems, but it's a good idea anyway. After all, who doesn't love leading a bunch of fight, er, soldiers, to kill some marauding orcs, er, indians ;)
Sage advice is also pretty lengthy this month: Who was Baba yaga (A cannibal ogre-witch from russia. Pretty darn badass. You'll be seeing her again in the future.)
Can a dungeon master change magic items after giving them to players (that would be cheating, unless you have an in-game rationale. We don't recommend it, as pissed off players often result. )
What are mithral and admantite(super badass extra valuable metals for when gold and steel just aren't good enough.)
Can a player character become a free-willed vampire (Hell no. We still think all devil leaders should be male. There's no way we're gonna be enlightened enough to let you play undead. And it would break the game anyway. )
Why can't rangers be in groups larger than 3. Tolkien's rangers don't have that restriction (D&D is not LotR. We can do what we want, so ner.)
How much XP should you get for solving problems and being clever (10-100, depending on how cool they were. Yes, killing is the quicker way to power than being clever and solving a situation without fighting.)
Can characters take over a dungeon after clearing it out? (Sure, why not. Don't expect it to be cheap, as they take lots of upkeep. And now you're the ones who have to deal with pesky monsters and adventurers coming in trying to kill you and take your stuff. Turning things around like that could be fun.)
Why do some GitE characters have percentile scores in ability scores they shouldn't (more differentiation in the upper scales of badass)
What is knucklebones (see appendix F of the DMG)
Which version of a person or monster is correct when there are multiple ones published in different issues(whichever one your DM chooses, or one of their own creation)
Is everything in Dragon official (no.)
Why do BD&D and AD&D contradict each other (because they are different games. Don't mix them up)
What happens if a D&D character is hit by gamma world's de-evolution (they lose levels, no save. Be afraid)
Can a paralyzed character speak or use psionics (no and yes, as psionics don't require movement)
What does " mean (each inch translates to 10 foot inside, or 10 yards outside)
What's the difference between a secret and a concealed door (duh. Ones secret, the other's concealed)
Are constitution bonus' per hit die, or per level (per hit die. Tough rangers have it good, don't they.)
How do you handle pregnancy (we'll leave that up to individual DM's)
What does CO stand for? (Comeliness. It's a new stat. See issue 67.)
How can a human have more hit points than a dragon (hit points don't just represent straight toughness, but also luck and skill. Don't you get that yet?)
Can half ogres be barbarians? (they can certainly be barbaric, but they can't join the barbarian class)
Why do half ogres have such low charisma's (because they're uuuugleeeee. And uncouth, and doodyheads, and smell.)
What do half-ogres think about other races. (depends which side raised them, and how they were treated as kids.)
Do rangers get benefits against half-ogres(no)
Why do half-ogres roll different dice for their ability scores (because we say so. Their ranges are too different for just pluses or negatives to the dice to reflect properly without negative scores appearing and breaking the game.)
When did Ares become a section of Dragon? It didn't last long, as I recall, and to be honest, while I enjoyed scifi in Dragon, the Ares section was pretty uninspiring while it lasted.
Dragon Issue 76: August 1983
part 2/2
We also get another extensive Q&A, on the proper format for submissions to the magazine. Write up submissions neatly, include SASE if you want a reply, what we want right now (more sci-fi stuff please) be persistent, keep trying. Nothing much has changed here since last time.
Off the shelf: Talbot Mundy, Messenger of destiny, compiled by D M Grant, is a combination of biography and bibliography, with plenty of commentary as well. It offers plenty of detail in a well designed package.
A field guide to dinosaurs is exactly that, giving plenty of information about the creatures, when they are from, and also museum listings so you can go see them in person (although those'll be long out of date by now.)
Invasion: Earth by Harry Harrison tells the story of an earth caught between two warring alien species, with vietnam parallels being drawn. Fast-paced and with a twist at the end, it's up to his usual standard.
Tea with the black dragon by R A MacAvoy is an action-adventure/romance with two amusingly contrasting protagonists. The supernatural side is fairly light, but that just means things can stay mysterious at the end.
Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster is a rather puerile comedy/epic fantasy. While that is not an inherently bad thing, it certainly doesn't blend them as well as say, discworld. Sounds like it would be perfect for a movie adaption starring Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler :p
Set of wheels by Robert Thurston is a bleak dystopian future from a battlestar galactica writer. Whoda thought that could happen ;) The protagonist just wants to get away from all that, and blast off down the open highway, and the book follows his attempts to do so. The writer then has fun putting him through the wringer.
Transformer by M A Foster has nothing to do with the soon to be released cartoon about robots in disguise. It does involve a shapeshifting creature though. And the stupid humans try and kill it, as they will do, which ends up causing just the problems they were trying to prevent in the first place. We once again learn about human nature by seeing it reflected through something else.
Against Infinity by Gregory Benford is set on Ganymede, and follows human attempts to terraform it, plus the strange things they find there. They have to struggle against both the environment and each other, but of course, that's what generates the interest.
Khi to freedom by Ardath Mayhar gets a rather sarcastic review. Apart from it's purely first person narration, it has little to distinguish it, being a melange of stock ideas, and weird aliens with unpronouncable names and stereotyped personalities. Could definitely do better.
Storm season, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin is the fourth thieves world compilation. As before, they've got hold of a solid collection of writers for the various stories. And as often happens after several books in a series they seem to be focussing more on the same cast of characters, and making things darker and more metaplot driven. If that's a good thing, it's hard to say. It certainly makes things less newbie friendly. Lets see where the next book takes them.
Yearwood by Paul Hazel is the start of another fantasy saga. It's epicness is both a strength and a weakness, as it's characters feel more like archetypes than real well rounded people, particularly the women. Guess you'll have to tune in for the plot rather than the characterization then.
Forbidden sanctuary by Richard Bowker tells a story of catholicism and aliens with a parallel religion, and what happens when the two collide. Which means there's plenty of philosophical and political thought to drive the plot along. You don't have to be a Christian to enjoy it.
Reviews: Gangbusters is of course a TSR game, so the objectivity of a review here is in question. The reviewer does a good job of pointing exactly how the game makes itself fast and furious, and handles the various social aspects of city life and crimefighting. You can't just hack and slash your way through this one. And keeping the party together all the time is not really an option, making it better for small groups. But it is well organized, and includes plenty of material to get your game up and running quickly, so it's still probably more newbie friendly than many modern games.
Borderlands (don't we already have something by that name :checks: yup. Issue 68. Damn name recycling. There oughta be a law ;) ) is a wargame. Get resources, fight enemies, control territories. You ought to know the drill. Simple rules result in complex emergent strategies, and plenty of fun with webs of politics and trading if you play with 3 or more players. For those of you who prefer a little more depth in your world conquering than risk offers.
Cities is a system free game supplement for any fantasy game, helping you both build and populate cities, and create encounters for existing ones. Whether you want realistic economics or high fantasy weirdness, it has some stuff to help you out. As long as you don't mind rolling on lots of tables, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.
Judge Dredd's new boardgame also gets a review. Frag those perps before the other judges do, and get the highest score to win. Good, vindictive fun that isn't too taxing on the brain. A good emulation of the source material then :p
Federation space is a star trek game of future war. Designed to contrast with and complement Star Fleet battles, it serves as the large scale strategic counterpart to the former's ship level tactical wargame. Travel between systems, form and break alliances, spend money, capture stuff. Doesn't sound very star treky to me. But I suppose making money is more important than upholding starfleet's peaceful ideals. You need to make sacrifices for the sake of playability.
Dragonmaster gets a second review in here. This is actually more like a promotional piece and rebuttal than an actual review, and if it were not for its length, should really have gone in the letters column with all the other rebuttals. Still, it includes plenty of actual details about the game, so it's still useful in deciding if you want to buy or not.
Wormy gets back to the snooker and jokes after the high drama. Snarfquest faces it's first challenge. What's new welcomes you to shamcon V. Business as usual in dragonmirth.
Another rocking issue, if not quite up to the standards of it's predecessor. But then, that set a high standard. This one seems more concerned with looking back and outwards, with reviews, indexing and answering questions playing such a large part. Will they have another stroke of innovation any time soon. I'm not sure. Given the form of some of their writers, it doesn't seem that unlikely. Onward! No time to sit around mulling over the past if I want to catch up with the present. :)
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;316072When did Ares become a section of Dragon? It didn't last long, as I recall, and to be honest, while I enjoyed scifi in Dragon, the Ares section was pretty uninspiring while it lasted.
Issues 84 to 111. Not that far away.
Quote from: (un)reason;316188Issues 84 to 111. Not that far away.
Ah, OK.
I was a bit surprised to see that a book
about Talbot Mundy was reviewed in "Off the Shelf." Mundy was an obvious influence on Gygax (see the reading list appendix in the 1e DMG), but he seems to have been largely ignored by many gamers. While his "Tros" books are the more obviously relevant books to gamers, books like "King, of the Khyber Rifles" and "OM: The Secret of Ahbor Valley" are grand adventures. They could easily serve as inspiration for any number of games, from D&D to Call of Cthulhu, despite the two I mentioned being set in the British Raj in India of the 1920s. Well worth looking for.
Dragon Issue 77: September 1983
part 1/2
86 pages
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter questioning why Ed greenwood referred to Sekolah as female. They reply that was because sahuagin are female dominated, so it makes more sense if their god is female as well. This is of course an entirely unofficial alteration.
A letter from someone who sent in a module, and then found one with a similar name on the gen con list of events, asking if it is his. They reply that no, they would have told him. Plaglarism is bad, but there are only so many monsters and scenarios, so unless you get all abstract and whimsical, chances are someone else'll do similar things at some point.
A letter from David Axler replying to the comments about his weather system article. Some are valid, some aren't, all will be useful in refining it for next time, you know the drill.
A letter criticizing Roger's all teamwork, all the time soapbox piece in issue 73. Another case where I say bloody well right too. :D
A letter from a person who's realized that the map of Launewt is actually Brittany rotated. Well spotted. As they've said before, judicious stealing creates far better verisimilitude than even the most careful wholecloth creation.
One of many letters they've received asking for the address of Starblaze editions Books. This is duly provided.
Tarot of many things: Random stuff. Muahahahaha!!! I do so love these articles. This brings an extra tactile edge compared to a regular deck of many things, because you can draw from a real deck to determine the results. And what fun they are. You character could be permanently enhanced or horribly debilitated based upon what they draw. Do you dare brave it? Some people would jump right in, while others would rather face a horde of energy draining undead led by a beholder. As this has to cover 78 cards, each with two effects, it spans 16 pages, effectively making it a full special feature in itself. The powers are split fairly evenly between good, bad and mixed blessings, although most are definitely more one or the other. As with any of these gambling things, the trick to them is to know when to quit, because if you keep on drawing, you will lose eventually. (Or cheat. Wild mages kicked ass pre 3rd edition. With an item like this, they could god mod themselves quite a bit. )Anyway, this is definitely a good way to kick off the issue, and another thing I would delight in using at some point.
The ecology of the unicorn: They really are pretty enthusiastic about this series, aren't they. Roger Moore asks PETA girl (who is a dryad, so the nature loving is to be expected. (great, now I want to put an urbanized dryad who's tree is in the middle of a city market square in a game)) about the unicorn, and gets a reply which turns into rather a love-in. Well, they are the insufferably pure mary-sues of the natural world, lusted after by many, but only accessable to virgins. (so most gaming groups are in with a pretty good shot :p ) What's not to hate? Not that the article is badly written, but it is too flowers and skippy-happy for my tastes. This starts the habit of putting game material in the appendix, although they still haven't started using footnotes yet. Still, good to see this series being developed and refined. Hopefully next time they'll pick a less twee creature to tackle.
Curses!: Ed contributes only a little article this month. A new selection of curses, slightly less brutal than the standard ones given for cursed scrolls and flasks, so low level adventurers have a decent chance of surviving if they find one in a pile. Which still means unpleasant and humiliating stuff happening to you when you least want it too. All part of the fun of old skool dungeoneering. One of those articles you can drop in pretty much any time, given it's modularity and lack of setting.
Nasty additions to a DM's arsenal: More items that are mostly pains in the ass, but can also be turned to useful ends by clever characters. Fun fun fun. We have the helm of enemy nondetection, which is basically a hitchikers guide joke transplanted to D&D. The ring of hypochondria, and arrows of conscientious objection, which do exactly what they say on the tin. The ring of gaseous form, which is very useful as long as you have someone around to help you get it off. The dagger of monster calling, which is just amusing. And the medallion of protection from thieves, which is incredibly useful as long as you're not in a situation where your group needs those abilities. Depending on the type of dungeon, that may not be a problem, particularly if you have spellcasters who can make a rogue redundant in any case. It's good to have peace of mind about the safety of your equipment. Another neat little article that you can drop in stuff from any time.
Elemental gods: Sometimes you don't want to populate your world with hundreds of deities for every concept under the sun, plus the sun itself. If you want to maintain a strong sense of theme, it can be better to have a limited cast of gods covering everything, worshipped under different names for different cultures and aspects. As an example, 4 elemental ones is a good place to start, as you can fit associations to most aspects of life easily enough under their umbrellas. And then you can start building your own. Try not to end up with the krynnish pantheon, as embarrassment and railroading may result. Remember, your job is to help the players make a story, not tell a story and drag them along as spectators. Even if your deities are active agents who's actions regularly impact upon the world, they still shouldn't overshadow the PC's. Anyway, this is a pretty solid worldbuilding article that is useful regardless of system. After all, very few worlds make religion completely irrelevant, even if they don't have D&D style granted spellcasting.
Dragon Issue 77: September 1983
part 2/2
A new game with a familiar name: Frank Mentzer talks about the new edition of the basic and expert sets (again? That's the third new edition in 4 years. And we complain now that 5 years between editions is too soon) and how much of an improvement it is over the last ones, particularly for complete n00bs, with it's introductory adventure teaching you the rules as you go. (remember, it's easier to get people to learn things if they don't view it as work. ) Better artwork, better editing, better initial adventure, better all round. Meanwhile in the expert set, we see the start of Mystara, as they expand outwards from the map in X1. YAY! Another classic setting starts here. All the old D&D modules now have locations on the map there, plus you have a proper hometown in karimekos. This is awesome, and hopefully we'll be seeing articles expanding on my own personal favourite of the generic D&D fantasy campaign worlds soon. The companion set also gets it's first mention, and it and the master set are coming soon. (For a generous value of soon :p ) Yeah, this is a pretty significant article, even if it does fall a little into the trap of selling the new stuff by saying the old stuff was crap. It also once again shows up the differences in tone between D&D and AD&D, with the greater emphasis on evolving playstyles, and the PC's coming to have important social positions within the world, making big changes to the setting instead of just wandering from one adventure to the next getting tougher, but still doing basically the same thing. Funny how that worked out. You might start out smaller, but you have a clearly defined path which leads to bigger and better things. It's a shame they've pretty much dropped that aspect from the newer games.
Figure feature: This month features a slightly more unusual set of minis, with superheroes, civil war, 20's (plus cthulhoid monster), star trek (khaaaaan!), and swashbucklers catered for. Do your games need any of those?
Spy's advice: What are the effects of being exposed to a cubic inch of uranium (how should I know, am I a physicist?(answer, not a lot, unless it's purified U235, as U238 is actually pretty stable, with a half-life of billions of years. A cubic inch won't be a problem unless you make it into a ring and wear it for years. ))
How much does thermite cost. What can it burn through ( $30 per bomb or 12 oz tube. Most things, apart from brick and concrete, which are just too damn absorbent.)
How long does a flash grenade blind you (1-100 minutes)
Can tripods or Two weapon stances increase your hit odds. (yes, by +10)
Why are my characters so much tougher than the NPC's (you're forgetting to divide by 10)
What are the odds of failing a parachute jump. (1 in 500 for round chutes, 3 in 10,000 for square ones)
When you gain knowledge points, do your AOK's go up (yes)
Is there a limit to AOK's (150)
Can you get more superior AOK's (only by buying them up the hard way)
Can NPC's have fame and fortune points (only if they were once PC's)
Does drinking too much alcohol kill you (yes)
How do I keep players from finding out each other's objectives in a PvP campaign. (note passing and leaving the relevant parts of their sheet blank so they can't find out just by peeping.
Are the prices for the other weapon charts correct (yes)
King of the tabletop: Hello again, Mr Wham. You have another game for us? How interesting. Let's see what it entails this time. Looks like he's getting all meta on us for a second time. Having covered the game development process, he now lampoons roleplaying itself. And wargaming, and economics. And still finds the time to make a workable game underneath the humour. He does have an interesting brain. The rules continue to increase in complexity, to the point where I really can't tell how the game will play without trying it. Lets hope that's a good thing, and the crunch creep hasn't reached the point where it gets in the way.
Valley of the pharaohs. Palladium once again expands their repetoire. Don't remember this one. Did it use the same rules as all their other stuff?
Wouldya like to take another survey? It has been over a year. Surely it isn't asking that much of you to fill it out and send it in? We want to know what's changed, so we can change in response. Is that so wrong?
Reviews: Harn is another thing that has been advertised for ages, and finally gets a review. A pretty positive one, too. Seems the designers already have a pretty solid idea of what their setting is like already, with plenty of geographical, sociological, and economic details, all well organized and indexed. It does get a bit of flak for being so blatantly based on middle-earth, but that's more a taste thing. It also has the problem that since it's all so tightly integrated, it may be tricky to change bits without messing up the game. I guess it depends if you like the idea of playing in someone else gameworld as written or not. Which is the same issue tekumel ran into. What makes good stories and worlds does not always make for good gaming.
Plague of terror is a generic adventure module. It gets a very critical review by Roger, who thinks it has too much plot detail and graphic content. Which, y'know, sound like pluses to me. I guess child abuse, torture and stuff is a matter of taste, and TSR prefer to tread a more family friendly line; plus what makes for good plots may make for railroady adventures, which would be particularly jarring when most modules at this point are location based rather than plot based. Can I get a second opinion on this one, as this review actually makes it seem perversely tempting.
What's new covers death in D&D. Fineous Fingers makes a cameo from ohio, calling out to all the pretty ladies around the world. Snarfquest features comical combat. Wormy goes back to the trolls plotline. Once again we are reminded just how slow time passes when you only have a strip per month to work with. The entire 10 year run is only about 3-4 days of events in setting. Dragonmirth is missing.
Rather a scattershot issue here, with lots of cool stuff, but very little theme, apart from random effects playing a strong part. I think they're doing it diliberately, to provide a nice contrast with the last few and keep us interested. Because they still seem to have a good idea what they're doing. And hopefully the info they get in the survey will help make it even better. (assuming what the public says it wants is also what I want, which they have a spotty record on at best. ) Eh, still time for tons of ups and downs before it's over. Why worry too much.
ISTR valley isn't the same system. It used to be a free D/L from Palladium Books.
Quote from: (un)reason;316589Valley of the pharaohs. Palladium once again expands their repetoire. Don't remember this one. Did it use the same rules as all their other stuff?
I've owned this game for years, never played it. Looks to me like it uses the same Palladium system, but it's been so long since I looked at it or any other Palladium game, so I couldn't tell you how it might differ. It sticks out to me because it has a number of odd-sized maps of Egypt.
Then I saw aramis post this:
Quote from: aramis;316593ISTR valley isn't the same system. It used to be a free D/L from Palladium Books.
Then my memory must be faulty. It's been 15-20 years since I last looked at a Rifts book, at least enough to get a feel for the system. How different is Valley of the Pharaohs? Is it completely different?
September 1983. I think this is where I become a gamer.
Seanchai
Dragon Issue 78: October 1983
part 1/2
100 pages. The request for psionic stuff half a year ago finally yields dividends in one of the more impressive themed issues in some time. Eight, count em, articles getting in on the act. That's even better than the Traveller special with the milk bottles managed. Hopefully none of these'll feel like they were whipped up and crammed in at the last minute just to make up the numbers. We also have another full size module, and several unconnected articles. Well, they have to have a few, otherwise complaints would be guaranteed. This should be pretty sweet.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter asking what will happen to games that are neither sci-fi or fantasy after the Ares split. The hobby is getting ever more fragmented, and they don't like it. Kim apologizes at length, saying that roleplaying as a hobby is now too big for one magazine to do it justice. (so buy both ;) ) They can't please everyone, so they're not going to try anymore.
A letter asking for a proper official ruling on phantasmal force.
A letter pointing out the errors in their last index. There's always something, isn't there.
A letter asking about modules based off other properties, and how EX1&2 got past that. They reply that if it's in public domain, it's fair game, but if the author's still here, steer well clear.
A letter praising them on the well targeted nature of their adverts. No booze, cigarettes or porn here. Kim remains silent on this, and I suspect this may be simply because none of them pay to advertise here. We're not an important enough demographic for those ugly corporations to focus their beady little eyes on.
A letter correcting details on 19th century guns for boot hill.
A letter asking what the new monsters mentioned but not printed in the nine hells article were. They reply that they're found in the monster manual II. Out in all good hobby stores now! :teeth ting:
A letter asking them why they don't do an art book compiling issue covers. They reply that in most cases, they only purchased them for a single time use, and so this is not an easy option.
Plus some Q&A for king of the tabletop. Not big enough to give it its own page, so they put it here.
Mind games: We start off with a basic discussion of what psionics is, and what it's ramifications are. While magic comes from an external source, psionics is purely internal. Which means most people have untapped depths of power in their minds. But with no formalized system of training, development of those powers will of course be haphazard and unreliable. (until now, of course) It then goes into a reiteration of the rules quirks, trying to understand and justify them, and failing, in some cases. Yet another instance where the AD&D rules are examined and found wanting, with many contradictions pointed out and thought about. Having done that, it's time to think about cleaning them up, and fixing them. But that's a matter for another article. Because otherwise this would be one huge screed with no dividers. Still, this has been a solid lead-in, that hopefully helped assuage people's trepidation about using psionics in their own games.
Sage advice: When do you check for psionic powers (when first created, and if your appropriate ability scores change)
Can you lose psionic powers if you suffer ability drain (yes)
How do you quickly assess if NPC's have psionics (roll D%. On a 00, they have psionics)
Which races can have psionics (humans, dwarves and halflings definitely can. Elves possibly can, depending which rules version you use. gnomes and half-orcs definitely can't)
Can a wish spell make you immune to psionic attacks (one wish will make you immune to one attack mode. You'd need 5 to become immune to them all.)
If you're surprised, can you still put up defense modes (yes)
Why aren't psionic attacks and defenses by high level creatures more powerful (for the same reason that regular weapons do the same amount of damage regardless of the wielders level. Not everything scales with level.)
Can you cast spells and use psionics at the same time ( You can have a thought shield up and cast spells as well, but otherwise no. They both require too much concentration to be compatible.)
Do successful psionic attacks disrupt spells. (only if they do real damage, or fully penetrate your shielding)
Can you raise a character killed by psychic crush (yes, but they lose all their psionic powers permanently. If they were an integral part of your character concept, it sucks to be you.)
Doesn't the players handbook say that thought shield is the only defense against psychic crush? (no, it says that's the only defense you can use while also using psychic crush. Read it more carefully.)
What does it mean when it says thought shield can be kept up at all times (exactly that. It's the only one you can use while fighting, spellcasting or otherwise being active. )
What happens to the points transferred back and forth in psionic operations. (they're expended. You'll have to recover them with rest as normal. )
What does page 77 mean. (if an attack reduces you to 0 psionic points, you start taking real hit point damage instead. Brain go splodey. )
Can psionic creatures sense other psionic creatures (only if they're actually using their powers at the time. If they're mentally shielded, not even then.)
If you switch classes, do you lose powers forbidden to your new class (yes, very much so.)
Can animal telepathy communicate with humans (no. They do not count as animals for the purposes of this power.)
Does cell adjustment let you know exactly how many hit points a character has (that depends on if you want the metagame and physics to be that closely connected. We'll leave this one to you.)
Can energy control negate any spell, even wishes. ((if you have the appropriate amount of power points to spend)
Does the table on page 60 apply to psionic invisibility (no. They're invisible because you're being mind controlled to ignore them, so no matter how good your other senses are, you won't pick up the clues.)
Can you attack someone and remain psionically invisible (no)
Can you use mollecular agitation through scrying (no. Line of sight means your actual, unenhanced sight)
Can you levitate yourself with telekinesis (no. That would make the other power redundant. )
Do magical protective items affect saves vs psionics (only if they boost all your saves, or specifically say so)
Do you gain XP just for using a power (getoutahere ya powergrubbing varmint. )
Do you gain XP for killing a creature with psionic blast (only if it was a threat, as with any other fight. Rigged games don't count. )
Ravenloft! What a way to mark this haloween. This is certainly one a lot of people remember fondly, and of course went on to get several remakes and be the centre of an entire campaign world. Let the gothic horror commence.
Overhauling the system: Back to the prose. Lets see what their suggestions for fixing this poorly designed and integrated subsystem are. 1: Proper progression, instead of starting almost as badass as you're ever going to be. An excelent idea. 2: use it or lose it. Not such a good idea. It conflicts with the general D&D design philosophy, and is way too likely to cause player/DM conflict. 3: Prevent low level characters from knowing the extents of their powers. Another not so good method that only works with novice players. Hmm. That's not a very good strike rate. Methinks this designer has a lot to learn about what makes for good game design. Not recommended, for annoying arguments may result.
Dragon Issue 78: October 1983
part 1/2
And now, the psionicist: Hmm. Now this is very interesting. We now have a class specifically devoted to psionics. And it has the same name that the 2nd ed version would. That automatically makes this a pretty influential article. Lets see what they changed in the meantime. These do have quite a few weird 1st editionisms, such as different hit dice at different levels, level titles (which overlap with other classes thanks to insufficiently sized theasauri) and basic details such as armor/weapons/money are different. Despite adding a bunch of extra powers, they still have a rather limited selection compared to the spellcasting classes. If the ability to access the ones they know in any order as long as they have the points to spend will balance that out I'm not sure. Given that even 2nd edition psionics was horribly breakable, I suspect that these guys may also be if you select your powers right. (Yes, I am aware of the contradictions there. Could they be simultaneously under and overpowered? Possibly. :D ) Still, even if it needs a few rounds of playtesting and fine-tuning, this is a pretty neat article, that opens up new character avenues nicely. And since AD&D classes were never that well balanced anyway, what does it matter if they're unbalanced as long as they have niche protection. Another cool thing to add to the massive list of things I want to try out.
The Deryni: Ooh, a conversion with official author sanction. It's been rather too long since we saw one of those. And since we got a FUDGE deryni game recently, that probably means she's actually a gamer herself and not just licensing it out for the money. Anyway, lets look at the actual merits of the article. As you might expect, they do run into the problem of trying to fit them into the D&D rules framework, but they take away options as much as they grant them, which means they aren't as annoying as some other contributions we've seen :cough:gypsies:cough: Overall, this is a pretty decent article, and they don't have to mutilate them too much to get them to work with D&D. I wonder if we'll see them again in here.
Heroes and villains of the deryni: Arthur Collins' final contribution this month allows him to put all the ingredients he's introduced so far into a nice package as he details characters from the books. Which is nice, as normally, you don't get to see the optional rules in these issues actually applied. We get 8 characters, most of which are multiclass psionicists. There is the usual tendency towards massive attribute bloat that we see in most of these articles. You ought to know by now I disapprove of that unless it really does accurately reflect the characters all-round capabilities as shown in the novel (in which case it's the author who'll get the mild disapproval if their writing isn't good enough to justify the characters all-round brilliance ) so I shall simply shrug and sigh at this. Giants in the earth may be gone, but it's influence is still seen, making people think creating characters with stats like this is normal behaviour. So I have decidedly mixed feelings about the final results.
Citadel by the sea: A 16 page module for low level characters. It does have some fairly specific character requirements, due to the mission and setting, and requires quite a bit of roleplaying. But once you get past that it's a regular, if pretty large dungeoncrawl. Like keep on the borderlands, this is one you can approach in a number of ways, and if you fail to clear it out first time (likely, unless you have a big, well henched party) they should react and adapt to your encroachment. So another useful little piece of kit that you can drop in easily enough to your games. They strike a decent balance between putting roleplaying stuff in and allowing the players plenty of freedom in how to solve the problem.
Figure feature: Lots of different monsters this month. Mermen, demons, trolls, hydra, dragons, plus a couple of mounted humans. But at least they're evil humans, so you can kill them without feeling guilty as well.
Be thy die ill-wrought?: Standard deviation. One of the more useful pieces of statistical math. In this case it's used to test if a die really is loaded, or your mind is just seeing patterns where there are none. For those of you who can't wrap your brains around the math involved, they also include a BASIC program which can do the heavy lifting for you. Its always nice when they put in something that'll expand people's general knowledge. I haven't done these kind of maths since I left school, and it's nice to be reminded of them.
The ecology of the mind flayer: Looks like they're getting in on the psionic theme as well, with the story of the ilithids, as told by a githyanki. And as they should know, you don't fuck with them unprepared, and you don't rely on magic to get them. Use psionics liberally, watch your companions for signs of being taken over, and generally make sure you have lots of failsafes and backup plans. Because they'll definitely learn from your mistakes and get revenge if you fail. The drama is strong in this one, as the protagonists learn just how scary it is dealing with someone who's reading your mind the whole time. Still, better they learn that now than in pitched battle where the enemy counters their every tactic and then eats their brains. Also interesting to note is that mind flayers don't have a god yet. Illsenine and whats-his-name who got killed by Orcus are still just motes in some writers mind. Also missing is the whole implantation schtick. In fact, details on their reproductive cycle are completely missing. On the other hand, they do get plenty of info which would be useful in actual encounters, such as the type of creatures that they associate with, and how they build their cities. Not a perfect article, but still an exceedingly entertaining one. Monsters like this are why you should treat dungeoneering as a carefully planned military mission. When you're going into a city filled with thousands of high power monsters, you've got to be prepared.
Spells can be psionic too: Kim finishes off the psionic stuff with some dull comparison between spells and powers that do roughly the same thing. While it does reveal some little details about the D&D universe metaphysics, this definitely has the feel of a filler article. I'm really not in the mood for this kind of piece by piece examination at the moment, and I think we can safely skip this one. The last of 8 articles in a theme is rarely that good.
Pop the clutch and roll: Chases! A situation full of drama that the vast majority of RPG's handle very badly indeed, with their flat movement rates, and awkward integration of attack and movement options. Vehicle chases are particularly problematic. Lets see what this set of rules for Top Secret is like, and if they work.
Hmm. Recording maneuvers for each turn in secret, then revealing them simultaneously. That's a pretty good way of going about it, as it allows both luck and skill to play a part in catching or losing your opponent. Obviously, there is a certain amount of crunch involved as you compare options, but at only 5 pages, I think you can handle it. And it's good that they're not neglecting their other games as well.
The thrill of the hunt: Dragonquest also gets an article this month. Rules for hunting food. Now there's a good idea. Unless you're in another plane of existance or something similarly problematic, you shouldn't have to rely entirely on food you packed beforehand. A simple and effective little table is provided allowing you to determine your odds of success in various environments. Obviously this does increase the power of the characters a little, but as it also takes up plenty of time and XP to develop and use, I think it balances out. Time spent hunting is not spent completing your primary quest. But if you die of starvation, you're not going to complete anything. I quite approve. It adds realism without getting in the way.
What's new sets us some puzzles. Wormy engages in some recounting. Snarfquest solves the predicament by mad luck.
Well, that was a rather harder issue to get through than I expected. Goes to show. First impressions from looking at the table of contents are not always accurate. Not that it's a bad one in terms of writing or design, but the degree of hard-to-digest crunch is definitely quite high in this one, making it less enjoyable that the last few. I guess it's good exercise for my brain, reading this much this fast. No pain, no gain. I wonder how much'll actually have been retained once it's all over. Maybe | should take a test. Eh. Long way to go. No time for angst. We can save that for the 90's. ;)
Purely out of curiosity, so I can see what you have in mind, could you give some quick D&D stats for a literary character that are more in line with what you think is reasonable? Level, significant stats and abilities, nothing elaborate or fancy. I'd just like to see where you're coming from.
Dragon Issue 79: November 1983
part 1/2
84 pages. Another step towards computers being integral to their operations is made here. On the plus side, this means nicer layout. On the negative side, as they've only just adopted it, only part of this magazine uses the changes so far. You don't get breaks to retool when the dreaded deadline beast needs regular feeding. Lets see if they can finish this year off in style.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A fairly long letter criticizing Len's anti evil characters stuff in issue 76. Kim rebutts this, saying that as ever, you can use this stuff the way you want, but we strongly recommend you do it our way. After all, we're the professionals. We know what makes a fun game better than you do. We particularly know what makes up AD&D. By real world standards, a bunch of heavily armed guys independent of and political body who went around killing things and taking their stuff would be regarded as dangerous criminals. But that's irrelevant. There are standards of Good and Evil in D&D, and you should play characters that fit those of Good.
A short letter supporting Len, saying they're sick of evil characters ruining their games.
A letter pointing out they screwed up yet another computer program. Never let literary editors do a technical editors job.
Praise for the nine hells article and asking for more planar ones. They reply that they're certainly open to the idea as long as someone sends them high quality manuscripts. They'll need to be pretty damn good to measure up to Ed's example though.
A letter asking if the combat computer is available separately. They reply that no, you'll have to buy another issue. Yah boo, razzle, etc etc.
A letter commenting on the skills that make up a good GM. Quite an interesting one, too. Well done, Jonathan Helles, if you're still out there.
The ecology of the treant: An ecology for one of the more ecologically minded monsters. This is why monsters from dungeons don't overrun the forests and rip them down. They have their own horrors that are quite capable of taking care of themselves. And if you're only facing treants, you should count yourself lucky. Better that than being schooled by some kind of trickster fae. The fiction on this one isn't particularly great, as it's rather lacking in drama. However, it does have an appendix that actually has useful game information. And a robert heinlein reference :) Overall, probably a slightly below average entry, but not terrible.
The best of the dragon, part three! They really are churning those out. I don't know. Any excuse for some easy money.
Fiction: The ordeal by Atanielle Annyn Noel. Ooh. Fiction about gaming group drama. Makes a change from the straight fantasy stuff. You see surprisingly little crossover between the fiction writers and the gaming article producers. Anyway. Pretentious twit gets a little mischievious justice, learns from the experience, everyone winds up happier at the end. There's a definite moral to this story. Plus it shows that this kind of gamer existed long before white wolf started writing games specifically targeted at the florid melodramatic prose crowd. A pretty entertaining story that quite a few people could learn from.
Sage advice has an amusing nanofic at the start this time. Ahh, the perils of having more questions than you can possibly print. Anyway, back to the questions.
Do you get Xp per gold piece or silver piece ( Gold. If it was silver, Hoo boy. It'd fuck the game assumptions right up. Merchants would kick adventurers asses no trouble. Hmm. Maybe that might be a good thing.)
Do landragons have claw attacks? Can they swim? ( no on both counts. They're LANDragons, aren't they?)
Can you use the combat computer in actual AD&D games. (That's what it was designed for.)
What is the min wis & cha to be a duelist. ( None in particular, other than the general 5 or lower rule, which would prevent them from joining it. )
Why can't duelists use flails ( No matter what you say, we can't find any reference to dueling with flails. No precision. Someone could get hurt.)
The ecology of the catoblepas contradicts the monster manual. Which one is correct. ( The MM is still the official answer. Your DM may change this for his game, as is his perogative. We are not responsible for any annoyance caused if you metagame and then find that things aren't what you expect them to be. )
Can the water creating pill in issue 73 be used as a poison. ( It'd certainly hurt if you swallowed it. But that doesn't make it a poison. )
Can ogres use magical boots or not? ( Um, maybe. We'll leave that up to your DM)
How do you find the new gemstones detailed in issue 72 (The DM will have to make custom treasure tables including the expansions, same as for any of the new items detailed here. Or they could place treasure as they see fit, instead of leaving it to the dice. Nahh, that's a stupid idea. It'll never catch on. )
Can lycanthropes who can change shape conciously do so on the astral plane. (Hmm. Since it totally cripples them as combat encounters to be unable to, I think we'll change our previous ruling and say yes.)
What special powers to githyanki knights have? Why aren't there more of them in Fedifensor? ( None, they're just complete bastards. Because Fedifensor is just a little outpost, not a full-blown fortress.)
How can you have assassins in an ice age setting ( Oh, you innocent little man. Assasination is like prostitution. As long as there is some form of valued item to create an economy, some people will fuck for it, while others will kill for it. There have always been assassins, and there always will (at least, until 2nd edition bans them))
How do you make animal skeletons ( You need to make a variant on animate dead. If you know the basic one, it's easy enough to adapt.)
Doesn't tiamat spawn all evil dragons? How does that jive with the colour wheel theory mon? ( Even if she did originally create dragons (A rather specious claim) they're still biological entities that mate and lay eggs. Both statements can be true simultaneously. Oh, and the color wheel theory is complete bollocks. I wouldn't say so in the magazine that published it, but you can tell I'm thinking it.)
How can deities be druids above 14th level. (They're deities. They scoff at your puny mortal rules. )
Why do the AC's for dragon armour suck so much. Can you enchant them. ( because we don't want to break the game, and yes. )
Jesters break the rules! They let dwarves and halflings cast wizard spells, and break their limits on languages known (Yes. And your point is? They are a joke class, you know. As ever, you can houserule things. )
What is a cantrip ( see issues 59-61)
Do boodle wizards hit on a 1-3 or a 1-4 (Oops. We made a boo-boo. 1-4 is the right answer)
Why are locomotives so slow (Game balance. You can move way more than 12 inches a minute. They needed to be scaled down likewise. )
You messed up the section on undersea magical items in issue 48 (aw, come on, that was two and a half years ago. Don't keep bringing it up)
What is a balrog, and what are it's stats. ( You've read Lord of the rings, right? You can find it in the OD&D books. Unfortunately we can't print it any more, or the tolkien estate will suesess uss, my preciouss. )
Can the shield spell stop lasers (no)
Can lasers hurt things that can only be hit by magical weapons (yes. Shows you which side we want to have an edge in a crossover)
I can't engage in even the most basic reskinning activities ( no, you're a moron. We shall have to give you remedial answers.)
Do barbarians eat quiche? ( Barbarians stomp wussy quiche! RAAAAAAAAARG!!! Apart from Rogar of Mooria. He like his quiche a little too much. We worry about him sometimes. )
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;317171Purely out of curiosity, so I can see what you have in mind, could you give some quick D&D stats for a literary character that are more in line with what you think is reasonable? Level, significant stats and abilities, nothing elaborate or fancy. I'd just like to see where you're coming from.
Hmm. Very good question. I tend to go between straight 3d6 and 4d6 drop lowest, depending on my mood. Checking through my old NPC's, I find they tend towards stat totals of around 72-84, with the pre 3e ones slightly higher because most of the really neat classes and kits had hard ability minimums to get in. I think the important thing to remember, that these usually don't is to give them the weaknesses they had as well as the strengths. After all, the villains in particular usually get beaten. A below average stat or two gives you constrains options and gives players something to exploit.
Quote from: (un)reason;317128The Deryni: Ooh, a conversion with official author sanction. It's been rather too long since we saw one of those. And since we got a FUDGE deryni game recently, that probably means she's actually a gamer herself and not just licensing it out for the money. Anyway, lets look at the actual merits of the article. As you might expect, they do run into the problem of trying to fit them into the D&D rules framework, but they take away options as much as they grant them, which means they aren't as annoying as some other contributions we've seen :cough:gypsies:cough: Overall, this is a pretty decent article, and they don't have to mutilate them too much to get them to work with D&D. I wonder if we'll see them again in here.
Actually, while Katherine knew of gaming and had gamer friends, she hadn't ever played a roleplaying game until I sat down with her and ran her through a quick scenario (15 minutes) set in her Deryni world. She's played several times since then, at conventions, including co-GMing with me (playing the role of a villain -- and very well at that!).
In fact, that first time I let her play an NPC (along with a mutual friend of ours, Martine Lynch, who'd never played an RPG before), it was a near disaster. As a GM, I had to pull a Deus-X-Machina and have the Council step in to save the PCs. I should have known if Katherine and Martine were playing the villains the PCs didn't stand a chance.... :-)
Ann Dupuis
Grey Ghost Press, Inc.
ghostgames@fudgerpg.com
http://fudgerpg.com
Quote from: (un)reason;317408Hmm. Very good question. I tend to go between straight 3d6 and 4d6 drop lowest, depending on my mood. Checking through my old NPC's, I find they tend towards stat totals of around 72-84, with the pre 3e ones slightly higher because most of the really neat classes and kits had hard ability minimums to get in. I think the important thing to remember, that these usually don't is to give them the weaknesses they had as well as the strengths. After all, the villains in particular usually get beaten. A below average stat or two gives you constrains options and gives players something to exploit.
What I'm looking for specifically is a quick character sketch from you of a specific, well-known literary character, especially one that may have already appeared in Giants in the Earth or a similar article. EDIT: Again, nothing elaborate. Just significant stats, class, level, and anything unusual about the character in D&D terms (given that these articles in Dragon always dealt with D&D).
Dragon Issue 79: November 1983
part 2/2
Magic resistance: Yes, it's time for some more rules clarifications. Magic resistance is an additional bonus chance to completely avoid effects that some creatures get on top of their usual saving throw. When it takes effect, what it does, what items bypass it, if it can be switched off volantarily, you probably encountered these questions if you were playing at the time. This makes it a useful but dry little article that feels rather dated, as the rules and how to phrase them have since been refined. Oh well, you've gotta put the work in to make the improvements. And it's a good thing someone did.
Gen con miniature open '83: Oooh. Pretty photos. Properly scanned ones this time. Their record on that has been spotty at best in the past. People, units, monsters and dioramas. Who's done the best job of painting and displaying their stuff this year? Shout outs to Julie Guthrie (four times, she really swept the boards this year), Jim Zylka (twice), Gene Elsner, John S Goff, Alan Patton, Judy Brown, and Mike Jaecks. (that's a weirdly high proportion of people who's names begin with J. What's with that?) I'll bet this brings up fond memories, if you're reading this.
Blame it on the gremlins: Oh, this is amusing. A monster from real world earth gets transplanted to D&D land. That's a bit wonky. Anyway. Annoying little trickster monster from modern legend. Be very afraid, for humiliation is worse than death, you know the drill. One of those articles that gives a rather large amount of tactical, ecological and sociological detail. It's just a vague irritation that it's being applied to such a silly subject. Really not sure if I like this or not, as it's going a long way for a joke, but wouldn't really fit in a serious D&D game. I think I'll leave it.
Setting saintly standards: Hello again Scott. You were dissatisfied by the fudgy answer to the question of sainthood, so you've decided to fill in some details of your own accord. While this still doesn't reveal how to become one (and given the criteria is essentially "convince some god they like you enough to grant sainthood" that puts hard and fast rules out anyway) this gives us a decent powerset and bunch of examples for different alignments. While that won't help you with the philosphical issues, at least it's a few more combat encounters to throw your players way, and lets them become godkillers lite before going on to the real thing. So it's useful in actual play, anyway. Another so-so article.
Wacko World: Another top secret module. Although 16 pages long, it actually isn't that big, because two pages are blank, while others have adverts on part of them. Still plenty of stuff going on, as it combines location based wandering with a timeline dependent plot. Something sinister is going down at the funfair, and you'd better figure it out before lots of people die. Despite the comical exterior, this actually looks like it could be rather tricky to solve. It's certainly not a bad module, and the site could be easily transplanted for other uses. As ever, actual play experiences are welcome.
Page advice II: Once again, they give advice to all you aspiring freelancers out there on how to get your stuff up to scratch and into print. This time, they're a little more specific than before, along with the usual stuff about producing work consistently, not getting discouraged, learning from feedback and trying again, they give more info about handy reference materials. The elements of style gets it's usual hearty recommendation, and research in general is played up as a very good thing. After all, you can't conciously hone and adapt your style unless you can analyze other people's styles and figure out what's good about them. Looks like they're refining their knowledge of how to spot a good freelancer as well as their personal writing skills. Well, with a bigger player base to draw on, they can afford to be more selective. This of course makes it harder for the ordinary person to get their big break. Oh well, so it goes. This is why getting in on the ground floor if you can spot a trend coming is a good idea.
The fights of fantasy: Lew Pulsipher considers how magic would logically affect D&D warfare. A very good topic to cover indeed. Once again, his tastes and thoughts mesh seamlessly with mine, as he examines the impact scrying, mind reading, and general use of wizards as artillery and strategy pieces has on the flow of war. Pay attention to this stuff, because it's easy to adapt to regular party situations as well. Good battlefield control enables you to take on far larger forces and come out on top than piling in with straight attacks. Buffs (actually get neglected somewhat in Lews consideration, which is interesting to note.) and strategic spells have far greater impact than straight damage dealers. While it is a bit dated by the ruleset, and hampered by 4e's brutal nerfing of strategic noncombat spells, the principles are still sound. Apply them, and your ability to take on large opposition and come out on top will be massively increased, whatever system you're using. I very much approve, and hope some of you had your playstyle shaped by this back in the day.
Be aware and take care: (You'd better watch out if you've got long black hair :D ) Lew gets a second article published in quick succession. This is quite a long one, spanning 8 pages. (albeit sharing them with lots of adverts) It covers much the same themes as the previous one, but from a different angle. This is focussed around avoiding the obvious mistakes an adventuring party can make, and tactics for good dungeoneering in general. The lessons from dealing with years of antagonistic DM'ing are writ large here, as well as lessons on adapting your play to the fudging, make it as they go along style GM. This is indeed very focussed on the kind of play where the team is trying to win, and the victories are more important than the journey. But as we know Lew doesn't neglect the role side, and this focus on the objective is merely for this article, that's not too bad. Once again, this is filled with inventive touches such as putting explosive runes on paper planes and polymorphing charmed creatures to make them more useful. He's pretty much got the whole package sorted. Rules mastery, imagination, and social contract stuff. I am indeed envious.
Off the shelf: The art of Al Williamson by James van Hise is a biography of the man and his artwork, showing how he has developed over the years, the people who have influenced and collaborated with him. It could be easy to get sloppy and produce scrappy work when you have to create stuff daily for the newspapers, but he has always retained proper anatomy and shadow play. This has won him much respect from his peers and readers.
Code of the life maker by James P Hogan is science fiction with a strong emphasis on both the science and the social commentary. Let us not forget, humanity has done many dumb things in it's time. What better way to teach than by mockery.
The unteleported man by Philip K Dick is another of his classics of convoluted plot and shifting viewpoint. Now in a new extended edition, with the original ending retained. What do these publishers know about commercial success?
Dinosaur tales by Ray Bradbury is an illustrated collection of his works. Great for anyone who loves dinosaurs, bradbury, or good artwork. That's a pretty broad net cast there. Methinks a little hyperbole is involved. Still, it's not as though dinosaurs don't hold a deep fascination for some people. I'm sure plenty would enjoy it.
The generals wife by Peter Straub is exceedingly expensive. Not sure why, when it seems from the decsription to be quite short. I guess the illustrations and packaging make up the deluxe cost. An interesting little curio.
The worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card is as preachy as we have come to expect from the man, the mormon, the legend that is Scott Card. Thankfully this is pre-brain eater days, when he could still tell a riveting sci-fi story to back his ideology. Or at least, this reviewer likes it. Ahh, more innocent days.
The man who used the universe by Alan Dean Foster is another tale of intrigue and ambition. The reviewer didn't like him before, but for some reason, does now. What changed?
Wormy goes to a werebar. Hybrid form is the preferred dress around there. Dixie gets bodyswapped in What's new. Say growf to me, bitch. Growf Growf! GROWF! Oh yeah, that's right baby. What, we're still not going to do sex in D&D. Then what....... oh no. :o
An odd mix of the dry and silly in this issue. Seems like they decided to use up a lot of april's leftovers before they went off, but also put in a load of gaming advice. This is a bit incongrous, and overall adds up to a slightly sub par issue. You really ought to get back to the spectacular special features. At least they're interesting even when they fail technically. At least all the rules stuff is pretty solid this time, unlike with a lot of joke articles. Come on, you've done some good stuff recently. Don't start letting things slide and get flabby again.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;317474What I'm looking for specifically is a quick character sketch from you of a specific, well-known literary character, especially one that may have already appeared in Giants in the Earth or a similar article. EDIT: Again, nothing elaborate. Just significant stats, class, level, and anything unusual about the character in D&D terms (given that these articles in Dragon always dealt with D&D).
Man, I feel like a musician asked to do a cover version of a pop song I don't know how to play in the middle of a gig by a heckler. :o This'll take a bit of rereading, to see who they've covered, that I also have the books of, and then rereading said books. I'll get back to you.
Quote from: (un)reason;317594Man, I feel like a musician asked to do a cover version of a pop song I don't know how to play in the middle of a gig by a heckler. :o This'll take a bit of rereading, to see who they've covered, that I also have the books of, and then rereading said books. I'll get back to you.
Naw, I'm not heckling. I'm just curious. I mean, there have to be some characters that stuck with you well enough without having to re-read the books. Doesn't have to be one that was covered in Dragon, either, just one to give a general baseline of your preferences.
Like say, Aragorn - I'd say in 1e, he'd be around 15th level, a Ranger with some paladin abilities, Str15, Int16, Wis18, Con18, Cha20. Why so tough? He was said to be the "hardiest and wisest man of his day." He spent years in the wild hunting Sauron's minions. He commanded Gondor's forces under an alias. He studied all kinds of lore under the tutelage of some of Middle-earth's oldest and wisest. His Wis and Cha are high, evidenced by his ability to confront Sauron himself via the palantir and actually wrest away control of it.
But he's an extreme top-end example. Boromir might be better example, comparable to the typical Giants in the Earth character. Say, an 11th level fighter, Str17, Int12, Wis9, Con17, Cha16. Very heroic and tough, especially in 1e terms. His men love him, so his Cha had to be pretty high.
The hobbits I'd say mostly started out as 0-level characters, except Bilbo, who seemed to have some innate 1st level thief abilities. Significant stats: Int12 (probably rose to about 15 by the time of Lord of the Rings), Dex15, Con13. The DM was generous with xp, because Bilbo soon rose up a few levels, at least able to fight a bunch of giant spiders on his own, so let's say he was 4th level by the time he reached the Lonely Mountain, and topped out at 5th after the Battle of Five Armies.
So maybe these examples could save you some time - are these overpowered or just about right, in your opinion? It'll give me an idea of your thinking.
If Gandalf is a 5th level magic-user (as has been argued at length), then Aragorn would probably also be 5th level. But I'd say Aragorn is actually a bit paladin-like - didn't he have the power to 'lay on hands'?
Dragon Issue 80: December 1983
part 1/2
84 pages. Another iconic cover from Clyde Caldwell that would be reprinted quite a few times here. We also find out that their circulation has now exceeded 100,000. Not long now until they hit their peak. Enjoy it while it lasts.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter praising the psionic articles, and asking if the new powers in there are available to non psionicists. They decide to leave that question open to individual GM's. It's all optional, dahlink. Ewerythink's Optional! :grandiose hand gesture:
A letter from Arthur Collins giving minor corrections to the aforementioned psionics stuff. Curse you, Kim! :shakes fist:
A letter pointing out that their dice probability program is flawed. They say they already admitted that last issue. Don't keep on.
A question about king of the tabletop, which they answer efficiently.
A letter pointing out corrections in the index, and asking how long it'll be before the next one. They really don't know.
A letter about testing dice with the same number twice with the chi-square formula. The best way is to treat each side as a single result.
A letter pointing a mistake in citadel by the sea. Thankfully, it's an invisible error, so it doesn't ruin the module anyway.
A letter pointing out that they've been ending articles with the zodiac symbols for each month recently, and wondering about the significance. They reply that it's just for fun, y,know.
The psychology of the doppleganger: An ecology by another name would still smell just as, well, pretty rank actually, for most of the creatures they tackle. But these guys can smell how they like. (unless you decide that that isn't the case, as a way to catch them out) This decides that dopplegangers are like cuckoos. They imitate humanity, breed with them, and think that they are human when they are young. Which as you should know, is a portrayal that sticks, simply because of the cool plots it offers. But like illithids (another race that would later become parasitic off the bodies of others,) they are far from human in their mentality, with mind reading and sheer intellectual power causing them to regard most races as mere cattle to be played with as they choose. How can you have an equal relationship with someone when you can read their every thought, probe their memories freely, and anticipate their every move. You'd come to think yourself superior as well and justly so. There's a world of darkness game in there, and I'm vaguely surprised they haven't made one about dopplegangers yet. All in all, this is a pretty good ecology, both in terms of fiction and interesting appendix detail. The creepiest things are those that hit closest to home. And dopplegangers can certainly do that in spades.
How many coins in a coffer: Oh great. Another article picking apart the holes in D&D's physics. Don't you think it's strange that all the coins in D&D have the same weight and fill the same volume regardless of what material makes them up. This is incredibly unrealistic. So lets crunch the numbers, see what they really are. Much basic but weighty statistical stuff ensues, revealing several interesting real world factoids along the way. Remember, encumbrance is a far bigger issue in reality than it's made out to be in the game, and you have to take shape into account far more as well. A certain degree of fudging would probably be better for keeping the game fun and fast flowing. But it could be amusing to extrapolate outwards to build a universe where the universal constant is coin weight and volume, rather than the speed of light. So this is another valuable article in terms of showing us how to deconstruct game reality, and remodel it in our own post-modern image. I must remember to refer back to it when this kind of stuff comes up again.
Amazing magazine has back issues! Get them now, before they're sold out!
Five keys to DM'ing success: Huh. only 5? Lew gave us twenty, just a few issues ago. This seems a little redundant, not to mention uninspired, when you consider that. I have to wonder why they published it. I guess like class and race expansions, GM'ing advice is always both produced, and in demand. Taken on it's own, it's not a bad article. But in comparison to Lew's one, it really doesn't measure up. What was Kim thinking letting this through when they could have covered something new instead. Was the freelance article slush pile really that lacking in interesting stuff?
Dungeon master's Familiar: Another computer program for speeding your game along. In theory, anyway. As ever, I'm sure we'll see complaints that it doesn't work for them. They really are surprisingly persistent given the number of failures they've had in this area. Eh. Better to play it too risky than to play it too safe.
Who lives in that castle: Katharine Kerr gives us more worldbuilding stuff, with a system free, but high detail essay on historical castles, and how they were inhabited, managed and supported. Useful but dry stuff, I found myself zoning out when I tried to read this one. I think I'll save it for when I actually want to build my own one. Come on, you need top make this setting building stuff sound exciting, otherwise people won't want to try it.
Treasures rare and wondous: Another list of a hundred interesting items for treasure, mostly nonmagical, but some with minor special abilities. Ed once again manages to make even the normal ones interesting and flavourful. See, it's not all about the specul powerz. Also interesting is his observation that increasingly, DM's are starting to place treasure rather than roll for it, as this results in more story specific and balanced (at least, if you're Ed, and a game design genius) long term games. Once again, we see how the old skool methods are already fading away, to be replaced by more story based methods of gaming. And he's playing an important part in making this the case. One of those articles that's more interesting as a plotting of historical trends than for its own sake, as I can only stay interested in the nuances of gems and jewelery for a little while.
Man, car wars has quite a few supplements now. Seems a bit much for a one joke game. I guess that like paranoia, it's a pretty good joke.
Barnacus, city in peril: is a 12 page low level AD&D module. This is rather a retro feeling one. treating the city as just another dungeon, with a map, lotsa random encounters, and a site based final encounter. You'll have to do quite a bit of your own world-building to make this place feel real, because it's still pretty sketchy. You'll also face challenges considerably above your own level, and probably have to do some retreating as well. Definitely not one of their high points of design. Still, cities are always more reusable than dungeons, so even once the adventure is solved, the map could still be of use. File under slightly subpar.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;317609Naw, I'm not heckling. I'm just curious. I mean, there have to be some characters that stuck with you well enough without having to re-read the books. Doesn't have to be one that was covered in Dragon, either, just one to give a general baseline of your preferences.
Like say, Aragorn - I'd say in 1e, he'd be around 15th level, a Ranger with some paladin abilities, Str15, Int16, Wis18, Con18, Cha20. Why so tough? He was said to be the "hardiest and wisest man of his day." He spent years in the wild hunting Sauron's minions. He commanded Gondor's forces under an alias. He studied all kinds of lore under the tutelage of some of Middle-earth's oldest and wisest. His Wis and Cha are high, evidenced by his ability to confront Sauron himself via the palantir and actually wrest away control of it.
But he's an extreme top-end example. Boromir might be better example, comparable to the typical Giants in the Earth character. Say, an 11th level fighter, Str17, Int12, Wis9, Con17, Cha16. Very heroic and tough, especially in 1e terms. His men love him, so his Cha had to be pretty high.
The hobbits I'd say mostly started out as 0-level characters, except Bilbo, who seemed to have some innate 1st level thief abilities. Significant stats: Int12 (probably rose to about 15 by the time of Lord of the Rings), Dex15, Con13. The DM was generous with xp, because Bilbo soon rose up a few levels, at least able to fight a bunch of giant spiders on his own, so let's say he was 4th level by the time he reached the Lonely Mountain, and topped out at 5th after the Battle of Five Armies.
So maybe these examples could save you some time - are these overpowered or just about right, in your opinion? It'll give me an idea of your thinking.
You know, I was just thinking what to do, and that was one of my top choices. He does need to be pretty badass, because yeah, he managed to fight for a whole day against mooks and not get hit once. I think the only real area he was merely average in is intelligence. Sure, he's not stupid, but his array of skills are due to his wide experience, (and the fact that rangers are skill monkeys. ) rather than personal inventiveness. Similarly, I'd probably put his wisdom above his charisma. When he did things like get the hobbits to trust him, lead the warriors through the land of the dead, and convince people that he was the rightful king, it certainly wasn't an effortless process, and he had to prove his chops before people would follow him.
Quote from: Age of Fable;317761If Gandalf is a 5th level magic-user (as has been argued at length), then Aragorn would probably also be 5th level. But I'd say Aragorn is actually a bit paladin-like - didn't he have the power to 'lay on hands'?
All Aragorn's magic came from herb lore and general knowledge. (Well, there was the thing with the Palantir as well, where he could use it better than sauron because of his bloodline connection, but that's the kind of thing that's be tricky to model in D&D. ) In 2nd ed, that'd be represented by high herbalism and healing proficiencies, while in 4e, he'd probably have taken ritual casting, and some appropriatate utilities.
Quote from: Age of Fable;317761If Gandalf is a 5th level magic-user (as has been argued at length), then Aragorn would probably also be 5th level. But I'd say Aragorn is actually a bit paladin-like - didn't he have the power to 'lay on hands'?
That's why I said "Ranger with some paladin abilities."
The "Gandalf is a 5th level magic user" business stems from that 1977 Dragon article, and I think it's a spurious argument at best. Still, it all boils down to plain old subjective opinion. If Gandalf and Aragorn are 5th level, and Aragorn is the "wisest and hardiest man of his day," while Gandalf is, essentially, an angel walking the Earth in physical form, then we're looking at a D&D campaign in which the PCs could spend years just getting to 5th level themselves. That would be boring, but that's me. By the way, I did an analysis of that article some time ago, which I posted on this site at one time. I broke down how the Fellowship would stat up if Gandalf was 5th level, and even included Sauron. Gandalf, Aragorn, and Sauron are hard to limit to such a low level, without simply handwaving some of the stuff that they do.
Quote from: (un)reason;317775I think the only real area he was merely average in is intelligence. Sure, he's not stupid, but his array of skills are due to his wide experience, (and the fact that rangers are skill monkeys. ) rather than personal inventiveness.
If you'll recall, he was accounted a brilliant war leader during his time under the alias Thorongil, managing to smash Umbar with a small force. Plus, his charisma had to be high, because as Thorongil his men loved him, and Ecthelion II came to favor him over his own son, Denethor! Also, remember, he purposely "toned down" how he looked and projected as Strider, but when he revealed his true self, the effect was immediate. A good example was when he "looked down" the Mouth of Sauron, scaring the guy just by looking at him.
Dragon Issue 80: December 1983
part 2/2
Leomund's tiny hut: Len gives us another of his officialy sanctioned yet not quite official rules revisions. Having characters remain static in their attack rolls and saving throws for several levels, and then do one big jump lacks realism, and makes advancement too granular. So let's smooth out the curve, so they progress 5% at a time. Now that's an improvement that they should have put in second edition, not waited until 3rd and a complete rewrite of the saving throw rules to implement. This time, he's really ahead of the curve. I approve of this development. Did anyone implement it? How did it work out in actual play?
These guys really took their time: Gaming group plays for a hundred hours non-stop, sets record, raises money for muscular dystophy. Not much to say about this article, as it's only a short one. I also approve of this. Has the record been broken by then, and if so, by how much?
A set of rules for game reviews: Ken Rolston imparts his wisdom upon the rest of us, so we may also make good submissions on this topic. Types of reviews, the way to approach them, solid criterea by which you can judge quality, aiming them at an audience, general style advice. Nothing hugely surprising here, but another decent checklist to go to if you're feeling lacking in confidence. Remember though, all the theory and study in the world means nothing if you don't try and do something with it.
Interesting to note here is how the internet has changed the time deadlines for reviews. In periodicals, if something's a few months old, it's dead news, but on websites where everything is saved and indexed, and reviews are often submitted by ordinary users (many of who really should read something like this) you can put them in years after release and still get some activity in the comments. Long tails are good, both in assessment and buying. You get a better picture of quality and informed demand that way.
Reviews: Timeship is a light hearted, easy to learn game of time-travel adventure, with a distinct tendency towards gonzoness. Save the city of Gommorrah. Kill Hitler. Yeah, they're not afraid of puncturing the big topics. Sounds like the kind of game which would be good for introducing younger kids to roleplaying. If you want strict realism, give this a miss, but for some fast furious, crossover friendly fun, this might be worth giving a whirl.
Illuminati is the classic Steve Jackson card game of conspiritorial wheels within wheels to the point of ludicrity. You've had plenty of opportunities to play it in the past few decades, and it's still in production. And this reviewer accurately calls it as a potential classic as well, with a detailed and enthusiastic review. Well done, Michael Lowery. Have a smug in hindsight point.
Privateers and gentlemen is a roleplaying game of high sea combat. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to it's swashbuckling premise, having poor organization, brutal hand to hand rules, and no introductory adventure to showcase the game and get you playing quickly. It is full of flavour though, and the author obviously knows their source material. You may want to steal the ship level combat rules, which seem to be the best developed part of the game, and keep using your usual one for human level interactions.
Man, myth & magic, on the other hand, does not seem to be salvageable. Ken viciously slates it, calling it the worst roleplaying system he's ever read. (and he's read a lot) Both system and presentation are teh suxxor. It doesn't even have the decency to be hilariously bad either. Avoid it. Ouch. Harsh man. Can I get a second opinion?
Coming soon: Ooooh. Another format change that moves things closer to the magazine that I remember. What better way to encourage strong sales than to always let people know what's coming out in the next month or two. Smart move. We don't want to just pop down to the shops, see what's in at random. Who knows how much we'd miss that way. Anyway, lets see what they've got to offer.
For gamma world, we have The cleansing war of Garik Blackhand. Gee, racial supremacists in a world full of mutants. Whoda thought it.
For star frontiers, Sundown at starmist, and Dramune run. Two more adventures to challenge your players with. (and I know nothing about beyond the teasers here. )
For AD&D, World of greyhawk, the new version of Gary's classic campaign setting.
For D&D, B5: Horror on the hill. Oooh, horror. Boogie boogie boogie.(Aiiee, the dread chant of Kool and the gang! Flee ;) ) And we just had Ravenloft as well. People will keep trying to do horror in D&D, despite it not being particularly suited to it. But then, they don't have the competition in that area yet. And it helps fill in Mystara as well.
Off the shelf: The anubis gates by Tim Powers is a time travel story. Historical and fantastical details are mixed with considerable skill, and the whole thing has a pretty epic plot.
The house of the wolf by Basil Copper also takes a bunch of common tropes, but combines them in an interesting way. Is there really a werewolf out there? Who is it, what exactly can it do, and how do we stop it? You won't be sure till the final credits roll.
The right stuff by Tom Wolfe is a history of the space program, and the elements that go into making up a true hero. How do you get to be the kind of person who can pursue an epic dream and pull it off. An excellent question. We still have quite a few frontiers to penetrate as a species, and it's a shame that our exploration of the universe seems to have stalled since then. And as modern culture shows, if you don't have people doing genuinely amazing things, then people will idolize any old crap that's remotely interesting. But I digress.
Where the evil dwells by Clifford D Simak is a story set in an alternate universe roman empire. A group of heroes venture out into the monster infested wilderness for their own various reasons. The quest turns out to not be so simple and they have to examine themselves and grow personally throughout the adventure. You know the drill by now.
The zen gun by Barrington J Bayley gets plenty of praise from both the reviewer, and Michael Moorcock, of all people. A thought-provoking slice of sci-fi, it does the usual trick of mixing drama with social commentary, including a thoroughly hatable villain. Can get a bit meta, but that's not neccecarily a bad thing.
Bug jack Barron by Norman Spinrad is an amusingly relevant tale of a gadfly tv presenter a la Mark Thomas or Michael Moore. People phone in, he does his best to fix things. But has he taken on a target too big for him to handle this time? Media and politics are uneasy bedfellows, and can often be turned against one-another. This makes for excellent stories.
Lest darkness fall by L Sprague de Camp is another alternate rome story. This time, a guy from the modern world gets transported back in time, and the innovations he introduces end up saving the empire. History is completely changed, but hey, at least he gets a happy ending instead of dying unlamented in squalor in a distant era.
The sea of the ravens by Harold Lamb takes Sir Hugh and Durandal out to the middle east, where he joins forces with Ghengis Khan. I assume it's more tastefully done than that synopsis indicates, because the historical realism gets praised. Along with the rich descriptions, there are some equally lavish illustrations, particularly in the deluxe edition.
Palladium still haven't fixed the spelling mistake in their advert. Tch tch.
What's new covers shopping for monsters. Wormy has monsters getting drunk. The size differential once again raises it's ugly head. Snarfquest is just embarassing. The anachronisms are painful, and going to be integral.
Another mixed bag of good, bad and mediocre stuff. Just like real christmas presents, there's a few things here that you'll wind up using again and again, and a load of stuff you'll play with for a few minutes before forgetting about it and wind up just sticking in the attic to moulder. Overall, a fairly average issue, not too good, not too bad, not too short, not too long. Just a reliable average issue. They seem to be chugging along smoothly again after the lows of last year and the highs of this year. So lets see which way 1984 will take them.
They did put that smoothing in attack rolls in 2E... for fighters, it's 1 per level in 2E, clerics are 2/3, thieves 1/2, and wizards 1/3.
Just not for saves.
Quote from: (un)reason;318001Snarfquest is just embarassing. The anachronisms are painful, and going to be integral.
I'm glad someone else feels this way about that comic. Elmore is a talented artist, though his black & white work is inferior to his color work. He's often praised highly for his color work, and often quite rightly - though his female characters tend to have the Exact. Same. Face. in every painting. Plus, those faces tend to show no emotion of any kind, no matter what the context.
The B&W work is obviously by a talented artist, but what he uses that talent to depict is, well, irritating to look at. Looking back on Snarfquest, I can't recall a single non-human creature that Elmore drew that was appealing in any way, or which looked cool or intimidating or...well, anything, other than cartoony.
In addition, if I recall correctly, Elmore also wrote this strip, didn't he? Regardless, the writing is weak. The storyline meandered, character development seemed random and unmotivated, and if a writer could find a more grating way to depict various accents and speech patterns or impediments, I've yet to read it. I never felt like the strip was going anywhere; it seemed like it was just wandering around. Compare this comic to later fare like Jeff Smith's "Bone," and the deficiencies are glaring. I tried hard to give a damn about this comic, and never received a reason to do so.
Wormy also suffered from lack of narrative focus, but Trampier's gorgeous art generally made up for it...although it grew tiresome after a while to see such talent focused way too much on the rather uninteresting ogres and goblins that seemed to dominate the comic for long stretches.
It seems to me that both strips could've benefited greatly from stronger writers or a firm editorial hand that had a definite vision for the comics. This is especially true of Wormy, where the art could be absolutely stunning - the various installments with the wizard and the winged panther/demon/what-have-you are good examples.
Dragon Issue 81: January 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. Your module design sucks. You always go over the limit, even the good entries. We're sick of the colossal editing and rewriting jobs needed to squeeze them into our self-imposed 16 page limit. So we're not going to publish any more of your amateur attempts. Sorry about that. Now try and avoid splurging over next time. I know it's hard, but you gotta stick closer to the format. Or go to judges guild. Oh, wait. :devil: Anyway, happy new year. Hope you enjoy the mid 80's as much or more than you did the early part. Lets get cracking.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter complaining at them for putting the Wacko world module off-centre, and with adverts in it. They apologize and say they hope they won't have to do it again. Commercial considerations, last minute changes, excuses excuses.
Two more letters asking for out of stock or unreleased stuff. As ever, they have to politely turn them down, for the sake of their own sanities.
A correction to the psionic stuff in issue 78, that on further examination, is wrong in itself. (as far as we can tell, given how badly written the original psionics rules were. ) Sorry reader, you're the one in error this time.
A letter snarking in a rather pretentious manner at those people niggling about realism, quoting Moorcock extensively. Frankly, you're making yourself look dumb, Mr Douglas. Even if we choose not to make our games realistic, it's important to know how they deviate from reality. Awareness is the first step to being able to manipulate things in an informed and predictable way.
A letter complaining about the crappy new paper the last few issues were printed on, as well as the general downslide in quality. Kim gets fairly heated in his rebuttal to this. He certainly doesn't think the magazine is poor quality, or bad value for money. But then, he would say that, even if he didn't really feel it.
A letter asking why most of the articles are for AD&D rather than basic D&D. They reply that OD&D is out of print, so of course they aren't publishing stuff for that, and the new basic sets are being ignored because they want to keep that game simple and not rigidly defined. They may seem like the same game, but they aren't, and we don't reccomend you mix them.
Some rules questions for king of the tabletop.
A letter on psionics, xanth, and more reprint stuff. This gets a very lengthy and considered reply, in which the company line is trotted out again for another lap round the block.
A (possibly joke ) letter from a DM who refuses to let his players read the magazine. They give him a reproving reply, saying any DM who nicks all their ideas from the magazine and modules without any adaption doesn't deserve to be called such. So stop cutting into our profits, dagnammit.
Taking the sting out of poison: Another nerfing article? Noooooo! Oh, I speak too soon. This is actually an attempt to de-nerf things after the last one on this topic went way too far that direction, in the opinion of the writer. A high detail article from someone who has obviously read all the previous articles on the subject, and then did quite a lot of thinking about how to fix the issue. Costs, onset times, social issues, harvesting from monsters, antidotes, all get looked at. If you're running a high crunch game, this looks like a pretty solid expansion to keep poisons useful, but not overpowered, and if you want to run a poison-centric game (Playing a group of adventurer who make harvesting poisons from monsters and selling them one of their primary goals would be an interesting game. ) should be pretty helpful. The level of dryness keeps this from being a classic article, but It's still a solid above average, and if I get the chance I intend to apply the lessons learned here.
Fiction: In the cleft of queens by Esther M Lieper. A quite distinctively written little tale of outwitting a dragon. Sometimes, the tongues is indeed mightier than the sword. But remember, they've been around longer than you, and they're possibly smarter than you as well. That does not mean losing is inevitable. You've just gotta have style. As they say in Nobilis. The smart man and the strong man may never match up to the god, but the passionate man may impress them. Same principle here.
Eh oop. Looks like the flow of letters has reached a point where they feel the need to split them up. So they're introducing the forum, where the longer debates can take place without direct editorial interference while the straight questioning letters stay at the front. Once again the magazine takes a step towards the format I remember. So lets see what the first batch of comments and complaints are.
Mike Mrozek disapproves of Lew's level of gaming paranoia in issue 79. Ahhh, the military wargamer vs people who prefer freewheeling dramatic fun argument. Already in force as new people stream into the hobby.
David Hutton talks about the horrors of characters who take a single level in fighter, and then dual-class to another one straight away. Er, did you not read the sage advices which made it abundantly clear that you suffer the restrictions of both classes and lose the benefits of exceptional Str and Con if you change classes. Silly person. While the rules are breakable, this isn't one of those cases. And you'd need to be using one of the twinky ability generation methods to do that reliably, anyway. You can easily restrict that.
William L Collins, Ed Zmitravich, Rodney L Barnes, Joseph Wilkinson and Andrew Briggs have pontification about the psionics system, and how to fix it to be more balanced and sensible. These are not all in agreement, of course.
David Carl Argall talks about the beholder ecology, picking holes in their presented hunting strategy and how it interacts with their powers. Remember, beholders are deadly, but slow. Open air environments where their enemies can keep their distance and wear them down are a bad idea. You wanna use disintegrate and telekinesis to build yourself a good dungeon to trap your prey in. Stupid mating habits are a little more excusable, because we know how many dumb and impractical things humans will do in pursuit of sex despite supposedly being intelligent creatures. But we can play around with those as well in our own games.
And finally, Elizabeth Parry weighs in on the sexism found in the magazine. The automatic assumption of masculinity in some articles galls rather to her. Unless there is good reason, the articles should be written from an unbiased perspective.
So there we have it. In a few months, they'll start to get letters diliberately aimed at getting in the forum, and then it'll start building it's own conventions. What debates will we see in future years. Who will become a regular in these pages. How long before the internet makes this feature redundant. Keep tuning in to find out.
The ecology of the basilisk: Ed Greenwood ploughs onward through the monster manual. Nictating membranes. Such a wonderful phrase. Nictating membranes. Aint no passing craze. It means no eye grit, for the rest of your days. Anyway. Let's not filk that again, no matter how easy it is. Before you know it, we'll have vagina dentata, and then we really won't be able to talk about this stuff in front of the kids. (http://www.queenofwands.net/d/20040121.html)
So, Basilisks. Thankfully, like hedgehogs, their exceedingly effective natural defenses mean they have no need for intelligence, and are rather stupid and sluggish as a result. We get plenty of detail on their mating and social habits (like the catoblepas, they need to be rather careful around each other if they don't want to die accidentally. ) personality traits, and of course, how much you can get for selling one. So plenty of stuff that's exploitable in actual play, as well as fluffy stuff. Also notable it the first mention of baldurs gate that I've spotted. We'll be seeing a lot more of that in the future. Overall, another strong article from the master of worldbuilding.
The british are coming! Games workshop starts a big push to make an impact on the international market. Buy their stuff, blah blah blah.
The Forum in Dragon really makes you see how much the internet has benefited gaming (among a whole host of things). I recall some of the discussions lasting for months that nowadays would be exhausted with a one page thread on a message board. Reminds me of scifi books where starships and planets are limited by light-speed communications, having to wait hours, days, or months just to get a reply. Makes me glad for the internet, even if one does have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff - at least one can get to that good stuff more quickly.
Dragon Issue 81: January 1984
part 2/2
Figure feature: Castle creations give us a Mercenaries, spies and private eyes line of figures. A whole bunch of contemporary models for your action based modern situations
Grenadier models offer us a 13 piece set of elf models. Archers, wizards, scouts, and a unicorn rider. You could make a whole army outta that.
RAFM gives us the reptiliad line. Lizard men and their equally reptilian mounts. They get a whole load of fluff too, but you can easily cut that away.
Dark horse designs gives us some more elves, this time concentrating on the wilder side of them, with scanty clothing, mohawks and really big ears. That's an interesting culture clash.
Tag industries gives us a fighter/mage, and a suitably towering messenger of the gods. Scale, you can play with it.
Chariots for characters: Another fun little bit of ancient technology that would be eminently suitable to the D&D game, but gets surprisingly little use in games I've seen, gets the spotlight put on it. So we get costs, rules for using them in combat (which they are rather good for) and historical bumpf. A quite simple but effective article that gives us more cool options to play with for both PC's and monsters.
Cu Chulainn: Giants in the earth may be gone, but it's spirit lives on, in yet another super powerful NPC statblock. You know the drill. A quick regurgitation of the myths involving the character, plus some roleplaying advice. Seen it all before, will probably see it again, still not very keen on the format. Nuff said.
The ruins of Andril: They billed this as an adventure for high level characters. 8-11 still counts as high level for you people? No ambition. I guess once teleporting and resurrection come in, site based adventures don't work very well. Lets give it a shot anyway. Another 16 pager, this is the kind of tournament adventure that does not play fair, and is filled with clever ways to screw the players over and keep their powers from working as expected. It also has an amusing anachronism, plenty of evidence of previous failed adventurers, a time limit, and a nasty sting in the tail just when you think it's over. Contrary to my initial skepticism, I find myself rather liking this, as it's a good example of no mercy old skool design, without being a no hints deathtrap like the tomb of horrors or doomkeep. I could see myself having a lot of fun with this one. Two thumbs up.
Living in a material world: More stuff on equipment. Just because material components have a price doesn't mean they should be easily available. Some of that's rather weird stuff, and you'll have to go hunting for it yourself. (note that this is an important part of keeping spellcasters from overpowering other characters. Even if you don't make them play out all their shopping, deducting costs appropriately to the spells cast will help keep them from blowing powerful spells on every encounter and hogging all the limelight) Like the poison article earlier, this is very useful if you want to play a high detail game where proper resource management is critical.
Off the shelf: Master of the five magics by Lyndon Hardy is a personal favorite of mine, with it's high concept examination of the metaphysics of magic and swift paced clever plotting being a definite influence on my own worldbuilding style. The reviewer is a little less enthusiastic, pointing out that the characters aren't the most deeply developed, and the naming conventions suck. (also flaws I can see in my own work, amusingly enough. ) I can see why someone less scientifically minded wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did.
Soul-singer of Tyrnos by Ardath Mayhar gets almost as scathing a review as her previous books. (see issues 64 and 76) Depth, character development, plot, predictability. This book is weighed, and found very much wanting. One wonders why the reviewer keeps on reading her stuff if he hated the previous ones so much. One to skip without regrets.
The swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, on the other hand, does get a quite positive review. While it does feature the same basic plot as her previous novels, as a female warrior is drawn into a fantasy world with very strong japanese tendencies, their characters are still easily as different as say, Conan and Kull. The main point of criticism is the cover, which seems to have been commissioned by people in marketing who haven't read the book. We do not need gratuitous cheesecake.
The role of books: Lew gives us some more good sources for our worldbuilding. This time, he wants to encourage us to stop using medieval stuff so much, and opens our eyes to the possibilities of Greek, Roman and Egyptian based cultures. There were lots of things that they did which differed massively from modern day life, including some which fall under the truth is stranger than fiction umbrella. While of course I cannot recommend wholesale stealing, picking and matching cultural elements will allow you to create a near infinite number of interesting nations to populate your world with. Don't get stuck in a rut.
Reviews: Shadows of yog-sothoth is the classic Call of Cthulhu adventure where you have to try and save the world from the big C himself. Comprised of seven interlinked scenarios, it should provide for months of adventuring. It gets plenty of praise, but is noted as taking quite a bit of effort to run, due to the open-endedness of some sections.
Ravenloft is of course another soon to be classic, that would go on to become the biggest selling standalone module ever, and spawn an entire campaign world around it. The conflict between D&D rules and tropes and those of the horror genre are immediately obvious, and the reviewer judges it as a failure as a horror adventure, especially in contrast to the previous CoC adventure. (he also thinks that gargoyles and golems are not suitable monsters for a horror game, which is a bit dumb. Statues and everyday objects coming to life unexpectedly is a classic horror trope.) However, taken as a challenging D&D adventure with horror trappings, it succeeds just fine, with a strong sense of atmosphere and good visual layout, and an easy to play setup which allows for multiple reruns which still surprise the players, due to the clever fortune reading mechanic. It's certainly a step up from most D&D adventures of this era.
Brotherhood of the bolt is a system free adventure. It has a slight horror slant, but is mostly your standard adventure fare of infiltration tomb-robbing, intrigue, and suchlike. As it is system free, it gets to put a lot of effort into creating good maps, descriptions and characterizations instead. Despite being obviously an amateur production, it does a lot of things that still don't appear in most adventures today, such as timelines and relationship details. Still, competing against two classic products, it struggles to stand out from the crowd.
Dragonmirth is particularly sadistic this month. What's new sees dixie going undercover in draconic society. Wormy is still wanted for wargaming. Snarfquest involves two dramas colliding.
Isengard module for MERP now available. Sounds interesting.
Seems like this issue has a relatively small number of extra long articles. This is not a bad thing, as it means they get to tackle their respective topics in more depth than usual, which is always a problem in episodic periodicals. It's articles also have an unusually high quantity of stuff directly applicable to actual play, in the form of rules expansions and setting building advice. This is definitely a good thing, as they do so without neglecting the fluff, unlike so many 3rd and 4th ed articles of this type. Add in the start of the forum, and reviews of quite a few classic products as well, and you have one of their strongest issues ever. Looks like they've got this year off to a strong start. Lets hope they keep it up.
Dragon Issue 82: February 1984
part 1/2
86 pages
In this issue:
Loremaster. Yet another rolemaster product line is starting up. Tanara, yog mur, the iron wind. More stuff I've never heard of, and would be interested to know more about.
Out on a limb: A letter picking apart the stats in issue 80's module. You forgot a rule. Now correct it.
Another letter pointing out that halflings cannot be druids. Kim reponds with the PC's are different maxim. NPC's can break the rules PC's are bound too any time the writer wants, so there.
Five more letters pointing out errors that they admit were valid, for various reasons. Kim apologizes. Making a magazine on time every month is incredibly hard work, and tis no surprise that some stuff slips through the net.
A letter asking for clarification on the combat computer as it pertains to monsters. Many of them don't map properly to PC armor types, so you'll have to just leave them out or spend ages on case by case adjustments.
Dr No. The official James bond supplement. You saw the Top Secret imitation, now you can buy the real thing. And there was much rejoicing, particularly amonsgst the people who had to go through the hassle of clearing the licensed products with the film company.
The forum: Nikki Purdue thinks that serfs in medieval times had things better than Katharine Kerr said. Really, it was a period of centuries over an entire continent. I'm sure these things varied widely.
S D Anderson pontificates on the planar cosmology, and how to make it work. He is of the opinion that there should be more than one plane per alignment, and this would solve overcrowding and turf war problems. But there only being one interesting thing in each infinite universe would make the planes feel even emptier. As it stands, creatures of the same alignment competing, or living on planes that don't match their morals because they got kicked around or chose to move (orcs and yugoloths, respectively) produces more interesting stories. I vaguely disagree with your thoughts.
Ralph Sizer thinks that the reason there shouldn't be official anti-paladins is because being good is harder than being evil, so it requires active sacrifices to maintain, while evil is the path of what I was going to do anyway. Ha. Have you ever tried being consistently evil? It's just as hard as being consistently good, because people keep trying to stop you. Someone else has experienced rather different life lessons to me.
Eric Odgaard thinks that the current multiclassing rules are balanced, actually. Hee. If it's working in your game, that's cool, I guess.
Laurel Golding doesn't think that dragon magazine and D&D in general is nearly as sexist as, say, chivalry and sorcery. I'll guess you weren't around for issue 3. Well it's nice to see some people aren't hypersensitive to every implied slight.
The ecology of the peryton: Nigel findley!!! One of gaming's most missed writers. And it looks like this is his first appearance in the magazine. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of him in the future. One of legend's stranger creatures gets a nicely creepy writeup, taking a weird, but relatively straightforward monster in actual play, and making it really rather disconcerting to deal with. I suppose you can do that even with monsters that familiarity has made prosaic, like goblins and tigers. He also introduces legends of lost glories for the creatures, and fleshes out the characters of the people doing the telling and their personal dynamics quite interestingly. One of those cases where the writer immediately stands out from the crowd, thanks to their already well developed personal voice. I look forward to seeing what else he gets published in here.
Wounds and weeds: Herbalism! Another excuse to heal and buff your characters when out in the woods away from easy shopping, and reduce an adventuring parties need for clerics. In fact, there's a little too much focus in this article on healing damage, at the expense of the other effects various herbs can have upon your health and state of mind. But I guess that's a problem with the underlying system, as well. It's certainly interestingly presented though, with decent fiction and nice illustrations of the various plants detailed. Despite it's limitations of scope, this is still a likable article, that punctures D&D's tropes in amusing fashion, and is very useful in actual play. One of those things I would have no hesitation about incorporating, as it is neither useless, nor overpowering. Just what the doctor ordered.
Enhancing the enchanter: Another dragonquest article. How pleasing. Quite a substantial one, too. The author takes a look at what is in his opinion the weakest of the schools of magic, and gives it a whole bunch of new things to do. Of course, I can't judge whether they bring things up to par, or overbalance them. So it goes. For all that I like them covering other systems in here for the variety, It still means I have to deal with bits I can't properly assess on a mechanical level.
Rings that do weird things: A bazaar of the bizarre by any other name would still still be just as sweet to shop at. 13 new types of magical ring, including two Ed Greenwood contributions. They're a pretty varied and useful bunch, with both combat and noncombat abilities well catered for. Only problem is, you don't have enough fingers to wear them all. Guess you'll have to share them amongst the party. Another collection of stuff that is both entertaining to read and instantly useful for an actual game. Just what the magazine should have.
New avenues for agents: Another non D&D article here, as they give us teasers for the top secret companion. Two new classes, a load of specialities, and some more informal roles that cross classes like becoming a rogue or double agent. Not sure about the presentation here, I mean, putting the XP tables first isn't the best way of saying Cool new stuff! Come and get it! But it's nice to see games other than D&D getting decent amounts of expansion material. And while you could play the informal roles anyway, spelling them out like this makes GM's more likely to allow players to do stuff like this, rather than being trapped in the "do mission, report back, get new mission" cycle. And expanding the scope of a game is usually good. They're still nowhere near the point of diluting the theme and overcomplicating the game by adding too many options. After all, going renegade or double agent is an established convention of the genre. It can cause problems in troupe based play, but that doesn't mean it should be forbidden outright.
A friend of mine at that time suddenly discovered the James Bond RPG. I think he may even have gotten the Dr. No expansion. He was really excited about it, but could find no one to play. At that time, I had no real interest in playing much beyond AD&D, and certainly nothing set in the modern day. This was especially true of secret agent games. My brother wanted to get into Top Secret, but after getting the game, he never really followed through - I think he expected me to GM it, and my utter lack of interest in the subject matter never prompted me to even read the game at that time. That's too bad. It would definitely be a different matter today. By the way, I keep forgetting that the James Bond RPG dates back that far! Too bad it's out of print. A new printing/revision of it would be welcome.
Dragon Issue 82: February 1984
part 2/2
The baton races of yaz: Hee. That cover could so be taken the wrong way. Not right at all. ;) Anyway. C C Stoll gets another game published as this month's centerpiece. Celebrate the liberation of the planet Yaz with a game of cross-country tag-team racing. One of those deceptively simple looking strategy games that actually supports some clever tactics, particularly in the build stage. This means it'll probably take a few games to get the hang of, as you learn how to operate the landscape. Like most games detailed here, they include a bunch of optional rules, which should add a few more replays before you get bored with the game and move onto something else. Another solid addition to their ever growing set of mini-games.
Curing the monty haul malady: Ahh, the joys of advancing too fast, and getting incredibly silly in the process. Something the vast majority of us did at some point, and there's nothing wrong with that. A short article in which Roger reminds us that when things have got too gonzo and overloaded, the best thing to do is start a new game, and learn from your mistakes, playing it differently this time. Very much a "we've got a couple of pages to fill, so lets whip up a half-assed reiteration of things we've said plenty of times before" piece. You can safely skip this and not feel you're missing anything.
Reviews: Battlemats and Megamats are useful devices for anyone who likes representing their game environments. Draw on them, then wipe them clean when you're done and start over again. Just another useful way of aiding the process of organizing your game, albeit at the cost of making your setup bulkier and more inconvenient to transport.
The dragonbone electronic dice wand is a mechanical substitute for dice. Set the type and hit roll for a random number. Unfortunately it fails to really take advantage of that and allow rolls like d13's. Still, if you want to play while walking around or something, it does have definite advantages over standard dice.
The fair shake dice device is another little device to prevent cheating from players. Drop it into the little gate tower, and it'll come out the drawbridge suitably randomized. Even d4's dropped from the same start position are dealt with reliably. Cute.
The d4 that rolls is an amusingly horror movie-esque title for what is essentially a D8 numbered from 1 to 4 twice. One of those cases where there's not much more to say apart from about time too.
Pavis: threshold to danger is a Runequest supplement. It details the city of new pavis, it's layout and history, and then gives us a bunch of adventures set in it. There is a certain amount of railroading in the scenarios, but apart from that, it's a high quality set that provides plenty of useful stuff without getting bogged down in extraneous padding.
Big Rubble is another runequest supplement, complementing the previous one. While Pavis described the new city, this covers the ruins surrounding it. Filled with both humanoids and monsters, it makes a great adventuring environment, with tons of things to do, people to meet, and stuff to loot. It includes 7 sample scenarios, many of which are quite RP heavy. So whether you like dungeoncrawling or plotted adventures, these two modules have enough to keep you busy for months of play.
City states of Arklyrell is a fantasy wargame. It gets a decidedly meh review, failing to distinguish itself from the many competitors. The wargaming equivalent of a fantasy heartbreaker, really.
Spells between the covers: Another author who would go onto become one of this magazine's most prolific contributors debuts here. Bruce Heard, author of the princess ark series and tons of other mystaran stuff, has now joined the freelancer pool. Here, he elaborates on the spell research process. Costs and odds of success, and how to modify them, and huge amounts of sample spellbooks. A topic that could be dull very easily. But thankfully isn't. Like Ed, he instantly stands out for his enormous knowledge of the existing D&D canon, and ability to fit new stuff into it seamlessly. Buying and selling magical books, the black market for spellbooks, two fisted research, the kind of stuff which makes the life of a working wizard rather more interesting than sitting at home rolling dice once a week or so. See, this is how you balance the demands of making a fun game in general with that of keeping things tricky for the researcher, so they can't just spend months holed away and then come out with a game breaking new spell. And it's all topped off with a sprinkling of new literary magical items. It's not the most entertainingly written article ever, but it's a huge improvement over all the previous attempts at this topic, particularly from an actual play perspective. Hopefully he'll soon iron out the little kinks in his writing style and produce plenty more awesome articles in the next few years.
Ohh. Dragonlance coming soon. One of those little teasers that's easy to miss at the time, but says a lot in retrospect. D&D's settings continue to build. How long before we see stuff appearing in the magazine on this? Not long, I'll bet.
Fiction: Windwolf by Earl S Wajenberg. Another of those stories that takes on an odd perspective, this time of a newly formed spirit who would grow to be a god. His birth, his early trials, spirit politics, and the inhumanity of man to nature in general. Some interesting thoughts, both in terms of plot and cosmology, are raised. Not quite a classic piece, but another enjoyable addition to what is turning out to be a pretty cool issue in general.
Dragonmirth continues to get things wrong.
Talanan: Another little comic. Say hello to the geekiest DM evar. See the size of his world. It'd take years to play through that. Another great example of how inconvenient having too much built up stuff to keep track of can be.
Snarfquest has a dragon that thinks it's a duck. Dixie stops being a dragon. Wormy talks about how to hunt a dragon. And makes some criminal puns in the process.
One of those issues that's not particularly significant in it's own right, but more for the things it heralds. Two significant writers, plus a gameline, there's definitely some stuff that was important with hindsight. Course, that doesn't really help us predict who's going to go on to greater things in the present, and who'll just sink into obscurity. Also interesting is just how much of this stuff is quickly and easily insertable into existing games. Seems they're really getting the hang of balancing the fluff details with the actual statistical information, without neglecting or messing up either. And we're still miles away from the point where they would start to concentrate on crunch to the detriment of setting details. For the moment, things look pretty bright.
Dragon Issue 83: March 1984
part 1/2
84 pages. Looks like 1984 is going to be a busy year full of changes. Having swallowed Little Wars, a long time ago, they're now eating up ARES magazine. Their attempt to relaunch SPI products must have bombed pretty badly for it to have died this quickly. This means they intend to increase their page count by at least 16 pages per issue, and fill that with more sci-fi stuff. Having seen how wargaming faded away after 1982 or so, I wonder how long this little incorporation'll last before being digested and forgotten about. Oh well, at least it means there'll be a reliable amount of non D&D stuff for me to read for the next year or two, even if it is being ghettoised. It's hardly a terrible development.
In this issue:
Out on a limb is rather short this issue: We have yet more psionics nitpicking from Robert M Schroek. Damn those unclear rules!
Lance J Purple (! :o Oh, long johnson, oh rodimus prime. Whyeyeyeyeyey?) asks for reprints. This time, they grant mercy, albeit of an expensive kind. Call Penny Petticord (Where do these people get their names from? I blame the parents. Do they not realize the consequences of what they are doing.) and she'll photocopy articles from out of print issues and send them to you. Well, it's certainly progress. I suppose that is to be lauded.
And finally, we get some questions about the 100 hour marathon D&D session, the procedures for the guinness records, and who to contact if you want to try and beat it. Toilet breaks are permitted, thankfully.
The forum is similarly undersize. Must not be a very debatable time: Scott D Hoffrage picks apart David Hutton's belief that dual classed fighter 1/whatevers are overpowered carefully and mercilessly. You've got tons of annoying restrictions to apply. Of course the character will seem overpowered if you forget them.
John Lester Jr nitpicks about the nature of contact poison. Ho hum.
The many facets of gems: Hmm. Starting off our features this month is a 10 page article about various types of gemstone. One of those things, like herbalism, ecology or fantasy languages, that's fascinating if you're into it, and interminably tedious if you're not. And on this particular subject, I'm afraid I must confess I fall into the not camp. Not to disparage the quality, or game-usefulness for those of you who want to challenge your PC's by setting them specific requirements for building their magical items. Or the rather good bibliography which shows that the author must have put a lot of work into this. But frankly, putting it as the leading article? If I were editor, there is no way that would have happened. Oh well, can't please all the people all of the time.
The ecology of the stirge: Ed contributes another ecology this month. Once again, he's stolen liberally from the biology of real life creatures, (love the bee reference in particular) and then remixed the details to make the stirge actually seem pretty plausible as a creature that could really exist, even without the aid of a mad wizard/genetic engineer to create it. He provides his usual selection of fascinating footnotes, and we have an increasing amount of game information which can be used to make encounters with the little bastards even more annoying. Which is definitely another positive development, as it encourages you to reuse the article, instead of just enjoying the fiction once, and then forgetting about it. See the benefits of actively thinking about what you've done and how to improve upon it. I very much approve, and hope our other contributors take note.
Palladium prints praise from various magazines (and kevin's mom :D ) in it's latest advert, The arms of nargash tor. Also, we have naked faeries. That'll boost sales a bit more. He sure does know how to hustle. And lets face it, that's as important (if not more so, annoyingly) to a company as actually producing decent product.
Fiction: the test of the twins by Margaret Weis. Looks like another member of the gang is here now. Welcome to the very beginning of the Dragonlance saga. Say hello to Raistlin and Caramon, and see the dramatic tension that holds them together, and will ultimately drive them apart. All together now! All you need is AAAaaangst! (do do dodo do) ;) Once again we see the beginning of a new style of D&D adventures, with a greater emphasis on drama, personalities and epic overarching struggles that define the fate of worlds and universes. Sure, it'll generate it's own crimes against common sense and literature soon enough, but for now, it's a breath of fresh air contasted against D&D's current flavour of swords and sorcery which alternates between didactic simulationism and gonzo crossovers. Lets enjoy it while we can, before the kender show up and ruin everything.
Dragon Issue 83: March 1984
part 2/2
The dancing hut: Baba Yaga! Talking of gonzo crossovers! Now this is a classic module. Breaking the usual 16 page limit, and featuring contributions from lots of TSR regulars, this is one of the most impressive, and also most annoying modules they ever produced. Enter the hut of baba yaga. It may seem small from the outside, but inside is an enormous extradimensional mansion that defies logic, and has enough weird stuff inside it to baffle and challenge the most hardened adventurers. Hack and slashers will have a hard time even into the upper teens, while smart lower level characters will be able to negotiate with the inhabitants and possibly come out ahead. This is the kind of adventure that could become the centrepiece of an entire campaign, especially if the PC's wind up working for Baba Yaga for whatever reason. (cue all kinds of fairy tale weirdness in the quests set.) Not only could you explore it for ages and still get lost easily, it can connect to various other dimensions, and introduce all sorts of interesting crossovers. This is definitely one of Dragon magazine's high points, that they obviously had huge amounts of fun designing and running. While not suitable for every campaign, I'm sure many of you have had scarring experiences with this one as well. As ever, actual play experiences are welcome.
How to finish fights faster: Roger gives another contribution in quick succession. Gary admits he's never been satisfied with the unarmed combat rules as presented in the DMG. So here's a quicker and easier version, which goes some way to making unarmed attacks more accessable, without sacrificing too many options. It's still pretty useless when up against anyone with real weapons and armour, but that's to be expected, really. At least now you can get into a bar brawl without it taking longer to resolve and involving more page flipping than a climactic boss battle. They are definitely producing more stuff that I could see myself using lately. Yet more evidence that properly patched AD&D v1.5 was quite a different beast to running the core rulebooks as written, and probably more fun, given the number of arcane oddities you needed to cut around.
A look at AOK's, old and new: Our token non-D&D article this month is another teaser for the Top Secret companion. And once again, they haven't chosen a very interesting way to present it. Five new areas of knowledge are introduced, bringing the total up to 42 (!) That's rather a lot of skills. Many designers these days actively avoid massive lists like that, as experience has shown that they are frequently actively detrimental to the fun factor of a game. And here they are engaging in lengthy pontification on exactly what you can do with each of them at different levels of skill as if that's something that will stoke people's enthusiasm for the game. Given the benefit of hindsight, I am forced to sigh and shake my head at this. Poor naive game designers, thinking that more is always better. Roger's realized this, but it'll take a while to catch on, and some people'll never get it. Ho hum.
Reviews: The James Bond, 007 rpg and it's current supplements get the spotlight on them this issue. The basic book swiftly explains how the game works in the first few pages, and then gives you plenty of specifics. It seems we have an early occurance of a universal resolution mechanic, as virtually everything is done by determining the difficulty, and then rolling on the same table to see how well you did. This of course makes it much easier to learn than D&D with it's tons of exceptions. On the negative side, that does mean you have to narratively define exactly what your degree of success or failure in an action means, which may take some getting used too. Still, given the fairly freewheeling nature of the source material, that seems entirely appropriate. It certainly contrasts pleasantly with the high crunch approach taken by Top Secret in the preceding article.
The Q manual is of course the gadget supplement. It keeps up the fairly rules light approach of the corebook, but describes the various devices with a level of dry wit that not only makes for good reading, but should help spark your imagination for the unorthodox uses each can be adapted to. After all, you can't carry everything without spoiling the line of your suit, so sometimes you'll just have to use your laser pen to clean out a clogged drain. And of course, you can steal and adapt these gadgets to other games as "magical items" So it's all good.
The gamesmaster pack gives you a chunky chart full GM screen and lots of other little tactile aids which should help you represent action sequences and stuff. The kind of thing that you can take or leave, but certainly doesn't hurt.
And on top of that we already have several modules, with more supplements to come. Looks like they're doing pretty well at the moment.
Dragonmirth is a bit lopsided. Talanalan has a computer in his car. This is not as easy or useful as it would be these days. Wormy is wary of long-jawed mudsuckers, with good reason. What's new doesn't do sex in D&D because Phil wants to sleep. Typical. Snarfquest gets the treasure and the girl. Don't worry, things'll get complicated again for him soon.
A tricky issue to comment upon. One one hand, most of the articles in this issue are of very high quality, even the ones that aren't particularly to my taste. On the other hand, they seem to be going through one of their periods of advertising expansion, so the ratio of articles to adverts is not great, and I feel a bit unfulfilled, as if it was over too quickly. Then again, I still have hundreds of issues to go, so I guess I should be grateful that some of them are easy ones. And since from next month the average size will be increasing quite a bit, I expect there'll be quite a few ones that are a struggle to get through before we finish. So lets press onwards, see what strange new worlds ARES will bring to my attention. Once again 1984 is proving to be a very interesting and varied year for the people of TSR.
Baba Yaga is one of their more faithful adaptations of traditional folklore. It's Russian folklore, tho', and not generally translated, because it really is that far out there. It's the stuff they used to scare little children with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga pretty much nails what my Russian reading covered. Now, just remeber, Баба Яга (Baba Yaga) is the stuff which was used for bedtime stories in pre-soviet russia....
Dragon Issue 84: April 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. No april fools stuff this year. They are slacking rather. But then, with the serious changes they're making to the magazine, they just don't have the right mood, or the energy. The death of one of your sister magazines is not the kind of thing you laugh at. You never know when your own fortunes could decline suddenly and before you know it you're the next on the chopping block.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter pointing out that the peryton in the MM is described as having claws, while the one in the Ecology article has hooves. They reply that they did that diliberately just to annoy pedants like him. :p They've learned from the gem dragon debacle. So canon be damned. Having hooves makes them even weirder, so why not.
A letter asking if the stuff from the dragonquest article could be adapted to D&D. They reply sure, you can convert anything from any system to another. Fundamental ideas generally retain their strength (or weakness) no matter what you do with them.
Some errata on sleep gas. It's still nasty, but less so now the error is removed.
A letter grumbling about how out on a limb ain't what it used ta be. Why make the forum? Things were fine before. grumble mutter grumble darn kids getoffa ma lawn.
Two letters pointing out errors in recent modules. Here we go again. An editors job is a thankless task. Ignored when you do things right, and yelled at when you do things wrong.
The forum: Edward R Masters pontificates about the nonsensibility of the various elemental planes. Oh, don't be such a pessimist. Yeah, if you change one bit of the physics, you have to keep changing other bits, until things all add up again. But that does not make them inherently unsolvable or unadventurable. Put a can do face on! And sing a happy song! You'll get nowhere if you never start because you think it'll always go wrong!
Peter Bregoli thinks the forum as it stands is all together too focused on grumbling about things that are wrong. We ought to talk about our cool ideas more. That's the spirit lad.
Ken Hughes thinks that the combat charts are unneccacary. We ought to just figure out what bonuses a character has, and roll against the enemy AC. Maybe we should even flip around the AC system so higher is always better, and the whole thing becomes more intuitive. Radical ideas man! They'll never catch on.
Bill Cavalier thinks Dragon ought to do more articles on the various conventions. They're the lifeblood of the hobby, after all. Yes, I do recall when they had extensive articles on the introduction of the giant modules to the conventions. Obviously, you can't innovate like that every year, but that doesn't stop you from talking about what it was like, the cool stuff you saw, and so forth. They've made interesting articles about that in the past, and they could do so again.
Jeff Naiman has some commentary and suggestions on the poison article from issue 81. What benefit is neutralize poison when the victim is dead straight away.
A cast of strange familiars: Yup, It's time for wizard's oft-neglected animal companions to get an article examining them. What creatures are suitable, how should they be statted out, what special powers and limitations should they have. We get a reiteration of the deadliness of housecats and other small animals in D&D, and an attempt to fix this. We also get a look at the problem of falling damage
for big and small creatures, and an attempt to fix that as well. In short this is an intelligent and considered article that would be dull if not for this wry eye toward the absurdities of the D&D system making it likable. It could definitely have done more to expand on the system, rather than just examining it, though. A rather mixed way to start off the issue.
The ecology of the trapper: Hmm, said Edward Greenwood. What shall I send in to Dragon this month? Time is a-passing, and Elminster hasn't shown up to disrupt things for a while. I know! Another ecology. That's always good for a sale, and I can whip them up in my sleep by now. Don't I just have the coolest job in the world. And so another of the strange creatures inhabiting D&D dungeons had it's lifecycle intimately probed in the name of Science! This of course involves questioning unsavory and cantankerous characters, as such monsters do not sit still to be investigated. But if he can wheedle usable information out of Elminster, everyone else should be child's play by comparison. ( I wonder if we will see an ecology of the doll golem at some point? ;) ) This is another well-written article from the master of worldbuilding, with plenty of detail in both the flavour and the game information sections. The amount of footnotes continues to grow, this time they actually cover more space than the fiction itself. This always happens, doesn't it. When someone has a good idea, it expands rapidly until it outgrows it's welcome, and then has to be shrunk back down again until it reaches a good balance with everything else again. Funny to think the series has only been around for a year, and is in some ways still finding it's feet like that. It already seems like one of the indispensable parts of the magazine. Now we just have to worry about running out of monsters to cover.
Figure feature: This month's featured models are a bunch of atlantean guards, a sultan on a magic carpet, a naga, a bunch of orcs, Bast, a centaur, A knight riding a boar, a wizard riding a dragon, and some weird alien creatures. Nothing too out of the ordinary then.
Off the shelf: The sleeping dragon by Joel Rosenberg transports ordinary students into their own RPG game, where they have to master the skills of their characters if they want to survive. Not the most original idea, but executed well in this case.
The Aquiliad by Somtow Sucharitkul is another of his alternate history books. What would happen if rome conquered America? It probably wouldn't turn out quite like this, but it's still a punfully entertaining romp through all manner of fantastical occurrances. Caught between mad emperors, and an equally mad reality, the protagonist has to try and survive and carry out his mad orders, with a little help from his friends.
The war for eternity by Christopher Rowley is another "immortality drug is discovered, ugly resource wars happen" book. Moral issues are raised, humanity behaves in inhumane ways to itself and others, and the aliens get plenty of interesting characterization (which is probably more sympathetic than the humans get) as well.
The man in the tree by Damon Knight is a story of a man with the power to transport things from other dimensions, and how he reluctantly grows into the messiah he really doesn't want to be. Religion and social responsibility are funny things, and this looks at both of them with an insightful eye.
Escape Velocity by Christopher Stasheff is a prequel to his Warlock books. His tongue is firmly in cheek as his protagonists bounce from dimension to dimension, experiencing increasingly insane adventures.
The mirror of helen by Richard Purtill is a book about Helen of Troy. Sure, she might have been the most beautiful woman in ancient history, but what was the person behind the face like? This tells her story from the viewpoint of the people around her, throwing new angles on the myth in a way similar to Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of arthurian legend. Which is neither a bad idea, or badly done.
Alanna: the first adventure by Tamora Pierce is a kid friendly fantasy adventure obviously aimed at hooking younger readers (get 'em young, and they're yours for life, as the smoking companies say. ) In that role, it serves perfectly well, with a fast paced plot, and simple but well defined characters. Give it to your kids for christmas or something.
The dragon waiting by John M Ford gets our token slating this month. A retelling of the story of Richard III from different perspectives, it jumps between it's characters in an abrupt manner, and the pretty descriptions don't really add up to much plotwise. You've gotta have a purpose beyond just writing for writings sake.
The wild shore by Kim Stanley Robinson is a story of postapocalypic america. They managed to piss of the rest of the world enough that they got bombed into the dark ages, and are now watched and prevented from developing new infrastructure. My, how topical that would have seemed a few months ago. And it will probably seem so again sometime, since these things tend to come in cycles.
I find it interesting that someone was calling for more convention coverage in the Forum. I honestly can't recall anything about Dragon's convention coverage, but I remember enjoying accounts from various scifi conventions that would show up here and there in various magazines. Still, it wasn't until the advent of podcasting that such coverage came into its own.
Nowadays one can expect to see video podcasts from various sources covering big cons like Comic Con in San Diego, the E3 game show in L.A., and PAX. Audio podcasts are even more numerous, and cover less well-known cons, and even GenCon. GenCon hasn't been as well-covered as I would have expected in the past, but I'm hoping to see some good coverage this year. I haven't seen much of anything as far as video podcasts from GenCon (some Gamer Zero stuff from a couple years back is all I can recall), and I hope it doesn't have to wait for the Totally Rad Show guys (who are also pencil & paper RPG fans, at least one of them from a good ways back), Penny Arcade, or iFanboy to shift their focus to RPG cons some year. It would be nice to see a solid, RPG-focused video podcast appear (or at least make itself known to me).
I also find it interesting that you're enjoying Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of" articles. I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Greenwood's writing. I clearly recall skipping over just about everything of his that wasn't "Pages from the Mages" or the "swords" articles. More specifically, I found myself bored by the ecology articles early on. Most, if not all, of them took away rather than lent any mystery or interest to their subjects, and a lot of the articles eventually became more about the framing story than the critters, in my opinion.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;319882I find it interesting that someone was calling for more convention coverage in the Forum. I honestly can't recall anything about Dragon's convention coverage, but I remember enjoying accounts from various scifi conventions that would show up here and there in various magazines. Still, it wasn't until the advent of podcasting that such coverage came into its own.
Nowadays one can expect to see video podcasts from various sources covering big cons like Comic Con in San Diego, the E3 game show in L.A., and PAX. Audio podcasts are even more numerous, and cover less well-known cons, and even GenCon. GenCon hasn't been as well-covered as I would have expected in the past, but I'm hoping to see some good coverage this year. I haven't seen much of anything as far as video podcasts from GenCon (some Gamer Zero stuff from a couple years back is all I can recall), and I hope it doesn't have to wait for the Totally Rad Show guys (who are also pencil & paper RPG fans, at least one of them from a good ways back), Penny Arcade, or iFanboy to shift their focus to RPG cons some year. It would be nice to see a solid, RPG-focused video podcast appear (or at least make itself known to me).
I seem to remember there being a bit more of that stuff in the 90's, but usually, it's just a few pages of listing in the back. Like forums themselves, this kind of thing improves dramatically once you get rid of the bandwidth limitations and don't have people screening the stuff before it even gets published.
QuoteI also find it interesting that you're enjoying Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of" articles. I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Greenwood's writing. I clearly recall skipping over just about everything of his that wasn't "Pages from the Mages" or the "swords" articles.
Different strokes, as usual. While not perfect, Ed does seem to be able to interest me even when tackling topics that any other writer would bore me with. I definitely have more appreciation for his talents than when I started doing this thread.
QuoteMore specifically, I found myself bored by the ecology articles early on. Most, if not all, of them took away rather than lent any mystery or interest to their subjects, and a lot of the articles eventually became more about the framing story than the critters, in my opinion.
Ahh yes, the excesses of the late 90's, when the monster hunter's association and their not very effectual antics became a regular appearance. It's gonna take quite a while to reach that little thread of history.
Dragon Issue 84: April 1984
part 2/2
Never the same thing twice: Rakshasas. One of the scariest and most flavourfull monsters in the game, thanks to their brutal resistances and highly customisable powers. Scott Bennie looks at them, and their mythical inspirations. Obviously, D&D couldn't fit them all into a single monster, but it actually hasn't done too bad a job this time at converting them to a coherent gameable form. Like Lunars, their reputation as illusionists somewhat exceeds the reality, and is based largely on their ability to disguise themselves. Still, if you enjoyed deceiving people, that kind of misrepresentation and manipulation is exactly what you'd do as well. We also get a load of new crunch in the form of two variant high power rakshasas, and their god, Ravanna. Another of those cases where the game, and it's foibles are illuminated, while still providing some useful and interesting stuff. And more evidence of their ability to better balance fluff and crunch. Which is cool.
And then there were three: At last, the companion set. Frank Mentzer gives us a teaser for the players book of the high level. We also get the first mention of the fifth set to cover play beyond 36th level. Immortal level is on its way. Nice to see someone likes the idea of really high level play. Funny how BD&D ended up catering to that style so much better than AD&D. Anyway, he talks about settling down and building strongholds for the various classes, the new variant classes such as druids and paladins, and the interesting workaround demihumans get so they still improve after reaching maximum level, unarmed combat, and demihuman magic items. We see the odd mix of simplification, and putting his own spin on things from AD&D that these sets would contain. Like the top secret teasers, they definitely need to work on their selling technique. They're still a far cry from the well presented and paced reveals that the 3rd and 4th edition runups had.
The twofold talisman: Another extra long adventure is detailed in these pages. However, as they just did a big one and doing that two issues in a row would probably result in complaints, they split it into two parts, putting 12 pages here, with the conclusion coming next month. This is very much a tournament module, with pregenerated characters, annoying fakeouts designed specifically to screw with player expectations, stupid jokes, (damn you monty python :shakes fist:) and no sense of realism to the environment at all. You should expect to die repeatedly and in very infuriating ways. Use with caution, for running it with your regular characters may result in very pissed off players.
Fiction: Master of the winds by Sharon Lee. Another of those tales of testing the apprentice wizard, psychodrama stylee. We had one of those just last issue. Guess they're like busses. Don't see them for years, and suddenly a whole bunch of them come along at once. Thankfully the protagonist is a rather more pleasant character than Raistlin. Although her rival is not, and actually has quite a lot of parallels with him, which I find very amusing. This time, the good guys win, and the future looks fairly positive. Which is more than we can say for Krynn, with it's endless litany of narrowly averted world destroying disasters ahead. But enough about that. On it's own merits, this is another likable but unexceptional piece of fiction to read, enjoy and then use as inspiration for your own magical seekings, or just forget about, as you choose.
Reviews: Secrets of the labyrinth is part two of the thieves guild stuff on the free city of haven. Annoyingly, they've dropped the loose-leaf format in the middle of the series, so you can no longer assemble the books into one bigger one when they're all out. It also requires quite a bit of buy-in to the gameline in general, due to lots of references to rules from other supplements. If you already like the gameline though, it's another solid addition to it, with plenty of setting details and adventure ideas.
Chivalry & sorcery's new edition attempts to be more accessable than before. It may be an improvement, but it's certainly not enough of one, and their editing process leaves quite a bit to be desired. It's still a game with tremendous depth, possibly even more so than before. If you're an expert gamer who wants a better treatment of the medieval mileu than D&D can provide, try this.
The mentzer ed D&D basic & expert sets also get a sycophanticly positive "review" This really does feel like a pure shill piece, with all the comments positive, and great attention paid on how friendly they are to new gamers. As much as I do like those same sets, I'm still pretty suspicious of this review. I understand that you want to sell your game, but you could at least pretend to be objective a bit better.
Are's section.
Are's log: So sci-fi is back in Dragon. This is pleasing, even if the method by which it returned isn't. Then again, they didn't have to do this. They could have just let the magazine die entirely. And at least this time they're transferring the subscriptions properly. Similarly, it looks like at least a few of the staff from the magazine have been transferred over as well. It's almost like a separate mini magazine. Which also means Roger gets to hone his editorial skills before he gets to take on a whole magazine on his own. So what have they got to offer. They've only got 16 pages to play with. Will they make the most of them? Lets take a look and see.
The lunar high republic: Well, it looks like they haven't abandoned their ambitions, in any case. They're planning on doing a series of pieces on the moon in various game universes and future histories. Just how many ways can an airless lump of white rock be developed? I'm betting quite a few. First up is the moon of the Space Opera game. Having been repressed by earth in it's early year, it rebelled, and is now fiercely independent, despite the infrastructure needed for survival. Dueling is an entirely de rigeur means of settling disagreements, and the generally pretty liberal laws are enforced fast and without ceremony. It all seems a bit of a mary sue writeup, really, as the author goes to pains to make it clear how much better things are than on earth in almost every respect. If this was an in-game perspective, this would be forgivable, but as a supposedly objective write-up, this makes me suspicious. Is this typical of the game's attitude in general, or a flaw of this writer in particular?
The zethra: Oh no! said Edward Greenwood. They have cancelled Ares magazine. Whatever shall I do now?! I can't write nothing but D&D stuff all the time, I'd go quite mad. And what's going to happen to the article I sent in just last month? Don't say it's just going to be lost forever. Don't worry, said Roger Moore. We wouldn't let you down like that. We've saved it, and we'll publish it in Dragon Magazine. Hooray! said Edward Greenwood. You guys are the best friends ever. And so everyone was happy again, and they all went and had pancakes with maple syrup for tea.
Anyway, where was I. The zethra are weird tentacled blob things. Seems like one of the standard sci-fi things people come up with when trying to get away from the standard humanoid body model. These ones come from the Xagyg ( ;) ) cluster, and shoot energy bolts. I'm really not enthralled, as they have an air of self-concious wackiness about them. When told to say something random, the average person will say Fish! Bad taste is represented by combining purple and green, and the random number is usually 7. So decorate the amorphous blob's room with 7 little flying fish models painted green with purple spots, and you have the wackiest setup ever. Malkav would be proud.
Starfire, gaming x3: Oh, now this is more like it. 3 quick sets of optional rules to include or not, as you see fit. Rules to speed up the movement process, and allow for simultaneous actions. That'll certainly ramp up the drama. Rules for facing and the advantage you get for catching someone from the rear. Hee. And if you want something a little more complicated, you can introduce 3d positioning, including the pythagorean mathematics needed to determine diagonal distances. Ai carumba. I think I'll pass on that one. Still this is a useful little set of ideas, and it's nice to see non RPG's get some small amount of coverage again. I've found this the most likable of the articles in the section. It's the only one that doesn't seem to be trying too hard. Lets hope they settle in soon. It might be a bit cramped, but at least it's homey and the companies good.
Snarfquest does some shapeshifting. What's new gets fired. Well, at least they go out with a bang, very literally, as that means it's time for sex in D&D. We also get a proper postscript. Talanan goes monty haul. Wormy reveals the dark side of wargaming with real figures and long postage times. They really oughta get proper life insurance for this. What are raise spells for, otherwise.
A nice full colour advert for D1:Dragons of dispair. Looks like they're going to push this one hard. They already have the flashy logo for the world done.
And once again dragon magazine goes through some substantial changes this issue, mostly for the better. The ares section might have got off to a shaky start, but it's still a very interesting development, and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer over the next couple of years. Hopefully things'll settle down for a bit after the madness of the last few months. If the format changed every month, it could hardly be called a format. I guess it's more interesting than things being essentially the same for years though.
Dragon Issue 85: May 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. Looks like it's another cleric special. I guess the whole merry-go round of class and race specials will start up again in the following months. They can't leave a topic like that as a one-off. Speaking of one-offs, once again we run into the nothing new in the world problem. They publish reviews of things billed as unique, and next thing you know, other people write-in to say they've been doing that for years. Suitably chastened, they say they won't do that again. Meanwhile, Ken Rolston and Katherine Kerr get jobs as contributing editors. Once again, the quality and quantity of their top writer's outputs have been recognized and rewarded. Which means we get to see even more of them. Hopefully there'll still be room for untried freelancers to get a foot in the door. After all, they've got a big magazine to fill every month. So lets get going. Even with Ken around, the magazine won't review itself.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter asking about copyright, and what exactly they can do with the material in Dragon. They are in magnanimous mood today and reply that as long as you don't sell it, they don't have a problem.
Two letters about the new unarmed combat rules and monks. Again, duly answered.
A question about pineal glands, and their use as spell components.
Some questions about baba yaga's hut.
A letter pointing out that one of the pregen characters in the twofold talisman is illegal. Honestly. Ordinary players get this right more often than RPG writers. It's quite shocking.
Two letters on the familiars article last month. My, their response time is pretty prompt these days. I remember when it took 3 months to start getting any feedback on an article.
A question on how international peeps are supposed to provide a usable SASE, when their stamps aren't legal tender in america. They reply that you need an international reply coupon, whatever the hell that is. Ahh, the arcane details of international commerce.
The forum: Jon Paulson complains at Ken Rolston for putting spoilers in his CoC review. Now he can't run it for his players. Ken apologizes and says he'll try and tread the line better next time. Yet another case of nothing new in the world.
Katherine Kerr rebutts Nikki Purdues statement that life for serfs didn't suck. While adventurers are off slaying dragons, they have to grub in the dirt on the edge of starvation. Woe! Woe! Give generously to the people still starving in africa today. Let them know it's christmas time. Oh wait. A bit early for that, isn't it.
Jeffrey Carey makes contributions to the playability of the elemental planes, pointing out that the genie races live there, so there must be parts which have coherent spacial structures and little bits of other elements. Someone with the right magical tricks really ought to be able to survive and get around there, and there can be all kinds of weird variations on a theme in an infinite universe.
Finally, Flex Williams points out how some nasty things, like nitric acid, can cause huge amounts of damage on contact and not be noticed immediately. Fantasy contact poisons could do even more unpleasant stuff without it hurting verisimilitude.
Here's to your health: Ahh, healbotting. One of the primary uses of clerics. If you don't have one, you had to spend weeks or months recuperating at higher levels back then. Which is a lot more realistic than 3rd or 4th edition, weirdly enough. I have to say that I never approached it like that back then. Partially it was that you didn't get spells until second level anyway, and we never memorized more than one copy of the same spell for reasons of versatility. So while we'd generally have a spell ready for when someone was about to die, that was the cue to get into defensive formation, and we certainly didn't expect to face each battle at full strength. But enough about my experiences. They're at the centre of the D&D experience. Of course they're going to have been hothoused into the mechanically optimal path more than the rest of us.
In this article, Kim tackles the nature of healing magic, how it works, what it's limitations are, and yes indeed, the question of if clerics should double dip on healing spells and focus on healbotting at the expense of all the other cool tricks they can pull. Should you reveal exactly how much damage is healed by each spell, and allow for metagaming. Should the deity served dictate or influence their clerics spell selection. Would any player be prepared to pay the extortionate prices that NPC clerics charge for healing. Like his examination of psionics, this is a fairly dull article that doesn't have that much that is useful in actual play either. But he's the chief editor, so it gets to be in pole position anyway. Mehness.
Special skills, special thrills: Our other editor makes the second contribution. Talk about keeping it in-house. Anyway, Roger gives us a rather more useful piece of work, talking about making clerics of different deities different. He refers back to the greyhawk god articles in issues 67-71, and then expands upon and rebalances them, so they don't just get special powers for nothing, and some gods end up way better choices than others. This is a very useful article indeed, and an obvious precursor to the sphere systems of subsequent editions. It should provide more than enough examples to allow you to do the same for your own gods, and if used, allows clerics a lot more customisability. An all cleric party would still probably be a bit of a stretch, but less so than keeping an all fighter team interesting and effective. Plus you get plenty of amusing role-playing opportunities. I very much approve
Clerics must be deity-bound: Talking of roleplaying clerics of different gods appropriately. Here's a load of advice on just that. They are predictable. Thankfully this is a quick one that doesn't outstay it's welcome, and has plenty of important points. Gods of the same alignments can have very different portfolios, and gods with similar portfolios can be bitter rivals and enemies. Clerics can have various degrees of devotion to their gods ideals, ranging from fanatical devotion, to propitiation out of fear or self interest. Deity drama is another one of those bits of worldbuilding that's often left out, but adds quite a bit to your game if you include it. After all, legends like that can be turned into instant plot hooks. A nice way to finish of the themed section.
Figure feature is only a single page long this time. This month, we get the elfquest characters made into mini's, plus some various lizardy monsters and weird things. Rather a filler article really.
A new edition of starfire? Interesting. That's been one of their regular games to review. I wonder what they'll think about it this time.
Problems by mail: Scammers, flakes, neurotics, asshat twink players, rapid and expensive edition changes. Just a few of the ways that your PbM experience can be ruined, and you can wind up wasting substantial sums of money. Not that it's easy on the other end either. Processing all the info from hundreds of letters takes quite a bit of work. But that does not excuse unprofessionalism. You ought to do the research and get the resources before you get in the kitchen. So Rick Loomis is setting up an organization that will examine PBM companies, and make sure they're up to scratch in terms of professionalism. If you're scammed, complain to them, and they'll make sure word gets around. That way, the good can flourish, the bad can perish, and capitalism can continue on it's merry way. Hooray! Well, that's good to know, anyway. Hard to argue with the idea, although I know that the implementation of these things can become unpleasantly bureaucratic. Another interesting footnote in the history of gaming as a whole that I wonder if we'll hear any more about.
The ecology of the ixitachitl (I hope I spelled that right): Ed gives us another ecology, tackling the demogorgon worshipping manta rays. While intelligent, they do not think remotely like humanoids, given their drastically different environment, lifestyle, and physiology. And despite not having hands, their magical abilities and vampiric rulers make them quite capable of being allmighty pains in the ass to other undersea creatures. For a second time, the amount of footnotes exceeds the amount of actual description, and contains extensive rules clarifications and suggestions. And of course, a guide on how to pronounce their dreadfully annoying name. While the game information is exemplary, the fiction on this one is a bit dull, as if Ed was on cruise control when he wrote it. Still, even an average Ed article is well above the general average in terms of overall quality.
Fiction: Valkyrie settlement by Susan Shwartz. Honor and valor come in many forms. And as important as knowing when and how to fight is knowing when not to fight. Sometimes oaths have to be broken. Sometimes losing with style can be better for you in the long run than winning at any cost. In short, things aren't always black and white, even in a proud warrior culture. This is a pretty cool bit of fiction, that manages to incorporate historical and supernatural stuff, cool fight scenes, and gender politics. Amazing how much depth some people can fit into these little stories.
Three cheers for beowulf: Like they did for bounty hunters, they make another attempt at reminding us the D&D isn't all one true way by presenting us with three different versions of his stats. While always a fighter with ridiculously high strength, his level and other stats vary in their twinkedness between incarnations. As ever, he has powers PC's can't match, and may overshadow them if included in a game. As a thought exercise, and a demonstration of how different writers can interpret the same material, this is quite interesting. As something that's useful for an actual game, not so much. Like so much of the GitE material, this winds up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Quote from: (un)reason;320329Three cheers for beowulf: Like they did for bounty hunters, they make another attempt at reminding us the D&D isn't all one true way by presenting us with three different versions of his stats. While always a fighter with ridiculously high strength, his level and other stats vary in their twinkedness between incarnations. As ever, he has powers PC's can't match, and may overshadow them if included in a game. As a thought exercise, and a demonstration of how different writers can interpret the same material, this is quite interesting. As something that's useful for an actual game, not so much. Like so much of the GitE material, this winds up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
I'd forgotten this article. Beowulf would appear at least once more, in the late 3.5 era of Dragon. I've always dug GitE-type articles. Not only are they useful as ready-made statblocks for major NPCs (with or without the serial numbers filed off), they are also useful (in my opinion) as illustrations of the strengths and weaknesses of the game system they're statted for. That is, they help demonstrate how versatile a given system is in modeling various character types.
If anything ever left a bad taste in my mouth after reading these articles, it's that the D&D system seemed pretty inadequate for modeling anything but D&D characters without extensive retooling, at least in some cases. Gygax's "Conan" article from way back is a great example. "Why can't I make characters like this?" I remember thinking then. We often tried to, using house rules, with varying results.
Dragon Issue 85: May 1984
part 2/2
The twofold talisman part two: Another 10 pages finish off this module. The dreadful humour becomes even broader and more irritating in this installment. The screwage also continues, with quite a few annoying tricks that automatically work with no chance to resist. And a poorly done wizard of oz ending. Ugh. Once again, I reiterate, do not put this into a regular campaign. Most players will hate you for it. Definitely not one of the magazines high points.
Ooh. New module submission guidelines. As with their general guidelines, these are a combination of the obvious, such as type it up properly, keep a copy for yourself, Spelling, punctuation, grammar are critical, stay in theme, don't rip off currently existing modules wholesale, and the specific, like don't send a module in to multiple companies at once, avoid railroading and deus ex machina (A rule you guys really ought to remember to stick to yourselves), keep the size between 8 and 16 pages, and stay out of Greyhawk. As ever, the details change, but the basic principles remain the same. Interesting that they are currently trying to avoid "unrealistic" and nonsensical dungeons. Also interesting is the avoidance of "family unfriendly" topics. They don't want to engage in any social commentary at all. Honestly, being controversial got you one of the biggest publicity boosts in your existence. Why would you want to avoid that? Still, I guess it leaves a big hole in the market open for White Wolf to exploit. And listening to media misrepresentation does get deeply tiresome.
Fiction: A stone's throw away by Roger Moore. Part two of our dragonlance teasers. Say hello to Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Bloody kender. If anything causes more irritation to both their friends and their enemies, I don't want to know about it. Especially when they have narrative protection as well as plenty of skill, so things always turn out all right for them. I mean, Demogorgon likes him. Admiral Crankypants himself. What chance do we have? As ever, Roger's writing is pretty good, even when it's subject matter and the implications it has for the game might not be. For now, they can keep their optimism.
Reviews: Warhammer FRP gets a fairly positive review from Ken. It is quite a bit better at presenting large scale fights than most RPG's on the market, and while the human scale stuff is rather simplistic, at least it's fast and easy to make new characters. They already have a supplement mill up and ready. It provides a nice middle ground between wargaming and full RPG's.
Reaper is the warhammer system's predecessor. Like OD&D, it requires substantial GM extrapolation and houseruling to make work. While it still has plenty of interesting elements, these days, it would probably be preferable to salvage the ideas and transplant them into a more robust system.
Lost worlds is a cleverly detailed combat system based around selecting maneuvers and going to the appropriate page on a little booklet. This does rather limit the range of character and creature types you can play within the system, and buying a booklet for each type will get expensive. This is the problem with that level of tactical detail. Every addition multiplies out the overall permutations and resulting complexity. But it does allow for an exceptional amount of transparency, ease of use and realism for the amount of detail covered.
Cry havoc is a fantasy wargame. Well presented, easy to learn, with plenty of interesting scenarios, it gets easily the most unreserved praise of the reviews here. Another of those cases where what gets good reviews at the time, and what survives longest bear little relation.
WHFRP also gets a second review by Katharine Kerr. This is rather less enthusiastic than the first one, calling out the absolutely terrible typing and editing. While the mass combat stuff may be a good game under the poor presentation, the human level stuff is lacking in basic abilities, and the random generation produces ridiculous results. In short, in her opinion it needs to seriously clean up it's act next edition if it wants to be a usable game on the individual scale. Like the fiend folio and call of cthulhu reviews, these varying perspectives are very interesting in hindsight. The different reviewers place different amounts of weight on the flaws of the product, and have different priorities in their gaming. Who's side are you on?
Are's section:
The federation guide to luna: Part two of our lunar series, and they turn their eye on the star trek universe. As this is pre TNG, (another instance where things seem very dated) this may not be compatible with future canon. As it's now pretty easy to get too and from (the waiting time at either end is way longer than the traveling time. ) and well settled, this is definitely not a place you boldly go where no man has gone before. More a place where you can engage in research and politicking without feeling in too much danger (at least, until someone accidentally destroys the universe again. ) Better than last issue's attempt (we already know the federation is a happy utopian culture, so there's no need to make a point of rubbing it in) this is still more than a little dull. Could you try and put some more adventure hooks in next time please.
Gamma hazards: Three new weird and disturbing monsters for gamma world here. Fungimals are rather creepy. They take the form of a harmless little herbivore, and then when eaten, infect the eater and transform them into a giant puffball which then releases more little harmless tasty looking creatures. And the circle of life continues. Not a good way to go.
Humbugs are one of those creatures based off a bad pun. They transform into mundane objects, and create illusions to make people think that they work. Much irritation ensues.
Jungle lurkers are psychic insects that disguise themselvesas plants, and drain life energy while creating illusions as a decoy. The closest to a straight up combat encounter here, they're still gonna be a pain in the ass to catch and defeat.
All in all, an imaginative and entertaining set of creatures. Unlike the last set, back in issue 75, the humour doesn't get in the way of their usefulness. And their core ideas could be adapted for other games with great relish. I can see myself deriving quite a bit of sadistic use from these.
Preventing complacency in Traveler gaming: Another fairly unexceptional "the stats don't tell you everything about a thing article. We've had them for alignment. We've had them for class. We've had them for sex and race. Now we have them for planets. Flesh out your planets beyond the basic infoblock, include ideas that you can't get by simply rolling, remember that what the galactic guidebook says may not be accurate for whatever reason. We've read articles like this before. We'll probably read many more of them in the future, for all kinds of games. The basic principles remain the same, and are as valid as ever. Doesn't stop this one from feeling like filler material.
Coming soon, the marvel super heroes RPG by TSR. Which means that it'll get plenty of representation in this magazine if it's popular.
Lions, tigers and superheroes: Ahh, animal stats. If a game doesn't include them, people'll complain until they get them (and if they do, chances are, they'll complain about them being unrealistic, but hey ho. ) This tackles that little topic in the Champions system. Which means lots of crunch packed into a small article. Given the effect based build, these are pretty logical and easy to understand. Dunno why people couldn't just build their own. Still, it's just the kind of thing this section should be providing, crunchwise. It could be more impressive, but it could also be a lot worse. Roger Raupp contributes some rather poorly proportioned art. I guess that's genre appropriate :p
Starquestions: Or Sage advice goes Sci-fi. This month, they're tackling Star frontiers, but they also intend to cover their other sci-fi properties such as Gamma world. (guess Boot hill and Gangbusters' rules questions will go unresolved though. ) As ever, lets see what inanity people present Penny & co.
Who created star frontiers (Dave Cook & Lawrence Schick. Read the credits in the books. )
Will we ever get to see the prepublication version of the game. (Nah. We rewrote it because it sucked. You wouldn't enjoy it anyway. )
What's the difference between regular Star Frontiers and Alpha Dawn (Marketing. It makes you do crazy things sometimes.)
Can you play star frontiers with D&D (No. Our friendliness to crossovers is currently declining. We'd never approve something like expedition to the barrier peaks these days.)
Can we use the new aliens from the modules as PC's (We do not recommend it, as they are not balanced in the slightest. )
Can a dralasite split in two. (no)
Can a dralasite ooze under a door (no)
Can a dralasite roll (yes, but it isn't the most efficient way of moving)
Can a Vrusk carry someone on their back (Yes, but with lots of complaining)
Can the PC races interbreed (Ick. No. Not even by artificial insemination )
Can you create a genetic superman. (Only as an NPC. Again, game balance, yah boo. )
Why isn't psionics in Star Frontiers (We didn't feel it fit in properly. Not every game needs a magic equivalent. )
How much do skills cost (new level x3, each level bought up individually. It's a bit more complicated than a level system, but you'll get used to it.)
Can I make a jack of all trades PSA ( :sigh: There's always one. Don't the current ones have enough versatility for you. )
Which cost is correct for the standard equipment pack (The cheaper one)
How do gas masks work for aliens (they need to have them specially made. This is particularly problematic for dralasites)
How much tornadium do you get for 50 credits (50 grams. The rest of the weight is protection. You don't want an explosive that unstable exposed to the air. )
Why don't grenades have masses. (because they're too light. You can carry as many as common sense dictates. Don't tell me you still haven't got some of that, when we've said you need it so many times.)
How do you handle vehicle mounted weapons ( Mechanically, fairly leniently. In terms of in game laws, expect trouble. )
What new modules are coming out (Not telling. :p Go to your local shop regularly, see what's in.)
Huh. TSR and GAMA have kissed and made up. What heart warming news. Now the whole hobby can work together to make better conventions. Whatever happened to GAMA, anyway. You never hear people talk about it anymore. Does it exist? Do the various companies still bother to pay dues. Or has it joined the great dustbin of history.
Wormy goes off on a random tangent again. Talanalan has some railroady GM'ing. Snarfquest blows stuff up and gets away.
Although they've had longer issues in terms of page count, this is possibly their biggest yet in terms of actual game content. Or at least, due to the proliferation of small articles, it's resulted in my longest review yet. :p I have to wonder just how I'll deal with their peak size 90's issues. My writing style's already changed quite a bit. Just what will several hundred more issues do to it? But I shouldn't digress. This is certainly not a bad issue overall, but it does have some annoying bits. At least the Ares section is a definite improvement on the first one, and it's not overloaded with adverts. But it doesn't have any real classic standout articles either. I guess we'll have to file this one under average.
Quote from: (un)reason;320564Whatever happened to GAMA, anyway. You never hear people talk about it anymore. Does it exist? Do the various companies still bother to pay dues. Or has it joined the great dustbin of history.
I wasn't sure if you were serious or not with your questions here (it struck me as though it could be commentary on GAMA), but yeah, GAMA is still around. Look here (http://www.gama.org/). It organizes Origins and an annual Vegas show.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;320604I wasn't sure if you were serious or not with your questions here (it struck me as though it could be commentary on GAMA), but yeah, GAMA is still around. Look here (http://www.gama.org/). It organizes Origins and an annual Vegas show.
I was being serious at the time I wrote that, curiously. (although I did check afterwards) I guess it shows how smoothly it's running these days, if it hasn't generated noticeable forum controversy in the decade or so I've been online.
GAMA also is apparently the source of those 3-letter codes used in product codes.
Dragon Issue 86: June 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. Welcome to their 8th birthday. Too old for every one to feel significant, but not a big round number like 10 yet. They're still trying something special, with a full-on cut-out cardboard castle for you to construct yourself. Which is pretty ambitious, really. Plenty of other stuff too. They certainly won't run out of ideas any time soon. But the important question is, is it good? Very good question. As ever, gentle readers, I shall attempt to inform and entertain you.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter asking if familiars can be raised (not easily)
A letter asking if lycanthropy caused by magical items is contagious (not normally ) These two feel more like sage advice questions than letter ones. What's up with that.
Now this is more like it. Eric Field points out a mistake in the poison article in issue 81, and then asks if they ever plan to do a listing of gamers again. They reply that with circulation in the hundreds of thousands, if they tried that these days it'd take up a whole issue. Not feasable or desirable.
A letter engaging in generalized complaints about how the magazine has gone downhill in the past year. Too many cartoons, too many adverts, not enough stuff from Gary & Len, etc etc. Kim replies, but doesn't seem very enthusiastic about it.
Some nitpicking on the nature of gemstones.
A letter asking how you get special rates for conventions. This of course varies considerably from convention to convention.
The forum: Mike Beeman has great difficulty comprehending the concept of multidimensional space. A universe can be unlimited in size in multiple dimensions, but still bounded in the others. And via the miracle of four dimensional folding, it can be infinite, but still have sections which border on other infinities. Is that so hard to comprehend. All it takes is a little advanced geometry knowledge. That you're finding it hard to understand does not make it inherently incomprehensible, merely that you haven't built the right mental model yet.
Jennifer Walker offers a possible rebuttal as to why Dragon doesn't promote Gen Con more.
Russell Thorp has some optional rules from keeping players from combining every herb at once to make a super-healing poltice. Can't have the nonmagical options overtaking the magical ones.
Jeff de Remer has some thoughts on alignment and the nature of paladinhood. Because the 9 alignments are equal, it ought to be no harder to follow any one than the others. But exemplars of an alignment still need to be held to higher standards than anyone else.
And finally, Kirk Everist thinks that the forum is a good idea, and the two types of letters sent to the magazine should stay separated. Well, of course you'd print one of those. ;)
The ecology of the slithering tracker: It was born in the strategic review. Now it's back in the magazine, courtesy of Ed Greenwood. It may not seem like the most threatening of creatures, but then, the really nasty ones rarely do. Before you know it you're turning into a giant puffball, being sucked dry of all your moisture, desperately trying to get that little squirming thing out of your urethra, or having your brain eaten from the inside because you listened at a door without using protection. The slithering tracker is unusual among oozes because it's really rather clever. Which is good for it, because otherwise it'd be doomed, as it doesn't have effective combat attacks, or proper manipulators. In a way, it's so helpless in the face of most other dungeon inhabitants that like kobolds, you're almost rooting for it to succeed despite the odds. As it is, it's the kind of monster that kills silently and unexpectedly, which rarely makes players happy. Because they're intelligent, you can invent all manner of tricks to lure the players into a false sense of security. Ed is his usual loquacious self in matters of their physiology and behavioral habits, inventing a whole bunch of cool little details beyond the basic monster description, most of which will be relevant in actual play. So it's just another masterful contribution from the king of setting depth then.
Familiars with a special use: Stephen Inniss returns to the topic he covered in issue 84, albeit with a different slant. Last time, he examined the natural animals. This time he focusses on the magical creatures wizards can persuade to bond with them. Firstly, he asks why should lawful and chaotic evil wizards get the cool extraplanar servants, and provides analogous creatures for the other 7 alignments. Then he adds three more little magical beasties for those of you who would prefer more options in the pseudodragon mould. Obviously, there's a lot more new crunch in here than the last one, which means you're more likely to want to refer back to it in play. As with imps and quasits, these guys are substantially more powerful than their masters at low levels, and should be treated accordingly. Exercise caution with letting a 1st level PC get one. But they're no more broken than the existing examples (yeah, everyone loves instadeath poison), so I don't have a problem with them in the larger sense, and can happily add them to my list of cool things I'd like to use in a game sometime.
The warrior alternative: Dragonquest gets another article. They may have virtually stopped coverage on non-rpg's, but somehow this little fella has slipped through the cracks. At the moment, not taking a magical course makes you a strictly sub-optimal character, as there's nothing else for you to spend that time on. It's a persistent problem, wizards being more badass than everyone else. So why not allow the characters to train in nonmagical skills with that time and money. It still probably won't make you quite as scary as a high power wizard, but at least it's something. And bringing a game closer to being balanced is usually to be lauded. I quite approve.
Five new enchanted objects: One of those articles that does exactly what it says on the tin.
The staff of the coatl lets you summon one of the aforementioned goody goody snakey snakes, and gives you a bunch of their other powers if you're of an appropriate alignment.
The scepter of defense gives you L337 parrying skillz. This is of course only useful against the kind of attacks you can parry. So pick your enemies wisely. Or give it to a Duelist, and watch them win battles like no-ones business.
Rust dust also does what it says on the tin, affecting anything sprinkled with it as if it'd been hit by a rust monster. Which means you can ruin enemy stuff without having to constantly worry about the thing turning on you and trying to eat yours, barring sudden gusts of wind. Muahahahahaha, etc.
The necklace of alteration is one of those weird items that offers a random amount of benefit each time you activate it. This can be rather amusing, particularly if you're turned into salt.
And finally, Dragonhelms give you a load of dragon related bonuses, at the cost of starting to think like a dragon, and sucking up to them if you actually meet one. A clever example of an item with both benefits and drawbacks, where you'll have to make a genuine choice if it's worth it or not. A strong selection of items all round.
The suel pantheon: Len Lakofka gives us more greyhawk stuff, officially sanctioned by Gary. Lendor, god of time (and tedium, oh my sides are splitting) and Norebo, god of gambling. (and Wee Jas' lover, at that time. An episode of her history I suspect she'd rather retcon.) More to come in future months. I'd say I'd missed you, but unfortunately I haven't. There's still something about Len's writing style that I find rather unappealing. They're still refining the rules to distinguish speciality clerics while keeping them balanced overall though, which is good.
Dragons and their deities: Another godly article by another regular writer. Alan Zumwalt. How do you make dragons even scarier? By letting them gain clerical levels from worshipping their gods. Muahaha and all that. Well, they had to have something dragon related for their birthday as usual. Since they can't get that high a level as clerics, and dragons are already pretty scary combat wise, it's best to channel these extra spells into increasing their versatility, healing and utility powers. Another option for when you have players who are starting to take things for granted and need surprising by putting a different slant on a familiar creature. Secondary options are useful, even when they might be suboptimal, simply because you can confound people who plan around the tactically optimum path all the bloody time. You can't do that when you only have 2 or 3 power options.
Dragon Issue 86: June 1984
part 2/2
Great stoney: This month's centrepiece is certainly an interesting departure from their usual servings. A full-on cardboard castle, this must have added quite a bit to the production costs of this issue. (I wouldn't be surprised if they actually made a loss on this one, like they did with some of the later boxed sets) At 8 storeys tall, it would certainly make an impressive adventuring ground, which you could fill with all kinds of challenges. Like most of the more physical extras, this is of course a bit of a nuisance in .pdf format, but still, I can see what they were doing here, and I'm quite impressed by their ambition. If TSR was run by bean counters and lawyers, this would never have been approved. Yes, it may have got them into trouble, and eventually killed them, but that's the risk an adventurer takes. At least they're living with style and producing extravagant stuff like this along the way.
Chill! Another classic game is about to be released, and gets advertised here. Neat.
Fiction: Mzee by Charles R Saunders. Life is hard for a young orphan. Bullied by other kids, looked down upon by the adults, getting the last share of any stuff the tribe has, and generally having a pretty sucky life. The question is, will that adversity break you, or make you strong? Everyone loves a good coming of age drama. Seems like half the stories (all of them if you believe Joseph Campbell ) are based around that theme. (and the others are romances.) Another likable but not particularly exceptional or original bit of fiction to fill out the pages with.
Reviews: Battlesuit is a wargame set in the same world as the OGRE game, focussing on infantry battles. This is only slightly more revealing about it's ruleset than saying that Mario Kart and Paper Mario are set in the same universe. It's more a marketing decision. But that doesn't stop it from being a fun game, as long as you like wargaming that has no pretensions towards realism, you should get along fine with it.
Phantasy Conclave is almost the definition of a fantasy heartbreaker, (only with a ph, which like using vampyre, faerie, deamon, or khaiyne, automatically marks it as pretentious as well as insipid) essentially a bunch of someone's AD&D houserules turned into a game of it's own. And it is very badly done indeed. The writing is badly done, there's tons or errata, the illustrations even worse, and there are huge amounts of basic detail like character sheets, weapon ranges, movement rates, and general worldbuilding just missing. If you don't want your heart broken and your money wasted, avoid it like the plague.
Ares section:
Know your enemy: An article on constructing supervillain groups. Why they exist, how they survive, and what you do with them. A topic that could be a lot of fun in the right hands. Unfortunately, this particular attempt misses the mark, being too concerned with realistic worldbuilding, and not enough with the creation of a fun story. Trying to force superheroic worlds to be consistent is even harder than trying to get fantasy worlds to be coherent, well-structured and have decent continuity. You'll have to try a hell of a lot harder than this to marry the two goals of worldbuilding and fun gaming, with all the genre conventions keeping them apart. Plus the article feels way too short. Once again we see the problems inherent with only having 16 pages to play with. You just don't have the room to create the depth a topic like this needs.
A world gone mad: This month's examination of the moon goes to the Gamma World universe. The lunar outposts have been taken over by mutant plants, and gigantic single celled organisms. (gross) Now it's a jungle up there. Can the PC's reclaim it and get hold of some kickass technology on the way? Or will they find this a leap too big for mankind. In just a couple of pages, Jim opens up a whole new avenue for adventure that could become the basis of an entire campaign. Just like going extraplanar in D&D, once you have space travel, it's never going to be quite the same game again. Unfortunately, like the planar stuff, it's still pretty sketchy, with vast areas given the most superficial of examination. Better get to work then. Those moonbases aren't going to draw themselves.
Fast and deadly: A short but sweet article introducing a bunch of new ships to the star frontiers game, and then giving us three new sample scenarios employing them so you can get the hang of them before developing your own. See, this is how you make a short article worthwhile. You've got to cut out all the extraneous bits and get right to the point. With proper editing, you can fit in far more than you'd expect. It's a skill that any creative medium, be it movies, books, music or whatever, can benefit from.
Interstellar athletes: Ahh joy, another traveler variant. We used to get quite a few of those before they got rid of sci-fi stuff in here. Good to see them return. Don't want to have a past in the military? Be a professional athlete instead. There's probably more money in it, and less chance of being horribly killed before you retire. Unless your chosen sport is slaughtersphere. :D And given the age most professional athletes retire, a second career as an adventurer is a pretty decent option. So this is a handy little article that you can easily slot into your game. They're definitely getting the hang of this.
Starquestions is handled by Jim Ward on his own this month. Well, he did invent Gamma world, so of course he's the ultimate authority on it's rules. He doesn't need the help of Penny or Will or Jean this time round.
Can cyborgs be mutated. (their organic parts certainly can)
It should be obvious how a gun works, you shouldn't have to work it out (Ha. Try shooting a bow or lighting a fire with a pair of rocks while we watch you and laugh (from a safe distance) for a few hours. Then say that all modern appliances are utterly self-explanatory in their use.)
Why do you get automatically hit when surprised (to encourage you to be more cautious.)
My ref isn't checking for reactions, but just making the NPC's act the way she chooses (That is entirely within her perogative. The dice do not rule personality.)
I want stats for more weapons (Kill kill kill. That's all you people ever think about. Look, bikini's! That'll distract 'em. Or maybe not. Great. Now they're homicidal, fetishistic, and have dreadful taste in music. ;) )
I haz 10 questions on mutations. Pls ansewer them. (longlist is looooooong. Jim hopes people don't get into the habit of doing this. )
Aren't swords and arrows a bit weak. (well, we had to make modern weapons more badass, or what was all that technological advancement for.)
When is gamma world set. (1st edition is in 2471, 2nd is in 2450. Not sure why we went backwards. New editions usually advance the timeline of a game. )
What happens to characters caught by cyber-netters (use the most sick and twisted part of your imagination. )
Can you crossover Gamma world and Metamorphosis alpha ( Effortlessly, my dear Watson. They use pretty similar rules and themes. They could be part of the same universe without either being compromised in the slightest. )
Wormy goes fishing. Watch out, because the fish'll eat you. Talanalan faces sudden death from the skies. Snarfquest has wishes go wrong, as usual.
Bug eyed monsters. The new game of alien abduction from greg costikyan. Looks like fun.
A fairly strong issue, with plenty of gameable material. (although I'd prefer more birthday stuff) The ares section in particular is definitely a substantial improvement on the first two, as they get the hang of the format, and figure out how to get the most into it. Looks like the turmoil of the first few months is over, and we can look forward to another year or so of the format staying stable before the next revamp. And that's not a bad thing, as they seem to have a pretty sweet gig going on here. It's risky to mess with a working formula.
Dragon Issue 87: July 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. A rather amusing cover this issue. Don't let the cutesy art style fool you about the seriousness of their predicament. Those are some scary plant creatures. Meanwhile, the editor would like to assure you that Dragon itself is in no danger whatsoever from the Tolkien estate. Unfortunately, TSR is now big enough that the left hand doesn't neccecarily know what the right hand is doing. We can't say with certainty what's going to be out when, or why changes have to be made sometimes. Sorry about that. Maybe if we had leaders who weren't bickering over control of the company, y'know. Anyway, enough with the inept rumour-quashing that'll just create more speculation, and on with the show.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: The vice-president of empire games writes a letter direct to Michael Gray, saying that the problems he mentioned in his PbP article have now been fixed. Please don't judge us on what happened in the past. Your money is safe with us.
A letter saying Kim's rulings on healing magic are inaccurate. Kim decides to defer. On consideration, nerfing healing magic's ability to help convalescing characters too much is a bad idea.
A letter praising them for printing dragonquest stuff, and asking for more ASAP. They say they'll do what they can.
Two letters complaining about inconsistencies between the ecology articles and their original monster entries. They reply that it matters not. You can pick and choose the fluff for your monsters, or even throw out the canon one and make your own. Don't sweat about it so much. The canon police aren't going to break down your door for changing things....... yet.
The forum: David W Sisk is still not happy with the way disbelief on illusions works. Other GM's in the area disagree with his rulings. You badly need to spell this out to us better.
Scott D Hoffrage gets a second letter published. In it he introduces us to set theory, the idea of different sizes of infinity, the balance of the universe, and lots of other cool conceptual stuff. You can make the other planes fantasticly alien, yet still functional, by correct application of advanced mathematics and imagination. Sounds to me that you ought to be sending in a proper article on this, instead of just pontificating in the forum.
David F Godwin thinks that given the standard amounts of treasure given in modules and random tables, it is pretty probable that characters will have a selection of items which give them a decent chance of taking down gods by the time they get to their upper teens, even without actively twinking. And they are unlikely to be happy about being forced to retire. The game's breaking at high levels is inherent to the system, not a result of bad players, and they shouldn't get all the flak for it.
Edward R Masters is another returning forumite, and he still thinks the planes don't really make sense as written. How can planets orbit through earth? How do you negate pressure in an infinite solid expanse with a defined down. It's too much hassle to fix, so I'm never going to let my players go there. Dear oh dear. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to side with Scott.
Beyond the dungeon part 1: Katharine Kerr starts really earning her keep around here, with one of those articles that tries to push people out of their comfort zone, and into new vistas. Wilderness adventures may be well established amongst the TSR cognoscenti by now, but there are still substantial holdouts of grognardia that haven't seen the sun in years. Ironic that the dungeon could wind up being considered safer than the wilderness for many people. The basic and expert sets have a lot to answer for.
For a start, moving around on different terrains dramatically impacts your movement rate. This requires an exception based new susbsystem that only works for humanoids! And lots more rules tinkering, all over the shop. While the goal is laudable, and the ideas interesting, the execution of the crunch isn't that well integrated. She's right though that D&D really needs a perception stat rather than having flat chances to surprise that a few class and race abilities modify in arbitrary ways. But then this would involve overhauling the entire system. A good article, that tries hard, but is just lacking that final push to get it into the classic domain, in my opinion. Lets hope part two can pull something really cool out of the hat next month.
The ecology of the dryad: Ahh, another of the popular sylvan creatures. How many people have fantasized about being charmed by one and lured off to be their love slaves for a few years. And how many adventurers have found them an almighty pain in the ass. All we wanted to do was cut down a few trees to make a fire with, and cook the animals we just killed for our dinner. Plenty of detail is gone into on their lifecycle, and a few new words are invented as well. They finally manage to strike a decent balance between fiction and footnotes in this one as well. If they'd included a little more action, rather than the fiction just being a load of sagely pontification, it would have been perfect. There's always some little nitpick, isn't there. Keep trying guys.
Gods of the suel pantheon: Len continues his elaboration on greyhawk gods, with Kord the brawler (now there's a familiar name) and his son Phaulkon, god of the open air. Seems like he's quite the Zeus figure, with tons of kids all over the place, more than a few of which become demigods. Your PC can become one too if they can roll 2 18's for their stats. Shades of Synnibarr here, as they reward arbitrary luck with even greater fortune. Once again a whole page is used up recycling the generic god abilities as well. In short, this is a rather poorly thought out piece, that I would recommend you keep in the Lendore isles where it belongs. There is an excellent reason why this style of game design has been largely abandoned. If you try it, you'll find out why pretty soon, when all the other players start complaining.
The legacy of hortus: A load of botanical fluff about a wizard who transferred his lifeforce into the plants he created. Lots of very very bad pun names are used as the basis for animal/plant hybrids of various kinds. It all gets rather silly. And they don't even make stats for them either. I strongly disapprove. At least when Jim gets silly with his mutants he does so inventively, and with decent crunch. I'm sorry, but dedicating the article to a dead person doesn't get you a pass on quality judgements, and I pronounce this article very much wanting.
Reviews: Stalking the night fantastic combines modern day occult, and the spy genre, like an early X-files. Unfortunately, the cool premise and setting is ruined by seriously clunky, poorly organized and overcomplicated rules. Steal from it and convert to conspiracy X or something.
The forever war (another product they've been advertising in here for a while.) is a wargame loosely based off one of the scenarios in the book. Again, the potential offered by the book is left unfulfilled, with big chunks missing or not very well modeled. While not a terrible game in it's own right, it does seem like rather a waste of a license. The review is notewothy for being the first mention of "beer and pretzels" gaming in the magazine though. Guess I get to pinpoint the popularization of another catchphrase, which pleases me.
Dragon Issue 87: July 1984
part 2/2
Whiteout: A 16 page top secret adventure. Head to the antarctic to figure out what the hell the Children Of Neptune (not literally, we aren't straying into crossover land here.) are up to. The previous adventures that appeared in the magazine were all part of a larger plot by a villainous mastermind! Can you foil their plan? The fate of the world rests in the balance. Looks like an open ended and rather tricky mission designed to be a climactic part of an extended campaign. The PC's have chance to make a real difference in the world with this one. That certainly makes a change from all the completely disconnected D&D modules. (particularly the railroaded metaplot ones where the difference you're gonna make is predetermined, no matter what the players do.) I very much approve, apart from the continued tendency towards silly names. Top secret has definitely come quite a way in the last few years from pseudo dungeon crawls in Sprechenhaltestelle.
Fiction: Simon Sidekick by John E Stith. Sci-fi manages to stray out of the Ares section in this fairly long piece about, oohh, yet another little boy learning how to come of age, and the people and things that help him through the experience. Angst is felt, the plot is nicely telegraphed and twists where it ought to, and the end is bittersweet. No great surprises here. File under solid but unexceptional.
Dragonriders of pern game and calendar available now! Buy it! Hee.
Freeze! Star law!: It's not easy enforcing the law properly out in Star Frontiers land. With such a huge area to cover, and much of the power in the hands of huge corporations who essentially are the government on many planets, a star law ranger's gotta be a pretty badass character, who can track a fugitive down over the light years, and get the job done by underhanded means and compromises if neccecary. Now that's a job custom suited for adventurer types, who even if they claim noble ends, often wind up using the most sociopathic of means to achieve them, and care nothing for collateral damage. You can even have a whole team of PC's working as a posse, and they actively encourage that, as well as drawing fun old west parallels in other ways. This is almost a textbook example of how to open up a new mileu of play and make it seem fun and inviting. (unless you don't like space exploration and cowboys, in which case you are dead to me :p ) The bureaucratic rules are handled with a light touch, and you have plenty of leeway to be a maverick and push their limits without being kicked out. I love this idea, and would very much like to play something in this style at some point.
Luna, a travellers guide: As the pun name suggests, welcome to the moon in the Traveller system. As Traveller is set waaaaaaay in the future, the moon has a history of habitation stretching back thousands of years, and a population of 8 million. It's a fairly decent place to live, but there is a substantial minority of Solomani extremists, and plenty of other things going on to keep it interesting for PC's. Marc Miller personally oversees this, turning in a well integrated and thought out piece that makes it feel like a real place with plenty of built up cultural quirkiness of it's own. Seems like the entries in this series are continuing to improve as they go along, which is definitely promising. If they can keep this going for a year or so, we should get some pretty cool variations by the end of it.
A field guide to lunar mutants: Jim follows up on last month's lunar article, as he promised. We get three examples of each of the two big competing genera, macrobes and plants. That should get your evil imaginations started.
Sword macrobes are giant amoeba with a vibrablade tentacle. Now you can have lightsaber battles with amorphous monsters on the moon. That's a pretty cool image. What more could a cinematic adventurer want.
Ball Macrobes look like a certain brightly coloured kids toy, and throw exploding stink balls at you. Such a humiliating way to go.
Eye Macrobes look like giant disembodied eyes sitting on a wall, duh. They're the brains of the single celled organisms, using their psychic powers to organize and direct all the bacteria in the area. If you spot one, expect trouble to follow soon after. On the plus side, if they're intelligent, you have a shot of negotiating. Hmm. What does a giant psychic eye want?
Coners are mutant pine trees. Not only do they shoot their cones, but they can plug themselves into a socket and use that power as a weapon.
Rosoid are ambulatory roses. Yeah, it's as silly as it sounds, but remember, roses have sharp thorns. And when they're 3 meters tall, you don't laugh at them for being froofy unless you want a fistful of thorns in the face.
Shooters are mutant dandelions that shoot their flowerheads like giant shuriken. Ouch. And if you don't dig them out fast, they'll start to grow a new flower inside your body. The old tricks are the best, eh.
As ever, the gamma world contributions are often rather gonzo and silly. That certainly hasn't changed. In a way, the game is already starting to seem outdated compared to the new more sophisticated settings. Still, it is funny and inventive. And it's certainly not generic in any way, despite allowing a pretty kitchen sink selection of add-ons. Jim really knows how to switch things up, and would probably be great fun as a GM. I'm sure these guys would make for a fascinating game in actual play.
Star questions is headed by Roger Moore this month, and is tackling the Universe game, one of the properties TSR snaffled up when they bought SPI. So while they may not have designed it, anything he says is Official Material now.
What new stuff are you making for the game. (lotsa new articles in various magazines. We shall remain curiously silent about any bigger stuff. )
What unpublished stuff do you have for the games. (lots more articles, some quite big. Write lotsa letters and we'll consider putting them in the magazine. )
What do the interiors of starships look like. (You tell us. We're all agog and fascinated to find out as well.)
I want more info on star systems. (You can get more info on stars in any good astronomy books. Star systems in the game, on the other hand, are all made up, because our telescopes just aren't good enough.)
Why do many stars have such silly names (Because there's a lot of stars, and a lot of bored astronomers trying to name them. Strings of numbers are hard to remember, and they ran out of sensible god names ages ago.)
Hw do you get a meteor storm in outer space. (When a comet falls apart, it can make space hazardous over quite an area. especially when you're traveling through at high speeds. Pinprick punctures are a pain in the ass. )
Wormy is still on a fishing trip. Talanalan gets metagame. Snarfquest is off on another mission.
Apart from the saggy bit in the middle, this has been a pretty impressive issue. The Ares section continues to gather steam, and the forum is finally starting to have recurring writers. We're seeing an interesting mix of new and old style articles, as they might be moving away from the game's roots, but there are still quite a few people writing and playing games like that. Still, as that results in an interesting variety of articles, it keeps things interesting for me. I can definitely see why this can be considered a classic era for the magazine.
Dragon Issue 88: August 1984
part 1/2
103 pages. Oh man, more litigious crap. This is what happens when companies pick similar names. Avalon Hill has been sued by Monarch Avalon, whoever the hell they were. And the settlement they've come too looks bloody stupid. I do not approve. And to top it off they use this as an excuse to remind us that they'll sue our asses as well if they think we're getting too fresh with their intellectual property. It's a hard life, being a big company. You've got to keep people on your side without them thinking you're a pushover, or they'll just take and take until you've got nothing left. So what are we getting for our money this time?
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter asking if the people from TSR would really send an unsigned personal reply on normal paper. Kim replies that the answer to that is hell no, someone's trying to trick you. You were quite right to be suspicious.
Some nitpicks about the unarmed fighting system in issue 83. It's supposed to be a simpler variant. Putting extensive lists in it would spoil that.
A letter complaining about the lack of stats in the legacy of hortus article. I quite understand.
Some more questions, this time on the new magic items from issue 86
A question about dragon deities. Who the hell do neutral dragons worship? Kim encourages you to fill out the dragon pantheon yourself. The AD&D multiverse is a big place, and there's still huge wodges of it that need filling in.
And finally a question on if stuff in the magazine is official. Yes, most of it isn't, but what about all the stuff Gary trumpets as Official AD&D Material™. Kim replies that while it may be more official than other stuff in the magazine, even that isn't truly tournament official stuff. You're still restricted to the three corebooks if you go to a convention and play a game there, which keeps everyone on a level playing field, no matter how much they've spent. )
The forum: Sam Chupp doesn't have a problem with high level characters. Once you get to that stage, you have to really start individualizing them, and creating plots and challenges customized to the character, instead of endlessly throwing bigger and badder dungeons at them. It's a big world out there, and you've gotta expand your scope to deal with it.
Kevin Deevey & Richard Emerich have some extensive thoughts on the nature of illusions and how to handle disbelief. This topic isn't going away any time soon, is it.
Adam Zar is entirely in favor of high level adventures where you take on gods and arch demons and things. Saying that you can't kill them because it'll upset the cosmic balance is like saying monsters don't exist to be overcome by the heroes. It's like saying the universe ought to suck, and you shouldn't even try and change that. Which frankly is both pessimistic and unambitious. These things were given stats so they could be beaten. So let's go and do epic heroey things. Hurrah!
Brian M Oglivie explains how the planes can work in simple terms, using some classic books as his sources. Expand your mind and get cosmic, man. Or better still, take it logically, and even the impossible can be rationalized. It's a tremendously useful human ability, (abeit one responsible for lots of stupid religious dogma. ) and so it should be used.
Chris Wayne puts his own spin on the Star law police force for his game. Any setting can be customized, and that does not imply that the canon setting is deficient.
James Brewer is shocked that the RPGA puts so little emphasis on the actual fun had when it comes to scoring tournament play. After all, it it's not fun, why play? It's not as if there are big cash prizes for winning AD&D tournaments.
Kevin Lawless thinks that the idea of dragon clerics, particularly worshipping beings as weedy as Bahamut and Tiamat, is a totally stupid idea. Both the idea of tithing and parishes are grossly inappropriate to their nature, and that's not even getting into the alignment problems with chaotic creatures worshipping lawful gods. Take that, Alan Zumwalt. Now someone hurry up and make a proper dragon pantheon, with gods you can really believe in.
Gods of the suel pantheon gives us Syrul, Fortubo and Wee Jas this month. Two long forgotten, one much less so. Syrul is the hag goddess of deceit, and a thoroughly nasty piece of work in general. She's certainly a good target for high level characters who want to try a little godslaying. Fortubo is essentially the lendore isle's dwarf god, as his portfolio covers mountains and metal. He's a bit dull really, being exactly what you would expect of someone with his portfolio to be. Wee Jas, of course, is another kettle of fish altogether. Somehow she manages to have not just one, but two really powerful portfolios, plus a bunch of minor associations as well. Ruthless, but not outright evil, clever but still beautiful, highly disciplined but with her chaotic bit on the side lover who she'd really rather wasn't mentioned in polite company, and with an interesting special benefit for her clerics, it's easy to see why she became so popular amongst a wide section of the population, both in and out of the game. She's far more three-dimensional than the majority of D&D gods, and in a pleasing way. And so we get to see D&D's implied setting build itself up some more, in it's slow and haphazard way. Take the best, leave the rest behind.
Physics and falling damage: Oh great. Not this annoying issue again. Have we not established that trying to make D&D realistic is like trying to fit an elephant into a mini. Neither side ends up very happy, and even if you do somehow find a way to do it, the thing runs so slowly you might as well not have bothered. Give it up, embrace the gamism. Anyway, we get a detailed analysis of acceleration rates vs air resistance, and the curve that follows to get us to terminal velocity in the real world. And then the author introduces an enormous fudge factor so as not to change the game too much after all that. Which satisfies neither my gamist or my simulationist side. Bored now. Next please.
Kinetic energy is the key: Great. More falling physics pontification. Bzzzt. Epic fail. I said next please.
The ecology of the rust monster: Ahh, this is more like it. Now if ever a monster deserved an entry in this series, it's this one. The rust monster has been a D&D staple almost from the very beginning, and remains one of it's most iconic monsters. In fact, specifically because of it's treatment in 4e, it's become the symbol for a certain kind of playstyle that the current designers no longer support, but many people still hanker for. Ed proves once again that he really likes his footnotes, providing us with a bunch of optional rules that clarify lots of points and make the creature even more scary in some ways. Crucially, it answers the questions, can you train them, and can you extract their rust inflicting power to use for your own ends. (yes, but not easily for both.) That'll make a lot of adventurers happy. Now they can put the screwage boot on the other foot. I certainly intend to make use of this article at some point, be it as player or GM. Like antipaladins, there was probably substantial prior demand for this article, and I hope you found it satisfying. I certainly have.
Off the shelf: The chaos weapon by Colin Kapp is a very epic bit of science fantasy, with disgustingly powerful heroes facing off against even more disgustingly powerful villains. It may not be that deep, but it's a fun story.
The paradoxicon by Nicholas Falletta is an examination of paradoxes in all their forms. How they work, why they are so annoyingly intractable, and the people who have struggled with them throughout history. It should give you plenty of inspiration on how to puzzle and frustrate your players.
The sword and the chain by Joel Rosenberg is the second book in the guardians of the flame series. Since it looks like they're stuck in a fantasy universe for the long haul, (or at least a trilogy) it's time for them to really find out what makes their characters work, and set goals for themselves. The meta conceits do not detract from the drama of the story.
Across the sea of suns by Gregory Benford gets a fairly negative review, as the primary narrative device of delayed lightspeed communications results in a confusing plot that gets bogged down by symbolism.
Salvage and destroy by Edward Llewellyn, on the other hand gets a very positive review. While there is a certain amount of the usual examination of humanities stupidity there is far more celebration of our positive aspects, and our ability to survive in the face of great odds. The aliens get a pretty cool treatment as well.
Neuromancer by William Gibson is of course the classic that was a huge inspiration on the cyberpunk genre. What seems like a techno-thriller at first turns into an almighty headfuck with a downer ending. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Dragon Issue 88: August 1984
part 2/2
Beyond the dungeon part two: So, how do you make an exciting wilderness adventure, Mrs Kerr? It's not as if the great outdoors is short on features that are a real challenge to get through. You've just got to figure out how to fit it into the framework of the game. Once again, the need for a proper skill system becomes apparent, as stuff has to be handled with a combination of attribute checks and ad hoc bonuses based on what skills they ought to have. Which means difficulties will vary wildly from group to group, and the skill of the DM becomes paramount in judging how to run a situation. Game design has a long way to go in these respects.
Of course it's not all wilderness out there. Towns, fortresses and ruins also receive the attention of her expert eye. Once you get out of the dungeon, you have to pay more attention to how your locations are structured, and the relationships of the people and creatures living there. Once again, this advice may be familiar now, but it's never been covered in this much detail around here before. If it seems unimpressive at times in retrospect, it's simply because the lessons here have been taken on board and developed upon so much since then. That's the thing about progress. It makes things look dated. We'd really miss this stuff if it wasn't there.
Games workshop gives us a big full colour ad for warhammer minis. It looks pretty good.
The indiana jones RPG. Another big licence to coincide with the new movie. I wonder how this one'll be handled in the magazine, as it's another TSR game. We shall see.
Limited edition 10th anniversary D&D collectors set. Pop it while its hot, pop it while it's hot. Get it while it's cheap, cos it'll be worth more later.
Elefant hunt: Another Tom Wham game. My, they are adding up over the years. How does he keep his imagination fresh? Well, in this case by stealing a real life situation wholesale and putting his own spin on it. Like the name says, you hunt elefants and other afercan game. If you're lucky you'll find their graveyard and can loot tons of ivory. A game that is fairly high on randomness, but still has more than enough tactical choices for you to consider, you're unlikely to see a consistent winner on this one. Still, it looks a good deal of fun, and by changing the score needed to win you can easily make this a long or short game, as you choose. It may not be very politically correct, but hey, this is a magazine where killing things and taking their stuff comes as standard. There's nothing wrong with enjoying imagining doing things you'd never consider doing in real life, right?
Jorune! Another familiar name gets it's first advert here. We are getting some interesting adverts this month.
Fiction: Key to Ramali by Ardath Mayhar. What, after your last three novels got viciously slated here, you send in some fiction to Dragon? Now that's gotta take some balls. I have to applaud that. Now I can see if your writing's really as bad as Chris Henderson says without having to spend any money.
And the answer is ......... meh. I've seen much worse. She does have a tendency towards florid prose and silliness. But it's certainly not as bad as, say, the Gord stuff. I can live with this.
Reviews: Rolemaster and it's supplements get a good looking over this issue. Well, I say supplements, but really, all 5 of these are needed to get the full rules for playing the game. And we complain that 3 books is too many for D&D.
Character law, despite being the most critical for actually playing a game, was the last part of the system produced. Characters start off with a certain level of baseline competence in the stats needed for their class, no matter how badly they rolled. There are a whole bunch of clever little ideas in the rules, some of which are good, some of which are clunky, and many of which have since been stolen and refined by other systems. Many of it's innovations seem obvious in retrospect, as really good inventions often do.
Spell law features spells up to 50th level, neatly arranged in themed spell lists. This gives them loads of room to put everything they can imagine, while making sure that spells for a particular level are fairly balanced. With lots of room for differentiation amongst the low power effects, it doesn't get out of hand as quickly as D&D spells do. There's also plenty of different varieties of spellcasters. As long as you're good at table flipping, it goes surprisingly smoothly. At least, the reviewer thinks so. If you're not keen on crunch, you may disagree with him.
Arms law, aka the big book of really gruesome critical hits, gives you the rules for weapons. Consult a different chart for each one, allowing them a tremendous amount of mechanical differentiation while still being able to resolve each round with a single roll.
Claw law does basically the same thing for animals. It focusses on their weaponry to the exclusion of any fluff. It also provides rules for martial arts, and generally seems like the least essential of the books.
Campaign law provides both plenty of world-building advice, and the start of a sample world, Vog mur. As ever, the economics has holes picked in it, as does the "realism". The density of crunch makes it rather tricky to houserule the game. (oh, you aint seen nothing yet) But still, as a primer on how to build good games, regardless of system, it's pretty helpful. Once again we see how things that seem obvious in retrospect really need to be taught.
Before the dark years: Oooh. Jim ward finally decides to reveal the timeline of gamma world (and metamorphosis alpha, as he decides to officially make them occupy the same universe.) How did we get from the modern world to a postapocalyptic mess. As with a lot of timelines from a few decades ago, it already seems rather dated, as their predictions were wildly out. (Although it'd be rather more surprising and worrying if gamma world of all things did turn out to be prescient, but there you go. ) It also suffers from the "reality is rarely as cool as your imagination" problem. Sometimes the game works better if things are kept mysterious, at least from the players. Just look at dark sun. Are we any happier knowing that the reason Athas is so fucked up is because Rajaat was an angsty emo boy that nobody liked, so he had to get revenge on the world. Do not ask, for you may get answers. In other words, not only did we not need this article, but we were probably better off without it. I guess you can't know until its too late. Some things, you can't imagine being without once you know them, others you just wish you'd never seen. Such is life. Not much I can do about it now.
The marvel-phile: Ooh. Now this is a series I remember still being active when I started reading. I guess this means the marvel superheroes game'll be getting consistent coverage for quite a long time. Neat. Hello also to Jeff Grubb, another familiar name who's going to be doing a lot of great stuff in the future. We start off with stats for Thor, Loki and Ulik. Each has their powers packed into a remarkably small and self-explanatory package. Any superhero game has to be able to handle a ridiculous range of power and versatility in it's characters without breaking, and if FASERIP can handle god level creatures as smoothly as this, then that bodes well for it. Like the ecologies, I'm very pleased to see this series arrive, and look forward to seeing how it develops over the years.
The battle at ebony eyes: Star frontiers gets some more love with a new scenario. Fight the sathar around a pair of twin black holes. This means there are serious risks of falling in, and weird space-time distortions which add quite a lot of bookkeeping. So don't use this one unless you're already fairly good with the rules, and need a new challenge to keep you interested.
Yachts and privateers return: And we get another quick add-on for star frontiers in the form of 11 new ships. A single page packed full of easy to insert crunch. That's always welcome.
StarQuestions is passed back to Penny and looks at star frontiers again. Quite the round robin going on here.
How high can ability scores go (100. Higher breaks the system)
I want more info on van neumann machines and their creators. (They're not as good as you think. But as long as they're only facing animals and plants, they don't have to be. )
The planet Gollywog (no kidding) has Waaaaaaaay too much carbon dioxide for humans to survive there. (Oops. Errata time. )
You forgot to paint the outer reach counters properly (Once again, oops. You can paint them like that if you like. )
You also forgot to name the planets inside the sunbursts (So we did. Once again, I apologize profusely, and encourage you to fix the errors we made. )
Talanalan alliterates excessively. Wormy finally gets to do some wargaming. We finally find out what species snarf is.
Yet more signs that the hobby as a whole is changing in this one. So many new people pouring into the hobby, bringing their unique perspectives in with them. For some this is a great thing, while for others, this means gaming is stuck in an eternal september.
I've found this one of the less captivating issues of late. While technically, they're as good as ever, it has had more than it's fair share of seriously irritating articles. I guess that'll happen once in a while when they're covering a wide range of topics. Lets hope next issue's contents are more to my taste.
Dragon Issue 89: September 1984
part 1/2
96 pages. There really should be 20 more, but the absence of the creature catalog from the dragon magazine archive is well documented. If anyone could direct me to somewhere I could download the missing pages, I would be very grateful. Still, plenty more stuff I can tackle right now. Lets hope we can sort out these little omissions later.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Another letter asking for a collection of covers, which they have to sadly deny, for legal reasons.
A letter from Merle Rasmussen talking about Operation Whiteout and the people who won it when it was used as a tournament adventure, plus lots of other cool tidbits.
Some questions on the rakshasa article in issue 84. They're a funny bunch. Not really prime material or outsiders, they're actually able to fit in all over the place.
An letter brutally picking apart the recent dragonquest article. This gets an exceedingly lengthy reply from it's original author defending it. Who do you believe? Are non-spellcasters inferior or not?
A question on how paladins handle dragonhelms. They're perceptive enough to realize they're being fucked with.
A letter asking for more scientific detail in the ecologies. Kim reminds them that they have to strike a balance between detail and not overdoing things. Balance balance, always with the balance. Go to the extreme for a change, it's much more interesting.
The forum: Bob Kindel thinks that high level campaigns aren't as much fun, and you ought to slow down advancement to keep players at the manageable stage. Also, anyone using deities powers cleverly ought to be able to beat even really high level characters. Those campaigns where god-killing happens are Doing It Wrong™.
Edgar W Francis IV (Oh, I say, old chap) also has thoughts on how to handle high level games, and transitioning from the old characters to some new ones. Just because you retire individual characters, doesn't mean the saga can't continue.
Katharine Kerr has a tremendously lengthy contribution on the idea of playing evil characters. Group pressure can lead to people doing horrifying things they'd never consider individually. It ends with the conclusion that even fantasizing about committing evil acts is mentally unhealthy. Great, another writer joins the morals brigade. There may have been good things about 2nd ed, but it's already clear who the drivers of the bad points are going to be.
David F Nalle finishes off this month's forum by talking about Ken Rolston, and his reviewing process. The things he calls out as flaws are sometimes intentional design choices, be it for aesthetic or financial reasons. You can't please everyone, I guess.
Survival is a group effort: Another bit of sociological pontification by Stephen Innis. This is pretty cool, going into population growth, and how creatures with short lifespans can out-survive ones with longer lifespans, but also longer times to reach maturity. Immortality is good from an individual perspective, but actually not that good in the long run for for a species. This is why elves and dwarves can wind up dying races against the goblinoids, despite massive individual superiority. He then gets even cooler, tackling the problems inherent in spawning undead and lycanthropes. What logical reason could there be for them not having overrun the game world already? Do they diliberately hold back to make sure they have prey in the future. Are they dumb enough that they prefer to kill rather than infect. Maybe there is none, and these creatures are new additions to the world that you'd better do something about or face extinction in a few generations. One of those cool articles that helps you build your own world better by gently stimulating your brain and directing your imagination. A strong start that definitely goes on my worldbuilder checklist.
Six very special shields: You can probably figure out just from the name that this is one of Ed's Elminster articles, wherein he pontificates on a bunch of magical items from the Realms. Reptar's wall. Thurbrand's protector. Hawkstone's bulwark. Dzance's guardian. Shoon's buckler. Grimjaw. (Guess Ed's theasaurus ran out of synonyms for shield ;) ) All have some surprising special ability beyond just deflecting blows, and most of them have a sting in the tail to their powers that can be inconvenient if you don't know how to operate them properly. (gee, what are the odds if you just find them on a treasure pile or take them from a dead enemy) By now I'm used enough to Ed's style that this doesn't have quite the impact it used too, but this is still a pretty cool article, that makes it's magical items seem properly magical, rather than just extra good utility items. As with the last article, this is showing you the way to build your stuff properly. Idiosyncracies are good. Nothing is identical in real life, and only abstraction and convenience makes it so in games.
Heroes Unlimited! The most comprehensive hero game on the market! By Kevin Siembida! Buy it now! Looks like the war for best superhero game is very much on. Bring it! We can handle it.
Gods of the suel pantheon: Len continues to provide a channel for Gary to get his material into the magazine during his unwilling exile. This month he's filling in the villainous side of the suel pantheon some more. Not even the sophisticated kind, but the ones that lurk in grotty places in the wilderness and'll get you you serious trouble if you're found worshipping them. Pyremius, Beltar, and Llerg. A fine bunch of reprobates to make your players lives miserable with. They shapeshift. They plot. They rage. They only grant mediocre special abilities to their clerics, including one clever little false benefit that makes suckers out of it's recipients. Once again, they also have to deal with errata. Gods are such a complication. And once again, this fails to enthrall me. So it goes.
Dragonlance, the epic novel trilogy, to tie in with the 12 part adventure series. Hello, Mr railroad, how will you force us to follow you, to get from the beginning to the end, without any choice of routes. Infinite draconians? What a wonderful idea. Where do they come from? Neveryoumind.
The many types of magic: Ah, yes, quibbling over exactly what the different schools of magic mean, and why certain spells are in one and not another. I knew this would come up at some point. And in many cases these are quite valid points. Why the hell is comprehend languages an alteration, or fear an illusion, when common sense would say they're a divination and a charm effect. What was their writer smoking at the time. Why is alteration used as a catchall. Why are there so few invocation effects, and what's the difference between an invocation and an evocation. Why does necromancy affect living things as well as dead ones. Why does magic jar get a category of it's own? Lots of questions are raised, and not nearly as many are answered. Lets hope that someone in the staff is paying attention and takes this stuff into account come next edition. Yet more evidence that despite their initial belief that AD&D was this great and perfect work that would need no change, an overhaul, or at least revision, is increasingly needed. A little cruft shedding never did any harm, and often makes you feel a lot better.
Time life books takes out a rather pretty full colour double page spread. Enter the magical world of myth and legend. Subscribe now! Oh, the cheese.
The role of books: Looks like they've decided to play around with their formats again. Lew is giving us another set of non-fiction reviews to help us in our worldbuilding. This time he's concentrating on the heart of the medieval experience, castles, and fighting. Two things adventurers love. And two things you can definitely do right or wrong, unlike all the fantastical elements. So what's hot and what's not in Pulsipher land?
The art of war in the middle ages by Charles W C Oman is one of the great old books on this subject. Originally published way back in 1898, it has gone through a number of revisions since then. It covers developments over more than a millenium in exhaustive detail, far more than you could ever need. The kind of thing you go to a reference library to look things up from, rather than buy.
Warfare in feudal europe by John Beeler covers a smaller period in less detail, but is far more accessable to the layman reader, with clear organisation, good synopses, and lots of analysis of the facts. If you want to get usable detail for your games without spending days poring over academic minutinae, get this one instead.
Medieval warfare by H W Koch gets a rather poor review. With poor writing and organization, this is one to avoid.
A history of fortification from 3000 BC to AD 1700 by Sydney Toy has tons of floor plans and photographs of various places that you can steal liberally, and adapt for your game, as well as plenty of detail about how they were built, lived in and developed over time. Another one you'll probably have to go to the reference libraries to find, and then photocopy bits from. Some things, the internet still doesn't really provide, at least not for free.
The medieval castle: Life in a fortress in peace and war by Philip Warner also covers castles, burt is focussed more on the people who lived in them, and how they changed their tactics based on new innovations in technology and attack styles. Why things developed the way they did is as important as the simple facts, and this fills that gap admirably.
Dragon Issue 89: September 1984
part 2/2
A reversible hooded cape? Odd thing to advertise in here. Well, I suppose it is nearly halloween. Grim reaper is always a good costume choice.
Halt! Who goes there: Hmm. This is a class I don't remember anyone talking about. The sentinel, guardian of people and places against assassins and thieves. Of course, in D&D, magic can render those abilities redundant with depressing ease. And while they can foil invisibility and stealth, other tricks like ethereality, remote scrying and mind control are still going to bypass them. Still, they have lower XP requirements than fighters, and more special abilities, so their power problems are more those that all the fighting classes face when compared to the spellcasters than actual underpoweredness. Having one of these guys along would certainly be useful as a backup for your thief, not to mention a failsafe for if you can't trust him, and suspect he's conning the rest of the party. I quite like this, as they fill a niche that the regular classes don't, rather than just being a hybrid. There are a few silly OD&Disms, like forced alignment change, but those just add to the flavour of the whole package. This is definitely an underappreciated gem that I'm pleased to have unearthed and would like to put in a future game.
Beefing up the bureaus: Oh noes. Top secret isn't dramatic or cinematic enough. We must fix this. This is one of the most audaciously blatant power-ups I've seen. So much so that I can't really give my usual complaint about power creep, as there's nothing subtle about it. Which is cool, in a way. If your GM allows it, he knows exactly what he's getting himself into. I guess this is the kind of thing that would lead them to completely retool the game in Top Secret SI. In any case, it's a short article that gets right to the point, so I didn't have time to get bored either.
Learn magic by the month: Dragonquest continues to get a surprising amount of coverage. This time, they cover the topic of learning a new college of magic in play. How do you keep it balanced with other training options, while still allowing for interesting adventuring. The solution is to allow you to break up your training times, and fit them around your adventuring. The rest of the article is comprised of crunch that looks pretty solid to my untrained eye, not making things too easy or hard, and having a number of quirks that emulate the real world education process. Again, I quite approve. It's nice to see they're putting plenty of non-D&D stuff outside the ares section as well.
What is a monster worth: Ho hum. Another attempt to standardize the amount of XP different special powers are worth for monsters. The current rules don't differentiate between things like 5% and 100% magic resistance, and people may disagree about what counts as a significant special power. This needs fixing. How can we do this? For a start, everything not combat related is irrelevant. Hmm. Where will we hear that again? Snark aside, we get to see another bit of behind the scenes work, as they attempt to refine their design technology. One of those things which would definitely pay off in subsequent editions. But not particularly interesting to read about. Lists alone do not a fun article make, particularly when they remind you of what you're missing.
Fiction: Dunkle Zee by Troy Denning: Hey, what's Minnie Driver doing in the artwork. This is way before she got famous. ;) Anyway. Hmm. Looks like another writer who would go on to write plenty of books for D&D makes their first appearance here. This feels like an excerpt from a larger novel, as it refers to lots of terms that it doesn't properly explain, and then cuts itself off in an unsatisfactory way, leaving the plot hanging. I wouldn't mind, but it is well enough written that I really do want more. Which I suppose means he's done his job well. Is this expanded upon anywhere? He has my interest now, and If there is anything, I'd like to read it.
The mighty Mega-Corporations: Star frontiers continues to get plenty of setting detail. The corporation system, and how it first drove galactic expansion, before being torn apart due to corruption, resulting in corporate wars that left the human civilizations vulnerable to the sathar. An all too plausible situation, given the reprehensible behaviour of many big companies in the real world. The pursuit of profit can lead to shocking amounts of misery and death. But it also leads to lots of cool adventure opportunities in a game like this, so that's alright. It ends with a promise to follow up on this next month, talking about the specific megacorps some more. Seems like they're doing that quite frequently in the ares section. I guess with limited page count each month, they need to do this to get the compromise between depth and variety right. I suppose it's making the best of the situation. Works for me, anyway.
Luna, the empire and the stars: Our moon series turns it's eye to the Other Suns game in it's 6th installment. Once again, history has advanced to the point where the timeline in here seems a bit silly. (or depressing, given how many of us thought moonbases would be well established by now. ) Similarly, the long term deadliness of nuclear weapons is much exaggerated, given what we know now. But hey, artistic license is needed to make a good story. Worse things happen on TV.
Of grizzly bears and chimpanzees: Gamma world gets another little expansion this month. Mutant animals as currently written require a lot of GM fiat in determining stats. So here's a little bit of help to get everyone on the same page, at least. We recommend that you not allow characters to select their species after determining what mutations they have, as this makes twinking relatively easy. Despite it's old skoolness, this is another useful little resource for gamma world GM's to keep their players in check with. If that's a good thing or not depends on your opinion. I can't muster a strong one on this either way.
The marvel-phile: The marvel-phile proves itself admirably adept at alliteration. And then turns it's attention on Namor, the sub-mariner, and his enemy, Tiger shark. Some rather beefcakey photos here (Look at those eyebrows, hee. I bet he plucks them.) of our aquatic protagonists, and the usual potted history of their times and trials, divested of all the filler episodes. (of which I'm sure there were many, since this is comics we're talking about) Once again Jeff delivers a solid, noncontroversial entry that doesn't leave me with much to say about it.
A monster crossword. That's a new one for this magazine. Cool. That looks like a good time waster.
Dragonmirth gets limerickal. Talanalan goes all las vegas. Wormy catches a big one. Snarfquest fights the planetary cultural divide, with hilarious results.
Once again, I am left vaguely unsatisfied by this issue, despite there being plenty of good articles in it. Maybe I'm doing this too fast, and need a break. Maybe I'm just jaded. No matter how good things get, humans can adapt to it and wind up taking it for granted. Life is a funny thing. Instead of a conclusion, I'll leave you with a question. How do you think the history of the magazine and D&D would have been different if instead of increasing their page count in 1979, they had instead decided to go fortnightly, and eventually weekly. What effect would producing lots of short issues, instead of long monthly ones have had on their style, and our perspective of the magazine? Would this have been a good or bad thing overall to do.
Dragon Issue 90: October 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. So we've finally reached the quarter point of this insanely epic journey. A pretty significant point for me, as it shows that this is not an insurmountable task, merely a very long and exhausting one. Not that they knew that at the time. They're busy planning for issue 100, trying to figure out how to make that nicely spectacular instead. Still, there's tons of stuff in here, as is standard, including several things we haven't seen in quite some time. This certainly seems promising.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: We have a letter asking how you advance your NPC's. You don't have to play out all their adventures manually, that would be several steps toward realism too far. Just look at their XP table, figure out how active they are compared to the players, and progress them appropriately. Honestly, the things some people ask.
Two letters saying the gods are statistically inaccurate. They're gods dear. Breaking the rules is what they do. You should know that by now.
A letter asking what the real relationship between Norebo and Wee Jas is, since their descriptions contradict. :giggles: And the editor said let there be retcon, for he does not want to be smitten. Whether they are or aren't doing it doesn't matter. Unlike celebrities, gods tend to get revenge against people saying things they don't want personally, and with great irony.
A letter complaining that their store got copies of the magazine before their subscription arrived. Oh woe. We do send them out a day earlier. If they don't arrive earlier, it's the post office's fault, not ours. That extra day or two won't kill you. Now, if your copy gets lost in the post, that's a different matter altogether, and you are quite entitled to complain.
A pair of complaints about baba yaga, and the contradictions in her description. Have we not established now that they change these things on purpose to make clear that there is no true canon, and all stats are malleable. You, sirs, are being more pedantic than the original writers. I mock your pedantry. Mock, mock, mock. :p
The forum is unusually homogenous this month. Jeff Martin, Jim Tuttle, Jay D Glithero, Jonathan Heiles (all the J's, for some reason) and Ted van Horn all have a problem with the physics and falling damage article. Ouch. Rough, man. Poor Arn. First they get your gender wrong, now this unanimous slating. Hope it didn't crush his spirit too much. Jim Parks is the only dissenting voice, and he is more concerned with the long running debate about high powered characters and what to do with them. Surely the editors could pick out a better variety of letters to publish than this.
The enchanting incantrix: Hmm, said Edward Greenwood. My players are taking magic for granted, treating it like just another form of artillery. This is most crass and not conductive to good stories. That makes me do my sad face :( What can I do about that? I know! What I need is a new kind of spellcaster with abilities ordinary wizards can't duplicate! That'll confound and delight them! And then I'll make it based upon mysterious forces of destiny, so they can't join the class after encountering it, even if they want too. That way, it'll stay mysterious, plus I don't have to worry about balancing it with other classes. And then I can write books about the 7 special women who can wield it, and Elminster can score with them all like the ultimate mack daddy he is. Happy days are here again!
Um, yeah. This has been a very tricky article to review. On one hand, it's brimming with his usual cool ideas, with loads of neat tricks and new spells, and evocative writing. It goes quite a way towards putting the mystery back in magic, by creating a class that's light on the blasty abilities, but has lots of neat tricks up their sleeve. On the other, this is a definite hint towards the excesses he would slip into in later forgotten realms books, with spellfire, the seven sisters, mary-sue twatery, and all the problems that came with it. The irony, of course is that for all his insistence that these girls should be kept rare, and under no circumstances should a PC be allowed to be one; like the death master, they're not actually that overpowered really. No more than standard spellcasters who have a wide range of supplements to pick their spells from, anyway. Oh, Edward, Edward, Edward. Don't believe your own hype.
Palladium's weapon series is now up to 5 books. And I'm guesing that's Maryann Siembiedas maiden name on the book of contemporary weapons.
From the Sorceror's scroll: Gary returns to our pages for a running visit. Firstly, we have an expanded list of what exactly counts as a person for the purpose of charm and hold spells. Fair enough. I can see that many people would want that kind of thing. Then, it's time to inform us what he been up to during his absence from these pages. The D&D cartoon is getting renewed for another season. (Surprised we haven't seen that mentioned more, whether in praise or mockery. It's like they're diliberately avoiding discussing it. ) We have two film scripts ready. (but no-one wants to buy them. Whatever happened to these. Is there any chance we could get hold of them?) The Master set is nearly done. Temple of elemental evil is finally written.( now it's just up to poor little Frank Mentzer to edit it into a publishable form) We will revise the game sometime after that. But don't stop buying folks! Your company needs you! Complain to your local shop if you can't find our products to buy! And then he's off again. Busy busy busy. No time to waste. Those cocaine fueled all night orgies/writing sessions won't hold themselves, you know. ;)
Bats that do more than bite: Ed also delivers one of his more quirky articles this month, courtesy of Elminster's rambling mind. Swords, shields, spellbooks ...... Bats? WTF! Thankfully, what seemed like madness is rapidly revealed to actually be genius, as we get an incredibly cool and varied set of new monsters that take the basic idea of bat, and run with it in all sorts of different directions. Azmyths are adorable little magical bats with stinger tails. If you can get one of these as a companion, DO IT! They'll pay for themselves many times over. Sinisters aren't quite as nice, but they also have a quirky set of powers, likes and dislikes that make them more than just another combat encounter. Gloomwings are the bad boys of the sentient bat world, serving both as steeds to powerful evil creatures, and plotters in their own right. Night hunters and Hundars are less interesting in terms of abilities, but still get plenty of interesting notes on their lifecycle and behaviour. And finally werebats are what you would expect. Infected by another werebat, their bloodthirst forces them to change shape at night and go on the hunt, yet unlike infected werewolves, they retain full awareness of what they are doing, and consequently, are filled with AAAangst. Just like actual vampires then. A great collection of nasties and potential allies that would make it into future forgotten realms books, and can be used to all kinds of cool ends. Me likey.
Gods of the suel pantheon: This month's deities detailed are Phyton, god of beauty and nature (the kind of portfolio you'd normally expect from a goddess, hmm. ) Xerbo, god of the sea, money and business (which is almost as annoying a portfolio as wee jas.) and Osprem, goddess of water voyages. Rather nuanced portfolios here, which I find interesting. They're definitely improving on the trick of balancing the bonus powers with appropriate restrictions and XP surcharges as well. They really should have kept that up in 2nd edition, instead of making many god's priests definitely more powerful than others.
Thieves guild 2nd edition. Woo. Buy it now, etc etc.
Playing the political game: In one of their bursts of appropriate positioning, they put this immediately after an advert for the Companion set. You don't have to do dungeon crawls all the time. Bringing politics into it can really spice things up, especially once a game's been running for a while, and you've built up a proper cast of NPC's. Suddenly, it's not all good guys and bad guys, and you kill the bad guys first chance you get anymore. You have to deal with resource management, alliances, treachery, territorial expansion, and all sorts of fun stuff that a single person, no matter how powerful, can't solve on their own. This can, of course be a daunting task to create scenarios for. So here's a nice bit of advice on the topic, including a couple of examples of actual play. You thought saving the world was tricky. Maintaining it's a lot harder. If you find you can't challenge your players by conventional means anymore, this is definitely a good way to go. Sure, they can make enough food to feed hundreds of people a day, and defeat a demon prince, but what happens when thousands all over the country are starving, and they have to choose who gets saved, or lycanthropy is spreading amongst the population faster than it can be cured. If you run it right, a truly epic adventure, that's what. As ever, I am very much in support of this playstyle.
Quote from: (un)reason;322701How do you think the history of the magazine and D&D would have been different if instead of increasing their page count in 1979, they had instead decided to go fortnightly, and eventually weekly. What effect would producing lots of short issues, instead of long monthly ones have had on their style, and our perspective of the magazine? Would this have been a good or bad thing overall to do.
I suspect Dragon would have folded if it had gone weekly or bi-weekly. I think it would have lost readers who dropped after they missed a few issues here and there. Plus, during this time, it was difficult enough to get gamers to shell out money for the actual game books, let alone any peripherals. Sure, D&D was selling really well then, but I was told by more than one merchant that shoplifting of RPG stuff was rampant. That's why so many of these merchants began putting RPG stuff in cases, and this included Dragon magazine.
On top of that was the phenomenon, which still persists to this day, of gamers who refuse to buy the book or books for the game they actually play. Looking back, I'm not surprised I was the only gamer I knew who bought Dragon monthly. For that matter, I was the only gamer I knew who bought Dragon
at all for a while, and I knew, or knew of, a few different groups. None of the gamers I knew seemed all that enthused about Dragon. Increasing the number of issues in a month would have driven away someone like me, who would have gotten buyer's fatigue pretty quickly. Speaking only for myself, I'm not a fan of weekly magazines. Bi-weekly isn't much better; it's still too easy to miss an issue.
As a group we bought a lt of games, but Dragon was definitely a pass around- like a lot of the comics we bought.
Quote from: Aos;323090As a group we bought a lt of games, but Dragon was definitely a pass around- like a lot of the comics we bought.
That happened on occasion with my group, with me letting the others look at Dragon if something really caught my imagination or their interest had been piqued by something I'd mentioned. But that was pretty uncommon; I don't think they ever looked at more than a dozen or so issues the entire time we gamed together.
We had a pretty stable routine in the summer for several years. Gaming most days in the am and the early pm; swimming at the falls (King's Falls on the Deer River in extreeme Northern. NY state) after that; laying on the floor in the dusty shafts of sunlight at my friend Dave's house and reading comics and magazines, in the late afternnon; often finishing off the day with more gaming. Girls destroyed it all, of course, like Godzilla in Tokyo.
Quote from: Aos;323100We had a pretty stable routine in the summer for several years. Gaming most days in the am and the early pm; swimming at the falls (King's Falls on the Deer River in extreeme Northern. NY state) after that; laying on the floor in the dusty shafts of sunlight at my friend Dave's house and reading comics and magazines, in the late afternnon; often finishing off the day with more gaming. Girls destroyed it all, of course, like Godzilla in Tokyo.
Our routine was Sundays, from 11:30 AM until we decided to quit, usually no later than 4 PM, but occasionally a bit longer. The other two guys in the group (there was a three-person "core," but we often had a fourth and a fifth, and a few times upwards of a dozen) lived very close together, so they got together throughout the week and came up with reams of material on their own. A lot of that material was inspired by various books read or movies seen rather than Dragon. I came up with my own house rules, but rarely used them with that group - I ran my own group with my brother and a number of other guys from my neighborhood (none of whom read Dragon, by the way). This latter group didn't have a set routine; we played roughly weekly, sometimes more, sometimes less.
Girls did eventually cause the disintegration of the first group. The second group eventually dissolved away as many of my players were playing high school football. Eventually both groups sputtered to a stop by the early 90s, as everyone was out of high school by then, some had gone to college, and 2e AD&D did not go over well with members of either group. For some reason, 2e really caused these guys to walk away from D&D. I think we'd all grown tired of 1e and were looking for a change - not a whole new game (we'd tried more than a few), but a revamp of D&D itself. That's why we created so much in the way of house rules - the game was just not working for us anymore. Perhaps if 2e had been as far-reaching a revamp as 3e was, more of us would have continued playing.
I love this thread
Dragon Issue 90: October 1984
part 2/2
Plane facts on gladsheim: Another plane gets an extensive official profile. It's been too long since the last one. Was no-one sending them in, or were the submissions they got just not good enough? Anyway, welcome to Gladsheim. One of the most adventurable outer planes, as despite having good leanings, it's still a wild and untamed place full of monsters and warriors. Roger decides to focus on the Norse section of the plane, to the exclusion of everything else. This may not have been such a good idea, as he falls into one of the primary traps planar chroniclers have to deal with, making an infinite universe seem too small and stereotyped. They managed to avoid it with the astral and hellish articles, but this is a definite case of fail, I'm afraid. The incorporation of real world legends is handled way too literally, instead of making the effort to make them fit properly within D&D, they just seem tacked on with little consideration to the larger picture. Once again, they also suffer the problem of individually spelling out the changes in spells and magic items, rather than just giving general patterns. Only since the article isn't as long, this winds up taking more than half of it. In other words, I found this article a massive disappointment, that manages to take a thrilling subject, and make it seem hackneyed and dull. I'm very disappointed in you, Mr Moore. You're normally such a reliable student. D+. Must try harder.
As with the astral article, we also get an official adventure set there, Aesirhammer. This is rather more fun, giving you the chance to meet some really high level creatures, negotiate with them, and possibly take their stuff. Of course, in the GM's advice they STRICTLY FORBID that you let the players keep the world shattering plot macguffin and actually use it themselves, or that you be permitted to mess up the status quo in any way. But if you ignore that, you have a neat sandbox with which to play, that could enable you to have all kinds of effects on the setting. After all, if you hit the reset button after every adventure, what's the point. High level play should be about making permanent changes to things, and having big friends and enemies. Step off the railroad, take your time, and set up a really great show.
Reviews: Chill is our only review this month, getting a pretty positive look at. Once again we see the advantage of boxed sets over single big books in making games quick to start and accessable, while allowing you to build plenty of depth into the setting. This simplicity does have it's costs in terms of setting depth, and there are a few silly elements. Still, it's not hard to houserule those, and then you have a streamlined yet versatile horror game. It already has 4 supplements, and looks like more may be along soon. If you like your horror a little less grim and weird than Call of Cthulhu, this could be a worthy addition to your collection.
The Ares section gets to have a colour cover for the first time. Manwhile, in the ares log, they use the space to provide a brief review of a book on the space program, and how you go about becoming a part of it. Those are certainly both developments. Guess the amount of trust (and money) they're getting for this section is increasing.
Skills for the super agent: Ahh, a persistent problem with supers games. How do you balance batman with superman? Much fun has been had with this debate in the past. Unfortunately, this completely ignores the generalities of this question, and goes into providing templates for trainees of the various organizations in the Champions game. With point costs of between 12 and 30, they don't show you how to make a really badass secret agent style character who can stand up to superbeings in a toe to toe fight by skill, grit and luck, either. I get the impression I may be thinking at cross-purposes with the author of this article. Not that it's a terrible article, but the way it's designed means it doesn't have much use to players of other games.
The superworld game, Expanded: And we get a second supers article in quick succession. Still not sure why they're lumping that in with the sci-fi stuff, but there you go, I'm not the editor on this magazine. Steve Perrin presents us with a grab-bag of new abilities and disadvantages for his game, making it better able to emulate the huge range of powers found in the genre. As he's the original creator, I'm guessing this is fairly balanced stuff, that made it into the next edition after a little tweaking. Plus it's interesting to see someone else who still gets talked about sometimes today show up in the magazine. Wonder if we'll see him again.
The mega-corporations: As promised last issue, we get write-ups for the various star frontiers megacorps. 16 of them are detailed, which means they don't get much depth each. They do tend to be a bit cliched, dividing themselves along obvious business lines, despite the theoretical ban on monopolies. I'm guessing this is probably diliberate, but it does feel a bit "white wolf splats in outer space, maaan" This is one article that could definitely have benefited from being quite a bit bigger.
Starquestions sets it's co-ordinates for Gamma world again. Penny takes the reins, to tell us about the game.
What's the difference between the original and revised editions of the game. (lotsa shiny new stuff, and an improved advancement system)
What issues of Dragon have gamma world stuff. (Several really old ones, and all the recent ones, with lots of big gaps in between)
Are there going to be any more supplements (No. You don't buy it enough to make that economical. )
Can you play old modulez using the new system ( Does a bee harvest flowers in the woods?)
How fast does a horse drawn wagon go. (Not much faster than walking. The real benefit is in the load you can carry )
Why isn't Canada on the map (Because Jim Ward's a big meanie who wanted to make Edward Greenwood cry. There there, Ed. Remember, the best revenge is success.)
Shouldn't plate armour be tougher than plastic armour (No. Plastic is awesome. Don't diss it like that. Metal may rust, but plastic is virtually impossible to get rid of. )
Can Gamma world races interbreed (Not usually. Course, with mutations being what they are, anything's possible. )
Can you disguise yourself as someone else with shapechange (no)
What happens to someone who travels to another plane (they're removed from play. Unless everyone goes, in which case convert them to the new universe's system.)
How do you get to the AD&D universe (Mad Science! It's indistinguishable from magic, so it can get you places you'd need magic to get to. )
Can you modify vehicles to run on different types of fuel (If you can scrounge up the parts. This may not be easy in postapocalyptic land)
Will sunglasses protect someone with dark dependency (no. You'll need a whole bodysuit to keep yourself from getting terminal sunburn)
Why doesn't being taller increase your hit points. (Because it doesn't. Size =/= resilience. Go beat up Jarvis Cocker. That'll be a good demonstration. )
How does a 1cm tall character attack. (poison and stealth. Just don't expect them to be useful in a pitched battle.)
Can I buy Metamorphosis alpha (Not unless you find a second hand copy somewhere. We're all out.)
Are there any Gamma world mini's (again, you aren't buying enough to make it worth our while. )
I need some help on making high level adventures (Tough. I can't provide you with any. Maybe Jim will be in a more generous mood.)
Wormy gets some REAL bait. Snarfquest has a random encounter. Which winds up a lot more random once he's through with it.
Paranoia! Buy this game! And play it! Are you happy now? Remember, happiness is mandatory. Playing other games is treasonous. Posession of this magazine is strong evidence that you play other games. Therefore you are treasonous and must be terminated. I hope your clone is happy and not treasonous, and has many long happy years playing Paranoia before it gets terminated.
Some serious disappointments in this issue, as they seem to be taking a definite step forward towards the more restrictive, preachy, railroading style of certain later adventures. I'm not happy to see those turning up this early, as I know they get a lot worse before they get better, and hope they won't grow too fast or show up up too often. We might have come a long way, but we've got far further to go still. And this issue is a foreshadowing that some of that journey is going to be rather challenging and unpleasant. Still, at least it shakes off the ennui, and gives me something to rant about. Can't be all sunny days and flowers, can it? If it never rained, we'd never see flowers, because they'd all dry up and die. Which I suppose proves the point.
Dragon Issue 91: November 1984
part 1/2
116 pages. So here we are, pretty much at the zenith of their popularity. With a circulation of 120,000, they're certainly a pretty significant force to be reckoned with. This is their biggest issue yet, and they seem to be making an extra effort for this one, with a load of format changes and special features. They probably should have held back for christmas but they just couldn't wait. So I won't bore you with pretentious preamble either.
In this issue:
Out on a limb loses it's vaguely amusing name, and becomes simply Letters. Seems a slightly pointless change to me. Eh, if they feel it'll make us take them more seriously. :shrug: Anyway, lets see what people are actually saying.
A letter praising Katharine Kerr's recent articles, and offering some supplemental advice. Kim gives an unnecceceraly large reply justifying an argument against such a minor quibble.
Three letters complaining about the rust monster ecology and asking further questions. Kim once again reminds them that a creature's description is not something to be stuck too slavishly. We're willing to give Ed plenty of leeway because the things he comes up with are cool. Whining whenever things aren't just so, on the other hand, is the epitome of uncool, and will not endear you to anyone.
Four letters about the details of various magical items they recently published. Once again I yawn. Just make it up for your own campaign. Is that really that hard?
The forum also gets it's header improved. This is nice.
Scott Hicks is not pleased at Katharine Kerr's denunciation of evil characters. Evil =/= stupid. The pragmatic bastard approach to adventuring can be very effective indeed. The success of many corporations in the real world is not hindered by their ethically suspect actions, quite the opposite in fact.
Steve Null also attacks Katharine, along a different tack. If even fantasizing about committing evil acts was mentally unhealthy, them all the GM's in the world would be on the fast track to breakdowns and depraved real life behaviour. This is obviously not the case. Your logic is deeply faulty.
Eric Herman worries about demihuman lifespans and the levels they would acquire in that time. Surely an elf is far more likely to advance to obscene levels than a human, particularly if they take thief, which is unlimited. Probably true, but for any race, levels will be an exponential curve. There is no proper age/level progression. Becoming high level is like becoming a millionaire. Some people manage it before they hit 20, but most will never do it, no matter how long or hard they try. Even long-lived races only have a low percentage of name+ level characters.
David N Moolten sticks his two cents in on the matter of falling damage. So much of it is dependent on what material you're hitting. This ought to be taken account of in the rules. Ha. No chance.
Finally, Alan Zumwalt sneers at Kevin Lawless' criticism of dragon clerics. It's perfectly normal for people to worship gods of different alignments if they have a desirable portfolio. Awareness of alignment is not constantly on creature's minds.
From the sorceror's scroll. Prreeeesenting! The Dukes of Demonic Destruction! The Squishers of Spinagons and Smashers of Structures! The Tanks of the Tanar'ri! The Goristro! Quail in terror, puny mortals! RAAAAARRGG! Particularly Gary's editor. You are most incompetent and must suffer for all the mistakes you introduced to my perfect work. ;) A particularly amusing article that is a classic of Gary's writing style. Unlike last issue, which felt rather tentative, he's now back and firing on all cylinders. It's good to see him in the driving seat again. Long may he continue to entertain and confound us (from a safe distance, preferably.)
Realistic vital statistics: Ahh, Stephen Innis again. He's becoming another regular of recent issues. This is another reiteration of the Square-Cube law, and the problems it presents when dealing with giants and other proportionally weird D&D creatures. A dwarf the height of a human would weigh around 500 pounds. There is no way cloud and storm giants could function without magical support or being way less dense than humans. (which is why they are partially composed of clouds, I suppose. ) This is one of those articles that falls into the competent but dull category. I already know this, don't particularly care at the moment, and would rather concentrate on figuring out how to make games fun than realistic. So much for all that hard mathematical work.
The ecology of the leucrotta: Now here's a bastard of a monster, made even more bastardly by a well written Ed Greenwood article. Leucrotta may not have genius intelligence or an array of magical powers, but they're still smart enough to trick humans, and cause quite considerable amounts of harm and paranoia with their mimicry and depredations. Kinda like the peryton in that respect. Are they from the same mythological sources? In any case, this is also another good reminder that even fairly mundane monsters become a lot scarier when you start applying basic tactics and not just jumping out and fighting the adventurers on straight terms. Once again, both the fluff and the extra crunch are entertainingly written, and you get a real feel for the creatures and how they live their lives. If only it were a little longer, as I could definitely stand to hear a little more about this kind of topic.
Nine hells revisited: Ed also gives us another 16 pages of cool stuff on the nine hells. Well, since Roger messed it up, I guess it's up to him to remind us how it's really done. Which means if my math is right, this plane currently has more concrete stuff about it than all the others put together. People do so love conceiving of unpleasant people and things.
Since the basic layout and hierarchy is well covered, it's time to diversify. Any place with any kind of law will have outcasts, so we get 8 new unique devils for you to fight, deal with, and probably get screwed over by, because even if they're no longer welcome in polite society, they're still devils. They may help you in a scheme against the established power base, but only so they can get revenge and/or back into it, by trickery and treachery. They have a huge range of personality quirks and powers, reminding us that alignment is hardly a straitjacket, even for it's exemplars. And because all the outcasts live on the first level, that means they're relatively accessable. This is the kind of stuff that's both entertaining to read and incredibly useful in actual play, as it'd take months to whip up a cast of this size and diversity yourself.
Next we have treasure in the hells. After all, if you're going to kill devils, you're probably going to want to take their stuff as well. They get increasingly rich as you go down the levels, with tons of different types of gems just waiting to be mined and used. They're certainly not short on stuff to trade or hoard. Just remember, the wages of sin may be a bad influence on you, and finance can do things as impressive as any magic when it comes to gaining influence over a nation.
This neatly segues into a discussion of devilish agents on the prime material plane. If you believe them, they're all over the place, the ultimate illuminati, pulling strings and manipulating the fate of worlds. They're probably not as good as they think they are, but if it weren't for adventurers foiling them on a regular basis, who knows how bad things could get. As with the GDQ series, use of devils as behind the scenes manipulators is a great way to gradually build up to an epic multiverse spanning campaign, which is great fun as long as it doesn't happen every game.
And finally, we get a trio of short sections. Talk on the devilish hierarchy & promotion process. Some talk about the river styx and securing passage to places via it's treacherous boatmen. And finally, one of those tedious exhortations not to allow players to kill archdevils and otherwise make significant changes to the universe. That privilege is reserved for the game designers alone. That standard disclaimer aside, this is another demonstration that there's no-one on the team who can match up to Ed in terms of all round writing skills. When he's on, he's on. And this month, that is definitely the case.
Eight devilish questions: And just when you thought it was over, Ed is playing sage advice as well. That brings his contribution this month up to 22 pages. Man, he's prolific. Where does he find the time? Well, if he's being paid enough to live on now, he's got to keep his output up, or it's back to a boring day job. That can be a pretty strong incentive.
How big is an army of devils (normally organized in tiers of 10, so you get stuff like 300 grunts, 30 sargants and 3 sub-commanders. Yes, this is an excuse to make them 666 big as often as possible. )
How do Titivius and Malphas confuse words. (Better than any mortal lawyer, bitch. Watch Ally Mcbeal, and then do the exact opposite. (although making your "clients" and opposing council see illusory dancing babies never hurts) Reading minds so you can avoid contradicting what they already know, figure out how your lies are being recieved and adjust your behaviour accordingly is a very good idea as well. )
Is Arioch the same Arioch that appears in Michael Moorcock's novels (No. More than one person can have the same name. It's be a rather awkward universe if they couldn't)
What stops Archdevils from simply killing each other and taking their stuff (Politics. No-one can take on everyone else and win, and if they tried it, they'd be the ones that died. Plus, too much infighting would keep them from advancing the cause of law and evil through the multiverse. They are not stupid. )
How many HD do archdevils have. (divide their hp by 4.5. This will produce nicely badass results for attack probabilities and saves. )
Where does rope trick go exactly in the hells? (an adjacent layer, either above or below. This can be exploited, but is not reliable by any means, certainly not as a method of storage. And if you use it for escape, the words frying pan and fire seem singularly appropriate. )
What are the limitations of fiendish teleport without error (Any solid surface in hell that isn't warded. They can take stuff with them, but can't send it elsewhere without going. This is a very important power, because more than any other, it liberates their logistical processes from a huge number of the hassles humans face, and shapes their view of the world accordingly. Use it cleverly. )
What are the statistics of the greatest pit fiend at all. (Duh. standard pit fiend, maximum hit points, extra cool magic weapon. Nothing spectacular in the greater scheme of things. He just has a good publicist.)
TSR is having a 10th anniversary sale! Snap up this stuff while it's cheap, because it'll be a collectors item soon.
Chronicles - A novel idea: The dragonlance modules are in full steam. You want more? Well you're in luck, because the first novel is out soon. Fear not though. We've made sure the books and modules are different enough that you won't be completely spoiled by reading them, and can still wind up doing different things. The world is a lot bigger than just the epic adventure you're going through. We've done great oodles of setting construction that you won't get to see for a while. As you may have guessed, this is a fairly blatant promotional piece, bringing more attention to their game world and trying to sell it to the masses. Something I have no objection too, but at the same time, am not particularly enthralled by. Once again, we see that their salesman techniques definitely need a bit of refining. Come on guys, do the work, make me quiver in antici
I didn't realize how early on that Dragon started to become a blur to me. This issue I cannot even vaguely recall.
I guess in this specific case it has to do with Greenwood having quite a bit of material in this issue. As I've mentioned before, his material (besides, again, Pages from the Mages and the sword articles) usually makes my eyes glaze over. As time went along, I began to skip his articles altogether, especially once the Realms became official.
Gygax's ouster is not too far over the horizon at this point. His output has been increasingly sketchy and unsatisfying, not just in Dragon but also in regards to modules. I recall wondering what was going on - I had no conduit to the inner workings of the game industry, as at the time of this run of Dragon, there were no nearby game shops, and most of my game stuff came from Waldenbooks or Kay-Bee toys. So even rumors were few and far between. As his presence decreased, my interest in the magazine began to wane. I actually kept buying it uninterrupted until it ceased as a print magazine, but for the most part the stuff I really remember has already come and gone, and it won't be until late in the 2e era and the 3e era that Dragon came back into its own, in my opinion.
Dragon Issue 91: November 1984
part 2/2
Treasure trove: pation. Ahh, this is another pleasing returnee. Bazaar of the bizarre hasn't been around all year, but like the dragon's bestiary, they've decided to make up for that with a compendium of 47 new magical items as a second special feature this month. As if the new 9 hells stuff wasn't enough. Ed and Roger contribute many of the items in this section as well, with Richard Lucas, Michael Persinger and David Baldwin also making significant contributions. There's way too many for me to tackle each of them individually, but my favourites here are the ring of the grasshopper (of all the animals to choose, what wizard would think of that?) The girdle of loins (er, lions. :D ) The necklace of bad taste (genius, simply genius. A flavourful way of providing a substantial combat advantage, and a social commentary on gamers as well) and the cursed everstriking sword. (now that would be perfect for an iron heroes game) A great example of just how quirky and interesting magic items were back then, compared to more recent editions. You never know what you're gonna find in your loot, and figuring out how to put it to best use also takes quite a bit of effort and research. If they just do one thing, and do so completely reliably, it's no surprise if people get blase about their items. How many of you have looked at your video recorder manual and suddenly realized you never knew it could do half the things it can. If you apply the same principle to items you give your players, they'll pay a lot more attention to the things they have. Which is definitely a good thing, in my book.
Spies' Advice: Penny escapes the Ares section to tackle Top Secret again. She is proving pretty versatile. Not like Jean "I do not feel qualified to do so" Wells.
Do assassins have a license to kill (Yes, but it doesn't count for much. If you mess up, you're on your own.)
Why do you say no PC can be super (They can, just not at starting level. We've got to give you something to aspire to. )
Why are there no damage modifiers for rifles ( Good question. I'll guess abstraction for 5 alex)
How much damage does a flamethrower do. (Quite a lot, especially if they don't drop and roll. )
How much do arrows and crossbows cost (lots. They aren't produced much anymore.
What is the .22 Galil. Why is it so accurate? (It's a kickass israeli assault rifle. We think so, anyway. Have desert eagles been invented yet? We may shift our loyalty to them if they have )
How fast can the M3 shoot (4 shots/second. )
I want stats for more military gear. (Tough. This is a spy game, not a war one. You are not cleared to use that kind of ordinance, so we will not stat it out. At least, for a couple of years, anyway.)
It's too hard for my assassin to kill people in one shot. (You'll be thankful of that when you're the one getting sniped from cover by some bastard. And really, bullets aren't as deadly as some movies seem to think. Some people survive repeated headshots. Maybe you should be using explosives or poison more.)
You seem to think all improvised weapons do the same amount of damage. This is rubbish! (I blame Merle. He messed up the rules revision, not me! )
Can a dumb agent learn hand signals (Probably. He won't be very erudite with them though. Mind you, everyone understands the gesture for THOG SMASH!)
Can agents be ambidextrous (if you roll a 00 on a D% Not likely, in other words)
If you have identical speeds, who attacks first (Resolve simultaneously. You could both kill each other. How very dramatic. )
How does an unarmed person defend themselves against a sword (run away! )
If you kill someone on a mission you weren't supposed to, do you get XP ( Generally. It is a learning experience, after all)
Can you use untrained combat without any skill levels (yes)
Some of the Sprechaltenstalle pregens are more powerful than any legal 1st level PC. (That was intentional. Remember that you're supposed to be forced to choose blind. Random screwage is still pretty popular y'know.)
Coming attractions: Just in time for christmas, we get another attempt to let us know about all the stuff they have for sale. They really should do this more regularly. I guess they still don't spend enough time on the supplement treadmill to make this worthwhile every month yet.
For the indiana jones rpg, we have module IJ3: Crystal death. Requires use of the Magic Viewer. Ahh yes, I remember that little gimmick from the transformers toys.
Star frontiers gets module SFKH, 2001 a space odyssey. Now your characters can play the events of the film and book. Sounds interminably tedious to me. I hope they remembered to license it properly this time.
For the marvel super heroes game, we have module MH4: Lone wolves. Or how to force a team of Mr Broody McAngstinthepants to work together to deal with a common foe.
D&D gets module CM3: Sabre river. You may have got yourselves domains, but that doesn't mean you can't go dungeon-crawling. This time though, even the dungeons are bigger and badder. You'd better come prepared.
AD&D, as usual, gets the lions share of products. Dragonlance is already up to it's 5th module, Dragons of mystery, and is getting mini's of the main characters as well. And Conan is fighting against darkness in CB2. Beware Thoth-Amon.
ARES Log: Eratta, eratta, what bettah place to put ya than in the edita's section. Bleh. Anyway, problems aside, it seems the the marvel-phile is easily the most popular part of the section. They have taken note of this and intend to keep it showing up regularly. More evidence that pure sci-fi isn't that popular. A bit awkward, really, and a sign that this section isn't going to last forever. Not that anything does. It's just a question of how long it will last, and enjoying it while you can.
Does anyone here speak Aslan?: Languages are a pain in the ass. They're one of the areas that gets most consistently fudged or worked around by some handwavium power in game settings, simply because the alternative is so much hassle to deal with, and constantly having to learn new ones wherever you go is bad for smooth and fun adventuring. Thankfully Traveller has never been known for it's cinematicness, so even with a certain amount of linguistic homogenization caused by concious governmental attempts, you still have thousands of the bastards out there, more than any one person could learn. This article covers the rules for learning new languages in a reasonable, but not excessive amount of detail, and somehow manages to keep the idea a likable one. A bit of grit never hurt anyone, (Yeah, I know, so not true, especially if you get it in the eye) and dealing with language barriers opens up almost as many plot avenues as it closes. If you want a more gritty realistic game, this is definitely an option to consider.
Day of the Juggernaut: A quick star frontiers scenario squashed between two longer articles, and with a slightly odd layout, this has a definite feel of something used to fill up space. Better that than more adverts, I guess. Like OGRE, this is a one big ship vs lots of smaller ships engagement, where you have to figure out how to stop the thing before it causes huge amounts of devastation. Perfectly serviceable, but not particularly exceptional.
The marvel-phile: Ahh, here we go. The marvel-phile tackles several interesting things this time round. We have stats for Cloak and Dagger (oh my aching sides.) Transformed by a mob experiment that went horribly wrong, they now target drug dealers and cure addicts. Here we see the conflict between the desire to tackle serious social issues, and the constriction of the comics code, forcing them to represent drug-taking as seriously wrong and detrimental to your karma, no matter what, no greys or excuses. (5 karma per glass of booze? Man that's harsh) How dated that all seems now. As with the U.N.C.L.E conversion, this is a great reminder that there are plenty of sillier things than rpg's out there in media land, and also that Dragon is horribly bowdlerised by it's editorial policy most of the time. You don't notice some things are missing until you see them, and them you're amazed that you didn't notice before. And frankly, I think I could handle a bit more sex and social issues, if you would be so kind.
Careers in Star Law: Yes, it's more detail on these guys. Having had a great idea opened up to us, now someone else weighs in on the crunch behind the idea. And instantly starts introducing restrictions and requirements that close plot ideas off again. This sucks. Every bit of inspiration requires a lot of perspiration to turn into a fully realized product, and maintaining momentum at every stage is nearly impossible. But still, this could definitely have been handled better. Very disappointing.
Don't leave home without 'em!: A nice little counterpart to the D&D treasure trove, they've also decided to give us a load of cool /magic/ technological items for gamma world. Anti-grav packs, energy shackles, /admantine/ duralloy war claws, this is definitely a step in a gonzo direction. Not that there's anything remotely unusual about that in gamma world. So you can slot them straight in, or file the technobabble off and convert them to D&D magical items with a minimum of fuss. Another bit with a good word count to fun had in actual play ratio.
Fiction: The rune and the dragon by Lawrence Watt-Evans. So you took something from a dragon, and now it's following you, trying to get it back. Why would it hold back, instead of tearing you to shreds like the impertinent little mammal you are? A very good question, and one I won't spoil you on the answer to, other than to say that while this may be a one-joke piece, it's a good joke. Another cool little bit of fiction.
Reviews: Shogun is this month's bumper sized review. A card game with substantial similarities to five stud poker, it's a license of the book and tv series by James Clavell. Thankfully, it's not as long-winded as the book, with good production values and a design that makes it simple to learn, but tremendously varied in play, due to the number of special cards and combination of luck and skill required to win it. Seems interesting. Anyone know how this one did sales-wise back in the day?
Mercenaries, Spies & Private eyes gets a rather mediocre review from Ken. It's fast paced simple style does not seem to appeal to him, and he is left unsatisfied by it's lack of depth. What does it have to distinguish itself from the other modern action games like Top secret, Gangbusters and Daredevils? He certainly doesn't see anything special in it.
Death in dunwich is a call of cthuhu adventure. Already the game is rising to a popularity that belies it's humble origins as a license of an obscure author, with a strong emphasis on the PC's suffering horribly. This is a good adventure, but not the best organized ever. It has some serious errata, and no overview, forcing you to read it carefully before you can play it. If you do it wrong, it'll be as much a mystery to the GM as to the players. One for an experienced group.
The vanishing investigator is a Gangbusters adventure. Unlike our last foray into the lands of mystery, this does have a proper index and chronology, making it easy to run. With strong characters, plenty of settling detail, good illustrations and an action packed plot, this gets his top rating for this month.
In addition, we have a whole bunch of capsule reviews. Dragons of dispair, the marvel superheroes game, The mountain environment and Bree and the barrow downs all get under 200 word summaries of their style and contents. None get particularly spectacularly praised or slated.
Wormy shoots Irving. Snarfquest goes to the big city. Dragonmirth is oh so wrong in it's implications.
With it's big size, format changes, and multiple classic articles, this is definitely another high water mark for the magazine as a whole. They may have their ups and downs, and things'll never change as fast as they did in the first few years again, but they're still learning and growing. Let's hope this isn't their artistic zenith as well as their commercial one, and we'll get some more amazing issues in the near future. Don't save it all for issue 100. Lets finish this year off in style as well.
Dragon Issue 92: December 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. A second cleric special in the same year? How odd. And without even focussing on the other classes in between. Someone on the editorial team must really like clerics. They've been getting extra crunch in the form of new gods with distinctive special powers the whole time, while the other classes have been getting very little. And yet they're still probably the least popular of the core 4. Seems like a definite case of Shilling the Wesley (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShillingTheWesley) to me. Ho hum. What are we to do about this? Keep reading, see if it changes in future issues, I guess.
In this issue:
Letters: We get more physics talk and formulae, as they further refine the calculations for realistic falling damage. They get more and more complicated as you factor in initial speed before falling, height of the creature throwing you, and other edge case modifiers. More stuff to put in the really not worth it files.
A letter asking why Ed's new bats have infravision when real bats are blind. A good question, albeit one that has since been discredited. They give the usual noncommittal "the rules am what they am, like popeye the sailor man" answer. So much for physics.
And finally we have three more letters asking about various details of gladsheim. Some are obvious, some obscure, and one potentially litigious. Damn you Tolkien's estate :shakes fist:
The forum: Katharine Kerr continues to be surprisingly controversial, with Cristopher R Kopec and Greg Meier providing their own opinions on her condemnation of evil PC's and the people who play them. One is in favour, and one is against, as is often their wont. Meanwhile, Mark Herman is unhappy about the way falling damage survivability interacts with level. Since level is all about combat training, the lethality of falling damage ought to remain about the same. That ..... would involve substantial system redesigns. Once again we see how some topics get raked over endlessly while others are ignored, in most amusing fashion.
From the sorceror's scroll: Gary puts his Official AD&Dtm Stamp Of Approval on the idea that clerics and druids of particular gods should have their spell lists restricted as well as gaining special powers. Balance must be Maintained! If they automatically had access to every cleric spell introduced in every available supplement they would be far more powerful than magic users, with their need to research spells themselves. A perfectly reasonable proposition, made more interesting by being explained in his usual florid manner filled with Excess Capitalization, and illustrated by a Most Excellent Example. I'm sure that these days he's writing like that to play to the crowd, because his mannerisms were nowhere near as exaggerated in the early years. Still, it makes for an interesting article where this could easily have seemed like a dull nerfing, and is more evidence that the sphere system of 2nd edition didn't come out of nowhere. Maybe it would have been handled differently if he'd still been in charge, but the basic direction would have been the same. That's definitely one for the historical footnotes.
First, spread the faith: Roleplaying advice. Whaat! Are people still playing clerics badly? Do they not feel they have enough role models for them in fiction? Did they miss the great fanboy rant about Archbishop Turpin a couple of years ago? Jesus? (and every other bibilical guy who God interceded for at various points in the book) Friar Tuck? Every pretentious shaman who ever went into a trance and gave cryptic advice in bad fantasy? This is primarily an encouragement for you to develop your cleric's god further, and make sure your cleric sticks to those tenants. Which of course includes trying to ensure the rest of the party doesn't violate them too much. Which if done wrong causes almost as many problems as the thief who steals from the other party members and the lawful dick paladin. There are plenty of ways that this stuff could hurt party unity. You've just got to make solving them part of the fun rather than an obstacle to it. Once again they provide advice that in hindsight is somewhere between obvious and discredited. This is not a good way to fill a feature.
The more, the merrier: Following straight on from the last article is the concept of introducing a mechanical system to the process of converting people to your religion. Charisma, Alignment, class, time spent trying, all sorts of stuff factors in. And if you do so successfully, you get XP. This could indeed be used to make a fun single player game, although a few mechanical kinks mean it's not as dramatic or versatile as it could be. Social mechanics are a controversial thing, and it's interesting seeing them show up like this. Another thing I'd rather like to test, see how it pans out in actual play. Could be cool, could be annoying, I don't really feel I can pass judgement just from reading. Anyone have any experiences with them to recount?
A better open, it figures: Once again the expansion of the hobby has resulted in more people entering the competitions at conventions, and a higher overall standard of entries. Judy Brown and Mike Jaecks show up again, each being highly placed in multiple categories. In addition, Larry Peters and Matthew Sturm make names for themselves this year. All the photos are very red and brown, and not that brilliantly done though. You really could be better presenting them to us.
Coming attractions turns up two months in a row, albeit with fewer products to plug this time. We get new mini's for the indiana jones game, and 2010 - Odyssey 2. The endless quest series gets two new installments, Blade of the young samurai and Trouble on Artule. And the marvel super heroes RPG gets it's own modulicious version of the secret wars plot arc. Now if anyones a railroader it's the beyonder. He seriously needs to suffer for this. No D&D stuff though. Goes to show, they were hardly a one product company.
Gods of the suel pantheon reaches it's end. It finishes off with a fairly pleasant bunch of gods. Lydia, goddess of music, light and daylight. Bralm, Goddess of insects and industry. Jascar, god of hills and mountains. Even as lesser gods, they all have tremendously impressive screwage attacks that'll inconvenience even high level adventurers trying to deal with them. Len also continues to hone his clerical designs, to the point where they seem pretty slick. Put them all together and you have a pantheon that is fairly varied and not archetypical. I may not always have liked them, but he does deserve credit for doing this stuff, and influencing future generations of game designers. And that's the end of the priestly portion of this magazine.
Let the horse buyer beware: A single page article elaborating on the horse buying process and reducing the randomness in the D&D system. Surely characters should be able to tell roughly how good a horse they're getting, because the sellers would, and adjust their prices accordingly. Gary would probably say that you're defiling the Sacred Balance of the Official AD&Dtm Game at this point, but I don't think you care about that. Interesting in that it points out a problem that would become more focussed upon in later editions, that a mount's power doesn't scale with the rider, so they become increasingly a liability in combat unless you trade up for rocs and dragons and stuff. While it doesn't solve the problem, now at least we know it's a commonly known one. Hopefully soon we'll have a beastmaster class along to try and fix that.
The ecology of the ettin: Ahh, ettins. Such delightful creatures. Despite having two heads, they most definitely are not very good at thinking. Or much else besides smashing stuff up and being incredibly stubborn even against mind affecting magic. Their slovenliness would give even the most odious chavs pause, and any treasure they may have is best left where it is, for having rot grubs crawling in through your hands and up your arms is exceedingly gross. Ed is relatively light on the footnotes this time, with the most significant entry being on how they handle losing one of their heads. (pretty well, considering) Certainly no great fresh perspectives provided this time. If they gave a damn, they would complain about being defamed by this article. He must be a bit worn out from last month's spectacular.
Pages from the mages III: Or maybe not. Once again Ed proves his prolificness with a little help from his friends, as Elminster reveals some more stuff about other wizards of the realms, the cheeky monkey. We get 4 new spellbooks, and 9 new spells, 4 of which can be traced to specific authors. They're a clever bunch suited to situations you'd expect a wizard to encounter at various points in their lives. Even the blasty spells have unique quirks that mean they're all distinct and may be better or worse depending on the situation, and all the books have Ed's usual loving descriptions of their appearances and histories. As I often do, I find myself wondering how the hell he does it. I find myself regularly exhausted writing at this rate, while he takes it in his stride, and produces truly exceptional material much of the time. I am filled with awe and envy.
Dragon Issue 92: December 1984
part 2/2
Off the shelf also loses it's name and become simply Book Reviews. Seems like they're genericising quite a few things. What's behind that decision?
The name of the rose by Umberto Eco has been both critically and commercially acclaimed, and now it gets recommended in Dragon as well for it's depth of historical research, making it a great resource for anyone playing in a pseudomedieval setting, and a good example of how to weave philosophy, mystery, and all sorts of mundane details into your plots. If you like that high crunch style, get it.
The riddle of the wren by Charles de Lint may not be quite as famous, but it gets just as much praise. Particularly important from a gaming perspective is the way he keeps the perspective firmly shaped by the characters knowledge, not giving away OOC details which might spoil the plot. Striking that balance between providing plenty of descriptive detail, without obviously showing your intent is another important part of good GMing. Narrative choice and player freedom requires the kind of detail that gives people information to make decisions with.
Castles, by Alan Lee & David Day, would have fit right in with Lew's book review in issue 89. A combination of artwork, and talk about the myths and stories of various historical eras, it shows just how many variations these places can have. You want places for your characters to go, whether to talk or to kill & loot, this'll help out with that.
The sword of justice is this month's module, an 8 pager. Designed for starting level characters, it seems a good one for starting up with a more story focussed tone. It does have a few silly elements, but the overall plot is a solid way of getting players used to the idea that sometimes killing is not the solution to your problems, and the personalities can be more important than the environment. Thankfully it manages to do this without falling into the trap of railroading the plot. This is quite pleasing, as it shows that they are expanding their criterea for acceptable adventures some more as time goes on. Definitely a good one to use as a warm-up for a new campaign.
A big list of the retailers participating in the TSR 10th anniversary sale.
New heights(?) in silliness: A review of TOON! A rather distinctive one at that. Drawing on a demonstration play given by the game's developer at a con, this shows the ways it brilliantly emulates the source material, and the areas in which it doesn't go quite far enough, still being a little too tied to the conventional RPG model. Compromises, compromises. Use the officially sanctioned house rules here to shake that off and make the game even more gonzo and fun. This is definitely another signpost towards the diversification of the hobby. One one front they're producing high crunch games like rolemaster. On another they're putting greater emphasis on plot, characterization and storytelling. And here they're getting increasingly radical in their attempts to simulate a particular kind of reality and story style. All the sides of the big triangle are here, and hopefully you can find a game that'll please you. Anyway, this is a fun review. I could definitely enjoy a few more context heavy ones like this.
Getting up and getting wet: Dragonquest's popularity is rewarded with another article. For some reason, the game provides no provisions for climbing for non thieves and swimming in general. This must be rectified! etc etc. So we get one of those efficient page long articles that does exactly what it says it does, no more, no less, no mess, no fuss, hopefully not breaking to the game for allowing it, and leaving me with nothing more to say about it. That's a positive, by the way.
Fiction: The multidimensional caper by Mark Acres. Or, the NPC's escape the game and start running the show. Starts off as a mystery story that takes an abrupt left turn into meta comedy. Could really have been spun out a little longer, as the format means there isn't really enough time to build up the tension, but still an entertaining read nonetheless. Leave me wanting more. Then I'll pay attention to whatever you do next.
The six million dollar mutant: Bionics for Gamma world. We haven't seen that since way back in 1978, with it's sister gameline Metamorphosis alpha. Surprised they haven't incorporated it sooner. It should be noted that fitting and maintaining these things takes skill and equipment, both of which are at a premium in a postapocalyptic wasteland. In fact, more word count is spent on the problems than the cool powers you can get as a result. Curious. The powers granted are probably a bit on the muted side as well, trying to stick fairly closely to what you could realisticly achieve with this stuff. Someone's playing this game in a less out-there manner than Jim and co. Still, I suppose it's easier to dial these things up than to tone them down again. You don't need to shout and rant. Just play it cool like president Ahmadinejad. With bionics you can be a real bad :rest of post deleted for random insanity:
The marvel-phile: This month's featured supercreatures are the heralds of Galactus. The silver surfer, obviously; plus Nova and Terrax. Everything apart from their intelligence is at seriously superhuman levels, as you would expect. Powered by galactus, they are put in a very morally ambigious situation, getting to influence which worlds live and which ones die. Now there's a gamable situation. Who will you choose to satiate your dread master's hungers? You'd better make the decision fast because if you don't, he'll eat whoever's nearby. Jeff continues to write with a pleasantly amused tone, having recieved enough requests to keep him in work for years. He's got enough cool source material to make his job an easy one. So that leaves him with plenty of time to think up his own material as well. Fun fun fun.
Ed joins Penny for this month's StarQuestions, as some of their questions refer to his recent creation, the Zethra.
What do you mean by the costs for shipping cargo. (Complicated economic stuff. You need to use the tables to determine how much profit you make on each trip. )
How do my players start an interplanetary business (Same way you do in real life. Make a plan, try to carry it out, and face all sorts of obstacles on the way. It's up to the GM to keep it interesting and challenging. )
Will we ever see a timeline for the star frontiers game. (Soon. Very soon. Oh yes. :rubs hands together:)
What are the stats for the zebulon and K'tsa-Kar systems (Wait and see. We only have 16 pages a month, so we'll have to do this stuff in installments)
Where are the primary races original homeworlds ( Have patience and keep buying our stuff. All will be revealed.............IN TIME!!!)
What are the stats for flamethrowers. ( 6d10 points of burnination. Perfect for frying aliens with.)
Some of the duplicates in the battle of ebony eyes overlap (yes. That just makes it all the more confusing.)
Can PC's be pirates, robots or cybots ( Why not be robot pirates? Then they can fight dinosaur ninja. Oh yeah, that whole pesky free will thing. Star frontiers doesn't have sentient robots. Boo)
What's the stats for shuriken and nunchuks (I wasn't serious when I said about ninjas. Let's just say that these are not optimal weapons compared to disintegrators. )
Are there mutants in Star frontiers (not often, and certainly not with the kind of unrealistic superpowered mutations you see in gamma world. Sorry to be a party pooper. )
I though starships landed nose up. An illustration shows them on their side. ( Artwork has never been known for it's accuracy. Where shall I start? )
Are there stargates in star frontiers (No. Once again, this is not a kitchen sink setting. Do not mess with the game themes and balance.)
How many races are there (17, officially. More may show up in the future )
Can ships get above size 20. (Only at great expense.)
How can zethra match colors if they can't see it? (Same way you can sing in tune even if you can't say exactly what note is being played. They can percieve them, just not in the same way we do.)
Why is metal so good at disrupting zethra electrics. Metal is a good conductor. (Technobabble. If in doubt, technobabble. Convince the universe it's good technobabble, and it'll believe you and let you solve the plot with it.)
How do zethra convert matter to energy. How often do they need to eat. ( Good question. Ed has as usual written more on this than we could ever publish, so here's a mini-ecology for you. Hope you enjoy it. )
The dreaded old ones ooze their way into the palladium fantasy RPG.
Wormy is also dealing with the problems two-headed creatures face. Dragonmirth is very festive indeed this year. Snarfquest introduces one of the most amusing beasts of burden you'll ever ride.
Another huge issue. With it's proliferation of small articles, it took a lot of work to complete. Still, most of them were pretty enjoyable. If I had time to read them at a leisurely pace I would probably have enjoyed them even more. But no. I can't take a full month to do each issue like you could at the time, but have to get several done each week. Done, done and onto the next one. Done, done and onto the next one. Anyway, this is another excellent quality issue, full of interesting and usable stuff. Not quite sure why they made the november one extra large and cool, and then kept this one normal size. But it's not that much of a let-down really. If the next year is as good as this one, I won't complain (much) We're half way through the 80's now. Lets do our damndest to clear the rest.
Dragon Issue 93: January 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. A non hawt weretiger? What is this heresy! Someone get that girl a makeover stat! We also see our first price increase in ages. (way back in issue 37) So far, they've only increased their subscription prices. But an all round increase probably won't be far off, given the cruelty of the economy. Was there ever a concept so annoying as inflation. Forcing you to keep running just to stay in the same place. Just another method by which ordinary people are kept under control. In a lot of ways, D&D adventurers have it easy. They're generally physically powerful enough to tell the taxman to go fuck themself (but not scribes ;) ) and doing the same to death is entirely within their reach. In such a situation, bucking the system and performing acts of extraordinary heroism is easy. Lets hope the magazine still has enough good stuff to make it worth it.
in this issue:
Letters: Someone confused about how a potion of explosions works. It's like real world nitroglycerine, sir.
Someone asking about realistic stats for all the various elven subraces. You can not expect every article to cater to every non core PC race. That would eat up so much extra space as to render them nonviable. Our format has limitations.
A letter asking why so many other letters sent here go unanswered. To stimulate debate and encourage you to send in articles answering them, my dear. We can't make this magazine without you guys.
A letter asking what the hell crystalbrittle does. It was printed twice in this magazine. You must be a newbie. Guess we'll just have to print it again until it gets a permanent home in Unearthed Arcana.
Finally, a letter asking why Ed didn't use the history from the politics of hell in his 9 hells articles. Frankly, my dear, it's because he didn't like it, and it was pretty explicitly noncanonical right from it's release. We don't think everything in this magazine has to tie together. Why the hell do you?
The forum: David F Godwin shows up again, to continue the debate on morality in D&D. By what standards are you judging good, evil, law and chaos. Modern ones? Medieval ones. An artificial set of standards that has little to do with reality? Morality is a complicated business, and can be picked apart endlessly. Just how far are you willing to take it?
William Huish weighs in with a scaling system for falling damage, making it almost as deadly no matter how high level you are. Complexity is increased somewhat. But not enough to make a whole new article, thank god.
Paul Montgomery Crabaugh also shows up again, to provide a little more fuel for the Adepts vs Non-Adepts battle in Dragonquest. You've failed to take the advantages you can get by completely ignoring a stat you don't use anyway. Things are more balanced than you think.
From the sorceror's scroll: Well well. This is interesting. Gary finally gives us the rules for druids above 15th level. Having ascended to become the ruler of every druid in the entire world, where do they go from there? To loftier concerns than mere temporal politics. Able to change shape and travel the planes, hierophants look after the wider balance of nature in the multiverse, and set in motion plans that may span worlds and take centuries to resolve. And spend years asleep. Hey, they've earned it. Plus it's genre appropriate, and explains why they don't constantly get in the way of their lessers. This explains a lot. It's no wonder druid's abilities seem so piecemeal when they were developed in sections years apart. Fascinating. This certainly opens them up for epic play in a way that few other classes can match. Once again we see AD&D reaching in it's haphazard manner for things that would be properly codified, standardized, and mechanically done better in later editions. I'm very pleased indeed to discover this stuff. Gary's definitely been thinking hard about all the cool stuff he wants to introduce to the game during his absence.
Thinking for yourself: Gary also provides a tiny little extra in the form of an exhortation to do things about the religious reactionaries attacking D&D. Show them that your hobby is harmless, fun and has definite educational benefits. Yawnaroo. You'd be getting better results if you were actively courting controversy, not trying to play it down. You of all people should know that.
The making of a milieu: Arthur Collins here again, folks, with more worldbuilding advice for all y'all. How d'ya like your worlds. Lightly done, stir fried, or a bit of everything. Will you start with people, maps or concepts. How blatantly will you steal real life cultures and ideas? Remember, the things you leave out are as important as the things you put in. Remember that this is a world for gaming in, so design it accordingly. Put conflicts in there, things that the players are expected to solve. And above all, have fun. Yes, it seems that we're getting another long talk on how to build your world. We've seen them before, and we'll probably see them again. Unfortunately, this one fails to push any boundaries that Katharine Kerr didn't push recently, so this is more a fortification article than a trail-blazer. Are you keeping up with the latest fashions in design? Or are you taking a different approach? Don't think you have to do it the way they say you should.
The ecology of the Eye of the Deep: Ed Greenwood gives us a look at one of the less commonly used beholder subraces. (mainly because they can't go up to shallow waters, so only groups with water breathing spells'll be able to get to them) This goes into plenty of detail on their mating habits (very weird) their powers(quirky as any beholder), and how they interact with other creatures of the deep.(not very well, really) The amount of extrapolation from the original entry seems to be increasing in this series, which is pleasing. Guess the recent statement that they care not about that has increased Ed's confidence in just making shit up. Once again he defends his title as the king of world-building. Not too sure about the picture though. Looks like it's cowering from the camera. Well yeah, not many people who are going to disagree if you say Don't look at me, I'm hideous! Can't win them all.
Short hops and big drops: Seems like returning writers really are taking over. Stephen Inniss is back, to fix the problem that there are no solid rules on how far a character can jump. Another case where I'm surprised no-one did something sooner. (well, Gary did thief-acrobats, but they're obviously intended to be exceptional.) Can you guess how he's going to handle it? If you took invent a completely new subsystem for 5 alex, then you win. The result is surprisingly predictable, with only a few feet of leeway provided by the dice. Thankfully, it's another single pager, so it shouldn't be any great problem to use. As long as you remember where it is, like all the other subsystems scattered throughout the many many issues. This is where loose leaf cutouts come in handy.
A Pronunceayshun gyd: Frank Mentzer provides us with some amusing fiction, featuring the interplanar consortium of nebulous sages, before filling four pages with an A-Z of various D&D creatures and personages, and how to pronounce their names properly. The V-Z letters get surprisingly little play, considering how often they produce problematic creatures. This is another thing that could have been dull very easily, but is held together by it's use of fiction to educate us without directly explaining, and humorous asides. He really ought to do more articles here, because he makes this stuff fun. Gary has taught him well. This is definitely something to bookmark for later, because this is the kind of question that comes up again and again. People will always forget how to pronounce xvart or shillelagh, and this way you can quote an authoritative source.
Dragon Issue 93: January 1985
part 2/2
Coming attractions: Marvel superheroes get the lions share this month, with modules MH 4 & 5, Pit of the viper and cats paw. Play canada's greatest heroes. Hee.
D&D gets module B8, Journey to the rock. What secrets lie within it?
AD&D gets C3, Castanamir. A tournament module, exploring a mad wizards place, where you face the gingwatzim, it sounds like there will be random screwage involved. Is my impression correct?
Agencies and alignments: Oh, this is amusing. Alignments for the top secret game. These have three axes, each with 5 different alignments on them, for a total of 125 combinations. Political gets democratic, republican, neutral, authoritarian and autocratic. Change gets radical, liberal, neutral, conservative and reactionary. And Economic goes capitalist, unionist, neutral, socialist, communist. That's considerably more nuance than D&D alignments get unless you use the alternate system from SR6, but you could still probably pick apart their definitions and who should be placed where on the axes endlessly. This is a definite case of a D&Dism applied where it doesn't quite fit, which could be exploited in ways not intended. And if you transplant it back into D&D, you can play the fantasy game of class and economic struggle, with secret alignment languages for each side. I am entertained, if probably not for the reason Merle intended.
Twilight 2000 gets three full page colour ads right by each other. They obviously want to push this one hard. Man it sounds brutal. Once again we have overtaken the future. Funny how that happens.
The gypsy train is this month's adventure, although it's hardly a standard one. 8 pages of character detail, plus a centrefold that lets you build your own mini gypsy wagons for use with a game. Less a challenge to be defeated than something to be interacted with, to add flavour to your game, as each of the NPC's is given several hooks. And as they're a traveling camp, you can drop them pretty much anywhere. I can definitely see the uses for this one. It may not be as impressive as Great stoney, but it's another good example of them pushing the envelope and trying new combinations of their old tricks. And lets face it, since there are so few truly original ideas in the world, that's probably the best shot you've got of surprising people.
Fiction: Eira by Josepha Sherman. Fairy stories. Here we go again. A definite attempt to replicate that mythic there and back again journey. Unfortunately it gets a little too precious with the froofy celtic elements, and fails to live up to it's ambition. Not that this magazine would publish unbowdlerised fairy stories, that'd be too dark compared to killing things and taking their stuff. Guess it's another month, another bit of so-so fiction.
The marvel-phile: This month's profiles are two more of the Avengers. Mockingbird, another product of trying to replicate the super soldier serum; and Shroud, who seems like a textbook example of a dark and edgy anti-hero, with his martial arts training, handicap which isn't really much of a handicap, and undercover criminal activities. Once again we see a distinct conflict between the growth of that writing style, and the fact that the Marvel superheroes game was designed to emulate the wholesome stories of the previous couple of decades. Not that it stopped the game from being successful, but it continues to be jarring in retrospect. Comics may be set in this static sorta history, but they've still changed quite a bit over the years. Jeff continues to deliver reliably on this front, just as Ed does with the ecologies.
New ships for old: Space opera gets some much desired increase (at least, by the writer ;) ) in it's variety of starships. Weapons, power plants, and reaction drive strengths. Plus a house ruled damage variant that seems thrown in for no apparent reason, and some talk about the tech levels various things are allowed at. Rather a grab-bag article. As is often the case, the usefullness of this article really hinges on the balance of the crunch, which unfortunately I'm not qualified to judge in this case. So I'll have to leave an open verdict on this one.
New brotherhoods: Gamma world continues to get a fairly healthy showing here with a collection of new alliances.
The friends of justice are a group of mutants who imitate the heroic behaviour of mutants in ancient comic books. Hilarity ensues. The people in the game may not get the joke.
Mental Warriors are an organization of geniuses and psychics who want to ascend to become creatures of pure mental energy. They do engage in unpleasant behaviour to the "less gifted", so they're probably best used as villains.
Searchers try and find the base which was responsible for causing the apocalypse. A little late for that, doncha think. They've evolved from a tactical team into a weird religious cult, which is amusing, but probably also realistic.
Spoilsports are teams of elite soldiers, trained by a slightly defective supercomputer. This results in a distinct uncertainty over what they should actually use their powers for.
Voyagers want to get off this crazy mudball and find a new planet to call home. Given what happened to starship warden, this may not be a safer alternative to staying. Still, it gives you a difficult but concrete goal to aim for, and it won't finish the game if you actually win.
Another article that has a good grip on the mix of humour and seriousness that a good Gamma World game can have, and steals it's ideas from the best sources. It may be ludicrous, but you've got to play it straight and remember that this is serious stuff for the people living there. Is it any wonder they wind up believing strange things, given their environment. I am entertained on multiple levels by this article, which is definitely a good thing.
Rare wines and ready cash: What's worth more than gold in space? Fresh food! After all, gold can be mined anywhere, but good food requires a ridiculous infrastructure to create, and goes off pretty quickly, so if you get it to somewhere where it's scarce at warp speed, you can make a pretty tidy profit. If that's the case, then why are the profit margins on furs better than things like fish and vegetables? Fantasy economics strikes again, with a dull little article for Star Frontiers. Definitely a case of put the boring stuff near the back where you'll see it last.
Wormy sends irving to hire a crew for his wargame. Snarfquest drives recklessly. Dragonmirth continues to be limerickal.
Another strong issue, and also one that was much easier to get through, with an unusually high quotient of stuff that has a humorous edge to it. If anything, it's better than most of the april fools issues in that respect. As it's also full of stuff that's quickly and easily usable in your games, even if you want to put it in a different game than the one it was originally designed for, this is another very definite high point for the magazine as a whole. Bringing the whole hobby together and educating and entertaining us all, they haven't really been doing that since 1981. Lets hope they keep it up a while longer before D&D pushes everything else out again.
Dragon Issue 94: February 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Oh, now this is one of the most iconic cover pictures ever. Near photographic levels of detail, plus hawtness & cuteness without being excessively cheesy and impractical = epic win. This is one that gets reprinted several times, and deservedly so. We also get an editorial which hints that they may be increasing their coverage of non TSR games further in the near future, as Greg Stafford asks about the viability of putting runequest stuff in. And to top it all off we're getting our second Creature Catalog (not left out this time. ) This seems very promising indeed. Can they keep this run of awesome issues up? I look forward to seeing.
In this issue:
Letters: Once again, their failure to properly centre a module leads to complaints. They try, honestly they do. But when you have deadlines to meet and stuff being changed around up to the last minute, it can't be helped.
Two letters asking for more ettin education. Multi-limbed creatures are better able to survive the loss of some of their parts than humans would under the same situation. Sealing off is useful.
A letter asking how the dwarves in Gladsheim can be magic-users. The answer is of course, because NPC's are not bound to the rules PC's are. Norse myth has tons of dwarvish enchanters. We need to break the rules to properly emulate that. No, you cannot do the same.
The forum: Kurt G Barringhaus thinks that D&D really ought to have a wound penalty system. Will that make the game more fun? Good question. But it'll certainly increase realism.
Tim Nye thinks that dwarves should be heavier than Stephern Innis does. They need to be bulky, because otherwise they have a combat disadvantage that does not combine well with their favoured class. However, halflings should suck at grappling. Ho hum.
Katharine Kerr continues to believe that playing evil characters is unhealthy behaviour indicative of some underlying problem with the players personality. Yes, you, Christopher Kopec and Scott Hicks. : points finger: Why do you enjoy pretending to do nasty things? What's the source of your mental damage, huh? Dear oh dear. We expect this stuff from Gary, but still, this is not the way to garner respect. I'm very disappointed in you.
Steve Pajak has his own variant system for determining success in ability rolls, and would like to share it with us. Thanks for that. Everyone loves a good variant rule.
Ralph Sizer also has thoughts about using ability rolls as a catchall. Remember that different tasks have different difficulties. By using % and a mutiplier to your score based on hardness, you have a situation where even incompetent characters have a chance, albeit a slim one.
Roy Cozier thinks that the magazine should be in no danger from the Tolkien estate for using the name Dwalin, because that name was taken from the Elder Edda in the first place. Ha. If a corporation wants to be an asshole and has way more money to throw at the problem than you, technicalities like that will not protect you.
Gary A Nelson reminds us that bats are not blind, they actually have pretty good eyesight. Silly folkloric sayings, spreading misinformation. A lot of the time the ancients didn't have a clue what they were talking about.
From the sorceror's scroll: Having seriously added to druids last issue, Gary now gives the ranger a nice little extra. An entire new system for tracking, taking into account level and lots of situational modifiers. Which may be an increase in complexity, but sorely needed in this case, and not a huge increase in time taken to use. An expansion to the creatures that qualify for giant class bonuses, since several new monster manuals have come out since the corebook. And just so it isn't all bonuses, a slight restriction on weapon proficencies. Two of these changes would become standard in 2nd edition. Oh, the power he has. I guess these ones all make sense. But they're certainly not as spectacular as the druid ones. Once again the primary spellcasters wind up seriously overshadowing everyone else at high levels. At this point, that problem seems insoluble. Guess it comes with the territory. You play AD&D, that's the way it's gotta be.
An army travels on its stomach: Katharine Kerr contributes another extensive article on realism, logistics, and how to achieve big results in a relatively realistic way. Feeding armies is a nightmare. Travel goes substantially slower than a small group can manage. Roads in medieval places suck. Look after your animals. A rather grim article that exists largely to remind you to throw lots of obstacles in your players way, should they decide to do anything big. Someone definitely prefers their fantasy with quite a bit of grit in it. This could definitely have been done in a far more positive manner. You need to talk about how you overcome the obstacles, as well as what they are. Otherwise it's just a dampener on our adventuring spirit. Definitely not very pleasing contributions by her this month.
Same dice, different odds: Statistics! Doncha just love them. :crickets chirping: Just me then? Straight distributions, bell curves, normal distributions with standard deviation, exploding results, exponential decay curves, and lots of combinations. With a bit of creative application of modifiers, you can solve problems that plague designers through the ages. The classic problem of over lethal housecats can be fixed by rolling two dice and dividing one by the other, allowing for a tiny average, with the possibility of a substantial hit still there. Similarly, things like rockslides are better modeled with this kind of roll on a larger scale. A clever idea, and one I don't remember many games doing. Is basic division really too hard for people? This is definitely an idea I intend to incorporate, as it seems so obvious, yet so little used. Allowing for longshots like this increases the swinginess of the game. And that makes for more drama, which is generally a good thing. Another abandoned gem I'm pleased to have unearthed.
Reptiliad attack wins big: Our final bit of photography from the cons last year is a full scale diorama with tons of stuff going on. Unfortunately, once again, their photographic techniques do not work very well at capturing fine detail on such as small scale. Ur technology, it needs improving naow. Sigh.
The ecology of the chimera: Elminster gets into the ecology business. Well, if he hangs around with Ed that much, it's not surprised he gets roped in. This talks about not only the chimera, but also it's abominable relations, such as the Gorgimera and the Thessalmera, which take the idea of hybridisation several steps further still, with results as ridiculous looking as they are terrifying. This is another case where Ed really doesn't write enough to satisfy. Each of these creatures could easily fill several pages, but instead, they're all crammed together in only two. You had the chance to really elaborate on the hybridisation process, how it happened, and possibly even formulas for splicing together other creatures, which would provide endless hours of fun. A definite wasted opportunity compared to the things my imagination conjured up when I saw the title. Even our top writer can't hit a home run every time, unfortunately.
Reviews: Mercenaries, Spies and Private eyes gets a second review, rather longer and more favorable than Ken's. Arlen P Walker goes into plenty of detail on it's system. A relation of Tunnels & Trolls, it has a well designed skill system, an emphasis on designing your background over random rolls, fast and furious combat, and plenty of design advice. It also has a dual-stat alliance with Hero games, weirdly. Two modules also get reviewed. The adventure of the jade jaguar was going to be published with the core book, but got made standalone at the last minute. As a result, it's probably a bit small to really stand on it's own two feet. Stormhaven is rather better, with tons of pulp references, and a scenario which can be played in lots of different ways. Another great example of how a second opinion can be very useful.
The role of books: Secret of the sixth magic by Lyndon Hardy takes his established world and laws of magic, and starts playing with the formula. Just when you think you know the rules, some bastard goes and changes them on you. And guess who's job it is to save the world in response to this? Muggins here who can't cast a a spell for toffee. Once again, the book gets my wholehearted recommendation, even if it doesn't quite get the reviewers.
The land beyond the gate by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach is another story where a protagonist from our world wanders into a fantasy world, finding themselves the centre of a epic destined story. This cliche is kept interesting by lots of enthusiasm and tight pacing and plotting that doesn't leave things on a cliffhanger just to sell more books.
Raphael by R A MacAvoy tells the story of the titular angel's tricking by satan, loss of power, and subsequent quest for redemption. It manages to be both philosophical and introspective, and have moments of extreme high power kick-assery. So if you want to know how to run really high power games where the protagonists are among the most powerful creatures in creation, and whatever they do will have serious consequences, this seems like good reading for inspiration.
The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce is a vampire story. Like any vampire story, the precise powers and weaknesses of the creature may vary from what you expect. Plenty of other mythical thingies make appearances, but it still manages to retain a folkloric feel to it.
The song of the axe by Paul O Williams is set in a postapocalyptic world. Considerably less gonzo and with a better developed setting than gamma world, it manages to be both a self-contained story, and have plenty of references to other stories in the same world. Once again, the reviewer points out how this could be of use in your own games.
The harem of Aman Akbar by Elizabeth Scarborough is full of djinn, and contains lots of advice on how to deal with these powerful, but not particularly loyal creatures in a fun arabian romp with plenty of humor and fantastical happenings.
Exiles of the Rynth by Carole Nelson Douglas is a good demonstration of what happens when the DM has a plot, but the characters persist in trying to do something else. Tensions are caused, and the game is slowed to a crawl. The result is unsatisfactory, and often feels like filler material. You do not need to make every story a trilogy dear. Just get on with it.
My honor is my life: Tracy Hickman introduces us to the Knights of Solamnia. The three organisations that take the proto-prestige class concept of switching classes at certain points like bards and thief acrobats, and stretch it even further. Not that this is mentioned here, as this teaser is entirely rules free, giving us a potted history of the orders and their founders. Despite being a tremendously heroic organization, they've become exiles, trying to find their place in krynn's war torn post cataclysmic landscape. Oh, the angst. Well, good guys are at their best when they're the underdogs, as the kingpriest and co showed. Or something. Many think Krynns "Neutrality, be thou my good" moral lessons are a bit of a broken aesop, and I can't say I'm entirely in disagreement. This also shows signs of dragonlance's concious attempts to hit buttons for commercial appeal, making what seems appealing initially taste increasingly sour on closer examination. You can't sell me on your supposed heroes that easily, I'm afraid.
Dragon Issue 94: February 1985
part 2/2
Creature catalog II: 18 new monsters delivered fresh to your door. Just the thing to terrorize your players with. Be careful unwrapping them, though. Many of them are Ed Greenwood creations, with Roger and Len also getting quite a few contributions in.
Belabra are really rather weird looking tentacled creatures. Thankfully, they don't attack with them. They can be trained too, which could have interesting concequences.
Giant Betta are, as the name says, giant siamese fighting fish. Like the real thing, they're teritorial buggers, easily set off by bright colours and new smells. As they make bubble nests, they're very useful for underwater adventurers in need of a quick refill. Stealth and stuff is good, because you'll probably piss off druids if you kill them.
Bhaergala are one of Ed's great lost gems of weird design and plot hooks aplenty. Virtually every line has some strange bit of flavour, and their abilities are pretty unique as well. Stealing musical instruments, spell reflection, smelling of freshly baked biscuits, these easily mach up to real mythic creatures in sheer idiosyncracy. One I could definitely stand to see some more of, and am very disappointed by future editions treatment of them.
Phase Dragons are exactly what they sound like. Phase spiders have some serious competition. Thankfully they don't grow very big compared to most dragons, and aren't that aggressive either. A 100 foot reptile suddenly appearing in front of you would ruin anyones day.
Ekrat are nasty little paper eating fae. If your wizard suddenly finds himself missing a spellbook, they might well be responsible. Bad puns are employed in the writing of this entry, which is definitely one that's more annoying than deadly. Have them keep pet rust monsters, and the screwage can be shared around equally.
Fireball Flys go boom if you attack them. Ha ha. Like the gas spore, this is a definite play with the expectations of the party monster, only coming at it from the other direction. Laugh? I nearly split my britches. The perfect thing to have hanging around those salamanders and red dragons in their volcanic lairs.
Firestar are floating balls of light that absorb energy. There's good spell components in 'em, so cruel adventurers may want to hunt them down.
Flamewings are our third fire related monster in a row. They expel methane gas and then use it to set fire to their wings. Um, yeah. You couldn't make it up, could you. Thanks for that.
Hurgeon are humanoid hedgehogs. As Good burrowing humanoids, they're pretty unlikely to show up in a game, unless gnomes are involved. They have tricksy magical powers that mean you don't want to despoil nature when they're around. Much mehness.
Giant Lightning bugs, like fireball flys, are little pains in the ass, in this case because they're attracted to metal and shock whoever's in it. This also has the chance of removing an item's magic, which would really annoy lots of players.
Lillendi are winged snake-women from gladsheim. With a ton of powerful tricks up their sleeve, they can be both good allies and scary enemies. Probably the most famous of the monsters from this collection, they get good write-ups in future editions as well. Well, sex sells. They might not have quite the pervalicious qualities of mariliths, but they can still fuel people's fantasies.
Orgautha are gross-looking giant land leeches. They also have two special powers that make them a serious inconvenience for an unprepared group of adventurers. Poor spellcasters. So easy to ruin their days.
Rekeihs are incredibly weird looking mobile plants. With a distinctive style and plenty of ecological detail, they will give adventurers pause, but not be too scary once you get into an actual fight.
Rummele are extraplanar dogs from Gladsheim. They get a whole bunch of feyish powers such as blinking, shapechanging, and divination, plus the ability to deflect missiles. They're a great cohort for mid-high level adventurers, entirely capable of taking care of themselves against all kinds of screwage. What's that lassie? The last group of adventurers all got petrified? We must rescue them! Bring the reflective shields!
Urisk are miniature goat-headed satyrs. They may look cute, but you can bet they'll be humping your leg and chasing the nixies if you don't keep a close eye on them. They have animal companions as well, so expect the unexpected.
Viltch are hooligan monkeys from Pandemonium. They smash pretty stuff and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Like many of these extraplanar versions of standard animals, they have substantial magical and class abilities that'll make them a real hassle even to higher level parties if played cleverly.
Great Wyrms are a mysterious ancient relation of dragons. They may not be quite as badass as later dragons, but they're certainly no picnic. They have toxic breath, a smaug-esque weak spot and can be a source of great knowledge. Pretty flavourful, in other words.
Xaver are decidedly weird looking things that corrode and eat metal like rust monsters. Only they're intelligent and can actually hurt you with their attacks as well. The party is not going to be a happy one after meeting them. Muahahaha.
So it seems like we have a lot of fae, planar, and general screwage creatures this time, rather than stuff you have a straight-up fight with. Introducing these guys to your game will definitely result in interesting times for your players. A definite sign that they were trying to push the envelope on what monsters did and how they acted at that point. Ecology may have been a fairly established concept by then, so now they're pushing the boundaries of how you should act in a fight, and the tactics you have to adopt to successfully deal with these weird creatures. Course, if the way you find out is by trial and error, there's going to be quite a bit of frustration and a few deaths on the way. Eh, if adventuring wasn't a challenge, what would be the point?
Fiction: Fortunes of a fool by Nicholas Yermakov. Oh, this is mean. How to go from rags to riches and back again, courtesy of some supernatural meddling with a distinctly pessimistic russian slant to it. That makes a change from the usual happy, or at least bittersweet ending, and still feels nicely folklorish. As a change of pace from most of the stories in here, I very much approve.
Coming Attractions: Lots of stuff out this month. D&D gets Blade of vengance, a solo module, where an elf must avenge the destruction of his homeland. It also gets AC4, the book of marvelous magic. Lots of new spells and magic items for your delectation and twinking out.
AD&D gets C4:To find a king. Part 1 of the prophecy of brie series, this tournament module does indeed sound pretty cheesy. Not a classic.
Endless quest gets EQ 25: Conan the outlaw, and EQ 26: Tarzan and the well of slaves. Seems like they're definitely in a pulpy mood at the moment.
Star frontiers gets SFKH3: Face of the enemy. Not much info is given on this one.
And on the wargaming front, we get The breakout from Normandy, and The Quadrigame of waterloo. Two more highly specialized games designed to cover particular battles in great detail.
S.h.i.e.l.d.™: The Marvel superheroes game's popularity is rewarded by a 5 page article on these guys. Their history, their enemies, their staff (including lots of rather amusing mugshots) and all the cool stuff they have, (including a cutaway diagram of their helicarrier base. ) and finally stats for Nick Fury, their head honcho. A very dense article, this gets tons of info in in an efficient manner. I've seen articles twice the size that don't actually say as much of importance. Guess they're really getting the hang of this 16 pages limitation and editing stuff down for it. The artwork is also particularly good on this one. A fast and furious way to kick off this section, with plenty of stuff that's useful in actual play. You never know when you're going to need a world-spanning secret organization to clear up the messes your players are making.
The marvel-phile: My gods. Now this dates this issue. We have spiderman's symbiote, but no Venom. They also don't know who the hobgoblin is yet either. Fascinating. Goes to show how movies condense the stuff from years of comics decades ago into their writing. We also get the Kingpin, another villain who would plague spider-man throughout the ages. Once again, I am shown just how much comics have changed in recent years, and paradoxically, how much they haven't, with events happening back then still having reprecussions now. Jeff delivers another three statblocks and potted histories efficiently as ever. I find myself tempted to pick up a compilation of that era so I can read all this stuff I missed first hand. Must. Stay. Focussed. 271 issues to go. Long Journey. No time for unproductive diversions.
From anarchy to empire: David Cook acquires his nickname of Zeb, for the first time I've spotted in this magazine. Another interesting historical footnote for y'all. Anyway, star frontiers continues to get plenty of coverage around here, with details on how interstellar government is handled there. From loose trade agreements to centralized authoritarian rule, they can vary widely. On the plus side, this is system free, so it's easily applicable to other games. On the negative, this is another case where they really don't go into enough depth, due to the short pagecount, and as a result all the advice feels very familiar, just reskinned slightly. Not a useful article to a longtime reader.
A second bit of fiction this month, The gun that shot too straight by Ralph Roberts. So you've developed a gun that has unlimited range. Just how unlimited? Oh dear oh dear. This could get ugly. A textbook example of speculative sci-fi, where the protagonists take a back seat to the conceptualizing. Which is a decent way to finish of the magazine.
Wormy is just plain awesome this month, as multiple plot threads get developed upon. Snarfquest shows us a map of his world. Dragonmirth shows us a variant on the trojan horse.
Well, this has certainly been an interesting issue. Never thought I'd see Katharine Kerr flipping out and being a downright spoilsport. Even if the average quality of articles isn't quite as high as the last three, there's certainly lots of weird and wonderful stuff happening in here. The monsters are good, the reviews are well above normal quality, the fiction is cool. It's just the full sized articles that aren't always the best. Keep the surprises coming, guys. Controversy like this is fun to rediscover.
Dragon Issue 95: March 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Welcome to the D&D experience, blue-jeans style. Certainly an interesting art style for this months cover. I quite approve. No particular theme to this month's issue, just another array of stuff for your enjoyment, for all kinds of systems. Can't think of anything else interesting to say here, so lets get going, as usual.
In this issue:
Letters: We have a letter complaining about how much advertising has increased in the magazine over the years. With statistics. They consider this so significant that they devote the whole editorial to justifying it. Commerce sucks, does it not. Just the price we pay to not have to charge you so much.
One of those awkward questions. If someone is deconverted after a cleric converts them, do they lose XP. The answer is generally no. They take the time to answer some more possible rules quibbles. So it goes.
A dumb question about an apparent rules error that is not a mistake at all. Use a little logic before you write in, it'll save everyone a lot of trouble.
Some questions about the monsters in issue 89. Once again logic and realism have to take a hike. Seems like they're saying that a lot lately. Every trend has it's backlash.
Another question on a recent article. Now they want to know exactly what counts as mental damage. Simple enough to resolve.
As is the next bit, which isn't a letter but a load of errata. All in all, this letters section has been rather a downer. Can't we have at least one feelgood compliment or amusingly insane rant? Poor Kim, having to sift through this crap every month.
The forum: Stephen Inniss rebuts comments on his recent articles. You, sirs, were not paying attention, for I specifically already addressed the problems you mentioned within the article. Fantasy is not real, but you should still try and keep it internally consistent. Not that you have to explain everything upfront, either. Balance, my dears.
Calvin V Jestice wants to introduce chances for broken bones to falling damage. Once again, we see people wanting to put specific injuries into an abstract hit point system. Shoo, Away wi ye, ya varmints.
Leslie G Gillis thinks that the idea of worshipping only one god in a pantheistic society is a silly one. Most people will appeal to appropriate gods whenever they're in a tough situation. A perfectly valid view. Monotheistic assumptions from the real world can be hard to shake of. Also, why should PC's be completely immune to systems that affect NPC's. They shouldn't be that special.
From the sorceror's scroll: After receiving many complaints, Gary decides to loosen up the demihuman racial limits a little, as well as open up the various subraces to general PC's. Welcome to serious power creep. We also see the first named mention of Unearthed Arcana. Having produced so many Official AD&Dtm Rules Additions in this magazine, it's time to compile them and make them easily accessable, like they've been saying they would since 1982. Yeah, that's the ticket ;) And then next year, they'll start work on a new edition. This is interesting information. And that's not all, not by a long shot, no sir. We also have more news on the D&D film, and results from the recent survey. And finally, Gary apologizes once again to the runners of Origins, as bad blood between conventions is not helpful to the hobby as a whole. My oh my. That's some quite substantial news. This will please a lot of people, and piss off almost as many. The D&D ruleset is about to be changed forever, not neccecarily for the better. Looks like the next few issues are going to be rather dramatic ones. Should be exciting for me.
The influence of tolkien on D&D: More pontification from Gary. Once again, for those of you who didn't get the memo way back in issue 13, he talks about D&D's many other influences such as Howard, Vance, Moorcock, Lieber, et all. While D&D's races may have been taken from LotR, the tone was very much not. In fact, he's quite critical in many ways of Tolkien's writing style and plot pacing. D&D is not suited to running a game like Tolkien's plots, and you really shouldn't try. Seven years may have passed, and many things have changed in the meantime, but his opinion remains much the same. All you Johnny-come-latelys who've never read most of the original inspirations for the game are Doing It Wrong™. Once again we see how he's already the ultimate grognard, pontificating on subjects most people already consider irrelevant, and only grudgingly changing with the times. Still, once again, he does so in an entertaining fashion. It's going to be different once he's gone. Who's going to play the cantankerous ideologue then?
The world gamers guide: Looks like this is back, sorta. They're no longer going to publish the name of everyone who sends it in, because that'd take forever. Instead, they're going to concentrate on expanding international awareness. If you're in some far flung part of the world, and struggling to find any players at all, they'll help out. How nice of them.
Christians! Learn how to fight at the gates of hell with Dragonraider! Well, okay then. I'm sure your parents will object less than if you were playing that ghastly piece of satanic propaganda that is D&D ;) I find this advert amusing on multiple levels.
How taxes take their toll: Taxes. Peh. Was there ever a thing adventurers hated more? Arthur Collins regales us with tales of the things kingdoms find to take money from you for having, and the way they do it with the least resistance. Catch them in the winter, when they can't run away. An annoying subject, but handled with humour and a good framing device. Will your adventurers aquiesce for the good of the kingdom, or will they slaughter anyone who has the temerity to try and leave or take over. And if they take over, how will they handle the whole finance situation. You might be able to live the high life on a dragons hoard for years, but it won't keep the roads smooth or the army paid for long. A dull subject, but still one you can build plenty of adventures around. Do you want those kinds of realistic ramifications in your game, or would you prefer to keep your play escapist? As ever, any amusing stories of how your characters acted when faced with the dread spectre of taxes are welcome.
The ecology of the cockatrice: Ed ropes Elminster in to help for the second issue in a row. He must be running out of time to do his own research, with all this rapid writing. We get one of his best stories yet, a nicely folklorish tale of ironic punishment featuring the red wizards of Thay and several now familiar bits of Realms geography. Once again we get plenty of detail on both their lifecycle and the uses to which their parts can be put (and the prices you can command for those parts. You want to make magic items of petrification, here's the thing you want to go for. Once again, he continues to outdo himself, with strong fiction, worldbuilding, ecology, and game-usefullness all handled in an exemplary manner. And he's got a decent balance between text and footnotes as well. Unless you don't like him putting Realms setting stuff in a supposedly generic article, this is practically the platonic ideal of an ecology article. Genius.
Prices for the roaring 20's: Hello Glenn. It's a while since we had some stuff from you. Once again he's put lots of effort into his research and writing to show us just how ridiculous inflation has been over the years. Cars for $200. Shoes for a couple of pounds. A cement mixer for $26, of all things. One of those system-free articles that'll come in handy if you find yourself in the appropriate position. He's got a good idea of what adventurers are likely to want. If your PC's want to go into the lair of the monster dressed in gingham, their desires are catered for. :D Another one for bookmarking.
Credit where credit is due: Katharine Kerr once again shows her distaste for hack and slash gaming and tries to get some more people to abandon it for the rarified realms of Proper Roleplaying™. This of course is tricky when the principle source of XP is killing things and taking their stuff. To change people's behaviour, you need to alter what the system rewards and punishes. Clever thought, and one which will be applied to great effect in future games. Once again, her attention to detail is exemplary, but she also shows a certain didactic over-literalism in her writing. I sense that she is growing dissatisfied with this job. She certainly isn't producing as smoothly and reliably as Ed, Ken or Roger.
The many shapes of apes: Stephen Innis continues to be a prolific contributer. At this rate he'll be next to officially join the team. He returns to one of his subjects of expertise, animals. From little chimpanzees to the extinct (on earth) Gigantopithicus, (which really ought to be renamed for a fantasy campaign.) plus gorillas and orangutans. Compared to the recent stuff in the creature catalog, they're a bit dull really. So much for reality being stranger than fiction. Shoulda put bonobos in there as well. Bah. Family friendly magazine and all that crap. Not the most fun way this could have been handled.
dragonraid is not, in itself, a bad game. Sure, the magic system requires PLAYERS to quote scripture... but other than that... It's very much CS Lewis in inspiration.
(Yes, I've got the big green box.)
Dragon Issue 95: March 1985
part 2/2
Into the forgotten realms: Well well. Having been regailed with hints about it for the past four years, we finally get to play an official FR module this month. With UA as well, this is turning out to be a significant month. This is one of those modules you're not intended to solve by straight combat, with a boss way above your expected CR. It's also very much a tournament module, with a scoring system and definite winners and losers. Looks like despite his progressive tendencies, Ed can kick it old skool with the best of them as well. Is there no end to his talents? This'll test your ingenuity and your ability to play along with ridiculous situations. Will you take the pregens, or subject your regular characters to it.
Battles above the dungeon: We've had plenty of advice on how to set an adventure above ground by now. However, tactical advice for party level skirmishes has not been amongst that advice. And lets face it, positioning can have a pretty significant effect on a fight. Surrounding, hitting from the rear, ambushing with ranged attacks, cover, there are plenty of ways you can turn the tide. Once you add flight, and the artillery effects magic can provide, you can face hugely greater numbers and come out on top. Or vice versa, if it's your enemy that's using these tricks. A lengthy article full of cool ideas to get you to raise your game, that if anything is even more relevant today, with 4th ed's emphasis on positioning and it's manipulation. You can get a lot of use out of this one, regardless of the system you're using. A pretty strong article all round.
Fiction: Desperate acts by Gordon Linzer. A very dramatic tale of aging, ambition, treachery, necromancy, and hiding the truth from both yourself and others. Has the captain of the guard been holding on to her post too long? Who wants to get her removed and why? Obviously I won't spoil you, but the answer will remain mysterious until the last page. Once again, he puts an interesting slant on familiar ideas, taking them a step further to keep them interesting.
Coming attractions: Endless Quest gets two new subdivisions. Super Endless Quest offers more depth and choice, with it's first release, the Prisoners of Pax Tharkas. Meanwhile Crimson crystal uses the same trick as the old transformers toys. Use the crimson screen on the artwork to reveal the clues to solve the problems. It's first two adventures are Riddle of the Griffon and Search for the pegasus. Anyone remember any of this stuff. Seems odd that they aren't covering it in the magazine at all.
Top secret gets TS008: The seventh seal. Save Los Angeles from nuclear destruction. The stakes are pretty high. Are your agents up to the mission?
Marvel superheroes gets MHAC5: Project wideawake. Essentially, it's the mutant splatbook. Lots of stats and stuff for your enjoyment.
Conan gets his own standalone RPG. Another one of those boxed sets that show up just how much more accessable to new players RPG's were back then. 80 pages in total was considered a game of medium complexity. Even supposedly light games like savage worlds are more than twice that nowadays. Ridiculous, really.
AD&D gets lots of cool stuff. The battlesystem game means you finally have a system for mass combat. Let your characters lead armies! Woo! We also get module C5: The bane of Llewellyn, and DL6: Dragons of ice. Both continue the adventures from previous installments. Lots to keep your heroes busy with here.
The zuraqqor strike back!: Star frontiers Knight Hawks gets some more ship stats and scenarios. Quite a familiar tale, that. Beware the insectile Zuraqqor, and their massive hive-ships. They may seem slow, but there's lots of things even slower, that they can raid and loot. Should provide a few more hours of fun for you.
Starquestions goes back to gamma world. It's becoming quite the regular stop for them as well.
Will you reprint old articles if we demand them ( Mmmmmmaybe. If you ask very nicely. )
What do you use for hit dice when attacking on matrix II (constitution)
How much damage do mini-missiles really do (10d10. Doesn't sound very mini to me.)
How do you penetrate powered armour with a club. (Lots of Clubs! The problem with ablative armour is that it ablates. )
Can you cut peoples limbs off with a vibroblade (No. Abstraction strikes again! Once they're dead, you can mutilate them any way you like. )
Do radiated eyes have a weapon class (nope. Zappy lasers are very good at hitting.)
Does having con 16+ let you attack as a 16 HD creature (quite possibly)
How many attacks can you do in a turn (1. No more. Ancillary actions may be performed as well. NPC's may break that rule.)
Where is the apocalypse base (Very good question. Keep asking and we may do a module on it.)
Can we have a list of how the new edition has changed from the old (no. You've gotta buy the new edition, so there. )
Are there prisons in gamma world (Sure. Don't expect the criterea for being put in them to be fair or sane. You get caught, you deal with the consequences of the local law, whatever it may be. )
Are there more cryptic alliances (Sure. Introduce any you want. )
I don't have an LGS. (Mail order our stuff. Aaaaanywhere iiiinnn the WOOOOORRRRRRLLLLDD!!!!!)
Is radiation damage applied immediately. (At the end of the appropriate interval. It'd be intolerably tedious to roll for background radiation every minute. )
Are there any gamma world posters (sorry.)
How much status do you get for killing things (the enemy's total hit points, divided by the number of combatants on your side. )
Should the players be allowed to look at the rules during the game. (That is entirely the GM's decision. You can be as nice, or as strict as the players will tolerate. )
When do we find out what happened to the rest of the solar system. (Again, keep begging and buying our stuff, and we may tell you ............ eventually. If you can't wait, just make it up yourself. )
Where can I find a starship. (In space. They're too big to land, and any functioning ones are already well off this dump. )
Are there gamma world articles in ARES and polyhedron issues (yes. Pick them up while they're available.)
Will we ever get Advanced Gamma world, organized like AD&D. (No.)
Who fought in the social wars (Everyone. No-one was spared. Not even Switzerland. )
Antimissiles and roundshot: Another familiar system gets more attention. Traveller gets some intriguing new weapons to tip the odds in space combat. Mines. Tractor beams. Antimissile clusters. A definite emphasis on the defensive side of your ship's arsenal. Stuff that shows up in plenty of Sci-fi movies and books, and I'm vaguely surprised isn't detailed already. Spot a gap, fill that gap, soon people can't imagine being without you, that's the way to progress, as I've said before. And this article neatly avoids the threat of power creep as well. But what would you expect from the author of something as inventive and meta-aware as Everybody eats everybody on sunday's planet. Once again, he gets my approval.
The marvel-phile: Iron man! Now there's a character who's evolved in powers quite a lot over the years. Because he has two operators, plus a whole array of special powers developed as needed over the years, this is too big to fit in a single issue, with more to come next time. To start off, we get the unenhanced stats for Tony Stark and Rhodey. Pretty much what you'd expect. Then we get the suit, and a whole page of the special powers it's had over the years. This is a definite case where you need reassignable floating power points rather than a laundry list. Some poor cut-and-pasting is visible in this article, which definitely doesn't interface that well with the usual style of these articles. Gadgeteers are a problem in many supers games, and it seems this is no exception. How awkward and disappointing.
The dolphins of known space: Larry Niven! Ringworld! It's been quite a while since we saw anything on this. But now we have an official licenced game, hopefully we'll be seeing some more in the near future.
Now, dolphins. While intelligent, they're a definite problem to integrate into standard games, cause y'know, the whole no arms or legs thing. Fortunately, Known space is a pretty racially progressive place, (We'll skip the flamewars about it's sexual progressiveness for now) and they have plenty of gadgetry to help them integrate. All of which is nicely statted up for the BRP system. And they do have some cool special abilities that make up for it, such as sonar and exceptional swimming ability. You can make this into the kind of problem that's fun to get around, rather than the type that'll ruin the game. A pleasing article, both from a fluff and crunch perspective. And since it's BRP, that means you can play dolphins in Runequest as well. Looks like Greg's request is already paying dividends.
Wormy also comments on taxes and economics. Snarfquest again triumphs by sheer luck. Dragonmirth is as puntacular as ever.
Looks like D&D's history is chugging along nicely. With UA imminent, and the forgotten realms given a considerable profile raise, we get some more foreshadowing of the big changes that will happen in the next few years. The rest of the issue's pretty interesting as well. Ed continues to shine. Katharine shows signs of burning out, there's plenty of stuff for other systems. Looks like their strong run is continuing, but there are hints that may change at any time. What will the next dramatic left turn be? Lets hope we won't have to wait too long to see.
Quote from: aramis;326125dragonraid is not, in itself, a bad game. Sure, the magic system requires PLAYERS to quote scripture... but other than that... It's very much CS Lewis in inspiration.
(Yes, I've got the big green box.)
So ironically, you're closer to performing REAL magic when you're playing it than you are in D&D :p
Quote from: (un)reason;326344So ironically, you're closer to performing REAL magic when you're playing it than you are in D&D :p
yup!
Dragon Issue 96: April 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Welcome to another april fools issue. They may have neglected it last year, but this time they're really going to town on the ridiculousness. Pray if they slap you round the face with a fish, it'll be a haddock, not a spiny puffer fish or a giant eel or a mudkip. No-one really lieks mudkips. Not even with pasta. DUCK CITY!
In this issue:
Talisman, the magical quest game. How cute. I vaguely remember this.
Letters: A letter asking if you could cut costs by feeding your soldiers nothing but iron rations. Sure, but they wouldn't be happy about it, and they still wouldn't be able to carry enough to feed them more than a few weeks, especially with all their other stuff. You can't escape logistics that easily.
A question about the jumping rules in issue 93. Unclear math in an example? Say it aint so.
An odd question about attacking while being grappled by the eye of the deep. Of all the things to quibble about.
A letter asking how hard the Urisk is to spot. Pretty darn tricky, as long as it stays still.
Someone pointing out a pronunciation inconsistency. They say to use the dictionary version. Even writers disagree at times.
And finally, as it's april, we have four joke letters. You know, these would be funnier if they weren't immediately obvious as joke letters. You ought to use the real ones. You should know by now they'll be more ridiculous than anything you can come up with.
PENDARGON!! (squee!) Ahem, I mean dragon. One of the most idiosyncratically awesome games ever gets its first edition. Honor, Passion, romance and getting old and dying in the reign of King Arthur. Man, we're not even to the first feature and we've already seen two interesting new adverts. This is promising.
The forum: David Miller has his own thoughts on alignment, leaning towards subjectivity and being true to your own standards being more important than some universal rules of morality. A perfectly valid way to do things, but not one that will end this debate.
Joseph M Dornbierer takes up the rest of the forum, with a huge amount of commentary on all sorts of articles and the way they change the rules. What is really official if even Gary doesn't use the rules as written, what additions and streamlinings are good for the game, and does anyone actually play them as written, because I've never seen a game where every rule is strictly applied. Even if they were, many of the results would be ridiculous in real world terms. This is seriously problematic. Once again we see that many people back then had problems with the rules, and extensive house-ruling was common. What are we to do with this turbulent playerbase?
From the sorceror's scroll: More demihuman level limit increases. God, people just won't let up on this one, will they? Having already granted some pretty hefty raises, now Gary opens up various previously forbidden classes. Most significant of these is that elves can now become rangers. Their gods have finally decided that this newfangled wilderness handling skillset the humans have come up with is so appropriate to elves that they'll grant their persistent prayers and let them have it. See what determined union action gets you? Druids also get considerably opened ranks. We also get some tedious organizational stuff, as they turn paladins into a sub-class of cavalier, and elaborate on the dual classing options available to characters. We also get some amusing contrition from Gary as he receives a lecture in etiquette from a FLGS employee, and reminds us to be polite when requesting stuff they don't have. (also, don't steal kids, as if you needed to be told) And in another of his random left turns, he recommends the Black Company books by Glen Cook as being excellent inspiration for gaming. Another amusing demonstration of his stream of conciousness writing style, in which rules are changed at his whim. Just business as usual around here then.
Daredevils, the game of 1930's adventurers. Well well, another one. So many people trying to do pulp and flopping in the 80's. So much for that plan.
What good PC's are made of: Katharine Kerr continues to preach the cause of proper characterization with increasing stridency. Careful attention to historical detail, check. A definite preference for the gritty over high fantasy. Check. Give your character a proper background. Check. Race, nationality and religion should mean more than a single word on a sheet. She is becoming predictable. All these elements have appeared in her previous articles in various combinations. Fortunately, this is her last appearance for quite a long time. I suspect she was getting as sick of having to think of stuff to write here regularly as I am of reading it. Such a shame to see a writer flag and quit. Still, she went on to bigger and better things, so gamings loss is fictions gain. You'll have to look elsewhere if you want to see the rest of her story.
The ecology of the gulguthra: A rather fitting name, don't you think. If you or I had to eat shit, I think we'd make a noise somewhat approximating the taxonomic name of the otyugh family. This is as much a story of forgotten realms politics as it is the monster in question. Not that it neglects them, going into considerable detail on their physiology and mating habits (which are as gross as you might expect) tactics and relationships with other creatures. Ed seems to have pretty much locked down this series for the moment, with the impression given that he can knock off these in an afternoon by now. They're definitely developing in a way I'm not sure I approve of, with forgotten realms creeping into the generic stuff so much. You'll have to remember that this stuff isn't canon, and you can alter their ecologies for your own world if you choose. Don't let them hem your imagination in without even realizing it. And don't think you have to have an ancient superpowerful wizard imparting wisdom to your players at every opportunity. There are better ways to get your infodumps.
Coming attractions: A bit small this month, but with a nice scroll backdrop. Our main feature is Castle Arcania, a one-on-one adventure gamebook. Sounds interesting. Anyone remember these things?
Indiana Jones gets the Judges survival pack, and module IJ4, The Golden Goddess. Rules expansions, and an adventure directly tied into the first movie. Lets get our payback.
Marvel Superheroes gets MH6: Thunder over Jotenheim. A solo adventure for the mighty Thor. Who dares!
Endless Quest gets it's 27th book, Lair of the Lich. Recover your father's secret spells from the dread liches catacomb before they're used to cause devastation.
D&D gets X9: The savage coast. What lies to the west of the Known World? One of the most fun bits of world you'll ever explore, and one we'll revisit quite a few times in greater depth. If you finish that, you can go straight into module CM4: The earthshaker. The Known World is at threat as a great danger awakes. Head back from your domains in Norwald to defeat it. We also get Dragons of Winter Night, part two of the Dragonlance Chronicles. The heroes split up. Well, since Tolkien did it, it's virtually obligatory to have the forking subplot. Otherwise it's not properly epic.
Off the shelf gets its title back: The bishop's Heir by Katharine Kurtz gets a rather mixed review. While for any normal author this would be great, for her it's slightly subpar, with the antagonists never really developed enough. Wait for the paperback if you like her stuff.
Moonheart by Charles De Lint on the other hand, gets a truly fanboyish response. Originality, characterisation, worldbuilding, style, all get top marks from this reviewer. It spans multiple genres and is pretty cool.
Brisingamen by Diana L Paxton takes an ancient norse macguffin and places it in the hands of a student in san francisco. Can you guess what happens next? Plot! Thankfully it's an interesting and well researched plot, which manages to feel real despite the supernatural elements.
The fire sword by Adrienne Martine-Barnes causes the reviewer much frustration. Something's not quite right with it, but he can't quite pinpoint it, and so kept reading and feeling unsatisfied, like scratching at an itch making it worse. He encourages you not to start. An interesting way to condemn a novel, and not one I remember seeing before.
The vulcan academy murders by Jean Lorrah is, as should be obvious, a star trek novel. While not that great as a murder mystery, with a bit of idiot balling taking place, it's a good source of more setting details for your own star trek games, with lots of stuff on Vulcan culture. And for all the reviewers distaste for Star Trek Fiction, is what D&D is doing with it's dragonlance novels any better?
Dragon Issue 96: April 1985
part 2/2
The handy art of forgery: A new special skill for assassins? Cool, I guess. It seems like a reasonable ability for them to have, so why not. As is common in 1st edition, it's odds of success are determined by a fixed % roll with a few basic modifiers. And you don't really give anything up to gain this new power, which is still a definite issue. A good idea that is flawed by the overall level of game design technology at this point. What are you gonna do.
Books to games? Perhaps!: Yeah, stealing settings seems like a good way to save time and get lots of cool stuff. However, it has definite problems. Gary is already aware of this, and has made his feelings on doing so very clear. But it's certainly not a terrible idea. You just have to pick your setting carefully, and make sure it has enough room for stories beyond the original one. Changing things to deal with spoileriffic players, setting it far in the past or future, hybridizing the settings and themes of several different books, all help. We get conversion and plot examples for Gor (!) Barsoom, and Middle earth settings. A pretty solid article that should help you if you're considering this course of action.
PBM update - news and views: Mike Gray is back, following up on his previous examination of the play by mail scene. Rick Loomis' attempts to regulate the hobby seem to be working, and the hobby as a whole is chugging along nicely. So he gives us reviews of 5 new games. Battle of the gods, World of velgor, Illuminati, Capitol, and Quest for the great jewels. All get crisp and fairly positive reviews that go into a decent amount of detail on their workings. Another good example of the diversity of stuff they're covering in this period, and it's interesting to see how this related field fares compared to RPG's. See you again next year, I hope.
Nogard: The ultimate high level Adventure to end all adventures! The most epic, exciting adventure ever. You will not believe how awesome this one is. April Fool.
The what's new dragon. Aww, isn't it cute. We get D&D stats for this little terror. Growf growf. We also get stats for the quazar dragon, a planet eating monstrosity for when your players have got too big for their boots. Neither are really legal, so don't worry too much. If they show up, you're screwed whatever you do. Your best hope is to amuse the DM enough that they don't utterly humiliate you with them.
The meanest of monsters: Two more spoof monsters, the Killer DM, and the sleep inducing DM. Once again, be very afraid, because there's no way you can win a fight with these guys. Soft Barbara Streissand music, booga booga booga. What worse fate could you face. There's no Robert Smith to save you this time. Also notable for introducing the scariest critical damage system evar. April fool.
It takes all kinds: Enraged Glaciers and Ghouls finally gets round to publishing race descriptions. Humans, Kobolds, Fairies, Goblins, Biters and Bogies. None are exactly what you would expect, as they put a unique spin on each race. An extensive matrix describes their relationships with one-another, but they have no actual stats. Maybe next year. April fool.
Rules to lose by: Ever wondered what the most underpowered class ever was. Look no further. Welcome to the hopeless character class. Even regular commoners could kick this guys ass, if he didn't kick it for them by accident first. Technically legal, but you'd have to be mad to play one. A hundred, of them, naruto style, on the other hand, could be fun. April Fool. As with everything else, you'll have to make of it what you will.
Getting in over your head: Dragonquest gets another article, this time devoted to underwater adventures. A new character class devoted to them is introduced, which will certainly change the playstyle a bit. Some rather complex crunch is introduced, with detailed examination of visibility, buoyancy, and fatigue while swimming. Curious. Not really sure what to make of this, or how it integrates with the existing rules. In any case, the writer certainly seems to have different priorities when handling swimming than most game writers. Goes to show what different people see when tackling a problem.
Palladium compresses little adverts for every book so far into one page.
Fiction: Inglafs dream by Ama Darr Rogan. Meta once again creeps into our fiction as characters start to become aware of their nonexistance. Only this time they don't get to do anything about it. Which makes this rather less interesting than several of our previous contributions. Ho hum. No cool new twist on the familiar idea this time. Maybe next time. It's not as if it's an uncommon occurance around here.
These are the voyages of the Ginny's delight: This month's special feature belongs to the ARES section. The Ginny's delight is a tramp trader, nominally set in the star trek universe, but easily adaptable to other space games. With full stats and deck plans, this is a nice help for anyone who wants to run a game with a firefly-esque independent group of PC's traveling the universe and getting in and out of wacky hijinks. Once again, they know what'll be useful, and give it to us without bogging down in unneccecary detail.
Why is this mutant smiling?: Because Gamma world gets a whole load of new mutations. More cool powers for him, in other words. 32 of them. Of course, in fine old skool tradition, you don't get to choose them, just roll them randomly, which makes the more egregious combinations unlikely, but utterly unbalanced when they do show up. Hey ho. Another so-so list of things to steal and convert for whatever game. If you saw the random demon construction and other lists, you've probably seen most of these before. Kudos for the camel hump though. A useful trick that usually gets forgotten there.
Not quite the marvel-phile: Howard the duck! Frog-man! Mailman! More awesome characters from the marvel universe get to strut their stuff on the gaming stage! April fool. An entirely legal and properly derived from the source material (which lets face it, has enough gonzo elements to keep them going for years) april fool, but an april fool nonetheless. Still, if you want to use them in your games, you can, with their blessing. I approve. These kind of things shouldn't just be swept under the rug, and april fools articles ought to be game useful. You can have mad and comical elements to your game, and not detract from the overall drama of the situation, as D&D, runequest and exalted have all demonstrated time and time again. The most risible people are those who take themselves seriously all the time.
The real marvel-phile continues it's talk about iron man, with three of the alternate suits statted up this time. Tony's lite suit, plus the space and stealth suits. The laundry list problem that plagued last issue is less of an issue (fnar), as the crunch is divided up between the various suits. We also get a very good synopsis of how Tony and co have fared over the years, with drink and financial problems playing a big part. His continuity certainly hasn't been static, and it looks like more changes are about to take places soon, as they keep up with soon to be released comics. Will we have to see him again in a few years to incorporate all the updates? We shall see.
The coming of the S'sessu: Zeb Cook gives us a new race for Star Frontiers. The S'sessu, amoral worm creatures that seem suspiciously similar to the Sathar. Don't trust them further than you can kick their asses, because they'll betray you as soon as a better offer comes along. Not a terrible addition to the stable of species, as it puts an interesting slant on the aliens as humans in funny suits trope by having two similar but apparently unconnected nonhumanoid races in the same game. I find myself approving more than I expected I would. Hey ho.
Wormy has no words this month, but some bloody impressive visuals. Trampier has certainly developed his skills quite a bit since he started working on this. Snarf breaks his poor little robot companions mind as he defeats the duck-dragon. My sanity would be squeaking too in his position.
Paranoia and MERP ads once again occupy the backmost pages.
Lots of fun stuff in this issue. Their comic output has been well above average this year, both in amusingness and game usefulness. The regular stuff, on the other hand has been pretty average, with some good stuff, and some bad stuff. So overall, a pretty decent issue. Will we see flamewars as a result of the jokes? Will next year be more or less zany? Only one way to find out. To the Causality violator! Crank dat supersoaker, Dr Netchurch! We're gonna wind 'em up fo sho!
Dragon Issue 97: May 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Silver dragons are such sluts. Seems like they'll mate with anything with a halfway decent personality or artistic skills, regardless of species. What's all that about then. When the cosmic entities who set the standards for good and evil said that love overcoming all boundaries, differences and difficulties was a great example of good behaviour, did they really mean that principle to be applied like this? Probably not, but it makes for entertaining stories, so I'm certainly not complaining. What other stories will be inspired by the contents of this issue? Good question. Too much rambling preamble keeps solid facts intangible.
In this issue:
Letters: Kim gets the first "letter" in, an apology for messing up the demihuman level raises article. That's gonna annoy a lot of overeager players. Unearthed arcana'd better be edited better than this.
A letter from Arthur Collins' mum complaining about a mistake in one of his recent articles. Kim says that that mistake was his fault, not ours. (although we really should have spotted it and fixed it. ) But really, your mum writing in to complain? What are you, 6? How amusingly absurd. Haven't seen that around here before.
Some more errors, this time in the forgotten realms adventure. This one is their fault. They meddled with ed's perfect work, and then failed to take the proper interconnectedness of things into account! Fools!
A letter asking how far a cockatrices stoning power spreads. One discrete unit, called a lifeform. Simple as that. Bloody rules lawyers, trying to make simple solutions complicated.
A question on ability score limits and magic items. Once again, they phrased things poorly. When they said maximum scores, they meant permanent ratings, not further temporary enhancements on top of that.
Three letters on the Treasure Trove, asking for more detail on various items.
A letter asking why apes have a such low chance of being found in their lair. Because normally they don't keep lairs, ya dummy. Does the word nomadic mean anything to you?
A letter full of rapidfire questions, which get equally terse replies. Someone's getting in the april fools spirit.
The forum: J R (R ;) ) Smith disagrees strongly with Gary's statement that Tolkien's world is not suited to D&D gaming, and D&D is not substantially indebted to it. Apparently lots of other people agree with him, in even more heated terms that are not publishable in a family friendly magazine. How very amusing. Goes to show what happens when you talk down to your audience.
David Finlayson thinks debating about good and evil is pointless, yet still has extensive contributions on the debate. That's like saying I don't mean to cause offense just before saying something incredibly rude. Rather disingenous really.
David C Rathbun has some optional rules about handedness, of all things. The kind of thing that feels like it ought to have been an article but wasn't long enough. Once again, experience gained from the SCA is cited. Not sure if I approve of that or not, but it's definitely interesting.
From the sorceror's scroll: This month, Gary goes into how deities get their power. Worship! Seems a sensible start. However, it then gets rather awkward, applying linear math to what should be an exponential progression, and reminding us that D&D alignment was bloody weird, goes all the way up, and wasn't all that well thought out. I'm really very iffy on this one. It reads like something that was dashed off late at night, and then published without proper editing. You need to join the dots up, otherwise the world won't work properly.
Sticks, stones, and bones: Did a thief steal your stuff. A rust monster eat it. Or a fireball backfire and melt your weapons. You'll need to improvise something fast if you want to get out of the dungeon alive. Fortunately, there are plenty of objects that make good improvised weapons, particularly if you've just killed something. Yes, it's demeaning when you're used to shiny magical swords, but a heroes true worth is in his spirit and ingenuity, not material things. Stephen Inniss delivers another of his great examinations of an aspect of the game you may have overlooked. From basic household objects, to industrial devices, so many things can be turned to the task of delivering Pain! Another thing that can be great fun, but has since fallen out of favour amongst the official designers, due to the emphasis on balance and having an expected array of equipment to go with your level. Household objects? We can't be bothered to put costs and descriptions for those anymore. Another article that makes it clear we're still a long way from home. But that doesn't mean we can't use this stuff in our games. If you power down the PC's a bit by removing their stuff, it makes battles genuinely nerve-wracking, and slows down the rush through the upper levels that you can see in 3rd and 4th. Just don't do it all the time.
A tale of three talents: Some rather impressive pictures of a miniature castle. Designed by Arthur Collins, built out of sheet metal by Dennis Kauth, and photographed by Mike Sitkiewicz, this is a pretty cool bit of design, well displayed. See what having a proper photographer on the team can do. Keep it up.
Crom's Blood! It's Conan the roleplaying game! Out now! Supplements coming soon! Adverts are amusing. Definitely a step up from getting D&D supplements.
Only train when you gain: Ahh, one of our perrenial topics. How do you handle training in the game. Should it be easy or hard. Expensive or not. How possible is it to innovate and develop in the field without help from anyone else. Let's see what this writer has to say about it. He definitely doesn't seem happy about the current assumptions. Unless you're pretty generous with your treasure, you may well wind up wasting a load of time grinding to get the money to advance after you have the XP. This doesn't seem right. Instead, lets save the training for when you actually gain new powers, rather than just improving the current ones. Seems a bit of a long-winded way to say it, but it's a sensible thing to say. Bit meh, really.
The ecology of the gorgon: Another petrifying monster gets special attention. Well, would you ignore it if it was wandering around your neighbourhood? As ever, Elminster draws upon his huge network of sources to present the information to Ed. As with the cockatrice, he decides to make their petrification a voluntary action. (which I vaguely disapprove of as it makes it entirely a combat power, and removes the inherent tragedy that the other route provides for. ) That sylistic disagreement aside, it's as well written and thought out as ever. Particularly amusing is the gorgons relationship with rust monsters, who will eat their skin (gross) given half the chance. And isn't fun stuff like that what ecology is about. Not just what a creature does, but it's relationship to other creatures. Once again, he's turning in pretty sterling work.
For a fuller background: Paul Crabaugh again contributes this month's dragonquest article. Some random rolls produce stupid results. This needs fixing. Lets revise the social class tables, and add a new variable. Nothing wrong with that, and the way it's written is laced with dry humour. A little fun makes an efficient article go down even more smoothly. As long as you don't mind some characters starting out with definite advantages compared to others from random rolls, you should enjoy this.
Pages from the mages IV: God, Elminster appearances really are increasing in frequency of late. I guess Ed's realized that quite a few people like him, and is starting to play to the crowd. Before long, his antics'll be overshadowing the game information that he imparts. We're also seeing the same place names turn up repeatedly on a regular basis now, as he develops the Realms in his own mind as well as ours. This installment's pages are Bowengles book, The spellbook of Daimos, The book of Num the mad, and Briels book of shadows. Between them, we have nine new spells, plus a recepie for making homunculi, and his usual array of amusing histories, offhand comments about people and places, and other things that can provide enough plot hooks for months of gaming. It may not all tie together, but that's the nature of a real world. There's bits all over the place, some of which connect, some of which don't, many of which seem to make no sense. You can't tie it all up into a neat package aimed purely at gamability without losing something.
Dragon Issue 97: May 1985
part 2/2
The only good captive: Oh, now this is a topic rich in ideas, that D&D really doesn't support at all. Lew Pulsipher floats the idea of keeping captives more, instead of just killing your enemies. It often allows you to get more financial benefits than just killing them and taking their stuff, allows PC's to lose without spoiling the game as much, and opens up tons of interesting roleplaying possibilities. You could be stripped of your stuff and sold into slavery (hey, a chance to use the earlier article on improvised weapons), held for ritual sacrifice, tortured, and forced to spend time with people you wouldn't normally give the time of day to. All cool stuff, that even Lew's advice probably can't make work against the rules of the game, and built up player expectations. Maybe we should consider moving to another one for a while, enjoy the change.
Blueprint for a big game: Jim Dutton, the head of the new AD&D PbM game, talks about the creation of the structure for it. This is the kind of thing that causes substantial logistical hassles. You have to structure your world building in a very different way to tabletop, and build up a lot more before you start, because winging it when you have hundreds of parties wandering around a continent is a recepie for disaster. While this gives you lots of advice in how to build your own game in an organized fashion, it doesn't actually reveal that much about the setting of the PbM game (spoilers, blah blah), and the way it's written is rather dull. Someone is rather better at technical writing than fun fluff details. Anyway, did anyone play this back in the day? What was it like? Just how much did they have to change the rules to make the week-long turn cycles work.
Reviews: Element masters is a rather curious sounding RPG. Each character is the chosen of one of the four elements, and must master element magic if they are to save the world. Looks like a rather crunchy game, with a long skill list, hit location system where each body part tracks damage separately, lots of weird monsters and implied setting detail, and good examples of play. As long as you don't object to the focussed premise and high crunch level, this looks like quite a good game which can support a decent length campaign.
Starstone is a generic RPG module. As with other system free modules around this time, it has to make up for it's lack of crunch by having stronger characterization setting and relationship details than similar D&D modules. It's main flaws are in making the plot solid enough that the PC's want to stick around to solve it, and it refers to an as yet unwritten other module, which everyone knows is an irritating sales ploy. Despite these, the reviewer still recommends it.
Bandit gangs and Caravans is the 10th thieves guild supplement. It gets a rather less enthusiastic review. The law of diminishing returns has set in, and the combination of copypasta, and reduced size compared to previous books is making the reviewer irritable. Which is a shame, because there is some salvagable stuff in there, such as the mass combat system. Judges Guild needs to shake up their format to freshen things up again.
Authentic agencies, part I: Merle fills us in on the real life secret agencies. CIA, NSA, FBI, ATS, and the rest of the alphabet soup, with a strong emphasis on american agencies. Man, there really are a lot of them, probably all working at cross-purposes, and not sharing information properly. You could build a lot of intrigue out of these lot, even without inventing more fictional agencies. Obviously, there isn't a huge amount of data, because they're, y'know, secret agencies. But it's certainly a start. And I'm sure you could look up some more. This raises the case for playing historical spy games, as you can get the declassified stuff from 30 years ago, and find out what was really going on. So the article may be dry, but it's inspired some cool ideas in my head, which makes it ok.
Fiction: Catacomb by Henry Melton. A rather meta tale of adventuring within a MMORPG text adventure game. (very interesting in itself from a historical perspective. How common was computer networking back then? ) And they already have gold farmers. How prophetic. The anachronism of it being text based aside, this really does feel like it could have been set today. The human drama side of the writing is pretty solid too. It's not quite a full-on classic, but I'm really rather impressed by this. Sometimes, they manage to get things spot-on. Have some kudos, if you're still around.
The ares section finally gets a colour cover. Guess they've proved themselves a valuable part of the team over the past year, so a little extra money is in order. Cool. Hopefully that means they're not doomed anytime soon.
Rogues of the galaxy: Ahh, traveller. Seems to be custom designed to allow for lots of expansion material. This time, it's the career criminal that gets an expanded lifepath especially for them. This is definitely a path many adventurers will want to follow. You can make lots of money, meet fascinating people, learn cool things, and visit exotic locations. But there are risks. You may find yourself mouldering in jail for several years, not actually learning very much. Them's the breaks. Thankfully, it'll still only take a few minutes to make another one. Welcome to the team. You'll make a valuable traveling companion as long as you don't start using your larcenous skills on the rest of the party.
Starquestions: Do you need skills to use a weapon. (Do you want to have a horrible accident? I suggest you learn.)
Shouldn't automatic rifles shoot more bullets than pistols ( it's not size, it's how you use it. )
Can you use a bullet belt on an automatic rifle. (only with expensive jury-rigging)
Do dralisite suffer two weapon penalties (yes)
Shouldn't dralasite be able to ooze under a wall (You can only compress so much. That's too much for them.)
How do you make encounters with pulsars, black holes and exploding stars (not easily. They're a bit too powerful for PC's to mess with. Instadeath for one failed roll sucks. )
How many rockets fit on a rack. (not enough.)
Can ordinary ships carry mines (no)
How often are new systems charted (As often as there are brave and bold adventurers willing to go boldly where no-one has gone before.)
Do the sathar fight deep-space battles (not often. They prefer subtlety)
Can you modify a starship to land in water (Only if you never want it to take off again.)
The marvel-phile goes canadian. Ed'll be so happy. We get the stats for Talisman, Box, and Guardian. Not particularly good names, but at least they're not as crappy racial stereotypes as certain other nationalities suffer. As usual, they have a weird and varied set of special powers, and equally varied backstories. One of them is dead, but whether that slows him down for long remains to be seen. Jeff is his usual efficient self, despite all the other stuff he's been up to lately. The artwork is pretty good this month as well. No complaints here.
New tools of the trade: Gamma world details yet more modern day equipment. Funny how that works. Pistols, rifles, plus some hypertech stuff developed in the future from now, but before then. This time there's a nice balance between the realistic and the advanced stuff. Not many actual tools though, as it's mostly weapons, the title's a bit of a misnomer. I guess for adventurers, It's not that important. But I would prefer weapons that can also be turned to uses other than killing. Turnabout is fair play, given the improvised weapon stuff and all.
Wormy goes into the airmail business, with limited success. Snarfquest has more romantic misadventures.
I.C.E bumps MERP off the back cover, but puts spacemaster on there instead.
While recent issues have been illustrating the changes in the hobby, this one feels curiously old skool, full off stuff you don't see anymore. Still, it's generally pretty cool stuff, so I'm not complaining. Add in the prophetic MMORPG fiction, and whole host of amusing touches in various articles, and we definitely have a pretty cool package. Seems like last month's spirit of humour has been retained. Lets hope they don't start taking their fantasies too seriously anytime soon.
Dragon Issue 98: June 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. So they've reached the ripe old age of 9. Not that significant a birthday. They're gonna save up the fireworks for the big one oh oh. Unfortunately, they've had to deal with rather a lot of complaints who didn't get the joke in their april issue, so they intend to scale back on that a bit. Boo. We are getting a special feature for gamma world, and lots of new tricks for dragons, so this is probably still salvageable. Is this going to be a decent warm-up party, or a damp squib? Only one way to find out.
In this issue:
Warhammer fantasy battle 2nd edition! Bright red advert! That makes everything look more amazing! Just count yourself lucky we're not using ALL CAPS as well!
Letters: Two letters quibbling over What good PC's are made of. Once you start multiclassing, there's too many combinations for one article to cover. You'll have to skip the random rolls and think stuff up yourself.
A letter asking how goristroi can use magic if they're so stupid. That's the advantage of being innately magical. You can just do it with a brief exercise of will, without spending years poring over scrolls learning ancient languages and precise sequences of actions. Don't you just envy them? Oh, wait, that's a sin. Just another way they have to lure you into damnation. Go on, introduce warlocks into your game. You know you want too.
A letter asking why halflings can't learn forgery. Because they can't become assassins, you dumbass.
A letter asking if solars have an AC of 9 or -9. The MM2 got it wrong. Gary will have to rant at his editor again.
A letter curious about who the person is reflected in the dragon's scales last issue. An excellent question, that they cannot answer.
Some quibbling about the new rules. All based around a basic misunderstanding. Again. :sigh:
Tailor made treasure: It's dragon special time! So, why exactly do dragons covet treasure, and how the hell do they get it transported and properly piled up to form a proper hoard? A very good question. Not all of them can be as lucky as Smaug and get a whole prepotted hoard in one foul swoop. This is definitely something that can be brutally picked apart with a little logic. Fortunately, there are quite a few solutions, from extorting the local countryside, to sniffing out veins of gold and ripping them from the ground with your own gigantic talons. This article basically boils down to another one of those encouragements to develop backstory, do some worldbuilding, and personalize stuff for your game, rather than just relying on the random tables. Fun stuff, but not exactly groundbreaking. You'll have to put in quite a bit of effort to find a spin that makes this trope fresh and coherent.
The magic of dragon teeth: Ahh, this old bit of wacky greek mythology makes it's way into D&D. Wanna take the teeth from a fallen dragon and use it to make your own army of devoted warriors? I'm afraid you'll need a wizard capable of casting 7th level spells to facilitate it. Like the dragonscale armor a few years ago, the results aren't objectively terrible, but they're certainly not worth the time and expense when you consider the other paths you have to obscenely powered stuff at that level. Personally, I'd ignore a big chunk of those requirements, to make the cool bits more accessable. So another article that has definite potential, but doesn't quite hit the button for me. Some people like fixer-uppers. Can't say I'm in the mood right now.
Dragon damage revised: And here we have another power-up for dragons. You know, they really ought to get more badass as they get older. A reasonable premise. However, it then makes a quite surprising assumption, that different sizes of dragons of the same colour are actually different species, rather than the same species at different stages of growth. So you have 3x3 matrixes with a certain degree of overlap. I'm more bemused by this than anything, as it's a case of having not even considered that someone could interpret the monster descriptions that way. Huh. Well, my mind is certainly expanded. Goes to show how you can be constrained by automatic assumptions without even realizing it. Interesting, if not in the way I expected.
The dragons of krynn: Ahh, now this is no surprise at all. I mean, their new setting has Dragon in the title. Of course they're going to do some stuff on it. So they talk about how krynnish dragons behave. Thanks to the influence of their gods, they associate a lot more closely with mortals than the usual dragon, with Takhisis in particular trying to make them an integral part of her world-conquering armies. We start to see the curious combination of epic storyline, at surprisingly low level that defines dragonlance, with becoming a dragonrider and having flying lance battles with your enemies an entirely achievable goal for a PC. A good reminder that many of the ideas that made up the setting were awesome, it was just the implementation (and the other, not so awesome ideas) that were the problem. There's definitely some salvagable material here, and it's also a good bit of promotion, making the setting seem full of possibilities. I'm quite positive about this one, and it's a solid finish to our themed section.
Creative magic items: Blah blah, don't just rely on the items in the book, make your own, plenty of spells and monster powers to convert if you're short of ideas, blah blah, common sense, game balance, watch out for unexpected ramifications, make magic items hard to destroy, blah blah. Seen it all before, probably will do so again.
Detailing a fantasy world: Our PbP creator continues to chatter about his worldbuilding, giving us lots of familiar advice about the techniques you use to build a large setting, but being annoyingly vague about the world of Talara (spoilers, blah blah blah) that he actually created. This is a definite case where it's not that the article is bad, but it keeps on talking about the stuff that I already know, and evading the stuff I really want to hear about, like a political speech or something. Which is really rather frustrating. I guess you'd have to play the game to find that stuff out. Which obviously I can't do anymore. A whole world developed in great detail that never got published products, that has no net presence at all. (as I found when I tried to google it. ) Jim, and WotC people, if you're reading this, there are some people who would be interested in seeing the campaign notes for this released, if you still have them.
Wabbit Wampage! The game of bunnies with chainsaws, and whatever else they can get their paws on. Very amusing.
Reviews: Dragons of autumn twilight and winters night get a review specifically designed to assuage people's skepticism about buying them. It's great both as an epic fantasy plot, and as a representation of the AD&D universe and how parties actually interact. It goes from the personal to the epic, and has great poetry. Er, ok then. Sorry, you completely fail to remove my skepticism. If it was a product by another company, I'd be more receptive, but this feels too much like a disguised sales piece. I turn my nose up at you, pfaw.
Knowing what's in store: This is a strangely written but useful article. Mixing fiction with objective details, it tries to fill in what shopping would be like in a pseudomedieval setting for an adventurer. What is in different shops, (after all, no megamarts here. ) how are they likely to deal with people, and what you can expect to face if you try and steal from the places. The shifting of viewpoints keeps things more interesting than either would be on their own, and it's one of those ones you can refer too quickly to make sure you're not missing out some silly little detail. A good example of how to keep things fresh when imparting fairly mundane details, and how to make shopping fun. Why should all the action be in the dungeon? You can meet all sorts of interesting people and put plenty of plot hooks in while out looking for gear. And if you get into a fight, it's less likely to involve death. Very interesting indeed.
Auctions aren't forbidding: From one shopping themed article to another very different one, this is advice about how to do the auction house thing. One of those things that progress has changed dramatically, with the rise of ebay and online shopping in general. If you know the basic rules about how and when to bid to get the most for your money, this will all be familiar. Apart from finding out that old modules can already go for ridiculously inflated prices, I haven't found out much I didn't know before. This definitely has the feel of a quick filler article used to complete the page count.
The forum gets moved from the front to the middle. Another one of those little format changes that happens from time to time. Is it temporary or permanent? Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Paul F Culotta points out that Gary is only a mortal, the system isn't perfect, and even tournament games don't use ALL the official rules perfectly. The system ought to be revised to better fit the way most people actually play it.
Richard W Emerich shows up again, this time saying that no DM could enforce the game rules perfectly, all the time, and they probably shouldn't try. Most of the time, an approximation will do just fine.
Dennis E Jones Jr, on the other hand thinks that the closer you hew to the official rules, the fewer arguments there will be when multiple GM's interact, and players go from one campaign to another. Um yeah. That assumes that they like the rules in the first place. I regard your statement with bemusement.
Thomas W Gossard thinks that trying to hew too close to medieval settings in AD&D is silly (yes, you, Mrs Kerr) and you really ought to develop things based on the ramifications of the rules, rather than the real world. Ahh, one of the other great viewpoints that still crops up in debates today.
Todd Breneisner weighs in with his personal experience of multiple games, some of which adhered strictly to the official rules, but most didn't. Since AD&D was made in 1979, using refinements developed since then really isn't a bad idea.
Chip Myers also says that he's never seen a game where all the official rules are used. Frankly, the game wouldn't be as much fun if you did. Looks like the house-rulers are definitely in the majority.
Daniel J Birkholz thinks that alignment is stupid, and expecting people to stick strictly to one without any deviation makes for seriously inhuman acting characters. Make proper characters with their own likes, dislikes, personalities and flaws, not cardboard cutouts.
Dragon Issue 98: June 1985
part 2/2
Coming attractions has some damn big guns this month. AD&D is getting Unearthed Arcana, the great book of compiled twinkery that will change the face of the game. Meanwhile D&D is getting the master set. It may not be the end, as you thought earlier, but it's still another quantum leap in your overall power, plus a bunch of odds and ends for the lower levels as well. It's also getting B9: Castle Caldwell ;) and beyond. Guess some people are still back there starting up new characters and needing introductory stuff. And if that's not enough for you, there's the best of the dragon IV, which is good for both. Yet more recycling in an attempt to make more money fast and save the companies ass.
Tons more stuff as well. The SPI imprint gives us wargames for Julius Ceasar's conquests, and WWII. Large scale games for players who think big.
Marvel superheroes gets MHAC6: New york, New york. So good they made two little books on it.
Conan gets his piratical skills focussed on, in Conan the buccaneer. Will we get to go all the way through to his life as a king in future ones?
Star frontiers gets SFAD5: Bugs in the system. Venture into the upper atmosphere of a gas giant to fix a refining station. What could possibly be the cause. I'm guessing giant insects of some kind.
One-on-one adventures gives us it's second book, Battle for the ancient robot.
Endless Quest is right up to number 28, Mystery of the ancients. People do so love digging up the past, even when that's a bad idea.
And finally, the crimson crystal series has Renegades of Luntar, it's 3rd book. Set on mars, which seems appropriate.
Whew. That's certainly a lot of obscure game lines. It's no wonder they were having problems with that many things hardly anyone was buying. I wonder how long they'll keep making new ones in them.
Mutant manual: 12 pages of gamma world monsters make up this months centerpiece. Guess despite it not being popular enough for more modules to be published, there's still quite the holdout of people with lots of affection for it. We get 17 monsters: Aeroscpids (sic), Blade whales, Master Blossoms, Crusteans, Dracs, Encroaches, Flipps, Garrels, Harmony trees, Hogarts, Howlers, Jestes, Juggernauts, Marloks, Mountain men, Sifoners and Spitters. An array of bad puns, stuff stolen from books (including obvious conversions from D&D), exaggerated versions of normal animals, and really weird adapted plants, this is pretty quintessential gamma world material. You can fight them in the seas, you can fight them on the land, you can fight them in the sky, you can even fight them on the moon. (nice follow-up material there) Or you could play them as PC's, things like Dracs, Howlers and Sasquatches certainly seem suited to this. Despite the number of writers, this is a pretty consistent piece of work, that should be useful however you're playing the game.
Authentic agencies, part II: Guess this was too big to fit into a single article. Merle fills us in on the allied international agencies this time. Be they single country based or comprised of many like NATO, they're here, they're there, they're everywhere, and they're monitoring you! Or something. Once again, we have a long dry list which doesn't leave me with much to say about it. Will they cover the enemy agencies next month, or is this the end for this topic? We shall see.
Fiction: The forging of fear by Ardath Mayhar. Looks like the magazines most slated writer is back. This time she's delivering some medieval fantasy. And once again, I'm not sure which bits of it are funny intentionally, and which bits are funny simply due to the pretentious phrasing. She steals from a real english myth, and then follows up on it, before delivering a rather morally dubious ending. This is a definite case of something being entertaining because of the things that are technically wrong with it. Her works should be fine subjects for a little MST3King.
The volturnus connection: So modules in this era are generally rather sketchy on the matter of setting, context and character motivation. Star frontiers is no exception. So this is an attempt to build in some extra setting detail to the recent module series. Lots of historical and political exposition follows. Once again they do something they haven't done before, that I find a bit surprising. I guess this is the first precursor of the articles expanding on Paizo's adventure paths in the last years of Dragon. An intriguing development, that leaves me wondering if we'll see it again any time soon.
When history goes awry: Ooh. Timemaster is getting an article. Always interesting to see a new game get some attention. This one concentrates on alternate parallel timelines. Fortunately, you have tons of novels to draw inspiration from, sherlock holmes, three musketeers, robin hood, and various other fictional characters to make real, and so forth. This is some pretty solid advice on how to handle developing alternate worlds and histories, working from the points of divergence, and going from there. Ripple effects, internal consistency, mythic resonance, this is cool stuff that's easily stealable for other systems. We haven't done much time travel stuff yet, and it has yet to be properly explored. Despite the challenges involved in time-travel games, there's lots of fun to be had in this kind of game. So another neat article.
Alone against the asteroid: One of those articles that does exactly what it does on the tin, showing you how to turn Against the Asteroid from a 2 player adversarial game to a solo one. This is accomplished pretty efficiently, with just a page of rules needed to control the challenges you face fairly randomly. Some of them can even be ported back to the regular game. Even not knowing the rules, this is pretty entertaining reading, letting me know about the quirks of the game's characters. Once again, they're tackling a new system, and coming up with things that are fresh and amusing to me. Definitely good promotion for the game.
Return to the vipers pit: Another module expansion in the same issue? Curious. This is rather less interesting than the last one, being another single pager full of corrections and things that got cut for space. Even the best editor can't fit everything in to everyone's satisfaction. Meh.
StarQuestions heads back to one of it's regular stops, Star frontiers.
Is there supernatural stuff in star frontiers (We recommend that there is only science that hasn't been explained yet. Truly magical magic would be out of theme)
What do you do after maxing out your skill. (get more ones. Being a hyperspecialist has it's drawbacks, so now you fill them in. )
You got a sample damage calculation wrong (Why don't you write in when we get it right. Seems like that'd be a more notable occurance.)
The amount of money you get varies between the basic and advanced games. Which is right. (Both are. Do you not understand the concept of different strokes for different folks. )
Can both your skills be from the same PSA (Yes, but they don't have to be)
Where are the stats for whips (page 43)
Can you put heavy lasers on a fighter ( I believe heavy is the limiting word here. No )
Can you trade ship designs (Sure, but negotiations may take a while)
Does starmist have moons or not (no. The artist was in their own little world)
How long do the repairs in SF3 really take (1 day)
What do extra crew members beyond the essentials do (Make things comfortable. Having to be perfectly efficient and austere all the time to keep things working is incredibly dull and exhausting. )
The marvel-phile: No new super-heroes this time. Instead, it's index time. With half a dozen modules, a year of marvel-philes, and a bunch of other products, it might not be impossible to keep track of who's already been statted, but it certainly can't hurt. It would be a bit annoying if two different writers did different stats for the same character, and ranty fan letters would be sent. So from Absorbing man to Zsaji, all 263 previously mentioned superheroes (and mooks, villains and other stuff) get alphabetized and their locations revealed. That's quite an impressive list. And just think, it's just a fraction of the amount of silly second rate characters that populate the Marvel universe. It'll be interesting to see how this grows if given a few more years of articles and products. Not sure if it's Jeffs writing or the strength of the source material that keeps even the index interesting, but somehow it manages it.
Wormy continues the tale of the bear and the minotaur in the big city. Snarfquest has still more romantic misadventures, and faces up to racism. Honestly, just fit a vibrator attachment on the robot and let it marry the princess. Everyone'll be a lot happier, at least until they start worrying about the lack of heirs.
I think the watchword for this issue is surprise. It manages to be fresher than anything reaching it's 9th year has any right to be, particular in the later articles, which are full of surprises. Once again they renew their commitment to covering all sorts of systems, particularly in the Ares section, which is really jam packed with stuff and punching well above it's weight. Goes to show. Just when you think there's nothing new in the world, something comes out of what seems like no-where to surprise you again. I very much approve. You can still surprise me, and I look forward to the next time you do.
Dragon Issue 99: July 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Well, it looks like whatever the general public may think, according to the designers, Unearthed Arcana does indeed represent official AD&D v 1.5 or the 4th corebook. All future submissions must take into account the stuff in there, or they will NOT BE CONSIDERED. That's right. KNOWLEDGE OF ITS CONTENTS ARE MANDATORY CITIZEN! BE HAPPY THAT YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEND MONEY ON EXPANDING YOUR UNIVERSE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. Thanks for telling us that. I'm sure your public will be delighted to hear this. Or maybe not. Well, I guess if there are complaints, we'll probably see them in a few issues time. And then they'll get amusingly rebutted by the absolutely not biased at all editorial staff. But we won't get to see that if we don't get through this issue. So lets not look ahead too far.
In this issue:
Letters: Two letters on the ecology of the gorgon. One of them is another case of the silly editors messing up Ed's perfect work by changing things without thinking about the consequences, and the other is answered quite efficiently.
A letter full of questions on Blueprint for a big game. You need to read your dictionary more.
A letter from someone who got their modifiers the wrong way round. (They corrct him with mild amusement.
A letter from someone who's spotted a genuine mistake in one of Ed's articles. Math, you should check it.
A letter from someone who's noticed that the magazine has lost some height. It's only an eighth of an inch. Hardly something to worry about, unless you're in porn.
The Pendragon campaign, to go with the corebook. A year by year chronology of Arthur's reign. Obviously no-where near the depth of later versions, as it's only 80 pages long, but it's obvious Greg already knows pretty much what he wants this game to be. And if you got it right first time, why change it?
The forum: Bruce Carlson thinks that balancing races by making them differently unbalanced at different stages of the game is bloody stupid, and doesn't really make anyone happy. Instead, allowing unlimited advancement, but imposing XP penalties commensurate with your racial abilities is a much better idea. You may be onto something there.
Alex Bergmann, meanwhile, thinks that tracking how much worship power all the gods in your campaign are getting on a regular basis is too much bookkeeping. You'd have to spend all your time worldbuilding to do that. Two pretty non-contentious positions this time it seems. Not their highest moment.
The neutral point of view: Ahh, lawful and chaotic neutral. Some of the most interesting alignments, and yet undervalued and ignored in too many books. (yes, you, the entirety of fourth edition.) Trust Stephen Inniss to spot a hole like this and fill it. It would be entirely logical for the various detect/dispelprotection from good/evil spells to also have lawful and chaotic variants, and this would require no extra bookspace at all. Doing this would give the endless moral war more shades of grey, which has definite plot potential. You do need to clear up a few things to do with planar stuff, but that's not an insurmountable problem either. This is exactly the kind of article you should be covering in the magazine, doing things specifically related to the rules and setting. It could definitely stand to be longer, and have more info on more mundane playing of morally neutral characters, but what there is is solid material. Come on, give us some more epic articles really delving into things, instead of just skimming the surface.
Tables and tables of troops: A neat little expansion for those of you who choose to build a stronghold and attract followers at name level+. As this is the kind of thing that you only roll for once in your characters career, it could do with being expanded and customized, made more of a special event. Plus fighters don't get nearly enough love. So this allows you to change the specifics of your troops based upon terrain and how much you prepare for this. Which could definitely provide several sessions of fun gaming, as you maximize your potential rewards. They would later do variants on this for many of the kits in the Complete handbook series, and this is a development I'm pretty happy about seeing, as it expands on a previously neglected class feature. This is definitely one to note down and pull out when you reach the appropriate point in your games.
The ecology of the Will-o-Wisp: Hello again, Mr Findley. So you've submitted another ecology article. And as with the peryton he goes quite a way towards reminding us that these creatures are supposed to be creepy. He also does another clever thing by turning the boggart into the immature form of the Will-O-Wisp. This is a cool article which adds a good deal to the creature, including legends of a trancended race, and abandoned civilisation from before they cast off material form. (See what transcendance gets you. Hanging around in swamps killing people for kicks. Definite lesson there. Don't transcend, kids. It's like reaching nirvana. It's no help to anyone else, and sometimes will have results akin to summoning cthulhu upon any unenlightened nearby.) His flavour is certainly quite different from Ed's articles. And that's not a bad thing, as too many cutesy Elminster-delivered ones would grow tiresome. Their mating and lifecycle is ingeniously described, and there's plenty of drama in the fiction part. One of the best ecologies yet. Don't be a stranger.
That's life in the big city: Ahh, city building. Are people still having problems with that? Well I guess what counted as a city did vary a lot over the centuries. You've gotta put a bit of research in, then make a big load of stuff up. Here's a load of potted info for if you want to build a pseudomedieval style one for your D&D games. Lets not forget that they were pretty gross places in terms of hygiene, and there's all kinds of mundane hazards such as thieves, "Insurance" salesmen, dodgy food and goods, mockney urchins, fire outbreaks, etc etc. Demographics, mapping, ensuring you have the stuff needed for people to actually live there. The usual advice we have to sit through on a regular basis. No great surprises here, good or bad.
The role of books (they're flip-floping on the title of this series. What's up with that?): Crewel lye by Piers Anthony is as punfull as the rest of his xanth books. He seems to have learnt from the criticisms in recent reviews, toning back on the sexism and moral ambiguity. While other reviewers may slate him, this one doesn't seem to have much objection.
Stormwarden by Janny Wurts features weather magic as it's primary macguffin. The plot gets a little overcomplicated, presumably leaving lots of loose ends for future books, but the characterization is pretty good. One to enjoy for the journey, rather than the destination.
Witchdame by Kathleen Sky jumps on the current trend for english flavoured romantic fantasy. With deus ex machinas, completely undisguised real world analogues, and vague historical mooring, the reviewer manages to sell me off the book even as he praises it. Hey ho.
Enchanters end game by David Eddings is the final book of the Belgariad, Eddings big tolkien /rip-off/ homage. It hits lots of buttons, but doesn't really integrate the various types of writing very well. But it's still good popcorn reading for fantasy fans.
Talking to Dragons by Patricia C Wrede gets another review that starts with the negatives, but then winds up praising it. Only this time, the good bits outweigh the bad, in a genuinely funny fantasy romp full of near indestructible wizards doing horrible things to one-another. If you want to put humour that doesn't feel tacked on in your games (and that doesn't rely on dreadful puns like Piers Anthony. ) this is a good example.
The Magic cup by Andrew M Greely is an updated irish epic with lots of arthurian parallels. Remember, behind the legends, are people struggling to find their place and accomplish something important to them. Can you be both a person and an archetype? There's certainly plenty of interesting reading to have in tackling that question.
History of a game that failed: Ha. Ahh, the joys of taking the game all the way to it's limits, to the degrees where it starts to break down, where no monsters can touch you without rolling a natural 20. Most of us have done it at some point, rushing through the levels to obscene power and more items than you can keep track of. But it has to be said, the published modules really aren't much better in this respect. If you just use the treasure tables as written, the system'll break down without any special effort from you. So how are we to get the system to behave. Let me count the ways. Fudge. Change the modules. Be stingy with treasure and watch out for synergies. Don't give away info they have no way of knowing. Don't allow ability score increases. Mess up their wishes. Nerf shapeshifting to buggery. Never miss an opportunity to have things backfire. Keep the XP awards down. Deities are not for killing under any circumstances. Don't let one person play multiple characters, for they will abuse the knowledge they get and co-operate in a manner that breaks verisimiltude. Don't be adversarial. (Have you just listened to your previous bits of advice :D )Oh, and don't allow nukes under any circumstances. Oh man. Where to start. This is a great example of how they have to exhort people to play nice with the system, because it just doesn't stand up to rough treatment. Very annoying on multiple levels, both that they give advice like this, which is a definite fun-spoiler when put against many people's playstyles, and that they need to do so in the first place. A most depressing read, overall.
Dragon Issue 99: July 1985
part 2/2
Reviews: Gems for Death is another system free module. Like so many of those at this point, they have to find other things to put where it would be. This includes incredibly detailed descriptions of the mechanics of traps, so you can disarm them by roleplaying, plus the usual characterization stuff and timeline. It has enough guidelines that it shouldn't be too hard to convert it to whatever system you want to use. Just don't put it into a hack and slash game, because the players might miss the point and ruin the adventure. Another case where just how much things have changed, not always for the better, is made obvious.
We get some more entries in the world gamers guide: Australia, New zealand, Germany, Japan, Venezuela. D&D has penetrated all around the world. Must take quite a lot of effort to co-ordinate all that subscription mailing.
Coming attractions: Amazing Stories celebrates it's 60th year. Pretty damn impressive. Will D&D make it that far? Dragon may not have lasted as a printed entity, but at least it's still alive in some form. Can we beat that run? It'll be the story of our lives.
AD&D gets a Battlesystem module, H1: Bloodstone Pass. Take high level characters, and organize an entire village into a force to take on 3,000 enemies. Epic. It also gets Lankhmar, city of adventure. Once again, Fritz reinforces his close relationship with the game, having been away for a few years. If you want some help with urban adventures, this certainly can't hurt. And if that's not enough, Dragonlance is up to DL8: Dragons of war. Once again, the new mass combat system gets an airing, so you can get properly epic. This series is certainly building up to something.
D&D gets two rather less impressive products. Dragontiles II: The revenge of Rusak. Lots of fold out card thingies. And they say D&D isn't a mini's game. We also have CM5: Mystery of the snow pearls. A high level solo module. Don't see those very often. Once again, you have to do some serious puzzle solving. Well, you can fudge combat on your own, but puzzles. If you don't actually solve them, you can't go on to the next section.
The Indiana Jones RPG gets IJ5: Nepal Nightmare. Once again, Fold-up cut outs show up. Guess they were this year's gimmick, like putting CD's in would be for Mystara a decade later. I roll my eyes.
Super endless quest gets book 3: Escape from castle Quarras. Take the role of Derek Shadowwalker (Hee. Those two names do not fit together) and save the kingdom.
And finally, we have a standalone. Proton fire, the roleplaying game of designing and fighting your own robots. Another thing that I've never heard of before, and assume disappeared into obscurity. Any stories to share on this one?
Treasure trove II: We get two new articles based on magic items in this month's sorta centerpiece. Guess either one on their own wasn't considered special enough to carry the issue.
A sharp system for swords is of course all about the sentient magic weapons. New powers, updated ego calculations, and the usual advice to individualize and name your magic weapons, as this makes the world feel more solid and the players more likely to attach to them instead of seeing them as simply powerful tools. No great surprises here, but another solid set of toys for when you don't have time to invent this stuff wholecloth, or want to roll randomly just for the fun of seeing what comes out.
We then get 17 more items. Completely unsurprisingly, Ed Greenwood contributes significantly. All the big categories get at least one new item, plus some weird stuff like the oyster chest. (great idea, my dears. ) Most of them are pretty utilitarian and one-trick, rather than the massive lists of powers a single item can build up in the previous article. But they're mostly pretty cool. Particular kudos goes to the aforementioned chest, plus the armor of acid secretion (way to make a cursed item properly visceral. ) Potion of pain suppression, Rod of melting, and stone of mysterious sounds. Drama, comedy, and quirkiness are all fully represented. Another cool collection of old skool items, overall.
Kevin Siembieda not only writes the entirety of Monsters and Animals, he illustrates it all as well. My, he's a prolific bunny.
Authentic agencies, part III: Yep, I called it last issue. Here's the specs for the KGB, GRU, SSD, SAVAK, and other agencies you are likely to find yourself at odds with, as an american spy. Plus MELT, a fictional one that seems amusingly out of place these days. And that's about all I can think to say on this subject. Extended series do run into this problem after a while.
Fiction: Dennim and the golem by Robert S Babcock. Some people choose to retire from adventuring when they have the money. Others have it forced upon them. And many just die. The protagonist of this story may not make the big time, but he still comes out better than he has any right too. Some interesting thoughts about alignment and it's effect on the world are touched upon in this one, without it descending into heavy handed rules exposition. A quirkily S&S style bit of fantasy, that fits in the magazine very well.
ARES Log: Boo. We get an official announcement that we won't be seeing any more Gamma World modules or editions from TSR in the forseeable future. You aren't buying it, so we don't think it's economical anymore. Not that we've made any for years anyway, but with the heavy coverage it's been getting in the magazine, obviously some people have got their hopes up. Maybe in a few years time.
Tanks a lot: So star frontiers has stats for personal level roleplaying, and spaceship wargaming scenarios. But not stats for ground vehicle combat. A sad victim of cutting for space. Still, what is this magazine for then, if not to fix that kind of omission. So we get a full 5 pages of stats and tables, giving us lots of vehicle equipment, what it does, and how much it costs. Better hope you don't get your vehicle wrecked too often, because this stuff's pricey. Still, if you wanna get your mad max on, I'm sure you'll find a way, even if it means hijacking a vehicle and scavenging the remains of any enemies you run across. They certainly don't object to a little overkill in this one, and using it could make or break a game, depending on the GM. Which I'd definitely prefer risking to the article exhorting overconservatism earlier.
Psybots and battle mechs: We saw it in the Coming attractions section earlier this month. Now Proton Fire gets an article. The usual story of wanting to promote their cool new stuff. And yeah, this is pretty much a straight promo piece, giving us a synopsis of the setting, and not really contributing anything that probably can't be found in the book itself. I know you may be hurting a bit financially, but surely you could make the effort to put in some material that got cut or errata, something interesting like that. I'm most disappointed in you. This is not the way to get me to want to buy your stuff.
The marvel-phile is also on a soviet kick this month, with the Soviet Super-Troopers. (Lame name, but they're in fine company there. ) Vanguard, Darkstar, Ursa Major, and Gremlin. Two tanks, a battlefield controller and a techie. Not the most balanced party ever, but superheroes have always been more about the personality archetypes than the precise powers when it comes to roles. After all, it's not really about power, but dramatic imperatives. And there's certainly no shortage of plot hooks in their backstories. Repressive governments just give superheroes more to rebel against. More superheroic stuff that's great fun, but can seem somewhat ludicrous if you don't buy into the tropes here. How many of these nationality themed groups are there? Will colour coded spandex ever go out of style? Will Jeff cover another country next time? Tune in to find out.
Danger on a budget: Looks like despite the pessimistic editorial, Gamma world will continue to be a regular on these pages for quite some time. It still has a small but vocal contingent of hardcore fans who keep sending stuff in. This is another load of familiar advice adapted to a different system, reminding us that you don't need to throw bigger and badder combats at your players to keep things interesting. In a postapocalyptic wasteland, the sneaky are more likely to prosper than the big tough guys with machine guns who need to get lots of food and regular supplies of ammo from somewhere. So sneaky psychic enemies, environmental hazards, traps and roleplaying encounters are just as important as straight battles in creating a somewhat realistic campaign. Realistic? Gamma word? Well, if you really say so. Another article that contributes nothing I don't already know and probably will see again virtually every year of the magazine.
Wormy continues the bright lights in the big city. Snarfquest hangs over the perpetual pit and panics. Dragonmirth mocks Conan again.
For all the big changes D&D may be about to go through, there's a lot of overfamiliar material here. Sandwiched between two big issues, this definitely feels like a filler episode, with all the really good material held back for later. Apart from the really strong ecology, everything else is Ok to poor. Guess I'll just have to move on to the big one oh oh, see what stuff they've been stockpiling over the past 10 months for it.
Dragon Issue 100: August 1985
part 1/2
116 pages. Time for the magazine to make a quantum leap, in the most literal sense. They've obviously decided to push things out again for the big number. However, this also means the price goes up, all the way to $3.95. They'd better have something to justfy this. Starting right away, they have a cover that's sculpted, rather than painted, which is very interesting, and the photo captures the three-dimensionality of it quite nicely. A nice idea for a change, but one that could go wrong if overused. Lets hope they don't start doing covers from posed dolls. ;) We also have a whole bunch of special features, for both D&D and other systems. Whether this is as spectacular as they hoped is yet to be seen, but it's definitely going to be quite different, in any case. Which means it should be interesting for me as well.
In this issue:
Letters is actually not comprised of specific letters at all for a change, but is instead an extensive Q&A about the workings of the magazine and lots of other related stuff. As usual, we get told just how much hard work it is getting consistent product where creative endeavours are involved. The dreaded deadline beast needs feeding, and so often there will be something going wrong that results in them scrambling to get everything done on time. Which means the time they have to read and answer letters and assess manuscripts is not as much as they'd like. If you want to be published, you'd better make your articles both eye-catching and well written, because with their current volume of stuff, if it doesn't get their attention on the first read-through, it's going to go straight in the slush pile. We don't have time to fix up cool but flawed articles like we did in the early days. Interesting to note that marvel super heroes is definitely the second most popular game in the magazine. Not so interesting is the usual disclaimer that their Roger Moore is not the film star Roger Moore. Like most of these editorials, this is a welcome look into where the writers heads are at at a particular point in time. Can you go fast enough to jump on board their train? Good luck with that, because you'll need it.
Kim reminisces about the time he's spent here. Seems like only yesterday he walked in nervously, and got given a big pile of manuscripts to go through as his baptism of fire. Next thing you know, he's head of the department, putting together a hundred page magazine with a six figure circulation every month. How did they get there? One step at a time, just like any journey. And despite the hard work, not particularly stellar pay, and general weirdness, he still loves his job. But we can't rest on our laurels. Here's to many more years of cool gaming products.
Score one for sabrotact: Looks like they're trying to put a little LARP material in here again. They do seem to try that every few years, but it never sticks. Most frustrating for all involved.
Anyway, this is a most fascinating way of expressing the boffer LARP principles. By attaching a bunch of target points to the people fighting, and having proscribed scoring systems for breaking specific ones, they remove the fighting from the realm of fiat without much danger of real injury by the participants. Of course, the buy in costs and need for large numbers of participants may be a problem. Still, this is definitely a game that has potential. Does it still get played these days, or has it become just another historical footnote?
All about the druid/ranger: Ahh, one of the more awkward things in D&D's design. Druid and ranger are both nature based classes that complement each other well, but alignment restrictions mean you can't be both at once. So to allow this, you need to bend a few rules in their respective strictures, creating characters who balance their commitments to nature and the people from the borderlands who explore it. This is a definite roleplaying challenge. Frank Mentzer also takes the time to examine some of the game's metaphysical assumptions. Do druids and rangers get their spells from the same source, and if so, why are they held to very different standards? Could rangers who act too lawful or chaotic wind up being denied spells? Once again we see the writers being confronted with ramifications of their own rules that they hadn't considered before, and the implied setting that results in. Organic writing does result in a whole bunch of weird resultant effects that you could never get if you planned it all out from the start. Is this a good or a bad thing? Probably a bad thing in this case, but there's plenty of instances where it has turned out for the better. This may be a small article, but it's jam packed with thought-provoking stuff. You could have long, fun flamewars as a result of this.
The forum: Michael D Selinker thinks that while there's nothing wrong with changing the game to suit your group, you ought to at least try playing it as written first, to make sure it isn't to your taste. If you can't handle playing AD&D as written, maybe you ought to go back to basic D&D instead.
Brian McCaskill tells a story about his D&D experiences, and the stages he went through as players munched out, and then lost interest. Already, people are drifting away from gaming because they don't want to be seen as uncool. We need to regroup and reassess what we're doing if we want to keep this hobby around.
Chad P Culotta (no relation) also thinks that the official rules are unusable, and you should examine them to use the good bits, as well as incorporating the good stuff from the magazine. Are we getting close to a consensus here? How very surprising. They'll have to find something else to flame about.
Pages from the mages V: Since he's one of their most popular writers, and this is one of his most popular series, having a 5th installment of this seems a very logical choice for Ed's contribution. As in the previous installments, we get 4 spellbooks. Exactly how Elminster knows so much about all these is still unrevealed, but he's definitely quite the font of lore as well as having a certain sense of mischief. He's becoming more defined by the article as much as the world he describes.
Sabrine's specular comes from the north, and runs the range from small to mighty, with three new cantrips, plus bladethirst, Merald's murderous mist, and one of those marvels of quirky magical design (Blatantly cribbed from Larry Niven) Spell Engine. Just the thing to have in your study, make sure people don't cause too much havoc.
Glanvyl's workbook is slightly less spectacular, with 3 more cantrips, plus a copied druidic spell for no apparent reason other than the compiler found it, and a couple of Ed's cookery recipies that just go to show how much cool detail he can casually create.
The red book of war is actually a cleric's prayerbook, not a spellbook. Guess Ed's tired of wizards getting all the new spell goodies, and is looking for reasons to share the love. I approve. As this is for Tempus, the FR god of war, the new spells within are quite useful in combat. Holy flail and bladebless handle the offensive and healing side. Reveal has huge strategic advantages, and sacred link has all manner of twinky possibilities in the hands of an inventive player. Wizards don't have to have all the spell-hunting fun on their own.
The Alcaister is a decidedly dangerous book to possess, with it's lethal pages and tendency to send you through a one-way gate if you read it wrong. But if you can survive it, you can learn a lot, including 3 new cantrips, plus Reconstruction and Body Sympathy. More ways in which wizards can mess with unsuspecting people and prevent themselves from dying.
Fiction: At moonset blackcat comes by Gary Gygax. Oh Gord. Oh Gord Oh Gord Oh Gord. Have you guessed what it is yet? Yes, it's the start of the Gord novels. Be very afraid. So we get a short story featuring Gord & co to promote it. In a bit of ingenious cross-promotion, our protagonist is playing Dragonchess in the starting illustration. It even features in the story, so it's not just a tacked on bit of pimping. Once again we see Gary get away with stuff no-one else would be allowed to in this magazine, with whores, gambling and drinking aplenty, and even some proper swearing. This definitely stands out, if not always for the right reasons, with overblown prose and a decidedly fiaty plot which leaves lots of questions unresolved. Will they be answered in the actual novels? Do you want to spend the money to find out? We won't judge you if you do.
Dragonchess gets a new edition. This complex variant on the traditional game runs across three boards, has 15 different pieces, each with their own idiosyncracies that'll take a while to learn, and supports some pretty heavy tactical play. Once again we are reminded that while D&D may be their big breakaway hit, Gary also enjoyed wargaming, model railroads, boardgames, and other similar hobbies, and wasn't short of ideas for those either. They really should have pushed this one harder, as it certainly shouldn't have been that hard to get this into commercial production and onto the toy store shelves at this time, and chess is a perennial game that seems to sell quite nicely without the endless revisions RPG's go through. This is another successful attempt to push the boundaries of what this magazine does, and definitely goes on the list of things I want to do when I have some free time. (ha) Drawing up and cutting out all the needed bits and pieces would be an adventure in itself.
Issue 100 was a real landmark issue of Dragon for me. I don't think I ever felt the same way about the mag afterwards.
I had really been looking forward to this issue. In retrospect, I can see that no issue could have lived up to the anticipation. But, even given that, I think the issue fell short of the mark even when you discount the overinflated expectations.
I can clearly remember what my main problem with the issue was. When I first picked it up and rifled through it, I felt a definite sense of deflation when I found the Gord story. Fiction in Dragon was, and is, still my least favorite thing in the magazine. I'd been waiting with a nebulous anticipation of Gygax making a huge appearance with all kinds of new goodies for AD&D. Instead I got something akin to watching Michael Jordan play baseball - yeah, I got to see the master at work, but in a context in which he clearly doesn't shine.
None of the other articles were standouts to me. I guess I expected a lot more out of an issue 100 for the flagship D&D publication.
Dragon Issue 100: August 1985
part 2/2
The city beyond the gate: One of our longest modules ever, at a full 22 pages, plus interruptions by several full page ads. They've certainly pushed the boat for this one. It's a somewhat goofy adventure, as the adventurers stumble through a dimensional portal into modern day london. With victorian overtones, given the prevailance of horse drawn hackney cabs, thieving street urchins, and other amusing sorta-anachronisms. (You can tell it was written by an American) Dr Who makes a cameo, you'll get plenty of chances to roll on the random harlot table, you'll have to deal with the strange technology, (which is handled pretty well) and your money will be useless for spending, but incredibly valuable if converted. Not quite as brilliant as the hut of Baba Yaga, this is still a well written, open-ended, tremendously fun adventure, which could have all kinds of insane results if inserted into your game. This easily matches up to Expedition to the barrier peaks as a demonstration of how to put crossover stuff into your D&D, and has advice on how to stop it getting completely out of hand in the long run as well. As a special feature, this succeeds quite admirably.
ARES Log: The massive popularity of supers games, and the marvel super heroes game in particular, has resulted in them deciding to do a special on it for this month's ARES section. This starts off right away in the editorial, where they fill us in on the changes to various characters due to events in the comics. Plus Marvel superheroes will hopefully be getting an advanced version sometime soon. Other supers games will also get more coverage. Just don't ask us to do conversions, for legal crapola means we cannot. Intriguing developments here as well.
Creative conjuring: Magic. While found in both main supers universes on a regular basis, like gadgeteering, it's a definite problem from a gaming point of view, particularly if the ruleset is a simulationist one, because it implies a level of awareness of how your powers work, and ability to get them to do whole new things on a regular basis that most powers simply don't allow. So how are we to deal with this, make having magical powers balanced with the other options? You could make learning each spell require study and XP, but that wouldn't fit the source material very well, and would take up an entire sourcebook on it's own. This magazine doesn't have that kind of space. So instead, it breaks up magical power into a bunch of schools, which is fairly thematic, and still means you have access to broad swathes of abilities . A nerf, but probably a needed one.
Champions Plus!: New powers. You'll always need those for a superhero game. At least until you've been around a few decades, and your corebook is a bullet-stopping monstrosity that contains an elaborate, rigorously playtested point buy system. And even then, you'll need advice on how to properly apply them to a milieu. As you may guess, this article is for Champions. It contains 11 new powers, from Bouncing to Vertigo. A decidedly imaginative and quirky bunch of abilities that patch in holes in the current ruleset. Plenty of fun to be had in this short but sweet article.
The D&D Master set out now! The BD&D series is now almost complete. Are you ready to ascend to immortality? Leave your domains behind and take on the greatest adventures ever.
Charisma counts!: Oh dear. Using the Charisma system in villains and vigilantes as written doesn't work the way it should. This needs fixing, otherwise the plots will not emulate the genre correctly. What do we need?! More crunch!! When do we need it?! Right now!! Despite it having a very valid point, and solid ideas, I find myself inclined to dislike this article. Curious, as I can't really pinpoint why. Must be a writing style thing.
Defenders of the future: Marvel super heroes gets a second article. We zoom into the future to say hi to the defenders of the galaxy. Vance Astro. Charlie-27. Martinex. Yondu. Starhawk. And Nikki. (Talk about a dull name by comparison with everyone else. ) All ridiculously popular in their home time, to a degree modern superheroes can only dream of. I guess when you don't have your own series, you don't have to worry so much about everyday dramas which take the mystique from your character. They don't have to worry about that secret identity crap either. Life seems pretty good for them. At least, until some timeline fluctuation or writer whim, retcons them from existence. What are they up to these days, as I've never heard of them before.
The marvel-phile: And finally we have Jeff being his usual reliable yet witty self. By an amazing coincidence, this month he fills in the stats for the missing present day Defenders. Man, that's a lot of ™'s. Gargoyle (Oh woe, for I have lost my mortal body), Cloud (ZOMG gender switching to avert lesbianism! What's all that about then?) and Valkyrie (they have tables entitled Hack-and-slash and Slugfest. Genius.) The usual grab bag of disparate origins and weird powers you'll find on a superhero team, particularly one with a fluid roster. And once again I find myself learning more about something I've only ever had a casual interest in before now. My knowledge of Marvel canon will definitely be hugely expanded by the time this series finishes.
The chance of a lifetime: So now both D&D and AD&D have mass combat systems (albeit very different, largely unrelated ones) You know what this calls for? Author commentary! Let's hear it for Doug Niles on da mic. I said, Douglas Niles on da Microphone! Booyakasha. Respec. [/Ali G] As this is AD&D, and they were devoting an entire book to it, they decided to go for a rather more complex and zoomed in system than the D&D one, with all the spells and special abilities from the regular game drectly convertable, and one-on one battles playing a part as well. The project seems to have had a rather chequered development history, with lots of writers contributing and sometimes pulling it in different directions. The results definitely seem more suited to skirmish level combat involving a few hundred creatures at most than truly massive armies. You can use this as an alternate combat system for variety in your AD&D games, or you can run an entire campaign focussing on it, with it's own advancement system. Well, that's their hope, anyway. I guess we'll see if this gets supported for the next few years, or dies an ignomious death like so many of their experiments.
From first draft to last gasp: The battlesystem commentary continues, with Michael Dobson the editor taking the reins. He discusses how this got tied into their new cardboard fold-up figures gimmick, and quite a bit of playtesting annoyance took place. They've taken care to involve the entire team in this, with modules for both AD&D and D&D planned. He also talks about how the Battlesystem and War Machine rules can co-exist in the same campaign, with War Machine used to fight really big battles involving your domain (Once again we see that BD&D handles the really epic stuff better) and stuff where you're not present and just want a quick resolution. He then encourages you to throw all sorts of wacky and epic stuff at the system. It will handle it, honest. You can have Nazi's Vs Slaadi Vs Gamma world mutants Vs Drow if you like. I must say, I'm tempted to take them up on their offer. Anyone have any opinions and experiences to contribute on this topic?
Wormy finally gets back to the giants. And once again we see how much Tramp's skills have improved, as we get some truly epic horror visuals. Snarfquest takes stock of what they've lost and what they still have.
Having been expanding the range of RPG's that they cover recently, this is another big leap outward in scope. They haven't tackled topics with this kind of diversity since 1981. And it's interesting that Gary is one of the primary forces behind this experimentation. He's evidently not happy with all the directions the magazine has taken, and would like to see more things on his other interests. However, it's also notable that despite their attempts to revitalize it with the Battlesystem, wargaming is pretty much dead by this point. If they want to expand the topics they cover, they'll have to do more books, PbM's, computer games and other such things instead. Are they up to the task? Or will this issue be an exception rather than a pointer for their future direction. Either way, as a celebratory issue, it's quite the success, breaking out of their rut and showing that there are plenty more things they can do to avoid getting repetitive and formulaic. Here's to the next hundred issues full of surprises and misadventures.
Dragon Issue 101: September 1985
part 1/2
100 pages My god. The price increase was only temporary. That's a new one. How long before it goes up for good? As ever, this will be reported as I discover it. Another reminder that they're not really in it just for the money here, as Kim talks in the editorial about refusing to print an advert that slagged off another company. Nevertheless, the party is over, and it's back on the treadmill. The deadlines are coming strong as ever, and the contents page looks surprisingly empty. Hopefully that means several big articles rather than a glut of advertising, but of course the only way to be sure is to get reading. See you on the other side.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking about the level limits for aquatic elves. They remain reluctant to give any, because they don't want them as PC's. They may have opened up a whole bunch of subraces in UA, but an all underwater game? That's a little too far for their comfort.
A question about the problems underground demihumans suffer in the light. They take the time to once again promote UA, but point out that PC's of those races have been nerfed in comparison to their NPC relations for the sake of game balance. Is this going to help sell it, or provoke complaints? Probably both.
A simple question. Does the will-o-wisp keep glowing after dying. An equally simple answer. No.
Yet more questions about demihumans, this time concerning their new increased level limits, and how they interact with old articles. They reply that yes, a whole bunch of old stuff is invalidated by UA. You'll just have to like it or lump it, because all the new stuff will be using it. We are currently in a phase of preferring cool ideas over consistency or universal compatibility, and publish our articles based on this. Which bits you take and use in your game, and how you make them fit together is your concern.
Some questions about the lightning bug. This is not a huge problem.
A question about murlynd's stats. Once again, there are very different versions of the same character floating around the D&D multiverse. It's like Amber. They got played in the original games, so they spawn tons of references and funhouse reflections all over the universe, long after they've retired.
An editorial turn in response to getting far too many letters to print on the subject of the Dragons Teeth article. Man, people have picked this one apart like a flock of crows on a dead sheep. Please, folks, don't look to us for all the answers, make them up yourself. Seems to be becoming a familiar refrain here.
A rather dumb letter that they seemingly printed as a joke, while still making a serious point. Logistics, people. All the old issues don't exist in some kind of phase space until ordered, there's bloody great warehouses and trucks and printing runs and all that. Its quite the issue.
The forum: Mike Dombrowski has some rather complicated thoughts about the balance of humans and demihumans, and how it changes over a very long term game, with different races aging and dying at different rates, as well as having different class maximums. How do we deal with and compensate for this? This is definitely a topic worth examining.
Gary comes in to make some comments on recent stuff. These are pretty positive, actually. He likes the idea of more scaling in dragons, so they can be a challenge for all levels of parties. After all, it is D&D. Without the Dragons, it would just be a dungeon crawl.
Sam Swanson is very much against the DM fudging dice rolls. This may seem like a good idea in the short term, but in the long run it will ruin your game by taking away the sense of danger and freedom of events. Plus it sets a bad example and the players are more likely to cheat as well if they have a DM who does it. A good DM should be firm but fair. So there, David F Godwin.
Dan Swingley has a short comment on the way climate affects the terrain. It's not just the plants and animals living in it. It also has significant effects on the erosion patterns. Why do you think we only get fjords in the far north.
Jim Ayotte talks about his gaming experiences, and how one size most definitely does not fit all. Also, Gary should stop being so cranky. I know he has lots of deadlines, but that's no excuse, plenty of other writers manage to meet their deadlines and still not let their personal feelings spill over into what they're writing.
And finally we get a rather innappropriate use of the forum, as Frank Mentzer pops in to shill the D&D companion set, and the new challenges it offers for jaded mid-level characters who think they've seen it all. You think dragons aren't scary anymore? Think again. With all their tactical moves, they make even a party of that level look like chumps if they don't think fast. While he has a point, this is definitely not where he ought to be saying it. I disapprove.
Update from the chief: Unearthed Arcana has sold out immediately! Holy jumping jimminickers Mohan! Back to the printing presses! We also have two big new books coming soon. Oriental adventures. Booyeah! And Temple of elemental evil is finally finished and will be coming to you in a bumper pack book containing the contents of all 4 intended modules. Double Booyeah! Am I not the man! I can run two companies simultaneously, find time to make products personally, and still think of myself as lazy. Would a satanist do things as amazing and selfless as that? I think not. Now back to work. I can't rely on you incompetents to do anything right when I'm not around and someone's got to keep this company afloat. Plans and plots, we have lots. (Many of which are going to fall through painfully in the next year or so, but that's life) We take another step, albeit an entertaining one, towards the realization that the supplement treadmill is the way to go to make the bucks the company needs to pay all it's built up staff, and the infrastructure they require. Be afraid.
All about the kender: Oookay, upgrade that. Be very afraid. Because these guys can't be, so you've got to be terrified for everyone. Roger Moore (lest you've forgotten, the creator of splat articles for all the other PC races back in 1982) outlines the history of the kender, and how they differ from halflings or humans. Fearless, insatiably curious, whimsical, no sense of personal property, vicious taunters. It's like they were custom developed to be pains in the ass to party dynamics in the hands of all but the best players. What were their creators thinking? Oh, yeah, we can handle it, and it works well in stories, so it should work well in a game. Plus it's the 80's, so you've got to have a silly comic relief character. It's a law or something. The transformers movie managed to survive four of them, so we can put in three bloody comic relief races and still create a serious, epic and dramatic story. Urgh. :throws hands in the air: Someone give me 20cc's of babylon 5 stat to cancel out the cheese overload. Funny how the writers of something liking them too much can result in other people finding them tremendously annoying, and not in the way intended. This is deeply problematic. Once again the integral flaws of the dragonlance setting are shoved in our face and called features. I do not find this pleasing.
Traveler alien modules. Now there's a splatbook series if ever I saw one. Once again, traveller is ahead of D&D when it comes to book type trends. Funny to notice that.
Plan it by the numbers: Another attempt at a CR system. Oh joy. [/deadpan] Frank Mentzer gives us the one he uses. Actually, this is pretty good for it's time, allowing you to calculate the deadliness of an encounter and reverse engineer it to your taste with a few minutes math, and being pretty accommodating to parties of various sized and mixed levels. At least, as long as the creators of the monsters don't mess up their number of asterisk calculations. A system is only as solid as it's weakest link. Still, if you stick to the BECM stuff that he also developed, this should hold up pretty well. More evidence that Frank was one of the people who really helped make TSR a professional outfit. I can see myself using this, which is a good sign.
For king and country: Great. Moral relativism and D&D alignment. Two flavours that do not happily mix. It's time for one of those detailed examinations of what exactly morality in D&D can mean. How can we have genuinely compelling morality tales when there is an absolute right and wrong, and people know for certain if they are good or evil. This writer dislikes the idea, and would rather change that. He'd much rather throw the idea of cosmic standards of behaviour out, and substitute specific ones derived from the character's culture and the specific gods they worship. That way, you can have people who both feverently believe they're right, and have their holy powers back them up. This is one of those cases where I find myself divided, as this is a well-written article, but one holding a position I'm not very keen on, as I rather like the idea of objectively quantifiable morality, even if the folks on the ground don't know exactly what the rules are they should be following. Still, this goes quite some way towards demonstrating that you can make subjective morality work in D&D, despite all the rules that get in it's way, as long as you apply a little effort. I'm not going to knock the fact that many people do like to play it like that.
The role of books: The destiny dice by David Bischoff tells the story of things happening within a fantasy game people are playing, and discovering that they may be inside a game played on an even higher level of the multiverse. The book leaves lots of questions unanswered, presumably for future books in the series to deal with. This makes it an interesting but unsatisfying read. Fortunately, this is a long time later, so you can now get the full trilogy.
The Isle of Glass by Judith Tarr (typoed as the isle of class in the header :p ) tells the story of a half-elven guy trying to find his place in your typical pseudo english fantasy world. Our protagonist is dragged into big battles for the fate of the kingdom, largely against his will. Despite the very generic elements, it gets a fairly positive review, being good gaming material. Guess it's all in the way the story is actually told.
Cats have no lord by Will Shetterly (awesome title) is a riddle filled story of why every race apart from cats has a god. (Because they're waay too arrogant for that.) The quest to solve these puzzles is handled in a surprisingly low-key, humorous way. Even after it's over, there are still plenty of questions left open for the audience to discuss. Will and his co-conspirators are definitely ones to watch.
Ladyhawke by Joan D Vinge is of course the novelisation of the film. It hews fairly close to the plot of the movie, and the changes it makes are generally improvements. In general, the reviewer is pretty positive about both the book and the film. I guess there were many far cheesier films produced in the 80's.
The sword of Calandra by Susan Dexter may be part of a series, but is rather more episodic than the usual trilogies that are currently clogging up the fantasy genre. This is probably a good thing, as along with the good plotting, it helps keep things from being too predictable.
Dayworld by Philip Jose Farmer is the rather clever tale of one man's attempt to buck the far future system in which most people are placed in suspended animation for 6 days a week, to deal with overpopulation. This is a great combination of theoretical speculation and fast paced action that is well up to his usual standards.
Charging isn't cheap: Making magical items. A most tedious process. Just how much do you codify it, forcing players to personally hunt down the ingredients for a device. How much random rolling will you insert to see if it works as planned, or fails, or even develops unplanned features. Here's a big load of sample procedures for making and recharging wands, rods and staves. Another thing you can insert into your campaign fairly easily when the issue comes up, even in different editions, and is full of flavor. Another thing that'd definitely save you time making everything up if you're not feeling inspired.
Draco dracorum: The limited edition figurine celebrating ral partha's 10th anniversary. Get it now, because it'll soon be very collectible.
Reviews: The DC heroes roleplaying game gets reviewed by Jeff Grubb. This is actually a pretty positive one, as he welcomes the competition to the genre he is currently the leader in. While crunchy, and not always brilliantly organized, it scales to handle the huge disparities in power level well, and emulates the combination of big world shaking plots and keeping track of personal drama you see in the comics. He's going to take this as motivation to step up his own game, so much arse may be kicked. A pretty cool review that manages to skirt the problems that his very partial position presents.
Those Traveller alien modules each were campaign settings as well.
Dragon Issue 101: September 1985
part 2/2
Creature catalog III: Another 16 page set of new monsters is this month's centerpiece. A whole bunch of writers, including many of our usual suspects. What kind of trends will we see in them this time. Good or bad, direct or sneaky, mechanically sound or not. We shall see.
Alcor are arctic lizards that snowboard on their specially shaped tails. Yeah, it's as goofy as it sounds, especially looking at the illustration. That quirk aside, they're just another basic low-mid level humanoid race to harass your players with. If you're going to cold climes, they're a perfectly decent lizard man alternative.
Avari are bat monsters from the lower planes. They aren't particularly powerful as planar monsters go, and have suffered for it, being kicked around by Deamonkind and relegated to obscure places. Which is an interesting take on it and explains why they're rare. They're still scary enough to do some serious wreaking of havoc if summoned, so don't take them too lightly or extend them any sympathy just because they're currently the underdogs.
Automatons are exactly what you would expect them to be, robots constructed by wizards or "scientists". They're primarily designed as servants rather than combatants, but are hardly useless in a fight. Suffers from a very goofy illustration.
Bogeymen are another creature with a very definite comedic edge, that do exactly what you'd expect them too. Not particularly dangerous in actual combat, they can still be immensely annoying, and ruin a good nights sleep.
Burbur are immensely useful to dungeoneers because they eat Slimes and Molds, and are immune to their nasty special powers. Keep a jarful of them, and then let them out whenever you encounter some of the weapon immune, equipment destroying bastards. It'll save you a lot of hassle, and they make the D&D underground ecology make more sense. I approve on multiple levels.
Creeping pits are an even more brilliant example of the deranged D&D dungeon ecology. Nearly impossible to destroy, they're likewise largely unable to harm you directly, but can be massively inconvenient to deal with, (Unless there are stairs nearby, hee) especially when combined with other monsters. Definitely one for the sadistic and inventive GM.
Dracones are another emergent monster, produced by the union of a snake and a dead Fighter. (Err, yes. Hmm.) They have a whole bunch of plot hooks embedded in their description, and are another monster straight combat won't get rid of for good. You can definitely get more out of talking to them.
Forchoreai are magical stags from the beastlands. They have a whole wild hunt thing going where they don't really die when hunted. They're a decent challenge, and you can also get one as an ally for your druid or ranger. Nicely thematic.
Gargorians are extra badass versions of gargoyles. With 12HD, 6 attacks per round, and regeneration, they're good straight-up combat for your low name level team, or a boss encounter with some minions for a slightly higher level party.
Gu'armori are magical suits of armor that explode when you hit them. Given their fragility, they're more a nuisance than anything, both to their makers and the people encountering them. I'm not very impressed.
Hamadryads are another more powerful variant of a common monster. They have the standard charming capabilities, plus a whole load of spell-like abilities, and aren't limited to a small area like their lesser cousins. Mess with nature while they're around at your peril.
Hawkdragons are a self-explanatory magical hybrid. They can be trained, but have exceedingly stinky breath. Oh well, if nobles will pay ridiculous prices for caviar, you can probably make a decent amount of money training these guys up for them.
Lhiannan Shee are one of those delightful mythological monsters. They seek out handsome men with musical talent, and slowly suck their lifeforce away. Much potential for intrigue and intraparty conflict here.
Mantimera take the ridiculous hybridization of the chimera and further cross it with the manticore. Apart from firing tail spikes, they're pretty much the same as the other chimera variants, annoying things that go raar and ravage the countryside. No great inspirations here.
Metal mimics are another powered up variant of a normal monster. As they can imitate a wider range of materials than regular mimics, they're great for inducing paranoia. Never trust an unguarded treasure pile.
Orpsu are decidedly odd looking gliding bloodsuckers. They're a weak but flavorful creature that make a good alternative to stirges, bats, giant centipedes, and other verminous low level monsters.
Pilfer vines are another amusingly named and behaving thing that does exactly what you would expect it to do. Intelligent plants that steal your shinys? Sign me up for putting some of those around my dungeon!
Righteous clay (these names just get more and more amusing) drops on you and STEALS YOUR SOOOOOOOUUUUUULLLLL! They can imitate sounds like an organic stereo too. Insane genius. I'm loving this.
Sea giants are, yeah, giant variants on merpeople. They're big, fairly smart, and many of them are quite magically capable. One of those monsters who's effectiveness will vary widely depending on how they're played, and may be both friend and foe.
Tener are thieving humanoids from pandemonium with definite arachnoid traits. With powerfull class abilities, lots of innate spell-like powers, and rather more physical power than you would expect from a creature of this type, they are pretty dangerous. Well, if you go plane-hopping, everything is scarier than on the prime material.
Thendar are near immortal humanoids from the astral plane who look rather like a slimmed down galactus. They do seem rather stereotypical, with their ennui with life in general and tendency to impart wisdom in exchange for a new story. Not very interesting.
Tundra beasts are another creature with a self-explanatory name, as they can camouflage themselves as part of the landscape and then jump out to eat you. Hopefully they'll eat the snowboarding lizard-men as well. At least they're covering a wide range of climates.
Wind throwers are badass relatives of dwarves that have the power to manipulate wind, making them virtually immune to missile weapons, and able to use them to enhance their own ranged capabilities. They'll definitely be a nasty surprise for people expecting the standard heavy armour and battleaxe variety dwarf.
Yale are another goofy pseudonatural animal incorporating a stags body, a boars head, and sword-like horns. Despite being pretty tough in combat, they're a favoured prey of huntsmen. Well, it's not sporting to fight a monster that can't fight back.
Definitely a very mixed bag this time, with both monsters I love, and dull, derivative stuff. All the levels between starting and low teens are well catered for, and there's plenty of variety in habitats, alignments, and fighting styles. The overall quality control probably isn't quite as good as the last one, but there's more genuinely funny stuff, and I can see myself using quite a few of the monsters in here.
Coming attractions gets a double page spread for the first time. Guess they're really gearing up to sell sell sell in bulk this holiday season.
AD&D gets T 1-4, the temple of elemental evil. Belated for six bloody years since the first installment, we finally get the remaining three all at once, long after any first time round players would have given up and gone on to other adventures. Was it worth the wait? If it can be judged by the number of remakes and references it's got, the answer is very definitely yes. It also gets DL9: Dragons of deceit. Our intrepid heroes have to sneak into the city of Sanctuary to find the secret to defeating the draconians.
Speaking of dragonlance, the first novel trilogy is coming to an end with Dragons of Spring dawning. However, a cash cow like this cannot go unwrung, so there's going to be a second trilogy following it up next year. Will they be able to maintain the magic?
Dragonlance also branches out to their Super EndlessQuest gameline with The Soulforge. Play Raistlin's test of high sorcery. Will it turn out like the official fiction? Only you can know for sure.
D&D gets XS2: thunderdelve mountain. A solo adventure starring a dwarf? Okay then. It also gets AC7, the player masters screen. Tired of your DM geting to hide all their stuff from you. Turnaround is fair play, and you get lots of helpfull charts at your disposal as well to reduce page flipping.
And in another case of accesorising, we have The art of the D&D game. Your basic coffee table book, I suspect many of the magazine's better cover pics will make their way into there. Much mehness.
Top secret's companion finally comes out after having been teasered in the magazine for some time. Lots of new rules, plus an adventure, this ought to freshen up your game a bit.
The Marvel superheroes RPG gets MHAC7: Concrete jungle, and MH8: Faultline. A book full of characters and another adventure.
Amazing Stories branches out from the magazine to sell full-on novels. The 4D funhouse and Jaguar! are our first two offerings. Anyone read these? How were they?
Conan gets CN2: Conan the mercenary. Our mighty thewed friend winds up having to save the world, because he's being paid too. He's a hero anyway. Where will his wanderings take him next?
Indiana jones gets IJ6: The 4th nail. Search for the titular nail from the cross and hope Ben ali Aloob doesn't beat you too it. Their current love of fold-up cardboard figures continues, with a whole bunch included.
Our solo adventure book series include one on one gamebook 3: Revenge of the red dragon. Endless quest book 29: Tower of darkness. And Crimson crystal book 4: Stop that witch! If you can't find a gaming group, that should tide you over to next month.
We also have another gaming related book. The game buyers price guide shows how much you can expect all your old out-of print stuff to sell for. If you have a mint copy of the 1st printing OD&D boxed set, you can get quite a bit for it. One for the historian and speculator.
And finally, we have a cancellation. Seems like there wasn't enough demand for
Proton Fire, so they've pulled it. After going all the way through the development process? That's gotta waste quite a bit of money. I smell the ugly hand of politics behind this. Anyone have any more info on this odd little turnup for the books.
Fiction: And adventuring To ... by Brenda Gates Spielman. Adventuring is like being a musician. Sure there may be disgustingly rich, famous and talented people at the top, but for a low level adventurer, things are pretty unglamorous, and you risk your life daily for rewards that really don't seem worth it. A story that feels very much like a low level D&D game, with clearly visible classes, spells and defined monsters. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. Guess I'll have to file this one under filler, as it's neither particularly good or bad.
The Ares section has a particularly good cover this issue. If they play their cards right, they might get a Sci-fi art coffee table book as well. Roger is rather chipper in the editorial as well. Seems promising.
Starships and star soldiers: Seems like they're continuing their push to get wargaming back on the map. Having produced the Battlesystem for D&D, now they want to try and give sci-fi wargaming properties a boost. This article lists a bunch of current systems that may do the job, and encourages us, the readers, to write in if we want to see TSR and the magazine do more mini's stuff and wargaming in general. Yeah, no agenda at all here. Unfortunately, your wish is not going to be granted. So sad to see a hobby on life-support, and people trying to resuscitate it. How long are they going to keep trying? I guess this is another thing I'll discover as we go along.
Sorry, wrong dimension: Ah, interdimensional travel. Not a very different topic to the alternate timelines one they had fairly recently. Thankfully this takes a quite different tack, giving us a quick way to easily quantify how each alternate dimension differs from earth, using a few random rolls, or not, if you already have a good idea in mind. One of those cases where I've already seen several variants on the topic, and it's interesting to see how different people do it differently. You could definitely go into a lot more detail on this one.
The marvel-phile: Beta ray bill! Sif. (no, she doesn't deserve an exclamation mark. ) We return to Thor's extended family. Another pair of rather badass characters get stats and histories. Definitely another case where there is no way this could have happened in backstory. Jeff also takes the time to congratulate Roger on becoming a dad and make a ludicrous naming suggestion for the kid. Just a normal day at the office, exchanging a bit of banter, doing a bit of work. Funny to think that kid's an adult now. How time passes.
Out of the sun: Gamma world's article this month is on the empire of the sun, aka oriental gamma world, and their giant mechas. :rolleyes: Why am I not surprised in the slightest. Just another bit of goofiness to throw into the melting pot. Also another reminder that OA is immanent, and general interest in that area is on the rise. Once again Jim is trying to expand the scope of his his game, with mixed success. This may or may not be a crossover too far, depending on if your want Gundam in your postapocalyptic game or not. Whether you object to the premise and power creep (300d8 HD? Ouch. Not so much creep as quantum leap.) or not, it's still a pretty entertaining and well written piece, with nice fiction. Another thing that I probably wouldn't put in my game, but have no objection to them covering.
The stellar Diocese: Clergy character paths for Traveller? Is there no end to the number of career paths they can give us? I guess not. Like new classes, there'll always be demand for this, even if mechanically they're not that different from current options. And lets face it, spreading the Word is a great excuse to travel to new places, meet weird and wonderful aliens, and meddle in their affairs. Like the criminal career path they had recently, you can definitely see the plot potential in having one of these guys along. This also gives a bunch of sample religions for you to follow. Once again they've provided stuff that is both amusing and easily insertable into your game. Traveller has certainly built up a lot of options over the years. Now all they need is a wizard career path and they'll have the full D&D party covered. ;)
Teenage mutant ninja turtles! Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle power! Official palladium RPG! My god, was it really that early? This is years before the cartoon. Were the original creators gamers, because they certainly seem to have taken plenty of personal interest in this. Fascinating to discover.
Wormy reminds us storm giants are absolute badasses virtually every monster should be afraid of, even dragons. Snarfquest gives a so far minor character a serious upgrade. Dragonmirth gives us lots of giant stuff in various scenarios.
While certainly not as spectacular as their recent celebratory issues, this has still proven quite an interesting issue. Somehow, once again, it's wound up with me breaking my own record for size of review, despite the smaller page count. Guess having lots of subdivisions within the larger articles'll do that for you. Lots of stuff that you can put easily in an existing game as well. Well, since most people will be established players by now, you don't want to have to start a whole new game every time someone comes in with a cool new idea. Just how much more diverse can D&D's melting pot get? Quite a lot, I'm wagering. The real question is, how quickly.
Quote from: aramis;331122Those Traveller alien modules each were campaign settings as well.
Doesn't surprise me. After all, they've all got to have home planets, and all the stuff that comes with that.
Quote from: (un)reason;331146Doesn't surprise me. After all, they've all got to have home planets, and all the stuff that comes with that.
Sector each, most of them. about 400 worlds.
Dragon Issue 102: October 1985
part 1/2
99 pages. Once again we Kim bemoans how annoying the press are, painting gamers as a bunch of weirdos who spend all their time dressed up in fantasy gear and talking pseudo-medieval bollocks, when they aren't living in their parents basements invoking satan. They're just trying to get the most interesting story. The fact that bears little resembelance to the truth is just because we're not actually interesting enough. Don't sweat it too much. It happens to everyone else as well. This is another reason why the internet is so great. It allows you to easily bypass the big media outlets and talk to real people around the world about a topic. It's no wonder we're so much more cynical when it's much easier to see through the bullshit, but they keep producing it anyway. But I seem to have digressed. Lets get back to the issue at hand.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking how the training rules in issue 97 work. They are designed to slow you down somewhat. This was intentional. We want you to spend more time at low levels, so you don't see how much it breaks down at higher levels.
A request for Dragonchess, asking if it will be for sale soon. Unfortunately not. They couldn't figure out how to make it cheap enough for the mass market.
A letter from someone who noticed the numbering slip-up in issue 65. Very ancient history by now. But mistakes like that will live in ignomy forever. What are you gonna do.
A rather amusing question. What happens if a character playing through The city beyond the gate finds and reads a D&D book. Kim deflects the question with a joke. Guess you'll have to deal with the recursion as you see fit.
Finally, we get a bunch of Dragonchess errata. Curse you, unclear explanations. Once again, we see that Gary needs a firmer editor to turn his cool ideas to clear reality.
The forum: Dan Fejes points out that the uberpaladin vs red dragon fight in issue 99 would have gone rather differently if you'd remembered to make item saving throws for all their stuff. One breath weapon would wipe out a sizable fraction of their toys, and even if they survived, they wouldn't be as twinked as they used to be. You aren't playing the monsters cleverly enough, or taking advantage of their full power. No wonder you can't challenge your players.
Anthony Ragan gets rather heated about the idea of the druid/ranger, and how dumb it is. This makes no sense and messes up the themes of the game. Cut it out now! Hee.
Carl Seglem has a pretty simple yet profound statement. There is life after Monty Haul. Come back to the game you know.
Chris Sheldon shares the sad story of how his game fizzled out when he tried to rein back the munchkins. Already D&D is starting to lose quite a lot of the casual players to the next fad.
Mark Permann presents us with a horrible moral dilemma. What should the alignment consequences be of a bunch of adventurers showing up on earth, using magic openly and shattering our belief that we are alone in the universe. Even if they don't engage in mass slaughter, they've still completely overturned a culture. Man, that's a tricky one. I can see justified arguments for all sorts of positions on this topic. I hope we see some more on this in the next few issues.
Realms of role playing: Ha. Gary thinks that too much attention is being paid to roleplaying, and not enough to the game part these days, and it's time the pendulum swung back the other way. Considering how undeveloped the settings and characterisations are still compared to even 2nd edition, and other games of the 90's, I find this very amusing. He's definitely not keen on immersing yourself in your character and their everyday likes, dislikes and behaviours to the extent that the goal pursuing aspect of the game gets forgotten. It's not that it's bad advice, but it's obvious that his idea of a good balance between the roleplaying and the game part is rather more skewed towards the game aspect than many of the new writers. If you think it's annoying now, just you wait and see what the next decade has to offer. We also get a bit of cross-promotion. For those of you who want to see more stories of Gord, buy Amazing magazine. After all, I can't fill Dragon up with fiction to the detriment of it's intended purpose. So you'll have to buy all our properties if you want to get the full picture of what we're up too. This is definite evidence that supplement bloat and scattering metaplot through multiple books would probably still have happened had he been in charge during the 90's. Overall, this is another entertaining, but not entirely pleasing contribution from the father of the game.
All about gully dwarves: Looks like Krynn has given Roger a whole new seam to mine. Unfortunately, this means putting up with the second bloody comic relief race, gully dwarves. Still, if that means we'll be getting ones on irda and minotaurs soon, I can sit through this. At least they're not as disruptive to a party as kender. Of course, most players won't want to play them because they have crap ability scores, no special powers, and are not very glamourous either. This means that in terms of not pulling their weight in a heavily optimized party, they're probably even more troublesome. So hopefully only people who really want to play them for roleplay reasons and can handle their quirks without pissing the rest of the players off actually will. This is one area I'm particularly interested in hearing about peoples actual play experiences, precisely because as written, they do seem so troublesome and unappealing. Did anyone manage to transcend that? If so, how?
A collection of canines: Doggies! This article gives stats for lots of variants on this species, and is essentially an ecology of article in disguise. This is a typical Stephen Inniss article, a well researched expansion on an already existing part of the game, with fairly decent crunch along with the fluff. We get revisions of existing stats based on more intensive study of how these creatures compare to people, talk on evolution and domestication of wild varieties of canines, and some stuff on jackals and hyenas as well. These are assisted by some pretty nice illustrations which remind me of science books from this era. This is one of his more pleasing contributions, avoiding the dullness he can slip into when he gets too interested in little details. He's certainly continuing to earn his place here.
Elvira officialy endorses the Chill game with a set of adventures, Evenings of Terror. Are we seeing the start of the goth and roleplaying scenes intermingling that would reach its zenith with the world of darkness? That's certainly a pleasing sign from my point of view.
Nine wands of wonder: And here comes the most regular of all our regulars with another Forgotten Realms piece. Elminster starts using magic casually as part of his conversations. I'm guessing it's not long now until he's revealed in all his, er, glory. Anyway, this month's topic is magical wands. So we get nine of them. The Wands of Magical mirrors, of Hammerblows, of Banishment, of Armory, of Darkness, of Displacement, of Obliteration, of Teeth, and of Whips. While many of them are quirky, there's none of the cursed, or partly cool, partly damn inconvenient powers that many of his previous items have possessed. Guess even he falls victim to the desire for mechanical superiority and making things more convenient in actual play. Or maybe it's that FR wizards are quite happy to put conditional drawbacks on their companions equipment like swords and shields, due to their evil sense of humour, but want the stuff they actually keep for themselves to work smoothly. In any case, it's another well written piece, full of stuff you can put in your game easily enough, while still developing the Realms as a setting. I continue to approve of this.
Villains and vigilantes: Another superhero game now out. They do seem to be rather common back then. Trouble is, how can you compete with the two big official licenses?
Coming attractions: Oriental adventures is occupying pole position in the promotions field this month. We went years without seeing the basics of AD&D changed, and now we get two big hardbacks within a few months of each other, introducing huge amounts of new classes, items and stuff. This is a quite substantial change in developmental policy. AD&D is also getting DL10: Dragons of dreams. The epic adventure continues as they free the elven kingdom of the silvanesti from the literal nightmares that have engulfed it.
D&D also gets a pair of adventures. M1: Into the maelstrom takes you into space to save the world against an incredible evil. You know you're playing with the big boys now. If you haven't quite made it that far you can instead play CM6: Where chaos reigns. Still pretty epic, with the fate of the world once again resting in the PC's hands, and time-travelling involved. Honestly, can't we have a good high level adventure that doesn't involve saving the world? It should be big enough and ugly enough to take care of itself by this stage.
Gord's first novel is out. Saga of old city is set in greyhawk, and shows the start of the eponymous rogues rise to fame. Gary already has a quadrilogy planned out. Ok then.
Star frontiers is also doing pretty well for itself this month, with SFAC4: Zebulon's guide to frontier space (With apologies to David Cook), and SFAD5: Dark side of the moon. (With apologies to Pink Floyd) An expansion and an adventure. How will they fare in the harsh environment of the modern market?
The marvel superheroes RPG gets MHAC8: Weapons locker. Gear, gear and more gear. Don't feel your heroes are super enough with just their innate powers. Here's where you should go then.
The Amazing stories imprint releases two books this month. Number 3 is Portrait in blood by Mary L. Kirchoff. Number 4 is Nightmare universe by Gene DeWeese and Robert Coulson. Yeah, there's a definite horror theme here, be it gothic or sci-fi. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Endless quest is up to book 30: The fireseed. Oh no! You've been kidnapped by pirates. You must escape! How will you accomplish this?
And finally, we have two new SPI brand wargames. Barbarossa is a strategic level game covering the Russian front of WWII. An epic battle covering 5 years and half a continent. How will it go this time round? Terrible Swift Sword is a regimental level american civil war game. Now updated with the latest in civil war research, it's now more historically accurate than ever! Mmmkay then.
Dragon Issue 102: October 1985
part 2/2
Now that's firepower!: Hee. Not long ago they said they'd never allow military grade firepower in the Top Secret game. Well guess what. So much for that statement. Here we have stats for machine guns and missiles, and the quite disgusting amounts of damage they can do to both people and structures. Missiles in particular are prone to inflict instakills on you, which is never good from an adventurers point of view. You should definitely use this stuff with caution, for TPK's do not a happy party make. Thankfully the writer realizes this, and puts in plenty of warnings and advice on how to help with this. If used properly, it could add to your campaign. I guess you can't have the rope needed to cross a chasm or climb a cliff without also having enough rope to hang yourself with. The more freedom you're given, the more able you are to do things wrong, and mess them up for other people. It's a definite problem with game design in general. Guess you just have to find a game which does what you want.
Valley of the earth mother: This month's module is a 12 pager intended for fairly low level characters. Despite the name, it's not actually that wilderness focussed, with the majority of the actual adventure set inside the dungeon area. It also features an anti-ranger class, the huntsman. Who are complete bastards (shock, horror, peta girl flails her hands frantically and then starts making placards.) and not recommended as PC's. Add this to the neutral rangers in Mehica, and we have variants for all morals. Might as well just get rid of the alignment restriction entirely, since your moral state is apparently irrelevent to how well you know how to (mis)use nature. Someone send a deposition to the relevant deities. Try not to mislay it in the post for 15 years. So yeah, this is a fairly typical dungeon crawl that has a few neat touches, but nothing that really makes it stand out from the crowd. Just another day at work, clearing out pests.
Creating a cast of NPC's: Our D&D PbM creator returns to give us some advice on creating all the many NPC's that populate you campaign. While you probably won't need the 5000+ he created to provide a diverse cast to all the different parties participating, using his methods to whip out a few hundred general peeps to fill the basic roles in your game could definitely help speed your game along, and avoid the dreaded stupid name made up on the spot problem. Don't sweat too much about the details of unimportant NPC's, just roll them up and put them on an index card. For more critical ones, determine the important details yourself, but still let random rolls play a part. It's quicker and will result in results that surprise even you, making the campaign as a whole feel more realistic than if every NPC is precision tuned for their job. After all, in the real world, very few people are. A case where even if you choose not to heed his advice, you can't dispute his expertise. This method definitely works. That's not to say others don't work as well, but do you want to stumble around figuring out by trial and error what works and what doesn't? Some of us just don't have the time anymore.
Fiction: Passing in the night by Rob Chilson. The solar system is being invaded by mysterious and hostile aliens. It's up to your crew to stop them. This is nowhere near as glamorous as in the movies, but still an incredibly tense experience. And while the science may be pretty speculative in this one, the tension is very real. Like real submarine crews, you're packed in this small space with each other for months, and if you mess up, it can result in the death of the whole crew. If people from different nationalities have to do this, it gets even more complicated. And this story captures that kind of emotional interaction quite well. Which is nice for me. Bottleneck scenarios seem to work slightly better in sci-fi than fantasy, and we haven't seen that many of them in the magazine, so this doesn't feel too hackneyed. Lets hope we don't get a ton of them all of a sudden.
What the hell is mandragora the evil-chaser doing on the cover of the ARES section? Rankin-Bass ought to sue ;) I guess they'd just be countersued for snarf, so it all balances out.
Sticks and stones and death machines: We had some attention paid to determining challenge rating last issue. Now we get a similar article for gamma world. As the random encounter tables are not scaled for challenge in any way, you'll start off in huge amounts of danger from random crap, which then fades away. This is worth reexamining. Unfortunately, this article is too short to do the complete overhaul an idea like this needs, instead giving you a load of ideas on how you can fudge things to help keep them survivable and interesting. Which is pretty much the kind of advice we've heard repeatedly before, and will do so again. A definite filler article.
A thousand in one: Ohh. This is an interesting article. How to prevent the monoculture problem suffered when engaging in interplanetary or multidimensional games. It makes things seem shallow and stereotyped, particularly if your home region is the only area that doesn't suffer from it. You can get considerable benefits from condensing these ideas so there are several to a planet, interacting with and influencing one-another more closely. It's a simple lesson, but one many settings could benefit from. I've always been annoyed by monoculture problem in planar stuff in particular, and definitely intend to take it to heart when designing future cosmologies for my games.
The marvel-phile: Oh great. For this month's installment, we get the Impossible Man, another indestructible cartoonesque joke character. Egads, those are irritating. Able to assume any form, and bounce back from any attack, he's been a pain in the ass to the fantastic four, the x-men, Wasp, and even given Galactus indigestion. And if you get mad at him, you lose Karma. Prepare to face the wrath of thrown plushies and the like from your players. Ahh, the joys of having source material silly enough that you don't even need to try. Save it for the april fools issues Jeff.
Active duty: Once again we see people pushing what you can do with Traveller's career system. This time, it's some advice on playing characters that are still in the military, rather than retired. After all, it's not as if we're short on sci-fi series with setups like that. And the fact that you'll have to obey orders from your superiors just makes it easier for the GM to run the adventures they want without it seeming like railroading. Jeff Swycaffer once again proves that he has a good idea how to create and run good stories that imitate sci-fi shows like Star Trek or Space:1999, allowing the players a certain amount of discretion in following orders, and if they mess up, turning the punishment into it's own subplot. This opens up another milieu of play that I would certainly have no objection trying. Another thumbs up.
Silvertwin!: Star Law continues to get follow-ups in here with this pair of kick-ass custom vehicles, a space car and bike. Guess my joke about evil-chasers was more accurate than I realized. Join the twinteams, the six man sentai teams that pilot these interlocking pairs of vehicles, and travel the universe, fighting for truth, justice, and the intergalactic way. You didn't need to do this. You already had me sold on the whole space ranger thing, this is just icing on the top. Although I must admit it makes an exceedingly tasty looking cake. And since the whole way the concept pans out is pretty amusing, I'm going to have to give another positive result to this article.
Wormy shows how bad trolls are at deception. Snarfquest has an attack of concience. Dragonmirth has both racism and homophobia in it's jokes, my oh my.
Another fairly good issue, if not quite as good as the last two. Still, with their current standards, they'd have to fall quite a way to produce one I actively disliked. Lets hope they don't continue to slide downwards. Both writing and production values are staying strong. It's just the usual problem keeping things fresh when you've been doing them for this long. They could definitely be doing more themed issues. Even their specials haven't really concentrated in one area all year. I guess this is what happens when you rule your writers with a light hand. Will my desires be granted? Will they get even better? Or is this the start of the end for the classic run of issues. Guess I can't really know until I can look back and see it in context. Onwards, christian soldiers, yadda yadda yadda.
Dragon Issue 103: November 1985
part 1/2
100 pages. Well, the price increases are back. From febuary onwards, issues will cost $3.50. The cost of everything else in their catalog is also going up next year. Buy lots of stuff for christmas, before the increases hit. (We still need to get ourselves out of debt, even after the runaway success of UA, but we're not going to actually say that. We're not beggars like palladium) So lets hope they continue to produce stuff that's worth the price. Once again their contents page looks a little sparse, which isn't promising. They really ought to do something about that. All it takes is a little formatting control and info on their regular columns.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking if you can still get photocopies of individual articles from the magazine. You can, but only if you're an RPGA member. Poor overworked Penny Petticord just can't handle everyone's requests.
A question about how holy flail works. This is the kind of one that really belongs in sage advice. I miss that. When will it be back.
Another rules question. Why are automatons so expensive. So you can't mass produce them, just like all the other magically created creatures. They need to be kept extortionately expensive so wizards can't alter the everyday food production setup and advance technology beyond pseudomedieval. Bleh.
The forum: David Gaw thinks the most important thing for a DM is fairness. As long as you stay fair, the players should respect your authority. In a perfect world, maybe. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. No one DMing style is going to fit all players.
Thomas E Wolff is one of those people who thinks fudging is a bad idea. Sure, you do it once, thinking it's harmless, but before you know it, your players have no fear of death at all, and the campaign loses all it's drama. Stay off that slippery slope. If the dice say you die, you die.
Brian Hook doesn't like the idea of mass combat systems, feeling it destroys your roleplaying and personal relationship with your PC's. Just abstract it away. Pah.
Richard Silva thinks that Frank Mentzer has dramatically exaggerated the lethality of a huge dragon when faced with a full team of properly equipped 25th level characters. Frankly, by his math, they would mop the floor with it if they were played with any intelligence at all. That's the rub, isn't it. At high levels, it becomes so much about how well you apply your powers as well as the straight numbers. Given how much choice both sides would have in spells and attacks, you could play this one dozens of times with very different results.
From the sorceror's scroll: Now UA is out, it's time for your esteemed writers here at TSR to start seriously considering working upon a second edition. Of course, it will take us several years to figure out exactly what to change and how, and write it up properly, based upon the feedback of our Gentle Readers, so do not worry. Your views will be crucial in its shaping, and you will receive plenty of warning as to its release, so you can prepare your campaigns accordingly. Let me elucidate as too the current plans! Assassins go byebye (my oh my). Bards become an ordinary class again. Mystic, savant and jester to be introduced as new official classes. Classes from UA and OA to be put in the players handbook. Deities to be more powerful and less firmly defined. More difference between clerics based upon god worshipped. Legends & Lore to be considered one of the corebooks. Now, how do we do this without making the books too damn big for casual players? As ever, this is very interesting, particularly when you compare it with what actually happened. Some of this came to pass, some didn't, and some retained the basic intention, but the details got changed along the way. Definitely one for the historical perspective files and citing in flame wars and wikipedia. Also interesting to note that the 2nd edition would probably have been out a year or two sooner, had the crisis of leadership not happened. The massive gaps between the early editions may not have been entirely intentional.
Arcana update, part 1: Errata, errata. Serve it up on a platter. Use it to make the next printing better. Yes, not only was it flimsily made, UA was an exceedingly errata-ridden book, and it seems that TSR's Loyal Readers wasted no time in sending letters to the company pointing this out, with various degrees of added vitriol. So we have four pages of various clarifications and corrections. Somewhere between amusing and tiresome to read in retrospect, this was of course Serious Business at the time. Question is, is this extra publicity for the book a good or bad thing? I'm betting bad. It'd certainly weaken my trust in a company, finding out they'd produced shoddy goods. As ever, the opinions of anyone who was there at the time on this matter would be very welcome.
Palladium fantasy goes on the high seas.
All about krynn's gnomes: Great. Tinker gnomes. Comedy relief race number three of Dragonlance. Stop talking when I am, the rest of us can't speak and listen at the same time. (now that is a useful special power. Screw mining, super accurate throwing and infravision, I want to be able to talk constantly and parallel process multiple conversations in my head at the same time.) These guys are actually reasonably cool, differing from humanity in such a way that doesn't prevent them from each having individual personalities, and being far more distinctive than generic gnomes. But the comic relief incompetence elements are laid on pretty thick. Still, if I had to choose between the three so far, I'd take these guys. Unfortunately, it seems that my earlier hope that we'd also get articles on the non comedy relief races is not to be granted, as this is the last in the series. Once more, their editorial direction seems to be slipping away from me, as they fail to cover stuff that seems obvious. This is most annoying. I wanted to like dragonlance back in the day, I really did, but they just kept making mistakes like this. So frustrating.
A samurai riding a foo dog attacking a ninja. That's .... certainly an iconic, if stereotyped image to advertise oriental adventures with. Is there such a thing as being too obvious in your adverts? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say yes.
Queen victoria and the holy grail module for call of cthulhu?? Okay. How'd they manage to make a title as pulpy as that properly horrific? Sounds like a right cheesefest.
A dozen domestic dogs: Having given us wild canines last issue, Stephen Innis now turns his attention to tame breeds. Thankfully, he doesn't try and give individual stats to every one, instead giving us a nice matrix of size and role that should handle everything from toy poodle to rotweiler, plus some more specific notes on dogs bred and trained to fill a function. This is an oasis of calm compared to the last few articles, being completely disconnected to the larger arc of D&D's history. And steve is as reliable as ever in producing stuff that is both mechanically sound and properly researched. The magazine would be a worse product without him.
DC heroes! Well, I guess marvel have had an RPG out for a while. I'm not surprised DC want a piece of the pie as well. That's a lot of tm's for one page. Who will win the battle for your playing time?
The role of books: The silver Crown by Joel Rosenberg is part three of the Guardians of the flame series. This certainly isn't the end of it though, as our protagonists find changing a fantasy world rather more complicated than you'd think. The writer certainly seems to be keeping up with recent progressions in gaming technology. Where will the story take them next. Will they ever get home. Will it be exactly when they left and no-one will ever know about the things they did. Shouldn't be hard to find out.
The song/flight of Mavin manyshaped by Sheri S Tepper are parts one and two of (what else) a trilogy, set in her True Game world. Thankfully, it's not some overegged piece where the world is in danger all the time, and has good plotting and dialogue. Her world is being built up quite nicely.
The secret country by Pamela C Dean takes a different tack to the regular people transported to fantasy land trope, with a bunch of kids dealing with fairytale logic in the Secret Country. They may not deal with it in the same way as Joels protagonists, but give them a few books, and they'll be hard-bitten adventurers too.
Bridge of birds by Barry Hughart is a fantasy novel set in 7th century china. Written as the memoirs of the protagonist, it manages to engage in both adventure and world-building while staying in character, building up a detailed and well-researched world. It gets thoroughly recommended for those of you who've just bought Oriental Adventures, and want fiction to help inspire a game.
Dragons of spring dawning by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman gets a rather extensive review, also looking at the trilogy as a whole. It builds up to a nice climax, and the reviewer certainly seems to think it's a suitable attempt to match tolkien's epic scope without slavishly imitating the details. Well, it was pretty popular at the time. I shouldn't be too surprised.
Magic in Ikthar, edited by Andre Norton and Robert Adams attempts to do for wizardry what the thieves world series did for rogues. Unfortunately, the shared worldbuilding aspect isn't strong enough, so the stories don't fit together that well. This is why you need editorial control. No matter how good the writers are, if they don't communicate, the result will be less than the sum of it's parts.
The Gadget factor by Sandy Landsman is your typical tale of teenage geniuses getting themselves into trouble by inventing a time machine. Amazing that I can be unsurprised by a trope that specific. Still, it's fast-paced, fun, and the computer stuff is handled in a coherent way, so it should be good fun for younger readers, who can identify with the protagonists.
Quote from: (un)reason;331523Realms of role playing: Ha. Gary thinks that too much attention is being paid to roleplaying, and not enough to the game part these days, and it's time the pendulum swung back the other way. Considering how undeveloped the settings and characterisations are still compared to even 2nd edition, and other games of the 90's, I find this very amusing.
Gary's editorials are vitriolic and inconsistent, and do not appear to match his and his player's 1996-on recollections of the pre-1985 games...
Quote from: (un)reason;331523Villains and vigilantes: Another superhero game now out. They do seem to be rather common back then. Trouble is, how can you compete with the two big official licenses?
By being 1/2 the price. By having excellent Jeff Dee art. By having a surprisingly robust system. By including rules for making a Mary Sue campaign work, including deriving your base stats from your real-world capabilities, then adding random superpowers. And by having good adventures.
It's worth checking out. I ran a mini-campaign of V&V in 1986. It worked, and worked well.
V&V is without a doubt my favorite of all the Super Hero games from back in the day. I'd still play it, and I know some people do. I'm not crazy about the random character generation- but I don't hate it either. I'm conflicted.
I played in and ran campaigns of it for years. We never played as ourselves though. 1985 seems too late to me though.
Yup, I just checked first edition in 79, and second in 82- which fits with my memory of playing it while I was in HS.
The month issue 101 was released, I was on vacation in Southern California. Huntington Beach. From there I went to SFO/Oakland for a few days. Then spent the next fifteen months in Korea, where I gamed with a group from the Eight Army HHC at Yongsan. We played plenty of Champions and 1e AD&D. I seem to remember trying out V&V about then as well.
Getting a current issue of the Dragon Magazine was a very hit-n-miss affair during that time as the only new Dragon Mags showed up when new players joined our group that had carried part of their collection across the Pacific.
It seems the military was made for gamers. Everywhere I was billeted the barracks or quarters invariably included a large recreation room that included pool tables, and large tables with plenty of seating. Getting a game or gaming group going was a snap. Just lay out the maps and gm screen on the table and let the folks show up.
Quote from: aramis;332264Gary's editorials are vitriolic and inconsistent, and do not appear to match his and his player's 1996-on recollections of the pre-1985 games...
Yeah, these threads seem to highlight some big disconnects.
Seanchai
Dragon Issue 103: November 1985
part 2/2
The centaur papers: Or, we got two good ecology of submissions, so we decided to merge them into an extra long and comprehensive one. At 12 pages long, this is virtually a full special feature. It goes into quite a bit of detail on the oddities of their internal system, diet, ecology and culture, doesn't forget that they are chaotic, and the original greek centaurs were a bunch of marauding drunkards, and treads the fine line between bowdlerisation of the myth and being too gross with aplomb. (yay for castration as a punishment for crime) They are also given PC stats, which is nice, (although they're nowhere near as capable in this area as they were in 2nd edition) and one would certainly make a decent addition to a party as long as they weren't faced with too many confined spaces. All in all, a very good article, that you'd never know was stitched together from two writers. Which means plenty of credit has to be given to Kim's editing as well. Not often you get to say that. Poor editors. The writers take the credit while they take the blame. Many shout-outs to Kim for making the magazine as good as it was, while I'm thinking of the subject.
The actual centerpiece of this issue is considerably less impressive. Another couple of pages of UA errata, designed so you can cut the bits out and stick them over the errors in the original book. Which is an interesting gimmick. Unfortunately, even the errata has errata, as the multi-classing table isn't properly formatted and suffers line drift. Well, at least they're trying. Shame this'll just be cementing peoples opinion of their editing skills. (in complete contradiction to what I said last article, but that just makes it all the more amusing, that they can be producing works of such widely varying quality in the same pages. ) What is going on over there. This issue is going up and down like, er, no, I won't complete this metaphor. Family friendly magazine, and all that.
Coming attractions changes its name to TSR Previews, and makes it absolutely clear that there will be no third party stuff here. Boo. They also don't have quite enough new stuff to fill the entire page this month, so they recycle some of last month's synopses. This is not particularly pleasing to me either. Sigh. Lets just see what the new stuff is.
D&D gets X10: Red arrow, black shield. As mentioned earlier, this combines roleplaying of troop gathering with Battlesystem and War machine stats for the actual conflict. Not your standard module.
AD&D gets Baltrons beacon. A sneaky one where you have to get hold of the macguffin before Baltron returns to his tower. Looks like another one where straight combat is not the solution.
One-on-one game books gives us book 4, Challenge of the druids grove. Druid vs Wizard! Who will gain ultimate power?! Muahaha.
Conan gets CN3: Conan triumphant. Based on the new book by Robert Jordan, this looks pastichealicious. Powerful barbarians, evil wizards, and hack-and-slash adventure. No pretensions to high art here.
Also notable is that there's a couple more cancellations. The SPI stuff gets the shaft, and has been delayed until next year. Take that, red-headed step-children.
Profiles: Oooh. a new feature. Time to put the spotlight on the writers behind the games. They could definitely fill a few years with this stuff. Unsurprisingly, our first one is of the head of the company, Gary Gygax. He really is working ridiculously hard these days, getting up at 5 in the morning to get the creative part of his job done before anyone else even comes in, then doing a full day's managerial work. He is of course, one of the founders of the company, although lots of credit is given to Donald Kaye in helping it find it's feet in those early years, which is nice of him. Of course, the current conflicts of personality the company is going through are completely ignored, and the whole thing is presented in an upbeat, the future is going to be even bigger and better manner. Bloody whitewashes. Still, this again has good advice for any a budding creative. If you have an idea, start doing it now. If you wait until you're ready, you never will be. Don't give up, even when things get hard, and everyone is messing you around. Once again, he is an inspiration to us all. How will they follow this up? Guess after starting at the top, they'll have to do an Orson Welles and work their way down.
Fiction: The wages of stress by Christopher Gilbert. Ha. A story set in 2007. As usual, they overestimate the rate of technological advancement. Although curiously, this stuff probably is within our current capabilities to create and implement. And given how big business compensation culture has become, and how unpleasantly omnipresent vehicle monitoring has become, something like it could still be tried. ( To go off topic, if the government tries to push implanting RFID chips in people under some pretense, I strongly reccomend opposing them in any way you can. They already do it to homeless people in some states, and it's a step towards big brother dystopia I would really rather not see come into common practice.) This does a good job of handling the speculative side of sci-fi, without neglecting the human drama, or getting bogged down in technical details. One of their strongest pieces in a while, along with the MMORPG one in issue 97, this shows just how well they can hit points that still have emotional resonance and cultural significance a few decades later. Discovering gems like this makes all the work of doing this worthwhile.
ARES log: A rather amusing editorial this month, as they loudly proclaim their accessability to foreign writers. We have lots of people in canada, and more than a few from the UK. Don't be shy. Send stuff in. Hee. Misconceptions like this are such a hassle.
Of nobbles and men: A rather strange little article here. Do you want to know more about Nobbles, the hornless rhinoesque grazing creatures that people on Tarsus herd. Can't say I ever did. Still, as the western genre shows, cowboy is an entirely valid adventuring choice, when you're trying to make a living in a wild and dangerous land, lots of things will be there to keep your life interesting. And the nobbles are rather more challenging creatures to herd than cows. This is surprisingly pleasing, as it does open up an adventuring style they haven't mentioned here before, which could well be transplanted to other genres and systems. Fancy giving your D&D characters a thousand cows and an assignment to transport them a thousand miles? I find this rather tempting.
Starquestions is doing gamma world again. No great surprises here then.:
How fast can a vibroblade cut through duralloy ( pretty quickly. Not much resistance there. )
How do you design adventures for high level characters (Politics and new frontiers. Both ways to up the stakes and challenge level by increasing the scope. )
Why are the symbols for craters and radiation the same (because that's where the nukes hit. Make sense?)
What do you use the range ruler for. (Moving your minis around the table and shooting stuff. )
Why are grenades and fungicide resolved differently when they're both burst attacks (ease of play)
Why can flying NPC's not go as fast as flying mutant PC's. ( It's not quite like that. It's just that the writers of the mutation and monster sections didn't co-ordinate. )
Where do the gamma world modules take place (all over north america. )
What city is sanjo (San Jose. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. )
The saurians: Star frontiers gets a new race. Lizard people? Oh, what an original idea [/sarcasm] Seems like they show up in any remotely kitchen sinkish universe. So we have stats that a primarily intended for NPC's, but are more than detailed enough for player use as well. No real surprises or original spin on the idea here. Such is the nature of cliche.
Tanks again!: Looks like this issue's theme of errata is continuing into the Ares section, with an article in issue 99 getting a follow-up. A single page article of corrections, clarifications and extensions, this is another one that is probably useful, but still not very interesting to read. Another article that feels like filler in quick succession. How disappointing.
A super-powered seminar!: Ahh, this is more interesting. Stuff from a seminar in which the creators of the various superhero RPG's around at the time got together and answered questions. Jeff Dee & Jack Herman representing villains and vigilantes. Ray Greer for the HERO system. Greg Gorden for DC heroes, and of course, Jeff Grubb handling the marvel side of the equation. How they were developed, the problems they encountered, and what's coming next for them. One of those reminders that the world of RPG's is a small place, and the sci-fi and superhero genres even more so. Everyone knows each other, even if they only really meet up at cons. Guess it's like actors and awards shows. This has been pretty enlightening for me, and apparently, them as well. See what a little communication gets you. It helps you combine all the best ideas from everyone.
The marvel-phile: Jeff also gets help from the official chronicler of the Marvel universe history this month. Guess this is another plus point of going to conventions, as well as a good indicator of his positive relationship with the game's parent company. If they had to go through an extensive niggly approvals process for every little bit of writing, these articles wouldn't be nearly as reliable as they are. Anyway, this month's detailed characters are Armadillo, Count Nefaria, and Hyperion. Only the newest and best (and in one case, already dead) for our magazine. We see how Marvel is currently riffing off DC with the Squadron Supreme series. We see how they must be running out of animals to steal superpowers from. Another solid entry in a series that could probably run forever, given the rate they create new characters for the comics.
Irving tries to figure out how to land safely in wormy. Snarf becomes absurdly suggestible. Both dragonmirth jokes this month feature actual dragons.
This has been rather an up and down issue. When it's good, it's good. When it's not, it's very boring indeed. Overall, this is a definite step downwards, yet again, from their issue 100 high. Lets hope they've saved up some special features for christmas, because otherwise next month is going to full-on suck. And I would rather prefer it didn't.
Quote from: GameDaddy;332276It seems the military was made for gamers. Everywhere I was billeted the barracks or quarters invariably included a large recreation room that included pool tables, and large tables with plenty of seating. Getting a game or gaming group going was a snap. Just lay out the maps and gm screen on the table and let the folks show up.
The military, and prison. (at least, when the guards don't screw you over regarding books & writing materials) Anywhere you're stuck with the same people for ages and not much to do. We get quite a few editorials on that subject.
Quote from: Seanchai;332278Yeah, these threads seem to highlight some big disconnects.
Seanchai
Still, it keeps the forum and letters page busy, which I suspect may have been part of his intent. Exaggeration and hyperbole makes these things more fun to read.
Quote from: (un)reason;332474(at least, when the guards don't screw you over regarding books & writing materials)
And dice, though I've read about ingenious workarounds for their lack.
Dragon Issue 104: December 1985
part 1/2
104 pages. Well, it looks like the meteoric rise is over. We get another look at their sales figures this month, and they're pretty much the same as last year, just a few thousand less. The magazine has reached it's commercial zenth, and now it's time for the long slow decline. We also have yet another D&D controversy to help that on its way. Ahh, the joys of misrepresentation. Anything can be done wrong. And a lie can travel halfway round the world before the truth has got it's boots on. We ought to know by now that most games are just harmless fun, not some unhealthy obsession. (says the guy who's spent several hours nearly every day for a year reading and writing about D&D, ahahahahaha! gibber!) So lets not stress too much. We can't change the past, all we can do is learn from it. So lets keep on learning. Looks like we have a thief special this month, with three articles devoted to them. Been a while since we had something like that. Still, I'm sure we will again.
In this issue:
Letters: We get a letter from the UK, pointing out the anachronisms in the city beyond the gate. I am not surprised at all. The author of the module replies that he based it heavily on reading the Borribles series, ( Hee, although I have to say I liked those books as well.) and he knew the police didn't have guns, but he put them in anyway so they could still be a challenge to the PC's. He also didn't do his research about decimalization, despite it being 15 years ago now. Dear oh dear. Shoulda run it past a real english person beforehand. This would be rather less likely to happen these days. Ahh, the joys of the internet. And that's our lot for now.
The forum: Richard W Emerich turns up for a third time, this time to chime up in favor of allowing PC's to pay to have magic items recharged. After all, once they're into the teen levels, and have the power to do this kind of thing, they also ought to have the money to get other people to do the tedious bits of maintaining the adventurer lifestyle for them. You should never miss an opportunity to streamline your magical capabilities, for it will save you much time and irritation.
Mark Deseck takes the time to introduce us to two new weapons, the sword-breaker, a real life example of a screwage counterweapon, and the pilium, a javelin designed to stick in shields so you can use it to make them useless. See the evil tactics you can do even without magic.
William Bond Jr thinks that no-one is perfect. Even paladins wind up doing neutral stuff sometimes. Don't judge them too harshly.
John Maxstadt contributes a fairly long piece, spread over three pages in different parts of the magazine. Ahh, the horrors of formatting without whitespace with the old technology. Still, at least they try, unlike 4e. Anyway, he makes the case that if anything is going to kill D&D, it's oversophistication. Something that still might turn out to be true. He also has lots of contributions on the morality in fantasy debate.
Nick Jamilla talks about media misrepresentation, and the crap that TV people go through to get good stories. They've got problems and pressures of their own. Is it any wonder that things turn out slanted. This is why you shouldn't believe what you see on the TV. Everyone's got an angle and a reason why they're doing something. Remember to read between the lines.
The well-rounded thief: Ahh, the thief who steals from their own party. Not a problem I've had to deal with, but obviously common enough back then that it needed addressing. So here's a look at some of the more common motivations for your characters that don't involve them being a complete sociopath with no regard for anything apart from personal enrichment. Maybe they want revenge. Maybe they want to look cool. Maybe it's just a job, and they're as loyal to the gang as anyone else, because no-one likes a snitch or turncoat. Maybe they followed their parent/elder sibling into the profession, and just want to make them proud. This definitely falls into the category of roleplaying advice that I've heard plenty of times before. Break out of the stereotypes, and play an individual, etc, etc. They obviously think it's still interesting enough to put in pole position. Can't say I agree.
Race is ahead of class: The roleplaying advice continues, with this examination of how the average thief of a demihuman race will differ from a human one. Info gathering elves, technically inclined dwarves, mischevious gnomes, thuggish half-orcs, home comfort loving halflings lured away by curiosity. Once again, there's no great surprises here, if you're already familiar with the basics of the races. Whether your character adheres to those tendencies or not, is of course, up to you. Once again, this is pretty solid, but superceded by later works that went into greater detail. This is the problem with starting off later and then going back to things. It doesn't have the impact it had to first time viewers.
Was it worth the risk?: And finally, we get some new crunch to finish off the themed section. If your thief wants to supplement their income by doing a little pickpocketing while in town, roll on this random table to see just who's pocket you pick. This of course has quite substantial dangers. During the daytime, you have an 18% chance of getting someone with significant class levels, or a disguised monster, that is capable of being a serious problem if they catch you. At night, this goes up to a whopping 35%, with demons and undead roaming the city streets. This is why thieves guilds are essential in D&D. Without that backup, 1st level characters trying their luck at larceny wouldn't survive their first day. Even the dungeon is safer than this. I find this very amusing. The table for what you get if you do make a successful lift is equally amusing. (yay for rubik's cubes) It's amazing what crap people keep in their pockets, most of which isn't very valuable. In general, this is a rather old skool article, which is best suited to mischievious and sadistic DM's running high fantasy games. It certainly makes an entertaining read, and would probably make for interesting (if rather lethal) games as well. The players won't be getting cocky anytime soon if they see you break out this one.
Oriental opens new vistas: They've been promoting it heavily for several months now. Just in case you hadn't noticed, here's a piece by David Cook, essentially giving a synopsis of what's in it. 8 new classes, tons of new weapons, martial arts, spells, monsters, plus the campaign world (or at least continent) of Kara-tur. Buy it, and you'll have tons of new stuff to play with, both as players and GM's. And you don't even need to stop your regular game to do so. Traveling, picking up new characters and dual-classing will allow gajin to experience the joys of the lands of the east as their players do. While if you do want to play a native, we have tons of everyday setting stuff to help you build a well characterized and integrated character. While obviously a pure shill piece, this is a good shill piece, that makes what they're selling seem desirable. I am rather tempted to pick it up second hand so I can make a more informed commentary. After all, it was rather popular.
Three challenges in one: A second, shorter promotional piece follows. As they've said several times before, Module X10 involves the standard D&D rules, the War machine from the Companion set, and the new Battlesystem rules. This really pushes the boundaries of what you can do in a roleplaying game. No longer do you need to fudge things when armies become involved. Instead, you can scale inwards or outwards as needed, to create a truly epic overall game where you can command nations. Use the War machine to quickly build up your countries, and their armies. In short, this becomes much more than just a bit of promotion, as it really challenges you to step up your game, take it in new, bigger directions, and makes it seem like a fun and achievable prospect. A single campaign can go from dungeon crawling, to wilderness exploration, to diplomacy, to comedy, to domain management, to personal introspection and relationship drama, to war, to other worlds, and even to godhood, while still retaining continuity. (aardvarks are optional) Do you have what it takes to pull that off? Or are you just going to pick one milieu and stick with it. If you do, don't be surprised if I get bored and leave you behind. This is much more successful as a mind broadener than the preceding OA piece.
Meeting of the minds: Another 1 pager here. Do you wish you got more psionic monsters in your random encounters? Roll here then. Be very afraid, because your chance of encountering a demon lord, primus, slaad lord or similar unique monstrosity that terrifies even 20th level characters is better than 1 in a thousand. man what. They put creatures like that on the random encounter tables back then? What happens if you kill them, then the DM gets that result again? This is definitely another attack of serious old skool design I'd be rather wary of using in actual play, for though it might be entertaining, lots of horrible deaths would result. This is why they started designing CR appropriate encounters and all that goes with it.
Leomund's tiny hut: It's been quite a while since we heard from Len. What's brought him back into the fray? Specialization, and its effect on game balance. Cue annoying average damage per round calculations. Yes, it makes fighters more powerful. That was the point. They're still seriously limited in options that can change the whole course of a battle compared to spellcasters. And if you determine the treasure your players get randomly, the benefits will balance out in the long run because chances are, they won't get magic weapons of types they know how to use as often, making the theoretical twinky synergies unlikely. Yet Len still wants to nerf weapon specialization further, making it harder to learn, and less beneficial if you do get it. Once again, I find myself at odds with his design choices. You need to be giving them more options, not reducing their power.
The ecology of the ochre jelly: Now there's a monster you don't see much anymore. Which is curious, as they're one of the least screwage inflicting of the oozes and their relations, like slimes, molds, and puddings. Elminster delivers a rather clever tale of turning the quirks of the monster to your advantage, and using it to devastate your enemies. Gotta love that division power. Which is a kind of story we haven't seen here before. I strongly approve, as this is the kind of stuff it's great fun to see your players try, and hopefully reading this will inspire them to do likewise. Drama, realms lore, some rather well researched physiological descriptions, character ingenuity. Once again Ed has pushed his own limits and come up with a new trick to keep me interested. How very pleasing. He's continued to surprise way long after most writers become predictable. And hopefully will continue to do so.
Assessing, not guessing: Hmm. Looks like we're getting a third article introducing a new subsystem this month. This is an interesting trend. This time, it's one for when characters try and figure out how much something is worth. After all, it's unrealistic for them to automatically know what it's value is. For that matter, it's unrealistic for gems and other valuable items to have a fixed value in the first place, but enough about D&D's monolithic price fixing cartels, and their desperate need for a union-breaker. Anyway, this is another efficient and easy to use article that reminds us that independent subsystems aren't neccacerily a bad thing, as they can be tailored to the needs of the matter at hand more precisely, it's just that learning them and keeping track of them becomes more fiddly when there are hundreds of different parts. Still a fun read, though.
Dragon Issue 104: December 1985
part 2/2
Sudden dawn: It's been getting articles every month for over a year. Now the Marvel superheroes game gets it's first module. As it's christmas, it's a full 16 pager. Venture to 1944, either using the pregenerated characters, or by concocting a reason for your regulars to go back in time, to save New york city from nazi ubermensch and a vampire with a nuclear bomb. It's a bit of a railroad, with a bunch of cool scenes, but very little opportunity to manipulate the plot. It's certainly an interesting experiment, and would make a decent pick-up game, but I can't see myself using it as written with a regular group. They'd refuse to cut the scene where it says and go off to investigate and mess it all up. A bit of a disappointment, really, despite the strong presentation. It'd make a good actual comic book story, but as we've found, what makes a good story and a good game are very different things.
Spy's advice: What happens to an agent who quits and sets up their own agency. (Watch your back, especially if you found out important secrets before leaving. )
I want my agent to use heavy weaponry. Pretty please. ( You'd better have a better justification than that.)
I want my agent to use lasers. (Tough. This is a modern day game, so they do not exist, so they have no stats. Doesn't matter how highly cleared you are. Can't have something that doesn't exist.)
If you shoot a car, how do you determine where you hit. (see page 38, and use common sense. Hitting what locations would produce these results?)
I want more info on uzi's. (zzzzzzzzz. Oh, alright.)
At what point does an object go from being really hard to conceal to impossible. (good question. )
How hard is it to shoot two guns at once. (depends how many shots you do with each. Recoil adds up quite dramatically.)
If you kill someone with a full burst, can you retroactively not shoot the extra shots (no. Chaos of melee and all that.)
Does increasing your charm also increase your deception (yes)
What guns did they use on the man from U.N.C.L.E (Walther P-38's)
Can you use fortune and fame points to escape excecutions and explosions. (people certainly survive them in the movies against impossible odds, so yes)
Can assault rifles be scoped. (yes. Most guns can. It helps with some more than others though. )
Profiles: Looks like this is gonna continue for a while. We get two profiles this month. Harold Johnson is the director of game design. This means you don't see his name as often as you do the writers, but he's a critical part of the organization, running from one department to another, getting them to all co-ordinate on a project. He also wrote C1, and is responsible for the hiring of lots of TSR's famous names like Jeff Grubb and Tracey Hickman. Obviously it'd be a different company without him.
David "zeb" Cook is a rather more famous name, having been responsible for designing lots of cool stuff of various kinds, from big stuff like Oriental Adventures and Star frontiers, to little games like Escape from new york. His favourite word is Wahoo!, and he subscribes to the philosophy that the person who dies with the most toys wins. Ok then, I suppose that's a pretty good philosophy for a game designer. He seems to be quite the prankster in general, really livening up the TSR offices. Unless that's just what they want you to think. ;) Still, he's designed plenty of classic stuff, so he must be doing something right.
TSR Previews: The number of new releases per month continues to plummet. Guess the leadership struggles and layoffs to deal with their debt problems are really starting to bite. So to fill the page, they once again devote a big chunk of it to recent and distant releases, rather than stuff shipping now.
The new Lankhmar series gets it's first module, Swords of the undercity. Three short adventures in the seedy underbelly of the place that can be combined to create a larger arc.
The Super endless quest series gets renamed, in a blatant attempt to boost sales by tying it more closely to the AD&D wagon. It's also rather topical, with the latest adventure being Test of the Ninja, in which a samurai is tempted to join the secret society of the ninja. Will you accept, or fight this treacherous scourge?
And regular Endless quest gets book 31: Tarzan and the tower of diamonds. Once again, they crossover their properties in various combinations in the hope that'll help. Ho hum.
I shan't bother reiterating the already out stuff. However, the more distant releases teased are: February, the start of the new Dragonlance Legends series. The immortal level boxedset, A1-4: the updated collection of the slaver series, and part two of the greyhawk adventures series in the spring, and Agent 13: the midnight avenger in may, plus two more unnamed surprises. What are we to make of this?
Star law returns: Looks like this is getting yet another follow-up, as people take the original description and expand on it in different ways. Once again, this is a definite attempt to turn down the freewheeling nature of the original for a more sensible and realistic game. Which is about as easy as doing so for star trek. Yes, there obviously has to be an infrastructure behind the scenes, but too much worldbuilding constricts your fun, as canon nitpickers show up to complain. One of the most important things you can learn as a creative type is when to stop and move on, because further additions and tinkering will just be a waste of energy, and possibly even make things worse. And this is one of those cases. Sigh.
Hexes and high guard: Jeff Swycaffer gives us a set of optional rules for traveller. Tired of your ship combat being just a slugfest with only the most abstract rules for positioning. Well, this is the article for you sir! This puts your ships on a hexgrid, and gives the needed adaptions that result from this change, so the reserve rules make sense, and you know how far you can go in a round. Since it's space, this may involve a bit more bookkeeping as you handle gravity, acceleration and deceleration. Be thankful it's a lot simpler than real world 3D space maneuvering. Once again, he's turned in pretty good work. This all seems pretty well thought out and easily integrated into a running campaign.
The exterminator: Ha. Gamma world gets a rather topical monster this month. The Exterminator. No, not ripped off from a certain recent movie starring Arnold Schwartzanegger at all. They do pretty much exactly what you expect, tromp around being virtually indestructible, and kill seemingly arbitrary targets. Pray your PC's aren't among them, because they really are rather good at their job. On the plus side, if you can beat them, you can get their plasma rifle, which is also pretty badass. This does rather neatly answer the question of how to challenge high level gamma world PC's, and they're not even slightly out of place here. You could even insert the whole skynet backstory without anyone blinking an eye, given the several centuries of lost history in the game between the present and then. After all, even if John Connor wins, it's still a radioactive wasteland after the war. I am amused and approve.
The kzinti have landed: Well well, it's these guys again. Welcome back. It's been years. This time, they're being given stats for the star trek RPG. Well, I suppose they did appear in the cartoon, so they are a semi-official race. The question then becomes, how do you distinguish them from the Caitians, another, fully official feline derived star trek race. Pretty easily, actually, given their rather unique societies, gender division, and psychic capabilities. There is, of course, a slight problem merging their known space history with the star trek universe, but you should be able to work something out if your players start picking at it. In addition to the basic stats, we get nice spreads for standard NPC types, plus a sample spaceship for them, which will enable you to get a crew up and running, ready to make your players lives miserable at short notice. Another pretty well handled conversion.
The marvel-phile: Jeff fills in the gaps left by this month's special feature with stats for Bucky, Baron Zemo I, and Baron Strucker. They are, of course, all dead now, but that means little in comic book universes. With children, relations, time manipulation, secret plans set in motion decades ago, and outright retcons, they can still influence present day plots. He also reveals what happened next to the pregens from the adventure, which is nice of him. A fairly satisfying entry, and a good example of joined up thinking, which makes several articles more than the sum of their parts.
Wormy realizes the benefits regenerating creatures have in wargaming, and puts out an advert. Snarf splats a giant and meets another hot woman, who looks just like all Larry Elmore's other hot women. What does he have for curly haired brunettes? Eh, I suppose as kinks go, it's fairly vanilla.
A nice mix of articles this issue. Lots of short ones and a long one. Roleplaying advice and random tables, conversions and original ideas. I find it interesting that it's the more old skool ones that I've generally liked better. There certainly seems to have been a high quotient of stuff you can insert into an existing campaign, no mess, no fuss. Which is nice. After all, if it takes ages to set up your presents, you might well not bother. In addition, with Unearthed arcana, Oriental adventures, and the temple of elemental evil out, they've finally managed to release all the stuff they said they would when they started AD&D. The game feels complete in a way. Any further expansions will have to involve bringing new ideas into the game, moving it in new directions. If you were going to have a happily ever after ending for the movie of the dramas behind the making of D&D, this would be a good place to finish the story. Of course, real life doesn't work like that. There are some signs that rougher times are ahead, but this is still a pretty decent finisher to the year. So lets see what big changes next year brings, and if they are to my taste or not.
Dragon Issue 105: January 1986
part 1/2
100 pages. We have another obituary kicking off the year. Paul Montgomery Crabaugh, one of our regular contributors, and the guy who pretty much single-handedly kept Dragonquest articles in the magazine over the last couple of years, has just died from cancer at the age of 29. He kept gaming right up till the day before he died. Man, what a downer to start the year on. Let us remember him, and the fact that a life can be snuffed out any time, for no reason. Make sure you live before you die, and leave behind things that make the world better. A moments silence, before we get back to the reviewing.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking if there are any half-wild elves or not. Kim rules conservatively. Apparently, they just don't see humans that way, unlike their poncy high and grey elf cousins.
A letter asking if Len's Archer class can gain the benefit of weapon specialization. Considering how much Len dislikes it, I'd probably say no, but Kim disagrees, and rules in the affirmative, so they can become even more twinked at shooting stuff.
Some questions about Stephen Inniss' dog articles.
A letter pointing out that the jumping system in issue 93, and the special one thief-acrobats get are incompatible and produce stupid results when put side by side. Correct. Such is the nature of and problem with arbitrary subsystems developed independently without guidelines. We have said before that it's impossible to incorporate everything this magazine does into a single game.
The forum: Cole Langston thinks that solo games are not harder to play than team ones. Ok, you have to be a lot more cautious when it comes to combat, but it makes things easier in other ways, with less keeping track of everything that's happened to everyone, and more room to roleplay.
George W Detwiler agrees with Frank Mentzer that a huge dragon is entirely a match for 25th level characters if it plans things right. All it takes is for them to strike first, and they'll be down lots of HP and possibly an annoying status effect. This is the stage where everyone has instadeath tricks. What this needs is extensive double-blind playtesting. For great justice!
James Maliszewski thinks that alignment is still important as a part of the game, and should neither be forgotten, nor played stupidly. Another pretty noncontroversial statement, unless you don't like the idea of alignment at all.
Leomund's tiny hut is once again in a nerfing mood. This time, len turns his eye to demihumans. Wild elves, Duergar, Svirfneblin and Drow are all rather more powerful than the regular PC races. This is indeed a problem. Fortunately, they have technology that works reasonably well now. XP penalties! Ok, they still won't be truly balanced, given their various level limits, and the fact that racial abilities tend to become less significant at higher level, but it's a step in the right direction. Just need to apply it with a little more finesse. The usual problem then.
Travel works both ways: Seems like random tables are on the rise again. How curious. This one is full of people and things you may run across going the other way while you're on the road. After all, it's not all monsters, and you can't just make something up off the top of your head any time a humans result comes up. This could just allow you to add a little extra flavour to your game, or it could spin off entirely new unexpected encounters. Taxmen! Nobles! Famous entertainers! A pretty good way to kick off the issue, with plenty of detail, including historical stuff. If you're playing pseudomedieval, this won't hurt at all if you don't have every detail of your campaign planned out.
Seeing is believing: Ahh, invisibility. A fantasy staple, being central to the biggest book in D&D's sources, and having plenty of mythical antecedents. But players being players, they have to ask how it works, and then start picking things apart further as a result of that answer. So this is ripe ground for an article, and I'm vaguely surprised we haven't seen one before. We start off with a description of the three different ways that things can be made unseen in D&D, with examinations of the quirks of each. We then go into a sage advice style Q&A, before introducing 2 new spells making the various types of invisibility more accessible. This switches from format to format at great speed, keeping me interested and proving that while this is a new writer, he's a pretty versatile one. This is how you handle examination of rules without boring people, and helping them make their game better as a result of the knowledge. Remember, after examining theory, you've got to be able to apply it. If it doesn't have a practical result and profit from using it, it might as well just be philosophy, which is no use at all to us. :p
The rest of the papers: Errata and supplementary material for the centaur papers. As this is largely about weights and level limits, it's not anything you'd miss if they didn't put it in, unless you wanted them as a PC. They seem to be doing a lot of this stuff recently. Editorial crap. This is what happens when you rush release lots of big books. Much mehness.
The role of books: Deep wizardry by Diane Duane gets pretty high praise. It develops the characters in the previous book further, and puts them through some rather tricky underwater adventures. It manages to successfully raise the bar and develop them personally. The reviewer looks forward to seeing where he takes them next.
Liavek, edited by Will Shetterly & Emma Bull is a set of shared world stories in the city of luck and wizardry. It does considerably better than Ikthar (see issue 103) thanks to it's editing, which manages to interweave the stories with common characters and plot threads despite the different authors. It also has a good, consistent magic system. Interesting to see two series in direct competition. How will they fare?
Mustapha and his wise dog by Esther M Friesner is an arabian nightsesque tale of a man stripped of his inheritance by his jealous brothers, cursed with shapeshifting, and trying to make his way in the world. As is typical of the genre, there are layers within layers, and some threads are hinted at and left undeveloped. Maybe we'll see them dealt with in later books, or maybe not.
Children of the dragon by Rose Estes is a strong attempt from one of our Endless Quest alumni to go into regular books. While aimed primarily at children, it still has enough depth to be of interest to the folks that read this magazine. Will she succeed in breaking out, or will it be back to the gaming pit with her.
A gathering of gargoyles by Meredith Ann Pierce continues on from The Darkangel. Looks like another trilogy again, and what seemed fixed is only the beginning of their challenges. The author is torn between liking it, and being cynical about the tropes it uses. A feeling I am all too familiar with by now.
Masters of glass by M.Coleman Easton is a surprisingly low-key book compared to the world spanning trilogies that are so common around here. It needs another pass through the editing process, but it's still a neat idea, that would be relatively easy to convert for gaming.
Plus a whole load of snapshot synopses of the latest books in various series. So many books, so little room. You'd need a whole magazine to really cover everything that's coming out all the time.
A well equipped victim: Hmm. Once again we have a load of random tables to determine what treasure a random victim has, should the players decide to engage in a little pointless thievery and slaughter. We had one last month. How odd. However, this time it's an Ed Greenwood production. And as we know, he can make up for a multitude of sins with his combination of light humor and incredible attention to detail. It also meshes well with the encounter table earlier on in this issue. The results from rolling on this will probably be less lethal and a lot more realistic than last issue's. Which one you use is up to you, depending on what playstyle you want. It's good to have alternatives.
Mechanoid invasion returns. More palladium fun.
A world of difference: Parallel worlds. It's been tackled from different perspectives twice in the Ares section, but evidently, it's a popular enough to get another treatment from a more D&D-centric perspective. Well, infinite worlds, infinite takes on a subject. And this is indeed a quite different take to the previous two, encouraging you to create wildly differing parallel universes that change not only the people and creatures, but also the basic rules of the universe and shape of the world as well. Remember, D&D shaped fantasy can be a tremendous straitjacket on your imagination, especially if you don't realize just how it's constraining it, and going to another universe gives you freedom to make the rules different. Not everything should work between dimensions, but that means you can give them new cool powers while they're there, and then take them away again once they go home without too much trouble. This is pretty well thought out stuff, which encourages you to really mess around with your game, and get the players strongly involved. Another definite approval here.
Dragon Issue 105: January 1986
part 2/2
Betrayed! is this months centerpiece module, a 10 pager for a group between level 3-5. A search and recover mission, this has a nicely tricky antagonist, and a good amount of freedom in how you resolve it. This is one of those one or two sessioners that won't change anyones world, but is easy to drop into your game when you're short of ideas. Nothing earthshaking, but an above average example of the breed that I wouldn't object to using.
Spy's advice: Are weapon weights for when they're loaded or empty (Empty. You'll have to calculate encumbrance for the shots separately. Oh woe. )
Why does such a tiny difference in ammo caliber mess up weapons (Guns are precision devices. Just being realistic.)
Why are high explosives better against vehicles than armor piercing shots (Good question. My bad. )
How fast do .45 caliber M3's shoot ( 4 shots per phase. )
If your modifiers take you above 95% before penalties, are the penalties subtracted
before or after you determine the maximum. (before)
How much should you describe enemy guns (depends how good their senses are)
What are the stats for air guns (half normal, due to their nonlethal nature)
How many AOK's can you have (Lots and lots. Advancing them all individually is a real bookkeeping chore.)
What's wrestling value (We've had this question before. Obsolete stat from 1st ed, dropped in the streamlining. )
The TMNT RPG celebrates it's sales. (over 7000 in three weeks. Not really that impressive by most standards. Still, I guess it's enough to live on.)
TSR previews: Another month, this time slightly more full, but still not enough to make up a whole page. Dragonlance is getting the most attention this time, with DL11: Dragons of glory, another collection of epic battles showing off their new system. (at least it is getting plenty of support) It's also getting the first novel of it's second trilogy, Time of the Twins. Raistlin may be gone, but his legacy lingers like a bad smell. Guess it's up to the remaining heroes to fix things again.
Ravenloft gets converted into a solo adventure gamebook. You are invited to Strahds castle for a pleasant evenings dinner. Or is that to be dinner. Guess it's up to you.
D&D gets AC6: the updated PC record sheets. Ho hum.
Marvel superheroes gets MHSP2: Secret wars II. Play out the stories you saw in the comic. Let's hope it's not a railroad like last month's module, and you can change the outcome.
And Barbarosa and Terrible Swift Sword are finally out. Will they sell, or will they flop?
We also get a second page of stuff out in february, but I'll skip that until next month. Don't want to repeat myself too much. We also get another apology for the price raises. Oh, poor you. Don't feel guilty about needing money to survive.
Profiles: Kim Mohan is our first interviewee. He would like to reiterate once again that he is NOT a girl. This is one of our least interesting profiles yet, mostly because we saw most of this stuff recently in issue 100. Apart from the revelation that he isn't really much of a gamer, and some stuff on his most recent projects, this all feels very familiar.
Patrick Lucien Price, on the other hand is one of those names that you see on the credits, but knew nothing about. He helps to edit all TSR's magazines, and takes his job seriously. He encourages you to learn your trade properly and do likewise. After all, the better your submissions, the less work he has to do. ;)
Fiction: On the rocks at slab's by John Gregory Betancourt. Oooh. It's the start of this series. Another one I remember seeing a sequel to when I was reading first time round. How interesting. Uleander the barkeep is trapped between a rock and a hard place, having to deal with the impossible demands of the people in charage of the city, and the equally impossible mischief of Slab, the ghostly former owner, and all his ghostly friends. A lot of the time, it seems all he can do is try and hang on for the ride. Entertaining, but fairly inconsequential in it's own right, I already get the impression that this gets more amusing as it goes along, and the little bits of mythology gradually get built up. See you around then.
Rites of passage: Hee. Initiation rites. An excuse to force the newbies to dress stupidly and humiliate themselves to prove they're the right stuff for your little club. They come in many forms, particularly in gamma world, where the people themselves come in pretty diverse shapes. This gives you plenty of amusing advice on this matter, interspersing a load of nanofiction with the OOC stuff. Expect unfairness on their part while you still have to play by the rules. It's almost enough to make you say fuck these guys, I'm starting my own club. But given the harsh conditions, you may have to swallow your pride and take what allies you can get. Oh, compromises, compromises. The thing good dramatic conflict is made of. So a quite decent article, overall.
The marvel-phile: An unusually high number of characters in this month's marvel-phile, as Jeff adds 5 new characters to the Serpent Society. (as shown on the cover of this month's Ares section. ) Cottonmouth. Asp. Bushmaster. ( :snigger: ) Diamondback. Rattler. They really ought to sue Quentin Tarantino. Anyway, this is an easy and iconic theme, that you can add more and more members too. They work as a villains union, allowing bigger masterminds to hire groups of villains more easily, and also providing protection from said masterminds inevitable betrayal, making sure they get properly paid, etc etc. That is a remarkably clever and realistic idea for a superheroic world. I rather approve.
We also get told that after much demand, Advanced Marvel Superheroes is on it's way. So that's what they were hinting about last month. Jeff will be teasering us extensively before it's release. All rather pleasing stuff here. I'm looking forward to reporting on this. Over and out for now.
Villains and variants: Villains and Vigilantes gets a bunch of optional rules here. Essentially the writers personal house-rules, this is pretty pure crunch that leaves me unable to comment on it, other than to say that it seems designed to make things slightly more lethal for mooks, and slightly less so for PC's. Which is certainly an understandable preference. Guess I'll have to leave an open verdict on this one.
The big guns: Guess superhero stuff really is taking over from harder sci-fi in here. And we have another attempt at increasing the realism here. In comics, whenever the army tries to go up against supervillains or giant monsters, they normally get chewed up with comical ease. This is not the case here, as the writer gives us pretty realistic stats for tanks, fighter jets, warships and submarines. If you want your monsters to be able to trounce them, you'll have to do it the expensive way, and you'd better make sure your heroes are up to the task of beating them, because otherwise, there's going to be a lot of civilian casualties. Ah, reconciling simulationist and narrativist play. Such a tricky business, sometimes. I'm pretty ambivalent on this one. It's not a bad article on it's own terms, but doesn't really mesh with the way I would prefer to handle a game like this.
Expanding the frontier: Back to the sci-fi with a star frontiers article. Exploring new planets might be part of the name of the game, but that doesn't mean it should be easy. Here's a couple of pages talking about the process, methods and obstacles. Which doesn't really say anything new to me. This is the kind of topic that could fill an entire sourcebook, and here feels like it was just tacked on to make up space. Once again, my overfamiliarity with the tropes makes this less enjoyable for me than it would for a newcomer to the magazine.
Wormy demonstrates Irving's, er, charisma. Yeah, that's the ticket. Snarf returns to sanity. Dragonmirth is as trope-aware as ever.
West end games takers out a nice full page colour ad with all of their big games in it.
Hmm. Overall, not a great issue. Starting off with a downer that heavy meant it never really picked up much momentum. Although it does still have some cool articles, their overall quality control still seems to be sliding, with lots of bits that are just way too predictable to sustain my interest. The Ares section continues to drift away from it's original remit as well. It's pretty clear it's days are numbered. Another shift in style is needed, before the magazine gets stuck in a rut.
Dragon Issue 105: January 1986
part 2/2
Betrayed! is this months centerpiece module, a 10 pager for a group between level 3-5. A search and recover mission, this has a nicely tricky antagonist, and a good amount of freedom in how you resolve it. This is one of those one or two sessioners that won't change anyones world, but is easy to drop into your game when you're short of ideas. Nothing earthshaking, but an above average example of the breed that I wouldn't object to using.
Spy's advice: Are weapon weights for when they're loaded or empty (Empty. You'll have to calculate encumbrance for the shots separately. Oh woe. )
Why does such a tiny difference in ammo caliber mess up weapons (Guns are precision devices. Just being realistic.)
Why are high explosives better against vehicles than armor piercing shots (Good question. My bad. )
How fast do .45 caliber M3's shoot ( 4 shots per phase. )
If your modifiers take you above 95% before penalties, are the penalties subtracted
before or after you determine the maximum. (before)
How much should you describe enemy guns (depends how good their senses are)
What are the stats for air guns (half normal, due to their nonlethal nature)
How many AOK's can you have (Lots and lots. Advancing them all individually is a real bookkeeping chore.)
What's wrestling value (We've had this question before. Obsolete stat from 1st ed, dropped in the streamlining. )
The TMNT RPG celebrates it's sales. (over 7000 in three weeks. Not really that impressive by most standards. Still, I guess it's enough to live on.)
TSR previews: Another month, this time slightly more full, but still not enough to make up a whole page. Dragonlance is getting the most attention this time, with DL11: Dragons of glory, another collection of epic battles showing off their new system. (at least it is getting plenty of support) It's also getting the first novel of it's second trilogy, Time of the Twins. Raistlin may be gone, but his legacy lingers like a bad smell. Guess it's up to the remaining heroes to fix things again.
Ravenloft gets converted into a solo adventure gamebook. You are invited to Strahds castle for a pleasant evenings dinner. Or is that to be dinner. Guess it's up to you.
D&D gets AC6: the updated PC record sheets. Ho hum.
Marvel superheroes gets MHSP2: Secret wars II. Play out the stories you saw in the comic. Let's hope it's not a railroad like last month's module, and you can change the outcome.
And Barbarosa and Terrible Swift Sword are finally out. Will they sell, or will they flop?
We also get a second page of stuff out in february, but I'll skip that until next month. Don't want to repeat myself too much. We also get another apology for the price raises. Oh, poor you. Don't feel guilty about needing money to survive.
Profiles: Kim Mohan is our first interviewee. He would like to reiterate once again that he is NOT a girl. This is one of our least interesting profiles yet, mostly because we saw most of this stuff recently in issue 100. Apart from the revelation that he isn't really much of a gamer, and some stuff on his most recent projects, this all feels very familiar.
Patrick Lucien Price, on the other hand is one of those names that you see on the credits, but knew nothing about. He helps to edit all TSR's magazines, and takes his job seriously. He encourages you to learn your trade properly and do likewise. After all, the better your submissions, the less work he has to do. ;)
Fiction: On the rocks at slab's by John Gregory Betancourt. Oooh. It's the start of this series. Another one I remember seeing a sequel to when I was reading first time round. How interesting. Uleander the barkeep is trapped between a rock and a hard place, having to deal with the impossible demands of the people in charage of the city, and the equally impossible mischief of Slab, the ghostly former owner, and all his ghostly friends. A lot of the time, it seems all he can do is try and hang on for the ride. Entertaining, but fairly inconsequential in it's own right, I already get the impression that this gets more amusing as it goes along, and the little bits of mythology gradually get built up. See you around then.
Rites of passage: Hee. Initiation rites. An excuse to force the newbies to dress stupidly and humiliate themselves to prove they're the right stuff for your little club. They come in many forms, particularly in gamma world, where the people themselves come in pretty diverse shapes. This gives you plenty of amusing advice on this matter, interspersing a load of nanofiction with the OOC stuff. Expect unfairness on their part while you still have to play by the rules. It's almost enough to make you say fuck these guys, I'm starting my own club. But given the harsh conditions, you may have to swallow your pride and take what allies you can get. Oh, compromises, compromises. The thing good dramatic conflict is made of. So a quite decent article, overall.
The marvel-phile: An unusually high number of characters in this month's marvel-phile, as Jeff adds 5 new characters to the Serpent Society. (as shown on the cover of this month's Ares section. ) Cottonmouth. Asp. Bushmaster. ( :snigger: ) Diamondback. Rattler. They really ought to sue Quentin Tarantino. Anyway, this is an easy and iconic theme, that you can add more and more members too. They work as a villains union, allowing bigger masterminds to hire groups of villains more easily, and also providing protection from said masterminds inevitable betrayal, making sure they get properly paid, etc etc. That is a remarkably clever and realistic idea for a superheroic world. I rather approve.
We also get told that after much demand, Advanced Marvel Superheroes is on it's way. So that's what they were hinting about last month. Jeff will be teasering us extensively before it's release. All rather pleasing stuff here. I'm looking forward to reporting on this. Over and out for now.
Villains and variants: Villains and Vigilantes gets a bunch of optional rules here. Essentially the writers personal house-rules, this is pretty pure crunch that leaves me unable to comment on it, other than to say that it seems designed to make things slightly more lethal for mooks, and slightly less so for PC's. Which is certainly an understandable preference. Guess I'll have to leave an open verdict on this one.
The big guns: Guess superhero stuff really is taking over from harder sci-fi in here. And we have another attempt at increasing the realism here. In comics, whenever the army tries to go up against supervillains or giant monsters, they normally get chewed up with comical ease. This is not the case here, as the writer gives us pretty realistic stats for tanks, fighter jets, warships and submarines. If you want your monsters to be able to trounce them, you'll have to do it the expensive way, and you'd better make sure your heroes are up to the task of beating them, because otherwise, there's going to be a lot of civilian casualties. Ah, reconciling simulationist and narrativist play. Such a tricky business, sometimes. I'm pretty ambivalent on this one. It's not a bad article on it's own terms, but doesn't really mesh with the way I would prefer to handle a game like this.
Expanding the frontier: Back to the sci-fi with a star frontiers article. Exploring new planets might be part of the name of the game, but that doesn't mean it should be easy. Here's a couple of pages talking about the process, methods and obstacles. Which doesn't really say anything new to me. This is the kind of topic that could fill an entire sourcebook, and here feels like it was just tacked on to make up space. Once again, my overfamiliarity with the tropes makes this less enjoyable for me than it would for a newcomer to the magazine.
Wormy demonstrates Irving's, er, charisma. Yeah, that's the ticket. Snarf returns to sanity. Dragonmirth is as trope-aware as ever.
West end games takers out a nice full page colour ad with all of their big games in it.
Hmm. Overall, not a great issue. Starting off with a downer that heavy meant it never really picked up much momentum. Although it does still have some cool articles, their overall quality control still seems to be sliding, with lots of bits that are just way too predictable to sustain my interest. The Ares section continues to drift away from it's original remit as well. It's pretty clear it's days are numbered. Another shift in style is needed, before the magazine gets stuck in a rut.
Dragon Issue 106: February 1986
part 1/2
100 pages. We see the ultimate blonde bimbo adventuress on the cover. The price increase also catches up with us. Neither of which is very pleasing. On the other hand, they're working on using their space more efficiently, which is good. After all, we want to get our moneys worth, and they probably never have enough space for everything they want to include. Will this be an improvement, or is it going to make things worse as they include more crap. Guess I'll just have to keep reading and see.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking where the maps for the adventure in issue 104 are. Buy our other marvel modules! Gotta collect em all.
A question about a missing armor class. Ho hum.
Some questions about an illegal class combination. Dear oh dear. Are you looking to us to tie together all the disparate articles in our magazine again. It is not going to happen. Please do not ask.
Some dumb population demographics questions. You can fit a lot of gnomes in a little mountain. That's the advantage of three-dimensional living.
The forum: Bob Kindel is back again, with a whole bunch of comments. He is very much in favour of proper characterization, and has no objection to solo adventures. Hey ho.
Charles Ryan ( The same one who would later become one of the head writers for 3rd ed?! Inquiring minds want to know. ) thinks that properly immersing yourself in your character does not come at the expense of action. If you do it right, everything they do will be informed by their experiences, likes and personal tricks, including combat and dungeon-crawling. Not everyone plays metagaming power-maxed monsters, and you wouldn't want them to.
Adam Griffith thinks that gods shouldn't be given stats, so players can't beat them. If they can be beaten, they're not a proper god. Simple enough, I guess.
Thomas J Todd believes the game can be fixed by conservative giving out of treasure. Pooooooosibly, for a certain value of conservative.
Lawrence Lerner thinks that the amount of time it takes for high level spellcasters to fill up their slots is ridiculous. It could take days! This needs fixing. Only if you see it as a problem. And considering it's one of their big balancing factors, that might not be such a good idea.
The laws of magic: How does magic work? Why does it work? Where does the energy to power it come from? Here's a theory. Not a particularly brilliant theory, but a theory nonetheless, and one that allows you to still treat nonmagical things as if they work in this universe. It examines why wizardry, clerical magic and psionics work in different ways, and why different spells are different level for different classes. This is one of those cases where I'm not very enthralled because I've seen plenty of game and book universes with better developed and more interesting rules for why and how magic works. Still, maybe it inspired some of you to develop a better set of magical rules for your own game. If so, then it wasn't a complete waste of time.
Casting spells for cash: Ahh yes, one of the most broken parts of D&D's utterly broken economic system. This glosses over that, particularly as there isn't a standardized cost for spellcasting yet, and concentrates more on the way spells can be useful for a place's infrastructure, enabling pseudotechnological advances that move the milieu beyond the medieval. Ho hum. Most of you should already know most of these tricks. If you're going to do this stuff seriously, then magic-users ought to start off in huge amounts of debt, to represent their tuition and spellbook costs. And that may be a bit too much realism for most people. It does introduce a pricing system, but it's ridiculously high, placing wizards for hire out of the range of everyone but really rich nobles. Once again we see that D&D really needs a unionbreaker, so the laws of supply and demand can rebalance everything to a sane set of prices. I am seriously tempted to make that one of the primary conflicts in my campaign world. An irritating article.
The ecology of the maedar: One of the stranger bits of AD&D mythology, the male medusa, gets the spotlight on it. They take the inherent tragedy of the medusas life, and make it bearable, compensating for their weakness and providing easy meals and understanding company. Rather sweet, really. (I assume the stupid thing where they only have a 1 in 400 chance of producing another maedar was a 2nd ed addition, as it isn't mentioned here at all) One of the shorter ecology articles, and once again, Ed makes it almost as much about Elminster as it's actual subject, but still an entertaining one. It has some sound tactical advice, and feels like the kind of thing that could actually happen in an actual play. Monsters may be monsters, but they still have feelings and lives when adventurers aren't killing them. And often, they aren't very happy ones. Looks like Ed is on his usual form this month.
Money isn't everything: As long as you have enough of it, that is. Which first level characters definitely do not. Looks like it's another economic advice article. If you rolled so badly that you can't even afford what are considered the essentials for your class, what do you do? You can go anyway, hoping and praying you won't die on your first adventure, after which you should have a haul good enough to fill in the gaps (as well as a better idea of what exactly a dungeoneer needs) Or you could get a loan. Wizards need little compared to other classes, so they often have money to spare. Or you could start out in debt to a loan shark, which gives you lots of incentive to get out there and make your fortune fast or die trying, for a kneecapping often offends. You could even take out insurance policies. After all, NPC clerics are expensive, and you don't get to raise dead yourself for quite some time. Having the party all chip in to help each other will massively increase their collective odds of surviving and prospering. As would not getting drunk and frittering your money away on the high life whenever you're back in town, but that's a whole different story) This is definitely some advice that will increase your characters survivability, if possibly at the expense of some of the games flavour. If you enjoy economic manipulation, that may be a good thing. If you'd prefer not to play characters who think in a slightly metagame manner and want to keep things medieval, or would rather gloss over technical details like this which slow the game down, this may not be so pleasing. Still, it does raise some very valid points that are worth considering, to see if you want to apply them to your game. It's certainly a thought-provoking article that points out, then punctures a whole bunch of the games base assumptions, making it easier for you to change them if you don't like them.
Battletech gets a very attention grabbing full page ad. Roxxor.
Open them, if you dare: Having covered swords, shields, rings, armour, and lots of spellbooks; Ed manages to wheedle from Elminster (with the aid of copious amounts of mountain dew) information on a whole load of magical doors of the Realms. 12 different types, each with their own tricksy (and often amusing) means of inconveniencing people trying to get through them. And without even getting into the cheesy old standby of talking doorknockers either. (Beware the area of David Bowie.) That should not only be useful for your own games, but spark your imagination for ways that you can screw your own players over and keep them properly paranoid. After all, any object could be enchanted to do virtually anything. If you get stuck in a rut, your players'll get bored as well. What items will he turn his diabolical mind too next? Will he ever run out. Hopefully not for a good few years.
The ranger redefined: Wilderness lore is a big topic. While rangers as written in the corebook do have some nature related skills, it certainly doesn't adjudicate how they deal with various environmental threats in enough detail for many people. This article gives them a whole new set of skills to make up for that, largely percentile ones that increase by your level by a fixed amount. This is an increase in the classes power, but the author does try and balance this out by requiring additional training times for each extra skill they choose to increase. This will significantly increase the downtime between adventures for you, which may annoy the players of the other PC's, so as a balancing mechanism, I'm not sure it works. This is another case where the game screams for a more standardized skill system and number of slots to devote to various categories, so you have plenty of choices without one character being massively better than another for no reason. OA has recently introduced the idea of nonweapon proficiencies, but they're still using the same slot base as the weapon ones, creating an awkward competition for resources in such a combat focussed game. Still, the wilderness survival guide is out later this year, which will substantially improve on this. The system is definitely developing. Anyway, this is a good idea for an article, but not brilliantly implemented. So it goes.
More range for rangers: We had this for fighters recently, in issue 99. Now it's rangers turn to get their list of followers expanded. What are the odds similar articles for the other classes will show up soon. This reduces the variability in the number of followers to make things fairer, smoothes out a number of kinks in the original table, and adds newer creatures from the fiend folio and MMII. It clearly explains why the writer made all the changes he did, which means if you don't agree with the specifics, you have lots of help in changing it further. Now that's definitely something I approve of, like DVD commentary and behind the scenes documentaries. Another one to bookmark and pull out when you reach the appropriate level.
The way we really play: Or The story of how I used to be a Monty Haul DM, but grew out of it. The problem is, even once you do, you still have to deal with your current group, who are still twinked out to the nines and used to the game world working like that. If you don't want to throw everything away and start a whole new campaign, how do you fix this? Talk things through, in a sensible and rational way of course. There may be a few complaints, but they'll probably understand, particularly if you do it right and the game does wind up more fun afterwards. An annoying subject, mitigated by the interesting actual play reports, leaving me with mixed feelings about the whole thing. Oh well, we'll see this subject again in various forms. I guess I should be grateful that I'm not hating it every time it comes up.
Dragon Issue 106: February 1986
part 2/2
Bad idea, good game?: Ahh, badwrongfun. Was there ever such a tempting thing? This article covers that very tendency, for things that seem implausible or tasteless to actually turn out to be fun precisely because of those quirks. When you break the rules of design, break them good, and find a niche no-one's thought of, and your odds of success are actually better than if you try and compete directly with an established company by copying their formula. After all, they have both an established fanbase, and are more experienced, so even if they didn't do things perfectly on the way up, it's damn hard to unseat them. A lesson you can see again and again, from evolution, to economics, to social dynamics. Learn it well, because it's virtually an axiom of reality. Of course, you may make quite a few mistakes along the way. That's also an inevitable problem with experimenting. But you shouldn't let it stop you. Paranoia, Toon, All my children. All break out from the traditional roleplaying mold, and get looked at here, along with some intriguing supplements from more traditional games. So this is sorta a review piece as well as an article, making you aware of games you might not have been, and what they do. And most importantly, saying to game designers, ok, we don't need another fantasy heartbreaker. What other cool stuff can we do with roleplaying. Just how far can we take this and still make fun games. Which is definitely an attitude I can get behind.
A plethora of paladins: Yay! 7 classes in a single go! I do believe that's a new record. And these guys are considerably better done than the set way back in issue 3. They've already covered paladins and anti-paladins. Now the other alignments get their own quirky set of exemplars. Myrikhan (NG) Garath (CG) Lyan (LN) Paramander (N) Fantra (CN) Illrigger (LE) and Arrikhan (NE) They are a fairly varied bunch, with ultra-tanks, versatile gish spellcasters, and sneaky backstabbers amongst them, but being warriors is always their primary focus. Most of them are pretty powerful, but their XP costs are also rather high. If this will keep them perfectly balanced in actual play I very much doubt, but introducing them, be it as PC's or NPC's, will certainly spice things up, introducing new shades of colour into our moral dilemmas. I'd certainly be interested in hearing from anyone who used these at any point, and should I get to play in a pre-3rd ed game again, would definitely consider trying them. (Although to try them all, we'd have to skip the regular classes. How do you suppose that would turn out, a party comprised of a bounty hunter, an incantrix, a sentinel, the revised monk and bard, a witch, and a myrikhan. ;) )
TSR Previews: Plenty of stuff this time, in another double page spread. However, once again, the SPI games are delayed. It's pretty obvious where their priorities lie. That's going to piss quite a few people off.
Anyway, back to what's actually coming out. AD&D gets OA1: Swords of the daimyo. It fills in lots of details on Kara-tur that the main book didn't have space for. So lets get playing! We're also getting N3: Destiny of kings. A low level module, designed to be solved by cleverness rather than force. Nothing unusual there.
D&D gets B10: Night's dark terror. Step out of the dungeon and trek across the wilderness in this module designed to bridge the gap between basic and expert set play. What lies beyond the duchy of Karimekos? If you're rather higher level, you can play CM7: the tree of life. Designed for a team of maxed out elves, you have to investigate what's happened to a hidden kingdom. Guess sometimes this stuff is mysterious even to the poncy near-immortals.
The second book in the Gord novels, Artifact of evil, is also out now. Gord starts to rise to fame from his humble beginnings. Ahh, the epic hero arc. How we love thee.
Partyzone gets two books this month. Number 2 is Inheritance. JJ Caldwell (that Caldwell clan sure do get around) is dead. Who killed him? Is it you? Who will get his inheritance. Number 3 is the Knave of Hearts. Quite the soap opera here, as the big drama happens in the scenario. Certainly sounds amusing, and it's nice to see them tackle other, very different types of RPG's.
Lankhmar and the one-on-one series team up for book 5: Dragonsword of Lankhmar. Are our heroes turned against each other?
And finally, Amazing stories is also releasing two full books. Starskimmer, by John Betancourt, and Death of a mayfly by Lee Enderlin. More sci-fi and horror, by the looks of things.
Profiles: Jon Pickens is our first profilee. He's the acquisition editor, which means he's the muggins who has to read through all the crap in the slush pile for potentially publishable material. So he's our first line of defense against twinks and stupidity. He's both a wargamer and a RPGer, and has been into them before TSR was founded, so he was well placed to get a job in the industry after graduating. Seems a reliable sort.
Steve Winter is the manager of game editors. His is a postproduction job, taking written games and getting them into shape, tightening up both the writing and rules. He's another person brought to RPG's by the wargaming path, and managed to get into TSR just as they were really expanding. He's married to another person in the business, and they probably have well grown baby geeks by now. His next project is something called Sniper Patrol. Looks like he's going to be producing cool stuff for us for years to come.
Fiction: Intruder by Russell Madden. What does a powerful predator think when some rival encroaches on it's territory. Does it care about what it is beyond the basics of how to get rid of the opposition, and if it'll make a decent meal? This is one of those bits of fiction that vividly shows you the PoV of the monster, making you unsure which side of the conflict you want to win. The human side is decently covered too, telling the story of two humans from an orbital station exiled to the primitive planet below for being dissidents. Neither side comes off very well from the experience, but they both learn valuable lessons about life. A nicely involving bit of writing.
The ARES section drops it's intro pages, and gets straight to the articles, just like they said they would.
Notes from the underground: The computer is your friend. Reading this article is treasonous. Please present yourself for summary excecution. Thank you for your co-operation. Yes, Paranoia is getting an article this month. How doubleplus good. Ken Rolston gives a rather amusing how to survive and prosper article. This is a game unlike most others in that you are expected, nay, encouraged to put each other in impossible situations, kill each other, and generally be a complete scumbag. All in the best possible taste, of course. :Crosses legs: Quite a long article, which is also very useful in getting across the playstyle to anyone reading who has no idea what the game is about. This may well have sold quite a few people on it back in the day. The illustrations are rather amusing as well. Once again, it's nice to see them cover different games. What will they get up to next? Lets hope we see this one again, because I've always had a soft spot for Paranoia.
Stellar feedback: Roger Moore decides to let us know how things are going to develop in the Ares section in the future, based on your feedback. Unsurprisingly, marvel stuff is keeping up it's strong performance, with gamma world running a reasonable second. Star frontiers is also doing reasonably, and it's not as if they're short of requests to cover other stuff. So it's the usual problem trying to figure out how to please as many of the people as often as possible in a limited page count. This is why how you filter and interpret your info is important. Maybe we should develop a statistical algorhythm. Meh. It'd never match up to human intuition. ;)
The marvel-phile: Jeff is heading back oop north to Canada to keep us up to date with the latest developments in the Alpha flight team. Madison Jeffries and Vindicator are the new heroes; a mechanic, and a power suited mobility focussed fighter. We also get Delphine Courtney, one of their recent villains. A robot wearing a bigger robot suit? That doesn't seem right somehow. I guess if no-one suspects it, then it makes a good plot reveal. Jeff is also busy trying franticly to get the Advanced game out on deadline, so apologies if he messes this one up. Thankfully he doesn't, keeping sight of the people behind the powers as well as the cool stats. He may be working hard behind the scenes, but from the front, it still seems pretty effortless.
The new humans: Oh, this is an amusing picking apart of rules quirks. Why are supposedly normal humans in gamma world so bleeding tough, especially compared to the ones in AD&D, but also to the real world. Even Robots can't compete with little girls. Even in a harsh environment, there's no way everyone should be the equivalent of level 8 at 10 years old. How do we justify this? Widespread genetic enhancement! Man, what a load of cheek. ;) So much for them being the easily identifiable with everymen when they're actually one of the most technologically modified and scientifically advanced groups. And the way it conflates mutants with dumb religious types makes it clear where the author's biases lie on the science/religion divide. All in all, this is an entertaining bit of lampshading, that I probably won't actually get to use, but still found thought-provoking. This is probably a case where the game is better off for not being as realistic as it could be. Whether you want to gloss over or call attention to the rules quirks is up to you. Still, this should help you choose.
Wormy continues mixing drinks. Snarf continues being a reluctant hero. Dragonmirth is dreadfully untrue to the source material. Shocking, shocking I say.
Seems like we have a lot of examination of the basic assumptions of the games this time. And most of the time, they've turned out fairly well as well. They're definitely keeping up their desire to encourage experimentation with different games and playstyles. And the new drive for more efficient use of space seems to be a success as well, because the issue feels fuller than recent ones. Guess a little freshening up the format was just what the doctor ordered, to get me enjoying this again. Course, the battle to find something new to keep ennui at bay is never-ending. How long before this in turn grows dull. Only one way to find out. When tomorrow becomes today, the next step will be revealed.
Dragon Issue 107: March 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. So they've expanded the size slightly again, to make up for the price increase. It's now reached the size that it'll remain at for the rest of the decade. Combined with their new drive for efficient use of space, this may result in a bigger increase in material than it seems. The contents page is certainly jam-packed. Will this force me to slow down my progress through the issues even more? As ever, this is the kind of question that can only be answered by doing. Let us see how much energy their new enlarged issues deplete. Anyway, this month's theme is the ability scores. Not something they've tackled before in this way, and a little more basic than their usual fare. Will they completely deconstruct the game? Here's hoping.
In this issue:
Letters: A question about how to handle point-blank shots from firearms in D&D. Do you allow coup-de-graces, or let high level characters be unrealistically tough. I'm gonna go with the unrealistically tough version alex.
A letter asking when they're next going to do an index for the magazine. Issue 112! Look forward to it!
A letter asking what a 26 int does for you, and if gods can have other stats above 25 as well. They suggest you engage in basic mathematical extrapolation from the current tables. You should have more than enough to work from.
Oooh. Well well well. We get the first rumblings that they're planning to make a magazine for adventures. They don't have a name for it yet, but it's going to be 64 pages long, published every 2 months, and edited by Roger Moore. Obviously, since they want lots of submissions from freelancers, they'll be giving more details as they figure them out. And almost as obviously, that means dragon'll stop having adventures in it soon. Which is a shame for me, but probably a good thing for the people at the time. Looks like they're not content with the changes they've made already, but have a whole bunch more to be rolled out this year. Will they be well-recieved? I'll just have to see.
The forum: Michael Dobson defends the Battlesystem. You can engage in mass combat, and still have meaningful character development and roleplaying. Have you never watched war movies? High level characters ought to be doing this epic stuff. If they don't then high level play will be just low level play with bigger numbers. Don't be so closed minded.
Dana P Simer gives us a mini-article about clerics, alignment, and how they are enhanced or hindered by aligned areas. Interesting.
Tom Humphries wants to reach a middle ground between the people who don't fudge at all, and those who do so regularly. If you kill too many characters too frequently, then you might end up with no game to play at all. How very wishy washy.
Daniel Myers is decidedly unhappy with TSR's current direction, and has decided to stop buying the magazine. It's concentrating too much on D&D and other TSR products, and the new books constrain our creativity. The new edition looks like an excuse to constrain us even more, and bilk us out of money again for material we already have. Ahh, this familiar refrain. Some things never change.
A new loyalty base: Hmm. Looks like Stephen Inniss is among those who finds that charisma is currently used as a dump stat and doesn't like it. Not only that, but the rules that use it are poorly organized, and scattered through multiple books. So he takes it on himself to provide an alternative system. Go him. This is actually slightly simpler than the regular system, and a lot more streamlined. The editors must have quite liked it to give it pole position. Can't say it really leaps out at me though. Given his crunch is generally pretty solid, I'll put it on the list of things to try out. Did anyone use this in place of the regular system? How did it turn out for you?
The six main skills: Another increasingly regular writer takes the second spot. Jeff Swycaffer breaks down what your stats mean in terms of real world capabilities, and which ones can be improved by what means. While it's hard to improve your actual intelligence, and wisdom is something that should come with time anyway, there is a lot you can do to make better use of what you have. While the article is ok, it doesn't really seem to do much. I am left wandering what the point is.
Room for improvement: Ah. This follows straight on where the last article left off. Now it makes more sense. Kim Mohan tackles the thorny topic of adventurers improving their ability scores. You may take this for granted now, but it was only a decade ago that you were pretty much stuck with what you rolled, powerful magic aside. He looks at the 6 of them, and whether, realistically, you should be able to improve them by training. He isn't completely against the idea, but if you do implement a system for it, he recommends you be exceedingly conservative, with months of dedicated training needed to improve one point, and no going above racial maximums. Ho hum. Stuff like this is why he's an editor rather than a primary writer. Just not very interesting, I'm afraid.
Reviews: Pendragon gets high praise from Ken Rolston. It's well presented, well written, has a truly epic scope, and does a great job of turning it's source material into a coherent gamable setting, and then making mechanics that encourage play that works like the source material. It's both enjoyable to read, and makes a great game. Nice to see it getting the credit it deserves already.
Harn's supplements get a good going over. Cities of Harn covers 7 major cities around the island. It's pretty small, and the cities are rather uniform. Whether this reflects a consistent design, or just copypasta, I'm not sure. The encyclopedia Harnica are a series of minibooks expanding on various aspects of the setting, from economics to herbalism to cosmology. Looks like with the small size, they can write stuff that they couldn't fill a whole book with. Ivinia is another country set in the same world as Harn. It's covered in a similar way, but this area is based more on scandinavian stuff. It maintains the same standards as the rest of their stuff. They certainly seem to be a vibrantly developing setting at the moment.
The role of books: A personal demon by Bischoff, Brown & Richardson is an amusing little morality play, in which a guy summons a demon, and ends up learning a lot about human nature. It has an interesting deconstruction at the end, where they talk about how and why it was written. This is of definite use to a certain kind of gaming.
The misenchanted sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans is the tale of how a poor scout got saddled with a magic sword of immense power, that renders him immortal and near invincible, but at a dreadful cost. Like Bilbo, he just wants to live a quiet life, but his macguffin keeps dragging him into adventure, and he just can't get rid of it. This is of course, a much more entertaining story than some brooding badass adventurer with nothing real to complain about.
Saga of old city by Gary Gygax is the first book in the Gord series. Unsurprisingly, it gets a fairly positive review, with the main criticism that the worldbuilding feels tacked onto the story, rather than growing organicly from his exploration of the world. The gygaxian prose is in full force here, resulting in a rather idiosyncratic read. Still, it should be useful to AD&D players, particularly greyhawk ones.
The book of kantella by Roland Green and Frieda Murray is a rather large and ponderous story, that makes not even a token stab at being standalone. It gets one of the more negative reviews, but they still take pains to point out it's good points, such as good worldbuilding and military strategy. At least it's not just another fantasy heartbreaker.
The book of kells by R A MacAvoy is nothing to do with our previous review. The book in question this time is a 10th century celtic manuscript sought by a modern-day artist. Somehow, he winds up traveling back in time, and getting into a whole bunch of adventures. And unusually, being crap at learning the language. There's rather more action in this than her previous books, which the reviewer considers a definite plus. Ahh, boys. Always after more action.
The sorcery within by Dave Smeds is a cleverly crafted tale of a dragon, and the people looking to slay him. It spans substantial amounts of time, and has a cleverly crafted plot. Another pretty positive review.
The iron tower trilogy by Dennis L McKiernan is an omnibus review of a very blatant tolkien rip-off indeed. As a pastiche, it's a well crafted success. As a work of genuine creativity, on the other hand, I think not. Probably not worth bothering.
Plus we get lots more microreviews. Sheri S Tepper continues to be insanely prolific, as do Paul Williams, Charles de Lint and Katherine Kurtz, while Judith Tarr takes a literary right angle. No shortage of books coming out.
Dragon Issue 107: March 1986
part 2/3
The ecology of the sea lion: Elminster punctures the stupidity of earth naming conventions as he tells a story of Real sea lions. A nicely mythic little tale of epic heroism, treachery and lineage, which has tons of recognizable forgotten realms stuff woven through it. This time he eschews the footnotes for a more prosey description of the creature, with definite hints of his Elminster voice even in the OOC bit. There is a bit of noble savage froofery, but this is another example of just how versatile a writer Ed is. Once again I am left envious and wondering how he keeps going. It barely seems like he's having to work at it.
For sail, one new NPC: Looks like we have another aquatic article in quick succession. Scott Bennie introduces a new character class. The mariner. Like the sentinel, this is definitely a skillset that the current classes don't really cover, so I'm not complaining on that front. They have a fairly extensive list of powers, most of which are focussed on sea adventures, so their usefulness as adventurers will vary considerably depending on adventure. Still, even on land, they aren't bad as a lightly armored swashbuckling fighter type, so they'll still be useful, just not spotlight holders in the same way. These are the kind of guys who would never appear in anything like this form in later editions, but I still quite like them nonetheless. They're certainly more interesting than the later Krynnish mariner class. Another one I would have no objection allowing into a game at all.
Economics made easy: Ahh yes, the principles of supply and demand. Essential to any functioning economy is the ability to adapt prices based on scarcity and necessity. But of course, as we know, D&D doesn't have a functioning economy. Only insanely powerful unions or some other form of fudge can make them work without doing a complete rebuild of the pricing structure from the ground up. So here's a little article letting you know about a few more basic economic principles. Inflation. Central place theory. Amounts of choice, amount of goods available, and the knock-on effects from spikes and collapses in demand. Resources available. All pretty sensible stuff. Now can you build a world that is both economically functioning, and still exciting to adventure in? Much kudos if you can.
More dragons of glory: A rather lengthy article here. Lest we forget, in DL11, the adventure stepped out of AD&D, and became a boardgame, allowing you to play out the war of the lance from a top-down perspective. Of course, in most things like that, there will be stuff cut for reasons of simplicity or page count. So as ever, the magazine gets to give you a nice load of bonus material. Stuff is added on to nearly every phase of the game, and then a load of new scenarios are presented. This is one of those cases where I don't really feel qualified to comment, but it certainly looks like a pretty involved bit of wargaming stuff. I'll have to leave this one up to public opinion. Was this a good game? Did this article add to it? How did your players feel about the change in rulesets when they got to this part?
And it's survey time again. A rather badly formatted survey at that. Is this really going to produce a good evaluation of what your readers do and don't want? If you don't pay enough attention to get all the boxes properly sorted out and the things lined up, I'm dubious about your ability to pick questions (and the right kind of categories of answers to them) to produce the data you need to really improve the magazine. This does not bode well for their future direction.
When the rations run out: And it's back to examination of realism issues. As anyone who's actually been hiking and camping knows, food and equipment are major hassles in extended treks. The day to day life of an adventurer is a lot less glamorous than the stories would have you believe. No matter how high level you are, until you transcend to godhood, become a lich, or use some other method of getting rid of your mortal limitations, you've gotta eat regularly. Or at least, this writer thinks so. Which is why he makes your ability to survive without food based directly on your con score rather than your hit points. Which is a perfectly valid thing to do, but still results in a rather dull article. Oh, the endless wash of minutinae. Is there no escape from you. Lichdom seems oh so very attractive around now.
Profiles: This month's staffers getting the spotlight are Roger Raupp and Larry Elmore. Roger is the head of the art department, handling much of the laying out of the magazine, as well as doing some actual cartography and art in his own right. I've never been that keen on his personal art style, but obviously the magazine as a whole wouldn't look as good without him. He's also primarily responsible for tormenting Roger Moore, turning him into Rogar the Barbarian and other such playful mockery for the dreadful crime of sharing first names. How very delightful :rolleyes:
Larry Elmore is one of our more famous names, and instantly recognizable artists, being responsible for lots of the new BD&D set, Dragonlance, snarfquest, et all. He's always been a doodler, getting in trouble for drawing when he should have been working in school. He became an illustrator with the army, and looked set for a dull job as a technical illustrator, if he hadn't been rescued by TSR. And he's rather thankful they did, because he certainly gets a lot more fanmail here. :D. The photo of him on a motorbike is pretty cool as well. He may not always turn his talents to the best subjects, but he's definitely responsible for one of the iconic D&D looks. Interesting to find out more about him.
TSR Previews: Another short list of releases this month. AD&D gets DL12: Dragons of faith. The chronicle is near it's climax, and the whole gang is together again. Will you triumph. Have you managed to keep your own party on the railroad long enough to get here? Good questions as ever.
The AD&D gamebooks gets book 7: Sceptre of power. The start of a trilogy, it looks like even these are getting epic. So much for solo gaming being something you do in the gaps between sessions.
Endless quest is up to book 32: Prisoner of Elderwood. A very sketchy description on this one, doesn't really leave me with much to say.
And Marvel Superheroes gets MHAC9: Realms of magic. Maybe now being a sorcerer will be a balanced playable option compared with other superheroics. Anyone have any feedback on this matter?
Dragon Issue 107: March 1986
part 3/3
Spy's advice: What did you mean when you said .44 magnums weren't suitable for use. (they reveal your position, letting everyone else shoot back. Baaad idea for a spy.)
How does magnum ammunition interact with regular guns. (badly. That extra damage requires special design. )
How do equipment finding percentages interact with the black market. ( If you're willing to pay the price, you can find nearly anything. Course, this may get you in trouble if it's illegal equipment. )
How long are fusing cords. How long do they take to burn down. (As long as you make them. 1 inch per second. For once, warner brothers cartoons are fairly accurate to reality.)
Can you load a gyrojet underwater (yes. You can shoot it too. Pretty handy.)
How do different kinds of bullets differ statistically. (Quite substantially. Choosing the right one is a big consideration. )
Can you kill someone with an overdose of truth serum (only if they're a wimp)
Can you get agency help if the mafia is after you (yes)
Can you wear karate pads on your feet (yes)
Why can't you use a fist in untrained combat (You can. What book are you reading?)
Can you use fame and fortune points to jam someones gun when you're unconcious and they'd kill you otherwise. (Only once. You'd better think of some other excuse next time.
How hard is it to shoot someone outdoors in the dark (-100. No chance for most people. )
Are there any limits on your advancement of your personal traits (Not many. Get as badass as you can dude.)
Does increasing your knowledge score add to your AoK's (yes)
Do police really carry thompson machine guns. (Sometimes.)
How do you raise language ratings (same as any other AoK)
Do NPC's have observation and perception ratings. (how else would they spot sneaking PC's. No challenge if they don't. )
What are the rules for car crashes. Will they explode (buy issue 78 :teeth ting: )
Are range modifiers cumulative (no)
Can you make bullets of strange materials (at great expense)
Do death rings affect the wearer or the person you shake hands with (good question. Both have their uses. )
If you attack someone while talking to them, do they have to check for surprise (no)
What's a neckband holster. (Another clever way to conceal weapons. Ahh, those wacky secret agents, always having to counter each other's innovations. )
How quickly can you replace a cylinder. (4 phases)
Can an M3 use a Thomson ammo drum (can you use USB devices with a ZX spectrum? )
Do frag and blast grenades cost the same (yes)
You missed out some prices. (Oh noes. Easy enough to fix)
If you shoot someone at point blank range, do you use the general determination chart (no)
What happens if you fire flechettes or microjets at point blank range. (they lose their special benefits. No point, really.)
Do telephone taps have their own transmitters (usually)
Can walkie talkies be concealed (Not in the 80's.)
Will a weapon still work after going underwater if you don't shoot it (unlikely, especially if you've just swum through a sewage pipe)
What are defenses S1-3 ( S1&2 are in the book. S3 was a mistake)
Weapon prices in different parts of the book contradict each other! (The chart is right)
Can I use a real world catalogue to buy non-espionage equipment. (That would make sense. Course, the GM might not want their game to make sense. )
Fiction: Doomsgame by J B Allen. An amusing little tale of how Teachers & Classrooms, and it's dramas, is corrupting the youth of a fantasy world. Who will slay the dragons? Who will propitiate the gods? What strange hold does the idea of sneaking cigarettes in and smoking them while trying to avoid being caught, figuring out if the boy from your geography class likes you, and trying to get good grades so you can get a good job when you graduate have on these children. I'll give you some magical gems if you go back to your zombie slaying practice like a good girl. Very amusing, and a slant on the whole meta gaming fiction I haven't seen before. This certainly brought a smile to my face.
Mutant fever: Hmm. Disease got short shrift in the recent edition of gamma world. This is rather unrealistic, and the writer of this article disapproves. Still, that's what articles like this are for. So here we get expanded rules for infection and treatment of disease. The kind of thing that will increase the lethality somewhat, but that's intentional, so I'm not criticizing the writer for that. As this is a big subject, this is only part of the article, with stuff on specific diseases coming next month. Which means it isn't really fully usable on it's own. Which is mildly irritating. Ho hum. Guess I'll have to wait until next issue before coming to a full conclusion.
One in a million: How common should superheroes be in your campaign. Should you imitate the marvel and DC universes, and skew the ratio strongly towards america. Should your universe have all the different categories of origins and powers that they put in those, or will you go for a more consistent theme and structure. As ever, good questions, that may not be that well tackled by the article at hand. This is pretty purely about demographics, showing stats for how many heroes there should be, assuming 1 superhero per million people, where they should come from, what ethnic groupings they should be. Not very interesting stuff and oh so very out of date by now, but not terrible as a piece to get you thinking analytically about your worldbuilding. Do you want a game where the PC's and named villains are the only game in town, or a world where you can assume there are superheroes in every city, each with their own dramas and crises. Choice is yours etc, etc.
Tote that barge: Looks like we have another recurring topic this month as economics is applied to sci-fi settings. Supply and demand becomes rather tricky when your travel times can run into years. You could make an enormous profit is what you're selling can't be found anywhere in the solar system. But if you turn up shortly after someone else, you'll make considerably less. Compensating for this instability is one of the prime causes of inflation. More stuff that seems perfectly reasonable, but rather dull. We do get some random tables for star frontiers that serve as an example. Think about what resources each planet has, and then plan your own economic map accordingly.
The marvel-phile: Lots more canadian creations this month. Smart Alec. :rolleyes: Diamond Lil. Flashback. Wild child. Scramble. Deadly Ernest :double rolleyes: Nemesis. Looks like Canada is as susceptible to attacks of bad puns as the rest of the english speaking world. As most of there are recently introduced (and in some cases already killed) characters, their histories and the true extent of their powers is rather sketchy. While they do have some interesting powers, this fails to sustain my interest as a whole, as the human interest just isn't there. A rather inconsequential entry.
The crusading life: A third superhero article this month, as we look at how to present your heroes with some more mundane challenges. Many of them have to juggle their secret identity with a normal job to pay the bills, and even if you can blow up entire buildings and run faster than a speeding bullet, this won't help with your love life, especially when you're late to your date again because you just saved the world. This is a staple of certain comics, spiderman in particular, and I have to agree that this could be pretty fun in a superhero RPG as well. So a few random low level events between the big plotlines seems like a good idea to me. This is a mistake that kills high level campaigns. If you have to save the universe every day, you get blase about it. And then the whole thing will just peter out. And I would prefer not to have to start all over again so soon, so this seems a pretty good way to finish off the section.
Wormy reminds us that while ogres may be stupid, they're still smart enough to kick ass. Snarfquest gets a little bit scooby doo in the way they face up to ghosts. Dragonmirth has some monstrous seduction.
West end games gives us two games adverts, one with commentary by Harlan Ellison, of all people. He does get around. He's like a crankier Neil Gaiman.
Overall, not a very good issue. The increase in contents seems to have resulted in more dull stuff getting in, which isn't very pleasing. Their editorial control also seems to be on the slide at the moment. To their credit, the survey shows that they are aware that they need to make some changes, but from this showing, I have my doubts as to whether I'll find them pleasing ones. Looks like the rollercoaster is heading downwards again now. How long before it goes back up again? Guess I'll have to just keep going and see. Well, they had three pretty damn good years. I shoulda known that it wouldn't all be like that. Onward! We can't end this on a downer.
Dragon Issue 108: April 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Larry Elmore delivers another of his particular brand of fantasy images with rather dated hair. It doesn't co-ordinate with your helmet dear. Tie it up before you get tangled up in something. Notable by it's absence this year is the april fools section, because people are still pissed off at last years tricks. Man, their joke detectors must have been on the fritz. Maybe next year. Instead, this one isn't quite a gamma world special, but comes pretty close, with a second Mutant manual, another article, plus some stuff on postapocalyptic gaming in general. They really ought to get back to doing proper themed issues. Just a matter of time.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter about applying The Laws of Magic to a modern setting. What's happened to all the akasa. Whatever you decide, dear. It's your game.
A letter asking if nonhumans can adopt any of the new flavours of paladin. They were going to let them, but changed their mind. Any references are editing snafus. How very galling for all concerned (except the human lovers)
Some more annoying quibbling about the physics of different types of invisibility. Kim tells people to stop being so damn pedantic. It's no fun for anyone. Just let the magic be magical.
The forum: Lyle P Wiederman III and R. W. Clark think that high level magic-users taking days to relearn all their spells is an important part of keeping them balanced. A smart spellcaster of that level shouldn't get themselves in situations where they blow their entire load regularly. If you really must reduce the time taken to learn each spell, it ought to be based on level rather than intelligence, otherwise you're simply deferring the problem for a bit. Or you could just have a flat time, regardless of level or number of spells rememorized. Nahh, that's a terrible idea. ;)
Mark Morrison thinks that centaur cavalry is a stupid idea. You can't use saddles with them, and they're not very disciplined. For most nations, regular horses would be far less hassle. This is where elves and other faeish creatures that are closer to their mindset have a definite advantage. As malkavians show, when you have a group with the same kind of chaos, things get very scary for everyone else.
Jim Mackenzie reminds us that right and wrong are not always the same as good and evil, particularly the D&D definitions of good and evil. Is there no escape from these damnable questions of morality?
Dan Preece thinks that people ought to be exposed to the unfun side of excessive power, so they come to appreciate low level gaming all the more. It doesn't always work like that. In fact, I am deeply dubious of that conclusion.
Norman Shapiro has an alternate explanation for why low wisdom clerics are more likely to suffer spell failure. Remembering every little tenet your god has in your daily life is a rather tricky business.
J. M. Talent talks about the maedar's stone to flesh power, and what happens if you apply it to things that were never alive in the first place. Hmm. Does the function follow the form, or will destoning a sculpted statue just produce a gross lump of vaguely human shaped meat? Depends what kind of GM you have.
Leomund's tiny hut: Len takes a look at monster advancement. They aren't born with all their HD and powers. And it's certainly possible that some might end up even tougher. And dragons shouldn't have a completely fixed number of HP per age category, as this encourages gamism. You can also upgrade monsters without actually changing their stats by judicious application of terrain features, magic items, team tactics, and so forth. He also introduces a new XP system that puts more weight on the individual monster's hit points, so the credit you get is for the work you actually do. Once again he is an inveterate tinkerer, house-ruling the game substantially, and quite possibly for the better. AD&D applying all the house-rules he's shown us in this column over the years would be quite a different beast, and that seems like the kind of thing that would be interesting to try for a one-shot (probably playing Secret of bone hill. ;) ) It's business as usual in Len's final appearance in these pages. Another case where we don't get to see the drama behind their departures, if there was any. So long. I might not have agreed with everything you wrote, but I'll still miss you.
The role of nature: Oh no. D&D doesn't have enough rules for environmental hazards! How am I supposed to properly play wilderness adventures if I don't have detailed rules for frostbite, heat exhaustion, equipment rot due to swamp exposure. and all kinds of weather effects. Yawnarama. A rather long and dull article. They do seem to be doing more of these lately.
The ecology of the pernicon: Now there's a monster I don't remember. Whatever happened to it? Anyway, these seem to be carnivorous locusts. A pretty scary prospect, when you consider how dangerous swarms of regular locusts are. They have water detecting antenna, which can be a definite help for desert nomads who harvest them and keep the antenna. Extra-helpfully, we get a full set of revised stats for them. The first non-Ed ecology in quite a while, this is rather more dry and scientific than most of his, but still manages to be quite an interesting read, giving me a good idea of how encounters with these little bastards would play out, as well as plenty of info on their lifecycle. A nice change of pace that should help to keep up the reputation of the series as one of the strongest parts of the magazine.
Cantrips for clerics: Well well. It's been a few years, but they finally get round to including minor magics for divine spellcasters as well. Pretty much as you would expect, minor, but still pretty useful powers that can be used to make your everyday life go much smoother, and might well save your life in a pinch if applied cleverly. Arthur Collins presents this with his customary flavour of humour, making powers that are specifically useful to the traditional jobs of clergy, and in particular the dull things novice priests have to do as part of their daily chores. This is a nice addition to the game, that I would delight in my players using, and finding clever uses for.
A different design: Tournament adventures. I think this is the 4th time this topic has shown up. And as ever, the conception of what makes a good tournament adventure, and how it should differ from a regular one has evolved somewhat since last time. Of course, there are plenty of bad tournament modules out there that don't adhere to these guidelines, with convoluted backstories that take up over half an hour of explaining before you even get to play, insufficiently clear guidelines on what you're supposed to be doing, poor playtesting meaning they're too big or small for their tournament timeslot. And that's not even getting into all the crap that poor GM's or other players can subject you to. So please please playtest your tournament adventures because if they don't work, we can't houserule them like you could at home. This goes double for multi-round adventures, which are a huge logistical hassle, and really need to be finely tuned if they are to work as intended, and not overrun or have too many people drop out at each phase. And if you're still willing to give it a try after all that, please apply to become a tournament GM at this year's gen con ;) As you may have noticed, this concentrates more on what not to do than what to do, and comes off as a politely couched rant. Still, bitching is always entertaining (at least, until they get drunk and start repeating themselves. ) so I rather enjoyed reading this one. Don't let the piles of dross drag you down.
Dragon Issue 108: April 1986
part 2/3
The judge Dredd RPG. Another game that would spawn multiple editions. Are you ready to lay down the law?
Palladium goes onto the high seas.
Agents and A-bombs: Ahh, nukes. One of the things that in most games, the writers tell you to never let the PC's get their hands on them at any cost, and if they go off, it's instant death, no roll. Rather spoilsporty behaviour, really. Top Secret is not an exception to this rule. However, sometimes the PC's will fail, and power stations will meltdown, or a nuke will be launched at some city. So rules for the aftermath would not go amiss. How harmful exposure is, how to avoid it, how to spot trouble. It also talks about nuclear scenarios, and the ways players could become involved in them. Terrorists selling nuclear material on the black market, hijacking of missiles in transit or nuclear subs, spying to make sure the ruskies are adhering to the treaties. There's plenty of fun stuff to do once you get over your fear of instadeath. A fairly decent article.
After the blast: Roger Moore follows up on the previous article with a short one about just how large an area is actually affected when a nuke goes off. Where does instadeath end, and simply very likely to die horribly begin. We have fairly finely graded sets of radii, along with top secret stats for how agents will be affected. Since lots of these measurements are in real world numbers, this is relatively easily adapted to other games as well. It doesn't quite make this a full special section, but it does fill out the previous article nicely. Which means this kinda straddles his roles as writer and editor. Hmm. Interesting.
The plants of Biurndon: Another writer copies Ed by talking about stuff from their own campaign world. Plants are an oft-neglected part of your campaign building, and can be pretty damn useful if you know how to use them. This is the kind of topic that can fill entire books in the real world, so a few pages will never give you the same kind of depth real plants attain. But the author tries gamely, giving us plenty of in-setting writings (which also reference other in-setting stuff amusingly) before letting us in on the behind the scenes statistical stuff. While actually pretty good, this does feel very pastichey, as if the writer is actively trying to imitate Ed Greenwood's writing style as well as his methods. And we all know that kind of imitation is not the way to great success. You'll end up being the Jobriath to Ed's David Bowie. Develop your own voice. It does help.
Mutant manual: This month's special is a 12 page bestiary for gamma world. The usual set of mutated reprobates with pun names to annoy, and possibly abet your characters. Curiously, none of our big regulars contribute. Guess this is powered by genuine fan demand. How nice.
Ameebies are creepy macrobes that suck your face and then assume a humanoid shape. They're pretty hard to communicate with, and have odd senses. Do they have some agenda beyond just eating? Do you want to give them a chance to integrate into society and risk getting your face sucked? Hmm.
Bumbles are gigantic bees. Unfortunately, they're missing a load of their stats, due to poor picture positioning. Errata errata, mutter mutter. They are intelligent, so you might be able to trade with them for honey. Mmm. honey.
Fear deer are a definite case of attack of the pun names. Unless there's nothing else to eat at all, leave them alone. If their fear doesn't get you, their poisonous antlers might. If you really must hunt them, do so from a distance.
Crumbleweed are gigantic poisonous invisible tumbleweeds. |'ll bet your players won't expect to be rolled over by one of them. How very random.
Deng keshes are shy cacti that drop into the ground and hide whenever something comes along. Amusing visuals, but a pretty sensible idea really, given that anyone with any desert lore knows to tap cacti for water. Try not to get too warner brothers with them.
Draguns are giant sea alligators. They're big enough to swallow you whole, and if you bombard them from a ship, they can shoot you back. Gamma world's weirdness extends to the high seas as well as the land.
Firebugs are fire-breathing crickets with a vindictive streak. Like Pernicon, they come in swarms, which means you might get some of them, but there'll be more around to take you down in revenge. Putting forcefields around your crops is pretty much the only way to foil their depredations.
Gliders are flying komodo dragons with laser eyes. Now that's what random mutation gets you in gamma world. In reality, you'd just be dead. Comic book radiation is awesome.
Kreel Torrn are another creature derived from grasshopper stock. Nomadic humanoids, they'll probably try and raid you, but can be negotiated with from a position of strength, and hired (until they get bored and betray you.) Yer basic orc analogues then, only with super jumping.
Lukalukas are giant turkeys which release clouds of gas as a distraction when startled. They don't make very good eating, and are rather irritating.
Moklas are mutant brontosaurs. Guess they weren't as extinct as everyone thought, and they've made a comeback. Another thing that can really ruin the day of shipgoing adventurers.
Niregs are double headed turtles. Each head has it's own personality, and they may argue sometimes. Now where have we seen that before? ;) I'm sure Trampier won't mind. You can befriend them if you try. Just don't ride them if you want to get anywhere fast.
Purrlions are giant domestic cats. They're pretty easy to tame, but don't make good mounts. After all, they are cats. Even when they're friendly, they do what they want, not what you order them too. Watch out for mutant catnip as well. You ever tried breaking the addiction of someone who doesn't want to quit? It's a lot worse when they're that much bigger than you and have sharp claws.
Rakkons are giant raccoons with empathy and photosynthetic skin, of all the strange powers they could have. They can be tamed, and make decent pets or riding animals. Definitely one that could have been created purely by random rolls.
Ribbets are, as should be obvious, frogs. Intelligent, flying frogs. Mischevious, intelligent flying frogs with faeesque powers such as time manipulation and memory erasure. You know what that means, don't you. Humorous screwage. They must die.
Slippigs are rather comical. They're just normal pigs that secrete an extra slippy grease, which makes them a bugger to pin down. I can certainly envisage hilarious scenes resulting from encountering these creatures. But they do make good eatin', and wandering outcasts can't be too choosy. Best to set a trap rather than try chasing them down. Preferably a pit or something else they can't squeeze out of.
Triphants are triple trunked elephants with poisonous spikes. While not that aggressive, this makes them even scarier than regular elephants. Good thing they're not smarter than regular elephants, because with three properly co-ordinated trunks, they could probably be pretty effective tool-users and build their own civilization. And you wouldn't want to get between them and their food, when each of them needs so much.
Vilchneks are giant chameleonic spiders. Unless you have even more gigantic birds around to scare them off, or spears at the ready to impale them when they pounce, you may be in trouble. Eh, nothing experienced adventurers can't handle. Are you experienced? (guitar riff)
Xloecs are double-tailed giant snakes with arms. They make rattlesnakes look thoroughly weedy, with their power to create thunderclaps with their tails. They're pretty slow through, so when they warn you away, stay away and you should be fairly safe. Being eaten whole would not be a cool way to go.
Rather a random set of creatures here, with many of them feeling like they were thought up purely through rolling on a table, and keeping the most deranged results. On the plus side, this keeps them surprising, as they don't all fit into the standard monster tropes. Once again, we are reminded that Gamma world is not an entirely serious game, and like D&D, you shouldn't tie it too closely to real world physics. Another fairly entertaining centerpiece to fill the magazine out with.
Judge Dredd, in the edition referenced, was a wonderful rules-light, fast playing game... Brings back many memories of Good Times and Pick-up games of Dredd. Two editions; one a two book boxed set, the other a hardcover with the same content. Still the best, IMO.
The other editions of JD are mechanically unrelated...
Dragon Issue 108: April 1986
part 3/3
TSR Previews gets mixed up, putting the further away stuff first. How very confusing. Well, it seems like there's way more stuff coming out in june than may, so they want to prioritize that. I shall keep my attention on the ones for next month though. Otherwise I would wind up repeating myself, which is no fun.
D&D gets M2: Vengeance of Alphaks. Face one of the biggest threats to the known world in his exceedingly nasty dungeons. How will he keep them from using Wishes, Gates, armies and stuff to short-circuit the adventure? Good question.
AD&D is also featuring a returning set of villains with A1-4: Scourge of the slave lords. Compiled, revised, and redesigned to better follow on from T1-4 to make a truly epic campaign, you can once again fight and intrigue your way through this brutal tournament series.
And we also introduce Agent 13, The midnight Avenger, to our roster. Written by Flint Dille, this seems to be a high adventure pulp series, set in the 30's, with all the genre mishmashing and cliffhangers that implies. The first two books, Agent 13 and the invisible empire, and Agent 13 and the serpentine assassins, are out now. This is another case where my opinion is divided. I quite like pulp. I quite like Flint Dille. (he wrote the goddamn transformers move,among other things.) But I know that this is both not a very commercially wise move, and this is part of the relationship between TSR and the Dille family that resulted in Lorraine Williams (Roll of thunder, stab of organ music) getting control of the company. How very awkward.
Profiles: Doug Niles is our first profilee. He's one of those people who ended up at TSR by a number of improbable strokes of luck. While not particularly suited as an editor, he's a great designer, with a real love of pulp stuff like Tarzan and Indiana Jones. And now he gets to write official modules starring them. This is why you should learn your craft. You never know when you're gonna get your big break, and you'd better be ready when it comes.
Jean Blashfield Black is in charge of the book department. She's a nongamer, but has had a pretty interesting career before joining TSR. Head of a major writing project at 21, consultant on a book by Lord Snowdon, chronicling the space program and getting taken to special events while writing about it, she's rubbed shoulders with lots of big names. And now she edits the dragonlance books. Of all the weird turns to make in your life. She has a daughter named Chandelle, which is actually a technical term for an aircraft maneuver, but sounds amusingly chavvy. Wonder how she's turned out since then.
Fiction: the grey stones by Josepha Sherman. Man, that is one bored looking bard in the main picture. Anyway, celtic stuff continues to increase in frequency, with this tale of a bard matching her musical talents against the creatures of the night. You really ought to get a priest to sort these bastards out, but when you're a hero, you don't get to say no to jobs just because you're not optimized to deal with them. A fairly standard heroic test story that's neither brilliant or too dull.
The cover to the Ares section is particularly good this issue. Welcome to Kitty Pryde's imagination.
High tech and beyond: So traveler tech doesn't scale very well. Once again, we are confronted by the fact that our own technological advancement has outpaced sci-fi in several areas. Most notable of these is miniaturization. They think that improvements come in the realms of percentages when IRL they have come in the form of factors of thousands. In other word, this is a very dated feeling article, that's not really very useful to us these days. One to skip without regrets.
An Honorable Enemy: Oriental adventures comes to the Hero system, with this adversary group for you to put in your game. Let by a villain who resembles the traditional japanese demon, this is a similarly traditional group of japanese career criminals, with ninja, samurai, and gadgeteers among their ranks. Good to see there are writers who are au fait with manga tropes in that era. Nothing hugely surprising here, but still something that gives you a good example of how to build characters in the game, and using them as an adversary when you're short of ideas wouldn't hurt. An ok read that would probably be more interesting in actual play.
Old yazirians never die: Well, actually, they do, as they're the shortest-lived of the 4 main races in star frontiers. Oh, the irony. This is a single page article that essentially transfers the D&D aging system to Star Frontiers, with middle aged, old and venerable categories each taking their toll on your capabilities. It's obvious that medical technology has advanced a lot, with the average human having a pretty good chance of making it to 200. It does exactly what it sets out to do, leaving me with not much to say about it. I suppose stealing from other games when your current one lacks an important feature is quicker and easier than making stuff up whole cloth. Meh.
The marvel-phile: Well, at least someone's doing a proper april fool themed article. As the cover hinted, we're off to the alternate universe of Kitty Pryde's fairytales. Bamfs, who may or may not be related to Nightcrawler, and regard him as the mack daddy of their race, to the embarrassment of everyone. Mean, the fiend with no name; a parody version of wolverine, with his automatic creation of six-packs of beer and deranged digging ability. Pirate Kitty, our heroine's cooler self-insertion character. Big Lockheed the dragon, a supersonic irish pacifist. And shagreen, a vaguely shark-like wizard from another dimension who is the villain of the piece. Even without Jeff and Roger's framing banter, this would have been a pretty entertaining piece, while with it, this comes close to being laugh-out-loud worthy material. Once again we see that they're not afraid to point out and embrace the sillier aspects of the source material. He's managed to brighten up what has been a pretty heavy going issue.
More mutant fever: Ahh, it's the follow-up to last month's article on disease in Gamma World. I almost thought they'd forgotten. 16 nasty diseases, both serious and comical (Sometimes at the same time. Monty Zoomers revenge is no laughing matter. ) Some are lethal, or may permanently reduce your stats if you're unlucky. A nice range of stuff, viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic, that gives you plenty more options to make your characters lives unpleasant in ways that combat can't solve. This is definitely an occasion where a little evil laughter seems in order. On the three everybody. 1. 2. 3. Muahahahahahahahaha!!!
Dragonmirth once again misinterprets peoples wishes. Snarfquest titilates and confounds. Wormy sets up a trap. Will it get turned back on him?
Not quite as bad as last one, this issue was still a real slog to get through, with lots of so-so or dull articles. They really do seem to be doing a lot of didactic application of realistic principles to gaming articles, and it is not producing fun results to read about. Combine this with the general dearth of humour this year, (apart from the Marvel and gamma world stuff) and we have definite cause for worry. Playing games is supposed to be fun and I am not amused.
Dragon Issue 109: May 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. The abominable snowman attacks on the front cover, in a dynamic, but slightly cartoony image. Can brave brave sir robin defeat him? Who can say. Meanwhile, inside we have another attack of the missing feature, as the 24 page Gen con Preregistration booklet they mention in the contents page is not in the scan. As ever, I would very much appreciate assistance in filling in missing bits like that. However, we still have the full 108 pages, even without it, so this is still going to be another long, tiring issue. Will I sink into a happy sleep of a job well done at the end of the day, or will I still be laboring to think of something interesting to say? Seems likely, I'm afraid.
In this issue:
Letters: Ha. Someone's realized that they've been hitting the supplement treadmill a lot harder recently. They don't like it, because it means they can't keep up with everything. Kim of course tells them that they shouldn't try too, they should just pick and use the bits they like. /buy everything. you know you want too/
An accusation of being a house organ, because they put TSR specific previews and profiles in. Kim gives a rather snippy response, pointing out all the things they've done recently that aren't purely for profit.
A letter asking a dumb question. How do you expect to survive the tomb of horrors with an attitude like that?
A letter asking why Gary changed his mind on an issue. People are entitled to that, are they not. Businesses even more so, when staff changes. There are a lot of things happening in the world, and promises can not always be kept, even if we wanted too.
The forum: Dr John F McDermott would like to battle the problem of fearmongering about D&D by doing an official medical study of people's roleplaying experiences, and how they have benefited or suffered from playing. Write up your adventures and send them in to him. Please do not send spam or hate mail just because he included his address in the magazine.
Glen Sitton would like to remind people that the greyhawk flavour in the core rules is just there as an example, and is relatively easy to strip out. Don't feel you have to have a Boccob and a Myrlund in every world. Don't be afraid to not put valley elves in there either :D
Gordon Hull thinks that the rules for the maximum number of spells a magic-user can know per level are stupid, especially when they can erase one from their books and learn another one. After all, how smart you are has nothing to do with the size of library you can own. A cogent argument.
Paul D Ingraham would like to remind you all that the GM is the boss, and shouldn't tolerate players who throw tantrums because you change the rules or introduce new monsters that aren't in the books. They'll respect you more if you're firm, and if not, no gaming is better than bad gaming. Or something.
Fritz Freiheit would like to point out that guns are not automatic instakill weapons in real life, any more than you can hack at someone with a sword for hours and they'll be fine in a week or two. Guns in D&D should not be exponentially more powerful than all other weapons. Remember D&D's escalating hp system isn't remotely realistic in the first place. And making weapons that have the same odds of killing you at higher levels is against the spirit of the game. There is a reason why damage is fairly static, and saving throws get easier as you advance.
Customized classes: Oohh. This is wonderful. Three months ago they gave us the biggest collection of classes yet. Now they give us the keys to the kingdom with an idea that would make it into the second edition DMG. Build your own classes by assigning point costs to various abilities, and adding them all up to determine the XP multiplier for the class. It's a bit clunky compared to the 2e version, but still, it's a great idea, and another one that you can redefine your entire campaign by using. (of course, as the cost is based around XP multipliers, you can make an utterly brutal 1st level character for a deathtrap dungeon you're not expecting to survive, and not face the downsides) It includes lots of sample classes generated using it as well, and shows how the standard classes would be balanced using the system, which is also pretty helpful. (Clerics actually turn out way more expensive than wizards, which is amusing when you consider they also have one of the lowest XP costs in the standard game. CoDzilla was already right under your nose.) Now that's the kind of thing you start an issue with. A classic article in it's own right. When you factor in that this is also Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's last posthumous contribution, it acquires extra resonance. A very fitting legacy, for someone who loved gaming so much. What's that? No, it's just a bit of dust in my eye. Honest.
The barbarian cleric: Looks like we have another class straight away. Funny, that. They go years without introducing any new ones, and suddenly, dozens come along at once. Anyway, this is a good demonstration of what happens when you forbid a class from multiclassing. Someone'll just go and make a hybrid. The barbarian cleric, aka shaman, medicine man, wokan, witch doctor, and all kinds of unpronounceable titles. Their relationship to gods is less the fealty to one big one that ordinary clerics swear, than a process of negotiation with whatever spirits happen to be around. They get a big chunk of the barbarian's wilderness dealing toolkit, plus some minor wizardly powers, bardic lore, and assassin poison making; at the cost of some of a cleric's spellcasting ability, a brutal advancement test system, and truly obscene XP costs, more than three times any of the standard classes at higher levels. Which I suppose is fitting, given that they're essentially a one man band, able to fill every party role themselves in a wilderness setting. I'm really not sure if the costs and drawbacks would balance them out when put with a regular party, but if you were playing a solo game, these guys would be the perfect pick. While slightly underwhelming in scope compared to the previous article, I would also be interested in testing this one out, partially out of morbid curiosity.
Fighters for a price: Mercenaries. People who fight for those who pay them. (As opposed to adventurers, which derive most of their wealth from the people they kill. ) A risky life, because no-one really trusts you. Yet they get everywhere, and are still found in war-torn areas today. Guess It's like prostitution (and I suspect the two trades do regular business with one-another. ) So here's a long and crunchy article on the finding, hiring, and maintenance of merc squads in D&D. They can come from many races and backgrounds, and have quite different capabilities and price ranges. While still a useful addition to a game that you can slide in without too much trouble, (if the DM will allow it, as many would get awkward if the players suddenly decided they'd prefer to do the job with backup, rather than play the big heroes on their own) this is a much less interesting read than the last two articles. So it goes. Back to the coalface to uncover the gems.
Worth its weight in gold: Oh, this is hilarious. A guide to dwarven beards,and how they style them throughout their lives. And this writer definitely falls into the female dwarves have beards, and they're proud of them too camp. As does the illustrator. From their first adolescent sproutings, to courtship, to marriage, to venerable elderhood, a dwarf's beard can tell you a lot about them. And since it's so important to their social status, it's no wonder they have a distrust for those pointy eared hairless pansies from the woods. It might be pure fluff, but I found it very entertaining, without being a complete joke. You shoulda had this last issue. We could do with some more light stuff like this in here.
The ecology of the displacer beast: Now here's a classic D&D monster. With an ability that exists purely to confuse people, they are pretty nasty predators, but not so far removed from real creatures as to seem utterly detached from the ecosystem. We get plenty of detailed physiological chatter in this one, taking us from birth to death, and talking about their antagonistic relationship with blink dogs. A very sage-ey entry, with lots of IC academic talk, this is good, but not exceptional. Needs to make a bit more stuff up, rather than sticking to the details in the manual.
This issue has one of my very favorite Dragon covers.
Dragon Issue 109: May 1986
part 2/3
The role of books: The initiate by Louise Cooper is a story of a world where the cosmic balance has shifted too far towards Law, and the protagonist finds himself being the one to overturn that. Neither side is really good or evil, and both have understandable motivations for doing what they do, so it's a tough choice who to sympathize with. Where will the rest of the trilogy take them?
Shuttle down by Lee Correy is an interestingly prophetic story of space a space accident, that turns out to be sabotage. Espionage, bureaucracy and sci-fi aren't the most obvious bedfellows, but this combines them quite well, to produce a tightly woven plot that is eminently stealable for your game.
The seekers and the sword by Michael Jan Friedman tells the tale of what happens after ragnarok. Most of the norse pantheon is wiped out, the world has recovered, and there has been thousands of years of relative peace. But someone always has to spoil things, and It's up to the peaceful Vidar to save the day against a cunning and mysterious adversary. This makes good use of the old legends without being bound by them.
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly is another story of a dragonslayer who really isn't as impressive as the legends make out. The dragon is really just the macguffin that drives the story, with lots of political and romantic intrigue involved as the protagonists try and figure out how to solve this problem, and who's really behind it. Even the dragon gets a proper characterization.
Where dragons lie by R.A.V Salsitz, on the other hand, is just another generic dragon hunting story. It gets a thoroughly mehsome review.
Time of the twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is the start of the new Dragonlance series. Raistlin's gone evil, and it's up to Caramon and Tasslehoff to stop him. But first, Caramon has to beat the demon drink. So it's not an entirely bowdlerized tale of happy shiny heroics and cardboard cut-out villains. Which is probably a good thing. After all, what would be the point of a straight retread of the first series?
The warlock enraged by Christopher Stasheff continues his interesting series about a real wizard on a planet full of SCA'ites. Only now he has kids, and they're developing unusual powers as well. This is going to get even more interesting as new factions show up to cause trouble.
Spinneret by Timothy Zahn is a rather complex sci-fi tale of discovering new technologies, trying to unravel them, and the competition between various factions, as they try and take advantage of these new discoveries. Which would probably be rather a headache as a world for gaming in, but it does make for fascinating reading. You'll have to steal and adapt carefully if you want to use the ideas from here.
War machine revisited: Now this is an underused subsystem if ever there was one. The mass combat rules from the Companion set get an expansion in this article. Naval combat, scouting, and lots of sample forces and officers. This is nice to see. I'll have to dig my companion set out and see how mechanically sound they are. Scouting in particular has a rather fiddly procedure attached to it, with math that seems more about clever use of dice rather than emulation of the realities of scouting. This is the kind of stuff you should only use if you do use the war machine in your games frequently, as many of it's rules involve the idea that you will be keeping a largely consistent roster of troops, replacing the ones that are lost, and advancing the ones that survive through multiple battles. Like the barbarian cleric, I'm still skeptical as to whether including them would improve a game, but I would be very interested in testing them out, so I could know for sure.
The uncommon tongue: Languages makes another appearance in this guide to ye olde english, and how to incorporate it into your game to make things sound more medieval. Because even if the language in your fantasy world sounds nothing like english, and hasn't evolved in a remotely similar way, it's still a good shorthand for previous eras that most people have at least a casual acquaintance with. You can't really be expected to invent a world wholecloth just for a weekly game. And if you did, your players probably wouldn't find it as easy to enjoy anyway. A little familiarity like this is probably for the good.
The paragon society for wargamers advertises itself, but not very well. I don't remember these guys, so I am dubious as to their survival prospects. Anyone remember this?
The eleven (sic) fighter/mage miniature from ral partha? They really need a better editor.
Locals aren't all yokels: So you have players who think they can act like arrogant jackasses whenever they come into town, who consider emrikol the chaotic a good role model. After all, they're just 0th level peons. What chance do they have against someone who can unleash fireballs, or windmill their way through mooks like a cat through a roll of toilet paper. Well, remember you're not the only game in town. Chances are, in a dangerous world, there are plenty of people who worked their way up to a decent level, then settled down with their ill-gotten gains due to laziness, shyness, love or political ambition. And remember, age is not a serious impediment in D&D. You have plenty of excuses to scatter higher level characters through ordinary settlements. Homicidal arrogance will rapidly become suicidal unless the DM is deliberately making the opposition incompetent. A single page article that makes an important point.
Toon now has a couple of supplements. How much can you add in terms of new monsters and adventures in such a simple game?
Blades with personality: Ahh, sentient weapons. A fine field for roleplaying, as they can wind up forging a personal bond with their users that can be stronger than their attachment to any NPC. Here's another quick single pager that reminds you that you can make treasure your players encounter much more interesting if it has a history, and in many cases, a personality. Even if they're of the same alignment, they can sometimes disagree with their owner. When they crave souls, can take over your body, or have a Machiavellian plot, it becomes a real choice if their powers are worth it or not. Another one of those articles that says something we've seen before and will so again, but does it fairly well.
Giant-sized weapons: Oh, here's a nicely prescient little article. Instead of big creature's weapons being arbitrarily assigned, a proper formula for scaling up weapons based on their original damage for man sized creatures, and their new size would be a very good idea. So here's a nice little table doing exactly that. Annoyingly, it doesn't cover scaling down, so it's not as good as the later edition's versions. Still, this is something we haven't seen before, and which seems like an obvious idea once someone's brought it up. It also has some other info on using weapons designed for different sized creatures, missile weapon ranges, and tactical considerations, which is nice. Another case where the magazine was way ahead of the times that I'm very pleased to have discovered. Have some kudos, Stephen Martin.
Hooves and green hair: Ahh, the joys of satyrs and dryads. This libidinous and highly dimorphous fae species are entirely partial to having a little fun with humans. And sometimes, it goes beyond just being a little fun, as they wind up having kids with them. So yeah, this article gives you the statistical info needed to make half dryad/satyr PC's. Neither are hugely powerful, and of course, both are quite good at dealing with nature related stuff. While nowhere near as impressive as the class stuff earlier on, they're still a flavourful addition to the game, although they may irritate those who would like the lechery kept out of their role-playing. Looks like introducing new crunchy stuff aimed at PC's is on the up at the moment. What are we to make of this?
Profiles: Jeff Easly is another of TSR's most popular and prolific artists, producing covers for lots of their recent books. He seems to be a visually inclined person in general, making sculptures and models, dressing up, and generally brightening peoples lives with the stuff he creates. He's a friend of Larry Elmore, and got a job here because of him.
Ruth Hoyer is the Art Director, which of course means she gets to order people like Larry and Jeff around. Not that they're likely to object, really. She's the one responsible for their recent logos, particularly the Dragonlance and Star frontiers ones. She's surprisingly scientific for an artist, with a definite preference for clean, functional designs. Another part of the machine that makes production values here rather better than they were back in the 70's.
Dragon Issue 109: May 1986
part 3/3
TSR Previews: At last. The immortals set is finally here. Now you can take your D&D games all the way, and actually win the game. Godhood is just the beginning. You've got to work your way up to supreme deity, Twice. Have you got the skill (and patience ) to manage it. I'll wager the number of groups who've managed to do it fairly from 1st level are even fewer than those who completed Knightmare.
AD&D gets CA2: Swords of deceit. A trio of short adventures set in Lankhmar. You even get to be the big heroes and save Fafhrd and the Mouser in this. How very unusual. We also get I8: Ravager of time. In it, your players are aged to near death, and have to find out how to defeat the villain while suffering the ravages of time and get their youth back. How very cruel. I'm betting a certain amount of railroading is involved to make that premise work.
We also have the Best of Dragon part 5. That means we have more than 1 per 2 years the magazine has been around. Guess we're still getting in plenty of new people who want stuff from old issues. And if they want it, who are we to deny them a chance to spend money.
For our 8th AD&D adventure gamebook, we're going back to Baba Yaga's hut. Since it's by the same author, I'm guessing there will be lots of similarities with our last visit.
Dragonlance is up to it's 5th book, War of the Twins. Can Caramon and Tasslehoff save the world from Raistlin. Surely, otherwise we wouldn't get any more books in the series. Question is, at what cost, and how much cheese will the writers throw at us while they do it?
One-on-one gamebook number 6 is Amber sword of worlds end. And once again, it looks like it does exactly what it says on the tin. Will the barbarian claim the sword and wield it with his mighty biceps. Or will the monk retrieve it in the name of his temple. The power is in your hands.
Finally, coming atcha from Canada, It's the Balderdash Game, one of their new family party games. Are the words and their definitions real? You get to educate as well as entertain your kids, expanding their vocabulary to quite excessive degrees.
Administrator's advice: Here's this month's Top Secret article. It's a big load of GM'img advice, helping you build your campaign. After all modern gaming is quite different from fantasy gaming. (although you can change that, by adding hypertech, bond style, and going overboard with the fame and fortune points. ) Still, there are lots of things you can't do in a modern setting, especially if you want to keep recorded history the same as the real world. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that you can do that you couldn't when you have to make up your own fantasy world, and you can travel anywhere in the world fairly easily. Lots of solid, specific advice here, that should help keep your players acting appropriately for the world, and make your games fun. Since we've had plenty of general advice by now, this kind of highly specific, focused stuff is just what's needed to keep long-term readers interested and developing their style. This may of course not be newbie friendly. But it's a big magazine now. Surely they can strike a decent balance between articles anyone can understand and ones that require a decent degree of expertise to build on.
Fiction: Valkyrie by W. J. Hodgeson. Love. It has caused much joy, and much suffering. Sometimes both at once, such as when a supernatural being falls in love with a human, and has to either watch them age and die while they stick around forever, or become mortal and suffer the ravages of time with them. A bittersweet result at best. On the other hand, if you're very lucky, the gods might show you mercy, and grant you an ironically happy ending such as this one. After all, they move in mysterious ways, and sometimes what they secretly want is someone to defy their word and prove their worth as a true hero. So this is an unusually happy ending to a story given the source material. I don't have any objection to this.
Fighting the good fight: Space Opera is our first stop this month in the Ares section, with a bunch of new tricks and variants for combat. Facing, parrying, and disarming. Three elementary matters that have been abstracted away in the game's combat system. Is it any wonder that some people want to insert them. Some will call that unneccacary crunch that misses the point of the game's design. Some will call that perfectly reasonable. I've been in both camps in the past, but this time I fall in the perfectly reasonable one. After all, without options like that, the game just becomes one of basic taking turns to attack, gradually wearing each other down. And where's the fun in that?
Patriots, terrorists and spies: Looks like metaplot has already snuck it's way into star frontiers, with cults suddenly increasing in frequency in FY 111 due to a supplement. This is an interesting development. And as ever, people will always want to introduce a few more, and this magazine is a good way to go about it. So here's 8 new cults which your players might theoretically join, but it's much more likely that they'll appear as adversaries. They include socialists, racists, religious fanatics, psychics, and those that fear them, and general self-advancing secret societies; and generally exist to provide plot hooks for players to investigate. Hey, you can always use a few more of those. Another one of those cases where due to the space limitations, they have to boil them down to their basic concepts, leaving out all the nuance and specifics. You'll still have to do a ton of developing if you want to use them in your game.
The double-helix connection: Mutants. A fairly familiar sight in here, thanks to gamma world. But they're not so common in traveller. Nor are they as powerful, with flaws almost as common as drawbacks. But then, Traveler is a lot more realistic than gamma world. That's not to say they have no place as PC's, as characters being exceptional in some way does help build interesting stories. So if you like, when generating a character, roll to see if they are a mutant, and then roll to see what powers they get. Your odds are around the same as your chances of getting psionics in D&D, and it's just as much of a crap shoot whether you'll get abilities that are useful and what you want, and learn how to control them properly. Still, that is the Traveller chargen way. If you don't like the way a particular character's developed, just roll up another one. Nothing hugely wrong with this article.
A change of diet: Speaking of gamma world mutants, they don't get neglected this month either. But they don't get too much either, as this is only a half page article. Seems like they're doing lots of short articles this month. So yeah, six awkward dietary restrictions your character could suffer from. What fun, everyone!!!! Anyone? No, I'm not enthralled either. Nuff said.
The Hero system makes a joke about it's own complexity in an advert. Pretty amusing.
The marvel-phile: Just as he did last year, Jeff provides an index of all the characters detailed by them so far, in every supplement, module and magazine article. And he intends to make this a yearly event, since this is an ongoing process for an active game line. So from Abomination to Zsaji, we're now at over 300 superheroes, creatures and organizations. Still plenty more to go though. Just don't ask us to do Transformers, Godzilla, GI Joe, or most of the other properties marvel does comics for, but don't actually own. They're not part of the license, no matter how we might wish otherwise. Onward! The advanced game is now out, and there's still tons of bits of this huge tangle of a universe we haven't filled in yet! Ahh, Jeff. You always know how to brighten my day.
The keys to good SF: Having made a visit to all their usual stops this month, they finish off this month's Ares section with some general role-playing advice. Sci-fi has the potential to allow quite different plots to fantasy, but often, the goals remain the same, with only the window dressing changed. Unfortunately, unlike the Top Secret article earlier, the writer fails to take her own advice, and gives us two and a half pages of yer usual world and character building advice. Because lets face it. Hard sci fi is hard, and of interest to a far smaller sunset of people that stuff that uses the ray guns and funny shaped people as merely backdrops to human drama. Once again, I am forced to say ho hum.
Dragonmirth gives apprentices some schooling. Snarf uses his anachronisms. Wormy continues setting up for the ultimate wargame, while others plot his downfall.
Despite the presence of several amazing articles in this issue, this has mostly been another long slow slog. Are they just not getting enough really good articles to justify their size? Are they deliberately playing it over-safe by rejecting weird stuff and publishing ones similar to the ones they've done before? Are they holding their A material back for the birthday issue again? Was the magazine losing it's sparkle around this time for you as well? Or is it just me, consuming too much as usual? I think I need a bit more exercise to work all this information off. Still, that's why I changed my schedule. Now I'd better make sure I make the most of those extra few free hours a week.
Dragon Issue 110: June 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Welcome to the 10th anniversary issue. How are they going to deal with that. They've already covered tons of topics, many of them multiple times. What new things are there to discover? How can they improve on the general format? Well, they wouldn't have asked us if they didn't want to know. Because let's face it, they have been struggling for ideas of late. While they could probably go over the same old ideas again and carry on for the next 10 years, diminishing returns would set in, and they'd get as bored as we would. Kim certainly wants to keep both us and himself interested, so he's not going to take the easy option. Well, that's pleasing to hear. Lets hope he can justify those words over the next few issues.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking how the ranger's nature skills interact with the general skills system. Because of course, we have one now. Oh, how mathematically awkward. What shall we do?
A letter by someone who didn't understand the swarm rules in the pernicon ecology. Treating a swarm as a single creature is a nice abstraction that saves you lots of time. It does mean they don't count as lots of 1 HD monsters, but really, that's a plus, because it means they provide a challenge to a wider range of adventurers.
A letter asking if we'll ever see computer gaming return to the magazine. Funny you should say that. We were just about too ;) The readers have spoken, and we have listened. Hope you like it.
The king arthur companion for pendragon now available. Who's who, what's where, and what do all those legendary items do? Read it for lots of extra setting info.
The forum: R. Zane Rutledge has recently reconsidered his subscription as a result of Daniel Myers complaints. Although he agrees with some of them, he has decided, on balance, that the magazine is still worth reading each month. A very considered letter here. Interesting.
Philip Winters has some thoughts about what happens to society when wizards are fairly common and willing to sell their powers for an affordable price. While continual light spells lighting every house is the biggest and easiest one, there are plenty of other cool ideas you can incorporate.
Daniel U Thibault engages in lots of nitpicking about the decay patterns of various radioactive isotopes. Elementary physics, my dear. This is the kind of thing the writer in issue 108 really should have researched better.
The cult of the dragon: Dracoliches! One of Ed's more impressive inventions, this gives us details on how you make one, the minutinae of the transformation process, and the special abilities they get once transformed. It also includes plenty of details on the social order that create and worship them. One of the early examples of template building, this definitely shows you how to spice up your dragons, making them distinctly more badass, both individually, and in terms of social support network. Before, if you killed a dragon, you could take their hoard, go home a hero, and that'd be the end of it. But now, you'll not only have to deal with the dragon again unless you can destroy their phylactery, but you might well have to face a whole load of powerful spellcasters and other dracoliches as well. Use with caution, because dragons are powerful enough already. But if you're in the upper teens or 20's in terms of levels, and even the biggest monsters are no longer a challenge for your team individually, these guys make great overarching adversaries for an epic game. Ed has once again looked at events happening in gaming in general, and figured out how to incorporate the ideas into the forgotten realms, while also making them just generic enough that you can insert them into your own game without too much trouble as well. He really is very good at this. A strong start that is very fitting for the anniversary issue.
Mekton. The game of giant killer robots! It's taken this long for someone to realize that transformers fans are a good crowd to target for gaming? Tch Tch. How do you expect to make money if you can't spot a gap in the market.
For better or norse part 1: Ahh, the norse pantheon. Second only to the greeks in the popularity of their legends. See what being a fractious bunch who are basically just humans writ large gets you. They've already got plenty of airtime in D&D, with quite a few magical items based off them in the core rules, (hammer, gauntlets and girdle for the win) and a whole chapter in Deities and Demigods. But since they have whole sagas about them, there are people who want more. Unlike with the centaur papers, they've decided not to combine these two articles into one, despite them having some overlapping stuff. After all, there is no Canon beyond what you choose to include in your game.
This first article gives us stats for the Vanir. Not quite as famous as the Aesir, (probably because they aren't as loud and violent ) they're still an interesting bunch, and including them opens up more avenues for godly politics, with multiple factions competing for worship in the same area. We have a mixture of gods, demigods, and monsters which may not be gods, but are still mean enough to present a challenge to them. Angur-boda. Edger. Gerda. Grid. Gullveig. Hati Hrodvitnsson. Skoll. Hermod. Mimir. Nidhogg. Njord. Ran. The Tempests. Utgard-loki. Vafthrudnir. Volundr. (whew) This nearly doubles the size of the pantheon. Which is pretty useful, if you're playing a game in an appropriate milieu. And if you want to be god-slayers, this is one of the more appropriate pantheons, given the number of horrible monsters they have around them. Another fairly decent article.
For better or norse part 2: A rather different and more focussed article makes up our second norse offering. Where the first one was largely crunch, this one has more extensive essays on a few specific deities. Niord (curse you, inconsistent translations! ) shows up again, with different stats, and Frey, Freya and Loki get expanded on from their D&DG entries. Loki in particular gets altered quite a bit, as the writer disagrees with the official interpretation of his personality. Ahh, the annoyance of drawing from a mythos that is inconsistent in itself. How very tiresome.
Dragon Issue 110: June 1986
part 2/3
All about Elminster: He's been telling us stories for nearly 5 years now, this mysterious sage. He spins tales of beasts and magic, spells, trickery, swords, shields and rings, histories and possible futures. But all things must change. He can't stay mysterious forever when so many people are curious about him. And so the 10th anniversary of the magazine is where Ed finally chooses to give us concrete details about the teller behind them. And this is one instance where the results are probably bigger than most suspected beforehand. A 26th level magic-user, with 3 18's in his attributes, and nothing below 12, he possesses vast magical and psionic powers, and travels universes with ease. He talks with the undead, sleeps with goddesses, and has developed some of the most twinky tricks you've ever encountered to keep his ass safe. But he still maintains a quiet little home in the Realms, and doesn't meddle in politics there openly, leaving that to others. We also get a bunch of new spells, and huge amounts of detail about the history and other big players in the realms. This really opens up the lid of the stew he's been cooking over the years, and it smells delicious. After this kind of showing, how can they not give Ed the chance to publish his world properly. People must be clamoring for more. Unless they're the sort who think there's too much mary-sue cheese in this mix, which is understandable. But as you can probably tell, I don't. At least not yet. When will it become too overcooked for me? We shall see.
The role of computers: As they said earlier, Dragon is opening up to review computer games again. How very pleasing. In the time they've been absent, computers have crashed, come back, developed massively, and are now far more common than ever before. Consoles are also just starting to make inroads into america. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and jabber on about stuff that falls outside this column.
Straight away, they recognize that if you just want to read computer game reviews, there are other magazines that specialize entirely in that, and can review far more games every month, probably in more depth. So to justify their place in Dragon magazine, they need to remember they're writing this as roleplayers, for roleplayers. A laudable statement. Let's hope they stick to it.
Their first big review is Wizardry. Wait a minute, I hear you say. Didn't this get reviewed in this magazine back in 1982 in issue 65? Why, yes it did! Don't worry. Not only is this a new set of reviewers offering a new perspective on things, it's also a new version of the game, on a different platform, with considerable improvements in the graphics, (although the specs are still pretty risible compared to modern computers. ) a massively improved save game feature, (saving mid adventure? Unheard of! ) use of the new Windows format of displaying multiple things at once, and lots of other awesomeness that will soon become common practice in programming design. It manages to improve on a game that they already have a nostalgic attachment too.
We also get 9 capsule synopses of other computer RPG's at the end, rounding off this column nicely. This is another case where it'll probably take them a few issues to really find their feet and strike a good balance of reviews, chatter and guides. Still, the magazine has taken another step outwards in the topics it covers, and towards the format it had when I started reading. Overall, this is a very pleasing addition to their roster.
Dragon damage revisited: Leonard Carpenter returns to follow up on last year's article on dragon attacks and how they scale with age. I know more about how the 1st ed system quirks now, so this doesn't provoke the bemusement it did last time. We have new expanded scaling charts for the 5 Gem dragons from issue 37, the 8 oriental dragons from the Fiend folio and Oriental Adventures, plus the Cloud, Mist and Shadow dragons from the MMII. We also get some design notes to help you adapt this kind of thing for your own campaign. After all, one size doesn't fit all. Maybe you want different dragons to the generic D&D ones. I'm generally happy to see follow-up articles going into more depth, particularly when it's an idea I approved of in the first place. I do vaguely wonder why this wasn't put at the front with the other dragon article. Eh, not important. I'd enjoy it just as much if it was right at the back.
The house in the frozen lands: Looks like we're getting one of our last modules before Dungeon starts up and takes that job over. And they spill out a bit, going to 17 pages on this one. Curiously, it feels a lot like the Top Secret module set in the antarctic, with the same formula of troubles getting to the remote frozen location that's been taken over, and then dealing with enemies that are superficially polite, but really just want to get rid of you, and will kill you if you probe their secrets. Thankfully, there is no threat of nuclear apocalypse if you fail, but there is still the potential for wider political ramifications if you play this one right and tie it into your campaign. The maps are pretty good as well, (although the only toilet has a water weird in it, which may be a problem. :D ) A pretty solid adventure that could take up a good few sessions and play out in several different ways. Ok, It's no baba yaga or city beyond the gate, but it's still pretty decent. Once again, it looks like they've been saving their good stuff for the important issues.
TSR Previews is still the wrong way around.
AD&D is getting the dungeoneers survival guide. Further evidence of the acceleration of the supplement treadmill, this is lots of advice for your dungeon explorers and builders. Here we go again, into the breach.
Terrible swift sword and Barbarossa are finally out ...... or are they? Oh, the annoyance. We also have a whole bunch of goofy stuff. The Paramount Movie and Broadway stageshow board games. The Honeymooners. What is this? More attempts for them to tap completely unrelated markets, I guess.
Marvel super-heroes is going Advanced. More crunch, more maps, and a whole bunch of gimmicky crap in the box. If that's not enough little pieces to get lost, you can get the 4th set of miniatures, with a definite X-men theme to it.
Endless quest gets book 33: Knight of illusion. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Damn Illusionists. Proper wizards just blast you and have done with it. But no, you have to be given a chance and wind up facilitating your own demise in ironically amusing fashion.
Dragon Issue 110: June 1986
part 3/3
Fiction: The wizard's boy by Nancy Varian Berberick. Oh, inscrutable wizards. What pains in the ass you are. Always concealing your motives and goals from the people you work with. Things'd be a lot simpler if you just explained upfront what you're up too (at least, the nontechnical aspects. ) then we could help you achieve your objectives more efficiently. Still, I suppose when looking for an apprentice, if you let them know what you want, power-hungry people who would abuse the knowledge would fake it. If you remain inscrutable, things may take a little longer to plot out, but you know they're real when you see them. Yeah, this is one of those tales of a young boy growing up into a powerful wizard, and not having a particularly easy time of it. Not the most original idea, but again, not badly done either, with pretty decent characterization and magic. Guess we're finally slipping back into the filler material then.
Knowledge is power: Seems like every new RPG that comes along these days has some kind of skill system, especially the ones that eschew classes and levels for a more ad hoc advancement where you only develop what you practice or choose to spend XP on. Games such as D&D and Gamma world are starting to seem rather outdated as a result of this. Just knowing what their players know or can describe them doing can result in huge imbalances in character effectiveness, even if they have the same stats. D&D has recently had a basic nonweapon proficiency system introduced in Oriental adventures, and in a few months that'll be rolled out for the regular classes in the Wilderness survival guide. But Gamma world is currently rather short on supplements. So here's a basic system for it. A very basic system indeed, as the skills are purely binary, most of their capabilities granted are handled narratively, and he neglects to give XP costs for learning new ones. Like the secondary skills in the original AD&D book, these rules are so vague as to be virtually useless. Frankly, you might as well just keep on using fiat, because you'll have to anyway if you try and incorporate this.
The marvel-phile: Having mostly been presenting minor heroes I've never heard of recently, Jeff decides to bring another big gun out for this issue. Ghost rider. The kind of name you'd have to be a fool not to use. And one of marvel's few legacy characters, (I wonder why DC wound up with more) where the person with the name changes, but the name remains in use, because it's a valuable bit of intellectual property. ( I have to wonder when we'll see a return of Shadowman, since that's another name that's too obvious for them to leave undefended for some other company to grab.) This is one case where the powers and style of the people possessing the name have varied wildly. Even what they ride varies, with one being a biker, and the others being horsemen. This is important, as it shows how you can progress the continuity of the universe without losing touch with the iconic bits. It's like monarchy. The person may change, even the family, but the state continues. The cycle of life and death goes on. All is well with the world. Or something. Another pretty pleasing contribution from Jeff. Lets hope he can keep that up when they transition to the Advanced game next month.
Going for a swim?: Looks like we have another case where the writer is filling in rules that you would think should be obvious. Star frontiers has no rules for swimming. I guess when you're in space most of the time, the idea doesn't come up. Fortunately, the gear needed to survive in space and underwater has quite a few similarities, only you don't need to carry your own oxygen supplies. Anyway, no great surprises here, as we get rules for movement, underwater combat, and the bends. The quirks of the various alien races are dealt with, as are those of equipment. One of those articles that falls under the solid but dull category.
Piece of the action: Hmm. Introducing the mafia to Paranoia games as a secret society? That's actually a pretty good idea. After all, using a bad italian accent for your character, having secret agendas conveyed by coded doubletalk, and wielding odd weapons is entirely within the spirit of the game, especially as most commonly played back then. Will you be loyal to the Family, make a profit for them, and work your way up the ranks, or will they be as prone to "retiring for health reasons" as the other members of your troubleshooting team? Either way, I find this quite an entertaining little article, that's useful in itself, and also reminds us that nearly any real-world organization or ideology can be converted to a paranoia one with hilarious results. It may require you to reduce the randomness of character generation, particularly if it's a player who came up with a cool idea for a society, but that's hardly a gamebreaker. This isn't WHFRP, after all. ;)
Dragonmirth mocks polearms. Not hard to do. Snarf's little leech thing saves the day. Wormy features a very impressive giant showdown indeed.
Get subscriptions at a bargain price as a 10th anniversary gift! How generous of them. Not as generous as a lifetime subscription, but they wouldn't be so dumb as to offer them anymore.
Looks like Ed is the real star of this show, delivering a one-two punch that comes close to his classic work on the nine hells. Even if he stopped here, he'd already have more than won a place in the D&D halls of fame. But no, next decade is going to bring even bigger things for him, as his world becomes the biggest, most fleshed out campaign world in the entire AD&D multiverse. And this issue has several hints on how that's going to happen. The rest of the issue is considerably better than most of their recent offerings as well, with more big articles, stuff looking back on old things and building upon them, and stuff looking forward and trying out new ideas. I'm definitely coming to prefer the issues with several big articles that link into gaming's overall history to the ones with tons of tiny shallow unconnected bits and pieces. And I'm guessing at this point, plenty of other people will feel likewise, or we wouldn't see the rise in metaplot we do over the next decade. After all, it's not an inherently bad idea, it's just that like any idea, it can be done wrong. And if you link everything up, then one part being fouled up causes problems for everywhere else, while if you have independent replaceable bits with multiple redundancy in your design, you can keep the bits that work and ditch the ones that don't. But I digress. This is about gaming, not mechanical engineering, even if the lessons from one field can be transferred to another. Unless you guys actually want me to go off on tangental discussions and rants when they occur to me. Because that's certainly an option. ;)
Dragon Issue 111: July 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Another month, and they continue their drive to regroup and reorganize their staff. Roger Moore has left the Ares section to become the head editor at Dungeon magazine. Meanwhile, they are encouraging their artists to make more money by reprinting cover art as posters. More money for the same amount of work. Hopefully this will mean they'll be amenable to reprinting the art in later D&D books :p
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking if dust of appearance disrupts a displacer beast's displacement. The answer is a very definite yes.
A letter about sexism. Two actually. The first involves the barbarian cleric and if women can become one, due to it's exclusive use of masculine pronouns. The other is from a female reader who would prefer more equal opportunity cheesecake. Ahh, the perennial sexism problem. Still a long way to go to equality. Any time now we'll be getting another women in gaming article. Ho hum.
The forum: David M Axler has a bunch of quibbles about the weather article from issue 108. Everyone's an expert. It's almost as bad as the stats for gods arguments.
Andy Price talks about talks about the nature of magic. If the gods are really infinitely powerful, granting spells should be no problem for them, regardless of where in the universe they are. I think that's where the flaw in your logic is. You have read the current god rules for D&D.
Jaldhar Uyas thinks that locals aren't all yokels was a dumb and unsubtle article. There are better ways to encourage investment in the world than making every third NPC 15th level. Is that a strawman I see here? You exaggerate the position of your opponent.
Scott Paul Maykrantz thinks UA sucks and will not be buying it or allowing stuff from it in his games. From everything he's seen, the new additions are a bunch of crap. Take that, T$R! Charming.
Good stuff, for a spell: Hmm. Magical items that allow you to spontaneously convert your memorized spells into spell energy, which when channeled through the item, produces some other spell. What a novel idea. This is an exceedingly prescient article, presenting a whole different way of balancing your characters capabilities by making sure their items are linked to their own powers, rather than working constantly, a fixed number of times a day, or running out after a while. As a direct ancestor of both 3e cleric's spontaneous conversion, and weapons of legend, this is definitely one for the files. As the writer himself says, this idea is like inventing the wheel, once you've done it, you can apply it to all sorts of situations, and are amazed no-one thought of it before. And so design technology takes another step towards the present day. A pretty damn good way to start the issue.
Welcome to Malachi: They get hinted at occasionally, but you don't get to see inside them as often as I'd like. Other people's campaigns are a ripe source of articles, as they can be much more specific and take a definite stand on topics that a generic article is likely to end up sitting on the fence over. But only Ed has managed to go from articles sent in independently to a fully detailed published campaign world, and he's a massive outlier. Well it's a tricky route to take. Let me tell you about my campaign world is only one step up from let me tell you about my character. It takes a special kind of storyteller to keep tales like that interesting for long.
Anyway, this is an example of what you can do to a city when spellcasters are common, and fully integrated into the infrastructure of the world. Clerics take the lead, revolutionizing health and living standards, while magic-users provide all kinds of expensive (but hopefully long-lasting) luxury items. Spell component vendors make a tidy profit selling to both, and adventurers can make good money by offloading all those monster pieces to them. This is the kind of conceptualizing I am strongly in favour of, interlocking the rules and setting to create a world that runs off it's own internal logic, and develops and reacts accordingly. The writer has developed this place through several years of actual play, and has lots more data on it to send to the magazine if it's readers are interested. (hint hint) This is a pretty nice article, full of fun ideas and tips for you to steal and adapt to your own game. This is the kind of thing I'd definitely like to see more of in the magazine.
DUNGEON™. Adventures: Roger Moore talks about his new job, being the head editor of Dungeon magazine. A definite step up from running the Ares section. And what he wants from you guys who are thinking of sending in submissions. D&D modules only, no more than 16 pages, send a proposal first, typewriting and SASE essential, you must surrender all rights to us, we pay flat fees not royalties, absolutely NO greyhawk stuff will be considered (because Gary owns that, and we're currently in backstage wrangling with him, but we mustn't mention that) and tons of other regulations to wade through. The kind of deal that frankly, I wouldn't sign with an 11 foot pole unless it had the potential of making me millions, and in that case I'd be engaging in hardball negotiations to improve it. (plus if I could produce a legible signature writing with an 11 foot pole, I'd be using my amazing dexterity to other ends) Oh well, that was standard back then, and all I can do is try to avoid falling into the same trap. And I suppose money from any source is better than no money. You've gotta love the job to do it, because you're never getting rich from it. Man, I wonder why I bother sometimes. Sorry about the cynicism. Just another reminder that the underside of the creative process is an ugly business. Best just to enjoy the flowers produced instead of sniffing the manure it comes from.
No campaign ever fails: Monty Haulism gets tackled again, from another perspective. Absolute power is not so important as if that power is fairly earnt, and if the characters are facing challenges commensurate to that power. Even if things have got out of hand, it's entirely possible to change a few things around, and bring them back under your control again. If you use NPC's as trap-springing fodder, a rebellion is pretty likely. If one character starts getting out of hand, award the group an item they can't use. Be very cautious about letting in characters from other campaigns. And if equalizing upward doesn't work, don't be afraid to do a little draining. A fairly balanced tackling of a topic that's never going to go away. Meh.
GURPS! It's finally out! The most modular system ever, according to them. And they're probably not far off. Especially once you add on all the supplements over the years.
Dragon Issue 111: July 1986
part 2/3
Microscopic monsters: Oh, this is nice. Stats for giant versions of microscopic organisms. We've already seen a relation of this for gamma world, so it's no surprise that someone has decided to do similar stuff for D&D.
Protision is a giant amoeba colony that has developed sentience through a communal hive mind. It is slowly growing, has learnt magical abilities, and wants to keep growing until it covers the entire world. What an awesome plot hook. Yoink.
Perdinium shoot little bolts from their pores to attack enemies. They can also produce bioluminescent flashes. If Beholders are related to anything from the real world, it's these guys.
Gonyaulax are tentacled, armored basketballs. In large groups they can really mess up your water supply. Only the tarrasque would drink stuff infested with them.
Ceratium has armor plating and a long saw-like appendage to attack with. Very interesting looking little creature, really.
Noctiluca can not only engulf you or strangle you, it can generate flashes of light with bioluminescence and dazzle you as well. Quite a effective set of hunting tricks there.
Euglena look like tiny squid with only a single tentacle.
Paramecium have lots of little sticky threads covering their exterior. Don't step on them, because they'll eat your foot. They might trap your weapon as well, which is always a pain in the ass.
You ought to know what Amoeba are. Blobby things that engulf their food. Merely gross when watched through a microscope, when they're big enough to consume you, it gets rather scarier. They're considerably less scary than things like ochre jelly and black pudding though. This writer does seem to be rather conservative with his statistics. Eh, slap pseudonatural, paragon and gargantua templates on it and that'll change pretty fast.
Elphidium are a combination of entrapping threads, and a shell-like central part. This means that they're much easier to escape from than they are to kill. They're mostly scavengers, so just steer clear and you won't have to worry too much.
Globigerina are like organic mines. They float around, and then entrap you in their spines. Don't go swimming at night. As if you didn't have enough hassle from bear-sharks.
Dictyostelium is one of those cases where reality is weirder than fiction. Comprised of lots of little mushroom like amoeba, when times get tough, they fuse into one big glutinous mass to migrate to a more suitable place. Like an organic spaceship, this allows them to travel further and protect themselves along the way. As they do so, they form specialist organs, blurring the line between many single celled organism's and one differentiated one. Isn't nature awesome? And the giant ones here are even moreso.
So we've not only got lots of new monsters, but I also know more about real world biology now as well. This is a great example of how reality can be stranger than fiction, and stealing from it is needed to make your stories better. The trick to seeming fresh is to not steal from the same sources as everyone else. And there's certainly plenty of weird corners of the microscopic phyla that don't turn up in fiction very often.
The role of books: Magic kingdom for sale - sold! by Terry Brooks features his usual smug self-righteous writing style. This reviewer doesn't seem to consider that a dealbreaker, however. It makes good use of info from Brooks' original day job to create a twisty plot that seems to keep their interest.
The curse of Sagamore by Kara Dalkey is the amusing tale of a man who really doesn't want to be king, cursed to be so due to his ancestor's funniness. There's plenty of humour, both IC and OOC, and it should give you ideas on how to make your players lives miserable in an entertaining way.
Yonder comes the other end of time by Suzette Haden Elgin ties together magic and psionics, and also ties together her earlier novel series', which had previously been unconnected, into one larger universe. The reviewer is somewhat ambivalent about this shift towards epicness, enjoying it, but not sure if it's justifiable.
Witch blood by Will Shetterly is quite different from his previous book, being a story of witches and magical martial artists. What could become cheese easily, does not, as he creates a dark atmosphere, and a strong narrating voice for the protagonist.
The cross-time engineer by Leo Frankowski tells the tale of a modern day man thrown into 13th century poland, trying to industrialize it early to protect it from the mongols. What ramifications on history will his actions have? Keep reading, because it looks like another long book series ahead
The unicorn quest by John Lee may not be about dragons (again) but the reviewer can't find anything much about it to recommend. Damn you, generic fantasy tropes. :shakes fist: I can see you coming a mile off.
Interstellar pig by William Sleator is an interestingly meta tale of a game of world destroying potential, and what happens when you're not sure if the key to saving your world is winning it or losing it. The various elements are juggled adroitly, in a thought provoking manner. Just what sci-fi should do. After all, silly ideas can allow you to comment on the world in a way that would be ignored or censored in a more serious product.
Death of an arch-mage: Looks like we're getting one last module in these pages before Dungeon fires up. And it's quite an impressive one, both in length (21 pages) and ambition. A murder mystery in D&D? Don't see those very often. Amusingly, the tournament pregens are just 1 level too low that they would be able to do some resurrecting, which is good thinking. On the other hand, 2 of them are illegal dual classed characters, which irritates me. It also puts a lot of onus on the DM to set the proper tone, and fill in spurious details to obscure the important bits, which may be problematic. With big chunks of their magical powers forbidden, they'll have to use mundane investigative powers, or choose to go maverick and risk spoiling the case. So yeah, this could be good, or it could be incredibly annoying, and go disastrously wrong very easily, it very much depends on having the right DM and players.
TSR previews is back to the right way around. Dragonlance is getting pole position this month, with DL13: Dragons of truth. Can they pass the nine tests of truth? Can they beat Takhisis? Considering the next module is called Dragons of Triumph, the odds seem good. It's also getting another calendar for 1987. Seems a bit early to release one now. Eh. Get a few months just looking at the pictures before you have to write on it.
AD&D is also getting REF2: the revised player character sheets. Unearthed Arcana made the previous ones redundant. Ahh, joy. Another excuse to sell you almost the same stuff again.
D&D gets IM1: The immortal storm. So you made it this far. Can your adventures as a god match up to the ones that came before? Well, at least they're trying to support it. We also get X11: Saga of the shadow lord. See, if you were the previous characters you could wipe out an army of undead no trouble. Oh well. Guess it's not heroism if it's not a struggle.
Our solo gamebooks get the Sorcerer's crown, book number 9. Our first one that follows on from a previous book. Will it involve further sequels? The dread hand of metaplot reaches into even here.
Marvel Superheroes gets MA1: Children of the atom. All about the mutants of the marvel universe, and adventures for them. As this is the advanced game, the supplements are bigger. Are they better? Wish I could tell you.
Amazing stories unleashes it's second anthology. Visions of other worlds. Containing stories from some of the biggest names in sci-fi. Have their prophecies been proved correct? Since this is a retrospective, I'm betting at least a few of them have.
One thing to keep in mind: even well into the 1990's, many had no access to photocopies. Character sheets therefore were consumables, not copymasters.
Dragon Issue 111: July 1986
part 3/3
Profiles: Jeff Grubb is of course one of TSR's most awesome game designers. The son of a teacher man, he's always been pretty damn smart. (apart from maybe thinking playing D&D would be a great way to meet girls, but even that seems to have worked out for him. ) He's responsible for the gods of the Dragonlance setting, the name of the planet the Forgotten realms is set in, virtually the whole of the marvel superheroes RPG, and is now writing the manual of the planes. His contributions are pretty much inextricably linked with gaming as we know it. Go him.
Anne Gray McReady is one of our editors. She's completely normal, honest! Nothing to see here at all! Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Anyway, she's responsible for editing all 5 of the BECMI boxed sets, as well as writing the savage coast, so she has made some cool contributions to the D&D universe. Ah pity da foo who believes her lack of hype.
Pull the pin and throw: Grenades! We've seen quite a few questions on them show up in Spy's advices over the years. Guess they thought it merited a whole article. So we get three pages of dry stuff like how they're constructed, what they have in them, concussion radii, a scatter diagram, and the all important damage done. Will this settle those arguments, or just reignite them, in ever more fiddly nitpicking detail? Either way, I'm not very interested by this article. Another load of crunchy filler to keep up the page count with.
Fiction: File under B by Esther M Friesner. Oh dear oh dear. The buttoned up young librarian runs across a near-naked barbarian warrior transported into the library by the evil wizard he was fighting. My oh my :fans self: This can't possibly be happening. We must get him out of here before somebody sees. He can't really be from a fantasy world, surely? But if he is then maybe the index can help me get him back. Now, is it in fiction or nonfiction? And then they get back to his world, great acts of heroism are done, bosoms start heaving from the exertion, and it all has to be faded to black before the author starts typing one-handed. Ahh, fantasies. Isn't it great being able to sell them. This is cheesecake, but amusing cheesecake, obviously written by a woman, for women. Nice to see them tackling the problems mentioned in the letters page. Can they keep that up, or will the accusations of sexism be back again soon enough. At this stage, I'm gonna take the pessimistic view. Some people will always bitch, especially if you bend over backwards to accommodate them and they think they can get more stuff that way.
Dark phoenix gets on the cover of the ARES section. She then gets a good going over in their first article. How do you portray and play characters as ridiculously powerful as that in your game? You'll have to take things away from direct fights, and concentrate more on the emotional aspects and fallout of the drama. Or just make sure you have some characters with invulnerability or huge amounts of plot immunity. Remember, in comics, resurrection is always an option. Just don't do it too often and cheapen death completely. An interesting topic to cover.
Maxima: Villains and Vigilantes shows off it's own maxed out capabilities. Which are actually considerably less than FASERIP's, but there you go. Maxima is a geneticaly engineered superwoman from the future, with all stats at an obscene level (and a weight of 663lbs :D Is that a specific artifact of the system's tables? ) superspeed, regeneration, but no real powers that aren't just human potential+. We also get a little more advice on using a character like this in your games, particularly if the other PC's aren't as powerful as this. Pairing off groups so each character has a suitable opposite may seem cheesy, but it's an established genre trope, so you shouldn't feel guilty about using it. Everyone has weaknesses, and you shouldn't be afraid to use them either. Even with different power levels, everyone can get a chance to shine if you design adventures right.
Supergirl: Well, this is nice. Our theme continues with a DC heroes article. I'm betting stats for Superman already appear in the corebook, but if you want to showcase obscene power of a kind PC's would expect to have, then supergirl is your next good bet. Despite her power, she's certainly got beaten around, mindfucked, romantically screwed over, and eventually killed with great glee. And as Jim Ward showed, way back in the monty haul days, it's entirely possible for a sadistic GM to follow that example, no matter how powerful you are. We get more advice on how to run high powered characters in general. When collateral damage is a constant threat, and you're the good guys, you really can't cut loose with your powers the way you'd like too. If they can travel miles in seconds, make them split their attention. If they can move planets, then they'd better get to use that power. Tailor the villains to the heroes, and put them through the wringer. Just like the real comic books. Remember, the more powerful and versatile the characters are, the less you have to play nice, because if they're using their brain, they can solve even problems that don't have a designated solution. (unless you're playing something like Armageddon or Aberrant, where damage scales faster than ability to absorb it, so characters paradoxically become more fragile against equal opponents at higher level. ) Another interesting article that once again puts a different spin on the same topic.
The marvel-phile: With a ton of supers stuff already and his own profile this month, Jeff's contribution gets heavily edited to fit on one page. Longshot, an alien stuntman with powers appropriate to his name. The switch to Advanced hasn't altered the formula of these entries significantly. As this is another character I've never heard of before, isn't that interesting, and will likely never see again, I can't muster much enthusiasm for this one. Hopefully having his writing butchered won't dull his enthusiasm though, because it would be a shame to see him lose it.
Quantum: Our final article tackles the same subject they've been tackling all through the section, only for a different system. Finally, it's Champions' turn to get some advice on how to handle characters of different power levels. This concentrates on scaling your characters, and scaling the opposition to them. It includes the eponymous character Quantum, who's power level fluctuates randomly due to some rather clever build tricks. She can challenge gods one day, and then get her ass kicked by a gang of thugs the next. Which is quite pleasing, both that the game can handle weirdness like this, and that there are plenty of people who have no problem with really high level games here. Plus the writeup and illustrations are pretty cool. This is quite a nice way to finish off the section, even if it is a bit galling that it's been comprised entirely of superhero articles. Still, at least they're trying with the themes, and the april fools jokes and stuff when the rest of the magazine isn't. That stuff sometimes gets excluded because of this is the price you pay. If it's good stuff it'll just show up a few issues later anyway.
The Snarfquest gang has to get away with the treasure they just found. Dragonmirth shows us a real monty haul dungeon. Wormy features more variscaled adventures.
Overall, a pretty good issue, if another one that was a real effort to get through. Still, in this case it was definitely worth it, with new developments in game design, lots of info on dungeon's start-up, and a good send-off for adventures; and a very interesting and well-focused Ares section. They're still probably not getting quite enough good material to justify their bigger size, but since so much of that is a matter of taste anyway, I'm not going to complain too much about that. And it looks like the spate of development and reorganization is going to continue into next issue, which seems promising. But that's a tale for another day. I'm not Schazerade, and I don't think always starting a new story before the night is over and finishing in the middle would suit the source material. Cliffhangers get tiresome after a while, so lets just leave it at this.
Quote from: aramis;337228One thing to keep in mind: even well into the 1990's, many had no access to photocopies. Character sheets therefore were consumables, not copymasters.
We always just scribbled (or in one case, carefully drew using a ruler) out stuff on bits of paper. Even at my most unquestioningly consumerist, I thought there were better ways to spend your money than official character sheets. Plus you can usually fit more info on that way, as the official character sheets for a line are rarely the most efficiently designed.
Dragon Issue 112: August 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Looks like their promise to change things wasn't a hollow one. Straight into the contents page, and the Ares section is conspicuous by it's absence. Well, I guess last month's one was as good a send-off as any, both in the sense of being a good, well focussed one, and also a demonstration of how thoroughly it had been hijacked from it's original purpose by superheroics. Some people aren't going to be happy about these changes, and indeed, Kim isn't too happy about all of them either. Some hard decisions had to be made here, and he's really hoping they were the right ones. Still, better to try something new than trudge along in the same old rut year in, year out. I guess now all he can do is wait for the vitriol to come in, see if more people approve or disapprove. And although my opinion obviously doesn't matter when it comes to the direction of the magazine, I'm pretty curious as well. So lets take a gander.
In this issue:
Letters: Michael Selinker sends in a bunch of revisions for Death of an Arch-Mage. Kim takes this fairly well, considering. I'm sure this didn't ruin the adventure for many people, since this is only a month later, and it takes time to finish off adventures and move onto the next one.
Dearie dearie me. The house in the frozen lands also gets a load of errata. More fixing needed. Oh, the horrors of being an editor on a monthly publication.
Some mathematical corrections about the volume of water. Tripped up by the basics again. Talk about calling attention to your mistakes.
The forum: James A Yates thinks that extremely big and strong people should be able to wield giant sized weapons, albeit maybe at a penalty. It's cool imagery, so yeah, I mostly agree with you there.
Margaret M Foy thinks that if TSR are going to be all edgy about putting christianity into D&D, they should show just as much respect to other religions as well. If they do that, the only pantheons they'll have are entirely self-made ones. Do you really want that? Definitely a case of can't please everyone.
Thomas M Kane disagrees with some of the corrections about radioactivity. According to his textbooks, his numbers are mostly right. Ahh, science. Remember, science is a method of thinking and acting, not a fixed set of facts. If you're just parroting what someone else says without testing it, you're not being very scientific.
Darcy Stratton is another person deeply annoyed by the sexism inherent in the AD&D game. These strength limits have knock-on effects on classes acessable and maximum level, especially to demihumans. (Why the hell are gnomes and dwarves even more dimorphic than humans? Realism is not a good justification there.) This degree of bigotry is unacceptable in my escapism! Amazing just how much of a deal a few points difference becomes when it's personal. Fraid you'll have to wait another 3 years for the new edition to fix that. Or play BD&D. They've never been sexist over there.
Dawn of a new age: Welcome to a new era. We've already seen a few of the new changes, but here Kim really talks about what he's up too. The people have spoken, and he's done his best to sort out the signal from the noise. Of course, one of the things they've spoken most clearly on is that there's too much sci-fi in Dragon. Buncha philistines. :shakes head: So the Ares section is gone, and we've cut our intended amount of sci-fi per issue in half. Hopefully that'll strike a balance between the people who like it, and the people who would rather see it eliminated entirely. Computer gaming is of course, on the up, and they intend to keep track of that, which I have no objection too at all. The trickier question, is of course, how they recapture the magic of the old issues, whatever the hell that was. The decision they've come to is to stop worrying so much about making sense and getting everything perfectly lined up, and publish articles more on the basis of them being interesting than if they have solid rules. That sounds like it has the potential to go oh so very wrong, and bring in a new glut of overpowered, poorly thought out optional stuff. Set your quality control filters to defcon 2. This does not look promising. I said you could have phrased your questions better.
Dinosaurs get another feature on them. This is one of those things that turns up again and again. They're really trying to go for a definitive take this time, with an epic 18 page article that hopefully will keep people satisfied at least until the next edition comes around. Taking a quite scientific approach to the subject this time, instead of listing tons of discrete species, they decide to give one set of basic stats for each genera, and then show you how to scale things up and down for a whole bunch of variants to challenge groups of various power levels with. Aetosaurs, Anklyosaurs, Carnosaurs, Ceratopsians, Giant sea turtles, Coelurosaurs, Crocodilians, Cynodonts, Deinonychusaurs, Dicynodont, Ichthyosaurs, Labyrinthodonts, Moasaurs, Nothosaurs, Ornithomimosaurs, Ormothpods, Phytosaurs, Placodonts, Pleiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Prosauropods, Proterosucians, Pseudosucians, Pterosaurs, Rhynchosaurs, Sauropods, Scelidosaurs and Stegosaurs. Whew. That ought to keep you going for quite some time, especially if you remember to include lots of variants on each body type as actually existed back then. It includes plenty of advice on how to run a game where dinosaurs feature, either tangentally, or playing a big part, along with lost world areas full of flora from their era as well. A very comprehensive article, that is both well researched, and keeps one eye firmly on making sure you produce a playable game with this stuff instead of getting bogged down in historical detail. While not quite as good as most of the planar articles in sheer epicness and imagination, it's just as good in terms of opening up a milieu further for play, and is in very much the same spirit. Which Is something I do like. Other eras and areas of the world can be almost as alien as other universes, and you can have fantastic adventures while barely traveling in a conventional sense. A very solid article indeed.
Battletech! Pilot your own mech! Hello to another fun game.
Revenge of the nobodies: Now here's a good demonstration of their desire to tackle more quirky topics. Commoners may seem innocuous, but you ignore them at your peril, for they provide much of the infrastructure that you depend on, regardless of level, (unless you're a live off nature type like druids and rangers) and slaughtering them will not benefit you in the long run, even if you have the power. So we have lots of demonstrations of how and why the peasants might become revolting. Many of them are incredibly funny, while also making a twisted kind of sense when you apply proper logic and knowledge of human nature to the fantastic elements of the setting. I can certainly picture tedious 'elf and safety people trying to force all the halflings to wear shoes, and the resulting backlash; and we've already had one examination of the support industry spell components can build up last issue. Disrupting parts of the setting that people have previously taken for granted is always interesting, if sometimes rather frustrating, and it does make a good learning experience. A deserved classic, that I fully intend to steal from when I get the chance.
The role of computers: Hmm. For their second column, the Lesser's tackle one of the great old games of yore. Rogue. A game that's so distinctive, it has an entire subgenre named after it. Create a character, and then venture into a randomly generated (and exceedingly brutal) dungeon. Explore and fight your way down to the bottom level to find the macguffin. Most games would stop there. But no, you then have to fight your way back up again, facing even tougher enemies along the way. You can save the game and stop for a rest, but if you die, it automatically wipes your slot, and you have to start from 1st level, in an all new dungeon where your previous knowledge of the routes and object positioning is useless. It's a very direct analogue of your old skool dungeoncrawling experience, encouraging extreme caution and clever tactical use of items rather than running in swinging if you want to survive and win. With it's tremendous challenge and huge amount of replayability, it, and games based off it such as nethack, still enjoy a small but highly devoted fanbase today. This is a topic I'm very pleased to see them cover, as while it may not actually involve roleplaying, it's a very close relation of RPG's, and has plenty of relevance to gamers. It's a great example of how both computer games and RPG's have become far more forgiving over the years, with way less permanent death and having to start from the beginning if you lose. If they keep up with this kind of stuff, then I'm definitely going to enjoy their new direction.
Cloaked in magic: Not everything has changed around here, however. Yes, its another one of those articles where Elminster elaborates on a particular class of magical items, giving us a whole load of interesting variants to play with. After all, why mess with a winning formula? So here's 9 cloaks, all of which are pretty damn handy.
The cloak of battle traps your opponent's weapons, allowing you to cut them down unopposed.
The cloak of comfort protects you from the weather, and even magical heat and cold based attacks.
The Cloak of fangs is a single use device which allows you to suicide in style, taking out everyone around you.
The cloak of many colors is the inspiration for a terrible terrible musical. :p
The cloak of reflection reflects certain spells, ruining attackers days.
The cloak of stars allows you to unleash powerful spells stored in it's threads, but unpredictably, as it's hard to tell which star corresponds to which power.
The cloak of survival isn't as impressive as the ring of the same name, but as it never runs out of charges, that's not such a terrible deal. 10 minutes survival in space is still a lot better than nothing.
The cloak of symbiotic protection is one of Ed's delightfully quirky creations. It may be a living organism itself, and in return for a slight drain on your HP, it also protects you from fungal infestations, disease, and most critically, the various oozes, slimes and molds that can so ruin your day without a proper battle in old skool dungeons. This may be a nuisance, or incredibly useful, depending on your DM.
The cloak of the shield allows you to generate a protective wall of force around you. It can also be used actively as a telekinetic object, and definitely rewards inventiveness.
While these aren't as powerful as say, his magical swords, Ed has once again managed to produce items that are a cut above the rest in terms of both descriptive detail, and inventiveness of powers. As ever, it'll be a real choice as to which one to wear if you have several, as they are all useful, albeit in different situations. Better spoiled for choice than having an obvious optimal one that makes any other build look stupid from a metagame perspective though.
Dragon Issue 112: August 1986
part 2/3
Armor, piece by piece: And the run of really cool articles comes to an end, with a little one which introduces a rather complicated new system for hit locations, and the amount different types of armour protect you on different parts of your body. While not a terrible idea, implementing this will add 2 extra rolls to every single attack in combat. I really have no desire for the amount of slowdown that would cause. Very much a filler article.
TSR previews is the wrong way round again. Get your act together! Anyway, next month sees the release of the compiled version of the GDQ module series. Follow on from T1-4 and A1-4 to make the ultimate AD&D adventure path, taking you from 1st level to the mid-teens, and challenging a god. Woo. What will they do for an encore? I'll tell you one thing, it won't be I9: Day of Al'Akbar. You'll already be way too high level for the tale of this legendary artifact.
On the fiction side, Dragonlance finishes it's second trilogy, with Test of the Twins. Looks like going to the abyss is currently the cool thing for big heroes to do. Question is, how will they get out? We shall see.
Marvel super heroes gets a pair of gamebooks from our husband and wife team. Jeff Grubb gives us The amazing spider-man in City in Darkness, while Kate Novak delivers Captain America in Rockets Red Glare. Talk about keeping it in the family.
Zeb Cook continues to push Oriental Adventures with a one-on-one gamebook set there. Warlords features the battle between the usurper of the throne, and it's rightful heir. Who will triumph in your game?
Gamma world gets it's first module in ages. GW6: Alpha factor. The start of an epic series in which you quest to restore civilization. Will it all get published, or will the game peter out again before they get it done? Don't try and make an epic if you don't have the budget.
And finally, we have a very intriguing development. Steve Jackson (the american one) is collaborating with TSR to bring you Battle Road, a solo Car Wars gamebook. I never expected that. Was it any good? Did it help expand their fanbase?
The ultimate article index is this month's centerpiece, the last time they would attempt to fit in details on everything they've done. As it eats up 20 pages of extra small type, you can understand why. There comes a point where you can't keep looking back, and holding on to everything you've ever done; but have to move on, and this definitely seems like theirs. This is also the perfect time for me to look over the first 10 and a bit years of the magazine, and reminisce about the bits that most caught my attention. (well, given how few articles this issue has by comparison with their recent ones, this'd be a rather short review if I didn't. )
A is for alignment. We've seen it go from the three categories, to 5, to 9, with a couple of odd and amusing variants, plus a whole load of articles and flamewars over the years. It's form is one of the things that makes D&D unique, and separates it from both reality and most fiction. There are plenty of different ways it can be used, but just as often, people have decided it wasn't worth the hassle and pretty much ignored it in their games. That's the advantage and drawback of vaguely defined, sweeping systems. Everyone will see something different in their own image.
B is for Boot Hill. One of their first other games, this got a moderate amount of coverage in early issues, but like so many things, wound up fading away unheralded as the sales couldn't compete with D&D. It really should have come out a decade or two earlier, as Westerns were already in decline by the late 70's. At least they tried. It's not their fault D&D outsold everything else they did by several factors.
C is for Campaigns. One of the big ways in which D&D has already evolved during the course of the magazine is a much greater emphasis on building a detailed world. People like Katharine Kerr and Lew Pulsipher have driven this cause forward over the last few years, with advice both interesting and dull on building people and places, and weaving them into a coherent universe. We've also had stuff on proper DM'ing, including rather too much on how to depower or reset a game that's got out of hand. This is one topic that isn't going away any time.
D is of course for Dragon. Every year we get at least one article on them. Some are good, some are bad, and some are mediocre. But the important thing is that the namesake of both the game and the magazine remains one of their most fleshed out monsters, with tons of variants usable in all sorts of rules, suitable for any campaign. From rampaging monster to sage to urbane loan shark to embodiment of the land, they can do all sorts of things. Like alignment, without them, you aren't really playing D&D.
E is for Ed Greenwood and Elminster. By a big margin both their most prolific and capable all round writer. By coincidence, It's also for Ecology. Fitting, really, as he's produced some of our most kick-ass ecologies, and Elminster has participated in some of them. Long may he contribute to the magazine.
F is for From the Sorcerer's scroll. Gary's regular column in which he pontificated on whatever came to mind. New rules, news, reviews, vitriol. All have been thrown in and stirred together to produce a fascinating, if not always palatable stew for us to consume. He always had a rather different writing style to everyone else, but somehow it worked. Genius, madness, or both? Whichever, he created an entire new genre of games and took it to multimillion sale success within a decade, so he must have been doing something right. And his contributions to the magazine allowed us to see his ideas raw, as he came up with them. Do you only want to see people's ideas once they've gone through layers of redrafting, editing, polishing and committee input? You're missing out on a lot if you do.
G is for Gods. One of the biggest sources of new crunch and fluff has been articles on deities. From the seemingly endless followups to G:DG&H introducing new real world pantheons, to Len's Suel pantheon stuff which also developed the idea of cleric powers being differentiated by the god they serve. The cosmic beings of your universe are an important part of it, especially when 1/4 of your PC's are supposed to get their powers from serving one. Not defining them properly will result in a shallow setting.
H is for Hell. One of this magazine's and Ed Greenwood's shining moments are the three epic articles he did on the nine hells. Between them, we have nearly 50 pages of creatures, places and ideas, all brilliantly constructed and evocatively written. Not strictly judeo-christian, but still drawing heavily on that mythos, this is a great place to adventure. You can play it as the ultimate hack and slash dungeon, world spanning conspiracy horror, or dangerous high stakes political negotiations. Whichever way, it's awesome with an extra helping of awesomesauce on top.
I is for Imagination. As in use your own, goddamnit! The number of letters they have to deal with from people quibbling over the official ruling on stupid details must drive them mad. Canon is not important. The game is yours to twist and add to as you see fit. If you want prepackaged entertainment to simply consume, go to another hobby.
J is for Jesters. The mascot and ringleader for their yearly dose of april mischief. Because having a sense of humour is important. The real world is full of ridiculous things, (look down your own trousers if you doubt me for a second. ) and if you're all serious, all the time, people wind up ignoring you. By injecting strange and sometimes silly elements into an overall serious product, you massively increase it's appeal, making it more likely to be paid attention too, and eventually taken seriously, ironically. They might have very different writing styles, but one of the reasons both Gary and Ed are so successful is because they are often rather witty and amusing, and sometimes silly.
K is for Kender. An excellent demonstration of my previous point. Dragonlance's cheese factor has always been a bit too high for me to digest. ( Although I did try back in the day. To my eternal shame, I made my highest set of stats ever rolled legitimately with method I a Kender Ranger/Bard. I still have the character sheet.) but plenty of people have eaten it up, and the world still has a decent fanbase. Honorable mention also goes to the Kzinti, who've also got a surprising amount of airtime in the magazine. I have no objection at all to Larry Niven's stuff showing up here, so those were welcome cameos.
L is for Leonard Lakofka and Leomund's tiny hut. Of all the regular contributors to the magazine, he's been the one I've disagreed with most frequently and consistently. He has managed to produce some cool stuff, such as the elemental planes stuff, incremental saves, and of course, Carnivorous flying squirrels :D, but on the whole, I haven't enjoyed reading stuff written by him. What does this say about me? What does this say about him? Damned if I can figure it out.
M is for module. We've seen plenty of them in the magazine, but that's a thing of the past. Still, we have more than enough to take you from starting level to early teens and still have some choices of route. And that's not even counting the non D&D ones. I look forward to trying some of them out. Honorable mention also goes to Minarian Legends. Divine Right became the wargame that got the most consistent coverage in the magazine, with both rules variants, and a richly detailed setting built up for it over a couple of years. It really would be a great candidate for a revival or licensing as a setting to other media.
Dragon Issue 112: August 1986
part 3/3
N is for Nerf. Putting stuff back in pandoras box once you've taken them out is always a tricky business. In another marvelously appropriate coincidence it's also for ninja. One of the classes introduced in the magazine that most needed a little nerfing. The mysterious orient is always a good excuse for people to sneak in a little power creep.
O is for Oriental, in another incidence of one thought leading appropriately to the next. The love of eastern stuff did not start with anime, or even kung fu movies. Forget not Fu Manchu and the many pulp stores that featured mysterious characters from the east, and all the, erm, fun our ancestors got up to and wrote about in colonial times. While we have seen a few articles, this is a rich seam for mining that they can still do a lot more on in this magazine.
P is for Psionics. While generally neglected, it does hold the distinction of getting the themed issue with the most articles devoted to it's topic. Honorable mention also goes to polearms, which have got less attention than the flak they get would credit. Sure Gary was interested in them, but there's plenty of things that he was interested in more. Just because other games neglect them, does not make D&D weird.
Q is for Quasi-elemental planes. One of the very interesting things for me has been seeing how the planes have gradually evolved and built up over the years in the magazine. Along with alignment, this is where the normally fairly vague pseudomedieval setting of AD&D becomes very specific and unique. And while huge swathes of the multiverse still only have a few pages on them, this continues to change and evolve as the years pass. They've already produced several classic articles on the planes, and I look forward to seeing what future issues bring on this matter.
R is for Rehash. We've already had several takes on quite a few topics, and it seems likely that the proportion of reappearing ideas will only increase. So it goes. All stories are from around 7 plots and a dozen character archetypes. Most music is made up of just 12 notes. It's all in how you combine them, and in what order. Boredom is in the mind of the beholder.
S is for Sage advice. While it has yet to reach it's glory days when Skip will reign for what seemed like an eternity, it's already been pretty entertaining reading. I've missed it since it went on hiatus in issue 79. When will it be back? Good question. I'm certainly awaiting that eagerly, so I can get my snark on again.
T is for Traveller. The non TSR owned RPG that's somehow managed to get the most coverage in the magazine, including a couple of specials focussed on it. Interesting how much it pioneered both rules technology, and things like splatbooks that are common products these days. Another game that richly deserves more credit in the history of the magazine, and gaming in general.
U is for Unearthed Arcana. Another case where we got to see a book gradually built up in pieces in the magazine. (and then erratad afterwards in it as well.) A commercial success, but critically very divisive. I suspect we may see further repercussions from it's release in the magazine.
V is for Vampires. They get everywhere, and D&D is no exception, with the biggest selling module ever being a vampire one, and plenty of weird vampire variants showing up in the magazine. Since ravenloft will go on to become a full setting campaign, and making october issues horror focussed becomes more common later, I expect we'll see plenty more. Honorable mention also goes to Valley elves. Of all Gary's more ill-thought out creations, these are probably the most effortlessly mockable, as the filk showed.
W is for witch. Born from a mysterious article that is still uncredited as far as I know, it has since undergone a couple of revisions in the magazine plus appearing in a best of, thanks to demand. It's the closest they've come to putting a different slant on spellcasting. It's also for Wargaming, and it's checkered history in the magazine. Originally, the magazine was formed as part of their efforts to deliberately separate RPG's and wargames, then after Little Wars was merged, they made regular appearances from 79-81, before disappearing again. They tried to get them back in with the Battlesystem, but that failed. Will they try again before giving up for good? Guess there's only one way to find out.
X is for Xochiyaoyotl. This is devoted to all the unpronounceable and ridiculous names that people have come up with over the years. Be they from other cultures, based off bad puns, or simply made up by stringing random syllables together, there's been no shortage of these in the magazine. Much amusement can be derived by mocking them. As I've said before, this may not be entirely a bad thing. It keeps people thinking about your work more than if all the facts were there, understood and accepted without comment.
Y is for Yefar's Magic Mirrors. This is really an opportunity for me to praise all the wonderfully quirky magic items that they've put in the magazine over the years. It's also a commentary on the way certain writers slip stuff from their own personal campaigns into general articles. Ed Greenwood is once again the biggest offender, but plenty of other people have tried it with varying levels of success. As with monsters and modules, there are probably enough to outfit an entire party over a campaign, but it would be a rather odd D&D campaign.
Z is for Zethra. Notable primarily for being one of Ed's few misteps so far, they've obviously stuck in my mind for precisely that reason. This is another case where we don't really have much to choose from, so that's the best I can come up with for this letter.
Dire invasion: Enough reminiscing. Onward. As Kim promised, though the Ares section is gone, they're still putting the stuff that would have gone in it in about the same place. Jeff is busy this month, so he cedes the Marvel contribution to William Tracey, who has decided to tackle Rom and the spaceknights of Galador. Earth was being infiltrated by yet another shapeshifting alien race, and it fell to him to deal with them, having been sworn to combat them wherever they may rear their ugly heads. (as if the skrulls weren't bad enough. What happens when the Dire wraiths try and infiltrate the Skrulls and vice versa. Nothing would ever get done with all the quadruple crosses and scooby doo reveals. Anyway, we get stats for Rom, Both Starshines, Cindy Adams, The Dire wraiths, Rocketeers, Hell hounds, and Hybrid. We also get character generation alterations for those of you who want to play a spaceknight yourself. Which is rather more player-useful material than Jeff usually gives us. Nice to see different people putting their own spin on this gameline. One person doing everything is not the way to make a well-rounded universe.
For a fistful of credits: Our final article this month is a star frontiers one. It suffers from the problem of being incompatible with their latest supplement, which is a bit embarrassing. Still, as with UA, not everyone wants to update their campaigns to take account of every new supplement, and they still want crunch. So here's a whole bunch of new equipment to upgrade your characters with, if you have the money. This is pretty useful stuff, so there may be a certain amount of power creep involved. As ever, I am faced with the problem that I can't judge the precise details of the crunch for games I don't have, only steal the underlying ideas. Still, they are pretty good ideas,so that elevates this article from the dull, to the realms of so-so. Still not the best way to finish off the issue, though.
Dragonmirth has plenty of actual dragons in it. Snarf gets to meet a spaceman, and humorous misunderstandings are had yet again. Wormy reveals the dark side of wargaming, and just why it is illegal.
Now this is an amazing issue. As both a closer to the old era, and an introduction to a new one, it succeeds spectacularly, with a real change of tone, overall, from recent issues. It has a whole load of classic articles, and reminds me of lots of the old ones as well. I'm not entirely convinced by their new goals as stated, but if they can keep this up, then they should continue to entertain until their next editorial shift. Lets hope they can get the good articles they need to power the machine with.
Dragon Issue 113: September 1986
part 1/3
111 pages. Kim would like to apologize for any slipshod editing in recent, and the next few issues. He has a good excuse this time, as he's been splitting his attention, to do his first proper hardback book for AD&D. The wilderness survival guide. He's learned more about the open air while sitting in front of a computer screen than any man should. You ought to watch out. You'll burn yourself out, doing double shifts like that. Anyway, back to the new Dragon. Lets see if they can maintain the momentum of their reboot.
In this issue:
Letters: Only one letter this month, asking about the viability of Ranger/thieves when they have conflicting alignment requirements. Roger Moore takes the role of justifier this issue, with a very long answer. One of the pleasures of being editor is being able to actively alter the articles sent in, not just fixing up things like spelling and cutting for size, but also changing the rules and adding new bits based upon what he would like to see in the magazine. Yes, this may sometimes annoy the original author, but that's something he's willing to live with. Strong editorial control is good for a gameline. Otherwise, we end up with an inconsistent kitchen sink. And those spill all over the place when you try and do the washing in them ;) Another interesting, and possibly controversial look at the mindset of the people behind the scenes.
The forum gets it's rules and code of conduct revised this month. Please try and keep entries to 250 words or less, you must remember to include your name and address, stick to one topic per letter, no personal attacks, be polite, we reserve the right to edit letters. How very tiresome. Guess they were getting too many people sending in vitriol unprintable in a family friendly magazine. Once again, I am very glad for the rise of the internet. There, you don't usually get censored until after people have had a chance to see what you have to say. Anyway, back to the pontification.
Bruce Lowekamp thinks that Len Lakofka's system for animal aging doesn't really add up. The idea isn't bad, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Isn't that what I've been saying quite regularly?
Ralph Sizer returns to further clarify Locals aren't all yokels, and discredit the strawman attacks against him. Given the nature of the D&D system, there have to be a decent amount of high level characters around for the society to work as it does. If you don't include that level of realism and internal consistency, you're just creating problems for yourself along the line.
Mike Johnson gives us a load of clarifications about how underwater diving works. Seems like that happens whenever they cover a real world topic in anything less than exhaustive detail. Yawn.
Danny Kretzer is very much in support of Unearthed Arcana. It's not just new races and classes, it's tons of spells, weapons and items as well. There's something for everyone. Even if you already have most of this stuff from the magazine, it's more than worth it so you don't have to drag all those issues to the group and find the right pages in the right one all the time. You ought to reconsider about not buying it, Scott Maykrantz.
Jeff Klein thinks that the limitations on the D&D spellcasting system are perfectly sensical in terms of what the various attributes represent in the world. People should stop trying to pick them apart and just get on with enjoying the game.
Thomas Kane is not in favour of a world where magic is commonly used in a technological fashion to transform society. If things are too comfortable, where's the motivation to adventure? Every solution creates new problems, my dear. There are plot hooks aplenty to be found in magitech worlds.
Corey Ehmke is suffering from a dreadful case of badwrongfun. His players are playing monty haul games and enjoying them more than they are his. You've got to help me, before I lose them all and can't GM at all! See, this is the problem. Fun is the most important aspect of a game, not depth, craft, consistency or fairness. If it's not fun, all the effort you put into the other aspects is pointless. Harsh truth of the entertainment industry, as homemade youtube videos so aptly demonstrate.
Welcome to hades: Yay! Another bumper sized planar article. It's been way too long since we had one of those. This presents a quite different view of the place to that used in planescape, focussing almost entirely on the greek portion of the plane. It is a pretty miserable place, full of suffering souls and fiendish creatures on their own inscrutable and often pointless tasks. But is certainly isn't the grey, all crushing nightmare of depression that it would later turn into. Anthraxus is still in charge of the daemons, who still live here full time. Healing magic simply doesn't work. Once again, a huge chunk of the article is devoted to spell by spell listings of their changes (they really have got to change that, they just don't have the space, especially now UA is out.) All in all, the place is both less playable, and less distinctive than it would later become. While not as annoying to me as the Gladsheim article ( because there's not as much crap railroading DM admonitions), this once again suffers from the problem of making an entire universe seem tiny and focussed around just a few characters and locations. This is another definite disappointment compared to the great ideas of the earlier ones on the astral and hells. What is up with that? This is no good at all.
A capital idea: Setting up a business. Not the most obvious route for an adventurer. There are several ways you can keep this fun. You can treat this as something they do between adventures, leaving the day to day operations in the hands of someone else, and letting a few rolls determine how it grows or shrinks. You can handle it like domain management, and the systems probably ought to be compatible, as they are doing similar things over similar timescales. Or you can handle it the two-fisted way, hunting down contracts and big scoops personally, going out and prospecting for new sources of revenue, and generally doing for your profession what indiana jones does for archaeology. Any of those can be fun. What probably will not be fun is determining expenditures and income on a day to day basis by calculating the population of the neighboring region, and what proportion are likely to be interested in your product, cost of buying wholesale, pay for workers, optimum price for selling to get profit without driving them away to cheaper rivals, etc etc. And unfortunately, this article suggests doing exactly that. Epic fail. Not the kind of thing I want anywhere near my escapism, thank you very much.
Dragon Issue 113: September 1986part 2/3
The role of books: The norby chronicles by Janet and Isaac Asimov is a set of tales about a very special robot, and the troubles he gets himself into. It puts a lighter slant on Asimovs famous robot stories, oriented towards younger readers, without sacrificing the underlying philosophical points his other books make. Hopefully it'll havedrawn in some new readers who go on to sample the rest of his marvelous canon.
The curse of the giant hogweed by Charlotte MacLeod takes a character more used to mundane mysteries into a fantasy world, and trying to maintain his logical attitude in the face of witches, shapeshifted creatures, and of course, giant hogweed. It maintains a sense of humour without making the characters seem ridiculous.
Dreadnought! by Diane Carey is a star trek novel about the aforementioned class of ships, hinted at in the technical manuals, but never shown on screen. It shows a general strong respect for the canon of the series, and tying everything together, while maintaining a fast paced plot. In general, the reviewer is pretty positive about it.
Heroes in hell by Janet Morris et all is an attempt to jump on the shared world bandwagon that currently seems to be on the up. However, without a strong setting bible and editorial control, it fails to create a consistent world between the stories. And without that, what really is the point? Even big name writers produce less than the sum of their parts if not properly co-ordinated.
The duchess of kneedeep by Atanielle Annyn Noel is a playful and punful tale of marital strife that manages to put plenty of depth and drama into the plot without resorting to violence every other chapter. She even manages to slip in reference to another Dragon alumnus. I find myself rather tempted.
The hounds of the morrigan by Pat O'Shea is a book I loved as a kid. It steals liberally from celtic myth to create an incredibly detailed and surprisingly contemporary book that you don't need to have read the original legends to enjoy. Like Tolkien's opus, this was produced over a huge timescale, and comes strongly recommended.
The dream palace by Brynne Stephens tries to push the amount of depth in the choose your own adventure genre. Of course, you have to make sacrifices, and rather than making the book huge, they decided to reduce the number of viable paths you can take to get to the end. The level of commercialism in the competition at the end is also a bit galling.
The tales people tell: Y'know, the real world manages to have weird enough folklore without any proven supernatural stuff. Why shouldn't fantasy worlds have outlandish legends that aren't true. It might irritate players when they've trekked through the wilderness for months seeking a plot hook, and they find out
Spoiler
the black pearl is just a big pearl, no magic powers at all
but it'll make the world more real. An excellent idea, but of course one that requires lots of prep time, or the willingness to steal and adapt from existing sources. Guess you'll have to choose if you're willing to put that kind of effort in for something that would cause player walkouts with the wrong group. And make sure that the journey is a fun part of the game as much achieving as the objectives. So this is an article I'm divided on, liking the idea, but knowing many people wouldn't. Oh well. Can't please everyone.
Magic and Morality: Mike Gray contributes this month's computer feature, an exceedingly positive review of Ultima IV. Like Rogue, this comes far closer to simulating the D&D experience than most CRPG's, allowing you a good deal of freedom, both in the objectives you pursue and order in which you do them, and also in your moral position. While you are supposed to be good if you want to win the game, you can choose to be a bad guy instead and the game won't railroad you away from it. You have to experiment with mixing up ingredients to produce spells, make real moral choices, talk to everyone, and explore everywhere. It also includes some nice little extras, like a proper cloth map and lots of booklets that it really will help you to read before playing. Another great reminder that there were plenty of cool games back then, quite a few that did things that most games now don't do, because it was so much easier and cheaper to develop games and so designers had more leeway to experiment with them. And now you can get most of them for free via emulators and roms. (not that I endorse illegal downloading, of course) Indulge your nostalgia. Go play.
Clout for clerics: Like they've done with fighters and rangers recently, it's now cleric's turn to get their follower tables examined and expanded. This article takes a slightly different tack to the previous two, eschewing tables to instead embed the rules stuff directly into the prose. They are slightly more generous than the core rules, but as much of the followers are embedded into the community around your temple, and none are more than half your level, this isn't going to be adventure breaking. This does tack on a bunch of new rules which aren't related to the general domain management system, which may be problematic if you try and use them both at once. Such is the problem with inventing new subsystems. You'll have to pick and stick with one.
A saddle isn't enough: Hmm. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a messenger was lost. For want of a messenger, an army wasn't ready when the enemies came knocking on the king's castle and the country was lost. Or in this case, the stirrup. Funny how such an innocuous looking device can prove so important. That annoying elves like Legolas can ride bareback and still kick much ass on the field of battle without falling off becomes a good deal more impressive when you actually know a little about the technical side of riding. It's minutinae, but minutinae I didn't know about before, so this manages to hold my interest this time around. If you're playing a gritty game, you would do well to heed it, and thereby frustrate your players when caught improperly prepared. Muahahaha.
Combat complexity: An article for the Conan rpg. Another case where it's been out for a few years, yet the magazine has paid no attention to it before. Guess even though the Ares section is gone, they still want to give non D&D games decent coverage, so a little more general fantasy doesn't go amiss. Anyway, this introduces one of our perennial topics. Hit locations. Seems if a game doesn't include them (and many don't, as they can introduce a lot of extra complexity.) someone'll create optional rules for them. Thankfully, they manage to keep things fairly simple, and curiously enough, the system seems more friendly to the idea than D&D anyway. It also seems pretty brutal, but thems the breaks. Nothing particularly ground-breaking here.
Cardboard dragon: Another interesting experiment is this month's centerpiece. We saw an example of Dennis Kaufman's excellent origami work on the cover of issue 100. Now, he brings you your own cardboard dragon assembly kit. Cut out the various bits and pieces, fold them up and glue them together, and hey presto, an embarrassing mess that doesn't look anything like as good as the photos in the magazine ;) Joking aside, this is another pretty cool idea. Hopefully at least a few of you managed to put it together and keep it intact for a few years. What toys will they come up next? Lets hope that with modules gone we'll be seeing a few more of those fun little complete games Tom Wham and C C Stoll used to give us.
Bubba the barbarian says "Don't eat Quiche!" Subscribe to Dungeon before it's even out! How nice of them. Now you can make sure you get every issue, right from the ground floor. Lets hope there are some more people who took them up on that, because our dungeon magazine reviews stalled ages ago, and I really would like it if someone would pick them up again and try and keep pace with me, now I've reached that era.
Dragon Issue 113: September 1986
part 3/3
TSR Previews is once again the wrong way around. D&D gets DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor. Dave Arneson is back, and he's bad! How did that work? Gary's embroiled in mad political crap, and the other founder is allowed to return. Hmm. I would rather like to know more about the behind the scenes maneuvering that led to this.
AD&D gets I10 Ravenloft II: Gryphon Hill. What is Strahd doing in faraway Mordentshire, working with Azalin the lich? And just as importantly, who's going to foil his plans? Will it be the same adventurers that attacked him last time? This thread of history definitely thickens.
Our 10th AD&D adventure gamebook is a Dragonlance one, Lords of Doom. Penetrate the evil city of sanction. What do you there? The synopsis doesn't say. Would it be too much to hope that you kill them all? Nah. If good won forever, they wouldn't be able to keep milking the gameline.
Marvel gets MH9: Gates of what if? Seems like a standard opposite universe romp.
Finally, Agent 13 get's his 3rd book, Agent 13 and the acolytes of darkness. Once again the description is pretty sketchy, but I guess this is pulp. You're probably getting exactly what it says on the tin. Fight evil cult, get captured, cliffhanger chapter end, listen to insane monologue, escape deathtrap, win, hooray!
Profiles: Keith Parkinson is another of our well known artists. He used to be a drummer, but decided to become an artist instead because you get more creative control. He was introduced to D&D by a friend, realized that he could do better than their early crop of artists, and went and offered his services. And so he became one of their second wave artists, along with Elmore and Easley. As usual, we see that you've got to be a hard worker to succeed as an artist, and striking a balance between not being put off by criticism, but still learning from the constructive points of it is tricky but useful.
Bruce Heard is our acquisitions coordinator, which means he's another of the poor sods who has to read through hundreds of manuscripts and find the gems amongst the dross. ( Once again we see that as the company has expanded, they raise the bar for allowing new people onboard. ) Born in france to a US soldier and a french woman, he is exceedingly multi-lingual. He first got a job as a translator of D&D stuff, but soon moved on to bigger and better things, and is turning out to be a pretty good writer in his own right as well. He seems to be one of the people who really pushed Mystara in a more high magic direction, which is a good thing in my book. I'm really looking forward to seeing his future contributions to the line.
Fiction: A difficult undertaking by Harry Turtledove. Hmm. Interesting. This is a fairly well known author. What's he doing in here? They must agree with me, because they let him put 9 page story in the magazine. A dramatic tale of barbarians vs civilization, as they try to outwit one another to break a siege, with strongly defined leads on both sides. It manages to stay serious right up to the end, at which point it lapses into using one of the worst puns ever as it's punchline. Which certainly makes it memorable, at any rate. I'm not sure if I should praise him for that, or groan in annoyance. Eh, even if I can't decide if I like it or not, I'm definitely not bored by it, which lets face it, would be worse.
Easy as 1, 2, 3: Rick Swan! Another of my personal fave authors debuts in Dragon. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm is easily quashed, as this turns out to be another boring NPC creation advice piece. Also, Playing out scenarios and questions for your NPC in your head to determine how they'd react? How very amateur dramatics. You can already see why he fit right in in the 2nd ed era. Keep plugging away, honing that craft. Come back when you're ready to give us something really cool.
One roll to go: Hmm. This is a clever little bit of tableage. Want to streamline the rolling of vast amounts of attacks and saves? Determine the odds, roll percentile dice, and consult the tables to determine how many succeed. Can handle up to 20 rolls at once. How very handy. This is definitely one to note down and use when those kobolds unleash their onslaughts of burning arrows and acid flasks. It could probably be refined (d1000 would only take one more die, and increase the precision hugely, saving time that this method wastes resolving rounding errors. ) but it is a great idea. The math wonk in me definitely approves.
Top [secret] gun: Looks like another movie has entered the public consciousness, and is already producing :rolleyes: worthy puns. As you may have inferred, this is about putting fighter planes into Top Secret. A considerably easier thing to do than incorporating nukes, but still a case where the spotlight may be taken by one player, and everyone else has to sit the scene out, or the whole team can wind up dying from a failed roll. So here's a pretty simplified set of rules for flying and air combat. This should keep it from bogging down and taking over entire sessions, allowing you to get back to the espionage. Neither very impressive or utterly crap, this is just another filler article really.
Minimag: Another example of their renewed desire to include random fun stuff to keep the magazine fresh. Here we have a couple of pages of Marvel dioramas built and photographed by Mike Sitkiewicz. How very curious. Once again, this has managed to raise a few smiles, and keep this issue surprising. This is the kind of thing that's cool as an experiment, but I probably wouldn't want to see as a regular feature. I am curious how he managed to get spidey suspended on a thin support like that. Either that thread is stronger than it looks, or there's a hidden wire somewhere.
Cold steel: Gamma world gets another article designed to provide new challenges to higher level PC's. Like the Exterminator, these are a bunch of robots from the past, designed to kick much ass, and now their creators are gone, they simply continue following their programming, causing much inconvenience to anyone who happens to fulfill the wrong criteria. The Cybohunter, the Robohunter, and the Manhunter, each getting increasingly large and deadly (and in the last case, it has lots of ancillary drones, so even if you split up and run away, you're still screwed. ) While nowhere as ridiculous as the giant mecha from issue 101, these are still nothing to be sneezed at, and make considerably more sense in terms of setting integration. With any luck, the cutting down on sci-fi stuff means only the better articles get through, and this is a pretty solid piece.
Star cops: Looks like playing law enforcement has come to Traveller as well, with this set of rules for playing characters both active and retired. While you might not get as much freedom, you'll definitely face a challenging life. You might want to fudge the rolls a little if you're playing active officers, so all the PC's are kept on the same assignments, and no-one gets stuck in a desk job watching the others go off and have fun. You'll pick up a different set of skills to the military guys, but chances are you can still get pretty badass. Another solid but unexceptional addition to the many many career choices Traveler players now have before them. You could have an entire team without duplicating careers once. Which is a good thing from a niche protection perspective. Now all you've got to do is keep track of where all the rules for the different careers are found. :p
GURPs fantasy. The first supplement, but not the last. Lets get this treadmill rolling. We spent 5 years developing this. Now it's time to make some profit.
Wormy has a troll toll bridge. The rat is not the brains of the outfit. Dragonmirth has lots of things going wrong. Snarf realizes a year has almost passed and he has to get back quick. Good thing he has a spaceship then.
The official AD&D paint set gets advertised again.
Well, they certainly seem to be keeping to their promises. There have been quite a few surprises in this issue, including some very amusing bits. However, they were also right in saying not all of them would be to everyone's taste, and some of them would be by people who don't necessarily know what they're talking about. And no matter how well considered the editorial policy, they can't turn a sows ear into a silk purse. If they don't have the material to work with, they can't make a truly brilliant magazine. Still hopefully they'll continue to find and deliver a few surprises per issue to keep them from feeling like a waste of time.
Dragon Issue 114: October 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Hmm. Rather risque cover this month. That veil was totally added on afterwards to sell this pic to a family friendly magazine! I call shenanigans. On the plus side, they're taking halloween seriously this year. But will we be scared? That's the important question. And if so, in what way? Visceral horror? Looming dread? Fear for the future of the hobby? ;) We shall see. Turn the page, open the door, and lets hope the giant bees are friendly.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who fears the coming of 2nd ed. Will you keep it compatible with the old edition? Can we return our old books for a reduced price on the new ones. David Cook takes the mic to assure everyone that 2nd ed will be as similar as possible, only with the crap bits no-one uses anyway taken out, and the rest better organized. A promise he can probably say he kept.
A letter from someone confused about psionics. Activating a power counts as your attack, maintaining it doesn't. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Holy crap. Someone impersonated Roger Moore at comiccon and managed to fool the entire convention, to the point where he got on panels and answered questions about TSR. Now that's chutzpah. And then he sent a letter telling TSR he'd done this and asked for a job, for doing it so well. Now that crosses the line into full-on insanity. Roger officially apologizes for everyone confused by this. Could people not do that. It's not going to get you a job here, and may well get your ass sued. Ahh, geekery. This is like ripping the hair and clothes off your favorite boyband member if they get too close. It will not endear you to them. Still, it's amusing for the rest of us to read about. Even funnier than their editorials about the satanic D&D rumours, and Arthur Collins' mum writing in to complain.
Forum loses it's definite article. Why do they keep doing that?
Fr Patrick J Dolan has complicated feelings about making gods in the game fightable. Well, being a priest, he would. He comes down with a compromise. While portraying the supreme god as anything less than almighty would be disrespectful, angels, and most gods from other pantheons are not generally portrayed as so, so PC's should have a chance of tricking or beating them. This can still lead to fun games. And also puts his faith above everyone else's ;) A rhetorical win all round.
Jeannie Whited keeps playing D&D despite the sexism. Well, sorta, as her character has special powers, and the whole game is houseruled to unrecognisability anyway. The point is, she's having fun and hopes other girls aren't put off just because the official rules are stupid.
Joseph Maccarrone thinks putting a hit location system in D&D is stupid. Hit points are not purely a matter of physical toughness. Someone subscribes to the narrative model then. You'll be fighting a losing battle against some of the official writers for a while then
Mark Nemeth thinks that the new typeface and way of heading articles is ugly. Also, how could people want less realistic articles? Everyone wants their games as realistic as possible! You must have read the survey wrong! Uh, yeah. Riiiiiight. The editors will just look at you and shuffle slowly away.
Andy Parris thinks that the rules for two-weapon fighting are completely unrealistic. You can so parry with the off-hand weapon. Yes, but is it balanced? Do you want to see the rise of Drizzt in every campaign?
Witches again. This is the fourth time, not counting the reprint in the first best of. It has been quite some time since the last time, but really, why do it again. Last time was pretty solid. This isn't even that different from last time. Some abilities have been added, others slightly reduced in power, and the formatting is probably better this time around. (apart from the spell table. They really have got to check test printings. I know all too well the pain of what lines up perfectly on the screen coming out wonky. ) Still, is it really that popular? Do they not have enough good new submissions? Is this a response to the recent flare up of sexist accusations, an attempt to pander to their female readers? In any case, this is 12 pages of reheated rehash. A very unsatisfactory start indeed.
Grave encounters: Oh yeah, it's Halloween time. That means spooky articles. Although there is very little spooky about 3 pages of tables. (500 pages of tables full of disturbing entries, a la FATAL, is another matter altogether, of course. ) On the other hand, these are very cleverly done indeed. Tables for random encounters in graveyards. The trick here is that they are sorted not only for degree of corruption, but also time of day, and phase of the moon as well. So adventurers can choose just how brave they are by when the venture into the graveyard, scaling the challenge in a more naturalistic manner. This is a very well done set, both conceptually, and in terms of formatting. I would have no objection to using these at all.
Traveller: 2300! New state of the art edition! Oh, this will result in flamewars.
The elven Cavalier: Like the barbarian cleric, it seems we have another example of forbidding something resulting in people creating a whole new class to fill that void. So yeah, the elven cavalier, the exemplar of the idea of mounted bowman, riding through the forest, singing tra la la lally and fucking any evil creatures who intrude on their land right up. As is far too often the case with fan-made elf stuff, they gain rather more powers than they sacrifice, when compared to their human counterparts. This is a definite sign of their new commitment to immediate cool stuff over game balance. I find myself pretty much obliged to disapprove. You carry on at this rate, and all the races will have access to every class, ( ;) ) only slightly different for each one, requiring tons of annoying checking to keep track of the differences. And don't even try and sell me the idea that purely fluff based roleplaying hinderances balance out mechanical advantages. I may have fallen for that when I was 15, and the swashbuckler from the complete fighters handbook was all the rage, but I'm not falling for it again. I call twinkitude! Get out of my sight!
Turtlemania rages on! Palladium pimp their primary line at this point strongly.
Quote from: (un)reason;338874Traveller: 2300! New state of the art edition! Oh, this will result in flamewars.
Oh, and how it did... starting weeks after release, and still continuing to this day.
Dragon Issue 114: October 1986
part 2/3
Many kinds of money: Economy, economy, you will be the death of me. A simple currency, based on metals of the highest purity? Such as simple idea could never be allowed here. For if a government wants to control the economy, they must maintain control of the money. And the best way to do that is to separate it from real, objectively measurable things like the gold standard, and create a currency based purely on fiat, trickery, and demand, who's only value is what people agree it's value is. Slightly trickier when you have magic that demands specific values of specific objects (or at least, specific quantities.) and even tricker when you have magic that provides an objective assessment of an object's value that isn't index linked to the local markets. Anyway, the point that this article is making is that having gold, silver, copper, etc pieces that are all exactly the same size and weight, accepted everywhere, is incredibly unrealistic. Oriental Adventures has proved popular enough to prove that gamers are capable of accepting the concept of multiple currencies in their fantasy. So go for it. Put in as much complexity to this as you think you and your players can stand. Remember also that counterfeiting is a rich ground for adventures, on both sides of the law, so you should consider that as a plot hook as well. One of those articles I both approve of, and am wary about actually using, as it could wind up being very dull if done wrong. Eh, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't like a challenge.
The ecology of the Remorhaz: Welcome to our third collaborative ecology (lest you forget, beholders and centaurs also got co-written.) This is not particularly epic, but does have plenty of depth, creating a creature that probably could just about exist in the real world. Of course, making it's metabolism work realistically does involve nerfing it a bit, but unless your players are the sort who like hit and run tactics and harrying their enemy into submission over long periods of time, this is unlikely to be an issue. And if they do try tactics like that, you probably ought to be rewarding them for doing so anyway. There's plenty of stuff here for those who like to capture creatures or harvest them for their organs. Another solid bit of ecological work here.
Combined generation: Ahh here we see one of the reasons they decided to do a new edition. Due to the not particularly brilliant organization, looking up all the tables for character generation has grown increasingly unwieldy as new supplements are introduced. Of course, compiling them in a magazine article may not be the best way to fix it, but they've had the idea, and by gosh they're going to do it, because the page count needs padding at the last minute. Or something, because this feels very much like a filler article, with it's word count and shape edited to fit around the number of adverts. Meh.
Class struggles: Welcome to another rehash. Training to gain levels presents a substantial problem at low levels. You also need to be able to train yourself at higher levels, otherwise it would become impossible to to advance and the state of knowledge would gradually degenerate over generations. It also suffers from D&D's ridiculous union carteled price fixing. This is one case where I have always ignored the rules as written, and the game has not suffered from this at all. This alternate system is slightly more generous in general, but also divides costs up so you have to determine the price for each ability separately. It makes some rather dubious decisions, such as escalating costs for weapon proficiencies (how are they to know what level you are? ) which abilities count as innate, and even the levels at which proficiencies are gained. So yeah, I disagree with both the premise and many of the specifics of this article, and do not intend to use it in any form. Bleah.
It's a hit, but where?: A second hit location system in quick succession? What is this? Alternatives month? At least this one only adds one roll to your attacks, and even then, only sometimes. But is still pretty unsatisfying in other respects, (it really isn't that hard to hit someone in the eye. I could do it as a kid, and I definitely didn't have any class levels) not giving enough detail on what effects losing a limb has. It does get kudos for including hit location tables for flail snails and wolf in sheep's clothings. These humorous touches make it more interesting reading but don't change the fact that this is yet more rehash I have no desire to include in my game. How very tiresome.
A recipe for espionage: Once again we are confronted with the problem that far too many GM's, presented with Top Secret, just throw the characters into the same old dungeon crawls, reskinned as warehouses and secret bases, where the characters engage in the same old killing and taking of stuff, only with firearms instead of fireballs. And as ever, it's up to the magazine to show them that this is badwrongfun, and they ought to be constructing their adventures more like a James Bond movie, with witty banter, spectacular locations, and actual information gathering being important. The writer weaves visuals that strongly evoke the feel of an 80's tv show, with the camera panning over a beautiful landscape full of shiny houses with expensive cars parked in front of them while a saxophone plays. They attend expensive parties, get picked up by their spymasters to receive assignments in private jets, and use mobile phones the size of bricks and laptops the size of suitcases with pride. They can play it episodic or go for extensive undercover missions. They get assigned bizarre tasks with awkward conditions as part of their training and testing. They can get captured and forced to deal with their enemies maniacal whims, fighting against leopards in nothing but a loincloth. This is entertaining, and often rather silly stuff, that definitely shows the influence of the TV shows and movies of the era. I have no objection to this, although I would urge caution. Don't want to overdo the gonzo, do we.
Robotech coming soon! Another palladium licence. Can this outshine TMNT? We shall see.
Dungeon once again offers you a bargain starting subscription price. And does so with another rather funny advert. They seem to know what they're doing here.
Quote from: aramis;339075Oh, and how it did... starting weeks after release, and still continuing to this day.
Yup. Course, it gets really ugly when they tried to have 2300AD and Megatraveller running concurrently. Who's idea was that?
Quote from: (un)reason;339154Yup. Course, it gets really ugly when they tried to have 2300AD and Megatraveller running concurrently. Who's idea was that?
Marc Miller has stated that he was basically out of the loop once
Traveller: 2300 was released, and didn't get back into the loop until GDW folded; he was stuck making board wargames. Essentially, Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, and Tim Brown agreed that 2300 wasn't the OTU, and DGP wanted to revise CT, as fans, and had been a licensee doing VERY well respected 3rd party stuff... and GDW let them do it out-house, working with Marc's idea for a rebellion to shake things up setting wise.
The Rebellion was Marc's idea, as was Virus (for TNE)... so hath said Marc, Loren, and Dave (who inherited the TNE line from Frank and Loren...), as well as Joe Fugate (of DGP).
The hate and discontent over the "two traveller games in print at once" was resolved a couple years in with a rename of 2300. But, also, they had a stock of [Classic] Traveller cores, as well, that continued to sell until about 1989... So really, they had 3 editions in distribution, with 7 different core options (4x CT: Traveller, Deluxe Traveller, The Traveller Book, Starter Traveller; 2x MT: Boxed set, separate books; 1x 2300: Traveller 2300, later 2300AD.).
Really, it appears that the core GDW staff (Marc, Loren, Tim, Frank) didn't realize that people were associating traveller so strongly with the OTU, and it backfired. Worse, the preview materials in Dragon made it look like it was supposed to be the early history of the OTU... but it wasn't.
Dragon Issue 114: October 1986
part 3/3
Guilty as charged: Top secret gets a second article this month. Sometimes, you get caught by the enemy, and have to be tried for the crimes you commit in the course of your job. Sometimes, you capture the enemy, and will have to serve as witnesses in their trial. And sometimes, you rebel, or get turned into a scapegoat and wind up imprisoned by your own side. And if you mess up, then the agency may well deny your membership, and even it's own existence, and hang you out to dry with the mundane police. Anyway, there's plenty of drama to be had in this scenario, so lets introduce a few optional rules, spin it out a bit longer and allow for a bit more nuance, shall we? Another one I quite approve of. Courtroom drama is a rich ground for roleplaying that doesn't get nearly enough attention, when it's perfectly designed for it, especially LARPing. I'd love to get a chance to play around in that genre for a bit. This would of course involve having players who don't slaughter everything and refuse to negotiate at all, forcing you to kill them instead of surrendering if it looks like they're going to lose. Eh, that's not that rare these days, is it?
The marvel-phile: Rather a long, and slightly nostalgic marvel-phile this month, as we head up to the moon, to see the Inhumans and their stats. Black Bolt, Medusa, Maximus, Crystal, Gorgon, Karnak, and Triton. While they have tremendous powers that have interesting parallels to their mythical namesakes, they are also curiously vulnerable to disease, pollution, and the other mundane unpleasantness of the earth, which prevents them from living down here long term. They are rather morally ambiguous as a whole, having been both good and bad, and riven by internal conflict. Plenty of interesting plots can be hatched involving them. Jeff also gives us some more info about the differences between the old game, and the new Advanced version. Like OD&D to AD&D, this is really just expansion and clarification rather than a major change. You won't have to do tons of relearning. You do get to define your place in the world better, with more info on contacts and base building. Even editorial screwage can't get Jeff down. He'll just chatter about everything, including his personal life. His star is still very much in the ascendant. Once again I've enjoyed reading his contribution to the magazine.
The dungeoneers survival guide. The first proper AD&D book without Gary at the helm. We still haven't heard anything about that, he's just stopped appearing in the magazine. How very worrisome.
The immortals set. Just in time for christmas. Are you ready to go cosmic! Awesome. Now you can finally win D&D for good.
The role of computers: This month's main review is of Wizards Crown, another adventure game. Explore the world, get stuff, and advance your characters to win back the titular wizard's crown. Make sure you save it frequently, otherwise you may find yourself suffering massive amounts of frustration, because it's a big and tricky game. Ahh, the differences between computer and tabletop RPG's, where this kind of thing is expected. Unlike the first few reviews, this is a game I didn't already know about, so it was interesting on that level. But on another, the novelty is wearing off, and this column is starting to feel like business as usual. I suspect we'll have some dull issues for this as well before it comes to an end.
Running guns: Battletech gets an article this month. As ever, nice to see them covering games they have not done previously. As is often the case, this article tackles something ignored in the main books. Humanoid mechs get all the glory, while boring things like tanks, missile launchers and PPC's get ignored, even when they do actually play a significant part in the battle. Just like the trenches and the planes in WW1. So here we have three new vehicles statted out for your enjoyment. Will they be the crucial tipping point in your fight, or merely cannon fodder? One of those questions I can't answer due to unfamiliarity with the system. Still, as with revenge of the nobodies, and heroic mortal exalted games, getting to see the world from a slightly lower down perspective than the PC default and face the consequences can make for very interesting gaming. So I think I'll give this one a thumbs up.
High-tech hijinks: Our final article is only sorta a sci-fi one, despite being in this section. It's about putting high-tech devices into your fantasy world. Fitting, given Blackmoor is just being released in a new version. Do you want them for a brief crossover (and if so, how will you take them away after the episode is over) or do you want them here for good? Who made it, when and why. And the critical question of how powerful it should be compared to magic and how you differentiate the two. This gives us some pretty specific answers to these questions. Needing batteries and repairs is a good way to take them out of player hands after a bit, weapons should be more powerful than regular ones, but not ridiculously so, buying and selling them should be a bitch, and magitech and bombs should not be allowed. Ok then. Seems pretty sensible. This is not entirely a good thing. Quite a number of games, from shadowrun, to rifts, to d20 modern, will merge magic and technology integrally in the future and be successful, so this advice seems rather dated. Take a few more risks. It's not going to kill you, and if it kills your game, you can just start a new one. Balance is not essential to fun.
Wormy gets to see his horde of new recruits. Dragonmirth plays with our expectations again. Snarf finds claiming the throne is not as simple as he'd hoped.
MERP is once again on the back cover with a new edition. And yet we've never seen an actual article for it, despite years of press. What's up with that? You'd think that given how much of D&D is derived from it, someone would at least try. Are the approvals people a bunch of arseholes?
Not a very good issue at all, with a ridiculously high degree of recycled material, particularly in the D&D bits. The articles covering other games are rather better, especially the top secret ones, but as a whole, this still leaves me unsatisfied. It also demonstrates that covering multiple systems really does make it much easier to maintain interest, as even if you tackle similar topics, the rules and setting quirks means they manifest differently in each game. How will they solve this problem? Believe me, I'm very eager to find out too.
Dragon Issue 115: November 1986
part 1/3
108 pages. Looks like another class special. This time, it's thieves turn, with 6 articles devoted to them. Wait a minute, wasn't the last class special in issue 104 also a thief one? And in 84, they did two cleric specials with nothing else between, in issues 85 and 92. This isn't very symmetrical. What are the editors thinking?
We also get to see their sales figures again. And it looks like the slow decline has been taking place in earnest. With an average of 108,000, but a latest issue figure of only 101,000, that means they've been losing an average of over 1,000 readers per month this year. Were you one of those people? (Given my current level of enthusiasm, I might well have been one of those people if I was reading at that time. ) Lets hope they can stem that decline. But lets not be too pessimistic. There's still plenty of cool material there. Along with the D&D thieves, there's also quite a bit of top secret material again, which is pleasing.
Also notable is Kim's abrupt departure, leaving Roger in charge of two magazines at once. Can someone fill me in on the behind the scenes stuff that led to this? Lets hope that doesn't result in even more slipshod editing over the next few issues. Looks like having barely recovered from the last big shakeup, there's going to be some more in the near future. This is morbidly interesting.
In this issue:
Letters: The introduction of a computer column has obviously resulted in a lot of mail for them, mostly positive. They've printed five of them, with a mix of questions and suggestions. This means it's future is pretty much assured for quite some time. Roger is surprisingly cagey in response to this, not wanting to promise anything he can't deliver. Curious. At least something's going right around here. You ought to capitalize on that.
Forum: John M Maxstadt makes another appearance, this time complaining about last month's cover, and the general amount of cheesecake in the art. It's demeaning to women, it's bad for the hobby, and it's just plan embarrassing to explain to my nongamer friends. Woe, woe and woe some more.
Paul Astle doesn't know how to stop players from abandoning your game in search of more munched out ones, but he has some advice on how to please the people still here. Even one-on-one games can still be fun if done right. Don't get discouraged. If you don't even try, you're definitely going to lose.
David Howery thinks that a second edition is a good idea, but making stuff from OA part of it is not. He also thinks that doing profiles on the staff members that include photos is a good way to stop impersonators. You're going to be pretty happy then.
Raymond Chuang has some thoughts about the interesting hassles PC's could face setting up a business. Any business with a wizard can massively outperform it's competitors, which may cause economic troubles and union unrest. Also, magical byproduct pollution can cause all sorts of hassle. Both are pretty good plot hooks, really.
Lords of the night: Thieves guilds. Huh. What are they good for? Quite a lot actually. Organized crime has quite substantial benefits. Training, specialized equipment, gossip and info, meeting new people, fencing your ill-gotten gains, infiltrating the legal system and making sure members don't get in too much trouble when caught. It's no wonder that to be a successful thief, you need to be in one, especially with AD&D training requirements being what they are. Here's another nice but unexceptional worldbuilding article that deconstructs things like demographics, how these organizations are created, joined and maintained, how they differ, how they will usually be the same, and how they relate to the world in general. Not that fascinating to me now, but one to bookmark for when I actually get the chance to build another gameworld.
A den of thieves: So, you've reached name level, and now you want to set up your own thieves guild. Congratulations, and good luck, you'll need it. Vince Garcia (now there's a name that sounds like a mafioso boss in itself) gives us lots of cool advice on how to make the life of a character trying to set up an organization interesting. While obviously focussed on crimelords, the lessons from this can be applied to other classes with a little conversion as well. Political maneuvering, constructing a proper hierarchy, with chains of command, specialist groups, and all that jazz. Raising money, dealing with the other local power blocs, breaking away from your current guild, this is all very solid stuff. It's also backed up mechanically with lots of tables, which alter the types of followers you get, and the odds of having run-ins with the law. Far better than the first article, this would definitely be of great use in actual play, not just worldbuilding, expanding the domain management system for rogues, and helping you zoom out and experience months of politicking in a session. And you ought to know by now I'm very much in favour of that. Are you ready to play D&D, Godfather style? Yes, I'm talking to you. There's nobody else here, so I must be talking to you.
Space/fantasy gamer is back. I didn't even know they were gone. What's up with that?
The art of climbing walls: Vince returns, (but gets his last name misspelled) to give us one of those really zoomed in examinations of an aspect of the game. How exactly does climbing walls work? Thieves are not spiderman, able to just scuttle up sheer walls using their fingers. You need ropes and grappling hooks and tiger claws, and other fun little implements to have a decent chance on smooth surfaces with no handholds. He alters the probabilities for climbing slippery surfaces quite substantially, and generally makes things a bit trickier. This is one of those fiddly little articles that suffers because even if it may be an improvement, the annoyance caused by looking it up when you're in mid play balances that out, especially if you try and use lots of them, from different issues. Same old problem.
Honor among thieves: Ahh, here's another unsurprising article. Although they make their money breaking the law, any successful thieves guild must have some code of it's own to keep things from falling apart. Even if they never formalize it, stuff like no squealing, no lying about your hauls, double agents will have their membership terminally revoked, and no going after people with "relationships" with the guild is pretty much going to happen anyway. And many of them do dress it up in formal oaths and pledges to make things absolutely clear to dumb n00bs, and give standardized punishments for breaking them. And then they're just a few steps away from becoming law enforcement themselves, Pratchett style. Funny how they do wind up becoming just another accepted part of society, with their own training system and accepted path of advancement. In the real world, far too many criminals are criminals because of mental illness, poverty, or inability to get a good above board job, you can go up and down in people's esteem based on what you've done recently rapidly, and any code they have is honored in the breach as much as the observance. Almost make you want to live in a D&D world. The math on the economics may not add up, but it makes perfect sense on it's own terms, there's a place for everyone, plenty of opportunity for you to advance your station, and the people who get into power do on the whole deserve it and have worked for it. Anyone else think so? Or is this another sign I've been doing this for too long and going mad?
Getting up in the world: A second article in quick succession on climbing? I guess that given the evidence of the last couple of issues, they really have made a conscious decision to present multiple differing views on a topic. Well, I guess embracing the rehash and trying to turn it into a positive thing is one way to deal with it. This one also turns it's attention to non-thieves climbing ability. One good thing about the new Non-weapon proficiency system is that it does allow other classes to at least try things they really should be able to do. The problem is that it has inconsistencies with previous writings on the subject. Should you try and reconcile the two lists of modifiers, or treat them as independent subsystems and apply one or the other. Lots of tedious rules minutinae, in other words. It is however, interesting that this one was obviously written after the first one, by people which had read it. That kind of co-ordination between their writers is pleasing, and definitely something I could stand to see more of.
Dragon Issue 115: November 1986
part 2/3
Tools of the (thieving) trade: Mr Garcia continues to prove that he is the don of all things larcenous, examining the tools thieves need for their other abilities, the penalties they suffer for going without them, and how they can improve their odds further by spending a little more. Ninja outfits to improve your stealth skills :D face paint, hearing cone (with protection from ear seekers, of course.) drills, 10 foot poles for springing traps if you aren't willing to risk disarming them the subtle way, and all sorts of other fun. Which doesn't come cheap, but such is life. As once again, the same writer is taking the reins, this ties in well with the other articles, building on them without too much overlap. While the individual articles in this month's theme haven't been exceptional, they have been very well tied together. We haven't seen them try stuff like this for over three years, in the psionics special. You need writers who are active, and get their stuff in early, so the other writers can work on the idea and produce further material to make this work. And someone with the ambition to co-ordinate it all. If this is what having Roger as an editor means, then it will be a welcome change to the last few years.
Hammer of thor, spear of zeus: Hello to another power-up to the class that least needs it. Giving clerics the option of learning a weapon appropriate to their deity seems like a pretty reasonable idea, if a a mild power-up. Giving them not only access to a new weapon, but the ability to multiple specialize in it to indefinite degrees, gaining an extra +1 to hit each time; on the other hand, makes them almost the equal of fighters in terms of attack progression, while still having all the spellcasting of clerics. Definitely an option that has the power to mess up a game at higher levels. Exercise caution about allowing it in your game.
Sharper than a serpents tooth: Sssssnakeses. Looks like this is this month's realistic biology contribution. The nature of their senses, biology, methods of attack, and 12 new sets of stats, which are generally more powerful than the original entries. This is probably a case where the writers like what they're writing about a little too much. Still, like spiders, they do provoke instinctive fear in people, making them great for a little horror gaming. Mix some of these variants with your yuan-ti, and people'll never be sure what's going to strike at them when they open a door. Another competent but unexceptional article.
Airs of ages past: Harps! Now there's an unexpected topic for elminster to turn his eye too. All 9 items in this article have a common origin, the lost city of Myth Drannor. Well, elves have always been fond of music. In addition to the various cool magical powers they possess, Ed also proves he knows what he's talking about when it comes to the technical aspects of music. Either he's already a musician, or this is another case of him putting a whole load of research in for accuracy in minor technical details that most people wouldn't notice. These are as flavourful as ever, with Jhantra's harp a particular favorite of mine. In any case this is another great entry that is both entertaining reading, and full of things I'd love to incorporate. Music is a big part of mythology, (often the medium for telling it as well) and it probably gets less airtime than it deserves in roleplaying. While incorporating it into your game and not being horribly cheesy may be a challenge, it's one that amply pays for itself if you succeed.
There's something on the floor: And it's not a crawling pit. This is some quick and dirty old skool tableage, designed to provoke paranoia in your players. The floor should be the one thing you can always rely on, right? If the ground beneath your feet is unstable, everything else is definitely going to be messed up. Muahahahaha. Be it just an unusual appearance, or something that actually has a mechanical effect, having things happen to the ground beneath their feet really forces players to think, as the usual methods of fighting the enemy aren't going to work here. And since it's all on a random table, you can insert this easily into your endless dungeon building kit. The specific effects are both inventive and well organized as well, making this one I'd take great pleasure in using on my /victims/ players. Two thumbs up.
The ecology of the harpy: Looks like we have another musically connected article this month. Harpies may have beautiful voices, but they are nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as a well crafted harp. When you consider that they're also cowardly, bickering creatures who'll turn on the weak amongst their own numbers, they definitely don't make the case for music being a great unifier.
For a second time, we also have a case of the writing being handled by multiple people, with a freelancer contributing the first bit of fiction, while Ed provides the footnotes, with assistance from Elminster. The change in tone between the sections is quite noticeable, but that's probably a good thing. We get plenty more details on their lifecycle, tactics, and modifiers you can apply to the saves against their abilities. This is both interesting in itself, and as part of their new trend towards collaboration, on a historical level. After all, most RPG books these days from the big companies have a whole load of developers, writers, editors, art people, etc listed, to the point where you can't really put a single name on the spine. Whereas most of the early D&D books do. (and it is frequently Gygax, even when it's made obvious that others contributed quite a bit inside.) Another change that's definitely worth noting and pondering. After all, most fiction books aren't written like that, it's more the purview of textbooks and guides to things. What do you make of this?
Elven armies and dwarves at arms: We return to another recent subject, that of more detail in our follower tables. This time it's demihuman fighters that get the badass strike teams. All the new racial variants from UA are covered, including the dread forces of the valley elves. (which do not include any stubby gnomes, curiously) Generally, these are fewer in numbers, but more individually powerful than their human equivalents, as demihumans are usually at least 1st level. No great surprises here, as long as you are familiar with D&D's implied setting. As with the previous ones, I find it hard to complain about the extra complexity introduced here, since you only get to use it once a PC's career, and you really want to make a big deal out of it. Still, I would have preferred it if they'd tackled other classes first, before going back to ones they've already done before.
Door number one, door number two, or: Hmm. More rehash. We've already had an article on doors, by Ed and Elminster, no less. Thankfully, this writer doesn't try and compete with that in sheer brilliance, but instead goes for quantity of ideas, giving us 50 brief tricks you can pull with your doors. Just the thing to put in your random dungeon design tables, just for extra sadism. Suspect everything. More quick and dirty old skool fun.
Stayin' alive: There's no resurrection in Top Secret. So you have lots of incentive to not die. Last month they gave lots of general GM'ing advice. This time it's players turn to get a general how too. This is both the usual character building advice, and lots of tactical advice for actual play. From first equipping for a mission, to scouting, to conflict, to the cleaning up of loose ends afterwards (and believe me, you want to do that, or it will come back and bite you in the ass) there are lots of ways of increasing your odds of success. Some of them are metagame considerations, while others are applicable to any system, and indeed real life as well. Apart from the strong emphasis on trying to play the game in a genre appropriate way, with recurring characters, romances etc, this is pretty standard, if with rather more width and depth than most of these pieces. Above average in terms of craftmanship, but nothing really leaps out at me.
GURPS autoduel: Roleplaying in the setting of car wars. Well, it's a good test of the universal part of it's name. If all it really does well is fantasy or modern day, they might as well not bother.
Dragon Issue 115: November 1986
part 3/3
The role of books:Lords of the middle dark by Jack L Chalker (boo hiss spit) gets a fairly middle of the road review. It has his usual disturbing penchant for mindfucking his female protagonists, and spends a lot of time in worldbuilding to the detriment of advancing the plot. As you may gather, I'm rather less fond of Mr Chalkers work than this reviewer, and from the sounds of it, I'd hate this one just as much as the books of his I have read.
The A.I Gang books (various authors) are a series of computer/ spy adventure books. The science is pretty loose, but then, this is high action pulp adventure. You don't expect realism from james bond, do you? Aimed at younger readers, these seem like the kind of thing that might have drawn people to gaming, back in the 80's.
The find your fate books are another set of multiple choice adventure books. These particular ones star the Dr Who crew. These very much bear the mark of bulk-written tie in products, with wildly uneven quality of writing and characterization. David Martin's one pleases the reviewer. Michael Holt's one most definitely does not. Same problem as gaming fiction, really.
God game by Andrew M Greeley has the author doing exactly that, inserting himself into the story as the god of a computer controlled world. How very meta and prophetic. He uses this device to pose complicated philosophical and theological questions with a directness most books cannot, while maintaining a strong edge of humour. Sounds really rather tempting to me.
Flight to thlassa mey by Dennis McCarty is written with dialogue in shakespearean blank verse, amazingly. That must take a lot of crafting. This elevates it above the generic fantasy it would seem to be from the cover, giving it both depth and a very distinctive flavour. This is an excellent example of how borrowing and incorporating the right ideas in the right way can make a work seem fresh.
The throne of scone by Patricia Kennealy steals liberally from another source, this time celtic myth, to create the kind of mythic tinged sci-fi that would not be unfamiliar to stargate viewers. The maxim about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic is out in full force here, in another bit of epic storytelling.
Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen is a loosely connected set of short stories about guess who, the legendary archmage. Each takes a different perspective and tone, combining prose and (pretty good) poetry. This shows that by weaving together multiple, sometimes conflicting accounts, you can create a real seeming overall picture of something. Touch magic, pass it on.
When only the best will do: Top secret continues to come off well from the dropping of the Ares section, with a second article this month, full of gun pr0n. Heckler and Koch are one of the biggest weapons companies in the world, producing great weapons used all around it. You know, fetishising a particular companies weapons is like doing so for Katanas just because they're japanese. I am rather suspicious of this article, and suspect there may be power creep in the stats therein. Hmm. Is this also going to be a new trend of the Moore years?
The teasing for traveller 2300 last issue is elaborated on. Just like movie trailers. Vague one, more specific one, big one with "In a time" gravelly voiced narration showing all the really cool bits. ;)
Profiles: Roger Moore, aka Rogar of Mooria, is of course our first subject this month. He is neither a barbarian or a clone, nor does he resemble a potato. He is, however, an ex army boy, and started writing while still on duty, during his many dull hours. Somehow, he managed to become our second most prolific and reliable freelance contributor, proving juggling multiple jobs like this can be done. (so there, JD Webster ;) ) And once again, he is going to have to do a ridiculous amount of work, as Kim's recent departure has resulted in him becoming head editor of both Dragon and Dungeon. Will he hold up to having two full time jobs as well as he did having one plus a highly active sideline? His run lasted many years, so I assume so. It's going to be interesting seeing how his leadership changes the magazine over the next few years.
Bill Larson is one of our book editors. One of the older members of staff, he doesn't seem to be that much of a D&D player, but has had a long and interesting life. (although after editing the Trixie Belden Mystery series for 15 years, anything would seem interesting.) Once again, the amount of lighthearted humour seems to be on the rise again. Not sure if that's the because of the writing or the change in editor.
TSR previews is back again, and hopefully this time will be remaining the right way around. D&D is getting M3: Twilight calling. As with the previous master level books, the universe is at stake. Guess who has to save it, again. :rolleyes:
AD&D gets RS1: Red Sonja Unconquered. Visit Hyboria. Meet interesting people, kill them, and then wonder where you're going to put their stuff when you're wearing nothing but a chainmail bikini. One cleavage can only contain so much. :p
Our adventure gamebooks are up to number 11, Clash of the sorcerers. The trilogy comes to it's exciting conclusion. Will you triumph, or fail?
Marvel gives us two books this month. For the solo players, we have The Wolverine in Night of the Wolverine. So important they had to put his name on there twice. If you can find a friend to fight against, you can play Fantastic 4 vs Dr Doom in The Doomsday Device in their 8th one on one gamebook. Dr Doom has created a giant robot. Can you guess who has to stop it? Yeah, it's like that. They aren't very subtle with their titles.
An interstellar armory: More bits and pieces for your star frontiers space battles. Armor, forcefields, lasers, tractor beams, bombs, anti-missiles, mines, cloaking, all pretty generic sci-fi stuff. I'm pretty sure we've seen most of these in the magazine before, and I'm surprised that they aren't in the books anyway. In any case, this is a load more not very interestingly done recycling. If you don't have counters to basic tricks like this, you're never going to become an advanced space general.
The marvel-phile: Rather a short article this month, as Jeff gives us the stats for Terminus, who is essentially a ridiculously powerful intergalactic scrap merchant. Seems about the normal level of ridiculousness for a fantastic four villain. Still, destroying the world is no laughing matter, and he certainly has the potential to do that. He's already been killed once, but we know that's no obstacle here, and someone else out there might have a similar giant robot body. Another pretty formulaic entry here, that shows up just how many hidden lands full of weird stuff the Marvel earth has. Are your PC's powerful enough to face a guy like this?
Wormy faces an insidious threat from his miniatures ranks. Dragonmirth catches tigers with velcro. Everything hangs in the balance for snarf.
The rolemaster companion makes the game even more comprehensive and flexible! Buy it now, etc etc.
Looks like collaboration is definitely on the up this month, along with power creep and humour, and recycling is still pretty common. Course, it's too early to say for sure what this change in leadership really bodes for the magazine. You can't make an accurate graph from a couple of points of data. Still, overall, this has been a pretty interesting issue, with both good and interestingly bad articles (as opposed to the more frequent dull, but not so bad as to be interesting ones) Maybe the golden age of the magazine is over, but that certainly doesn't mean there's nothing happening. If anything, there's more stuff going on than ever, so one story can't hold everyone's attention and become legendary in the same way. Just keep telling myself. I only have to read the bad bits once, then I can use the good bits again and again. Not a very poetic mantra, is it? Doesn't have to be. Just has to keep me going.
Dragon Issue 116: December 1986
part 1/3
111 pages. We're pink! The magazine now looks almost exactly like it did when I started reading! Nostalgia city! However, I assure you that I will not let matters of presentation bias me as to the quality of the articles. For some reason, they've decided to go with the aquatic theme this christmas. Nothing wrong with getting a little wet now and then. As long as the boring bits get glossed over. We don't want it to end up like the wind waker, do we? (well, there are worse things to base your games off) Lets see if this issue is a mighty battleship, or a waterlogged little rowing boat.
in this issue:
Letters: One letter about giving individual hit locations their own hit points. Roger gives an alternative method that doesn't require so much bookkeeping, but still adds a load of extra prepwork beforehand. Meh.
Two letters that think that as D&D is now starting to decline in popularity, the magazine ought to start devoting a greater proportion of it's space to other games systems. Not a bad idea. Roger gives the response that that's not what our survey repliers thought. We mustn't forget our core demographic. Oh, compromise, compromise. At least they aren't taking the route certain modern cable channels do and almost completely abandoning their original theme.
Forum: Craig Sessions tells the tragic tale of a girl who couldn't get anyone to join her game, just because she was a girl. How dumb are these people?! Was open sexism still that common in the 80's? Even if it was, you'd think at least a few would say yes simply because they want to score with her, as this is high school. Madness.:shakes head: It's as bad as the girl bassist in my class who was always complaining about exactly the same thing with respects to finding a band. Do they not understand basic principles of visual appeal and audience identification. Oh well. Their loss.
Dan Thompson thinks that save or instantly die poison is lame. High level characters shouldn't go out like that! Keep whining, little star, and eventually your wish will come true.
Alan D Long thinks that D&D ought to be targeted towards older people as well. There's a big untapped market with tons of disposable income just waiting for you. You could definitely be marketing the game better to increase your fanbase.
Niel Brandt gives a load of supplemental material for the mariner. This is pretty cool stuff, and still doesn't make them anywhere near as powerful as primary spellcasters, so I'd allow it.
Archie Li thinks that using humour in D&D should be done carefully, otherwise player suspension of disbelief may be destroyed. It's one thing to have IC jokes, but when they're built into the rules, it's just silly.
Chris Sanyk thinks that using batteries as a limiter for your high tech items is a good idea, but may run into source emulation problems. What makes a good show and what makes a good game are not the same things, you know.
James A Yates is in favour of nonweapon proficiencies, and feels that the longlived nonhuman races ought to have more. A perfectly reasonable statement that opens up a whole can of worms when it comes to game design, and still results in the odd flamewar today. Let the battle commence.
John Goldie is confusticated about the adjudication of illusions. Which considering they have a whole class devoted to them, is a big problem. Someone oughta do an article on it. Careful what you wish for. Both times they sent out a call like that, they wound up with a whole bunch of stuff, much of it contradictory. A special like that, with several different alternatives on how to handle illusions, would send the canonwankers into a frenzy of frustrated fapping. :D
To go with the dungeoneers survival guide, we now have the wilderness survival guide as well. Isn't that great news. At least Kim's departure didn't result in him pulling the work he'd already done. The company has enough problems on it's plate at the moment.
High seas: Sailing! In the real world, a huge number of our most renowned explorers and adventurers have been famed for their ocean voyages. It's full of hazards, both environmental and from creatures and people, and you get to see all sorts of cool stuff. It's also a perfect justification for episodic troupe play, with a large cast of characters, but only some of them taking part in each individual adventure, because someone has to stay back and take care of the ship and supplies while you explore the insides of the isle of dread, or whatever; while the fact that each adventure is on a different island, or is simply separated by several hundred miles of coastal sailing means you don't have to worry so much about your actions in one place having repercussions everywhere else. (at least, not straight away ;) ) A very promising topic indeed. And our first article sets off to cover the details of sailing a ship, with a long and well integrated set of fluff and crunch. Lots of statistics, how you fought with them, how many crew members they needed, how much they could carry, maintenance, fighting giant sea monsters, this is a solidly researched, comprehensive stuff that richly deserves the pole position. It does skirt on the edge of dullness at times, and the crunch'll probably take a few readings to fully digest, but it still looks like pretty useful stuff. Another of the things everyone should try at least once, seafaring adventures are a great way to visit new lands, kill their inhabitants and take their stuff, while skimming over the months of dull wilderness travel needed to get there. And you can even do bottleneck politics on the way. Now, if only the magazine were telling us that, instead of leaving it up to me to virtually construct my own little article out of tangents. :p
Children of the deep: At last. A PC writeup for aquatic elves. It's about time. Like most demihumans of this era, they don't get that great class abilities. But they do have fairly good innate powers, and some restrictions on their ability to function on land, so it balances out. Crossbreeds between normal and aquatic elves, on the other hand, are a bit twinked, (plus what is my place in the world angst, yay :rolleyes: ) with most of the advantages of both parents. Aquatic half-elves are also pretty good. If you have any seafaring or water adventures in your game, they will really leave everyone else in the dust unless they have some serious magic to compensate with. Another thing that can cause problems in a mixed party, and would be nerfed to bits in 4E. Consider carefully before allowing. It could be fun, but could also be an almighty pain in the ass to design adventures for
Dragon Issue 116: December 1986
part 2/3
The ecology of the minotaur: Hmm. Another new writer applies a different approach to the ecology series this month. We see the in game writer of the article captured by the creature he is studying, and having to survive by their wits and currying favour with the creature, instead of seeing them as just some scientific specimen to be hunted, examined and possibly dissected. This is an approach that would be used quite a few times during my reading, sometimes with the writer escaping, and sometimes with them being presumed dead, but somehow having managed to hide or send their writings for future discovery. This is a development I approve of. The actual ecological bit, I find rather less enthralling, for it takes a monster that has rather interesting mythological origins, and turns them into just another generic primitive humanoid race, fighting, raiding and mating with harems of female minotaurs. Damn you, family friendly policy! (Although they still have no trouble with the idea of hags being all female and producing offspring by mating with human males by force and trickery, but I guess the great rape double standard strikes again.) The ecological footnotes are rather halfhearted this month as well, not really adding much to them mechanically. Still an interesting entry, but overall subpar, given the series' general high standards.
The dragon's bestiary is back! Bumped off for Gary's featured creatures in issue 62, and then replaced by the Creature Catalogs, they've resurrected it due to public demand. Because the public hunger for new monsters is insatiable, but you don't want to give them too many at once, and then none for ages. This collection of monsters are all following the aquatic theme. So lets take a look at them.
Brain coral is exactly what is sounds like. Psychic Coral that physically resembles an load of lobes spread across the sea floor. Not that much they can do with that intelligence on their own, so they are likely to probe your mind and take over your body. I can see the entertainment possibilities in this.
Sea centaurs are to tritons and hippocampi what regular centaurs are to humans and horses. Which means they're rather smarter and more powerful, but still not as smart as their related species. (why are tritons and sahuguin so damn clever? What do they actually do with all that supposed intelligence? ) No great surprises here.
Giant carnivorous clams may not sound dangerous, but if your stuck inside them, you're in big trouble. And they have a surprising number of tricks to help them do this. Tentacles, paralyzing neurotoxin clouds, maneuvering jets. They're not just some sessile particle filterer you can ignore when not pearl diving.
Giant groupers will lurk in an underwater alcove, suck you in if you get too close, and swallow you whole. Better have something sharp to cut your way out with, and make Wormy proud.
Morana are really vicious eel/pirahna hybrids. Be thankful they don't come in large groups, because then the party would be in trouble.
Giant porcupine fish inflate themselves to look extra threatening. Considering they have save or die poison all over, you'd think they could be a little more secure in their masculinity. :p
Electric rays do exactly what they say on the tin, unleashing an electric charge to stun prey. And you, if you threaten them. Not a good idea to rub these guy's belly.
Sawfishes and sharks, like hammerheads, are an example of nature imitating tools. Or maybe vice versa. In any case, they look funny, but don't laugh when they chop you up and eat you.
Giant sea anemone will grapple you with their tentacles, and grip you with thousands of spines. That's really going to be a bugger to escape from. Another example of just how weird real undersea creatures look.
Sea titans are another aquatic relation of a well known land thing. Relations of poseidon, (if you're using a pseudoearth mythology) they are bigger and stronger than regular titans, but nowhere near as smart or magically powerful. They're still no pushovers, especially as they usually have various sea monstery friends. Even if you beat them, that may be just the beginning of your troubles, given how vindictive gods can be. Approach with caution, for even if they're friendly, their moods can turn on a dime.
Undines already appeared in the D&D companion set, you idiot. Someone needs to maintain better editorial control. Unless this is another case of them doing it deliberately to differentiate the two IP's. Anyway, these are sneaky little faeish bastards who enjoy drowning sailors. As if we didn't have enough of those.
Weed giants are larger, less subtle relations of Kelpies. They'll tangle you up, and use your corpse as fertilizer. You'll have to do a lot of hacking to get to their vulnerable areas. Beware dark water. You never know what lurks just beneath the surface. (cue jaws theme)
Hello? your majesty?: This article is only peripherally connected to the sea theme, but is still an invaluable topic they haven't got round to covering before. Communicating over long distances before the modern era was a slow, and often exhausting and inconvenient business. Here's plenty of examples of how it was handled in different real world eras, plus some more speculation on how you could use magic to speed this process in place of technology in a fantasy world. With an extensive bibliography, this is a good example that there are still tons of things for them to still do, they just need to hunt them down. Lets hope they don't wind up rehashing this one like they have so many others. Definitely one to mine for ideas when worldbuilding.
High seas in 3D: This month's centerpiece is another build it yourself effort. Cut out the cardboard pieces and build your own ship. How very appropriate for the nautical issue. Exactly what kind of ship it is is a bit vague, and of course size will depend on the scale of the miniatures you use with it, but this is another cool little centrepiece that I can definitely see the uses for. Dennis Kauth is definitely pulling his weight around here these days. Good luck putting it together. (they advise making photocopies so you can practice to get it right, which definitely implies a few of the staff members struggled with this one. ) As ever, any stories of how you actually used this in actual play would be very welcome.
Rogue stones and gemjumping: Elminster reveal to Ed another of his little secrets for living a long, exciting and twinky life without dying horribly. Gemjumping allows you to enchant a special stone so you can teleport to it later without all that awkward rigamarole of verbal, somatic and material components that someone can disrupt. Just the thing for when you're captured, tied up, or caught off guard. If you're extra clever, you can give it to someone, and use it as a way to get into places you haven't explored without the awkward risk of misfiring teleporting offers. A short article, but another demonstration of both how cool his writing is, and how he can wind up being seen as twinky. Even if individual items are balanced for their level (after all, this is basically just a slight variant on word of recall.), he knows so many tricks and synergies that his characters will legitimately trounce any regular character of the same level. This is why wizards and priests should go into the spell and item design business as soon as they're high enough level. It gives them a huge advantage over people who just use whatever they can research from old grimoires and take from things they've killed.
Dragon Issue 116: December 1986
part 3/3
By tooth and claw: Ha. Someone thinks real animals aren't scary enough in D&D? The game where a 1st level character has a less than even shot at beating a housecat. Where any animal with a claw/claw/bite routine can take on a party of similar numbers and HD and trounce them unless the spellcasters spot them and get off their artillery spells before they can close. Where a whole load of creatures have save or die poison on every bite. I regard your statement with amusement. The problem is merely because D&D PC's scale so massively as they level up, and most creatures remain static, so what is a near impossible challenge at 1st level is a cakewalk by 10. You want a skill based system like Runequest or Storyteller mate, where even after years of play, you're still not even twice as powerful in terms of total stats. So yeah, this is another realism in gaming article, that has some sound tactical advice, (even normal animals are smart enough to pull tricks like ambushes and learn how to deal with traps.) but is mostly a waste of time built on a premise that's pretty dubious anyway. I've certainly always used plenty of natural animals in amongst the weird stuff in my games. Yawn.
High ones, Ancient ones: Looks like they're continuing to push the boundaries of covered games, with this article for Elfquest. Actually, they have covered these before, way back in issue 66, but that was adapting the characters to AD&D. Now they have their own BRP based system to play with. Here we get stats for the High ones, which seem to be your stereotypical physically weak, but mentally powerful ancient race/alien types. Their disadvantages probably don't balance out their powers, but since both are pretty hefty, they probably won't overshadow everyone else all the time. An interesting article that gives me plenty of insights into the setting of a world I've never really got into, but am tempted to do so now. By that criteria, I think we can safely say this article is a good one.
The role of computers is starting to ease into the swing of things, having received plenty of mail by now. So a few ground rules need to be set, as they make clear what they are not going to do. (so don't send us whining mail about that. ) Ho hum. You can only do so much. So you've gotta try and please the largest audience. Anyway, this month's main review is of Dragonfire II. A tremendously customizable game, this allows you to build characters, monsters, places, and even run battles. It can be used to handle the mathematical bits for all sorts of roleplaying games, with a minimum of effort. Just the sort of thing they ought to be letting us know about in this column. Anyone use this back in the day? Seems like it would be even more useful these days, with the massive increase in memory sizes and portability of laptops.
Our other review is a more conventional computer game. Bards Tale. Train up your team to fight Mangar the dark. An integral part of this is keeping your Bard well sozzled so he can sing songs to buff the rest of the party ;) Even the city streets are incredibly dangerous. But if you already have experienced characters from Wizardry or Ultima III, you can convert them over. It is a bit grindy, with big fights you can't run away from, and you have to get all the way back to the adventurers guild each time to save and level up. So you need to be a careful tactician to advance far. This is not a game that mollycoddles you, but the reviewers have no objection to that.
TSR Previews: Not a lot of stuff coming up next month. AD&D gets H2: The mines of bloodstone. Following on from H1, this aims to prove that AD&D can do epic high level adventures too. Right on the other end of the scale, we have N4: Treasure hunt, for 0 level characters. Can you survive in a battle between goblins and orcs using only your wits? Good luck, you'll need it. Somewhere in the middle, we have DA2: Temple of the frog. Go back in time, both in and out of the game, to see this redone, expanded adventure from the very second supplement for OD&D. Not a brilliant name, but a lot scarier and more complex than it seems.
The marvel-phile: Jeff continues to mix the silly with the serious with aplomb. Because lets face it, the marvel universe has far too many silly characters to only do one a year for april. We get Crossfire, who is deadly serious, despite having a very silly outfit (posing pouch for vampire hunting strippers, hee) and will turn heroes against each other given half a chance. We also get another amusingly themed supervillain team, the Death Throws. Ringleader, Oddball, Tenpin, Bombshell and Knickknack. All specialize in throwing objects related to their name. Beyond parody, isn't it? Jeff is fully aware of that, and loving it, taking time to hone his faux editorial banter along the way. He's becoming almost as entertaining a writer as Ed. Will he keep his promise to bring us the Marauders next month? Does Roger ever really get to recline on a sofa with his workload? All will be revealed soon enough.
Skyrealms of jorune! Another fascinating new game starting soon. Will we see articles for this one?
Dr who?: Oh, this is nice. Another game we've seen around for quite a while actually gets an article dedicated to it. And we just had some Dr Who reviews last month. Curious that it's appearances in the magazine should be on the up just as the tv series is about to go into terminal decline.
Anyway, here we get to see stats for all 6 currently extant incarnations of the Doctor. Which they ought to have in the game anyway, but apparently these ones are corrected :sigh: Errata, errata, do you really matter? Anyway, this gives us a good idea of what they system looks like, apparently a fairly simple attribute and ability based one with a scale of 1 to 6. If you're interested in the show, you may well be tempted by this, but mechanically, nothing here seems particularly groundbreaking. Eh, as long as it does the job, and provides for fun games, it doesn't matter if it's complex or simple. And since the Doctor is probably at the upper end of the system's power level, it should be even simpler for regular PC's.
Aim and burn: Flamethrowers! Like their low tech D&D variant, throwing vials of flaming oil, these are highly effective weapons that are far too often ignored. What could be more fun than watching your enemies scream as you melt their face, while you laugh maniacally? For some reason, this article introduces them to the Traveller system. We get several models, rules for the special effects they have on things and creatures hit by them, plus a load of implied setting about the manufacturers to better integrate them into the setting. In another case of retro-future anachronisms that we wouldn't see in games today, we also have stats for asbestos spray, which you obviously use to counter fire attacks. We shall assume that they've found a way to keep you from getting cancer if you spray it all over your body. :p Definitely an article I enjoyed more than I really should ;)
Snarfquest continues to build up tension for the final showdown. Dragonmirth features the wrath of god. Wormy sets up that old classic, a pit trap.
Quite a good issue, overall. Both the themed bits and the general articles have an above average number of good articles, keeping this one fairly pleasurable to read. And even the ones I'm not so keen on, the minotaur and animal ones, are annoying in ways I could actively disagree with, rather than simply being boring. This is pretty pleasing. It's nice to end the year on an up note, after having found the average quality to be a good deal lower than the previous three years. Hopefully Roger'll avoid getting bored and burnt out in turn for quite a while, and the magazine'll sustain that over the next year. We might have slowed down, but I'm not stopping 'til this is over, one way or another. There's still way too much to see for that.
Dragon Issue 117: January 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. Roger has to confront the problem facing anyone who gets a regular job. You don't have the time to do all the creative stuff you used too. And as he used to be the second most prolific contributer to the magazine, that does suck a bit. Thankfully, these days there are more than enough writers willing and able to step up. The contents page is absolutely jam packed this time. Also, in response to their complaints, we actually have a female adventurer who may not be perfectly dressed for a swamp, but at least looks as though she's had the crap beaten out of her a few times in the past. And given their current situation, this may happen again sometime soon. Will this provoke complaints in itself. The line between equality and misogyny is easily crossed. Neh. Cant please everyone. The important question is, will this issue please me?
In this issue:
Letters: We get a letter asking why the cthulhu mythos has been removed from the god book. Legal crap, my dear. We ain't getting them back any time soon either. Nor will you be seeing the Melnibonean stuff again in this system any time soon. Until the great d20 comes and unifies us, we must remain apart.
A letter asking if they're going to do any more dragonquest stuff. Once again, the answer is no. We're going where the money is, and it aint there.
A rules question about adjudicating attacks on an army with multiple troop types. Fairly simple division. It may slow things down, but still far less than rolling for everyone individually.
A letter saying that presenting sample characters and their histories would be cool. Roger replies that Polyhedron already does this. Subscribe now! Gotta collect 'em all! You know, we really could have a reading thread for that as well. Anyone with the resources and insanity to try out there?
A letter about if something is available in canada. Yes, but it's gonna cost you more, what with currency conversion and shipping and crap. Oh, the woes of being north of the border and a cultural backwater.
Forum: Mark W McClennan may be 14, but he was not sniggering at the cover of issue 114. He also doesn't think that it's going to draw many new people into the hobby either. At the moment, the controversy is more on the satanic implications than the artwork. He seems to have a pretty level head on the matter.
David F Godwin is a forum regular, and he makes a more highbrow argument, pontificating about the difference between nakedness as Art, and as titillation. Entirely different, fnaw. Yeah, right.
Dan Tejes looks at this topic from a more sociological point of view. If both the writers and readers of fantasy are primarily male, then of course what is produced will primarily appeal to them. That's a rather chicken and egg argument. But maybe they could be appealing better to women.
Marc Andressen Is another of our young readers, and is somewhat embarrassed about the idea of his parents seeing some of the magazine's covers. Nor would he prefer the problem solved by more equal opportunity eye candy. Hrmm.
Carl Forhan also subscribes to the view that some things are more acceptable when done for the sake of Art. The magazine's policy doesn't need that much changing.
At this point Roger butts in again to say that he's shutting down debate on this subject. It grows most tiresome to him. Please do not deluge us endlessly with letters when there are other topics we could also be tackling. We don't want a rehash of the dwarven beards debacle.
Russell Taylor goes back to that old topic of the planes, and the mathematics involved in sets of infinity. They can explain quite easily how one infinity can be accessable from another but not other ones. Funny how a good grounding in the way the universe works can help you better conceive of how other universes might function differently.
Jeff Neely tackles another old topic, PvP. His group's characters argue and compete all the time, but they still have fun. Your group can too.
Mae Tanner thinks that grey on black is a bad thing in a magazine, because it makes it really hard for her to read it. I do have to say it's not the most attractive colour scheme, and I'm glad my eyes don't have problems like that.
Stephen Iicata points out just how much stuff you need for an expedition in the real world. This is why you have pack animals and vehicles if at all possible. Encumbrance is a bitch. Don't forget it.
David Sisk is yet another master debater. This time, he tackles the statement that stirrups are an essential part of mounted warfare. They might be helpful, but a good saddle is if anything an even bigger factor in safe riding. Your article does not match up to my 16 years of actual experience! Yes, but have you tried fighting actual battles riding bareback? Yes, I'll bet the other writer hasn't either. :p Ahh, the joys of realism debates. Never forget that you can actually do some pretty awesome stuff in reality with a little practice.
S.D Anderson dislikes the hit location system because it assumes all hit point damage is actual damage rather than exhaustion and depletion of narrative immunity. Once again, Gamism Vs Simulationism rages through the magazine, with articles trying to influence the implied structure of the game.
Patrick Goodman is fed up with people trying to put realism in fantasy, and thinks 2nd ed cleaning up the system and sweeping away the bad bits from the supplements can't come soon enough. Everything should be much better organized. Another perfectly reasonable desire that may not be satisfied by events to come.
The elements of mystery: Hmm. A topic we've seen before, but only once, from a rather different perspective. I think we can work with this. Robert Plamadon reminds us that they players shouldn't know everything about the setting, and it can be good for the roleplaying if they don't know everything about the game rules either. Rumours are an important part of making an exciting campaign with genuine choices, letting you hint at what adventures are out there, but not giving away the plot. You do not have to stick with the rules for monsters, and even variant classes and spells from other land could be introduced. If your players have misconceptions about the setting, don't correct them OOC, let their ignorance drive the plot by making amusing mistakes happen. Similarly, if they can't remember all the details of their adventures, use it to your advantage. Drama is born of conflict and misunderstandings. Much of the usual rules are not fixed for your game and roleplaying is important advice. Not a bad article, but probably doesn't deserve pole position. I guess they need to push their anti one true way munchikining powergamer agenda.
What are the odds?: You've used this title before as well. That's not good. Another case of a familiar subject updated to reflect new developments. In this case the use of really twinky ability generation methods in UA has people curious just what the chances of rolling a particular ability score with a certain amount of dice using Xd6 keep best 3. At really high numbers you have a better than 50% chance of getting 16-18. Which very much takes the specialness out of getting a roll that good. Oh well. A lot of the time, you don't want to be normal. And if there wasn't a big chunk of the playerbase who didn't want that, I doubt they would have put this stuff in the new books. Another reminder that for all the accusations of power creep in 3e and 4e, 1e had some very definite escalations of power in it's later supplements. Still, statistics are always fun. A nice crunchy counterpart to the very fluffy previous article.
Feuds and feudalism: So your players have reached name level and have set up a domain, and now you're struggling for plot ideas. Or maybe they haven't, but want to go into that sphere anyway. What do you do? If you're struggling for ideas, it's probably because you never really defined who the various rulers around are, their respective resources, and their opinions of one another. A Lord needs servants, and by ingratiating yourself, you can get to be a local knight or some equivalent. And then it's politics all the way. You've got to keep your boss happy, and keep your underlings reasonably happy, but more importantly productive, keep track of who likes and hates who, who wants what, and what they're willing to do to get it, and then choose what side to be on. It may take a bit of effort to set up, but once you set up a soap opera like this, it runs indefinitely with very little further effort. All you need to do is make things react logically and introduce new players every now and then to shake things up and replace people killed. And before you know it, you've got a full on game of generational power politics. Woo. You make it seem so simple. It's all about relationships. Another fairly solid bit of roleplaying advice.
Condensed combat: A load more tables here as they continue their new trend of compiling stuff from multiple books, and putting it all in one place for your playing convenience. Or it least, it would be convenient, if it didn't have some obvious errors. I know accurate copying is hard, but really, what are editors for? If you're gonna be crunchy, you need to be precise. Fail.
Dungeoneers shopping guide: The onslaught of short crunchy articles continues, with a couple of pages of new equipment. If ever there was something inexperienced GM's dread, it's players asking for something which logically should be possible, but isn't detailed in the book. And someone is bound to want to buy something that isn't in the book, and you'll have to fudge prices. Well, now at least you can eat someone else's fudge instead of cooking up your own in a hurry and risking making a charred indigestible mess that upsets your campaign later on. Still, since this is hardly the most comprehensive add-on, I suspect there are still plenty of things that annoying players can ask for that aren't covered anywhere. Thoroughly mehsome.
Adventure Trivia!: Hmm. A set of questions about lots of AD&D trivia. It's been a few years since we had one of those. This is rather trickier than the last one I remember, with lots of questions with answers that are idiosyncratically 1st ed, rather than remaining the same from edition to edition. Plenty of questions are drawn from supplements, plus a few from modules, and even issues of this magazine. You'd have to be a real completeist to get them all. A timely reminder that even as versed in all things D&D as I am now, it would still be possible to attain yet another level of mastery of the rules and settings. Oh, for a photographic memory, so it wouldn't also take another quantum leap in the amount of time spent studying and playing the game to do so.
A touch of genius: So, what's the biggest dump stat in AD&D? Many would say charisma. Quite a few more would say comeliness, post UA. Vince Garcia, on the other hand, thinks that for non magic-users, it's intelligence you can skimp on without it harming your character. After all, you can still play them cleverly. Aside from strict GM'ing and creating situations where intelligence checks are needed, what can we do about this? Vince's solution is to make intelligence factor into training times and saves against illusion spells. The second of those isn't a bad idea, but since training times and costs are generally ignored anyway, I am very leery of the first one. Forcing dumb characters to spend more money, and take more downtime between adventures would annoy everyone, especially if there were also other time related constraints in the game, and everyone else is raring to get back to the dungeoneering and worldsaving. There may be plenty of real world examples of incompetent people in businesses who massively increase the annoyance factor and inefficiency of work for everyone else, yet somehow don't get fired; but in adventuring, people like that will find themselves replaced, terminally if necessary. Like making wizards weak at first, but game dominating later on, this is a form of balance that is very much not conductive to a good game. Oh well. 50% isn't a terrible score.
Dragon Issue 117: January 1987
part 2/3
Sage advice returns, having also taken a three year break. Penny Petticord takes the reins to reign over and rein in the uncertainties in the rules created by Unearthed Arcana material. Yes, it has been over a year and it's still a big deal. Yet more evidence of how much slower paced things were back then. Anyway, to the questions.
Can name level cavaliers build strongholds and collect taxes. (yes. Use the same rules as for normal fighters, but double the money they get, because of their noble connections. The salary of virtue bleeds the serfs dry paying for it. )
Can you save the magic liquid from the Rainbow spell by decanting it (no. This is basic anti-weasel economics. Changing the location of something does not change what it is. )
When is Withdraw negated by other using spells. Does this ruin the other spell? ( When you actually apply it to the other person, not when you cast it. No, the negation of withdraw does not ruin the other spell. )
Can you use the illusionist rainbow spell as material component for the cleric rainbow spell ( ow, my head. Someone get the boys down in spell R&D a theasaurus. I'm sure Gary has several to spare. Anyway, the answer is yes. Super synergy strategy ahoy!)
What is the material component for phantom steed. ( A small silver horseshoe. I really ought to give a price for these, as that sounds like it'd need to be custom made, but I won't. )
You said in the DMG there's no such thing as magical elfin chain, but there is in UA. You contradict yourselves! ( That is for the same reason that we also raised the demihuman level limits in UA. Because you lot kept whinging and whinging and whinging at us for the past 6 years! You've got what you wanted. I hope you're happy now. )
How much should elfin chain cost to buy new( shitloads. We recommend at least 5 times the book price, with a waiting list of over a decade. Double that for members of another race. You're not going to follow this advice, are you? I thought not. Bloody munchkins. )
Since non-evil assassins are now legal, how do you introduce them to the game? ( We at sage advice towers still recommend that you do not. If you do so, we recommend the GM places extra obstacles in their way when it comes to training )
Do you get strength bonuses to damage on thrown weapons (yes. Some things are too obvious to forbid. )
Do high level bards gain hierophant druid powers (No. We designed the bard before we did druid levels above 14. By a strict reading of the PHB, they should, but that would be horrendously broken, so it's time for a bit of backpedaling. )
Can a cavalier use a crossbow. ( if he doesn't mind being looked down upon as unknightly by all his cavalier friends.)
If elfin chain is so fine, why does it still hinder your thieving abilities. (It may be lighter and more flexible than regular armour, but it's not better than no armour at all. It's not some magic cure-all. )
What is the armour class of a weapon when trying to disarm it. (you use the armour class of the wielder. Yes, even the bonuses granted by armour. Yes, this isn't particularly realistic. Do you have a problem with this?)
Do you lose all your spells if you change class with a hat of difference (yes. And then you need to rest to memorise spells available to your new one. Quick changes will not be helpful. )
How often can you change classes with a hat of difference (as often as you like, to any class you meet the requirements for. Note that this may play havoc with you experience gaining process, as it is split amongst so many classes. )
Do gray elves get both the race and subrace ability modifiers (yes. This is also the case for all other subraces. )
Can you cast spells while within an ottilukes resilient sphere. (yes. Yes, this includes dispelling. )
The ecology of the ankheg: Another monster that originated in the magazine returns triumphant, to cause devastation to farmers everywhere. Another of those creatures that is just about plausible enough to work in a proper ecology, this adapts plenty of tricks from real life bugs to create a pretty detailed lifecycle for the creature, full of exploitable points that canny adventurers can use to avoid becoming dinner. The fiction also takes a different tack yet again, as while there may be a pontificating sage, he certainly doesn't have the assurance or detachment of most of his ilk. Interestingly, once again the fiction and the gaming parts of the article are handled by different people. What's with that? Also contains a valuable lesson for adventurers. When you get to the domain management stage, if you don't do some actual managing, beware peasant unrest. Being a ruler has responsibilities. Another pretty good article in this series, full of stuff that would make it into the 2nd ed writeup of the creature.
Hounds of space and darkness: Stephen Innis returns like a dog to his vomit, to cover a topic he's examined twice before. Having handled real world tame dogs and wild canids in pretty decent detail, he now gives us three flavours of fantastic dog. Gith dogs are found among both the githyanki and githzerai, and were created by applying the same techniques to normal dogs that the illithids used on humans to make the gith in the first place, proving that the abused becomes the abuser in fantasy worlds as well. Lets hope they don't turn on their masters in turn, because they're pretty ferocious, and highly resistant to mental control, making them well suited to pounce on mind flayers in a pack, ignoring their primary attacks and ripping them to shreds. They're a pretty good addition to their tactical arsenal, that I'm vaguely surprised I've never seen before. We also get the Xotzcoyotl, or cave dogs, which can be found living with all sorts of underground creatures, in various breeds. With superlative hearing and smell, it's pretty much a waste of time trying invisibility around them. While not very pretty (unless you find hairless bats cute. ) they too can make a loyal companion for an adventurer, helping you deal with hazards even demihumans would be hard pressed to detect until it's too late. A welcome return for one of our regular writers. He's producing content as well researched and solidly designed as ever.
Fun without fighting: Speaking of regulars, here's Scott Bennie again, with another quick reminder that there are plenty of plots you can have without combat, and your personal badassedness and degree of social respect and influence are not always related. Romance, children, business, honour, social climbing. All are valid goals you can have a lot of fun striving for. While not bad at all, this is the third bit of basic roleplaying advice in one issue. I'm feeling a bit tired of that by now, especially as we're not even halfway through yet. I hope there were some more recently started readers that are getting more out of this stuff than I am, because they have been pushing it strongly since 1983, and I think I have it pretty well internalized by now. Course, that doesn't necessarily mean I'll be able to put it into practice, and actually run games any better, but we can certainly hope.
The forgotten characters: So hirelings are starting to go out of fashion these days. With the influx of new more badass characters from UA and OA, there's less need for adventurers to travel in large bands with massive supply trains of animals, squires and support troops if they want a decent chance of taking out a monster lair. But we're still a long way from the unaccompanied 4 and 5 person parties of 3 & 4e, and they want to make sure their current love of proper characterization is extended to every part of the game. This means thinking up names, personalities and backstories for your henchmen and hirelings. What's their motivation, likes and dislikes, ambitions beyond following the PC's around, etc etc. Just build it up organically, rather than engaging in tons of work making personalities for people who may die on the first adventure. More ideas to mine, that could be turned to fun or tedium oh so easily. Which will it be?
By magic Masked: Another Elminster article covering a themed set of magic items, in this case m-m-m-m-MASKS! (the mighty power that will save the day. Ahh, the joys of the 80's :D ) Anyway, once again, we're getting a big batch of stuff from the ruins of Myth Drannor. (What's the betting that when FR becomes a full setting, that'll be one of the first places to get a supplement dedicated to it.) The horned mask gives you lots of cool perception related powers. The veil mask keeps your mind from being read. The winged mask lets you fly. The Skull mask protects you from undead special abilities, but also pisses them off, so they attack you first. Better make sure a Defender is wearing it then. The mask of magic lets you see magical energies. The fanged mask lets you chomp on your enemies. The mirror mask reflects gaze attacks back. The mask of silence lets you prevent other creatures from making any sound, perfect for assassins. And the mask of winds is basically just a gasmask, protecting you from nasty poisonous gasses and the like. Not a very inspired collection this month. Very few of them have the quirky additional effects we've come to know and love from Ed, and the setting and historical chatter has been almost completely cut to focus on their mechanical properties. You'd barely know it was him at all. Which isn't very pleasing, even if they're still entirely usable. What's up with that? Hopefully he'll get back on form soon.
Bazaar of the bizarre is back as well! This is pleasing. Looks like they're reviving a lot of the old names. Are they back for good, or will they flip-flop on this. Either way, we get to appreciate their abilities at alliteration. :p Anyway, we get another themed article in quick succession, this time focussed on magical rings. 23 of them, from a whole bunch of different authors. (although there's no big names on the list) I wonder how long some of them have been sitting in the slush pile until they thought they had enough to make a full compilation. While a mixed bag, there are more interesting ones here than in the last article, with funny stuff like the ring of animal magnetism, annoying stuff like the ring of annulment, quirky stuff like the rings of limited telepathy and distraction, and setting tied stuff with inherent plot hooks like the rings of Lolth and Crius. Overall, this is pretty pleasing, and yet more fodder for my random item tables. This should keep them getting repetitive for a few months more.
More power to you: Having given us tons of system light roleplaying advice articles, it now seems that we're getting an onslaught of short sharp chunks of crunch. 5 new skills, 6 new powers, and a new limitation for Champions. Weather control, super flexibility, enhanced senses, greater flexibility, and the great old story device of not being fully in control of your powers. All abilities that have well known comic antecedents, and richly deserve a place in the book. Once again we are reminded just how much development and playtesting it took to produce a system that fills in most of these gaps, and just how big a book you need to cover all this in one place. Most of these are deserving of a more permanent home in the next edition, whenever that may come.
Tanks for the memories: Hmm. An article for car wars? Now that's something that's been around for ages, and never got any attention here. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since TSR & SJG have recently started collaborating on the gameline. Anyway, tanks are also something that doesn't get a huge amount of attention, probably because modern games aren't very big in general. Anyway, tanks are far bigger and more heavily armoured than all but the most insanely rigged hod rod, but nowhere near as fast or maneuverable. If you want to beat them, you'd better be able to attack them from range and make sure they can't target on you to shoot you back. They're also exceedingly expensive. Whether it be fighting them or building one yourself, this is another thing that seems like it should add a little spice to your game.
Roughing it: This month's Top Secret support is another sideways transferral from another recent release. AD&D recently got the wilderness survival guide, so why not convert some stuff over. After all, the life of a secret agent is not all witty reparte and pristine underground hideouts. Forests, mountains, swamps, deserts, arctic landscapes, ocean voyages, all present their own challenges, and get corresponding rules. Training to handle this may be expensive ( $10,000! Just how much money do secret agents have? I suspect the same bureaucratic inflation that can make a spanner or lightbulb cost $50. ) but it can save your life. Once again, they're making the game feel more complete and comprehensive, which is nice.
Dragon Issue 117: January 1987
part 3/3
The marvel-phile: As Jeff promised last month, here are the Marauders. Another incidence of the increase in brutal villains who actually kill people, these guys have caused much devastation recently and are mostly still at large. Scalphunter, Arclight. Harpoon, Scrambler, Riptide, Vertigo, Sabertooth, Malice, Blockbuster and Prism. Many of them I've never heard of, three are already dead (for now) and one would become Wolverine's iconic rival, and is still in regular use today. Another case where we get to see the coalface that would be distilled to make up the cartoons and movies. Not every story can be a classic, and deservedly so, but you can still learn something from them. And so it is with this month's installment of this column.
Even the bad get better: Stewart Wieck! One of the future founders of White Wolf gets an article published in the magazine! Now this is definitely one for the footnotes. The actual article isn't that impressive, being basically a single page article on how to advance your villains in a non fiaty way in Villains and Vigilantes. Whether you wind up using it for your PC's (playing the monster? surely not! ;) ) or just for your NPC's (save it for the big ones, because otherwise it'd be too much bookkeeping) this is a pretty cool idea, that shows you how to make characters behave in genre by controlling what they are rewarded for doing. (once again, it's notable in that in a mere couple of years, people are already a lot more open to the idea of killing in comics. Poor FASERIP.) Don't be afraid to houserule it for your game is you want to support different stuff. As ever, I am left curious if we'll see him in here again before he goes off and starts his own club, and becomes too important and busy for that.
Gamma III: So gamma world is getting it's third edition. And unlike their policy with D&D, they have made some quite substantial changes to the ruleset. A leaf has been taken from FASERIP's book, resolving everything using a single table, with odds of success largely based on your ability scores. Ahh, the joys of fashion. Of course this means you'll have to engage in a bit of conversion work to use characters from your old games with the new rules. It seems that in general they have tried to simplify things quite a bit, making it both quicker and easier to play, and more suited to long term campaigns. Seems both ambitious and laudable. But as we know all to well, such sentiments do not always translate into commercial success. Will we see several more years of good coverage before it dies out, horrible flamewars from a divided fanbase, or an embarrassing flop. This is definitely another interesting thread of history I look forward to following further.
OA3, the spirit warrior strikes gets a very pretty full colour ad.
The role of books: Windmasters bane by Tom Deitz gets a pretty positive review. It manages to combine celtic fantasy with a solid grounding in modern day ohio, with only the protagonist able to see both sides of the equation. Sounds like a good bit of reading for changeling players.
The architect of sleep by Steven R Boyett is the story of a man transferred to a parallel world inhabited by giant telepathic raccoons. (Run with us, etc etc.) This actually produces a surprisingly serious and well developed world, with extensive attention paid to history and sociological details. Only trouble is, there's so much worldbuilding to do that not as much plot happens as it could. Maybe the next in the series will get straight to the action.
The last knight of albion by Peter Hanratty thoroughly confuses the reviewer. It may appear superficially to be a tale of post arthurian britain, in which Percivale is tracking down sir Mordred. But there are all manner of anachronisms, presented in way which makes him think that the writer is trying to make some kind of political allegory. In the end, unsure of what's going on, and not that keen on the distant writing style, he is cautiously negative.
A multitude of monsters by Craig Shaw Gardner is a rather funny tale of a group of monsters attempting to form a union, and find a wizard to act as a spokesman. Plenty of stuff occurs that is both fun to read, and could be easily stolen to put in your game. The reviewer looks forward to reading future books in this series.
The troll's grindstone by Elizabeth Boyer is the 5th book in another series. In this case, experience has indeed honed her skill, making her characterization and plotting stronger than the previous ones, and her supporting characters memorable and nuanced. Remember, even if you aren't that good at something, the more you try, the better you'll get.
Her majesty's wizard and The warlock is missing are two new books from Christopher Stasheff. They get a mixed review, as the reviewer is starting to find him predictable, but is still enjoying his work nonetheless. He needs to develop or he'll get stuck in a rut.
The game of fox and lion by Robert R Chase is a sci-fi story of big business intrigue, as genetically enhanced constructs scheme against their creators. Plenty of Xanatos gambiting takes place. Can you figure out who's really manipulating who before it's revealed?
Silverglass by J F Rivkin is a rousing tale of adventure, politics, sorcery and bed-hopping, (all presented in the best possible taste) with just enough of an undercurrent of weirdness and philosophy to keep the reviewer off-balance. This time, he cautiously recommends it, but still isn't absolutely certain if he should. Is this kind of weirdness going to appeal to ordinary people or not?
Profiles: A pair of alliterative profiles this month, for some reason. Clyde Caldwell is another of our most notable artists, responsible for lots of covers in the past few years, plus a couple of cases of authorial insertion. A well educated fella, for him, the route of least resistance somehow led to freelancing for TSR, and then getting a full time staff job. But it seems he would likely be doing art even if he couldn't make a proper living at it. He advises you not to go into an artistic job unless you really love what you do as well. Being a bitter failure is not cool. We also get to find out the name of the model used on the cover of issue 94 (Why am I not surprised that one was painted from life) and the recent Red Sonja module. Intriguing. I wonder if they still have the outfits :p
Penny Petticord seems rather a perfectionist. Graduating at 15 and going on to get two degrees, she managed to achieve a level of rules mastery in a week that many players never manage. She then rapidly went on to become one of the top convention GM's in the country. (while also having a day job as a rocket scientist) It's no wonder that she's been handling the rules questions for the magazine for the last few years. That kind of precision may not be as essential in roleplaying as it is in aerodynamics, but it certainly doesn't go amiss. I have mucho envy for her talents.
TSR previews: Lazer tag! Fuck yeah! I used to love playing games like that as a teenager! Our pole position product is another incredibly cool live action game. Join the official club and shoot people safely and with style. Now this is a company experiment I can get behind.
Another really weird experiment out next month is the Cheers family game. Of all the things to license. What exactly were you supposed to do with this one, and what were the rules like?
For D&D we have X12: Skarda's mirror. Marauding bandits? Surely a lower level group could handle them. On the other hand, marauding bandits with a magic mirror. Hmm. Interesting. What could lie within.
AD&D is still giving Oriental Adventures plenty of support with OA3: Ochimo, the spirit warrior. Is it an honorable wronged spirit, or a scummy tricksy one? Either way, you'd better lay it to rest.
Gamma world gets GW7: Beta Principle. Venture to a preapocalyptic amusement park and enjoy the easter eggs as the adventure from GW6 develops into a more epic story. Hmm. Combined with the new edition, is this leading to a resurgence for the property?
Finally, we have two anthologies. Amazing science fiction releases a best of covering 1926-35, it's early era. Includes stories from luminaries such as John Campbell and H P Lovecraft. Way to remind us, dude. If you want something more recent, Snarfquest has just finished it's first arc, and gets a compilation of the story so far. Now you can read it all without having to flip from one magazine to the next, spreading them all out on your bed to get a proper feel for the continuity.
The game wizards: Another format change. With Gary fully gone now (not that they've actually said so yet. ) they need a new column to communicate the intentions of the company top brass. Of course, the new very top brass (Roll of thunder, stab of organ music) is not inclined to dirty her hands by communicating directly with the hoi polloi that buy the products, so that means Michael Dobson, Jeff Grubb, "Zeb" Cook, Doug Niles and Jim Ward all contribute their own scuttlebutt.
Mike handles the personnel news. Tracey Hickman and Margaret Weis are back from computer game land, and ready to rock our settings again. Warren Spector has been poached from Steve Jackson games to work as a new editor. (and top secret is getting a new edition, which is also his first project. ) Jim Ward has also returned to the fold after freelancing for a bit, and Harold Johnson has shifted positions. The usual round of reshuffles then. You can check out any time, but you can never leave.
Jeff reports on his progress through the writing of the Manual of the Planes. He's trying to keep the sense of wonder and infinite scope the planes should have and not explain them too much. If he gets a good response, he'll do a column containing stuff cut from it for size, or thought up afterwards to supplement the material in there. I think this project is in good hands.
Zeb is of course in charge of writing the second edition of AD&D. Send letters in saying what you want! Lots of them! We can't revise it for the better unless we have an idea of what you consider better. Nice to see them still listening to their fanbase.
Doug Niles is also hard at work on the new top secret edition. Now with a greater emphasis on actual investigation rather than commando raids. Last word in State of the art? Ha. You can always make more improvements.
Jim Ward is most vague of all, with a heavily redacted statement that reveals very little, but hopefully will stoke interest in whatever he's up too.
Well, I guess they're never really going to be able to replace Gary, but they're certainly trying to maintain an air of fun in these missives, with jokes, hints and asides aplenty. Maybe with the superstar writer/CEO gone, the game'll feel like more of a team effort. Maybe it'll give them more chance to establish their individual personalities. Maybe it'll suck. In any case, it seems pretty likely that the vitriol count will be way down compared to the old days. Lets hope they continue to give me something worth talking about in future installments.
Oh noes! Havoc Con III has been canceled. However, Dundracon, Orcon, Folie-con and King Kon :rolleyes: are still going ahead. Once again their names cause me amusement.
Snarf slays the dragon and gets a happy ending. Until next month anyway, when they start a new storyline. Dragonmirth gets newstandalicious. Wormy has a plan to deal with the giants.
Although not longer in actual length than their other recent issues, they really seem to be getting the hang of packing more into each one. With tons of small articles, and relatively few adverts, this really did feel like a mammoth issue, and has produced a mammoth sized review in response. Some of the articles are good, some are bad, and some are merely meh, as is standard by this point, but in this one, I definitely preferred the more crunchy articles. Also interesting is the fact that in some ways they seem to be regressing, reverting to formats not seen since 1981. Guess they meant it literally when they said they were going to try and recapture the spirit of the old issues. All in all, the range of stuff covered here has been so broad that I can't really say if overall it was good or bad. I think I'll return a mildly positive one, as they are definitely still developing and doing new things, even if it is mixed in with lots of routine crap. And once again I am left wondering just how much bigger my reviews will get before this journey is over. The magazine is still going to get bigger, and if it stays this efficient, then each one could wind up going to pages more. This is actually pretty scary. One article at a time. Just keep telling yourself that. One article at a time. That's the way to get through this.
Dragon Issue 118: February 1987
part 1/3
110 pages. A lovely cover from Dennis Beuvais here. Now that's a scheming villain with style. I want that outfit as well. The contents look promising as well. Finally, this month's special topic is PvP! Oh joy, for I have oft dreamed of this day! Well, not quite, as actually it's about other types of competitions within the game. But it's certainly not impossible that multiple PC's would wind up competing against each other in one. And it's nice to see them avoiding the all co-operation all the time mantra that Roger has spouted before. (see issue 73) I am cautiously optimistic. Now, if they could just do something about the chaos in the office, and the reorganizations in the magazine. One thing after another, don't know if I'm coming or going. Forget my own ears if they weren't stuck on.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking them if they plan to do any more cardboard cutout things in the future, and if they'll publish call of cthulhu articles. The answer is yes, and if they get any good ones sent in. Can't publish what we don't have, as they've said before.
A letter complaining about a monty hauling DM. Roger gives his usual advice, that the best thing to do in this situation is to end the game and start a new one, preferably with a new DM.
Another letter asking them to cover more non TSR games (BRP is getting a lot of love. ) and maybe do miniatures reviews again. Roger is once again cautious. You gotta send that stuff in if you want us to cover it. We also intend to keep Dungeon strictly D&D for the time being. All this is subject to change due to demand.
Forum: David Carl Argall points out that due to sloppy math, it's impossible for a horse in barding to carry a fully armed and armoured knight. Encumbrance would make them collapse. Dear oh dear. How very amusing. Will they fix that next edition?
Thomas Kane thinks that if the magazine wants to grow further, the game needs to market itself better. No matter what you do to the magazine, nongamers won't read it. To aid this, the D&D and AD&D games ought to be as simple and compatible as possible. Don't keep fucking around with things. Someone else would probably prefer it if D&D was treated as a perennial rather than a supplement mill.
Paul Griffin thinks the alignment system is stupidly written. Where's the room for pragmatists who do whatever is most convenient at the time, or people who try to be good most of the time but cave and betray their friends when things get tough? This badly needs fixing.
Greg Surbeck has a problem with the xp for gold system, as it produces wildly unpredictable results that can really mess up the game, particularly where thieves are involved. What are we to do with these awkward level disparities?
Ethan Sicotte thinks that the ease with which D&D can be modified is actually a strength. If it were a more internally consistent ruleset we wouldn't be able to do that without breaking things. I find this opinion highly amusing. You can't break it if it's already broken, eh? Amazing what you can rationalize.
Chris Lincoln and Ed Friedlander give some fairly solid opinions on how illusions should work. Perception can only do so much.
Nelson E Hemstreet expresses his contempt for the chauvinists out there. They don't know what they're missing.
Dave Robinson thinks that the magazine should have a few laughs in it. Even a serious game needs the tension relieved every now and then.
Peter C Zelinski thinks that multiple weapon specialization shouldn't be allowed at 1st level, as it's too unbalancing. Only higher level slots should be applicable that way. You mean how BD&D does it then. ;)
Slyvain Robert is another writer in favour of greater differentiation of clerics via the god they serve. You know, I don't think I've seen anyone actively against that idea. It's just the implementation that can be problematic.
The fighting circle: Gladiatorial fighting is an interesting business. Amusingly enough, if you want to bypass the crappy wandering around in nasty environments and looking for traps part of adventuring, and just have lots of fights with interesting people and creatures of a similar power level, it's a very good way to go for an aspiring adventurer. You get more fame, controlled encounters, that you (or at least the house) can pace to a reasonable level, and if there are clerics around, you might even get healed up between bouts. You could actually gain levels and fame a lot faster than people wandering the world. (although you'd probably end up with below average treasure & equipment. ) Course, it's not as easy as that, and most people come to the profession as slaves, thrown in and not surviving beyond one or two fights. Even if you do get decent training, your odds of surviving the three year term are not good. This 9 page article goes into plenty of detail on the whole charming business, including historical and sociological details, and plenty of variations to make things more interesting than an endless series of white room fights. A pretty strong start that opens up another campaign style for you to try, be it as a brief diversion, or an entire plot arc. (Once again, paper mario makes good inspiration, amusingly enough ) You get to live. ;)
Illuminati! All these conspiracies to control the world. Who will win? Now with new friends and enemies in the expansion set.
Surely, you joust!: Fast forward a few hundred years, and gladiatorial arenas are no longer in fashion, but instead guys in heavy armour get on big horses and do their best to knock each other off with lances. Course, in D&D, you can take a short trip from Karimekos to Thyatis and do both no problem. But without rules for weapon breakage and unhorsing, it'd just be a standard fight. So here's another fairly extensive article to turn tournament fighting into it's own minigame. Cavaliers are of course the stars of the show, with their slew of riding related bonuses making them better than any other fighter at the same level, but that doesn't mean you can't at least compete. Another pretty good article, even if it does fall into the trap of creating nonunified subsystems to handle each situation, and it's obvious that the writer hasn't read either of the survival guides that roll out nonweapon proficiencies for general use. It happens, especially when an article has probably been in the slush pile for months waiting for enough other stuff on the same theme to build up.
A day at the faire: Once again we follow on fairly logically. You now have rules to fight in a tournament. But plenty of fun can be had simply as a spectator, especially if you already have an in with the upper classes and can engage in a little shopping, betting and politicking while there. Here's a fairly quick article that gives us some descriptive fluff to help you set the mood, a set of map elements for you to take and use, some sample NPC's, and half a dozen plot hooks involving them. In other words, this cuts all the crap, and gives us one thing after another that's useful in actual play with very little work. If anything, it's almost a sample adventure. Which is pretty damn awesome, actually. Even more than the last article, this really makes a good bit of tournamenting seem a fun and accessable option for a session. Very pleasing indeed.
On target: And if you're not too keen on arena fighting or jousting, there's always archery, which allows you to demonstrate your skill with rather less bloodshed, particularly on your part. And once again, we are faced with the abstractions in D&D's combat system, which while normally beneficial to our play, make running a competition like this very hard if you don't houserule. And once again ;) Leonard Carpenter is here to provide said houserules. Once again, he isn't fully integrated with previous books and articles (Completely ignoring the Archer class in a discussion on archery? Shocking. I don't care if it was 6 years ago, and you don't have a copy of that issue ;) ) but most of it makes sense on it's own terms. A solid but unexceptional way to finish off what has been overall, a very good themed section.
Dragon Issue 118: February 1987
part 2/3
ARRRGH!!!: What a header :D I'm amused already. This is all about PAIN! Wound penalties are one of those things that certain people keep trying to put into the game, but so far, it's never stuck. Mainly because for most people, it's more bookkeeping for less fun. And massively escalating hit points combined with it produce odd results. But here we go again, into the AARRG, my FOOT!!!! territory. Which while it has it's superficial temptations, is nowhere near as nice as marlboro country to live. If you want to add an extra roll and a couple of extra bits of bookkeeping to every single hit, be my guest. But even though these seem pretty solid, and don't neglect the idea that some of D&D hit points are actually narrative avoidance, I still have no desire to actually use them. It also gets cut off at the end without saying where the final few lines are and I can't find them anywhere. Sloppy editing. Curse you, Roger! :shakes fist:
Nibar's keep: CC Stoll pulls an old game out of his files and finally gets it published. Not really a full-on special feature, this is a quick little game where two players summon various creatures and compete in an arena to settle disputes. They ought to sue nintendo ;) There are 9 different types of counters, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, giving you a level of emergent tactics on a similar kind of level to chess. With an optional advanced version, it should survive a few plays. This fits the theme of the issue well, and since it has a fairly generic rationale for existing in a larger setting, you could insert Nidar and his keep into an RPG campaign, and use this as a minigame who's results have effects in the larger continuity. Which I might well do, if I get the chance. Nice.
Fiction: Across the fog-gray sea by Lois Tilton. A delightful tale of incest, genocide, ancestral curses, and secret heirs to the throne, set in a wild, somewhat viking flavoured land somewhere in the polar regions. This is the kind of thing that shows why you shouldn't take half measures when oppressing a country, and keeping slaves of a different ethnicity is a very bad idea. They will resent you, and it will come back to bite your ass sometime in the future, often in a way you don't expect. So a surprisingly unbowdlerised little morality play here. Mature themes do not have to involve gratuitous cheesecake. I approve.
Sage advice welcomes Mike Breault onto the team. This month, most of the questions are focused on the Dungeoneers survival guide.
The proficiencies system makes no sense. The better you are, the harder it is. (yeah, we made an editing error. Reverse all the modifiers and it'll make sense. )
Does blind-fighting help you fight invisible creatures. (Yes. Are you gonna fill your valuable slots with the fluff skill choices anyway? We'll all be sniggering at you.)
Can you fire a bow while riding? ( You can only fire bow from a moving horse if you have the proficiency. That hit and run power is very much worth the investment. )
Can a loud noise disrupt the verbal component to a spell (no. Magical energy is HOP not HAP in D&D. It can hear the components and respond appropriately even if no-one else could unless you're magically silenced.)
Can you use hold person to hold a person underwater (No. It only prevents them from moving. They're still bouyant. This may not save them, of course, depending what side of them floats to the top.)
How do I make a bigger map than the blank maps allow.( Photocopy it enlarged and draw new lines between the existing ones. Or buy lots of graph paper. )
What's the cutoff point between shallow and deep descents? (15 degrees. Don't ask us about the level of resonance. I'm a rocket scientist, not a musician.)
Aren't grappling hooks too expensive. (what is this, a modern setting? Have you examined our price lists? Oh, alright, just for you, an 80% discount. I'm not going any lower, though.)
Isn't it too easy to smash a boat to bits underground (no. Crunch our numbers, I think you'll find them quite reasonable. Underground waterways are risky places. )
How do I turn my paladin into a cavalier-paladin if he doesn't fit the requirements or social restrictions. (Don't worry too much about it if you're not playing tournament rules. Gary's left now. You don't have to listen to his pontifications about the one true way to play AD&D anymore. )
Why can't a dwarf pummel a human. (Because they're too short for the basic rules. You'll have to use the expert ones. Shocking sizeism, really.)
A hero's reward: Oooh. Hero points. Narrative coolness finally arrives for D&D! You want to be able to make a choice to put some extra effort into a particular roll? Or have divine favour or the luck of heroes, making your game more cinematic. Well, now you can. In typical D&D fashion, they escalate directly with level, so normal mooks aren't much better, but big heroes are considerably more able to influence their fate. However, these ones only let you influence your own fate in terms of boosting numbers or giving enemies penalties, rather than plot twists, dramatic editing, and other cool stuff that later games would do with this concept. Still, even if it's not brilliantly implemented yet, you do usually have to go through rough versions before you get the really cool polished products. Hopefully several aspiring young game designers got their mind expanded by reading this. As ever, if you are one of those people, I'd love to hear from you.
Out of the stone age: Hee. Neanderthals. One of the monsters that appears in both basic and advanced D&D, they blur the line between human and nonhuman in a similar way to the demihuman races. Only with the additional weirdness that comes from them maybe having existed at some point in reality. Albeit not in this form, which is packed with weird D&Disms, like using rituals to advance their powers. Still, it's not often we get new PC races specifically for BD&D, so this is a welcome occurrence. Like the barbarian cleric, they balance out badassedness with high XP costs and a whole bunch of social requirements. Since their xp costs and max levels are similar to elves, I think that'll actually work out this time. In any case, this was definitely a fun little article to read. They do seem to be having a lot of those this month.
The dragon's bestiary: Opilonid are a swarm hunting breed of underground arachnoids. They get a whole bunch of quirky exception based powers and ecological stuff. Definitely one of the better thought out entries in here.
Spider cats(!) are exactly what they sound like, hybrid predators that stalk you, web you, and string you up for later. Mad wizards get memetastic. Just be thankful none of them have unleashed lolcats on the forgotten realms. That'd fuck it up even worse than the spellplague.
Pheonix spiders take the tenacity of cockroaches and make it even worse, as they reform, bigger and badder every time you kill them. Now that's the kind of thing that provokes HOLY SHIT! reactions in players. I so want to use these. If anything'll make even the dumbest kill everything that moves party stop and think, it's these guys. They also have instadeath poison that still does damage if you save, so even at their smaller sizes they'll still mow through an uninformed party. If you were to take the cap off it's growth, and vary it's weakness to a form harder to find and use, one of these could rival the tarrasque as a country destroying monstrosity that drives an entire campaign arc. Muahahahaha!!!!!!
Polar spiders, like polar bears, are big furry things that camouflage themselves against the ice, and hunt you down. Yet another apex predator in a world absolutely swarming with them.
Giant bolas spiders throw a sticky glob at you and reel you in like a hooked fish. Good luck breaking free before they grab you and apply the standard instadeath poison. To top it off, they're smart enough to be malevolent, and can detect magic by touch, which definitely seems like it could have plot purposes.
Definitely a well above average bestiary this month, with several awesome entries. Their diabolical imaginations are working at full steam, adapting stuff from the real world to their ends. I approve.
Dragon Issue 118: February 1987
part 3/3
The game wizards: Zeb Cook continues to clarify his plans for the next edition. This month, it's the crucial decision of which classes to include. Fighters, wizards and thieves are a shoe-in, although they may be tweaked slightly, and the thief abilities subsumed into the skill system. Too radical a change? Maybe the edition after then. ;)
Clerics are probably staying, although they do have some vocal opposition, and if they weren't essential for healing, might be ditched (just make another class with healing powers then, so they aren't essential anymore :rolleyes: ) We still want to differentiate clerics of various gods more. This will also have the effect of making druids less unique, and they'll likely be rolled into the general speciality cleric rules.
Assassins are definitely going, we're trying to be a family friendly company now, and they've just caused too much hassle.
Bards are getting completely reworked, to make them more universal, and less mechanically wonky.
Monks are going to be relegated to the oriental supplement where they belong. Barbarians and cavaliers are also likely to be relegated to a splatbook and seriously rebalanced, and maybe paladins and rangers will join them. Or maybe not, as we want to have a few unambiguous hero types.
Illusionists are to be rolled into wizards and new types of specialists created, and thief-acrobats will similarly be constructible using the proficiency rules, and therefore redundant as a separate class.
So his plans as stated aren't too different from Gary's original ones from issue 103. (Although I'm pretty sure the new classes from UA would have got a better deal if he was still around, since they were his babies.) For all his statements that your letters are vital to their decisions, they already seem to have come to a consensus on most of the big issues. Probably the thing that stands out most as a dropped ball was their failure to enhance the skill system, and make it fully integrated with class features, giving all the classes a much greater degree of flexibility, and their various abilities more universal resolution. Guess inertia won out over good intentions on that one. But then again, even the radicals in their office have no desire to make the kind of changes that we saw in 3rd and 4th ed, partly due to inability to conceive of ways the game could be done differently. Another interesting bit of fuel for the flame wars, that I'm sure we'll see responses to in the forum.
TSR previews: D&D is still on an epic kick, with IM2: Wrath of the immortals. Course, it isn't quite as epic as the first immortal adventure, but probably more accessable. Kick the asses of those who dare to meddle in human affairs directly. Woo.
AD&D gets I11: Needle. Frank Mentzer sends the PC's on an epic adventure to retrieve a macguffin and rescue a spider princess. How very amusing. We also get C6: The official RPGA Tournament Handbook. Want to write your own convention legal modules? Now you can without having to pay a load of subscription fees. Technically AD&D, but actually pretty system free, is Leaves from the Inn of the Last home. Tons of stuff to fill out Dragonlance as a setting, rather than just the backdrop for a specific set of adventures.
Marvel superheroes are getting MA3: The ultimate powers book. That sounds like the kind of thing which sells well. Everyone loves new official powers.
Our adventure gamebooks are up to number 12, Curse of the werewolf. Can you cure your lycanthropy before you become nothing but a monster?
Carwars gets it's third gamebook, Dueltrack. All the usual hazards, plus an unreliable experimental robot that's supposedly on your side. I suspect this may be used for comic relief. :shudders:
Another new imprint kicks off, the Windwalker books. The first is Once upon a murder. A detective is bodyswapped and sent back in time. Can he find out what the hell is going on and get home? The second is Bimbos of the Death Sun. I remember that name! I get the impression that this may be a line of less serious books. What was all this about then?
Finally, we have the Chase family board game. Another attempt to diversify, this had a short independently printed run which was a resounding success, and has now been picked up for widespread distribution. Anyone played this one?
Unfriendly fire: Top secret goes military this month. Yes, it may be tricky being a secret agent in areas with an ongoing outright war, but when the stakes are highest, the benefits you can provide for your country are as well. Plus you have a chance of getting to use the really cool toys to blow stuff up that you couldn't normally get away with. So here we have both cool crunch, and GM'ing advice on how to handle it, and build adventures building it. Now you can try and survive mass combat, and die horribly from chemical and biological weapons. A pretty decent article with plenty of actual play applications.
The warlock redux: Jeff takes a break from his Phileing to pay more attention to his planar work. So it's up to someone else to provide us marvel stuff this month. Adam Warlock, Pip, Gamora, and Her. One of our more cosmically powerful heroes and his rogues gallery. Themes of finding a purpose, responsibility, good intentions gone astray, and the general problems of a universe with time travel, fairly frequent but unreliable resurrection, and an animistic Death. Heavy topics, but they don't forget the comic relief. As with the last time Jeff took a break, more attention is paid to the actual play of these characters, and creating games with a similar style. Curious. As with Ed and the ecologies, this is evidence that even when you have top writers on the case, a little variety is still welcome, producing an overall stronger body of work on a property. After all, the marvel universe is now broad enough that you don't really have to worry about ruining continuity and dilution of themes. So another pretty decent showing all round on this front.
The role of computers: OrbQuest is an adventure game, where you quest to reunite the seven pieces of the shattered macgufin. /so you can enter ganon's tower/ ;) Explore cities, wilderness, and dungeons. (rather easier than in most games, because they've had the innovative idea of making your character head for the point on the screen your mouse clicks on. ) Fight monsters. Reroll your attributes untill you get good ones. (exactly the same as D&D attributes, but not on the same scale. ) While some of the ideas may have been new then, it seems pretty generic now.
Roadwar 2000 is a postapocalyptic survival game. Build a gang, scavenge vehicles, and compete for resources and territory in a burned out future that is now in the past, amusingly enough. It seems to push most of the buttons you would expect a game like that to hit, and certainly covers a pretty wide scope, as you can roam the entire states, and both tactical combat and strategic resource management are crucial to success. Sounds like fun.
World Builder is a general map creation program. This is exceedingly useful for GM's, as it allows you to build 3d environments, show them from any angle, and include descriptive text to go with it. (which you will need, because this is 1987, and the graphics aren't that great. If you have the time and energy to learn a programming language, then you can get quite a lot out of this, or one of it's descendants. If not, just leave it.
Snarf is rapidly getting bored of being king. But loose ends from last adventure will be back to bite him. Dragonmirth is all armored up.
Bloodbowl! The game of fantasy american football out soon. Now where have we seen that before? Oh yeah, back in issue 65. TSR oughta sue ;).
Spacemaster! Rolemaster in Spaaaace! Another newish game to enjoy.
Looks like Len Carpenter is the real star of this show, in an issue that manages to not only fulfill it's theme better than most, but introduces several other very interesting ideas. This shows that it's usually better to keep track of what's in the slush pile and put together the best stuff you can find, even if it takes a while to build up enough, rather than always existing month to month. The more you buffer the easier things become, even if you're outputting the same amount overall, the ability to smooth out internal fluctuations and engage in longer editing cycles definitely helps. Anyway, this is one of the best issues I've read in a while, in all aspects apart from the editing. Tsk tsk Roger. You're doing too much. Get more help before you burn out.
Dragon Issue 119: March 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. Welcome to a second druid special. One of the classes with a more interesting history in the magazine, they certainly have their fair share of fans. And obviously submissions for them have been building up over the past year or two. So let's let them out to play. Will they be well balanced, as nature should be, or twinky like CoDzilla? Shall we see?
In this issue:
Letters: We have a letter asking what Chainmail was like, and what happened to it. Roger replies that it is pretty scrappy. You gotta be prepared to house rule if you want to use it for a roleplaying game. Not quite a discouragement, but definitely a caveat emptor. They'll be bad-mouthing the old stuff done by Gary before you know it.
Two letters, one asking if they plan to do a sci-fi anthology, and another if they'd do a module anthology. Roger gives the same reply. We're considering it, but we need convincing that there's a big enough market for it. This is very much down to you, Loyal Readers!
Forum: Brock Sides thinks that weapon specialization and nonweapon proficiencies only detract from the game, because people only take the twinky options, rather than using them as intended. Yeah, as they are at that point, they are rather abusable, aren't they. It's your job as DM to ensure crap like that doesn't get out of hand.
Patrick Sieff thinks that people don't take orcs seriously enough. They can be a very real threat. Do more articles on them. But then people wouldn't be so scared of kobolds ;)
Larry Paisley suggests that videotaping a gaming session would be a cool idea, andcould definitely expand peoples minds on how the game is played. I very much agree with this idea.
Jeff Klein points out that the OA races do not have sex discrimination on their strength scores the way PHB ones do. This is wrong! If anything, they should be even more severe, given that the east is even more restrictive about gender roles. Um. Ok then. I understand the logic behind your opinion, but I really wouldn't want to be in your shoes in the forum in the next few months. Really, this is just asking for trouble.
Boyce Kline (no relation) gives a little advice for people still trying to find good models for their Dragonchess set. Interesting. Nice to see that still getting a bit of attention.
Underestimating druids (is a bad practice): Gee, ya reckon? Yeah, they don't have as good weapon and armour options as clerics. But if you're a goddamn polar bear, who cares. But then, this is before the internet, which enabled character optimizers from all around the world to pool their knowledge in seconds. People were less likely to be disabused of their face value impressions then. Really, with their fast spell progression and low mid level XP requirements, druids are one of the most badass classes in the game, and this article goes to considerable lengths to point out just how to make the most of their abilities. Spells, social abilities, companions, special powers, all are pretty effective, even in dungeons. We get mathematical analyses of their spell access compared to other primary casters, showing just how quickly they get their badass powers by comparison. And we get additional justification of why they would become adventurers and work with good people. Expect a big spike in the number of people playing them in the near future, because this is pretty unambiguous. A solid start that hits both the mechanical and flavour buttons just fine.
Is there a doctor in the forest: Herbalism. We've already had an article on this (issue 82), but it seems fitting for the issue's theme, so here's another one. With slightly higher overall power level, and considerably less flavour text and descriptive detail, this is very definite power creep compared to the last one, while also having less of a sense of irony about the quirks of healing in D&D. Once again we see how the game has gradually become taken more seriously, even as it remains just as ludicrous from a purely objective viewpoint. I vaguely disapprove. A definite step towards focussing on the crunchy effects for everything over the flavour.
On becoming the great druid: Booyeah. Druidic battles. Now here's one of the D&D system's quirks they should have examined in detail a long time ago. While it can be inconvenient in troupe play where people are expected to stick together, high level druidic politics is a rich ground for adventures. How big are the areas covered by a particular druidic hierarchy. Can you get around this particular restriction by heading to an area which currently doesn't have the full quota of high level characters? Just what do druidic challenges entail? Remember, they are true neutral, so they are fully entitled to be sneaky and red in tooth and claw in their machinations, even though they have to play fair once the challenge is actually taking place. This is rich ground for interesting setpieces, alliances, betrayals, twists, backroom deals, falls and comebacks, all the things that you should be up too at name level politics. A solid article that doesn't quite match up to the depth the topic is covered next edition in the complete druids handbook, but is still quite adequate as a mind expander for the general population. A solid continuation to this month's theme.
Cantrips for druids - Naturally: We had them for wizards. We had them for clerics recently. Now all the primary spellcasting classes have an additional selection of minor magics to make their everyday life a little more convenient. 12 minor spells that are primarily just for everyday work, but can be used inventively to turn a sticky situation round for adventurers. The somatic components are described as well, and are generally amusingly appropriate. (although as the forum shows, not everyone appreciates this :p ) A short but sweet article, that you can integrate into your own game easily enough, and hopefully will add to it.
King of the jungle: Ed gives us a new nature focussed class. The Beastmaster. As with the Incantrix, they warn it's overpowered and should not be allowed to PC's at any cost, but it isn't really all that. (apart from the ridiculous post name level hit points. You're supposed to get fewer, not more on average) Any spellcaster with the ability to choose and develop their own powers will be able to outclass them magically, while a decently trained fighter will be able to take them down in a head-on battle. In terms of wilderness dealing powers, however, they massively outclass rangers, with Ed providing a massive, and not particularly well organized laundry list of powers that'll be a bit of a bugger to remember in actual play. This is very much the equivalent for rangers to Gary's introduction of the cavalier for paladins, something that occupies much the same thematic niche, but expresses it in a much more specific and less elegant way. As with the poorly playtested UA classes we saw in here first, I rather disapprove of this. Not Ed's most stellar work by a long shot, mechanically or flavour-wise.
The uldra: Aka pointy hat gnomes, from the far north. Say hello to a new demihuman race for you to play. This is also in theme, just about, as they have strong ties with nature, and make good druids and rangers. Really, this is an attempt to address the fact that neither of our existing short bearded folk are that good at the nature connection thing, despite there being legends featuring them as such. Another demonstration of D&D's tendency to create variants for everything apart from humans. If you made their options a little broader in the first place, we wouldn't have to use kludgy patches like this to fix things. Anyway, despite being symptomatic of a larger underlying problem, this is a pretty decent article in it's own right. They aren't particularly overpowered, and we get plenty of fluff details and stuff on their gods. I would have no particular objection to my players playing one.
The ecology of the korred: Ed turns his attention to one of the less commonly used fae races. Slightly smaller, wilder, and weirder relations of satyrs, Korred live in the wilderness, like to dance and play the pipes waaay too much, and make ropes out of people's hair. It's all good clean fun until someone dies of exhaustion. Another of those cases where D&D's adaption of existing myths has had decidedly idiosyncratic effects, creating several subspecies where one with some cultural variations would probably do. Ed once again is not at his best here, giving us a piece of work that is merely adequate, rather than exceptional. Still, we have stats for their god, which is another first for this series, so it's not all bad. But he does seem a bit distracted somehow. Hmm.
The dragon's bestiary is also on theme this issue, with a whole cavalcade of sylvan creatures. This brings the total up to 8 articles, equalling the psionics issue. Interesting. Will they break that record at some point? As ever, I look forward to reporting statistics like this. But anyway, back to the topic at hand:
Anchu are canid humanoids (with a bad illustration that makes them look more horselike than doglike. Sociable and with a reasonable class selection, they seem pretty well suited to becoming PC's.
Giant capybara are even bigger guinea pigs than we see in the real world, up to 8' long. Aww, innit cute. Mweep mweep and all that. If you're in tropical swamps, there's good eatin on one of these.
Wild halflings are like wild elves, yet another fricken case of conflating cultural variants with racial variants. Most tiresome. They get a pretty big writeup, giving them a whole host of nature related abilities. Seems like the only races that become civilised are those without an array of special powers that let them survive comfortably in all sorts of conditions. Is this diliberate commentary? Is our weakness and sense of insecurity compared to other races paradoxically what drives us on to do great things, overcompensating for our human limitations. It's an interesting premise.
Leshy are another mischevious fae variant drawn from real world mythology. They'll confuse you, misdirect you, and fuck up your equipment. This rarely goes down well, despite it saying that they'll regard you better if you laugh at their jokes.
Luposphinx are of course dog-headed sphinxes. Like the other animal headed ones, they aren't very nice, and like to have humans for dinner. They often gather little bands of marauding followers as well, just to make things even more inconvenient. They'd make good midlevel bosses behind some bigger plot.
Musical spirits are creepy undead that lurk in forests, and can force you to dance until you pass out. If you're clever, you can learn this trick from them. An interesting noncombat challenge here.
Sashalus are cunning ambulatory fungi. As scavengers, they generally won't attack you unless you're already hurt. Another Ed Greenwood creation, these do have some of his customary flavour touches. So he's not totally off form this month.
Wendigo are people who engaged in cannibalism, and have devolved to the level of beasts as a result. It could happen to you too. If you're starving in the woods, eat dubious berries instead first.
Whispering pines are magical trees that mesmerize you if you try and cut them down. You'll need to come prepared if you want to counteract this and not starve to death.
Wood giants, aka Voadkyn, are one of those creatures that would go on to be officially published. Relatively small for giants, and with a slight faeish tint, they hang around elves and treants being agreeably mischievous. Another thing that's more dangerous than they seem, with their shapeshifting, stealth, and skill with missiles.
Wood Golems are created by druids, and do much the same thing any golem does. Big tough thing go smashy smashy, and be really hard to kill. Of course, being made of wood, it's vulnerable to fire. Take advantage of this if you can.
Dragon Issue 119: March 1987
part 2/3
Henchmen and hirelings: Another examination of a seemingly innocuous part of the game. In reality, just getting a decent job is a serious adventure in itself, whether you're an employee or employer. This is another thing that you can introduce into the game, as you try and sort out the serious disciplined followers from the flakes, the powerhungry betrayers, the spies in disguise, the slumming posh kids who'll be useless and complain constantly, but have parents that'll make your life miserable if you let them die, and that guy who says he's a black belt in several martial arts and has saved the world repeatedly, but obviously hasn't washed in months, and openly talks to your tits during the interview. Another case where you'll have to consider carefully if you want this much realism in your escapism, because this would bore a lot of people, and be exactly what they play to forget. But even if you gloss over most of this, you've still got to sort out how many extras the party has, and how much they're getting paid. Or you could just go it alone, keep all the profits for yourself. Your choice, don't come crying to me when you die horribly. Another middling filler article full of perfectly serviceable crunch and roleplaying advice. I can certainly see myself applying this to sadistic effect.
The game wizards: Jeff Grubb gets to meet Elminster. Finally, the forgotten realms are becoming an official campaign setting. In fact, they're becoming the primary campaign setting for 2nd edition D&D, and co-opting Kara-Tur into being part of the same world as well. Yikes. This explains Ed's slightly subpar work these past few issues. They obviously feel uncomfortable using Greyhawk with Gary gone. Tracy and Margaret must be seething with envy. This really is putting a lot of faith in Ed and his co-writers. Still, I'm sure they'll cope. Jeff obviously isn't as used to this as Ed, as he finds El a rather menacing figure. Well, you are most likely to be killed by someone the first few times you meet them. Anyway, this doesn't quite match up to last month's news in terms of sheer flamebaiting potential, but it's still a very important announcement, that will have huge ramifications, and please a lot of people who've been reading Ed's stuff for years and trying to join together the pieces. And it's entertainingly written as well. They're definitely establishing their own voice, and starting to move the company in new directions now Gary's no longer at the wheel. Hopefully they can keep up the strong standard for these bulletins.
Fiction:The pawns of crux by Steven Saylor. Another hard hitting story this month, as we see the nasty things slavers do to break their captives and get the most out of them. By arbitrarily favouring some, and making others suffer even worse than the norm, they turn their resentment against each other, making a rebellion even harder. How do you deal with this without becoming a monster as well? And if you escape, will you ever really be free? Another pretty good piece of fiction that has some cool bits to steal for your game. Plus the first Darlene illustrations in quite a long time. Interesting. And pretty pleasing as well. Wonder if she'll be around a bit more in the next few issues.
Sage advice is taken over by Skip Williams. I wonder if he'll stick at the job ;) They've been so intransigent of late. Rules lawyering is a hard job. This month, they've decided to set him onto regular D&D, and primarily tackling stuff from the master and immortal sets.
Can you handcuff a creature with a wall of iron (man what. No. )
What benefits do mystics get for weapon mastery with their hands (None! Their hands may be weapons, but they aren't really Weapons, if you get what I'm saying. Allowing that would be a no drawback power boost, as you can't normally lose your hands in D&D. )
Does anti-magic shell impede mystics. (once again, no. )
Do mystics get dexterity bonuses ( For the fourth time, no! I am not in a permissive mood today! )
Can you have thug and headsman PC's ( Can you guess my answer. Here's a hint. It's just the same as the last four questions. NO! It's my first time and I want to get off on the right foot. That means asserting my authority. Respect it, for I am firm but fair.)
What are bec du corbins and fauchards? ( Polearms. Mi diagram. Let me show you it. )
When do you encounter the dragon rulers (When you need to measure a dragon. :p Seriously, we didn't put them on the random tables because they're unique, and it would screw up the tables if you killed them. )
I need advice on druid status battles (Nonlethal fight. Prove dominance. How simple do you want it. Hmm. Naked mud wrestling'd be good. Get in an audience, make a little money on the side. Gotta take advantage of that 15 charisma minimum. Oh, wait, that's AD&D. Eh, naked mud wrestling'd be good anyway. Getting close to nature and all that crap. )
Why aren't the outer planes detailed in the master set like the companion set said they would. (because you're still too wimpy to play in the big leagues until you reach immortal level. )
Why don't NPC's have as much money as a player of the same level. (because they spend their money, instead of being total munchkins like you PC's. )
Is casting wizardry frequently an alignment violation (no)
Can create normal monsters be made permanent. (yes. They're still magically created though, and vanish if dispelled. This may result in angst along the line as they try to figure out their place in the world, and if they're really real or not. Do you want a Promethian crossover this early? )
What is a lycanthrope's natural form (Human. The hint is in putting the were before the animal. If you put it afterwards, the animal form is the natural one. )
What are special undead ( What you get if you animate the body of a retarded person. Duh. )
Can undead beholders be turned. (not easily. They're special too, you see. )
Can you turn undead with more than 12 hit dice. (yes. You round up, y'see, so you always affect at least one, no matter how badass they are. )
Can clerics learn how to use edged weapons (no. Your class restrictions still apply. )
Can clerics use shield weapons (no. They do damage with sharp and pointy bits. That's naughty and their god will spank them if they try it.)
I can't find the titanothere (Ahh, begorrah. It's O'there in AC9, me laddie. Now won't ye join me in a quick musical interlude before we tackle the second half'o the questions. And a one and a two and an oidely oidely boo. :riverdances: )
Can Immortals get below AC-20 (no)
What's the maximum PP you can get (15,000)
If time is the fourth dimension, what do immortals look like (time is not a dimension, it's a sphere. Four dimensional creatures look like regular creatures, but with an extra dimension. There are computer programs which can represent 4D objects, but trying to comprehend them has been known to cause brain pain. Even someone as smart as me, who can plot extrapolations of basic polygons in infinite dimensions has trouble with it.)
Can you bring your character back after they become an old one (No. They've won the game. You've gotta start a new one. You should feel happy, not sad. Actually, you probably ought to play a different game, because after playing it from 1st to immortal twice, you've probably exhausted the gaming options D&D provides. )
Can an immortal become a blackball and cross the dimensional vortex (no on both counts)
What is the astral plane (the transitive plane between the inner and outer planes. Not quite the same as in AD&D, but you can cross over ideas anyway. )
When will the old ones return. (Never. Unless we get bored and decide it's time for a big metaplot event. Let's say 5 years. ;) )
What was the great experiment ( Your mom was the great experiment)
What is immortals final fate (none. They're immortal, remember. Unless they get killed or transcend (neither easy to do) they stick around forever. )
What's in the 6th+ dimensions. (I dunno. We're already way outside most peoples comfort zones. I don't want to create rules for that level of cosmic power.)
Where are immortals home planes. (wherever they want them to be. Are you gonna tell them to move?)
Why aren't all immortals powers listed in one place. (because there are too many of them for your puny mortal brain to take in at once. )
Can an immortal create a new form anywhere. (no, only at home. They can take them with them and stash them elsewhere for emergencies, though. Make sure you smite any adventurers stumbling across them, otherwise they might get ideas above their station.)
Which way should I cross the planar boundary (any way you choose. You are an immortal, remember. )
Florble thnorble tetraspace gnorble Ahh, the angles, it burns! (Yes, these rules for planar and dimensional stuff are a bit of a headache, aren't they. Have a hyperspherical asprin.)
What is interdimensional travel ( moving into a place with a different number of dimensions. )
Can mortals percieve 4 dimensions while astral (no, because they lose the ability to see the 1st one. You can still watch them unseen from a right angle and then rearrange their innards at a whim. Play super paper mario, it'll help this make sense.)
How do you enlarge your home plane (lots and lots of PP's)
How do you create things to live in your plane (lots more PP's)
How many PP's, exactly? ( oops, we made a mistake in the table. Third column. )
Do immortals of entropy get more powers than you've detailed (oh yes. Be afraid, Muahahahahaha)
Why isn't there a path to immortality that favours demihumans ( because they already have it way easier, actually, with their lower maximum level. What seemed like a drawback at the companion stage actually isn't anymore. )
Can I get to immortality with a little help from my friends? ( Within reason. They've gotta do their own quests if they want to become immortal as well. )
How do I find a time travel artifact to become a Dynast when there's none described in the book. ( That is a puzzler. I'm sure your DM will come up with something. )
Can magic walls stop a blackball (no. Nothing can stop a blackball. It all gets eaten up. Nom nom nom. )
Can powerful monsters become Immortals (yes, but it's even harder than it is for humans. The odds are truly one in a trillion)
What's the reward for becoming full hierarch (Removal from play. Haha. Booby prize. Really though, if you worked your way up properly, you already avoided being retired in the domain management part of the game, so you should be able to figure out what to do here. Forcing them to stop here is just lazy rules writing.)
Can PC's join the sphere of entropy. (no. Someones got to be teh evul Villians. And we don't want it to be you. Yah boo.)
Can you become hierarch of multiple spheres (not simultaneously, and it won't benefit you to work all the way up one, then switch to another. If anything, this'll make you into a Benedict Arnold figure, not trusted by anyone in either sphere. )
I still don't understand how the hat of difference works (god, Penny and Mike were useless. Be glad you're in the hands of a real professional now. I'll explain it and I'll explain it good, or my name ain't Skip Williams. I'll explain and explain until you're satisfied baby. And then I'll move onto the next lovely caller and explain it to them. Because my name's Skip and I'm a lean, mean, sageing machine. I can go on and on and on and on, longer than everyone else put together. Uh! Watch me now! )
Do cavaliers get the bonus for exceptional constitution (yes)
Dragon Issue 119: March 1987
part 3/3
Politics amid the rubble: Gamma world's article this month is 5 new Cryptic alliances. The army of the deep is comprised of sailors and mutants who have aquatic adaptations. The Knights of avalon try and use arthurian myth as a basis for their ideals. The road clans jury rig together whatever vehicles they can find and do the whole mad max thing. Can't think of a better setting for that one. The sisterhood of the sword are yer basic female supremacy amazon types. Those who wait are space communication listening nuts. Is there anybody out there? Since the starship warden is canonically in the same universe, I'm gonna say yes. So yeah, another bunch of adapted stereotypes and comedic riffs. Not as funny as the last time they did this. Diminishing returns and all that.
The role of books gets a horrid orange on blue colouring. Colour wheel, people. Tritones are bad, be it in music or light. Lets hope the contents don't show a similar lack of judgement
Bordertown, by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold, markets itself as dungeonpunk, with biker elves, goblin street gangs, and lots of other elements that are going to make Shadowrun and the World of Darkness very profitable in a few years time. It's still innovative at this point though, to the point where the reviewer finds it a bit jarring. True originality does that, y'know. Definitely interesting to report upon.
Angel with the sword by C J Cherryh is another attempt to kick off a bit of shared world storytelling. It has an interesting writing style which the reviewer suspects may be lost if other authors take the reins, and a detailed appendix on the the world that would be useful to other writers, and gamers, but is a bit jarring when contrasted with the fiction. As ever, we'll have to see what comes of this.
The blood of ten chiefs is an elfquest anthology, with a whole bunch of authors and editors. Despite this, it still manages to keep up the general quality of this established series, while providing some new info on the history of the shared world.
Morlac: The quest of the green magician by Gary Alan Ruse is three stories in one book, nicely reversing the current fashion for trilogies. Each is nicely differentiated as well. It has plenty of clever ideas, and stands out from most barbarian adventurer books thanks to them. Sounds pretty good.
At amberleaf fair by Phyllis Ann Karr gets a rather mixed review. Bad poetry, dodgy plotting, and detached narrative vs interesting magic ideas, small, detailed focus, and idiosyncratic design. Hmm. Given my load, I don't think I'll bother to hunt this one down.
Silverhair the wanderer by Diana L Paxton is another post apocalyptic fantasy, where things have mysteriously reverted to imitating an earlier era. The eponymous protagonist becomes a bard and goes adventuring to solve problems threatening the kingdom. So far so cliche. But it still gets a positive review. It's main flaw in the reviewers eyes is that the writer is obviously not a musician, so the technical details of this get glossed over.
The silent tower by Barbara Hambly is another story of magic and science meeting, with tensions on both sides, as usual. Very much familiar tropes, and it gets cut off abruptly in the middle of the plot to sell the next book in the series. Yawn.
The marvel-phile: Jeff still seems to be pretty busy, only stopping in briefly to give us a single page piece on Psylocke. Egads that's a terrible costume. But then, she has had a lot of those in her time. Fashion sense is obviously not one of her special powers. She's currently more psychicey and less martial arts focussed than she would later become, but has already gone through some pretty serious traumas, including a disastrous stint as Captain Britain. :facepalm: An amusing bit of filler, but filler nonetheless. Bring on the manual of the planes! That's what we really want! Ra ra ra to the power of infinity.
This is only a test: Top Secret's article this month is on training missions. A topic we haven't seen since the assassins run. Like then, it's a pretty good idea. Playing out your characters training helps establish their personalities, and gives you a better idea of the tactics that will work in the game without so many PC's dying. Most of this article is devoted to two mini missions for you to run your players through, if you're out of inspiration for this weeks session, or simply want to train them up before sending them on full-on missions in the big bad world. A cool idea, pretty well implemented, apart from the little caveat that it refers you to maps in supplements you may not have. If they were running non D&D stuff in Dungeon, it probably should have gone in there, but their loss is definitely my gain in this case.
Profiles: Dennis Kauth is of course one of our graphic designers. With an extensive background in the stainless steel industry, he's accustomed to creating rather more solid works of art than most of our crew, using sheet metal, cardboard, sculptures, and all sorts of other 3D coolness. He lives in a motor home, so if he needs a change of scenery, he can just up sticks any time. He definitely brings some unique talents to the company. It's no wonder they've been using cardboard fold-up things in so many of their recent modules.
Michael Dobson is the Director of Games Development. Exactly what this job means in contrast with designers and editors is not made entirely clear, but I'm sure he gets to add his own creative input to lots of products as a result. He's another of our real brainboxes, completing his qualifications rather faster than most people do, and then going through a whole bunch of strange jobs before getting in with TSR. Will he move on again? Meh. Not that important.
TSR Previews: D&D continues to tap into it's own history, with DA3: City of the gods. Dave Arneson once again uses technology as a fantastic device. Can your characters get some of the ancient technology and turn it to their own ends, or will the villains beat them too it?
AD&D is also on a retread kick with I12: The egg of the Pheonix. Frank Mentzer compiles his old RPGA adventures, and weaves them together into a single larger plot. Will it become better as a result, or will the compression mess things up?
Lazer tag gets the Official Tournament book. You've had a couple of months to learn the rules for a game, now you can string several together and score the results, forming league tables and other fun stuff like that. Woo.
Dragonlance gets it's first volume of short stories. See, it's not all epic worldthreatening conflicts of good vs evil. More general worldbuilding that Tracey and Margaret probably thought up a while ago, but haven't got a chance to show us before.
Solo gamebooks are the big thing this month. Endless quest is up to book 36: Song of the Dark Druid. Stop the evil wizard from corrupting the fabled song of gold. Greyhawk Adventures gets book 3: Master wolf. Marvel super heroes gets book 4: Dr Strange in Through six Dimensions. Hmm. Were these any good? We haven't had any discussion of them at all.
Snarfquest starts it's new adventure..... In Spaaaaace! Dragonmirth parties like it's the 1950's. Wormy shows that scary storm giant being manipulative. Not that it's hard to manipulate ogres, especially when you're smarter and more charismatic than the trolls trying it last issue.
Another pretty strong themed issue, if not quite as tightly focused as the last one. But things continue to progress rapidly in D&D's history at this point, with the forgotten realms finally kicking into high gear, sage advice starting it's classic run, and plenty of other bits and pieces going on. Things seem to be going up again at this point. I'm certainly in the mood to keep pressing onwards. Lets hope next issue is just as full of fun, if not more so. If anything is going to test Roger, it's how he handles our yearly dose of april wackiness.
Dragon Issue 120: April 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. We're approximately a third of the way through this mad adventure. Course, as is the nature of D&D adventures, it was the easiest third. If this was a game, I'd be well into name levels, and trying hard to find CR appropriate challenges, mowing through lots of time wasting encounters intended for lower level characters on the way. Or getting horribly drunk like the people on our april fools cover with my ill-gotten gains. But no. I've got to be the disciplined one, so the rest of you can enjoy yourselves. Lets see what ludicrity they've cooked up this year, and how much longer it'll take to get to the halfway point of this journey. See you on the other side.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from Vince Garcia with some errata to one of his recent articles. Once again, it's problem fixing time.
Another letter, about some errata in the adventure trivia. Ahh, the joys of rules lawyering and down not being equal to dead.
A letter saying that they ought to split off the non fantasy RPG's to their own magazine. Um, they tried that 4 years ago. It died a horrible death in less than a year. I don't think they're gonna do that again anytime soon.
Forum: Richard Wiedeman is not particularly in favour of clerics getting to hyperspecialize in weapons in issue 115's article. Logic will not make your D&D game better. Keep it simple.
David van Domelen thinks training costs are a big problem, particularly for classes that are supposed to not value money and figure things out for themselves. There really ought to be more flexibility in this area. And just what are those trainers doing with that money themselves? Where is that goddamn unionbreaker?
Kristin Marquardt is surprised to find that some people think fantasy is a male-dominated genre. Where she lives, it's always been pretty well balanced. Funny how local variations like this happen. What can we learn from this?
Randy A Donohue thinks that Dan Tejes was reinforcing outmoded and stupid stereotypes. The best thieves don't look unsavory, (all the easier to steal if no-one suspects you) long beards get in the way of mixing chemicals and stuff, and women can fulfill both roles with aplomb.
Candace Miesen has had to deal with sexist crap, both of the patronizing, and the over polite kind. Can't a girl just engage in a little wholesale killing and taking of stuff with everyone else? We are not some delicate flower that will faint at the merest hint of rape and other unsavoury activities. Leave worrying about that for when you meet some real mythical creatures.
Jeanne McGuire thinks that the reason girls don't become roleplayers more often is because of peer pressure. They're under more pressure than boys not to be "nerdy" as a teenager, and to be ostracized if they do. Hmm. How things have changed. I guess in an odd way, this corroborates Kristin's view. If something becomes seen as normal in an area, it becomes much more accessible to other people. Our most important advice, once again, however, is not to stereotype people. It helps no-one.
Drew Martin reminds us that no social order is unbending and perfectly adhered too, especially in D&D, where a whole set of the alignments imply disobedience to established order. Playing it like that, and never bending the rules for prices and social order simply isn't realistic or fun.
Spells for everyone: The april fools section this year starts with another case of the non-spells. Is this rehash I smell? I suppose like the filks, as long as they mock different things, it's ok. So yeah. It's amazing what you can do if you put a little effort in. Dig tunnels, talk to animals, drown underwater, check people's pulses, and escape from trouble via groveling and running away. Laugh? I nearly raised an eyebrow. Well, I wasn't particularly amused first time either. Not surprising that it would have even less impact this time round.
The pun is mightier than the sword: So, how are jesters to prove their superiority to other jesters? Comedy is a serious business. If you fail to amuse, then you will make no money, get no bookings, and then before you know it, you'll be a mere street performer, barely a step up from a mime. You must pun! Or no other jester will respect you! Of course if you do, the rest of the world won't respect you, but such is life for a jester. So who'll be the butt of your jokes when you battle? Who will you pick to prick at their ego? Now this is more like it. A joke article that also has workable, if not particularly balanced crunch. If you're playing a jester PC, this is a perfectly valid addition to their repertoire. I may well allow this in my game. Muahahaha!!! The illustration is pretty amusing as well. Are you ready to have some pun?
The ecology of the picklebug: Hmm. A creature that pretends to be a normal pickle and lives in the brine jars eating the other gherkins? How very strange. I guess in the D&D universe, there have been many stranger creatures adapted to equally small and improbable ecological niches. Like many an april fool, this has an interesting message, in this case listen to those pontificating sages, for even if what they say seems random, there is usually some valuable stuff contained therein. Also, wizards are not inclined to save people from their own stupidity. Muahahahaha!!!! and all that. An entertaining but inconsequential read.
Dining out in the hells: Mocking Ed Greenwood's seminal work? Blasphemy!!!!!1! ;) This outrage must be avenged!!! But yeah, eating on other planes can be a tricky business, with corruption and death resulting with painful frequency. Beware the dread franchise of Maughdonnell's and it's equally dread proprietor. Just about the only thing worse than being forced to dine there while stuck in the hells would be having to get a job there to survive. (Wage slavery's a bitch. Still better than soul slavery though.) Once again this is a humorous article that could be stripped of it's obvious goofiness, and turned into a serious scenario, with the new monster stats being entirely usable as well. Just don't reveal where you got the idea from, or you may be pelted with pretzels. I believe another evil cackle is in order. Muahahahahaha!!!!!!
Not found in any stores: Magical items that don't work as they should. Another thing that can be played for laughs, but can also be turned into a deadly serious topic, especially when a previously perfectly fine item goes bad in a dangerous situation. So here's 8 magical items. Most of them resemble some other item, and then parody it in some fashion. Once again, thanks to 1st ed's fairly loose mechanics, most of these are legal, but using them will cause masses of annoyance. This issue is definitely turning out to be a sadistic DM's delight. Turn your dungeons into a funhouse, and watch the characters run away as fast as their little legs will carry them. (particularly if they have been chibified or muppetized, and their legs really are that little.) You know you want too. Muahahahahahaha!!!!!!!
Urban blight made easy: More mockery of a previous article. Need a little help with your off-the cuff encounters? Here's five prefab ones to spice up your game. While technically humorous, like clowns and little girls skipping merrily along singing a happy song, these are actually rather creepy, with an off-kilter, sadistic edge to them. This one didn't make me laugh, but actually put me on edge slightly. Which I guess is a promising sign, really. If I can accomplish that kind of thing in my own game, (and not have the players respond with wholesale slaughter of the offending encounter) then I can probably count this as a success as well. Ah, the joys of the uncanny valley. It's been a good year for comedy, all in all.
Scorpion tales: Back to the serious stuff with a single pager on a real animal. Trying to get past a scorpion with invisibility? Not gonna fly, as it's primary sense is of your footfalls, and that's how it knows when you're in the right position for the blinding fast strike and stab routine. This is the kind of thing that resulted in tremor sense becoming one of the standard monster powers in 3e. It's common enough in reality, and easy enough to define, that it makes a good way of screwing over a whole load of player strategies, while not being completely impossible to bypass. An article that probably seemed inconsequential at the time, but is actually pretty significant in hindsight. Interesting.
Dragon Issue 120: April 1987
part 2/3
Sage advice finishes off the companion set questions. Must have been too many of them to fit in last month.
What are the costs for the new armours ( 30 and 50 gp. You could probably work it out by adding and halfing the costs of the adjacent armour types. )
Can PC's create holy water (yes, but it won't save them money. Churches may be altruistic, but they still have to cover costs)
Can multiple characters share a domain. (I don't know? Can your characters share a domain without fighting? If so, then yes. If not, then ha ha.)
Can paladins and avengers use wands and staves. (not unless fighters can use them. Their magical training isn't that good. )
What's an umber hulk (see AD&D. We forgot to keep our gamelines properly separated. )
Where is the will o wisp (cut for space. Like the umber hulk, you'll have to go get AD&D to find it. )
Why don't characters that are immune to enemy attacks autowin (because there are ways to beat an enemy even if you can't hurt it. And you still have to find out how badly you lose. Some people will get away. Otherwise how would the PC's find out about the problem and come to save the day?)
How do you make a gargantuan manticore (just follow the formula in the gargantua entry. I know you're not used to the concept of applying templates yet, but it's really pretty simple. )
What does a potion of super healing do. (Triple the power in the same small package. Perfect for when facing high level monsters and you don't want to worry about overloading your backpack. )
What do druids do with money if they don't like it (spend it on stuff they do like. They aren't paladins. They don't need to tithe, give useful stuff away and generally be suckers for any kid with a sob story. )
Does protection from evil work on a drolem (yes, oddly enough. It's not as if they're even evil, since they're constructs, but there you go.)
How does table 10c work (ultimately customisable magical items. Any combination of armour type, plus and special abilities, all determinable with random roll! Step right up folks, your treasure options just expanded a hell of a lot)
Can we have some more info on the planes. (Nah. This is D&D. You're Freeeeeeeee to make it up for your campaign as you please, wheeeeee! This isn't AD&D, where you're limited to a set cosmology of 26 planes, plus a sprinkling of demi, para and quasi ones. Your imagination is your limit. You can venture great infinities away, and deal with ever more scary immortals and dimensional weirdness. Now go on, get out of here. If you stick around in our Cage after being offered the multiverse, you're a berk. )
First impressions are deceiving: Say hello to the Charlatan. Not quite as comical as the Jester, but even more annoying, this lovely thief variant makes money via social fraud and flashy legerdemain, taking advantage of people's greed and stupidity to get something for very little. Minor magicians, and capable rogues, they aren't too brilliant in a dungeon crawling situation, but as a social character, they can really bewilder and bamboozle. With several quirky D&D'isms, this isn't a perfect class either in design or organization of powers, and seems very likely to cause player tensions if handled wrong, but it's still an entertaining read, and doesn't seem too overpowered either. Once again, I get to add another class to my big list of ones I'd like to try out at some point, both as NPC's and PC's. I think I'll skip the maniacal laughter this time, as that might tip people off that something is amiss. ;) Let's just move on, shall we :whistles innocently: Don't check your backpacks. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Yet another quick little article here, as they try and clear out stuff from one of their contributors. The ring of rapid regeneration gives you healing on a combat useful scale, which is pretty scary really in this era. The rings of para and quasi elemental command offer substantial abilities related to each of these 12 subplanes. As pure extrapolations of existing items, there is very little creativity involved in these, making the article as a whole thoroughly mehsome. Filling in all the symmetries is one of the easiest ways to make up page count. So it goes. Still, crunchy filler like this is still useful in game, so it's not a total waste.
The ecology of the gas spore: Now this is one of the more amusing D&D creatures. As I said earlier, it's amazing the niches they can fill. A fungal monster which imitates one of the deadliest monsters in D&D as a form of protective camouflage? It makes perfect sense, really. Ironically, the tactics that work well on beholders are probably the best thing to deal with Gas Spores as well. Keep well away, spread out, and pepper them with missiles from all sides, preferably with some cover as well. Do not let them corner you, or rush in hacking, for this never ends well. Try talking before you attack, as this will help you figure out if you're dealing with the real thing or not. Ed doesn't call in any help to finish things off this time around, but as with beholders, this is one of his below average entries in this series, relatively predictable, and not really giving us any cool new ways to use the monster. Becoming a line developer is definitely eating up a lot of his creative energy these days, and these articles are feeling the fallout. He's moved on to bigger and better things, and it's looking increasingly like he's no longer going to be dominating the magazine the way he once did. Oh well. All things must change. Lets hope there'll be some more shining stars along to fill his rather large shoes.
Higher aspirations: Hmm. Rules for apprentice druids and their orisons? That's a double rehash. Len did the first one in issue 51, while Orisons were tackled last issue. And the rules are incompatible as well. Peh. Oh well, they did say they were going to provide alternatives. If you weren't down with the humorous material components of the last one (Um, er, wait a minute. Do you think they put these two in the wrong way around? That might have made more sense Roger.) or simply want to slow down our most overpowered class a bit, (but not as much as len did) then you may choose to use this one instead. And you can probably mix and match the cantrips anyway. Still a bit tiresome from my perspective though.
Who watches the Watchmen, a module for DC heroes. Hmm. I smell a tie-in. Isn't this interesting. Can it live up to it's source material?
Plane speaking: Another eagerly awaited upcoming book finally gets talked about. And as they had so many universes to cover, they do have some leftovers. Here we have info on the materials and pitches of the tuning forks you need to get to a particular plane and layer. Just the thing to slow down adventurers who want to go bouncing all over the universe, as they need to do proper research and quite possibly commission expensive stuff from a skilled smith. (who makes gold tuning forks for any other reason? ) Don't just generate random chords, because odds are this will send you to an equally random layer of the abyss, where death is quite probable. I can see why they cut this out, as it is rather tedious crunch, that would only be useful in the kind of games where the DM tracks all the food rations, number of arrows, spell components and other little bits and pieces of the adventuring life, and delights in screwing over players who don't keep themselves stocked for every eventuality. (while of course making sure they suffer full encumbrance penalties if they do) That playstyle is definitely starting to go out of fashion. Still, at least we got to see it in this form, even if I'm unlikely to ever use it. Going extraplanar shouldn't be a cakewalk, or everyone would be doing it.
GURPS has horror, bestiary, oriental, space and horseclans books planned for this year. And they're on their second printing. They seem to be doing quite well for themselves. Let the supplement treadmill grind ever onwards.
Fiction: Dragon meat by Robert Don Hughes. Now the writer of this has definitely read revenge of the nobodies and taken some serious notes. The funny, but still fairly logical tale of the poor muggins who was assigned to clean up a dragon's corpse after the big hero had swooped on in, saved the princess, and buggered off to his lah de dah pointy spired castle. The corpse is starting to stink, the taxman wants paying, and the bureaucrats are gonna take every opportunity to poke their nose in. Thankfully, you can make a lot of money from selling dragon bits. If the neigbours start to complain, give them a job. When the big hero comes back to complain about your profiteering, point out that this dragon won't last forever, and if we make it into a franchise, everyone can make tons of money from this endeavour. Before you know it, the draconic race'll be extinct. Ok, so that'll then cause an economic crash, and possibly mess up the ecosystem by removing an apex predator, but humanity as a whole benefits. Woo. And there are plenty of other supernatural creatures to profiteer off. An entertaining tale that is still full of ideas that could be used in a sensible game. Just what the april issues should have.
Operation zenith: Now this is one that's been lurking in the slush pile for ages, apparently. When the Ares section was doing pieces on the moon for various systems, Merle wrote one for Top Secret. But he massively overwrote in terms of size, then they canned that idea, and it's been just sitting around. Until now. Originally intended as a 3 parter, here we get a full 10 pages on adapting the rules of the game to handle spacefaring spy adventures, a la Moonraker. Learning how to function in zero g is an expensive and rather icky proposition. It's obvious that this was done before they started work on the new edition, because the emphasis is very much on a fairly realistic crunchy representation of the real troubles spacefarers face, and the bureaucracy surrounding it. This'll definitely slow even experienced characters down until they spend a good deal of xp. And unlike D&D, you can't cast a quick spell and then wander around in incredibly hostile environments unhindered. You can see why they wanted to publish it now, because that's a lot of work that would otherwise have gone to waste, but it's still not that useful to me or enjoyable to read. And what's more, there's plenty more to come next month. Ho hum. Not nearly as fun as the gamma world lunar stuff.
Dragon Issue 120: April 1987
part 3/3
Space-age espionage: Top secret just went orbital. Now Traveller goes espionage, with a new career path for spies. What an amusing convergence. I'm sure that's why they put them next to each other. Anyway, whether you're working for the government, or secretly plotting to overthrow it, these paths are some of the trickier ones to get onto. And there's plenty of risk of dying or rotting in jail for years. But as with the more apolitical larcenous path a while back, it's full of skills that are just perfect for the adventuring life. Pretty useful, and a good example of the editor connecting things up in a pleasing way. Kudos to Roger.
The game wizards: Doug Niles writes the column this month to talk some more about thew new edition of Top Secret. As I said a bit earlier, they're planning to dial back on the crunch a bit, making all the really detailed bits optional, and try to emulate espionage movies and tv shows more, rather than the real deal. Luck points are in, to make sure the heroes can act like big damn heroes and not die horribly if they run in guns blazing. And like FASERIP, they've taken to resolving everything with a single D100 roll and consulting a table. Interesting. This definitely sounds like they're trying to make the game appeal to a wider audience, but may also cause flame wars from people annoyed at perceived dumbing down. I definitely look forward to seeing what happens next in this thread of history. Hopefully they'll support the new game as reliably as they did the old one for a good few years yet. Just because D&D is getting seriously revamped, doesn't mean we should ignore the other stuff.
Here comes the cavalry: Hmm. Not enough rules for ground warfare in star frontiers? Like swimming, I guess this is because the game knew what it wanted to focus on, and cut out all the extraneous stuff. Fortunately, since their rules for space combat are already mostly 2D for simplicity reasons, it's not that hard to adapt them for land vehicles. So here's 7 new vehicles and a bunch of optional rules to make the system work better at a ground based scale and speed. Another article I have no objection too, but at the same time, can't get particularly worked up about. Once again, they seem to be just running through a checklist of systems to cover each month.
Born in the ruins: Gamma world's article this month is on social class. Even after the apocalypse, the family you are born into massively influences your prospects in life. Exactly how that might be expressed may vary from area to area, but even in yer basic stone age tribe, the bosses kid gets the best food. So here's yet another quick article giving us a table to roll on, and the mechanical effects of said social classes. Since it's pretty much all positive for being higher class, this will probably not be good for player harmony, with yet another reason for one to simply wind up better than another due to random rolls. Still surmountable, but not really a very useful one.
Welcome to the machine: Jeff once again cedes the floor on the Marvel article due to more pressing commitments. So they throw in a Pink Floyd reference, and give us stats for Machine Man and the Midnight Wreckers (tm, etc etc.) Not to be confused with Iron Man, because they approach this superheroing thing from completely opposite directions. Once again we see some time jumping weirdness in their story, and the depiction of a possible future that is probably well out of date and retconned by now. Nothing particularly great or terrible about this entry. You know, you don't have to cover the same games every month. There are plenty of others who would love to get a few pages in the magazine.
The role of computers: We return to Bards Tale to deliver some extensive hinting. Due to the pressures of review time turnover, it seems our writing duo didn't find many of the secrets, or figure out the most optimal ways to configure their characters. Fear not, their loyal readers have wasted no time in writing in to help out. And once they've shown it once, you can bet that more people'll join in, in the hope of getting their name published. They may have to make this a regular part of their columns.
Following on directly, their main review is of Bards Tale II: The destiny knight. Considerably bigger than the original, it introduces new spells, ranged combat, brutal puzzles, animated 3d graphics, and to top it off, you can bring in your old characters from the previous game to kick butt with. They give it a pretty positive result.
Lots of other smaller reviews as well. Steve Jackson games continues it's multimedia push with Autoduel and Ogre computer games. Design your locations and arsenals and engage in a little postapocalyptic violence. Explore the underground mazes of the Zork trilogy. Solve puzzles in your dead uncles mansion in Hollywood hijinx. Explore the epic Might and Magic (more on this next month) Play star trek tie in The Promethean Prophesy and save Kirk and co's lives. And check out the new improved Atari version of Phantasie. Rather a scattershot column, overall, as they tinker with their format. Well, it's still been less than a year since they started. Lets hope they come out of this bit of self-examination stronger.
TSR Previews: D&D gets CM8: The endless stair. An archmage has died? We have to take his stuff! For great justice! ;) And because if we don't some evil wizard will. Course, wizards being wizards, the place is not unguarded. And since this is a companion adventure, the tricks should be pretty tricky. Otherwise, how are we to level up? More importantly, we also have GAZ1: The grand duchy of Karimeikos. Finally, they've decided to put out info on the Known World setting beyond the minimum of what is needed for the current adventure. This is a very big sea change in their worldbuilding style. Before you know it, we'll be in the early 90's in all their richly tapestried glory. Let's do this.
AD&D is not quite as interesting, but is still trying something new REF4: The book of lairs. A whole onslaught of little encounters that you can throw in fairly easily. It's a definite step up from just having tables. And some of them, such as the rakshasa and spectre ones, are quite cool, not just combat encounters. One I do not regret buying.
The art of the Dragonlance saga arrives. Coffee table books, peh. Well, I guess it's fairly easy to produce, since it's mostly recycled art. But is it profitable?
Marvel superheroes gets MX1: Nightmares of futures past. Mutant internment
camps come to your hometown. Will your characters fall prey to the inquisition? How very dystopian.
Gamma world gets GW8: Gamma base. Welcome to the new edition! However, its the same old /Dungeon full of magic items/ ruined base full of ancient technology to explore and loot. Not very inspired sounding.
Amazing magazine gives us it's third anthology, covering 1936-45. Understandably, WWII looms large in the consciousness. Introduced by Issac Asimov, who also has stories in it. Magazines really have fallen quite a bit in general with the coming of the internet, haven't they. The cultural zeitgeist moves ever onwards.
One-on-one gamebooks is up to number 9, Daredevil and Kingpin in The King takes a Dare. I think this is pretty self explanatory. Question is, will the good or bad guy win, and how much zap, pow, kersplating will it involve? Their fate is in your hands.
And finally, we have the start of a new adventure gamebook series. Catacombs. Apparently closer to a real roleplaying experience than any solo gamebook before, this advert fails to explain exactly how, which isn't very helpful. Anyway, the first in the series is Faerie mounds of dragonkind. I suspect whimsy may be involved. Approach with caution.
Profiles goes up to covering three people this month. Karen Martin is one of our newest arrivals, having been here barely a year. But she's certainly been busy in that time, editing dozens of products. And maybe moving house again. Watch out for that commute. She seems more than geeky enough to fit in around there.
Margaret Weis is of course one of the creators of Dragonlance. Assigned to co-ordinate it, she took command, churned out 5 chapters in a couple of days, and it's been non stop work since then, producing several full novels plus a whole load of short stories every year. Goes to show what you can do when you don't spend ages fiddling around with the small stuff. Can they bottle lightning twice and top that with their next project? Hee.
Tracy Hickman is the other half of the dynamic duo who created Dragonlance. Thick as thieves, they even interview each other for this article. Not likely to produce a very objective result is it. Still, his career is a great example that writing is much quicker and more fun when done collaboratively, instead of chaining yourself to a desk alone, slogging away at a typewriter. First with his wife Laura, then with Margaret, he has increasingly assembled a great team around him to produce stuff with. Living the dream and creating family friendly entertainment with a strong moral message. That's the life.
Robots grasp sarcasm in snarfquest. And then there is pointless comedic bickering again. I don't think I'd enjoy playing in Larry's game. Dragonmirth mocks disney (deservedly). Wormy shows off the giant's talents. Do not fuck with them. Good, bad, they're all scary when you're on the other side.
A pretty good april fools issue, full of stuff that is both useable and amusing. They've definitely used the year off to make sure that they have the best material for this one. The non comedic parts of the issue are rather weaker though, particularly the non D&D articles. If I was reading at the time, I'd be complaining about them wasting their space on them. Are they not getting the good articles, or are they deliberately sabotaging them so they can claim public demand when they cut down even further on the number of them they include each month? In any case, it averages out to produce an, um, average issue. But I'm sure there'll be plenty more ups and downs to come in the other 2/3rds of this journey, both in the magazine, and my emotional state. Lets hope I can finish it, preferably without going completely mad.
Dragon Issue 121: May 1987
part 1/3
111 pages. Looks like they've accumulated enough Oriental Adventures material for us to have an oriental special. Well, it has been a year and a half, and it was pretty popular. So Ninjas, samurai, and other less well known roles get some more cool stuff, oh my. They are definitely having way more themed issues lately. A development I can definitely get behind, as long as they don't repeat the same theme, as it means they can cover a topic in more depth. So let's fire up our stereotypical oriental riff, do the horribly politically incorrect eye thing (me so solly), and head for the rising sun.
In this issue:
Letters: Two letters from people who are having problems with GM's. One wants to encourage more people to GM, as they're sick of always being the one to do it, and another from someone who wants to DM, but doesn't know how. Both think that there need to be more articles on this in Dragon. I sense the dread hand of foreshadowing passing over. Give it a few months, Roger'll be swimming in articles, and then they can do a themed issue on it. Woo.
A letter asking them do do more regular columns. Once again, Roger says he'll definitely consider it. It does help make up page count, having a bunch of topics that you know will be covered reliably each month. But it can also increase boredom, as they blur into one another. We shall see what he decrees.
The overseas military gamers guide: Now this is an interesting development. They've been showing general ones of these for years now. But it looks like they want to give extra support to the troops. Well, job where you're a long way from everyone you know, with lots of time spent just sitting around watching and waiting. Plus an emphasis on combat and tactical thinking. Army people are a great target demographic for roleplaying. A subject that is obviously dear to Roger's heart, as he devotes the editorial to talking about this as well. Now that's giving back to the community. Warms your heart, doesn't it.
Forum: Brian S Chase disagrees with the ecology of the harpy in an in character manner. That sage was charmed! He is obviously an unreliable narrator, and his facts are equally unreliable. See, that's how you do this kind of thing. Remember, these ecologies are not set in stone. You can change them for your campaign if you don't like them.
Jeanne McGuire engages in some rather longer and less interesting ecological talk, correcting us on the real world details of snakes. Your article in issue 115 was not properly researched! Same as it ever was.
Jim Vierling Weighs in on the old illusions debate. Unless the creatures have a good reason to disbelieve your effects, you ought to err on he side of generosity, otherwise illusionists become horribly weak compared to regular magic-users, and no-one wants to play them. A very sensible statement, really. We must consider the metagame ramifications of what we do.
Bob Hughes reminds us that if we're unsatisfied with the arcane details of AD&D, you can go and play regular D&D instead, which is much simpler, and can be easily houseruled. Chances are, you'll actually have more fun.
David Carl Argall returns to say that the game should be assumed to be realistic as possible, except where the rules specifically make it different from reality. It makes things less confusing that way, and you can apply lessons learned in the game to your own life if that is the case. Um, ok then. I can see how you would come to that conclusion. Can't say I agree with it though.
Micheal Lambert agrees with Vince Garcia that intelligence should be more important to characters of all types. He is, however, baffled as to why rangers have a high int requirement to join the class. Perhaps something ought to be done about that. ;) Is he just being prescient, or is this a more direct bit of cause and effect, as Zeb reads this and takes note of things to change next edition? Good question, albeit one even Mr Cook himself probably couldn't answer, given the vagaries of time, memory, and all the crap he sifted through at the time.
Robert Waldbauer points out that if you do stuff from all sorts of alignments, it should average out as neutral, even if they aren't conciously trying to maintain a balance.
S Kunz points out just how heavy magic-user's spellbooks are by the RAW. They ought to have backpacks at least as big as the average modern kid's schoolbag. Poor magic-users, lugging that stuff around. It's no wonder they wind up all stooped over.
Mathew Hamilton wonders why the AD&D game avoids christianity so, if it's supposed to be set in a medieval world. You really ought to do more articles on it and incorporating it into the game. Oh, that's a biiiig ugly can of worms there. Will any trolls bite on this bait?
Adam Morris reminds us just what the body can do to itself psychosomatically in the real world. When illusions are brought into the equation, even greater feats of self-deciet should be possible. Don't make illusionists useless, please.
The game wizards: Zeb Cook returns, having received a ridiculous amount of mail on the matter of which classes to cut for the next edition. Hoo boy. When they started, they thought this would be a simple editing job. Then you had to go and get emotionally involved. In any case, though there is vast amounts of nerdrage on both sides, he's not changing his plans that much. Bards and druids are definitely staying now, and the UA stuff and assassins are still superfluous to requirements. His desire to focus more on proficiencies is still causing some controversy as well. No, D&D is not going classless. My primary goals are still fun and flexibility, and the game should still remain as compatible as possible with the previous edition. Please, everybody, calm down. We really do care. Another interesting snapshot of history as it developed, full of quotable stuff. Let's see what his next step will be.
Whaddya mean, jack the samurai: Random name generation. Just the thing for when your mind goes blank, and you don't want to make an inappropriate name up and get laughed at. We've had ones for tekumel (issue 24) native american-esque (34) pseudomedieval (72), and probably some more I can't remember offhand. So here's three pages of D% tables and the guide to using them. An above average example of it's kind, and obviously useful, but still not hugely interesting to read. Just a warm up really, rather than a pole position spectacular.
Sage advice helps out with oriental themed questions.
How do you determine height, weight and starting age (humans are same as ever (yes, I know, IRL, asians do tend to be a bit shorter, but if we can gloss over sex differences to abilities we can certainly ignore that) Korobokuru use the dwarf tables and spirit folk use the elf one. Recycling made fun and easy. )
Do dual classed characters get all their new classes proficiency slots (Yup. Twinkitude! (sage advice reserves the right to change it's mind at any point in the future.))
Can women join the oriental classes ( By default, yes. You'll have to decide how sexist your individual setting is. )
Can oriental characters become multi-classed. (No. Feel the social stratifications confining you. Oh, the pain! You'll have to run away! )
Do oriental characters get Xp for treasure (Yes. Money is a great motivator, wherever you are. )
Do characters that attack 3/2 get their extra attacks on odd or even rounds (Even. It makes them a little less scary. )
Do magical crossbows extend your point-blank range. (not unless they specifically say so. Stop trying to twink out)
Can western characters learn martial arts (What. Would you make the karate kid illegal in D&D? Can't say I'd blame you :) But anyway, yes, they can. )
Why do forest barbarians get rhetoric (because they're good at talking bullshit. It's not quite the same as civilized debate techniques, but still not to be sneezed at. )
Where do I find stats for the harpoon (Unearthed Arcana. Did you miss the memo that it's effectively the new corebook, and all subsequent books assume you have it. )
When do bushi get AC bonuses (every 5 levels. Not a patch on modern defence progressions, is it. Give them time. The progression of class technology is slow. )
How much honor do they lose for learning ninja weapons (same as kensai)
Speaking of kensai, how do they learn MA (how do you think. They spend their proficiency slots. )
Shouldn't kensai get fast-draw (It would be advisable, but they still need to spend the proficiency slot. We don't want to make them overpowered, do we? )
Does the higher level kensai always win a psychic duel (no. They still have to roll, they just get a bonus. Go stand in the corner, and pay more attention next time.)
Which attack table do monks use (The cleric one. I though we cleared that up way back in 1980. Some people just don't keep track of errata.)
Do monks get Str and dex bonuses to AC and attacks (no. They're like monsters. They get trained so hard the normal PC rules cease to apply. )
Do monks get dex bonuses to their thief abilities (yes)
Do monks get damage bonuses on missile weapons (if they're legal and proficient. Take the test, be the best. Kick the ases of the rest. )
Can ninja be dual classed (They already are, sorta. No, they can't change class again. And if they tried their clan would kill them. )
Do ninja have to pay training costs (yes)
Do high level ninja get followers (not automatically. They'll have to please the clan leader, or go off and found their own. )
Why don't ninja get dex mods for their powers (cos we didn't think of that. )
What are ninjas base chances of picking pockets (none, unless they're dual classed with yakuza. Thievery is not an automatic part of their training, nor should it be.
Can you dual class into ninja after starting play (no. The clans wouldn't trust an already established adventurer enough to train them. Give me a boy until he is seven and he will be mine for life and all that.)
How do you determine how much stuff a samurai's fief has (Fiat. Pray your DM is in a generous mood. Bribe him with noodles if you have too.)
Can a samurai specialize in the Daikyu with only one slot (no. Even the benefit you thought you would get isn't there. )
Do shukenja get full XP for subduing enemies (No. They only get half, however they beat them. You may find your advancement slower than you expected)
How do sohei get the 5-7th level spells indicated (they don't, unless we choose to add some epic rules later. The designer was just so enthusiastic he forgot when to stop. )
Do wu jen need to study for 6 hours to regain EACH SPELL! (no. That investment lets them regain all their spells. This will put them at an advantage over standard wizards at high level)
Does the wu jen's second ki power give you extra spells (no, it only enhances the ones you have )
Can you use verbal only spells while fire wings is active (yes. Drive by power words are the shiz)
Is scry a flat circle or a sphere. (A circle. Volume calculations would be too complicated for my tastes. )
How do you use grenades (pull pin, count to three, no more, no less, and throw them)
What are the encumbrance values for the new equipment (oops. Our bad. Use their nearest western equivalent.)
What does standard intelligence mean (normal human. 8-10. Average. Mundane. Don't make me set the theasaurus on you. He's been cranky ever since Gary left. )
Do kappa get a damage bonus for their strength. (yes, but we've precaclulated it into their stats so you don't need to worry your pretty little head over it. )
How do you get special MA Maneuvers (each one costs one proficiency slot. Ya don't get many, so choose carefully.)
Why does Karate get more attacks per round than you can create (because the standard styles aren't created using the custom rules and are better than them. The wisdom of the ancients surpasses your puny ingenuity. )
How do you learn weapon related MA (Same as it ever was. Spend the slots. If you want to learn a new weapon, learn a new MA as well. )
Dragon Issue 121: May 1987
part 2/3
The deadliest perfume: Ahh, this is more like it. Lotus dust. The rare flowers of the orient can be harvested and refined into powders with mystical effects. Really, this is basically just a bunch of reskinned poisons, potions, lotions, incenses and dusts, but the concept of organizing items by their use type (single use, charged, daily, constant, worn, etc) hasn't really caught on yet. But this is still 8 flavourful new magic items that you can use as written, or convert into another shape while keeping the basic effects. Perfect for ninjas, assassins, and anyone else who likes being sneaky and poisoning people. Putting the flavour text first and then the mechanical effects in ecology style footnotes may not have been the wisest writing decision, requiring a bit more annoying flipping back and forth to get the full info on an item, but other than that, I quite like this one.
The anywhen universal roleplaying system now available, along with two game-world books. Anyone remember this one, because I certainly don't.
The life and death of a castle: Hmm. This is a topic we've seen covered before in plenty of detail for western stuff. (issues 80 and 89, among others) So it seems perfectly reasonable to examine how japanese ones differ from them. They may differ somewhat architecturally, but the basic tactical and socioeconomic pressures are much the same. You need to be able to see. You need to be able to defend your walls. You need to be able to dominate, tax, and protect the local population. You need to be able to live there fairly comfortably. And so forth. As with personal armour, they tend less towards singular big hard defenses (no castle can withstand a big earthquake) and more on an array of moats, trenches, and irregular wooden barriers that provide you plenty of cover and are a bugger to get through for enemy troops. It's no wonder they turn to ninja to penetrate these places and kill the bosses without huge losses on both sides. A pretty solid article that describes it's topic in an evocative, easily visualized way, this gives me some more evil ideas for designing my own world with. Mix and match tactics from various cultures to make your players decidedly miserable. Muahahaha, etc etc. Keep on building those fortresses. We'll keep on tearing them down. Lets loot and pillage the best bits and roll ever onwards.
Palladium apologize for the long delayed release of book III, adventures on the high seas. Same as it ever was. Nice pic of a cyclops and griffon though.
The geisya: Ha. Missing your bard role for eastern games? Take a courtesan adventuring. While certainly not badasses, with minor spellcasting and roguish abilities, and pretty good general and social skills, they'll be less useless than you'd think, especially if they're also ninjas. Don't neglect your social and support classes. Probably best suited to troupe play, where each player is controlling multiple characters and sometimes focussing on one or another of them, these are rather underpowered in combat, but also have extremely low XP costs at mid level. If you have the obscene ability scores needed, dual-class into them, then out of them after reaching 8th level if you want to remain a competitive adventurer. This fills a niche they didn't cover before, and maintains ideals of flavour over balanced mechanics, so even if it's not suitable for every game, and possibly a bit obvious, I don't object to it. After all, if you don't cover the obvious stuff, you don't have a solid base for other people to build upon. And you can nick the new spells for your bards and wu jen.
The Genin: There's always someone not satisfied with the established order, isn't there. For whatever reason, the writers of OA decided that all ninjas would be split-class characters, maintaining a convincing front as some other class, and ensuring they have a broad base of skills to draw upon to accomplish their missions and keep people fighting them off balance. But this writer wants to play a character who has been trained in nothing but the ninja arts since childhood, and has not bothered with such petty distractions. So here we have the Genin, which does exactly that, gaining all the powers of the regular Ninja, plus a few extra for being a specialist. They'll obviously advance faster than a character splitting their XP, as they have lower XP costs, and they'll probably have slightly better hp as well, but not be as versatile or able to operate independently for extended undercover missions. There's nothing obviously wrong with this mechanically, but like the barbarian cleric, this is very definite theme dilution, and is probably slightly overpowered as well (more tricks for less xp? shurely shome mishtake.) I mildly disapprove, as this doesn't display a huge amount of creativity. Give us something we couldn't whip up in a few minutes ourselves please.
Sun dragon castle: This month's centrepiece is another build it yourself cardboard model. And the surroundings, in another attempt to push their boundaries. This is bigger than their previous attempts, and the instructions are considerably longer and more detailed as well. I doubt many people managed to put it together successfully, and in any case, this eats up a total of 14 pages in the .pdf version that I can't get much use out of. So it's another worthy special feature that'll get oohed and ahhed over for a bit, and then forgotten, when more practical articles are still being used years later. So it goes.
Fiction: Love and ale by Nick O'Donohue. A Dragonlance story here. Been a while since we had one of those. This is one of the ones from Leaves from the inn of the last home, designed to show the softer, small scale side of krynn. See young Tika go through romantic woes, kender be their usual pestilent selves, and the small tragedies and triumphs in general of running an inn. Will this year's ale be a good batch? Will we be able to avoid having the place trashed by drunkards? Will we be able to spot thieves and con men? Not very dramatic stuff, but it has a certain twee charm. But then, Krynn has always done twee well, and the palatability of that is very much a matter of taste. I'm afraid it does not tempt me to pick up the full book.
The marvel-phile: Jeff returns, rather apologetic for his frequent absences of late. This time, we have another case of a new character taking an old character's name. Ms Marvel is now Sharon Ventura, daredevil, wrestler, another recipient of the super-soldier serum, and currently a member of the fantastic four. (yeah, that's not going to last long) Jeff has obviously taken notes from his substitutes, because he includes advice for using the new super-soldier serum in your own game. A bit of a gamble, it could make you badass, or cause you to degenerate into a bestial monstrosity. Don't be too attached to your character concept if you try it in game. But it does make for good drama, and a good excuse for lots of super-powered mooks to challenge your team with. In a genre where you're supposed to be one of a special few, if you don't stick to genre conventions and continually kill your enemies, you'll run out of suitable challenges way too soon, so that's probably a good thing. A change has obviously been as good as a rest for jeff, as this is definitely an above average entry.
Dragon Issue 121: May 1987
part 3/3
TSR previews: D&D gets M4: Five coins for a kingdom. Another epic adventure spanning planes, and ending in a battle inside the sun. Sounds like a suitable challenge for players that level. At least the world doesn't hang on their success this time.
D&D gets an attack of rehash, with I3-5: The desert of desolation. Tracey Hickman's early modules get complied and revised in light of his new popularity. Venture into the desert and face ancient undead foes. You know the sort. They generally wear bandages. It also gets I13: Adventure pack one. A collection of short OA featured adventures, it seems rather appropriate for this issue.
In the solo gamebook realm, we have book 13: The gates of death. Prove your paladinhood by saving a princess? All in a days work, really. At least, if you survive to become an experienced hero. ;) So many don't.
Lot's of novels this month. We get our first forgotten realms novel even before the rulebook comes out. Doug Niles delivers Darkwalker on Moonshae, an epic tale set in the Realms' britain analogue. Be afraid, for the stakes are high, and the writing of questionable quality. Lets get this treadmill of endless trilogies rolling. We also get 2 Windwalker books, Rogue Pirate, and Trail of the Seahawks. John Gregory Betancourt and Aradath Mayhar continue to work for TSR. Life is hard for a jobbing writer.
Lazer Tag also continues to roll out the supplements. Book 1 is High spy, and book 2 is Danger, second hand. Looks like they're bringing plotting and character arcs to what could be just a simple game of competitive violence. I wonder how these'll do.
And finally, we have an SPI imprint wargame, Onslaught. In an attempt to stem the decline of wargaming, they're going for simpler games that you can complete in a single sitting. Ha. If you don't market it right to attract new people, all this'll do is irritate the grognards, who will then ignore it after a bit of bitching. And that's no good for anyone.
The role of books: Hmm. Red and yellow-green. Much better than last installment, but certainly not perfect. But this should really be about contents, not the wrapper. This is the equivalent of bitching about what some starlet is wearing on the cover of her new single, and completely ignoring the merits of the music. Don't judge a book by it's cover, and other such cliches.
The folk of the air by Peter S Beagle is a rather well crafted and unorthodox bit of fantasy, with much of the weirdness remaining purely in the mind, while creating a mythic air. Seems like another one that would be good for Changeling: the Dreaming players.
The maze of peril by John Eric Holmes isn't an official D&D novel, but it is obviously based on a D&D game, with spell levels, dungeons, and other such metagame conceits showing up and playing integral parts. This does not translate to novel form too well, and indeed, the fact that it's only a small press work, even though he did manage to get an official D&D novel published in the past speaks volumes of it's quality. Boinger will struggle on regardless!
The burning stone by Deborah Turner Harris is the start of another trilogy. It has the same editor as Tolkien's LotR. Wait! Come back! It's actually quite good, with a nicely thought out magic system and social order developed to regulate that magic, realistically ruthless villains, and several plot threads that weave together to create a fast paced story full of cliff-hangers. The reviewer certainly wants to read the next two books.
Stalking the unicorn by Mike Resnick is a tale of a new york private eye who travels to an alternate reality at the behest of his new employer, an elf who has lost his unicorn, and needs it back fast. (don't snigger) It applies logical thought to a distinctly fantastic setting, to create a nicely plotted, suspenseful mystery.
A voice for princess by John Morressy is a tale of a wizard's attempts to completely reverse the transformation on a princess formerly turned into a frog (hence the title) Originally a series of short stories in a magazine, it doesn't quite work as a full length novel. Hopefully future books in the series will avoid that problem.
Dragon's pawn by Carol L Dennis is another fairly meta fantasy novel. While it uses lots of cliches, it's characters are aware of this, and manage to twist them to their own ends. Another one that seems likely to spawn additional follow-up books.
Cybernetic Samurai by Victor Milan is the story of a supercomputer programmed with the knowledge of an ancient samurai ruler, and how it deals with the conflicts of the modern day business world by applying those values and lessons. Seems like the kind of thing real geeks would do. :p In any case, it seems an entirely valid bit of oriental styled cyberpunk.
Wild cards, edited by George R R Martin, is another of our shared world anthologies, a series of stories about superhumans in WWII. Not nearly as comic booky as you'd expect, this has lots of strong characterisation, is well presented, and the stories meld together well, thanks to the editing. An idea that would go on to spawn an RPG, this is definitely an interesting one to report upon.
Operation Zodiac: We continue the series on Top Secret adventures in spaaaace with a whole bunch of extrapolative future history and plot hooks based around this. As is often the case, these seem sadly out of date these days, as we've actually gone backwards in terms of space exploration capability since those days. A sad state of affairs, really. If only the cold war hadn't ended. Now that was a nebulous media excuse for fearmongering and directing our tribalistic hatreds you actually had a hope of beating. ;) Still, as an excuse for lots of weird and wonderful adventures, this isn't bad at all, pushing the boundaries of (then) modern tech, without going into outright sci-fi territory. If only it had turned like that. Life would be rather more interesting than it is.
Profiles: Michael Breault is one of those names that seems like they've been around forever, when actually, they haven't. Curious, that. He's been around quite a bit of interesting stuff, seeing half his class flunk out due to overaddiction to gaming, working on a far right magazine (whether he subscribed to their beliefs is not revealed), and getting a degree in astrophysics. And he's already edited lots of TSR's recent big books. Having just become a dad, he's going to be a busy bunny in the next few years. Another familiar name finally gets a face.
Robin Jenkins has considerably more style than the average editor. Snappy dresser, party animal, movie buff, excellent dancer, he's got so much fashion sense he regularly gets mistaken for a woman. (along with several other members of the crew ;) ) One of our best written interviews, most of the attempts at humour in this one hit the mark nicely. He obviously applies his lesson of learning how to communicate to himself.
Barbara G Young's article, on the other hand, doesn't quite work for me. Much is made of her hippyish tendencies, but this is a bunch of life snapshots that doesn't really help me get into the head of the person behind them. Hmm. Never mind. Plenty more where that came from.
Snarfquest jumps into the future. Can the adventurers use their anachronisms, or will they just blunder around amusingly as usual. Dragonmirth gets in on the oriental stuff. Wormy is full of hostility, racism, and possibly treachery.
A very smooth issue, that went down easily, with plenty of mildly positive articles, but no real radical highs or lows. The big central feature meant that there was less text to digest than usual these days, which resulted in me finishing this one quickly. It fulfills it's thematic remit quite reasonably, and there were far fewer articles that seemed tacked on purely to make up the numbers than the last one. They seem to be back on track again, and getting the hang of their new remit. Lets hope they keep that up.
Dragon Issue 122: June 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. Black dragons don't breathe fire! You of all people should know that. [/pedant] Seriously, welcome to their 11th birthday. The times, they are still a-changin around here. The upcoming edition changes for both D&D and Top Secret cause many readers much distress. Top secret in particular is a problem, because they've made it clear that the changes are going to be big and the new rules are not going to be easily convertable to the old ones. They say that they'll dual stat the crunchy bits in new articles, but we all know promises like that by a company rarely last long. Still, at least they're asking us what we want to see at the moment, rather than telling us.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking if they ever plan to do a D&D comic book, and what the current situation on the D&D movie is. Roger is pretty positive about the first idea, and forced to report that the second seems to have died a slow development death with Gary's departure. Bleah.
A letter from someone who didn't get one of the april fools jokes two years ago, asking for free photocopies. Howe Audacious is not a real person. Stop bugging us! Drive a man mad, int it, blood.
A letter from a 13 year old asking if conventions have age limits. Generally, no. Especially not ones covering topics with a large youth demographic. That would massively cut their profitability.
A letter praising the ecology articles, and asking to make More! Bigger! Covering non AD&D creatures as well! Roger has no objection to the idea, but really, this is up to the freelancers as much as anything. Send in your own ecologies now! Your magazine needs you!
A letter asking for help constructing their own Dragonchess game. Unfortunately, the people most involved in that have since left TSR, so Roger can't help much. The technology still isn't really there to build a good board at an economical price, either. Boo.
Forum is extra long this month, as they let people get their opinions in about the state of gaming as a whole:
Dana Foley reminds us that the spirit of the various articles is more important than their letter. Trying to follow them slavishly without understanding the reasoning behind them will only cause trouble.
Anthony Tennaro thinks that weapons ought to cause more damage next edition. Characters can be hit in vital areas repeatedly to no effect. This isn't realistic. It was never intended to be. Abstraction, my dear.
Craig Ulmer would like to see an article on how you improvise as a DM. Um. You make it up yourself. If you're following rules someone else made, then it essentially becomes playing the blues rather than true freeform improvisation. While that can be fun, it hardly compares to genuine DM'ing skill developed by years of personal trial and error.
Sylvain Robert shows up again, quibbling about the nature of weapon specialization, who can have it, and how many weapons they can specialize in. Your pregens from an adventure break the rules as written. Trusting module writers to get all the stats right is a foolish thing to do. Just fix them, and play your game the way you want too, instead of trusting to a canon that is self contradictory anyway.
Chris Patterson thinks that it's important to enforce consequences for alignment deviations, especially for classes with moral codes. We must not allow psycho dick paladins to retain their powers.
W Brian Barnes thinks that with the recent supplement bloat, UA and it's questionable ideas in particular, the AD&D game has lost it's way. The new edition needs to get back to that original spirit, of allowing us plenty of freedom to keep all the optional bits out if we choose. Flexibility is a good thing.
Ed Friedlander reminds us that for a good cleric, doing good should be a pleasure, both for them, and the people they follow. If it's not, then you're playing it wrong. Being utterly po-faced about your religion is an attitude more suited to lawful neutral and evil types. Humour, music, parables, and using magic for entertainment are all entirely suitable actions for a preacher. And the next edition really ought to have proper rules for conversion of your opponents. Pacifism ought to be a valid character choice in D&D. Hmm. Radical ideas here.
Scott Gilpatric thinks that it should be possible to allow automated reprints of old articles by loading them onto computer disk, and then allowing people to order them, and print them out from their own printer via modem connection. Plus you could double the service up as a bulletin board. My oh my. That's a very forward thinking idea indeed. I very much approve.
Martin Gibbs agrees with Craig Sessions that sexism is bad, and so is judging people without giving them a fair chance to prove themselves. That kind of prejudice is hurtful to them, and harmful to you in the long run, because you miss out on so many cool opportunities.
S D Anderson reminds us just how heavy 1000 gp is, and suggests that giving xp for money is a bad idea. It can be gamed horribly, and results in unfair and over fast advancements. This is another thing about the game that needs fixing.
Robert Montgomery thinks that the problem with alignment is not the existence of good and evil, but the way you define these words. As long as you do that properly, you can have evil PC's without any problem. That's treading perilously close to the moral relativism argument.
W Brian Barnes shows up a second time in a single issue. This time he argues that balancing out magic-users power at high levels by making them painfully wimpy at low levels is not balance at all, and actually makes things worse. True balance should be applicable at all points through the game, not over time. Some serious revision is needed to make that the case. Oh, you don't know the half of it. I wonder what his opinion of 4e is.
Jeanne McGuire is another returning forumite. She examines the math of wizard's intelligence and spells known. picking holes in all the problems that come up and suggesting solutions. One of those letters that seems like it ought to be a proper article, but couldn't quite make up the length.
Stephen Barnecut is also examining the rules for wizards, and trying to clarify the ones for spellbooks. Having them scattered throughout the books really does make getting a clear picture a bugger. Let's get working to fix this.
Scott Luzzo delivers another almost article, about the procedure for recharging charged items. The rules on this are currently unclear, so I shall make up my own and share them with you. I do not object to this idea at all.
The ecology of the rot grub: Or Ew, ew, it just crawled inside me! getitout getitout getitout! as they are colloquially known. Yeah, these are fun little bastards to trick and squick your players with, and Ed Greenwood is fully aware of this fact. Even the stuffiest of sages will show a crack in their composure at the prospect of one of these getting loose mid-lecture. Ed skips the footnotes completely this time around, but this is still a fun little feature, that feels like a throwback to the early days of the ecologies, back in '83. He knows sage and adventurer psychology inside out by now, and this is pretty well tailored to answering some of the common questions adventurers might have. Nice to see he can still knock em out when in the right mood.
A step beyond shogun: We obviously have a lot of oriental articles, because they're continuing on from last month. This is a brief review of 5 of the books from OA's bibliography, so as to give you a little more info on just what you're getting yourself into if you pick them up. The writer goes for the ones that have already made some pop culture penetration, The art of war, A book of 5 rings, another biography of Myamoto Musashi, two books on the nature of what it means to be a samurai, this is very much a japan focussed populist selection. Still, if people are daunted by that bibliography, you want to direct them towards the more accessible stuff first. Don't want them put off before they even play. Very much a filler article.
And a step beyond that: Zeb Cook gives us yet more source material to read, this time Officially Recommended. What is Japanese architecture. The Taiheiki. Ugetsu Monogatari. Japanese ghosts and demons. Japanese castles. The samurai film. The medieval Japanese Daimyo. 7 more books for you to check out if you want to fill in your OA campaigns with realistic historical detail. Nice to see he's still enthusiastic abut the topic, but as a dry listing, this doesn't make very interesting reading in itself. Yet more stuff to possibly check out once I've completed this insanely long trek through history.
Dragon Issue 122: June 1987
part 2/3
Out of Africa: Hmm. Yes, compared to europe and the orient, africa does get relatively little airtime in mythological circles. But there's no shortage of legends from there. Quite the opposite, given the number of different tribes, it's just that they're not remotely unified, or even particularly well documented in comparison to greek and norse myth. This is the advantage of writing stuff down. It really does help with the posterity thing. Even more helpful is artwork, which is important for getting a fixed form from the strange descriptions in oral tales. Still, we can extract more than enough fairly concrete creatures from those legends to make up a whole bestiary full of monsters. And if you want to make some more, there's a pretty decent bibliography for you to hunt down and read. A nicely flavourful collection that looses a couple of points for being purely fluff.
Gaming the dark continent: Fortunately, Our esteemed lead editor is here, and continues his practice of making articles that complement each other, by himself if he has too. So here's stats for 11 creatures from the preceding article. There's something here to challenge you from 1st to low name levels, taking you from tricksy little humanoids, to gigantic swamp monsters. The descriptions are very sparse, because of course most of the fluff was back in the preceding article, which results in lots of annoying flipping back and forth. Would it have been too hard to composite these two articles into a seamless whole? Oh well. Still very much better than nothing. Now what we need is some stuff on playing african PC's. Come on writers. Don't let me down.
Paranoia second edition. Now even your own clones are out to get you. Buy it now. Not upgrading is treasonous citizen, as the computer may crash from incompatible code. As the computer is perfect, this cannot be. Long live the computer!
The natural Order: Looks like following on from recent issues is the theme of this one, as we now have lots of new druid spells for you to exploit as well. Arthur Collins delivers 21 new spells of all levels. All are suitable to druid's nature control purview, and help add a little more celtic flavour to the class. Utility and combat both get their fair share, and we also get a quartet of seasonal ceremony spells, as inspired by Len Lakofka in issue 58. Someone's maintaining a proper sense of history here, and finally seeing a symmetry like this filled in is curiously pleasing to me. He may not be one of their star writers, but Arthur is certainly continuing to deliver over a longer period than most of their freelancers. And it looks like that will continue for quite some time longer, since I remember him still being around when I started reading. If he continues to deliver little gems like this, I have no objection to this state of affairs.
From the sorceror's scroll: Yes, Gary shows his face again (sorta, because the graphic that used to adorn this column is missing) after his mysterious and unheralded disappearance. However, it is only to explain what has been going down in the past year or so, and deliver a terse goodbye. He was forced out by the board of directors (naming no names, but glaring very hard at) After much unpleasantness, he resigned entirely, washing his hands of the crap, and formed a new company. Looks like Kim Mohan and Frank Mentzer decided their loyalties lay with Gary rather than the company as well, and jumped ship. That explains Kim's sudden departure from the editing job, forcing Roger to edit two magazines at once, as they wouldn't have done that intentionally. Even Penny Petticord has switched sides, albeit a bit later. Man, this is uncomfortable. He's trying to couch it in optimistic terms, but all those staff leaving must have left quite a bit of chaos in their wake and bad blood on both sides. It's surprising that they managed to keep the magazine running as smoothly as they did. He hopes to talk to us again soon, but of course I very much doubt we'll see much of that in here. They wouldn't want to give airtime to a dangerous competitor. Rather shoddy of them to stuff this in the middle and treat it like one of those little retractions you see in the newspapers, something faintly embarrassing they'd rather you didn't notice. At least they deigned to say something, even if the true extent of the backstage ugliness remains very much concealed. So long, Gary. Don't be a stranger.
Sage advice is quite short this month.
How much do oriental structures cost to make (Same as western stuff using the same material. The peasant labour process is pretty much the same anyway. Apart from paper walls, those are expensive and useless. )
What are art objects and how much are they worth? (egads man, have you no life ourtside gaming? They're paintings and sculptures and caligraphy and pottery and stuff. Like jewelery, their value is largely in the eye of the beholder, and you can use the same tables to determine their worth. (Pickled bulls heads in an unmade bed, with names of all your lovers scrawled in your own menstrual blood on the sheets probably won't sell well around here.))
What are the movement rates for oriental vehicles (Again, same as for western ones. In fact, just take that as written. Everything not specifically mentioned as different is the same! If We examined every aspect of their society in the detail you want the book'd be over a thousand pages long. This is D&D, not Advanced Physics simulator 1987. )
Will you publish an oriental suplement for greyhawk (no. Canonically, it's all set in the forgotten realms now, despite the old references to Kara-tur being on Oerth. If you want to transplant them, it's not hard. Continent shuffling is an established D&D tradition, going right back to Blackmoor. )
When can you use MA Maneuvers (whenever it's physically reasonable for them to do so. We still expect you to have common sense, y'know)
Is there a duration for the iron fist maneuver (Irrelevant. It's an action, not a magic power. It lasts as long as you're doing it. What is the duration of a punch or a kick. What is the sound of one fist typing pointless questions.)
How does the form of a style affect it? (not much. Method is far more important. )
The martial arts styles break the rules (No, you just don't understand them. Order of maneuvers in style is not the same as order of maneuvers of group. It's perfectly clear to me. )
What AC do you roll against when using Leap (AC10, unless there are special circumstances. Give us a proper DC system, pleeease. )
Can you use a riding horse in a joust (no. They'd panic and run away. You'd be a laughingstock amongst all the other knights)
How do you make a Drolem ( Oooh. Sgonna cost you at least 25,000gp. Plus research costs. And lets not forget you need a set of dragon bones. It'll take quite an adventure to build one. )
How do you make illusory walls. ( Cast permanency on Phantasmal force. Or if you don't want to wait until 18th level, develop a custom spell. It should only be around 4th level or so. )
The GM's ten commandments: Pff. We've seen this one plenty of times before. Don't be adversarial. Always give them a chance unless what they want to do is blatantly impossible. Don't overplan. Don't go over the top too quickly. Description description description. Consistent worlds make for better games. Stick to your rulings and don't let the game get disrupted by rules lawyers. No takebackseys. Encourage roleplaying. If the players try cool and clever stuff, reward it, don't punish it. No great surprises here. One for our new readers.
Marshalling the martial arts: A third OA article? Plus sage advice being mostly oriental. Man, at this rate this'll effectively be another special issue. Psionics never got it this good. Anyway, here's 12 new martial arts styles made using the OA rules, allowing even nonmonks to become quite capable and versatile unarmed combatants. I recommend you go for Escrima, as it has top AC, damage, no of attacks, and a decent weapon selection, plus tons of special moves. Yeah, these aren't remotely balanced. But then, MA in AD&D wasn't well designed anyway, the tiny number of flexible resource slots you got meant power always outweighed flexibility for fighter types. This fails to fix that in any way. Ho hum.
Operation Zondraker: Merle's epic series on Top Secret in spaaace gets it's third, but not final installment. Having covered the rules for operating in space, they now take us to the moon, and show us how the rules handle it's low gravity, airless plains. Previous articles from the magazine are referenced freely to help build up the big picture, and we get plenty more cool toys to use, offensive, defensive, transport and utility. Still a very crunchy business, but that's no surprise really. I'm rather enjoying this, as it's one of the few extended, in depth articles that they're doing at the moment, and look forward to seeing how they finish this one off.
Ellery Queen's mystery magazine game. How cute. It's a murder mystery game advertising in Dragon. Now that's the kind of thing I could stand to see more of.
Dragon Issue 122: June 1987
part 3/3
The leader of the pack: This month's Star frontiers article is a quick one on the nature of the two social stats, and the difference between then. Persuasion is about your charm and skill at social repartee, while leadership measures your ability to boss people around and impart critical information in crisis situations. A perfectly valid way to divide things up, if one that can probably be picked apart by rules lawyers looking for edge cases. Definitely a filler article here, with the amount of text and illustration here finely formatted to fit around the adverts. It does have the neat idea of aiding others with your advice, and actually allowing mechanical benefits from doing so, so it's not a complete waste of time. That is, after all, an idea that would go on to be much more popular in the future.
TSR Previews: A decidedly short list of new products this month. Don't worry though, because it looks like there's considerably more in the month after.
D&D is getting B1-9: In search of adventure. Another attack of rehash, this ties all these earlier adventures more closely into the Known Worlds setting, giving you a nice little sandbox to level up your characters in with plenty of choices on where to go. It's also getting DA4: The dutchy of ten. Dave Arneson's been back less than a year, and now he's buggered off again, leaving the writing of the final Blackmoor module to his collaborator. Not a very impressive run, really. What was the backstage reason behind things turning out this way?
AD&D is getting the Manual of the Planes! One of Jeff Grubb's crowning achievements, this might not have quite the style of the later planescape stuff, but it certainly makes the planes playable and then some. This opens up a lot of campaign options and is pretty fun to read as well. If you don't want to go that far afield, but have still made it to high level, you can instead try H3: Bloodstone wars. Use the mass combat system to forge an army and rid a city of marauding bandits. Must be a lot of bandits. No wonder they're a nightmare to get rid of.
Fiction: The Prince's Birthday by Keith Minnion. A question often asked of genius inventors. If you're so smart, then why are you not in charge. Why are you taking commissions from a tyrannical sadistic maniac who's likely to kill you if you fail to amuse, and almost as likely to kill you if you succeed, so no-one else can have a copy of the cool stuff you've made for them. A very valid question. Interestingly, this one has read the legend of Dadaelus and Icarus, and isn't going to make the same mistake. Not only is he smart enough to get out of dodge at the right time, but he's also smart enough to leave something behind that'll really get him out of trouble. I won't spoiler you as to the details, but I did find this pretty enjoyable, and hope that if I have to resign from some big tyrannical corporation, I can go out with half as much style.
Profiles: Jeff Butler may look like a jock, play sports like a jock, and wound up marrying a cheerleader, but he's also a skilled artist, growing up on a diet of comic books and swords and sorcery. (with lurid covers, of course) He did all sorts of freelance drawing work before joining a small comics company. When that ran into financial trouble and it all went a bit pear shaped, he was clued in to TSR's job opening, and of course got to draw the big names, as the Marvel super heroes game took off. As a sideline, he's also started creating live action superhero costumes. Seems like he's definitely living the dream.
Jane Cooper is one of our book editors. She's gone from minnesota, to wisconsin, to taiwan, and back, picking up a husband while out there. As another of the surprisingly large contingent of staff who never gamed before coming to work there, she's had a lot to learn, but if you can learn other languages, you can probably adapt to most corporate structures.
Patrick McGilligan is yet another of our editors. They sure do have a lot of them. (well, I suppose it's better than White Wolf's only having two editors in the entire company, who give the impression they'd much rather be writers, and farming out the scutwork to Scribendi) He's written plays, biographies, edited Playgirl, (yeah, Suuuuuure you only edited it for the articles.) interviewed tons of famous people, and then decided that he'd prefer a slightly duller life, so he'd work as a book editor for TSR. :D He's played a big part in the making of the new Windwalker, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels. What writers will he sucker in with promises of fame and fortune next?
The enemy within! Shadows over Bogenhafen. The first supplement for warhammer fantasy. Oh yeah. They're gonna sink your boat, bitches. Feel the grit.
The marvel-phile: A quick venturing into the realms of hyperpower again this month, with stats for the High Evolutionary. A medieval scientist who turned himself into an immortal advanced being, he created a duplicate of the earth, engaged in all kinds of god-playing, then went mad and committed suicide by hulk when he didn't get the respect he felt he deserved from other cosmic races. Sounds like a bit of a dick, really. As this is just a cut statblock from the corebook, this is another bit of filler that won't be of use to most groups, since high power adversaries like this can be a problem. Seems like we're getting quite a bit of that this issue.
A big book of little heroes: A single book review is separated from the crowd this month. Heroes for wargames by Stuart Parkinson is a rather strangely written book. Part introduction to wargaming and roleplaying, part coffee table book of pretty minis and guide to painting them, part collectors guide, it doesn't seem at all sure what it wants to be. It's also very britishly written, throwing off the reviewer with it's idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation. (:facepalm: None of you have problems with my englishness, do you?) This is a problematic review of what is probably a problematic book, and if it tried to tie into the specifics of what was just coming out then, probably has not aged well. Definitely not one I want to chase down.
The role of computers: As they said 2 months ago, this month's main review is the massive Might and Magic, an epic RPG. It seems fairly typical for games of it's time. Create a party from the usual selection of races and classes, generate their ability scores, equip them, and explore a world with the intent of saving it. However, the devil is in the details, and there's certainly plenty of those. (as ever, they advise to go back and save often, for losing several hours work sucks) Even after playing for three months, they're only a third of the way through it, and still eager to push on and discover what tricks and secrets the rest of it contains. Oh what a shame for them, for they have to constantly move on and try new games as part of their job. Still, they'll continue playing it just for pleasure, and stealing cool bits for their own rpg'ing. If I were inclined to download ROM's, I would definitely be tempted by this review. Also notable is their talking about many manufacturers not converting their games to the Atari because it's the most pirated system. Same as it ever was :D.
The ultimate addenda: Errata, errata. Don't try and spread it on your bread without butter. Or it'll stick in your throat, make you choke and splutter. And if you're dead, the rules won't matter. Yup, it's this time again. Advanced Marvel Superheroes has stuff missing, and stuff that needs fixing, and it's up to this humble scribe to go back to it and fix this. 9 new powers, plus some definition of terms that are mentioned in the book, but not explained. So many superheroes. There's always going to be something you failed to design for. Yet another not very exciting article.
Hmm. Leaves from The inn of the last home. Aka cooking and singsongs with Tika and Caramon. This smells like the kind of thing that gives fluff a bad name, and does nothing to make the game more fun to play. Am I wrong?
Dragonmirth features the scariest gruumsh evar. The Snarfquest crew gets cabin fever as they travel through space. Wormy's standoff turns into another incredibly dramatic battle.
One of the worst issues in a long time, if not ever, for several reasons. Obviously, there's the official announcement of Gary's departure, treated in a decidedly shoddy way, but there's also a painful amount of articles that are rehashed, overly shallow, poorly organized, leftovers from other recent issue's themes, and just plain dull. It feels like a dumping ground for a whole load of the crap they've been building up over the past year. Not pleasant reading, with a few exceptions. Lets hope they've cleared out their blockage, and they'll be back to their reliable selves next issue. It's been a new era for a while, but this really marks the ending of the old ways, and the beginning of a new regime in a way that's hard to miss. This is gonna result in flamewars.
Dragon Issue 123: July 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. Ooh, shirtlessness. A little cheesecake for our female readers this time round. See what you get if you turn the flames up a bit. They also continue their drive to have more themed issues, with wizards getting another bite at the apple. Will this give us a nice selection of roleplaying advice and spells? Or does forbidden knowledge lurk within these eldrich pages, waiting to destroy your gameworld with it's twinkedness? Guess you'll just have to watch me, as I turn the pages and read the contents, see if this degenerates into the incoherent scrawls of a madman.
In this issue:
Letters: Another request for big prints of the magazine's covers. It's all up to the individual artists, really. But they are happy to facilitate this process.
A letter complaining that nearly all the articles in the magazine are for AD&D rather than regular D&D. This sucks. Roger quite agrees. Send them in! Not that it matters much, given how cross-compatible the games are.
A letter from someone afraid that the start of the forgotten realms means oerth and krynn won't get any more stuff. Roger assures them that that is not the case. And even if it was, you don't have to play nothing but modules. Surely the worlds are now fleshed out enough for you to build your own adventures in them?
Forum is rather large again this month. The flames about sexism and oriental stuff rage intensely, often combined. Double the nerdrage, double the fun!
Nathan Perkins points out that everyone taking the min-max choices results in parties with exploitable weaknesses. And even with double specialization, fighters still aren't really balanced with wizards. So if your players are munchkins, don't be afraid to play rough in response.
Eric Krein does some analysis of wizard's spellbooks, in a piece that's almost big enough to be turned into an actual article. Cost, capacity, size and durability, they ought to be awkward choices, not no-brainers. This needs some fixing.
Alan Ristow tells us that Banded mail is not a real type of armour. It never existed! Banish it from your games! Ahh, the joys of the Historical Accuracy crew. Really, it's no great loss, is it?
Steven Van Veen is entirely in favour of people videoing their games, and has some sadistic ideas for dealing with people who keep messing around during the game, slowing everyone else up. I like the cut of your jib.
Tommy Sronce points out that D&D is intentionally unrealistic in many ways. By trying to make it more so, you make it less fun. Go play runequest or something if you want characters who develop in a realistic fashion.
Leung Chi Kong thinks that ships in the D&D world would evolve quite differently, with spells and no gunpowder altering the tactical considerations considerably. Modern ship designs would not make a good example. Yet another case where we really need a full article to help fit things to the physics of the game universe.
Uriah Blatherwick is not happy with the onslaught of new rules in recent books and articles. The writers ought to do more optional stuff, rather than forcing us to change our game. Or at least make it more clear that the new rules are optional. Another case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Adam Dray reminds us that a good person is hardly good if they take the selfish path and sell out their friends whenever the going gets tough. If they do, then they're just a neutral person who likes to think of themselves as good, not the real deal, and shouldn't keep their special powers if they're a paladin or ranger.
T Fujiwara viciously attacks Jeff Klein's statement that women warriors have no place in an oriental campaign, with extensive mythological and historical citations. And even if that were not the case, D&D is supposed to be about exceptional heroes. If you can't do a little bucking of societies expectations, you're hardly a hero, are you?
Derek Ho also disagrees about the female samurai thing, pointing out the story of Fa Mook Lan (aka Mulan. Ahh, disney disney disney. Completely mutilating classic tales since 1932) Genderbending is another perfectly valid way of becoming a hero.
Pat Pitcavage is also against sexism. Use your imagination, people. Is it really that hard to come up with good reasons why there would be female warriors in a fantasy game?
Richard Silva returns to the forum, also presenting examples of famous female martial artists and their exploits. If anything, oriental cultures were less sexist in medieval periods than western ones. How will Jeff come back from this roasting?
Jeremy Sacco rails against the stereotyping of 14 year old boys as crude, sex-obsessed hack and slashers. You protest against discrimination against women by stereotyping and putting down another group. Charming. I find this very amusing indeed.
D Laslie Millitello is amazed such a big deal is made about people's gender, both in and out of the game. She's always been playing in a pretty mixed group, and the gender stereotypes definitely do not apply to them. Some people have all the luck.
Michael Estus is annoyed that no-one ever discusses Top Secret in the forum. Ok then. Perfectly reasonable. What would you like us to say about it?
Call of cthulhu advertises the miskatonic university graduation kit, arkham horror, Cthulhu by gaslight, and lots of other classic products. This is amusing.
Music of the forgotten realms: Oh great. Music and poetry from fantasy worlds. Now there's a topic that ha produced quite a few abominations against taste and sanity over the years. Remember folks, just because you can make it rhyme, that does not make it good. Thankfully, Ed doesn't show us his poetry, (Put it away. No-one wants to see it.) and instead talks about the actual instruments used in the Realms to create their music. Which is actually a pretty interesting topic, informing us indirectly about cultures and technology in the realms. After all, music is heavily shaped by the materials and equipment you have to make it with. From signaling gongs to primitive organs, they have distinctive variants on earthly instruments that he obviously put quite a bit of effort into developing. Once again, he's tackled a challenging subject and come up smelling of roses, having put the research in and then thought about how his world's countries would handle these things. I very strongly approve. It's a bit odd to have an unconnected article before the themed stuff, but I can see why they gave this one pole position.
The mystic College: So your wizard has reached name level. Quite an achievement, since they have the highest XP costs and are weak at lower ones. Wouldn't it be nice to give back to the community, start a school for aspiring young wizards, so they don't have to go through the same degree of crap you did. Much nicer than building a tower, and then filling the area beneath it with monsters that you rule over and experiment on like a cruel and whimsical god, striking dread into the hearts of peasant communities for miles around. Maybe we can actually advance the culture a bit this way, make the average peasant a little less superstitious and hidebound by ensuring at least a few of their kids get a proper education. So yeah, lotsa advice on taking this route, how much it costs, and the benefits you can get from doing so. Political, financial, and personal, they can be quite substantial if you are willing to put the effort in. We get another system for advancing 0 level characters to 1st level spellcasters, which eats up substantial time and xp in typical fashion. (Far quicker to go adventuring, make it up that way.) Still, at least it's now an option in a non fiaty way, which is better than before. While not fully integrated with the existing game management systems, this is full of solid mechanical and roleplaying advice for players who want to take a few years out from active adventuring, and try their hand at a little sim game, see how they do. It may never be useful to your group, but it's nice to know it's there. Pretty cool special feature, overall.
Dragon Issue 123: July 1987
part 2/3
No guts, No Galaxy! Renegade legion. Now that's an eye catching advert, that makes it pretty clear what the game is about, even though I've never heard of it before. Nice.
Fire for effect: Ha. It's a realism in D&D article. You ought to consider the consequences using area of effect blasty spells on the surroundings. We've had this one before, but not in as much scientific detail, as Richard W Emerich, one of our more frequent forumites, graduates to doing a full article. So here's lots of pontification about the effect of heat, cold, electricity on various items, and just how much they'll really ruin your day if you get caught in them. Not too long, but with lots of footnotes and a good bibliography, this certainly looks pretty well researched. As they've managed to surpass previous attempts, I'm not too bothered about the rehash. Lets hope it doesn't wind up spawning a load of forum flamewars from other realism pedants in turn.
Arcane lore: Hmm. Looks like they've finally realized what a rich ground for freelance expansions new spells are, and have decided to actively solicit for them. That's nice. Hopefully we'll be seeing this column regularly in later issues. Interestingly, this is not only in theme with the general issues topic, but also the previous article's, as we get a whole load of fire themed spells. Elementalists are always popular, so that's a solid, if not particularly inspired way to kick things off. Flare is yer basic real world tech analogue. Smokescreen is one of the less popular transformers. Enchanted torch is a higher level than continual light, but less useful in most instances, which is a bit crap. Mellix's fire mouth is a variant on magic mouth that proves words may never hurt you, but breath can. Fallion's Fabulous fireball removes most of the tactical disadvantages of regular fireballs. Just the thing for the discerning mage with companions who still haven't mastered basic tactics 4 levels later, the twonks. Fire Phantoms takes the opposite tack, providing weedy elementals for those who don't yet have the skill for the real thing. Avissar's flaming weapon makes a weapon into a flame tongue, and I'm not sure if it's good or rubbish because the duration is left out. At that level you can make permanent magic items easily enough anyway, so it'd better be pretty long. Hellfire makes your life an endless burning torment until you die. Charming. We also get some fluff tying them all together, and a new artifact as well. This definitely shows the influence of Ed Greenwood's writings on magical books, which is not a bad thing. Lets hope it doesn't descend into formulaic variations on the same old themes too much over it's run.
Lords & Legends: Ur characters, we are wanting them. As was suggested a few months ago in a letter, sample characters are another rich ground for freelance submissions. So send them in! We can't do this without you! Interesting development. Will they be as horrendously twinked as the stuff from Giants in the earth? Signs so far do not look promising, with not a single below average stat between them. Yoshitsune, Benkei, Hsu Hsun, Myamoto Musashi, the current upsurge in oriental material continues, and most of them have some special ability that ordinary PC's can't get. This annoyed me first time round, and it looks like it's going to be bugging me again. Le sigh. Not a pleasing development.
Gamers around the world: Ooh. We finally have an article that isn't remotely rehashed. A guide on how to write letters when trying to contact people through the world gamers guide. After all, making first contacts with strangers is one of the most nerve wracking things to do for a huge number of people. Making a tit of yourself, or the fear of doing so, can be huge problems, because if you get off on the wrong foot a potential relationship is ruined before it even gets a chance. So we have a whole bunch of advice on proper letter writing procedure. What to put in, what to leave out, and roughly what order to do it in. Formal letter writing was already an art in decline in those days, and of course, the internet has hastened that process, so this does feel a little anachronistic. But the basic principles are still sound, and well worth reiterating. Whether you're looking for a new group to join nearby, trying to set up a play-by-mail game, or simply exchanging correspondence with someone who interested you, this is some valuable advice that will hopefully encourage quite a few people to make that scary first step into communicating with people across the world. Memorable and very much appreciated.
The ecology of the giant leech: What is this, gross-out season? Okay, leeches aren't as icky as rot grubs, but they still have quite a substantial squick factor. Another amusing tale, as an orc and a half-orc plot against one-another in the swamps. Who will wind up becoming dinner? Brains will win over brawn in a situation like this. Plenty of tricks nicked from real world biology in what is pretty good as a bit of fiction, but not hugely imaginative in making the conversion from little real world creature to giant fantasy creature. So overall, a fairly average entry. Moral lesson, a little real world biology info, a little encounter advice, all wrapped up in time for tea, another perfectly serviceable way to fill a couple of pages.
Time flies: You can NOT have a proper campaign unless strict timekeeping records are taken! So said Gary! ;) Yeah. timekeeping can be a tricky business. So here's 5 pages of tables that you can photocopy, and use to help you with this. Going all the way from turns to years, you can tick off time as it passes, and make little notes as to what happened in each interval. While it may need to be adapted to your own campaign, as it chooses symmetry over realism, this is another invaluable bit of advice that they haven't given us before, and is pretty much unconnected to specific systems. Like the writing in advice, this is also applicable to subjects far beyond roleplaying, and a refreshing change from their usual fare. This is a direction I could definitely appreciate for a while, as it gives me plenty of stuff to steal for other games.
Just making time: We continue on from the last article, as is often their way. Now this is also very useful. Roger talks about making a calendar and astrological setup for your own world, and reveals that of the various D&D worlds. Toril and Krynn match earth's precisely, at 365.25 days a year. Oerth has a rather neater calendar of of 364, while Mystara is a fast one, with years only 336 days long. All except krynn have satellites fairly similar to earth's moon. Another slightly depressing reminder of how much more adventurous they could have been with the cosmologies and layouts of their worlds, but still interesting reading. Remember folks, you can do much better than this, because you don't have to worry about homogenising things for a large audience who may not be paying attention. Don't be afraid to experiment with your world design, and make things non symmetrical. It'll spice things up quite considerably. Colours, shapes, orbital periods, rotation times, cosmological influence. I look forward to making you lose track of them and have to look it up. ;)
Sage advice: What's the point of leather barding if horses have a natural AC of 7 (Good point. Methinks a little revised table is in order. Now everything's shiny again.)
How much damage does a catapult do (See the master set. Skip don't put out unless you pay, babe. I don't care if you got the chance to use them way before 26th level.)
What's the difference between light and heavy crossbows. (range, rate of fire, cost, weight. What isn't different.)
Do you lose initiative when using a bastard sword one handed (not unless you spend several minutes flipping through the rulebook to check this.)
What is a war hammer, +3 Boomerang (I think this is another case of well duh. It's +3 to hit and damage, and if you throw it, it automatically comes back. Gives your dwarven fighter a whole new set of cool descriptions to their moves. )
How much damage does a lance do (1d10, but only on horseback. They're big awkward things. There is such a thing as being impractically well hung.)
What's a javelin (like a spear, but with a longer throwing range. Thin pointy things come in many shapes and sizes. I could make another peenar joke but I won't)
The Combat charts contradict the separate listings (oops, our bad again)
What are the split numbers on the water movement charts ( for boats that have both oars and sails)
How much food do you find when foraging. (an abstract number measured in meals per day. We can not be bothered to deal with the vagaries in human taste and appetite. )
What is storm giant's special damage (calling lightning. You've been reading wormy, haven't you? Yeah, it's like that. )
How does a roc save (at Beaklays bank. )
What happens if a lightning bolt hits a solid object ( The DM can choose if it bounces straight back, or billiard style. Either way, hilarity may ensue, and other members of your party be hurt.
Isn't invisible stalker overpowered (Oh no. It is emminently subvertable. Summoned creatures are pains in the ass to keep under control. )
Dragon Issue 123: July 1987
part 3/3
Fiction: Palimpsest by Tais Teng. Hmm. Another twist on a few familiar topics in this month's fiction. Seemingly incomprehensible fae, 4th wall breaking stories, post apocalypse, and philosophical musing on the foolishness of humanity, willing to cut off their own hand just to spite their arm. Put together in such a way that you expect it to take one plot twist, and then it does a different one at the end, yet if you go back and reread, it all makes sense in light of that revelation, this is another pretty interesting piece that'll hopefully get your mind working to create similar twists in your own games. They are pulling a lot of surprises out of their hat this issue. Just when you think it's going to be predictable and formulaic, they throw you a curveball. Whee!
The whole-earth Ecology: The Star frontiers article this month is another one on building realistic creatures. Why are they the way they are? How common are they? What do they eat. How do they survive. What is their relationship with other creatures in the same region. Are they physically plausible. This last one is much more important in sci-fi than fantasy, for the degree of pure handwavium that the genre can tolerate is not as great. Not nearly as big or imaginative as Lew Pulspher's article on the same subject back in issue 59, this is a return to the same old rehash, slightly reflavoured for a different game. Another one that would be perfectly reasonable for a more recent reader, but doesn't really throw any new ideas or tricks into the mix for me to use. Like many a critic, novelty seems to becoming increasingly paramount in my equations of if I enjoy an article. After all, anyone can practice doing the same thing over and over again, and get better at it, but no matter how many new ideas you come up with, it never ceases being really hard coming up with more.
The marvel-phile: Jeff gets back to some long unfinished business, with three more of the heralds of galactus. (see issue 92 for the first three) Air-walker, Firelord, and Destroyer. (but not Aunt May ;) :( ) More cosmic level characters who had decidedly short tenures before being destroyed or retiring. A planet eating force of nature just can't keep good help these days. Who will he try and recruit next, what amusing themes will their powers have, and how will they cope with their heavy burden? Another bit of contractual obligation filler before he carries out his next diabolical plan, a list of the people killed off by Scourge. I look forward to it.
The role of books: The king of satan's eyes by Geoffrey Marsh is a very pulpy tale of a suit designer who winds up in all kinds of adventures around the world. With very tight, if somewhat formulaic plotting, it would make a good bit of inspiration for the more cinematic kind of Top Secret game.
With a single spell by Lawrence Watt-Evans is a story of the adventures of a young wizard who does indeed, start off with only one spell, and has to make the most of it. Seems like a typical heroes journey, going from small to large in a neatly plotted manner. Now, what will he do next? Can't get too formulaic.
Bimbos of the death sun by Sharyn McCrumb, on the other hand, isn't formulaic at all. Murder mystery? Character study of the nature of geek conventions? Fantasy? Very good question. In any case, it seems to work, despite the individual parts not being entirely satisfying on their own. It richly deserves it's memorability.
Arrows of the queen by Mercedes Lackey is the start of another trilogy. Looks like it's gonna need it, as it hints at several big plot points, and then leaves them completely unexplored. The reviewer still enjoys it though, as it's another one which does it's formulas right.
To the haunted mountains by Ru Emerson is a well described wilderness adventure, told in an interesting style that manages to be both distant and highly personal. It may not be to everyone's tastes, but as a regular reviewer, Mr Bunnel also enjoys his novelties.
Winter of magic's return by Pamela F Service is a tale of magic returning to a postapocalyptic world. Stealing liberally from arthurian myth, a reincarnated merlin must find his way to avalon, and release Arthur so he may be king again. While aimed at the young adult market, it has enough clever references that older people can appreciate as well.
Unicorn and dragon by Lynn Abbey does not get a very good review. The plot is confusing and cluttered, and the characters don't seem to have understandable motivations beyond what the story demands, and the format of the book is a bit odd. An experiment that doesn't really work, but is still mineable for historical detail.
Paranoia takes out a full colour three page spread advertising both the new edition, and all the old adventures. Orcbusters, Yellow clearance black box blues, send in the clones. This is a nice selection.
Operation Zondraker: So we come to the end of this four part Top Secret epic just as the new edition comes out. Out with the old, in with the new. Not that it matters much here, as this installment is pretty system free, giving us a bunch of example missions using the alternate future history they've spent time building up. They really ought to have multiplied this stuff out, and made it into a full-blown sourcebook, because there is a lot more they could have said on this subject, and fleshing out the missions with maps, character stats and the like would have been an entirely reasonable thing to do. Guess like some of the forum entries which are almost articles, there's a nebulous ground where a piece doesn't quite fit into either format comfortably, and it's not quite worth it to pad it out to reach the next weight category. Still an interesting experiment, and much better reading than the attacks of rehash. Lets hope that they have a few more epic articles planned for the near future.
Top secret SI is finally out. Buy it now. Yet more well co-ordinated advert positioning.
Profiles: Warren Spector is our only, and final profilee, as they retire this regular column, presumably because they've been doing this nearly 2 years now and are running out of people to cover, plus they just introduced two new intended regulars and need to clear out space. Anyway, he's our newest editor, having been poached from Steve Jackson games, where he edited The Space Gamer, and played a big part in the creation of Toon. He takes a David Bowie influenced method of recounting his history, emphasizing the sheer randomness of how his life has turned out. An amusing framing device that makes this a pretty strong finisher to this series, covering someone who's actually better known for their non D&D work. Will it return? Good question. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it brought back later on. But if you weren't there at the time, you'll have to wait until I get there to discover exactly when with me.
TSR previews: Something goes very wrong here, as most of the things they said would be coming out next month last month are missing. The only things mentioned as coming out are the Forgotten Realms Boxed set, and Top Secret SI. I know both are pretty big deals, but that's no reason to forget everything else. Someone in editing seriously dropped the ball here. How very curious. Tut tut Roger.
Larry has to take a break from snarfquest, but there is some rather amusing filler art. Dragonmirth gets cloned. Irving doesn't believe Wormy is in danger.
One of those issue with quite high highs, and low lows. The editorial sloppiness continues, and there's quite a bit of rehash, but still several quite cool bits and genuine surprises. It's certainly not perfect, but still considerably better than the last issue. Still it's looking touch and go, as the continuing introduction of new columns and removal of old one mean it could improve rapidly, or decline again in the next issue. Can't really predict that at the moment, given the unpredictability of recent fluctuations. Guess I'll just have to look and see.
Dragon Issue 124: August 1987
part 1/3
108 pages Hmm. As part of their drive to improve their services, they're considering setting up a BBs. Or in other words, thanks to their recently acquired computer game columnists, they're aware of what passes for the internet at the moment, and are considering getting on board. That would be forward-thinking of them. I wonder if they'll follow through on that. Our theme this month is Aerial adventuring. Something we've had the odd article on, but never a whole special feature, so hopefully there won't be too much rehash. Not a bad start. Lets see what else is new and shiny in the world of dragon publishing.
In this issue:
Letters: Another letter from people interested in breaking the world record for playing continuously. Roger tells them that we don't do that any more, due to the health hazards. Oh, for the halcyon days of 1980, when people played 100 hours at a a time. :p
A letter suggesting some more regular columns. Hmm. As ever, we'll certainly consider these ideas.
Another of our regular questions. Someone wants to become a writer for the magazine, and wonders how you do it. The usual response follows. Get the writers pack, read the guidelines, and then practice practice practice, making sure you listen to constructive criticism along the way. No surprises here.
Forum: Rad Jorgensen is one of the many people who thinks that the game is actually less fun when you incorporate the new stuff from Unearthed Arcana. The characters are more powerful, which means they have to fight higher level monsters, and get gold and XP more quickly, which means you don't get to enjoy the early stages of the game. Lest we forget, many people like the bit where one good hit can kill you, and you need to be cautious if you want to survive.
Kim Eastland pops in to do a shill piece on gamma world and it's supplements. If you want more material to come out, buy the existing stuff! If it isn't profitable, we can't produce it. :rolleyes: This is even worse than Frank Mentzer's dragon thing. At least he offered a debatable point for people to run with along with his shilling.
Brock Sides suggests that magic items ought to be given power levels, so dumb DM's can know approximately what level they should start giving them to their characters at. Rather a good idea, really.
Uriah Blatherwick shows up for a second month in a row. This time he makes the point that there is no one true way of running games. It's all about what's fun for both players and DM. And since variety is the spice of life, one group can and should experiment with multiple playstyles to keep things fresh. A viewpoint I very much agree with.
Clark Timmins reminds us not to sweat the small, everyday stuff when roleplaying.
Daniel S Huffman wants to play the beastmaster as a PC, but doesn't want them to overshadow other PC's. So he suggests a whole bunch of nerfs for them to bring things back under control. Woo. Nerfs. :deadpan: I'll keep these in mind for if I ever get to try the class.
Dan Fejes is another returning forumite. He points out that he wasn't being sexist when he said that the proportion of female players, and female lead characters in fantasy books, is not very high. It's the truth. Go to any bookshop, do a random sampling, prove it for yourself. Don't shoot the messenger, maaaan. Provable statistics will not shield you from the flames, especially where sexual and racial identity is involved. Even something as simple as " A larger proportion of people of non caucasian descent are lactose intolerant" can spawn hundred post flamewars.
Pam Parisi is also against sexism in fantasy on the grounds of it's escapism, damnitt. Let us play really badass women and don't worry about it. Seems a rather popular viewpoint.
Role-playing reviews returns, due to popular demand. There's lots of games out now, many of them diverging quite substantially from D&D, and it would be a foolish company which ignored them and the ideas they have to offer. They start off with a look over the current big competitors. Runequest is currently in decline, due to 3rd edition taking a number of dumb design and setting choices. fantasy Hero and GURPS are perfectly decent systems, but you'll have to do most of the world building yourself, as they don't have much of a supplement base. Harn has a well developed world, but a woeful lack of adventures. Pendragon is kickass at what it does, but has a very narrow focus that may not be for everyone. MERP is fairly good, but a bit too crunchy to really keep many of the inexperienced gamers it's big license attracts. All of which leaves things open for another system to move in and become number two. Which is where our review really starts in earnest.
Warhammer fantasy roleplay is of course the attempt of Games Workshop to compete with TSR in fairly generic fantasy. Classes are replaced by careers, combat has an exceedingly brutal critical hits chart, magic is relatively limited, and the setting is well developed, with an interesting mix of grimness and humour. It already has it's first module series, the enemy within, in full flow. For someone who dislikes how characters increase exponentially in power in a few levels in D&D, it seems a pretty good choice for your fantasy gaming. Another interesting development. While still partisan, and presenting the D&D system as the best all around game, they are acknowledging that other games do certain things better. This definitely helps me get a better idea of what things were currently like in the world of roleplaying as a whole. Good to see them looking outwards a little more again.
Sage advice: How big or small can you get using polymorph self ( DM's choice, but remember they can't exceed the hit dice limit)
How many times a day can hellhounds breathe fire (as often as the random roll lets them. It's like 4th ed, only nonstandardised.)
Can't completely dicing a troll stop it from regenerating (No. Even if it's put miles in the negative, it can still come back if you don't kill it with fire. Trolls are bastards to get rid of.)
Will remove curse make a magic item useful. (if it was cursed in the first place. If it was designed specifically to screw you over, it still will. Ha ha. )
How do you keep a sword with a different alignment? ( don't touch it with your skin or try and fight with it. I recommend selling it on as soon as possible. )
How far can you abuse geas and quest. (Moderately. Not as far as you think. )
Can you remove Quests and Geases with dispel or remove curse (no. You need the specific counterspell. They are specifically designed to be a right nuisance to deal with. )
How do you build a stronghold ( The costs and construction times are right there on page 23. Beyond that, you'll have to design the details yourself. Reading the evil overlord list before you do would be a good idea, even if you think you're a good guy. )
How much does it cost to build a wall (page 23, again. Pay attention, people.)
Why was the method of calculating will scores changed (because Frank Mentzer thought making the battle purely mental would be a better idea. Yes, this screws over fighters. Intelligent swords are a pain in the ass. Live with it. Or write to him to complain, not me. Oh, wait, he doesn't work here anymore. )
Is the sling range listing right (Yes. We claim Historical Accuracy. Do you doubt our claims? )
Why do galleys suck at riding out storms (because their sides hang low, and they waggle too and fro. You'll have to get a giant to put your ship over it's shoulder like a regimental soldier if you want to avoid sinking. )
Why are saving throws and thief abilities worse in Mentzer ed than Moldvay (Because Moldvay was a more of a twink. You remember Giants in the earth, don't you? Seriously though, it's so high level characters still have room to advance. 36th level is a long way, and we have to ration out your bonuses more carefully correspondingly.)
In '87, the internet was military only; college student access didn't start for another year or two. In '89, it was opened to general student use, but still was pretty damned slow.
Their BBS would have either been dial-in, or hosting WWIVnet, UUCPNet or FidoNet discussions. (FidoNet's naming system became Usenet's naming system.) None of the network subs were real time. (Think UseNet, only slower to propagate.)
A few other game companies also had BBSs at the time: SJG, TFG/ADB.
To give an idea of how poor the networking was, say I made a WWIVnet post on day X. I'd see replies from that board later that day. I'd see replies from other local boards either the next day (X+1) or the day after that (x+2). I'd see regional replies ususally on days X+2 to X+6, depending on hops and uplink sequencing. Replies from across the country could be days X+4 to X+10, again depending upon hops and uplink sequencing. Now, given that many posters only accessed weekly, add up to 14 days... you'd be getting responses up to a month later.
Dragon Issue 124: August 1987
part 2/3
Sailors on the sea of air: Airships! Another cool fantasy topic we haven't seen stuff on in Aaaaages. A cool idea, with plenty of fictional sources for you to draw on for inspiration, multiple methods by which they could be constructed, and plenty of ways in which they can be used to drive the plot. Ed agrees with me, and is quite willing to insert them into the forgotten realms. Indeed, he would later go on to create an entire nation of mages that make heavy use of skyships to travel around and trade with the rest of the world. But at the moment, it's the thayvians that have their hands on a mysterious bit of ancient magitech. He's a lot more specific than he used to be about realmslore, mentioning many familiar faces and places, and filling in a fairly substantial detail in the history of the Seven Sisters. (Mary sue metaplot off the starboard bow sir! Shall we open fire? ) He's also quite detailed about the construction and functioning of his sample ships, making sure that they aren't too powerful, but players would have a decent chance of creating and maintaining one, and could also salvage their components and turn the various effects on them to imaginative ends. So this is both a flavourful and very gamable contribution from the master, well suited to kick off this special with.
On a wing and a prayer: Of course, skyships are big, expensive, much coveted and frequently a bugger to maintain. You're unlikely to be able to justify giving a group possession of one (as opposed to riding on someone else's) until name level or so. But there are other methods. Such as Gliders. These can function even without any magical intervention, but a little levitation spell can hugely increase your flying range and maneuverability. They might be fragile and require quite a bit of training, but they're accessible to low level characters, and can be quite useful in some adventures, while giving the DM plenty of easy excuses that keep players from using them all the time. (Ahh, the joys of the weather) Definitely an idea worth considering, both for players and their adversaries (Goblins and Kobolds using makeshift gliders to drop stuff on attacking parties seems curiously appropriate, somehow. ) and the writer manages to strike a nice balance between the cool stuff and the realistic inconveniences. Once again, a highly enjoyable contribution.
Flying the Friendly(?) Skies: And unsurprisingly, we have our third common method of getting airborne. Flying mounts are another thing that requires substantial upkeep, and if they cause trouble to the game having them killed or stolen is entirely an option. But although this article assumes them as the default method of getting up there, this is really more concerned with the fun you have once you've made the grade, and are now soaring through the stratosphere. Wind, clouds, and other weather issues become very important considerations, as does maneuverability in combat. This obviously requires some tables, lists of penalties, and other such inconveniencing rules. While less interesting than the previous two, someone's got to do the dirty work, and at least it's kept pretty short and efficient, rather than bogging down in endless frequently recalculated modifiers. Roger's editorial hand ensures that the other articles are referenced, but not overlapped with, and the whole thing doesn't look like it'd be much more time consuming for a DM than designing a regular dungeon adventure. They seem to have made this topic work.
The wings of eagles: And we finish off our themed section with a new PC race. Aarakocra have been around for a few years now, and as flying creatures which don't have huge amounts of HD and special abilities, plus some special disadvantages, they're about as close to a balanced flying race as you're gonna get. With not particularly brilliant class abilities, they'll be quite effective at low level, then fall behind, as other characters get the ability to fly as well via spells, only without the claustrophobia and hollow bones. So it's a typical AD&D balance by campaign, rather than by encounter. If you want to make them work, you'll need to adapt the game around them to a certain extent. Much the same as they would later appear in the complete book of humanoids, this is another example of their current upsurge in new classes and races. As with UA and the forgotten realms, the magazine is probing the way, looking for good routes for future books to follow. Another interesting, if not completely satisfying article.
Kicks and sticks: Speaking of new classes, Oriental Adventures continues to get new goodies this month. The Escrimador, practitioner of a variant set of martial arts designed to function with primarily wooden weapons in a hot jungle environment analogous to the real world Philipines. Since OA focusses strongly on china and japan in the main books, this is a pretty cool add on, giving you a chance to introduce an interesting new NPC when they venture afield, and possibly then having one join the party. Cultural Homogeny does get tiresome. (Hegemony of homogeny? Now there's a tongue twister for you) Somewhere between a monk and a conventional fighter in terms of abilities, they get plenty of tricks to help them kick butt with, which they'll need, because their weapons and armour aren't the greatest. Not sure if they're balanced overall, they seem quite strong, but as we know, monks look good on paper but are actually problematic in both 1st and 3rd ed. Guess it's another one to test out, find out the fun way.
Front-end Alignments: Hee. Looks like we have an april fools article that got away, or was simply too good to be forced to wait until next year. People have often referred to games players as having various joke alignments. But this writer has taken it upon himself to codify most of the commonly recurring ones, and then submit this stuff to the magazine. And it got accepted too. How very droll. Lawful Bored, Lawful Liar, Lawful Serious, Lawful Goody-goody, Lawful Ignored, Lawful Idiot. Neutral Absent, Neutral Confused, Neutral Puppet, Neutral Self-centred, Neutral Montyhaul, Neutral Montyhaul, Neutral Dietosser, Neutral Wound-wailer. Chaotic Crybaby, Chaotic Stupid, Chaotic Diehard, Chaotic Hotshot, Chaotic Everywhere and Chaotic Suicidal. 19 personality stereotypes, mostly negative, arranged into a rough diagram of related types. (and how to deal with them.) This is amusing, useful, and has me seriously tempted to adapt it to use as a new outer-planar cosmology and/or pantheon. Muahaha and all that. Definitely a classic article, even if only a few of these alignments are really famous in modern day forum discussions. Still relevant though, as after all, it isn't tied to the old system.
Arcane Lore: Another mage gets their personal spellbook rifled through, and the unique spells that they spent years developing laid out for all to see. This month, it's the mage Odeen. Not quite an archmage, he still developed at least 5 new spells that your players can hunt down. Odeens magic cloud is a versatile little bag of tricks that can be used for offense, defense, utility or entertainment. Odeen's impenetrable lock is a more powerful magical warding for your doors and chests. Welcome to the arms race, because Knock just won't cut it against this baby. Odeen's magic tailor lets you customize your clothes quickly. Odeen's secret word is another advanced warding spell. Dispel this one rather than using the password, and it'll erase the stuff it was hiding. How evil. Odeen's sounding stick is yer basic dowsing rod spell, adapted for the special needs of adventurers. One of these'll massively increase your odds of clearing out the dungeon and getting all the treasure. So no blatant blasty spells, but lots of stuff that adventurers will find exceedingly handy nonetheless. While there is a bit of power creep here, making higher level variants of existing spells is a perfectly reasonable thing that would happen in a real world, so I don't have a problem with that this time.
Packing it all away: Encumbrance. If there's one feature that really says D&D is not intended to be a cinematic game, for all the superhuman tricks higher level characters can pull, it's this one. Once you start tracking it in terms of both raw weight, and the inconvenience certain items cause beyond that, due to awkward shape and size, you're well and truly into high crunch territory. And when you make all kinds of different backpacks, and start tracking exactly which item is in which compartment, that's where I start to zone out. Looks like it's a bit of mid-issue filler after all the cool articles to make up space and mollify the realism in gaming people. Not for me, thanks. I'll wait, keep my appetite for the next serving.
Quote from: aramis;343765In '87, the internet was military only; college student access didn't start for another year or two. In '89, it was opened to general student use, but still was pretty damned slow.
Their BBS would have either been dial-in, or hosting WWIVnet, UUCPNet or FidoNet discussions. (FidoNet's naming system became Usenet's naming system.) None of the network subs were real time. (Think UseNet, only slower to propagate.)
A few other game companies also had BBSs at the time: SJG, TFG/ADB.
To give an idea of how poor the networking was, say I made a WWIVnet post on day X. I'd see replies from that board later that day. I'd see replies from other local boards either the next day (X+1) or the day after that (x+2). I'd see regional replies ususally on days X+2 to X+6, depending on hops and uplink sequencing. Replies from across the country could be days X+4 to X+10, again depending upon hops and uplink sequencing. Now, given that many posters only accessed weekly, add up to 14 days... you'd be getting responses up to a month later.
So essentially, the only real advantage over letters was in terms of the number of people who got to read and respond to it eventually, rather than speed and cost. Also sounds like cacheing the pages and then turning the connection off to read would save quite a bit of money, since you were probably running on full per minute phone line charges.
Quote from: (un)reason;343865So essentially, the only real advantage over letters was in terms of the number of people who got to read and respond to it eventually, rather than speed and cost. Also sounds like cacheing the pages and then turning the connection off to read would save quite a bit of money, since you were probably running on full per minute phone line charges.
Depends. If the BBS was networked, it was simply slow to get to, but generally free, IF your local BBS could get the subs. But you the end user never dealt with their BBS, only the network sub.
If you dialed in directly, however, you paid long distance as normal.
If you worked for BP, ARCo, TexaCo, Shell, or similar large companies, you might be able to use a telnet on the local mainframe to connect to a dial-out local to the BBS, which you would then dial, and aside from lag, was like direct dial-in. BP set their connection to a specific time each day, world wide. Every BP office connected back on a schedule; if you telnetted to a remote site during local dial-up, it would keep the connection open as long as there had been traffic in the last minute. So you could establish a telnet link to a remote modem local to the target BBS, and dial the BBS that way. You needed an account on the local mainframe, however.
Hacking such mainframe connections was commonplace. Most modems were bidirectional; that is, they could initiate or receive connections.
Also, remember speeds were REALLY slow. 14.4 kilobits per second was considered pretty darned fast! (1.8 kilobytes per second)
Dragon Issue 124: August 1987
part 3/3
The ecology of the gelatenous cube: Ed returns to his familiar stomping ground, to tell another cautionary tale where the focus is on the human drama as much as the monster. Do not mock other wizards in the halls of academia, for they bear grudges a long time, and are willing to go to quite ridiculous lengths for a dramatically appropriate revenge. A pretty short one, this does still give us two very cool illustrations, a formal name for the titular cube, and the usual bunch of mechanical clarifications. Another perfect example of his writing, if a bit formulaic.
The game wizards: More second edition talk this month, as they respond to the quite ridiculous number of letters that are still coming in, including 80 page dissertations and death threats. They're taking this quite seriously, and now have a rough timetable of 2 6 month design phases, with another 6 months of brutal playtesting by the RPGA (sign up now if you want to take part :teeth ting: ) in between. And we'll be keeping you informed every step of the way. Man, that's a lot of time for us to anticipate the new edition. But then, they do seem to be going about this in a very open and careful way, listening to feedback at each step. The days when they would become arrogant and try to give the people what we want to give them, rather than what they ask for are still quite some way away. As further evidence of this, they've just adapted to some new technology that'll enable them to give us higher production values on our modules, at lower prices. How's that for cool? And on top of that, working conditions have improved. They are pretty optimistic at the moment. I guess that's what new management and pulling out from near bankruptcy (which of course, they've never mentioned) does for you. Or is it all a front, and Lorraine ( roll of thunder, stab of organ music) has cut prices by turning things into a virtual sweatshop. :p As ever, backstage gossip is very much welcome.
Blasters & Blunderbusses: Guns. A fairly familiar topic in this magazine, spanning multiple systems. This particular one is a system free look at the legality of guns in various places and eras. From past to future, and mentioning tons of game systems, this is an interesting, if rather americacentric little article. Owning weapons is something generally restricted in most societies, because governments don't want the population to be able to fight back. But governments aren't that good at keeping up with the advance of technology, so it'll generally be a few years after something is introduced before they get around to trying to regulate it. With a decent biblography (another thing they seem to be including more frequently these days. ) this is another one that goes on the worldbuilding checklist, as weapon regulations are definitely something you should consider when creating your own game. Poor PC's. All they want to do is strut around in heavy armour and kill things. Why should that be a crime? ;)
A shot in the arm: Our Star Frontiers article this month is an adaption of recent D&D ones. Hit location systems. Combined with critical hit systems (and the two do often go together like shoes and socks. ) possibly the single most tiresome recurring thing that people try to introduce, but rarely sticks. This is no exception, adding a load of extra modifiers, an extra roll to many attacks, and a load of nasty extra consequences for being hurt. How very tiresome for me. To their credit, they give info for crits on robots and the common alien races, but it's still of no interest to me, on multiple levels. Please don't waste space doing this for Marvel, Top Secret, Traveller, and the other regulars as well in the next few months.
The most secret: Welcome to Top Secret, dual stat style. Or at least, if there was any crunch in this article, it would be. :p Guess we'll have to wait a few months before the freelancers catch up with the new system. Anyway, this is all about real life top secret research projects. Just the thing to outfit your agents with, or have them try to steal from or sabotage the work of other countries. As this is 20 years ago, much of this is superseded by modern tech, particularly the computer stuff, where we have better in our laptops than an entire building sized machine could do then. But of course, the general principles remain sound. And once again, we have some rather good artwork depicting this stuff. That's definitely one area the magazine is still improving in. This can be applied to both the freewheeling james bond and the meticulous info gathering kind of game, and is a good reminder that is is both dramatically appropriate and realistic for secret agents to have bleeding edge technology to help them out. (unless they're currently going through a period of budget cuts and governmental incompetance ) A pretty decent article.
OGRE celebrates 10 years with a deluxe new edition. Shiny.
The marvel-phile: Here's one of their big guns, for the first time in a while. The incredible hulk, in his new gray form, and the misadventures he's been through recently to change his stats. Plus a load of his normal human associates. Oh, and Rick Jones, teen hulk (snigger) Welcome to the nightmare that is comic book continuity. Just when you think you're free to live a normal life, marry the girl, ( or get to rule the world if you're a villainous type) everything gets reset, or even worse, and a new plot sweeps you away, forcing you to completely relearn the rules of the game. Or maybe it's all skrulls. Still, at least they have some neat new vehicles and hulkbuster body armour for your characters to steal, so this is a more PC useful entry than most of Jeff's. Overall, another entry that makes entertaining reading, but isn't particularly world shaking.
The role of computers: Black Magic is an arcade adventure game where you use the various spells you acquire to solve puzzles, avoid enemies and progress to the next screen. While initially skeptical, the reviewers are won over by the mix of action and thought required to do well, and became determined to beat the damn thing. Sounds like a recommendation to me.
Realms of Darkness is our main review, some more standard menu controlled RPG fare. Build a party from the usual fare of 8 classes fighty and arcane, equip them, and then embark upon an epic quest to retrieve the macguffin. Unusually, you can split the party. Not so unusually, you must make sure you save as often as possible. While the graphics aren't that great, it's puzzles are very tricky, and it's an epic journey that they still have a long way to go on. Another massive time sink in an era that seems full of them.
They also implement another much desired feature. Hints and solutions. Woo. Once again the magazine moves closer to being the way I remember it. Someone stuck on The bard's tale gets advice on how to get out of a horrible looping room quandary. Looks like they're on the up and expanding their scope some more. Along with the return of roleplaying reviews, this looks like another good trend.
The art of dragonlance? They really are pushing the peripheral aspects of this setting, aren't they. I suppose with so many people buying the books to read, rather than simply as gaming material, they think there's a market for it.
Dragonmirth has things going wrong again. And terrible in(n)-jokes. The Snarfquest crew fills up the 8 month space journey by becoming a rock and roll band. Wormy loses some money, but the people who stole it aren't going to get the chance to enjoy it. :evil laugh:
The Sherlock Holmes solo mysteries? Another interesting advert by I.C.E on the back cover. Ahh, the joys of using public domain properties for your own ends.
A strong issue with quite a few positive changes, plus a well above average themed section. Roger really seems to be coming into his own at the moment, taking the magazine away from Kim's era, both introducing new things, bringing back old ones, and developing a distinct editorial voice of his own, which is definitely more playful and interventionist than Kim's. Just how much more will he shake things up before it settles into a new comfortable pattern? And just how much will he be shaken up in turn by the continuing growing pains of the upcoming edition change? More interesting questions that should be answered in a few months time.
Dragon Issue 125: September 1987
part 1/3
108 pages You dismiss Dark Dungeons? Fool! Do you not realize the power of Jack Chick! You wallow in sin every day, to the point where you no longer even notice how you desecrate the minds of innocents with your every word!!! Your soul is destined for the pit, and I only pray that you will not drag too many people in as you go!!!! Um, yeah. Roger delivers an entertaining editorial, that in hindsight dismisses a potential problem too quickly. He may come to regret that. In the meantime, this issue's special feature is Chivalry. For those of you who'd prefer characters with a little more class than the flaming oil throwing, backstabbing, sleep (both the spell, and the frequent rests) happy reprobates that manage to delve dungeons and survive. ;) Another topic that they've tackled before a few times, but never done a full-on special on. (and hopefully will leave alone for a few years after this) Lets see if they can take this to the next level like they should.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter in praise of Wormy. By amazing co-incidence, it's also his hundredth strip this issue. Pop the champagne, and prepare a special feature to celebrate our longest running comic.
A letter complaining that religion should not be proscribed in D&D. Yes, but putting real world ones in fantasy worlds without any explanation or adaption does look a bit dumb. This is a topic that's gonna provoke flames whatever you do.
A letter asking for a copy of the Fineous Treasury. Unfortunately, it's been 6 years, JD is no longer in touch with them, and it's all out of print. You'll have to search second hand places untill ebay comes out.
Forum: SD Anderson presents another simple way of making mass saving throws. Just use the averages. The simple solutions are often the most effective, especially if you just want to get on with the story.
Andy Wright plays the role of sage, to gives us some more conflicting stories about the mating habits of harpies. It's all very amusing, and a quite different use of the forum to the usual.
Edward R Friedlander calls bullshit on the creation of blisters via purely psychosomatic means. As an assistant professor of pathology, he can say with reasonable confidence that this is an urban myth. While illusions may be able to accomplish more in a fantasy game, you shouldn't confuse fantasy with the real facts.
Richard Pike-Brown is in favour of manipulation of money, and creating various currencies for your games. And screwing over players in the exchange rate doesn't hurt either. Muahahaha.
Loring A Windblad points out that most real world "barbarians" are small, tough, and canny, rather than giant thewed, oiled weightlifters. That is not optimal for hunting game and living off the land, because those overinflated muscles require a lot of extra food and sleep to maintain. A very valid point, but most players would rather stick with the Arnie as Conan stereotype.
Tom James thinks that D&D and AD&D are closer than a lot of people say. Both are flexible, and both can get pretty complex when you include a load of the optional add-ons. Compared to most other games, you are probably right.
Chuck Ambum is rather conflicted about the new Top Secret edition. In some ways, he preferred it when you had to meticulously plan out a mission, and there was tons of crunch and a small margin of error. And introducing alignment to a modern day game is just dumb. There may be some improvements, but it's still problematic.
Dennis McLaughlin is also uncomfortable about certain trends in Top Secret, namely the new addition of heavier weaponry and lunar stuff. I thought this was an espionage game, not a military one. Looks like their pursuit of bigger, louder, faster, shinier is indeed starting to alienate a chunk of the existing fanbase. Question is, will it also draw in new people to replace them, or will this send the game into decline? Since it was pretty much gone by the time I started, I have to say I'm not optimistic.
The ecology of the greenhag: Nigel Findley gives us an ingenious little horror story. He does seem to specialize in those, doesn't he. Do not tell them in a wilderness where said creature is likely to be lurking, for dramatic irony is very much against you, and you'll be lucky if two of the group (one boy, one girl, of course) get out alive. Once again he also takes the opportunity to tie in several related monsters, making this one of the more genuinely ecological ecologies. He does make what some would consider a misstep by separating their lifecycle so significantly from humans, removing opportunities for foster child horror. But on it's own terms it's a success, both storywise and mechanically. Keep sending 'em in, and they'll keep publishing them.
Beyond the supernatural available this fall. Modern horror gaming takes another step towards the environment that would produce the world of darkness. Isn't that neat.
Woodlands of the realms: Ed Greenwood proves once again that he can make incredible attention to detail in seemingly unimportant matters interesting, with a whole bunch of new types of tree for his campaign setting. Many of them are tied into specific cultures, and used to make specific things referenced in earlier issues. Most of them could really exist, yet they have distinctive features that make them useful in game in a way that you couldn't do simply using stuff from reality. One of those reminders that even though it may be becoming an official world, he already has entire filing cabinets full of this stuff, much of it we'll probably never see, and he makes up new details like this purely for his own entertainment. Which is what makes it such a joy to read. It does still feel a bit odd putting other general articles before the themed section of the issue starts though. I wonder why Roger decided to make that little change? I guess he's entitled to mix things up a bit, keep us wondering.
The code of chivalry: Knightly orders. In BD&D, they already have rules for doing the whole feudal allegiance thing, complete with fairly decent mechanical benefits. Meanwhile in OA, they have rules for personal honor affected by your deeds, and the benefits and restrictions it results in. So lets play catch-up, bring these elements together for regular AD&D, and give a specific example of a knightly order. This pretty much becomes a direct ancestor of the affiliation rules from 3.5, which is very interesting to note. This is something that can both be used immediately, and taken as an example to build your own variants for other groups and classes. An idea I definitely intend to take up. So both a strong start to a themed section, and a historically significant article in terms of inspiring future design developments. Very pleasing to see.
Meanwhile, back at the fief: No surprises that in an issue about knights, we're going to see some more stuff on domain management. A topic that's always welcome in my house, as long as it doesn't start trying to get to realistic, or overdetailed, doing the metaphorical equivalent of showing you tons of holiday snaps, and expecting you to remember all the stories associated with them. I think 5 pages is a reasonable number, don't you. So we have some fairly quick rules on fief morale, resources, the money you can get from them, and natural disasters that may come along to ruin your year. Once again done in a similar format to the year stuff in oriental adventures, this should allow you to fast-forward through a decade or two in a session. Competent and useful, but not hugely interesting. It is hard to make economics fun, and this writer is no Ed Greenwood.
Dragon Issue 125: September 1987
part 2/3
Prince Valiant! Coming soon! Greg Stafford attempts to take the themes he covered so well in pendragon, and then strip them down to a much more mechanically simple form. Very fitting to see an ad for that in this issue.
Armies from the ground up: Hello again, Mr economics. Back again to remind us just how much hard work maintaining an army is in reality, with food, money, transport, avoiding unrest in the ranks, and all that kraftwerk? (well, lets face it, the way you can predict this stuff is pretty much the opposite of jazz :p ) What would we do without you? This writer is very keen to encourage players to cut taxes, and generally be nice to their peasants. pointing out that the long term benefits from doing so are greater than those the fist of harsh government and high taxation will provide, especially in a world where if people don't like your policy, they can pack up and move. (such a shame this isn't sim city, and you can't whack taxes up just before they're collected each year, then cut them to nothing the rest of the time and enjoy the benefits of both worlds. ;) ) It does not spell out the benefits for creating an army of zombies, and using them to do all the mindless labour, freeing the peasants up to develop a much more substantial intellectual class, but that's not too surprising. This is pretty dull in general, actually. My mind, it is not expanded, although my play might be expedited if I follow the rules. Guess I'll just have to try them and find out.
Lords & Legends: Katharine Kerr contributes for the first time in a couple of years. Well, realistic medieval stuff is her speciality. They were probably begging her to return just one more time for this issue. She picks an interesting selection of partially real, partially legendary historical figures: Count William of Orange, his nephew Bertrand, and his brother-in-law Count Rainouart of Tortelose. I am immediately reminded that one of the controversies that led to her departure was a tendency towards moralizing in her writing, and once again, she makes some changes for reasons of political correctness. (Hopefully that'll mean the forum isn't swamped with angry muslim complaints for the next year. :p ) Not a hugely enjoyable article, but still interesting nonetheless. Funny to think that this PC stuff is still going to get worse, as we reach the next edition, see the cutting out of demons and devils, and all that /shit/ bowdlerisation. That's definitely going to be fun to snark about.
Glory, danger and wounds: A slightly misleading title, this is actually all about honor, and the tendency of knights to do ridiculously foolhardy things in it's pursuit. A true knight should be last to retreat, even if it costs them their lives, eschew worldly rewards for the simple joy of doing good, tolerate all kinds of crap from their liege, but fight to the death to avenge an insult from any other, and all sorts of other extreme statements. You certainly don't have to subscribe to all of them, even if you're a paladin, but choosing some of them for your character definitely gives you plot hooks to drive adventures with. So this is more well themed roleplaying advice to remind you of the many ways you can make your character's personality 3 dimensional. An example of them finding a new spin to put on a familiar topic. After all, they've got to have roleplaying advice, or this'd just be an optimization exercise followed by a hackfest. A perfectly decent way to finish off the themed section.
The best for the best: Top secret's slush pile of articles still aren't fully caught up with the new edition, in this little piece about your agents joining /prestige classes/ Elite agencies. It does have to be said that there's a certain attraction to joining clubs so secretive no-one's heard of them. You get to mix with the most skilled agents, enjoy the coolest bleeding edge tech, and get missions personally from people right at the top of the governmental food chain. But there are drawbacks as well. You're basically on your own, only get to join after having already proved your worth in a regular agency, and may even have to fake your own death and abandon all pretenses of a normal life. But then, many PC's don't bother with that between mission stuff anyway. This was really written to address two problems suffered in the author's own games, that of the PC's not feeling special enough, and at the same time, not feeling challenged enough by the enemies they were facing. Something you could probably fix without an agency change, but sometimes it's the placebo effects of a cosmetic alteration that are important. It still has plenty of advice on how to make an exiting high stakes game full of plot twists, recurring enemies, ( and inadvertent inter-player tensions, as it encourages you to recruit the characters to the new agency one by one, not letting the others know. ) So an interesting, but flawed article, with worthy goals, but not a very insightful method of implementing them.
Year of the Phoenix. The roleplaying game of amerika in 2197. Okay then. If you say so.
Clay-O-Rama: Silliness throughout the year continues this month, with an entertaining little mini's game as this issues centrepiece. Each player takes a lump of clay, and builds a creature out of it. Assign powers based on it's size, shape, no of appendages, etc. And then they fight, as is only right and proper. There is a huge amount of GM fiat inherent in these rules, and really, it's little more than an excuse to build silly creatures, tear them up, and throw pellets of clay at each other. Not that there's anything wrong with that. but introducing someone who tries to take the game seriously would spoil the fun for all concerned very quickly, unless they simply stopped playing, and ganged up to pelt the offending pedant with clay pellets from all directions. Which means it's probably not an option for me to try out. Still, even if it doesn't match up to the classic Tom Wham creations of yore, it's good to see the magazine start doing stuff like this again as well. Since issue 112, they haven't really been trying on this front at all. Hopefully next time it'll be a little more internally cohesive.
Fiction: The passing of kings by Lois Tilton: This month's fiction is also in theme, just about. It certainly fits well with the cover, anyway. They say that Arthur rests in Avalon, waiting to fight the enemies of britain, become true king again. But really, given the number of waves of invaders, and the amount things have changed since then, what are the odds that he wouldn't really want to come back anyway. Another one that raises a bunch of interesting philosophical questions about choosing your place in the world, the problems with immortality, the futility of holding grudges down generations, compromises, selling out, and all that stuff that is slightly more common in sci-fi. Not perfect, but a decent story, well chosen for the issue.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Masses of magic maps this month, 19 to be precise. For the first time since Gary's departure, we're also heading back to Greyhawk. Whether he will approve of other people making unsupervised additions to his world is rather doubtful, but at least the writer is trying to tie them into the established setting. Some of them are useful, some of them seem useful, but are actually directing you into trouble, and some are composites of several of the other types, and thus exceedingly valuable. So a mix of cool ideas, and filler, as they try and stretch out the ideas they have to make a full-sized article. Which isn't entirely satisfying, but a lot better than articles that are nothing but filler. Still, there's enough quirkiness in here that I'd probably enjoy introducing them to my game.
Dragon Issue 125: September 1987
part 3/3
Plane speaking: Jeff Grubb fills us in on the positive quasielementals, with the negative ones to come soon. Radiance, steam, and mineral, (lightning has already been covered independently in MMII, apropos of nothing.) each with their own interesting little quirks. Radiance quasi-elementals shoot bolts of randomly coloured light, each with an equally corresponding energy type. Steam quasi elementals can go hot or cold at great speed, and get nearly anywhere, with flight, swimming, and the ability to flow through the tiniest cracks. Radiance quasi-elementals assume odd forms, and merge with one-another to become increasingly badass in times of peril. All of them have very high damage outputs for their overall power level. Any wizard who can figure out how to summon and control them can lay waste to their enemies. Soon, this bit of symmetry will be complete. Short, but useful and flavourful.
The game wizards: Mike Breault takes charge of this column to talk about Dragonlance. The epic quest over 14 modules is over, and now it's time to give the gameline an actual corebook, containing all the setting info and new rules needed to play in Krynn. Like the forgotten realms, this is rather a backwards way of doing things to the usual, but it seems to be working for them. Before you know it, people'll be wondering how they ever managed without a corebook. So yeah, chivalry, gods, geography, history, lots of new races and variant classes. And wackiness. Mustn't forget the wackiness. :sigh: No escaping it as long as you're playing in this world. Interesting to note that they're using this to test the concept of gods granting different powers via spheres of influence, and redefine what each alignment actually means. 2nd edition might be well over a year away, but they already have many of the design elements floating around the office. Another entry that's not completely pleasing, but is quite informative, giving me another piece of the big picture when it comes to their current status and design philosophies. They do seem to be doing their best to keep these interesting, and get us on their supplement treadmill. Better it being here than not.
The daily planet gaming supplement reveals how superman has changed after crisis on infinite earths. Buy the DC heroes Superman supplement for more information. Very fitting that they design this particular advert as a newspaper cover.
A second look at zebulons guide: Errata, Errata. Once again you shatter my faith in your editahs. As you may gather, this is lots of corrections and clarifications for our eponymous Star Frontiers supplement. One of those things you'd rather they didn't have to do at all, but having made the mistakes, it's better that they admit to them and fix them than just leave them unacknowledged, only to be discovered when they mess up people's games. Bleh blah bleh.
Ultimate crisis in ultimate city-state of the invincible overlord. With a recommendation from Gary Gygax. Good to see judges guild's properties are still around.
Role-playing reviews: The grey knight is a Pendragon adventure, by our stalwart, if not regular contributor Larry DiTillio. It gets top marks, making good use of arthurian myth, and the strong cast of characters and beasties to create a strong adventure, with an interesting format (shades of nobilis in that respect) Apart from the lack of stats, forcing you to flip back to the main book, it gets top marks.
Treasure hunt is a 0 level D&D adventure. Intended to introduce new characters, and have them gradually develop class abilities based on their actions during the adventure, it takes a fairly fast and loose approach with the rules, and has good visual production values, which should also help lure in the n00bs, both players and DM's.
Phantom of the northern marches is a MERP adventure. While not brilliant, it is, in this reviewers opinion, an improvement on previous ones. Even if the production values aren't perfect, at least they're trying to make adventures that fit with middle earth. Always a problem for licensed stuff.
The role of books: The misplaced Legion and An emperor for the legion by Harry Turtledove are set in the empire of Videssos, the same world that his story in issue 113 was in. It manages to create aworld both like and unlike reality, buck several fantasy conventions, and generally be a good deal of fun to read. Another series I find myself tempted to pick up.
The phoenix bells by Kathryn Grant gets a moderately negative review, with it's design, marketing, historical accuracy, and coherence of plotting getting picked apart. Whether some of this was intentional is not certain, but it does leave a lot of questions hanging.
Worldstone by Victoria Strauss also gets a negative review, with it's psionics vs technology theme not quite working, and the central macguffin and it's powers being inconsistently defined. Curious.
Seventh son by Orson Scott Card is a tale of an alternate history in which the american war of independence turned out very differently. Worryingly, it uses it's magic and story to tell an allegorical tale of his view of Americas development. Beware the bias. Still, the reviewer can't predict the future, so he can appreciate it for the well crafted story contained therein.
Once upon a murder by Robert Randial and Kevin Randle is of course one of TSR's own windwalker books. It gets a mildly positive review, with an interesting twist on the prince and the pauper theme, and some cool plot twists and wisecracks. Seems entertaining popcorn reading.
Knight life by Peter David is the rather comic tale of King Arthur and co turning up in new york, and then launching a political career. The other characters react logically in response to this, which really doesn't work faced with a mythical king. Cleverly written and with good plot twists, it makes good use of old material for new ends.
Circuit breaker by Melinda M Snodgrass is an interesting mix of sci-fi and legal drama, as a lawsuit is launched to stop people from terraforming mars just as it's about to go ahead. With intrigue, plot twists, surprisingly explicit sex scenes, and other fun, it's a good guilty pleasure for a reviewer in a family friendly magazine.
The marvel-phile: Jeff continues to update the Hulk's rogues gallery, with stats for the new Abomination, Zzzax, and Doc Samson. One came off from the gamma exposure even worse than the hulk, another considerably better, and the last one simply wouldn't exist without radiation weirdness. All of them are subject to power and status changes at the whims of the plot, not having the same degree of reset button as the main character. Very much business as usual in this department, so I can't think of anything else to say here.
The Snarfquest crew run up against robot predjudice. Dragonmirth splits the arrow and shifts the biological clock. Wormy is almost ready to start wargaming.
With quite a few big returning names, this issue tries hard, but doesn't quite make the grade, mainly due to a lack of focus. The themed section is pretty weak overall, with many of it's articles only peripherally connected to it, and there's a well above average amount of filler in general. Guess Roger's run continues to be an unpredictable ride, full of sudden ups and downs. Will next issue have the traditional horror theme? Will he have the material to make it horrific in the good way, rather than the bad way? At the moment, I really can't tell. Still, I guess that makes it more interesting for you guys than everything getting good or bad marks. Will I like YOUR favorite issue? :points finger: Keep reading to find out. We'll get there, sooner or later.
Dragon Issue 126: October 1987
part 1/3
108 pages Well well. It looks like they're actually going to have a proper halloween issue this year. They've ignored it more often than not over recent years. But Roger has shown himself rather keener to do themed issues on a regular basis than Kim was. And hopefully he can figure out how to put a fresh spin on this stuff. Once again, I venture into the dark, to examine strange things, turn ancient pages, and illuminate their mysteries.
In this issue:
Star cruiser and ships of the french arm for Traveller 2300. More supplements pile up.
Letters: A letter asking about PbM games, and Dragon's coverage of them. Another thing they used to do more frequently, and has since been phased out. Roger directs the writer towards magazines devoted to the topic. They can handle it in far greater depth than we can.
A letter asking for them do do a column for more general gaming news. They shouldn't just talk about what they're up too all the time. Roger replies that if lots more people ask for it, they'll consider it. Don't get your hopes up too much.
A letter asking them if they plan to cover minis again any time. Roger once again turns things to the whims of the general public. We are but your humble entertainers, dancing as you command. Since they had one when I first started, I'm guessing that this is one request that does pan out pretty soon.
A letter asking when any more zebulon's guides will be out. Never, Roger is afraid to report. Star frontiers is no longer sufficiently profitable to give proper support too.
A request from someone wondering how much his copies of old issues would be worth. There is a book devoted to just such questions. Buy it now!
A letter asking what color various monsters are. Buy the next edition. Most of the illustrations will be in color! Sell sell sell!
And finally, someone wondering how they pick which letters to publish and reply too. Lots of tedious manual work. They don't have some secret supercomputer to pick things out for them. And if they did, they wouldn't tell us about it.
Forum: Robert Kelk is in favour of the idea of a BBs service, but also wary of the cost it would involve. Still, if SJG can do it, the industry leader really ought too as well.
Michael Sawczyn is very much in favor of setting up a system that would enable us to download old articles onto our computer, and gives some solid estimates for the cost of setting it up, and the profit they could hope to get from it. It's less than you'd think, and would be a win for everyone. At least until the pirated copies started getting shared around and outnumbered the legal downloads. Oh, if only they had been that forward thinking. A very good contribution indeed.
Bob Frager engages in some nitpicking about the nature of Akido and other martial arts. Yes, in the real world, martial arts are considerably less separated and rigid than they are as game mechanics. You can't expect them to be as complex as reality.
Len Carpenter comments on the comments to his recent articles with an exceedingly long letter that is virtually an article in itself. Clarifications, additions, and some more of his personal houserules. He's certainly not short of ideas.
Chuck Amburn is in favour of making a D&D video. It might be a bit of a logistical hassle, but it could also bring in plenty of new people. Ahh, how technology has moved on. Now, any computer with a webcam can create something passable in this respect. And it hasn't really helped. So it goes, in a world with a million distractions.
J R Porter talks about Banded mail. Even if it doesn't exist, it ought to be possible to make. Why not try it, SCA people, see how it works?
Jay Kaufman also talks about banded mail, it's history in the game, and real life. The main reason it appears in illustrations is due to lazy artists who couldn't be bothered to draw all the links in chain or ring mail properly. Throw it out. It never existed.
Anthony Speca delivers a third bit of pontification about the possibility and historical accuracy of Banded mail. Yawn.
Toby Myers reminds us that one reason humanoids can be such a problem is their willingness to try stupid things. After all, they breed fast enough that a few losses can be easily replaced, and if enough try a dumb trick on the players, it might well work by luck. They're probably the better idiot that scientists are looking for to test their devices. Sounds like he'd like Warhammer Orkyboyz.
James Allen reminds us to make carrying lots of stuff an inconvenience, just as it is in real life. Even portable holes should have their limitations. If you have too much stuff, you'll never use most of it anyway.
S Eric Pollard has a rather odd complaint. Evil characters have more options than good ones, because they don't have to worry about principles. This makes them more powerful. Hmm. That's what paladins and rangers are here to fix. Remember, that being a good guy has it's social rewards as well. It's not as simple as it first seems.
Charlie Gibbons complains about awarding full XP when PC's use devious means to take out large quantities of enemies with little danger to themselves. This isn't right. Why should they learn more just because they managed to catch twice as many in their AoE attack? Oh woe. Depends how you rationalize XP in your game universe. Unless you define it as actually absorbing the life force of your fallen foes, to boost your power, there's always going to be some fudge involved in the learning process.
Ed Friedlander shows up again, contributing some more to the neverending alignment debate. By providing some fairly broad and simple definitions of what counts as an alignment violation, and making them clear, you can reduce player complaint. Some of his other suggestions are a bit wonky, but I guess a wonky problem needs a wonky solution.
Role-playing Reviews: Griffin island is an updated, revised, expanded version of 1981's Griffin mountain. (see issue 58 for review) A snazzy boxed set, it boasts all kinds of cool little extras like player handouts and maps. While the reviewer isn't very keen on the overall direction the Runequest line has taken in recent years, as one of the holdouts of the original Glorantha setting, and as a work in it's own right, this is pretty cool. An interesting review where we get to see a glimpse of the changes in the hobby outside TSR. Other lines are being taken in fanbase dividing directions as well.
Undead is a Mayfair Games Role Aid for AD&D. So there are still people trying their luck at producing 3rd party stuff, despite the legal hassle involved. Anyway, it details a little kingdom of undead set in a volcanic caldera, ruled by a cabal of liches. Definitely a fun setup for a group of adventurers to come in and solve. It has pretty nice visual design as well. While a bit railroady, it does look like it can provide a fun adventure if you're willing to rip it up a bit.
We also get a load of little reviews. Particularly notable is the review of Who watches the watchmen, DC heroes tie in module. Unfortunately, it's not very good, being tied too closely to the canon plot by licensing crap. Ho hum. So it goes. Tie in's are a dicey business. Often best to not get involved.
Sage advice's questions this month are mostly on out-of game issues, rather than the rules.
Where do I find cardboard figures for my game. (Dragon tiles. Available at all good hobby stores or by mail order :teeth ting:)
I think my player is cheating. What do I do. (pay close attention to how he rolls his dice, and don't let him weasel you. If you catch him out, ensure he is properly punished. )
One of my players wants to have a baby. ( I assume you mean they want their characters to have a baby. We recommend you handle it tastefully offstage. D&D is a family brand, and that means no dwelling on the process used to create a family. ;) )
Is it ok for my paladin to marry a chaotic evil witch (probably not. The magic user bit won't be a problem, but the the other two probably will be, given many paladins are required to be celibate, and none of them can support or shield evil acts. )
What does TSR stand for (it stands for itself. It used to stand for Tactical Studies Rules, but then we went recursive. Blame Donald Kaye dying.)
Will TSR publish my module (not unless we commissioned it in the first place. We have so much stuff going on that we can't be arsed looking at unsolicited material. )
How do I stop my players from arguing. (Make rulings and stick to it. If that fails, kick 'em out. You must ensure your authoritah is respected. Arguing is a sign of disrespect. So strap on your sargeant major boots and get ready to shout. )
How do you fight a black dragon when they're made of acid (Er, no they aren't. You aren't made of air, and you breathe that. )
How long will it take you to reach 9th level. If our playtesting is a good indicator, about a year of weekly playing. )
How do I find modules M1 and 2 (Mail order! It's like the internet, only with way worse response times! )
How do you pronounce the word myrmidon (Chuffly Fanstsandleigh)
When will the next Star Frontiers supplement be out ( Never. Not enough people bought the last ones, so the line is Can-celled. So hnah. Shoulda got more friends to buy the previous ones.)
Will we ever get more details on the Old Ones (maybe. Buy more I series modules if you want us to do that. )
What happened to the D&D cartoon (It got cancelled. Don't look at us. We were never responsible for that pile of crap anyway.)
What happens if my players split the party and then metagame with info their players don't have. (Split them up IRL They can't cheat with info they don't know. )
What does D% mean (roll 2 d10's. One is the 1's and the other is the 10's)
I can't find a new campaign and my characters don't match the level of the solo adventures (Look harder. Or convert random people off the street like an evangelical preacher. You can even compete with them to damn peoples souls. Could be fun.)
How do I find a store that sells D&D stuff. (Look under hobby stores)
What is a sphere of death. (No such thing. A sphere of annihilation is a mini black hole that sucks everything it touches in. THE sphere of death is a metaphysical concept. That's yer lot.)
What does NSA mean (It means you're about to spend 24 hours without rest, making increasingly dubious moral decisions. No 15 minute workday here.)
Where can I find hexsheets (Mail order again. We get more money if you order direct. Hee.)
What's a murder hole ( Courtney Love. )
My players want to roll their own dice (This is entirely within their rights.)
How do I handle a 12 player team (military organisation. This is where having a caller really comes in handy. )
Can the DM play in their own game (not a good idea. Even if they aren't actually favouring their character, things have the potential to go very wrong)
Why aren't there Star Frontiers conversion rules in the DMG.( Because it was made afterwards. We are not fortune tellers)
How much can you improve your attributes by exercising (Zero. What you roll is what you're stuck with. Unless you're a cavalier. Are you ready to go that far?)
How thick is a 50' rope. (9/16th of an inch)
What do I do when a PC is tortured ( We recommend you don't. Once again, family friendly game and all that. )
How old is D&D (It started officially in 1974, but the proto rules were being played as early as 1970. Know your antecedents.)
What are the stats for Durandal and Excalibur ( Here you go. Enjoy the twinkedness)
How do I make a will ( Good question. Remember. The benificiaries only get what you can bring home. If it's a TPK, they're screwed)
Which part of the hex do you measure distance from (middle of one to the middle of the next. Most reliable way)
Dragon Issue 126: October 1987
part 2/3
Hearts of darkness: Ahh, vampires. The first thing most people think of when you say undead (and the other third or so will say zombies) They've turned up fairly frequently in D&D, and will continue to do so. Here Tom Moldvay gives us some real world mythological stuff on vampires of various eras and areas, before turning his attention to the most famous vampire of all. Dracula. We then get (typically twinked out) stats for him, plus a few more vampire variants, Vyrokolakas, Baobhan Sith, and Ch'ing Shih. As with the Witch article last year, there is a bit of repetition, but it's been so long, the magazine has changed readerbase enough in the interim, and the production values have improved enough that this doesn't feel too egregious. You can both use the stuff from the article as is, and develop the ideas referenced further to create your own cool variants on the lifesucking monster theme. Solid, but not too innovative, it'll keep the punters coming in.
Dead on target: So some people aren't finding undead scary enough. How can we make them more so? How about by making their weapons even less effective if they aren't the right type. Skeletons and zombies already have the bashing vs slashing thing. Lets encourage people to need a whole golfbag of weapons of different shapes and materials if they don't want to be ineffective and have a very hard fight on their hands. The kind of thing if you want your game on the gritty end of the scale, and want to encourage players being cautious, paranoid, and carrying ridiculously huge backpacks. Since I'm not currently in a gritty mood, I'm not that enthralled by this. Use with caution, for if applied wrong, it will result in frustrated, bored players.
A touch of evil: Vince Garcia continues to rise as a writer this month, with a whole load of adventure seeds based around the various types of undead. Every AD&D monster gets a look at their origins, and a way to use them, many quite clever. Since many undead look quite similar (and that's not even getting into the whole pseudo-undead rigamarole), you are quite justified in playing with people's expectations. Tactical advice for death knights. Trickery from crypt things. Attacks from behind by mummies. Attacks that only paralyze particular body parts. And all manner of other things that I won't spoil you on, because I plan to use them myself. A tremendously fun article to read, that looks like it'll produce pretty fun results, easily integrated into actual play as well. Easily our strongest article in this section, putting not just one, but lots of new spins on our familiar faces.
The game wizards: Steve Winter takes over from Zeb to give his perspective on the work on second edition. As he's the editor, and the editing is the aspect that they most want to improve over the first edition books, he has a pretty important job. Fortunately, technology has advanced quite a bit since 1979, so they can write it all up on computer, and shift paragraphs around with a simple copy/paste action. However, despite wanting to make an efficient, nicely organized reference work, they are not unaware of the fact that if you make something too slick and glossy, it actually becomes less appealing to many people, and they'll actually sell less. Which puts them in a pretty pickle. Still, it shows a pretty high level of insight for people in their position, and shows that they haven't been taken over by marketing executives making changes just for the hell of it, as happens far too often in the film industry. Very interesting in terms of revealing the though processes of the people behind the update. Hopefully the responses they get in future issues will be just as interesting.
The ecology of the shade: So life sucks, and you feel the inevitable pull of death and decay on all you see, including yourself. You want to escape it, but undeath does not appeal to you, as you will still decay physically, or be forced to slake foul thirsts upon the living, and lose much of your free will. There is another way. A middle path, if you will. Combining light and darkness to produce shadow, and then infuse that shadow into yourself. You will become an immortal shadowy being, able to step into shadows and disappear, venture to and from the plane of shadow virtually at will. And you still keep all your class abilities. The price is that bright light will pain you, and you will become prone to brooding in the shadows, suspicious and misanthropic. Not really a sacrifice for many adventurers, is it? Go, go, mysterious badass brooding loner prana. On the other hand, while they've picked a cool monster, and it has some nicely evocative, understated fiction, this article decides to nerf them by instituting a charisma drain, and prevent them from advancing in levels afterwards, which of course makes them much less appealing for PC's. If I get to use them, I don't think I'll be using those options, thank you very much. I like my transhumanism, and the prospect of my PC's engaging in transformations like this is something I'd like to encourage, not make pointless. So an interesting article, but not one I entirely agree with.
Fiction: Well bottled at slab's by John Gregory Betancourt: Well well. It's the second appearance of our put-upon barkeep in the magazine. (see issue 105 for the first) Uleander may find slab a pain in the ass a lot of the time, but when faced with the prospect of losing him to a vengeful wizard, determined to put him in a bottle, he decides the devil you know is better for business. Another fun S&Sish romp, with mischevious and alien ghosts, an earnest but not too bright wizard's apprentice, dim henchmen, and a nice sense of humour. Definitely a good fit for our halloween issue without being too dark and horrific.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: My, oriental adventires is getting quite a bit of attention in here. Most products, they give it one issue of special focus, and then leave it to sink or swim. People not only like this, but are unusually willing to write in with new stuff for the milieu as well. This is a grab bag of a dozen items, covering most of the big categories. Many of them aren't really that OA specific, but I suppose that just makes them easier to use in your games. While there's no Greenwoodesque strokes of genius here, these items do have some useful tricks, and aren't all combat focussed. Another solid but unexeptional entry I'd have no objection to using stuff from.
A ghastly grimoire: An article for call of cthulhu. Well, this is slightly surprising. Very fitting to the issue's theme as well. Hopefully this marks the beginning of them allowing more articles on third party games in again. This is a collection of 8 spells, some of which are obviously stolen from D&D, but all of them have a delightfully flavourful horrific twist, as befits the game. Feigning death has you caught in a nightmarish dream state for the duration, blur involves some eye hurting geometry, and stinking cloud gets a suitably graphic makeover. We also get the clever idea of allowing investigators to face an ediolon of an elder creature, rather than the full thing. With Avatars and Aspects of gods becoming common in later editions of D&D, I'm not sure where the idea came from originally, but it's interesting to see it show up here. So this isn't just a token non TSR article, it's actually pretty decent. Let that be an encouragement to other writers. They can't publish it unless you try.
Dragon Issue 126: October 1987
part 3/3
The dragon's bestiary gives us a load of gamma world monsters. Now that's mixing it up. Once again, they are not up to date, as these are 2nd ed stats, despite 3rd ed being well out by now. Doesn't seem very promising.
Buzzbirds are intelligent mutant hummingbirds. They have sonic blasts and bursts of light to defend themselves, which seems sensible enough given the environment. Try and befriend trhem, as one would make an excellent scout for a party.
Dagmits are another of your basic goblin-esque tribal marauding humanoids. These one's gimmick is that they have permanent density increase on them, making them a lot heavier and tougher than their size would indicate. This can probably be exploited.
Giggle bugs look so utterly ridiculous that it's nearly impossible to look at one without laughing. This is actually a pretty effective defense mechanism. They're pretty inoffensive, but laughing yourself to death is no laughing matter. As usual, Gamma world has the goofy going on in spades.
Molnangs are giant snails that instead of just sliming, leave a track of dead earth wherever they go, messing the ecosystem right up. If you see one, steer well clear, because they also shoot lasers from their eyestalks. Seems a very mad wizard thing to create.
Reptoads are another attack of the pun names. Thankfully, the rep in their name refers to repulsion, not replication. They're grumpy bastards as well, enjoying trapping things in forcefields and watching them slowly starve to death. Get a sleeth to hunt them down.
Stuhumphagas are giant telepathic tortoises. They're nice guys, and will transport you through radioactive wastelands safely inside their shell. A bit goofy, but certainly a welcome relief after facing all the other creatures in this feature. Very much business as usual around here, even though it probably shouldn't be. Come on, you need to move with the times, or everyone'll lose interest.
There are ways of making you talk: Top Secret's article this month is all about the various social skills in the game. What they do, the best time to use them, and suggested modifiers based on situational matters. You do of course need to use your GM discretion, as there's always going to be other things they haven't though of, plus people will react differently based on their own personality, and who else is around. While generally in favour of better defined social mechanics, I did find this article somewhat dull. It's one of those cases where I've seen this kind of advice given before, in considerably greater depth than a 3 page article can do, and it being for a system I don't have doesn't particularly help. Bit of a filler article really.
The marvel-phile is also getting in on the creepy shenanigans, with stats for Dracula in FASERIP. For all the mythology that vampires can only come in if invited, he sure gets into a lot of other ongoing series. He's currently dead, but even if this wasn't the Marvel universe, we know that would be a precarious state. I think we can be pretty damn certain he'll be back. On the other hand he might have a few new powers, and/or be missing some of the old ones. It all depends on the needs of the plot. After all, it can be a little tricky writing challenges for someone who can shapechange, control minds, manipulate the weather, and has all round superhuman abilities. Maybe you should use a lesser vampire for your plot instead. A bit of editorial sloppiness aside, this is both an enjoyable and appropriate entry. It's usually interesting to see how different groups treat established bits of mythology when they incorporate them into their world, and of course, playing in other people's sandboxes is one of Jeff's talents, so it's no surprise this one turned out well.
A marvel monster-phile: A second Marvel article in quick succession sticks with the theme, by delivering the stats for Frankenstein's monster, who is played pretty much straight from the book. The living mummy, who puts an interesting spin on this myth, just as Michael Morbus does on the vampire one, and Jack Russell ( :rolleyes: ) a Werewolf who has some measure of control over his shapeshifting, and like the Hulk, can be a nice guy, or a problem as the plot demands. A perfectly decent way to fill in a few more pages, and respond to the game's general popularity. And this brings the number of themed articles up to 8, making this a good deal more focussed than any of their previous horror issues. Now let's hope roger can put a different spin on the theme next year, ghosts instead of vampires, or something.
The Star Wars RPG by west end games gets a full colour four page spread. My oh my. That'll grab the interest of a lot of people.
The role of computers goes monthly. They've proved their popularity quite well over the past year, and now it's time to step their game up in response. This is interesting to hear. They decide to switch things up a bit this month. Instead of reviewing games, they give us an overview of the current situation in the computer industry. How it works, (games companies and publishing companies are normally separate entities, kinda like bands and record labels. ) The margin of sales at which a game starts to break even (around 15 to 20 thousand units, oh how things have changed) The big companies out there. (Still apple, Amiga, Commodore, almost Atari, but Microsoft are just starting their inexorable rise to supremacy. ) The problems of piracy bedeviling the computer industry. And a little excerpt from an interview with a game designer about the current limitations on computer based RPG's. We also get a look back over their earlier reviews, tabulating the stuff so far, so you can see what they rated top and bottom. One of our historical perspective articles, as we get to see another snapshot of the wider world. And it is indeed very different in many ways, a lot less centralized, with programmers having considerably more freedom, and more competition between companies. It'll be interesting to see how it changes over the next few years, and the magazine's perspective on computer gaming changes with it. This definitely adds a good bit of variety to my reading.
Snarfquest screws the pooch and pays for it in kind. Not very nice at all. Dragonmirth needs to consume a little less, in more ways than one.
Wormy celebrates his 101st issue (it was going to be the hundredth, but they were late) with a rather tricky hexagonal crossword puzzle. Even if you have all the back issues, this'll take quite a bit of work to solve. In the actual comic, the trolls challenge wormy to an all-or nothing wargame. That's certainly upping the stakes quite a bit.
Another mediocre issue, I'm afraid. Some good articles, but also quite a few dull ones. At least they're still having plenty of variety in the topics covered, which means that most people'll be able to find at least one to their taste in each issue. Still, by now it seems that their decision to "lighten up, go with the flow a bit more, stop sweating the small stuff" has definitely resulted in the average quality of articles going down a bit in the long term. Hopefully they're reconsidering this. Let's hope we don't go too much further down before the rollercoaster heads back up again.
Dragon Issue 127: November 1987
part 1/3
108 pages. Oh dear oh dear. We get another look at their sales figures this month. And it does not make pretty viewing. An average of 85,000, which is down a good 15% from last year. That is quite the slide. From the looks of things, most of the slide happened early in the year, during the crisis of leadership. Guess that had more impact on the distributer confidence than it did on the actual contents, which IMO really went downhill a bit later. Or maybe that's just human variations, who can say. In any case, they definitely need to get cracking on designing a new edition. After all, they've got to boost their cash flow somehow, and if they don't have so many players, that means they have to milk the existing ones harder. Anyway, back to this issue. Finally, it's fighters turn to get a themed one devoted to them. About time. Everyone else is way ahead on the cool toys stake. Let's hope none of them are nerfs.
In this issue:
Letters: Another letter from someone worried about the new campaign worlds displacing the older ones, and the compatibility of modules from one to another. Roger tries to be comforting, but is unable to disguise that the facts will not be palatable to everyone.
Another letter about releasing compilations from the magazine, possibly of magical items, monsters, or something similar. As ever, they're always considering ways of making a little more money from their existing material.
Another letter about setting up a BBs, and how this would be a good thing for them. Look, just get on with it, will you. Stop faffing around saying maybe. The rewards are more than worth the outlay needed to set it up.
This month's editorial is also of note, given the number of times I've seen it referenced. Tuckers kobolds is of course about how you can make the little guys really scary by proper use of equipment and tactics. An idea we've seen before (see issue 60 ) this time it's taken more seriously. In one of the games in Roger's army days, the eponymous Tucker managed to make his kobolds so scarily effective that the group dreaded leaving the dungeon again even more than they did tackling the class VI demons on level 10, because of course they'd have to go back through them again. If you can emulate his example, you are a sadistic DM indeed. And remember, you can apply clever tactics to slightly more powerful creatures (I've found kenku work really well for this) and then the players really have to step up their game in response or die horribly. An important lesson to learn, presented in an amusing fashion. Don't hesitate to heed it.
Forum: Tim McNally replies to SD Anderson's writings on XP with his own house rules for how and when you should be rewarded for getting treasure. Seems fairly reasonable.
Ed Friedlander continues to establish himself as one of our most prolific forumites, with a mini article on familiars. They can be both helpful and a liability to their masters. Here's how to accentuate the positives, and minimize the negatives. Also, we really ought to have rules for falling damage that vary according to creature size. (my own personal fix on this is to use the weapon size damage tables, and move up or down one column per size category change.
Tim Jensen suggests that there needs to be two neutral alignments, one which actively tries to preserve the balance, and one that doesn't give a shit about all that crap and just does what's convenient. Interesting thought. It might just work.
Peter Phillips pontificates about oriental naming conventions. Yawnaroo.
Role-playing reviews seems to be in a godly mood this month:
D&D Immortals set gets a surprisingly negative review. Even someone inside the company just can't figure out what you actually do with this curates egg of a system. It completely ignores one of the most important factors of deities, how they relate to their worshippers, and things like beliefs, rituals and heirachy. What do you do with these powers? How do you make the leap from human to god and keep the players interested. How do you integrate them into the world and multiverse. How do you run fun adventures for them. It's all a bit of a mystery, and is badly in need of some good supplements to sort this out. How very disappointing, and also indicative of TSR's current tendency to tread over-carefully around the subject of real faith.
Gods of harn, on the other hand, takes a relatively bottom up approach, detailing 10 gods, the myths surrounding them, and the churches that worship them. It remains vague about whether the gods are really real, but this doesn't matter, because it does have plenty of concrete setting details for PC's to interact with such as doctrine, sacred locations, history, saints, and even basics like what they wear. As this is Harn, the interrelationships between the 10 religions is also handled with plenty of detail. Ken considers it a success both as a sourcebook, as reading material, and a source of ideas to mine for other games.
Gods of glorantha becomes another casualty of Ken's preference for the older runequest material over the new. While not bad by any stretch of the imagination, it doesn't hold up to the likes of Gods of Prax, sacrificing depth of detail for a wider overview of lots of faiths. Still, the old stuff isn't in print any more, and this does manage to have a strong combination of coherence, and preservation of the contradictions in the various religions. Just don't consider it a must buy.
Lords of middle-earth volume I covers the Valar, lots of maiar, and other high power, legendary figures such as Feanor and Tom Bombadil. This includes stats for them, which are of course disgustingly high. Thankfully it also gives advice on how to handle high level campaigns in the system. rationalizations for why these guys generally don't use their full power, and plenty of other stuff to keep them useful in actual play. If you like to roll like that, of course, which may not be easy if you're started off from 1st level.
Sage advice is focussing on the BATTLESYSTEM this month.
What benefits do infra and ultravision have on the battlefield. (They let you see in the dark. This will negate penalties and put enemies that don't have it at a disadvantage. )
What angles can a unit cross a wall at ( Any, as long as they pay the extra movement costs )
How do you determine if a unit is at the edge of the woods ( If it's part in, part out, it's on the edge. Even the pope should be able to understand that.)
When can enemy archers shoot at a hero (Whenever they're not hiding inside a unit like a nancy boy, or in the thick of battle, so you can't shoot at them without hitting your mates.)
What does detect invisibility do in battlesystem (if you say they're trying to detect invisible units in the right place, they do. )
When do heroes check morale (NEVER! They are real men! Real men do not change their actions based on the vagaries of dice rolls. (What about spells?) Shut up, you. )
Is there a movement cost for being forced into open order (no)
Where do routing units go if their avenue of escape is blocked ( Wherever looks clear. Set a trap, kill 'em all)
What happens when a wraparound unit routs. ( Boomerang shape! Whoo whoo whoo!)
Is there any way to stop a routing unit without rallying it (Surround them. Or kill them all and raise them as zombies. Zombies don't rout. Sweeet sweeeet zombies.)
Do routing units have to pay for their heel-turn (no)
Can any hero attempt to rally a passing unit. (only one per phase. Otherwise it's just everyone talking at once.)
Can you double or half wheel (if you pay the price. )
Can spells be disrupted (only by missile fire in the right phase. )
Do you suffer penalties for moving along the top of an obstacle (use your common sense. Walls are cool, thorny bushes pierce your balls. )
Can you cast spells from horseback (Only if they stay still. Jolting around is rather distracting.)
What happens when you kill more units than are in contact with the enemy (erase stuff backwards. War is hell. )
How much damage does insect plague do (None. It's just a terrorist tactic)
How does insect plague affect individual units. (if it's not a unit, it does regular damage.)
How do one inch wide counters defend a wall (They'll have to choose a very small wall to defend. )
What is THAC0 (Ahh, A D&D person who's never checked out AD&D. You might want to do so.)
What happens when a unit force marching meets an enemy unit. (they can't. They have to stop when they realise they would run into them. It's like chess. You never actually take the king, only checkmate it. )
What stats does a tree animated by changestaff have (same as in the regular game. Big smashy tree)
How many hits does it take to kill a thing with two wounds (Two. You can count to two, can't you? )
The text and image on page 11 don't match (correct. )
Can you wraparound if you don't have initiative (you snooze you lose)
When is a melee round finished (when each side has acted once)
How do you put a PC in a unit (Average the stats. Doing this mid play is not recommended )
Do woods affect melee ( Does a falling tree make no sound if it knocks the pope unconscious so he can't hear anything? )
Do woods affect missile fire (does a bear shit on the pope? )
What does no premeasurement mean? ( Battle is chaotic. You need to make tactics based on eyeballing. If you get it wrong, there's no takebackseys.)
Why can't you just turn around when an enemy attacks your rear (mass surprise buttsecks is harder to counter than individual surprise buttsecks )
Do heroes have to pay to turn around (no!)
Does fireball get larger outside (no, but the range increases. D&D is not consistent or unified)
How much is psionics worth (You work it out yo'self. Skip is not a miracle worker. Skip has to take care of his own bad self first, mofo. )
How far can an elf see in the woods (As far as the pope says he can.)
When can a dragon breathe ( Quite often. When the choice is them dying, or you, most of them will choose to kill you. )
Can dragons split fire (no. Archers can though.)
How do draconian deaths work in mass combat. (Not that well, apart from Kapak and Aurak. Otherwise Takhisis wouldn't lose so often. Evil is dumb. )
Dragon Issue 127: November 1987
part 2/3
Lords & Legends: If there's one area fighters have better than other classes, it's the number of legendary characters from myth you have to draw inspiration from. It's no great surprise that this kicks off our themed section, with a bunch of characters who would also have fit in just fine in issue 125. Siegfried from the Ring cycle. Yvain from Arthurian myth. Roland and Bradamante from the tales of Charlemagne. They're relatively light on the stuff that normal players can't get, and of course, in the case of the paladins, actually hold back on their more supernatural elements because of course, they couldn't do that in the original myths. Less objectionable than most of these, I still can't actually say I enjoyed this. I think we can be pretty certain by now that obscenely statted NPC's just aren't my bag.
No quarter: Looks like their writers are thinking in the same vein as me. Spell casters have got tons of cool new stuff over the years. Fighters, not so much. How can we fix that without just giving them a ton of no strings power-ups? How about giving them a load of combat maneuvers, and then giving them the ability to select a limited number? That allows you to mechanically differentiate your fighter characters a lot more as well. A rather forward thinking article, and another trick that they really could have adopted a lot sooner, instead of taking 20 years for it to become standard. And the actual powers detailed feel a good deal more naturalistic than the stuff in Bo9S and 4e as well. I very much approve, and would have no objection to incorporating this system into my game. Definitely one both useful in it's own right, and citing in the historical perspective fights. Woo. Let's let our fighters do some more rocking.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another bumper pack of magic items from many contributors this month. 18 magical bows, for those fighters who prefer to pick off their enemies at range, and with style. Do you want raw power. Do you want a blatant rip-off of the bow from the D&D cartoon. Do you want accuracy. Do you want range. Do you want rate of fire. Do you want elemental effects added on to your shots. Do you want to be able to attack underwater or from high in the air. Such a difficult choice. Better pray you're lucky, or has a DM who lets you choose your treasure, because you could also end up with the one that automatically misses and alerts the enemies to your position. So yeah, this is exactly the kind of articles that makes players go "Sweeeeeeeet. Can I have one?" And in my current mood, I would be pretty likely to say yes. Knock yourselves out. They seem to be hitting some good runs this time round.
Two hands are better than one: Ahh, hands. A vital part of the creation of human civilization. But you can only do so much, when you only have two of them. Here's a little reminder of that fact, that goes over the various weapons in the game, and exactly how many limbs you need to devote to operating them. Not a hugely interesting subject, and one you can mostly figure out using common sense. But there are many people who would prefer not to wing it, and for them, there is this article. Very much a filler article. Whether it's filler that will nourish your game and keep it healthy, or just make it bloated and sluggish is a matter of personal taste.
In defense of the shield: Another short article giving you a few more options for a part of your equipment usually abstracted away. While shields are often treated as just another part of your armour, there is actually quite a bit of skill involved in using them to deflect the greatest number of attacks. Do you want to sacrifice some of your number of weapons known to become a better shield user instead? Seems perfectly reasonable, as they make sure that getting the full benefit from the really big shields takes quite a bit of expenditure, keeping you from tanking obscenely at first level. But like weapon specialization, as long as the DM is generous in terms of granting magical equipment of the type specialized in, and not making you fight you in precarious positions where you really need a hand free too often a shield, this could become unbalancing. Remember, balancing factors are not unless you apply them properly. This is important, dammnit. Any system breaks if you use it out of context.
Fighting for keeps: Unsurprisingly for a fighter special, they decide to show the Battlesystem some more love. When you get to name level, you get the right to build a stronghold and go into the land management business. But what happens if all the nearby land is occupied, and the current owners have no desire to let you into their power structure, even as a subordinate? You'll have to either fight them and take it, or go out into the unclaimed wilderness, and pacify that enough that you can build a settlement there. Either way involves lots of violence, and more than a little social machination as you raise an army to fight for you. Rich ground for adventures. And here's a sample one for you, plus plenty of general advice on how to handle this kind of scenario. As ever, the more followers you have the more support they require, and the more costly additional specialists you need to have as part of your supply train. (don't forget the harlots) Sounds like fun to me. And we get such lovely opponents as Baron Demento and The Black Knight to conquer. So this article manages to avoid falling into the trap of dryness that these sometimes suffer. and gives us lots of helpful stuff to back up it's ideas. Another pretty sweeeeet article.
Heat of the fight: More tactics to differentiate one battle your weapon wielding characters face from another. While earlier we had selections of individual abilities, here we have a grab bag of mostly group based stuff such as ambushes, battle standards, and psyching your army up into one of three types of stat enhancing states. Overall, this is stuff that is probably more useful to the DM than players, as they rarely get the chance to plan ahead, hire help, and control the conditions of the fight like this. While hardly paradigm shattering, or particularly unified in terms of design, this is still useful, so I'll put it on the upper end of filler.
A menagerie of martial arts: Oriental adventures once again gets a new add-on, in the form of 20 new martial arts. That's way more than any one person could learn, let alone master. 12 animal styles, which are fairly common, because humans are a bunch of copycats, and animals turn up everywhere and seem to be fairly effective. And 8 specialist styles, which are somewhat harder to find teachers for. It doesn't actually introduce any new maneuvers though, so it feels a bit like running through the motions, squeezing every permutation out of the existing rules. Another bit of filler to make sure this issue really gives you your money's worth on the topic (because chances are, you aren't seeing any more fighter focussed stuff for a year or two. )
The ecology of the yeti: Hmm. Now this is a monster that might still be out there, in reality. A very suitable subject for an ecology. Course, as with neanderthals, D&D has to take a perfectly reasonable concept and put it's own weird touches in, like a metabolism that actually absorbs heat, hypnotic eyes, and the usual tendency towards unreasonable bloodthirstiness that distinguishes monsters from real animals and ensures adventurers get get to enjoy regular stand-up fights. Another ecology that lives and dies on the quality of it's banter this month, as a pair of settled down adventurers meet up again to deal with a threat to their new home, and find that the other still retains the same irritating traits. Can they figure out a way to exploit the yeti's weaknesses and kick it's ass? Hopefully, and in the process they give quite a few ideas that are good for players as well as DM's. Another fairly solid ecology, both in the fiction and footnotes sections. It fleshes out the creature nicely, giving you plenty of hooks to play with. Nice to see this part of the magazine is still chugging along smoothly.
It's the no sase ogre. Now that's a face that triggers the nostalgia. An amusing way of saying we expect you to incur all the expenses when submitting stuff, so there. Thank god for the internet, making that crap redundant. Course, in many cases your applications for things are still likely to be met with a resounding silence, but such is life.
DC heroes is still putting daily planet newsletters in the magazine. Nice of them to come up with a new one for each month.
Dragon Issue 127: November 1987
part 3/3
Arcane Lore: Despite it being a fighter special, wizards continue to get their now regular dose of additional options. Well, actually it's illusionist's turn this time, which is mildly pleasing. Arthur Collins gives us 9 new tricks to mess around with people's perceptions. Making them see things in black and white, massively exaggerating echoes, masking the smell and taste of something, temporarily blocking their memory of memorized spells, this is a strongly focussed, and quite amusing set of tricks that could really mess up someone's day, or be used by inventive adventurers to provide benefits for themselves by selectively negating senses. Since this is the kind of stuff that encourages intelligent use of your powers, I definitely approve. Illusionists can be a fun class to play. Take advantage of that, because it's not long before they get rolled into wizards, and lose a big chunk of their uniqueness.
The dragon's bestiary is very much not in theme this month, choosing, for no obvious reasons, to give us two new oozes. Xador's Fluid oozes over your skin, and then hardens, turning you into a living statue which then suffocates, putting you in a good position to be digested. Delightful, eh? If you capture small amounts of it, you can apply it to only parts of your skin, making it useful as armour. Bloodsucking armour that is decidedly detrimental to your health in the long run. I'm sure that in the hands of inventive players, it has many other uses, possibly gross. I strongly approve, as I do of anything which encourages you to apply your own evil imagination.
Quagmires are somewhat less interesting, basically being your basic ambush predator that pretends to be a patch of swampy water, and then grabs you with a pseudopod if you get too close. Another gloopy death awaits you if not rescued. Giggety giggety, the joys of the old school.
The role of books: The paradise tree by Diana L Paxton mixes drug research, occultism, and some general sci-fi trappings, and then weaves them into a dreamlike book that holds the reviewers interest while reading, but slips away afterwards, and is tricky to analyze. This is a bit of a pain in the ass for a critic, but does not mean it's actually a bad book.
Sea of death by Gary Gygax is of course a Gord book. It does read very much like an actual campaign turned into a book, with authorial dice-rolling clearly detectable in many of the fight scenes. As a fast paced potboiler, and a guide to crafting good D&D adventures, it's useful, but it doesn't really succeed as a novel.
Dark walker on moonshae by Douglas Niles is another AD&D based book, but is much more plot-driven and setting building. While the reviewer isn't too keen on the narrative style, calling it a bit too eager to please, and over analyze itself, it's probably better as a novel. Still both demonstrate how differently you can interpret the D&D game. Other official novels should vary just as widely.
Issac asimov's robot city by Michael Kube-McDowell shows the venerable author opening up his robot universe for other writers to play in, just as Larry Niven was around this time with the Man-Kzin war series. This doesn't work too badly, with the writer managing a decent pastiche of Asimov's writing style, but losing focus and integration the more they introduce their own elements. The reviewer has their doubts about it's ability to sustain a 6 book series.
Dragonharper by Jody Lynn Nye is a strange fish. A multiple choice adventure book, set in Anne McCaffrey's world of Pern, more attention has been paid to the plotline and social conflicts than is usual in these kinds of books. It isn't that challenging as a gamebook, and you don't have that much ability to really change the overall outcome, but it's still interesting to explore the world, and see cameos from existing characters. This kind of licensing definitely has potential, especially if the authors themselves decide to experiment with this medium of storytelling.
The luck of Relian Kru by Paula Volsky displays a warped imagination befitting the most sadistic of DM's. Ingenious characters, strange plot twists, quirky magic, the author is having a good deal of fun writing this, and the reviewer enjoyed it as well, despite it not being the most highbrow of works. A bit of fun is much more interesting than another pretentious meandering pontification on the meaning of life and the tragedy of the human condition.
The romulan way by Diane Duane and Peter Morwood is of course a star trek novel. Starring Dr McCoy, he leaves behind Kirk and Spock to get himself in, and then out of some serious trouble on Romulus. It features big chunks of worldbuilding alternating with the plot, which slows things down a bit, but would be very useful for anyone planning to play in the trek universe. An interesting literary experiment.
The pig, the prince and the unicorn by Karen A Brush seems a typical save the world adventure, only the person destined to save it from the invasions of chaos happens to be a pig. An otherwise fairly normal pig, who has to figure out how to deal with the usual quests, chases, and, erm, romantic subplots without any hands. Drawing parallels to the narnia books, it gets a fairly positive review.
The role of computers: Maniac Mansion. Hee. I remember this. One of the more eccentric and in depth old adventure games gets mentioned here. However, the primary focus, once again, is not on the reviews, but this time on the licensing out of the AD&D brand to SSI, so they can create computer games based upon it. This is a complicated business, as you have to fit most of the rules from three books into a game disk, and adapt them to work in computer language (with the usual restrictions on your imagination. ) They are working closely with TSR to ensure the storyline is fully integrated with the forgotten realms, many of the 2nd ed rules are incorporated into the game, and you get to customize things quite a bit. This is very interesting stuff, once again revealing their attitude to multimedia products, and some cool tidbits about how programming worked in that era, but it does feel a little like they've been hijacked into doing a shill piece. Two issues in a row without full size reviews. They'd better get back to that next month.
Megatraveller! the updated game of battle in the shattered Imperium after 11,000 years of peace. Contrasts rather with the tone of fresh space exploration in Traveller 2300. I smell an edition war in the brewing, especially as this advertises itself as the First True Updated Edition. Way to split the fanbase dude.
The marvel-phile: The everlovin' blue eyed thing gets looked at this month, as Jeff ponders what could have been, if things had only turned out a little different for him. After all, he's actually a pretty smart guy. It's just that he hangs around people even smarter than him, and seems to have got out of the habit of using his head. What would happen if he fell out with the other FF, went back to the streets of new york, and started working his way up the underworld. What if he'd worked for tony stark instead of Reed Richards? Jeff may have struggled long and hard with this entry, but he's come up with some pretty cool ideas. Taking existing things and mixing them around a bit can be very effective, as it allows you to both get a quick emotional connection, and keep people guessing. It's the impetus behind a million reboots and alternate universe stories. And although it has been used badly quite a few times, hasn't everything? Another entertaining and thought-provoking delivery from Jeff.
Cyborg commando. Such a wonderful phrase. Gary Gygax's Cyborg Commando? Hmm. Okay then. Welcome to the new infinities of gaming. Where people have very hairy forearms. Dear oh dear. What are we to make of this?
The fury of dracula, a boardgame from games workshop for 2-4 players. This should have been in last issue. Delays lose sales people. Chop chop.
Dragonmirth actually uses a pun I haven't thought up before. Snarf fights, and people get hit on the head. Wormy proves once again that he's the brains around here, and the ogres are very much not.
A pretty good issue, overall. While there is some filler, there's also been an above average quotient of seriously kickass articles, going quite a way to redress the warrior/spellcaster balance. Definitely another one to bookmark and use stuff from for the campaign. Plus the reviews and adverts are also of above average quality and interest as well. They do seem to be scaling down the non D&D stuff even further, though. Is it that time already? Or will it do some more rising and falling before fading away for good. Similarly, just how dramatic will the sales fluctuations be before they go into freefall a decade from now? Plenty more gems, but also plenty more rocky territory to cover. So I've gotta keep on fighting.
2300 was always meant to be a parallel line to Traveller; after much fan-grousing, they changed the 2300 line name to distance it from traveller.
Further, 2300 was always overshadowed by the Kafer War; it was never really an exploration kind of game from the in print materials.
Quote from: aramis;3451732300 was always meant to be a parallel line to Traveller; after much fan-grousing, they changed the 2300 line name to distance it from traveller.
Further, 2300 was always overshadowed by the Kafer War; it was never really an exploration kind of game from the in print materials.
It's interesting you have that opinion, because it contrasts quite a bit with mine. I love the 2300 universe, mostly because it seems so ripe for exploratory campaigning. Certainly it doesn't have the sheer breadth of the Imperium of Traveller, but it has a lot of mysteries to be found and worked on. Some of that has to do with the Kafer war - SPOILER AHEAD - the sapient alien race that has been fighting a losing battle with the kafers, and which could provide the key to humanity turning the tide, is a good example - SPOILER DONE.
In addition, I think the material was more bound to longer campaigns on individual planets than in the original Traveller, but which involved quite a bit of exploration on those planets. A great example, and one of my favorite adventure sourcebooks for any scifi RPG, is Ranger.
I'm not arguing, really. I just found your comment and point to be interesting, as I'd always seen the Kafer War as a lot less pervasive, and exploration much more integral to 2300.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;345179It's interesting you have that opinion, because it contrasts quite a bit with mine. I love the 2300 universe, mostly because it seems so ripe for exploratory campaigning.
Problem is that they never supported that end of play...
Dragon Magazine Issue 128: December 1987
part 1/3
110 pages. Notice the name change? It may be small, but it's still very much there. Another step towards the magazine being the way I remember it. Curiously, after a year filled with them, they've decided not to have a particular theme for christmas. Hopefully that means they're only giving us the best they have in their reserves, whatever that may be, instead of putting in several filler articles to make up the numbers, but you never can tell. In any case, it definitely looks like we're getting another board game, which is interesting. Lets see if they can make this fun, despite it being just another year at the office for the writers.
In this issue:
Letters: Two more letters from people still fiddling around with Dragonchess. One has been trying to program it on the computer, while the other has been busy assembling the best minis for representing it.
Two letters on Clay-O-Rama. Despite it being an obvious joke game, they still have rules questions. Sometimes I dispair of you people.
A letter asking for more frequent board games. Quite a reasonable request, really. You may be in luck.
Cthulhu wishes all you puny mortals a merry christmas! Be happy, for tomorrow I may decide to eat you all. Rather missing the point there, methinks. When have cosmic entities cared about human naming conventions?
Forum: David Rudge talks about the mystic college rules from issue 123. Drawing from his own experience as a postgraduate, he picks holes in the amount of time you would reasonably expect faculty members to devote to teaching and their own researches. After all, wizards are an iconoclastic bunch, and if the terms of work aren't convenient for them, they are quite capable of going elsewhere.
David Carl Argall returns. He's also in favor of mystic colleges in principle, but picking holes in issue 123's article. In his case, this is on the grounds of economics. As written, it's near impossible to make a profit on running one. Given that real life schools often charge students (or their parents) obscene fees, and make up the rest from government subsidy, this seems pretty realistic to me. Most teachers do it because they want too, (or as the saying goes, because they can't do) not for the money. If you want to make a profit, you've should sell spells for commercial ends, using the apprentices to handle all the low level stuff, and only teaching them what they need to know.
Timothy J Cunningham thinks that the magazine shouldn't publish multiple different conflicting sets of new rules. It makes a mess out of the game, and no-one knows which ones to use.
Steve Shrewchuk points out a whole bunch of tricks even a low level magic-user can pull to make themselves highly effective. If they're multi-classed, as most elf and half elf ones will be, they can be even scarier, combing cantrips and mundane tricks to great aplomb. That's what high intelligence should involve, and that's how you get them to survive to higher levels.
K.B. LaBaw also thinks that the unsurvivability of magic-users at low level has been greatly exaggerated. This is why adventurers adventure in teams. A group of people with varied skills can accomplish what one on their own cannot. You should try and figure out why the designer made the rules the way they are, and what playstyle they intended to encourage with them, before simply saying they're crap and changing them.
Welcome to waterdeep: Ed delivers some Forgotten Realms goodies to kick off the issue with. Waterdeep is going to be one of the most important and well documented locations in the world. As usual, Ed has written far more than can fit in a reasonably sized sourcebook, but it's still kickass stuff they want to get out there, so the magazine gets the bonus material. A map detailing the region over a hundred miles in each direction, and 14 locations of note that your adventurers might want to visit. Quite a few of them are obvious adventure locations for the DM to use to challenge players with, which is definitely a good thing. Others are friendly, but still have plot hooks and distinctive flavours added which make them interesting places to visit. This is another volley of classic Ed material, full of ideas that could be extracted fairly easily and placed into your own campaign, but which tie together to create a greater whole in his. I could praise his skills all day, but I don't want to turn this into a sickly love-fest, so I won't. Lets just say it richly deserves it's place as our pole position christmas present and leave it at that.
A nightmare on elm street game. Man, the number of board games has been increasing recently. Either more general toy companies know about D&D and are putting adverts in here, or their standards have dropped. Worth noting, in any case.
Matters of mystery: It's a book review, but not as we know it jim. Role-playing mastery by Gary Gygax (at least the magazine isn't trying to whitewash him out of history) gets special attention. However, as with the Gord novel last month, that attention is not particularly favourable. Particular criticism is given to the poor organization, unclear writing objectives and schizophrenic design, at some points aimed at new people, at others expecting you to already have a decent grounding in what he's talking about at the time. It also falls heavily into one-true-wayism, advocating the idea that gaming can only be truly appreciated by few elite masters of the artform (which of course includes him and his inner circle) Overall, it seems more likely to drive people away than bring them into the hobby. As with Gary's farewell message in issue 122, I'm not sure how much of this is the reviewer's real opinion, and how much editorial interference has taken place. But given things like the 1E DMG, the nature of the criticisms seem entirely plausible. Which makes them more likely to stick and be taken seriously, unfortunately. In any case, this is some very definite bad-mouthing. They don't want New Infinities to succeed and become a viable competitor. As ever, it'll be interesting seeing just how much of this stuff shows up over the next decade, until the company collapses, and he is welcomed back into the fold.
To believe or not to believe: Ahh, here's a subject they've complained about in the forum recently. Adjudicating illusions is a pain in the ass. It's no surprise someone'd send in a article on it. If anything, the surprise is that they don't have multiple. Guess they're already reconsidering last year's idea of deliberately presenting multiple conflicting options so you can choose, if the forum is anything to go by.
Anyway, specifics. Looks like it's time for a new exception based subsystem. Not my favourite thing, but if done well, they can be better than applying the same rule formulae to everything. The writer takes a fairly simple approach, cross referencing the caster's level and the victims wisdom, adding a few other basic modifiers, and then rolling a % die (which since all the modifiers are in increments of 5, would work just as well as a d20 roll) This shows a definite FASERIP influence, and seems easy enough to use. On the other hand, it completely leaves out that can of worms of figuring out when you're supposed to try and disbelieve, and how much of the onus should be on the players to figure this out from the DM's descriptions. So it falls into the servicable, but unexceptional box. Probably not one I'll bother to use.
Quote from: aramis;345259Problem is that they never supported that end of play...
It's tricky to support constant expansion to new lands. Even the forgotten realms only managed it for a few years before giving up on maztica, kara tur and all the rest and just going round the same lands again. You either have to be constantly moving on, or the places become settled and no longer mysterious and challenging. Perhaps the easiest way to handle it would be a good, partially randomised planet generation system, quite possibly using design elements from the career system.
Quote from: aramis;345259Problem is that they never supported that end of play...
I think they did with the various adventures and sourcebooks. Ranger, for example, presented a planet and alien culture that bore in-depth investigation and exploration, as well as an interstellar mystery tied to both. The Kafer sourcebook provided a number of planets for exploration, as well as a couple of alien cultures and another mystery that spanned the stars. The atlas that was published also was a sourcebook of planets to explore.
Dragon Magazine Issue 128: December 1987
part 2/3
Role-playing reviews: Empire of the petal throne gets the spotlight on it this month. God, we haven't seen anything on this in years. As Ken points out in the introduction, too much originality is actually a bad thing from a commercial point of view. You need a decent number of familiar reference points to orient from, otherwise you don't have the context to take new things in and really understand them. And Tekumel certainly has unfamiliar elements in spades, even after being around over a decade, and 3 different editions. Mechanically, it may be just a fairly close relation of D&D, but the setting is a tremendously idiosyncratic one, with most of it's derivations from mayan & aztec culture rather than the more common medieval or oriental ones. For a third time in a row, Ken examines the current edition in contrast with previous editions, and finds it wanting in some respects. I suspect he may be feeling the pull of grognardia, as this is becoming a definite pattern. Still, better a new edition than a cool game like this goes out of print and can't be played by new people anymore. Hopefully this turned a few of the magazine's newer readers onto the game back in the day.
Skyrealms of Jorune is another highly distinctive game that takes rather a lot of buy-in to really capture properly. This is another case where Ken is torn between loving many of the ideas, and being frustrated by the flaws in their presentation. Character generation in particular is a bit of a chore, with some unclear writing and quite a bit of errata. But if you can make it through that, you'll get to enjoy a clever, richly detailed sci-fantasy game, with well integrated magic, mechanical design that encourages the players to become responsible citizens rather than hack and slashing sociopaths, and a generally delightful setting. Even if you don't play it, it's well worth stealing ideas from.
The game wizards: Jim Ward turns up to give a combination of advice and teasers this month. As ever, people are asking how you become a writer for TSR, and as ever, they are happy to provide their guidelines. Don't expect it to be easy getting in though, with competition as stiff as it is. Secondly, he gives us an overview of the big products coming next year. (which reminds me, what happened to TSR Previews? It's been AWOL for the last half a year. )
Castle Greyhawk (wacky edition with no input from Gygax ) will be out in January. Look forward to much humour, and much screwage. Sigh.
February features the first volume of the Gamers handbook of the Marvel Universe. So many preexisting characters that need covering, it's going to take a total of 1024 pages. It's a bit excessive, frankly.
March has quite a lot of stuff. Top Secret is getting a snazzy mega adventure boxed set, High Stakes Gamble. It's also getting two books. Well, two halves of books. They're releasing books with two stories in, one a Top Secret one, and one an Agent 13 one. This smells like a gimmicky attempt to boost sales for two product lines that aren't doing well enough individually to credit continued releases. Dragonlance is also getting a book, The legend of Huma.
April sees a new wargame, The hunt for Red October. Based on the novel, this is another attempt to bring in new players that's not going to turn around the decline.
May sees another wacky licenced experiment. The Rocky and Bullwinkle roleplaying game? Man what. Who's gonna want to play that? What exactly do you do in it?
June sees the 1989 forgotten realms calendar, 6 months early. Now that's one you definitely ought to have held back on a few months if you want to maximize sales. No-one thinks of buying calendars in June. Agent 13 gets a graphic novel, while greyhawk gets a solo adventure gamebook. Is is just me or is he deliberately not taking about actual D&D products.
July sees another double whammy of board games, with Dragonlance and Buck Rogers both getting one.
August sees Greyhawk get a new corebook, 5 years after the last big setting book for it. Just how will it have changed in the meantime? Given it's war torn history, they have plenty of leeway to mess with the political situation.
September gives us another art book. Like the Dragon best of's, money for recycled material is an economical way to go if you can get away with it.
October sees Oriental adventures rewarded for it's continued popularity with a big boxed set giving extensive details on the realms of Kara-Tur. Now that's more like it. And of course, this helps fill out the forgotten realms as well, so it should sell extra well.
November is all about the spies, and the Buck Rogers. Bleah. Lorraine (roll of thunder, stab of organ music) has wasted no time in figuring out how to draw extra money from her new company.
December sees Lords of darkness, a sourcebook for the undead; the 10th D&D gazetteer (which means plenty more are coming out next year, even though they didn't mention them earlier) and another Oriental module.
So there are some cool things coming our way, but it also looks like there's lots of dross as well. With the new edition planned for 89, and everyone well aware of that, they've probably seen a drop in AD&D sales, so they're concentrating on the settings and diversifying their product base. Another interesting one to draw on for a little historical perspective. And so we wind ever closer to the present.
Fiction: The spirit way by Leigh Anne Hussey. Ahh, initiation tests. For becoming is among the most dangerous aspects of our life, and so it is the one the greatest number of stories are about. This is typical teen insecurity stuff, set in a generic tribal backdrop. The lead character is the niece of the shaman, and she'd really rather like to live up to her family legacy. But so far, she seems pretty lacking in magical talent. Will she come back from the wilderness a hero, a nobody, or dead. As this is currently a fairly family friendly magazine, and likes to encourage the heroic ideal, I think you can guess which one it is. Weep not for her, but for the ones that don't get to have stories told about their exploits. This does actually have a few interesting twists, so it's not that bad. But the formula is very much there. Writers gotta make a living, and all that.
King's table: Our centrepiece this month does not spring from the deranged minds of our game designers, but instead is an actual historical boardgame dug out from the historical records, and given to us to try out. Originally called Hnefatafl, and played by the vikings, this has been around for over 1,300 years, with several variants. The king is surrounded by marauding hordes. One side takes that role, and has to defeat them or get the king to escape by reaching the corner of the board. The other, of course, has to trap him if they want to win. It looks simple enough to set up and learn the rules too, and even the epic variant with 19x19 squares, and 73 pieces should progress at a pretty pacey speed as long as you don't have the kind of player who spends minutes deliberating over every move. They do admit that the king's side is slightly more likely to win, but the imbalance certainly isn't so great as to keep it from being fun. A nicely multipurpose centrepiece, that you could use as a bit of standalone entertainment, or incorporate into your campaign as a game played by the people within, and also gives us some real world historical info I didn't know before. This is well within their remit, and I quite approve.
Plane speaking belatedly delivers us the negative quasielementals. All of them have the lovely effect of absorbing their related element, to the detriment of the environment when on the prime material. Not a good idea to mess with them. But if you're a druid who wants to stop ecological devastation, as is your job, you may have too. Blasting them from long range with spells and magic weapons is probably the way to go here. A short and too the point contribution, that completes the symmetry here. (although I don't thing we've seen pure positive and negative elementals (energentals?)) I have no problem with this, but as we've already exhausted most of our talk about it, not much more to say either. I look forward to seeing if I can use them in actual play.
Dragon Magazine Issue 128: December 1987
part 3/3
Stardate magazine. Another publication I don't remember. Any info on this one?
Chopper power!: Top Secret's articles continue to be behind the times, with these fairly crunchy stats for helicopters. Invaluable for both transport and combat, they're another thing that may push your game away from espionage, and towards military gaming if overused. Still, as they've pointed out recently, espionage and war go hand in hand a lot of the time, so drawing a hard line is tricky. It's up to your GM to choose if they want to allow this stuff. The magazine can't hold your hand the whole time. At least now you have the option.
A mutant by any other name: Gamma world skips the edition support questions this month with a system free one on slang and naming conventions in the far future. It's no surprise that things like that would carry on evolving, especially when the culture has changed radically, and there's no more mass media to standardize things across the world. There's the usual mix of corrupted existing cultural references, in-jokes, and stuff that seems random to me, but that may just because I don't get all the references. It certainly doesn't seem as immediately memorable and natural to slip into as planescape cant, but that may just be the familiarity speaking. Course, we're not likely to see this stuff go into common use, as it's just a magazine article, so it probably won't get the chance to grow on me either. Still, this is definitely the kind of world-building I approve of, so here's hoping.
Polyhedron took our second edition scoop. Sonofabitch. Do they want us to shell out money for three magazines now to keep up with everything D&D?
Robotech is now up to four books. Another game line is building up quite nicely.
The island in your computer: Another internet-centric article. One of the earliest MMORPG's gets a good looking over. Island of Kesmai is a game on Compuserve's network. (of course, they didn't have standardized protocols, so who had access to what and how much it cost varied widely from region to region. We have no world wide web yet) Anyway, this is a text based adventure game where you build your character, advance them, join teams of other adventures, and complete quests to deal with the (endlessly respawning) threats to the kingdom. Curiously, they deal with the powerful characters dominating the game problem, by giving each character a limited lifespan. So no matter how well you do, your character will die permanently after a while, and you'll have to start a new one. Now that's definitely a sign we're still a long way from home. There are plenty of familiar elements though, such as the classes, alignment system, and scenarios. The message boards and chat system are pretty friendly and helpful. This is another article that's very interesting indeed in terms of getting a view of historical progress. I never even heard of the internet until the mid 90's, when it was already exploding onto the mass market. Seeing stuff from when it was still the preserve of tech nerds with lots of money to burn does make me feel like I've missed something. Oh well, guess I get to see it from nostalgia free eyes. Let's hope there's some more of this stuff to come as well.
Gord the rogue is now up too three books plus a short story collection. Not bad for a character no-one apparently likes.
The marvel-phile: Jeff cedes the floor due to other writing commitments again, but this time allows the substitute freelancer to use the brand name. We get another case of an already existing character being covered again, due to recent continuity events changing that character. Due to government corruption, Captain America has recently become disillusioned with serving them, and quit. However, John Walker, formerly known as the Super-Patriot, has stepped into that role, bringing a new, more fundamentalist edge to the job. He's got some pretty big boots to fill, and given the nature of the story, we know he won't fill them entirely satisfactorily. We also get stats for Lemar Hoskins, the new Bucky, Karl Malus, the man responsible for augmenting both of them, but also lots of less successful augmentation experiments, creating flawed heroes and psychopathic monstrosities aplenty. Another of his creations, Demolition man, who may have badass strength and toughness, but also has a serious heart condition that could kill him any time. He really ought to get some Stark co medical assistance if he wants to last long as a hero. And on the definitely villainous side, we have Flag-smasher and the terrorist organization ULTIMATUM. Seems like they're going through one of their periods of political disillusionment, with grey being pitted against black, and no-one coming out brilliantly. It'll take a bit of work to get that reset button pushed without it seeming ham-fisted. As ever, I'm interested in hearing people's opinions on this arc, particularly if you were reading the comics at the time. Just how well was it handled, and did it mesh with contemporary concerns?
The role of computers: Shadowgate is another brutal old skool fantasy game, where you have to solve puzzles using the items you encounter along the way in your quest. Save frequently, click on everything, and be prepared for much frustration as you try and figure out how to get through this place. If you enjoyed the Tomb of Horrors, this is one for you.
S.D.I is an arcade game where you have to defend the USA from attacking soviet rebels. It has a pretty broad set of objectives, and you need to master both tactical and strategic thinking to survive and win. Still, once you've got the hang of it, it doesn't have that much replay value.
In to the eagles nest features another of our legitimate real world bad guys. Nazi's! Infiltrate the eponymous nazi stronghold, rescue prisoners from it, them blow the place sky high. A nice combination of shoot-em-up, and strategy game, as you have to sneak around, and conserve your health and ammo carefully.
Plenty of other mini-reviews in this month as well, including one of an after-school special, Drug Alert! and Delta patrol, another arcade shoot-em-up. Looks like it's back to business as usual for this column.
U2 kan ern BIG BUX: Another amusing questionnaire (and beefcake pics of Rogar of Mooria ;) ) finishes off this year's articles. Just how experienced an adventurer are you? Have you got what it takes to make a living by killing people and taking their stuff? Or would a nice accountancy job suit you better? Do not take their advice seriously, for it is not meant to be done so, and may result in the unfortunate loss of much of your money. Another good example of Roger bringing more of a sense of mischief to his job than Kim did, even in the non-april issues. Which is one change I have no real objection to. This year may have seen things become more erratic than they were under Kim's tenure, but there's still been plenty of entertaining moments. Whether things will get better or worse next year is still uncertain, but it's still going to be interesting finding out.
The 1988 Dragonlance calendar. And a dragonlance graphic novel as well. I guess quite a few people like it.
Things go horribly wrong again in snarfquest. Dragonmirth is unusually highbrow this month. Wormy once again has the ogres think they're smart when they aren't.
A pretty good finisher to this year. As I'd hoped, skipping the theme also meant they mostly skipped the filler, with most of the articles at average or above. Let's hope that doesn't mean they've exhausted their current buffer of good stuff, and the nexdt few issues are going to be crap again. A little consistency is just what they need to recover their lost readerbase. So let's press on, through these borderlands. We've left behind the old ways, but we still haven't reached 2nd edition. Just how painful will the next year of transitions be? Read along with me, or skip ahead, and see for yourself. As ever, the choice is yours.
Dragon Magazine Issue 129: January 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Another month, another return to familiar themes. Back in 1982, we had a whole series of issues devoted to the various demihuman races. This time, they're all getting lumped together, and being given a special collectively. Well, at least it's not a straight off rehash. Since Roger was responsible for writing the originals, that means the contents probably won't be a straight recycle either. And it has been 6 years, so it wouldn't be too unreasonable if they did reuse a bit. Can they surprise me this time? Onward, through another year.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking two basic questions about the contents of the magazine. Yes, we do have an article on running a business. No, most of our short stories are self-contained works.
A letter asking for Top Secret mini's. Use GI joes! :p
A question on the winners of previous year's Origins awards. Also, what does the S.I in the new top secret stand for? Special Intelligence, apparently.
And we finish off with some of the amusing titles people sent in for issue 127's cover. Ha. Unfortunately, none of them really tickle me.
Forum: Scott Whitmore is not happy with the restrictions on weapons and armour faced by wizards, finding them illogical. Clerics are almost as good at spellcasting, and they still get to wear heavy armour and be fairly capable in combat. It can't just be because of game balance. A passionate argument, but not enough to overcome decades of design inertia, I'm afraid.
Kurt R A Giambastini, on the other hand, warns against powering up wizards. Anything you do to make them balanced at lower levels will result in them outclassing everyone else even more at higher ones, unless you do a complete redesign. Not to deny that tweaks aren't needed, but if it were that simple to balance them someone would already have done it.
Larry Madden is also against the idea of powering up magic-users further. They really do not need it, especially when played cleverly. Ironically, he suggests as a joke, and then mocks, ideas that would go on to be taken seriously in 3rd ed, such as allowing higher level casters to use certain lower level spells at will. The joke's on you sir.
Bruce Johnson also has amusing contributions to make on the power of magic users debate. Overall, it seems people do not want it powered up further.
Keith Sutton, on the other hand, thinks that they should be allowed to wear armour, but suffer chances of spell failure on spells with somatic components. How very visionary. Once again we see that quite a few things that would become actual rules in 3rd ed were being used as houserules in people's games long before.
Elizabeth Atwood takes a tangent, picking apart the ridiculous size and thickness of magic-user spellbooks. How the hell are they supposed to carry these things? What exactly are they made of. Even the biggest real life books aren't that big. Yes, but real life books don't let you cast spells. Maybe if we did make books of those dimensions, they would. ;)
Douglas M Burck picks holes in the arguments of several other recent forumites. Oh, Globbits.
Stephen C Paylor dislikes the idea of putting a character in jail for things that they probably would have logically done, but their player didn't explicitly say they did. One of those cases where both sides have a valid argument, and I'm really not sure which to support.
Arcane Lore: Once again Len Carpenter takes this series away from covering the same old wizardly tomes, with some discussion of, and new spells for dwarven clerics. You certainly can't expect them to regard and apply their spells in exactly the same way as humans. So this is approximately 45-55% advice on existing spells and new spells. Since most of them are designed for the underground lifestyle, they are generally pretty useful for adventurers as well. After all, detecting precious materials, extending your senses through the ground, and healing your siege fortifications can lead to great profit. As it also includes optional rules removing some spells from their list, but also adding some appropriate MU ones in turn, it definitely helps differentiate dwarven clerics from other races. Since this is pretty good, both mechanically, and flavourwise, this is one I would rather like to incorporate into my own game. Another strong choice to kick off a section with.
Children of the spider goddess: Ahh, drow. One of the great jackass prettyboy races. Even more so than regular elves, they attract a certain kind of fanbase. When you combine the dominatrix females, the brooding outcasts, the spider fetishism, and the quite considerable amount of magical tricks and powers they have up their sleeves, it's no wonder people flock to them. But how do they hold together as a society, when they're so arrogant, backstabbing and chaotic? The answer, of course, is ego, and tribal loyalty. By constantly competing to prove their family superior, they ensure their individual badassedness, and even if a family dies, the race survives. This is one of the articles that probably increased the frequency of good Drow PC's quite a bit, as it talks about them as an entirely viable PC option, and goes into detail on the way they tend to approach each class, and other races. The awesomeness of Drow rangers is mentioned (Drizzt is coming, Drizzt is coming!) and we get plenty of roleplaying hints. So another pretty solid article, that has something to say that hasn't been detailed before. Course, they get whole books on them later, so it will be said again, in far greater detail. Such are the rewards of notoriety.
Give demihumans an even break: Hmm. UA included twinked new ability generation methods, but restricted them to humans. Of course, some people aren't happy with this, even though they did get a substantial boost to their class capabilities, and want yet more equality. Once more unto the power creep here, as they give a new optional system for ensuring your various races have appropriate high stats, with a few wiggle dice to allow you to customize for your desired class. Sigh. No thanks.
Don't sell them short: A halfling exclusive class? Hee. How very interesting. It's not even a direct analogue of an existing class, a la the Elven Cavalier. Well, given the huge number of classes only open to humans, someone really ought to redress the balance. So here we have stats for the Halfling Defender. Closely analogous to rangers and paladins for humans, they are fighters with modest nature affecting powers at higher levels, and a duty to defend their communities and the halfling race in general. Really, it's close enough to Rangers mechanically that if they were allowed to become them anyway, this could be represented by a minor tweaking to powers and accessable spells like the dwarven cleric one earlier. In any case, it doesn't look particularly overpowered, so even if it isn't hugely imaginative mechanically, it's another one I'd have no objection to my players trying out.
Entering the Drider's web: Drow get a second article this month, proving that they must already be pretty popular amongst certain freelancers. Lolth is a weird one. Putting promising drow through a test of skill and loyalty, failures are cursed with awesome, and sent back to the prime material to serve as an object lesson, a boogeyman to both the drow and other races in the underdark, and a massive source of fossilized angstium for future generations to mine. :p Makes a certain degree of warped sense, especially when you consider that one of a god's primary pleasures in life is watching mortals do stuff and playing with them like pieces in a game, throwing obstacles in their way to keep things interesting and advance their cause. This is essentially the footnotes of an ecology without the fiction coming first, expanding on their entry in the fiend folio, and detailing exactly how all their capabilities are changed by the transformation. Useful if you want to have one as a major villain, or possibly as a PC, (although that might be a bit tricky to engineer plotwise. ) this does still feel curiously incomplete without the fiction. Goes to show how much of a fixture those ecology articles have become over the years. It also makes a few curious mechanical decisions, and requires you to reference issue 119 to fully understand all the new capabilities given in the article. So overall, it is a somewhat flawed one, that is an interesting read, but could definitely have been handled better.
The role of computers: Tower of Myraglen is the main review this month. It's one of those adventures where you have to explore a massive dungeon complex, find stuff, and complete the quest. So far, so familiar. It does have several distinctive features to recommend it though. Proper stereo sound that also gives you clues as to what's around corners and through doors. Interesting tactical considerations, including the ability to move and fire in different directions independently. Design that encourages you not to kill everything and grab every tiny bit of treasure. Plenty of clues and hidden bits. And like the sound, the graphics also show off the new advances in computer technology if you have an up to date machine. If not, sucks to be you. :p
The rest of the column has the usual assortment of news, game tips and mini-reviews. From a pinball game, to a sex comedy (ahh, leisure suit larry. Of all the deranged series to remind me of.) they cover a pretty wide variety here. It's not just RPG's and wargames anymore. Which makes it a very pleasant diversion for me, with lots of contextual stuff on the wider gaming industry around.
A sorcerer's supplement: New spells for runequest. Another game that had an article here years ago, and nothing since. I know there's at least a couple more to come, but how infrequent will they be? Anyway, here's 12 new spells. From basic temperature control, to reversing aging, this is about 50-50 cool stuff that puts a distinctive spin on the spell idea, and dull stuff that simply converts it from D&D. Overall, a pretty decent article, with several ideas that I'd like to steal and back-convert. (creating the illusion you're wearing clothes? Now there's one you can make plenty of jokes about. ) While they may not be covering as much non D&D stuff in terms of page count as they did in the days of the ARES section, they do seem to be trying to cover a wider variety these days. That's not a bad thing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 129: January 1988
part 2/3
Sage advice is absolutely huge this month. This is what happens when you skip them. You wind up having to binge later on. Everyone knows that aint healthy.
How should you divide experience (Equally amongst everyone, even if they died or were lazy bastiches. Other methods promote competitive play, and may result in bad blood. And we can't possibly risk that in the new safehappy family friendly TSR.)
How much damage does a two handed staff do. (Same as it ever was. This is not your beautiful 3.5)
What is a concealed door (one hidden by having something put in front of it. It's like a secret door, only an amateur production.)
Can a good creature be convinced to join an adventuring party. (Hmm. Can you convince a good creature to tag along with a bunch of random humanoids for some indiscriminate killing and looting. Tough sell. )
How do you get yellow mold spores out (neutralize poison. For even the toughest toxins. )
When can you exchange ability scores (Only during character generation. And really, you should just roll a new character instead. S'not like they're hard to come by in BD&D )
Can crossbows hurl rocks? Can clerics use them if they do (yes, no. We don't want to mess with established game balance. Clerics'll have to stick to slings. )
How long is a round (10 seconds. Doesn't that make waay more sense than AD&D's minute long ones. )
How do you determine how fast you move. (Encumbrance table, muthafucka. Do you use it. Honestly. Skip swears that if he see's one more person ignoring encumbrance, Skip is gonna kneecap that bitch. )
What's the difference between chain mail and plate mail (Do the books not have diagrams? Is Skip gonna have to carve one on your chest?)
What's the difference between different races of elves (None. This is D&D, not AD&D. That would be way too fine a granulation for a quick pick up and play game. )
If elves are such great archers, why don't they get a bonus. (Again, you're thinking of AD&D, not D&D. The two are completely separate games, and we have to keep them so, otherwise Dave Arneson will sue us. )
What is encumbrance (What are you, some kind of computer with no experience of the real human body. Pick stuff up. See how much you can carry before you can't walk. That's encumbrance. )
When you use a wand of magic or enemy detection, who can see the glow. (everyone, including the creature detected. Violence may ensue rapidly)
Which monsters have infravision (Nearly all of them. It really isn't fair on humans, is it.)
Do you turn to stone if you see a medusa using infravision (Yup. No weaseling out that way. )
Can you see undead with infravision (probably. Even cold bodies don't radiate heat quite like the surrounding air. As for the insubstantial ones, it would be entirely in genre for them to artificially chill the air around them )
Can you see invisible things with infravision (no. It's be a bloody sloppy spell that only affected the visual spectrum. That'd be the kind of cut price variant Bargle would sell people. )
Can you use a mirror to look around a corner with infravision ( not unless it's made specially. As infra red is of a longer wavelength, it diffuses into objects more readily, plus the longer the wavelength the lower the resolution of fine detail in general. But enough of real world physics. What place does that have in a D&D game? )
Do character levels equal hit dice for purposes of calculating how something is affected (in most cases. We'll probably think up some arbitrary exceptions at some point.)
Can you copy spells from scrolls into your own book (yes, but this erases the scroll. Conservation of something is at play. Not sure what exactly.)
What's the penalty for using a weapon forbidden to your class (none, you just can't do it. It's like asking out a really hot girl. No matter how much you'd like too, you just can't make that move. And then you watch the bloody jock do it no trouble and you're left wondering why and how. Bitter, Moi? )
What's the highest level (36 for humans. Other races generally have lower limits. )
What's the best saving throw you can have (2. Failure is always an option.)
What does 2 in 6 mean (Are you Dense? Are you retarded or something? I'm the Goddamn Skip Williams. Roll a d6. if you roll a 1 or 2, you succeeded. How much simpler do you need it?)
Why aren't there rules for half-breeds (Again, simplicity. To squeeze the game into 64 pages, you need to leave stuff out)
How many Hp do you regain when you eat (none, this is D&D, not a computer game. )
How do you determine hit points (What is this, the remedial class? What happened to the hard ones about specific spells and social contracts. Skip so does not need this. )
How much food does a pack of iron rations have (A weeks worth. Not a very nice or satisfying weeks worth, though. )
Can you turn a stoned character back (yes, but you'll need a 12th level wizard to help you out. This may not be easy, depending on how rare high level characters are. )
How much Xp are rats worth (1. A good ratcatcher could gain several levels in a year. Don't underestimate your NPC's)
What's the AC of a sprite (5. I can't even be bothered to rant about how dumb you are this time. )
How long does a potion of gaseous form last (same as any other. 7-12 turns. I'm now going to be an idiot, and forget the difference between rounds and turns. Oopsie daisy)
Do area attacks hit automatically (yes. You're doomed. This is why smart teams treat their wizards like artillery)
Which weapons can halflings use (Any that are small enough. It's not some arbitrary absolute restriction like the spellcasters have to deal with. )
How do you run missile fire (Same as melee. If they're in range, shoot. If you hit, roll damage. Skip would be happy to demonstrate using you as a target, because skip is not having a good day. )
Can you restore hit points without magic (You get 1 hp per day of rest back. Getting better from being sliced up takes a lot of work in D&D)
Are holy symbols magic (no, but clerics can't cast spells without them. They're like a catalyst in chemistry. Or a beacon so your god doesn't forget where you are and to grant you spells )
Are creatures that need magic weapons to hit immune to paralysis (not nececarily)
Can you get a benefit from one gauntlet of ogre power (No. If one gets eaten by the washing machine, you might as well throw the other one out)
How many charges do rods have (none. They aren't like those one trick wands or flashy exhaustible staves. Rods can go on and on and on. Yeah baby. Who's the daddy now then? )
What's the encumbrance of a magic item (normally the same as a normal item of the same type)
What's the Xp value for monsters (calculate it using the table. It's easy enough. )
I don't understand why you need to keep track of time ( You're gonna have a tricky time getting on in life then, and get fired from jobs pretty damn often. Knowing who is where doing what when is vital for maintaining a consistent universe. This can not be stressed enough. Write it down, because it's less stress than trying to remember everything everyone has done and intends to do. )
What do you keep when you become undead or lycanthropic (DM's choice. What you don't get is to keep them as a PC. They're a monster now, raaar. )
The dragon's bestiary goes planar. Dean Shomshak points out that the para-elemental planes are seriously lacking in inhabitants. Course, ironically he picks the one that does have several already, including it's own statted out ruler, the paraelemental plane of Ice. I guess it's easier to think of interesting looking and behaving creatures for that than it is for vaccum or ash. And more planar stuff is always welcome.
Shiverbugs are odd looking crystaline creatures that emulate no particular earthly phyla. But if you step on them, they'll rouse the rest of their swarm, and then you'll face death by a dozen chilly nips. Seems like they could still be a hassle at higher level.
Icelings also take their aesthetic cues from Modrons, being three sided crystaline humanoids which can make a chilly situation all the more confusing. Again, they're not hugely aggressive, but that doesn't mean they won't defend themselves. Remember, just because it isn't immediately lethal, doesn't mean you shouldn't stack up on your cold resistance powers before visiting. Nearly everything has cold based blasty powers (that don't do much to each other) and you don't want to fall prey to them, or the more mundane toe losing crap frostbite can cause.
Snowfuries are basically semi-intelligent snowstorms. Hot things make them cranky, so they may be a problem to adventurers intruding in their territory. They can still hurt you if you're immune to cold, so don't think you can just wander around, messing up their environment.
Frigidarch are a third creature using the crystaline ice structure theme. Hexagonal pyramid things with tentacles coming from each side, they are smart, fairly magically capable, and frequently in charge, assuming they can find sentient creatures on the plane to be in charge of. If you're traveling there, finding one and ingratiating yourself into their court could definitely be to your benefit.
Just like the reviews, this is an unusually strong delivery taken as a whole, as it presents a consistent aesthetic for creatures from this plane that is easy to extrapolate upon, to create similar monsters of your own. Since the plane of ice has always been one of the easier ones to design adventures for anyway, this makes it even more tempting to find excuses to get my players to visit. Rather pleasing, that.
The game wizards: Jim Ward continues to reassure us that Greyhawk will still be getting plenty of love under the new regime. Just what kind of love, precisely, is up to you, the reader. After all, we can't fit everything in the new corebook, so what gets cut depends on what you demand least. Even the biggest company in the industry has to worry about commercial concerns such as these, and listen to it's fans to know what to provide them. More evidence that this is a vibrant company again, and hubris has yet to set in, but otherwise a pretty unremarkable little bulletin. Onto the next thing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 129: January 1988
part 3/3
Fiction: The old ways are best by Larry Walker. Oh, now this is very amusing indeed. The derangedly humorous story of a man who's daughter wants to marry a troll, his irritating wife, the trolls father, and his great^8 grandfather. With some inventive descriptions, pithy commentary on human nature, and some interesting ideas in terms of magic that actually feels magical. A highly entertaining tale that still manages to squeeze in a little drama and sense of danger as well. A well above average little story here.
Who's in charge here?: Demographics has never been something D&D has been particularly comfortable with. Here's another attempt at figuring out just how many higher level characters there are around for a particular sized community of normal humans or demihumans. Their answer is that it's an exponential decrease, going up to slightly below name levels for groups of 1,000+. Seems reasonable enough. Beyond those kinds of levels, the really high level characters will be singular, and have agendas that may or may not tie them to a particular community, so you'll want to develop them individually. It is probably a bit too generous with the spellcasting classes, unless you want a fairly high magic setting like mystara where many businesses use minor magics to increase their efficiency. But this kind of ratio'll keep players from rampaging through cities and taking stuff at their whim, which is important. And it remembers to account for demihuman limits and propensities, so it's obvious quite a bit of thought went into it. Not a bad attempt, even if it won't be appropriate for many campaigns.
Armored and dangerous: Star frontiers gets an article covering another thing that really should have been in the game all along. Powered Armor. Allowing you to pile on even more protection and not be slowed down so much. At least, until the batteries run out. And unlike laptops, you can't just find a hotspot and plug in for a few hours during a dangerous mission in deep space. Like computers, you get best value custom building them, and the price can vary hugely depending on what nifty add-ons you give them. Not sure how accessable this would be to most PC's, given the prices to buy and maintain one of these, but it does look like fun. This line still isn't completely dead yet, and as long as fans send stuff in, hopefully they'll keep publishing it.
The role of books: Murder at the war by Mary Monica Pulver is a tale of a murder during an SCA LARP. IC waring and OOC politics collide, and the quirks of the subculture are referenced and punctured with the affectionate eye of someone who is intimately involved with it IRL. Like Bimbos of the death sun, this seems like it would be a good deal of fun to read for anyone involved in the scene.
Agnes day by Lionel Fenn (aka Charles Grant, writing under a pseudonym) gets a decidedly unimpressed review. It tries to be funny, but isn't. Cliched, with a poor plot, it fails to hold together as a story. Learn from his mistakes.
Masterplay by William F Wu is an interesting bit of speculative fiction, positing a world in which duels using wargames become a means of settling legal disputes. This is not a move that pleases everybody, and there's plenty of drama, both on the table and off it. Another interesting combination of interests here, handled well, in a book that is far less implausible than most of these.
Sword and sorceress IV, Edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley is her 4th book of fantasy short stories featuring female protagonists. Writers both well-known and brand new contribute, and her editorial hand keeps them at a consistently high quality.
Tales of the witch world, created by Andre Norton, is not quite as consistently edited as the previous anthology, but it still has several good stories contained within. Some of them may not fit very well within the shared universe, but when you're a young writer trying to get published, you've gotta use the material you've got.
War for the oaks by Emma Bull gets pretty high praise, along with a shout out to the Minneapolis-based writing group that has produced quite a few other published authors. A tale of fae war behind the scenes of the local american music scene, this is more evidence that Changeling:the Dreaming didn't spring from nowhere, and there were plenty of people playing with this kind of modern urban fantasy before White Wolf made a series of hit games involving it. More evidence that writing is more fun when you have a little help from your friends.
Triplet by Timothy Zahn is an interesting combination of sci-fi and fantasy. As a logically explored setting up of a world and metaphysics, it's pretty good. As a story, the pacing of the plot leaves something to be desired. Not his best work.
The marvel-phile: Jeff finally delivers the first part of the victims of Scourge. Marvel attempted to clear house recently, getting rid of a big chunk of their Z-list villains. And on the whole this managed to stick, because no-one liked these guys enough to bring them back. Enforcer. Miracle man. Hate-monger III. Megatak. Melter. Titania. Basilisk. Hammer & Anvil. The Fly. Death Adder. Blue Streak. Wraith. These 13 unfortunates get stats, and very short descriptions here. Just looking at the puns in their names is enough to make me groan. The art direction is pretty interesting as well (Pum as the sound for gunshots? What's up with that? ) Jeff proves he is quite capable of cutting the crap when necessary. Definitely another interesting bit of history, that has had me googling away to find out more info on how this went down, and the aftermath of these plots. Funny that this has had the side effect of increasing my comics knowledge quite a bit. Hopefully there's more of that to come as well, as long as TSR keep the license and carry on putting out these columns.
Role-playing reviews once again gives us a history lesson before getting down to the reviews. This time, it's on world-building, and TSR's initial reluctance to get involved with it. While Tekumel had some cool setting stuff, stuff like Runequest and Harn massively outdid D&D until 1983, when they decided to play catch-up. And really, they've been playing catch-up ever since, and won't really pull ahead for another year or so, when the Forgotten Realms really starts filling up with supplements covering every area in detail. Ken offers a pretty balanced take on this, pointing out both the good aspects and the flaws in TSR and it's competitor's approaches. Very interesting to see the perspective of someone who lived through that era.
GAZ3 The principalities of Glantri is one of the D&D Gazetteers, filling in rather more setting details of the Known World than the old modules did. The whole line is rapidly becoming notable for being much more high magic than any of the AD&D settings, and this one really takes that to the limit, with it's nobility consisting entirely of name+ level wizards and magically powerful creatures such as liches, vampires, immortals in disguise, some of them from other planets. Religion is outlawed, and magic use is common in every strata of society. Bruce and co have great fun building up a setting that is simultaneously gonzo and well considered, making the ridiculous commonplace, and filling the place with plot hooks. The writing is good, there's plenty of cool new crunch to differentiate your wizards in a MU centric campaign set there, and it makes good use of D&D's rules quirks and implied tropes. You can have a lot of fun there.
The Forgotten Realms campaign set gets an even more comprehensive review, with plenty more comparing and contrasting with the other D&D settings, and even other companies stuff. Each of the booklets is examined individually, and most of it comes off pretty well. Ken probably has more caveats with this than he did with the Glantri stuff, but it's still entirely serviceable as a core product, giving more than enough detail to get going, while still leaving plenty of room for future books to fill in more specific bits in detail.
We also get several significant micro-reviews. Whimsy Cards are a creation of Mark Rein·Hagen (damn that pretentious splodge, it's a nightmare to find on a keyboard.) and Jonathan Tweet. Pull one out whenever you need a random plot twist. How very amusing. Nice to see those two names who'll go on to bigger things showing up now. Warhammer 40k has also just been released. Ken gets rather ranty about this one, liking the visuals, and lots of the setting elements but being really frustrated that there isn't an RPG based upon it. You're gonna have a Loooooooooooooooooong wait there mate.
Overall, this has been one of the most entertaining review columns ever, both in terms of critical depth, significant products covered, and the way it was done being entertaining reading in itself. We're definitely into the magazine's golden years now as far as reviews are concerned, with books, computers and RPG's all getting plenty of well thought out attention. How very pleasing.
Dragonmirth has lots of food related jokes. Snarf runs over another innocent creature. Wormy is missing.
The last word: Hee. Comedy central continues with this little feature, which is exactly what it sounds like. Did you suspect your immanent death? The kind of thing we see forum threads on on a regular basis, and is always good for a laugh or two. Another amusing little experiment by Roger, including things like this to keep the format getting too predictable. Keep it up.
One of those issues with a somewhat iffy themed section, but the rest of it is pretty good. Of particular note is the quality of the reviews, which have improved massively over recent years. While the quality of the RPG articles is as scattershot as it has been recently, they really are getting the hang of assessing other companies works in an informative, interesting, and often humorous manner. This does result in a more open feeling magazine, and if they maintain or improve on this showing over the next decade or so, before they get cut out, they'll definitely contribute quite a bit more to my overall enjoyment of this journey, and give me plenty more things that I want to investigate at some point in the future. Course, the page count for this is probably coming out of the same bit that would otherwise be used for non TSR RPG's, so it's not all good, but as long as they provide something enjoyable, I'm not complaining too much.
Dragon Magazine Issue 130: February 1988
part 1/3
112 pages. Back to familiar topics here. In 1984, it was Clerics who not only got two specials, but also got godly stuff nearly every issue. Now it's wizards turn, with their regular arcane lore columns being added too further, with a whole batch of magical articles. Couldn't we have some more mundane plot hooks instead? Ironically, that is exactly what Roger's editorial is about, pointing out some of the stranger and more dramatic things that have happened in recent history. He also points out that in some ways, technology has already overtaken sci-fi, and this is only going to get more extreme in the future, given the breakneck rate computers are progressing. And with that interesting little set of contrasts setting the scene, let's launch off into another massive issue, explore it's outer limits.
In this issue:
Letters: Another letter asking for more coverage of minis. Roger replies that they are seriously considering this, since quite a few people do seem to want it. Keep sending in suggestions, to help us refine the format to a form that'll please the greatest number of people.
A letter asking how you get your games published. Hee. We're always getting that one. And we have to break the hearts of most of the people asking it. Better us do so than you self-publishing and facing the horror of absolute public indifference.
A letter changing their recent format change. They've finally decided to start calling a magazine a magazine, not a "monthly adventure role-playing aid" We also get some questions on fonts used, which they duely answer.
Some more layout questions and praise. All complements and criticism on this go to Roger Raupp.
A letter from someone having problems finding people to play with. Oh, woe, etc etc.
Forum: Christopher Earley introduces a more complicated new system for determining how likely magic-users are to learn a new spell, based on intelligence, level, and the level of the spell being examined. Yawn.
Brent Silvis debates the D&D handling on PC's becoming lycanthropes, where they seem to adapt to their new condition straight away, and would prefer to remain that way with no angst at all. This doesn't seem right, especially when their player would prefer to retain control of them. Roll on Ravenloft.
Kelly Calabro is one of the people who thinks getting rid of the illusionist entirely and merging their spells with wizards is a damn good idea.
David Carl Argall continues to be a regular contributor. He continues the rather amusing debate on the nature and frequency of male harpies. You may of course choose any of these explanations for your game.
Tom Brincefield thinks that when the characters get to higher level, you ought to change the enemies, instead of just having them face more. Can't we do a bit of both?
Get the most from your magic: Tactical advice for spellcasters. Haven't had that in a while. And we haven't had many of the specific bits of advice this article gives us before at all, which is very good. Particular attention is paid to spells which have long-lasting effects. Buff yourself up with a load of those as preparation, and then rememorize your spells, and you are at a substantial advantage compared to someone who just walks into dungeons with a load of magic missiles and fireballs. (which lest we forget, are frequently unintentional suicide in enclosed spaces) Ethics go out the window, as they encourage you to charm all your companions just in case to ensure their loyalty, polymorph things liberally and exploit the hell out of this, and raise the corpses of your fallen foes to use against the next bunch of opposition. This is how you make people really dread your spellcaster. Just be grateful that personal buff spells aren't too common yet. Apart from stoneskin and contingency, you don't have to worry too much about tracking endlessly overlapping, long lasting stacking buffs, even if you wanted too. This is definitely one for players who play to win, and have to deal with GM's that are similarly ruthless, but have no objection to their players exploiting every little rules quirk for maximum personal advantage. Or to be less diplomatic, this is total twink fodder, likely to polarize the readerbase. Still, if it results in flamewars, that means more fun for me. Definitely an interesting decision for Roger to put this one first.
Arcane Lore: Len Carpenter takes the reins of this column for the second time in a row. And once again, they are ensuring that it's not just wizards that get the cool toys. This one is all about figuring out which of the new spells detailed in Oriental Adventures are suitable for converting back into standard cleric and wizard ones. Some of them are culturally inappropriate, and should be left out or modified to reflect those differences, while others are less thematicly appropriate, and should be left out or increased in level to ensure that the oriental classes have their own niche and special strengths. So here's several pages of lists, which do exactly that. Seems a reasonable enough premise, and if my characters head east and want to learn the cool new spells from the natives, this seems like a good set of guidelines, so I don't have to make up my own. Perfectly decent, but not hugely interesting.
From the creators of Dragonlance comes the Darksword trilogy! Honestly, can't you tell a story in less than three books? It's just a marketing strategy anyway. I'll bet that in terms of total length they come to considerably less than War and Peace. Tolkien's original publishers have a lot to answer for.
Hold onto your illusions!: Illusion adjudication. One of the forum's biggest topics of late. Looks like we have a second article springing from that little controversy in quick succession. Thankfully it takes a completely different tack than the one in issue 128. Where that was all about chances of resisting, this is more about just what images illusions can produce, how they do it, and your chances of spotting an error which would lead you to try and save. The further you try to create things that have multiple complicated moving parts, skills you don't know, or of things you haven't seen, the more likely there are to be obvious errors, and the bigger the bonuses they get to save. Seems fairly logical, but like the previous one, also pretty dull, particularly where it gets statistical. Let's hope there's at least one more interesting article in this themed section. What there isn't is the article referred too at the end of this article. (checking ahead, it appears in the next issue) Sloppy editing there Roger.
Dragon Magazine Issue 130: February 1988
part 2/3
The faces of magic: This is more like it. A cool bit of fiction, and a guide to mimicking the identities and abilities of other classes by using wizard spells. Given the dangers they face, some pretty handy advice. After all, if you go around advertising your wizardliness, you'll be the first target of any tactically inclined enemy party, for low HP and high damage output means you should be permitted as few actions as possible. It's also a good demonstration of just how redundant thieves can become after the first few levels, with magic able to duplicate most of their skills, often more reliably as well. There's more than enough spell overlap to imitate clerics as well, it's only fighter that may be a problem, and if you're multi-classed, even that disappears easily enough. Like the tactical advice earlier, this is a strong encouragement to use your powers sneakily, twisting them to ends above and beyond what is intended. It's also a good demonstration of the power of bluffing. With the right illusions, you can pretend to be far more powerful than you are, and given that those spells do actually exist, it wouldn't be too implausible if you actually did them. I approve. Subverting archetypes and applying powers creatively is a good thing in my book.
Better living through Alchemy: Oh, here we go again. What is this, the 4th time they've tried to give us alchemist characters? (Checks, yup, issue 2, 45, & 49, and Roger got his external references wrong again. :Shakes head and sighs: ) Guess like Witches, they think that 7 years is a long enough gap to validly revisit this topic.) Curiously though, the writer does not draw from the previous versions in the specifics of the design, despite having been a reader and contributer back then. And it is probably an improvement over them in terms of design rigour and formatting. However, they are still grossly underpowered when compared to standard wizards and priests, while also having higher XP costs, and far more inconvenient material requirements to utilize their powers. They really aren't competitive as PC's, so unless you ban regular spellcasters and use them to play a gritty game where all magic requires substantial preparation and ritual of some kind or another, they won't get much use. I do wonder why they bother sometimes, knowing this.
Fiction: Shark-killer by Carol Severance. Off to polynesian tribal territory for this little tale of a disgraced warrior, the sorceress who wants to steal her lifeforce, the little girl who wants to learn from her, and the enemy warriors who don't give a crap and will just massacre the village if they get a chance. You've already betrayed one set of vows. Why not break another? People will benefit if you do so. A nice little morality play here, with hard choices and a bittersweet ending. Seems closer to Runequest than D&D in it's handling of magic. A fairly enjoyable read.
The game wizards: This month, they consider how to rework the magic system for second edition. Many people still want a spell point system, but they aint gonna get it. We're sticking with the slot based method, and that's final. That does not mean we aren't making some fairly substantial improvements though, both in clarity of writing and organization, and actual alterations. Quite a few spells need moving from one school to another to better fit their concepts, several schools need adding too, especially in terms of high level spells to make sure all the specialists are viable, cantrips are out again, and we're stripping back on silly fluff details. Once again we see how they are approaching this with a cautious and logical tone, trying to please as many people as possible, and only change things when they really have too. After all, we mustn't alienate our fanbase. And so we get more historical context, that tells us much the same info as the previous few installments. Whether you agree with the changes 2nd ed made or not, I think we can be fairly clear about the designers intentions.
The dragon's bestiary gives us more out of date gamma world stuff this month. Whirrzlers are essentially the Peahats from the Zelda games, (which of course started recently, so it's quite possible this is a direct rip-off) bushy plants that fly by rotating their petals. They'll slice you up, and then settle on your corpse, use it for nutrients. Makes sense to me. One of gamma world's less gonzo elements, ironically. A not too impressive single-pager.
Miniatures in wonderland: From a single pager, to a half-pager. They declare their intention to make this years conventions the biggest miniature gaming events yet. Bring in your armies, play in battles of a scale impossible to do at home. We need you to make this happen! Interesting. Hopefully they'll report on the success of this endeavour afterwards as well, so I can see how it went.
Keeping a good watch: Top Secret's article this month is a interesting little bit of gadgetry. Watches are useful for more than just telling the time. Because so many people wear them on an everyday basis, they can be easily overlooked in a search. You can put quite a few different types of gadgetry in them, and then use them to gain a substantial tactical advantage. Garrotes, hidden compartments, swiss army knives, radio transmitters and recievers, X-rays and radiation counters, magnifying glasses and microreaders. It's amazing what you can fit into such a tiny space. Having something like this could definitely save your life in a tight spot. This is also a case where the advancement of RL technology has outstripped the imagination of this writer. A watch that has all the utility of a mobile phone, including full filming capability with several gigs of interchangable memory using micro SD cards would not be beyond the bounds of real life tech these days. Another reminder that we live in an age of wonders, and shouldn't hesitate to buy cool things in reality. You too can be a swiss army knife of miniaturized utility devices for every occasion, and be the envy of all your friends. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Dungeon Etiquette: Another entertaining little piece here. When one of your players doesn't show up, has to leave early, or falls asleep mid-game, what should you do to their character? There are some very wrong ways you can handle this, like the DM who automatically killed anyone who had the temerity to leave before the game was properly over. (and also liked running marathon sessions to 4 in the morning. Definite creepiest gamer candidate there.) You can assume they automatically vanish, and reappear next session, which can hurt the immersion and internal consistency of the game. You can run them as an NPC, which means they might behave in a way the player doesn't want or wind up getting killed while they aren't there. You can give the player a good prodding, and hope they aren't the cranky sort when woken unexpectedly. Similarly, if characters are killed, do you allow the players to stick around and advise the remaining ones, possibly causing some metagame info to be passed on? How do you deal with outbreaks of puns and digressive storytelling? Eating while gaming? Having the TV or music on in the background? Cheating bastards? Another topic that they haven't covered in detail before, and which could be the source of large amounts of debate. What is perfectly reasonable to one person is unbearably pedantic and strict to another. In any case this made for highly entertaining reading, steeped as it is in the worst case scenarios for these situations, as delivered by someone who seems to have been there personally. I approve, and hopefully we'll see some responses to this in the forum in future months.
Dragon Magazine Issue 130: February 1988
part 3/3
The oriental sea: Looks like OA is going to be getting at least one article most issues for the forseeable future. This time, the conversions are going in the usual direction, giving us info on something that's already had it's western counterparts covered in a previous issue. Ships. Although they might not do as much open ocean sailing, China has no shortage of massive rivers to traverse, and many people make a living on these waterways. So here's the stats for 14 more ship types, and some of the additional hazards they are likely to face in the east like typhoon dragons and cranky nature spirits. One of those articles that isn't likely to be useful often, but when it is, it'll be very handy. One of the great things about having decades of this magazine to draw upon is that it does give you a safety net to try different stuff when your players suggest unusual courses of action, without having to make rules up for it wholecloth. Once again, I have no objection to this at all.
If looks could kill: Gaze attacks also get another look at, 7 years later. (our last article on this one was way back in issue 50.) And pleasingly, this writer does not try and step on Lew's shoes, instead examining the physics behind them as much as their adjudication. This is a bit of a pain, as many of the monsters with them work differently on a case by case basis. Some are consciously controllable, some shouldn't be, and some are more spell-like abilities than actual gaze attacks. It also addresses the tricky issue of mating when you can't look directly at each other. ;) Thankfully, we already have a solution for this, taken from the ecology of the Basikisk. (issue 81) Nictating Membranes! (resists urge to filk) I must say, I would prefer my medusae a little more tragic and less in control, and frankly, this article goes on a little longer than the topic really deserves. But I do have to respect it for it's comprehensiveness of research and logical attitude, even if it doesn't quite hold my interest.
The marvel-phile: Jeff finishes serving up justice, (pum pum pum) finding the time to level a cheap shot at Rogar of Mooria's hairline in retaliation for the editing job on his work. We are reminded that before the internet and gigabytes of storage space on computers, Jeff actually had to physically chase down all these issues that these minor villains appeared in to do his research. Quite a lot of effort for a few pages writing. So here we have Bird-man II (powersuit bogaloo), Turner D Century, Cheetah, Commander Kracken, Cyclone, Firebrand, Grappler, Hijacker, Jaguar, Letha, Mind-Wave, Mirage I, Rapier, Ringer, Shellshock, Steeplejack II (more powersuit inheritance going on here), and Vamp. None of them hugely impressive individually, and many of them lacking any powers at all after their humiliating defeats at the hands of various heroes, when all 17 of them were gathered in one bar, inverse ninja syndrome made them easy meat for Scourge. Still, even if they themselves are gone for good, someone else could take up their super-gadgets and start the cycle again. Gotta keep the copyright on those names. We also get stats for Scourge, although since he may well be more than one person, they aren't strictly reliable. Jeff is driven to madness trying to find 17 different ways of saying the villains died in the same way, at the same place, which only adds to the entertainment this issue. And so this rather distinctive chapter of their history draws to a close. At least .......... Until Scourge serves justice again!!!! Ahahahahaha!!!!!! Pum.
The role of computers is sequelariffic this month. Wizardry IV gets an extensive bit of writing which is technically not a review, but that's just because they don't think they've got far enough yet. So a proper review will show up in a month or two. They still give plenty of detail on the plot and gameplay. This time, you're the bad guy, and you have to foil the adventurers and escape the ghost of your adversary. Iiinteresting. I can definitely see the fun in that, especially as it introduces a whole bunch of clever effects, such as adversaries that rest and regain powers in the same way that you do, and a keylogger that determines how many actions you've performed so far. (and how many you have left) Nice to see this series not only still going, but experimenting with it's playstyle as well.
Phantasie III is our main actual review. A more conventional continuation of the series, you have to assemble the usual group of reprobates from the classes and races available, and can import characters from the previous two games if you choose. In addition to the usual hit point system, they also have a hit location one, and your characters can have their various limbs broken, or even severed entirely. Getting new ones is not easy, and so the usual advice about saving frequently, and not being ashamed to surrender or run away when faced with superior opponents applies. Another tricky epic that you need both patience and wit to complete.
Sanxion is a shoot-em-up combining 2d and 3d perspectives. You'll have to practice your flying and shooting, because killing every alien ship and not being hit will not be easy.
We also get the usual selection of hints, and an amusing epilogue that hints at gamer stupidity in the recent past. Please don't call them at their home address anymore, especially at odd hours in the morning. They're only a normal family, not some corporation. Hee. Shouldn't have given it out then. Most of our freelancers have the sense to get their fanmail forwarded from the TSR Offices. Another entertaining and quirky entry in this series.
Dragonmirth does disturbing and grimdark. Snarf continues to suffer weird stuff unexpectedly. Wormy once again goes back to a plotline we haven't heard anything on in years.
A rather advert heavy issue. Despite it's increased size, it actually had less game material than most of the recent issues. It also had another case of the special themed material being of substantially lower average quality than the rest of the material. Roger really ought to wait a little longer, make sure they have enough good stuff before doing them, instead of trying to squeeze one into most issues. The rest of the issue is rather more entertaining, with an above average amount of stuff I can see myself using at some point. But it's obvious by now that Roger's run is going to have a lot more dramatic month by month fluctuations in quality and usability than Kim's did. Will next issue be a good one, or a bad one? I'm just as unsure as you are. Lets keep going. The sooner we bypass the hazards and kill the monsters, the sooner we get the treasure.
Dragon Magazine Issue 131: March 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Roger takes the time to reminisce about his old FGLS. Back in those days, having one of those was essential is you wanted to have any idea what books were worth getting, and successfully get hold of them. If they did things right, they also served as a social centre, for gamers to meet each other, form groups, and possibly even play in the shop. A bad one, on the other hand, could cut off the air supply to the scene in an entire town, slowly killing it. Appreciate your FGLS if you have one, and let them know you do. If you're a regular, they'll return the goodwill. And then we all wind up a little happier. But enough moral messaging. We've got some killing and taking of stuff to do. And this month's theme is the underdark, so there's a lot of things to get through. You snooze, you lose. Last one out gets their brain eaten! :p
In this issue:
Warhammer 40,000! The very first companion volume, the book of the astronomicon. Rejoice, for the emperor is generous. Nice to see the core of the game hasn't changed.
Letters: Some pedantry over the nature and numbers of undead and lycanthropes. Myths are inconsistent, you should know that. We defend the decisions we made adapting from the sources we have.
A letter asking them if they plan to do a Dragonlance themed chess set. They don't, but it's not a terrible idea, is it?
How many gamers does it take to change a lightbulb? 5. 1 to steal the lightbulb. 1 to figure out how it works, 1 to absorb aggro from the socket while changing it, and 1 to flick the switch. Oh, and one to sing about it and encourage everyone else to do their best. ;) Shouldn't this belong in next month's issue? Guess Roger needed to fill in a couple of lines, and this was the closest thing to hand.
Forum: Barbara Curtis gives us yet another alternate ecology of the Harpy. This is starting to get silly. Still highly entertaining though. How long can they keep this up for?
Timothy Makinson and Daryl Short have more comments about Banded Mail, and other nonexistant forms of armour. Just because it doesn't exist in reality, doesn't mean it shouldn't in game.
Matt Wright doesn't think that assassins are the problem, it's the people that are attracted to them. If you get rid of that class, they'll just play something else equally annoying, like kender, malkavians and assamites. Yeah, lets fob them off on White wolf, so they have to deal with them instead of us. Muahahahaha!
Ed Friedlander is back, talking about the medical condition that probably is the origin of real world vampire and werewolf myths. Interesting.
David Carl Argall is also contributing again, pointing out all the ways D&D is actually biased towards good. Funny how different people can interpret the same writings in such different ways.
Twilight 2000, weapons of the world. Someone's been sketching from a photograph for this advert.
The role of books: Forging the darksword by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman is of course the first book of their new trilogy, advertised last issue. Darker than their Dragonlance work, it contains surprisingly hard scientific principles applied to the workings of their magic, and thoughts about their logical concequences on the culture. Seems like they've taken a leaf from Lyndon Hardy's book. Which sounds quite appealing, actually. Can anyone else give their opinions on these?
The wizard of 4th street by Simon Hawke doesn't impress the reviewer too much. Drawing liberally from arthurian myth, it then fails to characterize or integrate the mythical characters very well. Only his inventive attitude towards magic and the sparky protagonists save it from being a loss. Rent rather than buy.
The Crown jewels by Walter Jon Williams is a space opera crime caper book. The protagonist has extravagant tastes, and grand larceny is the only way he can sustain them. Operatic in both senses of the word, it's fun to read, but would be tricky to emulate. Will you take your chances at the opera tonight?
Time pressure by Spider Robinson also gets a somewhat negative review, as it's character development is rather flawed, with the author's voice poking through, making the characters act in ways that aren't consistent with their own experiences, and doing things purely because the plot demands it. The comic elements of the book are rather more sucessfull, with plenty of wit, punnery, and amusing observations on the state of the world. Become a stand-up comedian instead of a novelist.
The first named by Jonathan Wylie is a surprisingly traditional bit of no frills high fantasy. While nothing special, the reviewer finds it refreshing in this era of endless formulaic trilogies. Remember, you imitate the spirit, not the letter if you want to be true to your inspirations.
Shadowspawn by Andrew J Offutt is a tale set in the Thieves World setting. The main character has appeared in several short stories in previous anthologies, and now gets his own full book. He's left the city of sanctuary to start a new, hopefully more respectable life elsewhere. But of course, it's not going to be that simple. A fun swashbuckling yarn, full of useful tricks every thief should learn.
Oh dear god. They also review some filk tapes, for some reason. Someone really needs to suffer for this, and I hope it's not going to be my ears. Heralds, Harpers & Havoc was written by Mercedes Lackey about her own stories, and the songs are sung by various people. Horse-tamers dughter is by Julia Ecklar, and the songs cover all manner of stories with female protagonists. If you want to find out more, here's where to write too. Okay then. :shivers: Another entertaining, if slightly worrying broadening of their remit here.
Even Ghostbusters has three supplements out now. They're lying when they say ghostbusting is big bucks by the way. That's just to sucker you in. ;)
Illusory solutions: As I noted last month, this should have been there, but presumably last minute reorganizations caused it to be cut. Oh well, better late than never. Once again, the writer tries to regulate the power of illusionists by granting their opponents saving throw bonuses if they try and imitate things wildly above their experience level. No longer can an 6th level illusionist convince an 18th level wizard that he is their superior with a bit of creative spellcasting and good roleplaying. And for a third time, we have a new way of handling this process. This is a quite substantial nerf to what is already one of the less powerful classes. Let's hope this is the last of these for a few years, and people are satisfied by at least one of the explanations. This is no fun at all.
Fantasy first class: What. People are still playing PbM games when they now have the technology for basic MMO's? I guess the rolling out of progress is usually slower than you expect, and there are always going to be a few holdouts. So here's another overview of an epic multi-player game that'll take you over a year to complete, and eat up quite substantial amounts of money each month playing it. Alamaze is a fantasy strategy game, where you have to build up armies, explore the map, spy on the other players, and battle them for victory. There can be only one winner! The usual selections of classes and races are available, both battle and diplomacy are important, and you have to do lots of resource management if you want to win. There are still a few bugs, but the programmer is proving pretty willing to fix them when they are pointed out. A review that is pretty much completely useless to me now, but still reveals a little more about the current trends in gaming and design. And they keep up their strong standards in terms of reviewing style. So this becomes a pleasant diversion rather than a total waste of time.
To the center of the Oerth: Mmm. Welcome to the start of the underdark special. The logical extension of having all those underground dungeons everywhere. Link them up into one endless, miles deep uberdungeon that you could spend years exploring and only see a fraction of. And the first thing they do is give us some sample areas, followed up by rather old skool random tables and design advice. Well, you can't be expected to map up miles of tunnels all by yourself, can you? This is the kind of thing that is pretty much instantly useful for any game, and is another definite sign of progress on the worldbuilding side as well. D&D's implied settings just got a bit more solid and a lot nastier. I squee in delight. You goin down, adventurers. Oh yeeeeeaaaaaaah. Just remember, choose your targets wisely. Going down on Drow might work. Going down on aboleths ..... really doesn't bear thinking about. Caution and keeping track of your supplies and escape routes is, as ever, strongly recommended. Because getting lost and winding up dying from starvation rather than actual enemies is not a good way to go. A pretty darn awesome way to kick off this themed section. What lies beneath YOUR city, just waiting to be unearthed?
Renegade legion BLOOD & STEEL! Now that's an attention grabbing advert for you.
Awesome! The first issue of Dragon I ever read! Telerie Windyarm in skimpy nightclothes! The Ecology of the Aboleth! The Hook Horror!
I should have told my ass to get out then!
Dragon Magazine Issue 131: March 1988
part 2/3
The svirfneblin point of view: It's been a while since we had one of these articles. Yay for new PC races. One of the more powerful options, they have to be given the power and unpleasantness of most of their neighbours. This leads to an excellent example of good not nececerally being peaceful or trusting, and their gnomish love of practical jokes is twisted into a decidedly lethal form, focussed against their racial enemies. You've gotta be ruthless and closely co-operative to survive when faced with so many powerful, smart and decidedly diabolical neighbours, especially when you have a low birthrate, so you can't afford to be cavalier with the lives of your fellows. A fairly decent piece that takes care to hit all the various class and race interaction checkboxes. Not brilliant, but not too bad either.
The ecology of the aboleth: Speak of the devil. It's the creepy fish things that are born with all the memories of their parents and transform your skin into a transparent slimy membrane. How's that for idiosyncratic powers. Like sahuguin, the fact that they are aquatic and underground based means you can justify them having massive empires that dominate huge areas of the world, and the only reason people don't realize how hopeless their situation is is because we're beneath their notice. And this ecology does exactly that, creating an entire hierarchy of even more scary aboleth subraces, right up to the Grand Aboleth, the most powerful one on the planet, with it's city sized entourage of lesser aboleths and slaves easily a decent match for demon princes, demigods, and maxed out parties of adventurers. Like the order of the dragon article in issue 110, this turns what was previously a singular fairly badass monster into a social even more badass society of monsters that make suitable adversaries for an epic campaign spanning years. If you wanna be a big hero, you've really got to step up your game, because once again, this article shows just how massive and challenging you can make the opposition. And so this themed section continues to kick ass.
Lords & legends: Two original characters are introduced here this time round. Both of them are dwarves, and both of them have forumite namesakes around these days :waves:
Kordan Badaxe is a blue-eyed boy with twin returning magical axes. He's kicked the ass of many a giant, and freed slaves to earn his name.
Gnarly Bones is an outcast dwarf, who's lost his beard. How very tragic. He's also had a pretty eventful life, going from hedonistic outcast, to responsible leader, with occasional relapses. A good demonstration of just how different you can make two characters, despite them being the same class, race and level. This is considerably better than their usual fare of twinked out literary adaptions. Now that is an unexpected further benefit of this theme.
The ecology of the Hook Horror: How nice. A second of these articles in one issue. This one hews closer to the conventional ecology format, once again bringing in a story involving the guild of naturalists. Hook horrors aren't a world threatening problem, since they're essentially just humanoid crab thingies that don't even have proper manipulators to build stuff with. But as a part of the underground ecosystem, they have a fairly solid niche, eating fungi, climbing from cavern to cavern as they exhaust supplies in one area, steering clear of big cities full of drow and the like, and serving as vectors for disease of all kinds. So yeah, plenty of actual ecological info here, as they go into plenty of detail on it's lifecycle and relationship with other creatures. Remember, these caverns are living, growing places with their own food chains, even if the bottom layer is fungi that grow from geothermal vents and magical radiation. Think about that when designing your own campaign. Going somewhere and wiping out it's inhabitants will have knock-on consequences in all the neighbouring regions. This is a good way of reminding us of that without getting into heavyhanded preachy windbaggery. Once again, they've really served up the goods, in both fluff and crunch.
The chasm bridge: An adventure? In Dragon magazine? Surely you jest. They've all been sent off to Dungeon, to be with their own kind. Nope. This seems to be on the level. I wasn't expecting that. I wonder if they'll put any more in. Or is this just a way of whetting our appetite and getting people who only buy Dragon to diversify, boost their overall sales? Anyway, this is an interesting little 8-pager, joining in with the underdark theme. Intended for a team of level 4-6th level adventurers, but fairly easily adaptable to higher or lower level ones, this is more a single encounter than a full-on module, but it's a lot more detailed than the ones in the past, with lots of attention paid to backstory, roleplaying of the various creatures, and their combat tactics for when things get ugly. It can be a one-shot encounter, or if the PC's go spelunking regularly, it can become a regular crossroads full of recurring NPC's. Once again, they've made this section highly accessable in terms of quick plug-in and playability. You can get a lot out of this. And so we draw to the end of one of the most impressive, broadranging, and widely applicable themed sections the magazine has ever done. Roger's really rolled a natural 20 this time.
TSR Previews is back! Bout time. Of all the silly things to cut. What was the logic behind that? Since they've been away for a while, they fill us in on what came last month, as well as this month and next.
February sees Castle Greyhawk. Explore the Hil-arious dungeon below the titular castle of the original campaign world. Shoulda saved this one for April.
We're also getting one of the bits of rehash several people have asked for. The Art of Dragon magazine reprints lots of the best pictures, plus 4 of the short stories as well. A chance for the usual suspects to make some more money from their art.
In solo gamebooks, we have Marvel gamebook no 8: Guilt by Association. Daredevil has to balance his day and night jobs do-gooding if he wants to make the maximum impact on the criminal population of hell's kitchen.
And finally, we have The crystal shard, by R.A Salvadore. Say hello to Wulfgar and his sidekick Drizzt. Soon the billing positions will be reversed. Just you wait.
In March, our D&D product is The elves of Alfheim. Another part of the Known World gets filled in, another formerly monolithic class/race gets several new variants. Cool.
AD&D is still Forgotten Realms heavy, with FR3: Empires of the sands. Head south to the lands of Amn, Tethyr and Calimshan. The ones that are going to seem rather redundant once Al-Qadim appears as it's own gameline.
The Dragonlance chronicles get compiled into a single book. Probably cheaper than buying them individually, if you're curious, this is the way to go.
In our solo gamebook lines, we have Shadow over Nordmaar, AD&D adventure book 16. They get increasingly formulaic in their descriptions of these.
Finally, we have The demon hand, Greyhawke (sic) adventure 5. Rose Estes continues spinning tales which will take the world ever further from Gary's conception of it.
Sage advice: Will a monster join a party if asked (We had this one last time. As ever, proper application of common sense based on the monster's intelligence, personality, and situation will determine under what conditions it will do so, and if they will stick to any bargains they make. Smart adventurers should always be ready for treachery.)
Can you change a captured monsters alignment. (Possible, but not easy. Remember, you catch more flies with a little sugar than with a whole vatfull of vinegar. )
How do you determine effective HD of monsters with only hp listed (divide by 4.5, unless stated otherwise)
Where are psionics explained (In AD&D, not D&D. )
What weapons work on ochre jellies (none. You'll have to blast them. If you don't have a wizard, torches and flaming oil'll do the job as well. )
How do you determine if a gray ooze destroys your weapon (Roll to save vs acid )
What is a magical creature ( Complicated business. It's just an excuse so really powerfull creatures can't be beaten by some weak thing that's immune to nonmagical attacks. )
How do you fight a phase spider without magical aid (Win initiative, then hold your action. Smack it when it appears. Zelda is as ever, a good source of visual demonstration )
Do giants get strength bonuses. (Not normally. PC's are special, everyone else is just abstracted)
What missiles can giants catch (anything big and non pointy. )
Can monsters use magic items (That is so broad a question as to be meaningless. Some can, some can't)
Can monsters get weapon specialization (not unless they have class levels)
Can a spellcaster exceed their normal spell limit by eating obliviax. (Yes, if they make the save. There's a potentialy lucrative cultivation industry in there for enterprising adventurers. )
Do draconians count as persons, or giant class monsters (yes and no)
How many eggs do dragons lay at once (take the max number appearing, and subtract 2. Easy enough. )
What is the mind flayers mind blast (same as the psionic power)
Where is the info on 0 level demihumans (There are none. They might not have the same limits of advancement as humans, but their baseline of badass is considerably higher. )
Gold dragons can polymorph themselves without harm? (Oh yes. They are rather badass)
What does molecular attraction do (Oops. Our bad. That should be molecular agitation. Duergar are pyromaniacs, not cave climbing geckos. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 131: March 1988
part 3/3
The game wizards: Doug Niles returns to give us some feedback on the reception of Top Secret/S.I . Choosing to make a redesign that big was a stressful decision, with a lot to lose. Thankfully for him, the number of people who've written in are 5 to 1 in favour of the changes, so it's sigh of relief time. This pretty good showing also means that they get to go ahead with a whole bunch of supplements, adding on lots more crunchy stuff, as is their wont. Guess we'll also be seeing articles around for another few years then. Another chirpily optimistic little article in this series then. Just how much of that optimism is real, and how much of it is a show to boost sales, on the other hand, is less certain. Should I be a little less suspicious? Better safe than sorry.
Role-playing reviews goes sci-fi. There's certainly been no shortage of sci-fi games, although they've never been a serious competitor for fantasy's supremacy. You have plenty of choice between hard sci-fi universes, and ones that are basically just fantasy with rayguns and spaceships instead of wands and dragons. It would make sense to review a wide spectrum of games, so people can make an informed choice as to what they want to buy. So that's exactly what they're going to do.
The star wars RPG by West End Games, as you would expect, falls firmly on the side of fast paced action. With a simple multiple action mechanic that allows high power heroes to do quite a few cool things in a single round, character templates that allow you to get through character generation and into the action quickly, and force points giving everyone the chance to push themselves for that extra edge in a pinch, it certainly seems to be aiming for fast paced cinematics like the movies, which is definitely a good thing. The work of familiar names Greg Costikyan and Bill Slavicsek, this is one that may be defunct, but still gets plenty of positive mentions on forums, which is definitely a good indicator of it's quality. Let's hear your tales of playing with this.
Traveller 2300, on the other hand, takes the opposite tack. It retains the same gritty atmosphere, with a well developed lengthy character generation process that really defines your past, but has no system for advancement beyond that; but puts it in a setting that's rather closer to home than the previous edition. Earth is just recovering from WWIII, and we're starting to extend out into space. The reviewer doesn't hesitate to point out the flaws in the system and presentation. The adventure guidelines are rather sketchy, not much help to novice GM's. Ship combat is exceedingly brutal, with one mistake spelling a TPK for the whole party. And of course, still no advancement system. No getting away from it. It may have been innovative a decade ago, but it's all starting to seem a bit dated now. You can see why they slid into obsolescence and went out of print for years.
Battletech is an interesting fish. It's basically a mech fighting boardgame, with the rules for roleplaying the pilots and doing human level stuff tacked on afterwards in a supplement. Unsurprisingly, it's very combat focussed, and also has plenty of focus on the stats needed to design, build and repair your mech, making support characters invaluable. Certainly seems distinctive, even if the ground level stuff doesn't quite hold up as a game in it's own right. Guess it depends if you like that kind of stuff.
The role of computers: A rather snarky editorial here, as they defend their preferences for some computer systems over others. This isn't tribalism, it's rooted in years of playing with and reviewing games on all systems, and really getting to know their capabilities and idiosyncracies. Some of them are simply objectively better than others. And some are definitely, statistically more pirated than others. Don't presume you know better than us. Ahh, joy. I do love a good rant, and this is about as good as we've got from the official writers since Gary left. Don't be afraid to defend and justify your position in the face of criticism.
The legacy of the ancients is our main review. Engage in a world-hopping adventure to retrieve and eliminate a world destroying macguffin. Explore the galactic museum, and find the warp points to the various other worlds in the game, and then travel to them to get the things you need. Reminds me of Head over Heels :p As in many of these games, frequent saving is essential, and exploring everywhere and not taking the most obvious route to immediate benefit will result in greater long term profit. Learn new spells, find new weapons, and go delve those dungeons.
Lots of mini-reviews this month. Golf, Marble Madness, Basketball, Scrabble, RISK, Baseball, flight simulation, they give us brief synopses of all kinds of stuff. Hopefully there'll be at least something to your liking amid the dross.
The marvel-phile goes back to the short articles filling in a few characters. Can't have epic crossovers where someone dies every month, or the readers lose interest. This time, it's that boisterous trio of Asgardians: Hogan the grim, Fandral the dashing, and Volstag the enormous. The musketeers to Thor's D'arganan, they are generally on the same side (unless Loki's trickery and/or alcohol are involved), and will back him up in a fight. Which is good to know. Jeff makes the interesting point that Thor's alter ego gets much less attention than most of our other heroes. Increasingly, all his personal drama is based around his godly relationships, and his human guise is merely a disguise, rather than the costume being the disguise, as is more commonly the case. Interesting observation. One that has been deconstructed quite a bit in comics circles since then. Sometimes the man wears the mask, sometimes the man is the mask. Unfortunately, I don't have time for a detailed philosophical discourse on this matter, so I guess I'll have to return another fairly positive verdict on this one for being thought provoking, and revealing a few more comic tidbits I didn't know before.
Dragonmirth once again has ideas that would be distinctly disturbing if played straight. Snarf tries to get out of the canyon, but is thwarted at every turn. Wormy gets all flashbackeriffic.
Join America's greatest hero! Oooh. Sounds interesting. Who, who, who could it be? We're all agog, rushing to see! Buck Rogers?! Fuuuuuuuck. Looks like the bleeding off of the company by Lorrane Williams (dun dun dur, organ music, crash of thunder, etc etc, you know the drill) has already started. This sucks beavis. Change the channel.
Ahh, now this is more like it. Ravenloft, house of strahd. The expanded reworking of the best selling module ever (well, there are probably actually more copies of B1&2 and X1 in existence, but that's because they came free with the boxed sets) becomes the centrepiece of a whole new campaign world for AD&D 2nd edition. Face the dread vampire Strahd von Zarovich (dun dun dur, organ music, crash of thunder, etc etc, you know the drill ;) ) in his equally dread abode. Now that's a nice way to kick off the new, more story focussed edition. Have fun. Hang on, wait a minute, 2nd edition isn't out yet. And this doesn't come out until 1994. Tch. Looks like the person assembling the archive messed up. Well, 250 issues, you can't get it all perfect. Mutter mutter mutter grumble.
The roles are reversed this month, with an utterly awesome themed section that shines brightly both as reading material and stuff to play with. The rest of the issue is also reasonably good (apart from last month's leftovers), with plenty of variety, drama, and fun bits and pieces. This is easily the best issue since the start of Roger's run, and probably in the top 10 overall of issues so far. Is Roger finally starting to hit his stride, or will it be down again next month. In any case, this definitely raises my enthusiasm, knowing that they're willing to try new things like this, and experiment with the way they cover things. Keep it dramatic, folks.
Dragon Magazine Issue 132: April 1988
part 1/3
116 pages. Snarf and co get to be on the cover, courtesy of Mr Elmore. Man, that's a lot of yellows and oranges. Deserts really need a better exterior design co-ordinator. Anyway, looks like they're continuing their recent policy of alternating serious april issues (84, 86) with ones with full on special features full of goofiness. And this year is serious face time. Not that this means it's going to be bad, but it certainly doesn't mean it's definitely going to be full of high quality material useful in your game either. What has Roger got lined up for us? And has he managed to get it properly lined up in terms of formatting? Good question, especially since he devotes the editorial to apologizing for his errors in recent issues. We discover by doing.
In this issue:
White dwarf has reached it's 100th issue. Pretty good. Unfortunately, not long now before it cuts off contact with RPG's and third party stuff and becomes a warhammer house organ. Peh. So it goes.
Letters: A little King's Table question, duely answered.
A letter from someone who is fining that the hobby is declining in their area, and fears for the future of it and the magazine. Please say D&D won't die. Roger gives no false comfort. It is the duty of each of you to seek out and create new players!
A letter from someone who has found his character's name appearing in Dragon. You have drawn from common sources. Plus true originality is tricky.
Forum: Daniel U Thibault recommends The Skeptical Enquirer magazine to anyone interested in real life supernatural phenomena. Many famous sci-fi authors write in it, and it has a very lively letters page. (I can guess) Anyone read this? Looks like like Dragon, it's still going online.
David Howery gives some expansions and corrections to his own article in issue 126. Always something you think of after sending it off, isn't there.
Mark R Shipley has some rather heated tactical advice on the battle of Scud and Allycia. If you play to the strengths of your opponent, of course you'll lose, and lose hard. What are you thinking, man?! And don't forget to metagame! Hmm. I suspect we have not seen the last of this one.
Bob James comments on a whole bunch of different things from issue 126. Proving rather controversial, that issue.
Craig Dudek thinks that good characters ought to be able to use nonlethal poisons that cause sleep or paralysis without it being an alignment violation. After all, winning an encounter without unneeded bloodshed is a good thing to do, right? Yes, but if you slit their throats after paralyzing them, then your claims of moral superiority go out the window again. Mercy to the helpless (even when it's only temporary) is one thing that they are pretty definite on.
Steve & Cynthia Higginbotham tell us Banded armour did exist! Roman legionaries wore it. So did the turks. And let's not forget the japanese. They just didn't call it that. Don't be so eurocentric.
Shaun DeMers is fed up of the OMG D&D is satanic!!1! crowd, and thinks a video would be a good way to prove it isn't. I don't think they're particularly interested in facts.
Rusty Ballinger gives us another reminder that real life is more complicated than the systems in the magazine, and one size does not fit all. This includes hiring military units.
Mike Montesano responds with amusement at the tuckers kobolds editorial. He's dealt with them too. Organized, tactically astute enemies are fun from both sides of the GM screen.
Craig Flescher has some tactics for dealing with said clever enemies. Turnaround is very much fair play here. Turn up the cleverness on both sides.
Richard Devens IV thinks that forcing you to have proficiencies for everything you want to do is a bad idea. you should be able to try cool tricks without specific training, and shields should count as cover rather than AC bonuses against missiles. I have no great objection to any of those statements.
Stephen Rasmussen introduces the idea of specializing not only in attacking with specific weapons, but also parrying and two-weapon fighting. Another good idea that can go wrong oh so very easily. Beware the twinks.
Michael A Costa doesn't have a problem with the majority of articles being AD&D specific. It's easier to strip stuff away to convert to D&D than going the other way would be. And it's not as if they're that different.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Our token comical contribution this year is another little article from Stewart Wieck. The chainsword! For when manual hack-and-slashing just doesn't have enough power. This is a curious article, going into plenty of detail about the inconveniences of making the item, maintaining it, and what happens when it goes wrong. For all the inherent goofiness of the premise and punniness of the flavour text, this is one that's not at all overpowered, entirely legal, and could be put into a serious campaign with only a little adaption. And of course, it would be perfect for an Exalted game. Ahh, the joys of magitech. He may be subverting the genre, but that still makes for fun games.
Role-playing reviews is also in a humorous mood, reviewing some of the more lightheated roleplaying games out there.
Paranoia is now on it's second edition. Which in the reviewers opinion, is a considerable improvement on the first one, the mechanics substantially simplified so the game can be as fast, furious and insane as it's supposed to be with less GM fudging. There's a pretty decent number of adventures out for it by now, and you should be able to get a clear idea of the distinctive tone of the game from this. Are you ready to betray everyone you know, deal with the most annoying bureaucracy ever, and die repeatedly for fun?
Ghostbusters is also a lighthearted game, but is much easier to turn into a serious one. With 4 basic stats, and highly streamlined skill, dramatic editing and motivation traits, it's another one that you can create characters quickly and easily for, and then play fun, highly dramatic games with. It's low on death, but high on goofy mishaps for your characters. And adventure designing is a breeze. It's another one that gets plenty of praise.
Teenagers from outer space takes the cartoon aesthetic even further, creating a game with no actual death, just a little bashed around (they'll be right as rain next scene, although their clothes may not be.) The rules aren't quite as solid as the previous two, but it's still hardly a bad game.
Beyond the gate of dreams: A decidedly weird new class, this is definitely cut from the mould of the bard and thief-acrobat in design. The Dreamer can be a split class like the ninja, or a single classed NPC. They get a whole bunch of divination and mind-affecting powers, most of which can only be used while asleep, so they won't be much more use than a normal member of their other class in combat, but can pull some pretty neat tricks given a bit of downtime. Like Rituals in 4E, this seems to be an attempt to separate out the plot device magic from the blasty magic. Which is a laudable goal, even if the power organization isn't the greatest. This is another one that's never going to cause problems the way a regular wizard getting all spell researchy will, so it's welcome in my game anytime, at least unless you wind up spending half an hour every sleep period doing solo adventure stuff, while the rest of the party gets bored.
Dragon Magazine Issue 132: April 1988
part 2/3
Resourceful sorcery: Runequest gets another magical article in relatively quick succession. Interesting. This is a rather cool examination of the mechanics of learning magic. It seems that once you've learnt a certain amount, if you do so in the wrong order, you can wind up slowing your progression to a crawl, as you don't have enough free points to learn more without danger. But if you load up on familiars, magic storage batteries, an assistant, and make sure you have long-term buffs up while in danger, you can not only be more powerful in individual encounters, but continue your more linear upward progression between adventures. Ahh, the joys of gaming the system. That seems to be another thing that's on the up these days. Not sure if I should approve of that or not. Still definitely an intriguing little article here.
The second volume of the darksword trilogy is already out?! How fast do that pair write stuff? This is decidedly surprising.
With all the trappings: Muahahaha. Trap design. It's been a while. Whatever happened to Dastardly deeds and devious devices? It only got 4 columns before dying back in the day, while the Dragon's Bestiary and Bazaar of the Bizarre lasted ages, and are now back again. Guess people prefer facing monsters to devices. Still, they definitely have a place in adventures, and here's 3 1/2 pages of advice not only on creating them and placing them well, but the economic and societal ramifications of doing so. After all, complex technical devices require skilled labour, and that does not come cheap. Plus if the owner intends to access the place being guarded, they need to have a method of bypassing the traps without ruining them. With a whole mini-dungeon of interlinked example traps as well, this is a pretty cool little feature, full of instantly usable ideas, and sparkers for your own imagination. Definitely one to return too if you find yourself short of ideas for your latest megadungeon.
Sage advice is tiny this month. That's a relieving change.
Can woodland creatures charge in the woods (only as long as they aren't part of a unit.)
Will flying over the woods negate the sight penalties. (only with respect to other flying creatures. And the pope's big pointy hat. )
Do you need initiative to do a wrap-around (nope)
Can you do a wrap around if attacked from the rear (Muuuust resist making your mom jokes. So hard. (your mom makes me so hard) Damnitt! And I was so close. )
Can missiles be fired into melee (only if you don't mind hitting your allies as well)
How do you hit a tree (Shoot at it. Roll to hit normally. It'll probably be AC10, as trees don't move unless the grand druid (ie, celtic pope ;) ) asks them too.)
How fast will a forest burn. (Fairly slowly. Wind direction will play a big part in how it spreads. )
How do you calculate damage against creatures with different HD sizes. ( blah blah, average hit points, blah blah divide by 4.5, blah blah statistical gubbins. )
Let the good dice roll: Another attack of statistical analysis here, showing us the probabilities of getting various ability scores with the various rolling methods. All seems pretty familiar. Come on, there's plenty of other stuff to run the math on. We don't need this again. Next!
Fiction: Out of hand by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Kids with uncontrolled powerful magic. Just one of the things that's common in fiction, that really doesn't work in D&D. (although a really good roll on the psionic wild talents tables could just about emulate it. ) Here's that trope mixed with another common one, that of pictures stepping off the paper and coming to life. And of course, events proceed from there as you'd expect. Some people want to keep her talent under wraps, while others want to exploit it. A rather formulaic entry really. Still, deserves credit for it's strong portrayal of the life of a craftsman and their dealings with the clergy. Holy blessings don't pay the bills, and a man's gotta keep working no matter how you curse him. Overall, I think this comes out about average.
The ecology of the Aurumvorax: Now this is a nice story. One of the monsters that demands ecological and social consequences to their existence gets them in spades. Greed, envy, use as a tracking device, material shortages, these guys definitely get the interest of adventurers of all stripes, trying to study or kill it. You can profit substantially if you can kill one, but you can potentially profit even more if you can manage the expensive process of raising one from a kitten. Of course, you'll have to watch out for envious people wanting a slice of the benefits without paying the costs. We see the trend for unreliable narrators turned up a notch in this one, keeping the "truth" back for the footnotes. And although there are less of those than in many of these, this is still a pretty enjoyable entry. There's definitely several extended and possibly convoluted adventures to be built using these ideas.
Orcwars: This month's centrepiece is another mildly humorous, but still entirely playable little complete game. Even more than Nibar's keep, this is easily integrated into an actual D&D game, and indeed, is set in the Known World. Unite the Orc hordes, and ravage the civilized lands. Whoza get ta be da warboss? Sound like fun? Certainly looks like fun, with multiple winning objectives, and plenty of tactical choices. Will you obey da code of ethnics? Will you primarily raid da hooman caravans, or beat up the the other tribes? Decisions, decisions. Ug tired of decisions, want to SMASH! As ever, if I get the chance to try this out, I will report back on how it turned out.
Arcane Lore: More druidic goodies in here this month. Want to be able to use animal tricks without completely transforming into one? Not a bad idea, and seems entirely within their thematic remit. So heres 6 new spells. Bat sonar, Deer speed, Lions claws, Oxen strength, bear hug, and vipers bite (with full power save or die poison, amazingly enough. ) That's some serious buffing, especially if you start combining them and developing your own animal power imitators. So a pretty cool idea, but one which may open the door to even greater feats of twinkery. Anyone who underestimates druids is a fool, as has been proven far too many times in the magazine.
The king of conventions: Looks like this year, they're definitely trying to promote con going more in the magazine. Gen Con and Origins have finally got over the bad blood that polarised people in the late 70's/early 80's, and are working together with the RPGA to make an even bigger and better experience for YOU! As they said a couple of months ago, mini's in particular are getting a big push, as they try once again to stem the decline in wargaming. Poor old guard, trying so hard, when we know in hindsight they are doomed to fail. So this is one that is somewhere between amusing and sobering, for it could well be us next. What are we to do? Move on quickly, before things get too morbid. :brrr:
Cash and carry, gamma style: Another article asking you to apply proper economic principles here. Course the economic pressures on a community in gamma world are very different from those in D&D, modern day earth, or Star Frontiers. Strangely powered mutants are both an obstacle and an opportunity, but good food and water is much rarer, and as a result, much much more valuable. The power to defend what you've got also becomes more important, for if there's not enough to go round, people will fight and kill to survive personally. Yeah, this is exceedingly low on the gonzo scale, trying to introduce considerably more realism and worldbuilding to the game. Combined with the fact that most of this is stuff we've seen before for D&D, and this isn't a hugely consequential article. Another month, another bit of filler.
Dragon Magazine Issue 132: April 1988
part 3/3
TSR previews: Still a bit messed up in here, smudging the stuff for last month and the one before together. Lets just look at now, shall we.
AD&D is getting OP1: Tales of the outer planes. Like with oriental adventures, they've opened up a milieu with a spiffy hardback, and now they want to milk it. Will we see any more in this series? Guess it depends on sales.
Top secret/S.I. gets High Stakes Gamble. A boxed set focussing on suave high society adventures, it certainly seems a good way to continue their desire to make the game more cinematic and social encounter based.
Marvel Superheroes gets ME1: Cosmos Cubed. I'm guessing the E stands for epic, because this is a really high power one. Are you ready to go cosmic, again. Are you ready to go back if it doesn't work?
Special Forces is our wargaming contribution. An SPI Sniper™ game, this seems to be a game of modern counterterrorist actions. Interesting. Rather a risky topic, really.
Our solo gamebooks are also tying into this theme, with book 5: ULTRA Deadly. Don't let the Nazi's crack the allies secret code early, change the course of history.
Appropriately, we get two Double Agent books this month. Hollow earth affair/The royal pain and Web of danger/Acolytes of darkness. Sebastian Cord and Agent 13 penetrate secrets and kick ass.
And finally, in pure fiction we have The Legend of Huma. Read about the legendary knight of Solamnia and his part in keeping evil from taking over Krynn. Poor Takhisis. She tries so hard, and never gets a break.
A little less super: A DC heroes article? They are covering different systems quite a bit lately. And as the title says, this is sort of a nerfing one, from someone who would prefer that not every character ends up at superman levels after a few years play. Curiously though, it's also one that would prefer not everyone starts at street level either, increasing the randomness in power levels at character generation, and then implementing a few house rules to ensure that while characters still advance, they don't go through the same kind of quantum leaps in power level. Which I guess brings things closer to the way things actually work in comics. It'd definitely require the right type of group to keep the game fun for everyone despite the power disparities. But it's still a good idea. I think we can make this one work.
Superheroes alive! Jeff Grubb gets in on the book reviews under a different name
The encyclopedias of super heroes and villains by Jeff Rovin are a pair of massive books that do exactly what they say. Not just the major comics, but cartoons, mythical characters, pulp novels, and anything else with superpowered characters gets meticulously combed. The villains one isn't quite as well written or edited as the heroes one (diminishing returns strike again), but both are massive, rather impressive works. You can both learn quite a bit, and get some enjoyable reading out of flipping through these.
Superman at fifty: the persistence of a legend by Dennis Dooley and Gary Engle is another bit of historical analysis. How did he become such an iconic figure, and how has he changed over the years to maintain that status. A whole bunch of people contribute, with examinations from the scholarly to the humourous, throwing their own interpretations on his personality, and why he works so well. As with so many successful characters, peoples ability to project their own ideas onto him seems to be an integral part of his success. Even Krypto the wonder dog can't spoil that.
Aces high, and jokers wild, edited by George R.R Martin, are the second and third books in the Wild Cards series. It continues to apply superhero powers to a decidedly non comic-booky world, weaving together stories by various authors into a larger whole. We find out a lot more about the history, and possible future of their world. Not entirely family-friendly, this is nonetheless highly recommended as story and a worldbuilding exercise. Even before getting it's own game, it seems very gamable.
The frontiers of design: Star frontiers' article this month is about improving the ship design process. Just how much can you fit in a ship? More than you'd think, if modern gadgetry is a good guideline. But it'll cost ya. Fairly dry stuff here, which by it's own admission has a bit of power creep. Whether it'll result in a more balanced or fun game is very much open to speculation. Another bit of filler, really.
The paranoia enquirer joins in on the adverts disguised as newspapers game. Space aliens eat Elvis's (sic) brain. The computer wants you to be well-informed. Buy it. But do not read the sections in colours higher than your clearance. That would be treasonous.
Looks very much like The marvel-phile: Rocket Raccoon! Jeff once again delivers the fun when all around him are staying resolutely sensible. Born on a planet inhabited largely by anthropomorphic animals, created to serve as doctors and security for all the insane people from worlds around, he became chief law officer, and faced down all kinds of opposition. We also get stats for Wal Russ, Uncle Pyko, Judson Jakes, Lord Dyvyne, and a whole bunch of generic creatures, including Killer Clowns, Prank Tanks, and Drakillers. Ahh, the joys of the marvel universe, mixing so many wacky elements together that somehow it manages to come full circle and become a serious story. Which has recently been resurrected in an even more serious form, as I see from wikipedia. (obsessive compulsive disorder?! :shakes head: ) Which cycles things back to amusing. So another entertaining but hardly worldshaking article here, especially once context is factored in.
The role of Computers: Beyond Zork, despite it's silly name, is an entirely serious text adventure game.(well, as serious as you can get when the macguffin is the coconut of quendor) Thankfully, they've been improving their parsers over the years, so our experienced reviewers have no trouble controlling the game. They also have automapping, randomisation of puzzle elements, and a booklet which will be nearly essential in completing the game. Well, you've gotta do something to fight piracy. Another tricky entry in a well-known series.
Pirates! (speaking of piracy) is an adventure game where you take the role of a ship's captain and go adventuring. Will you engage in legal trading, privateering for your country, or just raid all and sundry? While you can't really win it, if you're good, you can adventure for years of game time, and amass quite the fortune. With a wide range of choices and playstyles, they give it another 5 star rating.
Tons of mini-reviews as well, 17 to be exact, ranging from 2 to 5 stars. They certainly aren't short of material to cover. Less pleasing is the fact that they are unable to give awards for the best software of last year because not enough people voted. Even though they might be a fairly popular column, they aren't getting quite the reader responses they'd like. Oh well, I can understand how that happens.
Dragonmirth has several hellish jokes. Snarf gets out of one pit, but may well find himself in more trouble soon.
And so we come to the unceremonious end of Wormy, as the storyline simply cuts itself off midflow (at quite a dramatic point as well), and dissappears without a trace. Such a shame. Oh well. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Often the Fox network will be involved. All we can do is complain, write letters, and do our best to not let our own creative projects suffer the same fate. I'm doing my best. Are you?
An orcish map of the known world. Quite amusing. This of course ties in with the Orcwars game.
Despite the lack of a full themed section, this has been a fairly decent issue overall, both in terms of humour and usability. By spreading the mischief around, they keep it from being so groan-worthy, using it as a spice rather than a main course. Not such a bad idea, really. They're still covering a wide range of games, but the quality of their articles is even more variable than the D&D ones. Still, once again, I think they've managed to provide at least one thing that I'll use again later. So this is still a worthwhile exercise. Looks like zaniness will still go through several more ups and downs over the years. So let's get a filking move on. We three gamers of orient are. Killing things to gain ever more power :fade out:
Dragon Magazine Issue 133: May 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Roger takes the time to give a nod to the other magazines in the field in this month's editorial. Now he's an editor himself, he can appreciate the work that goes into them all the more. Be they big or small, there's something to learn from all of them, even if sometimes it's what not to do. And he doesn't mind recommending a few of them either. A fairly promising start which shows that they're staying in touch with the rest of the hobby. No special feature this time, but that hasn't proved too great an indicator of quality. As usual, let's get to work.
In this issue:
Letters: A question about them doing an art collection. They must not have been paying attention, because they answered that a few months ago. They are indeed doing one. Still, never hurts to promote it again.
A letter suggesting that instead of setting up their own BBs, they should just set one up on compuserve. It'd be cheaper and more accessable. Roger agrees with this point and tells us that he already does some forum surfing and question answering. An early adopter, I see. And yet I don't recall him being a regular forumgoer in recent years. Is he still involved in gaming in any way?
A letter with 4 questions, mostly about future releases. All are answered with ease.
A letter from someone who's suffering burnout. Take a break, or make a change. There are tons of other systems out there.
Forum: David Godwin thinks advantages should always be balanced with disadvantages. Super-powerfull familiars break that balance, particularly if you get them at low level. They shouldn't overshadow their master.
S.D. Anderson on the other hand, thinks that at the moment, familiars are more of a liability than a advantage. They need a little redefining, to be more magical. Interesting. It could work.
Denise L Voskull is in favour of sorting out monty haulism by taking away adventurer's stuff, and disallowing unbalancing rules from supplements. If your gaming group disagrees, take a vote on it. That way, less than half of your group will walk out on you ;)
Jason Greff thinks that there's nothing wrong with the odds being stacked against magic-users at low level. What's life without a bit of challenge?
The ecology of the carnivorous ape: Back to the detached sagely pontification this month, with a fairly mundane creature. After all, there could be carnivorous apes in reality. It would only require a few minor evolutionary adaptions. The rest of this article is largely extrapolative as well, with lots of details stolen from real world animals. They don't hesitate to make sly King Kong references either. However, the lack of drama in the fiction bit, combined with the lightness of the footnotes, means that overall, this adds up to one of the less impressive entries in the series. They could definitely have done more with this one, as modules from this era (and much of Terra Primate) show. Where's Stephen Inniss when you need him?
Bazaar of the Bizarre turns it's attention to magical quivers. Why should bows and arrows be the only parts of the equation that makes a really badass archer?
Frief's magical quiver has the ingenious trick of making magical arrows multiply into lots of arrows of a slightly lower power. A a quirky trick, but a rather useful one. An item that is very exploitable by clever adventurers, but also has a hidden drawback, this could definitely spice up your adventure.
The Quiver of arrow storing is normal sized and weight, but can fit up to 200 arrows without causing any encumbrance. Just the thing for lengthy treks. Now your biggest problem is finding the right one in an emergency.
And then it's back to the arrows. They don't actually give us any magical arrows, instead giving us a load of mundane ways of customizing them, such as flaming arrows, grappling ones, and nasty barbed ones that do extra damage when pulled out. But then again, magical arrows are stupidly expensive for the amount of use you get from them, and not worth making most of the time. These, on the other hand, can make any archer quite a bit more versatile, and are cheap enough for you to restock. Quite a clever entry really. You can definitely use this one to the benefit of your characters, as it'll mesh nicely with their other enhancements.
Notice anything different: Ahh, perception. One area where White Wolf got things spectacularly right, and D&D still struggles to this day, with your ability to tell what's going on in an emergency awkwardly kludged into wisdom, where it isn't very appropriate for the classes that most use the connected skills. This would certainly be a far better and more frequently used addition to the ability score list than that bloody stupid double dump stat comeliness. This does pretty much as you would expect, setting up the new ability, and what bonuses and penalties high and low scores in it offer. I very much approve, and wish this had been incorporated into the official rules in some way. (maybe making it a bit more subtly graded, because at the moment only extreme scores have any effect) It would have saved thousands of us years of bother, really. Fools! Why did you not heed their advice decades ago! An article that isn't historically significant, but could have been, and quite possibly should have been. Ahh, the joys and woes of hindsight.
Role-playing reviews turns it's eye to tournament modules. One of the trickiest things to design, because they have to be played precisely as written, so if you screw up, it's gonna suck for most of the parties. It's no surprise they playtest them rather more intensively than normal modules. Ken is as usual full of contextual info on his current topic, sharing his insider knowledge of how these things come to pass. We get a recap of the old idea that AD&D was supposed to be primarily a tournament game (I remember that! :D ) the differences between tournament and regular campaign play, and plenty of other stuff that makes it look like this is going to be another strong selection of reviews.
C6, the official RPGA tournament handbook is a guide to constructing your own scenarios, and also has two sample ones within. Not just for prospective tournament writers and DM's, most of this is applicable to home games as well. It gets Ken's wholehearted recommendation.
A1-4 Scourge of the slavelords is the compiled version of the slaver series from 1980. Like B1-9, it's been rewritten to tie it in much more closely with the setting developed since then, and to bridge the gaps between the 4 original scenarios. This is not a perfect stitching together, but it does the job. You may still have to do a bit of railroading, particularly if you want to use the 4th scenario as written, but you could also deviate from the path, and use the locations and characters in your own way.
I12, Egg of the phoenix, on the other hand gets a pretty mixed review. While the individual scenarios are cool, the new plot trying to stitch them together is not well done, and there is quite a bit of editorial sloppiness. It all smacks of changes made due to marketing decisions, quite possibly at the last minute. If you can get the originals instead, do so.
Ken also takes the time to comment on comments about his reviewing, and clear up a few misconceptions. This is also fairly entertaining to read, and hopefully he'll use the criticisms to become an even better reviewer. He does seem to be a very strong part of the team at the moment.
Dragon Magazine Issue 133: May 1988
part 2/3
The imperial gods: Ahhh, the roman pantheon. Not given much attention here because they're basically a reskinned greek pantheon, and that was covered quite adequately in Deities and Demigods. But as is often the case, the big similarities obscure the little cultural differences, and there are quite a few of those to examine. So this makes for a curious article, presenting a culture in which the gods may be important, but they are treated in quite a pragmatic manner. We give you veneration and sacrifices on a regular basis, you give us omens, good crops and other various goodies back. Clerics frequently give service to more than one god as the need arises, and are often quite cynical about the whole arrangement. Which is actually a pretty good model to adapt for a D&D campaign. After all, if the players are going to treat the cleric like a healbot and not actually give a damn about the IC religions anyway, you might as well make the problem into an opportunity to have a little fun. Perfect in particular for your god of business and the like. We also get the usual godly stats for Aeneas, Cybele, Divis Imperator, Eris, (Hail Discordia!) Janus, Mithras, Saturn, Serapis and Vesta. This is definitely a helpful article for me, being just what I needed to solve one of my current worldbuilding conundrums. After all, in a world where the gods are definitely real, active, and of great, but not omnipotent power, people are more likely to treat staying on their good side in a pragmatic manner rather than a mystical one. Considerably better than I was expecting.
The role of books: Aria takes off by Michel Wayland is a graphic novel from france. Stylisticly, it differs quite a bit from the current american comic book trends, with soft, rounded art, and a not particularly epic plot. Overall, it doesn't really impress the reviewer. Maybe it doesn't translate well, since it certainly seems to be doing pretty well over there, with over 30 volumes in the series now.
The dragonlance saga book 1 by Roy Thomas and Thomas Yeates is the graphic novel adaption of the first book in the series. It manages to convert the story fairly faithfully, even if the visuals and sound effects are sometimes a bit garish and overdone for the reviewers taste. If you liked the original, this is an entirely worthwhile purchase. If you didn't, you probably won't be converted.
The serpent's egg by Caroline Stevermer is a fun little tale of fantasy intrigue. Light on the supernatural Macguffins, and heavy on wit and plot twists, it manages to stand out both in tone and world-building.
Napoleon disentimed by Hayford Peirce gets a fairly negative review. Too many gimmicks, too much fast universe switching to get a good sense of the rules of the various realities, not enough tying together of the various elements. This is why you need to edit and split up your ideas to get the most out of them.
Soulstring by Midori Snyder is a classic fairy story with a twist, as told from the perspective of the rescued princess. A tyrannical wizard-king, a curse transforming the hero into a stag, it's romantic without being fluffy, and has plenty of stealable ideas for your game.
The burning realm by Michael Reaves is the long awaited sequel to The Shattered world. Not content with earth being reduced to a bunch of floating islands in space, now demons want to destroy the whole shebang. At least, some of them do, and they're as prone to making devious alliances to achieve their goals as demons in many other realities. The human characters are just as well developed and diverse in motivation, and the many elements are weaved together properly to build up to an epic finale. See. This is how you do it.
Greenbriar queen by Sheila Gilluly is another book that gets a mediocre review. It began life as a D&D game, and while it's not that the story is bad, it was probably a lot more fun, and made more sense when you were playing in it. Such is the nature of trying to get stuff from your head onto the page.
Wards against evil: Our Oriental Adventures article for this month is a little sumpin sumpin for the shukenja, if you know what I mean. The writer wants to boost their power a bit by making their power against spirits more akin to western clerics turning. Since this is a no cost power up, I somewhat disapprove. Even the editor doesn't seem too keen on the idea, pointing out that it doesn't appear in the literature, so not only does it makes them less differentiated, it does not help with emulation either. Which is no good at all. Guess this is an example of them providing explicitly optional material that they don't expect most of us to use. I'll definitely be leaving this one out.
The game wizards: More info on the upcoming D&D computer games this month. The dread hand of trilogyitus reaches even here, with not one, not two, but three Forgotten Realms computer games in development. They must be awfully confident they're going to be profitable. They also have two Dragonlance games, and two generic programs in the works. Quite an impressive list. I'll be even more impressed if they all actually come out in a timely fashion. :p This of course requires a whole bunch of development teams, and Jim talks about the various companies these projects have been farmed out too. He seems rather pleased with this development, currently having a good relationship with the companies responsible. Another optimistic entry in this column that is probably genuine. After all, they're trying something new, and it seems to be coming along nicely. It'll definitely be interesting to see what our game reviewers think about this stuff when it comes out.
The role of computers: Quarterstaff is another game which takes advantage of the burgeoning processing power of computers to create creatures with artificial intelligence. This means you have a rather better chance of making them friendly than in most games. Rather than having to figure out what vocabulary the parser has, you select options from a drop-down menu, and the instruction manual will help if you do need to describe more complex actions. Once again technology has brought computers closer to emulating the tabletop gaming experience and they give this 5 stars.
Dragon's Lair is of course a conversion of the classic arcade game. It has very good visuals for the era, but manages this by being exceedingly linear, with many of the rooms requiring a single exact sequence of actions to complete, and nothing else working. This makes it very tricky indeed to do, but once you've finished it there's no point going back, nothing new to discover. Still, now you can do it without burning away ridiculous amounts of money at the arcade. The reviewers give the impression they enjoyed playing it more than I did.
Not a huge amount of microreviews this month. However, they do have lots of news on the goings on at various companies. Moves, projects, new licenses, the computer industry continues it's meteoric rise to something that will rival TV, music and books as a economic force.
Mutants down under, a supplement for TMNT. Seems fitting. Kangaroos with mohawks and uzi's would fit right in in that universe.
Agents for hire: Top secret goes back to the idea of breaking away from your agency, and becoming a spy for hire. A risky business, with treachery from your employers a constant risk. Is it worth it, just to get a little more money? If you haven't built up a rep and some contacts, then you'll struggle to get any work at all. And rooting through bins for passwords, doing stakeouts for someone suspecting their wife of infidelity and similar stuff is a far cry from international espionage which influences the fate of nations. A rather lengthy article that seems mostly designed to point out how tricky this path is to tread, and mechanically codify the process of jobhunting, this is very much in the old edition's spirit (indeed, all it's rules references are to the 2nd ed books) and seems more likely to drive people away from this playstyle than encourage it. And I think that an article that discourages you from trying it out is a failure by most criteria, don't you.
Dragon Magazine Issue 133: May 1988
part 3/3
Success by conventional means: This year's focus on wargaming conventions continues with this article on running your own. Setting up something like this is not an easy proposition, and can consume vast amounts of time and money even if done right. So here's advice from someone who built their own con up from nothing, and has been going for 5 years now. Don't overestimate, for you will be disappointed. One person cannot do everything. There is no such thing as too much publicity. Make sure everything works and is rehearsed before the night otherwise you will screw up somehow. Consider your pricing policies carefully. Always consider food, for it can make or break peoples experience. If you are careful, you can make at least a small profit at every stage. Like the freelancing advice that pops up every year or two, this is the kind of advice that can be applied to any commercial venture. Ignore it at your peril. One of those diversions that I'm quite happy to see in the magazine, as it helps break up the monotony.
Sage advice: How does ensnare restrict demons (They can't teleport away or summon more demons, but they can still pull lots of other tricks. Be vewy vewy wawy. )
Can I have some guidelines on wish. (Another nerfer? Not satisfied with the number of articles on this subject already. Skip is very very bored now. Unleash the didactics.)
Can a ring of spell turning affect a wish. (if its effect is aimed at the wearer. )
Can a magic user replace a spell in their book (yes. This is an entirely acceptable way of circumventing the spells known limit. )
Isn't polymorph incredibly abusable (Oh yes, but not quite as much as you seem to think. People who are transformed have an annoying habit of forgetting their original form. Also, system shock's a bitch. Like wish and haste, this'll come back and bite you if you use it frequently. )
Surprise!: Ahh yes, the problem of nonstandardised surprise probabilities in D&D. What do you do when one thing has a power that increases the chances, another has one that reduces them, and neither even use the same dice type. How do we fix that? Same way they do for the Monk and Sentinel, convert the probabilities into percentages, and then add or subtract the two differences from the base 33%. While there are probably more elegant ways of doing it, they would require a substantial system overhaul, and this seems to work, so I think I'll adopt it. So it's a compact and useful article here. I quite approve.
TSR previews: D&D goes from elves, to dwarves, with The Dwarves of Rockhome gazetteer. Find out more about the known world, and introduce dwarven clerics to your game.
AD&D gives us H4: The throne of bloodstone. Their highest level module ever, this may not have quite the level of the BD&D immortal level modules, but it's still pretty ridiculous. Go kick Orcus' butt. You have the Power! We need to set things up for the second edition changeover, so it may even stick for a bit.
Marvel superheroes gets MU1: gamers handbook of the marvel universe 1. A-D of every character, all with stats, and we're already up to 256 pages? There's gonna be quite a few more installments coming.
On the boardgame side, we have The Hunt for Red October game. Can you avert WWIII? The stakes are high in this little license.
Our novel this month is Black Wizards. Doug Niles continues his Moonshae trilogy. The plot thickens, just as it must. Will there be a satisfactory resolution?
And our solo gamebook this month is a Top Secret/S.I. one, The Final Bug. Descriptions are rather sketchy. The problem with solving this puzzle is not lack of evidence, but too much of it. Just slap it in the supercomputer and let that solve the problem.
The wild warriors: Berserkers. Now they were one of the weirder parts of the D&D monster list. Technically human, yet treated very much as just another marauding creature to kill or be killed by. This is also another one we've seen presented as an actual class before as well, way back in issue 3. Since the writeup then was pretty perfunctory, I think they are well due a more detailed revisiting.
Unsurprisingly, they draw quite heavily from the Barbarian stuff from issue 63 and UA. After all, they are from the same culture. And even more than them, they are designed to be problematic for a group. Not only do they have the same distaste for magic equipment and wizards, but they also have the blind battle rage problem which means they may end up attacking their allies in battle. Even if the player tries to play them as reasonably as possible, a little inadvertent PvP may wind up taking place. Since they are also combat monsters, especially when berserk, this is likely to end badly for the other character unless you have some way of escaping from or incapacitating them. (a barbarian cleric loaded with several hold person spells, for example) Unless you're playing a solo or comedy game, exercise great caution about allowing them as PC's.
The dragon's bestiary: Wormy may be gone, but this month's bestiary has a decidedly wormy theme. Scaling up tiny and microscopic creatures has already given us several cool articles, but given the numbers and diversity of these creatures all around us, you could do a whole book on this subject and only scratch the surface. Lets see how we can use reality to make our fiction stranger this time.
Neresis are little bristle worms that pounce out from their burrows to grab things. Course, in reality they're mostly herbivorous, but that won't stop the giant ones from trying to get their jaws around you.
Diopatra are one of those disturbing creatures with multiple mandible type jaws that allow them to both grab, hold and chew at the same time. They tend to appear in colonies as well, so several of them can be holding you down and trying to strip the flesh from you ASAP. Definitely nightmare fuel to be had there.
Vanadis evert their bodies to swallow you whole. Since they're pretty stretchy, they can even fit ogres inside. Sounds like a combination of snakes and Krenshar. Another excellent reason for adventurers to travel in parties. It's much easier to cut them out than it is to get out from inside.
Eurythoe are fairly slow and inoffensive, but their bristles are covered with agony inflicting poison. Just leave them alone.
Glyceria have venomous bites that paralyze you, which means they make good ambush predators. Another thing with decidedly disturbing looking jaw structures for creeping your players out with.
Sabella are another harmless bottom feeder. I don't think we need to worry too much about stats for those.
Terebella are also harmless, but they have the quirk of sorting the stuff they filter and dumping the inedible stuff in a pile next to them. This means you can get some treasure off them if you're lucky.
Pectinaria, also known as the ice-cream-cone worm, constructs a portable conical home for itself out of pebbles and mucus. Sometimes there are a few valuable ones amongst them. Another inoffensive creature in an entry rather high on them. This is definitely an entry that you use for flavour rather than just another combat encounter.
The marvel-phile creates an index of all the characters they've covered so far. This is the third time in only 5 years. What's up with that? 5 pages of rather small type follow, going from Abomination to ZZZax, and all the modules and stuff released so far. It's a good thing the marvel universe is constantly evolving, otherwise they would be running out of material to fill this column with. Obviously useful, but not hugely interesting, particularly as the hints of humour that livened the last couple of times have been lost in the attempt to compress the info as much as possible. Wonder how long it'll be before this turns up again.
Dragonmirth tells some more jokes (badum-tish) Snarf falls for the trap. Silly snarf.
A fairly polarized issue, with plenty of good ideas that I'd really like to use, but also an above average number of genuinely poor and ill-thought out articles as well. The reviews continue their strong showing, and the editing seems to be improving, but the articles are very much hit and miss. Overall, pretty decent though.
Dragon Magazine Issue 134: June 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Birthday no 12. Another year, another batch of dragon related articles for your delectation. What new and terrifying adversaries will we face, what tactics will they deploy? Will you come home a great hero, or will you be served up crispy fried in foil?
In this issue:
Letters: A letter with some more last word suggestions. Very droll.
A letter from one of their writers, pointing out a mistake he made in a recent article. D'oh!
Another letter pointing out errors, which Roger examines and pronounces they are not errors at all. These are entirely legitimate uses of the english language.
A non letter from the editors, thanking all of us, their loyal readers. 12 years and still going strong. They couldn't have done it without us. Aww.
Forum: Tim Lieberg has his own rather extensive contribution on how to make low level wizards viable characters. Most of these are changes in emphasis rather than actual rules alterations. It's mostly a matter of how you play them that determines their viability.
James A Yates rebutts the recent responses to his college of magic article. Yes, keeping a educational facility running is an expensive business, and you're unlikely to make a short term profit on it. This is very much a realistic reflection of real educational facilities, and the reason why they need government subsidies to stay viable. If the wizard you're playing really is as smart as his stats suggest, he'll find some other ways of wringing money out of the students and surrounding community.
Ed Kruse is in favour of houseruling if you don't like the official rules. This includes the rules for XP. Getting XP for treasure is out, XP for using your class abilities constructively is in. Is that a foreshadowing I see?
David Choi not only thinks that you shouldn't get xp for treasure, but if you fail to actively practice your class skills, you should actually lose xp. Pff. That never goes down well.
Greg Pierson disapproves of the alignment restriction on thieves. Adversity can make even good guys resort to larceny. Another bit of foreshadowing. I suspect roger has a pretty good idea by now what's going to be in the next edition, and they're trying to soften us up to the idea of the changes.
Steve Kommrusch is in favour of the demographics of classes where each level is approximately half as rare as the one below. It's easy to calculate, and level 20+ characters become suitably rare as to retain their specialness.
David Poythress disapproves of ability creep such as that demonstrated in the recent article on alternate dice methods for demihumans. If this carries on, the whole game will cease to be a challenge. And then where will the fun be?
Paul Astle reminds us that there are many stories in which a lycanthrope reacts with horror to their transformations. You can have quite a bit of fun running adventures in which a character tries to rid themselves of this scourge, and the resultant fallout.
Lucas McNeill tells the people writing in as pontificating sages to remember that the medieval conception of the world was rather different to the modern one. Similarly, the D&D universe does not run on real world physics anyway. So they shouldn't talk like modern day scientists.
Len Carpenter rebutts his critics on the matter of jousting. It's been over a year, quite a few books have come out since then, and he's thought quite a bit about how to handle it better. He introduces a new, simpler and more integrated system here. He does not, however, address the matters of honour that some of the repliers have spun the debate off into. Hmm.
S.D. Anderson seems to be having a problem with proto-fishmalks. These degenerates refuse to take the game seriously, and constantly mess around with the other players, both IC, and OOC. Never let them get their hands on a Wand of Wonder. Rather amusing, really. That kind of player use whatever they can, no matter how you try and stop them.
Gregory D Scott tries to give fighters a bit more depth. They don't just fight, they've also got to know military tactics and how to work with a group well. They might not have these abilities spelled out, but you should still apply them if you don't want to be outshone by all the other classes.
Michael Anderson gives his opinions of the recent articles on illusions. One is very much better than the others.
The dragon's bestiary gets back to basics, giving us some actual dragons for the anniversary. Aquatic dragons are exactly what they sound like. They swim! They attack your ship! They really ought to develop proper underwater paper out of pressed seaweed or something for spellcasting! One of those entries that feels flawed due to later developments in design technology.
Ichthyodrakes are another underwater monstrosity. No shortage of those now, with dragon turtles, the various Lung dragons and the like. Well, if the fantasy world is more than 70% oceans like earth, there should be plenty of dragon variants for there that adventurers never see.
Astral Dragons are our first otherplanar dragon species. This conception of them is substantially different from the 2nd ed version, but they are pretty powerful, and rather quirky. I think the astral plane is big enough for more than one dragon type.
Weredragons are not contagious lycanthropes, thankfully, that would just be too scary. They aren't actually that badass in combat, but of course, not that badass for a dragon is still pretty deadly for normal humans. And their seduction and surprise capabilities are quite considerable. They certainly make for a nasty surprise.
Fang dragons don't have a breath weapon, instead having a bite which can drain all your hit points and add them to it's total. Fortunately, this only activates on a natural 20, so really, they're less deadly than many creatures with save or die poison on every hit. And they don't have spells either. Bit of a paper tiger really, compared to most dragons.
Sand dragons are snaky diggers with an instadeath breath weapon. Now this is a bit more like it. Blue dragons can take the desert sky, these guys'll rule the earth.
Stone dragons look like piles of rock when not active. Now there's a trope familiar from TV that can be used to horrifying effect. With three different breath weapons, and a whole bunch of earth based magic, they can be pretty tricksy. A good one to make uneasy allies/enemies of.
Give dragons a fighting chance: Hmm. This is stuff we've seen before, and will see again. Another bunch of ways you can power up your dragon, making them both scarier and more individualized. Unique powers, enhanced versions of exiting ones, clever applications of spellcasting, more detail in physical scaling, lots of reiteration here, some of which would be taken up and made official next edition. We also get another case of the endlessly quibblable sample battles. Not a very interesting one. Roll on the future, please.
AD&D, the pool of radiance computer game. Well well. That looks pretty nice, actually.
Serpents and sorcery: Hmm. Another bit of interesting foreshadowing here. The word sorcery in the title is particularly appropriate. This article sets out to explore draconic spellcasting, and how it differs from human magic-users capabilities. And in the process, makes them pretty similar to 3rd ed sorcerer's in the way they learn and retain spells entirely mentally, and can choose to use different ones for a situation. That certainly puts a new light and historical weight on the decision to give sorcerer's fluff that their powers are derived from draconic descent. How very pleasing to unearth. It also includes common spell suggestions and tactical tricks for the various chromatic and metallic dragon types. Course, these are tricks that could be used by any creature with the appropriate spells, including the PC's. In any case, this is a pretty strong article even if you don't take it's historical context into account, so I quite enjoyed it.
Lords and Legends: Yet another bit of historical coverage here, coming from the opposite direction. Dragotha was first mentioned in S2: White plume mountain. But that was merely a warning, from nearly a decade ago. Many have wondered since then, just who this Dragotha is, and what is his history. How did he come to the state of undeath? Wonder no more! Here he is, in all his glory! Which is actually considerably less scary than most older 2nd ed dragons, but that's power inflation for you. He's still capable of dropping an entire 20th level party in one breath if he gets the drop on them and they save badly, and with his horde of undead warriors, can exert substantial influence on the lands surrounding his lair. As with the underdark special three months ago, the use of original characters massively improves this series. In fact, since I've also put white plume mountain somewhere in my gameworld (muahaha!!) this is the first one of these I can actually see myself using. Considering how many issues of GitE and L&L we've had, that is a very definite turnup for the books, worthy of noting. This is turning out to be an intriguing birthday issue.
The ecology of the red dragon: We finally get an actual dragon race covered here. About time too. This series has been going 5 years now, and appearing most months and the closest we've come before is the chimera. Sensibly, it seems they've decided to only cover one draconic species, rather than the whole lot, which would take a truly epic special feature to do justice to the subject. Now they can milk it bit by bit for all it's worth. ;)
Anyway, this is a rather longer ecology than most so far. This is one of those where the sage has to deal with a rather annoying questioner, in this case some dumb young adventurers who think they can go straight to the big leagues and kill a dragon without going through the goblins, lizard men, bugbears, ogres, and the rest of the monstrous food chain first. Still, at least he isn't subverted like the Harpy one, or personally attached to the creature like the Aurumvorax one, he does give accurate information (and some suppositions and extrapolations). Not that this is going to save the adventurers, since even in 1st ed, red dragons are powerful, smart and magically capable. They do include quite a few bits that some won't agree with, (draconic sexism, relatively severe aging rules, exploding poo. ) but this is still a pretty decent ecology, with plenty of detail and ideas. Not too brilliant, not too bad.
Dragon Magazine Issue 134: June 1988
part 2/3
Sage advice is covering wider issues than simple rule questions this month.
What do you think of house rules. (Be carefull, be consistent, be upfront and explicit. But enough about my personal life. )
Can we convert AD&D characters to a D&D game (No. The two games must remain separate, by holy decree of Arneson! )
Can I play more than one character at once ( We at skip towers do not have a problem with that idea. Go wild.)
Can demihumans change class once they release max level(no. Not in D&D, not in AD&D. They can't even be classes in D&D, and you have to pick your multiclass options when you start in AD&D. Your path is fixed.)
What are attack ranks (an excuse for demihumans to get more badass once they've maxed out their level. Blame non-joined up designing )
How long does lycanthropy take to complete (2-24 days)
What happens when you turn undead. (They run away like little girls. This does not solve the long term problem. I have to wonder why clerics were given this power. Maybe it's a godly conspiracy. )
XP! Huh! What are they good for for once you're maximum level (not much)
When druids fight, does the loser drop a level (yes. They need to work the XP up again. Otherwise they could just rechallenge straight away. And no, restoration won't help you.)
How many druids are there above 30th level ( 25. And no epicly awesome heirophants after that. They're just about the only class that gets worse epic options in D&D than AD&D.)
When can fighters use special combat options (once they've learned how. They are a privelege, not a right.)
How many spells does a 1st level character have in their book (2)
Can I imitate perseus and have a medusa head shield ( :sucks teeth: Oooh, I really dunno. We really don't recommend it working for long, otherwise it'll fuck up the game. Plus there's the constant threat of the rest of the team being affected. )
How do medusas stone themselves (by looking in a mirror)
Why are normal bats stronger than giant bats (oops. We swapped the stats)
What special effect does a tiger beetle have (none. we mixed up the tiger and oil beetle. It's all the layout staff's fault. Yeah, that's the ticket. )
What does wolfsbane do (makes lycanthropes run away like little girls. Then they can cower in the corner with the undead from last encounter. And exchange haircare tips. Keeping it sleek and glossy is a lich when you're dead. )
How do you restore strength lost to shadows (patience)
Can a rod of cancelation disenchant constructs (nope)
Where is the description of the devil swine ( page 30 or 48, depending which book you have. Whatever happened to them? They were one of BD&D's more flavourfull monsters. )
Can rocs be used as mounts ( Yes, but it ain't easy. You'll have to assert your authority pretty strongly.)
What is a war horse (A horse trained for war. The name says it all. )
How lawful can an unintelligent creature be ( Repeaters aren't unintelligent. This is the problem with BD&D not giving proper attribute scores for creatures. Misconceptions like this. )
Why don't megaliths have XP values (because they have too many HD to measure properly. It's the old HD /= Challenge problem at very high levels.)
What's the encumbrance of a spellbook (pretty hefty. I could get precise values from Gary a few years ago, but I can't be bothered )
What do I do if the PC's get a too powerful magic item ( Let me count the ways. Take it away, rack up the opposition, give the other players more, let it run out. Your choices are myriad)
What's a pocket of holding (like a bag, only atatched to your trousers. You'd better hope they're sized right. )
Does your level affect powers from items you're using (No. This may cause scaling problems at high level. )
How do +1 items benefit a character. (oh, it's another moron question is it. Do you even know what a number is? Skip does not have time for this. Skip is a badass Mutha
Shut yo mouth
Hey, I'm talking about Skip here
I can dig it)
How can a bag of holding fit a 10' long item (extradimensional. Bigger inside than out. That's it's whole schtick. Once again, read the book properly)
Do you lose experience when you drink a potion of longevity (only if it's cursed. )
How do you avoid being trapped in a scroll of shelter (get out before it's taken down. Simple)
Can you add new creatures to the egg of wonder (oh yes. Like any random item, expanded tables to keep the characters on their toes are always welcome. Who knows, maybe we'll publish one in here. )
Can you bypass enemies as well as allies with an arrow of blinking (no)
Do magic arrows lose their magic when fired (yes. Use them wisely)
Can any elf or magic user use a crystal ball (yes. It's part of basic training, along with making spellbooks, and the curse which prevents you from using most weapons. )
Does suit armor save you from fireball and lightning bolt (fireball, yes. Lightning bolt, no. Electricity likes metal very much, and then they make little singe babies. You don't wanna be inside when they're getting biz-ayh. )
Can PC's make intelligent magic items (Yes indeedy. You need to be pretty high level though. )
Bazaar of the bizarre: More support for the Jester. One of the few classes solely from the magazine to get follow-up articles. There's a joke in there, or at the very least an irony. In any case, such repeated support makes them more attractive as a character option. This is rather amusing in itself.
The blowgun of wild emotions is a great bit of random screwage. Use with caution, for inducing envy, greed, rage, hatred or paranoia will likely backfire on you painfully if they know who hit them.
The Exalted book of ethnic Humor lets you tailor your offensiveness to humiliate and insult anyone, of any race. Eeech. I can see that one getting uncomfortable around the gaming table if there are any actual minorities around.
The Extendable hand of enjoyment lets you engage in, erm, manual manipulation of objects up to 30' away. I can definitely see a lot of uses in that, some of them not even jokes.
The Larynx of deafening is another item that could be used seriously, as it's basically just a portable amplifier for your voice. Now you can get through to even the largest and deafest of audiences.
Magical paddleboards let you thwok things with balls on rubber bands. Of all the humiliating ways to go, this really takes the cake.
Paddleboards of wondrous transformation take the previous idea and run with it, transforming creatures hit into some other random creature. Since these are often scary monsters, this is one that will just make a fight more insane, rather than putting the opponent out altogether. Muahahahaha!!!!
Random target daggers do exactly what they say on the tin. Throw them and they could go anywhere. Who knows what they'll hit?
Skates of the roller hoopers let you skate over any surface, including walls and ceilings. Your battles will become tremendously cinematic, verging on the cartoonish.
The Hula-hoop of the roller hoopers whirrs around your body and deflects missile attacks. Combined with the skates and a ranged weapon (or the paddleboards or extendible hand, you become able to whizz around griefing your enemies while they can do sod all in return. Now there's a confidence booster for you.
The Tome of the fool is like most other tomes, it gives a jester extra XP, and screws over nonjesters reading it. Avoid like the plague, for forced class conversion sucks.
The Tome of the humorous perspective allows a jester to calmly accept death as just the punchline to the greatest joke of all, becoming scarily fearless and able to bring levity to the grimmest of situations. Just like Kender then. Do not capture them, for they'll ruin even the best prepared evil monologue.
The Yo-yo of fate lets jesters do a bit of god-modding. Yet another tool they have to survive and laugh in the face of adversity.
For your orcs only: Bruce Heard plays sage as people give their feedback and questions about the Orcwars! game. You'd better learn da rulez of Waaagh!!!!! boyz.
Can hordes fight or occupy without a chief (Sure. Da boyz like to fight. Just don't expect dem ta show much initiitiitiative. )
Can hordes without a chief stay in a coalition. (Ya. Untill a noo strong leader takez over. Den all bets are off if he don wanna follow da big boss. )
How does the code of ethnics work if one side doesn't have a chief. (Da boyz join da first big boss of the same race dey meet.)
How can uncommanded hordes retreat. (Dey don't. Without a warboss ta give them tactics, da boyz fight to da death! )
Can uncommanded hordes mine. (Sure. Mining don' take much brainpower, and da boyz gotta get dere exercise if dere's no-one ta fight. )
Can chiefs exchange hordes (Yeaaaah! Watch out if da new chief is a different race to da hordes though. Da boyz might kill him.)
When can a chief pick up uncommanded hordes. (Da boyz will leap into action for him any time. )
Do you have to roll an authority check if forced to retreat out of your home (Nahh. Da boyz don't mind a little adversity. It's coming inta money dat makes dem unreliable. )
Can you collect gold from a territory you've just retreated into ( I bleedin wish. )
What happens to the gold if you lose your horde by the chief survives ( All gone. All Gooone! There's a dog loose in the woods. )
Can a big army lose war machines if a little army was successful against them (if dey used dem in da battle)
Can you retreat into territory controlled by your own coalition. (sure. Den you get more buds and go kick dere asses. Revenge!!!!! )
Can you fight, move and fight some more in a single turn (no. Such a shame.)
Can you use a spy to figure out which card you want to take (no. That would require two uses. )
Do you keep control of a territory after moving all your troops out (till some other chief comes in)
Does a chief automatically capture a territory he moves into (only if he ends his move there. )
Can a chief just take over an unnoccupied enemy territory and levy troops. (sure. Da boyz'll be bored and fight whoever ya tell'em to fight. Especially if you tell'em to get Soulja boy ;) )
Are we going to get an orcwars boxed set. (Maybe. Buy lots of GAZ10 if ya want that ta happen. )
Are Gold country east and west different territories. (Yar. There's gold in them thar territories, and they don't wanna share. )
Can you use multiple chief operations defensively (Yes! The boyz can co-operate sometimes.)
So let's get raiding! Raaaaaaar. Last one dead has to eat everyone else!
Dragon Magazine Issue 134: June 1988
part 3/3
Fiction: Eyes of redemption by James Brunet. Hmm. This is an interesting mythological set-up. And one I can't really talk about without spoiling the whole plot of the story. I'll just say that it works both as a story, as a bit of worldbuilding, and as part of this month's focus on dragons, taking the hero on a physical and internal journey that makes sense, given what he experiences, and ends in a way that is highly satisfying, if not completely happy. Quite a good one, really.
TSR Previews: AD&D gets FR4: The Magister. Lots of new magical items, and I suspect some reprints from the magazine, all with Elminsters inimitable writing style framing it. Can something that was pretty fun to read as articles be sustained for a whole book?
The Forgotten Realms is also getting next year's calendar. Once again, you get to see artwork from the books reprinted considerably larger, on nice glossy paper for your viewing enjoyment.
Dragonlance isn't being neglected either. The second book is now converted to graphic novel format. The third should be along pretty soon then.
Marvel Superheroes are still in an epic mood, with ME2: Ragnarok and Roll. Thor & co kick the asses of the Elders of the universe. They probably deserve it. :p
Top Secret/S.I. also pushes it's boundaries with TSAC4: F.R.E.E.Lancers. A new futuristic setting full of superpowered secret agents, this looks like being a polarising little book. They really are moving this ever further from it's original design.
The dread Bullwinkle & Rocky roleplaying party game hits the shelves this month. Includes hand puppets. Eeech. :rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: Erm, I mean It sounds marvelous, and will revolutionise roleplaying as we know it while also being a huge commercial success :teeth ting:
And finally, we have a trio of boardgames. Kage, Crosse and Steppe are all appearing under a new imprint, the Master Moves Strategy Boardgames. Interesting. Anyone remember having these, or are they going to disappear unlamented like too many of their experiments?
Arcane lore: Another interesting design experiment here. Healing magic is one thing that massively affects the tone of the game. Just how much of it you have available, and how quickly you can apply it makes a huge difference. Here's a clever little trick. Instead of waiting until they get hurt to heal them, you could apply pre-emptive spells that kick in when you get hurt. leaving the cleric free to do other things mid combat. And so another ingenious little bit of spell technology came into being, with 4 new spells that do exactly that. Regenerate light, serious, critical wounds, & Regenerative Heal. Each heals slightly less than it's after the event counterpart, and imparts the healing over a longer timescale rather than all at once, so they don't overshadow the standard spells in terms of power. But in terms of tactical play, combining the two types of healing can give a team substantial advantages. Very clever indeed, and a good example of how to become more effective through proper tactics and variety of options rather than objective power creep. I like this one quite a lot, and am definitely putting it in as a secret technique to be unearthed in my game.
The official ballot for Origins 1987! Vote now and send it in! Another interesting bit of context here.
Another rather lengthy bit of Gen con info, as they give a 4 page bit of promotion on the games auction, and how to participate in it. Pay attention to the small print.
Sighting in: Top Secret's article this month is focused on assassination. Just as people are finally getting over their rage about the assassin being removed from the next edition of AD&D. :p In particular, sniping. One of the least favourite ways to kill a PC, and generally problematic, in the same way that nukes and spaceship combat are. But that's because it's rather effective at killing things. Anyway, this is two pages of gun pr0n, and half a page on getting the proper training to use it. After all, not every agent can become a sniper. You still need to gather plenty of info about what's going on and where to lurk before you can set things up to shoot someone. Not a hugely interesting article, and once again the stats are all for the second edition rather than the new one. They really are still giving it a lot of support. Is this driven by the magazine staff or the fans?
The game wizards: Speaking of snipers, Steve Winter decides to talk about their new Sniper™ games. There are still quite a few people at TSR who like wargames, and would like to see them return to a wider audience, and he's leading the charge. So this month, this column is devoted to promoting the series, describing how the rules work, and trying to make buying them seem like an appealing prospect. Designed to cover a wide range of close range engagements, and both mundane and supernatural scenarios, they're certainly trying hard. But as Yoda said. Do, or do not do. There is no try. Another depressing reminder of all the companies failed experiments.
Role-playing reviews decides that it's their turn to have an oriental special. Better late than never to jump on the bandwagon, as it's popularity shows no sign of abating around here. As usual, Jim talks about what should make playing in this milieu different from any other game, and the standards he is using to judge the products by. You have to balance the cool powers with the social ties and responsibilities, the realistic elements with the fantastic, and capture the strangeness of the cultures without making them inaccessable. Oh, and there's gotta be ninjas. ;) How will he judge the current options?
Bushido is one of the more Old Skool games out there. With dense, poorly organized rules, it'll take several full readings to figure out how everything fits together. If you can do this, it's a crunchy games that does capture the Oriental feel fairly well. And you don't have to worry about keeping up with tons of supplements, although he doesn't see that as a positive either. Could be better, could be worse.
Land of ninja is a supplement for 3rd ed Runequest. It integrates pretty well with the existing rules, introducing plenty of new skills and powers. It is however lacking in martial arts, and the maps referenced in the adventures seem to be missing. So while generally of decent quality, the whole thing feels a bit unfinished, and if you don't like how the Runequest system works in general, this won't change that.
Oriental adventures is of course AD&D's attempt at covering these topics. And a pretty successful one it is too, integrating all the basic themes into the game in a mechanically codified way, without altering AD&D so much that you can't use them alongside western characters and monsters. If you haven't got it already, do so. Jim also gives brief reviews of the first two OA modules, Swords of the Daimyo and Blood of the Yakuza. Each provides both adventures and setting detail, helping fill in the lands of Kara-Tur some more. Seems reasonable enough. My only real complaint with this review is that we see another instance of their creeping desire to downplay Gary's contributions. Zeb Cook gets all the credit, while Gary and the other people who contributed to the book, but are no longer with the company do not get mentioned. This is rather telling. There is corporate culture crap going on here that they would rather we not see.
Catching some rays: Gamma World's article this month is a little expansion on the effects of lower intensity long term radiation exposure. This is definitely on the more realistic end of things, with radiation primarily giving you health problems and detrimental mutations. One of those articles that definitely won't be good for many games, with it's greater lethality and playing up a problem you can't fight directly. Serviceable but dull.
The role of computers: Dream Zone is an adventure game where you go from reality to a dream world, and then have to escape the dream. It uses the same framing trick as the wizard of oz movie, making reality black and white, while the dream world is in colour. The puzzles are typically obtuse, with a strong sense of humour involved as you navigate your way through the corrupt and obtuse department of information. Definitely seems like an inventive little creation.
Strike-Fleet, The Naval Task Force Simulator is one of those big strategy games where you have to learn to control a whole bunch of things at once, and then play out various military scenarios. Ship and submarine scenarios are quite different experiences, and you have to learn to both wait patiently for the enemy to make a mistake, and react fast in response. This will take quite a few tries.
The Pawn, another adventure game, gets a rather short review. While positive, this is actually mostly concerned with the capabilities of IBM computers as compared to more common gaming platforms. The graphics card you have can make a quite substantial difference to your gaming experience. Another one of those bits of historical context that reminds us just how far computers have to develop.
Gary Gygax presents Fantasymaster! We will compete with our former creation and blow them away! Yeah, right. Any opinions on this one?
Warhammer 40,000 gives us a big statblock as an advert. Buh. Does that work? Have you ever been sold on a game by looking at it's statblocks?
The ultimate Addenda's addenda: Another bunch of extra powers is this month's Marvel contribution. As they often do with monsters and magical items, these are the result of lots of people's ideas being submitted over time and then compiled. So here's 8 new variant powers, demonstrating the ingenuity of various super-heroes, plus 8 new "meta-powers", which improve your capabilities that work by messing with the quirks of the game rules. Change the Karma criteria, pool and combine your stats and powers with those of others, and choose everyone's place in the initiative order, these can be pretty effective. Once again we see how adapting ideas from other games can have quite different looking results when applied to other systems, and this can be very interesting. A pretty nice bit of new toys for a game which gets less than it's fair share of them around here.
Dragonmirth leaves things half-done twice. Does that make a complete joke? Snarf makes new friends. Possibly. Things could easily go horribly wrong again.
Yamara! Looks like they've found a replacement for Wormy. Already there is PvP. I remember the later issues of this, and I eagerly look forward to seeing the whole arc in the proper order. Not that they'll get that much done, as they're only tiny monthly strips. Still, it's how funny the journey is, not the destination, that really counts. And they're already off to a decent start in that respect.
We get a map showing where all 10 of the gazetteers of the Known world are covering. 640 pages between them. That's a lot of setting detail. Better than Oerth ever got. Goes to show how much the supplement mill has accelerated in the past couple of years.
Time definitely marches on in this one, with an unusual number of references to both the past and the future in this issue. You can definitely tell we're in the middle of gearing up for an edition change. This time, it's the D&D stuff that works best, while the coverage of other games feels a bit sub-par. Still, they seem to be maintaining fairly consistent ratios in what they're tackling. What will happen next, when the edition change really goes into full effect? What format changes, what flame wars will next year bring? Certainly looks promising.
Dragon Magazine Issue 135: July 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Bwuh. Rather amusing cover this month. Did that creature just stumble on the fairy, or is it a person who just got transformed into a walrus headed fluke tailed furry thing in a typical attack of mischievousness? Not important. More important is Roger reiterating D&D's international popularity, with stats on the number of people who read Dragon, and send in letters and articles from Canada, UK, Australia, and other english speaking countries. A broadly spread fanbase is the basis for a stable, long-lasting career. And strong distribution and promotion is a crucial part of that. So if you have the money, go on international promotional trips. If you do it right, it'll more than pay for itself in the long run. I will not be insular. Insularity is the slow death that leads to moribund echo chambers. I will step outside my comfort zone, acclimatize myself to new experiences, and incorporate the good ones into my daily life. Or something. Back to the grind.
In this issue:
Letters: A whole ton of quickfire responses for the cover of issue 133. Very amusing.
A letter asking how much the OD&D rules are worth. Depends which printing, and who you're selling them too. Name your price and see if anyone'll pay it. If not, you may want to drop it a little.
Forum: Dain A. Miller thinks wizards should be able to wear basic padded armour. Even that would increase their survivability at 1st level quite a bit. This is why so many of them wind up being dex & con monkeys, despite it having little to do with being better at their class abilities.
David Carl Argall still thinks that if anything, magic-users are too powerful, and need to be reduced in power at higher levels. Flatten that curve!
Kenneth Arromdee has some more comments on the magic-user debate. His own solution to increase survivability without changing any rules is dual classed 1st level fighter/magic-users. Better be using a good rolling method to get the scores for that reliably :p
Brian Habing, Randy Smith,Wayne Strailton and Eric Krein all have quite a bit to say on the dimensions of magic-user spellbooks. These of all things shouldn't be standardised. Have you ever seen real researchers notes. Homogeneity is not their strong point.
Theresa Mac Donnelly has some very inventive uses for the simulacrum spell. Like shapechanging, the possibilities are endless given a little time to prepare, and knowledge of the right creatures to copy. I very much approve of these ideas.
Amit Izhar also has another clever application for the larcenous wizard. Spider climb makes a great pilfering device. Palm objects without using any fingers at all, due to the stickiness.
Steve Allen thinks that RPG's shouldn't just be about fun. What about developing your analytical thinking, your acting skills, your ability to work with others well? You'll have more fun if what you're playing has a little sophistication. Contentious statement. I am interested in debating that theory.
Brett Barnsdale thinks that saving for disbelief on illusions is a subjective pain in the butt. Just let them know it's an illusion when they touch it and go through it, and leave them guessing until then.
S.D. Anderson is also talking about illusion saves. Damn these vague rules, provoking so much controversy!
Rick J Federle has a house rule to determine how much XP a thief should get for thieving. A pretty simple one. No objections here.
Thomas Cook debates our recent DC Heroes article. Interesting. Wasn't expecting that. Will he get any responses? Since he works for the actual company, I am skeptical.
Space 1889! Steampunk kicks off! Nice.
The queen galadriel collectors doll?! Looks like a modded barbie to me :p Do you really want to shell $56 on that? Bleh.
The ecology of the cave fisher: Back to the fairly realistic creatures. After all, there are real world spiders that hunt by snaring things with dangled strands instead of webs. Give arthropods functioning lungs and the other bits and pieces needed to scale up, and you'd see things like this in a few million years, no trouble. Not that you'd really want too, for being strung up for hours or days before actually getting eaten is not a nice way to go. One of the more lethal ecologies, we not only see two waves of adventurers die, but also an amusing postscript in which the innkeeper takes advantage of their foolishness. It may be a game for us, but it isn't for them. Definitely another entertaining little ecology here. Don't get smug just because your opponents don't have inhuman intelligence and a load of magical abilities.
The dragon's bestiary: Tibbits are nekocreatures, mischievous little feline shapeshifters with a quirky set of magical powers. With planar connections, the ability to form bonds with spellcasters, and pretty good thief abilities, they're quite capable of being highly tricky to deal with, especially in groups. One to be intensely annoying with, muahahaha!
Through the looking glass: A new miniatures column. It's been a while since they tried one of these. And once again, they're trying out a new name, rather than resurrecting one of the three they've tried before. I wonder if this one'll stick for any length of time. No actual content in this one, merely an outline of what they'd like to see in future issues. Obviously, it's future success is up to the freelancers. Yet again the magazine fills in one of the last few steps to become the one I knew when I started reading. Quite pleasing, really.
Give them enough rope!: Another little article engaging in some realistic analysis. With lots of Runequest references. Curious. As usual, the various RPG's differ substantially from reality and each other in their treatment of rope. Something that could be dull very easily, but Robert Plamodon's inventive set of uses for it, laced with dry humour, manage to redeem it. Another one to look at when stuck in an awkward situation with basic equipment and short of ideas on how to get out. MacGuyver would be proud.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More arrows this month. 33 different types of magical arrow, many of which have lots of subcategories as well. Be generous with them and in letting players find out what they do, for as usual, these are one-shot devices. Even the cheap (non cursed) ones cost 120 gp each. Still, definitely enough here for months of amusing treasure deliveries as they more than double the basic stuff from the core books. My favourites in this selection are the arrow of clairvoyance (perfect ninja weapon) The arrow of multiplicity (great visuals there) The arrow of roping, and the arrow of pursuit. Plenty of interesting stuff for players here. Definitely more than enough here for a good themed badguy as well. Another neat article in this series.
When game masters go bad: Another serious article with a humorous edge here. So many ways that the GM can mess things up. So little time to list them all. Adversarial GM'ing, messing up the rules, lack of enthusiasm, insufficient preparation, favouritism, formulaic design, railroading and overeliance on things turning out a particular way. Actually, that's not such a huge list. This is another case where most of the stuff mentioned is pretty familiar, so it's mostly a matter of how well the writer phrases it this time that determines if I like it or not. And this time it's pretty good, with some very amusing illustrations. Whoever came up with using the old image of the man eating his own face was a twisted genius. Credit to both the Roger's, much as they hate being lumped together. :p
The game Wizards: Jim Ward is buzzing away at several things at once as usual. Most important is the new Greyhawk corebook. Lots of suggestions have been sent in, and he's sorted through them and is incorporating the best ideas. Along with the usual endless demand for new monsters and spells, a lot of people also want a system for properly developing 0 level characters without them going into a class. So we'll give it to them. I suspect some of them would actually like to get rid of classes altogether, and make D&D skill based, but they ain't getting that. He also plots a pun-filled dungeon, and forgotten realms miniatures. Looks like someone's trying to keep the spirit of mischief that was more prevalent in the early years of the hobby alive. Now, can they keep moving forward while doing so?
The Mix-&-Match Module: Zany crossovers! Now there's something that's declined quite a bit over the years. Definitely a case of appropriate juxtaposition putting it next to Jim's piece. But actually, this isn't that zany or gonzo, being advice on how to convert modules from one genre or system to another. This is particularly useful when playing non D&D games, since D&D probably has more modules to convert than all the other RPG's out there put together. You can also steal ideas from books, movies, TV, etc, and as long as you alter it enough, no-one need be any the wiser. Learn enough techniques like this, and you never need worry about writer's block again! Now all you need to do is figure out how to live with the guilt of knowing you're nothing but a hack. I suggest large quantities of alcohol. 9 out of 10 fleet street journalists recommend it! And they write even more than I do on a daily basis, so they should know. I seem to have become sidetracked again, because this is actually a pretty dull article. Hopefully I won't have to use it.
Palladium starts trumpeting the universality of their system. Now you can go from genre to genre with the same characters, and have equally screwy and unbalanced adventures in all of them. Next thing you know they'll make a setting explicitly designed for gonzo crossovers ;)
Dragon Magazine Issue 135: July 1988
part 2/3
Heroes are made - Like this!: Following on neatly again, talking of converting from one system to another, here's the usual proper characterisation and backstory advice, converted to the superhero genre. To build a character, you need to figure out their connections with the world, both as a person, and as a superhero. Are they part of a team, what are their likes and dislikes, how have they taken gaining powers, etc etc. Once again, this is pretty familiar material, that fails to shake off the boredom. Let's keep going, shall we.
Philip jose farmer's The Dungeon! I love this series, even if it does suffer some tonal problems with the shifting of authors from book to book. A great inspiration for planar gaming in general. Go buy it now.
Sage advice takes a break from D&D for a little Star Frontiers menage au frottage. They may only get one chance to do this, so this is another mammoth session. Not that this is a problem for Skip! Aaahh! He'll answer every one of us! (guitar riff)
What happens when you fire on a stationary vehicle (lots of the table's results become inapplicable. Oh noes!)
Is vehicle damage cumulative (Hmm. What would the real world do? Yes! )
What happens when a pedestrian gets hit (say hello to mah friend PAIN!)
Do grenades bounce at point blank range (yes. You will be hurt as well, remember. )
Do sathar ignore environmental crap (mostly.)
Where is starmist (off the map. We'll have to make a bigger one.)
Why don't lasers work well underwater ( The level of scattering is waay worse than in air. It's range of usefulness as a weapon would be rather short. )
What are the odds of jumping from one moving vehicle to another ( Agility check. DM should probably assign penalties. )
What are the modifiers for exchanging fire between two parallel vehicles (cover and attacker movement)
How elastic are dralasites (oooh. Not enough to fly, but they are pretty damn flexible. Skip knows what you're thinking next, laydees, and would love to watch.)
Do vehicle's weapons get a bonus to hit (not really)
Can hover vehicles fly high (nope. They're like ghosts. They go whir, hum hum, AAAAARRGH MY FOOT! Or something.)
What's a track-mobile ( Sarah Palin is so not topical anymore. Let's skip this one)
How much protection does armour give a vehicle ( Quite a bit. Otherwise why bother)
How does a telescopic scope affect shooting (reduced range penalties, whichever way you want to slice things. )
How do you break a hold (use your melee score. It's a melee attack, innit)
Do you need to check for every jetcopter you fly (nah. Too much effort)
Can you try again after failing a skill check (ahh, this old chessnut again.
Yeah, if you have the time, and failing doesn't mess things up. )
Do GSY's have sub-units ( I think we'll skip overcomplicating this stuff.)
Can you climb ANY length of rope with only 2 rolls? ( As ever, common sense needs to be applied. )
Ammo has no encumbrance. My players want to carry infinite amounts of it ( And this ruins your game how? Embrace the cinematicness dude! )
How much does anasthetic cost (50 cr for 10 doses. )
How far can you move and attack (aaalll the way. This aint 3rd edition D&D)
Can you buy a skill up more than one level at once (no. You can only learn so fast. )
How do you use MA subskills (Instinctively! Keep training! It won't be instinctive if you don't work at it. )
Can you use a heavy weapon if you can carry it (no, they need to be mounted for the proper support. Otherwise you'll look rather silly )
How much does a tripod cost and weigh. ( Cost, 50 cr. Weight, 15kg. Making all the laydees gasp at the size of your L4zor. Priceless)
Can I photocopy the character sheet (only for personal use. Otherwise sueage may ensue)
Are the off-handed and two weapon penalties cumulative (yes. Double attacks need a hefty balancing factor. )
Why are groundcars faster over water ( because they have to be lighter to float)
How do you determine a robot's strength ( Watch him pumping iron with his iron pumps )
Do you need special equipment to deactivate a robot (of course. Otherwise the technicians'd be out of a job)
Can you get over 6th level in a skill (Only if you buy Zebulon's guide, the new supplement. Available in all good hobby shops now :teeth ting: )
When will another volume of zebulon's guide come out (Never. You ungratefull swine didn't buy enough copies to make it worth our while. )
Can I use gamma world equipment in star frontiers (If you like. Conversions aren't hard. )
What do you roll to hit if you don't have any combat skills (the 0 table. Fnar)
Why do the humma have two entries on the movement chart (because they're like kangaroos, so they normally bounce along. But if the ceiling's low, they have to move more normally or hit their head. This obviously slows them down a bit )
Do you have any chance of suceeding at something you have no skill in (there's always a chance. Not a good one, but there you go. )
Are dex modifiers applied before or after rolling (Before. In many games this wouldn't matter, but it seems here it does. Intriguing)
How do you teach a robot to drive. ( At great expense. )
Where is the throwing skill (What, are you still playing the basic game? You'll have to go Advanced to do complicated things like that. N00B)
How far do explosives bounce (depends how long they're set for. )
Do mentalist disciplines require an unobstructed line of sight (no. Fear the psychics, for your head may explode at any time )
Do solar optics save you from floodlights (not quickly enough. Needs some more R&D)
Can a single maxiprog do everything ( Nah. We're still working off 80's computer limitations. We don't realise that in 20 years they'll be better than the stuff in our current sci-fi. )
What's a random locator indicator ( The thing that lets computers work without running through their entire memory every time you want to find something. Verrrah verrah handy)
How many programs can a computer use simultaneously (never enough. Never enough)
Do type E scanners really weigh 1000 kilograms (oh yes. Some things just aint portable. )
Can a spy eye be controlled manually (Yes. It helps with the protagonisation if you play a reactive part in your espionage )
Can you keep doing damage with pyrokinesis (Yes. It's like cooking a pizza. They go from underdone to charred really quick if you don't pay attention. Once someone's properly heated up, even more damage comes readlily. Muahahahahaha!)
How much can you change your density (As much as you have the time for. It'll take aaaages to become a black hole and destroy the world though, and someone may foil you in the meantime. )
What's the range of a grenade launcher (D. It stands for Don't give away trade secrets)
What are parabatteries (They have little wings, and they bounce along the floor. Jump on them to turn them into regular batteries.)
What skill is used to fire micromissiles (oops. We'd better invent one pronto. )
How much is a minigrenade launcher ( If it saves your life, what does it really matter. )
Virgin games centre advertises in Dragon. Another depressing reminder of how much more mainstream the hobby was in that era. You bought your gaming products in the regular toy stores along with the computer games and mainstream albums, not some shitty little niche of a shitty little comic book store with a tiny selection. (no offense, forbidden planet, traveling man, and all the rest.) If we didn't have the internet, we'd never find most of the books we want. Also, WFT kind of name is Zavvi? It's no wonder you're suffering these days.
Dragon Magazine Issue 135: July 1988
part 3/3
TSR Previews: D&D is still mainly gazetteering lately, with The Northern Reaches. A viking raider culture is a perfect place for adventurers to come from. Including a 3D village? Interesting.
AD&D gets DL15: The mists of Krynn. Lots of miniadventures, set all over Ansalon, including plenty of familiar faces. This world aint dying any time soon.
Marvel superheroes goes from E to M in another 256 page handbook. The frequency which each letter shows up in the alphabet is exceedingly uneven.
Top Secret gets TS3: Orion Rising. Lots more details on the good guy bureaus. Just what you need to figure out what missions to give your players.
On the books front, we have Sniper! Adventure gamebook 6: Libyan Strike, Greyhawk adventure 6: The name of the game, and Starsong, a novel by Dan Parkinson. Busy busy busy.
And finally in boardgames, we get the I think you think I think game. Doublethink your way to victory. I'm sure I've seen something similar as a facebook app, which says a lot about how boardgames have been superceded even more than RPG's by computers.
Fiction: Karl and the ogre by Paul J McAuley. Fittingly for an issue which has already had several bits on crossing over genres and converting from one to another, here's a reminder that the boundary between fantasy and sci-fi is easily crossed, and there are many fantasy series set in a time after the fall of modern civilisation, when the magic has come back, for whatever reason. This is one of those, and a somewhat disconcerting one too. The big danger of transhumanism is if you create massively superior people, what they will do to normal people in return. Will they oppress them, look after them for their own good, or simply kill them all so everyone can be superior. And if their minds are that far ahead of ours, will we be able to tell the difference between benevolence and tyranny? A nicely thought-provoking little piece.
Up close and personal: Top secret actually gets an S.I specific article at last. A little piece on unarmed combat in the game, what exactly the various moves do. Now you have a little more support for your cinematic moves, instead of letting the fight degenerate into a slugfest because no-one wants to go through the hassle of figuring out how to do more complex stuff. This is a good example of how the universal resolution tables make these kind of things easy to understand, and make it easy to include fun special effects for drastic failures and successes. This certainly makes it look both fun and fast moving. So I think thats a success then.
Role-playing reviews: This month's theme is stuff with visual aids. Pictures, miniatures, cutouts, sometimes even full-on constructible castles, these can definitely spice up your game. Ken is a fan of having toys like this, and talks about their upside, problems, and his judging criteria. He also mentions those great bugbears of gridded minis combat, scale and diagonal movement. The square root of 2 is not a rational number, and trying to reconcile this with simple rules causes quite a bit of hassle, while going hex has it's own problems when you want to move in a straight line. Just use a ruler. Another unexpected digression here. This is definitely a promising start.
The halls of the dwarven kings is a pretty boxed set devoted to an underground scenario. Build up the abandoned dwarven halls, and have your players explore them. (they're actually too big for you to build the entire thing with the pieces provided, but since they shouldn't know what's coming that just means you'll have to build up and remove stuff on the fly) The whole thing is tremendously detailed, and includes stats "compatible with" D&D and Runequest, and easily convertable to other systems. This is several steps above most generic adventures both visually and mechanically.
Blood on the streets is a warhammer supplement which allows you to build your own villages. The different houses are all nicely english and individualised, and fit together nicely. They also tie together into a small collection of villages, with a whole load of NPC's and adventure hooks. Again, it wouldn't be hard to use the pieces in some other game.
Citi-Block is a sci-fi variant on the same theme. This is officially for warhammer 40k and Judge Dredd (goes to show how closely related they are in terms of urban construction and philosophy) and obviously wouldn't be of much use in a shiny happy future like star trek. It's probably the most flawed of these three products, but you can still get plenty of use out of it if you put the effort in.
Lots more mini-reviews here. Most notable is the his review of Castle Greyhawk, which gets quite a good review. They've taken the old skool dungeon design style, and sent it up in amusing fashion while also lampshading some of it's tropes. And since he cut his teeth on that playstyle, he rather likes this. Hmm.
The role of books: The light fantastic by Terry Pratchett is another thing that reminds us how far we've come. At this point in time, the discworld was still a relatively sketchy creation, and the humour far broader and less nuanced than it has since become. It still manages to have some moments with genuine cleverness and pathos. Ya gotta have the talent before you can develop the finesse.
Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevermer is a fun story, told through the old victorian narrative method of exchanging letters between the characters. (which is how the story was built up IRL as well) This works very well, conveying the sense of a larger world out there, while maintaining subjectivity.
The demon hand by Rose Estes is her third greyhawk novel. It gets a rather negative review. The characters are unsympathetic, the tone is too distant, and the villain is dumb, while outshining established characters by author fiat. Not a pleasing way to treat the first AD&D world.
The crystal shard by R.A Salvadore is the first story in the drizzt series, although at the moment it's actually Wulfgar the barbarian who is the primary protagonist. As this is long before the effects of flanderisation and crank-em-out syndrome have come into force, this is probably actually a bit better than later books in the series. It's definitely a lot better than the greyhawk novel preceding it.
The legacy of Lehr by Katherine Kurtz is an entertaining Sci-fi mystery. A series of murders are taking place on a luxury spaceliner, and obviously this racks up the tension between the various people and aliens on board. It manages to be a success in both of it's genres, and in creating interesting, well fleshed out characters that drive the plot along.
Of chiefs and champions by Robert Adams gets a considerably more negative review than most of his books have here. Neither the plotting or characterization make much sense to the reviewer, and the marketing seems out of sync with the contents. Has he lost his spark?
We also get another interesting rebuttal to reader's letters, as he explains why he gives some books full reviews while others go in the short and sweet section, and gives the usual YMMV disclaimer. Definitely a well above average one here in terms of both books covered, and the finesse with which they are reviewed.
The role of computers: Alternate reality: The city is an RPG where you generate a character, and the wander around a sandbox developing them. Get a job, join a guild, kill monsters. You get an unusually high amount of freedom here to determine your alignment by the actions you take, and not fight everyone. Weather & time of day are tracked and make real differences, and the whole thing has plenty of depth. The question then becomes what you actually do with this character.
Alternate reality: The dungeon solves some of the problems of the last installment, but presents some of it's own. By far the most egregious is a badly designed interface that requires very frequent disk swapping. The characters are also rather weak for the challenges they face. This ruins the fun of a series with lots of potential.
Airborne ranger is a game where you play a military commando behind enemy lines. You need to balance action with resource management, as you make supply drops before starting the mission, and finding and utilizing them is important to your success. Stealth is also crucial, so you definitely need to use your brain to finish this one.
Power! is an arcade game in which you control a hovercraft, and have to negotiate your way through a load of obstacles to defeat the enemy. Seems fairly standard shoot em up fare.
Decisive battles of the american civil war, volume 1, is not only a massive tactical wargame, it also includes programs that enable you to design your own scenarios. Not too hard to learn, considering it's complexity, it's also well researched and seems to emulate the battles represented decently.
Tetris gets instantly hailed as a hopelessly addictive game. Woo. I'm sure you all know this one, and it's theme tune too, so I shall say no more, apart from reporting that it only gets 4 and a half stars, rather than the full 5. Oh well. They can't predict that it'd still be around long after other things from this era have faded into obscurity. I wonder how they'll react to the rise of handheld games as well.
TNK III is an arcade game where you control a tank. The usual blasting and collecting of power-ups ensues. Not brilliant, but worth the price.
The daily planet gaming supplement celebrates it's first anniversary, after putting adverts in here every month. How consistent of them.
Just how big is this bomb?: DC Heroes gets explosive. How does a grenade translate to their exponential scale? How about a nuke? Supernova? What could superman survive? As with the Top Secret article, this is a simply explained little piece that makes the prospect of playing with cosmic sized powers that can devastate worlds seem fun and not mechanically onerous at all. Which means you have more time to get playing and worry about the story implications. Another pretty decent article.
Dragonmirth turns expectations around in more ways than one. Snarfquest has made new friends after all. Now, if they could only get rid of them.
Part 4 of the enemy within series, Behind the throne. This series continues to build nicely as well.
Another pretty good issue, with a new development, and lots of high quality articles. They seem to be gradually improving their overall quality again through this year. Is this going to be reflected in sales, or are they still going down. Just how much will the magazine change when the new edition finally hits. Guess I'll find out in a few months.
Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Back to the worldbuilding again, with another special on urban adventures. Whether the players are in charge, or just stopping by, certainly plenty of fun to be had there. The more the merrier, and all that. Speaking of the more the merrier, convention season is upon us again, and as we've found repeatedly this year, the runners of Gen Con and Origins really want to work together to make both big conventions the best they can be. What next, Sega and Nintendo working together? ;) History chugs onwards, and it looks like there's going to be plenty more stuff to report on in the next few months.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking what rolling method you use for berserkers. Much the same as for barbarians.
Another pointed question on how you deal with arrows that stick in people. It is a bit awkward, they have to admit. That's the fun.
A complaint that they don't cover Spectrum or Amstrad computers. Another reminder that there were a good dozen or so different companies competing for dominance in the computer world then, and their popularity varied quite widely from country to country. Thank god that's over, and even PC and Mac grow increasingly cross-compatible these days.
A letter asking what happened to Wormy. It's gone, we're afraid. That's the end of that story.
A letter praising Perception, and asking if that's the 8th ability score, what is the 7th? Someone's either a D&D player only, or hasn't been keeping up with recent supplements. Not that there's anything wrong with ignoring Comeliness. I do it all the time. :p
Forum: Aaron Goldblatt has another suggestion for the scaling of illusion saving throws. Unfortunately, it runs into the DM fiat problem as soon as you try and emulate objects. Needs moar guidelines.
Tim Merritt is another writer who appears here to rebutt responses to his articles. He stands by most of his opinions. Yes some of the changes are a bit kludgy, but they're better for making a fun game than standardisation would be.
Steve Marsh thinks that the random origins table for DC heroes in issue 132 was a little too divergent in potential power levels, especially when there are cascading open-ended results on the table. Allowing characters that different is like allowing 1st and 25th level characters to play in the same D&D adventure. A little more fairness is needed.
David Carl Argall points out just how many equal opponents you need to beat to go up a level. It's a wonder anyone ever gets to 2nd level, really. Even experienced soldiers and serial killers don't normally manage that kind of death count. This is why having xp for treasure and other noncombat goals is important.
Ron L Newsome is full of praise for Fritz Lieber, and the new Lankhmar D&D supplement. They make an excellent setting for adventuring in, particularly when house-ruled a little.
John H Chang has a few pointers on the berserker class, as derived from the real world. Yeah, like that ever helps.
Eric Liss continues the debate about Scud and Allycia the cavalier. Don't forget the list of powers cavaliers get. Their badassery more than compensates for their code of honour.
Alexander Thomas Greene expresses his disdain for people trying to play a spellcaster as mobile artillery in Runequest. You shouldn't be bending the system to make this viable, you should be learning how to use magic cleverly from behind the scenes. Same as it ever was.
Building blocks, city style: Random Tables! Always good to see a few of those around. Not that we haven't had them already, but it's good to have ones focused on earth, rather than mars. And they're prepared enough to give us info on both western and eastern style settlements. This is primarily useful for when you have the basics of a city fleshed out and mapped, but haven't got the time or inclination to fill in the details of every building on every street. Apart from a few amusing statistical quirks (it's much easier to find a bordello in a port city, hello sailor and all that.) this is the kind of thing that looks like it would be more interesting in play than it is to read. Nothing wrong with a few labour saving devices when you have as much to get through as I do.
A nightmare on elm street, the game. I quite approve.
Blood Bowl gets a pretty double page spread, with lots of properly painted minis. The cheerleaders for the various races are particularly amusing.
The long arm of the law: Thieves guilds seem to be virtually ubiquitous in D&D settings. Almost to the point where you wonder about their illegality, and the attempts the authorities make to catch them. Are they really so entrenched in the setting as to be impossible to fight? Good question. And obviously, in a properly fleshed out world, one that should vary from place to place. This article is very focussed on applying the alignment model to communities. Which is a good place to start, but a bad way to finish, since that's only 2 axes with three divisions. There's still room for huge amounts of variation within each alignment, especially once you take technology and historical relations with neighbors into account. But that's for you to develop. Another article that only really takes you a part of the way there, with most of it's info being pretty commonsensical. And since the law frequently has some aspects that seem nonsensical unless you know the specific events of the country involved, that's not very realistic, is it.
Empire builder is back. And still using the same recommendation from Gary in issue 65. Couldn't they get a more up to date review?
Taking care of business: The merchant class, as detailed ages ago in Leomund's (what happened to Len, did he quit when Gary was forced out as well?) tiny hut, gets a revised version. Which is nice. It keeps the players from killing everyone and taking their stuff when they shouldn't. They still have the same idiosyncratic spell learning ability, but their powers are better defined and laid out in general. Since they now also have decent combat capabilities, can earn XP from regular adventuring, and get yet another idiosyncratic way of breaking the usual multi/dual classing rules, they actually approach viability as a PC type. If you've maxed out your first class, switching to them seems a pretty good choice. This definitely goes on the list of classes I'll allow in my campaign.
A room for the Knight: Given the number of adventures that start in taverns, and the amount of traveling you have to do in the course of them, a little more info on the places you eat and sleep while in town seems a good topic to cover here. When you add in rogues, rumourmongers, barroom brawls, and all that fun stuff, you can turn them into an adventure in their own right. But for a third time this issue, this is more about giving you the basics, so you can get those sorted out quickly and efficiently, and move on to customising stuff for your own campaign. So they show us roughly how 1 to 4 star inns vary in quality and price, and what you can get there. Once again, the most amusing part of this is in analyzing the quirks of the tables presented. Which in the cosmic scale of things, isn't really that amusing overall.
Fifty ways to foil your players: Muahaha. What a very adversarial title. This seems promising. The title is, as is often the case, a bit misleading, as they use it in it's definition as a noun rather than a verb. So here's 50 character types that serve to amuse and inconvenience the PC's in such a manner that you're not expected to kill them, and doing so would probably make things worse. A strong streak of sadistic humour runs through this article, but they recognize that this is the kind of meal best served in moderation, for if you tip them into outright enemies, D&D characters will not hesitate to go into slaughter mode and damn the repercussions. This is definitely one that'll help you come up with random NPC's quickly, and makes for entertaining reading as well. From these seeds can spring characters that'll give you years of fun gaming. Sow them well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988
part 2/3
Mertwig's maze by Tom Wham. I guess he's still working for them, although none of his games have appeared in here for a while. I was wondering. I suspect he's one of the people who aren't taking the new corporate culture in the company well.
Fiction: The curse of the magus by Bruce Boston and Robert Frazier. People never react well to the concept that something they take for granted is going to be stripped away. Look at the modern issue of fossil fuels. Despite it seeming pretty likely that they'll become scarce enough to be uneconomical to mine for everyday use within our lifetime, people and governments drag their feet on changing to more sustainable power sources until they absolutely have too, and this may seriously bite us in the ass. This has echoes of that theme, but frames it in a rather more personal context, that of the day to day trials and reminiscences of an archmage exiled and stripped of his powers for predicting and trying to prepare people for the depletion of magic. Being right is a bitter satisfaction in that position. Still, at least he manages to go out with a bang. As this manages to be both visually evocative, and philosophically thought provoking, I think this definitely counts as another win for this department.
Arcane Lore: Rather a tedious lore session this month, as they give us Recharge. Now not just any high level spellcaster can make and reload wands and staves, you need to do some more special research, and pay some more money on material components. How very tiresome, and not worthy of further comment. Next!
Sage advice is feeling particularly classy this month.
Can barbarians build a stonghold (If they can afford it. It would be more thematically appropriate for them to take an existing one by slaughtering their inhabitants and then making a pile of their skulls though.)
Can barbarians hire man-at-arms ( No. He couldn't possibly leave he-man. They're like, a canon pairing. )
How do barbarians summon hordes (by going home and getting their family so drunk they agree to attack whoever it is. )
Can barbarians get their special AC bonus when wearing magic chainmail (no. You should be ashamed of yourself. All you need is a good sword and a loincloth to take on the world. Maybe some boots as well if you want to be a high class barbarian. Leaving out the loin cloth and becoming a three weapon fighter (take that, wussy rangers ) is possble but not recommended. )
How often can barbarians apply first aid (once per wound. Lets hope no-one starts doing the cutting themselves to allow more hit points to be restored trick. )
What attacks do bards use (their fighter level. Yes, this does mean high level bards suck a bit at head-on combat. Suck it up. You've got plenty of other advantages. )
How many bonus Hp do bards get for high con ( Skip is generous to the laydees. Skip is not like that rape illusion monster creator Jean Wells. Skip lets bards keep the exceptional ability score bonuses from their fighter levels. Oh yeaaaah. )
What druidic powers do bards get. (All of them. Did I not say Skip is generous. If you want to make them really scary, that can include the heirophant powers as well. Being able to change previous rulings is a wonderful thing. Skip has the power, and he's not afraid to contradict people with it. )
Can a thief become a thief-acrobat before becoming a bard (No. Skip has already given you great benificence. Now you must feel the hard end of skip's stick. Yeah baby. )
Do cavaliers go berserk in combat (no, that's berserkers. And no, you can't dual-class cavalier/berserker. That's a dishonorable style, (yes, sir Turquine did it. but that's another game, in another universe ) and you'll lose your cavalierhood if you try. )
What die do Cavaliers and paladins get for HD (10 sided. They might be cooler than fighters, but they aren't tougher as well. )
Are cavaliers immune to dragon fear (yes, for all the good it'll do them. Foil-wrapped yummies, hee.)
What are the effects of percentage scores of abilities other than strength (None. They're just to slow you down from getting 19. Oh, and cavaliers can't increase their int or wis, contrary to what you seem to think. )
Can paladins drink alcohol. (Depends on their order. Probably, unless they actually do something immoral while drunk. You do not get to claim diminished responsibility when you chose to take the actions that got you into a mess. )
Do paladins become fighters or cavaliers when they lose their paladinhood (Cavaliers. Further falling is certainly not impossible though. )
Can paladins use cleric magic items (Nahh. You wouldn't let a nurse do doctor stuff, even if they have the same employer, and have been working there way longer. )
What should a paladin do when he captures an evil creature. (Keep him, and housetrain him, and dress him up properly and put a bow in his hair and call him Gerald. )
Can paladins detect ordinary evil aligned humans (Yes. You still can't go around killing everyone who pings positive though. )
Just how good is paladins protection from disease (strong enough to deal with anything a regular cure disease spell can handle. Lycanthropy, and some other magical diseases can indeed penetrate this. )
Why don't clerics have any missile weapons (Hang on, are you seriously telling me you missed the bit about the slings? Archetypical biblical giant killing weapon, innit, slings. You must have been playin' like puddings to miss that. )
Do neutral clerics turn or control undead (Pass. Your DM can decide that. )
Can druids turn undead (no. They already have way more cool powers than clerics. )
Can druids become giant or magical animals (Not until 3rd edition, dear. It's not as if the powers regular animals get aren't cool enough. )
The golem's craft: Our stalwart book reviewer steps out of his usual role to contribute this article on golem construction. This is rather more interesting than the other item creation piece, as it opens up options rather than constraining them, giving you several different ways of achieving the same ends. It's also interesting because it examines the fine details of the D&D rules, and picks them apart. Strangely, it seems that using manuals actually increases the time and cost needed to build a golem compared to doing it yourself. Similarly, Caryatid columns cost more than regular stone golems, but are considerably weaker. Those wacky ancients, eh, always shrouding their work with extraneous cosmetic gubbins. The overall format of this article is similar to the ecologies, with lots of IC references in the writing, followed by game mechanic footnotes. This all adds up to a pretty good article, that helps make building golems more accessable and internally coherent. If it had also provided some new ones to go with it it would have pushed from good to great, but oh well, it's still pretty usable.
Through the looking glass is kicking off by giving us some reviews. Given this year's real push to promote wargaming at the conventions, it's no surprise that lots of companies are bringing out stuff to coincide with this. From small indie companies like Stan Johansen miniatures, to the established giants of Games workshop and Grenadier, everyone's got stuff to sell. Plastic or lead, at various scales, all in one or needing some assembly, the choice is yours, etc etc. The reviews are fairly conservative, with the lowest score 2 stars, and the highest 3 and a half. More interesting is a lengthy rant on all the things that can go wrong in the design and distribution chain. Have a little sympathy for the poor shopkeeper, for they can't control it if a game is late, or only available in other countries. Like bullying, ranting begets more ranting, and so the cycle continues. As long as people keep having unrealistic targets and deadlines, it is no wonder that there will be painful disappointments on a regular basis.
Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988
part 3/3
TSR Previews: Starsong apparently got delayed, for it is first out the gate this month as well as last month. Or is it just a formatting error? Hmm. Not hugely important, anyway.
AD&D gets the new Greyhawk Adventures hardback. Now redesigned to be compatible with 2nd edition, and more differentiated from the Forgotten Realms. Now with 100% less Pluffet Smedger!
Talking of the Forgotten Realms, we get Ruins of Adventure, the back conversion of the recent AD&D computer game. How very amusing. That's like doing a novel of a movie. Will it be improved or messed up by the format change?
The Forgotten Realms also gets another novel. Doug Niles and R A Salvadore have already made their mark, now Ed Greenwood gets to show these new arrivals just what the creator of the world can do, with Spellfire. There may be twinkitude involved.
Dragonlance isn't neglected either, with a new boardgame based upon it. Find the Dragonlance and save the world! Is it Tuesday already?
Buck Rogers, of course, has to go one step further. Their boardgame isn't just about the fate of the world, it's about the entire solar system! Overthrow that tyrannical dictatorship! :roll of thunder, stab of organ music: Erm, or maybe not. Got to have something for the next generation of players to struggle against too.
Marvel Superheroes tops even that, with ME3: The left hand of eternity. Oh, the elders of the universe are in so much trouble now. WHAM! THWOK!! KERPOW!!! and all that.
Finally, we get to see Tom Wham's latest stroke of genius, Mertwig's maze. The usual madcap boardgaming fun ensues.
Damage control report: Star frontiers continues to get occasional support here, despite being a dead gameline now. A new damage system for space combat, with a little more variety in which systems get damaged in an attack, reducing short term lethality, but increasing long-term annoyances? Seems a reasonable enough change. After all, no-one likes having a TPK result from a single hit, as is a problem in space combat. And troubleshooting unexpected faults can become an adventure in itself. A short article that leaves me with little to say about it, this is very much in the old Ares section tradition.
New kicks in martial arts: Len Carpenter tries to rebalance the OA Martial art system, so you can create custom styles that are balanced with each other, and come closer to the official ones from the book. It's still not too great, not being nearly as flexible as it could be. This is really still an area that needs a complete rebuild rather than just patching. I don't think I'll be using you.
The game wizards: Top Secret/ S.I. has been out for a year now. Feedback time! Not only are we going to try and provide all the realism you wanted, we're also going to take the game further out there as well, providing multiple different settings for all your modern day espionage needs. When we overhauled the system, flexibility was one of our design goals. So supplements will be coming more frequently, and they will not all be compatible with one-another. Very interesting. Seems like they're trying to make it into more of a generic system. A risky gamble. Is this what kills it? They never had much luck with generic systems, as we see again with the Amazing Engine and Alternity. Hmm. This is definitely worth thinking about.
The role of computers: Dungeon Master is one of those adventure games where you create a party, equip them, and take them through adventures, fighting monsters and leveling up as you go. Seems like they review a lot of those. Well, this is an RPG magazine. It gets a highly detailed review, with lots of screenshots, and plenty of praise. There's plenty of hidden stuff to find, (familiar looking) foes to to beat, resources to manage, and all that jazz. Visually, they are definitely improving quite a bit lately.
Basketball Challenge is a strategy simulation game, where you train up a basketball team, and dictate their tactics in games from the sidelines. Not too bad an idea, but not really my cup of tea.
Fantasyzone is rather more quirky. Primarily an arcade shoot-em-up, you also have to collect coins from fallen enemies, and get to spend them in shops for all kinds of upgrades. Picking the right power-up can make a big difference, particularly when facing the bosses. With an interestingly designed soundtrack and visuals, it's challenging, but a good player'll get a little further each time. Which is how it should be.
Gamma life in the big city: Gamma world joins in with the theme this month, despite not actually being in the themed section. The stereotype in postapocalyptic settings is that most of the cities are largely abandoned, with only small communities of scavengers picking through the rubble. But things get more interesting if there are still at least a few sizable communities. Course, this requires that there be the resources to support this population, and enough safe living environment that they not die too frequently and go into terminal decline. This frequently leads to insular attitudes and heavy fortifications. After all, resources must be protected, and only shared with the worthy. if you let mutie scum in, who knows where it'll end? This dials down the strangeness a little, but doesn't neglect it, pointing out plenty of ways you can derive humour from the settlements imitating and misinterpreting modern institutions. This is actually considerably more detailed than the earlier articles, giving you a one-stop set of info on using them both as home bases, as adversaries, and as locations for adventures. With sample characters, plot ideas, and plenty of advice, this is almost as useful as the other ones put together, and eminently convertable as well. Rather pleasing.
Role-playing reviews is also in theme, with reviews of products covering city settings.
City-state of the invincible overlord gets a very negative review, both as an updating of an older product, and as one in itself. The old nicely medieval, if rather hard to locate stuff on map has been replaced by a a fantasy Milton Keynes, everything neatly laid out in grids with lots of space between stuff. The metaplot isn't properly integrated with the setting, the way monsters just show up on random tables, yet the city doesn't react to them makes no sense, the religion is just a flavourless mishmash, the new races are twinked, there's just no cohesion in general. The only redeeming feature is the index. And what's the use of that if there's nothing you want to find? Zing! Now that's an entertaining slating.
Lankhmar: City of Adventure gets a rather more positive review. While there are a few irritating omissions that really need a supplement to fill them in, it presents a nice compromise between feel and detail, giving you plenty of room and tools to design your own adventure locations within the city. Massively downgrading the power and speed of magic to emulate the original stories, it shows you how you can mod AD&D to be more fighter and thief centric. Still, these rules changes, combined with the very strong flavour, mean this may be tricky to use in an existing campaign.
Carse is another generic citybook, produced by chaosium. While not brilliant, and rather too focussed on the little details over giving you the knowhow to use them, it's still better than the city state of the invincible overlord. One you'll really need to figure out how to make the most of yourself.
Tulan of the isles is another book in the same series, set in the same world. It manages to be slightly better in most respects, more general atmosphere, more detail on individual buildings, and more setting info on the world surrounding the city. It seems much easier as a starting point to build good adventures from.
The game fair update: Big ambitions, big hassles, as usual. They've been promoting the conventions strongly all year, but they've still had problems with organizing stuff. Stuff being late, stuff being overbooked, last minute changes, there's some people running around like headless chickens, trying to get everything done here. Will they pull it off? Will they put an optimistic spin on things no matter how badly it goes? Guess I'll have to wait for the aftermath. Let's put some Dr Dre on while we do so. Crank that bass, synchronised head nodding is go!
Dragonmirth is speciesist again. Yamara tries to fool joe the cleric, another of her companions. Win some, lose some. Snarfquest is still all about the races.
Our boardgames for Dragonlance and Buck Rogers are advertised in the back pages. How long before the magazine is forced to run articles on Buck Rogers products as well?
A fairly average issue overall. From good to bad, they run the gamut. Should we leave or stay put? Hang around too long and we'll be late in the terminal sense. And then this'll never be complete. Turn the page, shut the door, and open up the next one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 137: September 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. A very photorealistic, but not particularly autumnal cover here. Once again we step into the wilderness, treking through hostile environments, and hunting down creatures dangerous and tasty. Not a place for the physically unfit. In high contrast, the editorial tackles disabilities and roleplaying. We've already had one article on that, but it's been a long time, and Roger's encountered quite a few other people with various physical problems in his years gaming. So he's taking the time to reassert that the magazine is disability friendly, and they would welcome suggestions to make it, and roleplaying in general, more so. Now, when will they tackle questions of sexuality or race? Is that too controversial? Maybe. Oh, the persistent problems of running a family friendly magazine.
In this issue:
The bullwinkle and rocky roleplaying party game?! Now there's a license I wasn't expecting to have a game for it.
The waterdeep city system. Another player favourite gets it's first in depth look at. The realms is really being filled in now.
Letters: A decidedly deranged spattering of anonymous odds and ends make up this month's letters page. Waldorf has destroyed greyhawk and enslaved its gods. Please send in all your characters so I can figure out how much XP I've earned. In other news, Isildiurs ring has been found as part of a two-piece bathing suit. Smexy. Roger Moore is still not the same Roger Moore that does the bond films. This one would never wear a toupee, no matter how much he might need it :p All very amusing. After all, they get the material, why should they waste it sticking to the sensible stuff all the time?
Forum: M A Cottle is finding that the publication of Watchmen has been having massive knock-on effects on everyone's roleplaying of superhero characters. Detailed psychological characterisation is replacing hack and slash (BIFF and KERPOW?) gaming even here.
Ed Friedlander talks about the decline of lethality in recent gaming. With regularly available raising, the advent of saving games in CRPG's, the elimination of assassins, it seems to definitely be on the down. And he's actually in favour of this. They may be only characters, but people get very attached to them. He'd rather defeat be merely humiliating, as he sees enough real death in his day job. This may provoke serious debate.
Bahman Rabii expresses contempt for the idea of formalizing nonweapon skills. It takes all the player thought out of the equation when they know exactly what they can do and just roll to do it. This isn't the True AD&D Way!
Peter Kirkup is another grognard who feels threatened by recent developments. In his case, it's the poncy actory types that were drawn in by the Dragonlance games. We want more stuff for the hack and slashers and problem solvers, and less purple prose and modules with a fixed story.
David Howery has suggestions to make the vanilla fighter class more interesting, so they can compete with the more exotic combat classes. Still a problem, I see.
R. J. Wenzel, on the other hand, thinks that the game still focusses too much on combat, and the current tendency towards power creep needs to be fought. The DM should be rewarding players for actually roleplaying and clever problem solving more.
Theodore Licktenstein points out that Silence spells are not a faultless stealth device. The complete absence of noise is rather disconcerting, and can be a giveaway. Like any tactic, if players are overusing it, it shouldn't work all the time.
What's for lunch: Hunting for food. A decidedly tedious business in reality, for finding easily edible plants is harder than it seems, and catching animals requires a lot of patience and luck. It's already been covered in one of the duller 1st ed books, the Wilderness survival guide. But no, someone's not satisfied, and wants to give it even more detail. Cue lots of tables of the natural animals common to various climates, and more than a few statblocks for creatures not covered in the MM's. Yeah, this is still dull stuff, and is problematic because of the usual difficulties in integrating the fantastic and mundane creatures in D&D settings. One to pull up when needed, and then pay no mind too the rest of the time.
Treasures of the wilds: Just how much is the stuff you find in the wild actually worth? This is a tricky one, because unlike gold and jewels, the value of harvested plants, furs, meat, etc is very time dependent. A day makes the difference between highly valuable and manky, especially in warmer climates. Perhaps ivory would be a better choice. Course, if it's maximum money to weight ratio you want, poison harvesting is the way to go. This is another one that doesn't make hugely interesting reading, being more than half tables, but would probably save a bit of time if you have the kind of adventurers that collect anything that could remotely be of value. Looks like we're gonna have to deal with quite a bit of grinding here if we want to level up again.
The ecology of carnivorous plants: Hmm. This is an unusual one. An article coving a whole range of flora with only one connecting factor. They like to eat adventurers. :D This article goes into an indepth look at real carnivorous plants, and then extrapolates from there when talking about fantasy ones. Most of them come from harsh environments where soil and sunlight are not sufficient to grow healthy plants. After all, nature is lazy. It won't evolve energy intensive adaptions unless there's a real advantage to doing so. And movement via highly selective growth spurts definitely falls into that category. This is another nice reminder of things I learnt in school, and haven't thought about since then. Another bit of pure pontification, this is both longer and more rigorous than the carnivorous ape one, but has less humour in it. Overall, it's a fairly so-so ecology, focussed a little too much on the biology of the creatures, rather than how they can be used to challenge (and be exploited by) adventurers. Gotta keep your playability in mind, especially when dealing with stuff we can get entire books of real world info on elsewhere.
Time-life books are advertising in dragon magazine? Way to lower the tone of the whole neighbourhood. Superlame.
i stumbled upon this thread yesterday and find it riveting. haven't played d&d in years, this brings it all back. good stuff.
Dragon Magazine Issue 137: September 1988
part 2/3
Weathering the storms: Looks like table central is continuing this month, with a second article for high detail weather determination. (see issue 68 for the last one. ) And I'm afraid this is still dull, heavily realism focussed material that you could spend hours fiddling with, but would be unlikely to improve your game much. This is proving to be a very tiresome issue indeed. What are we to do with them?
Into the age of mammals: After the dinosaurs died out, there were several eras of time, filled with weird creatures that don't get nearly as much attention. Which means a rich seam of stuff for you to mine and surprise your players with. This article focusses on the cenozoic era, giving us info on 29 different creatures, 14 of which are new and get full stats. The rest are already statted creatures or variants on them, giving us more info on their place in that era. This is easily the best article so far this issue, with lots of fun little biology tidbits. Since we already have lots of stuff for dinosaurs (issue 112 and others) and more recent ice age stuff, (issue 68 again) putting in a substantial "lost world" region to my campaign increasingly seems both a desirable and achievable thing to do.
The fairest of the fairs: A quite different approach to a topic they've covered fairly recently. Issue 118 had a sample fair, including maps, and NPC's. This is more about the reasons to have something like this. Not that people really need an excuse for a party, but it helps if it happens regularly, so people know when to show up. And if you can placate some cranky gods at the same time, it's all for the good. So here's lots of sample reasons and appropriate times of year, to help you build your own. This is pretty nice, with both generic and campaign specific examples. In contrast to the weather stuff, this seems like the kind of thing you can whip up fairly quickly, and even if it doesn't make a huge amount of sense, it'll still add nicely to your world to throw in offhand references to them when characters are in a town.
The game wizards: The Hunt for Red October game gets a belated shill piece here this month. Must not be selling too well. Understandable though. After all, when you spent over $1000 just buying books for research, you really want your work to be a success. Doug Niles does his best to make the game seem appealing and drum up enthusiasm, and also do some errataing. Is my enthusiasm rising? Is my enthusiasm rising? :looks down: Um. No. Aww. So much for that plan then.
Up and running in the land of mutants: Gamma world's article this month is on speeding up character generation and advancement in the new edition. This involves lots more tables. Man, they are having a ridiculous number of those this issue. Once again, they look like they work, but still make decidedly tedious reading. It's becoming pretty obvious that I am not in the mood for what they currently want to serve.
Sage advice: What level do paladins cast spells at (We've already had this one. Do you forget so soon? Level-8)
Can you volantarily drop protection from evil ( Yes. Remember, attacking or forcing the protection up against them lets them come in. Violation of pax and all that. )
When do cavaliers and paladins get to use missile weapons (once they have free proficiency slots after learning all their required weapons. This may take a while )
Do paladins get extra spells for high wisdom ( no)
Can druids change into the same animal type more than once a day (no. Each of the orders is it's own power. Mammal, bird, reptile. Yes, that may put a crimp in your plans. Better study up on your zoology for maximum versatility. )
Do druids get bonus spells for high wisdom (yes)
Can druids identify plant's from unfamiliar terrains (Possibly. If not, they should be able to pick it up after a few weeks living out there. )
Why are all dwarven clerics so old! (Game balance. We never wanted you to be one in the first place so even though you whined us into giving in, we ain't going to be generous. )
What's the starting age of a drow cleric. (same as any other elf)
What happens when a character with % strength gains a point (they get 10% Crawlspeeeeeed, man.)
How much do bows for exceptional strength cost ( Ask Odysseus)
Where does it say fighters can do lawnmower attacks against creatures with less than 1 HD (page 25 of the PHB. Be very grateful for this power. )
What happens if a fighter is attacking a combination of creatures. (Then they'll have to choose between the regular rate or lawnmowering the mooks. One or the other, not both. I'd take out the kobolds. You never know when they might be using type E poison and kill everyone. )
The marvel-phile is also in a rather sagacious mood this month. Skip dresses up as Uatu the Watcher to keep things running.
What is a FEAT Roll (Only like the universal resolution mechanic of the entire goddamn game)
What do you mean a blocking character can't perform any other action (What part of stay still and do nothing else does not make sense? If you want to avoid damage and move, you shoulda selected dodge instead)
How do you convert Resources into money (You don't. Your wealth stays abstracted at all points throughout the transaction. )
How did you design the leaping table (Looking at real world figures and then making shit up)
How do you detect invisible creatures. (Using your other senses. Lots of powers can deal with this problem, one way or another)
How big is an Area. (Like a room, you ought to be able to tell from context. )
Do new characters use the ability modifier table (no)
How do rank numbers correlate to named ranks. (Each rank is a range of numbers. Advancing from one to the next is Sloooooow)
What are the stats of a megalodon (Just a simple scaling up of a regular shark)
Please send me stats for 100 characters. (That's the kinda number that makes up a whole sourcebook. Ain't no way you're getting that for free.)
How do you measure the distance for falling damage (Differential math. Don't worry, any hero with half decent toughness will shrug off even the longest fall.)
Can you use Agility to do a full move and attack in the same round (no, Endurance. Speedsters also need some toughness to make the most of things)
Do you get any bonuses when fighting hated enemies (only if you take it as a specific power)
Is there a limit to rogue's absorption powers (only the plot)
Does Iron man do more damage using both repulsors (No, he's just a bit more likely to hit. )
Can you use psychic powers on insubstantial things (Hell yeah. It's a standard technique. )
How do I stop my players from looting fort knox (Giant robot guards)
How do you build a class 1000 object (Godlike power)
Can you attack insubstantial characters with high power body armor slams (no)
Is there an addenda for the ultimate powers book (2 in fact)
How does someone made of electricity knock someone over (ask reality)
How much damage does regeneration heal (look at the table to translate ranks into points per round)
Dragon Magazine Issue 137: September 1988
part 3/3
Role-playing reviews goes espionage this month:
James bond 007 game has been around for quite a while now. It has a decidedly quirky character generation system that encourages you to make extreme characters. While it uses a universal resolution table, said table is rather less clearly designed than it could be. The reviewer considers it cool, but not brilliant.
Top secret/S.I, on the other hand, gets a very positive review, to the point where I start to become skeptical of their impartiality. This is becoming an increasing problem, with the reviewers seeming to favour the TSR product in any direct comparison. Are the suits leaning on the reviewers? Any backstage info would be welcome here.
Robotech II, the sentinels now available on VHS (ha) A cancelled series, the three episodes have been edited into a single feature. The palladium sourcebook is also out now.
The role of books: Invitation to camelot, edited by Parke Godwin, and Arabesques, edited by Susan schwartz are both um, shared setting books. Yeah that's the ticket. :p One uses an arthurian background, and the other an arabian nights one. Both are pretty decent, although Arabesques probably wins in terms of depth and scope.
Resurection inc by Kevin J Anderson is a nice bit of hard sci-fi. Two thought provoking technological advances, and their moral implications are examined. It wouldn't be easy to adapt for a game though.
Tales of robin hood by Clayton Emery doesn't hang together very well, trying to mix gritty realism with a mishmash of mythology. If you try doing more than one thing at once, you've got to integrate them.
The year of the ransom by Poul Anderson is a highly complex Time Patrol tale. While not for inexperienced readers, the interesting plot, told from multiple viewpoints, is worth the effort to unravel. Read the earlier books in the series first to see if you like it.
Shrine of the desert mage by Stephen Goldin is another interesting bit of arabian nightsesque storytelling. This is doubly the case because the actual protagonist is also a storyteller, resulting in a cleverly multilayered story full of magic, genies, and interesting tidbits you can steal for your own games.
TSR Previews: AD&D is getting lots of stuff this month. First up is Greyhawk Adventures, which has either been delayed or double-dipped again. They need to be more careful with that. Secondly, we have FR5: The savage frontier. Venture to the lands surrounding waterdeep, and do a little pacifying. How else is a city all on it's ownsome surrounded by wilderness to survive? Waterdeep itself isn't neglected either, with the City System. They are filling up the Realms fast.
Curiously, Ed Greenwood himself is actually more busy in the Known world, with GAZ8: The five shires. How will he flesh them out and differentiate them from tolkien hobbits?
Top Secret is also reaping the fruits of it's labours this month. TSAC5: Commando gives you back your realistic modern day action, while also upgrading the military hardware allowed. TSAC2, on the other hand is the Agent 13 Sourcebook, providing you with all your pulp gaming needs. Odd that it should be released out of order. Were there delays on the writing side, or due to licencing crap?
Speaking of Agent 13 and top secret, we have another Double Agent novel out this month as well. GLITCH!/The Hard Sell gives us a couple more rollicking spy capers.
Dragonlance is also getting another novel. Stormblade. The mines of Thorbardin fall into chaos as the dwarves fight over who should weild the lost blade. But first they have to find it. Finders keepers and all that.
And finally, we have a third, unconnected novel. St John the Pursuer: Vampire in Moscow. Another fairly self-explanatory synopsis follows. There's a vampire loose in moscow. Guess who winds up having to stop it.
The role of computers: Ultima V: Warriors of destiny is yet another game in this highly popular series. And the reviewers certainly think it lives up to those standards, while not being too dependent on being an established player. The graphics have improved considerably, and it retains the same depth of play and complex morality as the last few. Another one to bash your brain up against for months trying to solve all the puzzles.
Oids also gets 5 stars, being a highly addictive combination of several arcade game styles. Space and ground travel are both used as you try and foil the alien invaders. It even includes a level editor, so once you finish it, you can design fun new stuff for your friends.
Out Run is rather less impressive, being yer basic racing game where you have to do each bit of the course before the time limit runs out, and it gets extended if you do. You do get to choose both your route, and the music, so it doesn't get too repetitive too soon. Probably more impressive in the arcade where you're using an actual steering wheel.
Ebonstar is another space game. You race round a black hole, and have to knock your rivals in while surviving yourself. Seems most fun when played multiplayer.
The universal military simulator is another heavily customisable game, allowing you to set up scenarios from past and future. While it has some crashing issues on certain platforms, it has tons of depth in both unit and landscape detail.
Intellitype is a typing tutor program. Wait, come back! It's not actually that tedious! They are being rather generous with their 5 star marks this month. Hmm.
Snarfquest gets a-racing. Dragonmirth is absent.
A slick but tiresome issue here. With the table fetish in the articles, and the tendency towards self-promotion in even the supposedly objective bits of the magazine, it all feels very corporate, very powerpoint, flow charts, mobile phones, and sales targets. An excellent example of the fact that good content is just as important as presentation, if not more so when the eventual goal is having fun. Lets hope horror is a bit more conductive to exciting articles than the wilderness.
Dragon Magazine Issue 138: October 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Another bit of rather good artwork on this month's cover. This comes at a price though. Roger Raupp has finally decided he can't take the pressure of TSR's new corporate structure anymore and departed. So another of the old guard is bumped of, and his immediate subordinate Lori Svikel moves up to take his place. Hmm. Meanwhile, in the editorial, the hard work setting up this year's convention has finally paid off, and our remaining Roger talks about the madness that he enjoyed there. There's still plenty of fun going on at the ground level, whatever's going on in the company. And hopefully he's brought some of that back with him.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter about indexing. It's been more than 2 years since the last one, and some people are compulsive about that kinda thing. Roger says they're certainly thinking about it. But it is a lot of work.
Some errata. You know the drill by now.
Two letters filled with more amusing last words. See, your characters dying can still make for a fun game.
Sky galleons of mars. Part of the space: 1889 series. Sounds pretty cool.
Forum: Brian Estes has a suggestion for speeding up mecha combat in Star Frontiers. It shouldn't be vastly more hassle than regular combat. Quite agree with you there.
Joseph Goldlust also wants thieves to get XP from actually, y'know, thieving. He suggests giving the challenges they overcome levels equivalent to monsters, and calculating from that. This is particularly easy to figure out when picking pockets.
Mark Crane rebutts the people who distrust paintball, and stereotype ninjas. Interesting combination there. Hee.
S. D. Anderson has some comments on the new roman gods from issue 13, with a particular focus on Eris. Why should a spreader of discord have a problem with demons? Good question.
Jeffrey M Carey thinks that as RPG demographics are settling down, companies ought to concentrate more on getting as much money as possible out of established gamers, particularly older ones with disposable incomes, with lots of supplements designed to be as universally applicable as possible. I find this very amusing.
A Patrick Connery is another of the people that thinks magic-users being weak at first, then becoming more powerful is entirely acceptable. Gary knew what he was doing. It does not ruin the game.
Sean Jump thinks that evil PC's should get more equal screentime, with classes and adventures designed for them. There's plenty of fun to be had being bad, don't be such spoilsports.
Tim Emrick gives us some advice on making fold-up buildings, including a rudimentary house in the letter. Very interesting indeed.
Eric Burns has a bunch of suggestions to power up low level magic-users. You know, even with a d12, you can get 1 or 2 hp, and be painfully fragile throughout 1st level.
Through the looking glass: Great. Actual crafting tips. It's been way too long since this magazine carried any of those. This is a definite step upwards. This is all about skeletons. Which is fitting, I guess. And they do require techniques a little different to painting people. Put a black base coat on before adding lighter colours. Pay lots of attention to the ribs. Lots of thin layers is the way to go, making sure each is properly dried before moving on to the next one. Drybrushing is hard on brushes so use a different one to the other bits. Remember, these are undead. Make their stuff look well worn. Interesting and very specific bits of advice. I quite enjoyed this. Combined with the fact that the photographic quality has improved quite considerably since they last did this, with lots of full colour photos, and this looks pretty promising. How long will it take this to settle into a comfortable pattern and start boring me? All things must rise and fall. We shall see.
Sage advice gets in with the theme, as it so often does:
Are undead affected by web (If they only have a body)
Can you talk to undead (yes, but they still instinctively loathe everything living and want to kill you, eat you or turn you into one of them, probably not in that order. Squick prejudice cuts both ways. )
What creatures become undead. (Anything with a suitable body or soul. Lets keep it on the down low for now, but you'll be seeing lots of weird undead in later books. )
What happens to the connection to the negative plane when an undead is shifted to an outer plane. (Nothing. They're now off being an abomination against life somewhere else. Annoyed outsiders may come knocking on your door to bring back the trash if you make a habit of this. )
Can undead be affected by psionic attack (probably, as long as they have minds )
Can undead be psionic (sure, why not.)
Are undead affected by blasty spells (Mostly. Anything not forbidden is allowed.)
How do skeletons see without any eyes. (This is a mystery man was not meant to know. However they do it, they manage perfectly well. )
Can paladins keep ghouls at bay with their holier than thou aura. (yup)
What does powerless in sunlight really mean. (they can't attack, move things, or do anything other than cower or float away. Poor ghosty creatures. )
Can you turn a banshee (you can in BD&D, but not in AD&D, weirdly enough. )
What is a lesser vampire ( The enslaved minion that you'll become if you don't watch out. )
Can a staked vampire drain levels (No. Be thankful for this.)
The GDQ modules and the monster manual contradict each other on the subject of holy sysmbols and vampires (No they don't. This is what happens when vampires break their own rules. There is a reason they normally recoil from holy symbols )
How do spells affect nilbogs (opposite world is upsideown. No saves, no limits. Be very afraid)
Where are the stats for amphisbaena ( Snake! Snake!)
Can you get lycanthropy from being clawed (No. )
Isn't 2+2 a bit much for small Scorpions (They're still 3-4 foot long and toughly armoured. How's that for nightmare fuel. )
How much bigger are higher HD green slimes (3 square foot per HD. Better bring the toilet duck along )
Are spell attacks delivered by touch normal weapons (Hell no! What is your DM smoking. Skip says don't do drugs, kids! Or you'll end up like this poor guy, unable to make the most elementary logic work.)
How good is succubi and alu-fiends shapechanging (pretty good. And by good, we of course mean Totally Hawt. Skip would say no, but that is because Skip is totally awesome and can have any woman he wants anyway. Hey kids, become a sage and you can be totally awesome too. Learn the Elminster patented dirty old man seduction method(tm). Guaranteed to work on all women from barmaids to greater goddesses or your money back.)
Can I bribe a time elemental to take me back to kill my enemies before they're old enough to be a threat ( With what? What could you possibly offer them that they couldn't travel back and take before you found it if they wanted it. Even if you do convince them, Skip does not reccommend letting it be that easy. Remember, the universe is a big place, and even a well intentioned time elemental may struggle to find the right place and time.)
Need more info on barghests. Description insufficient ( Question recieved. Processing information. Delivering information. Another satisfied customer. Backup answertron for when skip has bunked off early deactivating itself. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 138: October 1988
part 2/3
The black book and the hunters: Call of cthulhu gets another article full of forbidden mind imperiling lore. Shub-Niggurath has a lot of offspring, and summoning them is as viable as dealing with any other monstrosity from another realm. Like pages from the mages, this follows the formula of presenting an IC grimoire, which is also described IC by a character, and then giving us the stats for the new spells contained within. Which is still a pretty entertaining way of doing things, especially when the narrator hasn't completely mastered the powers on offer, and isn't sure if they really want too either. They can sell us a few more of these in my reckoning.
The ungrateful dead: Tom Moldvay gives us another installment of undead reexaminations. Stepping away from the vampires he covered last time, he goes back to basics, with a whole load of variants for skeletons, zombies and ghouls. They certainly aren't lacking in folklorish antecedents, and you can have considerable amounts of fun varying the powers of familiar looking creatures.
Bloody bones are the skeletons of evil people who lurk and engage in sneaky criminal behaviour. This means fighting them is going to be a very different experience to regular skeletons.
Skeleros are skeletons who used to be skilled fighters, and have retained a bit of their old skill. Not hugely interesting, as they have exactly the same niche, just to higher level characters.
Dry Bones are exactly the same as they appear in the mario games. :p You knock them down, and they keep on getting back up. They might seem weedy at first, but there is a definite creeping horror factor involved here. Like phoenix spiders, these make me go muahaha and itch to use them in my game.
Gem Eyes are the generic knockoff versions of eyes of fear and flame. They get different spell-like abilities to unleash on you depending on what specific stones are set in their eyes. One of those monsters you could run an interesting adventure using nothing but different variants of, plus a boss.
Shock Bones are skeletons with a permanent electrical charge. Anyone attacking them with metal weapons automatically gets a nasty shock. How very castlevania. Just another way to screw over unsuspecting players.
Walking dead are zombies that lose limbs as you damage them, becoming less and less effective. Just like in the movies. It amuses me that zombies could wind up suffering more from wound penalties than living creatures in D&D.
Hungry dead are of course zombies that eat braaaaiiiiiinssss. If you don't hit the right body part, they just keep coming. You've seen these in tons of movies as well, so I don't need to say any more.
Collossi are massive constructs made of tons of dead bodies mulched and pasted together. Just the thing for if you want to get kaijuey. The smell must be terrible.
Le Grand Zombie is another name for zombie lords. These have completely different stats to their 2nd ed version, and were probably developed independently. They are probably a bit too scary for most parties, with truly excessive spellcasting abilities, they're more like zombie emperors than lords. Ease up a bit there mate.
Ghula are ghouls as drawn from arabian myth. Many of them are capable of passing for human, and have some magical ability. Like zombie lords, although they would appear again in Al-Qadim, the stats are obviously not the same.
Baka are an excellent example of cult membership continuing beyond the grave. Eating flesh even before they died, now they're back, and badder than ever.
Gelloudes are greek creatures, related to lamias or harpies, who's preferred prey is babies. If they can't get babies, they'll de-age you in the process of draining your life force. Interesting, and ingeniously scary, that puts a different spin on fighting level draining monsters.
Spirit-Ghouls are people who've been possessed. Statistically, they're pretty
similar to regular ghouls, but of course with these guys there's the possibility of curing them, which adds extra complications and moral dilemmas to fighting them. Damn good idea.
Black Annis is of course the inspiration for one of the types of Hag. But D&D has never been shy about having multiple monsters for the same niche so she can be an undead creature that hunts the wilds as well. And since she's pretty scary, it'll take some serious work to put her down.
Wendigo, of course is even scarier, with it's near godike powers, and ability to drive you to cannibalism. If it weren't such a short-sighted creature, it could enslave entire civilizations and turn them into monstrous hives of depravity. Hmm. This is definitely worth further consideration.
Callicantzari, on the other hand are almost as limited as vampires by their own stupidity and quirky weaknesses. This means even smart peasants have a chance against them, despite their strength. They seem perfectly designed to make scenarios like an 80's cartoon, with the scheming leader who rages at the comical incompetence of their underlings, and is defeated but not killed regularly as they retreat whenever their latest scheme is foiled even if they could probably defeat the heroes singlehandedly in a fight. A very entertaining way to finish off what has been an excellent article overall.
Methods to your madness: Call of Cthulhu has been fairly popular for a good few years now. It's made having your character gradually go insane be considered a fun playstyle. So lets transfer the idea over to D&D. There are plenty of mad things that happen in the game that it would make sense to have some lasting impact on your mental health. You can play this in a serious, tragic way, or a comical one, and this article touches on both styles. Similarly, it could be fun to play, or it could seriously mess up your game if a player uses it as an excuse to go fishmalky. Still, I think this article handles it decently, if a little shallowly. This could definitely have benefited from being a bit longer, particularly as it advocates making sure that mental illness in D&D isn't too similar to reality. Oh well. They're still maintaining the run of good articles this issue.
The end of the world: A slightly hyperbolic title. This isn't about inflicting a full-on apocalypse, but the kind of thing which "merely" wipes out around half of the population like the plague, and how it would impact on your campaign. There's plenty of room for adventures before, during and in the aftermath of this, and it's a good way to shake up a game that's getting dull. The players may not be able to save everyone, but they can certainly make a substantial difference on a local scale. Keep them guessing as to if they'll be infected, if they are, if they'll die, and play up all the dramas that sweep a community when people start dying and there's no apparent control over it. A very specific article, concentrating on the specifics of the historical plagues rather than extrapolating to a fantasy world, with all the ways magic affects society incorporated. Still, I'm having no trouble working outwards and thinking of variants on this idea, so hopefully you won't either. This is certainly a form of horror they haven't tackled before, so even though it's not perfect, it definitely has my interest. This has easily been the second best themed issue under Roger's run so far. Lets see if the nonthemed bits can also bring the awesome.
Putting fire into firepower: Top Secret gets another way out of date article, with info on lasers for the old edition. Despite being invented only a couple of decades ago, they're already ubiquitous in sci-fi settings. They don't actually make that brilliant weapons, due to atmospheric attenuation and lack of collateral damage making them fairly inefficient in terms of cost/damage ratio. And indeed, this article tries not to stray too far from reality, forging you to wear a ghostbusters sized power pack to operate one portably, and featuring lots of crunchy details about charging times, the difference based on the type of gas used in the canister, and rather high chances of malfunction. This manages to make something inherently awesome dull, and is definitely intended for those who prefer the older more gritty game style. How very tiresome.
TMNT goes transdimensional. As with the australian sourcebook, this seems entirely appropriate to the source material.
Dragon Magazine Issue 138: October 1988
part 3/3
Fiction: Between lightning and thunder by Nancy Varian Berberick. A rather melancholy story, combining the sadness of a declining race, the horrors of war, and the rather more banal horrors of bullying into a seamless whole, and saying that sometimes there may be no good answers, but you should still try and go on living, because suicide is an even worse choice. Hey ho. Not sure if I like this one, as it has good goals, but approaches them in a slightly after-school special kinda way. Still, it's an interesting one, that isn't all flashy heroics, so that counts for quite a bit. I think that I approve, overall.
The role of computers: Star command is a sci-fi roleplaying game. Like the more common fantasy ones, you build a team of characters from a selection of classes, and then do some asskicking, which is both ship based and hand-to hand in this case, and level up your characters and ships. It's more than big enough to accommodate months of play. They both recommend this, and give you quite a bit of play advice.
Questron II is a 3D adventure. It gets a rather short and vague review that assumes you are already familiar with the first game in the series.
Bards tale III balances familiar locations with drastic changes to the world, as you need to beat the new big bad before he completely mucks things up. There are plenty of new character classes, but you can also use your old ones from previous games. While it does what it does well, the reviewers have recently been spoiled by games where you can negotiate with your enemies, and the pure combat gets tiresome to them. Ho hum.
Power at sea is another one that gets repetitive after a while. A naval simulator where you control a fleet of ships, there's only so much you can do tactically, particularly where landings are involved. Not that they actively dislike it, but it doesn't have huge amounts of replayability.
Shanghai is a computerised version of Mah-jong. No great surprises here, but like chess, this is a game you can spend a lifetime mastering, particularly when playing two player. Combined with the good graphics and ease of learning, they give it 5 stars.
Wooden ships and iron men, on the other hand, should have stayed a boardgame, getting a snarkily negative review. Just don't buy it.
Role-playing reviews is doing horror again. No surprise at all there.
GURPS Horror shows yet again how solidly designed and flexible the GURPS system is. With three sample settings, and plenty of elements, it can certainly be used to build a horror game, but the utilitarian writing means you'll have to add your own atmosphere to actually make games scary. Seems fairly par for the course for them.
Beyond the supernatural, on the other hand, has plenty of atmosphere, but not very well designed rules. Ken makes it pretty clear that you'll have to tinker with this one a bit, but the setting is quite cool, offering a consistent explanation for all kinds of supernatural weirdness in the same game. The GMing advice and sample adventures are also not the best, but there are more than enough cool elements for you to create a good game from. Looks like palladium are the same as they ever were then.
Cthulhu Now, on the gripping hand, gets an unreservedly positive review. Both system and setting work together to update the mythos hunting to the modern day. (or at least, the late 80's :p ) With lots of odd little real world details, and several excellent adventures, it keeps things scary and challenging even with the extra equipment.
S. Petersen's field guide to cthulhu monsters also gets plenty of praise. The sly humour that pervades the book goes down a treat with Ken, and the illustrations are generally of high quality. Once again, they merge the IC and OOC perspectives to entertaining ends.
TSR Previews: Not a very impressive list of releases this month. Most of the attention is on last month's products, including one they missed last time.
Prince of Thieves is the 18th AD&D adventure gamebook. You steal so much, how are you supposed to figure out what's made someone REALLY mad. Time for a little swashbuckling derring-doo.
Anyway, this month, AD&D gets another bunch of prefab design assistance in the Dungeon master's design kit. Lots of blank sheets and advice on how to use them.
Marvel gets the second installment of it's epic guide to all the superheroes out there. E to M, 256 pages of bizarre creations. I wonder how much errata that'll need.
The rest of this month's stuff is all on the literary side. Dragonlance is getting it's first trilogy reprinted in a single compiled book. 928 pages of papery goodness. Wouldn't like to read that in the bath. Agent 13 also gets a new format, with his original story turned into a graphic novel. Pulpilicious. Bimbos of the death sun is also being reprinted, having massively exceeded expected sales. Is a reprint really worth mentioning again?
The game wizards: A newbie takes the reins here. Scott Haring is eager to talk about his first completed project, get his name out there. Empires of the Sands might have had it's map borked in the first printing, but they're fixing that, and sending out replacement copies to people who ask for them. He also engages in some errataing and justification of his decisions. And here we run into some fairly substantial controversy, as he reveals his belief that NPC's should not be bound by the rules PC's are. Yes, quite a few of them are impossible for you to replicate. Suck it up. Hmm. This is interesting as another snapshot of where company policy is currently at. They might care about their customers, but they aren't particularly concerned with maintaining editorial control over rules minutinae. The scene is very much set for the onslaught of contradictory splatbooks the next edition will bring. Time for another crap filter upgrade.
Dragonmirth continues the cruel jests, some where the jesters get to be the butt of the joke. Yamara and co waste time talking when they should be killing. Incidentally, Barbera Ward ought to sue paper mario. Snarf strikes gold at last.
The I think you think I think boardgame? That's rather a tonguetwister. Imagine having to ask for that in a shop. No wonder I don't remember it.
A pretty strong issue, particularly in the themed section. In addition, the general quality of the presentation seems to be improving again, with more colour bits, better incorporated photography, neater layout. They're still trying hard to please us. And still succeeding at least some of the time. Question is, are they pleasing more or less people than last year? Not long until we find out again. On we go.
Dragon Magazine Issue 139: November 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Looks like the recent improvement in quality hasn't just been subjective to me. Sales are up again, pushing over that crucial 100,000 mark. That's nice to know. What's even nicer is that the format is vastly improved, using actual type rather than a microsized photocopy. Guess they want everyone to see the good news. Will they keep it up next year? Keep on peeling, keep on revealing. (That doesn't sound right somehow. Reeling? Maybe. Congealing? Definitely not. But I digress.)
In this issue:
Alias and that Saurial paladin. Now there's a novel for you. A textbook example of the impractical cheesecake cover too. Hee. You can't spend 15 minutes lacing up sideless leather trousers (I speak from experience here) in the dangerous wilderness when wandering monsters strike at night.
Letters: A letter asking where the map to Dragotha's lair is. They can give you a large scale reference, but you'll have to make the close up one yourself. Whether he has a simple cave or an elaborate labyrinth filled with traps is up to you.
A letter asking what happened to the info on ordering back issues. Check their mail order catalog.
A letter asking what's going to happen to psionics and the anthologies. The first will be back in a supplement after some reworking, the second will not for the forseeable future.
Some questions on the new Merchant class. No great surprises here.
Forum: Jeffrey C Weber thinks that allowing wizards to specialise in different types of magic is a rather good tool to differentiate them, and allow them a little more power, but at a cost to spells outside their speciality. Hello mr foreshadowing. How often are you going to turn up here in the next few months?
Michael Drake gives us a bunch of sample ways to differentiate clerics. I think we've established by now that this is very much in next edition, so this is not so much of a surprise.
Scott A Shepard has thoughts on the balancing of magic-users. Don't we all. Just don't sweat it too much. Obsessive tweaking ruins the fun for most people.
Amod Lele is insulted by the idea that people who play primarily for fun are "lesser" gamers than those who play it to be challenged, or create something deep and artistically meaningful. If it's not fun, the other aspects mean little.
David Moyle also thinks Steve Allen was being pretentious. You choose games full of challenges and puzzles because that is what you consider satisfying and fun. Others think otherwise.
Ed Friedlander is back yet again, reminding us too keep our campaigns from becoming too unfriendly to newcomers. Pregens definitely help in this respect, as does explaining stuff in a non patronising manner. Absolutely right, dear, : pats head: Run along now. ;)
S. D. Anderson is also back with the beats from the renegade master, pointing out how little power the people have compared to a character with a decent array of magical items. Even if they don't have +5 everything, they can still be pretty untouchable. Meanwhile, poison is way overpowered for it's cost. Both need fixing in some way. Any ideas?
Douglas Porter is also engaging in statistical analysis of capabilities, particularly those of dragons. In his opinion, they need a serious powering up. You too will get your wish answered come next edition.
Phantasy star. I guess having a computer games column in here has got the magazine enough attention that the guys in sega's marketing division have noticed them as well.
A gamers guide to DC heroes does exactly what the marvel heroes index did a few months ago. Only shorter, because there's been less attention paid to it in here. Copycats :p Definitely an article I can't think of anything interesting to say about.
Lords & Legends gives us some more entirely original (as much as anything can be) characters. This time, the theme is wizardly ones.
Aylegard, Queen of the unicorns is your typical chosen one. Now it's her job to ensure their health and safety, protect the wilderness in general, and look incredibly hot while never ever getting laid. :p Custom designed for players to hate, methinks.
Eelix is a rather blatant rip-off. A formerly dumb guy raised to supra-genius intelligence by a lab accident that he's never been able to replicate. Now where have we seen that before? He has a ton of cool magic items, and is entirely willing to make more if the characters do him a favour. Is that plot hook I hear you say?
Elayne Mystica is an outcast (due to sexism) albino from a tribe of underground humans, who was trained by elves, became an outcast a second time for developing psionic abilities, adventured for a while, got too powerful for the rest of her party, and now owns her own demiplane. The amount of Aaaangst she has over this oh so hard life is not revealed. I sense the author would love to write a whole series of novels about her escapades.
Shugar is another blatant PC, with magic items that cover for his weaknesses, and tragic elements to his backstory that in no way interfere with his badassedness. Ho hum. Can't say I've been hugely pleased by this collection.
Where Wizards meet: Mage guilds. Given how tricky studying to be a spellcaster is, a tutor is obligatory. It'll be a long time before magic is ingrained enough to manifest spontaneously round these parts. So sharing the responsibility may not be as common as with thieves and clerics, but it's hardly rare. Here's another article on the idea. This is less concerned with the training of apprentices, and more with the social organization of working spellcasters. It includes a sample wizards guild, along with a map, and large quantities of setting detail. A long and elaborate article, this is a pretty good place to start from in designing your own, as it will probably need a bit of adaption to fit into an existing campaign. Pretty pleasing, as it's another good example of their improvement at building campaign worlds at this point.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Back to the spellbooks this month, as they give us some more tricks for exceedingly powerful spellcasters.
The book of black circles is a very interesting item indeed. With spells that allow you to detect magical potential in ordinary people, prevent them from advancing in magical power until they prove themselves worthy, and enforce a magical hierarchy, it is designed for a very particular kind of wizardly guild, and putting it in your game encourages a very particular kind of story. This is a strong thematic choice that may not be for every group, but is pretty cool, and definitely worth considering.
Laendar's book of metamorphoses is rather more self-explanatory. A big spellbook full of shapeshifting magic, including two new spells, it also has an awkward curse that takes place slowly, and is exceedingly hard to get rid of. This is another one that makes for dramatic stories, as the transformations it can inflict take place slowly enough that a race against time quest to cure them is a very viable option. Both of these are definitely intended for games where roleplaying is more important than pure hack-and-slash combat optimization. Overall, a very pleasing entry, that feels very much in the upcoming 2E spirit.
Speaking with the spirits: More call of cthulhu coolness here. Seances were rather popular around the turn of the last century, so of course Cthulhu by gaslight had some stuff on them written. But cutting for space happened yet again, and now their loss is the magazine's gain. Do you really want to sit in a circle and call up the dead when OOC, you know exactly what mind bending horrors lurk out there? Eh, you gotta go sometime. As this is CoC, you may not be dealing with the spirits of the dead at all, but insubstantial extradimensional horrors that'll take you over and use you for their own ends, and these get statted up for your use. As this is from an actual book, the quality of writing is pretty good, although thematically some of the elements don't mesh perfectly with the mythos setting. I suppose it depends how much of a purist you are. And it doesn't hurt to surprise people anyway in a milieu like this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 139: November 1988
part 2/3
Oh look - a harmless statue!: Now there's a phrase you'll never see an experienced group of adventurers say. They're almost as bad as skeletons for coming to life at awkward moments. So here's 30 ways that you can make your animated guardians a little less obtrusive. Recessed into walls, dressed up dummys, silly poses, many of these are rather amusing. This will of course have the long term effect of making your players even more paranoid. Generally, I'm rather fond of this kind of article, and this is no exception, as it also gives you plenty of ways you can mechanically customise your monsters. Another short article that'll give you hours of fun.
Ars Magica! Now this is advancement. This is turning out to be a very good year indeed for new games.
Fiction: The visitor by Llynne Moore. Hee. Bait and switch. Always a fun way to get people to remember you, if not always particularly favourably. So it goes here, in a story which builds the drama up and up, into purple prose territory, and then deflates in in one swift rush of humour at the end, with almost as much finesse as Harry Turtledove managed in issue 113. Which is pretty amusing to me, anyway. Taking things too seriously is one of the great dangers of writing, and mocking those who take themselves too seriously one of the great pleasures. Which this manages just fine, with lots of very D&D specific tropes mentioned. Woo.
The new, Improved druid: Hmm. New druid powers? Interesting. In actual fact, this is a substantial nerf disguised as a power-up. Reducing the range of creatures you can shapeshift into? Codifying poison brewing abilities in a way that substantially reduces their power, and competely ignores the many non-damaging penalties you can inflict with chemicals. Spells which seem out of theme (druids do not manipulate undead. ) This is not a good article both in terms of mechanical and thematic design. I very strongly disapprove. One to avoid.
TSR previews: D&D gets GAZ9: the minrothad guilds. Want to be a merchant prince rather than a dungeoneer? Let's hope they figure out how to make another playstyle fun.
AD&D gives Kara-Tur it's own full boxed set. Zeb Cook must be very happy that he gets to keep revisiting and adding to this.
Marvel Superheroes is picking up the pace with it's third gamers handbook following hot on the heels of the second. M to R get to find out all their powers. And now we must fight.
Novelwise, as mentioned earlier, we have Azure Bonds. Alias and crew gotta do what they gotta do. Will you enjoy reading about it too? Dragonlance is still recycling material on the other hand, with our third installment of the graphic novel conversion of the first series.
And finally, on the wargaming front, the Sniper system gets the Bug Hunter game. As inspired by Predator and Starship troopers. Now that's how you don't do alien relations.
Buck Rogers has yet more upcoming products next year. They really are going to push this for everything they can, aren't they.
Hand-to-hand Against the rules: Nerf time again. They've introduced tons of new martial arts in the magazines, plus a few general revisions. But here, the writer wants to reduce the access many classes have to these powers. He also wants to save us from ourselves, by fixing the problem of classes specialising in them when it would provide markedly less benefit than specialising with a weapon. This article actually turns out to be better thought out than first impressions would indicate, if rather conservative in terms of enforcing training requirements and social divisions. Not every member of each class should have the same attitude, especially in a setting where members of one class often pretend to be members of another. A mixed bag of suggestions here, some of which I like, and others which I don't. Guess I'll just have to do the usual plunder and discard routine then.
Jetboots, don't fail me now: Star Frontiers' article this month attempts to solve that old chessnut of making exciting chase scenes when everyone of the same race moves at the same rate. And fail, because the solution used still results in a fixed movement rate for a particular individual, only now that rate varies slightly based on their attributes. So success or failure in a chase is still pretty much fixed. And they don't even take encumbrance into account. A not particularly good bit of filler.
Sage advice: Can a spellcaster memorise a lower level spell in a high level slot (No, unless they use metamagic. That would let you cast particular spells more often and mess up the game balance)
Can you be hurt by your own fireball (Oh yes. Muahahaha! Don't forget the volume of the fireball splays out if there isn't enough room for it to expand properly. Fireballs in dungeons are responsible for many adventurer casualties. )
Are there restrictions on magic-users trading spells ( Only whatever costs indivdual magic-users impose. Aren't you glad you don't have to deal with an overarching organisation imposing stupid union rules like thieves, assassins, monks, druids, etc. )
Can rangers wear plate mail (If they don't mind the stealth penalties. )
How do rangers get MU spells (from the justified ancients of mu-mu. Kick out the jams, y-all!)
What level do rangers cast spells, do they get bonus spells for high stats, can they use items for magic users once they can cast spells (Rerun questions. Change the channel luv)
How can a ranger build a stonghold if they can only own what they can carry ( If someone else technically owns it. )
Do elven rangers surprise chances stack (no, use the best.)
Can dual class fighters and rangers specialise or not ( Depends if you take material from dragon as official. Remember, Gary's stuff isn't official anymore, no matter how much he claimed it was at the time. )
What do I do with characters made before the new rules (We'll forgive you if you retcon them, just this once. )
Can you get proficiency in two weapon fighting ( We do not recommend it Keep whining and wait another 12 years)
Is specialization in swords in general or a specific type (One type. Again, you'll have to wait a bit for weapon groups to come into style. )
Can you specialize in more than one weapon (No. Bad twink. )
Does weapon specialization count as a magic bonus (no)
Why can't assassins use shields anymore (they can, just not during assassinations. Union regulations, again.)
Do you have to roll to hit when assassinating (depends if you're abstracting the process or not. The jury is still out on this one. We suspect they may choose to scrap assassins altogether rather than answer it)
Can you backstab or assassinate with missile weapons (Skip says No! kids. Other writers will subsequently contradict him. Skip sometimes wishes he could cap all those bitches asses. )
Can you backstab with two weapons (Once you've attacked once, the element of surprise is gone, so nope. )
Do you multiply strength or magical bonuses on a backstab (No, only the dice.)
Do super high level thieves get more than 5x damage on backstabs (no)
Why can't thieves use longbows ( Not stealthy enough, and not thematic)
Do you add elves chance to surprise to their move silently odds (no. use the best roll. Don't keep on.)
How far can a thief acrobat fall (oh, pointless minutinae, oh mindless tedium. whyeyeyeyey. Miaow. )
What races can become thief-acrobats (any that can become thieves. Of the base classes, that means any at all, doesn't it. How generous are we! )
Do thief-acrobats pay extra for training (Nope. Skip likes thief-acrobats. They're cool. Skip does not like assassins. They're not cool. Skip is very partisan. Boom boom muthafuckers and I'm not talking about Basil Brush here. )
Do gauntlets of ogre power give you the bonuses to your acrobat skills. (only in your arms, so it only affects your pole vaulting rating. )
Does evasion affect missile attacks (yes)
How can thief acrobats multiclass (same as regular thieves. Have you no power of inferance at all? )
Can assassins become thief-acrobats (no, as they're part of the same class group. )
What races can become cleric/thieves (originaly only half-orcs, but in our benevolence, we have opened up a whole load more in UA)
Are druid/illusionists possible (Theoretically, but there's currently no class other than humans which can be both, unless you allow winged folk (issue 51 ) in your game. And given how twinked they are, that would be a bad idea. )
Who can become magic-user/assasins (lots of elf subraces. Fear them. )
Can a dual classed cleric/fighter use edged weapons (Skip is a maverick! Skip says yes! Skip forgets how annoying gods are. This is in contradiction of previous rulings and common sense and skip may get slapped for it. )
Can you combine specialization and backstabbing (No! Only single classed characters may specialize. Not sure if specialized characters can dual class though. )
Can multiclassed fighter/mages wear plate (As long as they don't mind not being able to cast spells. Which rather defeats the point, doesn't it. )
Can barbarians and cavaliers multiclass (they have to be human, so not at the moment. This may change as more races are introduced )
How do demihumans add another class after play (They can't. Oh, woeforous fate. I have chosen my path, and now I am bound to it, unto level I max out and beyond. )
When can fighter-illusionist specialize (only if they are human, and newly adopting the fighter class)
Do multiclass casters stack levels to determine spell power (No. Note that this is far less crippling than it would be in 3rd edition, because of the exponential nature of the XP tables)
How do proficiencies work for muticlassed characters. (They get all of them, but have to spend them separately.)
Can humans become triple classed (if they have the obscene stats needed)
Can a dual classed fighter make multiple attacks. (Depends. They might be forced to forfeit all their XP for doing so if they do it at the wrong time)
Half orcs still haven't had their errata from issue 35 added to the PHB (Sigh. Well spotted. We really ought to get round to that. )
Do elves get their full surprise chance while wearing elfin chain (Nope. Even they aren't that good at armourmaking. Makes you wonder why they bother. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 139: November 1988
part 3/3
The dragon's bestiary: Ed Greenwood makes a random little contribution for the first time in rather too long.
Lock lurkers, like ear seekers, are one of those creatures specifically designed to annoy cautious adventurers. Much of their body is concealed on the ethereal plane, and usually they look like little coins. Ed wastes no time in reminding us he's the king of odd little ecological details, giving us tons of uses for these things, both alive and dead.
Lybarde are another weird feline thing. Their tails slow opponents. When you consider their close relations are Displacer beasts and Nonafel, this makes perfect sense. What other ways can we manipulate time and space to give as their schtick?
Metalmasters are not quite what you would expect. They do, however, mess with your equipment. Fun fun fun. The illustration is pretty damn good too.
Serplar are another thing that keeps the infestations of slimes and oozes that threaten D&D worlds under control. Large pink wormy things, they're better avoided than fought, since they're dangerous but not too fast.
Thylacine's are almost, but not quite like the real world creature. Filtered through the medieval bestiary mentality, they get intelligence and rudimentary shapeshifting, and some weird combat tactics. This has definitely felt like an old school Ed contribution. Nominally set in the Realms, but easily applicable to other games, and full of interesting little details, this is a great reminder how to pull this stuff off. How very pleasing.
The role of books:
Sheepfarmer's daughter by Elizabeth Moon is the start of the Paksenarrion books. A farmer's daughter flees an unwanted marriage by becoming a soldier, and then has lots of interesting adventures. Welcome to another pretty cool series.
The three minute universe by Barbara Paul is a decidedly crappy star trek novel. It uses almost exactly the same bit of bad science as the plot driver as the new reboot movie, and then has a bunch of other irritating anvilicious elements. Avoid.
The heavenly horse from the outermost west by Mary Stanton tries and fails to do for thoroughbred horses what watership down did for rabbits. While the story isn't bad, the worldbuilding doesn't convince the reviewer, and it all seems a little over-precious.
When H.A.R.L.I.E was one: release 2.0 by David Gerrold is a nicely updated rerelease of a cool bit of hard sci-fi. The possibility of computers gaining sentience and exercising their powers over the world is a common one by now, and here's a good early example of the subgenre.
Child of the grove by Tanya Huff gets an ambivalent review. While what is there is good, the big gaps in the narrative leave the reviewer wanting more. But there are many far worse flaws, really.
The nightingale by Kara Dalkey is reviewed in a manner which imitates it's writing. How very droll. Seems good enough, though.
The blind knight by Gail Van Asten mixes arthurian legend with later medieval setting. It manages to do so fairly well, putting it's own spin on what might happen next.
The ecology of the spectator: Say hello to our third look at the beholder subraces. Curious that they're getting more attention in the ecologies than Dragons. And curious that they occupy such widely varying ecological niches as well. Standard beholders are marauding destroyers, cutting swathes through all that oppose them. Eyes of the deep are lurking predators in a hostile environment you're unlikely to even see. Spectators are almost benign, if rather weird in mindset, and you're unlikely to fight one unless it's being employed by someone. As an ecology should, this fills in the details of their lifecycle, and what they do when not being summoned. As you'd expect, this is rather strange. They really should do some more extraplanar ecology stuff. We have the basic books needed to giver people a framework. Filling it in would be a cool thing to do, and let people's imaginations really run wild.
Also notable is the increasing use of greyhawk locations and personages in the recent ecologies. With Gary well gone by now, they grow increasingly comfortable with allowing all and sundry to write there, just as Ed's done with the Forgotten realms. That's definitely a development that will have reprecussions in the future. Overall, this is a very interesting ecology, with it's inventive ideas, variants, and a new spell for our use as well. One for both players and DM's.
The game wizards: Back to the really big issue everyone's been wondering about for months here. The next edition of AD&D. Playtesters have reported tons of ideas. Zeb's been trying to change things, Jon's been trying to keep them the same, and of course there is much conflict in general about how much to change. It's all been a bit wearing. Entertaining, but not hugely informative, this is basically just a bit of blogging, not really revealing any specifics about what will be different. Definitely not a patch on the leadup to the release of the 1st ed DMG. Will anything provoke the same kind of furor afterwards as the female dwarven beards issue? (Demons & Devils, of course.) Come on, stoke our fires. It'll be good for sales.
When the tanks roll: Top Secret continues it's more military focus, with talk about coups. When and why are they most likely to occur? Here's a hint. Don't neglect the basic utilities. That's just begging for trouble. This strongly reminds us that the new edition has stepped away from realism in both system and setting, with Orion and Web being virtually 80's cartoon organizations in the unambiguity of which is good, which is bad, and the tactics they adopt. Which also means Orion seems rather standoffish and reactive. If you want to make the world a better place, you can't just watch for villainic influence and then foil them. And in a world without supernatural stuff, the excuse that you don't interfere in mundane politics carries rather less weight. There's still plenty of valuable advice in this, but it is tinged with that annoying shallow cartoon morality that I might have accepted at the time, but laugh at now. Not only are they shying away from real world religion, they're also bowdlerising real world politics due to overcautious company policy. So it's an interesting but not very pleasing way to finish things off.
Snarfquest is on vacation again because Larry Elmore is overworked. Dragonmirth also strains the sanity. Yamara wishes halflings had infravision like the rest of the demihumans.
Definitely an issue that strongly foreshadows the changes to come in the next edition, both it's good aspects, and it's bad ones. Which isn't too surprising really, but shows how much they've planned ahead, and are setting things up so as to make the readers more likely to accept those alterations in mechanics and tone. Still, the magazine as a whole seems fairly healthy, with sales up again, Roger struggling less to keep everything running, and the amount of rehash stable or even declining slightly. They certainly seem to be in a fairly healthy position for the changeover. So let's see how it all goes down.
Dragon Magazine Issue 140: December 1988
part 1/3
108 pages. Another classic Elmore illustration fills up this month's cover with sumptuous detail. Another clerical special fills up the inside with new stuff for said class. Rather a conservative choice, really. But then, they've been getting complaining letters when they try and do adventurous stuff. Considering exploring new things is one of the big reasons to become an adventurer, a surprising number of people would rather stick with the same narrow setting and rules conventions. Roger is not amused about this. It's hard enough to avoid rehashing stuff as it is. Stuck between the new people who still need to read the basics, and the grognards who want to chug along in the same rut for the rest of their lives. Even the differences Dragonlance has from straight generic fantasy are too much for some people. Come on, where's your spirit of adventure? We want to have fun creating new worlds. We can't do that if you don't buy them.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter pointing out probable errata. : peers: Ayup. That's errata alright. Clear as the nose on mah face.
A letter asking if Little Wars and Heritage Models are still around. It's been nearly 10 years. Pay attention, man! Didn't you read issue 22/13 where they said they were merging them?
A suggestion that they put a coming next time somewhere in the magazine. Roger says no, given the fluidity of their schedule. Future editors, of course may change this.
Another suggestion to put early issues of the magazine on computer. They'll get round to it, but once again, not for quite a few years yet.
A letter asking if it's ok to photocopy stuff from the magazine for personal use. Roger is magnaminous. It'd be too much hassle to stomp on things like that. But if you sell it, then beware our psychic hamsters and their van, roaming suburbia, probing people. Or something. I may be mixing my urban myths here.
Forum: Dean Wright is in favour of powering up dragons. He is also in favour of the DM as (hopefully benevolent ) dictator. If the players don't like the way he runs games, they can get lost.
Steve Allen is disgusted by the idea of weapon specialisation, and hopes it's eliminated entirely from the next edition. He's also another person who thinks magic-users are more than powerful enough if they use their brains. So he's against more player empowerment on both sides of the fence ;)
David Cohen disagrees with the portrayal of Saturn in issue 133. The original myth was merged with closer history, to create a more morally ambigious being. This is a good demonstration of how ripping gods from their context and transplanting them wholesale to fantasy realms doesn't have the same verisimilitude.
Delmar Watkins sells the virtues of co-DM'img. Two minds are definitely better than one here, because you can split the party without slowing things down, cope better with absences, and are less likely to see egregious dictatorial abuses of power.
Michael Norrish thinks that the flexibility of games like GURPS are the way to go. Ideas such as spell point systems, and differing spell lists for clerics could be incorporated into the game and remain balanced if done right. I'm guessing he liked Skills & Powers then :p
Paranoia crosses over with a western. Silly as ever.
TSR Previews: Another not particularly huge list of releases this month.
AD&D is filling out both it's big settings further. The Forgotten Realms fills in Thay, in FR6: Dreams of the red wizards. Plenty of adventures to be had trying to foil that shower of bastards. Dragonlance gets DL16: World of Krynn. Designed to serve as both an introduction for new players, and to tie up loose ends for those who played all the way through the module series, will this split focus work?
Top Secret gets TSAC6: Covert Operations Source Book. Bringing back the reality to your espionage with info on lots of actual events and organisations. Events may or may not match the actual reality, since this stuff was supposed to be top secret.
Marvel Superheroes squeezes out the final volume of it's gamers handbook just in time for christmas. Phew. Now people can grab the whole lot of them as a present.
Sage advice takes on top secret this month. Once again, it's the old edition, not the new one, that's getting the attention.
Are Temporary reductions percentages of your score, or 100. (your score )
How do you handle wounds in the field (You put up with them until you get to a hospital. No mid-mission healing round here. )
Does willpower help you resist poison (not usually)
How can you die from poison (Cumulative exposure. )
How do you check for sleep gas. (regularly pinching yourself)
How do Chlorine and nerve gasses affect you. ( irritatingly)
I want stats for heavy military gear. (Tough. Even though other writers are rapidly putting the lie to the words, Skip will continue to insist they have no place in the Top Secret game. )
What happens if you use a combat style the enemy doesn't know (they're at a substantial disadvantage)
Can players look at the charts when fighting hand to hand (yes. The rules should be an open book to them)
What happens in projectile vs HtH cpmbat. (usually, the shooter pwns the slasher)
How long does it take a chopper to get airborne ( In an emergency, always too long)
What happens if you dip lead bullets in teflon (if doesn't stick very well)
Do you roll a new difficulty each time you force a door (if its been broken once, chances are it'll be easier to break again)
What are the chances of having your disguise penetrated. (depends how good the disguise is)
What are the chances of an enemy running away when losing (Courage score seems tailor made for that purpose)
How do you learn to forge stuff. (That's a tricky crossdisciplinary business. Governments like making these things diliberately awkward to do, as is their right)
How much do false documents cost (You get what you pay for. If you're with an agency, they set you up with even better for free. )
Does the defender need a sword to not autolose at swordplay (no, but they do need something to block with)
What are the chances for train derailment (See the orient express module. Logical place to put it. )
The flamethrower is missing stats ( See the Top Secret Companion)
How do you improve your languages (same as any other AOK)
What is stopping power (how well a weapon knocks you back or out)
The military record rules are confusing (That's because it's a realistic emulation of military bureaucracy :p )
What do you roll when trying to create a diversion (a bit of everything)
What's with departure times ( Errata)
What are your chances of getting away at an airport (depends how long til your flight. This is why they normally make you book in advance and hang around for hours. )
What are the ranges of airliners (If it aint a few thousand miles, it's barely worth the name)
How much does water travel cost, and what is a water mile ( Quite a bit. Remember, you're not traveling straight, but round lots of little jiggly bits on a river or coast. )
Do the involuntary hit response rules work like they seem too (yes)
What's the modifier to a course if your skill is 17-84 (none. Only extreme scores do anything. )
What do you gain for doing the silent killing course (coughs and points downwards)
Sawn-off shotguns are way too accurate (you're right. That should be a minus, not a plus. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 140: December 1988
part 2/3
The savant: Ok, so it's not exactly how Gary would have done it. But at least you get to see this long mooted character class at last. This is an attempt to make a PC level Sage class, able to both adventure and have masterful knowledge of many fields. They're another split class, combining with some other spellcaster so they have slower advancement, but considerably more miscellaneous powers. Which is pretty cool really, as it gives you another way of making a character who is powerful, but not primarily a combatant. It would also require very little modding to allow it to split-class with warriors or rogues instead, and I would be entirely willing to consider that. Seems like split classes are becoming quite the fashionable option, allowing you to give your character more customisation while not completely removing yourself from the more heavily supported baseline ones. You can see why they developed kits in the next edition, to make this kind of thing more standardized and accessable. The demand is very much there. Since I like customisability, I approve of this development.
So many gods, so little time: Building a pantheon. A topic tackled by no less than Ed himself, back in issue 54. Rather big shoes to try and step into and rehash. And indeed, this tackles it with less detail and far fewer specific ideas than the previous version, making it not really that interesting to me. There are a few new ideas, but really, if you're going to do something again, you need to do it bigger, better or sufficiently differently to make an impression when the previous version is still around for the consuming. Sorry, but this just ain't up to it.
Fantasy clerics and clerical fallacies: Gregory Detwiler gets statistical on us to point out that clerics wouldn't completely remove the risks from everyday living, even if there were a lot of them. They'll always be a small fraction of the population, with numbers decreasing exponentially for each level increase. Spells are decidedly limited commodities, you need to be pretty high level to get the ones that are most useful for a community, and even then you can only cast them a few times a day. Even if you filled up all your slots, there's no way you could save or raise everyone who needed it. And if you want to increase your power, you've got to go adventuring, which means you won't be available if an emergency happens while you're absent. A good example of the rules of the game are the physics of the universe style thinking, which is something I generally enjoy. Lest you forget, PC's are seriously exceptional in D&D, able to cope with threats that would mow down hundreds of peasants. But they can still only be in one place at a time. There's a big world of mundanity out there between the spectacular creatures and places. Don't completely gloss over it, or the special ceases to be so.
As the cleric turns: A nice little revision here, smoothing out the undead turning table, and extending it to cover higher levels. There's been a lot of new creatures introduced since the first monster manual, and many of them have had turning difficulties not in sync with their overall power level. Fixing that, and extending the turning tables so they scale better is a small thing, but this looks like it would improve your game a bit, particularly if undead are regular encounters. No objection here, especially since the article pays attention to similar revisions in earlier issues of the magazine.
Specialization (cut down to size): The two Len's gang up on us to once again present the case for nerfing weapon specialization. The primary problem seems to occur when first level characters are permitted to double specialize. They're too powerful when they can use their chosen weapon, and near useless when they can't, because they don't have other stuff to fall back on. Seems to me that the problem isn't the precise numbers, as the Master set BD&D rules for weapon mastery are far more powerful, but the allowing it at 1st level. Looks like it's one of those well-meaning but tiresome articles that winds up letting spellcasters eclipse the fighters even more. Seen it before, will see it again. Yawnaroo.
The beastie awards: Our computer columnists finally have enough people voting to present awards for the best games they've covered. Might and Magic wins comfortably overall, with Bards tale coming second. Unsurprisingly, most of the other big votes also appeared in the column over the year. Next year will be bigger and better! Be ready, folks! Hrum. Before you know it, this'll be business as usual too.
Roll on!: When they invented the supertwinked method V for Unearthed Arcana, they didn't include numbers of dice rolled for all the various multiclass combinations. They said there wasn't the space. Well, what is the magazine for if not supplementary material like this. And since it only takes them 2 pages, I'm not sure if it was a problem in the first place. Not that I was ever very keen on the idea of 9d6 for prime stats in the first place. I think I'll leave this one alone as well.
Fiction: Flesh and blood by Mary Frances Zambreno. Fighting over children. There's something you see quite often in stories, but not so often in RPG's. When romance and breeding are kept largely in the realm of GM fiat, it's no surprise that the games wind up not focussing upon them. Apart from Pendragon. Maybe exalted DB's. I'm sure there are others. But I digress. This is one of those stories that starts off simple, but rapidly gets complicated, with the protagonist not being particularly heroic. Once again, it's the job of the fiction to remind us of the moral greys that your game can contain.
The game wizards: Jim Ward decides to do exactly the same thing he did this time last year, and use this column as a way of letting you know about their biggest projects for the next year. Best laid plans, and all that. I wonder how many of them will actually arrive when he says they will.
January gives us a second Tom Clancy licensed boardgame, Red Storm Rising. He seems to be quite the flavour of the month. Dragonlance starts a new module series, DLE1: In search of dragons kicks of a trilogy of new discoveries. Once again, the big flying lizards take centre stage. If you can find them. Amazing how good things that big are at hiding.
February sees the Forgotten realms statting out lots of it's NPC's, in Hall of Heroes. If editorials are anything to go by, expect huge chunks of them to not be PC legal. Meanwhile, Top Secret kicks off it's own epic module trilogy to compete with Gamma World's. Welcome to the Web of Deceit.
In March, 2nd edition finally starts to arrive. This time, it's the players handbook that's first out the gate. Doug Niles also finishes his moonshae trilogy, with Darkwell. Will there be McGrimDarkness™ involved? ;)
April sees dragonlance go prequelific with the start of a new trilogy. See how the stars got to where they are. Well, quite a few of the main characters died in the first trilogy, so this is the only way they can satisfy fan cravings without divisive resurrections. Watch out for continuity errors. It also sees the return of Tom Wham, with the Great Khan Game. What tricks do you have up your sleeve to solve this one?
May will hopefully see the new DMG arrive. All the errors taken out, rewritten for clearness, better looking, less flavour. Also revised and expanded is the Dungeon! boardgame. Been quite a while since we heard anything on that. How will it fare in a market quite different to the one it was born in. A new boardgame, High-Rise, seems to be trying to tap into the monopoly/sim city market. And Buck Rogers starts getting novels, courtesy of our great CEO, (roll of thunder, stab of organ music) and her brother.
June completes the new edition with the first monstrous compendium. A ton of loose leaf sheets, so as they add to them, you can put everything in a single file in alphabetical order. Course, for that to work, you'd need every monster to have it's own double page spread. Shoulda thought that one through a bit more carefully. :p Marvel superheroes also gets revised for clarity and released in it's own boxed set. And our non-rehashed release this month is Cities of Mystery. Another one with lotsa bits to cut out and put together yourself. Don't see much of those anymore.
July's biggest releases are a pair of boxed sets. AD&D gets Greyhawk city, while D&D receives Dawn of the Emperors. Another onslaught of setting detail, including all kinds of odd little bits and pieces you couldn't put in a book.
August sees the 2nd ed supplement mill kick up a gear, with the second monstrous compendia. There's a hellofa lot of monsters that need updating, so the gaps between releases are shrinking. Another quirky release are the Dragonlance Trail Maps. In a push to make their setting seem more real, they're releasing maps in the same format as real world ones. Slim fold-out things you can stick in your jacket pocket. Just the thing for if you stumble through a magic portal unexpectedly. ;)
In September, the first 2nd ed specific setting is unleashed upon us. And quite a doozy it is too. Spelljammer! AD&D in Spaaaaace! Take that, unadventurous naysayers! On the less imaginative side, we have a second volume of compiled D&D art. Guess more people bought the first one than you'd expect.
October gives us a proper Dragonlance boxed set. They try some more to make it a full world, rather than just a backdrop to a specific set of adventures. Marvel super-heroes continues to rack up the supplements as well.
November has something old and something new as well. The Battlesystem is revised for the new edition, now written to be more easy to understand and focussed upon using minis to represent your battles. Far more important though, is the Complete Fighters Manual. Welcome to the birth of kits, and the rise of the splatbooks. :dramatic music: None shall be spared! You will be customized!
December gives us another splatbook straight off the bat, with thieves getting their turn next. After all, it's the non-spellcasters that need more differentiation the most. The others'll get their turn soon enough.They also finish off the Dragonlance prequels. That is, if they can get them written in time. Eh, Tracey and Margaret have proved up to the job before. And now they have more writing experience. Why shouldn't they be able to pull it off.
Whew. I'm exhausted just reading all that. And it's just a fraction of their total output. Just think how hard the team must be working to produce this much. No time to waste here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 140: December 1988
part 3/3
An assortment of knives: Weapon porn has always been part of D&D. Having dozens of different kinds of polearms stretches right back to the strategic review. But so far, knives and daggers have managed to be passed by for bigger and more impressive looking weaponry. No more. Now you can choose from 7 new varieties of knife, each with their own little nuances of damage, speed and cost. Apart from throwing knives, which can be rather scary if you have a nice bandolier full of them, thanks to their high RoF, (Magic missile? Hah. They call me Brett Riverboat.) these don't seem particularly unbalanced. So another bit of power creep by increasing breadth of options. Meh.
The dragon's bestiary: Ed is in fine fettle again this month, with another assortment of cool monsters that would later appear in Forgotten Realms books.
Glyptar are the souls of Maedar trapped in formations of crystal. Since they've often spent millennia doing sod-all underground, they are often of dubious sanity when found. Since they do have some quite neat abilities, freeing them might pay off, or might not. It'll be a lot of fun finding out.
Magebane are magic eating parasites that attach themselves to wizards and make their spells malfunction. Like rust monsters and brain moles, they won't do any direct damage, but this becomes very irritating, and rather dangerous if there's another pressing threat at the same time.
Quezzer are scarily fast alien bug things. Definitely a horror movie in there, given the way they behave and the odd way they move. Unsurprisingly, you can harvest their bits for magic items involving speed.
Scythetails are another odd thing that don't have a particular earthly analogue, but are almost natural animals, with a few unique realmsey touches, and lots of tricks that make them more dangerous than many creatures of their hit dice. And as usual, they are a delight to read about.
Xantravar are even stranger looking, with their closest relations probably somewhere in the beholder family, or possibly Pelins. Maybe flumphs. No, I can't untangle D&D's creature families. How does he come up with these things? How would players react confronted with them? (kill it with fire! Baaaad idea.) Should be fun finding out.
Through the looking glass: Several columns in, and Robert is learning the hard way what the Lessers had too a couple of years ago. Piracy may take a different form in mini's than it does in computer software, but it's still very much an issue, and can reflect badly on the reviewers if they fall prey to it or appear to condone it. Plus, people have an irritating habit of writing in in vitriolic fashion, and much as you'd like too, you cannot reply in the same way. We also get some advice on planning projects, several reviews of scenery for your battles, and Robert's personal experience of this year's Gen Con. Looks like all the promotion paid off. Still fairly entertaining progression on this front.
The role of computers is also dealing with the effects of convention season being upon them. This means lots of new games to tackle.
F/A-18 Interceptor & Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer are a pair of flight sim games that get a joint review. Actually, they're owned by the same company, and there doesn't seem to be a huge amount to choose between them. Basically, it depends which system you own, and if you want the big name attached.
Global Commander is the opposite of a wargame, where you have to figure out how to prevent and defuse conflict between the various UN nations. This amuses the reviewers, but it still makes for a fun and tricky game. Monitor communications, engage in diplomacy, and if all else fails, shoot their missiles from the sky. Now, if only someone could make an RPG that encourages similar kinds of play.
Road Runner is of course, a game based on the cartoon. You play the bird, avoiding the coyote and trying to get round the tracks in the time limit. This is fun for a bit, then starts to pall. Another so-so conversion.
Might and Magic goes mac. This is not without improvements, and they spell out the differences between this and the previous versions. Is this really worth a full review?
Penguin Land is a typically quirky sega classic. Rescue your eggs and guide them through the mazes while avoiding the hungry bear. You can even build and save your own custom maps.
PT-109 is a torpedo boat sim. They do review a lot of sim games in here. Guess that's another genre that has since lost a lot of it's adherents.
Role-playing reviews goes back to the forgotten realms. It's been around for over a year now, and has a good few supplements, so let's sort between the good, the bad, and the ugly.
FR1 Waterdeep and the north works well as a guide to the city itself, but details of the lands surrounding it are still rather sketchy. It concentrates more on providing atmosphere and sample characters than detailed maps and locations, which means the DM will still have to do some work to run adventures in it. Still room for plenty more supplements filling in this region.
FR2 Moonshae gets a more evenly distributed treatment. This may be a problem for low level parties, as the random encounters include creatures of all power levels. Better be ready to run. Doug has done a good job of making the isles somewhat separate from the main continent in tone, but not completely so, and you can play it either as a sandbox, or join in the local iteration of the epic battle of good vs evil.
FR3 Empires of the sands is the same size as the other two, but covers a much wider area, so there is considerably less detail. Even so, some of the bits have the air of filler material. The three countries are very different, but all have plenty of room for adventuring in. Money, magic, and wild frontiers. Which will you hunt for most eagerly?
A couple of interesting tidbits are also found in the short and sweet section. Jim rebutts a comment by Greg Stafford on his recent review. Just because Runequest already has rules for unarmed combat, doesn't mean ninjas shouldn't get more kewl powerz in that area in their supplement. Quite the opposite in fact. Hee. Ars Magica also gets a small but positive review. The quality of the game is recognized, but it's future success does not seem to have been anticipated. Another one worth noting.
Dragonmirth reminds us that it's the type of armour you're wearing, not how much of your body it covers that counts. Fea gets a familiar in Yamara. Snarf attracts the attention of claimjumpers. Well, he was warned.
A fairly average issue, with both good stuff and bad stuff aplenty. It would probably register as better to a new reader, who hadn't seen the previous coverage of many of the topics. Once again, the reviews and previews are some of the most interesting parts to me. Hopefully the coming of the new edition will put fresh spins on the various ideas they repeat, and bring in some new ones.
Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Another year, time to put some more old chessnuts to rest. No more Allycia and Scud. No more world destroying adventures of Waldorf. No more harpy biology. And definitely no more sodding debate on if female dwarves have beards. We haven't published stuff on that in years, so stop sending it in. Instead, it's back to humanoids. Another thing that has previously had a special on it. Do they have some new ideas? Or is it going to be 1982 all over again. Page turning time.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter suggesting they do a holographic cover for their 150th issue or some similar special occasion. Since it's expensive and awkward to do, Roger is skeptical about if that would be worth it. Not very Visionary of him, eh? ;)
Someone asking why there's no articles for Dragonlance. Like BD&D, Greyhawk, and a ton of other things the magazine could cover, it's because people don't sodding submit them. It's not some conspiracy, honest.
Another question about the value of old stuff. Good question. How long is a piece of string, as ever. Hold on a few decades more, and it'll definitely go up in this case.
Another recycled question. Another group wants to try break the record for longest continuous session. Roger, once again, plays the spoilsport. For health and safety reasons, we do not recommend this.
And finally, someone upset because the role of computers skipped an issue. Honestly, it was only one issue. You don't have to go getting paranoid that quickly. A little variety is good for the brain.
Forum: Walker White continues the illusion handling debate, with another lengthy bit of opinion. You've got to keep the changes you make logical, so people are more likely to believe them.
Brad Shimzo introduces 4 new martial arts for the Marvel superheroes game. Another relatively unusual occurrence around here.
Mark Hunter dislikes the way many Dragon articles do not take each other into account, and are mutually incompatible. He's also not keen on the idea of adding new attributes. Perception should stay purely derived.
Douglas M Burck has some more sound strategies for aiding the survival of low level magic-users. Remember, spells can be combined to good effect, and even cantrips are invaluable. He also goes into some detail about the nature of different kinds of spellbooks.
Larry Madden has some more talk about ways for spellcasters to make a living, and rubbishes the idea of dual class 1st level fighter/magic users. It's not a practical option, in or out of the game.
Timothy Makinson chooses to debate the issues of weapon lengths and two-handed fighting, of all things. Well, it's one people can study themselves. That means realism nigglers can have a field day on it.
Aaron Goldblatt thinks, as a jew, that real world religion should stay the hell out of D&D games. Similarly, modern values cause substantial amounts of moral dissonance, and making your world too like them is not a great idea.
Darrell Anderson Talks about weapon and armour restrictions, coming to the conclusion that clerics are better overall than fighters or magic-users, and a certain amount of rebalancing wouldn't be a terrible idea.
Jimmy B Ellis points out that according to the RAW, a fighter can only specialise in one weapon. This means that you can't pour all your slots into several things to the exclusion of all else. Not that many future writers won't ignore that rule as well.
Sage advice goes back to greyhawk for some retro setting reexamination.
Where are the clashing rocks and other special locations (wherever your DM wants to put them. They're supposed to be a surprise. )
Which areas are best for adventuring in. (All of them! Would Gary, in his endless genius, design a place that is unsuited for adventurers? (oh yes he would!) Oh no he wouldn't! (oh yes he would!) Shut up, you. Panto season was last month)
Where was the weather info (Issue 68. No, we will not reprint it for you, so don't even ask.)
How big is hepmonaland ( We dunno. Buy more greyhawk stuff, and maybe we'll give it it's own line, like the various forgotten realms continents)
Which modules are set in greyhawk ( WGAGDQSTEX. Try pronouncing that. It will summon a great elder grognard if you can say it right 7 times while looking at your reflection in a bottle of mountain dew. If your character dies in the ultimate old skool game they run, you die as well. Bet you wish you'd listened to Jack Chick now. )
How can elven clerics wield swords in the random encounter table (Legacy code. We didn't have the heart to tell them they couldn't use them anymore )
What is the symbol of the knight on the cover (The city of Fax. Just what you need to send a message)
Why doesn't the map show the countries borders (Because they fight so much. The map'd be out of date in no time. )
When do the GDQ modules happen (In default canon, they happened in CY576. This is quite a few years ago now. You are of course free to ignore this for your own games. )
Can I use non-oerth deities from legends and lore (Eh, it's your funeral. You want to dilute our themes, go ahead. It's not as if the place isn't a kitchen sink already. )
What's the scale on the map (1 hex= 30 miles. Or 10 leagues for the pretentious amongst you. )
Does Zuggtmoy have the usual demon powers (Yes. Being a unique and special snowflake does not weaken her in any way. )
What's Oerik's lattitude (see page 18. )
The Dragon's bestiary: Blacktrolls are, yeah, trolls, only even more eeeevil. Smarter, tougher, with quite substantial magical powers, they're another good demonstration of how the stakes go up substantially when you go extraplanar. The omnipresent fricken teleport without error is a particular pain in the butt. Really, who decided to make that a default at will power for entire broad genera of monsters?
Caiveh are yet another humanoid feline race. Based off lions, they're another low level monster with a few tricks up their sleeve, that could probably gain class skills if the DM wanted.
Cynamolgus are another form of dog men, in another case of inspiration deficit disorder resulting in filler. Far better to fill in the ones we have than keep on adding new ones.
Diurge are decidedly scary people from the negative material plane. With a consistently high general class capability, psionics, and the obligatory energy draining, they seem good ones for a world-conquering plotline.
Jor are another upgraded version of orcs. Adapted to swamps, they have natural talents at stealth and assassination. A good backstabbing is just the thing to really piss off a party. Muahaha.
Rocktrolls are a second even tougher troll variant, living in the elemental plane of earth. Well, not much apart from fire and acid kills them, so it's no surprise they'd go all over the place and adapt to weird environments. They also have quite decent stealth skills in their natural environment. Seems like they want to encourage you to play your monsters that way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989
part 2/3
Orcs throw spells too: From stealth to spellcasting. Although they can't match up to humans and elves, many of the humanoid races detailed can get rudimentary spellcasting abilities, more commonly priestly than wizardly. And even a couple of well chosen spells can seriously improve the odds of a whole team of monsters. Be rather thankful they're quite rare, given the lack of formal education in their societies. Quite a long article, this gives plenty of design and statistical advice, to help you build them, flesh out their religious practices, and customise them appropriately for their racial tendencies. Many of the gods have ridiculously strict advancement criteria, which is an amusing example of their self-defeating tendencies. All in all, this is a pretty good article, giving us lots of extra depth without overlapping previous material. Very handy.
Boulder-throwers and humanoid hordes: Giants. The subject of the very first module series. Curiously, they're a race that is usually played as dumb, but can get quite substantial benefits from being played smart. This gives us tactics that are good for fightery races, thus completing the symmetry. They're quite good at ranged attacks, tremendously strong, and can often move faster than their foes. This means they can choose when they attack, and control the terrain. Much shorter than the last one, this still has plenty of neat tricks up it's sleeve, to help keep them challenging even once the PC's are loaded up with magic items and tricks, and remind you to vary the capabilities of your adversaries. Once again, pretty pleasing.
Hey, wanna be a kobold?: Ahh, the joys of people opening up races to become PC's. Few things are sweeter, or more potentially destabilizing to game balance. But lets face it, kobolds are not overpowering at all. If you don't use your brains, they'll be rather weedy. Still, they're considerably better in terms of stats and abilities than gully dwarves, more versatile than half-ogres, and a lot more applicable to campaigns in general. This also includes the stats for orcs, goblins and xvarts. In general, they are rather less capable than they would be in 2nd edition, and it's pretty clear why they usually lose to the PC's, but they are good enough that you could still have a fun game with them incorporated. Definitely a good contribution here.
Fiction: The ulfjarl's stone by Mickey Zucker Reichert. Ahh, the vikings. A decidedly ruthless culture in a lot of ways. The icy arctic snows require strong men to survive there, and even stronger ones to lead them. And often this requires a little more strength than simply prowess in battle. So here's a story that shows off the norse attitude to life, death, magic and riddles. Not connected to the issue's theme, but still fairly appropriate to it, this continues the fairly strong showing.
Role-playing reviews:
Megatraveller gets a rather long review, as befits a boxed set of this size. The reviewer seems considerably more impressed with this than they did with Traveller 2300. The advancements in timeline have made the setting rather more unstable, and as a result, there are considerably more adventure hooks wherever you may go. The career system is considerably expanded, with lots of the paths introduced in supplements (and this magazine) incorporated and they finally have a decent in play advancement system. Some bits are simple, some bits are possibly still a bit too complex and clunky, but as a whole, it's considerably better than previous editions.
GURPS Space gets a rather shorter review. Obviously, since it's a generic sourcebook to help you build your own settings, it isn't even trying to compete on that front. This just gives you lots of rules and example stats for creatures and objects. It does so in the usual clear and concise way, with well designed rules. No great surprises here.
Adeptus titanicus! Giant robot battles in warhammer 40k. Now there's a concept with a substantial wahoo! factor. It gets a tremendously pretty full colour four page spread of advertising devoted to it as well. Ooh, you are tempting.
TSR Previews: D&D seriously delivers on the Gazetteer front, with GAZ10: Orcs of Thar. Another one opening up a ton of new PC options, and their fun society. Now you can play things from the other side. Maybe that'll teach your players a little sympathy for the monsters.
AD&D also gets a fun and not completely serious adventure, with Mad Monkey vs the Dragon Claw. Martial arts action ahoy! Slightly more scary is Lords of Darkness, a module full of little adventures featuring the undead. Shouldn't be hard to drop in all over the place.
Novelwise, we have Weasel's luck, a Dragonlance book, and Red Sands, a general book. Two very different protagonists wind up in rather different adventures, but both find their experiences pretty harrowing. What is an adventure without challenge, eh?
Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989
part 3/3
The role of books: War of the maelstrom by Jack L Chalker is the third book of a profoundly fucked-up trilogy. I hated this when I read it, and the reviewer manages to pick several further holes in it's fundamental design and attitudes that illuminate just what a terrible book this is on several levels. Steer well clear unless you enjoy mind-rape, sexism, and poor plotting. And if you ever find yourself in a game like this, get the hell out after the first session. No excuses.
The fairy of ku-she by M. Lucie Chin is a tale of the chinese celestial bureaucracy, a byzantine organization full of powerful creatures working under their own idioyncratic rules and internal politics. This is a rich ground for adventure, especially when romance and duty collide. Plenty of fun ideas to be drawn for OA games here.
The armor of light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A Barnett is an espionage adventure set in elizabethan england. Walter Raleigh, Cristopher Marlowe and plenty of other historical figures make appearances in this high action adventure, full of magic, double agents, politics, and all the usual spy tropes that keep a story like this speeding along.
The sorcerer's heir by Paula Volsky is the second book in the trilogy, and builds up to a nicely grim climax that seems pretty insoluble. Will the heroes be able to solve it, or will it all end in tragedy?
The crystal warriors by William R Fortschen and Greg Morrison transports two opposed platoons of soldiers to a fantasy world, where they have to come to an uneasy truce to survive. With an interesting crystal based magic system, it'd probably translate better to GURPS than AD&D, and has both properly developed characters and military tactics.
The quest for the 36 by Stephen Billias features that rather familiar name Dexter Sinister, although from the description, I don't think it's the same one. (terrible puns have a strange attraction) It's another quirky one, with lots of silly names and odd bits while still telling a fundamentally serious story, drawing on real jewish mythology. Another one that's good inspiration for the stranger side of Top Secret games.
Song of the dwarves by Thoraninn Gunnarsson (now there's a fitting name for the writer) is a retelling of norse myth. Weaving the various sagas into roughly chronological order, it goes quite a way towards making them accessible to english readers. Now you can see where Tolkien got quite a few of his ideas from.
Also notable in this issue is a lookover of a whole bunch of star trek books. The next generation is just starting to hit it's stride, and a whole bunch of books based on both that and the original series are coming out in a regular production line schedule. This means many of them are crap of course, especially the one written before the new series was conceptually finalized.
The game wizards: Great. Buck Rogers fiction as well. Looks like he will creep into every department, until the realities of his sales become too great to press on against. This is all about the fiction coming up this year in general, which means there's quite a bit of overlap with last month's column, but it goes into more detail about the books. Dragonlance, Forgotten realms, general books, and the choose your own adventure ones, all lines are getting at least a trilogy, and some rather more. Unlikely many people will buy all of them. But that's probably not their aim at this point. As long as they can please all the people some of the time, the companies finances should stay in good shape.
The role of computers has tons of little reviews squeezed together this month. Many of them aren't very good. AAARG! is a game of giant monster rampage that gets completely panned. Alien Syndrome does not convert from the arcade to the home entertainment system very well, and there's a whole bunch of mediocre sports sims. It's not all bad though. Tetris is back, in full colour, with it's iconic music, and now increasingly recognised as a full-on classic. Moebius: Orb of celestial harmony is the kind of roleplaying game they ought to be covering, with both graphics and gameplay quite up to par. But overall, they seem to be trying to cram too much in, and not staying on topic. This is not a hugely pleasing development from my point of view.
Through the looking glass: Horses are this month's special topic. They're the kind of thing that shows up regularly, but can often be glossed over. Just slap a brown coating on it, and call it a day. But as we have seen in forum threads, there are also people who are scarily obsessed with horses, their colour variations, manes, hooves, the way they move, and write extensively about this. It can be most amusing. Thankfully the writer doesn't go quite that far. But this is an interesting little romp through the colours and nuances you can give them even when staying within the bounds of realism, and some magical ideas. The more little details like this you fit in, the cooler your stuff will be. A very welcome diversion from the more common areas of study.
The marvel-phile: Off to alternate reality land again. Earth-S has considerably fewer superheroes and villains than Earth-616, yet somehow, this bunch made history diverge considerably more from the real world. Most of them were detailed in the gargantuan gamers handbook, but it seems a few of them slipped through the gap. So here's stats for Master Menace, this dimension's Dr Doom analogue, and this dimension's Sorcerer Supreme, Professor Imam. (rather a tautological name, doncha think. ) Each has their own quirks in their personalities and abilities. A fairly standard entry in this series. Since they've filled in virtually everyone in the history of the company, I'm guessing from now on this'll be mostly about recently introduced characters, and any changes in existing ones. As long as there are dozens of different comics coming out every week, it's not as if they'll ever run out of material.
Snarf gets into a western style shootout. Dragonmirth shows how better things may come from disappointment. Yamara develops a personal hatred for the skanky villainess.
Once again, things seem to be switching around in quality, with the themed section being more enjoyable than the reviews and regular columns this issue. Still, overall, this is quite a decent issue. The changes in staff do not seem to have impacted on the overall quality of production values, and there's lots of stuff that is generally useful for people's games. They seem to have a decently built up slush pile of articles at the moment. Lets hope they can keep on using them to best effect.
Dragon Magazine Issue 142: February 1989
part 1/3
84 pages (32 page insert missing) So second edition is just a few months away. (while the release of the books may be staggered, it certainly isn't by the length that the 1st edition ones were. ) They want to promote this quite a bit. Unfortunately, whatever twonks scanned the Archive in thought that this wasn't worth preserving for posterity. Thankfully the good readers of this thread came through for me, so I have been able to get hold of it. Still, it does mean the main issue is rather smaller than usual. Oh well, hundreds more to go. 16 pages is just a drop compared to that.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking them to repeat their critical hit system article. Roger gives a maybe, with a side order of I disapprove of this idea. We know which side his bread is buttered on.
A bit of historical nitpicking. Remember, the number of a century is one higher than the numbers in it, confusingly.
Two questions about Moldvay's undead article. One is easily answered, the other is left for you to sort out. Is precalculating xp really that hard for you?
A letter pointing out the snafu in snarfquest's numbering system. These things do happen.
A letter praising them for doing more roleplaying focussed, system free articles that are useful to all gamers. I think I can get behind that one as well.
Forum: Eric Parish is another person who thinks that balance by campaign is a better idea than balance by encounter. If magic-users weren't weak at low level, there'd be a lot more of them. And that would make it much harder to keep the world recognisable.
Jason Kasper has a rather dubious suggestion on how to get magic-users through those awkward first few levels. Bloody deus ex machina mentors. I don't approve.
Jim Amos thinks that XP for treasure might not be a good idea in all circumstances. Foreshadowing ahoy.
Alan Clark also thinks that there should be means to accumulate XP other than killing and taking of stuff, particularly for the classes which should eschew material things like paladins and monks. Plus it causes fewer economic problems.
Robin D Brock also has a strong opinion on the XP for other actions debate, being in favour. This seems to be quite the flavour of the month to debate.
S D Anderson returns to the debate he started, to give another fairly well thought out bit of pontification. You ought to make the system encourage characters to excel, not be a bunch of bet-hedging jobsworths.
Marc Sanders tackles the thorny subject of demihuman level limits side on, pointing out that being able to advance in multiple classes simultaneously is a huge benefit. Does this balance out the overall limits? Over the course of the campaign, maybe.
Timothy Emrick is very much in favour of perception being incorporated into 2nd ed in some form. Oh, if only that article had come a year or so earlier, before most of the stuff was finalized. Things could have been rather different.
Ilya Taytslin thinks that level draining undead should stay as they are, so as to keep them genuinely scary. Can't have the PC's getting overconfident, can we?
Mike Speca is also being conservative in terms of class changes. Ordinary fighters have a versatility in terms of how they are roleplayed that the various specialists can't match. Hmm. I suspect that once again, they might be trying to prime us for the lack of changes in the next edition.
William H Stoddard does some nitpicking over explosive magnitudes, and the recent DC heroes article involving them. There are some serious dropped numbers in the math here.
Sage advice: How long does a dragon stay subdued (Until they think they can get away with killing you all or escaping. Be vewy vewy wawy. )
Is the tarrasque really as nasty as you say it is (Skip says YES! If you aint got that wish, don't make that trip. Steer well clear, or drop it in the lava, because you can't kill it by conventional attacks. )
Hangman trees are ridiculously tough! (oops. Now that is errata. They're still no pushovers though. )
What does beholders anti-magic eye do. (no magic works while they're looking at you with it. Period. On the plus side, that means they can't kill you, turn you to stone, and disintegrate you simultaneously. So look like a wizard, and then hit like a fighter, and you might have a chance.)
Why do demon princes hide their amulets on the prime material (because the abyss is full of treacherous maniacs. If they're schitzo like Demogorgon, they can't even trust themselves. To be extra safe, they hide them all over the place)
Is there an AD&D module with a spaceship. (S3. Get the reprinted version now! )
Is the temple of elemental evil bigger than the players handbook (metaphysicaly, yes. Practically, no. )
I don't understand the psionics system. (Don't worry. In just a few months we'll get rid of it, and rework it into something comprehensible. )
Are levels of mastery equal to your character level (no, they're equal to the number of levels you gained since you got the power )
Do thieves have to conciously activate hear noise (yes. You want autoscanning, get an elf. Good for 'elf an' safety, innit mate. Never know when a secret door might be a bother. )
The index in the DMG is wrong (no, you're reading it wrong. )
What does c in front of a weapon mean. (Circa. Not perfectly precise. No standardisation mate. Let the buyer beware, innit. The weaponsmiths guild aint as all-controlling as the scribes guild or the assassins guild. )
How do you pronounce drow (it rhymes with cow. But don't call a priestess of lolth that, for a lengthy flaying may ensue. If you get off on that kind of thing, make sure you get someone to youtube it, and pay for your ressurection in advance. )
Do you have to sell gems and jewelery to get any XP from them (no)
How many GP will a container hold (not enough to carry a dragon hoard. This is why sensible adventurers get bags of holding ASAP)
What happens when you're at -1 hp (Nothing. Yet. )
What does a one way door look like from the wrong side (that is so stupidly context dependent I can't even begin to answer it. What does the back of a creature's head look like?)
What's a composite bow (one build out of several layers, duh. The wonders of advancing technology, even if it doesn't actually make your life easier, eh. )
What's on the cover of the manual of planes (an astral dreadnought. Bet you wish you were psionicaly actually there now. )
This means war!: Mass combat for gamma world. Cool. It's heavily derived from the War Machine as well, although it uses rather smaller numbers. This actually makes it simpler to do the math on, and hopefully pretty quick and understandable. Overall, it looks pretty good, although there is the usual problem that if you're doing this as a one-shot, it'll take rather longer to convert the groups into army stats than it will to actually fight the battle. The bit on guerilla warfare may be a bit iffy, and it could definitely stand a few expansions and refinements, but overall, this is a pleasingly ambitious thing to kick off the issue with. Hopefully, we'll see a follow-up or two on this in future issues.
The well educated spy: Another review by any other name. The Spymaster's handbook by Michael Kurland is a good way to put the grit back in your espionage. A well researched book on the technical details and history of espionage, it has an understated sense of humour, and is curiously positive about a business that can get exceedingly mucky. Goes to show, you can't judge a book by it's cover. It's interesting that despite the huge 2nd ed bits, this issue actually has more non D&D focussed stuff than the last couple of issues. I do wonder why they didn't save this for a full book column, but it's still an interesting diversion.
The ecology of the kech: Another fairly mundane creature this month. Kech are one of those ambush monsters that works by imitating the sounds of a person in distress, luring adventurers into traps. Even if they fail to kill you, they'll make the party that much more paranoid for next time. And if one princess gets killed because you thought they were the doppleganger, that's one princess too many. Muahahaha! But yeah, this isn't the most interesting ecology. It's another humanoid that has human level intelligence, yet is perfectly happy to just hang out in the forest and kill anyone dumb enough to stumble across them. They do get a bit tiresome, and you wonder how they manage to survive, or possibly fail to wipe out humanity, depending on your perspective. No ambition. :shakes head:
Role-playing reviews: A bunch of mini's stuff here this issue. Even with Through the looking glass taking a break, they're not neglecting that side of their demographic.
Chaos wars is Ral Partha's wargaming system, taking advantage of their extensive miniatures line. It's still a compact little system, not perfectly balanced, but easy to learn and get playing with new people. With genres mixing freely, and spellcasters kicking ass, it seems like good fast and loose fun, if not suited to rules lawyers.
Warhammer fantasy battle 3rd edition is one of the real big dogs of this era. With rules more than 10 times the size of the last review, tons of supplements, and of course, white dwarf magazine regularly giving new scenarios, creatures and optional rules, it's the wargaming equivalent of D&D. The third edition isn't that different from the second, and it can get complex and bloated at times, but really, it got this big because it's great fun to play and add too, with a strong setting to put the battles in.
Warhammer Armies is smaller, and considerably better presented than the corebook. There are lots of little tweaks, prefab armies and troop types, including many player favourites. As a first supplement, you could do a lot worse.
Interestingly, the Battlesystem gets a short and ambivalent review. It's the first time in a while that they've been actively critical of TSR products in here. Hmm.
Dragon Magazine Issue 142: February 1989
part 2/3
TSR Previews: AD&D kicks off the new series of Dragonlance modules, with DLE1: In search of Dragons. Once again the forces of evil are becoming more powerful, and a new set of adventurers have to step up to keep the cosmic balance going. Oh, if only the old heroes were still around.
Top Secret gets TS4: Brushfire Wars. Lots of little military based adventures, many involving real world terrorist groups. Now that's definitely going to seem dated if you try running it these days.
Gammamarauders gets Revenge of the factoids. More biological warfare fun with a silly slant. Now with a comic based on the series as well! How long will that one last for?
Tom Clancy continues to make substantial profits from cold war geopolitics, with the Red Storm Rising game. How did his books deal with the fall of the berlin wall?
Finally, in the book department, R A Salvadore gives us our second dose of Drizzt'y goodness. Streams of Silver is part two of the Icewind Dale trilogy. Can they find the legendary dwarven halls?
The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition preview: Yay! Thanks to reader generosity, (http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=10886218&postcount=382) I do have access to this little bit of historical foreshadowing now. Skimming it, it's obvious that although it was included in the magazine, it wasn't designed by their layout staff. And it actually looks a bit scrappy by comparison, with it's single column type, huge margins, and skimpy use of artwork. They could definitely have condensed this down to 28, possibly even 24 pages without losing anything. But anyway. As with the astral plane article, reviews, and other big deliveries, I shall divide up my review using the headers that they use.
The cover is the only bit with any colour. On it, they display not only the three corebooks, but also the character record sheets, the Dungeon Master's screen, and the covers to volumes 2 and 3 of the monstrous compendia. Guess that shows they already have follow-ups aimed to support all segments of the game, pretty near completion and ready to roll. Are you ready for the supplement treadmill?
Introduction: Ahh, here we get our first bit of possible controversy. Wanting to clean up the rules so they're better organized and easier to learn and reference during play is one thing that they've consistently championed all through the development process. However, the other big change in approach is a new one. They consciously reject the "There is One True Way to play the Official AD&D™ Game" proclamations made by Gary in the early 1st ed days, in favour of actively encouraging you to houserule and pick which bits and pieces from the supplements you use in your campaign. They're also pretty open about the fact that this edition is going to change even more over it's lifespan, as they continue to learn and write new stuff. Actually, I do have to say that sounds more appealing to me than the idea of freezing the game in amber, I've never been a very enthusiastic chess player. But I can see why some people would take that as a personal snub, even though Gary was the personal architect of some pretty big changes to the game in UA and OA, and would probably have made more if he was still part of the company.
What we've been doing: And here they affirm that most of the changes are purely due to public demand, and the reason it's been so long between editions is because of a combination of finding there was more corrections and tweaking needed than they thought at first, and the need to make sure they properly tested all these adjustments. All pretty consistent with what we've been reading in the bulletins from the top since 1985. They seem to be pretty much on the level here, given the conservativeness of the changes, the fact that only a few that everyone agreed on got made all adds up. No objections here.
The new Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide: Hmm. This is probably the biggest bit of selling the new edition by crapping on the old one here. But then, given that even Gary admitted that the organization of the 1st ed PHB & DMG could do with some improvement, probably not unwarranted. They talk quite a lot about the choice between structuring it as an instruction manual and a reference book. Since basic D&D, particularly Mentzer ed, already does the step by step intro to roleplaying thing quite well, I think I agree with the reference manual choice. It is Advanced D&D still. Readers shouldn't feel patronised.
The Monstrous Compendiums: Ahh yes, the loose leaf folder approach to assembling your monster collection, as suggested by Stuart Malone way back in issue 30. I still think that could have worked, if they'd only made sure that full alphabeticality was maintained by giving each monster it's own two page spread. (With some more condensation of multiple subtypes of the same monster into a single entry.) Having fewer creatures covered with greater depth and customisability, so we don't need crap like different humanoid races for the 1/2, 1-1, 1, 1+1, 1+2, etc hp ranges, and don't have multiple creatures filling the same role; would definitely have made things more elegant. But then, which ones do you cut in a situation like that? If one person was doing it, you could probably hammer something out. But with hundreds of clamouring voices, all with their own little personal favourites they'll fight to the death to keep, you soon wind up with barely any streamlining at all, which is soon negated as yet more cruft is added to the system. So it goes.
Anyway, other notable tidbits are the fact that this time, they're leaving all the extraplanar creatures out until later. An understated hint towards certain controversies they'll have to deal with next year. And the fact that they're only introducing new monsters to make sure each letter of the alphabet has an even number of creatures amuses me somewhat. They certainly think they've planned this out well enough, even though they're making a few elementary errors.
The Big Changes: Ahh yes, updating the maximum press so that 18/00 keeps track with the accomplishments of real world strongmen. I find that rather amusing. But you still run into the limits of their tables when portraying really big or otherwise powerful creatures, instead of providing a formula for infinite extension. And their lift capacities seem stupidly small for massive creatures that weigh tons. We'll have to wait another decade for that little improvement. The rest of this bit is a demonstration of how much more attention spellcasters got back then. The considerable increase rogues get in flexibility and customizability gets only a few lines, compared to the massive bits on the new school specialisation and sphere systems. And of course, warriors actually got nerfed in the change, with the removal of double specialisation and the more twinked subclasses. If anything, they're the only ones that are even less interesting now. Roll on the complete fighters handbook. Similarly, it seems a little strange that they would only cut out a single race (half-orcs) from the corebook, especially when they're doubling it's size and adding so much. Course, they don't mention the real reason why, because mentioning rape in a positive preview would be impolitic. Still, at least THAC0 has been made official, and the combat table smoothed out so fighty sorts get benefits from leveling quicker and more evenly. That's definitely a good point. And of course, there's the elimination of sexism in the strength tables. That'll please a few people. So it's mostly good changes here, but also a few clunkers and some more that don't go nearly far enough. Which are which is of course a subject for much argument.
What's new: More than half of this section is devoted to nonweapon proficiencies. Now this is an area that IMO, they definitely didn't go far enough on, and the fact that it was treated as optional in the corebook, but a huge number of supplements and gameworlds took it as standard really put horrible stresses on the system. The tiny number of them that you got was never enough, especially after a load of supplements added their own "must-haves" for particular roles, and it's no surprise that a lot of the complete handbooks gave out lots of bonus ones with kits, and interpreted the bonus language rules to allow you to spend those slots on other skills. Once again, I am reminded that at one point in the development process, Zeb wanted to fold thief skills into the nonweapon proficiency system, and I think that could probably work if you rolled them in and divided the number of % points they get per level by 5, allowing thieves and bards to become the generalised skill monkeys as well, getting several slots per level to pick up new ones and enhance existing abilities.
One thing they have rolled properly into the skill system is the Ranger's tracking ability. While they can still do it best by far, now anyone can pick it up if they have the slots. And once again, they've tinkered with the modifiers. Actually, that probably is an improvement. As is the rest of the stuff. New equipment. Cleaned up mobility and visibility rules. The little advantages of ten years of consistent play.
Shifting gears: And finally, it's a little more fear allaying. The new system is entirely compatible with the old characters, and you don't have to ditch your old illusionists and assassins unless you really want too. You don't have to make the changes all at once, you don't have to throw out the old rulebooks. It's not a big deal. Not sure whether to feel reassured or patronized, but it definitely contrasts sharply with the aggressive conversion strategy of the 2-3 changeover, and the clean slate reboot of the 3-4e one. Goes to show, there are very different ways to go about an edition change, and it definitely affects how the customers respond.
So all in all, it's a pretty straightforward, no frills little bit of advertising. It could definitely have stood a bit more prettying up for maximum selling ability, but it more than does the job both in showcasing the good points of the change, and hinting towards the controversies and problems they'll face in the next few years, with bowdlerisation, supplement bloat, and excess options confusion. We aren't going to be surprised by the big course of history here. It's just a matter of how interesting and amusing I'll find the little details. On we go then, to see the real thing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 142: February 1989
part 3/3
The role of computers: Empire comes out on two new systems, and gets reviewed again. This concentrates on the differences, such as graphics, the new method of copy protection, and design errata. Rather a dull review really.
Ikari warriors and Karnov get converted from arcade games. This is a good reminder why arcades were big business back then, as they do suffer a bit in the change. Still, neither are bad games, so it's more stuff for your ROM'ing pleasure.
Contra gets nul points because it's copy protection scheme was stupid, and it refused to co-operate with their computer at all, so they couldn't play it. Hah. Rush'N Attack also gets a load of copy protection griping. Egads, they're doing a lot of that this issue. Odd theme to choose to focus on, if understandable if most games back then used some different idiosyncratic means of trying to prevent piracy.
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is another puzzle/Adventure game from the people who brought you maniac mansion. While not as good overall, it does have some refinements in terms of interface design. Oh, if only they could go back and apply them to the old games.
Battlehawks gets 5 stars. A simulation of WWII fighter planes, you can play from both sides, and do several tricky missions. The degree of research and realism is quite considerable. They really are rather fond of Lucasfilm at the moment.
Microsoft flight simulator version 2.0 also gets a pretty good review. People are certainly sparing no expense on making stuff like this. Course, that's easier to do when you consider how expensive the biggest games are to produce back then.
PT-109, Falcon AT, and Final Assault are also simulation games, covering Boating, yet another flight simulator, and mountain climbing, respectively. Man, this onslaught of tiny reviews is getting tiresome. This column isn't as much fun as it used to be.
Star saga 1: Beyond the boundary merges computer game and choose your own adventure book in a rather distinctive looking fashion. That sounds like a curious play experience, but the reviewers enjoy it. Certainly a change of pace.
Pharaoh's revenge gets the same marks as the last one, but a rather more negative review, as they point out that the graphics are seriously outdated. Oh, how very superficial.
Wizardry IV finally gets a review, a year after first being covered. Since they already went into plenty of detail back then, this is another brief synopsis, pointing out that this is not for newbies, and very hard indeed. Hmm.
Shufflepuck cafe is a computer game of the sport, with light sci-fi trappings. Using a mouse provides a reasonable approximation of a real paddle. It does seem like it would be more fun two-player.
Finally, we get a rather cheeky little plug, as they review the clue book for the D&D Pool of radiance game. If you're stumped, put some more into the companies coffers, and get plenty of spoilers on how to win the game. Save it for if you're really stuck.
Made-to-order clerical orders: Statistics time again! Just how common are clerics and faithful citizens in D&D worlds? The answers, as is often the case, don't quite add up. When there's dozens of gods in an area, all competing for worship, it's easy to wind up with either only one or two priests per god, or a proportion of the population being clerics that seems a bit untenable in a medieval society. (unless of course, there are enough high level ones to create food magically for all the hierarchy. ) This is one of those cases where I respect the methods of the author, while not being particularly keen on their conclusions, and is definitely an area you should customise for your own campaign, rather than taking this in slavishly. It does have a nice little map, a new spell, and lots of Realms specific examples, and isn't bad, but it's not one I can see myself using.
Arcane lore: A whole grab bag of druid spells from various freelancers here this month.
Animal/bird call are cut down versions of the usual summoning spells. They may bring the creatures, but they don't control them. At 1st level, you'll have to use your brains and exploit their natural tendencies to make them useful.
Coalstone is another low key, but tremendously handy little trick. Like continual light cast on an object, only with the additional benefit that you can use it to burn stuff like an actual coal, having one of these in your pack is a huge benefit every evening. The kind of thing you can see becoming a commonplace utility spell in any society where magic isn't too rare.
Druidsight lets you see through the eyes of an animal and order them around. Just what you need for when you've run out of shapeshifts for the day, and need to do some inconspicuous spying. Once again, they prove that what wizards can do, druids can do sooner, and with more side benefits if you apply the powers cleverly.
Hailstone proves that there are still some things wizards are better at, being a nature based relation of magic missile, only not as accurate or damaging. Still, any blasty spells are better than none, and it isn't annoyingly context dependent like call lightning.
Sense Direction lets you know which way north is. Elementary, really. Nuff said.
Sharpleaf lets you turn easily available plant parts into dangerous weapons. Be is as melee, missile weapons, caltrops, or simply tools, they can bring the pain quite adequately.
Shatter Stone and metal lets you not only destroy the weapons of your opponents, but do so explosively, adding injury to insult. A classic of screwage that'll annoy and scare players even more than a rust monster. They are producing a lot of seriously handy powers in this installment.
Sink into earth lets you do a bit of safe underground hibernation. Very thematic.
Splinter wood is like the metal one earlier, only lower level and affecting wood. No matter what your equipment is made of, a powerful druid can ruin it. So much for technology. Go the pure magical force route or something.
Stonewood lets you make wood as hard as stone, duh. Exactly which of the shattering spells now affects it is not clarified. Since it is fairly high level, I would incline towards conservatism. Things that look like one thing and act like another are a good source of screwage and counter-screwage.
Thunderclap is also pretty self-explanatory. The ability to inflict permanent deafness as an AoE attack is not to be sneezed at at all. It may not be as damaging to your HP as fireball or call lightning, but it is a bit trickier to get rid of. If you don't have a cleric, you'd better have money to burn.
Tracking lets druids effortlessly outclass rangers at one of their specialities, just as knock and levitation lets wizards marginalise thieves. Here we go again with the power creep.
Warp stone or metal completes the symmetry of object screwage, being lower level than the shattering one, but higher level than warp wood. Even if it's not as damaging, you can pull some clever tricks by choosing the directions in which the object is warped. And possibly even express your artistic side as well. :p
Weather dome gives you a mobile AoE forcefield against unwelcome weather of all types. It's a bit expensive to use every time there's a bit of drizzle, and that'd be the kind of thing which puts you out of touch with nature if overdone, but it is rather nice to have as an option.
Wind and rain protection does pretty much the same thing, only on a single target for a much shorter duration, at lower level. The two spells were done independently by different people, and boy does it show in their design choices and overall power disparity.
This is an article exceedingly full of versatility increases, and in many cases outright power creep. Definitely a fun one to read, but also another one that reinforces the current spellcasters are way better than other classes attitude. There is very little magic can't do quicker and better. And the edition change is going to do nothing to fix this.
Dragonmirth offends those on high. Yamara starts metaplotting. Things go from bad to worse for Snarf.
Another mixed bag, with some good articles, but the reviews seem to be fluctuating in quality rather. Another fairly average one overall, it is nevertheless a reminder that the magazines used to be easier to get through, and eventually, they will become so again. But in the immediate future, the issues are only going to get bigger. It's still going to be several years before I can get this millstone off my neck, so I'd better think of new ways to keep it interesting. Onward! 2nd ed itself is going to be a lot more interesting than some old preview!
Dragon Magazine Issue 143: March 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Now this is a nice cover. A dragon in the sights of a fighter jet. Do ya feel lucky? Will the missiles have any effect? It'll be interesting finding out.
In this issue:
Letters: This month's letters page is a whole host of errata and rules questions. The lifecycle of Spectators. Name changes and body changes. Tactics for dealing with Metalmasters. Attributing the wrong name to the wrong illustration. Incredulity at how crap kobolds ability scores are. All pretty inconsequential stuff in the greater scheme of things.
Forum: Ed Friedlander gives a system for speeding up the resolution of when characters are bombarded with missile weapons. These will average out the amount of damage you take per round to a substantial, but survivable amount for high level characters, making army firefights actually a reliably calculable threat to them.
Bob Tarantino things people shouldn't look down on ordinary D&D. Simplicity in mechanics is not a bad thing, as it lets you concentrate on roleplaying. And really, who uses weapon speed factors anyway?
Thomas W Gossard reminds us once again to remember to apply the logical consequences of spellcasting to our worlds, this time in matters of law enforcement.
Daniel W Howard is allowed to reply immediately to this commentary. He agrees with it in principle, but remember that any society with pretensions to human rights will likely restrict when spells can be used to expedite the legal process. (and most which are tyrannical will be wary about training ordinary guardsmen with that kind of power. ) Even in countries with security cameras everywhere, they aren't really used to their full potential. (thank god)
Timothy Koneval is also interested in magical substitutes to real technology, and the uses they could be put too in probing the physics of their universe. Even the Greeks managed some surprisingly accurate theories. Don't underestimate the supposed primitives.
K B LaBaw is not happy about the sidelining of evil characters in the new edition. There's already more stuff for good ones, and getting rid of assassins just makes that worse.
John C Tiedermann also has a good deal of fun playing the bad guy, and thinks other people shouldn't be afraid to try it either. What have you got to lose? It's only a game.
Christopher E Brogan has a separate campaign in which they play evil characters as a way of blowing off steam. Sometimes you just want to smash stuff, and damn the consequences.
Darren Hennessey also enjoys the idea of playing reversed D&D, with the players taking the role of the monsters, and trying to figure out how to deal with those damned heroes.
Stanley Bundy, on the other hand, has a real world example of what happens when evil gains the upper hand, destroying a community of players. Plus it gives fuel to the people who say D&D is satanic. We really don't need that after all the work we've done to gain acceptance.
Eric Sonnestuhl suggests that magic-users with high int should be able to memorise more spells than they can cast. That would make them more versatile without hugely increasing their power. Interesting idea. I wonder how it would turn out.
Wendell Works makes the rather prophetic suggestion of dividing magic-user spells into common, rare, and unique ones, based on how easy they are to get hold of and learn. Are you paying attention, Monte?
TSR branches out into books which have nothing to do with their gaming lines. Diversification is the foundation of a stable financial base, and all that.
Sage advice did greyhawk last month. This month it's focusing on dragonlance. Will the forgotten realms be next? We shall see.
What are the addresses of Maragret Weis and Tracey Hickman (You'd better wise up. Margaret Weis doesn't want stalkers knocking on her door. Send your letters to us and if they're safe, we'll pass them on. )
When will dragonlance tales 2 be out (it already is)
How do you pronounce Raistlin (it rhymes with waist-bin. Not that I'm saying he's fat, but....)
How many dragonlance modules are there (16, with 3 more planned. )
How many provinces are there in solamnia (6)
How did Tanis get up to 12th level ( DM favoritism breaking the rules again. Bloody writers. Honestly, can't we have one set of iconic NPC's that are PC legal.)
When will the dragonlance trilogies be available in hardback (again, they are now.)
Can dargonesti be PC's ( Not yet. Keep begging, bitches. We like it. )
How can nonhumans be paladins on krynn (Because the krynnsh gods have different standards. If they went elsewhere they'd lose those benefits. Yes, that is totally unfair. )
Can neutral clerics cast druid spells (No, druids are outlaws in krynn. They get the spells their god says they can have. )
Can you become an illusionist on krynn (only if you're a renegade, and don't mind being hunted and killed. )
Why can't black robes cast blasty spells (to teach them to be subtle)
Why could Raistlin cast them then (because he was a disgusting twinky rulebreaker, both IC and OOC.)
What are the game effects of raistlin's decay vision (none, it's just flavour text)
I can't find dragonlance stuff in the shops (oh noes! You'll have to order it direct from us then.)
Do wizards who change order or lose levels have to take the test of high sorcery again (no)
Where is the staff of magius and the timereaver spell (in DLA. You need to buy the crunch books as well as the fluff books )
What's the range of an orb of dragonkind (1d4x10 miles)
Is Lord Soth immune to normal weapons. Can he summon demons (yes, and probably. )
What do the numbers in the battlesystem in DL8 mean (oh, that's easy. )
Are Paladine and Takhisis Bahamut and Tiamat. (Yes. No. Sorta. It's all a bit metaphysical. )
Where in the abyss did takhisis go too (Again, this is one of those areas where there are cosmological conflicts. This is the problem with trying to set all your worlds in one universe. It causes problems with the writers and their tendency to put plot over rules. We ought to hire a stricter editor.)
Why can silvanesti be paladins, but not cavaliers (because they're a bunch of extremists. And you wonder how good can be as problematic as evil in Krynn.)
You left some stuff out of DL2 ( Once again, it's all the editors fault. )
Where the hell is thobardin (Just south of skullcap.)
How do the dreamshadow bits in DL10 work (You run each player's dream separately, but the other players play their dream selves. You do not reveal who the real person in each dream is. )
How do restricted spheres work (Skip rules for maximum leniency. Can you dig it? )
How often do you have to save using an orb of dragonkind (once each time you activate a power)
Solamnic knights confuuuuuuse me ( Oh, woe. You're really going to hate 3rd edition then )
What are tinker gnomes ability score ranges (sucky wisdom, everything else is OK.)
Can krynnish demihumans be multiclassed (yes)
Gold has no value on krynn? My poor brains! (Ahahahahaha! Yup. Not only
that, but you've got to divide by 22 to determine thing's value in steel pieces. Better get that calculator out)
How many towers of high sorcery were there (5)
Why can't PC's get above 18th level (same reason the githyanki lich queen eats them when they get above 11th. The gods don't want anyone getting too strong and messing up their world, (just look at what Raistlin did) so they remove them forcibly before they become a threat. )
Do the gods of magic have clerics (not yet. Once again, we may change our minds at some point. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 143: March 1989
part 2/3
And nobody knows but you: Back to world-building again, with a strong reminder that the only things your players know of the world is what you tell them. Even a single page quickstart of basic world knowledge will help enormously in this respect. A bit of general knowledge, a bit based on class, a bit based on race, just the thing to encourage them to play in character. Damned good idea. Pages and pages of detail will just bore many players, so you've got to find the optimum amount of quick and significant detail, and then fill in the rest in actual play. I really ought to make one of these.
Out of the textbook, into the game: A slightly more familiar bit of advice here. Everyone steals from others in creating their own worlds. The question is how well you do it, and who from. And remember, if you take inspiration from real life events, they can't get you for plagiarism. :p This shows you that it is remarkably easy to reskin them for your game, even if the scenarios seem superficially very different. And if they start deviating from the real world scenarios once you've set them in motion due to the actions of the players, then that's all for the better, really. Another pretty solid article, even if I'd encourage people to skip the commonly covered bits of history, and go for more obscure ones to steal from.
Telling it like it is: From world building to adventure building. A subtle change of focus, but an important one. From stealing from history, now we adapt play structure to the ends of roleplaying. Even if you're playing a sandbox game, and not a closely plotted adventure like this article seems to assume, controlling the pacing of a session so the players encounter plenty of interesting things to do is critical to keep them coming back. Even if there's months of game time between each important event, the action should keep flowing for them. This article manages to take a quite different tack to the previous ones we've seen in the magazine, encouraging you to learn voice control, public speaking techniques, and distinct voices and emotions to develop the mood of your campaign. Stuff which would become common advice in later supplements, particularly white wolf ones. The 90's is just around the corner, and all the balls are lining up. And this is certainly whetting my appetite for those days. Very interesting indeed.
The highs and lows of fantasy: Yet more progress here. The split between high and low fantasy, and how the high fantasy people are increasing in proportion in the D&D fanbase has already got the odd mention in the letters and forum. But here, they really try and codify the divide, which of course means it's being drawn to the attention of people who were just getting on with playing, and not bothering so much with theoretical stuff. And as with any single axis system, particularly one described in only a few pages, it oversimplifies, lumping together several traits that do not always co-incide. And they put Conan squarely in the high fantasy side, which shows that this writer has a rather stricter view of what is low fantasy than current common opinion. Interesting, but not entirely pleasing. There is also going to be a good deal of pretentiousness and windbaggy debate over the next decade that I suspect will soon grow dull. Oh well, at least it'll be a different form of dullness. That has to count for something?
To be continued: Or "Welcome to Second edition. Please keep your hands and heads inside the train at all kinds." Actually, that's a bit disingenuous, as this article actively tries to prevent you from falling into the traps of railroading. Remember, you can set up a scenario, but you can't control how the players react to it, or how the dice will fall once you get into encounters. You should make sure that a game isn't dependent on a single person being present, for you never know who is going to die or quit the game. On the other hand, you should make sure your world is filled with plot hooks aplenty for the characters to grab onto, many of which are too big and complicated to solve by just wandering around killing things. Similarly, in the real world, solving problems often sets up new, different problems (Or the good old "You killed my father! Prepare to die") so success is no reason for the game to end. Overall, a pretty good article, this is nevertheless a foreboding of things to come, including several official modules which do not heed the advice here. Still, a strong ending to a strong, and very appropriately timed themed section.
TSR Previews: D&D's Gazetteer series has been so successful they're continuing it beyond their original plans with GAZ11:The republic of Darokin. Another real world time period is juxtaposed on the Known world, while somehow it's advancements do not spread elsewhere. Still, you can have plenty of fun playing merchant empires engaged in Machiavellian schemes.
AD&D supports their novel lines with FR7: Hall of heroes. Now you can see just how much the characters from those stories break the rules. As if that wasn't enough for you, you can play out the removal of a whole bunch of classes, as the rules of the universe are changed IC and OOC in WG8: Fate of Istus. Byebye Monks. Byebye Assassins. Byebye Barbarians. Byebye Cavaliers. Convert or die. There is no place for you in the new order. Man, that sounds like the kind of thing that many players would rebel against if run through.
Top Secret gets TSE1: Web of Deceit. Start another module trilogy in seedy San Christobal. Where will it take our intrepid agents next?
And on the novel side of things, in both senses of the word, we have Illegal aliens, by Nick Pollotta and Illustrated by Phil Foglio. Aliens, space marines, mutants, and comic misunderstandings, oh my. Sounds like fun.
Fiction: The other Option by Dylan Brody. Once again, unto the test. Win, lose or cheat, a hero always has to face challenges. But not everyone wants to be a hero. Sometimes, they don't even want to be a fighter. Preposterous! Ludicrous! How could you not want to save the world from impossible odds and be lauded as a hero by an adoring population? What kind of coward would run away from glorious destiny? One such as the protagonist of this story. Befriending a monster and then riding away on it instead of killing it? Pfaugh, what a crock! Bartender! More mead! Do any of you nancyboys have what it takes to win my daughters hand?!
Through the looking glass: Robert Bigelow returns to give us some more crafting tips this month. A dedicated work board will save you tons of mess and smooth along your creative process. Choose your knives wisely, and handle them carefully, you could do yourself an injury with those things. Get a good set of files as well, and you can increase your precision, and reduce your chances of injury further. Similarly, clippers, drills, clamps, all are an invaluable addition to your arsenal. And magnifying devices will let you see details and paint your miniatures with a precision impossible with the naked eye, allowing you to give your work real style. If you're going to do something, you might as well do it right, and this'll certainly help quite a few amateurs sharpen up their act. I definitely appreciate this kind of advice.
The reviews section is mostly less interesting. A rather large red dragon, designed to be hung up as a mobile, but needing a thicker wire to keep it suspended. A whole load of cut out figures. Several bits of terrain. A collection of egyptian gods, which can be used as animal-headed monsters of all kinds. And finally, Chaos Warriors! (squee) Warhammer gets iconic. Now I know things are getting close to when I started playing. Heroquest was another great gaming gateway drug that has since disappeared.
Dragon Magazine Issue 143: March 1989
part 3/3
The marvel-phile: The second installment of our Earth-S series here, with three ambiguous villains who's powers are entirely equipment based. Mink, with her retracable claw-bracelets and canisters of mink-stink. :D Pinball, as dumb as he sounds, and dead as a result of it. (people complain about sexism and racism in comics, but the treatment fat people get is even worse, when they appear at all.) Remnant, with his magical fabric he can use for all kinds of tricks. Originally villains, the survivors seem pushed towards becoming slightly nicer people, simply due to the things they've been through recently. Do serious attempts to make the world a better place always have to end with the heroes failing and becoming worse than the villains they were trying to fight? I guess in comic book land, that'll only happen if the series is just about to be cancelled. Pretty average entry here. Character building, romance, moral questions, and buttkicking. Just another day hopping the dimensions.
Role-playing reviews:
Greyhawk Adventures is the 4th book featuring the name, and the third to give much info on Gary's own original campaign world. Of course, this version was done without his involvement. Weirdly, since he left, the release schedule of materials for it has actually increased, since it's not all coming from one person anymore. The new core gets a fairly positive review. It's designed to be compatible with 2nd edition, and is full of hints as to the changes that will be made, including clerics powers being defined by spheres, new ecological info on monsters, and lots of new named spells. It also has some stuff that won't be, such as rules for creating and advancing 0 level characters that aren't completely useless. Most of the individual bits may be good, but it lacks the cohesiveness of tone a single author would bring to the table. And while it's open to supplements, you can bet they'll make that problem worse.
Talislanta also gets a pretty positive review. Heavily inspired by Jack Vance, among other things, it's a pretty rich world, presented in a pleasingly IC way that we'll see used by the likes of Volo plenty of times in the future. The rules are also quite simple, but allow for plenty of permutations, allowing you to pick from a large selection of races and roles, and get playing quickly. It's another of the burgeoning alternatives to D&D that offers something it doesn't. Can you lure your players away to try it?
The role of computers: For the first time in a while, a single product gets an epic review. Pool of Radiance is the AD&D computer game from SSI that they seem to be plugging most heavily in the magazine, and this column is no exception. This is quite understandable, as it's the closest they've come yet to replicating D&D in a computer adventure, and a big complex adventure to boot. They heap praise upon it, with the only real caveats being the way it rewards grindy behaviour, both in character generation and exploration, and the slow loading times on some systems. Buy it, and make sure we continue to have a job here :p
Although that's the only review, there's plenty of cool stuff mentioned in the previews. A game based on William Gibson's Neuromancer, complete with cyberjacking. Castlevania II reveals it's accursed self. Look forward to much frustration trying to solve it. Altered beast and R-type also are soon to be unleashed on gaming platforms aplenty. Wizardry is about to reach it's 5th installment. How will they find the space and time to review them all? Guess that's why the family works as a team. And they take the time to promote an open-source RPG platform, with lots of games available for virtually the price of a blank disk, and designing your own being relatively easy. Another thing that the net has really increased the frequency of, and ease of transmission. The better your networking capabilities, the more profitable pure sharing without asking for immediate reward becomes, because you can absorb a few asses who take without contributing without ruining the system.
The role of books: The dragonbone chair by Tad Wiliams aims at being a Big Important Book™.Thankfully, it's actually pretty good, both in worldbuilding and story. Whether it can keep the pretentiousness at bay for the rest of the trilogy is still in question, however.
The labyrinth gate by Alis A Rasmussen is another one that combines lots of elements, but manages to make them feel seamless, more due to the characterisations than the plot.
The will of the wanderer by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman tries to do too much, and fails to hold it all together. While the ideas are good, there's too many stories being told at once, and they don't interact very well, or give any clear right or wrong. Plus, arabian nights stylings are getting a bit overdone lately. Choose your milieus carefully, for oversaturation leads to crashes.
Euryale by Kara Dalkey proves once again that she's a pretty versatile writer, in this story of the eponymous gorgon traveling to find a cure for her unfortunate tendency to turn people who see her to stone. Her wanderings take her to rome, which of course has lots of ancient lore collected, but also lots of complicated politics and people who want to use her for their own ends. This of course ends in nicely understated tragedy for them.
The horsegirl by Constance Ash is an interesting yet unsettling book, with incest, worrying plot twists, and lots of general messed-uppedness that the writer creates, and then leaves open for you to think about. Unless you share her fetishes, you may want to look elsewhere for enjoyable reading.
Spellsingers, edited by Alan Bard Newcomer is (almost ludicrously appropriately for it's creators name) the start of an anthology series about Bards. It has a whole bunch of big writers, many of them regulars on the shared world circuit. A pretty good collection, it is nevertheless obviously compiled after the fact, so the main strength is in the writing rather than the editing and worldbuilding.
Fool on the hill by Matt Ruff is a collection of tales set on a university campus bordering the realms of faerie. Stories within stories, narrative logic becoming reality, mythic creatures intruding into reality, it does get a bit meta, but can still be dramatic when it needs to be. A promising start for a young novelist.
Dragonmirth has yet another bloody knight eating joke. That's getting rather cliche now. Yamara's team is reduced to two. That is not good. Snarf talks things over and comes to a compromise. You can't trust them.
A strong issue, that is however very much of it's time. The edition change is right around the corner, and while the rules may not be changing hugely, the tone certainly will be. And the magazine is ahead of the times in this respect. Well, it's a lot better than being behind them. Will there be growing pains? Will there be drama? Will there be wackiness? Or will it be business as usual again pretty soon. In any case, it'll be business as usual on my end.
Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989
part 1/3
108 pages Ha. Now that's an april fools cover. The donkey's face just sells it perfectly. Welcome to the dragon swimsuit issue. Still, for all the april frivolity going on here, this is a fairly significant issue. Not only does it mark the 40% mark of my progress through the magazine's run, it's also when 2nd edition starts to hit the streets. We've definitely come quite a long way. But still, if this seemed like a long time, the 2e era is going to be even longer. This is not a time for resting on your laurels. This is a time for great deeds and epic heroism! Fortune favors the brave, as Roger's editorial so aptly illustrates. Let's emulate his example.
In this issue:
Letters: Once again, they prove that their deliberate attempts at humour have nothing on people who are trying to be serious, and in the process becoming utterly ridiculous.
A letter full of sex and gaming questions. Roger decides to move swiftly on, despite the fact that he wrote an article on this, back in issue 72. My god, that's half the magazine's lifespan away now. Spoilsport.
A letter from a priest of zeus, saying he has better things to do than run around healing stupid characters. Um, er, methinks you need a little reminder of the difference between characters and players.
A letter about conspiracy shenanigans. Some woman plotting to destroy TSR? Absolute rubbish :rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: Pay no attention to such madness.
A sage advice question that Skip refused to touch. People always try and exploit the shapeshifting spells, don't they.
An article on dwarf mud wrestling. Yeah, somehow, I think that one isn't getting past the filters either.
A terribly spelt and not particularly comprehensible letter. They can't answer it if they don't know what the question is.
A serious question that gets twisted into a terrible pun. Don't go hatin' on tree dwellers.
Another serious question about a dead artist. Some people just don't know their history.
A question that was probably perfectly sensible in it's owners brain, but looks rather silly out of context. Roger is forced to respond in kind.
Some incompetent advertising. You know, you're generally meant to give them some money to put that in the magazine.
A letter from someone who thinks Jeff Grubb is someone they know from school. Well, it makes a change from the usual thing where they mistake Roger Moore for the film star of the same name.
A reminder that all twinkitude can be defeated by the simple application of a little Erasure. Show a little respect to reality.
A system for picking up girls. Roger would like to keep this one purely between him and the letter sender. Hee.
Sage advice: How do I become a maiden so I can ride a unicorn (Hee. If you've already stopped being one, you can't become one again. )
When can mystics become immortal (Anytime after 16th level. Once again a lower level limit actually turns out to be an asset, not a weakness)
Does a weapon of wounding negate a troll's regeneration (no, it merely counteracts it. You still need to kill them with fire to make them stay down permanently. )
Do powersuits come with scanners as standard (no. You'll have to pay even more.)
What are the costs and weights for helmet rafflurs and grenade launchers. (simple formulas people. We give them to you to save space. Heed them!)
Why do paladins become cavaliers now (retcon. Nuff said.)
Do PC halflings get the +3 bonus with missile weapons NPC ones get (No. Once again, PC's are different, and not always for the better.)
Are elves resistant to monster charm and sleep effects as well as the spells (yes)
What are the racial characteristics of half-dwarves (Not what you expect. Wait for dark sun)
Can humanoids have weapon specialization (only if they have class levels )
What do you think of my 8th level troll thief (A heretic! :points: Burn him! Your first mistake was putting a return address on the letter. Let that be a lesson to everyone. No rulebreaking. )
Can you worship another race's deity. (yes, but it'll be a long hard path. Hey, instant drama fodder. Sounds good to me. )
When can you build a stronghold (Name level. Let the badassednes commence)
Which classes get exceptional con bonuses (All the fighter types.)
Can nonthief characters do any thiefly stuff (Not really. They have some analogues, but they use entirely different rolls. Curse you, arbitrary subsystems! )
Can you improve ability scores by excercise (What is this, the zero memory zone. For the third time, NO! Skip will cap the next muthafucka who asks that stupid question. )
Can you avoid gasses by holding your breath (For a little bit. Suffocation has it's own dangers. )
Do you still get con bonuses after name level (no)
If you lose con, do you lose hit points (oh yes. Dying and being raised regularly can become a declining spiral.)
What happens when a character with exceptional strength ages (1 point = 50% Yes, we know, going up it's 1 point = 10%. Time is a cruel mistress.)
If you increase your mental stats, can you you check again for psionic power (god, another recycled question. YES! If you keep bugging us, I may change my mind, so shut up.)
Do you get xp in adventures where you die ( Probably not. )
Are there rules for fatigue (buy the dungeoneers survival guide now! This and many other ways to limit your characters within!)
What do you do it you have enough XP to advance several levels (you lose the excess. Shoulda got training earlier)
What's the training cost for a NPC (same as for PC's)
Where do you put kara-tur in relation to oerik (good question. You may have to mirror it, since oerik is on the east side of the landmass anyway. If twilight princess got away with it (Link should be left-handed, dammnit!) you can as well.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989
part 2/3
Forum: Tim Oakes tries to tread the path of compromise in the issue of low level magic-users. Maybe they should be a little more able to learn basic combat techniques, but many of the forumites are going too far in their suggestions.
R. J. Wenzel thinks that the problem with low level magic-users is in the emphasis on combat in most games. Fix that, and the problems with only having one spell to use each day become far less of an issue. But how do you fix that, when the entire experience system revolves around killing things and taking their stuff?
James M Rogers is unhappy with the idea of simply getting xp for money, regardless of how you got it. He's another forumite who'd rather they got XP for class specific activities. Seems a pretty popular change. Good thing it's one they're actually making then, isn't it.
Tommy Sronce simply ignores the xp rules, and advances characters when he feels like they deserve it. This saves him quite a bit of time calculating. You know, if you write each death down and award xp as it happens, rather than waiting till the end of the session to tally things up, it's a lot easier, and less likely to be in error.
Nelson E Hemstreet also dislikes xp for gold. He also actively enjoys putting the players through the financial hassles that you need to go through by RAW to advance in levels. Forcing people to struggle financially and make hard compromises is fun. The challenge shouldn't end when you leave the dungeon. Hmm, and yet more hmms.
Ivy K Reynolds (any relation to Sean?) has interesting observations on the evolution of D&D and AD&D. As D&D characters are actually less powerful, and the monsters give less experience, it requires rather more skill to really succeed in. But on the other hand, it facilitates high level adventures better than AD&D. It is not a game purely for wimpy n00bs. And the writing and editing is better than the old AD&D game. Really, which is the better one?
S D Anderson has run the math on the strength tables, and found some awkward little flaws. Str 3 characters have a carrying capacity of 0. So how much can str 2 or 1 ones carry, negative amounts? :p Plus, you should remember to put weights for various noncombat items. The characters are going to want to carry them off after killing their owners.
A field guide to Game-convention Ornithology: Even the geekiest of categorisation can be made humorous. We've already had a gamer type guide made by mocking the alignment system. Now bird watching gets it's naming conventions parodied. 26 personality stereotypes. Can you figure out which one applies to which creature in the picture? Are you a Goldbricker, a Crested Falsetto bird or a Rubber-necked butt-in? Well, it gave me a few minutes amusement, anyway. Nothing wrong with the odd bit of humour here.
Cheating made easy: Oooh. Tut tut. Jeff Swycaffer reveals the tricks he uses to bend probability in his favour. There are several unobtrusive ways, and a few more blatant bits of trickery with dice that increase your odds of getting a good roll quite dramatically. This is useful stuff, amusingly presented, that of course, you should absolutely not be using in your game, under any circumstances. Still, reading this will help you spot when other people try these tricks, so that they can be properly punished for doing so, so like thieves, it can be turned to good ends. And it's something they haven't covered before at all, which is always nice to see.
Cheating made even easier: Hmm. Looks like more than one person had the same idea recently. Spike Jones recycles a whole bunch of ideas he submitted to other magazines. He takes a rather more ruthless and organized approach than Jeff, bullet-pointing everything, and making it clear that the other players are the enemy just as much as the DM. Not hugely funny in a joke sense, mainly because much of this stuff would be pretty effective. I think this calls for maniacal laughter rather than genuine amusement. Muahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!
Claydonia conquers the world!: Clay-o-Rama is back! Bigger and better than ever. Now you can advance your surviving creatures, and bring them to future games. And a whole bunch of other optional rules for you to try out. New powers! Playing without a GM! Rebuilding, bigger and badder! Well, the original rules are pretty loose anyway. In this case, a little tightening up probably wouldn't hurt. Not sure about character advancement though. Seems entirely too easy to cheat on in a con game. Oh well. At least it's not useless stuff that you should keep out of your game at all costs.
Still more outrages from the mages: Such as this. 27 joke spells, which either do nothing, do something that you could do just as effectively with mundane actions, or do something that is purely useless and harmful to the caster. Bigby's interposing eye, Drawmij's instant death, speak with mud, transmute rock to stone, we get lots of subversions of existing spells here. Mildly amusing, but not useful except as booby prize scrolls to put in treasure hoards and annoy your players with. And so the joke section draws to a close.
Role-playing reviews:
Toon got reviewed way back in issue 92. But it's still going, has quite a few supplements, and is still fairly groundbreaking. As is far too often the case with retreads, this is rather less interesting than the original review, both in writing style, and level of insight involved. But the game still kicks ass, so if it sells more people on it, then it's not too bad.
The Bullwinkle and Rocky Roleplaying game tries to cover similar ground, but with a lot more visual aids, and attempts to make things modular. You can play it purely using the event cards, trying to fit together a coherent story from the prefab pieces. You can play using the spinner, and trading off narrators. And then you can progress to making your own characters. You can't really advance them beyond that, and it does seem very much designed as a party game rather than a "proper" RPG. Have fun with it, but don't expect any deep meaningful stories.
We also get reviews of two Paranoia supplements. Ruthless mockery (in a good way) ensues, as you would expect. Tom Wham's new game, Mertwig's maze, also gets mentioned. Finally, we have one of our fun rebuttals. Jim stands by his statement that the new city of the invincible overlord is rubbish. Remember, it's only opinion. If we don't provide negative contrasts, then you can't see just how good the really good ones are by comparison. Ahh, the pressure to whitewash. A perpetual and rather serious problem, particularly when the reviewers are paid by the companies they're reviewing. Always interesting to see how different people cope with it.
When gods walk the earth: Runequest gets another article on it's magic, as seems to be common choice here. Do you really want to summon the avatar of a god? There always seems to be some idiot who wants too, even in games such as call of cthulhu, where success will result in huge amounts of death and insanity for everyone in the vicinity. Even the supposedly benign ones are arrogant and obsessive beings that will demand your absolute servitude and order you around with no regard to your human limitations. You have been warned. Don't come crying to me when your god of healing transforms the entire congregation into a fleshy amorphous amalgam that regenerates so fast that it's impossible to kill. Yeah, I'll still tell you how to do it. I'll even give you some pointers on how to get rid of the blighters as well. Obviously, this is primarily intended as a way for GM's to launch adventures, rather than a spell the players would cast. And it serves quite well in that role, both as something to foil before it happens, and deal with afterwards. Fairly pleasing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989
part 3/3
TSR Previews: First up, completely unsurprisingly, is the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook. Kicking down the door, making gaming more accessable. They've been talking about this since 85, can it live up to the hype?
AD&D is also getting a pair of modules. The forgotten realms is proving highly multimedia, with FRC2: Curse of the azure bonds. Play the module of the computer game of the book. I suspect railroading may be involved, given it's antecedents. Greyhawk also gets a rather specific module, WG9: Gargoyle. Play a gargoyle trying to get their wings back. Very curious sounding indeed. Any opinions on this one?
On the novel side, the forgotten realms finishes off the moonshae trilogy. The heroes may defeat a god, but at what cost? Meanwhile, Buck Rogers gets a whole load of short stories, in Arrival. Flint Dille personally oversees things, and I suspect Lorraine :rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: did plenty of executive meddling as well.
Marvel Super Heroes gets MT1: All this and world war II. The start of a trilogy dealing with time travel? Hmm. One of the more problematic powers when combined with gaming. That could work, or it could go very wrong. How will they keep the plot under control?
The game wizards: Spelljammer! We're finally getting proper metasettings. And lots of other stuff. Another of their short columns where they pack in a load of stuff that wouldn't fit elsewhere, along with some more promotion of upcoming stuff. The best (or worst, depending on your point of view) entries in their recent pun contest. Another load of guidelines on writing freelance for them. They do keep having to do that. And the 5 boxed sets they're planning on releasing this year. Alphatia vs Thyatis. Greyhawk city. New york, new york. Taladas. And of course, AD&D in Spaaace! Rather a random article really. But not randomness with as much style as when Gary was in charge of this kind of thing. Oh well, at least they've still got lots of cool stuff coming out. Hopefully, this'll convince a few more people to buy those things.
The role of computers:
Arkanoid is one of those horribly addictive arcade games where you have to manipulate a bouncing ball to break all the blocks. I know your kind. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Enormous timesink approaching off the starboard bow. These kinds of games can last aaages, getting ever trickier as you try and make it to the later levels, and get frustrating as you try and rush through the earlier ones and mess them up. Must steer well clear, or I'll never finish this.
Zany golf is exactly what it sounds like, and gets a 5 star rating. With great visuals, and a number of quirky twists on the real game, including fairys that you get extra points for hitting, moving holes, and pinball courses. Ahh, the joys of being able to create things that would be near impossible in reality.
The Legend of Blacksilver sounds like it ought to involve pirates, but doesn't. Instead, it's yer basic RPG, where you explore towns and dungeons, fight monsters, and complete quests with the aim of saving the world from it's would be conqueror. It's pretty big, but thankfully, you can save in most places. As ever, do so frequently, or you'll regret it.
Battle Chess is basically just chess, with amusing animations as the pieces move around the board and kill each other. Still, it can be played two-player online, so you'll always have someone to give you a decent challenge. Exactly how long it'll hold your interest will obviously depend on how much you like playing chess anyway.
Space Harrier 3-D is also a bit gimmicky, using those red and green glasses to facilitate 3D visuals. If you can stand the eye strain, this can still be fun, and is as tricky as most games of this era. You'll probably have to do quite a bit of replaying to win it.
Wonder boy in monster land is a game I vaguely remember. Still primarily an action adventure game, with hidden shops, taverns, and monsters that require the right equipment and strategy to kill, it's closer to an rpg than the previous game in the series. Now, if only it had a save function as well. Restarting from the beginning does get tedious.
Also notable in the hints section is one of the cheats they give, revealing a silly easter egg in Bards Tale III. Ahh, they joys of in jokes. Amazing what programmers can squeeze in.
Through the looking glass: Battle recaps! We haven't had those since the Strategic Review days! Once again they're delivering goods more interesting than endless reviews in this column. In the Battle for Headquarters hill, Robert tells a tale of an assault on a space observatory, using the Battletech rules. With a complete list of the units used, a map of the area, and a description of the battle from the perspectives of both players, this is rather well done, giving me a very clear turn by turn picture of what happened, and the rules of the game. As is typical of these games, both sides had rounds when they couldn't hit anything at all. But they soon had a winner. This definitely makes an interesting diversion from our usual fare, although I suspect I would grow bored if they did it every issue. Still, if they cover battles in different systems each time, they could probably keep this going for a year or two.
Robert doesn't skimp on the reviews either. In mini's, we have some female adventurers, an Umber hulk, an Ogre Mage, a Battletech regiment, and a whole bunch of fairly well done Forgotten Realms and Star wars characters. More interestingly, we also get Warhammer Siege, a supplement for WFB, but insertable into other wargames as a minigame. Far too many wargames don't have rules for this battle style and it's complexities. Now you can try and gradually undermine your enemies walls while they pour boiling oil on your head. Your tactics don't have to be constrained so much by the system limitations. This is also pretty interesting reading. He is stretching himself quite a bit this issue.
Red Guns: Marvel Superheroes gets a little more gun pr0n this issue. In issue 105, they gave some info on military equipment, for those of you who want your characters to go up against tanks and planes. (providing they have the power to make this a fight that isn't completely one sided in either direction. ) Now, you can go up against the red menace, and kick their armies butts in the name of the You Ess Ayy! These are somewhat better organized in terms of their stats than the previous article on this topic, but still, the real fun with these looks to be in the actual play, rather than the reading. Now, if only they'd tabulated the stats. Then they'd be even quicker and easier to reference in a fight.
Dragonmirth is a bit fishy this month. Yamara's party continues to suffer worrying attrition. We get another amusing one-off comic, Bludgeons & Flagons. Silly wizards. Do your own research, don't go for forbidden lore. There's a good reason why it's forbidden. Snarf wraps things up rather too quickly, and then gives us an obituary. Way to end on a downer dude.
A superficially entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying issue. The joke contents are rather less usable than they have been in recent years, and there's a lot of reviews that were a real slog to fill in stuff for. Come on, it's an edition change. Bring on the flamewars.
Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Roll playing vs Role playing? Really Roger?! That's the subject of your editorial? I suppose it wasn't quite the dead horse it is now. Anyway, the changeover continues, and this is another sign of the times, with Roger asking the freelancers to send in more role-playing stuff, and less pure crunch. Very interesting. Just how long will it take that particular pendulum to reach it's limit, and then swing the other way. I guess it'll probably be around when they start getting in financial trouble, look at the books, and figure out ones with lots of new crunch sell better. But anyway, back to the current bit of past we're going through. Our current topic is castles. We've had quite a few articles on this, plus a couple of actual castles as centrepieces in the magazine. Will they avoid the dread spectre of rehash?
In this issue:
Letters: Errata attacks again, as all our letters concern happenings in the magazine. Two of them concern the capabilities of humanoid shamans and witch doctors. You mean there's people who buy the magazines who don't also have most of the supplements? One from Vince Garcia, giving a few corrections for his Savant class article. And one goes way back, asking about the dragonlance mini's they said they would do in issue 91. Apparently, they got cancelled. So much for that idea.
Forum: Bryan A. Walker tells the story of a convention that went horribly wrong (while not naming names) People openly taking drugs and drinking in an environment which was also supposed to be child friendly was more than a little disturbing. With incidents like that, it's no wonder the hobby has image problems.
Graeme Adamson finds that the combat options in issue 127 do not bear up with his personal experience practicing with them. Same as it ever was. D&D is not a realistic game, and stuff from the magazine probably hasn't been extensively tested.
Zach Miller thinks that 1st level mages should be able to cast more spells, but at the same time doesn't want them more powerful. A tricky conundrum, which he solves by saying they should have more cantrips in independent slots. Another prophetic one then.
Michael Townsend, Dave Timmons and Bob Hempel all respond to Roger's editorial on disabilities and gaming, mostly positively. The power of fantasy can do a lot to bring people together and make a life bearable.
P. Jones is not happy about the fact that Oriental demihumans can't be multiclassed. As is often the case, he suggests his houserules on the issue.
Sage advice: How does the save against silence work (If you fail, you're stuck with it. If you succeed, it's still there, but you can just walk out. Neat way of doing it. )
What level do you need to be to make a level draining glyph (same as you would to restore it. 16th.)
Is tongues a universal or selective translator (Selective. Speaking truespeak tends to make it obvious you're a spellcaster)
Can you find a portable hole with find the path (no. It's an object, not a place. )
Can elves dispel a dust devil. No. They have specific resistance, not general magic resistance.)
How many spells can a 124th level cleric cast (enough that you really ought to retire him. )
Can an illusionist get out of the plane of shadow by casting shadow walk again. (Not unless they can find the planar boundary. Be careful, because the shadows can really bite around there. )
Are high level illusionists really that crap at casting magic-user spells (yes.)
Does alter self change your equipment ( Cosmetically!)
Does wraithform let you fly (no)
What counts as a 1st level illusion (any spell that is a 1st level illusionist spell. If it's higher up for other classes, then you can still see through it. )
Who loses con from casting permanancy (the caster)
Can massmorph turn you into things other than trees (no, but you can choose what kind of tree. No, you can't choose a carnivorous mobile tree type)
Shouldn't there be save against cause fear (no, because it's a touch spell anyway. It's the same reason you don't get saves against undead energy drain. Hohahohahohahoha.)
Colour spray has a contradiction in it's description (Yup. Don't worry. In just a couple of months 2nd ed'll be out and you'll have a whole different set of errata to spot. Won't that be fun! )
Can I breathe underwater if I polymorph into a fish (wouldn't be much use if you couldn't)
What's a small specimen. ( Talk to your girlfriend sometime. The things she says about you behind your back. Skip hates to be a bearer of bad news, but...... )
Why won't preserve work on mistletoe. (because it's a holy symbol, not a material component. If you mess with the cycles of nature, you despoil it's holiness. PETA girl mother nature goddess are not the most sensible of deities. )
How can whip disarm creatures if it doesn't work on things with an int above 3 ( You confuse clauses. A common mistake. Become a lawyer. They you can make a living out of exploiting vagueness and contradicting common sense.)
What happens if someone inside an ottilukes resilient sphere is shoved in the water (if the density of the contents of the sphere is greater than the density of water displaced, it sinks. If it's higher, it floats. This is an elementary enough bit of physics that it still works in D&D)
If you sucessfully make a magic resistance check to pass through forcecage, can you go back the other way (No. Once again, Skip finds himself feeling evil. )
I don't understand basic geometry. (This is your arm. This is the formula for calculating the distance between your shoulder and your hand based on the length of the two segments and the angle of incidence between them AFTER I BREAK IT AND TWIST IT 230 DEGREES MUTHAFUCKA! C2 = A2 + B2 - 2 COS AB. Are we clear now?)
How many spells do level 30+ magic-users get. (like clerics, it really ought to be retiring time. Clear off, ya twink. )
Can you cast spells from the ethereal to the prime material (not without extra effects. Otherwise being untouchable artillery would be just too easy. )
Can dark elves see through their own darkness spells with infravision (no. It obstructs the whole visual spectrum.)
Do you have to stay still the whole time you cast a spell (Yes. Five foot steps take place before or after, not during. Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I. )
Shadowrun! Another awesome game coming soon. Nice understated teaser advert as well. I'm guessing that they'll have more illuminating previews later.
A castle here, A castle there: Looks like the joys of random tables will continue even into the new edition. Here we expand upon the fairly basic tables in the old DMG, (after all, the new one isn't out yet) adding stuff from Unearthed arcana and Oriental adventures, and allowing you to quickly determine more details about it's construction, inhabitants, surroundings, and relationship with the rest of the world. Quick, but perfectly decent, this is yet another nice little time saver for me to pull out and use in my games.
It's interesting stuff
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Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989
part 2/3
Holding down the fort: A bit of rehash here, as they give us another events table for those of you who've settled down. If you won't go to the adventure, the adventure will come to you, with all kinds of natural and political inconveniences cropping up with tabloid filling regularity. You have to maintain the place, monsters show up and try and kill people, armies attack, assassins infiltrate, and the court in general bickers and machinates ad nauseum. A few months of this kind of stuff, and many players'll be itching to sell up and set off again. The frequency of events is rather higher than on most tables of this sort, to the degree where it would be exceedingly hard to stay on top of things, no matter how high level you are. Interesting, but not the best example of this kind of thing I've ever seen. You'll have to push yourself a bit harder to come up with a really expansive and statistically well distributed one of these that I'll really want to use in my game.
Strongholds three: A very useful article here. Arthur Collins does exactly what you'd expect from the title, and gives us three very different strongholds to insert into your game. All are logically designed to serve a purpose, and be advantageous to the people living within, rather than just some dungeon crawl. Littlefang is designed to give you a tactical stronghold in mountainous terrain, letting you control a travel route and bombard anyone who attacks with missiles while they have a tricky time even getting to the walls. Are you ready to pay the toll? Niriath Henning is a castle glamoured to appear as an elf hill. While designed to be aesthetically pleasing, with plenty of open space in the courtyard, it's certainly not without mundane defences either, and since it's inhabited by elves, expect lots of spell based attacks. Goldworthy castle, on the other hand, is designed as an exceedingly tough conventional fortress. Hard to get into, and easy to attack out of, it has extensive walled courtyards between the outer walls and the actual castle, so even if you penetrate the first line of defense, you're now being bombarded from all sides instead of just one. Since this is basically three half-adventures, (just give them a location, flesh out inhabitants and add plot) this is pretty handy. As they're pretty good as well, I have no hesitation about using them. He is becoming one of their more notable freelancers.
Your home is your castle: So why bother to build a castle anyway? It's incredibly expensive, takes quite a bit of maintenance, and they're frequently dank, drafty, miserable places. In case you'd forgotten, the big reason is so you can protect yourself, and possibly the local community if you're the benevolent kind of lord. (and even if you're not, you'll still want to keep anyone else from ravaging your dominion.) Anyway, this is lots of info on making your own realistic medieval castles. Just the kind of thing Katharine Kerr used to specialise in, and indeed, she gets mentioned in the bibliography. This isn't as fun as the previous article, but of course stuff that requires you to do a load of your own work to make it into something you can use in a game. Oh well, It's still pretty decent, with more well integrated illustrations. You can't use prefab stuff the whole time and be called an expert game master.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: 16 new items which are suited to this month's theme for your enjoyment here. Some of them, of course, are cursed; using their resemblance to other items to make a sucker out of you, and ruin your home. Still, the abilities to create teleportation portals so you can get around conveniently, keep your house lit for long periods of time at low cost, ward it from enemies, summon an army, and ensure that you always have a decent water supply are certainly not to be sneezed at. They also include two new spells, Balliant's Stonestrength and Stonesplit. If you want to have a siege, knowing these would be damn handy, whichever side you're on. A pretty good collection, with several items that have a whole bunch of inventive exploits you can pull. If you've made it to high enough level to settle down, giving your players some of these will definitely be appreciated. A pretty good finisher to the themed section.
The role of computers: Wizardry V decides to leave out the playing the villain gimmick they used in IV, and return to good old party play. It gets a typically detailed review, as befits an established and popular RPG. The stats are spelled out, the classes and races detailed, and plenty of advice is given on how to play the game. They have developed things quite substantially in terms of gameplay sophistication. The main complaint, as is often the case, is the complex and annoying copy protection scheme. Oh, woe. I'm sure people like you can figure out how to crack it, even if you don't say so in your reviews.
Gold rush! gives you a rather different roleplaying experience. Get from new york to callifornia by whatever means, and seek your fortune. All kinds of hazards await you at each stage of the journey, plus there's the additional subplot of finding out what happened to your brother. The whole shebang is designed to be educational as well as fun, with lots of historically accurate details.
Star Wars is a conversion of the old arcade game for several platforms. Unfortunately, this is still the era where the arcade version rules supreme. Technological limitations, combined with the fact that the game is rather old now, means the visuals aren't the best. One to skip unless you're a particular fan of the franchise, or shoot-em-ups in general.
Also notable is the number of complaints they've got about the Dungeon Masters assistant. Too many disk swaps are needed. I guess that's a problem when you only have 64k of memory. Wasn't that one of the programs they outsourced? Tut tut. Shoddy work. This will not do. Good to see the magazine pointing out flaws in products the company has a personal stake in again.
TSR Previews: AD&D transitions another of it's campaign worlds to the new edition. The forgotten realms kicks off the Avatar adventures with FRE1: Shadowdale. Prepare to become a pawn in the machinations of desperate gods who've lost (most of) their power. Mmm. I can smell the railroading from here.
D&D, meanwhile is not having an edition change, but is still keeping up with the conversions by making it's new rules compatible with AD&D 2nd ed in GAZ12: Golden Khan of Ethengar. If you wanna play a horseman in basic or advanced, there's some new crunch for you mixed with the setting stuff.
Top Secret gets futuristic in TSAC7: F.R.E.E.America. Chicago 1999. A sprawling city-hive filled with corruption, can your agents make a difference? So they're trying to get into cyberpunk as well, are they? Very interesting.
Novelwise, we see the start of the Dragonlance preludes trilogy. See what Sturm and Kitiara got up too before the big war. Enjoy the fanservice, and watch carefully for any continuity errors. If you'd prefer something standalone, we have The Jewels of elvish by Nancy Varian Berberick. Said jewels get stolen, and as they're the only thing that can avert an impending disaster, you can guess how the rest of the story goes.
Tom Wham delivers another of his fun boardgames, The Great Khan Game. Connected to the forgotten realms, really, that doesn't matter much. Just enjoy playing it. Or you could play Maxi Bourse instead. Translated from french, this is a games of stock market shenanigans. Someone's shooting for monopolies crown. But it is still going strong, while I've never heard of this before, so I shall assume they failed.
Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989
part 3/3
The role of books cleans up its formatting, making the titles easier to pick out. The planet builders trilogy by Robyn Tallis manages to sneak some obscure references into a fun set of young adult stories. And as the reviewer points out, you've gotta hook 'em young if you want to ensure a future generation of gamers. Hmm. Don't underestimate the intelligence of kids if you want to sell to them.
The bristling wood by Katherine Kerr is set in the world of Dverry, her longstanding setting. It already has quite substantial amounts of mythos built up, and the reviewer recommends starting with the previous ones if you want to understand everything. He's also not sure about the attempt to combine celtic and chinese mysticism. Overall, he likes it, but he's certainly spending more time on it's flaws than it's good points.
Svaha by Charles de Lint sees him push the envelope in terms of milieus covered, while maintaining his usual standard of fun and well crafted storytelling. Combining oriental and amerindian mythology successfully, the reviewer seems to like this rather more than the previous book.
Vulcan's glory by D C Fontana gets a rather vicious review for blatantly violating existing trek canon and characterization. Spock doesn't act like that! This is highly illogical captain. I suspect the presence of an idiot ball. I recommend we pretend that this whole incident never happened.
A spell of deceit by Laurie Goodman is another young adult one that also contains decidedly mature moral questions and character dynamics. Including the question of how you keep characters of very different alignments in the same team without killing each other. Which I suppose is a useful question to consider for gamers.
The mirror maze by James P Hogan is an interesting but flawed piece of sci fi/espionage adventure. While there are plenty of interesting elements, the combination of omniscient viewpoint being in error, characters making expository speeches which are obviously intended for the reader, not the other characters, and a blatant real world political agenda, keeps them from recommending it.
Those who hunt the night by Barbara Hambly is a vampire mystery novel. Someone's killing them all, and of course, being badass creatures of de niiight, they're rather worried and want to stop this. As it also goes into quite a bit of detail on their physiology and how they fit into the world, it looks like a good one to draw on to make a game setting. And it tells a pretty good story too. Was this part of the inspiration for Vampire: the Masquerade?
Shadow world. A mysterious world plagued by the unlife, a force from beyond the dimensions. (Isn't that the plot of the neverending story? :p ) A new Rolemaster setting. Now with 200% more GRIMDARK!™. Well, it is nearly the 90's. And since plenty of writers still haven't got over that awkward phase, we'll probably see plenty of that in the future.
Role-playing reviews: 2300AD is the new edition of Traveller 2300, renamed so as to reduce confusion and annoying flamewars. They've revamped the visuals, advanced the setting a bit, and finally have an experience system. It all seems to be a considerable improvement. That's nice to hear dear.
Colonial atlas is a supplement for 2300AD, expanding on the various extraplanar colonies. Since it's covering 29 planets in 96 pages, the level of detail can't be that great, and it has a hellofa lot of authors, but it's more than enough to make them playable, with statistics, histories and adventure ideas. And it's definitely a lot more than could fit in the corebook. Now the stage is set for even more specific books.
Kafer Dawn is an adventure centering around the many-mandibled monstrosities. Figure out how not just to win the straightforward engagements, but also the resource war, and come to understand the enemy and their decidedly odd behaviours and tactics. It's a decent starter, but certainly not the final word on the subject, as having proved popular, they have more sourcebooks on the way.
Aurore sourcebook is one of those, covering the same planet as the last book, in more detail. With lots of history, NPC's, environmental details, adventure hooks, etc, it certainly seems to flesh out the setting nicely on a closer scale.
Mission Arcturus is the second Kafer based adventure. Your characters are now experts on the chitinous menace, and venture to a new planet to figure out what happened to the expeditionary base there. The review doesn't spoil the ending, but says it's pretty good. Do you have what it takes to handle both the combat and problem solving?
The Kafer sourcebook gives us yet more info on these guys. Seems like they're being set up as the primary antagonists for the game. Still, with a well thought out psychology, and more than enough info to use them as PC's, should you be so inclined. If you're not, don't let the players read it and spoil all the cool surprises they should experience during play.
Invasion builds upon all these previous books to give you an epic campaign as the Kafers sweep through star systems, conquering and destroying. They really seem to have thought this one through. Lets hope the players can bring their best game in response to make a difference in the war.
Finally, the Ground vehicle guide isn't directly connected to the war, but of course the stuff contained within will be damn handy if you want to fight battles using hard rules. Whew. That was certainly one of the more impressive review sections. Good to see other gamelines with supplement treadmills turning furiously.
Through the looking glass: A guide to painting various emotions? We sure aren't in 1981 anymore. Another guest writer definitely brings the 2nd ed spirit to this column. Obviously, quite a bit of the emotion of a figure will be determined by the existing model, and it can be tricky to get decent definition on small and cheap models anyway. But the colour scheme you choose can make a big difference, and subtleties of shading on the face even more so. For something like this to work, you need decent illustrations to demonstrate the more complex details. Fortunately, this column does not disappoint, with the photography being excellent, and the illustrations being both detailed and amusingly exaggerated. While there is a bit of obvious advice here, this is still an excellent little article that also managed to surprise me slightly. Looks like they're still trying new stuff in this department.
Fiction: Cornwoman by Steve Rasnic Tem. A trip into primal myth territory here. Everything is magnified, anthromophicised and given extra symbolism. The woman who brought corn (and implicitly, the whole idea of cultivation. ) to the human tribe must rescue a stolen baby from Raven and his flock of crows. This is pretty scary for them, but each triumph they make codifies a little more of the world, moving it away from dream logic towards reality, and making the monsters out there a little less scary. Reminds me somewhat of Neil Gaiman's takes on mythical stuff in American gods and Anansi boys, which is definitely a good thing. With a distinctive, well crafted atmosphere, this is another memorable little story.
Dragonmirth has decidedly mixed messages about modern technology. Yamara is losing both the battle, and the war of who's funniest. Snarfquest ends it all on a cliffhanger of authorial self-insertion, instead of resolving the plot. Really Larry, you need to manage your time better. This is only marginally better than wormy's departure.
Overall, another pretty good issue, both in the themed section and the reviews. They once again seem to have a strong freelancer base to draw upon, and enough submissions that they can reject the obvious dross. The main problem now, is keeping the both the quality control and speed of production up, which as I know, is not an easy business. Just how great will the rate of turnover be? Gotta complete 'em all.
Dragon Magazine Issue 146: June 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Welcome to their 13th anniversary. They've come a long way. But like their 10th anniversary, they're much more interested in moving forward than looking back at the moment. After all, we've got a new edition to fill up with splatbooks. And we have fairly prophetic editorial, as Roger ponders the probability that computer games will come to displace pen and paper ones. Yeah, that's the future alright, even if it'll takes ages to get there. Any activity that requires the coordination of a whole group of people is at an inherent logistical disadvantage compared to stuff you can do on your own. Back to reading for me.
In this issue:
Letters: A rather dumb letter in which someone is surprised that they don't reference their own books in the discussion on high and low fantasy. That would be a touch incestuous, non?
A letter praising the quality of their cover artwork. They do regularly have some pretty impressive pieces, don't they.
A letter about claydonia. The people who contributed to it should be properly credited!
A whole bunch of rather good questions about what they'll accept in submissions. Interesting.
Forum: Barry A. McEwen contributes his experience of gaming with people with impaired vision, working as he does in that field. He's even created a 20 sided braille die for use by fully blind people. Roleplaying games can be an excellent means of escapism for people with all kinds of physical impairments. Introducing them to a nursing home would also be a cool idea.
Katherine York responds to the piece about MA in Marvel superheroes, with her own suggestion for a new ki power. Charge that internal energy, and release it suddenly. Perfectly reasonable given the universe.
S. R. Oldson craves some more classic modules like the ones released in the late 70's. Modern stuff just doesn't cut it like the tomb of horrors or demonweb pits. Prefab politics and railroads just don't work in other campaigns like a nicely challenging dungeon crawl. You may be disappointed by the next few years then.
Wayne Roberts tells a rather interesting story of his own experiences with role vs roll playing thinkers. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and good tactical thinking and knowing your adversaries make even a combat heavy game much more fun. (and survivable)
Michael Drake contributes a rather scattershot letter, of which the main point, as far as I can tell, seems to be asking what is badwrongfun. Overall, I'm not sure what to make of this one.
Daniel Reardon also has a rather interesting and complicated point to make. The D&D system revolves around parties of adventurers working together. Selfish characters go against the whole system, and will ruin the fun of the game.
Ian Reyes, in contrast, has had plenty of evil PC's, and it hasn't caused problems, while allowing a whole bunch of fun scenarios you couldn't do with good ones. As long as you keep the PvP betrayals to when it would be logical, and find reasons to work together for greater profit, it can work just fine.
Douglas J. Hutchinson finds both the fearmongers and obsessive players tiresome. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Just get on with playing, and ignore the stupid reactionaries. They do the same thing to virtually every cool innovation, and it rarely amounts to much in a generations time.
Kirk Karste is not amused at all about the OA misrepresentation of ninja. They were a spiritual order who only used violence in adversity. Here we go again. It's as bad as the stuff about druids and barbarians.
Martin Millar also talks about samurai and ninja. As usual, in the real world, strict divisions of good and evil really do not hold up to close scrutiny. Even the samurai/ninja divide is pretty blurry, with some samurai secretly employing or being ninja. Just because D&D abstracts these things for ease of play, doesn't mean you should take them as fact.
Sage advice continues to occupy pole position. I guess with the edition change, people are really examining just what the rules of what they're playing actually do.
How do fighters make magical swords (they don't, they get wizards to do it for them. Or they break the rules. Because there's certainly enough stuff around that's impossible to produce by a strict reading of them.)
What spell gives weapons magical plusses (Enchant an item can do that on it's own. Relax. That's an easy trick. )
Can bless fix a cursed item (Are you joking? That's like throwing a bucket of water on an oilslicked beach. Completely inadequate.)
Will protection from fire or cold help you resist a fire shield spell (nope.)
How much XP can you get from destroying Asmodeus' rod ( A quite substantial amount. It would probably be a good idea to destroy Asmodeus first though. )
Is magical armor weightless or half weight (good question. Depends if you're carrying it or wearing it. )
Is other magical equipment weightless (Oh, this is a can of worms. Skip's gonna say no to be on the safe side. )
Do bracers of defense work if you're caught unawares (yes, but you still lose your dex mod. )
Are bracers cumulative with armour (no, you use the best result. Cut the twinking. )
What's with glowing magical weapons. (They glow when it's inconvenient to PC's, and don't when it would be useful. It's like they were diliberately given that feature to screw with you. )
How do you determine which limb is severed by a sword of sharpness (Random tables! How else! )
Which parts of a giantslaying sword's damage are multiplied (like backstabbing, only the dice. Their degree of aid is the same regardless of your stats. )
Do all giant class opponents count as giants (only ones bigger than ogres )
How many plusses can a weapon have (once you're at 6 or above, you're in rule-breaking territory. Better stop Myrland, ask him for directions ;) )
Do you have to be lawful to use a vorpal weapon (yes, otherwise it's your head that'll get the chopping. )
Can a potion of longevity turn you into an infant. Can I use ghost aging to reverse this. Can an illusory ghost age people, since the fear is what causes the aging (probably, yes but we don't recommend it, and hell no that would be completely gamebreaking! )
Dragons are wizards' best friends: A whole load of minidragons is our first birthday gift. Designed to make good familiars to powerful wizards, these are typically tricksy little creatures. While they may not be able to match up to full dragons physically, they're easily as magically capable and tricksy as pseudo and faerie dragons. Scoring one of these little bastards might not be easy, but it will pay for itself in the long run, and give you plenty of fun playing out their antics.
Crystal Drakes may look pretty, and have moderate versatile magical powers, but as they eat gemstones, getting extra special powers based upon what they eat, they're probably pretty costly to keep. Once they die, you might be able to make a bit of that back by selling their hide, but it won't be much by comparison. You'll have to keep on adventuring to maintain them in the manner they're accustomed too.
Demon Drakes are as tricky as the other minidragons, with an additional sadistic edge. Not only are their tricks exceedingly dangerous, they're also pretty inventive. Their entry includes three new custom spells, and encourages you to give them more. Be very afraid, and don't hesitate to learn these tricks and turn them back at them.
Faerie Drakes are slightly bigger, tougher close relatives to faerie dragons. They aren't as magically powerful, but are more versatile, taking their powers and breath weapon from various full dragon types. Since they're pretty eager to learn spells, the chances of them becoming a familiar are pretty good, especially if treated as an equal partner rather than a servant.
Shadow Drakes are the shyest of these creatures, hiding in shadows and using connected magical abilities to misdirect anyone hunting them. They still have plenty of curiosity though, so you should be able to form a relationship if you take it slow and leave out food. Just the one for rogues and illusionists.
Dragon Magazine Issue 146: June 1989
part 2/3
The dragon's bestiary gives us yet more actual dragons to put our players up against. Of course, they still use the 1st ed rules, because we haven't seen the new ones yet, and they probably have to clear out the slush pile anyway. Oh well, they're perfectly compatible mechanically, so it matters little. Just means people are likely to use the old articles and sourcebooks with the new corebooks for a while.
Cobra dragons have the scary hood of their namesake. However, they have the full complement of limbs, plus a venomous bite that still has substantial effects if you succeed your save. Thankfully, they don't have any magical ability, so they're easier than most to outmaneuver. As usual, be very wary, for they may still have traps and allies.
Obsidian dragons have the unusual and rather awkward distinction of not being immune to their own breath weapons. They are exceedingly powerful spellcasters though, so they can probably memorize spells to help with that. Since they also run the gamut of good and evil alignments they're also more likely to fight each other than usual. This could definitely be used to build interesting plots.
Gray Dragons (Not to be confused with The Grey Dragon, from issue 62 :p ) are smarter relations of white dragons. Their favoured tactics run towards immobilising the enemy, and picking them off one by one, which can definitely make for some unpleasant battles. Again, I believe some evil laughter would not go amiss.
Rainbow dragons continue Greg Detwiler's attempt to fill in the neutral evil part of the draconic alignment spectrum. They're talked up as scary, but really, without an AoE breath weapon, they're probably not as dangerous overall as Reds. Power isn't just in the numbers, you know.
Drakken are little three headed dragons. Has some wizard been trying to mate hydra with dragons again? :shakes head: In any case, they're not very bright, so they're more mid-level pests than the culmination of an adventure. Interesting to note that this completes a symmetry of having one dragon type intended for each current campaign world. They seem to be consciously trying to differentiate them in that respect. I suppose they are still relatively similar compared to what's to come.
Minidragons are another load of cute little things that can serve as pets both to proper dragons and people. They're pretty tough, but not that smart. Since we just had a whole article on this kind of thing earlier, it seems a bit odd to plonk these ones in here.
Snarfquest characters are lost throughout the issue. This is what happens when you go out of dimensions. It makes a dreadful mess. Now where have we seen that before? Growf growf. ;)
The New ecology of the dragons: Is that like the new adventures of He-man? Because that came out around this time, and sucked. No, it's merely another less direct teaser that dragons are about to get a quite substantial upgrade with the edition change. Tail attacks, swoops, kicks, wingovers are in, Breath weapons are more frequent, subduing is not quite out, but no longer specific to them. They are now even more capable of demonstrating both power and finesse, and really ruining peoples days. This is an in-house production by Skip Williams, taking care to feature all their new powers specifically in the story. It comes close to shattering my suspension of belief as a story rather than a custom written promotional piece, but still manages to stay interesting. This is a case where the quality of the work manages to win me over, but I wouldn't like to see this kind of thing become common practice, with ecologies appropriate to whatever splatbook is coming out this month being a constant intrusion. You tread a perilous line here, TSR.
The hatchling magazine: A recap of the 7 issues of the strategic review. It has been quite a while. Another of those reminders that before the internet made copying things virtually free, far fewer gamers had access to any of the stuff from before they personally started playing. Only a small fraction of Dragon readers would have read these, and many would never even have heard of them. Let's see if this can shed any insights, either on the old magazines, or the current trends in historical interpretation.
The first issue, not too surprisingly, gets the most detailed examination. All the features are individually mentioned, and there is plenty of commentary. Unsurprisingly, quite a bit of it is focussed on just how far the magazine has come, both in contents and professionalism, and how little idea they obviously had about the directions the game was going to go. A particularly notable little bit is the commentary on the idea of cutting out the money off coupon, and how it would impact on the issue's collectability. They seem slightly surprised by the prevalence of PbP games, and the stuff for designing solo dungeons. We might have come a long way, but there were still some things they were doing back then that can be usefully drawn upon. Overall, the commentary is fairly neutral, neither slating or particularly gushing over the contents.
SR2, on the other hand, gets a very short description, mainly just a list of the contents. The main notable comment is the drawing attention to the fact that Brian Blume was already trying to set them apart as Gamers in general, not merely Wargamers. Thinking big, or the first signs of egomania? You decide.
SR3's description is also pretty perfunctory. It reveals that the quality of the paper went up. and they went from gluing to stapling for binding. Gary's rant of the issue is mentioned in a nonjudgemental fashion, and the fact that there is still huge variety in the contents seems important to them. I guess it would stand out in contrast to the current era, where the amount of non D&D stuff is seriously on the decline.
SR4's overview answers the question I've been wondering for ages. Yes the cartoon is by that Marc Miller. Guess he was in on things right from the beginning. Their main commentary is that FRPG's are rapidly increasing in dominance, and they too notice that the Dragon is coming. They have realized what the market wants. Poor wargaming, already being split away. In other words, this seems to be the point when they start to react to the changing market, altering their approach, and getting in new people to meet the increasing demand.
SR5 gets the biggest amount of text. The substantial improvements in production values gets lots of detailed attention, and the reviewer is pretty positive that this is where they moved from newszine to proper magazine. He's also has quite a bit to say about the sharp contrast between the willingness to throw anything into the melting pot and kitbash rules freely, and how it contrasts with Gary's calls for strict orthodoxy in the early AD&D era. Although he tries to stay neutral in this commentary, I get the impression he prefers the more freewheeling option. The kicking off of the great Gen Con Vs Origins war sees a bit of amusement peeking through. And like a lot of people, he wishes he'd taken the lifetime subscription option when he had the chance. Oh well. Your loss.
SR6 is a fairly brief one, which I find curious, since I preferred this one over SR5. The increasing dominance of RPG's is noted again, as is the fact that this issue was printed in purple ink. The rapid expansion of game clubs in mapping the dungeons is also tracked. Things might not all be going their way, but it's made all the more clear how they, and gaming as a whole are expanding.
SR7 is another fairly long look over. Gary's contributions get a lot of attention, with another bit of amusement at the intensity of his rantings peeking through. Twinks Beware! Once again, the increases in production values get noted as well. Also interesting is how much more we got to see of the writers personally, with profiles, photos, etc. They had to be more hands on in general in their handling of the various aspects of the company back then.
While overall, this is a pretty dry review, it does throw a new light on a few bits that I didn't note as significant, but probably were. And it's definitely interesting in that it's got me to look back on the first few issues of the magazine with new eyes. We're reaching a point where nostalgia can really start to come into play, and the people who've been around for a while are significantly older than when they started. How long before talk about "getting back to the roots of the game" becomes commonplace?
Dragon Magazine Issue 146: June 1989
part 3/3
Fiction: The ever-after by Eluki Bes Shahar. Another of those bits of fiction that reminds us that what we call heroes are actually mostly irresponsible wandering sociopaths who just happen to be killing creatures that we're opposed to at the moment. And many of them have pretty messed up pasts. To be truly heroic, you need to resist your urges, not indulge them. Build up civilisations, not destroy them. And do what is responsible, not what is glamorous, no matter what megalomaniacal magic items say. An interesting message to deliver around here.
TSR Previews: First up, completely unsurprisingly, is the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide. In fact, this is so important, it gets a little box to make it stand out even more. The players handbook never got that privilege. Hmm. Does that mean anything.
D&D recycles golden khan of ethengar from last month. Damnable sloppiness and delays.
In novels, we have Shadowdale, by Richard Awlinson. The start of the Avatar trilogy. You saw the module last month. Now you can see how the official characters do things. Their experiences are going to be the ones that really count. We also have the start of the martian wars trilogy for Buck Rogers, with 2456 by M. S. Murdock. Well, not many people are going to mind hat he's the star of that metaplot, and not their characters.
We get our first solo adventure in a while as well. They seem to be on a decline now. Still, Knight of the living dead by Allen Varney seems to be quite a big one. Play an undead paladin trying to adapt to unlife and still do good. Interesting.
Top Secret gets TSE2: The sting of the spider. Head back to San Christobal for some more underworld infiltration and elimination in an exotic location. Play that funky theme music.
It's not just AD&D that's getting relaunched this month. The Dungeon boardgame, last seen getting articles in the magazine in the late 70's, gets a new edition. How very intriguing.
And finally, the forgotten realms also gets next year's calendar, 6 months early. Why do they do that? One would think that the middle of the year would be the worst time for selling these things.
The marvel-phile is taken over by Skip, who gets the chance to be sagealicious twice in one magazine.
Aunt May shouldn't be able to kill Galactus by spending 100 Karma! (How, pray tell, is Aunt May to earn said Karma in the first place? Remember, Galactus can spend it too to counter things anyway. )
My players object to me using updated stats for characters from modules (Well, you shouldn't tell them that you're doing so then. Who is the boss here?)
What defense powers can resist eldrich bolts (depends what type of eldrich bolt)
Which table do you use for power ranges (page 16)
How do you determine resource ranks (see pages 6 and 7. This is why you read books start to finish.)
When's the next gamers handbook out? (The end of the year. Patience my dear. Otherwise things won't have changed enough to be worth a full book of updates. )
Send me updated stats for all the characters that have changed recently. (Get real dude. You gotta be prepared to pay if you wanna stay up to date. )
If two characters with the same stats work together, do they still get a bonus (yes)
What column do cyborgs roll on to generate powers (One. Affirmative)
How do you keep track of flying characters. (Get tactical. Or fudge. Whatever keeps you game rolling.)
What does luck manipulation do (no such power. You want probability control mate. Gotta stay precise in your terminology.)
Can you get 1,000 Karma for arresting someone with an invulnerability (Only if it's a very broad invulnerability. )
Why doesn't spiderman have a higher intuition. (Superhuman abilities covering part of a stat don't boost the whole stat if the other areas are lacking. )
How can I get replacement parts (Expensively. A lot of the time it'd be cheaper to buy a whole new model. )
Do you need to roll just to move full speed (No. Where'd you get that silly idea? )
Does Armour piercing shot permanently reduce body armour (No. Penetrated /= destroyed)
How do you establish a power stunt (persistence)
Sometimes Tony Stark can't buy a pen! The Resources system makes no sense! ( You'd be amazed how hard it can be to find a pen sometimes. Go electronic. It's much harder to lose computers.)
One of my player's characters keep dying. What do I do (Give him tactical advice. If he still doesn't shape up, kick him out. Achtung! Ve do not tolerate incompetence at Sage Towers!)
How do you decide who attacks who. (Tactical considerations and personal grievances. Just like in the actual comics)
Where are all the locations in MHSP2 (some are in the maps from the corebook. Sorry if that wasn't clear.)
Dangerous terrain: Gamma world's article this month is a few extra wilderness hazards. As if there aren't more than enough of those. But you know how those random encounter tables get stale and predictable after a few years of regular play. Like a long-married couple, adding some new toys to the games room is needed to keep a group together. One of those short, not particularly consequential articles that does what it does, neither too good or too bad. I suppose I should be pleased that it's still getting any coverage at all, since they haven't released any new supplements for the game in a while.
The role of computers: Might and magic II gets a large and detailed review, as an epic adventure game should get here. This does require quite a lot of disks, and backing up your saves is a good idea. They give us plenty of advice on the various character classes and how to use them. There's plenty of cool new stuff to discover, including time travel stuff which means the same location will have different stuff in it at different points. They're generally pretty positive, with their only gripe being the endlessly respawning random encounters which seem to throw monsters together without rhyme or reason. Oh well. It's not as if that's uncommon in computer games.
Hostage, on the other hand, gets a 5 star rating. While you don't get to negotiate with the terrorists, you do get tons of tactical choices, as you co-ordinate your team to take out the enemies with minimum loss of civilian life. Set up sharpshooters, lead your strike team in, and switch between characters rapidly. Think fast, because the terrorists are pretty smart too, and the whole thing maintains an impressively persistent environment.
Arrows of the east: Oriental adventures continues to get attention. Not that alternate arrow types didn't appear in the west, but they only got codified for D&D in OA, so this falls under that aegis. This is a combination of errata and expansion, making armor-piercing arrows actually, y'know, better at penetrating armor, as well as adding several new tricks. Still, we had another one of these fairly recently (issue 133) which was more inventive in it's new tricks, so overall, this is a pretty unimpressive little article. When you've got to fill an exact page count every month, you're going to get padding, and this is another example of that.
If you wish upon a star: Wish nerfing? Here we go again. Not a promising start. However, this manages to avoid the rehash problem by covering this topic with greater detail and methodicality than any of the previous articles managed. It isn't even too restrictive, since the massive array of options drawn from tales of all kinds will really help you choose just how restricted a wish from any particular source should be. With some fairly decent tables, tons of examples, and a decent bibliography for further reading, this is actually pretty good, and about as worthy a contribution on this topic as we're probably ever going to see. If you're going to do something ill-advised, do it in style, and you might be able to pull it off.
The great khan game. Another amusingly illustrated creation from the fertile mind of Tom Wham. As ever, they would like it if you bought it.
Dragonmirth really needs to tidy up. Yamara is well and truly defeated by dreadful dialogue.
A strong start that then gradually peters out this issue. For all their statements that they're trying to look forward, this one doers seem to be somewhat stuck in the past, with lots of stuff dependent on products that are very much old news. Just how much more OA stuff can the market bear? When will they actually start publishing submissions using the 2e rules? Come on. You've been advertising this stuff for 2 years now. I want the new shinys already.
Quote from: (un)reason;355791Greyhawk also gets a rather specific module, WG9: Gargoyle. Play a gargoyle trying to get their wings back. Very curious sounding indeed. Any opinions on this one?
It's about as lame as it sounds. The module doesn't gibe with anything we know, whether you're talking "Greyhawk" canon or real-world mythology. I recall being disappointed and having a "WTF?" reaction to the thing. Yeah, it was different, but not in a good way.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;357311It's about as lame as it sounds. The module doesn't gibe with anything we know, whether you're talking "Greyhawk" canon or real-world mythology. I recall being disappointed and having a "WTF?" reaction to the thing. Yeah, it was different, but not in a good way.
Having managed to get hold of it since first writing that, the closest thing I can compare it to is the kids cartoons of the same period. You have misunderstood comic relief creatures who need your help while simultaneously being an almighty pain in the ass in "amusing" fashion, and a plot that requires the PC's not be the sociopathic bastards we know and love from personal experience. Eric, hank, uni & co, on the other hand, would fit into this scenario just fine.
Dragon Magazine Issue 147: July 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Haven't you been on the cover before? I'm sure you have. Check Issue 106. Don't they look like the same person? Albeit with a little leveling up (and skankifying) having taken place in the intervening years. Even though they might not be by the same artist, they really do look like they're working with the same subject. We'll be seeing you reprinted as well. The theme is pretty familiar too. Magic! Of the arcane variety! Yawn. Lets hope there's a few neat new toys in here.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from the cover artist artist of issue 139, about the award she's just won for the piece. Woo. Go Carol Heyer.
A whole bunch of errata for issue 139's druid article, from it's original writer.
Another question about said druid article, clearing up another ambiguity. Yet more evidence that it wasn't a very well written article.
A piece encouraging them to take more risks. Sure, a few people'll complain, but the silent majority will approve. But the million dollar question is, Will they keep buying the magazine?
Forum is comprised almost entirely of recurring writers writing about religion this month. Seems like it's becoming quite the old boys club.
S. D. Anderson isn't happy about the idea of speciality clerics having limited spell lists. Cleric's spell lists are already pretty crap compared to wizards. Gods shouldn't intentionally handicap their followers. Hmm. You may not be pleased with the new edition's changes then, especially when the splatbooks start rollin' out.
Ed Friedlander is also tackling the topic of religion. Faith is an important manner, and developing the beliefs of our characters and worlds, and the organizations that serve the gods in them definitely deserves attention. You shouldn't just slap your own modern beliefs and values onto your characters.
Fr Patrick J Dolan takes a more pragmatic attitude to the problem of ministering. So clerics don't have nearly enough spells to properly care for a whole community. This is what low power, mass produced magic items such as sacred oils are for. One annointment may only heal a couple of hit points, but that's all you need for normal humans, and you can do hundreds of them in a single day.
Paul Astle also thinks Greg Detwiler was being unimaginative and overly pessimistic about the capacity of clerics to change lives. Sure, they can't save everyone, but they can solve several of the most significant problems that crop up every day. Over time, that really adds up, seriously reducing the number of deaths and invalids. If they're doing their job properly, they will make a difference to the community.
Dan Fehler talks about his own experience with someone who cuts out real world religious references from his games. We've all got to do our bit to keep the people who demonise gaming from having ammunition. Looks like it really is that time now.
Palladium celebrates having sold a million books. Just think, a few years ago, they were jazzed that TMNT had sold 7,000. Now look at them. Pleased as punch.
Sage advice is still looking at 1st ed magical items. Last chance saloon and all that.
Can a potion of undead control usurp control for someone else (yup, but it reverts back afterwards.)
Can I replicate a potion miscabiity result if I duplicate the formulae of both potions precisely. (I am afraid not. Magic isn't that scientific and reliable. )
Can rings of regeneration revive someone killed by special attacks rather than hit points (no. You've gotta have some threat)
Can rings of regeneration revive someone if put on their hand after they die (No. It's a condom, not a morning after pill. )
How quickly do you regrow limbs ( A matter of days. Worry not.)
Are two rings of protection cumulative (same bonus type, so they don't stack. )
Does an activated ring of earth elemental command still act as a ring of feather falling (no)
Does wearing of fire resistance protect the wearers equipment. (It would be a good idea if it did )
How do you recharge an item (Tediously. Very very tediously. Magic requires ridiculous amounts of prepwork for each boom. )
How do you make a rod of cancellation. ( Sacrificing your favourite TV show on the altar of your ambition, with the blood of a hundred babies. Or is that the Exalted method. Ehh, you should never pass up an excuse to sacrifice a hundred babies. )
Are rods permanent items (In D&D they generally are. In AD&D they generally aren't. How'd that happen? )
What proficiency do you need to wield a rod (staff. They're basically the same thing. They certainly get used with the same phallic metaphors.)
How do non druids get to use the staff of slinging's powers. (They can't. Trade secrets, etc etc. )
Do you need a proficiency to use a /lightsaber/ wand of force (nope. )
How do you penetrate a wall of darkness (stick your head through it. Duh. )
What's the range of a wand of flame extinguishing (barely worth it, if you forget how D&D scaling works. )
What's the duration of a tome ( Longer than your lifetime. )
When are gauntlets and girdles cumulative (When you're ripping off Thor.)
What happens if your strength is drained when you're wearing a girdle (good thing too, otherwise your hernias'd give you so much gyp.)
Isn't the price for girdles of giant strength a bit low. (Hmm. Haven't we had this question before? Eeexcellent. Another chance for Skip to show
how much better he is than Jean ever was! I cast Overturn Precedent at the question! Multiply the price and XP by 10! That ought to do it.)
Can you wear gloves and gauntlets at the same time (no. They use up the same item slot.)
Can the lyre of building destroy everything built with it if you mess up (No, only stuff built that week. Otherwise it'd be so much of a liability that it's funny)
How long can you use a crystal ball for( Like using the internet, time'll fly by before you know it. Spying on things is rather addictive, and more than one wizard has neglected their studies because they were too busy keeping up with current events. )
Can a helm of brilliance buff any sword (yes)
Can you wear a hat and a helm simultaneously. (No. We really ought to formalize the item slots system. Unfortunately, it's too late to put it in 2nd edition. Great. Skip will have to put up with another 10 years of this crap before we finally get round to fixing it. )
Is a hat of disguise an illusory or shapechanging effect (nonfunctional cosmetic shapechanging )
Can a cloak of protection be worn with elfin chain (nope)
Can I wear more than one cloak at once ( Haaaa. :points and laughs:)
Can a cloak be combined with armor ( Mayyyybe. )
Can you wear a cloak and a mantle (No, but you can wear a robe and a mantle. It's kingly, uh huh huh. )
How many people can draw from a deck of many things (4/x Where X is the number of cards each draws. )
Does the level boosting ion stone burn out after bestowing it's power (no. You have to keep it around to keep the buff, and if it gets nicked, you lose the extra power. )
Does the white spindle's regeneration keep working when you're dead (as long as they don't think to grab it. If they do, you're screwed.
What can a quiver of ehlonna produce ( Nothing! More Errata!)
Will a stone of good luck affect your ressurection roll (only if you had it before you died)
What's a freedom word. (Zagyg needed to make sure he couldn't be captured in his own extradimensional dungeon when dallying with kinky villainesses. So he took precautions. Remember folks, children are the least of your worries when dealing with women like that. )
Does a gem of insight let you check for psionic power (eventually. Remember, temporary buffs don't count for stuff like this. )
Are two substances found within a philosophers stone (Only in certain combinations. Green and white totally lacks style. )
What happens when a bag of holding is turned inside out (Man, that's gonna be non euclidian. Thankfully, most wizards put safety precautions to stop the universe being destroyed by this possibility. Well, they must have, because the universe is still around. Isn't it? .................. Oh, Maaaan. Is Skip gonna have to hit the reset button again? )
Can an amulet of proof against detection keep an invisible character from being seen by detect invisibility (yes indeedy)
Ghostbusters gets a new edition to tie in with the new movie. Will it be an improvement on the original? Ha. Win some, lose some.
Quote from: (un)reason;357340Ghostbusters gets a new edition to tie in with the new movie. Will it be an improvement on the original? Ha. Win some, lose some.
Yeah, this was definitely in the "lose" category. The Ghostbusters II revision of the game stripped away a lot of the charm of the original game, particularly the stuff that featured the characters from the movie. Then it larded it down with more detailed yet less fun rules. I have both editions, and I find the original very inspiring in that I want to run it. Even the adventures are more fun.
Dragon Magazine Issue 147: July 1989
part 2/3
Getting familiar: P. N. Elrod! This is an interesting turnup for the books. Nice to see another author who'll go on to pretty substantial things getting their start in the magazine. We have had a few articles on the subject of familiars before, but this does not follow in their footsteps. It's all about roleplaying your familiars. After all, in the era of 80's cartoons, most action adventure shows have an intelligent animal (or possibly robot) sidekick to supply a little comic relief and give voice actors a chance to talk in silly pidgin voices and squawks. It's no surprise that many people would think that is a desirable thing to emulate in your own games. So, um, yeah, each of the standard animals gets discussed, with lots of notes on their ecologies, racial capabilities and personalities. Toads get no love at all, as usual. It's all so second edition it hurts. And actually, it's the first article to specifically reference the 2nd ed rulebooks, so kudos to her for being quick off the mark. So this is a significant and entertaining article, that is also more than a little cheesy. Oh well, lots of good points, lots of bad points is a hell of a lot more interesting than a no score draw.
As I thought. We got the subtle teaser last month, now we get the full-on shadowrun logo with the goats skull and scantily clad elven chicks. That'll get people's attention.
Variety, the spice of magic: So you don't have the right spell component? What are you to do? You could just give up and cast some other spell. Or you could try substituting some other component. Now this gives the DM two options. They could say that nothing happens, it simply fails. Or they could use it as carte blanche to imaginatively sadistic in the way that the spell goes wrong. Can you guess which one I'd prefer? So here's a few tables to lend a little more legitimacy to that idea. See just how likely they are to go wrong if you use cheap knock-off substitutes. Course, if you deploy some rare monster pieces, the spell might even work better than normal, but don't count on it. I can definitely see the story potential in this, so even though there might be some tedious tableage, this is another one for bookmarking to pull out when it becomes appropriate.
Gaze into my crystal ball: More table heavy elaboration on a tiny part of the game. Magical viewing devices can have quite a number of different shapes and additional powers. In addition, there's plenty of other little factors that could be included, such as making your scrying ability partially dependent on your level and ability scores. As with the last article, this is a fairly neat little one to bust out when you roll the appropriate results on the magic item tables, flesh things out further.
Space hulk. Another warhammer variant bursts messily out of the designer's heads and onto our tables. Don't let those genestealers sneak up and infect your worlds.
Spelling it out: Hmm. Another article that could be fascinating or very dull indeed, depending on your current mood. An examination of the finer detail of spell memorization and casting, for the rules lawyers to peruse. Mainly notable because it has also been annotated by Roger with the changes 2nd edition has made to the spellcasting process. Which may seem small, but are actually fairly significant, closing up several exploitable tricks that used to be a problem, and drastically increasing the amount of downtime magic-users need to copy spells into their books. Looks like they have actually been nerfed a little if you remember to strictly follow the RAW. This is definitely worthy of note, and may provoke a few letters in the near future. When things superficially stay the same, nitpickers have a field day. I'm very interested to hear what other people made of this.
WoW your players: Ahh, the wand of wonder. (not world of warcraft, sorry to disappoint. :p ) Few things are more feared than a wizard wielding one. You never know what's going to happen. At least, untill they've used it a few hundred times. Then you might start to see a pattern. Which is what these alternate tables are good for. The larger the selection you have to roll in, the more truly wondrous your wand will be. And the more utterly twinked a wild mage with one will become. Muahahaha. I do rather enjoy these, but it does seem a bit odd that they give us 4 different tables, each with 19 results, many of which require you to roll again for subresults. Surely combining them into one big table, possibly using a d1000, would be a more elegant way of handling this kind of thing. Silly chaos mages. Not terrible, but certainly not the best example of random screwage fun.
Through the looking glass: Back to the reviews this month. A pair of dragons from grenadier are reviewed, and he also gives substantial tips on how best to assemble them. Good to see him taking a leaf from our computer game reviewers, and helping us as well as informing. We also get a five pack of fairly decent superhero figures for Villains and vigilantes, but adaptable to other games. Robert then decides it's time for a change, and switches from models to games systems
Aedeptus Titanicus sees games workshop get in on the giant robot fighting market, giving you a bunch of mechs and foam buildings. This means they are easily damaged, which would be a plus if you want to represent the extreme collateral damage your machines inflict, but it would be exceedingly expensive to do this and keep buying new ones. Indeed, the cost in general is the main gripe with this, which otherwise seems fairly awesome, and entirely integratable with their other 40k mass wargaming products.
And then it's back to reviews, with a chariot pulled by lions. Fairly customisable, this is nonetheless expensive enough to be a tricky decision to buy. And least, but not last, we get the response to another vitriolic letter accusing him of americacentricism. Well, yes. They don't sell many foreign models round these parts. One of those reviews that's all the more entertaining for it's fairly scattershot approach.
Two no SASE ogres? (look more like norkers to me) My, they must be busy rejecting people at the moment. Om nom nom.
Magus!: Looks like we have a board game as our centrepiece. They don't do enough of those these days. Rob Kuntz delivers a game of wizardly war. It looks like one of those ones where both skill and luck are important in winning, with a whole bunch of positional effects, and the ability to make alliances with other players to help you win. Annoyingly, the actual board and pieces are missing, (again) so I can't do a full judgement of it, but it seems pretty decent. Interestingly, both Gary Gygax and Dave Trampier are given credits at the end, so this has obviously been knocking about the office for quite some time. Even though certain people may be gone, they're certainly not forgotten, and some of the staff still stay in touch with them. Politics, politics. Almost as interesting as the stuff they show us.
TSR Previews: You've got the players, you've got the dungeon master, now, you need monsters for them to face. So welcome to the AD&D second edition monstrous compendium, volume one. The first batch of loose leaf sheets, plus a big binder designed to accomodate stuff from future volumes. How long before they realize this little experiment has serious problems, and go back to regular books?
Dragonlance gets DLE2: Dragon magic. Save the celestial dragon of neutrality. You'd think a cosmic force like that could take care of itself, but apparently not. Oh well, it's a chance to become a big hero, and that's what counts.
The Forgotten Realms continues it's metaplot madness, with FR2: Tantras. Elminster's dead? Surely not. It's all a big misunderstanding. Oh well, it looks like the trouble you get in fortuitously helps you solve the main problem anyway. If you'd prefer to stay out of the edition change teething troubles you can buy FR8: Cities of mystery. Build an entire city block out of the pieces within. Sounds like it would synergise well with the waterdeep city system, another FR product that can be used genericly fairly easily.
D&D goes back to basics for the first time in a few years, with B11: Kings festival. Unsurprisingly, the new, more plot based module style intrudes even here, with plenty of role-playing advice as well. A sequel is coming shortly. Just be glad it's not another trilogy.
Marvel Superheroes is still time traveling, in MT2: Weird weird west. Six-guns and the kitchen sink as rifts to the 1870's open up all through history. Guess you'd better close them up, before things lose even more continuity than even a comic book universe can take.
Novelwise, we have Monkey Station by Aradath Mayhar and Ron Fortier. Hyperevolved monkeys! Taking over the world! Sounds pulpilicious.
And finally, we have a whole host of board games. Europe aflame! High Rise! Web of gold! War, business or exploration, the choice is yours. Good to see that department is still busy buzzing away as well.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;357351Yeah, this was definitely in the "lose" category. The Ghostbusters II revision of the game stripped away a lot of the charm of the original game, particularly the stuff that featured the characters from the movie. Then it larded it down with more detailed yet less fun rules. I have both editions, and I find the original very inspiring in that I want to run it. Even the adventures are more fun.
I actually like GBI a lot. Its really maybe 10 pages more rules than GB. Its not as charming a read as GB, but its a little more in depth if you actually want to try to run a campaign with it as opposed to the odd 1 shot.
Most of the rules are the same. I read both rulesets like the same month. Got the GB books sans equipment cards and right after winning it on the bay a GBI set sealed popped up and I got it for a reasonable price.
Characters still fit on index cards, most of the gear seems to be the same, and so on.
The worst you can say is the adventure modules are a bit too silly and punny. A shame they never did a Real Ghostbusters sourcebook for it. Tobin's Spirit Guide is WAAAY overpriced for what it is, though its much subtler than the adventures in its puns and silly bits. Thank goodness I got it for less than a third the going rate.
Honestly the way to look at GB and GBI is like Original D&D (if you could make sense of it on your own anyhow!), and OD&D with Greyhawk rules.
Really the feel of GB in a game is up to the group. Do you want it more mature humor ala the movies or more family friendly ala the cartoon, or more goofy with a little of the subversive movie bits ala either game edition, or darker like the 00s era comic books done by 88 MPH and IDW?
Every single way is an interesting way to do a Ghostbusters campaign.
Dragon Magazine Issue 147: July 1989
part 3/3
Role-playing reviews is in theme, as is often the case, examining the spellcasting of several different systems. Everyone thinks they can improve upon D&D's old method of throwing cool stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. In many cases, they can, even if the resulting games haven't managed the same kind of commercial success.
GURPS magic gets a very context heavy review indeed. Ken's initial skepticism with the line has faded as the supplement mill has kicked up, filling all kinds of odd niches with well written books. Now they're revisiting their fantasy gaming roots, with typical attention to detail and modularity. Course, as usual, this genericness is a flaw as well as a benefit, and you'll have to create your own world. He reserves final judgement until he's seen the rules in action. I do hope we'll see a follow up on that statement.
ARS Magica contrasts sharply with this, creating a game with a very distinctive setting, and a system focussed around playing not just wizards, but a very specific variety of wizards. The similarities to Pendragon are spotted immediately, as are many of the other system and style elements that would be crucial in the success of the storyteller system games later. He's also pleased with the strong emphasis on troupe play, making sure the players work together, treating the group as more important than any one character. The envelope is being pushed here, and people are definitely noticing already.
The magister is a AD&D forgotten realms supplement. D&D's magic system may be a messy business, but he loves it anyway. Elminster narrates, and his tone is as fun to read as ever. Lots of new spells and items, some amusing lampshading, it adds both usable material and colour to the game. Sounds like the kind of thing the magazine has been doing for ages.
Talislanta sorcerers guide gets a rather more mixed review. While there are some cool features, they aren't as well presented as the previous books, and you'll have to fill them out yourself. So it goes.
The spell book sees Ken's enthusiasm fizzle out. He hasn't really had the time to properly digest the HERO system, and lots of dry discussion on how to properly balance a magic system doesn't hold his interest. One primarily for system tinkerers and heavy crunch lovers.
Fiction: Lord of the keep by Brenda K Ward. Another excellent example of the old maxim. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Offend one while working with them, and you may well face an ending worse than death, that also serves to advance some other goal of theirs, while technically getting exactly what you asked for. Which is what happens here. An excellent example for your more machiavellian characters to follow. Hone that sense of dramatic irony, and get plotting your inventive revenges. MuahaHAHAHAAA!!!!!
The role of computers: J R R Tolkien's War in Middle-earth has had almost as lengthy a gestation period as the book it's based upon. It only gets 3 stars, but the text seems rather more positive than that, painting a picture of an epic game requiring you to juggle multiple characters to achieve the objectives from the book and get used to flipping between the macro and character level perspectives. Hmm. Seems like people do try and put their best feet forward when tackling this property.
Hillsfar is the second of our computer based AD&D adventures. Explore said area of the forgotten realms, fight in the arena, deal with the tyranical ruler and his lackeys, and generally play in the sandbox. Fun, but not a hugely deep game, and marred slightly by saving being rather limited and no pausing. A bit of a filler game between the previous and upcoming epics.
Abrams battle tank is a high crunch simulation of driving said bit of heavy military ordinance. You have to flick between controlling the 4 different stations, drive, load, target and fire. And try and actually get some battle missions done. Sounds like a lot of keypress memorization required.
Sim City Terrain editor takes the still fledgeling program mentioned in passing last issue, and makes it into the supremely customizable timewaster we know and love. Now there's a nostalgia hit for me. Sim city was included on my first PC, and I spent ages playing around in it. The number of familiar names should increase quite considerably in the near future.
The role of books: The eight by Katherine Nevile is a playful espionage novel interleaving stories set in 1973 and the french revolution. It avoids the danger of involving the famous historical characters too closely, and develops it's own quirky cast and plot twists. The reviewer rather enjoys it.
Gamearth by Kevin J Anderson is an interestingly meta story which alternates between the viewpoint of a fantasy world, and the gaming group that plays those characters, as they try and stop the GM from ending the world. You know, you can just stop and walk away. It's not as if your players will chain you to the chair to force you to keep playing. Anyway, the question of whether the game universe is real or not, and it's relation to earth is left hanging, as is the final fate of the game, which frustrates the reviewer, but may be the point the author was trying to make. How very tricky to make a judgement on.
Starfarers by Vonda N McIntyre sees a would be space exploration ship under attack from global politicking. Lots of subplots delve into the lives of various crewmembers, and how they got to be in their current position, keeping the high concept from becoming too overbearing.
Lord of cragsclaw by Bill Fawcett and Neil Randall is a well built shared world story. It features anthropomorphic felines, but don't let that put you off. It definitely looks like there's plenty more room for worldbuilding and stories here.
The earth lords by Gordon R Dickinson gets a moderately negative review. The plotting and worldbuilding don't hang together brilliantly, and he isn't sure if it's fantasy or science fiction. Either way, he's produced better books.
Burning water by Mercedes Lackey has one of those omnicompetent protagonists who would be annoying if they weren't so likable. It runs the gamut of occult traditions in the course of it's plot, treating them all with respect and a decent amount of research. It looks like the start of another book series.
Who's afraid of beowulf by Tom Halt puts ancient characters in a modern day situation, and lets the humour flow naturally from there. The characters react logically to the strange situations, and it still manages to be a fairly dramatic story.
Dragonmith gets lost again. Yamara is saved by the debt collection. It's so hard to be a world threatening villain and stay under budget.
Three monstrous compendia planned already? Why not just release one big book. That would be far more convenient. ;)
A fairly interesting issue, and one that I got through quite quickly. As second edition finally starts to hit the magazine, even topics that they've covered before become fresh again, to be tackled from a different angle, with new rules. We're really getting somewhere now, and things are going to become more familiar, once again. Now the main thing they have to do is survive the controversies, and convert people over to the new way of doing things. Will they lose people in the process? Lets hope if they do, they'll at least send in vitriolic letters to say why they're leaving.
Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989
part 1/3
116 pages. From one repeated topic to another. Last issue it was spellcasting, now it's warriors turn again. Will they be able to deliver a fresh spin on the theme, or will it be the same old ideas? Roger's editorial shows he's very much aware of this problem, and it would probably be worse if he didn't reject lots of the most obvious ideas, that people seem to come up with independently again and again. And let's not even get into the massive hassles of active plagiarism, which we have to spot before publishing or face the legal consequences. This is one reason a good index is damn handy, so you don't have to rely on fallible memory, and can just flip through and say Done that, done that, done that, ooooh, shiny, haven't done that yet, and get on with things.
In this issue:
Peh. The columbia tape and music club? So much for the adverts in here being at least vaguely themed. This is crap. Oh well, I suppose their money is as good as anyone's. This is your fault for mentioning filking, Mr Bunnell. :p
Letters: A letter asking for more characters in the Marvel-Phile. Unfortunately, we've become a victim of our own comprehensiveness, and are running short of characters that haven't been covered yet. And we wouldn't want to go around engaging in mindless rehash there as well, would we?
Three letters pointing out errata on the various dragon entries from issue 146. Two are minor, but one would be very nasty if missed. Extra levels all round!
A rather amusingly phrased letter about a mistake in issue 144's minis review. This is what happens when you have several units with very similar names, and the product itself has errata.
Forum: Robert Benson thinks that completely glossing over religion and social order is removing a big chunk of the fun of playing clerics. Looks like this argument is going to run and run.
Hammad Hussain is also very much in favour of a rich mythological underpinning for your characters to riff off. If that means stealing from the real world, so be it. It's not as if D&D hasn't done plenty of that already. Plus, there ought to be more monotheistic religions in fantasy worlds. Where's the fun if all the faiths get along anyway.
Allen Wessels, on the other hand, is continuing to stir the pot when it comes to illusion adjudication. Damn this stuff gets tiresome after a while. How does Roger cope, reading hundreds of these things every month?
Eric Ehlers has lots of points to make, primarily about ability scores, race/class selections, and the sometimes irritating ways his players behave involving them. Munchkins.
Bryan Penney notes that the demon lords and similar singular beings are actually pretty weedy when compared to their good outerplanar counterparts and powerful PC's. Their magical versatility in particular ought to be increased to make them a credible threat. Well, most of them were created well before UA, and the later power creep, in days where even the founders of the game had never seen a party get much above name level. Don't you worry, many of them will get quite substantial upgrades next edition.
Valerie A Valusek thinks that fighters can be properly distinguished from one another, especially if you use nonweapon proficiencies. If you don't roleplay them at all, then of course they'll be boring to play. In the process, she also demonstrates that women can enjoy playing cheesecake characters of the opposite gender and stirring up trouble via titilation too.
Howard J Nenno has a rather more pragmatic set of ideas for how to make a straight fighter useful out of combat. People may fear the wizard, but they respect a guy who knows how to use a sword more. Fudge it all to hell.
Ann Dupuis proves that when you combine horse lovers and roleplayers, you get some of the most ludicrous attention to detail ever put down on a page, as she discusses some more coat patterns that didn't get mentioned in our painting guide a few months ago. Correlations between coat and hoof colour, the way their coats change as they age, it throws our own obsessive behaviour into sharp relief.
Sage advice moves officially to 2nd edition. The whole set is out now, so people can play games by the book without having to refer back to the old edition. And they've had it long enough to send questions in. But because the new edition is actually pretty similar to the old one, people are more likely to be caught out by the small differences. Which means nit-picking. Yay for us.
How much fire can a fire-producer produce when a fire producer produces fire ( 1 per level. Quantity /=/ quality. )
What is the surface area of the average man. (Skip cannot be bothered to calculate this. Get some cling-film and find out at home kids. (TSR is not responsible for any suffocations caused by being wrapped in cling film. ))
Can halflings become clerics (couldn't they anyway. Why do you ask?)
Does taking mountaineering boost your climb walls chance (yes. Fear the synergy)
Are strength bonuses multiplied when backstabbing. (Still no, despite what page 40 says)
How much does chain penalize your thieving skills 5% worse than elven (note the name change from 1st ed) in all respects)
Are multiclassed bards allowed (Finally. No more stupid lockstep class switching)
Do paladins and rangers need more than one stat at 16+ to get xp bonuses or not (I'm afraid so. )
What happened to double specialization. (Too broken, man. Go play BD&D if you want to get really really good with one weapon. )
Can you specialize in more than one weapon. No, but you don't have to pick your speciality right at the start, unlike last edition. )
Do demihuman fighters get extraordinary strength (yes)
Does armour affect animal empathy (Man what? No. Some people ask the dumbest things.)
Ranger's spellcasting sucks now! (Only by comparison. Be thankful they still have it at all. They won't forever.)
Can rangers use elven chain mail without penalty (No)
What do favoured enemy bonuses apply to (only attack rolls)
Can paladins dual class (as long as they don't violate their principles. If they do, they become fighters anyway, so the point is moot)
Why can't wizards learn all the spells around (because that would make them even more powerful compared to other classes. We don't want that. )
What's the minimum intelligence for specialist wizards (Same as for any other )
What happened to Write ( It was wrong for the game. Nothing personal, you understand. So we parted amicably)
What's the material component for spectral hand ( Don't ask. If we forgot to require one, you don't need one. )
Does enchanting your weapons break invisibility (Buffs are not attacks. Take advantage of this fact.)
Does delayed blast fireball have a limit ( same as regular one. Yes, that means you're already at the cap long before you can cast it. Not good game design)
Spells are missing from appendix 5. (And you are surprised about this why?)
Can any race be a diviner (any race that can be a wizard. This will not continue to be the case as more races are added. )
What happened to cantrips. (They were folded up. Now you can use them spontaneously. It's not quite sorcerer level yet, but it's a start. )
Can mages automatically read and write common (no)
Fireballs can detonate early and backfire (no change there. That's the thing about artillery. It isn't very discriminate. )
A ring of three wishes only radiates faint magic? Surely shome mishtake! (Nope. It's judging on criteria of quantity of powers, not quality. )
Always wear your best suit: Ahh, yes. This is fitting given some of the stuff they just discussed in the forum. One of the primary ways you can distinguish one fighter from another is what they're wearing. In the real world, people spend substantially more on one thing over another due to their cosmetic appearance, rather than their pure capabilities. Putting jewelery, odd ruffles, extra large shoulderpads, spikes, various colours, etc, is another way you can customize your character. Course, unless you actually have some kind of visual representation of your characters, people are unlikely to bother with this, so they also give another set of ideas for special materials, so you can pay loads extra for minor mechanical benefits. All in all, it's pretty dull. They'd need to get in someone like Ed to keep me awake through this bit of the syllabus.
Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989
part 2/3
Tracking down the barbarian: Looks like they aren't abandoning the old edition straight away. The barbarian may have been probably the most problematic of the UA classes (not being allowed to associate with spellcasters is probably more harmful to a D&D party than the cavalier's moral code.) but plenty of people still like the archetype, and want to see it done justice in AD&D. David Howery, one of our more frequent forumites, is amongst them. So he gives them a mild nerfing, massaging away their more egregious powers, while also making them more integrated into their native variety of wilderness, with better designed skills. I'm generally not very keen on nerfings, but I do like this one, which seems rather better thought out than the original version. Definitely worth considering, although if this brings them in line with the likes of the paladin and ranger, you might want to drop their XP requirements similarly.
Good does not mean boring: Ahh, the old paladin problem. Just what is proper behaviour for someone who has to be a fairly unswerving exemplar of law and good. Like far too many moral dilemmas, it can only be truly solved by ignoring it, as 4e demonstrates. Fortunately, Scott Bennie does not fall into the one size fits all camp, nor does he forget that they're holy warriors, and killing evil things is an objectively good act in D&D (at least, as long as it isn't done in an evil manner) Similarly, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best you can be, and recognized for that fact. It's when the publicity seeking becomes more important to you than the actual heroic deeds, you put others down instead of improving yourself to keep your place, or you get into ends justify the means crap that you're headed for a fall. A pretty decent set of guidelines. This also fixes another problem, that of the retroactive making all paladins also cavaliers, separating them out again, so you can have cavaliers, paladins, and cavalier-paladins running around in the same campaign. It could probably have done more to make paladins that aren't so bound up in western medieval cultural mores, but it's a quite decent article for it's size. Looks like they're really trying to get 1st ed sorted out before they say goodbye to it.
Space 1889 tells us what supplements they have coming up. Sweet.
The corrected Cavalier: Once again it looks like they're trying to fix the classes that didn't make the cut for the new edition. David Howery is rather more brutal in his cuts here than he was with the barbarian, getting rid of both powers and restrictions aplenty. Hmm. While once again, I quite approve of his objectives, he might be going a bit too far this time. Wouldn't want them to wind up underpowered, would we. This is the kind of thing that would definitely require playtesting to see for sure. And whether it's a mechanical improvement or not, all these articles in quick succession feels like a conscious rejection of Gary's old work and design style, and an attempt to homogenize everything. These three articles are definite fuel for the edition wars, and it'll be interesting to see what responses they get. Your opinions and actual play experiences would be especially welcome in this matter.
Arcane Lore: Healing is just about the only thing clerics can do, that wizards can't. There are a few spells that break that rule, but they're pretty high level, and do so indirectly. (Ed Greenwood, and his sneaky synostodweomer aside) But even if they can't break the laws of magic, wizards will always be pushing at their limits, and that's what this is about. First, there's an examination of D&D physics, looking at the spells that do offer some limited restorative properties, and trying to figure out the rules and limitations of wizardly magic from those, so as to not produce results that break the current niche protection. I note we're still missing vampiric touch, which would be a staple spell for many magic users in later editions. Secondly, we have 7 new spells which work from these principles. Quite interesting ones, too.
Arnvid's unseen limb gives you an invisible, selectively insubstantial limb to do stuff with. This is incredibly handy even if you aren't actually missing any limbs, and even more so if you are. Oh, the tricks you could pull with something like this. :rubs hands together: I may have to read up on Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton books.
Empath lets you transfer damage to yourself. Since it has a long casting time, and at the same level, clerics'll be curing serious wounds left, right and centre, It's rather a last resort spell.
Life force transfer also lets you transfer damage. Slightly less, but a lot faster, so it's useful in a combat situation. Given how weedy magic-users are, this seems rather risky, unless they value your life above their own. Don't want to lose your secondary medic as well.
Dispel exhaustion is just the illusionist spell at a level higher, to reflect that wizards aren't as good at that deception stuff. Meh. Another bit of niche protection is nibbled at, but since illusionists are being merged, it doesn't matter any longer.
Accelerated metabolism lets you heal at the rate of a day's rest per turn. Awesome. Course, like haste, this plays hell with your lifespan, and you have to spend the whole time eating and sleeping to keep your body functional, so it won't be kind to your provisions either. (and lets not think about the toilet arrangements) Could probably be twisted to other inventive uses on unwilling creatures. It also has an amusingly appropriate material component. Burning the candle at both ends indeed.
Vampire dagger is like vampiric touch, only it spreads it's draining over multiple hits, and lasts quite a while. This'll definitely extend your wizard's close combat time by quite a bit. (if you can hit) If you have the stuff, (which will cost a lot) combine with Tenser's transformation for great brutality.
Exchange lets you transfer HP from one character to another. This can be done unwillingly, but the amount is still fairly small, and since this is an 8th level spell with a slow casting, it's not going to be killing any equivalent level challenges or saving your friends asses mid battle.
Overall, it's a fairly well balanced set. Even a wizard in their teens will be hard pressed to match a low level cleric in terms of recovery power. As it feels like the kind of research wizards would logically do in game when confronted with their limitations, and most of them are not even as good at healing as common wizard spells of the next edition, I'm inclined to be generous with this one. You can come in if you like.
TSR previews: D&D almost entirely takes over this month, in one form or another. They decide that using the little grey box to denote the most important release is going to continue, even though the corebooks are out. This time, it's the dungeon master's screen that gets the special attention. Since 4 bits of card isn't a very impressive product, they also include a mini adventure. Anyone play this one?
The Forgotten Realms is still proving ridiculously popular, and getting the support to match. You saw the adventure last month, now read the novelisation of Tantras, part 2 of the Avatar Trilogy. See the people who will soon become gods do their stuff. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Kara-Tur, we have OA6: Ronin Challenge. The setting is much more filled out than it used to be, and this module certainly intends to take advantage of this.
Greyhawk gets a boxed set covering its eponymously named city. Greater detail than ever before! You still won't be able to match the insane level of detail the FR'll build up in a few years.
D&D is also reaping the rewards of all that effort creating boxed sets, with Dawn of the Emperors. Thyatis vs Alphatia! For great justice! With Airships! Oh yes, that reminds me, the princess ark series should be along sometime soon. I'm definitely looking forward to that. We're also getting TM1: The western Countries. See the known world mapped out in a style imitating real world hiking maps. A typically amusing conceit that probably springs from Bruce Heard's mind.
Our token unrelated product this month is the Deluxe city campaign set for Marvel Superheroes. New york, new york. What a great place to adventure in. Can you make sure it doesn't get destroyed and rebuilt as often as Tokyo?
Quote from: (un)reason;357746Ann Dupuis proves that when you combine horse lovers and roleplayers, you get some of the most ludicrous attention to detail ever put down on a page, as she discusses some more coat patterns that didn't get mentioned in our painting guide a few months ago. Correlations between coat and hoof colour, the way their coats change as they age, it throws our own obsessive behaviour into sharp relief.
Yeah, but that letter accomplished 2 things:
It once came back to me in a stack of things I'd written that a fan wanted me to sign (when I saw it, I said "I've never been published in Dragon Magazine!" and he promptly opened it to the letters page)...
... and it was one of the reasons that Bruce Heard recognized my name as we were shopping at the same booth at Origins. (He'd also seen Dragon Magazine article proposal I'd submitted that was rejected, about how to string all the D&D modules then available into a vast uber-campaign...) Bruce was looking for a writer with attention to detail and knowledge of animals for the Night Howlers product for D&D. :-)
Ann Dupuis
Grey Ghost Press, Inc.
http://fudgerpg.com
I think that demonstrates again how interconnected tiny seeming things can be, and the ways they can come back and have consequences years later, for better or worse. The vast number of details you have to take into account are why we can't predict the future, yet what happens can seem obvious in retrospect.
Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989
part 3/3
Luck of the draw: Interesting. This article is essentially the equivalent of an ecology of for this magical item, presenting us with some fiction of a group encountering them, trying to find out more, and having a little drama along the way. The writer answers the question of what happens if you try various rules exploits, and some cosmological questions that could be used as further plot hooks. He also demonstrates a delightfully cruel sense of humour, as the characters act in a very PC like manner. Yeah, this is pretty sweet. Yet more encouragement for me to include this kind of thing into my own games, sit back, and watch the group do it all to themselves for a while. I think I shall put the LP of maniacal laughter on the gramophone and let it run for a while while I go make a cup of tea.
The game wizards: The Sniper! games obviously can't be doing too terribly, because it looks like they've got a computer game conversion. What's more, they're multiplayer internet ones as well. Looks like they use ascii visuals, which is rather amusing, but is probably needed for bandwidth saving reasons. As is usual for this column, this is a promotional piece, making people aware of their shiny new stuff, and talking about how it works, the changes that needed to be made for the new medium. Real time gaming is quite a different experience to taking turns, but the fact that you can stack orders should allow you to run to the loo and not die horribly straight away. As with Kesmai, we see that they're still trailblazing in their developments, and having to figure out the best way to handle different genres from scratch. Better pray your connection doesn't lag. Fairly interesting.
Role-playing reviews: Looks like monsters are this month's theme here. In particular books concentrating on one or two specific ones. Another sign of the increase in fine detail in modern books, we've gone from statblocks of a few lines, to pages of ecology, to entire elaborate studies. But of course, detail is no indicator of quality. Let's see what Jim makes of this crop.
Ents of fangorn is of course for MERP. Remember, they might have been on the hobbit's side, but these are scary guys when roused, and have some decidedly alien cousins. If your players play things wrong, they could easily wind up their bad side. But the book doesn't present that brilliantly, with the actual adventures being more orc infested dungeons than bosky shifting woods. Looks like the writers are sneaking D&Disms back into a property that inspired it.
Into the troll realms is for runequest. Like the previous one, it's more about the adventures than a detailed examination of the creatures, but that's because there already was a supplement on that (Reviewed in issue 67, and with a revision coming soon) But this time the adventures are pretty good, with inventive plots that aren't all hack and slash. Looks like Runequest is still fairly popular.
GAZ10 The orcs of Thar takes a lighthearted, Paranoia inspired look at it's subject, giving the various humanoids a distinctive voice, as we saw in the Orcwars game a few months ago. Life may be cheap, but they still know how to have fun, looting, pillaging, and smashing their way through the nearby hooman countries. The various races all get 36 level progressions with optional spellcasting, and are balanced by the bigger ones being tougher at the start, but requiring more xp to advance, so they'll eventually fall behind. All are certainly a lot more effective than the optional rules given in this magazine for AD&D humanoids. It's all good whimsical fun, useful for both players and DM's.
AC10 bestiary of giants and dragons takes a rather different tack, being more a bunch of adventures than a detailed ecological examination. It does have some interesting visual aids and tables though. Overall, it seems like something to dip into, rather than use all in one go.
The role of computers: Prophecy is a fairly decent action-adventure game. Save the land from the latest villain trying to take it over. The review section of this is fairly short, with lots of direct hints on how to get past certain obstacles and win the game. Seems like the clue corner is proving very popular, so they've decided to apply that approach to the actual reviews. Curious.
The magic candle gets a more conventional review, for a slightly less conventional game. Create a party, and send them off to save another kingdom. What's different is the way that play is handled, with party splitting, formalized training, and actions consuming energy, which then needs to be carefully managed. Does seem like it'll require quite a bit of character switching and learning to complete.
Pool of radiance and Ultima V are our main subjects in the clue corner. Amusingly, they advise us to sleep spam low level creatures. Ahh, the joys of older editions. Overall, this one feels a bit shorter than usual. Oh well, plenty more stuff to see.
Around the world in 36 levels: Basic D&D gets a straight promotional piece. Seems like far too many people look down on it, and are ignoring it in favour of going straight to AD&D. That's certainly the way it seems from the articles in the magazine. But recently, they have been doing some pretty extensive worldbuilding, filling in the various countries in ways that make them quite different from the base assumptions (apart from Karameikos of course, which is designed to satisfy them as no other) but still fun places to adventure in. This makes it much easier for you to get a campaign going, and keep it interesting, whatever your level. There's plenty of information, while at the same time not filling in so much that the DM has no freedom to fill things in further. There is a faint hint of desperation to this, and it does make me wonder just what the current state of affairs is in terms of sales, and the office politics surrounding it. Is it being kept on as a sinecure, is it in danger of being cancelled? In any case, I do find this a little worrying, as well as largely being a waste of space for me, as it's not introducing any new material. Let's hope this works, and brings round some new players, because it's not the kind of thing I'm very keen on seeing.
Through the looking glass: Another battle report this issue. The old classic turnaround of the humanoids attacking the village sees a whole bunch of creatures, from kobolds to an umber hulk, teaming up to bring the devastation. Still, the good guys assemble fast, and thanks to a bit of wizardly artillery, the battle is nowhere near one sided. The battle is recounted in a very close to the ground way, with individual figures given lots of characterization. Using minis does not have to mean a lack of roleplaying. A rather quirky little entry here, that's interesting to read, but not particularly useful. I guess, like the fiction, it doesn't have to be, it just needs to be inspirational.
Watch your step!: Top Secret gets it's first article this year. That really does illustrate just how much they've dropped the non D&D stuff recently, usually only having one token article on another TSR gameline per issue. And this little piece on landmines shows that they're continuing their focus on more military matters, and are unlikely to reverse either trend any time soon. With plenty of talk about the trigger mechanisms of these delightful little lumps of potential death, this is easily convertible to other games, including the making of D&D traps. If you want to play things tomb of horrors style, where player ingenuity is paramount over rolls, and one wrong step spells doom, this is a good one to incorporate. If not, well, you probably won't want to use these regularly. Still, either way, it's another pretty decent choice for you to take as a GM.
Dragonmirth runs up against bureaucracy again. Yamara looks for a new job. We really need another comic to fill out this section.
Ooh, pretty. Connecting with the deck of many things article earlier this issue, we have a selection of cards for you to cut out and use when your players encounter this item. Course, this is another thing that'll be somewhat inconvenient to construct from .pdf, because you'll need to print out both sides, and then stick them to cardstock, but that's not an insurmountable problem. The biggest danger is the artifacts from your assembly process allowing them to figure out which card is which and only pick the good ones. Guess I'll just have to be extra careful. Or use the tarot of many things from issue 77 instead. Now that was a nifty article.
A rather quirky issue. With the combination of an unusually high level of whimsy, and the extensive look back on the old classes, it does stand out, although I'm not entirely sure if it's in a good or bad way. As usual when there's plenty of both good and bad elements, I shall have to return a cautious positive. It's certainly not a load of rehashed crap, despite drawing heavily from existing material.
Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Another classic cover graces this issue. They're really having a good run of those lately. Guess the work of the art director, and the rest of the team working under Roger deserves credit. Speaking of which, Roger decides to let the assistant editor do this month's editorial. How's that for delegation. Let them handle the tedious stuff about what we're currently looking for, and how to format it in such a way that it has the best chance of being accepted. How very tempting for him. One of those things I know will become more common later, especially once Dale A Donovan joins the team. Definitely worth noting. Increasingly, they become a corporation rather than a collection of individuals.
In this issue:
Mutazoids! Feel the allegory, or just enjoy the gonzo and ultraviolence.
Letters: There is no escaping Waldorf! They tried to shut down discussion of him in issue 141, but people keep sending letters in. Must be the most popular topic they've had in a long time. This is absolutely hilarious, but does get a little repetitive, since it mostly involves even more powerful characters engaging in revenge fanfic upon him. Can't we just call it quits and rebuild Greyhawk like it never happened? Of course we can. But this isn't over yet. Waldorf will be back! :shakes fist:
Forum: Toby Myers thinks that wishes should be the province of found objects, not PC spellcasters. He also thinks they shouldn't be able to directly grant you metagame stats like XP and levels. No escaping this crowd.
Peter M Wilbur thinks that artificially dividing low and high fantasy when D&D is designed to progress naturally from one to the other is a bit silly. It's also a bit of a waste to miss out those first few levels. They go by awfully fast, and if you miss them your characterization won't be the same.
Matt Richardson thinks that people are having problems with low level magic-users not because the class is weak, but because they're playing them stupidly. They need high intelligence for a reason.
R. J. Wenzel thinks that even if wizards did wear armour, and use weapons, their low attack probabilities and hit points would result in them getting trounced in short order. Course, even in an all fighter team, bombarding the enemy from a safe position is vastly preferable to toe to toe fighting anyway. Surely winning without being in danger is a good thing?
Jeremy Gilliam rebutts Bob Tarantino (while misspelling his name, dear oh dear) simply saying that he prefers the greater detail and character options in AD&D.
Ilya Taytslin once again demonstrates that you've gotta actually play smart creatures smart if you want to challenge powerful adventurers. Anything that just charges into hand to hand combat deserves everything it gets. Even if they don't have magic, allies, traps, items, environmental stuff can all be put to great use.
Aaron Goldblatt is another person who thinks that evil characters should be entirely capable of working together as long as it seems more beneficial for them to do so than betraying or stealing from their allies. Just leave the assassins out of it please.
David G Rathbun also thinks evil PC's can make sense, as long as they aren't chaotic evil, and they have some reason to stick around and work together with the other characters. If they act like complete idiots, enforce logical consequences upon them and things should sort themselves out pretty quickly, probably by killing the character or removing them from play.
Tarun Nagpal also gives his experiences with evil PC's. They'll certainly face more than their share of obstacles. But that does not mean the game won't be fun to play. It'll just be different to the shiny heroic ones. And variety is a good thing. If your players can predict you too well, it's hard to challenge them.
Sage advice: Do you need to learn how to use bastard swords one handed and two handed separately (Your DM's decision. )
Why would anyone use anything else if slings are so cheap and effective. ( Clearance, mostly. That and point blank shots. Why use swords if polearms are more damaging and have greater reach. )
If system shock rolls are used when being raised, what are resurrection survival rolls for (AWOOGA AWOOGA! Eratta alert! Please fix immediately!)
How much do staves cost. (find one yourself. It's far more rewarding than getting one from the shops. )
Can you use missile weapons in melee (not easily)
How much damage do short bows do (Same as it ever was. not fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better)
Why can't spears be set to do double damage against charges anymore (yes they can. )
Can you attack while withdrawing. (yes, but the rhythm method isn't very reliable.)
Where are nets, lassos and mauls (cut for space at the last minute. They'll be back in a few supplements time. )
What are the stats for a broad sword. (barely different from a long sword. I don't know why you would want to differentiate them)
Can you fire an arquebus faster at high level (not unless you specialize. Note that you'll need regular supplies of gunpowder to practice enough for this.)
Can you wield a longsword in both hands at once ( Not unless you're drizzt. And you really don't want that.)
Can you specialize in two weapons and then attack with full bonuses for both( no, doubly. So very illegal. )
What happened to space requirements (they were relegated to the realms of common sense. You may want to go there some time. )
Why can't you use blunt weapons nonlethally (Lack of finesse. This is why you don't get flail duels. Get some flail snails and make them duel instead. That should be a good little earner. )
The table of save priority and the example contradict one-another (the table's right, the examples wrong. Rip it out and throw it in the bin. )
What's the conversion rate between 1st and 2nd ed. (They're the same, apart from some specific attacks of inflation. )
What's the conversion rate between GP and dollars (approximately 1 gp = $20. Not that you could spend them straight away)
Can you multiclass subclasses (not unless we say you can)
Do you divide Xp between classses when multiclassed (nothing has changed here. Move along. )
Does temporary con damage temporarily reduce HP (yes)
What happened to alignment languages (They're gone. And we shall pretend they never existed. No one could ever agree what they were anyway. )
Do drow and svirfneblin still have all their 1st ed special powers (not until they get books for 2nd ed. It's like the disappearance and reappearance of monks and assassins and half-orcs. )
What are PC race's size classes ( You should be able to figure this one out no trouble )
What use is the healing proficiency (Do you decry the medical profession. Unlike gods, It'll never abandon you just because you break some stupid rule. Skip pitys da foo who underestimates it's use. )
The math on mountaineering doesn't add up ( Oh dear. That's not good. )
Why is it impossible to climb a dry ice wall, when you can climb a slippery one (all ice walls are slippery. At least until they get so cold that layers of your skin stick to them when you touch them. And you don't want to climb like that. You'd be a skeleton before you were halfway up the cliff face. )
Can you disbelieve an illusion at any time (as long as you can justify it)
Does plate still reduce damage (No. Skip streamlines. )
What good is a helmet (Skip will cap a muthafucka in the back of the head. Then you'll see what good a helmet does.)
Why are you killing baby dragons. Isn't this a family friendly magazine (because if you don't get them now, they become near impossible to stop. )
Do demihumans have to spend a slot to learn common (Probably best to give it to them for free. PC's can't really work together unless they can all understand each other. )
Are running and jogging cumulative (No. Man, that takes the cake for stupid questions. )
What's the correct procedure for dual class characters losing levels (whatever would be most inconvenient. We are still sadists, and awkward characters like this are a prime target to pick on. )
What happened to falling damage being geometric (Like so many of Gary's mid period contributions, we chucked it. We are our own people now. )
Do you take falling damage if you diliberately jump (yes)
Which way do proficiency modifiers go (High good, Low bad. Napster still irrelevant.)
Magic for beginners: Greg Detwiler continues to prove himself a fairly reliable contributer, with this article on how to keep magical weapons from becoming too crucial too soon. If you do things wrong, then you either end up with a situation where everyone can always affect the enemy, and there's no mystery and tension to a battle, or one where no-one can do anything, and they're in deep shit. Finding the right balance between those extremes can be tricky. Here's plenty of suggestions to solve this. Charged weapons that you need to save for when it's needed. Ones made out of special materials that only penetrate DR on specific types of creatures. Illusory items that'll hurt things vulnerable to magic, as long as they believe in them. When you consider that you need 16th level spellcasters for the most basic of permanent magical items, it's vaguely surprising that tricks like this aren't more common. Another example of how the D&D demographics and economy doesn't add up. In a similar vein, although obviously less extreme than dark sun's making metal scarce, this seems like a good way to up the level of grittiness in your campaign, and encourage players to be cautious and tactical in picking their fights. Not a terrible design goal to have, really. Definitely one I'll be considering.
The Envelope, Please!: Convention season is drawing to a close. So let's do a little looking back, at some of the more important events. Such as the Origins awards. They've been going for quite a while, but obviously, as TSR sided with Gen con during the feuding years, we've seen little on them in this magazine. A fairly balanced set of awards this year, with no one product obviously sweeping the board. GURPS, Sky Galleons of mars, and F-19 Stealth fighter each get two awards. TSR isn't completely ignored, but D&D is, with their minis line, and The hunt for Red October boardgame winning awards, along with Pool of Radiance featuring in their computer game awards. And Rick Loomis gets inducted into the hall of fame, having been working here right from the start. Make of that what you will.
Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989
part 2/3
The dragon's bestiary: This month's theme is variant horses. We've had a few of those before, plus a good few articles on regular horses, but it looks like this is the first time we've got a whole bestiary full of them. Let's hope at least a few of them show some imagination.
Av are, as the description says, the greyhounds of the horse world. Slim, very fast, and good at dealing with desert heat and terrain, they aren't good for combat, but make excellent mounts for messengers and scouts.
Bahtel, on the other hand, are rather stronger and more aggressive than normal horses, and make very good fighting mounts, able to kick, bite and headbutt all in the same round. Not that it's easy to stay on their back while they do so, but you can't expect power without work. And they aren't hugely loyal either. Better have a good ranger or barbarian handy to establish dominance over the buggers.
Kiita are intelligent quadropeds that choose you rather than being chosen, and depart just as abruptly when you no longer hold their curiosity. How very folklorish. With their minor magical powers, they seem like they have a good story in them.
Vor are not unicorns, but you might mistake them for one if you aren't an anthropologist. They aren't intelligent or magical, but they do have a little horn, and are very good at smelling poisons. This may annoy players at first if you introduce them, but what's wrong with that? ;)
Wandega are another quirky intelligent horse variant. They have minor magic learning powers, and like to team up with spellcasters so they can properly take advantage of this fact. They do tend to be a bit clingy, and have a number of other personality traits that they encourage you to play out, that could be amusing or annoying, depending on the group. Plenty of tools here for both PC's and adversaries to take advantage. Overall, I think this has been a solid, but not brilliant collection of creatures.
Advice for all mutants: Skip gets another Q&A column to answer gamma world questions with. He is becoming important of late. How did they ever manage without him.
Where in the modules are the things depicted on the covers (Nowhere! We do not constrain our artists imagination by forcing them to pay attention to what they're illustrating. )
What happened to module GW5 (Something went wrong in production. Skip will not reveal what. Can anyone out there in reader land enlighten us? )
How many more gamma world modules will we see. (None! As with star frontiers, it has proved insufficiently popular for continued support)
How do the maps in the modules fit together (Imperfectly! )
Where are the descriptions for the loot tables (GW6. We didn't want to waste space reprinting it in later ones. Gotta collect 'em all! )
How do you calculate service costs ( Skill of the workers multiplied by time it's gonna take to make the item. )
What does the endurance skill do ( Lets you fight on through the pain! Let's you fight on, through the darkness and the rain! Dreaming of the day we'll be together again! [/power ballad] )
Does high con let you avoid radiation (no, only lessen it)
I want vehicle stats (pay for the appropriate supplement then. Remember, you can mail order if the shops are being bastards. )
What's a pneumo-jack (Same as a regular car jack, only futuristic!)
Where are expanded rules for robots (GW10. Cyborgariffic!)
How often can you use telekinetic arm (3/day)
What protects you from black rays ( Light shields. Even black is a colour.)
How long does invisibility last (As in D&D, until you do something that breaks it)
What happens if you attempt to disrupt too many molecules at once (Hnnnnnnnrrrrrg! Ohh, you might bust a brain lobe doing that. )
Why don't plant mutations have modifiers (because they aren't dependent on ability scores)
Do mutant animals get their regular species abilities free (ayup)
How often can you use regeneration (5/day. Not enough really.)
How good is physical reflection really? (it's a fairly specific lifesaver, not a godmod)
What's the range of life leech (twice the rating. In what? Skip will not say)
How often can you use telekinesis (Same as telekinetic arm. Skip wonders why they have two powers that do the same thing)
Are clips full when you buy them (Usually)
How do you power a black ray pistol (propietary power source. Not easy to find.)
How much does a grenade hurt. (A lot, if you're nearby. )
What is a bu'daan protected against (Electricity)
Does pyrokinesis protect you from lasers (no)
Can a PC ultraborg have a stage V ID (yes)
Does genius capability boost your results no matter how good they are (yes)
Can a paralyzed character use mental mutations (Usually. Apply common sense liberally)
Do you automatically have clothes? (Easiest that way)
{Question obscured due to badly formatted advert} (No, I refuse point-blank to answer this! )
Can defence screens result in hits without damage (no, they make things miss)
Can you overcome tech level differences with training (sure)
There's a mistake in the equipment lists. (Only a few weights. It's hardly a system breaker )
When are the combat results tables used (When attacks do more than just hurt)
Is there an overall reference to the weapons and stuff (No. Once again, gotta collect 'em all. )
Orcs in space: Well, you took your time getting here. I guess orcs never were as technologically skilled as dwarves (see issue 70. ) Not actually related to the earlier one, this is still a very interesting article indeed, talking about adapting the Warhammer 40k Rogue trader rules into a full roleplaying game. The setting is not the most conductive to wandering groups of adventurers, it has to be said, with it's hypertotalitarian government and rampant xenophobia. Still, there are ways to do it, with the Rogue Traders themselves being one of the best options for semi-independent traveling. And there's certainly a rich range of places for you to explore, and challenges to face. The biggest alteration that needs to be made is reducing the lethality slightly, giving characters multiple wound points and rolling on a critical system similar to WHFRP's instead of simply dying when hit, and some basic provisions for resolving noncombat actions. Pretty cool. This reminds me of the time I modded the old Heroquest rules to allow for point buy character generation rather than being stuck with the same 4 pregens. That was pretty conductive for evolving into a roleplaying game as well. This has been refreshing, both tackling a system they haven't mentioned in here before, and taking a distinctive approach to doing so. I strongly approve.
The dragon magazine subsciption page recycles some earlier cover art.
Kesmai and beyond: It's been nearly two years since we heard about this early MMORPG. (see issue 128) Good to see it's still going and even growing, despite the costs of playing. (over $6 an hour. Nowadays people bitch about subscriptions costing $20 a month. You don't know how good you have things. ) Here we see them experimenting with new rules, new levels, new powers, and all that cool stuff. Once again, there are many elements that will seem familiar, but a few that didn't get picked up in later games, such as the way they handle upgrading to the advanced game. Grinding random drops and taking them to craftsmen to get upgraded equipment, boss monsters that are way too tough for any one person, no matter how experienced, they seem to be getting the hang of this medium's quirks. And despite the cost, there always seems to enough people online to have someone to play with. Another cool marker of how far we've come, and how far we still have to go. Makes me curious how long this particular game lasted as a vital developing world before being reduced to a sinecure and eventually shut down. I think it's googling time.
From freighters to flying boats: Star frontiers getting an article as well? This is rather more non D&D stuff in an issue than they've had for quite a while. This is a fairly long article as well, covering boats in the system. This should synergise well with the underwater stuff in issue 110. So here's 9 new vehicles, plus lots of notes on adapting the combat system to water based escapades. Ramming, surface to underwater fights, explosives, specific damage results, escaping sinking ships, (a lot easier than surviving a spaceship's destruction) this all seems pretty servicable. Remember, under the ocean is still almost as mysterious as outer space. The oceans of other planets can be even more so.
Getting it right first time: Oop. A (fourth, fifth? Something like that) guide to the handling of running convention adventures. Surely it would have been better to put this a bit before convention season, so it'd be fresh in the minds of the people about to try that grueling task for the first time. Perhaps Richard W Emerich just went though this crap himself, and that's why it's showing up now. Still, this takes you though in a sensible step by step manner, from the first preparations for your adventure, to the play itself; figuring out what works, what doesn't, what will speed up getting to the fun parts (extra important given tight time considerations.) communicating important details clearly to the players, running the adventure in a fair manner, and just as importantly, a whole bunch of things not to do. One of those articles that definitely shows the hallmarks of the years of refinement, as people have been creating and running adventures like this for over a decade now, and stress testing these ideas in reality rather than just theorizing about what ought to work, or not. And since many of these idea are also pretty beneficial when applied to standard home campaigns, and our writer has a fast-paced entertaining writing style, this is one time I have no problem with them repeating a topic. See you again in another 3-4 years, probably.
Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989
part 3/3
TSR previews: Not one, but two products get the grey box treatment this month. The second monstrous compendium follows hot on the heels of the first one, doubling your selections of officially converted stuff to throw at the players. We're also getting the official packs of character sheets, for those of you who really want to waste money.
The second two trail maps are out this month TM2 covers the eastern countries of the Known world, while TM3 is for Krynn. Well, Ansalon is a pretty tiny continent. It doesn't need multiple maps like the others would.
Greyhawk isn't being neglected either. On the module side, we have WG10: Child's play. Intended to introduce beginning players and characters to the brutality of RPGA play. Will there be evil dolls, or would that just be too obvious? On the books side, we get The eyes have it, another Rose Estes production. A flying ship drawn by pegasi? Methinks you may be confusing your Mystara and Oerth thematics.
The novels continue, with two second books in trilogies. Kendermore is the second book in the dragonlance prequels. Tasslehoff gets to be the star. Do you want him to get married or not? Buck Rogers gets Hammer of Mars by M S Murdock. Things look bleak for Buck, as RAM squeeze him into a corner. Always darkest before the dawn, even in space.
Spelljammer gets properly advertised. It's out of this world! :groan: I guess that fits the general tone of things in the setting.
The role of books: Child of saturn by Teresa Edgerton is a pretty strong debut, mixing worldbuilding, intrigue, and strong visual descriptions. Now what she needs is some key gimmick to set her apart from all the other fantasy writers.
Light raid by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice gets a fail result due to taking too many unexplained liberties with the political situation and not engaging in future history worldbuilding in a logical manner. The result feels like a fanfic that has the characters act completely out of character.
Wizard's bane by Rick Cook has one very clever twist that livens up an otherwise somewhat subpar fantasy novel. Still, strong research needs technical skill to turn into gripping stories.
Faerie tale by Raymond E Feist also gets a mixed review. It has lots of cool elements, too many in fact, and tries to cram them all in, cluttering the story up and keeping the characters from getting the development time they deserve. Needs a good editor to streamline and focus things.
A study in sorcery by Michael Kurland is a fantasy/detective story, seeing him playing with characters and a world created by Randall Garrett. It doesn't do too badly at capturing the personalities of the existing characters, and sets up and demolishes the mystery elements quite well. Still a good idea to have read the earlier books though, as it doesn't explain all the laws of magic it references.
The further adventures of batman, edited by Martin H Greenberg doesn't quite work, partly due to the editing, which fails to give them a consistent tone or any kind of continuity, and partly due to the change in medium from comics to prose, which hurts the character more than expected. Some of the individual stories are cool, particularly Issac Asimov's take on the setting, but as a whole, it's less than the sum of it's parts.
Nightside city by Lawrence Watt-Evans is another sci-fi/private eye story. However it stands out, both due to the worldbuilding, the protagonist, and the ending, which refuses to settle into a status quo like so many of these series. Whether it'll get followed up and continue progressing is another matter altogether, of course.
The role of computers: Curse of the Azure bonds gets 5 star review. Unlike the previous AD&D games, you start off at mid-level straight away, so you won't have to grind through 1st level yet again. You can transfer characters from the previous games, but it'll still be a challenge if you rush through things. It all seems fairly familiar, with the whole range of conversation options, spells directly derived from the game, and elements you'll recognize from the book and module. However, the devil's in the details, and with a plotline that allows you to take plenty of meaningful options and do things in a nonlinear manner, they think it scores highly in this respect. Are the shilling the home company, or was it really that good?
Space quest III is also an adventure game, with a sci-fi twist. With plenty of humour, cut scenes, lots of different activities in the course of completing the adventure, and excellent visuals, it also gets pretty decent marks. Now, if only it were a bit longer and harder, so they didn't finish it so quickly.
Several other interesting tidbits. A boy and his blob gets mentioned. Now there's a nostalgia triggering name. Atari try and get into the handheld console market. I don't remember that at all. It must have done pretty badly. Anyone remember why? Always amusing to see the future that wasn't.
Spock endorses the american cancer society. Eating right is highly logical. At least they're trying to fit in. But it's still bollocks I'd rather not see in this magazine. Man, they'll let anyone in these days if they're wearing a funny hat.
Role-playing reviews:
Cyberpunk is exactly what it sounds like, Mike Pondsmith's game of the dystopian near future, where the corporations are more powerful than the government, and cybernetic augmentation separates the rich from the poor in a very intrinsic way. Build a character, define their past, gear them up, and try and build a future in the harsh urban environments where life is cheap, and knowledge of computer networking is vital. Fun little business, even if it seems a bit dated now, with the internet even more ubiquitous than imagined. Future shock's a bitch. Still, this is another pleasing reminder of how far I've come now.
GURPS autoduel is the roleplaying game version of Car Wars. Seems like evolving board games into full RPG's is a current in thing. This is a relatively grotty future, where things might be a bit run down and resources running out, but there's still more than enough stuff to create finely tuned vehicles and engage in some serious asskicking. With plenty of ongoing support, GURPS is becoming one of Jim's go to systems, as it allows you to easily mix various genres without changing characters.
F.R.E.E Lancers mixes near future tech with relatively gritty superheroics using the Top Secret/S.I system. It seems to be rather a toolkit, as while it's default assumptions involve working with the eponymous organisation, you can strip out either the espionage or superheroic elements without too much trouble. It also avoids one of the other problems this kind of game can suffer, that of making the PC's small fry who can never have any influence on their organization or the big picture. Once again, it gets a pretty positive result. Looks like you're spoiled for choice in this area. Unless it's the usual whitewash problem, which is always a possibility.
DC heroes gets a new edition. Well, all the cool kids are doing it. D&D, top secret, gamma world, ghostbusters, traveler, runequest. Seems you can't move for all the revisions.
Through the looking glass: Some fairly standard miniatures reviews here this month. Unfortunately, for the first time in a while, the photos aren't very well shaded, making some of the bits tricky to make out. I suspect this may be the fault of the people who scanned in the magazines, rather than the original photographers. In any case, it's an irritating lapse in professionalism in a run that's been rather good at that.
Anyway, Thunderbolt mountain miniatures give us a trio of elven kings (on hexagonal bases, curiously) and a swan ship for them to ride in. Both have pretty good construction and detail.
Scotia micro models contribute a load of marines with pulse rifles. They do have some design problems though, with quite a few of them coming to the reviewer with cracks, and the detail not being brilliant. Still useful if you don't have enough variety in your space marines.
Games Workshop have a Blood Bowl pack featured. Star players for each of the 5 main races appear in it. A dwarf with a proton cannon. A cyborg orc. A heavily padded human (he's gonna need it) A high fiving snotling. A spiked shoulder padded halfling. The usual touches of humour are obviously well present and correct.
Ral Patha contribute a fairly bog-standard selection of 12 different fighter models. A variety of eras and weaponry are covered, but nothing is exceptionally good or bad. Not a hugely interesting column here.
Time marches on: Even a strong issue like this runs out of steam eventually. You always have to pay attention to matters of format, page count, structure. And whenever you have to fit in a strict set of numbers, there's either going to be good stuff cut that people would want to see, or filler that they'd rather skip. So it is here, with one of those little single pagers which says little, simply telling you that one of the biggest plot drivers for a game is giving your world a history. One event leads to another, and next thing you know, it's thousands of years later, and you can follow a (not so) logical chain of action and revenge all the way through, such as in LotR. Not a terrible article, but one of those that says nothing new at all to me. I think it's time for a snooze.
Dragonmirth gets disneyfied. Yamara discovers a disturbing fact.
A strong issue, with plenty of good articles, and a higher than usual variety in them as well, that doesn't quite sustain it's momentum all the way through. And while the ratio of good stuff to bad seems pretty high at the moment, they don't seem to be producing the truly classic articles like they used too. Are they in danger of losing people through sheer reliability and lack of drama? Tricky to adventure in overpacified lands. Oh well, it's the big one five oh next issue. Maybe they'll have something special saved up to celebrate. For now, toodle-pipski from me.
Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Larry Elmore gives us another character who looks very familiar. What diabolical plots does she have for that scarecrow? Since it's october, you can bet horror'll be involved. But there's plenty of different spins to be put on that idea. In 1980, they focussed more on the fiendish side of things. This time, it's mind flayers and other mind-bending alien horrors that'll be exerting their will on your players. Mmm. Mind control and tentacles. Two great tastes that taste great together, especially if you can't get girls the normal way :p Will it be well crafted oppressive tension and violation, or cheap schlocky scares? Let's crack open this particular musty tome from ages long gone.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter pointing out that the info for the vampire in the new MC is borked. Roger replies that they are already well aware of that, have fixed it in the new printing, and just to be extra generous, are also including this bit of errata later in this issue. Can't leave a monster as popular as that messed up.
A letter with a ton of questions, that require even more lengthy replies. Boiled down, they are Sorta, thanks, role of computers, no, no. Next!
Two rather astute suggestions on getting hold of stuff, and dealing with errata. Roger is suitably chastened, but that doesn't mean he's going to use them. We have our creative independence to consider.
Forum: The forum has both an unusually large number of contributors, and the individual letters are longer than usual. They also spread it over lots of pages throughout the magazine. Guess they had a load of awkwardly sized advertising that they needed to format around. That and the responses to the edition changes are starting to hit. This should be interesting.
David Cody & Ed Kramer writes in in their official role as runners of the Origins convention to rebutt Bryan A Walker's letter from issue 145. Your worries about cancellations and gaming being seen as a negative influence are unfounded. We provide both quality and quantity. Nice to see them paying attention to stuff said in here.
Toby Myers has yet more ideas on how a smartly played dragon could kick the ass of any party it likes, probably without ever even meeting them face-to-face. You know, even really smart bad guys have to sleep too. And a few years napping can really erode your trap setup and support network. Playing them as omniscient creatures with infinite resources and a contingency for everything that means you always play into some xanatos gambit and advance some other plan is just as unrealistic as the other extreme, and probably more unfun for players. As ever, balance please.
S. D. Anderson has some advice on just how common commercially available magic scrolls should be. Once wizards get to name level, they've got better ways to make lots of money than setting up a shop for any peons and adventurers that come along. That's where the cutoff should be.
Ted Collins rebutts S. D. Anderson's little piece on how untouchable characters with ridiculously buffed magic items are. Again, this boils down to how intelligently the characters are played to shift the statistics around. Mobs can beat a single character that is vastly more powerful, especially if they play it smart. So put the smart party against the smart dragon, and watch the fireworks fly. (albeit slowly, given the time both sides spend machinating and preparing their buffs and traps)
Stephen Jorgensen thinks much the same as Ted, and would also like to factor in realistic penalties that people facing multiple enemies at once suffer. Don't forget the fatigue rolls either. Even mook-mowers will start to fade after a few hours. And then you are in trouble. A nice reminder of how cinematic D&D can be, and how little some people like that fact.
Tom Foottit also thinks that S. D. is massively exaggerating how it would turn out in a real situation, rather than a white room simulation. You don't get to 5th level while thinking like a mook. This is going to be like Alycia and Scud all over again, isn't it.
Dennis Rudolph gives his own rather idiosyncratic take on the ideas of cheating and getting more XP for high ability scores. Or less, in his case. Very interesting and worth consideration.
Matt Foster freely admits that he's pretty messed up, and D&D is his main avenue of escape from the loneliness. Spare a thought for the people who don't actually get to play regularly.
Lee Loftis has players who are getting tired of the modules with plotlines, and just want to go back to delving dungeons, killing things and taking their stuff. Please make more modules like that, TSR. Good luck with that one.
Bill McCullough talks about his rather twinked current game, and how it was gradually forced into that state by player pressure, while he wanted something more down-to-earth, but players kept leaving. This is how power creep from edition to edition happens. You pursue the commercial agenda to keep your game from dying, and before you know it, you're a complete sellout.
Anthony N Emmel is also interested in the gradual evolution of the game, and thinks that you can have both hack and slashing and complex roleplaying in the same game, and it'll be all the more fun for the variety. He also points out that the Dragonlance Chronicles, one of the biggest D&D series ever, shows good and evil characters co-existing in the same party. If they can do it, you certainly can.
Who will be the new gods of the forgotten realms? Buy the avatar trilogy to find out. Remember, all the events of the novels are canon, and change the game world accordingly. If you skip anything, you'll be confused when the world in future supplements is different. Welcome to the start of metaplot becoming a big issue, used to encourage you to buy everything for a line, and annoying people who don't want to or can't afford to do that. We'll be seeing loads more of this over the next decade. You have been warned.
Sage advice forgets to format properly this episode, Roger must have been too busy writing to edit properly.
Why haven't you answered my 1119 questions (because you asked 1119 questions. Skip only has a few pages a month to answer questions in, so he gets to choose his cases. You ain't a beautiful dame with a knack for getting Skip into trouble or a mysterious billionaire, so you get low priority.
Why are you still answering 1st ed questions (Because so many people haven't switched over yet. And because we genuinely care. We aren't some heartless machine on a constant battle to push the new and shiny at the expense of our previous product. :) :p )
How do you handle fighting a hydra. (it does involve quite a bit of bookkeeping, doesn't it. I'm sure you'll work out a way. )
What happens if a magic user tries to wield a sword (nonproficiency penalty. Thank god this isn't like that Craaaaazy last edition with it's magical weapon prohibition curses and alignment languages. )
What does sensory impairment do to your spellcasting. (Lets just say it aint pretty. This is why magic-users become liches. Going blind and deaf when your powers should be at their peak really gets on your nerves. )
What's with weapon speed factors (oh, no-one uses those. Don't worry your pretty little head. )
What about the to hit adjustment tables ( Again, you might as well ignore those. They'll just slow us down. Remember your encumbrance rules. Don't tell me you ignore those. Ok, now you've crossed the line. Skip is Not Down with ignoring encumbrance. Don't make me have to cap yo ass. )
What do polearms look like (What don't they look like. Those craaaazy medieval fighters, favoring ugly but effective over pretty instruments like swords. It's as if they were actually fighting for real, instead of to show off )
What's a morning star. (What skip shows the laydees the morning after. Yeeeeeaaaaah, baby. )
Why did unearthed arcana take shields away from assassins (I've already answered this one. Go away)
Does a girdle of giant strength let you throw a polearm (not effectively)
What does darkness do to combat. ( -4. Not just for normal invisibility.)
What's with space requirements for weapons (You don't want to hit your buddies, do you? )
Can you use an at will power and attack and move in the same round (Oh yes. This is one of the things that makes extraplanar monsters so badass)
Can magic-users move and cast as well (No. That's what you get for being human and meddling in forces you weren't born too. )
Can you back off from melee (slowly)
Can you attack more than one creature if you have multiple attacks (Yes.)
How long does paralyzation last (Generally a lot less than last edition. We're still not at the point where you get to save again every round though. We haven't completely pussified our game in response to all the wussy whiners yet. )
Is there any proficiency crossover between weapons (Still no. Not until the complete fighters handbook comes out. Then you can twink out to your hearts content. )
Does bastard sword's size and speed change when it's used one handed (no)
Do multipurpose weapons also grant proficiency in the weapons that make them up (no)
What does charging do (this one is clearly in the book. Why the hell are you wasting Skip's valuable time with this crap )
What does high dex do for initiative (nothing. zip. nada.)
Can missile weapons be used in melee. Can I shoot into melee without hitting my buds (more recycling? Have you people learned nothing from Skip. Does Skip struggle in vain? Is Skip's battle against ignorance and stupidity in the big city destined to be never-ending, concluding only when a particularly intractable case finally wears down the last of Skip's sanity. Look, Skip is already referring to Skip in the third person! Only mad people do that. )
Can you use a random object for nonlethal combat (Depends what it is)
How far can you throw improvised weapons (not very far, usually)
How do you handle gaze attacks ( See Lew Pulsipher's great article back in issue 50 :teeth ting: )
Do you suffer a penalty for attacking more than once in a round (if you attack two-handed)
Can vorpal weapons sever giant creatures heads ( depends on your position)
Does unholy water hurt paladins (yup. It burnsses)
Can you turn undead and attack (another reused question? The answer has not changed since last time, so bog off)
Can creatures that can hit magical creatures resist quivering palm automatically (no. That's some pretty torturous logic you're trying there. )
Can torches be used as melee or missile weapons (Oh yes. As the movies show, this is actually quite effective )
How quickly can you draw a weapon (fast enough for it to be irrelevant )
Why do you only get one attack a minute (our abstraction. Let us remind you of it)
How do you determine if a sap hits the enemies head properly (flip a coin. Then hit them on the head while they're watching it. )
Can you hit sleeping opponents automatically (no, just with a +4 bonus. Don't think you're likely to take them out in one hit)
Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989
part 2/3
The dragon's bestiary gives us tons of cool information on illithids and their relations. As creatures from another world, even when they've evolved to fill niches analogous to our own, the under the hood means of doing so and physiology is quite different. As well as talking about the existing monsters that are native to those lands, they give us a rough template to convert earthly creatures into their gruesome sunset analogues. So high level adventurers now have a whole new environment to venture too when mundane wilderness encounters no longer offer any challenge at all. This is very pleasing indeed. They've already had an ecology, but this really builds them up quite a bit more than the old one did. And they include a bunch of new monsters as well.
Cessrid are essentially Illithid dogs. They have hairless slimy bodies, webbed feet, and sharp beaks surrounded by tentacles, but the hunting principle is the same. They're as smart as the average person, so their tactics'll likely be pretty advanced as they stalk you and rip you up. They remember to reference the Gith dogs from issue 117 and their relationships, which adds to the awesome quotient another little bit.
Embrac are slow moving carnivorous trapper creatures. They may not actually be plants, but they definitely make me think of Audrey II. Like everything else here, they're smart and psionic enough that you have a chance of negotiating with them.
Kigrid are the illithid eqivalent of pigs, large omnivorous scavengers that'll rip you up and eat you, and probably much of your gear as well. They might be smarter than you, but their perpetual hunger means they don't get much time for philosophising or scheming.
Saltor are the illithids equivilent of baboons. Knuckle walking slimy skinned, tentacle mouthed monstrosities, they too like to eat brains if at all possible, and implant their young in your head. They can read minds and levitate. They'll also stoop to throwing rocks at you, and are often capable of dimensional travel, so don't think you can outmaneuver them easily and pick them off from a distance. Seems like you'll be challenged well into the teens if you venture to these realms.
The sunset world: Stephen Inniss continues what he started in the last article, extensively detailing a possible homeworld for the mind flayers and similar dungeon based abberations. Actually, it seems like he probably intended them to be the other way round, with this giving the elaborate descriptions, then that filling in more crunch, but so it goes. Silly Roger. He starts from a fairly solid scientific base, that of a tidally locked world orbiting an ancient red star, and then starts building up the fantastical elements, all the highly evolved and psionically capable creatures that are perfectly adapted to this brutal environment, and pretty effective when invading the underdark of your home world. They may not be able to stand the yellow sun, but with minds like theirs, you can bet they have some scheme to extend their dominance over the entire world, enslave us like they did the gith all those years ago. Only this time, they ain't gonna screw it up. Combining a fictional account with some complex and well thought out biological details, this has both useful information and drama in spades, massively surpassing their original ecology in depth and inventiveness, if not humour. Between the two articles, this is probably the best contribution he's ever made, avoiding the dryness he is often prone too, while retaining his skill at detail creation, and a classic pair who's influence is still seen in mind flayers today. If the rest of the issue can live up to these standards, it'll be another top tenner to celebrate.
Fangs alot: As they mentioned earlier, the proper revised vampire stats. Woo. Not much to say here. Extensive collection of powers and weaknesses, horribly unfair energy draining, eastern variant able to become invisible, you know the drill. Now let's chill for a bit. Or maybe not. We must be eternally vigilant against further errata attacks! Errata attacks, errata attacks. We must defeat those errata attacks. Great. That's going to be stuck in my head all day now.
Palladium fantasy takes us to the frozen northern wilderness
The well-rounded monster hunter: Call of Cthulhu once again makes an incursion into the magazine. Seems fitting, as illithids and their slowly dying world do have a definite lovecraftian influence. On the other hand, the subject isn't particularly connected, since it's just adding and clarifying a bunch of skills. Like far too many systems with lots of finely granulated skills, BRP is prone to having skills added in modules with little explanation, that would often seem to overlap with existing ones. The more of these are added, the less competent existing characters become, and the more scope for confusion, with characters being useless at something they really would need for their job, and some being simply better than others, because they picked the broader sounding names for their skills. Man, what a headache. There's also the problem that in roll-under systems, people tend to stick with the fixed difficulty level determined by the stat, rather than properly scaling the DC's. Both issues many more recent games successfuly avoid. With mathematical analyses and ideas to fix these problems, this is a quite well done, but not hugely interesting article. You'll need a bit more humour or genuine inventiveness to get above solid.
TSR Previews: Our big release this month, slightly late, is the first campaign setting for 2nd edition. Spelljammer! Get up there, and get ready for crossovers.
D&D is also trying something new, with PC1: Tall tales of the wee folk. Orcs of Thar seems to have proved popular enough to create a spin-off line focussed on making various races available as PC's. Very neat. Will they be horribly unbalanced?
Confusingly, we have three books called Waterdeep this month. The avatar trilogy comes to an end, with Richard Awlinson completing this tale of gods losing their powers, dying, and being replaced. The module of the same events, FR3, also sees Midnight becoming the new god of magic, while you don't. Are you going to get off the train at this stop? And the trail map of the same name actually covers the whole of the western side of the Realms. Surely you can find somewhere nice to stay for a while until all the gods stop tromping around the place.
And finally, we have the Art of the AD&D fantasy game. Hello again Mr Rehash. Enjoy your time on the coffee table. So this is the first month where every single one of their products are directly D&D focussed. Curious that this should happen just after the edition change. Wonder who made that managemental decision.
Nobody lasts forever: Or do they? Superman and Batman certainly show no sign of dying for good, despite a few big plotlines putting them out of action temporarily. Even lesser superheroes have amazing capacities for making comebacks, through incredibly implausible plot twists. Any superhero RPG that wants to properly emulate it's source material needs to take account of that. This tackles that in a fairly oblique way though, trying to keep things purely in setting, rather than offering metagame manipulation methods. The way that they die, the things that happen if they do, and exactly how long people with enhanced lifespans live. Another solid bit of cataloguing, with a few amusing touches, but nothing that blows me away. Plus there's some more editing sloppiness that detracts a bit from it, although I can work out what's missing. Ho hum.
Fiction: the serpent of aledorn by John P Buentello. An evil wizard has cursed a village. The place needs a hero to save them! A typical scenario. But as is often the case, there is a twist. Two connected twists, in this case. The villagers are entirely deserving of their punishment, and the person called upon to rescue them figures this out and has some suitably ironic insurance to ensure their attempt to pull the same treachery on him gets what it deserves. Ok, so it's not quite in the same league as the pied piper of hamelin, but it's very much in the same spirit. Pretty neat, and another one with a strong scientific edge. They do seem to be doing that quite a bit this issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989
part 3/3
Role-playing reviews: Ken takes HARN to task over it's lengthy hesitation about publishing modules. As a busy writer, he wants his adventures ready to run. Just having loads of setting details without a direction is akin to the kind of GM who has hundreds of pages on their game world but never lets people play it, because it's "not ready yet" Oookay then :backs off: But anyway, they've finally caved to public pressure and produced published prefab modules for peons like you. And since despite his gripes, he does like the line, he's going to give them a good reviewing.
Araka-kalai is a fairly sketchy little book, halfway between an area supplement and a traditional D&D style module. Venture into the caverns of the spawner of monsters, and deal with the cult that worships him. With seven different scenarios in a 26 page book, it isn't going to win any awards for pure depth, but they do include plenty of background material applicable to all of them, and any other adventures set in the area you may concoct. And the adventures included do have some neat twists. Seems a fairly decent place to put a starting party in, their equivalent of keep on the borderlands.
100 bushels of rye is a rather more narrative focussed adventure. While the path of the adventure is fairly linear, the direction of the final resolution is very much in the players hands. Generic enough to be easily adaptable to other gritty medieval type systems, and the setting details can be used repeatedly. Once again, Ken recommends it.
The staff of fanon (now that would be a scary power. Making fanfics into official parts of the continuity. The horrors that you could inflict on literature. :D ) is a rather more high magic, fantastical adventure. Still, it doesn't skimp on the detail or the integration into the game world, and the strange things the players will encounter along the way do have a reason and rhyme to them.
The broken covenant of Calebais is an ARS Magica game. Mark Rein·Hagen's pretentious talk about roleplaying as art is already well in force, making Ken roll his eyes. But their talk about pushing the boundaries of gaming is more than backed up in the scenario, with the world, plot and character building being exemplary. On the other hand, the visual presentation, section organisation and editing are a bit slipshod. (no surprise there :p) Still, it's very distinctive indeed when compared to the current set of adventures. And we know what the future has in store for their ideas.
Flight 13 is a GURPS module, combining the horror and space supplements to create a goofy 1950's style retro-futuristic adventure in which the PC's are captured by creatures from beyond the stars and put through a bunch of weird tests. It can be used in any vaguely modern game, but take care, for it may disrupt the tone of some.
The role of computers: Populous! Simulating godly machinations since 1989. Now there's a game for you. Empower your followers, get more worshippers, kick the butt of the other gods followers and take over the world. Can be played against the computer, or online against a real person. Muahaha. A direct ancestor of Black and White, this is one I remember. They give it a five star review too. Now that's why God would actually hate RPG's if he were real and anything like the old testament god. Puny mortals pretending to have my station? Hubris! Smite them!
Axe of Rage is an arcade fighter/platformer. Take the role of a male or female barbarian, and hack and slash your way through all sorts of beasties real and fantastical. Enjoy the gore, and collect items so you can hack and slash even better. Sounds rather familiar, really.
Hidden Agenda is a game of political management in a fictional south american country. Pick your ministers, and try and balance the interests of the ridiculous number of power blocs to stay popular, while dealing with unexpected crises. Tricky, but probably a lot easier than real politics, especially if you read the guidebook.
Gauntlet's mac version only allows for two players at a time, not the 4 player dungeon-crawling extravaganza certain other platforms support. Still, most of the other elements seem to be in place, including the endlessly respawning monsters. We're really getting into familiar territory now.
Interestingly, they start a new section, Dragon Bytes, featuring mini reviews sent in by Joe Q Public. Well, they've been doing it in the clue corner for a while. And it does mean less work for them.
Trust and betrayal, the legacy of Sibot is another very different game of diplomacy and second guessing your opponents. You play a psychic, and have to use various mental powers with rock-paper-scissors relationships to one-another to beat them. The talks before the battle, where you try and figure out their capabilities and preferred tactics are a crucial part of the game. Sounds like poker players would do well with this one.
Barbarian gets a rather sketchy review. Sure you've got to kill the monsters and save the kingdom, but is it top down? side scroller? first person? Arcade, roleplaying? I am not feeling very informed. Makes me wonder if this little experiment is worth it and going to catch on.
Darkest secrets: Top Secret's article this month is about the idea of PC's having hidden advantages and flaws. One of those things that has become fairly well known since then, with BESM being probably their most notable user. But this is the first time I've seen them in the magazine, so it's another fairly innovative bit of design tech at this point. And the idea of getting greater power in exchange for enabling some interesting plot surprises along the line can seem like a win-win situation for many people. So this is a rather cool article, in an issue that is proving to be full of good ideas, pushing things forward. And Roger sneaks in another amusing reference to the fact he has the same name as a certain film star. If they keep this up, this issue will well live up to it's big number.
A final frontier of our own: An article for star trek as well? We haven't seen this many non D&D articles in a single issue since the ARES section ended. This is a rather long one too, bringing the usual campaign building advice to the rather specific future and tropes of the Star Trek universe and narrative conventions. You don't want to end up like some of the so-called official books, which mangle the characterizations and don't follow the tone. :p You need a strong ensemble, but you also need an actual chain of command, with the other PC's (usually) deferring to the person playing the captain. Unlike the shows, you can have your characters not being the big people in charge, at least at first, and advancing through the ranks as the campaign progresses. You can also change the ship as well, upgrading as they become more experienced, or giving them a tricky mission using something smaller to shake them from complacency. Advice on handling death (ah, the redshirts and officers distinction. ) the various races, the prime directive, roleplaying in the star trek universe, and lots of other stuff is examined in plenty of depth, and several examples from the writer's own campaign as well, which earns him a few extra marks. One of the freshest and most in depth articles of this sort in a long time. Once again, a very pleasing read.
Unspeakable secrets made easy: Dean Shomshak gets a second CoC article published in the same issue. He is doing well for himself and the game. This is about the proper application of eldritch sanity imperiling texts in your game. If you make up a new one every session, then players don't have a chance to develop the proper dread of them, because they can't even keep track of them. Far better to have a few new ones, plus the old familiars that the players can really get their dread on over, and dole them out conservatively. It keeps the players from getting jaded, and their characters from going mad too quickly. He also gives his own examples, quite possibly from his own campaign. Yet another solid birdie, this is a good reminder that pacing is crucial to a campaign. You can't be all shiny, top volume and full speed the whole time or people will get fatigued and bored, and quit. The music industry is learning it to their chagrin, and gaming needs to remember it too.
Dragonmirth mocks flumphs. Well, all the cool kids are doing it. Poor flumphs. Yamara takes on a commission from some decidedly mysterious and dubious patrons, to retrieve a decidedly dubious looking device.
Although not as big a step outwards in scope or spectacular in terms of celebrations as issue 100, this has managed to be a very good issue, with both the classic D&D articles, and the far greater than normal number of non D&D ones. After a year that has been very short on both of those, this has been nicely refreshing. Chances are, like that issue, it'll be an outlier rather than an indicator of future directions, but it was still fun. Let's press onward. Issue 200 is waiting, and I know that's an even more spectacular one than this. The big question is just how long and rocky the road between will be.
Dragon Magazine Issue 151: November 1989
part 1/3
108 pages. Looks like we have yet another oriental special this month. Even though they haven't updated it to the new edition, it's still a popular topic, with a huge slush pile of articles for them to mine. They're still far from scraping the barrel on this one, although depending on how many of their submissions are badly written and incredibly twinked, Roger might be sick of reading them. Still, that doesn't compare with how sick he is of the ZOMG D&D is satanic and causes serial killers/suicides hoopla. His editorial is devoted to that business yet again, this time in response to a kid who was obsessed with a Stephen King book and did this. :facepalm: Some people will go nuts regardless of their cultural surroundings. All they do is influence the directions their neuroses and aggressions go in. Let it die, people. Yawn.
In this issue:
Grenadier resorts to serious cheesecake to sell their wares.
Letters: A letter asking them to go twice monthly. Hey, didn't I have that idea too. Roger responds to that concept with terror. He's already spent some time editing two magazines at once, and has no desire to repeat the experience. That treads too close to those recent memories of 60 hour a week workdays. You know, you could cut the size of each issue in half. Then you'd only have to fill the same amount each month, maybe less if you formatted it right.
A letter full of questions about where stuff has gone. The daily planet gaming supplement was an advert. The world gamers guide was a victim of it's own success. The Dragon magazine best of's were probably canned because upper management :rumble of thunder: don't want to pay any more royalties to certain people who were forced out in 1986, and shall remain unmentioned as much as possible. Similarly, reprinting the Fineous treasury would involve giving money to people no longer in favour with the company.
Another letter suggesting that people use BBS's for roleplaying. Roger has no objection to the idea, as long as people don't charge to play anything derived from TSR properties. He points out that Steve Jackson Games are even more progressive on this front, with their own official Illuminati boards. He may have change his tune sometime in the near future.
Forum: John Wommer tells his own fun tale of playing evil characters. Or rather, how he put them off the idea by sending them to a parallel world where evil (including dark counterparts of the PC's ) was in the ascedant, and good characters were rare outlaws who really had to struggle to survive. That more than satisfied their transgressive urges.
Toby Myers has his own contributions on the endless alignment debate, albeit not very good ones. There are plenty of personality traits not connected with morality you know, and even true neutral characters can exhibit complex combinations of them. Don't get all compartmental on us.
Steve Williams shows how you can get a gaming group together without having to interact directly with people. Flyers and adverts on shop boards! Still far more useful when thinking locally than the internet.
A nameless letter (didn't they say they wouldn't publish those? ) gives some rather lengthy information on the history of castles in reality, and their problems in keeping people with magic powers out. There is a very good reason why they aren't built anymore, and they quite possibly wouldn't exist in the same form in fantasy games. Rather a persistent problem, isn't it.
Michael Hents, Eric M Paulson and Gregory H Graham get a combined letter, expressing their contempt for wimpy AD&D players, their overpowered characters, and their stuff must be done by the book attitude. Still, it looks like the new edition is more friendly to you changing the rules to make the game your own, like the old D&D rules. They phrase it in a rather amusing manner too. This is definite flamebait. Aligning AD&D 2nd ed and Basic D&D vs AD&D 1st edition? Muahaha. I look forward to seeing if this gets responses.
Joseph D'Amico is on the other side of the D&D vs AD&D debate. AD&D is far more logical and has far more options, so it's the better game. Hnah. What do you say to that?
Robert Morrison, on the other hand prefers D&D, going into considerable detail on how the weapon mastery system in the Master set is both more flavourful and better balanced than AD&D weapon specialisation. And it encourages roleplaying more as well. Oh, the controversy.
Alan Grimes thinks that computer RPG's aren't true roleplaying games, and will never replace the thrill of actual interaction with real people around a table, and a DM who can just make stuff up in response to your trying something not covered by the rules. Let's hope the day never comes when they supplant tabletop gaming completely.
Jason Dunn agrees with this in fewer words, although he does admit also enjoying Pool of Radiance. You can't play a computer in the car. Yes, but many people can't read in the car either, because nausea quickly results. I'm afraid I have to ooze envy at you.
Thomas M Kane thinks that a D&D group is no more tricky to organize than, say, a football team. If we can keep spreading the word, it has an entirely reasonable chance of becoming a commonly known and accepted pastime in a few decades.
Derek K Lechman also thinks it's the human factor that makes RPG's genuinely satisfying. Plus it's a lot cheaper than buying a new computer game each time you finish one. Looks like people are pretty much in agreement here. But how many of them will have drifted away from RPG's in 20 years time, while computers still play a huge part in their lives. It's easy to be cynical when you have the aid of hindsight.
Sage advice goes back to tackle oriental adventures stuff again. Guess there's still plenty of people confused about it's rules.
What do birth ranks mean (mo money mo prestige mo problems)
What do the birthright tables mean (depends how many siblings you have )
How often do you encounter animal generals (only when it's plot relevant. Random generation has no place when dealing with creatures like this. )
Can samurai become daimyos ( If they're badass enough. )
Can oriental characters be psionic (oh yes)
How much are gems worth in oriental games (no change)
Why aren't there oriental adventures character sheets (what's wrong with the regular ones. They all work in the same way.)
How many slots does calligraphy cost (2)
How many proficiencies do monks and yakuza get (like everyone else, never enough )
Can you use the wu jen's spell learning method elsewhere (er, it's the same as regular wizards anyway, you dumbass. Didn't you notice you were already using it )
Do oriental characters have to train like western ones (You've asked this one before.)
Why aren't battle axes two handed (because we say they aren't)
Can gajin characters learn oriental languages. (Yes. Note that Skip does not approve of you using the G word. Skip won't cap yo ass this time, but there'd better not be a next time. And don't even think of using the N word. )
How many martial arts styles can you learn (as many as you have the slots for. Remember, specialization gets you more badass moves than dabbling though. )
Why is kara-tur's calendar missing two weeks (Oops. we forgot that the forgotten realms year is different to earth's. Awooga awooga! Emergency Retcon! Emergency Retcon! There. All better. Now let us never speak of this again. )
What's the random encounter table for dungeons (A different one for each dungeon. See our great hordes of modules for plenty of examples. If you make your own dungeon, part of the fun is making up your own.)
Can gajin (BANG! Don't say you weren't warned, bitches. Skip is not in a merciful mood today.)
What level can wu jen research spells (Any level. Note this does not let them gain spells more powerful than they have. )
I still don't understand the difference between style sequences and power groups ( Still? Skip sighs. )
Can ninja use all their other classes powers (yes)
Are chain and scale mail metallic armours (are you blind? Have you no sense of touch? Yes. )
What maneuvers can you use with a new MA style (your choice. Try not to mix them up too much)
How long are turns, rounds and segments in the orient (same as ever. We may have messed up the calendar, but we're not going to change these. It's still the same basic game. )
I don't understand the proficiency rules (Yeah yeah. Just ignore them )
How much damage do needles do (Not much, especially in D&D. This is why you poison them. )
What domain do samurai get at name level (none automatically. They have to go to the effort of building it themselves. Still, they probably have an easier time than bushi or kensai.)
How much does oriental equipment weigh (same as western stuff. Did Skip not say last time that everything not specifically said to be different is the same. Don't make Skip say it again.)
I lose an ancestral weapon, do I have to die trying to get it back or commit suicide. (no, but your honor score won't be happy. Social pressure's a bitch.)
Is weapon catch made against AC10 like Leap (no, as it's opposed by an enemies skill.)
Is there a honor penalty simply for revealing that you are a ninja (no)
What's up with page 50. (inverted formatting. Barely worth mentioning. )
Are lajatang two-handed (yes)
What's the conversion rate between west and east (Unpredictable! You'll have to roll and hope. Haggling never hurts.)
How much can fit in a sword's secret compartment. (Several teaspoons worth. If it's a really big weapon you might be able to manage as much as a beer can. :waggles eyebrows: )
What are the rules for oriental characters two weapon fighting (Same as it ever was. We're wicked and we're lazy.)
Can you spend slots on two weapon fighting (no. Once again, stop badgering me with your twinkedness)
Do ninja get XP bonuses for high dex (No, that's a boner. Maybe the joker put it in to catch out batman. Having fewer levels than you think you do can be a shock, after all.)
What happens when a high level ninja knows all ninja weapons (they can learn any other weapon. Ninja are versatile. )
What are the stats for badgers.( Use the stats for racoon dog. Do not use the stats for aurumvorax. )
What's the initiative bonus for knowing iaijutsu (That power doesn't work like that. Do you even read the descriptions at all.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 151: November 1989
part 2/3
The RPGA takes command of ravens bluff, making it into a living city. Buy it now, play a part.
Our statement of ownership this year show's it's been a very stable year. Circulation has increased by just over 2,000, creeping up to 106 thousand. However, the number of subscriptions has increased by over a thousand, while the number of newsstand copies has declined slightly recently. Curious fluctuation there. Guess more people have decided they definitely want it reliably every month. Probably a good sign.
The ecology of the kappa: Our latest oriental special continues with a themed ecology. Kappa are decidedly odd little buggers that have appeared in the magazine once before, long before OA came out. They may not be that big, but they can really mess your day up. They're another creature that while intelligent, seems completely incapable of applying that intelligence constructively. They may be able to learn to speak and write multiple human languages fluently with a fraction of the exposure people need, but all they do with that ability is harass, trick, steal and kill (all very politely, though. ) What are you to do with them, since they refuse to become productive members of society. Guess it keeps the adventurers in work. The ecologies have definitely gone downhill in both quality and frequency this year, and this shows no sign of reversing that trend. Where's the drama, wheres the society, wheres the rules interpretations, where's the new perspectives? Bored now.
Soldiers of the law: Freeze, scum! Law enforcement is just as important in oriental lands as western ones, despite the lawful alignment restrictions of many classes. Far too many samurai, monks, kensai and sohei put their own personal codes of honor above the law of the land. And for Yakuza, that is pretty much a given, and entirely to be expected. Whatever force is responsible for judging who is what alignment obviously has no objection to this state of affairs, or they'd all be losing their powers a lot more than they do. But enough of the metaphysics. This is about how they deal with the consequences of this on the ground level. Often, they don't manage too, with yakuza gangs becoming the de facto law enforcement in less salubrious areas, settling disputes with ruthless efficiency. Where the ruler does have a tight grip on the population, they have to balance the need for non lethal enforcement of the law with ruthless effectiveness to deal with the more powerful characters wandering around. This article is useful for both DM's dealing with players, and for setting up a campaign where the PC's are the law enforcement themselves. Full of quickly set up encounters, this looks like quite a helpful one, giving you stats, new honor awards, and new ways of applying familiar classes. I look forward to an opportunity to test it.
Earn those heirlooms: Hmm. Someone thinks that some OA characters getting cool stuff as an inheritance at random is unfair, and makes them overpowered compared to both western characters and the rest of their party? Well duh, that was entirely the intention. You did see the bit at the front encouraging you to use twinked new ability generation methods when playing oriental characters, and compare the descriptions and powers of the oriental classes with their western counterparts. Fairness was not a particularly high point on the agenda, while randomness was. But some people are obsessed with bringing balance to a system, even when it's such a big task as to be pretty futile. So it is here, with a system to nerf the inheritance rules. A not particularly great one, using unneeded mathematical steps that could have been handled more elegantly by simply setting the numbers differently instead of having to do extra steps of addition and division. Worra loada point missing crap. No desire to use this one at all.
TSR Previews: Buck Rogers' first trilogy draws to a close, with Armaggeddon off Vesta. It ends dramatically, of course. But the bigger question is if we'll see another one.
Both our AD&D products are Dragonlance ones this month. Well, FR was over represented last time. Guess it just turned out that way. DLE3: Dragon Keep finishes their new series of modules, where you save the good dragons of Krynn. Nowhere near as epic as last time. Bigger, and even less directional is Time of the Dragon, the new boxed set. A whole new continent for you to play in, that will be relatively free of metaplot meddling.
Top secret also completes a trilogy this month, TSE3: Web Wars. This is what happens when you set your schedules at the start of the year. Will the villains have a secret escape route ready so they can scheme to defeat Orion another day?
D&D tries to cater for that tricky second adventure market with B12: Queen's Harvest. Head from Thyatis to Karimeikos and gradually take the training wheels off.
Marvel Superheroes gives us MU5, the fifth part of the gamers handbook. Less than half the size of the first four, this brings you up to date. You'll have to do all the alphabetical insertion to the main binder yourself though.
And we also have one independent book as well. Too, too solid flesh by Nick O'Donohue. Shakespearian sci-fi murder mystery? Sounds interesting and a bit meta.
The dragon's bestiary: Wang-liang are our sole submission here this month, albeit a rather long and detailed one. Closely related to ogre magi, they're another vaguely demonic looking creature, with a huge grudge against humanity because they know our greater breeding rate is going to push them to extinction eventually. By many standards, they're not bad creatures, with plenty of honour and a commendable lack of greed, but of course, shapeshifting and tricking people with the intent of making their lives a misery is not good for the alignment. This is one of those contributions where the writer seems a little too attached to their creation, giving you lots of warnings on how not to use them, and how awesome their elders are. I do find this a little tiresome. But then, I'm an honourless human dog, so what would I know. Let's kill 'em all! To arms! Don't forget the invisibility penetrating glasses! :p
The ecology of the Yuan-ti: After a year that's been fairly light on ecologies, here we have a double whammy. This is promising. Rather a far-reaching ecology here, as they give them a life cycle that is an enormous great plot hook to adventurers. Unfortunately, it's also the kind of hook that'll turn them into one adventure ponies, as a thousand year cycle sounds cool when it's in a book, and you can be sure it's the protagonists that get to do the acts of big heroics, but is problematic in an actual sustained campaign world. And indeed, while the Histachi would make it into the next edition, quite a bit of the other stuff here would be ignored in favour of allowing the yuan-ti to mate directly with humans to keep up diversity in their bloodlines. Once again, I'm not very keen on this one, and despite being in the oriental section, it doesn't seem connected to that theme either. What is going on here? How did one of the strongest and most consistently entertaining parts of the magazine turn into a liability like this? Most bemusing.
The beastie knows best: Welcome, one and all, to the second annual beastie awards! This year, we keep it in house, with the big winner being the Pool of Radiance Computer game! If you haven't got it already, we recommend the Apple version in particular. Second in our esteem is Ultima V. Despite being well over a year old now, it's still garnering considerable amounts of votes. Will it and it's successors continue to get critical and commercial acclaim? Dungeon Master also wins awards for the second year in a row, and Tetris, Sim City, Gold rush, and lots of other familiar names from last year's reviews get their just deserts. Not a huge amount of commentary I can do on this one, so I'll leave it at that. If you can think of anything that was unjustly passed over, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Role-playing reviews: Last month Ken decided to review a load of adventures from systems not particularly noted for them. This month, Jim is doing much the same thing, albeit with less preamble. Co-incidence or planned, I wonder?
Something rotten in Kislev is of course for WHFRP. Three linked adventures, in which the characters have to deal with undead, and the fact that they may be a lesser evil needed to hold off the forces of chaos. The adventures are a rich ground for tricky roleplaying, and the visual presentation is pretty good too. Plenty of scope for misinformation, moral greys, etc, here.
Tournament of dreams is a pair of pendragon adventures. A fae tournament where the virtues of the characters are tested, and an adventure of questing and single combat, it seems admirably tailored to the themes and rules of the game.
Harkwood is a GURPS fantasy adventure. Set in a relatively low magic region, it's also designed primarily for fighters of the mounted armoured sort, with a tournament and plenty of intrigue taking place. To foil players who read ahead, it gives you 6 different villains to choose, so they'll still have to figure out who's really behind things. Once again, the visuals and setting-building are pretty good, and in general it's a very flexible adventure which the players can take all kinds of tacks to solve.
Lords of darkness, on the other hand, gets a rather mediocre review. Many of the adventures are poorly labeled in terms of suggested levels, and others are so sketchy as to not really be much of a help. The attempt to make undead more scary is heavy handed and poorly integrated. It does have some good points, but it's definitely the weakest of this month's selection.
Dragon Magazine Issue 151: November 1989
part 3/3
The role of books: The outlaws of sherwood by Robin McKinley manages to put it's own distinctive spin on the Robin Hood legends. Not particularly historically accurate, it still tells an interesting story of a group of people becoming lifetimes in their own legends, or something.
Catastrophe's spell by Mayer Alan Brenner makes the common mistake of trying to cram too much into a single book. Shoulda given each of the main characters and plotlines their own book, then you'd be getting critically acclaimed and filing a whole shelf on the bookstores. :p
The scholars of night by John M Ford combines spycraft with stagecraft, with moderate success. While there are a few flaws, on the whole it manages to be a distinctive and fairly satisfying delivery. Just go back and reread it, so you can spot the references you missed first time round.
Shadow games by Glen Cook gets a rather tangental review, as he talks about why his books might be of high quality, but he finds them thoroughly unpleasant reading. Military brutality for it's own sake, and a world where it seems unlikely things will ever get better is not to his tastes.
A dirge for sabis by C J Cherryh and Leslie Fish also gets a mixed review. The attempts to fuse magic and technology don't really work here, partially due to the design of the magic system, and partially due to the writers throwing too much stuff in the mix. Meharoonie.
Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner manages to take the swashbuckling adventure tropes, and tell a story in a rather different style than is usual to the genre, with lots of depth and clever use of language. While there may not be overt supernatural elements, this is not a drawback.
Gameplay by Kevin J Anderson, gets a pretty negative review. From the confusion of the last installment in the series, the reviewer's opinion turns to annoyance as the rules of the universe are revealed to be so far from the usual gaming setup as to break his suspension of disbelief. Unless the final book makes some fairly substantial changes, it's not going to hold any drama for him.
The role of computers is fairly light on reviews this month, mostly comprised of previews and reader submitted stuff. They've been busy counting the votes for the awards or something. They're also eagerly looking forwards to 16, 32 bit and beyond systems becoming the norm. (They also announce the release of the Sega Genesis, woo.) Better graphics and more power are always good. Not gonna argue with you there. The problem, as ever, comes when the programmers try to use more power than the system has. And as we've found, that's still an issue decades later, with gigabytes of RAM to draw upon. Gotta live within your means. But anyway.
Silpheed is a 3D arcade shoot-em-up. You need to both master dogfighting in space, and figure out which upgrades to get between missions to enable you to cope with the final showdown. The reviewers are still struggling with this one and give it 5 stars.
Thud Ridge is a flight simulator game where you bomb the crap out of vietnam. It gets a fairly mediocre review, with a relatively simple control scheme, and another irritating copy protection scheme. I don't think we want to be reminded of this little bit of history.
Strider is the NES version, which is rather different from the arcade game, with it's ability to tackle the levels in non-linear fashion and puzzles involving one way tubes and finding items. This combination of action and puzzles appeals to the reviewers, and if it was longer, they would have given it a 5 star mark. Guess they're just getting too good for these games.
West end games gives us a decidedly pretentious teaser. Revolutionising the definition of RPG's? I'll believe it when I see it.
Through the looking glass: Robert takes the time to promote his other job, being vice president of the Historical Miniature Gaming Society, and their recent conventions. Minis are still pretty popular, and there's several new games of note this year. Limeys and Slimeys? Sounds amusing.
More formally, he gives Tactica a fairly harsh slating, giving it 1+1/2 stars. Shiny presentation masks absolutely terrible editing and rules assumptions. It might work if given a complete reworking and new edition, but for now, you really don't want to bother with this one.
On the other hand, Featherstone's complete Wargaming gets 5 stars. One of the great old men of wargaming provides his wisdom on wargaming and real history in an accessable manner. You can find out quite a lot about the hobby from this, and it even includes a game inside of it's own.
The rest of the column is fairly standard minis reviews. A Tank. A bunch of magic-users, both human and elf. A set of dwarves, and their natural enemy, an orc with a spear. Once again, the photo quality is not particularly great, with way too much black making details tricky to discern. So the usual mix of interesting and dull bits here.
At close quarters: Top Secret's article this time is a bunch of optional rules for those of you who would prefer a bit more realism in your games. Curiously, these actually make the game more cinematic. Quick drawing rules. Using guns at HtH range. Multiple action rules. Letting you use luck points to succeed at actions. They have a rather idiosyncratic idea of "reality rules" Well, anything the players can do, the enemies can too. If you use these little optional rules, you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. They did mention them in the previews. Nice to see the magazine catering to the toolkit approach. Let's hope it won't be a year before it does so again.
Paranoia has metaplot as well in the crash course manual. The computer is dead? Happiness is no longer mandatory? Hit the reset button quick! And never mention this again. ;)
The gamers choice: Another set of awards here. Voted for primarily by Polyhedron readers (damnitt, we still don't have a thread for that magazine), and administered by the RPGA, we saw our evil overlord :Organ music, wolves howl: step into the spotlight to present them this year. Mertwig's maze, Macho women with guns, GURPS 3rd ed, Cyberpunk, and Rocky & Bullwinkle do well for themselves. Buck Rogers ties for best sci-fi strategy game with Merchants of venus, which can be interpreted as good or bad, when you consider the vastly greater amounts of promotion it got. Polyhedron itself wins best gaming magazine, which seems mildly iffy. And Pool of Radiance proves popular with this crowd as well. Oh, if only the awards were being run by people not connected with the companies, so we could be a little more sure of their impartiality. Once again, not sure what to make of this. Any opinions?
Son of the ultimate addenda: Errata, errata, you keep sending in letters about it. Once more, unto the breach, as we try and fill some more little rules holes in the Marvel superheroes system.
What happens if someone with Internal Limbo captures someone else with internal limbo (If you put someone's b hole in your a hole, it gets rather tricky to find anything inside there. Just the way to escape that dick Sarda.)
Can you combine super leaping with atomic gain? (yes, but not very well. Square-Cube law strikes again! It's much better if you shrink instead.)
What happens if you have hyper speed without travel powers. (you go faster, but don't get any further without getting tired. Pretty lame, really. )
What happens if you combine hyper speed and hyper running. (You go very fast indeed. )
What are the stats of an energy doppelganger (Generally the same as the copied person. Such is the nature of being an imitation)
Yamara has yet more communication problems in the course of her adventures. Dragonmirth is very ironic indeed.
A bit of a clunker of an issue, really. The Oriental theme does seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel rather, the ecologies are unexpectedly weak, and apart from the awards, the rest of the issue is pretty much business as usual, with little to distinguish it. Hungover from the big celebrations, or something. Let's hope they've recovered in time for another blowout at christmas.
Dragon Magazine Issue 152: December 1989
part 1/3
116 pages. So we come to the end of the decade a very different magazine than we started it. The name has changed, twice, the staff has pretty much had a complete turnover, and the format and readership have had similarly sweeping changes. But they're still the biggest magazine in the roleplaying sphere, devoted primarily to providing cool stuff for D&D players. And whatever else they may do, that involves going into dungeons, killing things, and taking their stuff. So what better way to celebrate and reaffirm that core principle than with another underdark special. The first was one of their most successful themed issues ever. Can they repeat that, or will diminishing returns set in as it did for oriental stuff last month. Either way, let's resolve this cadence and start on the next symphony.
In this issue:
Virgin games centres give us a double page christmas spread. Damnitt. Stop rubbing it in. I want to be mainstream again.
Letters: Another letter from another person even more stupidly badass than Waldorf. Cower, puny mortals!!!!! Roger grows weary of this, but with so much public response, you've gotta do something.
A letter from someone who actually used the Outrages from the mages joke spells in their game. This has proved to be of much amusement, and the odd moment where the spells actually turn out useful. This pretty much assures their future in the next few april fools issues.
A letter mostly in praise of P N Elrod's familiars article, with a couple of little terminology quibbles. Research, research research. No amount is ever enough to satisfy everyone.
A question about when the various colours and other types of dragons appeared in the magazine. In many cases, it was quite a while ago. But we're still not going to publish any more under the same or near identical names. Find new barrels to scrape.
Forum: Toby Myers thinks that if a game doesn't cover a particular thing brilliantly, steal a subsystem or set of modifiers from another game that does it better. He's done it repeatedly to great success. Long live frankengames!
James R Collier thinks that while magic might replace the big developments, technology still has it's place in D&D worlds, especially for things that you have to do in large quantity. Magic is crap at mass production.
Jason Dunn tells a fairly dramatic story of a powerful mage who thought he could take on a whole cavern full of humanoids. While he made it, it was a close call. A combination of action economy and the odd magic item means low level characters can deal with a much smaller quantity of powerful ones with a little tactics.
Daniel J Stephans II thinks that the nerfing of the cavalier in issue 148 was a terrible idea. All their abilities make perfect sense for the concept! Not even slightly surprised to see one of these.
Jeff Cliber thinks much the same thing. Down with homogenisation and the removal of awesomeness in characters! Is anyone going to stand up for the Barbarian as well?
Alex Martin is not amused by all the controversy surrounding D&D, and thinks that the way to fix that is to talk openly about what you do, while also being a normal, well adjusted person. Easy for you to say. Not so easy for all of us to do.
Dan Humphries is not amused about the idea of allowing evil characters because it's likely to cause the problems outlined in the last letter. Overhearing conversations results in awkward misunderstandings, and then things escalate. Better not to pretend to be mass-mudering treacherous psychopaths. ;)
Michael J Natale, on the other hand, thinks there is nothing wrong with exploring the darker side of things in gaming. Do writers become psychopaths for writing villains. Do actors go mad trying to portray them? I seem to remember people using these same counterarguments against Katherine Kerr back in 1985. How little things have changed.
Sage advice: Which polearms do double damage against charging creatures (The ones with straight spikes. Co Mon Sense. Do you have it?)
Can you see magical radiation. (Not unless you have appropriate powerz. )
How do you find out exactly how many charges an item has (not easily. A lot of the time, you'll have to just trust the DM, and hope it doesn't run out at a crucial moment)
Can you taste a potion and find out what it does immediately (If you're willing to risk it )
Why don't the XP tables go above 20 (because we want you to stop there. The game just cannae handle it if you go much higher. You want really high power games, play BD&D instead :D )
Do clerics stop getting better at turning undead at level 14 (yup. Again, you want high level scaling, play BD&D. It's far better suited to that. )
What happened to the -10 rule (it's still around)
Does a cloak of poisonousness have a save (No. Instant screwage. Hee Hee. Don't matter if you're black or white. )
How quickly can you become invisible again after attacking (next round)
Who can use an amulet against undead. (Anyone! Bitchin!)
Shouldn't staff-spears have a chance of being +6 (no)
What's the risk of using a helm of teleportation. (Landing in the wrong place, just like the regular spell )
What level can a wizard specialize (normally only 1st. Allowing them to do so afterwards is purely optional, and remember, they'll have to erase a load of spells to do so. )
Can nonwarriors have % strength (No change here dear)
Do halflings get combat modifiers for their size (wait till next edition dear. )
Can you wear clothes if you have strength 1 (Hee. I can't think of an answer to that that isn't funny. Well, maybe apart from the classic words of Richey Edwards about anorexia.
I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity.
Now there's a downer for you. Let's get away from that pronto.)
Why are there spell failure chances for wis below 9 (if you've had it drained, you don't completely lose your deific connection)
Can nonelven characters find secret door (1 in 6! Wark! 1 in 6! Basic training! Pieces of eight!)
Do gnomes get poison resistance like dwarves (no)
Do you need to spend a slot to fight with two weapons (Hmm. That'd nerf it even more. Skip quite likes that idea. )
What's the range limit on undead turning (240 yards, plus line of sight)
How long does druid shapechanging take (3 segments. Lest you forget AD&D rules. that means 18 seconds. Realisticly, you could do all sorts of stuff to them that you can't in the rules. )
Rouges make different checks for setting snares to warriors (First, it's rogues, not rouges. Skip will rouge the next person to make that mistake with their own blood. Second, that's another mistake. Use dex for both.)
Does 90% cover protect you from spells (only if it has a physical manifestation like a fireball )
Can you use special powers on a surprise round (This is very much recommended.
Taking out your enemies before they can act is the best way to fight.)
Does the lifetime henchman limit count if they graduate rather than died (Technically, but you may want to house rule that )
Can you pick how many people you Hold (yes)
How much does one day's food weigh (Way too bloody much. Skip hates extended arctic adventures)
Can specialists cast spells from opposing schools using scrolls (yes)
What's the initiative modifier for protection spells (+3)
Do specialists get an extra spell per level! (No, per spell level they can cast. That's somewhat less. )
Fools gold has errata (Yeah? It's a tricksy spell. Obviously it got recursive. )
Do bards have to learn a musical instrument (Depends what style of entertainer they are)
Can you attack with one weapon and parry with the other (no. This is D&D, not swashbuckling adventures. You want off-hand protection, use a shield.)
Can tongues communicate with animals (They have no language. So they will just look blankly at you. )
How near do you need to be before attraction/avoidance takes effect (1 foot.)
If you cast light on chalk, do you write glowing messages. (No. That's what faerie fire is for. )
The ecology of the umber hulk: Another underground special, another monster than dungeoneers are likely to encounter. Umber hulks are important in the underground ecology because they actually create quite a lot of tunnels. They're smart enough to engage in some nasty tactics in the process of killing you and taking your stuff, but generally ornery enough that you won't be able to keep them from attacking for any length of time. They can be used in quite a number of ways, both alive and dead, and this does have the usual advice on that kind of stuff, making them both more dangerous, and more desirable to kill. Seems like a return to playing it safe territory, with an ecology that's competent, but hardly groundbreaking. Still, better that than the failed attempts of last issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 152: December 1989
part 2/3
In a cavern, in a canyon: Mining! One of the biggest producers of both valuable materials and future dungeons for adventurers to explore. Where would we be without it? And amazingly enough, this is a topic the magazine hasn't covered before as well. This is promising. But could also be very dull. Curiously, it manages to be both, capturing both the months of grindy tedium, and the interesting bits that happen during that time, as you find cool stuff, monsters find you, you have to deal with collapses, pockets of bad gas, seams running dry, and the omnipresent legal crap from other people when you actually try and sell the stuff. Seems like the kind of thing that would be good to incorporate when you've got to the domain management stage, and can skim through several years in a single session building up a history with the aid of a few dice rolls. Once you've done your share of killing things and taking their stuff, you've got to give back to the community, ensure that future generations have things to kill and take the stuff of. Not a classic, but certainly not a bad article either. Good to see them fill in another avenue for adventuring in a fairly plausible manner.
The wanderers below: More random encounter tables? Now taking advantage of the stuff in the Dungeoneers survival guide. This time tailored for specific regions of the underdark based upon what major features and dominant humanoid creatures are in the vicinity. I can get plenty of use out of that. A two page article that does what it says, no more, no less. The underwater one is a bit sketchy, but that's proably because there's not enough aquatic underground creatures to draw upon. Otherwise, the 9 tables are interestingly interconnected, and cover a decent range of creatures. Just be ready to run if you're a low level character, for monsters of all power levels occupy the same regions, not divided into neat depth levels like some dungeons. So much for the safety gloves, muahaha.
Reichstar? I don't remember that. Anyone have any info on it?
Role-playing reviews decided to go modern military this month. Tactics, all sorts of cool weaponry, and evil dictators to kill. For dungeon crawlers, it's like a home away from home. Just remember, you don't have magic healing to save you.
Twilight 2000 is another possible future that is now well into the past. WWIII is not going particularly well, and your soldiers are stuck behind enemy lines. This leaves your characters free reign to take any actions they choose to survive, advance the cause, and get home. This highly focussed premise lets you get into action easily, and the design, using lots of little booklets in a boxed set, helps avoid so much flipping slowing things down. It's built up a whole load of modules in recent years, expanding on the setting options quite considerably. It definitely puts it's own spin on combat heavy modern roleplaying.
Commando is the millitary sourcebook for Top Secret/ S.I. If you want to get in, your characters need to be the best of the best. But fear not, this is not material for twinks, the enemies will be similarly badass, and both sides will have pretty scary equipment. Pleasingly, the reviewer not only points out errata, he also consults the designer to get an official response for said errata. That's one advantage of working for the same company.
Brushfire wars is a set of little adventures for said Commandos. Since they are heavily military oriented, they're only really useful in an appropriate campaign. And they are pretty tricky. No froofy narrativist stuff here. Let's get planning, then hit 'em hard and fast.
GURPS high-tech is actually focussed on modern day and near past weaponry, and other equipment. It has the same reliable clarity and detail as the rest of their supplements. No adventures here, but it shouldn't be too hard to convert them from the other games covered with these tools.
Heroquest imitates D&D by putting out an advanced edition. Games workshop like making lots of money.
Servants of the jeweled dagger: What would one of these themed bits be without an examination of some of the natives. We had Drow in issue 129, and Svirfneblin in 131. Mind flayers got attention just a couple of issues ago. Goblinoids are well covered. So Duergar seem like a good choice for a humanoid race that needs a little depth building. Superficially, they may seem slightly more similar to regular dwarves than Drow do to regular elves. But with their acceptance of trickery, magical abilities, and near complete lack of any kind of sense of humour or affection make them rather less pleasant to spend time around. This is another of those ones that seems pretty familiar to me because most of it's ideas were repeated in later 2nd ed books mentioning them. Add to that the fact it's not very long, and my world is very much not rocked. Yawn. Looks like diminishing returns is already becoming a problem for this topic as well.
Fiction: The first notch by R A Salvadore. So the master hack (if that isn't a contradiction) gives dragon magazine some fiction. Set in the Realms, what seems like a basic dwarves vs goblins scenario becomes a more complicated one, in which both sides have to work together to survive an ettin. He manages a nice line in both banter and dramatic combat sequences, establishing individual personalities, and resolving things quickly and efficiently. A quite palatable little read, and one that hews closer to D&D than most of their fiction. I actually rather like this. Let's hope he can keep the schlock-o-meter from going into the red.
Cyberspace by I.C.E. What with cyberpunk and shadowrun coming out around the same time, it looks like we have a bit of a fad going on. Obviously, not all of them will survive, as with any bandwagon.
In quest of adventure: Hmm. Questing to achieve goals for some higher power, or atone for some misdeed. Certainly something with plenty of literary antecedents. This could stand a little more incorporation into D&D. On the other hand, it's also something that could be handled very wrongly, as the crappy fiction at the start of this article shows. Arbitrary railroading for some piddling infractions while ignoring other ones is a textbook way to get a pissed off party. On the other hand, getting levels restored or a bud raised is a very expensive business, and doing a quest for that kind of thing rather than paying is a much more dramatic option, that can lead into all kinds of spin-off adventures as you encounter people along the way, and take on their adventures as well. This is a good demonstration of the fact that it's much easier to build adventures for a character if they have some strong principles or goals, as you have carrots and sticks to work with and riff off. It's also a good reminder that if the characters are becoming too powerful, you can reduce them in capability by removing stuff or putting them in a situation where they can't use it without making things worse, allowing you to reestablish a degree of drama without starting a whole new set of characters. So if you wanna kick it second edition stylee, this is a good article to draw upon. If not, treat with great caution.
Palladium reminds us that they liked TMNT before it was cool and got it's own show and movies. Don't think it's going to be all kid friendly like the new stuff.
The game wizards: One of the few people still present who was part of the company nearly from the beginning, Jim Ward is now one of the most senior figures in TSR, and has responsibilities to match. This includes a whole bunch of silly little things, like making sure the mail goes to Lake Geneva, USA, not the original Geneva in Switzerland. And not getting out of touch and remembering how to have fun, and produce games that are fun for you. He makes a few jokes about becoming an evil dictator, which probably are less funny if he's being leaned upon by TSR's real evil overlord :wolves howl, organ music plays, evil laughter: And he gives a few hints as to next year's upcoming products. Despite the touches of humour, this isn't as informative as the last couple of years end articles, and feels like worrying foreshadowing. Soon the problems you jest about will be happening in all seriousness. And you will be the one responsible for passing down the cycle of pain, making sure someone produces all the Buck Rogers stuff. How do you justify that to yourself? Definitely something worth thinking about.
Dragon Magazine Issue 152: December 1989
part 3/3
The role of computers: Dragon Wars shows that even 8 bit systems can have pretty decent graphics. Another adventure game where you start from nothing, and become a serious badass and overthrow the evil ruler of the land. Assemble a party, learn a wide variety of spells, and get exploring. The usual mix of fighting, puzzle solving and talking to annoying villagers ensues. They give it 5 stars.
The Kristal is based on a stage play, of all things. Take the role of Dancis Frake :rolleyes: and engage in space piracy. Piloting, swordfights, and the incredibly annoying problem of landing. It does have a few programming glitches, but overall, is another fun tricky game for you to grab for christmas.
Indiana Jones and The last crusade - The graphic adventure is one of the many tie-ins to George Lucas' big summer blockbuster. A point and click adventure puzzle game, you find items, solve puzzles, and talk to people to progress through the game and get top score. This'll probably take quite a few playthroughs, and consulting a hint book for the last few points. With a whole bunch of different tricks to master, they give it 5 stars. Lucasfilm do seem to put quite a bit of effort into these things.
Beyond the black hole is a stereoscopic 3D game Put on the 3d glasses, and enjoy a distant, far more sophisticated descendent of Pong. It also gets 5 stars for it's spectacular visuals and interesting gaming challenges. They are being generous today. Ahh, the joys of gimmicks. So glad we can do proper 3D games without needing stuff like that these days.
TSR Previews: Another all D&D schedule this month. On the generic side, we have the updated battlesystem rules. Are you ready to add a little mass to your combat again? No? Wimps.
More significantly, we have the complete fighter manual. Splatbooks may have been around for quite a while, but here's where they really start making their mark. Say hello to kits, lots of new toys, and all the bloat that goes with them.
The forgotten realms is really doing well again this month. The third monstrous compendium compiles a ton of creatures, many of which probably got their first appearance in the magazine, and updates them as per usual. They give us the trail map for Kara-Tur. FR9: Bloodstone lands shows you how to play really high level adventures of your own. And Pool of Radiance becomes a novel, having already been a computer game and a module. How many people will have both the desire and money to snap all these 4 up?
Regular D&D continues to quietly do increasingly strange things, with PC2: Top Ballista! Not a very informative name, this bemused me when I first heard of it. Still, skyship flying techie gnomes have potential, otherwise we wouldn't return to them. Hopefully these guys'll be less irritating than their krynnish counterparts.
Worth a thousand words: If you've been checking the letters page over the past year or two, you'll note that several people have asked for the addresses of artists, so they can communicate with them. And though they may have some trepidation, they've asked their regulars, and some of them have consented. So now you can send mail direct to Dennis Beuvais, Larry Elmore, Carol Heyer, Daniel Horne, Keith Parkinson, Ken Wilding and Robin Wood. Or actually turn up at their house, in 5 of these cases. Let's hope this is just fan mail, and the occasional freelance job offer, not opening the door to some psycho stalkers. If any of these people, or anyone who knows them personally is reading, I'd be very interested in knowing if the results of this were positive or negative. Strange business, really.
Spiderman to wed Vanna White: As you might guess, this is our Marvel article for the month. Although really, it's applicable to any modern day game where the PC's have the potential for worldshaking deeds. Realistically, they'd be in the newspapers and TV regularly, treated like celebrities, asked to do sponsorships, and all the other crap that comes with it. Something that will become the central theme of an entire gameline in less than a decade, with the release of Aberrant. What are the legal repercussions of mind control, super intelligence, superheroes in government positions. What happens when you try and claim insurance for acts of super-villains or the people trying to foil them. So welcome to the arrival of gritty iron age realism. A short but significant article, that packs enough ideas into it's length to inspire years worth of scenarios. Feels like it was intended as filler, but is very much not. Well done to whoever picked this one out the slush pile.
Through the looking glass: We get a bit more colour photography than usual this issue, which is nice. For some reason, that seems to scan clearer. Just the usual set of reviews this month. Some pieces to construct outdoors hex terrain from GHQ. TSR's Cities of mystery boxed set gets a rather positive review. Greenfield garrisons gives us a house and inn. Probably best used if you have a regular game table that isn't constantly being cleared off for other purposes between games. A trio of vehicles intended for the OGRE game. It's been ages since they talked about that in here. Good to see it still going. Some goblin cavalry with wolves. A batman and joker pair that gets a 5 star result. A four pack of mechs for Battlemech. A boxed set of 10 Draconians for those of you who're still playing Dragonlance. And some British colonial soldiers. Pretty much business as usual here.
Make the most of your missions: Merle Rasmussen returns to give us an article on the game he created for the first time in years. If anyone should know about the game getting stale, feeling like you've exhausted all the options and are just doing the same thing over and over, it's him and Gary. And Gary isn't contributing here anymore. So he gives lots of advice on his own adventure creating techniques. Curiously, he seems to have taken a leaf from Tolkien, frequently engaging in the worldbuilding first, and then letting the story flow from that. After all, a good location gives you all kinds of ideas to work from. Stealing from other people's ideas and adapting them is also a big source of material. But it does all boil down to the same few story ideas in the end. So why not get a book on dramatic tropes, and go straight to the source. He might not be one of our most entertaining writers, but the years of practice have honed him into a pretty competent and confident designer. As this is pretty system free, it's good advice for everyone, not just modern day espionage people. And the sample ideas given show a fine mastery of the art of punning. A good combination of old and new school aesthetics. Seems a fairly decent way to close a decade.
Shades, the ultimate adventure multi-user game? Man, this telephonic networking thing is really starting to grow in popularity. Now if only they could get all these little networks to all connect together and operate off the same protocols.
Dragonmirth has plenty of food related humour. Yamara meets Ogrek the undisciplined. A very smooth operator indeed. Muahahahaha.
A solid average or slightly above this issue. With both the reaffirmation of a bunch of old elements, and the reaching out towards new ones that will become standard next decade, it feels quite appropriate as a bridging episode. While they may be repeating old ideas a bit, they are both coming up with new ones, and new spins on old ideas. You can see why they chose to create ever more exotic settings as a means of avoiding rehash, and making the same old races and classes feel fresh. It's all a logical progression, even when in hindsight, it might not have been the best idea. Oh well. Plenty of positives, plenty of negatives to come. I will let them wash through me. Hopefully my mind will not be washed away by the power of the tide, broken and left as debris on the bottom of the cliff of creativity.
Dragon Magazine Issue 153: January 1990
part 1/3
108 pages. So we've finally made it to the 90's. Cyperpunk is in. The internet is starting to seriously grow into more than just a glimmer in a few people's minds. The overall darkness quotient in gaming is up. Metaplot isn't quite the monster it will become in a few years time, but it's certainly getting there. In the meantime, roleplaying is spreading out in all directions, upwards, downwards, and several odd angles. And one of those is gods. We've had rules for playing them in D&D since 1986, but they've never got any expansion in the magazine, apart from the odd sage advice question. Let's hope this themed issue fixes that little oversight.
In this issue:
Letters: Another forward thinking suggestion. How about putting the magazine on CD, and sending it out that way? It would save transport costs and allow for more colour on the cheap. Roger continues to be conservative. You might save money in the long run, but changeover costs would be a bitch, and he's feeling lazy at the moment.
A suggestion that an article containing a transcript of play might be a neat thing to put in the magazine. Once again, Roger is skeptical. They still don't have the technology to do stuff like this easily, and it'd have to be a damn good one to merit inclusion, because these things can get loooong and stupidly tangental.
A letter from a German gamer eager to see a translation of the new edition. Funny you should mention that. It should be arriving right now!
A letter asking what happened to Judges Guild. They are very much deid sonny, largely thanks to us. But their game lines live on! Whether you support them is up to you.
Sage advice: What spells do clerics know (Any allowed by their spheres. Yeah, why play a wizard when clerics outclass them in most areas. )
How is bless different from chant and prayer (they affect different things. Read closely, because you need to know what you'll have if you stack them )
Can you suspend bless' duration between melee (no)
What happens if you bless cursed items (recycled question. Go away now)
What happens if you bless weapons. (nothing, unless it hits a rakshasa)
How does blindness and deafness affect spellcasting (more recycling? Have you people learned nothing from Skip? )
Can you cast command and turn undead in the same round (no, they use up the same action type. We really ought to formalize this. )
Does being at deaths door have any lasting effect (no. Once they've got 1hp, they're straight back to full performance. Doncha just love D&D)
Can you put a gyph of warding on a weapon and hit things with it. (no. They have to touch it, not it touch them. Subtle difference there, but important)
Can you move paralyzed creatures (With great mischief. )
Can light spells break a demon's darkness ability (What demons? This is second edition. No demons here. You can, however cancel out a Tanar'ri's darkness power. )
Create water only makes a few piddling inches of water? ( No, you forget your minis scale. )
Does protection from evil move with the caster (Yes, but don't try to barge past creatures. It's bad manners )
How badly messed up are you after being raised ( Lets just say you won't be up and killing things straight away. )
What are the stats of animated rocks ( Better than most weapons, but not as good as an actual elemental. So it goes)
Can call lightning affect underwater creatures. (only if they're close to the surface )
What are the disabling effects of being burned by heat metal (none. Abstract HP system strikes again!)
Can a wall of fire be used to surround someone (yes indeed. Not a nice thing to do, but pleasantly dramatic. )
Forum: Alex Iwanow agrees with Jeremy Gilliam that D&D is simpler and less realistic than AD&D. That's the point. However, that does not mean it's less fun, or that there is less roleplaying while playing it. That all depends on the DM and players, and sometimes, removing mechanical bits makes this run easier.
Rusty Ballinger gives his suggestion for balancing out demihumans while still allowing them unlimited progression. Varying multipliers based upon their various lifespans. This would only be a balancing mechanism in games which span long periods of time, but it would work. You'd need to structure your game so regular character turnover and characters of widely varying levels in the same party didn't cause problems. Better start putting sandcastles in that sandbox.
S D Anderson disagrees with Richard Emerich in great detail, using numbered points. There are better ways in which to run convention games. Much of it seems to boil down to not taking crap from players or letting one person dominate the game. Prepare prepare prepare.
Ed Friedlander continues to be a prolific forumite as well as a contributer, talking about the responses to his Dragon upgrades. He's pleased to see other people making clever monsters as cunning and prepared as they should be. Fear their diabolical plans.
Michael Norrish also thinks cleric's powers and behaviours should reflect their gods. If they don't, then their powers should go byebye. Simple enough.
The goals of the gods: Yeah, we've chosen our topic for the month. So what events are big enough to attract the attention of a deity, with their enormous cosmic power, and living space considerably less restricted than the average genie? Since they are also frequently petty, egotistical and vengeful, the answer is you'd be surprised. And since a lot of their interest is in playing cosmic games with/against other gods, once one has noticed you and taken an interest, the odds of others interfering in your life as well goes up exponentially. But this is as much about the way gods deal with one-another and their capabilities as it is about their goals. We get a strong reminder that they are not invincible or infallible in most mythologies. Skilled and lucky humans can best them, although they often wind up regretting it. They will dally with mortals, often producing exceptional offspring with the potential for great deeds and becoming full gods themselves. They can be overthrown, although again, not easily. It also has some slightly cleverer advice, such as pointing out that if their power is derived from worshippers, the ones who's portfolios are most important to everyday life are likely to get the most attention, and therefore wind up in charge. On the whole, I think following this advice in your campaign building will be beneficial for your game. Even at the top end, they're just people with limits, and personal likes and dislikes. If they weren't, they'd never do anything, and might as well not be there. And where's the fun in that?
As above, so below: Ahh, here we have another problem with gods. When there are multiple pantheons with mutually contradictory origin stories and overlapping portfolios, how do you resolve the conflict? This is particularly a problem when you try and put monotheistic and polytheistic stuff into the same cosmology. Someone has to be wrong, and whichever side it is ain't going to be happy. The solution usually involves ruling in favour of the big one or two in some way, since monotheism is currently in vogue in the real world, and then leaving the big god distant, while the local pantheons bicker and interfere with people on a regular basis. This article chooses to draw heavily on babylonian dualistic myths which also got combined with many lesser gods to show how this might work. Not with quite as much style as it would later be managed in D:tF or Witchcraft, but still, perfectly serviceable. And another thing they haven't mentioned in the magazine before, which is pleasing to see. Course, if you design your world from scratch, you don't need to worry about this crap. And it's only really an issue if you want a kitchen sink universe using all the monsters in the books anyway. So this may or may not be a problem for you, but once again, forewarned is forearmed. Once again, I don't have a problem with this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 153: January 1990
part 2/3
Following in their footsteps: The Greek gods again? Yawn. So overplayed. The title is very appropriate in this case, as they encourage you to flesh out your characterization of priests of various gods by playing them as mini-me's of their masters. All together now. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS! Do priests of our own god go around creating things and personally smiting anyone who breaks the rules of the bible? And actual historical priests of the greek gods were more oracles and the like. Plus there's also the fact that a lot of the time, they weren't priests of a specific god, but more a general spiritual intercessionary. And that's not even getting into the tendency of many gods, like mortal rulers, to be hypocrites who hold their servants to standards they themselves flout with impunity. I think this falls into the category of fail. Remember, diversity and specialisation within a hierarchy leads to maximum effectiveness. Trying to force all your employees into a cookie cutter mould will not be good for your cause, and should be reserved for dumb and/or oogy alien gods who have no appreciation of human frailty.
Your place in the grand scheme: The alignment debates are raging a full force in the forum at the moment. It's no surprise that when supreme forces and cosmology are brought up, the place of good and evil, law and chaos in D&D's system becomes an issue to examine. Question is, is it defined by people and gods to some extent, or does it only define them, with good and evil being forces you can objectively measure the quantity and quality of in a person, place or action? Yet more pontification on how to handle clerics, gods, alignment and philosophy in your game, hopefully without offending anyone. Some of the bits I agree with, some I don't, but even in opposition, you define more about what you do like and intend to do in your own design process. Just remember, ability and ambition are not strongly correlated statistics, (probably my biggest gripe. ) and the people in charge are not often the most insightful. (It'd be a better world if that was true)
Fiction: Firebearer by Lois Tilton. Still in theme here, with this little piece putting a slightly different spin on the legend of Prometheus. Deliberately low key, the protagonist of this story might not actually change anything in the long run, but they still tug on the heartstrings, creating a bittersweet little story that reminds us that even a small gesture can make a big difference to someone else's suffering. Another little life lesson that we would do well to try and imitate in reality.
The game wizards: Elminster is back. Funny how we've actually seen less of him in the magazine since the realms got a full game line. But he's as mischievous as ever, taking time to mock things like Alias' attire on the front of Azure Bonds, and the upstart new gods of magic and superdickery. (What? :p ) The events of the last few years require a big hardcover book to update things for those who haven't read all the novels, and give us a grab bag of new material, serving as a stop-gap until they can justify a full new boxed set. Spheres for speciality priests, updated 2nd edition changes (oh, those poor assassins guilds) lots of new geographical details, the works. Course, there's plenty more coming to make this stuff out of date again, with the Horde rapidly sweeping across the steppes, soon to hit the eastern realms, bringing massively increased OA crossovers in their wake. Jeff once again demonstrates that he can make pimping fun, and also that he finds Elminster rather more scary to deal with than Ed does by now. Still, it's obvious that the Realms is a healthy gameline at the moment. You're going to have to get running to keep up with this lot.
The role of books is getting in on the theme this month. Which is somewhat unusual for them. How nice of them to join in.
Quest for apollo by Michael Lahey has an interesting combination of elements, as serious story, humour, and huge numbers of literary and historical references get combined into the search for the sun god. (because without him, the sun won't work properly, which'll kinda put a crimp on the world. ) The result is fun but flawed, with a twist ending that doesn't quite work. Better luck next time.
Darkunders way by Tom Deltz combines celtic and native american myth in low-key but well realized style, as his existing characters discover there's more than one alternate magical dimension out there. It looks like this series continues to build nicely.
Tantras and Waterdeep by Richard Awlinson are of course parts two and three of the Avatar Trilogy. They don't get a particularly favourable review. Far too many events hinge on fiat. Elminster's death isn't convincing at all, the pairing of Midnight and Cyric works awkwardly as a party, and the whole thing feels driven by the bigger metaplot events rather than a proper story in it's own right. Such are the problems of writing to a preproscribed brief on a tight deadline.
The barsoom project by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes is a sequel to Dream Park (reviewed in issue 52) It doesn't quite live up to it's predecessor, mainly due to a bloat of plotlines, but it's still interesting as both theoretical speculation and a multilayered suspense plot with impressive visuals.
The jehovah contract by Victor Koman sees a private eye hired to assassinate God. (As Terry Pratchett would later parody in Hogfather) This contentious premise is mitigated by a likable protagonist, but it's logic runs out near the end, and it goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.
The steerswoman by Rosemary Kierstein creates an interesting, deliberately atheistic world, divided by gender, and driven by technology as magic. Sharing information vs keeping it secret isn't the usual axis of conflict in these stories, and the other alien worldbuilding touches add up to create a quite distinctive story.
Starbridge by A C Crispin sees her branch out from collaborative fiction and create her own world. A whole bunch of alien first contacts happen in quick succession, and our protagonists have to keep things from getting out of hand and manage peaceful diplomatic relations with some decidedly strange creatures. The setting established seems pretty good grounds for conversion to gaming.
The ecology of the manticore: Ahh, this is much more like it. An ecology that both tells an entertaining tale, and lampshades a few mythological tropes. Why would a rampaging monster attack heavily armed and armoured knights over defenseless peasants? Well, in manticores case, it's so they can regrow their tail spikes. That iron's gotta come from somewhere, and unlike Xorn, they can't dig it out of the ground themselves. As they have strong feline components, trying to train them is a complete waste of time, but that doesn't stop people from trying. The story also uses a bunch of recognisable D&Disms such as wizards and clerics being for hire, and resurrection being treated as, if not commonplace, a purchasable commodity that most people are aware of. A thoroughly enjoyable ecology. Lets hope they've got their groove back for the new decade.
Through the looking glass: Another bit of crafting instruction this month, as we get some tips on how to build your own dragon. Although the way he handles it, it seems easier to create dracoliches, working as he does by building the skeleton out of wire and then covering it with epoxy. The results will be pretty light for their size, and a surprisingly small base point will be all that's needed to secure a rearing or flying model. Just make sure you get the centre of gravity right, and don't sit on it, because it'll deform horribly. With three pages of full colour photography taking the sample model from skeleton to completion, this is a pretty little column, and shows that building stuff like this is surprisingly cheap as well. You make it seem surprisingly appealing. I think this counts as a success.
Dragon Magazine Issue 153: January 1990
part 3/3
The voyage of the princess ark! What a way to kick off the new decade. One of the coolest series they've ever done, and one that plays a huge part in building up Mystara's setting. I'm going to enjoy this. Welcome to the journals of Prince Haldemar of Haaken. We start of with a huge and amusing statement that everything you know is wrong! The map we saw in the Master set, while geographically fairly accurate, was annotated by someone who had barely been beyond Thyatis, and just made up place names based on in-jokes and their relations and pets. Sounds like the kind of thing that could really happen. :p Academics are like that.
We then fast-forward several months, into the future. To explore beyond the known world, they've somehow managed to fix up an entire flying skyship with a crew decently equipped with all classes and plenty of magical gear. This certainly isn't your usual adventuring party. They're starting off at a level of epicness most campaigns finish before reaching. How are they going to be challenged by whatever they face if they're already this powerful?
Their first couple of months is spent exploring the coast immediately to the south of the known world, just past the inner sea and the isle of dread. Labeled as the four kingdoms, there's actually nothing but jungles and savages there. They lose quite a few men to the various threats, but collect a man eating plant, and raise one of the lost crew as a zombie servant to handle catering.
So it's immediately apparent that these guys are from the pragmatic bastard school of adventuring. They take whatever the DM throws at them, and figure out how to turn it to their advantage, even if the results look somewhat strange. And I already know that they accumulate several more bits of weird stuff before I came in to the story, so I'm very much looking forward to finding out what happened in the episodes between here and there. With proper continuity, it looks like I'm going to enjoy this even more than I did first time around.
Your best chances: Ability generation statistics again, only updated to the new edition. At least they didn't call it What are the Odds a third time. Just what is the probability of being able to join each class with each of the 6 dice rolling methods. For straight 3d6, the chances of joining the big boys like paladins and rangers is well under 1%. The others increase the probability dramatically, but even for them, your average ability scores will still be somewhere between 12 and 13, so it's best to specialise. Looks like the average 2nd edition character will actually be less twinked than one using UA rules. So much for power creep being a linear progression. In another interesting touch, the writer (our frequent forumite Ed Friedlander) also introduces a method VII, roll 18d6 and assign them to each score. A method I developed independently, and am quite fond of using myself. A pretty well presented set of statistics, and one that refutes accusations of 2nd ed being power gamey compared to 1st. Sure, you can break it more with the right kits and other stuff from supplements, but at least you'll have to work at it.
The role of computers: Their finest hour: The battle of Britain sees Lucasfilm's game division continue to excel. George must make a lot of money keeping this stuff in house. Course, in this case he can adapt the x-wing flying system, as this focusses on the airborne side of things. Learn to fly a whole bunch of different planes, with very different capabilities, and then engage in bombing runs, dogfights, and similar nerve-wracking experiences. While there is a bit of flicker and slowdown when too many things are on screen, that probably makes things easier in those hectic situations. :p And it doesn't stop them from giving it 5 stars.
Swords of Aragon combines individual roleplaying and strategic level battle as you attempt to take over the country. Normally, that's the kind of thing you have to foil, so that's a refreshing change. Assemble armies, form alliances, and complete missions. An ambitious goal, but the excecution is a little lackluster, with neither the combat system nor the resource management being particularly user friendly, and the computer blatantly doesn't have the same limitations as you. They want to like it, but overall, found it a little too frustrating.
Space Rogue combines space combat with a certain degree of roleplaying and trading. Raid ships, sell their stuff to the various factions, and try to get somewhere decent. A fairly short and favourable review.
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the mission: Looks like Merle is well and truly back in the saddle, with a second set of roleplaying and worldbuilding advice for Top Secret in succession. In reality, random crap happens to even the most meticulous planner, and learning how to compensate for that (and in this case figure out what is an enemy agent scheme, and what is just another case of everyday randomness and incompetance) is another thing that makes the difference between a genuinely organized and successful person and an obsessive compulsive twit who's day is completely ruined whenever things aren't just so. Most of this article is a huge list of things to throw at your players, easily adapted to any modern day campaign, and many just as suitable for your fantasy and futuristic ones. It does encourage you to pick and choose them, rather than rolling purely randomly, but that also seems relatively easy to houserule. When you're getting bored of the same old wandering monsters, incorporating these ideas'll definitely liven your players day up. Muahaha.
Awash in phlogiston: So spelljammer is out. And like anything that pushes the envelope, there are going to be people who don't get it. Some just don't like it, and our stalwart game designers can shrug and tune them out. But it's the ones that want to like it, but have rules questions that eat up your time, that can really wear you out. And you can't pawn them all off on Skip. Once again unto the breach. Yes, there was only supposed to be one neogi deathspider and mindspider. Yes, there are some more ships statted that don't have illustrations. No, there aren't any new spacefaring proficiencies ...... yet. No, there aren't phlogiston flow charts missing, we never put them in in the first place. We shall make sure these unclear bits are fixed in the next printing. Like most errata articles, this isn't very interesting. Jeff tries to slip in a few bits of humour, but they don't work nearly as well when they aren't coming from Elminster. File under regrettable necessity.
TSR Previews: Not a very long list of products this month, but a decent variety. Spelljammer gets it's first module, SJA1: Wildspace. Seems to be custom designed to get existing PC's from another campaign involved in the new shinies. You do know you can never truly go home after this.
Dragonlance gets it's turn to have a monstrous compendium focussing on it's monsters. MC4 details draconians, and all manner of other weird creatures. Some of them are probably new as well.
Greyhawk gets it's first product in a while, WG12: Valley of the mage. Just what is that damnable mage playing at? You'll have to be pretty high level to venture in a and find out. Watch out for the stubby gnomes.
The Forgotten Realms gets The Halfling's gem, by R A Salvadore. See Wulfgar, Drizzt, and the rest of their ensemble cast get into yet more trouble.
And if standalone's your thing, there's Dark Horse, by Mary Herbert. A woman dressing up as her brother and going to avenge his death? With an intelligent magic horse? Oh, the drama. Sounds a bit twee really.
Dragonmirth gets a darker and more complex background, like everything else this decade. Yamara gets a tempting offer to switch sides.
Another mixed bag of cool and dull stuff. They didn't give me what I wanted with the themed section, but it wasn't bad material, nonetheless. The princess ark stuff is of course a welcome addition to the roster, and I look forward to them developing that over the next few years. Still, this has proved once again that there's plenty of stuff well within their remit that they aren't covering. And they will have to get round to it if they want to keep the rehash at bay. Let's build and support those settings. How many articles has Dragonlance had in here since it's release? Not nearly enough. Let's keep searching, for that perfect blend. :fade-out to smooth jazz:
Dragon Magazine Issue 154: February 1990
part 1/3
108 pages War! Huh! What is it good for? Having another fighter centric themed issue without actually calling it that! :D 5 new articles about kicking ass and taking names. Could be good, could be nothing special. Still, little has changed in the overall format, so I have little to say here. Cover's nice, though.
In this issue:
Crystal power? Genuine quartz set in solid sterling silver? Rassenfrassen load of new age crap. Even grimdark is preferable to this ponciness.
Letters: A letter from someone who is very cross indeed about one of the recent letters in the forum. That kind of vulgarity should have no place in this magazine. What ARE your criteria for selecting them? Roger gives a straight answer, but I can sense his undercurrent of amusement. The point of the forum is debate, so he picks letters likely to provoke it. By that criteria, he's succeeded admirably this time.
A letter asking why Dungeon magazine doesn't run contests. Wouldn't this be better answered by them, not us? In any case, they have far more submissions than they need. They don't need to prod the wasps nest of amateurs that this kind of thing would bring in.
Sage advice does another 1st edition session. More evidence of their friendliness towards the old stuff compared with the modern staff)
Can a magically terrified creature fight back (only if it's cornered. Rats, extremis, you know the drill. )
Can lightning bolts be cast vertically or diagonally (yes. Pew pew pew pew. Just watch the angles don't bounce back, and remember your pythagoras to determine how far it goes in each direction.)
How do you handle stinking cloud. ( It's pretty gross, whether you make the save or not. )
Can you seal someone's mouth with hold portal (no. Inapplicable target.)
Do you have to check to see if dispel magic affects your own spells (no. It works automatically )
What's the area of phantasmal force (pretty damn biiiig )
What's the area of cone of cold (not so big)
Can unseen servants fly (yup. Not as fast as arial sevants, though. But at least they don't go bonkers on you. )
Can you cast spells if you're polymorphed (only if you have a suitable voice and digits )
What can keep mordenkainen's disjunction from working. (it's certainly not impossible. )
Who gets affected first in a group of sleeped creatures (caster's choice)
Does anti magic shell destroy spells (no, it only suppresses them. Very different results)
Does haste double the speed of magical locomotion (no. You really don't want to do the locomotion at double speed. It'd be horribly squeaky, for one thing. )
Isn't weird overpowered (Not really. Very subjective. Remember, it's not real. )
Does magic missile ever miss (No. If it did, this wouldn't be proper D&D. :p )
Does stoneskin protect you from Ice storm hailstones (No. It's magic. )
Can you repair a simulacrum (Not easily.)
Can you magic jar a simulacrum ( Again, not easily. )
Can you complete components of spells separately (No. You disrupt the pattern, the spell goes kaput)
Can you be multiply charmed ( Yes. Too many conflicting loyalties may cause freakout, of course.)
Just how does invisibility work exactly? ( Oh, you craaaazy rules lawyers, always thinking up angles we haven't covered. Don't worry, Skip has it all under hand )
How high can you go with levitate ( As high as the duration lets you. You only want to go half that, otherwise you'll be coming down terminally though.)
How many spells does a 1st level magic-user have (Never enough. Never enough.)
Do spells end when their casters die (Wouldn't have many magic items around if they did)
How long can you hold a touch spell ( Until you next touch someone or stop trying. Watch out, because touching your friends by mistake may ruin this friendship. )
Where are the rules for spell malfunction (they're different for every spell, so you'll have to make them up yourself. You encouraged to be as evil as you can.)
How often can you sleep (Good question. Skip doesn't want to encourage the 15 minute workday, but.......... )
Editorial: Hmm. Roger decides to put his ramblings on a page of their own, rather than a sidebar with other stuff, thanks to legal being a pain in the butt. This is an interesting change, and one I know becomes standard with later editors. That's worth noting. Here, he talks about the end of the cold war, and it's impact on post-apocalyptic gaming. He notes that games covering it have got more serious in recent years, but I think that's more due to general trends than people taking the end of the world more seriously in particular. Don't worry, people will soon find other reasons to predict the end of the world. It's virtually hard-coded into us. Comes with the whole mortality gig. In the meantime, let's enjoy the increasing popularity of modern day games. Goes to show how immersed in gaming he is, if his thoughts on huge current events are how that'll impact gaming. Most amusing.
A big hairy tusked guy with a club saying Watch for us soon? What's all that about then? Ahh, the joys of cryptic teasers.
The game wizards: Oh dear. It's James Ward justifying their new family friendly policy of gamemaking. It's a game integrally based around killing things and taking their stuff. This is always going to be a bit problematic. But still, he has his orders. Devils and demons are out. Nipples are staying firmly covered at all times. Blood and guts are staying offscreen. Raping and pillaging isn't even going to be mentioned as forbidden. And they are going to resolutely pretend that D&D is a PG game in which violence is secondary to role-playing and exploration, and all the PC's are heroic. Heeeere we go. The 2nd edition changeover has been fairly sedate up till now. Most people probably hadn't even noticed that the extraplanar creatures were consciously censored. But now they do. If you thought all the letters from angry mums were tiresome, you aint seen nothing yet. Guess this is turning out to be a more significant issue than I first thought. A short article, but of course, pebbles can start an avalanche. I wonder how long it'll take for the letters and forum pages to be filled with responses to this. :rubs hands:
Forum: James R Collier has some more suggestions on how clerics ought to be further differentiated from wizards and each other. Their gods shouldn't design their power granting systems with so many abusable loopholes. Pretty much the opposite of the 4e approach.
Charles Bingham is another person who finds it easy to convert stuff between D&D and AD&D. The people trying to put one above the other are missing the point and quite a bit of fun they could have by combining the best bits.
Michael Griffith encourages you to play your evil enemies as sneaky sadistic bastards, not mindless frontal attackers. All's fair in love and D&D battles, as long as you don't break the actual game rules.
Amy M Traub tells us about her own gaming group, which features 5 kender, including a chaotic evil half kender half dark elf mage. :makes sign of the cross: It burnssess, it does. She also uses the dreadfully annoying true neutral as lawful good one day and chaotic evil the next method of balance. Seems like a textbook example of badwrongfun gaming to me. No thanks.
Jim O'Brien is finding that his local players are getting increasingly shallow and stereotyped in their roleplaying. What the devil. Aren't you supposed to get better at stuff the more you practice? Yes, I know you're getting older and have other things in your life, but that's no excuse to get lazy. Might as well not play at all if you're not going to put the effort in to do it properly.
H. K. McCoy thinks that you don't get enough nonweapon proficiency slots under the normal rules. He proposes that you should be able to get some more by paying an xp surcharge each level. I don't object to either concept.
Dragon Magazine Issue 154: February 1990
part 2/3
Warrior kings and empire builders: So you want a domain? In D&D, you can get a little place of your own to rule relatively easily once you get to name level. But what if you're not content with that? It's conquerin time! This article focusses on two of realities most successful empire builders, Julius Ceasar, and Charlemagne, their techniques and foibles. Being a conquerer requires considerable logistical and negotiation skills as well as personal badassedness. They really ought to represent that kind of thing better mechanically, because at the moment, wizards and clerics seem far better suited to being leaders of an army. Still, it's full of ideas that seem appropriate to members of any class, and indeed reality as well. (yes, I'm looking at you, George W Bush. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ) You've got to strike a balance between accessability and not micromanaging too much. You need a strong team of assistants, but watch out for grand viziers taking over, making you nothing but a figurehead. You need to make sure you don't extend your grasp beyond what you can actually hold, with things like supply trains being crucial. All fairly familiar stuff, solidly presented. Can't get particularly worked up about this either way.
TWERPS! Take that, stupidly complex acronymic titles! :D Another amusing parody hits the adverts pages.
The making of a paladin: Great. More on this irritating subject. :sigh: A relatively short article that feels more like an extended forum piece, this rebutts some of the recent controversies around them, with some talk on their training, and how they differ from clerics and regular fighters. The writer takes the approach that getting into classes is not an easy business, requiring years of training from youth rather than being derivable from divine inspiration or picked up on the job. Not the best approach from a dramatic story point of view, and also one that fosters the view of Paladin as elitist asshole detached from everyday problems and compromises. Not very keen on this one, as it very much does not solve the stereotyping and characterization problems that bedevil the class. No help here. Moving swiftly on then.
All in the family: Heraldry! There's something we haven't seen covered since 1981. And since this new article draws heavily on the new proficiency system, there's vary little rehash involved. Unfortunately, this leads to a textbook case of supplements spreading slots too thin, with 8(!) needed to get all the skills involved. Not a very well considered bit of mechanics. No-one's going to bother with that. Well, not unless the guild has it's own draconian enforcement methods to keep the nobles in line and employing their services, which this certainly presents hints towards. Overall, it's an entertaining but decidedly problematic article, with lots of cool little flavour bits, but decidedly dodgy crunch meaning they may not work out well when applied to your game. Y'know, Roger, as an editor you're supposed to spot and fix issues like this. I guess the system's still new, they haven't had time to see the bugs develop yet.
John Denver says plant a tree for your tomorrow. More crap completely untargeted advertising. Go AWAY! We get enough of this from Michael Jackson. We do not need sensitive acoustic guitar playing on top of the eco crap preaching. And don't you even think about joining in, Ozzy. For the supposed prince of darkness, you don't half have a bunch of soppy preachy ballads in your back catalogue. I'm watching you. Erm. Sorry about that folks. We now return you to your scheduled reviewing.
For king and country: Hmm. Army based gaming. There's something you'd think we'd have more on than we do. We've had quite a bit of stuff on playing and managing an army from the top down, since D&D does have extensive wargaming roots, and the name level stuff presents that as a default option. We've had several editorials from Roger about gamers within the real world military. But roleplaying as a standard grunt or a special forces troop within an army? Somehow we've managed to get this far without the magazine mentioning the idea, save in relation to Top Secret, a few reviews of modern games, and as your backstory in Traveller. And it's such an easy setup to create adventures for, because you have someone actively issuing your characters with missions without the railroading complaints. This article takes a fairly gritty simulationist approach to the topic, with tables where you roll to enlist, to find out your odds of promotion, what duty you're assigned too, and what happens during a particular year. You may want to fudge these a bit to ensure the group can stay together if not playing a solo game. It also sticks closely to the medieval fighter-centric view of armies, where they don't take advantage of the awesome benefits having magical healing and artillery in your arsenal to win wars. So it's a well written article on it's own terms, with plenty of detail, that is at the same time, very poorly suited to D&D worlds and campaign gaming. There is a good campaign to be had with this idea, but you'll have to find somewhere else to draw from if you want to avoid an awkwardly disjointed experience.
The deathgate cycle, the new heptology by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. They can really churn them out.
How to win wars and influence people: Thomas M. Kane gets a second article in on the theme. This is another one drawing heavily on realism issues, pointing out that logistics are usually a bigger enemy to overcome for an army than the supposed human foe. Disease, horrible terrain, disorganised command chains, morale issues, this is why zombies really revolutionise fantasy warfare. With plenty of quotations by Sun Tzu and other noted generals, they once again remind us that real battles bear very little resemblance to D&D ones, and are more commonly exercises in who can get the drop on the opponent and break their spirit rather than head on fights that end when one side is all dead. It's no wonder that adventuring party seems a far more glamorous option than army grunt. So with all the themed articles this month being at mediocre or below, this has not been a good issue so far. Let's hope the other features manage a bit better.
Role-playing reviews: Genre mashing! In the infant days of roleplaying, people piled everything they could into D&D, largely due to lack of other options. However, these days, we have systems specifically designed for very particular blendings of genres, instead of just a straightforward kitchen sink. And let's face it, this isn't a bad thing at all. So Ken's chosen remit this month is to examine some of these experiments, see which ones have turned out best.
Space 1889 sees GDW put a very different spin on space opera from Traveller. Drawing heavily on the works of Jules Verne, H G Wells, and other proto pulp and sci-fi authors, it sees the british empire extending their reach to the rest of the solar system in steampunk spaceships. The combat system seems designed to facilitate swashbuckling adventures where you're far more likely to pass out and have to escape or be rescued than killed outright, and you can integrate the board game into the overall ruleset for extra airship battley fun. And the settings of mars and venus are well developed and full of adventure hooks. It all seems like good rip-roaring politically incorrect fun. Very tempting.
Shadowrun of course merges cyberpunk with D&D flavour fantasy to create a game more popular than any of the pure cyberpunk games out there. Demihuman PCs. Various monsters, including Dunkelzahn the dragon CEO and all the undead people love to tell stories with. All the cool powers you're familiar with from years of gaming, plus cyberware enhancement and netrunning minigames. It's no wonder it appeals to a broad range of people. It is however, a bit mechanically dense and clunky, with disconnected subsystems all over the place that take quite a lot of learning. Ken is a bit dubious as to if it'll be worth it. Wait 'til the next edition unless you can take the steep learning curve.
Course, it's easy to forget that AD&D has quite a lot of clunky bits bolted on itself, it's just that we're used to them from years of play. Spelljammer adds more than it's fair share of these, as thy have to figure out ways of handling gravity, air supply, ship combat and interstellar flight that are fun and not too bogged down in realism. As with Shadowrun, the familiar elements should help ease the transition to new vistas. There are several new PC and NPC races, and quite a few existing monsters get repurposed for the new environment. You can have weird and wonderful adventures in in a setting more akin to some medieval fantasist's idea of space than the real thing, or you can just replace the hollow asteroids and ruined spaceships for regular dungeons and carry on pretty much as usual. Once again, even the official designers are swinging back towards freewheeling, house rule happy fun in their gaming. Ken is positively giddy with the possibilities, and I'm pretty positive he's not just saying that to be a company shill this time. Roll on the supplements.
In another amusing footnote, we find out that cyberpunk authors are becoming aware of the RPGs based on their work just as quickly as the fantasy ones, with Walter Jon Williams providing an official conversion of his Hardwired novel for the Cyberpunk system. This comes highly recommended as well. Interesting. They don't miss a trick. D&D's new system for making faerie folk available as PCs seems to be pretty decent as well. All in all, a very positive set of reviews, with a well above selection of notable products. This has been a fun bit of reviewing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 154: February 1990
part 3/3
Fiction: Raistlin and the knight of solamnia by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. (Or just Racy Hickman :rips bodice: if you go by the misspelled contents page :p ) This is a little prequel piece in which our delightfuly 'cesty little canon pairing engage in a little small scale heroism, lifting a curse and learning a few moral lessons, which, this being a prequel, they'll fail rather to take on board. Story of their world. An amusingly chaotic intro in which kender get all the dread they deserve segues into an adventure where the heroes win by brains rather than brawn and the supposed good guys are proved to be prideful jackasses, again. :shakes head: Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from these two. If you like their work, you'll like this. If not, you know what to do by now.
The role of computers: Mines of Titan is a sci-fi RPG set on Saturn's moon. A pretty open ended game, your theoretical goal is to earn enough money to leave. In the meantime, there's tons of things to do. You can gamble. You can go bounty hunting. You can talk to people and get all sorts of missions. Choose your buddies carefully, and make sure you train up before tackling the hard missions. Another way to eat up hours and hours of your life.
David Wolf: Secret agent gets a fairly negative review because it's mostly animated cut-scenes where you have no power to influence the plot at all. The bits where you do have control are ridiculously easy as well. Lame. Go rent a movie instead. This is what happens when you try and build a game around a gimmick instead of strong gameplay design.
M1 Tank platoon, on the other hand, gets 5 stars. Not only do you have to pilot a tank, you get to control a whole platoon and co-ordinate their actions against the enemy. This is one instance where you really need to read the manual, which as it's 200 pages long, means this game won't be for everyone. But with both great graphics and a huge tactical challenge with near infinite options, it's just the thing for a bunch of jaded reviewers.
Star fleet II: Krellan Commander sees you attacking the humans you were saving in the last installment. it's another enormous game, so much so that you'll need to adjust your computer's buffer settings to avoid crashes, and it'll still be sluggish unless you're on a high end machine. But once again, that doesn't mean they don't like it, just that you should think before buying.
Several other notable new games mentioned in the news section. Ghostbusters II. Double Dragon! And the second dragonlance conversion, Dragons of flame. They also seem to be getting over their griping about copy protection phase. That's a vague relief.
Novel ideas: Hmm. Looks like we have a second new column starting this month. The book department is one of TSR's most profitable divisions now, with it's relatively low materials costs, and mass market penetration even among non gamers. Actually, they've recently found out that they're the second biggest sellers of fantasy books in the whole country. So why not give it a little more promotion. Better than throwing good money after bad. And so the magazine becomes a little less about roleplaying, and a little more a mouthpiece for promoting whatever TSR is up to at the moment. On the plus side, I finally get to find out a bit about Jeff Swycaffer, along with Mary Herbert and Robin Bailey, as they profile the writers behind some of their recent and upcoming books. The books they've written, a little about their lives, their literary influences. It's been a few years since they last ran profiles on people, and this is fairly interesting reading, although I get the impression that they did some serious cutting to fit them all into a couple of pages. Like the mini's column, I actually rather enjoyed this as a change of pace, but am all too aware that it could soon become a waste of space. How very awkward. Guess I'll just have to keep judging them on a month by month basis.
The voyage of the princess ark: Another 5 weeks in the life of Haldemar and co this month. Due to a divination, they choose to head northeast, to see whatever is out there. This leads them to a mountainous island where they encounter trouble negotiating the landscape due to their maximum flight height, and then they nearly die when a dragon attacks. Along the way, they have to sacrifice another of the crewmembers. The plot definitely thickens. Once again we see that despite their power, there are more than enough things out there in Mystara able to challenge them. Plus the fact that they choose to save the life of the member of a rival noble house over a loyal crewman makes it even more clear what kind of "heroes" we're dealing with here. They're not going to breeze into a town, solve all the puzzles, kill the biggest evildoers, and then breeze off into the sunset with a cheering crowd behind them, leaving the world a cleaner, happier place. They're going to bounce from one scrape to another, frequently making hurried escapes from whatever they've pissed off this time. And the adventure is going to be all the more interesting and unpredictable as a result. This time round, we also get some player-centric crunch, with a spell described in the journal being statted out. Need some help with your navigation. Use this. It's good for your entire fleet of skyships. You can also reverse it, which makes for great hidden locations. If you've made it to companion level play and want to protect your domains, you should be able to see the value in this.
Dragonmirth reminds us that the reality behind monopoly is just as cutthroat and grim as that behind D&D. Yamara gets married. Wackiness ensues.
TSR previews: Dragonlance is once again our biggest export. DLA1: Dragon Dawn is the first of a trilogy of adventures set in Taladas. Good to see them once again giving their new properties plenty of push. Ansalon, on the other hand is stuck in the past. The Prequel trilogy has proven so popular that they've decided to give us another three books. This time, it's Riverwind who's history we get to see in greater detail.
D&D rolls out it's creature features fast and hard, with PC3: The sea people. Jim Bambra lets you mix merpeople, sea elves, tritons, dolphins, etc to create undersea parties that rival regular ones in racial diversity. That's unlikely to get a follow up.
Lankhmar gets revisited for a quick adventure. Nigel Findley does LNA1: Thieves of Lankhmar. Will his distinctive style translate to the old S&S milieu?
Flint Dille also seems to have been a busy bunny lately. He delivers his sister (:wolves howl, rumble of thunder:) a Buck Rogers graphic novel, and an agent 13 book, Acolytes of Darkness. Several big names are involved in their creation, including Frank Miller, Buzz Dixon, and Dan Spiegle. Very interesting indeed.
Who was that masked android?: Our token non D&D article at the end this time is a Marvel Superheroes one on secret identities, and their preservation in the face of investigation. Let's face it, if it weren't for narrative convention, and a decent supply of mindwiping and retcons, there would be far fewer supers with their disguises intact. (And it'd be another order of magnitude or two harder 20 these years later, with the huge increase in surveillance and recording technology, both government and private. ) In contrast to the recent Top Secret articles, this is a crunch heavy examination of the various factors affecting your chances of being discovered, well tied into their universal resolution scheme. The bigger your impact, both as a person, and a superhero, the greater the chances someone'll come along able to put two and two together and say, hey, if you took his glasses off, doesn't he look exactly like .......... ? Anyway, I found this another article that's both useful and likable, with it's easily determined divisions, and plenty of examples.
With a truly rubbish themed section, and several other very problematic articles, this is a bad issue overall, but in an interesting way. The Princess ark is still fascinating, and we're seeing the start of the early 2nd ed controversies, which is also fun to read about, but with lots of crap articles, and strong signs that the magazine is being interfered with in unpleasant ways by upper management, it makes for an unsatisfactory experience overall. Stressful times man. Let's hope there are some improvements ahead.
Dragon Magazine Issue 155: March 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. After 4 years of staying stable, the page count starts to creep up again. Have paper costs decreased? Are they getting more advertising in? Are the sales going up? I don't think it's that last one. In any case, that means more stuff for me to read and review. The 90's are definitely going to take even longer to get through than the 80's. And that's not even counting the frickin insert, which is missing again. :mutter mutter mutter: Okay, that settles it. I'm easing off the gas right now, rather than waiting for the burnout to hit. I've managed daily installments for over a year now without a break, I don't want to ruin that good track record. Let's see if this issue has anything that'll cheer me up.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from a new sculpting company looking for employees. At least, it looks that way to me. Hmm.
Someone curious about the witch NPC class. Roger is quite happy to point out the last two issues they appeared in. You'll have to find them yourself, mind.
A letter from someone who's noticed some of the displacer beast illustrations have insufficient legs. Sloppy artists, again. Send them to remedial fantasy anatomy classes.
An amusing suggestion for naming your dumb rampaging fighters/barbarians. Name them after the sound their weapon makes. Roger is amused, but a touch bewildered. How very 60's Batman.
A letter from someone who really likes many of the covers, and wishes they included a little more detail about the artists and methods of production. Bah. Write to them yourself, see if they want to give away trade secrets.
Connected to this, a letter asking where the hell the arrowhead on issue 150's cover is. You'd never spot it if you don't know it's there, particularly with the scan resolution I have to investigate from.
Sage advice gets to be a fetching shade of peach this month. Not that this does anything for the readibility. But that was never a problem, anyway.
Are demons and devils dropped forever? This sucks! ( We're carefully considering all the options. We don't want to annoy anyone. So we'll work out a compromise solution that merely annoys everyone a little bit. )
Do shamans get bonus spells for high wisdom. (Only if they learned their powers, rather than getting them innate.)
Can I photocopy the monstrous compendia sheets (yes. But if you sell it, the TSR rules nazis will kick your door down with their jackboots, and exact their brutal revenge. )
Are the new dragons really THAT badass? ( Not quite. We have our reasons for making all these changes.
Will we gets stats for tiamat and bahamut (2nd ed don't stat deities. Another casualty of the bitchin brigade. )
What can dragons dig through ( Anything common in their native terrain. Dig it, baby. )
What's the age category of a random dragon. (We suggest 2d4. Otherwise horrible random deaths may result. )
Why can dragons have AC better than -10 ( Because they're over a thousand years old. When thousand years old you are, ignore rules binding lesser creatures you may.)
What is the spell detect gems (It's not a spell, it's an innate power. As to why dragons have it, that should be obvious)
What's an alignment of nil (editing error. We were considering making nonintelligent creatures unaligned rather than true neutral, making the distinction between those that consciously maintain a balance and ones that just don't give a shit about morality, but it fell through. I'm sure you're intrigued to know that little tidbit)
Do fireballs do extra damage against white dragons (wait till next edition dear. It's only 10 years. You can get way more badass, and they won't even go up an age category in the meantime. )
Why are fire giants only immune to nonmagical fire. Why doesn't dragon breath count as magical (Because we don't want to nerf wizards, and we don't mind nerfing red dragons sometimes, because they aren't PC's)
Where are my wolverines, whales and sharks ( In a minute dear. Compendia 2 and 3 will be in the shops before you know it.)
How smart are werebears (smarter than the average bear)
What's the xp for noble genies ( Really not enough. Better to be their friend than their enemy )
Shouldn't liches be limited to 10 HD (No. They're monsters now. They scoff at your mortal HD limitations. On the plus side, they don't get con modifiers anymore. Well that's interesting to consider)
Shouldn't soldiers be tougher than farmers (have you seen what farmers put up with in D&D? Random plains encounters are way meaner than random city ones. )
Why was the huecava renamed (oops. No-one'll care, especially when the new version is more intuitive to pronounce.)
How strong are korred. ( Worryingly)
How much damage do cat's rear claw rakes do (enough to kill a wizard, no trouble )
Do orcs have too many chiefs and not enough indians ( Great. More errata. Pass Skip the historical revisionist whitewash )
Can rope trick be cast sideways or down (honestly, you let them cast lightning bolts at an angle, and suddenly we get a load of copycat questions. Skip is not amused)
How many pinches of dust of disappearance do you normally find (how long is a piece of string. How big is a pinch. When is being invisible around someone sexual harassment? These are all questions with highly variable answers.)
Does a wizard raising their strength with a wish still suffer the temporary penalty (yes)
Do you get a bonus for attacking someone while they're spellcasting (no. They can still get out the way)
Can you memorize the same spell more than once simultaneously (yes, but not advisable)
I still don't get the difference between spells known and spells memorized (Skip has been more than generous with you. Skip is giving you one last chance to pull your boots up and fly straight. Otherwise Skip will do what skip does, and show you what he can really do with his sagely knowledge. )
Unearthed Arcana is different from it's source material in Dragon (Our playtesting, we had it. And we used it. Course, that's all in the past now, thanks to Lorraine (:Roll of thunder, organ music, wolves howl: ) Williams. Do not mourn for us. But be glad that we lived. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 155: March 1990
part 2/4
Forum is another big one this month.
S. D. Anderson sorta rebutts the people picking apart his scenario where an itemed up fighter slaughters a horde of not so well equipped enemies. Yes, you're right that if they surrounded him, they'd probably win. But there are bottleneck situations where they wouldn't get the chance. The rest of his comments get very dull and nitpicky. Bleh. Let's just enjoy the game instead of dissecting it.
James Wise uses the emergent method of determining class and alignment, as espoused in N4. This means characters are more likely to stay in character. I very much approve, having used that method myself.
R. J. Wenzel reminds us that the point of monsters is to be defeated. If every monster was a supra genius with a vast xanatos roulette of contingency plans running at all times, the players aren't going to find things very fun. Similarly, in his game, spellcasters and magical monsters are rare enough that conventional forces and defences still work most of the time. Let the PC's be truly exceptional, like they should be if you want to replicate heroic stories.
Ahmed G. Amin doesn't allow resurrection in his games. Let death keep it's sting. Blah da de blah.
Larry Lidz wants to get rid of alignment and ban druids from making leather armour. Someone else really ought to be playing some game other than D&D.
Wesley Crowell reminds us that politely and clearly explaining things is the solution to parent rage. Acting as if you have something to be ashamed of, on the other hand, will definitely make it worse. Way of the world.
Gregg Sharp thinks that japanese animation is a rich source of gaming appropriate material to draw from, that is almost completely ignored at the moment. Muahahahahahaha!!!! :wipes tears from eyes: Man, that's another good reminder how much things are going to change in geek circles in the next few years. I wonder how long it'll be before we get a letter complaining ZOMG D&D is totally being animeised this suks. In any case, a surprising number of familiar names are mentioned, including Dragonball (no Z yet) Ranma 1/2, Dirty Pair and Urusei Yatsura. There's entire countries full of cool stuff out there, just waiting to be translated. Don't get stuck in the same old cliches the local media uses.
Bob Keefover suggests that there ought to be a stage magic nonweapon proficiency. Both real wizards and rogues would find that to be of great use, one for imitation, and the other for economy. I'm pretty sure that appears in a supplement or two at some point.
Dan Silvinski continues to fight the AD&D vs D&D war. He chooses the greater complexity of AD&D. Seems like that's getting rather more press than the probable AD&D 1st vs 2nd war that could have happened.
Robert Morrison, on the other hand, chooses D&D. Once you add on the companion, master, immortal and gazetteer stuff, the question of which game is simpler and has less options is decidedly less clear-cut. And he still believes that the D&D planar and weapon mastery systems are superior to their AD&D counterparts.
David Howery responds to the people raging over his revised cavalier, justifying his nerfs in a lengthy point by point manner. Yawnarama. How little things have changed.
Wild in the woods: Despite being about as mysterious and magical to the average D&D player as glass windows, elves are still technically fae creatures. Which means a special on them is likely to involve pulling some of the ridiculous number of elf related articles they get from the slush pile, just to placate that insatiable demand. So, they haven't done an article on wild elves yet. Fresh from poncing up the paladin a little more, Eric Oppen sets out to demonstrate exactly why there aren't any wild half-elves. Along with not being very bright, they're a dour humourless xenophobic lot who'd be much happier if all the so-called civilised races just vanished from the face of the earth. If it weren't for their dramatically different environments, they'd get along surprisingly well with duergar. :p A very good example of neutral not meaning apathetic good or ruthlessly selfish evil without the sadism, but actual neutrality. They seem perfectly aligned with chaotic neutral as presented in issue 106's paladins article - Me and my tribe are the only Real People in the world, and we're not going to trust anyone else further than we can gut them from with a well placed arrow. (which I guess makes them perfectly suited for a certain kind of adventuring party. ) A well focussed, but curiously unlikable article, he seems to have got into character a little too well when writing this, making it come off as hostile to the reader, not just the other creatures IC. Still, it is interesting, so it's certainly not a total failure. Just a little strange.
The elfin gods: Or, see this freelancer do a mediocre pastiche of Roger Moore's elf god naming conventions from issue 60. Set the random syllable generator to flowing and melodious, and let's look for gaps in their portfolios that need filling. Meharama. And since none of these guys and gals made it into 2e's Monster Mythology, I suspect the official writers feel much the same way. They're not even updated for the new edition with sphere lists for their priests. Come on, it's been nearly a year now. Get your acts together!
In the frost and the snow: More elf subraces? Dearie dearie me. Can't they spend a few generations in a landscape without morphing to match it. I guess with such long lifespans, they have to magically accelerate their changes to survive. Still, now the Uldra (see issue 119) have a little company oop north. Like them, they're rather better at the nature connection thing than their relatives in less hostile climes. And like both wild and valley elves, they're an isolationist xenophobic lot, not the kind of people you want to invite to any party that doesn't involve killing oogy underdark thingies. Once again, the hostility of the creatures within spills over to the writing, although not as much as the last lot, making them seem uninviting to use as PC's despite having several neat quirks. Vaguely baffling, really, and very much inessential. I am left with little desire to use these guys either.
The folk of the faerie kingdom: Vince Garcia decides to do something a little ambitious, and give mini-ecologies and encounter ideas for every fae creature in the books, including some edge cases. Since many DM's have trouble running noncombat encounters, he gives tons of ideas on how to incorporate them into your game. (Honestly, when they're tricksters, they hardly need to be evil for the players to have a noncombat encounter, get a profound dislike of them and want to wipe them from the face of the earth. ) These are actually damn good, with plenty of variety, and bunch of amusing mythological references. If that wasn't enough, he also introduces a new version of the druid with a more faeish tinge to their powers, and quite a few of the more wonky bits filed down. While probably slightly weaker overall, they are more balanced with other classes, and their special powers are more suited to everyday use, particularly the hierophant level ones. (going to the elemental planes and summoning elementals back may be spectacular, but it's generally a rather brute force solution, and planar travel without being able to bring the party along has problems of it's own. ) Overall, this is a very pleasing article indeed, useful for both DM's and players, and sneaking in some revision without presenting it in antagonistic way like the barbarian and cavalier articles. He's definitely proving a writer to take note of.
West end games finally reveal the name of the game they've been teasing for months. TORG! Wha? More info coming soon.
The ecology of the satyr: Hmm. This is a creature that's likely to be problematic for the more family friendly TSR of these days. And indeed, they scrupulously avoid all mention of the R word, or even that the very concept exists, merely presenting their amorous tendencies as extreme enthusiasm (if not always success) in attempting seduction on anything remotely female. They also fall into one of the other traps that material from this era was prone to, that of including substantial amounts of goofiness and comic relief elements. Well, I suppose that's one way of defusing the threatening aspects of sexuality without completely removing them. I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Another ecology that is an interesting read, but leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, designed as it is with elements specifically intended to annoy and confuse players trying standard tactics on them. Shoo. Away wi' ye! Go try yer luck on the kender wimmin. You'd fit right in round those parts. Bleh.
Thank you for your cooperation: Wouldya like to take yet another survey? This one is focussed on espionage games, rather than the magazine in general. Their Top Secret output has declined rather in general, and this is obviously them figuring out whether to put more in, or cut it out entirely. Tricky decision. What path will they take? You ought to know by now which path I'd prefer they take, but that means little. Still, hopefully they'll be able to give people what they want a bit better. Makes me wonder if this is just the beginning of a whole series of these on various genres. On we go.
Dragon Magazine Issue 155: March 1990
part 3/4
The game wizards: Anne Brown takes over the column this month, creating her own fictional mouthpiece, the mouse Bixby, to communicate the news. This time, it's Greyhawk city's turn to be destroyed by events in a module, unless the PC's do something. Well, as long as it really is them that do the saving, not some deus ex machina NPC, that's not a bad thing. Also looks like they're still making fold-up buildings as visual aids, which is fairly neat. Another attempt to liven up a fairly standard teaser piece, this isn't as successful as their banterings with Elminster, but is a lot better than nothing. If only Greyhawk's iconic NPCs had planewalking connections with earth, then maybe they'd get better press. :p
The voyage of the princess ark: A fairly quiet couple of weeks for the Ark this installment. They repair the damage from last month's debacle, and set down in a nice quiet bay, only to be followed by the dragon and attacked again. Fortunately, the locals have weapons designed specially to deal with dragons, and drive the bastard off. It may be back. Immediately seeing an opportunity, Haldemar recruits replacements for his fallen crewmembers amongst the locals, and of course, buys up a load of their weapons as well. Next time they see that dragon the shoe's going to be on the other foot. They meet, greet and trade, and set off again, seemingly in pretty good shape. Guess not every episode is going to end dramatically, and not every country they visit is going to wind up hating them.
On the mechanical side, we get two treats for us. The bolas of sunlight are just what the doctor ordered for chasing away things that are scared of the light. We also get to find out just how common spellcasters are in Alphatia, with entire squads of low level magic-users armed with blasty wands a staple of the army. Now that's how you make artillery capable of taking on way higher level creatures in D&D. Mystara is very definitely a high magic setting, with cleric and wizard powers fully integrated into the operation of society. You want realistic medieval stuff, go somewhere else. While this hasn't been as dramatic as the first two installments, it's still ticking over nicely. They'll be in deep shit again before you know it.
Editorial: Roger's little soapbox is used this month to talk about running games set in your own hometown. This allows you to have lots of fun with common references that the rest of the world wouldn't get, and get extra pleasure from sticking it to the man, or the school bully if that's your situation. This is the kind of thing that you might not think of, but seems like a no-brainer once you do. I've done so before (for an AFMBE one-shot, in case you're wondering), and had a great time. Once again, this is a new idea in the magazine, and one that shows how modern games are still increasing in popularity. Nice to see it appear here, and hope you've got a good game out of it too.
Fiction: Father, dear, father, come home with me now by John Morressy. Another story that slyly subverts fantasy tropes here, with the roles familiar for a fairytale, but the people inhabiting them rather different. Course, evil little girls have an entry of their own, but that's neither here nor there. The fiction once again proves to be an above average part of the magazine, less prone to rehash due to simple low volume of it compared to the gaming articles. I can see myself pulling a trick like this, albeit with caution. Teeheeheeheehee. Are you my mommy?
The marvel-phile: Jeff may have moved on to other things, but many people still regard this column fondly. Among them is Dale A Donovan. And since he's part of the staff now, that means he can write new ones. So the fan becomes the creator, and the cycle of life continues. Will the new ones be a pale imitation of the old? Guess we'll just have to see.
For this first one, things seem much the same as ever. Captain Britain has changed a bit in recent years, as like Green Lantern, he discovered that some of his weaknesses are purely psychological. He's also been tied in with a bunch of old mythology, encountering people from the arthurian cycle of myths, and generally being all latest in a long line of heroesey. We get updated stats for him, and new stats for Roma, daughter of Merlin. Looks like things are going to be back to business as usual, albeit rather more topical, since they've long since statted up all the established characters. So once again I'll get to find out about lots of amusing comic universe plotlines I missed at the time. Good to see superheroic gaming is still healthy around here.
TSR previews: A real set of riches here this month. On the generic side, we have DMGR1: The campaign sourcebook and catacomb guide. Long product code, long name. Hopefully it's advice on world and dungeon building will lead to equally long campaigns.
The Forgotten Realms gets Forgotten Realms Adventures. A big hardcover that looks like a grab-bag of cool stuff. Setting info, spells, the machinations of the bloody Harpers and Zhentarim. Some of it will be useful, some won't. We also head off to the far west, in Ironhelm, the first book of the Maztica trilogy. Doug Niles has done the UK, now he puts his own spin on the discovery and oppression of native americans. Sounds aesopalicious.
Dragonlance, having opened up a new continent, now shows how it connects to the old stuff, in Otherlands. It's a long trip, but somebody's gotta make it. It also gets to part 4 of the graphic novelisation of the original series. Course, this is barely starting the second book of the first trilogy, due to the way the different formats work.
Spelljammer gets it's very first module SJR1: Lost ships. Aka Dungeon crawling in spaaace, as has proved popular in Space Hulk. What horrors brought them down, and still lurk within?
Completing the list of settings, Greyhawk gets WGA1: Falcon's revenge. Another module trilogy? No setting can escape them! Ahahahaha!
We're also getting The best of Dragon Magazine games. Six of the bits of fun that appeared in here over the years. Not hugely useful to me, but old stuff was a lot harder to get hold of back then.
Marvel Superheroes gets MLA1: After midnight. The start of yet another trilogy, this time focussed on the more gritty end of things. Can your designers not count above three?
And finally, on the standalone novel side, Jeff Swycaffer produces Warsprite. Two highly advanced robots land on earth, and the good one needs to stop the evil one. Hmm. Sounds curiously familiar. How does this one play out?
Role-playing reviews is another busy section this month, tackling the Star Wars system. In the two years since it first got reviewed, it's accumulated a hell of a lot of supplements. George Lucas does seem rather good at handling his merchandising spin-offs.
Star wars sourcebook was the first thing released, and is basically just a grab-bag of stuff that didn't fit in the corebook. Stats for characters from the movies, new gear, maps of places, minifiction. Once you've got it, it'll be hard to run the game without it. Just the thing to snare you into stepping on that treadmill.
Star wars rules companion adds a whole bunch of new crunch, and revises existing stuff in light of more playtesting and reader responses. It adds to the game, but along with the errata, does tone down the cinematicness a bit. The battle between trying to emulate the movies and "what's that guy's story" pointing to some boring schmuck in the background has already begun.
Star wars campaign pack is a GM screen, and another booklet with a little grab bag of stuff. GM'ing advice on running long term campaigns. A starter adventure, and a bunch of outlines for some more to keep you going. Not quite a full module's worth, but it'll help until you get some actual modules, which there are also plenty of.
Tatooine manhunt draws heavily from the first movie, taking you to Luke's home to save a hero of the rebellion from shitloads of bounty hunters. Course, your attempts to find him might be used by them to get him, ironically sealing his doom, but that just makes things more fun. Screenshotalicious.
Strikeforce Shantipole sees you working for Admiral "It's a trap!" Ackbar to evacuate a base being invaded by imperial forces. PC's, running away? Surely not! Should be interesting to see if they play along.
Starfall is tailor made for if things go south in another adventure like the last one. Thrown in prison, it's up to the players to escape from a star destroyer. Map based, as well as plot based, since this kind of adventure requires lots of player ingenuity, and designed so it's reusable, should they be dumb enough to be captured again, this definitely seems like the designers thought things through before making it. Muahahaha.
Battle for the golden sun, on the other hand is the first module to step away from the events of the movies, and gets a mediocre review. Head to a water world and use the force to follow the railroad. Yawnaroo.
Otherspace, on the other hand, does make an interesting change of pace, although it introduces an alternate dimension I don't remember being used anywhere else in the EU canon. Course, that means you'll have to actively engage your puzzle solving abilities instead of blasting your way out. Hopefully your players won't complain about being bait and switched.
Scavenger hunt gets a rather less favourable from Jim than it did from Ken last issue, as he finds it somewhat scattershot, with signs that diminishing returns may be setting in, and that the various little episodes aren't perfectly stitched together. Hmm. Since Ken wrote some of the other modules in this series, I wonder who to side with.
Riders of the maelstrom sees things return to the status quo, with another fast paced, somewhat railroaded adventure. Even rebels have to deal with Space Pirates, and once again, you'll have to do as much sneaking around as you do combat. Guess that's just the way they like it.
Having ploughed through all that, Jim is probably pretty tired, and does the Galaxy guides 1-3 as a batch review. Each elaborates on the places and people from the films. It's a big universe out there, but it still needs a lot of filling in. Let's get a few more novels and video games and prequels out so we have more to build on, instead of having everyone winding up in the same grotty cantina.
Dragon Magazine Issue 155: March 1990
part 4/4
The role of books: Sword-maker by Jennifer Robertson continues to build up her world and characters, including the relationship between the hero and his intelligent sword. That's certainly a topic that can be useful for gamers, and the story is pretty strong too.
The lost years by J M Dillard is another instance of fail in Star Trek fiction, as it tries to tie together a bunch of continuity events, and gets nitpicked to death by the reviewer over it's inaccuracies. Sounds like you ought to be doing the line editing for the series then. :p
Laying the music to rest by Dean Wesley Smith sees another debut novelist with a refreshing and distinctive writing style get good marks. Whether he turns out to be a one trick pony or future works become more homogenised remains to be seen.
Rusalka by C J Cherryh draws upon russian folklore, but way the elements are handled feels rather more similar to her previous novels than anything from those stories. The supernatural creatures are also kept mysterious and poorly defined, and the result isn't among her best work.
The shining falcon by Josepha Sherman, on the other hand draws from the same sources, but with more depth and faithfulness. The character are more fun to read about, and the stuff would be easier to use to convert creatures for gaming.
Gate of darkness, circle of light by Tanya Huff steals a song from Mercedes Lackey, and uses it to create a quirky, lighthearted bit of modern fantasy. Now that's referentiality for you. Please don't sue.
People of the sky by Clare Bell draws upon Hopi myth, of all things, in another fantasy/sci-fi story set on another world, but with connections to this one. Like Tekumel, it's very distinctiveness and depth might make gaming in this world a little tricky. Still, once again, they're pretty positive about it as a book.
Once again, as a result of our novel's references, we are exposed to the dread world of filk in the shorts section. Curse you once again, Mercedes Lackey. :shakes fist: Other than that, it's pretty much business as usual. Big names fall, new names rise, the cycle of existence continues to turn.
The role of computers: Citadel shows once again that back in the early 90's, macs were still a healthy gaming platform. A 1st person perspective 3D adventure game, it may be in black and white, but it has both good visual design, and a complex character development system where you choose their parents and guide them through a whole lifepath before playing, traveller style. The action part of the game is similarly distinctive and complex, with multiple windows used to good effect in allowing you to select various options. Looks like it's another 5 star result. They do seem to be getting increasingly generous with those.
Taskmaster is also an interesting adventure game, full of choices in how you construct and direct your character. The graphics may be a bit outdated, but it's still fun, and rather easier to get into than many RPG's where you start off wimpy and have to do some serious grinding to get up enough power to do the fun bits. You still shouldn't forget to save regularly though. :p
The Atari Lynx gets 5 stars. A colour handheld game system the size of a video cassette, with games up to 8 megabytes big? Amazing! It kicks the gameboy's ass into last year! Ha. You're about to find out just how important battery life, convenience of carrying, and games available is in people's estimation of a system, over raw power. Once again, it's easy to be smug in hindsight. Still, interesting to see them diversifying.
Knights of Legend gets our second ever nul points, as the disk swapping and overall bugginess of the game was just too great for them to derive any enjoyment from play. Tch tch. The writing is on the wall for floppy disks, they just don't have the capacity needed these days.
Savage sees the commodore 64 push it's limits to try and compete with the 16 bit boys, with this fast paced little arcade fantasy game. They find it entirely satisfactory. Once again, goes to show, doesn't it.
The clue corner this month is entirely devoted to Ultima IV. Man, that's been out for aaages. What's all this about? Has it recently come out on a bunch of new systems or something? Or are people just still stuck at various places, unable to figure out how to finish it. Must have been pretty popular to sustain interest for this long.
Dragonmirth doesn't suspect a thing, as is often the case. Yamara tries to adapt to deified life.
Through the looking glass: Robert returns to minis reviews, with the odd strange bit thrown in. An instructional video showing you how to make terrain for your minis games? Very quirky, albeit probably pretty useful. It's certainly a lot easier to follow than most instruction manuals. The rest of the column is more standard, but still covers a fairly wide range of minis. Three tanks and an APC, for your near future overrunning needs. The heroes from the Dragonlance Chronicles finally get mass produced representations, several years later than they intended. Good things come to those who wait, apparently, because he gives them a 5 star rating for their detail and faithfulness to the artwork. Grenadier give us a big chunky fire giant that'll tower over most of your minis. M-3 have another set of futuristic vehicles for the surprising number of games that use them these days. And Tabletop Games finish our column off with the sinister barbarian Alaric Mancleaver, who he forgets to grade. The photography is fairly decent this time round, apart from the fire giant, who is rather occluded. He seems to be settling into a fairly predictable rhythm here. On we go.
Another one with a decidedly saggy themed section, and a mixed bag in the rest of the issue. As with the last time they expanded, it looks like there's going to be some growing pains, as they try to figure out what their readership wants and how best to give it to them. In the meantime, we may be getting lots of tiresome filler mixed in. Which of course makes me wonder just how funny and useful the humorous bits'll be next issue. Can they still get up the energy to party when working this hard? Even at this rate, I'll find out soon enough.
Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Lest we forget, beholders were originally created out of a pun on a saying and a desire to screw over players. No great social commentary or philosophical point here, just the sadistic fun of inflicting a TPK in a single round. Now that's the kind of humour this magazine should be running. Seems promising. Course, they have to put a damper on it by forgetting to scan the convention booklet again, but that seems to be becoming par for the course. Oh well, still another even bigger issue to get through. I doubt I'm missing anything crucial to the history of gaming.
In this issue:
Letters: More weirdness from the readers that the editors really can't top here. The usual problem of people mistaking our head editor for the actor who plays James Bond.
Two letters involving sex and gaming, which are dealt with in a manner that reminds us how their editorial policies have tightened up on this manner. You'd never see anything like 83's sex in AD&D article, thanks to upper management. :Wolves howl, rumble of thunder:
Some bad poetry. Fear the encroaching filk.
Some equally worrying speculation on the toilet habits of PC's and monsters.
A request for help choosing a tattoo. Exactly where it is going on their body is left ambiguous and dubious.
A question that actually makes sense, but is rather headache inducing, about the loyalty level of domesticated wolves. Leave it to the DM to make that decision in his game.
Editorial: Roger decides to tackle terror, a subject that is normally reserved for their october issue. But you should always have at least some element of risk while gaming. Once again we are reminded that Jim Ward is the king of monty haul games, and then creates enemies that can challenge those superpowered characters in turn. You can never be safe while he's around. Even crab grass can mutate into a monstrosity capable of killing gods without breaking a sweat. In comparison, Call of Cthulhu seems sane and restrained. A playful little editorial, but also one that manages to slip in promotions for several of their upcoming products, this doesn't ring completely true for me, and is another reminder that they are now a fairly focussed business driven by careful cross-promotion. We are not your friends, even if we affect an informal conversational style. Our job hinges on persuading you to give us money. Don't forget it.
Not necessarily the monstrous compendium: The magazine staff celebrate the goofiness inherent in the system, mocking mad monsters past and present as a way of warming up for some more of the most risible potential adversaries that our freelancers have submitted. This is not to say they aren't usable and in many cases are rather dangerous, for they worry not about ideas like fairness that lesser monsters adhere too. Muahahaha.
Blink wooly mammoths are like blink dogs, only for substantially higher level parties. Fighting a herd of them is an exercise in ugly cartoon deaths, for they have huge damage outputs, are very hard to hit, and are likely to teleport directly above you when attacked, with predictable results. You'll have to develop some very good tactics indeed if you don't want the humiliation of a TPK.
Death sheep are substantially less powerful, and played for more obvious laughs. Beware Basil the lord of the death sheep! While you'll probably survive this one unless the characters are too busy laughing to attack at all, there is a certain horror (and humiliation) involved in the fact that their death rage is infectious. Again, they can be played straight and still work.
Gello monsters, on the other hand, are just lame. Moving jelly cubes that are invulnerable to all attacks save being eaten? Pass me the giant rolleyes smiley that pukes little rolleyes smileys. There's no way these'll ever become anything other than a lame joke at the expense of D&D's lovely catalogue of oozes, molds, slimes and puddings.
Killer spruce work pretty well, actually. There's certainly enough mythic antecedents where this is played straight for this to work incorporated into a regular campaign. Evil plants, like underwater adventures, are a valuable addition to any designer's repertoire.
Man-drakes also seem pretty mythically resonant, but incredibly goofy at the same time. Essentially were-ducks, which are the male equivalents of foxwomen, they are a persistent embarrassment to any swanmays that may be in the vicinity, and can make your romantic life become deeply excruciating. Pelt any DM who tries this one with bits of bread, and hope that doesn't just encourage them.
Paper dragons are kyoot, and eat your spellbooks. Not hugely dangerous to fight, they are a pretty good screwage monster. Another one that will be taken very seriously indeed if they show up in the game, despite their whimsical elements. Even if it only scoffs one page from your spellbook a night, that'll induce extreme paranoia in the players, and make them set up elaborate guard mechanisms that you can have all kinds of fun figuring out how to foil.
Pigeontoads are a good demonstration that if you make something less cute, people are less likely to tolerate it flying around their city, crapping on the statues. Yet another vaguely baffling hybrid, they're really no more goofy than owlbears or stirges. Remember, the best way to eliminate monsters like this is to remove their breeding grounds. Otherwise they'll just be back in swarms again next year.
Pink dragons blow bubbles. Ya, Rly. They're still quite capable of ripping you up if you laugh at them, or fail to laugh at their jokes. (Oh the irony) Not properly updated to 2nd ed rules, they're not that ferocious, but underestimate them at your peril.
Ticklers are little flying puffballs that get under your clothes and incapacitate you with laughter. Dear oh dear. Still, the players'll stop laughing when they meet their epic level cousins. And while harmless on their own, combined with other monsters they can make an encounter much harder.
Tin golems look like big toy soldiers, but like most golems, they're immune to big chunks of your arsenal, and have an extra screwage trick on top of that. They're certainly worthy adversaries, and can be reskinned to remove the goofiness pretty effortlessly. Have a heart, and rescue them from the scrapheap.
Unicows, like unicorns, have a thing for virgins, and refuse to be tended by anyone else. Yeah, it sounds pretty dodgy when you look at it like that. Just be glad no-ones introduced unipegataurs in the magazine yet.
Were-hares are psychotic little fuckers, and you'll need a holy hand grenade to deal with them. Yes, it's time to break out the monty python quotes. Just when you thought you were safe. Methinks it's time for something completely different sharpish.
A pretty good collection really. About half or so of them would work just fine slotted alongside, say, the contents of the Fiend Folio, and the rest are pretty memorable, if not quite so easily used. This definitely seems more promising than last year's joke stuff so far.
Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990
part 2/4
Grenadier teams up with award winning artist Julie Guthrie to produce a whole set of dragons, and advertises them with a full colour double page spread. Drool.
The supplement mill starts for spelljammer with Lost Ships.
Razznarock: A pure joke piece with a serious moral in it. Beware the railroading DM. Beware the inconsistent worldbuilding. Beware the traps with no chances to resist. Beware the victory without effort. Basically a big how to not run your game, like the cheating pieces from last year, this is good for helping you spot these problems and fix them before they ruin your game. Pretty amusing, really. Definitely a better joke adventure than Nogard.
Yet even more outrages from the mages: Which really ought to be Bazaar of the Bizarre, as it involves a load of joke magical items rather than spells this time, but obviously they couldn't think of a good way to twist that title around. Oh well. Anyway, this is another collection of stuff that is useless, actively a pain in the butt, or in some cases actually useful in a twisted kind of way. There are three sentient magical items that just will not shut up and are impossible to get rid of, a whole bunch of bad puns, references to yet more items that can only be found on imaginary pages of the magazine, and all that stuff that'll drive the more literal mind mad. Once again, this is rather better than last year's equivalent article, with plenty of stuff that a devious mind could turn to practical ends. I'd at least consider this, anyway. Now, what can you do with a thousand lead pieces? :hmm:
The game wizards: Jim Ward once again tells us about what he's been up to in his role as liaison officer for the production of D&D related computer games. I suspect this involves a lot of ordering people around and leaving them to work out the technical details, which are frequently very hard to implement, as he admits to being rubbish with computers. Still, he knows what he likes, and is also happy to talk about his experiences with other people's games as well. So this is him very much writing in Gary's tradition, where he's technically promoting something, but the side-tracks and witticisms are the main focus. And if the games kill him loads of times, then is that a bad emulation of D&D campaigns? Somehow, he's managed to make a crap column fairly entertaining again. He may produce overpowered and poorly balanced games, but they certainly are fun.
Novel ideas: Promotion time again, this time for their Forgotten Realms novels. Since the Realms have proven so popular over the past few years, they're expanding them outwards both east and west. To the east, as we've known for some time, is Kara-Tur. But there's plenty of stuff between here and there, and they're going to fill that in too. To the west is Maztica. Welcome to fantasy native america. Man, they aren't being very imaginative with their alternate worlds. Still, it's how you use the ingredients, not how original they are, and on that from they're doing pretty ........... uhm, no comment. Man, they're still being a bunch of corporate shills. In addition, another of their fairly original (but oft imitated) elements gets some more airtime. You ate up his first three adventures. Now you get to see Drizzt's backstory in detail. Looks like the realms is going to be a lot more filled out by the end of this year. Busy busy busy. Another fairly dull bit of promotion.
Can you swim? Juggle? At the same time?: Vince Garcia steals liberally from Runequest to create an alternative skill system for the basic D&D game. With a % based chance of success, and fairly generous supplies of skill points, it's certainly a lot easier to reflect rudimentary knowledge in a whole bunch of things than the AD&D nonweapon proficiency system. The fact that further advancement is detached from regular level advancement, and stuff is differentiated by stuff that you roll for, and stuff you just purchase (with less valuable skills being cheaper) make it a fairly crunchy bit of work. While it doesn't feel very D&Dish, this is a pretty notable article, and looks like it might actually work better than the official one. This is one I'd be very interested in hearing about any actual play experiences for.
Fiction: Confusing sequel to a story you haven't read by Adam Troy Castro. Another joke piece here. When the stuff in the slush pile gets mixed up, all kinds of weird stuff can happen. Only the almightly pen of the editor can ensure everything appears on the page as it should, and there are no incomprehensible plot leaps, or annoying people ending sentences with propositions. A nicely meta bit of fiction, that once again seems to be hitting the right buttons for my sense of humour. It may be easier to do things badly but amusingly, and oddly, that can often sell better precisely because it is lampoonable. Don't be ashamed of the cheese in your collection.
The marvel-phile: Yet more goofiness here as well, as they tackle some more of the Marvel universes' many amusing and incompetent villains. Another collection of incompetent villains for hire, the Crazy Gang have an alice in wonderland theme, and have primarily been a source of irritation for captain Britain. Executioner, Jester, Knave, the Red Queen and Tweedledope. Just beat the crap out of them and shove them in jail. Problem solved. A pretty standard entry here. No great flashes of wit in their description either. Dale doesn't seem quite as good at making this entertaining as Jeff.
Wrestling with style: Another brief and unpretentious article here, expanding the martial arts rules to cover non oriental fighting styles. Boxing, two variants on Pankraton, and Wrestling, and a little on where these fighting styles are demonstrated in classical literature. It's not as if westerners had no style and finesse at all in these areas. Course, as ever, it doesn't address the fact that the MA rules in OA are a bit crap, but that doesn't seem to hurt their popularity as something to build upon. Once again, not even slightly world-rocking, but feel free to use it.
Sage advice finally leaves pole position. But it's still peachy. And illustrated! This is a step up! Some extra special april fools questions for us here.
What happens if an anti-magic shell is hit by a beholders anti-magic eye ( Magic doesn't work. Twice. Two wrongs do not make a right.)
What happens when someone's turned into water and then drunken. (Their deid sonny. Ach, noo. )
What happens if you cast spells to affect objects on a body and then raise it (oh, this could get complicated. Skip will have to filibuster until they get bored and go away. )
What happens if you get three draconians, cut off their wings, and load them on a catapult (Ok, now you're just trying to test Skip. Skip will not play your stupid games. )
What happens if you're turned into a worm, cut in two and then turned back ( You die. Simplest way to handle it. )
How much does a legless gnome weigh (Still quite a bit)
Can a dinosaur crush a sword + 6 (yes)
Can you shoot down a fireball. (No, despite how cinematic it would be. )
Can a ring of regeneration restore virginity (physically, but it won't fool the unicorns. )
We also get 7 more revisitings of previous questions, with the answers revised in light of new information. Skip ain't set in his ways. Skip is adaptable to please the laydees in every situation. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990
part 3/4
TSR Previews goes yellow. Their budget for colour seems to be increasing these days. Anyway, On the generic side of things, we get DMGR2: The castle guide, and Monstrous compendium 5, Greyhawk. Both team efforts by the whole staff, they bring a whole bunch of old creatures into the new edition, and expand the mass system rules for sieges and all that jazz.
The Forgotten Realms sees this year's big event start. Troy Denning gives us FRA1: Storm Riders. Head east to escape the mongols, and wind up in wacky hi-jinks land. David Cook writes Horselords, the corresponding novel installment. (Both the start of a trilogy, au naturelle) Having just got over a plague of gods and reworking of it's physics, now the Realms has to deal with a barbarian invasion. Well, at least they're not trying to top themselves every year at the moment. Still, prepare for big chunks of your old setting info to be made obsolete.
D&D gets another module, tied in to it's recent boxed set. Arena of Thyatis sees some new characters learning the ropes in a relatively controlled environment. I'm guessing being captured and forced to fight in the arena is on the agenda at some point.
Marvel also gets an introductory module. MLBA1: Mutating Mutants. I don't think the nature of your character's origin stories are in any question if you use this one. :p
And finally, it seems they're still trying their luck with new boardgames now and then. Fantasy Forest sees them resurrect characters from the D&D cartoon, and use them in a game for younger players. Who will reach the magic castle first? Anyone remember this?
Characterization made easy: Scott Bennie shows us how much he's grown from his bounty hunting days with another article on easy personality building. Remember, your personality is not what you own, or the numbers on your character sheet. Just answer a few basic questions to build up a fairly solid personality, pick an accent and some behavioural quirks. Just be careful not to be too stereotypical. Good guys don't have to be saints, bad guys don't have to be baby raping maniacal laughers. With pretty good targeting for adventurers and the kinds of people they're most likely to encounter, and about the right level of examples and humour, this is a pretty good example of this article type. There is a bit of rehash, but enough new spins to justify it. The general quality of this area of gaming continues to improve.
Through the looking glass: Another episode of painting advice this month rather than reviews. Shading, highlighting and definition. Doing stuff like this requires rather more precision than simply slapping a blob of paint on the area and adding a few dots for eyes. Like the last article, this is a good one for showing off their increases in sophistication, both visually and in terms of design. Casting techniques have also improved in the past 10 years, so you do have a better chance of having decent detail to build upon. The photography is excellent, showing how minor differences in pain jobs make a big difference in terms of visibility and distinctiveness. Quite a likable one here as well.
Forum: Alan Clark takes time off from his busy government minister schedule to comment on the cavalier. Yes, the individual abilities may be justifiable. But as a whole, the damn thing is way overpowered. That and the enforced attitude problem is not a hinderance as most adventurers act like that anyway. It's both lame and unnecessary.
Nicholas R Howe (Audacious) also thinks the cavalier is ill-concieved and overpowered. Quite a few of their powers would be just as suited to a regular fighter. See, this is why they got rid of them.
Timothy Sallume gives us some damn cool ideas for fantasy castles. Use magic to make living places with spectacular visuals that can only be penetrated by more magic. These fit in much better to a high fantasy game.
Darrell C Donald offers more pragmagic (sic) countermeasures against spells that make mundane defences useless. It's not that hard to deal with the low level ones without deviating too far from mundane appearances. All it takes is a little creativity.
Will Hettchen cheats on the castle issue by making a certain kind of common stone resistant to magic. Neh. Not as keen on this solution.
James Regan III demonstrates his own deranged creativity in the matter of magic protection. Wizards possessing giant black puddings. Teleport fields keyed to specific classes of object. Extraplanar precautions. Sounds pretty damn expensive. This is why you can only do this stuff at high level, and keeping it in house. I really think the DM should have thrown more obstacles in their way. Projects like this always meet unexpected obstacles.
David Howery expresses his contempt for the idea that high level characters with the tricks mentioned are easily available to anyone with a little money. These guys should be rare. Looks like this little conflict is going to run for a bit.
R. L. Brown talks about his efforts to make computers useful for gaming. Needs moar memory. Keep buying hard drives, so their sizes can keep increasing exponentially.
Quote from: (un)reason;361907Not necessarily the monstrous compendium: The magazine staff celebrate the goofiness inherent in the system, mocking mad monsters past and present as a way of warming up for some more of the most risible potential adversaries that our freelancers have submitted. This is not to say they aren't usable and in many cases are rather dangerous, for they worry not about ideas like fairness that lesser monsters adhere too. Muahahaha.
I didn't remember this at all. I mean, I recall similar articles from throughout the years, just not this one. The critters you mention sound an awful lot like things you'd find in HackMaster's Hacklopedias. I'll have to dig out my Dragon CD-ROM and take a gander, maybe even print some off and add 'em to the Hacklopedias.
Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990
part 4/4
Role-playing reviews: Ken once again helps us decide if his reviews are useful by talking about his criteria before getting on to the actual reviews. Which as ever, is fairly nice to see. It not only shows he takes the time to sit down and codify his though processes, it also helps us figure out if we're on the same level as him. I don't think I'm quite there yet, but then, I've only been doing this for 18 months, while he's been going a good 8 years now. Anyway. This month, he returns to the idea of cities. What makes a good description of one for gamers? Stuff useful for getting into adventures, mainly. Floor plans, personages with stats and defined goals, overarching tensions and potential conflicts. Seems fairly obvious, really. Lets see how the new crop have done.
Minas Trith gets a mostly positive review with a bunch of little nitpicks. It might not be totally faithful to tolkien's tone and design, but it does seem to be quite gameable, with a good mix of high and low fantasy. Mind the whitewashed ghetto through.
Tredroy is a city book for GURPS Fantasy. While the visual presentation isn't very appealing, on a closer read, he's fairly positive about the writing. It focusses well on stuff that's useful for adventurers, and isn't too cliched in it's design. Looks like they can do settings as well as solid rules.
Warhammer city expands on Middenheim. It gets a rather middling review. While initially impressive looking and full of mood establishing flavour, it seems the editing is rather poor, and the information is less substantial than would first seem. He also isn't too keen on Warhammer's tendency towards puns. It's not as grim as they pretend it is, you know.
The city of Greyhawk sees Ken play the company shill, giving it top marks in all areas. It's just what the AD&D system needs, and full of nostalgic references. Oh, if only it had been released 10 years ago! :p Ok then. Still, it is a boxed set where the others are single books, so the greater detail and visual stuff isn't surprising. There are still plenty of people in the company that love greyhawk and want to see it succeed, in the face of the more crap products.
City system gets a rather less impressive review, trying to do too much with too small a page count, and being dependent on the previous Waterdeep supplement. Seems like Ken would prefer his cities too small to technically be called cities in the real world, rather than trying to actually do things on the multimillion population scale. Still, once again, the production values are great, and the various bits and pieces are easily recycled for using in your own city layouts. Just don't expect it to be useful without any work.
Cities of mystery also falls for the pretty visuals & high production values, but lackluster writing and poor examples, which contradict the worldbuilding advice that they give you in the same book. Once again, it's mainly useful for the pieces, which makes it especially unattractive to me, unlikely to be able to get hold of a hardcopy. TSR is churning out quite a bit of marginal crap at this time.
Also notable is a minireview of GURPS Riverworld, which is also pretty positive. Riverworld has always seemed like a brilliant world for gaming in, particularly one-on-one play, and apparently this does it justice. I find myself tempted. Quite an interesting set of reviews, overall.
The role of computers:
Champions of Krynn gets a 5 star rating, filling the reviewers with sadistic pleasure as they use Kender to taunt the enemies, getting them to perform tactically unwise actions. It uses lots of other dragonlance stuff integrally as well, including the moon phases, Knights of solamnia, gods, etc. As Jim Ward noted earlier this issue, it's bloody hard right from the start, so optimization will be rewarded. Most of this turns into advice on how to play the game, and I suspect we may see more of that in future issues. Sounds like the designers know what they're doing.
Harpoon is a naval simulator, and also gets 5 stars. Very simulationist, with lots of freedom in how you act, and the potential for supplements with new scenarios and stuff, it seems well suited for lovers of those Tom Clancy novels.
Populous: The promised lands is an add-on to the ironically popular game. A whole bunch of new cultural options, including wild west and lego. Once again, they have great fun, giving it 5 stars. They are in a good mood today.
Risk: The world conquest game is a 4th 5 starer in a row. It's pretty faithful to the board game, only faster and easier to keep track of, of course. Little comment needed.
Tiger Road is a fairly decent conversion of the arcade game. They give a whole load of play advice in this review as well. Interesting trend. I wonder why.
Manhunter 2: San francisco gets unrated because the mac port sucks. Stick to the PC version. Blah.
The voyage of the princess ark: Our charming commander once again proves himself to be both devious and a master of understatement. Nearly sunk by a massive storm, captured by the heldanic knights, treated to the classic villainous monologue, contingency triggered time stopping his way out of there. Stealing the body of a god, hiding it on another plane, and then using it as a negotiating chip to escape from the treacherous knights and rescue the rest of the crew. All in a few casual diary lines. One has to wonder if he's exaggerating here. After all, this is a diary entry, and he's certainly not an omniscient narrator. Could he be embelishing his deeds for posterity to paint himself in a better light? Very good question. Maybe we'll get some clues later on, but for now, he's our only source of info.
This month's crunch is of course info on the heldanic knights, who are an excelent example of how chaotic=evil is a common association in BD&D land, with a strong organization and loyalty to it demonstrated despite their alignment. They also seem able to cast cleric spells while not adhering to the usual weapon restrictions clerics have to deal with. I guess that differentiating priests of different gods was well established in AD&D, so it's not that surprising. But it will probably result in players either complaining, or wanting to play one. Maybe not the smartest move on Bruce's part.
The ecology of the behir: What do you get if you cross a blue dragon with a centipede? No, it's not a joke, because the answer is something like this. Whether that's how they really came about, (we know dragons are omnisexual pervs.) wizardly experimentation strikes again, or it's merely a co-incidence is not revealed. That they have variants for other climates that do not directly correspond to other dragon colours is a mild negative to this theory. The providing of detailed stats for their various stages of growth seems to be on the up, as they do so for the 3rd time in 4 ecologies, and once again, they talk about training the creature. (futile task, really. Stick to things smaller than people.) Anyway, this is one with fairly average fiction, but pretty good footnotes, giving us plenty of detail about their lifecycle and little mechanical extras for you to slot into your game. Noncontroversial and useful. No problem with that.
Dragonmirth has several different types of release this month. Ralph gets evil in Yamara.
The twilight empire: A new comic, it seems. Yamara's been all on her ownsome for too long. We get thrown in in media res, and the protagonist is seriously off-guard. Ends after a cliffhanger. What is going to happen here. Will the comic stick around long enough for the plot to get anywhere? We shall see. The artwork is pretty damn good, in any case.
A rather better issue than the last few. With plenty of stuff that's actually funny, and some pretty good articles unconnected to the theme as well, this managed to satisfy me. The upper management may be trying to push them to promote the companies products at every point possible, but there's still plenty of writers who's primary goal is making our games better. And as long as that's the case, there'll still be some worthwhile issues for me to delve into. Onto the next one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 157: May 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Another thing that I knew was coming and dreaded comes to pass. Buck Rogers gets an RPG. Which means the TSR staff are obliged to put him on the cover and give him a special issue with lots of articles devoted to him. Curse you, Lorrane Williams :shakes fist: This could get ugly. Are you ready to face it with me?
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from the new owners of the Timemaster game, letting everyone know it's back if you want to buy it.
Another person asking for help playing paladins properly. It's not hard, you know. The more restrictions they put, the easier your choices become.
A letter pointing out that there are several better magazines for those of you who want to learn how to sculpt and paint better miniatures. It's only a tiny part of Dragon's remit, but a big part of some companies livelihoods.
A letter from someone pissed off at the attempt to pass norkers off as ogres. It's not quite as obvious as the goblin/kobold switchup in Dragon Mountain and the Monster Manual, but still, lazy art recycling is lazy art recycling. Your disdain is entirely justified.
Dragonstrike. The first ever dragon combat simulator? Looks like a reskinned flying sim to me. You'll have to do better than that to impress me.
Into the 25th century: Hmm. Looks like Kim Mohan is back on board. Now that is interesting. What happened to working for Gary? New Infinities folds, and he comes crawling back. Anyway, this sees him selling the new game, both it's setting and system. It's pretty similar to AD&D, so don't worry too much about that. There's plenty of room to adventure in, with plot hooks ready to go; lots of cool gadgetry, spaceship combat, pretty maps, cards containing iconic info, a GM screen, the works. It even has dice, so n00bs lured in by the name can get straight to playing. It all sounds pretty comprehensive, when you put it like that. But then, putting all those shinies in the boxed set costs lots of money, so that'll bump up the losses the company makes from all those unsold products. They're certainly pushing this one harder than they did Top Secret or Star Frontiers. Did our evil overmistress give the core a print run to match? In any case, this would be an interesting development even if I didn't know the context behind it. As I do, it stands out a little more against the D&D heavy backdrop of the current magazine.
Buck is back!: A second, shorter promotional piece, focussing on all the other multimedia products Buck is going to appear in in the near future. A series of comics. A computer game. Another trilogy of novels. And a whole load of supplements for the RPG. If you were a Buck fanatic, this would eat up a big chunk of your disposable income. There is a bit of an overlap with the last one, but this is a pretty short, no-nonsense piece that doesn't really give me any hooks to actively hate on. Ho hum. A rather unthrilling start indeed. On we go, let's see if they've got anything else to say apart from "We've got cool stuff coming out! Buy it!"
Chamber of the sci-mutant priestess? Now there's a name straight out of the pulp random title generator. And the protagonist of the game is called Raven? And a mutant monkey thing is carrying a scantily clad girl on the cover? To the clichemobile!
Buck Rogers flies solo: Ed Greenwood joins in to deliver the only article in this special that actually gives us anything we can actually use, rather than just being promotion. This is for the boardgame, and reminds me of the optional rules stuff he did for Divine Right, a good decade ago now. Basically just a set of behaviours for the enemy players if you want to play a solo game, this seems to have his usual combination of clever quirkiness, and plenty of options to allow you to boost your replay value. You'll probably win, but the big question is how well, with the margins he gives between resounding victory and failure fairly narrow. Hopefully that means he's playtested this a few times and has a good idea how it turns out. As with much of the non D&D stuff, I'm forced to ask the floor if this actually worked, but this is still easily the most interesting and useful part of this rather drab themed section. They really did struggle to get up enough stuff to really justify calling it that.
For the greater good: The Star Wars rpg also gets an article this month. That's nice. A bit more sci-fi would be welcome in here. Carl Sargent delivers the equivalent of some new spells, new force powers, which are always a popular option for those craving more crunchy toys to play with. Control Damage, when combined with refined Life Sense, allows a Jedi to inflict only the harm they need too, and no more. Not killing enemies but still winning a fight requires more skill than just slaughtering everyone by dirty tricks, but of course, they want you to play heroes in this game, and punish those who don't mechanically. So this not only adds a particular kind of cinematics to your game, but also makes it easier for you to stay on the light side while still having cool and dramatic battles. That's very handy indeed, as well as a particularly well thought out bit of figuring how to get a thematic result while working within the existing system. He can definitely have some kudos for this.
Sage advice: I need some elaborations on the nature of simaclulara (They're not properly alive, but they're real enough to figure out they're incomplete and wish they were a real boy. There's certainly a moral quandary involved in creating them)
Is magical elven chain less penalising to thieves (no)
Do you lose your dex bonus when spellcasting. (recycled question. The answer's still no )
Will an int boosting ioun stone help you learn spells. What happens if you learn too many spells then lose it ( Yes, and you get to keep them through the grandfather clause. Join the ranks of the overpowered ancient PC's. )
What level are ranger's followers (not strong enough to survive a high level dungeon with him. )
Can thieves use shields (No. We may have relaxed some stuff in 2nd ed, but that aint one of them. )
Do you lose spells that are disrupted during casting from your memory ( yes indeed. This is why the spellcasters stay behind the meat shields )
What counts as income for paladin's tithing. (The stuff you just got, not the stuff you already have. Remember, for paladins, that's a minimum. Holding onto wealth you don't have a good use for will always get you in trouble. )
Can the shield spell be boosted by other magical effects (No, it's another of those either/or situations)
Can you teleport onto moving places like ships and cloud castles. (yes, but there are many many ways this could go wrong. You may choose to be sadistic)
Can aging raise your ability scores above 18. ( Yes. This is another reason why human wizards can kick elven wizards ass. So much for logic.)
What's the point of writing a scroll into your spellbook rather than memorising it from the scroll (So you can use it more than once. The relationship between scroll writings and spellbook writings is one of those annoying little rules quirks that seems designed just to catch people like you out. )
How much water is created by transmute water to dust. (up to 10' cube per level. You'd better hope you have enough dust. )
Can you choose which colour to fire when casting rainbow (fnarr. Yes. )
Is magic resistance affected by caster level (Not anymore. Now 90% always means 90%, and you're gonna have trouble with Balors and mind flayers even above 20th level. Better get practicing your spamming techniques)
Dragon Magazine Issue 157: May 1990
part 2/4
Forum: Alex Iwanow reminds you not to engage in age prejudice, even if they are being little plonkers. If you treat them right, they'll learn from their mistakes and grow into good gamers, if you don't, they may well leave the hobby and bad-mouth the weirdos playing it among their friends. And that would not be good for it's future, would it now?
Amber McKinney, meanwhile, kicks off another round of the never ending sexism complaints. They'll catch a cold in those bikinis and get hacked to pieces, even if they are made of fur and chainmail. Here we go again. Just give them some sensible armour already. It's not as if they'll actually be any less attractive. As cultural comparison shows, even if you cover them up completely, the smallest glimpses of eyes or ankle is enough to get male juices flowing, while people can get blase to total nakedness if that's the norm.
Rocky L Sharier has some fairly detailed thoughts on channeling your xp into getting extra nonweapon proficiency slots. How about making easier ones easier to learn? That's already pretty much the case, only not very finely graded, isn't it. Oh, and charging % of your next level costs produces some seriously wonky results. Yeah, you aren't fixing this intractable little mechanics issue that easily. Keep floating ideas, maybe someone'll come up with one that works.
Robert S. Morris, Jr also solved the satan-paranoid parents problem by playing D&D with them. Personal contact is the bane of prejudice. Well, unless it's actually justified, because they are stealing your jobs, nicking stuff from your garden, sleeping with your women, selling drugs to your kids and playing music too loud at 3am or something. :p Then things get a little messier. But these rarely apply to roleplaying groups.
Robert K. Hackett thinks that allowing your character to have all the skills you to is a very dumb and incredibly unbalancing idea. Probably right, as subsequent game design has moved ever further from that principle, towards things like social combat and extended abstracted skill challenges.
Benson Syphrit replies to two letters. Humanoids can indeed be fun and challenging at any level, especially if you use the stuff from GAZ10. And chaotic and evil characters can work fine as long as you don't forget the pragmatism. They won't sacrifice their life for the greater evil, because that shouldn't be how evil works. Otherwise, as Aslan says, you may be doing things in the name of Tash, but the veneration goes to me.
Forgotten Realms starts the empires trilogy, the tie-in novels to the Horde invasion expansion. Will you explore the newly revealed lands, or will they come to you, raping (oh wait, we don't do that in 2nd edition) and pillaging their way through your country and campaign with their metaplot developments.
Where there is one Sumotori...... There's bound to be another: In the grand tradition of the bounty hunter, we have two competing versions of the same class in quick succession. Sumo wrestler as a PC? A rather silly idea, but they are oriental, look badass, and have a recent TV series bringing people's attention to them over here. So Stuart Wieck and Len Carpenter follow in Brian Blume's illustrious footsteps. This could definitely be fun to watch.
Stuart's version are highly specialised grappling based fighters. Like Monks, they do have some fairly effective MA based effects, but this probably won't keep them up with fighters in the wider world, since they can't use armour or weapons. They are serious tanks, and the combination of high HP & No of attacks, and so-so AC means they make a good way to draw fire if backed up with a healer. While comical, they wouldn't be completely useless, and their skill at grappling and bonus xp gained from winning fights means they might work in an urban game where a lot of the time you want to capture rather than kill.
Len's sumo warriors have many similar points, but are rather weaker (unless you take literally the typo which gives them 211 attacks per round, which I assume is meant to read 2/1), requiring more XP per level, getting smaller HD, less flexibility, and having a hard level cap of 8. Unsurprisingly, Len makes a stronger case for keeping them as NPC's. However, they do gain rather more miscellaneous powers scattered through their description, which may well add up to greater effectiveness than you'd think. It still wouldn't be completely predetermined in conflict between the two schools, but you would have to do some fudging, as the systems for battle are also somewhat different. Still, overall, lower basic power and more complication in remembering all their features adds up to a less elegant and desirable class than Stuart's version. On the other hand, since they're both underpowered really, perhaps combining the best features of both would result in a competitive adventuring class. Hmm. Was anyone zany enough to try these guys out in their campaign back in the day?
The voyage of the princess ark: A rather interesting genre change this month, as the ark ventures into the vulture peninsula. This, it turns out, was actually accurately named by the old map. Not only is it infested with vultures, but it's also the home of a race of vulture headed men cursed with eternal reincarnation retaining all their memories. And like way too many vampires, they spend a lot of time moping about their immortal existence as eternally shunned carrion feeders when they really should be doing cool stuff with their endless lives and quite considerable magical powers. As they're near impossible to get rid of permanently, they make great recurring adversaries. Definitely an interesting entry, showing how varied mystara can be. It's filled to the brim with odd places for you to adventure in and solve the problems of, and can do comedy, tragedy, horror and high fantasy. Which will their wanderings result in next time?
The best of dragon games! A compilation of six of the most popular games from the magazines history. Is there nothing they can't compile these days? Computer programs, maybe. It's been years since we saw one of those in here, and they messed them up most times they tried them.
The ecology of the Wemic: Ahh, cat-people. Always a popular choice. As are stereotyped noble savage cultures. And with this ecology, you get two stereotypes for the price of one, if not more! Just the thing for those of you out there who enjoy playing cat people and acting out their feline behavioural traits. One does not have to look far to see that the roleplaying and mad cat lady demographics have a reasonable degree of crossover. (there are still people who'll rant about the crap deals the Bastet got in the NWoD and refuse to play it because of that :p ) Like the Satyr one, this is interesting, and sometimes amusing, but not entirely pleasing, largely due to the degree of fanservice pandering involved. It's also hampered by one of their more annoying cases of page-chopping formatting, with bits scrunched between adverts and inside other articles. Part of D&D's downfall over this decade will be the rise of other games that cater better to certain kinds of players and luring them away. Hmm.
Dragon Magazine Issue 157: May 1990
part 3/4
Editorial: Still more commentary on the removal of the fiends from 2nd edition in here. Roger puts his 2 cents in, making it pretty clear where he stands on their removal while not actually contradicting company line in any way. There are a whole bunch of good reasons why they are useful to have in the game, both from a mechanical and flavour point of view. There's also a reminder that the old books are hardly obsolete, and the canon police aren't going to break down your doors if you keep using them. As with the Buck Rogers stuff, there are big chunks of the company that are rolling their eyes at some of the recent decisions, and working behind the scenes to undermine them. It's all a bit awkward, really. It'll be interesting to see just how this progresses, both in terms of this issue, and the larger company politics.
The dungeon alone: A second article on solo play in the same magazine? How curious. Well, actually this is mainly for one-on-one play, but it's not that big a difference. Weirdly, the idea of having a single player play multiple characters (By far the easiest solution, and one I use regularly) doesn't occur to this writer, and the rest of this article consists of ways you can turn down the difficulty level to give them a chance of surviving. Poison and paralysis obviously need serious moderating. Bend the rules on death and unconsciousness liberally. Give them better chances than normal to run away. Govern monster replenishment conservatively. Basically, be a complete wimp, and let them win even if they're playing dumb. He also seems to assume that you'll be playing fairly linear adventures, and if they make a "wrong" choice, you should blatantly have it just not work, or figure out how to get them back on track as soon as possible. While there are some cool ideas to steal, overall, I find this a moderately objectionable article, encouraging you to break the rules to achieve your ends, and make sure that the players win, rather than being a properly neutral moderator. Plus there are more satisfying ways of handling solo play, as they've shown in the past, and this is another sign of the gradual dilution of the game's deadliness over the editions. Bleh.
Next stop - Eveningstar: Ohh, shiny. More Realms bonus features. Ed's overwritten as usual, and we get the benefits. Say hello to the village of Eveningstar. Not a hugely important place in the scheme of things, but notable for FLYING CATS!!!!! FANGIRL SQUEE!!!!!! EPIC KYOOT!!!!! I do apologize. I just got a sudden unexpected nostalgia overdose. As I remember, this place does get into the updated second edition boxed set, and the flying cats become Tressym, which went on to play a fairly substantial part in my own youthful gaming. It's somewhat bigger than it's appearance there as well, filling in several details that were left unclear in the later version, and with a whole bunch of plot hooks and descriptive details that can make it a suitable adventuring location for both low and higher level parties. They can deal with wolves and local humanoids, or they might wind up rubbing shoulders with King Azoun and seeing what monsters live in the ruins of the Zhentarim base. (I'm betting there's a Deepspawn involved, given the ease they replenish with. ) This is definitely a welcome appearance of something I wasn't expecting to see again, but am very pleased to have discovered. See you again soon, hopefully.
Keep the heroes flying: Our Marvel article this month is another on proper world and plot building. Learn the plots that the comics use. Tailor adventures to your heroes and their backstories and personalities. A cast of recurring NPC's that aren't heroes or villains is important. A romantic interest is particularly useful as a driver for adventures. Turning friend against friend always makes for a fun fight. If struggling, temporarily remove their powers. All seems fairly familiar from years of the ARES section and the similar advice for other genres. Yawn. My mind, it is already expanded enough to not even notice this going in.
Through the looking glass: Robert continues to keep this more interesting than the other review columns by mixing up elements as usual. Once again, he has to explain his methodology. He can't review stuff that hasn't been submitted, and there's no point reviewing stuff that isn't available to most people. Similarly, given the magazine's international audience, mentioning specific shops would be bad business. Being a pro is hard. On the plus side, he's been reviewing enough that he can recommend figures for a whole range of monsters. Many of them are even officially licensed. :p
On the reviews side of things, the big one is Blue Max, a wargame of WW1 dogfighting. Modeling 3D movement and a whole bunch of maneuvers, it is as much about player skill as equipment stats and luck, and seems both pretty fun, and very open to expansions. Still trying to keep wargaming alive, I see.
On the actual minis side, we see that Shadowrun has taken off quickly and effectively, and have already licensed out their minis rights to grenadier. But D&D is still holding on tight to the market too, with new models for the Dragonlance line. There's probably room enough for both in this town, but it's not going to be a completely harmonious co-existence. More fun little snippets of history leaking through here.
TSR Previews changes their system so the dates should be the release dates rather than the shipping dates. Which is more convenient for those of us on the recieving end, isn't it. It also means they finally look like they're covering this month and the next again, even though nothing's really changed timewise. Since I already covered this month last month, I shall have to stick to the next month previews.
First up, completely unsurprisingly for this special, is XXVc™: the 25th century roleplaying game. Curious that Buck isn't actually in the title. Anyway, Mike Pondsmith is the person who took this mugs job, giving us the chance to join in the grim battle for freedom in the 25th century. Any volunteers? Oi! What do you think you're playing at, all taking one step back and leaving me on my own?!
If you wanna do AD&D generically, you can get PHBR3: Complete priests manual. Course, you may regret it, because it nerfs clerics to buggery if they worship the gods in it, and the kits are nothing to sing about either. One of the weakest ones in this series, in both senses of the word.
Dragonlance gets a double helping this month. DLA2: Dragon knight sees Taladas continue to get attention. Kaz, the minotaur is the star of this month's novel there, which probably isn't a co-incidence.
Having been hordeariffic last month, our Toril installment goes past them to Kara
Tur again. OA6: Ronin Challenge sees intrigue at a martial arts tournament. So much for cosmic enlightenment.
Spelljammer gets a second module. Nigel Findley combines piracy with undead in Skull & Crossbones. Arr. Aha mateys. Let's get that adventurer booty! Sounds very promising indeed.
Greyhawk is also getting novels which tie into their modules, with Night Watch, by Robin Wayne Bailey. Course, with no PC's around, it's up to the captain of the guard to figure out why the city is in danger in the official version of events.
D&D goes underground, to reveal GAZ13: The shadow elves. Not quite the drow you know, they give yet more options for adventures, both as PC's and NPC enemies.
And Top Secret starts another module series, TSA1: The web. They've had this villainous organisation lurking ever since the start of the new edition. Now you get an official chance to strike at them, foil their plans. Go for it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 157: May 1990
part 4/4
The role of books: Carmen Miranda's ghost is haunting space station three, edited by Don Saker (How would you know? Or is that Carmen Sandiego I'm thinking of?) is a decidedly quirky set of short stories based on the song of the same name. You wouldn't think it, but there were a lot of submissions for this anthology, and the ones that got accepted run the gamut of genres and tones. Sounds very amusing.
Eye of the world by Robert Jordan is one of his enormous books where very little actually happens. His continued megasales for this kind of workmanlike product baffles the reviewer. Get the animators of Dragonball Z to adapt the wheel of time, then it'll really be done justice. :p
The halfling's gem by R A Salvadore gets substantial accolades for it's high paced, well described swashbuckling fun. Drizzt and co are rapidly becoming not only popular, but influential. If this is what the next generation will be copying, then god help us all.
Ice dragon by Richard A Knaak is an enjoyable but insubstantial bit of generic fantasy. The reviewer compares it to eating fast food. It'll keep you alive until the next gourmet classic can be unearthed.
The mutant season by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber takes a rather more gritty approach to the same issues that the Marvel comic books have been wrestling with for some time. The characters on both sides of the divide are pretty well fleshed out, and the plotting and worldbuilding is smartly done. As long as it doesn't hit too close to home, it should be enjoyable.
Too, too solid flesh by Nick O'Donohoe posits a world where androids that can perfectly play a role have taken over from human actors. Shakespearian and other theatrical references are the order of the day as this odd setting becomes the backdrop to a murder mystery. One for the literary reader.
The apprentice by Deborah Talmadge-Bickmore gets a slightly baffled review. Just what is it that she's making that no-one else is? Anyone? Bueller? Oh well, if you write books to please yourself, you shouldn't be too surprised if other people don't get it.
Dragonmirth tries to adapt to the modern world. Yamara is already getting bored of omniscience. Go have an affair with Dr Manhattan.
The role of computers: Knights of Legend may have got nul points on Apple systems but the PC version gets top marks. They've really enjoyed this adventure game, now the system woes have been alleviated. Goes to show doesn't it. A small difference in capabilities means the difference between brilliant and unworkable. Guess it's like genius and madness.
A Boy and his Blob is the classic platform puzzle game of feeding jellybeans to your blob to get round various problems. Joy. Another nostalgia hit for me.
Day of the Viper is yet another 5 starrer, a rather tricky adventure game using both top down and 3D viewscreens. Fight enemies, avoid traps and solve puzzles to save the world from rampaging androids that have gone out of control. They still have a long way to go on this one, but seem eager to make that effort.
Dr Plummet's House of Flux gets a low score, but a more positive review. A 2D spaceship flying game a la asteroids, only with a lot more complexity in the level design, and amusingly quirky themes, you have to negotiate your way through and rescue a bunch of astronauts. They obviously didn't find it as fun to play as to describe.
Keef the Thief gets nul points due to another ridiculously eye hurting copy protection scheme. They really are pushing that issue hard, encouraging us to vote with our wallets and kill the annoying DRM. It's an eternal battle. How do you hurt the pirates without being a problem to legitimate users?
Knight Force also gets a pretty negative review, this time because the game actually sucks. The graphics are outdated, and the game play is generic and dull. Just don't bother.
Lots of hints this time as well. The bards tale series gets particular attention, as do the various D&D computer games out there now. They encourage you to exploit quirks in the system that any DM would counteract easily if this was tabletop. There is no playing fair against computer opponents.
The twilight empire reveals what I suspected. Another person from the modern world has wound up in a fantasy world, and will probably end up becoming a hero.
As I mentioned before. the horde gets a novel trilogy. They also get a boxed set and an adventure trilogy, linking up Faerun and Kara-tur in the process. Doncha just love that kind of worldbuilding.
Already up to 6 monstrous compendia? God, they really are churning them out. I guess they want to catch up everything from last edition (apart from demons and devils ;) ) as quickly as possible. Now that's a good contrast with the rather sluggish release of monster manuals in 3rd and 4th edition.
Rather an interesting issue, despite the above average number of dodgy articles. The tensions in the company are actually fairly visible below the surface this time, and this makes for entertaining observations even as the number of dull articles proliferates. Will the creative side be able to claw back a little more control. Or will the evil overmistress continue to make decisions that neither the staff or the readership really want. Let's see if there's any gems to salvage from the next issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 158: June 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Year 14. Yeah, the magazine is currently a sulky teenager, or something. But no matter how old you get, there's always a part of you that eagerly awaits your birthday presents. Well, it's either that or spend it moping how you grow ever closer to death's final embrace. Which doesn't really work quite the same way when you're a magazine. So as usual, we get a whole bunch of articles on dragons, and some fiction featuring one as well. Just the thing to make yourself a hero with. But remember, don't do it too well, or you'll leave nothing left for future generations, and the whole tradition will die out. Lets see what room they have for new stuff amid the old traditions.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking when they're going to release another best of. It has been a while, hasn't it. As with the last time they were asked, they'd like too, but for some reason upper management :Rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: doesn't seem too keen on the idea. What is up with that?
Another letter asking them why they don't go digital. Roger replies with a detailed and somewhat snarky breakdown of why it's not the great ecosaviour move this writer seems to think it would be. Besides, how would they advertise. Hmm. Actually, that is interesting. I wonder why they completely dropped the ads when Dragon went digital. It's not as if they couldn't still put some on the pages, and it would deal with the irritating whitespace issue.
A letter about how umber hulks smell. Roger trots out one of the most tired old jokes of all in response. I didn't laugh.
Forum: Ralph Sizer doesn't think there's anything evil about paladins using feints and other such sneaky tactics in combat. You're dethpicable. ;) No clath or honour at all! Such actions may not be evil, but they are chaotic. You can expect a good spanking if you use them regularly.
Brian Smarker is dubious about the idea of good clerics creating undead just to give their acolytes turning practice. Wouldn't that be like an environmentalist creating an oil spill just to teach people how harmful they are, and how to best clean them up. On the other hand, people like those PETA nuts who released a whole labfull of weasels into the wild, seriously mucking up the predator/prey balance, and dooming most of them to a quick death anyway because they didn't know how to hunt properly might try that. And clerics are frequently known for fanaticism over reason.
James S. Watson joins the realism brigade. Your articles on wars, and how soldiers were trained and organized in them were insufficiently researched! Same as it ever was.
Dennis Lee Bieber does some similar work on heraldry, pointing out some more accessable books for you to add to your collection. Another murky bit of history with customs often honoured in the breach gets picked over.
Craig H. Barrett has some pretty complicated thoughts about the alignment system, and how people should be judged along it's axes. As ever, it's tricky to separate our own cultural biases from the theoretical absolute standards of good and evil. I think there's room for some interesting articles on this matter.
Toby C Jennings is similarly interested in running the gamut of alignment in his gaming, and looking at the differences in how they interact. Once again, problems in the narrowness of various descriptions causes headaches
Toby Myers gives lots of useful advice about building your campaign world. Remember, stealing liberally and adapting is very much the way to go. Can't argue with that one, given what I'm currently doing.
The game wizards: Ha. Jim Ward returns to deal with the great wodges of nerdrage about the removal of the creatures who's name begins with D from the lower planes. The vast majority of readers want to see them back. So they've caved in, while pretending it was their idea all along, bringing them back under different names in the upcoming outer planes MC appendix. That didn't take long. Once again, the ball is in our court. Whether this will mollify the letter senders, or result in yet more annoyance from both sides of the satanic divide remains to be seen. In the meantime, he tries to distract us by waving around teasers for a few more of the shinys that they're producing in the near future. Maztica! Hollow World! New psionics rules! New horrific monsters! Think about those instead, and get to work saving up the money to pay for them. ;) Ahh, another perpetual problem creative types face. By the time a particular bit of work gets published and properly released, you're already sick of it and working on your next idea. Having to talk about old ideas endlessly with the public can sour you on them quite a bit. Still fairly stressful times trying to run the company then. The pressure from both above and below never really lets up.
The mightiest of Dragons: Oooh. A basic D&D specific article. The princess ark has company for a change. Their rather different approach towards the Planes, and supreme masters of the species is taken advantage of here, as they create a set of places that make suitably tough challenges for Master level adventurers, and a decent bunch of neighbours if you make it to Immortal. The D&D dragon rulers may not be as filled in as Bahamut and Tiamat, but they are rather more replacable, since killing them just results in another powerful dragon taking the job. Which means if you get the hang of these places, you have a nice respawning instance to grind for XP. :D It's obvious that the writer has had to deal with players who think like that, and wants to discourage that kind of behaviour, as he taken pains to make these places extra tricky to get through, with large numbers of obscenely powerful creatures around before you get to the actual bosses. While this does fall somewhat into the old problem of making an infinite universe seem small, it lampshades it better than most of these articles. While not really big or good enough to be a classic add-on, it's still an interesting and fairly useful article, that helps give high level characters more to do. And as we know, that's always a problem, given how many adventures it takes to advance a level at that stage in the game.
A spell of conversation: An odd little article here. If you want to talk with a dragon without them constantly trying to trick, enslave or eat you, what do you do? Generally, the answer involves proving yourself sufficiently badass that they take you seriously, rather than just yawning at the puny human and then terminally testing your capabilities. If you'd like to do so without having to engage in some impolite wholesale destruction as a demonstration, take this spell to enforce the pax. Like Protection from Evil, it gives a strong incentive to both sides to play nice, and penalizes you if you try and cheat and break it. Yeah, I can see the value in this, and it seems pretty thematic narratively. This is another one I have no problem with the idea of using in a game. Just gotta hope your players think of trying that approach.
Dragon Magazine Issue 158: June 1990
part 2/4
The dragon's bestiary: Gorynych are another mythological creature converted to D&D. Like hydra, they have more than one head, and can be an almighty pain in the butt, grappling you and then wishboning you apart with two of their heads. Like other creatures with no great amount of brains or magic, but lots of attacks, they seem well suited to being a good solo challenge for big mid-level groups. Pincushion them to death.
Common dragonets, like common gulls, are slightly misnamed, as they are being outcompeted by more ferocious and specialised variants. Still, they seem like a good target for taming, and their breath weapon is delightfully screwage inflicting. Beware halflings riding one of these. A good one for low level adventurers who'd like to fight dragons, but really don't have enough raw power yet. A few flocks of these'll get their level up, while teaching them valuable tactics for the future. A perfectly decent pair of new monsters.
That's not in the monstrous compendium: Another article, featuring more actual dragons. You know, you could probably have saved space by rolling them into one, which could then have been used elsewhere. But then the joke name harking back to the original introduction of the Gem dragons 10 years ago would have been lost. Still, this seems fairly positive.
Pearl dragons do have a slight mechanical problem, in that the new HD calculations for dragons give them 0HD at hatchling age. You'll have to work something out. They get tons of spells, but no spell-like abilities. Unsurprisingly, they own tons of pearls.
Jade dragons are supposed to be more powerful than emerald dragons, but actually aren't, being outperformed in terms of size and physical prowess quite handily. Whether their greater spell capability will compensate for this I am not sure, but it doesn't seem promising.
Jacinth dragons are a bit more powerful again, but still weaker than any of the standard gem dragons, with a decidedly weedy breath weapon that won't be much threat to an equivalent level party. They do get a couple of innate powers, but really as with the other two of these, the real challenge will be choosing a good set of spells and using them to tactical advantage. These guys are not for a DM who just wants to throw some prefab monsters at the players.
Overall, it's a pretty lackluster collection, that doesn't really seem that well integrated with the previous ones. A big part of this is probably due to the psionics rules not being out for 2nd edition yet, so they couldn't be used with it. And in general, the math seems a little off, as if the writer is working from 1st ed benchmarks rather than the updated ones. If they'd waited a year, they could have done a much better job on this. Now you'll have to live with them forever, including being reprinted in an official MC Appendix. Still, I suspect there'll be plenty more dragons in later years before this magazine's time is up. Mustn't let it get you down.
Also known as the orc: Once again they tackle another problem, that of the players automatically knowing what they're up against. This is amazingly simple to deal with. Simply have different people from different regions use different names for the same creature, or possibly one name for a whole class of similar looking creatures. It's realistic, it reduces the fantasy monoculture problem, and it keeps PC's on their toes, treating dungeoneering like the dangerous business it is. A whole load of existing mythological names are drawn upon, many rather awkward to pronounce, to make up these listings. A few of them also get variant stats to reflect that they are actual subraces. Course, given the nature of D&D, we're likely to see many of these names again at some point, attached to other creatures with quite different stats. But hey, that just adds to the mystery of dungeon delving, doesn't it. Now this is one I can definitely see myself drawing on quite a few times. Muahahahaha! Now get down that pit, and find out what you're up against firsthand.
The rules of the game: From an article for confounding experienced players, to one for helping newbies. Trying to convert people to your hobby cold is not a very effective way of going about things, and if you do it wrong, throwing jargon at them, having a whole bunch of people trying to explain things at cross-purposes, telling you about their character, being patronising, creepily obsessive, etc etc, then you are far more likely to drive them off. It's just a variant on acting or writing a story. Everyone knows what those are, even if many people are, er, a bit wooden when they try to do them. Remember, doing it fun comes before doing it right. It's only a game. Ironically, the best way to learn is probably by starting with a whole bunch of people who don't know what they're doing either, just like forming a band. Ironically, this article probably over-thinks the process a bit, making something that is, at it's core, very simple indeed into a process that uses a bunch of formulae. Which I really don't think I need. Of course, like dating, this is probably a case where those who've got it can be blase about their success, while those who haven't try all sorts of tricks and formulae to improve their odds to minimal success and much frustration. I think I'll get off this topic before my angstium refinery gets going and the whole thing gets derailed.
The voyage of the princess ark: Another sightseeing stop for haldemar and co. They come across a village of elf/ogre hybrids, who ride giant pelicans, and then discover that they're part of a larger country. As these guys have both pretty good physical capabilities, and like elves, are all spellcasters, it would seem a good idea to establish positive relations with them, despite their more unsavory personal habits. Ahh, the horrible compromises of politics. That's what being an ambasador for your nation entails. We also get PC stats for our new hybrid friends, which is a very nice addition indeed. Like most BD&D creatures, race=class, but they can choose if they use magic-user or druid spells, which means they can fill more than one niche in your party. Their greater baseline power than most PC races is represented by setting their starting XP at a negative, so you have to pay that off before you become a standard adult of that race. Combined with their high XP requirements, this becomes a surprisingly elegant solution to keep them in line with other characters. And all their info fits on less than a page as well. Another great example of just how quickly you could get a character up and running and into the fun in BD&D. As the series progresses, we'll be able to assemble characters from all sorts of weird races around the world. That'll certainly spice things up if you're getting tired of the same 7 basic classes.
A role-player's best friend: Another forum subject graduates to become a full article. All the ways you can use your computer to make your gaming experience better are expanded upon here. In theory, anyway. Course, in practice several ideas are missing that have since gone on to become commonplace, but many of them wouldn't even be possible with memory sizes what they were. Still, even the basic utility of easy cutting and pasting lets you organize and update your notes with several orders of magnitude less effort. And once you get the hang of databases and graphic design programs, you can do things that would be a lot more tedious than otherwise, especially when it comes to making multiple copies. Not to be sneezed at at all, this isn't a huge or particularly comprehensive article, but all the ideas within are pretty easily implemented. (although I'll confess to being driven mad trying to figure out spreadsheet programs several times.) In fact, since the vast majority of both my books and notes are now electronic, I already do most of this stuff. Guess once again it's not that the articles are bad, but that I'm already too high CR to get any XP from them. Oh well, onto the next one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 158: June 1990
part 3/4
The role of computers: Bomber sees Apple once again pioneering gaming formats. What went wrong? Anyway, this is another WWII flying sim. 3D technology is improving as the years go by, and our reviewers remain impressed by the increased amounts of detail. Find the target amongst the many buildings, bomb it to pieces, and get home safely. This is not as easy as it sounds, as you have to take the role of all the pilots, and deal with realistic varieties of damage if hit.
Breach II is a game of squad level combat. Preserve interstellar peace through strategically applied violence! Sounds about normal. Don't charge in, for that way lies swift death. Should be fairly easy for the old skoolers to remember that lesson.
War of the Lance takes you to Krynn to do a bit of overhead wargaming, as happened in module DL8 of the original series. Fight with the forces you have, while trying to persuade the various neutral countries to join your side, and direct heros to do various quests for tide turning macguffins. It's good quality, but big, clunky and sloooooow, especially on their computer. The bad guys also have a fairly big advantage if you go two player. Saving the world isn't going to be easy this time. Oh well, that'll give their clue corner plenty to do.
Time Bandit does not appear to be based on the Terry Gilliam movie, but still manages to entertain our reviewers, with it's combination of action adventure and puzzles, including some texty bits. You can have a second player join the action, competing or co-operating to clear the levels. Another one that'll take plenty of plays to clear.
Fire King is another adventure game where you need to pick a character and hunt the macguffins. It manages to compete with the 16 bit games and come off with a decent showing. Age and cunning once again holds it's own against youth and enthusiasm.
Laser Squad is another, somewhat different game of squad level combat. Here, you also have to figure out what equippment to buy for your soldiers, and complete missions where trying to destroy everything will get you killed in short order. You'll have to learn the capabilities of each of the soldiers, and try repeatedly until you know the tricks to beat each mission.
MEGA Pack is one of those little compilation packs of old games. Most of them haven't stood the test of time well, and some are rather buggy, so the average score isn't high. There'll probably be one or two you enjoy still though.
Editorial: Roger continues to tackle the ZOMG D&D is satanic!1!!!! problem from an oblique angle. A certain foursome of mutated turtles who he refuses to give the proper name of for legal reasons, while making it very clear who they are; are also getting parental backlash, which does seem tremendously dumb. Goes to show really. Kids will be attracted to shiny things and violence, no matter what you do. It's pretty intrinsic to human nature, and forbidding it just makes it more attractive to them. In most cases, these urges can be channelled into harmless or constructive ends, no problem. It ends with another attempt to encourage players to talk openly about their hobbies. Shine the light of truth on the cesspit of ignorance, and grow the healthy trees of understanding instead of the weeds of petty hatred! And remember, one day you will be the one staring in incomprehension at your kid's newest obsession, trying to figure out if you should ban it or not. Tee hee. This topic continues to entertain quite a bit.
Fiction: Ivory in the blood by Brian A Hopkins. Another birthday, another dragon hunt to go on in the fiction department as well. Now, what's the standard fee for doing this? Half your kingdom and your daughter's hand in marriage. Why is this the case? Because it's bloody hard to do. Those who've done it before in particular know that and often have no desire to go through that again, especially if it was decades ago and time has not been kind to them. Anyway, this one goes the bittersweet route. Dragons are nearly extinct, and the last one has something important he wants to say before he goes, and the magic fades. Course, if the events after the story turn out anything like reality, then it's a sad ending indeed. But you've gotta have hope. There's always a chance things'll change for the better. Methinks this one communicated it's intended mood quite nicely. Good for it.
Sage advice: What are the stats for the scythe wielded by the minor death (Same as it ever was. No sense of harmony, No sense of time. Going first all the time is a property of the monster, not the weapon. )
What kind of coins come out of Bucknard's everfull purse. ( You need to give a little of what you want to receive.)
Why is chain mail better and cheaper than scale mail (because scale mail is older and inferior. We put it in for historical purposes. I know, most D&D campaigns don't have advancing technology. That's because you suck, not because we're at fault. )
Can a ring of spell storing let a nonwizard get a familiar (Hmm. Yes would be more story enabling than no. Skip'll say yes. )
Are buffs and strength bonuses counted to determine if a vorpal sword gets all head sevrery (No. Skip ain't gonna cave on the rules to save yo marraige. )
Is the limit for rogue skills 95 or 99% ( 95. You're gonna run out of places to spend points quite soon at epic levels. )
Does a girdle of dwarvenkind make you count as a dwarf for the purposes of other items (Hee. No, although Skip sees where you could get that idea, given the girdle of masculinity/femininity.)
What's the formula for fighters Xp awards (10 per HD. This is on top of regular experience, remember, otherwise you'll completely cripple them. They don't need that. )
Why are red dragons weaker than blue dragons. How do you determine their THAC0 ( Errata. And THAC0 for monsters has a simple formula, just like for PC's. You should be able to figure it out, looking at the examples.
Why are riding horses more badass than war horses ( More eratta. This is what happens when you farm out to multiple writers and don't edit. )
What's with the juvenile entries for giants XP. (More aborted experiments we didn't clean up after properly. Don't let the pro-life movement start attacking us as well. )
Do the avatar books spoil the modules (Not much. Not that it matters anyway, as it's a railroady plot module. We can't let the free will of players spoil our metaplot. )
TORG is now out, along with supplements and a tie-in novel. Guess they want to start a supplement mill of their own. Money money money.
Dragon Magazine Issue 158: June 1990
part 4/4
Novel ideas: A bunch of rapid fire microinterviews this month, as once again they examine the process behind the creation of their upcoming novels. When you put a bunch of creative types in a room, and make them write on specific briefs with tight deadlines, strange things happen. Flint Fireforge's dialogue gets modeled on Yosemite Sam. Characters travel into the memories of other characters, which allows them to go back in time without worrying about contradicting other entries in the series. A whole cast of secondary supporting characters gets created, hopefully to fuel more spin-offs if they prove popular. And husband and wife teams really shine. Funny how Dragonlance in particular seems to thrive on male/female pairings in it's writers. I suppose it reinforces another lesson. While writing is stereotypically a lonely business, it really shouldn't be. Even if one person is doing most of the heavy creative work, having a set of attentive ears around to read your work to at the end of the day and be your first line of feedback massively helps you hone your storytelling abilities. An amusing read, but on the whole, this is yet more evidence that they're piling up stuff in that world with more concern over volume than quality. I think I'll leave them to it.
Role-playing reviews:
Call of cthulhu 4th ed shows that while the rules haven't changed hugely in 8 years and 3 revisions, the presentation has, and so has the sheer comprehensiveness of situations covered. BRP continues to handle the mechanical end of things quite nicely, while the writing captures the horror of the books without taking itself too seriously. After all, going mad and dying horribly is supposed to be fun, otherwise why do it? So let's suit up, put on our period appropriate hats, and go out there to enjoy the vast number of ways you can lose, see who survives the longest. After all, there's tons of adventures out there now. Let's see what Jim makes of those as well.
Masks of nyarlathotep has been reprinted as a book rather than a boxed set, with a bunch of extra illustrations. This has not hurt the product at all, and it has become one of the iconic CoC adventures. You should get it, if only to learn from it.
Cthulhu classics also draws upon and reprints a bunch of old adventures. While I'm sure they're good, that the line has already started eating it's own tail so soon worries me a little. Oh well, at least it keeps shadows of yog-soddoth in print.
The great old ones is a collection of new adventures, hooray! Hastur plays a large part in this set, which can be connected together into a larger story, but it'll take quite a bit of work. Mix them up with other adventures and you should be able to get a lengthy campaign out of this.
Gaslight takes us back another 30 years, so you can go mad in victoriana rather than between the wars. And then have kids, who can go mad in turn. As with Masks, this was originally a boxed set, but has been reprinted as a more standard book with a bit of extra stuff. You can meet and adventure with sherlock holmes, which seems a little schlocky, but hey. Plenty of fun to be had here as well.
H P Lovecraft's Dreamlands is also an ex-boxed set. Seems to be a standard policy. I guess it saves them money, given how annoying boxed sets are to produce. Anyway, it lets you venture into the realms beyond, instead of just trying to guard the earth against their depredations. Turns the thing a little closer to dark fantasy than straight horror, but hey, you can't stay disempowered forever.
S Petersen's Field guide to creatures of the dreamlands expands on the last book with more IC pseudoscholarly fun. Both the art and writing are well up to scratch. He's still more than making his mark on the RPG community.
Rifts! One of the great gonzo crossover games makes it's first appearance. Welcome to palladium's zenith. And yet despite advertising regularly for ages, they've never had a single article published in here. What's all that about? Would Kevin throw a fit if he didn't get to approve and rewrite everything that comes out for the line?
TSR Previews: Our complete handbooks series completes the core 4, with the Complete Wizard's Handbook. Rick Swan does a rather better job on this one than Aaron Allston did on the last one. Course, there's plenty more classes to cover still. And probably plenty more variants for the existing ones too. I wonder when they'll start putting new Kits in the magazine. We also get our 6th MC appendix. We've covered the base 3 campaign worlds, now it's back to the Realms to do Kara Tur. Expect to see plenty of familiar stuff from OA, now with artwork.
Greyhawk city is still under threat, in WGA2: Falconmaster. Can you beat the Falcon? Since this is a trilogy, I bet he's got an escape route ready, this time at least.
Krynn is going back to the prequels again, in Flint, the king. Course, the dwarves he gets to be king of are the Gully Dwarves. Oh, the indignity of it all. They also release a board game tie-in. Mage Stones is a game mentioned in the novels. Now you can play it yourself. Woo. Well, it's no more specious a tie-in than those calendars of artwork.
Finally on the AD&D front, we get our new campaign setting for this year. Ravenloft! Enter the demiplane of dread, and fight to escape the horror, the horror!!! :Claws at walls: Why would they create such a thing? Because undead sell, of course! They must continue to draw upon the selling potential of the name of their biggest module ever.
Plenty of non D&D stuff this month as well. Buck Rogers kicks off the first 25th century module, heading down to earth to stoke the fires of rebellion there. Will you get out alive?
Marvel superheroes continues to stay up to date with the changes of the comics, in MU6: Gamers handbook of the marvel universe part 6. Once again, you'll have to sort these sheets and put them in the right places in your now massive folder.
Top Secret progresses pretty fast, with TSA2: The Final Weapon. Web are stepping up their attacks, and you get to pull out the big guns in response. Finally, all those articles on military ordinance will get good use. Muahaha.
And finally, we get a rerelease of an old SPI game. WWII: European Theatre of operations. Now easier to learn! Any takers? Well, Doug Niles must still be a wargaming fan, anyway, otherwise he wouldn't have taken this on.
Dragonmirth only has one joke this month. Yamara gets plushified. The twilight empire gets romantic a little too quickly. Does infidelity count if you've lost your memory at the time?
Maztica! They really are building up toril's other lands at the moment. Shame they're all going to be marginalized in 3rd edition and then thrown off to another planet and replaced in 4th.
Through the looking glass: Ha. Robert runs up hard against Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complicated a game is, the more work it takes to get to the fun. Here he tries to give you advice on getting a campaign going, and keeping it from dying the death of grinding apathy and disorganization. Quite a bit of this is applicable to RPGs as well as wargaming, and would be good as a general article, as it covers logistical issues the previous ones on that topic have been pretty light on. Fairly useful.
The rest as usual is reviews. Star wars imperial forces are available in three sets of varying incompetance. Bet everyone'll go for the one with Darth Vader in. Battletech has a whole load of new vehicles to fight your mecha battles with. And GDW are licensing out minis for their Space:1889 line. Course, much of these are indistinguishable from victorian stuff played straight, but I suppose you don't see that much victorian stuff in minis. Business as usual here.
Another pretty decent issue, with plenty of entertaining stuff both in the articles and the soapboxing. A few clunkers don't detract from the fact that this is proving a fairly dramatic time for them, as the reactions to the edition change really filter through gaming networks and get back to them. Another reminder of how much slower things moved before the internet caught on. Course, that means the controversies are likely to take longer to die down as well, so there may be another year or so's entertainment in these themes. Will they get out the other end sane? Will I? On we go.
Dragon Magazine Issue 159: July 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Looks like we have a spelljammer special this time. It's been out for almost a year, and doesn't seem too unpopular. And good multi-pronged marketing is the cornerstone of sustained growth and public awareness. Let's push these products, build the profile of the brand, and maybe produce some good material while we're at it.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking about LARPing. Funny you should mention that. We've just done another article on it.
A letter pointing out how much paper the average gaming group uses, and asking about TSR's environmental policies. Again, they may not have done much on that in the past, but they're busy getting on this bandwagon. Expect more preachy off-topic adverts. And a gameworld tailor made as a soapbox for ecopreaching. (Dark Sun :p )
A letter full of good old fashioned scattershot questions. Roger replies with his usual combination of diplomacy and whimsy. Course, that doesn't soften the fact that Gamma world is dead again. Oh well. Sales will be sales.
Editorial: Another regular topic of letters gets Roger's attention this month. The damn morality in fantasy arguments. Here he decides to make the stand, and say, yes, you should judge them by our standards of morality. It may be a bit dodgy, and won't stop the flamewars, but it's less of a headache that way. So much for making roleplaying an immersive experience. Or is the heyday of that still to come? Anyway, this is considerably less fun than the demonic debate, and it's less likely to go away after a while as well. I do believe it's time I zoned out on this one. The forum is likely to have a load more of this as well.
Rough times on refuge: Ed Greenwood once again proves eager to try new things, and also demonstrate Spelljammer's potential as a crossover setting, taking the lead in this issue's themed section. The whimsy is high in this one, as he creates a new moon and surrounding crystal sphere for you to explore and be killed by. The Arcane feature strongly, and we actually get to see a bit of what they get up too "at home" for a change rather than endless inscrutability. Ed is as usual, the master of worldbuilding, giving us in a few pages a place with plenty of room for both wilderness adventuring and city based intrigue, and a whole bunch of sample characters and hooks. This is great fun to read, and along with the Buck Rogers stuff a couple of issues ago, reminds us just how broad his range is. The Realms is now big enough to take care of itself, which gives him more room to play around with other people's stuff. Not that they could stop him, as I suspect he comes up with all sorts of bits and pieces that wouldn't fit in with his full books. A pretty promising start.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Our second article continues the Elminster goes into space theme. Steven Schend establishes one of his off-world contacts, and uses that as a framing device for unearthing (unspacing?) their latest collection of new toys. Nice to see them getting into character.
Atmosphere cloaks let you breathe in space temporarily. Overall, they're probably not as useful as a ring of survival, but hey, what is?
Boots of star striding let you walk on a gravity plane even if there's nothing solid to support you. Now that's only going to be useful in very limited situations.
Orbus rings are made from beholders, and let nonspellcasters use a helm, or spellcasters move one faster. Finally, a practical use for the bastards. Now, the tricky part is getting hold of some.
Cabinets of air restoration do exactly what they say on the tin. They only have limited charges, so you can't explore space forever on one. On the plus side, you can cannibalize your other items to power it, so lengthy sargasso sea scenarios become an option. Just the thing to deplete a party that's got overpowered and overconfident.
Cloaking helms let your ships imitate the Romulans. This is of course immensely useful, and immensely expensive. You could bankrupt a country for one of these. No wonder space travel is always going to be a tool of the elite.
Everfull Casks give you 5 gallons of water a day. Compared to the decanter of endless water, that's pretty pathetic. You take what you can get.
Figureheads of wonderous power go on the front of your ship and buff it. Cloaking, speed, resilience, it's easy enough to convert human scale magic items to these rules. Course, you'll need a ship first, or you'll have to sell it on. Guess it's like getting barding in a treasure hoard.
Griffons Claws are automated grappling hooks. A rather prosaic trick, but obviously useful all over the place. And with a range optimised for space battle, they should be able to handle any distance you encounter while dungeoneering.
Mage shot is a bunch of alchemical thingies that you can load into your cannon for special effects when you shoot enemy ships. Like the array of special arrows, this is always handy tactically, if expensive to restock.
Oil of fire stilling makes your ship fire retardant. Unfortunately it has a limited and unpredictable duration, and gets less useful with repeated uses. Sounds like a good Arcane scam to keep the money rolling in.
Blackjammer's Cutlass is an intelligent cutlass that makes you into a stereotypical pirate. Arr. That be little change in behaviour for most adventurers. And methinks they will respond heartily to the idea of doing a little acting like this. Now all ye need is a good ship.
The Gauntlet of Tamus once again showcases their goofy sense of humour. It goes boom when you punch things. Unfortunately, it catches you in the explosion. This does not deter the Giff, who virtually epitomize big tough dumb macho guy. What ho! Let's get out there and boff some of those bally Scro! Pillocks.
So yeah, with the combination of weaker versions of existing stuff, things that will only be useful in very limited situations, and lots of irritating whimsy, this is one of the least useful of these collections I've come across so far. Looks like the things that will be this setting's downfall are already very much present. Sigh.
Voidjammers: Despite space being the new big thing, they haven't forgotten about the planes. Getting to and from them is a dangerous proposition for even high level characters. But where there is a problem, there is an opportunity! And when there are thousands of worlds to draw from and service, you can have confluences of high level characters that would be ridiculous in a normal place, for every one of them would be a ruler in their own right in a smaller pond. This reads like a massively extended forum piece on someone's homebrew ideas, showing the ways in which high level spellcasters can use magic as technology and have a massive impact upon the world with a little patience, persistence, and expensive and rare material components. This is the kind of thing that may or may not be suitable for your campaign, as it is very high magic, with more than a hint of cheese involved. But it is an interesting read, and gives you a good example of how paranoid high level characters should organize their defenses to deal with annoying PC's. I think this definitely has value as something to draw upon, even if I am leery of just dropping it in prefab.
Dragon Magazine Issue 159: July 1990
part 2/4
The dragon's bestiary: The magazine gets the staff's leftovers again, as they give us some stuff that got cut from the spelljammer monstrous compendium. This does seem to be another special that's mostly driven by the staff writers, rather than freelancers. Vaguely disappointing really.
Andeloids are oozes that engulf people and transform them into a composite creature in rather disconcerting and awkward fashion. You will be assimilated indeed. Depending on what creatures make them up, they can be very scary indeed. The kind of thing that'd be a template next edition.
Infernites are humanoids made from fire, who live on molten worlds. See, you don't have to go extraplanar to encounter some seriously hostile stuff. Thankfully, they'll die eventually if they come to somewhere cold, and water'll mess them right up. Their spellcasters specialize in cold based spells, which shows the designer is actually using their brain. They get tons of ecological stuff, which should be handy if you want to send players to an alien environment.
Metagolems are intelligent mechanical men with varying power levels depending on what metal they're made of. They can also power spelljamming helms, so they can show up all over the place, fulfilling their creators orders. A group of them would definitely make interesting antagonists, even if the scaling is a bit wonky. They're another one that probably needs a mechanical tune-up to move to later editions.
Forum: Dan Howarth points out that the machine is merely an assistant to gaming. The soul of it will always need to be provided by humans. That does not mean it can't be a big help. Also, don't underestimate compression algorhythms. You can fit a lot more information in a computer than you think when you reorganise for redundancy.
Erik Martella points out that liches, unlike other undead, do not go immediately batshit, and a PC who becomes one should not be forced to become an NPC. I quite agree with that, given the effort it takes to make that change. He does seem to have misread another bit of rules though. Someone else has to do the special quest to turn someone back, you silly billy.
John Patrick Wall ventures the argument that "just playing your character" shouldn't be used as a reason to disrupt everyone else's fun. I do believe that's the first time we've seen that advanced around here. Once again roleplaying technology continues to progress. Now, can we get that message out to all the twats out there?
Paul Arblaster wonders why polearms get ridiculous degrees of differentiation in D&D when beer doesn't. He knows what he'd rather see a huge appendix on the realistic medieval versions of. Generally, you don't use beer to kill people with. This is Dungeons & Dragons, not Gluttons & Gourmands. Not that couldn't be a fun game in itself.
Maribeth Hass tries to tackle the ressurection problem again. They should get a chance, but they should never take it for granted. Seems to be the popular compromise position. Yawnaroo.
David Raymond Gawarecki talks about finding validation and learning to face difficult situations through gaming. Face the mockery of real people with the same courage you face slavering orcs and soul-sucking undead in the game. I do believe there's a Dork Tower strip on this subject :p
Brian Hicks believes AD&D weapon specialisation is a better idea than D&D weapon mastery. Perfectly valid viewpoint.
Gregg Sharp talks about using real world physics in D&D, technological progress, magic as/vs technology, and his own world's approach to these matters. There is a whole bunch of "right" answers to this one, so don't sweat it too much.
Sage advice seems to be shrinking at the moment. Skip is on top of his game. That or he's just not getting any interesting cases.
Do other things than trolls have limbs fly off on a natural 20 (not without magical items. Trolls are just designed for comedy purposes. They don't need to worry about their limbs detaching easily, because they can just stick them on again. )
What are the XP values for greater rakshasas (Skip isn't listening. Skip thinks you asked what their names are, not how much XP do you get for killing them. Stupid Skip. Keep this up and you'll be out of a job. )
Is the Ultimist intended for PC's or NPC's (Neither. It's a joke class. Laugh at any player who suggests actually using it )
When will we get 2nd ed psionics rules ( Next year, my dear)
How much does it cost to build a castle (Extrapolate outwards from the cost of building each segment of wall. If that's too much, and I'm sure it is, buy the castle guide :teeth ting: We've got to give you motivation to buy supplements, and power buffs are a good one. )
I want to know more about spellfire (oh, it is sooo twinked. Skip is drooling at the thought of it. Which is why it must not fall into the hand of PC's. They must never be allowed to challenge Ed's obscene NPC's and their supercool soap opera. They're the stars of the show, you just get to watch it and applaud. )
Whine whine whine I want my character to be of a class forbidden to their race (Then what's to keep humans superior. We have already made many concessions in this area. We will not let you push us further and further like the white man did to the red man, until the entire ruleset is desecrated by demihumans of every class and level. I'd rather see TSR die than let that happen. ;) So says Skip, and so says all the staff! This far and no further! Urrah, Ooog Ooog!)
To the ends of the marvel universe: Looks like these guys are in theme as well, with an article on space travel in the Marvel universe. Since they at least pretend their universe works on real physics when they aren't being mangled by whatever supercreatures or mad scientists are around, they measure travel rates in multiples of lightspeed, and the various other capabilities of their ships need translating too and from their universal resolution table. One of those short articles that does what it does. In this case, I'm a bit dubious about it, given the strongly narrative way travel actually works in the marvel universe. Oh well, gotta make compromises for gaming's sake. And making it so wormholes and stargates expedite travel enormously, cutting getting to a few specific locations down does serve as a good way of focussing player options, especially if the plot also needs them to do other things in a hurry. So no strong opinion on this one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 159: July 1990
part 3/4
The role of computers: Loom proves that Lucasfilm's consistent computer game success isn't just a fluke or due to big name draw, with another high end and rather innovative adventure game. With a magic system based on music and a ton of cool details, this definitely seems tempting.
Gunboat sets you to patrolling rivers, from vietnam to panama, to kick the asses of the enemies of america. The enemies, as ever, are not as clever as the real people in the historical conflicts. But it's still a fairly fun 3D shooter, with plenty of replayability as you try and increase your grade on missions and unlock new ones.
Iron Lord is another rather different adventure game. It does have some awkward controls, but it also has rather interesting visuals and music, and a plot that allows you to raise armies by kicking ass and righting wrongs. Well, once again, it makes a change from dungeoncrawling.
Welltris sees Alexy Pajitnov attempt to bottle lightning twice with a 3D variant on his gameboy dominating classic. It probably is a better game technically speaking, but you know how these things go. Fashion is a fickle thing, and the public has already moved on. Welcome to diminishing returns territory.
Nuclear War also seems very familiar. Engage in geopolitical manipulations against AI players such as If-icky Dick and Ronny Raygun :rolleyes: and try to be the last one standing when the dust settles after the mutually assured destruction. You may have been topical back in issue 41, but now this seems a little dated. It could also do with a multiplayer option.
Fiction: The waiting woman by Peni R Griffin. Another sad one in this department this month. An interesting spin is put upon the once and future king theme, as an ordinary man falls in love with the immortal guardian of the sleeping warriors. This can of course only end in tears and heartbreak. Unless he can join them, to sleep until the final battle, and then after that, who knows. If you survive that, all the rules may change. Well, it sure beats watching yourself gradually get old and dying, that's for sure. Roll on workable suspended animation technology. Anyway, this is another one that does what it sets out to do nicely, putting a bit more romance in the magazine. Keep leading by example.
Pulling a "con" job: Convention season is upon us again, and this year they're giving us the advice on how to participate in one constructively better before rather than after. Yay. Thomas M Kane takes great pains to point out that you really really can't do this alone. You need a good name. You need a venue. You need people to run events. Big names who actually work for the various companies would be very helpful. You need booths, ticket sales organizers, stuff to show, and above all, you need attending members of joe public. Oh, and don't forget to tidy up properly afterwards if you want to use the same venue again next year. This looks like the kind of advice that would be good for organizing any kind of big event, so it's another one to place in the general life lessons category, like the one on formal letter writing. Just remember, even if you know all the tricks, it's still going to take tons of effort and more than a bit of set-up costs to make a success of things. Makes me wonder what else | could have achieved if I'd focussed all the energy I have on the magazine over the past couple of years on something else. Oh well, nearly halfway through. I'd feel even worse if I left it unfinished after getting this far. On we trudge.
The marvel-phile: The second marvel article this month is more conventional. Just another vaguely themed collection of characters they haven't found the space to stat before. Topaz and Rintrah are apprentices of Dr Strange. Both have pretty powerful, if not always fully controlled magical abilities, and obviously he feels that tutoring them would be mutually beneficial, with some justification. Even a cosmic being needs someone around to protect their back in a fight and save their ass when down. Plus there's the whole keeping you grounded, not turning into some cackling hubris infected maniac thing, which does seem to be important for powerful heroes. Once again, this seems fairly standard stuff for this column. Maybe next year they'll get to go in the gamers handbook with the big boys and girls. But for now, they're yet more bit part players in a universe teeming with them.
Rhythm warriors: Another new martial art focussed class follows on from the sumo duo. But it's not an oriental one, no siree bob. Instead, it's one specialising in Capoeira, the one that in reality was developed by African slaves in South America, and has quite a bit in common with breakdancing and hip-hop music. Like monks, they get an odd grab bag of special powers, have a limited number of top level characters that need to compete for position, and frequently operate as self-contained units. Unlike them, they aren't particularly bothered with the whole seclusion, celibacy and honour things, and like to stick around and benefit their community. So you get to kick butt, play music, dance, and engage in spectacular acrobatics. Doesn't seem like a bad gig, even if the stats are stuck back in the 1st edition. They can certainly find a place in my little homebrew, and hopefully, we'll see how they do someday.
The role of books: Redwall by Brian Jacques is the start of his series starring anthropomorphic animals. Due to it's spanning the gap between child friendly and adult reading, it manages to be popular with both, and thus assure it's consistently good sales. Well, you've got to have some furry stuff that isn't yiff-tastic, to get the next generation in. :p
Sunrunners fire by Melanie Rawn is notable for it's good depiction of a hero becoming a villain. Unfortunately, this means wading through two previous books and a bunch of interconnected subplots. One for the lovers of epic potboilers.
Wolfwalker by Tara K Harper sees our reviewer getting context heavy as people he knows succeed. Now, if only the novel would fill in it's linguistic and geographical context. This is why you need to put maps in your fantasy world's books. Other than that, he seems to like it.
Into the shadows, edited by Jordan K Weisman is a Shadowrun anthology. As usual for gaming fiction, it's a mixed bag, and it doesn't explain the lingo either, so it's probably best to have the corebook first. Still, it's pretty good as these things go, with several illustrations and lots of setting building. Good to see another game line flourishing.
Cromm by Kenneth C Flint sees our reviewer give him a second chance, and continue to not be impressed. Bland and forgettable, not even worthy of a good rant.
Dragondoom by Dennis L McKiernan sees him stretch his Tolkien pasticheing a little, so he's merely writing a story in the same kind of world instead of stealing plots wholesale. This is still not enough to recommend him to the more discriminating reader.
Bloodlist (sic) by P N Elrod sees her writing about what she does best. Vampres! In this case combined with Holmes-esque mystery. With a strangely vague historical setting that seems to steal from all through the first half of the century, it won't please any accuracy buffs. But her plotting and character building is already pretty good. See you again soon.
Dragon Magazine Issue 159: July 1990
part 4/4
TSR Previews: Pole position this month is Legends and Lore, the updated deity book that'll actually give speciality clerics decent custom spell selections and unique power sets. Bout time too. It's done by half the team that did the 1st ed version as well, so they've obviously kept a tighter hand on this than the farmed out complete splatbooks.
The forgotten realms sees the Horde invasion really hit in force. It also sees Troy Denning really start making his mark as a writer. He's responsible for both FRA2: The Black courser, the second module, and Dragonwall, the second novel in the trilogy. Three books in a single month. He must have been putting in mad overtime to get that done. It also gets an updated atlas showing all the hundreds of miles of revealed lands between the Realms and Kara Tur which the horde actually come from. No wonder getting from one to the other is such a chore.
Greyhawk revisits greyhawk castle, a mere two and a half years after the last trip, in WGR1: Greyhawk Ruins. Things are very different indeed from last time. So wait, does that mean the last one was a success, or a failure? Normally when things bomb, that's it. How did this wind up getting the green light?
Dragonlance finishes converting the second novel of the original trilogy, in part 5 of the graphic novel series. They have the Dragonlances. Hopefully next time we'll actually get to see them used with decent visual representation.
Spelljammer gets it's monstrous compendium, number 7 in the list. All kinds of weird creatures you've never imagined. Oh, and giant space hamsters. They may have degoofified greyhawk castle, but there's still plenty of that floating round the office.
D&D unleashes the Hollow World boxed set. Awesome! Their world gets ever more weird and high magic. Seems like this really is the year when they put a lot of focus on adding new continents to existing worlds.
The XXVC game gets 25CR1: Mars in the 25th century. I think the name is pretty self explanatory. The other planets should be along soon. It also gets the start of it's second trilogy, First power play. With a tie in computer game coming soon, it looks like this place is going to be as multimedia as the forgotten realms. Only not as popular, obviously :p
Gangbusters gets a 2nd edition! Now there's something that died without a trace a decade ago. Let's hope it gets at least one or two articles in here this time before disappearing into obscurity again.
And finally, we have an independent sci-fi novel, Outbanker. A solar system fights to stay independent of the great corporate hegemony. I'm betting there's some humorous commentary on modern economics in there. :cool:
Down with the titanic: Once again, after an absence of 5 years, the magazine degns to mention LARPing again. I guess that's a good sign, as we seem to be covering more non D&D stuff than they were in the recent past. Lawrence Schick is either playing the ingenue, or hasn't been reading the magazine he's contributed to regularly that closely, because he seems to have been completely unaware of the subculture's existence ........ up 'till now. Anyway, he reveals the fun you can have with all weekend events, even if everyone is a pregen, the fact that you have motivations and relationships all mapped out helps get things running fairly quickly, and the scene currently seems to be fairly light on the kind of tosspots who generate OOC drama and spoil everything for the rest of the players. Guess the issues that come from having persistent characters who advance between sessions, and lose all that if they get killed are still mostly in the future, when White Wolf joins the fray. Still, there's more than enough big events going on that you can meet people at, some of them with attendances in the hundreds. All sorts of historical eras, plus some unreal ones are covered. So it looks like they've got a healthy subculture of their own, running along largely independent of the tabletop gaming scene. Funny how that works. Does anyone know how the two compare in overall size and demographics, because there certainly seems to be enough to run big events in most cities, yet their online footprint is considerably smaller. An interesting little article, that reminds me once again there's plenty of stuff they could be covering, but aren't. Hopefully there'll be a few more little oddities to come in the next few years.
Dragonmirth puts us up against Mr Potato Head. That would actually be pretty scary. Yamara is not happy about being a toy. The twilight empire faces speciesism again.
Mutants of the yucatan by Eric Wujick. More palladium weirdness.
Through the looking glass: A rather orange installment this issue, with both the header and the photographs using it as their background. Anyway, Robert's brief this month is to cover more historical stuff. Seems the fantasy has been squeezing it out, and he wants to bring a little more gritty simulationism into the magazine or something. Yeah, this magazine is very different to how it was in the late 70's, and while they might still cover minis, they don't do much on the things they're used for. Oh well, all in the past now. Back to the reviews.
M-3 Miniatures have some futuristic hovercraft and tanks for Battletech. The stats probably need errata. Ahh, the dangers of licensed products.
GHQ give us a whole bunch of near modern military vehicles. This is accompanied by an explanation of the forces that led them to develop, and where they were used in real world conflicts. Another welcome little diversion.
C in C have a trio of WWI planes, all of which get 4 and a half stars. They're easy to assemble, and the right size for using with WWI wargames. A little more fine detail and they'd be perfect.
Grenadier returns us to the fantasy stuff, with a pegasus being ridden by a knight. Always demand for that kind of thing in wargames, even if they aren't brilliant. Up we go.
Ral Partha are a busy lot, with a bunch of orcs, a fire giant, a set of imperial guards for Renegade Legion, and a renamed D&D monster. Once again, Robert is pretty positive about all of them.
Ravenloft gets a new boxed set. Another case of the little module that could, this proved itself repeatedly, and now gets it's own complete campaign world built around it. Go on my son!
Another irritatingly whimsy heavy issue, particularly in the D&D parts of the magazine. They really do seem to be getting increasingly silly, throwing out ideas to see what sticks, and in the process letting out a whole bunch of ill-formed jokes that probably don't credit being published. Still, there is quite a bit of stuff that is usable amongst the dross this time, and they seem to be increasing their output on other games as well, which is usually welcome. Once again, I do have to wonder where they'll go next, with their current penchant for unpredictable exploration. Maybe they'll come up gold next time.
Dragon Magazine Issue 160: August 1990
part 1/4
120 pages. Off to the city again, it seems. Must be the second most popular adventure location. Well, it sure beats trudging for months to get to the adventure location through jungle, mountain, sea, and insane natives, and then having to get all the way back to spend your ill-gotten gains.
In this issue:
Games workshop is on a recruitment drive in the US Many jobs available to you now! Become an hero, or something.
Letters: A letter from someone who's parents forbid them from playing D&D. Roger tries to be conciliatory, but of course it's not really in his hands. All he can do is point out the best arguments his compatriots have made over the years.
A letter from someone annoyed that many martial arts styles from the magazine are better than attacking with weapons, with comparable damage and far more attacks per round. Roger replies that you are free to houserule this. (but by default AD&D is ZOMG teh anime. :p So there. )
A letter of complaint about many articles assumption that the DM knows more about the rules than the players do. Most groups do rotate DM-hood and everyone has all the core rules, in their experience. Hmm. This is a problematic one. On one hand they want everyone buying as much as possible, so they can make money. On the other hand, players knowing how an adventure goes or too much about a new monster can spoil the suspension of disbelief. What is an editor to say in response to this? More non-commitality, I'm afraid.
Editorial: Roger continues to gently creak under the strain and quite possibly grow a little more insane in the membrane in response to this month's events. You say the magazine's lost it, it's no longer as good as it used to be. HOW?! What am I doing wrong?! Why won't you tell me?! I can't fix it if you don't give any details why!!!!! :breaks down sobbing: This is why it's important to be able to articulate clearly what you want. For otherwise, you will not get, as we are not mind readers. Yeah, it's been stressful times. Storm damage, serious editorial goofs, endless complaining letters, trying to get articles uploaded onto the net. Being an editor is not an easy life. Buck up. You've still got a way to go to catch up with Kim's run. You can hold on that long. Another decidedly amusing, editorial here. I do have to wonder if he's exaggerating for comedic effect, or times genuinely are that stressful there. I suppose even if they are, you've got to have your gallows humour.
The enemy at the gates: Forum topics continue to graduate to full article status, with the fairly regular issue of fantasy war and defences getting a good look at. This is one of those ones where the writer examines the logical ramifications of various spells, magical items and monsters for both sides, and then starts building. With very little concern for budget, however, which is where projects like this tend to fall down when attempted in actual play. Sure, there's often the fantasy Dubai equivalent that has vast income from tapping some valuable resource, and can pay to hire the best from all over the world (and maybe beyond, as last month demonstrated) but unless there's both plentiful resources and clear and present threat, most defenses are going to be more dad's army than fort knox. Plus there's the old copy protection & piracy issue. After all, a city is meant to be inhabited. If you make things too inconvenient for legitimate users, then people'll go elsewhere, and then you definitely won't have the budget to maintain your snazzy wards, flying cavalry and truth detectors at the immigration lobby. Still, it's fun to run these theoretical constructs, even if we never use them in our game. All it takes is a few of these ideas to ruin an overconfident group's day. Like dragons with plans, a few cool tricks and precautions is better than a million xanatos gambits that they could never actually maintain, both for players and DM's.
The last call inn: Willie Walsh pops over from Dungeon to provides us something that isn't quite a full adventure, but certainly facilitates them. A fully mapped out inn plus a few helpful statblocks, along with quite a bit of description of what the average medieval inn was like. If the players get a little rambunctious, having a proper environment to maneuver in, fight, and run away will be a very definite help, for drawing up maps on the fly slows things down quite considerably. Like the underdark bit in issue 132, and the sample castles in issue 145, this is both more immediately useful than most of their articles, and a lot more rehash resistant, as even if they return to the same topic, different people will always put very different spins on maps and statting out stuff, and you can incorporate more than one location into your campaign easily, which is often more than can be said for optional rules. So yeah, pretty pleasing to see some more of this stuff.
The touch of the black hand: Another far more specific article than usual, complete with maps. This is definitely a welcome change, and I do wonder if it'll be the start of a trend. Thieves guilds are another thing that you could have peaceful interactions with, or it could all go wrong and you wind up breaking in for the sake of love, vengeance or retrieval, like a certain heroic duo who've made several appearances in the magazine. Interestingly, they decide to make the guild small enough that every individual is named and statted out individually. Which makes sense, given the size of the average settlement in D&D, and avoids the kind of problem we saw all too often in say, VtM, where you supposedly had this 100,000 to one ratio, and yet every settlement had a full complement of social positions including enough members of every clan that the position of primogen actually meant something, which was ridiculous. But enough about things that haven't happened yet. These guys seem to be pretty smart cookies, with the brains to know how far they can push it, robbery-wise, and about the right proportion of multiclass characters to add extra skills to the mix. They're also plugged in to the support industries, both low and high class, that keep them out of trouble. You could do a lot worse than following their example. Once again, this is both likable and well done, useful for characters over a wide range of levels and scenarios. It adds up to this being a pretty top notch themed section. I look forward to slipping these guys into my gaming experience.
Dragon Magazine Issue 160: August 1990
part 2/4
Sage advice: Your ruling on Raistlin's decay-o-vision is contradicted by the novels ( You ought to know by now that novel characters are not bound by D&D rules. This doesn't even deserve justifying. )
There is a half-orc in Love and War. I thought there were no orcs on krynn ( Bloody writers. Skip must discipline them a little. Mmm. Skip is going to enjoy this. )
What are the age, weight, etc, for Krynn's PC races (See the dragonlance monstrous compendium appendix)
I don't understand basic class name abbreviations ( You see, you take the first letter of the class. There's only 8 of them, and none have the same initial. Shouldn't be that hard to remember. )
When do tinker gnomes get proficiencies, and what combat table do they use (2/3, and wizards. They aren't good at regular fighting. This is what giant steam powered mecha which explode easily (and hopefully have an ejector seat ) are for)
I still want more info about tinker gnomes (Um, why? You're not planning on playing one, are you?! )
How many draconians can you get from a single egg. Can you make chromatic draconians? (Lots. 4d12 is a good example number, and the weaker ones produce even more. Probably, but no-one's done it yet.)
Why are there mentions of monks and assassins if those classes aren't allowed on krynn. (Because there are still religious types that pray in obscure corners, and people who kill people for money. They just don't get special skill sets for doing so. You can take the appropriate kits if you really like. )
Why are there no invocation spells (because invocation and evocation are the same school. Your confusion is understandable)
Do minotaurs and irda get thief skill modifiers (nope. We were feeling lazy that day)
What are the stats for hoopak (Meh. Help you play a kender? Skip thinks not. )
How can you have knights of solamnia before they were founded. ( Writing sloppiness. Go commiserate with the House V'neef fans)
Do clerics in krynn get bonus spells for wisdom. Do clerics of the magic gods get wizard spells ( Yes. No, because they do not exist, as Skip said before. )
Where is more info on the valley of the mage (WG12. Buy now! etc etc.)
Can 0 level characters keep their powers when they learn a class (as long as they keep practicing. )
Why do 0 level characters loose stuff when they gain levels ( Because they've been doing it all wrong, and need to unlearn their bad habits to gain truly great skills. The classes are the true ways, and picking up skills piecemeal like we do in the real world is just crap in comparison. Oh if only there were still heroes such as this in this world to teach the people here the true ways. Then you would see people able to take dozens of blows and keep fighting and climb sheer walls without tools like spiders. Oh woe, for these are fallen times. )
What is a time of special need (When your god thinks so. )
What gods are venerated in Celene (Mostly Ehlonna)
Who hates goblinoids (Everyone, even other goblinoids! Can I get an Amen? Can I get a hell yeah? Now everybody scream! )
What are the racial demographics of Ulek. What race is their leader (Read closely, padawan, and all will be revealed. Remember, everyone's human unless we say otherwise. See the prejudice inherent in the system. )
Chill. Coming soon. Rather an odd choice of colour here, but it certainly catches the eye. Hopefully that'll translate into buyer interest.
Forum: Jason Caudill is annoyed TSR don't do more to prove they aren't satanic. Saying stuff in the magazine where only converts will see it anyway is no use at all.TV adverts are exceedingly expensive, you know, and we aren't that huge a company in the overall scheme of things. What do you want from us, blood sacrifices? Or is that exactly what you don't want. :D
Paul Shuster is annoyed at Sally Jesse Raphael, and the way they slated their debate on D&D's satanicness, with no-one to defend the game. Ok, the fact that you admit watching those shows loses you several cool points. But since we're all in the negative anyway, it matters little.
Pierre Savoie is also deeply pissed off at the utter stupidity of daytime talk shows, and the way they ignore the facts whenever it gets in the way of a good bit of ratings grabbing hysteria. He's rather more constructive than the last forumite, because he provides an address for you to write and complain too. Will fighting fire with fire work?
Dennis Gill points out that roleplaying does a whole bunch of things that educators are always trying to get kids to do. Math, creative thinking, constructive socialisation, reading. Those ignorant reactionaries really ought to research before they rail.
Rob McNamee also thinks that roleplaying has substantial educational benefits. Easy now, you'll scare everyone off. :p
Norbert K Bendriss points out how much gaming has increased his vocabulary. Another good bit of evidence that gaming exercises your brain and provides sneaky education. Learning to adopt roles can do wonders for your social life.
Tim A Smith tries to protect D&D's image in a decidedly wonky fashion. Yeah, I don't think that's going to work. Highly specific denials are even more suspicious than admitting to stuff.
Scott Miller finishes up our controversy special by reminding us that it's only a game, and people will go insane regardless of their cultural surroundings.
Dragon Magazine Issue 160: August 1990
part 3/4
Up, away and beyond: AD&D has tackled space in it's own idiosyncratic way recently. Now Bruce Heard tries to do the same for regular D&D, in the process separating the two properties even further. While gravity and planet shaping still works differently from reality, it does so in a different way to spelljammer. Bruce gives plenty of freedom for you to create odd shaped worlds, while following a couple of odd rules that mean players won't have it too easy, and the whole thing won't be completely lacking in cohesion. A decidedly curious article, that again shows his skill at introducing ideas that could lead to years of play and many sourcebooks of expansion in a few short pages. He really has developed quite a bit as a writer and worldbuilder, and it looks like he's hitting his stride as the director of the D&D line now. Which is another very positive development from my point of view. Funny how being largely left alone to do your own thing by upper management often produces better results than constant executive meddling.
The voyage of the princess ark returns, having missed a month in the spelljammer special. This is ironic, because this would have fitted right in there. The ark finds a trick of going beyond the atmosphere, (see the previous article) and into space! There they discover Mystara has an invisible moon inhabited by cat-people. Oookay. That definitely falls into the category of ridiculously huge setting reveal. The overall plot thickens, as his suspicions about the nature of the skyship grow, they lose a captive and a travelling companion, and gain another one. Bruce certainly isn't afraid to shake up the roster of characters in this adventure. I guess this is another thing the system supports. Easy come, easy go. If you lose a PC, you can just whip up a new one in a few minutes. And given all the races he's detailing, it can almost be an advantage to do so, letting the players unlock new character options they didn't have at the start of the game, based on where they've travelled, and who they've befriended. Yes, it may be a bit computer gamey, but it really helps give your players an incentive to explore, see what's over the next horizon.
Also notable here is how Bruce avoids the monoculture problem demihuman races frequently suffer from. Even if they have multiple nations, those can seem all too similar. The Rakasta here are not only substantially different from the ones we've seen so far, but it's made clear that there are a whole bunch of nations up here, with different customs, with enough detail given to spark your imagination further. And once again this is all sorted out within a couple of pages. There really is no excuse for not doing this unless you actively want a monoculture in your race for whatever reason.
The role of computers: Our reviewers run across another little problem that really needs rebutting. The old conflict of interest issue when they review games made by their employer. And of course, they strongly protest their innocence. We really think the games are that good, and so do you, unless they also fixed the awards, and what would be the point of that? I think we can probably trust them on this one. But still, it shows how much TSR is seen as a corporate entity by lots of the public by now, even if they still like and buy their products. I suppose that's only going to get worse.
Conquests of Camelot is of course an arthurian adventure game. Combining point-and-click and various arcade minigames. Thankfully, although some bits are tricky, you can save anywhere, and create multiple backups. 3D graphics are progressing rapidly, and this brings a new emphasis on making sure you have the right computer specs to handle the game. Looks like that issue is going to become the persistent problem stupid copy protection schemes were last year.
Draconian: Drakkhen is an incredibly tricky adventure, but also has a ton of depth. With a 40 page mini novel included to set up the game's plot, (which it really isn't a good idea to skip.) and monsters that are a real challenge right from the offset, requiring you to learn how to optimize your party to get anywhere, it's not for the casual gamer. Be prepared to work hard and be patient if you want to see all the cool stuff here.
Phantasy Star II gets the same epic result as it's predecessor. It builds upon the same principles nicely, with plenty of new stuff joining the old favourites, with cool new equipment, and bigger and badder opposition to match. Sega, like apple, are still a healthy gaming platform at this time.
Tired of fighting the same old dragons, Try fifth cycle. I don't remember this one, but somehow it smells of fantasy heartbreaker. Any more info will as ever be welcomed.
The ecology of the gibbering mouther: Ha. Lesson no 1. You do not fuck with the sage. Especially when said narrator is an active adventurer who got their knowledge of various monsters the hard way. We've seen that lesson before, but it remains just as amusing here. We also get some nicely evocative descriptions of the titular blasphemy against nature and sanity. This time it's the fiction that's better than the footnotes, which are merely serviceable. However it's also pretty good as a selection of plot ideas to steal an incorporate into your own game. If you are ever short of an adventure hook, blackmail the players into doing the dirty work of the city officials, put a gelatinous cube at the bottom of a pit, and set up yet more other diabolical traps. Pretty nice reading here.
Fiction:Thief on a string by Dean Edmonds. It's not just genies and demons that get trapped by wizards against their will, and forced to obey any commands they're given to the letter. Fortunately, humans are no slouches at rules lawyering either, and this kind of thing often ends badly for said wizard. So it goes here, in another entertaining little tale with nice edges of both humour and sadism. He manages to get me attached enough to the main character that the subsequent mindfucking feels pretty nasty, which isn't that easy in a short story. The fiction section really is getting in good writers lately, as the rest of the magazine struggles. But then, they probably have a larger slush pile, since they only have to find one good story per issue, not a good dozen articles, and there are more general fiction writers out there than good rules designers.
There are no generic Black Belts: Off to Top Secret land, for the first time in a while. A fairly familiar subject, though. Martial arts. How many articles have we had on them so far? I'm pretty sure at least one of the Top Secret ones has involved MA too. And this article offers a considerable power boost to their users, and the expense of some tedious pontification about training times. Special techniques, descriptions of a whole bunch of real world MA's, shouting to enhance your abilities, it's pretty obvious what target audience this article is aimed at. Guess they're still a substantial buyer demographic that needs catering too. I fail to be enthralled, on the other hand.
Super jobs for super talents: Rather than a marvel article this month, they choose to have a system free bit of roleplaying advice suitable for any supers game. This is another one of those ones that tries to inject a little more realism and logical consequences into your superhero gaming. Questions of human rights, international treaties governing the treatment of use of powers and treatments of captured supervillains, This kind of thing has been on the rise for some time now, and this pushes forward that agenda decently, with a bunch of speculations, adventure hooks, and sample setting details for you to draw upon. Course, another thing that's on the rise is railroading, and the writer has some very definite "proper" solutions for his scenarios, and doesn't want players with inconvenient powers short-circuiting them. This adds up to another interesting but irritating article that needs a bit of customisation to your own campaign and the players involved before you can use it. Oh, the hassle of writing for characters who actually have a little power. My media empire for someone who can do it consistently and still make fun stories.
Dragon Magazine Issue 160: August 1990
part 4/4
Novel ideas: The Buck Rogers line is the subject of a little more promotion here. We see how much the upper management are actually paying attention to this one, with Lorraine, Flint and Mike Pondsmith all contributing quotes. The book series is if anything, more important than the gaming side, because that's where they're really going for the mass market penetration, to match the old comics and TV show. This is not to say they're not trying for consistent worldbuilding as well, attempting to put some hard sci-fi speculation and strong continuity into the old pulp stories. This attempt to do everything may be half the problem with the line in the first place. When management is giving out all sorts of tricky and somewhat contradictory orders at once, but not explaining how to carry them out, things become tremendously stressful for the actual writers, and it shows through in the actual products. Another interesting indicator of exactly why tensions were running high in the TSR offices around this period. What are we to make of this. It does make me wonder how things would have been different if the line had been a success, and continued rather than being cancelled a little while later. Certainly a topic worth speculating on. What effect did Buck's flopping have on Flint and Lorraine, and their approach to the company in general?
The game wizards: Ravenloft came out a couple of months ago. Might as well slip in a little more promotion. Andria Hayday tries to set the mood by telling us how it got under her skin during the writing process, alone late at night in the TSR offices with the wind whistling around the windows. Frightened? I think I might die from sheer cliche overload. The way the descriptions are done is a very definite reminder that horror has a rather larger proportion of female readers than straight fantasy. (Indeed, I suspect that's why it gets it's own section in the bookstores, while fantasy and sci-fi get lumped together for the browser to figure out what's which.) Mixing attraction and revulsion, romance and the threat of violation seems to be a formula that works, and I can understand why, even if it's not one of my personal kinks. Anyway, this is another attempt to make promotion entertaining, with mixed results. But it's given us an interesting conversational topic, so that's ok.
TSR Previews: Lankhmar takes pole position this time, unusually. LNR1: Wonders of Lankhmar. A book full of short adventures. How will they differ from the several books of generic short D&D adventures already out?
The forgotten realms, once again, is getting more products and faster than any other world. David Cook delivers The Horde boxed set, the centrepiece of this year's metaplot maneuverings. Welcome to fantasy mongolia. See the sights, meet interesting new creatures, and get killed by the long harsh miserable trek between interesting locations. R A Salvadore, on the other hand, is staying well clear of this mess. Drizzt proved the most popular character in his first trilogy, so he gets a prequel trilogy on his origins in, and escape from the dark city of menzoberanzan. Mmm. 'cesty. (Unfortunately true.) Part one is called Homeland.
Dragonlance is continuing to get more novels and other spin-offs than actual gaming products. What's with that? The Gates of Thobardin by Dan Parkinson sees the dwarves bickering again. Can someone find the legendary helm and unite them?
D&D is still in a roman mood, in DDA2: Legions of thyatis. Following directly on from DDA1, this should keep your players busy for a few more sessions.
Marvel Superheroes gives us the second module in it's gritty street level trilogy MLA2: Night Moves. Noo yoik is having gang wars? Par for the course back then. What do you expect us to do about it?
And finally, we have Battle of Britain, another fun little wargame. Another fairly self-explanatory name. Fly planes! Bomb buildings! Hide in air raid shelters! Listen to inspirational speeches. Or something like that, anyway.
Oh, and first power play apparently got delayed a month, because here it is again. Silly shippers. Never mind.
Dragonmirth mocks the new edition's omissions. The dwarf in yamara's party cracks under the pressure and wants to go back to the old school. The twilight empire shows how outmatched fantasy humans are against a real one, even if he's never done anything like this before. :rolleyes:
Through the looking glass: Robert throws in some more general advice about holding your gaming group together before going on to the reviews. Frequently these changes have a definite yearly cycle, since so many gamers are still in school or university, and change their patterns every autumn, that's when you are both most likely to lose members, and get the most benefit from advertising for new ones. Flyers and notes in all the nearby noticeboards is the way to go. As ever, the importance of promotion to success in an endeavour is not to be underestimated. Which reminds me, it's been a while since I spun this thread off to another site. I really ought to try that again.
Anyway, reviews. Apparently, 15mm scale is moving up in the world, making fighting bigger battles an easier thing logistically, as you can represent areas 66% bigger on your game table of choice. This seems worthy of note. Other than that, business as usual. Space marines, giant crabs, undead, griffins, artillery, tanks, flamethrowers, multiheaded dragons, giants, western saloons. A pretty wide selection of stuff is still being produced to set up your adventures. Now, the tricky part will likely be finding it in your local shop.
The hollow world! We get to see just how weird mystara really is compared to earth. Ahh, those wacky immortals. Always pushing the envelope. They certainly keep themselves busier than gods that were born to deitydom.
In addition, we have another of their fun little experiments. Trading cards! Another way to get money from you. A whole bunch of the big Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance characters get very abbreviated descriptions indeed on one side, and recycled artwork on the other. (Alias and Olive Ruskettle in particular look as dubious as ever) Another step down the slippery slope that leads to trading card games like M:tG and spellfire. This is definitely one noting. It can be used usefully, and it exposed me to characters I'd never heard of back in the day, but it may have been another poor step in the long run. What did you make of them?
A fairly substantial improvement from the last few issues, with an excellent themed section, and plenty of other cool stuff, including several intriguing new developments. Seems like their attempts to try all sorts of things has resulted in more hits than misses this time round. I hope they're keeping track of what works, and making sure they don't repeat the ones that don't. That's the way to improve your batting average. Keep looking, those classic and innovative articles are out there. Just gotta round 'em up, lasso them and bring them home. Or is the western method too dated these days? Always pushing on to new frontiers. I guess I'd better follow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 161: September 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Another month, another attempt to liven things up for their long term readers. In fact, this is explicitly the special topic of the issue. How very telling. Have Roger & co found something new to stoke their interests, or will the advice they give be pretty familiar to experienced trope connoisseurs such as myself. Another chunky issue is here for the taking, and I'm certainly not quitting at this stage.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter wondering why quite a few of their articles are still using 1st ed stats and formats. They have a huuuuuge backlogged slush pile, and getting out a magazine each month being their top priority means they have less time than they'd like to do something about it.
A letter asking where all the various new classes the magazine's published over the years are. Roger is nice enough to alphabetize the answer, but does not include the new one in this issue, for some reason. Oh well, it gives me another chance to double check my list of allowed classes for my own game.
A letter expressing approval at the idea of monsters being given different names in different regions, but with the caveats that they should fit the overall linguistic construction of the area. No dispute there.
Editorial: Black Bart returns, as I thought he would. Last seen in issue 48, it looks like he's appeared in more than one campaign, with more than one set of stats. I guess it's like the John Smith of adventurer names. I am Black Bart! Fear my rugged good looks and dark backstory! You and every other badass wannabe. :p Anyway, this is another of Roger's editorials where he talks about his actual play experiences. The story of a romance that took place in his game, including the NPC's death, the amusing brooding that happened as a result of that, and the rather dramatic way he brought her back so they could kill things and take their stuff across the dimensions happily ever after. The perfect melding of hack-and-slash and drama. Actually, it does look like he was pretty heavily of the gonzo monty haul school, but they had fun anyway. Anyway, this is a reminder that romance is a tricky but rewarding subject to put into your game, and actually, given it's importance in nearly every entertainment medium, it's surprising there's not more of it in roleplaying. Whether that's a factor in it never attaining wider commercial success I'm not sure, but it does seem very probable. And since V:tM'll come from nowhere to become no 2 in a very short period of time, and attract a rather larger proportion of female players, it does seem probable that this could have been handled a lot better by TSR. Once again, we are reminded how things could have been different, and possibly better, if people had made different decisions during TSR's early days.
Inside information: So getting adventures from shady characters in taverns is growing stale. There are many other ways you can find out about cool adventures and monsters to slay, even if the adventures don't come to you. And this reminds you of quite a few of them. Libraries, marketplaces, rumours, songs, divinations, etc etc. I'm sure you've seen stories using all of these. but it's easy to forget in the moment. So this is one that's very useful to novice GM's, and mildly so as a reminder to experienced ones. There may only be 30-odd stories in the world, but that's still a lot more variety than getting stuck doing one over and over again, as many writers do. And the RPG's out there at the moment tap into a surprisingly small subset of that group. Yup, there's definitely still room for refinement and diversification in gaming, and they're still trying to push for it.
Romance and adventure: Looks like Roger isn't alone in wanting to see a little more romance in people's games. And there's plenty of GM's who might want to try it, but are afraid that it might go horribly wrong. Oh come on, it's not like you're really asking someone out. Like they've been saying in the forum, an invaluable part of roleplaying is getting to do something safely that would be difficult or impossible in reality. Course, if you try this on your players, you should really expect the unexpected. They'll ignore or spurn the obvious romantic interests, and develop odd obsessions over minor characters you mentioned offhand. Heavyhanded manipulation or actual mind control will likely backfire spectacularly. Similarly, there's that horribly irritating fact that overenthusiastic pursuit will likely scare them off. On the other hand, a little competition can work wonders. And on top of all this, you have to make sure that you don't spend too much screentime on one player's issues over everyone else. When you describe it like that, I can see why a lot of DM's would be put off. So lots of advice and warnings here, most pretty solid. I think this definitely counts as a sign of the times. People are growing up, craving romance, serious commitments to epic character arcs and worlds. Can we satisfy those urges, or will we be left frustrated or heartbroken, returning to the dungeon to smash away the angst. Guess that probably varies from campaign to campaign.
It's sort of like a wand: Ahh, yes, the endless need for new stuff. If you use the same old monsters and items, players will rapidly grow blase and know exactly what to do in response. So encourage the DM's to male up new ones, including ones that look like other ones to surprise and annoy metagamers. I know we've seen this one before. Over a hundred issues ago in fact. And unlike that one, this is purely advice, rather than any mechanical tools to help with the problem of new confusing combinations to bamboozle the PC's with. Not very fresh, I'm afraid. So much for livening up the game.
The classics campaign: So, having spent three articles trying to spice up your campaign by adding new stuff, they try a different tack. Returning to the old classic modules. As with last years's review of the old SR issues, a sign nostalgia is growing as a concern. But nostalgia quickly gives way to pragmatism, with the primary focus of this article being how the modules might be affected by the rules changes since then. Lots of new classes, spells, magic items, all of which could disrupt their carefully designed screwage inflicting meatgrinders. ;) And many monsters have changed as well in the new edition, so that has to be taken into account too. Course, IMO, putting things in combinations they were never intended to handle and seeing what results is half the fun, and an important part of SCIENCE!!!! experiments. But customising all the old NPC's with new spells and kits is also kinda fun if you have the time to do it. And trying to figure out how to fit these old adventures into your world is also fun, if sometimes tricky. Since I'm already pretty much doing this, I quite approve.
Roleplaying reviews: Glorantha: Genertela, crucible of the hero wars sees Runequest return to it's roots, and make a new fan in the process. A snazzy boxed set giving us a fairly detailed overview of the northern continent, it's full of IC information, helping you get inside the heads of characters from various regions and the religions they follow.
Time of the dragon takes us to Taladas, where things are quite different from the high fantasy heroics and villainy of Ansalon. Minotaurs are the closest thing to a dominant race, kender aren't whimsical twats, clerics with actual magic are exceedingly rare indeed, and the whole thing tries for a gritty postapocalyptic vibe, with reasonable success. It all sounds pretty cool from the review. Course, it doesn't entirely escape the persistent irritations of Krynn's writing in general, with gnomes in particular having plenty of whimsy still. Still, at least it doesn't get strangled by endless novels filling in every detail of it's history, so you have more room for your own characters to make their mark. And the presentation is full of all the cool stuff we've come to expect from our boxed sets. Wahoo indeed.
Dragon Magazine Issue 161: September 1990
part 2/4
The voyage of the princess ark must be proving popular, for it expands in size quite a bit this issue. Once again, they make an enormous (and rather topical) revelation about the nature of their world. It's hollow! How about that folks! ;) Not that it's easy to discover, as the immortals have put a pretty good security system on it. Lightbending so the holes in the poles aren't immediately obvious. Antimagic around the polar regions that'll play hell with attempts to get there. (which is a big driver of the drama in this installment, as Haldemar has to deal with his untrustworthy new Rakasta companions without his regular supply of blasty effects.) And your standard frozen polar blizzard that'll discourage any ordinary people from settling anywhere near. They nearly don't make it, with only the amazing stroke of luck that they meet and befriend a gargantuan sloth capable of pulling their ship keeping it from being stranded on the ice floes. What are the odds? This really is the kind of plot twist that would stretch my sense of incredulity beyond it's limits if I didn't know about it in advance. Where's your foreshadowing, man?
Actually, that's a very good question, as Bruce starts responding to mail about the series. He reveals that the series is only written a few months in advance, and your letters can change the course of their exploration. Will they stay in the hollow world, return to the known world or head off into space, and see what other planets are to be found in the D&D universe? You have the power! Or not, as the case may be. Still, it's pleasing for me to discover it wasn't all plotted out in advance. Lets see what else we can discover from the letters and his replies to them.
A letter pointing out that at the time of Haldemar's writing, Karemekos hadn't been founded yet. Silly Bruce, messing up his history.
A letter expressing frustration that nearly all the articles in the magazine are AD&D focussed. This one thing a month isn't nearly enough. Bruce quite agrees with you there, as does the editor.
A rant from someone deeply annoyed that the map from the master set has been retconned, as well as the fact that Haldemar is biased against Thyatians. Quite reasonable complaints. Remember, you don't have to use any of the stuff in here if you don't want too.
A basic question on what the next gazetteers are to be. This is answered efficiently.
A letter complaining that the battlesystem rules don't cover the D&D game. We'll get round to it.
Why is the area where the Cestian gobblers grow uninhabited. Um, because they grow there. People generally aren't fond of being eaten, y'know.
Will we see any more Blackmoor modules. The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Are the knights of the white drakes the same thing as the knights of the air? They're a specific company in the larger army.
The scales in some of the maps make no sense. Ahh, once again, we have to deal with errata. Worldbuilding is a tricky business.
How can there be advanced civilizations elsewhere on mystara which don't know about the known world? Because the immortals treat the world like their own private zoo. Each country is it's own little enclosure, and the way they interact is being constantly messed with. Like the sims, the planet's development only makes sense when you factor in the constant adjustments from above.
What are the names of the halfling clans? Buy polyhedron to find out.
The role of computers: Dragonstrike takes us to Ansalon to ride dragons, flight sim stylee. They do seem to be covering a rather wider set of genres with their krynnish games. Beat-em-up, army based wargame, and now this, while the Realms is stuck with fairly standard conversions of AD&D rules. Wonder what drove that decision. In any case, while it's almost as complicated to control as actual flight sims, they still thoroughly enjoyed it. You get to fight draconians, other dragons, various flying AD&D beasties, and eventually a suitably massive draconic avatar of Takhisis. Ahh, the joys of taking centre stage.
Mechwarrior is a game of 3D mecha combat with a strong RPG element and a plotline about trying to avenge your uncle and clear your name. The elements of buying the right upgrades for your mech, choosing your missions, and haggling over their price play as much of a role as the tactical asskicking. As is often the case, they give lots of hints about this one, to help you through the adventure.
Budokan is a game of martial arts combat. It doesn't look as sophisticated as SFII, but things are certainly headed in that direction, as you have to master annoying key sequences to unleash various martial art maneuvers. Build up your ki bar and go to town on your enemies. That definitely sounds familiar, and it's curious to realise they haven't covered this genre before in these columns. To extend the sign of the times metaphor, the graffiti is definitely on the bridge.
Dragon Magazine Issue 161: September 1990
part 3/4
The marvel-phile: Another pair of leftover characters who couldn't fit into this year's big update. Dakota North, the hotshot private detective with enough martial arts expertise to hold her own in superheroic circles. And Stick, the straightfoward yet cryptically named blind sensei who trained Daredevil. Obviously pretty minor characters if they can't find the space to include them in an encyclopedia now pushing 1500 pages. I suppose given it's popularity, trying to consume and catalog everything in the marvel universe would be even more confusing and exhausting than my efforts on this magazine. I should be grateful for small mercies. Still, this does feel rather like formulaic filler.
Fiction: Shadow play by John P Buentello. A somewhat different bit of rules lawyering to last month, but rules lawyering nonetheless. Outwitting enslaved supernatural beasties when they have substantially more power than you is a pretty staple part of heroism. Course, yeah, diminishing returns, and this is neither as clever or funny as last time. On the other hand, it's protagonist actually becomes a better person as a result of the adventure, if you like that kind of thing. But on the whole, I'm not particularly enthused by this one. Another bit of filler in my nilla.
The role of books: Games end by Kevin J Anderson sees the mediocre reviews turn into an outright slating, as the physics fail to hang together consistently, and the characters act in ways that make no sense. Way to prove the point about their unreality.
Black trillium by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May and Andre Norton should appeal to likers of any of their writing. Well crafted, it does still have a bit of fiction by numbers to it. Still, it should keep them in money for a little longer.
The queen's head by Edward Maston is an elizabethan murder mystery. It does try and tie in events to the big historical ones too much, but the character building is pretty good.
Horselords by David Cook kicks off the Horde trilogy of novels. It's a surprisingly magic light affair, immersing you in their culture and getting you up to speed quickly. Once again, his enthusiasm does a lot of the work, keeping it interesting even if it's not actually that D&Dish.
Ironhelm by Douglas Niles, on the other hand, doesn't immerse you in the fantasy american invasion, taking a fast-cut approach to show events across the continent. You'll have to figure out the big picture made by the plot threads yourself. Still, it differs from reality more than Zeb's attempt, with the interesting new magic systems. Overall, it's obvious that the Realms are building up and diversifying nicely.
Phules company by Robert Asprin is an amusing story centering around a sci-fi Red-piss legion. With plenty of humour, swashbuckling, worldbuilding and a setup that's near perfect for adventurer types, the reviewer can definitely see the value in this one for gamers.
Scouting for new options: Once again we are confronted by just how much stuff intended for 1st edition they have lying around, and possibly are still receiving from people who aren't keeping up with current events. Curious how all the new classes are for the old version. I guess we have the complete books out, and kits more than adequately serve for minor tweaks like this in 2nd ed. I wonder why no-one's submitting them to the magazine.
Anyway, the Scout. This is a useful little one, because although it doesn't differ from the regular thief too much mechanically, (and even shares their unlimited advancement for all policy) they take pains to point out that they're more likely to be team players with an adventuring party, rather than backstabbing them and robbing them blind. This is very handy if you have players who can't get the idea of reskinning. Say goodbye to backstabbing, pickpocketing, and reading languages, and say hello to tightrope walking, tumbling, tracking, surprise boosting and several useful detection abilities that'll help prevent DM screwage. I think that counts as a pretty good tradeoff. And indeed, the fact that it reappeared in 3.5, and was pretty well liked then too seems a pretty good sign that plenty of people liked the idea and implementation. And since the writing is nice and clear as well, I think this is definitely one for the using. Combine with bandit, Armstrong bounty hunter, huntsman and beastmaster for a nice selection of wilderness focussed classes to fill up your party.
Forum: Another month focussed on feeding the persecution complexes of people here. Yes, they really are out to get you. Hit back, don't turn it into a circle-jerk of misery porn. Bullies never stopped because you capitulate to them.
Tony Pace tells another story of how one jackass and his hangers-on got D&D banned in an entire school. And the punishment hurt other people more than him, because of course he just ignored the punishments and kept doing whatever. Funny how that works.
Paul Cardwell sends out a call to get organized and fight back against the oppressors! Now that's what I like to see. Hard facts, names, places, faces, battle plans. Now, the tricky part is getting other people to join in. Don't let apathy kill your gaming.
Robert W. Heym points out that if you crunch the numbers, it looks like a substantially smaller proportion of D&D players commit suicide than the general population. Course this is the nature of statistics. You can do all kinds of tricks with them so they seem to support either side. It's all a bit of a pain unless you're a mathematician yourself and can look at the raw data and figure out your own conclusions.
Michael Shigetani has become a fundamentalist christian, but still plays D&D, and doesn't think there's anything satanic about it. Still, he's had to fight his case against his new friends, and thinks that roleplayers ought to be at least as organized as their opponents if they want to survive.
Lenny Valure contributes his personal, um, lack of experience with anything satanic about D&D. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Dayle Johnson reminds us that preaching to the choir is pointless. If you want to tackle gaming's popularity issues, you've got to put ads and articles in unconnected places, where people who are not already involved will read it. I do believe I have also said this in the past.
Craig H. Barrett agrees with Roger's recent editorials, and thinks that if anything, he was being too nice about the motives of D&D's detractors. They're doing it as much because D&D is an easy target as it is an object of genuine hate. You don't see people trying to ban cars, despite them definitely killing more people in a day than D&D manages in a year. Well, you do, but hardly anyone takes them seriously, because the benefits are too obvious and omnipresent compared to the drawbacks.
Jason Aljets has no particular suggestions, but is just angry about all this crap. D&D is not a cause of mental problems! Etc etc.
C. P. Bates wants to see hard evidence of the benefits or otherwise of gaming. Solid facts would be rather useful for challenging ignorance and paranoia. Maybe. Earlier views dispute this.
Geri Balyard thinks that the value of RPG's is in teaching us to deal with dangerous situations intelligently without actually being exposed to danger. And as an addiction, it's much less harmful than drugs. Also, harder to score in a hurry, especially if you start neglecting your friends.
Dan Pryor also points out the valuable things gaming teaches us. Heroism, the value of co-operation, tactics and bravery, the things you gain by being virtuous (if playing some kind of class with a moral code) etc etc. The irony is that it's not just bad things that draw the ire of reactionaries. Look what happened to jesus for preaching peace and love. Very good points.
Dragon Magazine Issue 161: September 1990
part 4/4
TSR Previews gets splayed over 3 pages, as they try and fit in all their adverts at the right size and satisfy their various obligations. Bleh.
Ravenloft kicks off it's series of supplements, with RA1: Feast of goblyns. Everything's scarier with extra y's. The DM's screen is packaged with this, apropos of nothing.
Dragonlance is not only compiling and reworking it's novels, it's now doing the same to the original modules. The Dragonlance saga classics vol 1 collects DL1-4, and updates them to the new edition. Which means the dragons'll be a lot tougher, so the old level estimates might not be accurate anymore. Beware.
The Forgotten Realms is also in a dragony mood, with FOR1: Draconomicon. Now there's a book that'll sell well and get follow ups in future editions. Mmm. Supplementalicious.
Spelljammer is still building up a decent supply of modules with SJA3: Crystal Spheres. Space is biiig, and there's plenty of systems to explore with problems to solve. Here's just 4 of them.
XXVc goes to jupiter in 25A2: N.E.O in the 25th century. Legendary alien artifacts? Curious. Thought this universe was focussed on humanity's inhumanity to one-another.
Marvel Superheroes, on the other hand, gets a boxed set expanding on the X-men. One of the superhero teams the players have a decent chance of joining, it's no surprise they're pretty popular. Stats, adventures, the format as ever lets them divide things up into convenient booklets and handouts.
Sage advice is rather far back in the magazine this month.
Which modules are set in the forgotten realms (the ones with the logo on the front. Shouldn't be hard to put the generic ones in as well)
Where are the stats of the tome of the unicorn ( You shouldn't rely on indexes. Read the whole book and learn it properly like Skip does )
Where are the stats of greenstone amulets ( FR4. Well worth the expenditure, because they're self-charging when they run out)
Will unstable wands explode if broken dilibarately (oh yes. Be very careful. )
Where can I find stats for the scholar class (that's an IC social class, not an actual class. Yes, I know it gets confusing when we do things like that. We ought to theasaurize more. )
How the hell can Drizzt use two scimitars at once. (He's a pioneer! You want to imitate him (and I know many of you do) get the complete fighters handbook. Aren't we nice, letting you get the powers our twinked NPC's can use for a change. )
Will the forgotten realms get an atlas (Yup. Just a couple of months ago in fact. Another thing for you to spend money on, since you seem so keen to do so. )
Has Elminster ever been to Oerth or Krynn (well, he certainly knows spells by greyhawk mages. He's been to earth plenty and read the gamebooks, so it seems likely.)
Where is the info on the places in FR1 (get FR 4 & 5! Gotta collect em all. You'll never get all the info any other way! )
What's clear terrain. (fairly flat grasslands and similar. Blah blah common sense blah blah. )
What scale are your maps (Various, because they vary in size so much. We ought to have labeled them )
When can we get colour corrected maps (Right now! yay! )
There's a gap between the forgotten realms and kara tur maps (Yup. Get the horde boxed set to complete the picture. :teeth ting: Beware of scale mismatch retcons.)
What is toril's circumference (about the same as earth. More lazy design on our part)
How do you become a red wizard (PC's shouldn't be villains. Skip disapproves strongly of this question, as editorial policy demands he do. )
Is chult africa-esque ( No, it's a dinosaur infested caveman land. Not an earth analogue at all, no siree bob.)
Can western characters learn eastern stuff (recycled question. The answer is still yes, twit. )
Why aren't all the rooms in illefarn detailed (same reason all the rooms in undermountain aren't. A combination of size issues and wanting to allow you rom to add your own stuff. )
What's on the other side of the spine of the world mountains. Is it greyhawk (No. Make up something yourself. )
I want more info on flying ships (see issue 124 :teeth ting: God, Skip really ought to get that tinging sorted out. It's starting to get on skip's nerves.)
Where are all the libraries (What libraries? It's all private collections around here. Free access to books is a modern concept. Magic doesn't support mass production very well. )
How big and expensive are waterdeep's rental villas? (Big enough to house an adventuring party. You'll have to keep working though. Floor space in a big city is expensive. By my conversion rate, the cheapest you'll get is somewhere around $8000 a month. New york, eat your heart out.)
Stuff in the city system set is missing and/or duplicated (It wasn't me.)
The ecology of the griffon: What is it about cats that turns people into cooing babytalking obsessives? I blame the brainworms ;) So many macros, so little time. This article just about keeps the fanboyism in check, but it takes only a little compression of the best bits to tip it over that edge into full on horse RPesque purple prose. (do not google if you value your SAN score) A magnificent and awe-inspiring sight, golden feathered with patterns of black washing across them, with ruby red, burning yellow, or icy blue eyes, they have an elemental feel for the ways of the sky. Suspicious and bold, yet strikingly loyal as mounts, they should be treasured by all humanity! It's all rather amusing. This is another one that's entertaining to read for all the wrong reasons, and the writer almost completely neglects to add new game information as well. Such a shame Ed's too busy to do ecologies anymore. He could pull off something like this and keep you laughing with him rather than at him.
Dragonmirth is verrry obvious this month. Yamara is returned to a fleshy state the weird way. It's out of one fight and into another, and then another in twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Battletech is still fairly popular, and Robert has obviously been playing it quite a bit, because he's running an epic feature on modding the rules to make a full extended campaign. This will of course involve buying lots of supplements and minis, but the target audience for this probably already has those. Rules for resource management, producing new units, repairing ones damaged in previous battles, salvaging fallen stuff, this does seem designed to allow you to run an extended war where one side eventually gets the advantage, but a clear-cut winner and loser isn't decided for quite some time, especially if there are more than 2 sides with shifting alliances. Obviously this one isn't that useful to me, but it does seem another good sign in terms of covering outside systems. Like the extended articles for Top Secret and Gamma World on lunar adventuring, this is interesting reading, and may be adaptable to other systems with similar considerations and limitations. Another article that's a lot more memorable than endless minis reviews.
The draconomicon. Hey, it's an inherently cool sounding name. Is it any surprise they'll reuse it in the next edition as well.
Another issue that is very much of it's time, packed with stuff that seems quite dated now, but was cool and new at the time. They also seem to be trying to leave behind certain things, but struggling to do so. Can they shake off the satanic furor. Will they alienate longtime readers with their search for new grounds. Well, we know that, the only question is exactly how the response curve will progress. Onto the next data point.
Dragon Magazine Issue 162: October 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. Another october, and you know straight away from the cover that this is another halloween special. As the success of Ravenloft right from the first module shows, the human desire to scare itself from a position of safety is a perennial one. And so they probably have more than enough suitable articles to fill several years of this, even if they never got any more. Hopefully that means they have enough spares to reject the crap and only use the best, unlike far too many of their themed issues. I suppose I'd better get reading and writing.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone pissed off about the magazine now coming in plastic wrap. They've exchanged environmental friendliness for greater durability. Oh woe for all the eco-people.
A letter pointing out two factual errors the magazine made recently. Looks like they can't do anything right.
A letter from someone finding that a vampire PC causes fairly substantial problems in AD&D. Vampire PC's? There's a turnup for the books. Roger gives us some advice that'll keep things getting too out of hand. At least vampires have substantial weaknesses to go with their powers.
Editiorial: Rogar of Mooria tells the tale of his latest adventure in convention land, looting and pillaging his way through the booths of the competing companies and the local chinese restaurants. Roleplaying may not be enjoying the same degree of corebook sales it did in the mid 80's, but the number of convention goers, and by implication established, serious players with decent amounts of disposable income is still increasing. And they're having lots of fun, between the buying and the selling and the weird attention grabbing freebies and the seminars and the adventures. Man, I ought to go to more cons. Hell, I ought to get out more in general. I have a laptop, and wifi is hardly rare. And working from coffee shop does seem to be in amongst pretentious hipsters. (which as my laptop is a mac, I suppose I fit by default) Maybe then I'd meet more interesting people.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A horror themed pages from the mages here this month, very much in the Call of Cthulhu mold. The Book of Horrors, a typically life and sanity imperiling tome that it'll take quite a bit of effort to get a benefit from. Just the thing for your evil necromancers to own, so if they players kill them and take their stuff, the adventure is in no way over. Can you turn the evil new spells within to good ends?
Undead Control is pretty self-explanatory. If your cleric fails, then you get a second chance to end things without needless bloodshed. Course, it's not as good as that innate ability, so niche protection is preserved.
Sinuous Horrors transforms your arms into snakes. This is scary looking, but on the whole, probably a good deal less damage inflicting than a good fireball or lightning bolt, despite being higher level; plus of course, your spellcasting options are seriously restricted while you have no hands. If you use this as your primary combat method, I'm afraid I will have to seriously question your sanity :p
Vampire Mist also looks cool, but does less damage over a longer period of time than the standard wizardly offensive spells. Again, I am forced to make a mad necromancer crack and sigh disdainfully.
Crimson Scourge is also not hugely effective in combat, but in a city setting, where you can use it's contagiousness to maximum effect, it could result in huge casualties, plus paranoia above and beyond that as you strike at the heart of the community without revealing your true nature. Now that's more like it, a means of driving a whole plot. Muahahaha.
Amorphous Blob unleashes a pretty self-explanatory ravenous monstrosity capable of infinite growth, in classic horror movie tradition. Another one to release in a community and watch the terror from afar, as if you put it up directly against CR appropriate enemies without a chance to grow to it's full potential, they'll make pretty short work of it. A fitting end to an entry with cool descriptions, but somewhat underpowered crunch. This one shouldn't cause any long term problems if incorporated into your game, while allowing you to make a good mastermind villain who is still quite defeatable when you actually catch them.
Robotech, the new generation? Has it been that long? Ok then.
The mind of the vampire: Nigel Findley, writing a horror article? No, say it aint so. ;) Another sign of the times here, as he encourages you to get inside the mind of your intelligent undead monstrosities, and play them as beings with plans, personalities, and quite possibly a degree of internal conflict about their status. Be they vampires, liches, ghosts, spectres, or even lesser undead like ghouls, the way they come to terms with their new lifestyle should vary very much depending on what they were and how they died. And as usual, he does a pretty good job of it, analyzing things both from the statistical capabilities of the various creatures, and their literary sources. They take another step towards the environment that will result in said monsters becoming the stars of the number 2 roleplaying game in the world. Yeah, this one really was pretty telegraphed in hindsight, wasn't it. Even more than those swishy antipaladins, people loooove da bloodsuckers. Bad boys, bad boys, who ya gonna call. So, um, yeah, this rocks, and is also moderately significant in the overall scheme of things. Go him.
Dragon Magazine Issue 162: October 1990
part 2/4
Hammer and stake: Call of Cthulhu continues to be one of the more popular non TSR games in the magazine, with an article for including vampires in the game. Rather a step back from the unknowable inhuman monstrosities investigators normally face here. But if you can get over that bit of cognitive dissonance, this is another pretty decent bit of articlage, giving them a fairly straight writeup with both the savage lesser vamps and the more intelligent and refined greater ones catered for. It's probably be a good idea to customise their origin and capabilities if you want them to be properly chilling. But it's certainly not useless, and it's another bit of variety in the magazine, so I have no objection to this.
Out of the shadows: Tom Moldvay continues his slow progress through the entire undead listings and their mythological antecedents with three variants on the Shadow. He also fills us in on the weird editorial decisions that resulted in Shadows being undead in AD&D, but not in basic D&D. An initial decision inspired purely by DM sadism gradually acquired mythic resonance and a special place in adventurers hearts. After all, temporary strength draining isn't as mean as permanent level loss, but it's still pretty scary mid battle, especially when you know what's going to happen if you lose. Once again, he's a font of fun facts, making this a lot more interesting reading than a set of straight bestiary entries.
Skotos are evil spirits who rule rpg.net ;) They recover damage as they hurt you, which means fighting them is not simply a matter of outlasting them. Still, their craving for fresh blood can be used to lure them into making rash decisions. A good mid-level substitute for ghouls or wights.
Sluagh are undead faeries, and a lot more interesting and idiosyncratic than the Changeling version. Appearing in massive hordes, they have very high XP awards for their HD, due to their combination of instadeath attacks, and the shadowesque ability to recruit you for the cause if they kill you. If you don't have an AoE blasty spell ready to go before you get to melee then things are likely to get very nasty. An excellent choice for if you want to play a storyline where entire settlements are being destroyed, and things are getting scarier each time.
Ghost-stones are even more idiosyncratic still. Drawing upon transylvanian myth, if your shadow touches them, it gets trapped on them and they drain your life force through it. Brilliant, and one that'll be a real puzzler for players to figure out how to deal with. Your life or death will depend very much on tactical setup rather than raw power this time. These guys can definitely have places in my game. This selection isn't quite as great as last year's, but that's more a matter of quantity rather than quality. I'm very much looking forward to seeing him complete the collection over the next few years.
Sage advice: Your talk on scale and chain mail was complete rubbish! ( Do you doubt Skip! Skip is the Sage! Do not doubt Skip's word, or Skip will not only destroy you, but your reputation as well. Skip has powerful friends. You'll get what's coming to you for this. )
Did you think up the questions for your april fools issue? (No! Your insanity is more ludicrous than anything Skip could make up himself. Skip is The Sage, not some kind of jester! )
Drinking enwatered PC's simply kills them? That is so unfair! (Only if you're playing a game with regular access to 9th level spells. You might want to think about your playstyle, as that is the problem here, not the rules of the game. So says Skip! )
Ninja can so pick pockets! Oriental adventures says they can! (No they can't! Skip calls shenanigans! You're a bunch of doodyheads.)
You got the number of times dragons can breathe per day wrong (Oh man, Skip just can't win this month. Skip had better call time out before Skip gets even more humiliated. You may have won this time, but Skip will be back, just you see :shakes fist:)
Forum is still going on about the goddamned satanic furor. Still, they are increasingly focussing on the optimistic and practical
Andrew Bartmess talks about how D&D could be a tool for good or evil, depending on the DM and the kind of adventures and lessons they put the players through. This is why it's better to stay involved in your kids lives. If you let them make their own entertainment, then you don't know what they're up to, and it's much more likely to be trouble.
Robert B. Luhrman talks about the law and free speech. We have a right to play, they have a right to protest against it. And since they've tried to ban far bigger things and failed, I don't think we have much to worry about. Just keep playing.
Gord Coleman is another person who wants us to get up get up, get organized. Don't be shy, testify! Let out the rage in healthy ways, don't crack under the strain and shoot up the school.
Marian Lynn Lucas used Dragonlance, and it's moralising lessons to prove that D&D isn't satanic to her parents. Guess they have a use after all. :p And also a reminder just how many of the writers responsible for D&D were christians of one stripe or another. The two things should not be in opposition.
Dragon Magazine Issue 162: October 1990
part 3/4
The voyage of the princess ark: Once again the Ark finds itself rather indisposed. Chasing their escaped captive through the hollow world, they get spotted by the Nithians, and have to put up with doing the awkwardly polite negotiation dance again. They then crash into a flying island inhabited by two rival clans of gnomes. Fortunately, the gnomes know how to make skyships (well, they couldn't get on and off their home otherwise), so they finally have a chance to get some decent repairs in. Funny how Krynn's making gnomes the mechanic race has spread to other worlds so easily. No cool new crunch this time, just some more objective gazetteer material on their new location. Once again we see how having so much cool stuff can be made into a problem as well as an opportunity, as they have devote lots of time and effort to repairing it, and when their magic doesn't work, it really messes up their plans. What other ways will bruce find to challenge them in future issues? Hopefully not too many of them will be crap.
The role of computers: Ultima IV: The false prophet is our only review this month. Since it's a well established RPG series, it is of course an big one, with plenty of hints. There are some fairly substantial improvements in graphics and gameplay as usual, although the bright colours and breadth of options means there may be some hassle keeping track of everything. They look forward to a good few months more completing it and publishing hints on it in here.
This month also marks the point when they make a conscious decision to focus more on video games as well as computers. The market continues to grow with no end in sight, and they're going where the money is. Another sign of the times I knew was coming, but wasn't sure exactly when. Guess history really is rolling along this month.
The dragon's bestiary: More inventive undead here. Spiritus anime are ghosts which animate any corpses in the vicinity, and if you kill one, they'll just hop to another one. A nice little challenge to deal with requiring the use of your brains, like the tombstone one. After all, fighting one skeleton at a time in a full graveyard will rapidly grow very tedious.
Ankou draw on a rather more obscure and specific bit of folklore as they're the undead forms of farmers who killed their families out of greed, who roam the roads and take people to Tartarus. Miserable business, really. A perfect random encounter for those wandering from one adventure to another.
Fiction: A prayer for the dead by Deborah Millitello. Still in theme here as well. They must have no shortage of horror submissions, with Ravenloft drawing in even more writers from that field. This is a ghost story of passion, misdeeds and vengance, where an undead horror needs laying to rest, and the townsfolk are not being entirely honest about the causes. It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, but the ending is a happy one, without being saccharine. Another quite likable bit of fiction.
Novel ideas: Probably one of the trickiest, but potentially most rewarding part of the book department is figuring out what books to publish outside the established gaming fiction ones. They don't have an established name to give them guaranteed sales, but on the other hand, they don't have an established logo putting off casual browsers. So they're the ones that really need promotion if they're to recoup their costs and reach an appreciative audience. So more free adverts for other parts of the company here. :sigh: Outbanker by Timothy Madden, a sci-fi cowboy adventure. The road west by Gary Wright sees a highly trained ranger face problems both inner and outer. And The alien dark by Diana Gallagher stars cat/bear aliens looking for a new planet to call home. Okey dokey then. Once more, this is mostly promotion, with a bit of behind the scenes stuff about the writer and how they made the book. This is rapidly coming to replace Giants in the earth as the most kickable regular article in the magazine. It's neither useful nor particularly entertaining. Once again I sigh.
The marvel-phile: Oh dear god. Dracula II: Daughter of Dracula. The schlock factor, it is through the roof. The engines cannae handle it cap'n! So Marvel is working hard to shake off the remaining vestiges of the comics code, and one of these is bringing back all the vampires, making the world a little darker and bloodier. Lilith :rolleyes: the daughter of dracula, cursed with eternal life by gypsies and trying to make unlife miserable for her dad down the generations. Family, eh? Who'd have one? Cheesecake outfit, cliches galore, yup, this has a very distinctive style that it's rather hard to take seriously. Get the whips out boys, we're goin' vampire hunting, and there may be flying medusa heads involved.
The game wizards: Yet more horror stuff, as they promote Ravenloft some more. Actually, this is a pretty close rehash of one of the articles from last month, only slanted towards horror. The big thing about horror is keeping things surprising. So you've gotta switch things around, and keep them mysterious. Obfuscate details, exaggerate, never use proper names, keep throwing curveballs. Not bad advice, but yeah, oh so very done last month, only with less pretentiousness. This is the kind of thing the editors should catch and screen out. Once again this column seems to be largely a mouthpiece to drive more sales for their products, and the entertainment aspects ring a little false. Bleh. Still, at least it's better than Novel Ideas. :p
Dragon Magazine Issue 162: October 1990
part 4/4
TSR Previews: They already had one book on castles this year. Now they give us a boxed set on the various fantasy castles found in Oerth, Krynn and Toril. Must be another surprisingly popular topic among the designers.
The Forgotten Realms is once again getting more than anyone else. FR11: Dwarves deep sees Ed fill in more details about, oh, you know, in his inimitable style. He's another ridiculously prolific writer, because he also delivers FA1: Halls of the high king. Off to the moonshaes to fight viking marauders. As if the horde weren't enough trouble. Mongols to the east of me, Swedes on the west. Guess I'm stuck in the middle with you. Oh well, maybe I can do a little ear collecting.
Greyhawk finishes it's latest module trilogy, WGA3: Flames of the Falcon. This time, you really do get to save the city at last. Woo. Includes a fold-up mansion, presumably representing an important location in the plot.
Dragonlance finishes off it's second prequel trilogy as well. You can tell we're getting near the end of a product cycle, can't you. This time it's Tanis who reveals hidden achievements, in The Shadow Years, by Barbara and Scott Siegel. Can the pairing give the writing the same energy as Tracy and Margaret?
D&D starts to put out follow-ups for the Hollow world. HWA1: Nightwall takes you to see the preserved remains of the very first culture in the entire world. Dude. Totally excellent. [/bill and ted]
XXVc continues to show us the planets, with 25CR2: Earth in the 25th century. Will they manage to get through all 9 before poor sales see the line cancelled? Dale Henson also begins his metamorphosis into Slade. How long before he loses both his name and capitalisation in the credits?
And finally, we have Boot Hill, 3rd edition. Gangbusters was rereleased a couple of months ago. Seems like they're trying their luck with lots of old properties. Before you know it, Gamma World'll be getting another try on the merry go round. Wonder if this'll see any supplements.
Oh, and there's another product mentioned in the this month section that wasn't there last time. Sloppy as ever. Maztica may not be getting as much press as the horde, but that's still going on as well. Viperhand by Doug Niles is number 2 in the book trilogy. How long before the gaming material arrives?
Role-playing reviews is taken over by Allen Varney. He starts us off with another entertaining little snapshot from this year's Gen Con, as a new edition of a certain popular game is unleashed upon the public. Always a tense time, when one of the major writers is late, it becomes even more so. I like him already. He's got plenty of cool credits (and a few bits of dreck) for me to look forward to reporting on.
Champions is up to it's 4th edition, which is 350 pages long. It hasn't been an easy ride, but the HERO system has survived a decade and improved quite substantially over that period. Allen gives this a very context heavy review, drawing upon his insider knowledge of the game's history. It now has tons of powers, rules for adapting the overall nature of the campaign, and lots of other options. Course, it's far from unbreakable, simply due to the enormous breadth of powers covered, so GM oversight is essential. Man, that's a pretty familiar refrain.
The HERO system rulesbook cuts out the superheroic setting stuff for just the rules. This brings it down to 220 pages, still substantial, but not bulky. Just the thing for when you're traveling.
Classic enemies is their assembled and revised bestiary. Scott Bennie once again shows that stuff like histories and personal connections between NPC's add to the entertainment factor quite substantially. They even have an incompetent supervillain prison for your own game to take advantage of. Most amusing.
Mind games is a much smaller book focussing on a group of psychic villains. It's mainly fuel for adventures rather than overall advice. Their equivalent of a module, presumably.
Ninja hero sees Allen praise Aaron Allston profusely, the nepot. You want to bring oriental badassery to the HERO system, he's your guy. Ra ra ra! Give him more jobs! Hee. How very naughty.
Dragonmirth is anachronistic again. Yamara fakes the macguffin. The twilight guys have multiple escape plans. One of them's bound to work.
Through the looking glass: The advanced battletech modding is concluded this month. Last time, it was mainly add-ons, this time it's the alterations to the turn sequence that get worked upon. They do have to forbid some things to make it work, and there's a huge list of little technical modifications that look like they'll be a bit of a pain in the ass to remember. Exactly how many of them are essential, and how many of them are simply house rules for their idea of greater balance I'm not sure, but it does look like they've been busy with the playtesting and stuff. This seems like the kind of thing that won't get a huge number of users, but those that do will be very enthusiastic about it. I'm not going to begrudge them some nice stuff I can't use, as long as it also means more variety in RPG's.
Bladestorm by I.C.E and grenadier. A fantasy miniature game of swords, sorcery and battle in a dark chaotic world? Looks like they're trying to rip off warhammer. :)
A quite entertaining collection of articles this time round, along with some pretty telegraphed historical pointers. Playing vampires, video games ascending to dominance, drama, history, this is pretty interesting stuff. The fact that lots of people are doing it obviously means that they can pick the best articles for the magazine. So even if some of their editorial choices are still rather iffy, there's still lots of useful stuff here. Wonder what next month will bring us.
Dragon Magazine Issue 163: November 1990
part 1/4
122 pages. Larry Elmore once again reuses models for his cover. Even the model looks bored with this. That can't be a comfortable tree to sit in. She must have been posing for him for weeks of total time over the years. The subject is pretty reused too. Magic. Pretty vague really, you think by now they'd start livening it up by running more specific themes, such as necromancy, shapeshifting or mind control. Apparently not. Perhaps they ought to say they're planning doing a certain theme 6-12 months in advance, and would like articles on it. That'd certainly help with the maintaining variety problem. Oh well, let's see if the individual articles are any good.
In this issue:
Letters: Roger once again finds himself with too many ludicrous letters to hold on to until april. So once again he decides to give his snark and punnery muscles a major workout. Whatever keeps ya sane, dude. At least it's not Waldorf or female dwarven beards again. And once again we are strongly reminded of their bowdlerising editorial policy. Gotta keep the actual words kid friendly, even if we all know what they're talking about. Sigh. Let's hope they can slip some dirty stuff under the radar every now and then.
Editorial: Ah yes, realism in gaming. And it's cousin who is often mistaken for realism, grimdark crapsack black and grey worlds where everything sucks and you've got no hope of ever making things better. (with thanks to tvtropes) Well, it's not too far from reality. :p So Roger delegates to Dale this bit of moderate rehash, tempered with current events commentary. The difference between low and high fantasy, the change in media depictions of stuff. And of course how this impacts on the D&D morality debates. Dear god this feels like filler. They expanded the editorials to a designated size, and now they have to fill them every month. Bed, made, lie in it. Just as I have to. Still, it's another sign of the times. Welcome to the iron age. Take good care of your trenchcoat while here, because the rain falls heavy in darkened alleys.
Have you seen this duck? Runequest advertises by juxtaposing the ludicrous with the deadly serious and hoping that'll draw people in.
Back to school - Magic school: Ahh, this is one I knew they'd get round to at some point. An analysis to the various speciality wizard types, figuring out which is best, courtesy of Greg Detwiler. Abjuration is problematic, with limited utility stuff and the removal of the most versatile school. Alteration is pretty awesome, able to fill a whole load of roles even without bothering with other schools. Conjurers are pretty middle of the road, but do have to rely on others quite a bit, which has it's risks. Diviners are unglamorous, but pretty damn good actually, especially once you add a few supplements. Enchanters, like conjurers, need to rely on unreliable aid a lot, but can work around their issues. Illusionists are even more crappy, but still probably better off than they were in 1st edition, with the whole range of conjurations, alterations, etc open to them. Invokers are pretty decent, but again, have their issues, and find it a bit trickier to be team players to compensate for those. Necromancers are a bit crap until you get a decent load of supplements, especially in the low levels. He seems to have a pretty decent handle on things, not giving us any misleading advice. Remember, ironically, having two wizards specialized in opposing schools is one of the best ways to ensure you always have a wide range of spells useful for all eventualities. And that can lead to odd pairing bickering buddy movie fun. I think following this one will be beneficial to your game.
Oops! Sorry!: Spell misfires. Muahahahaha. If anything is going to fill the players with dread, it's the prospect of things not simply failing, but going wrong in ironic and interesting fashion. After all, this is something with an incredibly long literary tradition behind it, frequently involving talented but impetuous apprentices who then have to spend whole books trying to sort out their cock-ups. Course, in D&D, you can't really go that far every time a spell gets disrupted, plus you may have problems thinking of something different to happen each time. You know what's perfectly designed for solving this? Random tables! Another instance where I'm vaguely surprised they haven't done this years ago. Guess even though the technology's been around for ages, there's still only so much room in each magazine. And since this is a pretty short article, that tries to keep it's various results applicable to the large variety of spells out there via vagueness, there's probably room for another, more comprehensive variant on this some time in the future. Not a hugely interesting read, this should nevertheless add a bit of sadistic fun to your play if used judiciously.
Hedge wizards: Hmm. Another article specializing in the uses of the new specialist wizards, this time in relation to getting a job in the community and selling your services. Given the small number of spells you have in D&D, a specialist really has a substantial advantage here, as they get to satisfy more clients a day, and concentrate on doing a few things well, instead of being dragged all over the place by people with unrealistic expectations and trying to compete directly with everyone in the business. Quite a bit of this seems to be Forgotten Realms focussed, with the new spells in particular being fully integrated with named owners and locations. As is often the case, the math in terms of the levels they're supposed to have and the money they earn is a bit wonky when you consider the amount of money peasants earn, and the amount of things you have to kill to get each level. Obviously you need to assume a pretty high magic world to use it. But it does have a nice flavour, and a whole bunch of low level spells useful for everyday use, so if your game meets that criteria, go right ahead. We'll get the hang of this spells for sale thing eventually.
Magic gone haywire: In a similar vein to the spell misfires stuff earlier, here we have a whole bunch of quirks you could add on to magic items, make them more individual than just another sword +1 or ring of invisibility. As is usual for tables like this, some are good, some are bad, and some are decidedly mixed blessings, particularly when various magic items become sentient and start talking back to you. Several evily inventive ideas mixed in with variants on a bunch of familiar ones make this another article that could be spicing up your game for years to come if used in moderation. And so we bring to a close a themed section that's actually been pretty good, and quite forward-looking. Once again they've managed to justify repeating a topic.
Dragon Magazine Issue 163: November 1990
part 2/4
The role of books: Dragon's teeth by Lee Killough, Hawk and fisher by Simon Green, and Nightwatch by Robin Wayne Bailey all try and combine mystery plots with fantasy, with varying levels of success. The one that's also a D&D novel gets the best review, curiously enough.
The interior life by Katherine Blake has two interconnected plotlines distinguished by the use of different typefaces throughout the book. Hmm. Wasn't Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man also published around this point using that device. This seems worth thinking about. Anyway, this review seems pretty positive as well, combining reality and fantasy subplots pretty well.
Elven Star by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman gets a review that focusses rather heavily on the meta aspects of the book, in particular a certain anagramatically named wizard who is probably also in Dragonlance, but for legal reasons cannot use the same name in this dimension. The reviewer has doubts about their abilities to resolve the plot in a dramatic and sensible manner.
Gossamer axe by Gael Baudino combines celtic harp music and heavy metal in another story putting it's own spin on combining modern day life with other worlds. While it does seem a little like the author is just writing about their own real life hobbies, at least that means the details are accurate, and there's plenty of distinctive elements springing from that.
Galen Sword 1: Shifter by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens looks like an attempt to start a pulp adventure franchise. The amusingly badass named eponymous hero and his various wacky sidekicks face an alien menace, with mixed success, both in terms of plot and tone. I don't think they're going to make it to 28 books.
Servant of the empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts gives us some fun fantasy politicking, showing that this is very much an option for building good plots on, and good inspiration for if your players are getting to that tricky name level region.
Another day, another dungeon by Greg Costikyan sees the noted designer play with game conventions and use them to drive the plot of this fun story rather better than, say, Kevin Anderson managed. Well, I guess Paranoia is good practice for that, whichever way round you do it.
Forum: Robert Roger shows it's not just D&D that suffers from twinkitude, with his star wars game currently having severe balance problems due to a little too much money going round. Remember, anything players can do, NPC's can too. You just need to turn up the opposition to reflect their capabilities.
B. Night offers a load of advice for new players. Is the magazine concentrating too much on stuff for the existing fanbase and becoming too obscure. Not sure I agree with that. Also really don't agree with flaking out because you're just not in the mood. It's hard enough to get a regular group going without "advice" like that.
Matt Bogosian also offers a number pointed contribution, this one advice for good DM'ing. Clear Communication of a Consistent Creation is what they can basically be boiled down too. Oh, and variety is important.
Allan Roberts points out ways in which characters can fail a mission without dying. That is not the only punishment for losing, you know.
Jeff Barnes also thinks that while death should be a big deal, removing resurrection entirely causes more problems than it solves. It'd certainly make the death penalty more acceptable if we knew we could fix mistakes after the fact.
Ofed Ofek also considers resurrection not an issue, because the costs involved are more than sufficient to keep you from doing it casually. At low levels, it's frequently easier and more fun to just start a new character anyway.
Willis M Burge is also in favour of resurrection, at the right price. Unless they got killed through sheer stupidity, they ought to have a chance to bring their character back. Suicide by DM. Always ought to be an option.
Jay Toser points out role-models for paladins from genres other than fantasy. Westerns are particularly good for this. (Let us not forget Murlyand, a canon example of cowboy/paladin crossover from the founding players.) Oh, and he references batman as well, which always gets contentious in the morality stakes. I wonder if anyone'll bite on that bait?
The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark enjoys one of it's most dramatic plot reveals yet. They thought they'd escaped the Night Dragon months ago. Now it is revealed that they've been played for fools for a while. Does everyone apart from the ordinary humans know about the hollow world and how to get there? They manage to escape from the hollow world, thanks to the ingenuity of the gnomes, but they are very much not in control of their own destiny at this point. One humiliation follows another, until it ends on a massive cliffhanger. The GM is definitely turning this from a sandbox exploration campaign to a fiaty railroad with great viciousness. Bloody 90's. Lets hope it gets better.
This month's crunch is info on Night dragons, both lesser and greater. They're a sneaky and deeply unpleasant bunch, even more than regular dragons, personally serving the immortals of Entropy. This does mean they're vulnerable to undead turning, holy water, etc, so it's not all bad. But they're not an easy fight, with every hit they do having a good chance of putting you out the fight. One of those monsters that would be substantially nerfed in later editions.
We also have another extra load of letters, all asking for extra info on various countries. (and the moon) Bruce encourages the writers to be more proactive in filling in the gaps in the Known world. After all, he can't single-handedly build a campaign setting. Prove that basic D&D is as popular as AD&D by sending stuff in yourself. Ahh, the problems that we were going through in that era. This brings them all back.
The HERO system introduces Fantasy Hero. Ahh, the joys of generic systems. You do need to show people how to bend them to whatever end. And that means splatbooks. Yay. More money.
Dragon Magazine Issue 163: November 1990
part 3/4
The role of computers: Secret of the silver blades is another Forgotten Realms CRPG that sticks pretty close to the actual game rules. Once again, you can even bring in your characters from previous adventures. It doesn't get quite the high marks of Azure bonds, mainly due to the plot not being as good, but in terms of gameplay, it does make some improvements. Another one to help the Realms rise to eminence as THE AD&D game setting with the mass market penetration.
Centurion: Defender of rome is one of those large scale tactical wargames where you get to build an empire from the top down. It has some control issues, and the fact that you have to prepare for events blind annoys the designers, but they still think it shows promise. The screenshot they have is certainly pretty amusing.
The keys to Maramon gets a rather mediocre review for not being sufficiently role-playey. False advertising, man. :shakes head:
Dungeon Explorer is basically Gauntlet, only with up to 5 players, and a little more NPC interaction. This is a pretty good thing in the reviewer's mind, giving them an RPG'y fix without requiring days of grinding and regular saving and restarting to finish a game.
The Revenge of Shinobi sees Sega sequelize to capitalize on the ongoing popularity of ninjas. Shuriken, double jumps, a special power you can only use once per life. This sounds very familiar indeed. I strongly suspect I may have wasted a load of money in an arcade on this one summer.
Fiction: Storm Winter by M C Sumner. Yo. Y-Yo. Sentient reptile people with a dry sense of humour in da house, representing it northside. Some of us really want to rule the world, but I just want to be a captain of sail. They try sacrificing me to their cruel god, but I'll team up with a human girl. We'll avenge her father, foil necromantic slaughter, send them packing, and hide the macguffin. And that's enough bad rap-filk for quite a while. Still, this was another fairly enjoyable bit of fiction, with some rather good world-building for such a small amount of space. And it doesn't take itself too seriously either. They're keeping up the good performance in this area.
The statement of ownership is in an odd place in the middle of the magazine this year, which means I missed it the first few times I looked through. Hmm. With an average of near 109 thousand, but a last issue number of only 103, it looks like they continued their slow rise early in the year, and then started declining in the last few months. Interesting to note that the ratio of subscribers to newsstand buyers has increased quite a bit though. I wonder why. Perfectly normal fluctuations.
Buck Rogers Play by Mail game? Talk about combining an out of date property with an out of date format. More excuses for Loraine (roll of thunder, stab of organ music) to siphon money out of the company.
The marvel-phile has a lot of writers this month. This is probably because this is more leftovers from the new marvel handbook installment, and they can't remember who did which characters, or split the labor on each of them in some arcane way to make the production treadmill work faster. This time, it's a couple of cut villains, Nebulon and Solarr. A shapeshifting alien who tried to take over the world, and a mutant thug who absorbs energy from the sun, although not to ends as powerful and wide ranging as superman. Both are now dead, which may be a factor in their non-inclusion in the update. And It doesn't look like they've been brought back since either. Since I didn't find them very interesting to read about, I think they can stay in the dustbin of history where they were found. It's nice to see characters stay dead around here, ironically.
Making law out of chaos: Where the forum leads, full articles frequently follow. In this case, it's back to the alignment debates. The out of date alignment debates, using the terms from the 1st ed books rather than the 2nd ed ones to define things, just to make this a little more tiresome, and drive home just how much crap they still have in their slush piles. Were they really getting so few decent 2nd ed articles submitted? And this is a pretty dull one that keeps the definitions fairly restrictive. There's no room for people who just don't particularly care about morality, with neutrality being the opposite of the way it ought to work. (In reality, people are far more likely to side with whoever looks like winning) Puh-lease. One of the good things about 2nd edition was that it was more clearly written than 1st ed, and allowed for more customisation of characters. While there are some cooler bits in 1st ed, this is not one you get much from holding on too. Let it go.
KIng arthur is back, and he's a mutant in palladium's new sourcebook. Hee.
Professional Monsters: Another one about giving monsters classes, this time idiosyncratic specific ones in the mould of the halfling defender. Why should humans get all the fun? So here's three examples - Centaur Cavalier, Orc Barbarian and Lizard man Druid. Curiously, along with the usual low level limits usual for 1st ed nonhumans, they are, in general, somewhat weaker than their regular equivalents. Still, they do each have a few unique bonuses along with the penalties, and I suppose it's better than not having access to the classes at all. I think I'm unlikely to see players pick these guys, even if I was getting to run games a lot more frequently than I am, so there's no need to restrict them. The humancentricism will continue for the foreseeable future.
The dragon's bestiary: Spell weavers are a classic weird screwage monster. Alien, inscrutable, and able to cast several spells at once. They've really gone to town on these guys, creating things that are pretty scary on multiple levels, and packed with loving advice on their tactics and unique equipment. One that does get into official books and adventures later, these guys definitely encourage both DM's and players to step up their tactical efficiency, for whoever snoozes loses. And pray Mariliths find them as incomprehensible as we do, for multispellcasting in their hands does not bear thinking about. As you've probably guessed, I've always been rather fond of these guys, and it's nice to discover they're another one that got their start in the magazine.
Dragon Magazine Issue 163: November 1990
part 4/4
TSR Previews: A fairly small list of releases this month, but the forgotten realms is still getting a double bill. FRA3: Blood charge completes the horde trilogy of modules. Their sound and fury burns itself out, but will continue to have repercussions. R A Salvadore is still prequelising in Exile. Drizzt has been kicked out of his home, and has to figure out how to make friends among other races that hate his. AAAaaaaaaaaaangst!!!!!!
Dragonlance finishes it's second spin-off character trilogy, with Galen Benighted. The things we do for our family, eh. Not an uncommon theme, really.
Lankhmar gets LNA2: Nehwon. A magical scavenger hunt? Sounds a bit goofy. Is this in theme with the books?
Marvel superheroes finishes getting grim and gritty in MLA3: Night life. They've done cosmic, they've done gritty, they've done time travel. Where will their adventures take us next?
And finally, it's another standalone book. The Alien Dark by Diana G Gallagher. From a truly alien point of view, the ad copy says. Does it live up to that bold statement?
The Affordable Fort: A second minis-centric article this month to supplement the regular one. We haven't had cardboard castles given away with the magazine for a few years now, but that doesn't mean you can't make your own. Cardboard, glue and paints are not commodities in short supply. The space and facilities to construct, display, and move these around, on the other hand, may well be, but that depends on your situation really. With excellent photography, this is a nice little piece full of practical advice useful for complete amateurs. Which makes sense, given how infrequently they run advice like this. Still, this does make me realise that the aimed average expertise level of the readership is actually lower than 10 years ago, even though the production values are substantially increased. Slightly sobering, really.
Dragonmirth reminds you that a good DM is essential. Yamara reminds us that there are better ways to clear a dungeon than going in hacking and slashing. Grognards may disagree. We get an enemy introduced and a flashback in Twilight Empire.
Sage advice goes from peach to yellow. This is what happens when you expose scrolls to too much sunlight. Still, as long as it doesn't affect the legibility of the writing, it's not a problem.
Why is it so hard to change your gender back after donning a girdle ( Hee. Because Gary found it amusing, back in the day. You might as well just enjoy your new gender. A lot of people would pay a lot of money for a complete, fully functional sex change. )
How do you choose a spell's school (logic and common sense, based on what it does and how it does it. )
If a spell is of multiple schools and one is banned, can a specialist use it (Yes. This is very exploitable if you're designing custom spells. )
How do you determine a multiclassed characters ego (use the best level )
Can grease counter spider climb (Probably. )
Are immortals immune to mortal magic or not? (Not entirely. So it goes)
I'm confused by the prices in the castle guide ( Yeah, accountancy's a bitch, particularly when you don't have proper editors and leave some pages behind. Skip has had Words with the writer, and will cap him if he makes a mistake like that again.)
Through the looking glass: Back to the reviews in time for christmas. A battlemat with a forest background. A pair of odd little figurines that aren't really that great for wargaming, but still look pretty neat. A rancor pit from Star Wars, which isn't very well done. And some more generic fantasy and sci-fi miniatures. Business as usual here.
A hoard for the Horde: Another bit of cut material from a recent Realms supplement here. Why do we never see stuff like this for dragonlance or greyhawk? So Zeb overwrote this time, and here's the monsters they decided to cut. Ironically, my second hand copy of the Horde boxed set came with this pull-out included, courtesy of whoever had it before, so I've already seen this.
Dzalamus dragons are three headed grouches that'll swoop upon you and temporarily reduce your level with their breath to soften you up. Fortunately, that's their only magical trick. They'll never make a good ruler of nations like some other dragons I could mention.
Manni are humanoid crow things. Probably related to tengu somehow, only with considerably less style and magic. They're basically another thing in the goblinoid niche, only tougher and able to fly. Which can make all the difference with a little cunning. Still, I can see why they weren't considered essential.
Morin are strange ugly little burrowing things that look very similar to a creature we'll see later in Orpheus. Ahh, the joys of body shape squick. They're not hugely dangerous individually, but come in reasonable sized swarms. Whoever they pick on is in trouble. Probably the coolest of the monsters here.
Sand cats are pretty bland, and another thing that I can see why they got cut. Course, they can still kill your average 1st level character easily enough, with the whole claw/claw/bite/rake thing. That's D&D for you. Redundant monsters aplenty amongst the cool ones.
A somewhat odd progression this issue, as they go quite from forward-thinking articles to out of date and tired ones over the course of it. They also seem to be increasing the number of articles which are simply cut bits from upcoming books, which I'm really not sure if I like. Well, I suppose I'll see a hell of a lot more of that if I ever do the 4e Dragons, and much of it isn't even cut material, just sneak previews. Anyway, overall, this is a fairly average issue in terms of quality, with a fairly even mix of cool stuff and crap. They're definitely an overcommercialised juggernaut now, but they are still acting as an airing ground for quite a few cool ideas. As ever, you'll have to keep your filters ready, and don't forget to read between the lines. On we go to the season of snow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990
part 1/4
116 pages. From one very familiar special topic to another one, in our third oriental special issue. 121, 151, and now this, with plenty of issues in between featuring oriental articles as well. Just can't escape it, can they? Still, last issue they managed to justify their repeated subject with new ideas. Can they do so again? As ever, I live in hope.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from people who seem to have assumed D&D = satanic = religion or something. Roger tries to explain, with much bemusement. Our sole purpose is to make money by selling stuff. Religion and philosophy do not come into it.
A letter asking where the new classes, adventures and places are. We have published quite a few of the first recently, with another one this issue. The other two are Dungeon's remit. You'll have to buy that. (PS. Death Masters, dangerous? Ahahahahaha!!!!! A wizard of equal level trounces them effortlessly. What are you on Roger? Did you ever playtest them at all? )
Editorial: Hmm. This is an idea we haven't had since 1985, from a different perspective. The concept of analysing people based on what kind of characters they most frequently play is an interesting one, but not something that works as well as armchair psychiatrists think. For a start, people frequently choose roles that actively contrast with their most common real life one, as a means of release and exploring different personas. For another, it's surprising what a few events early in a character's history can have on the way you portray them, often in ways originally unintended. And let's not get into the whole playing members of the opposite gender issue. While there are a few exceptions, such as the guy who insists on playing catgirls at every juncture, I think we can safely rubbish Katherine Kerr's theory that playing evil characters means you're a bad person in reality. Most people have a little more breadth and nuance to their personality. Just watch out for the ones that obsess on one thing, and bring it into whatever they do, even if it's inappropriate. This has been a nicely thought provoking little editorial.
Flying feet and lightning hands: We kick off our themed section rather literally, with a bunch of new MA maneuvers, including a new kick. :p Most of our articles in this vein have been on new styles combining different permutations of the existing maneuvers. Looks like Len wants to push things a little further. Just as with the core ones, there are several techniques that are obviously supernatural mixed with the physically achievable ones, showing how blurred that particular line is in D&D. Some of them are compiled from other articles in the magazine, where they were class specific abilities. A couple of them are really scary, but most aren't that impressive. So it does nothing for the overall balance of MA as an option, while setting a few more traps for the mechanically unwise player. Purchase with caution. You know how limited your slots are, and every one counts.
Things your sensei never taught you: More MA moves here, and a little advice on building your own styles containing them. MA styles shouldn't simply be bunches of random moves, but a themed collection with definite strengths and weaknesses. No great surprises here. What is slightly more surprising and irritating is that a few of the moves are pretty much the same as the last article. Since that seemed to be compiling stuff, having one immediately following it that not only makes it out of date again, but also introduces redundancy in terms of moves to buy is rather poor organization on the editing staff's part. You could have merged these first two into a single article, and both would have been rather better off for it. Wakey wakey Roger.
Bonds of brotherhood: Ahh, the old background filling in questions. Monks are supposed to have been trained by some organization. Like clerics, this means you can get substantial world integration benefits by spelling out what organizations, gods and philosophies are out there for the PC's to follow. If you set them up so they have good reasons to go out adventuring, that helps even more. So here's a bit of advice on that, and three sample orders from the writer's home world. A good one which hunts down and shares knowledge. An evil one which controls places from behind the scenes under a humble guise. And a neutral one which tries to pacify and enlighten barbarians from the inside. All seems pretty sensible, and draws on a nice range of literary sources for inspiration. File under solid but unexceptional.
Born to defend: As they've said earlier, new classes are popular. Just the oriental ones introduced here alone nearly double your options from the main book. Doesn't matter if they're poorly balanced or thematically misconcieved, people still crave the crunch. No surprises that another new class finishes off this section then. The Piao Shih, who's job it is to escort caravans and people across the huge distances and substantial dangers of the oriental world. You can see how one of them would wind up with an adventuring party. And they do have some exceedingly valuable skills, especially since oriental characters don't have a ranger equivalent, and the closest thing, barbarians, are kinda persona non grata in polite society. They are pretty high on customizability, with many of their abilities selectable from an array of options that looks easily expandable. They do have a bit of an issue in that they only earn half experience from killing things and taking stuff outside the line of duty, but since this is also a problem Shugenja, Samurai and Sohei face, this is not an insurmountable issue. All you need to do is make sure trade is an important part of your group's activities. They're certainly a lot easier to integrate than Geisha, and they certainly don't look egregiously over or underpowered, while having plenty of distinctiveness and flavour. If your group is playing Marco Volo, having one of these come back with you seems pretty plausible. And then the paths the adventure could take just keep on forking. What ideas will they have next.
Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990
part 2/4
Sage advice loses it's colour for the first time in a while. Oh noes. Poor skip. Just when skip was getting used to it, they pull the plug again. Skip will have to make some arrangements to fix this.
Can magic resistance stop gaze and protection attacks (no, and maybe. )
If a staff has all it's charges used, does it still retain a bonus to hit and damage (No. It's just a useless lump of wood. )
How do clerics read scrolls if they don't have spells to do so. (Err. Somehow. )
Where can I get more info on herbs to make proper use of the herbalism proficiency (Waay back in issue 82. No, we still don't do reprints. You'll have to get hold of it yourself. )
How many slots does it take to learn everything about poisons. What can I do with that knowledge (Ask your DM. Don't think that more powerful poisons'll be cheap or easy to make, even if you have the knowhow. And remember kids, poison use is hazardous to your health and your alignment. Don't do it at home. )
What abilities do you get when polymorphed (You've asked this before. Skip can't be bothered. Skip is still pissed off about losing his colour. Skip is off to complain to the editor. Seeya later, bitches.)
Forum: S. D. Anderson points out that wizards actually stand to benefit more than fighters from adding firearms to their arsenal. They're not likely to be the ones holding back their development. It's more likely to be the clerics, quite possibly from orders by their reactionary bosses. Remember, the magic/technology divide is a pretty artificial one, and most in setting characters would likely ignore it, seeing both as perfectly normal within their normal parameters.
Toby Myers trots out the old "computer can never replace the imagination of a human" argument. I think everyone agrees with that, yet they still keep using computers. This is pretty much a non debate.
Jeannine Cochran wants demons and devils back. Good needs strong opposition to really shine. We shouldn't listen to a bunch of mothers who'd rather ban things for everyone than keep an eye on what their children have access to personally.
Kildare Bangore speaks up in promotion of anime, building on Gregg Sharp's letter. It may not have gone mainstream, but there are quite a few clubs out there, trading videos and giving people a forum to talk about these things. He also goes into a talk about the history of the giant robot genre. Guess who was originally responsible.
Patrick E. Baroco and a bunch of other kids speak up to praise D&D, and give their opinion on it's problems. They of course think that they shouldn't be banned from playing it. Quite right too. We've already seen the educational benefits roleplaying sneaks in under the guise of cool explosions and killing stuff.
The voyage of the princess ark: Sweeps week on the princess ark, as we discover that they've been catapulted 34 years into the future. Now Bruce doesn't have to worry about accidentally putting anachronisms in his stories. ;) However, this means that Haldemar, and all his crew, are now people out of time, with everyone they knew changed dramatically or dead. What's worse is that while they were gone, their enemies have been doing evil stuff in the world at large. To top it all off, the empress decides that what they have seen can never become known to the public at large, so the entire crew are now condemned to roam the world forever, like the flying dutchman, never to settle down anywhere, never able to candidly talk about what they've been through. What a miserable reward for all they've been through. Still, it means we're going to get lots more adventures from them, so it's good news for us. Will they ever find a happy ending? Will the political climate change again sometime? We'll have to keep reading to see.
On the OOC side of things, this month we finally get stats for Haldemar. He's certainly not your typical archmage, with his dandyish socialite tendencies and penchant for gambling. He's actually not that twinked, with fairly modest stats and magic items for his level. Talasar, on the other hand, has considerably more innate talent, despite being lower level. This is also a good example of how alignment means surprisingly little, with personal bonds between the crew transcending it. Another interesting thing to note about the way Bruce handles D&D. So what kind of wringer will his evil mind put the characters through next year? I look forward to seeing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990
part 3/4
The role of computers: Another interesting sign of the times this month, as they talk about sound cards. While manipulating recorded audio still involves an expensive custom rig just for basic 4 track facilities, and most effects need to be tediously rendered on, computer's ability to sequence and create digital audio on the fly is improving quite a bit. We're currently progressing past the age where you only had 4 basic waveforms to work with to try and represent everything in the game, and into the age of General MIDI soundbanks. 16 channels full of cheesy sounds that often differ significantly from module to module. Not an age I remember with fondness. If chiptunes are just becoming the cool underground thing, I hope that doesn't mean general MIDI sounds will be the next in line for a kitschy retro revival. Still, like the things that give us clues to the state of the internet back then, this is very nice for me to see. If they actually come through with their hints and review some music sequencing software, I'll be all over that action.
Megatraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy brings the RPG to the computer with a level of success similar to the Azure bonds game, creating a huge universe full of things to do and people to kill. As befits the original game, just generating a good set of characters and running them through the careers system can involve hours of mucking around, which they seem to enjoy. Their main gripe, as is often the case, is that save points are annoyingly far apart. You'll just have to suck up the extra challenge that causes.
Flood is an arcade game where you have to collect stuff, avoid enemies, and escape, while water slowly rises. (and of course, you have no swimming ability at all) Now that definitely sounds familiar. Rainbow island should be along pretty soon, shouldn't it.
Bloody Wolf is a top down shoot-em-up, where you explore and kill terrorists to rescue the president. Another one that sounds pretty familiar, it seems like most of the big genres are present and correct now. Just a matter of the weird little discoveries and developments to come.
The Animation studio is a drawing product produced by Disney. At $179, this is obviously a pro level product rather than a game, and quite possibly is a variant on the software they're currently using to facilitate their movies. It does have several neat tricks to help you produce smooth animations and a whole bunch of preloaded disney characters for you to modify. Now that's something that'll definitely ratchet up people's temptations to pirate.
Bad Blood and The dark heart of Uukrul get slated due to bugginess issues. Not only are they continuing to push complaints against companies releasing shoddy material, they're making a new section to focus on this. I guess we should be glad that we don't see stuff like this too often in modern reviews, because it means the complaints have worked. (plus, there's downloading patches now. ) Still, this little subplot of history continues to amuse.
Pages from the mages, part VI: It's been over 5 years since Ed published one of these. What a welcome returnee. Once again, 4 new spellbooks, each of them as filled with both flavour and nifty new spells as ever. Just like new classes, new spells are a perennial favourite of players and GM's. Just the thing to keep people happy for christmas.
The book of Shangalar the Black is, unsurprisingly, a nice bit of necromancy courtesy of one of your paranoid liches. Two offensive spells based on manipulating bone, and two defensive spells, which are essentially just conversions of cleric's undead elimination toolkits. Not nearly as fun as the hordes of crawling claws power he hints at in the fluff description though. Guess you'll have to do that one manually.
The Glandar's Grimoire also has some fairly effective necromantic capabilities, including one spell that's exceedingly scary and will cause PC's a lot of annoyance if put up against it. Vampiric touch eat your heart out.
The Tome of the Wyvernwater Circle is a druidic tome, lost when they were attacked by expansionistic beholders. It's new spells are relatively straightforward offensive, defensive and warding ones, using nature in practical ways to kick butt (although mold touch is a bit underpowered for it's level. )
The Hand of Helm is a spellbook by clerics of said god. It's also pretty heavily inclined towards direct offence, defence and buffing effects, as befits the god's aggressive nature. Ed does seem to be a bit lower than normal on the whimsy this year. Still, I guess that means players are more likely to grab these spells and put them into regular rotation. Whether that's a good thing or not s definitely a matter of opinion.
Role-playing reviews: New classes may be popular, but new races are almost as much so. They also fill the craving of players for crunch, and allow for interesting new roleplaying challenges as well. I'm certainly guilty of having my decision to buy a book based on if it has new splats to add to the game, particularly where White Wolf are involved. That trend still hasn't reached it's zenith, but it's definitely well on the path. And as usual, some are good, and some are bad. Which of this recent batch will win Jim's approval?
Trollpak is of course an updated version of the classic Runequest supplement, originally reviewed in issue 67. Since it was so popular first time round, this time it's been split into 4 expanded products for maximum milking of profit from their fanbase. Still, the production values have been improved, and they retain their interesting history and characterisation from the original. It's certainly not a waste of money, especially if you're a newer Runequest player.
Troll gods adds some of the other stuff from the original Trollpak, plus a bunch of new deities. Much of this is straight rehash, however, making it not particularly great value for money if you have the related products already. One mainly for completists then.
PC1 Tall tales of the wee folk does for the fae what Orcs of Thar did for goblinoids, opening up both an area and it's inhabitants. This of course involves things with a wide range of HD and special powers, which can be tricky to balance. There are a few mechanical issues, but a little fudge solves those quickly enough. Adding these guys as PC's or antagonists can spice up your D&D games quite adequately.
PC2 Top Ballista moves things into decidedly goofy territory, a flying city filled with techno-gnomes and a bunch of other weird creatures, most of which can also fly. Along with the gnomes, things such as Pegataurs, sphinxes and harpies are made available as PC's. Unfortunately, the slapdash and often rather wonky attempts to balance them continue, with some creatures virtually crippled by their XP progressions. The adventures show a similar degree of mechanical issues, and the whole thing shows signs of not having been taken very seriously. Bleah.
GURPS fantasy folk gets a relatively ambivalent review. It's the usual generic stuff, designed to help you build your world rather than put any distinctive spins on the creature. This means it has the usual high quality mechanics with more than a hint of dullness. Don't know why they bother reviewing these when they nearly always say the same thing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990
part 4/4
The mechanics of the iron cobra: Another ecology by any other name here, as we cover a creature which makes the word inappropriate. One of the more sophisticated, if not the most powerful of constructs, iron cobra's powers of detection, and ability to be programmed with relatively complex orders makes them more desirable servants than smelly brainless or treacherous undead, and they're cheap enough to mass produce. For the first time in a while, we have a strong showing on both the fiction and the footnotes fronts. Plus, since this is a 1st ed monster that hasn't been officially updated yet, the writer is kind enough to reprint the actual stats here as well. How very nice of them. That really puts the cherry on this sweet little christmas cake.
What has he got in his pocketses anyway?: Ed Greenwood finds the time to deliver a second article for us this christmas. This is actually a rehash of one from issue 104 (they even reuse exactly the same artwork, which is a bit cheeky. Ed decides to go for fewer options, but greater detail on each one than the pervious iteration. The spirit of sadistic fun is still there though, with many of these results showing his sheer genius at coming up with twists on the usual plot ideas and odd items. Many could provide several sessions of adventure if deployed well. Looks like he's still very much got it, despite his workload keeping him from checking in here more often.
TSR Previews: An even lighter set of releases coming next month. Post christmas slump or something. The Forgotten realms continues to bounce from east to west with great enthusiasm. FROA1: Ninja wars sees Kara-Tur integrate further into the Realms, and Ninjas worm their way into all sorts of organizations. Who's really in control? Meanwhile, Crusade, by James Lowder sees the Horde trilogy come to an end in the novel department as well. King Azoun gets to kick ass and suffer indignities and compromises. They're really having fun with this world.
Greyhawk sees WGA4: Vecna Lives! Heeee's baaaaack! And he wants his hand, eye, (and their stupid anthropomorphic personifications) and dominion over the whole fucking Oerth! Hmm. Someone really ought to do some foiling before we spend an eternity as undead slaves. Watch out for the railroaded prelude extraordinare.
D&D continues filling in it's alternate setting, in HWA2: Nightrage. See the Nithians, and find their feathered serpent. What other strangeness will we encounter along the way?
Novel ideas: Looks like these guys are in theme this month, as they decide to talk about the Horde series of novels. Zeb Cook, Troy Denning, and James Lowder have all been immersing themselves in Oriental culture, to varying degrees and levels of ease. As usual, we get some interesting behind the scenes info. Zeb really isn't a natural fiction writer, despite having tons of info to draw upon. Troy on the other hand, does seem to be, producing more work in an hour than I usually manage in a day. But even he had to hone his craft and get over his insecurities about the quality of his ideas. Another article that helps to hammer in what a production treadmill TSR has become, with deadlines mapped out well in advance, and writers put under considerable stress to achieve them. If you want to work for them, you've got to jump on board the running train and hang on like hell until you find your balance, then keep going until you burn out. Not a very tempting option, really.
Dragonmirth reveals how you get lawn gnomes. Replica artifacts become fashion statements in yamara. The characters fight in miserable weather in twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Ooh. Another very interesting topical event from the realms beyond gaming in here as well. The great attempt to ban lead from miniatures (and lots of other stuff as well, but that's not important :p.) Robert is not happy about this at all, and encourages you to stand up, organize, and complain vocally. This is a spurious ban, and one that will do huge amounts of damage to the hobby for minute environmental benefits. How very alarming. I seem to recall this one dragging out for years before ending with a whimper, and it should be another interesting little subplot to track month-by-month.
The usual bunch of reviews for figures of all sizes are here as well. Witches, sorceresses, anti-paladins, chimera, firbolg, to fill your general fantasy cravings. Blue Ardua from Talislanta for those of you who want something more specific. Jabba the Hut and his entourage, if you're feeling a little sci-fi. The HMS Victory, if you want to go historical. And some more textured terrain for if you want to represent the hassles your miniatures are going through to get to the battle. Until the ban actually takes place, they aren't going to let it spoil their fun.
With diversions into psychology, composition and law this issue, this has been an unusually wide ranging and interesting collection, even if the themed section isn't that great. The writers are full of cool ideas, even if some of them are rather goofy, and not all are very mechanically rigorous. But even so, there's plenty of usable stuff to pick out this time round. I think this is a fairly positive end to the year. Let's see if next year can top it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991
part 1/4
116 pages. For a 4th issue in a row, they do a special topic that they've done previously. Albeit in this case, the previous is a little further back than the last few, as underwater adventuring last got a special in issue 48, where it was kinda overshadowed by the april fools silliness anyway. I think this is a sufficient gap that revisiting isn't too egregious. Let's hope they've got some good material to fill this in with.
In this issue:
Letters: A rather amusing letter about Roger's distrust of letting his kids practice martial arts. When he said practice MA, he really meant flailing about hyperactively and jumping on the bed. No artistry and very little martialness is employed at all. Tee hee. This sounds very familiar. I was doing that kinda stuff around this time as well.
Another letter asking for another index. It's been on the internet for some time, responds Roger. Do not hesitate to download it.
A letter promoting the Gen Con art show. It's not just games and miniatures that have tons of stuff on them happening there. Gotta keep building things up, diversifying and spreading, so we can make money from the greatest number of people.
Editorial: Bah. Some people are never satisfied. The soviet union has just broken up, bringing an end to the paranoia of nuclear apocalypse. We're closer to global peace than ever before in history. But we've still got quite a way to go, and it is the nature of many people to always look at the negatives and cry doom. Really, if we can avoid ecological disaster, and survive the potential collapse of civilisation when we exhaust the fossil fuel supply, things don't look too bad for the next few million years. Eventually an asteroid will hit, or the sun will burn out, and we'd better hope we've got the hang of space travel before then, but really, we would be a lot happier if we didn't keep making problems for ourselves beyond the real inevitable ones. On the other hand, without that urge to fantasize about potential problems when we don't have enough pressing real ones, we probably wouldn't have gaming as we know it. Human nature is weird. If only there was something we could do. Fraid I'll have to leave the transhumanist propaganda for another time.
Anchors & Arrows: Another out-of date article kicks things off. You know, the 2nd ed battlesystem has been out for over a year now, you really could have converted this one over. It's not as if 2nd ed is less friendly to the idea of naval battles. But they still think 5 pages of add-ons to the old mass combat system is a good way to start things, for some reason. I must confess to a degree of bemusement at that choice. Still, our regular forumite Thomas M. Kane attacks the idea with gusto, with rules for movement, artillery, boarding, ramming, fires on board and weather. Some of them are a bit vague, but I think that on the whole, this is useful stuff. It may be rather a niche market, but if it won't merit a whole supplement, then the magazine is the best place for it. I do question it's getting first place though. If they can't produce something more relevant to the wider population, they may be in trouble.
The dragon's bestiary: Giant archerfish shoot you into the water, just like their real world counterparts do to bugs. Just the thing to use as a random encounter for overconfident players on a boating trip. Staying out of the water will not protect you.
Giant damselfish turn the tables on fishers by using bait that looks like a drowning person, encouraging you to jump in and become dinner. Once again, compassion is rewarded by screwage by sadistic DM's. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Just kill everything and get the xp. That policy never really goes out of style. Not a brilliantly inventive pair, but another good reminder that reality is full of cool ideas ready for the conversion. These should be easy to slip in any time your players run across a river.
Undersea priests: Hmm. This is much more like it. The logistical problems underwater spellcasters experience, and the adaptations to the regular spell lists and paraphernalia that need to be made to accommodate this. Holy water is replaced by holy silt. Spells are written on seashells and bits of carved bone. And there's tons of reskinning that needs to be done on specific spells. A few years ago, they were trying to force all the monsters to fit the humancentric mold if they wanted any class capabilities. Now they've started down the path that'll lead us to using your own body as a spellbook via tattoos, Staves replacing books, Dragons becoming invaluable sources of unique magical lore, and all manner of boundary stretching experimentations with the nature and form of magic. One size does not fit all, and there's a lot of changes you can make, many developed due to necessity. With a decent number of new spells as well, this is very handy for DM's, and quite possibly for players as well. If your campaign spends any extended period underwater, you'll want to pick up some of these tricks. Looks like this issue is picking up pace.
The role of books: In the net of dreams by Wm Mark Simmons looks like another holodeck gone wrong story, as people get trapped in a computer game. (heavily based upon D&D) It's not perfect technically, but the reviewer finds it a lot more fun than Kevin Anderson's similar efforts.
Fire on the border by Kevin O'Donnel Jr takes us to the 24th century, to deal with some rather awkward politics, with the fate of planets in the balance. The destruction of worlds is handled with a bit more seriousness than, say, the Hitchhikers guide, and it all seems pretty positive, even if it doesn't quite manage to capture the galactic scope it sets up. Thousands of worlds is a tricky thing to manage, isn't it.
The black throne by Roger Zelazny & Fred Saberhagen draws upon the works of Edgar Allen Poe to make a rather strange bit of sci-fi. Maybe it's a bit pastichey, but it's a lot more interesting than another straight fantasy story.
Voyage of the star wolf by David Gerrold also gets a less than perfect review due to it's use of in-jokes and name-dropping from other sci-fi series. That caveat aside, it is a pretty entertaining bit of sci-fi, mixing drama and humour pretty well as the characters respond to the strange things that happen. Sounds pretty familiar.
Most ancient song by Casey Flynn gets picked apart by the pedant in the reviewer for being a butchering of mythology. This does not mean it's a bad book, merely that it triggers his personal buttons. Ahh, yes, often interesting when that happens.
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay is a shakespearian flavoured bit of fantasy. While not written in iambic pentameter like another novel reviewed in here, it still has both story, character-building and symbolism in spades. If you're looking for a world to base your game off, you could do a lot worse.
Scorpio rising by Alex McDonough is much more episodic than most of the books reviewed, with the uncontrolled time travel device serving as a good way to keep things focussed on the current plot. This makes for a refreshing change for him after multi-volume doorstops with cliffhangers at the end of each one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991
part 2/4
TSR Previews: Well, you didn't hold out long. First out the gate this month is MC8: outer planes appendix. Welcome back to our unpronouncably renamed summon cascading pains in the ass. Please don't overuse them. Also in the generic side, we have PHBR5: The complete psionics handbook. We've filled in the core 4. Now lets introduce a new class, and a seriously reworked system for their powers. Issue 78 gets a little more vindication.
For the first time in a while, the forgotten realms gets nothing this month. Instead, it's spelljammer that gets a double bill of sourcebooks. SJR2: Realmspace, and SJR3: Dungeon master reference screen. Oops. Looks like I spoke too soon. Welcome to crossover central. See yet more areas surrounding the ones we know well, albeit rather larger areas covered more sketchily. Oh, and Elminster's hidden moonbase. He just gets more and more cheesy, doesn't he.
Dragonlance starts a new year with another trilogy. 3 3 3. This is why they wound up mocking this stuff in planescape. Anyway, it's another historical one. See the rise and fall of the silvanesti nation, in Firstborn. Even with their enormous lifespans, elves still have squabbles over inheritance. Weak.
Our evil overmistress tells the staff to stop abbreviating the XXVc game. It's Buck Rogers, damnit! :roll of thunder: You will respect my authority and pay the licencing money into my coffers! 25CS1: Deimos mandate! 25CREF1: Character record sheets! You will pay for the official ones of these as well, not use some scrawled bits of paper! Ahahahahaha!!!
Another wargame for you this month. A line in the sand is a game of middle eastern conflict over oil. How very topical. Who will control the resources that power civilization itself?!
And unsurprisingly, another standalone book is put at the end. Jeff Swycaffer continues to be a quirky contributor, with Web of Futures. A man is plucked from his normal life by a strange alien to be a cosmic saviour. As is often the case, he seems completely unsuited to the job, and therein lies the fun.
Forum: Carol McGarril has found romance crops up quite naturally in her games, without the GM needing to contrive things. Well, lucky you. The rest of us do not have that luxury and have to really work at these things.
Jason Williams voices his skepticism at some of the tactics deployed in The Enemy at the Gates. Once again the conflicts over exactly how much magic to have in game become an issue.
S. D. Anderson has rather harsher words to say about the same article, picking apart flaws in the rules, and pointing out that D&D magic very much favours the attacker. All it takes is one strategically placed fireball to cause mass devastation, and you can't have wizards ready to dispel everywhere in the city.
Dirk Waters shows that the idea of reskinning thieves as scouts has been had by more than one group independently. And yeah, this solves them quite a few problems. Funny how big a difference a name change can make.
John Stanton Jr has a scattershot collection of gripes and solutions, which I do not find particularly helpful.
Bonnie Patterson has a DM who preserves her kender character in the face of recklessness and dickery. The other players may well want to murder them as a result of this, but the game is made more fun. Is this really something you want to tell everyone? :p
Robert T. Wahl grumbles about a player who quit because she didn't get any cool new items in the last adventure. He then goes into his own craptacular monty haul experiences. Huge rewards without effort just turn the game into a joke.
Ron Dippel faced the awkward problem of a player who dominated the game to such an extent that the other players tried to kill him, and failed because he was just that twinked. Now that takes a special variety of annoying player to pull off. I suppose that's actually a good benchmark for proving you're a master of mathematical twinkery, since a DM can always beat the players if they really want too.
Michael Repka finds that DM's who also have PC's in the same campaign are cheating bastards who use their inside knowledge to twink out horrifically. This is definitely a problem, but he can't get them to stop. No gaming is better than bad gaming, you know.
Rick Maffei points out a few of the many ways magic items can be taken away from players if they're becoming a problem. Don't think you have to completely reset the game just because things are getting a little out of hand.
Chill gets revamped. You're still not gonna be able to compete when the world of darkness comes a-knockin.
The voyage of the princess ark: The princess ark sets off again, once again heading southwest, but not as far this time. They end up in Thothia, Mystara's egypt analogue, where surprise surprise, they face a greater mummy, (technically, a lich, but it's how they present themselves that matters.) who is pissed off at their appropriation of his magic. They win, but the bad guy gets away again, adding to the growing list of people with a serious vendetta against them. Haldemar remains pretty unfazed by this, being more interested in the ramifications for the Ark. Is it really intelligent? Just how would it be upgraded if they use their new discoveries on it. Unfortunately, no time to fix that right now, as it's cliffhanger time again. Gotta keep the story dramatic. :rolleyes:
This month's crunch is stats for several more of our regulars. Myojo, the rakasta samurai. Raman, the chief engineer, and his amazing portable magical library. And Lady Abovombe, the ambassador from Cestia who's had a rather tough time of the last 34 years, but has had her youth restored thanks to Haldemar's magic. We see once again that the Ark has a wide range of different level characters adventuring on the same team, and they have a complicated relationship map between them. Goes to show just what you can do with a party, and still keep it functional. You don't have to use the 4 or 5 characters of roughly equal power model if you don't want to.
We also have lots more letters. The usual collection of questions and quibbles. Most notable here is that Bruce reveals that the Rules Cyclopedia is coming. No longer will you have to look up rules between 5 different boxed sets. Plus, it has a whole bunch of extras the originals lack. This is good news. They've certainly kicked this year off well. Lets hope they can keep the momentum up.
Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991
part 3/4
Rifts is already Palladium's best selling line ever, despite only being out a year. So of course they will get the lions share of the supplements from now on. Expect delays.
The role of computers: Railroad Tycoon is a computer conversion of the old game Gary was rather fond of. The reviewers rather like it too, finding it a nice way to eat up huge amounts of time, building an empire, setting up a neatly running schedule in which the trains don't crash into one-another, and adding all sorts of extras to your stations, while competing with other companies. Increasing memory sizes really are doing wonders for the depth of simulation games.
Brainblasters is a pair of fun puzzle games, a shoot-em up, and a sequence puzzle. Both get their approval, making this good value for money.
Imperium is another large scale strategy game. Conquer the galaxy! Live to 1,000! War, economics, diplomacy, you can once again spend aaages trying to finish this one. The graphics and sound aren't perfect, and also tend to overtax their machine. Still, that probably won't be a problem if you emulate it these days.
Starflight 2: Trade routes of the cloud nebula also takes you into space, to deal with an alien invasion. This also involves substantial crew management, planet colonisation, and similar resource control tactical details. This is somewhat hampered by the fact that you can only do one thing at a time, which can be a serious issue that you have to work around tactically. As a result, it gets a mediocre score.
Ishdo: The way of Stones is a conversion of an old chinese puzzle game. Like shangai or chess, it's the kind of game you can spend a lifetime mastering strategies for, and they enjoy both the game, and it's visual representation here, with plenty of options and computer tutorial stuff, plus some good old fashioned koans thrown in for extra verisimilitude. Nothing like pretension to liven your day up, as oscar wilde would say.
Armor Alley and Stratego are the proud recipients of the buggies award this month. A memory eater that refuses to play nice with other programs running at the same time, and a game that crashes if you click on the wrong combat option. Not very impressive ways of messing up, really, but still dealbreakers for them.
The denizens of the lower planes are back in the MC outer planes appendix. (geekiest rapper name evar) Renamed of course. Because we don't do the D words anymore. So instead, we'll use ones no-one can agree how to pronounce.
Fiction: The curse maker by Laurell K Hamilton. Well well, it's another writer who has since gone on to, er, bigger things. A pretty good story here too, involving another hero with an evil sentient weapon, trying to keep themselves from going to the dark side under rather strong provocation and save their party member from death by politics. The various characters are established quickly and effectively, and the magic is handled with style. It all adds up to a quite satisfying package. Of course, given the current company policies, there are no 24 inch were-schlongs involved. She'll have to go to white wolf to sell those stories. :p Another interesting historical footnote here.
Role-playing reviews goes back to the superheroic genre. Currently, it's pretty healthy, with both Marvel and DC having solidly selling RPG's. This month DC gets the spotlight here.
DC heroes RPG 2nd edition gets an interesting and context high review, referring back to Allen Varney's review of the 1st edition 5 years ago in The Space Gamer. Time has improved it quite a bit, with the rules being refined, and the editing improved as well. There are a few problems, not least with the rapidly changing and retconning history of the DC universe, and of course, the usual quibbles about character stats. But those certainly aren't dealbreakers, and of course provide plenty of room for supplements. Which of course sets us nicely for the rest of this column.
The batman sourcebook, 2nd ed combines a whole load of stuff on batman, his lair, villains and relationships with other heroes, an adventure, and some essays on the nature of batmanness :D Sounds like they had a bit of a struggle filling this one up. It also has some whimsical graphic design elements that Allen isn't too keen on. Batman may be pretty popular, but can a single person really hold that much attention alone?
The otherwhere quest is a solo adventure designed for a green lantern. Obviously, given the open-ended nature of their powers, it falls short somewhat, and the environment isn't that thrilling either. Mehness.
The laws of darkness, on the other hand is a fairly good high power adventure starring the new gods. It takes you on a ride through lots of familiar locations before petering out.
They also give the complete priest's handbook a short and favourable review. Lots of cool stuff within! Try it, and you can have viable all priest campaigns. Yeah, right, watch out for the newbie traps. This is why a good playtesting really helps.
The marvel-phile: Hmm. A whole team of female villains, none of which are actually particularly sexy? That is rather unusual. Say hello to the Femme Fatales, another recent addition to spiderman's rogues gallery. Knockout, Whiplash, Mindblast and Bloodlust. Individually they seem like one-trick ponies, with one name appropriate power each, (the usual rule of bad puns is very much in effect here) but together they're actually a pretty decent team, both in terms of tactics and personal dynamics. Since they're fairly street level, they'd make a good fight for a team of novice heroes, like many PC's. As both one showing characters I've never heard of before, and above average in-game usefulness, plus a few neat quirks, this is a well above average installment of this series, that I quite enjoyed reading. Let's see each other again some time.
Maneuvering for victory: Hmm. Two years into 2nd ed and they're still publishing quite a few articles intended for 1st edition. That does say a lot about the current editorial regime. And this is rehashed in another way, because they did something very like this in issue 127's fighter special. Only this is less advantageous than that, and incompatible with it, as while the previous one gave them extra resource slots to select special maneuvers with, this one requires you to spread your weapon proficiency slots even thinner than they already are, which does get very awkward indeed. It also allows you to spend slots to improve your ability scores, which is incredibly problematic as a resource distribution choice. This is definitely one you should approach with great caution, for several of these are rather game-changing, but you could also wind up without essentials if you get seduced by the shinies and spend all your slots on them. And we know that having a character that is over or underpowered causes problems either way. So this is a textbook example of rather dubious crunch from the magazine, that you incorporate at your peril.
Maybe my second favourite dragon magazine, I think (my favorite was #187). I quite liked the "Manuevering for Victory" and adventure conversions module (Square Pegs). I'd read the story and never noticed the story was by Laurell "is that a naked werewolf or just the Empire State Building?" Hamilton, though. Heh.
The actual DC heroes review is here on the web for anyone who's interested...
http://www.allenvarney.com/rev_02.html
(navigate up to see his a couple of his other reviews too). Said glowing review inspired me to go out and buy the thing (well, the 3rd Edition version), for which I may never forgive Mr Varney. It may be to some people's tastes, but what with hero points going everywhere, 9 statistics including multiple substats that distinguish between "mental" and "spiritual" power and endurance, accounting-heavy chargen system, and having to cross-reference 4 stats on 2 charts to do anything, it totally traumatized me as a teenager.
BTW Unreason, speaking of trauma, keep an eye out for the ad for World of Synnibarr in Dragon if you wouldn't mind;) I eventually picked this one up as well...with more idea of what I'd be getting, though. Just curious as to when this appeared.
Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991
part 4/4
Square pegs and round holes: Just 4 months after the last one, we have another article on putting modules into your campaign. This is a slightly more general one, helping you to rebuild them for an existing campaign. Ironically, of course, it's often harder to use the more recent ones in your existing campaign, because they have so much more setting detail that needs to be there if they are to work. This means you have to change things to integrate them, and quite possibly more things to get them to make sense. Even if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or something, you may have to do some tweaking from canon if your players go to places out of order. (Dragonlance in particular is a nightmare for this. ) Course, if you're the ambitious type, you can not only convert them from different worlds, but different genres entirely. The process may actually involve more effort than just writing a whole new adventure on your own, but hey ho, It all depends how good you are at fudging and twisting existing things around. A challenging article, this does have some nice advice and statistical help, but it certainly doesn't answer all the questions you'll face when you try and convert a Call of Cthulhu adventure to D&D. Still, it should help in making sure no two experiences are alike, since no two DM's will handle the conversions and integrations in the same way, and characters from different rulesets do have radically different abilities. Another one wasn't too interesting to me, but hopefully got some people to push their boundaries, back in the day.
The game wizards: We've already mentioned it twice this issue already, but welcome back to the fiends. And hello to the blood war. Funny that such an iconic bit of D&D's setting didn't actually appear until second edition. And ironic that their temporary forbiddance has actually made them a bigger deal in people's minds. This does their reputation no harm at all, pointing out just how useful their spell-like abilities are, especially their teleportation and gating capabilities; and warning you to use caution in incorporating them into your game, make sure that even the appearance of a minor one is a big event for the players. With this kind of buildup, it's no surprise that they'll wind up one of the most common adversaries in Planescape, and make more than a few appearances in other campaign worlds. It's almost a textbook example of publicity via counteractions. Whether this was intentional or not, I'm not sure, but I'm sure upper management :rumble of thunder: doesn't mind too much as long as this makes them a good chunk of money. In any case, I doubt this will end the debates in the forum. Another fairly interesting installment in this thread of drama, as they change the rules of the game on us again.
Sage advice is still uncoloured and undersized. Skip is not happy.
If you have stoneskin on yourself and are struck while casting, do you still lost the spell (It's the hit, not the damage, that's important.)
Does persistent damage like melfs acid arrow prevent spellcasting. (Oh yes. You'll have to develop a counterskill that allows you to concentrate despite pain and distractions. Hey, arms race! Heeeere we go!)
How do infra and ultravision work. (we can do this simple, and just say they let you see in the dark, or we can do this complicated and talk about different visual spectra, how they react to objects, and where they are found, and go on from there. How do you wanna play it, huh? )
What happened to psionics (We wanna do it right this time, so we held off and are putting it in it's own book.)
How many attacks does a two weapon fighting specialist get (normal amount, plus 1 for the secondary hand. Now matter how good you are, you can't multitask that much.)
Does two weapon specialization stack with high dex (yes, but you can't reduce the penalties below 0. Being more accurate when fighting 2 weapon style would just be wrong. )
How many punches can you make in a round (Irrelevant. 1 minute abstracted rounds, remember. You make the same number of rolls as normal. )
What use is the 1 result on the unarmed table when 1's always miss (don't forget the shift abilities)
Can you wish for other classes abilities (Oh, this is a can of worms. Sadism is to be encouraged in this area, as otherwise game-breaking may occur)
What AC do bigbys hand spells have (0)
How does a necklace of adaption prevent you from exploding in space (magic, duh. )
Can Zagygs spell component case produce nonwizard spell components (Yes, as long as you know the spell. Handy dandy!)
Everyone is not paying attention in Dragonmirth. Yamara messes with Fea's mind. A dramatic arrival saves the day in Twilight empire
Through the looking glass: Robert kicks his own little topical crusade up a gear this month, with his reviews concentrating on all the things that'll no longer be for sale if this bill comes to pass. The Silent Death, a sci-fi space battle game using a hex board. An Amazon Queen, an Astrologer, a whole bunch of shadowrunners, tanks, mongol hordes and ogre marauders. Looks like using lead is pretty common regardless of genre. Which means it's banning will impact all kinds of peripheral markets. An interesting tack to take, celebrating life due to the probability of it being taken away. I think it definitely works, adding another layer of human interest to this little drama. It's a good thing that the people throwing up a fuss about RPG's never got the traction to try something like this. That would have made the magazine very problematic in the long run.
Spelljammer starts covering the crystal spheres of the various AD&D worlds. The Realms is first, but Krynn and Oerth'll get their turns soon. Watch them try and cross them over without diluting the themes of the individual settings. Watch the other writers ignore any developments that happen in the spelljammer books. It's all such a pain in the ass.
A fairly average issue overall. The crunch is a bit sub-par, but the stuff involving the issues surrounding gaming at this time is quite interesting. They do seem to be undergoing a substantial renaissance in terms of controversy, and this is having an interesting effect on the fanbase, increasing the degree of defensiveness in their writing. This probably isn't good for the hobby in the long run, but what are ya going to do. Things'll get worse once the controversy goes away. No publicity is bad publicity and all that. Guess I should enjoy it while it's here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991
part 1/4
116 pages. Yay! A Sci-fi games special. Haven't had one of those before. Course, for quite a bit of the magazine's lifespan we didn't need one, with the ARES section providing a reliable supply of that stuff every month. And we have had a couple of traveller specific ones. But still, this is a positive step in terms of interaction with the rest of the hobby, so let's enjoy it as I experience it.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from an Israeli reader with some language quibbles. Roger gets down in the trenches and quibbles right back at him.
Another letter quibbling over the stats of the Griffon. Roger is a bit more magnanimous with this one, but still disputes some of their conclusions.
A letter of praise for the Mind of the Vampire article, from someone who rather identifies with them. Roger responds that he's always identified more with Kaiju. :) This could definitely spawn a series of responses as other people say what monsters they feel like/would most like to be.
I was a teenage TSR game junkie: This month's editorial is another delegated to Dale. And in it we see them reaffirm their desire to recognize that there's a whole world of games companies out there producing cool stuff, and hopefully give it some support in the magazine. TSR is not the only game in town, nor do we want it to be, for that would get boring. Try them out, broaden your horizons. Dale also talks about the fact that when he was younger, he didn't do this, sticking religiously to TSR products. This actually resonates quite well with my experiences, where for quite a few years, I refused to try other RPG's, on the reasoning that D&D sold the most, so it had to be the best, so what would the point be in trying other ones. (yeah, feel free to point and laugh at younger me. I quite agree. :o ) This is indeed a very positive editorial, and one that bodes well for their output in the near future. Course, we do know now that eventually they'll change their minds on this issue, and become all D&D, all the time, but let's not let it get us down. The Silver age of gaming still has plenty of delights to show us, and I'd like to face at least some of them with an uncynical eye (yeah, not easy, I know.)
Wired and ready: Cyberpunk! If anything says early 90's in RPGs, it's this genre. A whole bunch of systems are putting their own spin on this idea, and hopefully one of them is desirable to you. This brings the old worldbuilding and roleplaying advice to the new milieu, helping those of you still unfamiliar to get a good idea of the genre's conventions, and those with a little more experience to hone your DM'ing to a razor edge. Just how dystopian is your world? Is it the government or the corporations that are really in charge? Are there any real heroes out there at all? Yeah, the grimdark meter is running pretty high in this one, which does make it seem amusingly dated. But there is a lot of valuable advice in here, which does help you play in the cyberpunk style, while keeping the players from getting out of hand with superpowered hi-tech combos. Keep the challenges coming, make sure things rarely go as planned, (curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal, etc etc) and of course all the usual stuff about good descriptions and planning. A fairly good example of it's type, this manages to take the general principles of good DM'ing and make them seem fresh.
Tricks of the trade: Hmm. A battletech article about modding your mechs. The writer decides to share his house rules, where he makes minor alterations to a whole bunch of the mechs, mostly to make the crunch better match the descriptions. Course, since this is mostly statistics on a game I'm not familiar with, this is one of those articles that is rather tricky to judge for quality. I think I'll have to just shrug and pass over this one.
A clone of your own: Or let's cross Paranoia with Car Wars. Tee hee. With some fairly long and quite amusing fiction in the form of dialogue from the commentators on an Autoduel, this definitely has more than a bit of tongue in it's cheek. Not that it isn't useful in a serious game as well, raising some serious questions about the ethics, legality and practical implications of being able to grow new bodies and copy your memory into them. They also give the process some pretty high costs, both financial and potential side-effects from the cloning process, which should keep people from getting blase about their character dying. This article really does have it all. Fun fluff. Solid crunch. Interesting asides. Humour, game usability, and transferability to other milieus. I'd go as far as saying that this is one of the best non D&D articles they've ever published. This has proven to be a very enjoyable issue so far.
TSR Previews: Having spent the last year roaming afar, the Forgotten Realms gives Waterdeep some more love in Ruins of Undermountain. Now they have a dungeon complex to rival Greyhawk castle in it's size (and unfinishedness) Do you have the patience to delve it all the way and finish Halaster's dickery once and for all? Good luck with that, he's almost as contingencied up as Elminster. If you need a diversion, we have Song of the Saurials. See Alias, Dragonbait, Olive Ruskettle, and the rest of that crew return to face the evils of Moander. That's not a bad thing, really.
Dragonlance gets an actual module for the first time in a while. DLS1: New beginnings. Come on all you novel buyers. Please come and try the actual AD&D game. It's not scary at all, honest. We'll hold your hand through the first adventure. The writing is already on the wall for this gameline.
Ravenloft has RA2: Ship of Horror. Arr. Another cursed ship stealin' people away in ye night. Taste the salty air of dispair. Will you be scared, or just annoyed by the railroading?
D&D is still down in the hollow world. HAW3: Nightstorm ends another trilogy with an epic finale featuring the immortals. Been a while since they got any modules. Just can't get the epic staff these days. Wonder how long before they lose interest in this little offshoot.
And finally, Buck Rogers is still releasing lots of stuff. XXVcS2: Sargasso of space. Pirates also seem to be very in recently. What's all that about?
Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991
part 2/4
FEAR, a novel of suspense by L Ron Hubbard. With an endorsement by Stephen King. Now that's really jarring to see. Bloody scientologists. They are surprisingly good at this infiltrating the cool circles business.
The role of computers: Wing Commander gets an almighty 6 out of 5, such is the reviewer's love of it. A 3D shoot-em-up with between mission roleplaying elements, visuals, sound and gameplay all work together to produce the most fun they've had in years. They don't have a single bad word to say about it. Now that is interesting. As ever, I am obliged to be suspicious. Was it really that good?
Armor Alley, on the other hand gets a conventional 5 star review. Assemble your troops to blow up an enemy base. Resource management is critical, since you have a limited budget, and need to pick the right troops for the job. Sounds like fairly standard wargame fair.
If it moves, Shoot it! also seems fairly standard. An arcade action shoot-em-up, this'll keep you busy for a bit if you've finished Gradius so many times you can do it by heart.
King's Bounty also seems like nothing special. An RPG/wargame, where you pick your character type, assemble an army, and get all the pieces of the macguffin so you can save the kingdom. There are some awkward gamist elements, and the saving system is rather slow and clunky, so it's not nearly as smooth an experience as it could be. Definitely better ways to spend your cash.
Tangled Tales: The misadventures of a wizards apprentice is a somewhat humorous adventure game, with an interesting (if sometimes frustrating) control interface. Like many adventure/puzzle games, finishing this one is mainly about finding the right items and taking them to the right places, which means it doesn't have that much replay value. Still, the puzzles are pretty tricky, and the visuals aren't bad, so it's hardly terrible.
In the clue corner, we see Curse of the Azure Bonds continue to get more hints than everything else put together. Man, the number of system bugs and tactical exploits you can pull with that are huge. I guess that probably contributes to it's continued popularity.
The game wizards: So, we have noticed that sales of our biggest product, the D&D basic set, seem to be dropping off. You know what that means? New edition time! Well, not exactly new edition, as the rules are the same, it's only the presentation that's changed. Oh, and the fact that now the basic set goes to 5th level. As they did with every new basic set before it, they try and tell us how much clearer, easier to learn, and friendlier to people who've never played before it is. This time with an emphasis on how they've used scientifically tested teaching methods in their writing to make sure the info goes in people's heads and stays there. Buy sets for all your friends and get corrupting them. The evil overmistress needs more money! A somewhat awkward reminder that their commercial zenith is now over. While they do still have tons of cool products to come, overall sales are starting a gradual decline that'll become quite an issue along the line. Depressing how quality and commercial success do not actually have that strong a correlation factor. Not that I know if this one was actually better or worse than the old Moldvay & Mentzer ones because I never bought it either. :o Any opinions?
The voyage of the princess ark: Haldemar gets rather messed up in this installment, as he tries to comprehend the powerful thothian enchantment from last time round. This results in his offending the people he's currently visiting, and once again avoiding death by sheer luck and chutzpah. This is why being a solitary wizard is a bad idea. If you go insane, there's no-one to tell you you've gone mad and help you, so you keep on getting madder. Probably one of the factors that contributes to liches going bonkers, above and beyond not needing to give a shit about biological matters.
This month's crunch is details on the Emerondians, and their unique plant based weaponry. Descended from space pirates, they have exceedingly light and vicious weapons, that combined with their unique fighting style, can really screw you over. You can bet the players'll want to get a hold of this after encountering it.
The letters this month are primarily concerned with the Immortals. How they interact with their clerics, their churches, each other, and people trying to become immortals. We also have some general rules questions, and stuff on recent, and older releases. Seems like Bruce is being turned into quite the sage in his own right. What a job to be saddled with.
Dino wars: Another interesting game as our centrepiece this month, courtesy of Tom Moldvay. There were certainly no shortage of plastic or rubber dinosaur toys around in this era (even if some of them were a bit crap at standing up unsupported, as I remember. ) So like Clay-o-rama, let's round a bunch of them up, put them up against soldier minis, and enjoy the carnage. The rules are actually moderately crunchy, with some twists to the turn structure that ensure there will always be plenty of casualties on both sides. While playing this will require that you have a decent box full of toys already, it does look like a pretty fun one, with a lot of variety possible depending on what units you have and how you deploy them. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the stuff needed to try this (unless it's buried somewhere up in the attic, so I guess this is one I'll just have to sigh nostalgicly about, as I think of my own days playing with toy dinosaurs. Grr. Argh.
Fiction: Rest stop by J W Donnelly. Another old formula for a story here. Alien comes down to earth, imitates humanity poorly, terror and comic misunderstandings ensue. Course, the earth in this case is a fairly typical superstitious medieval fantasy world, which only adds to the fun, as they mistake the alien for some kind of demon, and react accordingly. The rest follows on entertainingly, but fairly predictably, until it reaches the end, which really rubs the joke in. So it is a bit cheesy, but fits well with the overall tone of the issue, combining humour and sci-fi elements to good effect. I think this counts as another modest success to add to the issue's run.
Arcane Lore: Another three tomes full of obscure magics this month. Manor's Manual of Sight was written by a blind wizard, and so it's obviously in a nonstandard form, printed on silver plates. It has three unique spells of increasing power that allow you to compensate for this lack of vision, eventually letting you cast your sight around, penetrating walls, magical deceptions, and darkness. Overcompensating in a world when all you need is a cleric capable of casting 2nd level spells to fix this little problem? Maybe. But they are still pretty useful to other adventurers as well.
Tymessul's Enchiridion of Travel is one of those ones who's theme is pretty self explanatory. Mostly standard movement spells of all levels, from levitate to astral spell, it also includes two exceedingly powerful custom spells. Tymessul's Cerulean Traverse lets you travel the planes and back with a bunch of companions by holding hands, and gives you some decent travel benefits while in other universes. Tymessul's Planar Pacifier deals with the incredibly irritating problem of magic items losing their powers when you go from one plane to another. They seem very attractive if you can make it that far. Since both are pretty expensive in terms of material components, you may want to make them permanent though. Course, if you've made it to 18th level, there's probably a lot of awesome things you want to make. Which is why some form of immortality should probably be your first priority.
Mylsibis' Codex of Contention is a somewhat less one-note tome, with two very different unique spells. Balance is a 1st level spell that lets you do things like tightrope-walking without a roll, stepping on thieves toes again. Mylsibis' Arcane Contention lets you fight a spectacular spell duel in classic novel style without hurting anyone, but only if you can cast 9th level spells. Since this involves summoning phantasmal giant monsters to fight each other there are definite shades of pokemon that make this a little more risible in retrospect than it was at the time. Still, once again, these spells seem pretty desirable. Let players know about these ones, and many of them will be quite happy to go on big adventures to hunt them down.
Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991
part 3/4
Sage advice has a litle striplight of color at the top, but is still shrinking. It's like working in a smoky office with the shutters closed, and a single lamp on the desk. How thematic.
What order do the monstrous compendia go in (However you see fit. That's why we made it loose leaf. Course, you won't be able to get it perfectly alphabetical, cause of the two monsters per sheet policy. We really shoulda thought about that a bit more)
What are the rules for emotions (see ravenloft. Otherwise player choice is preferable)
RA1's scales are all out of wack (oops. That should be measured in feet, not miles.)
Does a ring of free action remove armour penalties to thieving (chance'd be a fine thing. )
How powerfull bonds can knock break (it doesn't break them, it simply opens them. It's an opening spell, not a blast walls apart spell. )
Do dual classed characters get a full set of new proficiencies (No. And even though Skip definitely said they did back in the 1st ed days, Skip will pretend that never happened. )
Is there going to be a harpers trilogy (Skip will do some investigating. Hmm. Oh sweet mercifull jesus. Skip sees that our hacks are churning it out as we speak. People buy this rubbish? Um, Skip means yes. Available in all good hobby stores soon :teeth ting: :sweatdrop: )
Role-playing reviews: Welcome to the kitchen sink! :p Yes, this month's RPG's take the concept of strict adherence to genre and laugh at it, throwing in all manner of stuff, with room for further expansion and adding odd bits and pieces from nearly any source. Now that's definitely an amusing development. There are now several games taking that approach, competing for your gaming dollars. Let's see which one Jim prefers.
TORG gets a fairly good review. The conceit used to explain why the world has been turned into a multi-genre mash-up, and the PC's are superhuman (or at least, super lucky) is actually quite a clever one, allowing you tons of room to create your own plots, while also providing a theoretical overarching campaign goal that could be achieved eventually. The system is nicely open-ended in terms of power scaling, and handles large groups of creatures quickly and easily, while the Drama Deck and the dramatic editing (with neat IC explanation ) provides the cinematics. There are a few clunky bits, and the artwork could be better, but overall, it looks like a good deal of fun, that can be played in lots of different ways, or mined to create settings based on the individual genres incorporated. Which aspects would you like to emphasize?
Rifts gets a somewhat less positive review. The system is clunky and poorly explained, with little logic to how sections are ordered, and the enormous gap between regular creatures and things with Mega Damage causes some serious problems in terms of structuring fights. Looks like Palladium are already starting to fall behind in terms of design finesse. Still, they have many years of regionbooks and other stuff for this world to come, so it goes to show, system quality is not a huge indicator of success.
Novel ideas: A fairly formulaic entry here, as they inform us about the new novels they have coming up by talking about the people behind them. We've already seen stuff on Jeff Swycaffer and Mary Herbert, now say hello to L. Dean James, Michael C. Staudinger, Damaris Cole, and Robert B. Kelly. Course, since all 6 are crammed into less than 2 pages, to say there's not much depth would be an understatement. They do need to promote their standalone novels the most, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to sell people on them. Oh, if only I could think of a better way. But then, if I could, I'd be the one making millions. Sigh.
Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991
part 4/4
Forum: Christine Wellman contributes a long and fairly amusing letter which touches upon character stereotyping, the alignment system, and the sexual proclivities (or not) of halflings in idiosyncratic manner. This is indeed quite enjoyable to read about. Remember, individuals can have quirks that go against the bulk of their alignment without it tipping them all the way to another one.
Rob Williams talks about finding the optimum challenge level to keep players interested and enjoying the game. It's most fun when adventures are challenging, but the players eventually win, and feel they've actually achieved something. Similarly, resurrection is best used when the death was arbitrary and not the player's fault. If they were genuinely dumb, they should also reap the rewards of that and learn from the experience.
Jeremiah Lynch also talks about how hard he thinks you should make resurrection. Again, tricky, but possible if they really work at it seems to be the standard here.
Craig Hardie complains about the people who are overreliant on using the existing campaign worlds for their RPG's. Whatever happened to your creativity? Even if you do use existing stuff, adapt it, make it your own. Otherwise everyone who's read the book will know all the answers.
Jeremy Bargen thinks that the psychological changes a lich goes through thanks to undeath are more severe than Erik Martella does. I think this is one instance where I'd rather have it vary widely from individual to individual.
Alan Grimes reasserts his points against Dan Howarth's criticism. Computers are no-where near as good as real DM's for roleplaying against. So there. I suspect you may be talking at each other, rather than too.
Steven Zamboni picks holes in the astral taxi service in issue 159. Despite it's power, there are some quite substantial holes in their defenses, and githyanki are scary fast on the astral anyway, able to hit and run to wear them down quite effectively. And then there's the moral issue of using harvested brains as slaves to power your items. Even if they are evil, that isn't going to endear you to anyone. Hmm. Now I want to run actual combat simulations, see just how those ships actually fare against the various high level challenges mentioned. It'll definitely be interesting if this one is responded too by the original author.
The navy wants You!: Looks like they're giving Top Secret some support in addition to all the sci-fi stuff this month. As the title indicates, this is about the navy's own espionage division. They've already given the army plenty of attention, so this only requires a few pages of adaptions, new skills, and a whole bunch of tables giving info on the various career paths. This seems very much like the Traveller articles that opened up a new job in terms of feel, which adds a bit of pleasing familiarity to it. Plus it looks like it has quite a bit of actual real world info. So overall, another pretty good article.
Everyone's a critic in dragonmirth. Except maybe the rust monster. Ogrek moves in with Yamara. And brings all his stuff. Twilight empire gives us some hot spring stylee fanservice.
Through the looking glass: A little less emphasis on the legal troubles with lead this month, and a bit more on this year's conventions. Seems a bit early to start, but then again, conventions actually happen all year round, not just the summer. And you know what tickets are like for selling out way before the event. Act now, before it's too late! The same applies for the legal campaigning. It's more likely to turn out alright if you take personal steps than if you just trust other people will get round to it. In fact, that's definitely useful advice for any endeavour. Against laziness and apathy, even the gods themselves struggle in vain, while those who exploit the apathy of other really rake it in.
Anyway, this month's reviews continue the spirit of fun that pervades this issue. A knight facing the wrath of a princess for trying to kill her dragon. A rabbit - OF DOOOOOOM!!!!! A pair of dragons fighting, based on the art of Denis Beauvais from this very magazine. A wizard talking to a hobbit. An Armoured Personnel Carrier. A big muscly monster from Talislanta, which seems pretty adaptable for any ogre type humanoid for other systems. And finally, a ton of ships from GHQ, which inspires Robert to launch into a couple of pages of discourse on the real life history of each ship, and give them all 5 star ratings. This has obviously hit an area of personal interest for him. He does seem to have a few surprises in his bag still.
The best issue of the decade so far, with highly readable articles, lots of non D&D stuff, and a far higher than usual sense of fun in general. It was so easy to review, it feels like it was over way too soon, which is definitely unusual in this era of large page counts. Let's hope the next one isn't an agonizing crawl to make up for it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991
part 1/4
116 pages. Out into the freezing wilderness again. Dungeon, wilderness and city, the great trifecta of adventuring. Ok, so they tack on weird otherdimensional stuff as well, but those are the ones that must be returned to again and again, to create a satisfying set of adventure choices. We're well past the point where I can expect regular innovations, so once again, I'll just have to wonder if this one'll have some new spins and cool ideas to add to our repertoire.
In this issue:
Letters: A rather snarky letter to Skip quibbling about Scale and Chain mail. Skip gives an equally snarky response, as befits the badass sage who puts the pages in the mages.
Another letter giving a bit of random information on something that they mentioned. This is the kind of thing googling deals with in a matter of seconds these days. Not so easy back then.
Two letters about submitting stuff to them. Roger gives them the usual freelancers spiel about getting the proper paperwork. You can't just give them your campaign world out of the blue and expect them to jizz themselves with excitement and publish it for you in perpetuity. Even if you were that good and prolific a writer, there are procedures that must be followed. They do have to crush the dreams of another wave of enthusiastic young wannabes with less skill than they think on a regular basis here. :(
Editorial: Roger reminisces about his army days again. There were many long, happy campaigns had with his fellow soldiers. But there was always the distinct possibility of them coming to a sudden end when real life intrudes, and people are posted to different locations, or even killed in action. But you should still stay in touch. It can be lonely out there, especially when no-one knows where you are or what you're doing. A good reminder that in reality, killing people and taking their stuff (because let's not forget the importance of oil in the Iraq wars ;) ) is a nasty business, with long periods of tedium followed by quick periods of terror and pain. We engage in these things in our imagination because doing them in reality is not feasible or desirable. ( Well, feasable anyway. Muahahahahaha!!!!! Ahem. ) PS: Support your troops! Yeah, this falls a little into moralizing lecture territory, which I'm not very keen on venturing too. But it does raise a lot of interesting and pertinent points. Roger's still a pretty good writer. If only he had time to produce more articles, instead of having to edit everyone else's and still write this.
See the pomarj and die: Hmm. A Greyhawk article? Not often you see those in here. This is an interesting development. Welcome to another of AD&D's wild frontiers. Full of fragmented human communities, beset by marauding humanoids, and of course, endangered by the ur-slavers of D&D mythology, as it's the canon location of modules A1-4. It'll take more than wild Bill Hickok to pacify this region. A mini supplement that goes into a surprising amount of demographic detail, and gives you plenty of adventure hooks that should keep players busy throughout the low/mid levels, but'll probably run out by the time we get to name levels (at which point you'll probably have made the info here pretty inaccurate. ) It could have been a good deal longer, possibly even a full supplement, but this is a pretty decent starter. Enjoy your killing and politicking.
Back to the age of mammals: The Cenozoic gets another article on it. Only 2 + 1/2 years since the last one too. Fortunately, since that was also on Roger's watch, and this is by the same author as well, there is no overlap whatsoever. Reality is pretty damn big, and you could easily fill entire books talking about this era. So here's 11 more creatures to squeeze into your campaign. Agriotherium, Amphicymon, Anancus, Andrewsarchus, (I'll bet that's named after someone specific) Giant humpless Camels, Dwarf Elephants, (so cute! I want one. ) Giant Hippos, Megalania, Metridiocherus, Pelorovis and Sarkastodon. (hee) Plus a few more that don't get full stats, being simply adjusted versions of existing creatures. Most are clearly related to modern day creatures, only bigger and with various miscellaneous quirks. The individual descriptions aren't that long, but you should know where to look if you want more ecological info. And so this milieu grows even more inviting to me. Since lost world regions are such a popular adventure location, I shall definitely have to create one.
The ecology of the su-monster: Another excuse to ensure everyone knows about a newly updated monster here, including a reprint of it's stats. In this case, it's also a means of indirectly promoting the newly released Complete Psionics handbook. Gotta collect 'em all! That bit of suspicion aside, it's not a bad ecology in it's own right, spinning a rather grim tale of how creatures like this can be a threat to an entire community. Sometimes you don't need dozens of varieties of monster to make an interesting adventure, just one being numerous, devious and intractable. When they can also have various selected powers that differ from one individual to another, they can be pretty versatile even without class abilities. A strong revaluation of an underused creature. Tempting.
The dragon's bestiary decides to give us some more problematic plants to make your outdoor adventures a little more dangerous. Like underwater stuff, this isn't too common an option for writers, but there's tons of material to draw upon, so it still has plenty of room for adding surprising creations to your game.
Giant bladderwort pretends to be solid ground in marshy terrain, and then sucks you gloopily under for a good digestin'. Swamps are already one of the least glamourous locations for adventurers to tromp through. Stuff like this is why I try and get flying powers ASAP.
Giant butterwort also follow the ambush predator route. They'll stick to you like a fly in amber and wrap you up in their loving tendrils. They get nearly everywhere if you don't clear them out as well. Plants can grow surprisingly fast, remember.
Giant rainbow plants dazzle you with their pretty colours and lure you in, before dropping the act and suffocating you with their sticky leaves. Another one that probably has less ferocious relatives in real jungles.
Giant waterwheel plants are another way of making players deeply paranoid of going wading. They'll lurk below the water and digest you leg first.
Sword Grass is pretty self-explanatory. You try and step on it, it slices you to ribbons and uses your corpse to enrich it's soil. They're not hard to mow down, but will regrow unless you dig up the whole damn root system. Which means like goblinoids, they can keep showing up to challenge low level adventurers again and again.
Clubthorn are mobile holly bushes that'll beat you to a pulp. Since normal holly can do enough pain on it's own, that seems pretty decent grounds for paranoia. Something blackberry related would be even more tempting to lure us into a false sense of security.
Bloodflowers put you to sleep, and then drain you dry slowly. Now there's a pretty common archetype. Just the thing to be growing in a vampire's garden.
Helborn seem rather inspired by the Little Shop of Horrors, being sentient, semimobile creatures that can grow big enough to swallow a person, and have quite uncanny persuasive powers. Like Audrey II, they may try and deal with you, but that just puts you one lapse in feeding schedule away from being next on the menu. Still, anything intelligent can be played with variety, and I find the thought of using one of these as a crime lord and slave trader quite appealing. I can do a quite good impersonation of their signature line, and my players are the sort to appreciate that, so look out world. :devil: This lot definitely make good additions to your random encounter tables for various terrains.
Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991
part 2/4
Curses are Divine: Or more encouragement for your DM to be a sadistic, ironic, arbitrary bastard. Does anyone really need encouraging for that?! ;) Anyway, this is for those of you who'd like to put a bit of deific intervention in when your players loot, pillage, desecrate and slaughter the stuff of the wrong god, but aren't sure how to go about it. Chances of the god noticing and deciding to intervene in response to various actions, and a whole bunch of sample punishments. Under this one, it's a damn good idea to pick a team and stick with it, because gods generally don't mess with other god's sheep directly, but a free agent is free to be smitten from all sides. And a betrayer is trusted by no-one. The fantasy mafia in the sky are watching, and treading on the wrong turf without paying your dues may be ignored most of the time, but when response comes, it will be horribly disproportionate. One to be used with caution, depending on your assumptions about the nature of gods, their degree of omniscience, range of attention, degree of busyness and amount they care about their worshippers. Choice is yours, blah blah blah. Can't get up much passion for that.
TSR Previews: The forgotten realms is double billing yet again. LC3: Nightwatch in the living city sees Ravens Bluff go mainstream. (I don't remember seeing LC 1 or 2 advertised here) Now you don't have to be part of the RPGA to do some heroic acts around here. Far to the west, Doug Niles finishes the Maztica Trilogy with Feathered Dragon. Didn't we just find one of those in the hollow world? Man, this stuff gets tricky to keep straight.
Greyhawk starts something a little bigger than a trilogy this year. WGS1: Five shall be one. Carl Sargent sends you on a macguffin hunt to retrieve a series of magical blades. This one any good?
Dragonlance also seems to have realised people are getting tired of trilogies. Instead, they're starting a sextet. The meetings series sees us go right back, prequeling the prequels, to when the heroes of the lance first met. Man, they're really milking the past in this setting. Next thing, we'll be having whole books on their childhoods. Flint, Tanis, and Laurana are first up, in Kindred Spirits.
Spelljammer gets a second Monstrous compendium appendix, MC9. There's a lot of weird stuff up there. Not that they're spoiling what they are exactly. This should be fun.
Lankhmar has a second anthology of short adventures. LNA3: Prince of Lankhmar. Set in the city itself, it sounds as if there may be interconnections between them. Again, could be fun.
And our standalone book this month is Sorcerer's Stone by L. Dean James. Not a very edifying title, but the synopsis doesn't seem too bad, if a bit stereotypical. Just another tiny piece of the endless wash of product these days.
Arcane lore: Yay for problemsolving! A few months ago, it was pointed out that Necromancers have some serious problems with spell selection at low level. Their favoured school, while useful, is not nearly as well exploited as it should be. So this is damn helpful article, with quite a few spells that would make it into future sourcebooks. (in particular, I think all of them were in the Complete Necromancer's Handbook. ) I quite approve.
Animate Dead Animals is ridiculously effective for it's level. Unless you need them to have hands, I'm not sure why anyone bothers with regular skeletons & zombies if they have this.
Spectral Ears & Eyes are cut-price versions of Clairvoyance and audience, since you need an undead creature to share the senses of. Spectral voice lets you speak through your minions, as well which is basically a crap version of ventriloquism. Still, remote control of your minions is not to be sneezed at, especially at 1st level. If you use these wisely, maybe you'll survive your first adventurer encounters and get to be a proper evil overlord.
Skeletal Hands also gives you useful remote manipulation abilities. Not hugely useful in combat, this'll give a wizard who's to lazy to get up from sitting in front of the crystal ball a decent alternative to unseen servant. (in case they can't access that)
Bone Knit lets you heal skeletons, or even give them regeneration. Now there's a visual that always makes players worry. Just how much effort are these undead going to take to put down? Sometimes, in the movies, no amount of hacking'll do the job. Kill it with fire or drop them in a pit instead.
Ghastly Hands lets you paralyze things with touch like a Ghast. This feels very much like a way of compensating for the fact that Hold Person is an Enchantment. If you have no hammer, then maybe a screwdriver will serve if you use a little cleverness.
Skull Trap is like Fire Trap, only more obvious, and using negative energy rather than fire. Another reason you should be very wary of any skulls just left lying around a dungeon. How many spells need a good skull to work?
Transmute Bone to Steel doesn't actually do that, just makes it as tough as, like those wood/iron transmutation spells druids got. This is fairly high level for a moderate buff to your undead minions. Still, it is reversible, which is exceedingly good for dealing with Iron Golems.
Undead Servants makes your rotting minions somewhat intelligent and programmable with complex instructions. This is pretty weak for it's level, and may actually be a nerf in disguise, since animate dead never strictly defined how much memory for complex instructions undead have in the first place. Since the low level ones are quite powerful for their level, this does make me wonder a bit. We really could do with better power benchmarks for spell levels than highly subjective eyeballing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991
part 3/4
The voyage of the princess ark: It's psychodrama time as Haldmar finishes his incantation, and upgrades the Ark. He meets Berylith, the spirit of the dragon that would be bonded to the Ark, and journeys through the dimension of nightmares with her. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew have to fend off spectral hounds. Once again, it ends on a cliffhanger as the Ark's magic is complete, but it still needs to restructure itself. What will it's new form look like?
We also get another 4 of the ark's crewmen statted up this month. Ashari Sunlil, a navigator. Ramissur Zumrulim, a boltman. Tarias of Arogansana, a midshipman. And Leo of Le Nerviens, an irritating gnome. (Do they give tax breaks for having a comic relief sidekick in Mystara?) They haven't played particularly important parts in the story so far, but maybe they will now.
Not a very interesting installment this month, despite the dramatics. Hopefully it'll pick up again, as this feels a bit formulaic. Such is the problem with episodic pulp produced to a deadline. Sometimes the magic just isn't going to be there.
The role of computers: Tunnels & Trolls shows that other RPG's are getting computer conversions as well. The sound and visuals aren't that great, but it still gets a 5 star rating. They give us a review full of hints, revealing in the process that it has quite a bit of depth in terms of character generation and roleplaying, with knowing languages playing an important part of the game. It looks like another game where you can pull a whole bunch of system exploits to get the most out of your characters. I wonder if we'll be seeing this one further spoiled in the clues system.
Bettletech: The Crescent Hawks Revenge also lets the conversions flow, even though it draws more upon the wargame side than the RPG add-ons. You can control a whole squad, and adjust the speed to allow yourself time to give all the orders needed. Once again, it seems pretty decent, if not as open ended as the T&T game.
Hard Nova is another big, openended adventure, this time a sci-fi one where you have a whole bunch of playstyles, going from ship flying to indoor puzzles and shooting, with a good bit of roleplaying thrown in. Another one where you have plenty of choices on how to play the game, and actually get some control on what you say to people.
Stellar 7 is somewhat less complex, but still a good bit of sci-fi fun. Pilot a hyperadvanced tank, and blow stuff to bits. Now with massively improved 3D graphics. Well, not brilliant, but they're getting there.
We also get to enjoy the Beastie Awards for the last year, maybe a little late. No great board-sweepers this time round, with different winners for each game system, and no overlaps in genre categorizations either. Unsurprisingly, Ultima VI and Might of Magic II score high, along with other RPG's. Nothing particularly leaps out at me here.
Sage advice: Does being immune to nonmagical attacks make you immune to falling (No. The earth is an infinite HD monster, and can therefore hurt things requiring up to +4 to hit. )
Can a vorpal weapon sever a thing that's too tall for you to reach the neck of (Recycled question. Skip is going through hard times right now. Skip does not need this. It's the sagely equivalent of being parked outside someone's house all day watching for signs that their wife is being unfaithful)
Can I Charm a shambling mound and then use lightning bolts to give it hundreds of extra HD ( Yes, but the charm will wear off. And given it's new saving throws, you'll have a very hard time recharming it. Better be prepared for a quick exit.)
Do specialist wizards lose their speciality if they suffer ability drain (once again, no! God, this sucks )
Can conjurers cast evocations and lesser divinations ( And this is why skip is in the doghouse. Skip has failed to consider the implications of preventing wizards from using lesser divinations. So Skip is going to make a stupid ruling that Skip will later have to retract. )
How can I find a gaming club (Noticeboards. Also, recruit your friends. It's the best way to grow the hobby. Use the new D&D Basic set. :teeth ting: )
Fiction: Dragon's blood by Bryan Haught. One of the shortest pieces we've had in a while, this is one of those ones that is basically just a lead-up to a punchline. A bit insubstantial really, this is amusing the first time, but doesn't really hold up to repeated reading. Given the way it's formatted, this definitely feels like a filler piece picked out of the slush pile because they had a couple of pages not quite filled at crunch time. Mehness.
Just give me money!: Here we go again, with the deconstruction of the D&D currency system. This time with extra historical info. Weights are ridiculous, training costs exorbitant, and the whole thing is a bit of a headache. Dividing everything by 10 for everyday purposes has quite substantial benefits in practical terms. And of course, there's all the usual issues with protectionism, moneychangers, taxes, supply and demand causing fluctuations in value, it's all competent, aware of the previous articles and builds upon them, and very very tiresome. The kind of thing I really am not keen on dealing with in reality, and so will probably not bother to use unless I get an economics wonk as a player who actively pursues this stuff and makes it a plot issue. We will have to continue suspending our disbelief so the system doesn't come crashing down around us. (hey, maybe it's not so different from real economics after all)
Milestones and free miles: Oooh. A competition. Shiny. To go to england and attend a convention? Of no use to me, even if this wasn't years out of date. Another piece that's barely a footnote on the massive boot of history.
The marvel-phile: Connecting with the last article, we have some English characters detailed here. Malcom Knight and Thomas Fogg. In typical supers fashion, a scientific accident resulted in them gaining superpowers that just happened to be puns on their names and appropriate to their personalities. One's an ambiguous character who sticks by his own code, while the other is just a slippery slimeball. The idea of supervillains with a scouse accent is somewhat amusing, if a little hard to take seriously. It's very much another average day in the office here as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991
part 4/4
Forum is rather short this month: Russell Speir quibbles about the damage ratings of crossbows. They ought to do considerably more than longbows. Not particularly interesting.
Bradley Wadle takes up most of the forum, with a rather detailed piece about how incredibly unfair energy draining undead are. It needs to be removed or seriously fixed, so it doesn't mess people up semipermanently even if you win the combat. It is rather a problem, isn't it. It does have to be noted that even the official designers are gradually coming round to that point of view, with most new monsters, even ones that are supposed to be more fearsome like shadow dragons, only draining stuff temporarily and/or allowing saving throws to avoid the effect. Course, it'll still take 18 years and two big reboots before the people who hold this view can completely purge all the existing sadism from the system. Plenty more time for me to relish it until then.
Lords of the warring states: Or giants in the earth visits the orient again. They do have the advantage of a bureaucracy that stretches back thousands of years recording stuff in rather great detail than some folk stories. So let's head back to the warring states, to see what people make good characters. Lu Pu-Wei, a rogue with a heart who went out with style. Impenetrable Ordinance, who virtually epitomises the batshit insane emperor with his vanity projects and searches for immortality. Li Ssu, who by restricting weapons and clamping down on independent thought, probably contributed to the development of martial arts, as well as generally contributing to the civic good. Ching K'o, who tried to assassinate the emperor, failed, but still became a folk hero. And Sun Pin, the dishonoured general who still fought with tactics and style. There are a few illegal bits, as ever, but this is a lot more interestingly presented than most of these columns. Oddly enough, I have no objection to this one.
The game wizards: As they mentioned earlier, Undermountain is one of their big releases this month. It could have been a lot bigger, since it has been worked on and played in since 1975, when Ed first discovered roleplaying, but TSR do have fairly strict product sizes these days. As is often the case, Ed is joined by a character from the Realms to aid in exposition, (this time Laeral, because Elminster is off boning the Simbul :p ) The reason it remains a deadly dungeon even after all these years is largely thanks to Halaster's persistent efforts at restocking monsters, and designing ever more sadistic traps. (I suspect deepspawn may also be involved. ) He really is providing a tremendously valuable service to aspiring adventurers everywhere, especially since the creatures in there cause surprisingly little bother in Waterdeep itself. As usual, Ed manages to make this far more entertaining than most writers, and somewhat more useful as well, with some advice on how to best use his product. Big chunks of it are left open for you to develop further, but they've provided tools for you to randomly generate stuff for them quickly. It's a great place to incorporate spells and devices from this magazine. And even if you aren't playing in the realms, you can steal a level here, an encounter idea there, and get years of use out of this stuff. It also reinforces another maxim. The best adventures are ones that have been honed through years of actual play, and the best designers are ones who still find the time to play, because if you don't, you may produce stuff that looks pretty, and is mathematically neat, but if you don't learn what's actually fun for the players and works smoothly for DM from personal experience, then it simply won't have that magic. Ravenloft, the Tomb of Horrors, the Temple of Elemental Evil, Ptolus. All went through years of play and development before reaching the form they did in their final mass market release and are better for it. So this is not only a good advert, but useful and interesting in itself. That is very much the way to do it.
The role of books: Never deal with a dragon by Robert N Charette takes us into the world of shadowrun, full of darkness, mystery, and obscenely powerful dragons machinating to advance their agenda. Looks like they've got off to a strong start in this department.
Deryni magic by Katherine Kurtz gets a somewhat negative review for it's odd approach to deconstructing her own novels. There's surprisingly little behind the scenes information, and far too much verbatim quoting from the books. Not hugely insightful.
Heart of valor by L J Smith takes the typical young adult formula of kids learning about magic while also facing mundane problems and combines it with a road trip story. This turns out to be pretty fun, and also full of decent worldbuilding & metaphysics.
The road west by Gary Wright combines adventuring with serious Aaaaangst and psychological study as a serious brooding loner badass tries to get his groove back. Sounds like almost a parody of the stuff that makes Drizzt popular ;)
The shadow gate by Margaret Bail seems to break all the rules of good writing, and yet the reviewer still found himself carrying on reading. So it's like the worst form of literary junk food. Just be thankfull it isn't inexplicably selling millions.
The forge of virtue by Lynn Abbey is a novel based upon the Ultima series. Like far too much gaming fiction, it reads like writing to a formula and making up page count. Even less worth it than the last one.
Lifeline by Kevin J Anderson & Doug Beason gets a surprisingly good review, as a bit of hard sci-fi with serious questions about economics and ecology. A newly established moonbase is cut off from earth, and has to survive on it's wits and experimental technology. His novels do seem to be quite a mixed bag in terms of popularity.
Dragonmirth has more cynicism and naivette. Yamara has to figure out what to do with her worshippers. It's bad form to let them worship at someone else's church. Twilight empire focusses on the bad guy's camp this time.
Through the looking glass: Robert gets ahead of himself a little, and does some reporting that would probably be more thematic for the april issue. Among the more standard wargames out there, there's also stuff involving toy dinosaurs, (as we saw last issue) stuffed animals, legos, blobs of clay, and whatever else may be lying around your house. And this can actually be more fun too. It's certainly more newbie friendly. And since wargames are a decade or two ahead of RPG's in their product cycle of commercial decline, and the people of this era rather want to change that fact, this isn't that surprising. We'll see this topic revisited a few times in the future.
Anyway, in the actual minis reviews we have: A whole bunch of Talislanta stuff, Gnomekin, a trapsmith, and an engineer. Star wars continues it's strong efforts at encompassing all media with a set of rebel troopers. Stan Johansen Miniatures have a bunch of heavy weaponry for your sci-fi soldiers to equip. I. C. E. are also in a sci-fi mood with two space cruisers. Ral Partha is a little more present, with a set of modern day soldiers. While GHQ give Robert another chance to talk about his interest in historical ships, with minis of the LeSuperbe and the HMS Bellona. Very much business as usual here.
They came from outer space! Spelljammer gets it's own monstrous compendium appendix.
With a strong start, a tedious saggy middle, and a fairly good ending, this is a reasonable issue, with enough useful stuff to justify returning to it again. Seems like they're trying to increase the amount of crunch in the articles again, ensure that we have mechanical support for the various directions we are given to take the game in. Not a bad thing really. Steer the good ship Dragon on to ever more familiar terrain, Roger. Good luck.
Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991
part 1/4
116 pages. Another april, another dose of wackiness. No more keeping it to alternating years, Roger's got the material, and he fully intends to make sure we get it too. With this, birthday issues always being dragon themed, and october ones getting the horror stuff, that means he only has to think up different themes for 9 issues a year. So trust nothing anyone says, check every cushion before you sit down, and do not sniff flowers, or accept when someone tries to high-five you under any circumstances. You might just get out with your dignity intact. You can trust me of course. Let's go con some sucker out of their money with a rigged card game. ;)
In this issue:
Buy the new D&D basic game! The first in 8 years, and the best version yet! Get lots more newbies into playing. Pwease! Pwetty pwease! They just have to preach to the choir, don't they. Couldn't you at least make it mockable like Khellek & co.
Letters: Roger continues his now semi-annual tradition of posting dumb letters from readers pretty much as they were recieved. Substantial amounts of entertainment for minimal effort. All you need to do is lay them out properly. A relationship question that seems unlikely to end well. Goddamn bad boys :mutter mutter: A custody battle over a baby orc, of all things. A question on what to do with the body of a dead dragon. You ought to know by now that the sky (and the ingenuity of your magic-user) is the limit in this matter. A truly demented letter about using psychic force to attend a space academy for years in half an hour of real time. And a dumb letter involving people who don't have a clue what they're doing. They sure do know how to pick them.
Editorial: So you've been criticizing Roger's editing, saying it's not as good as Kim's used to be. Here, he pulls out all the sadistic stops to show us just how hard editing D&D is, especially now there are hundreds of products out, many of which introduce new creatures, classes and rules that aren't particularly consistent. A whole bunch of questions, most of which are trick ones, and many which require encyclopedic knowledge of the history of D&D publications. It ends with a fakeout, to be concluded next issue. Looks like Roger is bringing his particular brand of whimsy to this section as well. It rather makes me want to pick his brains with a bohemian ear spoon. It's certainly different, anyway. As ever, shaking off the boredom has definite value.
How to role-play in one easy lesson: Or Let's get Wacky!!! :p Roll on the random name generation table! (I'll take a consonant please Carol ) Play up the demihuman stereotypes! Stab all the other players in the back! Procrastinate and irritate! Metagame at every opportunity! Yup, it's a typical not very useful april fools article to kick things off with. Like the cheating articles of '89, this is more useful as a primer to what NOT to do. I think you can hop, skip and kangaroo jump (or possibly wombat trundle) over this one without regrets.
Merty's manual of magical Merchandise: MMMM. Another lovely collection of humorous items with uncertain usefulness, all tied together with an overarching creation story, and all awesomely abusing alliteration. I remember these from the magical item compendium a few years later, and must confess to a certain degree of amusement. They stuck in my mind quite effectively, as all have their uses, but most have their dangers as well. Let the buyer beware. Muahahahaha.
Merty's Marvelous Marbles let you pull all manner of pranks, and then call them back quickly and conveniently. They will backfire occasionally, but that's a small price to pay for years of fun.
Merty's Mystic Mustard is so hot it lets you breathe fire. And can give you terminal heartburn if you're not careful. Very cartoonish.
Merty's Magnificent Mattress puts you to sleep magically. This does have it's drawback. If there's no-one to wake you, you'll sleep forever. Good thing adventurers usually come in parties, eh?
Merty's Multiplanar Mushrooms let you go ethereal if you eat one. They have an obvious drawback, and a subtly hidden one. Buy in bulk for maximum benefit. (if you have the money)
Merty's Mysterious Mug is perfect for pranksters, but has few practical purposes. A good example of the how to lose friends and influence people principle.
Merty's Masterful Mufflers actually do their job reliably. No sound will get through when wearing them. Now you just need to learn sign language and watch out for monsters sneaking up on you.
Merty's Munificent Matches go fwoosh when lit in quite an alarming fashion. Watch you don't drop them and burn yourself. Not really very magical, is it.
Merty's mmm-mmmm! Muskmelons give you a reusable source of convenient food. Your henchman will be thrilled at how much less he has to carry. Still, don't be surprised if living off nothing but fruit gives you the runs.
Merty's Miraculous Mistmaker does exactly what it says on the tin. Remember, mist obscures vision for everyone, and lots of monsters are better at dealing with blindness than you.
Merty's Mud Masque lets you disguise yourself by covering yourself with it. This is not as useful as it seems, largely due to it's limitations and short duration.
Merty's Masculine Macho-Musk is a rather counterproductive product, that may be handy in combat, but will not help you get the girls like you think it will. How many spam e-mails have I got about pheromone perfume that'll supposedly make you irresistible. Use the character as a decoy in the chamber of the sci-mutant priestess. :p
Merty's Musical Menagerie will give you the musical instruments you need, if you're lucky. Finding the right one can be a frustrating experience though. Wearing gloves may help with this.
Merty's Magical Markers let you put invisible signals around a dungeon to aid in navigation. Don't lose the decoder ring, otherwise they'll be pretty pointless.
Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991
part 2/4
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Looks like we have a surplus of suspicious magical items this year, with a second article doing much the same as the last one, only with less style. They must have got a job lot off the back of a lorry, quite possibly courtesy of Bargle & co.
Mirrors of Sophistication give any woman perfect hair - for a dwarf! Now that's just plain mean, like those girdles of gender changing. Beware your hair indeed. Still, at least this one wears off eventually.
Rings of Ice do what they do, albeit a little too well. If you're not actually in serious hot water, keep it in your pocket.
Elixir of additional weaponry is also pretty damn handy - for Drow. Anyone else may have some serious issues with growing additional evil arms.
Elixir of reduction is like a potion of diminution, only permanent and not affecting your stuff. This is obviously a serious issue if you're not expecting it, for there are many creatures that would enjoy eating a tiny naked man lost in a dungeon. All those clothes can stick in your teeth and be a right pain if you don't have hands.
Scroll of Transmutation are another joke which works by playing with expectations. Like rust monsters and energy draining undead, this one will provoke massive amounts of terror in adventurers for all the wrong reasons.
The Orb of distant viewing is probably the dumbest and most meta of all this collection. All it shows are I love Lucy reruns. I am not amused in the slightest. Still, that aside, these two collections have once again improved on the last two years, in that most of the items feel like they could actually have been created by people for a reason, rather than just because the gods of the setting want to watch and laugh as the people who find them suffer. They could be incorporated into a serious game and not ruin it automatically.
Forum: Andrew Cairns gives an interesting motivational speech about what D&D can be, the stories it can tell, the lessons it can impart. If you do it right, it shows the players that working together and learning to understand people is an important part of life. If done wrong, it teaches that casual racism and killing is a quick path to profit. Hmm. Well, its certainly a way of thinking about it. Since the trend over time has definitely been to making other races playable and comprehensible, I think that your worries aren't substantiated.
Joseph Dineen contributes his own opinion on the impact spellcasters have on warfare, using not just D&D, but WHFRP and Palladium as well. So he suggests some tactics he thinks would work for a city equipped with a decent number of mages in their guards, and expecting likewise from any attackers. I guess WHFB is one of the better systems for trying things like that.
Jules Jones gives a whole bunch of (unofficial) rules clarifications, which look handy for curbing some of the excesses of twinks. (although ducks really shouldn't be able to hover :p ) Now, if we could only do something about the orientophillia. They're already more powerful than regular characters, you don't need to give them more options.
Scott M McDowell talks about his rather messed up gaming circle and his attempts to get them under control. They seem to be improving, but it's a slow process. Still, it makes for good stories when they pull ridiculous crap.
Jasen Cooper extolls the badassedness of dragons. Blah blah, tactics, excellent senses, should be nearly impossible to defeat. Yeah, we know, we get told so nearly every year. Are the upgrades they got in the edition change not enough for you?
On a similar note, Matt Bonnan wants dinosaurs given the credit they deserve. Our knowledge of them continues to advance, and the idea that they were all stupid, sluggish and ungainly looks increasingly tenuous. They never stopped being cool even so, you know. I suspect this means we'll be seeing another article or two on them in the near future. Issue 112's attempt at definitiveness could satisfy the public appetite for only so long.
Saddam Hussein and George Bush get lampooned in Mid-East Peace. I think that's something we can all get behind.
Role-playing reviews skips the roleplaying bit, and just does reviews, under the pretext of giving us something to do when the DM cancels abruptly. If you can't play the regular game, but a load of people are already there, you need a quick pick-me-up. A bit cheeky, but a very valid consideration.
Dungeon! is TSR's own attempt at stripping down D&D to a competitive multiplayer boardgame. It was actually made right back in the 70's, and got a few mentions in the early magazine before slipping into obscurity. It's been rereleased, but Ken doesn't seem overly enthused about the whole thing. While not bad, it's a bit too simplistic for him, and doesn't have much replay value. There are better competitors around these days.
The great khan game is rather more sophisticated, with Tom Wham's particular sense of humour and naming tendencies strongly noticable. It's probably not for novice players, but the rules do support plenty of depth once unraveled. This shows up the difference between organic and calculated design processes.
Heroquest is of course the game that brought Games Workshop's grim world where chaos is rising to the mainstream market. It's another good example of how to make games visually appealing and incredibly easy to learn without being patronising, and rake in the cash in response. It is a bit simple for Ken, with it's limited advancement options and rather weak enemies, but I guess that's what the Advanced version is for. Still, if you want a gateway drug for young relatives, this very much fits the bill. It also has quite a few supplements, jacking up the challenge and adding new minis. I have quite a few fond memories of this.
Space crusade has quite a few parallels with Heroquest, but is a more sophisticated game, with the blip system and mission objectives adding quite a lot of tactical consideration and replayability to the game. Like Heroquest, it get gets plenty of support in White Dwarf magazine, has great visual presentation, and plays a substantial part in making Games Workshop the juggernaut it has become.
Dungeonquest is a conversion of a swedish game. The theme seems pretty familiar. Get in, get the treasure from the dragon and get out alive. With randomly generated dungeons, it's good for solitaire play, and nicely brutal. He actually prefers it to the more mass market games.
Arkham horror attempts to do for Call of Cthuhu what Dungeon does for D&D. It gets critically acclaimed by ken, but doesn't seem to be able to match these others for commercial success, having just gone out of print. Which is a bit lame, but such is life. Good luck finding it on ebay.
Got all the 7 monstrous compendia released so far? Send off this form to get a rebate. Isn't that nice of us.
Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991
part 3/4
The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark finishes reconfiguring itself this month. However, it takes a whole week of IC time to do it, in which Haldemar and co think they've lost her. So they set off on foot through the jungle, and once again get themselves in deep trouble with the natives. All's well that ends well though, as Berylith saves them. Now if Haldemar can just get over the shock, everything'll be cool again.
The majority of this article is taken up by the new deck plans of the Ark, and their description. And it is both odd in several respects, and very impressive indeed, with a detached levitating section, magical elevators and teleportation circles, personal gravity to allow for spectacular acrobatics without everything inside getting bashed around, cloaking, plenty of weaponry and security measures, all wrapped inside a pretty aesthetically pleasing package. Or in other words, DROOL!! WANT!!! This is the kind of thing that will make you the envy of other adventuring groups, and a quite possibly a target for enemies, but hey, at high levels, you need lots of XP to advance, and suitable dungeons are not always easy to find. Let them challenge you. Then you get to blow them out of the sky in a spectacular arial dogfight, bombard their armies on the ground, root out their infiltrators and assassins, and generally prove just how awesome this thing is. Rock.
The role of computers: Bane of the Cosmic Forge is one of those RPG's where you generate characters from a whole bunch of typical races and classes, and a few quirky ones. The general options have been expanded upon, as is standard with a continuing series, and you should save often as you quest to save the world. The visuals still aren't brilliant, and this is probably what keeps it from getting 5 stars, but it's still another solid attempt to emulate D&D style gaming.
Powermonger is another of those games where you get to play ruler, build your settlements and armies, and conquer other lands. It also has diplomacy options, and online multiplayer, giving it extra depth. Since the world are pretty big, mastering the zoom function is important. (just like using the real google maps)
The Secret of Monkey Island, like Loom, shows Lucasfilm's continued success is not a fluke, or dependent on the Star Wars name. Another cool adventure game with tons of attention to detail, and a multitude of inventive puzzles to solve, this may well have you tearing your hair out at some of the trickier puzzles.
Faces is the latest puzzle game from the creators of Tetris. This gets a rather more negative review, as it is rather more frustrating than that game, with a bad run of pieces virtually guaranteeing defeat no matter how good you are. Obviously they haven't got the right balance of skill and luck going this time.
Harpoon is a submarine wargame. It's in black and white, but that doesn't hurt it too much. Not a bad simulation at all.
Mega Man III welcomes Rush to his side, and starts the process that would gradually result in the series picking up RPG elements and growing into a multigenre franchise where many of the the supporting characters are as popular as the main one. It doesn't actually get a brilliant review in itself, curiously. Well, technically, it does have it's flaws, and fighting the bosses can be a frustrating process. (I always had to save up tons of energy tanks to get through quite a few of them.) I suppose it's another case of critical and commercial success diverging.
Highly amusingly, Curse of the Azure Bonds gets put in the buggies this month, as it's mac version crashed whenever they tried to run it in colour. This does not stop them from putting more hints for it in the clue corner. Oh, the constant hassles of upgrading and compatibility. One reason consoles continue to be popular, despite frequently being several years behind computers in terms of raw power and sophistication.
Bane of the cosmic forge also gets advertised immediately after the column. With a topless female demon, (nipples strategically obscured, of course) no less. Surprised they can get away with that, really. Guess it is sticking to the letter of their code. And what the executives don't know can't hurt them.
Sage advice claws back another 2/3rds of a page. Skip is tougher than the naysayers think. You'll see.
How much weight can you carry while flying (As much as normal. Your definition of normal may vary)
Your statement in issue 157 contradicts the DMG (Not really. It's the same difference)
How does invisibilty work. Why isn't it an alteration. (it bends light. If you used that criteria all spells would be alterations. It's already the overpowered catchall school.
We won't put spells in it unless we really can't justify it being somwhere else. )
Why can't psionicists be chaotic (their minds go off on a tangent before they can actually do anything significant )
Do druids have to be completely neutral, or just one component (Completely! We will not budge on this, just as we will not budge on the paladin's lawful goodness!)
Alignment sucks! Druids have to oppose their party at every turn to preserve the balance! This makes no sense! (No, You make no sense! Preserving the cosmic balance does not involve doing one chaotic evil deed per lawful good one. The cycle of the universe can absorb minor shifts anyway. Druids just prevent permanent ascendancy by any one side. Also, don't confuse lawful pompous busybody with lawful good. Blah blah blah blah, proper way to do things, sense of perspective blah blah blah.)
Fiction: Thor goes fishing by Lois Tilton. Moderately in theme here, with a rather humorous little mythical tale. Loki's up to his usual trickery, sending Thor off to make an idiot of himself with a few well placed jibes, which he then takes full advantage of. The epic effects gods can have on the world, even without thinking about it, are played up for laughs, and the whole thing seems like good inspiration for a more lighthearted Nobilis game. Cosmic power doesn't have to mean constantly battling epic foes, maintaining a tedious policy of noninterference in the lives of mortals you could squash like bugs and worrying about the balance of the universe. It can mean doing 7 impossible things before breakfast, creating a universe in the morning, then revamping another one by siring a messiah on a nice virgin (while leaving her physically intact of course) in the evening. And that does sound like a good deal more fun. So this is another piece that's both entertaining and moderately thought provoking. Sometimes, you've just gotta cut loose.
TSR previews: First up, unsurprisingly, is the new D&D basic set. This time revised by Troy Denning. Even more than last time, when Frank Mentzer was in charge, it's designed to be newbie friendly. Have they gone too far into patronising territory? Are computer games now too big, shiny and distracting? In any case, you don't see as many people talking fondly about this version being their first experience as often as the Moldvay and Mentzer ones, despite Denning being a pretty big name. What's with that?
Marvel superheroes also gets a new basic set this month. Jeff Grubb is still the guy in charge here, and he also wants to expand their gaming base. Lure those comics fans in. Lure, lure I say! Don't just read stories about superheroes, create your own! I suppose that's one of the biggest barriers to entry. This is not a hobby for the lazy, particularly on the DM's side.
The forgotten realms heads up north to FA2: Nightmare Keep. Rick Swan takes us on a relatively traditional dungeon crawl. Treasure, guarded by monsters. What more could an adventure ask for? Do you really want to be like Drizzt, angsting over stuff as in Sojourn, the final book of his prequel trilogy.
Dragonlance is also obsessed with elves. DLS2: Tree lords lets us see the Silvanesti, and save them as well. Mind you, given what wankers they've generally been in the books, I do not find myself particularly inclined to do so.
Ravenloft gets their very own monstrous compendium. Yesss, preciouss, ssseee what horrors lie within the missstssess. Relatively few creatures here, but they get more descriptive depth than other world's ones, for extra creepiness.
On the generic AD&D side, we have HR1: Vikings. Rune magic, longboats, and all kinds of Historically Accurate stuff. You just know there's more of these on the way to cover other periods.
And Buck Roger's second trilogy comes to a close. Matrix Cubed sees the fate of the inner planets hang in the balance. So let's save them, and move onto the outer ones, already! Pretty obvious, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991
part 4/4
Novel ideas: In another case of related stuff being close together, here we have some elaboration on Dragonlance's novel schedule for the year. Doing prequels is a particular headache, especially when you're not the original author. You have to work hard to maintain continuity and characterization, and still tell an interesting story. And of course, despite being fully aware of these dangers, more than a few of the novels of the next few years will fail at one or the other. Slightly more interesting is psychoanalysing Krynn's approach to relationships. The tendency for drama and polarized divisions of good and evil means that relationships are simultaneously highly valued, and prone to tensions breaking them up for reasons that would seem stupid to most objective observers. And the good guys wind up enemies of other good guys over petty issues, just like the bad guys. I suppose healthy relationships are an enemy of the conditions that produce good stories. Still, it does differ very dramatically from my personal experiences in both gaming and reality, so I guess it's another reason dragonlance has never really resonated with me. I guess it's good to quantify things like that, rather than leaving it to gut reactions.
Chessex realize that it makes more sense to put the number on a D4 on the top rather than the bottom of each side. Such an obvious refinement, and now tons of companies do it. Now that's progress.
The marvel-phile: Some fairly substantial changes to the usual format here this month. This is where they start using this column as a regular airing ground for changes in existing characters. I'm vaguely surprised that this was only implemented so close to when I started reading, as it felt like a regular feature then. Course, for this first one, they need to do a whole ton of catching up, trying to fill us in on most of the big events of the last couple of years. Entire superteams have been disbanded, or killed and brought back to life. Quite a few villains are also dead - for now. Ghost rider has a new host, The human torch & rogue have lost their powers, Hawkeye is a cyborg, some more old WWII characters have been released from suspension chambers, Dr Druid has hair, :) and the hulk is temporarily in control of himself. Looks like they've now got an active metaplot busy with regular worldshaking events and more averted apocalypses than healthy balanced breakfasts. The next few years are going to be interesting times for them, and it looks like we'll get quite a bit more second hand news than we have been.
As with most features where they break or change format, this is rather more interesting than a standard entry, and in this case is also rather funny. As I've said before, you don't even have to try to see the funny side of comic worlds, especially when everything that happened is deconstructed and put together in one place like this. Get the image macros ready, and let's hope the hologram covers show up when scanned.
Look sharp!: Hmm. For some reason they've decided to put a crossword in. That's a turnup for the books. Since Roger's also put a questionnaire in his editorial, I wonder if this'll become a regular occurrence. Well, they are a nice part of many people's everyday newspaper reading, and good mental exercise to boot, so it's not beyond the bounds of probability. Still, I have enough on my plate reviewing all this stuff. I don't feel the desire to solve it as well. I'm sure there are interesting insights to be derived from studying newspaper crosswords across the decades and analyzing them statistically, but I really don't have time for that.
Vampire! Man's darkest fear walks the earth! Now that's a good teaser. Soon the swine will stalk the land, bringing the dreaded plagues of narrativism and goth girls with them. Are you ready to become the monster? I find it interesting that the distributor, Esdevium, gets higher billing than White Wolf, the company making the game. What's all that about?
Treasures more real: Following on from last month, we have another article that points out how broken D&D's economics are, and how much customizing stuff can add to the interest of your game. Where do all those thousands of GP monsters have come from? What is it's history? What condition is it in? Figuring that out for every item found would be a difficult and tedious process. What's a good solution for this? Random Tables! Say hello to another largely unconnected subsystem. Y-y-y-yawn. Using this will require quite a bit of rerouting of your campaign, especially if you try it midway through. And you'll still have to think up the specifics, even if this provides the generalities. So laudable intentions, but inadequate execution. Another bit of filler to make up the page count.
Harpers bold: Ed Greenwood contributes a couple of twinked out Harpers this month. Jhastar Belnold and Talantra Bowgentle. Neither has a single ability score below 15, and both have met big names in the Realms history and engaged in heroics that have brought them a modest degree of notoriety of their own. Their magical item collections are rather boring and practical though, and they have ridiculously little money for characters of their level. They definitely feel like something that was whipped up to tell a story rather than actually generated through rolling dice and built up through actual play. He encourages you to have them show up randomly in the wilderness and /steal the thunder from/ help out your group. This showcases one of the worst aspects of the Realms, that it can be so chock-a-bloc with powerful good guys that there just doesn't seem to be room for your adventurers to make any difference. This does not make for very pleasing reading, and is one of the worst things he's ever contributed to the magazine, even more annoying than spellfire. I wash my hands of this.
Why spy?: Espionage stuff has definitely been on the decline in here over the past couple of years. They haven't released any books for Top Secret for nearly a year now, and it doesn't look like any are on the schedule either. It's decade long run is winding down. And that people are forgetting about this is reinforced by an article aimed heavily at the newcomer, trying very hard to get more people to try out this fun little genre. It's actually a pretty good one, as well as being a full 7 pages long, taking you through the conventions of the genre and giving lots of advice helpful to both GM and players. Still, it doesn't change that all of this has been said before in the magazine, albeit not as well in many cases. If I'd started reading the magazine a few issues earlier, I would have loved this. But now, it stands as a stark reminder of the hard balancing act between providing material aimed at newbies and long time readers that they have to do. A problem that's only going to get worse for both me and them.
2 sided dice, courtesy of the US mint? Someone's taking the piss here. I really don't think your currency needs advertising.
Ironically, Chill is also releasing a vampire sourcebook at the very same time. I find this amusing.
Dragonmirth has more bloody jesters. Even an edition change can't shake them off. Yamara still hasn't realized her powers. Twilight empire has a total baba yaga rip-off.
Through the looking glass: Having fulfilled his ridiculous quotient for the year last month, Robert keeps things serious this time. The lead bill is currently on hold due to the USA's current military ventures, so let's take advantage of this fact and get buying and painting. Responsibly of course, for we are a family friendly magazine. This month's minis are: A whole bunch of dwarves. A dragon holding a crystal ball. A rather drunk leprechaun (which leads Robert to once again stress to our young audience that Drinking Is Wrong in classic 80's cartoon conclusion stylee :p ) A rather neat set of hex blocks that look good for constructing impromptu maps. And a bunch of officially licensed Drow. With everything getting between 4 and 5 stars, there's no great dirt dishing or other interesting stuff going on here, humorous asides apart.
War law. Mass combat for rolemaster. It's a snappy name. I'll bet the contents aren't nearly so cool and easy to understand though.
Another flawed but fascinating issue, with plenty of useful stuff, and a whole bunch of important historical markers which also trip my personal nostalgia buttons. V:tM, Mega man, the new Princess Ark, and plenty of familiar bits of goofy yet usable humour. The place really feels like home. Before long I'll have surpassed my original class levels with my new one, and be able to draw upon the powers of both classes freely. Pretty awesome, eh? I can't wait to get through these next few issues.
Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. At last, the magazine has reached it's greatest regular size. We've now reached the era where they were producing the greatest amount of official D&D material each month, both here and in terms of general supplements. (Whether this was a golden age or a golden shower is very much a matter of opinion, but we are unlikely to ever see them produce this much again.) While there are a few specials that are even larger, this is the size it maintains throughout the majority of the decade, before starting to shrink again. At last, the issues won't keep taking longer and longer to get through. Whew. Funny to think that I'm now regularly going through ones bigger than the one that caused so much surprise, way back in 1980. I guess it's like a frog in boiling water. Turn the heat up gradually, and it doesn't realize just how bad things are for it. Or more positively, it's like gradually moving up through weight classes by bodybuilding. You've got to warm up properly, prepare and practice. Which curiously, is also the theme of the issue. That's a new one on me, but an idea I could see yielding some valuable material. As long as the result isn't characters buffing themselves up tediously before each battle, and having to keep track of all the changes to their stats. Let's see what we can see see see.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking for more DM'ing advice. The stuff in the books just isn't enough. You've come to the right place. Roger can point out dozens of articles in the magazine's history that help with this, and intends to publish more in the future. Good luck collecting them all though.
A letter from someone who's recently picked up a disability about the article they did on that. Once again, Roger is pretty helpful, proving that he knows the history of the magazine inside out, in even greater depth than I do. Well, 10 years compared to 2, it'd be more worrying if he didn't. However, this does have the side effect of reminding me how little attention they've given to race and sexuality and how they relate to gaming. You'd think they'd have found the space for at least one article in in 16 years. No wonder roleplaying has wound up such a whitebread hobby.
A letter from someone having trouble keeping all the various characters and organizations in the Forgotten Realms straight. It's not easy, and it's only going to get harder. Good luck.
Editorial: Or let's see just how much of a dick Roger can be when he puts his mind too it, as he reveals the answers to last month's questionnaire. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who's played his adventures, such as Baba Yaga's hut and The Twofold Talisman. There are millions of ways you can do this job wrong, and every sentence is a minefield, just waiting to blow your foot off if you make a wrong step. Part of this is due to the persistent exceptionalism is the english language, much is due to the bloating of supplements (including changes made due to enshrining of previous editorial errors), part is due to legal issues of copyright, TSR's family friendly policy, etc, and sometimes there is no right answer, so you'll have to make the choice, and then try and get other people to stick to it. Is it any wonder he's a little mad by now. Good thing the other editors have got his back. (or is that sniggering at him behind his back :p ) This all feels a bit meanspirited, like he's saying I'm the editor of Dragon Magazine, and you're not, so don't get uppity when I make a few mistakes. Entertaining, but certainly not likable.
New weapons for old: Or welcome to the arms race. In real life, weapons varied quite substantially from century to century, as people constantly looked for an edge, and took advantage of new construction technologies. Here's some ideas that seem based upon those principles. Crossbows with more than one shaft, swords designed to pierce armour, hypersharpened swords that do extra damage for the first few hits, triple balled morningstars (these are particularly twinky, with a huge dps average, especially if you have a strength bonus) there is a certain degree of power creep here compared with core weapons. Since many of them do DX+1 damage, this also means they're less likely to whiff over long campaigns. Think carefully about allowing these ones, especially if you don't track the speed factors, space required and weapon vs armor tables that provide an element of rebalancing.
Creative casting: Ah yes, this old chessnut. Looks like the arms race is taking place here as well. Turning spells to uses other than those their designers intended is a tradition as old as the first gaming group. It's been incorporated into a few articles, and somewhat more forum letters, but hasn't got it's own article before. This is the kind of thing I delight in both as a DM and a player. It serves to remind us that a magic-user can usurp a thief's job with very little effort, continual light is actually one of the most awesome spells in the game, monster summoning is useful for so much more than combat, especially when you can pick the creature, and anything created can be sold, even if it's existence is only temporary. A couple of these look like they're really pushing the limits of the rules, and some DM's would disallow those interpretations, and quite a few more would be nerfed deliberately so these tricks definitely won't work in 3rd ed. (and even fewer in 3.5 and 4e. ) Still, mustn't let the spoilsports get us down. There's always a few loopholes somewhere in a ruleset. It's up to you to find them and abuse them, or possibly fix them if you're that way inclined. And that kind of arms race can be almost as fun as the IC action.
Learn something new every day: More new nonweapon proficiencies. Even more than spells, they're easy to think up, as you just look around and draw direct from reality, little adaption needed. Although as mentioned before, you don't have nearly enough slots to buy even the ones essential to your concept if you have a complex job. Still, here's 10 more skills, that will eat up a total of 17 slots. Alchemy, Astronomy, Botany, Calligraphy, Cartography, Diplomacy, Geology, Orienteering, Street Fighting, and Street Sense. Not particularly bad on their own (apart from street fighting, which really should be a weapon proficiency, putting it in nonweapon stuff causes the same issue as Palladium's boxing skill in terms of giving advantages to people who powergame for combat potential over everything else. ) they once again rub in the fact that you just don't have enough skills in AD&D. Which means unlike new spells and items, who's appearance is frequently treated with glee, these will be far less likely to come in handy in your own games. Slightly dispiriting, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991
part 2/5
The strategy of tactics: Ahh, now this is one that is pretty influential, and becomes standard next edition, as well as having equivalents in tons of other games. Unlike two previous articles that have introduced a bunch of special tricks that you need to buy to use well, this gives 4 basic tactics anyone can use. Fighting defensively, forgoing attack entirely for full defense, and attacking with two degrees of extra recklessness that increase your chances of hitting and being hit. A small addition that adds quite a bit to your feeling of choice in combat, without unbalancing things in particular, and lets player skill play a slightly larger part in determining the outcome of battles. This is one I strongly approve of. Every game where combat is a major part should involve a decent degree of valid choices in your combat options. Just trading blows back and forth until someone falls gets old all too soon. Incorporating something like this into your games is definitely one I recommend.
TSR previews: The tome of magic! New spheres, Quest spells, Wild mages and elementalists. And shitloads of magic items and spells. Just the thing to have all your spellcasters salivating over the cool new stuff they can do. Future products reference this one a lot, so like Legends and Lore, get ready to have to buy it and treat it as a de facto corebook to keep up with the joneses.
Far less essential are the TSR collectors cards. Buy tons of packs and trade the duplicates with your friends to get a full set. Gotta catch 'em all! Bleah. Keep it away.
For those of you who couldn't be bothered with getting every novel and module last year, FR12: Horde campaign gives you the big picture, plus more info on their lifestyles and environment in general. You probably want the boxed set first to make sense of this though.
Spelljammer has an interesting premise this month. SJ4: Under the dark fist. An entire crystal sphere has fallen to the forces of evil, and they're planing to do some major exporting of their primary produce. High level adventurers are needed to foil them before they flood the universe with cut price mass produced evil overlords driving the home grown ones out of business. Or something. ;)
Marvel Superheroes are still in an X-menish mood with MSL1: X-terminate. It's those stupid great death robot squads, isn't it. Never build intelligent death robots. It's just asking for trouble.
And finally, Buck Rogers gives us his third module. 25CS3: A matter of Gravitol. Well, artificial gravity is pretty critical to every sci-fi series, simply due to the prohibitive cost of filming zero gee regularly. So in a logical universe, controlling the resources responsible for it would be a very profitable business. This doesn't sound too bad, actually. I must be getting used to these guys.
The voyage of the princess ark: Haldemar starts to realize the more awkward side of his awesome new ship. Now she has a personality, and isn't afraid to show it, often being stroppy and gainsaying his commands. On the other hand, this probably also saves his life. When he winds up being captured again, this time by the Rajah of Jaibul, she senses this and homes in on him even though the crew don't know what do do.
Seems like we have an obvious india analogue in this month's travelogue section. Sind has a jungle section, some deserty badlands, and mountains in the north. This is next to the eastern europe analogue, for no apparent reason. Ahh, Mystara, where Immortal meddling means nations are just placed on the map like Sims houses, with weather and sociopolitics forced into unnatural shapes by the constant meddling from above. It's still considerably more realistic than ravenloft, where the things in charge barely even pretend there's an underlying world beyond the psychodrama prisons made for their amusement. Still, as long as it's a fun adventure, what does it matter if the world-building's a little sketchy.
The role of books: D'shai by Joel Rosenberg creates a world where everyone has some form of magic, except of course the unfortunate protagonist. This would be cause for enough angst in itself, but he also has to deal with being accused of murder as well. As with his previous books, it's real elements are well researched, and the fantasy elements are quite distinctive. He's as popular as ever around here.
The adept by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris gets a rather negative review, apparently lacking the best qualities of both writers. Might as well have not collaborated at all then.
Goblin moon by Teresa Edgerton is a very theatrically written swashbuckling tale. With highly dramatic, easily visualised scenes, and highly active characters, it sounds like a fun one.
Indiana jones and the peril at delphi by Rob MacGregor is another one that fails to take advantage of it's potential, as the writer seems to consciously reject pulp tropes without putting anything better in their place. Formulas are formulas for a reason, even if you personally don't like them.
The dagger and the cross by Judith Tarr manages to combine a whole bunch of elements without them getting short shrift. Set in Jerusalem during the crusades, it shows the other side of the conflicts covered in her previous book, while still managing to work as a standalone novel.
A book dragon by Donn Kushner is a pretty illustrated book about a dragon who has a book written about him, and then guards that book. Meta, eh? The illustrations demonstrate a similar sense of humour. It's probably a bit too slight a story to stand without the illustrations, but hopefully that won't become an issue.
The last unicorn by Peter S Beagle has also recently got an illustrated edition. This is not such a success, however, with the style of the drawings actively clashing with that of the writing. Not that it ruins the story, which is good enough on it's own, but it certainly doesn't add to it the way the previous one does.
Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991
part 3/5
The marvel-phile: Ghost Rider is back, with a new host! The cycle of life (and IP maintenance) continues. This of course means we get to go through the whole fun of doing the introductory and discovery stories again, only differently, as befits the personality of the new rider. They also introduce a new character who's never going to stick as a proprietary name, simply called Ghost. (which frankly, is right down there with Shadow as a supervillain name. And at least a hedgehog is better company than Patrick Suayzee) It's stuff like this that makes me appreciate the article about supers name in Aberrant more.
Also of note here are two issues that Dale raises. The first is a mechanical one. What exactly does being more invisible or intangible mean anyway? Actually a fairly simple and elegant solution to this. It only matters when it comes to conflicting powers rolling off against each other. Another small but significant bit of design technology that'll come into common use over the next decade. The other is a philosophical one on the nature of heroism, when applied to badass antiheroes who are almost as much a monster as the things they fight. Which is rather spoiled by a little editing error which means he says the opposite of what he intends to say. Still, the overall point is valid, and is very applicable to the media of the decade, as we see the rise of grimdark and everything that goes with it. So this might not be as funny as some of Jeff's old installments, but it is quite thought provoking. You can definitely use these as pointers to shape your own game.
The role of computers: The Lord of the Rings, vol 1 sees another game company pull out the stops to take advantage of the potential megasales. It makes sure that while the areas are familiar from the map, you get plenty of freedom to visit them out of order and find your own solution to the dangers besetting you. It may in fact be a little too big and slow, with lots of walking needed to get places, but it does capture the hobbit style of adventuring nicely.
Elvira is also an adventure game, albeit rather different. Explore a massive mansion and clear out all the monsters for our expansively cleavaged host. Combat, exploration, and lots of figuring out what items need to be combined with other ones to make potions & stuff to solve puzzles. Oh, and blood and guts. Yay for avoiding bowdlerisation.
Eye of Horus gets a rather poor review, as they simply found it boring. That's no good at all for a game.
Archipelegos fares somewhat better, even if it does have a plot that seems rather captain planet. Save the world by destroying the toxic obelisks and the viral trees and necromancers protecting them. Oh, if only it were that easy. POLLUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!
The Secret missions expansion disc for Wing Commander does rather nicely for itself, building on the original with harder new missions and a nice storyline linking them together. Nothing like a bit of continuity to hold things together.
Shadow of the beast I & II both get 5 stars. The first is a well done action game, while the second builds on that to add adventure game elements like cutscenes, talking to people and buying stuff.
Blazing Lazers is another arcade shoot-em-up where you fly a ship through space, kill aliens, and collect power-ups. They think it's a pretty good example of it's type.
Command H.Q. gets our buggies award this time, for it's badly designed copy protection. Once again, they make cheating seem the more attractive option, thus hurting their own cause.
Fiction: Swordfish and saucery by Deborah Millitello. One of our occasional contributors manages to get another piece published. It's a rather clever little story too, both in terms of the IC plotting and the deliberate expectation shifting wordplay. Rereading it, you can see all kinds of little details which are actually significant. One to draw upon if you want to write mysteries where the answer is in plain sight, but the players still probably won't get it until it's too late. Looks like the fiction department here is as strong and varied as ever.
Role-playing reviews decides to have another round of covering various game's magic systems. Ever popular, and often quite complex, it's no surprise that supplements creating new ones and expanding on existing ones continue to come thick and fast. As with last time, before starting on the reviews, Ken talks a bit about the magic systems in various games. They have a history as long as roleplaying itself, and they continue to evolve. What interesting ideas have they come up with in the last couple of years?
Elemental companion is a Rolemaster supplement. Unsurprisingly, this creates a variant upon the D&D elemental plane principle, and then details the spellcasters who draw their powers direct from the various elemental planes. Since they have lots of overarching effects that are applied to each element, this makes the spell system quite flexible and good for applying creatively. They also detail a whole bunch of monsters, and rules for creating hybrids of terrestrial and elemental creatures. Seems likely 3e was influenced by ideas like this. Unsurprisingly, the rules are rather more complex and table heavy than D&D, with their distinct approach to horrible ironic deaths fully present. Good luck playing one character long enough to get those awesome 50th level spells.
The complete wizards handbook gets a fairly positive review. The new crunch is great, just what the doctor ordered. The roleplaying advice is less praised, with ken finding it a bit wishy-washy, and some bits feel like filler to pad out the page count. No great disagreements with you there. It's the crunch we remember and keep coming back too, because it's the stuff our characters are actually using again and again.
Aysle is a worldbook for TORG, and it's associated magic system. The high fantasy genre region, it's a torus shaped world which has it's day/night cycle controlled by the sun bobbing up and down in the middle. This makes mapping pretty interesting. Everyone has at least basic spellcasting capabilities, which their economy revolves around. There is objective good and evil, and big chunks of advanced tech don't work. As with all the other realities in TORG, it's got people from it who are trying to take over the world, and impose their axioms of reality on ours, which makes for extra fun culture clashes. This makes for a great backdrop for spectacular plane spanning battles, but the worldbuilding rarely goes beyond that backdrop level. If you want to tone down the cinematicness and delve into the logical ramifications of their magic system on the development of societies there, you'll have to do it yourself.
Dark Conspiracy. More modern day horror gaming coming out at around the same time as the WoD and Chill. Must have been something in the water.
Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991
part 4/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ed Greenwood turns his mind to ends more useful than last month, with another collection of quirky magical items. Back in issue 74 he gave us seven swords, now he gives us a dozen daggers. (so what we need are nine clubs with nails in, eight bohemian ear spoons, six spears a-stabbing, FIVE FAUCHARD-FORKS! Four flails lashing, three tridents twirling, and possibly a partridge in a pear tree. Can you guess when I wrote this bit :p) Since these collections from him are generally pretty good, I'm quite optimistic about this. Let's see what cool tricks he's come up with this time.
Blades of banishing dispel wards by cutting through them. Just the thing for a fighter who distrusts most magic and doesn't have a wizard on the team.
Chill Blades not only hurt, they make you frostbitten and appropriately clumsy. This'll make fighting enemies with tons of hit points and big damage outputs a lot easier, as you can really wear them down.
Dagger of defiance make it near impossible to get rid of you magically. Another good antiscrewage one for a fighter expecting trouble.
Daggers of doomwarding give you a second chance in a pinch. Another thing that could be just what the doctor ordered. After all, what price your life in a world where save or die effects aren't uncommon.
Dragonfangs let you shoot (not very impressive) lightning bolts and kill dragons more easily. These ones are probably more appropriate for wizards who'd like an extra blasty effect for if they run out.
Fang Daggers have snakes heads and are poisonous. They're still not as nasty as most save-or-die monsters, but certainly not terrible. Once again we're seeing that new powers and creatures introduced here are actually frequently less terrifying than the old ones.
Grimwald's Dagger is another sadistic creation from the mage who brought you the healing screwing greymantle. (see issue 92) It makes horrible noises and causes you to suffer from uncontrollable laughter. I think we're definitely getting a good idea of his personality and approach to combat.
Invisible blades are pretty self explanatory. They're completely silent too. Just the thing for an assassin. Watch you don't cut yourself trying to find it again.
Jump Daggers let you go all wuxia, adding an awesome cinematic edge to your combat. They have another special use that's even cooler, and would never be allowed in later editions. Someone taking proper advantage of this would be very good at winning fights without anyone getting hurt.
Rust blades are made from rust monster antennae, and their special effect should be pretty obvious. Now anyone can screw you over and ruin all your stuff in combat. Muahahahaha!!!!!!
Speaking Daggers allow you to incorporate the worst aspects of mobile phones into your combat, repeating a prerecorded message every time they hit something. They can be both incredibly irritating, and used inventively as a secret way to deliver messages. Just the thing to give a villain with a fondness for Xanatos Gambits. Deedoloo dedoloo deduldumdedee. Genius.
Spider fangs let you generate webs, and pass through other people's. Another one that's good for dealing with people without directly fighting them.
So this is a fun collection, full of items that aren't generally obscenely powerful (People obviously prefer their unique named weapons a bit bigger and more impressive looking), but strongly useful, and which reward clever thinking and encourage playful action scenes. Looks like he's very much back on form.
Forum is interestingly multicultural this month.
Scott A Steinmetz talks about his convention experiences, and gives some advice on picking con games to join in on. Generally, the more choice, the better your chance of finding something you like, so big conventions have an edge. Don't be afraid to haggle, it's direct dealing, not a shop. And remember, it's not actually that hard to get involved as a GM or other volunteer either. The harder you go for it, the more fun you're likely to have.
Fabio Luis De Paoli speaks out in favour of letting evil characters indulge the full range of villainy if you allow them in your game. Otherwise it's just a bit wishy-washy. People need to remember it's only a game, and doing vile things to each other within it shouldn't spoil RL friendships.
Dan Howarth rebutts Toby Myers on the computer debate thing. They seem to be talking past one-another. Perils of written communication.
Kristian Teglbjaerg encourages you to build your character as an individual, with a proper backstory and such, rather than just part of a party to fill a role. Solo play can be a fun way of getting to really know your character. Ahh yes, another thing that has risen and then fallen again in D&D land, with 4e in particular encouraging you to build and play your characters as a team.
Love your thread. Seriously.
Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991
part 5/5
Sage advice is back to 2 1/2 pages. Nice to see Skip benefiting from the extra page count.
What climates is Survival appropriate for (Any terrestrial ones. For underwater or extraplanar, you'll need something else)
Do you need to spend a slot to be literate (yes. Note that magical notation is not a part of standard writing, and comes free with class training. Wizards can still be generally illiterate.)
How much does a kayak cost. Do you need a proficiency to use it (Hee. You said Kayak. Hyuk hyuk Ryuk ZOMG death note people! )
Do you need a skill for everything? You don't get enough slots! ( Yeah, these rules don't hold up without a decent degree of fiat and common sense to keep them lubricated. This is a strength, not a weakness! Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy rules lawyer, more interested in breaking the game than making it work! We don't want your kind around here. )
Can I backstab and apply specialization bonuses. (No. You can't combine abilities from different classes in the same action. It's one or the other. You aren't some filthy 0 level piecemeal character. You're a proud follower in the line of an archetypical skill set and you ought to act like it! )
Can you stack mirror image spells (sure, as long as they're additive, not multiplacative, why not. )
I still have questions about magic jar ( We shall have to do something about that spell. Whatever Skip says, it never seems to satisfy them. Why are they so damn attached to their souls and interested in what happens to them if you do various stuff anyway? )
How do you use flame arrow (All at once, with great brutality. But really, did you ever take this in place of the standard fireball? )
What happens to submerged creatures when you cast mud to rock ( Trappage. You'd better scramble fast, try and get out while it solidifies)
Do walls of iron fall over ( Quite easily, apparently. You may want to look at a more eco (and by eco we mean people, for being crushed to death is a very definite environmental hazard) friendly building option. )
Are undead, constructs and other technically nonalive monsters affected by polymorphing (yes, unless their descriptions say otherwise)
Do bags of holding generate air when closed (nope. It'll get stuffy soon if you try hiding there. )
Why do potions of heroism only work on warriors and 0 level characters (because otherwise they'd be multi-classed, and the calculations would be too bloody complicated. )
What are ranger's prime requisites ( Rather a lot. You ain't getting that XP bonus on method I matey)
How do | do ability checks for monsters (don't. Just roll a die and apply common sense. )
How high is a wall of sand (Ridiculously, skyscrapingly high. Um. Has Skip got the length and height mixed up? )
Doesn't 12+12=24 (only when there's nothing else in the equation. Pay attention. )
Dragonmirth offers an interesting solution to D&D economic problems. Yamara has to try and keep her husband under control, and not the other way around. Twilight empire finds an excuse to get the male characters in /skirts/ Kilts. :D
Through the looking glass: Like Ken before him, Robert opens up his reviewing techniques to us, for the sake of transparency and dealing with attempts at corruption. It's a small community, and it's amazing how petty people can be. Still, this shows it's easier to judge minis for objective technical quality and usefulness than it is books, where the value is in the ideas more than it is the object. A model either has flash lines and indistinct details or it doesn't. (although I know that you can get bad batches of a decent figure, just as I've sometimes got books with chunks of pages duplicated or upside down.) And if assembly is required, everyone appreciates instructions that don't look like they were translated from japanese to english by someone from india. Basically, the whole thing reads like a big "back off, buster!" to whichever company was trying to corrupt him into giving them higher marks, pointing out that no amount of bluster will change the fact that their minis have a certain degree of shoddy construction, and the rest of the magazine will back him up on this stance. Which is pretty cool, really. Anyone know which company that actually was? We certainly don't see this stuff in the magazine the way we did in the 70's.
After all that drama, the minis reviews are a bit of a letdown really. A bunch of battleships celebrating the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Bismark. It had a lifespan greater than the Titanic, but it too went down without really fulfilling it's potential. (which is probably a good thing in this case. ) Now you can get models of the various participants in these battles and reenact them. A wizard, an elf knight, and a bunch of cyberpunk samurai return us to fantasy terrains, with barbarians and dwarves providing the muscle for a fairly complete party. Business as usual, with everything getting between 4 and 5 stars. Can't see any companies complaining about that, ironically.
Another issue with quite a bit of stuff that's fun, quite a bit of stuff that's useful, and several things that are thought-provoking too. The tension and controversy that marked last year's output seems to be diminishing again, or at least becoming more manageable for them, which leaves them free to actually produce stuff that we both can and want to apply practically. The result is certainly quite nice for me, even if the themed sections are still very hit and miss. If they keep this showing up, their 15th birthday is going to be a good one. I hope they've got some nice presents for this big number.
Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. Hel-lo funky fifteen!!! How DO you feel?! Looks like they feel pretty good about themselves actually. A spectacular battle of good vs evil on the cover, a ribbon proclaiming it's their 15th anniversary, and that there's a game inside. It might not be quite as big a number as 5, 10, 20, or 25, but they seem to be making just as much effort. Get ready for power, finesse, and possibly barrel-scraping if we're unlucky. On your marks, get set, LET'S UNWRAP THOSE PRESENTS!
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from Allen Varney about the nonexistance of his game company. He's quite happy being a freelancer, although thank you very much whoever organised this prank, because it's given his profile a nice little boost. Do I smell the twisty hand of reverse psychology at work here?
A letter giving some more info about Dwight L. Moody. How very fascinating.
A letter pointing out that they reused a Dragonmirth gag in issues 149 and 165. It's a hard life, being an editor. If you don't spot the problem, your readership probably will.
Another letter pointing a whole bunch of interesting things about the history of D&D and the magazine. Like Roger has said before, independent invention happens, and the game is big enough that it's near impossible for one mortal to keep track of it.
Another letter from someone craving some sweet AD&D style intarweb gaming on their mac. Roger is only mildly helpful this time. It's still an unstable realm out there, plus there are copyright issues to consider. We can't go giving publicity to unlicenced games, even if they aren't for profit.
Editorial: Another 5 years have passed since they gave the magazine it's last big shake-up, and only slightly less since Roger became chief editor. This means that once again, it's time to look around, see what needs changing around to keep as much of the audience satisfied as possible. As with last time, it looks like a frustrating business, with the fanbase pulling in all directions. More AD&D stuff. More stuff for other games. More/less humour. More/less official rules and new crunch. And if you go all the way in the direction that has the majority, then you lose up to half your readership, and oh boy are you in trouble if that happens a few times on different axes. Plus the content of the magazine is still heavily influenced by what the freelancers send in. So once again, he's in a no-win situation, and has chosen to try and please all of the people enough of the time that they keep buying the magazine. Send in Stuff! The more you do, the greater the proportion of you we can reject, thus ensuring higher quality material in the magazine and greater choice of subjects! :p This all seems pretty familiar, although getting to find out Roger's personal preferences (many of which aren't surprising considering what he contributed in his writing days. ) is nice. Carry on as you are. That'll do you nicely for a good few years yet.
From hatchling to immortal guardian: Bruce Heard once again tries to push regular D&D to a more prominent place in the magazine singlehandedly. And in the process illustrates just how odd his ideas can be. It's not all anthropomorphic animals and direct rip-offs of real world cultures in the Known World. It's also cosmic beings who are intimately tied to the land and impact on the lives of everything there in blatant, large-scale ways that people don't realise the cause of, because we simply aren't conditioned to think in that way. So this creates a fairly complex life cycle and system for advancing through the size categories that looks like it'd be an almightily headache to play through, and which probably won't integrate with the known world's existing history. It all seems like the kind of stuff that'd be rather tricky to use in actual play, unless you were actually playing the dragons as PC's. Aside from the dragon souls and pocket dragons, which are adaptable to other ends, this does feel like a bit of a white elephant, pretty, detailed, lovingly crafted and not very useful to me. :sigh:
Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991
part 2/5
Crossing dragons with everything: Now this, on the other hand is easily recognisable as part of a long thread that gradually got a larger part in D&D as the years went by. They haven't got to the point where draconic hybrids become playable, or templates let you combine them with anything with minimal effort, but it's only a few years away. Greg Detwiler does his part to advance the idea here, with some rough guidelines and sample creations.
Mantidrakes look curiously similar to Arcanine from Pokemon, but let's not hold that against them. Since they can fly (clumsily) and have two quite effective ranged attacks, they can be pretty effective against unprepared adventurers. Strafing is one of those combat manoeuvres I don't remember seeing used that much in comparison to it's appearances in films.
Dracimera take an already draconic creature, and make it all the weirder, with two heads up front, and one where the tail should be. This means they get a lot of attacks all round with widely varying damages, and it's rather hard to backstab them. Should also make for an interesting fight.
Wyvern Drakes are also not very surprising, since wyverns are relations of dragons anyway. Once again, they give you the chance to combine the iconic breath weapon and immunities with the tactics of a somewhat weaker creature, so you don't have to deal with the vast array of mental and magical powers full dragons have, just a tough straight-up fight with flight, instadeath poison and almost as lethal breath weapons. Seems like that's a very definite axis of conflict amongst writers. The big smashy lizard vs cosmically connected wise creature of the ages battle is a tricky one, and in a game like D&D you need to cater to both ends.
On the whole this is another vaguely unsatisfying article, as the sample monsters aren't hugely interesting, and it lacks the rigour of later attempts at this.
The dragon's bestiary: We've certainly had no shortage of new dragon species over the years. But for their 15th anniversary they try something a little more ambitious, setting up a new draconic family in an attempt to get them into common use like the Gem Dragons. So say hello to the Ferrous Dragons. Now, there are actually only 3 naturally magnetic metals, but that doesn't stop them from stealing from the rest of the transition metals to make up the full 5. So this does seem like slightly shaky ground, especially as they don't have a particular theme binding them together like alignment or the celestial bureaucracy. Still, they've pulled together things with even less of a foundation before, so let's test this pudding the hard way.
Nickel dragons have a pretty critical typo in their statblock that means while they're intended to be the weakest, they're actually the toughest. Dear oh dear. That aside, like white dragons, they fill a dim but mobile niche, able to breathe underwater, swim, fly and assume gaseous form. They'll surprise you, pounce on you, and gobble you up.
Tungsten dragons are the nice guys of this extended family, complete with the lack of initiative that means they don't accomplish a huge amount in the wider world. They're also prone to being a bit intolerant. Seems a bit Pooterish, if he could make you spontaneously combust by glaring disapprovingly.
Cobalt dragons are as colourful and toxic as their namesake, with powers that encourage trickery and striking from a distance using the terrain to their advantage. They're a good rival for green dragons, in another example of evil not being even slightly monolithic.
Chromium dragons are also pretty nasty, their cruelty matching their shininess and capacity for complex chemical reactions. Their control over ice makes them another one very able to exploit their natural terrain to their advantage. Like all the previous ones, they have a natural rival, in this case silver dragons. Seems like the writer is setting these up for interesting conflicts.
Iron dragons are the bosses, of course. As neutrals, they can be friend or foe to your party, and as shapeshifters, they can get all over the place. They seem quite friendly to humans as a whole, which means one could serve as a mentor or employer to the party. They also get lots of rock controlling powers, curiously enough. Seems like all the ferrous dragons will have better designed lairs than the average dragon.
Gruaghlothor is their onomatopoeicly named ruler. He's a good deal more badass than Sardior was, keeping up with the 2nd ed upgrade, but not godly like bahamut and tiamat. This means he's a beatable adversary for high level parties if you can avoid being splatted by his breath weapon. He maintains their fairly solid set of design principles, with attention to lairs and rivalries paid. This has definitely been an article I've warmed too along the way, and looks like it could make a decent addition to a game, especially if you have lots of dragon NPC's that aren't immediately for the killing.
We get our first teaser for dark sun, although it doesn't reveal it's name. But the imagery is familiar enough. Great place to adventure in, but you wouldn't want to live there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991
part 3/5
Forum: Joey Kostura talks some more about various anime, concentrating on ones that are easily adaptable to gaming such as Megazone and Bubblegum Crisis. They do seem to be in the gradual word of mouth stage still, but every appearance like this gets the snowball rolling a little faster.
Paul Astle shows us how to ruin the life of a character who's become too powerful, and constantly shows off that power. Having to fight at the drop of a hat whenever some punk thinks he can challenge you gets rather tiresome, and you can't stay in full battle gear all the time. Sooner or later they're going to slip, unless they're just purely focussed killing machines. But then, some PC's are.
Duane VanderPol also replies to Robert Rogers' letter with some more technical suggestions about how to nerf powered armour in the Star Wars RPG. All the fiddly costs and rolls and forms, it's enough to drive you mad and make you give up. At least, that's the hope.
S. D. Anderson gives us a third set of tools to deal with overpowered power armour. If all else fails, make them fight a radioactive opponent. Then even if they win, they HAVE to dump the armour or slowly die from radiation poisoning. Man, people are mean.
Ben Ehrets has yet another suggestion. Corrosives. Rust monsters aren't just for D&D, they're for life. Actually, they'd fit right in in the Mos Eisley cantina, wouldn't they.
Michael R Federow brings in the arms race idea. You get more powerful, your enemies should get more powerful at approximately the same rate. Now that's just common sense. We can't be having with that here.
Dave Ewing completes the star wars depowering by telling the GM to tailor adventures to his PC's weak points. After all this, if Mr Rogers can't solve his problems, then he's obviously not very bright. Funny to think that this topic has made the forum the least D&D-centric it's ever been. Even the satanic controversy never managed that.
The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark moves westward along the coast, and reaches the divinarchy of Yavdlom. Bruce is increasingly giving us stories from many different points of view, as the various characters split up and do their own thing. This of course allows them to get in trouble that they could easily have handled if they stuck together, but we have to challenge them somehow. Haldemar gets paralyzed and tied up again, and is framed for the murder of the great prophet. Fortunately, the fact that most of the clerics there have prophetic powers means this doesn't stick, and he gets rescued and released pretty soon. I think a little vengeance is in order. After all, they can't sit around waiting for their enemies to strike next. They're not the kind of people who fatalistically accept whatever their destiny is going to be.
This month's crunch is more stuff on Yavdlom, and how it is governed. They read the destiny of people, and give them an importance commensurate with the amount of important stuff they are going to do in their life. Which may produce recursive results, as by giving them that power, they make them more able to fulfil that destiny. Still, it's a perfectly reasonable idea in a world where magic is common, and it does get around the problem of indolent hereditary nobles. It does run into problems where PC's are involved, which is where the typical cryptic non-interference clause comes in. Still, it's nice to see more experiments with strange forms of government. That's one thing that fantasy is very good for, that also has potential for useful applications in reality.
Fiction: a wing of wyverns by M C Sumner. Bringing D&D monsters and modern technology together is another thing that can be done in many ways. Here, it's used to tell an eco-parable about endangered species and the havoc that we unintentionally wreak on the environment. Somehow it's harder to stay concerned about the welfare of creatures that are able to eat you up with ease, even if they are rare and valuable. Even people who agree in principle with the idea that every species is sacred are likely to say "Not in my back yard" to a family of hungry little dragons. And both the PETA girl and the hard-nosed pragmatist in this story wind up coming to understand the other's viewpoint a little more. It's all a little moral of the dayish. And I'm not very keen on those, so on reflection, it's thumbs down time, despite there being several cool elements in it.
Chill once again beats white wolf to the punch with a lycanthropes sourcebook. Still, it's not who gets there first that really counts, it's who gets there best.
Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991
part 4/5
The role of computers: King's Quest V demonstrates that it's about time computers moved to CD's as their primary game distribution method, as putting a 12 mb game over 10 floppy disks sounds rather like torture to me, from both a coder and loader PoV. Still, all this data is reflected in the visuals, which do look pretty good for their time. Seems like a fairly standard point and click adventure game, in hindsight. Computer games have many more joys to show us in the future, as they grow ever more sophisticated.
Rise of the Dragon is another adventure game, this time a cyberpunk one where you play a hard-bitten PI who was kicked off the force for being a loose cannon. With action, talky bits, and movie-esque narrative devices, it appeals to them, and gets 5 stars.
Space: 1889 sees another RPG property converted to computer game form. It's certainly not just D&D that's jumping on that bandwagon. The sound is a bit crap, but the storyline isn't bad. The big problem is telling all the NPC's apart, which does slow down investigations quite a bit. So be prepared for frustrating situations where you have everything but one piece of the puzzle, and have to grind for that.
Dragon kings: Nothing to do with dark sun, I'm afraid. Still, another boardgame as the magazine's centrepiece rarely goes amiss, especially since it's both a C. C. Stoll one and in theme with the issue. Unfortunately, as with the last one, they forget to include the board in the scanning, making it once again useless to me. Seems like whoever scanned the archive is becoming less and less meticulous about peripherals and proper indexing and searchability as they go on. Which is understandable since they had to do 257 of them and the later issues are a lot bigger, but still damn annoying from a reader viewpoint. All the more so when the rules seem pretty good, giving you a decent terrain for up to 4 clans of dragons to have a real battle royale, sustaining and recovering from horrible wounds. If anyone still has this lying around in their collection, I'd strongly appreciate being able to get my hands on a scan of the board & pieces. Until then, I leave this case open.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms sees Ed doing a little rehash, a little new material in Drow of the Underdark. Browsing my copy of this is a very different experience now I see just how much of this stuff appeared in bits in this magazine, some of it a good decade ago now. We also see the start of this year's trilogy. Last year, they did mongols. This time it's off to Anauroch for some desert nomady fun in The Parched Sea, part one of the harpers trilogy. Troy Denning continues to produce both game and novel material prolifically.
Spelljammer is also mixing the two sides of publishing. Nigel Findley creates SJR4: Practical planetology. Lots of ideas on how to create your own world. Sounds fairly invaluable, if something like an extended version of an article here. It also gets it's first novel. Beyond the moons, part 1 of the cloakmaster cycle by David Cook. As is often the case, a normal guy from a normal planet (well, Krynn :p) is thrown into very weird situations. Just the way to sucker new people in.
Lankhmar is still getting a decent amount of attention as well. LNR2: Tales of Lankhmar has 7 more mini-adventures. Seems that's their preferred format for this world, paralleling the original short stories.
And finally, D&D gets a new introductory module for those who recently picked up the new basic set to grab. DDA3: Eye of Traladar. Just how easy and dumbed down will this one be?
The marvel-phile: They're Baaaaaaack. Not that surprising really, in a comic universe. The grim reaper has probably fitted a revolving door where heaven's gates used to be. Still, they don't always escape unscathed. Cameron Hodge, for example, has gone from a normal person with some unsavoury beliefs to an indestructible insane disembodied head with a cyborg body. (who is likely to be even more insane next time, after his method of ambulation was destroyed again, and he got buried. ) Speaking of the Grim Reaper, the Marvel version of him is back, stronger than ever, courtesy of Nekra, and equally reduced in sanity. Well, villains don't get buds offering up inspirational speeches to snap them out of their traumas. A good reminder that while comics may get a lot of flak for their frequent use of the reset button, there are some changes that stick, and these are generally the cool ones. Getting rid of the ones that prove unpopular is probably good for their long-term commercial survival. It's also a good demonstration how comic book changes are rarely as linear as character advancement in RPG's, with some substantial respecing taking place, and powers as often gained as lost. Seems like they've got lots of interesting stuff to report on for a while.
Stand up and be counted!: Or here's your opportunity to vote for this year's Gamers Choice awards. Act fast, for you have less than a month to get them in. Interestingly, they're purely write-in, rather than having a shortlist of nominees and letting you tick boxes. That should produce interesting results, if probably skewed heavily towards TSR stuff. I wonder if they'll post them up in here afterwards. We'll see in a few months time.
Role-playing reviews: Off to revisit Ars Magica this month. Another game that's been selling quite nicely and building up the supplements over the last couple of years. And they are still trying to give the rest of the hobby at least basic attention. Ken certainly seems rather fond of it, so this should provide a decent bit of exposition and promotion for me.
The order of hermes provides lots of background expansion for the 13 houses. It also introduces the concept of Twilight, which we'll be seeing again in another RPG about wizards by White Wolf. They're a bunch of morally ambiguous power hungry bastards who are always scheming and betraying each other for personal benefit, which also seems very familiar now, but is a refreshing change to Ken after years of games which have the PC's presented as heroic even if they aren't particularly in practice. No more heroes anymore. Seems like everyone's singing that tune lately.
The Tempest is an adventure path for the game that may or may not draw upon the shakespeare play of the same name. It's low on maps, random encounters, and all that solid stuff, and high on plot, NPC characterisations, little clues that pay off down the line, and the kind of adventure arcs that are tricky to pull off without at least a little railroading. Good luck.
Covenants of course is useful for both players and DM's. You want to put together a team that's more than just a bunch of disparate power-seekers, this does the job, giving both mechanical assistance, advice and examples. The strength of the fiction is praised, which is no surprise. They know what they want to encourage in their players and are putting in the effort to make it so. Once again plenty of elements that will become incredibly popular in the WoD are already present and invoking nostalgia.
The Saga pack is the least interesting of the bunch, basically being just a GM's screen and a bunch of pregen Grog stats for those of you who chew through them like 1st level characters in the tomb of horrors. One for completists mainly.
Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991
part 5/5
The pitfalls of game mastering: Ahh, another of these. Just the thing for anyone who's just started picking up the magazine. A point by point guide to what NOT to do when DM'ing. Which in a way is easier to figure out and implement than what TO do. Let's run through the list. Neither too generous or too stingy with the challenges and rewards be. Cut the cliches. What's my motivation, maaan? Let the player's choices be meaningful (this gets reiterated in a whole bunch of ways, discouraging railroading, deus ex machinas, cheating, and taking it for granted that they'll make a particular choice. Keep the world consistent and developing, not just some static backdrop for the players. (again, covered from a whole bunch of different angles, including reminding you not to make your NPC's know everything you do, give enough detail for the players to work from, and the players valid choices.) Don't allow the players to metagame, and keep the 4th wall fairly solid in general. IC Goofy humour is also a game killer. Learn the rules, but don't let them rule you. Don't play favourites among your players. Just because you're god of the game, does not mean you can lord it over the players IRL. About 2/3rds of these are mistakes I never even considered making, right from when I started playing. Still, the others are, and if I'd started reading the magazine an issue earlier, then my first few years of gaming might have been somewhat different. So it is a fairly valuable contribution, that's written in a way that makes it's advice easier to follow. (although I still often struggle to find the time and inspiration to do enough worldbuilding, even if I don't make the other mistakes any more) I can't hate on this one, even if much of it is rehashed.
Sage advice is really short again.
Can you stay in a maze spell longer than you have too. Can I abuse it in other ways ( Probably not. That would be too much hassle for us. )
Can innate shapechanging powers be dispelled (as long as you ain't in a true form)
Will anti-magic shell counter magic resistance (Ok, Skip has completely flipped from the pressure. Why would being resistant to magic prevent you from going inside something else that's resistant to magic. Two nos do not make a yes in this matter. )
What affects the calculation of the damage a fire shield inflicts (Nowt but the actual damage they do to you. Simple as that. )
Why can't globes of invulnerability move with the caster ( Because we say they can't. Nuh uh. We make the rules. You can't break them, or we'll take our toys and go home. )
Can you disrupt innate spell-like abilities ( no)
Can you attract an air envelope while on a planet (Oh, god, emergent physics strikes again. D&D is getting less and less realistic. Best say no for sanities sake. Oh, wait! Flurble Gibber flurble. How'd ya like some of that jello crate, mofo? )
Novel ideas: This month, they do for the forgotten realms what they did for Dragonlance a couple of months ago. The Maztica and Dark elf trilogies are drawing to a close, and in their place comes a new focus upon the Harpers, who are getting an extended ongoing novel series spanning the whole of the Realms. Troy Denning, Elaine Cunningham and Jean Rabe contribute the first three instalments. Meanwhile, R. A. Salvadore is taking a break from writing about Drizzt to produce the Cleric Quintet. One big difference between Krynn and Toril is that not everything ties together into one big story. It's a bigger world, with more loose threads winding all over the place and snarling up on things. Exactly why that proves more popular in the long run I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with greater variety of stories allowing it to appeal to a wider demographic. Or maybe it's due to better writers. In any case, lots of people are busily colouring in Ed's sketches. It's a good time for them. And this bit of promotion helps ensure that continues to be the case.
Dragonmirth has more knight-eating jokes. They're getting a bit stale, really. Yamara uses up another wish. Much courtly intrigue is had in twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Baby dragons! So kyoot! Don't you just want to take one home and turn it into your familiar? The creators of this month's first mini have done their job well. The rest of this column is devoted to draconic figures as well. Which I'm vaguely surprised they've never done before, but this column wasn't around for their 10th birthday, was it. So here's 9 more figures for you to fight with, or simply put on display. (well, dragon fights aren't that common in most games.) Two of them have a riders, one has a master, and one is fighting an angel. Two of them are from Julie Guthrie, who it seems has gone from winning awards to actually making a living at this stuff. One of them has a lot of heads. All get marks between 4 and 5 stars, showing that he's either cherry picking the good ones for the celebrations, or deliberately being over-gentle with his reviews again. Come on, give us some good slatings, something we can get worked up about. You call yourself a reviewer?
Yet another mixed bag, with both stuff that I like, and stuff that I'm not very keen on. Since there's slightly less useful stuff than dull stuff & promotion, it's probably another solid 5/10er. If the scanners had remembered the board, it might be a 6. Course, it's the next issue I'm really interested in. I haven't looked at it since I started this thread. How will it stand up to my new viewpoint? Will nostalgia influence my opinions. Guess we'll see tomorrow. Don't touch that dial folks.
Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. So we've finally reached the first issue I actually bought at the time. It's taken nearly two years, but we're here. Still even longer to go before we finish this, but from now on, I'm no longer looking at this from the perspective of a newcomer, even if I still haven't read many of these issues. Which is a fairly significant change really. This of course means you'll be hearing more about my personal experiences with the articles in this one. Hopefully that won't bore you.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter on the weight of coins. Very yawnworthy. The only notable thing is that Roger takes advantage of this to point out that money no longer gives you xp in 2nd ed. Which was certainly news to me when I bought this, so it's quite likely other people hadn't realised that either.
Two letters from people who find they have strong sympathies with wolves/werewolves in response to the stuff on vampires, and people talking getting inside their heads. Which makes the fact that Werewolf: the Apocalypse was the second world of darkness game seem very obvious in retrospect.
A letter from someone who strongly empathises with Kobolds, of all things. Actually a surprisingly common choice. Many people have a soft spot for the ultimate underdogs of D&D.
A letter from someone who empathises with rocks. man what. Actually, that's a sad story. Patronising older siblings suck.
A letter from someone who had sex with a wyvern while polymorphed. This obviously has them worrying about the consequences. Tee hee. This went completely over my pre-pubescent head the first time round. Once again, goes to show, with the desire to focus more of worldbuilding and ecology sometimes being at odds with the family friendly policy. We'll be seeing more on this topic in the future.
Editorial: Oh yes, I remember this well. A guest editorial by Michael Stackpole, on his recent experience with a burglar and his thoughts on his actions. We already know about the idiotic satanic accusations that surround the hobby, despite there being evidence that roleplaying actually reduces your odds of committing suicide & major crimes. (or at least, there is negative correlation. ) Here we see another bit of evidence disproving that stuff, albeit coming from the other way. When confronted by a burglar in reality, he didn't react even slightly like his character would have. Despite having a whole array of replica weapons he could have used to kill or threaten them with, he called 911 and then panicked and frightened them off by shouting. Goes to show doesn't it. Most people won't become badass psychopaths as a result of roleplaying, but at the same time, they're similarly unlikely to take the other extreme, and become merciful paragons of virtue who never compromise their principles, always keep their word and fulfil their obligations, no matter how great the adversity against them. Which is a bit depressing in a way. The call of mediocrity is strong in reality. Still, it shows that most people have no trouble subdividing their life and behaving in quite different ways fitting the circumstances.
Now, the big question is how you spot the people who are going to be a problem, and do something about it before they permanently fuck up their life, and quite possibly other people's as well. Another complicated issue, and one that could probably be handled a lot better. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and funding shortsightedness will wind up costing you a lot more later on. Still, let's not get caught up too much in the problems of humanity and the real world. Despite the fact that they do intrude regularly whenever we have to interact with one-another, and many of the more advanced games are built around making humanities quirks work for us rather than against us, this is not the place for trying to save the world. Not that it wouldn't be cool if someone did, and then said I owe it all to roleplaying, but what are the odds of that.
Who's who among dragons: Continuing on from the birthday issue, we have a piece on the territories of various notable dragons of the Known World. There have to be more than enough of them to maintain a breeding population, and some of them will wind up in charge. I haven't read this one in years, and looking at it again, I'm amazed at how much information Bruce fits into a small article. Even more than Ed, he really does have a knack for giving us the crucial details to make for fun adventures. In this case that's HD, personality details, relationships with the other dragons around, and pointers as to the kind of lair they have. This is one that I fell in love with on first reading, (Particularly Marudi, who I wound up pretending to be on the playground for several weeks after) and still seems like a very good bit of worldbuilding indeed, far more concise and effective than the bloated Wyrms of the North series. As with much of his stuff, this is both easily usable if you're playing in the right campaign world, and done in such a way that it makes doing similar stuff for your own game seem quick and easy. A perfect way to start off reading, really.
Hunting tanks is fun and easy: Top Secret continues get get occasional articles. When I first picked up the magazine, I assumed that meant it was still a healthy gameline like it was from my years out of date catalog that came with the basic set. Slightly saddening to realise it had already been put on hold for a good year now, and was tapering off in the magazine. Still, this is a fun, if rather crunchy little article that continues the military focus of the last few years, showing you how infantry and light vehicles can face tanks and not get completely pounded. Have those drama points at the ready folks, because it's not easy, but makes for pretty cool scenes. Nice to see this one again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991
part 2/5
The making of a monster: Now this is one that definitely shaped my gaming. A roleplaying advice piece focussed on getting you into the head of nonhuman creatures, with their IQ's differing drastically from yours, along with their senses, needs and goals. Put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself what you would do with their knowledge and resources if a bunch of adventurers came along. If they're smarter than you, then that can be simulated by allowing them a limited degree of metagaming, such as undefined contingency plans retroactively tailored towards the players actions. An ugly kludge, but better than the alternative. In any case, this was one of the things that rapidly broke the early habit of mindless hack and slashing, (the other being getting in legal trouble IC back at the homebase for attacking the neighbouring evil castle in my first campaign.) setting me on the path for trying out increasingly strange creatures and situations that culminated in the fun homebrewed stuff I did for the fair folk of Exalted in 2005, before starting to swing back towards examining the human condition again. It also has several other bits of cool advice, like monsters pretending to be other monsters, proper use of technology and natural abilities, and the joys of good collaborations. Another one that it's a joy to reread.
Care for a drink: The decanter of endless water. What a lovely device. This is another one that shaped my approach to playing the game, a strong reminder that you can get all kinds of uses out of many items and spells, and you always ought to be on the look out for that edge, for it may both save your characters lives and make for cool looking scenes as well. A fairly short article, this nonetheless has dozens of useful ideas for getting the most of an item that can produce unlimited water at high velocities. It's also a reminder how you can make established items more interesting by putting a minor twist on their powers, such as a decanter of endless lemonade instead of water. I thought it was really cool back then, and it still seems pretty decent now. Just the thing.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms finally gives mechanics for Doug Niles' pet project over the last year. Maztica gets a big spiffy boxed set. Strange new lands, magics and monsters are just waiting for you to explore them. Try not to lose your heart to the place, for many of the locals will take that phrase literally. Raven's Bluff is also a busy place these days. LC4:Port of Raven's Bluff examines the nautical side of living there. Pirates, sea monsters, hidden cliff face caves. There's plenty of adventure to be had just offshore.
Dragonlance is also getting a double helping this month. DLS3: Oak lords turns the spotlight on the Qualinesti. As usual, we only get to find out about them when a crisis happens. The novels, on the other hand are still focussed on the unedifying history of the Silvanesti. This time it's their human-elf racism that gets examined in The Kinslayer Wars. Time for them to learn from their own aesops.
Ravenloft fills in some more of it's big bads in RR1: Darklords. What naughty stuff did they do to get trapped here, and how intractably hard will it be to get rid of them? Like an ugly winestain on the carpet of reality, the demiplane of dread continues to grow.
On the generic side, we have DMGR3: Arms and equipment guide. If the complete fighters handbook didn't provide enough weapon pr0n, this is for you. Tons of illustrations of strange polearms for you to fap over. Gary would probably approve. We also have another strange product that feels like an inflated article from this magazine. The AD&D trivia game. As if standard trivial pursuit wasn't geeky enough. Who will be the biggest rules lawyer, and win the night?
D&D is back to the hollow world, in HWR1: Sons of Azca. More heart ripping fun for if Maztica just isn't enough. Can't you mix up your cultures a little more? Has someone been leaving their reference books lying round the office again?
Marvel Superheroes has another fairly high level adventure ready. MSL2: Warlord of Baluur. Not very well written copy here, but it does the job. Try to resolve an alien invasion peacefully? Tricky business.
Buck Rogers continues doing planet sourcebooks, with 25CR4: Luna. Well, it's practically a planet in it's own right anyway. Do I see any objections? :Rumble of thunder, howl of wolves: I thought not.
And finally, our generic novel this month is Token of Dragonsblood, by Damaris Cole. A Princess raised secretly as a commoner? There's a cliche we haven't seen here in a while. Oh well, once more onto the path of destiny.
Forum: James R. Collier replies to the criticism of The Enemy at the Gates. Just as the real world has fantastical areas like Hollywood or Dubai, where all the cool stuff is supported by a serious inflow of money from around the world, so should at least one or two magic heavy cities be possible in a campaign world, even with D&D's pricing system for employing spells commercially. When effects don't have an expiry date, even if you can only afford one every few years, they really add up. So let there be fantastic stuff.
Jager McConnell thinks that computer games can satisfy the roleplaying itch if done right, such as in the Ultima series. People are unlikely to react in the same way to all the situations, and a little randomisation can ensure that experiences are different even with the same player. Oh, and my 40 mb hard drive is more than big enough to handle a few roleplaying books. :D Bring on the digital age!
Glenn Pruitt also thinks that more advanced AI than they currently have could satisfy the GM'ing role. It might actually work. Take an advanced chatbot, fill it with all the data from the forgotten realms books and novels, and see what happens. It would be the biggest canon lawyer evar, and quite possibly insane as well, but it might get close to passing the Turing test.
Matt Heuser, on the other hand, remains dubious about computer adventure games. They're all a bunch of railroads where there are tons of things you can't do, that commonsensically you could in reality or with an actual DM to arbitrate them. Not that some modules don't do that as well. Rahasia sux! I'm guessing you never picked up the Dragonlance adventures if that's the one you criticise most. :p
Mario Sismondo often winds up playing additional PC's as well as DM'ing, but tries to do so fairly. Remember, they're people in the game, not avatars of you.
Daniel J. Cuomo also plays and DM's simultaneously, but does so in a group where the current DM rotates. This of course keeps people from abusing knowledge when they're god, because if they do it, the next person can do likewise or reverse their ill-gotten gains. The social contract is much easier to enforce when you aren't dependent on any one person.
Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991
part 3/5
The marvel-phile: Another example of the growth of dark edgy anti-heroes here. Darkhawk! Isn't that just a perfect name for this kind of character. Disillusioned about the law after witnessing his father taking bribes, he's discovered a magic amulet, which gives him powers, but the more he uses it, the more trouble he has controlling his temper, causing him to hurt the ones he loves, make stupid decisions in the heat of battle and drive people away. AAAAAAAAAngst!!! :shakes fist at sky: He even went on to join a superhero group called The Loners. (I have no words, save possibly oxymoronic) So this was another sign of the times that I thought was pretty awesome back then, but like shellsuits, getting off your face on E's and believing that the fall of the berlin wall meant the end of war and global tension, now just seems amusing and faintly embarrassing. Still, at least I can enjoy it ironically.
The role of books: Renegade by Gene DeWesse gets a better review than most Star Trek books have managed here. It doesn't venture too deep into the characterisations of the characters, but at least that means it doesn't mess them up like certain other writers.
Achilles choice by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes works rather better as theoretical sci-fi than an actual story. The psychological exploration that would give the themes of sacrifice for power resonance for the reviewer just aren't there.
Blind justice by S N Lewitt is reviewed in a somewhat pretentious way, as the reviewer tries to live up to the cleverness of the book. I do so love it when they try themed reviews. I shall have to experiment with doing a few myself.
The paradise war by Stephen Lawhead gets a moderately negative review. The mythical elements jarr with the self-invented ones, and the pacing is unpleasantly uneven. While curious about what happens next, the reviewer can't say he enjoyed it.
Good night, Mr Holmes by Carol Nelson Douglas is a book about Irene Adler, and her adventures before she crossed the master detective's path. It manages to both complement and contrast with the existing canon, with Irene and her sidekick putting their own spin on the mystery solving business.
The initiate brother by Sean Russel is an oriental adventure. (although not set in Kara-tur, despite using the same name for the empire) It gets a so-so review, doing ok as a story, but not actually feeling very oriental beyond the names. Needs moar research.
The voyage of the princess ark: Welcome to Slagovich. We get to see the precursor to the Red Steel setting here, as the Ark runs across a land poisoned by it's soil, and forced to rely on supplies of cinnabryl to alleviate the effects on people's minds. As this depletes when people touch it, and the stuff is also used as the primary currency there, this results in a rather unstable economic condition, prone to regular attacks of deflation. It's not all useless though, because some people have found ways to create powerful weapons and gain red-tinged magic powers that don't require components or correspond to regular wizard or cleric spells. How very intriguing. This is definitely deserving of some further investigation. Will they find out more about this? You'll have to wait and see.
In this month, we also finally get stats for Xerdon, who is proving to be easily the second most important PoV character. A maxed out Elf, he may not quite be the equal of Haldemar, but he's certainly no slouch, and if anyone's going to take over, it's him. We also see that the bloody morals brigade have penetrated here as well, resulting in them stepping very awkwardly around the topic of religion. This is definitely a part that feels quite different to read now I have the benefit of hindsight. So much context I was missing before, so many characters I now have a better understanding of. It's all tremendously satisfying.
The nature of the beast: A second minis article this month, this one focussing on painting monsters. Colour and fine detail, my dear, these are what make a mini captivating and lifelike. Even if it isn't a real creature, they usually have body parts drawn from them. And if not, then your imagination is the limit. One of those articles that is helpful because it give lots of specific examples of the effects they're aiming for and how they tried to achieve them. If you want to hone the synasthetic properties of your creations, then you should learn to think like this. I regularly use similar processes when composing music to try and get the right mood to match the lyrics, so this has probably been an inspiration in some small way. Can't say it's a particularly amazing article, but it more than does it's job.
The role of computers: Eye of the Beholder is our latest excursion to the Forgotten Realms. With graphics and sound substantially improved from previous games, it gives you a great dungeon-crawling experience, with the 3D interface meaning you can be attacked from behind if not careful. Just don't expect much actual roleplaying.
Buck Rogers: Countdown to doomsday is another prong of their multimedia assault with this property, once again proving it's getting a lot more money thrown at it than Gamma World or Top Secret ever did. It gets a fairly positive, but not
Dungeon Master:Chaos strikes back is a sequel where the difficulty level picks up where the first one left off, making it damn tricky if you come in with starting level characters. The first encounter in particular is a nightmare. So you'll need to persevere to get to the fun bits.
Lemmings is another classic game that caused me almost as much entertainment as Tetris, although it doesn't seem to have had quite the same longevity. Still damn cool though, and it's nice to be reminded of it after all these years.
Spirit of Excalibur sees you trying to unite the country after the death of King Arthur. They list the bad points first this time, but then go on to deliver a fairly positive review. Funny how that works, but at least it lets you decide if it's worth buying it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991
part 4/5
Fiction: Child of ocean by Eluki Bes Shahar. Another if our returning writers delivers a somewhat poetic piece which is essentially about deciding to say fuck you to destiny in a flowery way. Which when you consider her previous one was about denying the demands of your evil magical item and putting it to practical use, does make this a bit of a theme. Still, promoting themes of independence and believing in yourself is hardly a terrible thing, even if it can get a bit cliched and cheesy in the wrong hands. In this case though, I find myself appreciating the story a lot more than I did when I was young, as the questions of adulthood, what you have to sacrifice to achieve it, and if you even want to make those sacrifices at all obviously resonate in a way that I couldn't even conceive of then.
It's clobberin time!: A second superheroic article this month gets meta, looking at the roles superheroes play in their teams. The powers they have naturally push them towards contributing towards a full scale battle in a particular way, particularly when they are in a group. While not as regimented as 4e's role system, (particularly as many heroes fall into more than one category) this is certainly in the same vein, with tactical advice for both individuals and groups. This is another one that was probably an influence, getting me into looking for patterns and symmetry in character groups, and figuring out how to cover your weaknesses while striking at the enemies flaws. Still seems pretty decent, if a bit dated now. Tactical advice for teams is something they haven't covered much, despite it being crucial to playing D&D well. Hopefully they'll have something analogous for Top Secret as well before it disappears for good.
Role-playing reviews: Fittingly for my first issue, this is talking about introductory modules. At this point in time, the balance of releases has probably skewed a little too far in favour of experienced players. Most of the classic old B series are out of print, and AD&D 2nd ed does't seem to have an obvious introductory adventure at all. This is a real problem. Still, there are some adventures intended for 1st level characters out there, and as ever, Ken wants to help you buy the good ones, so you enjoy your game.
B11 kings festival & B12 kings harvest get fairly good results, both individually and chained together to introduce new players to both the dungeon crawling and role-playing sides of playing D&D. They might not be a keep on the borderlands beater, but they'll do the job. Ken also mentions a houserule of his that I quickly adopted, that of giving characters a bleeding out buffer equal to their Con score to make them less fragile (which was also used by Monte Cook later on) Guess that's another way this issue influenced me.
DDA1 Arena of Thyatis & DDA2 Legions of Thyatis get a somewhat less enthusiastic review. While a nice plot, it doesn't seem that well suited for a novice DM, and you'll either have to do a bit of railroading, or be ready to improvise when the players take a route the adventure isn't prepared for. Good luck.
DMGR1 Campaign sourcebook and catacomb guide is another recommended product. Full of advice for the inexperienced DM, and handy reminders for veterans, it's certainly a lot quicker to read through that than all the stuff from various issues of this magazine if you want a good checklist.
Dungeon master's design kit, on the other hand, doesn't do very well. Aaron Allston produces something that works by filling in forms, which bores Ken, and he suspects the average reader will agree. Only for the OCD then.
DLS1 New beginnings also gets poor marks for making learning the rules too much like work, and also being overly specific, not really working well unless you're playing a Dragonlance game set on Taladas. The odds of a player sticking around if this is their first experience don't seem particularly great.
LC3 Nightwatch in the living city, on thew other hand, gets top marks, having been honed to a fine sheen by it's extensive RPGA playtesting, while still having enough genericness to be applicable to fantasy cities other than raven's bluff. If this is your first experience, you're much more likely to become someone who thinks and talks their way through problems, rather than killing everything. Plus it doesn't take itself too seriously,
WG11 Puppets also gets a fairly positive review, with Ken considering the whimsical elements a plus. Well, he is also a Paranoia writer. And this kind of humour seems to be common even with TSR's best writers of this period, like Ed and Bruce. Like the fashion crimes of the 70's, it's tricky to judge them harshly for it, even if this is one of the modules that's considered rather embarrassing these days.
Conquer the solar system - By mail!: Hmm. I remember this one well as well. By this period, Jim Ward was very much part of the upper management, not one of the boys. And since that was my first impression of him, and his management approach, my impression wasn't that favourable. Course, even at that age, I quickly realised that he couldn't be that big a tyrant if they were publishing stuff like this in their own magazine, but it was still a little strange. It didn't seemlike the best way to promote your new game.
Of course, it all makes a lot more sense this time round. Buck Rogers was still the bosses baby, and so they really were constantly demanding impossible things from their employees, and meddling with the product. If anything, the experience of coding and playtesting the PbM was probably even more grueling and less funny than it comes off here. Still, this is the first Buck Rogers article the magazine has had in 10 issues, so my fears that it would wind up taking over a load of space in the magazine for a while haven't come to pass at all. Looks like the employees are managing to stymie Lorraine's :roll of thunder, stab of organ music: ambitions in all kinds of little ways. I wonder how long this managed to run before being shut down. Google is singularly unhelpful in finding out anything about this, just as it was with the old AD&D PbM.
Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991
part 5/5
Sage advice: Can you make more than one image at once with phantasmal force ( Probably not. The singular nature of the description makes the force bit of the title a bit of a misnomer)
Does Fly end when you land (Nah. That would be so easily got around it would be a joke)
Can you use at will abilities as often as you like (no, They generally still use up your standard act... oh, wait. Damn, there's Skip's precognition kicking in again. Skip hates it when that happens)
Psychic crush sucks (yeah, but it's the only attack mode that does real damage. We have to make it a bit less likely to work to compensate)
What does X mult mean (We have to make sure that their other powers scale with HD. Otherwise we'd be no better than 1st edition )
How much do siege weapons cost ( Whatever the market will bear. But we can't be having with adaptive economics around here. The guild cartels would throw a fit. And with the assassin's guild gone, who knows how they'd deal with you.)
How do you design a spelljammer from scratch and determine the cost (Too Complicated! Too Complicated! Skip cries uncle!)
Who is the attacker if two ships play chicken and ram each other (whoever wins initiative. Reroll ties. )
What happened to the new proficiencies for spelljammer (Drat. Must have fallen behind the sofa. We'll put them in a supplement. )
How much are weapon's ranges reduced by atmosphere. (lots)
How long do you keep your own gravity if you enter a bigger one. (until you touch the surface. More evidence of just how frickin weird AD&D's physics actually are. You could really exploit this. )
How long does it take to regain spells after spelljamming (At least a good nights rest. This is why you fly using multiple mages working in shifts)
Can a creature with a breath weapon foul it's own air envelope. (Yes, but only if it's not immune to it's own powers. That actually leaves out most of them. )
101 surprises in a bag of beans: Ahh joy. This is one of the things that introduced me to the idea of random screwage by player consent as fun. As such, it'll always hold a special place in my heart. It doesn't hurt that this is one of the larger and more wide-ranging tables of this sort, full of items that are good, things that are bad, and lots that are decidedly mixed benefits, that may be useful if properly exploited, but also have very real dangers, such as monsters with cool magic items, portals that'll close after a while, pandora's box, dragon eggs, and flying islands. You could spend months just planting these things and dealing with the fallout. Putting one of these in your game can let the DM sit back and laugh while the players bring about their own demise. Which I'm fully in favour of, because it means less work for me. Worldbuilding takes a lot of time, and the busier I am, the more I come to appreciate shortcuts and efficiency increasers. i won't hesitate to use this if I get the chance.
Dragonmirth screws up the tropes again. Yamara gets the note about her wishes too late and has to be bailed out. Twilight empire has action, drama, and comedy, as per usual.
Look like a loyal palladium fan (o rly? How do you do that then?) at gen con this year and you'll get free palladium bucks!. Only redeemable at the palladium stall, for palladium books. Okey dokey.
Through the looking glass: Another bit of evidence that minis are a decade or so ahead of RPG's in their product cycle here. Robert talks about the problems companies are having making a profit due to people expecting discounts at conventions. Too much undercutting can actually mean you wind up making a loss. Which in a different way is an issue that online stores have made much worse, and has contributed quite a bit in the fall of games shops over the past decade. Supply and demand may be an important principle, but so is ensuring your business is sustainable. Making a loss on one thing on the gamble that profits from other sources will fill it is a dangerous business. Another life lesson applicable to any money-making venture.
Our minis this month are a rather large fairy designed to sit on your mantelpiece, a dinosaur with a lizard man rider, elves, undead, a full 4 pack of elementals, a unicorn, and a castle construction kit. This is all fairly standard, and I can't muster up any particular nostalgia over this article.
Dark sun reveals it's name, and the basics of the setting. Overthrow the decadent sorcerer-kings and save the desert wasteland. Lest you forgot, the metaplot was hard-coded into the setting design, and it was intended to evolve rapidly right from day one. The wisdom of this decision may be questionable, but they carried their brief out with aplomb, leaving no part untouched.
They also give us another set of trading cards. This is another thing that's left out of the scan. Another array of characters, monsters and items with very abbreviated stats on the back, many of which I'd never heard of at the time, and was curious to find out more about. Of particular note are Alias and the Bebilith which both hinted strongly at larger things I had yet to explore. I guess they did their job then.
Well, they say you never forget your first time, and that's definitely true here. I do seem to find myself more positively inclined towards most of the articles in this one, than the previous issues, with specific memories surrounding a decent fraction of them. Not sure if it's actually better, but I do note that this has more non D&D articles than the average for this period, which I generally seem to have found myself in favour of. In any case, many of the articles still hold valuable advice that's still significant after several edition changes and applied to other systems, so it's a better jumping on point than many. It's nice to be here, but it'll be even nicer to finish this, so enough wallowing. On we go again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. A surprisingly non cheesecaky cover from Clyde Caldwell this time. Goes to show, doesn't it, you spend years fantasising about and drawing unrealistic looking and dressing women, but still settle for a perfectly normal one in real life. And even when you draw her, you still wind up showing substantially less skin than usual. Not that this is some great triumph of feminism. There's still plenty more ludicrous cheesecake covers to come. Also plenty more rehash too, as they make the underdark their theme for the third time. (see issues 131 & 152) Will we discover something new on this trip downstairs. It is a big place, after all. There should be some more nooks and crannies to scrape out of this barrel.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter saying they need more basic D&D articles. They've agreed with that for ages. WHY AREN'T YOU SENDING THEM IN!!! Poor Bruce is being driven to exhaustion trying to cover this stuff largely unaided.
A letter asking if they've heard of the SCA. Sure. They've heard of them since back in 1979. Course, they don't talk about them much, because for some reason, TSR doesn't do any LARP games, and isn't that keen on covering other people's either. What is with that.
An apology from a convention that got abruptly cancelled. Nasty business, very frustrating for all concerned. This is another area that the internet has helped substantially, as it allows you to easily send messages that'll get to all your clientele straight away at minimal cost. Course, you're still losing tons of money from their loss of custom, but that can't be helped, and they're more likely to come back if you do apologise promptly and with good grace.
Editorial: Oh god. Robin hood, prince of thieves. (everything I do) I'd forgotten that was released around this time. And then stayed at number 1 for, like, evar. I will always love you, love is all around, my heart will go on, spaceman. God, the 90's had some sucky music become huge due to tie-ins. But anyway, this is Dale once again demonstrating how players will not play along with ideas that work in the movies, partly because they are not stupid and genre blind, and partly because the rules frequently encourage and reward behaviour that is at odds with narrative convention. So do not railroad your players, or create scenes that don't work unless they take a specific course of action, for this will result in annoyance for both you and them. Even most of the licensed RPG's don't really encourage play that fits the source on a mechanical level. (MERP, I'm looking at you) And making rules that don't just define the physics of the game universe, but also the dramatic conventions hasn't become a generally known and accepted idea. Many even actively discourage playing like the movies by giving you characters dramatically weaker than the stars and setting the difficulties appropriate to them, plus writing adventures that encourage a different mode of play (This time it's star wars d6 and it's Traveller lite tendencies that'll get a good glaring) So don't try and jam a square peg in a round hole. There's lots of new players that make that mistake, and some have even gone on to become game designers. Quite valuable advice, really.
Seeing the sights in skullport: The Realms' fourth wall continues to be fairly porous, with Laeral making another visit to the TSR offices. Undermountain came out a few months ago, and it looks like they've got some leftover material again. If you want to spend extended amounts of time down there, you need a homebase, somewhere you can get food and don't have to kill everything on sight. Fortunately, since this is one of the biggest and most raided dungeon complexes on the planet, other people have already had the same idea, and set up Skullport, a classic example of a literal seedy underbelly to a city. If you want drugs, slaves, poisons, zombies, and enforced blind eye neutrality to any killing that may take place in the tunnels, this is very much the place to go. With a full map, plenty of interesting NPC's, and Ed's usual way with history and worldbuilding, this is another of his highly specific ideas that could nevertheless be stripped out and put into your campaign without too much trouble. Would you like to make a home around there? Not a good place to raise your kids, but at least rent is cheap. Watch out for the floating skulls the place gets it's name from, and other subtle dangers. Tons of fun to be had here, in other words.
The dragon's bestiary: Biclops are two-headed Cyclops. A bit goofy, but that's what you get when cyclopses and ettins interbreed. They might not have depth perception problems, but neither of their parents are very smart, so they won't be developing missile weapons any time soon. They shouldn't be hard for tactically inclined players to deal with.
Averx, on the other hand, are another small trickery-prone humanoid. Only a lot tougher, smarter and more magically capable than Kobolds, mites or jermalaine. If played with the full intelligence their stats imply, they could easily humiliate name level adventurers and take their stuff. Muahaha, etc.
Cushion fungus are one of those things that demonstrate why it's a good idea to dungeon delve in large groups. Threats like this, which will only kill the party if everyone succumbs to their sweet velvety lure and goes to sleep in them have their danger reduced exponentially the more people there are around making saving throws, as you can rescue the others easily enough. Another decent enough bit of screwage.
The ecology of the Galeb duhr: Seems like dramatic stories are returning to this series. Also seems like for all dwarves connection to the earth, there are dozens of monsters even more linked with it, some to the point of dying if the link is broken. Such as the Galeb Duhr. Fortunately, as long as you don't mess up their landscape, you're unlikely to even know they're here, and if you're careful, you can co-exist with them. Another ecology that takes pains to point out that these guys work best if you use your head, with powers designed to make use of the environment, softening up and trapping the enemies rather than fighting them directly. It also includes a new spell to allow PC's to emulate one of the new abilities they're granted here. Which when all added together, makes this a well above average ecology. It's good to cover plenty of bases, and making it good for PC's, allies and enemies fits that bill.
Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991
part 2/5
Role-playing reviews: More superheroes stuff this month. Both Marvel and DC seem to be rolling out the supplements. This may or may not be a good thing. Let's see what Allen Varney thinks this month.
Marvel superheroes basic set revised gets a rather negative review, being less fun to read than the old edition, and also concentrating too much on fighting over storytelling. It's not a great help in creating stories that work like the comics, and the layout doesn't appeal to him either. Like the new D&D basic set, it doesn't look like this is going to be bringing in lots of new players. Ouch. He's not in a good mood today. This should be fun.
The uncanny x-men campaign set gets a dismissive few lines. It's nearly pure stats, hardly any characterisation info at all. Obviously only useful if you're already a comics buff.
As do the Justice league sourcebook, The new titans sourcebook and the Swamp thing sourcebook. Churned out formulaic drek! Virtually impossible to review! I've felt like that sometimes. No sugarcoating here. Not quite as entertaining as Spawn of Fashan, but this is one of the most vicious review sections ever done here. What's brought this on?
The watchman sourcebook, on the other hand gets a good result, as it tries to emulate the format of it's source material, with reasonable success. This obviously took more effort than a simple cut and paste job. Alan Moore would still probably not approve though.
Kingdom of champions shows he's deliberately saved the best until last. Phil Masters doesn't churn out licenced property crap, but a well thought out supplement about the UK for the HERO system. Full of both real detail and cool invented stuff, it goes well beyond the call of duty. And so another writer comes to the attention of many.
We also get some interesting mini-reviews. The Tome of Magic gets drooled over, with Allen accurately realising this is going to be a mainstay of many people's gaming for years to come.
Rick Swan's Complete guide to Roleplaying gets his awe for it's incredible comprehensiveness. Someone even more immersed in gaming than me? Gobsmacking! But can he keep up with all the new releases? ;) The challenge is on! Since Rick will also review for Dragon in the future, I find that very amusing.
And we also discover that OGRE was Allen's gateway drug into roleplaying. We are learning a surprising amount about him. Before we know it, he'll feel like another one of the family.
TSR previews: Spelljammer reveals the details of the eponymous spaceship the setting is named after, the biggest and baddest vessel in the known spheres. A boxed set with over 200 pages of info, this is a pretty prize for anyone who can find it and master it.
The Forgotten Realms continues to show you how to have fun in Maztica, as the heroes venture into an active volcano. Better bring your asbestos undies.
Dragonlance continues to be mostly novels with the second book in the meetings sextet, Wanderlust. Tasslehoff first meets Flint and Tanis. Comedic misunderstanding ensue, as ever where Kender are involved.
Ravenloft also gets it's first novel, Vampire of the mists. A crossover with the Forgotten Realms, Jandar Sunstar is sucked in, and like everyone else there, suffers for our art. Muahahaha!!!!!
This month's generic AD&D products are the Skirmishsystem Mini's rules. For when the Battlesystem is too big and clunky. :p We also have the second batch of collectors cards. Look at the pictures and figure out where you've seen the artwork before. Neither really grabs me.
D&D goes back to the surface for the first time in quite a while, to cover GAZ14: Atruaghin clans. See the native american inspired cultures, kill them and take their stuff. Who said D&D wasn't realistic?. ;)
And finally, buck rogers gets gadgeteering, in the Technical Compendium. Tons of equipment and rules for computer AI's as PC's. Only if they can download themselves into giant mecha and go smash stuff thanks.
Fiction: the lay of Droone by William B Crump. How to face death in style, the dwarven way. Live your life well, build great things. Know and love your surroundings, and work carefully to shape them over the years. Tweak the noses of those intransigent eves, who don't take the quality of the things they surround themselves with so seriously. When danger comes calling, face it bravely, and use all the resources you've built up against it, and don't hesitate to sacrifice yourself if it means taking more of them down with you. I think this story definitely has some stuff you can draw on for your own characterisations, as well as making quite touching reading. Another positive and quite mature (in the good way) delivery from the fiction department.
The voyage of the princess ark: The story builds directly from the last issue, as Haldemar traces the source of the political unrest to Hule, which seems to be trying to manipulate it's way to power in all the savage coast states. How very suspicious. This time the boot is on the other foot, as Haldemar gets to knock out and tie up several of his enemies, and throw a wrench in the plans of the rest of them. Things might not be going all his way, but at least he's got some ideas of what to do. Much more interesting than seeing him get taken down like an idiot, despite his massive power, again.
This time we also get to see the true power of cinnibar. Less carefully balanced than it would later be in red steel, here the amount of power and risk you take on are very much up to you. (if you can afford it) You can gain over a dozen special powers and centuries of lifespan, albeit at the cost of your health, and possibly even your humanity. Fortunately for the rest of the world, contaminated people can't venture beyond the savage coast for long without losing all their powers, (while still suffering all the side-effects) allowing the rest of the known world to continue on their merry way, with the various countries keeping their own tech levels and milieus. This is rather interesting in the ramifications on the area. People of any class can have substantial amounts of spell-like abilities, which may or may not be well suited to their class, since they are determined randomly. This encourages inventiveness and cinematics. I highly enjoyed Red Steel, and it's good to see the world leading up to it from a different perspective.
Also notable this month is that Bruce starts to teaser us about the wrath of the immortals boxed set. Some people think mystara has become stale, and it's time for a big metaplot event that changes a load of stuff around. Ooookay. If you say so. How will this affect Haldemar & co. More being tossed around by fate like ragdolls? I guess we'll probably find out soon enough.
Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991
part 3/5
Forum: Andrew M Curtis finds the players want to kill every NPC, even the ones that are friendly and want to join the party. Sounds like you might need a little aversion therapy. If word gets out you have a tendency to kill your employers and employees, you may find discovering more adventures gets increasingly tricky. Perhaps a prison adventure would be fun.
Lyle Wiederman travels back in time from 2114 ( ;) ) and reveals that the same old gaming debates are still going on then. In particular, Kender and thieves are proving particularly intractable and irritating. The solution, as often seems to be the case, is fudge, and making sure you go beyond the RAW in the ways you manipulate the game situation.
Anjuan Simmons Points out that there are plenty of examples of nonevil thieves in literature. They have good reasons for what they do, and definitely aren't all backstabbing bastards who'll steal from their friends as well as their foes. PC's who play them like that are seriously missing the point.
Graham Ross also gives us reasons why thieves ought to work with others. A lone wolf will have no-one to train them or help pull complex heists, and is likely to be caught or die. They might not trust each other, but they have to learn to work together for maximum profit. And they certainly shouldn't admit they're thieves to potential marks. Utilise your brain.
Scott Wilbur thought he could have a PC and DM at the same time, but couldn't resist abusing his OOC knowledge. Now he doesn't do that anymore. Live and learn. I can't help feeling that it was probably the being caught that did it, not guilt.
Eric Durfee, on the other hand is still juggling godhood and characters with limited power and knowledge and having fun. It isn't impossible, by any stretch of the imagination.
Christian Stoudt has also reached a compromise on the PC/DM hybridisation front by temporarily passing his characters to other players while in the DM's seat. This of course requires a certain degree of trust amongst the team. But after he killed off his own character once to prove the point everyone else settled down. Remember, characters aren't hard to replace. Friends are.
Des Garrett is another person who's wrestled with the DMPC problem. Looks like this one's really hit a nerve with the readership, and is going to run and run like the sexism and satanic complaints. He has lot's of solutions to suggest though. Hopefully we should come to some kind of consensus eventually.
The role of computers: Darkspyre gets a surprisingly mediocre review for a leading product, seeming too generic, and also running too slowly on their computer. This is going to be a problem all through the 90's. Unless you have the disposable income to spend several thousand a year on upgrading, you're going to be out of date in no time.
Robosport does rather better, giving you a nice little game of competitive violence for one or two players. You can record your games, and replay them at various speeds, which does take up quite a bit of memory, but sounds cool. With turn by turn games, it can be tricky to get a real feel for the flow going.
Warlords also gets a good result. Fight up to 8 enemies for control of the kingdom. The old RISK scenario then, albeit with rather more complex rules. Raise your armies, secure supernatural assistance, and build up defences to protect your holdings. Strategilicious.
Shadow Dancer is the third in Sega's Shinobi series. You (and your little dog) engage in the usual ninja style awesomeness that builds on on the last two nicely. Rescue hostages, squash enemy ninja, I don't think I've actually played this one, but would be able to pick it up pretty quick.
Y's books I &II Show us what you can do with CD's as your loading medium. Animated cutscenes ahoy! Massive step ups in music quality! Soon, you'll be taking this for granted, just like all the previous advances.
Zombie Nation is another mediocre review to finish things off. Formulaic shoot-em-up. Not worth the time of anyone but addicts.
Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991
part 4/5
Into the spirit of things: A little runequest stuff this month. (featuring a recycling of that vampire pic from the expert set yet again, where it seems rather inappropriate. ) Although quite a few of them are necromantically focussed, actually. Feigning death, zombie creation, turning yourself in to an undead creature, possessing someone else's body, those all seem like pretty standard D&D conversions. But there are a few new ones, like erasing spells from others minds, synergistic spellcasting, selective invisibility, and permanent removal of ability scores. Actually seems like a pretty powerful set overall, and allowing them in your game will have significant consequences. Just the thing for a bit of hidden lore they'll want to spend a few sessions chase down. Possibly a bit twinky, but that's the risk you take with magazine articles. Nice to see the variety, as ever.
Shining Armor: Top Secret continues on directly from last issue. Last time, you got advice and weapons for fighting tanks. This time it's for playing as the crew of one. \m/ This is actually pretty tricky, as there is more to it than just rolling in and killing everything. Even something as big and obvious as a tank can be hidden, and there are lots of logistical issues to consider when owning one. Not to mention how unpleasant it actually is in one, and the limited visuals you have. I do hope that cameras and computers have reduced that issue quite a bit in the intervening decades. Anyway, enjoy the stats for 15 APCs, 24 full size tanks, 4 tank destroyers, and 4 other light armoured vehicles. Another dense little article, full of crunch, that doesn't hesitate to draw on supplements and previous magazine articles, this'll be damn useful to a few people, and a bit of a pain for everyone else. It is interesting to see them continuing to do very niche stuff like this, and I wonder what the current level of pressure is to drop it. Oh well, a good half a decade more to enjoy yet.
Completing the complete fighter: Kits! At bleedin' last! It's been two years since 2nd ed arrived, and only a couple months less since kits started rolling out in the supplements. You'd think they'd have published some before now. Still, better late than never, particularly when they're the class that most needs customising. Throw open the floodgates, come in, come in!
Assassins demonstrate their new commitment to equal opportunities killing for hire, with a fighter variant. (after all, thieves already have a kit in their splatbook. ) Unsurprisingly, they get moderate stealth and backstabbing abilities, with their only drawback being the illegality of their profession. (which in some places isn't a drawback at all) So they're pretty par with swashbucklers for twinkiness, likely to lead an entertaining life and outshine your average fighter handily.
Nomads slot in perfectly to the recent Horde stuff. Extra badass at attacking from horseback, but slightly disadvantaged off it, they seem fairly balanced. No objections here.
Northmen are another one that gets solid benefits for merely social penalties. Still, two bonus nonweapon proficiencies are hardly game-breaking, are they. You really never do have enough of them, as I've said so many times.
So it's two fairly solid kits and one slightly overpowered one. Not a terrible haul. Looks like the magazine is finally getting into the groove of the 2nd edition. Still a long way to go before they overtake the number of 1st ed classes, but hopefully they'll get there. 9 more years to go, and kits do generally come in larger batches. Guess I'll have to keep going and count them up at the end.
Playing the crowd: Ooh. Social combat. Wasn't expecting that. Rules for getting the attention of a mob and bending them to your will. Very much a case of May the most Charismatic man Win, as you would expect, but facts also play a part. Having patsies in the crowd will definitely help, for the mob is stupid and fickle. Don't expect them to stick around and risk their lives if the going gets tough. And if you succeed, expect people to remember you and possibly spread distorted stories of your exploits. Woo. All seems pretty simple to implement, and has potential to give you considerable amounts of fun. This is one that may not be that big, but more than makes up for it in adventurousness. Two thumbs up.
Ashes to ashes? Looks like Vampire already has a supplement. Guess they got off the bat running as well. Was this a home run?
Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991
part 5/5
Sage advice: How quickly will continual light consume an object. (It'll take years. You ever tried leaving books out in the sun? They get all faded and yellow soon, but then not a lot happens for ages)
What's the duration of ghoul touch. ( 1 round per level. Note that the duration of the spell, and the paralysis it causes, are completely different.)
Can you make anti-magic shell permanent around a building (no, and it would be too small anyway. Yes, NPC wizards may break this rule in modules. You should be used to that by now. )
What happens if you try and co-exist with your clone (All sorts of bad stuff. It can getas complicated as you want to make it.)
Is a sun blade's sunray power the same as the spell (no)
How exactly does sunray work (Skip has had to pull in many favors to answer this question. Skip hopes you're satisfied with the answer. )
Do you need special equipment to recharge a ring of spell storing (nope. It's user friendly!)
Do items get to make saves against being enchanted (what a silly idea. Any sensible item would be glad to be enchanted. Course, the problem becomes finding a sensible inanimate object :) )
Can vorpal weapons sever limbs (No. Only heads. You cut heads. That's it.)
Does changing gender affect your ability scores (No. We have purged the sexism found in 1st edition from the game! )
Can you wear gauntlets over gloves, cloaks over robes, boots over slippers, etc etc.
(Dayum, man! You sure do pick at it. You know that won't make it better, right? Skip really must lobby harder for a formalization of the item slot system )
Novel ideas: Spelljammer and Ravenloft are the focus of this month's column. Unlike FR and Dragonlance, they're just starting out, and their success is uncertain, so they don't merit a full one each. Course, one is going to go on to success several orders of magnitude above the other, but they don't know that yet. They're just putting out two books for each of them, and seeing who bites. Will you pick the cloakmaster cycle, angsty Vampires, or equally angsty Death Knights? Whichever way, they have some crossover with the established AD&D worlds, just to get in a few more people. Guess we're well and truly in the era where they tie together as much as possible, so as to make it tricky to appreciate it properly unless you buy a load of other stuff. How very tiresome.
Lone Wolves: Another of Ed's deliveries of twinked out NPC's here to ensure the Realms is packed up with enough whimsical but largely benevolent high level characters that the world is never in any true danger of being destroyed. Someone's bound to stumble on any plots and foil them even if your characters fail. Maybe they'll even get a novel about their exploits and angsty backstory. :p
Elsura Daunir is a superpowerful wizard who's been "cursed" with the power to shapeshift into a cat at will. If you're mean to her in kitty form, she'll exact revenge in ironic fairytale fashion. I think that says it all. Someone didn't read Dale's editorial this month.
Baelam the Bold lost his hand, but has grafted a Golem one on in it's place. This has made his so badass he's completely immune to all pain effects. So more stuff you can't replicate then. Mutter mutter mutter.
Dragonmirth has an interesting mix of old and new artwork styles. Yamara has more fraternisation between the good and bad guys. Twilight empire has a blatant David Bowie lookalike elf. And another fight scene. Well they've got to keep things chugging along nicely.
Through the looking glass: Convention season is here, and this month's column features the things you are likely to find there but not in regular shops. The small companies, the custom stuff, things you might not buy too often. Quite a few of them are vehicles. Some futuristic ones, some historical ones, both look rather eager to blow someone to pieces with their large weapons. Much the same can be said of the humanoid miniatures. Kraag warriors from Space:1889. An unusually technologically advanced troll. Goblins on small adorable wolves. Some amazon swordswomen from Talislanta. And most bizarrely, a large mini of the Beast from the recent live action Beauty and the Beast tv series, which is our only 5 star product this month. Huh. Well, as they said, it'd make a good present, or possibly a suitably imposing angsty handsome demon lord when juxtaposed with regular sized minis. Why should Grazzt have all the fun? :p
Another rather good issue as they make several significant, if somewhat tentative steps into the future, and produce a whole bunch of other good articles. It's a useful package with something for a wide range of readers, although as ever, some of them aren't much good for me. Still, once again, it is a good deal better than most of last year's issues. Looks like quality is on the up again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 173: September 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. Hello to the beginning of another campaign world. Dark sun's been teasered for a bit, but now it's arrived. And in another indicator of their departments gradually coming to co-ordinate better, it gets a special issue straight off. Buck Rogers managed that, but none of the D&D settings have before. Course, that does mean the themed section is likely to be all stuff by regular writers, but that doesn't mean it'll be poor quality. I just hope it'll be more useful for actual games once they've bought the books than Buck's crap was.
In this issue:
Letters: Roger decides it's time to sluice off some of the ridiculous letters again, before they overflow and cause a dreadful mess all over the office. They do get a lot of them, it seems.
A really pissed off letter about issue 168's editorial. Your attempt at self justification was pathetic! Dear oh dear.
An absolutely hilarious continuation of the saga of Waldorf, drawing upon all the letters previously published on the subject. Someone's been reading the magazine for quite a while and doing their research. See, without continuity, you couldn't have absolute gems like this.
Another letter about 168's editorial, with a rather specific bit of niggling. Babies are such a big issue, and raising them rather awkward for active adventurers.
A letter from someone really miserable that he can't get girls to roleplay with him. You're in luck. Vampire only just came out. Although judging from this, that may well not solve the issue, but that's a problem with your social skills, rather than the game. If I can spend years doing dance training and not get any actual dates from it, you can definitely flub meeting people through roleplaying.
A very badly written letter asking how much damage bullets do in D&D. Less than you think, given inflating HP.
Editorial: Or Roger goes LARPing. Looks like things are on the up for that, with their third reference this year. Interphaze III seems to be a close adaption of D&D, using the same classes, and much of the same monsters and magic. They also had a whole bunch of games within the game, including an IC banquet, elven belly dancers, and stuff for the kids. He doesn't explain exactly how the rules differed so stuff could be resolved without dice, but he certainly had a good time, packing a hell of a lot in. Another good reminder that he'd probably like to cover a larger variety of stuff in the magazine, but if people aren't sending it in, that's not an option. Oh well, can't fault his enthusiasm, even after all this time. As long as he's here. he'll keep on trying.
The monstrous side of the dark sun world: Welcome to the least generic AD&D world yet. Even more than Dragonlance, Dark Sun is defined by the elements it leaves out. Both in classes and monsters, there are pretty significant removals, particularly on the divine side. And existing things are also changed quite a bit. Dwarves frequently have obsessions other than mining or crafting. Elves aren't nearly as long lived, but a lot better at endurance running. Halflings are savage cannibals. Thri-kreen are much the same as ever, but have a lot more prominence, and human-giant and human-dwarf hybrids are relatively common, thanks to the Sorcerer-kings breeding programs. Oh, and everyone has psionics. So far, no great revelations that you won't also get if you buy the boxed set. As a stopgap until they get their own Monstrous compendium, they give you info on what stuff from other supplements is suitable. Gotta collect 'em all! So probably pretty nifty at the time, and decent as promotion, but not really very useful in retrospect. Bah.
A letter from the wanderer: Another article that would have been cool and new then but now seems rather dated. The undead of athas! Not just standardised collections of stats, but individuals all, frequently retaining all their class levels. Thanks to this and Ravenloft, that's actually become pretty ubiquitous in later editions, so this is another one that really has lost all it's impact with the passing of time. The writing is pretty good though, with Troy Denning demonstrating his way with words and descriptions. So once again, it's neat to read as a historical artefact, but about as useful as a calculator when you now have an iPhone. On we go then.
Random magic for organized minds: And so, like the Buck Rogers special, it seems the only still useful part of this themed section is the last article. Since Wizardry is mostly forbidden on athas, you'll have a hard time finding spells, and have to take what you can get. And that's where this bit of random tableage comes in, dividing spells up into (relatively) common, uncommon and rare. Something you can use with zero effort, and put an analogue of in your own game with minimal effort. One I'm strongly considering using myself.
Dragon Magazine Issue 173: September 1991
part 2/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Back to the Forgotten Realms we warp, to get another collection of themed items from Elminster. This time it's a dozen staves. Fighters are already well catered for in weaponry and armour, but wizards have got rather less in the past, despite it usually being them that makes the items. Good point. Since he's usually pretty good with these, that has me quite optimistic.
Rilantaver's Staff has three fairly low key but useful powers that'll make the wizard pretty popular with the whole party. Much better than a carelessly applied fireball wand backfiring on everyone.
The Staff of Battle lets you send things flying and stun them, making your wizard a lot more combat capable. It can also absorb magic missiles, apropos of nothing. Someone obviously had to put up with lots of enemies bombarding the wizard as soon as they start casting.
The Staff of Displacement has a whole range of mobility related tricks, and is another one that can protect other members of the party as well. Water, locked doors, chasms, all are no threat. Also pretty handy.
The Staff of Divergence, on the other hand is a bit passive for my tastes, being essentially an immunity to a certain attack type, with the added bonus of redirecting it on your enemies. When a PC has a power like that, chances are they won't be meeting many enemies that use the specified attack type anymore.
The Staff of Miracles lets you save lives and grants the occasional wish. All it's powers are rather charge intensive, which means you may well find yourself with some left, but not enough to power any actual abilities. Which does seem a bit wonky.
The Staff of Night lets you see in the dark, extinguish magical lights, and apropos of nothing, summon an umber hulk. Yeah, I'm not sure the connection is there. Guess you can't always be subtle.
The Staff of Scrivening lets you cheat the usual class restrictions on spells known, even letting you put priest spells in your spellbook if you can find an appropriate scroll. Now that's one that definitely has game-breaking potential. I'll bet Elminster has one of these in his collection.
The Staff of Silence is another largely defensive and utility device, but can also unleash the sounds it's absorbed to unpleasant effect. Another one that's likely to exhaust it's charges quickly if not regularly maintained.
The Staff of Spheres is one of Elminster's personal creations, a typically versatile utility device that allows you to transport all kinds of things conveniently. Offence, defence, and bad jokes are all well facilitated by this baby. See you in the fiction later then.
The Staff of Surprises is another one with an unconnected grab bag of useful effects. Whether these will save your life will probably once again depend on your brainpower, since none are hugely powerful.
The Staff of the Moonglow is another odd one, with a bunch of moon related powers such as concealment, greater attack bonus when exposed to moonlight, and being able to counter teleportation. I guess every wizard has their own pet peeves that they're determined to solve.
The Staff of Vision is pretty self explanatory, on the other hand. Invisibility detection, seeing in the dark, curing blindness. No great complaints or amazement here.
Magic mangling made easy: Nerf time! Greg Detwiler shows you how to reduce the influence magic has over your game, so that fighters and thieves can have a little more influence. A big chunk of this is devoted to going through the minutinae of the timing system. If properly enforced, spell casting times and weapon speeds make it a lot more likely that spells can be disrupted mid casting, with amusingly cruel results. Similarly, enforcing spell component tracking strictly (particularly when combined with encumbrance ) can substantially depower wizards. If you really want to be a bastard you can make the character allergic to one of their spell components. Ah, the joys of being supreme god of the universe. Another reminder that there really is no limit to your arsenal save your imagination, and AD&D's rules are simultaneously complex and flimsy enough that virtually everybody houserules them, and with a little effort, you can do whatever the hell you want to your players, and all they can do is complain or walk. One to use with caution, for creating balance by adding niggly restrictions is a textbook example of fun-sucking technique.
The voyage of the princess ark: A rather different entry this month. Instead of the usual load of misadventures, we have a report on Hule by Raman. A decidedly nasty, expansionistic state, it's led by the Immortal of lies, Bozdogan. (aka Loki. ) The whole place is built on circles of deceit, with each step in the hierarchy lying to all the ones below for the greater glory of Bozdogan. They'll use any methods to get you to convert, or if they don't think you'll be amenable, to swindle you of everything you've got. Don't trust them an inch. In short, the whole place seems built specifically to serve as a good villain in known world geopolitics. Y'know, if you're going to lie all the time, the last thing you want is a reputation of being a liar. A little more subtlety would probably be a good idea. I know D&D is all about the moral conflicts, but do we really want a human nation this unambigously nasty? Oh well, the change of pace is nice, even if the thing it's describing may not be perfectly designed.
We also have lots of letters this time. Lots of people are worried what the new basic set and rules cyclopedia mean for the D&D game as a whole. Bruce does his best to assuage them. Very little is going to change ruleswise, merely the presentation. We also finally get the name of the planet the Known World inhabits. Mystara. Not that impressive a reveal, but still nice. Lots more stuff coming. Seems like basic D&D stuff is selling quite healthily these days.
Dragon Magazine Issue 173: September 1991
part 3/5
Out of your chair, into the action!: Looks like LARPing really is on the up, with a second article this month. Say hello to the New England Roleplaying Organisation. Looks like they take the sandbox approach to their playing, setting up the situation, and letting the players provide all the drama for themselves. Which most of them do in spades (although since there were 300 attendees, there were probably a few left out, simply by math. ) You fight using boffer weapons, and cast spells by throwing packets of corn starch at each other. :D If you do well adventuring, you can become nobility, and intrigue your way through your new associates, and hire assassins to take them down. So this is a good demonstration that this not only works, but has a pretty substantial established fanbase, and can run extended games without the drama llama ruining everything. Between this and the editorial, we should be seeing quite a few people try out LARPing for the first time in the near future. Get ready for some substantial demographic shifts.
Get your priorities straight: Hmm. Another attempt to improve upon the alignment system. As we've found before, it's not hard, and there are a number of ways to do so, depending on what aspects of morality you want to draw attention to, and possibly encourage in your game. Here's one that takes quite a different approach to the norm. Instead of some vague ideal like the standard 3x3 grid, or slightly more specific ones in SR6 or issue 24, it works by establishing your character's hierarchy of loyalties. Obviously, most evil characters put the self above any higher principles or attachments, while lawful good ones try and hold true to comrades, family, state and god simultaneously, and may well find themselves having to make hard choices. It doesn't integrate perfectly with the existing system, with some permutations not mapping to D&D alignments at all, but it does show how, for example, the githzerai can be chaotic neutral while still holding a few principles to a fanatical degree. Actually, I think it would probably work better replacing the existing system, rather than running alongside it, and could easily be slotted over some game other than D&D. In fact, it would make a good alternative to say, Pendragon's passion system or the NWoD's virtues, vices & morality, and would probably reward further tinkering with itself. A very interesting design experiment indeed, and one that pushes forward the idea that what statistically defines your character influences the way you play, and by changing the stats of the game, you can slant people towards certain choices and playstyles. Quite a few designers could learn from that. I like this article quite a lot.
The role of computers: Death Knights of Krynn is another of SSI's solid conversions of AD&D, allowing you to bring in your characters from previous games to kick Lord Soth & his cronies butts. This is one of those reviews where they give you a lot of hints, because the game isn't easy, and will probably take quite a bit of grinding and resource management. The biggest reminder, as is often the case, is to save at every opportunity. Man, you'd think people would start putting autosave apps out.
Space Quest IV also gets a good review, and is a lot funnier as well. Travel into the past and the future of the series to save your son. Full of humour, and with tons of things to discover, it looks like a good one for those who like lighthearted, snarky games.
Zarlor Mercenary completes a hat trick of 5 star reviews. A shoot-em-up for the Atari Lynx, it has multiplayer networking for up to 4 people, and remains fully functional even with that many playing. Now the tricky part'll be finding 4 people who own atari lynxes. :p
Sage advice: How can the aztec gods live on the prime material if deities can't visit there. (One god can get told off by their peers, but when it's a whole pantheon going around engaging in blood sacrifices and ignoring the usual social conventions, it's a little harder. It's like the cops don't go up to that dirty great ranch full of inbred hillbillies who run a moonshine racket, play their music really loud and fire guns at 3 in the morning. )
Similarly, how can Iuz live on the prime material (again, he's a chaotic evil half-demon who worked his way to demigodhood. He doesn't give a damn about your rules, and no-one's come along who can sort him out yet. Perhaps your adventuring team would like to give it a go. Go on, we'll be over here, watching. )
Why are god's weapons so badass (because they're gods. )
Why does the complete fighters handbook let paladins and rangers specialize (Power creep. They have to encourage you to buy it somehow.)
How many weapons can you specialize in (Again, originally just 1, but if you buy the complete fighters handbook, you can do all sorts of forbidden things. Our splatbook writers care nothing for the fine details of the game and it's balance )
I have a blatantly illegal character! Look at it! I'm so proud! ( Great. Another fine mess Skip has to tidy up. Stupid DM's not properly house-training their players. We oughta get social services in, have them taken away if they can't look after them properly.)
What's the speed of a touch attack (3)
Can you reflect beholders gaze attacks with a mirror (no. They're rays, not attacks based on you seeing them. )
Do liches keep their racial capabilities (probably)
Why do elf mages get to wear armour (special dispensation. Part of their sekrit magical training. )
How many daggers can you throw per round. (not as many as you think. That's supposed to be darts, not daggers. )
What can you backstab and when. (Things with backs that aren't aware of you. Simple as that. It's an assassination tactic, not something you do in the middle of combat. That would step on fighters toes. )
If you twink out you can get your chance of surprise above 100% (so it seems. But you still have a 10% chance of failure, no matter how good you are. )
I really like kender! I want to play one! (Great, another player that urgently needs housetraining. Take it away before it messes up Skip's carpet.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 173: September 1991
part 4/5
Fiction: A little knowledge by Jerry Oliton. Dark Sun's co-ordinated rollout continues, with this little piece that illustrates the harsh realities of Athas from the ground level, and gives lots of setting details without being too expository about it. A young half-elf gets enslaved, and has to figure out how their psionic wild talents work if they want to escape. We also find out that the sorcerer kings are bastards, and that has been passed downwards pretty effectively; magic in general is outlawed, preservers have a secret organisation opposing the big bads, but good luck finding it, and there are lots of interesting animals replacing the standard earth ones. Not bad at all, even if it doesn't emulate the actual IC physics of psionics that well. (Co-operative powers should have been considerably easier to access than they were) I think this more than adequately served it's part in persuading people to buy the new shinies.
Chill does ghosts too! How long before wraith comes out? Another three years. Bah.
The sociology of the Flind: Spike Y Jones not only gives us another ecology under another name, but he uses the same cast of framing characters again. We get to find out another chapter in the life of Brendan Farwanderer, as told to his youthful charges. A decidedly dark one, that then comes back to haunt him in the final paragraph. Flinds may be physically pretty similar to regular gnolls, with only a few generations of selective breeding separating them, but culturally they are quite different, and rather more dangerous, for they have brains and organisation on their side to help them kill and consume the flesh of their opponents. This is a particularly epic ecology, both in size and depth, and it makes me very interested in knowing if we'll see the characters involved again. It's tricky to have proper horror unless you're emotionally invested in the characters, and introducing them, letting them hang around for a bit and then ripping them away definitely qualifies. They may not be doing ecologies as frequently lately, but the ones they have done have been of very high standard. It's good to see them not just churning them out because they're an easy way to fill a few pages every month. Now, let's hope they do get some more really good ones sometime in the not too distant future.
The same advert on three consecutive pages? Interesting way of doing things. Probably costs quite a bit too.
The role of books: The rocketeer by Peter David does fairly well for a film conversion, adding to the story nicely while maintaining the pulpy feel. As usual, they can both get into the characters heads more, and show bits that were cut. Time/space constraints do seem much less serious in books, for some reason.
Fallen angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn gets a fairly negative result, like the last one a couple of issues ago. For this reviewer, it works neither as a serious story or satire, and some of the plotting makes little sense. The brain eater is hard at work here. Choose your collaborators wisely.
Hawks flight by Carol Chase gets a pretty good review on both the worldbuilding and story fronts. Not drawing on any particular earth mythos too obviously, and full of depth, it's one that obviously took quite a lot of work. Unravelling everything may be a similar challenge for less experienced readers though. I think if we can handle Tolkien and Gygax's writings, we can get our heads round this too.
The fantastic adventures of robin hood, edited by Martin H Greenberg, is another of his anthologies that show a whole range of spins on the legend. This does of course mean there are huge jumps in tone and characterisation, as we're dealing with a vague public domain legend in the first place. Feels a bit like a cash-in on a certain obscenely profitable recent movie.
Street magic by Michael Reaves is one of those books that's too short, and splits it's attention too many ways for you to really get attached to the characters or world. Which is a shame, because what there is is pretty good. Never easy to get the length right, is it.
Extreme paranoia: Nobody knows the trouble I've shot by Ken Rolston sees the reviewer become the reviewed, in highly amusing and somewhat meta fashion. As an example of proper Paranoia play turned into a story, it succeeds brilliantly. As a conventional novel, it may be a bit too wacky and punful. Obviously depends on your tastes then.
Jandar Sunstar. The good elven vampire trapped in ravenloft. Oh, the angst. AAAAANNGGGST I say! Oh well. He can have yaoi buttsecks with Strahd and they can both whine about their respective lost loves for a while or something. Hee. That'll get the fangirls in. :p
Forum: Matt Barrett picks apart the argument that what assassins do is always evil. Killing things that are going to kill you if you don't get them first is entirely justified, even if you use stealth and take them out while unsuspecting. As Gary himself said, good doesn't have to be stupid. But the ends do not justify the means. Slippery slope, dude.
Michael Kellam bites on the Batman's alignment debate hook. I knew someone would. Given his current level of [strike]whoreswhoreswhoreswhores[/strike] darkness in characterisation, it's debatable if he's even good, and certainly not lawful. Once again, we are painfully reminded that Thiiiis IIIIiiis theeeee 90's!
Mark D. Krieter has to deal with the problem that one player is far cleverer and more motivated than all the others, and thus tends to outshine them and get more stuff and spotlight time. Yeah, that's a tricky one. You want to reward involvement, but at the same time, you don't want the other players feeling left out. An issue that I'm still struggling with myself.
John H. Goins thinks that vampire PC's, at least temporarily, and particularly if they're seeking redemption, is not a bad idea at all. And a heavy-handed horde of celestial being removing them from play is neither fun or fair, given the number of powerful evil things wandering around canon modules unmolested.
Robert W. Heym ponders the morality of raising mindless undead. Is the body no more than a sack of meat once vacated? Is making them them as turning training acceptable behaviour for good clerics? Since they do say it's evil behaviour, I'm guessing there are some issues. Means and ends once again come into conflict.
W. N. Knierim, Jr wonders how it relates to issue 164's editorial if you like to play lots of different characters. It means you can't make up your mind, duh. :p
Elizabeth Caetta has written a 5 volume set of stories based on the adventures of her characters, that can never really be published. Now that's dedication. Also a good reminder of how things can be huge for one person, but absolutely minute in the overall scheme of things. Makes you wonder why we bother sometimes. It's all going to be eaten up when the sun goes, and we won't even be a footnote on the cosmic scale. I'll bet those 25 pounds of typed paper have already been lost or destroyed by something. :(
Dragon Magazine Issue 173: September 1991
part 5/5
TSR Previews: Dark Sun is here! The boxed set of blasted oppression. A bleak world, ruled by sorcerer kings, where everyone is psionic and starts at third level. New classes, new races, and very weird spins on old ones. What can you do to make this world your own? Well, for a start, let your PC's take the starring role in ending oppression, rejuvenating the world and becoming epic heroes, not the NPC's in The Verdant Passage, our very first novel, which straight away makes big changes for the better (for a certain value of better) Remember, metaplot is only an example, not something you have to follow slavishly.
Greyhawk continues to get sporadic support with WGS2: Howl from the north. You have the 5 blades, now you have to keep them from the ice barbarians. Easier said than done.
The Forgotten Realms are still focussing on the Harpers, in Elfshadow by Elaine Cunningham. Is there treachery amongst their ranks? Surely not. Still, once an assassin, always an assassin.
Ravenloft gets it's own book full of little anthology adventures. RR2: Book of crypts. What monsters does your wallet have the money to pay for? Grr, aargh.
Spelljammer continues the cloakmaster cycle. Nigel Findley takes us Into the Void. Don't trust the brain-eater! They might be able to play civilised, but they're reading your mind, talking down to your limited intellect and drooling at the thought of cracking open your cranium. You cannot deal with them as equals. Have you learned nothing from a life of sheep farming?
Marvel superheroes finishes messing around with the cosmic control rod in MSL3: Spore of Arthros. Let's kick some negative zone horror butt.
Buck Rogers goes for some timed drama in 25CS4: Phases of the moon. No surprises where this one is set. What is surprising is that it seems to be mostly negotiation based. How's that going to work? Probably not very well, as this is their last product before the line gets abruptly and unceremoniously cancelled. Seeya later, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. :p So much for that plan.
And finally, our standalone novel this month is The Cloud People, by Robert Kelly. A savior from the skies? Relying on heroes of destiny is risky gamble at best. They'll rarely be exactly what you expect. Did this one subvert the fantasy formulae in any way, or was it just more schedule filler?
Dragonmirth is down wit da dungeoneering. Yamara has yet more romantic drama. of the undead kind. David bowie gives us a great shot of his area in Twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Return of the lead banning bill from beyond the land of sanity! We thought it was defeated, but in congress, things go though more revisions and appeals than any horror movie series. Beware! Do not assume rationality will prevail, or like the sensible character who doesn't believe in monsters, you'll be first on the chopping block. Proactiveness and being paired up with an attractive member of the opposite sex when you lobby will save your hobby! :p This little subplot continues to give and give.
Lots of actual reviews this month as well, as we lead up to staying at home painting season. ( O_o )
Stone mountain miniatures step into the future with two packs of alien soldiers.
Thunderbolt Mountain, on the other hand, give us a fairly large wizard piece to invoke wrath with.
Houston's Ships convert the USS Eagle to the Space:1889 game.
Black Dragon Pewter have changed address, and also give us a fairly statuesque female warrior.
Stan Johansen Miniatures are in a fusion cannon mood, for some reason.
Lance and Laser create a mini of the famous wizard Tamerlin from Talislanta. Now that's a privilege I don't think Elminster's had yet.
Alternative Armies release a pair of well-armoured and mounted mercenaries.
Grenadier release a whole set of different wood elves. They'll jump out of the forrest and get you happily.
Ral Partha easily manage the most, and most official stuff. A Troll. Some Golems. Kobolds! Being licensed does have it's benefits. Get those kobolds in bulk if you want to properly emulate the game.
Another issue in which the themed section is the worst part of the magazine, with it being largely promotion that's a waste of space if you actually buy the products. There are quite a few other useful and entertaining articles here though, and some definite signs of the widening scope of the hobby, and the very different ways you can play which still count as roleplaying. So it looks like the problems in this era are largely management ones, as they have more than enough good articles to fill the magazine, but have to take on some dubious ones for commercial reasons. Maybe I should read the issues back to front if I want to enjoy them more. .eno txen eht otno ,llew hO
Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. Oooooooooh. It's october again, gentle readers. Won't you come on in to my humble thread. :steeples fingers: Don't worry about the door slamming itself behind you, it's just a draft. Maybe I ought to get that looked at, before our bodies start to shiver. So, Dark Sun got a special last month, now it's Ravenloft's turn, with our regular horror theme now officially sponsored by Strahd von Zaroviches patent 2 in 1 fang polish & bloodstain remover. Good for clothes, carpets, curtains and coffins. Use after every meal to ensure you have no trouble getting your next one :teeth ting: But I digress. Roll the projector! We have articles to view! What mere mortal could resist that?
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone wanting to contact one of the other writers for the magazine. Roger does what he usually does, and agrees to forward any letters, assuming they're not bombs or acid.
A letter asking about shadow dragons. They're hardly the most obscure of monsters. You just need a few more supplements.
A couple of tedious corrections, suitably erratad.
An index to all the ecology articles they've done so far, just as they did with all the classes a year ago, along with a request to send more in, for they seem to have a bit of a shortage at the moment. They're still popular reading, but they can't satisfy demand without a supplier. Go on, guv, gi's a fix.
Editorial: Roger talks about the aftermath of convention season here, just as he has every october since he became head editor. As usual, it was exhausting but fun, with more stuff going on than any single mere mortal could take in. Rare and OOP stuff is sold, sometimes for silly prices. Shiny new stuff is unleashed upon us, sometimes for free. White wolf make their first big impact on the gaming industry. And for yet another year, it was bigger than ever. Just how long will he be able to boast that? The usual array of amusing little personal tidbits and historical pointers here.
Are you having bad thoughts?: Another entirely official bit of writing kicks us off this month. Ravenloft screws over a whole range of spells to keep you from solving your problems and getting out too easily. Did you think you could get around that issue by using psionics instead? Fool! They will not let you escape, and if you use powers that are tinged with darkness, you will feel the same corruptive effects. So here's a couple of pages spelling out both the general restrictions and specific changes to your powers if you venture into the demiplane of dread. This was reprinted practically verbatim in the revised edition of the core boxed set, so I can't really work up any enthusiasm about it, other than a mild surprise that this was another bit of writing that appeared in here before getting put in a book. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Sage advice is even smaller than ever this issue.
Can a wand of negation deal with spells and already existing magical effects (no, it's very specific in it's use. Only get it out if you know you'll need it for an adventure.)
Can you drape a portable hole over your back to protect from backstabbing (ow, mah brains. Better say no to this one, otherwise who knows where it'll end. Hmm, what excuse can skip give? Skip knows! Skip'll say that people are not objects. That'll keep em happy )
What happens if you hide inside a portable hole when an enemy casts reverse time. (inventive. If you remember to shut the opening, it might just work. )
Can you use a carpet of flying underwater (Slowly.)
Can gauntlets of dexterity raise your score over 18 (Probably)
I've been thinking about weapon sizes. (What a co-incidence, so is Skip. Maybe we should get together, plan a rules revision. Skip likes that idea very much. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991
part 2/5
Out of the mists: Another collection of scary monsters, also with the official ravenloft seal of approval. Dr Van Richten may have catalogued these ones, but that certainly doesn't make them less dangerous. And just because they're from Ravenloft, doesn't mean you can't use them elsewhere as well. Let's face it, in actual modules, the demiplane of dread is considerably more porous than Athas. But anyway, let's see if they're any good.
Shadow asps are yet another magical way of guarding a tomb from any interlopers. Their poison slowly turns you into a Shadow as well, so although they're pretty weedy, they can become an escalating problem to a party. A swarm of these coming at a party will provoke a suitable degree of terror similar to swarms of spiders or centipedes IRL.
Fenhounds are actually good guys, in that they only savage people who've made powers checks. Course, since even good people can wind up making them, especially if they're also spellcasters, and they have no appeals court, a party may well find themselves having their own recurring baskerville situation to deal with.
Psionic liches are scary mofos, just like their wizardly counterparts, with the typical array of powers, and probably minions, long reaching plans, elaborate lairs, etc etc. They're one that would go on to official use and several appearances in supplements. As with regular liches, finding out where the hell their phylactery is is crucial, for revenge served cold is not very tasty actually.
Looks like this has been a pretty nice collection really, with stuff suitable for a wide range of situations, not just more boring straight-up fights. Do you want body horror or psychological stuff, little minions or big big bads, because both are provided for.
Cry Wolf: A few more monsters to scare your players with. Wolves certainly haven't been neglected in the magazine over the years, with both the regular and were varieties getting plenty of mentions. And they do have a long association with horror stories. Let's see if there's any new ideas to be had here.
Dread wolves are animated undead with a nasty rotting bite and regeneration. Their creator can see through their eyes, which means they can be rather useful for espionage as well as killing stuff.
Vampiric wolves take the already close relationship between the two creatures and blur it a little further. They vill drink your bluuud, and turn on their leader if they show weakness. Now that's definitely exploitable in a plot sense. They should be popular amongst not-too-bright evil overlords.
Stone wolves, on the other hand, are loyal, don't require any upkeep or toilet breaks, and can disguise themselves as ordinary statuary. (not that experienced adventurers will let their guard down around that. ) So it looks like all 3 of these are designed to be minions to some other vaguely horror themed big bad. I suppose wolves rarely do get the same kind of central importance in big plotlines as vampires and mages. Overall, this is pretty useful, but not particularly impressive. Guess that adds out to an average themed section then.
The marvel-phile: Steven Schend delves into the history books to give us another obscure villain who hasn't been covered yet, probably because he hasn't appeared in comics for over a decade either. Equinox! Heat and cold powers in one mentally unstable package! A bit gimmicky, but there doesn't seem to be any great reason why he's vanished when some other D-listers haven't. And he's less likely to be countered and ignored by a team effortlessly like a one-trick pony, so he could have a use. But no, this isn't anything particularly special.
Bugged about something?: Ahh, yes, giant insects. They've certainly played a substantial part in my low-level D&Ding, especially in places with lots of random encounters. This is a quick little realism in gaming article that looks like it was put in as a filler one, to fit around the number of adverts they have. Greg Detwiler does a decent job of reminding us just how badass real insects are, with their proportionate strength, various spiffy senses, ridiculous toughness, social organisation, etc etc. A bit insubstantial really, but the artwork's good. Meh.
The game wizards: I may have made quite a few Gotta collect 'em all quips in my time doing this, and there are more to come, but here they really are literally asking for it. Their trading card series has proven quite a decent seller, and so they fully intend to print new ones each year until it ceases to profit them. This is full of the kind of data that collectables geeks will love. Limited editions, the variations in their looks based on number and run, size of print runs, the kind of thing that makes you look smart if you can quote it to your friends. I actually find myself quite liking this article, unexpectedly, probably because I am a statistics geek. And the economics of collectibles is an interesting and potentially profitable area of study. Anyone know what these cards go for these days?
The voyage of the princess ark: Once again, Raman takes centre stage this month, being lured away by a ghostly creature that hungers for cinnabryl. Guess it's Haldemar's turn to play rescuer this time round. At least, once he escapes from another annoying political plot, probably from the Huleans. Oh, if only we could meteor swarm them at the first sign of trouble instead of having to be diplomatic.
Crunchwise, we have stats for the aforementioned errant spirits, who are produced as a result of people extending their lifespans unnaturally with cinnabryl. We also have info on the northenmost 4 of the savage baronies, their relationships with each other, and the looming spectre of Hule's expansion. To survive around here, they have indeed become pretty tough places, full of passionate and stubborn warriors. A rich ground for adventure, both personal and political.
Letterswise, we have lots of annoying nit-picking this month. Yes, time has passed since these areas were first detailed in all those out of print modules. Yes, the gazetteers aren't very standardized. Yes, keeping intelligent flying mounts in your army is bloody tricky, and you need to ensure they're well treated and given the respect they deserve. No, none of these are setting breaking. Chill out, dudes.
Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991
part 3/5
Novel ideas: Athas's promotion continues, in an article that probably ought to have been last month, but for their bimonthly schedule. This is another one that's telling me stuff I know already, that Athas has a nice 5-book series kicking things off, courtesy of Troy Denning, and they intend dramatic things to happen in the novels and change the setting on a regular basis. It also calls attention to the way they're consciously trying to avoid or subvert as many of the usual D&D setting tropes as possible. Maybe too many at once, actually. We've been through this with Tekumel & Jorune, where too many alien elements keep people from getting into things. Athas is probably less experimental than either of those, but it is relatively low on literary and historical antecedents. And it didn't really enjoy the same kind of success as Dragonlance or Ravenloft. On the other hand, it did last quite a few years, and was one of the first worlds to be revisited in 4e, so it's hard to call it a failure either. Guess like morality in Athas, it's more complicated than that. This is definitely worth more debate. I look forward to the next time this topic comes up.
Fiction: The blue eyed thief by Bob Liddil. We hear a lot about cycles of abuse. Sins inflicted on people are in turn emulated and performed on others, be out of vengeance, need, or simple habit. You hear far less about cycles of redemption, people paying good deeds forward. Still, that's what this one is about. A young street-thief turned into a honest (well, almost) merchant by a little generosity and cleverly applied compassion, and then returning the favour a generation later. The kind of heroism that you can actually manage in the real world, if you're something like a teacher or homeless shelter volunteer. Don't think it'll be easy, or that some won't reject your help and continue being locked in their own self-destructive patterns, but you can make a difference. It may be a tiny one against the overall tapestry of the world, but you can make a difference. And this, in it's own small way, is a good reminder of that. So I think it does it's job quite nicely.
The role of computers: Quest for glory II: Trial by Fire combines a review with an interview with the makers of the game. Interesting. They talk about their design philosophy, and some of the technical details of it's creation. They've gone to plenty of effort to make this a fun adventure game that you'll have plenty of challenge completing, but hopefully won't get stuck on, and can improve your skills along with your character's. And they intend to release still better looking versions in the near future. Yay for ever increasing monitor resolutions.
Cybergenic Ranger: Secret of the seventh planet looks and sounds good, but is slow and boooooooring to play. Remember your design priorities, programmers. Fun must always be primary, otherwise all else becomes irrelevant.
F29 Retaliator is a flight simulator, but one that sacrifices realism for fun, making the planes rather easier to pilot than their real counterparts. Which is a good thing, really, since the amount of training to get an actual pilots licence is quite substantial.
Sonic the Hedgehog sees them instantly spot that this was created by sega as a conscious attempt at making a marketable mascot. Not that the game is bad at all. (although I always preferred Sonic 3. The series didn't really get going until he had a proper cast of supporting characters.) The high speed bits impress them, the non-linear level design still holds up today, (if anything, it's more so than many of the later games, especially once the series went 3D) and the rotating bonus levels are really cool for the era. Mario now has serious competition, and their battles will be good for the profiles of both sides. Let the lines be drawn, and the fanboys of both sides rage.
They also re-review a whole bunch of old games that have been recently released for new systems. Gunboat, Harpoon, Railroad Tycoon, and Wizardry: Bane of the cosmic forge. Most manage to improve on the previous versions in some way. Wizardry in particular is massively improved on it's original incarnation.
Dark Sun occupies the centre pages with a full colour photographed advert, including a fake weird creature skull. Any idea what monster that's supposed to belong too?
The possibilities are endless: Oooh. A TORG article. Spike Y Jones suggests changing around a few of the default setting assumptions and seeing the potential for fun adventures that result. All it takes is for the initial blitzkrieg of the probability wars to have gone a little better or worse and the political landscape will look rather different. Similarly, giving the characters roles other than Storm Knights who awakened to their power in a recent crisis will alter the way the game goes quite a bit. This makes me think of Exalted quite a bit, where the default character choice is both the most powerful, and the least integrated into the world, and subsequent splats introduced very different ways of playing in the same world, each with their own distinctive social structures. It also makes me wonder about the cfhoice of making a game have multiple settings, or one default one that it takes quite a bit of work to convert away from. Is the ultimate victory of the AD&D line over the BD&D one because it had a whole bunch of settings and encouraged you to make your own, while the BD&D one became increasingly locked into the known world as the line went on? Is that also part of the reason why games such as Exalted, TORG and Rifts never managed to unseat D&D in overall popularity and versatility? Was the introduction of the Infinite Worlds meta-setting tying everything together part of the reason why GURPS 4th ed has only had a tiny fraction of the books 3rd ed managed? Was the increasing degrees of crossover between the various AD&D settings part of what caused TSR's downfall? Now there's a big intractable question for us to chew over. So I guess this is a pretty good article, both giving coverage to a new game, and providing me with plenty of thoughts on how to change play that are applicable to other games. Spike is proving to be one of the better contributors of this era.
Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991
part 4/5
Forum: Martyn Agass thinks that characters need a decent amount of customisability so their skills can accurately reflect their personality and goals. Spellcasters are decently provided for, as a rogues these days, but warriors still suck in this respect. Kits just don't seem to be enough for him.
Jason Dunn has a fairly lengthy contribution, covering several topics, and mentioning quite a few previous writers. The result feels like whislestop tour through his GM'ing philosophy. Anything is possible. Don't kill too often, but don't let players believe they're invulnerable.
Robert W. Heym is annoyed that TSR are devoting so much time and page count to their own game worlds, rather than giving more generic advice. Just go back a decade or forward a couple and your wish will be granted. :p
Salvadore Giraldi, on the other hand, finds preprepared campaign worlds a huge help. Even the big ones hardly cover every bit of the world, and it does make it easier for players to become attached to the world and impressed by the famous NPC's. So many people don't have the time to make complete games. The trick is to design campaign worlds so they assist your own creativity rather than stifle it.
Shawn A. Chesak holds an opinion somewhere between the previous two forumites. Yes, the proportion of generic stuff to specific worlds is probably too low at the moment, but that doesn't mean they should cut out the campaigns entirely. They do serve a valuable role for novice players.
Sandy Green speaks up in support of young people gaming, and Paladins and Demons playing a part in the game. Learning about morality in a non-preachy manner is important.
Amber! By Erik Wujik. The first big diceless system! Once again with the progress.
Defeating more with less: Or return of the Tuckers Kobolds part 3, Endor holocaust. Greg Detwiler shows us once again how enemies played smart are far more likely to live long and prosper. Basic tactics like taking cover and using missile fire massively increase your effectiveness, as real world armies demonstrate on a daily basis. Stealth, traps, hit-and-run attacks, stealing stuff, clever use of spellcasters, this all seems pretty familiar, albeit presented pretty well, and with plenty of detail. Still, it doesn't have enough new ideas to really stoke my interest. Seen this stuff before, will likely see it again. One for the new readers then.
TSR Previews: D&D continues it's revamp with the rules cyclopedia. The new basic set may not have made much impact, but this certainly did, even amongst people who have all the old boxed sets. (after all, if you've been playing regularly for 6 years, they're probably getting a bit ratty. ) Even now, it has enough devotees to jack the ebay prices up quite substantially. It also continues to fill out the hollow world, in HWR2: Kingdom of Nithia. Another once great culture preserved from the surface world. What strange stuff do they have for the salvaging?
The Forgotten realms is still concerned with Maztica in FMA2: Endless armies. Foil a horde of giant ants using the battlesystem rules? That's a new one for the system. Let's hope it handles it and produces a fun adventure, because that definitely seems like a cool change of pace. Back in the Realms themselves. R. A. Salvadore
tries to escape the endless Drizzt trilogies with um, a quintet about a cleric instead. Who's idea was that, and did they come up with the plot and realize it would take 5 books to tell, or decided to do a quintet first, and then churn out crap until the page count was filled? Meet Cadderly in Canticle. Times are about to get very interesting for him.
Dragonlance isn't so diverse, with elves elves elves taking centre stage in both modules and novels. DLS4: Wild elves does what it says on the tin. Scott Bennie tries to make their trials and travails interesting to adventurers. Meanwhile, Paul Thompson and Tonya Carter complete The Qualinesti, the final book in the elven nations trilogy. They do like their boy/girl teams for writing Dragonlance stuff, don't they. I guess they're trying to replicate the magic formula of the original series or something.
Ravenloft takes us to a blasted fantasy egypt, to face the deadly touch of the mummy darklord in RA3: Touch of death. Water shortages, mirages, jackals, vultures and undead. Thoroughly miserable place.
And finally, on the generic side, the complete series kicks off again with PHBR6: The complete dwarves handbook. An arsenal of cool kits and other stuff to really fill them out. Certain players will be rubbing their hands together.
Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991
part 5/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ioun Stones! Another thing introduced in the earliest days of the magazine gets revisited in greater depth, with lots of new variants. Like Mind flayers, this is a very welcome returning topic. Like the card deck one from issue 148, this is essentially an ecology article, giving us some ideas of where they could come from, and how they got made. Be it the middle of a star, or the border between the plane of earth & positive energy, it takes quite substantial amounts of energy and pressure. A smart wizard might be able to custom make them, but they also show up naturally, which is pretty awesome really. And not only is this a decent enough ecology, but it also casually throws in 28 new varieties of stone to put in your treasure piles. So it's both good reading and damn useful in actual play, providing you with treasure and plot hooks aplenty to keep your game well fuelled with adventure.
The dragon's bestiary continues directly on from the previous article, introducing a whole load of new creatures for the Quasielemental plane of Mineral. As with the paraelemental plane of ice (see issue 129) these guys have a strong crystaline theme, mostly being formed out of sharp geometric shapes, and aren't very keen on gross fleshy interlopers. (which will now be even more frequent since they now know there's not just vast quantities of gems, but Ioun stones to be mined round these parts) This looks pretty spiffy.
Glomus float around and use their many spikes to deal with anyone who disrupts their inscrutable cogitation. They reform if you don't smash them thoroughly enough, so be wary.
Shard also demonstrate that even weak planar monsters are pretty scary for mid level adventurers. They might be only flying crystals, but they're both sharp and dazzling. And they often appear in large numbers. They can certainly turn an invading party into bloody ribbons.
Spined shards are even more unpleasant than their single crystaled relations. With multiple attacks, blasty effects and an anti-magic field, they have a bit in common with beholders actually, even if they look quite different. Well, Tasmanian devils aren't less scary because they're very different from wolves.
Chamerol are enormous tentacled rock-tree things that grow right on the positive energy border. This means they have no shortage of fuel to grow to truly ridiculous sizes and spread their roots through the tough rock beneath them. Wonder what the things that parasitise their innards look like?
Energy pods look like more substantial relatives of xag-ya, feeding of both energy and minerals. Watch out for the explosive effects when you damage them.
Trilling chrysmal look like those biology textbook pictures of viruses, with a hexagonal body and spidery legs on one end. They're pretty cute, but have powerful offence and spell reflection abilities. Be glad they won't be laying their eggs in you.
Crystalle is a nicely old skool elemental ruler, with plenty of magic abilities, and a haul of ioun stones that'll make even archmages jealous. He's certainly not unbeatable, but with all his equipment, money and servants, it'll be a big ugly adventure to get to take his stuff.
Combined with the previous article, this adds up to a rather idiosyncratic special feature that does quite a bit to fill in another obscure corner of the planes. Something they don't do nearly enough of, and that I'm pretty fond of, so I'm definitely giving this set high marks. It's a big strange universe out there, and if our game can reflect at least a small fraction of those environments and the theoretical creatures adapted to them, it'll be a lot more interesting than another delve into our own tedious minds.
Dragonmirth makes several social faux-pas. Yamara tries to help joe with romance advice. Twilight empire finishes the fight, and wonders if they can fit in some more fanservice before getting back to the plot.
Through the looking glass: A different set of current events are focussed upon her this month. The Gulf War is pretty much over, and now people are looking for minis to recreate the fun of blowing Saddam's shit up on their own table. Hmm. Very interesting, if in slightly poor taste. I guess it's not disrespecting the memory of those who died if hardly anyone (on our side :p :( ) did. But more on that next month, as it looks like this bit of potential controversy is merely a teaser.
The rest of the column scrupulously avoids this topic and concentrates on fantastical & sci-fi stuff. A cheesecake female warrior with some proportional deficiencies. A sea elf dressed in stuff that also looks a bit impractical for swimming in. A doomgarde unit. (somehow it seems less scary with a french accent. ) Something which is either a mutated snake, or a very big reptile that we're only seeing the head and upper arms of. A whole bunch of adorable tiny mechs with even tinier pieces that will be a bit tricky to assemble and easily broken. A rather large-beaked owlbear. A rather eyeless looking displacer beast. A mangy, short-legged catoblepas. A whole bunch of minis from sculpting doyen Julie Guthrie. And a nuyen & scoop hungry news team from shadowrun. Quite a few of these get scathing remarks about their quality. Looks like he's got his groove back after that nasty ratings fixing business. Long may he continue his semi-detached reporting.
Synibarr gets an advert! Awesome! The advert does a perfect job of revealing what happened in it, and the gonzo characters you can play. Are you sold on it? \m/
Another issue that really drives home some of the many ways the hobby is spreading out around this time. Conventions are still growing in attendance and popularity, existing settings are developing nicely, and people are trying out a whole bunch of cool new ideas that'll go on to make their own mark in the next few years. Of course, on a longer scale, there's also some more signs of their eventual downfall, as they diversify to the point of overextension and strangle games with metaplot, but every sperm holds within it an old person dying from flaws that were present all along. The important thing is that they survive long enough to inspire creative offspring of their own, with different quirks and flaws, to live and die in different memetic environments. Or something. I think we're getting into torturous metaphor territory here, so I'll move on before I tie my own tongue in knots.
Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. As hinted a while ago in the letters page, some people want more stuff showing us how to create and run our own campaigns. Looks like the freelancers were listening, for such is this month's topic. Power to the people, and all that. Keep that approach up, and you'll rarely want for the topics you desire, and can reduce rehash quite considerably. That gives us a positive beginning to this issue. Let's kick the proceedings off then.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter advertising the beginning of the Sci-fi channel. High hopes. We've got hiiigh hopes. You mean the one that recently renamed itself Syfy, to much derision, while also cutting down on the amount of actual sci-fi it shows, just like MTV, and has churned out more than it's fair share of crap TV movies. Oops there goes another crappy cable tv channel.
A letter about setting up pen-pal stuff. They stopped doing that ages ago because they had too many people writing in to handle. It's all a bit of a pain, but they'll do what they can.
Another person asking about the record for longest continuous gaming session. Roger gives the same slightly exasperated reply he made last time. Can't recommend it mate. 'Elf an' safety regulations, innit. Sigh.
Another very rehashed question. What does TSR stand for. These days, not a lot. :p
Editorial: Giant Space Hamsters! Oh Roger, what have you wrought? Forever now will spelljammer be inextricably linked with them. 20 years later, people will still snigger when you mention their name. But they do have plenty of supporters, as this outpouring of reader responses shows. In prose, in bullet points, even in verse, they show their love and the many things they use them for. It's enough to make me want to grow more heads and limbs just so I can perform multiple simultaneous facepalms. They just can't resist putting big globs of goofy into their products these days. When exactly will it end? Guess I'll just have to hold on a few years more.
Inventing the "instant" Adventure: So they want to give us more help constructing our own campaigns. Hrmm. How do we go about that? Let's ask one of our experienced freelancers, like, oh, :draws name out of a hat: Arthur Collins. Arthur, how do you create adventures on the fly when your players go in an unexpected direction.
Well, Roger, I'm glad you asked. The easiest way is to have lots of ideas prepared that you can easily insert. And the best way to do that is to Kismif.
Kismif? What's that. Is it some king of acronym, or are you just making up words?
Why yes Roger. It stands for Keep It Simple, Make It Fun. A very important maxim you should all take to heart. I've written a little song to help you remember it.
Keep it simple, make it fun
Then it works for everyone
Keep it simple, make it fun
That's the way games should be run
You can have a million things
going on at once
The subtleties get lost
and people wander off
Keep it simple, make it fun
give the people what they want
Keep it simple, make it fun
Then it works for everyone!
Um, Thank you Arthur. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Why yes Roger. I've got six easy lessons and 24 ideas that are just spiffing at getting things moving again quickly and easily. And they can be yours for the small small price of $3.50! Would you like a preview?
I believe so, Arthur, since I'm the one who'll actually be selling it as part of the magazine.
Well, of course. Don't roll on a table, just pick stuff off a menu. Don't tell them why, when their speculations will be more fun than what you come up with. Don't rush, use the time one encounter takes up to think of the next one. And there's tons of ideas you can steal from other media, as ever. Would you like to know more?
I think that's enough to get their interest, Arthur. Looks like you've done a great job. Here's your pay.
Thank you, Roger. Until next time then.
Yes, until next time.
The perils of prehistory: Back to dinosaur land again. Now there's a pretty well covered topic. Another area where they have to struggle to find new things to say. Still, once again, they manage it, eschewing the statistics, which are already well provided for if you own issues from a few years ago, instead talking about the problems integrating time-travel into fantasy campaigns. Here we run into a very interesting issue. The assumption that evolution works in a way remotely similar to reality, and the gods and planes are created by human belief, rather than the other way around is a rather large one to make, and opens up a lot of cosmological questions that you can have fun answering, which may well then open up more questions. So this is one that gives you tools to radically reshape your campaign via going back and changing things, and the different ways things could go if you try it. Your imagination may be the limit, but a few pointers are definitely helpful in an arena this big. So it looks like Greg Detwiler is once again proving his worth as one of our regular freelancers. This is one area where each action can have consequences, and you can just let the players drive the story, getting into more and more tangles until they don't know what to do. Fun business. I quite approve.
Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991
part 2/5
The perils of prehistory: Back to dinosaur land again. Now there's a pretty well covered topic. Another area where they have to struggle to find new things to say. Still, once again, they manage it, eschewing the statistics, which are already well provided for if you own issues from a few years ago, instead talking about the problems integrating time-travel into fantasy campaigns. Here we run into a very interesting issue. The assumption that evolution works in a way remotely similar to reality, and the gods and planes are created by human belief, rather than the other way around is a rather large one to make, and opens up a lot of cosmological questions that you can have fun answering, which may well then open up more questions. So this is one that gives you tools to radically reshape your campaign via going back and changing things, and the different ways things could go if you try it. Your imagination may be the limit, but a few pointers are definitely helpful in an arena this big. So it looks like Greg Detwiler is once again proving his worth as one of our regular freelancers. This is one area where each action can have consequences, and you can just let the players drive the story, getting into more and more tangles until they don't know what to do. Fun business. I quite approve.
Creative campaigns, a new recipe: Last month they made it very clear how Dark Sun differs from normal fantasy campaigns. Now they encourage you to make similarly radical changes to your own D&D games. Be it adding unusual new elements, or removing common ones, both can be neat ideas. Change the magic system. Integrate magic into people's everyday lives. Invent wacky new pseudophysics explanations for magic. Wait, we've seen these before. As is often the case, the last article in their themed section is the least interesting and groundbreaking. Guess they needed some filler to make up the numbers. Business as usual then.
The marvel-phile: 3-D man? Oh dear god, someone actually created a character based on those crappy red and green glasses. Once again, the cheese factor is burning out my brain. Needs. more. grimdark. :pants: It's not your fault, I know, it's the material you have to work with. But it does make me wonder how much crap there is in the bottom of the barrel for them to dig out and cover here. Dear oh dear.
They also cover another colour themed character: Blue Shield. This is considerably less silly, with the interesting way he started off as a gadget based hero, and then became able to use his powers without it. Heroic osmosis does seem to to be quite common in comic book universes, particularly where martial artists are involved. But once again, this doesn't have much new to offer me. Filler filler filler.
TSR Previews: Greyhawk has always been a war torn world in it's backstory. Now, get ready for this to really intrude on the metaplot in the Greyhawk Wars boxed set. You get a complete board game to play this out yourself, but of course, there is an official outcome of this war, and all the future supplements will reflect these changes and timeline advancement. Will you follow along their railroad, or branch off into alternate history?
The forgotten realms gets a game book and a novel this month, as seems to be standard for them by now. FR13: Anauroch takes you to the great northern desert, and the many destroyed empires and other adventure opportunities that lie within. Make sure you bring a cleric with food creating powers if you want to tackle these adventures. The red wizards are also being pains in the ass in Red Magic by Jean Rabe, the final book in the harpers trilogy. Guess who has to foil their actions. Go on, you'll never get it.
Spelljammer sees SJS1: Goblins return. You failed to take them seriously? Oh boy. They're a lot scarier when they have tons of cobbled together spaceships with various deranged weaponry. Another war situation that's too big for a single group to solve, but you can still play your part, and be annoyed at any metaplot mucking around.
Ravenloft also mucks around with other people's creations, as Lord Soth gets drawn into there without his original writer's consent in Knight of the Black rose. Will James Lowder manage to remain faithful to his original voice and characterization?
D&D is still splitting it's time between reaffirming the basics, and exploring the hollow world. This time, DDA4: The Dymrak dread attempts to show newbies a little more of the known world. Blah.
Marvel superheroes gets a double helping this time round. MU7: the Gamers handbook gives us our third yearly update to the vast roster of characters we have to choose from. And MSL4: Stygian knight sees the cosmic control rod used in an attempt to, well, once again the name says it all. Foiling time! You know, if you'd just listened to Annihlus and given him his rod back, this whole mess would have been short circuited. How hard would it be to get off the railroad and do this one differently?
The voyage of the princess ark: As the Ark heads south along the Savage coast, they find themselves invited to a formal ball in Saragon. An excellent chance for Haldemar to get some dance practice in, and a chance to show events from lady Abovombe's point of view as well. Of course, things can't go smoothly for them, and they find themselves in the middle of palace intrigue, with spies, assassins and gnoll ninjas ( :D) turning the evening into a combination of farce and grand guignol. An unusually funny episode, as we get to see romance (sorta, oh woe for the bowdlerising company policy. ) peer bonding, (over fried gnoll) and overdramatic death scenes. Bruce is obviously experimenting with what he can do in this series, and this is a definite hit. It really ought to be a TV series, because I can visualize this episode clearly now, and it would be really rather amusing.
Our OOC section fills us in on another 4 of the Savage baronies. Almarron, the deeply unstable new dictatorship. Gargona, the switzerland of the savage baronies with it's policy of neutrality and encouraging artists. Guadalante, aka cowboy country. And the aforementioned Saragon, with it's wizardly ruler, magical artefact shielding it's borders, and general magic-heaviness. Once again we see how we've gone from sorta medieval stuff to sorta colonial americas. The letters touch on this point as well, with some people vaguely dissatisfied at how far they've drifted from the low-magic, feudal style of play. They have to differentiate their three generic fantasy settings somehow, and Mystara got to be the one with really common magic that's fully integrated into everyday life. Go to Greyhawk if you want gritty, and leave us to enjoy our weird, and often rather amusing adventures around here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991
part 3/5
Fiction: Uktena's quest by Kit Wesler. Oooh. Native american stuff. And a timely reminder that now Vampire: the Masquerade is out, Werewolf: The Apocalypse will be following in quick succession. Get ready for descriptive names based on animals and achievements, often rather silly, to become a lot more common in the near future. Anyway, this combines the "young boy sets out to prove himself" and "Kill the dragon" plot seeds and puts them into a native american milieu. It uses the same method of killing said big monster as The Hobbit, features irritating and enigmatic little fairy creatures and is otherwise deconstructable to the point of absolute predictability. I really can't say I'm impressed by this one at all. Such is the nature of formulaic filler.
The role of computers shakes up it's format some more, putting a whole bunch of preamble before the reviews. Upgrades, protcol, news and requests. Oh, and recursive joke acromyns. It does feel a touch niggly, as they try and solve some little problems, but are still doing basically the same things. I can't work up much enthusiasm about this.
Castles is a typical top-down sim game where you build your settlement and engage in violence with rival settlements. You can play it as regular medieval kingdoms or add on fantasy elements. While no sim city beater, it's not bad either. This genre isn't going away any time soon.
Dragon Crystal is a roguelike adventure for the Game Gear. Make your way through 30 randomly generated levels, find food, defeat monsters, and raise a baby dragon from an egg. It's easy and simple enough to be fun to start, but hard to complete, as a good game should be.
Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective is of course a puzzle-centric rpg game where you have to solve crimes with the finesse of the fictional detective. It's one of the first games to use actual video cutscenes using real actors, so even if the picture quality is a bit grainy, it definitely stands out. The clue hunting process is pretty interesting sounding as well. Good to see someone really taking advantage of the massive memory increase moving from floppies to CD's grants you.
The clue corner is tiny this month. However, we do have another substantial conversions collection. The faery tale Adventure, King's Bounty & Might and Magic all get new versions on the Genesis. This generally entails a certain amount of simplification, due to the lack of a keyboard, but also improvements in the graphics and sound. Consoles are rapidly overtaking computers in terms of fun for your time and money ratio, and it's a long time before they'll start turning into multimedia centres themselves, bringing the streams back together again. Growing pains aplenty in this industry to come.
Forum gets a new, slightly more goofy looking header. Bleh. Some revamps, you just don't need.
S D Anderson weighs in on the issues of the day, as he has been doing for years. In this case it's to register his disdain about Craig Hardie's position. While creating your own campaign from scratch might have more creative integrity, a lot of us don't have the time, or do this because our primary goal is fun. That kind of worldbuilding is hard work, y'know. Plus if you're playing in a published world, it's a lot easier to transfer characters from one game to another. Good points, as usual.
Jose Pablo Zagal points out that it's the adventures that go wrong, and unexpected and amusing things wind up happening that are the most memorable. If you try and avoid that in your adventure design, then things'll get boring. And in the end, the memories are the only treasure that lasts after the game ends.
D. M. Burck thinks that the power level of the ships in the voidjammers article is more than sufficient for normal threats. And their boss kicked the ass of the lich queen. The rep he got from that is probably an important part of why others don't try it on too often.
Scot Eddy brings up the Star Wars twinking issue from a year ago again. Slow motion flamewars indeed. With more 10 options on how to deal with power armour twinks, this shows once again how easy it is for an imaginative GM to defeat any twink.
W. Norgielix brings up the issue of gunpowder in a fantasy game, and how wizards are likely to react again. Considering that a big part of their research should be finding sources of power that are less time-consuming, one would think at least some would adopt tricks like that.
Brian Dye supports including younger players into your regular campaign. It's more fun for you, and helps them learn how to do it properly quicker. It's easier to do anything if you have a good teacher.
And we also get an anonymous contribution, for the first time ever in here. Shows how long it's been since the magazine allowed any of those to get published. This is one about the validity of scale mail as an armor. Man, people are still worrying about that? Just how small a slush pile did they have to choose from those days?
Only the best will do!: Another year's conventions have flown by, and with them, awards ceremonies. Let's see what they rated highly this year at Origins. Genestealer is the only thing to get two awards, so it seems pretty diverse collection. Dungeon beats out Dragon as best magazine this year. Sandy Petersen joins the hall of fame. Ravenloft, Pendragon, Forgotten Realms, and AD&D's mini line aren't neglected. Nor are Shadowrun, Battletech, Illuminati or Wing Commander. Who's been snubbed this time? Well, V:tM was probably released after the cutoff point, so we'll see how that does next year.
Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991
part 4/5
Sage advice also gets a new header. This one I don't mind. Looks like they've decided to spruce things up a bit around here. It's also rather larger than It's been in a while. Happy days are here again for Skip at sage towers.
How many weapons can a spelljammer really carry. (never enough. A familiar litany, surely. Ships have to worry about encumbrance even more than people do. )
Can damage done by a deathjammer be healed (yes. )
How do spelljammer and planescape interact. (stating how everyone in a bunch of infinite universes interacts is an impossible task, frankly.)
What happens if you put a cursed item in a spelljamming furnace (Skip's not sure, but it's unlikely to be pretty)
Can you spend extra slots from inteligence on weapon proficiencies (no. Only nonweapon. Bad twink.)
Can you be a wild mage and a necromancer (no. One speciality per person only. It's hardly a specialty if you're concentrating on multiple things. )
What can you aim for with nahal's reckless dweomer (any spell you know)
How do you make a shrine ( The tools you're given in the tome of magic look entirely adequate to the job. You should be happy you don't have to rely on fiat anymore. Yes, NPC's will still be able to make better ones. So what? They always have.)
What level is a multiclassed character for purpose of enemy spells (use your highest single level)
What does magic resistance protect you from (magical effects that directly affect you. Not naturally occurring similar phenomena, and not stuff that affects the world around you, which then indirectly affects you. Basic logical principles )
Do druid/rangers exist or not? (Officially, no. Here's rules for if you insist on playing them anyway. Skip's in a good mood today. )
Do druids worship a nature related deity, or nature directly (their choice )
What can druids resist charm from (only fae/nature spirity types. Anything else, they're on their own.)
Do wizards have to have read magic (only to read scrolls)
Why are shadow monsters still in the illusion school when they're partially real (Look! Swamp gas! :Throws cannister and disappears into the smoke:)
Is wall of fug an evocation (yes. It's powers are entirely within that school's remit. You don't get to change that just because you don't like the spell)
Why can't halflings get exceptional strength. (because Reepicheep fought a duel for it and won. So no exceptional strength for halflings )
How many attacks can you get per round fighting unarmed (Recycled question.
The answer has not changed. Yes, I know many monsters get one attack per limb. You're not a monster, are you? )
How long will a simulacrum live after it's creator dies (quite a while, if it's careful)
How long does it take to make the paper for a spellbook (quite a while, unless you buy it. It's one of those things that's most economical to handle in bulk )
We seem to be missing some casting times (Dear oh dear. Skip thinks Skip'll blame Ed Greenwood this time around. Ed, It's all your fault. Make a mistake like that again and Skip'll cap you, mofo. Ahh, It's good to be back on top. )
What's with wyvern watches area (Eratta. We are serious about applying it this time round. )
If a demihuman leaves Krynn, do they keep their altered level limits (no. Blame the gods. But don't go and complain, unless you want to be smitten.)
Role-playing reviews: Horror time again, a little late. Busy magazine, people miss deadlines, not enough room, whatever excuse, here it is now, let's rock.
Dark conspiracy gets a fairly good review. It's clearly written, has great artwork, a system with simple base mechanics but lots of crunch on top of it, and a fairly well designed and versatile setting. On the other hand, it's humourless, uses complicated math, and doesn't put much emphasis on the actual horror aspect, instead just focussing on the killing stuff. So it's good for if you want to play modern dungeon delves, or know how to run horror without mechanical support, but not too great for new players.
Vampire: the masquerade gets a fairly prompt review. And oh yes, the pretentiousness is looked upon somewhat askance. The rules and presentation may be a bit rough compared to later editions, but, oh, the ideas, and the way they emphasise their themes. Artwork may not be perfect, but the way they use it to tell a story throughout the book is genius. (and one thing they really could do again these days) The way they handle the stuff you have and encourage you to play your character's personality via mechanical carrots and sticks is indeed damn innovative. The amount of advice on roleplaying and campaign construction is orders of magnitude greater than other games at this point, and the whole thing comes with plenty of prepackaged conflicts, both external and internal. What monstrous things will you wind up doing to avoid becoming a monster permanently? Oh yeah. They've arrived with a bang, as we also saw at the conventions, and soon the roleplaying landscape will be very different. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to put on The Cure's greatest hits and bounce around to Let's go to Bed.
Blood brothers is a Call of Cthulhu supplement that brings schlock horror to BRP, with a bunch of short adventures based on classic movies. This may of course piss off purists, but it is fun if you're in the right mood. One for both april and october then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991
part 5/5
Rhyme & reason: My oh my? 15 years of a fantasy magazine and we never had an article on riddles before. That does seem like a rather surprising omission, considering their significance in the hobbit, and frequency they've shown up in other books in their reviews section, sometimes even being the centre of the entire story. Course, that may be because they're a pain in the butt which depend heavily on DM preparation, and player skill over character stats. This article uses some quite interesting formatting, with the relatively short expository bit on the top, 8 sample riddles in the middle, and the answers at the bottom, along with quite a bit of varicoloured artwork. It doesn't go into that much detail, actually, a tiny amount on the RL history of riddles, and a similarly small amount on actually using them in your game. It's all a bit insubstantial really, and doesn't help much with either constructing your own, or overcoming the problems of using them in your game. Rather an odd duck really. Still, they've done it now. There's a reasonable chance we won't see it again for another decade or so, which is fine by me.
Delivered by breath, scares heroes to death: Egads. Two riddle articles in one issue. Yeah, this is pretty scary. Shoulda put these in last month's issue and moved the ioun stone pair to here. This one has less new riddles, and more stuff on making your own and putting them into your campaign effectively. It is rather encouraging, perhaps even a little too so, demystifying the riddlecrafting process pretty well. It's really no harder than writing poetry & music, and uses a lot of the same brain areas, along with the crossword solving one. Once again, the primary problem with including them in your game isn't mentioned, (never make a situation dependent on your players making a single particular choice. ) but it's a pretty decent article taken on it's own terms. I guess with story gaming making it's big uprising, people have to make a whole bunch of new mistakes while exploring and learn from them. Oh, if only we could have hindsight without having to go through all the crap first. Best we can do is learn from the mistakes of others.
The role of books: Life on the border, edited by Terri Windling takes us back to the dungeonpunk town where folk rock is king. It obviously feels less innovative now a whole bunch of other writers have got in on the act, but it does have plenty of cool stories. Very nice to see this series continue.
Palaces & prisons by Ron Miller does not get a very good review. The plot and settig are rather shallow and don't hang together well. Looks like he should stick to being an artist for other people then.
Elfshadow by Elaine Cunningham is one of our very own Forgotten Realms novels. It's one of those small scale ones which help to make the Realms into the biggest, most filled in and flexible gaming worlds out there. Everyone can contribute, including you. Just don't expect total internal consistency.
Halo by Tom Maddox is a story of a computerised satellite developing intelligence, and the ethical and practical problems that presents. This allows them to tackle serious sci-fi issues in the plot and make them accessable, which is rarely a bad thing in my book.
Vampire of the mists by Christie Golden is of course a Ravenloft novel. Like the original module, it doesn't quite work as a horror story, but it does indeed have plenty of AAAAAngst!!! and a good mix of sympatheticness and monstrousness in the characters. Guess it's not too terrible for Masquerade lovers either then.
Batman: Captured by the engines by Joe R Lansdale does pretty well, bringing the worlds greatest detective back down to street level with a strange little mystery story. It has stuff both from his perspective, and that of others, and manages to build an actual creepy atmosphere. Not often you see that in the actual comics.
Dragonmirth fails to grasp basic tactics. There is a certain amount of tabloid doctoring in Yamara. We confirm what was pretty obvious anyway. Dimensional travel is responsible for the heroes memory loss in Twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Let's get military! Or not, as once again the real war talk only occupies a tiny amount of the column before they return to the regular reviews. We also have another amusing case of impersonation at the conventions, with people selling shoddy imitations of other companies minis. Seems like a lot of work for the money you actually get from it to me. But then again, what did that guy who impersonated Roger in 86 get from it? I suspect that they really do it for the thrill, and the money is just a justification. But then, if we were all perfectly logical, D&D would never have been created, and I wouldn't be doing this ridiculous amount of work for free. I guess I shall have to mark it down as another of the sillier little footnotes in this magazine's history.
Back to the reviews then. The HMS Intrepid gets converted to Space: 1889. A little dragon outgrows it's doghouse in adorable fashion. A good and bad guy struggle epically, frozen together forever. A team of snipers set things up for a quick kill. A nice little loghouse and barn. A japanese village for all your samurai and ninja figures to fight amongst. A large dragon that you'll have to assemble yourself. And a vampire & his ghoul minions, nominally for Shadowrun, but easily adapted, by the increasingly ubiquitous Julie Guthrie. As usual, it seems like they're going for variety in reviews to maximise the chances you'll want to buy them.
D&D rules cyclopedia! Finally, all 36 levels in a single book. Atsa gooda revisione. If only they'd put the immortals rules in there as well.
An issue where they not only show clearly how things are changing in the hobby at large, but some of the ways they've been different in the past. And the magazine seems to be making an effort to change with the times, even if some of the changes are a bit silly and not altogether desirable. Hopefully the changes will be sufficient to stave off boredom a little more. Let's finish this year, as we have the one before.
Dragon Magazine Issue 176: December 1991
part 1/5
124 pages. Ooh. Elves vs Gnolls riding leucrotta on the cover! Does that mean we're finally going to get a themed issue on gnolls? No, it's just another half-assed double bill of elf features. After the yearly ones on dragons, they're now comfortably in second place ahead of dwarves for racial features. Still, maybe they'll be good ones, even if the topic is getting a bit overdone. Come on, give norkers their turn! ;) Or maybe one on the symbiotic relationship between mites and snyads. A special on the quasielemental plane of dust. Push yourself. Plenty of things hinted at in existing books but still unexpanded on. This is what imagination is for.
In this issue:
Letters: Only a single letter this month, a rather long and grouchy one about the lack of african based game material for D&D, topped off with the fact that what there is so far is mostly egyptian. As is often the case when people complain about the lack of variety, Roger agrees with them, pointing out the few contributions the magazine has made over the years, and begs all you freelancers out there to send stuff in! Hopefully we will get a selection at least akin to the bounty hunter submissions to make up a decent themed issue with in the near future. Once again he tries to stave off rehash by specific appeals to the readership, which is pretty neat.
Editorial: Ooh. Continuing on from the letter, Roger finally tackles race and gaming. Well, sorta. No mention is made of non-white people actually roleplaying, but he does talk about the dumbness of other races in fantasy games actually being less different than the many other cultures found in reality, especially once you start going back in time. The values and technology people have can vary widely, even without any significant biological differences, simply due to random variations and the butterfly effect. The same ought to apply to your fantasy cultures. Also, you should learn to live in harmony with people from around the world and embrace their differences in reality. (says an ex-soldier) So an important lesson, made a bit sickly by saccharine moralising. Overcome your prejudices, and learn to think outside your own cultural box, and both your gaming and real world friendships will benefit. You've probably seen this idea often enough before, probably with suitable inspirational material playing in the background. (yes, you again Michael Jackson. ) Like badly played lawful dick paladins, the fact that it might be right doesn't make it any less annoying when handled wrong.
Servants of the seldarine: So it's another elven special. How many is that now? Only 3? You surprise me. Not that they haven't got plenty more articles as part of other issues as well, including the fae special that turned out to be nearly all elves anyway. Anyway, here we see them attack a very particular issue. The complete priest's handbook and Legends & lore have been out for a bit now, so people have a decent idea what creating a speciality priest entails mechanically. But demihuman deities haven't got their gods converted over to the new system yet. And by now you should know exactly what this article does. Aerdrie Faenya, Corellon Larethian, Deep Sashelas, Erevan Ilesere, Hanali Cenalil, Labelas Enoreth, Lolth, Rillifane Rallathil and Solonor Thelandira all get their requirements, accessable spheres and granted powers detailed. However, they do have quite significant differences from their later official writeups in Monster Mythology. More attention is paid in particular to their granted powers and extra restrictions, which are far more interesting and idiosyncratic in this version, rather than just being free extra spells. In fact, having given the two a good comparison, I'll say I prefer this one, which feels like it was given more care in design, and not compressed and simplified because they had hundreds of gods to fit in a 128 page splatbook. Finally, we're getting good 2nd edition crunch in the magazine. I have to say I'm quite pleased about this.
If you need help - ask the drow!: Another trip down to undermountain in the company of Laeral it seems. Ed and Steven continue to work at making the Realms a living world, with new monsters moving in to occupy cleared out areas, cave-ins and new excavations changing the terrain, and existing characters gaining levels. And in the process encouraging the gotta collect 'em all problem and forcing you to skip between dozens of books and articles to keep track of everything that's going on. It's always so much easier to remember this stuff when you were the one who wrote it in the first place. But as is often the case, my inherent pessimism is won over by the sheer amount of fun Ed is obviously having. Drow aren't all Lolth worshiping psychos. There are actually a (not so, if you read the novels) surprising number of good Eilistraee worshippers amongst them, hiding amongst the cities and trying to do good, or exiling themselves to the upper caverns. And it seems Skullport has a decent number of them, engaging in cautious trade with the surface world, thwarting worshippers of Ghaunadaur, and trying not to be killed by both good and bad guys. It's all crammed to the brim with plot hooks and adventure opportunities, as is often the case with his stuff. Whether you want combat, roleplaying or exploration, he's got you well covered.
Dragon Magazine Issue 176: December 1991
part 2/5
Forum: Terry C Parlett praises the idea of manoeuvres for fighters. Giving people more of a feel of control is a good thing for the game in his opinion, and allows cool descriptions to really mean something. Now all it needs are a few clarifications.
Dave Wile tells us that if we set boundaries for our players, and we need to have consequences when they break them, otherwise they won't work. If they're incompetent, they should die. If they're psychotic, the law should be on their tracks. Simple as that.
Michael Kellam shows us the way to stop players from engaging in random slaughter. Make sure the people they kill have connections to other people who will miss them. They can't kill everyone, can they, and if they do, more will come of increasing power.
Tony Quirk points out that killing the wrong people will have mechanical penalties for quite a few classes. Byebye cleric & paladin powers. And without magical healing, a party will have to be much more cautious in picking their battles.
Mare Blanchard also reminds us that the only way to stop characters from slaughtering NPC's at the slightest provocation is to make sure there's consequences for doing it. Another one we've heard before, and likely will do so again. It's a lesson we have to learn even in real life, and it's one we have to learn again separately for internet interactions, for some reason. Ahh, the joys of a compartmentalising brain.
The voyage of the princess ark: Looks like this christmas, it's a step into full on western gaming as the Ark reaches Cimaroon county. They go to a saloon, endure the bawdy entertainment, watch a gunfight, and go a-prospectin for cinnabryl. There they face goblin desperados, enjoy a wagon-chase, and rescue a village of oppressed tortles from exploitative miners. Meanwhile, the Ark is trapped above the clouds by stormy weather, and faces several Heldanic warbirds. While amusing, I think this a is a step too far into direct pastichery for my tastes. You're supposed to pick and combine real world elements to make something new, not just steal straight and plonk something in without attention to the stuff around. I mildly disapprove.
Rather a grab-bag of crunchy stuff this month as well. We have deck plans and stats for Heldanic warbirds. We have info on Cimaroon. We have stats for their six-shooters, and a whole load of related skills such as staredowns and quick-drawing. As with the story part, this is entertaining, but not quite up to the standards of recent issues, as they get a bit silly. Not the series' best instalment.
V:tM gives us the anarchs cookbook. Row row fight the power, watch out for the sabbat boogeyman. Soon you'll be sidelined as people prefer to play the genuine rebels, not brats who talk big and run back to hide behind daddy's cape when things get tough.
Propping up your campaign: Hmm. This is a topic they haven't really covered before. While in LARPing, the use of props to enhance the mood is pretty much standard, it doesn't get much attention round here. About the closest is probably issue 135's reviews section, where Ken did go into detail on products which come with visual aids. So another cool idea that seems obvious gets a good filling in by Spike Y Jones. While it concentrates on modern day games, which are obviously easiest to cater for in this respect, it also mentions past and future ones as well. They don't have to be actual objects, photographs will do just fine, and are pretty easy to get hold of. (and even more so now than then with a camera in every phone and effortless copying of the digital data they're comprised of) And theres plenty of cool little things you can find in antique shops that would make good props. Even a scribbled picture is better than nothing. And there's several meta tricks you can pull, like arranging to have someone call or otherwise interfere with the game, that work really well for horror games in particular. So there is indeed quite a few ideas they've never suggested before, that can make a nice impact on the quality of your games if used sometimes. Another case of the magazine providing just what it ought to be.
TSR Previews: As is often the case, the start of the year sees things slow down a bit. Dragonlance is the only line getting more than one book. DLR2: Taladas: The minotaurs is another of our combined location and race splatbooks. They get the usual cool new stuff and filling in of roleplaying depth. Meanwhile, way back in time, Dark Heart sees us focus on the young life of Kitiara. How did she wind up opposing the heroes of the lance? Bad company, it looks like. Seduced by the glamour of evil. Silly silly woman.
Dark Sun gives the players a chance to play a (minor) part in the overthrowing of Kalak, in DS1: Freedom. You read the book, now enjoy the module, along with it's interesting format experiment and DM's screen. All aboard! :toot toot:
Ravenloft sees one of it's more iconic series start up. RR3: Van Richten's guide to vampires sees Nigel Findley do what he does best. Horror + Ecology = surprising win. Tons of ways to customise them, keeping them scary and mysterious for even the most powerful party.
The Forgotten realms is fairly quiet this month. MC11, their second monstrous compendium appendix, should keep your addiction fed for a while. 64 more pages of quirky creatures to challenge players with. Good luck finding places to fit them all in.
Dragon Magazine Issue 176: December 1991
part 3/5
The role of computers: Another tiresome bit of explanation this month, as they remind people that they get far more letters and games than they can ever cover in this space. Don't send more ranty letters when your original one doesn't get published. They just have no luck. Phone calls in the middle of the night, games companies leaning on them to get higher marks, lying company service lines, seems their life is one wave of irritations after another. And they're hardly public figures either. This is why celebrities get secretaries and bodyguards. As 4chan has demonstrated several times, in the internet era anyone can wind up having to deal with the negative aspects of celebrity without getting all the money if they do something sufficiently notable. It's a rather thorny issue.
Heart of China is a rather pretty looking multi-pathed adventure game. Rescue the daughter of your rather unpleasant patron from an even more unpleasant oriental warlord. Time is ticking, and your initial character is predictably hotheaded and troublesome. Have fun unlocking all the different ways things can go if you use different characters and make different choices.
J. B Harold Murder Club is of course a murder mystery, where you have to interview a whole bunch of subjects and figure out whodunnit. As with the previous game, you have a lot of options, some of which are better than others. They get a bit cross about one of the cases including a rape without the box having a warning. Ah yes, the great violence/sex double standard strikes again.
Phantasy Star II doesn't get quite as good a review as II, but is still a big, interesting adventure with a multigenerational twist to it, and multiple endings as well, giving it plenty of replay value. The increases in technology are being applied to good effect at the moment.
Our conversions this month are A-10 tank killer, Thexdar, and Space quest III. Mac stuff continues to get near equal attention to the PC. I wonder if this column'll still be going when PC's have reached dominance.
Fiction: Time for an experiment by Michael G Ryan. Oooh. A time travel story where everything all slots together neatly, but things don't actually make sense until the end. Those take quite a bit of effort in writing. An elf seeks a macguffin, and goes through quite a bit of hassle to get his hands on it, including being betrayed by himself from the future in disguise, so as to ensure everything turns out as planned in the end. I think that's more than enough twists and turns to make this a very enjoyable little story. This is turning out to be quite a consistently positive issue.
Role-playing reviews does some more boardgames. They seem to be doing that more frequently these days. Once again, it's because they like a bit of variety. And it's not as if the two things are so dissimilar that you can't learn from what works in board games. Judicious stealing is one of the easiest ways to progress through life.
The awful green things from outer space of course, is a Tom Wham creation, originally appearing in issue 28 of this very magazine. Obviously, he retained the rights to it himself, because it's now published by Steve Jackson Games. It seems to have increased in visual quality and sophistication since then, but retains it's strong sense of fun. Like most of his games, both randomness and skill play significant roles, keeping it fun and surprising through repeated play. So when exactly did he leave TSR again?
Scotland yard is another fun one suitable for short breaks. One person plays a criminal while the others play detectives hunting him down through london, both with limited movement resources and a time limit. Obviously, the more people playing, the harder it is for the criminal to win. An interesting challenge where working together is important.
Battle of the bulge is another rather familiar game, covering one of the more amusingly named battles of WWII. Set up your armies and fight, see if the Germans do any better this time around. Another one with plenty of replayability despite the seemingly limited premise.
Dragon Magazine Issue 176: December 1991
part 4/5
The marvel-phile: Cut characters time here. Another year has been and gone, and 128 pages just isn't enough. So here we get to see which new characters weren't considered important enough to make the grade. La Bandera, a young mutant revolutionary with social-fu power to rouse mobs. Windshear, an insecure young British hero with control over air. And Witchfire, an apprentice nature based spellcaster who's not afraid to speak her mind. As is too often the case these days, these are characters I've never heard of before, and am unlikely to do so again, thus proving why they were the ones cut from the book. They'll be first on the chopping block next time someone like Scourge strikes. Can't work up any enthusiasm over this lot. Just another way to make up a few pages in the magazine without having to rely on freelance material.
Orcs nest wish us merry christmas in their own easily imitable fashion.
Playing in the paleozoic: We've already had extensive looks at the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, and the weird animals that inhabit them in the magazine. Now Greg Detwiler takes us back a little further, to fill in the paleozoic. Lot's of increasingly odd things back there being discovered as archeologists do their work. And now you can kill them and take their stuff, not that they'll have much treasure to take. Another good example of Roger's attempts to work around a subject over the years while minimising direct rehash.
Giant Opabina are exceedingly slow and rather odd looking water creatures that occupy the same kind of niche as crabs today. Their lack of armour means they aren't nearly as dangerous though. Enjoy your wading experience.
Electric Agnath may be primitive fishes, but they're hardly defenceless. The water is hardly safe, since it is where life originally came from. Watch where you step in the water.
Eurypterid are giant water scorpions. They're pretty wimpy compared to modern top predators, but they're still a decent challenge for basic set level adventurers. And if you can't breathe underwater, their grapples will have a definite home team advantage.
Eogyrinus are proto-crocodilian amphibians. Slow on land, they'll attack from ambush, and chomp your feet. Once again, they're not really that scary compared to modern animals or D&D predators. Ironically, it might actually be a good idea to start off with the more primitive eras and move forward in play.
Eryops are another slow amphibian with half-decent adaption to life on land. If they can get their teeth on you, it'll hurt, but even heavily encumbered characters'll be able to outrun them. Might not be a bad idea unless you're xp grinding.
Cyclotosarus bring things a little further along the timeline, towards reptiles taking over from amphibians. Course, not having scales, it's AC is rather lower than full crocs.
Cacops sees them start to develop half-decent land speed and protective bits on their body. They're still going to be outcompeted by things with scales, but it's not for lack of trying.
Giant Platyhystrix are one of those things that show reality is often stranger than fiction. With a dimetrodon like sail on their back, and an oddly expanded ribcage, they're better at operating on land and regulating their temperature than most cold-blooded things. But once again, that advantage will probably not be enough against a team of co-operative warm blooded tool using mammalian killers.
Estemennosuchus have an amusingly shaped hard head, and graze on stuff, occupying the same kind of niche triceratops will do a few million years later, once the size war has really taken off.
Erythrosuchus also have rather large, dinosaurian heads, and a bite to match. That's a 1 hit kill if they get a good grip on you. Not everything was wimpy back then. I'll make them suitably rare on the random encounter table.
Plus, he gives us generic stats for Armoured predatory fishes and general Therapsids. And then a bunch of random encounter tables for various terrains, so I don't even have to make my own. Along with Tom Moldvay's reexaminations of the undead, this makes this one of the longest running and most useful irregular but connected features. Now, if only they could find some game useful animals in the ediacaran period. Then we could keep this going without rehash a little longer.
Dragon Magazine Issue 176: December 1991
part 5/5
Sage advice: Does anti-magic spell stop psionics (No, completely different type of energy)
Can a hasted psionicist use two powers per round (no. Too twinked, blah blah blah)
Does invisibility work on infravision. Does it work at night. ( yes, yes. Bored now. )
Can you disbelieve mirror image (no. Knowing it's an illusion (which is pretty obvious ) Won't help you tell which one is real )
If you polymorph an object, does it keep it's powers (as long as it's suitable to apply them. Same principle as polymorphed casters only being able to cast if they have voices and hands )
Do you have to cast 80 magic missiles to make a wand of them with 80 charges? That would take AAAAAAAges (Yes. Giving back to the adventuring community takes more effort than taking from it. Maybe now you'll appreciate the effort all those ancient wizards went too a little more. )
Novel ideas: Ah yes, the cleric Quintet. Bob Salvadore's most notable B-series, giving him a break from the Drizzt stuff while still filling in the Forgotten Realms. Starring a cleric who's not sure why he's a cleric. Also featuring a Dwarf who wants to be a druid, and communicates more effectively than many characters with a thousand times his vocabulary. A monk who would probably have been the star, were it not for the editors not wanting a class removed from the game to get too much spotlight. An imp who goes through several masters, and is quite possibly the real brains of the bad guys. And plenty of dilemmas and threats, most of which get neatly resolved at the end of each book, leaving only a few open for the next one and making sure it always seems like a happy ending, as per editorial policy. Curious business. He really doesn't want to be typecast, but TSR does want more money. Still, this did get several reprints, so it can't have been a failure, just not quite the same degree of success. Another straight bit of promotion, but quite a nice one, making the books seem quite likeable, and pointing out how the stars of each series are different from one-another. That's a welcome improvement from the usual for this column.
The game wizards: Great. More trading cards. Guess they're still profitable as well, as here comes next year's collection. So here's some more production details for the super geeky amongst you. The number of cards which ones were rare ones and the kind of things they tried to include this time. Lot's of odd options like kits and specialist wizards, lots of characters from specific game worlds, and quite a few original creations too. Traps, cities and a few terrible in-jokes. No end in sight here. Yawn.
Dragonmirth shows us that to attract girls, you need a really pimped out ride. Ogrek helps Yamara pack for her trip in his inimitable style. Robinson gets big chunks of his memory back in twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: The iraqi war subplot continues to be only a minor part of this column, taking up just a fraction of the first page before they get to the reviews. Like the real thing, it's turning out to be a bit of a disappointment. Looks like we won't be adding many more great battle scenarios to our repertoire any time soon.
Our minis this month are a wizard who summoned something he really wishes he didn't. A tower for another, more competent wizard. A larger castle for nearly anyone to use. Two pairs of lords and ladies to be in charge of said castles. A whole bunch of kings from various lands. And a trio of a female Ranger, Paladin and elf fighter from Julie Guthrie, bringing the badass without the cheesecake. Looks like it's back to the basic fantasy stuff this month after recent excursions to modern and cyberpunk.
The greyhawk wars boxed set. Great. Another big module that'll have metaplot reprecussions on the entire setting, invalidating big chunks of previous books. Just what we need.
An issue with lots of very good features, but rather dull regular columns. I suppose that highlights the tension between celebratory issue and business as usual. After all, christmas comes every year, so it can quite validly be both. Still, the really good presents are the ones we don't get every year. No matter how good you get, it never gets easier breaking out of your mould and trying new things. Still, if Roger has his way, we should get a few new additions to our repertoire next year. And with the halfway point of this journey within sight, I'm still willing to keep sifting for forgotten gems. To 1992!
Dragon Magazine Issue 177: January 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Another year, another special on good game mastering. Y'know, perhaps you ought to have a regular column for this kind of stuff to go with the ones for monsters, magic items and spells. Just a thought. Oh well, on with the show, with another rather nice chess themed cover drawing us in. They do seem to work quite well. Let's hope they grab potential new readers as well.
In this issue:
Waldenbooks double advertises here with some ridiculously plunging cleavage. She must have disproportionately small nipples to avoid showing even a peek of them.
Letters: As with last month, a single letter about an important topic, and it's rather long reply gets nearly all the space here. Should people be able to charge for DM'img? Roger comes down fairly strongly in the negative. It's fraught with problems, and seems likely to break up a group originally founded on friendship. It's very tricky to sell something when plenty of people are willing to give it away for free. And then there's the legal issues to consider. Making profit off their IP is exactly the kind of thing TSR has to stamp down upon. It's roughly equivalent legally to charging for playing videos to people. Best thing to do is make sure the costs for books, snacks, accommodation, etc are shared amongst the whole group, rather than one person having to bear the whole weight of putting everything together and making gaming a comfortable and enjoyable experience. Too damn right. As someone who winds up in situations where I'm putting all the effort in for very little return from others far too often for my own good, I do increasingly crave and appreciate the company of people who know how to be team players and can have work divided amongst them in a manner that makes them more productive than the sum of their parts. The individual benefits we get from working together are the true value of a society, not the money.
Oh, and Waldorf is finally officially dead for good, courtesy of an army of nilbogs. 'Bout time. That was dragged out easily as long as the dwarven beards issue. Will this truly be the end, or will april see him forced to beat this dead horse some more by public demand.
Editorial: Or see Roger try and appropriate Kinky for non-sexual purposes, and fail embarrassingly. Like middle aged people trying to spice up their sex life, or one person and their sockpuppets trying to force a meme on 4-chan, this is painful to watch, even as he tries to send a message I fully approve of. That is: try some weird games once in a while, it'll be much more fun than sticking to D&D all the time. Bunnies & Burrows, Metamorphosis Alpha, Lace & Steel; all break some of the unwritten rules of gaming and are the better for it. But once again, Gah! Major cool roll failure in the delivery. He's gonna feel the bite from that in future issues. An editorial that is highly amusing to read for all the wrong reasons.
Keeping the party going: Or how exactly did we get into this adventuring lark anyway? A question every party should have an answer to, but surprisingly many don't. And if members of the party all have different motivations arrived at without consultation, then the chances of the party being torn apart at some point increase dramatically. So this is an article strongly in favour of collaborative group character generation, with lots of examples of social groups that could be binding the party together. Be it family, religion, schooling, destiny or simply the prospect of lots of money, your choice will substantially impact the kind of missions you go on, how the characters will relate to one another, and how the campaign will progress. Another bit of roleplaying advice that seems obvious once you have it. What other figurative wheels of roleplaying design are we still missing?
That's progress: This topic, on the other hand, we've seen plenty of, both in articles and the forum. Inventing stuff is a haphazard business, as you need both ideas and the existing materials and infrastructure to implement them. (Take Leonardo da Vinci's designs for helicopters, for example) It's not as simple as just bringing an idea back from the modern day, as you should make absolutely clear to any cheeky players who try it. The physics might not be the same, the materials probably won't be optimal, especially if you're jury rigging something in the middle of a dungeon, and even when you know what you're doing, the first few times are likely to be filled with flubs. Of course, this shows up one of the substantial weaknesses in the AD&D ruleset, forcing adjudication of the success of this kind of idea to be largely handled by DM fiat. And while this article gives you plenty of real world examples, it's not particularly helpful on incorporating them into your game mechanically. Guess they can only take you half the way.
Secrets of the masters revealed: Now this is a bit better again. Examining other fields and seeing if they have any good ideas that can be adapted to yours is one thing I've promoted several times. And the techniques for successful fiction writing don't have perfect overlap with the ones for fun gaming, but it's closer than, say, archaeology. The stuff on worldbuilding in particular is very appropriate, as are the optimal work habits. Organising your ideas, always having a notepad available to jot down ideas that come at random times, researching stuff instead of just pulling it out of your ass, persistence persistence persistence and don't forget the editing. Actually, this also has quite a bit of crossover with the writers guidelines they put up every year or two, when people ask how they can get published in the magazine. So they're hardly big secrets to regular readers. Still, once again, this is good advice that you will profit from taking on board. I can't count the number of times I've struggled through writers block since starting this, to the point where it holds far less emotional sting than it used to. As with the last time, I encourage you to break your own procrastinating ways and get to work actualising your own ideas, for life is short, and if you put things off, before you know it, you'll be dead with nothing to show for it.
Defend yourself: Oooh. We finish off the themed section with a short but very cool article indeed. The idea that instead of using attack rolls to see if the monsters hit the players, you flip the math around, use flat values for the monsters and have the players roll to see if they manage to defend against the attack. It's a small change, but one that has a significant psychological effect. Not only does it make players feel more empowered because they're the ones rolling the dice, but it can also speed combat along, providing you trust the various players to handle all the attacks directed at their character simultaneously. This is one that we'll see again, as it also got used in the 3e Unearthed Arcana optional rules. Looks like they are once again serving as a good collecting and filtering ground for ideas. Major woo here.
This entire era of Dragon, from 1991 until around 2000, with the previews of 3e, is when I was buying Dragon on autopilot. I hadn't missed an issue since 50 (and had bought 45-49 when I bought 50). Occasionally I would swear off buying it, especially towards the end of TSR's existence, but then I would always grab an issue before it vanished. I was barely skimming through them, though. The "Princess Ark" stuff held no interest for me at all. I'd rarely read the fiction in Dragon anyway.
An article would come along from time to time that would pique my interest (the "Paleozoic" article in 176 is a good example), and make me wish for a moment I was still running a game. Still, the magazine seemed stale to me. The quirky, freewheeling nature of it ten years previous was long gone, and it had settled into a slick, colorful, D&D-focused mode that would last much of the rest of its print run. The internet was not there to provide a ton of competing content, so it wasn't a matter of being jaded. Perhaps if I'd had a game going then, perhaps if Gygax had still been working for TSR and producing official material for Dragon, I would look more kindly on that entire period of Dragon.
I recall buying Dungeon sporadically then, and Dungeon was a more enjoyable, inspiring read for me.
Dragon Magazine Issue 177: January 1992
part 2/5
The game wizards: No great surprise that they're going to give the D&D rules cyclopedia a load of promotion here. This is one of those articles which goes into detail about how harrowing the writing process was. It was such a sacrifice having to write to a predetermined size book when there was so many cool things from various supplements they wanted to put in it. Many compromises needed to be made. But even with the cuts, it's still vastly comprehensive, far more than any single book they've ever done before. Steven Schend makes sure to thank all the people who helped him make it as good as it is. Mwah, mwah, big hug everybody. (even the people who don't work here any more, who made valuable contributions to previous versions. ) Now rush out and buy it, make all our hard work worthwhile. But don't think we've made all those earlier supplements useless either. You can still buy them too if you like. Amazing how much work a project that has so little new material can be. Still, cynicism aside, compilation can be worth the price, and that is probably the case here. Here's to many fun years of gaming outside the supplement treadmill.
If I ruled the world: Once again with the causes for going Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!! (see how my breath control has developed since the anti-paladin days) What makes a man a mad scientist? Is he born that way, is it forced upon him, or does he become one by studying for 3 years at the university of Insane, Minnesota. (other courses include megalomaniacal politician, whackjob cult leader, detached from reality diva, and utterly incomprehensible bureaucrat. ) What are his ambitions, how does he justify the more unpleasant aspects of his plans to himself, and how does he plan to get the resources to carry out said plan? (apologies to all the female megalomaniacs out there) So plenty more fun DM'ing advice here, helping you build villains which make sense in abilities, plans and resources. Suitable for all genres, and with decent examples and a bibliography, this is another pretty fun article, illustrating the slippery slope that leads to over-the-top villainy well. The illustrations are notably good Baxa ones, making this quite a nice package overall. Just the thing to blow up your campaign world more effectively with.
The role of books: User unfriendly by Vivian Vande Velde (no way is that her real name) is one of those books that uses computers as a magic box, able to do things impossible in reality in the names of the plot. This breaks the reviewer's suspension of disbelief, and the characters aren't too interesting either. When the minor characters have more interesting adventures offscreen than the main ones, you have a plotting problem.
Shadow by Anne Logston embraces the cheese that any adventure starring an elf going by that cliched name would struggle to avoid. He engages in cheerfully roguish schemes, and is maneuvered against in turn in this fun little swashbuckling romp. Looks like Drizzt is starting to spawn cash-ins like any success.
The Crafters, edited by Christopher Stasheff & Bill Fawcett is one of our shared world universes. This is another one that doesn't really work, largely due to an insufficiently broad setting bible and editing. If all your writers wind up producing the same kind of story, then you haven't given them enough material to work with.
Old nathan by David Drake is another negative review. It's all window dressing with no window, substituting silly voices for characterisation. Mr Bunnel does not seem to be in a good mood this month.
Being of two minds by Pamela F Service does rather better, putting an interesting twist on the bodyswapping/sharing trope. It's in the young adult section, but handles the situations and the way people react to them in a mature enough way for the reviewer to still recommend it.
The encyclopedias of monsters and ghosts by Daniel Cohen are nonfiction pieces drawing legends together and giving opinions on them. Ah yes. You really should have one of these in the house. They're full of ideas to steal for your game, as we've seen before.
The heroic worlds role-playing game quiz: Or let's add a bit of variety to our brain-teasers. Instead of just another crossword, we have a multiple choice questionnaire. Most have around 5-6 options to chose from, but some are more complex, based around matching one set with another. Many of them are based around non tsr games, and you'd need a pretty encyclopaedic gaming knowledge to get them all right. Another diverting little bit of filler that'll probably give you more opportunities to go "did you know" in the future.
The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark leaves the savage baronies behind, and ventures over the kingdom of Rob Roy ( I keed! I keed!) This is one of those ones that doesn't have a particular earth analogue, instead being a showcase for a class like Alphatia and Yavdlom. In this case it's Druids who are large and in charge. And lest we forget, neutrality does not always mean nice. They have pretty harsh standards for their monarchs, and if they fail the tests, they get "absorbed" into the forest. In their attempt to help the king, Haldemar violates one of those conditions, which results in his being sacrificed. This definitely leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Damn immortals and their stupid conditions. It's alright, because the circle of life goes on, and we have some poetry to commemorate the departed. Yeah, I'd be seething if I was in his place as well. Fuck destiny. Fuck the cycle of nature and cosmic balance. I want to make things better, not have them just carry on as they are.
We get lots of cool new related crunch this month. Druids get several new tricks and spells, which bring them slightly closer to AD&D druids. We also get Druidic Knights, neutral counterparts to Paladins and Avengers with access to druid spells and social benefits with woodland creatures. They're probably not as badass as their lawful and chaotic counterparts, but are a bit better than regular Knights. We also get a new BD&D version of the Bard, which are basically slightly reskinned thieves. They're a bit underpowered really, but still nicely flavorful. If you already have a thief in your party, it can't hurt to give your characters a little more differentiation.
We also get lots of letters this month. It seems that the D&D line is definitely expanding this year, with new novels, rules for werewolf PC's, timeline advancements, and other stuff. Keep buying stuff, and they'll keep producing it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 177: January 1992
part 3/5
Sage advice's new typeface is looking increasingly silly. The topic this month is dark sun stuff.
Can dark sun wizards be specialists (yes. We reserve the right to retcon this in future books)
How do dragon's magic harm animal life (Buy the supplements to find out. Till then, just use a fiaty save or die. Athas is a nasty place. )
What spheres do clerics and druids have ( Quite a different selection to people on other worlds. Generally not as good, either. Unless you become a templar. Being a baddie gets results. )
Do templars get bonus spells for wisdom. What weapons can they use. (Yes, and any their master says they can. This is subject to changes even more frequent and whimsical than the average deity.)
Can sorcerer-kings automatically read their templar's minds (No, but given their huge spell and power selections, it would be triviality itself for them to do so. They can root out any traitors without too much trouble as long as they don't get too generous with their gifts. Given monkeysphere limitations, that means a priesthood around 120-130 seems about optimal for maximum oppression without pockets of rebellion forming secretly within it. )
How far can templars be from their master and get spells (Anywhere in the world! )
Can a wild talent have attack or defense modes (if that's the power they rolled )
How do sleep and hold interact with the new races (generally they work, with a few exceptions. )
Athasian halflings are weaker than regular ones! Everyone else is pumped as well. This blows. ( yarly. Don't forget though, you can houserule. )
The 18% rule is messed up by athasian stat boosts. ( Yes, but it was pretty messed up anyway. Skip will provide you with a sample revision that may help. )
Can thri-kreen use sign language ( Sure, if they adapt it. Being four-handed, they could even make an extra elaborate sign language no-one else could speak.)
The role of computers: Copy protection strikes again! This time, they cover another awkward angle. That of certain cheat tricks having the potential to completely bork your disc. This means that if you want to use them, it's strongly advised to use copies, which runs into problems of it's own. A set of problems that cease to be an issue once CDs and DVDs become the dominant medium, and many games are loaded entirely onto your hard drive, so you don't need to insert the disk to play. Still, it is a good illustration why I don't miss that era of computing at all. Thank hardworking humanity for technological advancement.
Might and magic III:Isles of Terra is another strong entry in this series. Still a big adventure, but there are a lot more conveniences than there used to be, like automapping and various new action options. They give you plenty of hints on how to play and what to buy first. The number of franchises keeps on building.
Gateway to the savage frontier is another SSI Forgotten Realms game. It only gets 4 stars, simply because it hasn't improved upon their previous games at all. Just churning out new adventures formulaically won't get you praised, even in TSR's own magazine.
Martian Memorandum also gets a less than glowing review. While the graphics and sound are quite good, the gameplay is awkward and controls are inconsistent. Compared to last month's pick, it feels slapdash and rushed out.
Wing Commander II doesn't get the 6 star treatment it's precursor did, but still manages the full 5. Twice as big as the original, and allowing you to transfer your characters from it, it builds on the good features of it quite nicely. It does require quite powerful system specs for the time though, so not everyone will be able to buy it.
Space Quest I gets rereleased with upgrades that take advantage of the new technology. This is definitely considered a success by the reviewers.
Spider-Man for the Genesis is a decidedly interesting take on his powers. Climb walls, negotiate open levels quickly with web-slinging, recharge your web-shooter by taking photos of the things you're fighting and selling them to the papers, watch out for the random appearances by Venom, and try to get it all done in an overall time limit. This was the demo game in my LGS for ages, and had some most frustrating bits in, particularly level 4, with the gorilla and sandman. Ahh, nostalgia. Haven't thought about that in years.
Ediolon, city in the sky for shadow world. Now there's a fairly common (but still cool) idea.
Dark sun steps outside the city-states with Slave Tribes. Yeah, they don't have it easy either.
Dragon Magazine Issue 177: January 1992
part 4/5
Forum: Harald Jeffery proposes docking your PC's charisma if they show no sign of being able to negotiate peacefully with NPCs. That or a Hound of Ill Omen. Aleaxes probably aren't a bad choice either. Hey, bad boys can be cool too. How many serial killers have fan clubs in reality, in contravention of all common sense?
Ian Johnsson shows somewhat more finesse in his attempts to get annoying players to accept NPC's right to exist. But if they still refuse, just let them be outlaws, feared by all. It is fantasy, after all.
C. J. Calo thinks the best way to make an NPC invaluable without having them step on the players is to make them primarily a source of information, not combat prowess. Making them able to kick the ass of all the PC's singlehandedly is only for the most anvilicious situations.
Jeff Ibach Is baffled how this situation began. Why keep trying to use NPC's as part of the party is the PC's obviously don't want them. And why give them equipment better than the PC's at all. That's just asking for trouble. And also, remember turnabout is fair play. Now they have all these cool items, they're open to being robbed in the night and left for dead. Ahh yes. Turnabout is ALWAYS fair play. Muahahaha. One guaranteed method a GM has of dealing with any problem.
William Lee Williams talks about the problems and benefits of using pregenerated materials. As usual, there's both benefits and drawbacks. With the vast amounts around these days, you get lots of different ideas and perspectives, albeit at a price. Of course, other people may also have read those ideas. Even if your players don't cheat, them owning the modules themselves does alter the experience a bit.
Angelo Barovier is also talking about the problem preexisting worlds present. The biggest one, of course, is the inability of PC's to make a difference to the setting. He also suggests using the Almanac style of keeping worlds vibrant and progressing forward day by day, which will of course be taken up by the known world/mystara shortly. Looks like this little idea, like the loose leaf monster sheets one, had it's origin in this magazine. Now that's something I get to say a good deal less these days.
Rick Tazzle goes back to the decanter of endles water article from issue 171, with some more defensive uses for it. Shoot it down the mouth of anything with breath weapons. Or make the ultimate industrial power source. One of them could provide the motive energy for a whole factory. Now that's how you change the world with a single item.
Toby Martin points out the many conflicts inherent in the various OA classes. They have to juggle a whole bunch of social and personal restrictions that drag the party apart if enforced strictly. Sounds about right. This is why adventurers are so frequently rebels, and also why just allowing players to make their characters in a vacuum leads to problems along the line. Gary did deliberately design the barbarian to be a pain in the butt, and zeb was just following in his footsteps here. Whether you see these conflicts as an obstacle to adventure or an adventure in themselves is up to you.
Stefan Schultz brings up the old argument about how much a serfs life sucked under feudalism. If it wasn't so bad, why did so many people flee it as soon as industrialisation made large cities an economically viable option?
Joe Piela speaks out in favour of scale mail, using his actual experience as a professional armorer for the SCA. What an awesome job to have on your resume. If anyone would know about it's protective qualities and ease of repair these days, it's him.
Beejay Johnson (O_o o_O [^0^] ≥O≤ :o ) wants half-ogres back. With neither them nor Barbarians updated to 2nd ed, the big dumb smashy guy niche has lost it's best fits. They'll be back soon. The splatbooks are rolling out at quite a comfortable rate, bringing everything up to date.
And finally we have another anonymous letter from a female reader complaining about the blatant sexism in her not so friendly local game shop. Gaaaaah. How many years have we had this problem repeated. Patronising behaviour bad. Don't make me have to come over there and hammer it in with an actual hammer.
The marvel-phile: More cut characters this month. Once again, we see the sexism inherent in the system, as all 3 of the characters are female, and 2 are ones I've never heard of before. Marvel really has no luck with that. (and DC doesn't do much better. Girls come and go, but it's the same old boys club that get to keep their regular titles as it has been for the last few decades. And as long as both the writers artists and readers are also mostly male, that's a pretty intractable problem. So anyway, here's the usual potted stats and descriptions for Madame Hydra, Lady Deathstrike and Saturnyne. A villain who's the 6th to hold that title and is in love with a SHIELD agent she fights a lot, another villain who has serious daddy issues and is also strongly defined by her obsession with Wolverine, and a dimensional overseer who isn't nearly as impressive as say, the beyonder or Galactus, and who's alternate versions all fancy captain britain. Looks like they still aren't passing the bechdel test in many issues. I believe this is where I sigh heavily and shake my head. So who did get in this year, and what was their gender ratio like?
Defenders of the hearth: Hmm. Following on from giving the spheres for the elven gods, this month we have an article doing exactly the same thing for the halfling gods. Is this the start of a new series I smell? So here's what you'll get if you worship Arvoreen, Brandobaris, Cyrrollalee, Sheela Peryroyl, Urogalan or Yondalla. As before, spheres, granted powers and restrictions vary substantially from the later Monster Mythology versions, and in some cases, the interpretation of their portfoiios does as well. (Urogalan is particularly different. ) This does make for an interesting session of compare and contrast, and is also another efficient bit of crunch for the readers in general. I approve, and wonder who'll be next in the cycle.
Dragon Magazine Issue 177: January 1992
part 5/5
Fiction: Human voices by Jean Lorrah. Or the little mermaid, played kinda in reverse, albeit with just as much angst. Pining for a member of another species, especially one that can't even live in the same environment as you, is just asking for trouble. It all ends tragically, just as the narrator knew it would. Actually, the narrator makes this as much about her as the story she's telling, which does put a different spin on the whole thing, and contrasts very sharply with the recent Disney movie. A short one, but quite good, with the artwork once again complementing it well. Seems like we're going through another period of improvement in that area lately.
TSR Previews: A lot more generic stuff than usual this month. CR1: Wizard spell cards compiles all the spells from various supplements, and puts them ready to be selected and arrayed for less wear and tear on character sheets. Muahahaha! Betcha fireball and lightning bolt wear out first. More idiosyncratically, they're also compiling a whole load of the cardboard fold-ups that appeared in previous products, in GR1: Strongholds. More kudos to Dennis Kauth. Get several, so you can build really big settlements. With this, and the recent skirmishsystem and greyhawk wars, I wouldn't be surprised if we see another spate of ZOMG they're turning D&D into a minis game. If that's not enough, they're starting a new series of one-on-one modules, for those of you who can't find a bigger group. HHQ: Fighter's challenge kicks it off. Another attempt to make more newbie friendly material.
D&D is also still on a baby's first adventure kick. Quest for the silver sword doesn't even have some arcane product code. Just a basic item retrieving plot. Off you go then. Come back in one piece please.
Dark sun starts to release setting expanding supplements. DSR1: Slave tribes shows you how to wander the desert and not die horribly, and what you're likely to meet out there. They're only enslaving you and treating you like crap for your own good. ;) Now get grubbing for cacti flesh, worm.
The Forgotten Realms revisits another big seller in Pools of Darkness by Jim Ward and Anne Brown. Will the new crop of heroes enjoy the success of Alias and co?
Think BIG: A second article from regular forumite Thomas M. Kane this month. We've had stuff on horses and flying mounts before. Now we have one on riding elephants. Tee hee. Just the thing for when you want awesome adversaries. Course, it's not that simple, with keeping them presenting vast logistical problems. Food, handling and training are big issues. Like some of Katherine Kerr's old articles, this doesn't seem sure if it wants to be encouraging you to try this, or warn you off doing so, and in the process leaves me ambivalent about the article. So I guess the choice is yours, you just have more information now. Hmm.
Special delivery from outer space: Ooh. An article for GURPS. Another nice little diversion from our usual fare. Like the runequest ones often are. this is a shiny toys one, giving you a bunch of gadgets aimed at a sci-fi game.
Temporal compressors are a decidedly cool piece of kit, that gives you the chance to do stuff in a hurry, and has rather harmful effects on anything half in, half out. They go into quite a bit of hard sci-fi info, which is pretty cool.
Biological factories are implanted into you, and allow you to synthesize stuff for free, although usually only one compound. You can then make a pretty penny on the black market.
Watcher-floater cameras are of course one of the awesome devices used by totalitarian states for surveilance. They fly, they swivel menacingly, they may also have disintegration lasers fitted so criminals can be instantly punished. Ah, the joys of cinematics.
Video glasses are one of those things that show how tech has advanced, since we could do even better than they imagined now fairly cheaply. An iSight camera, a cellphone transmitter and a several gig SD card could be discreetly incorporated into a bulky set of glasses no trouble. So an amusing end to another short but fun article, in a system they haven't covered before. Just the thing to keep the magazine open feeling.
Dragonmirth manages to slip in a little satire at TSR's legal policies. Yamara has an annoying crossover. David Bowie gets in trouble in Twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: We continue the slow build-up to the gulf war special this month, as Robert celebrates the anniversary of Operation Desert Storm. Once again, this all feels a bit strange, despite being less than 20 years ago. I doubt we'll be seeing anything similar on the Afghanistan invasion in 10 years time, so this does seem like a slightly tasteless curiosity already, like the women in gaming stuff from issue 3. While minis connected to this aren't reviewed this month, they do have quite a few photographs of them. Once again, really not sure what to make of this.
On the reviews side, we have grenadiers new fantasy wargame, which gets quite a good review as a game, despite the pieces not being the best quality. Ral Partha has licensed stuff for both D&D and Battletech, once again showing what a big name they are. Black Dragon Pewter produce another wizardly diorama, full of little details. RAFM give us a dark elf fighter and Drider, (not using the actual Drow and Drider names, of course.) The viking forge give us 3 Dwarf Comanders, while Alternative armies produce their natural enemies, a gang of hobgoblin raiders. Thunderbolt Mountain minis have another diorama, putting an interesting spin on that whole knight rescuing princess captured by dragon thing. And Stan Johansen Minis finish us off with a bunch of Cossack riders. Nothing much to say here.
Lots of high quality articles in this one, and also lots of high quality artwork as well. Looks like the increase in general editorial standards over last year is still going on. Guess Roger is still improving his skills at picking the right stuff out of the slush pile and cleaning it up for public consumption, with the various departments working together to deliver a neater package. Once again, the regular columns are probably less interesting than the features, but not to as big a degree as last issue. Looks like we could be getting into another golden age, if we're lucky. The 1st ed holdovers are pretty much gone, let's enjoy the stuff 2e has to offer.
To follow up on my last post, I think this project you're doing is pretty amazing. It's gotten me interested in looking back on Dragon, and re-evaluating some eras of the mag's run.
I still can't shake the feeling that after Gygax's ouster from TSR and thus from Dragon, the magazine seemed somewhat rudderless to me. I realize that's an unfair assessment, but it's one I have had since the time it happened.
Certainly there were a number of good editors afterward, and yeah, I know Gygax wasn't the editor in the first place, but his presence was so large it seemed to be imbued in Dragon, as well. Again, I know that's a very subjective feeling.
However, Gygax's personality was reflected in everything TSR did, and everything it was. Gygax seemed to be all over the place as far as his interests, and we saw that type of intellectual restlessness in books like the 1e DMG, and in Dragon. The company and, presumably, the editors of Dragon were following his lead, or at least the precedent he set...until he was gone. Afterward, Dragon became increasingly rigid in what it covered. While creativity was still there, it was limited to TSR games, which wasn't too bad until TSR began to jettison more and more games that weren't D&D, and thus, by default, every genre that wasn't heroic fantasy or swords & sorcery.
Eventually D&D became a sub-genre of fantasy itself, and I couldn't help feeling that there was a stagnation that set in once D&D began to draw upon itself for inspiration. We would see fewer and fewer articles like the one in issue 50 dealing with Kzinti, we would see Giants in the Earth disappear, we would see the oddball April Fool's articles that gave us stats for Popeye and Bugs Bunny go away...no more Boot Hill, no more scifi, no more modern day...TSR was taking itself and D&D more seriously, partitioning it off from outside influences. That's what made me less and less enthused with not just Dragon, but with D&D itself.
Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Another fighter special this month. Round and round we go, as they refuse to add any new actual classes this edition, so we have to figure out how to make the most of the existing ones. Still, it does seem that the themed issues covering regular topics tend to be of higher average quality these days, so there may well be enjoyable and useful material herein. Let's see if they can make playing fighters more interesting again.
In this issue:
Wizards spell cards! I remember these. Damn cool, and save quite a bit of character sheet scribbling, until you lose them or want to memorize the same spell more than once. Not that I ever did that. You've got to have some variety in your blasty spells, cause you never know what is going to be immune to each one.
Letters: A whole bunch of different bits of errata here this month. Tactical errata about the fighter stuff from issue 169. Mathematical errata about the probability of getting spells in Dark sun. More fighter issues, caused by the irritating discrepancy between books in who can specialise in what when. An unfortunate name misspelling. And some hitchhikers guide errata, of all the mad things to bother with. (especially given the casualness that facts and continuity are treated with in that series. ) I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's a hard life, working to the deadline.
Editorial: Oh god. Roger is continuing to invite ridicule with his attempt to appropriate the concept of Kinky in a gaming sense. Toon is the primary target, but shadowrun, paranoia, tekumel, jorune, elfquest, cthulhu, TMNT all get mentioned. That's such a broad net as to imply D&D is the gaming equivalent of the missionary position, and virtually everything else is kinky, which I think is pushing the metaphor well beyond breaking point, and also ignoring the amount of seriously gonzo stuff that D&D has incorporated right from it's early days. All goes to show that what you consider normal and weird is a seriously variable business, even in a single person over extended periods of time. Even the bible is pretty fucked up at times. Still, the stuff on breaking out of your own mould remains valid, even as the rest of this is risible and easily deconstructed. I wonder what he'll have to say to us next time.
The three faces of chivalry: Back to this almighty headache, I'm afraid. Paladins, cavaliers, and properly differentiating between the two when they're drawn from pretty much the same source, and often worked alongside each other. Both have pretty strict codes, although paladins have more to lose if they break them. And that distinction is what Len Carpenter picks to focus on. In an ideal world, you'd be able to balance temporal and spiritual pressures, no trouble. But in a world where adventurers are needed, and both gods and kings are frequently demanding and of questionable sanity, plus evil has it's own benefits that can seem all too tempting, this is a very real choice that you can use to shape your roleplaying. Will loyalty to your lord, serving your god, or pursuit of glory and love take priority for your character? If it's a paladin, you'd better believe your god'll know about anything you do wrong, while a temporal authority isn't so omniscient, so ordinary cavaliers can get up to some nasty stuff without losing everything, especially once they're too powerful to just dismiss casually. Pretty valid points, really, if not paradigm shaking. It also once again tries to deal with the problem of UA cavalier-paladins, which deserves credit. Not a terrible way to start things off, anyway.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Since war is one of the biggest drivers of technological advancement in reality, that people would regularly be seeking a magical edge in fantasy worlds is no surprise. Even one moderately powerful item can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Both the battle itself and the logistics of moving and maintaining troops can be seriously expedited, if not to the extent having a high level cleric on the team. I wonder what angles these will tackle that problem from.
Battle Standards are pretty self explanatory. You hold them up, they buff all your troops as long as they're visible. Or maybe debuff all the enemy ones instead. Either way, substantial advantage your side, but make sure they're well protected, because smart enemies'll realise this and try to take them down.
Bigby's Demanding Ram is somewhat less amusing than it's name. It's just an extra damaging battering ram, no coming to life or ironic price for it's abilities at all. Most disappointing.
The Cask of the wind spy means a general doesn't have to rely on wizards quite so much for battlefield reconnaissance. On the other hand, it's neither as fast or powerful as an arial servant. Maybe you can get a cleric to make an upgraded version. But then it might go insane and come back to kill you. Compromises, compromises.
Durimal's philters are potion concentrates. Just add water and you have enough from one tiny bottle to affect 80 people. Now that's pretty damn handy for an army leader. They're probably cheaper than buying 80 potions too, so in a magic high campaign, these'll see plenty of use.
Excellent rods of engineering give you a whole bunch of powers to make buildings, and knock down other people's. This'll see plenty of use until it runs out of charges at an awkward time.
Fodder dust is another easy to transport concentrate, just add water for tons of food. Course, that won't be much help in a desert, and I wouldn't be surprised if it tastes like pot noodle, but nothing's perfect. It's probably better than dwarf bread.
Ipsissimo's black goose is a rather cute, but still effective mechanical guardian. Real geese can be scary in a way far greater than you'd think from their size, and this follows in their footsteps, protecting your territory from all comers and making an awful racket while at it. Easily my favourite of this collection.
The Iron forge of the armies takes care of that other great logistical hassle armies face, equipment maintenance. Still, it's only a force multiplier, not complete automation, and is a pain to transport itself. Unless you have a whole bunch of magitech conveniences, it won't be ideal.
The Manual of stratagems is another slightly quirky item that exemplifies the idea of beginners luck. Learn from the tactics it teaches, for the book'll soon stop helping you. And then you pass it on. At least it doesn't just disappear like old DMG ones.
A Quartermaster's chest is another supply aider, albeit a moderately costly and unpredictable one. It'll be a benefit over the long term, but frequently a pain in the short one. Just the thing I enjoy giving my players.
The Talisman of mire lets you create a swamp around you. The defensive benefits of this should be pretty apparent. Just don't use it when fighting lizard men, and don't let them get their mitts on it. Hmm. That's another pretty good plot hook, actually. This collection has been rather good in terms of inspiring me to think of variants and actual play uses for these items, which is a definite plus point. I can see myself getting quite a bit out of this lot.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;387255To follow up on my last post, I think this project you're doing is pretty amazing. It's gotten me interested in looking back on Dragon, and re-evaluating some eras of the mag's run.
I still can't shake the feeling that after Gygax's ouster from TSR and thus from Dragon, the magazine seemed somewhat rudderless to me. I realize that's an unfair assessment, but it's one I have had since the time it happened.
Certainly there were a number of good editors afterward, and yeah, I know Gygax wasn't the editor in the first place, but his presence was so large it seemed to be imbued in Dragon, as well. Again, I know that's a very subjective feeling.
However, Gygax's personality was reflected in everything TSR did, and everything it was. Gygax seemed to be all over the place as far as his interests, and we saw that type of intellectual restlessness in books like the 1e DMG, and in Dragon. The company and, presumably, the editors of Dragon were following his lead, or at least the precedent he set...until he was gone. Afterward, Dragon became increasingly rigid in what it covered. While creativity was still there, it was limited to TSR games, which wasn't too bad until TSR began to jettison more and more games that weren't D&D, and thus, by default, every genre that wasn't heroic fantasy or swords & sorcery.
Eventually D&D became a sub-genre of fantasy itself, and I couldn't help feeling that there was a stagnation that set in once D&D began to draw upon itself for inspiration. We would see fewer and fewer articles like the one in issue 50 dealing with Kzinti, we would see Giants in the Earth disappear, we would see the oddball April Fool's articles that gave us stats for Popeye and Bugs Bunny go away...no more Boot Hill, no more scifi, no more modern day...TSR was taking itself and D&D more seriously, partitioning it off from outside influences. That's what made me less and less enthused with not just Dragon, but with D&D itself.
They do address this. We see in the editorials that Roger repeatedly tried to increase the amount of non D&D stuff covered, only to be met with apathy from the freelancers and general public. This culminates in the Dragon Project stuff of next year, which is the last time they seriously tackled the issue before giving up. Combine that with whatever pressures they were getting from higher up in the company, and it was probably as annoying for them as it was for us.
I do agree that one problem of this era is that the articles seem to be aimed at a lower average age group than the ones a decade ago, and there's also fewer ones that really wildly experiment with the structure of the game, and multi-part epic articles. (which seems ironic in the age of metaplot.) And what experimentation is being done is mostly a closed shop by the official writers. I suppose it's another consequence of their quite harsh fansite policy and bowdlerising code of conduct.
Quote from: (un)reason;387291They do address this. We see in the editorials that Roger repeatedly tried to increase the amount of non D&D stuff covered, only to be met with apathy from the freelancers and general public. This culminates in the Dragon Project stuff of next year, which is the last time they seriously tackled the issue before giving up. Combine that with whatever pressures they were getting from higher up in the company, and it was probably as annoying for them as it was for us.
I remember those editorials. There are any number of reasons why they weren't getting as wide a variety of submissions as before - I'm inclined to think a big reason was that as TSR tightened up what they defined D&D as being, the gamers (and thus, freelancers) who wanted more variety moved on to other games. This is one of the reasons I felt d20 really helped the game, despite the eventual glut - it returned that freewheeling feel. It's too bad that freewheeling feel never reached Dragon. I'll credit WotC for the OGL, but I'll fault them for foot-dragging when it came to letting the OGL directly manifest in their house organs, Dragon and Dungeon.
Quote from: (un)reason;387291I do agree that one problem of this era is that the articles seem to be aimed at a lower average age group than the ones a decade ago, and there's also fewer ones that really wildly experiment with the structure of the game, and multi-part epic articles. (which seems ironic in the age of metaplot.) And what experimentation is being done is mostly a closed shop by the official writers. I suppose it's another consequence of their quite harsh fansite policy and bowdlerising code of conduct.
I agree with this entire assessment, except in one regard - I don't think it was necessarily that Dragon was aiming at a younger age group; after all, my friends and I were 12-13 when we first started reading Dragon, and I knew plenty of other players the same age who liked the mag. I think it was that it aimed at less-well-read gamers as time went along and TSR started creating its own D&D-based fiction.
Gygax's departure may be coincidence with the decline of both Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Maybe the writers just ran out of things to say, or if they did, they provided the fluff that filled the deluge of 2nd edition splat books.
It would be an interesting thought as to what the fate of TSR and AD&D would have been had GG remained with the company and at the helm.
Seeing the same tired faces and the same tired articles wears thin after a while. To be honest, of all the articles I have ever read on role-playing games, only 3 or 4 have remained with me to this day.
Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992
part 2/5
Follow the leader: Ooh. An expanded followers table. Haven't had one of those in a while. (see issues 99, 106, 113 & 115, all of which are obviously for the last edition.) This time, it's paladins turn, in an article which reduces the number of followers they get ( under the principle that extreme lawful goodness is a hard path to follow) but gives you more cool unique creatures attracted by your reputation. Using this, you could well end up with a lammasu, couatl, gold dragon or ki-rin helping you out, which seems pretty nifty. As ever, careful with the ones that are actually more powerful than the character, which should be used as friends and companions rather than outright followers, and turn on you if you should fall from your standards. It's not easy being a good guy. So no great surprises here, but useful for me nonetheless.
In defense of polearms: Ah yes, the much maligned (unfairly, too) polearm. They might not be as glamorous as swords, but they're highly damaging, cheaper, and much more useful in formation based fighting. Reach is a tremendously useful quality that only gets it's full credit next edition. And they can also serve as 10' poles. Multipurposing for greater efficiency! This is one of Greg Detwiler's efficient, above par filler articles, playing a valuable part in keeping the magazine chock full of stuff, but unlikely to really rock people's worlds. Looks like this particular themed section has been pretty low on big cool surprises then.
What not to include: Yup. This is an increasingly important part of game design once you have lots of different games to choose from. What is left out becomes as significant as what is put in in shaping the feel of the setting. And since TSR are currently adding new settings as fast as they can, this is a big issue at the time. (It is very interesting to note that Greyhawk, FR and later on Eberron, all started in times of comparatively few active settings, consciously go the other route, trying to find a place for everything.) Arthur Collins knows what he's talking about when he compares it to sculpting. You have all this material, and if you keep it all, your world will look little different from anyone else's. And you don't have to connect it all up to the official AD&D cosmology either. (even though that may involve changing or forbidding some spells. ) On top of this, there's advice about avoiding the generic monoculture races, changing up the things you do put in, sorting out the religion, gods, and history/myths, and making the things you do leave in seem suitably significant in the overall scheme of things. It may be a case of taking something mentioned in another article, and expanding it out to several pages of it's own, but this is a pretty good one.
TSR Previews: Back to a fairly regular schedule this month. The Forgotten Realms is getting FOR3: Pirates of the fallen stars in the gamebooks, and Prophets of moonshae, book 1 in the druidhome trilogy in the novels. Doug Niles returns to the lands he helped create, bringing another crisis with him. Time for a new generation of heroes to level up and kick some butt.
Dark sun gets it's very own monstrous compendium. MC12. They've long since converted most of the 1st ed stuff, so this is mostly new coolness too, with lots of psionic beasties. Now you can match up to the increased power of your PC's.
Spelljammer continues their latest big metaplot event in SJQ1: Heart of the enemy. Fight those goblinoids through multiple spheres. Just how much mess will they leave behind them?
Ravenloft does zombies, voodoo zombies (It's like james bond with swampwater and shabbier tuxedos) in RQ1: Night of the living dead. Another adventure designed for low level characters recently sucked into the mists. Are you ready to dance the night away and still foil their plans?
Greyhawk is still mid-war, in WGQ1: Patriots of Ulek. Yet another one for beginning adventurers who don't have the power to make a big difference to the fighting. I suspect we may be seeing similar products for every single gameworld. This is not very useful to your existing playerbase.
And finally, our standalone book this month is Thorn and Needle by Paul Thompson. Some rather quirky ad copy tries to set it above run of the mill fantasy. Does it live up to that promotion?
The voyage of the princess ark: Another jaunt westward along the savage coast brings us to Eusdria, another blatant real world rip-off, in this case scandinavia. (despite it being a pretty warm locale, after all, this is even further south than the Baronies.) They're actually pretty civilized for such a warlike culture, thanks to the presence of lots of elves, and more than a few half-elves. (including the current king) Unfortunately for Haldemar, they're allied with the Heldanic knights, which gives them a perfect excuse to capture them (again) and have them tried for their "crimes" Once again, though, the ruler of the nation proves themself to be a smart cookie, more than able to deal with this kind of politics and come out ahead. Honestly, Haldemar, you really need to do more research. You have crystal balls and the like. Use them. Then maybe you wouldn't be in trouble so much of the time. ;)
We see in the OOC bit that Eusdria isn't quite a stereotyped as it first appears. Although they may be descended from your basic northern viking warrior types, they are properly integrated into their new environment, with technological developments, properly defined relationships with their neighbouring states, and an interesting plot hook that allows for raiding goblinoids to be a continuous problem. I'm surprisingly impressed by this.
We also get lots more variant classes. Rules for elven clerics and druids. Rules for elves to become Paladins and Avengers, and rules for half-elf PC's of all kinds. All are pretty simple and efficient, and have drawbacks as well as strengths. At this rate, BD&D will soon have as many class/race options as AD&D. Do we want to remove our strong fixed archetypes? Very good question. Even if they're not too unbalanced, you should consider carefully if you want to allow this or not.
Fiction: River's friend by Josepha Sherman. Another fairytaleish story from this author, this time with an eastern european dressing. But underneath the trappings, it's the same old hero's journey, as a boy from poor origins has to prove his worth to the people at court, and more importantly, to himself. Which is transferable everywhere, as there's always social class and an in and out crowd. More interesting are the human/supernatural interactions, with the fae creature in this one forced to interact with people on their own terms, but retaining a degree of it's own alienness. Overall, I Can't say I feel particularly strongly about this one either way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992
part 3/5
The role of computers: Pools of Darkness continues the Realms story, allowing you to reach higher levels than before in a D&D computer game, while also improving on the visuals and sound. This allows them to regain that prized 5 star rating. As ever, don't expect it to be easy, and note that this time, the demihuman level limits are a real issue, so bringing in your old characters from previous games may or may not work too well. Still, that should keep their clue corner busy for quite a while.
SimAnt sees the sims series get educational, while still being pretty entertaining. Turn your hive into the biggest, baddest swarm in the garden by getting the right proportion of workers to soldiers and then bogarting all the food supplies. Less open-ended than the city one, it still has tons of replayability, with circumstances being different each time.
Gunship 2000 is another one they're pretty generous with. Get your heavily armed supply helicopter to the needed place, destroying any opposition along the way. Tactics will work much better than trying to charge in and use twitch reflexes, as usual.
Police Quest III doesn't get such a good review. It's fiddly, crash-prone, and has "adult subject matter" Seems like that's going to be this year's pet peeve for these reviewers. They're really not going to like Mortal Kombat then :p
Swamp gas visits the united states of america is a surprisingly good educational program. Combining geography questions with arcade action, it sounds silly, but I guess some of those things would manage to be good by luck. Not that it'll make it any easier for parents to persuade their kids to play them.
Shining in the Darkness is another decent enough Genesis adventure. It's no phantasy Star, but uses a lot of the same elements and should keep you busy for a while.
Vapor Trail is a top-down shooter, for one or two players. Apart from the choice of 3 planes with different capabilities, this seems very formulaic indeed. Yawn.
Arcus Odyssey also seems quite familiar, having a lot of design similarities with Gauntlet. Fantasy arcade action with plenty of hack and slashing and exploring, and a bit of roleplaying. Another one that'll fill up some time. Remember to write down your passwords.
On the conversions side we have The Immortal. Another RPG which uses passwords rather than saving, which does get rather annoying given the length of levels and the fiddlyness of the codes.
They also praise the Wing Commander strategy guide. Even they don't find these games easy, so this is quite welcome. A bit cheeky though. Well, I guess the book reviews have done plenty of books about computers so turnabout is fair play. :p
The marvel-phile: A third set of characters rescued from the scrap-heap this month. Leir, the celtic god of lightning, which makes him a rival of Thor. Not a bad guy, but a hot-headed arrogant twit who is easily tricked, as so many gods are. Still, even he doesn't have as big a self-control problem as Nobilus, a flawed clone of Thor (again?! Silly mad scientists, forgetting the inverse ninja law. ) What was the High Evolutionary thinking trying a stunt like that? In any case, it didn't turn out well for him, and we won't be seeing these guys again very often, which once again makes it pretty obvious why they were cut. More filler here, I'm afraid.
Role-playing reviews is taken over by Rick Swan. Another personal favorite writer of mine (apart from the complete paladins handbook, which sucked) We finally get star ratings on our reviews here as well, (how long have the computer team been using them without the others catching on) which is another positive development in my opinion. Anyway, this month's review topic is another visit to minis based wargaming. Rick notes that while they may still seem popular at conventions it is now a surprisingly small number of people who actually play regularly. Although he doesn't phrase it so negatively, the market isn't in such good condition these days, with only a few big companies remaining. But ironically, the rulesets are possibly better than they've ever been. (now there's another familiar tale from both music and gaming) So I guess it's now his job to persuade us we want to buy things we don't need, and keep this hobby going a little longer.
Fantasy Warriors is Grenadier's attempt to provide a system for their many minis. It gets a solid rather than brilliant result. It's easy to learn, and the minis that come with it are quite nice, but there is some irritating rules cruft, and no sample scenarios at all. A new edition could make quite a few improvements.
The AD&D 2nd ed Battlesystem miniatures & skirmishes rules do slightly better, but still aren't perfect. Still, they are a substantial improvement on the 1st ed Battlesystem, with the presentation getting a clean-up akin to that of the various AD&D corebooks. The rules are nicely simplified as well, making running battles involving several hundred creatures on each side entirely feasible. The only major flaw (although it is a very big one), is the handling of magical effects, which is way too sketchy. This limits how fantastical things can really get, without some serious DM adjudication. Dark Sun'll probably take a bit of work then.
Bladestorm also gets a quite positive result. It manages to have both a good system, including cool magic; and a nicely imaginative setting to justify all the fighting that takes place. Strange races, advanced rules that improve the game rather than slowing it down, and spells that are designed around the battlefield make it all hang together nicely without being generic, and it's his favourite game of the month overall.
War Law gets our worst review. Like the rest of Rolemaster, it's insanely complex, with it's barrage of math and tables doing Rick's head in. Someone must be able to make head and tail of it, given the number of supplements they've managed, but if even experienced game writers have trouble, he wonders who the buyers are.
Quote from: Lawbag;387358Gygax's departure may be coincidence with the decline of both Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Maybe the writers just ran out of things to say, or if they did, they provided the fluff that filled the deluge of 2nd edition splat books.
My premise is that Gygax had such a breadth of interests that subjects for articles wouldn't have run out or gotten stale as quickly as they did, if Dragon and Dungeon followed his lead. Gygax seemed more interested in infusing many different, outside influences into D&D than his successors did. As I said, D&D began to draw on itself for inspiration after Gygax left. Whether or not this would have happened with him there we'll never know.
Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992
part 4/5
Novel ideas: The novels section continues to bloat in size as befits it's proportionate profitability. Course, they also have a couple of new gamelines as well, so they can increase the number of novels by splitting them amongst more subdivisions. Basic D&D is getting novels, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer are busy building up their own fanbases, and they vainly try to keep the XXVc line alive for another year. They do seem to be reducing the number of generic books though, going from 6 last year to only 4 this time. Guess my hunch that they don't sell as well was probably right. Even so, that's at least 29 new books this year, several every month. More than enough for most people's disposable incomes, unless you're a total addict. Still, they're not publishing nearly as many novels as they are game books, apart from in the Dragonlance line. So no great problems here, yet.
The game wizards: This month, our other promotional column concentrates on the Marvel Superheroes game. Just like the basic D&D game last year, this is going through a revamp. Looks like they're reducing the number of adventures, and going for more splatbooks based upon specific superhero and villain groups. Mutants, Dr Doom & Latveria, The Avengers, and Spider-man's rogue gallery are their first choices. I suppose it fits in with their general policy at the moment, but I can see this getting very barrel-scraping within a few years. It also encourages you to use the canon characters in your games even more, rather than inventing your own heroes and villains, which is mildly objectionable on a creative level. I guess we'll see what changes they'll make in a few years, when the shine on this new trick starts to wear off. In any case, I can't say I'm too enthusiastic, but since they've managed to turn around dubious premises before, I'm not going to prejudge. Any opinions on this particular change of direction for the line?
A swing and a hit: Some more fighting tricks for Top Secret this month. As with AD&D's OA, we haven't been short of a trick or two in this department. But like new spells and monsters, people'll always add a few more, even if they turn out to be just variants on already filled niches. So here's another 9. Choke holds, for killing people with when grappling. Crushing blows, letting you break bricks with a chop if you've built up enough strength. Disarming, always a favourite when the system doesn't make it more bother than just killing an enemy. Feinting, also a cool movie idea sometimes hampered by system. Cheap shots to people's vulnerable areas. What charming behaviour. Meditation as a means of making yourself more generally badass, which pushes at the bounds of supernatural capabilities. Attacking simultaneously with a weapon and doing unarmed MA stuff with the other hand, which pushes the bounds of cheese. Intimidating people with flashy displays of prowess, which is rather amusing. And steeling your body so it takes less damage from a blow. Rather a useful collection really, that'll offer quite an advantage to people using them. Watch players who want to introduce this one closely.
Sage advice is still on a Dark Sun kick. You change the rules substantially, and of course you will get a substantial amount of questions:
What levels and races are ranger's followers ( Mostly from the same races that become rangers )
Can athasian characters have kits (If they're culturally appropriate. That means no samurai or swashbuckers, for sure. )
Can water-finding be used in any terrain. Does it stack with Survival. (yes, and probably. This still may not be enough in Athas)
Do half-giants get extra damage on their weapons. Do they need to eat and drink more (no and yes. They're big enough to be inconvenient, but not big enough to completely smash the rules and setting up.))
Can thri-kreen use four weapons at once. (not unless they're specially trained. Claws are more natural than weapon weilding)
How do gladiators advance ( slowly, while spinning something spiky. )
Can bards backstab (no, thank god)
Do inactive characters get extra money when advanced (probably a good idea)
Are enchanted weapons less likely to break? (Probably)
How damaging are sandstorms (DM decision. Generally, death caused by sandstorm should be slow and lingering, as you are gradually flayed and dehydrated until nothing is left but your bones, to be buried underneath the shifting sands and forgotten.)
What athasian creatures does speak with animals work on (not enough. This will seem stupidly arbitrary to the natives who have no idea that some creatures exist on other worlds, and others don't. )
Why are there so few creatures in athas (ecological disaster. We're trying to engage in a bit of social commentary here. Art as moralising lecture on the evils of the real world and all that pretentiousness. Thiiissss iiis the 90's!!!!!!! )
Why no mind flayers or beholders (Mind flayers can plane shift, and are waaay too smart to stick around a dump like this. Beholders were just never here in the first place. (no way I'm buying the other possibilities, given much wimpier creatures have survived here. ))
Can I have a spelljammer crossover (no)
Does athas have an underdark (Possibly)
How much are thieves tools (relatively, a lot more expensive)
Can you backstab twice if wearing two wrist razors (general rules still apply. Don't think that just because a new gameline is out, you can get around Skip by phrasing the same question with altered fluff. Get back to the back of the queue. )
Why can't high level people detect invisibility anymore ( They can. We just moved the rules. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992
part 5/5
Where's the thief?: As we near the end of the issue, we get another little filler article. Rules for sneaking around in the Battlesystem? I can see why some people would miss that capability and want to include it. So here's an efficient page and a half of conversions, allowing them to work as both individuals and units. I doubt I'll get to playtest them, but I still approve in principle of this add-on. Yet another useful but hardly mid-blowing delivery.
Forum: John Cummings would rather undead drained ability scores than levels. You know, that's actually more of a problem if you can't get access to restoration spells.
Ivy K. Ryan thinks it's a rather good idea to make energy draining temporary. She also wants to nerf troglodytes strength draining effect. You can't stop effects from being more effective agains one class or another, and it strikes at the team nature of the game to completely cut stuff like that out.
Sabine Volkel continues the debate about DMPC's and the problems they cause. It does take quite a bit of work to avoid trouble, but can be done. Only the DM can break a game.
Dale Meier has another long letter about how to deal with that annoying star wars twink. This one is rapidly getting overdone, methinks.
James Lawrence-Knight wants to add a Reseaching nonweapon proficiency. Knowing how to best find pertinent info in large quantities of books is a definite skill, and another one we are probably losing as the internet becomes ever more taken for granted.
Marcus Wagner nitpicks 169's weapons article. That's not a basilard, it's a katar! Tee hee. So many silly sword variants.
J. B. Coburn discourages you from putting too many magical items in your game. The players shouldn't be overshadowed by their gear. Blah-de blah. Can't we just agree to disagree on this point?
Geof Gilmore complains about the balance problems psionics has when used in a campaign with magic. You can do a whole bunch of things at low level that wizards couldn't 'til much later, and screw people over from a distance they can't manage. It's not overall power that's really the problem, it's just that many other creatures don't take it into account in their design. Another thing that they heed and probably overcompensate for next edition.
Milwaukee by night for V:tM. With expanded rules for the ravenous Lupines :D Now that really rubs in how undeveloped the world of darkness still is. I'll bet their abilities bear little resemblance to the powers W:tA werewolves got.
Just who are these folks: Twilight empire gets a recap for those of us who didn't see the story from the start. Meanwhile, in this month's story, David Bowie needs a backup plan, and the others explore the ruins in the caves. Bad things happen, as you'd expect.
Dragonmirth is a bit depressed. Yamara has more discussion on the proper nature of romance. So fucked up. In a good way.
Through the looking glass: This time, the gulf war section at the start concentrates on the air side of things. Looks like there was quite a bit of variety, with different countries on the allied side having quite different air force compositions. Good luck hunting down models for all of them. Also, don't huff oil based paints. :shakes head: How silly can you get. Another irritating reminder that this magazine is primarily aimed at kids and teenagers these days.
Our minis this month are some dwarves with crossbows, giving your army some much needed missile capacity. A bunch of miscellaneous undead, none very pretty. And the usual assortment of D&D focussed models from grenadier. Half-elves & elves, paladins & anti-paladins, berserkers and bog standard warriors. The photographs occupy a bigger proportion of the section than usual, making the writing seem a bit insubstantial. I suppose you can judge for yourself now they're doing decent photography with reasonable reliability.
A rather filler heavy issue, one of those with lots of stuff that seems inconsequential, and was hard to form a strong opinion on. This far in, very little of what we see here will have any impact on the course of the game, or even be seen again. And so sifting out the good stuff becomes more of an effort. I hope other people are getting the benefit of all my effort, because it doesn't really seem worth it from the perspective of improving my gaming ability. Will it have been worth it in the end? I really am not sure. All I know is that I can't quit this far in.
Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. A surprisingly dynamic and cheesecake low Elmore pic heading things up this month. Someone's going to slip and fall while trying to get their hands on that sword, especially if they're rivals rather than part of the same team. The topic inside, on the other hand, is rather less mold breaking. Generic Magic again. You've got to specialise! They've realised that over in the campaign building stuff. When things are stable, you specialise to fill a niche, and outcompete anyone at it to profit properly. When times get hard, that's when it pays to be a generalist, and you adapt or perish. My mind needs more variety! :sigh: Pass me the lube. Here we go again.
In this issue:
Al Qadim! The forgotten realms fills up another continent with pseudo real world cultures. Well, it works for Kara-tur and Maztica. Why mess with a winning formula? Now all they need is a fantasy australia and the world'll be complete.
Letters: A letter asking about how you can become an official certified Dungeon Master. That, my dear, is just an urban legend, albeit one probably started by them back in issue 28, where they provided a system for figuring out what level DM & player you are. And then distorted and spread further by Jack Chick. What goes around comes around.
A letter by people who've translated the dwarvish on issue 174's cover. Another thing introduced by Ed Greenwood via the magazine, back in issue 69. Yet another strange little thread of history we can trace and enjoy.
And finally, yet another sexism letter, this time from a girl struggling to find other women interested in gaming. There's certainly enough of them sending in complaining letters to the magazine. Now, if only they could find each other in real life.
Editorial: Another familiar topic here, as Roger returns to the theme of future shock. The geopolitical situation has changed in a way few predicted, making a whole bunch of sci-fi novels invalid again, while also increasing his tolerance for improbable plot twists, since reality has often proved itself stranger than fiction. This seems really to be another not too subtle attempt at getting people to check out new games, both from TSR and other companies. Which hopefully will lead to more variety in the games he gets submissions for. Well, an editor can dream, can't he. Not a hugely interesting editorial, this does once again highlight his sense of whimsy and search for new forms of gaming to keep interests up. I'm betting we'll see a definite drop in non D&D articles soon after he's replaced.
Picture this!: Nigel Findley gives us another cool set of themed magical items. Why should Ed have all the fun in that department? So enjoy these 7 magical paintings, each a masterpiece both visually and in terms of effects. After all, you have a lot more room to customise a painting than with most items.
The Watchers lets you take control of animals in the vicinity and use them as spies. Careful though, for the twin dangers of losing yourself in their minds, and dying if they get killed while you're in them are quite significant. Seems like this could be almost as much a liability as a benefit. Seems rather appropriate given his fondness for horror stories.
Widow's walk is less dangerous, but still has it's quirks. But shielding from magical divination and weather control seem well worth a little creepiness. Anyone with reason to be paranoid'll value those qualities.
The Gladiators traps you in the painting and forces you to fight it's occupants. If you know the password, you can summon them out to fight a party the old-fashioned way. Which is actually less scary, but life is odd like that sometimes. This one is probably more a liability than a benefit to most groups.
Dragonnel lets you summon a little dragon to ride on, or turn into. It does have the danger of running out mid-combat, but since that's perfectly normal for magic, it can hardly be considered a curse.
Glorindel's Gates let you step into the area painted. This is of course a one-way trip. Seems pretty self-explanatory, and with plenty of literary sources.
Glorindel's Living Paintings are hypnotic. Another reason never to go to an art gallery in fantasy worlds, especially in Ravenloft. You never know what'll be implanted in the back of your mind, just waiting for the right situation. Being a slave sucks.
Igrane's Portraits let you communicate with the person in the painting. Again, this might not seem too surprising, but there are more than a few tricks this can pull. It can penetrate the veil of death. (with the usual dangers to your sanity) And there's an unfinished one which is even more useful than the finished ones. Goes to show how quirky magic can be.
Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992
part 2/5
Magic by candlelight: Another themed collection of magic items here. Looks like this issue is a bit more focussed than the contents page indicated. And since these are generally limited-use devices, you can be relatively generous with them as treasure. With 22 items in 3 pages, this is a dense little entry that I don't feel like individually listing everything in. Few are hugely powerful, but most are useful, with quite a few which can be hazardous to an incautious user, just like fireworks. As with potions, a good identification spell will come in handy. They also give you some guidance in what materials are needed to make them, which can be applied easily to potions, perfumes, oils, and other topically applied limited use items. Scavenger hunts eat up a good amount of time, and making magical items like this is a nice starter for them at mid levels. Plenty of good material to draw upon here then. This issue is looking up.
Mutants in orbit! A crossover supplement for Rifts and After the bomb. Seems a bit weird to have two different post apocalyptic settings mix like this.
Something completely different: Looks like it's not just new toys in the special this month, it's advice about properly applying them as well. We have all these weird and wonderful items built up over years of the magazine, and plenty of room for more obscure mundane items to be given their own magical powers. What do you do if you find a magical wardrobe in a villains collection, or a sentient spork? Large items may have cool powers, but transporting them can be a nightmare. And there's plenty of unusual nonmagical valuables you could use as well. Perhaps some customised random generation tables would be good. They often produce more interesting results than personal choice could. Curiously, this also manages to fit in 14 new items, each adding a quirk to an existing item family, although the descriptions are even shorter than in the last article. Another good example of their strong base of submissions around this time. Roger may be looking for more variety in his themes, but when people submit good material for previously covered topics he's hardly going to turn it down because of that.
Seven Enlightening lanterns: Once again, the influence of Ed Greenwood on the magazine is felt strongly here. Even when he's not contributing personally, he's done so much, and inspired so many that it's surprising we don't see more blatant copycats like this one. Still, once again you can enjoy a big collection of magical variants for an atmospheric but oft-neglected item. Let's see if we can play pinpoint the source material with this lot.
Bashal's Tendrilight sends out black quivering tentacles. Hmm. Have the Lasombra been aded to Vampire: the Masquerade yet? I guess Evard was already leading the way in hentai action. With paralysis and immunity to lots of weapons, these'll be a right bugger to fight.
Goldmane's Dazzler provides free light indefinitely, and also has two cool semi-connected tricks that make it seem even more Greenwoodesque. The history stuff is quite good too. So I guess the Realms grows ever more able to surprise it's creator in a good way.
Illag's Abominable Beacon is a skull-headed lamp of Eeeevil that projects undead summoning darkness. Better be able to see in that then to direct them properly, and make sure you don't stub your toe on a milling zombie.
Krillus's Blazer is electrified, and can unleash that power in a fashion akin to those pretty globes you see at every science fair. That'll do rather more than making your hair stand on end.
Malthrox's Shadowcaster also messes with darkness, in this case producing a shadowy clone of a person illuminated. This isn't as perfect a copy as an evil mirror clone, but is controllable at least. Have fun with it while it lasts, and don't hesitate to tease as well as fight. Making out with someone's shadow clone can drive them to rash acts.
Messakk's Eye can paralyze people looking into it Once again it looks like they're falling back on obvious ideas to finish the collection off. Still, an encounter-ender is not to be sneezed at, formulaic as it may be.
Thessall's Wayguider is incredibly handy for any dungeoneer. Instant illumination of secret doors & traps? Retracing your step effortlessly? True seeing? That'll cut your exploration time massively. No more tedious inching along mapping all the way and testing every flagstone. Now that's convenience for you. Awesome.
Fiction: Moonlight by Heather Lynn Sarik. Another quite amusing little story here. So you have a macguffin that produces a rare and valuable material. This stuff could make you a fortune! Trouble is, no-one can figure out what to do with it. And you keep on producing it. This is not a stable situation, and will lead to fast devaluations unless you pull some slippery snake-oil shenanigans. And the result is rather amusing, and reminds me quite a bit of "The two best thieves in Lankhmar" as the protagonists bicker their way through what they thought would be an easy job and wind up the fools, with unusually strong language for these family friendly days. As it's also moderately fitting for the theme of the issue, I definitely have to pronounce this one a success, subverting expectations quite nicely.
Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992
part 3/5
The voyage of the princess ark: Another year, another attack of surreality for the princess ark, as they find themselves in Renardy, home of the dog-like lupins. Who also happen to be French. :rolleyes: (Someone's been watching Dogtanian and the three muskethounds :) ) And determine prestige amongst the noble families by wine-making contests :double rolleyes: And someone has stolen this year's best vintage :o Guess who has to retrieve them and save the king from dishonor ;) However, they can't get through the fields of sleep inducing flowers to catch the goblins responsible. :( But it's alright, because they get saved by ninja tortles :cool: They solve the mystery, honor is satisfied, and everyone ends up happy. Apart from the goblins. The cheese quotient is definitely on the rise in this series. It may still be entertaining, but I'd want to filter this stuff out a bit before actually putting it in a game.
Unsurprisingly, we get more details on Renardy in the OOC bit. Lots of cultural and statistical data. Business as usual here. Can't say I'm that enthralled.
The marvel-phile: We finish serving up last year's leftovers, and actually have some interesting gaming advice here this issue. How do you build good villains? Why do so many official Marvel villains suck? Well, let's start with the name. A bad one condemns you to risibility even before you start, no matter how powerful you might be. Then there's the costume. Poor color co-ordination or the wrong areas of skin exposed can make it very hard to take you seriously. And finally, possibly least importantly, there's the powers. After all, there's plenty of badass normals holding their own out there in comic books, on both the good and bad sides. A single dumb trick is probably worse than none at all. And having too many schticks means it becomes impossible to remember them all and apply them to maximum effect. Their universe runs on dramatic logic rather than raw power.
They then go into specific examples of villains who have successfully repurposed themselves in the comics. Most notable is Paste Pot Pete becoming the Trapster, but there's others out there trying out a little self-improvement. Now, if they can just avoid things merging into a morass of grey grimdark villains with poorly defined badass powers. (yes, you, liefield.) And to top it off there's stats for the Sentinels and Hurricane. This is much better than the last few issues. Creative advice is more interesting than straight statblocks.
Rifts world book two, Atlantis. Beware the splurgoth. Now there's a name that'll eat your brains if you look at them the wrong way.
Forum: David Howery talks about painting minis, and expresses annoyance that there are so few minis of normal animals, along with various other thoughts about the practical problems of painting real creatures. There are some textures paint just can't simulate.
Justin Kelley is annoyed that magic resistance is so much more common and harder to penetrate in 2nd edition. Their mage is proving useless at high level! Elementary tactical error, methinks. That kind of stuff is why you move into buffs and terrain controllers rather than direct blasty effects. If your wizard isn't contributing much at 25th level, I have no hesitation in saying you're Doing It Wrong, since so many other groups are finding their spellcasters naturally graduate to supreme overlord at that level.
Bryce Harrington goes back to the headache of how to build fantasy cities in a defensible way with so many horrible creatures and spellcasters roaming around. Some historical models offer more benefits than others, but given the variety of powers out there, none really seem optimal. I guess it depends what monsters are most common in the particular area then.
Rene Vernon thinks that energy draining needs a little nerfing, but crossbows need powering up. More differentiation! Do you want every weapon group to be as complicated to handle as polearms and swords?
The role of computers: Macs may still be getting a decent amount of games, but it seems PC's are starting to pull ahead now, generally getting stuff first. However, it's Amiga that are really suffering. Just a couple of years now before they go bankrupt, and boy does it show. Might be a good idea to abandon this ship before it sinks. So it's another amusing historical pointer in the intro section here.
Conquests of the longbow: the adventures of Robin Hood gets a very positive review, with the reviewers impressed by both the graphics and gameplay. Point and click movement is applied with increasing finesse, and you get plenty of choices in how to overcome the various obstacles and bring peace to the land.
Eye of the Beholder II: The legend of Darkmoon once again goes to 5 stars, with substantially improved graphics and sound. Seems like they're saying that all the time these days, with particular emphasis on the precise specs needed. Point and click, and engage in lots of violence, as long as you have a good enough machine. SSI know what they're doing at this point.
Neverwinter Nights is of course their official online game. It's a pretty interesting, translating the turn-based D&D combat process surprisingly faithfully. Course, the world really isn't ready for this as a mass market product, with costs of several dollars an hour in phone bills, which probably explains why it doesn't count as part of the later series. I wonder if you can still get hold of this one.
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers only gets a short review, but they say it's as good as previous instalments. I guess, like the book reviews, that's all a series with established fans needs.
The Simpsons: Bart's house of Weirdness also gets a short but positive review. Don't spout long discredited catchphrases, just enjoy the action. Funny that you don't see more spin-offs based on this series any more, given the time it's been running.
Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992
part 4/5
TSR Previews: A mere half a year after the last new campaign setting, they unleash another, very different desert heavy place for you to enjoy. Al-Qadim, Arabian adventures. Ok, so it's actually yet another add-on to Toril, but it's disconnected enough that you can ignore that and transplant it if you want too, like Kara-tur, and very much unlike Maztica. They finally figure out how to use kits properly, as a device for making classes reflect cultural roles, and the proficiency system probably works about as well as it ever does. I believe this permits a little yaying.
Speaking of kits, we also have one of the books that applied them most radically. PHBR7: The complete Bards handbook, where they weren't so much variants on the existing class as total retools. You could build a whole party of bards and have more than enough variety to be viable and distinct, especially when the half-elf multiclass variants were allowed. Just watch out for the cheese. Here be jesters, and all that.
Spelljammer expands on space combat, with the War Captain's Companion set. Shoulda brought that out before the goblin war stuff so we could use it in those adventures.
Dark sun sees more mass combaty fun in DSQ1: Road to Urik. Tyr and Urik are fighting! Save the newly freed city. Making the world a better place ain't going to be easy. Once again, they use an interesting spiral bound format.
The forgotten Realms is off in Maztica still, in FMQ1: City of gold. See new people, take their stuff, and figure out how to get members of the cool new races and classes the players are drooling over into the party.
Dragonlance has many more short stories to tell. The reign of Istar takes us back in time to that false paradise destroyed by it's own corruption. Look forward to more bloody aesopping, if I know them.
D&D has yet more entry level adventures, three of them in fact, in Dragons Den. Well, I suppose they want to get noobs in, and it ain't easy to run low level adventures with dragons. That they might think we would appreciate help with that is probably justified.
Wonders of the land of fate: Surprise surprise, with the release of Al Qadim, (already mentioned twice this issue) we get an article promoting it. Ok, it's not the full-on special Dark Sun got, but it's better than nothing. And it's actually a lot more useful than the stuff in the Dark Sun and Buck Rogers specials. Ok, so it's mostly cut material from the corebook, but it's good material, as well as being appropriate to the theme of the issue. A ton of new magical items, many obviously derived from the arabian nights stories, and new random determination tables so you can get a good idea of their respective frequencies. The descriptions are very short, but do the job, and still manage to sneak in a decent bit of flavour. It does get released officially after all a bit later in the Land of Fate boxed set, but this is still useful stuff, and seems a good one for drawing people into the new setting. Jeff Grubb has done his job well, producing so much cool stuff that he can't fit it all into one book.
Ars magica gets a 3rd edition. Now with more crossover with the WoD. Watch out for those tremere.
Role-playing reviews: Back to fantasy gaming again. So many people who think they have some neat ideas to contribute to the genre. Some of them may even be right. This time it's Lester W. Smith who's our compere.
Fifth cycle gets an all round positive review. The worldbuilding is good, the system makes sense to him, and the magic has a nice internal logic to it. It has enough supplements to fill it out without overly bloating things. If you want another decent alternative system, go for it.
Barony gets a slightly less positive review, mainly due to it's small press origins being pretty obvious. But the ideas therein are rather more innovative, and it includes a rather spectacular treatment of Dragon battles, for some reason. If they could just tidy up some of the more pretentious and idiosyncratic language and make it more accessable. Pff. I'll bet I could understand it no trouble. After all, we had to deal with high Gygaxese for over 10 years.
Stuff O' Legends is halfway between an RPG and a boardgame, combining diplomacy and battle in a game of heroics revolving around the Trojan War. It's full of military and supernatural elements, as you build up your heroes and get them into position for the eventual inevitable conflict. With lots of optional rules that add further variety, it looks like an interesting edge case that could be taken either way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992
part 5/5
Ladders to the sky: The shine is probably starting to wear off spelljammer around the office, as the realities of the first couple of year's sales are in, and they aren't so great. It's not dead yet, but new products are starting to slow down. And aside from the special, and rather a lot of Sage Advices, it hasn't seen much stuff submitted to here either. Allen Varney tries to spark things a little by reminding you how easily you can incorporate space stuff into an existing game. All you need is a means of going up! And this being spelljammer, cheesy ideas work just fine. Giant plants which shoot up into space as part of their mating cycle. Hired by a passing ship with a crew shortage. Random portals that send you somewhere unexpected one-way. Many of these would also work fine for introducing the planes as well. And a nice reminder that it's not hard to shake up a game that's getting stale by changing the environment and removing most of the familiar cast. Just be careful, for as many a TV show can demonstrate, this kind of trick can kill a series as easily as it can revitalise it, and pushing the reset button afterwards may not help. Good luck pulling it off.
Sage advice: Why can't druids cast call woodland beings and commune with nature. Those are well within their remit (Oops. Errata. )
Can you save against a warp marble (only if it's thrown at you)
How do you determine an object's resistance to dispelling (use the person holding it. )
Does a ring of wizardry boost your spelljamming power (not officially, but Skip quite likes that idea. )
What magic items can bards use ( Officially only rogue ones, but skip likes the idea of making them jacks of all trades. Skip will argue the case with his sagely might! )
If you invent printing presses, can they mass-produce magical spells (Hell no! That would fuck game balance up the ass with a 36 inch spiked rotating dildo!)
Can you get someone back from a bag of devouring by turning it inside out (no. If they've been swallowed, it's already too late. They're gone, jim. )
Can you overclock a wand of conjuring to summon high level monsters at high level (no. Wands do not scale. Live with it, or sell them on to lower level adventurers for a tidy profit. )
Can a bag of holding's weight reduction powers be negated (not normally. Skip will laugh at you if you wreck one by experimenting to find a way to do this. )
Do cloaks of displacement protect against magic missiles (No. A penalty to automatic hit is still an automatic hit. )
Are item malfunctions always detrimental ( The odds of them being beneficial are about as good as real life radiation mutations being beneficial. Not bleedin likely, in other words. )
Dragonmirth is rather wizard-heavy this month. Yamara gets caught between the packs of marauding journalists. The twilight empire team have to figure out how to get flammable slime off in a hurry.
Through the looking glass: Hmm. Another interesting topic tackled in the introduction to this piece. The irritating battle between houserulers and official only takes a slightly different form when it comes to minis, but it is there. Try taking a customised piece to a Games Workshop store game, and see what happens. And as they're the biggest baddest guys on the block, you may well have to lump it if you want to play. TSR will die, but they continue onwards, regularly driving off existing players and having to draw in new ones with their irritating company policies. Yet another reason to steer clear of con games, as if there weren't enough.
Lots of stuff that seems adaptable to all kinds of fantasy games this month, presuming your GM will allow it, ironically. Two hordes, one oriental themed, the other gnolls, from Ral Partha. Thunderbolt mountain minis have a mermad, a dark elf, and a nicely idiosyncratic box containing a triceratops war machine ridden by orcs. There's one you really wish GW would let in their WHFB games. And Grenadier finish this off with a Halfling, a Ranger and a generic dungeoneer. They should fit together in a team nicely.
Great. The moonshaes get another trilogy. What a thing to happen to them.
With lots of stuff for various official campaign worlds, and plenty of bits that you can insert in anywhere as well, I've rather enjoyed this one, and it looks like it also has more reusability than the average issue as well. Keep submitting those cool articles folks, surprising us and making sure things don't get too dominated by the same recurring writers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 180: April 1992
part 1/5
128 pages. Welcome to the halfway point of this insane trek through time. Finally I can say, I am at the midnight of my suffering. Though there may be many challenges ahead, there will be a dawn. This kingdom shall know peace again! So proclaim I! We shall slay every dragon, delve every dungeon, roll every polyhedron, and er, drink with every white dwarf! (cue accusations of racism) And the ending shall be glorious! So press onwards with me, stalwart comrades from across the globe! Together we are strong! We shall not fall prey to despondency or insanity! (florble gibber thnorble help me! Or kill me now!) We shall face this april fools issue like we faced the ones before. Deadly seriously! (see page XX for the contract. ) It too shall fall! (god, I'm such a fool) I will not fail! (the betting pool is still open) Let's make it so.
In this issue:
Letters: No surprise that the letters here again prove that the collective readership have more silliness when combined than the writers. And a lot more wiling to ask questions about sex than they are to answer them. I hope that their parenting skills aren't similarly stilted. They also demonstrate the usual array of stupidly twinked characters, requests to buy stuff, chain letters, non sequiturs, bad crossovers, submissions that haven't a hope of being published, and other stuff that makes you go what is this I don't even. Perhaps it would be more fun if I had a little wharrgarble. WHARRRRRRRRGARRRRRRRRBLE!!!!!! Yeah, I think I feel a little better. And now, thanks to this, I'm imagining whargarble and other such amusing macro effects dubbed onto an oral sex scene. Ceiling cat approves strongly.
Editiorial: Hmm, this is a new one from Roger. A clever one too. Just how far can you take the concept of unusual PC's before they become unplayable? You need to be able to fulfil most, and preferably all of a certain checklist. Sentience. Communication. Hands or other environment manipulating capabilities. Movement. Power. Ability to advance. And not being inherently disruptive to the party by nature or needs. Ok, some games make a point of breaking some of those rules and still work, (Traveller, Wraith, Earthbound Demons) but like rules of musical structure, they remain valid as a general thing despite certain songs benefiting from violating them. I remember seeing a checklist very like this in forum threads before, but not in this magazine, which means he may actually be innovating here, and creating something that then spreads to GM advice things in other books. Can anyone trace this to an earlier source? Given the silliness of his recent editorials, this is a surprisingly serious and useful entry. One might suspect him of building things up to make a deliberate play on expectations this month. Still, it continues his efforts to get us to expand our gaming horizons, so it's hardly coming from left-field, especially when you consider his old articles for the magazine before he became the editor.
Suspend your disbelief: Oh, here we go with another realism in gaming (or at least, verisimilitude) article. Personality! consistency! believability! These are the great principles with which you must build your game. Ecology! Society! Parsimony! The things in it come from somewhere and must interact with each other! Hmm. Either this is a very dry parody, or just very rehashed indeed. Either way, everything said here has been said before in the magazine, better, and in greater detail previously. Yawn.
Not another magical sword: Another person complaining that magical weapons should get more detail so as to make each of them special? That idea in itself is starting to seem rather overdone, ironically. And not reflective of my personal experience either. I don't have names for my half-a dozen guitars, only one of the laptops in my family has a name, and the various electrical appliances that we rely on certainly don't get that kind of sentimental affection. Yeah, they might all have their individual quirks, but this is generally a pain in the butt to work around rather than something to celebrate. Not that making them visually and mechanically distinctive is a bad thing, but there's a lot of other places I could be putting my effort, and I only have so much energy to give. Fortunately, they also provide some nice specific examples as well as the oft-repeated generalities, keeping this from being useless to me. As with last issue, the Greenwood influence is very noticeable. No escaping it these days, with even the other campaign worlds that are consciously trying to be different winding up using the same methods.
Role-playing reviews: Rick demonstrates his particular sense of humour again in this little article, lampooning the crap deal psionics gets in so many systems. We've seen near nowt on it since issue 78. And either it's too similar to magic, or incoherently designed in many systems. Doesn't stop them from putting it in though. Which of course means he has enough to make a good themed column. Hopefully that'll also stimulate freelancers to send in stuff, so we can get a psionics themed issue for this edition as well.
The complete psionics handbook gets a rather dry and descriptive review, with lots of explanation of how it works. It may seem daunting at first, but it's not that hard to understand, and differentiates things from magic quite handily, apart from a few near identical powers in the telepathy domain. Unlike certain forumites, he considers the fact that powers aren't usually level restricted a plus. It could do with more GM advice, monsters, and other cool peripherals though.
Psionics is a Mayfair Role Aid product. It doesn't do quite as well, having a bunch of irritating niggly restrictions on it's powers. But with plenty of cool stuff to mine and surprisingly little overlap with the official system, it could run alongside the other system if you wanted.
GURPS Psionics Also gets a solid but not gushing review. It encourages you to pick one or two skills and specialise in them, which encourages team differentiation in a class free game. The mechanics are solid, but psychic battles are rather complex to manage. It also has more campaign material than the other two,aimed quite strongly at modern day games. As with all the GURPS stuff, it's for those who like to customise, and mix and match elements from multiple genres for their games.
Rick also gives brief reviews to the Draconomicon and Ashes to Ashes. Neither are perfect, but both have lots of cool stuff for you to use. Seems both Vampire and D&D started with a greater proportion of adventures in their early supplements.
Dragon Magazine Issue 180: April 1992
part 2/5
Your basic Barbarian: Another april fools collection of things NOT to do when playing a dumb smashy sort. All the classes have their own stereotypes of how they can be disruptive to the party. Fighters probably get the least attention, when compared to preachy dick priests, thieves that steal from their own team, and wizards who take over everyone else's role at high level. But they can be a real pain in the butt too, and this article shows you how! Exaggerated dumbness mainly. Never be afraid to leap into a situation, short-circuiting debate and getting your companions into trouble. Apart from water, which is a source of terror to anyone with heavy armour, and of course rust monsters, which must be fled from with as much speed as you can manage. I do not see myself laughing at this one. Just a bit of space-wasting goofiness.
Hot night in the old town: Or how to keep things interesting for clerics when they're not out adventuring. Because of the nature of both their organisations and their powers, (at least, if they resemble real world priests at all) there is a certain natural pressure on them to get involved in the community, and lots of demand for their powers if they're willing to set a reasonable price. Lots of fun can be had trying to increase your congregation and settle disputes, get together the money for a decent temple, and competing with priests of other gods. Many of them may involve asking your adventuring party buds for a little help, and lead into a whole new adventure. This seems like a very cool idea, and the principle could be applied to the other classes for generation of tailored between adventure solo bits without too much effort. It certainly makes for considerably more variety than another motiveless wandering monster. Very handy indeed.
Colorful connection: Looks like puzzles are indeed becoming a regular feature, with another crossword. 80 more cryptic clues for your puzzling out, and an overall secret contained within. Actually seems like it would be more appropriate put in the birthday issue than the april fool one, but that makes the solution too easy to guess. Another one that'll easily eat up a few hours unless you're a real whiz at this kind of thing.
Cyber HERO: Yes, another supplement for the HERO system. They're not gonna let a genre get away.
Forum: Adam Lesh deals with the Robin hood problem with roughly the same advice I would have given. You can't expect players to follow the film script, and you can't expect the game to follow the same narrative logic when the rules encourage other options. You can use those stories as inspiration, but don't forget the adaption.
Steven Davis would rather like playing gods to be a viable option for adventurers who've reached obscene levels of power. Things might change, but they can still have meaningful challenges. Roll on Nobilis to make that feasible system-wise.
Victor Paraschiv thinks that fighters are still crap and not worth playing, especially when you could take a multiclassed demihuman or a paladin instead. Perhaps increasing the XP differential would help?
Jake Remley goes back to the violence in roleplaying/TV/music/video games is corrupting our youth stupidity. Roleplaying is far less dangerous than those other media, because it's all in your imagination, and frequently very abstracted. It does not make you more likely to commit real violence.
The voyage of the princess ark: From the ridiculous to the epic in this series. The princess ark goes from a country full of french dog-people to one inhabited by english cat-people. Logical, I guess. As this is essentially elizabethan england, everyone is very polite, and their time there is devoid of the usual dramas. However, that's because they're just the B plot this month. The main one is that we get to see what happens when you die in mystara. Raman is killed by the ghost he faced several months ago, and has to find his way out of Limbo. (not the same limbo as the AD&D universe, in another example of them making the two games deliberately different. ) And he makes it just in time. Any longer and he would have been buried. Oh, the tales he has to tell.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the article is devoted to exactly that, opening up another interesting avenue of play. If your team got hit by an unexpected and unwanted TPK, you don't have to stop now. You can just take them to the underworld, where they can search for a way back to the lands of the living, go to their eternal rest, or explore the lands of the dead and try and make a living of sorts there. The various types of undead are dramatically recontextualized, we get an interesting synopsis of the society of the dead, and we have more info on how the sphere of entropy tries to dominate the universe. This is the kind of thing that you should consider carefully if you want to adopt, because it gives answers to big questions that may not be welcome. (curiously, that everyone goes to limbo, and only followers of specific immortals go on to get a nice afterlife, would later be adopted in 3rd ed forgotten realms stuff, and I wasn't too keen on the idea there either. ) But it's certainly interesting, and very gameable. Another great example of just how weird and expansive Mystara has become with it's own built up setting.
Dragon Magazine Issue 180: April 1992
part 3/5
Your own treasure hunt: Hmm. Another article with a bunch of ideas they've never tackled before. In issue 177 we had a letter about charging to pay. Roger may have come down against the idea there, but his feelings must be more complex than that, otherwise he wouldn't have picked out this article. In it, the writer floats the idea of holding a fundraising event for your gaming group, as if it were a charity or something. The idea that your gaming group should be a formal entity in itself, with books and equipment owned collectively, dues paid for belonging, a fund for expenditures, and written procedures defining where and how you play, and what you need to do to get in (or kick someone out) does seem a bit strange, and it's not something I've come across personally, despite once being in a group that pushed 20 at times. Seems like the kind of thing that would develop when you have to specifically hire out space to game, rather than meeting at someone's house or down the pub. And of course, in schools, where tedious bureaucracy reigns, and the authorities want to keep track of what their students are doing. Most of the article is devoted to the logistics of setting something like this up, including lots of general advice on organising stuff that is applicable to all kinds of tasks. Set clear goals, figure out how to achieve them practically and get the stuff before stating, make sure someone properly co-ordinates things, check as things go on and revise plans accordingly, and since this involves getting other people to give you money, publicity publicity publicity. One of their more interesting diversions into real world matters, and a lot fresher than the stuff on how to be a good writer that pops up every couple of years. This has certainly been a pleasant eye-opener for me.
The role of computers: Last month, we saw the plight of Amiga become hinted at. This time, it's the Atari Lynx that we scent the blood of. 3 years in, and they've just sold their millionth cartridge, and have a library of 40 games. That's fewer products than D&D has managed in the same timespan. Hell, it might be fewer sales than Palladium has managed as well. Compare that to the gameboy and it all becomes a bit risible.
Castles: The northern Campaign is an expansion for the original Castles. It improves on it quite substantially, adding lots of new options on both the military and trading fronts. This pushes their verdict up to 5 stars.
Castle of Dr Brain is another educational game. It doesn't really hold up to their scrutiny, with the normal difficulty level easily completed, and no interesting ending to reward you for that.
Elvira II: The jaws of Cerberus is another one that improves on the original, with more action, better graphics, better sound, and tons of items and spells that you'll need to apply carefully to progress. Get ready to juggle that equipment list again.
Hyperspeed is another game that is left behind by the advance of technology. If it weren't for Wing commander raising the bar, this'd probably be a 5 star one. As it is, it'll just have to settle for 4.
Nova 9 is a 3D shooter. This is one area that technology is definitely having an impact on. Anyway, with both ground and space based missions, there's plenty of enemies to kill and power-ups to collect. They quite enjoy it.
The Simpsons Arcade game gets a relatively weak review, being mostly mindless combat. This is another one I burnt a ton of money on at the arcade one summer. Having got to around level 7, I really wanted to finish it, but kept on dying and ran out by around level 9. I wan't even really enjoying it that much. Repeating patterns, eh.
V for victory: battleset 1, D-day utah beach, 1944 is another 5 star one. Looks like wargames are also exploiting the new technology out there. The number of scenarios isn't huge, but the interface is very good. Still, it'll take you quite a while to do each one, so it's not wasted money.
Back to the future III gets a fail result, both on a gameplay and a technical level. Recent advances in graphics really have spoiled them, and this just feels like a cheap cash-in.
Novel ideas: Looks like they're giving the huge world-changing events a miss this year. Instead, it's sequels to their bestselling series that are getting the big fanfare, as they want to milk the cash cows without disturbing them too much. Moonshaes: the next Generation. Yet more Dragonlance prequels. Existing authors have to come back to their old works and try to recapture the magic, while new ones have to learn the history and try to fit into the existing canon. As ever, they have little bits of info on the writing process and difficulties involved, which may or may not be accurate, and will hopefully make you want to buy the stuff. As usual, this column has nothing particularly essential worth reading.
The power of the pen: It's survey time again, for approximately the 7th time in the magazine's history. What do you want more, less or about the same of? Not brilliantly phrased, as I always read everything, whether I like it or not. Nothing much else to say here. What will the replies be this time? See you in the editorial in a few months time.
The dragon's bestiary: Battering rams are another creature based on a dreadful pun name. Like the Death Sheep, they might be a bit amusing, but they can still mess your day up, and in this case, break down many obstacles as well. Fuck not with a druid who has a flock of these as an entourage.
Gorse are teeny little fairies with magic that lets them control thorn bushes. Ahh, the old spike up the arse trick. That alway's gets a giggle. Since they have only 1 hp and come in large numbers, using magic while hiding in the bushes from attack, this is definitely one a flamethrower would aid in dealing with. Looks like they're treading the fine path between humour and usefulness well this year.
Quakedancers are real thunder lizards, looking much like brontosauri, but actually causing earthquakes as a hunting mechanism. Another one that's a serious monster (with very serious damage outputs indeed as it gets bigger), but can also be a bit goofy and amusing. Still, none of these guys are disbelief suspension breaking to me. They can join the queue of monsters to use.
Dragon Magazine Issue 180: April 1992
part 4/5
Sage advice has it's usual collection of questions so insane that they aren't even a joke.
I pick at your elven armour exceptions! Pick, pick, pick I say! ( You know that'll only make it worse. Yeah, it isn't the most consistent of rulings. Maybe we ought to modify it a bit. )
What's the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet ( One's a tension + release mechanism, the other's a counterweight force user. But do you really care about the physics behind it? Or do you just want to cause the maximum possible destruction? )
I need help with my 6 inch tall permanently hasted fighter-monk (You need help, full stop. Haste is not good for the body. You'll wear yourself out, keeping that on all the time. )
Can you turn the tarrasque into a bunny and eat it (yes, but it still regenerates. Persistent eating of tarrasque bunny may be hazardous to your health, particularly if it escapes. And you know what rabbits are like for mating. If it got loose and started producing tarrasque blooded rabbits, the whole world would be doomed. )
What happens if I deliberately misread all the rules, and then try and break the universe based upon my misreading ( A pair of pissed off astral dragons kill you painfully. This is gonna get really really nasty. )
How does losing an arm affect your ability to use magic items ( Common sense, you are lacking it. Err on the side of generosity, you should. )
How many gnomes can a griffon carry ( Bwahahahahaha! Oh, that's a good one, :wipes away tear: Two or three seems about right. )
Where can you put a sphere of annihilation when not using it. (anywhere you want. Not many people will be able to steal it, and those that can will laugh at mere walls. )
Fiction: Murder most fowl by Deborah Millitello. Who killed the golden goose? A comical question, but when each of it's eggs is several pounds of gold, a vital one for the stability of the economy. It could be any one of dozens of suspects, from this country or others. Intrigue runs wild. Harsh measures must be used. And the result is a rather fun little romp through fairytale land, combining whimsical fantasy with murder mystery. The answer, of course is not who you'd expect, or why. As with last month, the comedy of errors air and twist at the end works pretty well. As long as Roger doesn't pick another similar one next month, I have no problem with this.
TSR Previews: Gamma world is back! 4th edition once again tries to clean up the rules, make it more fun and accessible. Just how well they succeed is a matter of opinion.
Curiously, Marvel superheroes occupies second place, putting all the D&D stuff at the bottom. Seems like the X-men are still their biggest draw, because this is another supplement focussed upon them. MHR1: X-forces, the mutant update. As if a generalised handbook covering all the changes to existing characters each year wasn't enough. Have they been going through some kind of crisis?
On the generic AD&D side, we have DMGR4: Monster Mythology. See the weird gods various creatures worship, and what spheres and priestly levels they can get for doing so. Yet another way they can be made more 3 dimensional and scary at the same time. Also being newly ecologised is MC14: fiend folio. The 1981, erm, classic gets the remainder of it's monsters converted, and a few new ones in it's spirit added on. Don't neglect the gonzo!
Ravenloft ventures into the mists, and finds RR4: Islands of terror. If you thought the Core was claustrophobic and weird, you ain't seen nothing yet. Ripper era london, seriously fucked up india, the inescapable sargasso sea, it's a crap shoot regardless of whether you stay or head back into the mists to try another one.
Dark sun, on the other hand, shows while it may be bleak, there are some people on top who are doing fairly nicely for themselves. Nice contrast really. DSR2: Dune trader deals with the frequently underhanded profiteering of the merchant groups. When things are scarce but essential, you can really put your haggling skills to work.
Spelljammer reaches volume 3 in the cloakmaster cycle. The metaplot actions of the modules reach here, putting our hero in danger from marauding goblinoids. We coulda got that if we'd just stayed on krynn.
Speaking of Krynn. The Oath and the Measure is part 4 of our meetings sextet. Sturm, Caramon and Raistlin have wacky adventures together or something. I'm betting Raistlin's pragmatism vs Sturm's idealism is a principle driver of the dialogue.
And for D&D, we have Assault on raven's ruin. You know, we get through the first few levels quicker than any of the following ones. Unless you're the kind of group which can't keep the same campaign going for more than a week or two, you'll never get any use out of all these introductory adventures.
Dragon Magazine Issue 180: April 1992
part 5/5
Wear your best suit: Great. They still haven't fixed the gadgeteer problem in FASERIP, despite it being rather noticable way back in issues 95 & 96, where they first covered Iron Man. Guess it's up to the magazine to post an unnofficial solution that probably won't make it into the next edition anyway. This is a rather limited solution too, only covering powered armour wearers rather than equipment in general. It also reminds us how glacially slow normal advancement is under the system, when upgrading your gear really shouldn't work like regular xp. Can't say I find this one very likable, or well constructed. Keep looking for a solution guys.
The wanderers: They say "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." If you build a better wandering monster table, on the other hand, that means better monsters hanging around making a nuisance of themselves. Which might sound appealing to adventurers, but is a nuisance to people who actually have to live there. Although if the tables increase your odds of encountering a large variety of normal humans and animals, as these ones do, then they might welcome the change in their living environment. By making the encounter tables nested, you can fit a lot more in, and can also reuse them by having multiple terrain ones direct to the same other ones, only with different probabilities. Like the solo tables a bit earlier this issue, (which this would combine well with) this is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but is a good deal more elegant than the d12 + d8 tables, with the probabilities easy to figure and adjust on the fly, and more able to throw up a variety of surprises that keep your game from getting stale. These little design tricks definitely deserve consideration. And it allows you to come close to including the entire ecology of an area in your random tables, which also means you could probably increase the frequency of your rolls without breaking the game by having the players face too many killer encounters. Applying this would have lots of little knock-on effects, probably for the better. I shall try to remember it when I next design random encounter tables.
Dragonmirth is a bit creepy really. Yamara gets a new home courtesy of Ogrek. Twilight empire gets out of the fire and into the tentacle monster. Not really an improvement.
Through the looking glass: SCUD missiles. Aka scary enemy boogeyman 1991 edition. Once again I say, what a complete letdown compared to the cold war. Still, it's not as pathetic as the supposed terrorists of the 00's (less than one successful attack a year worldwide is a joke to someone who grew up with the IRA around. ) The media really do have very little sense of proportion. Still, I'm sure it was scary for the soldiers involved. (even if more of them ended up with long-term problems from our own chemical crap than enemy attacks. ) Funny that the biggest reminders of the big world outside the magazine should be coming from the Mini's and computer game columns.
Our minis this month go back to mixing fantasy and sci-fi. A wall of skulls, which I'd probably get more use out of than this reviewer. A ghostly skeleton, or skeletal ghost, however you want to play it. A dragon that should tower over standard sized minis nicely. A centaur archer. A cleric, a witch and a dwarf. (walk into a bar. The witch changes the bar into a frog as revenge, which causes the house to collapse. The cleric heals them, and the dwarf rebuilds the house. Everyone lives happily ever after. ) A futuristic hovercraft, and two battletech mechs. All get between 4 and 5 stars. He really isn't pushing himself in this respect.
This time they actually remembered to scan the trading cards in. Which is nice. They're also using mostly original characters this time. However, this does result in a very noticeable drop in the artwork quality, as they don't spring the same kind of money as they do for the various book covers they recycled from for the previous set. Say hello to Foleas, Alvestar Jankins, Aurora, Guido del Confuso, Mellenea, Zinnabar Albbee, "Slipper Kindric", "Thallios", Chobin"the punkster", Darwell Tectite, Aruthir, Jastus, Hm-boye, Lady Wendolyn of Gaunt, Reptilla Half-elven, Phun Ach-mana Phun, and Delynn Rosabell. Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms are all represented. Many of them have kits, all alignments are represented, there's a psionicist, and they all have at least token attempts at personalities. Pretty decent demographic collection. I wonder how many of them are from games by the writers and how many are whipped up wholecloth. This series seems unlikely to end soon, but diminishing returns are starting to set in. They need to do something more than just trading to keep people interested. ;)
As befits the middle issue, this is indeed a very middling issue indeed, with a medium amount of april goofiness between the full specials and the ones that cut it out, an even mix of articles with cool developments and tedious rehashed ones, and a moderate amount of non RPGing diversions. As is often the case, they seem to have gone for the approach that they can't please everyone all the time, but by casting a broad net, at least one article each month should be pleasing to you. Hopefully that theory will continue to hold water for a while longer.
Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Once more with the magical crunchiness with no theme more focussed than that. It's getting so common as to be barely worth mentioning as a topic. And yet despite the frequency of submissions of this sort, they're all pretty firmly stuck in the standard D&D magic paradigm. One of those things that makes it very clear why the 90's were a troublesome time for them. If you stay the same while the world changes, you get left behind. Still, they do make one useful little format change this issue. The various review columns get grouped together in the contents page, making them easier to locate and reducing the recent tendency of this bit to turn into just another wall of text. (the .pdf formatting follows in it's wake, which is also nice. ) So they are moving forward, just not as much as they probably need to be. I shall not be so patient, however. I fully intend to push myself to get the second half of this trek done faster than the first half.
In this issue:
Letters: Timothy B. Brown complains about the picking apart of his Dark Sun spell frequency math. These flaws were intentional! You would ruin the game if you changed it! Ha and ha again.
A letter praising their top quality fiction. Damn right. Haven't i been finding the same thing for years now, the average fiction quality is actually better than the average game material quality. Roger, of course, sends all the praise to his sub-editors. I'm sure they have to sift through a lot of crap to keep things this way.
A letter telling people to send in the adventures they spend ages working on to Dungeon if they want financial recompensation. That isn't going to work as well as you think, I'm afraid. They already get a lot more submissions than they can publish. Welcome to reality, where earning money doing things you love is really hard.
Editorial: Roger tries once again to push our gaming boundaries, proving as usual that he's a good deal more progressive than most of the material he gets. This time it's politics, and the lack of it in too many games that is his pet peeve. Once you get monsters of a certain power level, the impact they have upon the world automatically becomes a political issue, even if they themselves couldn't care less about the effect they're having on the puny humans. If your campaign lacks the epicness and emotional attachment of LotR, it may well be because you're neglecting that area, with people maintaining a nebulous status quo effortlessly despite all the monsters roaming around the world. He also exaggerates a little to demonstrate that personal power and political do not have to be linked, and you can do all sorts of clever things with long-term plans. (even if you have to retroactively make some of the details up to make the characters as intelligent as they should be. ) You can set your players at the centre of an epic and give them a decent amount of agency while still having an idea where the game will go in the long-term. He even makes it sound easy. Course I know from personal experience, it isn't quite that easy, but it's still a desirable goal to aim for. Nice to see him still aiming for the stars.
Sorcery & Strategy: Recently, we've had an article that went into tactics as performed by fighters in a relatively realistic world. Course, in D&D, spellcasters provide the majority of the really interesting tactical and strategic options, and even one makes a huge difference to the battle flow. And it's not just in their ability to inflict large quantities of area damage with a good fireball or lightning bolt. Thomas M. Kane points out that the buffing and defensive powers are actually more useful, especially once you get to higher levels and the enemies are pretty likely to resist direct effects cast at them. If you know what you're doing, you should be using divinations and terrain effects to ensure you're stacking the odds in your favour before the enemy even knows you're there. Once again we see the advantages specialists have in finding a useful niche in larger society, as he gives us some sample characters, their spell lists and normal tactics. With a nice mix of very specific detail, and principles that are applicable to any system, this is another strong delivery from forumite Thomas M. Kane. It could definitely have gone into more detail on the combat applications of clerics though. They're even more useful to an army, as they have all the healing and food effects, and aren't so squishy. Guess once again the magazine might have good material, but it's still limited in it's range.
Pages from the mages finally gives up trying to keep track of how many articles they've had. We have too many wizards! And they're all researching spells! Any time now we'll have another magical apocalypse that'll take a few centuries to rebuild from. Still, we have a definite formula by now. 4 spellbooks, each with 4 new spells in, for a total of 16 new spells. The only question is how cool and groundbreaking they are.
Galadasters Orizon is just a small part of the unique knowledge of a particularly ruthless and obnoxious lich who is still at large in Faerun and needs a good arsekicking. Now there's an easy adventure hook for you. The spells are similarly direct combat ones. Firestaff lets a wizard kick substantially more ass in hand to hand combat. Slumberward makes you immune to magical sleep, although the duration is probably a bit too short for it to make it a really good utility buff. Geirdon's grappling grasp lets you counteract the various bigby's hand spells, and engage in generalised grappling, of course. Morganava's sting is the only real clunker, as it's actually quite a bit weaker than vampiric touch overall, yet higher level. Someone didn't roll too well on their research attempts.
The Arcanabula of Jume is one of those spellbooks that teleports away randomly on a semiregular basis, ensuring that it's information doesn't stay with any one person, but is instead spread across the whole Realms. It's spells are similarly playful. Dark mirror lets you send magical darkness back against it's originator. Now there's a spell that's only going to be of limited use unless you know your enemy has a fetish for that kind of magic. Shadow hand is another rather underpowered device, that seems to be an attempt to compensate for illusionist's lack of evocations by making a semireal manipulator. Prismatic eye is a wizard's eye that can shoot color sprays. It too is mainly hampered by a too short range and duration for really effective spying, but is pretty decent as an additional attention drawer in combat. Shadow gauntlet is yet another failed attempt to make an all purpose manipulator, that looks pathetic next to the likes of disintegrate and flesh to stone. Ed seems to be seriously off his game at power level gauging today.
Laeral's Libram is a little spellbook lost by our friendly planehopping sorceress. I'm sure she'd be quite happy to have it returned to her. It only has a few spells, but the standard 4 of them are new ones. Forcewave is another one that seems weak initially. A second level spell that's less damaging and reliable than magic missile? Well, the prospect of pushing an enemy off a ledge does have the potential to do a LOT more damage, so I'll forgive that this time. Laeral's aqueous column lets you create cylinders of water through air, making diplomacy with aquatic creatures a lot easier, and having a whole bunch of creative uses. Jhanifer's deliquescence lets you melt things, even those that aren't intended to be melted. The details are deliberately left vague so he can exploit them later. Blackstaff is Khelben Arunsun's signature spell, so well known he doesn't even have to remind everyone by putting his name in front. It can drain your HP permanently, mindfuck you, disrupts both magic and psionics, and is near impossible to affect. Now that's one that does justify it's high level with both power and versatility.
Tasso's Arcanabula is the product of an illusionist and thief, playing around with the limits of their specialist restrictions. Tasso's shriek lets you prerecord your audible illusions and set them running surreptitiously, which is pretty handy for a low level trickster who doesn't want people realising they're a spellcaster. Shadow bolt is a semireal attack that works like an upgraded magic missile, and still does half damage if you disbelieve it. Shadow Skeletons are another semireal one that let you imitate a necromancer quite nicely, albeit not as effectively as the real thing. And Chromatic Blade lets you deal with prismatic barriers without memorising half a dozen very specific spells, and is a pretty badass weapon in it's own right. So lots of neat spells here, but also more than a few noob traps that you should steer well clear of. The writing does also feel increasingly formulaic, making this rather less thrilling reading than the previous instalments.
Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992
part 2/5
That's certainly un-familiar: Upgrading your familiar. Yeah, that's a much needed capability, and it's no surprise at all that a certain degree of autoprogression was built into 3e familiars. So here we see a moderately influential, but very useful article indeed. Familiar enhancer I-VIII are level 2-9 spells, which means every time you get access to a new spell level, you can cast the next one to make your familiar smarter, more powerful, and more closely bonded with you. There is a lot of randomness involved in determining exactly what powers you get, which may or may not be pleasing to you, but most of the powers are pretty useful, and some of the high level ones are very cool. I can see this becoming a staple of quite a few people's character building. And isn't this exactly what the magazine should be producing. There are a few wanky bits, (I'm throwing out the once in a lifetime bit straight away, if your familiar dies, you should be able to upgrade the next one too) but I like this a lot and intend to make it available as an option to my players.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another oriental submission? You honour us with your great generosity, oh kind freelancer. Let me put it on the shelf with all the others.
Dragon Bones are what they say they are, and enhance your divinatory abilities. Yet another useful item you can make if you can kill a dragon, along with the armour, teeth, etc etc. Someone ought to compile all the magic items that require dragon parts in their construction and figure out exactly how many you could get from a single dragon.
Celestial Fury is a intelligent katana that may well be more trouble than it's worth. With the spirit of a rampaging dragon trapped inside, it brings thunderstorms wherever it goes, and is very blatant indeed in battle. It really gives a good definition to the idea of overkill and would be pretty scary in the hands of a villain. Emrikol the chaotic approves.
The voyage of the princess ark: Bellayne gets the spotlight upon it properly this issue. Thankfully, the conflict remains civilized. A myoshiman rakasta happens to be visiting, and of course reacts badly to myojo. But they decide to settle things in a sporting manner, with a little rat hunting. We see that while they may be civilized cat people around here, they're still cat people, with all the amusing instincts that entails. Once again, this is a fairly quiet episode for Haldemar & co, but there's lots of little character building bits, which is nice. They get to enjoy a banquet of stuffed giant rat, which is probably nicer than it sounds, and the ladies get to play with balls of wool :rolleyes: Once again I am conflicted between liking the cool stuff, and rolling my eyes at the silliness, which is a lot more noticable now than first time around. Ahh, the dreadful curse of maturity. Preventing you from getting enjoyment from the childish things you used to love.
On the OOC side, we have the usual travelogue of the place. History, population, gods, animals. We also finally get the rules for rakasta and lupin PC's. They take a different tack from the usual demihuman races, having the full range of classes available to humans, albeit at a quite substantial XP surcharge and penalty. They will be quite a bit more powerful at starting level, and then gradually fall behind, but they can still keep up way after dwarves and elves have maxed out their capabilities. This is an interesting development. We haven't seen many races with unlimited advancement in all classes around. I guess that since they also included 36 level progressions for the demihuman races as an option in the Rules Cyclopedia, there are a number of people who approve of the idea. It'll take a while to percolate through to general use though.
The letters also has an interesting thought. Why should characters with high ability scores get a further bonus in the form of XP bonuses. This is totally unfair. What if it was the other way around. Hmm. Another thing worth considering. And once again, this place covers stuff that would considerably change the game if implemented. Bruce is certainly pushing at the boundaries of what you can do with D&D, almost single-handedly. Just how much further can he go before burning out or running into some managmental obstacle?
More magic for beginners: Greg Detwiler feels like he's been doing this often and frequently enough to publish a sequel to one of his previous articles. Have a little more confidence in yourself. Ed was starting to do that kind of stuff right from his second submission. So here we have some more sample items and useful advice for those of you who want to be generous with the magic without breaking the game. The solution? Finer graining of powers.
Items of Proficiency and Specialisation allow anyone to use them straight away. This allows you to have a full golfbag of weapons, which is rather tricky to do normally under the proficiency system. Just be careful not to become too dependent on the item over your own skill, otherwise you'll be in big trouble if you lose it.
Weapons of Enchantment penetrate DR, but aren't any more likely to hit and cause damage. Just the thing for if you want to slow advancement into monty haul territory while still giving the players regular measurable upgrades. We know D&D has problems in this area, and here's part of the solution.
Miniature/Polymorphed gear are another couple of ways of getting round the encumbrance limit. just say the word, and it goes from full size to something else more convenient. This is particularly useful for rogues and other people who want to take stuff where it shouldn't be.
Illusory Missiles are further variants on his ideas from issue 149. You're unlikely to disbelieve them in the middle of a heated combat, so it's almost as good as the real thing. Just make sure you finish them off properly once they're down.
Continual Torches have both the benefits of a torch, and an item with continual light cast upon them. This means you can set fire to stuff, but also makes them trickier to put away. Decisions decisions. I can see some groups having a long discussion over the merits and ramifications of these two options.
Weapons of Illumination are another case of taking the benefits of established items, and splitting them up. Want a sword which sheds light, but doesn't give you any bonus to hit or damage? I suppose it's better than nothing, once again.
Hammers & spikes of Silence are of course ideal for the enterprising thief who doesn't want to wake people. It's the little things that make the big difference when the element of surprise is at stake.
Armor of comfort comes in various forms. The basic variety lets you sleep in it without penalty. There are also variants which allow you to stay comfortable in environmental extremes, with the strongest even protecting you against otherplanar environments. I think that's easily worth the equivalent of a plus or two in terms of convenience.
Sleeping bags of Armor Nullification are another solution to the same problem. Snooze in comfort without undressing. Just make sure you get out quickly when danger threatens. Another one that might not be particularly powerful, but can definitely be a lifesaver, and makes adventuring a much more pleasant experience in general. This is why you should stay on the good side of spellcasters.
Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992
part 3/5
The role of computers: The writers here continue to back the wrong horse, heaping praise on the Atari Lynx, and trying to make comparatively small figures look impressive. It's faintly embarrassing in hindsight. But then, the Dreamcast was also a good system that seemed to be finally picking up speed when it was cancelled. Like VHS and Betamax, it's hard to know who the winner of a console war will be, and the battles can go on years before one side concedes. For now, they're still fighting. Warbirds,Shangai, Block Out and Ishido all get short but very positive reviews. A whole bunch of different genres are catered for now. Get in while you still can.
Danger zone is our only negative review. With mediocre graphics and truly terrible sound, it really isn't keeping up with the other flight sims on the market. Seems a bit of an afterthought amongst the vast quantities of hints, many for years old games.
TSR Previews: Toril is a busy little world as usual. Al-Qadim gets a monstrous compendium, MC13. Hang on, the Fiend Folio was number 14 and that was out last month. Someone's been la-ate on their deadlines. :p Ed Greenwood on the other hand, probably wasn't late with FRQ1: Haunted halls of eveningstar. A spooky little story, also intended for novice players. (set as it is right in the middle of safe territory. ) We'll have them going east to get revenge on the Horde before you know it. The Harpers also continue to get lots of attention. Book 4, The Night Parade has more spooky shenanigans. What are these creatures, and will they seem a lot less scary once statted out.
Ravenloft is also feeling more than a little spooky. RR5: Van Richten's guide to ghosts lets you scale your insubstantial boogaboos up or down so even the scariest party has to solve the puzzle of how to dissipate their frustrations to get rid of them permanently, rather than hacking and slashing with swords +5.
Dark sun, on the other hand, is scary in a consciously contrasting way as usual. Dragon Kings reveals just how obscene 21st level + wizard/psionicists are. You can beat them in a straight fight, but you'll have to be similarly geared up and ready to roll.
Lots of generalised bumpf this time round. We get another calendar of recycled artwork. Mostly Dragonlance, as they seem popular with the casual crowd, but some Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun stuff fills things out. Clerics follow in Wizards footsteps and get their own spell card collection. Once again, useful but hardly essential. And we get this year's batch of trading cards released, which is even less so on both counts. Yawnarama.
Ooh. Gamma world gets another edition. It's had more resurections than most comic book characters over the years.
Homebody heroes: Len Carpenter once again is prolific enough to get multiple articles published in the same issue. Here he tackles the irritating issue of nonadventuring characters with high levels in communities. Spellcasters and rogues can work their way up over the years primarily via their class based xp bonuses, but it certainly isn't as effective as adventuring in producing a well-rounded individual able to cope with anything. This brings the conflict between narrativist and simulationist design into the forefront. Is it right to assume that all NPCs had to work their way up to their power level in a way similar to PCs? If they didn't, should they be penalised for it? It's the kind of question that shows how much a class and level based system jarrs with attempts to create a naturalistic reality. Since this'll only apply to NPC's anyway, it seems a bit pointless to engage in detailed tracking of their skillset deficiencies. So it's one of those white elephant articles that's nice around to have because it's thought provoking, but I wouldn't want to slow things down by strictly applying the rules ideas in it in actual play.
Role-playing reviews: Ooh. Vikings. Now there's an adventuring friendly culture if ever there was one. No surprise that they've got enough products for different systems for Rick to do one of his compare and contrast themed reviews.
Vikings: nordic roleplaying for runequest gets the best review here. It mixes historical and fantasy elements in about the right quantity, the adventures are good, and it all seems very playable. His only real complaint is the ironically short shrift rune magic gets.
AD&D Vikings campaign sourcebook is from Zeb Cook, who of course also brought us Oriental Adventures. It doesn't go as far as that in providing new classes and removing existing stuff, but it doesn't have too really. Still, the crunch is the best part of the book, with adventure and setting material a bit lacking. You'll also need Legends & Lore to really get the most out of it. This is definitely a case where Gotta Collect 'em all is an issue.
GURPS Vikings also gets a middling review. More of a toolbox than the other two, it does tend towards the mundane, with only a few new magical bits and pieces. As usual with GURPS stuff, it helps you think clearly about exactly what kind of game you want to create, and how to accomplish that.
Rick also decides to review a bunch of GM screens and the stuff that comes with them. Vampire has an introductory adventure that is both pretentious and silly. Spelljammer has a bunch of amusing little fold-up cardboard bits and pieces, as does Champions. Star wars includes a 64 page adventure that'd make a decent supplement in itself, while CoC includes tons of little bits and pieces of dubious utility. What's fairly obvious is that few companies consider them worth it as a standalone product.
Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992
part 4/5
Forum: Just when you though it was safe to go back to school, here we go again with the satanic crap. This issue was never such a hassle for the magazine in the 80's. Just get on with playing and making cool books, instead of worrying abut what other people think of you. Life seems so much simpler if you don't care.
Ralph deGennaro talks about his life, and the benefits he's got from roleplaying. It's expanded his vocabulary, increased his math skills, and brought him closer to his family. TV is a far worse influence on people than D&D in terms of encouraging violence, apathy and social isolation, yet near everyone has one in their house. And that in turn had people trying to ban it a generation ago. Just another manifestation of the cycle of history.
Shane F. Cameron reveals the roleplaying backlash has spread to australia too. It does make playing a slightly nerve-wracking experience. Stupid media people and stupid parents who listen to it.
John McCord is another person who lost a friend because of the influence of their family saying D&D is satanic. It's a shame, and he wishes he'd had a good rebuttal to them at the time. Can the magazine help with that?
Brian Philips wishes people would focus on the real causes of mental health problems and suicide, like abusive families and bullying, instead of trying to attack irrelevant things in search of a quick fix. Love and understanding is the real solution, as the bible keeps telling us, and it's preachers keep forgetting.
William Michael Kelly also points out the many inconsistencies in the attempts to root out and ban "satanic" stuff. Football has it's origin as a pagan ritual, and kills far more people than roleplaying. Should we ban that? Good luck with that one. Basketball is similarly derived from a mayan game. And of course trying to completely ignore drugs and contraception causes more problems than properly educating your kids about them. Course, they won't find it funny when you point all this out to them.
Casy Leah Williams is also annoyed by the refusal of people to listen to rational debate. We have facts here, and you just plug your ears and keep shouting BAD STUFF IS BAD! How are we supposed to solve this without stooping to the level of our opponents.
Walter Roberts is another bit of anecdotal evidence that roleplaying does not hurt your grades or your social life. Not only does it have educational benefits, it teaches you confidence and the value of teamwork. Some people'll go wrong regardless of how well they're treated.
ILT Bob MacKey talks about his experiences gaming in the army. (currently stationed in saudi arabia) He's another one who learned about teamwork from gaming. In fact, that's the big positive thing about RPG's as compared to ordinary games. If done right, everybody wins. That shouldn't be such a hard concept to understand.
Tammy Coppa talks about the same issue from the perspective of a soldier's wife. The army is a decidedly stressful career to be in, and it's no surprise that soldiers need to blow off a little steam. Roleplaying is much better recourse for that than drinking and whoring. It's also something the whole family can do together as well.
Curry A. Mosher ( no thanks, they're generally a bit sweaty and greasy) gives us a numbered list of the things to do if you want your complaining letter to be published by newspapers. They have a definite format, plus fairly tightly defined word count parameters, and you need to fit into them. Plus typing is increasingly a very good idea, for fewer and fewer people are putting in the practice to have needed to have elegant yet readable flowing handwriting.
The role of books: Born to run by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon gets one of those reviews where the reviewer wants to like it, but can't quite and doesn't know why, as all the right ingredients seem to be there. Isn't it a pain when that happens. Where has the magic gone?
Escape from loki by Philip Jose Farmer is a Doc Savage pastiche prequel. It does not impress our reviewer, being very matter-of-fact and not pulpy at all in it's delivery. Must try harder.
Python isle by Kenneth Robeson is another Doc Savage pastiche. it also gets a negative result for it's clumsy, overblown prose, more like fanfic than professional writing. It seems that this property isn't in very good hands. Was it open domain at that point?
Horse fantastic, edited by Martin & Rosalind Greenberg is a story compilation about, you've guessed it, humanities favourite riding animal. With a mixture of fantasy and contemporary stories by a range of authors, it shows once again the strengths of the anthology format and the variety of stories you can tell within a seemingly limited topic. It's not all my little pony and black beauty.
Tom Swift 6 Aquatech warriors & 7 Moonstalker by Victor Appleton are two rather more successful modern day continuations of a classic pulp series. With surprisingly restrained technology and good packaging, it seems this franchise is in safe hands.
Dragon season by Micael Cassutt seems to have a lot in common with our own Twilight Empire. A guy has a girlfriend from another universe, who disappears back there and leaves him holding the baby. Course, there are also some substantial differences. The parallel world is more technologically focussed, and there's more emphasis on the philosophical ramifications of alternate choices. It more than manages to put it's own spin on these themes.
A matter of taste by Fred Saherhagen is a vampire story starring Dracula, alternating between modern day intrigue and flashbacks of his life. It has some interesting examination of how vampire's powers and weaknesses intersect with modern technology, and the historical stuff is well researched too. But the powers never overshadow the human drama, which is as it should be.
A world of darkness expands the WoD beyond just vampires. There is also poetry. What a surprise. Just the thing to draw in those Dragonlance lovers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992
part 5/5
The game wizards: Zeb Cook surfaces again to remind us that in 2nd edition, the rules are not the final answer. Unlike in Gary's day, you are not expected to constantly keep up with the latest rules updates and incorporate all the supplements into your game. In fact, since some are contradictory (although not explicitly yet, genre emulation still isn't a mature science. ) this is actually impossible. Similarly, while modules may in theory have a canon date when they take place, adhering to this in your game is a bad idea, and you should change details, make up new rules, etc etc to benefit you. Basically, this is a big plea to all the people out there in reader land to get off his back. He may have been the lead architect of 2nd edition, but he's nowhere near the ultimate authority in the company. He cannot tell you how to play, nor does he want to. 2nd edition is going to continue to expand in multiple different directions, and no one person can keep track of it all. One of those articles that rubs in just how different the company is these days. Superficially it seems a good deal more pleasant, with no-one chewing out the customers, and a real attempt at running professional PR. Course, the behind the scenes atmosphere might not be so good, but they're not letting on. And of course, their overall editorial control is a bit lacking, which will definitely lead to problems along the line. What are we to do with them? :shakes head:
A very special agent: A bit more crunch for Top Secret. It certainly gets a lot more player-useful material than Marvel Superheroes, despite not getting articles as frequently. Probably something to do with the approvals process needed for the licence. So here's 5 new advantages and 6 new disadvantages to customise your character with. Well, I say new, but every single one of them I remember also seeing in GURPS, with the prices scaled almost precisely. So like the Runequest articles that convert D&D spells, this is helpful, but not very creative. Even the system for buying new advantages and paying off disadvantages is straight rip. It all rubs in that GURPS is just a better designed system in general. I find this very difficult to like as an article indeed.
Vampire release a limited edition dragonskin version of the corebook, and a rubber stamp courtesy of Chessex. Huh. Neither particularly obvious choices given the game's themes.
The marvel-phile: Oh, Canada, and other mutant teams. Let's see how they've changed, in these recent years. Yes folks, it's update time. Alpha Flight have a most amusing standardised costume. The Avengers have once again tried to rehabilitate villains and failed. There's been another brotherhood of evil mutants formed. The UK team have had their big plot arc build to a climax years in the making. And the Guardians of the galaxy have split into two groups to deal with several pressing threats. There's been the usual round of deaths and resurrections, Some characters have overcome old problems, while others have new ones to deal with, and yet others have had the resent button pushed on them, bringing back annoyances they thought they'd solved. Busy busy busy. The days of largely self-contained stories are long past. And of course, though they don't mention it here, they're haemorrhaging readers as a result of this. Could TSR have stopped it's own decline if they'd learned from the lessons of the comic crash? I think that's one of those alternate universe questions we'll never truly know. But it's certainly not impossible. As usual, no sense in crying about it now. On we go.
Sage advice: A mere 4 questions this issue, as skip takes the time to give some fairly pontificatory answers. I may not be so merciful, of course.
Art is in the eye of the beholder! One person's junk is another ones masterpiece! How do you define a failed roll in making a work of art? (Art, like morals, and gems and jewelery is objectively definable in quality and value in D&D. Get stuffed. )
Good sux. I want more support for playing the bad guy. (Go play white wolf games then. We like our PC's to be goody two shoes. Editorial policy, donchaknow. We're not allowed to hint that being bad could be a viable option capable of prospering long term, and corruption dogs the vast majority of reality. Lorraine (Rumble of thunder, stab of organ music) won't let us, under pain of, well, pain. )
Is EVERYTHING we know about space wrong in spelljammer (no)
Did your official hotline really say to ignore the rules and kick out the rules lawyers if they get in the way of the game?! (Yarly. We know our game doesn't hold up under detailed scrutiny, but instead of trying to fix it, we'll turn the blame back on the people doing the scrutinizing, and say they're the ones in the wrong for doing so. A classic tactic used by corrupt and perverted politicians, preachers and teachers to great success. )
Dragonmirth shows us how annoying living with wizards can be. It's no wonder they don't normally have relationships. Yamara winds up being the chosen one again, much to her displeasure. The twilight crew get hot and sweaty with the tentacle monster.
Through the looking glass: The iraq stuff is over, and so it's straight to the reviews with minimal preamble this month. Thunderbolt mountain minis show us a mummy red dragon brooding on her nest, protecting her babies. Ral partha take us to Battletech's orient and give us a samurai inspired mech. Grenadier have both necromancers and liches. (it's like playing both country and western music in a bar) That one of them could become the other over the course of a campaign does not seem at all improbable. Viking Forge release a set of 4 orcs. If you added up all the goblinoids ever released, you could have a decent army where every figure is unique. Stone mountain minis introduce their own creepy hive-based alien race, the Kryomek. Alternative Armies go back to oirland to get some formorians out. Unfortunately, they're made of primitive lead that breaks easily. And Black Dragon Pewter finish us off with a wizard in the middle of a little research. As is far too often the case these days, nothing here leaps out at me as being of any note.
Some cool stuff in the themed section, but the rest of this issue has been rather a slog to get through. This is another one that shows how diverse and spread out they are at the moment. Yet curiously, at the same time, they're still stuck inside their own paradigm when the wider industry is changing rapidly. The wild experimentations of a few years later still seem quite a way off. Guess the long slow progress with plenty of good individual articles, but little overall influence will continue for a while yet.
Dragon Magazine Issue 182: June 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Year 16 has arrived. If the magazine was a person, it'd get a whole bunch of new legal rights. But instead, it's another round of Dragon related articles. It's as reliable as getting chocolates, and probably as welcome too. Will this selection be delicious truffles, or those horrible nutty ones that always get left until last? I shall consume the entirety of this pick-and-mix one by one, as usual.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who prefers 1st edition. It's getting increasingly hard to find the old stuff to replace his worn out copies. Don't worry, there's plenty of old copies floating around in bargain bins and convention sales. Those old hardbacks were built to last.
A letter asking about the various old issues of the magazine that were concerned with the people denouncing roleplaying. Roger gives quite a lengthy reply to this, and it is made very clear how the frequency with which this topic comes up has increased in the last few years. He used to think it was a joke, but the joke has worn increasingly thin as time goes on. They really do need to be stopped, albeit in a civilised manner that makes it clear we're the good guys. More on this over the page.
Editorial: Jack Chick. It's not an inherently scary name. Quite the opposite, if anything. But then, it's those with something to prove that often work the hardest. And Jack has certainly put his heart into the conversions business. Roger may have laughed him off back in issue 125, but he's not laughing any more. It really is rather worrying, the depth and breadth of topics he's attacked. Tracts tailored against every religion, including all the other christian denominations (it's WASP or damnation in chick's world) Music, Evolution, Roleplaying of course, even Masonry get their satanic underpinnings exposed. And most worryingly of all, a guide on how to most effectively distribute chick tracts. He's thought about this waaaay too much. Roger is evidently finding this increasingly irritating and worrying. Our enemies are bigger and better organised than we thought. We really ought to take this seriously. Yes, I know we've said that before, but I mean it this time. And then it's back to the day job :p It's hard to get too worked up about these things until they're actually on our doorsteps. And if these people were to get into power, they might well follow in hitler's footsteps of systematic reeducation and extermination. Man, believing in free speech, even for those who want to deny that privilege to others is a real bitch sometimes. Just when I though this topic was getting boring, they step it up a gear. It's evident that it's going to run and run, and possibly become even more hyperbolic. We have to make sure we don't lose interest first.
Not cheaper by the dozen: As they've complained several times, Dragonlance doesn't get many articles in here. Looks like it's up to their regular contributors to try and stimulate us. Spike Y. Jones once again comes up with a whole bunch of semi-connected ideas and integrates them into the setting smoothly. The kind of thing you usually see with the Realms, this is well up to Ed's usual standard. in fact, with specific dates and previously established events given, it's even easier to tie them in and check things for inconsistencies.
The Incubalum is an artifact egg that gives birth to random creatures, sometimes exceedingly powerful and strange. It's not really that useful, more a plot device. But it should be fun from a GM point of view.
Eggs of dragon breath are another way to abuse dragon eggs. Throw them and they release the effect of that dragon types breath weapon. They can be exceedingly expensive though no the point of diminishing returns, and they are rather fragile. Like any grenade, pack them with caution.
Shells of protection create a forcefield as long as you can keep them spinning like a top. This will obviously not keep out determined enemies forever, but in a nicely dramatic fashion.
Command Dragons breaks the pattern by being a spell instead. It bypasses he usual saves, but you need all the pieces of their eggshell to work, making this a rather tricky one you'll need a lengthy quest (probably involving said dragon's mother) to be able to use it, with no guarantee. And of course, once it wears off, you can expect trouble. Probably not worth it, on reflection.
Dreamhold is a magic egg that shows images of draconic history. Since TV hasn't been invented on Krynn, this can go for amazing amounts to the right buyer.
Mishakal's token lets you get pregnant easily, even if you don't have a partner. This is very valuable indeed just after a nasty great war, as long as people don't get selfish and pass it on once they've used it. We'll be seeing you again.
Apprentice's eggs are a really basic enchanted item that hold cantrips. Just the thing to ease people into building these things.
Eggs of Distraction are another one you activate by spinning. Unfortunately, they can hypnotise you as well, which will kinda ruin the effect.
Eggs of fascination are the refined version of the same item. They're harder to keep spinning, but don't backfire on you, and work even better in the dark. A good example of actual advancement, which can only really be shown with an actual timeline.
Eggs of imprisonment trap people in them temporarily. Course, in the meantime, you can set up more solid accommodation for the victim.
Ridiculators are the token Gnomish joke entry. They're basically automated egg-throwing catapults and mobile chicken coops. They aren't really any danger, but can be incredibly irritating. Another reason why krynn is avoided by many in the know.
Remove disease is a variant on the old illusionist cheat dispel exhaustion. It makes you look and feel better, but doesn't remove the underlying problem. This may actually make things worse in the long run. It saw plenty of use by charlatans when the gods were absent. I can see this one exported to other settings with great relish.
Dragon Magazine Issue 182: June 1992
part 2/5
The vikings' dragons: Last month, they reviewed a bunch of viking themed supplements. One of the curious absences from the AD&D viking supplement was new dragons, given the number of them that appear in legends. Guess the magazine has an easy opening to fill again. Say hello to the Linnorms. Don't expect them to say hello back. They're not a very nice lot. While intelligent, they really are very antisocial, even more so than the chromatics. They kick their kids out almost as soon as they're hatched, and it only goes downhill from there. They take longer to grow up as well, which means they're rarer than regular dragons, thankfully. Still, that's cold comfort when one's in your woods, eating people and fouling the place up. These are ones that would later get put into an official MC appendix, showing they proved more popular than last year's ferrous dragons. Welcome to the joys of mythic resonance.
Forest linorms remain sleek and snaky no matter how long they get, allowing them to worm their way through thick undergrowth. With invisibility to animals at will, they have no trouble hunting, but still prefer human flesh when they can get it.
Land linorms are lanky looking, cautious things. They get viking runes instead of spells. With invisibility and shapeshifting, they could deal with humanity peacefully, but no. Dragons gotta scourge.
Sea linorms are cranky herbivores who hate anyone sculling through the water above their lair. They actually live in relative harmony with their environment, but that's small comfort for you when you lose your ship and life.
Frost linorms are the only sociable linnorms, forming into small cabals. Instead of the usual spells, they also get a small selection of runes from the viking sourcebook. They don't hesitate to use these tricks for long-range strategy, and combined with their illusionary powers, they're the most able and likely to toy with you instead of just killing you. Time to get your Xanatos gambits out fellahs.
Dread linorms are by far the strongest, with 2 heads, and tons more HD than normal dragons. Their physical and magical abilities are similarly impressive, even a gold dragon will be dwarfed by a full grown one. And if you do beat one, that 500 foot corpse is going to be a pretty hassle to clean up. This lot do manage to one-up the existing dragon species in interestingly unpleasant fashion. Just the thing to reveal when they get to really high levels.
The Dragon's bestiary: No surprise that we get a few more almost dragons in this department as well. Let's see if these ones are good or bad.
Swamp wyrms are enormous snakey things with breath weapons. Not as badass as proper dragons, they nonetheless have a quite substantial effect on the environment around them. If it wasn't a stagnant bog with temperatures mirroring it's occupant before, it soon will be. Now that's nicely atmospheric, and gives you a very good reason to hunt them down and kill them. I quite approve.
Lindworms are dragons born with the draconic equivalent of Down's syndrome or something. Course, what is a runty little mentally handicapped thing by draconic standards is still a large, cunning and vicious predatory monster for humans. Another dull one for DM's who want to skip the magic and charm and let a low level party have their dragon to slay.
Sage advice returns to previous topics like a dog to it's vomit.
You've missed out a load of multiclassed combinations (Look again. Also, remember that you can't have more than one class from the same group, due to power redundancy. I know you think you're being clever, but really, this is stupid. )
Can athasian clerics get quest spells (If they can convince their bosses they need them. Good luck on that one, especially if you're a templar. )
Can athasian spellcasters be wild mages (Yes. God help us all. )
What are athasian cleric's holy symbols (Templars use whatever their boss says. Others use a bit of the appropriate element. )
Can psionicists have wild talents. (no. They have full control anyway. That's what being a psionicist means, y'know. )
Why can't thri-kreen wear magical stuff (you try wearing clothes designed for a preying mantis, and see how well they fit you. Turnabout is fair play, and without any wizards, who's making the items for them? )
How do racial adjustments interact with the initial dice rolls on athas. (one step at a time. Don't try and do everything at once. )
What are athasian movement rates. (check their monster writeups. )
Whoa. Does being able to do 20 hour marches let mul & thri-kreen travel twice as fast. (Yup. This is the advantage of a single race party. Everyone else'll just slow you up. )
Do athasian elves automatically get the Running proficiency. No. If they buy that, it'll stack with their racial benefits. )
Do athasian dwarves have infravision. (probably. They haven't had time to un-evolve it.)
How do you manage your character trees (carefully, so a single death isn't crippling )
What can you do with alchemy on athas. (rather less than you could with proper magic. It'd be an inefficient avenue of study if cosmic power is your goal. )
Does the amount of water found with water finding scale with species requirements. (stop trying to pick the rules apart and cheat. )
Do merchants transact at their headquarters (No. That'd be like doing espionage deals at the home office. Too risky, normally)
You messed up the weapon chart on page 53 (yeah, keeping formatting straight's a bitch. )
How far can you throw a chatkcha (all the way to kamchatka)
How many PSP's do you get if you have more than one wild talent ( determine separately, and add them all up. You are at the mercy of randomness. Stuff like this is why psionics unbalances characters)
What happens if wild talents roll a power with prerequisites (they get them as well. And the scope for unfairness gets even bigger.)
What happens when you have power scores over 20 (natural 20 still fails. We don't like you taking anything for granted)
Animal affinity throws up irrelevant results ( yup. Replace them with athasian animals.)
How do thri-kreen regain PSP's/spells without sleeping (sitting around doing nothing for 8 hours. This is why they don't become spellcasters very often. When you've got a short life, you don't want to waste a third of it.)
Can preservers use defiler magic without becoming a defiler, so they can fake it socially. (No. Oh, it's a hard life.)
What's the spell progression for athasian wizards (same as it ever was. Fightin fire with fire. )
If you lose a spellbook, can you replace it (with even greater difficulty and cost than a normal game. Athas sucks for spellcasters. We want to encourage you to become psionicists)
When do half-giants change alignment ( Early in the morning, making mah breakfast. Daylight come and me wanna go home )
How long does a place stay barren after being defiled (many a year mon, busy wizard gotta keep movin on)
How much extra xp do fighters get for killing things ( Really not enough. )
How much do roads cost ( Less than walls, thankfully. )
How muck honey does a kank make (A glob a day. Not a very scientific measurement, is it. Glob. Glob Globglobglobglob. )
How do athasians react to spelljamers (like Skip said before, it aint gonna happen. If you try it, Skip will send the canon police to break down your door and beat your head in with the rulebooks. They just beat skip around the head about the lesser divination school and spending bonus slots from intelligence on weapons, so skip knows what skip is talking about. Don't mess with the canon police. They're well funded, and they're growing. They will fight against noncanonical games internationally, and cross system. And they have a bitchin theme tune. Canon police, do do de do do. Canon police, they're watchin you. With their psychic NDA hamsters, they follow the wishes of their masters. Canon police, fuck yeah. :guitar solo: Canon police. They're everywhere. Canon police! They're here, Beware! )
Dragon Magazine Issue 182: June 1992
part 3/5
Novel ideas: Ravenloft's first novel has done rather well, and here come the follow-ups. Dance of the Dead taking us to Souragne, and Heart of Midnight to Kartakass. Looks like they're not going for trilogies and recurring characters in this world, in contrast to Toril and Krynn. Well, horror does become increasingly difficult when you have recurring heroes who you know are going to survive. Still, it does mean they never got a breakout hit character like Drizzt or Raistlin. Except possibly the Darklords themselves. We remember Freddy, Jason, Mike Myers. Do you remember what the heroes who faced them were called? So it's proving here, although it's still going to be a while before they realise that and start shifting the focus of their novels accordingly. Once again, we get little looks into the minds of the writers, and see that the sources they drew on when writing are pretty prosaic actually. And we also see that creating grim work when you don't feel that way naturally leaves you just itching to put immature jokes in and break the tension somehow. Who'd be a writer for hire, eh?
The voyage of the princess ark: Looks like Bruce is indeed suffering burnout or other things occupying too much of his time, for the Ark is on vacation this month. Only the letters pages remain. Lets see what people want.
Someone wants a creature crucible on the creatures of the savage coast. Bruce is not at all against the idea. Send in letters demanding it. It increases the odds it'll get made.
A question: Why isn't alphatia the most powerful nation in the world if it's the only one with airships.( I. Wizard kings are fractious bastards who are more concerned with their rival wizards than anyone else. The are not inclined to share for the good of the country II. Other nations have their own special tricks. )
A question: Is the princess ark based on Star Trek? (It wasn't intentional. It just kinda turned out that way. )
What AC does ironwood armor have (same as the type of armor it's imitating)
Will we ever see a gazetteer on Norwald (Good question. (the answer is no, but probably not intentionally.))
Are there rules for hull points (no. You've just gotta fudge.)
Are you gonna put firearms in D&D (no. We sorta just did. That's as close as I want to come to doing so.)
What is haldemar prince of (Haaken, like it says. A floating rock and a few miles of farmland below it. Nothing spectacular. )
Is the D&D planetary map based on earth in the past (Well spotted.)
What's with the missing stats in Kingdoms of Nithia (Oops. Our bad. )
Is there going to be a monstrous compendium for D&D. (Probably. We have so many things we want to do.)
The wild wild world of dice: A short but funny article here about the various quirks that people have about their dice. Silly superstitions, amusing habits, irritating tricks for cheating and methods of preventing this, and the endless cosmic battle of crystal vs opaque. One of those amusing little diversions that breaks up the flow of the magazine nicely, and has a few helpful bits of advice, (use different coloured dice for D% and define which is which beforehand) but isn't going to change the world. The equivalent of stopping for a drink at a small roadside bar on an endless freeway journey, just seeing the sights for a bit.
Palladium gets evul with villains unlimited.
Kings of the caravans: More Realms NPC's from Ed. Seems that's a real growth industry for him at the moment. Endless supplies of spells, monsters and magic items alone do not a complete world make. This time, the theme is merchants. Attach an identity to those you're shopping from to make the setting a little more filled in.
Llachior Blackthorn is from Tethyr. He's not only useful from a trading PoV, but because he hires adventurers to deal with pirates, giving us an easy way into adventure that doesn't involve taverns again. He's also looking for a wife, and his list of desired traits make it quite likely that a female adventurer would fit them. So that's two very good reasons he could find himself a recurring NPC in your game.
Ondul Jarduth is Llachior's cleric sidekick. He has some trepidation about him getting married, which could be spun in a very slashy way if you ask me. A fairly quiet one, he seems like a character you'd benefit from staying on the good side of.
Sharest Tanthalar is an insanely twinked character who's good at everything, has psionics, and is probably a Harper. She's singlehandedly killed mind flayers, Drow, and lots of zhentarim, and is personal friends with some of the most important people in the realms. Just another canon-sue to steal your glory if you get in trouble.
Emrock Uerngul is a thief who's managed to earn enough to go straight. He's still got a strong sense of mischief, and an unorthodox friendship with a sentient manta ray that profits them both. Thanks to that, he can get goods delivered when no-one else can. Sounds very much like a PC to me.
The role of computers: Buck Rogers matrix cubed is another of our official tie-ins from SSI, using much the same system as their Forgotten Realms games. It doesn't get 5 stars, because it doesn't really advance the interface and graphics, but they still give it a positive result, with plenty of advice on getting through the early parts of the game. Now if they'd only implement automapping, the reviewers would be a lot happier.
Planet's death is a second sci-fi adventure rpg, albeit one that takes you rather further afield than buck did. As is often the case, they encourage careful resource management and frequent saving. Rushing through the story is not the way to win. Again, there are a few system bugs that keep it from being 5 star material, but it seems there's no shortage of decent sci-fi rpgs out there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 182: June 1992
part 4/5
Dragonslayers on the screen: Another curious peripherally connected article this month. I must say, the idea of getting a bunch of friends together and having each one take the role of a character in a computer RPG isn't one that occurred to me. It seems rather like it would combine the worst aspects of the two media. The inflexibility of playing a computer game, and the bickering and internal sabotage a tabletop RPG group can suffer from. Having one person on the keyboard while the others are just backseat drivers does not seem like a recipe for fun to me. And indeed, this does point out the problems that are likely to occur. You need to make sure everyone is useful somehow, such as by mapping or doing the number crunching. Even then, I'm not absolutely certain about this. The days when easy internet multiplayer and games designed to take advantage of this will make it a moot issue are still a good few years away, and I think this kind of thing would definitely be less fun than just playing the game myself. Still, nice to see them trying out new ideas, even if they don't work that well. As with the dice one, this is more interesting than another bunch of formulaic monsters.
Pen power II: More survey questions? They obviously have a lot of things they want to think about. This one is mainly collecting demographic data. A decade ago, their fanbase was largely teenage and nearly all male. Just how much will that have changed in the meantime? See you in a few months time.
Ready! Aim! Fire!: Crossbows get a short shrift in AD&D? Oh noes!1 You know, we've actually known that for ages, and we've got a good idea who to blame too. (Len Lakofka, as he admitted in issue 51) So here we have one of those articles that points out the Proud Historical Antecedents of the crossbow, and adds a load of variant crunch that slightly powers up the weapon by adding extra detail. It still doesn't bring them remotely close two swords or polearms, so I don't have any real problem with this, but it is still more than a little dull. Still, we have to have our dose of reality to balance the fantasy, don't we. Let's not dwell on this too much, otherwise before you know it we'll be reading a thousand page illustrated dissertation on weapons through the ages.
Psionics in living color: And here we have another instance of attempting to spice up an old topic by applying it to a new avenue. Saying that you need to go for more vivid and detailed descriptions in your handling of psionic powers? I can see the formula from here. Classic pro roleplaying principle + obscure and little used subsystem = another way of hammering in the same lesson. It does have some amusingly experimental art design that I like, but the text itself is too obvious for words. So the formatting is still improving, but the content is much the same as a decade ago. One for the new readers.
TSR Previews: Lots of stuff this month, spilling out to an extra half a page.
Dragonlance finally gets a proper core boxed set. Strange to think it's never had one before, and everyone's just been picking up bits and pieces as they go along. We also see another bit of history we've known about for ages examined in detail in the novels, with The Cataclysm. More short stories showing snippets of lives affected by the big smash.
The Forgotten Realms gets Aurora's whole realms catalogue. Another of their really cool half IC bits of setting building. Dead useful for if you have players who like to spend whole sessions just shopping and roleplaying, and pretty handy if you have hardcore dungeoncrawlers who like to pack all sorts of weird bits and pieces that might come in handy. Just don't forget your encumbrance, or you'll make it too easy for them.
Greyhawk gets WGR2: Treasures of greyhawk. More mini adventures for when the DM runs out of ideas mid session and needs some filler to plonk nearby, keep the players interested.
Ravenloft is up to it's third novel, Dance of the dead. We've already had the low level adventure set there, now you get to learn some more about the Aaaaangst of it's darklord. Don't give in to brooding, for that path leads to becoming one of them.
On the generic side, we have HHQ2: Wizard's challenge. Soon there will be solo adventures designed for all the classes. Be ready to be bloody cautious, and hope you win initiative, for getting that spell off really does mean the difference between victory and death. We also have HR2: Charlemagne's paladins. Another historical era gets adapted as best the ruleset can manage. Just how good that was, I'm not sure. Any takers?
D&D has yet another quirky low level set of adventures, this time with a boxed set full of props and crap. Goblin's lair seems designed to introduce new players to the idea of mass combat, which I suppose is something. Still feels like they're seriously dumbing things down in this department.
Marvel Superheroes gets another spiffy boxed set. Lands of Dr Doom lets you into Latveria, to fight him, or at least one of his many doombots, in his secret lairs. Very definitely Muahahahahahahaha!!!!! time here.
And finally, weirdly, we have another XXVC product, a good 9 months after the last one. Are they trying to reboot it, or this one last book that was written and ready to go before the cancellation, and is just getting put out with a tiny run for contractural reasons. Hardware by slade gives you a load more gadgets to fill your game with. Assuming anyone is still playing, anyway. :p
The marvel-phile: Leftovers here again. Like cold meat on boxing day, it seems to be almost standard in this department these days. It really isn't as fun as it used to be. Still, this is one that's more player useful than most. Dr Doom's hyperscience gadgets. He's certainly come up with a lot over the years, and it wouldn't be surprising at all if some of them got lost, stolen, or recreated by someone else. Anasthetic nose plugs to keep people comfortably unconscious for whatever length of time. A staff designed to absorb nearly any force harmlessly. The nervous system scrambling Entropic Inducer. The Null time sequencer, which lets him freeze time to his advantage. And the Quark instability condenser, which is a pretentious name for a half-assed disintegration ray. All appeared in Fantastic Four issue 352, showing that he's got a pretty impressive toy collection. This is different from most of their articles, but still feels like they're more creatively hemmed in than they used to be, with the focus entirely on existing characters and things. They've also got less of a sense of humour about this, as reflects the general tone in comics these days. Can't say I'm happy about the way this column is going.
Dragon Magazine Issue 182: June 1992
part 5/5
Fiction: The dragonbone flute by Lois Tilton. Far too often in these stories, Dragons are a dying race, and we only get to see ancient powerful ones. Where's the next generation? Is anyone going to help keep them alive? And who will mourn them when they're gone? It's another melancholy story this month, with just a small glimmer of hope mixed in. Both the main human and dragon have lost the ones they love, and find a bit of comfort in a world which seems determined to screw them over. Quite an affecting story, this once again manages to shake off the boredom and engage me emotionally after a whole wodge of filler articles. If only the rest of the magazine has as much stuff to choose from when trying for the best.
Forum: Tim Harford is one of those people who actually managed to allay teacher fears by simply talking to them. It was actually surprisingly easy. Course, that's likely because they hadn't made up their mind yet. Rational minds which suspend judgement until they have sufficient information aren't usually the problem anyway.
Geoff Pass has a friend who became a born again christian, but kept relapsing into gaming, and then loathing himself afterwards. It'd be funny if it weren't for the valuable stuff he just threw away, some of it loaned by the writer.
Aaron Goldblatt points out that the RPGA is already supposed to be an organisation that represents gamers as a whole. Yes, but you don't see them doing much anti-oppression campaigning. Anyway, remember that the other side thinks of themselves as the good guys too. Without empathy, you'll only make the problem worse.
Dale Critchley is a christian and a gamer, and points out that evil characters tend to be a self-correcting problem. As we've found before, through gaming we can learn to work together better with other people. If you just flat-out forbid evil, they'll never learn the problems it causes except by harsh reality.
Michael Niveu has written a paper on the effects of RPG's as part of his university work. In assembling material, he found that there was plenty of rigorously tested positive material, while the negative stuff was merely unsubstantiated hyperbole. Another strike for the scientific method.
Richard Doyle is going to aggressively seek out and engage in diplomatic relations with church people in his area, and encourages you to do the same. If you do it right, it should get rid of a lot of their fears.
Jeffrey S. Kennedy is another christian who thinks the whole thing is stupid. No-one's saying monopoly turns you into a greedy social climber who backstabs their friends, or hungry hungry hippos promotes obesity. You are not your character.
Craig H. Barrett also goes on with great passion about the social benefits roleplaying has. Co-operation, self-control, reading, math, leadership skills, imagination, all in one neat package. And it's fun too. How can teachers object to that?!
Nathan Nieman suggests taking the matter all the way up to congress! Don't let the other side win just because they shouted louder! Send me letters personally! Ahh, the enthusiasm of youth.
Don Jamieson gives another anecdote of how his group have been playing for the past decade and grown up into productive, well-adjusted adults. Course, no-one notices those. When failure gets you more attention than success, failure can become a perversely attractive option. Such is the paradox of media reporting.
S. Lynne Mann also points out the educational benefits of rpgs. We are definitely getting into repeating points territory here. How much more of this can people take?
Role-playing reviews: Pixie is a 20 page indie RPG where you play the mischevious little home invaders trying to make lives for themselves. A great example of early highly focussed indie game design, it's simple and fun, if rather challenging and not suited to lengthy campaigns. Like Bunnies and Burrows, the mouse eye view of the human world can be both scary and funny if done right.
Amber diceless RPG gets not just one review, but two, with Lester and Allen contributing their thoughts. Seems like it's made quite an impact upon the game designers with it's paradigm shaking ideas. The game is uniquely suited for PvP games, and the system naturally pushes you in that direction, reflecting the source material and it's internecine familial conflicts. With no dice, you really have to think to win a battle, and with your own character stats and advancement uncertain to players, gaming the system is always uncertain. It really is both different and challenging. Just watch out the PvP doesn't spill over into reality, and be careful with making the power levels of the previous generations too high, resulting in the worst kind of GM fiat crap. Still, once again, TSR has had the gauntlet thrown down. Adapt or become moribund. There's so much more out there than dungeons.
Dragonmirth has yet more adventurer eating jokes. Yamara is live on crystal ball. How are you supposed to surprise the enemy when they're watching your every move? The twilight team get the macguffin, then get another sideplot to deal with.
Through the looking glass: As with last year, here we get lots of draconic minis. Both cold and ice dragons. (once again, the country and western joke seems very appropriate. ) A fire dragon, of course. Black, gold and blue dragons from Grenadier and Thunderbolt mountain. A Wyvern from Ral Partha and another heat and cold themed pair as well. Most notable in this column is the above average amount of complaining about assembling these things, and the various flaws in their construction. When they're made out of lots of parts you have to put together yourself, they're only as good as their weakest link. You can't just source parts out and hope they'll all fit together in the end. No escaping the need to communicate, no matter how tedious it may be.
Clerics get a deck of spells too. Don't get them mixed up.
For the second time in a row, this issue both highlights how TSR are starting to go round the same old issues one too many times, and how the world is changing around them. And they're certainly not ignoring these developments, but there's a world of difference between some of the writers being excited individually and the company as a whole adapting. This does feel like another turning point in gaming's history is upon us. The passage of events is going to continue to be interesting, even if individual articles may struggle to hold my interest. There will be no surrender.
Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Up to space again, in an issue that looks like it mixes fantastical and sci-fi approaches to going up up and away. I don't believe we've had a combo like that before, and it allows them to cover other systems more than usual, so this is a very positive choice. UFOs have plenty of books and movies dedicated to them, but not an RPG, yet. Come on, keep trying to expand the market.
In this issue:
Letters: Lots of stuff from Roger here as he plays with the usual formula again. Instead of actually publishing the letters, he just gives the answers to them, so he can get more done in the space allocated. Very cheeky. Course, what the questions were is usually pretty obvious. Chalk it up to multiple people sending the same questions in.
We also get one token letter, in which they point out the existence of Creeks and Crawdads, the roleplaying game of semi-intelligent postapocalyptic crustaceans. If your kinks involve something like that, I really don't want to know.
Editorial: The old married couple theme returns with Roger again trying to spice up his and our gaming life. The fiction department in the magazine is consistently proving to be one of the least repetitive and most emotionally engaging parts of the magazine. It'd be a rather good idea to imitate that, and pick up some books that don't fall into the usual tolkien/conan axis of fantasy knockoffs If you want to shake off the boredom. For whatever reason, he picks The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, and The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. He points out what makes then unusual from a gaming point of view, and makes translating that into AD&D rules seem pretty simple and easy. It's not hard, introducing new tricks. It's just that they'll soon grow routine as well, and then the next variant, and the one after that, and so so, and so on. Let's just hope that by the time we run out of ideas again your players'll be keen to go back to basics.
Magic and technology meet at last: Gamma World is back. And no surprise that they're trying to get articles for it going again when it's previous editions got so many in the magazine. Kicking off is an obvious topic. Converting between it and AD&D. Since we also had this in the 1st ed DMG, the at last bit of the title isn't really accurate, but meet again doesn't have quite the same ring to it. This is a quite easy business really, as like Buck Rogers, the new system is pretty closely related to AD&D. But what changes there are are very interesting indeed. Armour class is inverted, starting at 10 and going upwards. And there's a perception attribute along with the regular 6. Both changes that are needed back in D&D land, actually, and it's interesting to realise they already know this. But of course the slow edition cycle means one won't be implemented for 8 years yet, and the other'll be awkwardly kludged into a form which is still a pain today. This conversion is set up in such a way that both sides have very little resistance against the other's powers, and stuff happens on the terms of whoever is most proactive, but stuff taken into other worlds tends to lose it's abilities, which prevents inter-universe trade from seriously altering your campaign world. So when going interdimensional raiding, hit fast with blasty powers and keep the enemy off guard. Offence is the best defence. Now let's hope the PCs don't all get disintegrated in the first round of combat by enemy lasers. Very interesting, as it reveals some of the design assumptions that are currently running in the TSR offices, and how certain writers would probably like to revise D&D. That's well worth knowing, whether you're looking to play it like X, or just engage in a little edition warring fun, and want something vaguely resembling facts to throw at the enemy. So this is a nice one both for use and obsessive microexamination. A good way to kick things off.
Advice to a high lord: A second TORG article (see issue 174) Well, it's more than most 3rd party games get these days. And once again they make it seem like a pretty cool game, that I vaguely regret not having got into at the time. It's been out for around 2 years now, and has both supplements and novels. And here's some GM advice on how to make sure it's idiosyncrasies are an advantage to your game rather than a problem. Interestingly, the writer also explains things in a way that makes them pretty clear to people who don't own the rules either. After reading this I have a much better idea of the effects and limitations of the drama deck, for example. It also reads nicely as a throwdown to other games to have dramatic over-the-top plots that give players a greater than normal degree of plot control. So it's useful both for owners of the game, and in selling it to people who may have seen the adverts, and are still on the fence. Another very good result. If only their official themed articles could balance their promotional and add-on aspects that well.
Avast ye swabs and heave to!: How could we have a space issue without a spelljammer article? And how could you have ship-based adventuring without boat-to-boat combat and piracy playing a part? Beats me, but Rich Baker seems to think too many campaigns are leaving them out. In the case of ship-to-ship combat, that's probably because the rules are a pain, so like grappling, people ignore tactics that work well in reality because of the game's poor modelling. But the rest is easy enough to fix. The long months of waiting around for ships to actually pass by can be skipped over. And the joys of never knowing how badass the people you'll meet can be simulated effectively by random table. Really, it's less dangerous than dungeon delving, and if you go privateer, you still get to have a homebase in civilisation as normal. And if it goes wrong, you might even get arrested instead of just killed, which leads to other adventure styles if you know how to run it. This is a bit more pessimistic about the prospects of lawbreaking and the relative morality of who you're killing and taking the stuff of than I'd like, but I suppose they have their family friendly image to consider. So a cool topic, presented in a middling manner.
Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992
part 2/5
Unidentified gaming objects: We finish off the section with a system free look at modern UFO mythology. The usual ideas about them being secret weapons, fae, creatures from the clouds, parallel dimensions, even molemen from the centre of the earth. It's all very amusing. People come up with a ridiculous amount of crap, much of which can't be the truth simply due to mutual exclusivity. As is often the case, the magazine can barely scratch the surface, but it makes up for this by having a good bibliography at the end that'll take quite a while to read. Seems like a decent enough way to turn on people who've previously had no interest in the topic, and indicative of it's growing popularity at the time. Funny to think that this is more than a year before the x-files comes out. Wonder if that'll get any mentions in here.
Shadowrun gets it's second edition. Which is probably a good thing, as I've never heard anyone say 1st edition was better than the following ones, despite how the 2/3/4 edition wars rage.
The voyage of the princess ark: Just west of Bellayne is the mysterious nation of Herath. Seemingly just an ordinary Magocracy, (as far as there is such a thing) it's actually a nation comprised largely of Araneas who have developed the ability to assume a humanoid shape. This is of course a huge secret that no-one in the setting must be allowed to discover, and they will go to any lengths to keep it. And as usual when there's an elephant in the room like this, the protagonists come close to discovering it right away where everyone else who spent years there failed. :rolleyes: Oh, plot, how depressingly predictable you are. We also see the start of the Wrath of the Immortals metaplot event brewing, as the wizard king drops cryptic hints to Haldemar. What does this bode for the Ark and it's crew? Nothing good, I'll wager.
On the OOC side we of course have stats for the advancement of Araneas, which means they can be used as PC's, but this might be tricky, given their hefty XP penalties, and serious social restrictions. After all, keeping a big secret like that from the rest of your party may cause conflict, and if you do let them know IC, that marks the entire crew for some serious trouble from other Aranea. And while it may seem fun at first, once you've dodged the dozenth magical death squad, you may find it a bit tiresome. This does make this one of the more troublesome installments of this series.
Role-playing reviews: We are of course in theme here, with a couple of sci-fi games. And a bit of complaining about the difficulties of selling hard sci-fi in RPGs. When people actually have to pay close attention to what's possible, and carefully justify and examine the ramifications of what isn't, sales are hit. But we keep plugging away, for the speculations in them are useful for reality in a way star wars never can be.
Mechwarrior second edition doesn't do too great. Character generation is a real pain, with tons of number crunching, derived stats, and general sluggishness. Combat is similarly complex, and of course it's incomplete without the mechwarrior game to actually handle the giant robot side. Rick once again demonstrates that he's not patient enough to regularly play games that heavy. Still, he appreciates it for what it is, and the cool setting stuff, even if the system isn't his cup of tea.
Aliens adventure game gets an even worse review. Tons of random dice rolling in chargen, tons of dice rolls for even simple actions in game, brutal and unpleasant combat, it all seems heavily focussed on realism over fun. It also doesn't do horror very well, being far more focussed on the second film's military violence than the first film's atmosphere. Unless you want a very specific flavour of game, leave this out.
Rick also gives us a quick rundown of most of the Buck Rogers RPG supplements. The line may be running down rapidly now, but of course they still have lots of unsold stock to shift, and he gets roped into doing his part. NEO in the 25th century and the Luna sourcebooks come off best in his opinion.
The role of computers: Civilisation is one I've spent many frustrating hours with. Gods, that game can eat up tons of your time. Course, that is because it's fun, and incredibly open-ended. Will you rush to the spacefaring stage, or take advancement slow and concentrate on taking over the world. Read the manual, because it's big, and really will help.
Bard's title Construction Set allows you to build landscapes for your fantasy game. It also includes stuff for noting down your game's idiosyncracies of equipment, spells, monsters, etc. It uses point and click design, which makes it a good deal more user friendly than old programs. And the graphics and memory improvements of recent years allow you to both save a decent amount of stuff and print off images. That means you won't be completely tied to your desktop come game night.
Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992
part 3/5
The viking's dragons: I thought last month's selection of Linorms was missing a few. Multi-part special articles have decreased in frequency over the years, but we have one here. As with last month, here's five more highly malevolent dragon types to terrify your players with. Since we've covered the basics already, let's get straight to the monsters.
Flame linorms make red dragons look decidedly weedy, having substantially greater physical abilities and slightly better magic too. They're definitely another one for the high level adventurer who really needs that extra bit of challenge.
Gray linorms rub in how much bigger linorms grow than normal dragons by being described as relatively small-bodied, when their bodies are still actually bigger than most chromatics and metallics, while their tails are longer than a even a gold dragon's combined total length. One of the less powerful and smart Linnorms, they're still more than powerful and magically versatile enough to be confusing and deadly to fight.
Rain linorms are relatively small and weedy physically and in terms of spells, but get tons of cool innate abilities, including exceedingly good regeneration at their uppermost levels. They manage to be even more egotistical and greedy than normal dragons, which is quite a feat really. A little comeuppance before they get too big for everyone's boots would be a good idea.
The corpse tearer is an absolutely terrifying singular horror with energy draining claws, a breath weapon that may well leave you permanently crippled if you survive, and enough undead slaves to conquer a small country. It's wealth is similarly substantial, and it really does make an epic foe that would be a good climax for an entire campaign.
The Midgard linorm is even bigger and more powerful even than corpse tearer, but seems a good deal less aggressive and proactive in it's seeking of food, wealth and temporal power. Which is a bit of a relief really, as you really don't want the world serpent peering it's enormous eyes into your window as a prelude to eating your house whole. Actually, in some respects it's less powerful than a regular great wyrm, as it has neither discretionary spells or flight, but you'll still need both power and luck to get this monster. And flavour-wise this is a definite success. It's easy to get jaded with dragons, forget just how nasty they actually are. This lot bring that right back.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse, coming in august. They're certainly moving forward and capitalising on their success. Interesting to note that white wolf now occupies higher billing than esdevium.
TSR Previews: Al-Qadim gets it's first boxed set, Land of Fate, which actually gives us the geographical details to back up the rules. Strange that the core would be a single book, but then the line got so many boxed sets after that. Normally it's the other way around. I wonder why.
Spelljammer goes back to touch base in SJR5: Rock of Braal. It certainly never got the same kind of iconic status as sigil, but it's still a trading nexus where you can meet all kinds of weird creatures from across the spheres. Have fun.
Dark Sun continues to put the PC's almost centre stage in the metaplot. DSQ2: Arcane shadows sees the preservers trying to strike while the iron is hot, give the sorcerer kings a few more sharp knocks. Before you know it, half of them'll be dead, and the rest on the defensive. Hey ho.
Greyhawk fills in one of the characters who got mentioned in the old skool stuff, but not in much detail. Rary and Robilar. Traitorous wizard and his fighter sidekick. Man, the circle of 8 hate these guys. Can you solve the problem those great wizards couldn't, and exact a brutal killing and taking of stuff?
Dragonlance gets it's turn to have an introductory module. DLQ1: Knights sword. For a 1st level knight of solamnia and their buds. You know the drill. Proving yourself to the NPC's is likely to be as important as killing things.
The Forgotten Realms continues the cleric quintet, with Night Masks. Cadderly is still having trouble with assassins, despite the class being removed. Suspect everyone!
The generic stuff this time is more rehashed compilations. The magic encyclopedia, vol 1, is the first part of an attempt to compile every magical item published in every D&D product ever. In 64 pages? That's barely enough to index them. Oh, and there's also another bunch of collectors cards to fuel your obsessive trading urges.
D&D gets away from the little novice adventures they've been sticking too recently, and does the exact opposite. The Wrath of the Immortals boxed set revises the rules for playing them, and features a brand new adventure which completely fucks up Mystara. Can you make a difference, and save Alphatia, at least in your game?
Gamma world boots up the supplement mill, hope once again trumping experience. GWQ1: Mutant Master sees you foiling the plans of the mutant supremacist alliance. But what if you want to exterminate those stuck-up pure strains. We never get to have any fun. :pouts:
And finally, our standalone book this month is The nine gates, by Philip Brugalette. More fantasy where the fate of the universe is at stake? Iiiiits psychodrama time.
Fiction: Gryphon's nest by Ardath Mayhar. Hmm. You're back again, are you. Well, well. I suppose it has been quite a while since she got a successive onslaught of slating reviews in the book section. Mixing ecology and comedy of errors isn't a combination I would have come up with. But it seems to work, albeit going by rather too quickly for me to really get attached to the characters. It raises some interesting questions about the youth and raising of weird hybrid creatures, and unlike last time, the comedy is definitely intentional. It also reminds me of cartoons where intelligent talking animals are the stars, and they all seem to be able to communicate with each other and have vaguely human sensibilities. The illustration works well with the story, capturing the intended flavour quite nicely. Interesting.
Ah yes, the linnorms. I loved those articles back in the day. I was always glad to see Dragon present us with monsters portrayed in myth and legend. This is especially true when it's a type of monster that has been so thoroughly absorbed into D&D canon that it no longer resembles what inspired it in myth and legend.
Dragons are the best example; the D&D dragons only passingly resemble dragons from myth. The same is true of plenty of other monsters, though, from trolls to goblins to elves. I would like to have seen more Dragon articles address this type of thing, presenting interpretations of monsters as they appear in the literature of different cultures.
Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992
part 4/5
The marvel-phile: Enough leftovers! Let's cover some characters who are hot off the press. Cerise and Kylun from the Excalibur comic. An extradimensional adventurer, who's still a bit of a mystery. And a mutant who's spent ages in another dimension, and changed quite a lot in the meantime, but still has quite a bit of self-doubt despite his character development. Both get pretty decent history and roleplaying notes, even if their powers are nothing too exceptional. We get to find out a bit more about the Marvel universes many parallel dimensions, and get another good example of how characters can be brought back years after their last appearance. And also how heroic characters can wind up on opposing sides due to misunderstandings. The drama is still going consistently in the UK as well.
Forum takes a break from satanicness and goes back to sexism, with a whole batch of letters from female readers on the issue. Still an ongoing problem then. What are we to do with human nature? Can we get on with the genetic engineering please, because merely educational solutions don't seem to be getting the job done.
Clarissa Fowler is being highly proactive in attempting to make a community for female gamers. She's also pretty aggressive in pointing out the shortcomings of most rpg books in terms of female appearances and roles. The statistics are quite damning. Stand up and be counted! Burn your chainmail bikinis! Equal time for both pronouns! (you'll like Eden Studios then) The agenda Will move forward.
Leslie A. King delivers a Reader, I married him story. Now she's the co-owner of a gaming store. This puts her in a good position to examine the demographics of gaming. It seems that the proportion of girls is increasing at the moment. That may be a case of cause and effect though, as if you're running the shop, it's less likely to be a skuzzpit.
Shirl Phelps has the usual horror stories of guys hitting on her or talking over her when she just wants to play the game. She's finally managed to get a drama free regular game going. Stand your ground, make sure the twits get the message politely but firmly.
Sarah Brundage thinks there needs to be more games that appeal to a female audience. Going into dungeons and killing stuff does seem like a very male kind of fantasy. Once again we see the limitations that come from the first game having wargaming ancestry and others copying it rather than being inherent in the idea of playing a role.
Alan Kellog moves things onto fantasy racism, and how the various races can learn to co-exist, if not trust each other. Just as in the real world, trying to kill the orcs all the time is just too much bother, especially when you can stick them in crap jobs and profit off them for centuries instead. Course, humans do that to their own race as well. Maybe we are the evil ones after all.
L. Leon Adrian points out the problems that might occur when a bunch of wizards start selling continual light spells to normal people. The lantern maker's guild will send assassins! Other wizards will start competing, driving prices down. Clerics will decry this violation of the natural order. You know, all of those sound like springboards to more adventures to me. Change and the tensions that result from it are an ideal driver for interesting yet realistic plots.
Michael Miller decides to chat about time travel. Unlike our previous forumite, he is in favour of magic being applied in a technological fashion and different eras varying widely. The more variety of places people have to adventure in, the less likely they'll be bored.
Jackson Caskey brings up another endless problem, that of cheating twinky players. They change their ability scores between sessions! They metagame relentlessly and throw a strop when you use monsters and magic items in books they don't have! They refuse to treat your carefully written setting as anything more than a flimsy backdrop to their killing and taking of stuff. Bleah. Yeah, that's a problem alright. If they're all like that, just find a new group. Let them enjoy their monty hauling together.
John A. Tomkins has a more positive story. To keep his players all involved in his setting and aware of what's going on without endlessly repeating himself, he started making newsletters. This proved so successful that when he moved across the country, his old group still wanted them sent to them so they could keep up with his new adventures and worldbuilding. Now that's a good example of successful player engagement.
Christopher Newton encourages you not to be afraid of having your players make big changes in the setting. He also raises the idea of treating your game and creativity as Art. Swine! :points finger: Burn him! :D
Donna L. Beales talks about her recent spate of gaming funk, and the things that did definitely not work to shake her out of it. All the IC cool toys in the world won't help if you're not getting enough control or spotlight time. Don't forget fun is the first priority.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;393071Ah yes, the linnorms. I loved those articles back in the day. I was always glad to see Dragon present us with monsters portrayed in myth and legend. This is especially true when it's a type of monster that has been so thoroughly absorbed into D&D canon that it no longer resembles what inspired it in myth and legend.
Dragons are the best example; the D&D dragons only passingly resemble dragons from myth. The same is true of plenty of other monsters, though, from trolls to goblins to elves. I would like to have seen more Dragon articles address this type of thing, presenting interpretations of monsters as they appear in the literature of different cultures.
Yup. You'd think they would, given how popular the ones they did do were, such as these, and Tom Moldvay's reexaminations of the various undead types.
Quote from: (un)reason;393202Yup. You'd think they would, given how popular the ones they did do were, such as these, and Tom Moldvay's reexaminations of the various undead types.
It's too bad that the linnorms didn't show up until after my days of being an active D&D player had come to a halt. I'd have loved to use them.
I've never quite understood why official D&D - as made by TSR or WotC - has always shied away from at least discussing how creatures like dragons were depicted in folklore.
The Draconomicon is a good example, as there has been a version of it for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition. I recall an Amazon review of the 3e version which had a subject line that said something like "What is this?" The reviewer went on to give a baffled-sounding negative review of the book, mostly caused by exactly what I'm talking about - D&D seems to stay scrupulously away from exploring the subject in a way familiar to non-gamers. This reviewer was not a gamer, but rather a fan of dragons.
Now, I could point out that the person had ample evidence that the book was not some kind of mythic bestiary, but rather a game book. But I can't bring myself to be too harsh with the reviewer, because I can't help wondering why the powers-that-be for D&D wouldn't at least try to provide an entry point to the game like that. The 3e Draconomicon was a beautiful book, one that would draw the attention of dragon fans who had no experience with the game. If it had provided an overview of legendary dragons, from Beowulf's nemesis to Chinese celestial bureaucrats to linnorms to St. George's conquest, then it could have appealed to everyone. Same goes for monster books in general - why not provide at least one book that covered such ground? It's puzzling.
Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992
part 5/5
The role of books: Nightseer by Laurell K Hamilton sees another former contributor to the magazine graduate to full-fledged novelist. But not endlessly ongoing increasingly cheesy series, yet. As with R. A. Salvadore, this may well actually be better, and is certainly less formulaic than later works. The world-building certainly sounds interesting.
Doomsday exam by Nick Pollota is a book from the Bureau 13 RPG. Like the old J. Eric Holmes stories, it plays very much like the game it's based upon, to the point where it really doesn't fit the novel format very well. Converted campaign notes do not often good stories make.
Evil Ascending by Michael A Stackpole is a book based on the Dark Conspiracy game. It does rather better, with characters who aren't all joined at the hip, have proper personalities, and maintain a fairly consistent story tone. Still plenty of room for egregious violence and quippy pop culture references though, which is all to the good.
Two-bit heroes by Doris Egan takes a similar start to Christopher Stasheff's warlock series, that of one planet in a sci-fi universe where magic works, and then runs in a completely different direction with it, turning the story into a swashbuckling robin hood analogue. This also looks like turning into a longrunning series.
River rats by Caroline Stevermer follows a steamboat manned entirely by kids in a postapocalyptic mississippi. Given the setting, comparison with the works of Mark Twain seems inevitable. It probably isn't that compatible with gamma world's gonzo tone, but then, most post apocalypse is more serious than gamma world. This is probably a good thing.
The modular man by Roger Macbride Allen is a nice bit of speculative sci-fi about the effects of robotics which you can upload your mind into. It revolves around a murder case where a man was killed by his robot after transferring his memory into it, which may well have been suicide, but does it count as suicide in this instance? Other players in the story have similarly complex relationships with their gadgetry.
Sage advice has another case of few, but very long questions and answers.
What are the actual rules for a rope of entanglement ( Skip to the rescue. Skip will provide complete rules for you. Skip is a badass mutha...... oh, lets not have this skit again)
I still don't understand how magic resistance works in edge cases. (Oh, for the love of. If in doubt, roll. if you get below, it does nothing. How hard is that to adjudicate? )
I disagree with your rulings! I don't know what game you're playing, but it ain't True Official AD&D. ( Are you questioning the ineffability of Skip? Skip is The Sage! Skip puts the pages in the mages, and the broomstick between the witches legs. You think skip's pronouncements are not canon? SKIP IS CANON, AND CANON IS SKIP!!! Hooooorarrrrrrrrrg! Who are you, who thinks he can challenge Skip's position? Do you seek to claim the position of Sage for yourself? Then we must duel, good sir. TO THE DEATH!!!!! Choose your weapon!)
The game wizards: Let's go shopping! The Forgotten Realms gets another step towards complete comprehensive worldbuilding with Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog. A very stereotypically girly topic, and it's no surprise that Anne Brown was one of the lead writers. Course, boys do love their toys too, and as this was designed IC by an experienced adventuress, there's no shortage of useful gear that could turn your adventure around. Go beyond the usual flaming oil and 10' poles, play with stuff like weaponblack, spider poles, clockwork animals, insect netting, cranial drills, and all manner of dangerous gnomish contraptions. (so it'll be good for krynnish games as well :p ) And that's not all, there's also tons of info on food, clothing, general household and other everyday items. Unlike her rather forced attempt at metatextual humour in issue 155, this feels like it was genuinely fun to write about, and made the equipment assembling part of the game both easier and more fun as well. (if sometimes troublesome because you just don't have the money or encumbrance for everything you want) It's also a good example of the kind of thing that you just don't see anymore, despite it's usefulness, because that kind of setting high, statistics low design full of whimsical touches is out of fashion. Course, ironically, since so much of this is stats free, and D&D doesn't suffer much from inflation, you can still use this with 3rd & 4th edition, which means it actually remains useful in a way the reams of old splatbooks don't. So while this is another bit of promotion, it's one that's both entertaining to read and thought-provoking, that reminds me of the best aspects of 2nd edition. A very good reason to hunt down OOP stuff indeed.
Dragonmirth reaches the end of known humour. Yamara gets healed in a thoroughly romantic way. The party splits up (idiots) In twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Just when you were starting to relax, the lead banning bill strikes again! Bureaucracy is a predator that hunts through boredom, making resisting it so interminably tedious that eventually you welcome the jaws of death just to get a little peace. And then find you've arrived in an equally bureaucratic afterlife where you have to file a complete report on everything you ever did during life. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! We get a quite impassioned bit of writing on the merits of lead as a material over plastic, particularly working from the PoV of someone who likes to paint their own models. There are better things to use our currently cheap, but rapidly depleting supply of plastics upon. I sense there may be some dramatic exaggeration involved to better make the point. Or maybe, not, since eco-panic was quite the fashion back then. As with the satanic stuff, in hindsight this does seem very much like making a mountain out of a molehill, and is starting to get tiresome. Can we lurch onto the next crisis anytime soon?
Our minis this month are all futuristic, fitting the issue's theme. A star map, and a star legion to play on it. A pair of GEV artillery platforms for blowing stuff up. The interestingly attired legions of mars from Space:1889. Some Saurian warriors with rather large guns. And a whole bunch of Battletech Mechs designed to punch through enemy defences. Sweet.
Quite a few good articles in this one, but the reviews were an absolute chore to do, proving very dull indeed to look through. Aside from the RPG reviews, they seem to be suffering from a progresssive blandifying and unwillingness to make really harsh criticisms. This obviously keeps their suppliers happy, but does not make for interesting reading. Even negative publicity is better than no publicity, as so many famous people discover. If you're going to be blandly positive most of the time, you might as well not have reviews at all. Now I must press onwards and ensure I do not fall into that trap either.
Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. A nice bit of tag-team self-insertion on the cover here from the TSR staff. Why should the PC's be the ones initiating all the action? Since our special topic this month is NPC's, this seems appropriate. Ok, so it may be a bit GMcentric, but GMs are disproportionately represented among the magazine buyers, and I'm sure players'll get their turn again in later issues. Sometimes you have to specialise to do the best job possible.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter revealing the Toad-men in Twilight Empire were speaking hungarian. They contact the writer, who duly provides a translation, along with some other commentary. He's not just throwing stuff in off the cuff, he's got a plan.
Another letter on the Twilight Empire, extolling the virtues of New Hampshire men. It's the best state evar! Tee Hee.
A letter from someone driven mad by the hidden easter eggs on their covers. Once again I just have to laugh. People get worked up about such tiny things.
Some more amusing dice habits. Like people's animal empathies, this could produce quite a few more amusing comments over the next few months.
Editorial: Yay! The survey results are back. And not changed that much from a decade ago, really. Still 95% male, and with an average age in the late teens/early 20's, it's very obvious what their core demographic is. The Realms is by far the most popular game setting. Dragonmirth, the previews and sage advice are the most popular regulars. It's not all positive of course. We want more ecology articles, goddamnitt. And yes, Roger also think's we're long overdue a new Best Of too, but it doesn't seem to be happening for some reason. Blame upper management, as usual. Some of the improvements we want to make are not an option due to writer or budgetary limits. Anyway, it seems most people are happy with most things. Any tweaks need to be made carefully, or they risk alienating the majority by pandering to a vocal minority.
Courts and courtiers: Another attempt to make things both fun and awfully confusing for PC's as they rise in levels. Whether they're visiting an existing court in the course of their adventures, or starting to accumulate their own camp followers and toadies as they gain wealth and power, you can wind up in an awful pickle if you talk to the right people the wrong way. They may not be nearly as powerful as you, but when you're a highly specialised killing machine, having people around to handle the everyday aspects of life has it's benefits. And hey, if you get bored, or realise a particular person is just a waste of space and money really, you can just pull the old Off with their Heads! routine and everyone'll be on their best behaviour for a few weeks. Full of sample NPC's, this is one of those articles that provides you a good checklist of the kind of staff a good castle needs, and just how expensive keeping them around will be. Combine it with a random personality generation table (such as the one in issue 29) and a relationship map and you could probably get a whole political layout going in an hour or two. A decent enough starter, it only becomes more when you combine it with a whole bunch of the other time-savers the magazine has accumulated over the years.
Really good bad guys: Or revenge of Tuckers Kobolds part 4, now with PC skills. Yes, it's another reminder that you really ought to be playing monsters with the intelligence they have. There's all sorts of tricks you can pull even with a few low level spells that make an encounter both more challenging and a lot more interesting. This all feels very familiar, both in it's generalities, and it's specifics, which are heavily derived from recent forum debates. Some of the more imaginative tricks are new to me though, so like new monsters and magic items, this certainly isn't useless, even if it is a well covered topic. I may well use some of these tricks at some point.
In an appropriate twist of advertisting, Grimtooth's traps is promoted directly below this article. Now there 5 whole books of them, including a new one full of nonlethal but humiliating stuff. This speaks of a pretty popular series. Why is it that the traps column never really took off in the magazine again?
The 7-sentence NPC: Another attempt at formularising the mass production of NPC's. The title says it all really. 7 sentences, only one of which is concerned with statistics. As the writer shows, you can fit 3-4 characters on a single page using this method, possibly a couple more if you don't include sketches as well. The illustrations are probably the most entertaining part of this article, which doesn't really spark my interest. It looks like it works, but I still cannot help but say meh. Another day, another variation on a very familiar theme. And unlike the works of Wagner, these liefmotifs are not acquiring more power and resonance through their repetition.
You again!: Oh yes, recurring enemies. One of the things RPG's struggle with, and D&D in particular due to it's hit point system encouraging quick deaths, and complete lack of drama mechanics. The closest thing is Dragonlance's rather heavy handed "they never find the body" rule. This is a big problem for people who want to make their games more like stories. And unfortunately, while this has plenty of roleplaying advice, it completely fails to tackle the mechanical ones, apart from a brief bit on resurrection. Since I think those of us who grew up on 80's cartoons don't need help with the character building bit of creating amusingly interesting recurring villains, this is not very useful to me, and may result in more people trying it and running into problems themselves. And that's not a very pleasing idea at all. Still, hopefully if they identify the problem, that'll mean fewer games suffer from it in the future.
Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992
part 2/5
The referee's code of honor: Back to the basics of GMing here, with one of those little lists of useful advice. Treat your players with respect. Don't take their characters away from them. Don't take on more work than you can handle. Be reliable in scheduling. Make sure both you and they are having fun. And Take pride in your work. Hmm. This is approaching it from a different angle to most of the previous articles on this topic, with the emphasis more on how you relate to the players than how you run the game. This is something that hasn't been done too much, and is written in a clear concise likeable manner, so I'm giving this article good marks. If you forget the real world human elements, no matter how good your plot and worldbuilding, your game will not be fun. R E S P E C T, find out what it means to THEM.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms is back to getting multiple books in a single month again. FR14: The great glacier lets PC's penetrate another distant and inhospitable corner of the Realms. After the desert hijinks of last year, this should make a nice contrast. As usual, the novel is somewhere completely different. Doug Niles is still in the moonshaes, telling the story of The Coral Kingdom. Well, nearby, anyway, as the heroes venture under the sea. Will we get a supplement on that some time? D&D got one, why shouldn't AD&D?
Ravenloft goes somewhere a little out of the ordinary too. RQ2: Thoughts of darkness sees you face illithid vampires. Double the consumption, double the mind-fucking. Now that's scary, if a bit over the top.
Dragonlance gets up to part 5 of their meetings sextet. Soon even their bits of carpet lint will all know each other. Does that even make any sense? Anyway, Steel and stone lets us see Kitiara and Tanis bicker and try and have a relationship while engaging in the usual heroics. Mixing business with pleasure? Like that ever turns out well.
AD&D returns to the idea of cardboard cut-outs in GR2: Dungeons of mystery. Dennis Kauth helps you represent the places you adventure in again. Look after them, because they aren't the toughest creations ever.
D&D has a mixed bag. HW3: The Milenian empire covers the exotic worldbuilding side, taking you to another dead culture transplanted into the hollow world. Sword and Shield is for the people who are not only amateurs, but can't find a group either. They seem to be doing a lot of that lately. I do have to say I feel a little patronised. It's a laudable goal, expanding your fanbase, but saturating the market with too many of the same type of product will be particularly confusing to new people, and destroy that sense of shared experience the likes of B1+2 created.
Marvel Superheroes keeps up to date with current events, with MU8, our 4th yearly add-on to the gamers handbook. I hope they made sure the binder was big enough to handle all these extras, because it'll really be bulging now.
Wrath of the immortals! Lets take another stab at this playing gods thing again. And hopefully get it right this time.
The voyage of the princess ark is on a break again. The writing really is on the wall for this series. So it's more letter answering instead. After all, that requires far less creative energy. How very irritating.
You've messed up the calendar! Four times, possibly more! (Many sighs. Yes, it happens. This is why so many writers make their fantasy worlds identical to earth in these matters. It's way too easy to forget stuff like this. )
You've messed up the map of Darokin as well! (Well spotted. :sigh: )
How do you select ideas for novels? (Very mysterious process. First, the evil T$R taskmasters form a focus group to brainstorm and decide what would piss over your setting most. Then they hire some poor hack and force them to churn out several thousand words a day to the brief. Then they change their mind and make a whole bunch of even more annoying editorial changes. Then they stamp a cheesy cover on it that has little to do with the contents, and bob's yer uncle.)
Where is Blizzard pass (Between Ringrise and Hinmeet seems the most logical spot)
Are there critical fumbles in D&D (no. Keep it simple stupid.)
My cleric's player is uncomfortable with the idea of her character praying to another god (Pff. Fantasy. Reality. Completely separate things. Your character having a different faith to you is not a sin by any stretch of the imagination. Tell her to chill the fuck out. )
Thyatis is waaay too small! (mapping realisticly sized cities would be a nightmare. So we fudged. )
The Rich resource rule is stupid. (blah blah carolingan system evolution into feudal system simplification for purpose of gaming blah blah blah. )
How did Heldan become so badass. Why is Thyatis so feeble (One's a dynamic group of up and comers. The other's a comfortably established nation with a big empire. They aren't feeble, but they certainly aren't as ambitious anymore.)
Why did the empress make Haldemar and co pariahs. They've been of great service to the nation. (Palace politics. If they were allowed to stick around, someone else would kill them. Sending them off again was safer and more useful. )
Why did you leave the Sea Machine rules out of the cyclopedia (Space. No room! )
Why are the Thyatian armies so feeble in X10. (Because they only sent a small force. It's miles away from home. Not a conflict worth wasting much energy on. )
Isn't making a skyship too powerful an ability even for someone with 9th level spells (You obviously would prefer a less cinematic campaign. I don't think the Known world is for you, critic.)
Putting a western analogue in D&D is a bit silly, isn't it? (Yes, but that was entirely intentional. I do love a bit of gonzo now and then.)
The stats for some of the Ark's characters are impossible! (More errata? Don't worry, we'll fix it when we compile the story.)
How can Heldanic knights use edged weapons when they're clerics (Because their patron immortal is a cheaty bastard)
Since when are wands rechargable? (Where does it say they're not? Sources from AD&D books don't count, by the way. )
I'd prefer it if the princess ark was kept down-to-earth. We don't need too much spacefaring magitech. ( Well, you're in luck, because it's going to be permanently grounded soon. ;) )
I want a book with battlesystem stats for various known world armies (Tough. They're too big to use smoothly with the battlesystem. You'll have to settle for War Machine stats instead.)
How much space do 100 troops need to live in. (Not that much really. Depends how uncomfortable you want them to be. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992
part 3/5
Sage advice: Does project image allow you to cast spells through it. (It'd be a pretty weak 6th level spell if it couldn't)
There are no rules for dexterity adjusting initiative (no, there aren't. Very percheptive of you, Mishter Bond. How fast you can act physically has no bearing on how you react mentally. )
I can't find the gather intelligence skill (there is no such proficiency. The author was not paying attention. Skip has dealt with them suitably. )
What's to stop you from making a dimension door below a creature, the other up in the air, and letting them go splat (erm, that one of the doors always appears in front of you. Pay attention to the rules, dear. )
It's really hard to get telekinesis (Tell me about it. All I wanted to do was have a little fun playing rock and roll. But no, You have to study for years to get good enough to pull tricks like that. )
What happens if a wild talent becomes a psionicist (either keep it all separate, or it's payoff time. You choose.)
What's the difference between a morning star, a flail and a mace? (Illustrations, they are useful. )
Raising people in ravenloft requires a powers check? Isn't that a good act. What does it do to a priest who fails it. ( Ha. Was what Dr Frankenstein did a good act? Meddling with life and death, even with the best of intentions, is messing with stuff man ought not to wot of, and may be hazardous to body and sanity.)
There's no GP value for magic items. How do I determine how much starting witches get (buy the new magical encyclopedias :teeth ting: )
Do dwarves have to spend a slot to get dwarf runes and endurance or not? ( no, but they can spend more slots to improve them.)
Why are wild magic spells in regular schools as well (they may be wild, but they're still magic. They may break the rules, but they still follow the same classifications. Skip understands this, even if you don't. )
The role of computers: Out of this world uses 3d polygon graphics to fit an amazing amount of information in a tiny tiny package. The attention to detail really does surprise them. I wonder how this one would hold up today.
Spectre also features 3d polygon based graphics. Control your cybertank using both overhead and front views and make your way through 50 increasingly tricky levels. With limited ammo and a slowly recharging teleport meter, it looks like resource management will be important in getting you all the way to the end. It also supports multiplayer LAN networking, which increases the fun quite a bit. (and you won't have to pay several dollars per hour to use.) Another advancement we probably haven't seen enough of.
Speaking of online stuff, they have an almost review of Sierra's capabilities in that area. Costs have come down quite a bit, to $12.95 for 30 hours access. They have their own quirky website called Sierraland that connects between the environments for their various online games and chatrooms. Guess geocities wasn't without competition in methods back then. Another amusing reminder of the stumbling around early websites did before finding formats that really take advantage of the way the net works and how we naturally navigate it. Little walky avatars just seem so twee.
Treasures of the Savage Frontier takes us to the Forgotten Realms yet again. And yet again, the reviewers are starting to lose their infatuation with SSI. They're just churning out stuff as fast as they can rather than really improving the games to keep up with the times. Still fun, but I suppose it depends if you really like their gamestyle. Eventually diminishing returns will become a real problem.
The game wizards: Our second wave of trading cards this year gets it's obligatory promotion. It's zeb's turn on the mic again, bringing his customary Wahoo enthusiasm to the proceedings. New Artwork! Improved formats! More personality for characters! Customised and owned magical items! Course, it was not without it's problems in the making. Even within the TSR staff, there are substantial disagreements on what the rules actually say. Getting all the stuff you want on the back of cards requires some serious editing, and was sometimes impossible. And the rare cards required some awkward last minute switchings around. As with last time, this is statistics, but presented in a fun way, including a questionnaire and plenty of humour. They're getting to stretch their creativity a lot more than last time, and everyone is throwing in ideas and bouncing off each other in a healthy way. At least if you believe the ad copy. In any case, this is one of their more successful promotional columns.
Role-playing reviews: Having done some odd stuff in the last few reviews it is very literally back to the basics. Rick decides to see which introductory roleplaying products do their job best. After all, we always need new gamers, don't we. And christmas will be here before you know it. Perfect time to give them a free hit of your gateway drug of choice.
The new Dungeons and dragons boxed set scrapes in at 4+1/2 stars. It's a tight, well organised presentation, but the underlying rules are unchanged and starting to show their limitations. And alignment languages still give Rick a headache. We got rid of them in 2nd edition, why are they still here? Shrug. Once again it seems that the people in charge think the rules are good enough as they are.
Lord of the rings, on the other hand, strips things down quite substantially from full MERP, which is quite funny when you consider that's already streamlined Rolemaster. Rick likes this one as well, but I really didn't. Even at that age I felt patronised by it's oversimplification, although that's probably because I already owned MERP, and I was currently looking for more crunch, not less. Why would I want to start again?
Tunnels and trolls 5th edition is another one that has changed precious little save in presentation, and gets a mediocre result because of it. There is quite a bit to be picked apart in the rules, and it does have some silly elements. It does seem quite newbie friendly, but whether it'll keep them for long after this is debatable.
Toon deluxe edition is another one that gets much love, with a couple of little caveats. It's an absolutely brilliant game, providing you get the right GM. Yes, but palladium can be a brilliant game if you get the right GM. Still, I can see why that might make it not the perfect recommendation for an all new gaming group.
Now that shows dedication and love for the hobby. I can't remember when I picked up my first issue of Dragon. I do remember it had the article on path magic which I thought was totally cool and made more sense when thinking of magic in an odd logical sense. It just made sense you had to learn lesser fire spells before hurling fireballs.
If i still played plain vanilla d&d or advanced d&d, I likely wouldn't have trashed my small collection. I have only a few d20 issues and had to go with d&d insider for the new 4th edition digital ones. I miss print.
Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992
part 4/5
Rifts vampire kingdoms! Another setting gets in on the act, although with a rather different spin to the WoD or ravenloft.
Forum: Ian Johnson is another person who thinks the solution to paying for games is to share the burden of GMing around. Different people buy and master different systems, and everyone enjoys the greater variety and less burnout. And it all balances out financially.
Jay Kirkman thinks the idea of being paid to GM is an abomination. It would suck all the integrity out of the people running and bring in people who run a game every night and cut corners on their designing to do so. Bleah.
Tracey Greathouse is another person shocked, shocked I say at the idea of paying the GM to run stuff. People might chip in to cover costs, but no-one expects to make any kind of money out of RPGing. Not even the writers. :p
Anonymous contributes for a second time in recent issues, this time about a soldier friend killed in the Gulf War. They fell out over an in game argument which now seems stupidly small. Thanks to this anonymous being a soldier as well, he didn't even get to go to his funeral. It all puts things in perspective in a rather sad way.
Maurice Sprague talks about the nerfs he's implemented on psionicists in his campaign for the sake of fairness. Unobtrusive mindfucking can go a bit far due to the complete lack of visible signs someone is using psionic powers.
Brad Allison also thinks psionicists are horribly overpowered because they get to pick the really cool powers right away and the usual checks and resistances don't apply. Well, of course they'll be a problem if you never use monsters adapted to them. And I must admit getting planar travel stuff that takes wizards levels in their teens does change the campaign quite a lot. I don't think they need that much nerfing.
Allen McMillan is not amused at Greg Detwiler's article nerfing wizards. Giving them allergies in particular is just cruel wankery. Just don't be over-generous with your players and everything'll be fine.
Alan Kellog points out what I realised straight away in issue 179. When you're at 25th level and many monsters have saves of 2 and magic resistance of 90%, you want to use the indirect stuff like rock to mud or earthquake. How you use powers is also just as important as what ones you have. Play them as smart as their int score suggests.
Arlo J. White also suggests much the same solution. Telekinetically drop rocks on them, confuzzle them with illusions, disintegrate the ground beneath them, summon badass monsters. You really are doing it wrong if your 25th level mage is sucking.
Fiction: How nemra added a line to the book of thieves by Dan Crawford. Sometimes even the most badass of characters lose. Sometimes, characters are talked up as badass, but still lose regularly as a way of demonstrating just how badass the enemy of the week is. So it proves here, in a little story that talks up how badass and mysterious it's protagonist is, only to have him stumped by an even nastier puzzle. Feels very much in the same vein as the more supernatural end of the Lankhmar series, with mysterious and rather scary, but all too present gods and characters who certainly aren't stupid, but aren't smart enough. Curious business. One of those ones that would benefit from being part of a series, but doesn't appear to be. Guess I'll just have to appreciate it as it is.
Novel ideas: Troy Denning once again demonstrates why he's a pro writer and I'm not. You've gotta love the process if you're ever to become a prolific writer. And I still spend far too much of my writing time browsing the web and flicking from one program to another, nibbling at several different things at once to stave off boredom. I can't say I've ever been so engrossed in writing as to lose track of time or my surroundings. Anyway, this is quite an in-depth interview on him and his recent work, particularly the Dark Sun stuff. It's rather taken off, with people fascinated by Athas and wondering what will come next. There are still substantial mysteries in the setting, and the novelty of what's been done to the races and classes hasn't worn off yet. And that's a good thing, as people only really started to lose interest once all the big secrets were revealed. In hindsight, they should probably have covered more of Athas, included a wider range of environments and cultures, and not put all the Sorcerer-kings bunched up in one tiny corner of the world. Still, it's obvious that it has much to recommend it, and he has a good idea of what's coming up in the next couple of years. He's not just the writer for the novels, but an integral part of the world design team, which is definitely a good thing, as Dragonlance's freelance novels demonstrate. Once again the promotional stuff is a good deal more entertaining than usual this month, with plenty of detail that reveals where their heads are at. Funny how that happens.
Quote from: Guuthulhu;394307Now that shows dedication and love for the hobby. I can't remember when I picked up my first issue of Dragon. I do remember it had the article on path magic which I thought was totally cool and made more sense when thinking of magic in an odd logical sense. It just made sense you had to learn lesser fire spells before hurling fireballs.
That'll be issue 216, April '95. I remember picking that one up first time round as well.
Awesome. I wish I still had the article. I also remember antihero issue at had the 1000 or so uses for a wet blanket. That was another good read. Oh, the nostalgia. Oh, and the humor issues with crazy stuff in like choocolate easter bunny golems, plushy golems. I feel like a kid again. Now I need to see of dad still has my ancient computer stuff. I remember him buying me that archive of dragon magazines.
Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992
part 5/5
Magic with an evil bite: Some nasty spelljammer stuff here that would fit in nicely with last issue's theme. The neogi, along with beholders and illithids are one of the primary bad guys of the setting. New toys that make them more scary, but which you could hopefully take and use after killing them would be very welcome, especially as the other two already have multiple articles dedicated to them.
Venom Bite lets you hit an enemy with the equivalent of a neogi bite, slowing and all. With a very fast casting time, it's an okish zappy spell to debuff your enemies with.
Spider Gout lets you spit venom. Since it's material component is neogi saliva, it isn't going to be much use to other wizards. Well, do you want to go collect some? :p
Arachnophobia makes thousands of illusory spiders crawl over you. This naturally tends to cause freakout, even if you suspect it isn't real. Since some will run while others will drop and roll, this is a good one for splitting up the enemy for further future sadism.
Identify Race allows the arrogant jackasses an easy way to figure out what your slaves are good for without the tedious business of actually talking to them or testing them to their limits the hard way.
Lethal Hatchling lets you infect someone with a baby neogi which rapidly eats it's way out. This allows them to replenish their numbers without the usual hassle and need to sacrifice their own and really wreak havoc in battle. Good luck turning said baby into a decent servant though. Nature has a definite edge over nurture here.
It's not just spells though. This article has a bunch of magic items for consideration too. Charms of Distraction give minor boosts to your AC, Saves and ability to paralyse stuff. All minor benefits, but they combine to make recurring villains more likely. See, this is just what the earlier article could have done with.
Bands of the Serpent let neogi go all thulsa doom on us. This'll also let them expand their range of slaves to less intelligent reptiles as well. Lead an army of crocodiles against your enemies! Perfect pulp win!
Bands of the Arachnid, on the other hand, get them in touch with the other half of their heritage. Turning into a spider may seem like a small change, but instadeath poison instead of slowing. Whooo boy. No competition really.
On top of that, we also get a monster. Not often you get this kind of variety in a single article. Undead umber Hulks may lack the confusing powers of their living relatives, but ironically the illustration captures the brain hurting power of their 4 eyes and jaw/mandible combo better than the regular MM one. It's like looking at those pictures that can be a vase or two silhouettes. Much kudos to Tom Baxa for pulling off that feat. Both a well presented and versatile article, this was a joy to read, changing subjects quick enough to avoid boredom while maintaining an overarching theme. Very strong.
Audible Glamour: As usual as we near the end of an issue, it's time for the obligatory filler to ensure the page count lines up neatly. In this case it's one on making sure you describe rooms properly. Sight, sound, smell, touch. Hopefully not taste. If you do it right then you provide them with valuable clues as to what lies ahead, so they won't scream bloody murder when killed horribly by your latest deathtrap because the signs were there for them to avoid if they'd thought about it. Course, doing this for every room will multiply out your design time quite a bit, much of which will be wasted if the place is even slightly non-linear, which is why I've found myself actually doing this less in my most recent game. Quite frankly, I do not have the time. It's regrettable, but there you go. Perfectionism is for those who don't have constant deadlines breathing down their neck and a ton of other things they want to do with their life. And with that, I shall move on.
Son of pen power: Man, they really are pushing the survey stuff this year. This one is all about themes. What type of themed articles do you most want to see next year? Ones on our campaign worlds? Historical periods. Races, classes. Humour, undead, wilderness/dungeon/underground? Something new? Go on, suggest something new. Roger'll thank you for it. Once again we see the struggles trying to please their audience they have to deal with, especially after so long and covering so much already.
Dragonmirth is slightly more technologically advanced than usual. Ogrek is once again full of ideas that exasperate Yamara, but would probably actually work pretty well. The plot seriously thickens in Twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: Off to the conventions we go. This means this column is relatively uninteresting, but with the promise of cool new stuff next month, quite possibly from companies they don't normally get to cover. Just like gaming, there's a whole bunch of stuff that never gets into the standard distribution chains.
Plenty of variety in minis this month though. A nicely looming set of undead that demonstrate that 3mm can make quite a difference in minis scale. Two dragons and a hippogriff. Yet another demonstration of what happens if you get on the wrong side of wizards with polymorphing magic. A rather interesting Dragon powered zeppelin manned by dwarves, which seems like an awesome encounter idea. A mech for battletech. A street samurai for shadowrun. And three new ships for the Silent Death game. Mostly variations on familiar themes with the odd cool bit here and there.
Trading cards are certainly on the up at the moment. How long before they start making games specifically for them.
A pretty dull issue really. When the most interesting bits are the promotional articles and the editorial, something is a little amiss. I'm not sure if that's because too much is just very familiar, and I'm getting roleplaying advice fatigue again, or because there's an actual drop in quality. In any case, the buzz I got from reaching halfway is gone, and I am left very aware that I've probably got another couple of years of this to go. Hopefully the recent survey gives them the inspiration to find a few new topics and get enough articles to do them justice. Otherwise I may have to take a break for the sake of my sanity.
Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. A nice dark sun cover adorns this months issue. By no co-incidence at all, this is also this month's special topic, exactly a year after it first got unleashed upon us. I wonder if they're going to try and make a regular thing of this. Surely not, when even the Forgotten Realms hasn't managed that kid of privilege. Maybe I'll be interestingly surprised, maybe not. In any case, let's see how the gameline has developed over the past year.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter asking why TSR don't release their games on Atari formats. Not profitable enough mate. Don't want to throw good money after bad by supporting a dead system.
A letter asking one new question and two old ones. Roger uses this as an opportunity to once again drop subtle hints to upper management that we are well overdue another best of. The demand is obviously there, why will you not authorise it? It's easy money for old rope.
A letter from a Rifts fanboy saying Dragon sucks for not covering palladium stuff, and their reviewers suck for being so harsh on it. Comedy gold, enabling Roger to give a level-headed yet sarcastic response. You keep your facts away from the froth. Let's not even mention what happened when White Wolf tried to cover their products in response to a similar letter.
A letter suggesting that maybe the time is now right for them to put a hologram on their cover. All the cool comics are doing it. Roger gives a cautious response. Maybe for issue 200. Maybe. Not making any promises. Don't send complaining letters if we don't.
Editorial: The annoying letters apparently continue at a rate high enough that Roger can't print all of them. He can however give them a good rebutting. Flying space whales are an entirely viable form of fantasy! Not every cover has to involve something badass staring at the camera going Raar. AD&D 2nd edition is not dumbed down! If anything, it takes even more effort to keep track of and incorporate everything. Similarly, 1st edition is not some perfect holy canon. The number of things left open or inconsistent is quite considerable, and we've filled in quite a few of those gaps in the meantime. And finally, gamers can be any age, race, religion, sexuality, political affiliation, etc that they like. As long as they can create a character and roll them bones, they can join in. Assuming other roles regularly should breed tolerance and empathy. Well, it seems that they still have their share of vitriolic lamers writing in. Don't sweat it. It shows that they're invested in the game, and also keeps you from getting complacent. Plus, comedy. It's much better than bland positive stuff.
The Arena Master's Arsenal: More weapons! More ingenious and often rather ugly weapons with special tricks beyond just inflicting damage. Another case where this may not catch fighters up with spellcasters in the amount of new crunch they've got, but certainly doesn't hurt. While intended for Dark Sun, I'm sure you can slip these into your exotic cultures on other worlds.
Bard's Friends are multipronged knife things that are easily used from concealment and make good parrying weapons. They look like each one is likely to be a bit different, customised to the hand of their maker and whatever sharp things they have to lash together.
Cahulaks are halfway between nunchuks and grappling hooks, and can be useful both in hand to hand and short range combat, for purposes of pain and grappling. As both a tool and a weapon, they definitely seem like a good one to carry around just in case, particularly for rogues.
Crushers take the principles of leverage and momentum and seriously exaggerate them. 25' long poles? Not getting that in many dungeons. On the other hand, in a wide open field, this can let you attack lots of things at once. Interesting idea though. I wonder how they came up with that one.
Datchi Clubs are huge spiky honeycombs of pain, the worst kind of phallic metaphor. Rotate them when attacking for extra larceration based agony. And you thought corncobs and pineapples were bad.
Dragon's paws have blades on both ends and the middle, like klingon batleths, only more practical. You can use the ends as protection from the sides while attacking to the front.
Gouges are big axe/polearms with shoulder straps to give you leverage and reduce the risk of disarming. You can also do flashy spin attacks for double damage if you have the space. Very PC'ish.
Master's whips have special barbs designed to contain poison. If you're really good, you can have a different one applied to each lash and control which one gets the enemy. I must admit that sounds both awesome and fairly plausible. The themed tricks you could pull would be quite considerable.
Tortoise blades are a good example of using what you can get. Take the shell and bones, and use them to make a two-in-one blade and shield combo that makes for great dual-wielding and parrying action. If anyone's going to have a chance against Drizzt, it's a gladiator from the big desert.
Weighted Pikes have a sharp bit on one end, and a spiky club on the other. They're most effective on large creatures, but their versatility of damage types means they're good as a primary weapon. After all, you never know what'll be resistant to one but not the other.
Widows Knives are double pronged nasties that can be spring-loaded and used with great precision both in hand to hand and ranged. Now there's one you'll need at least a little metal to craft. Still, it's a good end to an awesome collection.
Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992
part 2/5
Mastered, yet untamed: More Dark sun monsters, and official permission to use a few more from other settings as well here. This time, the theme is stuff that you can domesticate. Even in a place as hostile as Athas, people can learn to work together with various animals for mutual benefit. And then eat them when supplies get low. :p Just watch they don't get you first, for they're no pushovers.
Baazrag are one of the few Dark sun creatures that isn't big and scary. In fact, they're almost cute. They might be only 2' long, but in packs they can make surprisingly good draft animals, like huskies with armour plated heads.
Heavy Crodlu are considerably less cute than chocobos, but serve about the same role. The athasian equivalent of draft horses, they can be pretty nasty, with a full 5 attacks per round. Train them to fight and any bandits attacking your merchant train'll have a rough time of it.
Drik are enormous, foul-tempered, flat-shelled turtles. This means you can set up little structures on their back easily, but also makes them a serious hazard to their handlers. Everything has to be a little more badass in Athas, doesn't it.
Jalath'gak (bless you. Get well soon dear.) are enormous flying insects. They don't make that brilliant draft animals, but the thri-kreen obviously prefer them to the reptilian ones earlier. And they still can work perfectly fine as flying mounts for combat. 7 attacks? That could strafe a whole party effectively.
Ruktoi are basically silt-based crocodiles. They do the old ambush predator thing of floating just below the surface, then grabbing you and pulling you under to suffocate. The lack of water in athas certainly doesn't keep these nasty tricks from working. Another one you can theoretically domesticate, but good luck not becoming dinner if you slip up. Rather a recurring theme really.
Watroaches are simultaneously a giant beetle, and a ton of little beetles that form a hive. This is pretty interesting really. They can't be tamed, but hollowed out undead watroaches are another nasty mobile siege engine that can really make a mess of the enemy's defences, since building materials really struggle to keep up with the creatures around here. Everyone ought to move into bioorganics, because stone weapons just can't cut it against these creatures.
Twenty tricks for castle defense: An article that obviously springs from the recent forum debates. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Roger probably finds it quite nice when someone sends in something forum related that can be broken out and make a full article in itself. It provides a continuity to the magazine that just including whatever seems cool at the time lacks. Mixing magical and mundane tricks, this is primarily intended for the defender, but many of the tricks would work just as well from the other side too. Staying on top of things while keeping the enemy off guard and reacting to you is always a wise choice to make. Hitting them in the infrastructure, breaking morale and using assassins rather than head-on fights also seems more likely to win, and with less bloodshed for both sides too. (and people say paladins are the good ones. O_o ) This is a good one, compressing lots of useful stuff into a small package, while coming up with some of it's own ideas. Sun Tzu would be proud.
Fiction: Water and ashes by Allen Varney. The story of the founding of the Veiled alliance. Since Allen just wrote the sourcebook on that, this smells like cut material, as for whatever reason, the editors decided not to include a short story this time. Not that I blame them, as this isn't the most enthralling little bit of writing they've included. In fact, it all smells a bit anvilicious, with very little actual agency demonstrated by any of the main characters. The founding of the alliance comes to look like more of a quirky accident that was run with than a deliberate attempt by anyone to oppose the sorcerer-kings. And the way morality is handled is oh so very D&D and unnaturalistic. It looks like the skills needed to be a good game writer and reviewer, and fiction writer do not always correlate. So we have here a textbook example of bad gaming fiction. Don't like this at all.
The voyage of the princess ark: Bruce makes up for last month's laziness with quite a long and interesting adventure. Heading north, the Ark encounters the three very different nations of lizard people. Shazaks, Gurrash, and Cay-men. Haldemar gets captured, again, and is going to be sacrificed to the Gurrash's monstrosity. Which turns out to be a Neh-Thalggu, played for laughs as it suffers an attack of multiple personalities from it's contained brains. We get more hints as to the upcoming big metaplot events. Haldemar remains skeptical. Mystara, losing all it's magic? surely not. This would ruin Alphatia. Even if they're lying, it would probably be a good idea to investigate further.
Unsurprisingly, OOC, we have more history on the races of lizard men and stats that make them playable as PC's. Uplifted by the Herathians to serve as slaves, and then kicked out when they proved not useful, they've built their own little cultures in the swamps and forests. Not very impressive ones, mind, but a definite improvement on regular lizard men. They have rather interesting stats, with negative levels, intelligence that starts off really low and increases as they gain levels, and yet another different way of handling things if they become spellcasters. Bruce does seem to enjoy experimenting with these exception based race/class combos. And so once again we have some cool new stuff opened up for us to experiment with. He does seem to be doing that more and more frequently. Guess it's what the people want. You know, by this stage it would be simpler to have separate races and classes like AD&D.
Magic in the evening: And then there were two wizards regularly visiting poor Ed. As part of the drive for increasing amounts of crossover between the worlds. Elminster invites Mordenkainen over for dinner, so they can discuss events, and exchange magical knowledge. Which means Ed gets to combine fiction with new game material in a manner quite different from Pages from the Mages. World spanning cosmic knowledge mixes with childlike glee at the culinary delights earth offers. Elminster has long ago put aside the fear of being underestimated or seen as immature. Mordenkainen is a little more cagey, but still has a sense of humour about recent events, and an appreciation of the finer things in life. Ed also uses this as an opportunity to comment on recent metaplot events in Toril, Krynn and Oerth. Lots of awesomeness, and more than a little silliness, and even he can't control it all. Not that they'd want to either. They both recognise that you need to keep minor bad guys around so the good guys have a target to healthily take out their aggressions on. (which neatly answers why he sets you quests that he could solve with a couple of judicious 9th level spells before breakfast)
Even more than PftM, the spells in here are both quirky and well integrated into the setting, showing signs of people who are familiar with previous generations of spells and designing their ones specifically to counter or one-up them. Curse of the grinning skull is just perfect. Spelldream is both effective and evocative. Thundaerl's universal taster is a handy utility effect of the kind we could do with more of, and moonweb gives you a justice field which can be very handy indeed. Both enjoyable and useful, this is classic Ed material. He's still got both the touch and the power.
Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992
part 3/5
Role-playing reviews I: The theme of this set of reviews is boxed sets. Another reminder how much more common they were back then. They're releasing enough on a regular basis that they can take them for granted, not every one is a big deal. If anything, they're about to reach their peak over the next year or two. We should be seeing this topic again.
Dark sun boxed set sees Rick once again give 4 +1/2 stars where most other reviewers would comfortably award 5. It's not that he doesn't like it, but he is aware of it's shortcomings. These are mostly in the areas it doesn't go far enough. They should have got rid of alignment, put a bit more emphasis on the ecological disaster spin, and included more adventure seeds and NPC's. A few supplements'll sort those second two right out. Course, you may not be happy with the answers they give.
Horror on the orient express is for Call of Cthulhu, and it DOES get 5 stars. It's as brutal on the investigators as a good CoC game should be, while maintaining a sense of fun about itself that should keep them from getting too pissed about their horrible deaths. If any game product can aspire to art, it's one like this.
Solaris VII is a regional sourcebox for Battletech and Mechwarrior. It seems slightly more aspected towards providing a good backdrop for the human level interactions, but with both frontier and city underworld stuff, there's plenty of excuses for both mech duels and proper political conflicts. Once again, Rick thinks it needs some more specific supplements to fill things in, but it is a massive improvement on their previous attempts at setting building. You'll just have to hope enough people buy this to make supplements worth their while.
The marvel-phile: Kree kree! Our second set of superpowered alien punching bags are back. And they've been copying other superheroes powers. Captain Atlas. Dr Minerva. Kordath the Pursuer. Shatterax. Supremor. And Ultimus. (methinks those last two are trying too hard) Most have energy manipulation abilities, and some degree of body armor, making them seem fairly standardised as antagonists go, but each has some trick that sets them apart from your run of the mill kree mook. They may be a genetically moribund race, but they're not dead yet by a longshot, no sir. This lot'll make good adversaries for a whole superhero team, and even if you beat them, you know there'll be more where they came from. More useful than some entries, this is nothertheless another rather dry collection of stats and histories I can't get too worked up about. Now what we need are a good bunch of Skrulls to put them up against. See you next month.
Sage advice: The alertness proficiency doesn't conform to 2nd ed rules (yes, the writer of the complete thief's handbook was quite the incompetent. Skip already sorted him out last issue, so worry no more about it. )
The complete fighters handbook breaks the rules on specialization. ( No it doesn't. Buy a new PHB, it will be in agreement. The canon police will be along shortly to erase your memory of the old flawed books with their psychic hamsters. And so the complete fighters handbook will always have been correct.)
Why do bards get reduced thieving penalties for armor, but fighter/thieves don't (The magic bard training faeries say so. Don't complain too much, or they'll revert to 1st ed rules)
Can energy containment be maintained. (no, It's a reactive power used when needed, not activated beforehand)
Is there a save against ID insinuation. (no. It's like ranged touch attacks. They already have to penetrate your mental resistance. Getting another roll to avoid it afterwards would make it too weak. )
Can you develop new psionic powers (yes, but it aint easy. )
Does the complete psionics handbook replace the powers monsters got before (no)
What can hurt a character in ectoplasmic form (anything that can hurt ghosts. This is a bigger selection of powers than you'd think. Also, running away from your comrades mid-fight may piss off the other players. )
Can you use a spell and a psionic power simultaneously. (no. Types of actions per round rules, we need them. You can maintain already activated powers though. )
What happens when you fail a system shock roll (You're dead. CPR and cure spells will do sod-all. You need a cleric with raising powers to get them back)
Can you escape ravenloft by exploding an extradimensional space or a prismatic wall. (No. They've already planned for that trick. )
What happens if people from different prime material planes see a colour pool while astral. Does it look a different colour to each (yes)
-3 THAC0?! How the hell do you get that (by being really really badass. It is within high level PC's reach. )
Can you use more than one psionic power with a preparation time of 0 in a round (no. Action type rules, again. Skip is developing some. Soon they will be official. Oh yes.)
What armour & weapons can vikings have. (whatever's left after the 800 pound gorilla got first pick )
Are undead cut off from the negative energy plane in the phlogiston? Does this mean they lose energy draining powers (no. Undead are a bitch to deal with. Like ravenloft, simple tricks that should logically work like that will do sod-all. )
Can psionicists use illithid series helms (no. They work off their magical powers anyway. Psionics are different, remember. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews II: Two review columns this month? What, couldn't Rick and Allen agree to take it in turns like usual. Are they really such a popular part of the magazine? Perilous line, my dears. Anyway, along with his fiction contribution earlier, Allen Varney has decided to stick his two cents in about the cyberpunk genre. It's a troublesome one, in that far too many of the things in it actively undermine the original message of it's originator, making dystopia and loss of humanity cool instead of a warning. Like the World of Darkness being played as superheroes with fangs, this may be fun, but isn't going to make the world a better place. What are we to do with them.
Cyberpunk 2020 falls prey to the excesses of pretentiousness rather badly. Big guns and attitude, these are the things that are good in life. It also has some inconsistencies and way too many typos. On the other hand, it's a vast improvement mechanically over the first edition. Mike Pondsmith may be a magpie, but at least he's stealing from good sources.
Night city is the big setting expansionbook for Cyberpunk. Like Marvel and DC, Cyberpunk and Shadowrun seem to have taken opposite tacks on the real/imaginary city question. It goes into quite ridiculous amounts of detail, with little entries for every single city block, and tons of building layouts to make running adventures a snap. It really useful not only for Cyberpunk, but any modern day game.
Hacker: The computer crime card game gets one of their odd context heavy reviews. It's actually Allen's baby originally, so reviewing it feels a bit odd. That said, he freely admits Steve Jackson Games have improved substantially on his original submission. But it's still not really good enough to compete with Illuminati. Send it back to the development labs!
A storytelling game of savage horror! W:tA gets it's byline. And the system gets it's name. Well, when you only have one game for a system, you don't need a generic name for it.
The game wizards: Not content with trying to make the old basic rules more accessable in a new boxed set, TSR are now trying to get into some of that lucrative HeroQuest market by making Dragon Quest, another game that bridges the boardgame and RPG classification, and hopefully will make a good entry drug for young players. As you might expect, this is the usual mix of behind the scenes and promotion. Buy it for your kids, or your little siblings! Hope they actually bother moving on from it instead of just playing a few times and losing interest. Hrm. Like the Collectable Card stuff, this feels like a slightly forced attempt to expand their scope and get into new markets. Good luck with that. And with a little googling, I see that that impression is actually rather disingenuous, as it's actually a resurrected SPI property that they only did token promotion on. Or maybe that's the last edition, and they just slapped the name on an unrelated product, it's hard to tell. In any case, my skepticism level is rather high here. I shall watch with interest to see if this disappears without a trace.
The role of books: Jaran by Kate Elliot gets a positive review for it's interesting take on worldbuilding. Complex cultures are created, set in conflict, and then our normal human PoV character is dropped in the middle. Y'know, some people would make it accessible enough that you don't need that gimmick.
Dragons over england is a set of short stories from the TORG setting. It doesn't get a very good review. The design feels more like a sourcebook than a novel, and the stories lack any kind of consistency. The problems with a kitchen sink setting is that it can wind up not feeling like a setting at all, and the editing certainly doesn't help that. You can't just plop in whatever cool stuff your writers come up with, however good the ideas might be individually.
Jumper by Steven Gould is of course a book that has gone on to be a movie a few years ago. And from the sound of this review, it quite deserves it, as it succeeds both on a character-building level, and in how he logically exploits and develops his teleportation powers. Sci-fi doesn't have to be all high concepts and rayguns. And psychic powers don't have to turn into a kitchen sink of mind control and telekinesis.
Court of shadows by Cynthia Morgan is a swashbuckling elizabethan espionage romance. With memory loss, dueling, and a strong chemistry between the female lead and the main villain, it also seems good fair for a movie conversion. Can't happen to every good book, can it.
The Catswold Portal by Shirly Rousseau Murphy gets a negative review for trying to juggle one plot too many for it's length. Not a bad attempt, but needs a better editor.
Sahara by Clive Cussler gets a mixed, but overall positive review. Yes, it's terribly formulaic as a spy thriller, and doesn't quite have that bondesque elegance, but it does demonstrate how the espionage genre has a future in the post cold war era. Keep the popcorn popping, and the airport shelves full.
Fire in the Mist by Holly Lisle, like Jumper, is a first book from a new author that scores quite well by putting a distinct spin on familiar ideas. Gender segregated spellcasters and prodigies with incredible but not fully controlled powers certainly aren't new ideas, but when the delivery is at the right pace, and the worldbuilding is good, the reviewer isn't going to complain.
TSR Previews: So much stuff coming next month that they drop the this month ones completely. This is gonna be another loong ploughthrough.
The Forgotten Realms is focussing on the Drow this month. Menzoberranzan gets a big boxed set letting you adventure the hell out of it. Whether you play as Drow, infiltrator, or adventurer trying to attack (bad move if you ain't epic level) there's lots of stuff for you to take advantage of. Meanwhile, Menzoberranzan's most famous prodigal son is doing so well, his latest book gets published in hardcover. The Legacy sees Drizzt about to have his newfound happiness shattered, again. Onward, building up ever more Aaaaangst!
Al-Qadim experiments with the formula of it's supplements. Mini boxed sets. Slimline, with all sorts of odd bits and pieces. The first on is AQ1: Golden voyages. Follow in Sinbad's footsteps and lose your ship repeatedly. Invest your treasure wisely and leave it at home, for losing all your stuff is very annoying.
Dark Sun expands some more on the veiled alliance, in DSR3. The degree that all the city states have become rotten and ready for a good revolution becomes increasingly clear. The preservers are all over the shop, just waiting for someone to get their acts together. Are you that someone? It also gets The Amber Enchantress, book 3 in the prism pentad. Wait, what? Cleric quintet vs prism pentad. Settle on a name for your 5 book series. Not sure what to think about this.
Dragonlance gets a second introductory level module, DLQ2: Flint's axe. I suppose it fits with their obsession with prequels. You can still move onto the original epic module series from here, I hope.
D&D is quite busy this month, with several very different products. The Haunted Tower adventure pack sees them concentrate on undead, with another bunch of mini adventures assisted by a ton of gimmicky props. Now there's one that would be a lot less thrilling if I downloaded it in .pdf. PC4: Night howlers makes werecreatures available as PC's in D&D. Been quite a while since they had new stuff in this series. Cool. Not so cool is their saying the first D&D novel is out. Um, are you forgetting Quag keep and Trollshead back in the 70's? Looks like the current management have either forgotten about the early years of the company, or are a bunch of lying liars who lie. Anyway, The minted Sword by D.J Heinrich is the start of the Penhaligon trilogy. This is rather a mixed blessing to the setting. Do we really need more metaplot mucking intruding here?
Gamma world gets the Gamma knights boxed set. Wear powered armour and pilot giant mecha! I remember when Jim did an article on that, back in issue 101. Hoo boy. That's a substantial change from the normal playstyle. And it includes a boardgame too. This may be contentious.
Marvel superheroes celebrates spiderman's 30th anniversary by releasing a supplement devoted to him. A bit trickier thinking of stuff to fill this out than for the X-men or Dr Doom. Oh well, he's got lots of plotlines and a big rogues gallery. I'm sure you'll be able to get some useful ideas out of this.
Finally, it looks as though Buck Rogers' gameline is still limping along at the moment, with Nomads of the sky by William H Keith jr. RAM are still trying to dominate the solar system, and not having an easy time of things.
Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992
part 5/5
Forum: Alex Skrabut finds that the sense of accomplishment gained from worldbuilding pales in comparison to the amount of bloody work needed. He'd much rather just make it up on the spot as much as possible. Or so he says. Since he also wrote a computer program to generate a world's topography, I think the man doth protest too much.
Matthew W. Grieco points out that even most of the articles for specific campaign worlds are easily adapted for other games. This is particularly true of the Forgotten Realms stuff, which is pretty generic anyway. People grousing about them having no place in the magazine are just being lazy.
Kevin Costello thinks people are overestimating how hard it is to design a setting. Just draw a big map, make rough sketches of what's where, and then only fill out the areas your players seem likely to go to. It's easier than you think, and then you won't have to worry about players knowing whats coming up. (unless you leave your notes lying around.)
Jeff House reminds you that most campaign maps have plenty of empty space that you can fill to customise them with without departing from canon at all. Even a single city can provide enough interesting stuff to do for a lifetime in reality. There's just so much more detail you could add.
Barry White loves using both his own world and pregenerated ones, and the characters in his campaign regularly flip from one to the another. It's all good baby. We're versatile.
Lawrence Hurley is one of those in favour of using official campaign worlds. It cuts through the boring design bit and gets straight to the fun playing. It's also easier to improvise off a solid base.
Ross A. Isaacs would feel like he was cheating if he used a prefab campaign world. Stealing stuff from sourcebooks, even non D&D ones and making it your own, on the other hand, he highly recommends. Integrity is such a tricky thing to maintain, and everyone has their own line they don't want to cross.
Jim Gonzalez has two big problems with prefab campaign worlds. 1: Other players read them and know what's coming. 2: TSR blatantly favours some worlds over others. Yes, that's because they sell better. How hard is that one to understand? They are a business, remember. If you don't like it, just don't buy them.
Dragonmirth makes a dreadful mess. Be glad you don't have to clean it up. Yamara's enemies make a pleasing discovery. Oh paladin, what art thou good for? Meanwhile we have more romance in extremis in twilight empire. Couldn't you just go on a rollercoaster or something.
Through the looking glass joins in with the theme, unusually. Ral Partha give us some official Dark Sun minis to have a look over. Sadira, Neeva, Rikus, and a whole host of classes and races including the new ones like gith and mul are covered. They get 5 stars, being very faithful to the illustrations and lacking in ugly molding artifacts. Seems like another positive step in building up their multimedia empire. Now all they need is a computer game.
Lots of other stuff, as usual. A Griffon. A tower keep which looks like it may be the start of an epic castle for your minis to fight on. Some banquet tables with included chairs (that none of your minis will be able to sit on) and various bits of ornamentation. A rather cranky looking pair of middle-aged nobility that could well make good antagonists. A full selection of skulls on spikes to put around your evil overlord's base. A winged skeleton with a scythe that should put the willies up inexperienced adventurers. A whole company of goblins riding giant spiders, including a spellcaster. They also seem like a good market for skull on spike decor. To take care of the spiders before they hit you with instadeath, there's a company of elf archers. But they too will fall before the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua. As will some basic orcs which look rather boring in comparison to the last few. Funny how that works out. In any case, this is an above average selection to read about.
Drizzt finally gets enough prestige to go hardcover. See kids. This is what making angst glamorous can get you. Keep your eyes on the futility prize.
With the start of a classic column series, and lots of other cool bits and pieces, this is once again an upswing after a couple of rather dull issues. The focus on specific campaign worlds is fairly welcome and useful this time round, rather than being just promotion. And since the survey seemed to indicate lots of people like this stuff, we may well be seeing an increase in it's frequency. Roll out those changes folks, you won't regret it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992
part 1/5
124 pages Boo! Jesus christ don't disintegrate me it was only a joke! Clerics these days. No sense of humour. No wonder they can't get the congregations. So anyway, we've reached another october. And as usual, that means the boogeymen are creeping out from every tomb, and it's up to adventurers to save us all from doom. We've got a well worn formula going now, and all the kids would cry if it was cancelled. So let's show them not that monsters exist, but that they can be beaten once again. Even if they will be back next year. But then, recurring villains are more fun than an endless cavalcade of one-shots.
In this issue:
Letters: Another regular occurrance, someone asking if their old issues of the magazine are collectors items in any way. You might make a profit on them, but I wouldn't bet on it.
And someone complaining that there's too much stuff in the magazine that requires various supplements and campaign worlds, and they'd rather get back to basics a bit. Roger reminds him that even the stuff that has specific trappings is generally pretty easy to convert. Look past the labels. We do need our variety. If we made everything corebook only that would be considerably duller. Once again we face the problem that you can't please everyone all the time, especially if trying to cover lots of bases.
Editorial: The ghost of conventions past once again haunts us in Roger's editorial this month. Physically, they may leave a room with little more than a stale smell of sweat and mountain dew, but it's the memories you take with you that are the cool things. And the freebies and shiny new or rare books, of course. As usual with these things, the busier you are and the more you engage, the more fun you'll have. Course, being a TSR writer and personally knowing half the people there puts you at a substantial advantage. You have to do far less waiting in line, and can join in the really silly games. Certainly seems like they had no shortage of spectacular props this year, with cardboard castles consuming the booths, Aztec Mecha, people dressed as Drow, giant dice, mini cthulhus, balalaika, Spiderman and Jim Ward in a suit. Damn that sounds like fun. Another reminder that since I'm doing this in such a serious way, I really ought to get out to them, actually meet people in person. I will not go mad, I will not go mad. I will find ways to keep this entertaining 'till the end.
50 Castle hauntings: What, couldn't you find 100, then we could use one dice roll instead of breaking it up into 4 little tables? :p I suppose real world legends do start repeating themselves if you hit the folklore books for too long, just like everything. Still even with only 50, you're unlikely to exhaust this, unless your players are stuck in Ravenloft, where there's a crumbling castle with baneful inhabitants with tragic backstories atop every precipice. And some of them are pretty good, particularly the temporal shifts, which are full of stuff that you can't solve by violence and could have significant effects on the campaign. Yet another encouragement for me to fill large quantities of my own game with horror themed stuff, as you could come up with random weirdness on the fly for quite a bit before repeating yourself with this. Now what I need is a random castle layout generator, which would synergize very well with this. A pretty strong start to the articles, as it should be with the amount they have to choose from.
Mission: Impossibly dangerous: Forward we jump to do a bit of providing for the fast growing modern day horror market. Concentrating on the Dark Conspiracy game, this stuff is pretty much system free, but very strongly focussed on the setting of that game. It'd certainly take a bit of work to adapt to Shadowrun or the world of darkness. It does reveal quite a bit about the assumptions of the game, possibly more so than the actual review, with a definite emphasis on reactive mission based adventures rather than active player agency. This obviously isn't my usual style, but it does make this article useful to me on two levels, as well as being quite interesting reading and covering a game they haven't done before. Quite pleasing overall, even if it doesn't actually make me want to buy the game.
The dragon's bestiary has three new varieties of hard to pronounce undead for your delectation this halloween, courtesy of Spike Y. Jones. Just as with dragons, these guys pile up, year upon year. The horror, the horror, I embrace it.
Cariad ysbryd are one of the vanishingly rare varieties of good undead, who keep their wrath focussed on other violators of the natural cycle. What a heartwarming tale. Not everyone gets trapped in cycles of brooding negativity. Course, being undead, they do still have personal initiative issues, but we can work on that.
Memento mori finally give us an insubstantial low level undead variant for clerics to create as a guardian. Woo. With no long-term memory, and a very limited amount of power, they're not that hard to beat if you know their quirks. Better hope you have a supergeek player or some equivalent of 3e's knowledge rolls, since they're from such an obscure source.
Tymher-haid are our only truly malevolent delivery this time. Created when lots of people die together, they're vulnerable to normal water, so they don't tend to last long. Another decidedly quirky little thing that'll be as much a puzzle as a combat challenge. And doesn't that fit the mood of most ghost & vampire stories better than big ugly battles.
Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992
part 2/5
Welcome to the neighbourhood: A curious little bit of worldbuilding here, providing us with a few more city districts and locations for your players to enjoy. Consciously trying to avoid rehash, much of this advice is specific to D&D style fantasy, especially the stuff involving demihumans. Much of this is stuff you'd figure out yourself, so it's mainly useful in that it gets you to ask the right questions and serving as a mental checklist. It also has plenty of ecological and logistical thoughts, some of which are quite clever. Overall, I think I quite like this one, even if it's not as groundbreaking as it wants to be. Roger's still trying hard to pick out articles based on innovativeness as well as quality. It's hard to succeed completely these days, but you can come close.
Role-playing reviews I: Looks like reviews are on the up again, as they indicate multiple sets of them are to come. This is a slightly worrying development. However, a closer look reveals that the number of reviews in each one are fairly small, so it's just that the number of reviews is being spread around more people. That's not so bad.
Lost souls is a game of playing ghosts trying to resolve their problems. It seems to be both less angsty and more focussed upon living/dead interactions than Wraith, with everyday human blundering a big, somewhat humorous issue. With quick character generation and reincarnation, it doesn't look like long campaigns with the same characters would be easy, and it probably needs a few supplements to flesh out all the off-hand ideas, but it should be fun for a halloween one-shot. Which makes it the perfect kind of game to review this month.
Aquelarre gets one of those interestingly mixed reviews that reveals quite a bit about company attitudes. Lester wants to like it, but finds it both alien in attitude and far too heavy on the satanicness and nudity. We're trying to move away from that round these parts. As is often the case where they try and play up the noncommercialness of the product, this actually makes me more interested. What will the public really think?
Pentacle is a card game of dueling wizards. Summon nasty stuff to kill or drive insane your rivals. Hmm. Why am I getting deja vu? Oh, I'm sure it'll come to nothing. It's only some small press game. :p
The voyage of the princess ark: From the bayou to australia. Once again we see how real world cultures are stolen and jammed into Mystara in ways that don't entirely make sense. And guess what. Haldemar gets embarrassingly separated from the rest of the crew again, this time by being turned into a frilled lizard, and knocked out by a boomerang. Fortunately the Wallara shaman realizes the problem before turning him into dinner, and he gets taken to /ayers rock/ to get the curse lifted. During this process, he gets more psychodrama dreams warning about the impending doooooom of alphatia. Guess he'd better get back to warn the empress. The endgame of this series approaches rapidly. Will it be decently climactic?
For the 4th time in a row, we get stats for a new race, our chameleonic friends. Once again we have a new variant way in which they become spellcasters, and a decidedly interesting set of special powers. With their concealment and short range teleportation, they'd make a great scout for a party, even more so than rogues and halflings. We also get the usual geographic and historical overview. Forced into a state of artificial primitivism by an Aranea spell, they're a wise but fairly inoffensive bunch, at peace with the land, and their neighbours. As is often the case, events won't make complete sense unless you know about the immortal politics influencing the nations. While it's obvious where big chunks of the source material for this entry come from, it's still a quite interesting one, that manages to combine those elements in interesting ways.
Sage advice: Does the initial cost of a power sustain it for the first time increment. (probably)
Can you scry a place not known to you psychically (if you have a defined spacial relationship with it. You can't pick a named place if you don't know where it is. )
Do light weapons used telekinetically suffer THAC0 penalties (no)
How is animate object modified ( simply)
Are control body and life draining sciences or devotions. (use the place in the list, not the description text )
How high can flames go.( Not nearly high enough. )
How hard is creating sound (pretty tricky)
Does inertial barrier protect against magic attacks other than disintegration (only if it has a physical component to block.)
What's the point of absorb disease. Cell adjustment is quicker and cheaper ( Hmm. Skip'll fudge something up to hold them till we can retcon it. Skip suspects this may be like the gauntlets and girdles dilemma. )
Can you start regenerating with cell adjustment straight away (no)
Can you use body equilibrium while partially submerged in quicksand (sure)
Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992
part 3/5
Novel ideas: No surprise that with the first new D&D book released, this column promotes it this month. So say hello to D J Heinrich. He didn't have a particularly easy time writing the book, but it was worth it in the end. The fact that it's the start of a new line automatically gives it an extra degree of publicity it wouldn't otherwise have, and despite the battles amongst the executive, the D&D coreboxes at least are still good sellers. He's in a good position to make a profit, assuming they pay royalties on novels rather than commission fees these days. So lets hope he can keep the plot on track and finish off the other 2/3rds of this trilogy in decent time. A fairly typical bit of interviewing/promotion that maintains the optimistic tone while saying little of real substance. Neh.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms buzzes onwards. FRQ2: Hordes of dragonspear gives you a new high level adventure, and sneaks in some more setting detail. Get ready to fight some scary yet familiar monsters. The harpers also get their fifth novel. The ring of winter by James Lowder. Seeking a device that brings a new ice age in the jungles of chult? Makes a certain amount of warped sense. Someone who misses winters is going to want to bring one to a miserable steamy disease infested jungle.
Spelljammer is also busy still. CGR1: The complete spacefarers handbook brings kits to outer space, along with new PC races, and all manner of other crunch. Om nom nom nom. Can't say I have much of an opinion on this one. The cloakmaster cycle reaches book 4 as well, The Radiant Dragon by Elaine Cunningham. The big aspects of the setting are namechecked again. Is space not big enough to find some new stuff?
Ravenloft also has a load of bits and pieces delivered, in their case in a boxed set. Forbidden Lore has 5 little books, filling in setting and rules details plus a set of Tarroka cards. If your players are rules lawyering to ruin the horror atmosphere, this'll help keep them in their place.
Greyhawk also gets a new boxed set, in their case the new core updating things in light of their recent wars. From the Ashes changes a good deal, once again contentiously. Doing change right is hard.
Dark sun gets DSQ3: Astilican Gambit. Off to Gulg to be envious of the people who still have decent vegetation, and become pawns in some nasty intrigues. Sounds like it could get railroady. Just apply a few fireballs to mess up their plans.
Lankhmar gets LNQ1: Slayers of Lankhmar. A slayers guild? Man, that's so cute. What's this adventure like, and what do they get up too?
Dragonlance finishes it's current selections of short stories, with The War of the Lance. Yet more small perspectives on the epic battle of good vs evil. Every one matters in their own way. For we must all choose to be a heeeeeeroo, every heart must reach for the sun!! :epic guitar solo:
Our generic AD&D product this month is HR3: The celts. Another historical era gets lots of setting info and some crunch to help you play it. Seems reasonable, when you consider the number of classes that have strong celtic influence.
And finally, D&D gets AC1010: the Poor Wizard's Almanac. Like Oerth, they've been shaken up and moved forward in time. This means they can sell a whole load of books detailing the changes. Metaplot is now well and truly at full power, completely dominating all their settings. How long before it starts strangling them, rather than fueling them?
D&D, warriors of the eternal sun! I remember playing that. It wasn't bad, even if missile weapons were completely broken in the underground sections.
Give your villains a fighting chance: Hmm. This is an interesting and new observation. One interesting facet of lots of supplements coming out for a game is that they tend to advantage the players more than the DM, as they only have one character that they can carefully lavish attention upon, picking and matching the best bits from all over for greater badassery. This is doubled if the DM uses modules a lot, as they rarely give their characters stuff from supplements. This is an excellent reason for you to start drawing upon supplements yourself, and redress the balance. Yes, this is indeed a tricky one. If the designers do go the other way, then it seriously pisses off people who don't want to collect 'em all. And we know that'll become a very real problem in a few years. I suppose it's a good reason not to rely on prefab stuff too slavishly. Very interesting. This is a thread of thought I came up with independently back in the day, and it's nice to see it in the magazine. As games develop, new problems turn up, and you have to develop new solutions to them. And as a DM, this is primarily your job. Hopefully this is one that got people to step up their game in the past. A very good one to be reminded of for me in particular.
Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992
part 4/5
The marvel-phile: Sorta in theme, this month's marvel-phile tackles some of the more obscure giant monsters that have plagued our heroes over the years. Gomdulla, a giant alien mummy with an off switch on his foot who tries to assemble a cult around him where possible. Groot, a space travelling giant plant creature that can animate other plants to do his bidding. And Zzutak, a creature that stepped off the page due to magic paints being used in it's creation. All have a rather awkward tendency to cause mass devastation that somehow results in very little loss of life before being stopped. They may also laugh maniacally and explain their plan to the tiny pathetic fleshlings, but that's entirely optional. An above average entry, as it has both a decent amount of creatures and some campaign advice about creating and incorporating similar things into your game. They may not be traditional horror, but giant monsters are definitely a topic which can make for fun games. We probably have room for a few more of these in D&D as well.
The game wizards: Hmm. A second article on the playing of villains. What's brought this on? Still, where the last one was largely examining new mechanical considerations, this is a more typical roleplaying one, with a particular emphasis on horror gaming. Well, that genre does tend to have more enduring and compelling villains. Not sure why this is under this column, as it doesn't seem to be anything to do with official TSR stance or upcoming products, but it's certainly not a bad article, even if it is a bit short. Maybe they couldn't find one that was the right size in the slush pile, so they got a staff writer to fill the gap again. Another minor mystery for the ages, I suppose. Have fun creating suitably nuanced enemies in both the mechanical and personality arenas.
Forum is having another round of the sexism debate. As usual, this ironically brings a far larger proportion of female participants than is standard for this magazine. After all, if we've learned anything from sexist jokes, it's that women love to bitch about stuff. Still, I can't see violent protest working very well on this topic. Can we not just get back to playing? That'll work far better, really.
Caroline Bussey thinks that it's the shame that's putting girls off. You shouldn't hide your hobbies. The censure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Learn from the example of Oasis. You get less derision if you act like an asshole openly and then laugh about it than if you try and hide your depravities behind a saccharine screen.
Donna Beales thinks that it's bad marketing that's primarily to blame. That and the silly little things like pronouns and cheesecake minis that make women feel subtly unwelcome. You will never attract the female demographic as long as they feel patronised. Strange that this should be such a problem with a female CEO. But I supposed Lorraine :rumble of thunder, howl of wolves: makes everyone feel patronised. :p
Elysa Moulding gives us her own patronising story. Women don't take pleasure in bickering and violence for violences sake. Damn right, they have more important things to snipe at each other about, like boyfriends, shoes, weight loss and fashion. :p It's so easy to be cynical after a sex and the city DVD marathon.
Halina Adamski thinks all the women getting worked up over pronouns should lighten up. There may be real reasons for complaint, but this isn't really one and the fixes just look clunky. Just enjoy your playing.
Mathew W Hurd brings the male perspective to this. He doesn't see why girls think it's boys stuff that isn't worth their attention. Join in the games!
Helaina Martin attacks the ghastly cheesecake art. Alias ought to have died of exposure long before finishing her first adventure. The contents of the novels are generally better than the covers. She also attacks agism too. Kids should be allowed to play as soon as they can read the rules. Treating them like they're dumb will not help them develop skills and confidence.
Colleen Fireely praises Dragon for their persistence in tackling the sexism problem. I may grow bored, but you do need persistence if you want to make an impact.
Frederic Bush also brings up the agism problem. As a 15 year old who's been playing for 7 years, he feels quite capable of mature and nuanced roleplaying, and was rather annoyed to be told he couldn't DM at a convention until he was 18. Age ain't nothin but a number.
Steve Giblin goes back to the wizards sucking at high levels issue. They really really don't, unless you have no tactical sense at all. Learn your spells and what they're good and bad against. Your party will thank you.
Michael Thomas heaps disdain upon TSR's current family friendly stance. Evil is quite depressingly capable of working together and prospering, as the real world demonstrates. They're far more interested in money than artistic integrity! Well, duh.
Chris Roberts also thinks Skip's ideas of good and evil are stupid and unworkable. Remember how real world tribablism works, allowing people to be kind and compassionate to those in the in, while also classifying others as nonpeople who can be killed without a twinge of conscience. How does that fit into your alignment system, huh?
David Howery, on the other hand, supports TSR's family friendly policy. There should be plenty of evil in the world, but that's just to give the PC's a better challenge and make their victory more heroic. Choosing heroism as the default is a perfectly valid choice, as most books and movies do it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews II: The popularity of horror is once again reinforced. There's so much good stuff that Rick and Lester can both have decent columns full. Horrifying, isn't it. ;)
Call of cthulhu 5th edition sees Rick give it a 5 star result as it continues to succeed against the odds. Characters are a little more competent this time round, but really, compared to the creatures they're facing, they're still going to be chow soon. Everything else is just the way you like it. BRP has pretty much reached maturity as a system, there's lots of great adventures and advice on making your own, and the presentation is still improving. Everyone should try it at least once.
GURPS Horror 2nd edition, on the other hand gets the usual competent but dull result they give them round here. Pick your elements, and put them together. They're all there, it's just up to you to figure out what you want. You know the drill by now.
The Apparitions, lycanthropes and vampires sourcebooks for Chill get mixed reviews. The interesting design makes them fun reads, but they aren't hugely innovative. Vampires gets the highest marks, with it's large quantity of individual named vampires tackled, while werewolves comes out the loser, with ridiculous amounts of whitespace. So it's not just TSR that's using that to pad out their books then. :p
Interestingly, we also see the first hint of backlash against the IC narrator device, with rick finding it unhelpful and distracting in Van Richten's guide to Ghosts. Just give us the crunch. Hmm. Sorry, I'm afraid that's going to get much more frequent before it starts going out of fashion. Guess you'll just have to be ahead of the times for a while. That's one for the notebooks.
Dragonmirth has some ghostly romance. Some people just can't let go. What ever happened to till death do us part? Yamara gets rather swept along by events. This is what happens when the PC's are aware of the metagame. The twilight empire guys are still split up and not sure what to do either.
Through the looking glass skips the introductions so as to fit more actual minis in. Unsurprisingly, many are horror themed. Werewolf, wereboar, wereape? (don't see many of them in D&D. Who's idea was that?) A whole undead army including boss, minions and standard bearer to serve your liches and necromancers. A wraith, a mummy, and for those of you who want something a little exotic, a two-headed zombie ogre. If this lot win, then you can make lots of use of the Impaled Victim mini too. If you'd prefer your horrors to be the stay at home sort, there's several that come with their own homes. A mysterious horror busting out from a tomb. A lich lurking under a mausoleum archway. A gravestone with amorphous spirits seeping out. You won't be short of spooky setpieces to lurk in your dungeon. Plus there's some more skeletons and zombies just to make sure you don't have too many duplicates, and some official ravenloft figures, including various darklords, and a vistani dancer. And finally, just to redress the balance a little, there's a mob of villagers. They're totally going to die, aren't they. Tee hee. It's not like in the movies. D&D is not merciful to the overconfident commoner. And that sure aint changing next year either.
The reviews in this one are a bit weak, but otherwise, it's a very consistent issue, full of crunchy stuff that's useful for D&D, and advice bits that are handy for most games. Guess it's another instance of the regular topics getting lots of strong articles over the year for the editors to choose from when the time comes. Which means next year should be pretty decent too. You can always rely on horror to be a good seller, so you can always rely on them to produce it. Gotta keep making that money, after all.
Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Hmm. Composite anatomy is a problem here. If that griffon flaps, he'll smack his rider in the back and really mess up his lance aim. The perspective of the various bits and pieces doesn't quite add up, giving me eye strain trying to parse the image. It looks nice on a casual scan from the newsstands, but I can't rotate and inhabit this landscape like you could an Elmore piece. It's all subtly annoying. Also subtly annoying is that this is another generic wilderness one. Can't you focus on a specific terrain for a change? Or will we have to wait for 3e to do entire books on specific terrains to scratch that itch, which may be a bit excessive. Oh well, the sooner we do this, the sooner we'll get to those too.
In this issue:
Letters: Some commentary on issue 184. Surely that's Jack Nicholson! Nope. Purely co-incidental, dear readers. It is however, staff self insertion of the highest cheesiness. Surely they could at least have done something about his receding hairline and stubble, features elves are not noted for in most portrayals. Many photoshopped fashion magazine covers are less realistic these days.
Someone asking if the D&D cartoon is available on video. It is now! Don't expect any new episodes though. And don't ask us about a movie either. We'd rather forget about those days, frankly. It's too soon for nostalgia.
Some more amusing tales of dice quirks. If you have dice chewers in your group, make sure you have spares around. Uh yeah. :backs away slowly: I shall say no more on this topic.
Someone asking them to put godzilla monsters in AD&D. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of you. They've been there since '85's Oriental Adventures, unsurprisingly. Buy moar supplements.
A letter clearing up the confusion about pegasaurs and pegataurs. Roger doesn't hesitate to insert a little humour into the situation. Some of the most memorable ideas were produced by someone running with mistakes and making them into something new.
A letter praising Ed's new wizard meetups, and criticising their errors in insect anatomy. Roger can afford to be smugly tight-lipped about this, knowing he's got quite a bit of coolness in the bag to let out soon.
And finally, some more tedious weapon quibbling. Yawn.
Editorial: Paper is a fragile thing. A little water or fire and the valued work of centuries can be lost forever. Computers aren't much better, particularly while turned on. It's an interesting question. Just how ephemeral are the fruits of our civilisation going to be? What will be lost when the servers crash and the file formats are outdated? What will happen to civilisation once the fossil fuels are exhausted? If we don't figure out renewable energy now, it's going to be a lot harder for our descendants to rebuild technology. But I digress. Looks like there was another fricken hurricane recently, and some poor gamers have lost all their cool stuff built up over years. Send generously! Escapism is as important as ever in these conditions! It's at times like this I'm glad I live in the UK, on a hilly place, with my books split between two locations and my .pdfs triply backed up. (although not as regularly updated as I ought too.) The chances of everything I own being wiped out in one go are considerably less than my odds of simply being killed crossing the road or something stupid like that. (Touch wood) Anyway, maintain compassion, but avoid complacency, yadda yadda yadda heal the world, make it a better place etc etc. You know the drill by now.
The wild, wild wilderness: Oh great, here we go again. Another round of the "Don't underestimate real animals" line. Someone ought to make a plaque and put it up on the wall so you don't forget it, because all too many people still do. David Howery warms us up with another article that feels more like an extended forum piece, and is all very familiar in it's advice. On the plus side, it gives rather more mechanical support than previous articles to the various ideas like enhanced senses, ambushing, strangling, trampling and other tricks real animals regularly pull when fighting. So it's neither badly written or useless, but does feel like a warm-up. The magazine's getting older, just like the rest of us, and has to consciously try to stay in shape these days. Stretch, lunge, twist, thrust, squat, lift, flex, realign the vertebrae. Now can we go on a run to somewhere new please?
Deadlier dinosaurs: Apparently not. Instead it's just another look at dinosaurs. Well, they are currently experiencing another upswing in public awareness thanks to jurassic park, along with quite a bit of redefinition of what they're capable of. So once again David Howery brings that info to the magazine, updating existing creatures with new tricks, and introducing the rather unrealistic giant velociraptors that appear in the book and film, along with a trio of other large vicious carnivores which'll make your players lives interestingly eventful. Once again this is useful, and a good reminder of where we're at historically, but not particularly interesting. Maybe I should go watch some pretentious avante-garde arthouse films so i can recover my enthusiasm for fantastical staples like dinosaurs and vampires again. 6 hours of watching paint dry while a naked dwarf recites poetry about the destruction of the rainforest in french it is!
Bazaar of the bizarre: Ooh. Magic items aimed at druids. As they say, you probably don't see enough of them. Course, many others would say that's because they're so powerful they don't need items to be competitive, they can comfortably wander around naked and still take on a fighter of the same level with a well chosen shapeshift. But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of things that would be thematic for them to have. And they're certainly quite capable of making this stuff themselves. Are you going to tell them they can't have it?
Amulets of transformation let you get around your number of transformations limit, which is always handy. Being able to leave in the same form you arrived definitely makes travel more convenient.
Claws of the bear let you do the slashy thing without wasting a whole transformation. They also boost your climbing ability, which would not be the case in actual bear form.
Mistletoe wands (not to be confused with cameltoe wands, which are an april fool contribution derived from Exalted I'd rather not think about) substitute as a spell component, as well as casting a bunch of low level utility spells. One for those who'd rather not have to worry about encumbrance.
Rings of the Hierophants let you skip ahead of your place in the druidic order and gain the ability to shapeshift into an elemental form. There's only one for each element, and they probably get given to the most promising young druids. Just be glad heart isn't an element in D&D. :p
Rings of the little people let you fit right in with the small folk, shrinking yourself down so you can frolic in their mushroom houses. Since they also shield you from the majority of their screwage too, they're well worth the cost to get hold of.
Sickles of the harvest can act like a dancing sword, but it's real value is in automated plant-cutting procedures. Better to have something thats a good tool and a good weapon than just a device for killing in their line of work.
Square meal seeds are another item that gives you an easy meal if planted. Seen them before, will likely see further variants again. Yawn.
Wooden armor of the East lets druids set their AC a little lower than they normally could. After all, it is natural and nonmetallic. Just because you're true neutral doesn't mean you can't rules lawyer to your advantage. A fairly average ending to a fairly average collection.
Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992
part 2/5
The ecology of the Dakon: Hmm. Our first ecology in well over a year. And it's one they mentioned as being in their slush pile ages ago. I guess they haven't been getting any submissions on this front, and they couldn't hold it in reserve any longer. Slightly worrying, that. This is a rather odd ecology, not really following the standard format at all. They eschew fiction and footnotes for a purely OOC anthropological study. In another rather distinctive departure, they also open them up to become NPC's and possibly PC's, with proper ability score ranges and class limits provided. The writing isn't particularly good though, this is obviously not from a regular freelancer, and they slip into cliches frequently. So despite having some laudable aims, this is a very problematic little article. Let's hope this reminds the other freelancers out there to send some more stuff in on this front, because I've definitely missed it.
Sage advice is still specializing in psionics, for the third issue in a row. Man, this might be an improvement on 1st ed, but it's still got a long way to go.
Can a wish grant you psionic powers (probably, but no more than it can permanantly increase ability scores. Diminishing returns will soon set in. )
How do multiclassed characters get psionics (Skip laughs at you! Just use your psionicist level. Simple and easy)
Can detonate be used selectively. (no. Like other artillery powers, you don't use it in melee, or you piss off all your buds. )
Can soften affect body weaponry. (only as much as polymorphing affects lycanthropes. It won't work long. )
What are the stats for animals. (Buy the monstrous compendia. We aren't relisting them because a power refers to them. Gotta get 'em all. :teeth ting:)
Does metamorphosis let you move at the assumed creatures rate (generally, yes. Unless their movement is magically based rather than physical. No beholder flight, for example. )
Arcane Lore: Not enough spells for elementalists? Someone hasn't got the Al Qadim stuff yet. Add that to the tome of magic and Dark Sun books and they're exceedingly well catered for. We've already fixed low level necromancers here. I think abjuration and divination are the schools that could most use a little sprucing up now. But anyway, here's a selection of new elemental spells, many of which have offensive uses. No matter what element you picked, (except heart) you're not going to suck at fighting, that's for sure.
Wings doesn't quite justify being more than twice Fly's level, but gives it a shot, with an array of minor tricks based on exactly what kind of wings you pick. Still, compared to the powerful shapeshifting spells you'll get at the next few levels, it seems somewhat puny.
Airball lets you unleash an outward hurricane somewhere in your vicinity, keep a load of spare air around for emergencies, or possibly set as a trap for the foolish adventurer. There's a lot you can do with compressed air.
Windwar is your basic 9th level mini apocalypse, whipping everything into the air wizard of oz style and doing considerable amounts of damage to everything in miles. One that fully justifies it's high level.
Stone Sleep lets you soothe golems and mud men with a tuning fork. Since they're immune to standard mindfucking, this is one of those boutique spells that'll come in handy occasionally, like invisibility to undead or animals. Nonelementalists probably won't bother.
Stone Drill is your basic tunnelmaker. Slightly different from Dig, it's the same level, and both still have their benefits and optimal uses. Battlefield control, particularly when prepared before the battle, remains a very smart thing to do.
Searing Serpent is a ranged whip attack for when fireball wouldn't be wise. It can still wind up setting your stuff alight, so mind you don't burn down the room by mistake.
Flame Chase is another distinctively shaped bit of firey destruction. Slow enough to terrify rather than just bringing the pain right away, it's another one that's probably not the most optimal spell for it's level, but is good for the sadism. You don't become a fire elementalist without at least a moderate love for new forms of burning and blowing stuff up.
Liquid Orb is another spell which creates raw material, which it is then up to you to apply creatively. Since it can create liquids other than water, your imagination can get quite creative. But of course, it's always good against fire things.
Shark Bolt creates a whole load of mini energy sharks to nom the enemy. Now that's a nice visual. Even more nice is the fact that you can sorta parry them,
Steam Blast is a new 3rd level spell that actually rivals fireball and lightning bolt. Add this one and you'll have a cone shaped AoE spell to go with your ball and line ones, and brutalise the enemy with great efficiency. I strongly approve.
Deep Delve gives you a semi-permeable bathysphere so you can take the whole group miles underwater and still interact fairly freely with the locals. Pretty impressive really, and a nice one to open up new adventures. After all, there's some pretty weird shit down there. Who knows what the Aboleths and Morkoths are cooking up.
Power Word, Liquefy is a slightly weaker, but more gruesome variant on power word kill. And let's face it, it will make bringing the killed back to life a lot harder. So it's probably one you use to scare the locals rather than for fighting equals. Pretty typical of this collection, which is a fun read, but tends to err on the side of underpoweredness. Guess the game isn't going to be broken by incorporating this lot.
Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992
part 3/5
The voyage of the princess ark: Bruce takes a break for a third time. The progress of this series really has slowed to a crawl this year. At least we're getting filler material in the form of more letters and answers, rather than nothing at all. What have people got to say for themselves this month?
Where are the stats for normal demihumans. (Right there in the book. Normal demihumans are 1st level. Yes, that means every single NPC elf knows basic magic, and they're all half-decent fighters. Humans have to really work at it to surpass them. )
Is the create food table wrong (yes. So much for your army logistics)
What's the base damage for striking (none. When you do fistfights, you don't want to kill people)
All the optional rules in the sourcebooks are making D&D too complicated (Only if you apply all of them at once. And since they're meant to apply only to their respective regions, you shouldn't be doing that.)
Who are the guys on p148 of the cyclopedia (Good question)
Will you do maps for the new areas covered in the ark's travels. ( I hope so. It'll be tricky to squeeze everything in though. )
The amount of text in recent supplements is decreasing! Also, why are modules so much more expensive than Dragon magazine when they have way smaller page counts ( We pay freelancers by the word. So when Lorraine ( :Organ music, roll of thunder: ) said we had to cut costs, we decided to pass the shafting on to them. As for modules, it's an economy of scale thing. We have guaranteed sales and distribution for the magazine. We do not for modules. )
Where do Mystics fit in. (Like AD&D monks, not everywhere. If you really want to play them, there are enough places they could feasibly be natives of. )
Where are all the gnomes (Good question. Maybe they're all living underground right next door. )
Can Shadow elf shamen wear armor ( Maybe. As long as they also wear their robes. )
What happens if you cast continual light on a beholders eyes. (Depends which eyes. You can't cast it on all of them. )
What happens when an invisible creature eats (the food disappears. To do otherwise would be grooooss)
How the hell do dominion holders stay out of debt. There's never enough money to go around. (Welcome to the wonderful world of geopolitics. You're absolutely right. You've either got to keep adventuring to get more treasure, sell some valuable resource to other countries, or make huge compromises in terms of budget allocations. If you don't, the banks will be happy to lend you money at substantial interest, making things even worse in the long run. Hey, maybe this economic system isn't so unrealistic after all. ;) )
Forum: Dorian Loeffler sparks off a round of the metagaming question. You know, it's not metagaming when your characters can clearly see one option is more effective than another IC and choose accordingly. Still, that can be a fine line, especially when playing newbie characters with experienced players.
Lawrence Davison sparks off another issue, that of limiting your player's choices so as to give them a coherent background, and help find reasons for the party to get together. This causes pissy players, which is no fun at all. This is why you should choose not only the system, but who you invite to your group wisely.
Micael A Lavoie debates the same problem. You do need reasons for them to get along. These can be obvious or surprisingly obscure. Remember, often it's the differences people have that make them complement each other well. Good roleplaying goes a long way.
Russell Dewhurst thinks crossbows should be more powerful. Once again I yawn. D&D lowballs this stuff for a reason.
Andy Shockney complains at length about the imbalance found in multiclass demihumans and their various kits. Some choices are simply better than others in all ways. Something needs to be done. Yup, this is a fairly substantial problem alright. Good luck houseruling it to your satisfaction.
Nicholas Abruzzo complains that a DM expected him to play lawful good as lawful stupidly merciful. Ah yes, another problem that won't go away, and will eventually be "solved" by taking alignment out of class requirements instead. As long as there are bad DM's and players, people will disagree about morality.
TSR Previews: Ravenloft is their biggest export this month. RQ3: From the shadows sees Azalin exert his power to manipulate the other domains, using the PC's as pawns. Join the dots, and you'll see another big metaplot event approaching. Meanwhile, in Heart of Midnight by J. Robert King, an unwilling lycanthrope schemes revenge. Ironic vengance approaches for those who made him suffer. Will he give into evil in the process?
Spelljammer gets crossoverlicious again, in SJ6: Greyspace. See their solar system, and show just how much spaceships would change the nature of the war down on Oerth. This should be interesting.
Dark sun reveals The Dragon. Borys, the only defiler/psionicist to make it all the way to 30th level. DSR4: Valley of dust and fire. He doesn't need a city state. He just takes what he wants from the other sorcerer kings. Maybe if they all worked together, they could kill him, but good luck with that. Scary place.
The Forgotten Realms gets FR15: Gold and Glory. A sourcebook on mercenaries? Well, adventurers often run into them. Sounds like it could be useful.
Our generic products continue to resurge. HR4: A mighty fortress brings swashbuckling to AD&D. Dueling, muskets, mass combat, and various bits of renaissance technology. Have at you, power creep! We also get GR3: Treasure maps. Another way you can facilitate adventures, with prefab maps that aren't entirely accurate, leading the players into all kinds of fun.
Meanwhile, D&D is very much not generic. HWQ1: The Milenial Scepter. The hollow world is having it's own metaplot events, and you're invited to the party.
And finally, our standalone book this month is Half-Light by Denise Vitola. Some complicated intrigue and interdimensional strangeness seems to be involved. Hey ho. So many books, so little attention to give to each of them.
Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992
part 4/5
The lonely harpist and the lady rogue: Another set of Ed Greenwood NPC's with not a single ability score without a bonus. Dear oh dear. Looks like once again he's serving up a cheese dish a little too pungent for my tastes.
Mintiper Moonsilver is one of those high level npc's who's received a mysterious blessing from a dying plot device character that makes him near impossible to get rid of permanently. This of course means he's had all sorts of adventurers and seen more than his fair share of companions lost around him. This may cause a certain degree of angst, but certainly doesn't stop him from adventuring.
Asilther Graelor is a slave girl rescued by Mintiper. She has the terrible problem of not being taken seriously as an adventurer due to her attractiveness, which seems rather out of character with the general portrayal of gender dynamics in the Realms. This makes me go o_O a bit. What's going on here then? Is Ed starting to succumb to the dirty old man brain-eater? But he's only in his mid-30's. Really not sure about this, not sure at all.
Fiction: Dragon scales by Eric Tanafon. Another dragon hunting story with a twist. Two actually. Both the result and the method of said dragon's pacifying are quite amusing, resulting in a situation that seems a lot more sustainable and interesting than recent ones where dragons are a dying race. The humour is both clever and properly integrated into the story, and the danger seems quite real. I think this is another pretty decent result for the fiction department.
The role of computers returns. This of course means the decision on what games to cover in their limited page count is an even trickier one than usual. This isn't helped by the fact that the number of games released continues to increase, and the cost of systems continues to decline. Before long, computer games'll be overtaking movies, books and music in terms of profitability. What then? A tricky question when this magazine is supposed to be primarily about tabletop RPG's.
A-train is a rather challenging sim game of railroad management. Not too hard to start, but a real bitch to finish, especially as it isn't always easy to tell how near you are to failing. Expect to reload it quite a few times before you get good.
Battletoads, of course, is renowned for being tricky but fun, and these reviewers hew to that conventional wisdom. Keep on trying, maybe you'll make it in the end.
The four Crystals of Trazere gets middling marks. Overhead land adventuring, isometric dungeons, and the usual set of attributes, spells, treasure, etc. Just another party based computer RPG.
King's Bounty loses marks for an annoying copy protection scheme and wonky controls, but other than that is a decent enough strategy/adventure game where you have to build troops, fight monsters and find the macguffin. The kind of thing that gives you lots of resource management choices, so you can experiment with playing it through in different ways.
Super Space Invaders just gets poor marks because for all their gimmicky attempts to modernise it, it still feels stuck in the 70's. True nostalgics will probably prefer the actual original, and others might as well not bother.
Ultima Underword: The Stygian Abyss gets our second ever 6 out of 5 result, putting it up with Wing Commander as a game that both lives up to it's predecessors and advances upon them in terms of visuals, challenges and control scheme. Just make sure you download the patch for your inventory so you can store enough items. Ahh, the joys of the internet. Letting coders get away with sloppiness after the fact.
The marvel-phile: Looks like spiderman is once again suffering from foes that have complementary themed powers and work together to make best use of them. Deathweb, are a pair of gadgeteers and a mutant, all with varying spider themed abilities. This is obviously a bit embarrassing for your friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler, and the rest of the Avengers got involved in foiling them. They were eventually foiled, but they may well have achieved what they planned anyway, it's hard to tell. In any case, they're currently locked up, which means they can escape pretty much any time another plot has a use for them. :p Curiously, a quick googling reveals this isn't the case, and these guys have pretty much disappeared into obscurity. Hey, guess the system can work. It's only where celebrities are involved that it falls down, just like reality. Another fairly average entry in this department.
The dragon's bestiary: Still just about in theme here, with two wilderness based monsters. Kruel are corrupted (and rather creepy looking) fae things that'd fit right into either of the World of darkness changeling games. They can shapeshift, but have a tell that gives them away, and some amusing quirks of behaviour and ecology. Halfway between raiding goblinoids & trickster fae in function, They're another one to give your low-mid level encounters a bit more variety.
Pardal are another demonstration of Spike Y. Jones' talent for putting a new mythic spin on things. Big cats with hypnotic coats, they're actually comparatively weedy if you can shake off the hex and fight back against them, but if not, you'll be dinner. One that's a much bigger threat to small parties, as with any creature with a save or be temporarily incapacitated effect that then kills you while you're indisposed. They can also serve as magic item components or a pet for the more extravagant evil overlord, so there's plenty of reasons you could encounter one. Looks like he's still full of cool ideas.
Troubleshooting your game: Another article born from the forum debates of late. They really do pay for themselves in terms of producing stuff tailored to the current issues that are important to gaming. In this case, it's keeping the game from falling apart under stress. Annoying players can kill things all too easily if you don't nip them in the bud. What are we to do. You can't kick out everyone who isn't exactly to your tastes, or before you know it there'll be no game left. But you do need to sort out the twinks, the party disruptors, and the people who act like idiots without expecting consequences. Yeah, this definitely feels like a forum letter bumped up to full article status, albeit deservingly. As this is one of those cases where it's not that the article is bad, it's just that the information in it feels very familiar, I shall just chalk my lack of enthusiasm up to my own jadedness. Not a lot I can do about that, as far as I can tell.
Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews: Shadowrun second edition is our only big review this month. As one of the biggest and most groundbreaking successes of recent years, they've decided it merits a little more attention than a cursory review. In fact, it's so popular it's seeing backlash from pretentious purists. You know an act has it made when that starts to happen. :D Not that it isn't a mishmash of cool elements thrown together, but that's precisely why it's so successful. By blurring genres in a cool way, you can wind up picking up fans from both sides of the divide. Anyway, it seems that second edition couldn't come too soon, and has made significant improvements to the rules and visuals, while also moving the timeline along at the same rate as reality. It looks like you'll be having a good deal of fun with this, and isn't that more important than some kind of ideological purity.
Course, they've also managed to put out a pretty decent number of supplements too, and these don't go unexamined. The adventures don't come off too kindly. Only a couple of years in, and they're either incredibly formulaic Mr Johnson betrays the party plots, or metaplot stuff which doesn't reveal even to the GM what's really going on, promising to deliver that info in future installments. This is very deserving of snark, and Allen delivers with panache. The character and location books come off rather better, even if hackers get the obligatory complaint about how using their niche disrupts everyone else's play. The problems of this system were obviously fully present and spotted by other designers right from the outset. Still, it'll give you plenty of time to figure out how to overcome them.
The game wizards: Another perspective on convention season here for some reason. Thomas Reid follows in Kim Mohan's footsteps by telling the story of his first con experience. And it seems they remain just as exhilarating and bewildering over a decade later, if not more so. After all, gaming is considerably bigger now, and so the workload on the poor staff is pretty mental. Food remains likely to upset a sensitive stomach, and three days of being on your feet may stress the sedentary gamer, but these are crosses you'll just have to bear. The whole thing still corroborates Roger's story that plenty of fun was had there, and the TSR crew still have plenty of leeway to be silly in the way they promote the game and interact with the public. Just don't piss off Jim Ward. He's still got the murderous monty haul touch. Yeah, this series is definitely getting better at making you forget it's a promotional tool, with no obvious plugs here, just lots of fun being demonstrated. Come next year, my pretties, oh yess. We will have such sights to show you. :steeples fingers: Yup, I think I enjoyed reading this.
The role of books has an unusually high quotient of collaborative works this month. That's an interesting theme to choose.
The forever king by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy gets a rather negative review. A good idea is nothing without proper characters and execution. Yeah, we've heard that one before. Learn from your mistakes and hone your craft some more.
Knights Wyrd by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald also gets a mixed review. The fantasy and real world elements of the story don't mesh perfectly, even if some of them are quite good. Still, this is one case where the reviewers quibbles don't seem like something I'd have a problem with. Heros completely bucking the rules of their society and not having role models is a perfectly reasonable method of generating dramatic tension.
Catwoman: Tiger hunt by Lynn Abbey and Robert Asprin is a licensed batman book that doesn't make very good use of the property. With the titular character both poorly characterized and only playing a small part in the story, I suspect an existing idea of the author roughly shoehorned into the DC universe as a quick moneyspinner. In any case, the editors should probably have rejected it, or at least made some serious edits to make it fit with the other stuff coming out at the same time.
Dark force rising by Timothy Zahn is one of his licensed Star Wars novels. This on the other hand does manage to capture the right style and characterization. reasonably well. Of course, we know now what an continuity nightmare the EU will become over the next couple of decades, but hey, it's not all his fault is it. Except maybe Mara Jade. :p
The crown of columbus by Louise Erdrich & Michael Dorris starts a whole section of colonial books. (well it is the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America.) Trouble is, it's a rather dull one, with characters that the reviewer finds unbelievable. Again. Sturgeon's law in fully in place this month.
What might have been: Alternate americas, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H Greenberg, on the other hand is another solid anthology from the king of them. As usual, he's quite capable of both getting the big names in, and ensuring quality and diversity in the writing while staying on theme.
Yesterday we saw mermaids by Esther M Friesner finishes things up by going above and beyond the formula, producing something that's both experimental and high quality, while still being fun reading. Guess she knows what she's doing.
We also see Terry Pratchett mentioned here for only the second time. He's been busily adding to the Discworld series in the past 4 years, and is about to reach his creative peak with Reaper Man. Not that this reviewer realises that yet. Funny how that happens. I wonder if he'll ever get a proper feature.
Dragonmirth has a joke that actually surprises me for a change. The good guys start watching the events in their crystal ball this time round in Yamara. Meanwhile the plot seems to be simplified, but then gets a lot more complicated again in twilight empire. Shapeshifters mean you're never quite sure what's going on.
Through the looking glass: As with the computer games column, they have more than enough material to review here, so no point wasting time on preamble. A mechanical drill vehicle thing like the TMNT one to burst out of your floor and unleash who knows what enemies on the battlefield. A mounted chaos warrior and an infantry one, possibly usable in tandem. A skeleton riding a motorcycle. Heavy metal Death approves. A young dragon that has recently kicked the butt of a knight. A drunk guy. Not very impressive in the circumstances. Fortunately the town watch are here to escort him away. There are three different elf models from different companies, a couple of dioramas, another dragon, and more adventurers and monsters than I can be bothered to list. Yup, this is another bumper christmas. Whatever the state of wargaming, minis are still a thriving industry. Looks like this column isn't going anywhere, even if they seem to be running out of fun framing stuff to write. Let's hope they can find something to keep it interesting next year, because this isn't as varied as it used to be. Come on, give us some painting and sculpting advice again.
Another issue that feels very much like business as usual. Quality is as high as ever, but returning to the same old topics again and again does result in a feel of diminishing returns and filler. They'll have to get in a regular supply of new young players if they want to sustain the magazine in this style. I suppose it works for many companies as a business model. But it does remind me that I eventually lost interest for quite a while, and there was good reason for that. Oh well, I'll keep on sifting for forgotten gems anyway. Far too much invested to quit now.
Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992
part 1/5
124 pages. Speak of the devil. Larry Elmore shows up again this christmas to show us how it's done. And for once, he's not painting the same model :p That's a pleasant change. For christmas, it seems we have another round of roleplaying advice for both GM and player. Do they have any new ideas, or will it be the same old homilies to character building and respecting the feelings of others? I think I need a little something beyond the basics this far in.
In this issue:
Letters: We get a belated obituary for Fritz Leiber this month. Alas, we knew him well. Fare thee well, old rogue. Your legacy remains every time they run a collection of magical items here.
We also get an official confirmation of demise for Top Secret support. The writing has been on the wall for some time though. It managed a good decade of fairly regular articles, but the will just isn't there when the public buy D&D products in several orders of magnitude greater numbers. Bah. Must try harder.
A letter complaining about how kid-centric their recent survey was. See, it's not just me suffering from this! Roger admits that their current marketing policy is indeed to catch 'em young, trap them for life. But you do also need to keep exiting players for that to work.
A letter from someone who's forgotten who or what the thendar are. This also completely stumps the TSR staff. Fortunately, a simple keyword search allows me to solve this problem in a second. Issue 101, the creature catalog III. Ennuii ridden astral planar guys with galactus hats. I love modern technology.
Editorial: It's been a long time since you could send in an article to the magazine anonymously and have any hope of it getting published. Here we see them getting a little more bureaucratically entrenched and hard for a new writer to break into. Not only do you pretty much have to do the SASE thing if you want to avoid the norkers dressed as ogres eating your hard work, you have to ask them before sending in the article if they're interested. That should be pretty offputting to those of thin skin or short attention span. It may not be the best way to nurture talent, but as long as they can choose from dozens of articles for each one published, they can get away with treating their freelancers like a cattle market. Man, I can't wait for the internet to be adopted by business, at least solve the problem of basic return communications being horribly expensive stuff that we bear the cost for. This is exactly the kind of crap that makes people want to see big businesses taken down a peg or two.
That's role, not roll!: Or let's make that cliche a little more overused until everyone's sick of it. And gee, can you guess which side they come down on? It's not the side that kills everything and takes their stuff. Although they do warn you not to overdo the roleplaying, particularly when shopping, this is mostly encouraging you to increase your character's connection to the world, and player immersion. It's all fairly familiar, trying to get you to strike the right balance of danger, challenge, NPC detail, etc etc to make your game fun. And as ever, they can explain the equipment, but you really need to try out the tools and figure out exactly how much of each is ideal for your group and the current situation, because it'll always be a little different each time. So as usual when they get to the system free roleplaying advice, this is useful first time, but not so much for me anymore.
Be nice to your referee: And so we move onto some advice for the players. This is largely metagame stuff. Even if the DM is often the adversary within the game, that's all the more reason to treat them with respect IRL. Basic stuff, like showing up on time and calling to apologise if you have to cancel. Paying attention and not digressing into chitchat, reminiscences or mucking around on your laptop. Making sure food is sorted out before the game begins. Having all the relevant details of your character and their current stuff sorted out ready to roll. And generally planning ahead in a round situation while everyone else is going so you don't waste time when it gets to your go. If everyone does considerate stuff like this, your game experience will be both more pleasant, and a lot more will get done. In contrast to the previous article, this is one that is incredibly unambiguous in how to apply it properly, and has some ideas the magazine hasn't aired before. This is definitely one to take to the group and have a good hard talk about if your group isn't quite working as it is. Of course, you may need to kick out one or two of the worst offenders to really make sure the rest take it on board, but that's the kind of discipline you need to keep a group healthy. So yeah, this is a pretty good one. They've redone the basics, now hopefully they can fit some advanced tricks in before the issue's over.
Roles for role-players: The idea of a Caller and a Mapmaker are well established in old skool gaming. In a large group where each individual may well get limited screen time, the idea of giving players additional specialised roles to ensure they have something specific and useful to do increasingly seems like a good idea. In addition to the existing two, this article also suggests the idea of having a dedicated timekeeper, to help rounds go smoothly, and story chronicler to make sure everyone can check what went on without the DM doing all the work of writeups. On top of those roles, you can always assign players the role of temporarily playing particular NPC's, particularly when their actual characters are indisposed or the party is split. While short, this is a nicely limit-pushing article that should help you think more about the technical details of how you organise your sessions and ensure all the players are invested and involved in the game. Hopefully the forum'll have a few follow-up ideas for this one, as it definitely a cool one that's over all too soon. Easily the most useful of the articles from this themed section for me, as it isn't covering ideas I've heard already.
Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992
part 2/5
The wizards three: And then there were three, and another classic series truly begins. Toril, Oerth, Krynn and our own world are all represented now. How Ed's avoided being killed or turned into a small furry animal with all these superpowerful wizards visiting regularly I'm not sure. But his gain is also our gain, as we get to read the stories of him stuck in a suit of armour while three archmages bicker and exchange stories. Well, two and a half, as El and Mord would say about Dalamar. It's a hard life, stuck on a tiny little world where the gods don't let you go above 18th level, and there's hardly any CR appropriate encounters for you to try anyway. Everyone hears about the cool toys months before you do, and when people get famous, they move away and never come back.
Even more than last time, this also becomes commentary on recent metaplot events, with Ed setting this instalment after Vecna Lives, where Mordenkainen got killed in the intro. (Remember folks, always back up your memories regularly and keep plenty of clones in storage. :D Guess D&D and Paranoia have more in common than you'd think. ) He also refers to several other creatures he's invented, and other articles from this magazine, making this extra entertaining now I've read all those. And the new spells and magic items are incredibly mean, once again cementing Ed's ability to create tactically intelligent effects that screw over the standard countermeasures and further humiliate those attempting them. Since these are advanced techniques, you should be wary about using them regularly, and make the players really work to add them to their spellbooks, but it's still highly entertaining. He's not only lasted longer than most writers, but continues to go from strength to strength, just like his insanely high level NPC's.
Forum: Steve De Young thinks fighters are still a valuable member of the party, particularly at low levels. Yes, but rangers and paladins are still even better, and can get most fighter kits and a whole bunch of exclusive ones each. Reliable damage output and toughness is rather a one-trick pony business.
M. J. Simpson, on the other hand, supports the complaint that specialisation just isn't enough as a nice protection. Hardly anyone in his game plays straight fighters any more. Even adding extra incentives aren't doing the job.
Selman Halabi also thinks more needs to be done to make fighters interesting. Unfortunately, his solution involves removing more stuff from other classes, rather than adding it to fighters, which isn't going to make them more interesting now, is it.
William De Pretre, on the other hand is on the side that thinks they're a valuable, nay, essential part of the team. I can see this one running for quite a bit.
John Duffin thinks having a bog-standard class which is easy to master is good for the game. Plus, this means you can role-play them in pretty much any way that you like. He does have a point. Accesability is important, and doing one thing well can prove a lot more profitable than doing many things ok, as many real world businesses can attest.
Andre Costatini also thinks that the fighter classes openness is what makes them exiting. Remember, most real world famous people would be fighters, and they certainly weren't all alike. You can certainly follow in the footsteps of Conan or Robin Hood.
Rick Tazzle deals with the Swashbuckler problem in some detail, including a few new optional uses for weapon proficiency slots. You know, maybe that is part of the solution to the boring fighter problem. After all, they do get more slots, although probably not in quite sufficient quantity to make up for their lack of other stuff.
Michael Satran extends the debate by pointing out how much better paladins are than rangers. Since they use the same XP table, this isn't entirely fair. With extensive bullet-pointing, it's hard to argue with him. Still, I hope someone will take up the debate. I certainly think that when you factor in their respective kits and other splatbook stuff, rangers get more customisability than paladins, catching them up a bit.
The voyage of the princess ark: The team split up again in the final installment of the adventure. Haldemar takes a planar trip to get back to Alphatia quickly, leaving the Ark behind. This does not go quite as planned, but the diversion proves useful, as now he has solid evidence with his own eyes that the Glantrians are planning to somehow drain magic from the world. Not good. He tells the Empress, but she of course has to deal with politics. Here we run into the problem that their future is now predetermined, with Alphatia's destruction in the Wrath of the Immortals metaplot. It just hasn't happened to them yet. Bruce drops a number of rather obvious hints in here, in another case of the big setting reveal being spoiled where it probably shouldn't.
Meanwhile, back at the Ark, the rest of the crew run across the Phanatons. Despite being cute little gliding things, they still prove more than capable of capturing the crew. Proving that they are friendly turns out to be a rather testing experience, involving lots of spiders used in a rather witch-hunt-esque manner. Charming. Still, all's well that ends well.
Having covered a new race in here, Bruce of course elaborates on their history and culture, and makes them available as PC's. Since being uplifted by the immortal Ui, the Phanatons have been a persistent thorn in the side of the Herathians, given their tendency to hunt and eat giant spiders. They aren't the scariest race, but in a forest environment, they can be very effective, shooting things from above and gliding from tree to tree. Like Kobolds, they can take down much tougher creatures by use of hit and run tactics, poison and traps. They get the usual shamanic option, and here we see an AD&Dism creep in, as they get different powers depending on the specific immortal they follow. Are dwarves and halflings the only races that don't have spellcasting as a standard option?
And that's the end of the series. It really could have gone on longer, after all, there's the entire arm of the immortals and most of the southern continent still left uncovered. And up to a few months ago, Bruce certainly seemed to think it would continue. But I get the impression that the management didn't want the series continuing in the past when the timeline in general has been moved on, and Bruce didn't want to send them into the future again, to see the aftermath of their nation's destruction. After all, Haldemar doesn't seem the sort to take that lightly, and if allowed to continue as a protagonist, he might mess up the metaplot. And we can't have that, can we. Another case where a good series is hampered by overall management. Such a downer of an ending.
Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992
part 3/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another article following very directly in Ed's footsteps. Idiosyncratic magical swords? Of the Realms? Issue 74 would like to have a word with you, whippersnapper. As ever, the difference between a homage and a rip-off is purely a matter of quality.
Calathangas turns both the wielder and those attacked into wererats. This may or may not be considered a good thing. It also lets you control normal rats, which probably is handy. Better get practicing that control shape skill.
Dyerwaen makes you highly popular with elves and lets you fit into the forest as well as any ranger or druid. Whether you use that responsibly is up to you.
Equillar lets you change shape, can change it's own shape, blocks mind-reading and disrupts the shapechanging abilities of others. You can slice through intrigue with ease and finesse. Useful here, and even more so in Ravenloft.
Evithyan's Blade is an elven sword designed to kick drow ass. Like Glamdring, just seeing it'll have them quaking in their boots, such is it's reputation.
The Heart of Stone lets you cast stoneskin on yourself, and petrifies enemies with a crit. Cheesy or what? It does have a teensy little drawback, but that's only a problem if you don't do your homework. And I do so love putting players in situations like that, so I approve of this.
Ice Claw is an intelligent frost brand that wants to kill dragons. Don't we all mate. And with an ego like that, you aren't going to be saying no to it any time soon. Have fun being dragged along in search of foes to valiantly slay.
Neekar lets you speak and read any language. It's intelligent as well, so it'll help you by explaining the context of stuff you still don't understand, and quite possibly being a general right-hand diplomat whispering in your ear. A sword that likes preventing bloodshed? Next thing you know, we'll have an axe that encourages you to plant trees. :D
Nightwatcher lets you see in the dark, and alerts you if set properly while you sleep. Solo dungeon crawling is always a mugs game, but this is a good bit of gear to have if you really can't find a team.
Swords +2, shock blade add extra energy damage to your hits above and beyond their regular plus. Ahh yes, this became one of the great cheese exploits in 3e, particularly Neverwinter nights. Add a whole bunch of 1d6 elemental/energy damage effects (and permanant true strike if you want to be really cheesy) and the weapon becomes a lot more deadly for it's GP value. That's what happens when you put item crafting in the hands of smart PC's.
Swords +2, Vampiric regeneration do exactly the same as the ring of the same name. Not sure why they bothered to specify the exact plus, and that's easy enough to change anyway. Really, that ability could be applied to nearly any item. Not the most imaginative ending to the collection, but they all seem pretty handy anyway, and have enough quirks to keep players on their toes. It's much easier to follow a trail than it is to blaze it.
Shadow knight supplement for Amber! With lots of glowing quotes and a questionnaire. You don't normally get those for palladium products. :p
The role of computers decides to fill their page count with more smaller reviews. In the process, they stray ever further from their original remit to review things from the perspective that this is a roleplaying magazine, and the games chosen and criteria they're examined with should reflect that. Another thing that has gradually been diluted over the years to the point where it's pretty much forgotten without actually being consciously abandoned. And more cause for long-term concern. Complacency is a persistent challenge that never gets any easier to deal with, just like creativity.
Aces of the Pacific is a WWII flight sim. It's pretty easy to learn, and reasonably fun. But they don't give much info about it, apart from stuff on what your computer needs to play it, which is a section that hasn't got any shorter under their new format.
Darkseed gets another review driven strongly by complaints and system requirements. Annoying copy protection plus a crap instruction manual drag down it's marks.
Falcon 3.0 is another flight sim, this time more modern. This gets a little more detail, and a general recommendation, although they once again complain about the manual. They're computer programmers! They may work in larger teams than in the 80's, but the days of each program being a massive project with space and budget for dedicated music & manual writers is still a few years away.
Minotaur is a multiplayer fantasy adventure game where you're put in a maze and have to compete to find weapons, spells, etc to beat the other players and escape. Treacherous alliances and brutal deaths are the order of the day. The online arena is progressing nicely these days.
Prince of Persia gets 5 stars, kicking off another long-running series with a bang and much frustration. Once again they complain about the copy protection. If you lose the manual, you're in trouble. Play it on a console instead.
Red Baron is a third flight sim, this time concentrating on WWI. Man, what has this got to do with roleplaying? I suppose it draws on the wargaming link, but we haven't see much of that round here in years. I am left vaguely bemused again.
Fiction: Something familiar by Eliza Erskine. Another tale of wizardly hubris and comeuppance this month. You try and steal from a thief, and who knows what they'll do to get revenge. Well, the same applies to stealing from wizards, as we've seen before, so the results are usually interesting whichever side wins. As usual where magic is involved, the punishment is suitably ironic and quite mean. About average for fiction around here, which still means it's reasonably entertaining.
This year's statement of ownership shows another steady year. With an average of 93,371, and a last month of 93,545, it looks from a casual inspection have a consistent fanbase at the moment. Delve closer, though, and the number of subscriptions has declined by more than a thousand and a half, while the number of newsstand sales is down by over 800, and the surplus is a large number of undistributed copies. This is interesting statistically, if not that pleasing. They'll probably sell those eventually as back issues, but in the meantime they're hanging around eating up warehouse space. Another subtle sign of slow decline.
Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: Rick once again diverts our attention to the various board gamers out there. It is christmas after all, and we might want a little light entertainment for the kids. Whether you're a normal parent sneaking a look at your kid's magazine for ideas, or a gamer parent looking to subtly corrupt your offspring, I can see the marketing sense in putting this in here.
The Xanth boardgame brings his much-loved paedophillic punnery to a new arena. Pick a character, each of which has distinctive abilities, draw a hand of cards, roll the dice and head around the board. The number of options you have to choose from and random events that can happen keep it replayable for quite a while, even if it can be rather unfair and swingy. Yeah, sounds about right as an emulation of the source material. :p
Minion hunter is a board game based on Dark Conspiracy. As with the Warhammer minis games and RPG's, players are substantially more empowered in this, with a decent chance of actually taking on the monsters and no actual character death. It's another one that's pretty simplistic, and seems more intended to snag newbies than cater to existing players. Get it to corrupt your kids.
Greyhawk Wars gets the same marks, but a slightly more positive review. A war game for people who hate war games? Hmm. Trouble with this one is that it has so much hate built up over what it represents historically, it's hard to judge it for what it actually is. There do seem to be some wonky rules bits, but they make heroes more important than they otherwise would be, which is probably good from a dramatic point of view. It may have it's flaws, but it's probably better to play this and apply it's results to your game than to simply use the default timeline advance.
Battlemasters appears to be another highly stripped down game set in the warhammer universe, like Heroquest. Rick isn't very keen on this one, finding it far too simple and lacking in tactical decisions, but realises that his tastes are a good deal more refined than the average 8 year old. And it's cheap too. Perfectly positioned to appeal to the lowest common denominator and make millions.
Novel ideas: Christmas has certainly come for R. A. Salvadore. Drizzt is a runaway success, and he's about to release his 10th Forgotten Realms novel, with several more already scheduled for next year. This is a pretty cool situation for any writer to be in, but it has it's dangers. You risk burnout, ( Writing a whole book in two months, yikes!) and there is the persistent danger of your character becoming an obscenely powerful mary-sue who's near impossible to seriously challenge and impossible to kill off due to fan demand. But he does seem commendably aware of the dangers and unfazed by the challenges, putting him in a good position to remain one of their primary cash cows for some time, and also making him a likable interviewee. It's so much more pleasant seeing people live the dream when they're not smug superior arseholes. Another relatively good performance from this column. They seem more likely to produce useful information when not splitting it up into too many tiny chunks.
The marvel-phile: Another selection of pretty much brand-new characters here this month. Shield has a new team of super-agents, ready to kick ass and quite possibly go maverick to get things done. Ivory, who ironically is only moderately dark-skinned, and very resilient indeed. Knockabout, a pathological liar who treats life like one big game. Psi-borg, a latverian who may or may not be a double agent, possibly even unwittingly due to subconscious programming. And Violence, who lives up to her nickname quite effectively. The kind of team that you send out if you don't mind there being some collateral damage and unorthodox solutions to problems. Even Nick muthafuckin' Fury finds it a struggle to keep them disciplined. Another entry that's rather too specific to be of a huge amount of use, and as Steven admits, it was a struggle to find enough info to write about them because they are so new. If they keep catching up like this, they soon won't be able to run this every month simply due to lack of new characters. After more than 8 years, I think this gameline is approaching saturation. Where can they go from here? Without rehash, I'm really not sure.
Sage advice finally finishes ploughing through the bloody psionic questions. Skip is getting quite sick of them.
Is flesh armour cumulative with regular armour (no. Best of either, as per usual. )
Can prolong enhance ballistic attack (no)
How does phobia amplification work on PC's (either they cower like little girls willingly, or the DM will have to take control. No stoic badasses when you're being mind controlled)
How far can you teleport at the minimum cost (less than 10 yards)
Does Molecular Manipulation work against Body Weaponry (yes. See the shapeshifter caveats previously mentioned.)
How do you contest control body (opposed roll. Higher better, up to failure point. Weird nonstandardized maths. )
Do telekineticly controlled weapons inflict normal damage (with some exceptions. There's always exceptions. AD&D likes her exceptions, because she's a very exceptional lady. That's why it takes a badass sage like Skip to satisfy her. )
Does the psionics errata in dark sun apply to other settings (Yes. Buy it now, for an even more official gaming experience, etc etc.)
What happens to the hit points animal affinity gives you when you stop if you're damaged ( adjudicate each form separately. This can get complicated. )
Does reduction affect equipment (no. Hee. Tiny naked psychics, running around a dungeon. )
Does dream travel work if you aren't sleepy (if you have enough willpower. )
Is psychic drain permanent (if overdone. The rules for this are clearly spelled out.)
Does wrench make you vulnerable to normal weapons (Depends on the creature. Not everything is immune to nonmagical stuff because it's extraplanar. Try it on the wrong creature and you've just wasted a round in which it can splat you. )
Quote from: (un)reason;396873Our generic products continue to resurge. HR4: A mighty fortress brings swashbuckling to AD&D. Dueling, muskets, mass combat, and various bits of renaissance technology. Have at you, power creep!
I'm not sure if you mean "have at you, power creep!" in the sense that HR4 eschews it. If anything, I've always thought it made the "advanced" tech of the Renaissance a little
underpowered, if anything. None of it ever inspired my players to want to use any of it, but of course that's just anecdotal. Maybe it wrecked campaigns elsewhere. If so, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe I missed something.
Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992
part 5/5
The game wizards: Not only are they revamping the columns and submission guidelines next year, they're doing the same for the RPGA. They are trying commendably hard at the moment. Polyhedron is bigger, more frequent and higher budget. More contests, more tournaments, more support of games other than D&D (including our first mention of something called the Amazing Engine in these pages) more online stuff, more clubs, and tons of Raven's Bluff stuff to make it the most filled in city in the Realms. They certainly aren't stagnant or resting on their laurels. A reminder that at this stage, it's mainly the casual gamers that they're losing. As the convention stuff and statement of ownership shows, serious players are staying loyal and maybe even getting more involved as things progress. A distinctly above average article in terms of historical relevance, this is quite interesting and useful to me. This also serves as an irritating reminder that we still don't have a thread for Polyhedron, and I haven't been able to find back issues online in any quantity. Come on, surely there's someone reading this forum who's been a regular member since the early 80's and is willing to step up to the mic. If these page counts are right it'll only be a tiny fraction of the work this thread or the Dungeon one have been. Anyone?
Mind over matter: Ooh, a 2nd ed psionics article at last. All the sage advice and forum brouhaha has paid off. Rich Baker, who would of course go on to write a full sourcebook on this issue, helps you figure out what to actually do with psionicists in actual play. Unlike fighters or thieves, what they're really good and bad at isn't immediately obvious from a casual readthrough. And unlike wizards and clerics, you really do have to pick your powers wisely for maximum synergistic effectiveness, for you can't hot-swap them from day to day and draw on millions of supplements and magazine articles. Like Greg Detwiler's work on specialist wizards in issue 163, this isn't that big, but packs a lot of solid mechanical advice into it's paragraphs. Power picks, tactics, fitting into a team, DM advice, this is an end of issue filler article that transcends that status quite handily, and will be very useful for the not so mechanically adept indeed. And it's very pleasantly readable too. I can see why they picked this one up to be a regular writer. Two thumbs up.
Dragonmirth apples more modern sensibilities to medieval tropes. Yamara gets level training the hard way. Twilight empire has another battle scene that advances the plot. Well, it keeps things more interesting than if the fluff and crunchy bits are separated.
Through the looking glass: Tis the season to be selling, with this column getting nearly 8 full pages of reviews. Battletech mechs cut from last month's column. More big stuff that you can spend quite a bit of time assembling and customising, above and beyond the usual paint jobs. Some rather tall Dream warriors, with all the mutant surreality said name indicates. An Eldar tank for Warhammer, proving they can pull out some pretty big guns too. A Dragon trick or treating, which they really should have done a couple of months ago. A wizard kicking back and relaxing on a skulled throne and putting his feet up on a pile of books. An angel supporting a holographic image of the world. God, that technology really is advancing quite a bit at the moment. Still costs $40 to buy though. The Visionaries were barely half that. Plenty of cheap ones though. A barkeep, a female rogue and a man-at-arms all go for a mere $1.25, so you can grab them as an impulse thing to round out your cart. I diorama of barbarian violence. Gee, like you never see those anymore. A pair of well-armed centaurs. Plenty more barbarian warriors, including some official woodwoses from LotR. Some miserable straw pallets for a little more realism. An armorer's workshop. Some dwarf cavalry. And a trio of wizards with staves substantially bigger than they are. No, not compensating for anything at all, really. Ahh, the joys of trying to maintain anatomical accuracy in widely varying scales.
TSR Previews: As usual for january, next month is relatively quiet compared to recent month. It's still a lot bigger than busy months a few years ago though, showing how much the supplement treadmill has accelerated.
Dragonlance is the busiest setting this time. DLR3: Unsung heroes stats up all the stuff that's appeared in recent novels. Once again we see that the book line is the primary driver of this setting, and has been for some time, while the gaming merely follows. Also, they finally finish the Meetings Sextet, with The Companions. Just how many of the team will be together by the end of this?
The forgotten realms starts off a series that will become quite a lot bigger. Volo's guide to Waterdeep presents a different perspective to previous sourcebooks, with a much closer to the ground, more fallible narrator. Well, it helps keep Elminster from getting overexposed.
Our generic AD&D stuff this month is PHBR8:The complete book of mary-sue twinks (elves) See some of the most powerful kits, and try and persuade the DM to let them into your game, along with enough lovingly crafted setting detail to choke a dwarf on their own beard. They're also filling out more general NPC's. REF6: Rogues Gallery. People from all worlds and none. Will you be able to find a place for them in your campaign?
D&D gets something very similar. The character and monster assortment gives you a ton of new models to represent your creatures in battle. You can never have too many kobolds to swarm your enemies with.
Marvel Superheroes continues to release sourcebooks focussing on characters. MHR3: Avengers archives is of course all about their history, villains, home base, and other useful stuff for your game. Who will get the spotlight next?
So we say goodbye to the Princess Ark, and hello to the Wizards Three this month. That's a pair of fairly significant column changes that say next year isn't going to be the same as this one, even if their overall policy hasn't changed much. As is often the case, we get both great articles and not so good ones, familiar faces and unearthed stuff. We do seem to have an above average number of historical pointers and groundbreaking articles this month, so even if it's not all good news, this is one issue I certainly don't regret reading. Lets see how 1993's crop come out.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;397923I'm not sure if you mean "have at you, power creep!" in the sense that HR4 eschews it. If anything, I've always thought it made the "advanced" tech of the Renaissance a little underpowered, if anything. None of it ever inspired my players to want to use any of it, but of course that's just anecdotal. Maybe it wrecked campaigns elsewhere. If so, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe I missed something.
Your interpretation is correct. Most of the historical sourcebooks, including the Masque of the red death boxed set, erred on the side of conservatism, as they probably should have.
Quote from: (un)reason;398021Your interpretation is correct. Most of the historical sourcebooks, including the Masque of the red death boxed set, erred on the side of conservatism, as they probably should have.
I completely agree. However...I think they had good intentions, and the resulting books and boxed sets were very good resources, but in the end they just weren't very colorful. I wish they'd spent a little more space discussing legendary creatures and magic of their respective eras/cultures, and a few NPCs with stats would have been nice. Still, they remain useful today because they were relatively crunch light. It strikes me that many of them now could come into their own, since the current edition of D&D allows for entire parties of non-magic-using classes to survive and thrive.
Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. Another month another year, another set of special topics to fill. Fortunately, one of Roger's requests to the readership now yields fruit. African gaming! Yay! They're finally getting to fill that long neglected region in in fantastical manner. And it looks like they're covering some other exotic regions of the planet too. Seems a good way to start off a new year. How long will this resolution last?
In this issue:
Letters: A repeat letter from a soldier who got shipped out to fight in the gulf war. Roger remembers him personally, and is quite friendly, but can't solve his primary request. They have proper professional artists to hand draw their maps, not some computer program. No easy shortcuts via throwing a bit of money at the task here.
A complaint that Atari isn't dead. Maybe not, but they're certainly not a leading company any more I'm afraid. We certainly won't be making any more computer games for their systems, so there.
Errata attacks again! Because we can't have things with AC's above 10, even though the system has no particular trouble with it. That would mean normal humans aren't the weediest, most fragile things in the world. It's things like that that remind you how mathematically unrealistic D&D can be.
A complaint from a UK gamer that far too many of the things they advertise are only available in the US. Roger is apologetic, but there's not much he can do. Roll on internet ordering to close these gaps somewhat.
Another complaint about ageism, from someone who's probably been playing longer than the complainers. Keep practicing, and smoke their asses like a good prodigy.
A letter praising them for finally doing some Greyhawk material around here. Roger gets a bit snippy, pointing out the many modules and sourcebooks they've released in recent years. Ok, not as many as the Realms, Krynn or known world, but it's hardly been neglected ....... yet. And of course when you actually get greyhawk wars, you may well wish they had neglected it. :p
A letter asking if there's a mundane survival game. Avalon hill has something about right.
And finally a throwaway joke comment just to pad out the page. Just what the doctor needed after a rather heavy interrogation.
Editorial: Once again, Roger exhorts you to fight complacency in your own campaign. Visualise what you want your players to experience vividly and then throw it at them with gusto. The results will be far more interesting than just grabbing some monsters and having them charge along a 10' wide corridor at the PC's. And even if they lose, the results will be memorable. Remember, roleplaying isn't about winning and losing, it's the ride along the way. hand it to them on a plate and they'll be bored as well. It's also a demonstration of how to nick stuff from literary sources the right way. You can't control what players do, but you can control the weather, you can control what they encounter, and that gives you a lot of leeway if you know how to use it. If you can't scare them with all the tools at your disposal, they're insufficiently invested in the game. Fairly standard roleplaying advice here. If you want your world to be real, visualisation is a very good task. I use it regularly myself.
The dark continent: Off we trot to africa then. Or at least, a place as much like it as Kara-tur is to real asia. David Howery kicks things off with a brisk 9 page special feature, including the map and quite good artwork. Integrating it into your campaign, terrain, natives, appropriate monsters, environmental challenges, magic, etc. There isn't a huge amount of new crunch, but there is lots of drawing upon various supplements to bind things together. He takes care to avoid the monoculture problem, pointing out that it's a big continent, and there's plenty of different cultures and environments for you to choose. Ironically, despite being bigger than most features these days, it does still feel too small, but I suspect anything less than a medium sized sourcebook would have the same problem. It does compare quite favourably to the introduction to the Known World at the start of the Isle of Dread module as a skeleton to build on though. If we're very lucky we might even get a few more articles doing just that. Anyway, this is a pretty decent way to kick things off.
Arms & armor of africa: So we've explored the dark continent, and met the natives. What time is it? It's violence time! Nothing to do with racism, just to make things clear, it's just that we're adventurers, and killing things and taking their stuff is our job. The fact that we took the job because we enjoy killing things and taking their stuff is neither here or there. ;) But you can't expect them to just lie down and die. Wouldn't be realistic or fun. What unique weapons have the people of africa come up with? There's the usual knives, spears, bows, swords, axes, albeit adjusted for things like chopping through jungle, and paddling across lakes to skewer fishes without carrying two items. There's giant razors and boomerang/club hybrids. There's sickles designed to get around enemy shields. Speaking of shields, they have lots of interesting variants on them too, as since it's too hot to wear armor, you've gotta make the most of them. Using lighter, more fragile materials than metal means you can make them larger, more cover than blocking devices. They also have ones designed specifically to deflect missile weapons. And they reintroduce the idea of spending weapon slots to specialize in shield use, which I believe we saw in the forum before. Again, this is competently done, and not hugely surprising. What next. Some new mythological monsters wouldn't be a bad idea.
Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993
part 2/5
The other orientals: They've finally stopped publishing 1e OA material, four years into 2e. But they're still quite popular, and we've seen a few of the old classes turned into 2e kits. Getting the magazine to finish this off seems like exactly the kind of thing they should be doing. If anything they should have done it sooner. Kits are a whole world of easy articles they've barely scratched the surface of yet. So I strongly approve of this article. Lets bring them up to date, and maybe even improve on them mechanically.
Bushi are pretty much unchanged, albeit a little less larcenous than they used to be. As they were the straight fighters of OA anyway, this is little surprise.
Kensai get a slight nerfing, keeping their signature powers, but losing some of the peripheral details, which makes them more streamlined and less overpowered. Since they're now working on the same xp scale as everyone else, this is probably a good thing.
Sohei actually come of pretty well, as they keep nearly all their old stuff plus full cleric spellcasting. Ok, they only get 5 major spheres to choose from, but compared to the crap deal many speciality priests get, that doesn't seem bad at all, and makes them a good deal more balanced than the 1e (and 3e) version, which were horribly underpowered.
Shukenja are also probably a bit better than they used to be, as they get regular cleric HD, although they still can't use armour. Just don't expect to be able to work up levels without adventuring by hanging around healing villagers anymore.
Ninja lose all their multiclass wonkiness and most of their special abilities. Now they're just thieves with a few more tricks and a particularly strict guild policy. Since that's mechanical benefits for purely social penalties, that's still a pretty decent deal as a kit.
Yakuza become substantially easier to get into, and are also a lot less wonky than they used to be. Having the full complement of regular thief abilities and not being so district limited will make them more playable. Yup, I think I can say this article has definitely improved on the old versions both in terms of balance and playability. You can very definitely have a place in any game that I'm running.
Rhino's armor, Tiger claws: Another set of weapons of armour, this time with an indian slant. This really is turning into a very culturally diverse issue indeed. India has a more advanced selection of armors than africa, despite being almost as hot. Large metal overplates above another kind of armor. Bracers with mittens to protect your hands as well. :D Rhino hide armor, which is considerably more kickass than regular cow based leather or hide armor. Lots of interesting helmets, many disguised as regular turbans. Armless armor to help you stand the heat a little better. And a guard to keep you from being slapped by your bowstring. Now that's one you never hear adventurers complaining about. :p Lots of good ideas here. As with the african stuff they have several shield variants specifically designed to be good at dealing with missiles or melee weapons. The weapons are rather more familiar, enough of them have shown up in other sourcebooks that I recognise the names and what they do. Tiger claws, spiked bucklers, punch daggers, interesting picks, and all kinds of sword variants that show there's no one best way to forge a blade. The momentum is starting to wear off, but this still seems like a decent enough way to finish off the themed section. Which leaves this issue at well above average so far.
The Known World Grimoire: The voyage of the princess ark may be over. But Bruce Heard still has plenty more detail about the lands of Mystara to give to us. And far too many ranty letters to answer as well. It's a hard life being a developer, especially when far too many readers don't appreciate your sense of humour. It's also tricky thinking up all the ramifications to big metaplot events. Fortunately he can give official answers to those questions here as well. It does have to say that the new mystara seems somewhat darker than it used to be, with multiple countries destroyed or transformed. While I don't recall it getting as many complaints as greyhawk wars, this did probably cause a few problems to people's campaigns.
We also get a bit of promo for the Poor Wizards Almanac. Bruce freely admits that there are a few errors in there, and sets about providing errata. Tear out the map carefully, unfold it, and then stick it back from one point so you don't lose it. Whalers island is full of walrusses, not whales, so watch out. And mind the scales on the Isle of Dawn. All relatively minor stuff given the volume of information there.
And finally, we have another load of writing on demographics. Mainly useful if you're at the domain stage, and want to figure out your tax base with a little more rigour, this bit is fairly dull. Still, the whole thing feels less forced than the last few princess arks. If this change is what he needs to keep producing cool stuff for us in the long run, so be it.
Fiction: Djinn coffee by Allen Varney & Aaron Allston. Even more multicultural fun here, in a classic example of the devils bargain tale, courtesy of a genie and the slimy merchant who thinks they can get the benefits of unlimited wishes without paying the price. Hah. I think you can guess what happens next. The poor schmuck tricked into serving him finds a loophole, and awaaaaay we go. They have studied the form pretty well. With some amusing magical anachronism, snappy writing and easily visualised action scenes, this shows that some of our rules writers can indeed manage entertaining fiction too. Even if it is a bit formulaic, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993
part 3/5
The role of computers: The dagger of amon ra sees the return of Laura Bow. Once again, it's detective mystery time, as she has to solve a murder and avoid being killed herself in the process. With good visuals, particularly in the cut scenes, and interesting puzzles, they quite enjoy it, even if it's not as action packed as it could be.
Global Conquest is one of those resource management heavy wargames that can be played solo or against other people online. Build cities, blast the enemy ones, and try as hard as possible not to lose your king equivalent as if you do, you're out of the game no matter how well you were doing. Make sure you save regularly, despite the inconvenience of doing so, for it does crash on occasion.
Gods is an action game with plenty of puzzle elements. Beat up monsters, pull levers, locate keys, shop for weapons, it sounds moderately zelda-esque. No bad thing really.
Mission:Thunderbolt is yet another one that loses marks due to hard to read, easily lost copy protection. Blue ink on pink paper? Poor poor colourblind people. Bleh.
Pacific Islands is WWII tank based wargame. The vehicles take quite a bit of learning to drive well, and you'll have to get good at interpreting the (not very realistic) sound effects as well. Sounds like it'll put off casual players before they really get going.
Prophecy of the shadow, on the other hand gets mediocre marks for being way too simplistic. With a formulaic plot, hardly any character stats, boring combat and repeated character models, they really aren't very impressed.
Siege does a little better. Take on the role of the humans & demihumans or the monsters, and try and break into or defend one of 4 castles. It is rather slow though even on their system. I wonder how it would run these days.
Warrior of Rome II is yet another wargame. Seems like they're reviewing more of these than actual RPG's these days. Are they trying to hint something to the rest of the magazine? Nah. Surely not. Hmm.
The game wizards: D&D: Warriors of the eternal sun! The first D&D console game. Once again they try and penetrate a new mass market, with moderate success. You talk, you shop, you grind for levels, you have to go all the way back to get your characters resurrected. (and they have a nasty surprise for you when you get to the endgame in that department. ) you spend days sleeping in the wilderness miraculously undisturbed, you spam enemies with missile weapons in the underground sections and win easily, you have a dreadfully anticlimactic ending. Ahh, nostalgia. Pay no attention to the recommendation for a well balanced party. Two elves and two clerics'll get you through way easier. :p Have fun. Yeah, this a quick bit of straight promotion that I don't mind too much, as it does trigger good memories.
Role-playing reviews once again goes outside it's name to review other sorts of fantastical games. This time, Lester Smith tackles stuff devoted specifically to wizardly battles. An idea well covered in literary sources, and not modelled too well in D&D. It has yet to reach it's commercial zenith, with the epic battles of Magic: the Gathering, but it looks like there's more than a few companies trying this out in various formats. Iiiiinteresting.
Duel arcane specializes in the shapeshifting based wizardly combats where you play rock-paper-scissors with your enemies to try and outshift them. It has a decent set of stats to enable this, although extreme ratings in a few of them prove unbalancing. It also probably takes longer to create and upgrade your character than the game really merits. Still, you'll have no trouble differentiating them and a decent combination of luck and skill is involved in winning. Good luck finding a copy these days though.
Shapeshifters takes a more crunchy, wargaming based approach to the same idea. With a complex flow chart that controls how far you can shapeshift by categories of size, phyla and sympathetic relationships, and secret action declaration followed by simultaneous resolution, it does sound like there's quite a bit of system to be mastered. But as lester says, while it may work as a game, that kind of crunch works against the feel of the kind of literature it's trying to emulate, so it can't really be considered a success.
Castle of magic is quite different in approach. A board game where you compete to take over the castle, and hopefully the countries that surround it, by hunting down macguffins and facing monsters. The visuals aren't too impressive, but the game is a good deal of fun, with a nice combination of competition, diplomacy and luck. It seems well suited to going overground in a new edition.
Wiz-war 5th edition is of course one of the leaders in this field, with proper mass market distribution and so forth. It strongly encourages treacherous bastardry and sounds like a good deal of fun. It's multiple editions have honed the rules so they're usually both fast-paced and well balanced, and there's enough luck involved that no one person will always win. Is this one still going?
The role of books: The spirit ring by Lois McMaster Bujold gets one of those mixed reviews that results from their being lots of good elements, but not enough tying them together into a coherent whole. Stick to one or two main characters and plots! Someone get that woman a stricter editor.
Mage's blood and old bones, edited by Elizabeth Danford & Mickael A Stackpole is a collection of Tunnels & Trolls short fiction. It retain the playful trope subversion that AD&D has mostly lost by this point, and has some nice background notes and essays along with the fiction.
Tales of Talislanta, edited by Stephan Michael Sechi doesn't get such a good review. It's a mixed bag, many of which aren't very good, and no overall picture of the game world really emerges. Meh.
The price of the stars, by Debra Doyle & James D Macdonald gets a very positive review indeed. High speed sci-fi, full of action sequences that would require a huge budget to represent on screen, and characters that still have distinct likeable personalities, it sounds like a star wars beater. Oh, if only commercial success followed quality. Someone remind george lucas he needs other people to write decent dialogue.
Out of nippon by Nigel Findley embraces the genre switching nature of the TORG setting. Unfortunately, this involves him sticking too closely to the genre formulas of the various sections, and the whole thing feels like it was written on autopilot. Which is a shame, since his short fiction work here was so good. I guess it becomes just a job for everyone eventually.
Best destiny by Diane Carey is a star trek novel that does surprisingly well. Kirk as a young man is as rebellious and impetuous as you'd expect, and the plot manages to be much less shiny than the series while not betraying the details. It is of course probably completely invalidated by the reboot, of course.
Quantum leap, the novel by Ashley McConnell is another one that actually benefits from it's new format, with the ability to get inside the heads of the characters in their odd situations and challenges working quite well. It's also very handy for providing extra details that would be useful if you wanted to make an RPG around the quantum leap premise.
In an amusing footnote, we also find out that Laurel K. Hamilton has done a Star trek: TNG book. Didn't know that before. Oh, the slashfic crossover images that one raises. :devil: Oh Data! I never knew you were that modular and extendable!
Quote from: (un)reason;398510It is of course probably completely invalidated by the reboot, of course.
Not really. Nothing is invalidated by the reboot. It's a parallel universe, as mentioned in the film itself. The original timeline, and variations like the Mirror universe, are all still intact and viable.
Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993
part 4/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A bunch of primitive focussed items here. Just because they live out in the jungle in mud huts, doesn't mean they can't make stuff. In fact, chances are they can do it cheaper, by hunting down the ingredients they need directly. Underestimate them at your peril.
Headdress of peaceful conflict are another way to smooth out your encounters with faerie folk. Unlike our last two items with that theme, if you play in bad faith it stops working. Oh come on. Since when do fae play fair? Turnabout is only what they deserve.
Spirit skulls warn the shaman of non-natives and have a load of other divinatory powers. You can fill in the rest of the visuals pretty easily.
Ointment of mage-smelling lets you know how powerful other spell-casters around you are. Sniffing around people may raise suspicion, of course, but you can probably play that down as part of your savage nature, especially if you're meeting them on home turf.
Drums of menace spread ominous rhythms through the jungle well away from you. This gives a fairly substantial advantage to the home team in hit and-run combat, for the paranoia does not make you any better at spotting real threats. It doesn't have a save either, so it's pretty powerful.
Powder of images is another basic divinatory effect refluffed for cultural appropriateness. Do we really need this kind of basic handholding?
A Rattle of Exorcism is the shamanic variant on sprinkling holy water around the place and reciting from the bible. It takes aaages to work though, in which any demon worth their salt'll do something nasty to them. What works on tv doesn't work in D&D dear.
Masks of stealth let you pick locks, and make people think you fit in anywhere, even if all you're wearing is a loincloth and the mask. It's only useful if you're engaging in actions suitable to a nature connected primitive though. You get corrupted by materialism, and you're out the club. Captain planet, he's our hero! Yeah, this collection seems to have rubbed me the wrong way rather. It can go back in the pile.
Completing the complete bard: So they're finally bringing kits to the magazine in earnest. It's been 4 years, and we've only got one set before? Dear oh dear. I guess spells got the same treatment. The editors really have had to work to get people to submit stuff fitting the new edition's format. Anyway, this is another positive step forward. At least, it will be if they're any good. :p
Dandys are a bard tailored version of swashbucklers, complete with fiaty special benefits and hindrances that'll be purely DM dependent. And looking at the math, they'll turn out completely inferior to them mechanically after 3rd level or so. Unless you don't have the str to take that kit, avoid this one like the plague.
Outlaws are somewhat better, sacrificing legend lore, countersong and rally allies for increased thief skills and underworld contacts. This is probably a negative trade overall in terms of raw power, but not so much that it's completely untakable. Many people don't bother with those froofy knowledge skills anyway. Still, these two aren't as interesting or effective as the ones from the actual book. You're not missing anything by leaving them out.
Forum: Steven Roemer has found his game has died because his players felt they'd seen and done it all, to epic levels and back. No amount of supplements and worldhopping could freshen it up. So they've had to move onto other roleplaying games. They'll be back. :steeples fingers: just you wait. Sooner or later some of them'll get the nostalgia bug.
Robert J. Letts points out just how annoying Stoneskin is when the party wizards buff everyone up with it every chance they get. Oh yes, this is one that runs and runs, isn't it. Little pebble, big avalanche. Which is ironically a good way to deal with stoneskin. Lots of little hits are much better than one big one. Muahahahaha.
Sally A. Haynes is yet another person annoyed by the sexism problem. It should make no difference who you are and what your character is. And things like separate directories are just patronising. No thanks.
Amaryllis Roy takes another swipe at the ludicrous cheesecake outfits. Come now, have you seen the impractical things women wear in real life. I wonder if Dragonmirth'll ever have something like that, with Alias and Neeva watching a crystal ball together and commenting on modern fashion.
Malcom Wolter points out once again how generous TSR modules are with awarding magical items compared to the theoretical recommendations in the books. It's no wonder PC's can smoke enemies of equivalent level without too much trouble and monty haulism gets out of hand easily unless the DM makes conscious efforts to stop it. VE NEED STRICTER EDITORIAL COORDINATION! ACHTUNG! Yeah, this is a big problem, as I've found before. It's much easier if you don't use prefab stuff though.
Sage advice continues to face questions about the rules quirks of dark sun.
What stops a cleric from becoming an elemental. (Improper planning of your career path. One wrong level and you're gimped forever. And you thought we'd got rid of that when we revamped bards. It's even worse than prestige classes.)
Things you said would be in Dragon kings aren't! (Skip may be The Sage, but Skip still can't see the future reliably. Those bloody writers are always rewriting destiny at their whim. Plays merry hell with continuity, let me tell you. )
Do Dragons and Avangions take damage from psionic enchantments (yes)
The stats of The Dragon, and their general stats don't match up. (Hmm, should Skip shake down the writer, or the editor? Skip thinks Skip'll bang their heads together until their brains are all mixed up. That'll make sure they communicate properly with each other next time.
Avangions have contradictory stats in different parts of the book as well. ( Oh, for fucks sake. How the fuck is Skip supposed to be the fucking source of all fucking knowledge when all the fucking books are fucked up! Guess Skip'll just have to play fucking rewriter afuckingain. )
Can avangions and dragons hurt each other physically (They're monsters now, and they have way more than 10+4 HD, so they can hurt anything which needs +4 weapons or less. This is pretty handy)
Can Dragons use the special attacks other dragons get (Probably)
How do high level avangions cast spells with no limbs (Magic. That's the way to solve everything.)
I think some of the new psionic powers are in the wrong discipline. ( Could be. That's the trouble with edge cases. Someone's gotta draw a line, and not everyone's gonna agree wit that. )
Dragon kings messed up the gladiator advancement table. (So it did. Ignore that. It means nothing)
What happens to your wild talent when you switch to psionicist to become an advanced being. (you get to keep it, thanks to Skip's generosity. )
Why does Ranis Inilka get spells when Athasian bards don't (More writer incompetance. I dunno. We set you these incredibly strict rules for module submissions in the magazine, and then we give commissions to writers who break every one of them with impunity and still get rehired. Life aint fair. )
You make too many game worlds! (We certainly don't think so. If anything, Skip thinks we don't make enough! And as long as you keep buying our stuff, we will continue to produce more. Isn't that nice of us.)
Quote from: (un)reason;398814You make too many game worlds!
This is one of those perennial complaints against TSR that irritated me back then. It always struck me that the complaints were levied by obsessive-compulsives who somehow felt compelled to buy everything printed for D&D. I know that the proliferation of settings has been pointed to as part of the reason for TSR's eventual demise, but as a consumer I enjoyed having a selection of varied game worlds to choose from. It's essentially the same complaint we heard during the rise of d20 - too much stuff to buy and use! came the whining. Well, duh, just buy what floats your boat and quit being a completist.
Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993
part 5/5
Dragonmirth faces more problems, and sometimes solves them. Yamara gets traded to the drow. Twilight empire gets very weird indeed.
Through the looking glass: Last month Rick gave Battlemasters a slightly sniffy review. It might be alright for those common folks, but not for me. Robert, on the other hand is a lot more enthusiastic, as befits someone who's more invested in getting new people into minis gaming. The quality of the minis is good, and they're easily adapted to other games, with their multifigure bases working well to represent large groups of monsters economically. He rather enjoys the game aspects too, going into rather more description of the details of the mechanics. This is an amusing contrast. I quite approve. Which side are you on?
We also get a similarly positive review of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. The new edition is clearer and more complete, filled with more than enough minis to get you going, and a catalog to make it easy to decide what supplements you'd like. Games workshop really are a smoothly oiled machine, whether on their own or collaborating with other companies. It's no wonder they survived when the other wargaming companies fell by the wayside. Control the distribution and the games played with your products, multiply your creative freedom and take of the profits. Be your own master.
Our other minis this month are a pair of dragons, Bronze and Flame. Some assembly is required for both. And a bunch of dwarf signallers. I suspect they may actually be overweight gnomes.
TSR Previews: No particular game line gets to shine hugely above the others this month. Al-Qadim has ALQ2: Assassin Mountain. Another slimline boxed set, this is another one you can use as a homebase if you have an assassin PC, or as an ultradungeon to overthrow. If one of the characters is secretly a holy slayer, you can have double the fun. Muahahaha!!!
Spelljammer completes the trifecta of crossover with SJR7: Krynnspace. Now if there's a world that's hostile to interplanar interlopers (apart from the gnomes, weirdly enough) it's this one. Buncha hicks. Leave them to their petty squabbles about good and evil.
Greyhawk gets WGR4: The Marklands. See one of the most war torn areas of Oerth close up, discover the personal cost of the recent conflict.
The Forgotten realms finally follows Dragonlance into the short story business. Realms of Valor has lots of familiar names in the credits, but no detail on the actual stories. Any opinions on this one?
Speaking of Dragonlance, they return to doing trilogies. The Covenant of the Forge is the first of three focussing on the dwarven nations. Well, elves got a load of love last year. The equal heights commission would go mad if they didn't, despite elves being more popular.
Plenty of generic stuff though. DMGR5: Creative Campaigning helps you vary and spice up your games. We can always do with one of these, if only as a checklist to make sure you aren't forgetting something obvious you already know. HHQ3: Thieves challenge is another solo module. You'd better have jacked up the right thief skills if you want to do well here. And finally, the Magic Encyclopedia gets it's second volume. Now you have hundreds more items easily referenceable for the enjoyment of players and DM's.
D&D finally gets a GM's screen of it's very own. Like novels, it's curious that they haven't bothered with that, when AD&D's been doing them for ages, with several different ones for the various campaign settings.
And finally, our generic book this month isn't standalone at all. Valorian by Mary Herbert is a prequel to Dark Horse. Guess we get to see the backstory of yet another universe expanded upon.
With the new column, the new themed topics, and the new determination to actually cover kits in the magazine, this is a very strong issue, full of useful stuff that you can return to and use repeatedly. While it doesn't have any particular standout classic articles, the overall package is one of the best they've done since 2e started. Solid specific details, that's the way to move forward at this point. And maybe a bit more real world cultural stuff, as despite the billing, they spread themselves a bit too widely to really complete the african stuff. Hopefully Roger got some more articles, and'll parcel them out over the year. And if not, maybe this'll inspire the readers to send some more in. Not an impossible dream, is it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. As the cover hints, it's time to go out on the ocean wave again. Although not that much, as it's only 2 connected features, barely worth calling a special. Still, better that than letting some crap ones in just to use as padding. Hopefully they'll have room for plenty of other interesting stuff in the issue instead.
In this issue:
Gnomes and halflings have to share a splatbook? Shows you the low regard people have for them :( Low regard, Gettit? ;) I prove my own point.
Letters: Some questions about Yamara. Roger goes to the source and gets answers that are a bit silly. But you wouldn't have it any other way, really.
A whole bunch of letters from people who did remember what the Thendar were. Roger is suitably chastened that other people know more about his magazine than him. I guess when you have to make deadline each month, you don't get much time to look back and reflect on the past.
This leads neatly into a request for people to make an index for the magazine themselves. Since you have so much free time and we don't. :p Cheeky muppet. Oh well, at least there's some money to be made here.
And finally, a correction by Lester Smith re one of their recent book reviews. Oh, cruel fate, that misattributes me so! Yeah, getting the recognition you deserve's a bitch.
Editorial: Ha. This month, Roger talks about the adventures that got planned, but never carried out. You spend hours and hours building a scenario, and then the players go the wrong way, or the group breaks up, and it all goes to waste. Sometimes you can reuse the work later, but others, the scenario is designed specifically around your player's quirks, and just one of them dropping out turns it into a mess. Such a pain. And then there are the idle fantasies for a game in a system you never get to run, which also gets quite a bit of attention here. There is a lot of goofy crap in here, and I can see why they wind up not happening. Roger does have one bit of good advice though. Don't hoard your ideas, talk about them. It increases the odds that you'll be able to bring them to fruition, for they might suggest modifications that you can bounce off, or they might like the idea enough to help you get a group together to actually play. Working alone is far more tedious and depressing than involving your friends. Another fairly entertaining and somewhat useful editorial that actually covers a topic they haven't done an article on.
Monsters of the deep: Not exactly a standard bestiary entry, here we have an odd grab-bag of new monsters and adaptions of existing ones, mostly using abbreviated statblocks. Giant eels, super otters ( :D ) giant turtles, colossal tadpoles and a whole bunch of variants upon the saurian and whale body forms. Whatever their origins, they're big scary sea monsters that can mess your ship right up, and quite possibly swallow you whole. They're the subject of many real world legends, including, of course, Nessie. Yes, the Loch Ness monster finally gets stats in Dragon! That's an amusing turnup for the books, and definitely ups my rating for this article. With both plenty of subtle humour and a good bibliography, this is a very readable article that manages to venture somewhere new for the magazine and give you directions on how to take a cryptozoological campaign further. I think this is a pretty good way to start an issue.
Deep beneath the waves: From a reasonably amusing upper to rather a downer, as we get an obituary for the writer of this article just before it. While not quite as sad as Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's death in '86, as they don't have a load of previous articles for us to get attached by, there is a very definite sense of wasted potential here. This is both pretty well researched, tackling the real world physical issues of going underwater, the fantastical solutions to those, and the magical creatures and weirdness that could be added down there for your adventurers to encounter. Metallic precipitation, geothermal flows, bizarre creatures, there's both challenges and treasures aplenty to be found down there. With giant tube worms and clams among the new monsters, this once again has slightly amusing elements that help sweeten the extensive footnotes and bibliography. As with the last article, this is pretty good, and together I think they do actually add up to a solid special feature. Just don't keep losing writers, or you'll never keep this up :) :(
The ecology of the actaeon: Yet another departure from usual Ecology protocol, we have a BD&D specific monster this month. That is fairly pleasing. Is Bruce's effort finally paying off? Anyway, in terms of actual format, as well as writing, this is a return to classic ecology style, revealing the nature and powers of the creature, and telling a little morality tale at the same time. Given all the powerful supernatural creatures protecting nature, you can barely collect firewood without running into them. I guess you need them to balance out the ridiculous number of apex predators D&D worlds also have to cope with. Anyway, this is a solidly entertaining, yet not particularly ground-breaking ecology. I do miss the days when Ed contributed a new one virtually every month, throwing new lights on creatures and filling in little bits of realmslore as well.
Divide (VVVV) and conquer!: Never split the party, the first words in this article, and one of those lessons most teams learn pretty soon, especially if raised on a diet of horror movies. It makes you vulnerable, and results in players spending long periods of time with sod all to do. But from a plot point of view, sometimes it's the natural course of action to take, and then you need to figure out how to make it work. Fortunately, there are tricks to make it work better. Timekeeping is of course the critical one, as Gary knew well, and the rest of us hurriedly learned. Not that fudging to ensure characters have a greater chance of "co-incidentally" running into one-another again hurts in this kind of game. The other things are making the story interesting enough that people don't mind sitting around waiting for a bit, tailoring the adventures properly to the participating members of the party, proper use of cliffhangers, between session one-on-one interactions, letting players control NPC's, and figuring out how and where they're going to get back together. So plenty of advice I've seen before, a couple of bits I haven't, and quite a few valuable ideas I've often used on this subject missing. I think that adds up to a middling article overall, just high enough CR that I can eke out a few more XP from it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993
part 2/5
The known world grimoire: As with last month, it's letters and economics in here. Not hugely interesting. Let's get a-saging.
Are you going to fill in all the locations in Thunder Rift? (not officially. We have to give your DM a chance to exercise some creativity.)
The Rules Cyclopedia is just too good and complete! (Honestly, no pleasing some people. If you want to keep things from the players, get the AD&D PHB instead)
The artwork on your new introductory products is frequently crappy, recycled and inappropriate! And Thunder rift is pointless! And they're too expensive too! You Suck! (How are they supposed to know? They're only N00bs. We want to dumb things down so new people can get in gently. Never mind that things weren't nearly as simplified in our greatest boom period. )
Was Robrenn influenced by the Asterix books (Hell yeah. In the original french too. Well done for spotting that one. )
Your map keys are incomplete. I'm confused! (Honestly, most of them should be common sense. How hard is that? :p)
I'm sad that the princess ark series has been half filler over the last half a year. (Sorry 'bout that. Reality is a complicated and annoying thing. )
You suck for increasing your margin sizes to save money! (Once again, would you rather we raised prices instead? No pleasing some people.)
The economics talk this month covers population growth (or decline, if you really mismanage it) and exploitation of natural resources. These are of course intertwined, for as the population grows, it'll want to clear woods and create new villages, and'll grow ever more capable of exploiting things like mines and farmland. Bruce introduces some more fairly simplified subsystems, that'll do the job as long as you don't examine them too closely. Meh. This is all a bit uncomfortable. I have to wonder how many of the complaining letters he actually agrees with, and is actually using this as a means of making sure other people know about the companie's current missteps. Or is that kind of political reverse psychology reading too much into it. I'm really not sure these days.
The marvel-phile: Looks like it's sagin' time in here too. What with the actual sage advice, plus the known world grimoire, and the letters and forums, this does seem a touch excessive.
Send me the game statistics of ABCDEFGHIJKLMNPOQRSTUVWXYZ characters! ( Statistics are a product, not a right. You'll have to wait for us to put them in books and magazines and then buy them like everyone else)
How can I get The Ultimate Powers Book? (Search me. It's out of print, and we ain't redoing it. (Note, do not literally search me, or we will be forced to taser you and inform the relevant authorities))
Send me a catalog of what's available! (Write to the right department! We are not going to do all the work for you. )
How does power absorption work? (In the comics, however the writers want it too. Don't expect your GM to be so generous with you. )
Why does wolverine need to put effort into slicing up a sentinel. (again, game balance. We have concerns they do not. )
How does endurance interact with martial arts (Martial arts is the great equalizer. A sufficiently well trained fighter can even take on the hulk in a superhero universe. )
How can assassins gain karma? ( By doing other stuff as well to work off their debt. )
Do you get a chance to dodge when the other guy shoots you (only if you haven't already used your action this round. Yes, it's so unfair.)
Which is tougher, Wolverine's bones and claws, or Thor's hammer. (Thor's hammer, but not by an insurmountable ratio.
How can street level heroes fight thugs with such a big multiple attacker penalty. (sufficient badassery. Simple as that. )
I don't want to play a superhero. What opposition can I face? (Steal batman's villains. Plenty of street level stuff around really.)
TSR Previews moves back to the middle of the magazine. Ravenloft does pretty well for itself, with Van Richten's guide to the Lich, and Tapestry of Dark souls by Elaine Bergstrom. Some choose darkness, while others are trapped within it by the wrongdoings of others. Ravenloft welcomes and delights in tormenting them both.
The forgotten realms is also mixing game and novel harmoniously. Ruins of Myth Drannor opens up another boxed set superdungeon to give your players plenty of opportunities to level up .... or die. The Druid Queen completes Doug Niles' Druidhome trilogy. The Moonshaes restore peace and proper rulership. Until next time. :fade out to ominous music:
Dark sun tries to make an epic adventure to match the promise of the setting. DSE1: Dragon's crown gives you another chance to affect the world, that may or may not be railroaded to keep things from straying too far from the official history. Go on, let your PC's break out and become Dragons too.
Dragonlance continues to reprint it's glory days, with DLC2: Dragonlav(sic)ce classics, Vol 2. Aka original modules 6-9. Give us more money! Your gameline needs you!
Generic AD&D products do well for themselves. PHBR9: The complete book of gnomes and halflings sees this line start to run out of steam. They obviously don't think either little race has enough selling power on their own. How vaguely insulting. GA1: The murky deep takes us underwater to a lost city. Woo. Looks like they're having a resurgence at the moment. We also get another year's batch of collectable cards. They have obviously proved profitable as a regular release.
D&D gets The Knight of Newts. An adventure designed for a group to play even without a DM. I'm guessing it's pretty simple then, especially as it's only 16 pages.
Gamma world has another gadget book. GWA1:Treasures of the Ancients. How much will this stuff have changed from previous editions, given real world tech developments since the 70's?
And Warlords of Jupiter completes the Invaders of Charon trilogy. Buck and the 25th century logos are not mentioned at all. It's almost as if they're embarrassed about them. :p
Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993
part 3/5
The role of computers: Darklands is a particularly in depth medieval RPG, taking your characters from birth to death. This makes for an epic, but often difficult and grindy adventure. One for those willing to do lots of experimenting with character builds and open-ended exploring.
The ancient art of war in the air is a WWI wargame. Unusually for a flight game, it's largely overhead, and has a combination of formation and individual bits to challenge you. This'll require both strategic thinking and fast reflexes.
Goblins gets a short but positive review. Control the three goofy looking little creatures, each with their own unique skills to solve an array of puzzles. Plenty of humour and weird solutions to be found here. Flex those lateral thinking muscles.
Plan 9 from outer space ironically manages to be almost as bad as it's namesake, only without the camp pleasure value. It's just a tedious find the items to solve the puzzles adventure game, linear and dull. Unless you want to MST3K it in the forums, avoid.
Shinobi adds a bunch of new ninja tricks to it's repertoire. Not just a little dog, but a whole bunch of additional ninja become available as you complete the game, with their own tricks. Sounds like someone's taking lessons from mega man's school of reward design.
Alisa Dragoon also involves summoning the right creature for the job as you go through the game. Manage your blasty powers wisely, and beat all the monsters.
Spellcraft: Aspects of valor sees you building spells from scratch using an elemental based components system. Find components, buy them, experiment with them to see what can be done, and try to avoid dying. But even if you do, it's not the end, as you can escape from the underworld, and possibly find some cool rare items while there. The biggest problem comes from mixing your components in real time as the enemies approach, and getting off the spells before dying.
Forum: Thomas Vogt asks a very interesting question. What can you do to improve a sucky GM as a player. Yeah, that is one that could merit an article. Hopefully someone'll step up to that challenge in a few months time.
Paul Cardwell, Jr radiates his disapproval for the more hyperbolic elements of TTLG's argument against banning lead miniatures. There are genuine health risks, and you're being a bit petty simply due to personal investment. Can we just make a law that's good for people.
Cory Dodt finds that people are incorporating house rules from the AD&D computer games into their tabletop experience. You know, I have never strictly tracked material components or post death door recuperation times either. Chances are, they're not even thinking seriously about it. The system actually runs more smoothly if you cut corners.
William D. Sharpe III makes the slightly patronising suggestion that if you want to get more girls into roleplaying, you should just keep all the rules stuff behind the scenes and just actually roleplay. Cos maff is hard for girlz, hehehehe. :rolleyes:
Eyal Teler suggests that you make magic items with charges a good deal more common than permanent ones. That'll help quite a bit in keeping them from getting monty haulish in the long term, as they'll be regularly exhausting and cycling through items instead of accumulating ever more.
Alexander Dengler suggests the idea of a Ravenloft/Gamma World crossover. The mists seem to reach to all times and places, and you can incorporate a wide range of technologies. All are helpless against the Dark Powers.
Matthew Lyon talks about his worldbuilding experience as a new gamer. Not too surprisingly, he's used a hodgepodge of ideas from whatever he could afford to get his hands on. Perfectly normal. It's only once you have more ideas than you could ever use that you can really pick and choose and only incorporate an appropriately themed set.
Julien Hermitte likes to use film soundtracks to set the mood for his games. Those lyrics just get in the way. Classical music is good too, particularly the more bombastic Wagner stuff. You know, this is another topic we really haven't had enough of. For al the led zeppelin stereotypes, they didn't mention music once during the 70's. More please.
John M. Fairfield picks apart the earlier contributions saying psionicists are overpowered. They may not have many hard level limits, but the prerequisites and high psp costs on their nastiest powers keep them from being easy to use at lower levels. And don't forget the failure chances. Those can be pretty annoying in a pinch. It's particularly the case if you don't allow them insanely twinked ability score generating methods.
Role-playing reviews: It's a GURPS special! My oh my. They have been busy, not only writing various genre supplements, but also licensing out a whole range of properties, many rather surprising. How better to prove that their system really does everything, and if you like, it could be the only game you ever need to learn. Mind you, it'll take a fair bit of effort and money to do that, but at least you're not trying to keep up with AD&D's supplement mill.
GURPS The prisoner is one that seems like it would be particularly hard to turn into a setting, given the surreal and sometimes contradictory nature of the show. But the designer manages it, partly by making sure the toolkitness of the whole thing is played up. Answers? Hah. It's more fun without them.
GURPS Callahan's crosstime saloon is a bit easier to convert, but ironically winds up duller because of it. And the humour part of the show is a bit neglected too. Some things, even the most generic of systems will struggle to model.
GURPS Middle ages 1 shows that they realized right away this topic needed more than one book. It focusses on the english side of history, feudalism and chivalry, legal developments, wars, everyday life details. But as with far too many GURPS books, it's just a load of details. It's up to you to turn that into a good campaign.
GURPS Camelot gets much the same result, with the tension between fantasy and history being if anything, greater. How do you make it all fit together? Up to you.
GURPS Old West gets the best review of their historical sourcebooks, for being full of easy fun plot hooks, and generally having a more playful approach. Rick also approves of the way the settler/native conflict is handled. Plenty of adventures to be had on both sides.
GURPS Terradyne is one of their few full original settings. It combines corporate dystopia on earth with frontier space exploration, giving us a nice contrast between old and new. Quite hard sci-fi, it focusses particularly well on the technological and economic developments of the setting. Sounds like the kind of thing I'd like.
GURPS Space atlas 4 is also setting heavy, but is a bit system light too. This makes it particularly easy to mine and convert to other games. Combined with the previous entries in the series, and you have a pretty substantial modular future atlas for characters to adventure in.
Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993
part 4/5
Novel ideas: As usual for the first instalment of this column of the year, it's time to see what books are coming out over the course of the year. As you's expect, they lead with their strongest lines. The realms is getting a good 8 books, including 3 Salvadore ones. Not for nothing is he the master hack. Dragonlance is getting 6 novels, plus a rerelease of an old favourite. The people have spoken, and they want poetry! Dark sun, Ravenloft and regular D&D are getting 3 books each. Ravenloft is even getting a hardback, despite being the one that's skipping the trilogies and bigger series. They must be doing particularly well for themselves. Ahh, the joys of horror bringing in a different demographic to exploit.
Course, it's not all good news, although they try and spin it all positively. Spelljammer is finishing the end of it's only series, and they have no plans for another one. They've given no hints what's coming after this year for the basic D&D line Similarly, the XXVc line is limping out it's final products on greatly reduced print runs. And the generic line is not only down to 4 books, the same as last year, but two of them are follow-ups of previously successful stories. They really do want to cut their risks in that department. Still, overall that's 30 books mentioned, one more than last year. On the surface it all looks pretty stable, unlike last year, there's few major changes in their lineup. Whether that will result in diminishing returns for sales yet I'm not sure. Anyone with inside knowledge here?
Sage advice: Where is Zalchara ( I dunno. But if you want Zakhara you turn south at Toril, and keep going until you get past the pretentious guys with the skyships, then take a 45 degree turn left. You can't miss it, since it is an entire continent. If it's not there, go back a hundred years and try again. If it's still not there, then it's been retconned, and you might as well play cards in limbo with all the people punched by superboy prime)
What's the level limit for halfling sha'irs (10)
What do rings of wizardry and other magical items that boost your memorization ability do for sha'irs (not a lot, in most cases. Like a mule with a spinning wheel, your best bet is to sell it on for a good price. )
What's with the reference to segments in Wall of Ash (Another case of the writer not keeping up to date with rules changes.
Why are descriptions of the Baazrag so contradictory (good question. Unfortunately, Skip doesn't have a good answer, so Skip will give you two mediocre answers instead. Hopefully that'll be satisfactory.)
Tinker gnomes have been nerfed by Tales of the Lance! (Yes. We're subtly trying to keep you from playing one, so groups don't have to deal with them as PC's. )
How much damage does a sashik do. (It's a bloody kender weapon, so Skip'll take the least favourable option. )
I don't understand the cleric spell lists (They do need a bit of clearing up. That is Skip's job, so Skip will do it )
Reorx and Sargonass' turning abilities are a bit odd (Not all evil gods like hanging around with undead. And is it so wrong for some gods to give alternate turning options? Things get very boring without variety. )
The dates on the calendars contradict each other again. ( Tracey! Margaret! Please report to Skip's office on the double. No excuses and no lallylagging. )
High level sword knights can't fill up their spell list in one go. (Yes. This is an intentional bit of design. Lets them have occasional access to high level spells without stepping on clerics toes. )
How many legs do displacer beasts have (6, unless some were chopped off. Or it could just be artist incompetence, as usual. )
The game Wizards: Oh no. No, no no no no. Iiiiiiit's Volo! If you thought Elminster was irritating, you ain't seen nothing yet. Ed Greenwood reveals his new finely veined, not quite fully matured cheese on the public. The little gobshite gives them an excuse to revisit previously sourcebooked areas of the realms and give them a second going over. After exploring north, south east and west, introducing three new continents to Toril, they're starting to close in and eat their own tail. Come on, there's plenty of place still to explore, we don't need to go back to Waterdeep yet. And do we really need so much info on the eating habits of various places. I suppose there's still more in Ed's personal notes that'll never see the light of day, and they want to get them out somehow. I do wonder who suggested this part IC format though. Since Athas, Krynn, Ravenloft, Planescape and Mystara would all use it at various points in their life, it must have been pretty popular in the TSR offices. It probably got overused over the years, and this is definitely one of the signs of that. Not an article that fills me with warm and fuzzy feelings, to say the least.
Sounds of wonder and delight: Jeff Grubb follows in Ed's footsteps. In issue 123, Ed detailed the musical instruments of the Realms, now we get the same treatment applied to Zakhara. Most of their instruments are pretty clearly based on real world ones, but there's always a few weird variants. The vast majority of them are small enough to be portable, with stringed, wind and light percussion being the most popular families. Not too surprisingly, there's also magical variants. The nay of the Djinn, The Riqq of the Efreet, The 'ud of the Marids, The Rababah of the Dao and the Qanun of the spirits are a themed set of musical instruments. Each has a couple of minor powers when played alone, but if you can gather all 5, you can summon a genie army. This is obviously a big plot device to place in the campaign, and players and bad guys can compete to gather one, while genies try their hardest to make sure no-one ever does. I think that'd make a pretty decent central plot for an entire tv show, or at least a season, so despite the mundane aspects being a bit predictable, this is a pretty decent article.
Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993
part 5/5
Unique Unicorns: 'Ello 'ello. Wot 'ave we 'ere then? A full dozen variant unicorns, doing for them what previous articles have done for dogs, imps, dinosaurs and of course Dragons. Well, it's an ideal choice if they want to appeal to the female demographic more without being too obvious. And exactly what powers unicorn horns have differs from myth to myth anyway. That leaves them with room for quite a few variants, at least one for each alignment. Another fairly obvious one they haven't done yet, so yay.
Alicorns have a twisted horn, and all the usual powers plus charming and the ability to ride on air. This obviously makes them even harder to catch or kill.
Bay Unicorns deploy the dread power of shaky-cam to win battles against their enemies. :p Oh, and fire based magic too. They're not very nice creatures, and like to live in volcanic caves. Sounds like a nice surprise for people who think unicorns are all sweetness and light.
Black Unicorns are of course utterly eeeevil and will eat your flesh. They radiate silence, can both become invisible and generate darkness, and have poisonous horns. Way to bring on a cheap death. Poor spellcasters just won't know what to do!
Brown Unicorns read your mind and put people with hostile intent to sleep. Very faeish. I quite approve.
Cunnequines are shiny, and can turn undead and invert your alignment. Since they're good guys, they'll generally use that to make people change their ways for the better. Unicorn hunters really are biting off more than they can chew.
Faerie Unicorns are the perfect mount for pixies and the like. If their natural concealment and mind-control isn't enough, they can summon animals to help out. Good luck trying to keep them in a snare when the squirrels and bears are around.
Gray Unicorns are of course true neutral. In the interests of balance, they have that classic equalizer the ability to make you suffer any damage you inflict on them too. Once again the dramatic irony is strong in this one. Welcome to the justice zone, fae style.
Palomino Unicorns fill the LE alignment axis and have fire powers. They probably won't get along with Bay unicorns then. Natural rivals and all that.
Pinto Unicorns ejaculate shoot rainbows from their horns. How very very my little pony. They also generate illusions, making catching them a crapshoot between humiliation and death. Send all the twee lot to the Gray Waste.
Sea Unicorns are the equine equivilent of selkies, able to assume a narwhal like form or a horsey one. Like a disproportionate number of water monsters, they can control the weather, so expect ship-destroying storms if you mess with their herd.
Unisus are a crossbreed between unicorns and pegasi. Flutter Ponies! :fangirl squee!: Sorry, no avoiding that this is one of the most obvious cheese ideas evar.
Zebracorns take their camouflage abilities to a logical extreme by being able to shapeshift. They may even assume human form and walk among us. While not evil, they're as stubborn as natural zebras if you try riding them. They'll go when and where they wanna go.
As with the earlier sea monster collection, this is a nicely mythic collection that manages to both seem logically derived and still pull a few surprises, as well as having the just about right quotient of cheese for my tastes. I think this lot would be quite usable, really making people think twice about trying to hunt unicorns. Oh, the cautionary tales that would be told. Hee.
Too Bizarre to be magical: Looks like psionic articles are increasing in frequency. Another sign of their attempts to tackle neglected but needed topics. So here's a bunch of psionic artifacts. Since each one is intelligent and unique, there's room for a lot of them.
Devan's Force of Nature is a fake wand, with a bunch of elemental effects. It can be a real pain trying to remember convincing spell components, so faking a single command word is much easier. Unfortunately it's a bit of a homebody, so adventurers will have to put up with it whining about wanting to settle down. Ah yes, the danger of comic relief sidekicks. I suspect we may see a few more of these in this article.
Fleshcrawler is a playful stone that likes to shift your form. It'll be more likely to be beneficial if you actively ask it to turn you into bizarre and amusing forms. Yup, once again with the goof negotiations in a pinch. Psions need to get a better hold on their subconsciouses.
Ynilgeira's Instrument of pain and misery is a chaotic evil soul trapped in it's own ossified heart. It drains life force from people, and generally causes paranoia and misery. You know, you ought to just kill them. This causes more trouble than you'll ever get in benefits from it.
Malgovich's Portrait puts itself in the possession of politicians and manipulates it's way down the generations. I wonder if the Baatezu and dopplegangers'll suspect the paintings when they realize someone else is doing the subtle grandmaster thing on the same turf.
Mana-Ken is a nasty little voodoo doll that lets you mentally control and torture things, but then lets them free at a time very inopportune to the user. Another one that's probably more trouble than it's worth.
Tawnwater is an immortal psionic falcon with lots of psychometabolic tricks. It'll pick you more than you choose it, and join in in your adventures. How very literary. Roll on psicrystals.
Pennison's Light of Truth reveals the truth without pity or bias. This may make people uncomfortable when it's their dirty secrets being spread to the world.
The Slumbering Ferry of Al-Colgia is all about the dream travel. It's secretly a romantic, facilitating trysts and getting you back before the morning. Don't wear yourself out too much, and remember that your magic items are watching you.
The Arbiter is a silk judges robe. Enforce the law in comfort with telekinesis, body enslavement and disintegration. Unfortunately it doesn't have any information gathering powers, so you'll have to make sure it doesn't jump to conclusions and get overzealous. Yup, I think this lot'll liven up your game too, even if you don't have any psionic characters. Managing your intelligent items and familiar equivalents does make for fun, if sometimes goofy games.
Dragonmirth blurs the boundries between the eating and the eaten. Yamara gets kidnapped. And now for the news. :D Twilight empire finally starts making sense. But now he'll have to defeat his own wife. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAngst!
Through the looking glass: A collection of the weird and gruesome here this month. an alien that likes to infect your brain, and the rather startling final result. An adorable baby dragon and it's owner's warning sign. An alchemist mixing the wrong potion and a wizard summoning the wrong demon. Some cyborg commando mutant turtles, not derivative at all, scouts honour. A similarly cybernetically enhanced ninja, ready to sneak in and sabotage shit. An undead skeleton that'll lead you astray, will-o-wisp style, and a more conventional skeletal warrior. A truly awesome robot riding a cybernetic cat. Some boring zombies. Some very much not boring officialy licenced aliens from the movie, including facehuggers and queen. An also rather interesting cave giant plus trophies. And some amazons in chariots pulled by tigers. It'd never work in reality, but it does look cool. Still compared to the previous ones, unreality is the least of your problems.
Quite a few good articles in this one, but also signs of the larger problems starting to develop in the company management. The game wizards and known world grimoire stuff are particularly damning in that respect. The reviews were also pretty lame, generally being pretty bland in their methods and conclusions. When the end of issue filler articles from unfamiliar names beat those of the established regular writers handily in terms of entertainment, I think I can say that your formulas are becoming more of a hindrance than a help. Fight the system from inside, don't become just another cog in it.
I finally got a USB cable for my Kindle DX. This has allowed me to place all the Dragons from the Archive on it, which will make referring to them so much easier. This thread has given me the motivation to go back through the run of the magazine and re-read some stuff. It's amazing what a wealth of material it is, even if one no longer plays the editions of D&D from whatever given era a given issue is from.
Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. PETA girl (aka Robin Wood) provides this month's cover pic. La la la, sweet music and harmony between all creatures. Sparkly sparkly flitty flitty IT'S A TRAP! And while this may not be a themed issue, looking at the contents, there certainly seems to be plenty of faeish whimsy inside too. And more real world cultural stuff too. As long as the cheese is kept in check, this could be a great deal of fun.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter interpreting issue 188's editorial as a cry for help. Funny, it read to me as almost the opposite, saying we have more than enough people trying to help, so you'd better do it right. The reality is somewhere in between, as Dale gives a lengthy reply explaining himself, and justifying the inclusion of campaign specific stuff, as well as the ease with which it can be adapted to other worlds. This is a struggle that's going to get worse.
A letter on the issue of getting hold of D&D cartoon videos. As ever, they're more likely to do so if they think there's demand out there. Don't hesitate to call and pester them.
Editorial: Oh god, Paladins and the proper roleplaying thereof. There's another almighty pain in the butt people keep complaining about. You think it's simple, that everyone should automatically know what's right and wrong. And then people inject all these grey areas. Sometimes I think they're doing it deliberately just to try and annoy you into falling, as these situations are astronomically unlikely to happen in a real world situation. But I do know that I'm less certain about what exactly is right and wrong now than I was at the age of 3. And I also know that there are a whole load of choices that have very little relevance to your personal morality, and those are the areas in which even paladins and saints can have plenty of variety. They can't control where they come from, or what they have to work with, but they can choose their actions. And without evil around them, they'd have no need to be fighters anyway. Which means they might be lawful good, but they may well often be in conflict with the actual rulers and mores of the land, which are not nearly so virtuous. Damnitt, I guess it really is that complicated. It's at time like this you wish you could just wander around using detect evil and mowing down everyone who pings as positive. So this seems like the kind of thing that's likely to stir up more forum debate than settle it. I guess Roger's got to keep people engaged and writing in somehow. I think this is a reasonable success if that was his goal.
Horses are people too: Horseys again! Well, the last time they gave them serious attention was 1989. Not at all an unwarranted topic, given how important they were to real world medieval society. This is mostly comprised of a slew of random tables for quickly individualising any encountered horse in appearance, personality and capabilities. This is mostly what you'd expect, with a few amusing surprises thrown in. ( I didn't know you could teach horses to moonwalk. :D ) As with most of these random tables, it should help you keep things moving in actual play quite a bit, but isn't that interesting to read. So I guess this is more of a warmup first feature than a straight off spectacular. Let's try and bring this up to a canter for the next article.
Open your mind: Psionicist kits! Now there's a much needed article. This one goes for an interesting mix of adding new kits, and adapting existing ones from the other Complete Handbooks. Many of the special benefits and penalties can be applied to another class without the game breaking, and this helps further blur the roles characters can play. Once again, the deryni get mentioned as well. It's certainly not a complete collection, but this should spur people's imaginations. and help them customise their characters. Hopefully there are some more to come in the future.
Berranie Seers are psychic gypsies. They favor the traditional mind-affecting and divination psychic powers, and justify people's suspicion of them with access to rogue proficiencies. Way to pander to stereotypes.
Thought Agents are easily the biggest and most customised kit of the bunch, with a whole variety of minor special benefits depending on if you want to be a nice guy or a mindreading fascist enforcer. Yeah, that's a perfect job for a psionicist. What fosters justice like reading minds and spying on people in their bedrooms?
Ascetic Warriors are psionic Monks. They get moderate unarmed combat bonuses at the cost of armour and wealth restrictions. Sounds about right, if very unimaginative. You'd rather still be back in 1e, wouldn't you.
Healers try and give clerics a run for their money. That'll please quite a few parties sick of the proselytising. Course, the oath of pacifism thing may be almost as irritating to groups who just want to hack and slash. That's the kind of thing you'll just have to resolve IC. So these kits are definitely on the lower key end of things, like the first few splatbooks. You won't be encountering many problems, but at the same time, they won't revolutionise your playing either.
Rifts England! Druids and new camelot bring hope in a dangerous world :rolleyes:
The elven pantheon - Completed!: A little bit of cut material here. For various reasons, Rillifane Rallathil fell through the cracks in the editing of monster mythology, and so there were still mentions of him, but we never got his actual stats and specialty priest details. Since we already got alternate updated stats for him in issue 176, this isn't such a big deal for regular collectors of the magazine, but here we go anyway. And as before, there are some pretty substantial differences between the two interpretations, in requirements, restrictions and granted powers. Curiously, I think I actually prefer this one this time around. While both versions have substantial similarities with druids, the granted powers are more distinctive in this one, and set them apart better. Plus of course, there's the Avatar stats. So this is a fairly handy little bit o' filler from the official writers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993
part 2/5
Different totes for different folks: A second load of lists and tables this month, courtesy of Vince Garcia. This initially seems like just a reprint of the PHB equipment tables with a few additions, but it's actually a lot cleverer than that. It then provides you with sample standard equipment lists for each of the major classes. This is very handy, both for getting your character up and running initially without all that faffing around shopping, and in allowing us to analyze the differences in needs of the classes. Elves come off worse by a long shot, with their multiclassed natures conspiring against them to really eat up their funds, and their spellbooks being shockingly big and heavy. Nature oriented types like druids also require a surprisingly bulky and complex set of equipment, at least until they're powerful enough to live off the land comfortably via magic. In most cases, a week's rations is one of the bulkiest parts of your gear, showing up just how inconvenient being an adventurer can be. A timely reminder that 50 pound loads are actually a pretty big hassle to carry, let alone fight in. It's also significant in that this kind of list became standard in 3e, with one for each class along with the default skill and feat picks. So this is one of those articles that is a lot more impressive than first glance would indicate. Very much one for the historical notes.
An African Genesis: Our african renaissance this year continues with an article on their gods, complete with full speciality priest stats. Like Kits, this is a rich ground for new crunch that they're only now starting to exploit to it's full potential. Since I seem to get more written when I break these things up, I think I'll do do here as well. Let's see how well designed these godly renditions are.
Olurun is one of your creator/sky deities, who has since become distant from humanity. This makes his clerics quite rare, and with restrictions that keep them from being adventurers. With flight powers, they'll have little difficulty maintaining their distance from humanity as well.
Otabala is Olurun's earthly counterpart, who's priests are a lot more involved in the community, and frequently rather wealthy, thanks to the smithing/creativity sides of his portfolio. With the ability to cast all earth related spells at double size and duration, his clerics can be pretty badass battlefield controllers. It'd be a pleasure to have one onboard.
Orunmilla presides over the spirit world. With nearly free mindreading, and a hugely expanded range of other divination spells, plus 4 free nonweapon proficiencies, her clerics are another group with abilities that are quite powerful, but'll still give them a distinctive approach.
Olokun is a rather unpleasant goddess of the sea. Like so many of them, she seems likely to send storms and sink ships if not properly appeased. Unsurprisingly, her clerics are highly focussed on water spells, and also have a strong piratical bent, raiding and slaving. They sound like a good choice for adversaries.
Ala is the goddess of the circle of life, giving her clerics enhanced powers over both sex and death. Man, regular necromancers attract enough fangirl goths. Just HOW much action will these clerics get if they use their position properly? And on top of that, they get druidlike shapechanging too at higher level. Yeah, these'll be a wet dream to certain players.
Eshu is our travelling taleteller and trickster, well known to Changeling players. His clerics have the interesting distinction of being forbidden to do anything for someone else for free. With minor roguish abilities, luck manipulation, and telepathic emergency messages, they aren't as powerful as many of the preceding priests, but are still eminently PCable.
Shango is the god of storms, and like the goddess of the sea, is violent and unpredictable. His clerics also have quite nasty necromantic abilities along with the expected electrical attacks. You can expect them to terrorise places with dramatic thunderclouds behind and maniacal laughs. A very playable collection, if a touch more powerful than most of the ones from Legends & Lore and the Complete Priests Handbook. They might even be competitive with ordinary clerics and druids :p The lack of access to Tome of Magic spheres is a bit on an oversight, and of course, this barely scratches the surface of the deities of Africa, but it's more than good enough for now. Like the psionicist kits, I hope we have a few more instalments in this vein to come.
Forum is fairly small this month. Erol K Bayburst has an interesting compromise on the mapping precise dimensions problem. Tell them precisely what's going on, but don't let them record it in detail until later. Having a mapmaker draw out each room painstakingly in detail as you get to it will slow down play something fierce.
Mark C. Francisco picks apart the problems with the psionic twinkery scenario in even more detail than I did. They are not total gamebreakers, especially when they fail at a critical moment. And social penalties can balance out any level of mechanical advantages! Send a witch-hunt after them!
Charles E Borner also goes into considerable detail on this. This is why the DM should make an effort to learn the powers of all their PC's, no matter how obscure a splatbook they come from. That way, they can't put one over you with unfair tricks. Looks like this is going to get a similar treatment to the Jedi problem.
The known world Grimoire: Bruce continues to work hard on making the dominion level of D&D play more fleshed out. Having waffled on about economics for a couple of issues, it's a somewhat more interesting subject. Raising armies. People are willing to put up with a little logistics if it means a more epic asskicking or similar spectacle. So let's figure out just how much you can afford to spend on your army, and how big you can make it. As usual, you get what you pay for. You can conscript huge proportions of your able-bodied population, but don't expect them to be loyal or well equipped. This is particularly an issue if you go elsewhere and enslave the natives. Whatever your political system, you still have to pay people according to their talents, or risk revolt. Even theocracies can't make everyone work together purely for the greater glory of god. It's all rather troublesome. Bah, this has got boring again. He really needs to get his groove back, as this is rather tiresome to deal with, and I suspect most players will agree.
Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993
part 3/5
Fasa give is a rather interesting teaser. What have they got up their sleeves this time?
A magical personality: An article I expected to turn up sooner or later. In issue 163 we got advice on the respective power levels of various specialist wizard types. Here we have roleplaying advice for them. Abjurers tend to be cautious and reactive. Conjurers are pack-rats and social butterflys. Diviners are always well prepared, but can wind up stuck as observers. Enchanters are charming but pushy and egotistical. Illusionists are a bunch of liars. Invokers are blunt and impatient. Necromancers are a creepy lot. And Transmuters could be nearly anything, but do tend towards obsessiveness in whatever they do. No great surprises here, since they are stereotypes. You know, you could have also done Elementalists and wild mages, since this isn't a particularly long article. I guess the question becomes if you're going to stick to the stereotypes or buck them. Really, this is a little fillerish. In a lot of worlds, wizards will be rare and obscure enough that the various subdivisions simply won't have room to build up their individual stereotypes. And as many campaign worlds have their unique magical divisions that are much more important than school, (Krynn, Athas, Zakhara) and games other than D&D use completely different magic divisions, it won't be useful that much of the time. It's more an example of just how easily you can build up stereotypes from tiny datasets (see also the various white wolf splats) So it does raise some interesting issues, just not the ones it thinks it does. Does the nature of your abilities really shape your personality that much? Do we really derive stereotypes of a whole group from the first individual of that sort we encounter that easily? Does that reflect well on humanity as a whole? Man, you could do a whole sociology dissertation on this topic.
Master of the blade: From personalities of wizards, to the personalities of their created items. This is another interesting and potentially problematic issue, albeit for quite different reasons. If you play them too actively, then they may well really start to bug the PC's. If you don't, they may forget that they are sentient. And if they take your character over, then things really get hairy. There's also the issue that they're usually being created by classes that can't actually use them themselves. So they may well be designed with effects not entirely beneficial for the owner. With a revised system for determining their mental scores, and a good runthrough of the various kinds of purposes these items can have, this is another pretty decent article, with a few ideas that I'd managed to miss. It doesn't completely solve the problems these devices present, but it does help.
The role of computers: Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen is the reviewer's new favourite RPG. With a familiar playstyle, but good graphics and sound, and plenty of challenges still to go, they've been spending many hours on this one. In addition to the review, they fill the entire hints column with highly detailed advice for getting through this, up to the 5th mine. I wouldn't be surprised to see this continued next month.
Discovery: In the steps of Columbus, on the other hand, seems fairly mediocre. Trade, settle and kick native butt. With unskippable cut-scenes. Sounds like many a resource management game.
Legend of Kyrandia is a point and click adventure game where you solve puzzles to defeat an evil clown. Another fairly good little challenge for you to get your teeth into.
Ultima VII: The Black gate and Forge of Virtue get a rather more interesting and lengthy review. They've brought out an expansion pack for the game that serves as both an errata patch and a whole load of side quests, opening up new maps, and giving you access to powerful new items that'll make completing the main adventure easier. This is a decidedly interesting marketing strategy, but not without it's flaws. The new stuff doesn't appear to have been designed with quite the same care and attention, as is often the case for add-ons they know are going to sell less than the core. But despite these mechanical flaws, it's still a worthy addition to the series, and a laudable experiment in programming that'll become more popular over the years, with both neverwinter nights games getting add-ons in this style. Well worth noting from a historical perspective.
Campaign journal: Oooh. Another attempt to start a regular column, focussing on expansions for their existing game worlds. Like the new kit stuff, this reads as a deliberate result of listening to their readership and trying to fill in the areas people said were lacking. It is nice when they do that. Course, stuff like this is dependent on getting good submissions, which will always be a problem. So it's no surprise that they start it off with a contribution from a staff writer. After all, even the ecologies took 3 kick-off articles from another magazine before they could stand on their own feet.
So we start off with a primarily promotional piece from Carl Sargent to fill us in on the recent changes to Greyhawk. There are plenty of ways you can handle this. You can ignore it. You can play out the wars using the wargame, and use the result. You can play them through IC, but not let your players make any real difference on the larger scale of things, or you can do a timeskip. There's also plenty of room for different tones, from gritty and beleaguered to high-magic mystery. And of course, there's adversaries suitable for all levels. It all feels a lot more calculated than it used to. Greyhawk, like Mystara, started off as a bunch of adventures thrown together as Gary tried to stay one step ahead of his players. It never really got the same kind of primary company focus Krynn and Toril managed in different eras. So this does feel like a substantial shift in tone, an attempt to make it competitive and distinct in this era of fast developing, varied campaign settings. Well, he certainly succeeded in making it distinct. Competitive? Um, er, :shuffles away awkwardly: Maybe it would have worked better if they'd also rebooted the novels, given us some new characters experiencing the wars to get attached too. But no, they didn't even try. Man, Greyhawk's novel line was third rate. Even Ravenloft and Dark Sun did better in that department. Still, let's not disparage the usefulness of this article, which has both roleplaying advice not found in the book itself, and errata for it. It's actually quite good. It's just that the historical context surrounding this one lies so heavy it's hard to be cheerful about it. I guess it's up to us to take this turbulence and make fun games out of it somehow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993
part 4/5
White wolf rolls out the splatbooks with clanbook gangrel. Rawr, rawr, feel my claws. Don't use their clan weakness as an excuse for playing supa-kawaii catgirls. We have enough trouble with the fishmalks.
Fiction: The barber, the thief and the smith by P Andrew Miller. Ironic comeuppance time here. Does that ever get old? Well, I'm asking the question now, so maybe it will eventually. I suppose like everything else, it's a question of not doing it too often. This is one of those stories which is the setup to a joke which seems obvious in retrospect, but good luck figuring it out beforehand. At only a page and a half in length, it doesn't bother much with fripperies and just gets straight to the point. Not terrible, but not brilliant either.
The role of books: Demons don't dream by Piers Anthony is one of those books that it's a struggle for them to recommend. On one hand, it's very good if you like that sort of thing. On the other hand, it has all his usual flaws in tone, characterisation, perversion and excruciating punnery. You really should know by now if this is to your taste or not.
Deus X by Norman Spinrad is a story of transhuman rights. As is usual when a method of immortality via computer upload is developed, this opens up an almighty can of worms, both legally and theologically. The church and big business both have plenty to prove, including the existence of god. The result seems to be a brisk bit of sci-fi that makes you think about these issues. That sounds pretty good to me.
Slay and Rescue by John Moore is a romantic comedy where our protagonist Never. Actually. Gets. Any. Fucking. Action. For all the attempts at lecherous shenanigans, things stay resolutely light on actual money shots. This is most frustrating for our reviewer, who hopefully retains some sympathy for the many poor geeks reading the magazine. Cockteases sustained too long just aren't interesting or pleasant.
The rebirth of wonder by Lawrence Watt-Evans is an interestingly contrasting little duo of stories. Going from low key mystery to fast paced swashbuckler, it manages to do pretty well at both, proving his versatility.
Assemblers of infinity by Kevin J Anderson & Doug Beason, on the other hand, really doesn't hold together. People fail to act in a realistic manner, too many subplots are jammed in, and the whole thing fails to maintain narrative coherence. Ouch. He actually seems to be going downhill as a writer. When did he start doing the Dune sequels & prequels that I've heard are so reviled.
All the weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, unlike Piers Anthony's offering, actually advances the series in terms of both plot and style. With new technology introduced to the world, and big plot threads resolved, it makes for a satisfying conclusion, while still leaving things open for yet more sequels. Maybe you should have gone out on a high note.
Sage advice: What the hell has nature got to do with the elements ( This one is ridiculously obvious. Skip is going to just stare at you until you go away. )
Wahh. You're a big meanie, putting all these restrictions on dimensional door. ( Skip is firm but fair. Skip merely points out the rules that are already there. Just because Skip's the private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs, that does not mean you can pressure Skip into making a wrong ruling for your benefit. Skip will cap yo whiny punk asses if you don't shut the fuck up and act like proper men.)
Why is chain mail cheaper than plate mail. (less raw material, less customization required. )
Can athasian or spelljammer characters be transferred to ravenloft (Sure. Culture shock'll be a bitch, but that just adds to the fun. )
Can defilers cast preserver spells from scrolls (Maybe. Skip isn't sure if the energy is collected at the item creation time or not, which would make the point moot anyway)
What happens if a defiler goes to another world. Do they still fuck up the environment (probably. They will of course face opposition from any druids or other nature concious characters who find out about them.)
I miss half-orcs. Are they ever coming back? (Sure. Buy the complete book of humanoids :teeth ting: Aint we nice. We're still gonna completely sweep the rape issue under the carpet though. )
Rolemaster gets an oriental companion, and shadow world gets an underworld with a hard to pronounce name. Oh joy.
Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews: Over the course of doing these reviews, I've become accustomed to the sensation of moving through time at a somewhat accelerated pace, with occasional hops back and forth. But as we've seen before, time travel in game can be a seriously headache provoking experience. To make it work, you either need very careful recording of events, or the ability to make shit up on the spur of the moment that nevertheless feels right on an intuitive level. But anyone can play let's pretend. The important thing for RPG's is how the rules support it. As usual, let's see if the current crop have learned from the lessons of their precursors.
GURPS Time travel, as usual, does this topic comprehensively and in a modular fashion, providing you with a ton of options, which can be used on their own, or combined with other GURPS books. (and of course, this lets you tie together adventures in all those other milieus. ) But unlike too many GURPS supplements, it isn't dull at all, with a well built up sample metasetting with inherent conflict built in. The whole of history is up for grabs, and two competing secret societies try and get control of it. Sounds like a dry run for 4e's infinite worlds setup, which isn't a bad thing.
Time riders is for Rolemaster, and takes a rather more rigid view of things, making changing events nearly impossible. Despite this, there are again several time-spanning conspiracies, trying to make sure things always have been in their favour. The result is rather thematically vague, and more focussed on setpieces than metaphysics. It all feels a bit strained to me.
Timelords is our most mechanically focussed offering, with dense rules that offer a quite effective method of quantifying temporal disturbances. It's also pretty crunchy and modifier heavy in other departments too, such as combat. The setting, on the other hand, is pretty skimpy, and probably needs a supplement or two to flesh it out. One for the expert GM who enjoys tinkering, and maybe grafting the time-travel system onto another general action system they're more comfortable with.
The dragon's bestiary has another pair of fae creatures for our delight and quite possibly irritation this month.
Faerie Phiz are magical faces that grow on trees, and sometimes other wooden objects. They can't move, but are tough, quite good spellcasters, and have plenty of ancient lore. This means they're perfectly suited to being almighty pains in the ass to adventurers seeking stuff, in Labyrinth-esque fashion.
Asrai are the even weedier relatives of nixies. All it takes is direct sunlight or removal from the water to kill them instantly. Poor little things. They'll never be able to break out of their habitat and become adventurers. So they'll just frolic in the water and provide you with a flavour encounter. Bleh.
Unearthed Mundana: Aka don't make all the cool treasure magical. Be it mechanical, highly valuable in terms of materials, or merely the information contained within, you can add more contrast to your game by not falling back on the lazy option of giving it plusses and a pretty glow. Still, this does seem more focussed on wizardly types, with scrolls containing various kinds of esoteric info having a very prominent place in it's lists. The remainder seem well suited to roguish sorts, with plenty of things with hidden compartments, tricks, and subtle ways of enhancing your offensive capability. Like the intelligent items article, this is a decent reminder of one of those things that is fairly obvious, but can sometimes get lost in the pursuit of shinies and the need to escalate your campaign to keep the players interested. You need the low key stuff to provide contrast, and make the special bits truly special. Don't forget it.
Dragonmirth upgrades their crystal balls again. Yamara continues to be dreadfully meta. Twilight empire looks like it might get to the climax soon. But will Robinson's daughter want to go back to earth and live a normal life anyway?
Through the looking glass has painting advice again, for the first time in rather too long. Unfortunately, it falls prey to their current push to go back to basics, get in the complete newbies. So here we have advice about the essentials of what you need to buy, how much it will cost, and what exactly you do with it, taking you from beginning to end, and including photographs that document these steps on a minotaur warrior wielding a big red shield. Which means that it's both quite well done, and more than a little tiresome to me. When I remember the quite advanced bits of painting advice from the early 80's, this just doesn't hit the spot by comparison. The mental equivalent of another grotty goblin fight after saving the world repeatedly. Give it to someone who needs the XP.
TSR Previews: Al-Qadim gets another boxed set, A dozen and one adventures. Guess their budget doesn't run to the full thousand. As is often the case with these products, the adventures can be played one at a time, but have easter eggs that combine to a bigger whole.
Speaking of a bigger whole, north in the forgotten Realms, they're reaching the 6th book in the harpers series. Crypt of the shadowking by Mark Anthony (srysly?) The Zhentarim are actually being surprisingly successful for a change. Guess the harpers'll actually have to do some work foiling them.
Dark sun sees the PC's having to do some nasty compromises in DSM1: Black flames. How does a would be Dragon position itself as the lesser evil? I'm interested in finding out too.
Greyhawk finally gives us a whole sourcebook focusing on Iuz. WGR5: Iuz the evil! Well isn't that nice. Another enemy you aren't supposed to be able to beat, but really should. I'll bet the Dark sun head honchos could kick his ass without breaking a sweat.
Dragonlance, having milked the origins of the heroes dry, now focusses on the villains. Before the Mask by Michael and Terri Williams shows us the origin story of Verminaard. What childhood tragedy drives his evil? Who did he screw over in his rise to power? Can you be bothered to find out?
Generic AD&D stuff this month is GA2: Swamplight, and the deck of magical items. Another little standalone adventure, and another compilation of stuff making it easy to find and equip items for the anal or just fast and furious among you.
D&D has DMR2: Creature catalog, and part 2 of the penhaligon trilogy, The fall of magic. Didn't they just lose all magic for a day recently anyway? Anyway, with lots of monsters being reprinted as well, this doesn't look very imaginative. They seem to be a little unsure what direction to take this in now.
A fairly good issue, with plenty of neat stuff to offer, especially in the features. They're once again trying to ensure that they deliver new crunch on uncovered topics, keeping the magazine useful for even long term readers. Obviously they don't always succeed, but this time I found there was rather more successes than failures. Plus with the start of a new column, and a less obvious, but still significant historical development, this is another above average one in terms of actually progressing D&D's history. I guess I'd better see if next issue is another arc episode, or just goofy filler, quite possibly involving hot springs.
Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. It's a trap! Again! Oh, I love this cover. Why do people harsh on Tom Baxa so much? Yes, it's april fools time again, and they make that pretty clear right from the outset. So you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, or you'll be the butt of every joker nearby. Humorless twits are the biggest targets. Let's get ready to turn the joke back on them.
In this issue:
Letters: Ah yes. It's time for the yearly round of laughing at the readers, or at least the ones who sent in stupid letters and submissions that were illegible, ludicrous, impossible, or merely utterly irrelevant. Nigerian king kong obsessives, Voyeur and Nymph classes, (which cancel each other out nicely, methinks) Dwarf throwers. Prostitute, Seducer and Wench classes, all rather too long and coming pre-illustrated, much to this editor's distress. (and to think he's the one who wrote sex in AD&D 10 years ago) A submission on Led Zeppelin fantasy, whatever the hell that might entail. (shoddy levee building as an adventure hook, I'll wager) Origami magic. (now that could actually work as an article. After all, they've done feather magic before. :p ) The usual cross-breeding suggestions. A module based on a Smurfs episode. And a rather disturbing prediction that probably didn't pan out. There's a lot of weird people out there. Thankfully, now we have the internet, so we can find this stuff in places like B. J. Zanzibarrs, instead of it languishing on paper or being thrown away by the editors. Because we all love a good laugh at the unfiltered crap of others every now and then.
Editorial: Roger reminisces about campaigns past and characters killed. Amusingly, the characters killed this time belonged to all the other members of the party, while he survived. This serves as an object lesson in never giving up, and also, paradoxically in running away and living to run away another day, which far too few adventurers do. What are we to draw from this? Fortune favors those who favor themselves? Never take shit from the GM? The rules keep things from being totally predictable for both the GM and the players? I suppose real events don't need to have a moral, they just kinda happen. And so the lesson you get from the same event can vary widely from person to person. So you may well get something different from this one to me.
Mage gets it's first teaser in the magazine. What will it's tagline be? I'm sure most of you already know the answer to this. Still, they've got 3 more months to elaborate on this before it comes out. How will they pique the reader's interest in that time?
Don't you dare!: Spike Y. Jones once again uses this time of year to give us advice on what not to do, just as he did in 1989. This time, it's played fairly straight, with the potential pitfalls pointed out precisely in bullet pointed form. It's not actually particularly funny, but it is very useful stuff. If you want you comedy to be universally funny, it doesn't pay to get too highbrow, and sticking too closely to rules or plot will only dampen people's spirits. A semi-improvised, knockabout style will fit perfectly with a lot of actual comedy shows. (Rik's the controller, Vyvyan's the striker, Neil the defender and Mike the leader. ) And if things go off the rails, make them worse. But avoid the dreadful puns, please. All advice I quite agree with. If you're aiming for comedy in your game, you would do well to heed his words.
What in the H...?: It's crossword time again. Also, another opportunity for Roger to thumb his nose at TSR's censorship policies, with their complete removal of certain D words. With tons of Baatezu references, plus plenty of other D&D monsters and game conceits, this isn't one for the nongamer. It's actually a lot easier than most of the previous crosswords for me though. Not sure why this is in the joke section. I guess it's an example of being able to slip subtle political stuff under the radar as humour.
Band on the run: Ahh, filking. We've seen mercifully little of you in the past few years. But all good things must come to an end. The Beach Boys, Van Morrison, The Beatles and Queen are all the subject of this year's round, which makes this seem rather dated even for the era. Come on, did the early 90's have nothing worth parodying? Achy Breaky Heart? Ride on Time? Considerable quantities of Michael Jackson's oeuvre? I guess the writers aren't particularly up with modern musical trends. Well, as we saw earlier, there are still people obsessed with Led Zeppelin writing in. They're probably still stuck in the first summer of love, and never even noticed the second one. So this is rather excruciating to me on multiple levels. Particular demerits go to the Bohemian Rhapsody one, which has some really tortured scansion. Make it go away.
Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993
part 2/5
Weapons of mass destruction on sale now: From one joke about the gnomish space marines to another. Blarg. Still, this is the only joke article this year that also has usable crunch. 5 scary, if rather unreliable bits of gnomish machinery that you could add to your spaceship. Or possibly your normal ship or ground based siege engine. Mechanical flails (based upon that popular joke monster, the flail snail. Fire and electricity blasters. Mass launches of buzzsaws and crossbow bolts. All almost as much a danger to the user as to the enemy. These could fit into an otherwise moderately serious campaign, just as normal Gnomes and Kender do. So it's easily the best of the bunch this year from a usability point of view.
The Dragon Project: Oooh. Another new column starts off. Welcome to the last resurgence of non TSR RPG material, courtesy of a conscious push by the official writers. This has been gradually drifting downward since the start of the decade, due to lack of submissions, and they're not particularly happy about this. And of course, the less they publish, the less people send in. It's a vicious circle. So they hope to reverse that trend by asking writers for other gamelines to send stuff in. Not a bad idea at all.
We start off with one for TORG. Dragons fit in pretty well in fantasy universes, but struggle a bit in sci-fi ones. How to integrate them? Cyberware! As if they weren't scary enough. With a history that serves to reveal a bit more of TORG's interesting history and political dynamics, and a statblock that shows it uses a system in which skills are keyed off particular attributes, this feels a bit artificial, but in an appropriate way. I'm still not sure how they'll compare to PC's in overall power, but I suspect one will be a suitable challenge for an entire group. In any case, this is another cool move by the editors, and shows that as is often the case, they're actually more progressive than their average readership. It's also a sign I should enjoy this while I can, for it will be gone all too soon. Born to blossom, bloom to perish. Compost to grow the next generation.
The known world grimoire: Bruce finally gets his groove back, in what feels like it would have been a continuation of the Princess Ark series, situated directly southwest of the last instalments as it is. Previously, we've had dog people, cat people, turtle people, spider people, several variants on lizard people, and flying squirrel people. Now, it's the Manscorpion's turn. Course, PC's with at will instadeath poison is not something they're wiling to allow, and so that aspect of them gets a good nerfing. On top of that, mystaran manscorpions have the dreadful indignity of being vulnerable to sunlight, courtesy of a magical curse. They can still go out in the sun, thanks to developing incredibly thick all-over makeup vampires would probably pay quite a bit for, but it does make integrating with groups of other species pretty tricky. They're obviously intended largely as antagonists. But it does have to be said that they're antagonists with style and plenty of built up setting detail. You aren't going to be able to wade in an exterminate the whole nation, even with a few landscape destroying spells to expose them to the sun and make them fry like bugs under a magnifying glass. They have a higher level limit than demihumans, and there's hundreds of thousands of them. Like Iuz's dominions, settling this tension is the work of a whole epic level campaign. A pretty awesome return to form for this department.
The marvel-phile: No surprise that this column still has a few april-fool suitable characters that they haven't had the chance to cover yet. Such as Slapstick. He's basically a living cartoon, made out of the same stuff superhero costumes are made from. And I suspect that in terms of character, he has a lot in common with The Mask and Freakazoid, two other zany characters who are near omnipotent and indestructible as long as their actions are funny. Which means the humourless everywhere should walk, not run away ASAP, for trying to fight him is like hitting a mirror. It'll only get turned back on you, and the harder you hit, the more likely you are to wind up with a bleeding hand. His primary adversary is an 8 year old mad scientist, presumably even Marvel villains have enough common sense to steer clear of this. Better pray he doesn't get too many crossover appearances and wind up joining the great lakes avengers, for him and Squirrel girl seems like a pretty unstoppable combination. (and let's not think of the children) A pretty typical contribution from this department, I can't say I have strong feelings on this one.
DC heroes gets a third edition. Man, seems like both the comic companies original games enjoyed long fruitful runs. What went wrong?
In praise of one night stands: Hee. As if we didn't have enough dirty stuff being suggested in the letters page. But a piece on why one-shots are a good idea is exactly the kind of thing the magazine should be doing. It gives you a chance to experiment with new systems and ideas without ruining continuity and thematic consistency of your long-running campaigns. It lets your regular GM take a break and players experiment with holding the reins without having to build a whole world. And if the regular DM flakes out, having a back-up plan is always a good thing. Only a page and a half long, this mirrors well how it's subject matter should work. Get straight to the point, don't overwrite, and make sure you have cool ideas ready to go right away. Which makes it one of those supposed filler articles that's actually a good deal better than anything in the main featured section. Model your game on movies rather than series, and provide a full setup and payoff in a few short hours. Just don't fall into the trap of doing a sequel just for the money, when you don't have a good idea for it.
Forgotten Realms new campaign setting coming soon. Well, they've got six years of metaplot to incorporate. Not everyone's been buying all the supplements. Cyric is the supreme god of evil now!
Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993
part 3/5
The role of computers: King's Quest VI gets one of those 5 star reviews where they praise it as both a game and a technical feat. And in the process remind us how far we've come since then.15 megabytes? I've got single photographs bigger than that. We used to manage classic games with mere kilobytes. Time ticks onwards.
Battle Chess Enhanced CD ROM is yet another game that tries to make chess cool. With speaking tutorials, and a wide range of difficulty levels, it doesn't do too badly. But chess really doesn't need the gimmicks anyway. It looks like it'll be around long after civilisation collapses and both computers and roleplaying are forgotten.
Cobra Mission gets a complete fail completely on the crappiness of it's content, rather than due to buggy programming, which is pretty unusual for them. Yikes. Plus it's not kid friendly at all. Come now, that'll just encourage prurient teenagers to waste their money.
Kingdoms of England II: Vikings, Field of Conquest sees you fight a bunch of other would-be kings to take over fair albion. Sounds like a fairly typical strategy wargame.
Miner 2049er doesn't get a rating, but it's review is quite positive nonetheless. One of their few game boy reviews, it shows the gradual takeover of consoles. Even these guys have to heed it, although they don't seem that keen on doing so.
Quest for Glory III: Wages of War also builds upon it's previous instalments, and manages to surpass them, in these reviewers opinion. You can even import your character from previous games, which is always a nice touch for this kind of epic RPG. Does sound like there's quite a bit of resource management though, with keeping track of food supplies a vital part of your adventuring.
Shadowlands has some spectacular visuals and interesting ideas based around light sources and the manipulation of shadows to complete the adventure. Unfortunately, its hindered by a clunky interface that can result in your death as you try to engage the right actions mid battle. Always a danger for complex RPG's, especially if they don't have pausing.
Waxworks is much easier to play, using the increasingly popular point and click play method. Video games are definitely becoming darker and edgier these days, as this is another one full of gory thrills. Visuals are finally sophisticated enough that you can do this without looking stupid.
Wolfenstein 3D is duly recognized as an excellent, if rather bloody game, offering you plenty of freedom of movement and a spectacular array of weaponry. You'll need it of course, particularly against the bosses, which are right SoB's at higher difficulty levels, and neither trading shots face to face or turning your back to run are wise choices to beat them.
Novel ideas: Ravenloft's novel line continues to grow in prestige amongst the department, as befits it's sales. This means it gets better authors in, including some previously published names who have fanbases of their own. Elaine Bergstrom and P. N. Elrod are both about to produce pretty big books for the line, and they're pretty confident that the results will let them go to another level critically and commercially again. Which is actually a fairly accurate prediction for a change. Dragonlance may have peaked and gone into decline creatively, but Ravenloft and the Realms keep on building. Like the Dragon Project, this is a good reminder that there's still plenty of cool things to come before the company goes completely off the rails. You've got to separate the politics from the product.
Fiction: The heroes of weefield by Mitchell Diamond. A reminder why the stalwart knight single-handedly fighting monsters is considerably less effective than a bunch of adventurers with varied skills, who attack with teamwork, magic, missile weapons, flaming oil, etc etc. You really can't afford to play fair, particularly with creatures much bigger than you that'll deal out and take more damage than even the most badass mortal man can manage. This is even more the case in a system where the ageing and advancement rules are more realistic than D&D's. But still it's not just kill or be killed. And so we have a story in which sympathy for the monster results in them sparing it, despite the fact that it may well kill again. Actually, all sides in this story are pretty sympathetic, even when they're being idiots. The plot is a bit insubstantial, but it's still a decent enough read, with good character banter.
Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993
part 4/5
Sage advice: What does a nilbog do to a spelljamming helm (Not much. It may make the user fly it somewhere unwise though. )
What's a ziggurat. ( A really scary monster. Second only to the Gazebo in it's power to terrify and confound players. )
Can you turn a staff into a morning star (not without ruining it. Wood is not the most flexible and resilient of materials. )
What happens if you turn someone to stone, then turn the statue to mud, resculpt it, turn it back to stone, then turn it back to flesh. (Oooh, thatsa nasty tricksa. I'll seta de godsa on you and theyla smita you for crimes againsta nature. )
What ToM spheres do the forgotten realms deities grant (Hmm. This is gonna take up quite a bit of space. Better get cracking.)
Would breaking a staff of the magi permanently destroy a vampire (possibly. Their indestructibility isn't as good as the tarrasque's)
Can spheres of annihilation permanently destroy the tarrasque (no)
How much alcohol do you need to get an umber hulk drunk. (They're about 3 times as heavy as humans, so Skip will make a wild guess and say three times as much. This may get expensive. )
Can you teleport inside a creature (no)
How far can you jump while wearing a girdle of giant strength. (36' plus 2 per point of strength above 18/00. Not that impressive really)
Are trained falcons really more expensive than war elephants (yes. Elephants are easy to train, and expensive to keep. Falcons are not. So there's more demand and less supply. )
What is a lair. (Anywhere I hang my hoard, that's my lair :fingerciicks: )
Can you enlarge something, cast permanancy, then enlarge it again (I'm afraid that falls foul of the no stacking the same kind of bonus rule. Or would, if we'd properly standardized that yet. )
Can we make a rope trick permanent and then take it with us as a storage method. (no, twice. It is neither sustainable or portable)
How do I measure east/west on hex grids (counting from the middle. Don't tell me that's hard for you.)
Do you reroll all your hit points when you gain a new level (Not officially. You can play it like that if you like, and the game doesn't break though. )
Why did you change THAC0's for the new edition (simplicity.)
If you wish for extra arms, can you wear extra magical items on them (No. Skip will not budge on this one, even if other writers do. Beware TPKing mariliths.)
Which speed factor and damage do small creatures wielding bastard swords have. (the worst ones)
How does poison work (Fucking witcha biochemistry. They can pull some pretty nasty tricks. )
Can a troll die from starvation. (Eventually. They may not obey the law of conservation of mass, but they still need refueling sometimes. )
Can you recalibrate your aim on a wand of wonder once you know what it's about to shoot. (No. These devices can not be relied on in any way, shape or form. Skip laughs at your attempts to mitigate it's consequences.)
Role-playing reviews decides to go the lycanthropic route, apropos of nothing.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse gets a fairly long and not entirely positive review. Rick still isn't keen on the idea of entirely nonrandom chargen, which reminds us how long ago this is now. And he gets a quite substantial number of cracks in at their Metallica obsession and overall melodramaticness. Lars Ulrich really really isn't all that. :p And WW's editing sucks, as usual. But as with Vampire, he's still impressed by the underlying ideas. Fix the Mechanics!
Night howlers is the D&D offering. It's both less impressive, and less mechanically problematic, and focusses quite a bit on infected lycanthropes learning to control their condition. This takes quite a bit of work for players, but seems like it could liven up an existing campaign.
Rick also directs his amusement at death cheese, and other excessive setting building of recent books. All sorts of systems are getting into it, from D&D to shadowrun. As usual, some do better than others. Watch out for both silliness and dullness, sometimes at the same time. How does that happen? Mostly when you have page count to make up, so you throw in any ideas you can come up with without editing to pad it out.
The ecology (love life) of the lamia: Brendan Farwanderer returns for a third time, with the author finding yet another way to twist the traditional series title. Even more so than yuan-ti, lamias are an inherently degenerate race, requiring regular infusions of human seed to keep their progeny from becoming sterile animals. Since they're also bugfuck nuts with hair trigger tempers, and they drain the common sense of those they touch, this is almost a textbook recipe for a dysfunctional relationship. (I will kill the first person to say they've been out with girls like that. ;) ) Once again Spike delivers an excellent bit of fiction, combining titilation, horror and humour with aplomb. And their new ecological cycle is pretty distinctive and nifty as well. This adds new depth to them without upsetting previous assumptions. He's definitely proving himself as one of the best ecologists currently writing in. Now, if only he'd do so a bit more frequently.
Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993
part 5/5
Forum continues with much the same topics as last time round.
Philip Edwards is one of those who thinks psionics is indeed overpowered. It needs more saving throws, more playtesting, more checks and balances! You know that stuff slows things down if done wrong.
Jon Winter gives a full bunch of rather official sounding nerf suggestions for psionics, some of which would be incorporated later. He's particularly keen on psionics-magic transparency, which does help, after all. Again, watch out for the play-slowing finickiness.
Shlomi Chetrit thinks that balancing psionicists is easy. Just enforce training rules strictly and force them to find someone to teach the powers they want. Never mind that that isn't particularly in keeping with the literature, which often has them manifesting new powers abruptly. But training times might well be a good idea, especially at higher levels.
Jason Jex doesn't think psionicists should have restrictions just because wizards have them. After all, clerics don't have the same ones. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need a little nerfing. Balance must be struck, but the game must also be kept interesting and varied.
Charlie Frye has a bullet-pointed list on how to deal with monty haul cheaters. Just make sure you have copies of their character sheets, and all the dice are rolled in the open. That keeps the worst excesses under control.
Justin D. Somma also offers point by point advice on how not to deal with Monty Haul characters. It's not easy to take stuff away without them complaining to high heaven. And make sure cheaters don't prosper. There's nothing wrong with kicking them out the group.
Dragonmirth really needs to sort out it's fashion and design habits. Yamara finds out what her husband got up to before he married her. Hee. Finella decides to bite the bullet and get married as well in twilight empire. Man, they're having a lot of relationship dramas these days. And many of them are inter-racial, too. Interesting, that.
Through the looking glass: Boo! THE LEAD BILL GOT PASSED. All Robert's work over the last year or so has gone to waste. Now they're going to have to put up with crappy pewter, tin and plastic. Such a tragedy. And on top of that, people are giving him gyp about the poor photo quality in the column. You shoulda seen them 10 years ago. Roll on digital photography. He's obviously not in the best of moods. Better not disturb him
Our reviews, as a result, seem to be on autopilot, with everything getting 4 stars. A flying pig, to minor humour. Another pair of elves for those who still don't have enough unique ones for their army. A wizard and his familiar. Some adventurers trying to steal an idol, and facing skeletons as a response. A completely lead free monk. Plenty of weaponry, both futuristic and medieval. And a selection of general props. Zzzzzzzzz.
The review of Battletech 3rd ed isn't particularly interesting either, being very dry and technical. The rules are good, the prepackaged mechs, less so. Oh well. Can't blame him for being off his game given the circumstances. But life goes on. We'll adapt. Like banning smoking in pubs, before long we'll wonder why it was ever an issue.
TSR Products: Dragon Mountain takes top place this month. See Tuckers Kobolds totally canonised in this epically brutal dungeon crawl. Just getting there is hassle enough. As for getting through it. You'd better get smart or you'll be dying a lot of times against enemies with a tenth your hit points.. Speaking of kobolds, you can now play them to somewhat higher level than you could last edition, thanks to PHBR10: The complete book of humanoids. 30 races, old and new, weak and strong, and some moderately lame kits to keep them in their place. Humans are still supreme!
Ravenloft builds up the epic rivalry between Strahd and Azalin even more in RQ4: Roots of evil. Who will come off better from the fight? Either way, ordinary people are likely to suffer. Miserable job.
The Forgotten realms shows us FR16: The shining south. Well, with Al Qadim doing well for itself, it would be a good idea if we knew what we were traveling though to get there, just as with the Horde set and Kara-Tur. (which we haven't seen anything on in a while. Guess they've decided that was played out. ) So Halruua, Lurien, and the other weird nations down there get fleshed out for you to enjoy.
Spelljammer is up to book 5 in the cloakmaster cycle. The Broken Sphere sees Nigel Findley try to finish this particular epic. Can he find the Spelljammer once and for all?
D&D has Rage of the Rakasta. Everyone's favourite cat people get a bit more attention. Serving as both adversaries and allies here, you'll have to do some puzzle solving to keep them from attacking.
Gamma world tries to make itself more suitable to extended campaigns, with GW2: The overlord of boniparr. An evil mutant overlord. Just the thing to make blasted post apocalyptic world even more annoying. Any resemblance to Iuz is purely coincidental.
And finally, our novel department produces Naked came the sasquatch by John Boston. Modern day comedy fantasy? That's an unusual one for this bunch. Will anyone be intrigued by this strange title and pick it up?
In case you didn't get the message in the last article, Dragon mountain! Well, it's a lot snappier than really unfair kobold infested mountain with a dragon at the end. Egads, that had some annoying bits in it.
A decidedly subpar april fool this year, both in terms of laughs and usability. Somehow, they've managed to be both less goofy and less crunchy at the same time than the last few years. There's still a couple of cool articles elsewhere in the issue, and the new Dragon Project stuff is definitely a cool idea but the weak theme, combined with the lead bill hassle makes this a bit of a depressing one overall. Things certainly aren't all going their way. You can't ever afford to get complacent, especially when you're working in the realm of ideas. Keep trying to expand their minds, Roger.
Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. Tying in with their new Dragon Project column, they have a whole bunch of covers featuring dragons lined up and ready to go. People do judge magazines by their covers, and this seems like a good way to reaffirm their core intent. Course, that still gives them plenty of freedom in terms of colours, shapes and surroundings. Such as down in the underdark. In reality, there aren't many places a full-grown dragon could fit, and it's not optimal for their mobility either, but D&D will favour drama over realisticness sometimes. And those are often the most fun times too. Hopefully there'll be some fun to derive from this issue.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from a brazilian gamer who wants to write directly to games companies to get stuff not available in shops round his neck of the woods. This is a relatively easy request to satisfy.
Another of those letters complaining about people who perpetuate the crappy stereotypes. We wouldn't dream of killing cats, and anyone trying in our vicinity is going to get a pretty stern talking too. To be frank, that's more likely to provoke general rage than a crime involving other people.
A letter asking exactly what languages D&D has been translated into. The answer shouldn't be hugely surprising. Most of the big european languages, plus mandarin and japanese. And hebrew, for some reason. Didn't know roleplaying was particularly popular in Israel.
And an amusing letter about figuring out if you're an unfair DM. Muahahahaha. Thanks for that. I think most of us know if we're doing something like that.
Mage focusses on the technomancers in this months teaser. Pleasing to note white wolf are already fully aware of the internet. This aint your fathers magic system, or game company. :D
Editorial: Roger celebrates his 10 year anniversary of becoming an official member of the TSR staff. This gets a relatively short bit of writing because after all, what is there to say? He's been living the dream for 10 years, even if it has been much harder work than you'd think it would be. And like many people who've been living the dream for a while, he feels the urge to pass on the mantle. Course, kids will rebel from their parents, so expecting them to follow directly in your footsteps when there's so many shiny new things out there is a moderately futile task. Have half a dozen of them, you'll be lucky if one becomes your true successor. And before you know it, you'll be looking at the new fads the kids are following in disgust and incomprehension, saying that's not real music/tv/roleplaying. Don't expect things to stay the same forever, and try and appreciate the new for what it is, not what you think it should be. Here's to many more years of entertaining articles.
Dungeoneering 101: Steven Schend has learned well from Ed, as he strikes out on his own in creating fictional characters that break the 4th wall and interact with the author, representing their writings as mere recountings rather than actual creative works. Which from one perspective, is doing your talent a slight disservice, but on the other hand is usually pretty fun to read. So say hello to Essimuth the dungeoneer. Unlike most of our transdimensional visitors, he's not a high level wizard, but a hard-bitten illiterate roguish sort who learned all his wisdom the hard way. Which means he's been at the sharp end of more traps than you can shake a stick at, lost a limb without being able to get a decent replacement, and learned all about how inconvenient encumbrance actually is when you don't have a bag of holding. Just the kind of guy you need to teach you adventuring isn't all shiny magic and level appropriate challenges. This reads like a love letter to old skool brutality, written in a very new skool way, so as to reintroduce more recent DM's to the idea of running games full of traps, air supply issues, darkness with monsters lurking within, slimes and oozes of many colours, and inventive ways of surviving said challenges to make your fortune. It's not quite the equal of Ed's top articles, but its a strong combination of practical information and fun writing method that make this entirely deserving of pole position. Now what he needs is the ambition to go solo, create his own campaign world. ;)
The amazing engine, coming soon. TSR begins the promotion for their attempt at making their own universal system. I bet we'll be seeing some stuff for that in here. Lets hope it does better than buck rogers did. Man, that went down like a lead balloon.
Live statues and stone men: Or lets have a few more Golems. They don't need food and other regular maintenance, so they can hang around underground for ages just waiting for adventurers to turn up and kill them, and the DM need worry not about ecology and all that irritation. These three all turn up in later monstrous compendia, as monsters in the magazine are increasingly likely to do these days. Brain golems also get quite a few appearances in other books. I guess illithid's strong connection with the magazine continues.
Brain Golems are ridiculously macho looking for something made entirely out of brains. They are rather smarter than the average golem, just like most illithid creations. And of course, they don't break out of control on an irregular basis like mindfucked members of other races. So they tend to get fairly good treatment for a slave.
Hammer Golems are dwarven creations designed to crush their racial enemies with great prejudice. They also work pretty well as miners, making new tunnels almost as fast as a dwarf can walk down them. With one of these, you really could excavate a dungeon a day. Monte Cook would approve.
Spiderstone Golems are Drow creations, unsurprisingly. With lots of limbs, climbing and web powers, they're well suited to taking on larger parties. Their chaotic evil origins make them one of the less reliable varieties of golem, prone to breaking free and killing their owner before going off to become a lurking tunnel predator. Still, they're neither as scary or unreliable as clay golems. They might well last a while as long as they're properly taken care of. And Lolth cares not that they'll turn on her own race, as her willingness to create things like Driders shows. These three are all pretty reasonable new creations.
Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993
part 2/5
Role-playing reviews turns it's eye on small press games. This is interesting because they're the ones that benefit most from a review in a major magazine. A good one can boost their sales by several orders of magnitude, while even a bad one is better than no publicity for a tiny company, and gives them a level of legitimacy it can be hard to feel when you know them personally, and it's just a couple of guys laying things out in their basement in their spare time.
Bloodbath is one of those simple but fun games with a few obvious holes in it's rules. Pure hack and slash, with setting entirely subordinated to that goal. Everything uses d6's, and you have an actual bloodlust stat which ha a significant effect on your actions. Perfect for if you want to play an all-barbarian game where life is cheap and limbs fly like confetti.
Bloodchant introduces magic to Bloodbath. The spells are just as gruesome as the combat, and the descriptions are just as florid and technically dubious. It all sounds like it was written by a teenage boy who has too many heavy metal albums. Are you ready to breathe the miasma of DISPAIR!
Advanced Phantasm Adventures is a translation of a fantasy game that's apparently big in japan. It gets a rather long review, explaining the rather crunchy system in detail. Unfortunately, despite it's high detail, it has rather slipshod editing, which is a bigger crime than in a rules light game it's easy to modify and hopefully fix. It does have some cool ideas, and is impressively open-ended, but doesn't really feel like a finished game. Maybe it lost something in translation, or maybe it was also problematic in it's original language. After all, Original D&D was pretty sketchy too ruleswise. I have to wonder how well that was translated into various languages.
Duel seems to be trying to fill the gap left when The Fantasy Trip evolved into the insanely crunchy GURPS. At 36 pages, it's small, but pretty versatile, with 3 main stats and 5 magic aspects covering most of what you'll want to do. The main complaint of the reviewer, ironically, is the base dice system. Lester likes his bell curves, it seems. And there's the constant temptation to load it down with expansion crunch. Oh, woe is you.
Toy war is even tinier, at a mere 12 pages. It gets a similarly tiny review. It works with nearly any toy, and has a mere 2 stats. It's actually surprisingly elegant really. You can have quite a bit of fun with it, especially if you have a big toy collection. Like clay-o-rama, this is barely a step up from let's pretend really.
Critter commandos is another fun minis game, designed to evoke a cartoon atmosphere. This has obviously been quite successful actually, with a supplement, and conversion rules to bring Warhammer 40k characters over, quite possibly to get a good cream pieing. It also has it's own suitably silly setting. Like Toon, this is an entirely viable niche to carve out in the market, even if it'll never be huge.
Palladium fantasy takes us to the island at the end of world. Now with extra metaplot. Everyones doing it. You don't have to copy them.
Traveller the new era! Now compatible with Twilight:2000 and Dark Conspiracy. Another company making attempts at giving all their games a universal system, it seems.
The known world Grimoire: Logistics, logistics, again there are nitpicks. Bruce goes back to the domain management stuff yet again in an attempt to singlehandedly support that playstyle in the face of widespread apathy. This time, it's the question of what you need in a castle to turn it into a self-sufficient mini community that can withstand months of siege. You need enough living quarters for an entire army, and storage space for food for said troops, plus toilet facilities, heating and general servants to maintain the place and feed everyone. Even a garrison of a hundred troops requires easily that again in support staff, and substantial daily expenditure. You know, someone ought to do a cost analysis, figure out exactly when it becomes more profitable to create undead and golem servants than train up and employ living ones. It'd probably come surprisingly quickly, especially for long term projects. Anyway, this once again slips quite heavily into dullness. Graah. Surely there must be some way of making ruling nations and commanding armies interesting, and not too mechanically onerous. Anyone? No wonder it fell out of fashion at this rate.
Fiction: Bainnor's last ballad by Ralph W Bundy. Or how to learn to sing the blues, D&D style. In this world, all it takes is a lifetime of poverty, heartbreak and alcoholism. :p There, rather more killing things, taking their stuff, and losing loved ones when monsters do likewise is involved, as an inevitable result of the XP system. So yeah, technically skilled but cloistered bard learns some hard but crucial lessons that you need to actually be able to sing with feeling and get the public engaged. No great surprises. The monsters are a bit vague, but it's all about the relationships built up and broken along the way anyway. Fairly average overall.
Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993
part 3/5
The role of computers has one of it's spates of many small reviews. This is a bit tiresome.
Amazon: Guardians of Eden takes you into the rainforest to find your brother and solve the many puzzles of the deep jungle. With puzzles, arcade action sequences, cut scenes and bits where you control other characters, it's a big and varied game. Even more than usual, saving regularly is important, with backups several stages back handy for making sure you get everything you need without starting all over again.
Castles II: Siege and Conquest expands on the original to enable you to administer kingdoms and attack other people's castles. This actually means you'll spend less time building castles than in the original, but such are the perils of making your game more generic. As we saw in the minigames reviews, it can actually take away what makes you special and unique and interesting in the first place.
The Incredible Machine is a game where you create incredibly elaborate cartoon like machines to solve puzzles. That's a fairly original idea. With a ton of different pieces, it's easy to start, but hard to master, and produces funny results even when you get it wrong. Sounds like you could have hours of fun mucking around even ignoring the supposed objectives.
Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis once again shows lucasarts knows what they're doing with a multi-pathed, fully original follow-up game. With plenty of different ways you can complete it, and high quality cut-scenes, it's a good attempt at having a cinematic atmosphere, while not compromising the game aspect. I seem to recall there being plenty more in this vein to come over the years.
Lemmings gets a pretty good mac conversion. Psygnosis have had several years to get this formula really working, and they have the brutal puzzles down to a tee. Remember, Blockers are vital so you can experiment without losing everyone.
M4 has you commanding said class of tank in WWII. Unlike many sims of this sort, it's actually fairly accessable, with point and click making things far easier than old programs where you had to learn hundreds of button commands. Convert the newbies! Gotta keep wargaming alive in some form!
Push-Over is a tremendously fun variant on dominos, where you control an ant trying to set things up so that when you push, all the pieces fall in the right order. Since some of the pieces do weird stuff, this can be a real brain teaser, but you can skip some levels if you do well enough in others. This sounds pretty familiar.
Space Legions lets you play the bad guys from the previous games in the series. Invade and conquer planets with great brutality! Failure will not be tolerated! It doesn't take itself too seriously, obviously.
Carriers at War is another WWII game this one focussed on the navy & air force. Well, I guess the 50th anniversary of various WWII events are passing as we speak. That probably contributed to a resurgence in interest.
Eric the Unready is yet another game that they can't really recommend wholeheartedly due to the magazine's family friendly policy. Toilet humour is not to be tolerated around here, no matter how much people may be laughing. :sticks up nose:
Paladin II feels several years out of date in terms of graphics and gameplay. One for adventure genre addicts.
Task Force 1942 gets a buggie. It simply didn't work on their system. You suck microprose, and need to fix it.
The druid gets a life: Oh, not again. Are people still perpetuating stupid put-downs against druids. Quite possibly the most awesome class in the game, with full spellcasting, decent weapons and easy shapeshifting on top. And, in these editions, a fairly strict charisma minimum. If they're social outcasts, it's because they choose to be, not due to necessity. And let's face it, they can achieve balance between man and nature much more effectively if they involve themselves in the affairs of both. There's also the interesting fact that they're one of the few classes that has an overarching organisation that they have to be a part of, and this makes them very able to co-ordinate their actions should it become necessary. By providing magical assistance to the common man, as long as they're acting in a nature-friendly way, with the threat of taking it away present in the background, they can subtly become a fantasy mafia that surpasses even the thieves guilds. This is the kind of thing that makes a political campaign seem rather more appealing than Bruce's contribution this month. Politics means little without agendas and means, and the fun is in just how subtly and obliquely you can fulfil your objectives, preferably via masterstrokes that accomplish several things at once while also turning your enemies against one-another. This is a very pleasing article. Plus on top of being likeable, this has a nice array of spells which serve to expand their everyday usefulness. Keep fighting the stupidity.
Fertility is one that'll let even a single 1st level druid make a real difference to a whole community over the course of the year. Once they have a few more levels under their belt, they can wander across a whole country. It really will take surprisingly few druids to make a huge impact on a society with tools like this.
Heal Plants is a lot more effective than the human cure wounds spell of the same level. At higher levels, it'll fix an entire blighted field. It's reversible too, which'll let you ruin a recalcitrant farmer's life as quickly as you saved it.
Ripen lets you cheat the seasons, presumably in case of emergency. Because regular use would probably result in disapproval from the hierarchy and possible power loss.
Firebreak stops nasty creatures from setting fire to the forest. Watch them look thoroughly bemused as it just doesn't work. Whether you choose to reveal your presence will obviously depend on what they do next.
Spring lets you conjure water from the ground, presuming there's any to conjure. Probably wouldn't work too well in athas. Still, you can get more than you would conjuring it wholecloth if you choose your location well. Both approaches have their place in a well rounded repertoire.
Heal Trees is a higher level variant of heal plants, able to affect the largest of plant-organisms, including intelligent ones. Meh.
Insect Ward is handy on several levels, as it can fuck up an ecosystem as well as make life more pleasant. With a duration of months, this is another one that can change the life of a community for better or worse. And isn't that a lot more interesting than another combat spell that's over in a flash.
Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993
part 4/5
The game wizards: Time for the collector's cards to get their now regular promoting in here. And oh god, the statistics are more complicated than ever. They now have both the regular gold bordered cards, and considerably rarer red bordered cards, explicitly made just for the purpose of giving people who really want to collect them all a real challenge. They've started hand-sorting the packs to make sure the distribution across the country is truly random. And there's several visual gimmicks like prismatic cards, stickers, and exclusive stuff. Amusingly, they point out their own errata here as well. Sure they've made a few mistakes. But that just makes those runs even more collectible, honest! As one of those articles that started off as an interesting diversion, but is now becoming routine, this is rather less interesting than last year. Statistics can only sustain my interest if I have some attachment to the underlying topic. And that's not really the case here.
Forum: Karen Remick is yet another person organizing their thoughts on an issue into numbered points. Seems to be becoming quite the trend. She's another person trying to address the twinkery problem, often by oblique methods. Remember, the less they know about the rules and their character's statistics, the less they can twink them. If you have to change system to regain that air of mystery, so be it.
Warren Tilson is even more keen on removing the statistics from the player's annoying grasps, having them define their characters narratively and just build from that. It forces them to roleplay, and speeds up character generation considerably too. Get back to roleplaying's let's pretend roots, not it's wargaming ones.
Randy Hunt yet again says the DM should be the one keeping the character sheets between sessions. I'm starting to think that should be standard. After all, if a player doesn't turn up, you can still run that character accurately as an NPC. If the DM flakes, everyone's screwed regardless. In addition, make sure you present options other than combat to your players.
Bill Heron also encourages number-pointing your ideas. Oh, and actually communicating with them, and establishing what people want out of a game. Passive-aggressive nerfing mid game is no fun for anyone.
Matt Martin advises you not to follow the treasure tables to the letter, or allow every optional rule into the game. These are sure paths to overpowered characters. The imbalance is inherent to the system, and you must actively work to prevent it.
Jorge Hernandez once again brings the mean solutions to the table to make sure no overpowered character escapes. As with the jedi stuff, at this point you really have no excuses but your own incompetence and cowardice for letting payers get away with this shit.
Ed Pflager tries to be reasonable about age restrictions on gaming conventions. Yes, a flat limit is a bit unfair. But in a public convention, how are they to know if you're mature enough or not. Best to be on the safe side.
Thomas M. Heckmann (is that bowdlerised? :D ) explains exactly why SARPA have an age restriction on many games. As usual, its the parents that are the problem, not the kids. You have to take precautions in these litigious times. Yes, it is a bit of a tiresome business. The alternative is worse.
Sage advice: Do dex and cover bonuses stack (Nah. If you're hunkered down, you can't dodge properly. )
Do dex bonuses stack with the shield spell (probably.)
What other magic stacks with the shield spell ( stuff that adds, not stuff that provides a new base. )
Can spectral hand be used to deliver cure spells at range. (Technically no, but you probably should. )
Does word of recall transport other people with you. (As long as they're not too heavy. )
What's padded leather armour. (A no longer extant type of armour. Like assassins, it was deemed unnecessary.
What happens if you roll higher than 23 with a vorpal sword. (You can't. The math does not parse like that. It's like rolling a 7 on a d6. )
Do all big creatures suffer penalties against dwarves and gnomes (no, only the ones listed. )
Can you use granted priest powers after being at deaths door. (no.)
Why do weapons do different amounts of damage to different sizes (to give you interesting tactical choices )
Why does thunder rift use AD&D stuff when it's a D&D adventure. (When in doubt, blame the editors. Writers get the praise, editors take the blame. Who made the rules like that? Some questions even Skip won't answer.)
If you create a giant zombie is it harder to turn (no, but you can't turn as many )
Can find traps figure out what a contingencies trigger is (not usually)
Do shamans and wokani have armour restrictions (yes, but not the same as normal clerics.)
How do I get a job at TSR. Will having a degree help. ( Keep sending in submissions as a freelancer. Persistence persistence persistence is waaaay more important than talent, especially if you listen to feedback. )
Shadowrun RPG for the SNES. I remember this as well. It took forever to complete if you didn't cheat. The amount of grinding I did to level up in that, and then lost because there were only two save slots, and someone saved over mine. :grumble, mutter:
The role of books: The grail of hearts by Susan Shwartz takes us across history in the wake of a female Wandering Jew, manipulated by the forces of evil as she tries to escape her fate.
Strange devices of the moon and sun by Lisa Goldstein doesn't do so well, with neither the historical worldbuilding or the fantastical elements brilliantly done.
Aquamancer by Don Calander has a rather mixed review for simultaneously being formulaic, and breaking several important rules of writing. Hmm. That doesn't sound right, yet somehow it works. I guess it's in the implementation.
Realms of Valor, edited by James Lowder brings us a whole load of Forgotten Realms short stories. Lots of familiar characters make appearances, including Elminster, Drizzt and Jandar Sunstar, plus a whole load of new smaller perspectives. There seems to be plenty of room in this world for further short stories, that don't take a whole novel to tell and have some significant effect upon the world.
War world: Blood feuds, created by Jerry Pournelle sees Larry Niven's frequent collaborator getting into the shared world business himself. And like the Man-Kzin wars, this involves both action and moral complexities, an overarching sweep of history bigger than any one story, and well done worldbuilding, even if some of the individual stories aren't brilliant.
The city who fought by Anne McCaffrey & S. M. Stirling comes close to being shared world too, as apparently McCaffrey is now leaving most of the heavy lifting to her younger collaborators. This makes it a little formulaic, staying well within the established boundaries for her world, but with a tone somewhat different from her own writing voice.
Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993
part 5/5
The dragon's bestiary: Yay! more planar monsters! All ones that would later appear in proper MC appendices as well. Keep building that part of the setting up, we've still got a way to go until planescape.
Giant Nautilus are one of the few things that can go head-to-head with Kraken in both the physical and mental arenas. With 21 attacks per round, tough armour, plus substantial magical powers, they should also be able to deal with most parties too, should one be around while they do something bad for the environment. Not one to be casually trifled with.
Abyss ants are exactly what you'd expect. Giant malevolent twisted versions of normal ants, ready to melt your face off with acid spitting. As they're considerably less chaotic than most abyssal inhabitants, they can survive via co-operation in the face of the horrors of the infinite pit and carve out their own little safe regions. (for them) As ever, good luck turning them to your advantage, because I don't fancy your odds of killing them all unless you're a creature immune to nonmagical attacks that can just wade through them.
Incarnates are possessing spirits that epitomise the 7 virtues & sins. They offer you appropriate powers at the cost of some of your free will. The good ones can be useful, while the bad ones are an almighty pain to get rid of. Now these can indeed be nice plot drivers. Are you willing to make that fusion willingly, and become a lot more like a White Wolf character? (what? Mage, Wraith, Changeling, Exalted, Mummy, Demon, Geist. All use variants on that theme. It does seem to be rather a habit of theirs. I do wonder why. )
Dragonmirth involves literal dungeons this time. And the same joke Fineous fingers started with back in issue 3. Ogrek continues to irritate everyone he meets. How does he get away with it? A spectacular arial battle fills twilight empire.
Through the looking glass: The hammer has fallen. Or has it. As usual, it's more complicated than that. It's only a few states in the US that are doing the lead banning thing. Some companies will still be producing lead minis, particularly ones overseas. And of course, with such patchy enforcement, it would not be a complicated matter to go out of state for your shopping, maybe do a little illegal importing for your mates (although as a pundit in a major magazine, he is contractually obliged to disapprove of that behaviour. ) It would be oh so easy to make a mockery of this, just as we did with prohibition. Plus it would make a great noir comedy. Wargaming importers and the hard-bitten detectives who try and track them down. Adversity does make things interesting.
Our reviewed minis this month are a mechanic with a gun, and a ton of little detail on his clothes that'll be a challenge to pain. Lord Soth in all his brooding glory riding a skeletal horse. Sir Bors from Arthurian legend, mounted or on foot. You think he'd stand a chance against Soth? Some modern soldiers with machine guns and missiles. Dwarves with polearms considerably longer than them. A wererat with a rather nasty looking sword. A completely nonchesecaky druid/ranger. And the token bit of furniture. Once again they fight to increase the legibility of the photographs, with mixed success.
We also get a review of Warhammer Battle Magic. It gets pretty good marks from Robert, with only the subtle niggle that the way they're dividing things up may be more based on getting you to buy lots of other figures than IC thematics keeping him from giving it 5 stars. Yeah, I think we know by now that Games Workshop are pretty ruthless and effective business people. They wouldn't have survived where all the other wargaming companies died if they weren't. At least someone's still around to push the mass market minis.
TSR Previews: Having had Top Secret grind to a halt in 1991, they make another, rather different shot at producing a versatile generic system. The Amazing Engine™. Base rules simple enough to fit in a 32 page booklet, and a system designed to allow you to switch easily between wildly different characters in wildly different milieus. Two of these are released straight away. For Faerie, Queen and country combines victoriana with a distinct flavour of open magic, while Bughunters is fast paced sci-fi. How many settings will they get out before this too falls by the wayside?
Dark sun is our top AD&D attraction this month. The Ivory Triangle is a big boxed set full of info on Gulg, Nibenay, and their epic conflict. Use it fast, because like everything else in this world, it'll be out of date and superceded soon. Much of this is of course the fault of Troy Denning, who completes book 4 of the prism pentad, The Obsidian Oracle. Tyr may be free, but the new boss'll become as bad as the old boss if he gets his way.
Ravenloft proves even Pinnochio can be made horrific, in The Created. A mad toymaker sends his creations against people. Guess it's foiling time again. But how many other suspicious characters lurk nearby to serve as red herrings?
Greyhawk follows up on a couple of months ago. WGR6: The city of skulls sends you to infiltrate Iuz's capital city. Can you make a difference to the big picture? Good luck.
Spelljammer gets SJR8: Space lairs. Another anthology of short adventures. Well, the standard ones don't work very well in space. Don't let your game grind to a halt because you're out of ideas.
And finally, we have another batch of trading cards. I can't even be bothered with the pokemon jokes anymore. Let's skip them until that actually comes out in a few years.
In contrast to the last issue, this one really flew by. Fortunately, that's because most of the articles were interesting enough that I could easily think of something to say for them even if many of them weren't actually that great. With Roger's 10th, and the lead bill kerfuffle, this is another one that both lets me really appreciate how far I've come, and how much further I have to go. And just how much work it's been. Eventually, it'll start getting easier. But knowing me, that just means I'll start posting faster again, making the workload just as hard. Let's hope that day isn't too far away.
Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993
part 1/5
124 pages So we're up to year 17. Many of the magazine's readers are now younger than it, including me. Feel free to shake your stick and try get us offa your lawn. As you'd expect, there's a dragon on the cover trying to do just that. Because let's face it, we're all youngsters to a fully grown dragon, even the elves. But I guess the important question is if they've still got anything to teach us, or their age has left them out of date and baffled by this newfangled technology. Since we have not one but two Dragon Projects this month, they do seem to have some genuinely new stuff to offer us. But on the other hand, they also have two game wizards articles, which generally aren't particularly useful. Let's see what the ratio of good stuff, filler and crap is this issue.
In this issue:
Letters: Praise for the african articles. Yaaay! Roger points out further reading. Actually, he doesn't, but it's the thought that counts. Coverage of african history and mythology is still pretty damn sketchy.
Uriah Heap? What have uriah heap got to do with D&D? A very good question that'll hopefully be filled in later.
A letter from a multiclassed gamer/akidoer. As with army people writing in, Roger gives this extra attention due to personal investment. Seems like lots of the TSR staff actually try to become badass ninjas in real life, with mixed success. Why do I find that more funny than I should?
A letter from someone who's found a misprinted trading card. Oooh. You can get more for them than the regular ones! Why do we even bother complaining about errata anyway when people fetishise it so.
A letter from Ann Dupuis responding to Rick's review of GURPS Old West. Man, political correctness is getting out of hand these days. Such was the 90's. Can't talk about anything real without offending someone. This is one reason why we retreat into fantasy worlds in the first place.
Editorial: From political correctness to more religious hysteria. Beauty and the beast promotes lycanthropy?! Ok, they're really really reaching for that one. I'm pretty certain some people just look for reasons to be offended by anything popular to get some attention. Roger treats this with the utter contempt it deserves. He really is getting more and more emotionally invested in this problem as the years go by. Still, it doesn't compare with the rage he feels at people trying to ban the diary of Anne Frank. That just says willfull eeeeeeevilness on a cartoonish level. Remember, a fairly reliable way of spotting who the good guy in a situation is the one who wants you to have access to information, and the freedom to make your own choices. It might not be perfect, but it'll be right far more often than not, until the bad guys wise up and feed you false info to make you make the wrong choices. And fighting censorship and government lies is something that remains incredibly relevant in the internet age. With video phones and instant uploads, we all have the ability to make a difference, ensure the actual truth on ugly events gets out. If that means we have to watch some poor quality, gruesome stuff, well, that's a price I'm willing to pay for freedom.
Dragon dogfights: We kick this birthday off with quite a neat little number. A simplified system for fighting in the skies? It's not nearly as silly as clay-o-rama, but that may well be a good thing. It does have stuff in common with it in that you'll have to supply all the raw materials yourselves, and the whole thing was a little thrown-together, designed so people could have a laugh at last year's conventions. Of course, deadlines like that often wind up working in the favor of usability, as you really have to stick to the essentials needed to get the game working. And the stress testing it got then probably gave them a chance to iron off a few more rough edges. The whole thing is tremendously easy to get into, and the rules could well fit on a single sheet of doublesided paper if they shrank the font a bit. This qualifies as a definite success, even if it's not as impressive a package as the old centrefold games they used to put in the magazine. I do rather miss those. We want more variety!
The details of the amazing engine and the way it will handle the core rules and settings is revealed. 32 page core rules and 128 page settings? Fight that bloat!
Dexter & Cornelius: Our first Dragon Project is for GURPS. An adorably naive young dragon and the conman who's exploiting him to make his fortune. There's an idea that can be translated fairly easily to other systems, although it may be out of character for some worlds. It actually sounds more like the plot of one of their short stories than an article, but since the fiction in the magazine is one of my favourite parts, that's no bad thing. The crunch takes up a pretty tiny part of the article, showing GURPS doesn't have to degenerate into a morass of special case stuff, and the central idea seems pretty fun as an adventure seed. I think this is a pretty good success in balancing their various pressures.
Dragonbot Ver 3.1: Ha. Paranoia time again. The computer is being so successful in it's attempts to root out and destroy mutant scum is so successful that you get the marvellous opportunity to employ its latest development, a mechanical dragon, to further demonstrate the perfection of the computer's engineering. It's the best yet, but all the older models were perfect as well! It has a cloaking system, and anyone who can see through it must be a traitorous mutant scumbag requiring immediate termination. Rather more specific than the other article, this integrates and punctures a whole bunch of D&Disms with a Paranoia spin, making it pretty hard to fit into another game. It does get rather silly, but you'd expect that. Maybe this should have been in the april issue instead. In any case, this is still an entertaining read, especially when you get all the references, but I can't see it getting that much actual play use.
Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993
part 2/5
TSR Previews: The game designers decide that maybe the loose leaf format for collecting monsters wasn't such a good idea after all, and release MCC1: Monstrous Manual. Still, they've collected creatures from lots of the compendia, revised them, and made all the artwork colour. And as noism's thread so epically indicates, there are a lot of people who remember this one fondly, probably more than the magazine. Rather less remembered is the Cardmaster Adventure design deck. Another way to facilitate quick easy design, I'm not sure how this one works. Spells, monsters and magic items are easy enough, but this seems a bit awkward.
Ravenloft is our double dipper this month. RM2: Web of illusions takes you to Sri Raji, to see the rakshasa. Or not, given their skills at misdirection. If you don't see through their deceptions and pack some serious magical heat you are likely to become dinner. Meanwhile, Carnival of fear by J. Robert King sees a bunch of carnival performers try and solve a series of murders. Somehow, I don't think these monsters will be Mr Jenkins the janitor in a mask.
The forgotten realms releases a new core boxed set reflecting all the metaplot changes, and incorporating a good deal of the material. Plus you can do some adventuring underneath shadowdale, fight drow and get saved by Elminster (and his little dog). Hey ho. Change keeps chugging along. Soon this too will be out of date.
Al-Qadim has a rather less hurried pace in City of delights, one of their bigger boxed sets. Ok, there is some stuff about yak men, and their plot to take over the city, but that's just an adventure hook. Enjoy wandering around a high magic city with plentiful elemental connections, and lots of colourful characters to encounter. Try not to get on the wrong side of the law, for many of the guards are also not your basic 1st level mooks.
Dark Sun gets splatbookalicious, with CGR2: The complete gladiator's handbook. You know the drill by now. Kits, equipment, roleplaying advice, all with that unique dark sun flavour (like barbecue, only drier.) mixed in. Don't be surprised if there's even more power creep than even this setting normally has.
Dragonlance reaches part 2 in the dwarven nations trilogy. Hammer and axe by Dan Parkinson sees hill dwarves split away from their mountain cousins. Cue monty python jokes about molehill dwarves, given how small the things they're disagreeing over are.
D&D has another tiny little adventure. In the phantom's wake is another 16 pager that would be rather hard to spot on a bookshelf. This format is starting to look seriously dated when contrasted with the 128 page splatbooks.
Role-playing reviews decides to have a spate of sci-fi. People may not be sending in many articles, but they can still rely on their columnites to cover a wide variety of other companies games.
Battletech 3rd edition gets the full 5 star deluxe treatment, with rick praising nearly every aspect of it's rules and setting. Fasa have improved on the existing game both rules wise and in presentation, and look like they'll continue raking it in for a while yet. All power to them.
Gamma Knights doesn't get quite such a great result. It's decent enough for what it is, but there's a few bits of rules weirdness, and it doesn't really integrate with the RPG at all. That's more a marketing decision than having anything to do with the existing setting.
Orbit War also gets quite a bit of negativity. It was cool as a special feature in a magazine a decade ago, but on it's own, it seems both too expensive and terribly outdated. Once again the end of the cold war has changed the political landscape enough that this kind of thing no longer resonates.
Tyranno Ex sees Rick argue heatedly with his playtesters over it's merits. When a game's this innovative, you can forgive it a few rules flaws. Plus evolution is an interesting business that deserves more publicity anyway. I wonder what he'll make of pokemon in a few years time. :D
The known world grimoire: Sagin' time again in this department. Bruce still has many more questions to answer.
No magic at all?! That'll kill me! Really? No magic at all!1! (oh all right, there's a few exceptions, mostly purely internal ones needed for some creature's basic functionality. )
Any info on Minea out there? (Not really. Maybe some day. )
Are there weapon mastery charts for the hollow world stuff. (Go back a year and ask again)
How does Bekander get a manifestation. (For free)
Why haven't green slimes eaten the world. (Our ecology, it needs adding too. Maybe you could create the monster that keeps the slimes and oozes in check. )
Are charmed things freed when their master dies (Nope. Until they actually make the regular save, they will try to avenge his death fanatically. )
What's a Night Dragon (Shoulda started reading this magazine a few years ago)
Will all the princess ark series be fully compiled (Nope. Nearly half of it'll be abridged, due to space issues. Shoulda started reading the magazine a few years ago. )
Don't listen to the h8ers! The New D&D basic set kicks ass! ( Why thank you. :teeth ting: ) I'm glad someone's doing their part to grow the hobby instead of moaning about everything we do. )
Breaking them in: Ahh, another attempt to get new players in. And it does actually offer some new advice. Do some solo mentoring. Encourage them to prepare. And get one of the other players to take them under their wing. Interesting, if a bit insubstantial in terms of word count. Plus a half page header on a page and a half article? I suspect padding out to fit around the number of adverts. Still, better just a few new ideas than 10 ones that we've seen before all too often. And better they choose fairly good articles for their padding and twist them a bit with font size changes than bad ones that just happen to be exactly the right word count. Pretty mixed feelings about this really. Oh well, it adds a few more XP to my count. And the emphasis on personal tuition is interesting. In the old days we all had to learn together. But gaming has been around long enough now that this has become a viable path to get someone up to speed quicker. I guess we should take advantage of that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993
part 3/5
Sage advice: What happened to the maps in WGR3 (Oops. Guess Skip will have to put the pages in the modules as well as the mages. )
Do hide in shadows and move silently work on undead. (Why wouldn't they. They may be immune to all kinds of stuff, but they still have the same basic senses. )
Can you sell a wall of iron for shitloads of money in athas. (No. It has a duration specifically to prevent that. You are so pre-empted.)
How do the veiled alliance interact with advanced beings (with great caution, like you do with anyone who can kill you with a word)
How many followers do avangions attract (everyone in the area who wants a better world for themselves, and their children, and their children's children. There are people dying. Spare a thought for the living. Make a better world, for you and for me. )
Do avangions eat and sleep (probably)
How do avangions use powers that requite them to walk (Shapechanging, duh. Does the concept of access 9th level spells mean nothing to you? )
How can elves be wimpy but live a long time (Horses and parrots. Cockroaches and china. Fast metabolisms burn themselves out. )
Why does the complete elves handbook have spells elves can't learn. (Just because they can't specialize in them, doesn't mean they can't learn them. )
What happens if you take plants spelljamming (you'd have to take a hell of a lot to balance up the breathing of a whole crew. )
Can a riddlemaster choose the right card from a deck of many things. (no. You can't analyze or game totally random results. That's a Wild Mage trick. )
The role of computers: Conquered Kingdoms seems pretty self explanatory. Take over places with your forces, and then deal with the hassles of managing them. Face off wizards & dragons, or maybe other players via modem. Not hugely innovative, but they enjoy it.
Lure of the Temptress gets a fairly good review. The interface, which brings up options via pointing and right-clicking, is relatively quick and intuitive for the number of options it offers. With plenty of different options for interacting with the NPC's, and an environment that changes quite a bit as you go through the adventure, it kept them interested throughout and wanting to try replaying it. Only a few stupid AI flaws keep it from getting 5 stars.
Realms is another one combining fantasy wargame and sim game, forcing you to master the finer arts of taxation and city building as well as battlefield tactics to win. As with most of these, this can eat up vast amounts of time mastering all the subtleties if you let it.
Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender is a point and click comedy adventure in the vein of the leisure suit larry games. Unusually for their reviewers, they don't object to the dirty bits, as they can be switched on and off quickly and easily mid-game and password protected, so your kids will not be corrupted and you will not be embarrassed. Ha. They continue to amuse on this front. Why must family friendly policies produce such risible results? People just can't resist thumbing their nose at them.
The Summoning is a more action oriented RPG, sending you through a massive multi-level labyrinth, where you have to change your equipment and other complexities without pausing. In an other sign of advancing interfaces, they not only have automapping, but also let you print your maps off easily. The magic system is pretty cool too. Another one they intend to revisit in future hints sections.
Gamma Terra Revisited: Along with the Dragon Project articles, here we have a gamma world article. Only the 2nd one since 4e's release though, (and once again by an official writer) which once again goes to show how much they're struggling to get people to write in with this stuff. It's not a particularly surprising topic either. More Mutations? That's like saying more monsters or spells for D&D. The main question then becomes are they any good. Browsing through them, I can definitely say that these are more superhero powers than remotely realistic body alterations. Some even have the rather artificial limitation of 1/day, which further affects that feeling. Guess they're still playing on the gonzo side in the TSR offices. Pretty standard collection though. Extended lifespan, darkness generation, phasing through objects, flight, blasty energy balls. The main thing to recommend it is the well above average artwork. Otherwise, tis somewhat yawnsome. You won't be inspiring the freelancers with stuff like this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993
part 4/5
Campaign journal: As with the dragon projects, we have our second wave of campaign boosters from the official writers this month. This time, it's Dark Sun's turn. Rich Baker sets about integrating kits into there, with a short bit of advice on good existing ones, and then launching into a whole range of new ones, 2 for each class group. That won't catch them up with Al Qadim, but it won't hurt, and shouldn't be too hard to retroactively integrate into your game.
Slave warriors have fairly substantial bonuses, but of course are slaves, which does limit their freedom quite a lot. And if they do escape or get set free, they'll lose the benefits and get a different set of penalties. Unless the owner is another PC (Which isn't impossible since there's a noble kit) this'll be rather a nuisance. Maybe an all-slave campaign would be fun for a bit.
Raiders are your typical bandity types. They get a substantial bonus to ambushes, but are obviously not very popular in most social situations. Better leave that to the other PC's while you lurk menacingly in the background then.
Veiled ones are preservers strongly on the in in the veiled alliance. This means they have other wizards to help them out and get half-decent spell choices, but need to spend quite a bit of time maintaining a cover identity and helping out other preservers. This'll create adventure options as well as restrict them, and the other players may well have to help out in your plot lines. Better hope they don't also have kits that demand a ton of their time.
Arcanamach's are their opposite halves, sorcerer-king's attack dogs. Which means they can operate openly, have extensive spell selections, and order around virtually anyone apart from templars, but they're feared, hated and regularly sent on missions by their boss. It's a stressful life, and not that great for PC's.
Chroniclers are priests who do historical research, a pretty rare commodity on Athas. They get Read Languages, rogue style, and an eidetic memory, at the cost of always having to try and recover ancient lore, which isn't really a drawback at all, although it may lead them into unwise situations. Ahh, the old swashbuckler setup.
Tribal Priests are another one with mainly social benefits and hindrances. Gotta take care of your congregation, no matter how it may get in the way of your adventuring. But much respect if you do.
Caravaneers get lots of bonus proficiencies and will never be short of a job, but like many travellers, will face scorn and distrust from people in any other situation. Gypsies and sailors get a bad rap but you can't really live without trade. Since their hindrance will mainly come into effect if they leave their job, this'll keep them adventuring.
Sycophants steal via charm and freeloading rather than blatant thievery, soon becoming able to juggle one friend off another and live virtually for free without anyone noticing. Course, this requires people not seeing them as a threat. They may have some mechanical backup, but they can still blow it by strapping on armor and looking like a professional adventurer.
Noble psionicists are pretty much the same as the kit for other classes. Extra money at the start, but they then have to maintain themselves in the style they're accustomed too, or lose the social clout their family connections grant them. Probably ought to be a non class specific kit.
Untutored ones break the normal psionicist rules and get a wild talent on top of their usual powers. They then pay for this over the course of their career by not getting free defence modes and being unpopular with regular trained psychics. This is obviously one rather dependent on luck, but in general, this will start out a fairly decent advantage and gradually become more and more of a disadvantage, so it's a good one to tempt players with.
So here we see an unusually high number of bonus proficiencies in many of the kits, and lots of purely social hindrances, some very strict. Ironically, this discourages everyone from taking a kit, for if they all did, their competing social requirements would tear the group apart when properly enforced. This is a definite design flaw that needs addressing. It's fine for NPC's to have issues like that, but PC's need to be able to keep the team together to survive and prosper. I am once again reminded of my own musical experiences, where one of the biggest obstacles to a band's success is the various life events of the members constantly getting in the way of actually producing anything. You really do need to be able to just say fuck 'em all and set off into the unknown if you want to make a huge life change. Integrating into the community can be a trap for the unwary that wastes your entire life in petty details. And I really don't want that incorporated into my gaming when it's precisely what I play to escape.
Castle Falkenstein! Another highly entertaining and idiosyncratic game gets teased here.
The game wizards 1: Promo goes into overdrive this month. The Amazing Engine was released last month, along with it's first two settings. And while it isn't getting the same kind of push as Buck Rogers, there's people here who want it to succeed. Particularly the ones who wrote the books, such as Lester Smith. Left to himself, he would have developed a rather crunchier system for Bughunters. But under Zeb's direction, he's kept it simple stupid and squeezed everything into 128 pages. Which since it's a game designed to model sci-fi military action stuff such as Aliens and Predator, is counterintuitive but probably more fun than something that details guns and equipment in fetishistic detail. (like the official licence, for example) Course, that isn't going to stop the whole thing from dying within a couple of years, but so it goes. The fact that settings are only getting a single book each and then it's on to the next one probably hurts the attempt to build up marketable IP. Still, the overall ideas sound good. It's a case where it's a little depressing how TSR's other RPG's kept dying. What could make a comfortable living for a smaller company was a gross waste of resources for them. It's all a little saddening.
Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993
part 5/5
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Spike T Jones takes a break from ecologising for a little itemising. He contributes an interesting grab bag of bottles, and things which fit inside them. Once again we see how a sideways theme can be more interesting and varied than a straightforward one.
Tenser's Tantalus lets you carry a whole array of potions and scrolls on it, secured and protected, but coming away at a touch ready to use. No more frustrating rummaging in backpacks in the middle of battle, like extradimensional storage, this'll change the life of adventuring parties to the degree that they won't know how they managed before it. Better make sure enemies don't smash or steal it.
Bottles of preservation keep anything in them fresh. Since some monsters are both highly perishable and can be used to make magic items, this could allow you to multiply your profit from an adventure, presuming the right buyer is available. Or possibly make prettier, better smelling flesh golems, if that's your perversion of choice. Brains in a jar make for good props anyway.
Bottles of trapping shrink you and suck you in, leaving you to be put on the shelf, complaining in a squeaky voice. No mention is made of it removing your bodily needs, so being a prisoner in a bottle may get rather humiliating after a while. It can also lead to some amusingly cartoonish scenes. Very mean.
Nerve tonic lets you stay completely calm. One that you could probably make lots of money selling to non-adventurers. Let's hope the ingredients can be farmed and mass produced.
Oil of monster repulsion does exactly what it says on the bottle. Course, it only affects a specific species, so it's hardly a great cure-all. Another one that'll be most handy when you can make it yourself, instead of just finding some random variant of it in the treasure pile.
Oil of neutral scent stops you from smelling, which is very useful when dealing with things like tracker dogs or grimlocks. The experience of being completely smell free may become addictive, which will be very expensive for the fastidious and paranoid. Just the quirk to give to your campaign's equivalent of Howard Hughes
Pox potion is yet another way your creative attempts could go horribly wrong. It won't be fatal to experienced adventurers, but it will make your life pretty unpleasant until you can get a cure disease in.
Ships-in-a-bottle grow to full size when you break them. Unfortunately, they can't be made to shrink again after use, so you're stick with a full size ship. Perhaps more research on this matter is needed. The solution is probably going to be expensive.
Skunk water makes whatever it's added too smell utterly foul. Do not drink under any circumstances, save possibly trying to blend in in troglodyte territory.
Smoke of fire quenching is another one-use item that may save your life, but only in very specific circumstances. Stock up on a whole bunch of them if facing fire elementalists then.
The game wizards 2: Hmmm. TSR's trying to get into the new FMV game scene. Stuff like Atmosfear started appearing a couple of years ago, and as with many gimmicky things that're easy to learn, they've sold like gangbusters, yet only been played once or twice before being relegated to the attic. Not that this bothers the manufacturers much, as we've already given them our money. This is in sharp contrast to AD&D, which is now pretty dependent on the return dollar (another reason why the non D&D RPG's keep getting dropped by the company) So Bruce Nesmith was the muggins who got tasked with developing a new boardgame at short notice to try and catch the money before fashion moves on again. Say hello to Dragon Strike! Created in a mere 3 months, it seems to have all the hallmarks of the genre. The tape is only 30 minutes long, so games should be easy to play, and it has enough variant adventures, random cards and shiny bits and pieces that it should manage a dozen or so playthroughs before getting repetitive. And hopefully by then they'll have read the advertising pamphlet and been lured into full D&D. Yeah, this is pretty blatantly another attempt to create a gateway drug. It's also interesting from a historical perspective as a precursor to the multimedia stuff they'll start including in AD&D products next year, First Quest and all the other things with Audio CDs that "enhance" the adventure. I guess from that we can assume it was at least a modest success. It does feel a bit odd for them to be so blatantly admitting that this is a gateway drug and produced on a worryingly short notice, but I guess the higher-ups don't mind that, for some reason. Not sure what to think about this one at all. I guess one important question is Was the game Fun? A lot of corporate crap can be forgiven if the final product is good.
With a bond of magic: Greg Detwiler's back again, with a moderately experimental little article trying to get round the problems giving out lots of normal magical weapons causes. Bonded weapons aren't exactly what you would expect from that name. The bond is actually to a particular element or concept, such as fire, fear, disease, magnetism, wood, etc. They bypass the usual plus structure, and hurt nearly anything, but don't have the usual bonuses to attack and damage (although the majority of them do extra energy damage of whatever type.) This means you'll rarely be completely helpless against a monster the way you can be when they're immune to everything below +3, but things with massively low ACs'll still be a very real threat. Mixing these with regular magic weapons in your party handouts'll be another thing that subtly livens up your game. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Novel ideas: As I've noted before, Dragonlance writing seems to be all about the male/female cowriter pairings. Particularly in the novels, it just works best when you have that particular kind of chemistry. It also helps if you have complimentary talents and work habits in other respects as well. Such as when one's a morning person and the other a night owl. Done badly, this can tear a partnership apart. Done well, people can set aside their egos for the sake of getting the product done quicker, better, by trading off work between them, and only actually working together for a few hours a day. Yeah, this all feels very familiar. A huge amount of my life, particularly the musical parts, are filled with annoyance at me being several hours ahead body clock wise, and a lot more reliable than anyone else. Learning to let go and allow them to run with it when I start to flag, because a lot of the time, they're just getting warmed up at that point is one of the lessons I've really had to work hard to internalise. Plus you want people who have talents that complement yours rather than compete directly with them, otherwise it is all too easy to get competitive, and that results in gradual resentment from the less talented partner which eats away at the relationship, while the more talented one can wonder why they're keeping these wasters around, they should just go solo and reap all the rewards themselves. It's all an incredibly complex issue. And here we see it played out in microcosm, albeit in a fairly harmonious manner, since it's also a husband/wife pairing that's being interviewed. It's all rather interesting, and definitely worthy of further discussion. How do you create a creative partnership that is greater than the sum of it's parts?
Dragonmirth is even more dragon-centric than usual. Yamara continues enduring the twisted drow interpretation of imprisonment and torture. Won't someone save her? The party is back together in twilight empire, but the big fight is still to come.
Through the looking glass: Is lead saved at the last minute?! Appeals are in process! You can still make a difference! Ah yes, the legal monster is a slow and sclerotic beast, and getting it to do anything takes months, if not years. This saga feels pretty sluggish to me going through the issues at this rate; it must have been positively torturous to live through. On top of the encouragement to keep fighting the appeals, Robert also starts motions towards setting up an underground railroad for existing lead figures, keep them in active use by the people who want them most. It's like a deliberate co-opting of classic social movement methods in microcosm. I can't help but smile.
Our minis this month have a pretty high proportion of underground stuff too, in a different sense. Drow and their spider mounts. Three different sets of dwarves. An ooze creature to schlorp your adventurers. An equally oozy pod which could contain all manner of horrors. Plenty of humans, mostly of the martial kind. One female fighter, but plenty of male soldiers, with crossbows, bows and swords. And some very 70's looking cyberpunk rockers. And some centaurs and a giant for your aboveground combat needs. Ready for action?
A pretty complicated set of issues raised by this issue. On one hand we have the substantial push to bring back coverage of non D&D RPG stuff. On the other we have the slick self-centred promotional stuff. Similarly, there's a definite tension between the bits that are business as usual, and the special features, and the bits where we see people trying to shut down our fun. Good intentions, but people pulling in different directions, and the whole thing becoming slightly less than the sum of it's parts. Is anybody really on top anymore? When no-one's on top, that leaves things open for someone unexpected to take charge. We shall have to see what happens next, because even if it isn't that unified, there's still lots of interesting threads to follow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993
part 1/5
124 pages The draconic covers continue. This one is looking in pretty poor condition, but isn't out of the fight yet. Will reinforcements save the day? And exactly which side are the good and bad guys anyway? They're all warriors anyway, which puts them all in a fairly dubious moral position from a pacifists point of view. Good thing violence is a morally neutral act in D&D! Otherwise most of our characters'd be out of a job. Anyway, here's another fighter themed issue. I don't doubt we'll see more of those as time goes on.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone annoyed at the number of powergamers out there. Where are the tales of the low level characters. Plane hopping is a pretty expensive proposition, you know. Anyone able to break the 4th wall is automatically going to be of a certain minimum bar. But yes, this could be rebalanced at bit in articles, as Roger admits.
Some more jokes of what constitutes an unfair DM.
A letter asking what the hell the symbols on the wizards spell cards mean. Buy the priest's spell cards to find out! Gotta collect 'em all! :p
A letter from a christian gamer asking if there are any christian specific games around. Anyone who's been reading this thread regularly will be able to point you to Dragonraid. Roger does exactly that, and then neatly segues into another discussion of the people trying to ban roleplaying for spurious reasons. A game like this splits their ranks quite nicely.
Editorial: Continuing on from the letters, Roger tells his own tale of how his non twinked characters not only survived but prospered, and had interesting adventures too. In famed third party product Tegel Manor too. The statistical intelligence of the character came second to the ingenuity of the player, and with a little help from her friends, she cleared out the place, and become landlord for a whole bunch of semi-retired adventurers ( in a place that huge, there's always going to be a few monsters you missed in the basement, or attic, or maybe a secret room, keeping you on your toes. ) If anything, it was more fun than later games where he was playing obscenely powerful characters. Goes to show. Greatness is defined by the adversity you face. Having a good, easily remembered gimmick doesn't hurt either. It's not the numbers, it's what you do with them. Goes to show. Reiteration of anything is more interesting with specific examples.
So you want to be a samurai?:It's not an easy life, you know. They have alignment restrictions forcing them to be lawful for good reason. The regulations put upon them in reality were pretty strict, and the only honourable way of protesting them suicide, which frankly is a bit iffy as it silences the protester's voice, leaving the daimyo free to continue being despotic unless the rest of his staff join in the protest. Independent thought was not encouraged, peasants giving you any lip were to be struck down without mercy. Unless you went ronin or had an understanding daimyo, adventuring in the traditional way would be rather tricky. No-one gets to have much fun in reality. One of those vaguely tiresome realistic history articles, in other words. I knew most of this stuff already, and the way it's presented this time isn't very exciting. Let's move onwards.
To all a good knight: Back west again to encourage you to give your fighters connections to the world here too. Knightly orders have quite a complex history in the real world. In a polytheistic one, this can be even more interesting, with connections to various gods, and quite different codes of conduct. We get a couple of real ones, and talk about how they would adapt to AD&D, and a new one from the writer's own campaign. While not bad, this is both more longwinded, and less mechanically innovative than a similar article from issue 125, so this once again falls into rehash territory, demonstrating how articles have become a good deal less experimental in recent years. Everything has to fit into the regular class and kit format. Is that another directive from on high, trying to get us to stick to the official rules, or are players just not monkeying around with the workings of the system the way they used to? Once again it is good reason for me to yawn and sigh.
TSR Previews: Dragonlance finally tries to move forwards again, having spent years prequelling the setting with increasing detail. PQ1: The players guide to the Dragonlance campaign may look like an RPG book, but it's pretty much system free, being a bunch of fiction and little essays designed to introduce people to the setting from a ground eye view. See, its not scary to join in instead of just watching. It also gets DLT1: New tales: The land reborn. You get to tag along with some of the characters from the books and clean up the crap from the aftermath of the war. Doesn't that sound like fun!
Spelljammer introduces a new area. The Astromundi cluster. Another boxed set opening up a place where things work a little differently. Which is pretty neat. Can you manage to live peacefully beside neogi and mind flayers?
Ravenloft continues to give Van Richten prominence in the setting with his guide to Werebeasts. If you don't think they can be scary, look again. The amount of mystery and suspense involved in finding one, and then dealing with them if they're unwilling, is quite substantial. These creatures are a lot more annoying here than anywhere else, and even powerful adventurers can feel the long term sting of an encounter with them.
Dark Sun goes back to home base, to show you what's changed. DSS1: The city-state of Tyr. Is it going to actually become free, or just another chaotic miserable shithole. You know the answer by now. Bloody happy endings mandate. How are we supposed to run a sustainable persistent world suitable for adventuring in if the good guys always win?
Greyhawk is still obsessed with Iuz, with the third product in a row focussing on his works. WGM1: Border watch sees the PC's trying to keep him from expanding his territory. Nasty business, but somebody's gotta do it. Don't you miss just going into the temple of elemental evil and killing everything in it. So much simpler.
The forgotten realms focusses on it's own villains. Prince of lies by James Lowder sees Cyric face some ghosts from his past. How long can he remain triple portfolio'd god of superdickery? Surely the other gods aren't going to put up with this upstart for ever.
Gamma world has the orwell inspired supplement GWQ2: All animals are equal. Mutant animals have taken over the zoo. What kind of society will they form without the humans?
And finally, even our generic novels get increasingly serial. Book of stones by L. Dean James completes the story from sorcerers stone. I don't even know about this to be properly snarky, so I shall say nothing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993
part 2/5
Real warriors ride elephants: Off to africa again. Persistence is paying off in multiple ways, as this is also another collection of kits to differentiate the class that most needs it. It may not be hugely groundbreaking, but it's certainly needed. Let's hope the mechanics are satisfactory.
Ashanti Warriors dress brightly and ride horses, travelling across great distances and generally being showy and heroic. They seriously kick ass in the saddle, with both combat and social benefits, but if they lose their horse, they'll be out of action for ages. This is most likely to be a problem at higher level.
Benin Hunters are fierce trackers and protectors, an African spin on Rangers. They get improved stealth and favored enemy bonuses, but lose two weapon fighting, as there's no particular cultural tradition of that. This a pretty minor adjustment, about on the same level as wizards giving up a familiar for some other minor benefit. After all, many wouldn't use it anyway.
Bornu Horsemen show that chivalry is not a purely european invention, being the closest thing to knights. This makes them generally pretty popular and trusted, but they have to behave or become hunted down by their former companions in arms. The real benefit is that they get to use heavier armour than any of the other kits round here, which is easy to overlook.
Kalahari Bushmen go around near naked in the desert sun, toughening them up, and making them able to survive their easily, but resulting in serious premature wizening. As this is a purely social penalty for substantial mechanical benefits, this is one of the more powerful kits here.
Kongo Pygmies are another set of shortarses, adapted well to the jungle. They get a whole bunch of woodland benefits that make them superior to rangers in some ways, particularly stealth, but all their initial nonweapon proficiency slots are eaten up by their requirements, seriously curtailing their choices, and they have a strength penalty to reflect their size, which is a pretty strong drawback for a fighter. I think that about balances out, but in an interesting way.
Kushite Elephant Warriors are the titular kit of this article. Of course, an elephant is both benefit and hindrance. It requires a ton of maintenance and won't fit in many dungeons. But on open ground it can trample most opposition into the dirt, especially if you have several of them in formation. Have fun.
Interesting to note how few bonus proficiencies these classes get, especially in contrast with the athasian kits of last issue. Other than that, they're pretty balanced, with the lack of armour an understated but omnipresent factor that'll actually be a pretty significant compensation for the benefits. I think this is a pretty good collection that'll add to your game without breaking it.
The game wizards 1: Dragon Strike must be quite a big part of their catalog, as they're giving it a second promotional article this month. While Bruce's was focussed on creating the rules, board and pieces, Jim Ward got to handle creating the video. This end was turned around on a stupidly tight schedule as well, with the reality of scripting, casting, costuming, makeup, special effects, editing, hitting them like a jackhammer. And I'm betting doesn't look nearly as impressive as they're selling it too, especially in hindsight. Computer FX in particular have come a long way since then, and I wouldn't be surprised if they look laughably cheap in actuality. After all, if many major motion pictures have that problem, what hope a little company from Wisconsin? Our imaginations are always going to be capable of greater special effects budgets than they are, which makes the rash of videos and CD games all the more questionable. And of course, making these things is still expensive even if they look cheap, so they have to sell quite a lot to make a profit. I have to wonder if this didn't make things worse for the company, by creating a whole bunch of products that didn't recoup their costs. The problems are mounting up, aren't they.
Sage advice goes back to 1st edition again, apropos of nothing. They really are still pretty friendly to previous edition stuff at the moment, even if the articles have tapered off.
How do you see using shadow walk. (You're moving at 126 MPH. Whatever you see is going to be pretty blurry)
Command dragon is virtually impossible to get the material components for. (Indeed. It is what we in the business call a plot device, not an everyday weapon. )
Does a periapt of wound closure work on damage caused by a sword of wounding (yes. Defensive powers trump offensive ones if they conflict. And you thought exalted was innovative. )
How long do familiars live. (about as long as their masters, unless magically zapped.)
What happens if you combine a bag of holding and a portable hole ( We've already covered this one. You get to take a quick one-way extradimensional trip through a spacial rip )
What's lawful about peace? (It lets you build stuff without it being destroyed unexpectedly. Peace is very conductive to order, if done right. )
The game wizards 2: Looks like the Amazing Engine is getting a second promotional article as well. You know, a good actual article with new crunch and fun writing would do more to sell it to me than half a dozen of these promo columns. As with the Dragon Strike stuff, here we tackle things from a different angle to last month. There, it was Bughunters getting the spotlight, this time it's For Faerie, Queen and Country. Where that had substantial rules for tactical combat based on sacrificing movement points for various actions, this brings an open-ended magic system, and rules for all sorts of fae races and their human half-breeds. The whole thing is designed to minimise rollplaying and maximise roleplaying :rolleyes: Yes, seriously, they actually say that. Combine that with the general cheesiness of their actual play example, (Mister Wog the frenchman? :facepalm: ) and a lot of my sympathy over the game's failure is rapidly evaporating. I really shouldn't be surprised at whimsy in a game this fae heavy, but I still find the tone of this horribly grating. Definite fail.
Pandemonium! Adventures in tabloid world. I don't remember this one. Would someone be so kind as to shed enlightenment?
The marvel-phile: New Characters! Hot off the presses! Getchore new characters here! Proctor & the Gatherers. All dressed up, posing, going raar, and ready to fight your heroes! Manipulative psychic supervillain extraordinaire; his wizened, also psychic crone sidekick; a cyborg with mobility, sensory & shielding powers; a big amiable bestial lunk of a tank; and a shapeshifting creature that duplicates others. Pretty decent team really, not totally stereotypical, and with plenty of variety. And they have a pretty interesting storyline too. Heroes from another reality, they've found themselves in the antagonist role here due to their bosses manipulations. Which of them will do heel face turns is still up in the air. Although maybe less so now, depending on how fast the turnaround time for articles is these days. Will any of these characters stick and become recurring ones after their storyline is over? Or is this just another part of their endless attempts to keep up with the obscure parts of the Marvel universe? Either way, it feels very much like business as usual here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993
part 3/5
Forum returns. Evidently they had so much stuff they wanted to cram into the birthday issue, something had to give. It is extra big this time, so that should make up for it.
Owen Muir speaks out against sexism and agism. But he does point out that Alias did have a valid IC reason for wearing impractical cheesecake armour. I suppose that makes it all better then. She was created to be an object of cheesecake IC AND OOC. There's so much wrong with that concept I'm really not sure where to begin.
Peter Rivellini praises issue 189. We need some more interesting themed issues like that. But anyway, there is some good mapmaking software out there. Feel free to order it direct, since it doesn't have major label distribution.
Cynthia Higginbotham has cheaper suggestions. MS Paint! Tee Hee. Frankly, that would be trickier and slower than doing it by hand for me.
W.A.N also thinks that shelling out several hundred dollars for the professional software would not be a wise investment. Think how many gamebooks you can buy with that! Yeah, some of these things can be pretty obscene. It's like academic textbooks. The development costs outweigh the demand, so they have to set prices far above the material costs of duplication.
John F. Wherry suggests getting some shareware. Ahh, this once again reminds me why I love the internet. And also why it makes such a mess of old commercial models. How can you sell stuff when people are giving it away, and also copying your stuff and giving that away for free too.
William B. Philips has yet another suggestion. Being in the army does have it's perks in terms of exposure to technology. No shortage of options then, as long as you pay the price.
Craig Judy recommends a bit of software that only costs $30. See, that sounds like a decent price to me. Now, how many copies would you have to sell at that price to pay for the developers and still make a decent profit?
Troy Herman goes waaaaaaaaay back, and tackles the issue of Paintballing prejudice. Really, they're in much the same boat as we are, and you shouldn't snipe at them. As with Jake and the LARPing crap, it's depressing to see our writers falling prey to the same prejudice that they decry in others.
Dennis Rudolph recommends you watch the antiques roadshow. No, seriously. There's so much cool stuff to draw upon. Tee Hee. History is not boring at all. Get your plot devices where your players least suspect.
Matthew W. Hurd has profited quite a bit from giving his address out in the magazine. Now he has a number of cool pen pals. See, the system works! The right combination of forcefulness and god manners gets you furthest with both genders.
Christopher T. C. Miller gives methods for encouraging a long campaign that keeps people engaged. You need to wind them along with carrots, not push them forward with sticks. And don't hesitate to draw upon realistic stuff to fill out background details.
Bryan Fairfield kicks the complaints about the complete bard's handbook into high gear, with some extensive statistical analysis of how powerful and versatile multiclass bards with kits are. His group is now comprised almost entirely of them. It's a big problem. He also suspects the complete book of elves will make things even worse. :D How very very perceptive of him. Get better rules editors for your splatbooks!
Vincent Nasso is another person who finds multiclass combinations generally turn out superior to single classed characters of the same XP total. It's all different facets of the same issue. How long will this breakout of complaints last?
Talus London Young has a whole bunch of mean nerfs for multiclassed characters, that probably go rather too far. 10% more failure on everything? Are the penalties from splitting XP and ability scores not enough? Yeeesh.
The role of computers: Quite an interesting introduction this month, as they wax lyrical over their new sound card. We're not quite at the stage where full CD quality Analog/Digital converters are available to regular consumers cheaply, but we're still making regular quantum leaps, and most of them can at least manage coherent speech. You can even record stuff through the line in, although hard drive space (and write speed) will still be a pretty big limiting factor unless you get a full pro tools rig, and quantisation distortion'll still be a real problem at that bitrate. I'm geeking out, aren't I. Oh well, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the obsessive geekiness of doing all this in the first place. Back to the main topic.
Night Trap takes full advantage of the new sound and video specs to fill up it's length with grainy low res movie stuff. You have to watch the video screens, and try to ensure people don't get eaten by zombies. This'll probably take a few goes round to get right, and it's long enough that it won't be completely lacking in replay value. There are far worse examples of this kind of game.
Dungeon Master moves from Amiga to PC, with corresponding increases in speed, graphics and sound while maintaining the good gameplay. Nothing much to say here.
Empire Deluxe is a sequel to Empire. (see issue 142) Among the updates include multiplayer online connections, a scenario editor, and the expected graphics and sound upgrades. This gives it pretty near infinite replayability, presuming you have someone who likes building maps and so forth. Games with an active mod community can survive for years.
Road Avenger, on the other hand, doesn't have much replay, due to it's linearity, and only takes half an hour to finish. Only for those who really want to show off the graphic capability of their new system.
Star Control II tries to take on Elite's mantle for a new generation of computers, with reasonable success. Collect minerals across hundreds of planets, deal with all sorts of alien races, and try to save earth from the evil Ur-Quan Hierarchy. You'd be disappointed if it wasn't ridiculously huge and open-ended, and this is very much the case.
Who Killed Sam Rupert? is another one that's good while it lasts, but doesn't have much replayability. Seems far too many games these days are concentrating on graphics over interactivity, trying to squeeze in FMV cutscenes that eat up tons of memory, forcing them to keep the overall thing linear. This sounds rather familiar. I remember complaints of developers favoring graphics over gameplay at the time as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews decides to go for the small press stuff again, see if they can find some diamonds in the rough.
Legendquest definitely qualifies as one of those, with it's home-press origins pretty obvious. But Lester is quite pleased by the system, which packs a lot into it's page count, and has pretty good, not totally derivative rules. Looks like your basic point buy system with a few idiosyncrasies to me, particularly in the magic system. You're only going to break, break my break, break my heart.
Monsters & Slayers, on the other hand, just gets a painful review. It's amateurishly written, edited & drawn, doesn't do what it says it's going to do on the cover, and is frequently so stupid it's funny. (volcanoes in wales? Bendover the hobgoblin necromancer? ) Avoid, if you ever see it.
Legendary lives is from the Lost Souls team, and puts just as skewed a view on generic fantasy as they did on the afterlife. Fun races, elegant mechanics that emphasise speed over realism, it treads a path many indie hipster games will follow. The art is rather dubious though, and they could do with more spells. Don't hesitate to add to it.
The role of books: The boggart by Susan Cooper sees an ancient scottish fairy transplanted to modern day Toronto. Hilarity ensues, with electricity and the like giving it a whole new avenue for pranks. Both the creature and it's new victims PoV are explored. This seems like good fodder for a movie conversion.
Burning Bright by Melissa Scott depicts a future in which a single MMORPG has taken over the entire galaxy and become the primary form of entertainment. Amusingly, this has not eliminated the active participation of GM's (unlike in reality :( ) This premise stretches the reviewer's suspension of disbelief quite a bit. You'd think people would get bored, and monopolies naturally get complacent and bloated, setting themselves up for a fall. If you can swallow that bit, the rest of the plot is quite good, mixing real world and in game stuff quite well. Remember, it's science fiction. It doesn't have to be plausible.
Danger of the sixth by Michelle Shirey Crean gets a pretty negative result. Poor pacing, poor focus, iffy morality, uncertain ending. Work on all of these for the next one! :wags finger:
The dragon's tomb by D J Heinrich gets quite a good review, making interesting use of D&D's Immortal based cosmology, and giving the monsters proper characterisation as well as the humans. The plot doesn't play it too safe either, with mystara in genuine danger throughout the novel. Well, it is the first series. It's only when you have half a dozen authors writing semi-independently at once that you have to take care not to tread on other people's toes.
The starship trap by Mel Gilden is a star trek novel with a nice concept, but clunky characterisation and writing. We know who Kirk and Spock are! Get on with the story!
To green angel tower by Tad Williams is one of the more successful Tolkien imitations the reviewer has seen, managing to capture the scope without copying the details too much. They're always looking for a real epic, and this is one they can reccomend.
Palladium once again boasts about their amazing rifts sales. No-one else gives concrete numbers. What's all that about?
Overcoming obstacles: Another rather interesting superheroic article this month. Heroes with some kind of handicap as well as their special abilities are actually surprisingly common. Be it mundane stuff that they have to compensate for, like Daredevil's blindness, or more complicated issues deriving from their powers, like Cyclop's danger of destroying everything he sees, the best characters are ones defined by their weaknesses as much as their strengths. But as in D&D, it seems far too many FASERIP players don't believe in that maxim, and want everything to be average or better. Looks like it's time for one of those short filler articles that encourage you to make a well-rounded character and play them properly, for it will result in more interesting games. The mundane difficulties they'll face can be a big source of roleplaying, and the way they use their powers to mitigate their limitations will hopefully be interesting. Have you got that into your thick heads yet, bloody powergamers?
Fiction: The end of trading season by Daniel Hood. Ooh. An unhappy ending! Not often you see those around here. Merchant fails to heed the native traditions, things go horribly wrong for him, and he winds up being a sacrifice to an undead monster posing as their god. Not hugely surprising, apart from the ending, where we can be pretty sure he didn't get saved at the last minute, but full of neat worldbuilding details nonetheless. The whole scenario looks perfect for an RPG module, as there's plenty of points where you could do things differently, and still get interesting results. That makes this a very strong bit of fiction for the magazine on multiple levels. Not just entertainment, but also helpful too.
Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993
part 5/5
Campaign Journal: We return to Greyhawk again, courtesy of Carl Sargent. And he's starting to feel the backlash from people who aren't at all happy with the major changes the war made to the world. They can't exactly reverse this stuff, but they can certainly mitigate it. A lot of this is a reminder that the books do not have to be adhered strictly to for your own campaign, and things can be rearranged, transplanted, adapted, or simply ignored if they contradict stuff built up in your own game. Which you probably know already, but it's still annoying when a world goes in a different direction to the one you want it too. One reason it can be easier to play in a setting that doesn't have a constantly churning active supplement mill. So I guess we're seeing the first signs of backlash against metaplot here. It's still going to get bigger before it goes away, but it's no longer the fresh young thing that can do no wrong, and everyone has to have. Welcome to the bloated arena rock days. Feel the gated reverb on that drumkit. Get ready for lightshows, costume changes, and guitar solos longer than ZZ Top's beards. Not my favourite environment. So this says nothing I don't know, and reminds me that there's a storm a comin'. Bleah.
KULT! The darkness continues to spread. Death is only the beginning.
Up front In charge: Quite a tricky roleplaying issue. The problem of leadership within the party is one we probably haven't covered enough over the years, with the player/DM adversarial relationship taking the brunt of the heat. But a group without proper organisation and tactics is a group sleepwalking into it's own death, likely to face humiliation at the first group of enemies played smartly. And a group that bickers while in the dungeon and has players wander off to try stuff without knowledge of the rest of the team, or fire off fireballs without checking everyone else's position will practically kill themselves. Thomas Kane well and truly graduates from expanded forumite to full blown writer here, in a piece which combines intelligent writing on social dynamics IC and OOC with rather amusing and all too true to life fiction. A dwarf that talks like Yoda. A gnome that everyone ignores until he gets them in trouble. A wizard who is all too keen to play grand vizier with her companions. And a fighter who likes to think he's in charge, but isn't to hot on the actual ideas. This clearly illustrates quite a few things. The person who most wants to be in charge is often not the best actual leader in terms of ideas and organisation. Listening to your subordinates and letting them feel valued and able to exercise their creativity is vital for keeping them happy. The best plan is a simple one. Beware PvP spilling out into bad feeling amongst the actual players. A very good article here, that even experienced players can learn from. Issues of leadership and hierarchy will be settled informally if you don't pay attention to them, and if you don't know what's going on, it's a lot harder to figure out why things have gone wrong and fix them.
Swordplay: Another regular comic starts here. As is often the case, not very impressively, but then, you need time to introduce the cast in strips as small as this. It's been 5 years and Yamara is still only on its third plotline. Man, the monthly serial format has its flaws.
Speaking of yamara, she gets a double size episode this issue as we see the trial of Yocchi. And once again ogrek .... er, seems to be about to save the day. Dragonmirth really isn't playing fair, as usual. The team get captured in twilight empire. Hey, that just means they'll be taken straight into the bad guy's lair. That should help get things flowing.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse come to Rifts. Can you guess what they want to do? Bridge? Opening a milk round? I think not.
Through the looking glass: Ahh, joy, the government committees have got involved in the lead bill. We know how long THEY take to get anything done. I swear they're just an excuse for government guys to give well paying jobs to their mates where they do maybe a few hours work a week for months or years. Bleah. And in the meantime, uncertainty is bad for business, so half the companies and stores are phasing out their lead minis anyway. Which means nobody really wins but the lawyers. This, like, totally sucks donkey balls Beavis.
As usual, the minis are less interesting than the drama. Several knights from Pendragon. The real differences are in the personality. ;) A 12 piece green dragon that'll be a real pain in the butt to assemble. King Arthur, his sword & horse, perfect for a bit more pendragon tie-in. A young and fully grown pair of wyverns. A dragon and her eggs, which are in danger of being nicked. And a full-blown diorama in which a party of dwarves are fighting a dragon. Quite a bit of multi-piece stuff, for some reason.
We also get three other reviews on top of that. Dragonfire gets a pretty mediocre review, with incredibly simple and dull rules for experienced wargamers. Legions of Steel does rather better, with a pleasingly consistent (if rather grimdark) aesthetic, and fast and furious rules that may be a little simple, but have plenty of scope for expansion. Study in contrasts of how to do introductory games right or wrong. In addition, he also proves rather fond of the Battletech Recognition cards. They're not actually that expensive, and can speed play quite a bit. I'm surprised how much coverage Battletech is actually getting over the years. I guess it's another of those things that you can skip over when reading casually, but this kind of detailed examination reveals.
Man, drizzt really needs to get a better photographer. He looks about 50 here, and that's in human years, not elf years. And would it hurt him to smile a little? At least he's got the eyebrow raising down pat.
Yet another mixed bag, with some good articles, but no real consistency, and an increasing number of non-useful promotional columns. The gradual slide into complacency on the part of the playing population continues, much as I and Roger wish it wouldn't. Someone ought to do a reading thread for White Wolf's old magazine or the Rifters, so we can get a more positive slant on this era from the up and comers. I'd quite enjoy vicariously reading that. But for me, it's to the next issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993
part 1/5
124 pages The dragon in this month's cover takes a secondary role, looking a lot like a pet of the guy with the sword. Who's in the driving seat this time? Hopefully you, as it's time for another issue full of DMing advice. Poor players. They never get to control dragons. (yet) And if they do, you'll have to think of even more impressive suitable challenges or risk the whole thing falling apart. So a DM's work is never done. Good thing we've still got many more years of advice to draw upon to go.
In this issue:
I, Strahd, by P N Elrod. Once again they bring out the big guns for Halloween, on the 10th anniversary of the original module.
Letters: A letter asking if the Snarfquest compilation is still available. Unlike the Fineous Fingers one, you're in luck. Larry still has a good relationship with the TSR staff, so they're happy to be of service to you both.
A follow-up on the Uriah Heap question. It was the early 70's. Lots of people were putting occult & Tolkien inspired blather in their music. These days, their hubcap diamond star halos are looking a little rusty and need a good servicing.
A letter from a person who found a moth squashed on their fire elemental trading card. The jokes here make themselves. Jim Ward, on the other hand, fails to see the funny side. I think the stress of his job may be getting to him. He ain't the mischievous monty hauler he used to be.
A suggestion that they include martial arts demos at their conventions. After all, so many gamers love MA in their games. Luring them to try it out IRL would be good commercial sense, and also fitting from a health point of view. After all we have to battle the stereotypes about being weedy/overweight couch potatoes, and what better way than being able to slam anyone who takes the piss to the ground and punch through bricks. Roger doesn't think it's a bad idea, although he'd really like to see sumo wrestlers, but doubts they could get any in. Always the joker, eh.
Some nitpicking about kukris. The historical accuracy brigade won't let any weapon go mislabeled!
Editorial: Never trust a DM who forces you to roll for breast size. Roger can't find anything current events related to get worked up over, so once again his mind drifts back to reminiscing on games past, and the naive fun they had. Seems he's doing increasing amounts of that recently. So say hello to Bob. A guy with boundless enthusiasm, no sense of proportion, and very little taste. It's tricky to get rid of him because he's so enthusiastic about it all, but at the same time the things he does are so silly that you can't really have a campaign with him without it all falling apart. Still, while it may be a pain at the time, at least it makes for memorable stories. And given the alchemy of nostalgia, the fun bits remain, while the crap gets glossed over. And so Roger manages to come up with enough entertaining anecdotes to fill this column for another month. Making it a permanent fixture may not have been the smartest thing to do really.
Exploring the fantasy political campaign: Ah yes, politics. One of those things that continue to be a challenge to insert into a game compared to dungeon crawling. Continuity becomes so much more of an issue when you're dealing with the same faces year in, year out. And if you get sloppy, it'll come back to bit you more than if you're moving from dungeon to dungeon, not looking back. Unlike a kill and take their stuff mission, where it can be safely assumed that the bad guys are indeed bad enough that compromise is a pointless task, who the PC's are, and what their opinions are on a topic can vary widely, and this affects the direction that they'll take the story. On the plus side, while you need to keep on making up new dungeons wholecloth, once you have a well set up political game, it'll last you years if well maintained, with actors fading in and out as time goes by. We've been through this before, but this manages to do so quite well, reminding us that the individual missions in a politics heavy campaign will often be little different, especially while the characters are pawns of the other power players. It's more the way the adventures tie together and have an effect on the larger setting that's interesting. And making the playstyle seem accessible rather than intimidating is an important aspect to getting new people involved that the older articles sometimes failed at. So as is usually the case with themed issues, they've picked a good one to start things off with.
Cultivating campaign cultures: Things step back down again, with a bit of random table stuff. We already have one for random personality quirks for people. Now we have one for random cultural mores for societies! If you stumble across some village in the middle of the jungle, you need to know what the trigger is that'll result in them driving the players out in disgrace or trying to put them in the cookpot. Yeah, I can see the use in that. I can also see the humour in it too. Most of the specific examples are ones from the real world, and don't seem too ridiculous though. Although it is a bit short. I guess you'll have to use it as a springboard to designing your own expanded tables with their own quirks and taboos. Cool idea, so-so implementation.
Quote from: (un)reason;404652Someone ought to do a reading thread for White Wolf's old magazine or the Rifters, so we can get a more positive slant on this era from the up and comers. I'd quite enjoy vicariously reading that. But for me, it's to the next issue.
I know you basically wrote this for RPGnet, but if I had all the Rifters I kind of do want to do this someday.
I only have about half of them now sadly, and almost none but the most recent in actual order. (29 total issues out of about 50 or so.)
I would get through like the first 6-7 and there would be a gap.
I only sort of buy them now and again, slowly filling up the set, kind of like what I am doing for Autoduel Quarterly and Battletechnology.
Eventually I will be bothered to have a full set of all 3. Eventually.
By the way.. hell of a job you are doing here. I don't read every bit you write, mostly focusing on the topics I care about, but damn if its not an epic bit of work.
Quote from: Captain Rufus;405025I know you basically wrote this for RPGnet, but if I had all the Rifters I kind of do want to do this someday.
I only have about half of them now sadly, and almost none but the most recent in actual order. (29 total issues out of about 50 or so.)
I would get through like the first 6-7 and there would be a gap.
I only sort of buy them now and again, slowly filling up the set, kind of like what I am doing for Autoduel Quarterly and Battletechnology.
Eventually I will be bothered to have a full set of all 3. Eventually.
Dragon magazine was actually relatively easy to collect a whole set of online, especially once you have the archive. I've complained before about how much harder it's been to get hold of polyhedron issues, and I have no doubt that would apply double to stuff from smaller companies. Good luck with that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993
part 2/5
The art of storytelling: Things step downwards again with this bit of basic listed roleplaying advice. With a rather substantial editing error which means that point number 6 is repeated twice, and then it continues from there. Tut tut. That loses quite a few marks, even beyond this advice being mostly rehashed. Very much half-assed filler.
Organization is everything: Or once again I thank humanity for inventing laptops. Even a decade ago, most of my notes were on paper, and things tended to get seriously higgledy piggledy as things were scrawled down wherever was most convenient at the time. If you wanted to seriously sort out the organisation of your notes post-hoc you have to completely rewrite them on fresh bits of paper. And of course, the sheer volume of them seriously mounts up if your campaign continues for years. If you aren't gaming at your own home, there comes a point where you simply can't fit all the stuff you use into your backpack to take to the group. These days, hard drives are big enough that you can fit .pdfs of every D&D book ever released into them, and still only fill a fraction, so I don't think you're in any danger of filling them up with your own written notes. And in this format, you can copy effortlessly, and cut and shift stuff around or insert something in the middle of other notes with a tiny fraction of the time and work it would have taken then. As is often the case, they finish off the themed section with an article that's relatively short, but still full of handy advice. Which in this case seems a bit dated, but the principles are still sound. After all, it may take a fraction of the effort to search and organise your work on computer, but it still needs to be done, otherwise you'll have a ton of little post-it's littering your document folder and you have to open them up to see what's inside the obscure titles. So plenty to think about here. Better get to work.
Forum: Pierre Lapalme agrees with earlier forumites that getting persuading new players to start can be tricky. Much of this is the fault of the rules. Choose wisely, and then be consistent, but don't let them straitjacket you. They should be a path to fun, not an obstacle.
Erik Koppang also thinks that wise house-ruling is important. Neither the rules of the tabletop game or the computer games are perfect. You certainly shouldn't follow them blindly just because that's the easy path.
Paul Bleiweis finds he's becoming more embarassed talking about gaming as he gets older. Yeah, probably need to tackle that, or you'll have great trouble putting a group together in adulthood. You need to be able to convince them it's a desirable thing to do, and shame will not help with that.
And finally we get another Anonymous letter, from one of the female employees at TSR, who is part of the anti-cheesecake brigade. Anyone know who this was? Anne Brown? Barbara Young? In any case, they blame it on the people in marketing. If you want to convince them otherwise, write to that department.
Sage advice is tiny this month.
Do paladins still lose their powers if they commit evil acts in ravenloft (yes. The gods know, even if you don't. Ok, sometimes the dark powers'll take over, but that kind of cheatyness is for NPC's only.)
Why aren't the new spheres from ToM used in Tales of the lance (Space. Writers always produce too much, then something has to be cut. Like Skip this month, it seems.)
What kind of spellbooks does a multiclassed mage/minstrel have (Two of them, one for each class. Oh woes, for I have to have a big backpack. It's nothing compared to the amount of gear modern musicians have to lug around. )
The known world grimoire: Bruce manages another burst of inspiration this month. He might not be able to manage them frequently enough to run a proper narrative, but there are still areas of the known world to fill in, and by gosh he's going to keep at it. He visited the manscorpions in issue 192. Now we head south to see the orcs that give this nasty swampy peninsula it's name. With a particularly big, tough battlescarred red dragon as their overlord, the various tribes may bicker with one-another, but they're more than organised enough to repel any attempts at civilising these lands. As with many aspects of mystara, this is a set-up designed to give the players challenges at whatever level they may be, from fighting individual raiding parties, to being able to take on entire armies and do world-shaking deeds that'll get them into the Immortal pantheon. Just be careful you don't bite off more than you can chew and get the attention of the big guns too soon, for huge dragon breath killing the entire party in one hit is a real day spoiler. With the usual mix of IC and OOC perspectives, and plenty of references to the other parts of this massive intertwined world, this is a pretty pleasurable read, able to support plenty of adventure while leaving room for expansion of the specifics by the DM. I just wish they were coming more frequently. While he may still have the skills, they mean little without the creative will to channel them. It becomes increasingly difficult to see a future for this series.
Mutant chronicles gets a very eye-catching advert. Nice colouring job, dude.
Fiction: The only good orc by Liz Holliday. Aka the story of orc jesus, and the stuff he goes through to get to sacrifice himself for the sins of his race. This involves a certain amount of deception, but mainly because people don't believe an Orc can be good, so the truth wouldn't be believed. The result has a pretty decent number of twists and turns, and the requisite bittersweet ending. It's not often you'll see PC's sacrifice themselves like this, so you need every good example you can get. It's all pretty decent.
Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993
part 3/5
The role of computers comes to an end. Or at least, the crew of writers leave for other fields, to specialise in Mac games in another magazine. Once again cementing the fact that they don't have a great track record in picking successful systems. :p We've had some good times, we've had some dull times, we've had some strange moments. We've seen systems rise and fall, games go from 0 to 6 stars, (wing commander is still unsurpassed) and lots of complaints about stuff not working properly. (well, it wouldn't be a computer column without them. ) They've been one of the most consistent columnists since 1986, and I can't escape the feeling that this magazine's computer game coverage won't be the same without them. I know it's only a couple of years before they cut out computer stuff entirely, so the people who replace them certainly won't have the chance to build up the same level of familiarity.
Challenge of the 5 Realms is an ok fantasy RPG, if a bit dated in presentation. Overhead walky stuff, slow dialog balloons, instruction manual based copy protection, this all sounds very familiar. is this the 90's or what?
The Journeyman Project pushes at the current limits of data streaming, and consequently runs annoyingly slowly on their computer. It's no good having these fancy CD's if you don't have the read speed to really take advantage of it, or the RAM to buffer most of the info for instant use when needed. Can't win either way. Too primitive, they give it poor marks, too advanced, they can't run it properly yet.
Legends of Valour doesn't do too well. It may look good, but play is both tedious and fiddly. If you don't have the hint book, you'll waste tons of time trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Whatever happened to the instruction manual guiding you through the basics?
Pax Imperia is one of those epic space games where you have to not only build an empire, but manage it too. I some how doubt we'll be seeing nearly as many of those under our next regime.
S.C.O.U.T combines action shooter with puzzle game, as you have to find keys, negotiate railroads, teleporters, mirrors, and all manner of other tricks to get around the alien base and blow them to bits.
Spaceward Ho! V. 3.0 is another, slightly smaller scale space exploration and resource management game, where you have to think more about controlling individual spaceships. They finish this off with another load of clues on how to play it well, which seems appropriate since these things can get pretty complicated.
Novel ideas: How many Forgotten Realms books have TSR published in the past 6 years?! Jeez, maybe you should have started worrying about their continuity a little sooner. James Lowder takes on the job of figuring out what happened before and after various other things, and delivering it to us. The timeline starts off fairly sparse and sketchy, but them becomes very busy after DR 1350. It's pretty obvious where the prequels end and the bits written as present begin. With things stretching up to 1372, it seems that they've progressed forward at the rate of approximately 2-3 game years per real year, giving new adventurers plenty of chances to strut their stuff on the stage. This is interesting when contrasted with their other gameworlds. Mystara & Ravenloft tried to maintain a realtime, 1 game year per real year progression, while Krynn and Oerth have wound up progressing in fits and starts, due to their primary developers being absent for extended periods of time, and over-reliance on prequels, interquels and side stories. It's a good thing there aren't actually that many crossover stories between them, or this'd become an almighty headache. This stuff isn't too hard to handle as long as you have a good line editor, but take your eye off the ball, and before you know it, there are inconsistencies and continuity snarls everywhere and you have to deploy the dreaded blunt tools of retcon and reboot to get things working again. And it only gets harder the more stuff you add. So this is a sign that they're not quite at the point where continuity starts to strangle the line, but it's only a few years away. It also manages to be quite a good bit of subtle promotion, not only helping you know clearly all the stuff you might want to buy, but also some of the books they haven't released yet. It's certainly given me plenty to think and talk about, and something to reference back too.
The game wizards: Hmm. A new adventure for Dragon Strike? That's an interesting one. I have been saying they need more useful stuff than straight promotion in these columns. Looks like someone else was saying so at the same time and they've listened. So in 2 pages we get a map, and a key, including a bunch of roleplaying notes. While still pretty basic to actual roleplayers, this still manages to have more depth to it's play than Heroquest, (which it is clearly influenced by) and is a good example of how you can fit a lot of play info into a tiny word count, which is a lesson the official AD&D adventures are increasingly forgetting to their detriment. While I'm still not too keen on boardgame stuff being promoted here, like this month's Novel Ideas, this is an interesting way of handling their duties, and one that gives me things to think about. You too can steal and make good use of this kind of adventure notating formula, and thereby fit a dozen scenarios in a 32 page booklet.
In another amusing footnote, we also get an apology for their spate of cultural insensitivity last month. Research Moar! And remember folks, what is acceptable around the gaming table is not acceptable in an international magazine. Knowing is only half the battle. You also have to act upon that knowledge.
Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: Rick picks some rather obscure licensed games this month. The kind of thing that are unlikely to make much money, and probably got commissioned because the original creator is a geek, or someone approached them and gave them a good spiel. Curious business.
When gravity fails is a supplement for Cyberpunk 2020, giving us a vision of how islamic culture might interact with cyberpunk tropes. There's always going to be the stereotypical reactionaries, but this gives a far more nuanced portrayal than that, mixing olde world issues with modern solutions, and adding on a ton of cool personality modification rules as befits the original source material. If anything, it's too short to handle all the cool ideas it raises, with some bits left sketchy, but what there is is both interesting and genre expanding. Just as roleplaying games need to tackle cultures outside medieval europe more so too do cyberpunk stories.
Dream Park is a rather odd little game from Mike Pondsmith, based on Larry Niven's story of the same name. (see issue 52) As you're playing a person playing a character inside a virtual reality game, things get a little meta, and you can shuffle your special abilities around between adventurers, and lose powers as often as you gain them. It also means the GM can worry far less about things such as plausibility and continuity, instead concentrating on delivering inventive one-shots while having an excuse for keeping the same underlying characters throughout. Like Toon, the system may be a bit simple to really support extended campaigns, but it should be fun for a change of pace if the regular GM is absent.
Wizards is based on Ralf Bakshi's movie. This isn't quite as bad as the movie, in Rick's opinion, but still feels like a poorly edited, convoluted mess that needs some serious revision to get it's good ideas up and running. Why it ever got made in the first place is a mystery.
3 Wizards too many: Having fully established the personalities of our three plane-hopping, 4th wall bending archmages, Ed starts to have them relax in each other's company a little more. Mordenkainen is still suffering the most heavily from his world's metaplot events. (I wonder what Ed thought about the power struggles in the company and changes made to Greyhawk after Gary left.) Dalamar is still the aggressive young punk who regularly gets taken down a peg by his older and more powerful companions. (Both El and Mord have tales of them facing down Fistandantilus during his plane-hopping days, which they may or may not be making up to keep him off balance. ) And Elminster is still playful, all-knowing, and tremendously cheesy. All three engage in gender-bending over the course of this episode, which is presumably why it's title is what it is, and these's a running gag involving gnomes as well. The new spells, items and monsters are somewhat less obscene than last time, but still designed for active adventurers, by experienced adventurers, and pretty useful. The whole thing is like a bouncy technicolour ball of sentient energy that bounds in and livens up your day. Which given how much work this thread is, is pretty damn welcome.
MERP finally gets a new edition. It's been well over a decade. That's vaguely surprising. Now, the big question. Is it an improvement?
Bazaar of the bizarre: Figurines. Little animals that come to life on command. (and sometimes when you don't want them too either. ) Another easy vein for you to mine, that's nowhere near tapped out yet. And since this involves some pretty good writers too, I believe I shall wander up to the head table and go "Please sir, can I have some more?"
Amber monkeys are a riff on the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil saying. There are three of them and they'll do exactly that on command, blinding you, deafening you and muting you. Which leaves you alive, but very vulnerable. Muahahahaha.
Coral Dragons aren't as badass as real dragons, but are still reasonably useful. They can be both combatants and fonts of wisdom. Show them a little respect, don't just stuff them in your pocket.
Emerald Frogs don't get any bigger when animated, but can shrink giant bugs and suck them straight in with their tongue, making what is often a deadly encounter much easier. Like the bottle of trapping 2 months ago, this makes for amusing visuals as well.
Jade Snakes come in pairs, one for biting, and one for healing. Trying to use both at the same time is a very bad idea. They look very pretty entwined though.
The Moonstone Rabbit digs quite impressively. Don't abuse it though, because it's more fragile than it seems.
Opal Cats are another themed set. The mother cat, which attacks with great viciousness. The kitten of caterwauling looks pathetic, and it's yowl is worse than nails down a blackboard. The kitten of contemplation, by contrast, is relaxing to have on your lap, and lets you recover spells in half the time, which a high level wizard would pay a LOT to have. A very cool set of ideas.
Silver Carp can produce water, or purify it. Their production capabilities aren't as impressive as a decanter of endless water, but what is? They can also blind you by wriggling their flashing scales. Individually none of their powers are that great, but they do add up to a nice little package.
The Tourmaline Turtle lets you ride on it's back like Jacques Costeau. Some of them even let you breathe underwater while on them. it also has a really vicious bite, so any kraken that messes with you will lose a tentacle. Still, it only works up to 12 hours a week, so you'll need another ship for lengthy voyages.
Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993
part 5/5
Swordplay lowers their ambitions to an achievable CR enemy. Fea wears drowface and incites racial hatred as part of her plan to rescue Yamara. Dragonmirth plays oblivious, but they'll suffer for it later. Robinson finally gets to meet his ex-wife. And safe to say, she doesn't feel the same way still.
Through the looking glass: The air of pessimism that pervaded the past few columns here is gone. Life goes on, and that includes the big conventions. There'll still be plenty of cool minis released there, along with paints, brushes, primer, and other modification tools. Don't hesitate to buy them. After all, your hobby still needs you as much as you need it.
Interestingly our first set of minis tie in with the Dream Park game reviewed earlier this issue. Guess it must be a bigger licence than I thought. Vaguely cyberpunkish people which can fit in any near future game. There's also a pair of giants intended for the Pendragon game, also fairly easily used in other fantasy games. Pendragon also gets another knight, so you have another choice to differentiate your PC from the others. Other products include a 2 storey medieval building, a Sorcerer ready to cast at you, A mummy that looks like it's in the middle of the Thriller dance routine, a thief, a cleric, an elf, several rather large goblins, and a cyberlegger. Any changes in construction materials have not affected Robert's fairly generous marking system, with all the scores going from 3+1/2 to 5 stars.
On top of that, we have another trio of game reviews. Night Brood introduces hive based alien horrors to the Silent Death game. Yeah, we know what you're influenced by. Get ready for violence with a touch of body horror.
Man O' War is a game of high seas piracy set in the Warhammer universe. This means it combines historical and fantasy elements to good effect. Games Workshop may well have another winner on their hands if they can market it to the kids.
Seekrieg 4th edition is another, far more crunchy ship based wargame, with rules covering hundreds of real period ships and their weaponry. It get's compared to Rolemaster, which really isn't a recommendation for me, but Robert must like da crunch, because he gives it 5 stars.
Vampire and werewolf get their own lines of minis as well. That vaguely amuses me.
TSR Previews: Having flopped with the fight for freedom in the grim 25th century solar system, TSR takes a more lighthearted shot at a Buck Rogers licence, with the High Adventure Cliffhanger game. More money for Lorraine's purse. Whoever got assigned to develop that must be seething. Will it flop just like the last one? Magic 8-ball says signs point to likely. Still, they're still gonna give it their all, experimenting wildly with mechanics and little add-ons in the boxed set.
Ravenloft goes back to basics and expands on them. RM3: House of Strahd lets you face the vampire lord just like you did in 1983 (not 1982, as the historically incompetent copy writers seem to think) Only now he's twice the level, and the castle & surroundings gets twice the detail. Which means your chances of finishing him off for good are considerably smaller. Still, they might come away alive, and with a copy of his memoirs, I, Strahd (Ghost-written by P. N. Elrod. ) See how he's not just some Dracula clone, but a complex person in his own right in one of the most popular gameline related books they ever released.
Dark sun, on the other hand, expands and changes once again. DSM2: Merchant house of Amketch allows you to take the role of a trading company trying to prosper in these harsh environments. Not easy when there's apocalyptic stuff going down nearby in the final book of the Prism Pentad, The Cerulean Storm. Rain is about to become more common again on Athas, but it certainly isn't happy shiny land yet. Still a long way to go.
The forgotten realms, having been focussing on the harpers in the novels last year, finally releases a supplement dealing with them. FOR4: The code of the harpers. Ed Greenwood personally intervenes to make them more playable. Do you have the right stuff to join their cheesy ranks?
Spelljammer comes to a conclusion with The Ultimate Helm. Book 6 of the cloakmaster cycle. As is often the case, the fate of the universe is at stake. Will they engage in a big act of metaplot screwage?
Dragonlance decides to tell the backstory of an actual dragon in their second villain book. The Black Wing by Mary Kirchoff lets us know what Khisanth got up too before the heroes met him.
Two generic products as well. GA3: Tales of Enchantment is another little module, this time focussing on fae. This time, diplomacy really is the best option. As it also is when trying to get all the fantasy collectors cards, which have been bumped up to 3 installments this year. Trading will get you one of each considerably cheaper than trying to tough it out on your own.
A quick and easy beginning, but a slow grindy ending here. This is often the case, but it was particularly pronounced this time. Still, with a classic article in the 3rd wizards three one, the departure of the computer columnists, and the interesting, but not entirely welcome dragon strike support, it was one that stands out overall. It definitely has me interested to see how the magazine will change with it's new contributors.
Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. Dark sun art doyen Brom takes the cover this month. No great surprise, since the last couple of years made this month a Dark sun special. And while they aren't going that far to promote it this time, there are a couple of articles devoted to that campaign world. September isn't really the optimal month for heat and dryness, but it's almost a tradition now, so let's just go with it, shall we.
In this issue:
Letters: A bumper pack of one-liners from readers of the unfair things their DM has inflicted upon them. Tinker gnomes with uzi's! Not so funny now, are they?
A letter praising the people providing us with African articles. Visualise the idea, and make it work!
Another of those letters about people's personal experience with the satanic panic. Some parents believe the hysteria, some don't. Pray that yours are of the sensible kind. Roger makes another long response that shows this is still an ongoing problem. And worst of all, they don't even contact us to get the other side of the story! It's so unfair. I want to go on chat shows and local news programs and become more of a celebrity. :p
Editorial: This month, Roger shows you how to take classic plots, and twist them until virtually unrecognisable. Going through 9 iterations of the same basic seed, gradually growing more elaborate and counter-intuitive, he shows how evolutionary thinking rapidly results in things as different as fish and trees. And just as with real world evolution, this will give your story weird legacy issues, such as human's tendency to get back and knee problems that stem from our quadrapedal ancestry, that may require further workarounds to turn into a good story again. Which is a fun business, especially if you have an imagination as active as Roger's. Many of these are rather goofy and humorous, but that's not a terrible thing, and it does help set an example for you to emulate. It's both better and more original than any of the bits of GM'ing advice offered last issue, reminding us that Roger's talents as a writer have been stifled somewhat by his time as an editor. He really ought to get back into a more creative role.
Discworld mini's! Ahh, the joys of cross-marketing. They're probably usable in other games as well.
The ecology of the giant scorpion: Hmm. This is a creature that's probably actually less scary in giant form than it is at regular size. After all, when you can see it and fight it directly, it's just another nasty fight to get through. When it lurks in your boots, bed or toilet bowl, and takes you by surprise, you have rather more of a shock coming. A quite D&Dish ecology, with a nice portrayal of infravision, and characters using named spells and the standard class roles. Most of the changes in the footnotes are for reasons of greater realism, which is reasonable for an ecology, and actually makes them more generally effective, yet less likely to cause a TPK with instakills. Since that'll probably make encounters with them more fun, I think I can can call this ecology a success, even if it's not the most brilliant one ever. On top of that, we have the first appearance of Tony Diterlizzi's distinctive style in the magazine, which is a definite plus for me.
Think big in miniature: If you've been reading the minis column, you'll know that TSR and Ral Partha have been partnered for ages now. This continues that relationship, with a particularly blatant single-page bit of promotion. Now they're introducing 15mm scale figures as well as the standard 25mm ones, so you can have more figures in the same space for larger scale battles. This doesn't even pretend not to be promotion or try to be entertaining, making it very tiresome indeed. Next!
Sage advice: Why don't you write back any more. I miss you.( Because the private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs is a very busy man. Skip can work non stop, and still pick and choose his clients. )
What's included in living expenses ( All your physical and housing needs, and nothing more. Lets get biological, biological. )
Does a jongleurs dodge count as an action. (yes)
How do you resolve synaptic static (same as any other contest. Best roll wins. )
There's overlap in the proficiencies introduced in two spelljammer supplements (Parallel evolution. That's what happens when you have two teams writing books simultaneously but independently. We need a stronger line editor.)
Plus, because skip is a badass mutha(shut yo mouth) Skip is going to give you the extra spheres for all the pantheons, one per month, without even being asked. Skip can read the signs, and knows what you like baby. Oooooh yeah.
Perils and postage: It's been a couple of years since we had an article on play by post gaming. As is the case far too often these days, this article assumes you're a complete newbie, and tries to act as a reboot to the concept, bringing in people who've never heard of or thought about the idea of using mail to play long-term games. Of course, straight away we are reminded exactly why this medium never really became mass market entertainment. It's slow, expensive, and requires substantial organisational skills as a GM to make sure everything is communicated in a useful fashion to all the players. It does improve from there, but you're still putting everything into the control of a single person to a rather greater degree than normal (unless everyone sends mailshots to everyone else, which multiplies costs geometrically) On the plus side, you get plenty of time to write more polished prose and react to the actions of others than if you were running in real time. On balance, they still can't make it appeal to me, especially with technology developing at the speed it is. Like the attempts to revitalise wargaming and other RPG's, this is another bump in the road of their interests gradually closing in, and becoming purely D&D centric.
Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993
part 2/5
By mail or by modem: The eternal september begins now. Play by post's days are numbered. Nice of them to publish an appropriate article to say that at exactly the right time. Much shorter than the previous article, this points out the same problems, with a very different solution. It's not really that much cheaper yet, and BBS's still have a definite regional element that makes international communications slower, but it is already substantially more convenient in terms of making sure everyone has access to the same info, and don't go around splitting up abruptly or treading on each other's toes. And while PbP peaked in the early 80's, this stuff has been growing fairly substantially, and is just about to start rocketing up exponentially. It's a pretty strong reminder how the future comes in ways you don't expect, at paces even the smartest pundits can't predict. In this case though, I think I can rightly say bring it on, since I have fond memories of chatrooms around the turn of the millennium.
The dragon's bestiary gets four new Forgotten Realms monsters courtesy of Ed. All of these would go on to be printed in official monstrous compendia. That does seem to be becoming increasingly common these days.
Banelar are ridiculously similar to Dark Nagas in powers and fluff. Put side-by side they're virtually the orcs & hobgoblins of the mid-level, scheming serpentine creatures. Rather unnecessary, really. Give us something new!
Flameskulls are another reminder that Ed loves his irritating whimsy. They're near impossible to kill, and may well follow you around making smart-alec comments and being quirkily mentally unstable. Is there a particular novel of his actually featuring one of these? Or is he just setting another bad example which will lead to less skilled DM's annoying their players like hell?
Foulwings are winged, vaguely xenomorph like creatures, with their 3 mouths, vile breath, and hollow bloodsucking tongues. You really don't want one of these jumping out at you on a dark night. Much better than the last two.
Whipstings are also decidedly alien looking things, another of the Realms' strange predators lurking in odd corners and leaping out to trouble the players. Like Gambados or Bhaergala, they're both a decent fight and amusingly weird. So it seems we have rather a mixed bag this time round. Hmm. Could definitely be better.
Castles Forlorn! Another epic boxed set adventure for your players to try and figure out how to deal with. Not an easy one, but good for a wide range of levels, since so many of the problems are puzzle and role-playing based rather than straight combat.
The known world grimoire: Looks like Mystara is finally getting to play with the other boys and girls in the AD&D universe, instead of being on its own. Here we get the big announcement that they're shifting ownership, with Jeff Grubb taking on the developer's role. Bigger budget for books, more colour, and some "special features" coming with the books that are still left mysterious. Course, this may be a poisoned promotion. And what's going to replace it down in BD&D land? Nothing is mentioned here, which doesn't seem very promising. Like the computer columnists leaving last issue, this is presented as good news, when hindsight shows that it really really wasn't in the long term. Now we're never going to get decent amounts of info on Norwald, the arm of the immortals or the southern continents, because they'll be too busy trying to re-cover and update the parts of the world that are already familiar, just like the Forgotten Realms. Another slow step towards the circle closing, D&D starting to eat it's own tail. Man, this is depressing. The new crunch, weapon mastery lists for chakrams and bullroarers, does little to mitigate this feeling. The old guard are gradually being driven away from the magazine. What will replace them this time round?
The role of books: The element of fire by Martha Wells mixes magic and swashbuckling, in a world where they are suitably balanced in power to make for stories full of derring-do and political intrigue. Combined with strongly written main characters, this one is pronounced a success.
Knights of the blood by Katherine Kurtz and Scott MacMillan wants badly to be the first book in a long series, but won't be if the poor plotting and worldbuilding doesn't improve sharpish. Vampire knights trying to remain honorable down the centuries certainly isn't a bad idea. But as ever, it's the implementation that's crucial.
McLendon's syndrome by Robert Frezza tries to meld sci-fi and comedy in a manner reminiscent of the Xanth books, only less irritating. The tendency of the characters to be full of quips and puns doesn't destroy the credibility of the worldbuilding or drama of the plot. You could have far worse guilty pleasures.
The ghatti's tale book 1 by Gayle Greeno feels like a blatant formulaic attempt at replicating the successes of several other recently popular novelists. John can trace the elements easily to certain other specific books, and does not feel they've ben integrated well here. The literary world equivalent of Menswear or Republica.
On basilisk station and The Honor of the queen by David Weber see Honor Harrington unleashed upon the world at high speed. These sci-fi age of sail pastiches have done pretty well for themselves over the years, and it looks like the praise is justified. The biggest danger, as for Star trek captains, is being promoted out of the adventuring life.
The shadow of Yserbius is a MMO that only costs 57 cents an hour at off-peak times. Isn't that a bargain? (5/6ths cost reduction in 4 years, the joys of exponential computer advancement.) Don't you want to play it now?!
Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993
part 3/5
Eye of the monitor: So welcome to the new computer column. As is often the case, the change in ownership also means a name change, to allow the new guy to draw a line in the sand and stamp their personality more firmly on things. Still, it's not all bad news. Sandy Petersen! Creator of both Call of Cthulhu and rpg.net! The hobby certainly owes a lot to him. This might be fun for a bit after all. He certainly seems more enthusiastic to be here and less formal than the Lessers were by the end of their run. On we go then.
Wolfenstein 3D does very well indeed. The look is strong, the difficulty is well-graded, the AI makes the enemies both clever and realistically dumb, and there's plenty of hidden bits to unearth and tricks to figure out. The fact you can download it for free on the web really is the icing on the cake. Despite that, the makers still probably made a healthy profit with console conversions and the like, giving the laugh to corporations who panic over piracy.
Commander Keen takes a slightly different tack to shareware, giving you the first installment for free, but then you've gotta pay up. Combining overhead map with side-scrolling action sections, it has a decent sense of humour and requires puzzle-solving abilities as well as reflexes. The computer format means you can have lots of similar games based off the same main character easier than you could with consoles, where you need a full-priced new cartridge for each game.
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure also tries the trick of giving you the first bite for free. However, with the actual gameplay slow-moving and repetitive, Sandy can't recommend it. Even free stuff can be a waste of your time.
Waxworks gets a mixed review for being a bit too tricky and brutal for it's own good. Get used to saving after every encounter and dying frequently as you work your way through 1st person 3D horror. You'll certainly be scared regularly, if maybe not for the right reasons.
We don't seem to have a tips section anymore. However, Sandy does offer numbered hints for the games at the end of each individual review, which is probably the biggest format change. Whether he makes more as his confidence increases or not, we shall have to see.
Join the electronic warriors: Jim Ward does a second piece of pretty odious pure promotion, this time concentrating on their quite substantial number of computer games out now. Along with the large number of adverts for their own products, this is rather tiresome, and makes me wonder if they're getting enough external advertisers in to pay their bills properly. Still, they do seem to be expanding the scope of this department, with games for new campaign worlds, plus a generic one planned as well. Hopefully we'll at least get some good games out of this promotional dross, so they can make some more money. But they do need to cut down a bit on this kind of crap. Show, don't tell. Basic rule, you know. Along with the one against railroading, they're slowly forgetting it in their attempts to be more sophisticated.
Forum: Clarissa Fowler points out an interesting conflict in the TSR camp, between Roger's support of GLB (but not T yet) gamers, and their code of conduct, which tries to sweep all that ickiness under the carpet. This looks like another topic likely to cause further debate now it's been exposed to the light. As well as that, she offers some more advice about how to make gaming more inviting to people of various minority groups. Things are gradually getting better, but only due to the hard work of people like her.
Kendal Miles encourages you to involve your players in creating backstories for their characters collectively, instead of sending them away to produce several page essays of pretentiousness. That'll help them find reasons to get the party together and all working on the same goals.
Erik Munne also encourages you to talk about what characters you and your players want when building a game, instead of working in a vacuum. Communication is integral to gaming, so of course improving your skills at that will help.
Les Bowman laid down the law when it comes to timekeeping and food during his game. He did lose a couple of players, but now the whole thing runs so much better. A little discipline is a very good thing. You wouldn't want the people who can't buckle down to it anyway.
Steven Cox brings the Complete book of Dwarves into the overpowered kit debate. As with the bard ones, it's the multiclass stuff that really brings the cheese. Another voice joins the list of people clamouring for a solution. Is it any wonder 3e overcompensated and wound up going the other direction with multiclass power levels.
Eyal Teler doesn't find psionicists overpowered. Course, that's because his wizards have houserules that substantially increase their versatility. In any case, you shouldn't expect them to work in the same way, as that gets boring. If you do encounter problems, he has some relatively reasonable sounding nerfs to keep them from getting too complacent.
Mage gets a rather odd byline. Truth until paradox. And there are ninjas with shades and people riding hoverbikes firing lots of guns with telekinesis. That'd certainly invoke lots of paradox in the actual game. Guess we have another unfortunate case of artwork disconnect. I suppose you've got to lure people in. A bit of false advertising never hurt anyone. :p
Role-playing reviews: The HERO system is Allen's choice of review material this month. Like GURPS, you can do a hell of a lot with it. But unlike GURPS, it has a definite focus, with the Champions game seeing the lions share of it's supplements. With it's effect based point buy design, it does stand out, and has some fanatical devotees, but not enough to keep it financially stable. As a result, we get a quick history lesson as well, telling us how ownership has shifted around over the years. It once again cements Allen's position as a good reviewer who knows the context of what they're talking about.
Dark Champions: Heroes of vengeance sees a decidedly mixed review, with Allen recognising it's quality, but also rather uncomfortable with the violent, nihilistic worldview it espouses, where the heroes are barely better than the villains. This may be just a reflection of the recent changes in comics, but it's a decidedly depressing one, and he wants no part in games based upon it. Fight the grimdark!
High tech enemies gets listed, but then almost forgotten about in the actual prose of the review. The only important detail is the sheer brutality of some of the enemies, who are quite capable of kicking the average parties ass. Better get accumulating those extra points then.
Champions Universe is a bit of a headache, as it tries to consolidate the work of all the previous setting books into one rather large unified supplement. Unfortunately, it's not nearly large enough to stand on it's own, and raises as many questions as it answers. You'll have to reconcile the inconsistencies exposed yourself.
Normals Unbound is the only supplement that gets serious praise, with character sketches that are both appropriate and fun. They may not have special powers, but that doesn't make them any less critical to the story. It's one of those areas where campaigns often struggle to emulate the source material, and this bunch of prefab example characters go quite a way in showing you how to do it.
Allen also mentions the monster book, adventures, official magazine, and online ventures by the community. There does seem to be the persistent theme of plenty of potential, but patchy implementation. Just can't get the staff, it seems, so they have to rely on the fans to keep the fires burning. I suppose that puts them in a good position to have their fortunes revived by the internet age.
Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993
part 4/5
The marvel-phile: This issue has been pretty light on new crunch so far. Here we get some rather unexpected new stuff for this game. The proportion of badass normals in comics has been increasing in recent years, and it's got to the point where they really need to represent this properly in the game. Steven Schend does just that, allowing you to generate characters who rely on skills and gadgets for any exceptional capabilities they have. On the plus side, they get more contacts than regular heroes, and a whole bunch of talents, which means they may not have the world changing powers, but they will be more versatile. Hopefully they'll be able to hold their own with the likes of Batman and Captain America. Not a bad article at all, even if it does highlight another area of growing conservativeness in the company, that of gradually backing off from high level coverage in their adventures and supplements. As usual, any actual play experience with these optional rules is welcome.
Beyond the dark horizon: The start of our little Dark Sun section is a mix of new spells and magic items, meaning it doesn't quite fit into either of the regular columns for those. Still, lots of crunch will generally have a few gems hidden in it, ready for raiding whatever the campaign. Let's chomp like a starving sand howler on a juicy kank abdomen.
Erdlu claw is your basic hand to hand enhancer, probably better cast on the party fighter than yourself. Slash them to death like an animal, divert the attentions of detectives.
Giant Fur makes you ridiculously hairy, providing modest armour, although not the protection from cold it probably should. But this is athas. Who wants to know how something'll protect you from something you'll never experience.
Petrification makes wooden weapons as damaging as stone weapons. Only in athas would someone even consider developing a spell like that. Still, life and death, often you can't get anything better.
Boneiron & Bonewood do much the same, although as these are more powerful transmutations, they're a bit higher level.
Erdlu Hide brings your AC down to 6. Not that great really, but it is long-lasting and cumulative with a good Shield spell. And good armor is in short supply on athas. A wizard needs all the help they can scrounge.
Ranike Cloud drives away even the biggest bugs. This'll range from a minor convenience to absolute lifesaver. Don't use if there's a thri-kreen in your party.
Reverse fossilisation makes stone weapons work like bone ones. Once again, you can't see adventurers who take proper blacksmithing for granted bothering to fill slots with that.
Stoneiron & Woodiron give us another round of the sequential weapon material enhancers. This does feel rather like padding, and could easily have been compressed into fewer, better scaling spells.
Erdlu Egg give wizards a basic food creating spell, even if it can't compete with cleric's capabilities at this level. When you draw your power from consuming lifeforce, you don't get many free lunches.
Kank Shell is another armouring spell that's flavourful, but a bit weak for it's level. Once again, the poor scaling of these spells is very notable in a setting which is all about the high level characters.
Isolate Templar is our first real winner, fucking up their ability to memorise and cast spells via interfering with their connection to the boss. Still, this is another one that'll be no use at all on other worlds with different cosmological setups.
Heart Call finally does something cool, giving you an instadeath spell with great visuals. Indiana Jones won't get away this time. Time to really show them the meaning of pain.
Which brings us to the magic items. Ranike Rods are another bug-repellent, making sure they'll learn not to mess with you pretty sharpish. Ranike Staves do much the same, only with more options on how to apply the pungent smoke.
Erdlu Canteens give you just enough to survive off if very conservative. A whole party trying to rely on one will soon wind up with egg on their faces.
Petrified weapons & shields are the permanent equivalent of the earlier spells. Since they're still susceptible to breakage, this seems a rather inefficient use of a really high level wizard's time. Why not just give them more plusses?
Purple-leaf blades are made from razor-sharp grasses. They get bent out of shape easily, but it's just as easy to get them back in. Watch you don't cut yourself while doing so.
Bonewood Fossilized, Woodiron, Stoneiron & Boneiron weapons continue this formula, allowing you to bring stuff up to the level adventurers in other worlds take for granted. Yawn city. Man, there's a ridiculous amount of padding and dross in this one. They could definitely be using their page count in a more efficient manner.
Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993
part 5/5
Fiction: Ashes to ashes by Lisa Smedman. Man, it sucks being a templar. You have to deal with a god who is very much present, giving you specific instructions and often being very partial and petty. And unlike most other priesthoods, you don't even have any kind of unifying ideology. Instead, it's more like a modern business, dog eat dog, short term profits paramount, with everybody treading on everybody else to suck up to the boss. No wonder that some people wind up doubting their commitment to the boss, particularly the ones who ironically started out as idealists. If it weren't for the fact that everyone'd lose all their powers and no-one knows how to replicate becoming a sorcerer-king, they'd have been deposed long ago. This gives us a side-story to the whole business where Kalak fell and Tyr became a free state, as one of his templars discovers just how nasty her boss is, and finds out that maybe losing all your spellcasting isn't such a terrible deal after all. Sure, it's a sacrifice, but it's better than knowing you're a jailer in a gilded cage, likely to be sacrificed yourself in the future if you stick around. Like most athasian stuff, this has a hard edge, but somehow remains fundamentally hopeful. Things will get better, because it's hard to see how they could get worse. As gaming fiction goes, I've seen worse.
The dragon project: ARS Magica gets a turn in the magazine this month. And in the process, we get to see Roger's editorial on evolutionary plots applied practically in another way, as this takes the big twist of Forbidden Planet and twists it to the point of near unrecognisability to fit it into their setting. The result is one of those adventures where there isn't really a proper good or bad guy, and it'll take a lot more work to solve the mystery than hacking and slashing. Unlike the GURPS one in issue 194, this'll take a moderate amount of work to convert to another system, heavily bound to Ars Magica's default setting as it is. I guess you'll have to practice those evolutionary tricks again. Should be fun. I definitely like this one, as it does manage to put a very distinctive spin on some familiar ideas, as well as once again introducing readers of the magazine to a new system.
Swordplay still has cash-flow problems. The drow still have Ogrek problems. The undead have serious paternity problems. Where is Yamara in all this? Dragonmirth has very contrasting art styles. Twilight empire also has multiple familial problems. She might help dad escape, but I don't think Becca would let him kill mum.
Through the looking glass: Minis continue to struggle onwards, with price increases and material changes frequent in this season's lineup. This certainly isn't business as usual, however much they'd like to pretend it is. But there's still more than enough choice for one little column. A vampire on the stairs, cape a-swishing. A princess with one of those silly conical hats that blow off at the slightest breeze. Some CoC deep ones, ready to lurk and rend. A rather emaciated looking minotaur. A nicely modular set of castle pieces. A gatehouse which might or might not mesh with the previous model. Another tank to add to your collection. A swarm of giant rats, one of those fantasy staples that's a bit under represented in minis. A suitably petite sylph. Some digitised monsters for Shadowrun games, looking suitably angular and polygonic for the era. A four-piece set of battletech mechs, some assembly required. A couple more mechs from Fantasy Force. Some polearms for those who want to mod their armies. An old skool paladin, judge Dredd style cops, and a trio of mad scientists, one of which is wheelchair bound. Affirmative action! Tons and tons of little things get tons of little reviews.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms continues to move forward, quickly obsoleting a few elements of the new core set. FRQ2: The doom of daggerdale rips off sleeping beauty. But don't think solving it'll be as easy as just kissing someone. Meanwhile, R.A. Salvadore has a very good month indeed. His new novel, Starless night, sees Drizzt return to menzoberanzan to kick ass and lift curses. And his previous novel appears in paperback with a bonus chapter. This line is still very profitable indeed.
Ravenloft is also doing pretty decently. Castle Forlorn lets you explore this deeply messed up, vaguely scottish flavoured domain, experience serious time shifting weirdness, and try and solve one of the more intractable darklord's issues. Not easy, and definitely not a hack and slash one. Be ready to leave baffled, frustrated, and quite possibly dead if you can't find the clues.
Dark Sun gives it's clerics a splatbook too. DSS2: Air, earth, fire and water. More cool tricks for them, particularly at high levels to make them a half-decent challenge to those bloody Dragons and Avangions. Are you ready to get para-elemental and save the world? Or just find out once and for all how those fucking magnets work.
Our generic stuff this time combines the spectacular and the prosaic. The Book of Artifacts brings back dozens more ways to screw your players over while also making them think they're going to get obscene power. Most have extensive backstories, many tied into specific worlds. Use with caution. They also complete the first round of solo modules with HHQ4: Cleric's challenge. Tailored specifically to your talents, which means lots of undead. Get ready to roll.
D&D gets champions of Mystara, the compiled book of the princess ark adventures. Now you too can explore the savage coast in detail and fly airships. Bruce Heard has worked a lot on this over the past 3 years. Enjoy. They also complete the Penhalligon trilogy. Come on, they've gotta save magic, because otherwise, they'd have to publish a whole new game with different rules! (shh, don't give them ideas ;) )
And in our increasingly small completely unconnected to D&D bit, we have AM4: Magitech, our next Amazing engine world. So what happened to AM3? Is it late, or are there still more books coming out that don't show up in these previews for space reasons? Vaguely bemusing.
It's quite notable how computers are moving forward in this issue, which is pleasing to see, but the gaming stuff has some very ropey bits indeed, with official promotion getting far too big a part of the magazine. The rise of grimdark and street level stuff isn't particularly pleasing to me either, as it feels rather like a step down when you've already enjoyed truly epic adventures and know that you can save the world. The shine of the start of the year is long gone, and it's pretty obvious they're building up their big guns for the huge christmas celebration. The next two may well be pretty lean pickings as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. Horror elements on this month's cover, but combined in amusingly goofy fashion. Goes to show, it's a tiny change from genuinely creepy uncanny valley stuff to harmlessly weird and back. Just the kind of melding of serious and playful Roger has got rather good at over the years. Lets see if the april spirit persists at the other end of the year this time.
In this issue:
Letters: Three letters from people having trouble getting hold of some of the smaller company games reviewed in the magazine. It's an object lesson in how much power the main distributors still wield in controlling what becomes big or not.
Another letter from someone who wants to become an Officially Qualified DM. That little rumour will not die, for some reason. I suspect some creepy gamers perpetuate it to gull the gullible.
A couple of questions about bonded weapons from issue 194. They aren't quite that special.
A letter asking for the sources used as references by the artists. We do have a lot of artists with different influences, but a few names do turn up again and again.
A letter wondering why they don't do more fiction. We tried that around issue 2. 1 piece of fiction per month has turned out about the optimum to minimise complaints from both sides of the fence. We are primarily a gaming magazine, you know.
Editorial: Well, Cons are still a growth industry, anyway. As has become habit over the years, it's time for Roger to recount our tales of Gen Con wackiness. TSR has increased the size of their booths, but they still look proportionately smaller when you account for all the other companies blowing up around this time. Once again Margaret and Tracey are right in the middle of any trouble that crops up, being captured by Klingons and then setting them on the rest of the TSR staff. (all for charity, of course. Jurassic park stuff was huge, George Takei guest starred with aplomb, and Roger consumed FAR too many M&M's over the three days. As usual, the whole thing was exhausting but fun. They've somehow retained enough immaturity and sense of wonder to really take advantage of events like that, despite this being a job to them for well over a decade. As is often the case, I am full of envy. It does get very tiring being the serious one all the time, but I just don't seem to be able to unwind enough to enjoy that kind of mischief anymore. Too much time spent writing alone, too little direct feedback for what I do leaves me perpetually insecure as to my value. It drives me forward, but it's not healthy by any yardstick. I wish I got to have more fun.
Pin back their ears: Lycanthropes get first place this year, unusually. However, it is not exactly to get more toys for the DM or players. It's actually mostly nerfs, with some optional clarifications as well. Handy for a low magic game where you have to figure out how to defeat them without the easy solutions, and especially if you've somehow wound up with a lycanthrope PC with a degree of control over their actions, and they've tried to run rough-shod over bit chunks of your campaign. A bit of mixed bag really in terms of opinions, but it does have some nice adventure seeds. They've done better, they've done worse. This doesn't set my world alight either way.
The false undead: Pseudo-undead were one of the more vague and irritating creatures of 1e, and for whatever reason, they never got converted over to 2e. But the idea of monsters that fake out the players is a well-established one, and always useful in dealing with overconfident players. Still, a surprise is only a surprise once, before you have to find a new one, so here's another instalment of things that look creepy, but you can't actually turn. Bunch of cheek really.
Skullriders are arachnoid creatures with a shell that looks very much like a human skull. They can attach themselves to a dead body and animate it temporarily, but are more a nuisance than a real danger to prepared adventurers. Just another strange add-on to D&D's dungeon ecology.
Goop ghouls are oozes that also like to use someone else's remains as a means of facilitating their mobility and ability to manipulate objects. They flow over a skeleton and animate it, looking like regular undead at a distance as they're semitransparent. Sounds like the kind of thing a Slithering Tracker might evolve into, given the right level of underground radiation. Both of these are pretty cool monsters, both from a conceptual and design point of view.
Beyond the Grave: From Pseudo-Undead to the real thing, as Tom Moldvay returns after 3 years to provide some more alternative takes on the traditional AD&D undead. Tracing back their names to various cultures, he shows how they largely stem from the desire to guard graves, and humanities discomfort at the remains of their dead. A primal fear manifested in many different ways around the world, and it's no surprise that they'll have quite different power levels and abilities, even if most have much the same goal. So let's see what he has to say about wights, wraiths and mummies.
Ka are somewhat more benevolent than normal mummies, but still not to be trifled with. They can animate the statues from their tombs, and control people with magical glyphs. If you're including one, you really need to design a suitably cool tomb complex to go with them, for the extra resources, secret doors and traps are what'll really make the encounter special.
Angreden are based on an icelandic legend, and have quite an idiosyncratic appearance. Their special power, that of cursing the person who defeats them, on the other hand is a pretty common legendary one. This is another reason why full parties work better than the solitary heroes you find too often in legends. The tall grass gets the scythe, and winds up with all the drama of death curses and blood feuds. An anonymous bunch of heroes can save the world and move on.
King-wights take us to Norway for a little inspiration storywise, but mechanically they're pretty much what you'd expect, albeit with slightly more magical powers. They're load-bearing bosses too, which is awesome. D&D could do with a few more of those.
Wraith-kings are fairly obviously based upon tolkien's ringwraiths. With the power to drain levels merely with a gaze, enslave people with ease, and a penchant for Nightmare mounts, they're pretty darn terrifying, and can make for quite credible big bads in themselves. Anything with the power to assemble 9 of them as lieutenants is going to take some serious levelling up to fight head-on.
Vartha are essentially revenant variants, people reinhabiting and preserving their body because they have some important task that needs fulfilling. They can be of any alignment, so who knows what their goal might be. Probably best to get on their good side, for they're another creature with an extensive set of spell-like abilities with which to deal with you, many which are divinations for some reason. I doubt trying to trick them will go down well. This lot are well up to the standard of his previous instalments. When he finally gets round to finishing this series, it'll be a real standout of the middle years of the magazine.
Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993
part 2/5
The marvel-phile: Our final instalment of this column this month, as it slips unheralded into obscurity, after a year in which the company didn't release anything for the game. Still they're going out not exactly with a bang, but a roar at least, as they cover a trio of giant monsters from the comics. Grogg, a massive horned scaly firebreathing horror. Why not just come out and say the word dragon? Taboo, a near indestructible ooze creature cast out from another world. And The Glop, another alien scouting the earth for potential conquering. They really shouldn't bother, but there you go. The heroes will triumph in the end, and the villains will be defeated in an ambiguous way that leaves things open for a future return. For if they aren't, a future writer will have to concoct an implausible twist or retcon to bring them back. This neatly leads us into our final little bit of pontification, as they talk about some name changes that people and creatures have gone through over the years. It feels very much like business as usual, which is ironic. Did the licence expire naturally, or did it get pulled suddenly for some reason? Either way, it means that despite their attempts to cover non D&D stuff more in the Dragon projects, they're losing one of their longest running and most reliably covered games at this point. Bit of a shame, but they have been struggling to fill it of late, with the information getting increasingly obscure and/or new as the years went by. All things must come to an end, and this has sometimes felt like it outstayed it's welcome over the last year. So long, superheroics, it's been a blast.
Sage advice: How many slots does an out of group proficiency cost. (1 extra. If you want healing, that's gonna use up your whole selection )
Does call lightning really do that much damage. (Yes. Its powerful because the conditions you can use it in are bloody inconvenient. )
Why isn't undead turning disrupted when you're attacked. Does this apply to other granted powers ( Because the gods wish it to be so. Yes. Granted powers don't require the complicated supplications spells do. )
Do you still lose your spell if you save for half damage. (yes. Pain is painful. Don't get in fights.)
How many languages can priests of Deneir speak (all of them! It may sound awesome, but once you have a universal translator, they get treated like a commodity, rather than a person. Then again, you are a cleric, so you should be used to it. )
Also, Skip's generous contribution this month is the Aztec pantheon. Blood sacrifice. Rogar of Mooria approves.
The dragon project I: Along with his new computer game column, Sandy contributes a little something to bolster his old RPG's position in the magazine. Mr Josh Wellmeat, a largely sessile, but still very scary creature from millions of years in the past that stretches the definition of dragon somewhat visually, but fits in perfectly from a thematic point of view, with his truly machiavellian level of scheming and hoarding, taking a long view with his plans to an extent that humans can't match because they simply don't have the lifespan. The way that he maintains a human facade is both clever and pretty horrifying, with lovingly crafted details to give it that truly cthulhu-esque san destroying air. He can be used as either an adversary or a rather dubious employer and provider of info, and either way, can be behind a good long adventure arc. This is a joy to read about, fulfilling all the several overlapping remits this column has with aplomb. He's really earned his keep here.
Role-playing reviews: Rick looks like he's facing the same kind of problem I sometimes have to deal with in coming up with introductions. How do you say something pretty similar to what you've said before and keep it both entertaining and informative? In this case, it's talking about what makes a good fantasy setting for him. Just because it's an RPG, doesn't mean you should forget the Chekov's gun principle. Keep your focus, and make the adventures fit the setting. Because there's a lot of settings out there now, and you have to make yours distinct if you want to get anywhere.
From the ashes gets a pretty positive review. Greyhawk finally has a consistent tone, rather than being a patchwork quilt of adventures sewn together into a setting post-hoc. This may displease some people, but you have to try. And you do wonder exactly how someone else could have done things differently so this didn't alienate so many people while still moving things forward. If only we could actually see parallel universes.
GURPS fantasy II sees the debut of Robin Laws, bringing a decidedly silly air with him. The giant moose and gopher gods stamp across the setting, throwing the utopian human culture into stark relief. Well, if you lived in a world that was virtually cartoonish at times, you'd come to throw away greed (as very little has enough permanency to really value) and treasure boredom where you could get it. It's a clever idea, but the theory is better than the execution. Guess that's why he got into theory in a big way later. :p
Eidolon: city in the sky is a sourcebook for Rolemaster's Shadow World. It's a cool setting idea, with the distinction between the haves and have-nots pretty obvious. The visuals are the best part of it though, with the adventure ideas and details on the inhabitants a bit lackluster. Once again, the concept exceeds the execution.
Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993
part 3/5
Eye of the monitor: Sega vs Nintendo. Mac vs PC. Computers vs Console. These interlocking wars are raging right now, with the great number of competitors that were flooding the market a few years ago being ruthlessly narrowed down. As we know now, the economics of scale where game development is involved means any advantage will rapidly tip further in the favour of the winning side, and push the others out of the market. Unless you can find a slightly different niche to target, as Apple managed to do, and then Nintendo a decade later, you will not survive for long outside the conglomerates. This is one of those topics that can run and run, and I don't doubt that we'll be seeing more unexpected twists and turns in future years too. What will the next generation of consoles bring, now the Wii has proved playability sells over the latest graphics cards and screaming processors? Will another company manage to come from no-where, or are computers pretty much entrenched now? Will the iPad take over the world. For all my examination of the flow of the past, I still can't predict the future.
A link to the Past is of course a stone-cold classic, both instantly accessible (none of the frigging cutscenes that really bog down the later instalments) and full of little hidden bits to discover. I can do it all in around 4 hours, including getting every single heart piece, but it'll take you a while to get that good. Playing around with the large quantity of magical items is called out as a particularly fun part, and I must admit there is a certain joy in sprinkling magic dust and making the beansprouts talk, or the pink skulls turn into fairys, or freezing monsters and throwing them at other ones. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you to get this one.
The Legend of Zelda doesn't do quite as well, simply because it is a bit dated now, and I must admit the saving is a bit clunky (but he would know there is a trick to it if he'd read the manual properly. ) And of course, there's the massive replay value, with the second harder quest and mass of really hard to find (albeit because there's no clues, and you have to burn every tree and bomb every bit of rock to find them) bits and pieces. (You must pay the door repair charge :p )
The Adventure of Link is well known as being a bit of an odd one out amongst the Zelda series, both stylistically and in terms of quality, and it seems Sandy agrees with the general consensus, giving it only 3 stars. The description is a bit sparse, and there's not as much to riff off. But you're going to buy it anyway, because you're completists.
Doom is previewed here, in it's own shareware incarnation. It of course manages to improve on wolfenstein in terms of graphics, and more importantly, the size and variety of your weapons. Even using your fists is more fun than usual, and as for the BFG's, my oh my you've just got to love them, and what they do to the enemy. :D \m/ So it's a full house of classic games this month. Haven't seen that before. Sandy is definitely making his mark as a reviewer and writer this time round.
The dragon project II: Another of our reviewers is roped into covering the game they worked upon before TSR poached them. This time it's Lester Smith and the Dark Conspiracy game. He doesn't do as well as Sandy, with a more conventional stalking and ravaging monstrosity, quite possibly from another dimension. Still, even if it doesn't support a whole campaign as easily as Mr Wellmeat and his plot hooks, the Darkwyrm is pretty scary both physically and magically, with 5 heads, disintegrating lightning breath, and the ability to mess up all your technological equipment. I'm not sure exactly how big and experienced a party you'll need under this system to have a good chance of beating it, but it's pretty clear starting characters need not apply. Decent enough filler that would probably have more impact if they'd spread it out better, instead of having two in one issue and then a gap of a month or two. Like the fiction, reviews and promotional columns, you have to tread the line between too much and too little to appeal to the greatest demographic, and this is another skill they appear to be slipping on lately.
Campaign journal: Al-Qadim gets a turn in this column, showing us to combine arabian stuff with horror. After all, they have no shortage of their own ghost stories to draw upon. Why can't they be two tastes that taste great together? Fallen Nog and Kadar are already perfect grounds for forbidden lore, quite possibly of the sort that erodes sanity merely by reading it. Meanwhile the rest of the continent is riven by paranoia. The priests are more oppressive, the holy slayers considerably less holy, and the wizards and genies more mysterious and feared. Yak-men are another perfect horror creature with their rather nasty possession powers and skill at long term planning. It all fits together pretty easily, as if it were born to do this. Sometimes, you just get an easy assignment, where everything naturally flows into place.
Along with the strong advice, we also get two new kits and a monster, making this a fairly complete package with plenty of reasons for us to return to it. Looks like this is turning out to be a pretty good halloween.
Priest-defenders gain the ability to turn genies as well as undead, but are members of one of those obsessive orders that can never give up their quest to destroy evil without losing their powers, and are generally not well suited for integration into society. They can turn evil in the pursuit of smiting though, giving PC's plenty of chance to get into means and ends arguments with NPC's.
Sungazers fight evil, but are likely to fall to madness in their study of it, unless you have access to a cleric powerful enough to cast restoration regularly, in which case their hindrance will be mostly mitigated. A decidedly tricky one in determining game balance, since so much of their benefits and penalties are external action and situation dependent.
Zakharan Kraken are pretty similar to their brethren elsewhere, only albino and slightly more powerful. They're set up to be perfect big bads, with a greater tendency to accumulate slaves and cults. Better watch out, etc etc. Horror can be things from the deep just as much as it can be undead, and we know there really are some pretty horrific looking things down there. (even if they'd actually die from pressure issues if they tried to come up to the surface)
Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993
part 4/5
Forum: Anonymous writes in again, supporting talking things through with your players to figure out who their characters will be, and what kind of world they'll live in. A really good game starts long before you ever actually play. Whatever happened to just making stuff up as you went along?
Joe Katzman actually thinks fighters need a little nerfing! O_o Mostly due to specialisation providing an unfair advantage. Well, Len Lakofka thought the same. The disadvantages from having access to a narrower range of weapons do have to be deliberately attacked to become an issue. Another issue that probably needs tweaking.
Jeremy Pataky is yet another person suffering under the yoke of officials with stupid preconceptions about gaming. Epic education fail. This stuff gets you reading, writing and thinking. But of course they don't REALLY want to encourage that, do they. :p
Chris Scofield is angry that churches are attacking gaming when there are far bigger and realer issues like poverty and crime around. Oh, they're old news. It's always the fads that really get the attention.
Eyal Teler gives support to the idea of playing evil games. You can have a lot of fun, honest! Damn straight you can, even playing it Paranoia style. And it certainly doesn't make it easier either. You might not have to play fair, but it really is you against the world.
Karim Pedersen has a fairly brutal nerf for wizards, based on temporary ability drain when they cast spells. Since it's more dangerous for high level spells, this makes it a real risk casting them. Yeah, that works, if you want to encourage a low magic campaign. Maybe a little too well.
David Howery praises Roger Moore for reminding us that even most good DM's steal most of their ideas. It's all about twisting them enough that it's not immediately obvious. And even if they do spot it, twist things in the right way, and that supposed foreknowledge actually becomes a liability. Muahahaha. I like you.
Roger Smith answers a whole bunch of points from previous writers. Debate needs listeners and replies, not just people talking at each other. Otherwise it's just politics. ;)
Chris Morris also answers lots of letters with his personal experiences on their questions. He's managed to solve the demihuman issues in his campaign, but not the one where people always pick the powerful classes. Just make them roll randomly. That reduces the odds they get to pick those classes considerably, and really pleased if they do.
Soul-swords & Spirit-slayers: Back to 1e for the first time in a while for another oriental flavoured article. Like the Al Qadim article, this has an interesting mix of ideas, giving you some nicely flavourful alternate uses for your honor points. You can gamble your honor in crafting an item, or invest part of your soul to make it permanently magical. However the mathematics on this one are rather iffy, especially since AD&D nonweapon proficiencies are roll low anyway, so the system they use for determining success simply doesn't work. This means I'm really not sure what to make of this one, as I want to like it, but it'll need ripping apart and reworking before actually using. Rather a pain, really.
Kamigoroshi are also a fascinating idea, but a bit of a headache mechanically. A monster that survives by consuming honor points? That raises the question of exactly what they represent. How can a monster absorb the degree of esteem others hold you in? I suppose it's magic, you shouldn't think about it too hard or it unravels. But combine that with the fact that they have no actual damage inflicting powers, and are perfectly vulnerable to normal weapons, and they become like rust monsters, an irritant that will wind up being killed fairly easily, it's merely a question of how much you'll lose in the process. That's a bit wonky in actual play. I think this makes this article qualify as a failed experiment, albeit an interesting one.
Novel ideas: A real bit of showing off this month, as they celebrate their hardcover releases. It's a step towards being Serious Literature, something that will endure for the ages. Or something like that. There are worse things to aspire too, even if it can be funny to see people trying too hard, I can't say I wouldn't want to be in their position, able to write and publish multiple bestselling hardcover books every year. Drizzt continues to go from strength to strength. And my god P. N. Elrod is having way too much fun with the Strahd gig. We must get inside the heads of these dark sexy brooding vampires. And I must force my husband to cosplay as him! She's basically just a squeeing pervy fangirl made good, isn't she. What are we to do with her? Aw hell, let's just rake in lots of money and keep the angst purely IC for a change. This one's just too much fun to dislike, even if it is basically just promotion.
Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993
part 5/5
Fiction: The dark warrens by Lois Tilton: An interesting spin on I am Legend this month. In a world where vampires are supreme, the few remaining free humans are a primitive and ignorant bunch, struggling to survive and stay free against creatures smarter and more powerful than them. Some people are immune to being turned, and obviously as the years have gone by, this proportion has grown simply due to the intensity of the vampire depredations. This kind of info is presented in a textbook example of show not tell, which lets you figure out a good deal about the setting and metaphysics without spelling it out via heavy exposition. It's pretty good gaming inspiration too, giving me an idea of how to combine horror with Dark Sun-esque survivalist struggles. Horror really can be a spice that mixes well with all sorts of other genres. And as long as they have stuff like this, that popularity will be justly maintained.
Swordplay is distracted by internal monologuing. Ogrek gets joe out while the drow are distracted by searching for the vampire's weakness. Dragonmirth gets in on the horror theme. Twilight war'll need to do some fast talking to say everything it needs to say while fighting. Maybe they should take lessons from Wolverine.
Through the looking glass: Things go from bad to worse in the minis section. The lead bill has ground through committee at last in new york, and lots of states are considering following suit. The combination of increased prices and general uncertainty amongst both retailers and public has really done a number on sales, which means the companies have shortages of money and are likely to cancel entire lines to try and survive. This really is the straw that breaks wargaming's back, isn't it. It fought on gamely through the 80's, still getting plenty of promotion at the conventions despite dropping sales, but now it's withering away, a whole bunch of factors simultaneously conspiring against it and draining the enthusiasm of everyone remaining still trying to treat this as an industry rather than a hobby. This also probably helps explain why games workshop ended up on top. As a brit based company, this chaos would have had less impact upon them, putting them in a good position to scavenge off the remains and consolidate their own position. Well, it sounds like a good bit of theorising. Anyone want to talk a bit more about the realities of the next few years in wargaming, since detailed info probably won't be forthcoming in the magazine?
But anyway, lets see what minis he's dug up this month. A mysterious cloaked, winged figure to haunt your dreams. A dragon with another mysterious cowled figure riding it, which wouldn't be at all out of place in Tolkien's setup. A diorama of adventurers discovering a treasure chest. This is not without it's dangers. A huge, oddly mawed worm bursting from the ground. A trio of hunched over ghouls, one with a natty hat. Two sets of three skeletal undead, with rather impressive weapons. Death on a Motorcycle, as we've seen on heavy metal album covers and will see parodied soon in the Discworld. Some nicely dressed muthafunkin tremere, ready to cast spells, drink blood, and look really sharp while doing so. And a set of 4 minis representing a wolfwere in it's myriad forms, from TSR's official line. Keep the one's you're not using hidden, so you don't spoil the surprise.
TSR Previews: The forgotten realms comes out looking good again. FRS1: The dalelands gives you some more info to help you adventure close to where Elminster can hear your cries of agony. A whole bunch of little independent states is perfect grounds for you to take one over if you're feeling evil as well. There's also Pool of Twilight by Jim Ward and Anne Brown. Once again, they try and recapture the magic of their famous mixed gender writing teams. See yet another generation of heroes come into play, possibly prematurely in this case. Oh well, child heroes are a well established fantasy trope. No reason D&D can't do them.
Al-Qadim expands upon genies in ALQ4: Secrets of the lamp. Now that's one that makes perfect sense, and will probably get pretty good sales. You can even get to adventure in the city of brass, although not in as much detail as 3e. Sweet.
Dragonlance is still busy, but less constructively. Leaves from the inn of last home gets reprinted, which I really don't think is worth the promotional space unless they've made some revisions and additions as well. And The Dwarven Kingdoms get a boxed set, tying in with their latest trilogy. Go them.
In Dark Sun, on the other hand, it's the elves that are getting another splatbook in DSS3. They're quite different from generic elves, and their kits and equipment reflects that. Watch them like a hawk, or they'll have your equipment too.
Lankhmar returns after a years gap. City of Lankhmar appears to be a reboot of sorts, giving us a new core. Seems like this is their only setting not being driven onwards by metaplot and timeline advances.
Our Generic product this month is another historical one HR5: The glory of rome. Combine with the Celts one for extra conquering and oppressing fun.
Gamma World has another adventure. GWQ3: Home before the sky falls. Ancient robot war machines have been reactivated. Sounds like this could require some gamma knights. That or discretion and finding a weak point. The usual adventurer dilemma then.
As is often the case with the october issues, the familiar and popular theme means they get lots of high quality articles in to choose from, giving us a fairly strong issue overall. Combine that with Sandy Petersen contributing two full-on classic articles on top of everything else, and this is a real home run even though the overall quality of the magazine is sliding. It makes their accomplishments feel all the more heroic, in a way, because things are becoming a genuine challenge again. A bit of fear and tension is just what the doctor ordered.
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 1/5
124 pages. It's blatant sadism time, with monsters being this issue's special theme. Like Magic, this is almost ridiculously broad a topic, that they really ought to focus a little more finely so as to reduce the frequency with which they repeat themselves. Guess they can only control what they get so much. Have the freelancers sent in some good stuff, or will we have to rely entirely on the staff writers again? Another day, another issue to fill.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone amused to see a baffled boyfriend dragged along to game night for a change. Statistically, it had to happen at some point.
A letter from someone wondering what happened to Rillifane in monster mythology. We've already sorted that out. Twice. Let's hope the back issues are still available.
Another person who wants Roman stuff. By no co-incidence, they have a sourcebook out, oh, round about now. Gotta collect 'em all!
A request for the addresses of some other gaming companies. This is no trouble for them to fix.
A question about their old products from the 70's. This proves a little trickier. Their record keeping was apparently not the greatest in the early years of TSR. It's no wonder they keep getting dates wrong and forgetting old products.
And finally, a question asking what happened to Judges Guild. They died, but many of their properties live on! Don't hesitate to pursue the new editions. (even if they might suck compared to the old stuff)
Editorial: So the day has finally come for Rogar of Mooria to seek out new adventures. He's being promoted from mere editor to the title of Product Group Leader. A pretentious corporatespeak title that translates as guy who bosses around and co-ordinates the developers for all the different AD&D campaign worlds. (At least, that's what it looks like) Which means he'd like to thank all the people that helped him make the magazine as good as it could be over the last 7 years. Mwah, mwah, you're all stars in your own way. It's all pretty short and predictable for this kind of departure. What he does not say though, is who is replacing him. And flicking back to the contents page, it's Kim again! Weird. Well, I suppose he did leave the company for a few years to go off gallivanting with Gary. That probably set him back a few rungs on the career ladder when he did return to TSR. So it's quite possibly going to be all change again in the next few months. And they've already lost quite a few columns recently. Guess it's going to be interesting times again until they get a new pattern down. And the editing may suffer in the meantime. Still, at least it's not abrupt chaos like Kim's original departure. I guess we'll have to wait for TSR's collapse for some of that action.
Opening the book of beasts: David Howery once again shows us that bad artists imitate, while great ones steal. Fresh and tanned from exploring africa, he heads back to medieval europe, and discovers that there's still a surprising number of creatures unconverted from there. Plus of course, there's the many mythological distortions of real world animals, created by imaginative naturalists with little real world experience of their subjects, and chinese whispers descriptions of African animals. Those are almost completely lacking from D&D, pushed out by the soppy revisionist witterings of PETA girl. Making even the mundane creatures fantastical would help reinforce the game against those tedious stickers for realism in fantasy as well. And I approve of both these objectives. On top of the alterations to existing creatures both real and magical, there's several new ones too.
Calopus are horned pumas, making them fairly versatile in terms of attack mode, but not actually much more scary than regular big cats. Still, it'll make the adventurers wonder and maybe get paranoid, which is usually pretty fun.
Monocerus are somewhere between the magical unicorn, and the mundane rhino in appearance and behaviour. They do have some weird quirks, and are pretty much impossible to tame, which means they won't be studied easily either. Best to just drive them to extinction then. :p
Sea Orcs are presumably drawn from sightings of killer whales, aka orcas. They're described as being more like crocodiles, but you know how these things change via chinese whispers. In any case, they're big, somewhat intelligent, and quite capable of smashing your little boat and gobbling up the party.
Sea monks & bishops are curiously benevolent creatures, living in small enclaves under the sea. Since they do all have fairly substantial clerical powers, getting on their good side can result in much needed healing during adventures underwater.
Serra are giant fishes that use their upper fins like sails to travel at high speed on the surface and slice straight through your boat. Even Jaws was never that awesome. The kind of thing you include just to see the looks on the players faces when they pull their signature move. It's no wonder sailors were a superstitious lot who got drunk and blew their money first chance they got. The sea has a lot to be afraid of.
Yale have appeared here before, in issue 101's creature catalog. And from the looks of them, David remembers this, as the stats are virtually identical apart from being converted to 2e. I quite approve, and hope Greg Detwiler won't mind this uncredited recycling either.
Bestiary Dragons are based on those long, snaky, frequently poisonous western ones that kill by constriction more often than they do by bite. Whether they have any magical abilities on top of that is up to you. As the legends show, spiky armor may well be a lifesaver. Just because you're adventuring in traditional lands, doesn't mean you won't profit from using your brain to solve problems. I think this is a pretty good little milieu opener.
Crude, but effective: Tuckers kobolds time yet again, reminding us how even dumb creatures become a lot scarier with basic tactics. Albeit with quite a bit of 4th wall breaking humour. Say hello to the Hobgoblin Elmonster. The kind of obvious rip-off character that would be more at home in the april issues. But the actual advice is as useful as ever, and include a few they didn't come up with last time. Traps, tricks, interesting synergies of relatively mundane monsters, even basic things like alarm systems and missile weapons. Use the damn things, for they will save lives, and help you kill enemies better. Even the dumbest of things don't want to die, except maybe bob-ombs. So this is a familiar topic that manages to justify itself by an excellent bit of tongue in cheek framing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 2/5
The dragon's bestiary: Trolls certainly aren't short of a few variants, including quite a few that appeared first in this magazine, such as issue 41, 51, 129, 141, more than their fair share of the minis review columns and tons of Wormy. Looks like that's not ending any time soon either, with the internet about to give their profile a further boost. Here's a few more.
Trollhounds show it's not just dragons that engage in pervy hybridisation. Basically just regenerating, extra ugly wolves with diseased bites, they're certainly not unbeatable or particularly strange. But since basic worgs managed to be pretty scary in The Hobbit, I guess it's how you play them that counts.
Phaze trolls operate on a similar principle to phase spiders. Mobility and misdirection make them the challenge they are. If you're extra unlucky they'll be psionic as well. I can definitely see them as a mid-level big bad or high level mook, so they're reasonably versatile enemies.
Gray Trolls have a poisonous bite, just to make things a little trickier, and uncommonly long range infravision, for some reason. They can assume gaseous form, and are burned by sunlight. That's what you get for hanging round with vampires. Another one you'll need a damn god lore roll to spot.
Stone trolls are tougher than normal trolls and have a unique weakness that you'll need to work quite hard to exploit. Still, their regeneration is slower than normal trolls, and they give lots of XP. Take wands full of healing and blasty effects to keep up with them long enough to finish them.
Fire trolls, unsurprisingly, are immune to fire, but have other weaknesses, although not exactly what you'd expect. (unless you watch lots of cartoons) On top of that, their acidic blood destroys metal weapons that hit them. They're big and tough enough to be a challenge even to name level adventurers. Probably best to have your spellcasters stock up on AoE blasty spells if you want to get out of this one alive too. A brutal ending to a collection obviously aimed at rather higher level parties than most of these.
Fiction: One-eyed death by Jonathan Shipley. A mystery story where the mystery is never really solved? Those can be pretty frustrating. Still, there's plenty of clues here. You'll just have to draw your own conclusions from them. Trouble is, it's nearly all loose ends. There are large amounts of vague worldbuilding that really need other stories to fill them in before this one can make satisfactory reading. Which if it was ever published, it wasn't in here. So this isn't terrible, but doesn't really work for me as is, needing some expansion. Writing truly self-contained short stories is actually a surprisingly tricky art.
The known world grimoire: Heraldry. Our third time round this topic. (see issue 53 and 154. ) And here we're reminded that Mystara is the only world that still uses alignment languages, and all the setting weirdness that goes with them. People know exactly where they stand on the major moral issues, and are generally not afraid to flaunt it either. Not that it matters, for obtaining nobility initially is entirely predicated on your ability to kick ass, rather than moral character. It may affect exactly what kinds of followers you attract though. This is a rather mixed up article, simultaneously trying to tackle real world history, and possible ideas for both D&D and AD&D game worlds. How you get them, what they look like, what different classes might do with them, it's very much a grab bag of options that you'll need to customise for your own campaign. The ideas for mechanical bonuses conferred by heraldic animals are pretty decent, and would work very well in a dominion style game. (transplanting to birthright shouldn't be hard at all. ) Plus it crosses over well with David Howery's article earlier on by talking about the medieval mythical connotations of real animals. Overall, I think I like this, despite not really wanting too. It gives us plenty of pointers without hemming things in too much, and reminds us just how weird you can make D&D by playing it's rules' logical consequences completely straight.
Campaign journal: A Spelljammer and Greyhawk crossover this month. (although relocating it to another world wouldn't be hard) The Black Pegasus Trading Company are a bunch of somewhat roguish adventurers who've moved into the space trading business as they went up in levels. They keep their sources pretty quiet while down on Oerth, thus neatly sidestepping the impact spelljamming would have on the technological and political milieu. They also carefully walk the balance between good and evil, tending slightly towards good simply out of self-interest, because it's better for business, and well treated employees are less likely to quit or betray you, while still being quite ruthless in making sure they get maximum profits from a deal. They could well end up as friends or enemies depending on how they're played. With a good dozen sample plots, and half a dozen character stats, this accomplishes what it sets out to do pretty well, giving you a good way to incorporate space adventuring without cutting the characters off from their original world, or changing said world drastically in the process of opening things up. Spelljammer may be pretty much a dead line by now, but this is still a good article for it. The lessons that they would later apply in making planescape accessible to new players are well in effect here. If only they'd learned them a few years sooner.
Eye of the monitor: Sandy shows another of his big differences compared to the Lessers. They were very much in favour of family friendly entertainment, getting rather uncomfortable whenever gore or sex came up in games they were reviewing. Sandy, on the other hand, wants to see those options out there, albeit with a parental guidance system analogous to the movie one. Why not just use exactly the same one? It would save time and bureaucracy substantially. What is not amusing is halfhearted censoring that removes the blood, while leaving the actual gameplay completely unchanged. Especially when it's only done in certain regions. Then it's both pandering and hypocritical. Sandy SMASH! Hee. This is a very entertaining intro. It's nice that games can finally do justice to mature themes, and amusing to see people reacting against that.
Final Fantasy II (which isn't the japanese II, but a later one, if I remember my geek lore correctly) doesn't have great graphics, but nearly everything else gets praised. The music is good, the enemies are always at just the right level of challenge, and the plot is fascinating. Characters appear and disappear throughout it in highly dramatic fashions, making the whole story seem much bigger than just your adventures. Get yourself some chocobos and go a-riding through the lands.
Ken's Labyrinth is another game where the first bite is free, then you need to pay up. However, Sandy isn't tempted, with a whole bunch of rookie mistakes messing up the programming. There are some cool ideas, but overall, the implementation needs some serious refinement.
Betrayal at Krondor also gets a negative review for some substantial design flaws. It eats up too many resources, and requires you to pay too much attention to IC bean counting. It also often refuses to recognise your accomplishments, leaving you just plain stuck when the plot can't be advanced properly. Needs some serious debugging.
Day of the Tentacle, on the other hand, is a fun Lucasfilm adventure game which really takes advantage of CD audio to allow you to hear every line of hilarious dialogue. The visuals look pretty amusing too. Once again, their development team has pulled together something both high quality and fun.
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 3/5
Role-playing reviews: Star Wars time again. The long-term success of this franchise really is quite impressive, when you look at it. A big part of this has to do with creator ownership. By controlling the licencing directly, instead of having to go through layers of studio interference, George managed to get a greater quantity and quality of spin-off stuff than most similar properties. (LotR has always been hampered by the licensing split between the sillmarilion stuff and the main 4 books, Titanic, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Aliens, and the like try gamely but resist being expanded into an entire universe because they're a bit too focussed on one thing. Harry Potter and Twilight could be worldified, but their creators seem to want to avoid being pigeonholed. Avatar has potential, but It's still too soon to see if it capitalises on it and becomes a decade-spanning franchise. ) Part of this is the RPG, which has managed a steady flow of supplements for years now. Last given a big feature in the magazine in issue 155, it's time to take a good look at what it's come up with again.
Star wars second edition is one of those cases where there are lots of incremental improvements over the first one. And a bit of bloat too, but not so much as to spoil the fun. A little knowledge of the EU may come in handy as the RPG has fed that in recent years, and in turn draws upon it. But it's still a fun setting, and a fun system that doesn't do too badly emulating it. The association between gaming and Star Wars can continue profitably for quite some time longer.
Heir to the empire, Dark force rising & Dark empire sourcebooks show just what a huge impact Timothy Zahn had turning Star Wars from a trio of riproaring movies into a remotely credible setting. There's a vast amount of information that can be converted, statistics of people, new worlds, expansion on the nature of the force. This does include some stuff that isn't very useful for gaming, and a certain degree of padding, but what do you expect. At least we have a decent idea now what happened after return of the jedi.
The politics of contraband is a collection of smuggling based adventures. Unfocussed and full of typos, Rick doesn't enjoy this at all. Develop your ideas better.
Twin stars of kira does rather better. Essentially a series of adventures bound together by an interstellar road trip, it's still a mixed bag, but there's more hits than misses.
Supernova sets things in a solar system about to go nova. This presents many problems that can't be solved by combat, including some tough ethical questions. Let's face it, there's no way you're saving everyone this time around. One for somewhat more experienced and mature players.
On top of that, there's microreviews for all the other 2e products released so far. Villains, locations, and a GM's screen. As before, it's a mixed bag really, but you should be able to get a pretty decent campaign out of this lot. West end games are coming out of this deal quite profitably.
Romancing the stoneskin: Here we go. The floodgates are well and truly opened on the Stoneskin topic, to the point where they've given it it's own special, in addition to the usual forum. Quite a substantial one too. This is going to take some pretty serious work to get through.
Erin D. Smale has a ton of suggestions, many which don't require changing the rules. Anything with 3-4 attacks per round will burn through stoneskin like a hot knife through butter. Sahuguin, bears, even carrion crawlers (oh yes, gotta love the carrion crawlers in this situation) If that fails, reduce the number of attacks it protects against or the duration. If they can't precast it miles in the future, it merely becomes a nuisance like Haste.
Scott Isaacs points out the many things stoneskin does sod-all against. Energy, disease, acid, poison, mass attacks. Many of these are entirely accessible to most humanoid attackers. They will adapt.
Jason Papadopoulos suggests going back to the 1e version of stoneskin, which doesn't protect against as many attacks. Simple as that.
Daniel Harms is another person who thinks making the duration nonpermanent is the primary fix needed here. Nerf durations in general! Let's lay that groundwork for later editions!
Mae Tanner suggests that rocks fall, everybody dies. Lots of little hits are once again the way to go.
The Baron suggests implementing the diseases in the Complete Wizards Handbook that stem from overuse of a particular school. Mean. Granite dust can also be surprisingly expensive and hard to obtain too.
Jason A. Goode shows us all the ways a Dragon can really mess a stoneskinned character's day up. Breath weapons and spells really ruin your day.
Thomas B. Knoedler wonder where all the money is coming from. Well, maybe it's because they are mowing through their enemies so easily at the moment. Treasure does normally come in the thousands in D&D.
Mark Macedo suggests lassos and contact poison. Have them wake up later with their gear gone. It'll take quite a bit of work to make back the money to refresh your spells after that.
Michael Tresca also suggests rocks fall. Or people keep bags of gravel just to throw in your face. Exactly what swashbucklers would do, anyway.
Rick Hood stepped up the number of monsters after his players discovered Stoneskin. It's all about keeping the challenges appropriate to the party.
John Gartner III reminds you to screw them over by having any attempt to cast other touch based spells on them fail and use up a charge. This is particularly mean if they've been taking damage from spells and really need healing pronto.
Peter B Sears suggests wild magic zones. Watch where you rest to buff yourself up.
Soren Thustrup goes back to the basics and reminds you not to roll, just to subtract a charge every time someone attacks them. Quick and easy.
Timothy J. Pudoff mitigates the problem by not letting them rest after every battle. You have 24 hours to save the princess before she gets sacrificed to the volcano god!
J. R. Katzman uses lots of little spikes, whether thrown darts, or in a pit trap. Every single one counts separately. They'll soon add up.
Scott Brownlee just wants to change the rules. Do you need too, when they're as easy to twist as this.
Nathaniel Deily also wants you to full on degrade the spell to reinforce your authoritah. Don't let the same trick keep on working.
Lev Osherovich suggests making stoneskin self only. That'll cut the abuses by a big fraction too, then you can charge them a premium by making stoneskin other a higher level spell. The crappiest kind of nerf. I hate it when they do that.
Alfredo M. Cunha suggests that you shouldn't be able to maintain the same spell twice simultaneously. There are certainly some systems where that is the case.
Roger Rhodes also cuts the duration, although not as drastically. You can't give them free extra resources because they saved carefully earlier. Just like real governments then :p
Alan Lauderdale suggests that the enemy corner the market on diamond dust. Then you can make a whole adventure out of trying to get stoneskin back.
Jay Knioum reminds us that dispel magic is useful against any kind of persistent buff. Spamming your enemy with it just before going into battle could well become a standard tactic in a magic-heavy world.
S. Morgan also goes the magic heavy route. Zap them with magic missiles and the like. Remember how even a single fireball devastates an entire party.
Sean Milner goes psionic. We know by now how good that is at bypassing the normal resistances and messing with your mind. Stone skin won't keep their brain from exploding from the inside out.
Paul Wrider recommends keeping exactly how much protection they have left secret. That'll keep complacency at bay a bit.
Wade Hoover suggests selective bookworms. Just take out the problematic spell and have done with it.
William S. Hickey suggests magical items that are designed specifically to penetrate stoneskin. Everything has it's counter, especially if it's pretty common.
Aaron R. Smith wants to give stoneskin a visible manifestation, and make having active stuff like that socially unpopular. Not that this'll stop people who sleep in full plate and carry 50 pounds of gear, including half a dozen weapons.
Anonymous tells you to simply not give any xp for any encounter that was no challenge at all. I think that's virtually an official rule anyway.
David Goodwin has the rather silly suggestion that as granite is radioactive, they'll start suffering from that eventually. Trace radiation like that is unlikely to affect anyone.
And finally, Michael T. Scott suggests switching worlds if all else fails. Different laws of physics can justify any changes you like, including complete removal of problem powers. Presto chango. So once again, any problem is solvable by an attentive DM.
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 4/5
The dragon project: Dunklezahn! This isn't magazine exclusive material! :pouts: On the other hand, that also makes it interesting because it is strongly tied in with the larger setting of Shadowrun (as many of you will have known as soon as you heard the name) The first corporate dragon, he's become quite the celebrity over the years, and probably made quite substantial amounts of profit from doing so. Sometimes he appears on chat shows, with the aid of a human interpreter to act as a mouthpiece for broadcast. Sometimes he experiments with VR, although that takes some pretty expensive and clunky custom jacking interfaces. And as a big, public political player, he has plenty of powerful friends and enemies amongst the megacorps, and is the subject of much gossip and speculation. Much of this is presented through IC excerpts from chatrooms and the like, in the same form they use in the actual sourcebooks. The stats are somewhat abbreviated, but he's pretty superhuman in all stats, well able to take down an entire party singlehandedly. Course, that won't stop him from being assassinated in future metaplot events, but that's a story for another time. This does plenty to show how a dragon can be a viable character in shadowrun's fusion of fantastical and futuristic ideas. And as a reminder of quite a few other cool bits of gaming's history, it's another joy to read. Respect to the people who sorted out this one, making it a lot more than a character sketch that just happens to use a system not normally covered in the magazine.
The role of books: A night in the lonesome october by Robert Zelazny is a playful crossover of victoriana, featuring sherlock holmes, dracula, frankenstein, rasputin, and the elder gods. It's good fun, but also a bit silly, and the illustrations make it seem even more so.
Dr Dimension by John deChancie and David Bischoff gets a negative result for bringing back the worst aspects of the pulp genre, including blatant sexism, paper thin characters, and ludicrous slapstick humour. Even the clifhanger ending feels forced and trite. Even Buck Rogers managed better.
Galatea in 2D by Aaron Allston shows he can do full novels as well as short fiction and game books. The protagonist has the power to pull things out from paintings, which is a pretty cool power, but not one suited to unprepared magical spectaculars. This means he's still in serious danger from the people who want to exploit him, and has to use his imagination to deal with his rival. The final ending is a particularly good example of a literary magic battle. What will he turn his writing talents too next?
Powers that be by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is a fun romp, but doesn't really work as worldbuilding, with John having no trouble picking holes in it's setting and plot. Like star wars, it's more fantasy than sci-fi, so you may want to disengage your critical brain and just enjoy the ride.
Death comes as an epiphany by Sharan Newman takes us back to 12th century france, for a more historically rigorous bit of worldbuilding than most. This does not come at the expense of story, however, creating something that's not quite fantasy, but still pretty interesting reading. I guess you'd compare it more to the modern day continuations of now historical novels such as the Bronte ones.
Dinosaur fantastic, edited by Mike Resnick & Martin H Greenberg, is one of those short story anthologies he specialises in. This time, of course, it's dinosaurs. Cashing in on Jurassic Park, the majority of these involve bringing them back in the modern day world, but there's a substantial minority of time travel ones where we go to them too. This includes a story in which we wind up in the Great race of Yith role, sending our consciousness back to bodyswap with a tyrannosaur, and a Loch Ness monster story, which fits in pretty easily actually. Dinosaurs can actually cover a surprisingly large conceptual space, and they've managed to get the good authors in as usual.
Sage advice: Do lizard men get benefits from using shields (yup. They're adders, not basic number setters.)
I thought aquatic elves couldn't be spellcasters. (Only on some worlds)
Why are Lolth and Vhaerun's stats different between Drow of the underdark and Monster mythology, Which is right? ( Monster mythology. They're better standardized with all the other gods in there. )
Can you combine trick shots (no, thank god. Elves may get to be better just because they're elves, but they aint that good.)
How do spellfilcher powers work? (Same as regular wizard spells. Spell level, caster level, blah blah blah.)
How do dragon caster levels and THAC0's change as they grow. ( Quite a bit. They're not primary spellcasters, but they're nothing to be sneezed at. )
Ready, aim, Fire!: :sigh: You're recycling titles again. But not topics, it seems. As one of our final basic D&D treats before they get kicked out, Bruce is giving us the weapon mastery details for siege weapons. Ballista, Springals, Light and heavy catapults are already ready to kick butt, but now you can specialise in them to even greater degrees. Ok, so that's the kind of option most PC's aren't going to bother with, unless they're 36th level and enjoying the supreme generalissimo stage too much to move up to immortaldom and being a small fish in a big pond again, but it's nice to have. Slightly more recycled is the talk on guns. Seems like people want to put them in every world. And since Mystara is one of the kitchen sink settings, and it'll soon be out of his hands anyway, Bruce decides to capitulate and figure out a logical place for them in the setting. Those obnoxious Heldanic knights are trying to bogart the technology, but it is spreading anyway. And since this stuff is rather dangerous to the user, it's being used more frequently in cannons than it is hand pistols, as you can light the things with fuses and make sure you're well back when they go off. As with the siege weapons, we get mastery stats for hand guns, and 4 sizes of cannons. Again, it's not useless, but it does feel a bit like a sour parting shot when you consider a year or so ago Bruce said he didn't want to include them in this setting. So this is fairly interesting from a historical point of view, and useful from a mechanical one, but a bit depressing too. Homogenisation sucks. And of course politics sucks too, but that goes without saying. Decidedly mixed feelings here.
Dragonmirth is all dressed up and ready to play. Yamara is still absent as Ogrek is his usual charming yet infuriating self. Twilight empire is in no mood for a prolonged mexican standoff. We have a battle to win here people. Lets get too it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 5/5
Forum is relatively small compared to the stoneskin special earlier. Jonathan Keepers thinks Oklahoma city's fandom is unpleasantly exclusionary. Oooh. This seems very specific and potentially flamewar provoking. It'd probably work better on an internet forum though.
K. W. Brown has a rather interesting observation on the lead bill issues the minis industry has been facing of late. It's the amateurs that get lead poisoning. People who actually work with it take precautions and usually avoid the issues. I suppose it's the same kind of issue that results in doctors hardly ever getting sick.
Ann Dupuis shows once again that she really does her research, talking about RPG's where violence is not the primary focus. GURPs comes off particularly well, perhaps because she's currently writing for it. Having tons and tons of noncombat skills and advantages does allow you to take your focus off the kicking ass.
Anonymous seems to be becoming quite the regular in here, with another contribution in quick succession. That old rule about always needing names is well and truly gone. Anyway, his problem is that their game has recently started developing more depth and actual roleplaying, apart from one player who is stick in hack-and-slash mode. This is presenting increasing tension. You may have to get rid of him. We've been through this before. Sometimes you just have to cut the chaff to move forward. Bigger isn't always better.
Through the looking glass: We kick things off here with another game review. Dragon Lords (not to be confused with Dragonlord, Dragonlords, or The Dragonlords, which are three entirely different products, also mentioned in here at various times. :§ ) is a hex based wargame where each side commands a wizard, and a bunch of dragons with knights riding them. Fairly simple ruleswise, it uses double-blind maneuvering and lots of breath weapon varieties to give you tactical options, making winning about outguessing your opponent more than luck or mechanical superiority. Once you get the hang of things like facing and altitude manipulation, things go quite quickly. Robert quite likes it, but thinks it would be improved by a bit more crunch. Well, you are an expert. That's perfectly normal.
Our first mini review is a trio that use the same lycanthropic transformation gimmick as last issue. Only this time it's a female werewolf. I smell bandwagon jumpers. We also have an absolute ton of undead. A duo of skeletal cavalry. A trio of amorphous ghosties. A trio of still sleepy vampires. Another trio, this time of undead pirates. Anyone can die, and nearly anyone can return, albeit not always in good condition. The living are hitting back though. A diorama of an adventurer captured by Orcs. Tons of little details in this one. A model of the oft-neglected packhorse. A mule'd be better. A wizard reading a scroll. Whether mighty magic will be forthcoming is up to you. A relatively small tank. And a trio of dark elves, ready to shoot you with (probably poisoned) crossbows. The girl looks like she's the one in charge, which is as it should be.
TSR Previews: As is often the case, christmas is a big one. The forgotten realms gets a full 3 products this month. Volo's guide to the north revisits another area they covered a few years ago from a different, more flavourful perspective. PG2: The player's guide to the forgotten realms also rehashes things in a crunch free, newbie friendly fashion with lots of IC moments. I think they're starting to go round in circles here. The Harpers series also fills up, with book 7, Soldiers of ice. Flawed heroes find redemption? Good for them.
Dark sun sees gulg and nibenay still locked in persistent grinding conflict, in DSM3: Marauders of Nibenay. And the PC's are once again stuck in the middle, trying to make the best of things. How are you gonna profit from this one? Meanwhile, a fairly famous name joins the novel team. Simon Hawke! I remember when he was Nicholas Yermakov, and get a short story published in issue 94. He's kept at it and come quite a way with us. Anyway. Outcast is part one of the Tribe of one trilogy. Starring a half-elf/half halfling. Great. Now everyone'll want to play one. Brooding loners do tend to do well in these stories.
Ravenloft gets a second Monstrous compendium appendix, MC16. This one is focussed on individual named creatures with full histories, just to make things more personal. Not every monster is a mook or a darklord. There's plenty of middle ground, and the creatures in that do quite a bit of ironically appropriate suffering as well. Put them out of their misery, one way or another.
Dragonlance looks at Ariakus, our third villain to get the spotlight. This egotistical twat thinks he can take Takhisis' place as supreme lord of evil. That's not going to end well. Still, could be fun finding out how.
The 1993 collector cards get a special limited edition factory set. See, if you just bide your time for a bit, you can get them all far more efficiently. Like a cobra, you should be silent, swift and deadly. Snipe like a veteran ebayer for great profit.
D&D updates the setting to reflect that another year has passed in AC1011, the second poor wizards almanac. 240 pages of mystaraey goodness. Well, they haven't been doing much of that lately. Good to see it get a little more love, rather than patronising disconnected intro products.
Buck Rogers High adventure cliffhangers gets it's only supplement. War against the Han. Good to see them being a little more cautious this time around. But it's still a big boxed set that possibly cost more to produce than they sold it for. They really are starting to lose touch on what the market wants.
Course, standalone books are always a gamble, but you've gotta keep trying them, or you're definitely doomed to eventual obsolescence. Green Fire by Louise Titchener features war combined with sexual tension between a king and a water goddess. Although probably without the actual sex, given their current company policies.
As this is the 4th issue in a row in which they lose a regular member of staff/column, there is the very real feel that the magazine is fragmenting at this point. We lost most of the old guard in 86, now the second wave are largely replaced as well. And it feels like they're actively burning through the last of their basic D&D articles before they dump that as well. As with last issue, they manage some pretty cool articles, but it almost feels in spite of the organisation rather than because of it. They're too busy gearing up for the next issue, which is now going to be even more of an effort with the management changes. Let's hope they can pull off something at least as spectacular as issue 100, hopefully even better.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993 (http://blip.tv/file/4084163)
part 1/10
172 pages. Oh boy. This issue is both a christmas one and a centennial. Not often you get a conjunction like that. And as a result, they really go to town, with the largest issue in the entirety of the magazine's history by a large margin. Plus the quintessential symbol of early 90's excess, a holographic foil cover. That's gonna push up the production costs. So I've decided to do something a little special for this issue as well. I've been rather enjoying the works of channel awesome (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/) in recent months, so I decided to see if I could do stuff like that, since I have the equipment, and I'm no stranger to audio editing. And a good month of frantic writing, filming and editing later, (video recording and editing is waaay more hassles than music) here we are. I've filmed video sections for many of the articles, in which I elaborate on details, take different tangents to my print reviews, or simply goof around. So get ready to enjoy what is almost certainly going to be the longest, most elaborate review in this series. I seriously hope you like it, and it was worth all the effort.
(http://www.rpg.net/pictures/show-water.phtml?picid=7026) (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqft8_dragon-magazine-issue-200-introduction_videogames#.UKaGGY6Rn8s)
In this issue:
Our statement of ownership (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqfv0_dragon-issue-200-statement-of-ownership_videogames#.UKaJL46Rn8s) occupies a fairly prominent place on the contents page. It shows this hasn't been a great year for them, numbers-wise. With an average of 86k, but a last issue result just over 80k, they've shed readers about as badly as they did in 86-87, with a higher proportion of losses being from the newsstands than the subscriptions. This means that despite the big celebrations this issue, they're probably actually running on a tighter budget than they used to. Oh well, got to speculate to accumulate. I suspect they're hoping this'll win some people back, and maybe even draw in a few new readers with it's spiffy attention grabbing cover. Good luck to them.
Letters: A complaint about Allen Varney's reviews in issue 197. It became a little too much soapboxing about wider issues, and not enough about the product at hand. This is a very interesting topic indeed. A review cannot help but have aspects of the reviewer's personality bleed through into it. (I'm sure you could figure out a good deal about me through proper analysis of this writing, and even more from the video stuff, since so much of communication is tone as well as actual words.) Indeed, to completely do otherwise would negate the opinion part that makes a review valuable. Similarly, products don't just spring into existence from a vaccum. Knowledge of the people producing them, the fashions of the time and place they were made, these are important in making an informed judgement about a product. Likewise, knowledge of a reviewer will help you know if their opinions are likely to be in accord with yours, so you can make an informed purchase. Nevertheless, Allen concludes that he might have gone a bit too far, and he'll try to avoid repeating that mistake.
A letter from someone who's uncovered their old character sheet, and wants to know what their old magic items do. However, they can't seem to find descriptions of them in any official products. This is because your DM was liberally stealing from mythology, giving you overpowered literary items that haven't got official incarnations yet. Monty haulism like this is perfectly normal in young games.
Speaking of young games, our next letter is from someone who has recently had two tweenage girls join the group, with the real possibility of a third coming along soon. This has seriously cramped the style of the older people in the group. Oh suck it up and get to teaching them to roleplay properly. The sooner you do, the sooner they'll cease to be a problem. We were all amateurs at some point.
A letter by someone interested in getting into PbM due to their recent article. A move approximately akin to getting into britpop in 1997 fashion-wise. Oh well, I'm sure someone, somewhere is still doing it the old fashioned snail mail way.
Editorial (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqfzg_dragon-issue-200-editorial_videogames#.UKaJ646Rn8s) this month is done by Kim, Roger and Dale working in concert. It wouldn't be a century celebration without a good look back at the story so far. Again, the fact that this is a quite well co-ordinated changeover compared with Kim's abrupt departure in 86 is made pretty clear. Everyone is still in touch with each other, and working in the same buildings, even if they're doing different jobs now. All the acrimony can remain focussed on the accountancy people. (who probably aren't happy at this issue being bigger without having a corresponding price increase to gouge the rubes. :D )
Kim is full of nostalgia about his early years at the magazine. Really, he was tremendously lucky to get on board the magazine just as it started to really rocket upwards, and that he was one of the few people applying who was primarily an editor rather than a gamer. That's not to downplay his contribution at all, as it was that experience that played a big role in pushing the magazine up to a new level of professionalism. In return, he got to enjoy the experience of working on stuff a lot more interesting and varied than newspaper journalism, and get the experience of being a celebrity for a few days a year, just enough time to really enjoy it without getting a bloated ego. It really is a very good life for him. He should feel very lucky he got not just one, but two chances to do this.
Roger's reminiscences are less personal, and more concerned with the great articles he's got to preside over during his tenure. There really are rather a lot, particularly from the early years. Just as with Kim, he got to be around when they tried out a lot of new things. But even more than Kim, he had to work ridiculously hard, as he became editor of two magazines just as the magazine's readership was starting to shrink again. He managed to turn that around for a while, but he must admit it's worn him down over the past few years, and he's glad for the change of scenery. It can never really be as special as the first time, can it.
Dale's section is relatively short, as he is still the junior member by comparison. Most of it is actually comprised of his side of the hiring process, and thanking the rest of the staff, with little information actually about him. He's still very much just one of the crew, no time to grow an ego. And with the top layers of the company still young enough that they won't be retiring any time soon, he'll also have to work very hard and be quite patient to advance further. The company is ossifying a bit, isn't it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 2/10
Magic from the gods: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqg38_dragon-issue-200-magic-from-the-gods_videogames#.UKaKQ46Rn8s) We started off this year with some african stuff and new kits, and it looks like we're going to end it that way as well. Technically, this lot are all wizard kits. However, the strict distinction between arcane, divine and psionic power sources isn't really source material appropriate, so a lot of them have limited access to cleric spells amongst their special benefits. Which definitely alters their focus, without having to deal with the massive XP penalties multiclassing inflicts.
Baule Diviners get access to the elemental sphere, and lots of social respect for absolutely no penalty beyond all their initial proficiency slots being chosen for them. Bit of a no brainer, providing you have the wis to specialise as a diviner in the first place. But then, people do frequently neglect the humble diviner and their puzzle solving powers. Knowing they can also flame strike their way through problems goes some way to making them more glamorous.
Bokor are one of the most interesting kits I've seen in a while. Both benefits and hinderances are pretty significant. Bigger Hit dice. Access to the chaos sphere. Automatically getting to become undead after death. Uncontrolled shapeshifting. And being pariahs in most places for being weird and satanic. They aren't going to get to live a normal life anytime soon, at least until they have enough spells to be able to polymorph themselves back on a daily basis. (and even then, the wild surges'll keep things from being too safe. ) One could certainly be a valued member of a party, but you couldn't really rely on them. Their powers will be troublesome sooner or later.
Houngan are ye old african voodoo stylee wizards. Which means lots of dealing with the spirits. This means they get access to the clerical Necromancy sphere to supplement their wizardly necromantic specialisation. Since this puts stuff like remove paralysis, neutralize poison and resurrection in their grasp, that takes quite a bit of the pressure off clerics to hold back and play support, for the party isn't so totally screwed if they're lost.
Mambo are the feminine form of spirit-talker. They get the same extra necromantic access, plus a moderately stereotypical charming power that'll do a bit to compensate for the schools restricted by their specialisation. Their advantages seem to well outweigh their hinderance.
Zande Witch Women are the african inquisition, rooting out Bokor and other spiritual nasties wherever they may be. As with our own inquisition, they look pretty scary, and often go too far, making them not hugely popular amongst the public. But with cursing, access to the Combat sphere (which again goes some way to compensating for their forbidden schools) and the ability to have a human bonded "familiar", their bonuses once again significantly outweigh their downsides. Aside from being very stingy with bonus proficiencies, these are a pretty badass lot, quite possibly capable of outshining less interesting character builds. Allow into your game with only with caution and an appropriate backstory.
The wizards three: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqg6e_dragon-issue-200-the-wizards-three_videogames#.UKaKjo6Rn8s) It's only the 4th instalment, and this is now cemented as one of the most eagerly awaited parts of the magazine. No surprise that it's appearing here, in this epic special issue. This time, they get down to business relatively quickly, trading more spells than they've managed before in a single sitting. 9 of them are new, and I'll examine them in more detail in a minute, while one is a bit of cross-promotion for their supplements. (gotta collect 'em all!) Not that it's devoid of drama. Mordenkainen is revealed to be fully aware of Ed's presence, the Simbul makes a guest appearance, and Dalamar gets taken down a peg by the others yet again. He just can't catch a break, can he. :p No matter how powerful you get, there's always a few people even better out there.
The spells are as useful as ever. Shadow bolt inflicts minor damage, plus various penalties on their actions due to pain. Since there is a shortage of good offensive 2nd level spells, this might just be the one to fill that slot.
Slowspell is an interesting little metamagic effect that delays when spells take place. This can inconvenience enemies, and be used tactically to benefit your own spellcasting if you plan ahead.
Acid Bolts are another basic blasty effect. Aside from the greater damage and different type, they're just a variant on magic missile, with no special effects to mark them out from the crowd.
Mordenkainen's involuntary wizardry sees him dip into his personal library and once again get metamagical. Make them waste a random spell. Way to ruin the careful plans of your adversaries.
Bonebind gives you another method for incapacitating undead, with the potential for comical applications as well. Just the thing for players who still hold a grudge about being aged or level drained.
Bloodstars give a wizard 7 orbiting orbs that let them kick the asses of a whole party like a fully powered up ship in R-type or Gradius. Just the thing for a villain about to face a climactic battle who doesn't have any minions near to split party fire.
Lightning Storm is pretty weak for it's level, with the only real selling point being the fact that it leaves you unscathed. Really, any combat spell more than twice the level of fireball should be substantially bigger or more damaging. Someone didn't roll well on their spell research attempt.
Alamanther's return lets you play mimic, casting any wizard spell you've ever seen, but don't know personally. Fill all your 9th level slots with this, and you could almost be a spontaneous spellcaster, eschewing study for mischievous improvisation. If you've made it that far, you deserve a little relaxation.
Tempestcone is a more offensive variant on Ed's own Spell Engine from issue 100. How very appropriate a callback. Instead of turning them into harmless light, it absorbs any magic energy cast at you and turns it into magic missiles. Truly a godspell, letting you change the whole nature of a fight in one fell swoop. Beware fighters though, since you can't cast out of it any more than people can cast in.
Looks like Ed has brought the awesome here, just as he has many times before. There may be a few balance issues, but that's standard with experimental magic, and it seems they're as often overpowered as under. Just exercise the usual caution and make sure they have to actively hunt down the rare and powerful spells on an individual basis. I wonder if he'll have anything to contribute to issue 300. Certainly seems like there's no end to his popularity at the moment, but we know how quickly that can change. Good luck.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 3/10
The color of magic: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqg9m_dragon-issue-200-the-color-of-magic_videogames#.UKaLK46Rn8s) Reskinning and type substitution. Two fairly valuable ideas that still need a bit of pushing onto the public. Remember, everything in a roleplaying system is an abstract idea, not a reality. This means you're free to do all kinds of things to said ideas. Do not listen to the literal-minded people who want to make massive twists to the system in the name of realism, or those who insist that the rulebooks are holy writ, the letter of which is to be adhered to over the spirit of adventure and creativity contained within. So this encourages you to create many many spell variants that are basically identical mechanically to existing ones apart from the way they look, and the types of immunities and vulnerabilities they are subject too. This includes four sample characters and the specific quirks of their magical education. From fire to spider themed, it all looks pretty easy to implement, and will make plundering the spellbooks of the defeated all the more fun for players. And so we move a step closer to highly abstracted indie games and effect based universal resolution systems being common design elements. I find myself rather approving.
Familiar faces: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgbo_dragon-issue-200-familiar-faces_videogames#.UKaLbY6Rn8s) Looks like David Howery has a bit to contribute to this feast of articles as well. Familiars are certainly an, um, familiar topic in the magazine, with lots of big names having contributed articles on them in the past. Stephen Inniss's wide ranging creature contributions in issues 84 & 86, P. N. Elrod's roleplaying advice in issue 147, and Len Carpenter's upgrading spells in issue 181. David's contribution is less about adding new stuff, and more about making the most of the existing rules. There's quite a few normal animals, and several monsters from the monster manual that would make appropriate familiars, but don't have a place in the PHB table. Instead, you can roll on this d% table, which includes lots of natural animals, and a couple of kyoot mini dinosaurs to grab the jurassic park fanboys. There are separate tables for if you try your summoning on the sea or in the underdark, and another one for users of the Complete Humanoids Handbook. It's all very easy to use, and probably won't upset the balance of your game, but isn't as impressive or imaginative as Stephen and Len's contributions. I may have to whip up an even more expanded table integrating all of these bits and pieces. So overall, this is neither brilliant or terrible.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqggr_dragon-magazine-issue-200-bazaar-of-the-bizarre_fun#.UKaLwI6Rn8s) Ooh. An item that has plenty of potential for magical variants, but hasn't been exploited yet. Magical keys. A little harder to think up new versions of than magical figurines, but certainly not insurmountable. What will they hide or reveal?
Keys of Inquiry force you to tell the truth. Not a particularly surprising power, really.
Map Keys are a lot more interesting, revealing details the original cartographer knew about but left off. This could mean nothing, or be incredibly valuable from adventure to adventure. Certainly a valuable thing to acquire if you're a treasure hunter.
Courier Keys are another solution to the problem of transmitting secret messages. Like Johnny Mnemonic, they lock the info in your head where no-one can get at it until another key opens it up. No torture will help get the info out, although you may wish it could.
Keys of Reunion come in pairs, and always point towards the other one. Splitting the party is rarely a brilliant idea, but this makes it a little more survivable and solvable.
Saddle Keys lock you into one so you can't fall off. Course, if you drop the key, things'll become very awkward, since you're stuck on the back of your mount. Better have at least one member of the group who doesn't need this kind of help.
Shapeshifter keys lock anything it's turned on into their current form. Another one that'll be very useful indeed in certain situations, and not at all in others. Remember, it's just as valuable used on you as on your enemies, and some creatures are pretty scary even with those powers removed.
Grave Keys can unlock any crypt, and bring the dead out to serve you. I'm sure adventurers'll find plenty of use for that, even though it seems somewhat morally dubious.
Keys of Silence lock up your vocal chords, like the speak no evil monkey from the last bazaar. There's more than one way to shut up an annoying blabbermouth, and a good thing too.
Spider Keys part webs and protect you from spider poison. Another one you won't use in that many adventures. Perhaps you should put all these keys on a single chain. After all, they wouldn't take up much space, and would be much more convenient for one person to carry than magical rings.
Rogues keys boost your lock-picking skills. No surprise something like this turned up in the collection.
Keys of Translation are another one that'll be very useful some of the time. Every party needs something to help with languages, really. Otherwise you'll have to fill up your valuable spell slots, and that will reduce your adventuring effectiveness.
Dowsing Keys unlock any groundwater that may be beneath you. Course, the more you need a drink, the less you're likely to get it, but such is life. At least it won't break an athasian campaign like a Decanter of endless water would.
Wizard's keys boost your chances of learning spells. Good luck figuring that one out if you don't have identification magic. So lots of quirky and useful, but not hugely powerful items this month, as well as a few formulaic dull ones. Now, where do we fit them into our random tables?
When I was buying Dragon new on the shelves, I recall that landmark issues were a big deal at first.
50 was pretty big. My first issue of Dragon, ever, and it was full of cool stuff I remember to this day - a big Kzinti article and a bunch of articles about dragons that fascinated me.
100 was one I highly anticipated. I was deflated with the actual issue. All I can really remember was Gygax's story, which I felt, and still feel, took up way too much space. I also recall the game, which I never had any motivation to play.
200 I remember even less. It looks decent enough from what you've written, and I'll take a look at it in the Dragon Archive, but nothing about it really jazzes me. It could be that it was just the era my own life was in at the time - 2e had come and most of my groups had dropped away from playing for one reason or other.
300...well, I'll wait until this project reaches that far.
I remember buying Dragon on autopilot by this point. I purchased it more out of habit and the desire not to break my unbroken streak of issue 45 (45-49 I bought just after I bought 50, which was my first new issue) through the present. I think I may have given short shrift to the run of the mag from about 1990 until 1998 or so (whenever 3e tidbits began appearing).
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 4/10
Arcane Lore (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgiw_dragon-issue-200-arcane-lore_videogames#.UKaMCI6Rn8s) returns after more than a year off, to give them another place to fit in new spells. Not that I've missed it with the Wizards Three taking up the slack. And since this is another collection of elemental and energy based stuff, it seems pretty obvious they haven't been getting any cool new submissions in the department lately. Like the ecologies, things sure aint what they used to be round here. Send more stuff in!
But enough pessimism. Let's talk about the good aspects of this article. For a start, it's fluff is set in Greyhawk, rather than the more usual FR stuff. Also, there's a decent amount of planes related stuff too. And all the spells are pretty handy for an adventurer. The worst that you can say about it is that it's a little formulaic. And that's hardly a surprise at this stage.
Frostfire lets you make your torches and bonfires heatless or actively cold. This'll keep you safe, or allow you to bypass many monster's energy resistances. That'll intimidate those red dragons.
Proficiency lets you use weapons you don't know how to, even violating class restrictions. (although gods'll still throw tantrums if their clerics break the rules. ) This is of course most useful to the wizard who casts it. Don't think you can go toe to toe with a fighter though. Hubris will get you.
Bands of Ice are your basic unpleasant magical imprisonment method, which'll also give the captive frostbite. Ahh, the joys of bend bars/lift gates rolls to escape. If anything says they don't actually want you to succeed, it's them.
Lightning Curtain is basically the electrical variant of wall of fire, with it's own variant on being drawn to metal, and being more dangerous to those wearing it. Another one to help wizards be smug in their lair when facing fighters.
Lightningcloak is a little more inventive and a lot more versatile, serving as both offence and defence for it's wearer. There is a compromise in that the protection ends when you discharge all the energy, but that's no biggie as you're unlikely to run out of other spells to blast in the interim at this level.
Death Shroud taps into negative energy for a similar, but even more powerful bit of garb that has a pretty decent chance of killing anyone who touches you. It does have rather expensive and hard to find material components though. Not one for casual use.
The whistling skeleton: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgl2_dragon-issue-200-the-whistling-skeleton_videogames#.UKaMV46Rn8s) Now this really shows how much they're pushing the boat out. We get our first adventure in here in over 5 years. It's only a 3 pager, admittedly, but it's still refreshing. It's another Ed contribution, full of delightful whimsy and very clever use of magic indeed. It could be just a flavour encounter, or it could lead into a whole set of additional ones, with the characters within becoming recurring villains. It's certainly designed to lead on to another plot with a much bigger bad, and has surprisingly well developed characters given the amount of descriptive space they get. I suppose that's one of the secrets to his success. He leaves loose ends, but in such a fashion that you really want to investigate them, maybe to find a solution somewhere else in the many realms books out there, maybe to just make it up yourself. Either way, it makes for fun games, and just as crucially, lots more money for TSR, which is a pretty effective combination. Unlike certain other would be supplement mills, the Realms never seemed inherently scary, bound by a single author's vision, or set above you, which is probably a big part of why it lasted. So anyway, this isn't going to fill a whole session unless you expand upon it, but it's likeable, well done, and has a new spell in it too. Another real winner that makes this issue extra special to me.
Santa's little helpers: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgm0_dragon-issue-200-santa-s-little-helpers_videogames#.UKaMo46Rn8s) Another crossword. Not a huge one, but with lots of little words to figure out, it'll take quite a bit of work. One for those long post-christmas days where you're lying around, trying out all your new stuff and getting bored of the computer games already.
Another thing your posts jar my memory about is just how pervasive Ed Greenwood's presence was in this era and onward. Or, at least, how pervasive his presence seemed. I had - and have, to be honest - such an aversion to his stuff that it was definitely a factor in how much attention I paid to any given article or issue. I would get an issue, leaf through it, and any article with his name made my eyes glaze over. That hadn't always been so; his stuff earlier in Dragon's run wasn't bad. I recall also liking the articles about spellbooks and swords in spite of who wrote them. Once the Forgotten Realms and its flagship character, Elminster, took off, though, it seemed like the articles became more and more grating.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 5/10
The known world grimoire (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgpw_dragon-issue-200-the-known-world-grimoire_videogames#.UKaNEo6Rn8s) comes to an end as they prepare to migrate to AD&D. But Bruce is doing his part to ensure this issue really goes off with a bang. What is on the arm of the immortals? It's been a mystery for years. What can top cat people, dog people, turtle people, scorpion people, australian chameleon people and secret spiders? Flying elves and minotaurs? Actually, that's pretty good. And the geographic reasons why they would be there, but not have much to do with the rest of the Known World are better than usual as well. As we've come to expect from Bruce, these new races are available as PC's, although their advancement is somewhat slow compared to ordinary classes to make up for their powers, and their flight requires them to remain fairly lightly encumbered to avoid painful crashes. They might be a bit overpowered at 1st level, but things'll soon balance themselves out. This is indeed a pretty cool sendoff, although I again find myself wondering how it would have gone down if it had been Haldemar & co discovering them. Probably make some embarrassing faux-pas, get captured, and have to get away again. It also serves as a reminder that there are still big chunks of setting still lacking info, presenting hints at what is even further west (which of course, is wrapping round to the far east on the main global map. ) A nation of Ogre-blooded humans? There's some interesting unexpanded history there. So this is a goodbye, but certainly not a tying up of loose ends. Have fun figuring out what to do with the thousands of miles of territory still free to you.
Libram X: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgsq_dragon-issue-200-libram-x_videogames#.UKaNZo6Rn8s) Another comic series starts here. And whadya know, it's another cosmic romance. Someone must be really eating them up. That or they really want to get more girls into roleplaying. With Twilight Empire obviously reaching it's conclusion at this point, this overlap'll hopefully help prevent them from losing more readers. It starts off in media res, with our narrator, Ace Bloodrunner, ( I bet that's not his real name) being pursued by something large and undeadish, for committing crimes as yet unknown. The girl is of course dragged into this, and I suspect she'll actually wind up being the primary audience identification character, as the normal person dragged into a universe stranger than they ever imagined. Man, it's a lot easier to see the formulas this time around.
Making the most of a module: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqgvk_dragon-issue-200-making-the-most-of-a-module_videogames#.UKaNv46Rn8s) Guess we're not completely devoid of filler, even here. Advice that you need to tailor existing modules to your players, and read them through properly so you're prepared, knowing what things are in there, how they relate to each other, and what tactics they will employ against the players? Issues 190, 157, and lots of other tangentially related articles say hi. This isn't a new topic at all. And with the use of modules as integral parts of people's campaigns fading somewhat, it does feel somewhat old skool in general, trying to lure people back into using and reusing the old stuff. This does not spark my interest at all, and feels like a bit of a letdown compared to the onslaught of special features we started off with. Oh well. We had to put up with things like V&V charisma in issue 100. We can breeze casually over this as well. Waiter! Serve up the next course!
Eye of the monitor: Last issue we saw Sandy give us his position on sex and gore in video games. This time, it's piracy's turn on the soapbox. Unsurprisingly, as someone who makes their living from the computer game business, he's against it. And to discourage us from it, he tells the story of the demise of the Atari ST, one of the most pirated systems of all time. With games so easy to crack, people had no hesitation in doing so, and eventually companies lost interest in making games when they could get more profit elsewhere. This reminds us of several things.
1: People will usually pay for things if you make doing so more convenient than stealing them, and those who don't probably wouldn't have become customers anyway.
2: What is and isn't considered acceptable behaviour is far more dependent upon social pressure from the people around you than what some rules and regulations say. (This probably contributes a lot to the general lawlessness of the early internet, as a lot of the time, it's hard to think of people you only meet on the net as real people. )
3: The asymmetry of production costs to reproduction costs is one of the great dilemmas of the information age, that we still have yet to come to a satisfying conclusion upon. The markups on things like computer games, CD's, movies, etc, compared to the cost of making the physical object are quite horrendous. Compare this to food, where they're often selling things for less than double the cost of production and getting to market, and some things, such as bread, are even loss leaders, and you can see another strong reason to consider the markups for easily copied luxuries somewhat unfair. And this is only going to get worse as more things become pure data, while the costs for gigabytes of storage space drop exponentially. This is hitting the music industry hardest, (probably because they were one of the slowest to react to the new distribution media :p ) but everything that can be turned into pure data has to deal with it. And when we really get the hang of 3D printers, even that distinction will get pretty blurry. Raw materials will always have a market, but capitalism will have real problems when most finished products can be copied in your own home for negligible costs. I seriously hope we can get there without vested interests suppressing advancement for their own profit, and find a way of organising society so the average person can live free of soul destroying drudgery yet still have something constructive to contribute to society. Normally I would have cut a soapbox piece like this off long ago, but hey, it is a special issue. If ever there was a time to indulge a bit of transhumanist utopianism, this is it.
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos see Westwood strike out on their own with a rather good fantasy adventure. The usual class suspects, albeit without the cleric, must foil an evil witch via violence, magic, and puzzle-solving. Sandy isn't too keen on the amount of searching required, and you can do some sequence-breaking if you're cunning, but overall it's quite satisfying work.
Dangerous Dave is almost shockingly primitive for the era, and so gets poor marks. Get with the programming, man. You can't make a profit if the graphics don't grab casual shop browsers.
Monster Bashes 1-3 get a very short batch review. More so-so platformers, with sometimes fiddly controls. This is one genre consoles do a good deal better than PC's.
Soul Blazer seems to be somewhere between Zelda and Gauntlet in it's proportion of roleplaying to action. You play an angel saving the souls of people from monsters. As you do, the world outside the dungeons gradually fills up, which is a pretty neat way to go about it. It's not without it's flaws, but they seem forgivable this time. Make sure you save regularly and do a bit of grinding to level up.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;409037Another thing your posts jar my memory about is just how pervasive Ed Greenwood's presence was in this era and onward. Or, at least, how pervasive his presence seemed. I had - and have, to be honest - such an aversion to his stuff that it was definitely a factor in how much attention I paid to any given article or issue. I would get an issue, leaf through it, and any article with his name made my eyes glaze over. That hadn't always been so; his stuff earlier in Dragon's run wasn't bad. I recall also liking the articles about spellbooks and swords in spite of who wrote them. Once the Forgotten Realms and its flagship character, Elminster, took off, though, it seemed like the articles became more and more grating.
It is interesting. His presence in the magazine did drop quite a bit when they first made the Realms into a full campaign world. But then it crept up again, until by the late 90's he had at least one article in every issue. I don't think he was writing quite as many full sourcebooks, but he always had a ton of little ideas that didn't have a place in full books. Plus, by that time, they knew they had a market for them, so he wouldn't have got so much editing of his worse excesses of tweeness.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 6/10
The centrefold of this issue (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqh1j_dragon-issue-200-centrefold_videogames#.UKaOIo6Rn8s) is a big flowchart of the books you want to get to run a particular type of game. Splatbooks aplenty. Give us all yer money. This is then followed by similar charts for the various AD&D worlds. It's certainly not impossible for them to keep track of all the books they've released, even if you might find it so on the receiving end. Greyhawk and Dragonlance are notable by their absence though. Dragonlance is now pretty much novel only, while Greyhawk is falling into disrepair post-war.
Planescape! This makes this issue extra special. Our first hint that they're planning on really fleshing out the AD&D cosmology. And they already have the covers of 7 products to show us. (some of which are not the same as the final product.) The supplement mill is going to hit hard and fast with this one. People must have been sending them a lot of letters asking for more planar stuff.
The even more complete psionicist: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqh3f_dragon-issue-200-the-even-more-complete-psionicist_videogames#.UKaOgY6Rn8s) A second set of kits to fill out obscure character options. The overall themes of the year are still being served quite nicely. Add these to the 4 from issue 191 and the 2 from 197, and we have 13, nearly as many as an actual complete handbook. If they add a few more sometime next year, they'll almost be caught up with the regular classes in terms of options. In any case, we probably have more options now than any one person will wind up playing, which is the important thing. Happy comparison shopping.
Mountebanks pretend to be wizards or clerics for profit and not being lynched by idiosyncratic inquisitions. Their kit has no mechanical benefits or penalties though, even on the proficiency level, making it pretty pointless to take though. Anyone'll have to fake it occasionally, no point specialising in it unless you really are in an oppressive regime full time.
Crystallites foreshadow next edition's psionic quirks. They bond with their crystal, giving them minor general boosts to their powers, at the price of having a focus object that can be stolen or broken, which results in penalties a lot more severe than the plusses. Whether this is a net benefit depends on how often you have intelligent opponents who do research and try tactics other than straight violence.
Dowsers get extra divination powers with their little rod, but suck at psychoportation and metabolism. As before, this will only be a net benefit if you're careful, and your DM doesn't put you in situations where you wish you had stuff from the interdicted disciplines.
Empaths get emotion sensing powers, but are sensitive to people's pain, and far more vulnerable to mindfucking in general. If you're playing in a psionics heavy campaign, this is another one that may well be more penalty than benefit. Plus you'll probably have to deal with Deanna Troi jokes on a regular basis, which is the kind of thing which gets tiresome fast.
Manipulators are larcenously inclined psychics who get boosted ability to mess with the composition of objects, including psychic lockpicking. They aren't so great at the mental manipulation stuff though, but hopefully someone else in the team'll be covering that. Another one that's pretty well balanced, only becoming a net benefit if you play to their strengths.
Psychic Surgeons, on the other hand, get a massive boost in using said power, and no particular penalties apart from having their focus tightened. Since part of their bonuses is increasing the odds of others getting wild talents, this is one that'll be very popular amongst adventuring parties as a support guy.
Spiritualists contact the dead by ouija boards and the like. This gives them some decent extra powers, but very unpopular anywhere necromancy is regarded as weird and dangerous. They may have to do a little disguising of their nature as well.
A very tightly balanced set on the whole, with the bonuses neatly cancelling out the penalties. Only one real free ride here, the rest, you'll have to actually work to reap the benefits of selecting. So I have few objections on both the twinkery front, and the underpowered one. Well done for treading that tightrope with only a few minor wobbles.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 7/10
Sage advice changes their header again, to a more blocky italicized shape. Skip likes to remodel every now and then. Keep the punters keen. Guess we had some extra budget for him to splurge as part of the special.
How long will it take to escape from the astral plane. Can you survive there. (Time works very slow there. Food will not be a problem. But there are soooo many other things that might be. Muahahahaha! )
What happens to a dual classed character who's original level is artificially boosted above their second one ( Complicated stuff. Don't worry your head over it. It's astronomically unlikely to happen in actual play. )
Can you film your adventures with a mirror of retention. Can filmed sunlight hurt undead ( No, you've gotta keep it in the diary room. No blogging on location with this device.)
What happens if you cast mirror image where there's not enough room for the duplicates (They overlap. Doesn't stop them from working.)
How many spells do dragons know. (Only what they can cast, apart from gold dragons. This is why they get associated with sorcerers next edition.)
What happens if you have two items which give you magic resistance (Take the best. On a 100% scale, the whole thing would break if they stacked.)
What's the chance a fireball has to hit (if you're in the area. It hits automatically. Wizards kick much ass. )
How do you make holy water. (recycled question. Kinda like the holy water ;) Watch the colour. )
Do you lose a point of con if you die while regenerating (No, because you never died, just got hacked up for a while. Regeneration is nifty stuff. )
Do clerics automatically know all their spells (More recycling? Haven't had that in a while. Funny time to reintroduce it. Yes, they do. )
How long do powers from the wand of conjuration last (An hour. Level dependencies strike again! )
What can stop a wall of fire (Any solid barrier that won't be burned away. )
Can you cast a flaming sphere in the air (yes indeed. Useful little piece of kit.)
You're messing up words in your greyhawk products ( Well, isn't that the shame. Skip does apologize for the incompetence of our writers. It's been hard maintaining a consistent vision for greyhawk, with Gary gone. But we try. Yes sirree, we give it our best shot. :doffs hat: To make it up to you, here's the extra spheres for both the chinese and celtic pantheons. )
Minion matters: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqh65_dragon-issue-200-minion-matters_videogames#.UKaPC46Rn8s) Some advice on how to run large battles using minis? It's hardly on the scale of the experimental reaching out in issue 100, where we saw both a whole new boardgame, and an article about LARPing. it is, however, handy in showing us how you can organise your army statistics better. Instead of one centralised bit of paper, little chits placed under the minis can be a lot quicker and easier, especially if you aren't operating a system using large numbers for hit points and the like. Which I seem to recall being one of the primary rules quirks of Savage Worlds that makes it the Fast, Furious and Fun game it is. It's particularly good for large quantities of mooks, where you may well have to put out many identical minis that move semi-independently. Grab all those goblins from your Heroquest set, it's time to make those high level characters work for their supper! How often do name level fighters actually get to use their ability to mow down ≥ 1hd creatures to it's full potential in actual play? I guess it's another good reason to use Dragon Mountain. (not that they'll have an easy time getting to do that kind of head-on fight in there. ) So I think this is actually a surprisingly influential little article, moving on gaming design a little further. We have plenty of kudos to spread around this time, you can have your fair share.
Novel ideas (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqh8k_dragon-issue-200-novel-ideas_videogames#.UKaPkI6Rn8s) is a second column that ceases to be a regular going concern this issue. Not sure why, since if anything, the proportion of books they're publishing is still increasing. But despite not explicitly stating that, this still feels like a farewell of sorts, as it looks back over the early years of the book department. In it we discover exactly why our first two D&D books by messrs Norton and Holmes have been airbrushed from the company history. As they were released before the proper department was founded, quite possibly in conjunction with some other company, they aren't on the records in the same way. And we already know that their record-keeping in the early years of the company was a bit spotty. Its funny how the average gamer in the 90's, even those at the company itself, actually knew less about their 70's output than we do now. Anyway, it seems that their primary output in the early days wasn't novels, but interactive game books such as the Endless Quest line and all it's gimmicky spinoffs. Books aimed at younger readers, books aimed at girls, books aimed at transformers fans, :p they spent a lot of effort trying to diversify the market. But they only really started having bestsellers when they tied things in with AD&D, the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms settings in particular. Curiously, they devote little time to that era, assuming we already know about it. (and we do know rather more, since that was after they started running previews in the magazine on a regular basis. ) This is actually rather interesting, showing there was plenty of stuff TSR got up too in the early days that never even got mentioned in the magazine, due to choice or department co-ordination issues. Just the thing to make obsessive collectors gnash their teeth and have more things to hunt down. Still, it's not all nostalgia. Endless Quest is coming back! A whole new generation get to pick a path. Course, now they have to compete with computer games a lot more. Good luck capturing kid's imaginations the way they did at first.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 8/10
Role-playing reviews: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhbd_dragon-issue-200-reviews_videogames#.UKaP6I6Rn8s) Adventure time again. Over the year, Rick has been doing quite a bit of playtesting of official modules. This means that while it may be a while after their release date, he does have more to go upon when reviewing than just his own opinion. And he's pretty harsh really. Even though these are supposedly the cream of the crop, none of them earn that coveted 5 star rating. I guess that makes sense, since the number and quality of them did seem to be declining around that period, pushed out by the bloat of splatbooks.
Dragon mountain is huge, impressively presented, and damn tricky. In fact, it may be a bit too huge and tricky, even for the levels of characters it's supposedly aimed at. The fact that a full third of the boxed set is devoted to the prelude is an issue to Rick, who thinks that's poor pacing. Since B2 took about the same proportion to get to the actual caves, and T1 devoted a good half of the module to the village, I am dubious that it's an inherently bad thing. It's more likely just the implementation in this case. The mountain itself has more than enough variety of encounters to maintain his interest through the difficulty level, although he's not sure about some of the goofier traps. I guess that kind of thing is a matter of taste. They're more serious than they were a couple of years ago, but whimsy and punnery is still a staple of the TSR writers even in serious supplements.
Shadows on the borderland is a rather good Runequest adventure from our other longtime reviewer Ken Rolston. The visuals aren't that impressive, but the plotting is, telling several good stories without railroading you into a fixed conclusion. Only the stabs of goofy humour again spoil the package. You know, a world where sentient ducks are a common PC race is never going to be able to maintain GRIMDARKness with a straight face for long.
Dorastor: Land of doom is another Runequest one. They've turned around their late 80's slump quite nicely. It seems to be as much an region supplement as it is an adventure, with plenty of info on the quirky creatures and dangers, but not a huge amount of plot.
The spectre king is a set of adventures for Pendragon. This is the one that wins top marks, with multiple adventures that fit together well, great writing, well researched historical detail, and interesting twists to the stories. That it wasn't even nominated for awards last year is shocking! Pendragon seems to garner nothing but praise, yet remain a very niche product with an unstable company history. It is a bit bemusing.
Honorable mentions this month go to GURPS Cyberpunk Adventures, Dragon Strike, Corporate Shadowfiles, and TWERPS. Two of them are notably simple and suited for introducing new players, while the other two are more sophisticated. None are perfect, but they all have something to recommend them to readers. He does tackle a pretty broad variety of games, although he seems to prefer slightly lighter systems. Well, I suppose they are easier to pick up and try on the spur of the moment, and then give a comprehensive assessment of. You always have to take practical considerations into account.
Social board games: Allen Varney follows Rick by contributing something that's about halfway between a review and a feature. So your game got abruptly cancelled, but there's plenty of people here. Let's get out a board game! But which one? Oh, the decisions. So here we have microreviews of 13 games, along with some general pontification about what makes a good multi-player competitive game. You ought to keep everyone involved most of the way through (by which criteria Monopoly is a failure) and allow for turnarounds at any point. Players need at least a moderate amount of personal agency, otherwise the game will soon grow tiresome. (again, snakes & ladders disproves that) I suppose this shows how detached serious gamers become from the mainstream, for although I've heard of some of these games, I don't own any of them, and the advice seems nice in theory, but not backed up by reality, where books like Twilight are huge commercial successes despite the obvious technical flaws in their writing and punk is popular precisely because of it's simplicity and sloppiness. Quality and commercial success seem to have a pretty low degree of positive correlation in actual situations. In the end, I am forced to simply shrug bemusedly at this article, as it doesn't seem to have much of use to me, and hope that maybe I'll get to try some of these games personally.
The dragon project: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhed_dragon-issue-200-the-dragon-project_videogames#.UKaQO46Rn8s) Star Wars gets a turn in this column, fresh from it's spate of reviews last issue. Now, as Star Wars is basically the heroes journey IN SPAAAACE!!!!, having a dragon somewhere along the line would not be out of theme at all. In fact, one could say that the Death Star took on that role, as a massive, tremendously powerful monster with a tiny weak spot only a highly talented hero could exploit. And that's exactly the tack they take in this article, statting out a warship called the Galaxy Dragon, and it's commander & inhabitants. By no co-incidence at all, the average troops aboard are members of a reptilian race, while the boss is a former Moff who became an independent warlord after the Empire's defeat. It's certainly a fairly creative way of interpreting the remit of this column, and the stats are a lot crunchier and more detailed than previous instalments, but the writing isn't that enthralling. I guess it's just ok then. It'll make a good adversary for an adventure or so.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 9/10
Fiction: The best by Margaret Weis. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhj8_dragon-issue-200-the-best_fun#.UKaQm46Rn8s) Another big name is pulled in to make sure this special stays so. It's set in Krynn, but not noticeably connected to the metaplot. The greatest heroes in the land are gathered together by a mysterious individual to kill a dragon. In most stories, this works fine. This time, it all goes horribly wrong, mainly because the dragon is the one doing the hiring, so the deck is horribly loaded against them right from the start. Although they aren't quite as machiavellian as Infyrana from Dragon mountain, but that would probably take a whole novel to play out, and we don't have the time even in this expanded issue. It's still an object lesson in proactivity as an adventurer. Mr Johnson will betray you sooner or later, so don't trust them an inch. They do regularly tell us to play dragons as smart and taking the long view as well, so this is good in that respect too. Don't fall for the hype though. It certainly isn't actually the best bit of fiction they've ever done though. Hell, with the wizards three in here, it's not even the best bit of fiction in this issue. But that doesn't mean it can't be both enjoyed and learned from.
Forum: Andres Zornosa spent time abroad, and is finding it's actually harder to get a new group together back in america, where most people have at least heard enough about gaming to develop a negative preconception. He's also encountering the issue that so many existing gamers have tired of D&D and moved on to other RPG's. It's almost like gaming is a disease, and the population is building up a resistance to one, while other variants still pass through the population. Very curious.
Joel Patton talks about the evolution of his gaming. He seems to have largely progressed beyond needing rules, changing them as needed for the storytelling to take precedence. We start in let's pretend, and that's where we end. It's almost zen-like, really.
S. D. Anderson has some more suggestions for helping out new players, following on from issue 194's article. Actually, he does a considerably better job than that, and in less space too. You have to learn to express your opinion succinctly here or get edited down, wheras they're more likely to pad it up via artwork and font size increases to fit the page count in articles.
Jeremiah Coleman is rather cross that gamers are so bad at returning books to the library. If you keep nicking them, they won't stock them, and that will remove one of the avenues for casual browsers to discover gaming. That is a real issue, and may be another reason why gaming has gone into decline. Stupid petty criminality.
Eric Burns thinks that lichdom is a dumb idea compared with using magic jar to bodyhop your way down the centuries. He presents a pretty good case too. I seem to recall that there are mechanical problems with that he's missed. I'm sure future forumites will point them out.
Jon Pickens suggests that you solve the tardy players problem by offering XP bonuses to those who show up on time. This little carrot worked quite well for him, although he did lose some players along the way. Well, substantial xp differences do present their own issues. This would wind up exacerbating that. One solution leads to another problem. I seem to remember us having flamewars about that on these forums.
Elminster's notebook: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhmd_dragon-issue-200-elminster-s-notebook_videogames#.UKaReo6Rn8s) A second regular column beginning along with the 2 ending this month? The issue becomes even more significant than it already seemed at the outset. Yet again it's made pretty obvious how popular and prolific Ed is, even though he isn't around as much as he used to be. Maybe that's going to change again, if this and the Wizards three remain regulars.
So we start off with a ghost story, Realms style. An old adventurer who's managed to reach the lordship stage, but then lost a lot of his enthusiasm when his sons were killed in Orc raids. Since then, he's become brooding and reclusive, and the castle is rumoured to be haunted by their ghosts. The truth is rather more complicated, as after all, we are in a place where magic is known to be real, and manipulated regularly on a professional basis. There is a haunting, but not the one you expect, and it doesn't seem to be particularly dangerous anyway. Certainly not to Elminster, who as ever, casually drops hints as to the many insanely powerful tricks he has at his disposal, and takes for granted his fame amongst the folk of the Realms. The artwork seems designed to add to the notebook feel, with a sketch that reiterates the important bits of the writing, and makes it a lot easier to remember than a straight wall of text would be. As an advancement in presentation, it's a success, and it also serves as an interesting demonstration of how real world legends become quite different once filtered through the Realms' cultural lens and laws of physics. It may not be quite as generic as it used to be, but it's still interesting and he's still got plenty of enthusiasm for trying new things while filling it in. I think once again, we have a winner here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 200: December 1993
part 10/10
The twilight empire (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqho7_dragon-issue-200-the-twilight-empire_videogames#.UKaSJ46Rn8s) is right in the middle of battle. The heroes seem to be losing.
Yamara (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhsn_dragon-magazine-issue-200-yamara_videogames#.UKaSd46Rn8s) has a rather more confusing and comical battle to contend with.
Dragonmirth runs the gamut of humours, from bloody to phlegmatic.
Snarfquest (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhui_dragon-issue-200-snarfquest_videogames#.UKaSu46Rn8s) returns for an extra special full colour story. Not that we ever find out how he got there, as the plots left hanging four years ago when Larry had his breakdown are simply ignored. Instead, it's a full-colour standalone story full of goofy humour and silly voices. And lots of cheesecake outfits for Telerie. ChEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEsecake! I mean seriously. You call yourself an adventurer? A couple of precise rapier swishes and you'd be completely naked. Ok, so the vampire one is amusing and relevant to the plot, but the rest. :shakes head: Pure pandering. Enough!
Through the looking glass: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhwb_dragon-magazine-issue-200-through-the-looking-glass_videogames#.UKaTCo6Rn8s) Robert consciously decides not to spoil our celebrations, but to give us the usual mixture of minis, plus a game review. Blood Berets is the game, a dark mix of sci-fi and fantasy that looks like it wants to muscle in on WH40k and Shadowrun's turfs. As with most of the reviewed games these days, it's simple enough to be picked up and played from cold in an evening. It doesn't seem to have done enough to merit expansions though.
On to the minis then. A whole bunch of floor areas for you to build your own dungeons with. A missile launcher and cannon designed to upgrade tanks with. A phoenix in the process of being reborn. Two more vampires, this time from the TORG crew. I wonder what unique statistical quirks they have. Two set of minis from Palladium. One of them gets the first result under 3 stars in aaaaaaaaaages from Robert, which means it must be pretty bad. Ral Partha have a whole bunch of mechanical thingies: two tanks, a battlemech, and a cyborg bear, of all things. And last, but certainly not least, there's a tie-in set of minis for the Dragon Mountain boxed set. This actually gets a better review than the adventure itself, with all the minis being of excellent quality. Only the dragon really disappoints, hardly having the stature of a proper D&D great wyrm. Who will make a dragon to really match the likes of Scorponok and Trypticon and properly menace our minis?
TSR Previews: Just about the only thing that isn't unusually large, next month sees things drop off as usual. Dragonlance gets a sourcebook and a novel. DLT2: Rook (sic) of lairs is another collection of small adventures to drop on your players. The swordsheath scroll completes the Dwarven nations trilogy. They still seem to be occupying a solid second place overall in terms of product numbers.
Ravenloft follows up on the recent van Richten's guide with RM4: Dark of the moon. Fight a werewolf. No further details are forthcoming, because it needs to be a surprise to the players. Raaaaar! Fooled you.
The complete series finally gets back to the classes, with PHBR11:The Complete ranger's handbook. Rick Swan shows you how to customise your wilderness lovin' guys even further. Not quite as broad as the complete bard's handbook, but not bad either.
And the Amazing engine gets AM5: Galactos Barrier. Swashbuckling space opera? Sounds like fun. Why did this have so many cool ideas, yet still die depressingly?
Conclusion: (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqi0y_dragon-issue-200-conclusion_videogames#.UKaTVI6Rn8s) Well, as a special issue, this has not only hit the bullseye, but gone right through the target and out the other side. There's just so many great things going on here that it's hard to pick out one to praise above the others. I guess it's going to have to be Ed that gets the gold again, since he did score another hat trick. And yet, somehow, this isn't nearly as adventurous in it's topics as issue 100, or even 150 for that matter. There's a couple of token stabs at more war and boardgaming coverage, but those are pretty weak compared to something like Dragonchess. Instead, the expansion is more a matter of sheer volume, colour and spectacle than having cool new ideas to give us. And when you factor in the substantial decline in readership over the last year, it becomes pretty obvious that if ever there was a definite jump the shark point for the magazine, this is it. A game attempt at really going over the top to turn things around, that they would never again be able to replicate due to declining budgets and closing horizons. I dunno, maybe they'll top even this in issue 400 or 500 just to prove me wrong. :D But I do know that for the physical issues, it's all downhill from here in terms of size. (and no more holographic covers either. :p ) Which means I won't be facing any more monumental challenges like this. I suppose I should just kick back and see if I enjoy individual issues as they come. After all, we might be past the "classic" eras now, but there'll still be plenty of month by month fluctuations to come. Some of them are bound to throw up great articles.
Dragon Magazine Issue 201: January 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. You know, I think this cover might actually be better than the issue 200 one. It's not quite as exquisitely photorealistic as issue 94, but it is both pretty and detailed, with a real sense of scale and depth to it. Guess we're back to reality after the high magic hijinks of last month. Course, that might mean a more consistently good issue overall, even if it doesn't have the extra size and budget. After all, they managed it in issue 51. Optimism, optimism, are you going to be crushed again?
In this issue:
Letters: A not too surprising complaint about the sideshuffling of mystara. This is putting too much emphasis on AD&D over the regular variety. Dale tries to sidestep the complaints rather than counter them, slipping in as much promotion for the upcoming products as possible along the way. Go on, tell us you're not happy about the move either.
A request for an indian setting. Like africa, you'll have to be content with an increased frequency of articles in the magazine for it.
A demonstration that roleplaying does indeed improve your writing skills. But then, we knew that already. Compare the level of discourse here with say, youtube comments, and there is very little contest.
Another query as to their online plans. They continue to be pretty conservative about this, keeping the web at arms length. And so they slip another small step behind the times, despite individual members of the company trying otherwise.
Another repeated topic, this time proper submissions procedure. You must still beware the no SASE ogres and their ravenous appetites. Grr, Argh.
Editorial: Kim may be the guy at the top of the masthead again, but he's not nearly as involved in day-to-day stuff as he used to be. From now on, it's mostly Dale that's doing the frontline work such as answering letters and writing the editorials. Well, he's still young and enthusiastic, and Kim was never really much of a gamer in the first place. He also has some pretty definite opinions on what he wants to see in the magazine, which doesn't hurt. More ecologies! More minis, non D&D articles and stuff applicable to any game! More detailed bits of setting! More advice on making your own settings! Stuff to grab the imagination, and be handy for all roleplayers, not just AD&D lovers. Not too dissimilar to Roger's aims actually, it's just that he hasn't been worn down by the responsibilities of the big chair and all the compromises and politics that come with it yet. This changeover isn't so much a fresh start, more a renewed determination to make their established formula work. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion.
The city of lofty pillars: Most cultures have legends of some kind of shangri-la, a perfect secluded place where the troubles of the mundane world do not reach, fantastical things are commonplace, and time passes strangely. Often bound up with supernatural creatures such as fae, you can go there, but you may well have trouble leaving, and don't expect to be able to take much with you. Here we have an Arabian interpretation of that monomyth. The city of lofty pillars in the Realm of Dreams. Time passes at 10 times the normal rate there, and if you leave, you'll rapidly age back to catch up with real time, so extended stays are not a good idea as an adventurer. Jewels grow on trees, but of course melt away when you leave. And spirit creatures like makshi are the primary inhabitants, turning up and slipping away enigmatically. This is one of those articles that seems set up to provide a whole series of adventures, as it's a real struggle to get there, a real struggle to get back, quite possibly another load of hassle trying to return; and even if you do, chances are you won't be seeing much long-term profit from it, you'll just have a good story to tell in the bars afterwards. Which is very much in the arabian nights tradition, if not the D&D one. Even if I can see the formula, it's one that doesn't get used around here that much, (the last example I can remember is The Garden of Nefaron, way back in issue 53) and it's quite well done, so I welcome this. It's not quite one of their old plane revealing epics, but as a way to kick off an issue, it is well above average.
Turkey's underground cities: From high fantasy to a look at the mundane middle east. Allen Varney shows us what he did on holiday last year, visiting one of reality's most impressive dungeon complexes. Not that it looks much like most D&D dungeons. As we've found before, caverns are rarely as neat as they appear on a map, with all kinds of odd-shaped, 3-dimensional rooms which developed organically in response to quirks in the geological composition of the rock. Ventilation is crucial for people to live down there, with large chimneys penetrating hundreds of feet down, ensuring a strong airflow nearly everywhere. It's all very interesting. The history which leads to it is also pretty fascinating. Originally they were just used as storage space, serious excavation and long-term underground dwelling only started in the early AD years, with the rapid growth and corresponding backlash against christianity. Yes folks, the early christians were one of the biggest groups of dungeon-dwellers around. How's that for massive irony, especially as we've already been through the fact that both founders of D&D were also Christians. It raises particularly interesting questions when juxtaposed with the tendency of D&D worlds towards polytheism, with the only people worshipping single gods some particularly obscure races. So this is useful, highly thought-provoking, and far less generic than the last article, taking us to the kind of place a single writer could never come up with on their own. There's a lot here for you to draw upon, and it's all presented with tremendous enthusiasm. This is exactly the kind of thing Dale said he wanted, as it is applicable to any system, and fills in info on an often neglected part of reality. A very definite 9/10er.
Dragon Magazine Issue 201: January 1994
part 2/5
The evolution of a castle: A second dose of reality in quick succession. Somewhat less impressive, this is another reminder that in reality, things are created organically, and on a "this'll do for now" basis far more often than they follow some grand concept. Real castles are strongly shaped by the landscape features of the area, with their position chosen by where the resources are, and what bits seem most easily defended. They're frequently unevenly shaped, need expensive repairs that the owner might not have money for, and had things added on years after the original construction. Castles Forlorn, dealing in time travel weirdness as it does, has a great practical example of this. As this has pretty similar lessons to last article, only applied to a different topic, it does feel a bit like filler. Oh well, It's decent enough.
Seven steps to a successful castle: This, on the other hand, is another pretty darn impressive article. Rich Baker finishes the themed section off with a full 10 page special on building your own castle, with both sample base plans and a highly amusing illustration. Despite the size, this is of course far smaller and more accessible than a whole book on the topic would be, and as such, is pretty usable, presuming you can get up the money to use it, as costs will run into the millions of gold pieces if you want to build a really big impressive place to live after name level. Unless your DM is well and truly in the monty haul school, you'll probably have to club together to build a single fortress instead of drifting apart to become individual landowners under these rules. Or once again, build your castle in stages over a period of years, adding on extensions each time you finish another big adventure. You'll never be short of things you want to spend your money on next, making this a good one to return to again and again while also doing other things. This all seems relatively easy to use. Just spend quarter of an hour at the end of an adventure figuring out where the money's going to go and how long it'll take and you're away again. Just watch you don't spend more than you can afford and get in the debt trap like reality. :p
Sage advice: Can you use nonoffensive spells while wraithformed or invisible (To be sure, to be sure)
Do you have to roll a natural 20 to make saves while irresistably dancing no matter what buffs you have (yup. Not only is it exceedingly humiliating, it opens you up to further humiliation. )
How much damage does defiling regeneration inflict (No people, only plants. Die, filthy plants, spreading their filthy roots through the earth. )
What happens when a pouch of security's owner dies ( It bonds with the first person to show it a little affection. The craving for security runs both ways. )
Can nonevil goblinoids worship human gods (Only the non prejudiced ones. Racism isn't evil if it's justified. )
Can you tear a magic cloak in half and have two small creatures use it. ( No. Magic items are a bugger to destroy, and if you do ruin them the magic's lost, not shared. )
There are instances where the same spell shows up in different books at different levels. (oh noes. Go with the most recent one, or the one for the campaign world you're in. Precedence and all that.)
Can illiterate characters be affected by gyphs & symbols (yes. It's the seeing that matters, not the comprehension)
Can I worship a community deity in the forgotten realms (if your DM lets you)
Where are the rules for half-giant clerics ( What rules? They work just like any other race. Random alignment shifts are not an issue because Dark sun spirit patrons don't give a shit about that as long as you promote their element. )
How many stoneskins can you have on you (I think we need to properly implement the no stacking rule. Otherwise broken stuff happens)
We want more info on what tome of magic spheres various gods grant ( You don't even have to ask. Skip's not gonna forget his duty. Even druids are gonna feel some sweet lovin from skip, the private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs. Skips gonna be extra generous to the goddess of sweet lovin of the forgotten realms, giving her two extra major spheres. Mmmm. Major Spheres. None of those egyptian fuddy duddies can compete with that.)
The dragon project: Sandy again proves that hiring him was a damn good decision by the editorial staff, with this little pendragon feature. Quite different from his CoC dragon, this plays up the pendragon principle of adventure as moral challenge as much as physical threat. Sure, the dragon may well wipe out an unexperienced whole party with a few casual swats, but fighting it isn't the main focus. Instead, there's quite a bit of effort put into the reason it was released, the way it approaches the world, and the people it's affected. Defeating it will probably involve another adventure beforehand to get hold of equipment that'll boost your odds of success. Even if you win, it may still have interesting after-effects on the campaign, for it's treasure is cursed. I think this counts as another success in terms of understanding and exploiting the themes of the game you're writing for, and bringing them to an audience that may not be that familiar with them. Embrace that mythological style, with all it's quirks and bitter ironies.
Dragon Magazine Issue 201: January 1994
part 3/5
The game wizards: Promotion time again. :yawn: Roger returns to try and give a shot in the arm to the historical sourcebooks line. Somehow I suspect they're not doing as well as the complete handbooks, and they'd rather like to clear now several years old stocks of the first books in the series. But they're hardly useless, and you can use them for games other than straight historical stories. Plus you have hundreds of external history books if you want more info. And articles from this magazine. This does all feel a bit forced. It's like he's got into his new office, had a browse through the accounts, and then gone oh shit, this area needs some serious shoring up. The result is completely unthrilling. Fastforward, fastforward, skip!
Forum:Eric Pollinger thinks that psionicists do not need nerfing. They're already unreliable enough as they are. Many of their powers even turn against them 1 in 20 times. That's a pretty ferocious balancing issue.
Another inadvertent Anonymous also argues in psionics favour. The main problem comes when one player uses it, but it's completely unintegrated, and none of the creatures or NPC's have any ability in it, or even knowledge of it. All obscure subsystems have that kind of inherent advantage, even if they are actually underpowered overall. It's the same principle that results in creatures transplanted to other continents having sudden population explosions and messing up the ecosystem.
Eric R. Filmer points out that Christianity plays a critical role in Pendragon. People wanting to incorporate real religion into their roleplaying could do a lot worse. Hell, they could hardly do better, given how awesome pendragon is. And it doesn't hit you over the head with it the way Dragonraid did.
Regina Larsen gives her experiences of last birthday's Dragon Dogfights. Even using little cardboard cutouts, it was surprisingly easy and fun, and not at all expensive either. More people should try it out.
James P. Buchanan has a rather odd suggestion. Cast silence on your silver bullets to shoot monsters. Ok. Seems rather oddly specific. There's a whole bunch of ways that could fall down.
Andrew Benson tells us all the ways his computer helps him roleplay. Character sheets, game logs, even dice rolls. The future marches ever ever on. Maybe we can take paper out of the equation altogether.
Benjamin E. Lake points out The Digital Dungeon. It really is that good! That kind of word of mouth'll probably shift a few more sales.
John Tomkins also talks about his new favourite program, as advertised in our sister magazine. Adventure Writer is both easy and fun. Yup, there's plenty of stuff out there. It just needs better promotion. Another reason I love internet search engines.
Christopher M. Cameron-Carey writes in to pimp his own personal mapmaking software, CARTOGRAFIX. Write in now to buy it! Take out an advert, dude.
Roger Smith finds it vaguely odd that RPG's are considered childish, when playing sports isn't. That's easily explained. When people are making obscene amounts of money from it publicly, that tends to stop those kinds of statements fairly quickly. The same applies to music. Dancing around in ludicrous outfits and doing pelvic thrusts on stage becomes a lot more respectable when you're raking in millions at every stadium gig you play. Until you can theoretically do the same roleplaying (wait, isn't that called being an actor) this will continue to be the case for us.
Amy Jones is among those who disapproves of cheesecake art. It's both ludicrous and pointless. Send those artists out into the world to learn about real female anatomy and dress sense!
Bryan Kirschner also thinks they're crap, especially since it's often so incongruous with the actual contents of the books, where sexual equality is exceedingly common. People do judge books by their covers. Marketing people should know that more than anyone.
Clarisa Fowler feels so strongly about this issue that she's created an amateur magazine for women and gaming. They certainly have plenty to talk about. As before, have fun trying to get hold of it. These things don't last very well.
Eye of the monitor: The 7th Saga is a somewhat FFish looking console RPG. Overhead map stuff, 3D fight scenes, you know the drill, although it's fairly new at this point. It also has tons and tons of side quests, which is another thing that's definitely on the up these days. Fashion come, fashion go.
Might & Magic: The World of Xeen are a duo of adventures which link up into a bigger one. It gets a so-so review. There's plenty of cool features, but also a few clunky and outdated ones. I believe this is the kind of situation they invented the word meh for.
Faceball 2000 does not get a very good review. It would have seemed impressive in the days of pac-man, but these days, endless maze-wandering palls rapidly, and the 3D aspect seems tacked on. Flicker and slowdown do not help things either.
Dragon Strike bogarts the centre pages with one of those double page, full colour spreads that so grab people's attention.
Dragon Magazine Issue 201: January 1994
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: Underground shows us what you can do with desktop publishing, becoming an obvious precursor to the modern age, where even books with tiny print runs like RPG's can be glossy and professional looking as long as they have a sufficiently dedicated designer. The game is quite interesting too, although it looks a bit dated now, being very much in the same paradigm as white wolf games, where your characters may have cool supernatural powers, but a lot of emphasis is put on the psychological effects of this, and the dark humour that often results. Still, government created superheroes who turn against their creators because they seem like the closest thing to 4-color villains out there? That seems more relevant than ever. Whatever happened to this game?
Magic: The gathering is greeted with great enthusiasm. Oh shiiiiiiiit. Allen loved the game, even before he knew it was going to be a huge hit. As a result, this review comes in two sections, written several months apart, as he discovered the world catching up with him with frightening speed. Not that it doesn't seem to deserve it, with Wizards of the Coast showing a dedication to customer service and pursuing new technology that makes TSR look positively moribund. A Challenger Appears! In a situation like this, where we know this is a significant historical step, we want plenty of context, and Allen does not disappoint, talking about the designers, the failed attempts to get something like this going in the past, and the social dynamics that are evolving around the TCG scene. It's all absolutely fascinating, if a bit scary. Just as notable is that White Wolf has already jumped on board, with the Jyhad cardcame in development as we speak. You can bet TSR is already planning their own attempts to break into this market. Watch this space!
The role of books: Ahh, double spacing. My eyes! Ok, I exaggerate a little, but seriously guys, this is a stupid formatting change. I hope you drop it soon. Anyway.
The well-favored man by Elizabeth Willey is a swashbuckler with surprisingly little actual buckling of swash, but plenty of fun storytelling regardless. Just as you can have an RPG with very little roleplaying, you can have a swashbuckler with little swashbuckling, and still have it work as an experience.
The black gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon gets a pretty good review, with some cool dogfighting between the titular gryphon riders, and well-defined characters who interact together well.
The robin and the kestrel by Mercedes Lackey on her own doesn't do nearly as well, with poor pacing and an overdose of monologues, exposition and setting building rather than actual story advancement. The difference is so striking that John seriously wonders how much merit her creative input has. Maybe she's been casting protection from editors too much lately, so it's up to her husband to keep her in check.
Bruce Coville's book of monsters is a playful little anthology that's aimed at younger readers, but still has plenty of scares for our adult reviewer. The kind of thing to read to your kids with a flashlight and lots of overdramatic voices.
The dark moon legacy series by Cynthia Blair gets a good picking apart for the inaccuracies in it's real world details. Native americans aren't some homogenous um how shamanistic morass. And Oregon doesn't have a mountain range right next to the sea. This is lazy cash-in writing, trying to make a werewolf equivalent to the vampire diaries. Ah yes, what goes around, gets mediocre copies. Funny to encounter that, just as paranormal romance has got to the floods of lazy cash-in books stage again.
The rising of the moon by Flynn Connolly gets compliments for it's plotting and characters, but loses marks for bad sci-fi. He is in a niggly mood today.
The wizard's apprentice by S P Somtow also seems fairly familiar, juxtaposing modern media magic with the real thing. This results in an interesting mix of optimism and cynicism, as befits it's hollywood setting. The result seems fun but not too weighty.
The ten commandments of tournament writing: This topic again. It's becoming one of the most regularly recurring highly specific topics over the years. There's plenty of demand for tournament modules now, and people are getting quite experienced at making them. Course, that means there's also going to be plenty of dross floating around. It also means things are quite different from the early modules in some ways. There's more emphasis on balanced encounters, and less on creating adventures that will kill the majority of parties, with the winner being who gets furthest before dying. There's also an emphasis on breaking the rules, or at least creating new ones, which is another huge sea change from the early 80's, where tournament stuff was supposed to be more standardised, and even though they did invent new rules, it was simply because there was no system in place to handle what they wanted to include. But many things remain the same, regardless of fashion shifts. You want good characters, good enemies, a good plot, and most of all, a good editor. For if your scenario doesn't add up, the only fun people will be having is MST3King you. Another article that's interesting in revealing the gradual changes in design theory over the years, but doesn't give us much advice we haven't seen before. Another article, a couple of xp more.
Shadowrun gets a Germany sourcebook. Ha ha! Is that the cause or the effect?
Dragon Magazine Issue 201: January 1994
part 5/5
Fiction: The river children by Peni R Griffin. A fairytale within a fairytale here this month, which is rather amusing. It starts off by telling the original story, a classic ghost tale of betrayal and ironic punishment, and then jumps forward to centuries later, when the original tale is just a legend, and a child meets the characters from it. The result manages to be both cute and creepy, with definite shades of peter pan to it. I quite like this, and it also has the benefit of not resolving itself neatly, leaving the characters open to be used in further stories, or indeed, your game. So it's another story that's both quite good, and well targeted for the magazine.
Libram X has a rather unpleasant bit of imagery that I'm vaguely surprised got past the censors.
Undiscovered treasure troves: For a third time this issue, they remind us that reality has tons of interesting elements to plunder. Building a detailed setting is all about taking elements from reality, and remixing it sufficiently that people can't immediately say that it's a rip-off of a particular thing. Sure, if you can come up with a truly original idea or two, more power to you, but most of us are lucky to manage a few of those in our lifetimes, not enough to build a whole campaign world out of. So stop being embarrassed about having to do this, and focus your mental energy on hiding the sources you steal from and ways you remix them better. Methinks they're definitely descending into filler material again after the strong beginning. So much for this new year's resolution.
Swordplay cheats on their taxes like any sane self-employed business would. Ogrek's plan does indeed pan out and save Yamara. Dragonmirth makes fighting seem like an unwise prospect. Twilight empire has an annoying deus ex machina come out of nowhere to save the day.
Through the looking glass: The impression that win or lose, the damage has already been done in the realm of minis is reinforced this month, with another rather gloomy editorial on Robert's part. This hobby is no fun anymore. Another reason why CCG's probably seem very inviting to many people about now. They fill a very similar niche in terms of highly portable modular impulse purchases which you can play games with, or just collect for the pleasure of it. Jumping ship from one to the other seems like quite a logical option. But we all know fun isn't logical, so there's going to be a lot of embittered people left behind by this sea change, wondering why the hobby shops have changed their space allocations so dramatically.
Still, there are plenty of minis coming out, even if they aren't enjoying the sales they used to. A pair of high-rise buildings, one in good condition, but the other nearly ruined. You may have to swap one for the other if the PC's have heavy weaponry. Another diorama of adventurers intruding into a tomb and finding the inhabitants aren't going to take having their stuff nicked lying down. Another trio of licensed miniatures from the dream park game, that don't get good marks at all. The witch-king of Angmar, about to meet his demise at the hands of a woman and a hobbit. Yeah, no man can kill you. That only means what it says. Four warriors, and three bards. A creepy thing emerging from a dumpster. A werewolf with a gun and a wand. Fricken glass walkers, always confounding the stereotypes with their newfangled tricks. Some not nearly so innovative Sabbat vampires going raar. A spectator and a death kiss. Neither are as scary as regular beholders, but you shouldn't get complacent. And a full set of 10 adventurers. Not often you see a party that big anymore. Oh, for the days of the companions of the lance.
Finally, we have a review of Warhammer 40k 2nd edition. Another of those things that says we may be catching up with the present, but we're still nowhere near there yet. It does get a very good review though, with the clarity of the instructions improved from previous offerings. With the other companies out the way and them gaining increasing control over their own distribution, they're free to steam ahead and hook newbies.
TSR Previews: Another slow month next month. Al Qadim is up to ALQ5: Ruined kingdoms. Off to Nog and Kadar in all their ruined Ashton-Smithsonian glory. Mind the magic items you find there aren't sanity destroying or cursed.
Northwards in the Realms, we get the 8th book in the Harper series, Elfsong by Elaine Cunningham. Well, who better when elves are involved.
Dragonlance releases it's 4th villain book, Heldrick the Theocrat by Ellen Dodge Severson. Neither names I've heard of before. Man, they're getting obscure here.
Ravenloft tackles golems, in Van Richten's guide to the created. Now there's a monster that doesn't seem immediately gothic, but just say frankenstein and most people'll get it. Do you dare meddle with forces man ought not to wot of? Ahahahahaha!!!!!
And finally, our generic product is another deck of cards. The deck of encounters'll help you easily generate packages of monsters and treasure. Oh, go on then.
This time round, I think Allen Varney takes the top spot, with two great articles. The magazine as a whole starts off very well, and then takes an abrupt downturn near the middle, however. With both the introduction of TCG's, and the downfall of minis getting plenty of screentime, things seem a lot less optimistic than they did this time last year. TSR's demise is no longer some distant shadow on the horizon, but something that draws nearer every month. Will anyone realise this before it's too late, or will it come as a shock to everyone inside the company? Keep on rowin down that river, whatever the weather and hope we don't capsize.
Dragon Magazine Issue 202: February 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Polly want a cracker! Polly want a cracker! Polly'll toast a dumb thief trying to steal her feathers to cinders. Yes, it's rogue's turn to get a featured issue again. One of those topics we've seen quite a few times, and will do so again. As one of the basic class groups, they have to keep providing for them, come rain or shine. Well, unless they changed the primary system they're covering, but that looks increasingly unlikely the longer we go on. So once again I must pray they do not serve up some overcooked rehash browns as I venture into this issue.
In this issue:
Werewolf: the apocalypse gets it's second edition already. Well, that was standard WW practice at the time. And their visuals have certainly improved.
Editorial: Dale proves that he's been perusing the old archive copies of the magazine from before he started buying originally, quoting an ancient Jim Ward article from issue 13. Yesss, curry favor with your overlord. :rubs hands together: The result is a pretty middle of the road bit of GM advice that shows that Dale, like Roger, could be a pretty good article writer if he so chose. The main lesson here that to be a great GM, you need to make sure it's not all about you. Involve your players at every stage, from the creation of the world to the end of the session. And don't kill them unless you really have to. Because after all, sitting out the game until a new character can be introduced is rather boring. Ok, it's not the way they played it back in the old days, but people are more attached to their characters these days. As with increasing the number of continues and frequency with which you can save computer games, it seems like a logical progression. Just have to be careful you don't go too far the other way and have people lose interest because they no longer feel challenged. So this is fairly good advice, albeit very slanted towards the current trends in fashion. Ask again in a decade, see how things have changed.
White wolf denies imperilling the sanity of their playtesters. Nothing to see here, move along, we're a perfectly decent game company. :D
Letters: A letter complaining that there's too much crunch in current issues. Unfortunately, the more specific stuff is, the easier is is to avoid repeating yourself. This means that in a magazine like this, the average tendency over the years will be to increase the proportion of statistics.
Some joke responses to issue 197's cover. Another thing Roger's departure doesn't seem likely to affect.
A letter from Ian Reid volunteering to be a PbM clearing house. They warn him that he may be biting off more than he can chew. Scary business.
A letter informing us what gliepnir was. Norse mythology is full of cool magic items to plunder for your game.
Another bit of trivia helpfulness.The D&D coloring book was a licence from 1979. They produced some kiddie-centric cheese back then too. Don't let nostalgia fool you.
A complaint that their subscription always arrives late. Pass it on to the postal service. :p
Another procedural question. With all the staff changes, who do we write too? Just the magazine in general'll do fine.
Magic to a different beat: Bard's relationship with magic is still wrought with tension. Issue 56 suggested that it would be more thematic for them to cast their spells in an entirely different way to wizards, using song, and possibly interpretive dance or playing on an instrument to manifest special effects. And as I thought then, they still need a whole new magic system to really do that idea justice. Still, an article that suggests what kind of instruments are most suited to what types of music isn't a terrible idea. Shame this isn't a very gripping implementation of that idea. In fact, having read it though several times, I'm still struggling to remember enough to comment upon it. Very forgettable indeed, which doesn't really bode well.
Dirty rotten scoundrels: Hey ho. How do you properly roleplay your rogue? With style and panache, duh! You've got to think fast and be flexible if you want to outwit and eliminate your enemies. Course, you have to make sure you stay on the good side of your buddies at least. And you should be prepared to be spontaneous, as oxymoronic as that may seem. For timing is everything, and a great window of opportunity may never open again. This is all very basic indeed, even if it is avoiding the mistake of PvP antagonism that they encouraged back in the 70's. It all feels a bit patronising to me. Very much for any new readers they may have got their hands on recently. I get no xp from this one at all, on the other hand.
The legends say: We've had some fairly general roleplaying advice, now it's back to examining a specific class feature in great detail. This time it's bard's lore ability. It's a mildly problematic one, because you have to either invent histories for all the magic items in your game, or be rather good at winging it. Or create a random table of historical details, and cross things off as they come up, with is even more work really. Maybe you shouldn't have so many magical items in your game in the first place. :p It also suggests that you shouldn't make all the legends true or complete, which may be a bit problematic, but will make things more interesting. So this is pretty far towards the fluffy side, but not terrible advice if you like that sort of thing. Can't see it appearing in later editions though.
Dragon Magazine Issue 202: February 1994
part 2/5
The master's hand: Another bit of purely fluffy roleplaying advice, presented in the form of 2nd person IC narration. Zeb Cook has lots of fun presenting real world thievery and con tricks, showing how a poor street rat can survive and prosper while staying one step ahead of the law. Ironically, the best way to do that is not to look notably ragged and suspicious, so you can walk past someone, have their purse and be long gone before they suspect anything. And the really big hauls involve actually playing on their naiveté or desires, getting their trust temporarily and then exploiting it, preferably in a way that leaves them embarrassed to go to the law for revenge. Having accomplices you can trust but pretend not to know mid heist goes a long way towards making your role convincing. It's all a surprisingly social business, especially once you get into the organised crime aspects, which is where the really big profits lie. If you want to be outside the law, you've got to be prepared to live by a code and be trustworthy to those close to you to stay out of prison in the long term. Ironic, isn't it. Anyway, this is a good deal of fun to read, showing much of the same spirit of cynical IC delivery as his upcoming planescape work. It may not have any mechanical stuff, but this is very solid stuff to draw upon to help you build a convincing larcenous type. And much more entertaining than Wolfgang's spin on the same topic. Wahoo!
Attack of the little people: Minis may be on the decline in many respects, but it looks like one field is still a growth area, so to speak. 15mm minis are obviously a good deal smaller than the standard 25mm ones, but that is actually a real advantage if you want to hold really big battles. After all, scale to area is quadratic, and having them at .6 the size means you can fit 2.77 times as many in your legions. It's not a bad idea at all, especially in these days of increasing prices, to trade visual detail for practicality. Course, their motivation for telling us this is not purely commentary, it's because TSR is moving into that market, with a fairly extensive line of licensed Ral Partha minis coming out over the year. So this is a fairly sneaky bit of promotion, trying to big up an ailing hobby and make more money for themselves in the process. There's still lots of people out there who want to combine minis with their gaming, despite it not being official company policy to encourage this. They'll rise to ascendance eventually. For now, we can watch them really work to keep things together and survive.
Even WiLdEr Mages: Like Wands of Wonder, the wild mage's selection of random effects when they cast spells is big enough to be interesting for a bit, but introducing new and interesting ways for them to go awry after a few hundred spells comes as welcome. This eschews detained tables for a few basic pointers on how to make your own, and the probabilities with which they should occur. You should feel encouraged to whip up new variants on a regular basis, so the players never get complacent, and are always wary about unleashing the wild mage upon the enemy. But at the same time, positive effects should be slightly more common than negative ones, so they keep on coming back to them. It's all pretty predictable, making for another average middle of the issue filler article.
The preservers choice: Or let's make screwing yourself over in the long term for short term benefits a little more tempting. Being a wizard is a bit of a mugs game in Athas anyway when psionics is far more common and less stigmatised. And the option that's less harmful to the environment has powerful enemies that want to wipe them out. It's all rather a pain. It's no surprise that even principled preservers might wind up using defiling in a pinch. So Rich Baker gets to work on making the fall and redemption subsystem more interesting. This is made more problematic by the odds of you becoming a full on defiler each time you use them pretty likely, so you're unlikely to be able to get use out of this article more than 2-3 times in a campaign. If it was bigger, this'd feel like a white elephant. As it is, it's a cool idea that deliberately makes itself inaccessible. I can't help but feel frustrated by that.
Mythic races of africa: So, what alternate races can you play in africa? What mythic creatures seem good for establishing positive relationships with humans and going on adventures with them? Lots and lots of animal men, mostly. And since we've been getting tons of them over the past three years in Bruce Heard's work, all with strong integrated cultures and quirks of their own, this feels decidedly uninspired by comparison. I suppose it's one you can get lots of use out of mechanically, since these are AD&D rules while those were basic D&D ones, but still, this is boring. Reading generic versions after someone else has done damn cool specific versions just isn't working for me at all. Maybe if they'd given examples from specific stories to showcase them. But no, instead this feels like another return to entry level, which I find rather jarring after the known world stuff went on so long, took us so far, and gave us so many tools.
Libram X has another frying pan to fire episode.
Dragon Magazine Issue 202: February 1994
part 3/5
Eye of the monitor: Computer programs grow ever bigger and more complicated as the years pass. Unfortunately, computer programers are as prone to the ravages of ageing and ossification as the rest of us. This frequently makes it a pain to get teams together, as everyone has to be on approximately the same level in terms of coding languages, and if they aren't willing to lean a new one, this can either disqualify them, or make them a drag on the entire team. It also means it's much harder to develop a whole new, more efficient and robust coding language, as you've got to compete with the established ones in the marketplace, even if they do have weird legacy issues and aren't totally suited to making modern games. This probably contributed the slowdown of advancement in computer technology in the 00's, and the increasing dominance of mobile systems that are easier to develop games for, many of which are actually fairly straight conversions of early ones like tetris and pac-man. It's a pain when every commercial product requires a massive team with multimillion dollar budgets, and as we're finding in music and movies, it's not a stable situation. What is overly built up will become bloated and rotten, and change will come by force, for they will not willingly convert to the new ways even when they do offer substantial benefits. It's the ciiiircle of life. Bah. If only there was a way of restoring people's ability to learn with the same speed and ease they could when they were young. It's horrible seeing people descend into creative irrelevance and mindless repetition of domestic patterns and knowing it's likely to happen to me too sooner or later. Hmm. Something in Sandy's writing seems to bring out the philosophical side in me. I wonder why. Back to the reviews.
Master of Orion shows that computer game programmers are starting to poach RPG artists already, with Jeff Dee providing much of the visual flair. Explore planets, fight alien races, and get resources as you try to take over the galaxy. There are some minor flaws with the interface, and the alien races are not balanced at all, but it's still one of those games you can have plenty of fun and eat up huge amounts of time with, in the Civilisation or Sim City vein.
Spaceward Ho! gets a split mark, reflecting the fact that it's a good deal better in multiplayer than solo. Another sci-fi themed wargame, it's pretty simple, but has some neat touches. This of course means it's easy to learn and get going with a bunch of friends. The fact that it conceals which sides are people and which are computers adds to the interest.
Bram Stoker's Dracula gets a good heaping of disdain. It's sluggish, has a poor control system, and dull visuals. Another mediocre movie tie-in.
Biomenace gets another poor mark, but not quite such a negative description. It's just your basic side scrolling shooter. And it's another bit of freeware, so you can try it with no commitment anyway. It's no sweat off his nose if you like your junk food.
Sage advice: What non core races can become psionicists (not many, and they're not very good at it. The powers of the mind are mysterious and inscrutable, and only humans can truly master them)
What happens when a land is sucked into Ravenloft (This town, (aaahh.) is comin like a ghost town. All the clubs have been closed down. Yeah, it's like that. )
Can you escape Ravenloft to Athas. (Frankly, given how hard it is to find a way out of Ravenloft, you aren't in a position to be picky on which world you escape to. At least on athas you can plane shift outta there. )
Saurials can't have any rogue kits! Waah. (What about the ones available to everyone, and the ones from other books. Some people, no imagination. )
What are the encumbrance levels for str above 18 (You must have an old PHB. Buy a new one :teeth ting: This is how we reward our loyal customers. Force them to double dip to keep up with a few trivial rules changes. You'll pay for the corebooks again and you'll like it. )
Can you have two defense modes up at once (no)
Why aren't the spheres for the halfling deities listed in their complete book (to force you to buy monster mythology, duh. Gotta collect 'em all. )
If you fail a save against scrying, can you try again (no. The matter is resolved. You've figured out you're being watched or not. That's it.)
Are there mechanics for the invisibility factor (not really. Fiat fiat fiat)
Armor of command looks like one type of armor and works like another. I is confuzzlded ( Oh trageday. Yes, it looks more impressive than it is. That is not an unreasonable thing for magic armor to do. )
Also, beware of Skip bringing gifts to greek gods. They're petulant enough as it is. Now they'll be even more trouble.
Rifts world book 5. Looks like they're also covering germany at the moment. What a co-incidence.
Fiction: Thieves justice by David J Schwartz. What is it with rogues and cats? Nahh, that's a dumb question really. Ok, what is it with wizards and biting off more than you can chew? Nope, I've got a pretty good idea why that happens too. Why do people feel the need for the punishment to be ironically appropriate, especially when they also have magic powers? Once again, I think I understand the dynamics of human nature well enough that this one is pretty clear too. Man, I'm running short on big rhetorical questions to ask. Still, you should be able to get an idea of what kind of story we're dealing with here. Like issue 188's story involving a kid of the cat lord, which it bears several stylistic similarities too, this melds the mundane and magical sides of larceny pretty well, and the comeuppance of the villain feels deserved, but not completely without ambiguity. Nice to see they can still pick an entertaining story, even if I can spot the threads that weave it a little too easily these days.
Dragon Magazine Issue 202: February 1994
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: Mage: the Ascension arrives, with a pretty heavy foreshadowing having preceded it. White Wolf are now the company on everyone's lips, so this gets a good long review. Course, this is the point where their doom and gloom onslaught starts to soften a little, with mages being a somewhat more familiar and less inherently screwed archetype as PC's than vampires, werewolves and mummies. If they have the right spheres, they can do just about anything, and the mechanical process for doing so is somewhat less time consuming and onerous both IC and OOC than the old one in Ars Magica. Not that it's simple or risk free, and Rick certainly finds it a challenge to put everything together, especially as like most WW first editions, the editing and organisation isn't great. It is still pretty ground-breaking, and has a long, if controversial history ahead of it. For to have the will to reshape the world, you must be prepared to endure the mockery and opposition of others with calm certitude, accepting that you may be called wrong or pretentious for daring to take a definite stand, rather than following the crowd or doing what is convenient! Gotta love the way the fanbases of the old WW games mirrored their in game content.
Earthdawn isn't nearly as innovative, especially when compared to it's far future parallel Shadowrun. It also has some seriously clunky crunch, involving matrix tables of the sort that went out of fashion in the late 80's. But then, Shadowrun managed to be a success with some serious mechanical cruft of it's own, so who's to say it can't be a success as well.
Earthdawn gamemaster pack is the usual GM screen plus miscellaneous other nonessential bits and pieces, plus some errata for the corebook. This formula seems to be pretty proven and universal from company to company now, and as usual, this is for completists.
Mists of betrayal is the first adventure for the setting. It gets a quite positive response, even if it is pretty close to a regular AD&D adventure. But at least in this world there's a good reason for all the dungeons.
We also get a reminder of how good the princess ark stuff was, especially in showing you how to handle really cool, wide ranging high level adventures and still challenge the PC's. D&D can take you a long way, and you shouldn't give up just because you've got a little world-shaking power.
Elminsters notebook: Even our great sage doesn't know everything. Sometimes he comes across things which defy even the strongest of divination magics. Of course, this is another demonstration of how he managed to survive and get to that level. Here's a hint, it's not by leaping in and checking things out himself, when it looks like everyone who did so before died howwibly howwibly. Instead, he sets a triggered divination so he can find out via the next dumb adventurers to come across this, and hopefully save them via seeming deus ex machina in the process. (but if not, meh, adventurers are a dime a dozen in the realms) So this is another bit of cool mythology, made all the more distinctive by the unique viewpoint and narration style of it's IC and real world writers. It's not as easy as it seems, both being this awesome, and setting things up so the world views you as such. So this is cool both as an adventure hook, and as a view of the hard paddling feet underneath the swan, which helps give you ideas of how to operate your own Machiavellian high level characters in your own campaigns, so they can be awesome as well without resorting to fiat. Once again he shows us how he's several leagues above everyone else as a designer. My only real complaint here is that the scan of the illustration is poorly contrasted, making it hard to make out some of the bits.
The dragon project: We've already had one mechanical dragon in here, for Paranoia. This month, Talislanta gets a second, more serious spin on that idea. A legendary giant mechanical construct, that if found and spruced up a bit, could give you substantial benefits in the shock and awe department. Exactly what role it plays in your campaign depends strongly on how intact it is when found, and whether the PC's or the enemies are the ones that find it. Like many of these articles, they try and play up it's versatility as a plot device and long term applications, such as if you find small pieces and have to go on an epic quest to complete it while other groups are racing to do the same. |It all seems quite pulpy and cinematic. Whether that's a good thing for talislanta's general themes I'm not sure, but it's reasonably entertaining, and could be slotted into plenty of other campaign worlds. (particularly Mystara. ) It's another solid contribution from this column.
Forum: Travis N. Gillespie would like to know what real world countries Realms ones are based on. This isn't that hard, apart from the ones that aren't based on real world ones at all. And those are relatively few.
Kerry C. Zane would like them to set up a personals section. Oh dear god. Once again I thank the internet. With stuff like Facebook, you have pretty good odds of being able to get back in touch with people in a matter of minutes, wherever in the world they are.
Andrew Wyatt praises David Howery for his skill in creative lifting of ideas from other media. It's useful and helps make better stuff quicker. Well, how often has David been published here? If he wasn't a good writer, they wouldn't keep letting him back in.
Joe Katzman finds skimpy costumes on adventurers breaks his sense of verisimilitude. Cheesecake has it's place, and it's not in a dank dungeon with things trying to kill them. Save it for the nights on the town when you get back, and want to brag about your exploits and get laid.
Nathan Bruha points out that hack-and-slash characters in a realistic world will seal their own doom. It's all very easy. All they have to do is kill the people who would help them, and they'll be out of a quest in no time.
The man himself, David Howery, returns to point out some more ways to get round stoneskin. Nibble them or grapple them, it all comes out in the wash. When basic tactics can get around it, there's no excuse to fall into the pattern of just hitting back and forth till someone drops and getting upset when that fails.
Sean Murphy is annoyed at how little respect gaming gets at sci-fi conventions. Insufficient crossover, weirdly. This may because Sci-fi games are rather underrepresented, especially since Traveller fragmented itself into limbo. Another depressing case of geek looking down on geek for no good reason.
Christopher A. Hunter is yet another person able to explain clearly what lawful goodness and being a paladin should be about. It really isn't complicated. Kindness & Organisation in good balance. Don't be nasty to people, unless they really need killing, and if so do it cleanly and fairly. It's a lot simpler than being morally grey actually.
Dragon Magazine Issue 202: February 1994
part 5/5
Campaign Journal: Al-Qadim gets a second turn in this column. We've already seen how well and easily arabian adventures can be melded with horror, now Greg Detwiler shows us a grab-bag of other milieus that mix well with it. Mercantile stuff is facilitated by the kits, as is the land and sea based travel and exploration. There's plenty of political reasons for them to go to war, what with religion being a rather touchy subject, and the usual resource issues. Plus there's the expectation that even minor disagreements should be settled with blood feuds. It all seems well designed for neverending interpersonal dramas on any scale. But you can also focus on the supernatural side if you choose. Wait a minute, this isn't a very imaginative selection. Not sure what to make of this. One would think these playstyles would work to a reasonable degree in any world with at least a modest degree of both realism and supernatural elements. This once again feels like basic handholding. Is that the best you can come up with? How about merging arabian adventures with hard-boiled noir private investigator, or bitchy rom-com. I can visualise how to make those work without too much trouble as well. So once again I am feeling rather patronised. Next thing you know they'll be reminding us of our ABC's. I'm starting to feel I may not be in their target audience anymore.
Swordplay once again engages in some money related treachery. Yamara goes into spaaace. Watch out, it gets cramped up there. Dragonmirth points out the drawbacks in getting crystal balls from PBS. It all seems to be a happy ending in twilight empire. OR IS IT? (dun dun der)
Through the looking glass: This column temporarily changes hands this month, with Ken Carpenter taking over. This is probably a good idea, as he seems noticeably less ground down by the ongoing troubles in mini land than Robert. We also get a bit of preamble in which he goes into detail on molding lines, and the things you have to do to make a stable mini that doesn't bubble and crack at the slightest provocation. Since this includes some technical details they haven't elaborated upon in the magazine before, I quite approve of this. New ideas and perspectives are important to keep us from getting bored.
The star system that Robert uses is gone, but there is a new emphasis on the prices of the various minis reviewed, and the scales that they are in. Since those are varying a lot more lately, this once again seems like a good thing. You don't want to see something cool, and then find out too late you can't afford or get good use out of it. Funny how tiny organisational changes can improve the usability of a column so much.
So anyway, back to the minis. A 10-piece official menzoberannzan set, featuring, drizzt, his panther, and 4 other drow of each gender. All glossily mass produced to high standard, even the animal is properly proportioned. A second set of minis based on the artwork of Larry Elmore, who continues to tower over the fantasy genre. These'll be a challenge to paint, but worth it if you can. A duo of rather forcedly "street" vampires, the sort beloved of Bradstreet & co. A trio of female rogues, ready to break the bank and your heart. A genie taking people on a magic carpet ride. Careful assembling this, as with most flying stuff, a small area for weight distribution can lead to instability. A knight with a mace, and an elf with a sword, ready to duel. And finally, a dwarf champion and a goblin launching catapult from the warhammer universe. An odd pairing, and once again likely to be in opposition to one another.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten realms returns to milk another proven topic some more. The ruins of undermountain II, the deeper levels. More maps, more monsters, more screwage from Halaster. Have you exhausted the previous stuff and still want more?
Dark sun also gets a deluxe adventure set. Black Spine has 3 books, and 2 maps. More strangeness threatens Athas. Who'd want to conquer this dump? Oh well, guess it's up to the PC's to foil them anyway. It may be a dump, but it's our dump.
Dragonlance sees the original authors return after quite a bit, The second generation is 5 stories showing what happened after the war of the lance. About time. Good to see new heroes taking on the job of fighting evil.
Ravenloft has done Dracula, sorta. Now it puts it's own spin on Jekyll and Hyde in The Enemy Within by Christie Golden. See Sir Tristen and Malken try to live their lives at cross-purposes. Will their secret be discovered in this story?
And finally, the Amazing Engine combines arthurian legend with fantastical sci-fi in The once and future King. Arthur is back, but my has the world changed. Sounds rather comical and cultureshocky. Could work.
They also add a coming next month in the magazine's sidebar here. Guess they want to push a little harder to make sure they retain their readers by hooking us with the cool stuff they're planning. Makes sense, with their readership starting to slip. Shame it didn't work. There is such a thing as looking like you're trying too hard to please.
Dragonlance, the second generation? Once again they put adverts right next to the previews to make sure you get the point. Can they recapture the magic of the original?
An issue that really makes me feel like I've got past the stage where most of the articles are aimed at me. I guess this is compounded by the large number of recent departures. The new guys that have replaced them are noticeably less experienced, and this is where it's really starting to show. On the positive side, it means they've got more enthusiasm than Roger had in the last year or so, but on the negative, it means I have to listen to them saying things I already know as if it's some great new discovery. I'm starting to see why generation gaps cause problems in relationships. It's the gap in experiences and cultural references as much as the physical differences that become issues. Which is a very odd thing to be learning from reading a magazine. Guess there are still further layers to discover, even after the obvious ones have been peeled back. The question then becomes how you relate them to people, and indeed, relate to people who have no idea what you've been through after learning them. Looks like I might go completely nuts from this after all. :p And I thought the biggest challenges in doing this thread were over already.
Dragon Magazine Issue 203: March 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Bradstreet! :shakes fist: Dear god that is some excessive grizzling. And those tattoos were totally added on in post, not properly worn in the way they would be on a proper badass of that age and experience. Still, at least the guns look pretty accurate. Makes sense, after all, THIS IIIS THE 90's!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, we're having another go at sci-fi this month, which means lots of non D&D stuff of various stripes. After last issue's back to basicsfest, this is very welcome indeed. Over the edge, shadowrun and the amazing engine? Even if they only stick to the basics, that'll still be more than we've seen before on these games. And they're starting the planescape teasers too. I think I'm actually excited again. Let's get to work.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who's written a supplement for AD&D and wants to publish it. Ahahaha! Ahahahaha!! No. It's time you got a hard lesson in copyright law, you poor poor overenthusiastic little fanboy. It's ours, all ours! You can do nothing commercial with it.
Ironically, the magic items mentioned in issue 200's letters are all from a 3rd party product. Mayfair's Role Aids have a rather interesting legal history, as a little googling shows. You can get away with this stuff if you know how to do it. What does putting these letters next to each other say about the magazine staff's view on this stuff?
A letter from someone who noticed there were no greyhawk or spelljammer products on this year's schedule. And of course, they are concerned. Dale doesn't sugarcoat. They were canceled because their sales sucked. And they are indeed lowering their intended average age group for products in an attempt to get new people in. If you don't like it, complain and talk with your dollars. This is what you get for lowering sales. The only consolation prize you get is that Dragon is publishing stuff from the would-be sourcebooks as articles throughout the year.
A letter from someone who's realised D&D and AD&D are virtually the same game, and you can apply articles for one to the other effortlessly. My god, It's full of stars! Your deduction, it is elementary.
Editorial: Once again Dale plumbs the past to keep his editorials interesting for long-time readers. In issue 166 he encouraged us to try out new systems from all kinds of companies. Here we see some of the new crop of weird and wonderful games out there. Lost Souls, Whispering Vault, Metascape, Amber. All have some kind of innovation that makes them worthwhile to try out, and even if they might not stand the test of time, you can nick their better setting and rules ideas and put them in D&D. This once again shows that Dale is another person who would like to see Dragon covering other RPG's more, which is an ironic turnaround from his earlier days. But then, as we're finding, roleplaying as a whole is still healthy, possibly even growing, it's just D&D that's suffering, as people grow bored and seek out other ways of playing an imaginary character. It's that 7 year itch writ large. Even people within the company are probably playing other games for fun more these days, as working on D&D becomes altogether too much like, well, work. So this is another positive editorial with dark undertones to it. An tree can be rotten to the core long before any signs show on the outside. And you only find out which ones are when a storm comes.
God, white wolf really want to promote their bad boy of game designers image. Oh, I'm sorry, did I get snark all over your lovely expensive trenchcoat? Don't worry, it won't stain. Anyway, we get our first teaser for Wraith this month, and they rip off The Shining to make it.
First quest: Yay! Another cool regular column gets booted up. Another chance to get to know more about the people behind the games, since they ran out of staff to profile years ago. Jim Ward is first to step up to the plate, somewhat bashfully, as of course they haven't quite got the formula down yet. Although some of that seems to be because they can't mention the name of oh, a certain founder of the entire roleplaying hobby! This is a bit awkward. Not that we can't figure out real information about his early experiences in the hobby, but it is rather intentionally vague, and considerably less interesting and informative than his own monty haul recountings back in the day. He played a substantial part in the elimination of the D word monsters, and the corporate chain lies heavy on his neck. This all adds up to an article that feels unsatisfying because I know he's holding back, and does have some far more interesting stories to tell.
More gamma goodness: Kim Eastland is once again the only person who seems to like Gamma World 4e. Tragic, isn't it. This time, it's more /magic items/ technological devices. Let's get exploring those ancient /dungeons/ military bases.
Laser pens let you draw on hard objects, but have safeguards that prevent you from using it as a weapon. Gee. I wonder how hard that'll be to bypass.
Kinetic Dampers repel fast moving objects, like anything intended to hurt you, hopefully. Course, you can still be gassed, or grappled, so like our old friend stoneskin, don't get too cocky just because you have one of these on.
Particle Scrubbers are little wands that clean any surface they're waved over. Exactly how they know what is dirt and what's supposed to be there is uncertain. I guess that's what makes it magitech.
Velcan Tubes are essentially a D&D light spell, although not as good because they require constant maintenance. Still, blinding is pretty crippling in combat, so it's not surprising that they would want to decrease it's duration.
Laser Scissors are essentially lightsabers redesigned for practical home use. Snippy snip snip. Don't run with them, you might trip.
Stikemup is just your basic long-lasting superglue. It may well be so strong that it's easier to saw around it than pull it apart. Nothing remotely reality stretching about that idea.
Smart Dart Bracers are another one that could work fine in reality, even if they are a bit comic-booky. A flick of the wrist is all it takes. Watch you don't launch it accidentally while shaking someone's hands, for this will not be good for diplomatic relations.
Neutralising pigments make you resistant to something when smeared liberally over your body. What is gamma world's ozone layer like anyway? It was such a big issue at the time of writing, you'd think there'd be some commentary on that. :p
Repellents are another fairly realistic one. Rub it on your skin, it keeps the selected creatures away by smelling absolutely foul to them. Course, using the one that repels humans may be a little problematic. Where are the nose plugs when you need them?
U-Beam guns temporarily negate most of a creature's mutations. Exactly how they know what's a mutation when real creatures have stuff like chameleon skin or wings is another of those things that you'll just have to shrug and accept that It is basically magic.
Brain Jammers block psionic stuff, both incoming and outgoing. Simple, easy and potentially very useful. You will want to be careful if trying to keep a powerful psionic prisoner under lock and key, for the batteries do require regular replacing once again.
Portable Purifiers may save you from gas attacks, but you'll still need to be able to hold your breath in a pinch while they do their work. And they are fairly bulky. Encumbrance is very relevant in a postapocalyptic danger zone.
Mine Detectors allow you to play minesweeper with your life. Move vewy vewy slowly if you don't want to be blown to pieces. And then the GM gives you a mission with a time limit. :p Such is the adventuring life.
Plastic Melding Rigs are an all-purpose bit of kit that allows you to do all kinds of construction work with plastics. Plenty of fun to be had here, especially if you run across an ancient cache of /children's toys/ sacred idols of he who is optimised and first. It's just a shame the comedy is largely missing from the actual articles in favour of straightly presented magitech. Somehow it becomes harder to suspend your belief in this setting the more you're expected to take it seriously.
Dragon Magazine Issue 203: March 1994
part 2/5
Terribly twisted technology: Over the Edge gets in on the gadgetry market. And if you though gamma world got a little silly at times, you ain't seen nothing yet. Where that is starting to get a little embarassed about it's past, this still embraces the weird and makes it core in it's assumptions. And we know now this one won't be diluted by future editions and committee writing. It's also by Robin Laws, which piques my interest a little further. Just how impressive is his imagination really?
Brainostats disguise your brainwaves. This is only of use in a setting which has psionics and brainwave scanners, but there seem to be plenty of those around in Al Amaraja. There are plenty of quirks and dangers to this process, the biggest of which is coming to believe your own illusion. This is the kind of technology that's in a constant state of arms race, giving you a good excuse to have it not work every time.
Hotlines are an alien tool for manipulating would be bead wearing hippies. Those voices in your head? That's not psychic powers or angelic advice. This is why you should rely on your own problem-solving abilities wherever possible. It might be harder work, but you won't get screwed over as often. Very ingenious.
Moonlight is exactly that, moonlight in a torch. Simple, easy to recharge, perfect for detecting werewolves and facilitating magical rituals. Not quite as handy as stored sunlight would be though.
NDE Helmets simulate Near Death Experiences. Some people can get addicted to anything, while others just want to finally hear that their daddy loved them. Either way, it's a new high that may not be illegal, but that's just because no-one's though to ban it yet. You can bet the national enquirer would love to run a stary on how near death experiences are corrupting the nation's youth.
Normalenses are used by government agencies to send people into weird situations without them realising the trouble is supernatural. As we know from the X-files and Men in black, they have no compunction about misdirecting and mindfucking their own people for the greater good.
Reptilisers lampshade another RPG and videogame trope, that of monsters just sitting in their room, attacking mindlessly and fighting to the death. Put these little babies on your minion's heads, and you too can enjoy that kind of fanatical loyalty. Sheer genius. Watch out for brain damage though. You probably want to restrict use of this one to your mooks. Yeah, this collection is a lot more interesting and impressive than the gamma world one. Existing in the boundary between conspiracy theories, tabloid culture and the 4th wall gives them a quite different set of tropes to play with.
Looking for work, chummer?:You should know which system this is for from the title alone. Yup, it's time to go shadowrunning, across seattle's streets. You can never be sure what kind of people you'll meet, but chances are, they'll want to screw you over in one fashion or another. The thing about mission based games is that you need employers. And the nature of employers is to want maximum profit for minimum outlay. And if that means it's betraying time, so be it. This is one of those basic adventure-building articles, adapted for a different system. One reason for shadowrun's success is that it's basically D&D meets cyberpunk, and the adventures reflect that. Killing people and taking their stuff frequently works the other way around, with bursting in and kidnapping people while blowing shit up spectacularly being a surprisingly good career choice. And information has tremendous value, despite being easily copied and disseminated, with corporate espionage and hacking putting a very distinct spin on things, as you can take their stuff without them ever knowing it's gone if you do things right. So this is another article that definitely benefits from tackling the same subject in a different game, with all it's quirks and new opportunities. This is why covering 3rd party games is a real benefit to the magazine long-term.
Arcane lore: Back to the Realms for yet another rifle through a spellcaster's personal collection. Must be several for every village. I'm sure they lose them deliberately to increase their legend. This lot have a definite lightning theme, which means there's a certain amount of overlap with the stuff from the last AL column. Still, the history stuff in this one is well above average, feeling like it would actually be fun to incorporate into your game, rather than something the writer added to fit into the format. And as the new spells are split between three books by the same author, you can have a good adventure tracking down the other two after hearing the rumours.
Normal Aura gives you the ability to emulate the recent Al-Qadim items, and temporarily disguise your magic items. Essentially the reverse of Nystul's magic aura, this is of course particularly useful when combined with it, to keep thieves and rival adventurers off-guard.
Lightning strike is a level lower, single (or possibly double) target lightning bolt. Another unpretentious attack spell that'll fill the gap between magic missile and the big boys of blasting while you're 3-4th level.
Charge is an electrical version of fire trap. Curiously, it's probably better, despite being only 2nd level again. But then, it's probably fire trap that's underpowered, with most of it's strength going into the extended containment bit. Electricity is obviously more amenable to being stored and discharging on touch, as you can do that in real life.
Staffspell is basically an electrical variant of shillelagh. I'm shocked that they're resorting to filler material like this. :p
Lightning shield is another basic energy type substitution. Yawn. Just don't try and cheat and stack it with Fire Shield, as they react explosively. No double damage reflection for you.
Static field is slightly more interesting, sticking to an item, and keeping you from getting in or out for an extended period of time. It won't be nearly as hard to deal with as the prismatic walls, but I think it's about right for it's level. In fact, I'd say the whole balance of this article is just right, which is nice.
Electric Bow is another one that lets you emulate the D&D cartoon, albeit quite impressively, as at higher level you can create a whole electric ballista to bombard the enemy with. The material component is very nicely flavourful too. It shouldn't be too hard to get if you still have good relations with your adventuring party, but isn't the kind of thing you can mass produce either.
Storm allows you to show off to and help out low level druids limited by existing weather conditions for their smiting. It has an interesting compromise between duration of the spell and number of lightning bolts called. It's casting time makes it not really suitable for unexpected combats though. Save it for the big castle assaults. Again, it's fairly familiar, but a nicely written, and more importantly, nicely balanced variant on existing spells.
Dragon Magazine Issue 203: March 1994
part 3/5
Amazing engine system guide: Oooh. A full 16 page special feature. Haven't had one of those since they stopped doing modules back in 86. Along with the 10 page castle-building one in 201, this is one definite positive change this year. Course, the reason they're doing this is because the Amazing Engine isn't selling too well, and they'll stop producing new products for it before the year is out. So what do they have to lose by giving away a taster for free?
In we go then. The most innovative part of this, of course, is the use of a player core and individual characters, allowing you to bounce from genre to genre without it just being a bunch of disconnected one-shots. The ability scores are also interesting, if not quite as successful. Four different macro stats, each divided into two more precise categories. An idea they'll try to apply to AD&D next year in the Players Option books. Combined with the fact that there's still a substantial random aspect to character generation, and that means your characters may have a few common trends from universe to universe, they won't be identical by any stretch of the imagination.
The primary resolution mechanic is percentile based, and this may be one of the definite flaws in the system, as even with skill bonuses, it looks like your average chance of success in a task is going to be under 50%, even for specialised characters. D&D manages to get past the early vulnerable phase with it's clear level structure and advancement path, but this doesn't have the same clarity, especially as it emphasises the fact that beyond the basics, the rules will vary widely from universe to universe. It puts a lot of onus on the GM to both come up with specifics, and get buy-in from the players. And since they only got 9 books out before the line was cancelled, you hardly have the same base to build off that you would with GURPS or the HERO system.
The experience system also seems a bit hinky, with you constantly having to gamble on if you're going to stick with this game long enough to apply the experience now, or if you should hold off and put it all in the core, and possibly get no benefit from it for months. It does seem like between these problems, you will have to fight the system to create a fun long-term game. Well, at least now I have a better idea of why I would or wouldn't want to buy it. That's certainly worth 16 pages to me, even if it isn't really for them.
Eye of the monitor: Doom gets in a guest reviewer to deal with conflicts of interest. It still gets a 5 star review though, as should come no surprise. BFG's, lighting tricks, moving walls, getting monsters to fight one-another, networked multi-player fighting, the amount of awesomeness packed into this game is quite considerable. Don't be afraid to run away and use tactics, because there's a lot of monsters, and only one of you, and you don't want to lose all the weaponry you've accumulated.
Sam and Max: Hit the Road is another Lucasarts graphic adventure. It is a bit buggy, but it does have great graphics and interpersonal interactions, along with their typical sense of humour. It also showcases another instance of RPG guys moving into computers, taking their contacts with them. Go where the money is, etc etc.
Phantasie I, III & Questron II don't seem to have stood the test of time for Sandy. Still, this little compilation is pretty cheap. And it does highlight the ephemeral nature of computer games, disappearing as their platforms are superseded. It'll still be more than a decade before the online and mobile platforms bring old games back into general circulation.
Mario All-Stars gets a surprisingly cursory review. As with the zelda reviews, it's obvious Sandy isn't a true nintendo fanatic. The hammer suit IS in the original SMB3, even if you can only get it reliably in one place. And there is one very significant difference in the physics. Shells used to be faster than fireballs, now they're slower, and this messed up one of my old tactics when I first made the switch. Playing these again reminds me how much faster and less padded games used to be. Thiiiis IIIIssss NOSTALGIA!!!!!!
Libram X gets to a lull in the action. I guess it's time for some exposition. Because heaven knows, we need it at the moment.
Forum: Seth Seyfried has not had the negative experiences talking about gaming to nongamers that so many people have written in to complain about. In fact, his went rather well. Both luck and good social skills may play a part in this.
Joe Kutcherfield gives another reminder that fun should be foremost, be it by killing things and taking their stuff, or constructing elaborate histories and personalities. It's a game, people. Do we keep on forgetting that?
Anonymous makes it's now near monthly contribution, telling us about the recent powergaming escalation in their area. They got arm cramps from rolling so many dice! You call that fun? A very good reason why you shouldn't simply scale up the math. That is not an inherent improvement to a game. If anything, it's a rather bad thing, as it sets the joining bar higher.
Lucy Kinborough is getting tired of the sexism complaints. Yes, Roleplaying isn't perfect, but it's a lot more accepting of women than certain other hobbies. :cough:sports:cough: Not that we should stop pushing to fix the issues that exist, but at least accept that they're not doing everything wrong.
A colorful Collaboration: Once again with the Bradstreet. He's a big name already, so they have to do a whole article on him to show off the fact that they've got him. The cover isn't all his work though. Fred Fields did the colouring, and the whole thing was originally derived from a posed photograph. It is a pretty good example of how you go from a scratchy sketch to a full-color, high detail piece via adding things, removing or going over the little notes. It's also a lot funnier when you see the amount of thought that goes into adding all the over the top badassery. Those tattoos, guns, outfits and circling eagles all took meticulous research drawing upon real-world examples. It once again reminds me that I'm not alone in my degree of obsessiveness, and this stuff is pretty hilarious when viewed from the perspective of an outsider. Where would white wolf be without people like him going above and beyond the call of duty, in the process encouraging us to be proactively pretentious as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 203: March 1994
part 4/5
The plane truth: The teasers for planescape really kick in with this highly abridged A-Z. And the first thing they do is start teasing about the new homebase. This is completely new for the new edition, unlike most of the planes themselves, which are mostly as they were last time we visited. It's ruled by the lady of pain, and the people in it are divided into factions, which fight over philosophical points, for in the planes, what people believe can shape reality. SQUEE! It's all coming right back to me. The modron and the sexy tiefling are also instantly familiar. (and look at the size of those horns! I don't remember them being that big! ) They are going to release some really cool stuff in the next few years, and this is definitely one of the high points. (and again, I'm not talking about the tiefling horns :p ) The mix of slightly surreal imagination and artwork with real philosophical questions underlying the action still speaks to me today, unlike the previous article, which feels very dated. Ok, so technically it's just a promotion article that won't tell you anything the actual books don't, but it's still done very well, with interesting framing and accessible writing. This time, it looks like the promotion style is going to achieve exactly what it was intended too, a mix of "Wait, what?" and "Drool, WANT!" I look forward to reading the next part.
Sage advice: Can the caster of a prismatic spell let their spells through it selectively (no)
What happens if something with magic resistance resists time stop.(the whole thing collapses. Waste of a 9th level spell)
How exactly does a holy sword's dispelling work (with great brutality. They really are paladin's trump card. )
Can a druid help someone else turn undead with a combine spell (sure)
What things from issue 185 have psionics ( none of them. Not everything that goes on a trip to athas develops their mind from the experience. Just like going to university)
I want deck plans for more spelljammer ships (buy the supplements then. :teeth ting: )
My thief wants XP for stealing stuff (Yes, and you ought to give it to him. It's a social contract thing, donchaknow. Otherwise he's hardly a thief, more a trap disarmament and stealth specialist. )
Finally, skip does the indian pantheon this month. Mmm, lots of arms. How will they find places to put them. Good thing Skip's gotta whole lotta sage for them to love.
Role-playing reviews: Shatterzone Is the new game from West End Games. With many similarities to TORG, it has an interesting setting, but rather clunky rules. Big numbers, exponential scaling and card based narrative control, it all seems pretty similar, only with a sci-fi setting rather than a fantastical cross-genre one. Ironically, they encourage you not to use everything, and Rick finds the game runs better that way. Once again, the parallels you can draw with palladium are pretty obvious.
Crosshairs is the first supplement, sending you to a delightfully grim burnt-out industrial planet where corporations rule and danger lurks omnipresent within the rubbish dumps. It all sounds rather Shadowrun meets Judge Dredd, which isn't a bad market to try and tap.
High adventure cliffhangers is of course TSR's new try at a Buck Rogers game. It sees him playing a skeptical cheerleader, wanting it to succeed, but all too aware of it's flaws as well. It's easy enough to learn, but it may be a bit simple and twee for experienced gamers, particularly ones who don't buy into the intentionally gee-whiz pulpiness of it. Jeff Grubb tries his best, but even his sterling work won't save this from the scrapheap of history.
War against the Han is also not really to Rick's taste, with lots of stuff on determining adventures via random rolls. Fashion, thou art not here. And nostalgia is not currently in in general either. It really doesn't bode well, does it.
Battlespace takes Battletech's mechs up, up and away to fight on an interplanetary scale. Surprisingly easy to learn, but hard to master, this get's Rick's highest marks this month.
Rumblings: A second new column starts up this month. Gossip time! Because if anything flourishes in hard times, it's telling tales of how other people are doing even worse, and bitching about the few that are profiting. Particularly screwed are mayfair games, who have just dropped their entire RPG department to focus on board games. So much for DC heroes, Chill, et all. Funny that the comic licences for both big companies have died within a year of each other. Beyond that, we have a whole bunch of hirings and firings, which don't seem too controversial. Larry Elmore has decided he can make more money freelancing again. Willie Walsh is back, Lynn Abbey is joining us, Ken Rolston has moved over to White Wolf, Jonathan Tweet has just joined WotC. Nope, no big dirt this time round. Is there anything people who know what was happening between the lines can tell me about the politics that led to these changes?
The role of books: The iron thane by Jason Henderson takes a minor character from Macbeth, and then continues his story, weaving in further shakespearean supernatural elements, including a faerie invasion. The result is interesting but a bit choppy.
The case of the toxic spell dump by Harry Turtledove is another of his somewhat comic alternate history fantasy tales. This time mixed with mystery story. As usual, even though he's quite playful, he's also put some serious work into the worldbuilding. I suppose like Ed Greenwood, adding fun bits helps keep you around and paying attention for the serious stuff.
Under the eye of god by David Gerrold gets picked apart. It's various elements combine badly, making this less than the sum of it's parts. Not really worth the effort.
Guilty pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton sees our good friend Anita Blake start her adventures by proclaiming "I don't date vampires, I kill them." Yeah, I bet you make that resolution at the start of every year. How long before you fall prey to the sweet temptation of having your cervix bumped again? It's easy to be cynical, but it's important to remember that this is another series that started off pretty good, and has been fairly influential in horror over the past decade or two. There are far worse places to start reading.
Dark Mirror by Diane Duane sends the next generation characters into the mirror universe to meet their goateed counterparts. This gives her a chance to put distinct dark spins on all the regular crew, including a few minor ones, and expand on how history is different here. Hopefully it'll please the fanboys who recall the original mirror universe episode.
A wizard's dozen, edited by Michael Stearns tries to create a set of new fairytales to tell your children. Plenty of familiar names contribute, with Will Shetterly's The princess who kicked butt seeming like the obvious standout. This is very much one for getting for your kids, or at least, someone's kids anyway.
Dragon Magazine Issue 203: March 1994
part 5/5
Fiction: Spenser's peace by Kurt Giambastani. Being top wizard is like being a gunslinger. There's always some upstart punk who thinks they can take you on, that cosmic power is a limited resource, and any competitors need to be eliminated, not worked with. And when you've got immortality, and age will not slow you down, this may get easier to handle, but ever more tiresome, and the knowledge that you will slip up at some point can come to weigh heavy. It's no wonder many liches turn to constructing ever more elaborate many-leveled deathtraps, despite the fact that this actually often attracts even more adventurers just for the challenge. Don't you just wish you could give it all up sometimes. Yeah, not likely. As a certain prime minister once said, the worst day in power was better than the best days after it. But some people manage the strength to give it all up. And when you do, you can find it isn't so bad after all. A nice bit of dramatic irony here, as is often the case in this department. Whether it'll get PC's to follow the example I very much doubt, but it's still a reasonably successful bit of fiction.
Dragonmirth puns it's way through the day again. Ralph has abandonment angst in Yamara. Shandara has just enough strength for one final strike in twilight war. Will someone have to die before the end?
Through the looking glass: Once again we see how companies are trying to survive by experimenting with different scales more. Robert's preamble this month is largely devoted to the scales. 15, 23, 25, 28, 30mm, many of these are close enough together that you can mix them, although certain ones will loom amusingly over others. I guess every problem is an opportunity in this instance, as you can use them to represent a setting full of giants and dwarves.
Our first set of reviews are not of minis, but sourcebooks for Warhammer fantasy battles. Splatbooks are in full force these days, with ones for the empire, elves, dwarves and goblinoids out now. All get Robert's recommendation. In another sign of Game Workshop's expansion, they're also sourcing out production of minis, with Epcast producing an appropriately ugly riveted tank called a gobsmasher. Palladium, on the other hand get another unusually low mark, showing that they need more quality control than one person writing, editing, doing quite a bit of artwork and handling most of the business at once can manage. Grenadier, on the other hand, are their usual reliable selves, producing a whole bunch of humanoid rat variants that seem well-suited for using unofficially as Skaven. Yeah, games workshop really are on the up these days, with the competition in poor shape. This looks like it may be a continuing trend.
TSR Previews: Back to firing on all cylinders and then some here. First up is the Planescape campaign set. Join the factions. Marvel at the awesome Diterlizzi illustrations. Sneer at the cant. Get ready to buy the supplements, because less than a page on quite a few of the infinities out there really isn't enough.
The forgotten realms takes us to where humans are forbidden, in The elves of Evermeet. Now it's been statted, you can bet some group will ruin it. They might even be one of the official novel writers. :p
Al-Qadim has the slightly misleadingly named complete sha'ir's handbook. It also has stuff fairly evenly distributed between sorcerers, elementalists, and a whole bunch of weird and wacky new kits. (which are far superior to the complete wizard's handbook ones) But the genie controlling mages are the big draw of the setting, so they get to enjoy top billing.
Ravenloft shows us some more frankensteinian horror in Adam's Wrath. Is Dr Mordenheim still mucking around with these things after all the times he's messed up? He really ought to learn how to let go. Will you side with the man, or the monster?
Dargonlance has another anthology. A rather large one. The Dragons of Krynn is another one that does exactly what it says on the tin, reminding us that this setting was designed to showcase the blighters in the first place. It is, as we say so many times, Dungeons and DRAGONS.
Two Generic AD&D books this month. HR6: Age of heroes takes us back to ancient greece. Crack out your Legends and Lore, and prepare to get mythological. Or you could play it gritty, removing most of your armour and much of the weaponry. There's also Fighters Challenge II. The original 4 solo adventures did well enough to start the cycle again. Will we get a third go round before diminishing returns become too great to continue?
Speaking of solo gamebooks, the Endless quest line returns. They got a quite ridiculous 36 books before the line ended in 1987. Will they match that run this time around? Two of them get this off running. Dungeon of fear, and Castle of the undead. The second of these is tied into the Ravenloft setting. This is definitely another interesting development.
The primary conflict this month seems to be between those pushing for more darkness in gaming, and those still favoring a whimsical, lighthearted style. Seeing the two approaches juxtaposed so closely, going from the dark hyper-realism of the Bradstreet work to the wispy angular Diterlizzi illustrations really makes them both seem all the more fascinating. The two new columns are cool ideas as well, even if their initial implementations are a bit ropey. But then, the ARES section had similar teething troubles, and I certainly missed that when it ended, so hopefully I'll be able to say the same about these. So a fascinating, if flawed issue, where once again, we see how the hobby is growing and changing, if not as quickly as history would indicate. Remember, trends take quite some time to percolate out into the wider public, often years. Looking at release dates can be very misleading as an indicator of what people are actually doing on a day-to-day basis.
Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994
part 1/5
128 pages. We have to talk dear. We never find time to game anymore.
Oh, do we have to? I was planning to repair the D on our house. One hurricane and who know's where it'd end up. Oh well, I suppose it can wait until tomorrow. I can fix the wisteria you keep going on about as well. What's for dinner?
Frankfurters.
April Fool. Yes, it's a very particular brand of silliness that has infiltrated the cover this year. It's american gothic, but not the way white wolf would do it. The magazine can turn it's funhouse mirror on the rest of the hobby, with fascinating results. At least, it looks that way from the contents page. Let's hope these jokes make me laugh, not groan.
In this issue:
Letters: The usual collection of april insanity, some of it real, some of it fake ensues. Someone desperately seeking issue 200. Mind flayers invading the earth. Super crossovers of ultimate destiny. A combination of foods that seems perfectly optimised for giving you gas. And another couple of people who really want to kill canon characters. Ahahahaha. Metaplot comes down from above, not up from below. You cannot dictate to them like this, and they will laugh at you for trying.
Editorial: Continuing directly on from the letters page is another assortment of semi-random goofiness, this time by the staff. In a job which involves creativity, people will come up with ideas that don't get past the filters. So let's look at what people have been up to, at least the stuff they haven't censored because of course this is a family-friendly magazine, or because it might reflect badly on upper management. :organ music, roll of thunder: They're still finding the time for silliness in the office, which helps them keep the products fun, if sometimes a bit too goofy. April fool indeed.
First quest: Speaking of silliness, we once again continue onward in a surprisingly seamless manner, with Roger Moore telling us just how goofy his early gaming experiences were. We already had hints of that in his many editorials, but here he really goes to town. Serious Roleplaying this is not. But is is pleasing to see that many of our writers actually played the game just as we did. So yeah, badwrongfun aplenty in this tale of punnishly named characters, 4th wall breaking escapades, and lots of half-ogres and stranger unofficial races and classes. This is great fun to read about, even if it would be annoying if the DM was trying to run a serious game. Even call of cthulhu isn't safe from his goofiness. Is nothing sacred! :shakes fist: Yup, this is massively better than the first instalment. He seems to be recovering now the pressure of delivering a magazine every month is off. Hopefully he'll start contributing articles again soon too.
Dance steps for space hulk: In the grim darkness of the far future there is only WAR! And dancing. :D But the dancing must happen at the same time as the WAR! April Fool. Allen Varney comes up with something truly leftfield this year. Fight the genestealers with funky dance routines! Spin, kick, leap, and throw your companions around the field. Defeat them and then breakdance around their corpses. You know, this looks like it might actually work. The moves make sense, and some have valid tactical applications. And Allen shows you how you can recreate real world dance sequences in game. This could be absolutely hilarious, especially if the GM gets in on the act. The idea of genestealers doing the thriller dance routine is pretty hilarious to me. So I really like this one, which manages to be mostly comedy, but treated with a straight face and presented in such a way that it still has useful ideas for gaming. The UK judge awards you a 9.3.
Bard on the run: More filks this year. Elvis, Robert Palmer, Jimmy Buffet, and the Chordettes get to endure having their lyrics twisted to fanstastical ends. Elvis comes off best, probably because it's short and rhythmically simple, while Drizzt with Jimmy Buffet causes my brain the most irritation. But really, it's just another three pages of so-so humour, to make this into a proper april issue. Fun to read once, but not really doing much for your gaming. On we skip then.
Potion commotion: Aaaand it looks like it's crossword time again. Lots of clues based upon obscure setting details this time around, including plenty of planescape ones that you'll currently need to have been an old school planes buff to dig out. How very sneaky of them as a bit of co-ordinated promotion. Still, as usual, have fun trying to solve this one.
Arcane Lore: Another set of silly spells, as has happened many an april before. The crazed book of Mog is one of those magic grimoires that tends to appear and disappear mysteriously when least wanted, and makes very little sense. If you see it and want the stuff within, make a copy.
Gain Weight is near impossible to cast if you read the description. Balance a 50 pound cheese on your head? You'll do yourself an injury trying that. Mind you, if you succeed, the penalties inflicted are well worth it, especially as it's only a 1st level spell.
Wake-up call is the reverse of sleep. This is one of those joke spells that isn't even worth memorising, for it's components look like they'd do the job quite adequately on their own.
Macho's Uncontrollable Hideous Belching does exactly what it says on the tin. A humiliating and rather smelly way of making sure enemies can't stealth away. Watch you don't get indigestion yourself when casting it.
Pelf's rancid arrow may be a fairly blatant bit of parody, but ruining all the supplies of the person you hit is a very nasty way to deal with them, particularly if you're undead and they're at the bottom of a dungeon. Starvation is so much crueler than killing them in combat.
Hold Portal Open is the reverse of the usual hold portal. This is another one that seems useless initially, but really isn't. How many times have DM's screwed you over with one way or trapped doors that slam unexpectedly, leading you to have to find another way out.
Hallucinatory Murrain is a silly pun name, and is another reversed spell. Rather than creating illusionary vegetation, it makes existing stuff look and smell manky. I can think of uses for this one too. This is proving to be a pretty good article really.
Wall of Paper is also a bit silly, but not to be underestimated. It might not be that good an obstruction, but it sure beats spending several hours wallpapering a room. And after all, that's just the kind of convenience magic should be used for. It's ironic that the joke articles sometimes have stuff more suited to everyday use than the normal ones.
Teleport without Awareness is just plain mean. Who knows where they'll end up. It doesn't even have a save either. If they don't have their own means of magical transportation, they'll be living in interesting times for ages after this.
Power word, kill rodents is another one that sounds silly, but has plenty of practical value. One word'll get your house nice and clear of anything smaller than a rabbit in a jiffy. The value of being a specialist if you want to be a commercial wizard once again becomes apparent, as you can do quite a few more appointments per day that way. And so we bring this year's april fools section to a rather good end, that would work fine even without the humour.
Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994
part 2/5
The plane truth: Name changes ahoy! Having introduced the brand new city of Sigil to us, now it's time to go back to more familiar locales. Or are they? The planes are infinite and multifarious, and the same place may have many names. And calling them the wrong ones in the wrong places will get laughter or baffled looks. Of course, we must try not to use the H word, any more than we use the D words, for it is naughty, and miss moral majority will give us a good spanking if she catches us at it. In hindsight this is a reminder that some of the changes they made were for sake of playability and the sheer joy of making cool shit up, such as the gate-towns and the factions, but others were due to company politics and the frustrations that surrounded them. (Lady of pain? :Roll of thunder, organ music) It's also a reminder that despite concentrating on the outer planes, where alignment is one of the most important things in the multiverse, it actually had more moral greys, odd couples and compromises than most D&D settings in it's adventures. So this is another example of how you do teasers right, that sets my nostalgia glands a-secreting, and shows us that we can play D&D quite differently to the way the rules encourage you to go.
Creative thinking: Hmm. An article on advice for developing new psionic powers, along with new actual powers. Well, like advice on other systems, this gives them a good reason to say the same kinda thing as they would on developing new spells, only with different spins. And more psionic crunch is always welcome. I have no objection to this. Course, much of this is by necessity DM fiat, with costs for new powers figured out by eyeballing existing ones with similar strength. The main solid rules here are how long it takes to do research, determing if a power should be a science or devotion, and a rather annoying one that seems to have been invented purely for game balance's sake so psionicists have to expend money the way magic-users would during the research process, which doesn't feel very thematically appropriate. Yeah, I find that mildly irritating. Whatever happened to eschewing material things. That aside, this seems pretty solid. Now let's see about the powers.
Diagnose allows you to figure out what a disease is. Since Cell Adjustment can fix it for the same cost, without the preliminaries, and also gives you regeneration, I'm not very tempted by this.
Feature Dancing is the psionic answer to change self. This isn't too great either, because it's maintenance cost is per round, so extended deceptions don't seem very viable. Not hugely tempting, since there are better ways to disguise yourself.
Tool, on the other hand, is a variant of body weaponry that you probably can find millions of uses for, many which will require you to stay in it for an extended period. Fortunately, it's cost is low enough for that to be feasible. Perfect for the imaginative player.
Bonding is a variant on Charm Person. Again, it's probably a bit underpowered compared to the wizard's spell, but has plenty of interesting quirks. it would be ironic if psionicists are actually weaker at mind-control than wizards in some respects.
Enter Dream is another one that may be a problem due to a maintenance time measured in rounds. Dreams can go on for quite a long time, and even with a little time dilation, I'd rather like to stick around more than an hour or two.
Microkinesis lets your psionicist nick the role of a rogue almost as effectively as a wizard with Knock can. It may also reward inventiveness, but they concentrate entirely on it's lock-picking and trap disarming potential. Guess you'll have to make it worth the price with your mind again. So this is a collection that definitely seems rather conservative, particularly when contrasted with the equivalent spells. Maybe being able to use them more frequently'll balance that out in actual play. Not sure.
Creatures that time forgot: Our irregular series on prehistoric beasties manages to unearth another era to plunder. Issue 112 did dinosaurs in epic detail. 137 filled in the cenozoic. 176 went back to the paleozoic. Now it's time to look at the weird invertebrate thingies from the cambrian era. That is exciting. Course, most of these things were pretty tiny in reality, (and there may be other inaccuracies in light of subsequent discoveries and creative licence) so Greg Detwiler has decided to scale them up to be a decent challenge for a group of adventurers. Some of them are even big enough to swallow you whole. Get your swords out, or you'll be trilobitten.
Opabina are a variant on the things that appeared in issue 176. These ones are actually slightly tougher than last time, but otherwise identical. They're still pretty sluggish and wimpy, but they can surprise you and lash out with their tentacles.
Yohoia are somewhat faster and tougher, with two clawed limbs which they can also use to manipulate things with. They may grapple the PC's, which of course adds a whole extra set of tactics. Let's hope that doesn't put DM's off using them.
Marrella have a xenomorph like face, and a centipede-like body, and whip with their antennae. With a heavily armoured head, they seem like they'll be trouble for a single enemy. Good thing adventurers come in parties. Kill it with fire.
Odontogriphus are flat things with circular maws that drop from the ceiling, enwrap you and suck your blood. Sounds like they fit right in in D&D land. Greg has chosen his topic well.
Leanchoilia are fin-footed arthropods with more tentacles to attack with. Someone ought to find a way to make a show that crosses over the dinosaur and hentai fan crowds. Fun for boys and girls.
Amiskwia occupy the same kind of niche as seals do today, if somewhat grosser. Give them a bit of brains and psionics and they'll fit right into 150's sunset world too.
Hallucigenia are all spines and blobbiness and have a lot of attacks. They're pretty scary both to look at and to fight, especially if they pin you down. Once again, they seem pretty good for a movie adaption. Brr.
Cave hallucigenia are much smaller, and are another thing that drops on you from above and sucks you dry. This means the rest of your body is just left there for other predators, so they serve a valuable role in the ecosystem.
Acidic Hallucigenia are between the previous two in size, and unsurprisingly squirt acid to break down their prey. The HR Giger comparisons become ever more appropriate. Just be thankful they're not poisonous as well.
Sanctacris are armoured things with dirty great mandibles and armoured heads. They take advantage of this by lunging out of narrow passages where you can't surround them, and then retreating with one victim. Down we go, into another dungeon then.
Wiwaxia are all spines and scales, with their jaws in their rear ends. They crawl over you and eat you that way. They're really slow, so they're only a danger in confined spaces and numbers, but they're tough enough to still be a pain to clear out. At least they're not as goofy as piercers.
Ottoia are enormous sea worms with extending proboscises. They have a very amusing illustration that shows just how big they are. Hee. Almost scooby doo really. Letsa hunt those bugs.
Anomalacaris have been turned into whale size tentacled shrimp, ready to grab you and stuff you in their maw. They'll be short work for an actual kraken, but who's got one of those to just whip out any time. So this is pretty cool, and the dual statting for the amazing engine is a nice bit of icing on the cake, showing me how the same creatures translate to two very different systems. Let's hope they can dig up (literally) creatures from a few more eras before the edition changeover.
Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994
part 3/5
The game wizards: Hmm. What is this strange sound my ears detect? Hammy acting? Obvious sound effects? The latest in holophonic technology, trying to make it seem as though sounds are coming from in front, behind, above and below. Editors scrambling to get everything done and properly produced on time and within budget. And the strident voice of hype. Why, it can only be their new Audio CD line. Heeeeere's First Quest! Yes, the lessons they learnt with Dragon Strike are now being applied to AD&D in an attempt to hook new players. Well, it's certainly not a bad idea. But it was rather gimmicky, and we know stuff like that rarely has a long shelf life even if it sells well for a bit. The harder you try to be modern and hip, the quicker you seem embarrassingly dated in the long run. We know all this, but with sales gradually declining, they really have to do something or become irrelevant. And the results do have a certain kitsch appeal. So anyway, this is an article that even they admit is a bit pointless, for regular buyers of the magazine are not their target audience. Don't know why they bothered.
Campaign journal: This column is mostly co-oped by Greyhawk from this point on. As they said last month in the letters section, Greyhawk is cancelled, but there is stuff written but unpublished, and they still want to get it out. Wonder if this means Carl Sargent is still getting paid? Anyway, it's a lot better than nothing, and more evidence of support from the creative side of the company. After all, Blackmoor has never gotten any articles in here.
So yeah, it's time to take a tour around the decaying ruins of the great kingdom. Back in 1982, the general public of Oerth was still unaware of just what a scumbag Ivid was. How things have changed. Now, with undead things occupying many high government positions, it's pretty obvious something is amiss. This is particularly the case in Rinloru, which is nearly 10% undead by now. This is why you should never let priests of Nerull have any kind of secular authority. There's plenty of other nasty sorts in power around here, and they're not all allied either. The result is interesting, but it does seem to push Oerth in the same high magic direction as Mystara and Toril. I suppose that's one of the big flaws of the metaplot heavy post Greyhawk Wars Oerth in general. Poor niche differentiation. On the other hand, the level of darkness is distinctive, this looks like a world where not only is evil flourishing, things could easily get substantially worse, which you certainly can't say for Toril. So this is an article that highlights why this stuff wasn't to many people's tastes, even if it isn't badly written in itself. As the primary writer, Carl must take both the praise and the knocks for this.
Eye of the monitor: Ooh, the question of if computer games can be art. Now that is an interesting one. Their heavy degree of interactiveness means they can't simply be passively appreciated like a painting or TV show. On the other hand, there is a strong element of skill involved in creating them, and they do exist entirely to entertain and provoke thought. (well, apart from DDR, wii fit and stuff like that) Like Sandy, I'll probably incline towards the yes camp. Things like the mario and zelda series are definitely going to be remembered as one of the big cultural components of our era, far more than most bands, authors or painters. By that yardstick, there's definitely a degree of artistry involved.
Companions of Xanth throws sharp contrast upon our intro. The works of Piers Anthony are never going to be remembered as high art, to be honest. The game does not stray far from that formula, with terrible puns aplenty and a very linear plot. No alternate choices or sequence-breaking here, just straightforward puzzle solving. Meh.
Bloodnet mixes cyberpunk & supernatural shadowrun style, with you playing a detective gradually turning into a vampire. This involves both brutal combat and lots of talking to various people to accomplish your goals and survive, making it quite the challenge for Sandy. Save frequently, for as is genre convention, many of the people you deal with will double-cross you, and it may well be easier to just avoid that subplot altogether. Still, it does seem to have some rather cool bits, with random killing accelerating your decline into monstrosity in a pleasing way.
World of Xeen:CD-ROM gets lower marks than the text would indicate. It may be fun, but it also looks and sounds rather primitive these days. And in this fast-progressing world, that is definitely worth subtracting marks for.
Escape from Monster Manor also gets low marks for being simplistic and sloooow. Disk based games need to buffer more, so loading times don't ruin the experience. Silly game designers.
Libram X explains the cosmology of their universe. Also, Holy crap tentacle monster vs King kong mickey mouse world! You don't want to live there. My poor poor SAN score.
Forum: Mohammed F. Kamel presents the case for keeping the numbers out of the players hands, and sticking to vivid descriptions instead. This is a particularly good technique for horror gaming, where you want them to feel uncertain and out of control.
Todd A. Silva gives his contribution to the question of what a paladin should do to the fallen foe. In general, they should pick the merciful option, unless it's completely obvious they're going to offend again if given another chance. Hitting someone when they're down is pretty well established as dishonourable.
David Carl Argall reminds us that a paladin defeating villains but not killing them shouldn't let them go. They ought to be turned over to the rightful authorities to serve the proper sentence, whether they say they're sorry or not. Otherwise you're making a mockery of the law. Course, if the law is corrupt, or as incompetent as Arkham Asylum, then you might be justified in taking matters into your own hands.
Chad Cuss also tries to deal with the problem of just when a paladin should actually be violent, and how far they should go. As with many others, he reminds us that Lawful good does not mean stupid or lacking in proactivity. They should be actively seeking out evildoers to thwart and damsels to rescue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: This time, Lester decides to focus on card games, or at least, games that incorporate cards. Not everyone is content with just dice as a randomiser. And of course, with Magic: the Gathering making real waves, the scene seems to be set for a whole bunch of people trying to use them in some form, quite possibly in tacked on and bandwagon jumpy ways. This is a new topic, and so should be quite interesting.
Quest for the faysylwood sends your adventurers on a quest into the unknown, trying to find the legendary forest. Draw cards, which determine the lands you travel through, the challenges you face, and the dangers you can throw in the paths of your competitors. Sounds like many a board game out there, only with cards. Lots of tactics available here, which means that the leaders of the pack tend to get knocked back again by everyone else, keeping things dramatic. I can see myself having fun with this one.
Once upon a time doesn't do so well, with Lester finding the rules both too strict in some ways, and too vague in others. It is very much a game of skill, with winning or losing a matter of weaving the cards you're given into a coherent story. On the other hand, it looks good as a means of breaking writer's block. like Eno's oblique strategies. Make of that what you will.
Dark Cults is a game of gods manipulating a mortal's life. This of course leads to all sorts of hijinks, frequently fatal. Of course, the nature of card decks means they generally peter out anticlimactically, with the protagonist escaping or dying. Well, that's how it happens in real life. You really need to try to make a game become narrative simply by naturally following the rules.
Creatures and cultists turns the tables, being a card came of mad god cultists competing to see who can summon their dark god and destroy or take over the world first. This is pretty funny actually, with all kinds of chaos ensuing when you mix the mundane and magical to sabotage your opponents. You'll never be able to play Call of Cthulhu with a straight face again.
Sage advice: Do you get strength bonuses to attack and damage when you push a rock off a ledge on someone (no. Gravity is doing most of the work, not you. Skip does not approve of credit stealers )
How hard is it to hit the broad side of a barn (harder than you think, especially in a high pressure situation with missile weapons. )
How do beholders reproduce (See the ecology of the beholder, waaaaaay back in issue 76. Even Skip has trouble remembering stuff from that long ago. )
If I accidentally break a crystal shell and let all the phlogiston in, killing everyone, do I get XP for killing everything in the system (there are so many holes in that logic Skip doesn't even know where to start. Let's just say no, you can't play this storyline. Skip will dispatch the canon police to retcon you if you persist. )
Can Dwarven booze replace greek fire (Almost. It'd certainly make a good improvised substitute. But it's not as useful as dwarf-bread plate armour. Now that's a truly impenetrable defence.)
What happens if a toothless man is turned into a vampire (retractable fangs! Woo! )
Can a molydeus sever heads with an adjusted roll of 24 or 25 (yes. Basic math, my dear, once again.)
Why do you have stats for gods if we can't kill them (We don't. We only give stats for their avatars these days. Skip pitys yo, fool)
How long does it take to memorize a spell, oh great sage (10 minutes per spell level. This gets very tedious at high level)
The dragon project: Car wars! Another of those games that seems to have surprising survivability. Since they've done crossovers with them before, it's no surprise that they get a turn in the Project. Now, how do we incorporate dragons into a fairly low-key sci-fi setting? Well, they managed clones with memory backups in issue 166. A little genetic engineering should do the job. So get ready to face gigantic genetically engineered alligators, able to run at 20mph for short bursts, and with snouts tough enough that if they ram you, your car may well be damaged or overturned. That'll give a shock to people expecting a more conventional battle, even if it won't make a particularly credible extended threat when the protagonists have flamethrowers and missile launchers attached to their cars. The setting stuff is pretty good too, with nice touches of humour making this feel appropriate for the issue without going so far as to break suspension of disbelief. This is definitely making me reappraise Car Wars as a premise suitable for interesting long-term gaming in. Like Divine Right, I'd now be fairly enthusiastic to pick it up if I should stumble across it in the shops.
Fiction: A brush with life by Tim Emswiler. a little while ago, we had a review of a book where someone gained the power to bring things they painted to life. Here we get a rather more humorous spin on that idea. A young student finds that the minis he paints are coming to life. Unfortunately, they're not even remotely under his control, and rather annoying and demanding. This leads to comedy with great ease, and eventually results in the protagonist giving up painting altogether. Oh well. Some gifts are more trouble than they're worth. Better to learn that now than by leaving new york a smoking ruin when the statue of liberty decides to scourge the world of all evildoers. I rather like this one, as I generally tend to when they incorporate a bit of sadism into their humour. Now there's a pattern I have no objection to realising.
Dragon Magazine Issue 204: April 1994
part 5/5
Psychotronic weapons: Tesla! Ahh yes, those wacky theories about wireless transmission. If anything is perfect for gaming, it's these. A surprisingly long article, this is a system free primer on the things he was supposedly able to do with his theories, and how it would make for good games. (along with limitations to make sure that it doesn't become a game-breaking god power. ) There's plenty of ways you can use the ability to capture and transmit energy sympathetically, many which are very scary when combined with real technology like nuclear bombs. It's not exaggerating to say that you can threaten the end of the world quite easily, which means the PC's have plenty of incentive to pull their socks up and get thwarting. This is very definitely an idea they haven't covered before, which means I'm pleased to see this. Like UFO's, it's a 90's cultural reference I'm quite amused to be reminded of, as I wasted many an hour playing Commands & Conquer: Red Alert, where tesla coils were easily the coolest form of base defence, and other pseudoscience devices like the chronosphere and iron curtain also added interesting tactical options. There's plenty of modern day or mildly futuristic/retro settings that could benefit from a little more Tesla, from Mage to Shadowrun.
Swordplay makes light of modern living. At least as an adventurer you're your own boss. Yamara & co get cabin fever. Ogrek solves this problem by taking them to a bad crossover world. Dragonmirth gives a shoutout to pinball. Twilight empire ends tragically, with the lovers separated for an eternity. Or at least until next issue, given the time rate differences between the worlds.
Through the looking glass: For a second time, this column is delivered by Ken Carpenter instead of Robert Bigelow. Actually, looking ahead, it looks like this is a regular arrangement, and they will continue to contribute in alternate months until they both get knocked off in the next big reorganisation. I guess Robert wants to focus on keeping his store open in these tough times, and has less energy to devote to this column. Like the departure of the Lessers, this feels like a sign that we're drawing to the end of the silver age of the magazine. Tarnished silver has a good ring to it.
We start off with a partially humorous look back at how far we've come. Paints and minis have improved quite a bit since the 70's, and for that he is grateful. But really, minis in the 70's weren't that bad. I suppose it is april and a little comedic exaggeration is to be expected. But this does have a touch of meanness to it as well. So much for nostalgia. Let's just enjoy the new painting techniques.
Our proper reviews once again show the rise of games workshop, and other games based on properties that aren't purely minis based. Mutant chronicles gets a review, another boardgame with plastic minis trying to get into the Heroquest/Space hulk mass market. Again, it's fun, but not too complicated, with a nice combination of co-operation and competition between players. But it does mean another nail in the coffin of wargaming, as minis become further detached from that.
For actual minis, we have a serpentine winged thing from Call of Cthulhu. Undead, skaven and orcs, a little for each monstrous side. An anthropomorphicised gorilla that's kidnapped a woman, for reasons we're not sure. A mech for Battletech. A dragon for Earthdawn. And the Green Knight, which is obviously most suited for Pendragon, but could appear in other games as well. So the companies that are surviving are the ones that tie in to other stuff. Another pattern we see again now, as the music industry suffers, and those areas connected to TV, movies, video games, etc suffer less than the straight recording companies.
TSR Previews: Since they recently killed off the D&D line, they now need a new gateway drug to put new bums on seats. Their answer? First Quest. With a CD, and a whole bunch of other bits and pieces, this is another attempt at making the game easy to learn while forcing them to buy the three corebooks as well if you want to get above the first few levels. Also damn useful for any aspiring DM is DMGR6: The complete book of villains. A relatively low key and system free book, this has retained it's usefulness to me long after the edition finished. Covering not only villains but general plot and roleplaying advice, this is a pretty handy reference.
Dark sun gets Forest Maker. Like a decanter of endless water, the idea that there could be something that valuable lying around unexploited simply will not do! The PC's must investigate. It also continues the Tribe of One trilogy. Simon Hawke takes our hero and makes him suffer for his enlightenment. There's still some of the old sadistic dark in him.
The Forgotten Realms doesn't just get a new Harpers novel, it gets a Super Harpers novel! Crown of fire by Ed Greenwood throws all sorts of fun into the mix as people seek the power of spellfire from it's unwilling possessor. Rock. Cheesy hair metal with extra mandolins to be precise, if I know Ed. Oh well. might as well enjoy the ride :throws horns and starts headbanging:
Dragonlance starts another novel trilogy. Night of the eye by Mary Kirchoff. So wizardly politics are going to be involved. Well, when you have good and evil forced to co-exist and work together for the betterment of magic as a whole on the same hierarchy, there are going to be tensions. When powerful upstarts burst onto the scene, they are going to make enemies. Surprised they haven't focused on it before now.
Much better than last year's april issue, with stuff that manages to be genuinely funny, stuff that manages to be generally useful, and stuff that manages to be both at once. With lots of non D&D stuff as well, this feels like a nice continuation from last issue as well, an indian summer of sorts as people send in a wider variety of material again, thanks to the Dragon Projects. For a second time this year, I'll have to give Allen Varney top credit for an issue, with two excellent, highly varied articles. He's really hitting his stride as a writer. It's a pleasure to have him on the team.
Quote from: (un)reason;399285Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993part 1/5
Divide (VVVV) and conquer!: Never split the party, the first words in this article, and one of those lessons most teams learn pretty soon, especially if raised on a diet of horror movies. It makes you vulnerable, and results in players spending long periods of time with sod all to do. But from a plot point of view, sometimes it's the natural course of action to take, and then you need to figure out how to make it work. Fortunately, there are tricks to make it work better. Timekeeping is of course the critical one, as Gary knew well, and the rest of us hurriedly learned. Not that fudging to ensure characters have a greater chance of "co-incidentally" running into one-another again hurts in this kind of game. The other things are making the story interesting enough that people don't mind sitting around waiting for a bit, tailoring the adventures properly to the participating members of the party, proper use of cliffhangers, between session one-on-one interactions, letting players control NPC's, and figuring out how and where they're going to get back together. So plenty of advice I've seen before, a couple of bits I haven't, and quite a few valuable ideas I've often used on this subject missing. I think that adds up to a middling article overall, just high enough CR that I can eke out a few more XP from it.
Middling? Middling?! Hey, I wrote that article years ago, and I was pretty happy with it. Plus, the pictures were pretty amusing. What's missing from it?
I shudder to think what you'll say when you get to the other stuff I wrote. Still, it's nice that someone finally read it.
Quote from: Bill White;414385Middling? Middling?! Hey, I wrote that article years ago, and I was pretty happy with it. Plus, the pictures were pretty amusing. What's missing from it?
I shudder to think what you'll say when you get to the other stuff I wrote. Still, it's nice that someone finally read it.
shit, you should go back in the thread and read what he's said about people who aren't around to defend themselves.
Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994
part 1/5
128 pages. Elminster shows off his stuff on the cover of this issue, while Strahd broods toweringly on the next page. How very iconic. You can bet they'll be making contributions inside as well. The theme is nothing to do with that, however. It's wilderness time again! Trompy tromp tromp. Watch out for that weather, it can be a killer in it's own right.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter praising the african articles, and wondering if they'll do any on other cultures as well. You, good sir, are in luck. Plenty of that to come, including some this issue.
A letter complaining that they don't want to double dip pay for african stuff if it's going to be collected in a book later. Well it isn't, so there. :p Keep buying the magazine.
A letter from a teacher trying to improve roleplaying's image and make people realise it's value in education. Good luck with that.
A bemused question about why subscriptions are handled in a different state to the rest of the company. The ways of accountancy are strange and arcane. Like sourcing food from abroad, it can be cheaper to use a bank in a completely different state, despite this seeming counterintuitive.
A letter from someone who found their infant was hypnotised by issue 200's hologram cover. Hmm. They'll be approaching 17 now. Perfect age to find being reminded of that really embarrassing. I am tempted to see if they're on facebook.
Editorial: Our art director takes the editorial this month, with Kim continuing to be disinterested in day-to day communications, and Dale unexpectedly busy with life crap. This is another of those ones that points out just how many people sending in submissions they have, and what you need to do if you want to be published. Of course, for art, we're looking at a slightly different set of criteria to writing. The biggest one, which may be a bit of a surprise, is that it's not what you're best at that'll get you the job, it's making sure you don't have any obvious technical faults that'll persistently bug people. (I suspect this is a view not shared by his successor, given the way 3e steps away from 2e's realism for a more stylised, aggressive form of artwork) Similarly, ability to make stuff that's appropriate to the articles and complements them will get you regular repeat work, while a talented but self-centered auteur should seek financial renumeration elsewhere. It's not the best that rise to the top, but the most able to network and play the system, and there's a lot of competition. Thanks for that somewhat depressing reminder.
Wraith drills in the fact that it's about people who died, but have reasons to stick around. That's a pretty strong motivator, isn't it. Careful now, don't wanna hit too close to home, otherwise people'll be uncomfortable playing it.
First quest: Karen Boomgarden is our writer this month. Unlike Jim & Roger, she's not one we've had much direct communication from before. The only one I can find is in issue 195, where she made a bit of a gaff while trying to promote For Faerie, Queen and Country. And like Roger, it seems that her early gaming experiences were more than a little silly. (and quite possibly still are) So this is a runtthrough of not just her first, but a whole bunch of the more memorable experiences in her gaming career. In the process, she has learned how to make her characters survive a little longer, just how differently people will approach the same problem, and when to duck and cover to avoid explosions. :D Reasonably good fun, this is another illustration of what TSR's office culture and approach to gaming is like at the moment. Do not be surprised if there are monty python quotes.
Oh for the love of. Ahh yes, one of TSR's goofier products during their last few years. Interactive audio CD's. Including First quest, the mimir, and those dreadfully forgettable soundtracks for red steel. Almost as pointless as multiple holographic covers for comics. I do not approve.
The people: Another dozen page special feature! Yup, they are definitely doing more of these this year. Having done africa last year, David Howery turns his sights on the native american setup. This is a little tricky to research due to the lack of written records, and the fact that we were destroying their original cultures pretty much as we discovered them. Still, there's more than enough to fill a magazine article. As with many milieus, it's what you leave out that's more important than what you put in, and you need to do some pretty extensive pruning to make this work. Actually, there seems to be more removed than added, which is slightly uncomfortable to me, but what can you do. There's plenty of useful stuff here, but it does feel slightly like diminishing returns compared to the african article. Still, let's have a good look at the new kits.
Eastern woodland warriors are great at stealth in their native terrain, for no particular penalty other than optimisation. They're also scary archers. One of these would definitely shape the party's combat tactics in an interesting way.
Great plains warriors are another one of those kits that gets special benefits on their horse, but then has to deal with the hassle of bringing a horse everywhere. It's not quite as big a deal as an elephant, but you aren't taking it in most dungeons. This also shows the bias towards invaders already being present. Horses were not an indigenous animal of the americas for quite some time.
Southwest desert warriors are also excellent at hiding within their natural terrain, and highly unpopular outside it. They'll never be the face for a party, but at least they're closer to balanced than the east coasters.
Shamen are pretty much as you'd expect. Esa good. E's are good. He's Ebenezer Goode. They're good with nature spells, and can summon animals to make sure the tribe doesn't starve.
Mystery Men are the sole wizard archetype, distrusted but tolerated, like wizards in many places. They have no real penalties apart from lack of formal tuition, and their social benefits won't be particularly relevant as adventurers. All pretty meh really.
Tribal Scouts also show how the conventional D&D class system is a bit of a shoehorn here. Since so many of their skills won't be commonly used, they get to ignore the usual limits on hyperspecialising. This means they're invaluable at low level, but may struggle at higher level, unless you allow them to pick up optional thief skills like the Dark Sun ones.
Plenty of magic items too. Snake belts let you turn into a rattlesnake. As usual, I have to hope the DM will give you full poison privileges and not nerf you.
Calling stones are another item that seems pointless to an adventurer, but invaluable for a community. Hopefully they'll just give it up after retrieving it, thus saving the poor beleaguered tribe from starvation.
Medicine fire is a shamanic bundle that gives you a whole bunch of fire based blasty spells and protection. It may be the most common attack type, but it'll still impress the average native.
Tribal lances only work for members of the tribe, and terrify the people fighting them. The kind of thing that'll really annoy players when they find they can't profit from it later.
Pipe tomohawks are implements of war and peace, forcing honesty at pow wows from all who smoke it. Yeah, I can see that being responsible for more than a few wars. :p
Bison skull totems boost all the villagers around when properly mounted, plus giving their shaman a bunch of fairly wide-ranging nature spells. They're another one you probably won't be able to loot as well, making players all the more keen to hunt down every last one of them if they're on the other side.
On top of that, there's the idea of minor magical items that only work for the intended person, possibly handed down through family lines. You see them pop up all over the world, but without commerce, they're particularly common here. As before, the whole thing doesn't seem quite as gameable as the African setup, but it's certainly not terrible. The crunch definitely needed a second editorial pass though.
Quote from: Bill White;414385Middling? Middling?! Hey, I wrote that article years ago, and I was pretty happy with it. Plus, the pictures were pretty amusing. What's missing from it?
I shudder to think what you'll say when you get to the other stuff I wrote. Still, it's nice that someone finally read it.
That's the problem. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with it, but there wasn't anything hugely exceptional either. When you're reviewing a good half a dozen articles day in day out for years, that means it becomes just another face in the crowd. It's one of the most annoying aspects of doing this, that it is such a large job, and so many people will have to wind up in the middle. In a way, I actually look forward to the articles that are actively bad, because it gives me more interesting things to say.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;414387shit, you should go back in the thread and read what he's said about people who aren't around to defend themselves.
We've been through this before. I believe that whether someone is alive or dead, or if you like them as a person shouldn't have any bearing on how you assess their creative output. You do not. I'm perfectly willing to listen to arguments why I should change that opinion.
Quote from: (un)reason;414671That's the problem. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with it, but there wasn't anything hugely exceptional either. When you're reviewing a good half a dozen articles day in day out for years, that means it becomes just another face in the crowd. It's one of the most annoying aspects of doing this, that it is such a large job, and so many people will have to wind up in the middle. In a way, I actually look forward to the articles that are actively bad, because it gives me more interesting things to say.
No, that's cool. I say I was pleased with it, and I was. It summed up many of the lessons I learned from my H.S. DMing experience, and I think it was cleverly written (if I do say so myself). I'll grant that it didn't contain anything that any reasonably competent DM of a particular gaming style couldn't have picked up on his or her own, but my sense is that many people never get beyond the "Never split the party" mantra, and miss out on thereby on opportunities to be awesome.
Ultimately, however, I'm intrigued by your comment that there's stuff that I missed about split-party techniques. Can you amplify that remark? I'd appreciate broadening my repertoire.
Anyway, I have two other articles coming up as you move forward through the 90s: (1) in Dragon 220 (Aug 1995) a piece called "Dangerous Ground" and then (2) in Dragon 274 (Aug 2000), "The Hero With 1d1000 Faces." You don't have to say nice things about them, but I look forward to your assessment.
Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994
part 2/5
Getting back to nature: Oooh, an extensive semiofficial rules revision in the magazine. We haven't had many of those since Gary left. Jon Pickens starts picking apart the cleric and druid spell lists, with a little help from Skip. Druids have lost some of their important 1e spells due to the choice of spheres they were put in. Meanwhile, generalist clerics look grossly overpowered compared to wizards, and most speciality priests. And a couple of the spheres are pretty much useless as is, particularly Astral. So he sets about majorly rejigging the sphere lists. All needs quite a few more, like Dispel magic. Elemental stuff gets a serious reworking, as do creation, charm and divination. The difference between guardian and protection is discussed. Necromancy and healing likewise get a discussion on the awkwardness caused by the positioning of certain spells, and how it affects clerics trying to do their job. Summoning and sun also need a bit of filling in. This all seems pretty well thought out. Course, ironically, it makes both clerics and druids more powerful as well, which isn't such a great idea. But as long as people think of them as support classes, they'll continue to not use them to their full game overtaking potential. This is one I'd be particularly interested in hearing actual play reports on what happened when applied.
Arcane lore: Jon Pickens continues to draw upon the past and try and tune up the divine spell lists. If this was a bit more innovative, it'd be pretty close to a classic special feature. Even as it is, it's pretty useful, deliberately concentrating on the less used spheres.
Seal of Destiny shields the recipient from any divinations that would determine their future. This is less fiat limited than it would initially seem, but still varies widely in usefulness based on your campaign style.
Alter Luck gives you rerolls, as is standard for luck effects. You'll still need at least a moderate amount of real world luck for this to be useful then. :p
Windbearer is an interesting variation on levitation that'll let a whole party go up an awkward shaft. Careful getting off. Set a whole bunch of these in your lair for fun zeldaesque puzzles.
Calm Winds is a bit of limited weather control for those clerics who aren't high enough level for the full package. Typical that you would get the dull stuff before the interesting like weather summoning.
Clean Air is also a lifesaver, but not very impressive. Still, if it keeps you from being railroaded into module A4, you're going to be pretty happy you picked it that day. This is the joy of having lots of new spells to select from supplements.
Conjure Air Elemental is one of your basic symmetry fillers. Not really worth mentioning.
Whirlwind is the air equivalent of earthquake, your basic 7th level elemental devastator. Clerics may take a bit longer to get the AoE spells, but they certainly don't lack them.
Precipitation is from Unearthed Arcana. Another minor weather effect making it drizzle a bit, it's been changed a bit due to the lack of segments in 2nd ed, and the rules on what it actually does mechanically are a bit clearer. A typical 2nd ed revision then, for good and bad.
Cloudburst is also a rescued UA scrappy. It gets pretty much the same treatment. Enjoy raining on people's parades.
Tsunami is a second bit of elemental symmetry. Whatever elemental god you serve, you'll be able to kick ass righteously at high levels. Not that that's a great surprise if you've been picking up Dark Sun or Al-Qadim stuff.
Animate Statue is lower level and less versatile than animate object, but may actually be better as a combat spell. After all, it'll probably last longer than a combat, and immunity to nonmagical weapons counts for quite a lot. Course, there is the issue of finding a nonmagical statue in a dungeon. :p Perhaps you should bring your own in your pack and enlarge them when needed.
Lesser & Greater Guardian Seal keep various supernatural creatures out, as you would expect. Basically just an extended customisable protection from evil, it shows why the guardian sphere is underfilled. You need a more sadistic imagination for nasty triggered effects like Symbol has my dear.
Imbue Purpose answers the question of what spell you need to make weapons with extra plusses against specific creatures. It's reasonably kick-ass and customisable, as you would expect, but rather expensive. Better get investing to make it permanent if you want to save in the long run.
Inner Sanctum is your basic scrying and teleportation blocker, albeit rather high level. Another one you can profit highly from making permanent, possibly for other people as well, as this kind of thing is much in demand by the rich and diabolical.
Ancient Curse is from Oriental Adventures. It not only fucks you over, but your descendants as well. One that certainly hasn't been nerfed in the slightest.
Shield of the Archons is a high level spell deflector of so-so power for it's level. It will be reprinted soon in planes of law, making it all the more official. Good to see this article got drawn upon as well as drawing upon. Makes it feel more like a proper thread of history.
Warmth gives nonelementalists shielding against cold effects. There's more than one route and reason to get an effect, especially where gods of odd portfolios are involved.
Sunburst splats undead and dazzles everyone else. Another one that would go into common use in the future. This is proving to be a pretty influential article actually.
Crown of Brilliance is another one that would become common knowledge among Archons in Planes of Law and get a whole bunch of various power variants as well. So with both familiar faces from the past, and soon to be familiar faces in the future, this article is both useful and full of nostalgia. A pleasure to be reminded of, really.
Rifts gets a sourcebook making gods playable too! Now everyone'll want to play them. Man, that guy has a lot of arms.
The role of books: The legend of nightfall by Mickey Zucker Reichert is a fairly low-key fantasy detective story, who's protagonist can alter his density. This minor magic is of course used inventively throughout the story and allows them to develop his personality better than someone with godlike power. Fairly common story. Escalate to epic to soon and you lose people.
The imperium game by K D Wentworth is another novel that shows the arrival of MMORPG's was anticipated by quite a few writers. This one gets picked apart though, because it's economy doesn't hold up. If people are spending virtually their whole lives playing the game, how are they affording doing so. I think neither the writer or the reviewer fully realise how much costs are going to come down, or how addictive real MMO's can be. Many people do wreck their lives and live off their parents or unemployment benefit for years to spend 20+ hours a day on them. Reality is stranger than fiction.
Fallen heroes by Dafydd ab Hugh is a Star Trek DS9 novel where nearly everyone dies. Of course, this being Star Trek, time travel is involved, and the reset button is pushed by the end of the story. Hey ho. At least it's well done this time, with characterisations being accurate and events not seeming gratuitous.
Indiana Jones and the white witch by Martin Caidin, on the other hand, does not manage to sound like the Indy we know from the films. Way too much exposition, and too little action. And no sexual tension at all? That's no good. :shakes head:
A college of magics by Caroline Stevermer is a little more technologicaly advanced than the average medieval fantasy, while not being quite modern or cyberpunk. Regencypunk? Sounds good to me.
Crown of fire by Ed Greenwood shows that he isn't quite as palatable over the course of an entire novel as he is in magazine articles. Elminster's voice grates on our reviewer, while the plotting ironically seems like it would work better as a module than a novel. It's like reading about a macguffin hunt from the PoV of the macguffin? Iiinteresting.
Quote from: Bill White;414830No, that's cool. I say I was pleased with it, and I was. It summed up many of the lessons I learned from my H.S. DMing experience, and I think it was cleverly written (if I do say so myself). I'll grant that it didn't contain anything that any reasonably competent DM of a particular gaming style couldn't have picked up on his or her own, but my sense is that many people never get beyond the "Never split the party" mantra, and miss out on thereby on opportunities to be awesome.
Ultimately, however, I'm intrigued by your comment that there's stuff that I missed about split-party techniques. Can you amplify that remark? I'd appreciate broadening my repertoire.
A couple come to mind at the moment. I'm a big fan of the 2 DM approach, be it as guest bad guy or general splitting of duties. Either moves things on a lot quicker, reduces players sitting around with nothing to do, and makes fun plot twists that you would never come up with on your own more common.
The other one is instead of trying to keep what the players are up too while split from each other secret is to not do so, and let them help engineer the co-incidences that bring them back together. There's a whole bunch of metagame tricks that weren't in common use back then, that have since appeared in fairly popular games, often with mechanical backup. But then, you probably know about them now anyway.
Quote from: (un)reason;414671We've been through this before. I believe that whether someone is alive or dead, or if you like them as a person shouldn't have any bearing on how you assess their creative output. You do not. I'm perfectly willing to listen to arguments why I should change that opinion.
You are reviewing this stuff. I see zero reason why you aren't allowed to review it if the person is dead or probably long moved on.
I mean, it would be as if I can't bash original White Box D&D for being a poorly written, confusing, unplayable pile of ass because its writers have passed on.
That would just be stupid.
Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994
part 3/5
Rumblings: Ooh. A sighting of Gary! Admittedly, it's because TSR sued his ass over the Dangerous Journeys game, but still, first time in a few years. Everyone is happy about the resolution? When said resolution is not only the game ceasing production, but TSR acquiring all the rights, I very much doubt Gary or GDW have the same opinion of this outcome. A little googling shows that this is another case where they bombarded them with lawyers, and probably would have lost the court case, if it were not for the fact that they had far more money to throw at the problem, forcing them to settle out of court to avoid bankruptcy. Truly a case where our evil overmistress (roll of thunder, wolves howl) worked to justify her appellation.
The rest of our gossip isn't nearly as interesting. Dragon magazine is getting a spanish edition. I wonder how long that'll last. WEG is making an indiana jones RPG. White wolf are following TSR into the novel business, quite profitably too. Margaret Weis is working on a star wars book. Lace and steel has a new publisher. Some companies are flourishing, others are suffering. Have you backed the right horse, or are we all onto a loser here really.
Immortal! What colour of pretentiousness will you specialize in? Oh wonder of worlds that gives us something so incredibly easily mockable. It's all coming back to me now!
The plane truth: Our third and final instalment of the teasers takes things in a very dramatic horror direction. They may be making the planes more accessible, but it's still full of powerful and alien things that can completely mess up your life if you meddle with them. The codex of the infinite planes is one of those things. You meddle in it, you risk a fate worse than death, and making the lives of many others miserable in the process. Gods are another thing you need to tread carefully around. They might be one of the primary employers, but they aren't known for their generous severance packages. (severance of your package, on the other hand) So this serves well as both a teaser and a warning. You have plenty of cool stuff to explore, but don't expect to be able to waltz out here and kill your way through every problem. Your DM should make sure this place remains wondrous and scary even at the highest levels. Now git yerselves a-buyin'.
Forum: Patrick J. Dolan brings the real world perspective of an army chaplain into the paladin debate. Important in the process of sparing and treating enemies is making sure they're no longer a threat. This may be a bit harder in a fantasy world, but you still don't torture and kill a defenceless person. The ends do not justify the means. I'll bet he hated what the US army became after 9/11.
Dan Cuomo seems to have a somewhat lower standard of what counts as an unredeemable monster. Assassins and evil clerics fit into this category. I radiate dubiousness at this suggestion.
Alan Clark is another person who makes sure his paladins hand people over to the judgement of the law rather than killing where feasible.
Craig Hilton encourages you to spell out exactly what lawful good means in your campaign before you start. That'll at least deal with half the arguments, as they won't be transgressing from ignorance. And don't set them traps just to strip them of their powers. That kind of adversarial play is just asking for trouble.
Alan Lauderdale gives us one of those letters that replies to half a dozen recent topics. But foremost of these is the alignment one. The rules are a gross oversimplification, and need some GM attention to make everything work. That is why D&D isn't a computer game.
Paul Peterson turns defining morality for a campaign into an entire session in itself, requiring short essays from each of the players. Yeesh. Well, it'll solve that problem, but have fun trying to get all the players to join in. This sounds altogether too much like hard work for my liking.
Eye of the monitor: Gateway II: Homeworld is a text adventure with still shots to show you what's going on. It doesn't get a very good review, being noth primitive and rather unfair in design. Without the hint book, you're unlikely to be able to finish this.
The hand of fate is not a licence of Manos, (unfortunately) just another fantasy adventure game where you point and click, selecting options off a list. It is a bit slow and easy, but Sandy likes it anyway. There are far worse in the genre.
Dungeon Hack is rather more unusual. An upgrade of the roguelike principle, using the AD&D rules, it has lots of customisability, which means you can control the challenge level pretty well. And of course, near infinite replayability, as long as you don't mind the puzzles being basically the same after a while. This definitely sounds quite cool.
Dark Sun: The Shattered Lands gets the same marks, but a less positive review. It's interesting, but also hard and grindy. Save frequently, blah blah blah. It's a shame CRPG's do have to be more combat centric than good tabletop ones can manage.
Libram X introduces the macguffin, and the retro-cyberzombie. Even if this isn't set in the same universe as the planescape cosmology, it certainly uses quite a bit of the same tone. Which isn't a bad thing.
Sage advice: What level can bugbear shamans be (7)
What level can voadkyn druids be (5)
Can humanoids become bards or not (Most of them can only become the nerfed bard kit in the book. Skip has forgotten this, and makes a dodgy ruling)
How high a level can alaghi shamans get (6)
Can you permanance wildfire (no, and it wouldn't do much good anyway)
What's the range of speak with dead (1 yard. Corpses don't have very good hearing. )
Can item shrink a living creature. How about dead creatures. How about fire ( no, no and yes)
My wizards want to put plate mail on after using up their spells for the day. (Well they can't. They're not properly trained, and they'll collapse like schoolkids forced to hike a hundred miles with a fifty pound backpack. Plus, who's carrying the armour when they're not wearing it? Doesn't that impede their fighting usefulness somewhat)
There are maps missing in FRS1 (Skip will solve that. Skip is more than used to dealing with this little problem. )
Gauntlets of ogre power, girdles of giant strength and warhammers stack?! Isn't that broken? (Yes, but you've gotta use all three simultaneously, or no go. Someone back in 1st ed really liked Thor, and we've never bothered to clean out that bit of exception based design because it's cool.)
Do psionic attacks go twice against non psionic opponents (Yes. This isn't as great as it seems)
Can psionics and magic work together (not easily. Magic is from mars, and psionics from venus. Relationships will be filled with misunderstandings. )
Why doesn't mind blank completely protect you from psionics (Be thankful it provides any protection at all. You know they normally don't work on each other at all. )
You got dark sun scroll creation wrong! (Skip apologizes profusely. Please don't cut Skip's pagecount or retcon Skip, oh mighty TSR overlords. Skip assures you that Skip will do better next time. Skip has kept up on his godly duties, expanding on the gods of nehwon. Isn't that worth something? )
Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994
part 4/5
Fiction: Cap Revoort's luck by Daniel Hood. A sequel to the story in issue 195, this manages to answer the ambiguity left at the end of that story quite nicely, while still working as a standalone. It also highlights the dilemma of the swashbuckler's luck, where you are destined to accomplish great things and have legendary adventures, but the flipside of that is that you never get to live a quiet life, and the people and things around you that aren't so blessed will suffer lots of collateral damage as they're swept into your wake. It may be pure advantage from the PoV of a person playing them, but from the perspective of the character themselves, the constant drama can be a bit tiresome. As with the previous story, the character dynamics are pretty good as well, and there's plenty of implications that there's a wider world built up by the writer's notes, ready to go if needed. This is one campaign setting I could definitely stand to see a bit more of. We won't se it here though, unless the Freeport referred to repeatedly is the same one Green Ronin did quite nicely out of in the early d20 era. Let's check this. Doesn't look like it. Damn overcommon names.
It's never too early: Or once again, we have awesome plans for our conventions! Book now, otherwise you might miss out! Q is our special guest! More than 10,000 dollars worth of prizes to be won! Roleplaying and board games aplenty! (note that wargaming is now subsumed into the board game stuff, another sign of it's decline) An open gaming library that you can use to browse books and check out for use in games! (what are the odds many of them'll be missing by the end) And tons of stuff that's exclusive to RPGA members, so sign up now! Meh. More pure promotion. Like christmas, it seems to come earlier and earlier every year.
12 secrets of survival: Ooh. A collection of toys by Spike Y Jones. He's generally pretty good. Although not at math, apparently, as there's 13 things detailed in this article, not 12. Maybe it's the editor's fault. Maybe they meant 12a secrets, in the way that some buildings skip the 13th floor because it's bad luck. Either way, it's amusingly facepalm worthy.
Amulets of catnaps allow you to sleep in small bursts and still retain full functionality. For a couple of days anyway. Then, like most magic items of this sort, they'll start causing problems. Sleep seems to be one of the hardest things to get rid of completely in D&D worlds.
Armor of restful sleep lets you do the paranoid adventurer thing and stay fully protected in the roughest of terrain without having backache afterwards. Now you'll never get them out of it.
Exposure salve protects you from the elements for up to a full week. Well, you know how tiresome it gets having to apply makeup properly every day and wash it off before going to bed. Like the previous one, this'll save quite a bit of time on a day to day basis if you can get hold of it.
Eyes of the condor let you see as if you were soaring high above your location, getting a birds eye view that can be quite handy tactically. Just don't try to operate stuff at the same time, for perspective shifts make you clumsy and quite possibly nauseous.
Otiluke's survival sphere lets you encase yourself in an airtight bubble that also provides for your needs when active. It can be rolled around by the occupants or anyone around, so it won't make you totally safe from monsters and hazards, but a giant invincible hamsterball makes you able to explore more safely than normal, and is also a thoroughly amusing visual. I love it.
Pavilions of plenty are a somewhat larger device that also gives you a full food supply, and some protection from the elements. It even has it's own inbuilt butler, who can probably tell you all sorts of stories about what trips other adventurers took it on. Be careful packing and unpacking it though, or it will gradually lose it's value.
Potions of camel thirst are another thing that allow you to defer, but not eliminate your bodily needs, with diminishing returns setting in when overused. Still, the comedy value of drinking several week's worth of water to make up for your deprivation is quite appealing to me, so you can definitely go in my game.
Stone Cloaks let you disguise yourself as a rock when wrapped around you, a la morgan le fay. Like many transformations, there's the danger of coming to think like the thing you've become, which isn't very good for rocks. Could be a looong time before you turn back if that happens.
A straw of breathing makes sure you have an air supply on the other end no matter where you go. Which will leave you looking like a yokel when sucking this out of the corner of your mouth all the time in space, but hey, better ridiculous than dead, as we've said before. (and contradicted ourselves on a few times - it's such a hard decision.)
Sun Cloaks are of course very helpful in dealing with inclement weather. They do have a catch though. You wear it one way to stay warm, and inside out to stay cool. Put it on the wrong way round by mistake, and you'll be suffering twice as quickly. What are the odds someone'll do that while in a hurry to pack, particularly if there's monsters around?
Sustain fire makes anything you set alight burn for 10 times as long before being consumed. Along with the obvious use in dungeon delving and cooking, this also seems usable as both a torture device, and ironically, a last ditch protection should you happen to find yourself plunged into the elemental plane of fire unprepared. Gotta love those low key utility spells that encourage you to use your brain.
Rainfire prevents your fire from being put out even by being plunged fully underwater. If used to set someone's hair alight, you can bet they won't be happy about that.
Rainshield deflects any water from above, allowing your cleric to keep their dignity, and maybe even their life if acid is involved. Another of those utility spells that doesn't sound too impressive, but certainly makes things a lot more comfortable. Now, if only they'd remembered to include a sphere listing for it. So this article does have lots of cool, useful and funny things, but also some seriously sloppy editing marring the product. What's with that?
The game wizards: As hinted earlier, it's time for Ravenloft's new edition. Which means it's promotional article time, as is now the norm for their major releases of the month. In it we see a certain degree of sympathy for the devil, as happens far too often with vampires. Strahd tried to be a good and just ruler all his life. He would never have fallen if it weren't for that bitch Tatyana teasing him and then rejecting him! O_o Silly silly fangirls. That aside, this basically just fills in what's been happening over the past few years in game metaplotwise, and what's in the new boxed set. Nothing too surprising. Another healthy gameline chugging along here. We can move on and not worry about it collapsing when we take our eyes off it, unlike Azalin with his plots. :p
Dragon slayers: Council of wyrms! Another of the ambitious but ultimately horribly flawed products released during the final days of TSR. And another article of cut material directly from the official writers. Now obviously, in the CoW setting, dragon slayers are intended as NPC's, but in most other campaign settings, they'd be just fine for players, if a bit specialised and not nearly as useful against any other type of monster. As with Spike's article, this is a grab bag of stuff, including a selection of expansions for the existing dragon slayer kit, a new kit, and a new monster. 5 new special attacks for dragon slayers are the first thing, which is aided by the option to spend your proficiency slots on getting more of them instead of weapons. As with any specialisation, this is cool, but facing creatures not subject to them will give you problems. More options give you more chances to screw your life up.
Slayer-mages have some pretty extensive benefits and penalties, even more than their fighter counterparts. Not just good at killing them, they also get to communicate with them and control them. Well, as wizards, they are more prone to taking the wider view and thinking about things instead of rushing in. That doesn't make them any less dracicial though, as they need regular supplies of their body parts for their spells to function at full power. Let's hope the DM allows lesser draconic things like pseudodragons and hybrids like chimeras to count for that criteria, otherwise they'll have an exceedingly hard time at lower level, and missions'll grow tedious over the course of a campaign.
Undead dragon slayers reuse the skeleton warrior picture, which makes sense even if it is a bit cheap of them. After all, they do have a lot in common, and are frequently called back from the grave by some jackass who doesn't really care about them. Another bit of crunch that won't be that necessary in most games, but it's nice to know it's there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews: GURPS Vampire: the Masquerade gets thoroughly praised for taking the great themes of Masquerade, and marrying them to the solid mechanics of GURPS, while being visually better than the average book in either line. Concepts that were originally shrouded in pretentiousness are clearly explained. And of course you have a far greater range of other genres to cross over stuff with. What's not to like? Now they just need to take those lessons and transfer them back to the main line next edition.
Dark alliance: Vancouver sets Vampires vs Werewolves to the fore, with the two factions fully aware of each other, and sharing the city uneasily. The kind of thing they'd consciously step away from in revised edition, this is marred by both silliness and vagueness, with much of the location stuff feeling like it was lifted straight from a tourism handbook. If you're going to do regionbooks, getting a writer who actually lives there does help.
Caerns: Places of power does slightly better, but it seems like their best ideas are the ones that are developed the least. They're able to just throw away all kinds of cool adventure seeds, leaving it up to you to turn them into full encounters. Ahh, the folly of young game designers. Soon your skills will be greater, but your inspirations fewer, and you'll wish you hadn't been so casual with your talent in the past.
Umbra: the velvet shadow shows that White Wolf can match TSR in their imaginative otherworldly realms quite handily. From the heights of the cosmos, to the lowest, most defiled atrocity realm, there's tons of highly adventurable locations for werewolves and mages to explore. The further away from reality you step, the freer the rein you have as a writer.
House of strahd gets the full 6 pips on the review die. It was already a classic. Now it's bigger, better described, and with more DM aids to help the horror proceed smoothly. Good luck, you'll need it.
Castles forlorn doesn't do quite as well. As a setting, it's pretty amazing, but it is very much up to the DM to construct an adventure out of the locations and denizens of this place. Just leaving them to wander around will be a confusing and frustrating experience, for it's not likely they'll figure out how to deal with this darklord permanently without a few clues. Well, maybe they can just escape with their lives to tell chilling tales instead. Isn't that the Ravenloft spirit?
Bears Vs Sharks in Dragonmirth! Yamara and Stress try their damndest to figure out how to get rid of Ogrek. Twilight empire finally comes to an end, but is left open for a sequel. Did everything turn out the way the real big bad wanted it too anyway?
Through the looking glass: The lead bill is overturned! Yay! Course, coming well after the 11th hour, this technical victory is still a loss in real world terms. Which is really the worst possible outcome, as it leaves both the advocates and defenders frustrated and unhappy. The only people who win are the lawyers. Bah. I'm repeating myself aren't I. Nevertheless, the problem remains deeply entrenched in the system. I don't see a solution coming any time soon. And as I'm not in a position to make the problem work to my advantage, ( I may be able to master legions of arcane rules, but I don't really have the public speaking ability or interpersonal skills to make a good lawyer) I shall keep complaining.
Back to the minis though. A marine standing on top of an armoured vehicle, defending it from all comers. A trio of skeletal musicians, playing drums, flute and bagpipes. Yeah, you know the overlord is truly evil when they make their minions play bagpipes. Two heavily armoured futuristic soldiers. Their heads are obscured, so they'll be easily reduced to mooks in the face of real heroes. A rather malformed earth elemental, approaching close enough to humanoid that it's starting to go down the uncanny valley. Dracula and a werewolf, a little late for halloween. A dragon having a good snooze. Two more dragons in flight, quite possibly about to fight. Some rather heavily armed and armoured space rangers, with spare weapons so you can customise them. A whole bunch of flags and standards, that you can again use to make your minis army look more professional. A vaguely enterpriseish little spaceship, designed to serve as an escort to larger ones. And a trio of non-cheesecake female rangers, ready and able for kicking butt and trekking through the wilderness. Sci-fi seems to be doing better in minis than it is in RPG's these days.
Ral Partha does a newspaper style advert. Nice to see one of them pop up again.
TSR Previews: Looks like I spoke too soon last month. Barely 3 years since the last basic D&D set, they release another one, entitled The classic Dungeons & Dragons game. Once again, I am curious as to how this version differs from the previous ones.
AD&D, as usual, is stuffed to the gills. First up is another spectacular boxed set opening up a new world and milieu. Council of Wyms! Finally, you can play as a dragon. A substantially nerfed dragon in comparison to NPC ones, but a dragon nonetheless. Now, um, what do we do next adventurewise? How do we compensate for the truly ludicrous XP requirement disparities? Oh well, can't fault them for trying, just the execution.
A third boxed set this month as well, the revised Ravenloft setting. They too have been busy metaplotting away, and now the world has been substantially rearranged, with somewhat less nerdrage than Dark Sun or Greyhawk. Get another set of tarroka cards as well. Meanwhile on the novel front, they get Mordenheim, by Chet Williamson. Venture to the far north with two amateur necromancers who really don't know what they're doing, and see the Aaaangsty history of the monster and his maker in much greater detail. Who next?
And Al-Qadim gives us a 4th, somewhat thinner boxed set. Jesus H their printers and assemblers must be working flat out. Cities of Bone would fit right in in Ravenloft. Still, at least here it's easier to escape the desolate desert horrors stuck in their eternal routine and get some benefit from the treasure.
Planescape starts it's first adventure, The eternal boundary. See the fun you can have without even leaving sigil. Really, the adventures come to you.
The Forgotten realms gets "Marco" Volo: Departure. A fake Volo? Who'd want to claim responsibility for writing that stuff? A wacky adventure for low level characters? I'm hating it already. Shoo.
Our setting free AD&D books this month are PHBR12: The complete paladin's handbook, and Temple, Tower and Tomb. See Rick Swan fail to do as well to expand their characterisation as he did for rangers. See three nasty little dungeons and try to survive. Then maybe you have a chance in the tomb of horrors. Maybe.
The Amazing Engine updates one of the oldest settings they have, in Metamorphosis alpha to omega. It's been a loooong time since we visited the Starship Warden. This should be interesting.
Endless quest is getting Al-Qadimish, with Secret of the Djinn. Rescue the king of the genies? Oh boy. A tall task for a young pearl diver. Can you guide him the right way?
And finally, wackiness seems prevalent in the books department too. Captains Outrageous by Roy V Young. The world is about to be destroyed because the court jester offended the court wizard, and his three musketeers have to foil him. Oh boy. Can I skip this one.
Spellfire occupies the back page. Yes, TSR are now officially in the collectable trading card game business. Yet another sign of their impending doom appears on the horizon.
Another issue full of contrasts. There's some great articles here, but even they have some elementary editing errors. There's also a lot of promotional articles, some of which manage to be quite good, but the fact that they're custom-ordered by the company rather than reader submissions is also very obvious. It makes me feel that the magazine is probably being interfered with more by the people in charge of finances, which means the editors are distracted and having to add and remove things at the last minute. It's all rather unsatisfactory as a complete product. They've managed to get through it before, but with sales dropping, will the noose tighten upon them? The 18th birthday would be an ironic time to lose a bunch of your independence. But that's for next time, as I've said many a time before.
Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Not just one, but a whole family of dragons on this birthday's cover. Ok, so the lighting could be better, and they're definitely not going to smile for the camera, but would you be the one trying to get them to say cheese? Frankly you'd be lucky to avoid having your intestines used as spaghetti, with your kidneys as cocktail snacks. Not the way I'd like to spend a party.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter including a picture, of someone who has managed to get every issue and spread them all out on the floor. Whoa. You're gonna have a hard time getting back out after that one.
In sharp contrast, a letter from a complete n00b seeking advice on roleplaying. You're in the right place! Probably, anyway.
A letter from a group who have recently lost a member. Someone dying IRL has really taken a lot of the spark out of things. Understandable, really.
A letter from someone suggesting incorporating fate points into D&D. Dale doesn't object to the idea, but points out it isn't exactly a new one. Many games these days are trying to make high action swashbuckling heroics work better than D&D manages. Quite a few of them succeed.
Editorial: So why do we play anyway? In my case it's always been linked to my need to create, which is pretty integral to the way I approach the world. Dale, on the other hand, suggests the more straightforward idea that it's because it's fun. I vaguely recall fun. Something to do with getting carrots for what you do rather than an absence of stick. And escapism. And once again, I'm confronted with the problem that when you do decide to seriously pursue the dream, and find it's a lot more work than you thought, you're left with nothing to use as escapism from that. Is it any wonder I'm depressed a lot of the time. Spending time with people you like? Creating a world where the solutions are simpler than reality? I'm really not doing this right by those standards, am In. So this really tells me one thing. When I finish this thread, I've got to do a complete detox, and find something to do with my free time that I actually enjoy, and doesn't involve computers in any way. This may be interesting as an excercise, but it's also rather unhealthy in the long run.
Street fighter the RPG! You go from gothy narrative games to one of the most straight-up fighting licenses. How you you make that work? Well, for a start, you can break Blanka's arm with your cannonball boobs :rolleyes: Now that's a special maneuver.
First quest: Skip Williams has of course been playing longer than the game was officially published. If anyone can claim the grognard title it's him, even if he's not actually that old. Benefits of starting young, I guess. Unlike Jim, he still mentions Gary's name, albeit mainly in conjunction with his son Ernie, who was one of his early players, and apparently still is. It must be a bit awkward still working around lake geneva, like dealing with divorced parents who still regularly run into each other at the shops. But anyway, this is about the fun they had, not the bad things that have happened since then. Not that he can resist talking about that either, as his second game was rapidly put out of print by legal crap. Formative experiences like that highlight why he became their premier rules lawyer. This is a fairly fun read, helping me not only get into his head, but also reveal a few bits and pieces that they didn't mention back in the day, like Don Arndt's cowardice in the face of imaginary danger. Funny how formative events that still have effects in the shape of D&D today can have such petty seeming beginnings. Butterfly, hurricane, etc. I'm sure they didn't expect a paladin in hell to be turned from a picture into a whole module 20 years later either. But he's the one still influencing rules development on a monthly basis, while they're long gone from the company. It's not hard to say who's the bigger legend now.
More than just couch potatoes: More draconic roleplaying advice. As we saw in issue 200, they can be pretty machiavelian buggers. Wouldn't it be nice to make proper use of that intelligence, have them turn out to be the ultimate big bad who was behind most of the plots throughout the campaign. With their long lifespan, plentiful financial resources and array of magical powers, they could well have been at it for centuries, and have their claws in every pie. So fairly typical don't underestimate the monster advice, showing you that they can be made a lot scarier without touching their statistics at all. Only dressed up in a birthday suit. Which neatly sets us up for an emperor's new clothes quip. This is a lot less impressive second time around.
The dragon project: Sandy once again holds this column up, and shows us that he's a pretty versatile writer in the process. This time, it's Runequest, another BRP variant. Runequest has always had a good dash of goofy humour in it's setting details, and this is the case here. But it also manages to have both serious storylines and genuine poignancy. Cerulean Glory Oversees Tides used to be human, a long time in the past. He's spent centuries as a dragon, and has enormous physical and magical capabilities. But he's decided he was happier as a human and wants to go back. So he's trying to act like a person, while still being an 80' dragon with odd mindset and biological needs. You can't go back the way you came. That's like trying to uncook a cake by freezing it to -200 degrees for several hours. The results may be interesting, but they won't be what you want. In contrast to the previous article, this one comes off a lot better on rereading. The idea that you could separate yourself from humanity completely and then want to go back just seemed vaguely comical and stupid back then. Now it makes a scary amount of sense. You spend years trying to become something better, more knowledgable, more skilled, more focussed than you are, and then you find it doesn't make you any happier and ask what's the point? It's all going to be dust in a hundred years. So I give this one my approval, and now I'm off to have an existential crisis. See you in a bit.
Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994
part 2/5
Part dragon, all hero: Oh yes. While it had it's flaws, if there's one thing that came out of the Council of Wyrms setting and stuck, it's half-dragons. While there might have been plenty of monstrous dragon hybrids, such as dracolisks, dragonnes, etc; the idea of PC'able draconic hybrids didn't seem to have occurred to anyone before then. Without this, there likely would have been no half-dragon template, no Mojh and Dracha in AU/E, no part dragon bloodlines in UA, and no Dragonborn as a new PC race in the 4th edition corebook. So here we have one of my favourite tie-in articles. Roger Moore gets back to article writing with a real bang, with something in the vein of his old half-ogre article, only better. He looks at the possibility of half-dragons in settings other than the council of wyrms, in the process granting most dragons with innate shapeshifting powers the capability to procreate with other species. Things vary widely from world to world, with even greyhawk and toril having their own quirky variations, and Krynn and oriental stuff working pretty much completely differently to the norm. This is very definitely not a case of one size fits all, which I find very appealing. They also have balancing factors! Ok, the powers they get are a good deal better than the ones they lose, but still, having them gradually lose their original racial abilities as they become more draconic is a neat touch. As is including half-iron dragons, which of course are entirely from the magazine. Still, unlike last issue's dragon slayer expansion, this does mostly work standalone mechanically, although it does reward setting mastery fluffwise. This convinced me to buy CoW first time around, and it still seems moderately significant in retrospect. It does have the risk of making everyone want to play special snowflakes, but that's always the case when you introduce cool rare races and classes. And hey, if you can't be amazing in your fantasies, what really is the point?
Gunnar Thorson: Another comic starts up to replace Twilight Empire. Barbara Manui & Chris Adams show they're capable of a quite different art style to Yamara. A Viking detective? Well, Cadfael was doing something similar around this time. Dropping deductive reasoning into a setting where it's unusual does have interesting effects.
Campaign journal: Some more of Carl Sargent's cut Greyhawk material here. Off to the east coast to meet the sea barons. This of course means pirates. A loose confederation of bickering landholders, they have nice weather and plenty of resources, but limited actual land. And of course, they can treat any serfs who don't have the resources to sail away very poorly. So there's plenty of wrongs to right around here. There's also plenty of uninhabited islands, ready to populate with monsters for those who prefer their dungeon crawling. It's all in character with his moderately dark, but not totally hopeless setting changes.And of course, you could probably plonk X1 or X8 in easily enough. Neither terrible or brilliant, this seems like enough info to get us started on another adventure. About what we can expect from an article.
Was equinox really that hard?
Fiend knights and dark artifacts: More Carl Sargent cuttings, strewn through the magazine, filling in details on what Ivid & co are up too. The published stuff post greyhawk wars was very Iuz-centric. And this shows that would not have been so strongly the case if the line hadn't been cancelled. Although the fiend heavy direction likely would. Seems like they're getting everywhere, under the guise of service, with serious designs on taking the whole place over. And that never ends well, especially if you have baatezu and tanar'ri around at the same time. So here's more nasty creatures and items to bite you in the ass.
Fiend Armor gives you a whole bunch of baatezu advantages on top of the standard AC boost. They do broil anyone of the wrong alignment though. One of those ones that'll be a pain for most heroes because it is neat but not for them. Don't just leave them lying around so the next mooks can be powered up by them as well.
Fiend Circlets are pretty similar in terms of granted powers, only less bulky and intended for spellcasters. Stuff like this does not mean they'll respect you in the morning, just that you're a valued pawn. But enjoy your few decades of hubris before eternal slavery while you can.
The malachite throne is Ivid's 'orrible great regal artefact of insane power and substantial dangers. It gives you true seeing, magical protection, and devil summoning, but said protections are useless against the devils, leaving you open for betrayal or collection of bills. And as he's going mad, while simultaneously suffering from a wasting disease, it's safe to say that the situation here will slip out of his control sooner or later, no matter how brutally he tries to hold on to it, and how much cool stuff he has. (unless he decides to become a lich, which isn't unlikely at all )
The Spear of Sorrow is one of those nasty intelligent weapons that has a load of cool powers (literally) but also likes taking control of it's so-called owner, and using them to bring back Tharizdun worship. How very embarrassing. I'd rather not be turned into a door to door preacher, no matter the god.
The Cauldron of Night is essentially a pure plot device for producing more evil artefacts. You risk your life by coming here, and only woe will result in the long term. Still, it's a perfect looking location for a climactic fight with a big bad. Send them toppling into the bottomless pit in the middle and hope that finishes them for good.
Fiend Knights show that once again Ivid is sowing the seeds of his own demise. Turning your soldiers into unsleeping remorseless semi-automatons seems like a good idea in the short term, but it makes you very unpopular, especially with the friends and families of the transformed. Seeing them stamp around like this is in many ways worse than knowing they're dead. Silly evil overlord needs a PR adviser if he wants to catch up with Iuz.
Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994
part 3/5
Forum: Kathryn Bernstein suggests that if you have one hack-and-slash player pissing off all the others, they ought to gang together and sort it out IC. That and the other logical IC consequences of being a psychopath who kills indiscriminately without remorse. They'll get themselves killed if the DM simply plays fair with challenges.
Anonymous gives his experience with hack-and-slash vs roleplaying, pointing out how low level characters succeeded where higher ones failed by using their brains. (and poison) There are several great equalisers in D&D, and even kobolds can exploit them, as Dragon Mountain so brutally showed.
B. J. Tomkins reminds us that if a particular player continues to be disruptive, you can and should just kick them out. If they don't want to change, it's not worth trying to force them. You'll have no fun, they'll have no fun, the whole thing will run and run.
Lee J. Ballard tried giving the hack and slasher in his group exactly what he wanted and then some. Curiously, that did not satisfy him. Hee. Nothing like a little dark humour to open people's eyes to the plight of others. Unlike the hectoring approach, that sneaks behind their defences to open their eyes.
Eye of the monitor: Once again sandy rubs in that the computer gaming and rpg hobbies are currently too young and transient for nostalgia. We've been through this before, so this time I shall shrug and move onto the reviews. You'll get your turn in a few years.
Lufia is a Japanese rpg in the final fantasy vein. Build a party, choose a girlfriend, and travel through the land to fulfil the plot. It has a good beginning, but gets more fight-heavy the longer you go on. There's plenty more where this came from.
Isle of the dead bores and frustrates Sandy. It's shoddily programmed, and the rapid respawn of monsters means getting anywhere is tedious and unneccecarily challenging. We have enough RAM now that this is entirely soluble. Leave it out.
Archon Ultra also gets a crap review. Barely improved from a decade ago, it's frankly inadequate. Not worth buying at all.
Epic puzzle pack, on the other hand gets a little slack for being lots of little games rather than one. They do get very cursory reviews though. His heart doesn't really seem to be in it this month. What's going on in his life?
Karamiekos, Ho!: So Mystara has finally finished gearing up to go advanced, during which they've been absent from these pages for 5 months. Will Jeff Grubb be as regular and enthusiastic a poster as Bruce Heard was? He certainly managed a pretty long enjoyable run on the marvel-phile.
Straight away, we see that Jeff has brought things into AD&D land by using the same technique now common for Forgotten Realms correspondence. Say hello to Joshuan Gallidox, our latest 4th wall breaking character to pop into the offices unexpectedly. Only this one's a halfling. Exactly how he makes the crossdimensional trip is not explained, but there are plenty of magical items he could have come across. He's not quite as scary as Elminster, but he is pretty prone to self-aggrandisement. I suspect Halflings may not be as crucial to this story as he makes out.
Second, of course, is the timeline advancements. The black eagle barony is free! Good has triumphed and the kingdom is just again. Er, sort of. Ludwig and Bargle are both still at large, the place is still a shithole, and the interim leader is thoroughly ineffectual, but these are all presented as opportunities for PC's. The rest of this article fills us in on the other changes around this region. Jeff's writing style is as fun and readable as ever, and this certainly looks like one of the better attempts at keeping the world living and moving forward. But still, you should be careful putting it into existing games, especially as the original overthrow scenario was presented as something the PC's would lead. So this is another well-written article, that may or may not be good for your game. Now, where do we take the world from here?
The dragon's bestiary: Great, more irritating faeries. We had some of those last year too. Looks like this year has seen a drop in both the number and quality of monster submissions, just as the ecology series did a couple of years ago. This is a bit worrisome.
Brambles are meaner relatives of Gorse, and have a similar spike fetish. A good reminder that fae creatures were associated with thorny bushes long before C:tL, and they make both good protection and a decent home for the buggers. As usual, laugh at them at your peril.
Dobies are essentially incompetent brownies. They mean well, but having one of these in the house means botched chores everywhere. And trying to get rid of them may well make the problem worse. What is a poor farmer to do?
Faerie fiddlers are another predictable mythic entry. They can make you dance uncontrollably, and distort time so a night lasts for years outside. Now there's one that can really have interesting effects on your game. Can you turn this to your advantage, or will it really mess up the game?
Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994
part 4/5
Elminsters notebook: Ed once again shows us how to pack a campaign's worth of adventure seeds into a single page. Another evil wizard from the distant past, and their somewhat dubious legacy is detailed. One of the biggest problems as a solo wizard vs a party is only being able to cast one spell per round, especially as wizards are somewhat squishy. What's the solution? Orbiting undead skulls that are hopelessly in love with you! Unorthodox, but it certainly did the job. At least until hubris lead her into taking on a god and failing. Another example of how a greater number of high power characters and creatures actually results in the realms being more stable than krynn or oerth. Try the same trick on the krynnish gods and you might well succeed. So it looks like he's once again playfully showing off his system mastery and inventiveness, while ironically pointing out all the cheap tricks in the world will not save you if the DM decides to invoke a deus ex machina. There's a definite multilayered irony there. As usual, his output is pretty great.
Role-playing reviews: A bit more magic reviewed here this month. So many different takes on it are appearing these days. It's one of those things that makes TSR seem more than a little behind the times. The rationale why spells work the way they do can also be pretty interesting, but Rick isn't so bothered, and just wants to get to the effects. Fluff is something you read once or twice, crunch is for a whole campaign. Which of these books will make worthy additions to yours?
The wizards grimoire is for ARS Magica, and is sufficiently specific that rick can't see players of other systems getting much use out of it. The kind of crunch you can spend years mastering, it combines the wondrous and banal, and the detailed and vague as well. There's probably too many undeveloped ideas, needing a good pruning to bring things together and make the good bits better. Less can be more, and all that.
The compleat alchemist is a system-independent book from WotC that feels like one of those old articles from this magazine. And like the old alchemist classes from the magazine, it's light on roleplaying advice and the characters are ill-suited to adventures. It's like it's actively trying to make itself not useful to the average game. How do you expect to sell it to us?
GURPS Magic 2nd ed, on the other hand, is solid as a rock mechanically, and full of ideas that you'll actually want to put in your game. You can always trust GURPS, rain or shine, which is a lot more than you can say for most systems. The worst you can say about it is there's a few vague or redundant spells, the overall building system manages to keep things both imaginative and well balanced.
Earth, air, fire and water puts the attention on clerics, showing us what you actually do with them in terms of playing, and filling in lots of cool high level stuff and new spells. Like much of dark sun's stuff, they need this because it is so different from the D&D norm. They should be decently competitive with wizards again after this.
Sage advice: Why does locate object have different durations for wizards and priests (That's a typo. They got the regular and reversed versions mixed up. )
Is the bonus spells for high wisdom table right? (no. Congratulations, you've spotted more errata. Skip thanks you from the bottom of skip's heart)
How can a non-thief disarm a trap. (by describing exactly what they intend to do with the mechanism. Old skool fiat system strikes back!)
How long does an undead creature stay away after turning (24 hours - roll needed to turn. Not a long-term solution. )
Isn't enhance overpowered compared to wishes. (Not really. At that level, superbuffing is a perfectly standard tactic)
Can imps, quasits & pseudodragons become familiars (Yes. For plenty of other examples. check out issue 86. )
I haven't read the general spell keywords (well maybe you should, before ploughing into the spells. You can't learn a culture if you don't know the language.)
How do you get the acid from melf's arrows off (apply a little common sense, and then rub it in with elbow grease. )
Are liches immune to harm spells (yes, but not for the reason you think)
Can fighter/mages use their fighter THAC0's for touch spells (A few years ago skip would have said no, as he did regarding fighter/thieves using their fighter THAC0 for backstabbing. But skip has mellowed a bit since then. So Skip'll say yes. Don't go thinking Skip's not still a badass mutha though. )
Is an invisible character invisible to themself or not? (They are. The complete wizards handbook is another case of freelancers being irresponsible and sloppy. )
Is animate dead an evil act (sorta. It won't change your alignment straight away, but it will have a negative impact. )
Can forget disrupt spellcasting (Probably. )
Does prayer buff the damage of your spell attacks (Oh yes. This is why you should have a priest on the team.)
Can there be specialist wizards in dragonlance (Only if they become renegades. That thar's forbidden magic round them parts)
You got my question wrong! I was asking about what happens when druids absorb defiling damage from defiling regeneration. (Don't you get bolshy with skip. Skip is still The Sage, and you aint. Skip will answer you, but if you don't pay up on time, Skip will track you down and cap yo ass. )
Does creating an illusion of an attack break invisibility (yes)
Why are memorization and casting times so different (preparation for anything usually takes much longer than doing it. Even magic has to obey that rule)
Can ottilukes resilient sphere block teleportation (Probably not. Too weak.)
Can undead be raised (Recycled question. We sorted that out over a decade ago, and the answer's still the same. )
And this month's newly enhanced pantheon iiiiiiiiiiiiiis........... The norse pantheon! Are you ready to ragnarok? Come on up and collect your prize!
Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994
part 5/5
Fiction: defiance by Lisa Smedman. It's a mugs game, fighting dragons head on. One breath and your entire party could well be an outline on the wall. Far better to use your brain. They have to eat, they have to sleep (quite a lot in many cases) and they have to breed. All give you levers to exploit, and in this case, a simple peasant woman manages to do so where legions of armoured knights failed. As is often the case, the fiction imparts a lesson many adventuring parties would do well to learn. Sometimes, the best way to win is by never drawing a weapon, and 0th level characters can kick the ass of 36th level ones. (especially when they're your characters mother) Overconfidence can bring about anyone's ruin. At least the small know they're small and try harder.
Denver gets a full boxed set for shadowrun. Sounds spiffy.
Libram X spends a whole month choosing what outfit to wear. Jeff takes the time to poke fun at his own past works while at it. Swordplay is consumed by ennui. Dragonmirth is, as you would expect for an anniversary issue, infested with dragons. Yamara meets her sister, who wants to marry her husband, and more people who want to kill her husband. No break there then.
Through the looking glass: Another bit of painting advice in Ken's 3rd article. This time, he discusses layering. Basecoat, wash, drybrushing, detailing. Each has their place. Once again it's very much back to basics here and I can't scare up much interest, especially after they have had several articles with new ideas and significant developments. I don't need this, although I'm sure some new readers will.
Our minis this month are a feathered dragon for shadowrun, good for oriental and Mexican adventures. Another pair of dragons fighting. Make sure you paint before assembly, otherwise you'll have a tricky time reaching everything. A cleric with a mace, looking rather cross and ready to rumble. Two Mad Max rejects. A bare potbelly spoils the most cutting edge fashion. A Julie Guthrie dragon with a knightly rider. Good as ever, I see. A giant mutant skaven monstrosity. It's a hard life in the sewers, especially when you're that big. Two space marine sergeants from the future edition grimdarkness. Yet more goblins and skull-headed undead spellcasters. More things that never go out of style. The lady of the lake, and some Arthurian style pageboys and dwarves. They'll be setting you macguffin quests before you know it. And a mechanised demon thing for the Legions of steel game. Once again, it's the big lines tied to other products that are surviving.
TSR Previews: Planescape gets it's first monstrous compendium appendix. This does mean some rehash from MC8. Still, at least it's a proper book this time. And with yet more pretty Diterlizzi art. But the succubus and marilith will not be showing any boobies. Live with it.
Dark sun expands on psionics, in The Will and the Way. Lots of new powers, and a reworking of existing ones. Given the importance of psionics to dark sun, it's about time.
The Forgotten Realms finishes off the cleric quintet. The Chaos Curse sees Cadderly conclude his journeys and lift his curse. Woo. Now he can go back to writing about Drizzt like a good little hack.
Our generic accessories this month are the Deck of encounters set 2, and the players gaming screens. Now everyone can be paranoid and hide their stuff from each other, while having useful tables at hand to reference.
This one is an interesting one because so many of it's articles are tied into specific AD&D settings. With stuff for one-shots, established settings, brand new ones and the dying one, it really does run the gamut. Most of it's pretty decent, but like last issue, it feels very controlled from the top down. I suspect that's not going to change, and their grip will tighten as readers slip through their fingers. There is something to be said for co-ordinated promotion, even if it's not as cool as when things happen organically. So I'm left a bit unsatisfied, but can't trace it to a particular source. Bah, next issue please.
Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Is that a boy or a girl on the cover? Hmm. The contents say the original model was a girl. It may be a trap. The topic of the magazine, on the other hand, is treasure. One that seems basic, but somehow they haven't thought of doing it before. This seems likely to please the players in the audience in particular. Now, when are they going to do a special on wandering monsters? That seems like it could be fun for a DM. :D
In this issue:
Letters: This month's letter page is devoted entirely to errata. From last issue to a good 7 month in the past, they've got plenty of little mistakes to report. Many of them were spotted by the writers themselves, albeit too late to fix them before printing. Allen Varney, Roger Moore, Steve Winter and Ed Greenwood all have a little egg on their face. Happens to the best of us. Dust yourself off and try not to make the same mistake again. Especially you Ed. If you're going to do crossovers, you have to make sure you don't mess up basic details of the other property, because that can be interpreted as dreadfully disrespectful.
Editorial: So people are complaining that their game isn't as much of a challenge as it used to be. Maybe that's because you're skipping over all the travel bits. We can't do that in real life. Even after years in the same office, the commute still takes approximately the same amount of time, and you'll regularly be faced with inconveniences such as traffic accidents, overenthusiastic evangelists, bums selling the big issue, and terrorist attacks. Or something. Anyway, this is another thing that's going out of fashion, along with wandering monsters, for more scripted storylines and metaplot stuff. And Dale is trying to fight against the tide, pretty vainly in this case. Rather surprised this lesson is being forgotten. But then, the old expert set is several years out of print by this point, and there is a new generation of gamers coming who are learning a very different set of starting lessons. Whether you prefer this way, or decry it as another sign of instant gratification culture not wanting to work for their fun or have the possibility of being thrown against impossible challenges and having to run away is your choice. Lawns, gitofa, etc.
First quest: Zeb Cook is one of those designers who has enough cool credits over an extended period of time that it's hard to pick one over the others. The original expert set, Oriental adventures, Planescape. Each would be enough to seal his place in the hall of fame individually. The fact that he's been consistently producing other cool stuff for the past 15 years as well is icing on the cake. But it doesn't seem like his start was particularly auspicious. Like so many of us, his first characters didn't even have names, just numbers as they died repeatedly. Sophistication came gradually through trial and error. Which is you've got the time, is a more fun way to learn than being bossed around by a teacher being told that things are badwrongfun without explaining why. Even now, he's still learning and developing, which unfortunately means he's leaving us for the fast growing world of computer game design. Looking forward, it seems his credits there aren't so great, although they do include being lead designer for City of Villains. Oh well. We'll always have the forbidden city.
Big-league magic: Yes, even 9th level spells are pretty puny on a cosmic scale. And even D&D artefacts rarely offer you sufficient power to take over or destroy the world. Course, there are several good reasons for this. First is that the original designers kinda expected you to stop somewhere in the teens, so they never bothered to do hard design beyond that. Second is that it's a lot harder to keep such power from ruining the whole story than it is in a narrative written by a single person. So you're put in a slightly awkward position when covering this topic. You're not sure if you should be encouraging it, because it can be a lot of fun to have phenomenal cosmic power, or warning people away from it. So this is an article that isn't quite sure what it wants to accomplish, and settles for sitting on the fence, being a serviceable bit of advice, but not really doing too much. One of those cases where I'm bemused why they put this first.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A collection of items from celtic legend here, putting the lie to the statement that they were uncommon back then. It's just that they were more likely to be living creatures, large objects or locations, and most heroes only had one or two. Which is the way to keep them special, really.
The Hound of Loruaidhe is a perfect tracker. Well, not truly perfect. A good spellcaster could beat it no trouble. But it seemed impressive to them at the time.
The Pigskin of Tuis can heal you and turn water into wine. Wait, wasn't that jesuses schtick? And isn't human meat very similar to pig. Hmm. I am very suspicious.
The Chariot of Dobhar can be ridden over water. But you can't stop without sinking, which may be hard on the horses if you try long trips. Once again they prove that magic may be spectacular, but you need the mundane technology like ships as well.
The Pigs of Easal, like Thor's goats, restore themselves if you put their bones out properly. If you don't, they stay dead, and the host gets very cross indeed. Don't kill the golden goose, or something.
Apples of the Hesperides are seriously nerfed here. No immortality, just extra effective sustenance. Bah. This is a greek legend rather than a Celtic one as well.
The Spear of Pisear protects you from fire, and sets alight anyone you hit. That'll create lots of panic if you wade into a crowd of enemies, breaking up their ranks quite efficiently.
The Spear of Lugh drains the blood of those it hits and uses it to heal the wielder. Is it just me, or is that a bit vampiric? I guess it's alright if done in a heroic cause :p
The Cauldron of Dagda gives vast quantities of food to the worthy, and leaves cowards to starve. It can be a harsh life up north.
The Sword of Nuada has also been nerfed in D&D compared to the legends. It's still pretty powerful though. And losing limbs can be considered worse than death, amirite?
Stones of Destiny predict the future. As legends show, this generally isn't too helpful actually. You've got to actually make the mistakes to learn from them it seems.
The Horn of Dispelling Illusions does exactly what it says on the tin when you blow it. No wizard's gonna frighten off my army! Course, in D&D they'll just fireball it instead, and what will disbelieving that get you?
The Cup of Truth is another means of accomplishing an end mentioned in the last bazaar. Course, it's lie detecting power is blatant and applies to everyone around it, so it's harder to abuse by authority.
The Well of magical Lands transports you all over the shop if you stop and drink from it. If you make it back, you'll have some pretty wild adventures to tell.
Cloaks of invisibility have a pretty similar effect to rings, but only your weapon becomes visible if you attack people. This means it'll look like a disembodied sword is attacking, which may be amusingly misleading.
The Salmon of wisdom boosts your wisdom if you catch and eat it. Good luck with that, since I'm sure they're both rare and slippery. Of all the animals to invest wisdom in. Which god was responsible for that little cosmic joke? Another workmanlike collection really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994
part 2/5
Paper prosperity: Like artwork and magic items, pieces of paper can have value far above and beyond the physical item. Paper money is of course only valuable because people honour it (well, the same is true of all money, but gold, silver, etc are rare, and have quite substantial uses in electronics and precision crafting. ) Maps are valuable because of what they let you do, and the difficulty in creating a precise one. Legal documents can let you know exactly what you can get away with doing, and may well result in you going places or owning things you otherwise wouldn't be able too. This is a fairly low key article, but one of those ones that looks good for breaking a creative impasse, and inspiring adventures a little different from the usual. You can make the treasures from one adventure a direct hook into the next one, which saves a good deal of time and reduces hanging around drinking in taverns waiting for shady quest-setters. I think we can all agree that that's a good thing, at least until overused, and you spend years running from one hassle to another without ever getting to take a break. This is one they haven't done before, and hopefully It'll help you get out of a rut too.
Trifling Treasures: The alliteration continues, with another short but amusing article. Putting a bunch of random bits and pieces in the pockets of your NPC's is the kind of thing that adds a lot to your verisimilitude, but takes a lot of work, and if you only do it with some people, you run the risk of the players jumping on the details just because they're there and making enormous red herrings out of them. What shall we do about this? Random tables time! Now that's old skool. Actually, I seem to recall them doing something like this before, quite possibly by Ed. Ah yes, issue 104 and issue 164. This isn't too uncommon an idea then. Course in this, like wand of wonder tables, you can never have too many to choose from to keep your players on their toes. Mix and match spare bits and pieces for maximum randomness in your life, like a real messy apartment. Good luck finding something that'll be just perfect for saving the day some time in the future.
The magic of Karameikos: Joshuan pesters Jeff for a second issue in a row, just because he can. This time, he's talking about Karemekos' premier school of wizardry. This is one of those cases where they consciously lampshade D&D's tropes, with it built on a dungeon which was repeatedly looted, repopulated by new monsters, and cleared out again. In theory, this'll keep it from being reoccupied again, and give apprentice wizards a good source of relatively safe xp as they study, as they can explore the underground bits, but run up to the surface where there's a ready force to deal with anything too nasty. An excellent example of self-awareness in setting design. Course, if it all goes wrong, one of the wizards'll be corrupted and turn into an evil overlord with their own ready made looming spire fortress once they've killed or co-opted everyone else. But hey, that just means another adventure for the PC's. So this shows you that you can do Hogwarts school of magic in AD&D, quite possibly including members of other classes as support guys. Not burdened by the metaplot stuff of last issue, this is pretty fun, and looks like it could be adapted to any high magic campaign fairly easily. D&D may be slanted more towards campaigns where you travel around, but nothing's stopping it from being set in a static location if there's enough interesting stuff going on there. Looks like we might get a few more fun bits and pieces before this world falls into disrepair.
Forum: Greg Howley nitpicks over exactly what benefit bow and crossbow specialisation should have. Yawn. This is why we abstractify.
Mike Tresca tells his stories of how thievery has hurt the gaming industry as a whole by making shops stop stocking them. This is obviously not a good thing, and the least you can do is eject people who admit to stealing books from your gaming group. Yeah, that's a tricky one. Why are gamers (and Terry Pratchett fans) more larcenously inclined than the average reader? Is it just because they have a much higher percentage of teenage males, or are more complicated social issues involved?
Ken Lacy tries to solve the Bard kit issue. His first bit of advice is that where supplements contradict the core books, you should stick with the rules in the core books. That'll cut off the worst of the twinkery before it really gets going. One of those ones that illustrates the problems in their rules editing by directly pointing out that some of their books contradict others. Where are their editor's heads?
Tim Emrick gives his 2 cents on multiclassed characters with kits. He's moderately conservative, taking the view that it's all optional, and disallowable by the DM. And don't forget, kits should have significant hindrances to offset their bonuses.
Daniel L. Grindstaff complains that gamers at cons are becoming ruder and more likely to attack the GM's running style these years. Generally, not taking crap is a good thing, but there are proper ways to go about it. If you're the only one not enjoying it, you ought to not spoil it for everyone else playing.
Adam Panshin has a whole bunch of ideas for tweaking classes. Multiclass prioritising, anti-paladins, weapon specialisation, ranger's balance with paladins. All in the name of Balance! Tough order, you know. No-one really agrees what perfect balance is.
Role-playing reviews: The Planescape boxed set gets a 6 pip review from Rick, thoroughly pleasing him with it's stylistic choices, vastly greater accessibility, and highly fun to read prose. The bones may not be too different from last edition, but everything else is much more built up. Philosophy, geography, and biology are given new spins. Of course, it's still not nearly complete yet, but with so many infinite universes, you wouldn't want it to be. The stage is set for it to support many years of supplements.
Chessboards: Planes of possibility is another attempt at creating a planar cosmology, this time system free. It too seems pretty cool, even if it doesn't have the amazing visuals or instant accessability of the planescape stuff. There's a lot more dimensional math which seems aimed at those who like analyzing the conceptual side of things. But it still manages to have a sense of mischief as well. When you're working in concepts, it's hard not to have some funny results. I think I'd like this one as well.
Tales of gargentihr? What's that all about then? Another game I don't remember.
Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994
part 3/5
The game wizards: Spellfire! Curse you Collectible Card Games! :shakes fist: We saw you on the horizon at the start of the year. Now one of the things that turned out to be a real bane of the roleplaying hobby, due to the way it competed directly with it for shelf space and social leisure time, is upon us. And it's chief corporate dog Jim Ward who's doing the promotional duties again. So here's a whole bunch of statistics, and a bit of rules details to tantalise us. Build realms comprised of famed locations from various D&D worlds, and attack & defend them with named characters using classic artefacts. It's not a bad idea, even if seems likely to produce scenarios that would be deeply cheesy if done in tabletop, akin to the setting gulf between WHFB & WHFRP. But then, that may be the point. Getting to quickly play scenarios that would be verisimilitude destroying in pen and paper does have it's pleasures, otherwise it wouldn't have had any success. Still, this is another development that is a bit irritating, especially as I know it'll also be taking quite a bit of magazine space in the next few years. I wasn't amused by it the first time around, and this looks like it'll give me plenty of fuel for complaint. Let's hope I can make some of the rants fun ones.
Eye of the monitor: Sandy once again tackles the backlash against violence in gaming. As not only a reviewer, but also a designer of one of the most celebrated gore heavy games of the year, he has a rather large stake in this argument. Unsurprisingly, his view on the matter is rather nuanced. Ironically, just as D&D players seem less likely to commit suicide statistically, it's looking like unleashing your aggressive urges on a collection of pixels makes you less likely to be violent to other people. Really, the important thing to do is raise your kids, not plonk them in front of a screen and let them play whatever they want, or just wander off unsupervised. Game rating systems only work if the parents pay attention to what's on them. This is a big part of why tribalism works. Even two adults can't give full time attention to a whole brood of rapidly growing little horrors. Having a whole bunch of aunties, uncles, grandparents around to share the burden helps in properly socialising your kids tremendously. Another bit of evidence that the way modern society is structured has some serious flaws, trying to go against human instincts and paying the price for it. But we're getting into soapboxing territory again, so let's cut to the games.
Fantasy Empires tries to do the companion level D&D thing and create a game where you start off head of a dominion and then have to conquer the world. The result is as mixed in success as the original Dominion management rules, although it alters them a lot. It does get a good long review, with lots of advice, but it's also quite critical in a lot of respects. It can be a bit slow, and once you've got halfway and victory is pretty much assured, you still have to get through the rest of it to win. Really, it's more for wargamers than RPG'ers, and how many of those are still around today?
Walls of Rome is another OK but not mindblowing wargame. I think you can figure out roughly what technology you have access to in this one, and it's not too surprising, although there are a few sloppy bits, particularly in the manual, which was obviously written before the game was properly finished. You'll have to work things out via trial and error instead.
The role of books: The magic and healing by Nick O'Donohoe looks like it'd get a 5 star review if John did that kind of thing. It's hard for him to pinpoint what makes it so good, but he settles on the way it balances realism and fantasy, hope and cynicism. getting proper depth into what you create is one of the hardest things to do, really.
Witch and Wombat by Carolyn Cushman, on the other hand, fails to do the worldbuilding needed to make it's odd premise believable. It all feels half-finished, and the jokes aren't strong enough to make it work as a comedy either. Reading tons of other people's stuff doesn't necessarily make you a god writer.
Sleipnir by Linda Evans mixes norse mythology with a hard-bitten modern day soldier protagonist. There's plenty of parallels to be drawn between ancient vikings and modern military, and this tackles them while keeping the action count high as well. Don't be surprised that there's lots of non gratuitous violence and swearing.
Decalog, edited by Mark Stammers & Stephen James Walker, is an anthology of Dr Who stories. With adventures set in a whole range of the Doctor's incarnations, it's filled with easter eggs that reward detailed knowledge of the show. In fact it may be a little too focussed on hardcore fans. But it is full of imaginative twists and turns, and has a nice narrative device typing the stories together. He may be down, but he's not out by a long shot.
The beekeepers apprentice by Laurie R King gives Sherlock Holmes a young female protegee from america. This sounds like it could turn into the worst kind of mary-sue fanfic, but this gets a good review anyway, showing her gradually learning instead of jumping right in, stealing his thunder. As pastiches go, there are many many worse ones.
Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994
part 4/5
Sage advice: If you forego a saving throw, then someone casts a different spell at you, can you save (nope. This is exactly what fast-talking is for. Dramatically, it's a feature, not a bug. )
Why the hell would anyone be a sha'ir! They can't get spells fast enough to use them in combat! (no, but they can keep going all day, and don't need to select their spells at the start. As tactical and utility casters, they rock to an incredible degree. Plus they can't lose their spellbook and become useless if captured.)
Can gens get out of ravenloft (Eek. There's a quandary for you. It'd make the class useless if they couldn't but potentially setting breaking if they could. Skip will allow them to temporarily check out, as they're not PC's, but just like ghosts and roaming Vistani caravans, they can never truly leave. )
Can paladins and rangers cast stuff from the tome of magic spheres (Skip does not want to seem churlish. Skip will give them one extra sphere each so they can keep up with the jones's)
Does a ring of free action prevent paralysis (Skip is going to make a completely outre ruling and say no! Do not question the whims of Skip! )
How exactly does a frost brand work (just say the word. (The word is on your lips ) Say the word. (The word is on your lips ) )
Can a gem of insight hyper boost an elf over the centuries (No. It has to be a different creature each time)
What happens when a wild mage abandons wild magic (Much Aaaangst as they ponder their new place in the world, and the harm they did with their former powers )
Can undead drink potions (yes)
How do undead recover hit points (by feasting on human Fleeeeeeeessssssssh and Brrrraaaaaaiiiinssss )
How does sunlight affect non-vampire undead (see their descriptions. )
What happens when a lich uses a wish. It shortens it's unlife by 5 years. Hey, that means it gets to be a demilich quicker. A plan with no drawbacks! )
How do you determine a liches HP (Since they use completely different dice, a complete reroll is in order.)
Can archliches be turned (Sure. It may not be easy though. )
Gunnar Thorson starts his murder investigation in earnest.
The dragon sage: For a third month in a row, they have something extra for Council of Wyrms. While they may not have enough faith in it's long-term selling potential to make it a full-blown line, there must be quite a few people who like it in the office. So here's a new kit for it. Sages have a bit of a problem on a human scale because they're not that suited for adventuring. But Dragons are inherently big, scary and awesome enough to make up for that. And while spellcasting isn't their primary thing, they do get an interesting selection of spells drawn from both wizard and priest lists. (Divination and summoning are normally opposed specialities. ) If you have a large party, and are struggling to differentiate your dragons, it doesn't hurt, even if it probably is slightly underpowered overall. Now, how do you do a draconic rogue variant? That's one I'd be very interested in seeing them tackle.
Rumblings: This month's gossip is primarily concerned with our links to the computer game industry, in one form or another. As we've heard earlier, Zeb
Cook is off to Magnet Interactive. On top of that, GURPS is getting computer games, Battletech is getting a CD supplement, and WotC are establishing a pretty solid web presence. TSR, on the other hand, are losing their relationship with SSI that produced so many good games, while all their net presence is in the form of third party newsgroups and websites. It's not great news for them really, if you read between the lines. Along with CCG's, this is another strong, and still growing competitor that will do a lot to take players and designers away from RPG's over the years. Getting half a dozen people together to play a game socially is a lot harder than turning on the TV and settling down to a session of final fantasy. These aren't really very good signs for us or them, are they.
There's a rum do about, old chap: A proper Amazing Engine article. About time. Spike Y. Jones turns his mind to distinctive plot hooks for this setting. The result is system free, but of course very steeped in victoriana, and so would take quite a bit of adapting for another game. Ware the french menace! How the hell does evolution apply to faeries? They're going to try and blow up parliament again?! Or replace the MP's with dopplegangers? How does this new technology of blood transfusions work when done between fae and people? Zombie Prince Albert strikes again! And a bit of parallel dimension fun just for the hell of it. A lot of rather fun ideas here, which seem to capture the mix of weirdness, humour and historical flavour the game wants to be played with. It's too little too late, but this is an entertaining little read who's heart is in the right place.
Great Responsibilities: What is with superheroes being outside the law. The good guys are rarely affiliated with any legal organisation (and the ones that are are generally noticeably less effectual) while the villains are never punished using the proper legal system, and get off ridiculously lightly for their crimes. It makes sense with the ones so powerful that no mundane system could hold them, but for street level ones it can only be explained away by liberal application of drama points. Plus unless you have super-senses of some sort, or incredible luck, spotting crimes in time to foil them regularly and get that superheroic reputation is a bit tricky. There are plenty of less glamorous things you can do with superpowers that make the world a better place proactively, instead of waiting around for some villain to attack. With a sample superheroic organisation based upon these principles, this is one of those ones that seems quite decent at what it intends to do, but not too good if you're looking for a fast-paced, high action campaign. There's always the danger of actually making the game less fun when you add more detail and realism, and this seems the case here. But if you want to try a more logical setup for your superhero-filled society as seen in the likes of Aberrant, this could be what you need.
Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994
part 5/5
Essential Villainy: Deliberately contrasting with the last article is a second system free supers piece. How do you make a memorably diabolical villain? Pretty much the same way you do in any genre. While powers may play a part, it's more in how they behave, and how they relate to the heroes. Whether they're flat or three-dimensional, scary or risible has little to do with their statistical capabilities, and more to do with how they're played. So this is one of those bits of end of issue filler that takes a familiar topic and tries to spruce it up by applying it to a new genre. I yawned my way through it.
Fiction: The lady of Roth Shan by Jo Shannon Cochran. Damn fae. Both men and women can wind up addicted to their beauty. Even if you rescue them from the immediate threat, they may well wind up in trouble again, maybe years later, quite possibly of their own volition. And you might well end up paying a price yourself. Law of drama and all that. If you think you're about to be dragged into a fairy story, steer well clear and nuke them from orbit. It's the banal way. Yeah, this is another example of why you don't want to get mixed up with fae, for the chances of living happily ever after are not actually that great. On the other hand, your chances of living happily ever after in the real world are pretty much zero, so this is a case where I can't really give a definitive answer. All I can say for certain is that this story didn't make a particularly great impression on me, positive or negative. More filler, methinks.
Libram X has amazons fighting more weird tentacled creatures. I do worry about these artists sometimes. Swordplay would prefer it if the party worked together properly. Dragonmirth's tuning is seriously out. Yamara introduces the new lich in the hood, comin' to take over ur familiars.
Through the looking glass: Convention season is on it's way again. We may be in somewhat reduced circumstances compared to a few years ago, but we're still getting our best stuff around this time of the year. A ghost and female vampire, with strikingly similar expressions for such differing body shapes. Sir Tarquine, a mace-wielding knight ready to bash your brains in. A werewolf formor that's entirely suitable for converting into a D&D monster. Three lizard men mooks, plus two more interesting lizard folk and their tamed dinosaur watchdog. A whole cast of mundane people for populating your city breaks. A whole bunch of familiars animal and supernatural for your wizard to chose from. A sarcophagus, containing a mummy, of course. An illusionist on a flying carpet. Pay no attention to the small bit of rock supporting it. ;) And a Dwarf from Earthdawn riding a sabretooth tiger. That'll put the fear up any goblins riding Worgs for sure. (unless they seriously outnumber you, in which case I'm sure they'll pull something nasty. )
TSR Previews: Another new yet old campaign setting arrives this month. That's the 4th this year. They're really going into overdrive. Anyway, the Known World has migrated to AD&D, and been officially renamed Mystara, after the planet rather than the region. We kick off with Karameikos: Kingdom of adventure. The perfect place to make your name or die trying. Now with audio CD! We also see them kick off the supplement mill at a breakneck pace. Their monstrous compendium appendix is out straight away, as is their first novel, Dragonlord of Mystara by Thorarinn Gunnarsson. (another familiar name that's shown up in the magazine ages ago. ) Are they going to get any new stuff out, or is it going to be mostly rehash with shinier visuals. After all, there's a lot of ground already covered here.
The Forgotten realms is also rehashing, in Waterdeep, City of splendors. Another big boxed set full of stuff for players, stuff for GM's, monsters, maps, etc etc. Come on, surely there's somewhere you've missed out. What's south of Maztica? You're unlikely to find out in "Marco" Volo: Journey, as that faker also sticks to fairly safe territory.
On the other hand, we do get to go a bit further south than usual thanks to Al-Qadim, in Corsairs of the great sea. Haven't they already had one nautical sourcebox. Oh well. Plenty more strangeness at sea to go round
Planescape decides to expand on the places dumb adventurers are most likely to want to go first. The Planes of Chaos. Oh yeaaaaaaah. See the curiously phallic giant ship being constructed on the cover. Go wild in Arborea. Go mad in Pandemonium. Go drinking and brawling in Ysgard. Totally trip out in Limbo. And there's so much to do and see in the abyss that you'll never live to experience. Just enjoy the awesome.
Ravenloft does mummies, or The ancient dead, as Van Richten calls them. Considering they're one of the creatures that most needs a bit of extra depth, this is probably a good thing.
Dragonlance does Lord Toede, in the 5th villains book. Jeff Grubb makes this guy's antics amusing and full of unintended consequences. Yet more goofy humour in a setting brimming with it.
Dark sun gets The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey. Another reliable worker roped in to fill out their supplement mill. A templar has a crisis of morals? Whatever next?
Endless Quest releases The Siege of the tower. Set in Greyhawk, it has you manning a tower and defending it from approaching monsters on your own. Will you be saved by the cavalry or die horribly. Guess only you can know for sure. Oh well, if you lose you can just try again.
And finally, our generic book is City of the Sorcerers by Mary Herbert. A sequel to Dark Horse, this is another one that picks up a generation later. Seems like they're doing quite a few timeline skips lately. Gotta have time for new adventurers to grow up, otherwise humanity would be a declining race from all the crises.
For an issue about treasure, there's surprisingly little crunchy stuff in this issue. It's filled with advice that seems rather familiar, and articles that are generally inconsequential, even when they aren't bad. The bits that are significant, on the other hand, are the bits showing the arrival of CCG's, and the reorganisation of their relationship with computer games. Which are a bit depressing. If issue 201 foreshadowed this stuff, now it's well and truly here, and will be a regular part of the magazine experience for the next few years. And while it may be a break from D&D, it's a lot less welcome than covering other RPG's by different companies. This doesn't feel good at all. I knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier now I've actually get to it. Guess I'd better press onwards ASAP.
Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
part 1/5
132 pages. The wolves howl and the cold wind blows in a cover which is completely contradictory to the actual season of this issue. Also advertised on the cover is coverage of their dead campaign world, and brand new CCG. It's all a bit contentious. Still, that means they're challenging their audience. Whether the audience will accept the challenge is another matter altogether. Maybe there is some reward at the end. It may be madness, but I've just got to see.
In this issue:
Letters: Another round of the submission guidelines thang. It never goes out of fashion. This proves two things. The magazine is still getting new readers. And people just don't pay attention, do they. Man, this stuff gets repetitive.
Not repetitive, on the other hand, is a letter by someone who turned a potentially tedious wander around into an opportunity. It's amazing what you can turn into a useful tool if you keep your eyes open and do a little macguyvering.
And finally, we have a complaint from someone who can't find call of cthulhu stuff near them. And as before, this is solved by giving their address and telling the writer to order direct. I can't wait for internet shopping to take off so this ceases to be a concern.
Editorial: Dale tries to promote roleplaying over rollplaying again, by giving you a little assistance in building their personality. Who, what, when, where, why and how? Simple one word questions, that can have very complicated answers indeed. When building a character, it's important to do so from several angles, otherwise what appears solid and 3-dimensional at first can turn out to be just a cardboard cutout. But at the same time, overcomplicating things can result in a whole load of wasted effort. My tendency is to go for a little too much, but the more I have to do, the less chance I get to indulge that desire. As is often the case with Dale, this is more an extra article than any commentary on current events. He's really racking them up despite not actually doing official articles himself. I also wonder just how much he actually adds and takes away from articles on a regular basis. Being an editor gives you a lot of behind the scenes power, different ones will use it to different extents, and probably only another experienced editor could tell the difference from reading a completed publication. So this isn't bad at all, and has also been fairly thought-provoking in general.
Jyhad, aka the Vampire TCG. Everyone's getting in on the act. But some will have more success than others. And it's not always the ones you'd expect.
First Quest: Ah yes, James Lowder. One of the people who's become a regular contributor to this thread in the last year or so. He seems noticeably less zany than some of our other writers, but that just meant his early adventures wound up with him as the straight guy, getting screwed over and rapidly dying while the more experienced players laughed. It's a hard knock life, for us. Still, once again, it makes for a fairly entertaining story that a lot of readers will be able to identify with. To truly hook people on something, you need intermittent reward, and combining sadistic teasing with the fun bits fits that bill disturbingly well. So this is a study in social dynamics, and how they (don't) change as we grow up. People manufacture drama because without it, they would be bored, and in the process, drag everyone else in. And some people need a lot more drama in their lives than others. Stay away from people who need more drama than you can take. Even if they don't mean to hurt you, it'll just fill your life with annoyance.
Right from the start. Ooh, an article by Eric Noah, the founder of ENWorld. Like Sandy's contributing over the last year, that's a definite turnup for the books. Following straight on from First Quest is another slant on introductory info. You can just throw them into the dungeon and make up a world as you go along, but this gets old after a couple of times. If you know your players, know what they want, and engage in the worldbuilding and character generation process simultaneously, you can tailor them to each other, making your life easier, and your players happier. Makes sense to me. A whole bunch of highly specific steps, with examples, makes this a pretty easy one to implement too. It's all pretty likeable. He evidently knows how to work with people and get good results out of them. Seems appropriate really. Keeping a whole bunch of moderators on the same page and not abusing their powers would require much the same skillset.
The sound of adventure: Once again with the audio CD cheese. I do have to wonder if their commitment to this format was one of the things causing Mystara to die so quickly once it went AD&D. After all, even if the products sell the same amount they used too, creating stuff like this pushes up costs quite a bit. So as soon as their finances start dipping into the red, these'll be the first to be flagged up as problems. Actually, how did the Mystara stuff compare in sales to the old basic D&D gazetteers and modules? There do seem to be quite a few people peeved by the rebranding, and possibly not buying the new products because of that. So this is an irritating promotional article that is very indicative indeed of the problems growing within the company. Silly gimmicks drive away regular buyers and attract people who then don't become long-term fans. Plus the audio CD's were pretty lame in general, which certainly didn't help. At least this is mercifully short.
Masterbook! WEG makes their own shot at an universal system, with worldbooks for indiana jones, and bloodshadows (I smell WoD clone) coming soon.
Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
part 2/5
Get motivated!: Contrasting with Dale's character creation advice earlier, this article thinks the most important part of a character is not who they are, or their past, but what they intend to do now and in the future. Interesting thought. It's certainly the case that far too often, players will come up with an elaborate backstory, but in the end, become just another cog in the party, doing exactly the same dungeoncrawls that they always do, unless they make a conscious effort to adjust their natural playing habits. Course to make that work, you need to co-ordinate with the other players to make sure they don't have contradictory goals, otherwise you'll tear the party apart. This is a bit of advice that they haven't given us before, and it's one of the good aspects of the characterisation-heavy era, so I quite like this one. Like method acting, there are various other cool ways you can approach the same problem. If you think up a new one, don't hesitate to share it.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another article on horses here. If an experienced adventurer wants a mount, they've got to be prepared to upgrade it for it to stay battle competitive. If you don't want to switch to dragons or something, then you'll have to start making magical items for your horse.
Bridles of Equine control do exactly what they say on the tin. Magic enforced loyalty for those who can't be bothered to form a proper bond with their animal.
Bridles of fearlessness, intelligence or strength are also pretty self explanatory. How do you want to buff your mount today? Make sure you're badass enough to keep up with them, whichever way you choose.
Feed bags of plenty ensure you don't need to load up with grain and water. You'll still need to remember to put them on and take them off each day. Maybe you should just get a golem, if that much maintenance is too much for you.
Grooming kits of disguise let you change the appearance of your mount. After all, if you're going undercover, you don't want to be given away because you forgot a basic detail like that.
Riding crops of speed let you push your mount extra hard. It has it's limits, of course. Killing your horse through pushing it too hard is not a good idea.
Riding crops of teleportation, on the other hand, dispense with all that sweat and effort and just get you there. I know which I'd prefer in most situations.
Saddlebags of holding are for the adventurer who still can't carry enough despite all their own extradimensional spaces. Jeez, that's gonna hold a lot of treasure.
Saddle blankets of comfort are for holding while you suck your thumb. Or something. Your horse needs environmental protection too you know.
Shoes of Combat are the horsey equivalent of magical weapon, Your basic bonus to hit and damage. Yawn.
Shoes of Flame are like a flaming sword, a nice upgrade to the previous idea. They also protect both the horse and rider, which definitely seems useful to me. Ride across that magma Trigger!
Shoes of Leaping are the equivalent of boots, which reminds us that the horsey item slot situation is a bit more competitive than for humans.
Shoes of Flight make the previous item look thoroughly unimpressive. Flight vs jumping. No competition really.
Shoes of Obscurity are the horsey equivalent of rings of invisibility. They'll let you disappear mysteriously when needed elsewhere. With billowing mists too. Neat.
Shoes of Protection are another straight conversion. Some protect the rider as well, some don't. either way, you're not going to kick them out of bed for wearing them. <_< >_>
Shoes of Swimming should also be pretty obvious in effect. Speeding through the waves, faster than a flashing dolphin.You'll still get wet though.
Shoes of Weakness are the usual cursed item in the batch, to keep you paranoid. You didn't think making equine items couldn't go wrong, did you?
Spurs of command are another means of ensuring obedience. Once again I have nothing much to say.
Trappings of displacement let you imitate a displacer beast. Not very useful if in formation, obviously, but pretty nasty for hit and run combat.
Trappings of elvenkind remind us that the nature loving ponces provide for all animals. While not as good as the shoes of obscurity, they once again have quite decent concealment capabilities.
Trappings of protection are yet another direct conversion. They'll even stack with other compatible garments. A decidedly unimaginative end for a really rather boring article. Man, that was a serious grind to do.
Team Spirit: A third bit of character-building advice this month once again takes a different angle. Don't know why they didn't make it this issue's formal special topic. As should be obvious from the title, this is about giving your party enough common ground that they want to adventure together. Now, you can work this out amongst you, or if you want to make the campaign truly random and quick, you can roll on a table. Actually, this devotes more time to the random tables than the custom advice, which I find rather amusing. Some of them could be used in conjunction with others, and of course, the table on group customs could be rolled as many times as you want, and you think they can remember. This is another thing that could break an impasse and speed along the process of starting up a campaign by a few hours. Definitely one for noting down.
Quote from: (un)reason;418713Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
Masterbook! WEG makes their own shot at an universal system, with worldbooks for indiana jones, and bloodshadows (I smell WoD clone) coming soon.
Bloodshadows in its D6 incarnation OWNS. Its noir fantasy horror and not even on a proper Earth. If there was any justice in this world (there isn't) this would be one of the most popular RPGs out there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
part 3/5
Behind the scenes: Bah, back to the promotional articles with a planescape one. Unlike the teasers, this is fairly banal, although it does have some cool sketches I don't remember seeing in the actual books. While Diterlizzi gets all the fame, Dana Knutson also had a good deal to do with defining planescape's distinctive aesthetic, and indeed, getting it commissioned in the first place. And of course, there are plenty of other people who deserve credit for making the line as good as it is. So this is a bit of mwah, mwah, we're all fabulous dahlings, let's engage in a bit of backslapping and drink champagne to celebrate our baby being released into the world. It's a little bit sickly, but oh well. At least in this case they deserve it. Still, again I say next! This is inconsequential!
Campaign Journal: Carl Sargent makes his final contribution to Greyhawk's post war geography. Last time we went sailing the sea, now it's into the depths of the Adri forrest. Even elves & stubby gnomes are rare in the depths of this one, while bandits, goblinoids and weird stuff aplenty for the players to fight roam the area. So it's mostly low-mid level encounters, but there's also one super high level plot device bit that's near impossible to get into, and has a terrifying evil artifact sealed within. With plenty of important characters from the area given full stats, this is another fairly long and wide-reaching article that you'll have to build upon to make a complete campaign, but does give you enough for when players stroll through the area. It's not as obviously suffering post-war as other areas, but it is a place riven by paranoia, with lots of small groups who don't trust each other or any strangers wandering through. And with adventurers being the sort to fight first and ask questions later, they shouldn't be short of opportunities for XP. So I think once again this'll make for fairly good gaming. Should I be playing greyhawk, I'd use this.
Eye of the monitor: Ah yes, computers vs consoles. one war that was particularly immature, because the majority of people eventually wound up owning at least one of each. Can we not accept that each has plusses and negatives for different kinds of games? Fie on ye, and your tribalism! A pox on both your houses! I'll be over here having fun with both.
Secret of Mana is another megaseller of the SNES era, even if it doesn't quite beat Zelda 3 overall. Sandy still gives it a 5 star rating; with it's multiple characters, decent AI, sense of humour and challenging puzzles. Consoles can produce games that have depth and don't let anyone say otherwise.
Ultima: the false Prophet brings this series to the Super Nintendo. It doesn't get a brilliant grade, and actually, it barely gets reviewed at all, with Sandy digressing into a rant on the drawbacks of console versions of PC games, and indeed conversions in general. This is actually probably more interesting than a normal review would be. He does seem surprisingly keen on turning this column into a general soapbox.
Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse is one of the final SSI AD&D games. It does have the usual flaw of requiring grinding for XP, but is otherwise is plenty of fun, and has a lot more instant action than the old games. Nice to see them producing stuff for the smaller campaign settings as well.
Ultima VIII: Pagan sees this series continue to decline in quality. It doesn't give you enough help figuring out how to play it, and the controls grow increasingly arcade game like. Fashion is moving on, and they're moving in the wrong way to follow it successfully.
God of Thunder has you playing Thor, of course, smashing shit and solving puzzles in an overhead zeldaesque style. It's a bit primitive, but it's free, so what's the worry. The worst you can get is some wasted time.
Raptor is a shoot'em up where you get to upgrade your plane between missions with the money you earned from blowing up enemies. Sandy enjoys that, finding getting real rewards for your accomplishments instead of just a higher score increases the pleasure. Once again, it's free as well. And blowing stuff up is inherently fun in itself.
Defend the realms: Our first proper spellfire article makes it's appearance. Variant rules time! Allen Varney was our first reporter on CCG's, so it's fitting he experiments to see what happens if you change bits around on TSR's new game. Change the pyramid to a line, circle, cross, grid or cluster. Introduce an economic element to play, as happens in reality. Ally protectors. And they squeeze in some errata as well. This isn't bad at all, and squeezes in a lot of options in a small page count. (made to look bigger by lots of awkwardly shaped adverts) It's a bit more variety for the magazine, and doesn't feel forced like the Buck Rogers articles in issue 157. Once again, it looks like I'm going to be able to get more info on something I pointedly ignored at the time. As long as they keep it to 1 article a month or less, and they don't suck too much, this is an entirely valid use of their page count.
Gaming around the world: It's been a while since we had a yank go off to report on the UK conventions. This could be good for a laugh. No great surprises here, but of course, it's the little differences that really stand out in his mind. The greater politeness of the english (ha!) The vaguely prisonlike UK holiday camps. The massive greasy breakfasts. All the cool old stuff. And the convention itself isn't bad either. So this reminds us that you shouldn't just be adventuring in your mind, and if you do, don't be surprised when everywhere you create seems the same to your players. Some real travel'll really help shake up your ingrained assumptions and let you create more varied cultures in your game worlds. Plus shopping opportunities. It's fun being a tourist. So this is one that's interesting for me because it does turn the tables on my UK flavoured viewpoint, and the enjoyment of the writer bleeds through into the article. Obviously it's not as significant as Gary's first trip to the UK, back in issue 63, but very few articles these days are. Another little adventure, that hopefully'll lead to bigger adventures for you.
Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
part 4/5
Forum: Rick Underwood revisits that thorny subject of critical hits. He suggests the probability system adopted in 3rd ed. Natural 20 means a threat, then you have to roll a hit again to confirm. Well well. This is a turnup for the books. He also uses fumbles with a similar probability if you roll a natural 1. This seems like about the right probability of brutality to me.
J. W. Rommell talks about his own experiences gaming, and suggests that you ought to let new gamers watch before they dive in. This stuff doesn't have to be scary.
Serena Ng also tackles both the sexism and introducing new players angles. It's less scary if you introduce several at once. Girls can get intimidated when there's just one of them and a whole bunch of blokes, especially if they're already an established group. It's one of the things that makes bands with female lead singers particularly unstable.
Marle McCabe believes Stout halflings have more in common with gnomes than dwarves. Don't let Tolkien hem you in. He never had gnomes to worry about.
Daman Robinson points out that it is entirely possible for male gamers to play female characters. Some of them aren't even lesbian stripper ninjas. There are plenty of male actors who actually enjoy acting.
Mike Olgren advises us not to be embarrassed of roleplaying as an adult. We don't grow out of our musical tastes. Like video games, the problem is simply because it's a first generation form of entertainment. We just have to make sure the hobby survives after they die out and gets passed down successfully.
The game wizards: Dragon passed it's 200th issue fairly recently. Now Polyhedron hits the big 1 oh oh. And it looks like they're putting a similar degree of extra effort to make it a special issue as well. Ed Greenwood is contributing, of course. But there's also stuff from Margaret Weis, Zeb Cook, Monte Cook, Bruce Heard and Roger Moore. Pretty much the same cast as we see regularly contributing to Dragon. It also looks like they're making an extra effort to cover other RPG's in this one. I do wonder just how connected the editorial policies of the two magazines (and Dungeon, for that matter) are. Will all three cut out coverage of 3rd party stuff at the same time in early 96? Do they all use the same editing and typesetting equipment? (I'm still not sure if they've moved fully to computer yet) As ever, when they bring this topic up, I must bemoan the apparent absence of polyhedron issues on the web, or anyone willing to hunt them down physically and do a reading thread. It's looking increasingly unlikely that itch will get to be scratched. So this a promotional article that reminds me there's a whole other untapped source of old D&D articles, many of which are quite good in their own right, even if they don't have the same legendariness simply due to smaller reader base. It'd be a shame if that just disappeared into the ether as the physical copies gradually wear out and get lost.
Role-playing reviews: Another delve into the quirky small-press games. Cool ideas, implementation limited by budget. Often an interesting position. Will any of these go on to greater things?
Whispering vault is Mike Nystul's rather interesting attempt at designing his own game. Creating a premise that seems perfect for an anime series, you're ascended beings with their own weird and wonderful realms protecting the world from rogue gods. Lester only got to see a prerelease copy, which had a few flaws, but hopefully some of them'll be fixed in the full version. It's still a decidedly fun premise, and the dice mechanic is interesting as well. This is one that should have done better, and seems a good subject for a revival.
World Wrestling Federation basic adventure follows in the footsteps of our old Ringside game to bring the world of pro sports to roleplaying. It's a very amusing idea but the writing is repetitive and hard to untangle. It results in things being a lot slower than they ought to be, which spoils the fun.
All-star Wrestling game does a good deal better. It's only half the size, yet a lot more flexible, and easy to play. Should you want to engage in white room combat and bizarre theatrics, this is the one to pick.
Superbabes is licensed from the Femforce comics, and like most licences, tries to emulate the tone of the source material. In this case, that's quite playful and not too complicated, with drama point mechanics that promote the right kind of stories. The main complaint seems to be the shoddy construction of the physical books themselves. Meh.
Inferno panders to the satanic RPG controversy, with you playing damned souls, necromancers, demons, or possibly priests venturing into hell to smite evil and rescue unjustly imprisoned souls. You can choose to be good or bad, and either looks fun, but of course the evil options are given more relish, just to annoy the moral majority. Like white wolf, they must be gambling this will increase their success.
Fiction: Time in a bottle by P. Andrew Miller. We had a genie based bit in the computer reviews. Now we have another story involving a being with phenomenal cosmic power, and an itty-bitty living space. Quite a good one, as it twists around two classic genie tropes - the perversion of the wisher's wish, and the desire to wish them free. It also manages to expertly mix pathos and humour, and get inside the head of a decidedly alien creature. And the happy ending is just tear-jerkingly brilliant. A real little gem that fits a lot of descriptive density into it's pages. This one definitely goes in my top ten bits of fiction from the magazine.
Gunnar Thorson is capable of surprisingly deep thought for a man engaged in pitched combat in the dark.
Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994
part 5/5
Sage advice: What classes and level can tieflings be (most of them, pretty high. They're versatile little things, as befits their diverse heritage )
Do magically aged undead get more powerful (probably not. You don't get mental bonuses for fake aging, so they shouldn't either)
Can druids use athasian weapons if they're made of organic materials (Hmm. Skip is suspicious of this concept. Skip does not recommend it.)
Where's the height, weight and aging tables for the new planescape races, ya berk. (Are you threatening skip with yo bad 19th century british slang. Skip was brought up on the mean shores of Lake Geneva, where there were d4's that could take your foot off lurking round every corner. Skip laughs at your pitiful attempts to sound tough, biatch. But Skip will answer your question anyway. Now watch yo mouth next time. Can you dig it?)
Where the hell is the Dawnspire?( Good question. Errata, errata, here we go again. )
Can PC githzerai plane shift (No. They've all been disowned for associating with other races. )
Can planars really see portals without using magic (yes. Why do you doubt the books, friend citizen? )
Are 1st and 2nd level priest spells common knowledge to sha'irs (no)
How the hell do dragons from far countries get to the council of wyrms on time (Flying 20 hours a day. Man, their wings are gonna need a serious massage after that. )
When are all the things that happen in the forgotten realms novels gonna be properly updated to the game. (They aren't. They're just gonna be referred to obliquely so you have to buy everything to keep up with the metaplot :p )
I question the validity of your rulings! You keep missing points! (Ahh, fresh meat. Come here son, Skip's gonna teach you a valuable lesson. :bang: There. Once your kneecaps heal, I hope you won't make the same mistake again. Ahh, that's better. It's been too long since Skip did that. )
Can a beholder's eyes survive the death of the body (No, thank god. They'd be even more of a nightmare if that was the case. )
Wouldn't a vampire that had recently fed still be obvious to infravision, because the heat would be concentrated in their stomach? (And what's to say it isn't passed straight to their veins? They do not have regular metabolisms, remember. Your DM was entirely in his rights to screw you out of 2 levels in this way. )
Libram X gets rather confusing as Jen meets an alternate her. Dragonmirth finds a prince in every pond. Joe gets in trouble with his gods in Yamara. This is what happens when you hang around vampires.
WotC creates their own comic to advertise their customer sales line. It's a Foglio number too. Haven't seen much of him around here recently. This is the kind of thinking that will lead them to own ur ass, TSR.
Through the looking glass: Ken proves himself not a reviewer after my own heart by saying that the reason most of his reviews are positive is because he thinks we'd rather hear about the good stuff than be warned away from the bad stuff. NOPE! I want to laugh at the crap stuff. :p Entire websites are formed precisely for this purpose. Plus only posting positive reviews can make you look like a company shill. You lose several points of credibility.
So anyway, the minis. A chief goblin and his pet squig from warhammer. What a heartwarming story. A pair of street samurai from Shadowrun, probably noobs, since they aren't cybered up to the gills. Some 15mm ogres for the Battlesystem. They'll be barely goblins if the PC's are in 25mm scale. Zulkir Szass Tam from the forgotten realms setting. One of the few bad guys with a chance of beating Elminster in a straight fight, if your PC's meet him, you know it's serious. Some griffon riding warriors, also AD&D official. A pair of postapocalyptic rebel leaders. The fat one is wearing less clothing than the thin one, and appears to have an armoured codpiece. Thank you for that, designers. An arthurian herald.
TSR Previews: Generic stuff is very much on top this month. The complete druid's handbook shows you how they can be protectors for all terrain, plus the usual supply of kits, roleplaying advice, scary new spells, and a villainous organisation dedicated to the harsher side of nature. They also bring out player packs, prefab sets of character sheets, minis, pen, dice, all the obvious crap. Very much aimed at beginners. And another art book for those of you who don't want to trawl through dozens of places for the odd pretty picture.
Dark sun shows us City by the silt sea. Shane Hensley is expanding on things. There's another really scary undead monster out there. Looks like even Athasian dragons can wind up Dracoliches.
Ravenloft is also undead obsessed, as usual. The Awakening sees another monster unleashed on the world. Thankfully it's stuck in Ravenloft, but that's small comfort if you're trapped in there with it.
The Forgotten Realms gets another R A Salvadore drow novel. Siege of Darkness. Things go horribly wrong, but if anyone deserves it, they do.
The Amazing Engine releases Kromosome. Genetic Engineering + Corporate espionage. Sounds like it would have fitted in with the Top Secret output 5 years ago. More cool toys to build your own game world.
Somewhat better than the last few issues, this is still very much of it's time, but shows a lot more of the positive aspects of that era, in terms of worldbuilding, characterisation, design elements, etc. Remember, even if the average quality goes down, all the good stuff from all the previous eras remains valid, so you can just keep accumulating options with which you can make your game better. You'll just need more time to sort everything out. Now, the big flaw here is our limited lifespans. And since I've now been working on this thread for almost a 10th of my life, I'd better get a move on if I want to get a practical benefit from it. On we go to the next issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Time for clerics & druids to get another turn at being the featured class for an issue, with both a cover appearance and three articles near the beginning. I guess this means more spells, and possibly more kits if we're lucky. They still don't actually do articles with them that frequently. Funny business, really. I suppose it reinforces the image of them as a cool idea that was never implemented very well, allowing prestige classes to improve on the principle quite a bit come next edition. But I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I. Let's try and keep this linear, at least in the output stages. (and then you'll never know just how non-linear my reviewing process actually was, ahahahaha!!!!! ahem)
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who wants to work at TSR. As with the unsolicited magazine articles, Dale has to inform them their chances are slim. Try becoming a freelancer first. It's a rough ride, but it all gets a lot easier after the first few articles sold and contacts made.
A letter from someone worried about the death of dragonlance. It's not dead, it's just the RPG side of it that got small. The novels are going as prolifically as ever. If you're unhappy about this, keep writing and buying.
A complaint that their copy of the complete book of humanoids lost it's cover. Hey, that happened to me too! Guess it's another one that was shoddily printed in general. Which is silly, since like UA, it was one of their crunch heavy books most likely to be thumbed through again and again.
And finally, a request for healthy food recipes that'll make good alternatives to the mountain dew and chips stereotype that results in overweight gamers. Tee hee. Thankfully that is not a concern of mine, and as long as my knees'll allow me to walk miles regularly and do several hours of dance practice a week, hopefully that'll continue to be the case.
Editorial: Not sure who's doing the editorial this month, as they don't sign it, but it certainly doesn't read like a Dale piece. Plus he's too young to have a daughter just join the army, unless he was a dad at 12. Still, like Dale's editorial in issue 207, it's a strong reminder that the journey is usually by far the biggest part of the adventure, and in real life, every lengthy trip is a minor adventure, especially if you aren't much good at reading maps and following directions. And most people didn't have GPS or mobile phones then, so if you were lost or running late, you couldn't call to apologise or ask for help. It's also a reminder that gamers and army people do have quite a bit of overlap. Since Roger left, that's come up less frequently round here. Still, this story of other people's frustration and eventual triumph is reasonably entertaining, and has lessons for you to apply to your gaming as well, be you player or GM. It's a big world out there, and a lot less actively malevolent than most game worlds. If you want true realism, you have to remember the neutral stuff as well.
First quest: Steve Winter has been a fairly regular contributor for over a decade now. He's one of the old guard who started off as a wargamer, before being sucked into roleplaying by the people in the gaming club. He actually puts a lot of attention to that start, it's more than halfway through the article before he gets to his D&D experience. And even then, he found he preferred Metamorphosis alpha and gamma world. I seem to recall him being heavily involved in the Battlesystem stuff, so I suspect he takes the non D&D projects where he can. This is one of the introductions I identify less with, as the writing isn't too engaging, it takes too long to get to the point, and the experiences are quite different to my own. But then, it would be a boring world if we were all alike. I know there are other people out there who'll see themselves in his formative experiences. Personally, I'll have to return a meh result though.
Branching out all over: So we've reached the end of class and race handbooks. All the ones from the players handbook are now fully catered for. What now? Not sure, but at least we can take advantage of the last one with a tie-in article to provide subtle promotion. As he did with the Council of Wyrms, Roger Moore looks at better integrating the new druid subtypes into the various other campaign worlds. Actually it's surprising how few of them actually have druids. Like assassins, they like to think of themselves as ubiquitous and eternal, like the cycles of nature, but they really really aren't. No wonder entire planets wind up ecologically screwed on a regular basis. This certainly isn't as fascinating as the half-dragon stuff, and is pretty much lacking in new crunch. It's obviously for the setting obsessives who just have to have a canon answer, instead of applying a little logic. The new spell ideas are cool, the rest is stuff I could have whipped up myself in a few minutes. One of those cases where you wonder why they put them first. Probably the whole established author thing. MeeeeEEEEeeeeh, once again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994
part 2/5
The priests of africa: More kits time! As with issue 200's wizardly kits, (which are by the same writer) these have minor access to spells from the other side, thus blurring the wizard/priest distinction in D&D. This should make for an interesting article mechanically, but also runs the risk of repeating fluff ideas. Africa is a big continent, but are his cultural sources wide enough to do that justice? I shall have to see. Artwork's good though, so that's already a plus in it's favor.
Animal priestesses get wizard divination spells (but not clerical divination spells, very weirdly) and the abilities to talk too, charm and summon their chosen animal. Course, they can't hurt said animal without losing their powers, but as a limitation, I think this falls into the path of what I was going to do anyway. They're pretty unlikely to attack you with that suite of powers unless there's a more powerful spellcaster involved.
Kongo Witch Doctors get to create village wide circles of protection via dancing. They're not that great as adventurers, with quite a small sphere selection and no armour allowed. More a support kit then, for they'll be almost as squishy as wizards in the frontline.
Legbas are another variant on the elemental priest idea. They get the more wide-ranging power to control all kinds of animals from the appropriate terrain, and a pretty decent spell selection, including wizard spells of the appropriate element. The only hinderance is once again having no armor and shields, which I suspect may be standard for all this lot, given the culture.
Obeah-men get wizardly necromantic spells, setting them up as the priestly parallel of issue 200's Houngan & Mambo. They also have to sacrifice animals to the gods upon level increase in the same way. Using both really blurs the distinction between the magic types.
Poro draw upon their ancestors regularly, and get to upgrade their mental stats in the manner of cavaliers. They also get bardic lore and lots of proficiency slots. Their spell selection isn't that great though, making them more generalists with spiritual fluff than clerics. Which is interesting. But as with last selection, these seem more likely to err on the side of overpowered than under. Maybe the consistently considerably lower AC's will balance that out. Guess that's another question for the actual play realms.
Palladium also gets all verdant, with the jungles of yin-sloth out now.
Long-lost priestly magicks: Wizards aren't the only ones with obscure spells. Clerics might not have as many, for both IC and OOC reasons, (godly records, and not as many supplements focussing on them) but there's certainly nothing stopping spells from going out of common use, particularly if they're the sort that would only be cast a few times a lifetime anyway. High priest forgets to pass them down, or gets killed before a decent successor arises, and the hierarchy's secrets are borked. Such a pain.
Merge with Nature lets you avoid death by merging with a tree and becoming a dryad. This is nowhere near as good as Tree Spirit from the complete druids handbook, but it is a level lower and accesible from more spheres. If you know about both, you're unlikely to use this unless it looks like you're going to die from old age before you get the chance to advance a few levels.
Roots of the Assassin are a druidic variant on Evard's black tentacles. They kill by strangulation, and are rather a bitch to fight. They seem perfectly decent as a combat spell, and have some neat forgotten realms fluff woven in as well.
Resplendence of renewed Youth lets an old priest temporarily regain the vigour of youth for one last world-saving adventure! (at a heavy price, of course) Very much a plot device, this has a good dramatic feel to it, making me thoroughly approve. This selection definitely goes for quality over quantity, which since we have tons of spells already, isn't a bad thing. And new methods of playing with the aging process, which is one area D&D has always been rather conservative with, are especially welcome. So I definitely enjoyed this one.
Role-playing reviews: Lester bends the rules a little, and reviews computer-based roleplaying aids in this column. Well, it's just as valid a form as audio CD's to aid your gaming, and has considerably more legs in terms of development and reusability. After all, we know now that computer based aids'll become an invaluable part of 4e's player aids toolkit. It's mainly the budget required that keeps this from becoming more common. I suspect quite a few companies are trying to jump on this bandwagon around this time.
Goldtree engine is for creating your own fully searchable city setting, full of fleshed out buildings, people, objects, weather, random events and plot hooks. Much of Lester's review is devoted to his sample adventure created with it, which does indeed sound pretty cool. It's surprisingly quick to use, and can throw up results that surprise even the DM, spinning off into new plots easily. A computer program should make things quicker and easier, not harder, and this certainly seems to fit that bill. Now, if they could just get the self-aggrandisement out of the manual. :p
Worldsystem Mapmaker is designed to create maps and encounters over a wider scale, even going up to solar systems rather than just planets. Again, it's flexible, and supports putting a certain degree of randomness in your game so you can have random monster attacks and weather to keep players on their toes. It does seem a bit harder to use than Goldtree, but also more versatile. It also has a bunch of expansions, so it seems good for people who really want to work at mastering a program.
Campaign Cartographer isn't nearly as versatile as the other two products reviewed here, but does what it does better, thanks to being more specialised. You can zoom in and out from street to global level easily, and create amazing levels of detail. You can lose yourself for hours and fill your entire computer's memory with your world maps. And it costs $70. That's a fairly substantial investment to make. Once again I'm thankful that computers have become a good deal cheaper and better over the years.
The invisible sun: A second (and final) amazing engine article for the magazine before it slips away like Top Secret and Gamma World before it. This is actually recent enough to be topical, as it's for Kromosome. Although it does look like cut material from the book, as it is by Wolfgang Baur, the actual author, but still, better than nothing. So here's a new organisation for the players to join or oppose. Existing largely online, and making use of nasty computer programs that burn out people's minds, turning them into cyber-zombie slaves, The Invisible Sun certainly isn't a heroic organisation by any stretch of the imagination. But of course, they have valuable information and a good social network, so you might need to deal with them to get things done. And the premise is fairly fun and not too hard to convert. The biopunk name might differentiate it a bit from standard cyberpunk, but stylistically, it means little. Just a slight difference in the kewl powerz. But I'm not complaining at all.
Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994
part 3/5
Forum: B. Johnson brings back the paladin's code issue, once again saying you should discuss it with the DM before play to establish their moral priorities. Then, when the pinch comes down and it's time to make hard compromises, you won't lose your powers for prioritising a different ideal to the DM.
Mary Cateli thinks that paladins shouldn't all be played as cavaliers, and cavaliers shouldn't have to act like jackasses towards the peasantry. Many of the best knights were humble and courteous to everyone regardless of age, sex, race or social class.
Eyal Teler thinks that it's important that the paladin's code doesn't force them to act like idiots. Good ≠ stupid, and if you make it so, then of course they'll wind up falling from grace or failing in their tasks regularly. Unless they're following the god of pedantic bureaucrats, this is a bad thing.
Steve Fletcher points out that paladins may be slightly more powerful than rangers, but they're both harder to get into, and easier to wash out of. This is what counts as balance in D&D at the moment.
Mike Delmonico is finding his specialist wizards are gaming the system, and often not actually using that many spells from their speciality. And the fixed opposition school system is rather clunky. Perhaps removing that, and making the proportion of spells that need to be of their speciality rather higher, at least 50%, would help.
Jean-Philippe Suter expresses his displeasure at Jon Pickens reorganisation of spheres in issue 205. This kind of movement based not on what they do, but who ought to be using them seems like putting the cart before the horse to him. Course, in his ideal world, every god would have a completely customised spell list. You know why they don't do that? Because that would mean it'd be a nightmare figuring out if a particular priest could have particular spells from supplements. The sphere system supports modular expandability.
Julian Neale picks apart the power level of high level necromancers. Many of their spells are surprisingly sucky. House ruling time! Yeah, I think half the time they use necromancers as villains so they can inflate their levels to look impressive, while still having the PCs kick their ass when they get to them.
Donald R. Maclean turns his eye on the many problems with using magic jar as a method of immortality. Sooner or later, they're going to break free, or you'll be stuck in the receptacle somewhere obscure for years with no-one to take over. Like becoming a vampire, you're setting yourself up for a troubled existence where you regularly have to worry about your victims coming back to haunt you.
Christopher Davis also points out Eric Burns' misconceptions as to how magic jar works. People do fight back mentally when you take over their body. Plus you can't tell exactly what you're getting beforehand. That can be rather embarrassing.
Doug Ironside recommends cheating on your gaming group with another one. If they're better, you have more fun, and if they're worse, you learn to appreciate what you have all the more. Either way, it's more interesting than hanging around with the same people year in year out.
Ex Libris: Just back in issue 207 they encouraged us to use pieces of paper as treasures, for there are quite a few plot opportunities created by them. How many more opportunities in something comprised of hundreds of pieces of paper? We already have a decent selection of magical books in the DMG, so this adds a whole selection of nonmagical ideas, once again determined via random table. Most of them are useful, quite a few are funny, and some of them contain useful information for magic-users to research stuff. This is very much in the old school spirit, being short, lighthearted, and not afraid of bending genre. Does feel a bit rehashed though. Probably shouldn't have come so soon after a similar article.
You wanna be a What!: Ah, yes, gamma world and their gonzo selection of races. Unlike D&D, which is still relatively conservative in the official publications, they've always encouraged you to play sentient plants, cockroaches, conglomerations of radioactive gas, and other such weirdness. So here's another bundle of crunch, giving you stats for characters derived from ants, butterflies, cats, dogs, dolphins, dragonflies, fleas, flys, killer whales, leopards, lions, lizards, owls, rabbits, rats, scorpions, snails and wolverines. Most of them are pretty much as you would expect in both stats and personality. The artwork goes for an alice in wonder land, pseudo-victorian style which looks good, but doesn't seem very appropriate for the post apocalyptic environment of gamma world. That, combined with the fact that this seems to be back to basics again (what, no stats for cat & dog stock in the corebook?) leaves me a little bemused. Not a lot of rigorous critical thought going into putting this together, it seems. What game do you really want to play? What playstyle are you trying to promote?! This is doing my head in now. Why did the editor put this together in this form? Chalk it up to lack of direction.
Eye of the monitor: After only a single year, Sandy moves on, his regular programming work taking up so much time that he can't hold down this column as well. Bah. And now we truly move into the endgame of computer game coverage in the magazine, where the cast of reviewers changed every month, with very little consistency. This doesn't feel particularly good either, even though he wasn't around as long as the Lessers, he certainly made his mark with memorable soapbox pieces and cool additional articles for the magazine. Still, he goes out with another prophetic statement, predicting the rise of MMO's and other multiplayer games. The greater the proportion of people regularly buying computer games, and the more able they are to communicate, the better the network externalities become, and the more viable this option is. And other people are always a challenge where computer opponents soon cease to be, or reach the point of impossibility. He certainly has his finger on the pulse better than most people who try to predict the future.
Inherit the Earth is a point and click adventure game that feels a bit buggy and outdated. It's also annoyingly hard, leaving Sandy frustrated at what could have been. It only takes a few things wrong to seriously lower a game's score.
Equinox is the sequel to Solstice. (see what they did there) Like it's precursor, it's a 3d isometric game where you explore levels and solve puzzles with decidedly limited resources. Make sure you don't use them up too soon, otherwise you can find yourself stuck.
Castlevania IV shows Sandy once again making fairly elementary errors about nintendo games. Castlevania II was the only one that had any real roleplaying elements, I & III were both straight platformers. He's decidedly disappointed by this. Platformers are evidently not his thing.
Serf City is essentially a medieval version of sim city, with all that entails. The building side is balanced out with the combat side, with knights that you use to conquer enemies and defend your city. The AI is limited, and there's no networked multiplayer, so it's hardly a classic, but it's another one that's entertaining enough if you like the genre.
Gunnar Thorson solves the mystery, with a little oracular help. A plot wrapped up in under a year? Unheard of! Will he be back to solve another one? Nahh. This is going to stay a one-off. Bah.
Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994
part 4/5
1,001 faces of undeath: Ahh, yes, dark sun undead. Each one an individual. Which means more powers for them to choose from rarely go amiss. And that is exactly what we have here, along with a semirandom set of tables for determining how many and which ones they have. Like the old hordeling table, which it has a moderate amount of stuff in common with, you can get some pretty obscene results, especially if you get multiple complementary effects on the defensive powers table that make them virtually impossible to hurt and able to reform even if their physical body is destroyed. You won't even have to resort to fiat to get scenarios like a classic slasher movie series, where buggers like freddy and jason just keep on coming back ad nauseum, killing more people each time. Ravenloft may spin a scary tale, but Dark Sun really backs up it's terror with large numbers. So this'll let you whip up multiple scary, idiosyncratic individual monsters much faster. That's definitely worth something, even if it's hardly original these days.
Fiction: What power holds by Richard Parks. A tale of magic and it's laws this month. Not too unusual around here, you might say. The thing you have to pay attention to is their consistency, and the way they impact the fictional world around them, hopefully in such a way to create compelling stories. When they create a battle between what is just, and what is the compassionate thing to do, this becomes more of a benefit to the narrative. And when we get to discover them along with the protagonists in a naturalistic fashion, it helps keep the world accessible, and makes you eager to read more. So once again, it looks like their fiction department has picked a winner, with a premise that could easily be expanded on to fill a few novels of adventures and worldbuilding. Sometimes this magazine seems like a whole world full of unfulfilled potentials. Only a few of them will ever become reality. But then I remember that's much of the point. With roleplaying, it's what you make in your own games that really matters. So let's draw what we can from this and move on again.
Sage advice: How does speak with dead work on petitioners if they've lost their memories (It doesn't. It works on corpses, which remember just fine. )
What racial adjustments do githzerai thieves have (none. Their body is close enough to human to make no difference in these matters. )
Do the fated get double to both weapon and nonweapon proficiencies (Skip says no, full knowing future freelancers will break that rule. Skip looks forward to capping their asses. )
Can power's avatars enter sigil (no. Even that would cause the lady of pain to throw a tantrum with sharp whippy things.)
How big are a dragon's wings (2/3rds it's body length)
How high can a dragon's strength go ( Not as high as you'd think. Damn this 25 point scale )
How big an area can you scry ( As far as you could see from that point normally)
What races can use giant sized weapons (have we not formalized size categories yet? Oh well, another thing to put on the edition change list)
Do PC satyrs get 50% magic resistance (no. PC's are different. In this case this means we nerf stuff, like we did for githzerai last issue.)
Can a magical shield deflect attacks from creatures that need magical weapons to hurt (yes, but a normal shield could do that too)
What's this? Looks like the higher-ups at TSR are forcing Skip to do spellfire questions as well. What are you gonna do if Skip refuses, huh? Oh. Yes, maam. Right you are. :mutter, mutter mutter. Skip'll get you for this later, just you wait and see:
What is an unprotected realm (one with no defences or defender )
How far back can I set my realms (you need to put them as close as possible. Only if you have lots of them can they cower behind one another)
What happens if you get more than 8 cards in someone elses turn (nothing, until you get to step 5 of your turn.)
Can a realm defend itself with spells without a champion (no)
Why put stuff in your hand, not the pool (so you can use it more quickly)
How many cards can you have in the pool (as many as you like.)
The dragon's bestiary: Fae last time, trolls before. Now it's Golems. Another fairly common occurrence in the magazine (see issues 44, 99, 119, 136, 156, 159) and gaming in general. And one that's relatively easy to create new variants for, just by picking a new material for them to be constructed out of, then adding a few appropriate powers. Thankfully, this writer doesn't take that lazy route, instead going to some effort to both reaffirm their horror story origins, and create some more inventive creatures.
The brass minotaur is your classic terminator style pursuer with a couple of twists. Any damage it does is a bugger to heal (although not as much as clay golem's) and it can transport it's victim into an extradimensional maze and hunt them down without their friends being able to help. Run, run as fast as you can. If you're encumbered, shed the excess. It's better than losing your life.
Phantom flyers are unusually clever and mysterious for constructs. They strike in the night, and disappear into the shadows in the daytime. They can serve as spies, retrieval, or just mothra-esque engines of destruction for their masters. Steal the magical whistle controlling them and you get some pretty awesome treasure instead of having to kill them. That sounds like a fun scenario to me.
The burning man is even more likely to go psycho on it's creator than Clay Golems. Since it's also near indestructible, and has a malevolent intelligence, it really is a nuclear option for a battle. One of these is perfect for destroying an entire village and similar horrifying situations. Don't hesitate to run away if you don't have the tools to beat it. Yeah, all of these three are nicely scary, more so than most actual undead. Maybe they should have been saved for the october issue. :p
Rumblings: Hee. Kindred: the Embraced. White Wolf is about to learn the hard way what TSR learnt over a decade ago. Dealing with tv executives and coming away with a shred of artistic integrity and faithfulness to the original licence's vision is not an easy task. They're a bunch of coked up tosspots. At least most musicians have basic listening skills. The rest of this column is taken up by the origins awards winners. Dragon mountain, their minis line, and this magazine all get awards, while Traveller: the new era, GURPS Vampire: the Masquerade and Magic: the Gathering are among the other products making waves. Colons are the in thing in modern titles. People'll copy the silliest little things in the hope that some of the cool will rub off, while missing the things that really make them popular. ^~^
The game wizards: I've certainly been guilty of a little Ed Greenwood worship over the years. Here we see that even the other designers at TSR are in awe of his talents. Whatever you think about the quality of his work, his sheer prolificness is not in dispute. He produces writing more than twice as fast as most of their staff, despite also holding down a regular day job as well. Does he type faster, sleep less, or simply have so many ideas that he doesn't need to pause to think what to write next the way most of us do? Even the editors find him a joy to work with, which is not the case with many prolific but scattershot creators who have more ideas than they have time to properly develop, and struggle to decide which to work upon and complete properly. And he seems to make an impression as a great eccentric on those who meet him personally as well. So while this is technically a promotional article for his new novel, Crown of Fire, it's more one extolling him personally, to make their superstar writer even more of a legend than he already is. Does he really need that? Probably not, but there you go. In any case, it reminds us there are very good reasons he rose to the top, rather than someone else, and sometimes you can meet your heroes without it shattering your illusions about them. There are far worse things to learn, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994
part 5/5
The role of books:Weird tales from Shakespeare, edited by Katherine Kerr & Martin H Greenberg does the alternate takes thing with humour and aplomb. From musical comedy to satire about hollywood conversions, the fun variants are the best, while the ones which play it straight less so. If you want to make an adaption work for a new time you need to inject same of your own creativity. After all, shakespeare certainly ripped off older plots, but it's what he did with them that was important.
Mordenheim by Chet Williamson is of course the story of Ravenloft's Frankensein analogue. It gets hit by the strong complaint that magic in D&D is a well known and codified thing, and Mordenheim's actions make no sense at all in light of that. That is a presumptuous assumption. Maybe in some other worlds, but Ravenloft is very much a place where each domain works on it's own little rules socially. Darkon might have plenty of wizards and clerics, but Lamordia certainly doesn't, and anyone openly showing occult knowledge would be another target for a good old lynch mob wielding burning torches. Yeah, it all falls apart if you look at it too hard, but when doing so will likely get you eaten by a creature of the night, you learn not to do that almost reflexively. Ahh, rationalising. There's not a lot you can't do with it.
Caledon of the mists by Deborah Turner Harris is one of those stories that can't figure out if it wants to be Historically Accurate or fantastical, and suffers for the split in tone. Pick one or the other and stick with it! Less can be more.
Mother of storms by John Barnes posits a near future in which global warming has destabilised the weather substantially, resulting in far more frequent and violent hurricanes. Meanwhile, virtual reality is really taking off as a form of entertainment. These two bits of unconnected relatively hard sci-fi premises interact in an interesting manner to create a story that seems fairly plausible, while not neglecting the characterisation either. This doesn't seem bad at all.
A logical magician by Robert Weinberg is another novel applying scientific principles to magic, setting things in modern day chicago. It does have a streak of comedy running through it, but not to the extent that it could be defined as a comic novel. As is often the case these days, it leaves things unresolved so as to obviously set up a sequel. Shouldn't give away everything at once, should we?
Wizard's first rule by Terry Goodkind is another book that's immediately recognised as a series chosen for major promotional push by the book company. And indeed, it does get a mostly positive review, standing out from the pack due to it's quite distinctive characters and setting. Course, those quirks will start to bug us over the course of an extended series, but hey ho, too late then.
Libram X deals with the duplicate problem, and then they get back to Jen's home. Of course, now they have to deal with the thing they left behind. And time seems to have passed faster here. What are the odds he's ready for them. Swordplay shows that while the mage may be useless at defending the party, he's quite capable of defending his property. Dragonmirth shows the limitations of various types of spellcasters. Yamara is in danger of having her skull repossessed, along with everyone else. What a diabolical plot. And given the RL attempts of companies to patent genomes and genetically modified crops, reality is once again imitating the most ludicrous of fiction.
Through the looking glass: As he's done several years in the past, Robert warns us to prepare for the long dull winter months at home. Perfect time to stay in and paint all your minis, really, presuming you can get a good idea of the colours in artificial light. Just watch your ventilation. You need to strike the right balance between keeping warm and not suffocating yourself on toxic fumes. I think that's not a worry to most people. Still, using spraypaints is an option that could speed your painting process along quite a bit, so it is good of him to point it out to us. A few decades ago, people would pay a lot for that kind of technology.
Our minis this month are a sleeping dragon and its treasure hoard. They're detachable, so either can be used individually, making it more versatile. An armoured giant that'll tower over most minis, but still look pretty puny compared to action figures, as it's only 65 mm. 6 coffins, 2 ponies and a sacrificial altar. The ponies will not fit in the coffins, but they might carry them somewhere. Two mildly futuristic troopers, and two trenchcoated badasses with guns, another adjacent pairing that seems to add up to a good story. A dune buggy and a helicopter. A mohawked, dual-wielding post apocalyptic warrior grrl. Another batch of faceless security goons for your PC's to dispatch with ease. And a quartet of shadowrunners which are really feeling the burn of the removal of lead from our minis. The stresses of the last few years have faded to a low-level persistent grumble.
TSR Previews: The forgotten realms gets Elminster's Ecologies. Ed was the king of these a decade ago. See what he can do when applied to the various regions of his own world. The Realms really is filled up to quite a frightening degree now. How can they find more stuff to put in? And our book this month seems quite interesting too. The Ogre's pact by Troy Denning is another start of a trilogy. An ogre's kidnapped someone's daughter and he doesn't want her rescued? Whyever could that be. What will happen to the doof who tries to rescue her anyway?
Ravenloft, on the other hand, still has plenty of room. Hour of the knife, of course, takes you to Paridon to face Jack the Ripper. Just who or what is he really? Not that it's hard to know. All you need to do is read the corebook. It's so hard to be genuinely scary in D&D. It also gets it's first fiction anthology, Tales of Ravenloft. Another opportunity for them to illustrate the ironic sense of humour of the Dark powers, as people suffer, and make others suffer.
Planescape gets it's own short adventure anthology. The well of worlds. 128 pages of extraplanar jaunty goodness. Get 'em done and be back in Sigil for dinner.
Mystara continues releasing CDs with products, with the adventure Hail to the Heroes. Add a new level of atmosphere to your game by playing tracks at the appropriate places. Oh, the cheese. How much did these cost to produce?
Lankhmar gets Rogues in Lankhmar. Exactly what it sounds like, this details the thieves guild, and has lots of ideas for what larcenous adventurers would like to steal in the city. Now that definitely sounds like fun.
Dragonlance finishes rehashing the original module series, with Dragonlance classics, Vol 3 filling parts 10-14 in a condensed format. As with B1-9, it might be a good idea to use the originals as well if you can find them.
Endless quest does Spelljammer, in A Wild Ride. Save the rock of Braal from rogue asteroids. Isn't that a computer game? :p Strange to think this is the last product for the line.
Our generic AD&D book this month is Wizards Challenge II. A monster a normal army can't touch? No problem. A few magic missiles'll do the job. Really, if you fill your army with nothing but fighters, you should expect this trouble.
Another book which looks to have goofy elements is Go Quest, Young Man by K B Bogen. A young would be mage has a distinctly awkward time of things avoiding a girl who's after him and finding anything genuinely heroic to do. He needs more narrativium.
Once again, I'm not hugely enthusiastic about this issue. There are some funny bits, but it's bookended by boredom and basic advice. By this time, I'm getting fairly sure it's an actual consistent quality slide, and not just burnout on my part or a few duff issues. I suppose that fits with the brief history of the magazine I read before starting the journey. Still, it's not really bad enough to outright slate yet, just getting dull and go round the same subjects too many times. Which is better than being actively bad from a reader's point of view, but not from a reviewer's. On top of that, I seem to be running short of jokey ways of pushing onwards without repeating myself too. What are we to do? Let's start the next issue and hope something in there'll inspire me. The halloween ones generally do seem to be of above average quality.
Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. That lich's collar is definitely OVER 9000!!! Ahahaha! And his wife hasn't let a little desiccation affect her bust size. It's those little details that provide so much amusement in this Tom Baxa cover. Yes, it looks like our horror will be leavened with a nice slice of schlock again. Not that there's anything wrong with that. More than one note is needed to make a truly great tune. And a bit of chromaticism is very helpful in producing horror tunes. Let's try and add a few more odd chords to our horrific repertoire.
In this issue:
Letters: The harm CCG's are doing to roleplaying really starts to become clear this issue. The reviewers thought they could peacefully co-exist, but no, they are stealing valuable players away with their highly modular charms. It's a terrible tragedy. What are we to do!?!1!! Ok, maybe I'm being a little hyperbolic, but it is having an effect. Despite his levelheaded response, Dale has cause to consider the magazine's future direction. Do they follow the tide, and risk alienating people who think this magazine should focus on RPG's, or stay where they are, and risk losing sales because of it. Not an easy decision.
A letter complaining about something being out of stock. There's usually somewhere second-hand you can get it if you're really desperate. You'll just have to work a little harder.
Another familiar topic. A complaint from a reader who's spotted an error in the magazine. Dale comes up with a suitably comedic faux punishment for the errant freelancer. Again he has learnt from Roger well.
Editorial: Wolf Baur takes a turn in the editorial seat to do what Roger used to around this time of year - report on his convention experiences. He has less to say about the madcap antics, and more about the actual games themselves. In particular the foreign ones. We've managed to convert D&D to many other languages, it's caught on successfully in some markets, and now they're returning the favour by translating their games into english. Stuff like The Black Eye and Nephilim are making waves this year, and existing games like Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu have supplements created by the localisation teams, and then translated back. The dawn of international gaming is upon us! Hmm. This is one thing that the internet has done less than we expected to fix. While it has eradicated distance barriers with reasonable success, language barriers are still fairly substantial. While small countries have most of their population learn english as a second language, latin america and china in particular can still feel like different worlds with very little crossover in popular media. Course, the more separated they are, the more likely the games are to be intriguingly different in rules and cultural references. So as with quite a few recent editorials, this encourages you to go out and check out what the real world is doing, because it'll make your gaming more interesting and varied. Don't spend a lifetime dreaming in isolation, or your dreams will be small and unrealistic.
First Quest: Dale may be taking a break from the editorial this month, but he's here, on the next page instead. You're hardly going to miss him. He's not one of the grognards. No, he was part of the second wave drawn in in the early 80's by the brief period of media hysteria. The cool factor of killing things and taking their stuff is not to be underestimated. And enthusiasm is more fun than technical skill, especially when it comes to recruiting new people to your cause. This is another tale where they look back with a combination of nostalgia and embarrassment, and recall both the good and bad aspects to gaming in the early 80's. You learn by making mistakes and reading stuff in magazine articles. Actually, that's another distinctive factor of his early gaming, just how much he drew from the magazine. Seems fitting for someone who would then become editor for it. This is another one that's quite likeable because he does obviously have clear memories and plenty of enthusiasm for the topic, and isn't censored by politics as far as I can tell. And as long as he's having fun, he'll bring it to the magazine.
Dead or Alive: Resurrection does open up a legal can of worms. Since clerics are more likely to be on the inside socially than wizards, it does make sense that they would be cautious about bringing people back if it would cause social upheaval. An extensive look at the logical ramifications of it being regularly available and commonly known about is long overdue. What does it do to inheritance and tax law, especially if they're dead for a while before being raised. What is the legal status of undead who integrate with the community and don't try to eat everyone? What does it do to royal successions? Quite the headache. Fortunately, this is the kind of headache that makes for good adventures. Normally, when you kill a bad guy they stay dead, but when people keep on coming back, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to get a comic-booky scenario where over-the-top stuff happens on a regular basis. On the other hand, players being players, they might well get obsessive about finding and mutilating every body so the enemies can't come back again and again, more maniacal and irritating each time. So lots of ideas here on how you could play it up or tone it down, both of which could make things interesting and different from the average campaign. I approve of this quite strongly.
Who's afraid of the big bad ghost: From a fairly new idea to one that's somewhat less so. How exactly do you make horror roleplaying genuinely scary? In this case, less is very definitely more. The greater the degree of uncertainty, the more players will genuinely worry about the fate of their characters. Fake dice rolls, jump scares, sensory weirdness, monsters with uncertain stats, extended periods with no combat, and the prospect of permanent loss of stats when it does occur. It's all about being mean, but in moderation, and making their imaginations do the real work. Which will only work with some players, no matter how good you are. I liked this quite a bit on first read, but there is quite a bit of stuff that's been discredited here, or at least has been made unfashionable by the many people who complain strongly whenever they feel deprotagonised. So it's not as compelling as the last article, but is more universal. Horror techniques are a lot easier to apply to games other than D&D without breaking things than easy resurrection.
Too evil to die: Tom Moldvay finally finishes his series putting new spins on all the standard D&D undead, 7 years and 5 articles later. It's always worrying to see something done sporadically, because you're never sure they'll finish it. So much can go wrong in a life, and people can change unexpectedly in ways that ruin the project, or cause it to end up substantially different to when it started. It's a nagging concern of mine as regards this thread, and why I've set it up so posts continue on a daily basis even when I'm taking a break from writing. So anyway, this is now complete, which feels pretty damn satisfying. So we now have a full 32 variant types of undead from him, more than enough to populate an Ravenloft style domain of distinctive horrors, capable of challenging people from low to high level. I think I'll call it Moldvania. :D It has a nice ring to it.
Ekimmu are the restless spirits of people who never got properly buried. They possess you and then attack your buds, forcing you to do the subdual and exorcism thing. You'd better hope there's enough players free to grapple them, for they also come in groups, and you don't want to be reduced to observers to the carnage.
Casurua are ghostly horrors created by mass slaughter. They're exceedingly tough, but fortunately are not intelligent or mobile. They may well make a place pretty uninhabitable though, which won't be good for real estate prices. And just inflicting damage won't finish them off for good, either. Stuff like this is why undead make good long-term challenges.
Keres are one of the monsters that originally escaped from Pandora's box. They inflict ageing, disease and bad luck with their attacks, which means you'll probably need some serious clerical assistance after fighting one. They can transform into gnats, which makes them quite effective spies or able to pop up while you're in bed to scare you and then disappear. As with the random undead from last issue, they'd make excellent horror movie stars, especially in a threesome as they like to gather.
Charuntes are an interesting clerical variant upon liches. Vulture-headed, hammer wielding high-up servants of gods of death, they sound like they could become iconic if given a good promotional push. And if not, they can still scare the crap out of your players, especially if used in groups.
Dark Lords aren't based upon real world mythology, but a purely AD&D conceit. What happens if someone is sucked into a sphere of annihilation, but badass enough to survive and escape? A near indestructible creature of pure blackness, able to warp time and space in quite a number of versatile and scary ways, and both age you and drain levels with every hit. The only saving grace is that subtlety isn't their strong point, but these buggers could take on armies and tear down cities and are likely to be pissed off enough to try it. They very much earn the special appellation. So as expected, this final instalment is very much aimed at the high level player. Very nice to see longtime readers getting some love.
Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994
part 2/5
A monster in the classical traditions: Call of Cthuhu is our non D&D coverage this month. This means one of those amusing little bits of IC fiction where some poor schmuck stumbles across things that are bad for the SAN score and barely escapes with their life. Degenerate worm-things that worship Nyarlathotep? Well, if you do close-ups of real little worm things, they look pretty creepy. This definitely qualifies as an easy target. Still, it's fun, and manages to meld Cthulhu mythos bits with real world mythology bits in a manner that seems pretty seamless. Like the ecology articles, which it has a lot in common with, this both makes for a cool read and adds plenty of adventure ideas independent of system. I approve.
Geas: Oooh. This is an interesting tie-in. The Tarroka cards for Ravenloft were one of the cooler little bits and pieces included in their boxed sets. It's pretty obvious what their inspiration was, but they put a D&D spin on the tarot symbolism. With suits based on the 4 main class groups and a major arcana filled with other monsters and strangeness, it can be used for both IC fortunetelling and games. And that's exactly what they do here, with an amusing little card game they cut from the actual set for space. Assemble an adventuring party and complete quests to win the game? Sounds very similar to the premise of actual D&D. :p This does seem like a very niche article, as it's use is completely contingent upon having one particular supplement, and it can't be easily converted the way many of their specific world and non D&D articles can. I guess this falls into the same category as their Audio CD's, an expensive to produce and obscure frippery that helped to split the player base to a ridiculous degree, thus causing them to lose money in the long run. The kind of thing that would be given away for free on the web these days. I'm rather uncomfortable about this.
Campaign Journal: Athas is an interesting world. It's easily been the one in which they twist around the core rules of AD&D the most. (at least successfully) Which means unlike the similar Al-Qadim article this time last year, they do genuinely have some new adventure ideas. Very rarely is keeping track of water supplies crucial in other games, except for short periods in desert adventures. There would be vast amounts of bitching if you were this stingy with weapons and other resources in any other world. And while intrigue and exploration can be applied to virtually any setting, they have a very different feel here, largely because basic resources are so scarce. It's all a lot more desperate and cutthroat. It's weird how in some ways, Athasian characters are more powerful than regular ones, while in others, they're rather less, and of course they have challenges more than sufficient for them. Of course, if you put them in a crossover game, all these problems disappear rapidly once they've encountered another adventuring party, killed them, and taken their stuff. So cool ideas, including a bit of badwrongfun here. Greg Detwiler has examined the source material and put plenty of thought into this one.
Forum: Adam Bickford tells us we've been underestimating the cleric all along. They're actually pretty good statistically, and their spells are far more accessible than wizard's. Add it all up and they blow them away.
Melody Alder, in an amusing contrast, complains just how much her cleric is overshadowed by the wizards. Who is right?! This combination seems almost custom tuned to provoke further debate. :rubs hands together:
Greg Detwiler decides to contribute to the forum, praising the idea of reskinning. Using that, we can make clerics even more obscene, by letting them have access to nearly every spell, only with the visuals reflavored to their religion. :p Dear oh dear. :D
Philip N. Toomey thinks the parrying rules are crap. Another opportunity for the forum to serve as an airing ground for house rules. Yay.
Joel E. Moyer bigs up the old books on world and adventure building. They may be out of print, but their advice is still invaluable to the novice DM. There's tons of advice out there now if you know where to look.
Lee Sutton disagrees with Joe Kutcherfield that there's too much roleplaying in roleplaying. o_O Sure getting too bogged down in backstory and shopping is bad, but roleplaying is the name of the game. You ought to be doing at least some of it.
Matt Lunak also find's Joe's assertion pretty ridiculous. Go and play a computer game! Then you'll get the reward you want for acting like a personalityless, relentlessly goal-focussed automaton. Zing!
David Shanahan gives his experiences on putting superpowerful characters and their players in their place without making them leave the game entirely. Just put them on a bus to godhood and start with a new character. Easier than killing them, that's for sure.
The game wizards: Spellfire expands rapidly as they try and play catch-up with M:tG. This means card sets for all their campaign worlds, including ones they're no longer producing books for. Each has their own distinctive abilities. Dark sun's toughness, Ravenloft's secrecy, Dragonlance's lunar cycles and the Forgotten Realms' random effects. Hopefully the extra cheese will balance out, making cards from all worlds viable choices. And if not, well, mixed decks are more likely to surprise enemies and use the best bits from everywhere to maximum synergy. Only chumps stick to obvious themes, as both the pokemon and yu-gi-oh cartoons show all too well. So this shows their marketing strategy for this game is pretty much what you'd expect. Exploit as much of their IP as possible, and hope that'll draw existing customers into the new market. That's the way to do it! (no it isn't!) Yes it is! Shut up you naysayers! This game's Not For You!
Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994
part 3/5
Arcane Lore: Back to the life, times and quirky products of a particular wizard here this month. Drenal was one of those geeky guys who was unpopular because he was way too absorbed in his research, even in life-threatening situations for the party. This eventually wound up in him becoming a casualty while wandering off from the party. Let that be a lesson to all would be broody loners and badasses. The reason humans are social animals is because it offers substantial benefits. I know it can be hard getting along with those idiots fate has thrown you together with sometimes, but you have to try.
Drenal's Annoying Poke lets you remotely jab someone with a needle. This gets incredibly irritating when done repeatedly. Wizards can be quite nasty bullies too when they put their mind to it, even with only cantrips to call upon.
Drenal's Distraction is one of those spells that looks like it would work anyway with just the material components. Waving a flag onna stick and shouting at the enemy? Are you sure this isn't april? I'm not wasting a spell slot on that.
Drenal's Dry Ink, on the other hand, is pretty useful if you have the kind of DM who likes to enforce equipment limitations and little stuff going wrong unexpectedly. No bursting, no smudging, just easy writing. That's the kind of utility spell more wizards should be developing.
Drenal's Stone Flame turns fire to stone for a short duration. This is handy as a livesaver, illumination, and quite possibly as a good way of setting a trap. One for the imaginative player.
Drenal's Amok Needles is a more powerful version of his Annoying poke. A whole bunch of flying needles stinging you 'till you drop. It might not have the raw killing power of fireball, but it's more likely to make the enemy cut and run. It's worse than wasps.
Drenal's Eyesore sends the flying needle straight for the eye. Not nice, but also a way to win a fight without completely devastating the surroundings and ruining all their equipment.
Drenal's Sound Barrier is a variant on silence 15' radius that may well be be more useful. You'll still be able to communicate with each other, but everything on the other side is blocked out. Another thing I'd rather appreciate having as a musician. I rather like this collection after all. It's spells may be slightly underpowered, but they more than make up their usefulness in finesse, so it all balances out.
Primitive weaponry: A second article by Greg here. One that crosses over well with his previous one too, as most of these are made of non-metallic materials, so they won't be affected so badly by the scarce resources of Dark Sun. Plus many of these have additional benefits beyond the basic attack and damage thing. A few more tricks to liven combat up is rarely a bad thing.
Kotitate are clubs shaped like a thin sharpened violin. Perfect weapon for gangsters to conceal for HtH battles, since guns aren't common in D&D.
Kugerongs are another club variant with a sharpened point. Inflicting multiple damage types with a single weapon is always good, because it gives you tactical options.
Leoniles are primitive pick/clubs used by australians. They're a real bugger to parry, but not hugely damaging, so they become most interesting against other warrior types. Exactly how good they'll be against a kickboxing roo I'm not sure.
Manoples are like large sais, short swords with a pair of daggers on the side. As with the japanese variant, this means extra good parrying. Specialists can even break enemy weapons. Nasty and totally radical. (Gimme a break)
Patu are little sharpened paddles. So another one that also serves as a tool, which is important when you aren't wearing any clothes, and don't have many pockets. They're also good for two weapon fighting. Seems like that's a common thread most cultures experiment with.
Powhenua are another variant on the spike/club combination. Putting one on each end, they let you deal with flanking enemies simultaneously. So much more sensible than bat'leths.
Rang-kwan are staves with spikes on both ends, another variant on the same theme. Again, they're good for parrying and/or attacking multiple enemies on both sides. I wonder if they have a 3rd edition conversion, where that would be even more handy.
Shotel are very curved swords that are rather good at getting round enemy shields. Since they're from the kind of climate where people only used shields, and not armor, this is quite a substantial benefit. Against dumbass knights (presuming they resisted heatstroke) this may not be the case.
Tebuje are clubs studded with sharks teeth. Just another way of raising the damage and looking more intimidating. Plus, relatively easy to replace if they come off. (and you know they will) Just add spiky bits from your latest monstrous kill. It can become a real avenue for bragging.
Tewha-tewha look like no weapon I've seen before, and look like they'd be handy as tools as well. They're one that really rewards specialisation. Nice to see other cultures coming up with stuff that isn't just another variant on the same few shapes.
Wahaika are little curved clubs. They're surprisingly good at being used from horseback, and are cheap too. For those who think cavalry strafing is a european advantage, these'll be a nasty surprise, and really annoy adventurers who are used to their foes standing and trading blows with them.
Watilikri are massive boomerangs that don't come back, but do lots of damage and get stuck in the victim. If you have a whole stack of them you can throw them pretty fast too, so you have a good shot at bringing down something big and tasty.
Wongala are another boomerang variant, this one intended to be thrown at the ground just in front of someone and then bounce up to smack them in the face. This is obviously disorienting and tricky to dodge. That's not cricket at all.
Wirka are another one designed to trap the enemy's weapon and break it in experienced hands. Plenty of meanness there. So this is a collection of weapons that very much supports system mastery, as stuff in a supplement should compared to the core weapons. That there are a few that aren't just variants on existing weapons as well is a real plus. Keep experimenting, something new turns up eventually.
Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994
part 4/5
Fiction: The siege of Bahorel's bed by Daniel Hood. Hmm. This is a nice mix of pathos and humour. Not easy to blend those without diluting the two. So this is the story of an old librarian dragged into being an apprentice wizard, and the awkward stuff that happens as he tries to learn wizardry with students maybe a third his age. This culminates in a well handled incident of accidental demon summoning which is solved by a neat bit of rules lawyering. So by combining a whole bunch of elements that I like, this manages to be very satisfying indeed on an emotional level. Like an early episode of Red Dwarf or The Young Ones, it's amazing how attached you can become to a bunch of misfits, even if they aren't actually that nice as people.
Role-playing reviews: Players guides? What's the difference between a player's guide and a players handbook? I'm glad you asked. The handbooks are generally core products, modelled after AD&D. They contain information essential to playing the game. Meanwhile, the guides are generally released afterwards, intended to serve as an expansion on matters that are most of interest to players, rather than GM's. Some are pure spoiler-free setting, while other introduce cool new mechanical options. And there definitely seem to be a lot more of them around than there used to be. So Rick jumps on an area of growth and rides it to produce another column. (Yes, I know that sounds dirty :p )
The Werewolf players guide adds a whole bunch of stuff that would become core in the next edition, such as archetypes, merits & flaws, and plenty of new Gifts. It also explains a number of existing concepts more clearly, particularly when it comes to the werewolf social order. It still shows a lot of the early white wolf flaws, but they're still at the stage where they learn with every product, and are progressing towards being the number 2 gaming company rapidly.
Players guide to the Dragonlance campaign goes for a fully IC approach, filling you in on the world as the narrator discovers it. This makes it rather easier to read than the core set, even though a lot of the material is near straight copypasta. Since their current problem is getting people playing the game, not buying the novels, this seems like a sensible experiment on their part.
Players guide to the Forgotten realms campaign takes a similar tack, with slightly less success. This seems to be mainly due to an obsession with minutinae such as the foods of the Realms and a more meandering, less plot driven narrative style. Well, I suppose that's consistent with the general flavours of the two campaign worlds. I suspect this is a matter of Rick's tastes as much as any actual quality difference between them.
Investigators Companion is for Call of Cthulhu. It's rather focussed on the real details of the 1920's, which you could find in a non game book anyway. The fact that it's also rather dry leaves Rick decidedly unimpressed.
Players survival guide is for Over the Edge. It's another one that is hampered slightly by the need to avoid spoilers for players, but it still does a lot to unravel the out-there ideas of the game and make them accessible. Hopefully now you'll be able to get to the fun parts.
Rick does get suckered by the First Quest gimmicks though, so it's not all good here. I suppose when it's brand new technology you don't have much to compare it to.
Sage Advice: Can you try and touch someone next round with a touch spell (Only if it explicitly says so. Otherwise, you get one shot on the round you cast it, and if you fail, you wasted it)
How much damage does fire storm do (a piddling amount for it's level. You're better off with call lightning)
What do the short races get bonuses to saves against. (spells, and spell like abilities, regardless of which save they actually require. Not extraordinary powers though)
Does druids shapeshifting healing apply to all hit points, or just the ones suffered since last change (All of them. Skip don't want to give you extra bookkeeping to worry about)
Can you backstab with missile weapons (Skip says No! Don't allow ranged backstabbing in your games, folks. Nothing good can come of it)
Does stoneskin protect against energy draining (No. Skip knows it's overpowered now, so skip will do everything in skip's power to nerf it without actually seeming to change the rules.)
Do multiple stones of good luck stack (no)
You still haven't properly fixed the wisdom bonus spell progression. (Oh dear. Surely you can work out the intention and fix it without Skip's help.)
How big is sigil (large city sized, enough to hold a few million people. The lady of pain can change it at her whim though)
How does everyone understand each other on the planes ( :handwaves: Common is spoken everywhere, and it's pretty similar everywhere. Unrealistic, you say? Would you prefer learning a new language every time you travel a few hundred miles. That gets tiresome very fast)
What does a cranium rat's mind blast do (same as an illithid's)
When does Iuz get to throw a tantrum over being beaten (any time you actually defeat him, as opposed to ending things without battle.)
How do you affect a battle when not involved (event cards. You can fuck things right up with a good storm or something)
Can you use wall of fire on defense (yes)
When does the temple of elemental evil let you draw cards. (when it's placed.)
What does 3/4 mean (you can use it in step 3 or 4. Flexibility can be as crucial as power.)
What happens if you put a champion in a realm that has a level (they fight the champion, then the realm, not both at once)
Do you have to beat drizzt twice in a row (no, just twice. He'll go and brood no matter how long you took between giving each beating)
Can you use Drizzt more than once a battle (no)
Does solid fog prevent a battle without harm (yes, but it doesn't undo any damage already taken)
Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994
part 5/5
Elminster's notebook: Oooh. Snake cultists. Been a few years since they got any press. Which I suspect is the way they like it, since they're generally all about the insssssidioussssnesssss. Here we see a return to the old ecology style of writing, where he keeps the main description purely setting, and puts all the crunch in footnotes. There's a pleasing blast from the past. Speaking of which, whatever happened to the ecologies? We haven't seen any all year. But anyway, along with info on the cult, we also have a whole bunch of their custom magical items which you could in theory take and use. (if you can control them, and don't mind people being suspicious of you because you're wielding a sword that is also a snake. ) As is usual for these columns, the sheer density of useful ideas is quite impressive, and the whole thing has quite an old school feel to it. Ed is definitely returning to a more active role in the magazine, after a few years away. And he certainly seems to have no shortage of ideas still. It's just a shame he can't carry the magazine all by himself. I guess even he can't write that fast. :( :p
Tarant has indeed made himself comfortable in Jen's homeworld and has no intention of going back in Libram X. Swordplay is all about the money, as usual. Dragonmirth has a rather good limerick this month. Yamara meets psionic bugs on hard fun. Whoda thought it. And Ogrek is still annoying.
From the forge: Looks like Ken's decided to change the name of his mini's column to something a little more manly. Ironically, just as he makes the effort to distinguish his columns from Robert's a bit more, he takes his first stab at soapboxing about the lead banning bill. Lead might gradually return to the table now the crisis is mostly over, but prices sure ain't going down any time soon. If production costs go down again, that just means more profit. Uh yeah. The utility companies might be able to get away with that kind of crap, but everything else, you put prices up, we'll buy less. Supply and demand requires the demand part to work properly.
Unsurprisingly, the minis this month are horror themed. Undead in all shapes and sizes. A chariot pulled by skeletal horses. A full blown warhammer army set, and an individual lich-king commander. Another lich, this time an official AD&D one from Ral Partha. Dr Mordenheim's official lab, plus some extra official mad scientist gear. This really is his year, isn't it. A big spiky gorilla/frog thing. A half dismembered undead giant using it's own leg as a weapon. A winged demon in the classical tradition. An alien stalker with a seriously heavy bit of weaponry. A vignette of a woman about to be sacrificed by an undead priest. Some fae, just to provide a little light relief in the midst of this gross sepulcher. Another undead legion with a mounted leader. A rather large werewolf, with additional mid-transformation models. And finally, in another break, some robot dogs for Legions of Steel. Actually, those can be pretty scary too, especially if they have the stereotypical glowing red eyes. After all, Terminator is really horror rather than hard sci-fi.
TSR Previews: Red steel! Booyeah! One of the most brilliantly goofy parts of our most brilliantly goofy campaign world gets updated and rejigged from it's appearances in Dragon Magazine. Now everyone has a magic power of some sort, and a rather devastating dependency. This makes things complicated but fun. Don't bother with the CD though. Yawn city.
Masque of the red death! Double Booyeah, in principle at least. Like council of wyrms though, the attempt to do D&D modern is seriously mucked up by the rules, which nerf you horribly while offering nothing in return and really fight against the proficiency system, not changing enough to properly model the era. Most frustrating.
Into the Abyss. Triple Booyeah. I've used this twice, and it's been pretty entertaining each time, even if the players go off the road and wind up in even deeper trouble. But then, that's what the abyss is for. There's always another nook that'll lead you even deeper and more in trouble. All you need is a sadistic imagination.
Al-Qadim gets Caravans. Cross the desert, and try and keep as much of your stuff as possible along the way. Why have a merchant kit if players aren't going to use it?
Ravenloft gets it's third monstrous compendium appendix. More undead variants and other things that go bump in the night. Never let your players be certain of exactly what they're facing.
The forgotten realms has yet more bloody Volo. This time, it's the Sword Coast he's all over like a rash, the cheeky beggar. Seeya later, alligator.
Dragonlance gets something nasty called The Medusa Plague, part two of the defenders of magic series. Yeah, if that illustration is right, limbs turning to snakes is pretty worrying, and very much needing of an epic quest to fix.
Dark Sun finishes the tribe of one trilogy. The name turns out to be cleverer than we thought, as our protagonist finds out he is just one part of a greater being. And with that knowledge and regained unity, he gets to become really badass. Athas is going to become a better place.
Our generic products this month are HR7: The crusades, and the Deck of Psionic powers. Pretty broad field then. Will you go for gritty religion based conflicts, or for quick reference of your mental powers. Or maybe both. This has easily been the first month where I actually bought the biggest proportion of the products released at the time. Interesting business.
As usual, the october issue is considerably above average quality for the magazine, which feels particularly dramatic in this case, thanks to the modernist advice from Spike, the conclusion of the classic series by Moldvay, and the two and a half (counting the forum piece) pretty good articles from Greg Detwiler. I think Greg'll have to take first place, but it's a close run thing. Lets hope they have another store of good articles for christmas as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. A second Halloween appropriate cover in quick succession. So good, they have to milk it twice! Actually, that's not too bad an idea from a commercial point of view. Still, it's that kind of thinking that leads the christmas adverts to start in september and not quit until the end of the year, when they immediately switch to easter. Bleh. Let's hope this isn't another sign of them running out of ideas.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who named their kid after a forgotten realms character and now wants to know what it means. Not a lot, after all, ed just made it up. I'm sure he could come up with an in setting meaning for all the various names in his world, he just hasn't got round to it yet.
A letter from someone interested in Star Trek gaming. There are star trek games out there, but none seem to do quite what you want. The licence doesn't seem to be particularly stable.
A call me from someone who wants to find a person they played with at a convention. Aww, how cute. Once again, I love facebook.
A pretty unsurprising complaint about the price increases. You'd be more surprised if no-one at all complained. No-one likes it, but what can you do when production costs keep rising.
Editorial: Roger may be gone, but Dale is still trying to push the same agenda of increasing the amount of non D&D RPG coverage in the magazine. To do this, he encourages you to say goodbye to system purism, and not only try other systems, but various hybrids of systems, settings, and your own houserules. If the canon police were real, they'd be onto him with great brutality for this act of sedition. Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Star wars, Castle Falkenstein, Rifts, TORG, GURPS, he certainly covers a wide range of games, hopefully turning a few people onto ones they haven't tried yet. As usual, I approve of this. We do find, however, that the magazine still hasn't moved to desktop publishing, despite much of the company using it now. They probably ought to get round to that. Such is the problem with monthly deadlines. You can't risk taking stuff that works offline, even if the results of changing over would probably be beneficial in the long run. Another article that simultaneously shows the consequences of stagnancy while trying to avoid it. Very ironic, really.
First Quest: Speaking of the battle between adventurousness and stagnancy, this is the main theme of Jeff Grubb's turn in this column. New and different ideas are often greeted with bemusement and belittlement, until they become big hits and suddenly what came before looks very dated. Roleplaying did that to wargaming, and now it in turn is under threat from Computer RPG's and Collectable card games. His recollection of his own gaming origins seems pretty vague, and he's more interested in telling us how he got into TSR and become the kickass designer he is today. And then, he's pretty interested in figuring out where life will take him next. So this is very interesting, but isn't a great fit for the column, and shows that at least a few people at the company are aware they need to do something different if they want to stay in gaming and profitable. If that means leaving roleplaying behind, or at least changing it so much that many existing players say "That's not Real Roleplaying!" so be it. Change is better than death, even if it can be pretty scary. So this is one that foreshadows the troubles the company will face over the next few years. All a little disconcerting really.
The ecology of the dungeon: Looks like we've had another ecology article free year. The early 90's really has been a dry patch for them. Even this isn't really a normal ecology article, instead being another of our generalised worldbuilding ones. Water, air supply, waste disposal, how various creatures that live near each other relate and interact, and how these kinds of things would logically change over time. The kind of thing that they've been pushing regularly since 1983, but you need to bring back every few years to catch the new readers. Such as me, in this case, this being my own personal first exposure to these realms of worldbuilding and finding it quite cool. In rereading, it doesn't really have the same impact it did first time, but still, its a solid article, and a good reminder precisely why they need to go back to these basic topics every 4-5 years. (every 2 is probably too soon) Can't get too esoteric, or you won't be able to keep new players.
Sight in the darkness: After a whole load of articles that resulted in rather sobering thoughts, we finally one that provokes a genuine Wahoo! in me. Scientific analysis of infravision, and just what seeing heat really means for a demihuman. It's not just seeing in the dark in exactly the same way as normal. There's a lot of interesting information you can pick up by being aware of radiated heat. Hiding requires quite different procedures when you gradually warm up your surroundings, leaving afterglow anywhere you stayed for a while. Undead become extra scary, being nearly invisible in the dark even to elves & dwarves. A sudden burst of light can ruin an enemies darkvision at a crucial point, letting you do the quick getaway thing. Roger Moore once again shows that freed of the pressure of constant editing, he hasn't lost the touch that led him to produce game defining stuff like the series on demihumans back in 1982. This is one bit of rules analysis that's both cool and long overdue. (although it doesn't look like they're ever going to do one on the realistic ramifications of the existence and nature of alignment languages, which is one I really wanted to see.) If fully applied, it could be a real game-changer. Exactly the kind of thing the magazine ought to be covering.
Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994
part 2/5
Fungi of the underdark: A little more ecology appropriate stuff here. The underdark can't just be full of monsters with nothing to live on. Unless you use some technobabble about time being retarded by underground radiations, sending things in closed rooms into a state of stasis until someone opens the door. How d'ya like them lampshades? So here's a whole selection of fungi to put in your game. That's a long overdue and welcome one.
Trillimac is a massive mushroom that can make a servicable paper or a dull but long-lasting meal. The kind of staple you need to build a civilised society, in other words. With no trees underground, that's the kind of cool ecological thoughts you ought to include in your world-building.
Nimergan makes a really brutal mushroom beer, and is favored by duergar who want to prove their manliness in front of their peers. Since dwarves are rather resistant to poison, you probably don't want to try keeping up with them unless you want to wake up naked, tied to a stalagmite with a bad case of green slime.
Ormu is glowing moss that gives DM's another excuse to let the players see underground. It's luminescent properties can be turned into dyes, and then used as an obvious fashion statement by Drow and any other underground races that give a damn about that kind of thing.
Askume is another poisonous lichen that can be used to great effect by nasty underdark creatures. Practice your herbalism, and you too could be inflicting save or die attacks on a regular basis!
Timmask may or may not be poisonous to humans, but de:censored: love it. This makes it handy as a summoning aid, a bribe, or a distraction. It is pretty rare though, which is a relief for the world, and means they're only available for obscene prices. Keep an eye on the underworld and you may be able to head off fiendish infestations before they even happen. Plot hooks aplenty in this collection.
I sing a song by the deep-water bay: Steven Schend once again acts as Ed's sidekick in Realmsbuilding. Once again we see the reasons why the Realms is a relatively stable world, where any magical cataclysms are confined to a countrywide scale at the most. :p Powerful do-gooders such as the Harpers everywhere. Actually, not many of them are full Harpers, but they seem to have learned to turn the bad guy's methods back on them by building a network of people who do favors for them and pass on information without knowing the full details. Hey, the success of that approach speaks for itself. This is why being chaotic good can prove more effective in dealing with evil than lawful good. So here's yet more little details about some of the many inhabitants of waterdeep, and what they get up to. Their secret methods of communicating, hideouts, and the means they use to protect them. Since Waterdeep already has multiple supplements and magazine articles devoted to it, this starts to feel like overkill, but it's still entertaining, with the 4th wall breaking fiction as amusing as ever. Steven might not have the sheer effervescence Ed manages, but he's still a pretty good writer. And there's lots of info here that can be easily applied to your game, so it's still useful even if it is familiar stuff.
Eye of the monitor has some new writers, the very abbreviated Jay and Dee. Do they have something to hide? They certainly show no desire to tell us about themselves, moving onto the reviews far quicker than the previous columnists. How do you expect us to get attached to you and have nostalgic memories with an attitude like that?
Civilisation is praised by both of our guys. Worldbuilding over 4,000 years? How could that not be epic? Tricky. It could have turned out overcomplicated and tedious though, and thankfully it hasn't. Despite being out for years, it still gets regular plays from them.
Heaven & Earth is a multilayered puzzle game, combining a whole bunch of different minigames into one storyline. Again, it's a huge time eater, and one they compete on to get top scores. I suppose that's one big advantage of a team over a single writer.
Reach for the Stars is another old game they pick because it was a longtime favourite. It's another god game, where you send out your spaceships to colonise worlds and build new bases. It's a bit primitive by today's standards but it's still fun because it's relatively quick and simple to play.
Bandit kings of ancient China is completely different, but still in the same kind of genre. Recruit heroes and try and protect the people from both corrupt overlords and wandering tigers. How cute.
Jewel Box and Pipe Dream get tiny tiny reviews, barely even worth mentioning. They seem to be skimming over a whole bunch of games as a means of showing what they're interested in. And once again, it's quite a different selection from the previous review teams.
Aladdin (the Genesis version) gets 5 stars from both reviewers. Disney have successfully expanded their multimedia empire to fill the new medium, like Lucasarts before them.
D-Day in Miwaukee: Normally, Roger would have reported on convention season in his editorials. Instead, another benefit of his leaving is that he gets the time to write up a full 8 pages of coverage with a ton of colour photographs instead. More than 25,000 people attended, once again easily smashing last year's record. Margaret Weis was once again chief troublemaker, ( I think Roger still bears a grudge from the time she sent Klingons to kidnap him) sending Buffy to Ravenloft and trying to set up an Elminster vs Raistlin fight (pfft, no chance. They're not even in the same league.) Jim Ward Dressed in frilly swashbuckler gear with rapier et all, and our evil overmistress (Wolves howl, roll of thunder) showed her megalomania by ordering her minions to attack the neighbouring stalls and take their floor space (all in a spirit of fun, of course) Other guests included Majel Barret, John de Lancie, Timothy Zahn and Flint Dille, reminding us it's not just about RPG's. Once again, this looks like an enviable amount of fun. If you just looked at the conventions, it would seem like the glory days of roleplaying show no signs of ending.
Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994
part 3/5
Topkapi palace: We started off this year with Allen Varney going to Turkey and bringing home some stuff on it's unusual locations. Now it looks like we're finishing it in the same way, with Steve Kurtz going to Topkapi Palace and bringing back a load of first hand photographs and info on it's history. It looks like a pretty cool place to insert into your campaign, some bits are labyrinthine and heavily guarded (particularly the harem) but it also has huge courtyards and places for the various servants to live. As is often the case where they draw directly on reality for inspiration, this reminds us how utterly unrealistic and impractical many fantasy maps are, with the basic amenities of living missing, and everything laid out in neat right-angles. The photos are of excellent quality as well, showing the minarets, spires and lavish colour scheme. It makes western castles seem positively dull by comparison. And it's hardly indefensible either, with it's design confusing invaders and making it hard to get a clear picture of the whole thing. This would of course be perfect for an Al Qadim campaign, but you could adapt it to some other fantastical culture as well. It's not quite as instantly game usable as the castles in issue 145, but it's still pretty interesting reading, and has plenty of room to be expanded upon, thanks to the references to other books which cover the palace and it's history in far more detail. Reality definitely has it's value in your fantasies.
Forum: Eric C. Putnam thinks that both too much and too little roleplaying are bad. Balance and maintaining interest are the critical things. The DM and players should work together to make sure no one person gets out of hand.
Michael Patrick is another person rubbishing Joe Kutcherfield's rejection of roleplaying. Seems he's stirred up quite a hornets nest. Most people here want personalities on their characters.
Douglas E. Berry tells Joe to get back to wargaming. Once again with the cheap zing. Find yourself a new group that shares your preferred playstyle.
Joshua McMillin thinks that fun is more important than roleplaying, but you ought to be doing some of that too. If the other players are wasting time, just tell them to get a move on.
Jason Wright also thinks it's not how much roleplaying you are or aren't doing, it's how much fun you're having. That's the spirit. Remember the game portion, otherwise we're all screwed. Can we have a new topic now?
Rumblings: In previous instalments of this column, we saw the end of TSR's relationship with SSI. Now, it's time to meet their replacements, Interplay. Actually, it looks like it's not the end after all. Interplay are getting the Realms and Planescape, while SSI is getting Ravenloft. Curious. Once again I smell the hand of behind the scenes politics, and wonder what led to things shaking out like this. Also probably involving plenty of wrangling negotiation is the return of Weis and Hickman to writing for Dragonlance. Whether it's genuine desire to tell more stories, or just the temptation of another fat payout, they're back, and the company seriously hopes they'll revive Krynn's flagging fortunes. Get ready for worldshaking metaplot events. :p In other news, WotC are bringing M:tG to computer systems as well, and there's a new SF gaming magazine out there. Probably won't last long though. Man, it's easy to be cynical about this stuff, knowing what's coming in the near future.
Fiction: Lifegiver by Darren C Cummings. Ooh. This is one I remember very positively. We've had plenty of intelligent swords over the years, dominating their owners and frequently leading to their downfall, but what's rarely explored is the possibility of them learning and choosing to change from their experiences with owners over the centuries. Well, here you go. It may not be legal under D&D RAW, but hey, if you can have angsty conflicted vampires, you can definitely make a good story about an angsty pacifist magical sword. Of course, the people it meets are bound to be suspicious, especially when they know the legends about it's past deeds. And as Redemption = death in far too many stories, it doesn't end well. So a sad story here, but a good one, and one that definitely opened my eyes up to another plot avenue.
The wizards three: Near another year has passed since our esteemed archmages last met. Yeah, scheduling's a bitch when you have a ton of responsibilities. Being lighthearted and whimsical takes a lot more effort than it seems. Nothing of significance happens in this one, and all assembled are noticeably more lighthearted than previous instalments. Familiarity breeds contempt, which leaves them open for disintegrations. The primary focus is on the new spells, which get a considerably larger proportion of the article than in previous instalments. So let's see how cheesy and broken they are individually.
Belsham's mace is an entry level variant on the flying weapon that attacks independently principle. Since it only lasts two rounds, it's not going to be much of an independent actor, but it does have multiple nasty effects beyond just hurting what it hits. Just don't expect it to be as reliable as magic missile.
Falling Wall lets you do what Elminster can anyway, but everyone else is forbidden from with other wall spells. Squishy squish. Definitely one for the sadist. It doesn't last long though, or have much range.
Battlecurse impedes your fighting ability, sensibly enough. Since it only affects one person for a few rounds, it's considerably weaker than Hold person in most circumstances. Not really worth a 3rd level spell slot.
Aragaster's cloak of shadows lets you counter Evard's black tentacles, as well as providing general low level protection through concealment. He obviously wasn't very keen on being grappled. :p
Othnal's spectral dagger gives you another fairly standard flying weapon. Another so-so offensive effect to add to your selection.
Sphere of eyes lets you penetrate a whole bunch of misdirecting spells. Just the thing for if you're being regularly screwed over, but haven't quite reached the stage where you can use true seeing.
Jonstal's double wizardry and Improved double wizardry let you unleash two spells at once, under very limited conditions. Spell weavers still aren't remotely challenged by human multitasking capabilities. Not really worth it most of the time.
Valiancy is really crap compared to haste, but at least it doesn't age you. Another bit of experimental magic that doesn't compare to standard spells of the same level. Seems like this year, he's definitely erring on the side of conservatism. What are we to make of this?
Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994
part 4/5
Role-playing reviews: Cyberpunk time again. It may not be particularly innovative anymore, but it is reaching it's peak of commercial penetration, with shadowrun and cyberpunk 2020 both enjoying plenty of supplements and an active metaplot. And much as Rick would prefer not to have to deal with imaginary computers, as long as he's a reviewer, it's his duty to go where the money is. It's a hard life. :p Does it ever get easier?
Land of the free is a full book length adventure for Cyberpunk 2020. It takes a leaf out of Mad Max's book, and sends you on a road trip across america, with plenty of setting detail along with the plot. With tons of optional encounters and plot twists, it looks like the kind of thing that can be draw upon to fill out a campaign in general as well as following the actual tracks. Just don't expect gritty realism from this one.
Greenwar contrasts pretty sharply with the previous adventure, but is also pretty good. This puts you in the world of corporate espionage and buyouts, trying to take over an enemy company without ruining it (which rules out unsubtle uses of violence.) There's still room for tense searches and cool action set-pieces, showing that this kind of complex RP heavy adventure can work if done right.
Paradise lost is for shadowrun. This time Mr Johnson sends the PC's to Hawaii, where they face a obstacle course of slightly undeveloped encounters. It all seems a bit contrived and flabby. They don't seem that good at adventures really.
Double Exposure is tighter in it's construction, but seems to suffer from the worst excesses of mid 90's railroading, with the story operating on ridiculous amounts of co-incidence rather than solid plotting and worldbuilding. You can't just have things happen because you say so if you want to maintain any illusion of reality.
Digital web is for Mage: the Ascension's Virtual Adepts, showing you what a digital wizard can do in the world of darkness. There's a whole bunch of methods they can use to do this, and the worldbuilding is pretty complex as well. As is the white wolf way, things aren't always clearly explained, but that'll just fuel the fanboy flamewars, which is good for the line in the long run. ;)
Also notable this month is GURPS Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and Strangers in Prax, which looks like it might be the last Runequest supplement in quite a while. Now there's a sad statement. I know they were inactive for quite a while before Mongoose revived the property. What went wrong for that line?
Sage advice: Where are the rules for mass combat ( The castle guide. Buy it now, :teeth ting: )
What happens to sha'irs spell collecting on the planes (usually nothing. Gens can get out of ravenloft. Anywhere else is child's play in comparison)
Do dragon mages and clerics get better spellcasting choices than regular dragons (oh yes, very much so)
I thought dragons could only breathe 3 times per day (Are you still thinking in 1st edition rules. Get with the times man, don't be a square!)
Can I use a council of wyrms PC in another setting (only if you don't mind that you won't be able to advance levels with the other characters)
What spheres do dragon clerics get (same as any generalist. Far better than any specialist)
What tome of magic spheres do Lolth and Eilistraee get (Does Skip have to go back to this. Skip already gave you months of extra service. I guess it's not as humiliating as having to do spellfire stuff. Speaking of which, Skip supposes Skip had better lubricate Skip up for this months reaming.)
Does Iuz throw a tantrum if the heartwood spear kills him (yes. )
Who chooses what land Iuz razes (His player)
Do you get the spoils of war from a land Iuz razes (No. If he can't have it, no-one can)
Can a wizard cast fly and attack a protected realm (yes)
Can you kill a champion as soon as they're chosen (only if your wizard's rank is lower)
Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994
part 5/5
The role of books: Dun lady's Jess by Doranna Durgin puts a horse into a human body, and has her trying to make a living, find her rider, and get turned back. This premise is followed up logically and avoiding cliches. It seems like an excellent introduction that won't be easy to follow up.
A prince among men by Robert N Charrette is in sharp contrast to the previous one, too many ideas, poorly developed. And Arthur returns to a cyberpunk setting? That seems very cliche, since Shadowrun and Rifts cover much of the same ground. Why bother?
Aurian by Maggie Furey also draws upon a bit of arthurian mythology, but manages to take it a completely different direction and make both the characters and worldbuilding convincing. It's large, but makes easy reading, and looks like it could become a good trilogy or even longer. And we know our book publishers like their shelf fillers.
Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O'Neil is the one where batman gets his back broken, and Jean-Paul Valley replaces him. It does not get a positive review at all. Batman gets handed the idiot ball so the plot can work, the plotting is poor, and of course, the reset button gets pushed at the end. Bleah. Another reminder that 90's comic continuity was a sucky business.
The raven ring by Patricia C Wrede gets a blandly positive review. It just seems to be generally good all round, without any hugely distinctive features to generate controversy. So while it may be good, it's unlikely to make the leap to megasales.
The godmother by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is one of those twisted modern day retellings of old fairytales. This is another one that feels awkwardly stitched together, drawing on so many stories, and introducing so many characters that no-one really gets enough spotlight time. Either make it longer, or edit it better.
Dragon's eye, edited by Cristopher Stasheff is an anthology set about dragons. To make sure this doesn't become monotonous, they draw on plenty of different regions, times and mythologies. From the usual celtic stuff to bibilical, napoleonic and WWII. The main complaint is that it's a bit expensive for it's size. Costs for everything seem to be going up too much around this time. Must be the economy. :(
Tarant loses his head, but keeps on ticking. The first story of Libram X comes to an end, but is left very much open for further adventures. After you've had a taste of the multiverse, how can you be happy going back to a normal life? Dragonmirth has more thoughts on dungeon hierarchy and ecology. Yamara and co establish a working relationship with those damnable insects against a greater foe.
Through the looking glass: Since Robert is now only bimonthly, he has to use this one for christmas shopping, otherwise he'd miss it entirely. When you count the lead-in time, he's probably writing this in september. If he didn't have an established relationship with the minis companies, there's no way he could do that. You have to work your ass off to establish a business, but hopefully if you do things right, they'll become automated after a while, so you can relax a little and do something with your life other than nonstop work. Or not. It all depends on if you're succeeding or not.
A dragon-riding warrior kicks off our minis this month. It's not a very big dragon, but as we've found before, three hundred foot great wyrms are a bit of a pain to represent on the tabletop. A cyberpunk street biker, looking like they're in the act of a drive-by shooting. A whole tribe of lizardmen, with predictably primitive weaponry. Shame there's no decent roads where they live for you to do a drive-by on them. Some more hard-bitten streetrunners and mercenaries, heavily dressed and armed. And some slightly less heavily dressed (but hardly immodest ) victorian ladies round things out. As usual, they're covering a wide range of eras and genres in here, even if the sales might not reflect that.
TSR Previews: A surprisingly light december this year, with the major push having happened last month. So the people manning the presses can enjoy time with their own families a little earlier.
Planescape gets The Deva Spark. The slightly awkward adventure that tells us that free will and moral agency is a complicated, and often incredibly stupid business. And can be liberally fucked around with by magic in D&D. Be careful what you eat.
The Forgotten Realms competes the "Marco" Volo trilogy series of adventures. Who is he really, and why is he on the run? Is the reason ridiculously improbable and nothing to be ashamed of at all.
Mystara releases the Poor Wizards Almanac for 1012. They may have shifted the universe sideways a bit, but they're still keeping the timeline consistent. It's a lot easier this way than having the metaplot changes scattered around in supplements as they come up.
They did a magic encylopedia a couple of years ago. Now they're doing an Encyclopedia Magica. I dunno. :shakes head: Almost as bad as demons, deamons and demodands. Anyway, Slade is in charge again, but the scope is much bigger this time. These tremendously pretty faux leatherbound follies attempt to collect every item TSR has even published. I still have all 4 of them. Still, this is one of those things that I'm very glad we have the internet for these days. Living documents are so much less expensive and inconvenient than things like these, which are out of date even before release, and need yearly updates to even come close to staying relevant.
The Amazing Engine releases Tabloid! A world in which all the stories in the tabloids are true, and you play one of these beleaguered bastions of journalistic integrity trying to find the truth and get it out there? Muahahaha!!! They do have amusingly weird imaginations.
Endless Quest gets Forest of Darkness. Another choose your own adventure. Which path will you pick, and will it get you home safely?
And finally, there's The Hidden War by Michael Armstrong. Just another basic sci-fi conspiracy novel. Cue the X-files theme music.
Between the themed section, the Realms articles, and the fiction, this manages to be a fairly pleasing issue for me. There's a whole bunch of cool ideas in them, many long overdue. Once again I am reminded exactly why I press on through this even when some issues are mostly useless. The constant churn of writers and fashions mean that even when they do cover the same ideas again, there's often at least a different perspective on them. But still, screw the cover versions. It's the new originals I'm really interested in. Bring them on, if you please designers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994
part 1/5
124 pages. Monsters breaking down the door? I don't think they're bringing us any decent christmas presents. Death and destruction, more likely. But probably not rape, since this is pretty much the middle of the 2e era. Curiously, they have a featured articles section, but no particular topic for the articles within. What's up with that then? Did they run out of money or space for intro artwork? (as they do seem to have a general theme of being adventure designing advice for the Dungeon Master. ) Don't tell me they're already feeling the pinch round here. Stuff like this is only going to get more frequent in the near future, isn't it. :(
In this issue:
Letters: A public service announcement from the runners of Gen Con that if you want to be involved next year, you'd better let them know pronto, for the deadline is surprisingly close. Given their size, a 6 month lead-in time is now needed. How very tiresome.
A letter trying to find the article on fighter assassins. Issue 172'll do you good.
A question about the probability of being published in the magazine. For your first article, not great. Do not let that deter you though.
A letter asking for help converting the FR Novels into adventures for their players. They keep wandering off the track. You know, railroading is generally considered a bad thing. We've had articles on this before. Trying to put players up against fictional characters usually has unexpected results.
Editorial: In a year which has seen their quotient of blatant promotional articles increase, Dale ironically tries to avoid that by pointing out the nonmonetary ways to facilitate gaming. Driving people to the game, providing the snacks, space, and DM'ing cost relatively little, and help make the whole experience so much more pleasant. Gaming is a fundamentally social hobby, and if no-one does these things, then campaigns are likely to be short and awkward. Creating a game club or convention may well be even more effort for you, but it has definite benefits for gaming in your area. Hmm. I think he may underestimate how much these things cost. Conventions in particular require massive outlay, even if they have a chance of making it back with profit at the end. And as a terminal cheapskate who managed to get through further education without getting into debt, (not easy at all these days) I've calculated exactly how much these things add up over the course of a year. Course, forgetting little courtesies like that which other people would consider necessities so I can afford to save to buy equipment to pursue my dreams may well be a part of why my social life is so messed up, but that's largely my own fault. This is an uncomfortable reminder that I've been living in my own world for far too long, and may not have been treating the people around me very nicely in the process. I'm going to have a good hard think about this. How much do we pay for the things we don't consider, that make the world work? How much do we get back for them in intangibles such as friendship, company and the practical favors people who know each other do when asked? What am I actually gaining and losing by living this way? Bah. I made the decision to put my creativity before my humanity a long time ago. I can put my life back together after I finish this work. (at least, I hope I'll be able too) Onwards!
First Quest: Tim Brown? Don't remember that name. What did he do? Greyhawk Ruins? Dragon Kings? Ok, that's not too bad. In fact, he's done quite a bit to push interesting epic games. It's mildly ironic, then, that the experience that hooked him on roleplaying was killing a single skeleton and barely surviving. Goes to show, it's the human element that's most captivating, whatever the supposed power level. He manages to get the balance between what leads up to his first encounter, the big event itself, and the rest of his early gaming experiences down pretty well. It also seems he likes quite a variety of stuff, with third party rpgs, wargaming and PbM all part of his youthful experimentation. This is definitely one that gives me a good picture of the man behind the writing, and his general approach to the world, most of which I quite like. He's probably been reading the previous instalments of this column and learning from their mistakes.
Hitting the books: Hello again, Eric Noah. Nice to see you. We've touched upon trying to make your campaign work like a novel or other work of fiction, but this is one of the longer and more detailed attempts at this we've seen in a while. So here's a step by step guide to how stories work, how you combine characters, plots, themes, events to make a coherent story. As a writing guide, it's pretty good, and has quite a bit of stuff that hasn't been covered in the magazine before. Unfortunately, it completely neglects the mechanical side of a role-playing GAME, and the opportunities and obstacles the rules present to telling a story in the literary mould. Apart from a reminder that the players choices should remain meaningful, there's a real danger that this could encourage DM railroading, by making them think they ought to craft a detailed story which has a definite beginning, progression and ending, rather than a world which can be interacted with in all kinds of ways. It does point out the standard D&D tropes of being a sociopathic mass murderer and thief, and encourages you to go against them, but doesn't say how, when the XP system is still built largely around violence. So as creative writing advice, this would be excellent. As DM'ing advice, it falls into the classic problems of 2nd edition, trying to change our playstyle without changing the rules to accommodate and reward what they want us to do. This is a big problem. Lofty ambitions need the right tools to fulfil them if you don't want to wind up just a frustrated dreamer.
Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994
part 2/5
Adventures that improve with age: After the relatively new high fantasy advice, it's back to the dungeon. Dig up your old modules. Can it ever be as good as the first time? Actually, that's a very good question. I'm glad you asked. If you do it right, it can be even better! Obviously you can't expect it to be the same, but if you run it with a different party, or at least after a few years have passed to dull people's memories, then the thrill of seeing how they do things differently (and possibly worse) can make it even more amusing as a DM. That's the spirit. Make the most of what you already have, instead of constantly searching for novelty that won't really satisfy you anyway. Of course, there's always customising the adventure, but even without that, there's plenty you can do. If the randomness from changing players isn't enough, you could get sidekicks in to play the bad guys as well, removing the pressure to be both omnipotent neutral adjudicator and adversary. Yeah, I like this one, and it does have some very valuable lessons that we haven't seen before. We're not quite at the nostalgia boom yet, but articles like this are laying in the groundwork for it.
Consider the consequences: Ah yes, this pattern again. Having led with some cool ideas, the third article isn't nearly as impressive. Things following on logically from previous events is just the way the world works. Well, as often as not, they don't, they just peter out because people are lazy. But a good adventure changes the world, or hopefully at least saves it in such a way that people know you did so and will be suitably grateful. (shyear, right :p ) The reset button should not be pressed, instead creating a new status quo with further plot hooks for future adventures. Technological advancements should change the economy, keeping the characters from getting complacent or pulling the same exploits over and over again without others developing counters. Unless you were raised on a diet of 80's cartoons where metaplot and character development were anathema, this isn't too controversial or surprising. Another one it's nice to remind the newbies of, but doesn't change my world in the slightest.
Bug city! Shadowrun metaplot at it's finest. This is the 90's, remember. We're still feeling the fallout from that series of adventures today.
Tricks of the trade: A little more very 2nd edition gamemastering advice. It's not so much about the locations, it's about the characters, plot and story. Continuity is important, an in depth campaign has more than one plot element running simultaneously. Don't be afraid to lie to the players, at least IC, as after all, why should villains tell the whole truth? Once again this is system free roleplaying advice that does nothing to make the game better accommodate the playstyle. After 4 articles in a row, I'm a little tired of that. This stuff manages to be both crunch free and very dated seeming at the same time, which is not an easy feat, or a pleasing one to see accomplished. This collection does not feel like a good editorial decision.
Psychic proficiencies: Hmm. In the regular Ravenloft campaign, psionics was something that the original boxed set overlooked and the magazine filled in, and then got officially incorporated in the next edition. Looks like a similar process is going on for Masque of the Red Death. Still, even more than magic, William W. Connors chooses to nerf psionics to a huge degree to better fit the powerless ambience of the setting. Each power costs 4 nonweapon proficiency slots, and is quite a bit weaker than it's regular psionicist equivalent. This means that you're unlikely to be able to have more than one, and even that'll be a serious hit to your ability to operate in normal society. It's once again a reminder that AD&D doesn't give you nearly enough resource slots to make your character well-rounded beyond their class skills, and changing class is not generally an option. If I was going to do victorian horror with minor supernatural powers for the PC's, I would much rather use WoD or GURPS than try and kitbash AD&D to fit. So to be frank, I can't see myself using this at all. Just as with the main Masque books, this is just frustrating to read because they're putting so much effort into a fundamentally ill-suited setup.
Eye of the monitor once again changes hands. Just can't get the help these days, can we. Indeed, this time it's regular TSR staff Ken Rolston, Paul Murphy and Zeb Cook who've been rounded up to work on this column. This all seems a bit awkward and last minute. Three people can go to crunch time and produce a column in time for the deadline where one might struggle, since one could be playing and tossing out comments while another types. This is interesting, but another sign that things are starting to fall apart around here. Roles are blurring, people are taking on odd jobs to get things done in time, and everything gets a little higher pressure and closer to the wire. Sooner or later, people will bow out from the pressure. Plus, since these guys aren't regular computer reviewers, they aren't as good at dealing with them when they mess up. That lowers the professional tone a little as well. It's not a good transition.
The seventh Guest is one of those examples of what not to do with all that extra memory in CD based games. Pretty visuals, seriously insubstantial gameplay, largely unrelated to the supposed plot. Not of any great value.
Gadget, on the other hand, subverts your expectations of what a game and interactivity should be to create a genuinely creepy experience. The illusion and lack of choice is integral to the plot, making what is normally a problem into a solution. Of course, that means it doesn't have much replay value. Turn your friends onto it, and live vicariously through their frustration. :p
Gold Medallion gamepack is one of those compilations of 40 little games that they can't really give a full opinion on, but at least it's good value for money. Meh. We have enough of those now to fill a lifetime.
Quantum Gate also gets a tiny review. It's another one where your choices mean little, but at least you can make your character into a good or bad person. That means something to the reviewer.
Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994
part 3/5
Fiction: Winter tale by Catherine Brennan. Quite a seasonally appropriate story this month. Rather tricky to summarise as well. A young squire is turning out to be rather bad at the knighthood thing. So he takes on a rather difficult seeming quest, and solves it via application of wits and folklore. It's funny, and has some cutting remarks about the nature of the artistic life, but doesn't really hit me as hard as the stories in recent months have done. It also has quite a bit of built up implied setting that you can steal for your own game, so that's another plus in it's favour. As usual, it seems like the fiction department gets to maintain higher average standards than the rest of the magazine.
This years statement of ownership shows their slow decline continuing. With an average of 79 thousand, but a last month of 76, their fanbase continues to drift away, albeit rather less than last year. Just about the only number going up is the number of free copies sent out, which has more than doubled for some reason. Wastefulness of resources and all that. :( Enjoy your deluxe boxed sets while you can.
Sage advice: Is a quickling's speed and attacks a natural power that you get if you polymorph into one (Your decision. Skip gives you carte blanche to disallow that, just like PC Gith lose their planeshifting and superspeed on their home planes)
Can you transmit a shocking grasp through a wire. (again, just because it was allowed in a module, don't mean you have to allow it. Skip urges conservatism, for you never know which trick will let the players break your game forever.)
How do you win a psychic contest against a nonpsionic power (use the opponents intelligence score)
Is half-dragon fear the same as dragon fear (yes)
Do magical items without plusses count as +0 for the purpose of hurting things (no,+1, unless stated otherwise.)
Can you energy drain mummies (no. Being powered by the positive energy plane rather than the negative one doesn't change that)
I still don't understand how a frost brand works (whoda thought such an innocuous item would cause such trouble. So it goes. If we knew where the problems would be, we'd fix them before releasing the game)
How much can winged boots lift (enough for all but the fattest people )
How often are defilers charged (once per turn in which they cast spells)
How long does Johdee's mask last (once per battle)
When do you use a rod of shapechanging (Just before declaring battle)
What does ignoring undead mean (you know when ghosts try and speak to people in movies, and even wave their hands through them, without being noticed. Yeah, it's like that.)
How does grak's pool work ( :Croons: You've always got a friend. You'll never be alone again. )
When do you draw a card to defend north Ledopolus (When someone attacks it. Like it says)
How do you decide what kind of champion an ally is (It's a hero unless the card says otherwise)
Does a champion come back to life if he casts animate dead and is beaten straight away (yes)
Does an animated champion count as undead (no)
What boosts a champions level (stuff that says it boosts their level )
Can a feebleminded spellcaster dispel their own feeblemindedness (Physician, heal thyself? No. )
When is the end of your turn (step 5)
Which cards have been replaced (These guys are about to become increasingly rare. Treasure them. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994
part 4/5
The game wizards: Another spellfire article here. Bruce Nesmith shows that it may only have been a few months, but he's already keenly honed his twinkery skills to create an unbeatable deck. He's done this by concentrating on speed and defence, trying to get realms out as quickly as possible while also making them tricky to eliminate. It's not totally without weaknesses, and indeed, he points out what he thinks it's flaws are, but it's unbeaten so far. On the surface, this seems innocuous enough, if a touch boastful, but of course, if this is common for the department then it's encouraging them to think about games in a more analytical way, encouraging system mastery and finding exploits. Which was of course the huge sea change in design between 2e and 3e, for better or for worse. So once again, this puts the lie to the statement that CCGs aren't influencing RPGs. They are in all sorts of little ways. And if you didn't like 3e, this is yet another thing you can blame them for.
Role-playing reviews has a Mage: the Ascension special this month. It seems to be focussing on the technowizardry side of the game in particular this time. This may be because Allen has recently joined the online community, and gives out his email address to all and sundry who may be reading. Man, things have changed. First there was the trust no-one and lie about your personal details to avoid weirdos and pedophiles phase, then there was the no-one is real on the internet irresponsible phase, then there was the realizing they were real, and most of them were perfectly normal, by which time internet use was standard in business and everyday life, so there's no point separating the two. Or maybe that's just how it was for me. Since this is a game specifically about the subjectivity and malleability of reality, I'm sure there's room for plenty of other perspectives and experiences.
The book of shadows has a ton of new bits and pieces from a ridiculous number of authors within it's pages. It showcases the inherent fractiousness of mage traditions, and also their need to overcome this if they want to make the world a better place (and unlike the other supernatural splats, they can) The main complaint is that all this cool writing is made hard to read by gray patterned backgrounds. Now that's a mistake they continue to make for ages, with both Kindred of the East and secret of Zir'an messed up by it. Silly overzealous art directors.
The book of chantries is of course all about building a homebase for your cabal. The system sounds pretty familiar. Pool your background points and spend them on various aspects of your pad. Get ready to spend lots of valuable freebie points if you want a really good one. In addition to that, there's plenty of sample locations and the NPC's that inhabit them. Unlike many white wolf products, which can get over-specific, this stuff is easy enough to pick and choose from for your own campaign. A bit more tookitiness is probably a good thing.
Virtual Adepts is the splatbook for the good guy techno-wizards, letting us know about their history, and their very bright-looking present and future. With the internet rapidly taking over the world, they're having great fun, while being rather unpopular with the other Traditions. It's a great setup for lots of intraparty bickering, which lets face it, is what's so great about white wolf games.
Technocracy: Progenitors isn't quite so imaginative. The bioengineered creatures are pretty unexceptional as monsters go, and the IC bits are mostly dry lecture notes. The villains aren't getting as much effort as the heroes, which seems a little odd.
Technocracy: Iteration X is a bit more fun, cybernetics having more scope for obvious flashy effects than biotech. This includes the classic HIT Marks, but also ridiculous things like the Cyber-toothed Tiger. Exercise your imagination, because there's a lot of ways you could enhance your character with these kinds of resources, and many of them look damn cool. Now your players'll want to be one.
Forum: Gregory Johns thinks that Bards ought to have more freedom in making up shit about history if they succeed their legend lore roll. The DM should let other people collaborate in world creation and roll with their ideas.
Jim Looper Points out to the guy complaining about young gamers that they're actually older than he was when he started. You really ought to remember what you were like at that age, and put up with some inanity at first. They'll grow out of it a lot quicker with a little guidance than if just left to their own devices.
Kevin Lighton thinks it's not just the game you're playing that can get stale, it's the players you're playing with. Remember, you can change either independently to revitalise your interest in gaming as a whole.
Mike Delmonico praises Ravenloft, but also points out it's flaws. Of course, he has his own house rules to mitigate these. You've got to give them a reason to stick around.
Robert Griffin let his players take a temporary vacation to play evil characters, and then applied the consequences of their actions to his regular campaign. No-one seems very keen on repeating the experiment. Muahahaha. Evil genius. One I'd very much enjoy doing at some point.
Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994
part 5/5
Libram X does that clip show thing. Swordplay is large, but not in charge. Dragonmirth has eating jokes that don't revolve around dragons for a change. Glatheld encourages ultra-violence and commercial cheer on Hard fun and beyond this christmas.
From the forge: Return of the ratings system! Well, we have had one for years from Robert, albeit not a particularly brilliant one. So it's not that surprising Ken has been getting mail complaining about the lack of numbers in his review. In a typically amusing irony, he overcompensates, giving us a system with 3 1-10 scales (technical, artistic and value) rather than just the boring 5 star rating. This is the great thing about new reviewers. They're still willing to change things around on a regular basis.
Most of our minis reviews this month are of landscapes and accessories. A wizard's chamber with a magical mirror, crystal ball, book stand, and of course somewhere to sit. (not as young as they used to be. ) A cottage and apothecary pairing to plonk in your idyllic little village. A set of magnetic walls for assembling your own dungeons. You know, this is what Advanced Heroquest did quite nicely, albeit not quite as impressively. 8 reversible doors for adding to your construction kit. A pharaoh's crypt and mad scientist's lab, obviously intended for horror purposes. A set of cards that you can lay out to create environments for your minis battles quickly and easily. Our only actual creatures are a pair of dueling wizards and a fairly small but still intimidating to 25mm characters Takhisis. Meh. Well, we have plenty of creatures already covered. A bit more attention on the backdrops makes for a well-rounded world.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms kicks off the new year with a vengeance. Another Book of lairs, 96 pages of FR specific mini encounters, for when you need a few hours filled. Realms of infamy, another short story anthology. All the familiar names contribute little slices of life, many featuring iconic characters. However, the biggest name of all gets his own full novel as well. Ed Greenwood delivers Elminster: The making of a mage. Big wodges of backstory that demystify him even further. Familiarity may breed contempt.
Dragonlance also goes right to the top, with book 6 in the villains series covering Takhisis herself. As with the other one, I worry vaguely that this will remove all the wonder from a greater deity. Particularly as she keeps on losing. Tricky to have an impressive villain if they get foiled and have to retreat each week.
Ravenloft has another lycanthropic adventure, Howls in the Night. Unless it's a bait and switch, which is possible. What spin will they put on the themes this time?
Our generic stuff this time is the 1994 Monstrous compendium annual. They've largely exhausted doing this for individual campaign lines, so they're going to collect all the monsters released last year (and quite a few from earlier years too.) and put them in a single book for eases sake. Not a bad idea. Seems like they're doing quite a bit of compiling lately. Also out is City Sites. Another attempt to make on the fly adventure design easier with a load of common floor plans. Again, seems fairly useful, particularly if you're busy IRL.
I've been holding off for a while, hoping things were going to get better, and for the last couple, it even looked like they were. But man, this issue sucks. The themed section is dated, the crunch is dubious, the computer section is massively inferior to the previous reviewers. The whole package is deeply unsatisfying. I hope they're making some serious new years resolutions, because at this point, they need them. Oh, for the innocent days of 15 years ago, when the main flaws were technical rather than narrative, and charming rather than tedious. This is all very frustrating for me. Just how far is this going to slide before it starts getting better again? Guess I'd better grit my teeth and find some more reserves of willpower to tackle 1995 with.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 1/6
124 pages. A pretty awesome cover here this month, even if it is recycled (precycled) from one of their upcoming products. Not sure if that's good or bad overall of them, but it's definitely a cheap move. Still, we are getting a planescape themed issue. Unless they custom commission some artwork for that, they're unlikely to get something appropriate, for surrealism is not a hugely popular genre at the moment, and the planes do tend to be quite specific in how they differ from earth. So I'll forgive them this time. Let's move on to the inside and hope that's original material, and not just cut stuff from their recent books.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter praising Masque of the Red Death, and wondering if it'll get any more books. Thanks to considerably greater sales than expected, they've already commissioned one for next year. Buy lots of that one, and you might get even more! Woo. An honest success story.
A letter from someone who's been reading the Dragonlance novels and wants to move into the roleplaying side. Can you say hint hint. I think their motives for picking this one are not entirely due to the quality and interestingness of the writing.
A letter complaining that they're doing fewer high level adventures lately. They're doing less adventures full stop, but yes, this is a real trend. Even the so-called high level adventures only seem to hold out to the mid teens, in contrast to the companion & master level adventures released in the mid 80's. As usual, Dale has to defend them by offering the best they have in that department, even if it isn't that brilliant in the overall scheme of things. And it does look like the pendulum is starting to swing back again this year. They do have quite a bit of stuff aimed specifically at experienced guys to show off.
Editorial: Art director Larry Smith takes the editorial again. As is appropriate for the new year, he's thinking about making a few changes, to keep things from getting stale around here. A couple of years late, given the speed things have been changing around them, but better late than never. If anything, it feels like they've been changing too fast, and you're struggling to keep up. Yeah, I noticed that a while ago. Nice to see the people inside the magazine catch on. So this signals that we're reaching the end of the complacent years for the magazine, and entering the worry and panic phase, where they try a whole bunch of different things to turn sales around, but ultimately fail. As ever, I'll be interested in seeing how much the stress shows, and how much it gets glossed over and whitewashed. Happy new year. :p
First Quest: Regular reviewer and Bughunters designer Lester Smith takes his turn to dredge up his past. Appropriately enough, giant ticks attacking his character when he tried to loot a giant's body is one of the first things he remembers. He turns out to have quite a way with imagery that he really doesn't exploit enough in his reviews, describing several encounters in such a way that I can instantly put myself in them, without going overboard with the adjectives. And they make a loose narrative with a happy ending as well. I suppose that illustrates an important point. You only get a happy ending if you choose your cutoff point. If you hang onto a campaign, it will eventually cease being fun or just fall apart. So this is fun to read, and also has a few little lessons on how to make your game fun, despite all the odds. These definitely seem to be improving as time goes on.
Godsmen, bleakers, guvners and takers: Hello, planescape factions. You're making quite the waves amongst gamers. Ok, so they're essentially D&D's answer to Mage:the Ascension, taking exactly the same idea that reality is subjective, and it's our belief that can shape it, right down to the laws of physics, and then having a bunch of philosophies duking it out for control of the universe. Actually, I think I prefer the planescape factions to the Mage traditions. It's more obvious what they stand for, and easier to build a party consisting exclusively of one faction, as you still have the full class/race axes to play with. But the benefits you get from them are pretty minimal. Shouldn't the higher-ups in a faction get some additional abilities? Oh, you powergamers. :waves hand: You do keep on. Any excuse for a little more than the rules normally let you have. So each faction gets a few bits and pieces, be it new innate powers for everyone of higher rank, new spells, or donated magical items given to those in their good graces. Most of these will appear again in a few months time in The Factol's Manifesto, making this into a teaser of sorts. So this was damn cool on first reading, but loses a bit of it's impact in rereading because I do know it's just another extracted promotional tool, rather than something created specifically for the magazine. Once again we see the fact that they're relying more and more on staff writers these days.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 2/6
The demiplane of shadow: Ahh, now here's another thing it's been way too long since. A complete overview of a so-far left nebulous plane. A really cool one too. Let's face it, shadow is one of those themes that's inherently dramatic narratively. Caught between light and darkness, unable to exist without both, ephemeral, mysterious, brooding, morally ambiguous. Fangirl bait onna stick, in other words. it's no surprise that this is one that actually gets followed up on, actually becoming a full plane next edition as they hint it might here (with an extra special place in the cosmology at that), and one of the few survivors to make it to 4th edition. This is further reinforced by the fact that a good half of this article is devoted to updating Shades, one of our easier ways of becoming an immortal brooding world-travelling badass, as last seen in issue 126's ecology. So in retrospect, this article may have slight pacing issues, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's both awesome, useful and historically significant. The demiplane is an excellent place to adventure, and when you get to really high level, you have the tools to make it into your homebase, and move the game from dungeon crawling to manipulating the world from the shadows down the generations. (why should bad guys have all that fun? ) I still wuv this article.
Planar personalities: Somewhat less universal and more rehashed is this little bunch of Sigil's NPC's, most of which appear elsewhere in various supplements. Goddammnit Bill, Rich, et all, there's no way you're going to catch up with Ed in terms of world details at this rate. How can a whole team of writers working on a line be producing less and recycling more material than a single guy? Well, I suppose it's more focussed, game useful material than another round of magical pranks and details of food. :p So say hello to A'kin, the friendly fiend, Lissandra the gate-seeker, Estavan of the planar trade consortium, and Kylie the tout. All quite morally ambiguous characters, both good and bad guys can do business with them, or quite possibly wind up opposed to them. Despite the setting weirdness, they all fill fairly mundane roles, shopping, information, both buying and selling. As long as sigil is mostly comprised of things that need to eat, breathe, etc, economics will mostly work the way it does on the prime material, despite the things being bought and sold being a little odd. Actually, this feels rather banal in retrospect. I guess I'm spoiled by the more alien Exalted, Nobilis and WoD creatures, which manage to be several orders of magnitude more developed in terms of self-consistent alienness. Even the mid 90's already seems very dated in some respects.
You never know who you'll meet: The planes as presented in the AD&D cosmology do have their limits. Here we step outside them for some rather gonzo random tableage, perfect for when PCs enter that part of the map marked Here Be Dragons. No matter how high level you are, the wrong result on these'll make your day pretty interesting, and may also threaten the entire world if you don't think fast. Still, in infinite parallel universes, you can probably go back in time to fix things, or find one that's almost identical except for a few little niggling historical details. It's how well you tell the story, not the stakes. What is fairly certain is this article provides a good monkey wrench for you to throw into a campaign that's getting too staid and has players that are getting too confident. Call it kill or cure. :p Either's better than letting a game just drag on past it's natural end.
The role of books: The sword of maiden's tears by Rosemary Edgehill is essentially an anti-quest, as the dysfunctional protagonists deny the mess they're in to precisely the point of believability. (and not beyond, as in too many magic meets modern day stories do. ) This does mean that a solvable problem becomes a far harder one by the end, but anyone who's studied economics knows that's pretty realistic. And it's that dose of reality that makes the drama all the more affecting. Sounds like she's amusingly genre aware whatever name she's writing under.
The list of 7 by Mark Frost gets one of our more common criticisms. Too many elements at once leads to clutter, and not enough attention given to any one of them. And combining the wrong ones is just nasty, even if they seem good individually. The art of editing and arrangement is one even good writers can struggle with, even after many books.
The winter prince by Elizabeth E Wein is a very welsh retelling of arthurian legend, with Mordred as the narrator. This of course means that the perspective is very different, even beyond the various creative liberties. The story is quite complex as well, with plenty to unpick from what is implied but left unsaid. Sounds like it'll reward rereading.
The child queen by Nancy McKenzie does something similar with Guinevere, portraying the story from her view, with a particular emphasis on the Arthur/Lancelot love triangle. Once again this shows how differently people can reinterpret the same source material. It only takes a few bounces round the hall of mirrors for an idea to become distorted beyond recogniseability.
Brian Froud's Faerielands by Patricia McKillip is a triumph of style over substance, with the story virtually inconsequential as a framework to hang the gorgeously rendered artwork. Might as well have just released it as a straight art book, as the attempt at eco-preaching is very much a broken aesop. Maybe he should collaborate with David Bowie again.
Spear of heaven by Judith Tarr gets a fairly good all-round review. It's set in an established world, but not unfriendly to newbies. It's a serious story, but the characters aren't lacking in sense of humour, and there's plenty of worldbuilding without the plot dragging. All just recommended.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 3/6
Eye of the monitor: Ultimate Domain gets a negative review of considerable detail, due to many small flaws. It's ridiculously slow, gives you very little help in figuring out how to play it, isn't sure what it wants to be, and when they tried to call the helpline, they spent ages on hold. Bleah. Sounds more like a chore than a game.
Genghis Khan II does only slightly better, having some fun elements, but also a bunch of niggly restrictions and areas which our reviewers would have done differently. They compare it quite a lot with the similarly themed Bandit Kings from their last review, and like that, you need to balance being a conquerer with a domain manager and protector. If you're looking for straightforward action, give it a miss.
Master of Magic gets our best review of the issue. It also sees our first mention of that great modern annoyance, patching. No longer do game designers have to make sure they iron out all the bugs before release. Instead, you need to download something, or in this case, actually send off for a disk to get the update. ( A practice I don't think will last long simply for cost reasons. ) But once they finished getting it working, they found they thoroughly enjoyed taking over the world with their wizards. Their main complaint is the lack of a diplomacy option. Play a proper RPG then! These two haven't touched a single one yet.
Space Hulk tries to emulate the board game and give you a limited amount of time to make decisions, but fails to get the balance right, with clunky AI making controlling your squad well enough to finish a scenario near impossible. And you never get to play the bad guys either. They wanted to like it, but were left frustrated.
Forum: Frederick Mills complains that his experienced players with new characters are metagaming. See, this is another thing in favour of changing systems regularly. It's never quite the same starting again after the first time.
Rob Gidlow tells us what real world cultures he uses for his FR nations. In the process, he also points out just what parts of the Realms still need their own sourcebooks. Get too it, Ed! Stop lallylagging round the dalelands!
Jason Whitbeck complains about rising costs. Haven't had that in a while. The whole lead banning debacle has been particularly bad for this, meaning models are both more expensive and come in smaller quantities. Hey, it's hardly as bad as the gouging oil companies give us. and if you don't like the costs of gaming materials, you can just stop. The existing ones'll last you ages.
Joe Katzman belatedly realises how nasty extraplanar creatures deploying summoning cascades can be, with a very real threat of the buggers taking over your entire world. This really needs houseruling, because you can't rely on the celestial cavalry to swoop in and save the day in time to avoid massive devastation.
Ruediger Landmann finds his players are abusing the -10 rule, knowing exactly when their fallen companions are going to die, and only saving them at the very last second. Put a bit of randomness back in the bleeding to death process to keep them from gaming the system like this.
Peter David Levi is a second forumite espousing something that would be taken up next edition. In his case, it's the elimination of demihuman level limits. The amount of time and effort to advance each level after name is so great that it's churlish to stop them at that point and pretty unlikely they'll get much further anyway.
Fiction: Harvesting the boneflowers by Joe Lunievicz. Now this is one I've always loved. The curiously poetic and touching story of skeletons in an undead army, their interactions with one-another and the living, and the mythology they've been given. If you're used to thinking of the undead as mindless monsters, this is quite a refreshing spin on things, completely avoiding the sexy vampire trope. In a way, they are still just tools, worked until they break, and then thrown away. But from their perspective, it's quite a different matter, with the prospect of an eventual reward if they just hold out and be good. I guess it's like programming robots to believe in silicon heaven. It makes good sense, even if it's pretty hilarious from the viewpoint of an impartial observer. And of course, we can use this as commentary on the human condition, and our ability to treat one-another in inhumane ways by classifying certain people as nonpeople. So there's a lot of levels to appreciate this story on. I hope I've managed to catch most of them.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 4/6
Sage advice: Sage advice drops the bolding that makes it easy to distinguish question from answer. Who's dumb idea was that then? I shall have to be extra careful until I get used to this.
How good is an amulet of proof against detection and location (pretty damn good. You'll have to consult gods to get round it )
Can detect magic detect invisible creatures (not precisely. All it'll tell you is that there's something magical going on in that general region)
How do gnomes wield bastard swords (recycled question. Last time skip said use the worst of all options, this time, skip will be a little more generous.)
Can shadow magic affect objects (yes, but they automatically disbelieve. If a tree in a forest is cut down by a semi-real creature and no-one is watching, it's still cut down, it just takes a lot longer)
When a weapon loses it's pluses due to plane travelling, does it also lose it's ability to penetrate damage resistance (yes)
Does a cloak of displacement work if you're invisible (no)
Can golems ignore prismatic spheres (mostly)
Can you memorize low level spells in high level slots (not without metamagic spells)
What do you need to copy spellbooks (time, paper, ink. Very expensive paper and ink. )
Is Gib Htimsen immume to delaying events (yes)
Can you use assassins when you have no hope of winning (yes. That's exactly their point. )
Are multiple surprise raids cumulative (yes)
Does Mogadisho's horde force you to discard from your hand (no)
Role-playing reviews: While D&D does have resurrection, dying in RPG's is still a serious business, and frequently a session ruiner. But the great thing about gaming is that you can imagine characters so dramatically different from mundane humanity that conventional labels of alive and dead don't apply, and then figure out what it's like to exist as one of them. Sure, it may be challenging, and probably won't enjoy the same kind of sales as something which tries to speak directly to the human condition, but it'll be interesting and different. I know there's been times when I've had all I can take of romances and heroes journeys, so I'm exactly the target audience for this month's kind of experimental gaming.
Nephilim sees Chaosium take a leaf from white wolf's book, putting you into the role of a bodyhopping spirit trying to achieve godhood down the centuries, described in decidedly florid prose. There's a lot to learn, with the magic system being a bit of a mess, and the campaign material sparse, but it has the potential for truly epic campaigns spanning generations, even more than Pendragon. Good luck trying to get a group together capable of fulfilling that potential.
Wraith: the Oblivion is also difficult to keep a game together, but for far more depressing reasons. Chief amongst these is of course the shadow rules, which are cool for a single player, but frequently cause a group to devolve into dark comedy and internecine bickering. The relentless grimness doesn't help either. Even more than Vampire, you are pretty damn screwed as a ghost. It's pretty much the height of white wolf as an uncompromising newcomer producing gaming as art, before they started to bow to the realities of practical design limitations and make sure their settings worked as places that are good to adventure in as well as read about. Once again, good luck getting a group together, with so many other inhabitants of the World of Darkness vying for attention, even though this might be remembered by many, you're more likely to wind up in a crossover game than pure ghost story.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 5/6
Rumblings: White Wolf has a pretty prominent place in this column as well. After much bickering, some of which was via email and has been preserved for posterity on the internet, SJG and White Wolf have agreed to put out GURPS Mage: the Ascension, but stop making any further products together. Neither side is very happy, and I'm not really sure who was wrong in the first place. Rereading them, it all seems a combination of misunderstandings and petulant overreactions. Definitely wrong, on the other hand, is White Wolf's new Black Dog imprint, where they push the envelope, already pretty elasticated, well beyond breaking point, mostly for sensationalism's sake. The road to maturity does require going through adolescence, unless you want to end up like Michael Jackson, spending a lifetime trying to recapture what you missed out on at the time and looking increasingly creepy in the process.
In other news, there's a whole bunch of multimedia crossovers coming out soon. Cyberpunk 2020 is getting a soundtrack. The Death Gate Cycle and Battletech are both getting computer games, while Tank Girl is going from comic to movie and RPG. True ambition is never satisfied with conquering one medium, but must keep going until it overreaches itself and falls over. I wonder which of these were any good.
Series magic: Another Steven Schend Forgotten Realms article that is very much in Ed's spirit. I really ought to be making more batman & robin jokes about them. Seems like Laeral is taking a personal interest in him again, letting him in on some rather big secrets. Themed sets of magical items that synergise to give the wielder extra powers when you have more than one? It's not a new idea, especially when said theme is elemental (captain planet, he's our hero) but they're still not actually that common, since the logistical hassles involved in creating them are considerably greater than just making a similar number of unconnected magical items. You have to give kudos to anyone talented and determined enough to make a set. We get two examples here, a set of magical blades, and of course, a set of elemental themed rings (without Heart, of course) Both get plenty of references to their history, and where they might or might not be now, as is usual for Ed influenced stuff. The idea is slightly better than the implementation, but that just encourages you to create your own. After all, there's tons of themes out there, and if you make your own, you can better integrate it into your world and build a whole campaigns worth of adventures around assembling the set and making sure your enemies don't. Plenty of value in that.
Elminsters notebook: Speaking of Ed, he's talking about another female wizard who likes to keep a floating skull around for extra firepower. In typical Ed genius, he turns what would be seen as recycling of ideas in lesser hands and uses it to make his world seem all the more real and subtly interconnected. After all, a lot of what adventurers do is unearthing old stuff, combining it with other old stuff from different areas and eras, and then use it to fulfil their own ambitions. As with last time, he uses a bunch of footnotes to make this more accessible to newcomers, and keep the main narrative flowing while also making various amusing digressions. This shows him balancing material for players of all experience levels, and giving them plenty more adventure hooks, plus a whole load of potential spells and magic items for you to hunt down, or quite possibly write up yourself. (after all, the names are pretty self explanatory, unlike Nulathoes Ninamen) As usual for these articles, he's packing in one of the highest concentrations of plot hooks per page I've seen outside the original 70's modules, far outmatching most of the actual supplements released around this time. If you can't get a good adventure or two from this, I pity you.
Libram X starts a new story with Dave Gross replacing Jeff as writer, and the second death of the net zombie. Not a good way to go. Swordplay finds they have developed a reputation. Dragonmirth is duly warned that their GM intends to screw them over. Yamara finds out why halflings shouldn't overuse the hair products.
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 6/6
Through the looking glass: Robert runs out of soapboxes, having been going through them quite a lot over the years. Since I've also been finding myself low on enthusiasm lately, I can quite understand that. Let's just do the job, shall we. First we have some buildings. A greek style temple with a removable roof, so you can fight around, inside and on top of it. Some tavern tables, if you want a little more worldly comforts in your adventuring. And some little houses, of late medieval extraction. Fairly mundane settings really. Rather more fantastical are the creatures. Two nasty mechanical mechanical units for the Legion of Steel game. A somewhat insubstantial looking fire elemental. A rather heavily dressed lich, with ambitions of being king of the undead. A very veiny looking beholder. He needs more shut-eye, methinks. A rather short orc standard bearer. Well, they get the job because they're not the best warriors. A barbarian cyclops, with requisite pot belly. He needs a bit of fixing up, I'm afraid. Some similarly sloppy marines by the same company. A tremendously amusing diorama of an apprentice sorcerer accidentally summoning a demon. He's going to have a scary time when he realises what's happening. And a mysterious bearded guy with a lantern. I suspect he may wind up being used as a wizard or druid. Well, someone has to be exposition guy. :p
TSR Previews: Mystara is our biggest deal this month. Paired Accessories, the players and dungeon masters survival kits give you yet more gimmicky bits and pieces that they hope will make your game run more smoothly and be more fun. Neh. Can't really say I got much use out of these, and unlike the Tavenloft tarroka deck, the cards weren't very tactilely pleasing and tended to get lost.
Planescape has Planes of Law. Contrasting with planes of chaos, each of the 5 planes here get their own mini book. But just as with the last one, this seriously kicks ass, and has both cool descriptions and pretty maps. Just watch out for the metaplot, which intrudes even on the supposedly eternal and infinite universes.
The Forgotten Realms figures out an area it hasn't done a splatbook on. The Moonsea. Extra incentive for you to go kick Zhentarim ass and liberate the miserable people beneath them.
Dragonlance also finds more little gaps in their history to fill, after much searching. Doug Niles gives us the story of the Kagonesti. They refused to fight. Which means when the war came to them, they were beaten easily and enslaved. See them suffer, muahahahaha!!!
On the generic side, they realize that they've run out of existing classes to create splatbooks for, and do The Complete Barbarian. The start of my dissatisfaction with them, and the first complete book I chose not to buy, this gave me the first inkling that they were just making stuff for their benefit, rather than ours, back in the day. So much for innocence.
Endless quest goes gamma world in American Knights. You get to save the world! Doesn't sound very in theme for the setting.
Lots of cool articles in this issue, even if many of them have been or will be recycled in actual books. So it seems the problem this time is not quality, but quantity of ideas. By relying on a few staff writers too much, and having most of the people present in the same office, there's the constant temptation to reuse material to make deadlines and pad things out. This of course means people buy less in the long term, because they feel gypped and don't want to spend money again on basically the same thing. Just another small factor to fit into their overall issues. The irony there being that you can pay new freelancers less and move onto new ones when they start becoming demanding. Still, they are coming out with at least some great material, so I don't consider this issue a waste of money at all.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 1/6
124 pages. Dark elves on the cover, even if their skin is more grey than black. But then, there's both the tedious racism issues that have resulted in alterations in the past, and the fact that grey is better camouflage against cave walls than jet black. Still, this doesn't seem to hurt their popularity, along with that of elves in general. So they're getting another themed issue. Altogether now! boo Yaay! Dwarves'll never catch up at this rate. Oh well. Let's see if they have any particularly unbalanced crunch to offer us.
In this issue:
Letters: We start off the letters page with some particularly blatant pimping by Tim Beach. Red Steel is perfect for high level games! Well, yes, but dis is still vewy vewy tacky. There is a time and place for self-promotion, and the letters and forum pages are not it.
A retirement letter from Ian Reid. He can't keep doing the PbM thing due to life issues. Don't let the games we created die once I'm gone. Not likely they'll be replaced with the internet taking over at the speed it is.
A letter from someone who noticed that the TSR staff have been engaging in self-insertion in their spellfire cards. This is a long cheesy tradition in the company, as Mike Nystul, Don Arndt and Dennis Sustarre have demonstrated. I just hope they wipe the cards off afterwards. :p
One of our regular cries of help from someone trying to find out of print books. Come on, you have the technology now. Make online downloads available, then we need never worry about this again. :p
A heartwarming tale of the magazine going above and beyond the call of duty to deliver to a subscriber. Good customer service does help quite a bit to keep buyers loyal. It's the difference between repeated purchases and going elsewhere. Course, some companies manage to suck at it and still keep going, because they advertise enough that there's always a new sucker. Read the feedback before you buy.
Editorial: As with last issue, the editorial suggests that our staff have been made very aware by management that their sales are down, and they'd better start turning things around or face the consequences. But of course making the wrong changes would alienate people and accelerate the decline. So what Dale's asking us to do this time is explain our reasoning behind changing the magazine in one direction or another. Okay, this means that any changes will skew in the direction of the intelligent and erudite readers, which isn't always the path for maximum commercial success, but It's a mistake I'd probably make in their position as well. Better to go out with integrity than to try and produce what a committee says, and probably lose both commercial and critical credibility. So this is one of those no good answer situations. They no longer trust their own vision, and they're following rather than leading. As is often the case, this makes for uncomfortable reading in hindsight.
First Quest: Harold Johnson brings a good deal of self-awareness to the writing of this column. Having noticed that many players were rather annoying when young, he one-ups them all by revealing that it's him who was responsible for the creation of Kender. Hrmmm. <_< >_> BURN HIM!!!! Add to that his was the original idea for A4, a classic instance of player screwage inflicted upon thousands, and I think he has earned his place in the deepest circle of gaming hell, somewhere between Byron Hall and the Blume Brothers. :p The rest of his article is a whole bunch of firsts. The first time he played, the first time he DM'd, the first time he ran at a convention. It's so hard to choose which was most significant. It's certainly entertaining reading, and highlights that gaming is a collaborative process, with lots of people beyond the actual writers contributing to forming books. I just wonder if the other participants remember things the same way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 2/6
The complete half-elf: Hmm. Since elves can use nearly all the kits that humans or elves can use, they're already pretty spoiled for choice when customising themselves. It's an interesting question how this can meaningfully add to our options. By focussing on multiclass specific kits, which is the area half elves really stand out in compared to other races? That'll do it. Now the trick thing is coming up with archetypes that are both distinctive and emotionally resonant.
Shadowblades are your typical brooding fighter/thief loner, trying to match the popularity of Drizzt and hopefully failing. They're more oriented towards stealth and sudden violence than actual larceny, but that doesn't mean they're trusted.
Military Scouts combine their martial and roguish talents for official purposes. This means they're more trusted than most rogues, but also kept on a shorter leash by their bosses. You'll probably want to make sure the other players are also on good terms with the boss, as this'll make setting up plots a lot easier.
Crusaders are about as close as half-elves get to being paladins, although they're rather more focussed upon converting the ambivalent as well as smiting the unrighteous. Since they aren't strictly restricted to lawful good, you get more leeway to be a jackass in the process. There is something to be said for a good smite.
Wilderness avengers are the Fighter/Druid kit. What's the difference between a Fighter/Druid and a Ranger? Mainly how mean they can be in the process of protecting nature. They're another one that has social penalties for concrete benefits, which will probably push them into the brooding loner role again.
Spellarchers get the rather useful ability to deliver touch ranged spells through their arrows. Better get scouring those sourcebooks for the twinkiest combos to use with this option. Or just ask Elminster. He's sure to have a few ideas.
Aristocrats remind us that even half-breeds can be accepted into high society when they look this damn good. As with the other kits of this ilk, they get more money and social benefits, but have to live extravagantly. If you allow multiclassed characters to take a standard kit from either class, this is pretty pointless.
Rescuers are Cleric/Rangers, some of the nicest folks you'll ever meet. This means like any good medic, they'll heal up friend and foe after the fight, which may be rather a departure for many PC groups. If they come into conflict with even the paladins, they're probably doing it right. :D
Arcanists are the mage/cleric combo. They get 4 bonus proficiencies, bard legend lore due to their wide magical knowledge, and a social penalty for being bookish. Once again, a pretty good tradeoff, especially as long as they're in a party where someone else can play the face role.
Guild Mages are another one that sees the established order exploit their unique flexibility for nefarious ends. A well-trained half-elf who knows when to keep their mouth shut will always be in demand for a little Knock spell.
Prestidigitators put a rather more flamboyant spin on the Mage/Thief theme, for those who can't quite make it into Bard and the unlimited advancement it offers. Not that you should udderestimate them, or they'll leave you in nothing but your Bart Simpson underpants by the end of the show.
Redeemers our our first triple class kit. Fighter/Mage/Clerics who throw everything into defeating a particular favoured enemy. That doesn't sound very redemptive to me. Genocider just doesn't have quite the same ring though, does it. :p Still, that impressively Orwellian level of redefinition aside, the idea of getting bonuses against a particular enemy, at the price of an irrational level of hatred for them that'll prevent peaceful solutions is a pretty standard tradeoff.
Dilettantes are Fighter/Mage/Thieves who wound up that way through simple inability to stick to one thing. They won't be keeping up with the rest of the party when it comes to gaining levels, but have tons of tricks that may save your butt in an emergency. The perfect 5th member to a team, in other words.
Diplomats are also Fighter/Mage/Thieves, falling very much into the James Bond mould of ambassador who may have to do shady adventures in the course of following their countries interests. Well, who better to serve as mediator than someone who isn't of any one race? That's a pretty good niche to fill. And a party comprised of multiclass characters like this'll never be short of tricks to pull. Still, there is a moderate amount of uncompensated twinkitude in these kits, so I can't say I entirely approve of them. Elves will be elves, and even half-elves get substantial privileges simply due to the rule of cool.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 3/6
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Elven magical items? Now there's a surprise! I never would have guessed! They have so little to do with magic normally! Yeah, even the sarcasm is wearing thin.
Arrows of Entrapment enweb whatever they hit. Just the thing for when you want to take down that pesky adventuring party intruding into your woods without killing them. And that can be damn handy in a narrative sense.
Enchanter bows make your arrow able to actually hurt things that need plusses to hit. Valuable, but dull.
Ironheart bows can morph into a hand weapon. It's a werebow! Give it intelligence and this might become extra fun. You could have all sorts of variants on this principle.
Bracelets of mental contact let you do the silent communication thing. It has a bunch of quirks and a limited number of charges, but people being unnerved by elves being really good in the woods won't know that.
The Harp of Courage is another no-brainer. It's approximately as good as casting bless on your buds and it's reverse on the enemy. Like magical battle standards though, it only works while up, so expect the player to become a target pronto. Invisibility might be a good idea.
Locks of security are a magical deterrent probably needed in a culture where nearly half the population are spellcasters. There'll always be someone who doesn't obey the social contract, especially in a pretty chaotic race.
The Manual of Nature's Harmony is the level boosting book for rangers. Surprised we don't have one of these already. Goes to show what can be missed out for ages.
Pendants of Augmentation are your basic metamagic effect to make spells bigger, harder, longer. This kind of thinking grows ever more frequent.
Pendants of Azuriel are your basic pair bonding item, seen previously in ring form. What better way for two adventurers to express their love than an item that says "I'm in deep shit! Come rescue me!"
Potions of resistance cure disease. I really don't see what this one has to do with elves at all.
Rings of Cooshee summoning bring the dogs from the valley to aid you. Like, totally day-saving, man. Just don't get all doggystyle with them, as that's just grody.
And Orcslayer swords ARE the ones from the Hobbit. They glow when goblins are near and kick ass. Nuff said. Really should be in the corebook along with rings of invisibility, given their popularity.
The dragon's bestiary: Kercpa are sentient squirrel people. Don't we already have some of those? Why yes, the Ratatosk from norse mythology (detailed very recently in planes of chaos. ) And in theme with this issue, they do have substantial faeish tendencies, with an array of tricks that exceeds their HD, and all that froofy respect for nature stuff. Can't say I'm very keen on them, particularly when they're trying to fill an already occupied niche. Let's leave this one out, shall we.
For truth and justice: Hello again superheroics. It's been well over a year now since the Marvel-phile ended, and coverage of that genre fell off a cliff. And sadly, it looks like the return is starting again from scratch with basic advice, a pattern we've seen several times before, and not one that endears them to a long term reader. So yeah, here's another of those basic adventure checklists, this time slanted towards superheroics, but really, applicable to any game. Tailor your adventures to the PC's. Give the villains proper personalities, motives and plans. Give your adventure a beginning, middle and end. Keep track of character positioning and stats in an efficient way. Nope, can't find any new advice in here. Not that it's bad advice at all, it's just not doing anything different or innovative.
Role-playing reviews: Following on from last month, we have two more rather large reviews of games that differ substantially from the norm. As the centre weakens, these spring up, grabbing people's attention, as they consider trying something new, moving on to more interesting grounds. Course, none of them will displace D&D as the biggest game in the hobby, but it's theoretically possible they might have. Far stranger things have become huge hits on TV.
Aria is a gobsmackingly huge game that tries to let you play entire nations, and their developments and conflicts. It also has human level stuff, but that isn't as impressive, and you may well be better off running that in another system and then overlaying this for the global scope. It does have some flaws, and takes a lot of work, but Rick is still highly impressed by the scope of their creativity and the degree the game can be customised.
Castle Falkenstein gets even more effusive praise. Character creation is quick and different, Playing cards are used to resolve actions, magic is full of interesting quirks and potential backfires, and the setting is really rather cool. Mike Pondsmith has managed to come up with another winner, and he hopes it's commercial success will match it's critical reception.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 4/6
Rumblings: Where last month had a lot to say about White Wolf, this is closer to home, with a lot of attention on TSR's media properties. Wildspace TV show? I don't remember this at all. Sounds like an attempt to revive Spelljammer. And that's a lot of tie-in stuff planned too. And on top of that, the long on hold D&D movie has a new owner and staff and appears to be moving forward. What went wrong with these two? Development hell strikes again! The only thing I know actually did come out is the Blood Wars CCG, TSR's second shot at grabbing this market in quick succession. Shouldn't they wait so they can learn from the mistakes of the first one? Or are they rushing them to market so this has a rather shorter development lifespan than their regular product cycle. I must confess to quite a bit of curiosity on this issue.
CCG's from other parties are also springing up like mushrooms as companies realise there's big money to make here. Highlander, Star of the Guardians, Doom Trooper. Big names and small, many from RPG's and other industries. Can you say talent drain? We are not amused.
The ecology of the Neogi: Our first proper ecology in ages is also our first spelljammer one ever. And it's quite a neat one, making it clear that these are pretty darn alien creatures, and not very nice at all. With an inherently destructive reproductive process, a society built on enslavement, and equally nasty gods, they are pretty much forced to be evil by their biology. You'd feel sorry for them, if you weren't too busy being scared and grossed out and urgently KILLING THEM WITH FIRE! Curiously though, this is another one that makes them available as PC's, or at least classed NPCs, so you can make them even more challenging to your players. Anyway, I rather like this one, which is pretty decent in both fiction and mechanics, and does quite a bit to build them up as a race. A welcome return here.
Eye of the monitor again changes hands, with Lester Smith taking on this month's review. Once again I get the sense that the level of organisation in the TSR offices is declining, as people struggle to get everything done with declining budgets and workforce. Compounding that is the fact that this isn't very long, is covering a game they've reviewed before, and is completely lacking in screenshots. So this is another look at the Space Hulk computer game. Lester thinks it's a great game, and sets out to repudiate Jay & Dee's review one point at a time. You've got to use military tactics and think ahead, it's not an arcade blaster. There are valid reasons for using both the overhead and personal views. The monsters spawn randomly, so you can't win by simple memorisation anyway. Even their grasp of the basic controls seem shaky. It's as if they weren't even paying proper attention. Perhaps they should have read the manual. So this is a somewhat curious review, that does have traces of snark and condescension in it while remaining civil and avoiding any ad hominem attacks. It's certainly not as interesting as Gary's old rants, but it does stand out against the current tone of the magazine. This is definitely worth noting. Just how haphazard will this column get before they cancel it altogether.
The game wizards: This column is taken up by spellfire stuff again. No-one outside the company is sending articles in it seems, so it's purely company pressure that's putting it in here. As they did with the Buck Rogers boardgame back in issue 157, they show us how to adapt the rules for a solitaire game. Which is very appropriate, given the difficulty of finding people to play these games. :p The opponent is completely predictable, but gets several substantial advantages over a human player because they're largely an aggressor, and don't need to worry about realm maintenance. They should still be quite tough to defeat, unless you build a deck specifically intended to work poorly for them. And if you're spending that much money on fine-tuning a deck you'll never use for a proper game, I think a little derision is not entirely undeserved. So this is exactly what they ought to be giving the game, and I mean that in the meanest possible way.
Forum: Paul Morgan goes back 19 issues to the multiclass character problem. He's found that while more powerful at first, as time goes on, they become less and less so compared to their single class companions. Long term balance, not per encounter.
Christopher Davis has his own fairly mild solution for multiclassed characters. They're not that much of a problem. Always spreading xp half and half between their classes no matter what they do, on the other hand, isn't such a great idea. They should be able to concentrate on one or the other a bit.
Jarmo Gunn is another writer reaching back well over a year. His characters survive despite having several below average stats due to their ingenuity. Don't just throw yours away because they don't have multiple 18's.
John Morris. Jr is horrified by all the people playing drow all of a sudden. They're mostly ghastly twinks too. Bob Salvadore has a lot to answer for. What are we to do with these pesky dual-wielding bandwagon jumpers! Hee. Another overpopular thing gets it's much deserved backlash here.
Philip Dale reminds us that sometimes problem players are a result of the DM, and it's your responsibility to figure out what the problem is and fix it as it is theirs. But if all else fails, go freeform, then they can't game the system. Or just kick them out. That is an option, you know.
Thomas Martin reminds us that nearly every RPG system has some exploit that'll make characters unfairly powerful. D&D's new bard kits certainly aren't alone in that. You've got to address the problem on the player level as well s the mechanical one, otherwise they'll just find some new trick to exploit.
Andrew McLeish comes to the defence of bard kits. Penalise them when they play them wrong, and don't be overgenerous in handing out magic items and they'll be fine. Ha.
Gray Calhoun makes the tedious statement that you should balance the twinked bard kits by social hindrances. I think that theory is getting a bit frayed around the edges now. It doesn't really work very well, especially with this most social of classes.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 5/6
Lost empires: Atlantis! After doing nice big articles on two real world continents, David Howery does a slightly smaller one on a (probably ) imaginary one. This means he has to make things up mostly from wholecloth and a few ancient books. The result does feel a little light compared to the Africa one in particular, but it does have lots of options. You aren't restricted to one culture or era, you could pick any of their stages of development (although you're probably gonna want the hypertech empire, decadent weirdness or mysterious lost continent phases. ) Really, this is sufficiently vague that it's just a reminder that lost continents are a cool plot option to insert into your own game, rather than a ready to go adventure location. I hope it wasn't another victim of excess editorial trimming because they aren't fond of doing epic features any more.
Sage advice: Why do innate abilities have initiative modifiers (Reaction times. Even thought has a speed)
Can you disrupt magic items (often you can. They do have some fiddly requirements at times. )
Where's the info on alignment tongues (We got rid of them Aaaaaaages ago, with the edition change. Don't tell Skip it took you this long to notice. )
Does a thief's backstab get the bonuses for ambush as well (only if it would be logically appropriate)
Does protection from fire work before or after the save for half damage from spells (after)
Do symbols blow their wad after affecting someone or stick around to bug everyone. (Wizards symbols are one-shots. Cleric symbols have real staying power. Huh! )
Can detect magic detect charm spells (Like with invisibility, it only detects that something is up. It's up to you to figure out exactly what.)
How many missiles can you catch with gloves of missile snaring (1 per round per hand free. Once again, beware mariliths. )
What can a rod of cancelation destroy (Quite a lot. They're a real screwage device)
How does a wand of negation work (It's your own personal interruption beam inna stick. Not as good as actual dispelling, but nothing to be sneezed at)
What happened to the +4 bonus to attacking motionless creatures. (we moved it to the DMG. This should not affect your enjoyment of the game in the slightest)
I still don't understand about the mechanics of gnomes wielding bastard swords (Just what kind of game are you playing, anyway? Everyone knows gnomes are illusionists. Any gnome who'd want to wield a bastard sword is seriously out of character )
What does immediately mean ( right away. No time to counter or pack. It takes effect right now. )
Can you alternate champions if a battle lasts 3+rounds (not usually)
Does a card affect previously played cards (Well, they can't affect ones that haven't been played yet, can they)
How do ghost ships work (Ooooooh. They move you around unexpectedly. Oooooh. )
Can you dispel dispel magic. (No. They've already done their job. There's no magic there anymore for you to dispel)
Nasty Tricks: Immediately after the spellfire rules questions comes some more twinkery by the TSR staff. They've figured out ways of exploiting the rules such that they can become almost invulnerable, only very specific methods can counter them. If you don't have those cards, you're screwed. Fortunately, they do point out those solutions with each of the exploits. As we found earlier on in the issue, designer ego does seem to play a big part, with exploits named after the people who first came up with them. Still, at least that means they're actually playing it in the office, which means the rules are getting stress tested, and presumably they're finding the game fun. But that does mean it's taking them away from writing and playing RPG's even more. So once again this is a sign that CCG's are encouraging the designers to be twinky munchkins. Sage advice is all about fixing the game, not exploiting it, and the amount of hard mathematical analysis hasn't been great in recent years. One article could be an exception, but this shows the start of a definite trend. Well, spotting stuff like this is one reason I started this thread. I just wish I felt happier about doing so at this point.
Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995
part 6/6
The ecology of the owlbear: A second ecology in the same issue? Guess they're really making up for lost time here. Does this mean they'll be back as a regular thing? For a second time, in the story, the narrators get in serious trouble, only narrowly escaping by luck and wits. And for a second time, they give us plenty of new crunch. Arctic Owlbears, even bigger and scarier than the regular ones, plus better camouflage in their native territories. And something I'm sure many people have wondered about. Flying owlbears. Oh yes. Sure it stretches realism a bit. But frankly, if dragons can fly, the amount of physics-bending it takes for a bear sized creature to fly is considerably less. Another strong one that both entertains and answers questions. Very usable, and indeed, I plan to do so.
Fiction: Hunter under the sun by Brent J Giles. Ah yes, the exploration of alien psychology. If you've been reading this regularly, you'll know that's one of my own great loves, if not as much as it used to be. Standards of morality and compassion can vary widely. Could you expect a race that spawned hundreds of children in a go to care about them individually the way humans do? Could you expect one that flies the vastnesses of space to have the same kind of idea about personal property? Even a basic difference like being adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle could change their psychology quite a bit. But when we all live alongside one-another then it can be a very good idea to learn from each other, preferably the good aspects rather than the bad ones. So it goes, as we combine this kind of study with a supernatural murder mystery. I find this rather appealing, as it does work on two levels. The more depth something has, the more you get rewarded by repeat readings.
Libram X has more relationship angst. You were a tagalong in the first place. He tried to get you safely home, and then you refused. You shouldn't be surprised he's more interested in the book than you. Dragonmirth has lots of demihuman fun. Even Snow White can be made grimdark. Yamara and Joe really ought to get off hard fun before the world is all gone.
From the forge: Last time, Ken was all about the accessories. This time, it's landscapes that get the spotlight. Pimpin'. Minis without context are like tea without biscuits. You can live happily without it for years, but adding them just takes the experience to a whole new level. :adjusts monocle:
So, let us take a stroll through these miniature panoramas. Stone mountain miniatures go for both retro and futuristic, with a fireplace, some rather spooky giant stone heads and computer control panels, a weapon array emerging from little domes, and some weird rock outcroppings. Build up the suspense, and then give them the payoff, barrier peaks style. Heartbreaker Hobbies go for something appropriately traditional, a hut and tent inhabited by yer basic orcs. Geo-Hex take on the city blocks and highways, while Terrain Specialities will let you set out the green green hills of home. Tactical Conflict Systems fill an oft-overlooked niche, with modular strips of river that you can assemble into all sorts of shapes, plus a bridge to go over it at any point, and a little cottage that'll look nice nestled into a bend. Finally, Alternative Armies have a wide range of walls for you to shore up your defences with. This seems like a collection that'll get a complete newbie up and running without too much duplication. In addition we have three minis sets, one a holdover from his last column. A spined and heavily armed mecha angel for Legion of Steel. A trio of samurai. And another set of postapocalyptic scavengers. The influence of Mad Max over the cultural landscape lies longer than I remember at the time.
TSR Previews: Planescape releases an adventure that ties in with last month's boxed set. Fires of Dis takes you there, to one of the biggest and hottest cities on the planes. You break the rules, you'd better be ready for trouble.
Dark sun gives us another monstrous compendium. As if this place wasn't harsh enough. More stuff to challenge you right up to epic levels. They also get The darkness before the dawn by Ryan Hughes. A story of gladiators, and their suffering in the arena. Can the protagonist survive and come out tougher. Signs point to positive.
Ravenloft takes us to Sithicus, to face Lord Soth. You know the drill by now. Explore, deal with railroading, probably fail to actually defeat the domain lord.
Lankhmar shows us the Cutthroats of Lankhmar. See the places where you make money, and figure out how to get ever more of it. Muahahaha. The city is not your friend.
The Forgotten realms gets part two of the twilight giants trilogy, The Giants Among Us. As is usual here, things get more complicated than ever, hopefully being set up for the final book to resolve.
The First Quest line gets two novels of it's own. How very odd. Guess it actually sold really well last year. Rogues to Riches by J Robert King and The Unicorn Hunt by Elaine Cunningham show you some more novice adventurers learning essential life lessons the hard way. Lurk Moar. Amateurs.
And finally, we have another non roleplaying, but connected item. The Blood Wars Dueling Decks. Blerg. Trading card games have well and truly arrived. Can you build an optimal deck to beat your enemies?
The ecologies are highly enjoyable in this issue, and a very welcome return indeed as well, but the rest of isn't very good at all. The themed section is twinky froofy crap, the computer section is weird and thoroughly flawed, and there's way too much CCG stuff. Meanwhile the rather good reviews and fiction remind us that there is plenty of of good stuff happening in the wider roleplaying landscape that you might want to check out. It is more than a little frustrating. And makes me want to reread the other books I was buying around that time more than I do this. Bah. Next issue please.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 1/6
124 pages. Ahh, what a lovely day for a stroll in the woods. Birds are singing, deer are gambolingITS A TRAP!!!!! Never let your guard down for an instant. You never know what will happen. As this issue has no particular theme, that goes double here. Each article could come out of leftfield, completely throwing your playstyle for a loop. Well, probably not, but the odds aren't completely hopeless. And hope is what keeps us going, isn't it. I don't think we're out of hope just yet, even if it is a struggle at times.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from a finnish gamer pointing out that gaming is alive and well there. In fact, scandinavian countries seem to have one of the highest proportion of roleplayers. It's interesting to speculate why that might be the case. I suspect the long depressing winter nights staying in. Same reason they produce so many great bands.
A letter asking if they plan to compile all the monsters from issues of Dragon in a book. Sorta. There's not quite enough to do that regularly, but they will be putting them in the monstrous compendium annuals, along with stuff from other sourcebooks. Now a whole new bunch of DM's can inflict Linnorms and Spell Weavers on their players. :devil:
A change of address report from Goldtree Enterprises. Please don't send letters or orders to the old one. Please continue to buy our products though.
A letter complaining that the original Athas boxed set is seriously out of date now. We need a new one that takes all the supplements into account! You, sir, are in luck. Major revisions off the port bow! What a lovely co-incidence someone wrote in at just the right time!
Editorial: Dragon goes digital! TSR finally dips a toe into the rapidly growing online world, and Dragon magazine is one of the first parts to join in. Subscribe online! Chat with people from all over the world, including many of the actual game writers. Check out the complete article index. We're giddy with excitement. Shame I can't be nostalgic about that, as it's still a couple of years before I joined the online revolution. But it does seem like genuinely good news for them. I do hope they're not plagued by delays and incompetence. Not every company coped well with the sudden change in how easy it was to communicate and transmit information for negligible cost. Many are still behind even now. And entire industries are suffering as it becomes ridiculously easy to copy their work and give it away for free. Anyway, it looks like this editorial is another pointer of the way things are going in the wider world. We're reaching the point where normal people become aware of the value of the internet and consider signing up. And because of that, everything becomes a lot more accessible. It's really rather neat to finally get this far, after years of jokes about the lack of online access.
First quest: Whatever the game, Bill Slavisek naturally gravitates to being the rules guy. It's a heavy responsibility, and sometimes irritating, but with it comes power and authority. I can quite empathise, since I fall into a pretty similar mould. It's amazing how much you can get by taking on the jobs no-one else wants to do, providing you don't just do it for free and let everyone get accustomed to that. Still, he had fun, starting out with wargaming before moving into RPG's like many a grognard. Maturity and characterisation developed gradually and with many a death, as was often the case back then. And it's mainly because he was a little more driven and knew the rules better that he made a job out of his hobby while the other people in his group went on to normal lives. All matches up with my experiences. I think I'd probably get on with him if I met him.
Putting evil to good use: Yay! This is a cool article! A highly amusing bit of rules lawyering, Jonathan M. Richards shows us how to make lemonade out of lemons and turn cursed magic items to your advantage. Many of them are quite advantageous in certain situations, and even the ones that aren't can often be turned against your enemies rather than you if handled carefully. I remember reading this first time round, and it's a pleasure to reach it again. This is a very definite mind expander, while also having lots of highly specific details you can use without having to think yourself. I can't praise this one enough. Taking problems and turning them into opportunities is exactly what players should be doing in their gaming, and this is full of inspiration on how you can do just that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 2/6
Gaming with style: Ah yes, dividing gamers into various types, and getting all analytical about the type of games they like to play. Not an unfamiliar topic, even if this kind of analysis has yet to reach maturity. (or at least, GNS theory has yet to be developed :p ) Thomas Kane picks out 5 categorisations. Power-gamer, immersive roleplayer, puzzle solver, rules lawyer, and gaming as Art. Hmm. Pretty broad divisions really, with plenty of room for overlap between them. The biggest distinction drawn is those who see gaming as art, which is a relatively new categorisation most often shown by White Wolf players & designers, that is proving somewhat contentious and considered pretentious by quite a few established players. There's also the big question of just how much control the DM should have over the course of the game, how much the players should have, and how much should be random, left to the dice to decide. Plenty to think about here, as this is the kind of thing that needs a good debating to really hash out. A good forum flamewar would be amusingly appropriate. :D With it's eventual conclusion that striking a balance between the various extremes is probably the way to go, it's probably not going to get one though. Still, it did make quite an enjoyable read.
The beginners game: I've been complaining quite a bit recently at articles that are obviously aimed way below my experience level. Ironically, this does not fall into that category, as it's designed for experienced DM's who want to get new players in, but may not be entirely sure how to go about it. After all, if you started with one group, and learned along with them, when that one falls apart and you try to put together a new one, there's going to be a big skill gap that can interfere with the chemistry. Both rules and roleplaying can be introduced in a wrong way that winds up putting many people off. The worst traps to avoid are probably being patronising, and treating them with kid gloves, or overloading them with infodumps (particularly contradictory ones with multiple experienced players talking over each other and elaborating in quick succession to one newbie) and throwing them in the deep end. Start small, and gradually turn up the volume, on the other hand, and things can get pretty epic before you even know it. And then hopefully you can figure out how to break them of the more obscene powergaming tendencies that a lot of new players develop. This jives with my personal experiences. First time, you want to explore the limits of the system, get all the way to the top. Subsequent times, you want to see how much replayability the thing has, what alternate routes there are. Or just move on to something completely different, given many people's boredom thresholds. So this has both advice I approve of, and a goal that's very laudable in the current climate. After all, if you want people to play with, growing the hobby should be your first port of call.
The ecology of the Amphisbaena: After several ecologies in which the person imparting the knowledge is captured and escapes, here we have one with a rather more tragic ending, like the cave fisher one. Captured by Kobolds, and only surviving by a stroke of luck making him exceedingly useful to them, he becomes their technical advisor on the proper handling of a double-headed giant snake. Not the kind of thing you anticipate doing when you grow up. This answers quite a few biological questions, but glosses quickly over the all-important one of how they crap (from the middle, apparently) to focus more on breeding, movement methods, and combat capabilities. It does make them seem both more scary, and less silly, which is a definite plus point in my books. Another excellent little read.
Donning a new Masque: Masque of the Red Death has proved to be one of their more popular supplements in recent months. And while it may take nearly a year to produce a follow-up book, the magazine has a rather quicker response time. So here's four more kits, all tradesman ones, to encourage you to play the mundane, well integrated into society roles a bit more. Not something that grabs me hugely at the moment, but I can certainly see it's uses.
Scientists are a blatant geeky stereotype, stuck in the lab all the time. Since most PC's will be forced to do experiments on the fly in decidedly uncontrolled situations, this one seems like more of a liability than a benefit on a mechanical level.
Athletes are a high strung lot, prone to niggling long-term injuries in a manner most aren't under D&D mechanics. But when they're on form, they're one of the closer things to an asskicker you're likely to encounter. Can the players swallow their pride and invite a jock onto the team?
Thespians are one of those roles that seem likely to irritate other players if played badly. They're obviously good at a whole bunch of social skills, but too busy being flamboyant and telegraphed to be great in combat. Can't see them being popular with munchkins, but then the whole of Masque is pretty much powergamer repellent.
Lawyers are of course pontificating twats. But at least they're trained pontificating twats, able to twist words around with great proficiency. You may not like them, but chances are they'll be able to talk you out of more problems than they'll get you into. I'm still rather dubious about whether I'd use them personally though.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 3/6
The deities of africa: Another bit of african priestly lore from Michael John Wybo. Issues 191 & 209 covered pretty much the same ground, but it is a big continent, so he can completely avoid repeating himself no trouble. This just means that longterm readers get the reward of lots of choices, which I approve of. Like the many prehistoric eras, I'm sure they could manage a few more of these.
Ananse is a complicated god, and they choose to represent him in a benevolent light here. You're still allowed to use poison, and the alignment restrictions are light enough that you can play a trickster without too many worries. It may not please the paladins, but the rest of the party'll be happy to have a cleric like this along.
Asse Ya is the goddess of the earth, in typical loving gaia fashion. This means that they get a lot in common with druids, only a wider sphere list and less powers and alignment restrictions.
Nyame is the god of the sun and moon, and appears as a three faced beholder. As with most beholder variants, they're not as scary as the regular bog standard version, but don't get complacent. Since this squeezes in a new monster along with the avatar and priest stats, I quite approve. Good use of space and plot points.
Cagn is an obnoxious mantis who commands insects and birds. Since part of his job is promoting plagues and insect infestations, he may technically be neutral, but he's certainly closer to evil than good. As a cleric, you'll have a lot of leeway in who you harm or save.
Gauna is the lord of African vampires, who like beholders, are a little different, but still pretty scary, and capable of spawn cascading with truly alarming speed. His priests get rogue abilities and automatically become undead upon death, making them versatile and persistent as big bads. Don't be too surprised if they turn your whole village into vampires as revenge.
Bumba is the god of law, the celestial order, and also the african giver of fire. This interesting portfolio combo means you're quite entitled to burn anyone who breaks the rules at the stake, and the priests can cast wizardly fire spells and ignore burning attacks themselves. One I can see myself enjoying playing.
Khonvum is the great hunter, and also appears to be quite the hero when it comes to slaying tribe threatening monsters too. His clerics are very rangery, and can speak too and order animals around. Well, would you mess with the guy who's job it is to kill and eat you?
So is a god of thunder and lightning, and one of those humourless vindictive sorts who give paladins a bad name. Still, if you've got undead plaguing the place, who ya gonna call? And his servants do have some quite neat quirks.
Leza is the humorously deaf god of the sky, with a tendency to misinterpret prayers. This means any religious ceremonies to him are VERY LOUD! His clerics get wizard air spells, and at name level, grow wings. Whether said wings are beautiful or not is uncertain. It's just a ridiculous amount of fuel for the parodically minded DM. And indeed, this whole article shows just how little clerics have to resemble the preachy christian stereotype. They tend to be rather powerful magically, but have far more restricted armor and weapons, as has become standard for the african priest & wizard kits. Plenty of options good for both PC's and antagonists here.
Rumblings: Only a few arrivals and departures this month. Jeff Grubb is leaving TSR and jumping on the CCG bandwagon. He didn't need to leave to do that. TSR is having great fun with this. In fact, it seems demand for the Blood Wars game is considerably higher than anticipated, and they've already sold out. Now, will they overprint the second run, and be stuck with a load of stock from that? Hard to say, isn't it. Other departures and arrivals include Ken Whitman as TSR's convention co-ordinator, Carl Sargent & Tom Baxa being recruited by FASA, and Grenadier's lead sculptor being poached by Heartbreaker Miniatures. Seems like we're losing more people than we're gaining at the moment, which makes sense.
Eye of the monitor: Inferno gets a rather mixed review, with our two reviewers trading off between each other well to cover both the good and bad points. It has good visuals, but tricky controls, and plenty of space combat action once you get the hang of it. Only one of them did though, so only pick this one up if you already like the genre.
Wyatt Earp's Old West has both reviewers yawning. This isn't a proper game, it's an educational multimedia point and click program. The game elements are on the same kind of level as Mario is Missing. No challenge at all, save remembering the information you learned earlier in the game.
Spacekids is also more entertaining for the banter between Jay and Dee than for the actual game, as they go on about the dumbness of trying to make toys "educational" all the time. It may make parents buy them, but kids are generally not fooled by crap like that, and will abandon them for games that are actually fun. This is another one where one ends up liking it, and the other doesn't. What does this say about them? Different maturity levels, perceptions or expectations? It's good to have more than one view, in any case.
Dream Web is another fail result, with buggy interface, confusing graphics, little discernable plot, and a serious lack of clues as to what you're supposed to be doing. Cool atmosphere and music does not a good game make. Seems to be a real problem around this era, as graphics improve so rapidly, and far too many designers fall into the trap of style over substance to get sales. Speaking of which, they also preview Wing Commander III, with it's extravagant budget, full video, starring real actors. Oh boy. Now that's a story for another time. I'll stock up on the large hams in anticipation.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 4/6
The role of books: The sherwood game by Esther Friesner sets things around a VR robin hood game, and the trials of it's programmer. as first his company tries to shut down development, and then the characters escape into the real world. A theme this ridiculous obviously has a certain degree of comedy, but she still manages to tackle some serious topics and handle them sensitively. It's all pleasingly versatile.
Arena by William R Forstchen is a Magic: the Gathering novel. As the first one, it has a hard job to do figuring out the setting from the cards. And indeed, it sticks to what they know, by focusing on the duelling wizards and fast paced action with a bit of intrigue. It does have rather poor naming conventions, and the characters are worryingly powerful, but hey, you work with what you've got.
Whispering woods by Clayton Emery manages to show a little more of the ground level setting detail of dominiana, but shows that their editorial control on this line isn't great, with details being inconsistent with the other book, and not particularly well justified. As with RPG fiction, this has the flavour of stuff churned out to make a quick buck, with consistency and continuity not great priorities. Future writers'd better improve on this if they want the line to last.
The hallelujah trail by Bill Gullick isn't a new book, but it's just been reprinted, and John seizes the opportunity to recommend it to another generation of readers. Technically, it's a western, but it certainly doesn't fall into the lone desperado cliches, with a large and complex cast, plenty of politics, and a decent helping of wit to leaven the cake. Even if you're not a fan of westerns in general, you might find something to like here.
Merlin's bones by Fred Saberhagen jumps back and forth in time between merlin's young reincarnation, the present day, and other points in time. Thankfully, the plot is presented in a linear, easily understood manner despite the time shifts, and it manages to take the lore and do some rather different things with it. Exactly where they'll go from here is uncertain, but I think John would rather like to find out.
The diamond age by Neal Stephenson defies easy description by the reviewer, but does get plenty of praise. It's sci-fi, but has retro elements, and lots of interesting structural shifts and setting details. Even the flaws make it more worth talking about rather than really detracting from it, which is one of those tricks most authors never manage. This is one I definitely ought to check out, as I've heard good things about it from other sources too.
Dragon Moon by Chris Claremont & Beth Fleisher gets a fail due to lack of substance backing up the basic idea. It's too short, the politics and personalities don't add up, and the supernatural elements are poorly handled. Off to comics land with you. They have lower standards of what counts as decent continuity and world-building over there. :p
Elminster: The making of a mage finally reveals the early history of our frequent plane-hopper and 4th wall breaker. In the process he's made even more scary, for he now has low level dual-classing as a fighter & thief retconned in. Typical Ed helpings of cheese aside, the plot flows pretty well, and Elminster distinguishes himself from the average archmage in training handily.
Fiction: Where thingies rush in by J Robert King. April comes early in the fiction department, with a thoroughly ridiculous and punsome little story. Stealing the piked head of an archmage to give your podunk town more prestige? People have come up with dumber plots when drunk, I suppose. With a whole load of footnotes, and some fast paced comical action, this is quite amusing, has a clever ending, and doesn't outstay it's welcome. It's certainly not the deepest story they've ever published, but it's not trying to be, and you don't want that every month anyway. This fish will never be a cat, so let's just fry it up and eat it, not try and stroke it.
Role-playing reviews: This month is a Masterbook special. West End Games are finally trying their hand at a universal system, instead of building all new ones for each game. Unfortunately, the system chosen is TORG and Shatterzone's one, which scales well to all sorts of power levels, and has some very cool quirks in it's drama deck rules, but is also rather clunky and crunch heavy. Rick is rather dubious about it's ability to translate to any genre, despite TORG setting plenty of good examples. In any case, it's not standalone yet, so you have to buy a worldbook anyway. Hmm. Since their original RPG's, particularly Paranoia, are better remembered than this, this might not have been such a great move in hindsight. Too late to worry about now.
The world of Indiana Jones draws upon not just the movies, but also the books, comics, TV series, etc in creating it's setting. This means there is a certain amount of low key supernatural weirdness, but it's mostly about the action. The PC's are souped up a bit, but things are still a lot crunchier than the old TSR books. Overall, it doesn't get particularly praised or slated. I guess it'll do the job.
Raiders of the lost ark sourcebook, on the other hand, does get a 6 pip mark. All the locations, complete with NPC's and ideas for incorporating them into your own story. What more could you want? Well, the other movies as well, but all in good time.
Indiana Jones and the Rising sun sourcebook takes a sidetrack and shows us 1930's japan, with plenty of info on both the mundane and supernatural, plus an adventure. Again, it's workmanlike rather than brilliant. The farther away you get from the original movie, the less special it all seems. :/
The world of bloodshadows is not a WoD clone as I thought earlier, but a darkly humorous pulp noir meets horror movie mashup. PC's have abilities both subtly superhuman and downright bizarre, and the setting is highly imaginative and very different from mundane earth. If Raymond Chandler had preferred LSD to alcohol, then maybe we'd have more novels like this.
Galitia is a city sourcebook for Bloodshadows. It gets a pretty cursory review, not distinguishing itself that well from the setting in general. Maybe the world part of the setting is a misnomer, and it doesn't really have enough to support more than a monoculture. This is why TSR rolled a whole bunch of setting lines into Toril, for example.
Mean streets is the DM advice book. This gives you lots of bits and pieces to insert into your game, along with the usual GMing advice. As if often the case, this speeds up your adventure building quite a bit, especially if you're not familiar with the genre. Buying stuff like this'll keep the line going.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 5/6
Tank girl RPG! Man, Jamie Hewlett has certainly gone on to some pretty spectacular things since then. We've got the cool shoeshine, a'right?
Sage advice: What do you mean by magical creatures and spellcasters (anything that casts spells or uses spell-like abilities. Are you saying our english isn't plain enough for you, punk? You ought to know by now what Skip does to people who disrespect Skip!)
What happens if someone's charmed mid-combat (They get all confusticated cos their friends are all fighting. Oh woes. We must settle this disagreement. )
How do you get even more specialized than normal in a weapon (play BD&D or buy the new PLAYERS OPTION books :teeth ting: )
Why are the rules for clerics losing levels on the planes inconsistent (Because the gods say so. Bodged compromise treaties suck, but they're better than open interplanar war all the time )
Can priests in sigil get spells (sure)
You forgot to mention the astral plane's time weirdness in the new planescape books (So we did. You can still use the old stuff with it if you like )
Do Alu fiends, cambions and manes have gating powers (no. They don't have enough respect in the general fiendish hierarchy )
I don't understand what stops fiendish regeneration (then you're not gonna be able to beat them. Better steer clear of the lower planes if you don't want to die horribly. That's what you get for being dumb)
How do Vecna's bits affect a character sitting with a card in the pool (Skip doesn't want to think about what Vecna would do with his withered lichy bits to some poor defenceless champion in a hot tub. Bad images man, bad images.)
When does a ring of shooting stars buff someone (when you want it to. But only once)
What happens when two monsters are fighting over treasure (it's a draw)
Can calm prevent caravans (no. What a silly question. Caravans prefer calm.)
Forum: Colin Cashman fills near a whole page with his solutions to the multiclassing problem. XP penalties, restricting kits to single class characters, restricting demihumans to their racial kits. Let's bring back human supremacy!
Robert Briggs is another person attesting that multiclassed characters fall behind at higher levels. This is particularly the case with triple class ones, which become seriously fragile compared to single class characters of the same XP. It all balances out.
Jeff Stone reminds us that multiclass characters also have the restrictions of both classes. This is particularly the case with speciality priests, who's gods will expect their demands to take priority over all their other classes. Tear them apart with commitments. But remember, if the player's a twink, they'll just look for another method. You have to address that side too.
Larry Sonders has a player who threw a tantrum and quit when low level characters didn't treat his 11th level mage with the respect he felt he deserved. Essentially the fantasy equivalent of Do you know who I Am. :D There's no magic badge that says you're whatever level, and even so, fame has to be constantly backed up with actions. Complacency can kill even 36th level characters.
Wilson Miner plays while hiking, and has developed a diceless system to use while on the go. That's a pretty cool idea actually, even if the implementation is a bit flaky. Sounds like it could degenerate into freeform all too easily. :)
Anne Butler thinks that you shouldn't stop a person from roleplaying just because they haven't read geek staples like star trek or LotR. That means they're less likely to fall into cliches. A fresh view is frequently interesting, and it helps keep roleplaying from ghettoising.
James R. Collier tells us exactly how rare magical items are in his campaign. Enough that you can get statistical with them, but rare enough that only the very rich and powerful will have any. Sounds about right for an average campaign.
The game wizards: Last month we had a whole load of Spellfire advice here. This time, it's the Blood Wars card game that's getting a similar treatment. The number and nature of the cards, rough details of the rules, and a selection of sample decks. A fairly standard promotional article, this sees them try to get in on the CCG market with more than one game in quick succession, and quite possibly split their buyer's market. After all, both draw heavily upon D&D lore to create a game of interplanetary battles. How is one to choose which to spend your money on at the store? And how much coverage will each get in the magazine? Does this mean we'll now be seeing twice as much CCG coverage for the next few years? Are more games already in development? A little tickle in the back of my head is saying Dragon Dice. I must resist the temptation to read ahead and find out before I actually get there. I may not be very keen on this stuff, but it's still interesting to see it rise and fall.
Dragon Magazine Issue 215: March 1995
part 6/6
Ha. Highlander is getting a card game too. There can be only one, and all that.
Something is very wrong in Libram X. All is not as it seems. Swordplay faces near certain death again. Dragonmirth reuses the wish to be a god, become the GM joke. Yamara is about to have her skull terminally reposessed, unless Ogrek can do something.
Through the looking glass: As Robert's time here draws to a close, he reminisces a little about his most significant contribution to the magazine. It seems the thing people remember most is not his reviews, but his Battletech house rules back in 1990. Well, they both stood out, and were stretched across several issues. As much as they try and avoid multi part epic articles these days, those are the ones we are most likely to remember as classics. Perhaps that's another reason why the magazine isn't doing so well.
As usual though, this is mostly minis reviews. A trio of monks, made for Pendragon, but suitable for nearly anything medieval. A sky cycle from Rifts, which won't be nearly so convertible. An ancient table with some decidedly sinister tomes resting upon it. It is, of course, a trap, my dears. Four Knights, one with an axe and the others choosing the boring old sword attack. An absolutely massive wolf, easily twice the size of a man if it was standing up. Pretty Dire, really, especially if you get a pack of them. Even larger are some giant rats, with ratmen riders. By comparison, the trio of mecha that follow look a bit short and skinny. Different scales, I suppose. And male & female Virtual Adept, in full visor & gloves setup. These days, they could fit that technology into the rim of regular sized shades. Isn't living in the future great.
TSR Previews: More wodges of forgotten realms goodies this month. Ruins of Zhentil keep ties in with the recent moonsea sourcebook. A megadungeon boxed set? Those always lure in the punters. Remember, if you don't want them coming back you have to raze all the buildings, fill all the underground stuff in with concrete, dispel all the contingencies. and kill all the clones. Otherwise the place'll be infested with a pretty similar bunch of nasties in a few years time. Elminster's ecologies have obviously proved pretty popular, because we get two more of those. Two spooky little undead infested places in the midwest. Just the sort of places adventurers are likely to visit. Finally, we get Shadows of Doom by Ed Greenwood. See what Elminster was really up too during the avatar crisis. Making sure he could boff the new goddess of magic, I'll wager. :p
Dark sun has another splatbook. Thri-kreen of athas. Or four-handed death machines of wherever they choose to go. See that they're not just nomadic raiders, they have a whole bunch of castes and an encroaching empire to the northwest of the explored lands. Be ready to fight.
Mystara gets another expansion & audio CD. Glantri: Kingdom of magic. With Alphatia gone, they're now the biggest collection of wizards around. How have recent years been to them since their first sourcebook back in 1987?
Dragonlance starts a new series, The Warriors Series. Part one is Knights of the Crown by Roland Green. What's the bet the next two will be named after the other two Solamnic orders. On we go.
Ravenloft has another tale of woe and sadistic revenge. Baroness of Blood by Elaine Bergstrom. And so the cycle continues. Who will rid me of this accursed curse? ;) Endless Quest is also in a ravenloft mood, with Night of the Tiger. Facing a rakshasa? That's never an easy one. Good luck and do your best to find the crossbow.
Our generic products are pretty interesting too. The Dancing hut of Baba Yaga sees one of our classic scenarios return for a third time. Lisa Smedman takes us into a expanded version of the extradimensional whimsy we've seen before in the magazine. There's also another attempt to squeeze a few more drops out of the splatbook format. The complete book of necromancers takes a rather different, more DM focussed approach to fleshing out the wizard speciality, with a sample setting down in Al-Qadim and the NPC's to go with it. Full of flavour, even if that flavour may be somewhat maddening.
Mostly pretty good stuff this month, with plenty of articles that are still pleasant to read and useful for me. There's still plenty of treasure to be found amongst the dross of this era, some of which has actually aged quite well. I guess next I shall have to see if they've still kept their sense of humour this year. Toot toot, all aboard.
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 1/6
124 pages. Things get meta straight away, as the editor's hands intrude on the cover. That little goblin thing may well take a bite out of them if he tries to correct it. If that breaks your suspension of disbelief, I suspect this issue is Not For You. They're trying new forms of wackyness too, with a wacky review and wacky planescape article. Man, there's no shortage of silliness still. Are you filking ready?! I don't think you're ready for Weird Al Yankovic's belly. Hoo Ha!
In this issue:
Letters: Once again, we give it to the floor. Passing up ridiculous letters, enough for evermore. You won't be snoring or finding it boring although their stupidity might be appalling. Their twinky ideas can be quite egregious, you'll place your head in your palm and mutter Jesus. They make assumptions from poor perceptions, and don't realise they'll get a risible reception. And when they try to be nefarious, you can bet we'll find it hilarious. Just don't try to compete with Drizzt, for every fanboy knows he's the shiznit. And I think that's enough horrible near-rhymes for the sake of humour from me for one year.
Editorial covers women in gaming again. This is the 4th or so time. Since the magazine has been around 19 years, you can't exactly call that overkill. And they are definitely making headway. If you look at the staff listing in the contents, slightly more than half of them are female, although the men are still hogging the top positions, so it's a bit of a mixed message. But it's still a massive improvement from 1979, when Jean Wells was the first and only woman on the TSR staff. The same can be said of general media, where there is also a decent amount of women being portrayed at least half-decently in prominent roles. Course, you can't expect them to like exactly the same stuff men do, and this road will eventually lead to them splitting away from the geek's categorisation and creating the currently massive Paranormal Romance genre, to much amusing nerdrage. Just as MMORPGs have substantial tabletop ancestry, but have now eclipsed us commercially by orders of magnitude and become very much their own thing, if you suddenly appeal to a different demographic, they won't play by your rules, but make their own. Which is why a broad definition of what roleplaying is is a good idea, otherwise you're setting yourself up for obsolescence. Learn from others, but find your own voice as well. And don't take crap from anyone. Lessons everyone should learn, regardless of sex, race or creed. And now off the soapbox for me.
First quest: William W. Connors may be a fairly recent arrival to the TSR stable, but he's already done pretty well for himself, with Masque of the Red Death exceeding their commercial expectations by quite a bit. His story begins with a game of Starships & Spacemen that went on for 16 hours, and was fun all the way through. The kind of game that pretty much deserves to be called legendary, more than half the participants have gone on to be game writers. Sounds like seeing the sex pistols in '76 or owning the velvet underground albums in the 60's. Another one that shows that you really can't start off with mature exploration of character if you want to grow the hobby. Little kids are drawn in by strange landscapes and blowing stuff up. It's only later that they wind up writing toned down, atmosphere heavy games which emphasise roleplaying over combat. :D
Bazaar of the Bizarre is brought to you by Bargle the infamous, former high wizard (read, grand vizier :D ) to the black eagle baron. He's killed Aleena, screwed over a dominion, and now has his own magic manufacturing line. Course, being in it primarily for the money (and how) his items are a classic example of let the buyer beware. Tee hee. April fool. I love this one.
Invisible rings disappear when you put them on. They might be mildly useful as brass knuckles, but otherwise this is practically the platonic ideal of pointless.
Rings of Destruction gradually turn your body to dust. The trick here is of course to make sure it's your enemy that puts them on, as with all cursed items.
The ring of the eagle lets you turn into a black eagle. As this is one of his oldest items, it's also entirely reliable, because his previous employer would probably apply some violence if he messed up.
Rings of fashion give you a snappy outfit. Well, an outfit in a snap, anyway. Hoo boy. Fashion can be a fickle thing :D
Rings of ideas are either going to save your ass, or completely ruin the party's day. Either way, they should keep things interesting. Good luck.
Rings of circular cursing inflict the same curse upon you and someone else. This'll force you to get really inventive and customised, thinking up effects that'll be devastating for them but minor for you. Genius.
The ring of gender confusion doubles the comedy by only making you think you've changed gender. This is easier to remove than the girdle, but has the potential for even more comedy.
The ring of impact lets you hit harder. Another one that actually works exactly as it should. It's stuff like this that keep you coming back after all the mishaps.
The Ring of kindness is another one you should put on others. Unless you're already saintly enough it makes no difference, you don't want to realise you've given all your stuff away to whoever asked for it.
The ring of languages is another helpful but risky one. Do you want to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, understandable by everyone? Ironic that such a scumbag should wind up producing items with drawbacks that are least troublesome to good guys.
He also has three self-help books to tell you nothing you can't figure out yourself, and give you new spells with quite serious design defects. Course, you won't realise that until after spending the money, but such is life. Really, killing him and taking his stuff would work far better, presuming you can pull it off. Thousands of adventurers will thank you for it.
Quote from: (un)reason;430060First quest: William W. Connors may be a fairly recent arrival to the TSR stable, but he's already done pretty well for himself, with Masque of the Red Death exceeding their commercial expectations by quite a bit.
I was always impressed with the quality of Masque of the Red Death, but I never knew it did all that well for TSR. I know later supplements for it tanked, or so I heard. The original box handled the concept well, and there is a faint proto-League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe to it. The later supplements were, as I recall, far too tepid for my taste, concentrating too much on the era as it
was rather than how it
could have been, along the lines of the aforementioned LoEG.
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 2/6
Fuzzy Reviews: Oh man. This is like Clay-o-Rama's cuter big sister just bounced into the magazine. Fuzzy heroes is a wargaming ruleset which allows you to take nearly any toy, assign it stats based upon it's physical traits, and then have them fight. It has simple basic rules, but tons of optional advanced rules, and plenty of possible variants. The main complaint is that it's sample battles and setting assumes the same set of toys the author had, which probably will not be the case. Still, it seems perfect for introducing your kids to wargaming. April fool indeed.
Fuzzy Sooper Heroes takes this idea and encourages you to mod your toys liberally. Add a cape & mask, and suddenly they get a whole bunch of cool extra abilities, and an interesting attempt to implement a moral code. This means that games involving sooper heroes are more likely to feature one-on-one fights and a certain degree of roleplaying, as players have to learn to play fair and get along OOC to make the chivalry point rules work. It all seems designed to segue neatly into playing full RPG's. This is one joke that definitely has serious applications.
April fools Faxions: Oh boy. Some philosophies are just too out there even for people in the planescape universe to take seriously. That's quite an achievement. April fool. The kind of april fool you could well include into your game if you handled it right, but nevertheless, this is primarily intended for humour's sake. Handle with caution, especially if your players are sensitive or humourless and involved in the industries parodied by this.
The Beautification League think that aesthetics are all-important, morality is irrelevant. Of course, there is still a degree of internal dispute, but most are not keen on the current chaotic and frequently spiky decor of Sigil. They may be annoying, but they can spot secret doors and hidden compartments like no-ones business with their keen sense of the out of place. Thats a benefit worth acting like a snooty fashionista for in my book.
The Free Flora Collective is a group of sentient plants fighting for their rights. This isn't making much headway in sigil, where people have no trouble treading on anyone whop doesn't stop themselves being walked over with force, and the biggest plant, razorvine, is not a valuable member of society. I lack the wit to come up with suitable plant related puns for a shaft filk at the moment, so I don't feel inclined to support their cause.
The Herbivorous Assembly think that the most humane and healthy thing for intelligent beings to do is stop eating animals and live in harmony with them. This ironically puts them in direct conflict with the FFC above. Develop synthetic foods to solve the problem.
The Wizards of the Black Teddy are an order of scantily clad dominatrix wizards, wielding the power of cheesecake to their advantage. Sounds more like a kit than a faction, given it's narrowness. Still, I'm sure they have no shortage of men seeking to be "auxiliary members". They shouldn't expect to get the faction benefit though, no matter how skimpy the leather thongs they're wearing. :p
The Apathetic Alliance are the Bleak Cabal on steroids. They can't even be bothered to rationalise the futility of the universe, and just sit around doing sod-all. They won't even notice if you attack them with nonmagical weapons, such is the strength of their apathy. This would obviously be pretty broken in a serious game, especially if you min-maxed them by pumping their wisdom up to 18 to mitigate their drawback. But surely no serious DM would allow that. Maybe, but don't call me Shirley. ;) :(
Paranoia skips two editions and goes straight to number 5. Is it still funny? That's for you to decide.
Bards on the run: More filking. Some fairly obscure choices to mock this time. I can only recognise two off the tunes offhand. Wait a minute, is that the American national anthem? Ouch, man, ouch. Even Magic:the Gathering doesn't deserve that. So yeah, this is as excruciating as ever, while also managing to be moderately topical. April fool.
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;430071I was always impressed with the quality of Masque of the Red Death, but I never knew it did all that well for TSR. I know later supplements for it tanked, or so I heard. The original box handled the concept well, and there is a faint proto-League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe to it. The later supplements were, as I recall, far too tepid for my taste, concentrating too much on the era as it was rather than how it could have been, along the lines of the aforementioned LoEG.
Probably. Like Oriental Adventures, diminishing returns set in pretty quickly once people had the basic rules and setting, plus this was right in the middle of their general sales decline. Still, enough people liked it that they licensed it out for 3rd edition.
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 3/6
Paths of power: Back to the serious stuff. Now this is one of the more impressive attempts to rework the D&D magic system into something a little more literary feeing. It's been rather a while since they really tried altering the magic system, and the usual request, which they resolutely ignore, is for a spell point system like most other games use. This gets rid of the artificialness of having casters forget spells, while still constraining their options on a day to day basis. Spells are divided into paths, similar to rolemaster but a bit less regimented, with some paths having multiple or no spells in a particular level, and many spells appearing on more than one path. This is a feature, not a bug, with forking from one path to another being a good way to pick up cool new stuff without an external teacher, via scientific extrapolation. This has a whole bunch of interesting emergent effects, and many of them are spelled out in the article, showing they've really thought about this one, and hopefully done a bit of playtesting. I think this actually qualifies as a classic article, with both neat fiction, and very adventurous crunch. Don't see nearly enough of those these days. Ok, so it'd need a whole new campaign ( or at least region of the world where everyone does things differently) to really take advantage of it, but that's not insurmountable. Hopefully at least a few people tried this one out, given the demand for stuff like this.
The game wizards: Bah. It's the Player's option books. If Unearthed Arcana was AD&D 1.5 edition, this is definitely 2.5. And this is precisely the point where they started to lose me, back in the day. Quite a bit of that can be attributed to this first teaser. Goddamn critical hit tables. We hatses them, and the havoc they inflict upon our painstakingly developed characters, yesss. Get back to Rolemaster where you belong. The fact that all this was presented as optional made me instantly decide that I wanted no part of this, and was going to refuse to buy it, and any further supplements that required the stuff therin. Maybe I'd have chosen differently if they'd teased something else, like the various combat options that give fighters more tactical choice rather than showcasing the bad things that are likely to happen to you. So in my case this was a very definite marketing misstep. Whether this was one of the things that hastened their commercial decline overall I'm not sure, but it can't have had a particularly positive effect on overall sales, and did quite a bit to split the userbase and cause flame wars. So this is another historical turning point I'm not particularly happy to have reached, especially as there's going to be plenty more S&P articles before 3e arrives.
Eye of the monitor: Zeb Cook is our sole reviewer this month, trying to maintain links with TSR while also adapting to his computer programmer job. Once again, the job falls to the person who is least busy, quite possibly at the last minute. No back and forth banter this time, I'm afraid.
Doom II doesn't do quite as well as the first one. Yes, in technical terms it improves upon it in nearly every aspect, but it's simply not innovative in the same way the first one was. Diminishing returns and all that, just as with SSI's Forgotten realms games. Plus it needs a pretty high end system to run at a decent speed. You'll need to put a few more tricks in Doom 3 to keep the franchise fresh.
X-Com is a multilayered strategy game where your job is to defend the earth from alien attacks. This required shifting from a sim style setup where time passes and you have to choose where to position your bases and soldiers, and a tactical stage where you actually fight them off. This means that you have to think long and short term, and while you may be bored waiting months of game time for attacks to happen, you won't regret having taken the extra time to prepare. So it's not for everyone, but those that like taking on all these different roles in one will love it.
Rumblings increases in size this month as it has lots of juicy gossip. Dale Donovan is getting a sex change, lycanthropy and alien abductions run rampant through the department, and people are fleeing as chaos sweeps the land. April Fool. Anyway, the hit status of Blood Wars is confirmed. The Jyhad card game, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein are all getting novel lines. White Wolf is introducing the "masterpiece" HOL to a wider audience. And Steve jackson is combining Lovecraft and Shadowrun with GURPS Cthulhupunk. I don't remember that one at all. What was it like?
The Auld Alliance: Arthur Collins has been contributing articles to the magazine for well over a decade. If anyone knows something about persistence, it's him. So I can give plenty of credibility to advice about keeping a gaming group healthy over years of play from his pen. Game with friends and family, instead of meeting up with people you don't see outside gaming, and might not even like much. Don't be flaky, and get rid of those who are. A few stable people are much better for getting things done than a larger group full of people who only show up half the time. Respect each other, ya sonsofbitches! ;) Make a regular time for the game and stick to it, regardless of how busy life gets. Trade off leadership, or at least give everyone a defined role so you can work together better. Customise things to fit you. And if things lose their spark, a change is as good as a rest. Sounds good for most kinds of social activity where the socialisation is actually where most of the fun lies. I approve of this message. Theoretical analysis can not compete with real world practical experience.
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 4/6
Role-playing reviews: Masque of the red death tries to tone things down to accommodate modern day gothic horror, but still retains far too much of the D&D class and level system to make it work properly. These flaws are not immediately apparent though, and in terms of layout it's pretty great, resulting in Rick giving it a 6 pip rating. Style!
Parlainth: The forgotten city sees Earthdawn picking up pace and setting detail, with a nicely detailed citybook. Robin Laws gives it plenty of history, and makes it into a dungeon crawl with a sense of humour and plenty of opportunities for roleplaying. Rick's main complaint is exactly that, it's not sure if it wants to be completely serious as worldbuilding. Bah. TSR have certainly been guilty of that too. Glantri vice, anyone?
Red steel turns D&D's magic level up a good deal, ironically making spellcasters less essential in the process. The new races are pretty good, the kits are cool and well integrated, and the constant need for new sources of Cynnabryl to stave off nasty withdrawal symptoms keeps adventurers constantly busy and with plenty of potential opportunities and enemies. I like this a good deal more than Masque, and it has stood the test of time better mechanically. (apart from the CD, which was pretty meh even at the time, and now just seems embarrassing to my trained ears in terms of sound design. ) Rick just wishes there was more detail on the setting, which I can quite agree with.
Denver, the city of shadows gets a review that is largely Rick taking the piss out of Nigel Findley in an affectionate manner. The product is packed full of IC dialogue of shadowrunners trading off quips and information. This makes it an entertaining read, but tricky to find stuff in a hurry. Typical mid 90's writing flaw then.
Fiction: Dead man's curse by Roy V Young. An excerpt from one of their new novels? They haven't done that since Quag Keep & Trollshead. This is a very unwelcome stepping up of their co-ordinated promotional recycling crap. It's another goofy april story as well, which is a bit much after last month. On the plus side, it is edited in such a fashion that the excerpt still works as a standalone story, and the finale is genuinely laugh out loud worthy. So this is another case where I have to return a mixed result because I can see ever more of the sausage grinder that's actually producing this stuff, and looking behind the scenes isn't particularly pleasant. This is another case where I seriously hope they don't make a habit of this.
Forum: Jon Larie praises the idea of mashup games, but warns that you should be prepared to houserule after the fact if a combination turns out to be gamebreaking. In situations like this, GM agency is more important than ever.
Jason Hubred justifies the recent rise in minis prices. Yes, we know there are good reasons, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. It's still a pain from a consumer end, however you slice it.
Ann Wilson tells Stephen Jessup not to try railroading characters into novel plots, especially if they're the wrong level and party mix. That'll result in things turning out differently even if they try to play along.
Steve Shawler complains about the recent tendency towards railroading and statistical sloppiness in TSR modules. The backlash is building, the backlash is building. Damn right too. We want choices in our adventures, not to watch some NPC's having all the fun. Keep that to the novels.
Donald Hoverson suggests another thing that would become standard next edition. AC should have a base of 10 and go up, not down. These are really starting to add up and still 5 years to go. I wonder how many more canonised houserules we'll spot in here.
Ralf Toth thinks clerics are not the supreme class. Their kits suck, and they're in just as much danger of losing all their powers as wizards, maybe more if they follow a strict deity. They don't get as much love in supplements, do they.
Garry Wilson wants holy warriors for gods other than the same old lawful good stuff. You'll wanna go back to issue 106 mate. That'll give you more than enough examples to draw upon.
Matthew Ferguson continues the magic jar debate. He thinks it is all that compared to becoming undead. Y'know, I think I'd prefer the Shade option. Far cooler, and a lot less destructive of other people's lives.
Steve Collier is another person who thinks clerics can be pretty scary in combat. Ok, they may not stack up to wizards in AoE power, but stuff like hold person, heat metal, animal summoning can really turn the tide. Points of damage are not the only way of determining advantage.
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 5/6
Novel ideas: Oohh. This column again. The unloved stepchild of the books department gets to go out in the sunlight for the first time in over a year. Albeit the nasty blasting red sunlight of Athas. Not sure that's such a great deal. On the plus side, it then gets to go to Cerillia immediately afterwards. Yup, here's our first teaser for the Birthright setting. Slightly more traditional than the other campaign worlds they've released recently, it nevertheless tries to change the gameplay quite a bit by putting you in the leadership role right from the start. But as this is the novel department, this isn't to do with the mechanics side. Instead, it's an interview of the guy hired to write the first novel in it. Simon Hawke. He turns out to be quite an interesting person, who's taken a rather idiosyncratic path to get where he is. A name change from the original Russian proved a good career move, making him a more recognisable brand. He's been a musician & DJ before becoming a writer, and still bounces round the room playing music to warm up before writing. He's got a pretty impressive resume of novels, both independent and working in shared worlds. It seems a fairly enviable life, even if he did have to sell out a bit to get it. Looking forward a bit, it seems like he stops producing novels in 2003, although as far as any of the wiki sites know, he's still alive. Early retirement? Health issues? In any case, this is one I pretty much skipped over back in the day, that's actually rather interesting second time around. This is a pretty good example of how you get to make a living in a creative industry.
Elminsters notebook: Kobolds of the Realms get a turn in the spotlight. After Dragon Mountain, it's not as if anyone is going to make the mistake of underestimating them again. Still, they do have trouble going it alone, which is why they work best as minions of something able to do what they can't, mostly spellcasting. (a flaw which will be solved spectacularly next edition) One or two is all you need to massively upgrade their traps, items and general mobility, which is just what you need when using your brains. As usual for this column, there's a ton of little setting details. Various kobold tribes, where they are, how they like to make a living, lots of little bits and pieces for a canon junkie to take advantage of. Pretty standard really. It's still good, but as with anything, sticking to exactly the same formula makes it feel routine.
Sage advice is here, despite being missed out on the contents page. Skip is gonna have to do some serious capping of asses for this snub.
How do I deal with the huge XP needed disparities for dragons in council of wyrms (temporarily retire those characters. Make them play their human PC's more. Yes, the biggest problems are at 1st level, where you can't do that anyway. Is it Skip's job to solve all your problems?)
Can planar races take Al-Qadim kits (no, but their kids can if they settle there)
Do optional class awards supplement or replace the group ones (supplement. Otherwise slow advancement would be sloooooow.)
Are racial save bonuses cumulative with the normal ones for high stats. (Yes, but 1 is still a failure. )
What's the experience modifier for having psionics ( a mere +1-2 HD. Not very good differentiation given how much they can improve a character)
Do you need to be able to read to use magical books (yes. But you don't have to be able to write to have your own private code)
What does spellcraft let you do. (Tell if something's magical. Simple enough. )
Can you stack bladesinging with regular specialization (And make elves even more twinked. Skip thinks not. )
How many miles is it from the spire to the gate towns (Indefinite. Not all planes have euclidian geometry. The outlands, for example, has node and vector geometry with randomized travel times between nodes. 3-18 days travel to get to the next adjacent point location, no matter how fast or slow you are. This is a great pain in the ass when you want to be precise. It also means it takes 30-180 days to get to the middle from the gate towns, but only 24-144 to get to all the way to the other side by going round the circumference. Which means pi = .8 in that instance. Now that's alternate physics!)
How does lightning bolt work (with great brutality)
Do allies lose a level when a card says everyone does (yes)
Can you play cards before being forced to discard them (Immediate means immediate. Has you no memory at all)
Which effect happens first if you play more than one (The one you played first. They cannot be done simultaneously)
Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995
part 6/6
Curses, Dragonmirth is fooled again by those pesky do-gooders. All seems lost for yamara and co.
From the forge: This month, Ken chooses to have a sci-fi special. It's currently approaching mainstream in terms of TV coverage, with Star trek right in the middle of it's multiple series at once zenith, and Babylon 5 making real waves in redefining how you can handle long running plots on a tv show; while oddly enough, starting to decline in terms of RPG market share. Life is complicated, and saying something as large as an entire genre is becoming more or less popular is not a straightforward thing, with all kinds of subtle demographic shifts within the larger population.
We start out, of course, with the big boys. Games Workshop has a whole bunch of stuff for the familiar 40k universe, plus a new game, Titan Legions, which brings giant mecha combat to the grimdark future. That is indeed pretty heavy metal. Grenadier has competition for them though, with the Future Warriors line getting a game to go with it. It's different, with anticipating your opponent's moves crucial to winning, but whether it has longevity is another matter altogether. Global games also have four minis reviewed from their Legions of Steel game. Two rather sinister looking robots, one with four arms, and two heavily armed aliens. FASA get the best marks, with the Battletech Compendium and Tukayyid Scenario Pack filling in lots of setting and giving you sample scenarios to play out as well. Ral Partha has a couple more mechs for battletech, and also shows us how a minotaur and satyr look in Shadowrun. Pretty funky, really. Heartbreaker Hobbies have two dark legion officers for the Mutant Chronicles game, and two members of the Brotherhood determined to stamp them out. Pretty obvious who they're trying to imitate. Ground Zero Games get Full Thrust reviewed, which sounds vaguely pornographic, but is just a game of space combat. It's another one where you have to issue orders the turn before and guess what the opponent is going to do well, and also take momentum into account. It seems to strike the right balance between easy to learn and having emergent complexity, and has done well enough to get at least one supplement. And apropos of nothing, there's also a Tudor inn so fantasy fans don't feel completely left out, remember, there's plenty of crossover between the two.
TSR previews is unreadable this month, for some reason. Even a slight angle on the scanned pages makes the cleanup software not work very well. Oh well, this is one magazine I have in print, so that's not a problem. First up, unsurprisingly, are the expanded and revised Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. More colour, bigger margins, more references to other books, (Gotta collect 'em all) less errata. Go on, give us more money for old rope.
The Forgotten Realms finally gives us info on the Seven Sisters. Like Elminster, they've been mary-sueing round the realms since it's outset. Now you can penetrate a big chunk of the mystery, and find out for sure just how twinked they are. There's also Once around the Realms, by Brian Thompson. Or around the world in 80 days converted to toril. What fun we shall have! :claps:
Mystara expands further on the Red Steel setting, giving the Savage Baronies their own sourcebox, including another silly audio CD. Find out just how common adventurers of various classes are in these wild and magic heavy lands, and just how fragile the current power blocs are. Perfect place for you to carve out a domain of your own.
Ravenloft has Van Richten's guide to the Fiends. They may not be common in the demiplane of dread, (possibly because they actually outclass the evil of most things there and the dark powers are scared of them) but they really do a number on the place when someone summons them in. No surprise that he'd have a run in or two with them under his belt.
Planescape fills in one plane that doesn't quite fit in the big sourceboxes. A Players guide to the Outlands sees Audio CD add-ons come to other gameworlds, this time as an IC artifact. Probably the best use of this idea they managed, even if some of the acting is a bit hokey.
Our generic novel this month is Mus of Kerbridge. The adventures of a mouse made intelligent by a wizard? Hmm. Not too bad an idea. I certainly liked the Dartford Mice stories, and Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice. This has potential.
Spellfire gets a booster pack, giving us stats for most of the weird and scary Artifacts in AD&D's history. Rod of 7 parts, eye of vecna, coat of arndt. I'm sure your champions'll be happy to have them.
This issue contains both the best and worst of times. It has both a genuine classic article, and some pretty terrible promotional stuff, and the humour both hits and misses, albeit with slightly more hits than misses. Once again there's enough enjoyable stuff that I don't feel I wasted my money first time around, but it's not by a huge margin. It won't take much of a decline to push me over that edge. The time when I quit first time round grows ever nearer. Let's see if I have the same opinion this time round when I get there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 1/7
128 pages. A spelljammer cover here for some reason, despite the line being long gone by now. I approve, since it both looks cool, and thumbs the nose at their marketing department. On the other hand, they've once again forgotten to tell us what theme their lead articles have. Straight away it looks like this is going to be another mixed bag in terms of quality. Let's see if the good outweighs the bad this time around.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter worrying that the new printings of the corebooks are a 3rd edition. Nope. They have no plans to do that anytime soon. No sir. Not at all. :shudders: All sounds like far too much work to us when we remember the last time round.
A letter pointing out the mistakes in their blood wars card list. Happens every time. No escaping it.
A request that they not put magazine articles online before they get published physically. Ahaha. Now that's a promise that can only be kept for so long. :(
And finally, we have an obituary for Nigel Findley. Damn shame. He managed one of the highest ratios of great articles of any writer, even better than Ed. (although he certainly wasn't as prolific) And as we saw last month, he was still producing thoroughly entertaining stuff recently. If he'd lived, he would probably have produced quite a few more great books.
Editorial: A farewell from Dale this month. He stepped into some pretty big shoes when he became the main editor, and he didn't quite manage to fill them. Still, as Roger didn't really get into the flow of things until about a year and a half in, this may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As usual, it's hard to say how history would have been different if someone else had been in the chair. So as is often the case for farewells, he looks back over his run on the magazine, and talks about the coolest things they printed in that time. Somewhat saddening. Sure, he wasn't one of the greats of roleplaying like Kim or Roger, but he certainly wasn't a bad guy, and he did make some interesting personal contributions as well as choosing other people's articles. So once again it's time to face the chaos of new people coming in, and having to figure out how to run everything all over again. Tough times are already here, and they're about to get tougher still.
First Quest: RPGA co-ordinator Jean Rabe takes a turn at this reminiscing thing. (just before she leaves the company. Everyone's jumping ship to go freelance it seems. ) A werehawk with exceedingly low mental stats was her first character, and she got into roleplaying because she wasn't keen on going out getting drunk. Wait, shouldn't that be the other way round? I guess starting in media res and then filling in the backstory later is an established narrative convention. Just wasn't expecting to see it in a 2 page article. There's plenty of info on the rest of her gaming career as well, and the benefits she's got from it. A job, a husband, friends and a whole cast-off campaign world. And probably cheaper than going out getting pissed on the weekends too. Who said gaming was bad for your social life?
Boons & Benefits: We've had quite a few articles on unorthodox treasures before. Gems, books, maps, title deeds, plants, poisons, works of art. There's no shortage of things you can give your players beyond money and magic items that let them kick more ass. This pushes that idea a bit further, with the concept of treasures that are largely intangible. Titles, memberships in secret societies, medals, honorary degrees, a well paying sinecure of a job, huge discounts at the place saved, (or maybe just tax breaks) undefined favors to be called in at a future date. Here's 126 ideas, nicely divided into semirandom tables. Once again, we reinforce the fact that we have more ideas from the magazine than we can ever use. Still, there are a good deal wider ranging than most articles of this sort, and it's a good reminder to put different stuff into your game. I approve, even if I'm not blown away.
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 2/7
Behind enemy lines: Hmm. Another quite good and somewhat different idea here. And another one that might be tricky to implement. Just as many players will look at intangible rewards and thumb their noses at them, trying to run a campaign where you're right in the middle of the bad guys, and there's far too many to kill your way out of the problem may prove a problem for some groups. Be it because they don't have the tactical and roleplaying acumen, or they're now high enough level that instant teleportation or easy flight is in their reach, this might be tricky. Since D&D is more prone to both those problems than the average RPG, this is one that might be better suited to another system. Not a bad idea, though, and certainly easier to get a group into than the horrible A4 captured and stripped of all your stuff setup. So this is a second article I have mixed feeling about. I suppose we exhausted most of the easy adventure ideas a while ago, so I shouldn't be surprised we're getting into ones that are rather harder to run successfully.
Two heads are better than one: Now this is one of my personal favourite ideas, that I've used personally to great success. Sharing DM duties makes things a lot more fun. (provided you like the other person and have time to meet up with them outside the game to prepare for the next session) You can split the party, you can bounce ideas off each other and edit them better, you can divide labor in ways that play to both your strengths. Two heads are very frequently better than one. I have absolutely no reservations about recommending this article to everyone, whatever system or genre they're playing in. It may be short, but you can get a good deal of joy out of trying it, and may even find it becomes your default way of working if you can get a good enough partner. The smallest ideas can have the biggest repercussions, because they're most widely applicable.
Class action!: Oooh. Another idea that really should have got an article much sooner. They are stepping up their adventurousness in terms of rules and playstyles. Let's see what happens when you break D&D's usual niche protection, and have a party comprised largely or entirely of one class. While campaigns certainly won't be the same, they can still be entirely viable, and possibly even more interesting. And you can still find ways to differentiate them. Warriors can wield different weapons and work on their formation fighting skills. Wizards and rogues can really focus on getting good at their specialities. And bards can play different musical instruments. :p As white wolf games show, a game can thrive by focussing on one thing and doing it well, and then highlighting the more subtle subdivisions within that area. (savage vampire, imperious vampire, shadowy vampire, mad vampire, pretentious vampire ) You really will need to create adventures tailored to your party though, otherwise they may die horribly (apart from clerics. A good set of different speciality priests hardly needs other classes, as they admit here. :p ) With a sample adventure for each class group, this is both strong and fairly innovative. You could potentially get 4 whole campaigns off this one before rehash set in, so I'm definitely voicing my praise for this article.
En-Psycho-Slade-ica: Or How compiling every magical item ever released for D&D into a set of tables drove slade quite quite mad. A sensation I can empathise with pretty well at this point, as the third anniversary of this thread draws ever closer. The sheer quantity of stuff just gets to be more than the human brain can comprehend at some point. To prove this, here's 21 pages of random tables, covering every item in the game via rolling d1000's. A fairly impressive special feature, made less so by the fact that it'll appear in volume 4 as well, so this basically fills up a 6th of the magazine with precycled promotion. So this was cool on first reading, but moderately annoying in retrospect, like so many promotional articles that no longer have any use once you have the actual product. Did you have a shortage of decent stuff to put in the magazine or something?
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 3/7
The new colour PHB & DMG get a centrefold spread. Four pages of teasing full of shiny new visuals. Considerably bigger, but not actually much more content. This means they cost more as well. Whether that gives them a bigger profit margin, on the other hand? Surely they weren't expecting to sell as many this time around as when 2e was first released.
Eye of the monitor: Looks like it's not just Lester who's rebutted Jay & Dee's review of Space Hulk. Indeed, they've got so many that they decide to give it another shot. They don't change their mind in the end, but that's not the point. The vigorous debate caused is still interesting, and writers do appreciate getting responses to what they write, even if it's not entirely positive. It's only when you're getting more flamers than you can even read that it really starts to bog your life down.
SimTower is the latest in the hugely successful sims series. You unlock new features to put in your towers as you go along, which helps give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you playing longer. Controlling your stairs, elevators, and eventually escalators is key to success, which is somewhat amusing. Their main complaint is that you can wind up waiting around for too long to make something happen or get more money in, which means it's best played while multitasking with something else. Nothing wrong with that playstyle. I must admit to doing that while also trying to write these reviews. But I can see why that would stop them from awarding too high a mark.
D!Zone is an unauthorised mod for Doom. It basically adds on a ton of mods and new levels, of decidedly dubious quality, and seems to expect anyone using it to be a computer programmer. It's definitely not for anyone but the most hardcore fanatic.
Heretic is another one for Doom fans, as it's essentially a fantasy themed Doom heartbreaker, with most weapons obviously analogues of Doom ones, and much the same gameplay. So if you liked that, get this. If not, don't bother.
Landstalker also seems fairly typical of it's genre, zelda-esque overhead fantasy adventure with lots of things to kill and puzzles to solve. There's less actual roleplaying than they'd like, but it does what it does well. No groundbreaking classics this month then.
The game wizards: Skills & Powers teaser part two. See us try and halfheartedly get in on the GURPS market by implementing point buy. And in the process, make the game considerably easier to break by not being very rigorous with the point cost balancing. As with several of their other rules experiments at this time, this really shows up the fundamental flaws in the system design. Developed in an organic evolutionary fashion, it's pretty good for some things, but exceedingly ill-suited to others. And like trying to tidy a filthy bedroom, a half-done job looks worse than not doing it at all, and just means the original owner now has more trouble finding things. So once again, this reads like a case of cool intentions gone wrong, and implemented poorly. Many of these options are just obviously better than other ones. And the choice between buying new stuff or using the points as one-off drama points to save your ass is very clunky. Given AD&D's advancement rate at higher levels, you're pretty much screwing yourself over if you don't upgrade yourself. Rip it up and start again. Chances are, you'll be wanting to respec characters built like this after a few levels.
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 4/7
Sage advice has finally wormed out of spellfire duty. Skip is most pleased. That'll teach em for leaving skip off last month's contents.
How does an amulet of life protection keep your psyche for 7 days (By trapping your Soooooouuuuuuullllll! )
How much does bariaur armor cost (same as for horses. How humiliating.)
How do bariaurs ride a bonded mount (Er, um. Ick. It'll just have to be a loyal companion, rather than an actual mount. )
Can psionicists improve already existing defense modes (sure. The choice between power and versatility is a hard one. )
What monsters can I summon with various levels (use their XP rating to see what can be considered fair. )
Can you clarify some specialty priest powers (is this still causing people problems. If you're gonna make skip explain every one, you'd better pay skip pretty damn well. )
How much can you fit in a backpack (Don't worry about it. Encumbrance is already inconvenient enough. If you enforce realistic storage space as well, you'll never get anything done)
Can you remove a creatures spellcasting power with dispel magic (no, only the spells they currently have active.)
Warhamer + Gauntlets + Girdle is totally broken. How could you allow that! (Skip only examines the rules. Skip doesn't make them (unless it's unclear and skip feels like it at the time) And there are plenty of ways to make a character even more broken. Skip will even show you some if you pay.)
What gets multiplied by buffs (usually, only the dice. The adding comes afterwards.)
What special powers do you gain with shapechange ( Some, but certainly not all. )
Isn't it easier for priests to make magical items (no, because they have to get their god on side. You know how busy gods are. )
How do you make magic items if you're a specialist without access to the enchantment school (you can't. You'll have to find a scroll or persuade someone who can to help. Oh wait, you can't use opposition scrolls, so I guess you'll need a friend. Solitary wizards in towers are screwed. )
Does a wall of force protect you from reading symbols (no)
When are you gonna do tome of magic spheres for monster mythology. (they're already in the book, dumbass. Have you even read it, or are you just kneejerking for the hell of it. Skip doesn't like kneejerkers. They're prime targets for bein' capped. Then their knees'll never jerk again. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 5/7
The role of books: The armless maiden, edited by Terri Windling is a collection of reframed fairy stories focussing on child abuse, edited by someone who suffered from it herself. This means it sometimes makes uncomfortable reading, and the preachiness may get in the way of the stories, but that doesn't mean that the craftsmanship is bad. Quite the opposite, if anything. It's just a question of if you can find something like this enjoyable or cathartic reading.
Cats paw by L. A. Taylor is a victorian flavoured mystery, low key but with good character development and excellent artwork. It's old fashioned air contrasts quite a bit with more irreverent modern attitudes of the other books being reviewed, and as is often the case, this contrast turns out to be a positive overall.
The book of earth by Marjorie R. Kellog is the start of an elemental themed quartet of books. That's already pretty overdone as an idea, and that the story is pretty standard makes this feel like just another cliche ridden fantasy book. Do we want to stick around and see if future books improve?
Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston is unsurprisingly a fantastical twist on Doc Savage. It hits pretty much the notes you'd expect, taking a guy from modern day earth as the viewpoint character and throwing him into this pulp fae realm with the Doc & his other companions. The sexism & racism of the originals is toned down, of course, and it maybe has too many supporting characters that don't get properly developed. John nevertheless finds it highly enjoyable. Pulp isn't dead, it's just a little diluted.
Voices by John Vornholt is a Babylon 5 novel. It focusses on just a few of the show's cast, and takes them places the show probably couldn't due to budget constraints, while keeping them consistent with established characters. That already puts it up on far too many books from tv series. That is also tells a pretty decent story and fills in a bit more of the setting makes it a quite good result for the series. Let's hope the editorial control stays good on this line.
No earthly sunne by Margaret Ball is another fae themed book, combining music based magic, computer programming and time manipulation in it's plot threads. All of these elements are handled quite convincingly, showing the author did her research, and the story is pretty well done as well and full of variety in moods. No objections there.
Role-playing reviews is particularly strange and wide-ranging this month. A novel, a computer game, a card game? This isn't roleplaying! Very curious. On the other hand, a little variety does help to stave off the boredom, so I am interested in seeing how this shakes out.
Theatrix is one of those games that plays with the concept of what roleplaying is, moving it a lot closer to improv acting than wargaming. There's no dice, and the overall direction of the story is scripted in advance. The fun is in finding out exactly how you get from A to B. This takes quite a bit of adapting to for people used to lots of stats and dice rolls, but does make a fun game, and would be an excellent framing device for giving drama students a degree of narrative control within a play. Lester highly recommends it.
The empire of Elwolf, on the other hand, gets slated in amusing fashion. The days of Spawn of Fashan are not over. So proclaims King Blasteem Baltamax! Stupid names. Inane dialogue, delivered with all kinds of weird descriptives. And oh god, the terrible terrible riddles. Really, it's not a good example for your roleplaying at all. Avoid at all costs, unless you wish to do an MST3K reading.
HOL is technically a roleplaying game, but really, you can't exactly play it as written, and the primary entertainment is in reading it. The whole thing is hand-written and illustrated, and it's all deeply deeply twisted in an amusing manner. A home-spun gem that would be ruined by trying to treat it in a professional big budget manner.
Superhero league of Hoboken is a computer game putting you in charge of a team of misfit heroes with mostly useless powers, trying to fight crime in New Jersey. Shame Squirrel Girl isn't around to show them how it's done. Of course, this being a RPG, the odd powers and items all become crucial to solving at least one puzzle over the course of the game. The tricky puzzles, challenging combats and amusing bits all combine to create a rather neat package.
Whispering vault is another 6 pip groundbreaker of an RPG. The rough edges from issue 208's prerelease copy have been sorted out, it looks great, and the gameplay combines tremendous freedom in character creation with an easily understood formula for adventures. Horror does not have to be disempowering or bogged down by angst.
Dangerous prey is the first supplement for Whispering Vault. Not too surprisingly, it's a monster book. In any game that differs from the norm, a GM is going to want a little help defining the boundaries and conventions, and this has more than enough weird creatures and their lairs to keep PC's on their toes for a while. And they'd better get on it, for I get the impression normal people may have a hard time even affecting things like this.
On top of this, we have quick reviews of The Great Dalmuti and Battlebots. A card game and a tiny board game. Man, this is some pretty insane variety. That's one definite benefit of the editorial regime being in flux. You can get away with quite a bit if you pick your time right.
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 6/7
Rumblings: Ooh. TSR releases the cancelled Ivid the Undying as a free download. Greyhawk lives on over the Web! That's not bad news, is it. It certainly sets the stage for further internet support for lines that don't merit full books any more. Also very historically interesting is seeing WotC consuming various other companies IP with great gusto. The TSR takeover had plenty of precedents, and they certainly weren't shy about buying properties they liked, even if the companies weren't even in trouble.
The other two bits of news aren't quite so significant. A trio of fanzines get promoted, along with some talk about what's in them. And the guys behind Whispering Vault have a new project in the pipeline already. Given the positive reviews that got, the people in the magazine are interested to see more. I can't say I disagree with them.
Changeling: the Dreaming gets teasered in here, as they do. Once again we see how their budget has increased, as they give us a 4 page, full colour piece giving us info on the kiths and noble houses. Much more visually appealing than TSR's revised corebook spread as well. Someone poach some new graphic designers from the competition while they still have the money.
Forum: Keith Bidwell needs help with his game, as it's houserules seem to be causing problems. Someone send out an all areas call for the Canon Police to reeducate this sucka.
Eric Shearer has a more prosaic problem. How much descriptive info on places should you give your players. I would incline towards initial conservatism, but encourage them to ask more specific questions, and let them deduce stuff from the answers to those.
Danny Walthall thinks you need to have some roleplaying for it to be a roleplaying game, but a certain amount of balance still needs to be struck. Remember, if they act like a pretentious self absorbed procrastinating idiot IC, nasty stuff is going to happen to them. That's just common sense.
Stefan Happ hasn't been in a gaming shop in ages, and is surprised the magazine is still going. The way the hobby has changed in recent years is strange and scary, so he's just going to accept that he's a grognard now and stay out of your way. Really not sure how to respond to that. Another sign of troubling times ahead, methinks.
Greg Howley shares his parrying houserule. Don't know if this one is going to stick any more than the last one.
Stephen Carter talks about issues of darkness and maturity in gaming. The two are not the same thing, no matter how much White Wolf may think they are. And weirdly enough the official adventures still seem to fall into the same mission based crap., putting the lie to those claims. Tricky one. True mature games seem to need to be tightly tailored to the specific campaign.
Jamie Nossal is annoyed by all this talk of one class being more powerful than another. They still all have valuable roles to play in a party. The game keeps on working unless you consciously try to break it. Plus variety is fun in itself, even if some of the options are suboptimal.
Jean H. Monday tries to balance the people claiming clerics are overpowered with the ones saying they suck. How did they end up like this? Social issues as much as anything. Gods need worshippers, so clerics have a much stronger need to be involved in the community than any class apart from Bards. There's a lot you can do without sinking into the background.
Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995
part 7/7
Swordplay has drama and betrayal in a life or death situation, as usual. Dragonmirth seems to have a castle theme this month. Yamara is saved. Er, maybe. We definitely have a musical episode. Even if it doesn't rhyme. Or scan. Or have a proper tune you can hum. That should drive off a big chunk of the enemies, anyway.
Through the looking glass: Something a little different here this month. Modular components? That's something that could definitely do with a special feature. After all, they're good value for money, but require careful shopping to ensure maximum compatibility with your other bits and pieces. Guess we might end this column on a high note.
Firstly, there's some 6mm scaled city scenery. 6mm? They don't normally review stuff that small. That's the size of those teeny plastic toy soldiers. Not easy getting good paint jobs on those. Somewhat more warhammer appropriate is a castle assembly kit that'll be just about big enough for 28mm things, but could be more impressively looming at 15mm. Six minotaurs in different poses. Not sure how that's modular. A second, slightly longer review of the Kill Zone game, with plenty of playtest info. As with the other one, the overall verdict is pretty positive. And finally, FASA's Citytech game gets it's 2nd edition reviewed. Well, that theme petered out pretty quick. So much for a focussed topic.
TSR Previews: Audio CD frippery comes to Ravenloft as well in A light in the Belfry. As ever, play the tracks at the appropriate juncture for extra horror. Just be ready to hit stop quickly, otherwise it'll run over to the next track and the players'll get spoilers. They also release an adventure tying in with the recent Van Richten's guide. Circle of Darkness has the players stuck between a Tanar'ri and a Darklord. Can they kick the ass of both sides?
The forgotten realms is sticking close to home base in Sword of the Dales. Mourndale is having a little lich trouble. Why are these low level schmucks being asked to help solve it? I suspect some railroading may be involved here to make this one work.
Planescape gets In the Cage: A guide to sigil. It has plenty of detail already, now you get even more, so you can wander around to your hearts content. Just don't get sucked into the plane of ooze.
Dragonlance gets The History of the Dragonlance setting. Another crunch free recounting of stuff that's happened, both IC and OOC. With interviews by the prime players it it's success. They're in an odd position. The novels continue to sell solidly, but the gaming material has petered out from lack of interest. Can they drum up a new generation of actual players somehow?
The Encyclopedia Magica is up to book 3. The green one with tons of other spellbooks detailed within. Just the thing for the wizardly among you.You'll have to wait until next time for the swords though.
CCG's get pushed hard this month. Spellfire gets a reference guide, with strategies, errata, tournament rules, and all sorts of other ways to put it's buyer at an advantage compared to those who didn't shell out. Blood wars gets Expansion pack 2: Factols and factions. Oh boy, now we're really in trouble, if open war has got into the city of doors. Good thing this stuff isn't canon for the gameline as well like Legend of the 5 Rings.
The featured articles section in this one is excellent, with a very high amount of game changing ideas. The rest of the magazine, once again, not so much. The reviews seem to be losing their editorial focus, and there's absolutely tons of crap promotional stuff in this one. Neither are particularly pleasing developments. And since they're having a big shakeup of the editorial staff, things are likely to stay annoying for a few issues yet. Let's see if they've remembered to get some proper birthday presents amid all this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 1/7
124 pages. Birthday number 19 here. And for the first time in over 10 years, they forget to advertise that on the cover. Either they're starting to feel the budget cuts, or they no longer want to boast about how old they are. Still, the quality of the cover is pretty much unchanged, with a rather epic dracolich coming round for an attack on a castle. Let's see if the contents can match up to that.
In this issue:
Letters: The primary topic this month is the critical hit teaser article. This is one of those rules that generates a lot of controversy, and so it proves this time around. One is just plain against their current implementation, while the other two are just unclear on the finer points of the rules. In any case, it's pretty obvious that this is user base splitting stuff. A few people'll be driven away, others simply won't buy it, and if there's a mixed opinion within a gaming group, there'll be a lot of debate on whether to adopt the new rules or not. Oh boy. Here we go. Another rather negative signpost in retrospect.
A letter saying that the M:tG craze seems to have died down in their area. Maybe so, but that just means it's levelling off. It still has a long and highly profitable life ahead of it.
And a request for Chaosium's address. Call of Cthulhu is still a fairly popular game amongst Dragon readers, for some reason.
Editorial: The last editor said goodbye last issue. No surprise that the new one says hello this time. And straight away, they're talking about giving things a major shake-up. Things can't go on the way they are. But at the same time, if you change things the wrong way, you'll only make them worse. They're very aware that at the moment they're looking a little dinosaurish, and don't want to die. Which is a perfectly valid fear really, since it will actually come to pass in the near future. So this is an editorial that shows they're entirely aware of the trouble they're about to get themselves into. What a way to start off a birthday.
First quest: Whoa. Ed Greenwood gives us his first gaming experiences this month. And it's an absolute doozy. The tale of how he was shaped into an awesome dungeon master by a girl from university who then died of cancer reads as almost too perfect to be true narratively. Exactly how much artistic licence he made in recounting this tale is something I'm very curious about. Still, it would explain why he became so driven to create as much as possible in the time he has. Being exposed to the fragility of life at a young age can have that kind of effect on people. So this is both genuinely tearjerking in a way most of these stories are not, and quite informative. There are some quite serious issues behind him ending up the person he did, and they could probably be explored in more depth than this. Question is, does he really want that, or would he prefer to stay behind the scenes and let his creations do the talking? Hmm. Anyone got any links to further interviews where he actually talks about his own life seriously?
Birthright!. Here we go with the last big setting of the 2e era. Ready, Steady, Rule!
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 2/7
Tanzin the Gray: Straight after the advert is our first proper birthright article. And like all the other important players in Cerilia, they're rare and individual in their stats, not just part of some generic subrace. And here's one of the oldest and most well known. Unsurprisingly, he gets personally connected in to all the big events of the setting, which is a bit mary-sueish, but since they've only just released it, they probably haven't filled in the minor details of the world enough yet. And lets face it, a great wyrm should be badass enough to participate in world-shaking events, especially when they're one of maybe a dozen on the entire continent. And he is suitably badass, Aside from the major artwork fail ( a purple dragon where he's described as grey, and it's way too small as well) this fits the bill. He's sufficiently morally ambiguous that he could serve as an ally or an enemy for the party, and he has some rather good reasons to want to interact with the world rather than snoozing the centuries away. So this is pretty well designed stuff that fills exactly the niche they intended, and is quite useful for your game, but isn't particularly surprising. By this point, they've designed so many worlds in quick succession that there is quite a bit of following the formula and going through the motions involved.
Dragon Intrigues: An article encouraging you to play your dragons proactively and intelligently? We had one of those last year. Still, this is substantially longer and has more specific examples than last time, which is a definite plus. Greg Detwiler once again shows that he's one of our more reliable workmen, with an article that's low on originality, but high on game usefulness. A lot of emphasis is put on their power to manipulate the environment and order various creatures around. Sure, they might also change shape and infiltrate human society, but really, they're dragons. They ought to be taking a wider view of control than just looking at the effects of a single species. So this is a little iffy from the perspective of a long time reader, but excellent for more recent arrivals to the magazine. For all that they appear in the name of the game, you see dragons surprisingly rarely in actual play, so this kind of advice does come in handy.
Dragon dweomers: Another topic we've seen before. Spells by dragons, for dragons, and in many cases unusable by other creatures, be it due to magical restriction or mere practical physiology. Guess it's going to have to be another case where I judge on the specifics, not the generalities.
Aerial Acceleration alliteratively augments your airborne abilities for fantasticaly functional flight. In flight movie not provided, but if you're in the middle of combat, that would be a bad idea anyway.
Aura of Terror enhances your fear aura. This is obviously useless if you don't have one in the first place. But you wouldn't put it past a Lich to nick this one for their own pleasure. Maybe a mummy too.
Blast Jewel is a variant on fire trap that does substantially more damage. It also ruins any stuff around it, making sure thieves can't profit from their ill-gotten gains. Sour grapes or what? Dragons really can bear grudges for a long time.
Focus Fear allows you to reduce the area of your fear and increase it's intensity. I'd just breathe on them and watch them die horribly. It'd be a far more efficient use of your action for the round. One for the metallic dragons who don't really want to kill casually then.
Hoardguard lets you glue all your treasure together into a great immovable mass. Whether this makes it more or less comfortable to sleep on is not revealed, but at least it makes it harder to steal. It's duration isn't too long though, so if they come back the day after killing you, they'll be fine. Will they figure that out though, or waste tons of time on complicated curse removal methods?
Pseudodragon lets a dragon summon mini-me's. This is one that is completely useless to nondragons then. There's a whole load of speculation as to where these come from, since they don't resemble regular pseudodragons. Schrodinger's summoning, I guess. Best not to think about it too hard or you'll destroy the universe.
Razorfangs gives you near vorpal teeth. Careful with them, for limb severing makes a lifelong enemy if you don't finish them off.
Shadow Scry is only dragon specific because it relies on your connection with your lair to work. That's a trick that shouldn't be too hard to emulate. And then you can track people from anywhere there's a shadow. And since this is your lair, you can probably make sure there's plenty of shadows everywhere.
Shadow Dragon lets you turn into a shadowy form that's near impossible to hurt save by light, and can still breathe and use spells on you. Unsurprisingly, it was developed by a shadow dragon, and fits their sneaky modus operandi to a tee. Be ready for calls of unfairness from players. :D
Sharptooth is the less powerful relation of Razorfangs. Even the dumbest white dragon can get use out of this one. And you know those extra points of damage add up over a battle. So there's quite a few spells here that could be a staple of your dragon's tactics, and enough of them are usable by PC's that they won't feel totally gypped. Once again, I'm going to have to return a result of competent but not thrilling. This birthday set hasn't been nearly as distinctive and quirky as last one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 3/7
Spice of life: Having A plots and B plots in the same episode of a TV show is a well established convention. Similarly, in a show with continuity, there will generally be at least one plot thread per main character, and these will alternately get the spotlight at some point or another. Now, how can we make that principle work for our games? For a start, a large group with multiple characters is going to have problems. You have to make sure people are paying attention and don't get confused. And you have to move back and forth between plots quickly enough that they seem concurrent rather than separate episodes in a larger metaplot. This all becomes a lot easier if you're all operating from a single location like a city, and characters can split up for short periods and then get together again without too much trouble. The big reward of this style of plotting is that it makes games less likely to peter out after you've accomplished some big objective, as there'll always be more plot threads lying around to pick up on. Some of you'll already be doing this instinctively, but for those who aren't, this is another pretty decent bit of GM'ing advice. We've said many times that you've got to be a good observer if you want to be a great storyteller, and this is another angle on getting that across.
The game wizards: Hmm. As with spellfire, it looks like the Blood Wars CCG is encouraging you to do things that they strictly forbid in the RPG. This time it's having open warfare in Sigil. All the factions are being dragged in, and the gods aren't far behind. So as with actively encouraging twinking in CCG's while discouraging it for AD&D play, this shows a definite developing double standard between the games. You can of course break it in your own game, and there are several instances they'll casually do something in the name of metaplot that would also get a rather sniffy reception if ordinary PC's & DM's did it and then wrote into the magazine about it, (kill an entire city and turn them into undead? surely in any decent adventure the PC's would get to foil this successfully? ) but it is very much there. Who's really having the badwrongfun these days? All I know is it sure ain't me, and this article gives me more reasons to be grumpy.
Forum: Nigel Epsley points out how many things were wrong with the player throwing a tantrum about 1st level characters standing up to his 11th level wizards. Discipline, force of numbers, the frequency and level of wonder magic has. You can't just drop out of the sky and expect people to worship you in a world where weird shit happens all the time.
Robert Melvin points out the problems with a spell/fatigue point system for magic. Wizards pump their Con ridiculously, and spam a few spells over and over again. it's a good deal less fun than D&D's regular one in actual play.
Greg Detwiler praises issue 216's Paths of Power. He offers his commentary on the advantages and disadvantages illusionists would face under this system. Double-bluffing is always a good idea for deceitful types to really keep others on their toes.
Alex Plocki reminds us that paladins need to be lawful as well as good. That should be a priority for them over whatever god they serve. I am dubious. Do you serve your employer, or the principles your employer ought to serve? I know which one is more likely to get you fired in the real world.
The forum welcomes it's first email contributor, who is simply called Steve. New technology is penetrating everywhere. He is also rather interested in Paths of Power, offering a little contribution on how bards fit into this new system. They might have trouble getting a foothold on the arcane arts, but become real jacks of all trades once they've picked up enough paths, which seems appropriate.
Floyd Adams III is one of those people who sees the strengths of the cleric, both statistically and socially. Magic-users and thieves'll really have to struggle to get the respect and breadth of powers clerics can claim as standard. Godly backup and worshippers count for a lot.
CLS Innis thinks giving characters xp bonuses for high stats is exacerbating the unfairness. We've heard that one before and it continues to make sense from a metagame perspective, if not a realism one.
Stephen Carter points out the difference between dark and mature games quite rationally. It's quite possible for a game to be one but not the other. In the end, fun is more important than either. Amen to that.
Mike Clair is suffering from insecurity about being a DM. Afraid he's not doing it properly, he asks for help. Oh just get on with it. 20 years ago people had no-one to learn from, they did ok.
Philip Crawley suggests modelling the character's hometown on the player's real hometown to help ease them into playing, make it as familiar as it should be. That presumes they stick around their hometown and come back, which many adventurers don't.
Joe Walker has found his game ramping up to ridiculous monty haul levels, and not being able to do much about it. Well, of course not, now you're there. This is what the reset button is for.
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 4/7
Magic resistance, step by step: Oh bloody hell, this rules pain in the ass again. Issue 79 covered it in 1st edition, but that's a long time ago now, and they shook things up quite a bit in the edition change. Skip Williams has answered more than a few questions about it in his time here. Will a full article about it settle this once and for all? Maybe for a year or two, if he's lucky. So like forum getting a stoneskin special back in issue 199, this feels like a sage advice special on top of the regular one. It's all pretty clear and sensible, and is over in a page and a half. Makes you wonder why it was a problem in the first place. Is it because far too many people don't read the rules properly, or is it the fault of the rules for being scattered around the books and sometimes contradicted in supplements. Probably a bit of both. As with last time, this isn't too gripping, although the writing is less dry than last time round. It's a good use for the magazine, but at the same time, you can't help but wish they didn't have to do it. Well, no shortage of other issues they'd do articles on instead if it wasn't there. Meh.
Eye of the monitor: Aww, poor Apple. They're pretty much reaching the nadir of their popularity. Co-incidence that they nearly went bankrupt at the same time as TSR? Probably, but it's amusing to ponder. In the meantime, they still have some pretty avid followers in our writing team, arty types that they are. So both reviews this month are mac ones. Well, at least they're not Atari Jaguar ones or something. That would truly be a lost cause at this point.
Jump Raven gets a whole load of grumbling because it's far too tricky, and no fun to play. There are plenty of shooting games where you can control everything without a co-pilot, and where the collision detection works properly. Complexity & shiny visuals do not equal fun.
Cosmology of Kyoto, on the other hand, isn't really a game, but is both interesting and educational. Explore the streets of japan, encounter all kinds of supernatural weirdness, and try to reincarnate yourself into a favorable form. Course, going to one of the many hells or being reincarnated as a dog just gives you new avenues to explore. For someone who loves oriental stuff as we know zeb does, it's quite a treat, even if it is slow and often a bit illogical. Still, since many of the legends are long and not entirely coherent, this adds to the mythical feel. It's achieved what it set out to do, even if that isn't for everyone.
The nature of evil: Ah yes, the question of how to make a really memorable villain. There's one that's always an issue as soon as you introduce an overarching plot with a big bad to your game. The choice here is fairly simple. To make them significant, you need to make the players fear and hate them. And of course the rest of the article is focussed on methods of achieving that. Not a hugely nuanced method compared to the ones that really try and get into your NPC's heads and find out what makes them tick, but the focussed tricks are often quicker. Figure out what they can do, and what they will do to the PC's when they interfere with their plans. Make them mean, make it personal, set them up and deceive them, turn their friends against them, and generally make Evil mean more than just a letter on a sheet and a side in a conflict. It even recommends that you play on the personal fears of your players, which is something that can backfire badly. These things are a balancing act. If you have the villain raping, killing and then reanimating their character's babies as undead monstrosities the players may leave in disgust. So I think this article doesn't quite present the degree of perspective and moderation that you need for a truly great campaign. But if you're looking for trouble, you'll get it in spades following this advice.
Rumblings: Rather a grab bag of arrivals and departures here, few of which really leap out and grab me. Most notable is the departure of Vampire developer Andrew Greenberg. Their gonzo era is about to draw to a close, with the mad overarching conspiracies reined back into a more coherent form. Also of interest is the mention of WotC releasing Everway, and of course Changeling: the Dreaming. Both of which use cards in their mechanics, quite possibly as a response to the CCG craze.
Speaking of CCG's it looks like the X-files is licencing their name out to get in on that action, following in the footsteps of Star Trek. As are The Crow, James Bond and Wing Commander. The cash-ins just keep on coming. When will this bubble burst?
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 5/7
The ecology of the bird maiden: Another setting gets it's first ecology. We sail over to Zakhara to tackle a creature that is very strongly based on real world mythology. Tales of people who turn into animals by putting on skins are incredibly common in many cultures. And almost as ubiquitous is the idea that if you steal their skin and keep it, you can force them into marrying you, at least until they find it, at which point they are likely to depart, possibly inflicting some horrible vengeance along the way, and taking any kids that may have resulted from the union with them. Seems like the kind of idea that really really isn't worth it. But arrogant fat merchants are notoriously genre blind, and deserve everything they get. While this story is a bit anvilicious in the way it rams home it's moral message, it does manage to put a good D&D specific spin on the old story, and make them seem pretty decent as both NPC's and PC's. They certainly make more sense as shapeshifters than Swanmays. (I mean, what kind of form to change into is that? It's no good for stealth, not brilliant for combat, and similarly rubbish in terms of speed and maneuverability. Silly myths.)
The hyborean gates card game. Another bandwagon jumper. Note the pic of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell looking incredibly pumped. Nice to see some artists still find the time to work out.
Species also gets a game licence. Man, now that's a rather limited property to work with.
Role-playing Reviews: Oh man. Rick gets sucked into doing a CCG special. THEY ARE NOT ROLE-PLAYING GAMES. Call the column something else if you're going to cover this kind of stuff regularly. Still, it looks like they're here to stay. Maybe you ought to start a new magazine focussing on them. Then that'd get them out of our hair and let the people who still prefer creating worlds enjoy that again.
Star trek: The next generation CCG gets a 6 pip result, with great visuals on the cards, and the rules creating games that reflect a ST mission instead of being a straightforward battle like most other CCGs. The details of the setting are carefully adhered to. The only oddity in that respect is that you can wind up using the same character on both sides, which is kinda an inevitability in a CCG as compared to a limited deck game.
Star of the guardians is from Margaret Weis, as mentioned in the Rumblings column a few months ago. As with Krynn, this CCG is also a novel line, and looks like being a nice little earner for her. It's fairly simple and fast, and has some loose mechanics, but hangs together well enough, and gets straight to the action. You'll have to get the novels to find out much about the setting and characters.
Galactic empires brings warring alien races to the CCG arena. Like many a wargame that covers similar territory, you have to make huge complex logistical and tactical decisions, and do lots of bookkeeping. One for lovers of really crunchy games, it is quite fun if you can handle the rules, and the setting certainly seems cool. Guess they're going to make the same mistakes RPG designers did in the search to one-up M:tG.
Illuminati: new world order sees this long running game adapted to the collectible craze. This of course allows things to be even more multilayered and convoluted. Which is exactly what the game needs, really. Rick gives it 6 pips, finding it thoroughly achieves it's design goals, even if it isn't particularly newbie friendly. I'll bet he was paid by the church of the zogonian ascension( using the FBI as an intermediary) to say that.
Rifts goes underwater, and to japan. There will be appropriate PC classes and power creep, as you would expect.
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 6/7
Fiction: The time of leaving by Ron Collins. A story about growing up seems appropriate for a birthday issue, especially as the magazine leaves it's teens behind. Still, these days it becomes increasingly difficult for children to leave the nest, for one reason and another. (mostly economic) And a lot of the time the parents feel the wrench as much as the kids do. So this is a story where the mentor figure thinks it's time for the student to leave, the student disagrees, and eventually, proves he has the right to stay as well as leave. Not the usual way these things go in stories. On the other hand, since in reality the balance of power shifts as the parents become increasingly frail and unable to keep up with changes in technology, it's one that happens more in reality than we'd like. So this makes for quite melancholy reading, but not in a bad way. Not all those big truths are pleasant ones, and stories can choose to reflect those as well.
Sage advice: What is temporary damage, How does leaching work (The normal sort. Leaching is where you temporarily suck magic out of your items to stop yourself from taking damage)
Are weavings like spellbooks or scrolls (They're essentially personalized scrolls. So if you get killed, the enemy doesn't benefit from your gear)
Can you clear up after the mystic of nog (Has he not been wiping properly again. Well, if you turn your hands to stone, I guess that's what happens. Silly mystic of nog)
Aren't clockwork mage's devices a little slow (That's scale inches. Even some of our writers slip into first editionisms by mistake sometimes)
Are language proficiencies affected by intelligence (yes. Note that you don't have to roll every time you try and speak. This aint creeks and crawdads)
If you don't have a high enough int to learn permanency, you can't make permanent magic items. This sucks! (So it goes. Some people will never be good enough, no matter how hard they try. Skip will at least be generous enough to reverse last months ruling and allow specialist wizards to use opposition scrolls. Be thankful for that.)
Do svirfneblin hate light like drow. They're really scary. They need some nerfing. (suuure. Don't worry so hard. They can be agoraphobic too if you still don't think they're balanced. Just don't try having an Aaracockra and a Svirfneblin in the same party, or someone'll be miserable all the time )
Where are the stats for new weapons mentioned in supplements, but not detailed (arms & equipment and combat & tactics. Better buy both, just to be on the same side.)
Do you get individual XP awards for using spell-like powers (only if you actually do something with them. Pointless waving around won't impress anyone)
Does invulnerability to magical weapons protect you against normal weapons as well. (no, but if you have a separate power that does that, they stack. Beware fiendish spellcasters )
Where are the planar monsters that aren't in the appendixes (All over the shop. Gotta catch em all. Yay. More money, more money, more money, mo problems.)
How many HD does a lich have (Recycled question. Skip is bored now. )
My players were pissed off that vorpal swords can't chop off huge creatures heads (And well they should be. It's a powerful magic item. It should be able to overcome little hassles like realistic measurement)
Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995
part 7/7
Libram X makes it clear just how unpleasant the players in this game are. Swordplay once again have problems with their party dynamics. It's a good thing they don't have continuity, or they'd be dead by now. Dragonmirth is extra geeky this time round. Yamara has to sit and watch while the day is saved by the macguffin.
Nightspawn! Another game that's going to have to change their name soon. Oh, glutinous legal crap. Why ay ay ay ay must you smell so raaaaaaank.
From the forge: Straight into the reviews, trying to fit as many as they can into the limited space again. A mummy pegasus trying to get her foal to fly the nest, which is thoroughly adorable. A pegacorn, that symbol of mary-sues everywhere. An interestingly coloured griffon with rather impressive wings. Some Gnashings from 5th cycle. Look like fairly generic humanoids to me. Similarly, orcs riding big scaly warbeast thingies isn't surprising after a good helping of warhammer. A chunky spiky earth dragon and a slim, curvy air dragon, both with humanoid companions. A heavily armored cyclops with a helmet that may well restrict it's vision a little further. Two different wyverns, one looking up and to the side, and the other looming over something prey-like. And finally, two wemics and a ki-rin, filing in the officially licensed D&D monsters. Well, they are some of the more attractive creatures out there. Guess it's the shiny end of fantasy that wins out this time.
TSR Previews: A truly scary 13 products released this month. I think that's a new record. 4, count 'em, are for Birthright. Even the forgotten realms never enjoyed this sheer short term onslaught of releases. As well as the core boxed set, there's Blood enemies: Abominations of Cerillia; The Endier domain pack, and The Roesone domain pack. Whoosh. Are you ready to take command, and face up to enemies as singular and connected to the land as your party? If they keep up this pace, you'd better learn the ropes fast.
The Realms certainly isn't sluggish though, with it's usual one-two punch of gamebook and novel. Spellbound expands on Thay, Rashemen and Aglarond. Have they recovered by now from the horde invasion of a decade ago? What secret magics do their rulers command for the PC's to take once they've killed them? Ed Greenwood is also busy telling his own stories of what Elminster was up too recently, in Cloak of Shadows. What looked like a big crisis was actually an even bigger crisis. Is it any wonder he has to get other adventurers to help save the world?
Planescape releases The Factol's Manifesto. Join now and work your way up for even greater benefits. Your philosophy can do as much for you as you can for it. Especially if you become a god. Now that's something to aspire too. Another tremendously pretty book with plenty of experimental elements.
Mystara revisits another ancient module in style in Mark of Amber. Like House of Strahd, it's twice the size of the original, and it also has a CD full of atmosphere building bits and pieces. Can it top it for excitement though?
Dark Sun compiles the many many changes the past 4 years of metaplot have made in Beyond the Prism Pentad. Have they ruined it forever for you yet?
Dragonlance, on the other hand, goes back in time rather further than usual, to tell the story of the fall of the Irda. Linda P. Baker is in charge of this one. Will there be any new spins on what we've already seen in the books?
Generic stuff is also big this month. First up, we have Players Option™: Combat and Tactics. Boo hiss spit. I had a very ..... visceral reaction against this when it was first released, and even now, in hindsight, the idea of point buy twinkery still seems better done in something like GUPS or BESM. The other two releases are pretty unexceptional though. Thief's challenge II lets you have more low level solo fun. Castle Sites gives you more floorplans so you can generate adventures quickly. Try the new or rehash the old? Funny how I've actually got less conservative since then.
Not nearly as fun as last birthday, this issue shows that they are continuing to slip in both quality, and choice of what they cover. It's all very tiresome, with the generic bits going round and round, and the new developments mostly being bad ones. And with the new people in charge promising to shake things up, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be even more problems for quite a while before things start to get better. Who will provide a light in this darkness? Bugger. Guess It's going to have to be me again, isn't it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 1/7
130 pages. An extra $2 is added to the newsstand price because they include a CD with this one. And once again, they can't be bothered to have a theme for their features section. I guess with Roger well gone, no-ones pushing that as an idea very strongly. Still, better to try and celebrate the new than mourn the old. I'm certainly interested to see how they'll fare with this format experiment, with the rather faster turnaround a magazine has to contend with compared to their supplements.
In this issue:
Letters: The theme of this column seems to be people complaining about missing stuff. Fiction, comics, cards and ampersands, of all things. People really don't like having their routines disrupted, do they. It's not even as if their recent special features have been special enough to justify it. As always, they'll try to give you what you want, presuming they can find it somewhere in the first place.
Plus a letter asking for a Yamara anthology. It's already here. Just contact Steve Jackson & co, they'll sort you out.
Editorial: A bit early for a day in the life editorial. You've only been here two months, and so's your publisher. That's hardly time to have settled into a tedious workday routine in my book. Nevertheless, here we go. It's not really groundhog day, given the weird stuff that happens, but it can feel like it given the way the deadlines cycle on a monthly basis. We get brief introductions to each of the other editorial staff, and find out that Dragon actually gets more fiction submissions than it does everything else put together. It's no wonder that department is maintaining a consistently higher standard than the rest of the magazine. And of course we have to listen to complaints at their computer woes. Are they finally catching up with modern technology in that department? Not sure what to make of this. Mostly, it helps me get a bit more of a handle on Wolf's writing style. Still, it seems like they have decent supplies of whimsy remaining. It'll be a while longer before they fall prey to the cutbacks at this rate.
First quest: Ah yes, Mike Nystul. He hasn't actually been a TSR employee, (he wasn't even in high school when the 1st D&D books were published) but he certainly left his mark on AD&D. And it's certainly left it's mark on him too. His introduction to gaming came due to having a father who was an insider, allowing him to get in from the very first releases. Still, there were plenty of flavours of the week he passed up on along the way. And I suspect that plenty of people exposed to D&D in those early years did pass it up for something else more interesting to them. But anyway, this is a good example of the fact that the imagination really needs to be properly primed for roleplaying to properly take root. If someone doesn't think the idea of pretending to be something else is cool, no amount of persuading is going to work. So if you want to introduce your kids to gaming, make sure they're excited by the subject matter first. There's quite a bit you can do to actively ensure you have new players, and this has a few good pointers.
At sword's point: The swashbuckling style has plenty of fans. This is another one I'm surprised they haven't done an article on before, especially since Red Steel accommodated it so well. Guess the magazine is behind the times again. So yeah, a little history, a whole lot of talk about style, and how to get the right one for a swashbuckling, high action campaign, and a bit of crunch involving unarmed combat and improvised weaponry for those delicate situations where you can't take your heavy armour and magical weapons. Almost exactly what you'd expect. Actually, D&D isn't too terrible at this playstyle anyway, especially when you use the right options from the complete handbooks. After all, after a few levels, fighters can pull some pretty over the top tricks. You've just got to narrate them right. Might be a good idea to skip the one hit and your doomed phase of the adventuring career though. So I approve of this, even if it isn't particularly mind-blowing.
Run!: Chase scenes. Like social combat, there have been a whole ton of experiments to try and get these to work in a way that extends the drama out and allows for tactical choices from the participants. It's something that can and has been played out in an exciting manner in other media, so why shouldn't it work for RPG's? Unfortunately, this article doesn't go that far, instead boiling things down to opposed dexterity checks with a bunch of modifiers. That doesn't give you a whole lot of choices when the crunch comes down, although you can certainly stack the odds in your favour by your choice of character and equipment. Come on, you could have at least factored constitution in, letting there be a meaningful difference between sprint chases and endurance pursuits. So this feels a bit half-assed and underdeveloped, relying too much on ad hoc DM oversight to make it interesting. Most disappointing.
Quote from: (un)reason;434584An extra $2 is added to the newsstand price because they include a CD with this one.
Wow. I don't remember this
at all. I know I bought it, because I had an unbroken run from issue 45 until the last print issue, but an issue with an included CD should stand out in my memory, and it doesn't. Not even in a vague "oh yeahhhhh, that's right..." kind of way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 2/7
Out of armor: A bit more buckling of swash here. This one is slightly more player focussed, although it also talks about how to encourage the playstyle from a DM's point of view. This is accomplished by both encouraging more playful action as seen in the movies, and imposing substantial penalties on those who attempt flashy acrobatic stuff in heavy armor. In fact, it may overcompensate a bit, making the penalties too harsh, and would probably get complaints if you tried suddenly imposing them in an existing game. So once again, it's a cool idea, but I'm not sure I agree with the implementation. If I want a game built for fast paced swashbuckling action, I'll go for Savage Worlds these days.
Pirate crews and retinues: Expanded followers tables. It's been a good few years since we had some of those. (issue 178) This time, the extra differentiation is kit based. Some of the complete handbooks implemented this anyway, (bard, ranger ) but most didn't, and it's the kind of thing that's easy to add onto those that missed out. So here's ones for the complete fighters handbook kits. Always seems to be fighters that come first when it comes to getting followers. Probably something to do with them not getting any other special abilities. The lists are pretty good, drawing upon the other complete handbooks as well, so the followers also have appropriate kits and equipment. I quite approve of this, even if like any followers table, you won't get to use it more than once a campaign. Now, can someone come up with a similar degree of variety for wizards or thieves?
The factol's manifesto. Or how to sneakily introduce complex philosophical concepts to impressionable minds and make it fun. I wuv this book.
The ecology of the black pudding: Another cool stylistic experiment in this series, as we see things from the perspective of both the creature, and the adventurers that encounter it. And the writer develops quite a distinctive voice for both sections, the relentless rhythmic pulsing drive of our worrisome ooze friend, and the amusing bickering and experimentation of our amateur adventurers (A group of 2? They're just begging for a swift death) It's interesting to see people who really don't have a clue what they're getting into, and the whole thing feels very true to games I've actually played, when the characters run across something unfamiliar with a bunch of screwage powers. Another highly entertaining entry in this period of resurgence for the series, which makes it scary, but also helps point out why creatures like this don't overrun the entire planet. Unless, of course, you want them too. Muahaha.
A colourful weekend of euro-gaming: Roger Moore once again plays convention reporter, as he has done many times in the past. This time, he's off to england, along with several other special guests. As with Gary's trip over a decade ago, he finds UK gamers more polite and helpful than their yank counterparts, and the whole thing less rigid and centralised than the american Gen Con has become. There's plenty of amusing anecdotes related, most notably the incineration of poor Wesley Crusher. (for charity) This isn't nearly as big as last year's similar article, and there's no photos either, which makes it feel a bit shallow. All it really does is perpetuate stereotypes. Hopefully there'll be more to come in a few months time, and this is just a warm-up.
Role-playing reviews: Ah yes, Al Qadim. A good example of a limited run series, started with the intention of doing a set number of supplements, and then wrapping things up neatly. After all, Oriental Adventures was highly successful initially, but then suffered quite considerably from diminishing returns in the follow-up modules before fading away in 1991. By contrast, Al Qadim actually exceeded expectations, getting a few more supplements than planned to round the setting out. And now it's finished, but not yet out of print, this seems a good time for a comprehensive themed review.
Arabian Adventures gets quite a bit of ambivalence in it's review. Much of this is due to the conflicts between D&D's rules and setting tropes and those of the source materials. It's pretty, and handles the mechanical aspect of things quite well, but setting, adventure building and roleplaying advice isn't great. It all feels like they're laving stuff out so they can sell more supplements later. Plus a few of the decisions seem to have been made for political correctness, which is rarely particularly entertaining. In hindsight, it's not the greatest implementation ever, but it's still fun reading. And quite a few of the kits and spells can be plundered for other settings as well. It's a valuable addition to 2nd edition's wide range of covered settings.
Land of fate is of course the second thing you should get, as it actually gives you a decent overview of the continent. Of course, it is only an overview, setting things up for yet more supplements (gotta collect 'em all!) and often rather dry. They did have to set up a lot of places. What can you do?
City of delights is where things actually start taking off. Like Waterdeep or Sigil, Huzuz is the obvious centre for a campaign. It has tons of plot hooks, locations, and colourful characters, and makes a suitable adventure location to take you from 1st to 20th level. You can then build up the wider world as much or as little as you want.
We also get brief reviews of each of the little sourceboxes. Golden Voyages, Caravans and Secrets of the lamp get the best marks, while Corsairs of the great sea is the least liked. Most of them have at least something useful for a general campaign, even if the adventure bits don't all hold up without DM modification. The combination of setting and adventure in each box is interesting, and means that this setting was built up in the same kind of way as the original Known World stuff, only over a shorter period.
GURPS Arabian nights on the other hand, does exactly what GURPS supplements usually do. Historically accurate as far as possible, careful and logical in the adjudication of the magic bits, and rather dry. The rules are taken care of, now it's up to you to make a fun campaign out of it. Or you could just nick the Al Qadim setting from earlier. :p
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;434597Wow. I don't remember this at all. I know I bought it, because I had an unbroken run from issue 45 until the last print issue, but an issue with an included CD should stand out in my memory, and it doesn't. Not even in a vague "oh yeahhhhh, that's right..." kind of way.
It was dreadfully forgettable. I guess that really serves to illustrate the problems with their audio output.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 3/7
Eye of the monitor: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans begins a series that is going to go on to take over the computer gaming world pretty effectively. At this point, it's a fairly standard wargame, with the two sides identical to each other save in the cosmetic aspects. Train up your minions, and set them against the enemy. There's tons of stuff to discover and unlock, and the difficulty curve is just about right to keep you coming back. They just wish the manual explained things a little more clearly, instead of repeating itself in gimmicky fashion by having one set of instructions for each side.
1830: Railroads & Robber Barons is a fairly straight conversion of the old Avalon Hill boardgame. The computer taking over the rules means things progress a lot faster, but the visual resolution is lower, making some things hard to make out. The manual is once again a pet peeve, although for a different reason, with the impression someone went mad with layout software, putting boxes, borders and garish colour schemes all over the place. What a thing to pick on for an issue.
Citadel of the Dead gets nul points. In many ways, it's more primitive than games they played 10 years ago, yet it has the nerve to boast about it's complexity. And the manual is almost nonexistent. The only reason they reviewed it is so they could give something a good slating. Well, that is always fun, isn't it.
Realms of Arkania: Star Trail, on the other hand, is a fairly decent CRPG, based on Germany's The Dark Eye. It is a pretty accurate conversion, highly crunchy, with tons of room to customise and equip your characters. This time, their main complaint is that as a sequel where you can load the characters from the previous game, it's incredibly hard with starting characters, and possibly too complicated and detailed in the nature of it's encounters. Most of us can do without treating tetanus infections in our escapism.
Birthright gets a pull-out six (!) page spread of advertising in the middle of the book. Yikes. How much would that have cost if it wasn't being done by their parent company anyway?
The role of books: Mastering magic cards by George H Baxter & Larry W Smith, Ph.D (not often you see one of those around here. ) runs into a rather awkward little problem due to the speed WotC is releasing new editions. It's already out of date by the time it gets to publication. It's not much help on the social side, either, which means it's utility is still rapidly deteriorating further. It's a good example of bad mismatch of subject matter and delivery medium. This is a very definite case where the internet already handles this stuff better.
Excalibur, edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H Greenberg & Edward E Kramer is another of those fantasy anthologies Mr Greenberg compiles so well. As has been the case for some other very specific topics, he gives his writers plenty of leeway to work around the subject and find new angles both funny and serious. Plus a bit of poetry. If you like arthurian lore, at least some of the stories'll probably please you.
The faery convention by Brett Davis is a fae detective story in a setting that seems like anita blake's, in that the supernatural has just been brought into the open and they're trying to sort out the legal issues. This does not go smoothly, and is also used as an allegory for the oppression of real world minorities. It gets the fairly common result of good ideas, but needed a better editor.
Such pain by Don Bassinthwaite is for Mage: the Ascension. There is of course a certain amount of pretension and mature subject matter. And a good deal of moral ambiguity, since our protagonist is a technocrat. The setting and rules from the game are not egregiously violated, and indeed, it serves as a good introduction to the themes of the game as well. White Wolf haven't done too badly with their fiction department so far.
The printers devil by Chico Kidd gets another fairly typical review pattern. The quirky one that doesn't go over the top with explosions and shit, but manages to find a new spin on several topics and build up it's characters nicely. Well, John has been doing this for 11 years now, it's not surprising he's settled into a pattern as well. I'm glad my reviews almost certainly won't take that long even at this rate.
Quote from: (un)reason;434826It was dreadfully forgettable. I guess that really serves to illustrate the problems with their audio output.
What was on it? Music? Background sound? Maybe I still have it around here somewhere.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 4/7
Fiction: Breaking the wall by Lois Tilton. Mrs Tilton's 7th story in the magazine? Since we just found out how fierce the competition is for this slot is, I wonder how many stories she's sent in and had rejected to get this far. So it's no surprise that this is once again pretty good, and quite dark, asking hard questions about the nature and extent of free will, and how much good people should compromise on actively opposing evil for the sake of short term comfort and family. The answer is of course that there's no good answer, and you're going to have to fight like hell and make some nasty sacrifices for freedom. Which is fairly realistic, if rather depressing. But hey, at least it's a good deal more dramatic than reality, which is what the public really wants. And it has some decent setting building, which is what you want in an RPG magazine. She definitely knows what she's doing here.
Sage advice: Why are there spell failure chances for wisdom below 9 (recycled question. Skip has not changed skip's mind since then)
Can you cast spells from scrolls if you aren't smart enough to learn them ( yes. Stand on the shoulders of giants and you can see further. Stand on the shoulders of beatles and you can fill stadiums in style without having an original thought in your head. )
Are giant's weapons adjusted by their enemies size (no.)
Can big races backstab small ones. (sure, if they can get surprise. Look for the appropriate modifiers. They're right there in the books )
Are creatures that are immune to death magic immune to disintegrate (no. Whatever could possibly make you think that. )
Does immunity to magical charm also make you immune to psionic charms (usually)
I'm still not satisfied about elven archers (well tough. Skip will nerf them some more. Shut yo mouth or skip will nerf them further, and their poncy cat and dog friends too. )
Can you turn a polymorphed lich (Sure. They're still dead inside. AAAAAAnnnngst! )
Why can't humans become dual classed paladins (they can, just not with classes from the same group)
Can you specialize by buying a weapon for two of your classes (No. This is another case of fundamental misconceptions about the way the universe works)
Do dual classed characters get double the amount of bonus proficiencies from int (no)
Can you improve blind-fighting by spending more slots on that (no)
Can you specialize in thrown weapons (Yup. Not a problem at all.)
Can you use a decanter of endless water underwater as a propulsion method (Sure. Skip doesn't always discourage inventive uses of powers. Just usually.)
How powerful is a chromatic orb's magnetism (exceedingly strong. As hard as opening doors ;) )
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 5/7
Forum: Heather Darling brings back the sexism issue. Not only do far too many men look down on female players, when it becomes apparent they do actually know the rules and what they're doing, they get scared. They obviously can't be very secure in their abilities. :p I know groups of girls giggling does seem to set off an instinctive masculine paranoia, but that's one of those things you have to try and rise above. We are not slaves to our instincts.
Denyse J. Zane is finding other women are half the problem in the battle for equality, particularly when you're trying to DM. It's the old bitch/pushover problem female bosses have to struggle with in the workplace as well. You've got to find the right combination of firm and fair, and stick to it, they'll soon get used to it.
Leyshon Campbell points out just how bad for your health repeated use of Haste is. It really ought to be a bigger deal in terms of use. Plus if you're going to get into realistic logical consequences, there's all kinds of tricks you can pull. Yeah, that's a fun one. It is one of those spells that unbalances a game if not counterbalanced, like stoneskin.
Daniel Arenson thinks Rangers are underpowered for their XP costs. Oh come on. Yeah, they're not as powerful as wizards at higher level, but you know what spellcasters are like. They're still miles more rounded characters than fighters.
Christopher David defends cyberpunk's search and retrieve missions. It's quite different from rescuing a princess, I assure you. I guess it really depends how you play the adventures. All in the details.
Greg Detwiler contributes for a second month in a row, adding a bit more to the Paths of Power system. He really seems to be quite taken with it. That's a pretty good recommendation to me, given how frequent a contributor he is in his own right.
The wizards three: Elminster, Mordenkainen and Dalamar once again make the time is their busy schedules to meet up at Ed's place. In sharp contrast to the last one, where things were pretty staid, and our friendly neigbourhood archmages got down to productive horsetrading fairly quickly, this has quite dramatic fiction, and fewer spells covered. Elminster actually gets challenged, although the danger never seems that serious. We get to see a decent example of the multilayered contingencies and counterspells paranoid archmages equip themselves with. Ed is actually an active player in the narrative for a change. (and gets a rather more comfortable hiding place for a change. ) But Dalamar still winds up being the primary butt of the humour, of which there is plenty. And of course, the family friendly policy forces him to fade out on the romantic aspects of their evening. It does once again make for rather fun reading. And the fact that the new spells are shown in action rather than just talked about really does elevate their coolness and integration.
The Floating Helm of Tharados is the latest in magical imprisonment technology. A
repurposed giant's helm, it's now Elminster's latest contraption for putting enemies out of action for a while without killing them. Being trapped in a 5x5x5 space for years, unable to even stretch out properly, would not be good for the health or sanity. Man, it's hard to fight evil archmages and win without making hard moral choices.
Handfangs is one of those spells that's pretty self explanatory. Shake with an enemy at talks and then nuke them while they're incapacitated from the poison.
Farscry is another effect actually used in the narrative. An upgraded clairvoyance and audience, it's mechanical quirks are crucial to the plot, and show Ed knows exactly what he wants to do when he puts them in. Once again, we see why wizards who get into the custom spell business will be way more effective than conservatives, even if the individual spells are weaker in some ways.
Dauntra's Cloak protects you from poison. Not quite as good as clerical healing, it's still another rather useful little buff spell for the paranoid.
Translocation Shift is the kind of spell most archmages would pay handsomely to acquire. Relocating incoming teleports is a crucial warding when you have extraplanar enemies who use their powers intelligently. How could you sleep without it?
Temporal Freedom is another counterspell that can seem near essential once you get to the stage where 9th level spells show up routinely. Plus, easy immortality with no apparent drawbacks save regular maintenance. No wonder Elminster guards THIS one extra carefully.
Brainblaze is one of those odd 9th level spells that like Tempestcone, gives you epic powers and resistances, but with substantial issues and risks. Becoming a bodiless pillar of raw energy forever has some fairly substantial problems to it. Ahh, the fun of experimental high magic. This collection definitely feels like it's come from a wide range of sources, of varying competence. And introducing some of the spells will definitely be appreciated by your players as long as they can get their hands on them. After all, applying these countering strategies will definitely increase your lifespan at high level. So it's another instalment that's both entertaining and instructive here, probably the best yet overall.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 6/7
The game wizards: Hmm. Dragon Dice. Ok, it's not exactly a third CCG, as it doesn't involve cards, but it's very much in the same genre, where you have to put together a structure from lots of little modular packs and fight it against other players. As it's the first release, we get lots of behind the scenes talk from Lester Smith, the main designer. The usual trials and tribulations manufacturing something in a new format involved. Figuring out what looks good when put on dice. And then the basics of how you actually play the game. It's skewed more towards skill than luck, with the choice between offence and defence an important one. Once again, I think system mastery will prove pretty important, and they'll have further articles with tips and tricks coming up. And once again I am left with mixed feelings. I don't have quite the personal disdain for this I did for CCG's, as it is an interesting variant rather than a straight bandwagon jumper. But I did regard it as another unwelcome intrusion and pretty much ignored it first time round. I think I'm willing to be a bit more magnanimous this time and see how it does. After all, it looks like there's a substantial supplement mill coming up. As tempting as it would be to prejudge for dramas sake, I'm not going to do that.
What's a wizard to do: Still more playtesting talk, this time for Birthright. Despite the tales of their evil overmistress (Wolves howl, roll of thunder, organ music etc) discouraging playtesting, they're still managing to get some done. Such as this rather interesting little piece on domain magic. In the basic game, wizards may not get domains even when they get to name level, having to settle for a piddly tower, while here, they can tap power from the land to do large-scale spells with cool tactical applications even at low level. The prospects are quite drool inducing. Undead hordes without spending months digging up the graveyards manually, mass teleportation, magically enforced laws that apply everywhere in the country, it's all pretty cool. Course, there are checks and balances. Most interesting is that the more developed and populated an area becomes, the less magic there is to tap, so wizard rulers have to keep substantial wildlife preserves if they want to properly exploit their powers, and there's a real temptation to become a hermit ruler in a lonely castle with nothing but hordes of undead or constructs as servants. Which sounds absolutely perfect from a dramatic viewpoint, as it creates just the kind of tensions that lead to cool stories. Yep, this definitely looks like a fun addition to our campaign options. Did the implementation work in actual play?
Rumblings: Computer game conversions once again dominate this column, one way or another. Neverwinter nights gets a rather belated bit of promotion, as more people realise just how cool and useful the net is. White Wolf is making a Vampire computer game, not too surprisingly. Magic:the Gathering is also moving to the digital world, complete with online multiplayer coolness. Bruce Nesmith has been poached by a computer games company, while another is hiring big names in sci-fi like Michael Dorn to appear in their cut scenes. They've long since overtaken roleplaying, and will soon pull ahead of the music and film industries. Speaking of film, the Dragonlance cartoon idea that would take well over a decade to get out of development hell appears here. They really aren't pushing their multimedia side enough down at TSR. They do have some new arrivals. Mike Nystul, unsurprisingly given his recent appearance in the magazine, plus Alan Polack and Bill Olmsdahl. Hrmm. Seems like a whole lot of poaching going on. The big companies borrow from the small companies, which recruit from the even smaller companies that aren't exactly stable financial prospects, but have talented people manning them. Creativity is a cannibalistic business.
Libram X makes evil doubles sympathetic. Dragonmirth needs to buy better equipment. Swordplay kills the wrong stupid movie star. Yamara ends really sweetly. All together now. Awwwwwww.
Through the looking glass: The reorganisations begin with the wrapping up of minis reviews. Time for Robert to bid us farewell. Thank you to Roger Moore for giving him a chance in the first place, thanks to all the companies that sent him free stuff, and thank you to all the people who read the column and wrote in. No particular thanks for the current management though, I'm fairly sure it was their decision to end this relationship, not his. After all, if you're going to retrench and focus on your core audience, something like this would be the first thing deemed unneeded.
The number of minis reviewed is less than usual as well. He's certainly not getting to go out with a bang. A page is devoted to a starter castle, which of course is a fairly large piece of work requiring some serious assembly work. This means it doesn't quite fit it's beginners label, despite being high quality. A trio of fairly generic elf archers. They'll drop into most games without too much trouble. Ral partha continue to take the official orders for the big games, with a bullette and a bone gnawer in various states of transformation, and a horse headed centaur, from shadowrun, apparently. All are pretty good as usual. You can see why companies keep coming back to them. And finally, there's a female orc riding a turtle, which is from Earthdawn. And yet another elf wizard. They're in no danger of being short of troops any time soon. And that's the end of that. Not a particularly impressive way to go out. Who'll be next on the chopping block, I wonder.
Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995
part 7/7
TSR Previews: The Forgotten realms is back to taking the lions share of the supplements. The secret of spiderhaunt carries on the Mourndale adventures. Randal Morn is missing. Guess who's responsible, and where they're hiding out. Volo is nearby, giving his own distinctive guide to Cormyr. Shame we can't pin the blame on him. And we are reminded once again that as prolific as their schedule is, there are even more books that don't appear here, as we find out they're up to book 10(! Why didn't they mention 2-9?) of the Super Harpers series. Masquerades sees us return to the doings of Alias and co. Man, this is getting impossible to keep track of.
Planescape gets Harbinger house, another extradimensional place full of weird set-pieces in the vein of Baba yaga's hut. This is one I've used to reasonable success, and it confounds mapping nicely while still being easy for the DM to keep track of where the players are. This is the dark side of seeking godhood.
Ravenloft sees Van Richten try and study the Vistani. Not an easy task, and one likely to result in half-truths and curses upon the examiner. But hey, he's already cursed. Still, beware lack of objectivity.
Mystara gets Dragonking of Mystara by Thorannin Gunnarsson. Dragons are never easy to negotiate with, and trying to get profit out of them is like getting blood from a stone. When there's a whole bunch of manipulative shits supposedly on your side, it gets even harder. Still, that's what we need heroes for.
Dark sun gets Cinnabar shadows by Lynn Abbey. Yet more developments and dramas under the harsh desert sun as people fight to survive.
Some fairly interesting generic stuff too. The second Players option rulebook, Skills and Powers hits. Yet more attempts to make AD&D point buy to limited success. Also ambitious but a bit dodgy is Labyrinth of Madness. Wasn't the 20th anniversary of TSR's founding last year. Unless you're being lawyerly and counting it as the founding of the new TSR, not the old Tactical Studies Rules. Anyway, this is to the Tomb of Horrors what a Jumbo Jet is to a Monster Truck. A meatgrinder and pixelbitcher on a scale large enough to give even 20th level characters months of frustration, years if they play dumb but don't give up and the DM doesn't give any clues. Like getting to immortality twice in basic D&D, if you can win this one fair and square, no help or cheating, then there's pretty much nowhere left to go. It really deserves more nostalgia than it gets. Guess so few people get to 20th level that they can't build the same kind of shared experience as the old convention modules.
Blood wars on the other hand, is still escalating with every supplement. This time, the gods get involved. The lady of pain isn't going to be happy if they come into sigil.
Bonus CD: They've been doing CD's with their products for the past couple of years. It's been one of the more irritating and gimmicky parts of their output, and hasn't aged very well at all. Now, as with a lot of digital media, most of the costs are in producing and distributing the content, the costs of duplicating each CD are pretty small, especially when you have a run in the tens of thousands. So making this bonus feature isn't that great a technical feat anymore, although it would mean their packers had to work overtime this month. Which means this is mainly excerpts, with commentary by Tim Beach, Andria Hayday, Colin McComb, and the other writers of said products. I haven't listened to this in years, and I'm immediately reminded how bad the acting is, and how general MIDI a lot of the instruments sound. D&D really does work better in your imagination than put on the screen in front of you, because the budget needed to smooth out the rough edges is just too great. It also shows up just how much processing the sample tracks received compared to the commentary. The commentary sounds noticeably muffled and bassy by comparison, especially on track 1. I suspect much of this nitpickiness is precisely because I am a trained musician, but it does still make me feel like this stuff is not worth using, because I do know the mechanics of how it's done, and could replicate it if I wanted too. The fact that it also forces them to write adventures with quite linear design is another strike against it as a fashion. So it looks like distance has not removed my annoyance at this fad at all, and if anything has made it look worse. What a waste of money and time.
Another issue where the good articles are very very good, but there are also bits that are horrid too. The bonus CD feels like a dreadfully forced bit of promotion, and the initial articles are mostly pretty dull. Still, it does look like some changes are coming soon. Unfortunately, I seem to remember them being mostly bad ones, at least in the near future. Still, at least that means I'll have something new to say. 10 years in which the magazine hardly changed at all is a pretty long time really. All things must pass. Roll on the new era.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 1/7
140 pages. A third enlarged issue this year, it seems. This is the biggest of them all, and is actually the 4th largest issue in the magazine's run. Fairly impressive. It looks like there's going to be plenty of action this time round, with the contents page bursting at the seams. Still, quantity does not equal quality. But at least there's no 20 page promotional cuttings like a few issues ago.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter wondering who slade is. Ha. Now that's an interesting question with a fairly interesting answer. Whether he's more or less interesting than zeb though, is another matter.
A letter complaining about the frequency of alcohol in TSR's adventures and illustrations. Won't someone think of the children! Oh, this is an awkward one. Banning alcohol from your products is rather harder to do than getting rid of de:bleep:s because it would present an overly sanitised everyday world which lacked believable people with understandable motivations. It'd be like Star trek TNG or something. Plus it'd sell less. Kids want their transgression. Better they do it in their imagination than in reality.
A in ironically contrasting letter complaining TSR's products are too modern in their mindset, rather than being realistically medieval in terms of values. Again, they wouldn't sell as well if they were. You have to exercise dramatic licence as a producer of fantasy. Oh, the annoyances of compromise.
Editorial: Larry Smith the art director once again takes the editorial. And here we start to find out what they're planning. More themes and regular columns. Coverage of dead campaign worlds. Less CCG stuff, less stuff on other RPG's, it's time to focus on AD&D first and foremost. And thankfully, less articles that are just blatant promotion for an upcoming product. A decidedly mixed bag. The overall result seems to be a reduction in variety of topics covered, and a greater reliance upon the various regular columns. Well, we have found that highly specific topics like the ecologies make them less likely to precisely repeat themselves, particularly as long as the editorial control stays good, and there are lots of little details in the rulebooks and settings that could be expanded upon without meriting a full book. So we could well get more interesting AD&D specific crunch on various topics from this. As ever, I guess it depends on the writers and editors. But it does look like this new policy will make it easier for them to get trapped in a cycle of the same few options, again and again. I hope that won't be the case.
First Quest: Ed Stark? Who? :Googles: Lots of TORG, a little paranoia and star wars, some bloodshadows and shatterzone. That's a pretty good resume. Still, the fact that they're picking people who've only just joined the company shows they may be running short of people with interesting first time stories and the desire to tell them to the public. And really his first experience was nothing special. A little embarrassing, mainly due to an unwillingness to admit he was a noob, and didn't actually know what he was doing, but hey, most of us have done that at one time or another. Sometimes faking it until you make it is the best way in anyway. So this is one I can empathise with quite well, even though it doesn't match my own first time. (I really ought to get round to talking about that before this column finishes, shouldn't I. ) It's short, but it gets the picture across pretty well.
Dirty Tricks: Or Tucker's kobolds, unofficial part 8: This time EVERYONE'S invited! Once again it's time to crack open the Art of War and show players and DM's how you can shift the odds of battle with some basic tactics, and if you're lucky, win fights without ever drawing a weapon. We've definitely been here before. Course, many people would ask why you would ever want to leave, when the alternative makes life so much shorter and nastier. This is basically another case where Greg Detwiler takes an already well-covered idea, and puts his own personal spins on it, introducing us to a whole bunch more specific ways in which you can screw your opponents over. So like another collection of monsters, spells, or magic items, this isn't original at all, but is entertaining and useful regardless of system. He's still a pretty solid contributor.
Politics of empire: We follow on with something on much the same topic, but far far more specific. A look at the politics of Birthright, and their trends from region to region. Heartlanders are expansionistic blame-shifters. Easterners pretend to be above all that politics crap while subtly manipulating everyone. Northerners & westerners are blunt and aggressive. And Southerners are most interested in getting their own domains prosperous by whatever means. Pretty broad stereotypes, but I suppose that helps a DM pick what kind of game they want to involve players in. PC's domains really ought to be set fairly near each other so they can interact in the political play segment of the game as well as the adventuring. And since you are in control of large areas which will change during game as you engage in trade and conquest, they can't just give potted lists of specific rulers for specific areas. This isn't hugely useful, and I suspect will become superfluous once you actually own a bunch of books for the setting. It's another case where the agenda to slip in a bit more promotion for their new books is pretty transparent. Still, it does give you a nice format for designing your own political regions, so it's not completely useless. Overall, it's another resounding meh.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 2/7
Hired Killerz: Hrm. This is a blast from the past in two ways at once. A look at assassins, which have been persona non grata for a good few years now. And a statting out of a character from a book, which is also something that's fallen out of fashion for a while. Here's talk about the kinds of hired killers out there, from guild assassins to brooding loners, and stats for Vlad Taltos from Steven Brust's series. Some of them are complete bastards, while others are merely morally ambiguous. They can be used as PC's, but watch out. And since they should be good at stealth and making getaways, they can be foreshadowed before the PC's ever meet them by having them kill NPC's, and then become recurring adversaries. This is mainly interesting because like making the fiends a crucial part of many planescape supplements, it shows a softening of their big edicts around the 2e changeover. Even without the company changeover, it's possible they would have become a class again in the next edition. It's also interesting because this time round, the literary part is done by someone who's familiar with roleplaying, and so the character converts a little more smoothly to gaming, although he still breaks D&D rules liberally. So this is quite an interesting article, as it shows they may start to incorporate more old school elements into the magazine in an attempt to win back readers. When you don't know what to do, try what worked before.
Moving in mysterious ways: What? What?! Riiiiight. This is an article that raises some rather complex questions. While having an all-encompassing way of categorising and dividing up your spells isn't a bad idea, it has the flaws that it can discourage creativity, and if the subdivisions are bad, some will be vastly more powerful than others and you may struggle to figure out where a more quirky power should go. In AD&D, it's Alteration that gets to be the catch-all school, and rather overpowered as a result. Eve if you were to separate out the spells that move things from those that transform them, it'd still be better than most of the others. So why not create the school of Apportation? With crucial stuff like knock, fly and haste falling under it's umbrella, it's hardly obscure or useless in practical situations. And it should be easy enough to figure out what spells from supplements should go into it. Will this fix the underlying problems in the school system? I'm not sure, although it is probably a step in the right direction. Albeit one that didn't make it to next edition, where transmuters remained one of the best specialist options. Oh well, we can still use the neat new spells, and ignore all the mechanical wrangling.
Little Bird is essentially a low weight telekinesis spell. Just the kind of thing you want as a stopgap between cantrips and the real thing to impress the rubes at low level.
March lets you move at full speed without any fatigue even when heavily encumbered. After a few levels, you'll be able to help the whole party, which is when you'll be weighed down with too much gear from your hauls anyway. Utility!
Tipple is more whimisical. You can make a swig of drink fly into your mouth on a whim. Tee hee. Very much in the gandalf spirit.
Bloodbridge lets you do blood transfusions, essentially transferring hit points, as last seen in issue 148. Wizards might struggle with creating hit points, but their ability to manipulate them is fairly well established now. (and they've never had any trouble removing them) ;)
Mouse lets you enchant an object to run away and hide whenever anyone tries to mess with it. Another whimsical one I seem to recall coming from a cartoon.
Speed gives you the mobility boost of haste, but not all the other stuff. It has whimsical material components. Nuff said.
Teleport Object should be fairly obvious. Send it where you want, within reason. Which is an incredibly versatile trick really. Have fun setting up your xantatos caches.
Transpose gets a little more meta, allowing you to move properties from one thing to another. This does have slightly fuzzy rules, but is another one that can really reward imagination. What strange swaps will you engineer?
Transfuse takes things a step further, allowing you to steal characteristics from something, and quite possibly not give them back. This can be very mean indeed, and will definitely piss off players if it's used unwillingly, as it doesn't even allow a save.
Rip moves something in multiple directions simultaneously, causing quite substantial damage if not dispelled. Every school needs at least one good offensive trick, such as divination's ninja foresight and illusion's phantasmal killer.
Teleport Other is another one that can screw over enemies quite effectively. It does have a fairly nasty backlash though, making it one for when you hold a personal grudge against someone.
Mass Teleport and Mass teleport without Error are exactly what they sound like. Now you can take the whole party along. Another of those ones that casually changes the game once you have it.
Skycastle is one of those spells many an archmage will drool about getting their hands upon. Really, who doesn't want a flying castle? You've gotta think big, and this article certainly gives you several more spells that can really make your game feel fantastical.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 3/7
Things I learned at E3: It's Zeb Cook's turn to do some post convention reporting for us. Seems like he's actually been around more since he left the company. Anyway, E3 is a computer games convention, but since quite a few gaming companies are licencing out their properties, he has quite a bit of stuff relevant to our interests. Baldur's Gate and Torment, Gary Gygax's new game Hunters of Balk, (another one I've never heard of, once again showing how he failed to bottle lightning twice) and several star trek games. Fairly short, this mainly drops names, without talking too much about the events. I guess the computer gaming crowd aren't so likely to kidnap you and hold you for ransom. :p As a result, there's not much I can say about it apart from that I found it vaguely dissatisfactory. He ought to read Roger's reports, pick up some pointers.
Dice Advice: As they did with the two CCG's, now it's time for twinking tips for Dragon Dice. Single theme decks are dumb and easy to counter, a mixed team will usually do better. He who dares wins. Terrain is important. Plan ahead. Make sure you finish a defeated enemy completely. Don't forget to recruit and heal troops, otherwise you'll lose via attrition. If it looks like victory is within your grasp, then is the time to go all out and sacrifice resources. It does look like this is a game which can go on for quite a long time if you have competent players, since you can replenish your forces, and conservative players could get into an extended standoff as they try to build up an advantage. Once again, it shows that playtesting is going on in the TSR offices, and fun is being had. After all, you want people to keep on buying the booster packs to upgrade their forces. If they stop playing after a few tries, they won't do that.
The thought police: Muhahaha! Or how to make sure players don't steamroller over the militia. While wizards are squishy and can only cast once or twice a day at low levels, psionicists start off with a decent selection of powers, can use moderate weapons & armor, and can recharge with an hour or two off before going back on the beat. In addition, the whole telepathy and synergistic abilities angle, combined with their subtle disposition towards disciplined thinking in general, makes them much more able to work together than any spellcasters apart from priests of some particularly orderly gods. It all makes a good deal of sense, even if the requirements for the class might be an issue. This article approaches telling us this in a pretty entertaining way too, with some ecology style fiction with rules notes afterwards. The ramifications of their common powers are examined logically, and with a nice bit of humour as the hapless thieves come up against powers beyond their ken. It all makes it into an option that could be used not just one, but several times with different variants in a psionics heavy campaign. I strongly approve.
Role-playing reviews: Don't look back: Terror is never far behind gets one of those reviews that is less about the game at hand than it is a look at the history of rules evolution in RPG's. In particular, the examination of how mechanics affect mood. The eventual conclusion is fairly positive, but it doesn't seem too exceptional in setting or system. It has to compete in a pretty busy market these days, and modern conspiracy horror is a pretty well run genre. It really needs something extra to make it stand out from the crowd.
Shattered dreams puts you in the role of dreamwalkers, exploring the dreams of others and defending them from creatures of nightmare. This cool premise is not followed up though, with clunky mechanics and cliche-ridden setting design. There are far better games which can do the same thing, so why bother?
Psychosis: Ship of foo(a)ls is a more successful experiment in RPG design. All the players begin amnesiac and completely detached from reality, and the fun is in realising just how screwed up they actually are in reality, kinda like a reverse Changeling the Dreaming where sanity is the goal rather than something to avoid at all costs. It's a limited game designed to last around 6-8 sessions, and makes a highly amusing diversion for a group.
Forum: Tim Jones has some advice for Joe Walker. Wishes go wrong, prices come due, ooh, how about now. Get too it. Give them some challenges suitable to their powers.
Alan Clark says much the same thing, but in far more sadistic terms. We sorted out this problem for star wars, we can certainly do so for D&D. Use your ultimate world controlling power and snap them like twigs.
Eric Aune tells joe walker to retire his group. Sometimes it's the only way, and this looks like the case here. He has similarly blunt and unambiguous advice for other forumites too.
John Holcomb is being driven away from AD&D by the sheer bloat of products. It's impossible to use it all, and his group keeps arguing over what exactly to do, winding up getting very little done. There's too many choices, too many books to haul around, and they've virtually stopped supporting regular D&D. It's not good for the company. Ah yes. Choice is a good thing, but the human mind is not equipped to deal with too many choices, and TSR has pushed well over that limit by now and is busily spreading itself too thin. Another sign their public support is definitely going downhill these days.
Christopher Kelley is finding that roleplaying is still very much a man's game where he lives. He's tried to get more girls interested, to much apathy. It isn't very pleasing.
Anonymous writes in, giving some more worldbuilding ideas, plus one rather sadistic little adventure seed that'll make your life very interesting. Take all their stuff away, make them really work to get it back. Many adventurers don't look nearly as impressive without their shiny toys.
Jess Hallsworth concentrates more on game running advice than worldbuilding, but still has helpful info to impart. Sometimes it seems like the forum has more concentrated useful info than the rest of the magazine put together.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 4/7
Eye of the monitor: Warcraft gets a second review in quick succession. This is becoming a definite issue with having two sets of reviewers who don't seem to be very well co-ordinated. (unlike the minis pair, curiously. ) Once again, it's a pretty positive review, with the main complaints being that the two sides are mechanically identical, and the computer AI is too easy. Going multiplayer is definitely the right course for them.
Machiavelli is a sim game of renaissance politics. Explore the world, trade, build up political power and take over Venice. It does have some amusing play elements, but ultimately falls prey to grindyness. Just like real life then.
Blood Bowl is of course a computer game conversion of Games Workshop's grimdark fantasy football game. Unfortunately, it seems unfinished. The AI sucks, they hadn't got round to implementing online play and intend to do so in a patch, and there are stupid tactical mess-ups. Really not worth bothering with.
We also have a quick review of Inside Mac Games magazine. It's another good example of people taking advantage of the cheapness of CD's, as it comes packed with demos and shareware. They've still got a userbase big enough to produce more games than you can play. Now they just need a few more regular consumers to pay for this stuff.
Arcane Lore: Another variant magic type? They are definitely experimenting more with the rules here these days, not just in the books. While not as ambitious as the Paths of Power stuff from issue 216, this is a lot easier to incorporate into a regular campaign, and less arcane in it's additional rules. Say hello to sea magic. Now, you might think that with two different types of water elementalists, this would be redundant, but as we've found over the years, you should never underestimate people's ability to think up interesting new variants. And the sea is more than just water. There's air, weather, and all the various practical bits and pieces you need to maintain a boat. Plus pirates, sea creatures, supplies, and all those things that a pure water specialist, or even an air/water hybrid wouldn't have any particular proficiency with. So these are the arcane and divine equivalents of the Mariner, exceedingly useful in an ocean environment, but with serious limitations on land. Very handy to have around as NPC's, but players should take them with caution. The DM may sink your battleship and send you to Athas. Still, even if you don't take the speciality, you can get some of the useful new spells here. There are quite a few of them for both clerics and wizards.
Conjure Water Elemental is another boring symmetry filler. I find this very appropriate since we had the air one recently in issue 205.
Elemental Control lets you nick someone else's summoned elemental. It's lower level than the regular spell too, so if you know you're up against a big bad who likes using stuff like this, it could strike at their weak spot and win the battle.
Hold Wave is less fun than it sounds, becalming an area rather than freezing water in position. I wanted to make water sculptures. :pouts:
Home Port lets you do the pigeon thing. It can last for months cast by a high level character, so one responsible cleric can make a huge difference to the prosperity of a port town. Shipshape and Bristol fashion. Come back with plenty of slaves, won't you. :)
Protection from fire becomes applicable to inanimate objects. Now that's a useful bit of customisation. How often have you lost stuff to fire under the current item save rules?
Sea Form lets you turn into a liquid ooze shape. This makes you hard to hurt and able to slip around, but slow, and naked when you reform. Useful for spying and escapes into the sea then, but not so much for getting into fights.
Sea Mount is another basic summoning spell. It's only useful for transport, not combat though. And it may backfire if they break free. At this level, there are quicker and more reliable means of transportation.
Speak with Sea Creatures demonstrates that specialising has it's downsides too. So much for being able to communicate with landdwelling animals. Oh well, more incentive to stick to what you know.
Surf is a baby environmental havoc wreaker for mid-level clerics. Even mildly choppy waters can play havoc with shipping. And sometimes you've gotta use that kind of leverage if you want the community to listen. Peaceful protest works best when they know you can back your words up with actions.
Swim lets people who can't swim do so. Another useful low level trick that you may find yourself memorising multiple times in your role as party utility belt. Being a cleric can be tedious sometimes.
Compass is the wizardly navigational aid. Slightly less useful than the cleric one,
Elemental Turning is a direct cleric spell conversion. Having a specialised niche lets you penetrate some of the normal
Fireproof is pretty self explanatory. In this case Wizards have to take a different route for their magical protections. No saving yourself with this one.
Ironwood is an idea we've seen before in the magazine. (Issue 142. ) It's less powerful than last time too. I know it's appropriate, but once again, I am bored.
Protection from normal missiles also becomes applicable to inanimate objects. Hell, there's a lot of spells that you could profit from by applying that variant too, one direction or the other. Maybe it should be a metamagic feat.
Summon Wind will hopefully give you a trouble free journey right to your destination, controlling the weather for days or weeks. Given it's material components and other provisos, you'd better hope you get lucky on those rolls.
Tsunami is another one repeated from issue 205. Course, 9th level wizard spells have a bit more leeway in their ability to devastate than 7th level cleric ones, so it's rather bigger and scarier this time.
Waterspout is another devastation inflicter that won't be a huge amount of use on land. Like regular tornados, it's relatively contained, allowing you to devastate what you want and not everything around it.
Wood Rot decays an enemy ship. A non sea mage could probably apply this to other structures too, but that's something they'll just have to live with. Have fun deciding if this one is worth it in your campaign or not. It's one I have no objection to incorporating, in any case.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A second article on elven-made magical items in the same year? Dear oh dear, they really are running out of original submissions. This kind of close repetition would never have got through under Roger's run.
Arrows of Return come back a limited number of times. They get less effective each time. Really, who decided to make magical arrows limited use devices anyway?
The Cloak of the Unicorn lets you get around the usual "virgins only" association policy, and also transform yourself into a unicorn as well. At last! Now that's an item I can really get behind.
Faerie Stones have a whole bunch of minor powers. Infravision extension, telepathy, magic missiles. I fail to see the connection, but they're all pretty useful powers. People of any class would find these desirable.
Elven Hounds are a rather unimaginatively named figurine. You call on them, they come to life. The usual deal, and not nearly as imaginative in abilities either as the set from issue 196.
The Rod of Sylvan Prowess changes shape to become a whole bunch of weapons and utility devices. Much more useful than just a basic werebow :p
Elven Blades reinforce the "elves are superior" meme by having the same stats as katanas. Superlame and unneeded, especially if you're already using the complete book of elves.
Tents of Elvenkind apply the same concealing material used in their cloaks, and those for their horses. I suspect that this is applicable to nearly anything, including full-size buildings. Once again I yawn.
Wands of Faerie Spheres have 7 powers, each based upon a different colour. All have rather unpleasant effects upon the person engulfed in them. Should be something to penetrate most resistances here if you choose wisely. So lots of cool stuff here, but another irritating reminder of people's elf fetish, and tendency to give them stuff better than other people. Tensions tensions.
Sage advice: Can you cast spells through a peephole (no, you filthy pervert )
Can you raise a faerie dragon. (Why in the name of all that is serious would you do that! Only with resurrection.)
I thought you couldn't cast walls of stone in the air to crush people, but Elminster did. I wanna do it too. How much damage does it do? ( YOU can't. Elminster can, because he's a genius gary-stu. Now stop hassling Skip. Skip answered this question years ago. )
What's elven huntsmen's tracking penalty (only -3. It may not seem like much, but 15% is not to be sneezed at)
The complete book of necromancers thinks wizards are 3 times as likely to become wild talents as everyone else ( Curse that incompetent freelancer! Skip hears he's been sneaking actual play reports from his own campaign into a generic splatbook and engaging in telling you about his characters without a licence as well. Fear not, skip is still The Sage! (oooh, ahh) Skip will hunt him down and put the pages in his mages and a broomstick between his legs most painfully.)
Why is detect life only printed once (because it's identical for both classes. We can't be bothered to write it twice. )
Can gloves of missile snaring stop a magic missile (Nope. Aint nothin stoppin a magic missile short of a sphere of invulnerability dude. )
Can a dustman protect others from undead by interposing themself. ( No. That's a definite act of hostility. But then, you've already broken into their home. Would you stand for that in their place?)
Psionicists can't learn empower at level 10 because they don't get a slot. Do they have to wait another level (Yes. Oh woe. Surely you can wait that long. )
Is a psionic item limited to using int based powers (no)
How do psionic powers that involve transfer of stuff work for items (They transfer or drain the owner's stuff. Thankfully, they need consent to do this. )
How fast do psionic items regain PSP's (6 per hour)
Does a ring of wizardry double all a specialist's spells ( No, only the general ones Multipliers go before additions, remember. )
What does a druid see when looking at an illusory forest (Fakery! Flimflam! A risible attempt at deception! Mistletoe doesn't grow like that! The angles are all wrong. And look at those leaves. How could anyone believe in that for a second!)
Which method do you use for a demihuman's method of surprise (recycled question. Best option, as ever)
Can you teleport past an ottilukes resilient sphere (Sure. It's a higher level spell, so it has priority.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 6/7
Dangerous ground: Last issue we had a good deal of talk about swashbuckling. Here we have a related topic, that of setting your fights on interesting terrain, and how to take advantage of that. After all, in movies people do often fight high on rooftops, along narrow cliffs, over balconies, swamp water, cramped basements, and all kinds of other interesting locations. All you need to do is apply a few mechanical effects, and make sure the party don't defy physics too egregiously in their positioning & movements. A little sketch or minis may help with this. So it's one of those bits of fairly basic advice that you may well have already figured out on your own, but it still does them good to spell out. After all, if people make their games exciting and dramatic, we're more likely to stick around. And if there's anyone who doesn't think that's a good idea, I pity their business model.
Fiction: Hunt's end by Rudy Thauberger. Another Dark Sun story here that seems to have been picked to tie in with a recent splatbook, since we did get one on the thri-kreen a few months ago. Still, it's not by the same author as the book, and indeed not by a regular author at all, so it looks like it's more lucky co-incidence on the magazine's part that they got this submission. Still, it has an excellent handle on the general atmosphere of the setting, where life is harsh, psionics are omnipresent, and the only people with any moral conflicts are the protagonists. It also manages to deal with the fact that the giant insects are rather alien, and even if you live with them and they consider you part of the pack, you'll never entirely understand each other. So it's a pretty decent addition to the list of stuff for this setting, which has managed to run nicely for a good few years now. The combination of many small ways that it differs from standard fantasy is pretty well established, which means they don't have to spend half the story just making sure you understand what they're talking about and getting you to buy into the world, which is a definite issue with many of the standalone bits of short fiction.
Do it on the cheap: Or how to save a big of money when convention going. A very short article, padded out with extra spacing, layout tricks and photos, this is one of those articles that feels like it was put in at the last moment to fill out space, but it does still have some useful information, especially for newbies. As a promotional article, it manages to remind us that convention season is upon us without being too intrusive. Overall, I think this warrants a meh, as it's not really consequential enough to have an opinion one way or another.
Rumblings: Another fairly TSR centric rumours column this month. Since they're starting to draw back from the rest of the hobby, I suspect this will be another continuing trend. That great lost project Wildspace gets a good teasing. When will it come out? What will it look like? How an something that had so many prongs of attack planned just disappear with barely a trace? More successful, of course, is the return of Tracey & Margaret to do more Dragonlance books. Well, successfully released, anyway. In other annoying news,. Tim Beach is leaving. Now we'll never get sourcebooks expanding on the rest of the savage coast. :( And a company is going to try and release a home VR system costing $ 8,000. Yeah, I don't think that's going to be a commercial success. Although given computer's depreciation, something like that would cost, what, $60 today. If only VR had become a fad 10 years later, it might have actually lasted. On the other hand, there's a ton of MMO games coming out around this time, and they're cheap enough to play for hours these days. They're actually an idea who's time has come. So once again we see how high the ratio of hits to misses is in commercial ventures.
The game wizards: Ooop. Speaking of Athas enjoying a healthy life, this is where it really started to go wrong for them. They lived by the metaplot, and then they died by the metaplot, as the changes made to the setting progressed so fast, and in many cases reduced adventure hooks because the good guys won regularly, that they alienated a lot of people. And this is where it really came to a head, as they released a new corebox, and it became near impossible for existing campaigns to ignore the effects, especially if you wanted to use the new geographical areas opened up. On top of that, they tried to fix the psionics system, but I found the new one more confusing than the old. And the answers to many of the things that were mysterious before weren't particularly brilliant. So in hindsight, we can chalk this up as another big fat misstep. How does something that has so many cool ideas put into it wind up becoming so much less than the sum of it's parts?
Quote from: (un)reason;437790Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 6/7
Dangerous ground: Last issue we had a good deal of talk about swashbuckling. Here we have a related topic, that of setting your fights on interesting terrain, and how to take advantage of that. After all, in movies people do often fight high on rooftops, along narrow cliffs, over balconies, swamp water, cramped basements, and all kinds of other interesting locations. All you need to do is apply a few mechanical effects, and make sure the party don't defy physics too egregiously in their positioning & movements. A little sketch or minis may help with this. So it's one of those bits of fairly basic advice that you may well have already figured out on your own, but it still does them good to spell out. After all, if people make their games exciting and dramatic, we're more likely to stick around. And if there's anyone who doesn't think that's a good idea, I pity their business model.
I just re-read this piece recently (I'm the guy who wrote it), and I think it holds up. Yeah, it's basic advice, but as you say it's worth it to spell it out. I'm running a little D&D 4e mini-campaign for some of my friends who have 11-year-old sons, and the basic principle of making the terrain part of the action is something that I still try to do. So in one fight there was a big stream that the heroes wanted to cross to get away from the bad guys, and one PC fell in and had to fight his way across; in another, a giant tunneling engine with giant borer-teeth operated by machinesmith orcs was a moving piece of the battlefield.
Anyway, as always, thanks for doing this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 220: August 1995
part 7/7
Jen still doesn't suspect treachery in libram X. Dragonmirth is concerned about getting in..... and out. Swordplay come out ahead of the game for a change. Yamara is off into space again.
From the forge: Oh man. Now this is a classic intro. After many columns of horror at the legal issues and price increases minis have faced in recent years, we have a far less weighty complaint. Bright colours are winning over fine detail and shading, particularly in recent contests! Thats a gitoffa mah lawn moment if ever there was one. Not that it probably isn't true, if I know human nature, but it's rather a vain cry, like the one against the loudness wars in music. Some things rise to the top, but it's not always the cream. If only there were something we could do to raise the average level of intellectualism in the world. Oh, wait. There's plenty you can do on a local scale, if you get off your ass and engage with the community.
But anyway, the minis themselves. A female barbarian with a sabretooth tiger which looks like it would like to make a meal out of all suitors. A quartet of pirates, some overdressed and others under. In similar contrast, a trio of vampires and opposing trio of vampire hunters. I think the undead still have the advantage though. Games workshop have a trio of their individually named standardbearer characters examined. Njal Stormcaller the Space Wolf for WH40k, Varang Ghoulchewer for Blood Bowl, and Teclis for WFB. All are pretty good, if rather expensive. We then change gear for 5 wizards. One is rather large, and has a robe that only goes to knee length, which is vaguely amusing, while the other 4 are a more generic elementalist set with appropriate accessories to their outfits. You ought to know that just makes it easier for enemies to predict and counter your actions. A trio of heavily armed stormtroopers, who's actions are likely to be even more predictable still. A duo of secret agents, who may not actually use their weapons. And a chaos lord and lich with over the top thrones that make it very likely they will apply excessive force to a problem. Probably overcompensating for something, as usual. Just get them bickering and sneak out while they're distracted.
TSR Previews: We go from Players Option to Dungeon Masters Options. High level campaigns helps you go up to level 30. Skip Williams tries to make the rules go to the limit without breaking. Whether he succeeded or not is very debatable. Also pushing their luck this month is the Complete series, with the Ninjas handbook. I really do roll my eyes. Go on, pander to the cheesemonkeys if you think it'll help you. Slightly more cerebral is Chronomancer. Can you make time travelling work in your campaign? Signs point to it being tricky.
The Forgotten Realms tries to put new spins on familiar subjects. Giantcraft follows up on the recent novels to make giant PC's playable and expand on their lifestyles. How does it compare to Council of Wyrms? And Drizzt gets a copycat in Daughter of the Drow by Elaine Cunningham. A drow princess goes adventuring, and winds up being rather more generous than most of her race. Methinks my Aaaangst-o-meter may start pinging.
Birthright also gets a double bill. Sword and Crown puts you up against three simultaneous problems. Figure out how to delegate or splitting the party seems the most likely option, worryingly. Simon Hawke completes the first Birthright novel, meanwhile. The Iron Throne serves as a warning tale of how you could screw it up and lose your own rulership. Learn it's lessons well.
Ravenloft follows up it's van richten's guide with a themed adventure, as usual. The Evil eye has you getting vistani aid, then getting on their bad side, much to your danger. Will you face a fate worse than death?
And finally, we have a third collectible game this year. Dragon Dice. Man, TSR really jumped on this bandwagon quickly and enthusiastically. But not to much success. Anyone know how and why that happened?
Having just said what they're going to get rid of in the revamps, this magazine sure has a lot of it. I suppose it's the usual thing where they burn through the existing reserves before making a fresh start. As a result, most of the increased size went to tiresome promotional stuff again. Still, there is also a definite increase in the amount of useful crunch as well. So once again it's a real struggle to get through the whole thing, but there are a few worthwhile things to reward me for doing so. I can not wait for things to be switched up a bit.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 1/7
124 pages. Larry Elmore turns up again, with a summer themed cover that's as pretty as ever. Summer's over now, my dear. Dark clouds are gathering, and both the protagonists are looking pretty pensive and brooding. Even the horse doesn't look like it's in a frolicking mood, despite it's expensive looking accoutrements. Very fitting, really. As is standard this year, there's no particular theme or hook in the contents page to grab us, focus our attention and sway those on the fence about picking the magazine up. Turning the page to see what's next is once again proving to be quite the effort.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter complaining that they should do more fiction. Ironically, they're skipping it this month. It seems unlikely this particular request will be honored.
A letter grumbling about having to pay extra for the bonus CD, especially as the product itself was so lackluster. Don't do it again. They make no promises, apart from not to charge subscribers extra. (So subscribe now. Save money! Tee Hee. )
Another request for a complete index for the magazine. It's all on the internet, being regularly updated. Get with the times man!
A letter complaining about the unprofessional behaviour of their computer games columnists. Fear not. They're being shown the door as of this issue. That'll teach them! I think this is following the path of what they were going to do anyway.
A letter pointing out the nostalgic callbacks in the new corebooks. The artists have had fun updating, and in many cases improving on old favourites like a paladin in hell and Emrikol the chaotic. Course, it's the originals that'll still get most of the glory. Will any of the new ones enjoy the same memorability and longevity?
Editorial: After a mere 4 months as head editor. Wolfgang decides this job isn't for him, and buggers off to become a full-time writer. This is really not what he saw himself doing. Which is understandable. Very few people go into any field with the intention of becoming the wind beneath someone else's wings. Course, he will wind up in this position again in a decade's time when he sets up Kobold Quarterly, but hey, he gets to be his own boss there and top of the masthead. Plus 12 years of experience and maturity can change someone's viewpoint in all sorts of ways. But back to the past. This probably means the period of transition and uncertainty will be extended by several months more, as they get the new guys up to speed. '95 really is not being a good year for them. It's a good thing they still have the rest of the team working away stalwartly in the face of changing orders and budget cuts, or they'd start missing months.
First quest: Michael Stackpole? Once again it seems like they're choosing writers who haven't done much in D&D before. In fact, he seems to be primarily a novelist rather than a gaming writer, which I find very curious since they cut coverage of that in recent years. In fact the main game he's written for is Tunnels & Trolls. And in fact, that was the first game he played as well. He then leapt straight into writing an adventure, and sold it back to the publishers, which goes to show, it was much easier to get into roleplaying back in the 70's. He then had to sink or swim, GM'ing with much more experienced players and realising just how much freedom the RPG medium offers. He did resort to a little fiat attack when the players outsmarted him, but hey, what can you do. Actually, you can go the complete opposite way to me, and wind up playing virtually dicelessly for long periods of time, making most of the setting up on the fly, but that's not a bad thing as long as the players are having fun and you can keep a hold on continuity. It is roleplaying, after all. So this is probably completely different from most people's early experiences, but still very interesting for it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 2/7
In dreams: Ah yes, dream magic. That's a topic that rolls around every few years. Issue 132 featured an entire class devoted to dream powers, there's been the odd spell or two in other issues, and of course, there were several big reviews of games in which dream magic features heavily, such as Changeling the Dreaming and Shattered Dreams. So I guess it would be appropriate for the magazine to jump on the bandwagon again, with this article by the assistant editor.
Alter Dream lets you play dreamlord. This is exceedingly versatile and can mimic several lower level spells by controlling what they experience and giving them ideas. Have fun.
Enter Dream is one we've had before, in issue 204. This works somewhat better than the psionic version, but still isn't really long enough to see a full dream. Is this really so hard to do? Maybe if it actually sent you in bodily, instead of leaving the caster asleep and vulnerable. Nah, that'd definitely need to be a higher level spell.
Conjure Dream Object is one of those ones that'll be a pain to adjudicate, as it requires you to keep track of the weird things the character has seen in dreams. And since they lack any supernatural properties in the real world, this is just a bit annoying. So this is serious wasted potential in a fantastical magical world.
Conjure Nightmare lets you get hold of said lower-planar horses. If you're not a scumbag, it may be more trouble than it's worth. Plus it may disappear abruptly if the dream it came from ends. I suppose it is a good deal better than basic monster summoning'd get you, so it needs the drawbacks to balance things out.
Endless Slumber is your basic sleeping beauty effect. Only a wish or a very specific condition chosen by the caster can break it. Very much one for making games work like stories.
Sleepless Curse keeps them awake for one day a level. At the level you can cast it, this has a pretty decent chance of killing them if it isn't removed in time. Drop that on them and teleport out, leaving them to deal with the consequences while you get on with your real plans.
Sleepwalking will of course let you control someone while they're asleep, with no memory of what they did. It's way weak for it's level, when you consider how long and effectively charm person lasts. Not worth bothering with unless you're theme obsessed.
Slumber is like Sleep, only it doesn't break if you kill them, essentially making this a save or die in combat. it's got a longer duration and harder save than Hold Person too, making it quite a nasty option for capturing and humiliating someone.
True Dream is your basic semiprophetic dream spell. it's such a staple of literature, and so subject to fiat, it probably ought to be lower level. I grow increasingly tired of that kind of spell.
True Nightmare keeps you from refreshing your spells, and otherwise prevents you from getting a restful night. It's short duration though, so you'll need to have regular access to the victim to keep casting it. Probably better in a city/espionage situation than a dungeon crawl then. Actually, it'll be easier to get another couple of levels and go straight to sleepless curse.
Healing Dream gives wizards another option for facilitating health in their buds. Ok, it's only 2hp per level, and takes it's time, but as ever, it's better than nothing.
Overall, I think we have an article which is strong on flavour, but moderately weak on mechanics, with several of the spells rather under or overpowered by comparison to existing stuff of the same level, or just problematic. I thought he was supposed to be an editor. I suppose it is hard to look over your own work objectively. But surely they have other people in the staff to do that these days? In any case, this is a bit disappointing, but not truly terrible.
Magic of kings, magic of the land: New spells for Birthright's realm magic system. Seems a reasonable enough idea, particularly as the selection in the core set was fairly limited. Since I seem to remember Birthright was a rather short-lived setting, it's probably not going to be that filled in, so any new crunch the magazine can fill in is welcome.
Forethought gives you an extra domain action next turn. Since this costs an action to cast, it'll only be useful if used very tactically. Practice your chessmaster-like planning ahead for great justice.
Disrupt Ley Line puts a short term blockage in place. You'll probably have to scope out the ley of the land to get the one that'll reduce enemy power the most. Good thing you'll probably be dealing with recurring enemies in this world.
Tangle Ley Lines is slightly more powerful, temporarily stopping all the ley lines in a province from passing power. This means it's a more blunt tool, and may disadvantage you too or make unexpected enemies if cast in the wrong place.
Duplicate lets a wizard bugger off for a few months adventuring or studying and have a magical clone handle the tedious day to day stuff. This'll only work for a little while though. And don't let the public know, or they'll be deeply annoyed that you're slacking off.
Enhance Source lets you double the power you can get for a couple of turns. It's fairly expensive, but you will get a net positive from doing so if you tap them out both turns. So this is another one you use just before you plan to be very busy dealing with trouble.
Locate Sources is the only spell here that can be used from 1st level. Good thing too, as a new wizard probably needs a bit of help figuring out where there's some magic to tap. Course, you will need to get at least a little magical energy to cast it in the first place. It can be hard getting on the first rung.
Divine Right is mechanically identical to forethought, but has completely different fluff. An interesting example of reskinning here then. I quite approve.
Erik's Preserve prevents natural disasters in an area. Get the weather to behave, and you have a tremendous advantage in farming. One that seems likely to make you popular with the common people.
Hand of Peace makes everyone stop fighting, walk home and suffer amnesia. The kind of thing that's pretty impressive in narrative terms, in other worlds, this would be very scary to be confronted with, especially as it doesn't have a save.
Haelyns Courage is a god specific spell that buffs the troops and keeps them loyal to you, as long as you act appropriately. Typical godly behaviour, really. You could do similar spells for all sorts of gods.
Nesirie's Blessing lets you move your ships around faster by giving them favorable winds. It's fairly cheap too, so you can easily recoup your costs in trade profits. Pretty unfair advantage for that clergy, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 3/7
The little wish: As with Kobolds, you really shouldn't underestimate cantrips. They might not be able to inflict direct damage, but given a few levers and a bit of preparation, a tiny push in the right place can cause an avalanche. And yet, they don't get used nearly enough, as to get access to them requires sacrificing a 1st level spell slot, which is pretty valuable for a low level wizard. This article tries to solve several birds with one stone by making cantrip use a proficiency, allowing wizards to pull off extra little magical tricks if they want too, but not reliably, and allow members of other classes to be dabblers in magic without going through all the rigamarole of multi-or dual classing. I suspect this article may have influenced their decision to include 0 level spells next edition, so even 1st level characters always have a decent selection of options up their sleeve. So this is quite nice from a mechanical viewpoint, and also from a flavour one, as it helps make the game more literary and playful, rewarding creative thinking. Add in the historical significance, and I think this qualifies as one of the closest things to a classic article from this year, along with paths of power and the demiplane of shadow.
The ley of the land: More tales from the coalface about Birthright's nifty realm magic system. Getting hold of that magic and maintaining those ley lines takes a fairly substantial amount of planning and resources. And if you have any enemies, then they can disrupt any leylines if they can get into a territory that they pass through. This means that you have to make a choice between having multiple lines that cost more to maintain, or a few long ones that have more chances to be broken. Either way, it's important to keep track of where they all are, because otherwise it makes the domain stuff pretty pointless. This article points out the ambiguities in the rules as presented in the core box set, but instead of giving them a straight answer, decides to give us four different options of how they could be interpreted, in roughly increasing order of power and flexibility. Which means you can figure out if you want wizards to dominate domain play as they do many other arenas, or if the fighters have a far easier time in this sphere. This results in an article that is quite interesting, but also pretty ambiguous. Like the Player's option stuff, this is very much left open for individual groups to customise, and may well lose easy buy-in due to that. Birthright is already a fairly hard sell to a group given it's theme and the number of active worlds it has to compete with. Making the new rules vague and open to interpretation only makes that worse.
Arcane lore: Hmm. Rather depressing to realize that in more than 12 years of Arcane Lore and Pages from the Mages, this is only the third spellbook by a female writer revealed in the magazine. (and the other two were both written by Ed.) Once again the bias inherent in people's assumptions is thrown into sharp relief by the few exceptions. Still, this little collection has 9th level spells in it, so a few women are managing to follow the seven sister's example and go all the way to archmagedom. Say hello to Zala and her book of barriers. Looks like they're going to be filling in abjuration, which is also one of the more neglected schools. How very pleasing.
Zala's Icejacket coats you in a mobile barrier of snow. This is moderately versatile and protects you against both mundane and magical heat. Plus you could break a bit off to suck if you don't have a cleric to provide water.
Compose Mind protects you from mundane distractions, and low level magic ones too. If I had that, I'd be getting all this writing done a hell of a lot faster. :p
Zala's Lifeforce Guardian keeps your soul safe. This protects against some quite powerful magics for such a low level spell, such as energy draining. You're unlikely to regret learning this one. After all, a life ends, but your soul should be forever if you look after it properly. Yet far too many people take it for granted. Take care of your soul.
Zala's Forcebuckler gives you generalised AC and spell protection. It's another one that burns itself out after absorbing an attack. Is that going to be a general trait of this collection?
Zala's Amberhelm counters psionics. They won't get inside your mind. It can be overloaded, but it's a lot trickier, as the levels mount up.
Repulse Metal is of course perfect for dealing with those plate-clad lummoxes. And unlike a rust monster, it won't ruin their equipment. Keep them at a distance and use your wizardly blasting powers to their full potential.
Thunguul's Preservation squirrels some of your hp away for a rainy day. Another trick enemy wizards can use to escape insufficiently zealous heroes and get revenge later.
Zala's Deception combines blink and mirror image to make your location indeterminate for an entire combat. The images don't disappear and your real location teleports between them. This should increase your survivability quite a lot.
Zala's Disruption causes everyone around (including the caster) to forget a load of the spells they've memorized. Like any AoE spell, this needs to be applied wisely. After all, it's not often you face large quantities of low level spellcasters, unlike warriors, and you could wind up hurting your own party more.
Tobian's Ultimate Circle is completely invulnerable from one side only. Course, if you cast two of them, that little problem can be fixed, and you have a completely impenetrable warding circle that'll outlast the world. Now that's the kind of thing you should be doing with 9th level magic. Another strong entry in this series.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 4/7
Eight ways to tame the dark overlord: After several issues in a row where they showed you how to make your villains scary and effective, they remember that just maybe the heroes are supposed to win. How are they going to do that if the villain outclasses the heroes that much? Weak points! Be they psychological, or actual statistical issues, you have to give the players something they can exploit. Or just make them imprisoned, crippled or in another plane, and the real battle is to keep them from being unleashed on the world, because if you face them directly, you've already lost. After all, the only time we ever see Sauron in LotR is briefly via palantir, and he's defeated by exploiting a weak spot rather than direct combat. And if the players do screw up, you can give them at least one second chance by having them captured instead of killed, which we know doesn't work well in D&D. So this is very typical 2nd edition advice encouraging you to put story before mechanics, and if necessary, break the rules to make the story continue to work. A bit awkward really. You're trying to fix problems you made in the first place. Oh if only they could have just not made them in the first place.
Role-playing reviews: Players option: Combat and tactics sees Rick skeptical at first, but won over fairly quickly. For the first time in, like, evar, someone is trying to seriously clean up the rules of the game instead of just adding more and more stuff or giving them a cosmetic polish. Attacks of opportunity, weapon groups, a greater emphasis on tactical movement, there's quite a bit of stuff that would make it into the next edition, albeit further cleaned up in a lot of ways. Course, there's also quite a lot of stuff that wouldn't as well, and there's too many options for a group to really use it all at once. It OUGHT to improve your game. Well, yeah. In theory, every supplement you buy ought to improve the game. But in practice, too many choices leads to options paralysis and less gets done. And this is where that point hits for me. Maybe if they'd done it a few years earlier, it wouldn't be such a problem. Once again, there's plenty to speculate about how this could have been done differently and in a less alienating way. As is often the case at the moment, I'm finding it rather frustrating.
The ultimate martial artist is for the HERO system. With over a hundred martial arts detailed from around the world, with plenty of research on their details, and how they translate into the system, it is indeed pretty ultimate. On top of that, it has conversion notes for lots of popular systems, including D&D, that'll allow you to add some more MA to them as well. Looks like you can get plenty of bang for your buck from this one.
Arms Law is of course for Rolemaster. And equally obviously, It makes skills & powers look quick and simple. Which is of course exactly what it's target audience buy it for. That and the funny bits in the vast critical hit tables, which never seems to get old. If you want your combat complex and brutal, accept no substitute. But since Rick is starting to incline towards lighter games, he doesn't give it as high a mark as the other two.
The role of books: Angel souls and devil hearts by Christopher Golden is a high action vampire thriller, owing as much to James Bond as Dracula. People are coming up with all kinds of different vampire variants these days, and doing well from them. Course, he'll do even better once he moves into playing with other people's worlds, but that's another story for a different time and place.
The fearful summons by Denny Martin Flynn is another star trek book that fails to write the existing characters very well. Seems like they have particularly low quality control as franchises go, as they get easily the most complaints on that front. Maybe it's that John is a big fan of the series, and so has high standards for writing the characters properly.
Tapestries, edited by Kathy Ice is a Magic:the Gathering anthology that does more to fill in the setting than the novels reviewed a few months ago. It also sees humour start to enter the design. As with most anthologies, there are a few missteps, and the lack of illustrations is a bit curious, but it's still an improvement. Where will WotC take their big moneyspinning property next?
The key of the Keplian by Andre Norton & Lyn McConchie feels like it's one of those franchise books where the younger author does most of the work, follows their formula, and then they both reap the rewards. Not that it's bad, but it doesn't seem to add much to the world, and the marketing is somewhat incongruous. Probably not worth bothering with unless you're an established fan.
The baker's boy by J V Jones, by contrast, is a first novel that manages to bypass several common fantasy flaws, and be quite distinctive as well. It gets to the point, the worldbuilding has some very amusing touches, and both good and bad guys are human and understandable. And the marketing is similarly quirky and amusing. Well, a bit of bread with the review copies certainly gets a reviewer's attention, and can hardly be called bribery. A lot of products could benefit from care like that.
Rumbles: You know, Wolf just told us he was leaving in the editorial. We really didn't need it as lead news here as well. Slow month? Or just self-aggrandisement. Actually, it's quite a busy one. TSR loses a second tim, (brown this time) but is getting a Dragon Dice computer game and a new Forgotten Realms computer game as well. There's another new gaming magazine out, d8, which will die in just over a year's time. GDW has sold the licence for a Space: 1889 movie, which is another spinoff that never seems to have come to fruition. Cthulhu is getting a collectible card game, which just depresses me, as is Marvel Comics, FFG, and WWII, of all things. Well, it was popular for wargamers. Why not try recapturing that market? Even more strangely, Mortal Kombat is hosting an entire stageshow featuring tons of real life martial artists. I guess when you're making money hand over fist, you get a little extravagant. In general, it seems like what's going on in movies and computer gaming is more interesting than what's going on in RPG's. Maybe they need more high profile designer drama or something to keep people interested.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 5/7
Floyd: Another new comic starts. Annoying ginger apprentice wizard loses his master due to magical politics. Wackiness and big explosions ensue. His life is about to get very interesting.
Forum: Michael A Fiorentino comes to the defence of TSR's current trends in adventure design. Gamers are bored with just wandering around, they want story! Yes, but a story where you can choose what happens would be nice.
Jason Johnson rules that haste may drain your lifespan, but that's due to stress rather than actual aging. That reduces quite a lot of the pure logic stupidity.
Ed Freidlander contributes for the first time in a few years, to talk about the human weight and body composition. This is another area D&D isn't too realistic on, and could stand to revise it's formulae for next edition.
Hussain Adulhaqq finds that his characters refuse to pay for anything, preferring to rob and kill all the shopkeepers. You know, they really ought to bite off more than they can chew at some point. And if they are too powerful, there's been plenty of advice on how to deal with that over the years.
Steven A. Greenfield hasn't found female gamers have any problem in his games. Guess this is another annoying thing with lots of regional variation.
Koby Bryan is another individual who feel TSR's output has really gone downhill in recent years, and is more concerned with making money than encouraging creativity. We don't want to be hemmed in, and we don't want style over substance. Smarten up, or many more people will leave the fold.
J. B. Pollard has more advice on dealing with powergamers. A shapeshifted dragon in politically powerful positions means brown trousers time if they try to completely mess up the status quo. Even ridiculously tough characters have issues with that kind of damage output.
Steve Bitz thinks we ought to have sentient armor as well as sentient weapons. It's a lot easier to have them take over in amusing fashion, and should liven things up. I quite agree, as I have said before.
The dragon's bestiary: Ahh, yes, the Slaad lords. Created by Charles Stross way back in the fiend folio. Course, that's long out of print, and unique enemies seem notably rarer in 2nd edition, Ravenloft excepted. A few of the old de :shut yo mouth: (hey, I'm talking about Graz'zt here) lords have come back recently in Planescape though, so it seems that this is no longer a strict policy like it was around the changeover period. And since so many people won't have access to the originals, like a few of the ecologies, reprinting the stats seems a good thing to do. And indeed, this was where I first read about these guys. This will be an interesting one to revisit now I've actually read the FF.
Ssendam gets some fairly substantial changes, including a gender switch ( O_o Can a giant golden amoeba really be said to have a gender? ) and serious behavioural tendency alterations along with quite a bit of powering up in general (apart from the nerfing of it's energy draining ability :rolleyes:) It all feels like more of a rewrite than an updating, and I do wonder what the motivation of the writer was.
Ygorl isn't powered up nearly as much, putting him firmly below Ssendam whereas before they were pretty near equals overall. He's also considerably less changed, with all the fluff from the previous version updated and expanded upon. When contrasted with the previous entry, that makes this whole seem even more curious.
Chourst, on the other hand, isn't rehashed. He is however a personification of the lulz school of chaotic neutral, as also practiced by the xaositects and fishmalks. This also makes him seem rather annoying and out of place in these more serious times.
Rennbuu is slightly less goofy, but probably even more annoying. Randomly changing your colour is like girdles of gender changing. Statistically, it may mean nothing, but few are the people who will be happy about their character becoming purple with orange pinstripes unexpectedly. In short, it seems that this is an article that has not aged well, and didn't have respect for it's source material either, leaning quite strongly towards the kender side. Bleah. I want to wash my hands after reading this.
ARS Magica stops numbering their editions, and just revises them. For now, anyway. The next owners will have different ideas.
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 6/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magic items to buff your familiar. We've already had articles on getting hold of better familiars (issue 86), and using magic to enhance your existing familiar. (issue 181) So now an enterprising wizard has even more tools to ensure their companion's badassity.
Amulets of mutual location are yet another tool for ensuring splitting the party isn't permanent. What's that Skippy? Your wizard's stuck down the well again? You're getting very tired of that joke and wish he'd just memorise levitate? You wish you'd never answered the call at all? Ok then.
The Basin of disguises lets you disguise your bird by giving it a wash. Once again we have to consider every eventuality to foil the master detectives. They are recycling abilities in different containers with increasing frequency these days.
Boots of manipulation give your familiar fingers! Oh, what a joyful day for them, especially if you've already enhanced their intelligence. Much gratitude ahoy.
The Bowl of Dampness keeps anything in it properly moistened no matter how hot and dry it is. A niche item, but one that could save lives, or keep something valuable and fragile from getting spoiled on the way to market or making a magic item.
Coats of Adaption do exactly the same as the necklace would. I suspect we'll be seeing some more of these straight conversions in here. In fact, to save myself more boredom than I really have to, I shall just extract them all. Coats of displacing, Collars of protection, Legbands of Sharpness, you are all creatively moribund direct conversions of existing items. I yawn and flick my thumb at you. Begone!
Coats of Slipperiness keep them from being pinned down. Just the thing for if you're about to be captured and need to get a message out.
Collars of defending let your familiar use your saving throws. Now that's going to save their life more than a few times at high level.
Collars of freedom keep them from being mindfucked, ensuring their loyalty to you and you alone. At least, until you mistreat them too badly, at which point you won't be able to charm them back, but such is the risk that comes with power.
A Dropper of good measures lets you affect small animals with a potion without worrying about overdosing them. Not a problem I'd considered before, but given how much trouble vets have treating various species, I can see why they'd think of it.
Hoods of Suspension let you keep your falcon completely inert until you need them. If you have a whole bunch of these, you can make for seriously creepy tableaus. Another idea that's just ready for the stealing. Does Ravenloft have a falconer darklord?
Legbands of Identity make them immune to polymorphing. Course, this is another one that may be a disadvantage if your wizard forgets what items he's given his familiar.
Legbands of Haunting let them come back as a ghost to wreak their revenge against whoever killed them. Since ghosts in D&D are really scary, this will probably have the desired effect.
Oil of Repulsion keeps predators away. Since it only works on animals, this will only be much use if you're sending them on a solo mission. And how often do you do a thing like that?
The ecology of the crystal spider: The ecologies continue to venture to new worlds, with one set in Athas. Not a place where you get to do much detached academic study, but one where knowing what dangerous stuff is out there, how to deal with it, and if you can eat it after doing so is crucial. This ecology doesn't really take full advantage of this opportunity, lapsing back into detached pontification for the majority of it's length, showing a very detailed knowledge, without telling the story of how that knowledge was obtained. The results are still useful, and full of interesting little details, but overall, this isn't a brilliant ecology like the last few. Back to the up and down it is then.
More than 101 uses for a portable hole: Ah yes, this ever popular item. Unlike the decanter of Endless Water, very few adventurers (unless their DM simply doesn't enforce encumbrance in the first place) undervalue it's usefulness. But still, they might underestimate just what they can fit in, that would simply be unfeasible in any number of backpacks due to bulkiness or fragility. And by being prepared, and bringing this stuff in, they're more likely to survive than if they just threw everything in the hole as they looted it, and then thought no more of it until it was time to divide the spoils. So this is filled with ideas, some of them cool, some of them silly, but most of them pretty inventive. And as with the Decanter article in issue 171, they also offer plenty of variants on the item that would give them further uses and possibly problems to deal with. So this is one of those articles that's not only full of tricks for you to use, but encourages you to come up with your own. Brain food of the best kind, really. They really ought to do more articles like this, taking an overlooked part of the game and expanding upon it. Now, if only there was a snappy alliterative column name that would fit.
Sage advice: Do bards suffer penalties for trying to read languages in armour?! ( No. That's just silly.)
Does magical armour reduce thief skill penalties (no)
Can druids wear armour other than leather (as long as it's made from natural materials )
Why doesn't magic resistance work on stoneskin (because it's buffing them, not directly affecting you. Another reason why buffs are better than blasts at high level.)
Isn't it too easy to spot when a jackal's stolen your spells ( Probably. Skip'll make it a little trickier, just for you. )
Can you stop casting a spell halfway through, then pick up later ( No. Be thankful this isn't Buffy, or who knows what would happen. In D&D, it just gets wasted)
What's the point of speed factors (For nitpicking with. After all, having nits sucks, especially when you're just a poor boy growing up on the mean shores of lake geneva. No-one would do it for Skip, so Skip had to get good at picking nits for himself. )
What's a samovar (An arabian teapot, short and stout.)
Can Elementalists or sha'irs learn the kits from the complete sha'irs handbook (No, because then they'd have two kits. Why did we call it the complete sha'irs handbook if they can't use the stuff in it? Good question.)
Can you have firearms in planescape (It's a big universe. Probably. They won't work the same from plane to plane though, just like everything else. Expect lots of retooling every bloody time you go somewhere new. )
What happens if wild mages cast spells in wild magic zones (Everything goes wild. What do you think. Extra randomness on toast with a little dancing chaos beast on top. Wise wild mages wouldn't do it, but wise mages don't become wild mages.)
Do you retain your class when reincarnated (As long as the new form can be that class. If not, you'll have to start again. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995
part 7/7
Jen is finally starting to suspect something is amiss in libram X. Dragonmirth is anachronising again. Swordplay are totally fair in dividing their treasure. For a certain perspective of fair. Yamara goes full-page as a world ends, and a woman is reborn. Yay, no more baldness.
The game wizards: Back to bigging up the CCG's in here. Quite literally, as it's time for the gods to be introduced to the Blood War. So this is another basic promotional article, listing the various new cards that are coming out in the expansion, and giving us a couple of themed sample decks. Yawn. It's over quickly, so I shall skip over it quickly as well, knowing that they'll hopefully be getting rid of this kind of dreck soon. Why is reading about this so much duller than the wargaming stuff in the early 80's? Why have their methods changed for the worse so significantly? Why does this not make me want to investigate the games further at all? I'm sure their marketing people would love to know the answer to that. Trouble is, if it's something like you can't manufacture sincere enthusiasm, and people can tell the difference, there's not a lot you can do apart from easing up on the top down control, and hoping someone comes along with a cool new idea that isn't focus-grouped into blandness.
Eye of the monitor: As mentioned earlier, this is Jay and Dee's final appearance. Their sacking must have been fairly abrupt, because they don't get given the chance to say goodbye, instead treating this as just another day at the office. Indeed, they introduce another reviewer as if he will become a regular contributor, when in actuality, we never see him in the magazine again. I'm having flashbacks to the mysterious disappearance of Pinsom and Jasmine when Kim took over. There's definitely some behind the scenes unpleasantness going on this time round. Who else will be on the chopping block?
Hammer of the gods is a sim game with you playing vikings building communities, and then going out looting and pillaging. With decent diplomacy options, extra quests, and multiplayer options, it offers more than enough choices to keep you busy for a long time, and doesn't get boring while doing so. Sounds like you can get good bang for your buck from this one.
Machiavelli the Prince gets a second review in quick succession. (again) This time they are aware of the previous review and try and comment around it. In the end though, it doesn't hold up quite as well as Hammer of the Gods, which seems more cohesive in design.
Toh Shin Den and Ridge Racer get tiny reviews from just Dee. The first is a reasonably good fighting game, while the second is a rather bog standard racing game. Nothing much to say here. It's as if he was interrupted mid review or something. Hmm.
High seas Trader has a rather long, but ultimately negative review from our guest reviewer. It looks good, and there's plenty to do, with a good economic system, but the combat system sucks, and many of the options are simply suboptimal or not expanded upon properly. Sounds like it needed a good deal more development and playtesting before being released.
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms triple bills again. Elminster's ecologies get a second appendix, covering two more out of the way adventuring locales. Just how likely are you to find certain monsters there? Back in the Dalelands, Randal Morn is rescued and takes his rightful place. Assuming the PC's have done their job. You could get a doppleganger to take his place and rule in his stead. :rubs hands evily: And similarly, Troy Denning completes the giants trilogy with The Titan of Twilight. Happy ending left open for future adventures seems the likely order of the day, if I know them.
Planescape gets it's second Monstrous compendium appendix. More creatures nifty and weird, including a complete set of mephits for all your elemental mischief, and a bunch of new alignment exemplar races. As you'd expect, many of these are powerful, and have annoying laundry lists of powers and immunities. Magic missile is no longer the old faithful it used to be.
Ravenloft reprints I, Strahd in paperback. Yawn. Not worth mentioning, really.
Endless Quest revisits greyhawk in Bigby's curse. Keep him from becoming a lich? That sounds a bit sketchy. Normally you don't get to be a lich without serious conscious effort, and stay fairly rational if you do. Who's idea was this.
And finally, we have the Terror T. R. A. X. interactive audio CD games. More buh inducing and probably expensive to produce ideas. Did they have a bloc hiring of studio time they needed to fill or something?
As usual, there are a few great articles in this one, but there really is a landslide of poor articles, plus the rather badly handled removal of the computer games columnists. It feels like people are quitting because they cant take the pressure, and their replacements are throwing their weight around, and in the process deadlines are slipping and quality control is being forgotten. If anything, this is the most turmoil-ridden issue yet. Have we reached the bottom, or is there even worse to follow? Guess I'll find out soon enough.
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 1/7
124 pages. We get a funny little red triangle underlining the various headers. Is this your revamp? It looks crap, especially superimposed upon the more conventionally painted rest of the cover. It's like someone's first attempt with 3D modelling software. The rest of the cover isn't too bad though, occupying the uncanny valley nicely. Inside, they're experimenting with format too, changing the shapes and colour schemes of all the headers, and often not getting it quite right. Things have come down to the wire enough that they're making their mistakes in public again, rather than having a decent buffer. And unlike me, they can't slow down to deal with the pressure better. Well, it's more interesting than the first half of this year, anyway. Let's see what's happened to the writing.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who has players who refuse to learn the rules. If they're really that dumb, you may have to just drop them. Some people are not worth the effort.
A complaint about the whole SASE thing being a pain when you're an international writer. Yes, you will have to pay extra. If they want to help with that, they could start allowing online submissions and correspondence.
A letter asking if the new printings of the corebooks are essential. Of course not, my dear. Merely desirable for both you and I.
A letter criticising issue 219's armor nerfing article. It's amazing what a well trained person can do even in full plate, and the agility hit isn't that great if it's properly fitted and balanced. They were merely overexaggerating for genre emulation.
And finally, a continuation on the alcohol question. It should be done responsibly. Yes, but irresponsible drinking is responsible for so many interesting stories in real life it would be a shame to leave it out of our gaming.
Editorial: Hello to a second new editor this year. Anthony Bryant wasn't a promotion, but someone headhunted from an entirely different magazine, moving in from a different state as well. Which means that learning the ropes has been compounded with the shock of adapting to the weather and new environment. Still, he seems to be both a professional in the field, and a long-term gamer, which is obviously what they're looking for, hoping to shake things up in a way that promoting upwards wouldn't manage. Well, there are worse things to try, but it does mean that the lower members of staff are now more experienced than the boss, which I know full well can cause resentment and erode team spirit. So once again I'm suspicious about this, especially as he doesn't seem to have lasted very long in the job. What things will they try during his tenure? As usual, we'll find out soon enough.
First quest: Doug Niles finally takes a turn here. He's the pulp guy, and it's not at all surprising he got inspired to engage in gaming via that route. Actually, it looks like he might well have been a writer anyway, even without being introduced to roleplaying by a rather large stroke of luck. But even so, having people to test out your ideas on a weekly basis does do quite a bit for your creative confidence. After all, if you don't enjoy something, it becomes a lot harder to persist with it and get really good. This is really a reminder that very few great things happen in a vacuum, and luck plays a huge part in people's lives. And also, incidentally, a reminder that Gary was a fairly mature adult with teenage kids when he developed D&D, not some whiz-kid, and that probably also had a significant influence on early playtests. So unlike the last few, this column actually has a degree of significance in overall gaming history. That is an improvement.
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 2/7
The Death Knight: Well, we're having a decent halloween themed beginning, anyway. Death knights are dramatically interesting because you have to have started off as a good guy and then fallen to darkness to become one. This isn't exactly an ecology, more the equivalent of Council of Wyrms or the complete book of humanoids, turning them from a monster entry into a class/race combo by letting them scale, spreading the abilities they gain out over various levels, and codifying the amount of undead followers they gain. It's obviously intended to keep them as bad guys, but like antipaladins, there is sufficient detail that a PC could run one if they were permitted too. In any case, it lets you customise them quite nicely as big bads, and also provides roleplaying and adventure designing hints for campaigns featuring them. So this is a pretty likable feature, that does something they haven't done for way too long. New classes, kits and races are one of those things the magazine is ideally suited to cover, that they don't do nearly enough on. Hopefully that's one of the things they'll fix in this revamp.
The necrology of the Penanggalan: Ahh, ecologies under another name. We've had a few of those over the years, all with a different twist. In this case, well, the fact that it involves undead should make the reason behind this name change pretty clear. This is a fairly familiar story of corruption, deception, and aaaaaaaangst. But the body horror of the original myths has been played down, with the full-on display of flying viscera that they possessed in 1st ed replaced by a more utilitarian combo blood reservoir and clubbing device. Bloody 2nd ed bowdlerisation. It also has that other great staple, of the woman trying to prove herself in a man's world. And then turning into a weepy twit under pressure and having to be rescued instead of seeing that there is a pragmatic solution to the problem at hand. You're living in a magic heavy world. Do you not think that the solution to the little issue of becoming an undead bloodsucking fiend would not be known to your bosses. Dear oh dear. It's certainly not dull, but I do not approve of several of these stylistic choices. If this is the kind of thing that'll be even more common next year, it's going to get pretty irritating.
Role-playing reviews is in theme, as isn't too surprising. Dark magic for villains to glory in, and heroes to be tempted by. Virtually every successful game has something like that, so there's no shortage of things to review. The formatting change for the header isn't too jarring either. This doesn't look like it's being hurt by the changeover. Plus the intro is pretty good, and has some amusing callbacks to previous reviews. He's still got it.
GURPS Voodoo sees CJ Carella do WoD lite. Wait a minute. Isn't that exactly what Witchcraft has been described as as well? :D Not that it's much like the later game, with the focus being on ritual magic and a detailed, well researched, fairly realistic portrayal of the supernatural elements. And since he's going from this to Palladium's Nightbane, he can hardly be said to lack versatility. If anything, it tries to throw too much into the pot, trying to make the scope global and compatible with the themes of many other GURPS supplements. Still, they certainly can't call it bland, unlike many other books they've reviewed in the past.
The complete book of necromancers has plenty of cool bits and pieces, but two main criticisms. It's aimed towards DM's and discourages players from using it, which may reduce it's sales somewhat. And it's just too darn polite and tame in contrast to White Wolf's lurid output around the same time. Where are the decaying entrails and cackling inanity?!!!1 TSR being stuck in the disney position, trying to be the family friendly good guys everyone else plays off does have it's limitations.
The bronze grimoire is the magic expansion for the Elric RPG. As this is from the works of Michael Moorcock, Law vs Chaos is the primary conflict in the universe and magic is moderately firmly on the side of chaos. Which means it has some rather interesting side-effects if the spells go wrong, and the rune magic operates under rules that are even more detailed and idiosyncratic. Rick's main complaint this time is that it's not very friendly to people who haven't read the original books, with setting detail being a bit sparse. Gotta collect 'em all, etc etc. Really, who buys a licensed game without reading the source material first? (although I must admit I was tempted with Smallville)
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 3/7
Mage: The ascension gets 4 page spread of rich purple to advertise it's new edition. White Wolf has a promotional budget, and they're not afraid to do a little splurging.
Sage advice also has to put up with the horrible triangle underlining it. And answering questions about players option stuff. Hard times are comin for the company, and skip's gotta lump it with everyone else.
Why aren't attack options modified by character size (Finesse is more important than mass in D&D. Abstract combat, remember.)
What are the stats for shield punches and rushes (Does skip have to write this? Please, Lorraine, have mercy. :looks up: :Crash of thunder, stab of organ music: Yes mistress, Skip understands. Skip will tell them.)
Shouldn't light and medium lances inflict double damage from horseback (yes)
Are lanterns really that light (No. Did you really want to know that? Now you have several extra pounds of equipment to worry about.)
Shouldn't the staff sling be large (no. Your knowledge of historical weapons is insufficient, fool)
Do creatures with low AC's become immune to whips (nah. Abstract combat again. You can always get 'em in the eyes if they don't have any other weak spots.)
Isn't the direct fire example wrong (No, you're wrong! Get outta Skip's sight, you peon! )
What's the damage for a gaff/hook (Same as it ever was. Aint that the way you like it, livin wild wild wild.)
My old kits don't work with the new rules! (Nope. You'll have to choose. One or the other, you can't have both. So what's it gonna be? Are you prepared to make that choice? )
Do any kits automatically get weapon mastery ( no. You gotta pay the price if you wanna be that badass)
The new initiative system is messed up! (Yeah. Skip completely ag :Crash of thunder, ominous organ music: er ...... disagrees with you, fool! It makes perfect sense! Now here's a message from our sponsors. )
What's the deal with guarding (we're doing experiments with stuff we might want to put in the new edition, like attacks of opportunity)
Why do psonic creatures have to wait to use their powers (Speed of thought isn't infinite. Big creatures have big brains, so the thoughts take longer to get from one end of it to the other.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 4/7
Rumblings once again repeats what we just found out in the editorial anyway. What a waste of word count. Other than that, they're also again more concerned with computer games than straight RPG's. Interplay's plans for the Forgotten Realms, Planescape and Dragon Dice continue to gather steam, and on top of that, they're planning another console D&D game for the Playstation & Saturn. There's also Magic: the gathering and Illuminati spinoffs on the way. I guess CCG's and computer games are now far more dominant in terms of media space. The result is that they seem to be actively pushing our spending away from RPGing. This column is still a real problem then.
Roaming the Realms: Another IC narrated bit of Forgotten Realms setting building. Those are generally pretty entertaining. Curiously, it's not by Ed or one of his regular sidekicks like Jeff or Steven. It is however quite high density, fitting in stuff about a whole bunch of elf settlements, their cultural quirks and significant NPC's. Exactly who the narrator is isn't revealed, although we do get some hints. This isn't bad at all, although unlike with Ed's stuff you don't get the impression that all the hints connect up to a bigger world out there. I suppose that's another sign of how big the realms has become, and how many people are playing in it these days. It might not all add up, which means you'll have to choose which ideas to give priority. And if there's a conflict, I'm afraid I'm probably going to go with Ed's vision. Overall, this article'll just have to join the many in the middle, not having anything to mark it as brilliant or terrible.
Fiction: On the scent at slab's by John Gregory Betancourt. A belated third appearance in the magazine for this series. (see issues 105 and 126) I get the impression that there may be other stories in this series published elsewhere, and a little googling confirms this. I must pick up that anthology at that point. Once again this manages to be both funny and creepy, with the ghosts both interestingly alien in their actions and all too human in their motivations. By this point, I suspect he has a fairly good idea of the world around the tavern, even if the details were originally invented just to serve the stories. It certainly seems like a solid enough place to game in, even if it doesn't exactly fit D&D or wraith rules. In any case, it's both a welcome returnee, and a good story in it's own right, with plenty of room still for further follow-ups. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we get another instalment, so I'm a little disappointed. Guess it'll have to go down as another unfulfilled opportunity. Will anyone ever overtake Niall's record of 8 stories in the early years of the magazine? They've got a pretty steep hill to climb. (Or they'll need to bribe the editors. ;) )
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 5/7
Dragon interviews Steven Brust: After statting out Vlad Taltos a couple of issues ago, we now get to see the man behind the books. I suspect they might have been intended to go in the same issue, but you know what it's been like around here lately. Still, this is a very interesting interview, as we get to see a lot of the interplay between what someone intends to write, and what actually comes out. It does look like his writing involves quite a bit of conscious examination of fantasy, and his own tendencies, and then deliberately undercutting overused tropes so as to keep things interesting. He also reveals that he's toying with his audience as well, telling the stories in the books from the viewpoints of the characters, and intentionally misrepresenting certain details due to their biases. It's all very tricksy, and he certainly seems to be having fun with his writing. It's fortunate for him that writing what he likes resulted in the public liking it too, and playing with author voice didn't make them complain about being deceived and railroaded. Much of it comes down to not forgetting the core elements, like action and snappy dialogue, whatever experiments you're trying out in the larger scheme of things. That even carries over into the interview, where he manages to communicate a lot with fairly curt answers. And since he's still going today, he's obviously managed to find the sweet spot between giving the people what they want, and what they don't expect but will wind up liking anyway. I approve of this interview, as it's fun to read, is of a gamer, and gives us lots of tricks to play with, and possibly try in our own games. It's certainly much better than most of the Novel Ideas interviews.
The tricks and traps of illusions: Oh no, not this subject again. Slab may be a welcome returnee. Illusion adjudication, on the other hand, I am very very bored with, even though the last time it got a serious look at was in 1988. With multiple articles and forum follow-ups that dragged all the way into 1991, I think it got more than enough screentime. So it is with a heavy heart I see that a new generation needs to hear about this topic again. What should be considered reasonable doubt, so as to trigger a saving throw. The importance of the various senses in fooling particular creatures. And various reasonable situational modifiers. Zzzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzz. This is so not what I want to read about anymore. Next!
Floyd might know the basics of magic, but he really has a lot to learn about proper woodsmanship.
Adding substance to psionic combat: Oh great, another encouragement to describe your battles in an exciting manner rather than just rolling dice. Like we haven't seen those before. Only this time for psionic combat. Which really makes it too easy, since you have 5 different combat options with obviously differentiated descriptive natures, and since the battle is all in the minds of the participants, you're free to describe the attacks and defences as you please. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, no challenge at all. Which makes this article feel deeply pointless, really. It also feels like it's put here as promotion for their new products, which is a bit annoying. Subtlety fail, Mr Slavicsek. You'll have to write better than that if you want to pull us in and get us to update.
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 6/7
Who needs hit points when you have credit?: Building up and breaking down villains. Or in this case, both at once, with a side order of Tucker's Kobolds. Yup, this is about making level zero characters threatening to PC's. Something that certainly needs a little ingenuity, especially if the PC's are of the sort who's first reaction is to slaughter their way through any obstacle. Money certainly can't hurt, although it can make you a bigger target. Brains are pretty much a necessity. More powerful minions are very much an option, although you'll need good reasons why they don't just take over. Similarly, a neat magic item can be a great equaliser, but ones that have clever applications will work better than power adders, especially given how small the bonuses they offer are compared to character's natural scaling. It's all fairly tricky when you do the math. It will work better in some other systems, but even so, it's the kind of thing you'll want to do in moderation. So once again, they're encouraging us to fight against the rules to do something that makes dramatic sense. Something I continue to have very mixed feelings about. Make the rules better, and then they'll work with you instead of against you.
Secrets of the sunless seas: Tie-in time again. The Night Below is our big adventure for the year. In fact, it's not so much an adventure, as an entire campaign in a box, with a load of expansion on the underdark that you can use even if you don't put the characters on the main adventure path. And here's a few more glyphs for the new magic system. Since we're unlikely to see it again in actual books, this kind of crunch expansion is generally welcome. Here's 11 new glyphs which you can place in your underdark locations, just to keep players paranoid and ensure the monsters don't die too quickly or seem too dull. They range in power quite a lot, and the upper ones are pretty much a death sentence if you fail your save. It's possible but difficult for a PC to learn these tricks, and they're clearly explained enough that it all makes sense even if you haven't read the actual book. So like the half-dragon article in issue 206, I think this is one of the better tie-in articles they've managed, being useful in it's own right while also selling me on further products. That's the way to do it.
A slither in the dark: Oooh. A Call of Cthulhu article again. Interesting that this should be one of the last non TSR games they ever cover. It's popularity has been amazingly enduring, and if anything has gradually grown over the years. Course, that has come with a bit of dilution. In issue 162 they did an article on putting vampires into the game. This time, it's nagas. Since CoC already has fish-men hybrids, snake ones doesn't seem that much of a genre shift. And being able to swallow you whole is pretty scary even without the uncanny valley. With pretty decent ecology style fiction, with the usual san loss involved, this is quite entertaining, and of course, the new monster can be used for any BRP based system, not just Call of Cthulhu. I suppose that means they can also cater to a larger demographic than they would doing articles for most systems. I still wish they'd done World of Darkness ones at some point. Still, this is a pretty decent way to round off the issue's articles.
Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995
part 7/7
Things are starting to look up for the heroes in Libram X, but they aren't out of the woods yet. Dragonmirth has more humanisation of the undead. Swordplay's encounters are starting to blur into one, even for them.
White Wolf has got their dirty paws on the Lankhmar novels! Shock, Horror. They'll get narrative juices all over our old skool swords and sorcery! ;)
TSR Previews: Revising and revisiting seems to be fairly high this time. We get a new set of generic DM screens. Instead of one with 4 parts, we have 2 with 3 boards each. In theory more versatile, I found them more fiddly and irritating to use. So much for that plan. They also continue the floorplans series with Country sites. More understated but useful stuff that gets lost among the flashy splatbooks with new crunch.
The Forgotten Realms digs up a bunch of old Dragon articles, add some new stuff, and pads out Pages from the Mages to a full book. The ecologies managed to make the transition. Can this do the same and remain kickass?
Ravenloft pushes the boundaries of gaming in a different way with The Nightmare Lands. Shane Hensley takes you into a land where even when you're awake things are pretty screwy. When you fall asleep, they get even worse, because now you're playing under a different ruleset. That always puts experienced players on edge.
Dark Sun gets a new revised core set. Find out a lot more about the world and it's history, see a revised psionics system, and generally try and decide if you approve of the alterations or not. Some of them aren't actually that bad, heresy as it is to say so.
Dragonlance tries to kick off it's new generation properly. Margaret and Tracey return with Dragons of summer flame. Can they pass on the torch properly this time?
Mystara gets Dark Knight of Karameikos by Timothy Brown. Another new protagonist has an adventure launched by an awkward misunderstanding. My braaaaaiiiin iiiiissss Melllllting!!!!
Okay, some very mixed feelings on this issue. They are obviously making attempts to fix the problems that have crept up on them over the last few years. However, with the visual presentation taking a substantial turn for the worse, some very tired ideas, and repeated tricks that have lost a lot of their impact, overall, it's once again a slight decline in overall quality and satisfaction for me. Let's hope their graphic designer gets better at using the new equipment, because this is just a bit embarrassing. You'll have to try harder to teach this old dog some new tricks.
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 1/7
124 pages. The budget cuts continue, with the degree of shading and definition on the cover art taking a real drop. Turn up the contrast too much, and convincingness takes a hike. The red triangle continues to look like it's poorly superimposed on the rest of the image as well. On the inside, we have messy disrupted lines being worrisomely common. Not sure if that was in the original magazine, or a result of careless scanning, but either way, it's another downwards step for the magazine. The issues will continue to mount up until the company changeover, it seems. Let's see how much worse they can get.
In this issue:
Letters: A letter from someone who who is profoundly peeved by the new Dark Sun boxed set. All my stuff is invalidated! Now now, most of the rules stuff is still perfectly functional, particularly the splatbooks. And to be frank, it's only excess entitlement that makes you think you should get a break on new editions.
A letter complaining about the recent absence of Dragonlance stuff. This is met with cryptic teasering. We have big stuff planned. Stay tuned next year. That's right. Work them all up to let them down again. ;)
A request for an anthology of stories from the magazine. They give the usual noncommittal response. Make us think it's profitable, and we'll consider it. No change there then.
A request that they review more of their own books. That's a perilous path to tread, as it opens up accusations of house organism very easily. Oh, if only there were another big gaming magazine by another company that does these things for them to recommend. That would be more healthy for the whole gaming community.
A bold statement that the semi-regular columns are the best thing in the magazine, and the writer intends to send in submissions for them. The response to that is long and in-depth and digresses into talk about how much Dragon, Dungeon and the rest of TSR share staff. Perhaps that may in itself be part of the problem.
Editorial: Oh dear. Another bemoaning of nerd bitchiness. Oh what a surprise, that a group renowned for their lack of social skills wouldn't get along well even amongst themselves. Not that I'm in any position to point fingers. The fact that I'm pretty odd and dysfunctional should be fairly apparent to most of you by now, particularly if you're a Tangency regular. Of course, the fact that I don't even fit into an obvious geek mold, (moving from Genetic engineering/general transhumanism to conceptual hyperspacial physics modelling to combinatoric math and it's applications in musical harmony. ) makes me hesitant to engage in tribalism, because when you're in a group of one most of the time, it's both pointless and suicidal trying to pick on other people. So, um, yeah, Geek solidarity! Except for the sports statistics nerds. And the furries. And the people who actually read their religious texts and spoil it for the honest down to earth fanatics by pointing out what they actually say on various matters. ;) And definitely the pedophiles who hack other people's websites and hide their dirty pictures encrypted in there. Wait, I think that one does go beyond the boundaries of reasonable inclusiveness. Let's move on.
A more interesting point raised by this editorial is that of microcelebrity. This is something that has been massively increased by the internet, but even in those days, the D&D writers and staff had the experience of working at a job for most of the year (and not even a particularly brilliantly paying one at that) and then being treated like stars by the people who buy the books when they do meet them. It shows that the tendency to assign greater weight and authority to people who communicate with you through some artificial medium is pretty inherent in human nature, even when they hold no official position, qualification or mandate beyond their own skills and what they are willing to claim. Indeed, it's something I've experienced personally a few times. It leaves me very curious as to how much of our society is a perceptual construct based on peer pressure and what we can convince others of. How do you leverage the belief of others into something you can make a living from? It's the real big question of the internet age, and a problem I'd rather like to solve, as it would make my life a lot more pleasant.
First Quest: Tom Dowd? Google is not very helpful, due to both names being fairly common. Had to get to the third page before something pertinent came up. Still, with tons of Shadowrun credits, and a part in writing the original Vampire:the Masquerade book, perhaps I ought to know more. And indeed, his primary interest seems to be in sci-fi games, although he did play D&D as well. Curiously enough, he doesn't talk about the events of his first game at all, although he goes into plenty of detail about the circumstances that led up to it, and then the subsequent ones that got him into the gaming industry. Maybe time has blunted his memory. Or maybe it's the fact that he seems more interested in rules tinkering than the lives and times of individual characters. So I do find this vaguely dissatisfactory, as it's light on the kind of amusing life details you only get in this column. I wouldn't normally say this, but we want to hear about your characters, not you. :p
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 2/7
The lords of the nine: Oh dear yet again. Now this is another very sad reminder of the worst aspects of 2e. In both 1e and 3e, while the lords of the nine might possibly have been mysterious to the characters, they were fully known and statted out for any DM which had the right book. Trying to make them mysterious here is very much a case of closing the door after the horse has bolted. Although actually, this is already less mysterious than the Baator book in planes of Law, where only a small fraction of them were named. This time, everyone but the big boss As:urk: Excuse me for a second, GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE! I NEVER SIGNED YOUR NDA CONTRACT IN THE FIRST PLACE! AND IF YOU LOOK AT THE DIMENSIONAL TREATIES YOU'LL FIND THIS PLANET IS ALREADY CLAIMED BY ANOTHER HELL. UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET INTO A TURF WAR WITH SATAN I SUGGEST YOU ACT A LITTLE MORE CIRCUMSPECTLY. And really? Knife in the back? This will not wash and loses you several points for style. MUIRBOPPO NI OTREVER!
As I was saying, while it's fairly apparent that a majority of the company want more openness in the handling of fiends, and they have made some progress, we're still a long way from the openness and usability of the stuff they were making 12 years ago. Which is a shame, because they're trying so hard here. Yet both the descriptions and statistics are damnably vague, making them generic and difficult to use without further DM planning, and this whole article concentrates strongly on trying to establish atmosphere over in game usefulness. Presenting them as avatars rather than regular creatures further enhances the impression that you're not meant to be able to do stuff to meaningfully oppose them, and the whole thing has the air that the best thing you can do is avoid getting their attention in the first place. How deprotagonising. Which is especially odd given several of the lords have changed since 1e, so those keeping track will know they can be beaten. This is an excellent example of 2nd edition fail caused by overall politics in the company. Still. it couldn't have happened to a more ironically appropriate group of creatures, could it?
The dragon's bestiary: Hmm. Gargoyles haven't had as much attention as some of the other monster types around, but they haven't been completely absent from the magazine either. (see issues 101 & 131) But they certainly seem like they have room for quirky variants, and that's what this issue has to offer. Just the thing for a cleric who needs an unobtrusive guardian for their church.
Spouters lurk on the eaves of a building and send acidic jets of fluid at anyone who doesn't give the password. Make sure you pack them away if you're planning on holding a service then.
Archers look cherubic, but they're little psychopaths who'll shoot up a whole town if not stopped. One of these could be the driver for quite a nice horror story/murder mystery as long as they make sure they only struck when no-one else is around. After all, who's going to suspect the statue? Muahahahaha!!
Stone Lions generally come in pairs, guarding the front of a building, as you'd expect. They're relatively unlikely to cause problems for their creator, so they seem like a good investment, unlike so many other created beings which are more trouble than they're worth.
Grandfather Plaques are another variant on the old talking door theme. We've seen plenty of these before, so I simply say meharoo to this one. Can't win 'em all.
Primal Rage: Hmm. They've recently brought back conversions of novels. Now they're introducing AD&D conversions of video games as well. Very interesting. It's not even one of the expected RPG's either. Instead, it's a giant monster fighting game called Primal Rage. Now that is a strange choice. Still, it means you have some creatures that are supposed to be ridiculously powerful and have some strange tricks, and they aren't being modelled by classes, so I have far less to complain about than usual. Plus I'm just so surprised that it's completely suspended my normal ennui. Onto the specific creatures then.
Blizzard is a gigantic simian with oversized jaws, and unsurprisingly, cold attacks. He can either breathe it, or summon blasts of it down to hurt the enemies at a distance. Sounds pretty familiar from fighting games I've played.
Talon is the short agile one, at only 16' tall. Once again, his abilities are pretty directly modelled. High speed means he usually attacks first, plus he can jump on an enemy's head, and summon other velociraptors to mob opponents. Not sure how that would convert to facing normal sized PC's, but it's unlikely to be pretty. Certainly looks likely to convert to an interesting looking battle.
Vertigo is a cobrasaur, and looks like she might be distantly related to demogorgon. A hypnotic gaze, acidic spit, teleportation, and general spellcasting, she definitely seems the most versatile as a big bad in a regular game. Something like that looming over you laughing maniacally would be rather scary. So I think this article has quite a bit of game usability, even if they don't have very good sphere selections for their worshippers. Plus I rather enjoyed it. Can they continue to pick good choices for conversion? I guess we'll just have to see.
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 3/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: We riff off both Ed Greenwood and Tolkien here this month, with 9 more magic rings. We also see them reset the artwork to old skool style, which looks curiously clunky and blurry, as if it's been photocopied too many times and scaled up and down in a computer without proper antialiasing. More evidence that their budget is going doooooooooown. Still, they haven't come up with many hugely inspired items in the past few years. Maybe the ideas will be inversely proportional to the presentation.
Rings of Assimilation let you fit other items into your ring slot. This seems like a waste in the case of ioun stones, but it might be handy for pearls, scarabs, and the like. Metamagic effects continue to develop in interesting ways.
A Ring of Autonomy makes you immune to mindfucking. Just what every adventurer wants for christmas. Few things are more valuable than assured free will.
A Ring of Cages lets you escape from said implements. It's very hard to detect too. Another failsafe that's almost too valuable really. Who could possibly say no?
Rings of Life shield you from energy draining. Looks like antiscrewage really is the name of the game this month. I quite approve.
Rings of Might give you power over all 4 elements. All purpose badassery makes you able to do without wizards little better. Hey ho.
A Ring of Obstruction prevents you from casting spells. Like a ring of weakness, this will completely screw you over until you can get a remove curse. Doncha just love it when that happens.
A Ring of Shields lets you make a magical force shield. This isn't too impressive normally, but will really save your hide if something tries to disintegrate you. Pray you or the DM remember this.
A Ring of Swords makes a magical blade of various types. All are rather scarier than a standard blade, but it only has limited charges. Still, your own lightsaber is another one that seems very tempting to certain players. Are you ready to be generous?
A Ring of Timelessness makes you immortal. It does not protect you from the mental pressures of said state, however. But what's a little insanity among friends anyway? All your buds'll be shades or liches or something, and I'm sure they'll be forgiving of your idiosyncrasies.
Role-playing reviews:Bug city is the kind of adventure that completely changes a big part of a setting, turning chicago into a sealed off zone infested with giant insects, and trapping the players inside to survive however they can. This may involve resorting to eating the bugs, or cannibalism. Rick finds the whole scenario more funny than he expected, because it is just so over the top. Something of this scope could do with being even bigger though. We're not all entomologists, and could do with some more ideas on how the lifecycles of giant bugs differ from real ones. Still, it's entertaining as both an adventure and political commentary, and adaptable to other cities and systems as well. It's certainly different, and a lot more ambitious than another dungeon crawl. Will you derail your game with this unnatural disaster?
Mystic China gives the palladium system it's oriental fix courtesy of Erick Wujik. The whole thing is fast-paced and easily explained, packing a ridiculous amount of info in and keeping the writing exciting at the same time. Rick gives it 6 pips, finding it lives up to the standard of Oriental Adventures quite adequately. Well, with source material this fun and diverse, it's not hard to fill out a book with ideas.
Pacific rim is for Cyberpunk 2020. This doesn't get such a good review, the sheer size of the area means things are again sketchy at times. You'd best invest in some good real geography books if it looks like your characters are going to spend much time there.
Tabloid! was released a good year ago now. Not sure why Rick is reviewing it here, but it is an entertaining idea. Still, since he freely admits that the system is exceedingly light, it's very much up to the DM and players, and their grasp of comedy to make it fun. All it'll do is get out of the way. You could play this premise under any system.
More interesting are some of the supplementary reviews. The Marco Volo series gets bizarrely high praise. Well, I guess they read better than they play. Meanwhile Dirty secrets of the Black Hand gets described as humourless. Uh yeah. Shapeshifting alien-infected plants. A vampire werewolf who has to be constantly kept from suicide. A power that makes you act like a skipping record. A whole family of ghouls raised explicitly for the purpose of child snatching. Can you not see the funny side of that? I suppose by contrast with the Volo impersonator the humour here has quite a bit more subtlety. But really, the vampire designers were having fun making this stuff too - I've seen their foreword dedications.
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 4/7
Winter Fantasy 96 gets a brief promotional article over recycled artwork. Meh, my dear, meh. Exactly the kind of thing you've been told to cut out.
The role of books: Season of shadows by Ellen Foxxe appears to be written under a pseudonym, with an unknown amount of the worldbuilding and plot done by the publisher. This results in John being curious who's behind it, and how much of it is actually a collaborative work. That is an interesting question. As I've said before, even when one person appears to be sole author, they do often benefit from a friend or SO providing an ear and holding up a mirror to their work. It's like an editor without the extra cost. Anyway, the review is positive overall.
Chicks in chainmail, edited by Esther Friesner is obviously on the lighterhearted side of fantasy female asskicking. There is of course good stories and bad ones, and a bit of cyberpunk in amongst the typical fantasy. And it is very obviously aimed at a female audience. But it is generally pretty entertaining, and any preachiness is generally outweighed by the fun. Since she's had stuff published in here, I can guess pretty well what this'll be like.
Time scout by Robert Asprin and Linda Evans is of course a story of time travel with fairly complicated rules that are crucial to the unfolding of the plot. Sounds fairly familiar. Still, as he says, the implementation is the important thing, and this fast-paced action filled one is pretty good. Looks like it's going to be all positive reviews this time around.
Fires of eden by Dan Simmons is essentially a bottleneck murder mystery, only set in Hawaii, with a cast of unpleasant gods endangering everyone. This means the structure may be traditional, but the trappings and twists certainly aren't your standard english country house cluedo cliches. Plus it's tightly plotted and well paced. No objections here then.
Point of hopes by Melissa Scott & Lisa A Barnett is another novel that gets plenty of praise for being well-crafted, well plotted, and understated in style, so you can uncover more with multiple readings. One of those cases where I'm sure John has said exactly the same in a previous review. Either he's been doing these too long, or I've been reading them regularly for too long.
The ecology of the chitine: Hmm. This ecology is delivered by a drow, upon one of their many enemies. Very interesting. In this case, it's a self-made problem, as the chitine were created by them, and then thrown out when they failed to live up to expectations. Lolth, on the other hand, still thinks they've got potential. But then, she's the kind of deity who really gets off on the idea of her worshippers fighting over who loves her more, while being randomly cruel to all sides to "make them stronger." A pretty short ecology, this is very much business as usual. Description, footnotes, a bit of new crunch. They may be planning to shake up the magazine, but it doesn't look like much needs changing here.
Eye of the monitor comes to an end with a rather embarrassing little piece about zeb's upgrade woes. Sure, it's vaguely reassuring seeing our familiar long-term writers suffering from the same problems as us, but it really doesn't make them seem like professional computer operators. Plus Windows '95? I'm not sure if I'm nostalgic for that or not. On balance I'm gonna have to go with not. I certainly remember our computers crashing a hell of a lot more in those days than they do now. So this is yet another case where they go out poorly, and with little warning, as if they know there's going to be some changes around here, but are expecting, or at least hoping to have a place in the new order, and trying to present a positive face accordingly. Life can be cruel.
Our only actual review here is of the Discworld computer game. This gets a decidedly mixed result. The writing is funny, the art is great, but the coding really is not up to scratch, and it gets very repetitive by the end. This is one game that seriously needs a good patching. A very definite shame, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 5/7
Forum belatedly gets the triangle, although it's in black and white. Unusually after skipping an issue, this is rather a short one too.
Adam Volk reminds all the rules pedants that are clogging up games that the rules shouldn't be set in stone, and the game runs faster if you cut away many of the options. Plus you should stick with one campaign for a while instead of jumping from one world and set of characters to another like a kid with ADD.
James Fahy also thinks that you need to get a little consistency in your game, and better communication if you want it to last. You can't throw the kitchen sink in the stew, as it's pretty indigestible, and what's going to store the water once you've done that.
W. Jason Peck wants to nerf level draining, and make temporary ability damage more common. Yeah, that's another prophetic one to chalk up. Ability damage is a good way to make the players really hurt without putting them out straight away.
Michael C. DeRosenroll defends TSR's modules and points out that the dungeon crawls are also frequently guilty of being over linear. That's pretty crap too you know, and I shouldn't tolerate it either.
Karrie Huff is another person who is being affected by sexism problems. Mind you, complaining that there aren't enough female classes and kits is a bit erroneous. I can think of far more kits that are female only than male only, and classes are all unisex. That bit shouldn't be a problem.
Sage advice: You've changed the ranges for infravision again. What are the right ones? (Whatever we say in the latest book. Buy it and implement it, or you'll no longer be playing an Official AD&Dtm Game)
Do drow really get to keep their Special powerz under Players option rules ( Sure. Retconning down the road, system blasting. We don't care how many players we drive off! Booyeah! )
You've messed up the paladin spell progression ( Skip will try and fix it. Unfortunately, Skip has been slacking on Skip's formatting training lately, and Skip will screw it as well, only in a different way)
Shouldn't table 46 have another entry (yup. )
Have crossbows been buffed (Yup. Len aint working here anymore. No-one's trying to keep them down. )
How do you determine a monsters mental AC ( Assume wis is equal to int unless stated otherwise. This may result in some stupid results, but works better than nothing.)
What happens to characters with multiple specialisations from the old rules (They lose them. Retcon, retcon, merrily down the stream. We don't care if we're pissing on your dreams.)
How do you decide if a grenade hits (by rolling to hit, just like any other weapon. Scatter only maters if you miss)
What are the costs for fighting proficiencies (Don't worry, Skip's got it. And Skip's not going to mess it up this time. )
Which class of a dual or multiclassed character gets the benefit of a green ioun stone. ( The current or highest one)
What spells are elves resistant too (Recycled question. Charm ones, like Skip said before)
Does exceptional strength boost ability checks (only as a tiebreaker)
Can a cloud of purification kill a tinified character (First, tinified isn't a word. For that rank stupidity, Skip will deny your request. Get outta mah office.)
How often can priests change their spells (each time they memorize them)
What happens if you try and teleport while carrying too much (Nothing. Better shed a little, tubby)
Isn't polymorph other too powerful (Probably. But it is also very thematic. We will have many debates on this before deciding to nerf it.)
How many creatures are affected by hold person (Not enough. You'll always wish you could get a few more. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 6/7
Here we see this years statement of ownership. And in the past year, it seems they've shed another eight and a half thousand readers, with an average of 71, but a last month total of 68. They haven't sold this little since 1981. The number of free copies given out also continues to increase, although they obfuscate that by splitting it between free posted stuff, and stuff given away to in house staff, at cons, etc. Ahh, nepotism, freebies and bonuses. Another thing that seems harmless, but can bleed a company dry if not kept in check.
The right monster for the right adventure: Call of Cthulhu coverage comes to an end with a rather long article on choosing what adversaries to throw at your players. There are now a lot of mythos beasties out there, and they have very different abilities and habitats. You need to keep track of that is you want to maintain a sense of reality. So this is mainly adventure hooks, with a little bit of ecologising thrown in. I'm not sure if it's aimed at experienced GM's who are dry on ideas for a session, or newbies who maybe haven't read the original book too extensively, (which isn't hard given that it's now an open universe with all manner of different authors adding to it without any kind of central clearing house. ) but it does seem useful, and packs a lot of information into it's page count. It has a surprisingly large number of decent illustrations as well. It all makes for a classy and elegiac goodbye for coverage of third party games. So long, eldritch mind-shattering horrors. We no longer practice affirmative action employment for your sorts. ;) Don't let the door hit you on the way out. :(
Floyd is indeed in over his head, and narrowly escapes becoming dinner. This wizard gig isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Fiction: Winter's Knight by Mark Anthony. Dragonslaying time again. It seems almost an anachronism these days, with the things given so much weight, but rarely encountered in actual games. And interestingly this story takes advantage of that tendency, presenting dragons and the knights that hunt them as in decline, and the kingdom suffering from this fact. The twist here is that the dragons, as forces of tremendous vitality, bring renewal to the land when their blood spills upon it. Which leaves the story open for a happy ending of the kind you don't get to see in reality, without it feeling unduly given or a deus ex machina. Since we've been having quite a bit of darkness lately, that is a fairly welcome contrast. Plus it feels thematically appropriate given the recent release of Birthright. The fiction is maintaining it's usual high standards quite comfortably despite the troubles around them, just like the ecologies.
Libram X reaches a climax. Possibly. It's certainly progressed a lot faster than most of these comics. Dragonmirth features PETA girl. No, seriously. And no, she isn't hot either, before you ask. Swordplay features things from the point of view of the monsters. Only don't call them that. Persey has to get the hang of being human in Yamara.
An interview with the Dragonlance team: Dragonlance has had rather a lot of embarrassing episodes in it's history when you sit down and look at it. Some of them were intentional, while others really weren't. But they don't shy from either in this interview, acknowledging both that new books may piss off longterm readers, and that the writers have made terrible mistakes that ought to have been spotted in editing, as well as revealing how banal and whimsical many of the inspirations for characters and events were. I'm not sure if they're trying to sell us on or off the setting, given how mixed the messages being sent are. In any case, they're being honest, which does count for quite a bit. I guess it's like a family. Everyone knows that jimmy's had a drug problem for years, and mum's having an affair with the gardener, but they still stick together and stay civil because they still love each other and the alternative is worse. And the soap opera provides interesting gossip for the whole neighbourhood. Which means this is an advert for their big things to come, that also shows us just how goofy and flawed Krynn is. Yet it still holds together somehow and has millions of fans. They must be doing more right than they are wrong. So this remains intriguing yet frustrating reading. I do wish I could stomach this setting.
Dragon Magazine Issue 223: November 1995
part 7/7
TSR Previews: December, as is often the case, is jam packed. Birthright, for a second time, gets a fucking mental 4 supplements in one go, rather than spreading it out like a sensible gameline. It's like they're trying to make it tricky for people to keep up with it, unless they have tons of disposable income. Ariya and Talinie get sourcebooks, giving you prefab domains with set up plots for your players to take control of. Cities of the sun takes you off to the coast to show you how to combine domain play and naval stuff. And Warlock of the Stonecrowns is an adventure which puts you up against an Awnshegh who's draining your country's powers. Team up and kick his mutated ass.
The Forgotten Realms revisits the idea of splatbooks, in Wizards and Rogues of the Realms. Really, this is getting ridiculous. Who's going to buy this one? Well, I guess if we put some even more twinky kits and spells in there, they'll have to or fall behind their buds who did. Talking of twinks, Ed fills in some more of Elminster's history, in The Making of a Mage. What did he do to earn all those XP?
Planescape reaches some balance at last, with Planes of Conflict. Another one that occupies pride of place (and lots of tea stains, because that's the one I'd always rest my mug on while reading in bed) in my collection. I'd never sell it, but apparently this one goes for quite a lot on ebay.
Ravenloft realizes that this Gothic Earth thing is good for more supplements than a one-shot, and gives them a gazetteer with more info on victorian times, and the monsters that lurk around the world. Good to see them giving successful products a line on merit, rather than throwing tons at one for a year, and then dropping it when it disappoints, losing a load of money in the meantime.
Mystara gets it's own annoying IC narrator. Joshuan's Almanac continues their tradition of yearly updates here, only with a bit more copycatting of the forgotten realms. Bleh. What happened to niche protection?
Our generic stuff this year is moderately interesting. slade (who has now completely lost his name and capitalisation) completes the Encyclopedia Magica. Now you have the tables to randomly determine which of these hordes of items to give out. I hope you like rolling D1000's. :D Another big expensive boxed set that eat up months of play is The Night Below. Venture into a massive underdark realm, and try and survive without seeing the sun. I hope you brought your collapsable 10 foot poles. And finally, play yet another type of Shaman. A decidedly weird little supplement with a premise that can take over an entire campaign. I'm still not sure if I like this one or not, over a decade later. It'd probably work better as a white wolf game.
An issue that starts out pretty horribly, and then improves a bit as it goes along, but still never really catches fire, this continues to see them use up old stuff, and bring in new, cheaper looking features to replace them. They're caught between wanting to stop repeating themselves, and not having the money or submissions to do so as well as they used too. Which means they're probably not enjoying themselves in the office as much either. It's all pretty unpleasant really. Let's move on, see if they can still afford some decent presents for christmas then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 1/7
124 pages. This month's cover looks almost CGI, with it's clean angles and mostly monochromatic design. It looks like it was probably really good in high resolution, but whatever they're doing to get it onto the magazine, and then back onto the computer has done it no favours, with the detail blurred and the contrast murky. Still, at least we have a proper theme this issue. Fantastic Architecture? Interesting, if not obviously festive. Still, let's make the most of it.
In this issue:
Letters: Another letter on how to get published by TSR when you're a complete n00b. Follow the procedures and don't get your hopes up. Financial troubles mean we're even less likely to speculate on a completely untried idea, even if we like it personally.
A letter requesting that they set up a sage advice hotline. Skip finds that most objectionable! Skip'd have to employ lackeys to keep up with that kind of demand, and they'd surely mess it up.
A letter congratulating the new editor, and enquiring about the presence and absence of various features in recent months. Some were merely skipped, while others are going going gone. Dragonlance, on the other hand, is going to be back with a vengeance next year. Look forward to it. Still slipping in promotion wherever possible then.
Editorial is really short this month, and padded out like a business letter. They've finally figured out what they're going to do with the magazine. Raise prices! It's only been 2 years since the last increase. Couldn't it at least have been a 50 cent one like last time rather than a full dollar? I suppose if their budget is directly linked to sales, they might be faced with the choice of a big price increase or layoffs. In return, they promise to give us more colour, more meat in their articles and more attitude. Hmm. So this is the point when the pendulum starts swinging back towards the crunchy side. I can't say I'm that surprised. When times get hard, you fall back on the proven sellers. Colour has always worked, this is the 90's, so attitude is very much in, maaan, and splatbooks are big perennial sellers. Oh, and the logo looks like it's been star warsified with that parallax slope. Hmm. If they're becoming more conservative, how will they find new topics to keep long-term readers interested? This all seems a bit ominous for me. As with the last crisis in 1986, it looks like they're going for up front shinys over balance and subtlety. Oh well, it'll give me plenty to bitch about. <^>
First quest: Steve Jackson! Now there's a big name to bring in, even if like the last few, he never worked for TSR. Still, when he started, D&D was pretty much the only game in town, so it's not surprising he started with that anyway. Also not surprising is that he rapidly started modding the game and writing his own stuff, moving from freelancing to full-time writing pretty quickly. More surprising though, is that his initial play experience was pretty rules light. Given the way GURPS developed, I find this rather interesting. I guess it was always modular, and you can dial the complexity up or down as you please. If Kevin Siembieda doesn't use all the rules from his game, and Gary went back to stripped down OD&D in his later years, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr Jackson doesn't use all his own rules either. Once again, he doesn't remember much about his first session, which goes to show, it's not such a big deal for some people, especially when it was over quickly, and the things they did after that are so much more impressive. Still, this was quite informative for it's size.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 2/7
The Castle designer's guide to coping with magic & the supernatural: Ah yes, let's bring back a topic that got a whole series of forum letters a few years ago, turn it into a full article. A fairly familiar path by now. So magic massively changes how sieges and the like work, on both sides of the conflict. Bypassing walls becomes simplicity itself with flight and teleportation, a single creature immune to nonmagical attacks can wade through a force of regular fighters and laugh. But spellcasters run out of stuff to do quickly in a protracted battle, and there are mundane tricks that still work surprisingly well. Archers are a great equaliser, taking out high level characters by sheer force of numbers. Lead always cramps the style of divinations and ethereal marauders. Well constructed domes on top of your towers allow you to shoot out while not leaving you vulnerable to flyers. A 6 pager with several illustrations of stuff described, this is definitely a case where they've tried to come out with all guns blazing. And it does a pretty good job, tackling most of the annoying things wizards can do to ruin your day, if not in as much depth as they could. A good engineer certainly isn't helpless, even if their services will cost rather a lot. And there's still plenty of room to expand on this, which hopefully we'll see in the forum again. Symmetries and patterns. As long as people have ingenuity, there'll be new tricks developed on both sides of this issue. I somehow doubt it'll ever get as filled in as their lists of monsters and spells.
Elven cities & settlement: A random elven settlement generation table?! Ok, that's definitely a new one, even if it's two constituent components are not. At less than half a page these tables are more to spark your imagination than provide a complete setup. And spark my imagination they do, partly because of the very odd demographics you'll get if you apply them strictly. So I'm not sure if this is a success or a failure, because it is pretty interesting, but I can't imagine using it regularly in my campaign. Maybe they didn't do the math. Maybe their conception of what elves do in their day-to-day lives is a bit different from mine. And what dice do you roll to get a result between 70-200? So mechanically, this is a bit of a fail. If you're going to be more specific, that gives people concrete things to analyse and find good or bad about your work. And let's face it, their mechanics editing still isn't great around here. Make changes without making the preparations to adapt, and you will have a hard time getting used to things.
Descent to undermountain: Another AD&D computer game, another promotional article. We've already seen undermountain get a rather large boxed set, and plenty of adventurers have visited, it's an obvious choice for an action focussed AD&D conversion. This time, they're using the Descent modelling engine and getting on the doom bandwagon, with a 1st person 3D adventure game full of action, puzzles, and mutiplayer competition. That's the theory anyway. Googling shows that this was shunted between development teams, arrived late, was unfinished, completely cut out the multiplayer element, had crap AI, and was generally a bit crap all round. And since it's still a good year before it's actually released, we may well see more promotional articles in the mean time, or maybe stuff in the rumour mill about how it's going (wrong). This definitely has potential for a little morbid amusement.
The sleep of ages: We're still in the Realms, but this is a good deal more solid than the last article, in several senses. After all, Dwarven tombs are built to stay the same through the centuries, while undermountain is always being restocked and rearranged by Halaster as adventurers go in, kill stuff, and then die or get out again. Course, they don't stay unplundered for long if they don't take precautions, and they're not very keen on putting undead or constructs in to guard them, so the traps and tricks need to be pretty brutal. So this is packed full of example traps and fakeouts. For a more important tomb, they'll have a fake one near the entrance, with all the real stuff through hidden doors, and several fake secret routes that only lead to more trouble for anyone trying them. It is quite inventive, and you could either use the layouts and traps as given here, or mine them for your own dungeon complexes. Which is exactly the kind of crunch I approve of, and the reason why the Realms has been leading the way in the magazine since the early 80's. Stuff that's generic enough to make your own, but also fits into a larger picture if you want it too. It's a formula that works all too well, hence it's longevity.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 3/7
Role-playing reviews: Everway is WotC's first attempt at an RPG. Rick is rather surprised at how different the mechanics are. Mind you, making the random elements card based is probably the way to go if they want to get crossover from people who play M:tG, but haven't roleplayed before. Rick has a rather split opinion on this game. On one hand, it's a perfect fit for his GMing style, and on the other it may well be too vague for new players and rules lawyers. If you aren't a good improviser, steer well clear. Yeah, I think I'll pass then.
The Birthright campaign setting is also for experts, but for completely the opposite reason, as after all, there is a lot to keep track of. Plus the way the game is set up, it does rather encourage PvP actions. But the domain rules do seem to work and reward the actions they're supposed to. And let's face it, making them reward people who go out and attack others over those who turtle in their domain hoarding resources definitely makes sense if you want an interesting game in actual play.
In addition, Rick gives a good muahaha at labyrinth of madness, expresses amazment at T.W.E.R.P.S's longevity, and is very pleased that we can now go to Miskatonic University. This stuff may not be for newbies, but you should still consider supporting it, so they'll produce more in the same vein.
Forum: Geordie Keefe has the problem that he knows a DM who was really mean to newbies, blatantly favouring the existing players. This drove him off, and probably other people as well. This kind of behaviour is another thing that's dreadfully bad for the hobby as a whole.
Allen Mixson points out just how prejudiced and provincial medieval people could actually be. Shakespeare supports him on this. Tribalising was a lot easier back then. Some people managed to succeed anyway, but they were very definite exceptions.
C. Joseph Walker suggests using subtle methods to deal with shop-robbing psychopaths. If they can't get a decent drink without killing someone, hopefully they'll get bored eventually.
Karen Remick has the old solution of merchants being semi-retired adventurers who decided to invest their money in business rather than becoming nobility. They'll keep their hand in by disintegrating anyone dumb enough to try robbing them. The company might even be a whole party of them sticking together. See what happens when they try and raid Bargle's magical item emporium and deal with his 27th level contingencied ass.
Roy Penrod thinks you ought to penalise people XP for killing shopkeepers and other stuff they shouldn't kill. It's horribly metagame, but it'll soon solve the problem one way or another, particularly when combined with IC legal consequences.
Douglas Porter points out that Bards are actually one of the best classes for a single class party, particularly when you add kits. (and if you're really cheesy, multiclass half-elves, as we've had flamewars about before) After all, a band of touring musicians is one of the closer things to the adventurer dynamic IRL. (And may well be part of the reason why I am a musician. ) Plus it'll really work if you want to play a social heavy game.
Linda Edwards proves that women can be idiotic twinks too. Or maybe this is ironic. In any case, not letting 50th level drow in your party seems entirely reasonable to me.
Anton J. Uselmann thinks that when it comes to descriptions, you need to make sure you show, not tell. You control all the information, it's up to you to give them enough to make interesting conclusions from.
Jason G Ward makes the statement that maybe gaming doesn't need women. There are plenty of other pastimes that have massive gender imbalances that don't seem too worried about correcting them, such as fishing. Is it really worth stressing about?
Jeremy Prada is another person who makes players hesitant to use wishes via sadistic interpretation. People have been doing that since the dawn of the hobby. It's not particularly worthy of comment.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 4/7
A thousand and one words: Which isn't an Al Qadim article, surprisingly enough. instead, it's one of those short articles that tells us it's not the statistics, it's how you describe things. Even more than the castle design one, this is something they've said many many times, and this contributes very little if you're a regular reader. This feels like filler of the most obvious kind, with the layout manipulated in a odd way to pad things out to just the right size. Yawn. Time to hit skip again, I'm afraid.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another article complaining that druids don't have enough magic items focussed towards them? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like there's not enough continuity here. This is why compilations turn out handy after all. But why are monsters getting regular yearly ones while magic items aren't. Surely items are useful to both players and DM's, so they'd actually probably sell more. Oh well, basic logic errors may be another thing that's contributing to their sales slide.
Claws of the Bear are an idea they've already used in this column, goddamnit. So very bored right now.
Silver Branches shed moonlight, which lets you see, reveals fae, and enhances plant spells, curiously. Nicely idiosyncratic collection.
A Pouch of Trails protects you from tracking, and helps you follow trails made by others. Another one full of flavour and multiple uses.
Eyes of the Frentlin let you see through the eyes of a bird. Unless you have other powers to control it, this aint so great. But there are plenty of spells to solve this, particularly if you're a druid. Meh.
Bane Toadstools are evil fungi that corrupt you if you use their powers. They had to have a booby prize in there, didn't they. Most druids will of course try to uproot these buggers. But there's always one who thinks they can master the powers isn't there. Muahahaha. An entertaining end to a rather mixed bag here.
From the forge: Another column comes to it's end without being given a proper chance to say goodbye. Indeed, the writer is aware that this column has been delayed during the reorganisations, and even gets some formatting updates along with the rest of the magazine, which suggests that the guys in editing thought they'd keep this column, and then suddenly changed their mind, probably when the second changeover in quick succession happened and Pierce and Anthony came in. I guess minis are still a contentious topic for roleplayers. Some love them, while others find they actively impede their imagination. Now, the big question in my mind is: Was this the personal choice of the staff, or driven by the survey responses of the readers? This is one era where a little insider knowledge would help a lot, as the reality might be very different to what I'm inferring.
Once more to recap the actual minis then. Games Workshop release Warhammer Quest, their latest attempt to get new players on board. It seem a little more sophisticated than Heroquest, and is certainly more challenging and open-ended. They also release another pair of undead badasses to command your armies in the full game. The public appetite for them seems to be neverrending, and so why should they stop making them? Not that they're lacking in competition, with RAFM's skeleton war wagon, Ral Partha's official Dragolich, Crypt thing, and Lord Soth figurines, and Grenadier & Harlequin's respective skeleton forces. We've had so many skeleton armies over the years that no force should be reduced to a skeleton crew. :rimshot: There's also a demon and a dragonman, neither strangers to the modelling world. The only unusual creatures are two rather goopy looking Earthdawn monsters from Heartbreaker hobbies. Well, it's more diversity than some halloweens managed.
And finally, we have a best of year. It's like squeezing the contents of two articles into one. A lot of these are larger showcase pieces that you might not want to use on the battlefield too frequently. A scene of a Hippogriff taken from a poem. A new wizard figure from sculpting legend Julie Guthrie, who has apparently gone into retirement. A dracolich necro drake from RAFM, photographed with brooding clouds gathering behind it. A 16 inch living dragon, which I'm sure will terrorise nearly any scale of minis you have. A rather skinny demon named Kreegah the Spoiler. I'm betting he can still rip most wizards to shreds from his description, not that that's hard when they didn't bring the rest of the party along :p A High elf from Games Workshop, an Orc Shaman from Heartbreaker Hobbies, a Grim Reaper from Grenadier. They're sticking to the standards as well. A julie Guthrie sculpted Klingon from Rawcliffe, showing she's busier than it seems. A very brightly painted and menacing looking mecha from Global Games. A looming Balrog from Ral Partha. And yet another bloody skeletal legion. Just how many more of them do we really need? Maybe we could do with a break from minis after all. It is a shame though, because they actually appear to have improved the way they transfer photos into the magazine as part of their reorganisation. That's gone up and down so much over the years that it seems very silly to stop just as you got it working well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 5/7
A history of the rod of seven parts: Ohh. Now this is something they foreshadowed ages ago, but never filled in. What exactly were the Wind Dukes from the description of the Rod of seven parts. Well, wonder no longer, because not only are they being detailed here, but there's a whole adventure featuring them coming out next year. That is interesting. It would make sense that if you make an adventure from an idea they've already mentioned in the books, it would sell more than one delivered cold. This is especially the case when it's appeared quite a few times, each with slightly different details, thus building up curiosity in the kind of people who like to analyse apocrypha. So this is as much as history of the Rod IRL as it is in game, particularly as this is a generic module, so you may have to adapt it to any world. Unfortunately, this is the kind of article that is rendered superfluous if you actually buy the book, which I do rather disapprove of. But at least it's interesting and the information excerpted is self-contained. Another case of the magazine being used primarily for self-promotion. :mutter grumble mutter:
The chronology of krynn: Or let's get round to doing for krynn what we did for the Realms in issue 196. Take a good look at all the novels and short stories, and figure out exactly where they all fit in the timeline. Of course, since Krynn started earlier, it has been several years since that, and Krynn has had more short story anthologies, we have a lot more ground to cover. It takes nearly two and a half pages of rather dense type and spans thousands of years, a far more impressive timescale than the Realms' mostly present based stories. Well, it's a smaller area, so they have to expand outward in the 4th dimension instead. A little dry, but this is invaluable for completists and continuity obsessives. I don't object to this, although it would work better in an online format. Have fun keeping it up to date with all the stuff they're planning to add next year.
Rumblings is cut down to fill the half a page left by the chronology, with only 4 news items. News regarding Winter fantasy and Gen Con. A collectible card game about Waterloo, obviously by wargamers trying to capture some of that CCG dollar without quite getting it. And a particularly silly licence. TSR making limited edition mobile phone sim cards? Buh. I am truly boggled as to how they thought that was a good idea. You do not think of your gaming company when you want to top up your talk time. Admittedly, it is a profitable and rapidly growing market at the moment, but you are not equipped logistically to take advantage of it. All I can do is shake my head in utter bemusement. Even Buck Rogers and Dragon Dice make more sense as company projects than this.
Fiction: The law of third power by Richard Parks. A sequel to the story in issue 209, this once again presents a very interesting lesson, that applies not only to fictional magic, but to real life as well. When it comes to authority, it matters not who you are or what you can do, but who other people believe you are, and how much esteem they give your credentials, and so much of social life is front and illusion. And if you can get into power and fake it well enough, then chances are you're actually doing the job anyway, particularly if it's not one that actually requires technical knowledge. Important life lessons aside, this also manages to juggle the tasks of maintaining continuity without making the story inaccessible to newcomers, and establishing atmosphere. It all seems ripe for a continuation of the story. Unfortunately, as with Slab's, a little looking ahead shows this isn't going to happen. So much for continuity. I have to wonder if that's an active decision by the editors, or merely a lack of suitable submissions.
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 6/7
Floyd continues to be snarky in response to events, but the people around him are not impressed.
Sage advice: Do krynnish bards have to take the test of high sorcery (There are no krynnish bards! The question is moot! ) Then why do so many of the races have bard level limits (Umm. Look! A shiny magic item! Quick! Retcon the books while they're not looking! )
Does shield proficiency replace or stack with the standard benefit (Depends if you're using players option or not. Are you gonna keep your edition locked down? You choose, you choose.)
When do you make sprinting checks (When you try and sprint. Surely that should be obvious)
How much does grand high mastery cost ( lots of points. But it's worth it.)
Do wizards who buy a combat bonus get a rogues or priests THAC0 (a priest's one Yayzo4)
What are polymorph's visuals? ( DM's choice. Drama is good.)
Isn't the long spear too good. (Skip thinks so. Skip remembers that Gary didn't like spears, and skip will carry on his vision in these hard times. You are free to nerf it :glances around nervously:)
What happens if you break a wand (nothing, except for a few specific cases.)
Do you have to save against poison every time a monster hits you (Usually. This can get really nasty if they have multiple attacks. )
What happens if you don't defend against a psionic attack (tough. You gotta spend the points, even if you don't want to. If you've got no points, they'll have an easy time.)
What happens when a high intelligence character sees through an illusion (They sneer. Or pretend to be fooled, if they're as wise as they are smart and trick the person trying to trick them.)
Are rakshasas immune to all priest spells (yes. They can be rather irritating, can't they.)
What happens if you try and raise an unconscious person. (You waste a spell. Nothing happens. Since these spells have expensive material components, this is a bad idea. )
What happens if a time shifted character puts themself in a perfect position for when time catches up (+4 bonus to hit at best. If you're a thief you might be able to finagle a backstab bonus as well, but that's yer lot)
My boyfriend banned me from the campaign, and said I can't play my characters anywhere else either. ( Sock it too him, sista. You don't need him. Dump his ass, and go find a new group. He can't stop you playing your characters there, no matter what he says. And if he shows up at your new group demanding you stop playing now, taser his ass, call the cops, and file a restraining order. All the ladies who independent, throw your hands up at me!)
Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995
part 7/7
Dragonmirth really ought to move to a better neighbourhood. Swordplay really can't get out of character properly. Yamara ends with a wedding, and a big bang. Curse you, renovators.
The ecology of the lammasu: Oh, we have a couple of pages left over at the last minute? Hmm. Let's dig another ecology out of the slush pile and fill it with that. That'll keep people happy. What do we have? Lammasu? The goody-goody lion guys? Well, it's not my first choice, but you've gotta have a few good creatures around. Otherwise players would be justified in attacking on sight, and killing everything that surrenders. So we have a little bit of drama, a load of pontification, a few twists involving their relationships with other creatures, a bit a tactics, a bit of eco-crap, and a happy ending. Ho hum. I see why they put this one so far back in the magazine.
TSR Previews: Once again, the new year hangover sees output drop to a fraction of last month. Ravenloft subjects your characters to railroading and body horror as they get captured and turned into animal hybrids by Lord Markov. A dark sense of humour is recommended because otherwise you'd get really mad.
Dark sun gives halflings some more screentime in Windriders of the jagged cliffs. There may be plenty of water for a change, but adventuring in an enormous vertical jungle full of cannibal halflings with tamed flying creatures is no picnic. Unless you have serious mobility magic prepared you'll lose out to things of considerably lower level.
The monstrous compendia get their second yearly update. This one is black and rather better bound than last year's. But the monsters are probably less interesting. Diminishing returns strike again. Similarly, the solo adventures cycle around a second time, with Cleric's Challenge II. Will they try for another scrape of this barrel? No? That's a relief.
There's certainly a lot to hate in this issue. Price raises, rehashed topics, laughable promotion, half-assed excerpts. It far outweighs the good bits, and generally leaves me feeling decidedly cranky, especially as many of the bad bits herald further developments that I know didn't work in hindsight. So it's with a pretty heavy heart I head into 1996, knowing that there's definitely worse to come. It's going to come to a head at some point, but we've still got a way to go, and even if it might not be pleasant, at least it'll probably be more interesting than this year was. Turn the pages with one hand, and hold your nose with the other, and let's take another step forward.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 1/7
124 pages. So, here we are then. At least they realised fairly quickly that the red triangle was a dumb idea and are pretending it was never a long-term plan in the first place. In it's place, we have a tilted logo, a whole bunch more promotional blurbs scattered across the cover, and a completely blank print of the cover image a few ages inside. Now they have one less page to worry about filling with actual content. And a whole bunch of new regular columns, one of which is misspelled on the contents page. :p Only a few pages in, and I'm already finding good reasons to be amusingly bitchy. This looks like it will be worryingly easy pickings.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: The editorial gets renamed and moved ahead of the contents page. Because what they have to say is just too important to wait. Yes, this year heralds big format changes. The last two issues had a few of these, but now they hit in full force. (the price also goes up a full dollar, to $4.95) It's time for the magazine to start focussing seriously on gaming. Computer game reviews are out, the old comics are out, there'll be less stuff on games other than D&D, (apart from CCG's) and the visuals are seriously altered. Welcome to the last gasp of TSR, before they collapse under the weight of their bad company policies and financial mismanagement. So it's out with the old, in with the ....... older? as they promise to give plenty of coverage to dead campaign worlds and bring back regular deliveries of specific NPC's. Y'know, I never much liked those back in the day. Guess that's probably going to be another sticking point. They say they're going to bring back miniatures, but they've changed their mind several times recently so who knows. And it's all change in the comics department, of which I'm still not sure what to think. So as with last month, this already seems like more bad news than good news, but we'll have to see for sure.
Letters becomes D-Mail for some reason. Probably trying to get down with the modern lingo and new developments in technology. Me'n ma homies are delvin this dungeon, an any punk-ass muthafucka who gets in the way is gonna get capped. Word up. What's in this mailbag, dudes?
A request for more Drizzt books. Yeah, we're not going to let this one get away, when he's one of their biggest sellers. He will write until he drops! Ahahahahaha!
A letter wondering how much they can get for old issues of the magazine. A lot more than shops will offer you, that's for sure. You might even be able to get more than you paid for the really early stuff. So don't settle for less.
We've had letters asking how you get published by the magazine, or TSR as a whole recently. Now they ask how you can get them to publish your novels. Generally, you don't. They tell you what to write about if you want to be published, not the other way around. Look at poor Bob Salvadore. I'm sure he'd love to give them stuff set in a universe of his own invention, but you know what would happen if he did? Do you want to find out? Do you really?
A letter pointing out that you can trade old cars for new, and so they ought to do the same for the new Dark Sun campaign setting. I do wonder why everyone is suddenly getting all worked up about this one when the Realms, Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Mystara all made huge changes when they updated and didn't get anything like this fuss. It's not as if they were less popular than Athas. Or were they just not publishing it. After all, greyhawk & mystara died soon after being updated, so sales must not have been great.
Another development. They've been doing 12 issues a year for the past 16 years. Now it seems they've decided to push their limits a little further, and do a dragon annual every year as well. Which brings the total to 13. Unlucky for some? Quite possibly. More work for me? Definitely.
A LorR Collectible card game? I'm not that surprised really. The bandwagon jumping continues.
Skills & Powers in 8 easy stages: Get your calculators out folks, it's time to do some serious character designing. AD&D has always been relatively simple to build a character in, especially if you start from 1st level. Even the wodges of complete splatbooks only add a couple of steps to each character, given the amount of resources you have to spend. Incorporate Skills & Powers stuff, though, and the number of options goes up by several orders of magnitude. Be prepared to spend a lot longer making characters, and to need a proper character concept before you start number crunching if you want to be optimal. This article aims to make it less daunting by spelling out exactly what you have to do, but still makes it clear that it will take a lot more work before you get to play, and there are a lot more opportunities to make one character more powerful than another based upon the skill of their players rather than the luck of the dice and the treasure they get. So this makes it clear that this is where one of the big changes in 3e started. People want more choice, and though not all of the ideas tried here worked (subabilities in particular needed to die with a vengeance) some of them did. So as with all the letters about Athas a few pages ago, this sees them recognising that some of the things they've done recently may be divisive, and trying to do damage control. Exactly what effect that will have I'm not sure. Does it win back people alienated by recent changes? Does it make things worse to admit fault, when many people wouldn't have noticed the problem anyway? In any case, this is a rather worrying way to kick off their features.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 2/7
Secret origins and motivations of player characters: We may be starting to swing back towards the crunch side, but we're still right in the middle of 2e territory. Which means they follow up the mechanical advice with one on establishing your character's backstory. With particular emphasis on why they became an adventurer in the first place. Makes sense, really. As we've found before, taking a focussed approach on what we really need to know gets us playing sooner than writing several pages of fluff that may not ever come into play, particularly if you make it so long the DM can't be bothered to read it anyway. So this is quite decent advice that seems likely to speed up your game rather than slow it down, by getting you to fill in the right kind of details instead of the wrong kind.
Caste of characters: We've covered Africa and the orient pretty well. Now it's india's turn, with the first of several articles on this topic. First off, new kits. This is relatively easy to do, thanks to the caste system. Of course, that does mean people might be forced into roles they find impossible to fulfil, but that is the stuff stories are made of. Let's see how much they have to twist reality to get it to fit in a AD&D shaped mould.
Singh can roar like a lion as long as they never cut their hair. Ahh, mythology. That quirk aside, they're your fairly typical martial sorts. Disciplined, reliable, and subject to the orders of their bosses. How much of a disadvantage that'll be is up to the DM.
Kshatrya are technically paladins, but the way the caste system is divided up, they're forbidden from personally performing religious duties. This means they sacrifice lay on hands and cure disease, but get the ability to read people's karma, and a reaction bonus. Hmm. I think that definitely pushes them away from a full-on combat role as well. Might not make them popular amongst an adventuring party.
Shikari are indian Rangers. They get the ability to slow their bodily functions to feign death, but have a tendency to take on impossible challenges, which leaves them open to DM screwage, or an epic tale, as they choose. Know your DM, in other words.
Swami are wizards who learn from the spirits, although said spirits need rather a lot of persuading, since they don't have a great relationship with them. On the plus side, they don't need a normal spellbook, and can cast spells well beyond the usual range wizards can manage. On the negative side, they don't have a regular spellbook, which means they have the same kinds of compatibility issues as the more out-there variant wizards from the complete sha'ir's handbook, and breaking their focus doubly screws them over. I think their hindrances balance out their benefits adequately.
Brahmin are technically right on top of the caste system, but since they're supposed to be detached from worldly concerns, they don't get to enjoy it that much. A little graft, skimming off the money that's meant to go to the temple might take care of that, but then you have the usual problem with losing your powers. D&D just isn't well suited for tales realistic grey-shaded morality, is it. I suppose that's one thing 4e's changes have in in their favour.
Thugs go back to the root of the name, strangling for religious reasons and generally being superstitious and cowardly. It's not that they're not adventurer material, after all, going on journeys & killing everyone you meet is a perfect excuse for a bit of excitement in your life. It's just that other players may get tired of all this omen crap and decide to spend time with someone more reliable.
Fakirs may appear holy and magical, but they're primarily showmen who make a living from showing off their various tricks. They get the ability to learn spells by just watching them, and pretty much ignore the usual material component requirements, but they also lose a lot of the standard bard powers. Not sure how balanced that is, as both the benefits and penalties are pretty substantial here. Should be interesting to play though.
Yogi concentrate on the mind-over-matter thing and get incredible powers and flexibility as a result. Actually, it looks like they're inspired by Dhalsim from SFII as much as anything, with super-stretchiness being their main kit benefit. Their limitations are pretty substantial though. No ability to affect the minds of others, which is a pretty wide restriction for a psionicist, and the usual monastic aeseticism thing, which means they won't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor much. So overall, I think this collection is fairly balanced, maybe erring a bit on the conservative side, but better that than horribly overpowered. They're entirely usable, if a bit odd in places.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 3/7
The Winter Fantasy Convention gets 3 pages of promotion and a pre-registration form. The conventions still have plenty of money to spend on advertising then.
I'm okay, you're one-dimensional: Another article on getting your character going in a hurry. If you want help fleshing them out, try imagining who they'd be played by. Pick am existing person or character, tweak a few details, plonk them in the new milieu, and off we go. You could also ask what their theme song would be, what their most important personality trait is, or what they first do when meeting new people. So this is an interesting grab-bag of ideas, that might work for you, or they might not. I think it'll be very much a matter of taste. Oh well, a few more tricks and options doesn't really hurt. At least this one does put an interesting angle on the whole character-building thing.
Network News: For a long time, we've heard very little about the RPGA in the magazine. Just as Dungeon handles the adventures, Polyhedron is where all the talk of RPGA activities goes. Exactly why they've decided to change that I'm not sure, but here's another soon to be regular feature. Actually, upon reading, it looks pretty obvious why they want to do this - to grow their player base. Raven's Bluff currently has around 5,000 adventurers living in it, played by people from all around the world. But it could be more, oh so much more. We want you! Course, you have to start from 1st level, and your character options are fairly strictly restricted. No weird races, spells from only a few extra books, standardised hit points, comeliness as an extra attribute, evil and chaotic neutral characters not allowed. Hmm. This definitely reads like a set of rules developed organically as and when they ran into problems, and had to patch them to prevent people from running roughshod over the city slaughtering everything. If I was reading this at the time, I might have been tempted. These days, on the other hand, I'm not. I was rather soured on the whole large scale connected RPG thing after 3 years of MUSH play, which ended after one site folded from lack of players, and I quit another after they decided my main character's type was no longer permitted, thus wasting several years of built up xp without the character getting a decent ending. The degree of arbitrary unnegotiable crap you have to deal with from moderators is greater, the amount of influence you actually get to have on the world far less than tabletop, and the choice of venues if you want to enjoy decent sized network externalities rather small. I have no desire to subject myself to that again. Still, this is one step to increase their revenue that seems both sensible and potentially fun for most people involved, so I'm not objecting. And it's looking increasingly unlikely I'm ever going to get hold of a decent collection of Polyhedron back-issues, it will be nice to see what's going on in that corner of the gaming landscape.
Back in the saddle: Another bit of rules tinkering here. Maybe you prefer the way nonweapon proficiencies scale in Skills & Powers, but don't want to adopt the whole point-buy rigamarole using it entails. Try this backconversion. The results are almost precisely halfway between the basic 2e nonweapon proficiency system, and the 3e skill system. Proficiencies starts around 10, ± your ability modifier, rather than being liked directly to ability, and you get to scale them to a greater degree than before, but they don't all escalate the way they do in 3e. That makes this very interesting as a curiosity, and a game using this will have more flexible and balanced characters than the basic system. Overall, I think I approve. After all, the system did need overhauling, and this is a step in the right direction, if not a complete fix.
Campaign classics: So, the magazine's readers have made it very clear that they still like many of the campaign settings TSR is no longer producing material for. So here's another regular column to try and fill that void. And not too surprisingly, we're kicking off with a Greyhawk one. Three spellbooks, each by established names. This would do just as well in Arcane Lore. Probably wasn't even written for this purpose. Oh well, at least that shows demand is there.
Vecna's Ineffable Variorum is constructed entirely out of creatures. Bone for the covers, Skin for parchment, hair for binding, blood for ink. Pretty gross really. It has three unique spells in it. Depth perception, which is obviously to compensate for Vecna's little ocular deficiency. Vecna's Conflagration, which does what fireball cannot and flings enemies away as well as burning them, which is awesome visually. And Turn Lightning, which is also pretty obvious in application. Don't go for the boring attack types against someone this smart.
Iggwilv's Nethertome is a rather large and glossy spellbook, and is largely focussed upon demonology. It does have some spells though, including two rather nasty unique 9th level spells. Iggwilv's Lightning Cage allows you to trap enemies in such a fashion that they take tons of electrical damage if they try to escape. And Iggwilv's Timeless Sleep is another variant upon the sleeping beauty thing, not as good as the one in issue 221, although she's more likely to use it to create guardians that last centuries, so adventurers have something badass to fight. Nice to see a villain doing so much for the adventuring community.
Acererak's Libram has gone through owners almost as quickly as the tomb of horrors went through adventuring parties. Exactly why is uncertain, as it only has one rare spell, Acerack's Blackstone, which is a fairly basic spell absorber. Frankly, spell engine is lower level and better. So this doesn't seem to be a very imaginative collection at all. Delve deeper into the ancient tomes, you'll get far better ways of doing the same things.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 4/7
The convention listing gets renamed Cons & Pros. My sides, they are splitting.
Tales of the fifth age: Kindling, by Jean Rabe. All the rules have changed in Krynn. And this year, all the rules change in the fiction department as well. In their attempt to revitalise Dragonlance, they're filling the magazine with stories from it, just to make sure everyone's aware of it. Which means a dramatic shift in the style of material we're getting. Wheras for the whole of the magazine's lifespan, even the tales that were part of a series worked self-contained, this is hugely, horribly dependent upon what has come before, and feels very incomplete as a story as well, instead being more a set-up for events to come. It's main purpose is to introduce the gargantuan red dragon Malystryx, one of the major antagonists for the next wave of stories. Her origin is pretty mysterious, coming from some previously unmentioned brobdingnagian continent somewhere on Krynn, there's very little around these parts that can even remotely challenge her, and so she decides to stick around for a bit, make the place her own. So despite being longer than many of the bits of fiction in the magazine, this barely feels like a story, more an extended introduction. Which is an interesting change, but deeply unsatisfying when compared to the general high quality of short fiction around here. They'd better have a good payoff planned in future issues to follow up this setup, or I will be very cross with them for messing with one of the bits of the magazine that least needed it.
Rogues gallery: An elf wearing chainmail? What is this aberration. Common sense over displaying your pointy ears for the world to see? Dexterity as the lowest ability score? A nuanced and original personality that goes against stereotypes and has both cool bits and interesting flaws? I'm shocked. This new regular column has started up with something that's a vast improvement on the old Giants in the Earth character conversions. A character who isn't obvious and cliched, yet is still easily usable in an ordinary campaign. I was all ready to spew bile at this, and instead I find myself giving it fulsome praise. That is a pleasant surprise. I hope they keep this up, and don't slip into the bad habits of making supertwinked, rule-breaking mary-sues that PC's will loathe if they ever meet them.
Forum looks like it ought to have been some colour or other in the header and then casting a shadow, but they couldn't get the budget. So the draconic F winds up all smeary and indistinct, which is not very aesthetically pleasing. Another strike against their new direction.
Christopher Myers contributes well over a page on how arbitrary and illogical the dual-classing rules are. Bout time too. They have a certain interesting symmetry as a game concept, but absolutely no connection with the way people actually learn new skills. It's rather baffling how they were invented in the form they were.
Kerry Zane tells people to stop complaining so much. You know, if they did, this whole column would be pointless and wither away. A hobby needs a certain amount of friction to survive.
Tim Cafferty defends TSR's recent price increases. They do have a need to make money, y'know. Roleplaying is not a charity.
Chris Curran, on the other hand, thinks maybe the prices are a bit of a problem especially for new players. Buying three big hardback books is a pretty hefty buy-in. Bring back an affordable basic set.
Tournament rules: Earlier on, we had the official rules for RPGA play in Raven's Bluff. Now we have the Official Tournament Rules for Dragon Dice, for use in conventions this year. Rules clarifications, point allocations for armies, and the system by which you organise and advance contestants after each round. This all seems less arbitrary and irritating than the Raven's Bluff restrictions, largely because this is a fresh game which is just establishing itself, and so they've been developed in one go by a single team rather than accreting a bunch of odd little exceptions. They also include the official tournament tracking sheet, which is fairly simple and easy to understand. This again seems like a fairly sensible way to try and hold onto their player base, and make a bit more money from them. After all, if you build a community around a game, people are more likely to enjoy it and stick with it. So they are still doing some things right. I'm rather interested to see where this attempt leads us over the coming year.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 5/7
Sage advice gets rid of the little red triangle, and instead goes purple with black spikes. Lorraine must like her minions looking stereotypically evil. Most undignified to a sage who isn't as young as they used to be.
Can a giant object falling on a prismatic sphere penetrate it. (no. Even a falling planet will be stopped and destroyed or teleported to another plane by it's mighty power! Way to save the world dude! )
What's the point of chain lightning having scaling damage if the maximum is below the level you need to be to cast it ( Wands)
Can a frisky chest spell animate a giant gold statue (sure, if it isn't too big.)
Do mirror images make sound (Sure, why not)
When do enlarged characters get more knockdown dice. (when they go up a size category. Pure and simple)
How much do you know about magical items when you find them. (not much, unless you're a bard)
How do you know when magic is hostile (Common sense. Do we have to go through this every time.)
Can you move someone by pushing into their protection from evil radius (No. It's a magnetic repulsion. Note that paladin protection from evil doesn't do that anyway. )
What are the penalties for thieves wearing really heavy armour (Skip will help you out with that, no trouble.)
Do you go up to D20, then D100 for knockdown rolls by huge creatures (nah, just D20 is badass enough. It's like saves don't go below 2. The system breaks if you go too high, so we cap it.)
A rather stereotypical arabian bazaar scene? A bit jarring, in these politically correct days.
Dungeon Mastery: Oh boy, splitting the party again. It never ceases to be an issue, because there's just so many situations where it's unrealistic for half a dozen people to be joined at the hip 24/7. How are we to deal with this? Getting the players who's characters are absent to play NPC's? Seems pretty familiar. Actually, we already covered this in issue 190, along with a whole bunch of other bits of advice on what to do if they insist on not sticking together. So this seems both rehashed and very limited by comparison. It's not as long, it has less of a sense of humour, and the illustrations aren't integrated as well. Editing fail. You have to keep track of this stuff if you want to avoid boring us by telling us what we already know.
Role-playing Reviews: Warhammer Quest gets a second review. Rick is immediately drawn in by the high quality shiny bits and pieces, the rules are quick to learn and support a quite surprising amount of random happenings to keep things interesting. It's mostly just fighting, but there is enough potential for roleplay to use this as a gateway drug. And it's fairly affordable too. Shame christmas is over now. I guess timing is important when choosing your reviews.
Fudge gets a rather complicated verdict as it's not so much a system, as a formula for constructing your own RPG system. As such, it's very much for the expert DM, despite the simplicity of the basic system. Some more specific implementations like Spirit of the Century would be very helpful in raising it's profile. Otherwise there's just not enough to say.
Dragon Dice gets a pretty enthusiastic review. It's fairly original structurally, easy to learn, reasonably fast and has lots of tactical options. If you want to get in on the ground floor (having missed the boat for M:tG, go for it. Man, even the reviewers are getting bored with RPG's these days. How are the general public to be expected to hold on under these conditions.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 6/7
Palladium fantasy gets a new edition. Undertaken personally by Kevin Siembida! (wait, doesn't he do nearly everything there anyway. ) More fun and detailed than ever before!
Dragonmirth takes the pragmatic approach to the situation. Swordplay is quite dry in it's wit. Brave brave sir robin.
Even the gamers guide gets a logo in the new style, with the G once again looking like it ought to be in colour but isn't, and winding up looking murky and amateurish as a result. Come on, that's basic layout. Many things that are fine in colour look like crap when put in greyscale. Preview this stuff before sending it to print.
The changing faces of Dragon: Or let's highlight how little the magazine has actually changed in the last 10 years. They've lost their The, and eventually accepted that yes, they are a magazine after all, but they've stuck with their logo design for longer than D&D itself has at this point. Whether that's a good thing or not is very debatable. There is a lot to be said for not fixing something if it isn't broken, but it can also be called complacency. I suspect the main reason they're trying to change things is precisely because they're not working anymore. Still, this is interesting, because it points out a few changes I didn't spot at the time, such as the shift from a ™ to a ®. It's also amusing because once again they say they want the new magazine to have more attitude. You know who had attitude? Poochy. And you remember what happened to him? [brooklyn accent]Boy, they really screwed the pooch on that one.[/brooklyn accent] No, no, stop it, it's too easy, you're writing my commentary for me! Welcome to the failboat. We will be your ride for the rest of the year, presuming we don't capsize first. Um, um, can I get some semblance of sanity in here? So in conclusion, this is quite revealing. If anything, it reveals a little too much, and not in a flattering way, like your mum trying to squeeze into the clothes she wore as a teenager. (ok, ok, no more! ) Your choices in the past got you into this, and now you're making the wrong ones to get you out again. It wasn't just bad luck. I look forward to seeing how quickly they try to change the format again after this.
Rainforest rescue? It might not be too early for this eco-crap anymore, but it's still tiresome. The world isn't ending. Stop going on about it.
The role of books survives the purge.... For now. Actually, this new logo looks quite nice, even if it does have that badly photocopied air that pervades the rest of the logos. The basic theory is sound. Can they scrape up the cash to get it working properly?
The shape-changers wife by Sharon Shinn sees John welcome another first-time novelist onto the scene, producing something that would be excellent no matter the experience level of the writer. The ordinary and the fantastical is blended quite nicely, making both stand out all the better.
Two crowns for America by Katherine Kurtz, in deliberate contrast, sees him criticise a long established writer for being dull and formulaic in her writing. Sure it's a different milieu, but the characters are the same, the plot is the same, the magic works the same way. Did you think we wouldn't notice?
Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley, on the other hand, sees her try out her hand at gothic romance and do pretty well. It manages to make the twists sufficiently surprising that John doesn't spot them beforehand, and keep the characters well matched to the challenges. That way, you don't have to rely on a deus ex machina to solve the problems at the end.
Sisters in fantasy, edited by by Susan Shwattz & Martin H Greenberg (he must send comp copies of every anthology he does to John) takes a somewhat darker slant on feminist fantasy than the recent Chicks in Chainmail. It's also pretty engaging intellectually, without neglecting the emotional side either. Once again, they've pulled in a good selection of big names to do the job. Which is so much easier when you have the long established contacts.
Dragons of summer flame by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman sees John praise it pretty highly. Well, he was on board right from the start (see his review in issue 103) Their writing is more polished than it used to be, and they've had the courage to completely transform the setting, which is always a major risk when the world is as well established and filled in as this. In fact, they're almost too casual about the number of small and big changes they introduce. But then, creators are frequently a good deal less precious about their work than the fanboys. Just remember, the public are more conservative than they'd like to think they are. They can and will complain, as we're also seeing with regards to Athas.
Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996
part 7/7
Floyd escapes the undead by the skin of his teeth. And his saviour is starting to pick up his snarkiness.
TSR Previews: A rather slow month in february, once again, however, they also mention two new supplements for this month they forgot last issue, so I'll do those first. Land of the Minotaurs by Robert A Knack sees us return to Taladas for the first time in 4 years, as Kaz deals with conspiracies in the royal court. Go him. Planescape also gets it's first novel. Blood hostages by J. Robert King starts a trilogy focussed on the Blood War. Well, with a card line as well, it is one of the most popular plot drivers.
Anyway, next month sees the forgotten realms complete it's secondary splatbook series. Warriors and priests of the realms makes our tank classes more powerful and integrated, as usual.
Ravenloft shows how to make artifacts even more sadistic than regular campaigns, in Forged of Darkness. Great power, even greater drawbacks and prices. Remember kids, just say no to artifacts. The buzz may be hot, but before you know it, you're an undead monstrosity who'll die if you give up the artifact or fail to sacrifice a baby to it every full moon.
Dark sun moves it's supplements IC in The Wanderers Chronicle: Mind-Lords of the last sea. Well, at least he's not annoying like Volo. And it's another pretty boxed set. They retain their collectors value better than books.
And finally, the Blood wars card game gets it's 4th expansion pack. The inner planes decide to make the long trip to join the fray. I play the yeti with tentacle arms! :p
Rumblings gets renamed to The Current Clack, which sounds like a reference to something, but I'm damned if I can figure out what the joke is. It seems to be designed to catch the attention of people who pick up the magazine and start reading from the back, newspaper style, with the overspill placed several pages earlier in the magazine. Which would work better if they hadn't just started polybagging the magazine. :facepalm: Classic case of departmental uncoordinatedness really.
The news has some pretty interesting stuff though. Games Workshop is cementing their dominance of the minis market by taking over their own distribution. This means smaller shops are being squeezed by their minimum order numbers, and they're being sued for unfair trade practices and anti-trust breaches by their former distributors. Meanwhile, White Wolf magazine has recently died, after a year in which they tried to revamp themselves by changing their name and turning up the attitude knob. Once again their decision to do that on this magazine too looks not just laughable but thoroughly misguided. ( A let's read thread for White Wolf magazine would be very welcome too, by the way) White Wolf the company, on the other hand, are doing very well from turning the attitude knob up, which I do find rather curious. Just as interesting is Jolly Blackburn's leaving AEG and coming here, bringing Knights of the Dinner Table with him. There's plenty of other bits and pieces, but these are the ones that stand out. Is the gossip going to get more salacious with the new format? Well, there are worse ways to get readers than emulate the tabloids.
There's certainly quite a bit to dislike here, but it's not as bad as I was fearing it would be. Some of the ideas they're trying are not only good ones, but properly implemented as well. On the other hand, there's quite a few articles that are not only rehashed, but just plain worse than their previous appearances in the magazine. And they're really struggling to get the mechanics of the game up to scratch, which is a lot more noticeable now they're putting more crunchy articles in. It is very interesting though, as we're starting to see the growing pains that'll eventually flower into 3e. So there are signs they'll get through this. It's just a matter of how much they'll suffer and lose on the way. That makes me a little more enthusiastic about pressing onwards.
QuoteSkills & Powers in 8 easy stages: Get your calculators out folks, it's time to do some serious character designing.
You needed a calculator for S&P?
QuoteAD&D has always been relatively simple to build a character in, especially if you start from 1st level. Even the wodges of complete splatbooks only add a couple of steps to each character, given the amount of resources you have to spend. Incorporate Skills & Powers stuff, though, and the number of options goes up by several orders of magnitude. Be prepared to spend a lot longer making characters, and to need a proper character concept before you start number crunching if you want to be optimal. This article aims to make it less daunting by spelling out exactly what you have to do, but still makes it clear that it will take a lot more work before you get to play, and there are a lot more opportunities to make one character more powerful than another based upon the skill of their players rather than the luck of the dice and the treasure they get.
It's not
that much more work, but it depends on just how far you want to go with reinventing a class. For example, if you want a paladin with weapon specialization, you have to figure out which of the standard paladin abilities you're willing to give up. This kind of thing has a precedent in 1E, when clerics of certain deities got some extra abilities, but at the cost of others. S&P puts this into a standard system rather that the ad hoc arrangement from 1E.
QuoteSo this makes it clear that this is where one of the big changes in 3e started. People want more choice, and though not all of the ideas tried here worked (subabilities in particular needed to die with a vengeance) some of them did.
I kinda like sub-abilities, since it's a speed bump in the way of PCs needing wanked-out stats. Again, it's a simple exchange: you have to give something to get something.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. This cover looks a bit rushed. I can still see the brushstrokes. They've managed to blend the logo with the backdrop nicely this time though. Maybe it was just a stylistic choice. Oh well. They do seem to be putting more artwork in, with the contents page having a rather large variety of different colour illustrations excerpted. Will they work in context? Flip, flip, turn the pages quick.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Blaah. Another editorial on how to get into writing for the magazine. Either they're still getting tons of letters, despite having said this stuff a couple of issues ago, or they aren't and are trying to get more new writers by reverse psychology. We've heard all this so recently, that it really doesn't seem like people are paying attention. Well, apart from the quibbling about fonts. That's new. And also goes to show just how picky they've become about their formatting these days. There is such a thing as being too standardised. Oh well. As soon as online submissions become commonplace, that'll cease to be an issue. In the meantime, this just reminds me that they've had huge staff turnovers recently, so of course they're going to be repeating old ideas more, since they may well be new to them. Ironically, the better my memory is, the more I'm going to suffer due to this. Not a very promising beginning.
D-Mail: We lead with three letters asking for stuff from back-issues. I presume that like the requests on how to write for the magazine, they get rather a lot of these, and are trying to drill in the stock answer of no free lunch, you've got to pay, presuming it's even available still. Once again I feel both bah and blah about this. We also see another bit of polyhedron promotion. Looks like the drive to boost the RPGA is going to be sustained throughout the year then.
A letter deriding issue 224's castle defence article. If they get to the walls, you've already half lost. A good leader ought to be paying attention to politics and news, and making sure it doesn't get that far. And if it does, they should have an army ready to go, blast them on the approach. Offence is the best defence. Quite a few real world military people agree.
Another attempt to soothe a worried writer. What is obsolete now? Oh, that's a tricky one. Just think of it as all optional, some options which aren't compatible with others. You can still pick and choose which options you allow. At least presuming you can get the rest of the group to agree. Good luck with that, by the way.
A letter criticising Rick Swan's reviewing style. Surely the most important thing a review should tell you is if a book makes a game more or less fun. The reply goes off at a tangent somewhat, tackling minor points first. Curious.
And finally, yet another letter from someone wondering how to become an RPG writer. Another one?! Departmental co-ordination fail. This repetition is getting out of hand. Who's overseeing this section anyway? Anybody? anybody?
The magic goes away: Eeek. Nasty scary eyes and 80's hair. No thanks. Equally unwelcome is the topic, trying to sell you on cutting down magic in your campaign. While not a bad idea in principle; as the various historical sourcebooks and masque of the red death have shown, it's not very well suited to the D&D ruleset. You need a system built from the bottom up to really do it justice, because you won't get the proper breadth of characters and niche protection here, and if you try and tone down the level of general magic in the campaign, while leaving the PC's rules untouched, there is the very real risk of them just walking all over the NPC's, no matter what social hindrances you try to put in their way. Ironically, this is one of the worst timings for an article like this, with their tightened focus on AD&D and other TSR properties. So it's a well meaning but problematic article here. Just go to another system instead of spending ages trying to get this to balance. Runequest or WoD work way better for gaming with the magic stripped out.
Rome may not have been built in a day but...: We're in more of a hurry these days. And we have better equipment. Yes, it seems that one theme that's continued on from last month is the desire to speed up your creation process as a GM, by guiding you through it step by step. More hand-holding, in other words. And while these channelling methods may help you work productively, if you are completely devoid of inspiration, no amount of trickery will solve the problem short of full-on random tables.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 2/8
Off-the-cuff NPC's: Such as these ones. Here's a whole bunch of quirks you could give your impromptu NPC's. They incline quite a bit towards the broad and humorous, and some are very silly indeed. Still, it should ensure that they're memorable and easy to integrate, and with 208 of them, you probably won't use then up too quickly. I know random tables are often labeled as old skool, but these ones really do have a level of whimsy we don't see anymore, except in april issues. As such, I have to make my usual warning to use them with caution if you're trying to run a dramatic campaign, for unless it's set in Krynn, this may spoil the tone.
Another nameless comic is scattered through the magazine. What's with that? I guess it is appropriate to the articles coming up.
Improve with improv: The DM'ing advice continues. Looks like that's definitely the theme this time. You know, you could have delineated that more clearly. Are they ever going to do that as well as Roger did again? Whatever. Not that advice on improving your improvisation skills is a bad thing. In fact, it's pretty much essential, for the nature of an RPG means the players will inevitably try something outside the proscribed options (and it would actually be more boring if they didn't, to be honest) In fact, you're more likely to produce a fun game without any preparation than any improvisation. But there are still tricks you can learn that make success more likely. Chief among them, as it's mentioned first and last, is getting your players to work with you. Pay attention to them, figure out what they want to do, and if you can't guess, just ask them outright. Second is having stuff prepared that works in a large variety of situations, so if you're stuck, you have a whole bunch of tricks to fall back upon. A lot of the time, improvisation is merely a matter of being exposed to situations often enough that you have a pretty good idea what will happen if you do X, Y or Z. Indeed, you can compare it to improvising as a band. In theory, it should result in chaos, but as long as the players can pay attention to each other, stay in the same key, and keep a groove going, some really cool stuff can happen almost by accident. Just don't get stuck relying on cliches all the time, for that will become as dull as sticking entirely to prepared material. So this ironically points out just how much preparation goes into being able to confidently improvise. Everything is a matter of balance really. \:/
Dot to dot: Hmm. We've been given advice on quickly building NPC's, now we have an analogous one for building a community. This themed section may not have too many new ideas, but it is collecting a lot of them and putting them together into a quite cohesive package. I ought to give it more credit, as it would be very handy for newer players. Obviously, if you want to build a community fast, you do not create a map, as that's hours of work even if you're good at this stuff. Far better to get a feel for a place, which you can then build out logically from and create things that make sense in context as and when they're needed. And maybe a few key locations and people. After all, what would new york be without the empire state building, or paris without the eiffel tower? Oh yeah, and remember to figure out what the law is like, and how harshly it's enforced, because chances are, you're gonna need to know that at some point. This article again inclines towards the whimsical in it's presentation, using a lot of IC examples to demonstrate it's points. It does make it more amusing, especially with the rather silly names. Overall, I think it manages to justify itself even to longterm readers through entertainment value as well as informativeness.
Arcane Lore: We continue to redress the cultural balance with a bit more indian stuff, following directly on from last month, and fully integrated with the new kits introduced there. So get ready for a long list of stuff stolen from mythology and religion. Seen those before, and probably will do so again. Still, at least these generally produce more diverse results than the latest collection of variant blasty spells.
Cloud Messenger is the ancient indian method of sending remote messages. Cloud come down, you talk to it, and it takes said message to the desired person. Perfectly logical when you don't have more powerful technology.
Waking light of Dawn wakes things up. Since it's only a 1st level spell, it's ability to remove magical slumber is limited. You're probably better off with a little strategically applied violence than wasting a spell slot.
Distract is worse than tv tropes for keeping everyone around from getting any productive work done. It's one that seems directly drawn from an old TV show in execution. Play that funky flute, guru boy. Don't ask where the wah wah guitar accompaniment is coming from.
Skin of the fire Tiger makes you red hot! And then very chilly when it wears off. Still, in the meantime you get to do the burning grapple trick. There are more powerful spells to do that around, I'm afraid.
Serpent Garland is a fun one. Turn a necklace into a snake. Make it permanent and give it as a present and you have a great assassination tool to keep in reserve for someone.
Mourning Stone lets you transfer your angst to a rock. Then the cleric can take that pain, and use it to make beautiful sculptures or architecture. Really don't want to live in something made of that though.
Third Eye is not a divination, but a really nasty gaze attack that also takes it's toll on you. Curious decision there. Have fun with your beholder like death and disintegration ray.
Life Illusion lets you trap someone in an illusory world, possibly for weeks or months if they keep failing their save. It's nice enough that you don't starve to death while in there though, unlike some other versions of this effect.
Monsoon is the third application of the coastal storm based mass devastation principle in the last few years. They really ought to put something like this in the corebook if it's so popular.
Om is your basic meditative prana. You sit crosslegged and chant and become able to heal faster and resist mindfucking. Course, anyone can walk up to you and backstab you to death, so guards might be wise.
Sanctify Ghi creates an indian variant on holy water. Holy butter? Actually, that's probably pretty tasty, if a bit fattening. Gotta bulk up a bit before going on those month long fasts.
Karma Sight draws from Legends and Lore, letting you manipulate the optional rules there better. You'll know if you're in danger of coming back as a slug or achieving nirvana and can hopefully change your ways accordingly.
Steep Soma Juice is another, more powerful magical fluid making spell to buff it's drinker. As this is long lasting and can affect quite a few people at higher level, it's used to show favour to people in the community. Enjoy your subtle social engineering.
That art Thou is a particularly neat bit of divination, allowing you to share the senses of everyone and everything around. This'll probably be a bit of an overload, but very handy for avoiding nasty surprises. What does a trap or secret door feel anyway? Man, you could have tons of fun describing this one.
See all faces is another way you can get to know someones basic character without all that hassle of actually socially interacting with them. That's a trick applicable to most cultures.
Pool of Deeds lets you find out what cool stuff a person has done and is going to do. It does not let you change the future though, however hard you try. Have fun with your new knowledge of predestination.
Conceal Lifeforce is one of your basic divination deflectors. It can even hide your soul from the agents of reincarnation. Feel free to do bad shit in the meantime without your alignment changing or being turned into a cockroach. But if you get caught, oh things will get unpleasantly interesting. Watch out for Maruts.
Reincarnation sight lets you track down the new life of someone, even if it's in the outer planes, and restore their memories of the old one. If they've been dead longer than your ability to raise them, this is a nicely flavourful alternative. Just don't take a baby away from their family and expect them to jump straight back into the adventuring life.
Penetrate Cosmic Ignorance lets you see the deific manipulations and bigger ramifications behind everyday events. This can be bad for the sanity, for mortal mind was not made to contain that much intertwining information. It may also be hard work for the DM, but that's to be expected when you have high level spells.
Call Avatar is one of those plot device spells that like Gate, may save your life, or result in smitings for disturbing said deity. No matter how powerful your cleric is, they always have to respect their boss, especially in a culture like this where letting go of your ego is considered crucial to enlightenment.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 3/8
The game wizards: Ah yes, the CD rules and character generator. This is one experiment with computers that was a pretty decent success, so much so that they later produced an add-on with a ton of the crunchy bits from various splatbooks. It did indeed make creating characters quickly and legally easier, especially in long-running campaigns, as when you levelled, or the sheet got worn out from marking and erasing spells & damage, you could just print off a new one, and it'd be just as good in quality at no additional effort. Fully indexed and searchable, so it's good for the DM and rules lookup as well. It occurs to me that if this hadn't succeeded, it would be very unlikely that we'd have got the Dragon Magazine Archive either, and then I probably wouldn't have been able to do this thread. So this is a step towards integrating computers into your roleplaying that is pretty significant really. And this article makes it pretty clear why you would want to buy it as well, without forgetting to inject a bit of humour into it's selling process. I'm pretty glad it's here, because it gives us another useful historical marker to take note of. TSR were taking steps to improve their computer-friendliness, if they'd survived they might have got there eventually, if not by the same route as WotC.
Powers from the past: Oooh. A new idea. In regular D&D rules creating magic items is the exclusive province of powerful spellcasters, and requires vast amounts of time, expense and deliberate effort. Also damper on narrative drama is that you can't normally enchant an existing item. When something is created, that's about as awesome as it gets. Wouldn't it be cool if it could work the other way around, and an item could develop special powers of time through being used in awesome deeds and developing a legend correspondingly. Well, using this system, you can. The result will have a very interesting effect upon a setting, especially when you include the proviso that someone currently owning a magical item will find it a lot harder to create new ones through their deeds. It essentially creates a system whereby the vast majority of items have a legend and original user associated with them, and if you want to make more, you have to do something worth being celebrated without any crutches. That's actually a pretty awesome premise from a narrative PoV. Not sure it jives perfectly with D&D's expected number of items per level thing, but since that only really becomes codified with 3e, that's not really an issue yet anyway. So this is a great idea that has potential far beyond this system, making for good novels as well. Jackpot!
Vampire: The dark ages! Now White Wolf are muscling in on medieval territory. Do you have what it takes to go against the 800 pound gorilla and survive? If you're now a 300 pound orangutang, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: David Howery's back again, filling another little idea. Magical scabbards don't get nearly the screentime swords do. I believe this is a perfect topic for the magazine to cover. He's got no shortage of ideas, even if some of them are nicked from existing myths and legends. Should fill up another few pages nicely.
Bondbreakers let you draw your sword even if they're tied up. You're ready to fight anyway. Naughty naughty very very naughty. :p
Quickarm Scabbards can teleport your sword to your hand and back, even from a distance. This allows you to pull a whole load of tricks and then look innocent as soon as authority turns it's head around.
Scabbards of adjustment fit any weapon perfectly. Hurr hurr, IYKWIMAITYD.
Scabbards of care are another one bringing a feminine touch to proceedings, allowing you to leave the business of oiling and cleaning your weapon to it. That'll save a good bit of time each evening.
Scabbards of empowering give your sword a plus which fluctuates in an interesting manner, depending on how long it stays in the sheath. Which means the less you fight, the more badass you are when you do. Interesting dynamic to have.
Scabbards of Forging can completely fix a broken sword by just shoving the pieces in it and leaving them there. If you don't have the logistics for a blacksmith in your supply train, carry one of these.
Scabbards of flame are another one that empowers their sword. If you kill someone wielding a flaming sword, make sure you take all their stuff.
A Scabbard of Protection gives you another chance to stack extra AC bonuses beyond your armour and shields and rings and boots and etc. Truly, you can get obscene negatives with the right combinations.
Scabbards of Sharpening are another one that makes your weapon badass, but they'll need regular returning for resharpening. Like most of the others, this does not stack with a magical sword's powers. Oh well.
Scabbards of Weightlessness do exactly as it says. If your DM's an encumbrance tracker, this is mildly cool. Otherwise, it's just a bit of extra flavour really.
The Scabbard of wound closure gives you arthurian badassedness. Course, clerics with their blunt weapons'll still be able to take you down, but that just keeps them the powers behind the scenes. Let the fighters have their little bit of limelight, posturing and preening.
Scabbard-swords are an emergency one-use item for if you lose your weapon. The kind of thing made by paranoid wizard/thieves.
Scabbards of binding prevent you from drawing your sword, by being intractably sticky. Unless it's a valuable magic sword trapped in them, it's easier to just discard the bugger, leave it in the treasure pile for the next sucker to solve.
Scabbards of Cowardice try to stop you from taking your weapon out by twisting around, and are of course impossible to discard once you've seen their bad side. Give it to your enemy for the usual fun.
Scabbards of Tripping are even worse, because they hamper you every round you fight. Way to enforce pacifism on people.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 4/8
Rifts is now up to 11 world books. Just how many more can they come up with? It's a big world out there, after all.
Miniature player character record sheets: Well, this is a turn-up. Normally, when they give us extra character sheets, they're longer than the standard one. Some can go up to 4, maybe even 6 pages in complex and highly customised systems. Maybe that isn't what you want though. Maybe you want a sheet that cuts out all the stuff that isn't relevant for your class, thus allowing it to actually be smaller. So yeah, three little sheets, one for fighters, one for rogues and one for spellcasters. Enjoy. Not a bad idea, but one of those cases where there just isn't much to say. Keep it up.
Forum: Tim Nutting reminds people that if they have a problem with their game, discussing it with their DM and other players will be more likely to solve it than writing to the forum and waiting several months for your letter to be printed and maybe get replies. I'm not going to argue with that at all.
Eyal Teler moves into using e-mail. He again recommends the turnabout is fair play method of dealing with annoying players. Do as you would be done by is a lesson everyone should learn.
Ryan Leach thinks that DM's ought to try and make new players particularly welcome rather than the opposite. Mind you don't get patronising though.
Eleanor Clarke gives her experiences with sexism, which haven't been too bad. But if you do encounter it, exploit it, instead of getting intimidated. People trying to chat you up are particularly vulnerable to all kinds of subtle humiliations. And then you wonder why we get shy and bitter.
William Valentine is another guy who just shrugs at the fact that not many women are interested in roleplaying. It might be nice to have a few more, but it's not worth stressing about.
Rogues gallery: A dwarf who wears nothing but armor? Oh dear. I'm sure that's meant to sound badass, but it actually sounds hilarious. What, nothing at all underneath it? And he will wear nothing but armour until he finds or avenges his family. Can you say chilly and chafing. Well, it keeps you looking brooding and the smell will keep you a loner. So yeah, this month's character is a fail simply because it's so cliched and unintentionally funny. Did no-one spot that, or did they put it in precisely for that reason. It's certainly a very sharp step downwards from last month. I do wonder what they'll try and serve us next.
Network news: Another PSA from the RPGA, as they try and expand their user base. This time, it's by explaining how you get an official RPGA presence at your convention, and encouraging smaller conventions around the world to write to them and request permission to run official adventures. A lot of recruits are made via people playing a con game casually, and then getting hooked on the idea of tapping into a wider world of gamers. So the idea of getting more people on the ground seems a rather good one. Build things from grass-roots support, instead of just bombarding us with adverts (especially when they don't have the money for regular TV ads anyway) Once again it seems like this is one department of the company that has it's head screwed on straight, while around them is much flailing. I'd be pleased to see them succeed.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 5/8
Campaign classics: Magical sand? Well, that's as good a topic for a Bazaar. It's certainly bizarre, at any rate. Now, what campaigns are filled with sand? Athas and Zakhara, mainly. And if you guessed the one that romanticises it's deserts more, you were right. Arabian niiiights, like arabian days. More often than not, are hotter than hot, in a lot of good ways.
Fire Sand creates flaming walls wherever it's sprinkled. This seems like one that could backfire easily if it's holder is careless. I'll bet fireball is involved in it's creation.
Rasping Sand is another one that's pretty hazardous to it's user. Wear a special glove, or have your sprinklin' hand abraded to the bone. Gee. better not lose it, or you'll be more screwed than Cyclops without his glasses.
Sand Cages are pleasingly cinematic. Throw it, and the victim is trapped within it's swirling bars. This doesn't actually stop them moving though, but merely abrades them while they're inside it. False advertising, methinks.
Sand of Mirages is almost too obvious. Sprinkle for easy illusions. You'd be more disappointed if they didn't include it.
Sand of Obscurement is an easy way to do the disappearing ninja thing. Fwoosh. Mind you don't run into a wall as you make your getaway, as it can be hard to navigate with your eyes closed.
Sand of Restoration temporarily recreates buildings if you sprinkle it on a ruin. Now that is an awesome idea. You can get to explore dungeons that literally don't exist anymore. That's a plot device I'd love to use at some point.
Sand of Sinking is also pretty versatile, as you can use the ability to turn floors and walls into quicksand as a means of travel as well as a weapon. After all, many platformers have secret bits accessible by going down the sand pits. Why shouldn't a DM nick that trick?
Slow Sand is another misnomer. Complete paralysis is not slowing. Still, at least this one'll probably work better than expected. Who's going to complain to Standards & Practices about that?
Solid Sand is pretty much the opposite of Sand of sinking, letting you turn a soft or fragile surface into a rock solid one temporarily. Let's get bibilical, forge a way through the wilderness.
Thirsty Sand is pretty nasty. As if dehydration wasn't a serious risk already in the desert, someone has to make it even worse. Another one you should probably be careful when sprinkling, for if a bit gets in your eyes, you'll really regret it.
Sand of Scintillation explodes in a flash of light. Like sand of obscurement, this is perfect for the ninja wanting to make a good entry or exit without being spotted. Not the most imaginative ending, but this article definitely has enough good ideas in it to justify itself. You can really mess with the tactical landscape with this collection, which is great fun to plot about.
The role of books: Book of moons by Rosemary Edgehill sees her once again defying genre categorisation and cliches to deliver something that's both fun, and has more sardonically realistic reactions to the strange things happening than the average book. Long may she fail to toe the line.
Enchanted forests, edited by by Katharine Kerr & Martin H Greenberg continues his dominance over the fantasy anthology field. It not only has good stories, but the influence of Mrs Kerr means they're sequenced well too, going from one subtheme to another. The broad and vague theme also means the stories have plenty of room to surprise. It looks like this publishing house has no shortage of material to assemble in various orders.
The fantastic four: To free atlantis by Nancy A Collins is another not so great novelisation of comic characters. The focus is poor, it tries to have too many plots going on at once, and then reveals an enormous twist in the end which invalidates most of the previous events. While not uncommon amongst comics, this is still stupid writing. And without the pretty visuals for fights, this is even less tolerable than normal.
Star trek concordance by Bjo Trimble is a highly comprehensive guidebook, primarily aimed at covering TOS. All the episodes, indexed with detailed listings of creatures, events, jargon, and more obscure stuff like the precise backstage crew involved in each episode. John's main complaint is that there isn't the same kind of research put into the real world references, so the inaccuracies the series made to real history & mythology for dramatic licence are not pointed out as such. Don't believe everything you read.
The art of star trek by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, on the other hand, avoids that issue by being largely stills & artwork. Not that there isn't a good deal to learn from this, as they include behind the scenes shots, storyboard and concept art sketches, costume design information, and the backdrops used for alien worlds and space scenes. The perfect thing for a nerd to have on their coffee table.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 6/8
Sage advice: There can so be chaotic psionicists in Athas! (No they can't. Or at least. you can't. It's just another case of NPC's breaking the rules. )
What racial xp bonuses do aaracockra and pterrans get ( Sappy sappy respect for nature and your life path is good for them. They'll never produce badasses to rival the sorcerer kings)
Do defilers cause damage when they cast, or when they memorize? ( When they memorize now. Retcon, retcon, with great glee we retcon. We care not who's flowers we trample. And we pretend not to have a care in the world, but secretly fear that next day, we will never have been today. For who knows what the dread hand of retcon may touch next. )
Can you resurrect the undead of the dead land (nah. They've been dead too long.)
What are the thieving adjustment for athasian races that can't become thieves, but can get some rogue skills from another class (Here ya go, son. Good to be able to provide a bit of basic help for a change.)
Do you hurt your hand if you punch someone who's stoneskinned (nahh. )
Does dispel magic stop clay golems wounds from being unhealable (no)
You've changed the thieving modifiers (We changed a lot of things in Players Options. Some of them are mutually contradictory. Hence the word options, y'know.)
Role-playing reviews: Giantcraft makes Giants playable as PC's, but does have some issues. It's a little too Forgotten Realms specific, has writers ADD, and doesn't do enough to make giants more than just big people. Sure, it'll do the job, but don't expect a free ride. There's so many splatbooks competing for attention these days.
GURPS Fantasy folk also gets a pretty mediocre review. As with most things GURPS, it's good for producing creatures that are varied and statistically balanced, but it's more an encyclopaedia than a setting guide, with roleplaying notes sticking firmly to the stereotypes. Still, if you have your own ideas ready to go, you could choose a far worse system to put them in, and this'll help you build them quickly and easily.
The Complete Ninjas Handbook brings Aaron Allston back to one of the subjects he loves best. It's not as comprehensive as his old Ninja HERO book (see issue 162) but then, the complete series sticks to it's 128 page formula. It does a decent enough job of creating a whole bunch of rogue hybrids and tying them together with a cultural setup that supports all-ninja campaigns. It's a decent enough way to round out the series, which has been dragged out a bit beyond it's natural ending.
Faeries is a supplement for ARS Magica. It does a good job of making them interestingly whimsical and full of setting detail, but rick finds the rules for using them as PC's rather too complicated and sometimes vague. Guess despite moving from White wolf to WotC, the writers are still thinking in the same way they used to.
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 7/8
Dragonmirth gets slightly confused by events. Swordplay is starting to increase in size. I guess it happens to every regular comic. Libram X returns to get a half-decent send-off instead of being unceremoniously cancelled at the climax. Still feels like the story is seriously cut down from it's original conception. Am I right in this inference? Anyone with any behind the scenes stuff to spill on this one?
Knights of the dinner table: Hey, at least the format changes aren't all bad. We also get classic stuff like this, that would go on to have it's game made into a real system.
Floyd starts to get anachronistic. Another case of the real world intruding in amusing ways, thanks to the joys of magic.
TSR Previews: More stuff out this month that they didn't mention last time. They are getting sloppy. You know, if you formatted things a little less garishly you could fit them in.
Birthright gets Greatheart by Dixie McKeone. The shadow world threatens an elven burial ground. Oh, they do go on. Will it wind up being everyone's burial ground?
The forgotten realms gets Escape from undermountain by Mark Anthony. Oh, Artek is so screwed. You know what Halaster is like. You may get the guy you came to rescue, but there will be a price.
First Quest concludes it's own novel trilogy. The farmboy hero now has a full party of stereotypes and a talking animal. They're now ready to save the world! Doug Niles, who really ought to know better by now, churns out the requisite cheese.
Our generic adventure is The Silver Key. Even fairly powerful characters have to run when faced with lots of orcs. Easy to place in any campaign (except dragonlance )
And spellfire has obviously been busy when we weren't looking, because it's up to booster pack 8. Characters and locations from classic modules such as the tomb of horrors join the fray. What powers will they have in this game?
And now we're caught up with this month, on to the next month. Birthright continues to launch stuff at an unprecedented rate. It's obviously a favorite of someone in upper management. The book of Magecraft does the splatbook thing for this campaign world, with a particular focus on the unique domain magic tricks they can pull. Binsada gets a domain sourcebook, giving you another fleshed out place that your PC could be in charge of. And Sword of Roele is another adventure. Geared towards mid-level characters, it's a survive and conquer mission against an awnsheigh. Looks rather like a chimera on the cover. Is that him, or just one of his pets.
The Forgotten realms gets two novels, but no sourcebooks. Vaguely unusual. The veiled Dragon by Troy Denning sees our stalwart novelist working on the harpers series. They have to do good while not getting to be heroes for it, because of the whole secret organisation thing. On the other hand, regicide isn't the kind of thing you can easily hide, and you can bet the people investigating it in Murder in Cormyr by Chet Williamson will get a decent amount of kudos. Now, will they raise him, and if not, why not.
Planescape gets Something Wild. One of their more forgettable adventures. ( I own it, and all I remember is something vague about dream manipulation playing a part, and those eco-aesop anti rangers trying to get into the beastlands. Neh.)
Dark sun gets The Rise and fall of a Dragon King by Lynn Abbey. Trying to follow in P. N. Elrod's footsteps by humanizing one of the big villains of the setting I see. Damnitt, why can't they revel in their cosmic power instead of getting all angsty and brooding. Surely you've suffered enough.
Dragonlance has another prequel. Don Perrin shows us the pre war life of Theros Ironfeld. Who? Man, they're getting increasingly obscure these days.
Ravenloft is also in the mood for filling out a villain's backstory. King of the dead by Gene DeWeese does for Azalin what P N Elrod did for Strahd. Will it enjoy anything like the same success?
We also get a generic AD&D novel, and a straight generic novel. The rod of seven parts gives you a sample story loosely based on the module of the same name. Doug Niles is responsible for this one as well. And Winged Magic by Mary H Herbert. Another not very edifying teaser leaves me with nothing to say. The size and quality of these does seem to be going down, and the number of typos increasing. Who was in charge of this section anyway?
Dragon Magazine Issue 226: February 1996
part 8/8
The current clack: Wizards of the Coast get a whole page to themselves this month, as they make massive layoffs despite (saying they're) making record profits. They're dropping the ventures that aren't working, and concentrating on the ones that are. Once again, they're proving themselves more business savvy than TSR ever were. Of course, that pragmatism comes at a cost in innovation. In fact, it seems they've completely cut their roleplaying department. They want a proven seller rather than risking tons on developing a new property. Hmm. This is very interesting indeed in light of future events. Both the good and bad aspects of this attitude will be applied in force when they take over D&D. So this is a definite historical pointer. Really, its amazing just how quickly they rose to prominence.
The other news is fairly dramatic as well. There's another gaming magazine folding, and FASA's fan club has fallen apart, defaulting on their debts. Things aren't looking so good for gaming in general. On the plus side, it seems most companies now have at least a token online presence. And we can be pretty sure that'll only get better. Pretty big changes in the landscape, really. I'm rather pleased they're reporting on them.
With lots of useful crunch, quite a few articles that are good for any system, several very interesting historical details, and bad articles that are hilariously bad rather than just dull, this is the best issue they've done in a while. That's not to say there aren't problems with it, the beginning in particular is pretty ropey, but it shows they are still getting good submissions, and picking them out of the pile. I guess all those repeated reminders of how you submit to the magazine do serve a purpose. If only everything had as firm a logic behind it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. A prime example of the put everything right up front and clutter everywhere image style. I disapprove. Things can only look genuinely big if you give them enough context to establish scale. Otherwise the brain just defaults to seeing them as normal. Just as to make music loud, you have to get people to want to turn it up, not simply record it louder. It took me quite a few looks to realise how big this thing was supposed to be. Needs moar contrast. The topic is another return to familiar territory. The Underdark! Where monsters this big wouldn't really fit realistically! Are there some new caverns down there that delvers still haven't found. Hopefully. And hopefully they'll be full of interesting challenges and treasures too.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: Ahh yes, a reminder that we can be constrained by our cultural touchstones a little too easily, and ought to draw upon other real world cultures if we want to create a varied and interesting world. Like Roger didn't say that in his tenure. (issue 176) The solution? The Encyclopedia Brittanica! I'm sorry, that's just unintentionally hilarious. To expand your knowledge of other cultures, you go straight for looking through the filter of posh white guys. The irony is staggering. I mean, sure, you need a translator unless you're willing to spend years learning the language and cultural references from the inside out, but that choice? It hurtses my brain. This is another example of them repeating a topic, only shorter, and not as well handled as the previous article. Gimme a break.
D-Mail: There's a whole bunch of letters commenting on their new look this month, mostly positive. First up, is a certain Iquander, who is particularly pleased at Greyhawk getting better treatment in the magazine than it used to. Do it more! I smell foreshadowing.
Secondly, we have a suggestion that they should compile all the spells ever developed in the same way they did magic items. This is one case they're waaaay ahead of you. Still, this stuff takes time. Especially here, where they have to dig through the archives and assemble everything in alphabetical order. Lot's of hard work for their editing staff.
Another rather shorter bit of praise for the greyhawk article. You know, it was hardly as impressive as the ones in issue 204-8. Much of this is absence making the heart grow fonder.
In contrast, they do have a letter saying they should be careful with the campaign world specific articles. Too many, and the magazine ceases to be useful to the general public. It'll still probably cater to more of their readership than articles on other game systems, and they did those for ages without it hurting them. It's merely a matter of not doing too many in a single issue.
Two letters commenting that the switch to perfect bound has made it hard to read the beginning of each line. You know what the fix is? Increasing the margins! That means they can fill the magazine up with a good % or two less actual content. :p How's that for making savings as well.
And finally a letter from someone who seems to want to adhere too closely to canon, by wanting them to tell him exactly where the named magical swords in the Forgotten Realms are. Oh dear. I think that counts as not quite getting it.
The secrets of successful dungeon building: Swordplay artist Matthew Guss tries his hand at article writing (as well as illustrating said article, thus providing them two products for the price of one, and ensuring they're better integrated than usual. ) The result is surprisingly serious given his comic output. It's also very very 2nd edition, with a lot of the emphasis on building a dungeon by thinking about the people who made it, the resources they had, the reasons they had to make it in the first place, and how they would realistically keep and utilise their treasure. No gonzo corridors of death here. I find that rather curious. I guess he's just following the crowd, after all, that's what they've been saying for years now. This does feel rather like another of their returns to basics that we're seeing far too much of lately. So the illustrations are easily the most new and entertaining parts of this article. I am forced to conclude that he probably ought to stick to them.
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 2/8
The dragon's bestiary: Quelle surprise, more darkdwelling monsters. Will they actually help the ecology down there make more sense, or just be more horrors to kill?
Bainligor are moderately badass flightless bat-people. They come in huge numbers, and their stats scale up a lot, but are relatively slow, so they are not ones you want to stick around and fight the whole horde of. Still, at least they're more interesting and negotiable with than Gibberlings. Good luck to your dwarven communities if a horde attacks them.
Giant scarab beetles nom dung and undead, thus serving a vital ecological role in the underdark, and quite possibly in keeping spawning undead from taking over the world in general. They might also eat you if you get in their way though, so sticking around to say thanks isn't the best idea. Like denzelian, it's good to have them there.
Carapace is another gross organic thingy that grows all over you and grants you powers, but also gradually consumes you. Are you willing to make that sacrifice? If you don't have a good cleric around, it will be the end of you, but you've got a good chance of taking down plenty of enemies with you.
Darkness Elementals are of course made of negative energy, This means they can blind you, but are vulnerable to magical light. The usual negative energy = Eeevil rule is in full force here. So we still need positive energy ones to complete the symmetry, but all the para and quasiplanes are long since dealt with in the magazine. They'll have to start making up new planes if they want to do more of these.
Fireweed is like brown mold, only far less dangerous. Plant it in a volcanic region and it'll grow quickly and render the area inhabitable in the process. Another one that's more flavour and ecological filling in than combat encounter.
Glouras are whimsical fae with quite powerful charming capabilities, and the willingness to use that power to assemble harems of slaves who will defend their mistress to the death. You may well have to fight your own buddies again. Be ready with those dispels
Whispering Moths are another ecology filler, serving the role of bats or bees in spreading seeds and fungi spores. They're not harmless though, and are especially likely to be a pain for surface adventurers, as like regular moths, they're drawn to light. If you can keep your head and toast a whole swarm in one go, you'll get a truly ridiculous amount of experience.
Blue ring octopi are another of the few good guys down there. Like svirfneblin, they survive by caution and co-operation, hiding and fighting only if they have to. You may well meet some if you get turned into an aboleth slave, which can lead to making new friends when you break out. I think that sounds like a pretty decent plotline, don't you.
Vampire squid are illithid's weapons of choice in spreading their reach to the waters of the underdark, kicking the asses of aboleth & kuo-toa. They're another one that has a strong implied plotline connected to them, with interesting issues of morality and sacrifices for freedom raised. This is proving a very interesting collection of monsters indeed.
Albino Wyrms have relatively low HD for dragons, and no particular magical abilities, but are pretty tough still. They're also of dubious sanity, so they're probably not that effective really, and may get stuck in one area as they age (which can't help) Not a very interesting way to end an otherwise pretty good article.
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 3/8
Journeys to the deepest dungeons: Or the logistics of penetrating dungeons miles deep, with entire cities of monsters and surviving. Even at 20th level, you can't just walk in, kill them all, and take their stuff. (and even if you do, it's going to take some pretty involved magic to get it all back to the surface, so logistics will come into things anyway. ) More realistically, you have two options. You can pick a target within your power, get in, make a surgical strike, and get out again before they can retaliate. Or you can assemble a larger team, maybe even an army, and use them to keep the general population busy. (and they will have problems in a city of Drow or Illithids) So really, it's the kind of undertaking that'll take a few adventures just to get the resources to take on the big one. As with our first underdark special, in particular the advanced aboleth article, this tells us that there are adventures possible that are epic far beyond the usual scope of what happens in play, and it's up to you to seize those possibilities proactively. That's not a bad message to send to a group.
The ecology of the Osquip: Om nom nom! Whosa happy rat-thing? Whosa OW! Bleeding hell, it bit my finger off! Do you know how expensive regeneration spells are?! Anyway, welcome back to the guilds of bickering sages. They played a substantial part in the first few ecologies, but haven't been around much lately. It seems that they're experimenting with format even here, with the crunchy footnotes put at the bottom of the page, rather than all being saved up for the end. This actually is probably an improvement, particularly in pdf format, which is not as conducive to rapid flicking back and forth as paper. The fiction is pretty entertaining as well, as we see said sages bicker, theorize, and aim snide remarks at one-another. And make poop jokes. Oh yes. At least they're not getting all flustered when talking about mating habits. Family friendly magazine, blah blah blah. An excellent addition to the series, that gives me plenty of new tricks to try on my players.
AD&D Triviathon: Ha. We've had a few of these knowledge tests before, but this is the first time they've made it a competition with actual prizes. Very interesting. Unfortunately, it's on a pull-out poster which they haven't scanned in, so I can't match my wits against it, see how I would have done. That's mildly irritating, but as ever, what can ya do. You can only go so far to track this stuff down. :shrugs:
Sage advice: How do wererats transmit lycanthropy through their swords (By rubbing their weapons in their were-ratty filth. You really don't wanna get hit by that. )
Do you lose a point of con after being resurrected (yes. Each time, it gets easier to die and harder to come back. Sometime, you're gonna fail. Do you feel lucky this time, punk?)
Why can't you cast spells through a projected image anymore (you can. We just don't advertise it anymore. )
What's the difference between AD&D 2nd ed and the new rules (It's still 2nd edition. Only the packaging and the errata has changed. We still want you to buy the new versions though. Lorraine, er, I mean we, need your money.)
Krynnish characters can so be bards! It lists them in the book! No, those are actually just thieves with musical proficiencies. If you have bard characters in dragonlance, you must retcon them immediately!)
Do you get to roll % immediately if you increase your strength to 18 by wishes (If you like. )
Since when do rangers cast wizard spells ( They did way back in 1st edition. Don't you remember that? Ed certainly does. )
What happens if an invisible character is in the way of a magic missile shot (It ignores them. A magic missile does not miss it's target, no matter how improbable that may look.)
What happens when two half-elves mate ( That's a bit personal, isn't it. Look, we're just people. Our bits work just the same as any human or elf. We don't turn into a glowing ball of light or cause earthquakes or anything.)
Is charging a full or half move action (depends how far you charge)
Do undead get fatigued (no. Not for a second. )
How fast can you move running or sprinting (running is x2, sprinting is x3. Is that so hard?)
What AC do you get when you combine cap and coif ( Are you making a dirty irish joke? No? Skip'll be watching you. 4. )
What affects a weapon's speed factor ( magic)
What are the saving throws against normal blows (2 for everything. They're unlikely to do much)
Is there a formula for converting proficiencies to the new rules (no. You'll have to fudge it)
How many pages extra does having a reversed spell take (none, unless it's listed separately )
What happens if a specialist uses a item from an opposing school (nothing. They either don't know how to use it, or can use it fine. There's not some canon police waiting to sweep them up if they try and use a forbidden item.)
What age should you be at a particular XP level (There is very little correlation between the two. You can go a lifetime without getting any, or be epic while still in your 20's. It's all about accomplishment, not putting the time in. Just like becoming famous in real life. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 4/8
The role of books has a Magic: the Gathering special this month. Since role-playing reviews has already done that recently, this means it has become such a breakout hit that no-one's quite sure where to put it anymore, and so anyone remotely related is trying to get in on the act. Ahh, the joys of becoming a breakout hit that creates a whole new genre. Until the shine wears off, and the world puts you in a niche, you get to do virtually anything you want. It's a brilliant position to be in.
The pocket players guide for magic the gathering is already up to it's 4th edition. They must be releasing them every 6 months or something. Still, being released by the official writers, it's got a better ability to keep up with the breakneck rise of CCG's than any third party competitors. Apart from the attempts at IC banter, which fall a little flat, it's a pretty solid explanation of the game, well organised and indexed. That should make them quite a bit more money by handling their own support industry as well.
Learn Magic cards, by Larry W Smith, PhD, on the other hand is just plain innaccurate in a lot of it's details, some of them worryingly basic. This problem is compounded by the fact that the writing is smooth and authoritative and consistent in it's misreadings. Unless it's John who has the rules interpreted all wrong, which isn't completely beyond the bounds of probability. Still, it is worrying, and he can't recommend it. Curious and interesting. Any comments on this?
The unauthorized strategy guide to Magic: The gathering by Gregg Williams and Paul Dreyfus (man, these titles really are getting stupidly huge) isn't bad, but it is very focussed upon helping newbies. This means serious tournament players are likely to outgrow it fast. If you just want to have fun with your family, on the other hand, this might be the right guide for you.
Deep magic by Charles Wolfe & George H Baxter, by contrast, is aimed at experts, particularly those with the cash to spend on buying tons of booster packs to get those rare cards for really brutal deck-building. It's so focussed on these optimal strategies that it neglects the more achievable builds, which means it won't be useful to a lot of people. Still, it's a good way to keep people buying more booster packs, isn't it. :p
Targen's tome: A masters guide to Magic by John M Corradin, looks like another attempt at writing from a semi-IC perspective. With quite a bit of humour, and accessible top tens of most useful cards, it's both useful and a good read despite being a bit rough around the edges. Remember, a game should be played for fun. Taking the whole thing too seriously kinda spoils it for everyone.
Network news: Once again this column clearly and concisely states what it's trying to accomplish. To make these conventions work, they need people able to write good adventures. After all, they can't keep reusing the tomb of horrors for eternity. We need self-contained, easy to understand adventures that can be played in a single session, with pregens that are correctly tailored to the challenges of the adventure. You need to submit your idea first, and then be willing to test and edit afterwards. As with most of the company these days, it's not particularly accessible to newbies anymore, but still, it's probably an easier way to get a foothold than going straight into freelancing for official books. And it's easy enough to understand what you have to do here. I just wish they didn't have to repeat themselves so many times in slightly different formats to get the message across.
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 5/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: We had two specials on elven magic items last year. Inevitably, this brings the complaint that dwarves are under-represented. Oh, suck it up. You're still easily in the top percentile in terms of media coverage and shiny toys to play with. Spare a thought for the Norkers and Dire Corbies. They're never going to get a special on them, while you've still got several to come over the years. Now enjoy your presents, ya grumps.
An Axe of Dwarvenkind can turn into a battle axe or a pair of twin returning throwing axes. In either form, they're only really any good for dwarves. No question how the treasure's gonna be divided if you get one of these.
Stonereaver axes are not only super effective in dwarven hands, they also hurt stone based enemies even more. No big surprise from a race built on mining stuff.
Dwarven Warhelms give you a bonus to AC, and also to ale! :p (I presume that's meant to be morale, but is a very appropriate typo played straight) It's even cumulative in groups. Let's quaff some more, lads! :D
Explode stones are a very bad pun. They can be used as grenades or dynamite, both of which seem handy in subterranean warfare. Watch the enemy don't reverse engineer them, because then you have very definite technological advancement and we can't be having with that.
Hammers of Battering allow you to automate your violence in a whole bunch of interesting ways, and avoid having to keep rebuying material components. Definitely one for the priestly then.
Hammers of Stunning seem pretty self-explanatory. You hit them once, they're at a substantial disadvantage and you can keep on pounding. Always useful when facing a big boss.
A Manual of the Forge gives you a free proficiency. It's not as invaluable as the ones that give you level or ability score boosts, but certainly nothing to be sneezed at. Search for lots of variants on this to become a real skill monkey.
Oil of Corrosion Resistance is invaluable in a community where they try and build things to last. A manufacturer of this can make a pretty penny by selling it on to all the craftsmen.
Oil of Sculpting is basically stone shape in a jar. Another one that has considerable economic value. Not trusting magic rapidly disappears when it's just so useful.
Floyd has the summoner/demon relationship rudely inverted.
They're in the book: Another way of using books as plot hooks. Well, it's important to get our adventurers reading, especially since 2e has the lowest literacy level amongst characters of all editions thanks to the way the proficiency rules work. :D Actually, this is pretty interesting, as it showcases the various ways clues can be hidden in an otherwise unrelated book, or collection of books. The main issue here is that it is rather tricky to adjudicate, as you can't just put the books in front of the players and let them find the clues themselves. You can either give the solution away, or like secret doors, make them roll, and just use the solutions as flavour when they discover. Or if you're really dedicated, scribble on a real book and make them search for the anomaly IRL. Yeah, Not sure I'm keen on that one. Maybe annotate a .pdf instead. So this is a good idea, that may be a lot of work in actual play. I'll have think about how I can make this one work to my benefit.
Tactics for two: Our CCG coverage this month is a little collection of variant rules for the Blood Wars game. Rules optimised for two players? Seems slightly odd. After all, the game doesn't break down when played that way, unlike in solitaire play. Still, they would probably know better than I do, having plenty of chances to playtest it. The changes aren't that great, mainly being adjustments to how much stuff you can play, and a few additions and clarifications that will keep play suitably brutal when the political aspect is greatly reduced. It makes me wonder just how badly the game handles 2 player under the core rules. And was that a problem when it came to actually finding people to play the game with? This is one of those cases where I'll have to turn my questions upon the general public. What were your experiences with this game and how did the number of players change it?
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 6/8
Tales from the fifth age: Mission from kendermore by Harold J Johnson. A story of a whole adventuring party of Kender from their original creator? Oh dear god. This is what I call penance for my sins. Still, it demonstrates exactly why Kender are prime adventurer material. Even if the situation wasn't that dramatic before they got there, they'll find a way to make it into an adventure. And no matter how bad things get, how many of the party get lost, they still act like it's one big game, with the long-term consequences irrelevant. And yet despite all the bickering and sidetracks, they still somehow wind up on the winning side most of the time. And hey, if they lose, that just means the fun continues with more challenges to solve. Their stealth skills & toughness makes them much more likely to survive than the average adventurer. This makes this very interesting, and rather unusual in style. The fact that the kender do gradually get eliminated throughout the story makes it all the more entertaining, and very unusual for the magazine, which has become quite shy about killing off protagonists. You could almost say it's penance from the author, providing the readers with sadistic amusement at the expense of his own creation. So I'm not sure what to make of this, but would be very interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes thought that led to it's writing and publication. It is once again a fairly dramatic change from the usual fiction published in the magazine.
Arcane Lore: Oooh. Pretty fireworks. Another thing that has a long association with magic, including a substantial appearance in The Hobbit. We certainly aren't short of elemental fire spells, but this once again shows that you can create a new genre from existing ingredients, like collectible card games, paranormal romance or comedians in drag with fatsuits. And is rather amusing really. Let's amaze those hobbits and startle the goblins.
Firecrackers inflict minor damage and are loud and startling. Is this going to be one of those articles that does technology with magic? Those get dull quite quickly.
Sparkler, on the other hand can light up any metal object without destroying it. A nice alternative to conventional torches or light spells. Watch as they go ow when you hit them with it. Tee hee.
Flare is another one that does pretty much what it does in reality. It even has the same material components. Meh.
Goblin Chaser is very closely inspired by a certain Hobbit scene. Sparking balls of fire to rout your enemies. It's not just pain, it's noise and impact. Wheee.
Spark Fountain is an extended one that'll make an area painful to pass through for quite a few rounds. That'll be good both as visuals and battlefield control, especially if you can shield your own side.
Bakarapper sends out little explosions that explode again. Another familiar real world firework that you don't want to get caught up in the middle of.
Dragon Whirl is a more macho Catherine Wheel. Another one that'll be good for battlefield control over a moderate area such as driving enemies away from your castle wall.
Roman Candle gives you a rapid fire mini grenade launcher, which you can wield, or set down to serve as one of those regularly firing obstacles you have to slip between in CRPG's. Make it permanent and you have a perfect ornamentation to your insane lair.
Special Effects lets you reshape the visuals of many of your spells. Later on, this stuff'll be free. But for now, it takes a 4th level spell. 2nd ed can be harsh in many ways.
Starburst lets you terminally taste the rainbow as it arcs over the horizon and explodes in your face. Or is that Skittles. Oh well, you won't be any position to complain once ye've got a taste o' this sonnie.
Display lets you put on a full gandalf-esque performance in a single precisely timed package. It even lets you make normally deadly spells child-friendly but still impressive looking. That should be exceedingly useful. Can't really complain about this one, as it has lots of cool bits and callouts in amongst the dull spells.
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 7/8
Forum: Larry Framness prefers the old modules, and would like to see many of them re-released. Wait a couple of years, you'll be in luck.
Peter Levi thinks we need to reach out more to convert the ambivalent. There's a lot of everyday stuff we could do, but don't. Star Trek managed to become normalised through persistence, (although you still see jokes) we can do it too! Ahh, idealism.
Tres Deloach wants to cut the cruft and get back to the dungeon too. There's just so much crap out now that it's squashing down the good stuff. That complaint is definitely increasing in frequency quite rapidly. No wonder sales slumped.
Nicholas Smith reminds you that if your game sucks, pull out and start a new one. You have to know what you want and satisfy your own needs.
Tobias Hill reminds us that rogues are more powerful than they seem, because on the same XP total, they'll often be several levels ahead. He's also finding TSR's supplement bloat is just getting too much to handle. Not much connection there, but both valid.
David Carithers wants some example of dwarf chants to sing. Perhaps something about ale? :p
Anton J. Uselmann gives his advice about introducing new players into an ongoing campaign. Maybe they should be a touch behind, but not so far they can't catch up with a little work.
Dragonmirth has plenty of retorts to life's problems. Swordplay goes colour and doubles in size. Not that the joke really needs it. Knights of the dinner table shows that Exalted has nothing on the new edition of Hackmaster when it comes to buckets of dice.
Down to scale: Or let's usher out minis coverage with another bit of introductory painting advice. We've seen this a good few times now, each time a little different. At least this one is a decent size, at 4 1/2 pages and a full 9 steps detailed. Not all of those steps will be used every time, which makes it feel a little less basic than it otherwise would. Some of them you might want to do out of order, particularly painting the base, which generally isn't very complicated compared to the mini itself. But this is both easy to understand, and quite informative for it's size. So this feels like one of the last remnants of the old order, mixed with the new attitude of the current one. Not a bad combination, really, especially if you haven't read the previous ones.
Role-playing reviews: The nightmare lands introduces dream based magic and adventure to Ravenloft, which is perfectly suited for it, really. As with Astral Travel, the more intellectually capable characters have a huge advantage, while warriors will be helpless lunks. It certainly isn't for newbie players and DM's, and Rick feels the setting info is a bit sparse, this could justify becoming a whole other line like planescape. So the question is if it's doing too much, or not enough. Not an easy one.
Nightspawn is essentially Palladium's answer to the World of Darkness, monstrous creatures that thought they were human, are trying to balance their human and monstrous lives and preserve a masquerade, while keeping cosmic evils from conquering the universe. Only since this is palladium, there's less angst, and more random rolls, strange mutations and bits of huge weaponry with which to mow down your enemies. How very adolescent. Well, again, that is very appropriate, and a big part of why Vampire became such a huge success as roleplaying went through it's 2nd decade. You can have lots of fun here, as long as you're willing to fudge the rules a little bit.
The world of necroscope brings Brian Lumley's alien, shape-twisting vampires to the Masterbook system, of all things. Well, I suppose it wouldn't be hard to squeeze them into TORG. This becomes another case where the descriptions are brilliant, if rather gross, but the rules aren't too great, and struggle to fit the books events into the system. Just play an all Tzimisce V:tM game instead.
GURPS Blood types brings a vast load of variant vampire types, most from various real world mythologies, some rather obscure. The strength and flexibility of the GURPS rules means all can be made to fit into your game, and it shouldn't be too hard to convert ones from other games too. They rarely seem to be any problem at all.
The cairo Guidebook, on the other hand, doesn't include enough system stuff to make it worth buying over a real book on egyptology, especially not for Call of Cthulhu, which ought to avoid falling into real world cultural cliches too much when venturing around the world. Go back to more primary sources if you want interesting adventures there.
Aaah, Dragon 226 -- the issue that really kicked things off for me.
The strip went from 20,000 readers in Shadis to 250,000 in Dragon (I could be blanking on their distribution at the time). What a difference that many eyeballs can make.
I still have fond memories of my three or four year run with Dragon.
I eventually had stop doing them for Dragon (and Rifters) because of demands on my time but I loved doing the 1 to 2 pagers.
(and the easiest 1,000 bucks a month I ever made).
Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: The forgotten realms takes twinkitude to 40th level, 10 more levels than generic characters can manage, in Faiths and Avatars. As if gods weren't scary enough. It also gets Realms of the Underdark, another collection of short stories giving drow fanboys some more material to consume, and Tangled Webs by Elaine Cunningham, the second book starring the exiled drow princess Liriel. Busy busy busy.
Planescape gets Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. You've already had the general guide. Now you can get more full stats and relationships between characters. Oh go on then. More generally useful but not essential stuff.
Ravenloft sees Van Richten's ghosts come home to roost in Bleak House. And then he may well become a ghost himself. In any case, this is another big metaplot event, with a fairly substantial amount of railroading crap involved. Be ready to acquire derangements, possibly lose stats permanently, and deal with long spells of tension building bits trapped in fixed locations. Not suited for hack and slashers at all.
Mystara finishes off it's current book series with Dragonmage of Mystara. The good guys and the bad guys have to join forces to deal with the even worse guys. Sounds fairly familiar.
And our generic book is Den of Thieves. Do we not already have a complete handbook for this class. What do you have to add to the pot, huh?
The current Clack: This year continues to be the one that really changes the roleplaying landscape, mostly for the worse. GDW shuts down, giving the rights to most of it's games back to their original creators. It's better than bankruptcy, but not by much, and still means Traveller isn't going to get any new books for ages. Meanwhile we get some more elaboration on why White Wolf engaged in substantial layoffs, despite the fact that their sales are still increasing. Just like TSR in 1983, they'd been expanding beyond their means, and living large like they were going to keep increasing exponentially in profits forever. Goes to show, at least a few people got to live like rock and roll stars for a while from roleplaying. But now they have to learn to be a sensible company if they want to survive long-term. Bah. Adulthood sucks. So it's not all bad news, but it is still a bit dispiriting. You can only be carefree and happy-go-lucky if someone else is taking care of things for you.
It's definitely becoming less of a struggle to review this year than it was the last one, but once again, there is a good deal here to be bored and/or unsettled by. The gaming landscape in general is shifting in uncertain fashions, and they're not sure whether to experiment more, or retreat into safe territory, and as a result are trying to do both at once in a manner that's tentative and lacking in confidence. Which doesn't quite work. Better to go out with a bang than a whimper, and at the moment it feels more like a fizzle. It all makes me want to move on to better times all the faster.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Ahh, once again it's april. Spring is starting to be sprung, flowers are starting to bloom, and you can just bet you'll be squirted with water if you sniff the wrong one. And although they aren't leading with them, it does look like they're not skimping on the goofy choices this year. Gotta keep a brave face on, even if the only jokes you really want to make are gallows humour. On we go.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: It used to be conventions were mostly concentrated in summer, (weather being better for travel, plus you can bring your kids, since they aren't in school. ) As the world gets smaller, and the geek population ages, these become less of an issue, and we can enjoy stuff like Winter Fantasy. However, what seems initially like a slice of life recounting like Roger used to do actually turns out to be primarily another tool for promoting their Official RPGA Tournament Games™. Bait and switch! I find this vaguely insulting, but also very telling. They're not just restricting their new RPGA recruitment drive to it's column, they're going to put it in the editorial, and quite possibly the letters page as well. The last traces of resistance to the idea of the magazine being purely a TSR house organ are being eradicated as we speak. This definitely makes me grumpy. The contrast between the old staff, who'd been part of the company for years and had a less formal relationship with their colleagues is not as obvious a change as many, but it is part of the tonal shifts they've made. And it does make it seem like the relationship is more master/servant and less bunch of guys trying to make a living out of a fun hobby.
D-Mail: A letter from someone wondering what the hell a flumph is. You don't know what you're missing out on. No, really. They're brilliant. One of the old skool classics like rust monsters and green slime, only friendly. Don't diss the flumphs.
A rather long letter complaining about Skip's ruling on the Frisky Chest. Skip is unrepentant. People trying to apply magic scientifically should not be surprised at all when things don't work the way intended. Magic is based upon exceptionalism, not formula, and that is what makes it different from physics.
Yet another person singing the out of print blues and asking for the magazine to repeat stuff. No. You can pay the price and mail order them the hard way. :p
Someone wondering what has happened to the rest of Krynn during the 5th age. Buy all the stuff we have planned now, or you'll never find out! One continent is enough work for now. Which is their worldbuilding in general. They call it that, but they never get anywhere near complete at worldbuilding, even if they make the world substantially smaller than earth. There ought to be a better way.
Another letter from someone who wants to submit their stuff to to TSR. That's 4 issues in a row. This really is getting out of hand. Is this what they have to put up with all the time? I can see why that would wear on the sanity.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 2/8
Real jungles: Hello again, Mr Detwiler. I see you've done your research and want to show up a few people's misconceptions again. Is that worth putting in pole position? Actually, yes, as it's a very interesting topic, as it's a great place for adventures, while also being counterintuitive enough to someone raised on media portrayals that you can get it completely wrong easily. Some of these can be worked out via examining more conventional forests and applying logic, such as the fact that while the vegetation is really thick and verdant on the edges, once you get past that into areas where sunlight is blocked out, it's surprisingly empty and quiet. What's less intuitive are the somewhat disturbing ways life can parasitise off itself, growing intimately interconnected as things compete to get more sunlight, and thus more energy to grow Grow GROW! It definitely doesn't make for neat right angled walls and flat floors that are easy to draw maps for. Tricks like how to blend in with the animals, the way the diurnal cycle becomes even more critical without significant seasonal variations, and the dangers that are mainly a problem for nonnatives, with their excess clothing and flashy, easily detected and rusted metal equipment. This is presented with a pleasantly conversational tone with some neat bits of humour slipped in. The main thing that raises my eyebrows is a reference to their Living Jungle campaign, yet another bit of subtle RPGA promotion. Still, I suppose that's a further positive in their book, so this does indeed deserve to be first, as it's both entertaining any useful in any system.
Final Quest: For two years, we've had people talking about their first game. Wouldn't one about people's last games make just as much sense. Well, we're in luck! April fool. Roger Moore finds the time to tell us about the amusing ways characters have died in games he's known, and also some ways in which they haven't, but it would be really embarrassing if they did (so don't go getting ideas ;) ) He also takes the piss out of the silly red triangle graphic, but that's merely an aside in a massive barrage of schadenfreude that is oh so aware of the game's tropes and how to subvert them. After all, long years of reading letters from the magazine mean he knows more than nearly anyone how people are actually playing their games, and the stupid things they think are cool. This is indeed pretty hilarious. Let anyone trying to play a half-elf who's grandfathers are Drizzt and Elminster and dual wields staff/swords be warned. :D The DM can always find new ways of killing you, and if they can't the other players can.
101 uses for a (wet) blanket: Remember the Miller Milk Bottle? (issue 51) I said at the time that it was a pretty blatant rip-off of Douglas Adams' hitchhiker jokes. Well, here's an even more blatant one. Why? Who knows. April fool. This does exactly what it says on the tin, giving you another example of just how versatile a seemingly innocuous household item can be, while also making quite a few bad jokes. And just like the original, about the best response I have is Oooookay. O_o o_O They say that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so what does everything look like when all you have is a blanket? Or a bottle. Or a spoon? Answers can be sent in written or sewn on a blanket please. :)
The Athalantan Campaign: Ooh. Milieu opening time again. The Forgotten Realms is already the most detailed and furthest ranging campaign setting in terms of geography and variety of environments by quite some way. But of course, as in reality, every expansion reveals a new frontier. New continents have dropped off in recent years, but they can't keep just repeating the same places again with different perspectives, so what are they do do? Historical settings! The realms already has quite a few prequels, and Elminster's origin story has driven up demand for details of the past quite a bit. And Ed Greenwood is all too enthusiastic to help, with 9 pages on the long destroyed country of his youth and it's notable people and events. As befits a country ruled by mage-kings, most of the significant NPC's are spellcasters, which means the tendency for them to seem the most important part of the setting (maybe because they're the ones telling the story to the writers of this world :p ) is even more exaggerated than normal. It does seem a pretty interesting place to adventure, and of course, you'll have a freer rein to avoid running into canon than you would in the present day Realms. And even better, it isn't an obvious real world analog of something. While not as fizzy as many of his articles, this is a pretty ambitious one that once again shows us new things to do with the Realms. Once again he's produced something that I really enjoyed consuming on it's own, that also fits into a larger picture and makes the world ever more complete.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 3/8
The dragon's worstiary: Chocolate golems are very much a paper tiger. They may look big and imposing, but they're just so YUMMY! that you're unlikely to find them a challenge. Om nom nom nom. April fool.
Chia Golems give you another means of surprising stupid adventurers. Terrifying animated topiary! Make sure you take good care of them, or they'll grow into just a big blob of greenery, and that won't be good for their mobility.
Plush golems are genuinely creepy, although they'd be even more so if they could grow and shrink as needed to the situation, thus allowing then to be more innocuous when not needed. They react to the subconscious desires of their owners, which we all know is just a recipe for trouble. So these may be a joke, but they can certainly be used in games that are mostly serious. Which I suppose is a fairly optimal combination. People will certainly remember this one over the articles surrounding it.
All in the family: Ah yes, involving your family in adventures. Another of those things that's really cool if it works, but has the potential to go horribly horribly wrong, especially if they players aren't invested enough in the reality of the world (or if they have crafted an elaborate backstory featuring them, and the DM just ignores that for a cheap plot device or refrigerator moment. ) So incorporating family only really works in a long-term game where they have chance to make an impact over extended time periods both IC and OOC. Otherwise, they might as well just be wandering loners anyway. That said, if it works, it can be brilliant, so don't get discouraged because many have done it badly, just as you shouldn't give up on trying to build healthy relationships and a family because you've failed repeatedly in real life.
Network news: Big crossover event time! Raven's bluff is under siege and needs lots of adventurers to help defend it. Become a hero and maybe even influence what happens next! Ah yes, how very very 90's. In a way, I miss this kind of ambition. And then I remember why it went out of fashion. Metaplot is hard enough when it's top down. When it's dictated by the results of tournaments, as was also done in L5R, it can just seem nonsensical all too easily. Which makes this another cool sounding advert that has some rather interesting and strange implications if looked at a little closer. It is nice that they're trying to involve us in an ongoing storyline, but that puts a heavy burden on us and them to get it right. Will they manage it without the Drama Llama getting involved OOC? Were you part of this big event? If so, what did your character do in it?
AD&D Triviathlon: In another instance of promotion which makes me go Huh? they promote last month's triviathlon again. Call the clue hotline at 90 cents a minute if you're having trouble with the answers! Oh dear. That does make this seem rather like a blatant cash grab. Sure there are prizes to be won, but any well-planned competition of this kind will ensure the income is well above the expected costs, and this is just one way to do that. So this ups the tackiness rating of this little business quite a bit. I do not approve.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 4/8
Rogues gallery: Gangsters of the underdark? It looks like it's time for an article that's theoretically usable, but would be out of place in all but the most goofy of campaigns. April fool. Have fun spotting the bad puns and references, since prohibition era gangster culture is not one of my geek specialities. Dear oh dear. :sigh: Whatever will they come up with next?
Gnormahlenvaey "Squeaky" Catonerihn is an incredibly annoying voiced gnome who is rather insecure about his height, and makes preemptive jokes about his mother. The kind of NPC that makes players really happy to kill them, in other words. Who's da april fool now huh?
Vikhrumn "100 Gold" Coil is a beholder that always levitates a sharp suit and gangster hat around him, and "rubs out" people for the above quoted price. The assassin's guild might like to have words about that, but they're still recoving from the 2e cartel breaking, and how do you backstab something with 11 eyes anyway? Maybe poisoning his drink would work.
Brikhalana "Dutch" Ipprszhen is the very model of a refined mind flayer gentleman, with handlebar tentacles and a gambling habit that's made so much easier when you can read and control minds on a whim. I wouldn't want to frequent a bar run by someone like that.
Felyndiira "Mad money" Shi'narrvha is a misanthropic race traitor drow who uses polymorphed wolverines as her personal bodyguards. Oookay. That's very specific indeed. What the hell are the references on this one?
Grey'shivnarien "the fiddler" Taliain is an insane drow in clown makeup who's fiddle can shoot poison darts. Again, I'm not entirely sure what the joke is, but I am scared. Clowns are scary enough when they're sane and not playing music at you.
Sir Elliot of Kness is (Of Course! ) the trenchcoated and fedora'd guy who has to hunt down all these undesirables. The means he uses to accomplish this may jeopardise his paladin status, but hey, someone's got to clean up the underdark. Do you have a better plan?
Role-playing reviews: Throwing Stones is a somewhat odd attempt to incorporate CCG design into roleplaying. You character is defined by a selection of dice, and of course you will need to buy at least one set per player, and quite possibly do some trading to get the character you want. It's CCG elements mean it's fun in PvP, but player vs GM challenges are a bit dull, and the worldbook is just incredibly generic. You'll have to play to it's strengths if you want to make this work.
Chronomancer leaves Rick pretty much baffled by the rules details. It looks cool, and the writing is authoritative and convincing, but damned if he could run it as written. One for high crunch game lovers only.
Guardians is another CCG review. It's well illustrated, amusingly goofy and fun to play, but probably too crunchy for it's own good. Not a complaint we're unfamiliar with. The game designers need constant reminding to KISS if they ever want to be kissed in real life.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 5/8
Dungeon Mastery: A random adventure generator? Yay. That's an invaluable addition to my ...... wait, what's this? Some guy they met in a bar? Deliver a singing telegram? A plague of rabid ferrets. This is another april fool article isn't it. Bugger. Just when I was getting excited, you drop that on me. Still, I suppose you could theoretically use the scenarios generated by this, but the odds at least part of them will be stupid is well above 50%. Do you like those odds? I don't think I do.
Forum: Rick Maffei takes up more than half of the forum this month, complaining about how players option subabilities mess up the game, making it far too easy to min-max. This is particularly the case with percentile scores. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of these either.
Roy MacEachern reminds us to have fun, and throw out as many optional rules as you need to make that happen. Another bit of evidence that adventuring is more fun as the underdogs, and you only need a few ideas at a time to really kick ass.
Adam Cole is another person annoyed at the politically correct, modern minded anachronisticness of far too much fantasy these days. The socioeconomic pressures are all different, so it's just not believable. Yeah, worldbuilding is hard work. You've got to really work at creating people and places who's experiences are substantially different from your own.
Michael Garcia thinks that it's not that girls wouldn't be interested in roleplaying, it's just that we're so crap at selling it to them. After all, women buy rather more books in general, and certainly have no less interest in playing let's pretend. Is it the smelly geeks, the emphasis on killing things and taking their stuff, or the heavy math that puts them off?
Tim Gray brings up the old topic of cheating on your dice rolls. Naughty naughty. I think it's spanking time. Other stuff is a matter of taste, but this definitely needs stamping down upon.
What's so funny: Ahh yes, corpsing. A persistent danger in Serious Acting is everybody bursting into giggles when something goes wrong. This can become contagious and turn into a running joke all too easily, making it a nightmare to get a scene completed. Gaming is not immune to this at all. I can personally think of several incidents (they ate the buggered pig!) that just completely shattered the mood of technically serious games, that resulted in everyone going off on a digression that lasted quite some time, before getting back to the plot. So this is sort of an april fools article, but instead of trying to foist jokes upon us, it invites us to think about our own experiences, and thus invokes nostalgia rather than groans. I don't mind this at all.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 6/8
Greater Familiars of faerun: Another article on getting better familiars? When I started doing this, I certainly didn't expect that to become one of the more commonly reappearing topics over the years. Issues 84, 146, 147, 181, 200, 221; there's already plenty to draw upon. This is an article of two halves. Find Companion is a 3rd level spell that lets you summon a larger fairly mundane creature such as a horse, bear or cheetah to accompany you on your adventures. Find Minion is a 6th level spell that lets you get hold of a mid-level supernatural beastie like a displacer beast, umber hulk or unicorn. What's particularly interesting about this implementation is that you can have one of each, giving you three bonded animals at high levels. The main issue I can see with that is if you allowed this article to be combined with the familiar upgrading article from issue 181, as having all three maxed out with those spells would be a pretty effective synergy. (But if you're that assiduous a collector, you ought to be reaping the benefits of combining obscure powersets. :p I'd allow it in my game. ) In the end, my main issue with this one is wondering why it's branded a Forgotten Realms article, since specific wizards are not mentioned, and none of the monsters are setting specific either. It just seems forced, especially compared to the Arcane Lore ones that do actually fill in who invented the spells and when. Maybe there was more fluff detail that was cut out in editing.
Sage advice: Can you pick what age category of dragon you shapechange into (sorta. It's complicated)
Is the size of a breath weapon reduced if a creature is (no. Smuggle a dragon in in your pocket, and watch it wipe out an entire hall. )
Can humans enter an anti animal shell (yes. Normally they don't count as animals, but in this case they do. Curious.)
Can animal growth be used on humans (no)
Can ESP pinpoint the location of the creatures you're mindreading. (no)
Does a scroll of protection from magic negate your own items as well (yes. So much for all those buffs.)
Can anything remove an antimagic shell (just wish upon a star. )
Where do meteors detonate if there are things in the way (The point designated. anything in the way just gets blasted through painfully.)
How do the ranges on the monster summoning spells work (That's how far away from you they can appear)
Does a rod of alertness let you know where the hostile creatures are (no. )
Just how good is a prismatic sphere at stopping stuff. (It can stop a planet. You're no trouble, no matter how buff and buffed you are. )
How does spell immunity interact with other protections cast afterwards. (it stops. It doesn't play well with other protections, no matter what order they're applied in. )
How do you decide what questions to publish (Skip uses special arcane methods. Skip will not reveal them, because then you would rules lawyer them. Skip does the rules lawyering round here, and will cap anyone trying to muscle in on skip's teritory)
What happens if you possess yourself with magic jar (The spell ends. Read the book again. )
Are there any modules with weredragons (no)
How long are elven characters pregnant for. (seven and a half years. That's a looooong time to be fat and cranky. Maybe that explains why so many elven women go for human men a tenth their age. :p Half elves grow a lot quicker.)
Can you kill a bag of devouring (sure, if you can find it. Can you go extradimensional?)
What happens if a female dragon mates with a male human (nothing. Half-dragons are always male dragon/female human. You are free to be angsty about this if it would be appropriate to your character. Or you could find a couple of girdles of gender changing, and be proactive about it. )
There are gaps in your rules ( Anyone can break the rules. The tricky part is getting them to work at all. And that's the goal you should be aiming for, not travesties like this. You oughta be ashamed!)
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 7/8
Yamara's world finally gets a map! Any resemblance to events and people that actually appeared in the comics is purely coincidental ;)
Venturing into the city: Adventures in the city? We've had entire themed issues on this before. (issues 136, 160) And as is usually the case when they try and cram a topic like this into a single article despite having done whole issues on it before, the article comes off as a lot more basic. In this case, it does seem to be aimed specifically at people who have never run a city adventure before, and are daunted by the prospect. So this is clear, step by step, and rather basic advice. It's one of those cases where it's not that I have a problem with the material, but that it's not aimed at long-term readers at all, and so makes me zone out as I read it, experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. The hobby was attracting new players in greater quantity when the magazine wasn't nearly so focussed on catering to them, which is a great and rather depressing irony. What are we to do with you?
Dragonmirth deals with bureaucracy and comes off the loser again. A familiar scene of tragedy in Swordplay. The Knights of the dinner table engage in some hard negotiation over their social contract. Floyd is in so much trouble right now. This is what happens when you don't do your research before going into the dungeon.
Nightspawn becomes Nightbane. Curse you, Todd McFarlane! :shakes fist:
Tales from the 5th age: Mission from kendermore part 2 by Harold J Johnson. Once again, this is more a collection of vignettes than a proper story, as the Kender team encounters various challenges and falls prey to attrition, one by one. Although none of them actually die onscreen, and whether they do or not is very uncertain. Which really does make this feel like a bait and switch for those looking for a bit of sadism. I know you have the whole family friendly thing to consider, but this is almost as bad as an 80's cartoon in it's avoidance of directly showing consequences. So once again, I'm going to have to pronounce this series as interesting, but deeply unsatisfying compared to the usual fiction they give us. This just violates too many rules of how to write a good story which engages the reader and makes them care about what happens. You''re a third of the way through this themed year already, you'd better start giving us some payoff for sitting through this soon.
Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: The Forgotten realms realizes they have yet to cover the area north of waterdeep in great detail, and sends slade to sort it out. Where he goes, PCs will follow. They also continue to do a bit more delving into the past, albeit not nearly as much as Dragonlance. Sword Play by Victor Milan is set in Netheril before it's destruction. What will the stupid archmages get up too to seal their doom.
Speaking of dragonlance, they get another anthology, The dragons at war. They seem to be making more of those lately. Hmm. I wonder why.
Ravenloft rehashes it's first two monstrous compendia, turning them into a single proper book. Well, that loose leaf stuff has long since gone out of fashion. And access to out of print stuff is a perpetual worry of a company. Why shouldn't they make a little more money from it if the demand is there?
Birthright gets War by Simon Hawke. The usual novel stuff, as they try and build a set of iconic characters for you to imitate. Go go formulae.
Our generic AD&D product this month is Treasure Tales. Another attempt to give you a load of adventure ideas to make sure your campaign runs smoothly. Ignored plotlines are the grist that makes the world whole, or some such pretentiousness.
And our generic book this month is F. R. E. E. Fall by Mel Odom. Another world threatening peril? Yeah, it's tuesday alright.
The current Clack: Another one bites the dust. Iron Crown Enterprises splits ties with HERO games. Now, initially, it looks like HERO are getting the rough end of the deal here. But give it a few years and you'll find it's ICE that's crashing and burning while HERO chugs along in a fairly low key but stable fashion for the following decade. Part of it's due to not being weighed down by expensive licences and part of it is due to embracing new technology. But really, it's luck as much as anything, isn't it.
Along with the currently near obligatory WotC news, showing them continuing their rise to world dominance, we also have the rather more interesting topic of people being examined by MRI while roleplaying, to find out exactly what parts of the brain it stimulates. Ahh, students. Is there any excuse they won't use to incorporate their leisure interests into their studies? Not that you couldn't use this bit of SCIENCE! to design better games. But I doubt it would be a simple process, given the amount of monitored playtesting you'd have to do to get useful data. I wonder if anything much actually came of this.
The comedy stuff is actually pretty good in this issue, if sometimes rather strange (not that I object to that) but it's the serious articles that are filled with dull and annoying bits this time. The RPGA promotion is being pushed almost too blatantly, and there's more than the usual amount of overly basic articles that are useless to me. This big historical events are the most interesting part. I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised. Still, the magazine is still going fairly reliably, so the company can't be finished yet. I guess once again, my primary desire is to see what happens next. 1, 2, 3, let's go!
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Another chance for magic to get a turn at a themed issue. They say specialist wizardry, but it's not concentrating on any one type, so it's just the usual selection of whatever they've got in their slush pile. Can't we have another psionics special at least? It's halfway through 2e and you still haven't got round to it. I suspect I'm going to have to make this complaint again in the future. Why is it so hard to get people to really specialise in a topic?
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: My oh my. A positive message about geekdom and it's place in the world! As technology progresses, nerds become ever more essential and able to make a living from their brains. Which of course means they're less likely to be stuck in their parent's basement remaining virgins forever. In fact, things like preppy glasses, skinny jeans, stupid sweaters and hanging out in coffee shops reading are becoming a new fashion statement (goddamn hipsters) and while it might be annoying to True Geeks, being imitated by wannabes is a hell of a lot better than being ignored and laughed at. And for the foreseable future, this is getting better too. Eventually, things'll probably swing the other way, but that'll require some pretty big technological alterations to take place as well, either in making things idiot proof, or due to easy fossil fuel running out, thus forcing more people to do physical labor to survive again. So many things could happen that it's pretty much impossible to speculate on that accurately. Let's hope the future involves moving forwards to transhumanism and space, not technological collapse or extinction due to our own shortsightedness.
D-Mail: Another couple of letters praising their revamped magazine for offering stuff that's much more immediately usable, by people who haven't been reading regularly in the last few years. Well, I suppose that's the benefit of going back to basics. Repeating topics is of most benefit to casual readers.
A letter specifically praising the new Rogues gallery and Campaign classics articles. Yeah man, we like kickin' it old skool, and you're catering to that segment of the population a good deal more.
One of those letter about confused canon that are becoming increasingly common. Where the hell is Soth really? Dragonlance or Ravenloft? Well, that's a very interesting question, and you'll get a different answer depending on who you ask and when. At the moment though, he's officially stuck in Ravenloft, so Krynn can breathe easy. Not that they don't have plenty of other problems on their plate.
A more balanced letter commenting on the changes. The amount of semi-IC gumph is getting out of hand. This is interesting, but not really genuinely old skool. Well, no. It's pastiche, not actually going backwards. They are quite different things.
A letter asking for more articles covering the other continents of Toril. Faerun is starting to look overexposed. No argument with you on that one. If only the general public thought as we do, so sales made equal universal coverage economical.
Magic Miscibility: Or ultimate magic item nerf of ultimate justice! You know that potion miscibility table you rolled on if you consumed two at once? Well, someone's just had the idea of applying that principle to all magic items, and quite possibly sustained buff spells as well. They might work, they might cancel each other out, or any manner of random shit might happen. Essentially, this pretty much forces a relatively low-magic campaign, as while you can still have an item and cast spells, you won't be able to transform yourself into a hyper-buffed all contingencies covered monstrosity even at high level. So this is one of those articles that will change your game quite a bit, especially at high level, and might well make you unpopular with players. Still, it might just work, if you are having a problem, and it'll be amusing along the way. Just call it a paradigm shift, making magic less stable throughout the world. Make them grateful it still works at all. Muahahaha!!!
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 2/8
The Rhabdomancer: A new specialist wizard type? Actually, it's more a particularly amusing diviner kit. Using dousing rods to detect various hidden things around you seems incredibly banal in a universe where even starting wizards can control minds and conjure blasts of energy. Whether it's more practically useful I'm not sure, but like other diviners, they only have one forbidden school, so it's not as if they're lacking in other abilities. And they do have enough new spells and alterations to existing ones that they will be interesting to play. Overall, they don't seem to be particularly under or overpowered, so I'd have no objection to using them, and the fact that they're optimised for detecting things underground gives them a perfect reason to team up with adventurers and go dungeoneering. Not bad, not bad at all.
Illusions of Grandeur: Oh hee hee hee. Our themed section continues with this highly amusing semi-IC advice on being an illusionist. Or not being an illusionist, for as we already found in issue 202, the best trick a roguish sort can pull is making you think they're completely honest and trustworthy. And let's face it, with access to another 4 wizard schools, they can provide a decent bit of reality to back up their illusions, keep people guessing as to whether a particular feature is a bluff or a real hazard. It's when things seem innocuous that you should be most worried, for when the illusion is hiding a real danger that you're actually going to suffer for your foolishness. With 5 new spells that also facilitate this kind of double-bluff behaviour, and a very quick-paced and self aware writing style, (although I figured out the twist at the end way before it happened) this shows us how to run illusionists far better than the dry old articles nitpicking on the fine points of the disbelief rules. A case where covering the same topic again isn't redundant at all, which is something they ought to pay attention to when picking articles to run.
Curses: Let's face it, just inflicting a boring penalty on dice rolls in response to people doing nasty stuff to you isn't really very dramatic. A really good curse doesn't kill it's victim, at least not quickly, it makes them suffer. This is another topic that certainly isn't new. Issues 29, 77 & 167 had articles on the inventive application of curses. And here we go again, with some random tables for you to select a punishment from. In theory, you could roll for it, but the number given doesn't fit any particular dice. Still, they are reasonably varied and amusing, giving you plenty of chances to get your sadist on. Just remember, these are really the starting point, not the end-all. Muahahaha!!!
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 3/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Oooh. More Indian stuff. If there's a still neglected corner of the world in gaming, this is it. Both Oriental and Arabian settings slip stuff from it in, but it doesn't get it's own dedicated setting very often. Nice to see them continuing this theme for the year.
Akbari lotus wine of negotiation helps people just get on with the business at hand, instead of farting around joking and getting sidetracked, and ensures they stick to the contract after agreeing on it. Gods, I'd love to have some of this right now.
Amrita paste of immortality keeps you from dying if eaten regularly. It doesn't make you look any younger though. Enjoy your ancient withered guruness.
Animated rumal is a magical scarf that can fly and strangle people. As ever, myth is full of amusing bits to steal.
Anklet of firey retribution is one for the married couples. Course it only alerts you something is up after they die, which ain't so great, but at least it has the revenge part built in, and you won't have to clean up their body either.
A Bell of announcement lets people know how long it's going to be until you arrive, no matter how far away you are in the journey. How very polite of you. Not many wizards are well mannered and considerate enough to think of making something like this.
The Bow and Axe of conflicted Righteousness are both lawful good, but have their differences on how to best achieve this. Which means that if their owners meet, they are likely to fight. Should be fun to resolve.
Conches of rending get rid of anything from other planes, and stun everyone else by being ridiculously loud. Deafness might be an advantage here.
Dhoti of nonviolence make sure no-one attacks you if you don't attack them. Just lay back and watch the fight smugly, then negotiate with the winners and send them on a cryptic quest. That's the guru way.
The ebony mace of wavering drains karma from anyone it hits. Great, not only have you been bashed to death, but you've been reincarnated undeservingly as a weasel. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Ashoka's lion kings are a 4 set of wise and benevolent figurines. They're more than just servants, they make excellent conversation as well. Naming them Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo will probably not go down well.
Bandicoot Mounts reverse the normal figurine procedure. Instead of growing, it shrinks it's user so they can use it as a mount through small areas.
Hanuman monkeys are rather good at spying and trickery. Send them on a mission suited to their strengths and they can be quite effective. Straight combat isn't quite such a strong point, but they're hardly useless at that either.
(little) White bulls are our final figurine. They're mainly for ploughing and carrying heavy loads, but like the real thing, can be pretty nasty in a pinch. They can stay animate longer than most of these too, so they can become a staple of your party's treasure carrying strategy.
The flute of Silence persuades undead to die for good with it's unheard melodies. An excellent substitute for a cleric in the party.
Linen armor of displacement is for the thief in the party. Climbing and dimension dooring lets you ninja around quite happily.
The Mandala of psychic devotion contradicts itself. Not as useful as it'd like to be, due to unclear rules.
Rani of Jhansi's saddle lets you fight on beyond death. Once the battle stops, that's when you drop. Ride a bear, so your mount doesn't become the weak link in this business.
The Rod of monsoon control lets you cause massive devastation. Since that happens every year around these parts, people won't be too surprised. :p
Sapling wands allow you to bend in the wind and avoid any harm from it. Low key but neat. Probably work better as a ring or other worn item though.
Shakunta's ring of memory helps you remember where you last met people and what you did. Perfect for the adventurer on the go, this'll save you a bit of embarrasment over the years.
The Sitar of clarity is another incredibly useful item that allows you to half your spell regaining time, along with it's other meditative benefits. Course, it's tricky to read and play at the same time, so you'll have to hire someone else to do so.
A Spinning wheel of Dharma is a rather interesting device that helps you locate people's reincarnations and restore their memories of past lives. This is a very entertaining one to play with indeed.
Spirit Whisks allow you to clear out an area of intangible presences. The cleaning process may look somewhat amusing, but really, this is a plus.
The Tandava Drum and Tambourine of deva presence make people think you have a powerful supernatural guardian. Which after all, you might in a fantasy world.
The Tome of Spying allows you to have all your nearest and dearest watched for signs of treachery. Since the magical creatures involved tend to err on the side of generosity when reporting, this will make you paranoid and bitter if you weren't already. Which is the kind of consequences for owning a magic item that I find rather pleasing.
Flame-of-the-woods trees produce flammable flowers that you can use as grenades. Woo. Everyone should have some of these, if only to learn how to handle stuff carefully.
Moshka Mango Trees are the ultimate booby prize for any non-buddhist. If you're not a self-righteous prig they'll permanently cripple you, and if you are they'll "release you from the cycle of reincarnation" Yeuch. And this is presented as a good thing in the original myths.
Wool trees produce extra badass wool. This may sound funny, but will make a nice little earner for anyone who can cultivate them. And given it's importance in everyday life, it's another one it's surprising you don't see more of.
Vajira arrows turn into lightning bolts when shot. That's reasonably awesome visually. Not as dangerous as actual wizard's lightning bolts, but since they're often in batches, the damage and stunning can really add up in a tactical situation.
The Wheel of light rays is dazzling, and hurts you more the worse your karma is. Another one to separate the good guys from the bad guys (and then result in a fight afterwards) Since it also seems to have unlimited uses, use it from behind a transparent wall for freesmiting utterly broken carnage.
Wrist threads of spirit protection allow you to usefully cover another area of your body in magic items. In addition to the obvious shieldings, they also let you detect rakshasa. Course, you still probably won't be able to hurt them, but that's your problem to solve.
Well, that was certainly a pretty epic article. This should keep me busy for a quite a while, and has several amusing and surprising items in it. Always nice to be able to open a fresh barrel instead of scraping out the old ones.
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 4/8
A wizards' three: Not to be confused with THE wizards three, which I did when I first looked at the contents page, and I suspect is a misconception they encourage, for there are some people for whom the presence of an Ed Greenwood article is a real tipping point in deciding to buy. But no, this is another variant specialist type and a couple of kits instead. Not as impressive, but still nice for those players who crave more crunchy options when designing their characters.
Frost wizards are para-elemental specialists, following in the footsteps of Athasian clerics. They are extra good at ice spells, above average with air & water, and forbidden to use fire & earth ones. Since there aren't that many ice spells, they may have rather limited tactical options, but that is solved by collecting more supplements. They don't seem particularly under or overpowered really.
Fiend slayers are one of those kits where the bonusses seem to outweigh the penalties, but as they're very focussed upon lower-planar monstrosities, and since such things are well above average in their offensive capability, they'll need all the help they can get to avoid a quick (or slow, which would be worse) death. Like paladins, it's a hard life being a hero.
Spiritualists are also mostly benefits, with the penalties for their profession purely social and roleplaying based. Since their benefits are more widely applicable, they are one that is definitely better than just not having a kit. Whether you allow that is of course up to you as a DM.
Rogues Gallery: Skip Williams chooses to remind us that while Ranger/Druids are technically an illegal combination, they're such an obvious choice thematically that they had a loophole built in for them. Thanks Frank. :teeth ting: There are other interesting aspects of this that stem from the game's rules quirks, such as the fact a half-elf would grow up slower than humans, but way faster than elves, and thus struggle in a standard schooling system either way, and the way his magical items synergise and their effects are factored into the statistics. The personality stuff is pretty typical, but then, he's never been great at that, has he. So overall, I think that balances out to an average entry for this series.
AD&D Triviathalon: For a third month in a row, this competition and it's associated hotline get promoted. Time is running out fast! Take this chance to give us more money! Nothing new here, I'm just surprised how hard they're promoting it. Curious and slightly annoying.
The dimensional wizard: A second new specialist wizard in one issue. I feel rather spoiled. This issue isn't doing too badly with it's theme at all. And specialising in planar manipulating magic is the kind of thing I would love to do. Like wild mages, they don't actually have any forbidden schools, although they do suffer a fairly substantial penalty when attempting to learn spells outside their speciality. With the usual bonus spell per spell level, bonuses on saves and penalties on enemy saves, plus a few nifty extras at high level, they seem quite decent, although like necromancers, they have a serious shortage of low level spells that means they may be rather squishy and a third wheel initially, but become really awesome later on when groups actually want to go planehopping. I shall have to invent a few low level spells to compensate for that if I ever get the chance to use this, but I do strongly approve of this in principle.
Campaign Classics: Zeb returns to his own writing of a decade ago, and updates the Wu Jen for 2nd edition. In fact, this isn't so much an updating as it is a complete reimagining, trying to create another type of wizard which spends hit points to power their spells instead of forgetting them after casting. While a little tougher and more capable physically than a standard wizard, they're still pretty fragile, which means they'll only be able to cast a few spells before having to rest even if they max out their constitution. And since they're resistant to magical healing, over an extended campaign, they'll wind up using dramatically less magic, or resting for weeks between adventures. Combine that with the fact that their spell selections are tiny, and they're vastly underpowered to even the most cursory mechanical examination. Sorry, as much as I love some of the stuff you've produced, I'm not using something like this with a 10 foot pole. The core idea isn't bad, but it needs some serious revising to work in a game with ordinary classes. So this somehow manages to be the only big failure in an otherwise very good themed section.
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 5/8
The role of books: The perfect princess by Irene Radford gets a review that is almost entirely mockery for the stupid alphabet soup names. There is no cultural correlation, a whole bunch of dumb puns, and some random ones that just make him laugh. If you can ignore that the plot isn't too bad, but you'll have a hard time doing that.
One for the morning glory by John Barnes, on the other hand, gets quite specific praise. He's managed to produce something quite different from his usual fare, but still just as high quality. That requires quite a bit of knowledge of craftsmanship and how to manipulate genre conventions. Which means he's a lot more likely to produce other good books in the future. And you know the book houses like their reliable sellers.
Caverns of Socrates by Dennis L McKiernan is a trapped in virtual reality story that does the common thing involving the questioning the nature of reality and consciousness where highly sophisticated computers are involved. It avoids giving any hard answers to those questions, but you probably wouldn't want it too, given they're still ambiguous in the real world. The important thing is that the story is fun, after all.
The spirit gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff draws on a pesudo polish backdrop for it's fantasy setting, which is mildly unusual. This is one of those books John likes because it's on the subtle, well thought out end of things, with an internally consistent magic system, and plenty of personal intrigue and character building. He seems to pick one of those most months, so how much drek does he have to wade through to find them and consider them unusual?
The instrument of fate by Christie Golden is another attempt by a TSR author to strike out on their own with a new world. The big supernatural elements? Elves and music. How very froofy. Not that it's bad, mind you, just that the basic ideas are quite familiar. Still, that means you can compare them to other similar things, and he finds she's done her research and made sure things aren't too hackneyed.
Survival of the smartest: A second article which illustrates it's lessons with in character speeches this month. They seem to have really decided to give them preferential treatment. I suppose it's not surprising, given that this approach seems to produce a lot of memorable articles, and if the writers (& their mouthpiece characters) are recurring it a good way to leverage into bigger things. But not everyone is Ed Greenwood. So it proves here, in an article which is pretty entertaining as a read, and has some nice tricks for your character to steal and incorporate but doesn't push the boundaries of wizard behaviour. Well, maybe apart from pointing out that they ought to be using darts more, and not hoarding their charged items like far too many characters do, and that's a playstyle issue. So this certainly isn't bad, and once again, the IC sections help reduce the feel that we've heard this topic before, but it's not quite as good as the illusionist article earlier in the issue. Guess the usual pattern of front-loading the best articles applies here.
Magic doesn't always go Boom!: From clever uses of magic to subtle uses of magic? Yeah, we know this one too. We've been shown many times that utility magic has a far greater impact upon the game than offensive spells of the same level. Magic affecting your skills in particular is overlooked. Stuff that grants you basic skill in something you're ignorant of appeared in issue 181, but here we have a few more variants on that principle. It's not completely redundant, but it is pretty familiar. Neverrending pickle jars. Technology substitutions for hot & cold running water, quills that write on their own. I think this manages to justify itself by putting new variants on the idea, but it's a close one. Next time you probably won't be so lucky.
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 6/8
Tales of the fifth age: The taking of mount nevermind by David Wise. From a double bill of annoying kender facing adversity with cheer, to an equally annoying story of tinker gnomes facing terrifying adversity with cheer. And despite suffering a quite substantial bodycount, they suffer far less than they ought too due to sheer optimism and ability to take advantage of any opportunities life offers them. Despite technically losing at every step against a rampaging red dragon, they irritate him so much that he is just driven to despair. It's one of those cases where the cheese factor of Krynn just gets too much for me to handle, and completely prevents me from believing the setting as a real place with characters I can empathise with. Once again I am forced to pronounce this experiment a failure. The kind of story you are trying to tell is just way too silly for me to enjoy. Even the gag comics have characters with more convincing motivations and emotional reactions.
Dungeon Mastery: A is for yet another quick NPC generation method. An alliterative one as well, in this case. I suppose it makes them easier to remember, but it can also get a bit forced. And when it's only 3 steps while others have gone for 7 or 10, this definitely feels like one of those articles that's redundant when compare to it's bigger, more comprehensive precursors. And as I've said before, the fact that they've suddenly become a lot more willing to directly rehash topics recently is one of the worst parts of the new editorial regime. Nothing much to see here I'm afraid.
Sage advice: How do you decipher illusionists secret language (read magic'll do the job nicely)
How can Phaerimm be 40th level if mortals can't get above 30th (by not being mortals. Another case of the answer being right in front of you, dope.)
Do monster THAC0's improve above 16 HD (yes. They can get very scary)
Do druids still get planar travel at 21-23rd level (no)
Can you cast a true dweomer with a difficulty above 100. (no)
Can a dragon use it's breath weapon if it's mouth is taped shut (They have noses as well. Common sense, as ever, must rule, my dear. )
Do chant and prayer buff spell damage (yes, but only once, not per die)
Is a wall of force negated by a spell engine. (yes. Schloooooorp)
What are the limitations of contingency (one spell, released once, then you have to recast it. You set the conditions. That's it.)
Does call woodland beings work like other summoning spells (no. It's all exception based design. Druids are a pain in the ass.)
Is failing to turn the same as turning your back (no.)
How many attacks of opportunity do you get against a charging creature when using a bardiche (none. They've done nothing to provoke it)
What's the difference between offensive and defensive disarms (one you do on your turn, the other you do on theirs)
Network news: The convention columnist shares his early experiences of going, and a few tips on how to get the best out of doing so. The result is quite pleasant reading, but somewhat hampered by his low word count. Even as single page columns goes, this seems pretty short due to the formatting, and we have had pretty extensive articles on convention going over the years. I think my rough opinion can be described as elaborate or get off the pot. It's not that this is bad, it's just that it's not nearly enough to satisfy, and a bit rehashed. Just as with the editorials, having to write a fixed amount every month even when there's no real news can result in a lot of filler.
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 7/8
Forum: Andrew Pearce supports eliminating both dual-classing and level limits. They do not improve the game at all. Slice off that cruft.
Jessica Beals is part of an all female group. See, they do exist. Not too surprisingly, rescuing babies is one of their more common plot points. Sometimes the cliches happen because they're true. ^~^
Andrea McCormick recommends a disciplined and cynical worldview. A pessimist is never dissappointed. But they can well be miserable. A little pleasure once in a while would be nice.
Anton J Uselmann gives his advice on incorporating new players. You have to treat them differently depending on if they're completely new, or have played in other campaigns before. In both cases, there are good and bad ways to handle it. Oversight of characters transferred from other campaigns is always a critical one.
Duston Batson addresses the contrasting problems of characters being too strong/weak to join a campaign. It definitely needs addressing, otherwise you're just setting yourself up for trouble. Make it easy on yourself, start them at about the same level as the others.
Nick Spear disapproves of trying to take the magic out of D&D. Most players would rebel! Yeah, there is that. Yet another reason why going to another system without so many built up expectations would be preferable.
Nathan Kirschenbaum gives support to the women seeking equality, and reminds even the male DM's to put plenty of well-rounded (no, not that way, you perv) female characters in their games. Equality is as important in game as out of game.
Tim Eccles defends the idea of castles as a defensive building in D&D, even in the face of magic. Would you rather they had no protection and just roamed the land like some common adventurers? Well, if it is the optimal way, people will wind up adopting it.
Gary Stahl is annoyed that certain NPC's in official supplements break the rules. Consistency and fairness is important to maintaining a world. The rules should work the same for everyone. Ahh yes, another 3e maxim gets an airing here. The designers are listening. :spooky music:
The knights of the dinner table have had one too many DM screwages to be merciful to strangers. The seven dwarves make another appearance in dragonmirth, and they are not happy. Swordplay still can't get the hang of this tactics thing. Floyd has much to complain about, as he discovers he'll have to change his career.
Role-playing reviews is in the mood for setting expansions this month. Geography may be an exhaustible subject, but it takes a good deal longer than splatbooks in all but the smallest settings, and is far less likely to be completed. After all, it's easier to expand the map than it is to think of new archetypes. Course, they may fall into stereotypes anyway, particularly if cribbing off real world countries, but that's just a danger we'll have to face.
The shire is of course for MERP. As one of the most detailed parts of the original stories, this is pretty easy work for the writers, and with lots of attention to detail and a ton of adventure hooks, it's been made into a great place for low level adventurers to start out. Sure, it's rural, but remember how closely there were animated trees and trolls haunting the outskirts. And hobbits do love to gossip. Even little things could become epic adventures by the time the rumour mill is through with them.
Angmar is of course completely different, and required more work to flesh out. It's a pretty miserable place, even after Sauron's fall, filled with brooding castles occupied by sinister figures. They don't seem very proactive though, which I suppose makes them good for treating as dungeon crawls. It might not be quite as good as the shire one, but not for lack of trying. Guess it's up to the PC's to shake things up and make a difference.
Rifts Japan draws on the obvious ideas, contrasting ancient mysticism and hypertechnology in the creatures, classes and equipment. It's pretty crunch heavy, as is standard for the game, yet is still sold as incomplete, with a second volume in the works already, coming who knows when given palladium's schedules. (still not out as of the writing of this commentary) Not that is isn't a fun read, with cybernetics, ninjas, drug enhanced crazy psionic people, huge guns, mechas, etc etc to fill your game with. Just don't expect game balance or huge amounts of setting detail.
Rifts South America 2, on the other hand, does fill in an already detailed part of the world further, and has some truly off-the-wall additions to the world, courtesy of CJ Carella. Not that there isn't plenty of insanely overpowered crunch, but the setting it's welded too is farther away from the reality and myth of the area. Whether that's a good or bad thing is largely a matter of opinion, but I do note that Carella's contributions to Rifts seem to be some of the most remembered ones. He must be doing something right.
Beyond the wall: Pictland & the north is for Pendragon. It's pretty heavily locked into the pendragon rules and setting assumptions, but like virtually everything else for the line, is of excellent quality, showing you what happens when your knights venture into the highlands and making the picts available as PC's. You should be able to get quite a few years of adventures out of this.
GURPS Greece, on the other hand, uses the dry and modular presentation common to the line, leaving you to decide what to use, and how to build the adventures yourself. And as usual, Rick is respectful, but not too enthused about this. It's tough being the guy in the middle.
Also of note are Rick's assessment of the 7 domainbooks so far for birthright, and his high praise of Planes of Conflict. (a far more dramatic title than planes of neutrality) Both take us well away from D&D's core playstyle and make it work. Support variety in your game worlds!
Dragon Magazine Issue 229: May 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Birthright unleashes another 4-pack of stuff into the world. Helskapa and Baruk-Azhik get domain sourcebooks, for those players who'd rather rule a more exotic landscape. Viking land and a dwarf mountain. Not too unusual, but popular secondary choices. The Rjurrik Highlands get their own full sourcebook, putting you up against marauding goblinoids if you want to keep your domain. And on the novel side, we have The Hag's Contract, by John Bettancourt. This gameworld is actually turning out pretty traditional compared to recent worlds they've tried. Can they put a different enough spin on their core values and tropes to justify this kind of continued support.
The forgotten realms almost keeps up with another triple bill. We return to Undermountain for a third time, as they discover some lost levels. With beholders in? I think they can stay lost then. Is this particular cash cow dry yet? We could always head to the Vilhon Reach then. That's still fairly adventurer free for the moment, so if we get there quick we can beat the crowd and grab the good loot. Elaine Cunningham is also churning out books at scary speed, with the 13th harper book, Silver shadows. Which cliche to use today. :rolls: 62. Rash actions endanger everyone the protagonist loves? Ok then.
Dragonlance gets a double bill of novels. Murder in Tarsis by John Maddox Roberts and The Gully Dwarves by Dan Parkinson. Serious conspiracy and comical blundering. There's more than enough room for both here.
Our generic AD&D book this time is another Players Option one. Spells and Magic not only gives you new spells, it lets you customise exactly how magic works in your game. As usual, DM oversight and approval of options is essential.
Our collectable games are busy too. Dragon Dice gets it's third supplement, full of undead monstrosities to add to your army. Blood wars gets part two of it's novel trilogy. Abyssal Warriors. Family is pitted against family in the endless war. Just another evil the fiends manage to accomplish even as they attack each other.
The current Clack: White Wolf once again proves they're number 2 with their new TV series. Not that it'll last long, with a run even shorter than the D&D cartoon, but hey, just getting there is an achievement in itself. Meanwhile, HERO games has a new publisher, as do WotC's ARS Magica and Everway. It is a shame that White wolf didn't buy ARS Magica back again, resulting in erased from continuity weirdness in the game's setting. But then again, maybe it's for the best, as keeping up with the developments in the WoD might have diluted the theme. As is often the case, it's so hard to know for certain. Any idea why they sold the game in the first place?
This is one of those issues that's very much of two halves. The themed section is actually pretty damn good, providing funny, well focussed and easy to use bits of advice and new crunch. The second half once again falls into serious grindiness and lots of rehash. Still, that is better than a lot of recent issues. And having a direction that is often repetitive is still better than the drifting lack of direction of the last year. I can't be too harsh on this one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. So here we are at the 20th anniversary. A fact they're keeping very quiet about actually. It's not on the cover, it's not mentioned in the letters page, it's not in the editorial. Considering up till 2 years ago, they loudly proclaimed it on the cover every year, this is very odd. This says one of two things. Either they're becoming uncomfortable with their age, and would rather people not know exactly how old they are anymore, or the budget cuts have reached the point where they can't even spring for a simple ribbon on the cover. Neither are particularly flattering conclusions. What this bodes for the contents remains to be seen, but doesn't seem particularly positive. I hope the writers have something good anyway. After all, the best presents aren't necessarily the most expensive ones.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: Man, things really must be going downhill for them. This is the point where their professional exterior starts to crack. They're practically begging us to stick around. What do we have to do? We can change. Please! Just write in and say. Poor magazine staff. Incidentally, I note that the editor has left, and the assistant editor has been promoted to take his place. Did he see the writing on the wall and decide to jump ship, or was he pushed by upper management, annoyed that their big recruit from out of state couldn't turn the sales decline around? Either way, things look pretty miserable for them, and it's not helped by their distributor giving them trouble. Ah yes, I seem to remember that was what tipped them over, all the overprinted stock that they then demanded returns upon, messing up the ready cash flow that keeps an active company solvent despite having huge debts lurking in the background gradually mounting up and up. Guess it can't be long before things come to a head. Let's hope it happens with a bang.
D-Mail: John Major's a gamer?! Well, I suppose the conservative government was in a pretty similar position to TSR at this time, so he could probably empathise with them :p But seriously, this is another bit of mostly positive commentary on the magazine's changes. He's another old skool gamer who's pleased by their attempt to go back to basics. People might be resistant to change, but some changes are more likely to be accepted than others.
Another letter of praise, and a request if there's anywhere that sells a solid gold d20. You know how heavy gold is, right? Even a small one would be capable of hurting quite a bit when thrown. Plus that would be better used in electronics these days. No thanks.
A letter asking about birthright, and another letter asking about Dragonlance, and what those worlds are up to in the near future. They are indeed going to be busy busy busy, both here and in terms of actual products. Stay tuned!
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 2/8
The orbs of dragonkind: Roger Moore once again tries to give us something significant and impressive for our birthday. A collection of magical items with a well defined history and theme? We've had quite a few of these before. But this is unusual in both it's level of detail, and how specific the adventure hooks it gives are. It's fairly firmly set in Greyhawk, and while you could move the items, it would be quite tricky to translate all the plot details to another setting. It ties in quite closely to existing modules, and having them would help you understand and run this article quite a bit. It's all pretty distinctive. So yeah, 8 dragon-controlling orbs of escalating power and danger levels. All are sentient, and like intelligent weapons, will try and take control of their user. And even if that is resisted, they have curses which will make their owner's lives a misery and eventually be their downfall. (presuming they don't get killed by other fools seeking the orbs first) This does indeed seem like the kind of article that could drive a whole campaign, as various people seek awesome power, and cause considerable amounts of unpleasantness in the process. You've got to love that kind of adventure design, as it's essentially self-perpetuating until someone has the wisdom to drop the items into a volcano and get rid of them for good.
Beyond the actual items, there's some rather interesting stuff here. We've always known Roger was fairly up to date with the web, having published stuff on it way back in 1987. Now we see he's corresponding with the guys on the Greyhawk board, and even getting help from them in keeping track of obscure bits of setting detail. The internet knows all, especially when there's helpful people like Iquander on it. So this is another article from him that's not only cool, but also quite historically significant. Very pleased to see he can still pull spectaculars like this off.
Dragonslayers: New kits focussed around kicking the butt of dragons? It's about time. Lets see, we had one in council of wyrms, one in the complete paladins handbook, and one in issue 205. That's not a huge collection. I think there's room for a few more, don't you.
Dragonslayers are the straight attackers. Double damage, breath weapon resistance, and the ability to call out dragons so they don't just fly away or deathtrap you from a distance. Their benefits aren't as versatile or well developed as the council of wyrms one, and they don't play well with others. I think this is a case where the previous implementation was better done.
Black Arrows are obviously based upon the hobbit, and get to make extra damaging called shots upon dragons just as in that story. Course even with this bonus, they won't be inflicting 1 hit KO's very often, but that's D&D for you. In return though, they have a -1 to all melee attack rolls, which is a small number, but such a broad penalty compared to the very narrow application of their bonus that it will probably actually make them a net negative, especially if you wind up going the campaign without encountering dragons anyway.
Georgians are based on St George, mounted paladins able to call out dragons, and not only resist their attacks, but also impart the same protection on their mounts. They do lose quite a bit of general utility power, but since they can proactively seek out their foes easily, they're less vulnerable to DM screwage making their benefits pointless.
Dragon Lords turn smooth talking back on the wyrms. As long as they don't screw them over, they can wind up with a draconic cohort, and you know how handy something like that is. As usual, the wizards have far greater options than the warriors, and can make a problem into an opportunity instead of just applying violence to stop it. As the best of this lot, I can't see dragons being in any danger of extinction with challengers like this.
Dragons of legend: If feeling a bit lost, go back to your roots. They've been saying basically that for the past year, and here they encourage us to do likewise with our portrayals of Dragons. Question is, which set of source material will you choose? One of the many ancient myths from around the world? Victorian whymsy? Tolkien's silver-tongued engines of destruction? One of the many many modern novels featuring dragons of one kind or another. The choice is yours. I recognise most of the sources too, as even the ones I haven't read have been mentioned (and in many cases reviewed as well) in the magazine. So this is actually moderately nostalgic, making me think of stuff I haven't in quite a while. And while I do complain about basic advice, sometimes a look back at exactly what your original intentions were can be invaluable. So I quite like this one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 3/8
Fire in the five Peaks: Just as with last year, we have a piece on one of the ancient, singular dragons of Cerilia. Zakhur Lifesbane is one of those dragons that sticks to his home, and metes out a horrible death upon any who dare to intrude. This would be pretty boring, so there has to be something he's guarding to make it worth adventurers bothering. Enormous treasure? Nope. One of those artifacts that theoretically gives you massive power, but in practice just winds up being a huge pain in the butt, taking you over and killing you before too long. Now that's the kind of adventure hook I'd steer well clear from. While the writing here is pretty good, this doesn't look nearly as usable in game as last year's equivalent. It's only really good for a single adventure wheras Tarazin's plans could be woven throughout an entire campaign. Plus there is a bit of diminishing returns involved. Overall, I don't think this is that great.
Wyrms of the north: Ahh. Oh. This series. :( This officially marks the point in my mind that the Forgotten Realms jumped the shark and went from a brilliantly detailed world that was great fun to read about, to ridiculously overloaded with detail on every aspect of every region. A series entirely devoted to dragons of a single area of the realms? Um, yeah. That definitely felt to me at the time like we'd reached the point where they no longer had valid stuff to add to the world, and were just making up crap to sell to us because they wanted more money, rather than out of any genuine inspiration. It also marks the point where Volo started making regular appearances in the magazine. You already know my opinion on HIM. :spits: As much as I loved Ed Greenwood's work in general, my reaction to this can essentially be summed up as WTF IS THIS BULLSHIT?!?!?!!! :throws the magazine down in disgust:
And that's where I stand on this. While technically it may be better written than the last article, this really does hit the point for me where the Realms are too tied down and codified, and there's not enough room for you to stretch your improvising muscles without hitting your head on some silly little bit of canon. Let me out! The fact that it heavily references other dragons (that turn out to be later entries in this series that we won't see for another few years) further makes me feel hemmed in. Essentially, this whole article made me feel creatively claustrophobic and want to get the hell out of the Realms, and unlike the Skills & Powers stuff, time has not diminished that reaction. I'm remembering exactly why I stopped buying the magazine first time around.
Arcane lore: Yet more draconic treasure here, to make your enemies well equipped and magically versatile. They remain supreme as the monster most likely to have some customised gear to throw a wrench in your plans. Curiously, this focusses on magical items as well as spells. Still, that keeps the variety up. They continue to come up with interesting new ideas here, 20 years in.
Amulets of Supremacy are basically a free maximise spell for the dragon wearing them. Very scary indeed really, especially as they're exclusive. Whether half dragon PC's could use them is up to your DM.
Dragon Fangs make your bit even more badass with their metal edges. Don't want to encounter these false teeth wound up and chattering towards you :D
Focus Objects let you turn your breath weapon into a single target attack, thus avoiding collateral damage. Not always going to be handy, since it is technically a reduction in power, but not useless either.
Hoardstones make everything in your hoard look more valuable. It's like the fat girl angle and photoshop for insecure dragons. They'll never live it down if you tell their rivals.
Wing Armor has obvious use. Going for the vulnerables can leave the enemy grounded for months, and many dragons are smart enough to realise this. This is adaptable to nearly any flying creature too.
It's not all off-topic, with some more draconic spells following. More notable though is a little index of previous dragon-only spells from the magazine, and a couple of supplements. Gotta collect 'em all if you want really badass antagonists!
Hoard Servant is like unseen servant, only stronger, and mentally suited to the cleaning and cataloguing of shiny things. Not hugely thrilling or dragon exclusive.
Scale Shift lets you change color to fake out any hunters. Use it regularly while going out, and the townsfolk'll think there's dozens of dragons around and be really scared. Muahahahaha.
Dragonbane helps a dragon figure out if they're screwed, by detecting spells and items targeted against dragonkind. Then they can concentrate against them, or run away as appropriate.
Scalespray lets you clean off all the crap you've got encrusted on in a single explosive burst. If your enemies have you surrounded and breath weapons aren't going to cut it, it's time to break this one out.
Clutch Ward lets you enchant your eggs to teleport away if tampered with. Sounds pretty reasonable, given the lengths people'll go to to protect their kids. But what do you do with that slot once they're all grown up, and you're too old to make more?
Alter Breath Weapon is another energy type alterer. This is particularly useful for dragons, of course, especially if they expect to fight another one of their own type. You prepare for a whomph and get a zzzzap instead. Never trust anything with the power to pick it's own spells to be predictable.
Death Matrix lets a dragon go all balor when killed, hopefully taking their attackers down with them, and ensuring you don't get profit from their corpse in any case. It's hard to get hold of, but even harder to get rid of, so it's a good plot device both ways.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 4/8
The role of books: The fantasy role-playing gamers bible by Sean Patrick Fanon delves into gaming history. Like the real bible, it's particularly interesting for the stuff on the creation of the hobby, but then gets more selective and incomplete as history goes on. Still, it's highly readable and doesn't take itself too seriously. You could lose yourself for a good few hours flipping back and forth getting a better picture of the history of gaming.
Remnant population by Elizabeth Moon puts a single woman in an alien culture, trying to figure them out and survive without being well equipped for the job. It does a good job of showing, not telling, and while the underlying message is pretty clear, it isn't rammed down our throats. That's the advantage of conveying personal experiences instead of empty words from books, which is a very ironic message to have in the novel format.
Eye of the Daemon by Camile Bacon-Smith has an interesting cosmology, but the plotting is a mess, going from one character to another in a mess of convoluted machinations that only becomes vaguely explained at the end. John thinks her talents may be better served in the RPG writing department.
Vision Quests, edited by Dawn Albright & Sandra J Hutchinson, is a fantasy anthology focussing on just that. There's relatively few stories, and 2 of them have been previously published in other sources. Not that the stuff we're given is bad, and the smaller size means it doesn't have room to get repetitive. But you may find yourself still hungry at the end of it.
Ladylord by Sasha Miller is a tale of overcoming sexism in a somewhat oriental flavoured fantasy world. With obstacles of both intrigue and action, there's plenty to keep her busy, and with generally good writing, it's another positive review rounding this out.
Network News: This month's RPGA article is another promotion of Polyhedron. There really is quite a lot of cool stuff in it, honest! Well, given the insane rate Ed Greenwood writes and submits articles that's not surprising. They also make the point that they still cover non D&D games as well, which I find very interesting given Dragon has cut that out this year. Unlike the previous times I've come across this topic, I have finally managed to get my hands on some Polyhedron issues, and though my collection is nowhere near complete, it does please me that even after I complete this thread, there'll be several thousand pages more similar stuff still to surf through once I recover my appetite. But still, more than 10 years to go before I have to worry about that. I should put it out of mind for now, not get too distracted.
Tales of the fifth age: Mirta's Boo (yuck, that is a horrible font) God by Mark Anthony. Here we confront a big part of why they had to make a new system for the 5th age. No gods? AD&D just can't handle that mechanically. Athas got rid of the gods, but kept the clerics. Krynn is trying to go all the way, with no divine magic at all. (which they'll fail at too, with the discovery of mysticism bringing it back pretty soon. What can you do. :c ) Ironically, this allows them to tackle questions of genuine faith in a way you can't when the gods are definitely there and communicating with their priests regularly. So it proves here, in the first bit of fiction this year that's actually pretty good. A dragon pretending to be a god and duping people into feeding it. Score! A doubting thomas who gets eaten? An unlikely deus ex machina ending. A sappy life lesson that its what's in the heart that matters, not the figureheads you worship. Actually, in hindsight, this is pretty cliched and cheesy. But it was well written and characterised enough that I didn't notice on the way through. Well, that's a good deal more pleasant than intros that go nowhere or the irritating kender double bill. I'll say 6/10.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 5/8
Rogues Gallery: A bunch of Birthright characters this month, from their official authors. I strongly suspect they're part of her latest novel. Hey ho. That'll give me a chance to learn a little about the story without actually reading it.
Jerryl is a noble bard who doesn't actually rule a domain, although she has no shortage of romantic offers from eligible princelings. Instead, she's having plenty of fun making music, wandering the land and having adventures, some of which make for good stories, and others that remain mysterious, leaving people to speculate about her. That's the spirit. Leave them wanting more, so your fame has room to grow.
Keldric the seer, by contrast, is a diviner who's rather weighed down by the inevitability of what he sees, and the tendency of people to shoot the messenger. This means he's taciturn, grumpy, and only consulted when people really need him. Not a very pleasant life, really.
Maija Larsdotter is a young noblewoman who has accepted that her destiny is rulership, after a fairly long period of rebellion and adventuring. She might not be entirely happy with it, but now she's got the job, she takes it seriously, and is trying to make sure her people prosper. Seems like the kind of person your PC's would benefit from making an ally, not an enemy of.
Ulfig Bjornsson is a study in bear metaphors. Course, as a druid, that's quite understandable, and makes for a more ferocious take on close to nature than many froofy balance seekers. Don't get on his bad side, for I don't fancy your odds, and he may do something he regrets later.
Witchcraft! CJ Carella strikes out on his own.
Dragon Dice: Promotion for this game is back after a good few months off. Well, since Lester Smith left, they'd have to pick out new creative directors for the line and get them up to speed. But they haven't been skimping on the supplements. This is one of those somewhat irritating promotional articles outlining their newest supplement, what it does, why you would want to buy it, blah blah blah. Undead! Really hard to put down for good, able to do things like become invisible, convert enemies into more undead, or scare them away from the battlefield. They are relatively slow though, and don't have any particular ties to a terrain type. An interesting tradeoff. Just as with D&D, they seem designed to lurk in a place and be a right pain to anyone that comes to them, but not so great at taking the fight to others. In a many-players game, they could wind up being ignored for some time. (which would be a fatal mistake if it gave them time to build up their forces. ) I actually don't mind this, given how little non D&D stuff they've been doing recently, seeing more on a game I don't really know does give me something fresh to analyse. But really, I wish they were covering other RPG's again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 6/8
Forum: Jamie Nossal has some interesting analysis of rogue's combat progression and how it has changed from one edition to the next. Clerics & fighters used to have a hit bonus compared to the others right from the start. Restoring this'll smooth out the mathematical hinkiness where sometimes rogues are better than clerics and other times worse.
Andy Farrell reminds us that roleplaying promotes reading by making it fun. Plus it promotes co-operation. This is a crack to get it into the education system, and thus hook 'em young.
Jeff Crowell picks apart some of the rules in more obscure sourcebooks. Time travel once again becomes an almighty headache for a DM, as there's no way they can predict their players actions for sure and have reactions happen before the action.
Peter Heyck thinks that High and Grey elves are the wrong way round in terms of personality traits. Huh. He does have a point, but it's the kind of silly little thing I wouldn't consider it worth worrying about.
Tim Nutting tries to stem the tide of Players Option complaints by reminding them it's optional. That ain't going to work. As long as DM's have to deal with pressure from begging players. they'll pass the pain onto us. Might as well try to stop the tide.
Sage advice: How does contact other plane's intelligence contacted table work ( Depends how far you are in alignment from the plane you're contacted is. Hostile planes tend to be less informative.)
Do you have to meet the racial limits before or after applying racial modifiers (before, except where sloppy supplements say otherwise. Here we go again)
What happens if you put an ectoplasmic thing in someone, and then resolidify it ( The thing gets destroyed, not the already solid thing. It's called shotgun on that space, and you can't change that. )
How fast is feign death cast (as quick as it says. It has to be to have a chance of fooling people)
If you cast a spell, then move planes, how is it affected (it's usually fine, unless something seriously sadistic changes that.)
How many volumes will the wizards spell compendium have (We don't know until we've finished cataloging them. That's what 22 years of accretion gets you.)
Where are the spells listed in page 123 of the complete druids handbook (Unearthed Arcana. It's no wonder you don't remember them. They're 1st edition spells)
How likely is a high plus sword of sharpness to sever limbs (Scarily good. Don't mess with one.)
How do you handle turning undead (Recycled question. It's a full round action. )
Do gauntlets of ogre power affect your ability to open doors (sure. Ogres are gooood at opening doors. That's why Skip employs one when going out sagin. Never know when you'll need to open a door in the pursuit of info. )
Can priests who learn wizard spells cast them in armour (yes. They count as cleric spells for all purposes)
Can spellstrike remove anti-magic shells ( If it was cast last round)
Did you really advocate changing the rules mid game to stop player innovation in issue 228?! (No. How dare you Impugn Skip's integrity like that! You, outside, now! Let's settle this like men!)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hnah. What do you say to that? ( Yes, but the difference is that you can figure out the causes and means behind technology. You can't do that to magic. No matter how you slice it, it will still make no bloody sense at all.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 7/8
Dragonmirth takes the old knight-eating joke to a new level. Swordplay have to take on a rather tricky task. Knights of the dinner table mocks Boot Hill. It's been quite a while since we saw that mentioned. Floyd runs into a bad cockney accent. The person it's attached too isn't very nice either.
Role-playing reviews goes sci-fi again. It's not dead, honest, just ..... resting. Premillenial tension and all that, we're wondering if there's actually much future left. Turns out, there is, and it's pretty damn cyberpunk. But space travel is playing far less of a part than we'd like. Oh well, it's not as if what's happening isn't interesting. And it's not as if people aren't releasing new sci-fi games. It's just that they have more genres to compete with these days.
The darkstryder campaign is a rather interesting expansion for the Star Wars RPG. A combination of setting and adventure, it takes you to a troubled, relatively obscure sector where the writers have greater freedom to develop things, and turns the grit rating right up. Sounds AWESOME!!!!!!! [/90's kid] Actually, it's pretty good, if rather incomplete. Having come up with a way to keep their licence going, they'd like to milk it for a while.
Don't look back second edition isn't hugely changed from 1st (reviewed in issue 220) in mechanics. However Rick seems to pick up on the tone quite differently to Lester. Either it's changed in writing style quite a bit between the two, or he's just more attuned to the humorous side of modern conspiracy weirdness. It's not that hard to learn, but there's still more math than rules-lite Rick would prefer. Let's just get to the action.
Giant psychic insects from outer space is an adventure for Don't Look Back. An invasion of giant mantises is a launchpoint for some good retro sci-fi cheeseball fun, with enough sideways cultural references for a media studies degree. If you're not the deadly serious gaming as art type, he can recommend it a lot.
Star Wars Customisable Card Game looks good, but Rick finds it rather clunky in actual play, and not really very good to play with just the starting deck. Sounds like a few expansions are needed to round out the card selection, and possibly a new edition. Trouble is, you have to compete with Magic as it is now, not as it was when it first came out. That is a fairly stiff challenge,
Alternate Universe is an expansion for the star trek CCG, introducing characters from the mirror universe, and the other weird dimensions and times that have appeared over the course of the series. There is a bit of silliness, but that's to be expected, and the artwork is pretty good. Overall, it's quite a good add-on for the game.
Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Volo shows up again to give us a second perspective on the Forgotten Realms, with the Dalelands the area he's rehashing for us. Meanwhile, south in Cormyr, King Azoun's death is continuing to have big repercussions. Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb team up to handle this rather large metaplot event.
Dark Sun sorts out a few issues with it's magic system, in Defilers and Preservers. The awkward retcon of when defilers defile is sorted out to my satisfaction, and there's lots of the usual splatbooky goodness, along with a bit of rehash from Dragon Kings. Gotta keep this stuff in print.
Planescape releases something that's very much in theme with recent stuff. Hellbound: The blood war. See the Yugoloth's finest hour. See the writers attempt to fix the dreadful problem entire hordes of enemies with at will teleportation cause. See a rather pretty comic which will also come to the magazine shortly. Once again they pull out the spectacular even as the company falls apart.
Ravenloft starts another big metaplot event. Fresh from killing Van Richten, now they're going to kill everyone in the biggest city in the entire demiplane. Death Unchained kicks off the module trilogy. Are you ready for the reaper to make his grim harvest?
Dragonlance finishes off it's solamnic knights series, with Knights of the Rose, sensibly enough. Once again the order is becoming corrupt, and our protagonist has to make choices between the order and true honour.
We start a series of stuff on beholders, interestingly. I, Tyrant may be a terrible pun, but it's a cool book. The beholder ecology over a decade ago wasn't that impressive, but this goes the distance. They supplement this with a trilogy of adventures. The first is Eye of Pain. Muahaha.
Larry Elmore takes a break from art and ropes in his brother Robert to write a novel as well. Runes of Autumn. Any opinions on this one. We know he can write, because he did snarfquest for years. How good is this?
And last but also first, Spellfire releases it's 4th edition. Already? It's been what, a year and a half. They've really been going at a breakneck speed with this one as well.
The current Clack: Barbara Young is leaving Dragon. :( And this is put near the end of the article and not even given it's own header. Well, it's a perfect time for a mid-life crisis given what the company is going through, and that her job has been dramatically altered by the year's themed fiction. What has been happening to all the freelance fiction people sent in over the past 6 months? Are they keeping the good stuff back for later, or is it all going in the bin? And what is seeing nothing but in house stuff published doing for the rate of submissions? As with the departure of other long-timers, this feels like a bad omen for the future of the fiction department. Whoever replaces her will have some pretty big shoes to fill.
The rest of the column is mostly concerned with licences. A new forgotten realms computer game, also incorporating elements from Dragon Dice. A Babylon 5 RPG. GURPS Discworld. But no M:tG RPG. Oh well. The fact that we don't always get what we want doesn't mean we don't get way more than we need if we try sometimes.
Having been showing some signs of improvement in content recently, this issue has some of the clearest signs yet that things are going to crap for them behind the scenes, and staff are unhappy and jumping ship. What doesn't kill you may in theory make you stronger, but, um, yeah, so much for that saying. Whether their content will improve despite the pressures on them I'm not sure, but even compared to last year, this is a slight downward slide overall. And since the ones just after people left are often the most problematic, I doubt they'll be getting better next month. I'll have to keep looking ahead to the further future for hope then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. And so we reach the last issue that I actually bought at the time. While I certainly didn't suspect what would happen next, I was distinctly disenchanted with the recent changes in the magazine and products, plus they were getting harder to find in shops, so I bought them less and less. Around this time, I lost interest, and converted to White Wolf. D&D pretty much dropped off my radar until well after 3rd edition came out. So once again, after this point, I'll be pretty much discovering the month-by month events as they come. You can look forward to much snark. Let's dig this one out of physical storage for the novelty and get ready to rumble.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: So you just got namechecked by the X-files. If anything says that ordinary people have at least heard of you, it's something like this. And really, gaming is losing it's stigma as the people who play it grow up and become (mostly) fairly normal adults. So much for the satanic panic, and the hipsters. It's just another form of recreation. In contrast with last month's very gloomy editorial, this shows them fairly confident that gaming will survive, and with it D&D. After all, the company couldn't possibly collapse when it's still the biggest roleplaying game there is. That'd mean all the other companies are unviable as well. This also indirectly points out one of the big problems the game is having. There's now so many supplements that the degree of shared experience players have is rather lower. So this shows them pretty confident that the company will pull through these tough times. Oh, how wrong they are. :devil:
D-Mail: A rather interesting letter from someone who noticed a card game being played in one of their novels, and would like to see rules for it. Oh, you obsessives. Is there no part of the setting you will not explore? Just make it up yourself. Please?
A letter of praise for this year's april fools stuff. Much funnier than last year's! Yes, I suppose it was, on reflection. It was certainly better distributed.
A letter saying they need to aim more articles at players, as they make up more of the userbase. True, but that's a tricky one to get right, because the DM just needs so much more stuff to do the game justice. You can't have nothing but new spells and magic items in an issue.
A whole bunch of questions on the spell and magic item compendia. Yeah, they'll get them out eventually. Don't think it's easy for us. Poor poor slade. He works so hard and sacrifices so much for you people. :p Show him some love.
A joygasm from someone who really likes the idea of a computer character generator and rules compendium. Steady up mate. They're not putting every supplement in it. That'd be too much even for slade and zeb combined. Still, we hope it doesn't disappoint too much.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 2/8
The master thief: Hmm. Thieves were always one of the weaker classes, although they do balance that out somewhat with lower xp costs to advance. But given the rate spellcasters have got new stuff, and even warriors have stocked up on the kickass magical weapons and armor, they're the ones that have gained the least from the ever piling splatbooks of recent years. This is a problem. Also an issue is the way their powers max out at a relatively low level. How do you keep a 20+ level thief interesting? Unless you invent new rogue skills, you can't really. Hmm. No, they wouldn't. Actually, they would! After all, they already did in Dark Sun. And it opened up issues there. This is one of the articles that made this issue my last. Along with the recent Players Option material, it felt to me like they were making changes that weren't needed, and which would cause trouble if integrated. In hindsight, my opinion is a little different. This becomes more an indicator that having thief skills and nonweapon proficiencies artificially separated, and every rogue having the same skills was the main problem that needed to be addressed. You can't fix an inherent system problem by piling ever more patches onto it, especially when things worked better kept simple. So this is also a reminder that early AD&D may have worked at what it's aimed for, and 3e core may have worked, but pile on the supplements, and things go to crap eventually. It's a real pain in the ass.
The thief who came in from the cold: The thief as disruption to the party is something they've tried to tackle from several angles before. Most notable from a mechanical PoV was the Scout, which kept most of the regular abilities, but by casting them as a member of an organisation using those skills for quite different ends. Here we have an approach which isn't quite as interesting mechanically, but comes pretty close flavourwise. Use a thief to catch a thief. Make the PC's members of a government counterintelligence organisation that trains rogues for the purpose of sniffing out troublemakers, infiltrating their organisations and surreptitiously obtaining all the evidence they need to put these scumbags away for good. It might well be more effective than having big stompy guys trying to stop crime, and it'll make for tons of easy adventures. With another extra thief skill, this did add to my trepidation about spreading your points too thin at the time, but now seems a pretty cool article. It both solves problems and presents new opportunities, which is a nice double whammy.
The spying game: We continue the whole spying theme by letting in other classes on the action. After all, anyone can pass on information, and if you're to be a convincing agent, it's often best to get someone who genuinely knows the job, and leave them in deep cover for years. That or hire a diviner, who can frequently short-circuit the whole information gathering process by scrying and mind-reading their way through the whole problem. :p Course, every trick has a countermeasure. Diviners can be foiled by abjurers and illusionists, spies can be captured and bribed or brainwashed into becoming double-agents, and spying organisations can be subverted themselves and torn apart from the inside with false info and spurious diversion missions. This is a reasonably entertaining and informative article, that makes it relatively easy for the whole party to get in on the action. Just as with assassins, one class not getting all the action in an area is a good thing about 2e.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 3/8
Why spy: As usual, as the themed section draws to an end, the quality starts to drop. It's very much more of the same, only this time from the perspective that PC's might hire a spy to get information for them. You don't want to do that! The whole point of being a PC is that you're the one getting hired to do stuff, going out, risking your neck, and generally getting into trouble. To top it off, we have another case of proficiency bloat, including one that was presented as a new thief skill a couple of articles ago. That's another of those things that made me realise the thief ability and proficiency systems were rather awkward in their current implementation, and something needed to be done to overhaul and better integrate them. So while this has some fun advice, it's another one that's primarily notable for increasing my dissatisfaction with the system as is, especially when there's lots of supplements bolted on. Despite everything, I still believed in the idea of "one system to rule them all." on some level. Seeing two articles in the same magazine that were impossible to use together once again adds to my frustration.
Wyrms of the north: And here we reach the straw that really made me not interested in carrying on with buying the magazine, back in the day. The realisation that every dragon in here would probably have their own unique self-developed spells was what pushed my suspension of belief in the Realms' fabric a little too far. That combined with the number of references within to other books and articles killed my desire to collect further for quite some time, for I realised there was no way I could keep up with it all on pocket money. IT'S JUST TOO MUCH! And so I wanted to get off. It is rather interesting just how much my endurance has increased since then. But I can still remember pretty clearly how I felt, and it is taking a conscious effort to carry on past this point. Funny how it all comes back to you, even if you haven't thought about it for years.
Defilers and preservers: Tie-in article time. Dark Sun is getting a book expanding on the unique quirks of their wizards, and here's some more kits exploiting the conceits of the world and it's cosmology. Harsh environments produce strange creatures to exploit any source of energy they can find. Thankfully, this isn't cut or recycled material from the book though, and is still useful without it, which definitely puts it well above most promotional articles from the start. As to whether they're good mechanically and thematically though, that still needs further examination.
Grey Chasseurs hunt undead and blur the distinction between wizards & clerics. They do get a lot of benefits from this, but like clerics, have to work to keep those godly relationships going. Unlike dragon hunters, undead are ubiquitous enough at various levels that you won't have a problem encountering them if you're actively looking, so I don't have a problem with this. Even with their advantages, they're still heading for an early grave by definition.
Obscures use an adjective to describe themselves when they probably ought to use a noun, which looks silly. That said, they are pretty interesting. They get around the normal athasian plant-killing problems by drawing energy from the neighbouring plane of darkness instead. This could very easily kill the central; drama of the setting, but they continue to show how scarce and hard to access magical energy is on athas by other means. They get unpredictable amounts, could fail altogether and take damage, and being transformed into shadow makes their social issues even greater than normal wizards. It's not an easy alternative by a long shot.
Pales continue the dumb naming conventions. And they function in a pretty similar manner too, drawing energy from the plane of the dead, which is similarly subject to failure and inflicting damage upon the user, and becoming rather undead-like themselves. Once again though, they do get quite reasonable benefits. Better stack up on those appearance altering spells to mitigate the social penalties.
Protectors are elf fighter-mages who try to keep their tribe safe at all costs. This may be a pain for adventurers, as they are constantly on call by the tribe's shamans. Once again though, I think the benefits well outweigh the penalties. Bonus blasty spells are worth a lot of hassle when it comes down to the bottom line.
Relic Seekers are rather interesting because the consciously go against the original conception of athas, a place where people just don't have the time or resources to waste on luxuries like archaeology. I guess they have jungles and a proper sea now. Dilution of theme, blah blah blah. Happens to any long-running setting. :( That said, the idea isn't bad, and is mechanically pretty cool. Just transfer to another setting.
Slayers are wizard assassins. This is another one that seems better suited to another setting where wizards can at least advertise enough to get clients. As it is, they're stuck working for a singular powerful and nasty patron who'll be able to cause them serious grief if they screw up or try to leave employment. Dunno why wizards don't bugger off to another plane when they get the spells. So overall, I'm ambivalent about this collection. Some of it's cool, but others feel shoehorned into the setting. Once again, we may be adding a bit too much onto what was originally a really cool focussed world.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 4/8
The role of books: Guardian's key by Anne Logston gets lots of praise for both being high quality, and defying easy categorisation. The elements from various subgenres are incorporated expertly, but the primary goal remains to entertain, which is as it should be. As we've said many times, that needs to be the primary goal of any artform if you want to be commercially succesful.
The two georges by Richard Dreyfuss & Harry Turtledove funnily enough, doesn't play to the stereotypes either of the writers as established in their solo work. It's fast paced, has interesting, if not fully fleshed out worldbuilding, and is generally quite pulpy. John's main complaint is that it doesn't delve into the whys and wherefores of how the world got to be different from reality. Given answers generally lead to more questions, this may be hard, but there you go.
The dig by Alan Dean Foster is a novelisation of a computer game. This gets a moderately problematic result simply because reading it will spoil you on the game, or vice versa, so there's really not much point having both. As with most gaming fiction, it's probably better not to bother. It's not bad, just rather derivative.
War in Tethyr by Victor Milan is of course for the Forgotten Realms. Starring the kind of noble who got the title by kicking butt all the way to name level, it feels like it needs a prequel filling out our star's earlier adventures. But that's a request, not a complaint, as it does make for fun reading, providing a great example of how to set up plot twists so they come as a surprise yet make sense upon rereading. Given how many times we've had complaints about last act deus ex machina, that seems worth reading for aspiring writers.
The gates of twilight by Paula Volsky gets a mildly negative review for concentrating too much on side plots and worldbuilding over advancing the main story. It's not that there isn't stuff to enjoy, but it would be better placed in appendices or given a good pruning by an editor so the story can shine. Perhaps writing should be presented as more of a collaborative artform in the first place.
The electronic wizard: Oh man. Here we have a crux of my annoyance with this issue. You offer us cool bonus stuff, I don't get it, and then we have a fairly long promotional article on it to rub it in. And to top things off, it's not even as well written as the teaser in issue 226. This sent me into more than a little of a sulk back in the day. Ok, so it's probably the distributor or newsagent's fault, not TSR's, but that's not the point. The point is that it's a cocktease. I've never had much patience for that kind of experience, and if anything, my tolerance has only decreased as time has gone by. I'd much rather walk away than try jumping through someone else's hoops for some potential reward they could wind up withholding on a whim anyway because you're putting all the power in their hands. No. Just no. Screw you, and the distributor you rode in on. Buh-bye.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 5/8
Tales of the fifth age: Measure of the home guard by J Robert King. Another story in Krynn where the lesson is neutrality, be my good. For a certain value of neutrality. Which really depends on the assumption that going out and killing bad guys is more what the good gods want to see than staying at home and taking care of your friends and family. Which in D&D world, is quite possible. But it does make for some very interesting philosophical questions. Is proactivity really a good thing, when all is said and done. In an entropic universe, everything you do contributes in a small way to the end of everything. In a world threatened by regular apocalypses, both good and evil will want to preserve the status quo, even if it may be out of selfishness. Is it better to work with enemies who will probably backstab you the moment the crisis is over, or stand by your principles even if it means everything going down in flames? What do you do when things change so much that what was once a good and sensible thing to do (be fruitful and multiply) becomes an active liability. (overpopulation) So this story asks hard questions and answers them in a poignant manner. If there's anything that the new setting and system ought to facilitate, it's issues like this, rather than the dungeon crawling D&D is obviously designed for.
Game wizards drops it's definite article. They really are making a habit of that, over the years. You'll already have heard by now that Dragonlance is coming back under a different game system, but here's the official promotional article. People in setting have had enough time to adapt to the lack of gods and figure out a new magic system, which does seem like a bit of a compromise, but there's plenty of radical elements here. Actually, the decision to make it card based and narrative focussed is a blatant attempt to follow in the footsteps of Everway and the WoD, respectively, but there's nothing hugely wrong with that idea. And the way the cards draw upon existing lore does allow them to do things with the mechanics that would be impossible in an all-new setting. There's a lot of interesting things to be said about this one, which of course makes the fact that it doesn't do particularly well all the more regrettable. So it's with decidedly mixed feelings that I say hello to this. At least it's an actual other roleplaying game, unlike all this blood war and dragon dice crap. But it's not as innovative as it would like to think it is, and is marketed in a somewhat newbie unfriendly way, which pretty much ensures it's sales will only ever be a small fraction of AD&D's. I'm sure they could have done things differently and better, even if I'm not absolutely certain how.
Forum slowly shrinks. Combined with the larger font size, it's definitely passing a lot quicker these days.
Tim Merritt points out some more problems with S&P subability scores. It's all too easy for them to wind up as almost pure benefit if you build your characters suitably specialised. No wonder this is one rule that didn't make it to the next edition.
Dale Donovan steps into the ring to defend TSR's creating rulebreaking characters. Story purpose and coolness is more important than strict adherence to the rules, especially for NPC's. Plus you have to make sure rules lawyers don't get smug and overconfident. I don't think he's one of the people who survives the takeover, is he. That kind of change it just to spite them attitude'll be falling out of favor soon.
Steven Shaffer thinks each demihuman race should have at least one class with unlimited advancement. How simultaneously progressive and old skool. This will of course strongly encourage multiclassing with it, especially now XP isn't still split amongst maxed out classes slowing you down like 1st ed.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 6/8
Sage advice: How do you make psionicists using skills & powers (oh, this is gonna eat up tons of space. Should skip cap this mofo to get out of this question :Rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: oop, lorraine's watching, better get to work. Work work work. La lala Happy shiny rules writer, la la lala.)
Does a scarab of protection help you against dispel magic (no. It has no save, so the bonus doesn't apply)
What happens if you destroy a liches phylactery before killing the lich (You get a very pissed off lich after you. Also, liches, like dev :organ music: er, fiends, are notoriously tricksy. Don't be surprised if it's a fake.)
Network News: Another case of fail this month comes here, with the end of this article cut off abruptly for no apparent reason. It looks like it ought to route to another page, and indeed, on the next page there's a whole load of blank space it could have gone in, but I've scoured both my .pdf and physical copy and can't find it anywhere. This is another thing that makes me grumpy, especially as I was rather enjoying reading it beforehand. An interview with the guy in charge of Earthdawn, and his past and convention experiences. He's one of the people working hard to keep the RPGA supporting games other than D&D, which definitely deserves kudos. He's also busy writing for FASA when not co-ordinating convention adventures. It's both likable and informative. So this article manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, which is both annoying and funny. This is what happens when you go through editors too fast.
Dragon dice: A second bit of supplement pimping two months in succession. From the undead, to what is pretty much their opposite. The Ferals! Embodiment of vitality, fecundity and animalistic savagery. They replace troops at a scary speed, making them hard to put down for good, move fast, are ok in any terrain, and have plenty of tricks based on their individual animal types. Yeah, this is pretty standard fantasy tropeage, and quite a few of the spells seem to be directly taken from D&D. I find this surprisingly boring, especially compared to the quirks of the first few races. I suppose half of that is the problem with changing your lead developer and the other is that supplements don't generally get the development and editing time core stuff does. In any case, I suspect half-assed ideas like this contributed to the line's overall problem with oversaturation and underselling. Adding the kitchen sink makes a setting less interesting, not more.
Knights of the dinner table has an attack of the henchpeople. Swordplay turns the tables on the law. Dragonmirth does the old fake house trick again. Floyd faces the attention of the Randian inquisition. Will they give him a properly objective trial?
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 7/8
Role-playing reviews: Shaman sees Rick annoyed because he can't discuss more than half of it due to spoilers. And the name is the least imaginative part of the whole thing, which may cost it sales from those inclined to judge a book by it's cover. It's a damn good idea that could do with a better implementation.
Arcane companion is for rolemaster, adding a whole bunch of interesting options for players and DM's to customise their campaign with. It's as crunchy as ever for the system, but rick still finds it surprisingly accessible and concise, packing thousands of spells and items in. If you like the system, it would be silly to pass this one up.
Magic: A manual of mystic secrets is for Earthdawn. As with the Rolemaster one, it's pretty tightly tied to it's system and setting, and will take a bit of converting. And even more than Rolemaster, the magic ideas are quirky and interesting, with unique abilities and social ramifications for each magic type. Rick's main complaint is that the system for the planes is a bit of a non-starter. Probably ought to get it's own book to sort that out.
TSR Previews: Another busy month coming up. The forgotten realms continues to slant slightly heavier on the novel side. The Heroes lorebook stats out all the various NPC's from books again. How many new ones will there be, and how much will the old ones have changed since they last did this 5 years ago. And how soon will the continued novels render this one out of date? The Mage in the Iron Mash (sic) by Brian Thompson features Volo being his usual nosey and irritating self. Still, as long as it's mainly bad guys he's annoying, that's not a problem. Passage to Dawn by R A Salvadore is another Drizzt novel. He's forcibly returned to icewind dale and has to go through all that crap again.
Red steel is rehashed in a rather odd way. The Odyssey line kicks up with another generalised sourcebook on it. Wha. It was less than 2 years ago. Why is this happening? What happened to the Mystara name? I'm confused. They also get a book, The Black Vessel by Morris Simon. Seems generic enough. Really, what's going on here?
Birthright gets the Naval battle system. This sounds self explanatory enough. Mass combat is one of the things there is a consistent demand for, yet doesn't quite stick in the core rules. It would be needed in a game where domain management is important.
They also try and kick off the Lankhmar line again, with The New Adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Shane Hensley tries to make this boxed set streamlined and truly standalone, to try and lure in more new players. Interesting. What was different about it, and did it bear any relation to his later Savage Worlds stuff?
Ravenloft continues the Grim Harvest series with Death Ascendant. Things are about to get even uglier unless you can foil them pronto. Can you keep things from progressing to the next level?
Our generic stuff this month is Sages and Specialists, and a Heroes Tale. More stuff on the people you might want to hire, and more mid-range mini adventures to keep your players busy. Not very gripping.
Dragon Dice get their 4th Kicker pack. The Feral. Beastie boys join your army ready to fight for their right to party. More weirdly, they start a novel line as well. Cast of Fate by Allen Varney sees a young lava elf concerned about the futility of war. Ha. Like Gundam or Mega Man, as long as your franchise is built on blowing shit up, you're always going to have to fight some more.
Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996
part 8/8
The current clack: This month's news column is mostly concerned with revivals, which is actually quite pleasing. The battletech CCG is being rescued from limbo, Hero games are getting a new publisher, and so is The Whispering Vault. While companies may be experiencing financial problems, there's still plenty out there, and they want to keep cool properties alive. Of course, in some cases, this'll be just throwing good money after bad, but this is frequently the case in creative industries. You have to offer people all these different ideas so some can become breakout hits and support the other ones. The eras where everyone tries to follow the crowd in their attempts to succeed are the dullest to observe.
Also amusing here is Allen cementing his place as the resident technophile. He jumped on the internet quickly a couple of years ago, and now he's sharing his wisdom on the matter of mailing lists and message boards. Yes, they do require adapting to a quite different style of conversation to face-to-face communications, and can branch and spiral in ways that aren't easy to follow to the uninitiated. It is interesting to speculate just how people's brains are being affected by regularly conversing in this fashion, and what implications it has for young people who don't remember any differently. In the long run, it just makes for another "kids these days, gitoffa my lawn" cultural gap for people to rail against. And there's not a lot we can do about that.
It's not all bad here, but I can quite clearly identify the bits in the issue that made me decide I was getting sick of D&D at the time. Too many bits, pulling in different ways, too many mutually contradictory articles, too much dilution of theme, too much sloppiness in the writing and editing. And Dragon Dice just being annoying. It made me realise that I had enough to keep on playing for years as it was. Why bother with more if it was only going to make things worse? So that meant I pretty much missed their commercial nadir. This time, of course, I'm going to have to go all the way through it, try and give it a fair assessment. Tune in next time, as I once again venture into terra incognita. Only this time it's urban decay instead of virgin wilderness. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities for heroes here too.
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. A cover rendered entirely in washed out reds and yellows that looks like it needs a little sharpening up here. The theme, on the other hand, does seem pretty sharp. Weapons? Don't think we've had a full themed section on that, while we have had quite a few on magic. Rogues got some new tricks last issue. Now it's warrior's turn to try and play catch-up. As usual, I am fairly curious how well that'll work.
In this issue:
The new D&D starter set is advertised using the cover from the old Moldvay basic set, in the process showing that the new one isn't a patch on the old in terms of sheer attention-grabbing weirdness. This is no good at all. All you'll do is fuel people's nostalgia.
The wyrms turn: We leap straight into the issue's theme in the editorial. What exactly is a weapon? Let's consult our friend the Oxford English Dictionary again. Huh. These new editors have more boring references than the old ones. This doesn't compare to army stories or goofy actual play experiences. And once again, they use formatting to try and disguise the fact that their word count here is very low. This feels like another content free editorial that they could have skipped entirely. Blah blah over-reliance on formula. You could have fit an article twice this size in this space. I miss 1987, when they were actively trying to be as efficient as possible. Now it seems like they're trying to pad things out wherever they can to save money. This sucks.
D-Mail: A letter praising the revamped magazine, in particular Roger's recent orbs of dragonkind article. They have been printing a lot of letters like this recently. I suppose it shows they are pleasing a decent segment of their readerbase. And the ones they aren't pleasing must be quitting altogether rather than complaining. Or maybe they're being selectively positive to keep people from quitting via peer pressure.
A letter nitpicking about the name of Tolkien's dragons. He did change his own mind quite a bit over the years. Even serious geeks may dispute which one to use.
A letter saying that what they need is more themed issues, and a bigger forum section. Perfectly reasonable requests. The themed stuff I agree with in particular, especially if they can find one they haven't done before.
Another letter just offering general praise and stuff. (apart from the price increases, which suck) Yawn.
And finally a question about rare Dragon Dice. You can only get them at a convention! Just another way to sort the true fanatics from the lightweights. (join the RPGA now :teeth ting: )
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 2/8
Weapons of the waves: We start off this themed issue with one of their more ambitious articles in a while, a 9 page one on naval combat in the Birthright setting by one of the official writers. Since they're also producing a supplement on this topic, this has the air of a promotional tie-in, so I'm not sure how much of this is repeated in the book. Still, it's both interesting and at least some of it is new. It reveals just how much Cerilia's history and naval tactics differ from the real world, and are shaped by their magic & geography. With tactical advice, new weapons, and a whole bunch of little cards containing statistics for ship types, there's plenty to use and appreciate here. It's not particularly usable in another campaign, but I still rather like this one, as it has both ambition and smoothness. Still, I don't think it'll be changing history like the half-dragons one.
En Garde!: Yay! A Red Steel swashbuckling article! That's something I've certainly wished they'd do. If I'd noticed this was coming, I might not have quit last month. It has some pretty cool ideas as well, with formalised fighting styles that you gradually learn upwards, only getting the higher level manoeuvres after learning the lower ones in the style. They did that with wizards in the Paths of Power article, and that was awesome. Unfortunately once again we are hindered by the fact that warriors only get one new proficiency slot every 3 levels, and have a lot of choices on which to spend it. You'll be unable to master this stuff before 20th level, at which point wizards will be using wishes and chain contingencies. So this is a cool idea hindered by the underlying system, just as with the previous attempts to give warriors more combat options. Roll on the next edition.
And the walls came down: Magical Battering Rams? That's a new one. (apart from that april fool monster, and that's bleating) Not often you see mundane ones in D&D either, as mass combat isn't that common, and they're a bit too encumbrance-heavy for a party to carry in a dungeon, despite being quite useful potentially. Maybe when you get yourself a portable hole or something. As is usually the case when they manage to fill in a new niche that makes sense, I approve.
The Arien of Thang-Nor is a spell that conjures a supernaturally tough battering ram. Fairly basic, but it does deal with a lot of the logistical problems you'll face. Whether it's worth a 5th level spell slot I'm not sure. Might want to add a few summon monsters to get the creatures to wield it. Everything is soluble if you're a wizard, but it can take a lot of preparation.
Frost-Rent is more interesting. Carved of solid ice from the paraplane, it'll transfer it's chill to the structures attacked, and make them brittle. Wrap up warm, otherwise it'll take off your fingers as well. Can't trust these artifacts at all, but at least this one's drawbacks are relatively simple to avoid.
Khalmick-Graz is a rather scary orc device that plays music as it runs, like a giant evil bullroarer. This makes it pretty likely to win by sheer revulsion, presuming you have the staff to operate it. But then, given how fast orcs breed, they should have replacements up and trained soon enough.
Thunderstrike Rods let you unleash lightning bolts so powerful, they also serve as battering rams, and stun everyone in their path. Make sure your forces back off before you unleash it, because that's one hefty area of effect.
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 3/8
A flurry of swords: More new swords? Do we not have enough variants as it is? Apparently not, as Greg Detwiler gives us a full 26 new variants, well and truly affirming the sword's place as the supreme weapon throughout the ages and continents. Polearms? Pah! Piffling by comparison. 17 of them have some distinct benefits when you're proficient in them, and more when specialised, rather than just being another endless tiny variation on damages. So whether you want to slice through armor, massacre small creatures or parry better, you can find something to suit your needs. Happy twinking. :p Yeah, I'm not very interested in this.
Sorcerous six-shooters: Here we go again, following in the footsteps of issues 28, 57, 60, 70, 124, 176, 199, and lots more non D&D ones over the years. It's not an unfamiliar topic. Thankfully, this isn't one of those annoying starting from scratch reboots that forgets everything that came before. Instead, it's an examination of the place of firearms in all the various settings, including the inactive ones. Apart from Greyhawk & Athas, they have a place in all the worlds, even if it's a rare one for various reasons. (oh, poor poor krynn, made distrustful of technology because the species that uses it most is completely nuts. ) So not only is this pretty pleasing because it has something useful for the casual fans of every world, it's also nicely in continuity, and has some nice new bits of crunch for you to play with. Magical guns may be an abomination to the purist, but as we already know from Shadowrun, they can do some pretty awesome things. And if you try fighting against someone optimised, you lose. Call it natural selection. I think this article manages to draw and fire fast enough that I don't get bored. :)
The ecology of the roper: Aw. Poor little girl. Now this is a very different ecology indeed. The story of a little girl suffering from uncontrolled attacks of clairvoyance, and when she jumped into the body of this month's monster, and had to experience it killing and eating things from the inside. Now that's a narrative device I've only seen once before (ahh, the joys of rugose cones) The writer gets in character, and stays there all the way through, before ending with a heart-wrencher of a final line. Absolutely brilliant, this even makes the classic Ed ecologies from the 80's seem tame. The footnotes are merely average, but hey, you can't have it all. This is still a classic article, managing to make more impact on me than the magazine has managed for quite a while. Much kudos.
Floyd still hasn't twigged why the little boy has massive magical powers, the twit. How telegraphed do these things have to be?
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 4/8
The role of books: One foot in the grave by Wm Mark Simmons is not a book based upon the sitcom, but a vampire story involving a beleaguered half-vampire. Cliche, you may say, but we all know there's little new in the world, and this is a story that manages to make the idea fun. There's action, sex, and plot twists aplenty, and while it's open for a sequel, it still manages to finish it's current plot properly. It's all very well balanced.
Shade and shadow by Francine G Woodbury combines mystery plotting with magic as science ideas, to produce a fairly slow paced but well written murder mystery. John's main complaint is that the worldbuilding possibly isn't taken far enough. That's the stuff roleplayers need to steal for their games. :p
Firestar by Michael Flynn is one of the many books coming out around that time that tries to capitalise on pre-millenial tension. How long ago and silly that all seems now. Still, it's very much of the vein that we can make the future better, not that the world is doomed and there's nothing we can do, which is welcome. After all, sci-fi ought to be driving us onwards to advance technology, not making us hold back out of fear.
The magic touch by Jody Lynn Nye is our negative review for the month. It's blandly written, derivative, and the tone really doesn't match the setting. Gotta warn us away from stuff as well as recommend it, otherwise this section wouldn't be half as interesting.
Wind from a foreign sky by Katya Reimann sees John bemoaning that the explosion of fantasy actually means fewer heroic epics in the old skool vein. Fortunately, there are some new writers producing them, like this one, and he hopes they get at least a good trilogy out of this series. But will they enjoy the same commercial success in a competitive market? It's so much easier to become legendary when you're a pioneer.
Tales of the fifth age: The gift of fire by William W Connors & Sue Weinlein Cook (so she's married Monte now? Iiinteresting) We've had stories showing us what's happened to the kender & gnomes during krynn's upheaval. Now it's dwarves turn. With 4 months to go, I don't doubt the elves'll get their go as well. As befits the race, this is actually fairly serious, showing that they're having to deal with internal tensions as well as outside challenges, and do morally dubious things to survive. Such as trying to train a fire dragon of chaos to fight the great dragons taking over the land. Yeah, that's the kind of plan that's likely to lead to massive losses on both sides, whoever wins. And it's not surprising it leads to it's user being banished from the dwarven halls for his rashness. This is actually pretty good, with plenty of drama, well defined characters, and a story that holds up on it's own but still ties into the larger sweep of krynn's history. We're finally getting somewhere with this 5th age idea, figuring out what it's supposed to be about and the stories we could be telling in it. Let's hope they can bring this to a climax at the end of the year, and justify their sluggish start.
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 5/8
Dragon Dice: The last two months, we had new races. Now we have new magical items. I guess that they're once again following in D&D's footsteps with this game. Regular items are 4-sided, while artfacts are represented by 10-sided dice. They're also introducing summonable monsters that can be used by any side with sufficient magic to spare. As usual, they have a whole bunch of quirks, requiring constant attention, and refusing to fight other summoned monsters of the same elemental type. And on top of that, they're adding new terrain types with various advantages for their users, like grassy knolls to shoot from and wood to hide in. So this opens up a whole bunch of new tactical opportunities and obstacles for all sides, which means it has potentially higher sales than introducing a new splat. Hmm. Feels once again like they're taking a lot of their lessons from the way they've run AD&D over the years. And why not? It's probably more likely to work than creating a whole new paradigm.
Wyrms of the north: The first two dragons in this series both have names that began with A. Now we have one that begins with a B. Oh dear god. Don't tell me Ed had all of this column written out in advance, and delivered it to the magazine as a fait accompli that'll last several years even before the first one was published. That's just showing off. Could he fill the entire magazine on his own if he wanted? In any case it's a reminder just how head and shoulders he is above everyone else writing for them, that he has both the talent and prestige to get away with such an idiosyncratic and specialist column.
And despite my previous rants about canon strangulation and magic bloat, there continues to be a lot in Ed's writing to enjoy. Chief in this particular one is his detailed talk on the tactics this dragon uses, and his attitude towards the rest of the world. While very obviously of a draconic mindset, he has more than enough nuance to make him individual in both conversation and a battle, and in typical Ed style, these details are easily used in actual play. There's also plenty of info on his lair and the magical items he has are actually put to good use, instead of just being slept on in his hoard. If I were to play in the Forgotten Realms and use dragons, I would actually use this. Still, I don't think there's much chance of that happening anytime soon.
Sage advice: I sent in a question. It cost me $5.16! I'm entitled to an answer! (No, you are not. The Sage's time is a privilege, not a right. Skip is entirely within skip's rights to charge an initial consulting fee, and then refuse to take on a case. And if you send in another letter to whine, you've just wasted another $5.16. Ha ha. Go on, waste more of your money sending in a complaint. Skip dares you. )
Do you get the backstab bonus if you hit a sleeping creature in the front. (yes. They don't know you're there. )
Does backstabbing work on undead and things without backs (not generally. Common sense must provide the exceptions as usual, because we can't talk about every monster individually in here. )
How many attack does fighter get against a swooping creature ( it depend on may thing. The position of fighter in round is critically important. also weapon number held. Attack of opportinity provide one phase of attacks, up to limit. If already used, then no opportunitty to attack.)
Does your movement rate initiative affect? (Affect it does, for PC's only)
Are touch spells blocked by armour (yes)
How does dual-classing work with respect to proficiencies (Skip has changed his mind again. Retcon, retcon! La la la la. Skipadee doo dah, skipedee ay, my oh my what a wonderdfull day. Great chanfes come, great cvhanges go. )
Can priests change spells after napping (not without making their god cranky)
Can dual-classed wizard/priests put priest spells in their contingencies (Sure, why not. Let your imagination run wild. )
Is there an initial save against charm spells (yessssss. )
Do fireballs burn up stinking clouds (nooooooooo)
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 6/8
Forum: Rick Maffei takes up a full 2/3rds of the forum this time round. People have challenged his opinion, and he is eager to rebutt. After all, that is what the forum is for, and if you don't want debate, get a soapbox and megaphone instead. And despite them being optional, TSR shouldn't publish stuff with shoddy rules in the first place. It sets a bad example.
Jeffrey Martin thinks AD&D should be concentrating on fantasy over realism. It's more fun that way. Plus, medieval laws were heeded in the breach as often as the observance, just like real world tax and traffic regulations.
Michael D. Bugg thinks magic ought to be kept rare enough to remain wondrous. Rather a tricky task when half your PC's use it routinely, methinks. Once again, you're battling the system.
Network News: Hee. We actually have a bit of LARPing coverage this month, as they prepare for the big Gen Con Living City events. Dress up as your character, and you'll get the chance to make a serious impact upon the metaplot of Raven's Bluff. Hey, there are far worse things to do with your time. You'll even get the chance to meet Elminster, although I very much doubt you'll get to attack him. (and wouldn't it make a pretty pickle if some deluded madman killed Ed while he was dressed up as El as vengeance for what Elminster did in one of his previous games. I wonder if that would make the metaplot. ) As with the return of non D&D stuff in their 5th age article, this isn't unwelcome at all, even if it does fall prey to a bit of self-aggrandisement, and isn't as thrilling as coverage of 3rd party games would be. This kind of stuff does look like it would be a great deal of fun to do, presuming you have the time and money for all the travel and costuming. And this is definitely a case where the more the merrier, so promoting it beforehand is a rather good idea.
Swordplay finally reveals how they survive this stuff. Life insurance works much better when you have resurrection spells. Dragonmirth stumbles right into the joke this time. The KotDT crew are reminded that no matter how powerful you are, GM fiat can beat you without a roll. And the GM is reminded in turn that walking out is always an option. No gaming is better than bad gaming.
Role-playing reviews: Conspiracy X is of course an attempt to produce an X-files inspired game. After all, it's one of the biggest sci-fi/supernatural shows out there, so a good game based off it has definite sales potential when targeted at the geek audience. The basic character creation and and action resolution is fairly familiar, point buy and stat + skill + modifiers + 2d6. But it still has quite a few unique quirks, such as the group cell construction rules, and the zener cards for psychic powers, that do help set the atmosphere and make the whole thing more genre appropriate. If you want to play that sort of game, there's few systems better, at least until the unisystem version comes out.
Lost worlds gets a 6 pip review, as Rick is overjoyed it's not only been rereleased after a decade (review in issue 85), but improved upon. It's not quite a roleplaying game, but it is a good deal of fun, and less obviously designed as a money sink than CCG's. Get a few, and have a blast.
Tales of Gargenthir beats even Traveller in the depth of it's character generation lifepath system. It may take a session or two just to get to the present. And things don't speed up much from there, with a pretty crunchy system for resolving actions, and a well detailed, interesting setting. If you can cope with Rolemaster, this should be pretty enjoyable.
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 7/8
Wraith: the Oblivion gets a second edition. But forgets the pathos regaining rules :p What are you gonna do. Hire a better editor? Ahahahahaha!
TSR Previews: We once again break the record for new releases next month, with 15 of them mentioned here. Anyone who can keep up with this lot has some serious disposable income and is a very fast reader. Lets see what we can see.
The AD&D core rules get put on a CD-ROM. Now thats a good use of technology, not like those silly audio CD accessories. Just fast, easy, fully legal characters to start playing with. It's not all bad ideas. There's also the epic Rod of Seven Parts adventure, which unusually is well behind it's tie in book. Was Skip late with his manuscript or something?
Birthright gets Legends of the Hero Kings, and the Khourane Domain Sourcebook. More adventures for them to make their name completing, and another place for them to come from and be in charge of. Are your guys ready to step up and bat when their blood destiny comes due? It also gets The Spider's Test by Dixie McKeone in the novel department. Lolth is not involved, unusually. Normally, there's no getting rid of her where spiders are involved.
Lots of setting double bills as well. Dragonlance relaunches it's gaming end with a bang. The Fifth Age has begun, ruled by cards and dramatic conventions rather than dungeon crawling. Will it get the success it deserves. I guess that depends if you like the ideas of dragonlance or not. :p The novels also kick off the stories of the new era, with Jean Rabe writing The Dawning of a New Age. How will the canon characters react to the massive changes in cosmology and magic system?
The forgotten realms returns to undermountain for a 4th time, to find a place called Maddgoth's ( Mad goth? Srysly? White Wolf envy much? Go sit in the corner with Boinger, Goretox and Black Ice Shadow ) Castle. A flying castle in a giant underground vault? Not the most practical position for it, really. Well, I guess he must be mad. Meanwhile, Elaine Cunningham continues to try and replicate the success of R A Salvadore in drow adventurer tales.
Planescape gets the planewalkers handbook. Finally they get kits suitable for the planes, along with lots of other player-centric goodies. About time. Not so wanted is Pages of Pain, by Troy Denning. How do you do the memoirs of the lady of pain without destroying her mystique. Can he pull off that tall order?
Ravenloft returns to gothic earth, with A Guide to Transylvania. See the land Dracula rules, and quite a few of his lackeys and enemies given greater detail. Well, it's worked for Strahd, it should work even better for the real thing. They also have another ironic Vistani story. To sleep with Evil by Andria Cardarelle. Well, romance is given extra piquancy if it's tragic and cursed. If it's troo wuv they'll battle on regardless.
Our generic book also seems pretty familiar. Trail of Darkness by Darlene D Bolesny sees another scheming bastard foment division and conflict between races for his own profit.
Dragon Dice is also expanding yet again. Magestorm adds magical items to your dice arrays. Can you figure out what their most tactically optimal uses are?
Dragon Magazine Issue 232: August 1996
part 8/8
The current Clack: Once again the most interesting news this month is thrown in as a virtual afterthought. Margaret Weis marries Don Perrin. Given they're both writers, I am absolutely certain collaborative books will be forthcoming. Still, how will this affect her writing partnership with Tracy Hickman? Well, he's already produced collaborative works with his own wife. Oh god, foursome, bad images, bad images. Also :googles: 17 year age gap. Go her. Although apparently they divorced in 2003, so it can't have been a hugely stable relationship. I am strongly tempted to delve into gossip a little further here, but I think that's a bit too far out of good taste. Family friendly thread (just about) etc etc.
Our more standard gaming news once again concerns the ownership of various properties. Everway is getting to be the first game of a brand new company. Gatecrasher is being republished by Grey Ghost Games. Darkurthe Legends has moved to Gatekeeper publishing. Pandemonium, on the other hand is being dropped, and all remaining copies are being given away for the price of shipping. Everyone's feeling the pinch, and just hoping that their creativity survives. Oh, you needn't worry about that. The internet is busy making the creative attempts of normal people ever more accessible to a wide audience for a minimal price. Still, the outlook doesn't look great from this angle.
Overall, I rather enjoyed this issue. After the last two being pretty torturous, they had quite a lot of good or decent articles, and the return of several features I'd rather missed. It feels like they're finally starting to accomplish the goals they set for themselves in the revamp. It may not save them, but It's good to see they still gave it their all. The next few months are definitely going to be interesting reading.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Okay, now this is truly a hideous cover. Everything about it offends my eyes. The scrappy colouring. The lack of depth and perspective. The cluttered loading in of creatures. This is a pretty strong contender for worst cover evar. Even the cheap stuff from the early days of the magazine had better planned composition than this. Remember, once you get above a certain level, adding in more stuff makes things worse, not better. I'm turning the pages fast to get away from that, and hoping the contents will be an improvement.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: This month's editorial is actually pretty entertaining, as Dave Gross tells us the story of his youthful passion for chess. It's amazing how such a simple seeming game can become a passion that takes a lifetime to master. Well, although it may be a game of pure skill, there's still more permutations than a human mind can memorise, and your opponents will hopefully improve as you do, so there'll always be a challenge there. Really, this is another reminder how interesting gossip is, and how small and silly our reasons for taking one direction in life over another can be. Even if you cloned someone, they might well wind up with quite different interests and skillsets from being raised in a different time and place. What chance events threw your life in a completely different direction?
D-Mail: A letter asking for coverage of online gaming, and conversions for older editions. Things that seem likely to get a mixed response really. Still, doesn't hurt to try.
A letter from the writer of 231's Arcane lore answering some questions about dragon wing armor. Yeah, it'll take quite a bit of work to make that one useful for PC's. Might want to destroy it or give it to a good dragon as a bribe.
A letter chattering about the whole geek stigma thing, and also about the age gap in their gaming group. They might not have the same experiences, but they can all contribute positively in the present.
A gripe that the CD they included with the magazine was Windows only. Poor macs, getting the short end of the stick. Count yourself lucky they survived at all. What would the computer landscape be like without at least one competitor to Microsoft's world domination?
A letter asking what computers they use to make the magazine. Currently, Quark Express is the main program. But it is a complicated business. One crashed system could be a real problem. I hope they have backups.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 2/8
Going to Court: Once again, they try to revitalise the political game-playing, as after all, they'd really like Birthright to succeed, and prove that D&D can sustain modes of play other than dungeon-crawling. As is their current trend, they take a somewhat more crunchy approach to this than previous attempts, breaking things up into influence levels, their effects on reaction rolls, and the various actions you can use to raise or lower your standing. This goes by amazingly quickly, which is a pretty good sign, as it means they're not only fitting quite a lot in, but it's done in an easy to read style. So It's a pretty positive beginning, that should help even the most socially inept DM run a courtly situation. Good choice. A random courtier generator would be nice at some point though. :)
On wings of eagles: Or The Ecology of the Avariel, attempting to do for them what Roger Moore's articles did for the standard demihuman races quite a while back. Instead of giving a general overview, they choose to go with the options of IC fiction (with added AAAAngst), and lots of detail on a specific example city. At 8 pages long, it's bigger than our last look at winged elves, back in issue 200, but obviously less integrated into other articles, since it's generic, rather than for a specific gameworld. This does make it harder for me to establish an emotional connection, especially as this writer doesn't have Bruce's skill at cramming vast amounts of detail into a few paragraphs. It doesn't bug me like the article on animal men which was in a similar position, but it does fall a little into the elves as mary-sues with a perfect society trap. It does have quite a bit of useful new crunch, including 3 new kits, and is self-contained enough to be used without the complete book of elves, so I'll return a mildly positive result. It's got more than enough good and bad points to be interesting, in any case.
Fiendish Fortresses: Or good god, it's an absolute pain in the ass creating a safe home when there's creatures with at-will teleportation. All the normal tactical approaches go out the window, especially when they add flight, a whole bunch of immunities and magical abilities, and the intelligence to take advantage of this. Not that it's impossible, especially when the other side also has at will teleportation, and a different set of immunities and magical abilities. The solution? Well, it involves places that feel rather like traditional dungeons, with deathtraps in a substantial fraction of the rooms, layouts that are counterintuitive and lack toilet facilities, and infinite pits all over the shop. Tee hee. Basically, they ensure anyone trying to go in blind has a pretty good chance of ending up in a horrible situation that does tons of damage before they can get their bearings. And since they may be able to teleport, but they're pretty low on scrying spells, this makes them cautious. Immortality is a terrible thing to risk. Obviously the various sides have their own quirks. The baatezu make every single room containable and checkpointed, while the tanar'ri places are such utter tips that no-one else can figure out where to go and constantly stub their toes and knock over cups of acid. :p And let's not even get into the yugoloth ones. (which they don't, annoyingly) This is well-written, logical, inventive, and fun to read. The only problem, and it's a doozy, is that THEY JUST INVALIDATED THE WHOLE FUCKING PREMISE IN THE METAPLOT!!!!!!!!!1! Seriously, that's not the kind of problem you just brush off in the prelude. If every single human in the world suddenly had their legs fuse together into a single hopping limb, you would not see us carrying on as if nothing was wrong. I get that they're prideful creatures and afraid of revealing weakness, but when you're that common and smart, you should figure this crap out pretty quickly. So it's not this article I have a problem with, it's their company need to have metaplot in every single bloody gameline, and the way it makes an infinite universe seem so ridiculously small. And there's worse to come on that front. This really just makes me want to shout FUCK YOU TSR, YOU'RE SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT HERE!!! Ugh. So much squandered potential.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 3/8
Wyrms of the north: Speaking of squandered potential, is Ed Greenwood still producing this stuff? As interesting as it might be to read, just how many people are actually going to get to use even one of these dragons in actual play, let alone the 20-odd it looks like we'll be getting. Still, we're onto C now, and chances are, we might skim the last few letters. We're probably well over a 10th of the way through.
So this is our 1st green dragon. She is a pretty cranky creature, as is standard for the race, but the details are very individual. From eating habits, to vices, to tactical details, to sex life, (or lack of it) the details are not only pretty substantial and usable, but also rather funny. They're just the kind of thing a skilled player could exploit, but should watch out when doing so, for having your corpse used as a chewtoy often offends. It's also a reminder that while the lesser chromatic dragons may have intelligence, they're nowhere near as smart or magically capable as the average metallic or gem dragon, and they may well envy their sheer range of options. Actually, I wonder if he will do dragons of other types, as so far, it's been all the boring colours. Guess I'll find out in future issues.
Campaign classics: Al-Qadim meets Birthright this month, with domain stats for the various regions and city-states of the land of fate. That's actually a pretty cool idea, if rather specialist. Obviously you'll need at least the core products for both worlds to make sense of this. But if you do, you have a very interesting bit of conversion, which takes a few liberties with the setting of zakhara and the rules of birthright to produce a game that won't be quite like a regular birthright domain game, but will be more high magic, more trade-oriented, and with more interesting nonhuman interactions, particularly where genies are involved. I think this is a pretty awesome idea. Substituting Cerilia's very traditional celtic fantasy backdrop for an arabian one can really spice up the domain rulership game, as well as changing the personal adventures between them. Plus you could do a little continent shuffling (hey, it worked for kara-tur) and set both continents in the same world, so you have a playground more than twice the size to conquer. I like that. Now, if you could get round to doing a crossover article for OA as well, I'd be even happier.
Dragon dice: After rapidly introducing a ton of new races, we're now getting assurances that the old races are still valid. Power creep hasn't made them useless, and they'll still be getting support in the future! God, once again we see how accelerated their development cycle is. It's no wonder they overreached themselves and then burned out when sales didn't match the creator and company's enthusiasm. Just as with Birthright and it's 4 books at once barrages, it makes me wonder how they expect the general public to keep up with this. I suppose that's exactly why they're having problems. The lack of research and unrealistic expectations about what the public wants led stuff to be overprinted, underprinted, or generally not targeted right to make maximum profit. This isn't really a terrible column, but it is pretty telling. If you'd spread these supplements out over a longer period, the game might still be chugging along. But no, you had to get overambitious. Oh well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 4/8
Bookwyrms: Oh dear. Another column gets a punny name. Not that it's a terrible pun. But I still rolled my eyes when I saw it. I wonder how long this change'll last.
Archangel by Mike Conner sets a mysterious and deadly plague on 1930's america, that for whatever reason, doesn't affect black people. This obviously has serious political repercussions, and a whole bunch of other interesting things are happening against that backdrop. There may not be overt supernatural elements, but there's plenty of speculation in this fiction.
The forgotten beasts of eld by Patricia McKillip is an old book that's been reprinted. It's writing style evokes nostalgia in the reviewer for the books he read as a kid, which is a good thing. Pastiches may try, but a book written in a particular period will always bear the hallmarks of it's real time in terms of cultural influences.
Immortals by Tracey Hickman gets a rather odd recommendation. It would be perfect as a text for teaching in school? Bwuh. Okay then. I don't think that's going to get much traction.
The wind after time by Chris Bunch is a bit of high action sci-fi adventure that seems to have more than a little in common with Star Wars. It once again gets a recommendation. You know, these are a good deal shorter and less critically rigorous than the role of books. This is not a very good change, and worries me quite a bit.
Tales of the fifth age: Thunder and ice by Douglas Niles. Meet the new magic, not the same as the old magic, but a good deal more similar to the average portrayal of magic in fantasy stories than D&D's vancian magic system. This allows them to do things more narratively, but just as importantly, it democratises magic enormously. People from regions and cultures that formerly wouldn't get the formalised education to tap into the moons are discovering new powers in a haphazard way and refining them into an art. Which makes them valuable, but not in the same reliable and relatively trusted way as the old mages and clerics. So as so much of the 5th age, this is about faith and it's sincerity and justification, hard sacrifices, and being challenged by the forces of nature as much as any monster. I think I'm starting to get the picture. After the last few stories built the drama up, this lets it unwind a little, but not all the way. I'm pretty ambivalent about it, actually. Feels like filler. I suppose you've got to have a few plateaus before you get to the climax, and it has been a mostly upward trend so far. They've still got a bit of time.
Iron & blood: warriors of Ravenloft? Way to break the mood of your license. Really, I can't even parody this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 5/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More magical armour? Here we go again. I really think we need some form of more specialised categorisation here. As usual, let's hope the ideas are both cool conceptually and not mechanically broken.
Avian armor isn't that great at the actual armoring gig, and makes you look like Big Bird. But hey, shapeshifting! Actually, given that there are plenty of more powerful and less embarrassing items that let you change shape, I think I'll skip this one.
Armor of Faith only works for someone who is of a specific alignment, and who follows a specific deity. A perfect excuse to prevent you from using enemy gear, in other words. Not likely you'll get use out of this when it turns up randomly.
Armor of Grounding protects you from electrical attacks. That's it, sparky. Once again, good luck getting the right enemies.
Armor of Swimming doesn't impede you in the water at all. In fact, it lets you swim like a fish and breathe underwater. Perfect for a pirate. Watch out for the sahuguin while you're down there. They can still outswim you and pwn your ass.
Helms of Horror have evil glowing eyes and scare people you look at. You may get mistaken for an antipaladin, and killed horribly by the next bunch of adventurers if you can't walk the walk as well.
Helms of Thought Protection are another one that's very common in the literature, and I'm surprised hasn't been done before. Many are even comfortable to sleep in. It's all about the tinfoil layering, my dear.
Dweomerbane shields suck up any magic that passes by them and get ever more powerful as they do. This may not be a good thing if you have spellcasters on your own team, but will be devastating as a bad guy fighter's primary item.
Shields of Faith are another highly restricted item for the DM to annoy the players with. Really, this restriction could be plonked on any kind of magic item.
Shields of Missiles suck up magic missiles and spew them back at the enemy. Obviously not as obscene as the general dweomerbane ones, this could still be a lifesaver. And shaking wizard's faith in one of their most reliable spells doesn't hurt either.
Shields of Shattering, like swords of 9 lives draining, are incredibly brutal, but have decidedly limited lifespans. They'll break both the weapons and arms of anyone attacking you, and then break themselves when they run out of charges. Keep it for special occasions where you really don't want to play fair.
Forum is once again cut down to precisely the size they need to fit it around the adverts.
Roger Smith adds a third voice to those who want level limits and dual classing removed. There are many more silent out there that agree with them.
Steve Shawler starts his all new players off at 1st level, but makes sure they get adventures tailored to them. It seems to work.
Josh Heckman points out that demihuman level limits are a setting conceit as much as a balance one. Changing them will change how they are regarded in the campaign. Ah yes, the battle between thematicness and those desiring strict mechanical balance. One of the more interesting axes of gamer opinion, and one that's definitely swung as time went on.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 6/8
Game wizards: Skip Williams is once again promoting his big Rod of 7 Parts adventure. (and isn't that an invitation to make tons of dick jokes. Well, at least it's not an octodog (http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/the_octodog_slices_wieners_is.php)) Still, this time it's stuff that definitely isn't in the book, but may well be helpful to you once you buy it. And it's more support of their official campaign worlds, albeit nowhere near all of them, as he shows you good places to put the various scenarios in the adventure. I guess Krynn has never been fond of adding random gods and artifacts, while Athas and Ravenloft are kinda closed off from the standard planar cosmology. This obviously isn't useful if you aren't interested in the first place, but it's not bad as a bit of promotion. Bonus features are always far more welcome than a straight advert.
Network News: Ahahaha! The epic editorial fail in issue 231 is corrected here, with the rest of the interview with Lou Prosperi. This is actually only half a page of writing, squeezed around an advert. Basically, it's just more reiteration of the fact that this is a hard job, but a fun one if you can get into it, and you have to be prepared to make your own breaks. Yeah, we know that. It's only getting harder, too. Still, if you don't play the game you've got no chance of winning. We can't give up hope, even if we make mistakes like this. Just try not to do it again.
Sage advice: Can an invoker really have 8 1st level spels under the new rules. (no. We did mess up. Skip gotta clean up agaiun.)
table 30 page 95 0,1 2 points table 30 up to 29 points infinal round against initiative huh? ( Youy forget modifiers. Many more points can be accumulated if you apply them, see. Pkus give more monety please. Skip, er deity like that.)
Arrow of done duration special how long special? ( 1 day until fired, prepare in advance)
Can you stack heart of stone and trollish regheneration (no.)
How do mind fayers work in campaigns without psionics (juuuust dfine. Skips mind wor just fine. Magic if not psiobnics.)
How do you convert psionic powers to skills& owers (11-power score = MAC. Ok)
Can humaniods ability adjustments exceed ability score maxumums (no. Rules all backwards. Not like PHB. Skip Caaap mooooofooooo)
Can you stack MA specialization with Complete book of humanoids fighting styles. (:sips coffee: only close quarter fighting. Savage and finesse fighting styles do not mix well.)
KotDT tries to break it's players of the kill them and take their stuff habit, to no avail. Dragonmirth reminds us that to get to the top, you've got to be ready to cheat. Swordplay are not acknowledging encumbrance. Floyd continues to treat serious matters in a rather goofy fashion.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 7/8
Role-playing reviews: Immortal: the invisible war is pretty much the zenith of 90's storygaming pretentiousness, and all the more entertaining for it. Like Nephilim, you play a self-actualised spirit being, moving through multiple incarnations over centuries of existence. The specifics, particularly the mechanics, are quite different though. Colour based powers, reassignable attribute pools, and vast quantities of jargon. The system is simpler than it looks, but you'd better get used to decoding long words for ordinary ideas. And you'd better get used to some counterintuitive powers as well. Still, if you're in the right frame of mind, those'll just add to the fun.
The Pilot pack is one of those bundles of bits and pieces that seem to come out immediately after the corebook, now that they can't cram them in the boxed set. GM screen, character sheets and a short adventure. It's a pretty decent example of the form.
Lost trinity is a trio of rather good interlinked adventures that gets 6 pips. It has a CD as well, but don't let that put you off, the Characters are fun and it manages to avoid degenerating into a reskinned dungeon crawl with it's politics and plot twists. Considering White Wolf's adventures were never much cop, I'd call that worth noting.
The shapeshifters manual is the supplement Rick finds least interesting. It's just another load of new powers. As someone who's whipped up whole books worth of those, he can smell padding a mile off, and this book has it in spades. Do you really need this? Probably not.
Warlock of the stonecrowns shifts gears rapidly, as we go into another Birthright barrage. They're releasing stuff so fast even their own reviewers are working overtime to keep up. It's also a return to fairly normal dungeon-crawling adventures, aimed at novices. Why make it Birthright specific then?
Sword & Crown also adheres to the standard TSR model, although it's a little darker and more challenging. Looks like they're once again being left behind by other companies who walk the walk about making their settings and adventures different and distinct better. Perhaps using a few more freelancers instead of the same stable of writers would help a bit.
Cities of the Sun does a bit better, as TSR is concentrating on their settingbooks over their adventures these days. This is the one with all the naval combat stuff that they've also been promoting in the magazine. It gets a very short review though, not giving me much to comment upon.
The Rjurik Highlands is also passed over with a fairly positive comment. Gimme something I can make a joke about. Please? Bah, If you can't be bothered to go into any detail, I can't either. You could have covered half the number of supplements in better detail if you'd wanted too. Unless this is another case of upper management leaning on people in counterproductive ways.
The book of magecraft get another 6 pip result, as Rick finds it's advice on realm magic both straightforward, fun and well tied into the setting. (unlike say, rolemaster's implementation of ley lines and tapping magical power from the land) This does genuinely push D&D's magic system in a new direction, and it's only a shame that so few wizards will get to try out effects of this magnitude. Of course, PC's should have no such restrictions, since they usually are the nobility here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 233: September 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms ploughs ahead getting ever more overfilled. Volo gets in yet more trouble by publishing a guide to all things magical. Trade secrets man. Becoming a wizard is actually pretty easy in D&D, but if everyone realizes that, we're in deep shit. We'll end up like Halruaa, which is the subject of one of the novels. Murder in Halruaa by Richard S Meyers. Pretending to be a wizard? Not a good idea. Unless you're a bard, in which case you can be even better than actual wizards at being mysterious and impressive to common people. Oh well. Ed Greenwood is also busy writing his own novels. This time, he focuses on Storm Silverhand, and some of the things from her past.
Dark sun gets into the perilous goodies business, with Psionic Artifacts of Athas. Be prepared when you handle these, because they'll touch your mind in return.
Planescape goes into more detail on the gods, in In Hallowed ground. Do you have what it takes to fight their proxies ..... or become one? Unlikely, given their current editorial policy.
Ravenloft takes the horror one step further. They've transmogrified you into a part animal in Markovia. They've utterly fucked your mind in Dominiani's asylum. Now you're transformed into an undead monstrosity, and have to try and defeat, or at least escape from Death himself. And this is one where canonically, you fail, and the land remains fucked in future supplements for years to come. Ouch. Truly metaplot taken to it's most horrifying extreme.
Dragonlance gets The Dragons by Doug Niles. New, far bigger, scarier dragons. The people of krynn can say oh shit, thankya no matter who wins their epic fight.
The generic stuff is no cakewalk either, with our second Beholder focussed module. Eye of doom reveals another plot. Well, with double charm rays, they can get control of lots of things should they be so inclined. Not all of them want to destroy everything.
And Spellfire gets another booster pack, focussed on things that lurk in the night. Well, it is october.
The current Clack: Allen has obviously been to Origins last month, because more than half this article is devoted to it. The history of the convention is first, including it's rocky recent past, and then he goes into the winners of this years Origins awards. TSR isn't doing too badly in the nominations, but White Wolf and WotC really stand out more. And Shadis takes best roleplaying magazine. Given that Dragon & Dungeon normally have a lockdown on that, that's particularly worrying for them.
Also interesting is some substantial Palladium drama. C J Carella has now struck out on his own, with Myrmidon Press. It seems like they were trying to maintain a relationship with Palladium, with talk of licensing out Rifts Manhunter, but that's gone south, and been cancelled. What happened this time? Has Kevin been making enemies and alienating people again. Still, we got Witchcraft out of the deal, so I'm certainly not complaining. The gaming world would be a duller place without them.
The articles are well above average quality this month, but the reviews are horrid, and the promotional ones are as annoying as ever. After having dropped minis and computer games last year, it now looks like the days of book and RPG reviews are numbered as well, with the size, rigor and objectivity making a real slide. So while their core competencies are better than they've been in a while, they are definitely getting more repetitive and self-centered. I suppose there are worse tradeoffs to make. But it does mean they'll run out of new things to say all the quicker if they don't revise their style regularly. So this leaves me with mixed feelings.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Ahh yes, welcome once again to halloween season. Which isn't obvious from the cover painting, but the various blurbs (which once again look like someone new to a computer has been set loose with a bunch of fonts and filters and then plonked stuff wherever on the cover) make this very clear. They've still got so many submissions that they could probably run multiple months of this, but instead, they'll hopefully have managed to compress the best ones into a single issue. I do generally enjoy this month more than average, let's see if that's the case this year.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: This month's editorial is another attempt at recapturing Roger's old magic at telling stories. And once again I am forced to say it doesn't quite work, partly due to the short wordcount, and partly due to a lack of focus, jumping from one related topic to another just as it's starting to get warmed up. Beyond the basic realities of sales at the times they were helming the magazine, it's becoming very obvious why Dave Gross isn't as well remembered as Kim or Roger. He's just not very interesting as a writer. Which is a pain, because he's not even interestingly bad enough to rant about. I'm going to have to put up with this column being boring for several years more, until someone else takes over, aren't I. :(
D-Mail: Some commentary on the whole alternate history thing in Harry Turtledove's books. The developments do need to produce interesting plots, otherwise you won't get a book. If that means they don't make complete sense, so be it.
A letter from someone disturbed how true KotDT is to their group. You might want to do something about that. I suppose that's why it's popular. We're certainly not all serious epic producers.
A letter from someone who wants to become a writer and is wondering what classes to take. Creative writing is better than journalism if you want to write for RPG's, even if neither are brilliantly focussed upon it. But really, the main thing you need is creativity. Everything else is just polishing.
A letter complimenting them on doing both an article on magical fortifications and battering rams. Synergy! Yes, it does make a lot of sense to cover opposing topics in adjacent issues, doesn't it.
A familiar name writes in. Joe G Kushner! I know I've seen him around quite a bit in the forums. He gives brief comments on nearly every article in issue 232. Nice to see you. How did it feel to be here?
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 2/8
Nocturnal crusade: Time to start off with another batch of creepy magical items, it seems. Undead are pretty much contractually obliged to appear in every campaign world there's clerics, (yet more evidence of a godly conspiracy) so this stuff is applicable in any setting. Maybe they should make a setting without the standard monsters. Nahh. Wouldn't sell.
The Shroud of Sol's Embrace stores sunlight if left to bask in the day, so you can unleash it upon creatures of the darkness and fry their asses. It has some nice touches that make it more than just a deus ex machina, and force you to think carefully about when and where to use it. Fun.
Blood of the angered spirit detects undead and extraplanar thingies. It is rather a rigamarole to create though, and given these creatures aren't always very subtle in D&D land, it may well be more bother than it costs. Your call, I guess.
Bane of the Black Heart Javelins let you stake a vampire from a distance with ease, Buffy style. It does get consumed in the disintegration, so it's another one that'll need regular costly replacing if you're a full-time vampire hunter. Better charge the townsfolk for your heroism, so you can keep on doing it.
A Font of the Tortured Spirit (what, comic sans? :p ) lets you find out why a particular ghostie is hanging around being unsatisfied with the afterlife. Since people don't become ghosts if they die pleasantly, this may be a bit bad for the sanity. Another heavy price you have to pay to give the undead some peace.
Feast of Oblivion Philters lace your blood so any vampire who tries snacking off you is knocked out and at your mercy. The tables are very much turned, and you'd better have some restraints and sadistic ideas ready if you let them live.
Verses of Belneiranon cause any undead hearing them excruciating pain, but also take a toll on the user. Your standard weapons grade exorcism stuff then, as the possibility of you failing makes the fight more dramatic.
Chimes of Dark Need make vampires ravenously hungry to the point of stupidity. Unfortunately, they can also make living people exhibit cannibalistic tendencies as well. The monster hunters may become monsters themselves, which is always a nice irony. As with a regular chime of hunger, a good set of earplugs would be invaluable to a team planning on using this.
Reinhoff's Meerschaum protects you from undead as long as it's being smoked. This is awkward if you actually get into pitched combat, but should let you negotiate with a vampire without worrying about mindfucking. I'll bet Elminster has one amongst his capacious collection.
Chalk of Barriers is another fairly normal superstitious one. Draw the line, they can't cross it. Make sure you make it an all-rounder, otherwise the might be able to squeeze through, especially if they're incorporeal.
Urns of Bound Souls let you get all ghostbusters on any incorporeal creature. Unless you have something else to put it in afterwards, this is only a temporary solution, but hey, it may well last longer than a human lifespan. Not your problem when some idiot unleashes a pissed off ghost a few thousand years later, and it makes a great story.
Eyes of the Hunter's Wisdom give you cryptic clues about the enemies you're facing. Whether they're useful to you before it's too late is still up to you, but once again seems likely to make for an interesting story. They're definitely valuing drama over pure competence in this collection, which means undead hunter's lives won't go smooth.
Harbingers of Darkness enchants a group of birds to seek out undead and generally hang around being noisy. This will unsettle both people, and the more intelligent undead, so it's another damn cool idea that won't solve all your problems by itself, but certainly helps. The good in this collection well outweighs the bad, as it should for a first article.
The draconomicon: A whole article full of templates, allowing you to make draconic versions of every kind of undead? Dragon skeletons, Dragon zombies, Dragon Ghouls, Dragon Wights, Dragon Wraiths, Dragon Mummies, Dragon Spectres and Dragon Vampires. Certainly don't mind if I do. Seems like two great tastes that would taste great together, and on top of that, it's another thing that cements the place of Templates as a good idea, ready to be made commonplace in the next edition. That's something I approve of rather a lot. Of course, in some respects, these templates actually make the dragons worse, particularly in the area of breath weapons and energy draining, but since that's the thing most likely to kill a party instantly, I doubt too many people will complain about that. After all, people want to be challenged but win eventually, not be wiped out if they lose initiative on the first round, or crippled despite technically winning. So this is also another example of rules progression, showing how they're gradually becoming more lenient upon players. All in all, an exceedingly interesting article indeed.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 3/8
The book of souls: The Forgotten Realms has been detailing the spellbooks of it's wizards semi-regularly for ages, and Greyhawk has got in on the act a few times. Now it's Ravenloft's turn. Of course, this being Ravenloft, there's no free lunches. In fact, there's not even any new spells here, merely a rather extensive description of how owning this book will take you over and corrupt you, and how much of a nuisance it'll be to get rid of. You know, that's both stereotypical and not very tempting. You have to mix both good and bad aspects if you want people to not drop you first chance they get. I don't really feel this works for me. You aren't giving me a reason to care before you screw me over. So I shall shrug and ignore you. And the drama llama will have to go hungry.
Crypt rangers and defenders: A couple of undead focussed ranger kits continues the theme. Not the ones hinted at in the complete ranger's handbook though, as the writer disagrees with Rick's ideas of what rangers should be allowed to do. Interesting. Always amusing to see disagreements amongst writers for the magazine.
Crypt Rangers are one of those specialist hunter kits that get substantial concrete mechanical benefits, for no drawback other than spurious social hindrances and a woe is me, the challenges I have to face are so much harder than other adventurers sob story. Those are getting increasingly common in the magazine, and I'm really not convinced. We all have challenges, and at least you have good odds of being able to pick your fights and be well prepared against them. I'd say you're in a pretty good position really.
Crypt Defenders are rather less player-friendly, as they're one of those kits that are bound to protect a certain area, and all their benefits only apply in their home turf. They're still all mechanical benefits for purely roleplaying hinderances though, which you know I rather disapprove of. So this is a second failure of an article in quick succession.
Undead again: Another chance for a tie-in article. Making undead playable has been proving rather profitable for White Wolf for several years now. Now TSR has finally played catch-up, albeit in a rather odd way, bundling the rules for undead PC's with some rather large and awkward metaplot events. And here's a few more undead types given PC writeups, somewhat more obscure than the ones in the main book. After all, D&D has produced a lot of weird varieties of undead over the years. Who's to say you shouldn't get to play them?
Boneless are one of the most disturbing and tragic undead types out there. It'd take a fairly open-minded person to accept that happening to your character. But hey, you get to ooze through letterboxes and grapple people like a snake. If you're going to be a monster, why not go the whole hog? And if you happen to meet your skeleton, which has also been reanimated into undead, you have the perfect setup for a really weird buddy/evil twin scenario. So many ways that could play out, many awkward or comical.
Crawling Claws as PC's? You can finally play Thing?! AWESOME!!!! Obviously they have pretty substantial limitations in what they can do, but still, this is definitely a squee moment for me, and quite possibly Ed Greenwood as well. Since they can climb well, move fast and fit in all sorts of places a normal character can't, they can definitely make a valuable and unique addition to a team. And when they can't, just pop them in your pocket, and they'll be no encumbrance at all.
Penanggalan got a whole article to themselves last year, so I'm not too surprised to see them turning up here. They're in a rather odd position, as they're basically normal during the day, and then off trying to satisfy their hungers in the nighttime. It's actually a pretty awkward lifestyle, and you really have to work to keep your problems a secret. Still, at least you have that option, unlike the other ones detailed here. All in all, this seems pretty damn cool. I definitely like this article, even if I'm not fond of the hassle it took to get here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 4/8
Wyrms of the north: Ahh yes, a dracolich for halloween. How very appropriate of Ed. An exceedingly scary one that's modified itself further, so it has half a dozen breath weapons, magical abilities that match up to a decent archmage, and the usual array of minions and traps built up through several centuries of planning and paranoia. This really is not the kind of creature you want to mess with, for even nuke it from orbit may well miss the phylactery, and then you'll definitely be having nasty repercussions down the line. This is a particularly highly concentrated article, repurposing and modifying stuff left, right and centre, providing a decent amount of new stuff as well, and showing once again that no-one does high level challenges like Ed, particularly pre 3e where you don't have to worry about obvious EL mathematics. And the ability to melt someone's bones and turn them into a vaguely humanoid ooze is worth the price of admission alone. He's brought more than enough awesome here, including plenty of bits which could be plundered and used individually, to overcome my misgivings about the overall format of the series.
Network news: Another non-surprise, the RPGA column is devoted to what happened at Gen Con. As the busiest time of the year, that's when they really justify their existence. And good god were they busy this year. Over 900 tables over the course of the weekend, with more than 90 playing at once at the peak point?! That's pretty impressive. Once again, it seems that despite the troubles in the company as a whole, organised play is still thriving and even building new avenues for itself. And that means not only supporting the big events, but the smaller ones as well, for that's how you build up a playerbase, especially if you're doing the persistent world thing where people want to play frequently so they can competitively advance their characters. So this is another pretty positive column that may even get a few people to join in itself. That's definitely worth a page of the magazine a month to them.
Artifacts of athas: Time for another setting specific bazaar. Yet another example of how the player appetite for crunch is seemingly neverending, and they're working harder to satisfy it these days. Which given the drop in readership, may be working, but there you go. :( Giving people everything they want means they don't need you anymore. It's like seduction really. You always make sure you have something more to offer ...... maybe, if they're extra good; if you want them to keep coming back.
The Chatkcha of the Great One is a +5 vorpal weapon that lets you summon and command thri-kreen. Ironically, when it takes control of you, it makes you preach a message of peace and love. Well, peace needs to be enforced with a sharp blade, especially when you're proselytising to giant carnivorous insects. :p
The Crown of the Dwarven Kings is a second race focussed artifact, able to summon and command dwarves, but unable to harm them without being feebleminded. So you're pretty much obligated to be a decent king if you have this. Of course, you could always be political and give people you don't like the harder and more unpleasant jobs, as that's not against the rules. :D I mean, that's practically expected of a ruler.
The Dragonskin is an artifact that raises some very interesting questions, given how dragons are created on Athas, and how rare they are. It's not really powerful enough to justify the rigamarole of it's creation though, and leaves it's wearer completely vulnerable to psionics. On Athas, that's a pretty hefty hindrance. In fact, it's probably better for it's noncombat benefits than it's melee ones.
The Eye of Psurlon goes back to the race-focussed theme. It is pretty cool though. 80% discount on psionics and the ability to create a null magic zone a mile in diameter? That's some impressive scale discounts. You'll be able to punch well above your weight, and the curse is pretty easy to bypass. You could have a long and interesting career with this on if you don't get careless.
The Rvk'choel is a rather gross looking organic artifact from the blue age that protects you from other life-shaped stuff and gives you regeneration, but takes over your body while you're asleep. Better get into bondage then, like an infected werewolf, if you want to keep your friends alive. You know, it's hard to see a downside to that. ;) Despite a tendency towards underpoweredness, this collection have in general been a pretty interesting read, with distinctive powers, not too onerous curses, and plenty of setting integration. You don't have to worry about ruining the whole game if you introduce one.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 5/8
Forum: Roni Saari has managed to run a magic poor AD&D game and still have fun. It was pretty dramatic actually, without magical healing, everyone was much more cautious. Guess it can work after all, even if the odds are against it.
Jochen M. Kaiser thinks that thieves shouldn't be trying to be straightforward combatants, but taking advantage of their stealth and backstabbing powers. That more than compensates for their relatively low THAC0 and armour abilities. Nice theory, anyway. You know how players hate it when one person hogs the limelight for a whole scene.
Lucas Ashlar Lee is another one of those people who supports magic being rare enough to feel magical. The Forgotten Realms just doesn't do it for him, with an archmage in every city.
Robert Armstrong gives his alternate rules for axe damage. Once again I say huh. Go go pedant lawyers. Hyper nerdy pedant lawyers.
Ian Bloomberg becomes our third Emailing contributor. Still not common, but gathering pace. He brings up the old canard about spellbooks being ridiculously thick and heavy for their page count. Yawn. Been through this before. Your topic is not keeping pace with it's delivery.
Martin Scutt agrees with a whole bunch of other forumites. He's eliminated level limits and dual-classing for some time and it hasn't caused any problems. He's also cut down on magical items quite a bit, and that has helped his campaign carry on in the long-term. Remember, you can go back without completely resetting everything.
The dragon's bestiary: We finished Tom Moldvay's examination of all the undead types last year. So it's back to upgrading basic skeletons and zombies, as he did back in 1988. Necrosurgery is a fun little business, and as any Tzimisce will tell you, the human form is a highly malleable. While your imagination might not actually be the limit, with patience and raw materials, you can do a hell of a lot. And won't your enemies be happy to know they're being killed by creatures you spent hours customising, rather than fresh from the grave mass raised zombies.
Spike skeletons are not only hedgehogised, but have two other tricks added on that'll really make you regret hitting them close up. As ever, cover and missile weapons really will help.
Acid Zombies are another one that's pretty self explanatory. Do not touch is once again the defining mantra. Still, at least you're unlikely to get diseased as well from this one.
Dust Skeletons go poof when you hit them, but this is still not a good idea, as said dust is poisonous. Get your cleric to use his sling to deal with this one.
Quick Zombies are also pretty obvious, moving at double human speed tirelessly. These should keep the enemy busy while the slower creations mentioned above have time to close. See the advantage of tactics. Several different creatures can triumph where hordes of one couldn't.
Absorbing Zombies deal with the spellcasters, absorbing their attacks and turning them back. The writer is really thinking about these guys as a team, not just as individual monsters. All I need to do is create said boss.
Defiling Skeletons are easily the scariest of these guys, with their lovely ability to rejuvenate via destruction of all the plant life around. They have a nicely flavourful weakness too. Even though it says they're dark sun only, I'd have no hesitation transplanting them elsewhere.
Tales of the fifth age: Firstborn by Dave Gross. Ah yes, this is where Dragonspawn start. As if Draconians weren't trouble enough. Now we have to deal with humans mutated into humanoid draconic hybrids as well. Which of course means the opportunity for AAAAAAAAAAAAAngst, as people become monsters, and have to deal with that fact. Not that Dragonlance has ever been short of angst. They were doing it before White Wolf was an inkdrop in the Wieck brother's pens. But this does feel like a conscious attempt to tap into the same vein of drama. An assassin gets transformed into a monster, and ironically winds up becoming a better person for it, or at least, turning his talents on those who truly deserve it instead of working for pay like before. We've seen that story before, and I don't doubt we'll see it again. And this makes them feel like they're now following trends instead of making them, as with many of the 5th age rules quirks. This certainly isn't terrible, but it doesn't stand out either. I am forced to say meh.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 6/8
The role of books is back. Or are the two different book columns competing? I guess I'll have to keep reading and see what happens. More drama, I guess. I suppose it keeps things interesting even if the individual reviews aren't.
A breach in the watershed by Douglas Niles is an attempt by our well-established TSR pulp guy to do his own world (published by another company.) This doesn't get a particularly positive review. The fantastical creatures are renamed, but not given anything to really distinguish them otherwise, and there's some awkward plot holes. I guess that's the trouble with his sources. They don't hold up to close examination, and if that's what you learn from.........
Palace by Katherine Kerr & Martin Kreighbaum removes the punk from cyber and adds a healthy dose of space opera instead. The two work together to build a complicated plot and setting that takes work to untangle, but is worth it if you do. There's always something about being able to bounce ideas off people that lets you build things up more quickly, as long as both sides are engaged and enjoying what they do.
Glenraven by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle is another collaboration that uses both writer's strengths to full advantage. Set in an imaginary country on the border between France and Italy, it takes it's protagonists out of the comfort zones, and in the process of dealing with supernatural stuff, they also manage to get over their romantic troubles. Who says fantasy doesn't appeal to women. :p No-one these days, that's for sure, with paranormal romance overtaking other fantasy no trouble.
Reign of shadows by Deborah Chester sees John primarily complaining about sequelitus in modern novel writing. They're so blatantly writing this as a doorstopper. Not that that is inherently bad, but when the book cuts of midway through the plot, without even a decent cliffhanger to get your appetite up, he gets tetchy. The way it splits up focus between the characters in different chapters also isn't great. If you'd split things apart, and given each perspective it's own book, each plot could have got farther and been resolved more satisfactorily. But no, gotta drip-feed the damn stuff until we decide it's not worth wasting our money on. Good thing he probably gets comp copies anyway.
Murder in Tarsis by John Maddox Roberts gets ripped apart for being completely inconsistent with Krynn's established setting, history and society. It's not terrible in it's own right, but it reads like the author was paying no attention to continuity, and just shoehorned in an already written story where it doesn't really fit and did a search and replace on the names. The TSR editors should never have let this one get published. Ouch and ouch again. See, this is why I prefer proper reviews, You get gems of vitriol like this to add variety to proceedings. Don't go away too soon.
Dragon Dice: After a brief break, it's time for the 5th new race to be introduced in a kicker pack. Swamp Stalkers! Combining the elements of water and death, they'll drag you to a watery grave and then mutate your body into another one of them. They're sold here as possibly the best all-round units yet, which is a bit worrying. Either they're introducing power creep, or they're lying and saying they are to get more sales. Either way, I don't particularly approve, despite the number of cool tricks they try to sell them to us with. Still, it does seem they're also paying attention to the setting behind the game. That's interesting and worthy of note. And it's not as if they're totally devoid of weak spots. Kill their leaders, they can't replace them nearly as easily as other sides. And they have to stay on the offensive, which means you may be able to bait them into a trap. Whether that balances them out though? Anyone want to share actual play experiences?
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 7/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Horrifying magical items to fit the theme. Actually, we haven't had too many of those, as the writers generally prefer to concentrate on the monsters. And of course, since they may be icky or of dubious morality, you have another excuse to give the enemy cool stuff that the PC's can't profit from. Poor PC's just can't get a break these days.
Amulets of the undead let undead find other undead, like a necrotic dating service. This is of course useless to you, unless you become a lich or vampire.
Blackfire wands are so-so zappy things that channel negative energy. Still, at least they don't require regular recharging. Undead always forget that kind of thing, not needing regular food and sleep and all.
Bonebriar amulets let you grow spikes from your bones. This is of course generally lethal to living things, but makes a nice grappling buff for undead. Never trust the obvious treasure in an undead dungeon.
Brooches of turning resistance are pretty self-explanatory. What use is your holy symbol now, fool?
Gauntlets of aura suppression let liches grope you without paralyzing you. Course, unless they're using other shapeshifting as well, this will still be a shudder inducing experience.
Memory globes let you store memories you no longer want. Why you would want to do such a thing is up to you. Liches tend to use it to get rid of lingering shreds of humanity, which is rather silly really. Vampires struggle so hard to hold onto it and you throw it away. No appreciation of true value.
A Nightmare harness lets you summon said demonic horse to ride. This isn't undead specific, unlike most of the items here, but nonevil characters will still have a hard time controlling the blasted thing.
Potions of yellow mold distillate are genius and gross, a truly horrible way to die that also endangers everyone around the drinker. Poison seems thoroughly mundane by comparison. Muahahaha
A Staff of the Flesh lets you steal the flesh of others and use it to temporarily rejuvenate your withered form. Another gross way to die and effect that isn't very useful to living characters. My, this is an evil bit of writing.
Sage advice: What happens if bob Holds joe and sam puts a ring of free action on his hand ( Nthing, It's too ;ate. He's already spoken for. )
Does the hat of difference let you be a class nornally forbidden to your race (yes. This may still be a problem. )
How do you tell if a material component is used up (it is unless it specifically says it isn't. In soviet TSR, guilty until proven innocent. )
Please clarify the rules for scrying cheacks (add the odds from intelligence and level tohether, then you'll have a decent chance.)
Please explain players option unarmed combat again. (yay, Skip gets to eat up page count again. Skip gets paid by the word, so that's very important when they keep cutting skip's rates. Blah blah blah, lotsa tables, blah blah blah mastery, grand mastery, extra padding.)
Can you use a wish in an antimagic shell (no. If there's no magic there, then the most powerfullest spell in the game certainly isn't going to work)
You don't do your research properly. You give answers without consulting all the books. (The books are not official. Skip is! Skip gives the answers, not the complete book of supertwinked mary sues. I'ma cap yo ass. :pfft: Crap. Skip can't even afford new bullets anymore. Uhm. Retroactive april fool. :runs: )
No SASE ogre has been replaced by a no SASE dragon. How the hell are they affording that? I am very suspicious.
KotDT parodies real game designer conflicts. Swordplay reveals how dull it is siting in a 10x10 room waiting for adventurers. That pie has to last you an eternity. Dragonmirth goes back to the classic gags. Puns and movie references. What is sweeter in life? Floyd goes from crap to exceedingly powerful. But he doesn't know it yet. That's not a good idea.
Dragon Magazine Issue 234: October 1996
part 8/8
Role-playing reviews: The Night Below is of course TSR's latest epic adventure path, designed to take you all the way from levels 1-10 (which then puts you into a perfect position to face Dragon Mountain immediately afterwards :p ) It's a bit more linear than the average dungeon crawl, but then, that's what's happening in adventures these days, where plot is put above exploring locations. It is good at what it does though, and has given Rick hundreds of hours of actual play fun so far. If you don't have time to make your own campaign, this will go a long way.
Undermountain, the lost level, on the other hand, just seems like a self-consciously old skool dungeon crawl, a bunch of amusing ways to die strung together without any particular plot or climax. If you've played the tomb of horrors several times and know how to get through it without dying, this might scratch your itch for a bit, but don't expect it to change the world.
Blades is an adventure anthology for Earthdawn. This gets 6 pips, managing to combine making the adventures self-contained, yet able to combine into a bigger whole. Both the writers and editors are on the ball here, which means they can mix up settings, and work a moral message in at the end without being heavy-handed. That seems worth praising.
Super tuesday is for Shadowrun, and sets things in the shadow of the presidential elections. Dunkelzahn for president! :D Yeah, this has lots of potential for satirical fun, and is filled with IC commentary on the process of the election. As a framing device for multiple adventures PC's can interfere in, you could do far worse.
Classic adventures volume three is a reprint of Star Wars' old scenarios. Okay, they're only what, 6-7 years old, but that still feels like a long time to Rick, and there has been an edition change in the meantime. And they are pretty fun, taking you from Tatooine to deep space. Strap on your lightsabers, and get ready to play.
The Kathol Rift contrasts dramatically with the lighthearted old stories with it's decidedly grimdark tone. Players will face substantial environmental hazards and struggle from one gritty challenge to the next, assuming they survive. And if they do, you can bet they won't be in the right mood to appreciate the prequel movies. :p Poor poor EU, subject to retcons at a moment's notice.
TSR Previews: Generic stuff is very much on top this month. The world builders guidebook and Wizards spell compendium are more useful tools to help speed your game along, and keep you from flipping through dozens of books to find the crunch and advice you need. Gates of Firestorm Peak is the first adventure to use the Players Option books. Now you can face enemies as tweaked and twinked as you are. For fairly high level players, obviously.
Dragonlance continues to be temporarily invigorated. Heroes of Steel is the first sourcebook for the 5th age game. Stuff for both DM and players, they obviously want to try hard to retain people beyond the corebook. Having got rid of the gods, they bring them back again pretty quickly, in Dragons of Summer flame. Takhisis is back, and as usual, she has evil plans. And they follow up on them straight away, in The Doom Brigade. Margaret Weis leaves her long term writing partner, and teams up with actual husband Don Perrin instead. The Chaos war continues to do a number on the setting you love.
The Realms sends you back in time to Netheril again, this time in game as well as fiction. See a time before the gods put the level 40 cap on humanity in the realms, and their other attempts to emulate the changes between 1st and 2nd ed. Netheril: Empire of Magic is the sourcebook, and Dangerous Games is part two of the novel trilogy. It's like Blackmoor all over again. It'll all end in tears and you know it.
Planescape fills in the astral plane. Another case where we say about time. When are you going to get round to the ethereal and inner planes? The really alien and hostile universes are the most fun to read about.
And our evil overmistress :Wolves howl, thunder rumbles: makes yet another attempt to fill her personal coffers at the expense of the company. Buck Rogers: A life in the future by Martin Caldin. Another book, another continuity from the last two attempts. Let this one die just like the rest.
The current Clack: Last month was filled with info from Origins. Now this one is even more jam packed with Gen Con goodies. Celebrity guests! Big new releases timed to coincide with the fair! A monty python & the holy grail TCG!!?!! Oh man, that's brilliant. I hope it's as snarkily deconstructive of it's source material as the film was. Hogshead are rereleasing Warhammer FRPG and WotC are once again making waves in terms of products and convention space, at this point actually outdoing TSR in attendance. Ok, that's the biggest pointer yet that TSR aren't the healthy market leaders they used to be, even if they try and put a joking spin on it. We really can't be far away from the buyout if that's the case. Very very interesting.
Yup, as usual for october, this is a pretty good issue overall. There's lots of good, highly usable articles, and the bad ones are mostly flawed in interesting ways, keeping me from getting bored and making me want to read onwards. It does seem like the magazine is finally getting better again overall, partly because we are getting some very specific ideas, some of which disagree with other ones. So it seems I get to move on feeling quite cheerful for a change. Calm before the storm and all that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Hmm. Another cover I wasn't too keen on at first. It looks like a highly zoomed in photograph of a mini. Actually looking at the description, it turns out to be their first all CGI model. Which would also explain why the resolution looks a bit weird and grainy, but there is a genuine sense of 3D. Computers still have quite a way to go before they can produce realistic looking images, but hey, we'll get to watch Reboot and Toy Story in the meantime. There doesn't seem to be a definite theme this month, but a good 3 of the articles are sea based, so we'll go with that. You know, you've advertised themed episodes before when you only had two articles on a topic. I suppose that was a different age. :|
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: Another editorial charting the rise of online gaming. We're now at the point where the average person has at least heard of the internet, even if they might not have signed up yet, and it's pretty easy to find people to play a game with online. Chatrooms can connect you with people around the world instantly, and many have virtual dice rollers that allow you to roll any amount of any-sided dice you desire. (Thanks, SeaCHAT!) In fact, not seeing the faces of the people you're playing with can actually help your imagination. It certainly makes it easier to play characters of the other gender convincingly. :p We're most of the way along that path of history now, but it's still nice to see it mentioned, as it gives me another chance to talk about things happening outside the roleplaying sphere. Not everyone may want to play online, but it does offer some definite advantages and disadvantages, and only a fool would ignore that option completely.
D-Mail: One of those letters that comments on nearly everything, and then asks if it's worth subscribing to the magazine. Um, you're getting more than 3 times the page count of those hardcover books you could get for the same price. Economywise, I think that's a pretty decent move.
A complaint that Bookwyrms doesn't have nearly the reviewing rigour of The Role of Books. Guilty as charged. We just want to do some pimping in the hopes of getting free stuff.
A complaint they don't do enough planescape stuff. The nature of the magazine means they can never do enough stuff on any particular campaign, (apart from the Realms, which is getting pretty saturated) and even if they wanted to, people aren't sending enough in for that anyway. You'll just have to live with it, and be thankful specific settings are getting any support at all, because there's a rather vocal minority which want everything generic, all the time. :(
Planar heroes: Kicking things off is a 16 page extravaganza of Skills and Powers material. Blergh. That's a lot of stuff I'm never going to touch, even if it is for a setting I love. While I'm sure there are people who really want S&P racial builds for tieflings, aasimar, bariaur, gith, rogue modrons et all, I'm not one of them. Some of the abilities they can buy are pretty damn twinked as well. Regeneration, immunity to level draining, plane shifting, wings, magic resistance, all that good stuff is available if you're a member of the right race for surprisingly reasonable costs. On top of that, there's a bunch of new class abilities and restrictions, many of them not even focussed upon the planes. So I'm decidedly ambivalent about this. On one hand, I can recognise that it is a rather large, impressive bit of writing. On the other, I can see the twinking potential from even a cursory examination, and it highlights the fact that any rules revision requires a ton of revisiting existing works to make them all compatible and updated. The overall effect is to remind me how bloated 2e has become, and how much 3e will also become in time. And massive rules splorps like this are the quickest way to make that happen. Not a good way to start things.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 2/8
Mage on deck!: Oh dear. Sea mages & magic again. Considering that was given a quite solid treatment in issue 220, hardly any time ago really, my rehash alarm is being sent into high alert. The result is a bit iffy, but is aware of the previous entry and tries to take a different approach. Where that made them into a specialist wizard type, this does them as a kit, which allows them to make their benefits and penalties a little more subtle and idiosyncratic. (and also make them more fragile, because they lose their extra powers if they ever settle down and become a landlubber. ) It does raise serious questions about concept implementation and niche protection, which again shows up the problem with AD&D's current ruleset, gradually accreting extra bits and pieces ad hoc from different writers. However despite the larger editorial issues the appearance of this article indicates, taken individually, it's actually a slight improvement on the previous one, with more amusing little flavour bits, and a much larger selection of new spells. So this is one case where they manage to justify the repeated topic, but doesn't leave me totally satisfied. Now let's look at the spells, see how many of them are variants of already existing ones and how they compare mechanically.
Absolute Location is a fairly basic homing pigeon thing. Seen that before.
Cast-iron Stomach lets you consume manky rations & weird foreign stuff without fear. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of these basic practical spells over the course of this.
Cure Lumber is also self-explanatory. It may save time, but only once your wizard has a decent few levels up. Remember, rememorisation is a bitch, especially at the 1 spell a day level.
Depthsounder means you don't have to carefully measure out rope to see how many fathoms the sea bed is. It's duration is fairly short, so it may run out before you get through big reefs. Better get sailing then.
Detect Structural Flaw is another one that lets you condense hours of careful examination into 10 minutes chanting. Now you just have to schedule regular maintenance time to actually apply that knowledge. Don't get complacent.
Desalinate is for those who don't have the levels to make water from nothing. And since a ship's crew can get through a LOT of water, this'll help you stave off pissdrinking for quite a while longer, hopefully. Then you just have to deal with weeks of getting weaker & starving.
Predict Tide is only really useful if you've been knocked out & imprisoned for ages, or live on a world with multiple moons which make the tides more complicated. Otherwise, you really ought to be able to remember this stuff yourself.
Preserve keeps yer perishables intact for a year. Make sure you write down somewhere what's expiring when. Logistics is a crucial part of long journeys.
Protection from Rust is another one that's long term, but certainly not permanent. After all, the shipmages want to stay in regular employment, not get hired once during construction then ignored. Tactics as well as logistics, y'see. ;)
Strip continues the basic function accelerators. This is going on for ages. Just how much more can we take? I suppose you'd need a specialist to get near to having all these spells memorised.
Vermin-ward lets you keep rats off the ship. But then how will the sailors know if it's sinking?! I suppose that's another reason to keep the wizard around. ;)
Anchor starts us off on the 2nd level spells. Not only able to do it faster than a manual drop, but also able to halt enemy ships if you can get onboard. This one seems ideal for extending the range with spectral hand.
Collision Alarm is your basic awooga. It won't spot people swimming up to the boat though. Watch out for ninja pirates pulling their appearing tricks.
Diskboat is a hybrid between a rowboat and Tenser's floating disk. Interesting. I suppose there are some definite benefits to floating just above the surface of the water. Just don't expect to avoid seasickness.
Fog Light actually works better in mist or fog than in open air. Well, magic doesn't have to be logical. And that does have a definite use, so you could see why someone'd develop it.
Eagle Vision basically does what the old magical item does. Always amusing to see that kind of retro-fitting added onto the game.
Fisheye lets you see better underwater. Also fairly obvious.
Flamedouse lets you get rid of fire more cleanly. After all, this is one thing you really want to get done in an emergency. Don't be afraid to wake your wizard in the middle of the night.
Gripdeck keeps people from slipping off in stormy weather. Also a perfect counter for Grease, which has long needed a better opposite than dispel magic.
Helmsman creates an unseen servant with specialised knowledge to pilot your ship. This seems like the kind of thing you could create a whole bunch of variants for. Selective intelligence! It's so much less likely to turn on you and try to take over the world than full sentience.
Intruder Alert is another expanded version of an existing spell, upgrading Alarm to cover an entire ship. That'll show those ninjas. :p
Seal says we're never gonna survive, unless we go a little crazy. And indeed, the sheer length of this article is starting to wear upon me. Too much filler!
Stormsail is another bit of basic reinforcement so when the weather gets tough, the tough keep going. Turn an obstacle into an opportunity and get there ahead of time.
Swim also adds basic skills to the unskilled. Swim swim swim like a fishie. Don't go sleepin' with the fishes though, as that's just gross.
Turn increases the maneuverability of your vessel. You'd better learn learn learn, learn to react appropriately if you don't want to overshoot.
Crew of Phantoms finally gets us to 3rd level spells, and further expands on the unseen servant idea. It's a good thing the numbers decrease as you go up in levels, or this'd take up half the issue.
Doublespace lets you fit twice as much in the hold. Make damn sure you've removed the excess before it wears off, for trying to fit a quart into a pint pot is very messy indeed.
Fast Travel Doesn't work as well as Haste does on individuals. Maybe if it were a few levels higher.
Locate Person is one I'm sure I've seen before. Well, it's such an obvious variant on an existing spell that multiple people would develop it independently, wouldn't they.
Phantom Sail is another way of keeping on going even when things are a complete mess. Mind you, it has a duration of concentration, so you'd better have that anti-slippage spell already cast if you're in the middle of a storm.
Robust Construction is another example of impermanent protections that'll last quite a while, but keep the sailors coming back for more. Fantasy economics at it's finest. :p
Sail in Irons lets you stall an enemy ship. This seriously pisses off anyone on the locked ship, probably more than just grappling and robbing them. Really, it's just embarrassing, like a spell to make your trousers fall down. You know, they really ought to add that in one of their april issues. :)
Shield Vessel is yet anther large-scale variant of a lower level spell. Oh why couldn't stuff like that be a template. Then we wouldn't have to endure endless variants like this.
Hurricane Anchor will keep you safe from all but the strongest winds. Watch out for farmhouses from kansas though. If it's strong enough to pick one of those up, you're still screwed.
Smooth Sailing is pretty similar, only it keeps you moving as though the weather was mild and balmy. A better researcher could probably have condensed these into a single spell.
Wind of the Zephyrs lets a ship move faster in a more stable fashion than the lower level spell. It's reversible too, letting you slow down enemies and maybe even capsize them. It really ought to say how far you can target them at though.
Blinkship continues the larger scale spell adaptions with a particularly impressive trick. Even blink elephants'll look awkward next to this bit of teleporting confusion.
Wild Jibe sends a blast of wind to knock over an enemy ship. They really are obsessed with wind here. I would make a fart joke, but I'm feeling pretty deflated by now.
Dimensional Fog lets a nasty wizard pull the Ravenloft trick, sending you to another world via fogbank. This works on a ship or landbound group of people, so it's not just for sea mages. And that's the end of that article.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 3/8
The dragon's bestiary: Another helping of aquatic monsters. As ever, they're hardly rare, but certainly not in proportion to their frequency in reality. As with the underdark stuff this year, we shall have to see if they avoid rehash the hard way.
Octo-jelly may sound comical, but they can certainly eat you up. Who'd want to hybridise octopi and jellyfish? Mad wizards once again proving their insanity, I guess.
Hide do exactly that, camouflaging themselves on the ocean floor and eating anything that comes on by. Seen that plenty of times on wildlife documentaries.
Gulpers, like snakes, make a living by swallowing creatures that it would seem rather improbable for them to do so. Make sure you have a dagger ready to cut yourself out.
Angler fish are another real life creature scaled up for fantasy purposes, but otherwise largely unchanged. Since we've seen a variant on this before in here, i yawn at this.
Viperfish are also converted pretty straight from reality. If one of these gets it's teeth into you, you're going to lose a big chunk of flesh, win or lose. Man, it's hard being an adventurer underwater.
Death minnows are easily both the funniest and scariest creature in this collection, with a cartoon-esque trick that'll disconcert your players. My sadism gland is already secreting away at this. A good end to a mostly mediocre collection.
Arcane Lore: Following on from the second take on sea magic, and more aquatic monsters, we have another set of nautical spells barely a year after the last one. This is not a very thrilling prospect to me, as you might expect. Once again they drive me away by repetition and lack of imagination.
Foul Rigging tangles all the enemies ropes, slowing them down for hours. That'll win you most races if you don't get caught out there. (I hate this job so much right now)
Land Call lets you know the direction to your destination. If you got blown off course, this is very helpful as usual. Mind there's nothing in the way.
Map is one that would be rather useful on land too. (if it worked) Just enchant it and it draws your travails for the next few days, no mess no fuss.
True Compass is a pretty direct bit of recycling from issue 220. Yawn.
Eagle eyes is also one I'm pretty sure I've seen variants on before here. No dice, dude.
Fantar's Shoal, on the other hand, is a new variant. It's essentially hold person on a ship scale. Temporary grounding with invisible planes of force is another mean trick for pirates to pull.
Flame Resistance is another one that's oh so very rehashed from last time.
Leomund's many life Preservers creates buoys for the crew. How very goofy. I wonder if Len would approve or not.
Morning Glory is an equipment only large scale burning hands. Careful who you spend time with in port sailors. Running away naked is rarely a fun experience.
Plug Leak provides short term relief so long term repairs can be implemented. Roll on higher levels so you can just summon a complete ship out of nothing.
Buoyancy allows you to save your stupid party fighter who insists on wearing plate armor on board and fighting the giant sea serpent in it. Rather a relief to have really, especially as it's rather open to creative applications. Watch those poor sahuguin try and escape now.
Fantar's Reef is a more vicious version of his previous spell, not only trapping a ship, but doing serious damage to it's underside.
Leomund's Lifeboat see's our tiny hutmaker's name aliterated in vain again. Well, I suppose he is from the Lendore Isles. He's got slightly more reason to research nautical lifesaver spells than Mordenkainen. Wizards and lusty wenches first!
Mentap's Mine makes you wonder why delayed blast fireball is 7th level. If it weren't for it's highly specific need to be attached to a ship, this would be almost as useful at half the level. Hmm. This is worth considering. Legacy issues can be a right pain.
Narcomb's Battened Hatches is another quick way of making sure sudden changes in situation don't ruin your ship. It is not idiot proof, however. Make sure you don't have a foolish and superstitious crew to mess things up.
Amgig's Rowers is one of those spells that will help you replace the human element. I'd prefer the undead touch, frankly. They last longer and can be used for other jobs as well.
Call Wind is another one that appeared in issue 220 as well, only this time it's lower level and a lot more convenient. Once again this writer is being quite generous with their spell's capabilities.
Ironside is your basic durability enhancer. No extra weight, no downsides apart from the duration. And a few more levels and you'll be able to fix that part. Y'know, we ought to have a special on magical ships at some point. The princess Ark shouldn't be alone in these pages.
Otiluke's Screen is a protective device, pretty similar to his sphere only larger and mobile when centered on a ship. It probably ought to be applicable to other vehicles too. Shields up, cap'n.
Repair Breech is a basic ship healing spell. If ironside's protection isn't enough, you use this next.
Spectral Navigator is essentially a shipbound version of Find the Path. It'll get you where you want to go safely, assuming you aren't hopelessly lost.
Raise Vessel brings a sunken ship to the surface. It won't fix the structural problems though, so you'd better get busy before it's duration runs out. More amusingly, it's reversible, which is a quick and brutal way to ruin your enemies day. So there is plenty of useful stuff here, as there's more actual spells than last time, and less ruminating on specialists. The two could well be combined to good effect.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 4/8
Bookwyrms: Alvin Journeyman by Orson Scott Card gets a positive review from the editors, showing his fall from grace in geek circles is still yet to come. The worldbuilding is interesting, and his characters have a distinctive voice. He just wishes they'd release new books a bit faster.
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester is one of those old classics that any self-respecting sci-fi fan ought to have read. A man driving himself to madness in an attempt to get away with murder in a telepath controlled future. With some fascinating word-pictures, precursors of modern text speak, and exceedingly clever plot twists, this gets inside your mind and shows you different ways to think. The science may not be that hard, but there's still plenty to speculate about here.
A game of Thrones by George R R Martin begins another epic series (that's also going to takes ages IRL and quite possibly never be finished) that takes fantasy in a somewhat different direction. Eschewing obvious good and bad guys for multilayered intrigue where no-one is safe, the twists just keep adding up. I doubt anyone can predict where it'll end.
The grid by Philip Kerr is a story of a computerised building turned sentient and malevolent, and trying to kill the people inside it. Wasn't that the plot of an X-files episode around this time as well? Well, at least it isn't going to take over the entire world like skynet.
Now you see it by Richard Matheson is a whodunnit involving a stage magician, who may well be using his craft to foil a murder investigation. This of course means plot twists and false reveals aplenty. So as usual, have fun seeing if you can guess the real killer and how they did it.
So you want to be a wizard by Diane Duane is another old book that they dig out to try and ensure younger readers of the magazine have shared cultural references with the editors. After all, it is perfectly targeted for kids, and it'll get you into the idea of building internally consistent magic systems. That's worth quite a bit to them.
The stars my destination by Alfred Bester is another of his old books that still has few direct peers. Once again, it shows us what we could be, if we only have the will to surpass our limitations, but also that people in power will fear you if you do, and try to keep you within their boxes.
War of the worlds: Global dispatches, edited by Kevin J Anderson lets a whole bunch of authors do slice-of-life examinations of the martian invasion as seen by different people in different cultures. You know, my class had to do exactly that as a project when I was 10. These are almost definitely better than what we wrote, but still, I find this spooky. I'm definitely going to track this one down.
The winter king by Bernard Cornwell tries to bring a bit of gritty historical realism to arthurian myth, downplaying the magic, and focussing on the real social changes of the 5th century. Oh, how very 90's. Meh. Once again, I'm not impressed by this column.
Tales of the fifth age: Relics by Jeff Grubb. Our themed fiction draws to a close with yet another low-key examination of what true heroism is. It's not about getting the praise for saving the world, although that certainly doesn't hurt. It's about the good you do for the people you know, not some anonymous and exaggerated tales. repeated by people in another country. And it's what you're prepared to do in the future, as much as what you've done in the past. But you shouldn't get cynical, and think all heroism is just exaggerations and putting a good spin on pragmatism. There are genuinely nice people out there, doing genuinely amazing things. So this isn't really a climax in any sense of the word, but a story of people carrying on another day, doing the best they can like they do in real life. The only truly happy ending is a new beginning. Actually, I have to wonder if sticking to that message so strongly was part of the reason the 5th age failed. People don't really want that level of realism in their storytelling, even if they say they might.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 5/8
Network news: Another attempt to make joining the RPGA seem easy to do for newcomers? This is getting a bit repetitive really. Don't tell me the column is already outstaying it's welcome barely a year in. So yeah, this is them telling you all the benefits you'll get for signing up. It's worth it if you plan on attending even a single convention in a year! So give us your money! Yeah, this is one case where the attempts at entertainment fall flat, and this just reads as straight advertising. I'm not impressed.
Sage advice: How tall do you need to be to weird a longbow (at least medium size category. Yes, that does mean 4' 1" dwarves can wield 6' longbows. Maybe they hold it sideways)
What happens if you use attack modes on a nonpsionicist (nothing unless you use contact first. Yes, it's all backwards, but at least it's better than 1st edition. Do you remember 1st edition? Skip remembers 1st edition. Skip misses Gary. He was my best mate, y'know. Will you be my friend? :Rumble of thunder, ominous organ music: Yes, mistress, Skip'll get back to work now.
How much does making powers permanent by psychic surgery cost (However long the surgery lasts, you have to pay the cost that long. After that, it maintains itself, whether they like it or not. )
Can sha'irs hacve a signature spell (yes indeedy. It ony requires minor adjustments to work with them)
Can song mages canst sopells without singing using vocalise (No. No singing, no magic. )
Can yopu memorize cantrips asd your bonus 1st level spell as a specialist ( ```````yes)
Can the new rules frolm issue 232 be applied to the weapons in the PHB (Sure. You'll have to do the specifics yourself. Skip is a very busy sage. Very busy getting bery drfunk. )
Why do other specialists get wildf magic sopells when they caaaaant (HJave the freelancers been getting inna rules barn again. Skip qwill set rhetorical traps for them. Thatll teachem a lewsson, twist their tongues into a mobius loop and cut off their typin fingers. )
You blooped all over issue 231 ( Bloop? Skips stomach go bloop. Bloop. Bloop is a funny word. Booooooooooooop. Oops I did it again. )
I've already read the rod of 7 parts book. Can I play the adventure (Suuuuure. It's completely different. Buy two copies. :teeth with bits stiuck between: Wghy are you running away. That normally works great.)
What bonuses does a pixie cutpurse get (pixies are Soo twinkedas theives. They can theive better than the best. They'll make you dance to their tune and by the time you finish you've got no pants on and still feel greazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 6/8
Forum: Rick Bruner flaunts his noncanonicality, and invites the jackbooted TSR enforcement that may come. :D We will face it with pride, and fight them using optional rules. They'll never take us alive with these bleeding out rules! ;)
Rasmus Juul Wagner suggests another thing the next edition will take up. Get rid of exceptional strength. It'll make things so much easier. Athas already shows us how. Follow eeeet. Follow eeeeeeeeet!
Keith Houin goes back to another hot topic, that of transferring PC's from one campaign to another. Surely you can come up with some IC reasons why they lose powers or items, rather than just fiat retcon, and only change the bits that'll actually be a problem. The personalised approach is usually best.
The ecology of the troglodyte: Another inventive ecology here. Last time, we had a rather neat tale of uncontrolled body invasion. Here, we have another riff on that theme, that of a wizard who in the course of his researches, gets stuck in the body of the creature he was investigating. Still, he gets to find out a good deal about them, and why they are such backwards, smelly, unsophisticated seeming creatures. Having senses that are too acute can actually be a pain in the butt, as it prevents you from using certain kinds of technology. In the footnotes, we also get the spell used to do so, which is rather powerful for it's level, but also exceedingly risky to use. Ahh, the fun of experimental technology. It also puts quite a few more interesting new spins on the creatures, making them seem increasingly plausible and usable as a culture. While not quite as good in sheer impact as the roper one, the footnotes are considerably better, and the whole thing is much cleverer in both design and pacing. Seems like we really are in a golden age for ecologies, even as everything else goes wrong. Guess stress can do that for you.
Arcane Lore: A third set of spells this month? Another good example of how they're falling back on the regular columns a lot more these days. This also feels heavily reminiscent of the recent set of Dragon-only spells. Spells for the various reptilian humanoids, dependent on their physiological quirks to work? That'll be mildly irritating to players when they loot their enemies. I'll bet they're just exaggerations of things actual reptiles do in real life as well.
Barble lets you grow extra long vicious spines for offence and defence. I'm sure we already have a version of that usable by everyone, probably in one of the forgotten realms books. Yawn.
Serpent Tail turns your tail into a snake capable of independent attacks, chimera stylee. It'd be more fun if you could do it to your enemies, but I'm sure I can figure that one out on my own.
Camouflage is another one I'm sure there are generic variants of. Chameleon skin is just too obvious a power to miss for rangers and druids.
Scale Blade turns a reptile scale into a weapon with special powers based on the creature it came from. You should be able to get a few hundred components from a good dragon to power this for a while.
Skin of the Salamander makes your skin burst into fire with painful results for your enemies. We've already had two variants of that in the magazine. This is just too fucking tedious.
Moltings lets you turn your shed skin into a mini-me. You can then use it as a slave, or engage in self-cannibalism to restore your HP. Finally, something a bit interesting. The rest of this is still rubbish though.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 7/8
Dungeon Mastery: Game getting boring and you feel like aborting? Get up and do something! One of the quickest ways to revive interest in players is to give them a hook. Bring out your inner LARGE HAM! and stride across the room gesticulating and getting in the player's faces. They won't dare to take their eyes off you. Even if they laugh, that's a lot better than going to sleep. And if you do it right, they'll start joining in, and the game becomes a lot more fun for everyone. While slightly exaggerated for comedic effect, this is a good reminder that roleplaying is descended from acting as well as wargaming, and there is a lot of fun to be had in adding a little more physicality to help out everyone else's imagination. Just remember your boundaries folks, especially in mixed company. One over the top gesture without paying attention and someone else can be sporting a nasty black eye.
The Knights of the dinner table clean up the town at the expense of the plot. Is swordplay going to get anything done? Maybe. Dragonmirth has a surplus of horned helmets. Get them while they're cheap. Floyd's world is getting ever more messed up. Some extradimensional creatures really need a primer in proper shapeshifting etiquette.
Role-playing Reviews: Woohoo! The CCG craze seems to be settling down to a stable level, instead of growing insanely and eating up everyone else's floorspace like it has the last two years. Which means Rick can get back to actually reviewing roleplaying games like the sign on the door says he should. This is another case where he's a month late as well, as it's time for another horror themed review. Well, conventions do keep one busy, and it's not as if he could write the reviews on a laptop between events like I can now. It is nice living in the future sometimes.
The golden dawn is a sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu. As it covers an occult secret society, there's a lot more magic accessible to the PC's than in a normal game. But of course, it's still not without it's dangers, and there's plenty of adventures included for you to lose your characters in. It's good to see the game still stretching itself after more than a decade.
The london Guidebook, on the other hand, is a bit boring, with way too much info you could find in any mundane guidebook, and not enough mythos coolness. Not much point getting an RPG book if it doesn't have RPG specific material.
In the shadows is a pretty decent trio of adventures. Rick's main complaint here is that it seems very dated compared to other companies in terms of layout and graphic design. Chaosium, like palladium, aren't really moving with the times and will eventually be left behind at this rate.
The Mythos card game gets a fairly positive review, boosted a little more because the booster packs do really add to the game. :p It's fun and easy to learn, as a CCG should be, and the booster packs add plenty of scope to it. Just don't expect to feel genuinely scared like you can in the RPG.
Chronicle of the black labyrinth is for Werewolf: the Apocalypse. It takes you into the history of the Wyrm's nastiest servants, the black spiral dancers, through purely IC fiction both grim and at times hilarious. (Sherlock Holmes parody FTW!) Rick finds it wilfully eccentric and at times incomprehensible, which is quite reasonable since it's being done by an unreliable narrator of dubious sanity. This is one you really need to be heavily versed in the game already to fully appreciate. Ahh, old school white wolf. Always a joy to go back too.
Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996
part 8/8
TSR Previews: A fairly empty month next month, so they move to covering two months in advance. You shall have to wait until next issue to see that though. In addition, all of the products are novels. Not a single gaming book. How very strange and disconcerting. That may get a few complaints.
Birthright gets The Falcon and the Wolf by Rich Baker. Another young ruler has to deal with usurpers and rivals. You gotta make sure people respect and fear you.
Dragonlance goes back in time and shows us Lord Soth's history. Edo van Belkom, whoever he is, fills stuff in. Will it be consistent with his brooding on his past in the Ravenloft novels?
The Forgotten realms gets Council of Blades by Paul Kidd. The description is so short I have nothing to work from. Blah.
Blood Wars also finishes it's novel trilogy. The protagonists have had children, and they're also intimately connected with the ugliness of the war. Can they do anything to make a difference?
The current clack: This month sees Allen talk about two big things that would turn out to be vaporware. White Wolf's original attempt to go sci-fi, Exile; and Runequest's 4th edition. Mark Rein·Hagen's attempt to make an open source polymedia property was a cool idea, but stalled and messed up in such a way that he sold all his stock in WW and got out of the gaming industry completely. Must have been some serious drama going on behind the scenes for that, given how profitable WW was at the time. Or maybe he was just sick of all the fanboys. :p Meanwhile, Runequest:Slayers was cancelled when Hasbro bought out Avalon Hill. Still, at least they didn't hold onto the IP forever and not let anyone else publish Runequest stuff. And in the meantime we got the rather interesting rules experiments of Hero Wars/Quest, and the psychics, superheroes and pulp adventurers of the Aeon Trinity games. Neither can really be described as terrible, so it wasn't a total waste. Really, this is just a good example of how life rarely goes exactly as planned. The best thing you can do is be adaptable and keep your eyes open for opportunities, especially when times get tough.
With only 2 articles that aren't regular columns, and quite a lot of rehash, this issue is waaaaaaaay too formulaic for my tastes. If the last couple of issues managed to strike a nice balance of edge and crunch, this overshoots too far into providing crunch, with not enough context. It's exceedingly tedious and grindy to get through, and finishing it is a huge relief. Let's hope they don't make the same mistake next time.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Christmas time, a time for giving. Or is it a time for counting your blessings? Appropriately enough though, it's time for another cleric special in here. Ho ho ho. Give us your faith and be thankful we don't smite you, puny mortals. So yeah, it's a topic we've seen before and it's way too easy to be cynical about. I'm yet again left wondering if they have anything new to say. Let's roll the dice and hope we get lucky.
In this issue:
The wyrm's turn: Naming the editorial The Dying Game? SYMBOLISM!!!! OMGWTFBBQGENIUS!!!!! If the birthday issue was them begging for help to turn things around, this is them practically throwing their hands up and admitting they're now in deep shit and know it. Actually, the editorial isn't actually about that, but another story of how the editor's early characters got sent through a meatgrinder and died in quick succession. Which is not only less entertaining than Roger's old editorials on the same subject, but also most of the First Quest series as well. Dave Gross continues to bore me with his writing style. Screw this. Onto the letters.
D-Mail: One of those letters that comments on nearly everything in the issue 2 months ago. Guess that's still their lead-in time. Oh, and do more greyhawk articles. Yeah yeah, we know it still has a strong fanbase by now. Where were you in 1993?
A letter from someone who wants to write books. Oh man, they just can't get away from their legal issues and responsibilities in this area. They once again have to figure out how to let someone down gently. You'd think they'd have a stock response prepared by now.
A letter from an army guy who finds Dragon is one thing that lightens up his otherwise rather cut-off existence. Haven't had so much of this since Roger left.
A letter from someone who really likes the SAGA system, and would like to see all their other worlds converted to it. I don't think so, somehow. Nice try.
Some praise for the creepy lich-focused magical items. Ahahahaha!!!!! A pleasure doing business with you. :steeples fingers:
A letter complaining Al Qadim is gone, and it looks like Mystara has fallen to the same fate. Campaign worlds are going at quite a rate, and it does not make people happy. Only the magazine keeps them alive! It is sad, isn't it. But they can't argue with sales figures. You wouldn't want them to go out of business, would you?
Heroes of faith: For a second issue in a row, we start off the articles with more Skills & Powers expansion. Fortunately this is a good deal shorter than last month, with a mere 2 pages of new options for speciality priests to buy with their character points. Quite a few of them are from other classes, given the usual excuse that they might be worshiping gods of magic, or thievery or whatever. And of course you can now get mechanical renumeration for the strictness of your god's tenets, which in theory will make characters more balanced, but in practice results in people picking restrictions that they would have done anyway, and twinking out like a mutha. So this might improve the game, but only under plenty of DM oversight. I'm once again left a bit grumpy by this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 2/8
The seldarine revisited: And here we go with some very intentional rehash, albeit the kind that actually builds upon and improves previous articles. In issue 155, they added a whole bunch of new elven gods in an article. However, I wasn't very impressed, in large part because they didn't include speciality priest details for them, despite being well into 2e by then. Well, this fixes that problem, along with adding a couple of new deities on top of that. The specific names still feel a bit like a random syllable generator was let loose on the elvish language, but the writing is rather more palatable than last time, and the sphere selections and granted powers are on the upper end of things, but not utterly obscene. So this is an interesting revisting that goes quite some way to redeeming & justifying the original article, which I rather approve of. Still doesn't mean they'll get a place in official future supplements though. :p
Elemental summoning gone wild: Hmm. This is more like it. Adding a bit more sadism to Athas, which is already rife with it. Athasian cleric's elemental summoning abilities are ok, but not great compared to the granted powers some speciality priests get. This adds a bit of wild mage style fun to this, by adding the potential for all sorts of variations, from being eaten by a grue, getting a bonus spell effect, or para-elementals hacking your signal. Most of them are bad, but you might luck out and get healed or temporarily transformed into an elemental avatar ready to spectacularly kick the butt of whatever's troubling you. In short, this is one of those articles that makes your times more interesting, and keeps players from getting complacent in their playing. After all, things might go smoothly 95% of the time, but that 5% is more than enough that they won't take them for granted. Muahahahaha, and all that.
Mystic, Miracles & Meditations: Featuring one of the hardest to make out headers they've done recently. Once again it looks like their graphic designer was too busy mucking around with the computer filters and forgot about practicalities. Anyway, this is a couple of new kits for Masque of the Red Death, and associated extra proficiencies. The kind of crunch there's always room for, even if we struggle to find the time to use it all.
Exorcists are in the business of getting rid of evil spirits, which is obviously a major growth industry on gothic earth. This means they get reduced odds of punishment for using necromantic spells in the line of duty, but if they abuse their powers, hoo boy. Sounds like a path of what I was going to do anyway thing, but hey, it's less of an issue than paladins.
Enthusiasts are more capable of moral ambiguity, being the kind of preacher that goes around getting a congregation by being loud & doing miracles. Hallelujah!!!!! They aren't that well educated in proper magical theory though, and often wind up being the target of scientific debunkers. That seems like a setup that leads to lots of interesting adventures.
While the kits are ok, the new proficiencies are horrible. Meditation abilities that you use to grant bonuses to your ability scores? Representation of your degree of contact with the church hierarchy. Supernatural presence that only affects monsters, and makes them more positively inclined towards you, and appears more an innate gift than a learned skill. This is not only unbalancing, but a fundamental misapprehension of what nonweapon proficiencies are supposed to represent about your character. I object quite strongly and am baffled how that got past editing. Do they not examine mechanics and how they fit with the existing game at all? WTF man? This becomes extra baffling when you consider it's by James Wyatt, who is going to be pretty significant next edition. Father, I am disappoint.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 3/8
The ruin of adlersberg: Looks like we're getting a lot of setting specific articles this month. Now it's birthright's turn again, with this rather nice little adventure location. With plenty of setting specific details tied into the larger history of the place, and stat conversions so the things mentioned interface with the domain systems, the location doesn't feel spurious at all. And there are some rather clever bits. Undead that only arise on specific days of the year, so there's a good reason for the challenge to vary substantially between parties and the place to be near impossible to completely clear out. Bickering humanoids that add a secondary threat before you even get to the main location. And an additional threat that the Gorgon might decide to come back, push on through to attack the lands beyond. This scales in and out very well indeed, and also has quite a nice writing style that packs in plenty of information. And it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to adapt to another setting either. I think this definitely counts as a success on most levels.
Arcane Lore: Still doubly in theme here, with a whole load of spells specifically for demihuman priests. Some are even exclusive to individual gods, just to give them a little more niche protection. Guess they get a little more spotlight from the magazine that birthed them. I quite approve, as long as they don't fall too deep into comedic racial stereotyping.
Weapon of the Earth lets you turn a bit of rock into your god's favoured weapon. And somehow I doubt you'll be short of those when you're a dwarf underground. Choose the material components to your spells wisely, for it makes a big difference.
Mark of Brotherhood let you give someone a secret sigil to show they're part of your gang. Betrayers will be automatically expelled and made very obvious. Then you can join Caine and wander the earth angsting. :)
Abbathor's Greed lets you figure out how valuable an item is. Course, given the nature of this particular god, he might decide to step in and take your hard-won valuables for himself. And when you're his priest there's not a lot you can say to that apart from pass the lube. Life's a bitch when you serve an evil god.
Crypt Ward is the source of a lot of those dwarven zombies defending their tomb. Course, they don't call them zombies, but you say construct, I say potato. The difference is immaterial to everyone except the clerics that try turning them.
Berronar's Favor lets a dwarven community in dire straits get a handout from said god. PC's on the other hand can forget about it. No free money for you. Don't know why they bother listing this stuff.
Animal Animosity moves us onto elven specialities. And if there's one thing they enjoy doing, it's being more connected to nature than you. This is no exception. Get ready to deal with lots of cranky animals.
Faith Arrow essentially gives elven clerics their own automatically hitting Magic Missile variant. Wearing full armor while casting spells, and now their clerics stepping on their wizards. They just keep breaking the normal niche protections, don't they.
Probe Enemies invites slashfic cracks like there's no tomorrow. Tee hee. Still, spotting which enemy is the most badass is a useful skill for the arrogant fighter. Death or glory!
Assume Gaseous Form is one that really ought to be in the corebook, given the frequency which the corresponding potion shows up. At least this version lets you take your clothes with you. A little dignity is a precious thing.
Faerie Flames looks like faerie fire, but actually burns you, and is about as hard to put out as phosphorus or sodium fires. Very nasty, especially if you've encountered the regular variety plenty of times before.
Garments of Elvenkind let you create a temporary set of boots and cloak for if one of your buds needs to get stealthy. Well, despite how it seems to adventurers, not every elf can afford multiple magical items as a matter of course.
Sejogan's Armor moves us onto the gnomes. It lets you make a suit of armour out of plants and iron filings. That'll be a bit trickier to assemble in a hurry when trouble knocks on your door.
Burrow gives you a dig speed, completely unsurprisingly. Badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom. Yawn.
Analyze Contraption, also unsurprisingly, draws upon the tinker side of the gnome heritage. Find out exactly what the complicated and stupid devices other people have made do, if they're worthy of love, fame, or just a quick merciful smashing.
Shades of Rhontang makes your hammer flaming, just like your god's. Don't let it criticise your choice in footwear.
Mantle of Baravar helps you see through illusions. A deceiver should not be fooled by the lies of others. Perfectly standard stuff, really.
Reed Staff turns a blade of grass into a quarterstaff. A nice bit of sympathetic magic I could see coming from actual mythology. Yoink.
Weapon Shift is rather more boring, due to it's strong limitations on what weapon can be turned into what. A little more fantasticality would be nice.
Stealth of Brandobaris lets your priest steal the thief's role for a while. If they're not multiclassed already, as clerics of this god often are. All you really need in your group are speciality priests and multiclassed bards :p
Call Hounds is of course for Urogalan's priests. Two big sinister black doggies at your beck and call. Not to be used for playing fetch on a sunny day. :p
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 4/8
Tracking the faith: Ha. A system for mechanically quantifying just how pious you are, and offering mechanical benefits for those with sufficiently high faith scores. Thought I'd see something like this at some point. And amusingly, it's the kind that if you get too high in, your character ascends from this mortal plane, thus "winning" the game and taking them out of play. Not that it'll be particularly easy to get to that point, since you need 256 and can only get 4 per session at most. (not counting martyrdom, which nets you a good 10 :) ) But still, rewards that really aren't can be an awkward business. And on top of that, it's just as easy to lose them as it is to gain them, which means religious prohibitions will really have some teeth compared to normal games. Overall, I think this is interesting, but will increase the amount of paperwork you have to do tracking gains and losses, so it's only going to justify itself in a game where faith is important. Let's just say religion is a sometimes topic, and leave it at that.
Network news: This column is once again all about selling the RPGA. But wheras last time it was trying to persuade you to join by pointing out all the cool stuff, this time it's doing so by reminding us how much it sucks to be an insular group, never knowing just how common geeks are in the rest of the world, or how to replace members when they leave. Essentially applying the stick after last month's carrot, which I do find rather interesting from a marketing point of view. Still, there is a lot to be said for being able to advertise for new players, especially if you want to play a less common game of some kind. And while Dragon long since stopped doing stuff like this, facilitating actual play is pretty much the job of the RPGA, so they're not about to outgrow that anytime soon. So this does seem like negative advertising, but that makes it all the more interesting to read from a bitchy point of view. Yes, many geeks do have social issues, but will reminding us of that like this persuade many people to avail themselves of your services? Very worth thinking about.
Wyrms of the north: Well, we finally have a non-chromatic dragon in Ed's wanderings. And hey ho, it's a silver dragon which spends quite a bit of time in human form. Aka a great big paternity lawsuit waiting to happen. ;) Not that it's specifically mentioned, and indeed, he has a proper partner, which a little skimming ahead shows is a gold dragon, so it's still interracial sex FTW. Guess Ed is still managing to slip some rather naughty stuff under the radar. Indeed, given all the shapeshifting and identity swapping action that's taking place officially, I would be very surprised if there wasn't some kinky partner swapping taking place at some point. This one is also unusually well connected with a whole bunch of important NPC's of the realms, regularly interacting with and assisting Alustriel in particular. And the tricks they get up too are a perfect example of Ed's mastery of high level tactics. So this one really reminds me how pervy you can get with high level D&D spells & shapeshifting monsters. For that, I have to give it credit.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 5/8
Fiction: Legendary heroes by Ben Bova. Finally, we get back to proper fiction in here. And by a proper regularly published author at that, with a story in his established universe & continuity. Actually, continuity is a very interesting issue for the Orion series, for it's brilliantly designed to produce standalone stories that can be read in any order. The immortal hunter gets incarnated into various times and places with orders to kill or protect certain people and thereby change the course of history for his godlike masters. This is complicated by the fact that he hates his master and goes against him where he can get away with it, with help from the other "gods" who are playing political games with the whole of history at stake. This premise allows things to make sense (or not) in nearly any order, (especially as Orion suffers a degree of memory loss between incarnations,) and even revisit eras, as the nature of time travel means the timeline can go into flux repeatedly and different issues need to be solved to get history on the right track each time. Plus you get to use historical figures as characters. It pretty much rivals Riverworld as an incredibly flexible tool for the author to draw upon various material and feed it through the lens of his imagination to make new stories.
But that's enough exposition. This time, it's the legend of Beowulf we're revisiting. Now handling stuff like this can be tricky, because there's the danger of having your own hero upstage the original protagonist, revealing they were actually a fool, oaf or lucky braggart. Fortunately, this is not the case here, and Ben manages to strike the right balance between making beowulf competent and badass, but also flawed, and Orion useful, but not show-stealing. He then sets things up for further stories weaving other legends together with amazing smoothness. In short, after the annoying nature of the 5th age material, this makes me go FUCK YEAH!!!!! AWESOME!!!!! vmv Let's hope we'll be seeing more of you in the magazine.
Oh look, it's survey time again. This time with the potential reward of a poster if you fill it in. We didn't need that the previous times, so I'm not sure why they need it now. Once again with the little signs of desperation.
The role of books: Mosaic by Jeri Taylor is a star trek novel about the early life of Janeway, from the person who created her. It gets rather a critical reception, as from the way she is described here, she is not a good candidate to be put in charge of a starship, and would completely mess it up. One of those things that proves many of the flaws in Voyager stemmed right from the original writers, rather than just poor execution of those concepts.
The glass cat of oz by David Hulan continues this sprawling series well after the original author's death. And it manages to draw upon and stay consistent with both the established setting details and characterisation of minor characters while continuing to introduce new ones and build upon Oz lore. This is another one that a bibliophile could spend years researching the expanded universe of.
Kingmakers sword by Ann Marston starts another trilogy. Fortunately, it's the kind that's mostly self-contained, and has well constructed worldbuilding. This seems like another of his generic mostly positive reviews that appears every few columns.
City of diamond by Jane Emerson seems to be a soap opera - IIIIINNNNNN SPAAAAAACE!!!! (that never gets old, does it. ) The number of subplots may sprawl out, but the pace keeps up, and the various viewpoints are handled adeptly. Don't let the labels put you off.
And peace shall sleep by Sonia Orin Lyris is a Magic: the Gathering novel. It's a rather interesting one though, that doesn't fit the normal mold of gaming fiction. High tension, and full of politics, I suppose it shows what it's like when the whole setting is being used as a battleground for a game. John hopes that WotC won't stop producing books like this in the wake of the CCG craze's leveling off. Looks like it's all positive reviews this time. That's no good. After you've started alternating with ones that are more like pure promotion, you ought to put a bit more effort in to differentiate yourself.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 6/8
The statement of ownership is once again hidden in the middle of the magazine where it was a bugger to find. Quite deservedly as well, as they've really been in freefall this year. With an average of 61k, and a last month total of 57, they've been shedding nearly a thousand readers every month. And though it's similar number, it's a much bigger proportion than it was during the 86-7 slump. Less than half their peak, they're really in trouble now. How much further can they go before collapsing altogether?
Children of the night: Hello? It's time for another article drawing on details released in a recent supplement and taking them in another direction. A bunch of interestingly unique vampires for the Forgotten Realms setting, using the expanded rules from Ravenloft. Two popular settings, so hopefully this crossover won't be too niche for the average reader.
Morg is a vampire hill giant shaman with a rather interesting past. He's taken full advantage of his vampiric state to get revenge for his mistreatment while alive. Now he's a real scourge upon the countryside, as his greater size means a correspondingly larger appetite. His minions and lair are detailed pretty well too, given the space available. It all seems very well designed to make a good adventure for PC's.
Saestra Karanok is a vampire thief who hunts mages, and will create a witch hunt when none are available to ensure she has plenty to eat. It's the kind of racket that'll unravel sooner or later, especially with the whole not ageing thing. Vamps gotta learn to think long term if they want to survive. In the meantime, this should make for some quite interesting political/sleuthing adventures.
Saed, Beast Chieftain of Veldorn, has managed to survive a few centuries, on the other hand, and made a pretty decent unlife for himself as the ruler of the kingdom of monsters. Not that he's particularly happy in his current position, for he is the kind of vampire who is consumed with angst about what he has become. Once again, he has a really cool set-up, with minions, treasure, and interesting personal abilities. So that makes this article both interesting, entertaining and useful on all counts. That pleases me quite a lot.
Starshield sentinels. Looks like Margaret and Tracey have another trilogy out.
Forum: Amy & Ryan Biggs become our 4th internet contributors. The snowball is gathering pace. They remind us that medieval books did indeed have ridiculously thick pages in comparison to modern stuff. You take for granted just how good you have it, how much technology has advanced.
Devin Ross says much the same thing. Go to an old library, and you can look at the things, get physical proof if you ask nicely. Do not nick the books and use the pages as toilet paper.
Wayne Rossi reminds us that wizards do have their drawbacks. Yes, but they're one of the classes most able to compensate for them, especially if they get into spell research. You have to watch out for that.
Larry D. Hols discusses the level limits thing with a fairly balanced contribution. You need to give humans some advantage to compensate if you remove demihuman level limits. Hey, is that history calling I once again hear?
Chris Leon reminds you that if you remove magic for the players, you also have to make sure you aren't attacking them with any monsters or puzzles that are impossible to solve mundanely. Actions have knock-on consequences, often quite significant.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 7/8
Sage advice goes SAGA. Is this the last straw for skip! Or a chance for him to demonstrate his rules mastery again? Tune in for this month's exciting instalment of sage advice!
Does physique decrease with wounds (Of course it doesn't. Does strength decrease with hit points! What kindacrap idea is that? )
Can you use elemental magic to destroy that element (If you must. It's a very crass way of working)
There's no way to kill without making people unconcious first How undramatic is that? (Yeah, It totally sucks. Skip blames the fucking editors)
How many extra spell points should you put into overcoming resistance ( Is skip the arbiter for your success? Give it a little fucking time. It's a brand new game. You've gotta make up the conventions as you go along, twat. )
When do you use Va, and when do you use Vc (Va, unless it's inapplicable)
What happens when one player casts a spell against another (Big drama. Both of you are in big shit you dirty PvP'ers )
Why can't bows fire faster than crossbows (abstraction. SAGA is even less realism based than D&D. Don't you DARE weigh it down with the years of fun spoiling crap you put into D&D, you wankers!)
Are there rules for Swinging frying pans (improvised fucking weapons. Someone always wants improvised weapons, even though they know they'll be crapper than the regular ones. We'll give you fucking rules for improvised fucking weapons! And then we'll beat you over the head with the book containing them as a practical demonstration. How d'ya like them improvised weapons! )
We want to convert all the cool new stuff in the SAGA system back to AD&D. Please give us conversion guidelines ( No. Skip worked hard making this system different, and the first thing you want to do is turn it back into an AD&D game?! Fuck the hell off. Skip does not need this. Skip is the private sage! TSR has been making a joke of that over the last few years. Skip says No More! Skip Quits! Nothing you say can bring skip back! :Rumble of thunder, ominous organ music: And that means you, too, Lorraine! Nothing you could make Skip do could possibly be worse than what you've already made Skip do!!! Skip is sick of listening to your threats and rantings. Skip is not going to wear purple spikes any more. They make skip look like an overweight gay evil flower. Skip will never forgive you for this. You took a job Skip loved and made it into torture. Skip is outta here. Skip is so pissed off Skip's not even going to close the bracket behind him. Enjoy your grammatical deathtrap, ladies.
KotDT fits a thousand orcs into a 20 by 20 room. This won't end well. Swordplay gets a metallic wedgie. Dragonmirth has more heroics, both smart and dumb. Floyd needs to find an excuse to avoid dinner fast.
Dragon Magazine Issue 236: December 1996
part 8/8
Role-playing reviews: Deadlands gets moderately praised by Rick. The character generation and combat systems are pretty interesting and suitable for the game's wild west flavour, but the setting is still very sketchy. It does read very much like they want to produce lots of supplements to fill in various bits and pieces in upcoming years. (which will be the case, thankfully) Better get ready to spend that disposable income. :p
Neverworld gets praised for it's character generation system, which again is full of flavour and detail. But the rest is either boring or confusing to him. In the end, that probably doesn't make it worth playing. You want something to do after finishing your character, unless you're a charop wonk who's more enamoured of theoretical number crunching than actual play.
Infinite domains is another one with an excellent character generation system, and simple but effective mechanics, but the rest could do with some development. Mind you, it is an attempt at a universal system. Those do need a good deal of supplements to really prove their versatility. Even if the corebook shows potential, you can't truly cover every genre without adding some serious page count.
We have rather a lot of interesting short reviews this month as well. Mage: the Ascension & Star Wars get new editions. Mage justifies the repurchase with the improvements it makes, SW doesn't. Meanwhile, I Tyrant, GURPS Goblins and The Planewalkers Handbook all keep Rick interested with their idiosyncratic approaches to their topics. TSR is still putting out some pretty interesting stuff even though sales are dropping.
TSR Previews: Another fairly light month next time. We finish the beholder trilogy of adventures, with Eye to Eye. Do you have what it takes to win a war against them? Actually, they may be individually deadly, but it seems to me that multiple ones in an engagement would be rather less than the sum of their parts, as one's anti magic eye would be where another one wanted to shoot, and more than one would try and kill the same enemy in the same round, resulting in powers going to waste. And they've never been that good at co-operating without the spelljammer variants to glue things together.
Dragonlance takes us to Wayreth in The last tower: The legacy of Raistlin. He may be gone, but we can still learn about the new magic using his methods. For those of you unhappy with the 5th age, the novel this month is prequelariffc yet again. Vinas Solamnus by J Robert King tells the story of the founding of the knights.
The Forgotten realms completes it's 5th visit to undermountain. Stardock sees the PC's asked to save Halaster! Better the evil you know, I guess. And he does play a vital part in ensuring more adventurers get to reach high level and save the world. Their novel this month is also magic related. Realms of the Arcane is a collection of short stories, many of them set back in Netheril. Is time travelling going to become the new continent exploring?
And Dragon Dice gets their second novel as well. Army of the dead ties in with the recent expansions, as they often do. Is there any real setting behind this latest money grab?
The current clack: Allen talks quite a lot about licenced games this month, asking some interesting questions. Does the value of a licence in terms of sale outweigh the costs and inconvenience of getting it? Quite possibly. Actually, in these tough times, it seems like the proportion of licenced games is increasing, because they're a lot more likely to get proper distribution in stores. This can of course lead to accusations of creative moribundity. It's the same problem as hollywood in microcosm. It's not that there aren't plenty of cool new ideas out there, it's just that the sequels, remakes and spinoffs of proven successes are more likely to get greenlit, even if they're obviously crap to a discerning eye. Name value is important, and this is yet another annoying reality that has to be dealt with.
Our other big bit of news is the attempt by HERO games & R .Talsorian to merge their systems and create the Fuzion system, easily compatible with both and appearing in both company's books. Another amusing experiment that would eventually fall apart, while the original systems survived. It's like a big comics crossover in game mechanics form. :p
I actually like a pretty high proportion of the articles in this issue, and once again, the bad bits are often bad in interesting ways. So despite some rocky bits, I am forced to conclude 1996 has been a better year overall than 1995. And they've finally got rid of the annoying 5th age stories. Course, it's not over yet. They've now added an annual onto their workload. That could turn out all sorts of ways, maybe good, maybe bad. Let's hope that either way, it's not more of the same, as that would just be boring.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 1/8
124 pages. Hmm. So we've reached the extra product. I wonder how this will differ from the standard issue. For a start, despite having the same pagecount, it costs $5.95. Was there any bonus stuff to justify this extra cost? Or was this just to make up for the fact that subscribers got it for free. The cover is slightly different, with a border around the cover image in the style of the early issues of the magazine. The contents page seems much the same as usual though, although most of the regular columns like sage advice, letters, forum and and reviews are missing. So instead we'll be getting more game content. Cool. Wait, that means less variety in what I'll be reading than usual. Now I don't know what I'll make of this. If they've put extra effort into picking the best articles it could still be an improvement.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Since this is their first time doing one of these annual thingies, the editorial is a fairly basic explanation of what they're trying to do here. And yeah, it looks like they're trying to pack it with a greater proportion of game material, and give us more of the same stuff that they felt worked over the last year. And lots of material for specific settings, including their now quite substantial selection of dead ones. So this does feel very much like catering to their core audience to keep them from leaving rather than trying to expand things. Which is very symptomatic of their overall approach this year, and probably isn't helping if their sales figures are any indication. How is a game about adventuring actually becoming less adventurous? Doesn't feel right, somehow.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game: This little descriptive piece before the articles tries to illustrate just how far AD&D has come over the years, yet at the same time, how little the core of the game has changed. The rules are still pretty much recognisable as the same little pamphlets we saw way back in 1974. And they are having to strain a bit to sell that as a good thing. Yeah, they admit that once you add some supplements, the game gets rather bloated and unwieldy at this point, but in theory you can still choose which ones you use and leave the rest out. And the talk about the modern world being more complicated than it used to be is just rose tinted glasses. In 1974 you had Nixon engaging in corruption sufficient that he was forced to resign, the cold war hanging over people's heads, all kinds of economic instability, and disco music. In 1996 the worst you had to deal with was the Balkan states squabbling, britpop invading (and mostly failing) and Clinton shagging everything that moved. The late 90's actually look like a pretty decent part of history in hindsight. So yeah, this shows up the problems in both the ruleset and the company's attitude towards their game quite clearly. Makes you want to give them a good kick in the pants and tell them to buck their ideas up.
The ecology of the wyvern: Brendan Farwanderer makes his 4th appearance, more than 3 years after the last one. He's not very prolific. And he's still the closest thing the ecologies have to a recurring character. This, of course, is all the more annoying precisely because his stories are such good ones, made all the more interesting due to the now well established banter between Brendan and his charges. Wyverns may not quite be full dragons, but they're still quite scary, able to swoop down and kill you with their poisoned stingers, or carry you away to feed to their young. Indeed, a lot of attention is paid to their stingers, and the way they use their poison as a territory marker, means of fighting for dominance, and way of ensuring nothing else eats their food. With plenty of detail on it's lifecycle, and also some more cool tricks you can pull with the creature, this is another one that's both a good read and useful for actual play. Let's hope we'll be seeing these guys again sometime.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 2/8
Wyrmsmere: Well, this is nice. I get to see some modules again, as these annuals are outside the regular Dragon/Dungeon continuity divide. It's a reasonably substantial one too, at 10 pages long, which definitely contrasts with the one from issue 200. It's quite an involved one plotwise as well, with some quite interesting NPC's and potential for open-ended interactions between them. While in theory you could ignore that, and run this as merely a straightforward dungeon crawl, you'll get a lot more out of it by playing up the various characters and roleplaying their encounters. Indeed, since they mention some bits that aren't directly statted out, and which would require rather higher level characters than to main part of this adventure, there's a lot of room for follow-ups. That makes it pretty good value for money.
Arcane lore: Having given us tons of elemental stuff over recent years, for this special, they decide to get paraelemental on us. Unsurprisingly, it's ice magic that gets first go. Cold magic is already comfortably third place behind fire and electricity in the blasting stakes. This keeps it so, while also adding a few utility bits and pieces that may well actually have it overtake electricity in the overall number of spells stakes. It's not neglected by any stretch of the imagination.
Arctic Spray is burning hands with a different energy type. Since more things are immune to fire than cold, this is probably a step up. Take those nasty yugoloths down with a good zap.
Icy Missile is a cold based magic missile which is otherwise identical. Since more things are immune to cold than force attacks, this is probably a step down. Funny how that works.
Shiver imposes moderate penalties on the victim. A basic debuff on a similar level to the likes of Bless/Curse. Another good one for ice mages to fill their extra slot with at low level.
Deep Freeze encrusts whatever object in magical ice that'll take other magic to melt. This is one that has lots of versatility, as a preservative, as a doorstopper, to break mechanical devices, or even to create firm blocks for you to jump on megaman stylee. You won't regret memorizing this one.
Freeze Tag paralyzes whatever part of the enemy's body you touch, also in an unpleasantly chilly way. Good thing this isn't reality, as gangrene would be likely after it melted. Even so, using it on your genitals so as to prolong lovemaking is not recommended.
Frozen Ground is an elliptical method of replicating pass without trace under the cold theme. Freeze the ground so no tracks are made. Y'know, this'll be rather a giveaway itself in warmer climes. Perhaps not the most optimal method of doing things.
Ice Floe summons a barge made of ice to ferry you around. Obviously this lasts longer in colder climates. Please sit still while the vehicle is in motion.
Ice Trap makes a fragile bit of flooring to serve as concealment for whatever nasties lurk beyond. People still fall for this basic stuff, because you can't check every single bit of floor before putting your weight on it.
Snow Cone is one that could in theory have become a staple low level blasty spell to rival fireball and lightning bolt. Enjoy your icy AoE blastiness and watch out for your friends, as usual with these things.
Cold Shoulder fails to live up to the punny potential of it's name, merely being another damage and penalty inflicter for your combat oriented characters.
Hail fails to scale and so won't be taking fireball's place in my arsenal anytime soon. Yawn.
Ice Bolt, on the other hand does scale properly, taking lightning bolt's place quite nicely if you're that way inclined. It even eliminates the bounceback problem, which'll please some people.
Snowblind is another one that isn't nearly as useful as it's regular equivalents light or cause blindness. I don't think I want to stick this closely to theme for that.
Snowman is another one that has interesting visuals, but is so suboptimal compared to it's corebook equivalent hold person that no-one with basic mathematical skills would touch it with a bargepole. What has happened to basic comparative analysis? All down the toilet.
Hypothermia is yet another one that doesn't seem all that optimal when you crunch the math. It tries to do two things, and winds up not being that impressive at either.
Northwind is a bit better, being basically gust of wind with added damage. I think the issue here is that it's gust of wind that's not very impressive in the first place, being very context sensitive. In an arctic environment, don't miss the chance to blow your enemy off mountaintops or into freezing water.
Blizzard is one of our lower level, less versatile weather controllers. Seen this kind of thing before in the sea magic stuff and it's decent enough powerwise, but still yawn-inducing.
Avalanche gives you mass freezing paralysis. No, can't work up any enthusiasm for this either.
Icicles is yet another decidedly unimpressive zappy spell. Since you have to make a hit roll with this, and wizards suck at those, this may well wind up being less effective than the 1st level magic missile variant. Lame.
Dancing Shards, weirdly, manages to be even less impressive despite being higher level. It's like the power levels were just picked randomly out of a hat. Roll on the next edition please.
Winter Flames, on the other hand, does have the potential to cause the devastation an 8th level spell should, but only in very specific circumstances. Not one for casual memorising and unleashing still. I can not say I'm impressed with this collection, with it's serious power level issues. What were the editors thinking, letting it go through like this?
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 3/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another bunch of new magical armours? That was quick. They must be running out of ideas to approve this. Couldn't you do staves or scrolls, something you haven't done in a few years? Mutter mutter mutter.
Rabak Armor is made of multiple layers of wood with sticky sap smeared on top. This makes it maintenance heavy, but very stealthy for it's AC and able to trap weapons that hit you. Another one that would be nowhere near as much benefit for the PC's as the enemies, as without the materials to fix it, it loses it's special qualities in weeks.
Sindar web armor is less of a bugger to maintain, but even rarer than elven chain. A rogue who wants some really tough spider silk armor like this will probably have to steal it, given the stupid prices it goes for.
Asheiran armor is made from tons of tiny crustaceans. This makes it another one that takes ages to make and tons of maintenance. Don't even think of using it out of the water.
Sul Armor is even more gross, made of trained cockroaches that cover your body and respond to the will of their wearer. Since they are chameleonic, they actually boost your thiefly hiding skills. They're perfectly designed for drama and I like this one.
Armor of the Ventadari is made out of layers of transparent force, allowing you to be fully armored and still cheesecake. :rolleyes: They also absorb magic, although unlike last time's item that does the same, they don't get stronger from doing so, and can be overloaded and fail. Still, this is another definite case of paucity of ideas, even if this variant has some nice fluff added to it.
The dragon's bestiary: Another collection of underdark monsters in quick succession as well. They really are running short on original ideas this year. Not really a surprise, given the amount of time they've been doing this. Oh well, on I trudge wearily.
Gohlbrorn are to bulettes as people are to chimpanzees, using tactics and missile weapons where regular landsharks would just wade in biting and slashing. They can burrow ridiculously fast, making setting up ambushes and escaping if things turn against them a cinch. One for the kobold lovers to really take advantage of.
Lukhorn are gigantic worms with camouflage so good, you could just walk right into them, and not realise until you get swallowed. Now there's something that's been missing from D&D and I didn't even realise it. I know I've seen that kind of trick more than once in books. How pleasing to add in.
Varkha are another variant humanoid, slightly smaller and more vicious lizard men. These really do not add anything new in the slightest. Peh.
Chromatic mold is another annoying threat that gives you good reason to be deeply suspicious of anything fungal. Curiously, it's a lot more dangerous to things with infravision. Oh the dilemma. To take torches or use magic to see in the dark. Looks like there's a monster designed to catch you out either way.
Eighonn is a mysterious unique shadowy being that kills without remorse. Unique? Ha. That's every other mysterious cloaked badass to a tee. Once again, I'm really not impressed here. A decidedly mediocre collection overall.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 4/8
Rogues gallery: Another set of characters from a recent novel stated out here, courtesy of their actual author. Now, given that I've never seen Elaine Cunningham produce any game books, I do wonder if she actually plays D&D much, or if she's like Simon Hawke, just someone who writes in their worlds. Well, it's not as if D&D is that hard to learn. We shall see if there's any rules-breaking going on here.
Hasheth, Lord Venazir is an annoyingly talented teenage nobleman who has trained as an assassin, worked for the harpers, and also managed to amass an independent fortune through merchant work at the age of 16. Sounds more like an anime protagonist than a D&D one. Can you say Cheeeese. Ahh, the joys of flexible timekeeping.
Ferret is an elf who disguises herself as a human, in the process wearing some rather sleazy outfits to ensure people's attention is always on the wrong features. Fanservice! She too works as an assassin, but has an agenda behind many of the targets she chooses. Interesting. Still, if the next one is a shaved dwarf on stilts, I shall laugh a lot.
Foxfire is another elf with a literally translated name. He also reads as author fanservice for women, with great detail gone into just how sexy he is, strong and with a dark past, but also considerate and a good leader. So yeah, there is a hell of a lot of cheese in this collection. I really don't think I'm the target audience for her books. Let's move on.
Campaign Classics: Spelljammer's turn now. This is one that doesn't feel basic or rehashed, instead being Roger Moore's look at the scro, and how to make the most of them in any setting. They're reasonably capable in a fight, and have even more tricks up their sleeves than regular goblinoids. Plus spaceships scare the shit out of people in a regular fantasy campaign, because it means you have an enormous mobility advantage. You'll need the original monster entry as it doesn't repeat that stuff, but if you do, there's plenty of cool ideas for you to take advantage of. Actually, in terms of presentation, it's quite similar to his old classic articles on demihumans in 1982. And that's a very good thing indeed in my book, as it gives this article more weight in general. Not being constantly occupied by editorial work has indeed helped him return to being a valuable writer for them.
Forgotten realms: Ed Greenwood introduces this one of course, with his usual impish sense of humour making things so much more entertaining to read. The realms is now packed full of characters competent, and not so much. And good gods they get up to some funny stuff. Well, when you're Elminster, and they offer very little threat to you, it's easy to laugh. How big does the body count in the various Realms novels become before they get the mandated happy ending? I guess even here, you can make a real difference to individual lives. There's still plenty of people having fun with this world, and actually, you could be one of them. Don't forget that, amid all the overcrowding canon.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 5/8
Gem of the north: Hmm. A description of Alustriel's palace. You know, a map would only take up a page or two, and help quite a lot, especially for adventurers who might want to get a little combative. But no, instead we have to visualise it all ourself, and accept that there's great wodges of stuff that we're not being told about, as they want to maintain the supreme power of mystra's chosen, and that means always being able to pull another deus ex machina out of their arse. So while there's a good deal of cool descriptive detail in this article, it is very much part of the problem, both in the 2e sense of putting description over stuff that will be useful in actual play, and the Realms specific issue of tying everything down and making it feel like the PC's can't really affect the world. I don't really feel comfortable reading it.
Dragonlance fifth age: Now, the Realms started slow and gradually built to dominance, but was a success from day one, and never really flagged in popularity. If anything, it's supremacy over the other D&D settings is all the more obvious today, as it's the only one getting repeated support in 4e and fairly regular novels anymore. Dragonlance, by contrast, started in a big fanfare, and then really, it's been mostly downhill from there. Still, that means they've been less afraid to shake things up, for it's less of a cash cow to kill in the first place if it does fail. And next year they're really going to go to town filling in the 5th age. After all, they have to get this stuff out quick, for things aren't great in the company, and if it doesn't sell, this setting'll be put on the backburner for good. Once again, this does make for slightly depressing reading in hindsight. Oh well, at least they went out experimenting.
Between the ages: In which it is revealed just how long it took for things to reach their current state. Sure it seems like everything has changed. But when you lived through it day by day for 30 years, it doesn't seem so bad, especially when you remember these events are scattered across the entire continent. But it does show just how annoying the dragons are being at this point, and how many there are. I guess the important thing this once again demonstrates is that this is the setting made to showcase the Dragons in D&D, and they're making substantial attempts to make them bigger, scarier and more integral to the setting. It also puts the 5th age stories from the magazine into better context. Really, there's a 27 year gap between the 1st and last ones. That's longer than, say, the whole real world history of D&D at this point. So this makes their actions over the last year seem a little more palatable to me. There was a bigger plan in their redesign of the setting. We just don't get to see it until after the fact. And hopefully that'll make it a little easier to run a game here, should I ever decide to do so.
Ravenloft: as befits the gothic setting, Ravenloft is really starting to be weighed down by it's history at this point. After all, like the Forgotten Realms, it started off slow, and built up popularity by proof of demand for quite a few years before getting a full gameline. But like Dragonlance, it's actually changed quite a bit as time went on. The geography has gone through a full-scale rearrangement, and they've also killed off the biggest good guy NPC and city in the setting, thus really driving home that no-one and nothing is safe here. Just about the only thing that remains constant is that it's near impossible to get out of here. And now it's getting it's third core set. Even the Forgotten Realms hasn't got that privilege yet. Goes to show just how popular and enduring horror is, and how many writers in the TSR stable want to put their own spins upon it, dragging the setting in different directions in the process. Just how much more stretching can it take before it too is torn apart by nerdrage over it's metaplot choices?
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 6/8
Vampires A-Z: Now we've definitely had this topic before. Yeah, right back in issue 25, plus another in issue 126. People like their variant undead from around the world. Although looking at this and comparing them, it seems to be substantially inferior to those previous articles. For a start, it's completely crunch free, simply renaming existing undead for new cultural setups, saying there's not enough room for statistics. This despite being a good 3 times as long as the first one in issue 25, and not having that many more entries. (26 compared to 15. ) It really is a great demonstration of how much more tied down by convention and less can-do writers are now. It wouldn't be impossible at all to detail how they differ statistically as well from their primary template in the space you have. You'd just have to cut down on the descriptive fluff a little bit. Fail.
Beyond the Flanaess: Greyhawk doesn't get an introduction, as like spelljammer, it's not a live setting anymore, but it still gets an article. Actually, this is a rather interesting one, as it's very old material indeed. An original sketch of the whole continent, approximately tripling the amount of area detailed in the previous books, by Ga :rumble of thunder, organ stab, wolves howl: sorry mistress, by it's original creator himself. That's both tremendously useful, and also an important hint of what the political situation is like in the TSR offices. Are they now aware that the company is in trouble, and trying to sneak out valuable information they haven't been allowed to relay for years, just in case this is the end? Or is it just generalised breakdown in discipline. Ok, there's still a bit of whitewashing in force, but still, we are getting valuable old skool information in highly condensed form. Of course, if Greyhawk were ever to come back, the details of these new areas might turn out to be as different as the expanded continents in Mystara were from their Master Set map. Well, we shall cross that bridge if it ever comes. In any case, this article is a joy to see.
Planescape: A fairly straight introduction here, covering all the usual bases. Fantastical locations, not for hack-and-slash, power of belief, anything can be found, Sigil ties it all together. Yawn. Pretty much what they said before it was released, only without the IC teasing. I suppose it contrasts with the previous settings, which have changed quite a bit over the years. But then, you don't really want the planes as a whole changing. That's the whole point. Individual worlds and species may come and go, but the universe remains, too vast for one creature to make a difference. Try and change that, and people get very pissed off. It's like if we suddenly woke up, and the sun was green, the moon was tiny and orange, and all the stars were different. (oh wait, they just pulled that kind of stunt in Dragonlance and look where it gets them) Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Back to now then.
A handful of keys: Proper control of your portals is vital for a low level Planescape campaign. Until they get hold of magic that gives them the choice of where to go, they are purely dependent on your generosity as a DM to control where they can go, how easy and costly it will be to get there, and how much travelling they'll have to do at the other end. So a bit of advice on how to do it right comes as welcome. Frequency, type of keys, random places in sigil in which they can be found, how to have them cycle in game, and alternate key ideas such as magical items, spells and thoughts. Yeah, this seems like exactly the kind of handy little reference that you'll want to take a look at if you have an adventure to run in a few hours and are running short on ideas. Basic, but not bad at all.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 7/8
Birthright: Birthright is expanding outwards in it's own way. While it doesn't have a central city, it does seem to have a default starting point for your characters, down in the southwest. And in traditional D&D style, the further away you go from that, the further you go from the default medieval assumptions of the game, into different landscapes and political setups, as well as the intention that characters will be higher level. Interesting. So it looks like there's still plenty for them to build upon in this setting, even without opening up other continents on the same world. I wonder how much they'll actually get done before the line dies.
Guilds of cerilia: A fairly short article for this world, that's about thieves going legit. Or at least, giving themselves a nice plausible front business for laundering money and keeping the authorities off your scent. Which is a very funny business when you might actually have a more noble bloodline than them. How does that work, when the guy who is in charge uses their power for ends like this? Well, I suppose we have plenty of real world examples of banana republics where the leaders bleed the population dry and then bugger of to switzerland when things go bad. Why shouldn't you enjoy doing that kind of thing? So this shows just how much you can do when you're a rogue that's in charge. They don't have to be the odd ones out at all. A pretty decent little article really.
Dark sun: Really, has Athas become more or less dangerous over the years? That's the big question they have to face given how many things have happened. And really, the messages are pretty mixed. The existing areas have probably become less dangerous, but they've opened up a whole bunch of new areas with their own challenges for you to face. And the PC's, already more powerful than ones from other worlds, have gained tons of new stuff in the various supplements, while the bad guys have become fairly pinned down and codified, so we know exactly what it takes to beat them. I think we can probably say that while still daunting, the place is less scary than it used to be. All the over-the-top descriptiveness in this intro can't make up for the facts.
Heroes of Athas: Bah. And I was hoping we'd get through this issue without having to deal with more Skills & Powers stuff. Instead, I have to wade through 12 pages of it, the largest article in the issue. Well, when you have to allocate costs to all their standard racial and class abilities, plus a bunch of new extrapolated ones which do tend to be more powerful than the basic set, it really adds up. I'm struggling to get through this set without zoning out, which isn't a particularly good sign. I do note that there seems to be quite a lot of healing/regeneration innate powers, which reduces the need for clerics in a team. There's also plenty of resistances to specific energy types, ability score bonuses, and natural AC lowerers. All that good stuff that'll come in handy nearly every session, in contrast to being able to detect sloping passages. I think I can say pretty safely that there is opportunity for twinkery here. Once again, this is not to my tastes.
Dragon Magazine Annual 1996
part 8/8
Dragon dice: Mixed Race Armies? Well, this is interesting. Once again it is proved hybridisation is the path to maximum twinkitude! :p Although you do still have to maintain some level of compatibility. It seems some of the best choices have one element in common, but the two races bring other things to the table as well. Still, they don't seem too keen on you combining a bit of everything, for reasons I'm not sure of. Would that be even more powerful, or would it actually result in a weaker army overall? Once again, I do somewhat regret not knowing any more about this game than I've read in the magazine.
Deckbuilding Revisited: You know, we haven't actually seen any Spellfire articles over the last year, as Dragon Dice seems to have replaced it in the affections of the writers. What's up with that? Short attention spans, I guess. And this is already a return to basic deckbuilding advice. Can't they take a break from something for any amount of time without assuming people have forgotten about it and need to start from the bottom again? So yeah, this tells you that you can't expect to win by just throwing money at hundreds of booster packs, and then putting the most powerful cards you find into your deck. Synergy is the name of the game, and all types of cards are needed to win. Picking stuff from the same world can make you predictable, but does often have real combo advantages. And never forget to have enough realms to give you a chance of winning quickly. Another article that seems sensible, but not groundbreaking in the slightest. You could do stuff like this all day, should you be so inclined. But sensible is not exciting. Zzzzzz.
An 8 page spread of artwork recycled from recent products finishes this off. Not that it's bad at all, as they've obviously picked what they think is the best of the year, but it once again smells of padding because they don't have enough material, not making the most efficient use of the space they have available.
This definitely seems to have been designed to attract the interest of more casual buyers, who wouldn't normally pick up issues regularly. With it's heavy emphasis on settings, familiar topics, and noncontroversial crunch that's easily incorporated into existing games, it wants to take people who've already bought a little, and get them diversifying so they buy a greater proportion of TSR's stuff. So I'm left feeling that this really isn't aimed at me, and this is rather less satisfying as a whole product than the regular issues. Even the number of external adverts is vastly reduced, which also contributes to making the whole thing feel much more like a house organ. It also feels like they don't really have the ideas to fill all this extra space, and are resorting to self-promotional padding a lot. Really, it brings the end of the year down. I hope next year's annual has a better idea what it wants to do with itself.
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: very late unspecified date sometime in the middle of 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. So they're back. Where've they been, and what happened to them? You already have a rough idea, but lets see what the magazine themselves has to say about their unscheduled absence. Amusingly, not a lot. This issue appears to have been pushed out using their preprepared material, with no thought as to it's relevance. Big chunks of it look amusingly out-of place and inaccurate in light of events. Well, if they'd restarted from scratch, they'd probably have been out for several months more. I doubt there were particularly good options here. Let's stop skimming, and delve a little deeper.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Here we see the only bit that's really up to date, where they apologise for their lengthy unscheduled absence. They've been bought by Wizards of the Coast! They of course try and spin this as positively as possible, saying the future is going to be better instead of dwelling on how bad the past may have become. We'll be the judge of that. I also note that they've also lost two members of staff, but only gained one, so there's a gap in their staff listing now. This does feel very much like they're giving us an official party line, rather than talking honestly about all the troubles they've been facing in the past few months. Maybe they'll give us more info later, but for now, it's only a teaser, making us curious as to what this means for us. I'm going to have to try and get to next month as quickly as possible in light of this.
D-Mail is completely oblivious, and stuck in the end of last year. Still, at least the commentary on earlier issues mostly makes sense.
Regular forumite Steve Shawler once again complains about one of Rick's reviews. Dungeon Crawls are the adventures we remember, because we have the chance to play them differently and make them our own that you don't have when the story is the main attraction. Especially when we die in unexpected and funny ways. That's not a pleasure we grow out of.
A letter praising the Dragon Annual. Gee, what a surprise. Well, there's always someone who likes nearly anything they try. Even Buck Rogers had a few hardcore fans.
A letter pointing out a couple of bits of eratta. They duly fill in the missing statistics. It's always those little details you forget when in a hurry.
A letter from someone who misses first quest. Why did it have to go? Not enough people with interesting stories to interview, I think. It is a shame though. It could have run indefinitely with a wider writerbase.
A letter asking them to do themed issues on campaign worlds. They have done that occasionally, particularly Athas. Still, I'm sure it would be popular, and would be their only real chance of contributing significantly to the development of cancelled worlds. I'm sure they'll do it if they can get the submissions. Which may be harder after this little hiatus, as that's the kind of thing that messes up relationships with established writers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 2/8
Wild at heart: Well, at least it looks like we're getting a quite substantial themed section this month, even if it is on a repeated topic. Time to get close to nature again again again again. Here's a selection of nature related kits suitable for all classes. Ecofroofery! It's fun for the whole family! Not enough things you can say that about really.
Ferals are warriors bonded with animal spirits. Oh, like we've never seen that before. Their benefits and penalties are also completely unsurprising. Basic animal specific abilities, eventual shapeshifting, temper control issues and excessive respect for their totem animal. Yawn.
Greenfellows are rather more interesting. What happens to the kids swapped for changelings and raised by faeries? If they take a roguish path, and many do, they'll get this selection of benefits and penalties. If anyone can understand them and play them at their own games, it's these guys. Plus there's plenty of opportunities for roleplaying fun as they discover the human world as well. Ha. I suspect people wanting a SERIOUS game may object.
Stridesmen are another potentially irritating kit for their tendency to just keep walking, and trust that if they turn up somewhere, they're not lost, they're exactly where their god planned them to be. They also need less rest than normal people, so they'll also be annoyingly energetic., wanting to press on when the rest of the team are tired and cranky. Mechanically, they're ok, but I can once again see this fostering party conflict. Maybe if they use their spells to buff the rest of the party they'll be able to keep up.
Merlanes are wizards that specialise in genetic engineering. Finally, someone's taking responsibility for all the weird stuff you find in dungeons. And you can become one of them, with 8 new spells which allow you to transform and hybridise to substantial degrees, trace the ancestry of created creatures, and if needed, make them devolve back into their base form. I believe that's sufficiently awesome to redeem this otherwise somewhat sketchy article. Want want want!
Man's best friend: Doggies! Man's best friend, supposedly, although I've always preferred cats. They've had a few appearances in the magazine (issues 67, 94, 103, 117) but maybe not as much as you'd expect given their real world popularity and potential usefulness in dungeoneering. After all, they get bred for all sorts of applications in reality, including digging, hunting, tracking and guarding; that would be useful for a dungeon explorer. They'd be more versatile and less trouble than mules, that's for sure. Here's an attempt to mechanically codify how much they can learn, and how long it takes to teach them. I have no idea how true to life this is, but it does seem quite solid mechanically, even if it won't really allow your companions to scale up with you as you face challenges together. I suppose they're just not that analytical and gamist yet. In any case, it's a good reminder that there's stuff in the players handbook that will not only be helpful, but also give you a ton of roleplaying hooks if you drop a little money on it. That you'll probably have to deal with the tragedy of it being killed a few levels later will just provide more roleplaying hooks.
On a waterless sea: Naval combat got an article a mere 5 issues ago. Now it's time for boating on Athas to get a good examination, with this solid 8 page look at silt skimmers. These take a good deal more effort to keep up and going, because silt varies widely in density and doesn't handle like water at all. Fortunately, they have psionics to help them out. Still, that does mean they'll have to trade navigators, or only go for short periods of time each day. So once again this demonstrates that life finds a way, but you certainly don't have things easy on Athas. (thongs, on the other hand, are not hard to come by if you take the artwork as canon ) And a DM can make getting somewhere a pretty significant part of the adventure without resorting to fiat. With plenty of different tricks and options, I find this article both useful and likable. Even if you aren't using Dark Sun, you may want to make your world work differently from the norm, and this is the kind of thing that'll help you get ideas for implementing that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 3/8
Wyrms of the north: Ed once again shows off like crazy in demonstrating his talents with creating high level creatures and their survival strategies in a big, complicated and dangerous world. Curiously, the method this dragon has adopted is almost exactly the inverse of Liches one. While they hide their soul in an item, keeping them safe and able to possess a new body as long as the item remains safe, he instead hides his body away, and sends his awareness hopping from item to item, mostly swords. This is far less conspicuous than having a great wyrm dragon wandering about the place, and allows him to observe adventures easily and help out if needed by pretending to be just an intelligent magical item. Now that does sound like a fun life, especially when you're old and patient enough to snooze through the walky and sleepy bits between stuff happening. He's seeking a longer-term method of life extension, but hasn't got there yet, and being a dragon, isn't in a great hurry. So this is one creature that could easily be encountered at low levels, and repeatedly throughout a parties career without their knowing, and the plot hooks contained in this article are similarly suited for long-term pursuit and being used independently. And the new spells are really cool. It feels almost redundant to say how awesome he is again at this point, but as long as he's still got it, I'll have to keep on praising him.
Hidden talents: Oh dear. Another case of people instantly trying to move the Dragonlance 5th age system away from being highly abstracted, this time by adding a skill system. They just can't let go, can they. We had tons of hassle with this in AD&D as well, and many people still find the game faster and more fun if you just ignore the proficiency system entirely. Still, I can't see this slowing the system down much, as the system is insufficiently granular to model levels of skill beyond trained and untrained, so all it does is give you a tiebreaker where the skills you have would be appropriate. The whole mechanical details bit is sorted within half a page, and then the rest is just a rather too long and dull list of skills which again, seems to be trying to put it's simulationism in a very narrativist game. So this article is counterproductive and filled with fail on almost every level. - it doesn't improve the game, it's not faithful to it's original intent despite being by one of the official writers, it doesn't promote it very well, it's not pleasant to read, and it illustrates how problematic it is trying to add new stuff onto a rules light game in general, which means it is going to be hard for the magazine to give it regular coverage. I'm completely boggled at just how bad this is. I'm not even going to laugh. I'm just going to point and sneer.
The dragon's bestiary: Yet another previously covered topic gets revisited with snakes getting another turn on the merry go round (see issue 115, among others.) This is a bit tiresome, and doesn't even have the numbers or ecological stuff of the previous. Yeah, things are really going to crap around here.
Bushmaster still sounds like a bad joke, all these years later. Damn you, and your forked tongued ways. No cunning linguist is a bad cunning linguist! [/cartman] Keep your horny tail spikes away from me.
Fer-de-lance is one I haven't seen before, so it's not all bad. They have much more realisticly applied poison than the corebook snakes, which is interesting to see. Guess this is good for something after all.
Gaboon are another rehashed one. Aside from the more detailed venom effects, they're pretty similar to last time. If you're hit by this one, you're in trouble even if you make your save. Ahh, the joys of clerics. Doing what modern medicine still can't.
Black mamba are another very familiar and already covered name. They hit hard and fast, with cumulative poison effects. Just what you need.
Boomslang are another one with a comical name, but plenty of deadliness. Remember, if it's not aggressive, you don't need to fight it. How hard a lesson is that to take in?
Cobras are of course the venom spitters. Seen them before plenty as well.
Gila monsters take us beyond snakes, to poisonous legged reptiles. They may be tiny, but you don't want one of these attached to your finger. Once again, these are converted completely straight, and aren't that interesting.
Rough-skinned newts have poisonous skins, making having them for dinner a dubious prospect. Wear gloves when handling.
Poisonous frogs also have unpleasant effects to touch. Wear gloves. Hell, wear a whole body suit in the jungle. It's safer that way, even if it will make the heat even more stifling.
Neotropical toads are also pretty boring. Man, this has been a waste of time and a half. Next!
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 4/8
TSR Product line previews: Oh dear oh dear. 9 full pages of release schedules for the year. All of which is now late or cancelled. You really shouldn't have. No, really, you shouldn't have. It would make you look less of a mess if you'd bumped this entirely and pulled out a couple of extra articles from the slush pile instead. Now exactly how far you've let things slide is on full show to the world. Well, I suppose it's valuable for us anyway, and it means that despite any future attempts at whitewashing we can point at this and say yes, they were planning such and such products. Still, even if the takeover hadn't happened, this would be promotional filler that wouldn't particularly please me. It isn't a very comfortable feeling reading through this section.
Game wizards: Another outdated promotional article here. Coming this summer - Alternity! 4 years after their last attempt, here's another shot at creating a new system for sci-fi gaming. This time, they're staying rather closer to the AD&D system than previous attempts, although they are introducing a universal resolution mechanic and a setting that hits all the modern storygaming cliches. Gah. They're being trend followers instead of trendsetters again aren't they. :( As with the 5th age stuff, I am left with a tremendous sense of cynicism about this new endeavour, albeit for different reasons. Wheras that felt like them trying to revive a property that still had some support, just not the right kind by wild experimentation, this feels like trying to follow the market rather than genuine creativity. And neither of these extremes is going to work out particularly well. Plus of course there's the fact that they've now missed their deadline. This once again reminds us how messy things have got around here. I look forward to seeing how they revise their plans and change things around in upcoming issues.
I'm a what?: Don't tell me we haven't already had an article expanding on Reincarnation?! Apparently not, aside from a few bits in last year's indian articles. And like Infravision and Alignment Tongues, it's been in the game from the start, and is perfect for a good examining. So I'm rather happy to see this. Figuring out what they can do in their new form, what prospects for advancement they have, and what obstacles they'll face is something many DM's wouldn't mind a little help upon. It is a little conservative on strength scores, but we know they won't fix the game's scaling until next edition. It also reinforces that this kind of death is still a fairly substantial blow, and the things you lose from being stuck in an animal form will probably outweigh the benefits. Still, plentiful reincarnation seems considerably less game-breaking than straight resurrection. I'm going to rate this one at slightly above average.
Campaign classics: An article on dogs, and an article on dog-people? Shoulda got a few more, and made a whole themed issue on canine stuff in general. Oh well, this is pretty great anyway. Bruce Heard revisits our old favourites, the lupins. And gives us more detail on them in a way that is both very interesting, and more than a little silly. Lupin versions of the dozens of real world dog breeds, complete with variant ability modifiers, level limits and racial abilities. Although it can't go into as much detail on each one, there's actually more options here than there are in the entire complete book of humanoids. You could easily make a whole party from these guys - in fact, if you wanted to do dogtanian & the three muskethounds, you could run a dog-people only campaign and have no trouble differentiating characters from all around the world by using the different breeds. Indeed, many of the special abilities specialised breeds get are very distinctive and idiosyncratic, far exceeding ordinary races in the way they distinguish themselves from one-another. Bruce has always been good at packing tons of information into a small package, and here he's really surpassed himself, with an article that's more useful than many full books, and would be a definite classic if anyone was still paying attention during this mess. This is one instance where I really wish Mystara hadn't died. The Realms needs competition like this to keep it sharp and adventurous.
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 5/8
Network news: Double promotional fail here this month. Not only is this promotional article for Winter Fantasy coming out long after it should have happened, but the convention itself actually got cancelled, as they note in a footnote. This of course means all the tournament games, particularly the multi-parters that were supposed to tell an ongoing story, have been thrown into disarray. This hurts their plans for Dragonlance: the 5th age the most, as after all, the system was on shaky ground right from the start, and having the company drop out underneath it certainly can't have helped persuading people to buy it. But really, everyone's a loser here. It goes to show how important TSR still was despite their accumulated debts, that their fall had immediate knock-on effects upon the rest of the roleplaying industry. Another thing I suspect I'll be seeing more of in the next few issues.
The triviathlon finally gets answers. Nice to see the new management hasn't forgotten about little things like this in the chaos.
Sage advice: I don't care how much you apologize. Skip ain't comin' back. Skip's enjoyin' skip's independence. Skip is still much in demand. There aint no way in hell skip is workin for she who must not be named again. What's that you say. She's gone for good? And you'll pay Skip better rates? Weeeeeeeeeeeell, ok then. What are you waiting for. Send in the clients.
Can you cast a flame strike sideways (no. It can't go through ceilings either.)
When you dispel magic, do you roll once, or per effect affected ( Once would be quicker, but for some reason, most people haven't realized that. )
Is casting animate dead inherently evil. (fraid so. Gods get squeamish about dead bodies wandering around too, and they will judge you for doing it, even if you don't actually do anything evil with the undead. )
What spells can pass through walls of force. (Anything that tries to go through rather than around it. Apart from illusions. They're fine)
Do walls of force stop infravision and divination spells (no, and usually)
If a wall of force's edge is infinitely thin, can you use it to cut stuff (No. Cut out the rules lawyering. You could hurt yourself, son. Leave it to the professionals. )
What happens when you turn a paladin. Why can't you turn clerics. (Same thing that happens to undead. They run off and cower somewhere. Clerics can't be turned because they're not as intrinsically holy. Sometimes too much faith can be a bad thing.
Can paladins and rangers cast from the All sphere. (no. The All is for all clerics, not everyone. Some alls are more all'ey than others. )
Do multi-classed clerics have to abide by their armour restrictions (yes. Their god will not give them a pass if they claim multiple commitments. )
Can you backstab, and then activate an item to become invisible again instantaneously (no. You've already used up your standard action for that round. )
Can you parry a two-handed sword with a rapier (sure. Abstract combat system, remember)
Can wild mages become dual-classed characters. (Skip recommends not. It can get messy. Skip specifically forbids wild mages/chronomancers, as that messed up the universe something fierce.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: No surprise that like last time, their holding pattern has resulted in a tried and tested topic being dug up for another go in this department. Magical bows and arrows. The last time they got specials on them was in 87 and 88, so I think this is probably about due, unlike the Armor ones just before the break. Let's see if any of the ideas are new.
Arachne arrows work as a high quality grappling hook. As usual, they're one use, so save them for when you really really need them.
Arrows of billaro wrap the person hit up with great brutality. Always a useful trick. Again, one use, so make sure you need it.
The arrow of endless archery gives you exactly that as long as it stays in it's quiver. It even has a failsafe to make sure you don't waste it accidentally. Very handy.
Arrows of pyros obviously add a load of fire damage to the hit. Some of them also provide an AoE fireball effect. Make sure you don't shoot them into melee with your friends, as usual.
An arrow of the thunderst(r?)ike go boom when they hit, providing an AoE hit. Another thing we saw a variant upon very recently.
Arrows of withering aren't permanently crippling like I'd hoped, just another one that inflicts tons of themed damage. Well, it keeps spellcasters from totally dominating the artillery role.
Diamond tipped arrows hurt a lot, but are very expensive. Unusually for magic arrows, they're sometimes reusable if you can recover them. Good luck with that.
Ruby-tipped arrows teleport the person hit home. This can of course be useful whether you target friends or foes, and definitely deserves thinking about before use. Very interesting idea I'd like to see used cleverly in a book.
Emerald-tipped arrows are another explosive hit triggered AoE attack. Really, they could come up with endless variants on this by putting different spells into the equation.
Gnimshan oil lets you enhance rather more arrows with burning death. Honestly, have these people never heard of mundane flaming oil? That'd be cheaper and almost as effective.
The bow of Ehlonna has the best aspects of several bow types, plus a few more benefits. Not very impressive, but just generally useful.
Duell's iron bow folds up into a tiny size for easy carrying. Another trick that can be applied to nearly any item type, and I think already has. This is one I can't work up much enthusiasm for.
KotDT suffer from overattachment to their characters. Dragonmirth makes another Marilyn Monroe joke in quick succession. Swordplay starts playing a game within the game. A whole host of crossovers make cameos in Floyd. Growf.
Rifts has a checklist of their release schedule for that year. How many of these were late as well? :D
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 7/8
Role-playing reviews: Dragonlance: the fifth age sees Rick think that diceless gaming is the wave of the future. Haha. Nice idea bro. Well, freeform gaming probably outnumbers all roleplaying games put together, but I'm sure most people would say that doesn't count. In any case, he certainly thinks it deserves more credit than it got, with both presentation and writing being top-notch, and the system pretty easy to understand. Just another victim of circumstance, another twist of fate.
Necromunda is another Games Workshop gateway drug, taking the warhammer 40k rules, simplifying them a little, and giving you a pretty cityscape for your minis to fight in. Rick finds this both amusing and impressive. His main complaints are that it can sometimes be tricky to calculate line-of sight, and that the board is large and takes so long to put together that assembling it for every game or storing it between them would be pains. Get a bigger house. :p
Blood dawn tries to bring white wolf style pretentiousness to postapocalyptic cyberpunk. Once again, the base system is simple, but combat fills things up with a ton of conditional modifiers of the sort that makes rick yawn, and the setting needs a few supplements to fill things out. Same old story. These things need a while to get going, that they might not get due to the buying public's fickleness.
TSR Previews: One of the bits rendered most laughable by the hiatus. I'm sure this is not only out of date, but pretty inaccurate, Nevertheless, I shall handle February and Marsh (sic) as they appear here. This means this is going to be a big one, but hopefully repetitions as we find out where things actually got delayed to in future issues will keep the overall bloat from being too great.
February sees the Forgotten Realms move up to show Birthright how it's done, with a full 4 books. Three of these are novels. That department really is getting too big for it's boots. Errand of Mercy is well into another series I've never seen before. The double diamond triangle saga book 4? Right. Would it be so hard to give the magazine another page so we can actually see everything you release? On the other hand, we know exactly where Elminster in Myth Drannor comes from. Filling more backstory and tying into the recent themed adventures, Ed gets to kill two birds with one stone. Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak cross over with planescape in Finder's Bane. Someone's trying to bring Bane back to life. We've gotta stop them! Unfortunately, this is another case where good isn't going to win. You may succeed this time, but he'll be back come 4e. And our single lonesome game product is Four from Cormyr. 4 mini adventures. Hey, Isn't Azoun IV still dead? This is getting headache inducing again. The continuity is snarling up to the point where I certainly can't keep track of it.
Talking about Planescape, they get Faces of evil: The fiends. When you consider that they got a big boxed set focussing on them just half a year ago, I have to wonder if this will involve rehash.
Ravenloft ties in with it's recent modules, in Lord of the Necropolis by Gene DeWesse. Was all this part of another convoluted plan by Azalin to escape the demiplane? You're the biggest fish in a small pond. Learn to appreciate what you've got, and be a better person. Ceasing to be evil is the only true way to quit being a darklord, you pillock.
Birthright gets Hogunmark, another domain sourcebook. Want miserable weather and lots of druids in your domain. Come from here! Doesn't seem very inviting when you phrase it like that.
Having given beholders plenty of love, the Monstrous Arcana series decides it's second subject is to be the Sahuguin. The Sea Devils takes us under the water to see just how powerful and in control they are. Will the follow-up adventures let you put a dent in that?
And finally, it looks like they're starting a new Sci-fi book imprint, Fantastic Adventures. The first one is Tale of the Comet by Roland Green. Two alien forces, and earth is caught in the middle.
Onto March then. Once again, the forgotten realms is driven by it's novels, just like Dragonlance. Mortal Consequences by Clayton Emery finishes the Netheril Trilogy. This themed bit seems to be coming to an end. Where next for them? The Double Diamond Triangle saga (man, that's a mouthful) is up to 5 books. An Opportunity for Profit by Dave Gross. Pirate assassins see their plans go wrong. Can't say I'm surprised.
Dragonlance gets Heroes of Defiance. As far as I can tell this is a game supplement about roguish sorts, and their new place in the 5th age. I could be wrong, with the ad copy being both vague and pretentious. They also get The day of the Tempest by Jean Rabe. The superdragons are oppressing Ansalon. Can puny humans make any difference at all? Only if they stand together, and use the power of their hearts. Blergh. Changing the laws of physics has done little for their cheese quotient.
Ravenloft gets Domains of dread. Again, they are vague, but this looks like a new corebook, so they can enshrine all the metaplot changes of the last few years and force everyone to adopt them. Thanks for that, dudes.
Birthright's War by Simon Hawke gets a new printing. Probably going from hardback to paperback or something. I wish they'd say.
The Odyssey line gets Tale of the comet, presumably tying in with the recent book. Magic vs Sci-fi. Been a while since they let that into their D&D.
And Dragon Dice get their 5th "kicker pack" Who came up with that name anyway? Frostwings seems to involve some spooky vaguely draconic humanoids. Which side are they on, or will they just kill everyone.
Dragon Magazine Issue 237: Mid 1997
part 8/8
The current Clack: No surprise that this column is also very out of date and laughable in light of events. TSR experiencing substantial growth over the year?! I don't think they were being entirely honest in their reporting. That or it's the old story of expanding profits, but new expenditures exceeding revenue, resulting in spiralling debts even as they technically succeed. Other companies have been suffering pretty badly as well. The blame is laid upon the distributors as much as the public. They've been taken in by the CCG craze, and are only carrying the biggest items, leaving the others to rot, which hurts diversity quite a bit. Once again I wonder what history would have turned out like if CCG's hadn't been invented, or didn't wind up appealing so strongly to the same demographic as RPG's. If they weren't competing for shelf space, might TSR have survived? In any case, it would have been someone else than WotC that bought them if they'd still killed themselves through poor management and 3e would have been a very different beast. So I think this proves that you can't believe everything you read here, and that the explosion of CCG's did make a real difference to the RPG market. Very worth noting indeed.
I don't think it'll surprise you to hear that this issue is an absolute mess, with huge amounts of the articles stuck in different time zones, and the whole thing having the air of someone who's just woken up after being knocked out and trying to stagger their way home on automatic. That said, it still has two absolutely brilliant articles, and it's fair share of ok ones, so it doesn't feel wasted either. They've still got plenty of people sending in material, some of it quite good, and a fully built up infrastructure. They're not in a bad position to make a recovery, unlike far too many companies. Let's see how they pull it off.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. Our second issue after the changeover, and things still look pretty much the same. The perspective on that dragon looks a bit awkward though. Not sure exactly where they're supposed to sit, and no way will that lance reach ahead of it's neck to actually be useful. I guess Dragonlance might have moved on from the actual lance thing, but people still haven't learnt from it's mistakes. Let's see if WotC is starting to learn from the mistakes of it's predecessor yet.
In this issue:
Even before the editorial, we have an updated product list for the rest of the year. It fits everything in in just 2 pages as well. When you contrast that with the 9 pages of cruft they had last issue, that looks like a huge improvement. They're already getting their acts together and hopefully cutting waste, which is a positive sign.
The Wyrm's turn: Dave Gross finally gets the hang of this telling stories from his past gaming experiences thing and making it entertaining. This is helped by the fact that he's picked the most insane parts of his youthful experiences, including cameos by the smurfs and the dread disco dragon. This kind of experience must be pretty much universal with first generation gamers, particularly ones that started young and made it up as they went along with their first group. And like most people, they eventually decided that was enough silliness, it's time to get Serious. It's pretty obvious that this editorial was originally intended for their april issue, one of the most anticipated (or dreaded) months of the year. But heaven knows we could do with a little levity about now, so they're bringing a good chunk of their joke articles over, and trying to get the right balance between comedy and serious ones. A development I have no problem with at all. Still, the real test of the new management will be seeing how they handle april next year, when they've had time to start writing their own material.
D-Mail is still stuck in last year, and being mainly positive. Actually it seems very strange that the proportion of positive letters would increase as the sales dropped. Are the editors being selective to make themselves look better, or is the removal of casuals leaving only hardcore fanboys, creating an echo chamber effect that leaves them out of touch with reality. Either way, it makes it even harder for them to figure out how to genuinely improve the magazine. But anyway.
We start with some nitpicking about Forgotten Realms dating. Like a long-running soap opera, even the official writers can't keep continuity straight anymore. Fortunately, they have a 4th wall breaking excuse to help them out. Elminster may have mastered 9th level spells, but his handwriting still sucks. :p
A letter from someone who thinks the magazine has improved quite a bit over the last year. Congratulations, at least you're winning some people back.
A complaint about them publishing articles that are basically just bits from recent supplements. The article you're specifically calling out wasn't one of those actually, but the basic point is valid. It is something that lowers the value of the magazine if they do it regularly.
A generally positive letter from someone who would like to see elves maintain their dominant position in the magazine. I think that's another fairly safe bet, given the number of freelancers that also enjoy writing about them.
A letter from someone who wants the dragons in Wyrms of the North more codified mechanically. But then DM's won't be so able to change things around for their game. Once again it's the Realms in particular that's being strangled by canon.
Yet another letter from someone who wants more Wyrms of the north and Wizards Three. The vote is in and the ayes win. Ed'd better keep cranking then. I hope he's getting well paid for all this.
Mommy dearest: Bwahahahaha! This is an old school comedy article and a half. We haven't had a cheesy new class for April since back in the 1e days. And since this isn't april, I guess we still haven't. :p So here's the Mother Class. In classic style, it has branching advancement paths, going to Grandmother, and then giving you the choice of Great-Grandmother or Fairy Godmother at really high level. Their abilities are pretty much what you would expect. Kissing it better, sending you to your room, mastery of gossip, always being able to find something wrong in what you're doing. Anyone of the politically correct ilk will not find this funny. Me? I find more issue with the fact that the granted powers show up really unevenly, with huge amounts at 9th and 16th level, and tons of dead levels inbetween. Is that what you call a fair way to build a class dear? I don't think so. Go back upstairs and don't come down again until you've sorted yourself out. ;)
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 2/8
Villains, like fine wine: Or let's make having characters who are centuries old actually mean something. What have they accumulated over the years? Is there a particular era they've got stuck in in terms of morals or fashion. How does that affect their behaviour. What unorthodox tricks have they developed with their abilities over the years? What goals do they pursue, and how do they stave off the boredom and ennui of the years pressing down upon them? It's a complicated question, but the answers are generally pretty similar to those already given for dragons in recent birthday issues. To believably live that long, they need to have plenty of contingencies set up, contacts all over the place with favours owing or owed, and vintage gear that they'll be very annoyed if you break. This means work building the character, and making sure they don't go down like punks in their first encounter with the PC's, wasting all that effort. So this is a more general application of a principle we've seen used before for a specific case. Normally it's the other way round, but either keeps things from getting too tediously rehashed. You can have plenty of fun doing this, so it's not bad to be reminded of it.
Bard on the run: Obviously april is long come and gone. But the filks must be heard! This time they name not only the artists they're parodying, but also the specific songs, which makes things much easier for me, as I can just go to youtube and find out exactly what tunes they're meant to be sung too. In any case, here's a full 8 songs, including a full length parody of American Pie about the loss of magic and discovery of Sorcery in Dragonlance, plus songs for both sides of the blood war. It's actually a pretty good collection, and I have no objection to the presentation this time around either. So I think they've actually improved on things this time around, even if the songs still aren't very up to date. Well, I guess they've had extra time to think about exactly how they want to run this.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Buh. Once again they do a close recycle of a very recent theme indeed. Their editorial control is really going out the window. Villainous items that'll be rather inconvenient for PC's to profit from (unless they read issue 215) Ok, the undead focus has been removed this time, but it still turned up just 4 issues ago. It's almost like their writers are echoing each other. Buh and buh again.
Betrayers shrouds let you mindfuck people into doing nasty stuff to other people. This is obviously easer if they're already naturally inclined that way.
Black crystal balls put a dreadful slant on all the news they deliver. Just like real TV then. :p This has a corruptive effect over time, which means you'll become paranoid and preemptively treacherous. Just a normal day at the TSR office.
Chains of command are a bad pun with an obvious effect. Wrap someone up, they obey. Simple, handy and eyeroll-inducing.
Darkfire lanthorns burn the fat of innocents, and shed light or darkness at your whim. Neither are very pleasant for enemies caught in them.
Bloodbane inflicts a slow unpleasant death by destroying all your blood. Perfect for suiciding if you think you're about to be vampire chow then. :D See, these things can be useful for good guys too.
Gravebringers suck the lifeforce of everyone around you to make you into a near unstoppable juggernaut of destruction. As usual with AoE stuff, this will not make you popular with your friends. Still, singlehanded army slaughtering definitely has it's perks.
Brightstar daggers make you incredibly powerful for a very limited time, then kill you. Obviously only for those who want to die, or care nothing for their minions. Very cool idea though. This is a trick you see quite a bit in media, but not so much in gaming.
Enchanter's knives let you transfer the Con loss from making magic items to some other sucker. Given how annoying that is, this will be pretty tempting even to good characters.
Ebony helms are another highly ingenious trick. You think you're getting a badass skull mask. Really, you're signing away your independence to an evil wizard. Not cool at all.
Honeydrops make you susceptible to mindfucking. Mmmm, sweet sweet mindfucking. Still, booze would probably be cheaper and almost as effective.
Iron Maiden's Plate gives you a quick spiky death if you put it on. Yet another Sucker! item with no use other than leaving in treasure hoards as a trap.
A Shield of the faithless is useful for bad guys, cursed for good guys, but still a lot broader in it's applicability than the one religion shields from a little while ago. Another near direct recycle then.
Staves of bones multiply your undead creating powers 10 fold. Finally, undead armies you don't have to spend months painstakingly digging up and animating a few a night! Another one certain adventurers will find very tempting.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997[/u]
part 3/8
Gangsters of the underdark: Okay, here we go again with the belated april fools material, in a direct follow-up to last year's article of the same name. Get ready for real world and literary references aplenty, many of which I won't get, and some absolutely terrible puns.
Da Pen takes the godfather references to a new level of cheesiness, with a Marlon Brando Aboleth and sufficient metaness to make me groan repeatedly, including a deadline joke that seems very ironic given what's happened to the magazine this year. If these are about getting a reaction, this one is definitely a success so far.
"Tommy Gun" Tortello once again makes me go WTF with his mishmash of pop culture jokes, and attempts to lampshade how they could be combined into one character and make sense within the setting. You really don't want to spend time with him, for death by exposition is a terrible way to go.
Master Furli is an amalgamation of comical sidekick traits which once again, feels like they're trying to pack as many references as they can into a character that would die exceedingly quickly if the forces of drama weren't on their side. Really, his only purpose is to serve as a stalking horse, and make even sir Elliot of Kness facepalm on a regular basis. Go go gadget cravat. :-/
Vanyard " The Fox" on the other hand is instantly recognisable to me. It's an X-files reference! And oh dear, the lengths they go to make a truth is out there pun is quite considerable. Other than that, he's actually a pretty straight conversion. Course, that in itself makes things all the sillier in a regular D&D campaign.
Danna the Skull makes things completely obvious, as if they weren't already. The doctor thing becomes study as a necromancer, and there's another terrible pun worked in with great aplomb. And to top it all off, they even manage to weave Elminster into their web of conspiracy. This has certainly been one of the most elaborately set-up joke articles they've managed, especially when combined with last year.
The return of the wizards three: It's been rather longer than they'd hoped since the plane-hopping wizards last got to meet up. Things haven't gone very well for Krynn or Oerth. In fact, since Krynn lost it's magic system, Dalamar can't even get here, and the others are not inclined to risk their hides going to look for him. In the face of metaplot, even the gods themselves can wind up going out like punks. What odds a mere archmage? Still, El has a solution to prevent this column undergoing an awkward name change. He's been training up an apprentice for just this kind of eventuality. Say hello to Rauthene, a rather promising protege. (although I suspect their reasons for focussing on her are not entirely due to her natural magical talent. ) She'll get to be the butt of the jokes (which is where all that ice-cream is likely to go ) in quite a different way to Dal. The lechery content is way up in this one, as is the metaness. Both the 4th wall and the censors need reinforcing. Ed really does have a dirty mind. I wonder if we'll see any more of that under the new management.
Spell Echo lets you engage in magical forensics finding out what's been cast in the area recently, and possibly get some hints as to how to cast it yourself. That ought to be worth a decent bonus on your spell research rolls, and short circuit lots of mystery plots.
Scourge of Stars gives you a magical whip that gives you the hit points it drains from others. It lasts longer than vampiric touch, but doesn't hurt as much per hit. Seems pretty decent. Ed is building us up a nice collection of spells that make magic weapons over the years.
Firedart, on the other hand is one of those spells that's higher level than fireball, but also weaker. Another blah bit of blastage.
Turnblade lets you turn a weapon into any other weapon. Just the thing for multiclass wizards and anyone who wants to deal with inconvenient undead.
Backshift lets you screw up people's shapeshifting abilities in a rather amusing manner. Just the thing to deal with a Dragon that's been playing you for fools for a whole campaign and has recently decided to reveal itself and finish you.
Mystra's Unravelling is a close relation of Mordenkainen's disjunction, only Toril themed. It'll still permanently depower most magic items in it's AoE, so this is very much the D&D equivalent of the nuclear option. Another reason why archmages are scary things that other classes can't even touch if they do it right.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 4/8
Wyrms of the north: Ed is pretty whimsical most of the time anyway. But it seems like his second contribution this month was intended as an april fools one as well. A happy go lucky dragon who constantly crashes into things when flying, and treats evil creatures as a game to be played with, humiliating them, but never taking them seriously or killing them, and has insane amounts of lucky co-incidence insuring things work out for him. Like Master Furli from the gangsters article, I can trace the cartoon antecedents of this character with great ease and pity anyone who encounters him. If he's on your side, it'll be excruciating, and if he's an enemy it will be doubly so. Stuff like this makes Elminster look better by comparison, as at least he knows when he's irritating people, does it on purpose, and has the sense to get sensible when it's needed. The new spells give new uses for teleportation that also have extensive comical applications, particularly Frame Teleport, which makes for serious oh shit moments when he extends the duration and poses as a stuffed Dragon head. So this is one of those instances where Ed is simultaneously brilliant and incredibly annoying, and I'm not sure which to give more weight too. I guess your milage will probably vary. Still, he certainly remains interesting.
Frequently asked questions: But not many answers, it seems. They might be assuring us that they're aware of our concerns in light of the takeover, but they're still being very cagey indeed on their decisions. The main thing we can draw from this is that they're definitely going to go where the money is, dropping anything that isn't profitable, and keeping the gamelines that are. Any vanity projects by the old company are fucked. They probably will introduce a new edition at some point, but they would have done that anyway, and they certainly don't want to rush into it and alienate people. This isn't satisfying at all, but at least tells us things are likely to be more sensible from here on out. Whether that's a good thing or not, is very much a matter of opinion.
Bookwyrms: The widowmaker by Mike Resnick showcases another thing that's different about this than the proper reviews. They do a lot more books that are in a continuing series. In this case it's the story of a terminally ill gunslinger and his younger healthier clone that's being used to fund his survival. This allows you to fit plenty of questions about ethics and identity into the action, which sounds like it makes for good sci-fi.
Orion among the stars by Ben Bova sees them pull a bit of nepotism for the magazine's new contributor and recommend his latest book. This time, it's enough with the real world history and into the far future for some epic interstellar war. Once again, I don't really have a complaint about the book, just the fact that this seems rather obvious in light of recent events.
3001: the final odyssey by Arthur C Clarke sees the editing go out of the window as the 1's are replaced with 7's not just once but 3 times. WTF man? More dawizard to your credibility, methinks. Anyway, we finally get a few more answers as to what the hell this was about, presuming you can get through the pacing, which if anything is even more ponderous than the first one. I think we may have to differ in opinions on this one.
Nightlamp by Jack Vance once again takes us to unusual worlds and cultures, and gives us heroes who go against them, at a rather faster pace than Mr Clarke. Again, this seems like such an obvious choice that I'm not sure why they need to recommend it. Actually, looking at wikipedia, it does seem that many of his books have had small runs and gone out of print over the years, so he might not be a rich as we'd expect from an author this big. Hmm. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.
Desperation by Stephen King seems to have a lot of familiar elements too, drawn directly from his own life. Another tale of small town horror against a mysterious supernatural being. Course, he's very good at writing this stuff, so that just means it's a safe buy if you like this stuff.
The regulators by Richard Bachman is one worthy of note, because this is a psudonym of Stephen King, and the two books are strongly linked thematically, showing us the same characters, confronting the same adversary in two rather different parallel realities. That's interesting as both writing and a marketing trick. I approve.
The sandman: book of dreams, edited by by Neil Gaiman & Ed Kramer is a short fiction anthology set in the world of the comics. This proves that the art is not essential to making good stories here, and they manage to be both good and quite varied. Neil isn't bad as a critic either it seems.
Lord of the Isles by David Drake is a little less predictable, as the sci-fi author tries his hand at a fantasy doorstopper. Obviously the writer considers it a success, otherwise it wouldn't be appearing in this column.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is another no-brainer recommendation, especially as they just mentioned another book by him just a moment ago. This just feels like playing it safe to a ridiculous level. Who do they think is reading this? We are quite capable of doing a little follow-up investigation of our own, especially now we have access to the internet.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 5/8
Fiction: Nothing but trouble by Ed Greenwood. A third contribution by Ed this month. Well, if they're having to make some hard choices which articles to keep, and which to drop from their 6 month hiatus, it's certainly not going to be Ed's. And if they're short of contributors because people are pissed off they haven't been answering mail for ages, I'm pretty sure he has enough spare material to make up the deficit, so he wins either way. Actually, I don't think he's done completely system-free fiction in the magazine before, so this shows him once again showing off his flexibility. And also his dirty mind, because this story is so filled with innuendo and dirty humour (and full-on genderswitching, just to underscore what a filthy bugger Elminster is) as to make many a young geek blush. They may not have officially repealed the TSR code of conduct yet, but he's already getting away with rather more than he could under the old regime. Which amuses me no end. Also pleasing is that we finally get to meet Mirt the Moneylender, who's been mentioned casually before, but not really filled in as a character. And he certainly distinguishes himself from Elminster nicely, being competent and quick-witted, but certainly not godlike or immune to the ravages of time and chance. In fact, he makes for a rather more interesting protagonist. So this definitely helps me fill in a little more knowledge of the Realms, and makes it clear Ed's not going anywhere soon. In fact, he might be even more entertaining now. Mwa ha, muahaha!
The dragon's bestiary: Sewers! For the first time in over 2 years, we have a monster topic that isn't rehashed! One I'm surprised we haven't seen before too, given that they make another good excuse for interesting and distinctive dungeon environments. This seems rather promising.
Necromantic sludge is what happens when wizards keep on performing alchemical experiments and just dumping the remains. It may well develop intelligence and start oozing around making a pest of itself. No good deed goes unpunished.
Plague moths are another magical experiment that backfired. Instead of a poison, they produce the effects of some random potion when they bite you. Course, since they come in large groups, that means the miscibility table becomes an issue. What an ingenious idea. You could definitely profit from these little guys, but it would be a painful process requiring lots of suffering and careful sorting of captured moths. I strongly approve.
Albino Crocodiles are your basic urban legend fuel. Years of being exposed to magical goop does not make them easier to beat. Another neat little encounter idea.
Water cats are not only good swimmers, but intelligent and with a very special poisonous bite that can provide an excuse for another classic sewer trope, the clan of mutants lurking beneath the city. They can simultaneously save your life and ruin it. How's that for fun.
Lich's blood is another form of malfunctioning magical goop. It eats your magic, so spells will be useless against it. A decent end to a nicely themed collection that are perfectly designed to be weaved together into a single adventure.
Forum pulls itself together as they try and ease back into a regular routine again. There is something different though. Hmm, what is it? It's a lot bigger than it's been for a year for a start. Oh, oh, oh! They now have headers on the letters, for the tl:dr amongst you. That is interesting. Not a bad idea, really.
Peter Johansson backs up the people who say spellbooks should be pretty hefty. In case you'd forgotten during the interim. And again I yawn.
Kevin McMahon puts a very specific slant on the low magic issue by bringing up resurrection. Of all magics, this is one that changes people's behaviour the most. When you have life insurance that really means something, it really affects how you play your character, often for the worse. Ban it, make death regain it's sting.
Amber Decker also supports lower magic than the average D&D world. The 5th age stuff has particularly regained it's mystery with the recent changes.
LT Bruce F. Beyers wants the cavalier back as a full class in itself. The 2e kit is ridiculously nerfed! Nostalgia does silly things. I wonder if anyone's going to deconstruct you.
Chuck Moffat shares his multiple specialisation rules with us. Players really fear Driz'zt under these house rules. And his own drow fighter/mage/thief with exploding cigars. He's obviously heavily inclined towards the cheese side.
Daniel Bishop disagrees with Dale. PC's and NPC's ought to operate under the same physics, even if they don't have the same abilities, and there ought to be an IC rationale for why they can make exceptions to the game rules. Because is not a reason in itself.
John Cudmore gives his reasoning for why high and grey elves have the names and behaviour they do. Semantics, like statistics, can make the same thing appear to be many things, all perfectly plausible to the casual observer.
Alexander Fontenot tries to defend dual classing. The first reason, that of powerful subclass combinations is reasonable, the rest doesn't hold up so well. A lot of us get pretty good at multiple things in our so-called short lifespans, often simultaneously.
Paul A Schreiber brings back the parrying problem. Weapon sizes ought to play into it significantly, but skill is still the primary determiner. This one still needs a little refinement.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 6/8
Sage advice also seems to be in a time warp from april this month. How silly is that.
Define spasmed, shocked and scorched. ( Oh yeah, we have formal game effects for each of those words now. Isn't that useful. We must remember to keep those for the next edition. )
Where does righteous wrath of the faithful transport allies too. Which sphere is it really in? (it transports them emotionally, maaaaaaan. Skip thinks it fits better in combat than war. )
What happens if a lupin becomes a werewolf. (much emoness. They have become the thing they hate the most, and will do anything they can to be rid of the curse. )
My druid kept summoning fire elementals in the hope of getting an efreeti, and then wishing his ability scores up until they were all level 25. Is this allowed. (Technically, but lets look at the math. You've only got a 4% chance per casting, which means if you're 16+ level and fill all your slots, you still only get a an average of 0.24 efreeti per day. Plus it takes 10 wishes to raise your scores after 18, and 20 for each point above 20. It'll take years to do this even if you're lucky. And if you're not, who knows what tricks the efreet might pull for this kind of indignity. This is a great plot opportunity for you to screw him over.)
Are bracers of defense armour or not (no, but you should still punish attempts to twink due to that fact. Skip keeps old skool antagonism alive, just for you.)
Can you have a sepia snake sigil tattoo (no)
Can you repair an apparatus of kawalish (yes, but a regular blacksmith wouldn't have a clue how. )
Does an enchanted shield count as a magic weapon if you bash with it (Hmm. Skip will say yes, but gives individual GM's full freedom to say no.)
I have my own interpretation of how frisky chest works (Excuse me?! Are you The Sage? No. Skip is The Sage. You ask the questions. Skip answers them. Of all the nerve. Kids these days. No respect.)
Shove 29 tiny marshmallows up your nose and try and sneeze them out (man what. And Skip thought Skip was cracking up under the pressure of She who must not be named's rule. Skip can't be bothered with this. )
What happens if the character is smarter than the player. (let them make ability checks to solve problems they can't)
What happens if you drink sovereign glue (Hmm. Let's try it, shall we. Glug, peh, peh, peh. Morf morf gnorf schplorf. Schnorplf hgnorplf ooooruuuugh! )
Does cure disease prevent you from developing resistance to diseases (probably. This is why overreliance on magic is bad for the fibre. Makes you soft.)
Can you lay on hands if your hands are cut off (yes. Just use the stumps. )
If hit points are abstract getting better at fighting, rather than being able to actually sustain more damage, why don't healing spells restore more to high level characters ( Because we didn't think it through at the time. It was 1979. We were more concerned with our hairstyles and funky disco moves than engaging our brains.)
Can you use shocking grasp as a defibrilator (no)
The dragon's bestiary II: A second bestiary this month? Dear oh dear. In the chaos and uncertainty, they're retreating, relying heavily on proven topics. In this case, it's back to the undead to add a couple new varieties of Mummy.
Bog Mummies, unsurprisingly, are from peaty places like oierland. They aren't diseased, but their waterlogged nature makes them a bitch to deal with. Another thing with an annoying tendency towards advancing relentlessly.
Ice Mummies bring the south american preservation to the party. Unsurprisingly, they then ruin said party. They too are pretty predictable really. This is nowhere near as good as the other bestiary entry.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 7/8
Rogues Gallery: Silent Sheehan is our only character this month, a grave-robbing dwarf sucked into Ravenloft and given a snake's tongue for his incessant lying. This has slowed him down a little bit, since Ravenloft peasants tend to be superstitious and take weird stuff like that seriously. He definitely seems like he might be useful as an antagonist or uneasy ally, and could develop (or degenerate) with the party as a campaign went on. Obviously it doesn't work so well in another campaign world, but this definitely has potential, and works quite nicely thematically. I think I approve.
Dungeon Mastery: Some 5th age stuff in this column, as we get advice on building an intrigue focussed campaign. Actually, it's system free, and the 5th age stuff is merely used as an example, which is one of the better compromises they can do to keep it's profile up in the magazine without getting in the way. And the advice is quite solid, while the example is very amusing. A scheming spoiled teenage princess as the main villain. Who'd suspect that when you aren't playing in a high school drama? :p I like this. I didn't think I would at first, and it is a bit more long-winded than I'd prefer, but it's still quite an enjoyable read once I got into it. And it also shows that the 5th age game's different mechanical focus means it might be better suited to this than D&D. Which does help us justify buying it as well, so this does it's job.
KotDT has an aesop's fable to deliver to everyone out there in readerland. Dragonmirth has some ridiculous weaponry. Swordplay are actually working together properly for a change. Floyd is about to face an empire of tiefling bunnies. Er, maybe.
Role-playing reviews: Back to Sci-fi again. Seems it's doing better than it has the last few years. Or maybe it's just doing better by comparison, given that D&D, Runequest and Rolemaster are all undergoing difficulties at the moment. Well, at least there's no shortage of games to choose. Buy now, because you never know when they might disappear again.
Traveller 4th edition tries to take things back to basics after the fragmentation of megatraveller and the new era. Character generation is mostly the same as ever, and the setting information in the corebook has been stripped back considerably, while taking us to after the war. So really, if you like it, this would be a good time to try and get new people interested.
Fading suns seems to be an attempt to apply the White Wolf aesthetic to far future sci-fi. Civilisation is in decline, resources are running out, and everyone is dooooooomed. Eventually. In the meantime, the stage is set for a rich and atmospheric universe for you to explore, and plenty of adversaries both internal and external for you to face. It all seems ready for a good long line of supplements filling things in, such as Byzantium Secundus, which gives us plenty of extra detail on the history and politics of the central worlds. And since it managed 7 years, 34 sourcebooks, plus d20 and LARP conversions before going on hiatus, I think this counts as a reasonable success.
Gatecrasher 2nd edition goes completely the opposite direction, converting the rules to FUDGE, and filling the setting with kitchen sink zaniness of the highest order. That's not to say it isn't highly playable, with plenty of the elements having potential to be quite scary if played straight. After all, transdimensional chaos means never knowing for sure what the rules are, which gets very stressful if you have to live through it the whole time.
Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Yup, as I thought last month, there have been lots of delays. Although we've updated to July, August, September and October this month, much of the stuff mentioned is a repeat of last time. So I shall skim that, and only go into more detail on the new stuff.
July repeats Finder's bane, Lord Soth, Planar Powers, and Tale of the Comet. (the novel)
August repeats Heroes of Defiance, The Day of the Tempest, The sea devils, Tale of the comet ( the sourcebook) Domains of Dread, The falcon and the wolf and Vinas Solamnus. There is some new stuff though.
The forgotten realms gets 4 books again. Powers and Pantheons. Isn't this like, the 3rd book on them. Just how many more secrets do they have to reveal. Lands of Intrigue gives us more info on Amn and Tethyr. If you want your adventures full of scheming and double dealing head there. We also get two sodding Drizzt novels. See what delays get you. Passage to Dawn by R. A. Salvadore and Shores of Dusk by Mark Anthony certainly sound like they belong to the same series. Guess his life is as eventful as ever.
There's also King of the Giantdowns for Birthright. A quite atmospheric sounding supplement. Isn't often you can manage much mystery in D&D, but this seems quite decent at it. Can you call on the buried giants in your hour of need, or will they ravage the country when their day comes.
September is mostly new stuff. It does, however rehash Faces of Evil, and War. Blaah. Onto the interesting bits.
Dragonlance gets the SAGA fate deck. Now you don't have to share if you want to play the 5th age game. If you just want to read, there's The Wayward Knights, number 7 in the Warriors series. The Tale of Sir Pirvan comes to a conclusion. Is it a happy one?
The Forgotten Realms is up to number 5 in the Nobles novels. Council of Blades by Paul Kidd. More swashbuckling action. No further info given.
The Sahuagin get their first tie-in adventure. Evil tide is the start of another trilogy. Living on the coast never seemed a less attractive option. This is why you need heroes to keep property prices from falling too far.
And Dragon Dice gets a strategy manual, following in Spellfire's footsteps. Now you can spend even more money on becoming optimal. The pokemon comparisons become increasingly apt around here.
October reschedules Lord of the Necropolis and Frostwings to then. Is that all of it, or will we have more schedule revisions detailed next month?
The Forgotten Realms finally gets a novel devoted to the Simbul. The Simbul's gift by Lynn Abbey. Once again, they are obviously relying on the name's selling power because they give no info on the plot at all.
Dragonlance gets Fistandantilus reborn by Doug Niles. You know, even if you bring him back, he'll have to start from scratch learning the new magic system. He won't be the great messiah you'd hoped for.
Planescape starts being really messed around. The Great Modron March is happening out of schedule! What the devil? Oh well, we're adventurers, lets go see what this is about.
And the wizard's spell compendium gets it's second volume. Yet more spells to make you so versatile you'll never lack for a trick to take down an enemy. Fear any player given free access to this.
The current clack, on the other hand, is still oblivious to the recent changes in schedule around here. Indeed, neither TSR or WotC get mentioned at all, the attention being on various other companies. As is often the case, the various licences are the most interesting part. Xena and Men in Black RPG's? Highly amusing. How did they wind up doing? Plus Indiana Jones and Star Wars are still doing nicely for themselves, and the Star Trek CCG has expansions for all the new shows and movies, which is the kind of thing that takes quite a bit of negotiating. I wonder how long they'll keep hold of the property. Also of interest is that they've finally released In Nomine, quite substantially altered from the French version. Another area where I'm quite curious. Why the redesign instead of a straight translation, and was it an improvement?
This issue is definitely better put together than the last issue, but there are still some fairly substantial problems. The tone is all over the place, with most of the articles playing it extra safe, but Ed is suddenly getting away with even more than he used too, which makes him stand out all the more. They've shown they're aware of the problems that led up to TSR's collapse, but still aren't sure what to do in response to them, which also comes off as a little wishy-washy. And they still aren't quite caught up on the schedule. Still, it made an interesting read precisely because of these problems, and leaves me rather optimistic for the immediate future. Just how much further will they have progressed by next month? I'll start finding out right away.
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 1/8
124 pages Another draconic close-up showing only the head and a bit of the wings on the cover. Give us the whole picture please, it looks more impressive when there's a real sense of scale. Plus if you miss things, it leaves you vulnerable to tricks from the hand you can't see. Which is this issues' theme again. Looks like we'll be getting a few more traps and diabolical schemes to make weak monsters scary and keep players on their toes. Will some of them be recycled? Previous issues and page references at the ready.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Ahh yes, illusionists pulling double fakeouts. There's a topic we've seen before. (issue 229) Dave Gross again gives his personal experience of this lovely bit of meanness. Plus the equally cruel trick of mixing gas spores and beholders, and having the big bad use extra tricks to make them more convincing. And the reaction to these kind of tricks is straight out of Knights of the Dinner Table. That's two entertaining editorials in a row. I think he might be getting better at this. In addition we see another sign that they're catching up with themselves here, as the staff list has changed again, with them losing an associate producer and changing their advertising guy. Ok, they're now a smaller team than they've been for quite some time, but I guess they don't have so much money. So this definitely shows them moving forward, while not losing touch with their past. I think that's a good sign.
D-Mail: Our first letter is from someone who missed the magazine, and is very pleased they're back. Guess the two issue lead in time continues to apply in this department, despite everything.
A letter praising their Dungeon Mastery article on incorporating more acting into your game. May this column long continue to flourish!
A letter from someone who thinks Dragon should cover other forms of gaming more. It's not as if we're a bunch of monomaniacs. And people will remember things better if there's more contrast.
In typical contrast, someone annoyed by Dragon Dice, because the same common monsters show up again and again, and there's not enough people to trade with in his area. The game isn't taking off the way they'd hoped, is it.
Another letter from someone who really liked the changes they made in the last year. They certainly seem to have no shortage of them writing in, despite everything that's happened.
Sneaky sea Devils: Sahuguin have never particularly been underdogs, with substantial scaling (fnarr) capabilities built in, plus spellcasting right from their original entry. But with their undersea environment, you have to think a little differently to come up with the best tactics and create the best possible technology with the resources available to them. Fortunately we have Skip on the job, and he's not only got enough to say on the subject to fill an entire book, but also has some leftovers for the magazine. So this is cut material, but pretty good cut material, that mostly stands alone, and goes into plenty of detail on each of the tactics they use, and how they work in context, given sahuguin's strengths and weaknesses. So they may be relying a little too much on staff writers, but since they're probably trying to get their submission flow back up and running, I can't complain too much, especially as long as the quality stays good. (which hasn't always been the case, as there have been issues where I've found the staff contributions to be the least interesting parts)
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 2/8
101 dirty orc tricks: Tuckers kobolds style advice hits double digits! And well into the triple digits in terms of specific tactics! What more can I say at this point? I really don't know, since we've been here so many times before. I'm definitely running out of ideas. So yeah. 101 ideas, some new, some old, some borrowed, all concisely presented and useful. Th-th-that's all I have to say folks.
Legend of the 5 rings. A teaser advert that is once again out of date. I guess they paid for it ages ago, and still have to fulfil their commitments. Not very satisfying for either side at this point, as who's benefiting from it?
Aurora's undermountain sale: Now this is kind of another tie-in article, but not nearly so blatant. After all, Aurora's whole realms catalogue was released a good 5 years ago now, so this isn't commercially motivated at all and more of a follow-up, showing that this still has quite a few fans for it's detailed and playful worldbuilding. So here's 16 more nonmagical items that would be rather handy for adventurers, just in case you still have a bit of room in your pockets. And if you don't, they have better backpacks for you to buy too, so you can carry more with less risk of doing your back in. Power creep! Hey, if magic improved in RPG's at the same rate as computers in real life, people would be complaining it's totally unfair and breaks the game in no time. So yeah, there are a few improvements on standard fantasy technology, but none that don't work in reality as well. It just makes the realms a little more fantastical and less gritty. (not that it was ever hugely gritty, even at the start, what with all the hypermagical empires popping up and then blowing themselves to smithereens every few centuries. ) I have no problem with this, and found this a reasonably enjoyable read.
Magical locks: Another themed collection of magical items. Well, we've had doors ( issues 106 + 115) and keys. (issue 200) This would synergise well with those two. Perhaps one on magical chests some time as well please. Maybe. We'll have to see. In the meantime, it's the usual runthrough of what's in here and how imaginative it is.
Locks of Cages transport anyone trying to pick them into the classic minimus containment. They can't hold that many people though, so you'd better check them regularly if you're a big bad, and bring lots of henchmen if you're a PC. Yeah, bringing henchmen to go ahead of you is a good idea in general in dungeons.
Locks of Curses deliver personalised blights on anyone trying to get through them in unorthodox ways. Another classic, or highly cliched idea, depending on your current cynicism level.
Locks of Displacement are rather cleverer. The innards are not where they appear to be, making picking them a good deal trickier. Anything that doesn't rely on manipulating the mechanics can bypass this no trouble, so this isn't too valuable.
Locks of the Elemental Guardians summon an elemental to kick the butt of the lockpicker. Best to run. Guardians generally stick around, and if they do follow you, someone else can sneak through while they're distracted.
Locks of Etherealness just whisk your target away. Best used on chests, not doors. :p
Locks of Exploding are another one that has pretty limited use, for once blown, it's pretty much gone. Once again, henchmen to take the brunt will come in handy. RIP, Baldrick the 37th. Hello Baldrick the 38th. Nice to have you on the team.
Locks of petrification are meaner than I thought, because they only turn your hands to stone. This is painful and slowly fatal due to weight distribution and bloodflow issues rather than just freezing you in place. Not a nice way to go.
Locks of Riddles trap you in with them until you can crack their conundrum. Another method that'll make you exceedingly cautious next time if you manage to get out this time.
Locks of Shadow fade away, but keep their door closed. This can be solved by the gordian knot solution of breaking the whole door. Well, isn't that true of most of these. Don't forget to put protections on the walls, windows floor and roof too. Any weak spot can be exploited.
Locks of Shearing eat up anything used to pick them and spit it out in amusing fashion. Om nom nom. Another one that's best to get round by finding an alternate route, for losing your tools and possibly fingers doesn't sound cool.
Locks of Spell Holding, like the cursing ones, are mainly limited by your imagination. Still, they will need regular recharging. Acererak probably wouldn't get round to it between adventurer visits.
Locks of Transferrance teleport your stuff elsewhere, leaving you there naked. The standard is to put them just beyond the barrier, adding taunting to humiliation, but that is very open to customisation. Better hope the other henchmen in the team have the same size clothes.
Locks of Warning just make a racket, attracting any other safeguards the placer may have. So as usual, this is a fairly mixed bag, both in inventiveness and effectiveness. Should keep players busy and paranoid for a while.
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 3/8
Wyrms of the north: Up to G this month. Here we take advantage of the draconic ability to live long, and help others prosper, with a copper dragon that has associated (serves really doesn't seem to be the right term) with a company of adventurers, and derives quite a bit of pleasure from seeing them develop over the years, and eventually have families, many of which have become adventurers themselves. Really, he occupies a place somewhere between kindly uncle and animal breeder, depending how cynical you are. This also becomes another opportunity for Ed to reveal there's been a lot more sex and smutty shenanigans over the years than the official records of the Realms have been allowed to let on, with matters of breeding playing a substantial part of this episode. So once again, we see him already getting away with far more than he used to. One wonders how much it was Kim and Roger editing out his excesses in the old days, and how much this is due to having been a regular for years and knowing he's valuable enough to the company that they can't say no so easily anymore. This adds an additional layer of entertainment to my reading. I guess it's the beginning of a new chapter in his story as well as the game's in general.
A saga of your own: Or how to convert other settings to the SAGA ruleset. The mechanics may be fairly simple in general, but there's still knack to making sure any new things you create are balanced with the existing ones. Unless you want them to be blatantly under or overpowered, that is, which is your prerogative in a homebrew game. :p Stephen Kenson provides some fairly balanced commentary on the quirks of the system, and how to convert to them. Of course, even if you do a bit of modding, the nature of the system means actual play will feel quite different from D&D, and whether that's a good or bad thing will depend upon you. So the question is what kind of games does the system encourage (and how does that compare to what the promoters say it encourages. ) and if you want to run games like that.
The ecology of the stirge: Warning, rehash alert! Hordes of low level biologicals approaching. If you haven't fought some of these guys several times in your adventuring career, you were probably playing in a game without random encounters, because stirges seem to be absolutely ubiquitous in a lot of environments. Since these are the kind of creature that could exist in reality, they get a fairly serious lifecycle examination. This is our first repeated ecology, strangely (see issue 83) and it is rather longer than the first time round. There are a few contradictory details, with this writer making them slightly less smart and co-operative than Ed did, but most of the stuff can be incorporated. I am a bit annoyed to find them rehashing ecologies even before 3rd edition, but the blame for that can go squarely at the editor rather than the writer. Don't do it again. :waves finger:
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 4/8
The dragon's bestiary: More fae creatures? Fucks sake. They really do seem to be overrepresented in this magazine, third only to undead and dragons. What did we do to deserve this? It's not even as if they're nearly as used in D&D in general. Another symptom of the problematic times.
Boggarts already appeared in issue 54, making this REALLY rehashed. Personality wise, they're near opposite to their previous incarnation, favouring the housework & well meaning tricks side over sadism. Just leave them alone and you'll be fine.
Clurichaun sneak into your wine cellar, and live off it. So you're safe if you do not drink ...... wine. An irritating footnote in most adventurer's careers.
Wicked Leprechauns do exactly what it says on the tin. They trick you out of your stuff, or might just kill you with poison, depending how they're feeling.
Leshy are another reused name, also seen in issue 119. Your barrel, it is seriously scraped. I definitely think we need to find a new one. You know what havoc stuff like this plays with my indexing? They too are statistically quite different from their previous incarnation, but still probably a pain in the ass. I do not approve of this at all.
Arcane Lore: Stuff for larcenous spellcasters? Hmm. We've already had one article on how existing spells can enable wizards to beat thieves at their on job. I guess this'll make it even easier. Ho hum.
Appraisal lets you figure out how valuable something is. Seen this before in multiple contexts. Next!
Disawareness makes you look boring and unremarkable. This is often more useful than full invisibility. Everyone gets suspicious if a door opens and closes by itself. Some guy who looks like they belong can go anywhere. Basic principle I have profited from many times.
Instant Lockpick ensures you are never without equipment. No more smuggling stuff into prison up your butt if you're captured and stripped. Course, you'll still need to get your spellbook back, but that's next on the list. Good luck.
Lock Inspection gives you a good 25% bonus on your mechanical skills. A multiclass mage/thief will more than compensate for the xp splitting with stuff like this.
Muffling Blow silences whoever it hits temporarily, so you can have a battle without worrying about reinforcements. You cannot expect to take enemies out in one blow in D&D, even with backstab bonuses.
Audio Enhancer boosts your hear noise capabilities. The usual warning about loud noises being bad for you applies.
Feet of the cat lets you run and jump silently and with ease, for those rooftop gigs. Now you can keep up with those annoying psionicists, appearing and disappearing unexpectedly.
Forgery should also be pretty obvious. Doctor that shit to get in places. Yeah man, you'll never spot this one. Now if you can only remember the password. Oh well, a little ESP'll let you know exactly what the guards want to hear.
Minor Disarm automatically removes one trap, obsoleting remove traps just as Knock does open locks. 3rd level and wizards already make thieves look like chumps at their own game. Multiclass really is the way to go.
Silent Saw lets you cut through things at a distance, and completely silently. Another perfect espionage visual, that could also save your life by ruining machinery and architecture at a crucial point in an encounter.
Ghostly Garrotte is of course for remote strangling. If the big bad is at the other end of the room looking smug, this'll wipe the grin off his face and keep him from casting spells to support his minions.
Major Disarm lets you take all the hard work out of eliminating traps. It even has them automatically spring back to life afterwards, so you can waltz through and leave the owners bemused as to how they weren't triggered or disarmed. Man, being a wizard makes the ninja gig so much easier.
Remote Access creates a brief extradimensional window, perfect for a quick bit of filching or an impossible backstab. This could well be a tide turner if you use it right. Yoink the macguffin and high-tail it outta there. Yeah, this is a lot easier and more fun than learning to pick pockets the hard way.
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 5/8
Fiction: And a ship to sail by Chris Pierson. Poetry attack!! Well, this is a romance. I shouldn't be too shocked really. And as a romance, it does have a certain number of cliches. A high born lady being forced into a loveless marriage and planning suicide to escape it. A young working-class man who falls in love with her, and isn't sure how to deal with this. Some comic relief sidekicks. And a grand gesture of the kind that only works if everyone is willing to chip in. (which incidentally proves your social value and smooths over any questions of the class gap. ) Obviously I can't speak for the magazine's female readers, all I have to go on is do as you would be done by. And I can say that a gesture of this style and magnitude would be a pretty strong persuader in letting someone do me. :p So I'll give this story three and a half Oh yes, baby's ......... out of four.
Network news: A little negative advertising here this month. Join the RPGA because unlicenced convention games suck! Too many people, too few, nepotism, the DM hitting on players, poor organisation, railroads, lack of continuity. You know, those can all happen in official play too, from what I've heard. The main difference is that you have someone to complain too when things go wrong. (although in the case of nepotism, it probably won't help ;) ) Still, it seems likely that the average convention play experience is more civilised than it was in 1978. And with the living campaigns, you can play characters repeatedly and have them advance despite not having the same DM and companions each time. So this is one of the few articles with any real bite this issue, along with Ed's one. Like the fights for equality by various minority groups, this isn't a war that will ever have a definitive ending, but there have been real improvements, and more can be made if we keep trying. Just got to keep at it, not get complacent.
Dungeon Mastery: This column is in theme this month, with more tricks for the sadistic DM to spice up their plots. Most of them should be pretty familiar by now, making the primary value that they're being collected into one place. This is another one that's sufficiently rehashed that I can't think of much to say, but is sufficiently polished enough that I can't be too critical either. Just bland really. I just hope we don't get too many more articles that are too bland to comment on in the immediate future.
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 6/8
Bookwyrms wins the battle of the novel columns. Seems like John Bunnel is another of the people who decided not to stick around after the company changed hands. From here on in, it's all fricken recommendations. This is definitely cause for grumpiness on my part. If you don't provide a target for my bitchiness, you will become the target yourself.
Ignition by Kevin J Anderson & Doug Beason is basically Die Hard - IIINNNN SPAAAACCCEEEEE!!!!!. Yeah, that's about it for the description. This will either sell you instantly, or not. Now, how do they get a movie adaption going so they can rake in the megabucks.
The tranquility alternative by Allen Steele is basically Die Hard - ON THE MOON!!!! The staff are obviously in the mood for some fact paced popcorn action books to consume. Well, when you're twiddling your thumbs for months uncertain of your job, you want fantasies of playing the big hero barreling around the place solving problems, don't you.
The waterborn by J Gregory Keyes changes gears, starting off slow, but building into a fairly complex plot with characters that are well-developed, but not always likable. Therefore they mark him as an author to watch. Right back atcha, if I remember correctly.
Sorcerers of Majipoor by Robert Silverberg is another story set on his enormous fantastical world with sci-fi underpinnings. This is one of those recommendations that's pretty much a no-brainer. Gotta reach out to those new fantasy readers. :p
Reliquary by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child seems to be one of those sequels where they have to turn everything up a notch, with a substantially higher body count and larger scale. Fortunately, it doesn't do it at the expense of the science part of the fiction. One for Michael Crichton fans, apparently.
Millennium 1: the frenchman by Elizabeth Hand is a fairly straight conversion of one of the TV series' episodes. This does mean you can skip some bits that were ponderous in the actual show, but otherwise, meh. Once again, I am pretty unsure why they would bother to recommend this.
Sage advice: Can you combine deity specific kits and regional kits. (Skip recommends not. Just because one writer breaks the rules, doesn't mean you can.)
What HD do crusaders use (d8)
How long does a horse take to grow up (3-5 years )
How do true dweomers & quest spells interact with the spell point rules (they don't. They are entirely independent special subsystems)
Why do firbolgs get such good weapons (Good question. We may have to alter this for the sake of game balance. We also need to fix giant sized weapons in general.)
What xp chart do shamans & witch doctors use (Cleric ones. Yeth, thath tho unfair.)
Can witch doctors be elementalists, wild mages, or some other special school (probably)
I thought you said 30th is the maximum level. Faiths and avatars lets you get up to 40th level (Gods of different worlds have different levels of generosity. The Krynnish gods dispose of you if you get above 18th, while the toril guys and gals let you get up to level 40 because they like watching twinky bastards messing things up. All you can do is suffer their whims, since we don't let PC's challenge gods anymore, no matter how high level they get. )
How do you determine your odds of blind-fighting successfully (9)
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 7/8
Forum is cut down to a single page. Fluctuations, reorganisations.
Remy Verhove reminds us all the rules are optional, even the ones they say aren't. He's having much more fun now he's realized that. Houserule it into unrecognisability, you know you want too.
Mark Fitzpatrick doesn't want to kick out his problem players, because his group is too small. That shouldn't deter you. Kick them out and recruit new ones.
Paul Crowe is yet another person heaping disdain on the players option rules for inviting min-maxing and other twinkery. They cause far more problems than they fix. Guess I'm not at all alone in my distaste for them.
KotDT has the tables turned. Sometimes the players will add up all the clues and come to the right answer. Dragonmirth brings in the clowns and other cartoonish hijinks. Swordplay is being held up deciding on outfits. The magic 8 ball says floyd's future is about to get rather topsy-turvey.
Role-playing reviews: Witchcraft is CJ Carella's very own WoD clone, trying to combine the atmospherics of White Wolf and the flexible point buy system of GURPS. Course, this is CJ Carella we're talking about here, the author of Rifts South America and Nightbane, the king of power creep. What starts off as an interesting empowered humans in the shadows game with some neat mechanics that make the magic flexible, thematic and co-operative rapidly became filled with near invulnerable metahuman types and exceedingly breakable combo tricks. Still, those certainly don't stop the game from being versatile and fun, even if characters actually become more fragile as they advance, as one of the actual plays I've done indicates.
Netheril: Empire of magic finally gives people what they've been begging for for years - a proper official spell point system for AD&D. Such a shame it was buried in a relatively obscure sourcebook and came out around the time the company wasn't in a position to promote it, or it might have got more traction and been a bigger influence on the next edition.
How the mighty are fallen is the tie-in adventure for the netheril books, letting the players participate in ruining things for everyone and ensuring the gods limit everyone to 40th level and memorising their spells. :p Or not. But then, how hard would that be, changing time against the forces of historical inevitability?
The book of crafts brings us some more down to earth arcane groups for Mage: the Ascension, drawn from real world cultural stuff. This of course gives them plenty of opportunity to show you how to construct mythological spells within the Sphere framework. It's an easy target, but it may well draw in a few more people not interested in making the power of belief central to their games.
Serenades: the first book of powers covers the music magic of Immortal. Once again, Rick finds the jargon a bit impenetrable, but the specific spells are fun. Maybe you should steal them and transfer the ideas to another system. After all, Rick's done it often enough. Looks like it's all positive reviews here as well. Guess that's already one bad thing I can say about this changeover.
Dragon Magazine Issue 239: September 1997
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Things have just about stabilised here. They detail september, october and november. The first two of these are just the same as they appear in last month's issue, so I shall have to just do the one two months ahead.
November has The last tower, Four from Cormyr, and Elminster in Myth Drannor rescheduled to here, leaving only 4 new products to cover.
Night of the Shark sees the Sahuagin continue their deadly assault. If you don't stop them, the whole kingdom is under threat.
Birthright gives us another splatbook. The book of Priestcraft shows us how their clerics and druids differ from the norm. I bet they don't get as many cool new bits as the wizards did.
Planescape follows straight on from the great modron march with Dead Gods. Another annoying metaplot module where canonically, the PC's lose, this sees Orcus return to active service in the AD&D multiverse. Gods in D&D are about as easy to finish off for good as Marvel Superheroes.
Dragonlance has Tales of Uncle Trapspringer by Dixie Lee McKeone. Tasslehoff, a respected elder? Dear god, what is the world coming too. :shudders: Haven't we suffered enough? Do we need to hear how he's mates with demogorgon again, ever more exaggerated? What else has he got up to in the intervening years?
The current Clack has finally caught up with actual current events as well. WotC has not only bought D&D, but Legend of the 5 rings as well. Will there be a crossover? Many of you already know the answer to this. A little more surprising is a tale of incompetence involving Aaron Allston being booked to do Star Wars novels, but not actually being told until the deadline approached, and having to do some serious overtime to catch up. Editors eh? How do you get them to do their jobs? Plus HARN gives it's corebook away for the price of shipping, hoping that'll drive sales of the supplements, and a cthulhu punk filk band manages to release their second album, showing there's a real audience for this stuff. Companies may be struggling, but that just makes the news all the more interesting. Let's hope they're still managing to get product out there despite all this trouble.
Once again they play it safe this issue, with lots of repeated stuff, and exceedingly boring and timid reviews. They are still improving quite a bit in terms of organisation, with only a couple of out-of time adverts, and are starting to fix up the presentation as well. And even if many of the articles are rehashed, the info is still very useful. While it doesn't hold up particularly well as a whole package, the individual parts would each contribute to your game just fine in actual play. Well, they're trying to make a new start. I shouldn't be surprised if the continuity goes to hell. Anyway, let's see if they've finished rebuilding next issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. Well, we've finally made it to the 2/3rds point of this journey, even if it has been more than a year since the halfway mark. Woo. Actually, it doesn't feel like much of a landmark compared to the recent company changeover, or the upcoming 250th issue. Just them trying to get back to business as usual. Although things are still messed up enough that they've decided to tone down the usual october horrorfest, and instead go for a little mystery and suspense. Still, I don't object to variety. I'm sure it'll be back next year. Let's see if they can build up a little tension and anticipation.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Another editorial full of reorganisation and staff changes. They've replaced 2 of their editors and their subscriptions person, and added a new face to their advertising team. That's a good 50% turnover. Much of this is because they're upping sticks and moving those TSR staff who want to stay on all the way over to their own offices in Renton, on the other side of the country. That's a pretty big upheaval, and I'm not surprised that more than a few people would bow out because they don't want to leave their current lives and family. And just think of the transport costs for all the paperwork, equipment and archives. It's no wonder they'll want to liquidate a great chunk of the unsold stock that was a big factor in bringing the old company down. So this is another handy snapshot in showing what progress they're making getting things back on track. Really, things are already a good deal better than they were a couple of months ago, when they still weren't sure what they were doing. That's worth rather a lot.
D-Mail: Bafflingly, we lead this month with exactly the same welcome back letter we did last month. Editorial sloppiness, or simply the only letter about their absence that wasn't vitriolic. Either way, that's the kind of dumbass mistake everyone's going to notice.
A letter supporting the dungeon crawl above all that plot stuff. We want puzzles to solve and monsters to kill! Do not forget it.
In typical contrast, a letter from someone who prefers roleplaying detail over dungeon crawls. Of course, the magazine has to figure out how to cater to both if they want to remain viable, don't they.
Some nitpicking about the nature of dogs, and what it's hard or easy to train them to do. What they do naturally doesn't map to an obvious power level structure.
And finally we have a bit of errata from Bruce Heard regarding his lupin breed article. Something with that much concentrated crunch is harder for editors to examine, because as long as it's technically legal, it could also not be what the author intended to write and still get past the radar.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 2/8
Forum: Christopher Manning is vaguely negative about the dragonlance saga rules, and wants to see where general opinion lies. Since it's long discontinued while D&D still lives, I think I can guess what the majority of replies will be.
Mike Wilson is another person who thinks humans don't live long enough to get really good at multiple things. Since many adventurers go from 1st to 20th in a matter of months, not years, I again laugh at this. High stress situations make people learn FAST, as I can attest from reality.
Greg Gartland tells us again that a wizard's greatest weapon is not their spells, but their mind. Well, the truly innovative ones anyway. The others'd still panic and be screwed when their spells suddenly stop working. :p
Wayne S. Rossi reminds us that the existence or not of resurrection matters not if players are not attached to them, and can just roll up a different character of similar power. You've got to make them care before ripping it away will actually hurt. Oh, cruel fate and DM's. Why must you torment us so.
Phil Page thinks that players tend to be blase about everything. No point being too stingy with magic, they still be just the same once they have it. Yeah, humans are pretty good at losing our sense of wonder about things we're regularly exposed too. Get a different race for players if you really want magic to stay magical :p
Sage advice: How do you determine the rogue skills for a thief/gypsy bard (add together the points each class level gives you. This is indeed a twinky combo that breaks the usual game rules.)
Do thieves have to spend a slot on thieves cant (no)
Can you cast find familiar for someone else (no)
What counts as a proper surface for tensers floating disk (good question. Skip recommends twinky players be suitably punished.)
What does a zombie lord's weakness power do. (Hmm. Skip thinks some fudge would be tasty around now. Reverse of the strength spell'll do nicely)
Does stoneskin protect you from critical hits (yes)
What happens if you combine stoneskin with fire shield (if you suffer no damage, none can be reflected. Basic logic.)
What happens if a wizard gets animate dead as a priest spell (Ahh, players option. See the problems you cause us. Terrible business. )
What happens if you cast inverted ethics on a dragon. ( A sexy party! : cue benny hill theme music: Or possibly part of the Cleric Quintet. Your choice. )
Delayed magic missile contradicts itself (No it doesn't. See. That's a contradiction. The example you just cited, on the other hand, isn't.)
Can you resurrect a headless character (Sure. No problemo! Assuming you have 7th level spells. You do have 7th level spells, don't you? )
What is evil magic (magic cast by evil creatures)
Are 9th level characters immune to death spell. Does this also make them immune to a beholders death ray. (yes, and probably not. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 3/8
The murder Medieval: Ahh yes, murder mystery. Now there's a topic that really needs a bit more attention, especially given the difficulty of making it work in D&D, where shortcuts are found aplenty to those with a bit of magical skill. Ironically, most of the examples here are from more gritty historical series, which there are actually a surprising number of. Actually, this is nothing but examples, listing both book series and their main protagonists, with rough synopses of their adventures and what makes them interesting characters. I'm left ambivalent by this one, as it basically gives you a whole bunch of reading, and then does nothing itself. Like turning the novel reviews into mere recommendations, I'm not sure this is how I want them using their page count. It just feels lazy by comparison.
Mysterious cities: Here comes a tie-in. James Wyatt has already sent in a previous Gothic Earth article. Now he proves that this is a personal favourite of his with another one based off the new supplement for it. 11 cities that the gothic earth gazetteer passed over from all around the world get short descriptions, along with hints at what lurks beneath the surface. Many of them are exactly what you would expect if you had a basic primer in world mythology already, but there are a couple of surprises, with exceedingly obscure monsters referenced, and a couple of new statblocks. This is certainly more useful in and of itself than the last article, but it still feels like a pointer towards bigger, better books than a full product and leaves me unsatisfied. It's like they're putting the filler articles at the front this time, which is a rather baffling editorial decision.
John Manabi's Capricorn. Well, this is a different looking bit of advertising. Looks like our new staff are already starting to make a difference in that department as well.
Goddess of shadows, Guild of thieves: Ah yes, gods of thieves. Bridging the gap between what are on the surface the least connected classes. Here's a good look at the Birthright implementation of this idea. Cleverly, she doesn't even represent herself as the goddess of thieves to the general population, allowing her church to put on a legitimate front as shadow-worshippers and avoid harassment that way. As with illusionists who don't let people know they're illusionists, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. They do have a relatively small sphere list, but with a well built up social setup, several neat new spells, a reasonable amount of thief skills, and tons of money as a result of their larcenous activities, they're hardly underpowered. They're perfectly suited both as villains and PC's (presuming you don't have to share the party with a holier than thou paladin) so you could have this either as a backdrop setting element, or as central to a political plot. And as it doesn't seem too hard to adapt to other settings, it hopefully won't get complaints from the people who want all generic stuff either.
Saga of the mists: More tie-in stuff. Doubly so, in this case, as it's about converting Ravenloft to the SAGA system. Interestingly, since Ravenloft already has it's own card deck as part of the old boxed set, that gives them an easy in to allow the system to be translated to the setting's quirks. And the setting is more suited to lower magic, character driven adventures than many, so that makes them a good match on another level. There are quite a few changes made to the rules, but they're logically done, and seem like they'll further make the rules support the mood you should be going for. Morality matters, magic works closer to the way it does in D&D, but constructing spells is still a different process that'll force you to specialise in the type of magic you use. I rather approve. This is useful for both people who already have the 5th age game, and those that are still on the fence and need more proof that it's applicable to other settings to buy into it. That seems like another good use of their page count.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 4/8
Mysteries of the dead gods: Another author tie-in here. Seems like they're doing them more issues than not these days. Monte Cook is another writer who quite possibly overwrote when making the rather large adventure Dead Gods. He managed to fit in a side-plot already, and this article makes you even more able to handle sidetracks and stretch things out. Random Dead God generation tables for people who are wandering around on the astral plane for an extended length of time? That's fairly specific and quite awesome, as well as being a callback to the very first issue. The challenges you face, the visuals you see, and the treasures you can get from exploring and quite possibly mining them can be rather strange, and coming up with stuff off the cuff may not be easy. So this is exactly the kind of article I like to see, as it's useful, full of flavour, and builds on D&D's existing elements nicely without rehashing them. Good to see Monte has cool creativity to spare at this point.
Fiction: True power by Ron Collins. Ahh, this old chessnut. The idea that given the choice between immortality and great power, but uncontrollable appetites that involve feeding off other humans; or being a regular joe, you'd be happier if you chose mortality. Considering mortality involves a whole raft of pretty onerous appetites to keep your body fully functional, and many people are deeply annoying to spend time with, I'm not entirely convinced. I'd still give it a few centuries, see if I got tired of living like that first. After all, in a fantasy world, there are plenty of other long-lived creatures out there for you to have friendships and intrigues with, keep you sane and with something to do over those timescales. So this is a story who's message and moral hinges on a morality I simply don't subscribe too, and who's protagonists are not being particularly sensible in their actions. I really can't relate. You can do far better with the hand you've been dealt than this, you just have to be willing to change your worldview a bit.
The ecology of the nymph: We return to the monster hunters association again this month, with the characters from issue 227 recurring. And here we see the dark side of such an organization, in more ways than one. They don't just capture and kill animals and marauding monsters, but also more benevolent creatures like this. Of course, this being the magazine that it is, anyone dumb enough to distress a damsel, regardless of species, is going to get their comeuppance by the end of the story. Even with the new ownership, that part of company policy is unlikely to change too much. So yeah, this is almost exactly how I'd expected it would be. Not sure if that's good or bad. Guess I'll have to go for mediocre, as it doesn't have much cool new crunch, and is pretty predictable. That's what happens when you get distracted by sex.
Wyrms of the north: Time for a topaz dragon here. Now of the gem dragons, they were always presented as the closest to being evil, with their generally misanthropic nature and ruthlessness. And here we have one that seems generally designed to be played as an antagonist, if not exactly a nemesis, as she is of a distinctly larcenous bent. Whether the players wind up a victim of her quest for more treasure, tricked, robbed and left alive, or are merely hired by someone else who was, this is an easy way to get into an adventure. And since like many Ed NPC's, she has a rather substantial and ingenious array of contingency plans ( he really does more of that than everyone else put together), the possibility of her surviving a confrontation and winding up a recurring character seems rather good. This is a relatively short one, but that thankfully means he doesn't go overboard on the new spells and magical items this time, although the new spell that we do have is probably a bit overpowered for a 1st level one. So I'm reasonably entertained by this, and can see it's uses in game. A little ambiguity does wonders for opening the field up.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 5/8
Dungeon mastery: For a second month in a row, we have a 101 items list. Hrum. Well, those are generally expansive enough that even when every single item on them is stolen, you're unlikely to be able to trace all the sources. And unless you're blessed with photographic memory, you'll never remember all of them anyway. This time, it's unexplained mysteries, giving you a large selection of omens and Fortean weirdness to unsettle your players with and keep them guessing. Some would make great setups to a future adventure, while others are just red herrings that wouldn't be easy to do stuff with. Once again, this seems like a good one to go to when you suddenly find yourself at an impasse, and don't want to resort to the old cliche of goons breaking down the door and attacking. More stuff to fill out the middle ratings, really.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Cyberware comes to D&D! I kid, but only by a little, as this is all about magical limb replacements. If you regularly put your players up against phycomids, and similar ugliness (which is thankfully quite rare these days) it would only be fair to let them get their army of darkness on and replace lost limbs with something better for a sizeable price. I quite approve. And with a good bit of overarching fluff, this is much better than their recent attempts in this column.
Seeing eyes are the basic model. Apart from being able to choose your colour, there's nothing special about this. Not that this is to be sneezed at when someone's had yer eye out. But if you don't have enough money for the upgrades, I guess you'll have to settle.
True seeing eyes are one of the obvious upgrades. Who doesn't want to short-circuit dopplegangers and shit. Nobrainer really.
Dim-seeing eyes give you infravision. Now you can know what demihumans take for granted. They won't pull the wool over me again :shakes fist:
All-seeing eyes give you x-ray, telescopic and periscopic vision. Truly a device for all seasons. Even superman can't quite match that.
Eyes that bind paralyze you with a look. If you didn't include it, someone else would. Another no-brainer.
The look that kills isn't as impressive as it's name sounds. Sure it'll kill your victim eventually, but it'll be both tedious and painful. Mounting a medusa head on your shield would be both cheaper and easier.
Helping hands apply the same no-frills principle to your manipulatory digits. It's a lot more useful than a hook, that's for sure. But let's see what else you can add before making a final decision.
Gripping hands show once again how popular Larry Niven is amongst geeks. You really don't want one of these closed around your balls. Tempting for a sadistic ship's captain.
Tricky hands let you be even better at sleight of hand than you were before. If you lost your hand as a punishment for thievery, this really is the way to go. You really don't want to be caught making that mistake again.
Hidden Hands are another one for rogues and brigands. They go from regular hand to vicious hook with a word. Best of both worlds, really.
Casting Hands give you extra fast-castable spell slots. Now that really will prove awesome in extending your wizard's useful day, albeit at the cost of greater downtime too. No free rides, I guess.
Hands of Justice are by far the most powerful of these, with multiple tricks useful for taking down the other items. Well, they cause so much trouble, this is just a small way of redressing the balance really.
Walking legs are of course the basic replacement down there. Not that kind of down there, although you could probably commission one of those too. But this is still a family friendly magazine. What are ya gonna do when you can't advertise through regular channels.
Leaping legs let you go all froggy. Does that sound like your kind of additional benefit? It's certainly worth 500gp to me, as I like my cinematic combats.
Hidden legs turn from realistic to peg-legs in the blink of an eye. Useful for pity plays, comedy and disguise. Hee.
Swimming legs turn all fishy in the water. Since this stuff is marketed at sailors, that really is a no-brainer. You're gonna fall in sometime, really. an extra thousand gold pieces is a small price to pay for survival.
Hollow legs Improve dramatically on the real world variant of this trick by being extradimensional. Just think how much you could smuggle. Amusingly, this means they're the most common variant. Fantasy economics strikes again!
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 6/8
KotDT suffers once again from players missing the point. Dragonmirth is very topical, with magic eye pictures. I remember those! Ye gods that was irritating. Swordplay also miss the point. Floyd is now officially a target of the demonic invasion.
Role-playing reviews: Requiem: the grim harvest is of course the Ravenloft supplement that lets you play the undead, along with overturning Ravenloft's established order in the accompanying adventure. Rick's main complaints, ironically, are where it sticks a little too closely to established D&D rules cruft, limiting options in some ways, while presenting too many irrelevant ones in other cases. It might be entertaining to play, but it's not going to win many people back from White Wolf.
Children of the night: Vampires looks like a collection of NPC monsters, each with unique abilities of their own, but really, it's a bunch of mini-adventures as well, as each one has their own history, agenda, and in many cases lair and minions detailed. Not all of them are great, and some are silly, but it shows just how varied you can make them these days, which is important for a long-term Ravenloft campaign. After all, that's what they're trying to promote now.
A guide to Transylvania gets a fairly middling review. It's useful if you're playing a gothic earth game, but a bit dry, and doesn't have ready-play adventures. Still, this is one case where the folklore wasn't all stuff I'd seen before, including some rather interesting expansion on the piper of Hamelin mythology. And it's system light enough that this book is one I still find useful now. Some things age better than others, and this has actually been one of them.
A world of darkness 2nd edition looks like a general WoD book, but since Vampire is the most popular line, can you guess who gets the lion's share of the screentime? Yup, it's time for another gritty, highly detailed, and not so highly edited dive into a world not too far from our own, and sometimes so over the top that the horror flips round into being funny from Rick's PoV. I should look this one over again as well, see how it's held up over a decade later.
Constantinople by night is cut from much the same vein. You still expect indexes from them after 6 years? More fool you. And of course, it's very much for mature readers. Gee, ya reckon? Shame you can't fleshcraft common sense onto someone.
Chicago Chronicles Vol 1, by contrast, shows that they have actually developed quite a bit, by compiling two old supplements from the early days of the line into one. The artwork is noticeably worse than more recent supplements, and the writing less polished. But that doesn't make it less fun to read, only trickier to use in actual play.
Horror's heart is for Call of Cthulhu, and shows up the sanity threatening side of Montreal. (don't laugh) Spooky locales, gruesome monsters, and an overarching plot that is full of interesting bits, but doesn't quite climax properly. Still, since the end of a story is where you have most leeway to change things, hopefully that can be fixed in actual play.
Ye Booke of Monstres II also showcases the cthulhu designer's twisted imaginations, expanding the universe beyond Lovecraft's original writings. The main complaint here is that the illustrations aren't that great. Compared to TSR or White wolf's recent output, they really don't blast the SAN like they should. Guess it's back to using your imagination to fill in the details again.
The complete masks of Nyarlathotep, on the other hand, does manage to pull everything together and make a mega-adventure that holds up all the way through. It might be an old one, but surely standing the test of time is a good thing. Now, if only they'd come up with some new adventures that match it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 7/8
AEON! Another game that's going to be forced to change its name soon. Dear oh dear.
TSR Previews: Just one bit of rescheduling for december. Pages of pain finally gets released. Troy Denning can breathe a sigh of relief. Onto the new.
Dragonlance bounces around it's history in Dragons of Chaos. More short stories painting the world of Krynn as it goes through turbulent times. As if we didn't get enough of those in the magazine last year. Goes to show, plenty of writers still want to play in this sandbox.
Technically under the Forgotten realms banner, but crossing over with both Dragonlance and Planescape is Tymora's Luck, part 3 of the lost gods series. Kate and Jeff set things up for their heroes to save the worlds, again.
Birthright gets Tribes of the Heartless Wastes. Now all of Cerillia has at least a general overview. The gameline can die happy, knowing it came out hitting hard and fast, and did what it had to do to make the whole thing playable and complete.
The Sahuagin adventure trilogy also comes to an end with Sea of Blood. Load up on water breathing powers and hit them back. Watch out for 3D maneuvering. It lets even more enemies swarm you at one time.
Dragon dice combines fire and water to get the Scalders, their 7th kicker pack. Seems pretty self explanatory, even if more info on what this new race looks like would be nice.
Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997
part 8/8
The current Clack is extra large this month, as they've got a lot of news to deliver. Most importantly, we have WotC mending bridges with Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. They didn't have to do that, but it's tremendously beneficial for both them and the game that they did, and helps give the new owners more legitimacy. That definitely deserves credit. Also positive is that Gen Con has remained a stable size, and Origins has grown in attendance despite the company problems. Well, some people probably turned up so they could get first-hand accounts of what was actually happening. :p Not so positive is Larry Elmore having a heart attack. Still, it looks like he's going to recover. And hopefully he'll take better care of his health for a while. Sometimes you need that scare to get you to shape up.
In non D&D news, we have significant stuff for several other big companies. White wolf's sci-fi game plans have gone out the window and been hurriedly replaced. Meanwhile, they're also producing a whole batch of historical supplements for their WoD lines. Things were never exactly happy shiny puppies and unicorns, but some creatures had more prominence at one time or another. Shadowrun is moving onto it's 3rd edition, and getting a CCG like the rest of the cool kids, although it might be a bit late to really cash in. Meanwhile, Glorantha is leveraging fan power to raise the money for it's new books. The company may be having problems, but the public interest is still very much there. This is interesting. And we get to see the beginning of Eden Studios. Plus there's the usual array of awards from this time of year. The whole landscape seems to be shifting. Guess it really is the start of a new era in general.
The articles this month aren't very interesting, as they continue to play it safe and rely heavily on regular columns and campaign world tie-ins. But they do seem to finally be caught up in terms of internal organisation, and starting to implement plans for the future. And those plans do seem to be an improvement on TSR's behaviour over the last few years. That makes me hopeful that there'll be more interesting things to write about over the next few years. So: 240 down, 119 to go. I'm pretty certain I can do this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. Giraffe neck, woodlike head, trogdor arm. This dragon is a bit of a mismatch of body parts. And would have serious trouble chewing it's food. If it doesn't eat those adventurers whole, they'll be doing it a mercy killing it. No particular connection to the contents this time, which apparently involves ancient empires. Well, most of their campaign worlds have been around long enough for that, with the ironic exception of Ravenloft. That gives them plenty of room for tie-ins. Lets see who gets excavated, and who is left buried this time.
In this issue:
The Wyrm's turn: Ooh. We add a 9th member to the staff again. A production manager? What does one of them do then that the editors and directors don't? Actually, their staff list currently looks a bit top heavy in general. Big titles, or do they actually have too many chiefs and not enough indians? Well, as long as everyone knows their role, and doesn't step on the other's toes, it hopefully won't be a problem. Speaking of stepping on toes, they're now trying to figure out how much material they should publish on specific settings. One person may like one over another, but really, they shouldn't be in competition. So this is the public's chance to influence their direction in the next few years. Once again, they're trying to pay attention, really give people what they want. Let's hope what they want is interesting to me as well.
D-Mail: A letter complaining about the Mother NPC article. By a man. No mothers appear to have been offended by the creation of this parody. Lighten up maaan.
A letter asking about Alternity and what kind of support it's going to get. Quite a bit, apparently. Once again, given how previous attempts died, they want to try extra hard to get this right, so they're not so dependent on their flagship products.
A letter from someone who finds their group is being bogged down by bickering from contrasting characters. An article on how to deal with this would be very welcome. I doubt the editors will have trouble finding one.
On the other hand, they may have trouble finding original articles if this is the quality of would-be writers for them. Our final letter is from multiple people who want to write for them, but don't have a clue what to write about. You may be approaching things the wrong way around. Do you even know if you're any good at writing in the first place? Do you enjoy the process, or do you just want the prestige? It won't be worth it if that's the only reason.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 2/8
Forum: Alan D. Kohler is not amused at the guy waxing lyrical over the cavalier. Not only is he wrong on several mechanical details, the old cavaliers were an abomination anyway. Mind you, the new skills and powers stuff is pretty bad too, so no-one's coming out of this great.
Lloyd Brown thinks xp bonuses should be factored off wisdom, not your key ability scores. He makes a fairly persuasive case from a thematic PoV, but of course the mechanical results may be a bit iffy. Like factoring hit chances off Dex instead of Str, it's worth a try.
David DeKeizer supports regular character death and multiclassing. Both give you more chances to change your character and keep the game interesting. And the rules lawyers can go hang. :p
Sage advice: What happens when a rogue violates their alignment restrictions (Lawful good thieves have to go straight. They can no longer in good conscience go on living the life they lived, and if they try, they'll find their alignment changing back pretty fast. Bards lose their spellcasting. Ha ha. That's what you get for being originally derived from druids. )
What undead are affected by sunlight (Read the descriptions. Duh.)
Does a cloak of elvenkind stack with thief abilities (No. Use only the best roll. )
Does a cube of frost resistance protect you against lava. (no Greater than or equal too is not equal to equal too. )
How does faith of Illmater work ( They're way too nice. They can wind up sacrificing their life for you. Suckers.)
Does regeneration from high con let you stay alive below -10 and regrow limbs (no)
Does know alignment work on intelligent items (yes)
Does spell immunity get disrupted by any form of protection, even irrelevant ones (yes)
Can I stack all these spells (no)
Great Excavations: Archaeology? You mean we have to dig our own dungeons just to get at the treasure and monsters?! The DM is being bloody stingy this session. Well, we had mining in the past. (issue 152) If you want a slightly more realistic adventure setup, this is a way to go about it. All classes have reasons to seek out ancient stuff, and there's plenty to find down there. And since so much of what you find is luck, a grab bag of bits and pieces of crunch on the theme seems curiously appropriate. Two new kits, one for the spellcasters, and one for the fighty sorts. 2 new spells. And 4 new Proficiencies. Oh, and a new priestly sphere which has so few spells as to be near worthless. (still better than Astral though, amirite? ) None of this seems particularly over or underpowered, although the random findings table is a bit underdeveloped. Overall, it's a reasonable enough bit of coverage that isn't on a heavily rehashed topic. So in terms of marks, it's somewhere in the middle.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 3/8
Chronicle of Cerilia: Or oh yeah, this line's been cancelled, and we still hadn't got round to putting a timeline in the books. Guess it's the magazine's gain again. And as usual for a D&D setting, the beginning of recorded history is actually surprisingly close to the present. Elves & dwarves have been around for ages, but history only gets going a few thousand years ago, and the current political system, with empowered bloodlines and everything that goes with it is only 1,500 years old. And really, how do you expect democracy to gain root when they are so obviously and demonstrably superior. Maybe if someone exercises their droit de siegneur a little too much, so a larger proportion of the public have at least some bloodline abilities. Keep harems for greater justice in the future! :p But I digress. While not as detailed as the Realms timeline is by now, this is still pretty detailed, obviously drawing on not only the whole range of supplements, but also the magazine articles for the setting. In a way, that makes it very much a capstone on their output as a living setting. There may be a few more articles coming after this, but we won't see timeline advancement or big metaplot upheavals anymore. Which is a bit sad in a way, but given how much metaplot annoyed people, might be for the best. At least this way, it's memory will remain unsullied amongst those who cared.
Legacies of the Suel imperium: Hmm. New PC races with a greyhawk slant? Well, we've had spellbooks and magical item collections. The main issue here is that as the original generic AD&D setting, what creatures feel distinctively Greyhawk rather than just D&D? That's a tricky question to answer. The approach here seems to be to go for a bunch of stuff from all over the place, with an emphasis on the old school. Well, I guess the old modules that got retroactively incorporated into Greyhawk were rather a grab-bag too, so that makes as much sense as any decision.
Derro are of course interesting because of their unique Savant class. Unfortunately, this article takes an old school attitude towards this, and spends a big proportion of it's time telling us that behaviours that are quite normal for the race should not be allowed when they're used as PC's, and making sure that we can't play the most interesting parts. This makes it deeply unsatisfying.
Lerara are ....... Holy shit!!!! Remember Elayne Mystica from issue 139. One of the most obvious examples of cheesy mary-sue background this magazine has ever produced. Well now you can play another member of the race of albinos that she came from. Only you'll never be as cool as her, as they're given a charisma penalty that retroactively makes her an illegal character. Now that's either insulting or just incompetent. Drizzt doing stuff that's impossible in game and then making new rules to make that legal is one thing, but making a character that's basically legal, if very cheesy, and then retroactively invalidating them is just nasty. Major mechanical fail, as well as a delving of ancient lore that really should have remained buried, thank you very much.
Skulks are always thieves, although a few of them have minor multi-class abilities. Stereotyping much? Still, since all their racial abilities are focussed around greater stealth, would you really want to take another class? On the other hand, playing against type is a great pleasure of roleplaying. And on the gripping hand, making them lose their special powers if they manage to get over their racial cowardice makes this another deeply problematic one. Mandating good behaviour or you lose your powers causes enough problems with bad DM's. Mandating bad behaviour or losing your powers just seems custom designed to blow up in your face in actual play. So that's 3 fails in a row. I'm not optimistic about the rest of this article.
Jermalaine are another one that are pretty much restricted to a single class, as they don't have the strength to become fighters, or the magical aptitude to become wizards, and their priestly skills are pretty pathetic too. This is one of those times when I can't wait for 3e to come, and sweep all this arbitrariness away.
Su-Dopplegangers are new, and drop even the pretense of class choice, essentially being a full-on return to Basic D&D race as class design. That said, even though they only go up to level 8, they're a lot more powerful than halflings, with their innate AC and damage dealing abilities scaling with level. Unsurprisingly, their ESP power gets nerfed.
Blah. Who made this? Roger Moore?! WTF man. I thought he liked his gonzo. This has been one of the most persnickety and restrictive set of new races I've seen, and is easily the worst article he's ever done. This is really the kind of bad article that only someone on the inside could get away with writing. Just as Gary's new classes that then got put into Unearthed Arcana were more mechanically problematic than most of the classes sent into the magazine by freelancers back in the day, this is the kind of bad writing that only gets through because the editors have a personal connection to the writer and aren't judging their work with the same kind of critical scrutiny as everything else. Epic fail.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 4/8
Modron Magic: Time for another burst of themed crunch, this time mixing magic items and spells. Modrons have always been fairly entertaining creatures to put in adventures, with their moral neutrality making them usable as allies and enemies easily, and their quirkiness giving DM's good hooks for roleplaying them that keeps their orderliness from getting tedious. They may be very much a love or hate creature, but that's because they're distinctive. So there's plenty of information for you to build appropriate devices with, expand the info on them further. Which is just what Monte Cook is doing here.
Clockwork Slings take advantage of modron physiology to sit on their heads and fire automatically. This means they effectively get an extra action per turn. Since pentadrones can already get 5, fitting the infantry with these will make them rather scary to PC's with only 1.
Clockwork Spinswords aren't exactly magical chainsaws, but they're close enough for government work. Well, we've seen a those in the magazine before (issue 132) You've got to put your own spin on things, and this definitely does.
Crystals of Clear Focus help you do things in a logical and successful manner. Unlike certain other supernatural groups, there is no catch, but it will tend to push you towards their way of approaching tasks. Hey, it's better than losing your soul because you didn't read the small print. And yet you still hear about people trying to deal with devils more than you do modrons. Maybe it's because they understand the principle of combining carrots and sticks better. Or maybe it's just sexiness. Oh dear, bad images.
Delay Fire Cossbows are a great retreat coverer. Put them down, and they target and shoot anyone nearby later a bit. The kind of technomagic that rewards intelligent use, will players take advantage of it?
Flying Harnesses are another mostly mechanical one. They may be rather awkward for a non-modron to put on, and take some learning to operate, but hey, flying! Everybody wants that. Probably why we've had so many methods of doing so over the years.
Lenses of Protection save modrons from being maddened by the strange and incomprehensible chaos of the rest of the multiverse. What they consider maddening may not be the same as what is bad for human sanity, of course. :p Still, better than nothing.
Limb Extensions are another technological one. We don't need magic for that. We can buy those from a toy store. You can even get pretty good at using them.
Magnetic Clamps are another pretty mundane trick that would seem supernatural to the superstitious mind. Mind you, it's a bit broader than real magnetism, but I guess that's where the magic comes in.
Mirrorballs show that Monte is playing this for laughs to a degree. A floating mirrorball that hovers around you to give you rear and sides vision. Again, it works in reality. (I've used the reflections from my glasses to surreptitiously watch things behind me in the past.) And modrons would take the practical route without concern for how silly it makes them look to everyone else. I can see the logic in this.
Truebridges violate conservation of mass and turn from a single plate to a whole avenue of them. This isn't just useful for bridges, but also temporary cover, ramps, patching up the floor, or anything else you can think of.
A Winch of Giant Strength also adds a little magic to a basic physics principle. This has the air of filer. Mixed bag, really.
That's all the items. Now for the spells. Set the Path is another variant of making everything go according to plan. Assuming it's a good plan in the first place. Otherwise, you'll be forced to mime the actions that make no sense in light of reality. More intentional comedy in the name of unbending logic I see.
True arrow of Law works on the same kind of principle as Holy Word, only not as powerful. Chaotic creatures hit by one are hurt, lawful ones are buffed, and neutral ones are charmed in your favor. Also notable because it's a wizard spell that can heal, so it bears watching carefully in the hands of PC's.
Correlate Data lets you do the Sherlock Holmes thing without the DM giving you tons of data and you working it out manually. Useful for breaking plot dead ends and general avoiding deus ex machina.
Harmony promotes the Arcadian version of law rather than the Mechanus one. Go for the peaceful solution, and calm man, beast and nature. Not very adventurer-like I know, but who wants to be orthodox all the time anyway. Overall, I think this collection has more finely tuned machines in it than rattly old bangers.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 5/8
Fiction: Innkeepers solution by Steven Piziks. One of those stories that shows us that the big damn hero method is not always the wisest way to get things done. If you're lucky, you'll get the glory. If not, then a fate worse than death may well await you. So it proves here, when an attempt to take a dragon as a familiar results in the dragon making a familiar of them instead, resulting in a lifetime of isolation, broken up with being a stalking horse for it's appetites. Not a very pleasant thing to happen, but when you can't disobey them or even kill yourself, what can you do? There is an ending, but it's pretty bittersweet. With quite solid worldbuilding that makes it clear this isn't our world, while setting up it's own rules quite clearly and then working from them, this manages to be a pretty good story, without making comfortable reading at all. It's another reminder of how arbitrary, unglamorous and fragile life can actually be. It makes me want to find a way to get around my own mortality on my own terms. Living in an entropic universe sucks.
Wyrms of the north: Ahh, red dragons. The real iconic bastards. Ed gets round to giving us one of these at last. They have pretty decent magical abilities anyway, but Ed just can't resist giving this one even more, to keep up with all the other superpowerful monsters and wizards he's already added. Not that he's quite on the same level of some of them, merely being a seeker of immortality where they've successfully attained it. And for all his paranoia, he falls victim to that great draconic vice, spending decades at a time asleep, which can leave you open no matter how many traps and constructs you protect your lair with. I suppose that the important thing is that while competent, he doesn't seem unbeatable or a mary-sue, which is quite significant when you're intended primarily as an antagonist. The new spell is interesting but underpowered, which further makes him seem fallible despite his plentiful treasure and magic items. So this isn't the most inventive creature Ed's ever given us, but still useful, and not as cheesy as he has been known to get either. Middle of the road for him is still a well above average article for anyone else.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 6/8
Arcane Lore: Back to Greyhawk we trundle for another trio of spellbooks by named wizards. Gotta keep up with the realmses, or at least try and fail miserably. Even this doesn't excite me like it used too.
Exalted Dwomercraft was made by the mage of the valley. It's like, totally a collaborative work with a hot drow babe too. Dude has mad skillz. He can totally condense a prismatic sphere into weapon shape and fly around in a pimpin' conjured ride. That'll kick ur ass in a single hit. Power word kill eat your heart out.
The Pyronomicon is the work of Keraptis, he of White Plume Mountain fame. Unsurprisingly, all it's spells are fire based, including adapted versions of unseen servant, magic missile, cone of cold and invisible stalker with extra burnination attached. Equally unsurprisingly, it has a long and ugly list of people fighting over it after the original owner was beaten. Dunno why, when fire stuff is so common.
Slerotin's Manifesto is a survivor of the Suel rain of colorless fire. It's also proved rather popular, and surprisingly enduring due to the troll components used in it's construction. It's only unique spell is similar in effect, allowing you to make inanimate objects completely indestructible. 9th level spells rock.
Dungeon Mastery: Oh god. The Idealist-Reactive-Civic-Adaptive generational analysis model. There's a bit of sociology of debatable value that I haven't seen in years. Still, even if things get pretty blurry in reality, it's the kind of thing you can apply to help you in your worldbuilding, and twist around to represent the different psychologies and lifespans of other races in the setting. Boiling things down to one or two significant crises per generation per country certainly seems to be a way to accelerate constructing a history for your world. And this is the kind of quirky article that keeps me from being bored by not relying on the usual fantasy cliches and using an unusual source for inspiration. What would Lord of the Rings been like if Tolkien had been a sociologist rather than a linguist? Probably not as commercially successful, but hey. Fun to speculate.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 7/8
Campaign Classics: Ah yes, Yak-men. While genies got plenty of expansion in Al-Qadim, Yak-men were the big breakout new monster of the setting. Quite right too, as they have enough mythic ancestry to be resonant, but are also pretty unusual in powers as D&D monsters, and their power levels are sufficiently scalable that they can continue to be a challenge into the mid-teens at least. An article supplementing them is to be welcomed. So here we get a look into their politics and day-to-day life, when they're not off bodysnatching and trying to overthrow and enslave everyone else. Despite being fairly unified and stoic for an evil race, there is still a degree of internal politics, and the losers end up on the sacrificial altar while the society as a whole goes onwards. With details on how their kingdom is divided up, stats for the leaders of the provinces, and even the manifestation of their dark god, this is a nicely specific article, not afraid to make a stand and pin things down in many ways, while also being helpful in showing you how to transplant them to other settings. In addition, it's fully aware of and builds upon the ideas from issue 233's birthright/al qadim hybrid article, which is something I find very pleasing indeed. If anything, it has quite a bit in common with the princess ark travelogues in the way it expands upon a previously mentioned place, and isn't afraid to set it up as a challenge for all levels. That makes me pretty happy, as that's just the kind of adventure location I can use.
KotDT sees conspiracies in every random roll. Someone really should break the miners guild monopoly. The inflated prices they're charging are ridiculous. Dragonmirth applies modern principles again to hilarious effect. Swordplay needs a new party leader. Floyd gets some much needed exposition.
Role-playing reviews: Bubblegum crisis RPG gets a reasonably positive review, despite Rick not being into anime at all. Since that's about to undergo a real boom around here, he may not enjoy RPGing so much in the near future. Anyway, character building is based on random generation & lifepaths, traveller style, and the system is based on the Fuzion engine. While fairly crunchy, it's clearly explained, and seems to facilitate the kind of action the show shows. Give it a good chewing over.
Hong kong action theatre sees the first mention in the magazine of infamous designer Gareth-Michael Skarka. Even more than the last review, this wins Rick over by the way it approaches it's subject matter. It actually has some elements in common with the Amazing Engine, in that you're playing an actor, who has some stats in common each time, but plays different roles regularly. Still, it implements them better, encouraging you to flip genres regularly and break the 4th wall while still developing your character. Whether it's aged well I'm not sure, but i'm sure you could still have fun with it.
Cthulhu Live reminds us just how little coverage LARPing gets in the magazine. Rick loves it as much as he loves Cthulhu tabletop, and finds it rather easier to get into than dressing up as warriors and wizards. The system has been stripped down quite substantially to fit the environment, and the sample scenarios are excellent. Now you just need to have enough players and a suitably atmospheric location to make them work properly. Not a challenge I would object to taking on.
Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Up to next January, and we've finally cleared the schedule snarls. What a relief. Let's just get back to doing what we do best, albeit at a somewhat slowed down pace.
The Forgotten Realms is still steaming happily onwards, giving a full supplement to the cult of the dragon. Introduced in the 1986 birthday of this magazine, they certainly make people's lives interesting, but have played second fiddle to the Zhentarim and Red wizards in recent years. Will they be getting tied in novels where they make some master stroke shortly? Whatever happens though, we already know Netheril is doomed. Can the stars of the trilogy get back then escape it and live long happy lives before it implodes?
Dragonlance is it's usual beleaguered yet curiously cheerful self. Heroes of Hope is the supplement for the new Mystic magics. Divine power from hope and believing in yourself? Then what do we need gods for? Oh yeah, we don't. They always caused more trouble than they were worth, anyway. We also get to see Raistlin, finally free from all that suffering crap and a fully accredited archmage, look back on his life in The Soul Forge. See what Margaret produces without Tracy to balance her.
Two rather quirky generic products this month. College of wizardry finally fills in details on their guilds, schools, and other organizations. Common, rare, or somewhere in between, this is more worldbuilding fun. We also get a mini campaign setting you can drop into any other world. Jakandor: Island of War! What's all that about? Don't remember this stuff at all.
The current Clack: More progress on the WotC takeover. The Code of Ethics is out! You can say Demon again! Greyhawk is coming back! Woo! Other settings may not be so lucky. And Magic: the Gathering's world is getting a AD&D conversion. Well, maybe. So this is interesting, but it also reminds us that things are up in the air, and they will still change their mind about many of the details of their future plans. Still, there is a certain excitement in the air here. Once again, the simple fact that the pressure is off after several years of it gradually mounting up means a lot. Once again it looks like this'll be more interesting than the average article in the near future.
This issue is mostly ok, improving towards the end, apart from the two Geyhawk articles, which for some reason are both rather iffy. That does seem a little strange, given they're planning on bringing it back now, and makes me wonder how well it'll do. Still, the magazine as a whole has settled down, and we're getting clear indications of where WotC want to go with the game as a whole. Things have definitely been worse, even if the magazine doesn't have the verve it did back in the early 80's. Will it ever get that level of groove going again? As usual, it's time to look to the future with both hope and fear. 1997 will be over quite quickly, but 98 is going to be another long year, what with the annual and everything. Off I bounce to another christmas then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. A nice cover at last, with none of the over cluttering or excess badass that has been far too prevalent in recent months. Ahh, Tony Diterlizzi. Managing both quality and quantity of images while retaining a distinctive style. He deserves quite a bit of credit for what he's done over the years. Lets see what's inside. Gah, another generic magic themed issue. They've done that for christmas before, and this certainly doesn't look like it's got anything special like issue 200. Come on, prove me wrong bitches. I'd love to have my expectations defied in this case.
In this issue:
The Wyrm's turn: This year's been a bit of a bust really. But they're already cheerfully looking forward to next year. So here's where we hear about the changes they're making. While they're not announcing 3rd edition yet, they're going to concentrate on setting heavy products that'll remain useful even if there is an edition change, so they're obviously starting to make plans in that direction. They're also putting more control in the hands of the writers for the settings, and the magazine is getting a column by their new owner Peter Adkison. Since Gary's columns were often one of the most interesting things about the old magazine, I shall watch this development with great interest. Promises promises. You may have changed a few things already, but you have a whole bunch of established culture to go against. And you shouldn't want to slay every sacred cow anyway. In any case, this is more interesting historical signposts.
D-Mail: We start off with someone complaining about Dalamar's replacement in the Wizards Three. Ed takes the opportunity to give a suitably whimsical IC reply. People would complain just as much if you ignored continuity and had him turning up unexplained. Still, couldn't you have got a replacement from Cerilia or one of the other settings instead of just adding an apprentice. That would seem a more interesting solution. Don't they have enough iconic NPC's to draw upon?
A letter expressing annoyance at too many multi-page adverts, and suggesting that an article on medieval clothing might be useful to their readers and not too rehashed. That's the kind of specific request they can fulfil without too much difficulty.
A letter asking for more Greyhawk and Spelljammer articles. We're already getting a decent number of Greyhawk ones. Any setting ones would be welcome really, because it gives them choice.
A quibble from regular writer and forumite Paul Culotta about Roman history and language. He knows his stuff, it seems. Do you want to try debating him?
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 2/8
Forum: Chad Dukes gives us another good reason to recruit new players. It lets you see things through their eyes, enjoy all the old tricks as if they're new, face all the old monsters as if they're a real threat, etc etc. I quite agree. A game is more fun when it's not with the same people year in, year out.
James Thompson dislikes bringing back 1e cavaliers and allowing paladin/bards. But multiclassing for humans is not an inherently bad idea. It's still probably better than the current solution, even with it's flaws.
Brian Frink picks apart the fearmongering over paladin/bards. Like ranger/druid, that's a technically impossible and very hard to qualify for combination. What kind of god could sponsor that?
Timothy Eccles tries to apologize for slavery. Just because we think it's wrong, doesn't mean all cultures think it's wrong. Plus ancient villains ought to learn that reliability (up to a point) is a far better policy that killing your underlings after a first infraction. That will not lead to loyal minions. Unless you live in a universe where the 80's cartoon attitude is what gets you optimum success in life.
Anton J. Uselmann promotes straight talking in dealing with disruptive players. Tell them they're being a problem in no uncertain terms before trying anything else. A lot of the time, that will fix things, particularly if everyone else in the group backs you up and says that behaviour is not acceptable. Peer pressure can be used for good or ill.
Bruce F. Beyers defends his praise of the cavalier. They do have a unique niche to fill, and they can't specialise in weapons, at least not the paladin ones (and who'd want to play any other type) That said, there still some abominations of classes out there.
Daniel Ingraham is another person rebutting Bruce. An ultimate warrior would not be good for the game. The classes are meant to be balanced with one-another, and they should all be able to contribute to a party, albeit in different ways.
Charlie Martin-Brooks thinks thieves cant should have variants for races other than humans. Really, it's never worked as a separate language, and it's no wonder it's another thing on the chopping block.
Arthur D. Reynolds analyses how scary issue 238's specialisation rules are. Frankly, what regular monster can face up to that. This is the problem with houserules that grant more power. Once you get to a certain degree, the game ceases to be fun due to lack of decent challenges. You price yourself out of the market. Now you'll have to start again in some other field.
Ushio & Tora? Looks like we're seeing the real takeoff point of the process that'll result in RPG's and anime sharing the same shops, and much of the same fanbase. Well, since the mainstream shops have abandoned us, It's back to the comic and hobby stores. Still, that also means the ground is laid for Exalted to become a hit, so it's not all bad.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 3/8
Sage advice: When you lose your mind due to polymorph do you gain all the HD and special powers of the creature. (yes. This may not be a good thing.)
What happens if new enemies arrive after I cast prayer ( they aren't affected, but you've still got your buffs. It's not so bad.)
I'm still not happy with the question of what elves are resistant to. (Normally, skip would just ignore you. But Skip has been thinking about this one as well, and will grace you with a new improved reply. Be grateful for skip's generosity.)
Can familiars learn spells (Twice no. )
Why do you have a monster list for monster summoning 8 when we can't get that spell level (just in case someone decides to introduce 10th level spells)
How do you turn lower planar creatures (as special undead. It usually isn't worth the bother trying)
If a spell lasts more than a day, can you rememorize it while the previous one is still running (yes)
Can neutralize poison save you from monsters with instant save or death poison. (Only if cast on the same round. Save or die is brutal, and we're really considering reducing the number of things that can do that)
How does herbalism work. (With a lot more work than spellcasting)
Does an injected poison work if you coat a slashing weapon with it and hit someone (yes)
Would a cloaker be surprised if someone tried to put it on (only if it was asleep beforehand. They're evolved around that trick, so of course they have instincts designed to cope with it. )
The laws of spell design: I do believe this is one someone asked for in the letters page a while back. A breakdown of how to figure out what level a spell should be from it's effects, rather than just eyeballing it. Obviously with thousands of existing spells in hundreds of supplements, they won't all stick to those rules. But the same can be said of the class design rules in issue 109 and 2e, and existing classes. So by following this, you won't get anything as badass and efficient as Magic Missile, Continual Light or Stoneskin. On the other hand, it is clearly written, laid out in a logical step-by-step fashion, and should keep players from running roughshod over the DM. People have wanted this for a long time, and it could have been done far far worse. A worthy choice to lead the issue with.
The magic of krynn reborn: Once again it's time to do a bit of backpedaling with the 5th age setting. Albeit the sort that would probably actually happen. Having discovered a new magic system, former wizards would immediately set out to replicate their old spells, with mixed success. So here's 31 conversions of old D&D spells, and 11 new ones. Teleport doesn't come off too great, but Wizard eye actually works a little better. Sleep and charm have been moved from wizards to clerics, and dispelling magic is still not really an option, so a different tack has been developed. This is another of those articles that's really rather interesting from a systems wonk perspective, showing me exactly how to game the new magic system, and what it just can't do. Obviously I'm not going to get to use it in actual play any time soon, but that doesn't mean I dislike this. Actually, I rather enjoyed it. Even though it's making another system more D&D like, it's still a welcome break from it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 4/8
Mage Construction: And if a couple of articles ago we had one inspired by the letters page, here's one born from forum debates. Using magic in the process of building. Which is closely related, but not identical to the one on magical fortifications in issue 224. In both cases, there's a whole lot of ways that magic would logically change things, but in most fantasy worlds doesn't. As this is focussed on the business applications rather than the military ones, it's not quite as interesting or instantly applicable to people's campaigns. Really, it seems intended to sit in the background and lampshade the weird stuff that would turn up anyway. And I guess so when the players want to make their own dungeons, you have an excuse to bleed away their money through hired help when they can't do it themselves. As it's also shorter, yeah, I don't think this one is terrible, but it doesn't quite manage to justify itself. Another example of how they've become more comfortable with frequent rehash these days.
Learn more about magic: Oh dear. time for another article that splits an existing skill into a whole bunch of more focussed ones, thus making it a hell of a lot harder to actually be a well rounded character. We don't have enough of them. :p It does have to be said that's one benefit of the Skills & Powers system. It's already more skill friendly than the standard nonweapon proficiency system. And specialising in the theory of a particular school of magic does offer some distinctive benefits that are useful in general play. In the end, this is another of those articles that makes me long for the imminent arrival of 3rd edition, with skills and feats separated out and skill bloat kept mostly under control. Let's keep on moving, trying to keep a groove going.
Jest the Wizards Three: A second instalment in relatively quick succession this year, it seems. Well, the last one was probably one of the many things delayed by the changeover. Still, it doesn't look like they're feeling the trauma. If anything, Dalamar's replacement has moved things even further towards light and fluffy territory. It's all childish hijinks mixed with a bit of innuendo and a surprising amount of food talk. It's actually rather irritating, as if he's getting less mature as the years go by. Let's hope the spells will make up for this drop in the fiction quality.
Coinsharp lets you turn money into daggers and vice versa, and then drop the change at a moment of your choice. A perfect one for con men, assassins, and other roguish sorts.
False Ioun Stone is pretty self explanatory. Just the thing to let a low level illusionist seem to be a lot more powerful than they are. Another quirky little flavour spell from the master of them.
Hither lets you have an item leap into your hands with only a brief verbal component. Another one that sounds pretty useful and multipurpose, applicable whenever you're in a pinch.
Wizard gong is a cheeky variant on Alarm, with the extra benefit of being immune to standard detection. It does cost 1,000gp per use though, so it's not for everyday use.
Echo lets you record and play back sounds. Amazingly, the recording can be done retroactively, which many musicians would kill for the capacity to imitate. Want.
Fingerblade is yet another method of surreptitiously creating a decent weapon for your wizard. And seriously screwing over low level fighters. Muahahahaha.
Nextremity lets you swap your limbs around. Another low key but awesomely versatile trick in an instalment full of them.
Sortil's Aqueous Transfer lets you move liquids from one container to another with zero wastage.
SPY is another little divination trick, albeit a slightly gross one. Not that great compared to Clairvoyance, really. Still, the fact that all of these are lower level spells, and most are quite useful means this is all the more usable by players. These ones won't break your game, but they will liven up your plots. I think that despite the cheese increase, this series is still proving it's worth.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 5/8
Wyrms of the north: Volo isn't much help this time, leaving Elminster to do all the work. Understandable, because while Ed may have held back a bit last time, this one is just insanely powerful. A blue dragon with 20th level spellcasting, and enough extras to take on Phaerimm? This is getting a little excessive. If you make all your NPC's exceptional, then the exception becomes the rules, which devalues the exceptional and makes the normal seems hopelessly inadequate. Which I suppose is a result of having a mainline to way more inspiration than anyone else. You never have to learn how to be economical and make the best of limited resources. So this one does annoy me rather with it's excesses, and doesn't seem like it'd be very easy to use in game. And I was never very keen on this series anyway. So this is one case where Ed doesn't manage to win me over with his whimsical charms. He'll have plenty more chances if I know him.
Bookwyrms: The world of Robert Jordan's Wheel of time by Robert Jordan & Teresa Patterson would be incredibly handy for anyone planning on roleplaying in this setting. Like most companion works of this sort, there is quite a bit repeated from the books themselves, but the new information on their history and villains is worth it for getting a more objective picture of the world. And when the books have as much character switching and descriptive padding as this, collecting the useful setting info you could glean from the books is handy in itself.
Destiny's road by Larry Niven once again sees him create a new world, and use real scientific ideas as a big driver of the story. You know, I don't actually think I've read this one. I ought to get on that, given how much I like most of his work.
The singing sword by Jack Whyte is an attempt at a gritty, realistic take on Arthurian myth. Sounds very 90's. I suppose that's the thing, isn't it. Reinterpretations of existing stories can't help but bear the influence of the concerns of the current age.
The subtle knife by Philip Pullman is the second book in his anti-Narnia trilogy that's going to go on to be quite the breakout hit in a few years. I don't think it's any surprise to say they recommend it wholeheartedly, moral message and all.
Fiction: In the bleak deepwinter by Lynn Abbey. Oooh. A bit of fiction from one of their official writers, for the Forgotten Realms setting. In Ed's tradition, it involves an immortal and exceedingly powerful protagonist which can basically steamroll their way through most challenges. Unlike most of Ed's creations though, she got that way through happenstance, and isn't particularly happy about being immortal. With the number of people in the Realms who do manage to adapt to immortality decently, the old trope of angsting because you've left behind everyone you know, and are afraid to love anyone loses a bit of it's sting. But no-one ever said people were rational, and so that's what we have here. And in classic romantic tradition, despite weird trappings and supernatural obstacles, we essentially have a story of learning to let go and open yourself up to love. How sweet. I think this manages to fit into the realms decently, despite the tone being darker than Ed's writing. After all, it's still pretty cheesy. :p And as far as I can tell, the continuity is ok. So I'm not going to complain.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Still in theme, with some Realms-set items designed to give you stories that rival Drizzt's in style. New magical figurines. Another idea we had quite a few of last year, in issue 229. Still, with a different flavour, they could still be fun.
Harashuin's Spirit Ally doesn't come to life, but as long as you have one of these little pendants, you'll never be truly alone. Aww. How sappy. And you can trade it up for a familiar of the same kind as your spirit animal easily. No more worrying about being stuck with a toad for a decade.
Quixoro's Knightly Steed is an ultimately chivalric horse that will try and mold it's owner into an exceptional knight. This could be cool, amusing or irritating. You may end up passing this on if you aren't the right sort.
The Urn of the Blue Vishap summons a rather cranky dragon who has to fulfil three tasks for you. Since he doesn't have actual wish-granting, this isn't as cool as a genie, but you take what you can. And the risks are pretty similar. Let the rubber beware.
Lycaeonorukke becomes a wolf with various playful quirks and magic abilities. Not enormously powerful, it is useful for a good deal more than combat, and once again, may or may not form a bond with it's owner. I guess it's all down to your roleplaying skills. They're not up to Ed's standard, but I can still see myself having fun with these lot.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 6/8
Arcane Lore: Ooh, new bard spells. We really ought to have had some of those before. Damn wizards stealing all the publicity, despite not having the charisma. Druids have been pretty neglected in the last few years as well, having to cadge off their irresponsible mates the elementalists for new spells. Still, at least they're not rehashing again.
Apparition makes you look insubstantial and ghostly, allowing you to scare or fake-out people. Always a good way of seeming more powerful than you are, and that's something Bards should pay extra attention too.
Chromatic Crown gives you hot-swappable resistances that scale in versatility as you level. This is quite useful, because you never know what kind of attacks you're going to face beforehand. This could save your life a few times.
Chromatic Rod dazzles everyone it hits, in an interesting variant on color spray. Good thing bards have a lower THAC0 than wizards, for that touch attacky goodness.
Size Disguise is another one for when you can't afford the real thing or wish to take advantage of looking big or small and having hands in a different place. Hmm, that'll take a bit of creativity.
Captain's Voice gives you the projecting power of BRIAN BLESSED without spending years working on your vocal power and stage presence. It even lets you talk through walls. Combine with a little clairvoyance to keep your subordinates from masturbating. :D
Chorus of Valor forces your companions to join in the singing if they want the buff. This is why people prefer clerics to bards.
Hostile Images is another illusion one that makes things confusing and scary for the enemy but doesn't actually have real effects. But flinch reflexes being what they are, that may waste a crucial few rounds.
Hypnotic Harmonies is a reskinned hypnotic pattern that'll work on grimlocks, but not people wearing earplugs. Like varying energy types, this is useful simply because it keeps enemies from getting smug about their resistances.
Mute shuts your enemy up, making sure they can't cast spells. Seen that before very recently. Well, it's such an obvious avenue of screwage.
Dirge of Despondency spreads Aaaaangst. Meh.
Rumble fakes people out with signs of an earthquake. Seems like that kind of chicanery is going to be a definite theme of this article.
Shrieker Wail imitates said wandering monster attractors, with hil-arious results. God, it's been ages since we've heard about them. They really ought to do an ecology.
Silent Passage is a slightly more focussed silence spell, designed to make your party stealthy but still able to communicate. It's considerably better than the clerical ones of similar levels we've seen in the past. This technology is coming on quite nicely. Soon it'll be as good as Invisibility.
Inspirational Theme is an absolutely hilarious and rather obvious buff spell. Ba baba BA BA Ba bada BA BA Ba baba ba. Arum papa pum papa pum pum pum. Sisters are doing it for themselves! Whatever floats your boat, the mechanical effect'll be the same.
Protection from Light makes you and all your posessions completely light-absorbant. It's not quite invisibility, and so it's substantially higher level seems a bit odd, but it certainly has it's uses for stealth and intimidation.
Echolocation should be an obvious one. It has it's advantages and disadvantages over regular vision. Seen you before.
Infrared Light gives you infravision. Seen that before in this magazine too, possibly twice. Yawn.
Otto's Triple Chime gets rid of traps and opens things up, twice. Possibly overkill, but when you've seen the traps some people put on their stuff, who can blame a bard for a little doublechecking.
Prismatic Shell gives you a single layer of prismatic goodness to shield yourself with, since bards like their pretty colours, but can't afford the whole thing. Any well prepared wizard will penetrate this with a single thrust. Uh! Watch me now!
Aria of Peace keeps people from fighting as long as you keep singing. Keep those vocal chords well exercised and be ready to make a quick exit when you stop. A lot of people get unreasonably pissed off by pacifism.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 7/8
The dragon's bestiary: A tied in entry here, as they detail talisman servants from Netheril. Magical automation is a topic that's been covered in here before, but it's not often you encounter a society that takes full advantage of it. If the Realms and all it's lost empires destroyed by malfunctioning magic are any indicator, there may be a good reason for this. Still, they left plenty of cool stuff behind. As long as you only use it, don't try and replicate it & sell it you should be fine.
Caravan Servants serve as both beast of burden and possibly place to live as well. They don't need feeding either and have enough volition and loyalty to act independently to help you, so one of these is a hell of a lot more handy than a mule. If you meet a wizard with one of these don't kill it when you kill him.
Gladiator Servants fight your opponents with style, until they go psycho and attack everything, including you. A textbook example of let the buyer beware.
Mystran servants have a bunch of magical abilities to help them serve as guardians better. They too have their quirks, but are unlikely to be a problem for their masters, aside maybe from adding a little comic relief to proceedings. A quite good set of creatures really.
The ecology of the mongrelman: From one of the sexiest creatures in the D&D universe, to one of the ugliest. Which is a pretty interesting distinction, when most humanoids tend to have an average charisma substantially below human. Awkward, short-lived (even shorter when you consider how many of their children are stillborn or die shortly afterwards because they just weren't viable) and oppressed by everyone, mongrelmen really are the bottom of the kicking pile. Course, much of this is because they just sit there and take it. They have a number of tricks that mean if they were more aggressive, they could easily deal with the likes of goblins and orcs, and their class learning abilities are well above average. But no, they were bred to be stoic, and stoic they shall be. Rather sweet really, and certainly makes them stand out against the usual ravening hordes adventurers have to deal with. This also answers the question of where they come from with a neat little twist that both makes their personalities make more sense, and makes them seem even more tragic. And finally, we get quite a bit of new crunch, good for both players and DM's. Another excellent ecology, hitting both the crunch and fluff buttons square on. The doldrum days of the early 90's seem well behind us in this department.
Ellcia. More bright anime adverts to break up the flow of the magazine.
The statement of ownership is halved in size again, to make it even harder to spot. Not surprising, since this year of chaos has really done a number on reader confidence. Particularly hit has been the number of subscribers, which is down by over a 6th. With average sales of 53k, and last month ones of 49, they seem to be starting to flatline. Lets hope next year brings some serious improvements on this front.
KotDT divides the party. This is what happens when you don't read the instruction manual for dealing with deities. Hiding in shadows is easy when the shadows are big, as they are in swordplay. Dragonmirth also features some serious equipment, but they still can't use it all at once. Floyd has some more serious exposition. And the plot thickens.
Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997
part 8/8
Role-playing reviews gives us another look at D&D's competition in the fantasy arena. Old Ones is for the Palladium FRPG, and has been updated for the second edition recently. When they say old ones, they of course mean cthulhuesque world eating monstrosities, not geriatrics. :) The book is filed with plenty of info on them and the dark kingdom that worships them, and manages to make things suitably strange and gruesome. Kevin certainly doesn't lack in drive and imagination.
Dragons and Gods also sees him pilfering liberally from existing media, but more than putting his own spin on it. There may be plenty of bits of egyptian myth mixed in, but really, no-one could tell it quite like him. Who else would have an intelligent dagger with paranoid schizophrenia?
Adventures on the high seas is scattershot, but also full of interesting details, covering not just the sea, but plenty of coast, trading & economics, and some seemingly unrelated stuff like gladiators and necromancy. As prolific as he is, perhaps an external editor might help make the products more professional.
Monsters and animals, on the other hand, disappoints Rick, being just another load of monsters, only without much descriptive verve, and far too many stats for mundane animals. Do we really need those? I suppose a chipmunk might come in handy at some point, but I can't recall ever using them.
The Earthdawn survival guide is essentially a book of essays, with whimsical, mostly IC writing, and all statistical stuff confined to a few pages at the back. This means it's easy to steal ideas for another system, which Rick is keen on because he's not too fond of high crunch games. There are quite a few supplements like that these days. Might be a fashion thing. Until D20 comes along, people have to try and grab the generic dollar any way they can.
Throal: the Dwarf Kingdom Game is also for Earthdawn. Robin Laws creates a mountain fastness that's a little more chaotic and filled with political tensions than your average lawful good D&D dwarven setup. Which means it should be fun to adventure in. Ricks only complaint is that it needs better maps and maybe a prefab adventure. Since those are falling out of fashion, he may have to keep complaining.
GURPS Dinosaurs is the kind of supplement a comprehensive generic game ought to have. After all, who doesn't think dinosaurs are awesome? Well, unless they were ruined on them by watching all 13 land before time movies. :p Other lines could learn from this. Still, it is a GURPs supplement, and that means it is a bit dry at times.
GURPS planet krishna is one of their fairly obscure licences, based on L. Sprague de Camp's series. It's a sufficiently strange one that it keeps Rick's interest, and tests the system nicely. Plus there's plenty of humour in there. You could really kick it old school with this.
Aeon has indeed been renamed Trinity. Now their clever aliterative naming system has been messed up.
TSR Previews: February sees things continue at the same pace as last month. The Forgotten Realms finally fills in another place that's been on the map for ages. Hellgate Keep is perfect for another megadungeon. Be careful delving it though, for you may let out even more unspeakable evils to plague the world. Speaking of unspeakable evils, Cyric finally pisses off the other gods enough that they put him on trial. Troy Denning tells another of the Realms' more lighthearted stories, as superdick gets his comeuppance.
Dragonlance concludes it's first 5th age trilogy, with The eve of the Maelstrom by Jean Rabe. Some old favourites are brought back improbably to help deal with the really big dragons. Will they be enough to deal with them for good?
Ravenloft has another adventure in which you are caught between two dubious sides, Servants of Darkness. Will you choose the witches, the inquisitors, or just kill everyone for maximum xp?
Also monstrous, but rather more lighthearted, is Moonlight Madness. Skip Williams once again proves that when you let him lose to write adventures, he doesn't half produce some goofy crap. Stick to the rules lawyering.
And the Wizard's Spell compendium reaches volume 3. No surprise that this one is turning out at least as bulky as the magic item encyclopedias.
The Current Clack comes to an end. Whether they continue their gossip under another format or not we shall have to see. But as they've just lost one of their strongest opponents, Patricia Pulling, and let's face it, the amount of media controversy D&D has faced has declined dramatically in recent years, gossip doesn't seem like such a worthy use of their pagecount. So this is a reasonable change, especially as the replacement, bringing back employee profiles, looks like fun. In other cool news, we're getting a new Marvel Superheroes RPG from them. Since the previous one was easily their second strongest game for nearly a decade, this has definite potential to get quite a few articles in the magazine and keep me from getting bored by ubiquitous D&D coverage. I look forward to it. (although I do wish we'd heard more about why they lost the licence last time. )
This issue is nicely focussed and has tons of usable crunch, although it is maybe a bit too Realms heavy. They really ought to be giving their other settings at least at bit more love, rather than blanketing us with ubiquitous coverage of the setting that's already the most covered by a long shot. Still, most of the individual articles are good, it's just that these days they really seem to struggle with getting sufficient variety to make the magazine feel satisfying as a complete package. Instead, it's more for dipping in and out of. I suppose that makes more sense when you're reading over the course of an entire month. Let's hope they can keep at least a little continuity going next year, instead of resetting to basic article topics yet again.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 1/8
124 pages. What is this? Featuring articles by Gary Gygax?! Whoa. They'd been talking about reconciling with him this year, but I guess this clinches it. He's back. The rest of the cover seems appropriate as well. A bunch of generic fighter types, with one aging badass( who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gary if he'd kept himself in better shape ) taking centre stage and pointing his sword at the reader. This is significant. Course, since Gary was an unpredictable writer to say the least back in the day, that might not mean it'll be good, but it should be interesting. And they have plenty of other big guns as well. Let's hope this annual really has something to deliver above and beyond a normal issue, unlike last time.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Ha. Considering that immediately after they did their first annual, the company went tits-up, they're remarkably positive about the outcome. No deaths were directly attributed to the extra workload? Technically true. Really, they'd probably already scheduled this before they even released the first one, and having missed 6 issues, this'll help them get the slush pile under control a bit more. So it's hello to all the regular columns, and lots of stuff for their various settings. Not too different in principle from last year. So I guess it's all down to whether the articles are any better, since last time was more than a little dull overall. I should stop expecting the editorial to be anything interesting anyway, shouldn't I.
Dragonmirth is at the front for some reason. Swordplay needs reminding that clever tricks only work for so long before the enemy develops a counter.
Arcane Lore: As with last year's annual, it looks like they're going to tackle subjects very similar to ones already covered. So here we go from Bards to Illusionists. Both have a definite tendency towards the larcenous, and seeking indirect solutions. And since they share spell lists in this edition anyway, a spell researched for one is a spell researched for both! Two for the price of one! Careful with the overkill, dudes.
Acquaintance makes people vaguely think they know you. As long as you have basic social skills, this may well work out better in the long run than brute force charming them.
Anasthesia makes you numb. This isn't as nasty as blindness or deafness, but is rather exploitable for your multiclass rogue. If you numb the right place, they might not even notice the backstab until you're gone, possibly with their wallet too.
Anosmia takes out their sense of smell. Looks like we've got another symmetry filler here lads! Ensure he's paid properly for his troubles.
Dancing Shadows is sorta the inverse of dancing lights. Another one that can be creepy and misleading but doesn't do much mechanically. Illusionists still have to use their brains to profit.
Engagement is another cool mindfucking one, making people "remember" that they need to do something important somewhere else. Genius. This is turning more fun than I expected.
Illusory Savor, on the other hand just does the symmetry filling thing creating illusory smells and tastes. Yawn.
Jannes' Impressive Demeanour makes you look more badass. Meh. That's not hard to do. Backing it up, on the other hand, takes a little more work.
Phantom Touch does the symmetry filling with illusory touch. Itches, taps on the shoulder, slimy things up the legs, the choice is yours. Keep stretching that imagination dudes.
Shadow Cloak is a 4th way of increasing your hide in shadows chance in recent years. That idea really needs to become core next time if that's to be gone by.
False Thoughts is our only second level spell, unobtrusively foiling ESP with a handy decoy screen. Another one that could well become a staple if properly promoted, which would of course make it less valuable as people would get to developing counters for that.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 2/8
Deadlands disses boot hill. Are we going to let that lie?
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More bottles? Last seen in issue 194, it seems like there's a few more drops to be squeezed out of that theme. Not that you can squeeze bottles in D&D, as they don't have plastic ones. Well, maybe that will be one of the ideas. They do often pull the magic as technology trick around here.
Bartender's friends can heat, chill, stir and refill with but a word. Keep a few of these in your pub and you can raise the rates quite satisfactorily. (course, some of that'll go into paying for security. :p )
Cormian's viewing bowl is a classic scrying variant. Crystal balls are getting too ubiquitous? The fashion may shift to these instead. Then you'll look so 80's to all your wizard friends.
Flasks of delusion make whatever's in them look mysterious and magical. Another one with minimal use really, but you can leverage this into more money with a little brains. Just watch out for repeat customers who might want recompensation.
Goblets of the emperor protect you from poisoning, and have a bunch of other suitable awesome tricks. One of these will indeed give a court a good deal more prestige, but adventuring parties may find them a bit of a pain to steal.
Water purifiers are a tiny fraction of the usefulness of the last item, but also only a tiny fraction of the cost. I'd still prefer a decanter of endless water. That's not gonna flake out on you for anything less than a planar rip.
Potion cloakers are the precise opposite of the flask of delusion. Now you can double fakeout everyone around you. Those wacky wizards, always hiding the really valuable stuff in plain sight.
Security vials are the perfect preserver, and nearly impossible to break or open accidentally. Yeah, this is magic as technology alright. :shrugs: Store up a few of these for your health and safety.
Martyr Glass, on the other hand is very nicely idiosyncratic. You can get substantial benefits if you smash it in the right way. It'll make sure you have the fortitude to carry through on your good intentions, regardless the sacrifice.
Courtier's Bane is a nicely tricksy variant on poisoning your enemy. With but a word, you can turn the liquid in it to healing instead. Way to pull xanatos gambits, methinks.
Campaign Classics: Well, if Athas is appearing here, I think that makes it pretty certain it's dead now. Actually, this is an example of how their rules and setting stuff got entangled when they really needn't have been. They introduced a revised psionics system in the new Dark Sun Campaign set. This was not compatible with the Players Option stuff, despite that being well out at this time. And here's errata for both of these versions. Confused yet? I am, trying to penetrate this morass. Once again I am left with the feeling that while a bit unbalanced at times, the original 2nd ed psionics rules were easier and more fun than the revised ones. Gimme a break. :wrinkles nose: At least the 3.5 rules definitely work, even if they do encourage novaing 15 minute workdays.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 3/8
Ew. Eating spaghetti through your armour. What delightful imagery. Aaron Williams again brings the funny.
The dragon's bestiary: Ooh. An arctic themed collection of monsters. Haven't had one of those since christmas 1980. We could probably do with some more of these to fill out our encounter tables. Let's get a cataloguing.
Snow spiders are a lot more social than you'd expect, hunting in packs to keep warm. Thankfully, they don't have instadeath poison, so it'll just be a fairly standard fight as long as you can keep from falling down on the ice.
Crystal skeletons are another skeleton variant with a low malevolent intelligence. Like Dust skeletons from last year, they're even more dangerous if you kill them. The undead equivalent of suicide bombers, they should be most annoying to fight, especially if there are civilians around.
Tundra lizards are pretty self explanatory. They're not too scary in combat, but may drain the heat from you while you're sleeping. I bet the players'll suspect vampires. :p
Growlers look like icebergs and use that disguise to let their prey get close. Another cool idea I'm surprised they haven't got round to before. A quite decent end to a fairly average entry in this series.
Dungeon mastery: Oooh, a back conversion of an idea from Oriental Adventures. It's been ages since they tried something like that, partly because they simply ran out of enthusiasm for Oriental stuff in general after 1991. This time, it's the random events table for regions. So whether you're doing the domain play thing, or just passing through a town and need a little help figuring out what happened recently, roll on this and see what it throws up. It's not innovative, but it's useful, and that counts for quite a bit. Plus, y'know, nostalgia callback, which adds an extra frisson of excitement. If you're going to be unoriginal, it helps if you steal from good sources, which OA definitely was. So this is the kind of article I hope I'll remember when the right time comes in actual play.
The ecology of the shambling mound: The monster hunters association are all nicely raised after their debacle with the nymph, and this time, they're after a creature which will simply kill them by bashing them to bits, rather than narrative fiat. But since shambling mounds can grow infinitely if you cast the wrong spells at them, this can be a risky business for the dumb. And this ecology ends rather comically, with the association in disarray again. How will they stave off bankruptcy with a showing like this? It is marred a little by having a bit too much pure pontification, with the personalities of the people talking not quite managing to keep me interested the whole way through. Still, it is pretty solid, and gives the creature a few new tricks to surprise adventurers who think they can beat it by sticking to a formula. A perfectly decent way to finish off the year in this department.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 4/8
Rogues Gallery: Hey ho. Time for another instalment in this column statting up the characters of their recent novels. How's that working out for ya? Cheesily, if the past is anything to go by. And since this involves a newly ascended Forgotten Realms demigod, I don't have great expectations. The things they do with their powers. :shakes head:
Joel the rebel Bard is an illegal alignment for a bard, so I guess his name makes sense. From a long line of talespinners, this makes his a major disappointment to his family. Like many young protagonists, he's managed to rack up a list of heroic deeds in an improbably short period of time. Course, he'll only keep that up if the writers stay interested and produce another book starring him, which seems less likely under the current climate.
Jas is a fighter who's acquired wings under embarrassing circumstances. Yes, they are fairly beautiful, although the precise details vary from plane to plane. Joking about them may result in abuse or dive-bombing. This is of course extra funny and meta in the internet age. Jeff is truly ahead of the times here. :D
Holly Harrowslough is a 16 year old 5th level paladin. Another alumni of the fast track adventuring advancement system, including the stereotypically tragic loss of her parents. She's a little less naive than the average 16 year old or paladin though. Guess she gets to be the voice of reason for this party, which is indeed fairly cheesy. They know their audience, and hit those story points pretty regularly.
Dragonwyr: Well, this is a welcome bit of continuity. We not only have another module in the annual this time, but it's a follow-up to last year's one. I strongly approve. Not only does it let us have more info on the conflicts hinted at last year, but it also caters for higher level parties than most of their adventures. There does seem to be a stronger default path for the plot to go in this one, but you could probably still go off the rails and give this a rather unexpected outcome. It certainly makes allowances for the PC's to fail, and things to go horribly wrong for the village they're supposed to protect and the plot to go on from there, so it's not a railroad. The fact that the two combine together makes me especially keen to use them in actual play, as that's the kind of thing I encourage. And maybe they'll even make a trilogy out of this next year. Guess that's another pretty good incentive for me to keep reading.
Cry Havoc: We're having another extensive set of articles for each of their campaign worlds this annual, but thankfully this time they aren't wasting an extra page just talking up the settings for noobs. Instead it's straight into the action with an article showing us how to convert between Birthright's War Cards mass combat system and the old Battlesystem mechanics. Since it's been years since we saw anything on that, and I suspect it's out of print now, that's quite welcome in a quirky way. Unfortunately, as I'm not really familiar with either system, I'm not really in a position to judge the quality of the crunch, but as with many of the old non D&D articles, that's really not the point. It still makes for more interesting and varied reading than another wodge of monsters and magic items and reveals quite a bit about both. And if it gets people to buy one or both of these, then it's been a success for them in a larger financial sense.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 5/8
Hark, the herald!: Or Converting Bards to the 5th age system. Never mind that they might or might not have not had Bards in the first place, as some amusing Sage Advice questions showed, they're here now, and they have an iconic NPC to back them up. Where the last age had Astinus and his huge great library cataloguing the history of Krynn, now we have a mysterious wandering Herald showing up to tell stories of it's past, present and possible future. Which I suppose is symbolic of the same changes magic has gone through in general. No longer is it controlled by the gods, and regulated by a stuffy council which tests everyone seeking it, instead it's become more low-key and everyday, and goes to them instead of having to be sought out. So this fits nicely into their setting, and provides us with some new crunch for both the 5th age system and AD&D. My main issue with it is by tying an entire class to a single character, they risk making the world seem too small. But then, that's a mistake that's also very much in keeping with the setting's tone in general. Does that make it better or worse in the big picture?
The magic of Myth Drannor: Ed only takes one article this special, although we know he probably could have done more if he wanted too. But then, wouldn't want to upstage the guy with top billing, would we? So it's time for another bunch of magical items and spells. Exactly the kind of thing that we're oversaturated on, so it's particularly hard to impress me with. Still, if anyone can manage it, it's Ed. And as usual, he's going for it with gusto, and making use of IC fiction.
Mantles are magical gems that drain your hit points to power a quite extensive set of magical abilities. They need to be bathed in your tears to activate, and are generally unique in their precise abilities. They're really another excuse for elves to be better than you in all sorts of annoying little ways, and make it trickier for you to just kill them and take their stuff.
Spell-Webs are a prettier and easier to trigger means of storing spells than scrolls. Unfortunately, they're very much a lost art. Anyone who figures them out could make a pretty penny selling the secret to modern mages, for they let you build up contingencies quite handily. And in Faerun, that's what really makes the difference once you have 9th level spells, not a few more hit points and spells per day.
Araemyths are scary spells/devices capable of destroying magical items with ease, and converting the energy to unpredictable but powerful beams of destructive force. When a magical civilisation develops something like this, you know it's on the path to imploding sometime soon. After all, that's the standard cycle of development in the Realms. Get more magically badass until someone loses control of their massive magics, and then blows it all to pieces, creating lots of interesting dungeons for later generations to explore in the process.
Body Switch isn't as cool as it could be, essentially just teleporting each person involved to the other's position. Still, it seems like the kind of magic Ed could find many inventive uses for in his fiction. Muahahaha.
Gargajaws has impressive and quirky visuals, but is basically just a way to destroy inanimate objects and leave people unharmed. This will of course piss people off, especially if they have lots of magical items. Once again, it seems the Drannoreans have mastered destructiveness to a degree that makes you glad they're a lost civilisation.
Lifequench lets you kill something with a touch, and use its energy to double the power or uses of another spell. Scary and efficient. Once again, you're glad this one got lost, for overuse can make a spellcaster positively obscene.
Blood Dragon, on the other hand, kills it's caster, which makes it the kind of spell that only gets used when the caster has nothing to lose. It's not actually that scary for a 9th level spell though. A good meteor swarm would be preferable unless they're immune to fire.
Avarphyn are another item with a whole array of powers, but quirky limitations upon their use that may result in you permanently ruining them through ignorance. Oh, if only identify were a little cheaper and faster. Then we wouldn't have to worry so much about DM screwage.
Storm-Swords protect you from lightning and let you shoot lightning bolts and teleport. They seem positively mundane given the company they're keeping.
Wyrmtongue Scepters, on the other hand finish us off with another lovingly described weird item that has plenty of utility, but expresses it in an unusual way. Well, that must have been the cultural norm back then. Look how fashions have changed in reality, after all. So once again it looks like his imagination is functioning on a whole different league to most of their writers, and our gaming experience is all the better for it.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 6/8
Founding greyhawk: Gary's back! Now this is a way to make this special really special, and a good sign in general. Now the people in charge of TSR are gone, the new folks start the reconciliation process with the old guard who'd been driven away by Lorraine's ( single raindrop, chihuahua yaps, kazoo tootles) policies. And he's going right back to the start, to talk about his early campaign before D&D was even published. This demonstrates that even before it was finished, the game had plenty of people enthusiastic about it, and was already growing via word of mouth, as people told their friends about this fun new game Gary was running, and they wanted in as well. And as a result, the castle was built up from session to session, with big chunks made up in play or just before it. And so when it was released, it was thoroughly playtested, and ready to surprise people wherever they wandered in it. And so the stage was set for years of people dying horribly in conventions, and speculating what the full map of Castle Greyhawk might look like. A question that never would be answered in full, with Gary's death and legal crap leaving it unpublished, and so much of the details being cryptic notes that were merely guidelines to be played around with and changed on the fly in response to a party's actions. Really, this shows that D&D wasn't meticulously planned from the top down, and much of it's best work was created in a social context. This is more evidence that sequestering yourself away to work on something for years in the hope it'll change the world and make you a fortune isn't a particularly natural or easy method of creativity. You've got to immerse yourself in the world if you want to change other people's lives. This article is pretty cool, but it's really what it represents that's critical. It says that the new company is really drawing a line in the sand and making an effort to change things. And hopefully it means we'll be seeing more articles from classic writers in the future as well. That's worth a lot in terms of making me anticipate reading through the rest of the magazine.
Pox of the Planes: We've had a whole boxed set on fiends, plus another book on top of that recently. But they've been pretty light on details about Night Hags. Which is probably just how they want it. For all the Yugoloth work behind the scenes to orchestrate the flow of the blood war while pretending to be purely mercenary, it's the hags that are really making the huge profits, despite not having any overarching organisation or plan, beyond a mean spirited vindictiveness against anyone else who tries to muscle in on the larva trade. Still, they have some pretty nasty tricks up their sleeve, and can call in favours from all sides, since without them, the lower planes would go into a serious recession. And the most important of these is that they hold the key to turning Yugoloths into singular badasses to rival Baatezu and Tanar'ri lords. So this article actually fills in details on the setting that are rather important in the larger picture, including bringing back Anthraxus from the original 1st edition MMII. Whether these details will stick in future supplements I'm not sure, since unlike the demiplane of shadow, Yugoloths & Night Hags never really got much spotlight time in 3e. Still, this is another ambitious and rather good article from Ed Bonny. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to keep the planes alive and growing.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 7/8
Villains of gothic earth: Ah yes, James Wyatt doing a Red Death article. He's doing quite a lot to keep people from forgetting this otherwise pretty minor subline. This time, it's a collection of antagonists. We've already had one rogues gallery this issue. Will this be sufficiently different to keep me from getting bored?
The Abomination is a british gentleman that's been transformed into a yuan-ti by a curse. In classic darklord fashion, that means he now has a nice little domain with plenty of slaves and everything he needs, but the things he wanted are now forever out of reach. Well, without hands, that's quite literal. ;) Shouldn't be a slavedriver in the first place.
Grepik is a jermalaine hillbilly with a sweet tooth. Don't laugh, you don't want to be sleeping in a creaky shack when he's around. I think someone's been reading some steven king for their horror ideas. :p Not sure how well that fits with Ravenloft's flavour.
Grethiyn Greymalk is a githyanki trapped on Gothic Earth. As his learning comes from offworld, he doesn't have to worry about most of the crap PC spellcasters have to go through here. He explains his odd features by pretending to be lithuanian, which I once again find hilarious. Really, in the long term, he's not getting away, and it's his own fault, just like most other bad guys here.
Musaf ibn-Talir is a thief who got transformed into a jackalwere for his sadism. He'd like to think of himself as a hunter, but really, he'll always be a scavenger, and isn't that ironic punishment enough?
Ndrionhary is a beholder that pretends to be a god that just happens to look like a beholder. Wait a second. That sounds familiar. Ah yes, issue 215, as part of our african deities articles. Cool. And really, given how powerful beholders are, are you in any position to claim it's not, when you're a nerfed gothic earth PC? I'd like to see how their scientists would even go about testing it.
Juliette Preduit is a badass wererat gunslinger (with total fart control :p) She's originally from paris, and currently trying to take over montreal. Once again, I'm not sure if I should be laughing or not, but it certainly isn't helping establish a horrific atmosphere. All the incongruous bits just come off as silly.
Sheldra is a sahuguin who's been scarred in such a way that she can pretend to be a person wearing a fish-person mask, which is amusingly meta. She's also developing a drinking problem from her raids which she's trying to hide from her clan. I'm still being amused by the offbeat way these ideas are being presented.
Praskovia Voronov is a russian ghost who feeds off anger by possessing people and provoking an argument. This isn't inherently comical, but when the DM starts acting out a thick russian accent in actual play, it may well become so. So yeah, this article is pretty much a failure as horror, but it's still pretty entertaining reading.
Dragon magazine annual 1997
part 8/8
Afterword: A little earlier this issue, we got our first bit of writing by Gary in over 10 years. Now we get to see the first bit of direct communication by our new boss, Peter Adkison. This really is a very special issue, far more than last year's. And no surprise that he seems pretty excited to be here. Quite a bit of this is repeated from issue 242's editorial, but we get a bit more info on how these plans are to be implemented. The new Marvel Superheroes game is going to be diceless and use a version of the SAGA System, while Greyhawk's first new adventure will involve putting the old gang back together IC after their embarrassing demise at the hand of Vecna a few years ago. Whether they're getting older people in to write for the line as well is not certain yet. Rather than releasing a whole new world, they're going to try a mini-series, and see how that does. And of course, there's the desire to do more electronic stuff. Once again, I know a few of their plans won't pan out, but that just keeps this interesting as a record of their historical progress. While pretty breezy, Peter doesn't seem to have a particularly distinctive writing style as of yet, which means I doubt we'll be seeing comedy gold moments from him like we did from Gary. Still, it's better than Lorraine's disdainful detachment by a long shot.
This annual is far better than the first one, in terms of organisation of articles, quality of individual articles, and of course, it's quality of special guests. They've been promising change since the start of the year, but sticking mostly to formula. This shows them really making their formula work for them and proving that when they have the articles it can be great. Now I just hope they still have a decent number of freelancers sending stuff in. After all, relying on staff writers is a quick way to push things too far in the formulaic direction. So things might get better next year, or they might get more average. At least it seems unlikely that they'll get worse, with all the extra self-examination they're putting in.
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Another new year, another layout revamp. Well, considering how fast things slid under the last one, they'd be mugs to stick with it. In some ways it feels like a return to 80's layout, with more narrow vertical columns and bright primary colours. But in other ways it's clearer and more sophisticated looking. It's pretty obvious that these days, everything is being laid out on a computer, rather than cut around physically. But that does also mean they can switch colours and fonts around a little too easily, and wind up with clashing combinations. The novelty will wear off eventually. Let's see if there's any novel stuff in the contents.
In this issue:
Baldur's gate! One of the most fondly remembered D&D computer games coming soon. Cool.
The wyrm's turn is back to making efficient use of it's space again, with the header and staff credits reduced in size, so they can actually get more written. And as part of their second attempt to get back to basics, they're also trying to get back to actually playing the game, instead of just working on it. Many of them haven't played properly in years, which of course didn't help when it came to making good supplements in the last few years of TSR. And it's no surprise that they're not using any of those supplements in their actual play either, instead going for an old skool module that they might remember if time hadn't blurred the details. So really, this illustrates the gulf between the written books and actual play that's really grown up in recent years, and is probably one of the things that contributed to people drifting away. Close that gap, and you've got a better chance of attracting and keeping players. So a valuable lesson to be found in this month's editorial, even if it is hidden as a gaming anecdote. One that they do pay attention too, if I remember correctly how big the list of playtesters for 3e was.
D-Mail: We start off with a request from the assistant editor for more letters. They aren't getting enough! I think the cause of that problem is pretty obvious. With so many people suspicious or confused after their lengthy absence, and distribution in a bit of a mess, plus their recent address change, there are issues all along the chain. Hopefully the direct approach will yield results like it has when people have craved specific articles.
A letter complaining Ed Greenwood is overexposed. But he just sends in so much, and so many people love him! They'll try to keep him to just 1 article per issue, but no promises. :p He laughs at obstacles that would kill a lesser writer's creativity for ever.
A letter from someone pissed off about stirge rehash. With the complete staff turnover, they'd forgotten all about the old one. They'll try to pay more attention to the archive in the near future. ;)
A letter complimenting the assistant editor on his new job. Well, since he's obviously in charge of this section, how could he pass up on this one? :D They do love a little ego stroking.
Kindred of the east! White wolf starts off their year of the lotus. That took them less time than it did for TSR to do their own oriental setting.
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 2/8
Forum: We already knew that the forum would be a major source of information for the next edition. What does surprise me is that here they spell this out explicitly. Send in your rules suggestions! What should stay, what should change. This'll make things even more interesting, as I get to see the rejected ideas as well.
Gary Sturgess shows us what happens when you make armor subtract damage rather than making you harder to hit. Interesting. I know most systems do it like that, but it looks like D&D'd need a bit of rejigging before that could work.
Chris Brucas objects to the idea that Dex is more important than Str as a real life martial artist. Both are pretty important, but strength moreso. Even fencing, the stereotypical finesse swashbuckler style, requires tons of arm strength to do quickly and stylishly. Don't you just hate it when people bring reality into your elegant models.
Chris DeRosa thinks that spells and items that change your capabilities are far more important than those that add plusses to your existing ones like magic weapons. Yeah, this is why wizards & clerics win at higher levels. It's not about the numbers, it's about the options. Making things too convenient is what really short-circuits adventures, not how hard you can hit.
Eric Morton thinks that nymphs consciously using their beauty as an offensive weapon seems rather out of character. Plus stripping is inherently humiliating, and what if they save? Plus the flavour could do with a little rejigging. Hey, whatever makes your campaign sparkle dude.
Sage advice: Who can use wearable magical items. (anyone of the race it's designed for. Magic can adjust it the rest of the way. )
When does a character wielding two weapons attack (Whenever the DM says. )
Does spellcasting trigger an attack of opportunity. (no)
How do proficiencies, abilities and hit points work for multiclassed characters (no-one agrees. It's most frustrating. Skip will give you skip's opinions, but skip will not pretend that other books won't contradict them in the future)
Is fireball a sphere, or a cubic volume (Both. If you cast it in an enclosed area, it pushes outward until it's used it's entire volume. This can have tragic and hilarious results. )
Can fireballs bounce (No. They go boom straight away.)
Does doing a touch attack spell trigger an attack of opportunity (No. The magic counts as a weapon.)
Does Choke mess up spellcasting automatically. (make an initiative check to get a spell off before you take the damage. )
What happens if you have a weapon that does 1d20, and upgrade your die type. D100 is too much (d30 should do the job. )
How does a thief know what spells are on a scroll (what do you think their failure chance is for? )
Does wall of force block locate object (no. The magic goes round.)
How do you determine what type of magic arrows your characters find ( Ahh, tables. Is there anything you can't do with them? )
What language is that?
Edit: Google's my friend, we've been hit by a Thai spambot, is that a first?
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 3/8
Out of character: Ah yes, Peter Adkison gets his own regular column, just as Gary used too. Now there's something that has a chance to go amusingly wrong. But not this time. No outre opinions or vitriolic rants here, just an alternative system for awarding xp that's simpler and gives the DM more control than counting up goblins slaughtered and booty plundered. Set a target that reflects how quickly you want them to advance (in his case rather quicker than in standard D&D, as he likes high level play) and then give them a percentage of that based upon how well they complete the goals of the adventure. This is of course the kind of mathematical thinking that they'll apply when figuring out advancement for 3e, with the standardised XP table and 13.33 encounters of equal CR to your level to level up, resulting in a total campaign length of a bit over a year going from 1-20 if you have weekly sessions with 3-4 encounters per session. So yeah, this is very interesting indeed, and already shows how the boss will have a personal influence on the next edition, even if he isn't actually one of the writers. That makes this historically significant right away. The magazine feels relevant to the development of the game as a whole in a way it hasn't for a good decade. Plus it's becoming apparent that Peter's pleasantly breezy writing style in the annual is his natural voice. If he keeps this up, and doesn't get too caught up in his managerial work to talk to us and still play, I could really get to like him.
Destriers of the planes: A selection of extraplanar horses, one for each alignment? interesting. Reminds me of the similar work by Stephen Innis in issue 86 where he created imp variants for each alignment, plus several other little magical creatures for those bored with pseudodragon familiars, and number 149, where they gave us a bunch of generalised magical mounts for players to ride. This gives them plenty of room to come up with imaginatively quirky expressions of each moral point. Or they could just rely on the standard cliches. Let's hope not.
Trothspyre are superficially similar to unicorns, but slightly easier to catch, and a lot more expensive to keep. They can know alignment, heal stuff and keep out evil things, so they're a perfect match for a paladin. The main problem is that they don't deal well with the nighttime, so no riding out vampire hunting.
Gildmanes eat 200gp worth of gold every day. No resting on your laurels as an adventurer if you want to keep one of these babies. Fortunately, they can detect false gold magically, and also provide good luck. And talk to astral travellers, even though they aren't allowed to go astral themselves, weirdly enough. Yup, I think we're definitely going to get some non-cliche quirks here. I approve.
Favonian are slightly less expensive, but still take quite a bit of effort, as they eat stories. Better keep your voice in good shape. They have control over winds, and the more powerful ones can fly for short periods. I can see the thematic connection.
Lithicthil, by contrast are stony and persistent, as befits the LN alignment, and eat magical earths and metals. (although wild magic will make them unwell. Their powers follow these two themes pretty predictably.
Menthric have a human shadow rather than a horse one, and are good at spotting and exploiting weak spots in things. They eat magical papers, which means they'll be another really expensive one to keep. Probably the best way to handle this would be to go wizard hunting and take their spellbooks.
Potherrounce round off the neutral ones by drinking mixed magical potions. This is of course pretty hazardous to the mixer. Perhaps a crucible and tongs would be a good investment. They of course get to screw up magic and generally cause chaotic effects wherever they go. Muahahaha.
Banecoursers have forked tongues and lap up poison, and are vulnerable to silver. They of course love harsh but fair treatment, and look very proud and noble. They make a fine alternative to a Nightmare.
Rosinante are revolting hairless rat-horses that insist on being hand-fed rotten meat, and can summon vermin. Not so glamorous. But then, neutral evil is rarely presented as such in D&D, and certainly not in the Gray Waste, which epitomises banal, grubby depressing nastiness. They fit in there perfectly.
Charnalbalk are ferocious carnivorous warthog-horses, as befits a creature from the Abyss. They can't stand the day, just as their lawful good counterparts can't stand the night, and can strike fear into onlookers. So overall, I think this is a pretty cool and usable collection, with creatures that are powerful enough that even high level PC's want them, but also costly and quirky enough to not be a no-brainer, and well integrated into the existing planar setup. Fun fun fun.
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 4/8
Holy swords of the Realms: You know, we've already had two articles on magical swords of the Forgotten Realms. (issues 74 and 188) Now we specialise even further and go for a collection specifically of holy and unholy swords. Well, just as clerics only get a fraction of the number of new spells wizards do around here, paladins don't actually get that much love. So I suppose this is a good example of them finding a still unfilled niche through hyperspecialisation. And hopefully they'll follow Ed's example and make them suitably quirky and individual.
True Slayer keeps anything killed by it from being raised or becoming undead. Not a particularly unusual power, really.
Soul Mate lets a paladin turn undead better. Once again, pretty straight really. Just because you're a goody goody doesn't mean you have to be this boring.
Captor makes it impossible for you to kill enemies with it, merely knocking them unconscious instead. Whether you use this for mercy or justice, that's another simple but valuable trick that makes being lawful good without compromising effectiveness a bit easier.
Illuminator makes the person hit glow with a faerie fire, making it easy to spot and follow them in the dark. This is particularly ironic when fighting Drow, since they have that as an innate ability too and make tricksy use of it. And let's face it, Irony is a form of humour good guys aren't restricted from appreciating at all.
Chanter sings to buff the party, and can even penetrate magical silence with it's voice. It has additional tricks that it may use at it's own discretion in an interestingly mythic manner.
Peacebringer casts Sanctuary, allowing a paladin who wants to avoid fighting to back up that desire a little better. Meh.
Raptor is our first unholy sword. It has a nasty habit of slicing clothing apart, making it perfect for the kind of villain who likes to leer menacingly at fair maidens. Aharharharharhar. :p
Mist Reaver blurs your location with great prejudice, making you a bugger to hit. So yeah, another pretty simplistic but effective effect. This collection certainly won't be making the hall of fame, I'm afraid, as it's a bit dull really. So much for making paladins more interesting. :(
He's got personality: Trying to make Charisma a slightly less neglected stat. Now there's something they've wrestled with before, (issues 63 & 107) and will do so again until they revise the rules and make it mechanically crucial for quite a few classes. And here we go with examining what high and low charisma means from both a mechanical and roleplaying perspective. It is actually longer than either of the previous attempts, and looks at both high and low Charisma as it related to various classes and personality types. It also introduces a whole bunch of new social proficiencies, which may or may not help, and some new rules on influencing crowds. Overall, I think it is an improvement on the previous tries, and is another of those articles that's laying the groundwork for the next edition. While not brilliant, it deserves credit.
Treasures of the fifth age: Or how to convert most of the old iconic magic items of Dragonlance to the new system, plus add a few new ones. I find it curious that despite the old spellcasting systems no longer working, old magic items still retain their powers. Grandfather clausing, convenience of writing, or is there a more significant metaphysical reason behind this? Maybe we'll find out in future novels. In any case, 15 items, most familiar, are detailed here and given pretty straight conversions. Which means I can't really get very worked up about this, for good or bad. Having tried something brave and seeing it fail, they're starting to slip back into old habits, relying on converting old stuff forward and new stuff back in an attempt to make a connection. Basically, they don't know what they want to do with this world. And to be honest, I wouldn't either. I'd rather start something completely new than keep trying to prop it up.
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 5/8
Enchanting weapons: Mike Nystul contributes again. Man, word must be getting round that WotC are nicer than TSR were if more old writers are coming back. So here's an article on trying to make magic items seem more magical. And as usual for this advice, it's all about context. How they were made, where they were found, what they've done in the past, and what plotlines might be set in motion by finding it. I'm pretty sure we've seen most of this stuff before. Once again, it seems that their attempt to make a new start has ironically resulted in them going back to old subjects more. And so we have yet another case where the article isn't bad at all, but I am left feeling like I haven't learned anything new. It's just making the magazine feel like a grind again.
Wyrms of the north: Oh dear. With the number of dragons capable of assuming human shape around, it was only a matter of luck before one of them decided to form a more ... personal connection with Volo when he went to research them. So yeah, he's been shagging a steel dragon. :facepalm: So much for objectivity. As with many steel dragons, she prefers spending much of her time in human form and living the urban lifestyle to sleeping for years and building impregnable lairs. And given her penchant for mischievous manipulation, she's probably going to bite off more than she can chew at some point. In the meantime, you have another tool for your DM to really get on your nerves with. I know a dragon that'll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves. Actually, I probably know dozens by now, and more than half of them are Ed's fault. Really, what has he wrought? Mixed feelings about this column, as usual.
Fiction: Honor and Guile by Margaret Weis. Hmm. Another Krynn story. Since the takeover, they seem to be doing a lot more fiction by their regular staff, in their regular settings. I suppose it's more evidence that the freelancer pool has dropped quite a bit. And oookay, it's a prequel. Raistlin & Caramon are 16. Raistlin's not a proper wizard yet, but is still bitter and snarky and living on his wits. Caramon and Sturm are still dumb boyscouts. And Tanis & Flint are still trying vainly to keep Tasslehoff from being annoying. Basically, they've hardly changed at all, so as to give the writers tons of room to write piddly little prequels like this one where not a lot happens and milk the setting a little more. The whole thing is just so small in scale as to be meaningless, and the new characters are nothing much to write home about either. Utterly pointless and vaguely irritating. This would probably not have got through under Barbara Young's watch.
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More armor? Gimme a fucking break. One or two new ones a year as part of other stuff and then three dedicated columns come along really quick. Bleah. Just another sign of their slide into banal repetition.
Black Mithril chain mail is even more indestructible than regular mithril. Only extreme violence will work. Magic, heat, cold, electricity, acid all slide off. Guess it's down to good old sonic damage to trump the bugger then.
Black Mithril Gauntlets are exactly the same. Not really worth a separate entry.
The Blood Shield of Dreen is actually a portal to a horrible demiplane of blood, and emits a tentacle to suck you in. Things like that aren't normally anchored to a mobile surface. Pretty evilly ingenious person who thought that one up. Just the thing for your servants of forbidden abominations.
The Gnomish Shield of Drago has a mechanical gnome engraved on it that comes to life and serves as a secondary combatant. This is decidedly funny yet exasperating to imagine, as with most gnome-made things.
Helms of the bat give you nightvision, and can shriek to terrify people. Unsurprisingly, they also look stereotypically villainous. You can bet that pushes up their selling power quite a bit.
Gingabar's Armor is dwarven armor with a nice heritage to go with it's powers. Fire resistance and bonuses to AC are pretty common, so you get this on mainly for the fluff.
The Helms of the Celestial Temple are a themed set of items, each with a different divination power. They'll make a good award for a sentai team of a ranger, diviner, priest of a god of knowledge and bard. :p
Leather of the Telereath Rangers are another one that's about the fluff rather than the powers. An extra plus really isn't worth talking about, but the social prestige you get from wearing them may be to some players.
Helmets of pure vision are another one that penetrate deceptive crap. Seen it before, likely will see it again in various degrees of effectiveness. Who doesn't want to cut through the crap, after all.
Largem's Cursed Armor is a strange one with both benefits and penalties. The bad points probably outweigh the good, but it's hard to say really. You could probably game it to your benefit it smart.
Missile Bane is very self-explanatory. Modest plus in hand to hand, kickass protection against all missiles, even magic ones. That increasingly loses it's old faithful quality as people specifically develop counters against it.
Silk of the Dred Shalen Guards is another excuse to have magical stuff that becomes useless soon after the players get it. Another thing that is very depressingly on the up these days.
Muckden's Miraculous Mechanized Buckler is a fun little device with several pseudoscientific tricks. Combine with a chainsword for real slice and dice fun.
The Shield of the Lion's heart is another one with powers that are themed, but not obviously. Strength, courage, and defeating evil. The owners of this and the bat helm will obviously have to fight.
Armor of the Silver Brigade is another nonmagical one that gives you social benefits due to prestige. This means you'll have to incorporate the setting stuff if you want to use it. This might be a problem.
The tower shield of McFlaggin has so many powers, and such a precise theme, it feels like it ought to be intelligent. But it isn't. Shields never get to be sentient. A bit disappointing really.
The dragon's bestiary: More various animal hybrids. Certainly seen plenty of these over the years. Roll on templates so we can cut down on the amount of page space stuff like this takes up. Oh well, let see if these ones are any good, as usual, or if only a truly mad wizard could ever be responsible.
Armidillephant combine the size of elephants with the toughness and digging ability of armadillos. This makes them excellent shock troops and fortification makers for an army, provided you can get enough food for them. Not a bad idea, really.
Dragonfly Turtles look utterly ridiculous, but since they're big enough to ride comfortably on, they're again not to be sneezed at. Hell, you could scale them up and build an entire castle on their back if you're powerful enough, and wouldn't that be a pretty thing to lead an armada with. I wuv the gargantua template. Dr Eggman & Bowser would both approve, and quite possibly fight over who gets to control it.
Duckbunny? Okay, now I know they're playing this for laughs for sure. Couldn't this have waited until april? I guess amateurs have to start somewhere. They're harmless enough, but could well wind up overrunning an ecosystem with their versatility. One to have swimming in the moat of castle Greyhawk. :p
Moat cats are crossed with newts, and make decent guardians. Couldn't you just keep alligators in the moat instead? They'd be tougher, and no more likely to turn on you. Silly wizards.
Spider-horses are definitely nightmare fuel if you aren't a drow. Like the Steeders used by Duergar, you'll need a special saddle to stay on this one while it's scuttling up walls. Still, it's a better idea than many, and has a mythic antecedent as well. Thank's for the idea Odin.
Venom dogs combine the loyalty of dogs with instadeath poison, which is quite the combination for a wizard. I think these definitely count as one of the more successful experiments in a decidedly mixed bag. What combinations will your own players try?
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 7/8
In a class by themselves: A whole bunch of example classes using the class creation system from the DMG? Well, it's not something they've had before, so I'll give them that. On the other hand, when contrasted with the fact that they originally invented the idea in here, back in issue 109, and gave us a rather larger and quirkier selection of custom classes, this really isn't all that. I suppose it's much harder to innovate when the game is so much more filled in, and you need followers as well as leaders to really fill an idea in. But still, this has no emotional impact upon me, which contrasts very sharply to the original in issue 109. Really, all I have to say is meh. This is definitely on the mediocre side of their output.
Arcane Lore: Another trio of greyhawk spellbooks, as they try and bring it back to compete with the Realms. In a few months we'll see new books, but in the meantime you can see them once again apply the exactly the same fluff and crunch principles to two worlds that really need a little more differentiation.
The Ice-shard tome is yet another cold themed book. It has another tedious magic missile variant, a similarly standard magical chilling whip that inflicts penalties as well as damage, a nasty cold based slow torture spell, and a rather cool environment manipulation spell that lets you make a long-term freezer for all your storage needs.
The Incunabulum of the Forgotten City is one of those books of ancient lore from the fallen suel empire that lots of people'll want to get their claws upon. It lets you make a sadistic variant on mirror image that explodes when you hit the images, become able to monitor a place remotely with great precision, plus two very high level spells that strike directly at the opponent's magical abilities, causing them to misfire and get drained to decidedly unpleasant and somewhat unpredictable effect. The kind of stuff the Wizards Three would be very interested indeed in learning about, with their love of nested counter-counters.
The book of Darazell is the work of a wizard/assassin, and has lots of spells designed to bring subtle death, and a few nasty secrets above and beyond that. It's new spells include a sensory impairment one to help you stalk your victim, a telekinetic noose to bring about a slow dramatic death, which is pretty neat, immunity to nonmagical bladed weapons, which I'm pretty sure has been done before, and a magically conjured poisonous blade, which is actually a bit underpowered really. Wizards shouldn't be developing spells that require them to use their THAC0 to hit unless they're multiclassed. So another case of Sturgeon's law being fully in effect with a few neat ideas amongst the familiar and unwanted.
Dungeon Mastery: Margaret Weis's hubby makes his first contribution to the magazine. Co-incidence that they're appearing in the same issue? I think not. So here's a short, system free piece on real life knighthood. With a huuuuuuuuge bibliography. That's really the main attraction here, as trying to fit several centuries of stuff into two pages doesn't quite work. So yeah, he obviously knows his stuff, but you're better served going to those sources than sticking around here. Some people might be able to hook you and give you something useful for your game with half a page, but this is not one of those cases.
KotDT discover the joys of point buy. They may take a while to get playing. Dragonmirth discovers the joy of breath sweets. Swordplay discover what it really takes to motivate them. Floyd falls for the villain's threat. Honestly, even if they're threatening your friend's life, you keep fighting. Following their orders only makes things worse. Do they not realize this yet?
Role-playing reviews: Armageddon sees CJ Carella continue to build upon the unisystem. If Witchcraft was his WoD knockoff, this is his Rifts, upping the power level tremendously, and throwing stuff from every earthly mythology together to fight cthulhu. Power balance certainly isn't perfect, and there is some cruft in the skills and merits list, but the basic system is simple and effective, and the flavour text is pretty great. Really you can do a hell of a lot with the tools given here.
Fire, fusion and steel is for Traveller. It gives you guidance on how to build your own spaceship. Unfortunately for Rick, the complexity of the mathematics is beyond his ability to unpick. Which means he really can't judge the quality. It could be great, it could be crap. Either way, it's just too damn crunchy. What can you do?
Pocket empires, on the other hand, explains it's new systems in a clear and concise manner. As you might expect, this is their domain management supplement, showing you how to build entire planets and their political structures. Some bits aren't quite as big and comprehensive as they could be, but it's still a nifty bit of design that gives your traveller games rather more room for upward advancement.
Anomalies is a collection of 9 mini adventures. This gets 6 pips, with Rick loving every one, and the way they're put together. The presentation isn't actually that great by modern standards, but when the ideas are this good, like in our old skool favourites, who cares. You don't need hundreds of pages to create a great story.
First Survey is our clunker of the month, a regionbook falling prey to trying to cover too much ground, and so giving hardly any info on individual places and people. These days, we expect a little more than a list of planets and their general climates.
Lords of the expanse is a Star Wars supplement, continuing things in the darker vein they've been following for a while now. You get to play the scheming merchant lords of the Tampani Sector, doing all kinds of morally ambiguous things to advance yourself. Rick's main complaint is his increasingly common longing for an index. And of course, there's his amusing belief that the prequels are going to follow in this vein and be darker than the original trilogy. What is he going to make of the final result?
Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998
part 8/8
Re:Views: A few years back, Rick and Lester shared the RPG reviews column from month to month. Now Lester's got his own, as it seems the public is demanding more reviews, but they don't want to bring back computer games, minis, proper book reviews, or anything else. So instead of variety in topic, we have variety in format, with this gimmicky attempt to seem modern by placing the review in the context of an email. (which it might actually be, if Lester doesn't work in the building with them) So this ironically looks more dated than the regular reviews, just like calling the letters column D-Mail. Still, let's see if the content is good despite the format. And really, it doesn't seem that different, although it is shorter. Description, good points, bad points, roundup.
Asylum sets the PC's within a city sized madhouse, in a postapocalyptic wasteland, where everyone, including them, is quite quite mad. It seems to be a textbook case of cool ideas, somewhat amateurish presentation. Take the setting, and convert it to another set of rules like GURPS. So really, this isn't that different from the regular reviews. I'm thoroughly underwhelmed.
TSR Previews: March sees another half a dozen new items and change for your enjoyment. The forgotten realms has finished looking at Netheril, and is off to Cormanthyr instead. The lost library of cormanthyr by Mel Odom is the novel. They may be gone, but their defenses against intruders are still very much alive. For those of you who want to travel back and play it for yourselves, buy Cormanthyr: Empire of elves. Can you change the present during your stay in the past? Let's hope they don't start ret-conning things via time travel in setting.
Dragonlance is really getting into the swing of the 5th age. Wings of fury gives us more info on dragons under the new ruleset. We've seen the novel characters stand up to the great dragons and suffer in the process, now you can see if your characters can run it any better. The novels continue to be a bit goofy, with The Doom Brigade by Margaret Weis and Don Perrin. Draconian and dwarf are forced to work together to survive. Monsters get humanized in the face of bigger, badder monsters.
Ravenloft gets Shadowborn, by William W Connors and Carrie A Bebris. Another story of heroism perverted within the domain of dread. Can the shadowborn family make a difference, or will they become monsters as well.
Planescape finally fills in the inner planes, with their 3rd monstrous compendium appendix. Have fun, try not to die too suddenly.
Profiles is back after ten and a half years. I guess the staff has changed enough that this'll be able to fill another year or two of articles. I wonder if we'll see any recurring faces, and if so, how they'll have changed in the interim?
Our first face is indeed a familiar one. Margaret Weis may have lost a little hair, and an agent since her last photo in issue 120 (cancer is a cruel mistress), but her writing has gone from strength to strength, producing multiple multimillion selling series, which has probably made her quite wealthy. She's now making sure that she gives back to the community, helping out young writers. Quite a sweet profile really, and definitely gives me a better picture of the person behind the profile than the old one. She's still pretty busy, with the Sovereign stone setting her next big project. Definitely interesting to see this series return, as it'll help me get some more perspective on the progression and turnover of the big faces in the hobby.
While there's a few interesting new things in this issue, there's also a quite ridiculous amount of repeated material, even more so than the last couple of years. I'm getting an idea why people don't talk about this period very much. Besides the reduced readership, the fact that they're really playing it safe leaves me wondering what there is to talk about. Well, apart from the stuff that's relevant to the next edition, but that's still over 2 years away. That's going to be a long, slow buildup, isn't it. I'm once again left quite eager to keep moving.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 1/8
116 pages. Another flying special? Well, it has been over 10 years ago since the last one in issue 124. Just as with arctic or underwater adventuring, it's still a sufficiently uncommon topic that they can probably find something new to say. Plus it looks like we're seeing the return of Roger Raupp both on the cover and inside, and his art skills have definitely improved in the intervening decade. So at least there's some more evidence of them reconciling with the old guard. Which means even if the articles are dull we'll have more historical progress. So let's fly, but try not to get too high.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Dave Gross reveals that his personal favourite campaign setting was actually Al-Qadim. Exotic enough to be distinctive, but with enough real world sources to be instantly understandable to a layman. And the production values and writing were great. I find it hard to argue with that assessment even if it wasn't my personal preference. And of course, this is evidence that they are going to have more articles for specific worlds in the near future. That's not something I have a problem with. And his obvious enthusiasm makes this editorial more pleasing to read than many of his. Hopefully that enthusiasm'll carry on into the rest of the issue.
D-Mail: We start off with a good four letters in favour of the Mother NPC. This is the kind of humour the magazine needs, and is obviously done in a spirit of affection, not misogyny. How po-faced would you ned to be to think otherwise?
A letter praising the Greyhawk setting. This group has long since exhausted all the official adventures for the setting, so it's revival will be tremendously welcome to them.
Another letter praising greyhawk and ravenloft. Well, they did ask.
A third which complements planescape, dark sun and dragonlance, albeit in rather less detail. It does take all sorts, after all.
A letter from a new reader that proves their current article repertoire is indeed more exciting to someone who hasn't been exposed to the topics several times before and become a huge postmodern cynic. Maybe I shouldn't judge so harshly.
a letter asking for more ecologies. Well, they are still one of the strongest parts of the magazine. And they could fill decades without repeating monsters easily. One for every issue!
And we finish off with a long letter which shows exactly why the Realms is the biggest, most popular setting they have. It just has so many interesting characters. Even if some of them are cheesy and annoying, that just makes us think and talk about it more. And if you want prefab adventures, accept no substitute.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 2/8
Forum's first big question is what races the next edition should contain. I wonder what kind of turnaround times these questions will have. In the meantime, let's enjoy the last few unfocussed fora.
Dan Cross gives some advice on preparing your game and keeping it running. Nice to see they can still do mini-articles as well as rules revisions here.
Harry Pratt points out that Lord Soth has powers beyond a regular Death Knight. The others should be powered up too. Um, that's like saying every wizard should be as twinked as Elminster. It'll remove all their specialness.
Chris Reeves is not at all keen on the SAGA system. It's simplistic, expects you to know most of the setting detail already, and has some seriously arbitrary crap. Not amused at all.
Chris Merritt actually prefers the SAGA system. It gives you more choice of actions and goes faster. It's definitely a better choice for introducing new players. Nice to see someone prefers it.
Simon Fung sings the high level blues. How many things did you kill to get there, and how many monsters must their be to maintain a decent number of high level characters in the world. The math is a bit iffy. Maybe that's another thing that needs adjusting.
Sage advice: Waaah! I still don't understand how the symbol spell works! (You're not the only one. In fact, we've had so many questions on this matter that we're gonna completely rewrite the spell to clear this up, covering nearly 2 full pages. There may be some nerfing involved, as we try to cover all the eventualities. )
Can spellcraft identify magical items. (Not very well, if at all. It's SPELLcraft, not ITEMcraft. )
Can you cook fish you caught (Yes. Everyone can do basic cooking in D&D. (Ha. That's like saying everyone in a modern setting can read, drive and use computers.))
How do you succeed at casting Nahal's reckless dweomer. (get 100 or better, or one of the results that shows cast x spell with y modifier )
What's the difference between the bladesong fighting style and the bladesinger kit. (Bladesong is something any elf can learn, bladesinger is for when they want to really specialize in it. )
Out of character: Mr Adkison once again reveals his enthusiasm for a system element that'll make it into the next edition. This time, it's having a universal resolution mechanic. Well, it is pretty fashionable these days, and is one of the things making AD&D look like a dinosaur compared to smaller, faster, more flexible systems. If you want to fix things, start from the bottom. But this isn't just long-term systems discussion, it's also blatant promotion of Alternity, their current hot new thing. Now that's more like something Gary would have done. :) It also reminds us that Alternity's mechanic was a good deal more swingy and unpredictable than the d20 one would eventually become, with the target number remaining the same, and the difficulty being represented by adding bigger dice. So this second column from him isn't quite as pleasing as the first one, but is still both interesting and historically relevant. Hopefully it'll take a while longer for him to settle into a routine and start to become formulaic, as happens to most of their columnists at some point. For now, his writing is still a breath of fresh air against the general backdrop of the magazine.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 3/8
Warriors of the wind: We start off this month's theme with a whole bunch of new races, all able to fly. Since far too often, just being able to fly is such a significant ability that it can eclipse other interesting personal traits of a race, this is the kind of hyperspecialisation that really lets you create a nuanced set of creatures. Or maybe not. They certainly seem to have fairly limited class selections, but since exactly what those are varies quite a bit, that might not be so terrible.
Fainil are Drow/Bat hybrids. They seem to have somewhat atrophied legs, giving them an exceedingly slow movement rate on the ground, but can hover and manoeuvre well enough that their flight is useful underground. With the usual Drow magical powers and magic resistance, plus the intelligence to use them, they could be a terror both in the air and underground. And of course, they have the usual angsty rebels which make perfect PC's. Now all they need is to make a novel featuring one.
Telvar are flying humanoids with exceedingly long fingers, who tend towards the honorable barbarian who lives in harmony with nature stereotype. Had to have one of those, didn't they. :p This does not mean they're stupid or undisciplined though. And with their skill at missile weapons and taking out spellcasters, you may well find yourself out-ranged and helpless. Well, that's always an issue with flying creatures, so why not specialise in your strengths.
Ashiera are flying fish humanoids. They're moderately slow in water, land and air, but hey, that versatility counts for a lot. They tend to be quite aggressive, but lack the organisation to hold places they've conquered. With the ability to generate magical bursts of cold and mist as well, they can be dangerous even when unarmed. One would fit great into an adventuring party as long as you're not expecting to have to run away.
Masgai are flying insectoids who have a gradual expansion plan to take over the universe in a civilised fashion over the course of centuries. They're highly organised, but also unusually willing to be flexible and adapt their plans to the situation for such a lawful race, and certainly not cliche in their personalities. So this collection improves as it goes along, and gives you enough variety to make a party out of, particularly if you add existing flyers like pixies and avariel. It's definitely a solid addition to AD&D's many character options that could actually make a difference in actual play. Plus the plentiful magic items are handy even if the races don't wind up playing a big part in your campaign.
Xakhun Airship: Straight away, we have a second variant on flying drow. It's almost as cheesy a fangirl choice as unipegataurs. Just how many of these must they have rejected in their time before finally caving to public demand? :) Fortunately, it's a completely different take on the idea though. A whole tribe of half drow, half wood elf exiles who've taken to the airship riding lifestyle. That's not particularly cliche. Despite being exiles, they're still mostly bastards, and of course all the more scary because they come from above instead of below. This is a real epic of an article, 16 pages long, and filled with both fluff and crunch. Three new kits for various classes, so each has their role in flying the ship. A sample ship for you to fly, complete with map and game stats. Four new spider variants that they make use of to protect and repair their ship (plus another excuse for loadbearing bosses.) And in a real old school callback, a cut out and assemble guide that'll let you make your own model of their skyship. We haven't had one of them in so long, and it's a very welcome return. See, that's how you do a special feature. Take some familiar elements, and grow something new, interesting and individual. Roger Raupp's return has done quite a lot to make this issue more special. Who will come back next, and what will they bring with them?
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 4/8
Wyrms of the north: Another red dragon for us to face this month. And wait a second, is all this talk about being unpredictable and grumpy until he's had a mug or two in the morning an in-joke about Dennis Kauth, one of their art guys? :) (who's another long absent returnee this month. Wouldn't put it past Ed. Where last month's dragon was of a good race, but had some nasty manipulative tendencies, this one is of an evil race, but performs unpredictable acts of kindness. If you're lucky, anyway. If you're an adventurer hunting him, you really shouldn't bet on it. He still kills liberally and eats baby red dragons to keep himself vigorous and youthful. Plus he has 6 wands strapped to his wings so he can blast you in quite a few ways beyond his breath weapon simultaneously. Once again the Realms has plenty of experimental magic that would probably result in someone blowing up the country if it got into common circulation. Well, at least that's true to his original vision from the early 80's. Once again he shows us how to do engaging writing, and build truly scary high level challenges. Better work on getting those saving throws up.
Bookwyrms: The red wyvern by Katherine Kerr is another book in her Dverry series. It moves between a whole bunch of time periods, featuring characters that are reincarnations of each other. This does make the plot a bit of an effort to follow, as it's not immediately obvious who is who and how much they remember. It all seems like setup for future books filling in the gaps. Which makes sense when you're building an epic. And since of course she's an ex-gaming writer, it's well designed for plundering for your own worldbuilding.
Running with the demon by Terry Brooks is a modern day story of cosmic good vs evil, and the people caught in the middle being made to choose sides. Combine this with themes of predestination vs being able to change the future, and you have a recipe for a reasonably complex world and characters that can have moral conflicts despite there being an objective right and wrong. Still, it probably won't net him as much as a new Shanara book would.
The Dragon and the Gnarly King by Gordon R Dickson sees the writer say it's the third book in the series, when a little googling says it's the 7th. How do you miss that badly? Anyway, our hero out of time is now settling in quite comfortably to his new life. But it wouldn't be a new book without a new challenge, and he's sent on a quest to rescue a baby and encounters a whole bunch of strange creatures, some friendly, and some not so much. The whole thing remains fairly lighthearted, and they exploit the anachronisms to their advantage. Sounds like it could be fun.
War of the gods by Poul Anderson sees him put his own spin on a somewhat less known bit of danish history, giving it the full Arthurian legend treatment with giants, gods, rune magic, and all that norse goodness. With a writing style that echoes their poetic style, and larger than life dialogue, it seems a good choice for those who like mythological epics, but are bored of Arthur, Beowulf, Gilgamesh and the greek guys.
Fiction: Soulkeeper by Michaelene Pendleton. Another bit of fiction, another attempt to give us an internally consistent magic system in just a few pages and still tell a story. And I think they do a reasonable job of both, although the system is better than the story, creating shapeshifters who can pull some pretty neat tricks, but are still limited by conservation of mass and relying on a sidekick to keep them from getting lost in animal form. Given what a powerful ability it can be, that kind of limitation keeps narrative drama going. With the other forms of magic hinted at, but their rules not spelled out in the same way, it leaves room for sequels, while still resolving the plot neatly enough. I wouldn't mind seeing this expanded upon.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 5/8
Arcane Lore: Another in theme article, with a whole bunch of elemental air spells. Appropriately enough, we're coloured light blue, although I'm not so sure about the pink headers. Oh well, at least it gives me something interesting to comment upon. Let's hope the same can be said of the spells.
Cloud Cushion is a quick-fire spell that you can create to catch falling creatures, reducing or negating the damage altogether. One that'll save quite a few lives and facilitate getting around awkward locations if your wizard memorizes it.
Glide is somewhere between feather fall and flight in terms of power and usefulness, as befits a second level spell. You can control your descent quite a bit, but can't go up. Combine with levitation, and a 4th level wizard or air specialist'll be able to kludge together something to keep up with full flight.
Part Vapors lets you cut a path through mists, including magical ones like cloudkill or death fog, and gas based monsters. Since so many of those creatures are impervious to conventional assault, this will be very useful in certain encounters.
Windshear makes turbulence to fuck up flying things. This is another one that's pretty versatile, if not hugely deadly on it's own. Exercise your imagination.
Mass Flight lets you bring the party with you, assuming it's not too big a party. Since you are about name level, this is the kind of game-changer you really should be exploiting to the hilt.
Air Mantle lets you breathe in vaccum, and shields you from nasty gas effects. Really needs to be longer duration if you want to go spacefaring.
Wind Conduit lets you summon raw elemental air energy to enhance your spells. This can obviously be applied to the other forms as well.
Death Stalker is a far more badass invisible stalker that only kills, and is extremely hard to kill permanently itself. It may sometimes turn on it's caster though, so stay on your guard if using it and keep a banishment spell ready.
Solidify Air is interesting and versatile, but probably doesn't merit being 9th level. Still, it's another one that's full of fun variant uses. When you're that kind of level, you can afford a little wastefulness.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre gets some more colour too. The budget increases are starting to percolate through. We're still on theme here, with an absolute ton of items designed to get you airborne. No more worrying about niche protection, there's enough for everyone, albeit at different speeds and limits. This is a new one on me. Things are very literally looking up.
Anklets of feathers turn you into a bird. Always a good way to fly, even if the lack of hands limits your actions quite a bit while up there.
Clasps of Theol create a cloak from whatever materials are around, in a somewhat destructive but cool looking way of assembling your flying appendages. Might not be a good idea for a wizard to activate this in their study, for spellbooks are rather expensive.
Cloaks of the Swanmay let you grow swan wings, putting you halfway to bird maidenhood. Whether you can leverage this into a promotion is up to you.
Cloud Blend lets you go all lakitu and ascend to the sky that way. Steering and coming down may be a problem though. Better have at least a ring of feather falling as well.
Cloud Chariots are rather more maneuverable, but still require a mount to pull them. And their capacity may not be enough for a whole party either. Neither fish nor fowl, it's a bit of an awkward middle ground really.
Courier Shafts turn into a hawk and go straight for their destination, which can be up to 100 miles away. Much better than a pigeon service by a long shot.
Crowns of the Wind Dukes reference our old artifact rod and expands on it's lore a little. It's powers are relatively minor, but it's more what they represent as a symbol of law from a vanished race. They also suffer from infectious alignment syndrome. Wear with caution.
Daedalus' Wings are as decidedly shoddy as their mythic counterparts. Do not use near an open fire or highly sunny days. These won't stand up well to the rough treatment adventurers go through in their travails.
Darkest Bridles summon big scary flying mounts. Exactly how scary is random. Have fun when your luck turns bad and the enemy laughs at your mobat when you needed a Dragon.
Flying windmills are basically gnomish helicopters. Seems like they're getting a token item quite regularly these days. I guess it makes up for them hardly ever getting the full themed issues.
Gargoyle armor is protective, lets you fly (rather slowly and clumsily) and has claws. Even better than the real thing as far as many people are concerned.
The Greater apparatus of Kwalish is another callback to classic DMG setting seeds. Obviously, given this issue's theme, it can fly, but it's real value is as a mobile engine of armoured destruction. It even has a breath weapon. Pretty awesome, if a bit easy to run away from.
Horseshoes of the asperii let your mount not only stay in the air, but also go up and down with ease. Just a slight upgrading from the basic DMG formula.
Masks of the Aarakocra are psionic items that let you fly via animal affinity with eagles. Interesting bit of problemsolving there. Psionics does have a little trouble with that, as telekinesis is far too expensive to really use for flying yourself.
Ravenkin rings are another one of those affinity items that let you fly via transformation, and offer nifty social benefits with related creatures too. This is of course dependent on finding wereravens and ravenkin, which may be tricky in some campaign worlds.
Rudders of the winds let you sail a ship through the air. Another trick that's always useful, simply because it has a far greater capacity than other arial methods.
Saddles of the Dragon Steed let you enslave a dragon and order it to fly you where you want. This will not be taken kindly by the dragon. I would recommend against it. There are definitely better ways.
Skyblight rods let you summon so many fucking ravens as to completely blot out the sun for miles around. Rings of invisibility get copied from the hobbit left right and centre, and no-one thought to imitate this one? How dumb are we? Truly, we're missing out on the epic right in front of our noses. It has other pretty scary powers too. I love this one.
Staves of the lost winds produce 4 different cardinal direction themed powers. Hot, cold, wet, dry. They don't let you fly though. Guess they've had enough of that by now.
Whirling Scimitars let you fly, but only by using them as a helicopter. This obviously leaves you slightly vulnerable, and a bit comical to more maneuverable flyers. Watch they don't knock you out of the sky to splat.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 7/8
The ecology of the sphinx: This is amusing. This story manages to weave together a tale of all four main sphinx types, and a wizard who manipulates their various tendencies to get what he wants. Man, their sex lives are even more fucked up than Lamias'. It's a wonder they manage to survive and perpetuate themselves. It's all pretty much as laid out in the monster manual, but of course much more fun to read about when it's happening to specific individuals, rather than some nebulous generic sphinxkind. The footnotes aren't very interesting or useful this time round, making this an entertaining but ultimately inconsequential entry in the series. On we go then.
Dragonmirth may be playing the wrong game. Swordplay once again fail to kill each other. Floyd draws upon some very interesting magic tricks indeed.
Roleplaying reviews loses it's hyphen. In time, everything gets abbreviated. Fire bad. Space good, though. Rick thinks so, anyway, and he's got no shortage of designers who think likewise to review. So once more unto this topic, just to take things a bit further than the sky theme of the rest of the issue. :p Up up and away!
Trinity sees white wolf go sci-fi. Well, space opera anyway, as lets face it, it's hard to do psychics in space vs aliens and superheroes turned mutant monstrosities and keep the science particularly hard or avoid thinking of Star Wars. Rick is reasonably positive about it, as the setting and characters are vividly done, and the system streamlined somewhat from the WoD version. But it's still designed very much as the header for a ton of splatbooks, so he's not entirely happy about running a game there yet. Give it a little while, and hope it doesn't die before they get enough books out :p
Heavy Gear on the other hand, gets an overall negative review. It looks good, but the setting is exceedingly sketchy when contrasted with WW's, and the system has a nice core but huge impenetrable tactical combat rules. Plus they're more interested in mechs than the human scale stuff. One for wargamers who want to add a bit of roleplaying & plot to their epic battles.
The southern Republic tries to fill in the biggest nation of the setting, but the writing fails to enthuse rick, with it feeling as if the writers were struggling for inspiration. Far too many of the things are pretty direct real world lifts for a setting 4,000 years in the future, and some of them are just goofy. Is this what you want to do when not in your mechas?
Jovian Chronicles uses the same system as Heavy Gear, but gets a slightly more positive result because it's setting seems simultaneously closer to home, and with a more interesting setting. Still, that's merely a matter of degree, and it still seems rather tame when compared with Trinity. What was acceptable 10 years ago no longer cuts the mustard.
Mechanical catalog really concentrates on the vehicles of the setting, giving lots of example ones and showing you how to build your own. This actually gets the best marks, because it's the area the writers seem to be most enthusiastic about. So really, it's a case where the system has potentail, but they aren't really applying it to it's full capabilities yet.
Reign of steel is one of GURPS' most interesting settings yet. Ok, the basic theme is essentially that of the Terminator series future, but it's handled with style, and with a whole bunch of competing overminds, there's plenty of room for regional variation, and weird touches keep it from being a one note setting. Plus you can play as either the humans or the robots, in case you get bored. Who doesn't want to hunt down and slaughter human scum.
Re:Views: The Power seems to be an attempt to meld Mage and Changeling, as PC's are initiated into a secret world by eldrich entities where they can tap the dreamtime to manipulate reality through a deeper understanding of how it works. Just as with last month, this is a case of great flavour, but somewhat lacking mechanics. I guess they really are following in the White Wolf spirit. In any case, it's the kind of world that accommodates all the standard archetypes and adventures while not feeling too generic. It gives you another option if you want to do the dark modern fantasy thing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998
part 8/8
The KotDT crew are suckered into endless debate. This gives the GM breathing room to think and recover their sanity.
TSR Previews: Things start to step up in pace again in april. The forgotten realms continues to try and figure out what to do regarding Azoun IV's death. Just put a new king in and get on with things. You'd think they'd never heard the word succession. Also under stress this month is Evermeet: Island of elves. Elaine Cunningham has fun setting Malar against them. Will they have to swallow their pride and ask for help from humanity to survive?
Al-Qadim also gets some attention for the first time in a while. The appropriately titled Reunion compiles three linked tournament adventures where you have to complete some fairly solid objectives. Will you win, lose, or go off the rails?
Ravenloft finally reveals what lurks within The Shadow Rift. Gaping holes in the fabric of reality can only hang around so long without something coming to fill them. Can your PC's do anything about this dire new menace?
Our monstrous Arcana series turns it's attention to illithids. The Illithiad is our third monster book. They've always been popular in the magazine, and it looks like another generation will get to enjoy being mindfucked and having their brains eaten in the next adventures.
Dragonlance has another anthology. Relics and Omens covers the period immediately after the Chaos Wars, as people adapt to the new world. Who will deal best with the changeover?
Dragon Dice is up to Kicker Pack 8: The Treefolk. Earth + Water = plantfolky goodness. Once again, the balance of power is upset as ever more sides join in the fight.
Looks like they've slipped out another game when we weren't looking as well. Marvel Super Dice? Man, they've missed no time jumping on the licencing. This pack gives us extra coolness for the avengers. Okey dokey.
And finally, they make another attempt at a generic system, 5 years after the last one. Less wacky than the Amazing Engine, Alternity attempts to position itself firmly in the modern day/sci=fi vein. Once again, they will try hard, and fall short of their primary cash cow to the extent that is isn't profitable to continue.
Profiles: When asked to feature in this series, Ed Greenwood massively overwrote, as usual. It's all because of his enormous, infectious enthusiasm though. He's produced the biggest, most detailed campaign world in the world, and he's still going. Much of this can be credited to his gaming group, which has been going since 1978 with the same core people, and who's questions and input help direct his imagination and keep his enthusiasm going. And he has a full time regular job as well. (although as a librarian, he probably gets plenty of free time to jot down ideas as they occur to him. ) It's not all sunshine, he's not as rich as he could have been if he got royalties from all the FR books, nor does he get as much creative control as he could have if he signed a better contract. But he doesn't seem too bothered (not that the magazine would publish it if he was) and is very happy that so many people have taken his words to heart. Hopefully he has several more decades of insanely prolific writing in him. As enjoyable a read as most of his contributions.
With several old school returnees, and a sufficiently new take on on the issue's topic that it doesn't feel particularly rehashed, plus some more upgrades in the overall presentation of the magazine, I rather like this issue. It shows they were not only reconciling with the obvious big names, but other writers as well, and really thinking about how to bring readers back. Do more epic features that make everyone who reads the magazine talk about it with their friends! Word of mouth is the most important thing for long-term success, and you'll never get anywhere if you don't make new legends to rival the old ones. Do something bold, give me something I can really care about.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 1/8
116 pages. It's a dwarf special. We haven't had one of these since 1982! And elves have had at least three I can recall since then. That's a bit of going back to your roots I can get behind. Wonder if halflings and gnomes will have to share theirs again when they next get one. And will goblinoids ever get a turn to shine instead of being mowed down like the mooks they are? Well, I guess we'll have to see. In the meantime, I shall skip shaving for the next couple of days to get into character.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Alternity may have been delayed a bit because of all the financial problems, but it's still coming out. And here they ask if they should give it lots of coverage in the magazine, a little, or none at all. A question which is almost guaranteed to result in them taking the middle path and putting maybe 1 article a month in here, given the way it's phrased. Still, hopefully there'll be some more specific suggestions that the writers can take on board. And hopefully they'll do a better job of promoting it than they did many of their other products. The 80's had plenty of variety, with Marvel Superheroes, Star frontiers, Top Secret and Gamma World all doing quite nicely, but Buck Rogers was rather a debacle, and the Amazing Engine coverage halfhearted. So this is a reminder that they used to have more variety and adventurousness in their topics, and could in theory do so again, but it seems unlikely. There are drawbacks to playing it safe.
D-Mail: A letter praising Dragonlance and asking if they plan to make official recordings of the music from the books. Very good question. They might well just leave it to the filkers.
A letter in support of Lankhmar. It's the closest thing they have to a low magic setting, plus the city has more than enough detail to feel alive. It deserves much more popularity than it has.
A letter supporting Greyhawk, but also cagey about the possibility of them adding more to it. The fact that it's still fairly open gives you more room to make it your own without being contradicted by canon niggling. They could ruin it all too easily if they're overenthusiastic.
A letter saying planescape is obviously the most awesome as it encapsulates everything else and then some. Simply in sheer variety of ways you can play, it wins by a long shot. Well duh.
And finally, a letter of general commentary. Most of it is positive, but there's always something you think they could do better.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 2/8
Forum starts to really ease into it's new role as airing ground for the edition shift. Our second question is what they should do with the weapon stats. They need some interesting factors beyond damage to distinguish them, make for valid choices. How best to implement that?
Kevin R. Messner attacks the guy saying slavery is just another form of business quite viciously. It's an inherently corruptive and exploitative practice, resulting in much death and misery. How can that not be evil?
Jo Ann Spencer points out how magic low Tolkien actually is in comparison to most D&D games. This does not make it a bad story. Quite the opposite in fact. Learn from that.
Mike Walko thinks that humans ought to have a few extra discretionary points compared to other races to reflect their versatility. Now there's something that definitely made it into both 3 & 4e. Now you know exactly who to blame for that. :D
Rob Garret also gets right to the point. We need to be able to raise our ability scores as we gain levels. Yeah, we'll yoink that one too.
Tom Kretschmer thinks you ought to get rid of level limits, but give humans slightly lower XP costs so they learn faster. Sorry, you fail. Not every idea is going to be taken up, of course.
Sage advice: How can a bladesinger attack and parry in the same round (secret twinky elven techniques. They can cast spells one-handed, too. Skip doesn't even need to try to make that sound wrong. )
How do you use the monster summoning VIII table for VII. That would be broken. ( only use one monster, instead of rolling for number)
Can dispel magic get rid of summoned monsters.( Usually. If you choose the wrong spell though, it'll just remove the control over the monster, leaving it there to rampage. Know your enemies magic. )
What's the difference between mislead and an image made by spectral force. (you don't need to concentrate, and it can leave the area without disappearing. )
What happens if a shadow mage casts spells on someone in a different lighting condition (the target's condition takes precedence)
What does a ring of wizardry do in the spell point system. (They gain a fixed number of extra spells. No messing around with the extra power. )
Does making a permanent item make you less likely to lose con than a freestanding spell or not (Volo is wrong. What would a 5th level character know about advanced magic technology.)
Does alignment based damage happen if you are forced to touch an item (no, only if you pick it up of your own volition)
How does sleep work (weakest creatures first. )
How do you calculate MTHAC0 (table 77)
I don't understand it when ships have multiple movement rates (sails, oars, and both.)
What's aasimar's movement rate (12)
Can identify detect cursed items (not directly. Most of them are designed to screw you over. Commune'll generally do the job.)
What modifiers affect spell-created weapons (oh, this is a can of worms. It depends on if you physically wield them or not, and a whole bunch of other complicated things. Some fudging may be required. )
Strength provides more benefit to two-weapon wielders than two handed weapon users. This is wrong! (You have a point. We may have to do something about that. )
How do you work out ego points. (with great bravado.)
Can rockfalls hurt creatures that are immune to nonmagical weapons (yes, as they aren't a weapon)
Can you improve your THAC0 further than the high level table says (you can certainly add more bonuses onto it. You seem to be confusing base and modifiers. So it goes)
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 3/8
Out of character: Peter puts his own unique spin on the idea of using music to enhance your roleplaying. Rather than just using it as a backdrop, he takes individual artists and adapts their songs and personalities to fit the bards in his campaign, giving them an instant hook for players to relate too, while reducing the work for the DM. That has the potential to get rather cheesy. But it also has possibilities for directing your career path, as if you choose an experienced artist with a hefty back catalogue, but your character starts out new, you can play out the process of them writing new songs as they advance their career. That isn't an idea I've encountered before. So it seems he still has plenty of ideas to contribute, freshen up our games. And they're easily adaptable to most systems as well. Once again he's being a hands-on positive force for them.
Heart of the forge: For a second month in a row, we have an epic feature from the staff with a ton of cool illustrations, including ones from Roger Raupp. Second only to mining, Dwarves specialise in smithing, as after all, they have to do something with all the stuff they dredge out of the ground, and make money so they don't have to resort to farming to eat. And even in a mostly medieval setting, this can involve some fairly sophisticated technology. Other races would be worried if they knew just how big and complicated dwarven forges are. But their prowess isn't purely technological. Smithing is a religious activity for them as much as it is a practical one, and this is given just as much attention, with 18 new spells and 5 new magical items. As one of those articles that gives us a whole ton of setting detail and crunch that is primarily useful in worldbuilding terms, rather than for adventurers, this seems to be aimed at the DM, but people with dwarf PC's can still get something from it, especially as the new spells do have ingenious uses in adventuring situations. This definitely manages to avoid rehash by focussing on an area and providing lots of extra detail, and it a suitable strong start to their theme. So as usual, I just have to hope they'll keep that momentum up this month.
Mindstalkers: It's not just gith who hate illithids. Dwarves might not have a personal animosity with them the way they do with goblinoids, but I'm sure they run across them in their delvings and are not fond of the arrogant mindfucking squidfaces at all. So a society of dwarves dedicated to hunting them down, and developing their own psionic capabilities to counter them is just the kind of practical solution they'd adopt. So here's a new kit, and a whole bunch of powers designed specifically to fight illithids. Many of these can be acquired through multiple methods, either as psionic powers, or nonweapon proficiencies. Of course, the expense of these (one of them costs 5 slots! ) means you're pretty unlikely to be able to buy them if not using S&P rules, plus the fact that they're illithid specific means you'll face the same kind of problems as the dragon-hunting kits we've seen before. You just have to focus your build so much that you're left weak against other monsters. So while this is pretty well written, it's the kind of stuff that you need to approach with caution, because if you buy a ton of expensive powers that you only get to use once or twice in a campaign, you'll feel more than a little gypped. It really makes me long for the introduction of Feats and the 3rd edition version of the illithid hunter, which was done better. (and should be, since they were by the same writer. ) They still have some serious lessons to learn about power budgeting and controlling the size of your characters niche so it's harder for people to make themselves hugely under or overpowered, or useless in far too many situations.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 4/8
Little rascals: A little bit of hyperspecialisation here. Dwarf Rogue kits. Since the complete dwarves handbook only gave us 4, adding another 4 gives them a decent number of new opportunities to advance themselves. Or not, particularly if they turn out to be the sort that trade tangible benefits for purely social penalties. Which is particularly a temptation for rogues, given the inherent illegality of their skillset.
Delvers are dwarven indiana jonses, mining to dig up ancient artefacts and quite possibly world destroying monstrosities if they're not careful. They do indeed have substantial benefits in exchange for a mild social penalty. And this does irk me a little.
Hoardsackers specialise in stealing from Dragons. This does seem like a pretty suicidal occupation, and indeed, it doesn't make them popular with older more conservative dwarves. And as with the warrior kits who's benefits are all dragon specific, they'll have to actively work to make them useful. So really, their benefits don't outweigh the risks.
Scurr appear to be dwarven jesters, but they're actually spies for their governments, pretending to be pratfalling merrie pranksters while keeping their eyes and ears open for gossip and state secrets. Other dwarves who aren't in on the secret think they're complete and utter twats, and if they're found out, they can expect terminal dismissal. If you look a little deeper you'll see the tears of a clown.
Talebearers are the only popular ones, being another dwarven bard variant focussing on stories and historical info. Amazingly enough, the author once again makes their only penalties social, simply saying their powers don't work as well on nondwarves. So that's 4 for 4, in a shockingly poor bit of mechanical design. That's almost Complete Elves handbook level of benefits exceeding penalties twinkery. I do not approve at all. If you try and fight the mary-sues on their own terms, and in the process become like them, everybody loses, even if you technically win. Bad writer. No cookie for you.
Wyrms of the north: Ed gets round to talking about draconic naming conventions of Toril. He's not just throwing syllables into a blender, there's actually a plan behind them. Or at least, there is now. How much of it is retroactive is hard to tell. Which I suppose is another reminder how many notes he has still to mine and turn into published articles. The dragon itself is another interesting example of how Ed is getting away with rather more than he used too. Imprisoned by a sadistic mother who enhanced her with regenerating spells and used her as her food source, before she was freed when her mother's magical experimentation killed her via Akira style limb growing overdose. That's some pretty high octane nightmare fuel right there. And it has indeed left her pretty traumatised, with huge trust issues and a tendency to go berserk if something triggers flashbacks. But thankfully, it hasn't led to the abuser becoming the abused, with her becoming rather protective towards people who play it straight with her. So this is another rather interesting character study that once again shows us just how much more he can get away with than any other writer they have on the staff. (except possibly the new boss) And precisely because of that fact, it holds the attention more than another rehashed helping of magical items or monsters. It also shows yet again that he's planned quite a bit of this stuff out in advance, with more references to dragons yet to come. I can't dislike this, as it's still just more ambitious and adventurous than anything else the magazine is doing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 5/8
Fiction: Honest and true by Troy Denning. Lest we forget, Cyric is a right asshole. And now of dubious sanity as well, which just makes him all the more dangerous. Who'd want to serve something like that? A snivelling self-deluding little weasel of a man, who gets horribly abused by both friends and enemies, and mostly winds up taking it. You have to pity him, really. So this is a story of several levels, as it shows that the book The Trial of Cyric wasn't just a subjective account for us with a first person narration, but is actually a physical book in setting, albeit one with a very small print run from a vanity publishing house. The 4th wall in the Realms, never particularly strong, just got another hole poked in it. Really, this is a story where everyone fails. Malik winds up beat around and losing tons of money, Cyric doesn't get his version of events read by more than a few hundred people, and Ruha fails to defeat them permanently. So it bucks a whole bunch of normal trends, while sticking to several Realms specific ones with style. It's all very interesting indeed. Troy might not be quite as adventurous as Ed, but he certainly has some very interesting ideas and the mastery of the craft to follow through with them.
Rogues Gallery: Following straight on from the fiction, this column goes on to stat out the characters from it. Well, that ensures that they're instantly accessible to every single reader, unlike when they just publish characters from one of their recent novels. That's a reasonably sensible move. And since I've just been rather entertained by them, I'm already primed to like this article. Course, they could still ruin that. I guess it probably depends on if the cheese overpowers the cool, as with so many other Realms articles.
Ruha has every single ability score at 15 or higher, and a ton of spells from the Al Qadim rulebooks. But not many magical items for her level. Well, that seems to be a common issue with fiction NPC's. They don't have the wealth of onscreen adventures that would let them organically accumulate all sorts of weird bits and bobs.
Malik El Sami yn Nasser, on the other hand, has acquired a whole bunch of weird little abilities and handicaps as a result of his starring role (that he'd really rather not have, I suspect) All he wants to do is serve Cyric and make a decent amount of money in the process. But no, he gets to live the life of Job, beset on all sides, unable to even be as weaselly and deceitful as he'd like. Feel sorry for him, but if you see him, don't trust him.
Avner of Hartwick was a good guy, but has been stuck with being a servant to Mask. This also leads to amusing situations where he follows the letter of his orders rather than the spirit. This does not lead to his powers being taken away, curiously enough, because Mask has a sense of humour about these things. He's also dead, which brings it's own powers and problems. He's once again full of the kind of exceptionalism that seems likely to produce player imitations. I think they're intentionally trying to replicate the success of Drizzt. So yeah, it looks like they aren't scaling back on the cheese and twinkery at all, as they have to compete with existing characters or die horribly. It's a hard life being low level in this world.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the bizarre: We stay in theme here, with a whole bunch of dwarf-made items. Interestingly, this time they're all not only unique, but focussed on a specific setting, with lots of setting detail.
The Helm of Agate Thorwallen isn't even magical, just lovingly crafted and engraved with tons of gems. Truly a triumph of setting over mechanics. Guess that like the ecologies, that's really reaching it's zenith now.
Moradin's Anvil has no powers other than being apparently indestructible, but that's more than enough to make dwarves love it, and use it as a means of settling disputes. After all, religion is Serious Business to dwarves, just like everything else.
The Tomes of Gideon also do nothing other than recount history. This makes me wonder if we're going to have an entire Bazaar of nonmagical items. That would be a truly bizarre turn of events.
The Banner of Courage is also nonmagical, but at least gives a mechanical effect to the confidence inspired by fighting under it. Once again, pretty craftmanship and culture is serious business.
The Book of Kemalok Kings does for Dark sun what the Tomes of Gideon did for birthright. Course, Dark Sun has both more obscured history and fewer resources, so the final product is rather different.
The Prize of Erackinor may or may not be magical, but they still don't spell out it's powers. Still, it certainly seems to inspire creativity, so Moradin must be doing something right.
The Sarcophagus of Ran is another one that may or may not be magical. Either way, it's creator is no longer stuck in ravenloft, so he may well have done something right. In any case, it's a very curious ending to a very curious article. I wonder if they're going to get any complaints about this one. In any case, it's a not entirely welcome departure from normal procedure that makes me wonder what they're going to try next to get the magazine back on track. There may well be some awkward flailing around to come.
The ecology of the steeder: The dwarven section winds down with a little something for the Duergar. Training giant spiders isn't the easiest of things to do. They will try and eat you if you don't start them young and bond with them carefully. But if you can, you get to ride on the ceiling. How awesome is that! This does a good job of reminding us that while they may be stoic to other races, it takes considerable cultural pressure to mold them into that kind of badass, and they're only that way because the underdark is a bloody harsh place (and their god is too stubborn to let them go elsewhere. ) This clears up a bit of errata, but doesn't present a hugely different spin on it, and actually seems more concerned with the human (well, dwarven) interactions than the actual creature. So it's another one that's pretty good as a story, but not too great as an ecology. Oh well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 7/8
Best Behavior: Our themed material finally comes to an end with a moderately sized piece on dwarven etiquette. Dwarves might seem blunt and taciturn to other races when not drunk, but as a lawful race, there's some definite rules of conduct that they will think less of you for not following. And of course these are pretty counterintuitive to elves, thus contributing heavily to their continuing rivalry with each other. And since they don't talk about them much to outsiders, that puts you at a bit of a disadvantage. No great surprises here, just elaboration on what we probably already know, particularly if you've read their complete handbook. The insult table is quite amusing, but really, this just washes through me without making much of an impression. Well, it's a rare issue that doesn't have some filler these days.
Dragonmirth needs some henchmen fast. Swordplay needs some job security of the pointy kind. Knights of the dinner table take the time to pimp their back catalogue. Floyd comes to an end with a final battle that is both spectacular and funny. Coming next month, Nodwick! What will Aaron deliver us if he can't have obvious continuity in his strips?
Role-playing reviews: Allen Varney takes the review slot for the first time in a while, with a Call of Cthulhu special. It's kinda lost some of it's shine in recent years, but there's still plenty of books coming out for it. In fact, due to it's open domain source material, other companies can release material for it, and they may be doing a better job of it than chaosium. Once again, the simple fact that they've been established for ages with the same staff means they're less inspired and vigorous than the competition. This will lead to further problems along the line. What are we to do? Make the best of what we have.
The new orleans guidebook sees Allen comment on Ricks previous reviews of their other citybooks. While you could look up all the mundane stuff yourself, there is something to be said for having the more obscure bits of information already collected and ready to run adventures with. Really, it's of most value to people who don't actually live there. But no, it's not a classic.
A resection of time: the strange case of Kyle Woodson is one of the best adventures of Chaosium's new crop. It might not be that great as part of a campaign, (and does have some railroading resulting from it's tournament origins) but do you really expect Cthulhu characters to survive that long? In terms of atmosphere and drawing upon real world stuff, but not sticking too it too pedantically, it's pretty entertaining. Just don't expect it to be for everyone.
The dreaming stone is their first lengthy adventure for the Dreamlands. Allen gets a bit distracted here, going into plenty of detail about the tonal issues of including the high fantasy dreamlands in your game. But it is still pretty horrific, and not suited for hack and slash gaming at all. The purists can get stuffed. His main complaint here is that the art and editing sucks. The writers might have some enthusiasm left, but the editors definitely aren't what they used to be. So the real problem is the company, not that the setting is out of niches to expand upon.
Re:Views: Big Eyes, Small Mouth gets a very positive review. It's almost perfectly suited to it's source material, and the artwork is pretty good as well. The system is fairly simple, but highly customisable, and it has plenty of room for expansion. Of course, this expansion will turn out to be an issue in itself, as it becomes more rules heavy and less accessible to new people, before dying slowly when the company had financial issues. But in the meantime there's a whole bunch of amusingly named supplements and licensed properties using the system to come. That's one thread of history I'm definitely interested in, should they choose to follow it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 245: March 1998
part 8/8
KotDT also gets a double page spread. It goes a long way for a rather dumb jab at the artist who temporarily abandoned his name due to legal issues with his record company.
TSR Previews: Our generic product this month is something I'm sure they've done before. The Dungeon Builders Guidebook. Random generation, templates to assemble places with, advice on how to populate them, these are all things we've seen in various magazine articles here, stretching right back to SR1. Let's hope it improves on them.
The Forgotten Realms finally brings back Waukeen. She's been a slave to fiends for all these years and you get to rescue her. That sounds promising, if potentially railroady. Their novels also seem to be business as usual, with Tangled Webs by Elaine Cunningham. Our second outcast drow continues to have her own adventures.
Dragonlance stays in solid second place. A Saga Companion does what books of that name normally do, be a grab bag of new rules stuff and roleplaying advice they've though of since the corebook came out. They also get a new calendar, for the first time in a few years. Illustrations, biographies, a place to write events on, you know the drill.
Greyhawk starts to ruthlessly reverse the changes the last wave of products made in Return of the Eight. You, of course get to play a part. Hopefully, anyway. Can neutrality triumph again?
Planescape sees Monte Cook kick butt with Tales from the infinite stairway. Like well of worlds, you can do these little adventures separately, or linked. Go on, splurge a little.
Alternity imitates AD&D by releasing the Game Masters Guide. Doesn't have quite the same ring as Dungeon Master, does it. Surely you could think up a cooler title. This is why GURPS works. Despite the eminently sensible system, it always has the vaguely amusing title to keep you from getting too blanded out.
Dragon dice gets Champions of Estfah. More heroes fighting for a peace that can never come as long as the line survives. Kinda paradoxical, really.
Marvel Super Dice releases two games in one using the same pieces. Variety variety variety. Just what's needed for replayability.
Profiles: Troy Denning is our profilee this month. He may not be quite as prolific as Ed, but he has got a considerably better groomed beard. He's also been involved in considerably more worlds, having co-created dark sun, and written books for there, FR and planescape. He seems a thoughtful sort, full of introspection on different approaches to try new things, and how he would do older works better if he had the chance. Certainly an attitude I can agree with.
Another issue that mostly plays it safe, but does so with pretty high quality material. Exactly how long they've been building up these submissions I'm not sure, but they've evidently been able to save up plenty of articles in the time since they last gave dwarves the spotlight. Still, it does leave me wondering if the new company is going to bring any new ideas into the pot any time soon, or merely handle the old ones in a better way than the old company did in it's dying years. I guess once again it's onto april, to see what's happened to their sense of humour. After all, they considered it important enough that they kept most of the material in their august issue last year. But they have changed several policies since then, so who knows.
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. So, we meet again, impractical spiky helmets. Getting caught in doors and taking people's eyes out when they stand too close. And ew, what have they done to that guy's face? That's some serious uncanny valley stuff right there. So, I can find stuff to laugh about in the cover, but not that much. No theme it seems, although there's three articles on the topic of henchmen & followers, to tie in with their new comic featuring one. So individual articles will take us here and there, flitting from topic to topic at their whim. Tra la la la la. Pages rise and fall like particularly skinny ocean waves. Will the information within soak my brain more than water soaks my body? Or will the oily residue of previous knowledge make it slide off like a ducks back?
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Love slave of the kobold queen? Well, this editorial both serves as a dose of april humour, and an explanation as to why they don't have a full theme this issue. It's all Jesse Decker's fault, and he has been made to pay suitably for it. :) Never miss a deadline for people who can have your character humiliated in ways that will leave you wishing they'd simply killed you quickly. So they certainly haven't lost their sense of sadism around the offices, despite the management changes. You'd better watch out, because in these politically correct times, this can turn into accusations of workplace bullying all too easily. And that would just suck. Don't want to be replicating the things we escaped from when we left school behind.
D-Mail: A letter from someone who is finding their recent emphasis on the regular columns for monsters, magic items, and spells is getting a leetle repetitive. He may have a point, but they'll need a few more good articles to fill the magazine if they want to avoid that.
A fairly lengthy bit of commentary, mostly positive, but with some constructive criticism as well. This is hailed as exactly what the editors want to see, so they can make changes. Carrot plus stick is better than either individually.
A letter from someone who's created a politician class. You know, they already did that in issue 74. You are very scooped. Well, that's another thing it might be long enough that they decide to repeat it.
And finally we have letters asking for more Al Qadim and Spelljammer material. They're quite happy to publish articles if you write good ones. Supply and Demand is a two-sided coin.
Nodwick gets hired. At least this group are honest about viewing him as nothing but cannon fodder and hired help. I'm sure they'll get along great.
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 2/8
Forum now moves onto the balance between the PHB and the DMG. In 1e, things were definitely slanted towards the DM's side, while they moved a big chunk of that into the PHB in 2e. What now? Tee hee.
Joe Goranson wants D&D completely converted into a skill based system. Levels are a clunky and outmoded concept! Hardly anyone else in roleplaying uses them. I think not. Plus less railroading, more player control. No argument there.
Cameron McKee has lots of suggestions for the new edition, most of which will not be followed up. If anything, this is the kind of stuff they'll move away from, particularly things like rules for weather and mining. We want to concentrate on the asskicking.
Mark E. Greene thinks that the proficiency system is the part of the system most in need of a complete rewrite. Your wish is our command!
Robert Hertel wants to go back to the 1e collection of core races. All the current lot, plus the reinstatement of the Half-Orc. Seems like a fairly conservative choice. That it is then! Your class suggestions, on the other hand, heed will we not.
Joe G. Kushner pushes it a step further, wanting the current core lot, plus the half orc and half ogre. Too much? I guess so.
Sage advice: Can you throw an entire necklace of missiles at an opponent. (yes, but if you haven't taken the beads off, it'll do as much good as throwing your gun at the enemy.)
Lathander is neutral good. Are vampires scared of his priests (yes. They aren't scared of his holy symbols on their own though. )
Can good priests rebuke/control paladins (Chance'd be a fine thing)
Why can't a thief hiding in shadows be seen with infravision (They can. The trick is in convincing people not to look in the first place. )
Is a flame tongue sword any good against a red dragon (no more than a regular +1 sword)
Could you clear up the rules for immature giants ( Suuure. Skip is glad to clear up after an incompetent editor. (no names, but looking very hard at))
Are creatures that need magical weapons to hit immune to phantasmal killer (no. You infer things that are not there.)
How does levitation work in a place without gravity. (pick an axis, any axis. This is not a 3 card monte. Skip is not forcing your hand. )
Surely the best way to incapacitate a wizard is to strap them up inside a suit of plate mail. (you'd think so. However, Skip recommends finding a way to screw over players who use this trick repeatedly. Skip is not a fan of other people using rules exploits in the face of realism.)
I protest about your rulings on poison with instant onset times. (Are you dissin Skip? Have you forgotten that skip is the badass private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs. Just because Skip went through some tough times last year, does not mean Skip's lost it. If anything, they gave Skip a chance to get back to his roots, hustling for info on the mean shores of lake geneva. If you think Skip won't cap yo ass for this impertinence, you've got another thing coming. )
Are Golems affected by retributive strikes (hell no)
Can dispel magic cure lycanthropy (Not a hope in hell.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 3/8
Knights of the dinner table advertises the RPGA. Two great tastes that taste great together!
Out of character: Peter gives us his first bit of writing that isn't particularly consequential after all. Happens to every writer sooner or later. This is why many epics stop at a trilogy, as that's about the longest you can ratchet up the tension before having to take a break to let things plateau. Anyway, this feels like a companion piece to their longer henchman feature a little later, a selection of random personality quirks that you could give them. Since we've had longer, more detailed personality lists in the past, this isn't a game changer. If anything, it feels like filler. So I really don't have much to say here. I don't actively dislike it, but I don't like it either. Having the boss talking to us every month again means the novelty is starting to wear off.
The wizard's companion: Hmm. We've had a good half a dozen articles on familiars by now. That's getting a little played out. So let's put the spotlight on homunculi instead. Well, it's about the equivalent of focussing on grimlocks rather than the regular orcs for your low level monster encounters. Still, it follows pretty much the same formula. Several pages of extrapolation on the nature of homunculi, their creation, their relationship with wizards and possibly their familiars if they have those as well, and what happens if they become independent. Then it details a whole bunch of alternate homunculi types with their unique appearances and abilities. The illustrations are all in colour and not too bad either, and it gives you some obvious avenues to develop these ideas further. It's a pretty good starter, if rather formulaic. Looks like they're going for a safe option that'll retain it's value for a while.
The Omega Variant: Oooh. So this is our first proper Alternity article. A 10 page quick-play solo adventure that introduces the basic concepts of the rules, and then takes you through a little choose your own path adventure that'll take maybe half an hour if you're lucky. (although if you're not, it could take several tries, as they give you plenty of opportunities to lose.) This is definitely better than the Amazing Engine's similar attempt, which they didn't do until well after it was released, and then didn't really show you what to do with the system once you had it.
Straight away, I can see that they're using mostly the same abilities as D&D, but with some noticeable differences. Charisma has been renamed Personality, while wisdom has been renamed Will, and has taken the Perception role that would be shoehorned into Wisdom in 3e. So it looks like we can already say that this'll have some influence on the development of D&D. This highly swingy, roll under resolution mechanic, on the other hand, I think we can safely say was discarded because of the weird way it scales and interacts with the difficulty modifiers as you increase your stats. The action phases system also seems like an interesting experiment that might have been kept on, but was instead replaced by the full/standard/move/free system and cyclical initiative that takes slightly less rolls and bookkeeping. And the wound system was obviously an intentional change because they didn't want characters to become unstoppable tanks as they gained experience in this system. So there's plenty to analyse here. The adventure itself is pretty linear, but there are several nice touches of humour that make it fun reading, and it shows us some setting details that I assume will be expanded upon in the main books. This definitely feels like a good introduction that'll get a few more people to buy the system. My main lingering question here is how the system handles advancement. Does it have the potential for campaigns as long as Basic or Advanced D&D, or does it run out after a while?
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 4/8
A few good henchmen: More than a few in fact. 101 to be precise. As with the dirty tricks list, you'll never have thought up everything on this list. And unlike the tricks, you could get plenty of sessions of use out of every single one of these, presuming you aren't too cavalier. There's a definite slant towards humans and fighters, but all the basic classes and races are covered, plus there's a few ones from odd races as well. They also have short but effective personality notes that'll make them easy to pick up and play by any actor. I'd use them without hesitation.
Wyrms of the north:We're now halfway through the alphabet, which means we're probably slightly more than that through this series. And here we venture a little out of the usual geographical remit, with a trip to Sembia. We get to find out quite a bit more about the Cult of the Dragon in the area, and why they're very much the poor third party as a villainous organisation when compared to the Zhentarim and Red Wizards. They're blinded by their ideology, and put it over profit, and that makes them very open to manipulation, especially by dragons themselves. Like many Sapphire dragons, our subject this month tends to be a bit of a shut-in geek, but the magical equivalent of the internet lets him see what's going on, and undead servants wait upon him to make sure he has plenty to eat. And of course, you're much more likely to run across the results of his machinations than you are to meet him. This makes him another fun one for long-term play, and while as powerful as any dragon, he's not so twinked out as to be unbeatable, like so many of the Realmses contingency fetishists. You might actually get to beat him, or save him from the Cult when they actually realise they've been played for fools. And really, since PC's should always get to make a difference in the adventure, I approve.
Fiction: The great hunt by Elaine Cunningham. Our great elf-lover stretches herself a little to show us both sides of an elf-orc conflict. Both of these races are of course able to interbreed with humans, and that does become significant here, showing them that really, they're not so different. But the elves are the good guys, of course. :p Not really sure what to make of this, as it's virtually all description around a plot that could be boiled down to a single sentence effortlessly. I think it's more evidence for the fact that they're relying on regular authors a lot more these days, and spending even more time in the Realms than they used too. I'm not really satisfied with this at all. Ed may get away with it, but his followers? Sorry, no dice.
Rogues gallery: This month, we're not covering the subjects of recent books. No, we're going all the way back to the turn of the decade, and the Forgotten Realms comic books published back then. What? They didn't get round to giving them full stats in a book? Well, I suppose it's more evidence that the Realms is way too big to keep track of properly. So anyway, time for the usual plot compression before we get to the characters. And with three big adventures with a 16 year gap between the first and last, it's obvious these guys are no rookies or flash in the pan. But they still probably won't have realistically large sets of equipment. :p
Vajira Valmeyjar is a badass warrior woman who's been promoted to nobility as a result of her leveling up, but isn't particularly comfortable with the courtly lifestyle and gossiping crap that comes with it. This of course makes her the subject of more gossip. Pay them no mind and keep having adventures.
Timoth Eyesbright is a centaur with a double sword. Well, having all that extra mass allows them to wield weapons that would be flashy but impractical for humans. He's the trusting dumbass of the group, which means he may be both subject to trickery and the Worf effect in adventures. Well, it seems like he'll keep the banter interesting.
Onyx the Invincible is a dwarf fighter/thief who's smart enough to use blowdarts, and hot tempered enough enough to get into adventures regularly. He sometimes rides the centaur, which makes perfect sense tactically, and gives the impression that these guys were actually PC's at some point, for NPC's tend to be sniffy about that kind of thing. He also has relationship issues, which is generally something they're rather taciturn about. I like him.
Kyrani of Waterdeep is the mage of the group, and in typical Realms style, is not shy about using her looks and lifespan to have as much fun as possible with a whole bunch of different men of various races. Tut tut, etc etc. What are we to do, with the celebrities of this world setting such a bad example to other adventurers?
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 5/8
The ecology of the flumph: It would be an april episode that features these guys. The unjustly mocked lawful good flying jellyfish. Flip them upside down, and they're helpless. Well, it's no bigger a weakness than vampires dying horribly in sunlight. Fortunately, the association of monster hunters' antics are comical enough on their own, so they make perfectly credible foils for them. At least this time they get off with just a bit of dignity lost, rather than having to rez dozens of people. The footnotes are better than they've been for the last few issues as well, with theorizing on how they are related to several other D&D monsters, and quite a bit of stuff that doesn't appear in the original monster entry. Not perfect, but probably far better treatment than it would have got under some other writers.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: This month's theme is kitchen based. Lots of items which ordinary people'll get use out of. Another bit of setting heavy frippery, or genuinely cool items? Pretty typical question here.
Bowls of plentiful porridge condemn you to crap food for the rest of your days. Still, at least you'll never run short. Tempting and nasty, this is a very real and difficult choice as a possession.
Cauldrons of dreams are another one that's almost as much bother as it is benefit. You could get a cool prophecy, you could get traumatic nightmares. It's all rather random. Like most random items, even though more of the options are good than bad, it'll probably backfire on you nastily in the long run.
Cauldrons of gateways allow you to go somewhere by jumping in them. This is of course one way and leaves the cauldron behind, so it might not be a great one for PC's. Leave it with your friendly neighbourhood witch.
The Cauldron of the Magi offers magical powers at quite substantial cost and risk. Assembling the ingredients you need to brew in it looks like an entire adventure in itself.
Cauldrons of Planar Travel let you go anywhere in the multiverse, presuming you can get soil from it in the first place. This of course rules out quite a few planes, but hush you pessimist.
Chamber pots of concealment have an extradimensional space in them. This means they can be used for ages without needing emptying, or have stuff hidden there where no-one would look. Clever.
Cleavers by Grog are nasty blades that make you bleed profusely, like Barbazu pikes. They're a good example of tools being useful weapons as well. Don't mess with the cook.
The Cookbook of Uzul gives you a bonus to your cooking checks. Not flashy, but like many items, surprisingly profitable.
Cormac's Wonder Butter is a bit rancid, but what doesn't kill you makes you better. Another decidedly mixed benefit in a article full of them.
Hypnotic Cauldrons are another perfect witchy stereotype. The right brew will have everyone in the room subliminally implanted to do something for you and not remember it. I believe this merits an evil cackle. Nyehehehehehe.
Everfull jugs of Lard are like decanters of endless water, only much thicker and greasier. I look forward to seeing people find good non-cooking related uses for this one.
Jan Jo's Tea Bottle keeps you awake better than any coffee, can cure lycanthropy, and heal you. One of those ones that'll really boost an adventuring parties performance, especially at lower level.
Medicine Spoons are another one that may cure you, but it'll be as unpleasant as real medicine. You'd think when clerics can do this stuff easily enough, it wouldn't be so hard to replicate.
Pepper of the Pyrolisk is just too damn spicy. One for X-treme high level characters with a masochistic edge. Can you take the heat?
Salts of Dehydration do to you what ordinary salt does to slugs. A painful shriveling death to the consumer. Good assassination technique, really. It'll certainly make other people think twice about crossing you. Crisp?
Salt and Pepper shakers of Ogg are a paired set that can poison you, or cure poison. You really really do not want to get them mixed up.
Seame Cauldrons are rather interesting scrying devices that work via sympathetic magic. This'll make using them practically an interesting challenge, and not game-breaking at all. You could do a lot worse than including these if you want divination.
Spatula of lifting let you flip up to 500lb items. Another useful tool with fun combat applications.
Spirit Cauldrons let you summon up ghosts to answer questions. This may or may not go well, but works in a nicely narrative way. I quite approve. A very fun collection of items, overall.
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 6/8
The wizards three: Another little serving of inoffensive whimsy and lechery from the wizards three. They have a slightly better idea of what happened to Dalamar, but of course, they can't meddle in the affairs of other worlds. And since he is technically a bad guy anyway, they'd rather stay at Ed's and scoff the stuff he so generously provides rather than go on an epic adventure anyway. Once again, the only drama comes from Elminster's continued teasing of their new apprentice, which grows a bit tiresome for me, and probably a lot more so for her. Cosmic enlightenment? They're just mucking you around.
The spells also undergo severe woobification, with all of them 1st level. The usual array of minor mischiefs and similarly weak attack effects easily surpassed by the standard magic missile & sleep array. Once again, it's all rather unsatisfying, and makes me wonder why these changes have been made. Was it Ed's decision, or the new management that's led him to dumb his stuff down so more players will be able to get their hands on it. In any case, it's not a good ending to the run of this series, as easily the weakest entry. I guess fourth wall breaking crossovers just don't work well when they're cutting down their setting selection.
The dragon's bestiary: Hmm. Backconverting monsters from the 5th age Dragonlance stuff. I can see how there'd be a demand for that kind of stuff. There are some people who are annoyed at the whole 5th age business, but are still reading the novels and want to play the game. And they are trying to cater for as wide an audience as possible for this beleaguered gameworld.
Daemon Warriors are moderately scary undead hordes. Adventurers shouldn't have too much trouble, but of course anything immune to nonmagical weapons is deep trouble to normal people, as no size of army'll help. And like draconians, they have destructive deaths just to make them even more of a pain. Seems to be a personal fetish of Margaret & Tracy.
Fire dragons are yet another stupid rampaging monster that might look scarier than normal dragons at first glance, but is seriously lacking in the intellect and magical capacity. Chaos doesn't seem to be particularly imaginative really. Couldn't you just reskin existing monsters?
Chaos wights, on the other hand, are really really scary and cool. If they kill you, they erase your life from the memory of everyone who ever knew you as well. Which means no-ones going to even know to try and raise you, but may also be their eventual downfall, since the only legends of fighting them will be ones where the heroes win. So it's one cool idea and a bunch of filler. Seems about par for this world.
Dragonmirth is full of snark. Swordplay gets the wrong kind of hot oil. Oooh, this is gonna make a mess.
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 7/8
Roleplaying reviews: Zero is a rather interesting little game from our other reviewer Lester Smith. Somewhere between Paranoia without the humour and Star trek if you were a rebel Borg, you were once a happy part of the collective, but suddenly woke up with individuality, and have to do your best to survive in a world that suddenly and inexplicably hates you. The rules are similarly minimalist and offbeat, with you having to choose between number of skills you know, and being able to adapt to new situations. Like Paranoia, it seems like it would struggle to accommodate long campaigns, but could be good for a one-shot.
Mediums: Speakers with the dead for Wraith, on the other hand, could make for very long-term games indeed, as you can get a full career as a mortal, and then eventually transition into being a wraith. (and then become a risen or spectre, and back again) It has a lot of writers, and consequentially feels a bit unfocussed, but that just means it'll be good for being interpreted in different ways and causing flamewars, like many old white wolf products. And crucially, you don't have to worry about your fricken shadow constantly undermining everything you do like you would if you're a wraith. It's a hard life, being a game writer and stuck with previous design that's already proven to be a mistake and trying to work around it.
Tribebook: Stargazers reminds us that white wolf could get pretty silly at times. Buddhist werewolves? That's just an excuse to give your flesh-ripping engine of death kewl martial arts on top of everything else. :p Still, White Wolf has got better as lampshading their cheesier urges over time, and that proves the case here, with the combination of W:tA animism and real world eastern mysticism actually fairly coherent. You don't have to be a twink to want to play one, but it can't hurt.
The great modron march showcases some of the weirdest bits of the planescape setting, using the big cosmic event as a backdrop for a whole bunch of little adventures of various levels. In theory, you could play all of them, but in practice, they don't really happen in order, plus you know how slow the AD&D leveling system is, so you'd have to add other ones in between, and in the meantime, the march would move on. Really, you're unlikely to use more than one or two with a particular set of characters.
Faces of evil: the fiends evokes considerably less wonder in Allen. Far too much of it is rehashed or overly conservative in approach, and amusing IC writing can only go so far. They could do much better now they're not bound by that sodding code of ethics.
Dreams and nightmares is for Changeling:the Dreaming, and explores their own weird world away from the one we know. (while making it clear that the PC's are never actually going to get back to Arcadia without ceasing to be characters as we know them) As should be expected from WW, the editing continues to be a source of contention with the reviewers, and as expected from the topic, the continuity is a bit scattershot. Still, there's plenty of material to add to your campaign. And given changeling PC's tendency towards amnesia, it's pretty reusable as well. :p
Re:Views: The Pocket Warrior is an experiment with format, fitting three little booklets into a CD jewel case which cover rules, creatures and setting with more detail than many books with twice the page count. Of course, if you have poor eyesight, you might as well not apply, but it's a brave design choice that stands out in this era of bloating page counts, and deserves credit. Of course, an actual .pdf on a CD would be able to go thousands of full colour pages with the right compression settings, but that's neither here or there. In the meantime, if you like easy to learn universal systems, drop a few dollars, give them your support.
KotDT shows up again, this time to abuse and drive off the newbie.
Dragon Magazine Issue 246: April 1998
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Unusually, Ravenloft takes front position this month. I Strahd: The war against Azalin has P. N. Elrod do for the sequel module what she did for the first one. Most amusing, and likely to suffer from diminishing returns just as the module did. They also get Champions of the Mists. The characters from books finally get statted out, the way the FR and DL ones have been a few times.
Speaking of the Realms, they're also putting their novels above their game products. Realms of Mystery is yet another short story anthology. Get to see faces new and old face little puzzles and probably overcome them. A little more epic sounding is The Fall of Myth Drannor. Another one where you probably don't get to have much influence on how things turn out, due to metaplot paradoxes being a bitch to deal with.
Greyhawk continues to return with a vengeance. The Players Guide to Greyhawk does what players guides do. Stuff to properly integrate you into the setting like country descriptions and new kits. As ever, whether Gary approves of the new direction is very much in question.
Dragonlance reaches The Last Thane, by Doug Niles. The dwarves bicker like idiots as the chaos war rages, to their detriment.
Our latest monster spotlight starts it's trilogy of adventures. A Darkness Gathering sees the Illithids finally put in motion their sun extinguishing master plan. Sweet. They've been hinting about doing this for years. Nice to see them actually get round to it.
The Odyssey line gets Jakandor: Isle of Destiny. A low level adventure for a spellcaster. Hmm. Nope, can't work up any interest for this one.
Dragon Dice introduces the treefolk in their 8th Kicker pack. Once again the balance of power shifts as a new foe enters the arena. Choose your weapons. Earth and Water? Mud Wrestling! Yay!
Alternity gets a pack with a GM screen, character sheets, and a bunch of other loose leaf gubbins. Shoulda got a boxed set, then we wouldn't have to buy this separately.
And finally, 5 years after the last one died, Marvel Super Heroes gets a new, rather different RPG. Considering FASERIP was their second most successful line for years, I'm not sure why they wanted to monkey with it so much, but there you go. Enjoy.
Profiles: Elaine Cunningham says without irony that the reason she writes about elves so much is that she's a cat person. In a post Pratchett literary environment, this seems more than a little risible. But then, gaming fiction is mocked for many reasons. Drop in an ocean really. Add on writing furry fiction, and even with the positive slant they try and put on this interview, I am groaning and rolling my eyes. Having never read her stuff, I now have even less desire to do so. I suppose the article has served a purpose then, if not the intended one.
Well, it looks like the new direction is going to include substantially less goofiness in the magazine, even if behind the scenes, their actual play is as filled with weirdness and messing around as ever. Combined with the emphasis on following more strictly to a formula, and I'm once again left feeling that this is an era to be dipped in and out of, rather than ploughed through. I wish I could be more non-linear in my reviews. Instead, I'm going to have to get through a load more on an edition that's already looking pretty complete as it is. Waiter! Next course please!
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Who decided muddy green was a good idea as the primary colour for the cover? That's not going to stand out very well. Turn up the saturation! That'll keep it from looking too realistic. Yeah, I'm not too sure about this cover. Maybe it's another one that didn't scan well. Odd that the latest issues should have that problem more than the early ones. Maybe they were getting bored by the time they got this far. Well, we're almost at the end of the Archive issues. I shall definitely be interested in seeing how things change once we get past them. To the articles!
In this issue:
Tenchi Muyo! El-hazard! More classic anime out now and advertised here. Still no DVD's to save space with, I'm afraid.
Mage: the sorcerer's crusade! Another white wolf game gets it's historical edition.
The wyrms turn: Ahh, the great irony that a legend rarely seems legendary until it's over. This is certainly the case with Greyhawk, which was persistently a second stringer until it got cancelled. Yet they're coming back now, while Mystara, Spelljammer and the rest are down for the count. Really, this is just another reminder that they'd like to give plenty of support for the various dead campaign worlds in the magazine. But chances are, they'll actually wind up giving the Realms more support than everything else put together, because Ed shows no signs of running out of inspiration, and people are still showing plenty of interest in what he and his companions have to say. Theory, meet reality. You might not be the best of matches, but you'll have to learn how to get along with each other if you want to get anywhere in life.
D-Mail: A letter pointing out Rick Swan got the authors of his reviewed products mixed up. Tut tut. What do we pay these editors for?
A mostly positive point-by-point letter picking apart issue 243. That's my job! Well, apart from the positivity, anyway. :p You can keep that.
A letter encouraging you to give your magic weapons names and histories. People'll stick with something if you give it sentimental value, even if it's not the obvious choice. Unless they're ruthless twinks, and do you want to game with them anyway?
Two letters about Alternity and what should be done with it. One is optimistic enough about it's success to think it'll get it's own magazine. Oh, if only that were the case. If the hobby could support a whole bunch of magazines devoted to different systems, it'd be much healthier than it is.
Nodwick is introduced to the rest of the team. Signs continue to point to this being a bad gig. He ought to get out now while he has the chance.
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 2/8
Forum is well and truly in it's new more focussed, change directed swing now, with a new header and the question of the month at the beginning rather than the end. This time, it's psionics that are the big issue. Should they stay or should they go now? If they stay there will be trouble. But if they go it will be double. :p So you've gotta let us know!
Gary Sturgess thinks Alteration needs some serious pruning for the next edition. It's got so many spells that belong elsewhere really, simply because the writers were lazy. As a result, it's rather overpowered and thematically blurred at the moment. Absolutely correct.
Lloyd Brown III thinks intelligence ought to be decoupled from your ability to learn skills. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. No.
Kenneth Rath isn't talking about 3rd ed, with a load of discussion about the ballistics of missile weapons combined with flight. It does take a bit of trigonometry to accurately model. May be a bit complicated for many gamers.
Paul Benfield wants the XP and psionics systems fixed, but the magic one mostly left alone. The classes need more even advancement. Yup. You can have that one.
Paul Hoyak doesn't think D&D needs a new edition, it's good enough as it is. I knew there would be one. He's particularly not keen on making all the old books obsolete. Sorry man, there's just too much built up crap. We need to make sacrifices.
Bill Logan has many suggestions, including the idea for the new saving throw system. But plenty more that weren't taken up. Once again, we now know who's idea another little piece of the big picture was.
Bill Johnson points out just how much magic there IS in Tolkien. Yes, but they don't rub it in your face. Gandalf uses his brain more than his fireball blasting. And remember, the classes are based on them, not the other way round.
Sage advice finally finds the time and money to get rid of the nasty spiky decor from the dark times too. Good to see the end of it. Guess Skip's finally got his groove back. And a new love of italics as well. The private sage aint shuttin his mouth anymore. Bow chicka wow wow and all that.
How long does it take to banish an elemental (The same time it took to summon it. You'd better have something to keep yourself from getting hit in the meantime, cause excorcist is not a safe job. )
Can you stack invisible mail with other non AC increasing defensive buffs (if it makes sense)
Just what can you do when only partially broken out of a web (Again, common sense. Note that webs are springy and tend to go back to being an obstruction even if one person breaks out)
Pain touch makes no sense as a divination. (No. It's necromancy. Buy a new updated copy of the book where we've already fixed this problem :teeth ting:)
What happens if you cast transmute bone to steel on a dead person before bringing them back to life (Skip recommends against allowing benefits from it. Screw the rules lawyers, gotta screw those rules lawyers. Skip don't want any competition round these parts )
Can a ring of spell turning deflect a cursed scroll. (no. You brought it on yourself by reading it, so there's no-one for it to be reflected back on)
Does charm person or mammal have a save (yes. Read the spell better, dummy)
Who saves against random causality (the person holding the item affected)
Can chill touch repel ravenloft undead (yes)
Do you have to touch stone to stone shape it. (yes. You want a larger area, you'll need to cast move earth instead)
Shouldn't fireball deal pressure damage to fire resistant creatures (What pressure. It's magic, ooooh. Logical extrapolations don't work)
Can an ottilukes telekinetic sphere be used to fly (sure. Won't be a comfortable ride though, particularly if lots of things are inside being jostled around. )
Can protection from normal missiles work against point blank shots (yes. So much for holding a gun to someone's head. Not that that ever worked under the rules anyway. Damn escalating hit points)
Can rope trick be used to bypass a wall of force (only if it's a moving wall. Rope tricks can't move their entry point. )
How do you decide if an exploit is a legitimate piece of cleverness or a horrible bit of twinking that needs to be stamped upon. (Rule zero, biatch. Skip cannot substitute for common sense. You've gotta decide what's good for your game, and what's bad. Don't listen to those pesky players, you can't trust them an inch. They only want to beat you.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 3/8
What the hell is a Baatezu? Well, the writing is certainly on the wall for those unpronounceable second edition fiend names. Soon they'll be back to being demonized and treated simply as boring big bads to kill.
Out of character: Peter delivers another solid but unexceptional bit of writing this month. Why did your character become an adventurer? Was he born to it, did he choose it, or was it thrust upon him unexpectedly. The most interesting ones are rarely the emotionless connectionless hyperoptimised monsters. Yeah, this is a familiar one, and all the literary examples given are very familiar ones as well. Definitely an article for the less experienced player, reminding us of the kind of things they do every few years. Meh. Let's move on.
Rakasta of mystara: Oh joy. As he did with lupins last year, Bruce Heard now provides a whole load of subbreeds of rakasta with different ability modifiers and class capabilities. Which means you can have whole teams of cat-men vs dog-men, and still have well differentiated parties. This is useful. As with the previous one, it wouldn't be hard to file off the cultural fluff and transplant them to other worlds. There aren't quite as many subbreeds here as the lupins got, but that's due to the nature of the source material. Instead, most of the variants are clearly derived from one breed of great cat or another. Of course, there are plenty of other cat-humanoid hybrids out there, and this makes for complicated relationships which aren't glossed over here. Suffice to say they aren't very fond of rakshasa, and will get rid of them terminally if they find out one is among them. Just as with lupins, the breeds get special abilities (including the obvious 9 lives one for domestic rakasta) that actually make them a good deal more varied than a standard race party, while also retaining a common set of strengths and weaknesses. (if anyone's going to be shooting for a 15 minute work day, it's a party containing one of these guys) So this is another article that could pretty much take over your game, given the popularity of cats and the amount of cool crunch contained within. Ed may win in terms of sheer quantity of writing, but Bruce manages a density of useful information that far exceeds his page count. I hope he still has a few more contributions to make to the magazine before the end.
The Taltos: Well well, Tom Moldvay's back. Ok, he wasn't gone as long as some of the old guard, but still, we haven't seen him since 1994, when he finished his series revamping the various varieties of undead. And here we see he's a fan of Steven Brust as well, giving a new class which is practically designed to replicate Vlad Taltos. Well, as a real jack of all trades with some distinctive elements, he's impossible to do in AD&D without cheating, as we saw in issue 220. So he gets to join Drizzt as a character so cool that he gets new rules so you can copy him. Even more interestingly, we get a full 7 kits for this new class, instantly giving you a whole bunch of different variants on the general principle of spirit-fighting jack of all trades, and removing my usual problem with introducing new classes at this point. I'm not sure how balanced they are, as their abilities are versatile in some ways, but limited in others compared to regular classes, but they are pretty intriguing and certainly worth investigating further. I wonder if the frequency of new classes is another thing that'll increase now they've got rid of the old TSR rules.
Heroes of cerilia: It's birthright's turn to get a load of Players Option support for their various classes and races, making them more distinctive, but also more twinkable. Elves get even better in in woodlands, halflings get to kick the ass of undead, dwarves can move silently underground, and humans get 5 different racial subtypes, each with their own buyable abilities. It is what it is, and you know by now I'm not interested, so I think this is a case where I shall skip lightly through this article and move on.
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 4/8
Wyrms of the north gets a new, more legible header style. And once again Ed provides another exceptional dragon, making it seem like they're more common than the ones who keep to all the rules. A dragon afflicted by a magical binding that forces her to defend Candlekeep against any thieves or invaders, even beyond death, and stuck with that job even though her body's long since rotted away? Yeah, that's going to be an almighty pain in the butt for adventurers to deal with, especially as she respawns, and no-one knows how to stop this. And no surprise that she's also intimately familiar with the place she's trapped, and of dubious sanity from the centuries of loneliness. A horror story almost worthy of Ravenloft, really, only without the ironic justice. In terms of writing quality, this is pretty much business as usual, with Ed's more irritating quirks very much in evidence. Give us something lower level characters can engage with please. Otherwise the Realms may become increasingly unfriendly to new players.
Fiction: Reunification by Jeff Grubb. Another bit of Forgotten Realms fiction this month, using previously established characters. And in this case obviously following on from and referencing previous adventures, although not to the point of impenetrability. And as with Troy Denning's work a couple of issues ago, it showcases the interesting relationships the gods there have with their followers. Since atheism is not a very sensible choice if you're at all concerned about the hereafter, you may have to pick a god who seems like the least worst choice. Meanwhile the gods have their own issues with noninterference and plausible deniability. What they say they want may not actually be what they want. So again, as with Troy's work, this shows there's more moral complexity to the Realms than there may seem, despite them having objective morality. And it is gradually becoming less generic as time goes on, as ideas are introduced that build off the previous ones rather than having real world sources. There are some benefits to relying on staff writers who have built up a relationship with each other over years and developed their own distinctive office culture.
Bookwyrms: Between the rivers by Harry Turtledove does his usual historical setting with a spin thing, in a Bronze age society with gods who are active, and often vindictive. Of course, the protagonist holds to slightly more modern values, and the conflict between reason and obedience is a primary driver of the plot. This also serves as a metaphor for being a mindless drone or a free-thinker in modern society. And I don't think it'll surprise you which side the author is on. Where ARE the books encouraging you to be mindless drones?
Ship of magic by Robin Hobb is very much a fantasy slice of life, with heroes that are flawed, and villains that have explainable motivations, and their plotlines intertwining in an interesting manner. The main complaint is that it's clearly written to the word count, and then cut off to make a new volume when it gets there regardless of the state the plot is in. Given how thick these books are, that's obviously driven by marketing wanting to make sure she covers tons of shelf space at your local bookstore. After all, thats a big part of getting those megasales these days.
Touched by the gods by Lawrence Watt-Evans is another story where there's lots of active gods, or at least used to be. While a recommendation, this is another one where the weaknesses of the book are given plenty of attention, to the point where it feels like a proper review again. Are they listening to the reader's complaints? Well, it wouldn't be the first time.
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 5/8
Rogues Gallery once again follows up on the fiction earlier in the issue. Kate Novak details the characters that she and her group played, and her hubby DM'd for. What are we to make of that? Well, it's probably not scraping the barrel, but it does have the danger of getting cheesy and self-indulgent. Still, they obviously had a lot of fun, and that comes through in the writing, which goes quite some way towards mitigating my scepticism.
Dwalimar Omen is the wizard of the group, and is older (well, relatively, given the presence of demihumans) and higher level than the rest of them. As with many old wizards, he can be subtle and quick to anger, but he's not so powerful that he can just blow off his companions, and it's pretty obvious that he does have some affection for them. He also has quite a distinctive appearance that the illustration captures decently. So far, they're no doing too badly.
Minder is a dwarf who's been stuck in a Golem body. Since Alias was also a woman who was actually a construct, this makes me wonder about Jeff & Kate's personal fetishes. She does have a bit of angst about not being able to smell or taste anymore, but hey, immortality and immunity to nonmagical attacks make up for that. There are far worse fates.
Foxilon Cardluck is our halfling thief, complete with drug issues (which have been bowdlerised in amusing fashion. ) He's managed to kick the habit, but still gets tempted from time to time. He also shaves his foot hair, which does seem a little weird. I guess they've got to buck the stereotypes in more ways than one.
Ishi Barasume looks like a 1st edition OA holdover, with Bushi and Monk abilities in a way that doesn't look strictly legal to me. But then, she's sharing a party with a Golem, and what are the rules for that? She has the usual Oriental obsession with honor, and a disgrace which gives her a good reason to be away from her homeland and questing for a way to redeem herself. And as long as they have more adventures to tell, that plot hook is unlikely to be resolved.
Vartan Hai Sylvar is the elf, but he's also the cleric, which does buck stereotype a little. He's pretty twinked, and got to be the avatar of his god during the Time of Troubles. (which did strain their relationship a little. ) He could be a mary-sue, but has enough character flaws and genuine struggles to avert that. This collection of characters is actually proving pretty good.
Priam Agrivar is the paladin, and is another member of the party with addiction issues, having fallen into drink after a pretty spectacular failure. This means he has more sympathy than many paladins for people who can't manage the same kind of moral standards as him. He's also not celibate, having got into a relationship with Ishi. He could actually be decent company. So overall, I do approve of this collection, as they've obviously been built up organically and well treated over the years, rather than just whipped up for a single novel then forgotten about.
Bazaar of the Bizarre gets to be green under the new format. It does look a good deal better. As with last issue, we're getting a load of stuff that's likely to be useful in a more everyday environment. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Aprons of the alchemist protect you from explosive experiments. Common sense really. A good one for wizards, as they give an AC bonus, but don't exactly count as armour. Way to get round your normal restrictions.
Nalkar's Apron is an absolute lifesaver, albeit one that requires rather expensive maintennance. Like most charged magical items, this'll be a real problem until very high level.
Tools of Art are another basic skill booster. Of course, they're cheaper than weapons with the same plus, despite probably being rarer. Supply and demand is of course dependent on the demand bit.
Magic Tar reduces your ship maintenance by several orders of magnitude. Well, it should sell for a good amount to the right people. Boat building is so expensive that an extra 500gp isn't too hard to spring for.
Flags of the Warsmith make fixing stuff much quicker and easier. Which is something we've had before, but is still useful. It does have some awkward stipulations though. May well be another one it's better to sell on.
Nalkor's tape measure lets you automate your tailoring processes. Trade the personal touch for being groped by an invisible force. :p Yeah, that'll make you popular with the customers.
Glasses of the Architect don't seem to do much, unless there's some architecture specific terminology I'm missing here. Can someone explain this one to me?
Barrels of Potion Storing let you deal with the problem of having dozens of bottles in your backpack and having a devil of a time finding the right one. Like any mass storage device, this is tremendously handy if you track encumbrance.
Jadon's mortar dries really fast. Now those builders have one less excuse for hanging around drinking tea with their arses hanging out. It may even be useful for remodelling dungeons as you go. Now that has even more tactical tricks than flaming oil.
Knives of Decoration let you carve stuff quickly and easily. It only works on wood though, so no swashbuckling in combat pisstaking, unless you're fighting treants. And I don't think you'll want to carry one around just in case of that eventuality. This isn't as fun as last month's collection.
Nalkor's Book of Servants generates lots of unseen servants. If you're sparing with it, it'll last for a lifetime. If not, you'll wear it out. Manage your resources folks. Long term planning is nearly always the better option.
Fitting Dolls assume the shape of a person, to help you in creating bespoke garments. Maybe you could also use them as a decoy, but I can't think of any real combat use for them.
Easels of Pageturning are yet another way wizards can freak the mundanes and make their lives more convenient. It's like having a remote control for your books. Now all you need is a speaker function too, since shortsightedness can be a real pain for wizards.
Changing Molds let you produce lots of different weapons without paying for different molds. Which will probably cost more than buying all the molds, given how expensive magic items are. A bit pointless really. Well, at least it saves on storage space.
Molds of 1000 Candles are not nearly as impressive as their name. Bah. You'll need quite a bit of patience to get that much out of them.
Pots of Metal Melting do what they say on the tin. Simple and easy. But probably a bit tricky to use in combat.
Diamond Scales let you instantly value any gems you find. That'll help settle arguments and save money on valuers. Keep it in house as much as possible to profit.
Diamond Scales of Chalacha put the power in the hands of the merchant, allowing you to over or undervalue commissions as you choose. Muahahaha.
Dan's Dough Doubler does exactly that. Another boring logistics multiplier to make your provisioning a little easier. This really is getting a bit tiresome.
Jeremiah's box of Knife Sharpening makes me lose the will to live. Really. The personal touches, they do nothing.
Vials of Nalkor let you identify potions. Again, very handy to have one of these along for the ride, instead of risking poisoning or 8 tedious hours casting identify.
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 6/8
Dragon's bestiary: A new header here as well, as their revamps sweep through the whole magazine. But not a new topic, as we've had quite a few frogs in the magazine's run, including a couple quite recently in issue 237. Come on, couldn't you wait a little longer before you rehashed this one.
Archer frogs, like archer fish, knock you down and suck you up. Nature does tend to reuse the same tricks over and over if they work, doesn't it.
Ghoul frogs, like ghoul worms, aren't actually undead, merely translucent. Again, just make it a template. They aren't particularly offensive and the don't make good eatin', so just leave them as a flavour encounter.
Leech toads suck your bluuuud. Like stirges, one probably won't kill you, but they come in large groups to suck you dry.
Spined toads are also pretty self-explanatory, adding the defences of hedgehogs to their usual amphibious tricks. Seems like all these ones have been made by combining one existing creature with another basic monster idea. This makes this entry feel very formulaic and tedious indeed. Someone is churning out crap primarily for the pay rather than inspiration. Seems rather worrying that the average quality of new monsters is decreasing as the rate they give them to us increases. Guess it's another sign we rather need a new edition.
Dungeon Mastery: Along with the skill system in general, languages can be a real pain in the butt in AD&D. And given the modularity of proficiency slots, if you do buy one after character creation, you can seem to go from nothing to full fluency straight away when that isn't the case with real learning at all. The solution here is to go with a BRP style percentile rating in languages that you can increase slowly on a month by month basis. Which is a moderate amount of bookkeeping, but far less annoying than many of the alternatives, and only really becomes a problem if you're trying to learn a ton of different dialects in short succession. Which if you're adventuring over wide areas might become an issue, but it's supposed to be challenging, isn't it. While this introduces unconnected new crunch, it's a better than average example of it's type, and feels curiously old school in it's approach. With the new class, the openly devilish new advertising, and this, it looks like they are actually going back to their roots in several interesting ways. I wonder how long it'll take them to formally adopt the back to the dungeon slogan that they use next edition.
Dragonmirth has a star trek crossover. There is no escape. Swordplay tries their hand at medicine. This isn't going to work.
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 7/8
Roleplaying reviews welcomes Chris Pramas to the fold. What's with this rapid reviewer switching? When that happened to the computer column, it was just a year before they got cancelled. This does not make me confident. So let's see how his voice and opinions differ from our previous incumbents, and if they'll be swapping back in subsequent months. Unusually for a new reviewer, he doesn't bother introducing himself, and gets straight down to business. But they do take the time to revamp the appearance, and bring back the 1-6 pip rating system. The show must go on!
Tribes of the heartless waste is a region expansion for Birthright, with a player and DM book. Obviously, it's off to the barbarian lands, to see if you can face down the gnoll hordes, take care of the Awnsheigh, and unify the squabbling domains. It has a pretty decent set of new crunch appropriate to the culture and climate, and enough adventure hooks and bits left open for a DM to spring plenty of surprises on the players over the course of a campaign. So that's most of the obvious bases covered for the line. Shall we move on?
Earthforce sourcebook is for the Babylon Project, and improves quite a bit on the artwork of the corebook. The writing is still rather dry though, and the new crunch just makes the system even more complicated. Chris does thoroughly enjoy the ship & space combat rules though, which keep PC actions significant while scaling up nicely. Overall, he does recommend it, and hopes the line keeps improving.
Lordly domains is for Pendragon, and of course is about managing any land your knight may own. If you do it right, you'll expand your holdings and pass it down from generation to generation, making it as important as the actual characters. As with most pendragon books, it gets an excellent review, and adds plenty of depth and setting detail to a game that can already span a pretty epic scope. It even includes a decent prefab adventure, which most domain management systems don't really manage. Once again they come up trumps.
Libellus sanguinus 1: masters of the state is for Vampire: the Dark Ages. They don't think that the historical lines merit full splatbooks for every clan, so they're condensing them into 4 packs of 3, each clan getting 30-odd pages. It does suffer from the tendency to assign vampiric influence to many historical events, and Chris is uncomfortable with the idea of playing Tzimisce as represented here. They're all monsters, that's part of the fun. Let go of your humanity. Embrace the darkness.
Crisis of faith is for Heavy Gear, and puts all the timeline advancement in a single book, instead of scattering metaplot gumph all over the place in unrelated sourcebooks, as has happened in AD&D settings. Now that is a sensible idea. The presentation is pretty good as well. Course, there is the usual question if this'll make the setting less accessible to newbies. Guess they'll just have to risk it, or the line won't survive anyway.
The world of darkness kicks it's metaplot into high gear. The time of judgement is coming and the blood is growing thin. Soon ravnos will rise, and he will be ravenous.
Re:Views: Stuper Powers! sees Lester tackle a game with a nonstandard format for a second month in a row. A simple comedic superhero game using a comic book format? With dubious and often scatalogical powers? Oh I can so see that working, although it might be hard to find a parody power that hasn't been used seriously at some point. The system is simple, easy, and gets out of the way, and there's enough adventure ideas to get you going for a few issues. Seems like a good one to introduce young boys to roleplaying with. :p
The knights of the dinner table are not in the same boat as bob marley. Hoody Hoo
Dragon Magazine Issue 247: May 1998
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Some fairly substantial yet distinctive releases coming in july. AD&D gets a CD character generator, including all the corebooks and several supplements. Accelerate your ability to build and keep track of characters quite considerably. Our other generic product is the complete opposite. Return to the Tomb of Horrors sees them start to seriously cannibalise their old adventures in a search for more profit. See them try and jam together old skool meatgrinder and modern plotting with limited success.
The Realms gets a triple bill this month. Mostly rehash though. Murder in Cormyr and the Dark Elf Trilogy get reprinted. And the Villains lorebook brings more characters from novels into your game, should you be so inclined to give your players a chance to kill them. Yawn.
Greyhawk continues to kick off again with The Adventure Begins. They try and make the adventures more customisable this time round. Down with the Railroads!
Dragonlance can't resist getting prequeliffic again, with Spirit of the Wind, part 1 of the Bridges of time series. See what happened between the time periods covered in detail so far. Riverwind gets the spotlight again. Meanwhile, the 5th age gameline continues, with Citadel of Light. More info on Mystics and their new centre of learning. Should be helpful.
Alternity kicks off it's first campaign setting quickly, wanting to get all the critical stuff out before it gets cancelled. StarDrive gets both it's core setting book, and it's monstrous compendium. They really are following the same format as the D&D books a lot more closely than they did with Buck, Top Secret or the Amazing Engine. They live in hope that it'll work out this time.
And finally, we have another intriguing double bill. Xena and Hercules get interlinked Endless Quest books. Sounds like it could be fun. They are pretty perfect material for roleplaying.
Profiles: Jeff Grubb is our second returning profilee. (see issue 111) He's done a lot more since then, and the focus of the profile is much more on his game work than on his earlier life this time round. He's created Spelljammer and Al-Quadim, but his real fame and popularity (especially with other game designers) is due to his ability to write in other people's worlds, producing fun stuff that fits in with the wider universe and it's themes. A skill which is much more in demand than simple creative talent. Combining your logical and creative abilities can be tricky sometimes, but it is crucial for producing the best work. He's still happily married to, and sometimes co-writing with Kate Novak, the lucky git. Definitely an interesting profile, both in the facts it reveals, and the way it phrases them.
This issue definitely seems to be an attempt to go back to the old school, with a new class, new unconnected subsystems, and several revisitings of old topics and characters, some more welcome than others. The result is reasonably entertaining, and the reviews are better than they've been in a while as well. Of course it does trouble me that this means they're going to be even more repetitive in the topics they cover in the future, but I can survive that. At least now they know where they're going.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Another birthday rolls round. They still aren't saying how old they are, but there's no doubt that it is their birthday, with more dragon related articles than they've had in quite a while. And a slightly goofy cover picture that still manages to be more practical and sensible than bareback riding with a Dragonlance. You have a flying creature, the best way to enhance it is with an attack that has an even longer range than it's natural breath weapon, and strafe enemies from the air. Pew pew pew! Time to take potshots at this month's articles.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Why'd it have to be Dragons? Because it alliterates in a snappy manner, and because it's one letter further in the alphabet than Castles & Crusades. Actually, I wonder how much deep thought went into Gary & Dave's choice of the name, how much brainstorming and arguing went on before they settled on that as a title. But anyway, the important thing is that they're big, scary and alien. D&D started off with a lot of weird monsters, and while it has accumulated more over the years, the ratio of weird stuff to more conventional humanoids and human antagonists has gone down over the years. Sometimes, you don't really want an enemy you can negotiate with, or at least, not in good faith, you want a monster you know you're trying to trick, hunt, and eventually kill. After all, we have to keep our murderous urges satisfied somehow. :) Who knows what might happen otherwise? People say computer games RPG's etc etc cause violence, but really, we have far less physical fighting than we did a few centuries ago, so all this distraction and education must be doing something right.
D-Mail: We kick off with some pretty extensive commentary on recent issues. This then digresses into a complaint about wizards being stereotyped, and a load of extra recommended reading that the articles missed out. This gets a pretty positive response from the staff, plus a note that you can now talk to them online with a scheduled chat. The net begins to bring audiences and creators closer together.
A second, mostly positive bit of commentary. Their emphasis on immediately useful articles is definitely pleasing some people.
And finally, another praising letter, this time on the fact that the April issue was humour light this time. No silly letters, and the articles were all usable. They say they intend to continue in that vein. WotC is a less goofy company than TSR in general. Eventually people will start missing that though.
Nodwick gets some small satisfactions. Such is the life of a henchman.
Forum gets onto the thorny business of alignment. Even more than psionics, this is likely to result in some heated debate in a few months time.
Scott Hall goes back to issue 66, and suggests weapon damage should be a function of class, rather than weapon. A Narrativist! Burn him! Yeah, I think this is a bit out there for the general gaming public.
M. Kant thinks weapons that are superior IRL ought to be superior in the game. And isn't that a can of worms in itself. I don't feel optimistic about getting interesting responses to this one.
F Matthew Fagan wants the DMG supreme again. Oh, and don't duplicate info between the two. That's just a waste of pages.
William De Franza wants gnomes removed from the core, multiclassing eliminated and simulated by hybrid classes, and detailed riding rules. A bit out there, but 2 of those'll turn up in 4e. Hmm. That is a strange one historically.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 2/8
Out of character: Peter gets in on the birthday theme with an article on making dragons suitably cunning and prepared for the players. When they're on the ball, you are well and truly screwed, particularly once they've built up their spellcasting and magic items. So this is one of the many articles from this period that's good in isolation, with Peter's writing style making it fun to read, but oh so very rehashed when taken in the wider sweep of the magazine, where there have been a wide variety of articles and forum letters saying much the same things. And as before, I have to remind us that there are young dragons around, and many of them won't get the chance learn these lessons and survive for centuries, and also that spending decades asleep can wear down those preparations quite a bit. It should be possible to catch them off guard, especially if you're living in a world where there aren't that many adventurers, so dragons can go years without getting any significant challenges and have the chance to get lazy. So hey ho, this isn't particularly consequential. As with cutting the april fools material, I worry about this because it means people are less likely to remember these articles. You do need a certain number of off the wall ideas along with the sensible stuff to maintain attraction, and they are not providing them.
The return of the missing dragons: Or maybe they are. Jesus christ it's a blast from the past get in the car! The color wheel dragons were one of the less impressive add-ons from the old days, originally appearing in issue 65. But very little dies forever in D&D, especially now we're developing computer versions of books, and extra especially when the original writer is still around. And that's exactly what happened here. Richard Alan Lloyd returns 16 years later to convert his creations to 2nd edition. All get the usual extra amounts of ecological detail and general powering up you would expect from the current formulae, but remain pretty faithful to their previous versions. His writing has improved quite a bit in the meantime too. The combination of this and the nostalgia factor means I definitely like these better the second time around.
Yellow (salt) dragons get the chance to permanently blind you, plus water and weather control powers. Since the sea is one of the biggest sources of salt, but also absorbs it pretty well, this means they incline towards coastal regions. They make plenty of practical uses of the real world properties of salt.
Orange (sodium) dragons are even more interesting chemically. Again, the applications of real world principles are cleaned up a bit mechanically, and they're surprisingly fond of water. ( boom badaboom) The info on their eating habits is quite good.
Purple (energy) dragons, as before, are the scariest of the three. Their concentrated lightsaber energy weapon now has the power to inflict semipermanent injuries, and their fire based & hypnotic powers make them quite able to come ahead in negotiations. There are far worse big bads out there.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 3/8
Building a better dragon: Such as a dragon using these optional rules. Having had our requisite dose of machiavellian planning advice, we now have some more mechanical variations for them to make sure your players don't get complacent. Pick or roll randomly from this list of 50 powers (what, couldn't find enough for the full 101? :p ) , and then stack that on top of their regular abilities. Most of these are from mythological sources, and so feel appropriately draconic, and are simple enough in their mechanical implementation. And it's not all bad for players. You could get permanent magical abilities from drinking or bathing in their blood, and even more cool bits and pieces from their body. (of course, you could also wind up being transformed into a dragon yourself, which might be considered a good or bad thing. ) Given the level of sadism here, I find myself enjoying this article. Sure, not every dragon should be unique, just like not every magical item should have a name, but some should. And this is sufficiently different from previous articles on this topic to merit it's place.
Crystal confusion: Back to the old school again for an article on gemstones. These last got significant articles on them in issues 72 & 83, making this a fairly forgivable bit of rehash. And it's their equal in length, so I can't bash it on that ground. However, I can criticise it on grounds of artwork, which manages to be inferior to both of the previous ones in quantity and quality despite the recent increase in colour pages in the magazine. Plus one of the old ones was done by Ed, who of course took the opportunity to add a ton of fantastical details that made it so much more interesting to read. On the plus side, this does cover more varieties of stones than the old articles, but that means it goes into less detail on each. So when I add it up, the degree of overlap isn't so great that this is useless, but I certainly wasn't entertained by it, and it shows up some areas that the old magazines did better. They certainly never had pixelated jaggies in their artwork like this one. :bleah:
The dragon of Vstaive Peak: Birthright gets a unique dragon detailed again this year, just as with the last few birthdays. Since the line recently got cancelled, I suspect this'll be the last time barring the occasional nostalgia article. Still, they go out with one that's both impressive, and has a certain degree of pathos. A dragon that's fused with a mountain, so his power is vast, but his mobility is also seriously limited. (plus usual deleterous effects to the sanity, nach.) A cautionary tale for birthright rulers as much as anything, given their connection with the land. With a rich description, plus plenty of detail on the history, treasures, and political ramifications of him becoming active again, this is pretty specific to the world, and would take a bit of work to convert to elsewhere (except perhaps Ravenloft :) ), or even to another region, if the PC's domains are far away and they have to reason to go near Vstaive peak. But at the same time, it is very enjoyable to read, and the fact that he's trapped gives lower level adventurers a chance to engage with him without being instantly destroyed. It all adds up to a good bit of adventure design for a world that needs it's plot hooks kept fairly open-ended.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 4/8
Wyrms of the north: Ed once again makes the exceptions more common than the rule in this column. This time, it's not even a proper dragon he's covering, but a person transformed into a dragon. Well, I suppose it keeps him from getting bored as much as it does us, even if it is cheating. Her tale is smaller in scale than Master Fire Worm's, but obviously has more of a personal element to it, as she has a pretty tough life even before being transformed. Mind you, as a priestess of Shar, you ought to expect demeaning treatment and backstabbing. And really, trying to get turned back by proving yourself valuable? That's not going to work. It just makes it all the more obvious that you're a better tool in your new form. (as well as a longer lasting one, likely. ) So this is another instance where they've been cursed with awesome, and are going to have to learn to live with that. Look on the bright side, you could simply be cursed. This once again shows that Ed can keep a topic interesting long after anyone else would have given up, become dull or started repeating themselves. The magazine would still be a poorer place without him.
Fiction: The quest for steel by Ben Bova. Orion makes his second appearance in the magazine. Following on from last time, where he helped out Beowulf and discovered Excalibur, he's now off to meet King Arthur. Only to find that when history is in flux, his incomplete memories can be as much a liability as a benefit. Unlike the first instalment, which was completely standalone, this not only makes much more sense when you've read it's precursor, but also obviously intends to have further follow-ups. And once again, the contrast between Orion being able to take on any physical threat, but all too helpless against the machinations of the creators is a big source of drama. The question is not if he'll succeed in what he tries, but what course of action he'll take, and the consequences it'll have. So really, this is better inspiration for something like Exalted or Nobilis than D&D. This doesn't have the novelty of the first one, so it doesn't thrill me as much as that, but it's still better than all the forgotten realms fiction they're suddenly bombarding us with. (which is itself better than the Dragonlance stuff from '96) And it does leave me wondering where they'll take this series next. They may have cut down on continuity in the comics, but between the fiction and the ecologies, the amount of recurring characters is increasing elsewhere in the magazine.
Bookwyrms: The masterharper of pern by Anne McCaffrey is a prequel set in her now very busy world, filling in the history of one of it's most well known characters. This of course means he has to face some fairly substantial challenges to grow up to be the badass we see in earlier books. There are some apparent continuity errors though, which can only really be resolved by making one or another of the narrators unreliable. Writer sloppiness, or intentional?
Wolf's Bane by Tara K Harper gets picked apart, with it's pacing flaws, inconsistent naming conventions and whiny main character. it has potential, but really needed an involved editor to hack big chunks off to make it a better story.
The dragonstone by Dennis L McKiernan gets an even more scathing review, as the entire main cast seem to be playing a stupid game involving passing multiple idiot balls around, blundering through their quest and engaging in awkward romantic pairings. Sounds like it would be most entertaining given an MST3K reading.
Wizard of the winds by Allan Cole is a fairly interesting arabian fantasy that also maintains a pretty nasty amount of genre appropriate IC sexism. (while making it clear that the author doesn't share these prejudices. ) If this isn't a deal-breaker, (and it is a woman doing these reviews) it is pretty good, and is left open to become an extended series. (or at least a trilogy, as googling reveals. )
The prestige by Christopher Priest does get a pretty positive review though. While it may seem to have flaws at first, the twists at the end make sense of them, and telling the story from multiple viewpoints is used to full effect to make the story more interesting. Do not switch your brain off when reading.
Shards of a broken crown by Raymond Feist gets a blue sidebar marking it out as a special recommendation. Well, they have increased the amount of colour quite a bit this year, why not do a little experimentation? They still say it's not quite as good a story as the previous instalment in the series, but it does make the setting better for other groups to adventure in. Not sure If I want to be tempted by that or not, but I am interested in googling more details.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 5/8
Arcane Lore: Hmm. More dragon-exclusive spells. No great surprise there. What is interesting is that this time they're priestly spells, most of them specific to worshippers of specific deities. Since most dragon types have rather fewer priest spells than they do wizard ones, they also tend to be rather powerful for their level. After all, it's not as if players can use them. :p
Aura of Null makes their fear aura extra chilling and penalty inflicting. Since dragons get attacked by whole parties, this debuff'll really add up in terms of the awkwardness it makes you suffer.
Hydraform lets you go all Tiamaty, with a ton of extra bite attacks. Yeah, no way that kind of benefit could ever be allowed to a PC for a 1st level spell.
Hoard Attunement lets them do the stereotypical draconic thing of detecting the tiniest addition or subtraction from their hoard, and being able to track the stuff taken perfectly. Once again, it's scary powerful for it's level.
Purge of Garyx gives you radiant burnination. This one is actually less impressive than a standard fireball or breath weapon. Most useful for a dragon who doesn't already have fire based innate powers.
Faluzure's Curse raises anything they kill under it's effect as a zombie lord. A zombie LORD?! Jesus. That really is pretty obscene. Even if you kill the dragon, a regular user of this would have a truly scary number of nested minions that still need dealing with.
Kereska's Favor lets you put wizard spells in your priest slots, or vice versa. Don't see why this one should be so exclusive. PC's are rarely going to be able to benefit from it, and it'll still be an overall step down in power for increased versatility for those that can.
Aura of Kereska lets you consume a magic item to briefly have unlimited spellcasting. Another deeply brutal one that they think should be kept well away from PC's.
Dragon's bestiary: No surprises here either. It's a birthday issue, and that means draconic variants. As they've been running short on original ideas of late, they go back to the source legends, and manage to find some that haven't been used yet. Course, we still don't have D&D stats for Bonnacon, and with good reason, for they are more than a bit of an embarrassment. So we shall have to see if these have cool ideas as yet unmined, or are another example of the toilet humour of the ancients.
Amphitere are two-tongued, winged snakes. Yeah, that's typically mythically quirky. Since they have save or die poison, they're one that can mow through a party, and a long spear or missile weapons would help.
Lesser Cetus are rather goofily described sea monsters. They're another one that'll devastate your ship though, and with their interesting balance of nature trick, can make for a bigger plotline as well. not bad at all.
Dragonets are slightly stronger tan they were in issue 158, but pretty similar otherwise. Just couldn't avoid the rehash for long, could we. They do include some quite cool ecological ideas and uses for them, so it's not all recycled ideas though. The fun charlatans can get up too when everyone knows magic does exist.
Gargouille are another large reptilian sea creature that will enjoy sinking your boat and gobbling you up. Man, there sure were a lot of those around in old legends from all kinds of cultures. I guess it probably has something to do with ocean voyages being a big gamble in general back then. Now we're more concerned with subtle predators that stalk the streets than massive ones that lurk in the deeps.
Hai Riyo are partially draconic birds big enough to carry off gargantua as prey. When the shadow of one appears above you, it may be brown trousers time. But as ever, not as much as with real dragons. None of these really match up to a proper great wyrm really.
Peluda are another dragon turtle variant, only with spines instead of a shell. Since those spines are also save or die poison, (the old legends care nothing for your pitiful cries for fairness and game balance) they're quite a tricky one to fight. The usual missile bombardment won't work very well, and they're surprisingly good at hiding for a creature their size. Good luck.
Surrush are yet another creature that probably looks stranger due to bad word of mouth descriptions over the years. Relatively small pack hunters, almost cute-looking, they seem like the kind of thing a red dragon would domesticate. Since they're yet another instadeath poison deliverer, that would add to the danger of an encounter with one, even when the PC's are name level+. Looks like they've managed to justify the birthday issue covering the same basic topic again this year, just about.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 6/8
Dungeon Mastery: A fairly amusing bit of system free adventure advice here this month. Out of adventure ideas? Convert one from the newspaper or TV news. Just be careful you don't pick one that the players'll find unbelievable. Who'd be convinced for one about banks trying to extort and evict people who aren't even their customers? And you might have a little trouble trying to put together dungeon crawls using this method. (although you could google the layout of the daily mail's offices) There are some specific details here as well, with 4 examples showing the easy routes to get from modern day things to their medieval fantasy equivalents. You'll still have to do all the mechanical design yourself, so this won't work if you're completely devoid of inspiration, but hey, the magazine's given us enough random generation tables in the past that you can probably break that impasse as well. This is sufficiently different from most of their articles to hold my interest, and feels like another part of their attempts to return to the old school. And while that's not as good as genuinely breaking new ground, it's better than staying the way they were a few years ago.
Nodwick gets rescued too late. Ho hum. Another resurrection fee to pay.
The ecology of a spell Contest: Slightly misnamed article here, but in an amusing way. They talk about the judging process of their recent competitions. How do you get from hundreds or thousands of entries, to a few in the final, and then to a winner. For a starter, you get rid of any which break the rules of the competition, are incomprehensibly written, or grossly under or over powered. Then you look for more subtle flaws, such as forgetting little details like types of saving throws, disruption of niche protection, silly humour, and blatant anachronisms. And only then can you really be judged on actual merit. This is why you should always learn how to give people what they want. All the talent in the world counts for nothing if you can't learn to follow the rules, both written and unwritten. Bah. Be a rebel, live by your own rules. Still, we get 4 neat new wizard and priest spells here, plus a couple of Dragonlance Saga ones. As ever, this proves you don't want to think about the mulch that was used to grow the roses you're smelling, because the process is rarely pretty.
Dragonmirth gets away from the old ball and chain. Swordplay gets on the bandwagon. Which is still pulled by horses, I'm afraid.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 7/8
Roleplaying reviews: Kindred of the east sees them forget to put in a pip rating, but still give it a positive review. It doesn't do too terribly in terms of political correctness, and has pretty interesting setting conceits, putting a very different spin on the basic idea of playing a vampire. In retrospect, the system probably has a few too many twiddly bits, with three different kinds of chi to keep track of, and the very real possibility of your character losing control of themselves on a regular basis, but this is a White Wolf game about oriental vampires. Being screwed and having to deal with too much bureaucracy seems curiously appropriate, and an interesting counterbalance to the Asia is kewler bits. And the gameline managed to fill itself in with a decent number of supplements without becoming bloated and impossible to keep track of, so it's well worth revisiting.
Merchants of the jumpweb is for Fading Suns, detailing all the main merchants guilds, plus larger details on their history, and how they go to be so prominent in the Second Republic. A different writer takes each guild, which means they get covered in distinctively different and appropriate voices. The developer keeps them all on message, and it adds up to a quite substantial expansion to the setting.
Cracken's threat dossier is for the Star Wars RPG, and is essentially a detailing of characters and places from 7 of their recent novels. The fact that the contents of 7 books fit into 140 pages reflects poorly on those novels, but the sourcebook does it's best with the material it has to work with. The Force has become cheapened by growing increasingly common, and the tone of the books has strayed far from the original movies. It's a credit to the editors that they do still manage to get useful material from them.
The way of the dragon is a splatbook for Legend of the 5 Rings, covering the appropriate clan. Chris wonders about the wisdom of doing the most atypical clan first, but they attack it enthusiastically, filling in both setting details and new powers, plus a rather excessive 5 appendices. Just watch out that they aren't overpowered until the other clans get their turns.
KotDT features a truly intelligent dragon for a change.
Dragon Magazine Issue 248: June 1998
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Not much going on in August, but the things that are are pretty neat. The illithids get the second in their trilogy of adventures. Masters of Eternal Night has them sucking the power of the sun like a juicy elephant brain. The fate of the world is genuinely in your hands.
The Realms revisits an already covered area in more detail. Empires of the shining sea is a boxed set covering the far south and it's rather weird surrounding states. High magic in hot climates. Up north, the Harpers series finally ends with it's 16th book, Thornhold by Elaine Cunningham. Good luck collecting all that lot.
Planescape gets a little closer to filling in it's various bits and pieces, with a Guide to the Ethereal Plane. Explore insubstantial realms a lot closer to the prime material than their usual fare. Watch you don't get sucked into the demiplane of dread.
Speaking of the demiplane of dread, they once again reach out and grab characters from other worlds in Vecna Reborn. Guess who the newest darklord is. And he ain't happy at all. Can you keep the crossovers from getting out of hand?
And finally, Alternity sees it's first campaign setting get a third book, the StarDrive Arms and Equipment guide. Once again, the rather different approach to the Amazing Engine's fire and forget style is noted.
Profiles: For our birthday issue, we get the biggest gun of all. Gary Gygax got the first profile in the magazine, way back in issue 103. Quite understandable when you remember that he founded the game, the magazine, and the entire milieu. Unfortunately, it seems his glory days are behind him. Where last time the magazine was most interested in pointing out how ridiculously hard he was working, and the things he was planning to do next, this article is more interested in using him as a means to promote Return to the Tomb of Horrors, their latest bit of nostalgia exploiting expanded rehash. They barely mention the stuff he did after leaving TSR. They get the publication date of Unearthed Arcana wrong. It's all more than a little shoddy. Even the greatest of people can be turned into a sideshow. Not a very pleasingly written profile.
This issue starts slowly, but winds up pretty jam-packed with cool stuff, even if more of it is rehashed than I'd like. The articles are generally of high quality, and the reviews appear to be on an upswing again as well. So as usual, the battle for this era appears to be getting enough material that hasn't been done before better. And this time, I think they've succeeded again. But then they are generally spoiled for birthday and halloween issues. There are still plenty of others between those they may struggle to fill. I suspect there'll be plenty I struggle to think of something to say about before I finish this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Raar. Birthright gets to be on the cover for what will probably be the last time. How long did they have this one planned in advance before they knew the setting was going? There don't seem to be any actual tie-in articles inside though, although there are both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms ones. Birthright never really caught on amongst the freelancers, did it. So I wonder what mix of material we'll be getting this month. Good or bad, specific or general, freelance or staff commissioned, what will they choose?
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Dave Gross reminds us of a small but important bit of worldbuilding. You don't have to plan every detail in advance, but when you do, you need to make sure it's internally consistent with what's come before. I suspect that this is part of how Ed Greenwood has so many notes on things that are pertinent to actual play. Keeping a regular gaming group going and writing up all the stuff that they encounter or ask questions about will get you more material for less effort than slaving away in a cubicle saying you don't have time for gaming. And the more built up material you have, the less work it takes to keep the campaign going if the players make an unexpected turn. So this is pretty good advice.
D-Mail: A rather lengthy complaint about Thulsa Doom. He wasn't in the original books! Judging Conan on his movie incarnation is wrong! The editors shrug and respond with a simple YMMV. Sometimes adaptions are better, sometimes they're worse, and sometimes you get canon immigrants like Harley Quinn coming back to the original from the adaptions. Usually, we can pick and choose the best bits and discard the rest for further development.
A letter from someone who can't tell the difference between Rakasta and Rakshasa. Methinks you may be a little dailysex. Fortunately, upping your nerd rating'll soon cure that. :p
A lengthy letter about possible rules changes in the new edition, and the status of various settings. Obviously, the magazine staff disagree on what their favourite settings are, and what should happen to the rules. It'd be an even more boring magazine if they were all in perfect lockstep.
And finally, someone who feels betrayed by them putting Alternity articles in his D&D magazine. If they don't stop immediately, I shall cancel my subscription! That's a bit melodramatic, isn't it? There's always someone who spoils it for everyone else, isn't there. Who are you supposed to try and please most?
Nodwick is alive again. For how long, however, it's difficult to say. These adventurers are not the greatest doctors in the world.
Forum wants to know what rules you ignore. If no-one uses them anyway, why include them at all? We don't want the new books to be really huge, that'll scare away the newbies.
Justin Bacon does believe there's plenty of things that need fixing about AD&D, starting with dropping the A. Streamlining is the most important. It needs to be accessable, but also expandable. That way, you can cater to EVERYONE!
Chris Perry tries to fix up the favored enemy rules. Not quite the final result, but at least they're bringing it to the attention of the writers.
Kevin McMahon talks about luck and fate, and how AD&D and the SAGA system focus more on each aspect. You should choose depending on what sort of game you want to play. The same can be said of any RPG.
Adam Donaldson things one of the most important things that needs fixing about weapons is the weights. You'd think the writers had never handled actual weapons. Yah, I can buy that.
Night warriors and Bastard! (their exclamation mark, not mine) The anime adverts keep racking up. Not long before they become so common as to be unremarkable.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 2/8
Sage advice turns it's questions orange, and cuts down on the italics. This definitely makes it easier to tell what's what.
Can you catch an arrow with juggling (no. Mucho pain if you try it)
Does being forbidden to use magic armour also apply to shields (Oh yes. You also can't take restrictions that other ones render redundant. Min maxing is OK, but points for nothing is not.)
Which ship is the acting ship. (The one taking the action. Honestly, next thing they'll be asking how you determine who the attacker is in melee fights. I suppose it's better than being prosecuted for your face repeatedly hitting someone's fist, as the police sometimes do. )
What subabilities go with what proficiencies. (Oh, this is gonna be a tedious list. Skip ought to get an intern to handle crap like this. )
What subabiliites goven bonus spell points (knowledge and intuition)
If a wild mage casts sending, can the surge affect someone across the world (no. Such a shame. )
Does a wildshield protect you from nahal's reckless dweomer (By the RAW, yes. Skip recommends changing that to screw players who try and abuse this privilege.)
What special powers stack with shields (most of them. But there's always exceptions. The game would get silly without them. Well, even sillier. You know what Skip means. )
What happens if an immortal creature casts spells that age you. (System shock! Oh, the strain, the strain, woe is my poor little immortal body)
How do you recharge a ring of spell turning (recycled question. The answer has not changed.)
Can a specialist cast opposition spells from a ring of spell storing (sure)
High level campaigns says anti-magic shell blocks psionics. This contradicts the complete psionics handbook (We changed our minds. Pray we do not change them again. )
Does a prismatic sphere stop psionics (sure. It'd be churlish not to when it stops everything else. )
What happens to goblyns when their master dies ( they act all lost and lonesome until they find a new Masssssssster)
Where do the al-quadim deities live (look at their alignment, and put them on the appropriate plane. How hard is that?)
Can ogre mages spread out the duration of their daily flight power (no)
Can an illusory creature move freely through the spell's range (yes)
My characters always give their magnificent mansions the maximum number of floors (This power does not work the way you think it does. Skip is afraid Skip will have to burst your players bubble.)
Out of character: Peter gets back to giving us what we really want to see. Hints as to the next edition. Here, it's the basic correction of making high good, low bad for everything. It may seem small, but it just makes things a good deal simpler to learn for new people, (although many would say 3e took more effort to learn in other ways) and allows power levels to scale upwards infinitely without weird mathematical circumlocutions taking place. They are still addicted to acronyms though, possibly at the expense of accessibility. Still, it's the kind of house rule many people were independently doing, and it's one even many of the retro-clones used, so I think we can definitely say in hindsight this was one of the smart moves. So this was a brief but enjoyable read, that again shows the influence the new boss is having. How many more changes will be directly attributable to him before this is over?
Seeds of evil: Historical fantasy? It's a relatively bland sounding theme. But with interesting results, as what we have here is a double tie-in article combining the Masque of the Red Death campaign, and their old series of historical sourcebooks. Nice to see James Wyatt is expanding his range a little. :p This proves yet again that you can mix horror with nearly anything, and produce something worth playing. What we generally know about history is respected, although he has no qualms about saying X historical figure was a puppet of the Red Death or agent of the resistance in a way that makes the World of Darkness look subtle. Really, this just goes to demonstrate that the Red Death is gradually winning the war over centuries, by being unified and capable of long-term planning where the heroes aren't, and the deck is so slanted against us that winning seems impossible. So I think the question is are you going to go down fighting, or are you going to cheat, build a time machine and go back and plant all the seeds to it's downfall along the timeline just where they're needed, Bill & Ted style! :guitar riff: So yeah, this can spin off into cheese very easily, destroying the low-key mood that the corebook worked hard to create in favor of gonzo time-traveling antics where you see the world, meet historical figures, find out what kind of gribley they are, and kill them. I'm really not sure what to make of that. It took the world of darkness hundreds of supplements for that to happen, and you've done it in 2 and a few magazine articles. :claps: If he was going for that, this'd be awesome, but I think he actually expects us to take this seriously. :/ Well, it's a success as entertainment, anyway.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 3/8
Below the tomb of horrors: A second double tie-in, sort of, as we have material here that's useful for both the old and new tomb of horrors modules. Since the original Tomb was a mere 12 pages long, 2 of which was taken up by the pregens; plus the separate illustration book, this is actually a pretty substantial add-on, nearly doubling the amount of potential challenges they could face if they take a wrong turn. As this is the tomb of horrors, you can expect to be utterly screwed if you don't choose your actions very carefully, and won't even get a saving throw on many of the challenges, instead having to use your OOC ingenuity if you want to succeed. And even if you do get out, there are subtle traps in the magic items that'll cause you more problems along the line. So this is very much for the hardcore amongst you, and much of it feels like a conscious attempt to emulate Gary's sadisticness. And it did elicit a few diabolical chuckles from me, so it must be doing something right.
Sixguns and Sesheyans: It becomes apparent that their theme of Historical Fantasy this month is actually a pun with a double meaning, as they're referencing both real world history, and the history of gaming in their articles. Here, they're bringing Boot Hill to Alternity! Not that they really covered Boot Hill enough in the magazine for me to feel nostalgic about it the way I might if they bring back Marvel, Gamma World or Star Frontiers material. But making a left turn like this helps them establish Alternity as a universal system, not just a sci-fi one, until they can get a few more settings out. While this concentrates on the wild west, it also gives some details on the development of firearms throughout history, and the various ways you could introduce fantastical elements to the milieu, allowing you to take advantage of the already introduced crunch. Most of this falls into the competent but dry mold, with the exception of the final setting ideas, as there is a lot of info to be dumped upon us. So I didn't really enjoy reading this one, but can recognise it's usefulness. I think it needed another writer to really bring the Wahoo spirit.
Fiction: Wakes the Narrow forrest by J Gregory Keyes. Ah yes, Fool Wolf. I recall being told that he becomes another recurring character in the magazine, along with Orion and Ed's stable of bickering wizards. And as it turns out, he's a brooding loner hero who has some very good reasons for being the way he is. After all, when you have a powerful spirit bonded with you that has a nasty habit of killing everyone around you whenever it's let out, it kinda precludes the possibility of long-term healthy relationships. Becoming a hermit or an irresponsible drifter actually seems the safest course of action. There's some pretty substantial worldbuilding in this story, and it does lay the groundwork for further adventures without slowing itself down with exposition. My main complaint is of course with the complete failure of editing, putting the pages of the story in the wrong order, which took quite a bit of effort to unravel. Unlike little mathematical miscalculations, that's not the kind of thing you just shrug off. Someone's going to get reprimanded for this.
Wyrms of the north: Since Ed was the one who originally created Weredragons, I was wondering when he'd do one in this series. Wonder no more! As usual with Ed, we're dealing with an exceptional example of an already exceedingly rare subspecies. Her humanoid form is a Drow, and her Draconic form is a Shadow Dragon. But she does have the typical Weredragon trait of using sex to get what she wants, then eating paramours that become troublesome. And is also of dubious sanity, engaging in behaviour that makes it likely she'll be killed by some band of heroes eventually. So this is one of his more PC friendly articles, presenting a character that isn't so powerful and well prepared that they won't be able to pin her down and beat her if they play it smart, and that gives them good reasons to want to fight her in the first place. And the new spells are low enough level that people could use them, and useful enough that they would actually want to learn them. So as usual, there's plenty of merit in what he's writing, and you can easily steal bits for your own campaign if you like. He's building on what he did before to good effect as well. He just gets the best of both worlds, doesn't he.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 4/8
Bookwyrms changes reviewers again. Well, at least the editorial staff are delegating a bit more instead of piling this on their plate on top of everything else. Course, whether it'll be proper reviews again or just recommendations remains to be seen.
Giant bones by Peter S Beagle is a collection of short stories set in his established world. But it manages to hit that balance of being accessible to people who haven't read the previous stuff, while still providing useful supplemental material to those who have, and making it clear that there's solid worldbuilding behind them. Sounds like another good prospect for gaming in.
The gratitude of kings by Marion Zimmer Bradley is another follow-on book, this time giving a full book to someone who'd only appeared in short stories (and is ironically her last appearance before the author died). Her big secret is under threat, and of course she has to find a clever and unorthodox solution. Most plot threads are resolved, but a few are left open for a future that would never come. Oh well. That's the nature of life. :(
The gift by Patrick O'Leary involves the Arabian nights technique of telling a story within a story, which then turn out to be linked together and all add up to a coherent whole. Maybe it wraps things up a little too neatly actually, but it still examines the nature of storytelling while also telling a good story. You'll probably learn about craft more easily than reading a dry technical book on how to write.
The stars dispose by Michaela Roessner is a historical fantasy in the relatively low-key mold, keeping it's magic and villains subtle, it's characters non stereotyped, and it's history unbowdlerised. And it's cooking recipes included in an appendix at the back. :p Well, a little cheese to help the healthy brainfood go down rarely goes amiss.
Trader by Charles de Lint sees him do a take on the old body-swapping plotline. The people involved act with more common sense and personal agency than certain movies I could mention, and the ending is better than most of his books, but it's not completely without flaws. Still, this is another recommendation, so that makes it 5 for 5 again, which I'm not happy about. And indeed, quite a few other people must feel the same, because this is the last appearance of this column. So it looks like book reviews have gone out with a whimper, being watered down until they were of very little merit to the discerning reader. Which goes to show that taking the safe seeming path is not always the route to success, because if you don't stand out, you can just fade away and be forgotten, which is a failure in media terms.
Giants in the Earth returns! This is a turn up for the books. Lets hope the characters are a little less overpowered this time around.
And the answer is ... yes. In principle, this is no different from the modern Rogues Galleries, since it involves an author statting out his own characters, which recently appeared in the magazine. The only difference is that it isn't a D&D property. So here we get to find out out a little more about J. Gregory Keyes' world of the Waterborn. They have an animistic cosmology that's in trouble because one spirit is trying to kill all the others and establish a monotheistic world with it in charge, and creating scary spirit-blooded to serve as it's mortal agents. Meanwhile, most shamen don't have the magical power to deal with spirits from a position of strength, having to rely on cunning and making deals instead. It's an interesting setup, and one that has humanity at a bit of a disadvantage. Which leaves people like Fool Wolf working hard for their heroism.
Perkar Kar Barku is the upright young hero of the Waterborn book, trying to do right by his goddess, and ruin the life of the big bad river god. He has a magic sword that has another little god bonded to it, which of course means he always has someone to banter with. And his stats are considerably less bloated than the average Forgotten Realms NPC. I think I might like to read about his adventures.
Hezhi Yehd Chadune is a good example of the power of the Waterborn. Only 13, she's already an incredibly powerful shaman with a whole load of spirits bonded to her. Not that she has it all good, with a strength of 4, and imperfect control over her still growing powers. Having a few fighty sorts around would probably be good for her health.
Tsem is her Half-Giant bodyguard, and is a good deal smarter than he seems, but still hardly a genius. Still, you don't really want a bodyguard to be too smart, just loyal, and he has that in spades. Once again he has fairly balanced ability scores, and skills that are chosen for flavor rather than twinkitude. So I think I can safely say I like this collection.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 5/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Bazaar continues to be much higher in both frequency and number of items per article than it was before the takeover. They really are playing it a lot safer than they used to, despite the revamped visuals. This time, the theme is items for travellers. Which is likely to be a lot more handy for adventurers than the last couple, but still means they can avoid excess focus on combat. Let's see how imaginative this bit of freelancing is.
Amulets of Warning save you the bother of casting alarm on your campsite every bloody night. You'll still need to pay attention, as it doesn't detect animals or undead. But still, it's another definite convenience that will make a whole group's life easier.
Traveler's Backpacks are near indestructible, protect the stuff inside, and float too. If you have bastard DM's who like to make all your items save after every fireball, you certainly won't regret this.
Bags of Cleanliness are yet another lifechanger, like real life washing machines, only portable and not requiring constant refuelling. Seems wizards are increasingly keen on creating conveniences that let them escape the medieval these days.
Hiking Boots let you tromp through any environment, and keep dry and comfortable. Course, if you only find one pair, expect the rest of the party to have trouble keeping up. I hope you're willing to share.
Marching Boots are even more likely to split the party. Moving half again as fast for half again as long? You'll leave them behind in no time. Put it on the heavily armoured fighter who's normally right down at speed 3 to avoid that.
Boots of Passage are more subtle. Like a druid, you can get through thick undergrowth easily without leaving a trace. If you have a druid and heavy party, this'll help your wizard keep up with them.
Boots of Trail Marking are a decidedly mixed benefit. Glowing footprints wherever you go? That could well become a liability. Still, it'll certainly make you notorious. Wear these around town and people'll be flocking to your door.
Bottles of Holding are another extradimensional item for your carrying convenience. You can never have too many of them. Just don't put it in your bag of holding, whatever you do.
Bows of Hunting are no better than normal in combat, but make you great at spotting and tracking down prey for your dinner. Since you may well be using that benefit daily in the wild, are you going to say no?
Canes of Evasion reduces your chance of random encounters by 3/4. This will of course also reduce your opportunities to gain XP. It may seem nice, but getting soft is a perpetual danger for adventurers.
Canes of Fire Starting let you avoid all that tedious business of rubbing sticks together for hours. Yet another convenience that you'll really miss when it runs out of charges.
Canes of Foraging let you find food in a rather less offensive way than the Bow of Hunting. Now you don't have to violate your vegetarian principles. :p
Capes of Comfort serve as both daywear and sleeping bag. Let''s hope the colour scheme is to your liking, because you'll be seeing a lot of it from now on.
Chalk of Trail Marking is another way of leaving hidden signs for yourself. Not nearly as fun as Merty's magical markers though.
Climbing Spikes are yet another tediously obvious item that does what it says on the tin.
Cloaks of Animal Kinship show that skinning creatures and wearing their fur can endear you to other members of their species. :p If only it worked that way for humans.
Camoflage Cloaks are like elven cloaks, only they only work in one specific terrain. Yawn again. Do we really need a whole bunch of weaker variants for existing stuff?
Good Weather Cloaks are another one that duplicate many previous items. Increased comfort? Everyone wants some of that, don't they.
Hammers of Climbing are to climbing spikes what magical bows are to magical arrows. Much much more reusable. Not really a big decision if you have the choice is it.
Helms of Infravision are yet another one we've seen a variant on before. Infravision granting stuff is hardly rare.
Helms of Excellent sight are another useful but familiar one. Still, bonuses on finding secret doors are still surprisingly rare. That's one power your players will love.
Machettes of Path Clearing are a far less subtle way of getting through undergrowth than the earlier boots. Another one that'll leave a very clear trail for anyone to follow. Watch out for pissed off druids.
Necklaces of Language let you understand a single extra language. Given item slot limitations, you may find yourself stuck with the wrong one in a pinch though. And for whatever reason, they aren't hot-swappable. Can't say I'm impressed with this design.
Pipes of aversion keep bugs away. Both Gandalf and Elminster probably approve of that comfort.
Rods of Attraction are another way of attracting easy meat. Keep this up and food'll actually be decently catered for in terms of magical items.
Rods of Direction are a variant on the Dowsing principle. Course, they tend to take you by the most direct route, which may well not be convenient. They have other limitations as well, which keeps them from being game-breaking.
Silver's Sustaining Satchel triples your food supplies. Just how many variants on this do we need?
Skillet's of Frying need no fire, and stay perfectly cool on the outside, making your cooking experiences much easier in the wilderness. Who wants burns, after all? Plus, fires do tend to attract attention. You might want a bit more stealth.
Stakes of Concealment tell creatures This is not the tent you're looking for. Well, spellcasters do need their sleep. Wandering monsters during the day is all very well, but if you have to get up in the middle of the night, your memorisation is seriously thrown out.
Torches of limited Light are only visible to those close to them. Now that is a clever trick and a good substitute for infravision. This is even more useful than a standard continual light globe.
Whistles of Repulsion are yet another meh improvement on a perfectly normal real world device. Ahh, the joys of ultrasonics.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 6/8
Arcane Lore: Only one spellbook this month. It is however, given an extra detailed and interesting write-up, with lots of information not only on the new spells, but what it actually does. As those who've studied D&D history will know, Rary is one of those characters who's got quite an interesting treatment. Originally just a bad joke of Brian Blume, retiring as soon as he got to Medium level, he was later turned into the traitor of the Circle of 8, which is very ironic when you consider the position the Blumes held in the company before leaving. But anyway, here's one of his spellbooks. And an evilly appropriate little thing it is, stealing other people's ideas and magic items, and funnelling them back to it's master, before disappearing when it's dupes owners start to get suspicious. Lost spellbook my arse. You can't even copy the new spells contained in it, so you'll soon lose access to them as well. This'll definitely cause the players much misery if they encounter it. Muahahahaha. I actually rather approve.
Rary's Empathic Projection is basically a cutdown ESP only affecting emotions. This is primarily important for the uses the book itself puts it to.
Rary's Mind Scan is upgraded ESP, letting you do a detailed probe of memories. This lets the book figure out exactly what you have worth taking, and when there are gaps in your routine to be exploited.
Rarys Hesitation increases spell casting times. Only really useful if you actually bother to track segments.
Rary's Protection from Scrying is pretty self-explanatory. This is used on the items stolen after they're teleported away, to make getting them back much harder. It even helps you figure out who's asking, so you can turn the tables. The kind of thing every archmage worth their salt should develop a variant on, and it's no surprise they're all so closely guarded.
Rary's Urgent Utterance is essentially quicken spell metamagic, letting you prepare to unleash another spell with a single word. Choose carefully, for it's still a lot trickier to access than it will be next edition.
Rary's Vicious Missiles is a somewhat underpowered 8th level spell that's mainly notable for another bad joke being applied to it. Guess this is in the old skool spirit after all, even if that is somewhat eyeroll inducing. It wasn't all great back then either.
Giants in the earth celebrates their return with a contest for characters. Just the way to build up a new supply for publication. All rights are of course transferred to TSR in perpetuity, blahblahblah, no royalties, no money even, just a free subscription. Not everything has got better since the takeover.
Dungeon mastery: After an issue that's generally been pretty crunch heavy, a bit of system free setting advice based on real world principles comes as a bit of light relief. So here's a whole bunch of spelunking terminology, which allows dungeoneers to sound smart by being able to refer to specific features with a single word while underground, which saves time when who knows what gribbleys may be chasing you, and you don't want to take a wrong turn and be cut off and die. It spans three pages, and does introduce some terms that I'm not familiar with, so it seems they haven't covered all this stuff despite all the underdark specials they've done over the course of the magazine's life. Plus it's a reminder that purely natural processes produce some weird and beautiful landscapes all on their own. Why shouldn't fantasy ones be even more imaginative, and entirely explainable in their own way. By adding more contrast, you make the mundane bits more valued as well. I approve of this one.
Dragonmirth reminds us that the trappings are not neccecarily the class. Swordplay are a bunch of pervs this month. KotDT need reminding that high rolls are not always good in hackmaster.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 7/8
Roleplaying reviews undergoes another change of writer, this time someone called Ray Winninger. Not inspiring confidence here guys! They also fall prey to the wave of rehash that's sweeping the nation, with another Call of Cthulhu special. We had one just 4 issues ago. Have your horizons really become that limited? Maybe we'll even get the same ones reviewed again with a different perspective. :/ No, I can't really give this a positive spin.
The complete masks of nyarlathotep has indeed turned up before, not only getting reviewed in issue 240, but the previous edition getting reviewed in issue 158. It gets a long and gushingly positive review that really just cements it's place as a classic adventure. It's big, clearly written, has a decent amount of nonlinearity, and doesn't hammer it's story in your face. Something for everyone to love.
Delta Green also gets a 6 pip review, and is hailed as a new classic for the game. Four years in development, it's exceedingly polished and very complete in both character options and campaign material. You're certainly not as empowered as you will be in Cthulhutech, but you're not as helpless as in the average CoC campaign. The fact that this still gets talked about today means that it too has stood the test of time, and actually lived up to the hype. Individual companies may suffer, but the mythos does not die.
Realm of shadows is another Pagan Publishing Cthulhu campaign, this time set in the 1940's. It too is pretty interesting, using both old and new school elements to build up plenty of depth in the setting and advice in how to handle the set-pieces. Ray's main complaints are that the organisation isn't quite as perfect as the last two products, and it's quite a bit more visceral in it's horror than the old products. Plus you'll probably have to make new characters. :p
Nocturnum: Long Shades is from Fantasy Flight Games. This is another attempt at a modern day cthulhu adventure, that introduces a whole new set of bad guys, and is apparently the start of a series. It's interesting, but certainly not as polished as the previous reviews, and has some more reliance of stereotypes. Still, it's more competition that will hopefully drive improvement, not pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Dragon Magazine Issue 249: July 1998
part 8/8
Previews finally realizes that as they are no longer owned by TSR, they shouldn't have their logo. They also take this opportunity to start covering other games companies as well. I strongly approve. However, they do stop covering stuff 2 months ahead. Since I'm not sure how long this lasts, I'll do everything new mentioned here, and then incremental updates. This does mean I won't be mentioning any TSR stuff this month, as they're not mentioning anything new there.
Atlas games seems to be rehashing a bit, in the Festival of the Damned anniversary edition for Ars Magica. The town of Vezay is involved in dubious stuff again. Better get the inquisitors on the red courtesy phone and try not to be burned in the crossfire.
Biohazard games release Wetware for Blue Planet. Cybernetics, genetic engineering, and other cool toys for both players and GM's. A perennial good seller.
Clockwork release Spookshow. Combining ghostly stuff with espionage. Now there's a pairing that go together pretty well, as Orpheus showed a bit later.
Critical mass Studios are pretty busy, with the Soothsayer game out this month. The players guide, the usual reference sheet and GM screen pack, and two adventures, Set in Stone and Avogrado's number.
Event Horizon seem to be trying to get into the magazine business. RolePaper issue 2 seems to have a whole bunch of articles on stuff useful for various systems. I don't remember this at all.
FASA releases an updated corebook and a new novel for Battletech. Their ongoing plotlines advance, and the rules advances from various supplements get collated into one place for usefulness. Woo.
Fractal Dimensions release SORD. The System of Role-Playing Development. A generic system that I've never heard of before. How long did this last?
Gold rush Games are producing Sengoku: Chanbara roleplaying in feudal japan. Samuraiariffic. Well, I guess D&D has lost interest in that stuff at this point, and it's still fairly popular. Other people will move in to satisfy a demand.
Heraldic Game Design release Steeltown for SOL. I don't remember this gameline at all either. Shrug. I guess I was mostly out of the loop at this point.
Holistic release War in the heavens: Lifeweb for Fading Suns. They're obviously big enough to support an adventure trilogy at this point too.
LUG seem to be the current users of the star trek license. Star trek: The next generation gets a corebook and a Narrator's Toolkit. Including an adventure involving Q? Oh boy. What was this incarnation of the game like?
Pinnacle are busy bunnies, with 4 things upcoming in the next 2 months. Tales O' Terror: 1877 does for deadlands what the poor wizard's almanacs did for Mystara. Another year passing in the game, with more alternate history weirdness. Next month, they unleash Deadlands: Hell on Earth. And you thought the weird west was rough as it is. With both the core and the radiation (ie, GM's) screen, you'll be having a hell of a time in no time. And if that's not enough, there's also Worms!, their 7th dime novel/adventure. They've certainly managed a lot more supplements than boot hill ever did. Probably due to the supernatural elements, in the same way Shadowrun massively outsold Cyberpunk and is still going.
Steve Jackson Games lets In Nomine's metaplot climax, with The Final Trumpet seeing the world in serious danger of ending. Go on, cancel it on a high note, you know you want too. They also release GURPS Traveller. Another big gameline gets a new form after quite a bit of inactivity. They really are the kings of system conversions.
White wolf easily outpace everyone but WotC, showing that in terms of size and production values, they're already comfortably number two. Methinks their output needs dividing up into it's various gamelines.
Dark ages gets Clanbook Baali! Read about the little boy raping and impregnating a priest! See the picture of a woman with maggots in her hoo-ha! Watch as we riff off cthulhu again! ZOMG we're so dark and edgy and mature. \m/ Not their finest hour.
W:tA gets Hengeyokai: Shapeshifters of the East. Goblin spiders, Kitsune, all sorts of strange virtue requirements for different species, and a good excuse for crossover games.
M:tSC gets Crusade Lore: The storytellers screen and book. A rather longwinded name for an ST's companion, but what's new, eh?
W:tO takes us deep down with Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth. Grimdark at it's finest, with tons of stuff for fighting spectres with, and more than a little to help playing them too. You can never truly beat oblivion, but maybe you can hold it off for a day longer. Just make sure you get regularly castigated for your angst level.
They're even busier next month as well. V:tM gets War of Ages, a rehashed compilation of two old books. See the Anarchs and camarilla contrasted and trying to get the upper hand on each other like the sabbat is barely there. Silly vampires. Man, that seems dated as hell.
W:tWW gets the Wild West Companion. They seem to be on a historical kick as well at the moment. See how wild the frontier is when angry native spirits are added to the mix.
M:tA is also in a rehashy mood, with The Traditions Gathered. A compilation of the old Virtual Adepts, Sons of Ether and Order of Hermes splatbooks. See science get mangled as they try to persuade people to believe in it. I do not consent to this reality.
C:tD gets it's storytellers guide. Actually, this has considerably less cool stuff than the players guide, but it's hardly terrible, and the intro fiction in particular has stayed in my mind.
Trinity is right in the middle of it's big adventure arc. Darkness Revealed: Passage through shadow. They continue to singlehandedly provide colons with employment in this world and beyond. Course, from the perspective of the RPGPundit, they're providing colons with employment in a different sense, but I think the less said about that the better.
Profiles: Having covered Gary last month, Dave Arneson is the logical next choice. After all, he might sue them if they don't. ;) However, the shoddy researching for these articles continues, with several of the dates wrong (as I can personally prove from references earlier on in the magazine's run. ) This makes me skeptical about the facts I can't substantiate as well. I get the impression these may have been dashed off in a very short amount of time, by someone who was busy with dozens of other things as well. Anyway, from this profile (and I know there have been some far less complementary ones from other industry people) he seems to be a likable dilettante, having been set up for life financially by royalties from the basic sets, he's free to experiment with things in all kinds of fields, reviews, making a computer game, interviewing people, and of course, doing guest spots on the convention circuit. Not a bad way to live. You don't have to constantly try and produce the next big thing after having one big hit if you don't want too.
Another issue in which the articles are actually very good, overall. On the other hand, it's increasingly obvious that the reviews are on their last legs, and their editing and fact-checking is more than a little spotty. So at the moment, they're at their best when actually creating new stuff, not looking over other people's. Well, I guess giving the power back to the individual writers and line developers would have that effect. So once again it looks like this era is better to read in bits and pieces than to plough through in a linear fashion looking for the connections. Will that be enough to keep people reading? Not too far till the end of the year, where we can see the statistics again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. So here we are at the end of the issues covered by the Archive. If Dragon hadn't gone electronic, I might have still done this thread, but I would have stopped at this point, because I do like to set myself achievable goals rather than endlessly ongoing ones. We would also probably have reached this point somewhat sooner, as there would be less scope for reading ahead filling in bits and pieces, and the long middle parts wouldn't feel like such a grind. But we're here now, so let's see if they've done anything special for this issue. Format-wise, nothing's changed. And the theme is a familiar one. Underwater adventures again. But they have been doing good articles recently. Maybe they'll have solicited some future classics from their writers. Give us a multi-part epic special again. Pwetty pwease.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: So it seems that the greater proportion of positive letters in the letters page has been indicative of the larger trends in their submissions. It's hard to figure out what you need to do better to improve the number of readers when the current ones are either content or not complaining because they're afraid of losing the magazine altogether after it's recent absence. But they're still looking for ways to improve. If anything, as Ryan Dancey's post-takeover writing indicated, they're all the more interested in listening to public opinion after it becoming clear TSR not listening was what led to their downfall. So here they apologise for some recent mistakes, and promise to try harder. Ironically, the apology for their mistakes contains a mistake in itself (how could Kim print a correction for a game in the issue before it appeared? ) So yeah, they admit their editing needs work, and manage to really prove it in the same breath. :facepalm: Really not inspiring confidence in me.
D-Mail: A letter complaining that one of their recent monsters was grossly overpowered for it's XP rating. More crosses for their editors to bear in public. They'd better be preparing for the next edition to fix this.
A letter with a ton of advice, much of which they heed. They're getting rid of Bookwyrms, and doing another Psionics themed issue in the near future as a result of this. You do have the power, as long as you ask for the right things.
A letter on their Robin of Sherwood editorial. That was awesome, and you are paragons of taste for remembering it! Why thank you. :) Good to hit your nostalgia buttons. Hmm. Maybe we ought to do that a bit more ;)
And finally, a letter from the netherlands, mostly about existing settings, but also the idea of Magic:the Gathering getting a D&D conversion. Again, it's mostly positive. The magazine is a perfect place for little expansions on worlds that don't merit full books.
Nodwick gets no treasure. But at least he's not tricked as to it's value.
Forum: Craig Hilton thinks obscene ability scores as standard is bad for the game. Method I 4eva! The classes that require them are a big part of the problem too. Fix that and much of the need to be better than everyone else goes away.
Lloyd Brown III gives fairly detailed thoughts about exactly how to nerf poison. Many of them ought to be nonlethal, quite possibly paralytic or with effects other than death & hp damage. Once again I nod.
Charles Stucker tells us how hard it is to use an axe, and how nasty it is when you fumble them. Try it yourself, get up the scars to give yourself credibility.
Joe Piela fills us in some more on the history of polearms. Wrong again, M Kant! Polearms changed a lot over the years!
Lizzi Plant isn't particularly happy with either existing proficiency system. We need a few more, and more improvable.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 2/8
Sage advice is still having problems with stoneskin. It's the spell that keeps on taking up column space. Skip wishes Skip had a time machine so Skip could go back and rewrite that bloody spell.
Can you clarify the necklace of prayer beads (12th level, constant karma, nonstackable. )
Do 1/day powers recharge after exactly 24 hours or overnight ( you can choose from item to item as seems thematic, to the irritation of your players.)
Can a wall of force stop a sphere of annihilation (nope. It just goes right through. Fun.)
Are item saving throws neg or 1/2 (usually neg, as you don't usually track item HP)
Why can't thieves get basic picks all other classes can. (Good question. Skip doesn't have a problem with this, so skip will chastise the twitmongers who forgot this.)
Is called lightning magical (yes)
Can Keoghtom's ointment cure mummy rot (Sure. Rub it in, why don't you)
Can you cast nightmare on a disguised person you don't know (As long as you can clearly state somehow who you intend)
Do you get XP if your figurines of wondrous power kill something on their own. (No more than if your henchmen did. In other words, not unless this is mass combat)
Please clarify the exact way teleport handles your motion ( Skip thinks you're overthinking things. You can define the fluff for why teleport works the way it does as you please )
Do you lose a stoneskin charge from a giants boulder or being caught in a fireball. (Only if you're the one being aimed at, and yes. )
Can a dragon use clairaudience to spot a character under dust of disappearance (no trouble at all)
Can you heal damage from a sword of wounding by indirect healing powers (no. That's like saying you're a vegetarian when you're eating fish and birds )
Can a tarrasque heal damage from a sword of wounding (yes. It's the poster child for better than you exception based design.)
What does a ray of enfeeblement do to someone wearing a girdle of giant strength (subtract from their buffed score )
Can aid cure damage (no. The points are always temporary )
Can charm monster affect creatures with more than 8 HD. (Yes. It's like turning undead. You always get 1.)
Can I forbid metamorphose liquids from producing utterly broken compounds (Sure. Skip says never let real life logic wreck your game kids! Just say no! )
How do tentacles work (Scandalously! Just like the rest of your limbs, only without strength bonuses )
Out of character: Instead of gaming advice, Peter's column this month is pure personal viewpoint. Yes, Gaming can definitely be Art. It involves creating things that have no practical use, tells a story, involves substantial amount of technical expertise, and most importantly, can touch the hearts of those exposed to it. It may not have even the same kind of marketability as poetry or painting, but it's definitely a creative endeavour. The fact that it's an interactive one, just as Video games can be, makes things more blurry, and begs the question of who the real artists are, the writers or the players though. Still, you can't disqualify it on being improvised, or you'd have to disqualify jazz music. :p You can't disqualify it on being a derivative work, or you'd have to disqualify fanfiction. (double :p, and yes, I'm fully aware that people have argued vehemently against both of those in the past. ) You couldn't call every RPG campaign art, but I'm going to have to support him and say that at their best, both RPG books and RPG campaigns can be works of art. Hell, you could really say this thread is a work of performance art in itself, as it involves vast amounts of mental effort and creativity for no practical gain for me. If you could qualify Dr Johnson's first dictionary, which took him 9 years to do, this would probably fit into the same category, as while it is technically a reviewing and cataloguing, it also involves considerable personal agency in the way I approach it and the sources I draw from. And I'd hate to see the people who'd argue that people like The Nostalgia Critic and Spoony aren't artists in their own right. Or maybe art is a purely subjective concept that has no actual solid provable boundaries, like emotions or religion, and I'm just rationalising my own insecurities about the value of what I do. Still, at least I know I'm in good company. And after 250 issues, I think my ego could do with a little primping.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 3/8
Heroes of the sea: Just as with the flying special 6 months ago, they decide to kick things off with a whole array of aquatic races given PC stats, so you can have an all-underwater campaign and still feel you have plenty of choice. And then quite possibly become dinner for the all-feline party using issue 247's rules. :p Looks like here there's more races given less detail than the flying ones, but not as many variants as the cat and dog articles. Kind of a middle ground, really. So let's see if the mechanics of the writeups hold together.
Crabmen fit into the strong but dumb niche, and their mental and physical quirks mean a lot of equipment that's built for humans won't work for them. Their natural armor and weapons mean they'll be ok at low levels, and then fall behind at higher ones. Still, given their short lifespan, they're not likely to make it that far anyway. No decades spanning epics with one of these in the party.
Koalinth are pretty similar to their land-dwelling cousins in terms of class options and culture, and able to survive out of water more than long enough to be viable PC's in a regular party. Like most goblinoids, they may tend towards evil, but they can still be excellent adventurers.
Locathah are of course very problematic in a normal campaign because they can barely move on land. But in an all-underwater campaign, they can be a staple character race. They do have the oddity of being able to be Bards, but not Thieves for some reason. Rules can be weird.
Malenti are of course perfect for becoming adventurers, with their angst-inducing backgrounds meaning at least some of them surely escape and wind up forming bonds with creatures less abusive than Sahuguin. They don't have the arcane skills of real elves, but do enjoy retractable claws and teeth that make them capable unarmed combatants, and can withstand depths that even most of the other underwater races would be crushed at. They could certainly support a Drizzt of their own.
Merfolk are another underwater-only suited race. Their class selections are surprisingly limited really, with Bards once again the only rogue choice. I'm rather curious why the author decided to do that. It's not as if there isn't plenty to possess down there, and the buoyancy means you can actually carry a lot more if you have the right kind of pack. I can't see any reason cultures wouldn't form that feature criminality.
Pahari are in sharp contrast to all the previous races, in that they can only be arcane spellcasters. Shapeshifting aquatic nymphs, they kinda fit the swanmay niche, in that they don't exactly fit in amongst all these primitives, are all female, and have magic resistance and substantial lifespans. But of course that makes them all the more valuable if you want a party with all the standard bases filled without putting a normal human into the mix. And it's good to see them expand on a more obscure race along with the standard monster manual ones.
Selkies are a decidedly weird one, with their timed week a month shapeshifting. (which they tell you to ignore here) They can't actually breathe underwater, but they move way faster than any of the others, and have decent class skills. Their main flaws are their pacifism, and their weakness for alcohol, which seem very likely to come into conflict with one-another while on land, especially when trying to play eco-cop. :) They'll have to get over one of them to truly satisfy the other. :p
Vodyanoi fill the niche of the really big tough guys, a la Minotaurs or Ogres for a land party. Although they're not as dumb as they seem, they aren't naturally social, and their size and bulk may be a real problem, especially out of water. Their limited class options force them into the role of bruiser, but at least you can be a tactical one like Beast instead of just a tool.
Liminals are half human, half merfolk, and the only race that can become thieves, although they lack priestly options. Like Half-Elves, they make good diplomats, but also have problems fitting in any one place. Still, this also means they bond very strongly indeed with the creatures that they do love, to the point they waste away if separated from them. Absolutely perfect for an adventuring party then. :p
So overall, this collection hews pretty closely to the formula established in the complete book of humanoids in terms of powers and balancing factors, with the exception of the weird aversion to thieves. Some of these may be powerful at starting level, but none have great level limits, and natural armor and weapons grow progressively less significant the longer you go on. And as they may well fall behind standard characters in terms of equipment as well, I very much doubt they'll be game breaking in the long run. Course, as with Council of Wyrms, running a long-term all underwater campaign is a real challenge for a DM, as they can't rely on published adventures at all, so you're not likely to hit those level limits. Still, given my love of pushing boundaries, it seems the kind of thing I'd like to try. Overall, this definitely adds stuff to the game that is of value and wasn't there before.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 4/8
The dimernesti: Having just upgraded a whole bunch of monsters to PC's in AD&D, now it's time to update the sea elves of Krynn to the SAGA system. And hey ho, despite the supposed departure of magic from the world, things haven't changed much for them. They've had the same kinds of hassles that Ansalon had to deal with Dragon Overlords, but managed to overcome them. And their shapeshifting ability remains fully functional, showing it's an innate power rather than linked to the old form of magic. So this is quite a conservative conversion, changing as little as they can get away with given the massive alterations around them. A mere two years on, and the backpedalling is already very apparent. I'm left wondering how much longer they'll do any coverage on it, and if any new elements will be introduced over the course of those articles. Because this really isn't grabbing my attention.
Warships of the sea: Time for another delve into the real world, old skool style, with extensive lexicons, pretty cutaway diagrams, and lots of crunch. This is one aspect of bringing back the old style features that I fully approve of. Actually, we have had a book on this fairly recently, and this builds upon that, providing stats for ships from centuries after the books medieval cutoff point. Which of course means pretty substantial power creep, but that's the real world for you. Statistically, this is a bit dry, but it more than makes up for it with the excellent presentation and use of colour. It seems like they're finally getting over the novelty and teething problems of their computer editing programs and turning it to better support the articles. Overall, this is one of those articles that's fairly specialised, but pretty invaluable if you do want to cover it's topic in your game. Still, it's no cardboard castle. I know you're trying to be more careful with your money and production costs, but it is the 250th issue. You could stretch a little bit for the occasion.
The world of the mechalus: Our Alternity material this month is a good 10 pages long, and another article that feels like it's trying to be a special feature, but couldn't quite get the right degree of epicness up. Shoulda gone for one 20 page one instead, and you'd definitely have my attention. Instead, this feels like a mini splatbook for the race. Which was cool in the early 80's when Roger Moore was doing them, but now we have thousands of full length splatbooks from various companies competing for our attention, it's not so impressive. Still, it has more new crunch than some splatbooks (White Wolf, I'm looking at you) and a reasonable amount of setting detail squeezed in. However, this goes to show how far behind D&D Alternity is, and by trying to compete in the same ballpark in an established market, it's setting itself up to struggle. And the cybertech seems decidedly dated only a decade later, given the rise of wi-fi and mobile communication devices, so the sci-fi in this article hasn't aged well at all. In the end, this article feels like a bit of a quaint curiosity, less contemporary than some articles decades earlier. And since I don't have much nostalgia for the late 90's, certainly not for the computer technology of the era, I can't say this excites me at all.
Sunken Fortunes: Back to the in theme articles, with a little piece on what kind of treasure you can find underwater. Salt water in particular is very harsh on all kinds of materials, reducing many metals to a pitted mess in no time, and rotting away organics. This also means that while there may be the equivalent of dungeons down there, they may not be as stable, and you have to pay more attention to the 3D aspect of layout design. Still, gold, gemstones and ceramics survive the depths untarnished, so there are some very valid reasons to go and recover lost treasures, and that's not even getting into anything underwater races might create. So this starts off fairly realistic, and then introduces the fantastical elements and solutions afterwards, allowing you to dial up the level of cinematicness by introducing the new spells and item quirks. It contains information I haven't seen in the magazine before, and delivers it in a no-nonsense style. There's definite value in knowing what valuables you can realistically include in your underwater games.
Fiction: Dedrak's quest by Tracy Hickman. In issue 200 we had fiction by Margaret Weis. Here we have the other big name of Dragonlance in a bit of fiction that almost fits into one of their established worlds, but not precisely. A story starring dragons, who have gnome servants, but haven't seen humans in ages, and now regard them as a kind of boogeyman? That has quite a lot in common with Council of Wyrms. But the specifics are subtly different, and the tone is both whimsical and contains a strong moral message. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given his previous form. The fact that he's also writing sci-fi books at the moment is also apparent, with a magitech underpinning to the setting. Overall, I think I enjoyed this, as it does have a pretty good story and characters, despite being built around the obvious Aesop. The magazine could do a little more tackling of social issues than it does.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 5/8
Wyrms of the north: Looks like for a second time, Volo has actually had an interesting love life as a result of his draconic investigations. Just goes to show, a little confidence makes up for a lot of practical shortcomings. Family is once again a strong theme in this article, as we not only have talk about Volo's illegitimate offspring, but another dragon who's decided to form a bond with a family of humans and see what happens to them over the centuries. As a Bronze dragon, he's able to assume human form with ease, and is relatively benevolent in his approach to manipulating them, although as he takes the long view, he won't save individuals from their own stupidity, and may even cull them if it would be for the better. There's some more seriously sloppy editing in this article, with two nasty discontinuities in the writing chopping away parts of sentences. So it seems that Ed is finally starting to repeat himself in this column, and the editors are continuing to make large, easily noticed mistakes. Put that together, and it does drag this article down quite a bit.
Dragon's bestiary: Once again they show that the rate and frequency with which they rehash topics is increasing in this era, with another bunch of aquatic monsters, last given an article a mere 15 issues ago. It's really not good enough, you know. If you haven't got anything of significance to say, you shouldn't say anything at all, and let someone else speak instead.
Black slime brings old skool ooziness to the oceans, turning you into more of it just as green slime does in caverns. And so another previously untouched symmetry was filled in.
Giant clownfish are a pretty direct conversion of the real life creature, only bigger. They're basically an excuse to pass on a bunch of real world ecological info to the rest of us philistines, as if we hadn't been eagerly devouring that stuff for 15 years. This is veering into patronising territory. Johnathan may write good ecologies, but he's not much cop at thinking up new monsters.
Giant diving beetles see the formula wheels churn once again, upscaling an existing creature while hardly changing it to reflect it's new circumstances. Yawn.
Sea cows get somewhat more fantasy info, with people farming them, and plenty of magical uses for their stuff. But they aren't really much use for adventurers, and the whole thing feels like setting-building for it's own sake. It's an excellent example of the stuff that would be brutally purged next edition, and in this mood, I can quite understand why. The pendulum really has swung too far to the froofy side this time.
Arcane Lore: Hmm. An al-qadim spellbook. Haven't had one of those here before, which is surprising, since it's part of Toril, and lots of the most interesting variant wizard types come from there. I suppose sha'irs, clockwork mages, ghul lords, jackals, etc, don't use conventional spellbooks, so they aren't going to be contributing to the greater lore stores of the multiverse. This is interesting for another reason, as it draws upon the same real world vein of lore as the Sons of ether in M:tA. Say hello to the Kitab al-Asfr. The work of a powerful geomancer, it's unsurprisingly focussed on earth spells.
Dusting the Rock makes any small particles of dust and gravel in the vicinity all fly towards you. This is obviously not very pleasant to experience, and may be immobilising in the right terrain.
Cone of Earth is a reskinned cone of cold, doing plenty of damage, and impeding the victims. You could also probably make use of the raw material created. It's certainly more lasting than a fireball.
Entombment sucks you in, but doesn't preserve you for eternity like the 9th level version. No, it's a slow suffocating death for you, unless there happens to be a dungeon immediately beneath where you're standing. And what are the odds of that? :D
And that's your lot. Rather short compare to most of these articles. Oh well, better to leave you wanting more than to wear out their welcome with repetition like far too many of the department articles do these days.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Hmm. This month's topic here is items that can only be used by a particular class. Yeah, we haven't had that one before. Does seem likely to produce a rather disjointed collection. Plus, you could easily have concentrated on one class at a time, spin it out 4 times as long. Curious.
Soldier's armor has a whole bunch of minor extra benefits for fighters. Really, that's just to give clerics sour grapes, isn't it. I guess they get more than enough of their own.
Knight's lances make you less likely to be knocked off your horse. Probably a good idea. After all, accuracy and damage are not the only indicators of skill.
Boots of Marching are another great example of how much their editorial filters have lowered their standards for rehash recently. They're a good deal crapper than last month's Marching Boots too. Really, what were you thinking when you approved this?
Swords of Destruction break enemy weapons. And we know how much people hate that. At least it's not energy draining.
Necklaces of Success give you rerolls. Bah. Don't see why this one is class specific at all.
Staves of High Magery let you perform minor magical effects casually, and ignore those of others. Wizards shouldn't have to constantly engage in careful resource management once they get to high level. Just don't expend that last charge.
A Talisman of Power lets you cast spells as if higher level. The kind of thing that would become standard next edition, this is always a useful little booster.
Orbs of Protection give you saving throw bonuses, but you need to have it in hand to get full benefit. Choose lots of verbal component only spells to take full advantage of this.
Robes of the Specialist let you switch your spell specialities for ridiculous versatility. They even let specialists double-dip. Huge amounts of power at the cost of double the school restrictions. Now that is potentially problematic.
Rings of Escape let you run away at double speed. Another one for which the class restriction seems pretty unnecessary.
Vestments of Safety give priests of a particular god permanent Sanctuary. You can just sit back and buff your minions in safety, and then walk casually away if you lose. Way to make truly loathed recurring villain. :D A kender might actually come in handy for a change, as taunting would be a good way to get them to break the needed pacifism.
Symbols of Purity boost your undead turning level. Like spell level boosters, this is very familiar from 3e. It's not just what you can do, it's how well you can do it.
Divine Armor gives you permanent protection from evil. Just as useful, and less likely to be irritating to players than the sanctuary one.
Helms of Holy Might let you resist mindfucking. Not as well as some previous items though, in what is becoming a familiar refrain. Blah.
The Hammer of Bablas is more powerful against evil creatures. Also very familiar. Clerics don't get the most interesting items, do they?
Burglar's gloves help you detect secret compartments and traps. But not doors though. Oddly specific that. Better than nothing I suppose.
Silent Blades are another variant on an already introduced weapon. Not only do they make no noise, they also silence the victim as well, which does seem like a good perk.
Assassin's Armor lets you obscure yourself and go insubstantial. Maybe Ninja armor would be a better name for it :p
Dust of Blinding is basically souped-up glitterdust. Perfectly normal trigger item.
Bard's Spellbooks let them store their magic and music in the same place. Another of the very minor conveniences that seem to be increasingly common in this column.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 7/8
Dragonmirth gets all monty python on us. Now that's vaguely surprising. Swordplay is also unusually culturally aware this time.
Alternity is also having a competition. Send in your spaceships. Once again, all rights are signed away, and the prize is free stuff, rather than money.
Roleplaying reviews: Ray again takes exactly the same topic the previous reviewers already did a few months ago. Sci-fi gaming. Zzzzz. How did we get here? Why can't we leave? Surely there must be some more oblique and specific topics to cover? Are those not selling well enough for you? I guess it's another serving of bread and butter then. Careful. Too much of that can be very fattening, especially when it's white bread.
Alternity players handbook gets a positive, but certainly not glowing review. It's a pretty game attempt at repurposing AD&D to fit sci-fi gaming, although trying to fit it into a class/level structure raises issues in itself. Ray's main issue is in their attempt to create a generic set of aliens and technology that definitely won't fit every setting. Sci-fi universes don't tend to have as many common tropes as fantasy ones, and it'll take some serious supplements for this to approach the depth and variety AD&D has managed, and become truly universal.
Blue planet, on the other hand, gets praised highly for it's setting, which manages to be both specific and focussed, and leave plenty of room for exploration. There might be a whole universe out there, but it's the mysteries of the planet Poseidon that get center stage, just as Planescape had Sigil as a place that you may never really need to leave. This time it's the rules Ray isn't entirely satisfied with, being a bit overcomplicated and very lethal. Why people still write rules like that is a very good question.
Amazing magazine is back! Buy it now or it'll go tits up again! Life can be so cruel sometimes.
KotDT engage in tawdry negotiations without the full information. Man, they are so going to regret that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 250: August 1998
part 8/8
Previews: AEG release Tomb of Iuchiban for L5R. An evil wizard's tomb full of scary things. A boxed set adventure? Sounds just like home. Suit me up, honey, we're going adventuring! They also get Way of Shadow: The ninja investigations of Kitsuki Kaagi. Looks like another gameline has taken the IC approach to setting development deployed by Volo and Van Richten.
Archon Gaming release Unknown Armies. Woo. Another kickass approach to horror gaming who's influence will filter through the system over the next decade.
Armitage House release A guide to the Cthulhu cult. The kind of people who really need foiling, now you can find out a little more about them, before going mad.
Atlas Games give Ars Magica the Wizard's Grimoire Revised Edition. Old info is refined, new stuff is added. And you know what wizards are like for spell research. More power is always welcomed.
Basement Games unleash Forge: Out of chaos. Another medieval fantasy heartbreaker, it looks like. A new slant on magic indeed.
Chaosium are also busy with Cthulhu stuff. Before the fall: Innsmouth adventures prior to the great raid of 1928 seems pretty self explanatory, if possibly too verbose a title. Sounds like they don't want you to be the ones who get to call in the army and purge the nasty place for good though.
FASA release stuff for a whole bunch of gamelines. Battletech gets Technical readout: 3060. Technology and timelines continue to advance, which means new mechs for both sides to kick butt with.
Earthdawn fill in more details on their Dragons. They may not have elves, but they can't resist putting a load of elaboration and variation on this fantasy cliche.
Shadowrun gets a triple bill. Renraku Arcology: Shutdown sees an explosive bottleneck adventure take place. Just how much of the population will make it out alive, and will your PC's be among them? If they do make it out, it's time for them to convert to the Third Edition rules. Prepare to see the canon outcome of the previous adventures incorporated into the timeline. And if that's not enough, there's a novel too. Psychotrope by Lisa Smedman. Trapped in the matrix by an evil AI, they need to work together to escape with their lives. What lessons will they learn in the process?
Flying Buffalo have a slightly unseasonal offering. Grimtooth's Halloween special. I suppose it'll take a few months to get to the shops. They also compile their citybooks. More generic stuff for all to use.
Guardians of Order give us the Sailor Moon RPG. Ah yes, the days when BESM was not only healthy, but got a load of official licenses. Now you too can have teenage girls doing nude transformation sequences for great justice. Hee.
Hogshead Publishing release another well remembered game. The extraordinary adventures of Baron Munchausen. The exaggeration extends to the description of the corebook, amusingly. They're also bringing out Marienburg: Sold down the river. WHFRP must also be doing reasonably well then.
Inner City Games gets Gary Gygax in to make a module. The Ritual of the Golden Eyes. Exactly what system it's for, if any, is not disclosed. Any more info available on this one? They also release A Very Large Campaign. Take control of giant monsters for fun and profit. Sounds fun, and more than a little whimsical.
Pagan Publishing are a third company doing Cthulhu stuff. What's with that? What are the licensing arrangements here? They release Mortal Coils. 8 more adventures for a system already well catered for in that area.
Steve Jackson Games have a nice little pair for us. Killer gets it's 4th edition. God, I remember when that caused a dirty great controversy, back in issues 53 and 58. Good to see it's still going. GURPS is also doing pretty well for itself, with Egypt the subject their latest supplement. Will you be a pulp hero unearthing the ancient ruins, or travel back to the era they were made in?
Profiles: Unlike Margaret Weis, Tracey Hickman doesn't appear to have aged much since his last appearance in issue 120. (although I wouldn't be surprised if a bit of hair dye was involved. ) Like her, he's kept busy since then, churning out dozens of novels, including a few solo ones, and doing his best to promote his message of a strong morality and influence people's real life behaviour by the messages he puts in his writing. Which I do find slightly dodgy, especially when that morality involves mormonism, and of course, deriding the whole concept of escapism in writing. Gotta be family friendly and set a good example. Bleh. Trouble is, I don't disapprove of the methods, just the specifics. After all, you should try to accomplish something with your creativity. He gets my respect, even if we are ideological enemies in many ways.
After two pretty good issues, this one sees them slip back into dullness again, with a whole load of sensible, realism heavy articles that might be useful, but don't light up my life. You wouldn't think going underwater would bring out the sensible conservative side in people, but I guess knowing you'll be dead in minutes if something goes wrong kinda brings out the desire to prepare carefully. In any case, it means the end of the Archive doesn't feel like anything special in terms of quality, despite having a little more non D&D RPG coverage than they've had in a while. It's making me feel that 2e really did drag on several years beyond it's natural lifespan, and they should have started preparing something earlier. Still, this does feel like a real landmark in that I'm now way closer to the end than the beginning, and the standardised format in which the issues have been indexed is about to stop with the next one. This means that exactly what future issues contain takes a little longer to find out, which maintains a bit more mystery. Whether I'll find them more interesting or not, we shall have to see.
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 1/8
142 pages. So we've reached the end of the issues in the archive. From here on in, I've had to hunt the magazines down from various sources. Any missing parts are unfortunate, and if you spot any gaps, inform me and I will do my best to fill them in. This also means I'll be adding a new category to these reviews, looking at the scan quality of the issue, and identifying any problems with the transfer. Any trends in this over the years will be noted with interest.
Anyway. Looks like once again we have a case of celebrating a big number a little too late, as the page count is boosted by a 16 page quick-play booklet in the centre, making this our third biggest issue ever. They're also making extra effort to distribute it to new venues, bring in new people. So this feels like them again trying to make this issue a new beginning, hopefully bringing in some new players. Of course, if the other articles aren't good as well, they may have problems keeping them.
Scan quality: Good quality & resolution, colour slightly oversaturated. No indexing.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Here, we talk about the intersection of nostalgia and their new recruitment drive. Part of the D&D experience is the shared memories and the people we played with. As an inherently social hobby, the people and the way we interacted with them is inextricably linked to your memory, even if you played the same modules as millions of other people. And for a social hobby, word of mouth and player network are even more crucial than they are for other forms of entertainment. So get out there and recruit new people, create your own legends. Otherwise this hobby will slowly fade away, no matter how hard they try to promote it. Which really is just as pertinent a message today. Go to the effort, let today be as nostalgic as 20 years ago when you're another 20 years older. Are you ever too old to make a new beginning? For my own sake, I'd like to hope not.
D-Mail: Our first letter is a complaint about books which need a whole load of other books to fully make sense, and a request that they do more straight AD&D articles. Ahh yes, the back to basics crowd. Given the direction they take in the next edition, I'm not surprised to see complaints like this mounting up.
A letter from someone who really enjoyed seeing Jeff Grubb's PC's in action again and wants more, preferably prequels. I think that's an achievable request with him working for them again.
Two little nitpicks about real world stuff. Aint physics a bitch. We can't constantly elaborate on all the disclaimers when we're trying to fit an article in a few pages.
A letter of generalised praise from new zealand. They can be a bit cut off from the world there, so it's a good way to keep in touch with the rest of the gaming community. I'm guessing you haven't quite got the hang of the intarweb thing yet.
A letter from someone else who doesn't entirely approve of Alternity articles in their D&D magazine. Is there really any demand for it? That's a very good question. It's becoming apparent that the negatives outweigh the positives. People here are more conservative about their roleplaying than a decade or so ago.
Of course, they're still getting mixed messages, and the next letter is one from someone eager to see more Alternity material. It needs help to prove it's versatility, and that won't happen unless freelancers get in on writing articles for it as well. Bring back the ARES section!
A letter from someone who's very happy with issue 248, and thinks it's the best one they've done in ages. If they keep this up they deserve to win new customers.
A letter that thinks people who feel betrayed by the magazine because they included one non D&D article are being overdramatic. Get over it, get a life, grow a thicker skin, or you'll never be able to cope with the things the rest of reality throws at you.
And finally, we have two more letters on the subject of Alternity coverage, one positive and one negative. This looks like it's settling down to be a long haul of a debate. We never used to have this problem about Gamma world, Marvel superheroes, and all the other bits and pieces they also covered. What changed?
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 2/8
Nodwick once again punctures his employer's egos. Oh, he's going to suffer for that.
Forum: We take a break from soliciting for the next edition to do a little alternity promotion here. Cross promotion! It gets everywhere! I wonder if it'll actually get any responses. After all, the SAGA debate hasn't exactly set the forum alight.
Matt Wilson disagrees that so many spells need to be moved out of Alteration. I know you can justify it from an IC perspective, but there's still the OOC balance one to consider as well.
Jeremy W. Burks wants psionics kept in the next edition, but any inconsistencies carefully cleaned out. I think everyone'll agree that inconsistencies in the rules are a bad thing. Even the ones that otherwise want everything kept the same won't complain about that one.
Greg Jensen draws upon his philosophy classes to analyze alignment. As ever, there should be room for plenty of variations within a single alignment, as there are only 9 of them, and billions of creatures. Relative morality falls apart when analyzed a lot quicker than picking an objective moral system, and applying it to everything though.
Stephen D'Angelo wants poison and energy draining seriously nerfed. Now you're definitely in luck! Enjoy.
Tim Newman subjects us to nearly 2 pages of weapon related tedium, with a bibliography. This really should have been an article. It's longer than many of them.
Sage advice: How does detect life interact with blocking spells (Perfectly normally. Direct counters stop it. Irrelevant counters don't.)
Can a ring of vampiric regeneration get power from a spectre. (Yes. We have not clarified the way negative energy interacts with living creatures. )
Are illithid vampires intelligent or not (no. They go all feral and raar. That is not conductive to logical thought)
Is spellfire one of the energies energy containment can stop (That is up to your DM. )
How do true dweomers interact with chronomancy and wild magic. (perfectly normally. No, you don't get true wild surges. That would make an awful mess)
Can you use split personality and astral projection to go world-hopping and stay home at once (no)
Can you gain proficiency in a shield by specializing in another weapon (man what. Skip doesn't know how you thought that one up. No.)
When do you get the benefits from a deck of many things (straight away. You can't defer the good or bad effects to a more convenient time. Such is the nature of these random screwage items.)
How high level can demihuman speciality priests get (rather higher in the forgotten realms than anywhere else. Doncha wish your planet was twinky like Ed's. Don'cha)
Can feat help a signer imagine his way to the top (no. You've been doing it wrong for months. Skip recommends you scrap your game and start again. )
Can dweomerkeepers cast inside a beholder's ray (no)
Can dispel fatigue restore spell points (hell no!)
How often does the great modron march take place (once per 17 years. Exactly which planet's year this is judged from is not made clear. )
Can you open a book of infinite spells to more than one spell a day (yes, but you can only use one of them. And luck is a cruel master)
What gives you immunity to chlorine gas ( Immunity to gas in general. Or immunity to chlorine, but I know no monster that has that specific immunity.)
How much do the new armor types cost (some of them cost lots, other little)
Rainbow only produces 6 colours (Oh noes. Pretty colours not properly matched. Skip must make errata. That's better. Ooooooh. :Bats: 7 pretty colours, tied in a bow.)
How fast does telekinesis let you move things (20 foot per round, no matter how heavy. Newton would have a fit)
Do unused magical items count towards a paladin's limit. (As long as they own them. Pass de dutchy on the left hand side. Sharing makes everyone happier)
Is an owlbear's hug normal damage (yes)
What's the 4th power 16th level hierophants get (permanent healthiness. Their connection with nature is strong enough all the diseases politely give up and go away to harass someone else.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 4/8
By any other name: Our elvish section ends with a short article on elven names, and how to create them. We already know to make them melodious and multisyllabic, but this gives us a bunch of sample elven words and the way they can be made to fit together to form a descriptive name. The kind of article that's ok when taken in isolation, but frustrating when you try and plug it into a larger continuity, and makes me wish for a full length book on fantasy linguistics to do this definitively in a final way instead of messing around with little articles with minimal overlap.
Dragonlance gets another calendar. People must keep buying them, otherwise they wouldn't keep making them.
AD&D core rules 2.0 Sneak preview: Hmm. A straight up promotional article. I'd forgotten just how annoying I found them a few years ago. For all my frustration at their reduced variety of articles these days, that's one thing I don't regret them reducing the number of, instead going for more subtle tie-in articles. Of course, this is an exception, simply telling us about the new computer version of their rulebooks. It now contains all the info from 9 books, fully searchable, plus the character generator, mapmaker, and support for houseruling the game. In some ways, thats better than the official 4e DDI tools, all this time later. And of course, it's not dependent on being online or paying a regular subscription. It does make me wonder a little about their current direction. We've already seen evidence that pathfinder is outselling 4e. Is the attempt to grip their IP too tightly part of what's causing people to slip through their fingers at the moment? It is very worth thinking about. What lessons can the people running the show now learn from those taken in then?
Fiction: The lizard shoppe by Neal Barrett, Jr. Hmm. This is a fairly complicated story with several layers, combining the magical, political and romantic. This makes it a little tricky for me to figure out what aspect to focus upon, as they interact with one-another. I'm not absolutely sure it's a good story, as they don't always mesh together perfectly, but it is a pretty interesting one, that I had to reread a few times to take in all the details. And like many of their writers, it's obvious that the author has thought about the world and built it up beyond what we see in the story. So it looks like although this isn't a regular writer, he fits in here and is probably a roleplayer. That's a decent use of their pages. It's nice to see they're still giving plenty of fiction despite variety dropping in other areas.
Wyrms of the north: Music has the power to soothe the savage beast? Not that anyone but his typewriter would call Ed savage. But he's certainly shown an interest in music before. (issues 94, 115, 123) So here we have a dragon that's obsessed with music, and will spare the life of anyone who plays for him. Of course this being the Realms, this doesn't so much become a singular legend as a regular thing with established relationships with various Bards from around the realms being the majority of his social life, and his hoard filled with music boxes and magical instruments, many of which can play on command. So this isn't an original idea, but demonstrates that despite being a kitchen sink, the Realms retains a distinctive flavour, partly because it's original creator remains such a productive force for the world, and any ideas he steals will still wind up sounding like him once he's through with them. In the Realms, you won't be the first, you won't be the last, and you won't be the best. Just be thankful that you can play a part without getting abruptly eaten.
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 5/8
Dragon's Bestiary has lost it's definite article as well? Really, this is getting to be quite the habit. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. This also seems rather familiar in another way, as Johnathan creates some more hybrids of existing creatures, this time with less comic and more fantastical elements. Whether they're common ancestors of the existing ones or products of magical experimentation in your campaign is for you to choose. In any event, it lets him fill up another article without needing much actual inspiration.
Bloodstingers are somewhere between pseudodragons and wyverns. With cute little tyrannosaur paws and save or die poison, you might be tempted to tame them, but it ain't going to work. Stick to the regular ones.
Boneslithers seem to be the primitive ancestors of nagas. With no magical abilities, they can't do much with their intelligence. Like the many dumb near dragon things, they seem like an excuse for someone who wants the visuals of a particular encounter type without the hard to manage versatility.
Marble pudding could be the common ancestor of mimics, ropers, and some other pudding types. Their disguise abilities might not be as sophisticated, but really, in a natural cavern, all you need to do is look like stone and people won't question odd shaped outcroppings and stuff until it's too late.
Shadow panthers look pretty similar to displacer beasts, but also have centaur like properties. Curious business. Just how does a creature go from quadrupedal to bipedal anyway? This set of creatures has definitely given me something to think about, even if they're not that imaginative in themselves. Combining existing elements in odd ways is a useful technique when your inspiration is running dry.
D&D fast-play game: Now this is the kind of special feature they should have had last issue. A 16 page adventure designed to get complete newbies playing without a DM. Of course, for experienced players, this is a ridiculously tiny and easy dungeon, that'll take less time to do than most of the 8 page adventures back in the day. So it's really the kind of thing you give to someone else, rather than play yourself, especially if you're a regular reader of the magazine, rather than someone caught by their new marketing push. As such, I am a bit ambivalent towards it, as it involves a level of hand-holding I did fine without when I first learnt to play, and worry that it might slip too far into patronising elementary school territory. I may have to test it out on someone so as to get a fresh perspective, rather than simply judging by how it reads.
The ecology of the wererat: Hmm. Lycanthropes have been curiously absent from the ecologies before now. I guess that since they have official books on them going into greater detail, people haven't felt the need to send them in. Still, this does better on the crunch front than I'd expect, giving them several more new tricks. They may be the weakest lycanthropes in head-on combat, but they more than make up for that by numbers, deviousness, the variability of their weakness, spell-like abilities, capacity to replace themselves, ability to spy and live in cities, right under your feet. Compared to that, who's afraid of the big bad wolf? I pity the thieves guild that doesn't maintain a cordial relationship with the local wererats. I seem to have drifted off topic a bit, so this one can't have been that interesting. It follows ecology formula number 4, that of the writings of someone who died facing the creatures being discovered later. And that's all I can think to say about it. Just seems to have slipped through my mind without making much of an impression, good or bad.
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 6/8
Rogues gallery: Ah yes, the Harpers series of books, their largest numbered series of books, making the trilogies and pentads look tame. And Elaine Cunningham has been responsible for more than her fair share of them, in the meantime showing that she's one of the few people who can outcheese Ed in his own world. So can you guess who's converting their characters so you can use them as well? Here's a hint. It's not Jeff Grubb. :p On with the show.
Bronwyn is a Harper Bard with the Loremaster kit. She has a magical bag that instantly sends any treasure she finds home, where she has a shop. Which means she's even richer than most adventurers, as she's getting to play both ends for her own profit. Plus she gets to hear all the best gossip. Seems to have it all worked out until she makes the wrong enemies with her discoveries.
Dag Zoreth is her older brother, and as a priest of Cyric, is pretty much on the opposite end of the moral spectrum. This is further reinforced by the fact that he's part of the Zhentarim. What would their parents think? I'd bash their heads together and send them to their rooms. ;)
Algorind of Tyr is a naive young paladin, the kind of guy who trusts his clerical superiors wholeheartedly, and doesn't realise how complicated moral choices in the world can be. This is of course the writer setting him up for future drama. Dance, my little puppets, dance! I'm sure you'll get to read about it at some point.
Ebeneezer Stoneshaft is a dwarf who shaves. Blasphemy! Actually, it seems like we're getting more dwarves who buck the stereotypes than elves in this column over the years. That is curious to note. Any ideas why?
AD&D game aliens: Looks like the drive for Alternity material will be cutting more ways than one, with what looks like an attempt at a new column converting Alternity races to AD&D stats. This seems like the kind of thing that'd be good for a single article, but doesn't really merit 4 or 5 pages for every single race, spread out over the course of months. Like Wyrms of the North, it feels like over-pushing a very specific idea to the point where people will get sick of it all too soon.
So this one strips the technological trappings away from the Seshayans, recasting them as animistic primitives with a unique shaman class. Or not so unique, since it's all about getting favors from ancestral spirits, which is about as rare in roleplaying as rice is in food. They can fly, but not for long enough for it to be useful in overland travel, giving them a good excuse to stick with the rest of the party. They have low-light vision rather than infravision, which is unusual for D&D races at the moment, and makes me wonder if that was a 3e change imported from Alternity. They also have a pretty substantial penalty in daylight that may make for conflict with a party that prefers daytime activity. So this is mostly made up of conventional elements, but with a few weird quirks that deserve noting for posterity. It does indeed feel like the company promoting their pet projects over what the public wants though, justifying the earlier letters complaints. So I have mixed feelings about this, with the negative ones narrowly taking the lead.
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 7/8
PC portraits: Wait, what? not one, not two, not three, but four elves with beards? That's not sloppiness, that's wilfull contrariness on the part of Rebecca Guay, who's responsible for the first instalment of this new column. Are they actively trying to provoke a rash of complaints on the letters pages? I'm not sure, but it's interesting, and definitely gives me something to talk about here, where I suspect I may struggle to find something to say if this becomes a regular thing. In the meantime, it's a pretty good way to fill out a single page, and not something they've done before, so it's convenient for their editors; and it's system free, so it's the kind of thing that'll remain useful after the edition change. We already know they're thinking about that, so this kind of thing makes a lot of sense. Now to sit back and see if any flame wars come from it.
Dragonmirth has more knight-eating jokes. Swordplay reprints the strip from issue 249 for no apparent reason. Is this the fault of the cartoonist or the editor?
Another contest asks us to design an inn for them. Give us the best possible location for adventurers to start their careers, and then come back too once they've finished an adventure. You have the power! But you don't get to choose the name. Well, I suppose it gets people writing in that wouldn't otherwise. And maybe some of them'll stick around, become regular freelancers.
Roleplaying reviews continues on it's sci-fi special, giving long reviews to a relatively short list of products. This really seems to be to drive in that Sci-fi is a big thing right now, with two active Star Trek series, and other stuff like Babylon 5 and Farscape enjoying both commercial and critical success. At that point it seemed like it would just keep getting bigger. But that's not how fashion works. Things may stick around longer than you expect (reality TV, I'm looking at you) but the public always gets bored eventually, especially as technology does things that make old sci-fi look dated. So let's see how these offerings have held up over a decade later.
Fading suns gets a second review. (Rick did this in issue 238) Once again, the fact that this is heavily influenced by classic White Wolf aesthetics is mentioned, probably even more than WW's own Trinity around this time. Ray goes into more detail on the system and less on the setting than Rick, but comes up with the same overall mark. It's a good system, and the game is full of adventure hooks. Plus it's an original setting in a genre dominated by licences, which is also worth supporting.
The babylon project, on the other hand is a licence of Babylon 5. It gets a rather ambivalent review, with it's odd licensing restrictions and crunch heavy system. It won't be of much interest to people not already interested in the property, and whether hardcore fans will like it is also uncertain. On balance, it seems like a probably not to most readers.
Star*Drive: is Alternity's first setting, and I'm not sure why this is being reviewed the month afterwards rather than with it. It gets a mostly positive review, but also one that points out it's all very generic and kitchen sinky, consciously engineered with the intent of becoming the Forgotten Realms of it's system. Of course, that could well be interpreted as bland. Still, I'm sure it's very playable, should you choose to dig the old game up for a spin.
KotDT face their deadliest foe yet. Squirrels! Lenard Lakofka would be proud.
Dragon Magazine Issue 251: September 1998
part 8/8
Previews: We're finally caught up to the point where they're showing new D&D products in this section. They change things around, so they're in the front, which makes sense.
Our generic product this month is the Wizard's spell compendium, part 4. Like the magic item compendium, this means that you now have far more official stuff at your fingertips than you could ever hope to use.
Technically generic, but also sorta a planescape project, is A Paladin in Hell. Only without the cant, but with the return of the things our old evil overmistress forbade, and a whole bunch of other nostalgia inducing elements that they hope will draw in the casual buyer. Man, this feels contrived.
The Realms get a double bill, as usual. The Shadow Stone by Richard Baker sees another young character go through a coming of age story. No change there. On the other hand, it looks like Raven's Bluff is finally out of the RPGA's hands, because Ed Greenwood does a supplement on it. Hmm. Looks like the new management is really starting to make some changes, as they bring out books that weren't planned before the takeover.
Greyhawk gets The Star Cairns. The start of a new series of old skool dungeon adventures. Put on your boots, we're going back to our roots. Don't forget your encumbrance rules.
Dragonlance also does some fairly familiar stuff. The 5th age game gets it's own bestiary, so you have plenty more things to challenge your players with. Most of them probably also appeared in AD&D. They also rerelease The Art of the Dragonlance Saga. This line is no stranger to coffee table books, calendars, and other such frippery, and this continues their attempts to get money for old rope.
Alternity gets Dataware. Details for sci-fi stuff like AI, netrunning, cybernetics, playing robots, etc. Trying to steal shadowrun's playerbase, eh?
And finally we get to see something from another department of WotC advertised. Planeswalker is a Magic: the Gathering novel by Lynn Abbey. Man, we really are seeing the management changes from the takeover hit the release schedule this month.
Onto the stuff by other companies. AEG release The way of the Phoenix for L5R. I know a splatbook series when I see one, and this certainly fits that bill. Since many of them are spell users, this has lots of new magic stuff to lure in players.
Basement games unlimited release The Vemora. New system, same old macguffin retrieval adventures. So much for that plan.
Chaosium move into the novel business, publishing Nightmare's Disciple by Joseph Pulver. Since the Cthulhu mythos was a literary universe before it was an RPG, this seems a little recursive. Not sure what to make of this.
FASA follow up their recent big releases with smaller support ones. Record sheets for Battletech 3060, and the gamemaster's screen for shadowrun. Another company is following D&D's product model pretty closely. They also release a novel, Warrior: Coupe. The conclusion of a trilogy? This all seems very familiar.
Gold rush games try and release a magazine devoted to LARPing, called Metagame. Interesting. Well, thanks to White Wolf, it does seem to be on the up again. How long did this last for?
PEG continue to pump out the deadlands products. The Wasted West gives you lots of info about the hell on earth setting, in all it's grimness. Shane also unleashes Leftovers, their first Dime novel set there. He does seem to be a busy bunny.
The Scriptorium, whoever they were, release a trio of CD's full of stuff that would probably be useful to a fantasy gamer. Fantasy and horror fonts and art, and a mapmaker. This feels like they're pushing the boundaries of what they should be covering a little. Strange.
White Wolf, once again, are comfortably second in terms of prolificness. Their general WoD product is The Bygone Bestiary. Even they're getting into the general monster book business, even if they do describe rather fewer creatures in greater detail than D&D. These really are perennial good sellers.
C:tD gets Inanimae: The secret way. A bunch of new kiths get opened up for PC's, albeit not with very solid mechanics. One that needs a little houseruling to hold together. Also, watch out for the eco-crap. It's almost as bad as werewolf.
Speaking of W:tA, they compile 3 of their old tribebooks, just like mage did a couple of months ago. Red Talons, Shadow Lords and Silent Striders. Long term demand keeps outstripping print runs, it seems. Good for them.
Minds Eye Theatre unleashes Secrets of Elysium. Elder rules for LARP? Oh boy. This is going to get diableriffic. Get ready for much bitching as people want to use them, but the camarilla only lets a few people do so.
Trinity continues their odd combination of region books and splatbooks with America Offline. Electrokinetics and north america get the spotlight. See why they're no longer the preemminent power around here. And hopefully learn from those lessons in reality.
Profiles: Tony DiTerlizzi is another of our artists who got where he is by sheer enthusiasm, and a desire to live up to the works of the people who influenced him, and produce works that makes other people feel about him the way he did about them. An ambition I think we can safely say he's achieved. Dave Trampier, one of our great vanished artists, gets a big shout-out, as do a whole cavalcade of other artists. Having achieved cult success with TSR and white wolf, he's now gone back to his very first love, children's books. This is another profile that is both amusing and helpful, giving you some definite hints on how to produce your own cool stuff. Be vocal in your love of other people's stuff, and often, they will return the favour, thus aiding both your careers. Give, and you shall get back. Don't be put off by the idea just because it's a cliche.
Well, this is certainly more of a stand-out issue than no 250, with it's new columns, extra pages and special features. The repeated attempts at calling this a new beginning are getting a little frustrating though, as they aren't quite sticking, and in the process the magazine keeps drifting further away from catering to long-term readers. They may hit on the right changes to make eventually, but it's not easy when the feedback they're getting isn't the best. Still, they're trying hard, and that counts for a lot. No complacency here. And despite my own battles with boredom, I'm certainly not going to assume that the next hundred plus issues'll be a shoe-in. There's plenty of time for the articles to make me experience all sorts of emotions, and I just hope there'll be a decent variety of them in each issue.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 1/8
124 pages: Ahh. Back to good old fashioned horror, after a year off. Can't say it's been quite long enough to properly miss you yet. Even more than Elves, our unliving friends are pretty much the definition of overexposed. Still, they also have vast quantities of variants to spread the love around, and new ones appearing every year, so even vampires don't seem quite as stale yet. It looks like this year will be no exception, with new monsters coming to terrorise your neighbourhood and old ones being expanded upon. Turn the pages cautiously, and let's see what leaps out at us this month.
Scan quality: Excellent. Articles indexed in sidebar.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: The editorial is nostalgic this month, getting in with the general trend. Ravenloft has long been their biggest selling module ever, and so it's not surprising that they revisit it regularly. The fact that it's laden with cliches did not hurt it at all. If anything, exactly the opposite. The reason Avatar became the biggest grossing movie ever is not because of the innovation of the giant blue cat-people. The reason Ravenloft became a success is because people want a dark brooding vampire adventure, and this fits the bill. The fact that it's one of the most replayable adventures they've ever done, however, is what really makes it stand out when there's plenty of adventures from the same era that haven't had the same kind of longevity. So yeah, this is a bit of a lovefest. I do wonder why more adventures haven't imitated it's methods to make themselves more replayable. I suppose it's easier to copy the trappings than to go to the effort to give things the same spark.
D-Mail: Dewain Higbee isn't very keen on Alternity stuff in Dragon magazine. This is a Fantasy Magazine. Get your own!
Greg Foster gives the opposing view, wanting plenty of info on other products. As usual, they take the middle ground, because they want to please as many people as possible. Wishy-washy lot.
Mark Papina wants some stuff from out of print books covered again, quite possibly in the magazine. Since the one they tried worked pretty well, they certainly won't reject submissions like this out of hand.
Frank Troise wants to see the characters from the Double Diamond series statted out, and articles for the new Marvel superheroes game. Maybe and yes, we already have one for you this issue. As with Alternity, it's certainly worth a try, to see how long it sticks.
S. Hopkins nitpicks the hell out of the recent article on ships. I think this may be part of why they do those sorts of articles less and less as time goes on. It's just less hassle all round for their regular writers and editors to stick to their own fantasy worlds.
Nodwick is rather twee. That's what happens when you have a lawful whitewash cleric in your party.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 2/8
Forum: Leon Chang wants a greater degree of flexibility, but not a complete abandoning of the class & level system that makes D&D so easy to pick up and get going in. As is often the case, he suggests some more esoteric details that they wouldn't pick up, but the basic idea is sound.
Greg Whyte wants to cut down on the number of languages, and make it non-obligatory for smart people to learn them. More flexibility in how you spend your slots next time would be a very good thing.
Trevor V. Swanson thinks we don't need a new edition. Another person who thinks we're fine as we are. Um, the company collapsed recently. I think that's a pretty strong indicator things aren't fine. Changes need to be made.
Greg Detwiler puts his oar in on the weapons issue. As a writer of an article about this for the magazine, he know's what he's talking about. So he talks quite a bit about what weapons were actually used for in medieval armies. The reason there are so many types of weapons is due to rock-paper-scissors interactions. It'll take quite a bit of work to model that in D&D
Matthew Seibel gives his houserule that ensures everyone has all ability scores of average or above. Make all the PC's big dam heroes. Bah. No flaws at all is boring.
Doug Ironside is against a 3rd ed. There's not that much that needs fixing, and it'll invalidate so much, and cost so much. You know, charging them extra is a bonus from the company point of view. That's not going to dissuade them. Plus finishing something when it's just looking complete ruins half the fun. It's the old coming of age thing. A fully mature system is a boring system, with nothing left to do but fade away.
Dana Aquandro wants all the options kept in and new ones added too. What, all of them? How big do you think that'll make the books? Practicality people.
Sage advice: Do sha'irs cause defiling on athas (no)
Can you beat a wall of force down (no)
Does immunity to illusions mean spell level or caster level (recycled question. Same as it ever was. You're the dream operator. )
What encyclopedia magica items can a witch have at chargen (anything from tables ACDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ. That's a lot of choice)
How do you determine what level a spell is. (Like we said before, rough comparisons combined with lots of fudge. Spells are not easy to quantify. Skip will have to deny your request with a sneer. The day D&D spells can be boiled down to a perfect formula is the day Mage becomes obsolete.)
Can subjective reality penetrate an anti-magic shell (sorta. Remember, it's purely soliptistic. )
Does a multiclassed fighter get a save against Chaos (not usually)
Does free action protect you from Chaos (no. Very little does. )
Does dispel magic do all 3 functions at once (no. Decisions decisions. Oh, the worries of only having memorized a spell once)
Can true dweomers be held in focal stones. (no. If they were alive they'd go all veiny, and then their head would explode from the strain.)
How does weighty chest save if someone else is already holding it (Automatically. If they've already grabbed it, it's too late to use precautions)
Is there anything to stop you from using the mount spell to run scams (Traders who know about magic and react accordingly. Depends if magic is common in your game world. Still, if you fool them once, word will get around. You'd better have used change self or something while making the sale. )
What happens if you cast feather fall on another creature or object. (it can't go down fast. This may foul up it's aim if that was intended)
How does a ring of x-ray vision work (Idiosyncratically. We really should standardize the system for healing temporary ability damage)
Does resisting magic against guards and wards collapse the whole thing (nope. Modular, decentralized parallel processing is a brilliant innovation. )
My player thinks the pressure from a fireball ought to knock down a succubus (Damnit, Skip is only going to say this once. Fireball does not have the logical concequences real fire does. It's magic. It does what it says it does, no more, no less. Air is not consumed. There is no outward pressure. Only burnination. Capiche?)
Does wearing two cursed rings on the same hand cancel them out (no. The first one just takes precedence over any others. Two wrongs don't make a right, didn't you momma ever teach you that? )
How many giant insects can you control (as many as you have time too. This is not such a great deal, as Skip just nerfed the duration. Ha ha. And you thought you could pull the infinite army trick. )
Do elemental based spells work in the outer planes (usually)
Can you make wands and staves produce reversed effects (not unless it says you can. Skip'll bet Elminster knows a way though, the sneaky old rulebreaker )
Does heat metal evaporate an poison coated on a weapon (probably)
Does a potion of vitality let you re-memorize spells instantly (no)
What do ioun stones do when you sleep or die (They're smart enough to orbit above your head without colliding with things when you lie down or lean against a wall. If you die, they fall to the ground. It's free for all scramble time between all the remaining combatants. Yay! )
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 3/8
Grim Callings: We kick things off with a horror themed collection of kits. We've had a couple of those before, but not a complete collection covering all classes and giving them multiple niches, so there's still room here. Of course, too much choice of powers gives you room to twink out and reduce the horror aspect, so you might not want that many kits as a DM. So let's see if it's desirable to add this collection to your game.
Keepers of the Veil are paladins that specialise in kicking undead ass. This means they sacrifice their normal healing abilities for a suite of more specialised ones that'll be good in a few situations, but not nearly as in demand as restoring HP always is. So this kit'll only be beneficial in an undead heavy game.
Dirgists are Bards who specialise in goth music, comforting the miserable living, and entrancing the dead. This is not as effective as clerical turning as it only makes them stay still, not run away. They're good for an adventure but suck at the afterparty. Sounds like my kind of adventurer. I'd much rather just get onto the next bit of business.
Lethean are priests concerned with saving souls, literally. They lead an ascetic lifestyle, and their turning powers are subtly altered to reflect the fact that they liberate the souls of the dead rather than repel them. This is mainly flavour, and their hindrances are mostly flavour behavioural restrictions as well. Meh.
Moribunds are necromancers with a particular obsession with feeding off negative energy to sustain themselves. This means they are undead hunters, but for completely different reasons to everyone else. It also means normal magical healing is useless on them, which is a pretty nasty hindrance. Overall, I think their penalties outweigh their benefits, but in an interesting way, that might make them still desirable if gamed right. So I think this collection is perfectly suited to their milieu, with class variants that are interesting, but won't break your game in the slightest. Now you just need to persuade people to pick them over the more powerful options.
Legacy of decay: The Realms tries to prove it can do horror as well, giving us a whole selection of nasty magical items and spells recovered and sealed away by the Harpers in their pursuit of evil. And since the Realms has far more high level characters than Ravenloft and less natural justice, that means more opportunities for villains to make a genuine impact with their diabolical creations. Well, that's the theory anyway. It's a generic setting. Who knows what we'll get.
The Black Satchel is one of those items that really isn't worth the price. It may let you heal, and even raise people from the dead, but the number of people you have to kill to power it far outweighs the number you'll save. Of course, if you're an adventurer slaughtering your way through enemy territory, that might not be an issue, but you'll still face the requisite alignment change. Caveat emptor, etc etc.
The Intellect Syringe allows you to drain the brain of others and temporarily boost your own, making it another one that'll eventually be your downfall, either due to creeping insanity or the murders you commit to power it catching up with you.
The Needle of Fate lets you create tattoos that murder people, and then transfer their remaining good luck to you. Of course, if they resist the attack, it'll turn on you, so this again seems fiddly and not worth it in the long run. Who designs these evil artifacts anyway? They really ought to pay more attention to what they're doing.
We now move onto new spells. Decay ages inanimate objects in a fairly impressive way. Obviously the effect of this will vary quite a bit, but even metal and ceramics don't deal perfectly with the passage of time. This seems like the kind of spell that rewards imaginative usage.
Undead Ward is slightly disingenuously named, as it only protects you against strength draining attacks. Very much the kind of specialist spell that only gets prepared when you know that's what you'll be facing today.
Contact the Dead is essentially the clerical speak with dead, only crap and evil, inflicting pain upon the spirit contacted and harmful backlash upon the caster. Torture doesn't work in the long run, and this is the kind of spell no-one would take if they knew about the alternative, which in the Realms should be all but the most uneducated spellcaster.
Lesion causes the victim to bleed profusely. In certain circumstances it could wind up doing more damage than fireball or lightning bolt, but most of the time in real adventuring situations it won't. Still, at least it's less likely to destroy their stuff in the process of killing them.
Spirit Attack, on the other hand, is much more powerful than the similar higher level spell Nightmare, as it has a decent chance of permanently draining the victim's Wisdom. It looks like we're going to have quite a few balance issues in both directions with this collection.
Candle-Life allows a sick person to act normally for a few days, before dying for good. This can be used compassionately, if they want to do some important final task, or by scammers selling a cure and then moving on before the consequences arrive. Gee, which do you think is more common in this context?
Drain Vitality is another nasty one that permanently drains someone else to give you a temporary ability score bonus. Eat the rich. How glamorous. The greatest possible long-term benefit is if you then use the drained points in creating magic items. Just tell yourself they were going to die anyway. It'll all be dust apart from what you create.
Suspended animation is your basic sleeping beauty effect, if not quite as long lasting. Not as good as the version in issue 221.
Age affects living creatures, although not as well as the much lower spell affects objects. Such is the joy of actually having decent resistances to magic. Of course, one ghost touch'll do as much as half a dozen castings of this, so it's not really that impressive. Some things just come so much easier to the real monsters, try as a wizard might.
Preserve Youth is yet another spell that permanently drains another to temporarily keep you going. They're building up quite the selection of those, aren't they. Hope they have somewhere suitably capacious to hide the bodies.
Summon Ghost is pretty self-explanatory. Watch out, because if they get loose, you know how much even a single hit'll hurt you. Maybe you should stick to elementals, as they don't tend to hold grudges as much.
Transplant is another permanent spell, letting you nick body parts from someone else to replace your own. As in reality, rejection is a bitch. So this isn't quite as evil as the others, but it'll still wind up killing you if overused.
Revenant lets you trap someone's heart, making them temporarily undead, nearly indestructible, but vulnerable to whoever owns it. Similar to the Al-Qadim heart removal spell on steroids with a more gruesome slant, and another case where I'm not sure how well it balances with the previous version.
Summon Night Hag is another one that'll turn on you if you let your guard down for a second. Honestly, given how greedy and vindictive they are, this seems like a losing game even if you don't mess up and pay their price. Two sacrifices before you even get down to business? I'll hold out for a pit fiend who you know'll stick to the letter of their bargain.
Final Struggle takes the stealing theme of this article to it's logical conclusion, with a contingency effect that lets them take over the body of someone else permanently when they die. Well, they've certainly had a strong agenda and stuck to it, even if many of the spells aren't something sensible PC's would want even if they were evil. Overall, I think I'll give a positive result to this article, even if I have misgivings about many of the individual entries.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 4/8
101 Hauntings: Ahh, so we've finally got an article able to give us a full 101 ideas on this topic, after issue 186 gave us a mere 50. I knew it was possible. Of course, the fact it's not all castles this time round helps them come up with a wider range of ideas. The length of ideas is also about the same or slightly larger this time around, which is quite interesting, and makes this feel quite close to a special feature. However, there is a lot less mechanical help this time around, instead concentrating purely on the setting details and histories behind the hauntings. Overall, both are entirely valid and don't repeat each other much, and there are more illustrations this time as well, although they don't quite match up to the quality of the previous article's one. So I think this one wins via sheer quantity, but the previous one was pretty good too. I suppose that just means I have more choice should I need a haunting in the future.
Home Sweet Headquarters: We skip having an Alternity article this month, and instead go for a Marvel Superheroes one. As it's brand new, and has the potential to sell well, they obviously want to make sure everyone's aware of it. Exactly how much coverage they'll give it, and if they'll alternate between the two, or we'll get the pleasure of multiple non D&D articles again, we shall have to see. This seems designed to ease us in rather than starting off with a bang, with a short article that's 3/4's pure description, before introducing us to a bit of statistics for the system. And while constructing a lair may be slightly different, you can apply some of this advice to your fantasy campaigns as well, particularly if you have the kind of villain who goes for carving a mountain into the shape of a skull and calling that their "secret" lair. After all, a good setpiece doesn't go amiss in all but the grittiest of games. Of course, since these are the official character's headquarters, I have a suspicion players will seriously struggle to create hideouts with the same degree of awesomeness on a budget, but that's usually the case in licensed games where they never let you overshadow the official characters. Still, they do seem to support the more spectacular possibilities in terms of location and capabilities. You'll just need to work up to the really big stuff. So this does leave me not entirely satisfied, but definitely interested in learning more. The original Marvel-Phile got caught up in endless filling in of minor characters at the expense of actually improving your game. Will they go the same way this time?
Fiction: Mathers blood by R A Salvadore. Oh, you've finally found time to squeeze out a bit of extra short fiction on top of the novels again. It's been a while. (Issue 152) And while there's plenty of fast-paced action here as usual, there's also quite a bit of poignancy, as he examines the problems of aging as an adventurer, when many of your companions are of different races and developing in different ways and speeds to you, and the value of blood vs adopted family. And he actually gets to kill off the protagonist at the end, which I'm sure he's wished he could do to Drizzt a few times. So this feels like a bit of light relief for him, while also having a definite serious side and moral to it. Being an adventurer isn't all guilt-free slaughtering and enjoying your loot. If you go on for any length of time you'll develop real relationships with your companions, and be choked up when they die or leave. (and if it's done right, it could happen within a 22 minute cartoon. :D ) If you can manage that within a 7 page short story, you're probably doing something right.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 5/8
Dragon's bestiary: Hmm. A rather curious halloween present from this department, as they choose to convert monsters from the works of M. R. James. He might not be as famous as H. P. Lovecraft, but it seems he created his share of monsters to scare the reader with. This could well provide us with some unmined ideas for a game.
Demonic sawflys can grow to human size, and then shrink back to regular insect dimensions. That's actually pretty creepy, when you consider how often bugs get into your house and have to be swatted. You really wouldn't want to wake up with one of those in your bedroom in the dark.
Living hair is a bit silly, but constructs can be made of nearly any material, after all. And being able to fit through tiny gaps does have it's advantages over big clunky golems. Once again, the horror seems to be derived from the corruption of the everyday into something unsettling.
Web-spectres are from the same wellspring as Worms that Walk, albeit rather less gross. Still, just like them, being able to discorporate and reform as long as even a tiny amount of your body survives is a very useful ability, so you can see why wizards would want to become a creature made of nothing but cobwebs. And it seems the transformation is available to relatively low level characters, so it's not a bad one to dangle before your players.
Death linen removes any doubt that there is a comic element in these particular writings of the macabre. Smothered by your own pillow. How's that for a humiliating way to go? You'll have to be a good storyteller to keep your players from laughing at this particular problem.
Wyrms of the north: Ed once again skews his examinations towards the ancient dragons who have attained obscene power, and found ways to extend their lifespan even beyond the thousand+ years allotted them. However, this is one of the experimental life-extension methods that hasn't worked perfectly, making it's recipient somewhat fragile and only suspending his ageing when he's in an insubstantial form. Still, he makes the most of the whole invisible thing to be a subtle protector and follow the lives of a small community and generally make it better. Which is a theme we've seen before here, and seems to be a common one amongst immortals. Vampires may become jaded and monstrous as the centuries go by, but that's a problem with their situation and appetites in particular, rather than an inherent one with immortality. So this once again shows that while Ed may be repeating ideas, and probably ought to move onto something new, immortality as a goal is a viable one, and it's not as if you'd run out of things to do once you had it. You just have to move your attention onto longer term ones that would be impossible and foolish to even consider before. And I think I know a little something about impossible and foolish goals by now.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More Horror stuff here. In fact, we have one of our most Halloween specific articles ever. Magical Jack-O-Lanterns? Why has no-one thought of that before?! Genius. It's not even that much of a stretch given their origins in real world folklore, frightening off evil spirits. And as we've found over the years, if there's anything you can do in reality, you can do it magically in D&D.
Your basic magical Jack-o-lantern acts as a protection from evil spell and repels mindless undead. Keep it well preserved for next year, as they are quite expensive.
Jovial Lanterns make everyone around their glow want to party! Woo. Get the keggers! ( But hold the Cheggers, thank you very much)
Bursting Lanterns explode when you go near them. Some people will find this hil-arious. Course, 3d6 damage may be piddling to high level characters, but it'll blow marauding goblinoids to pieces.
Fright Lanterns scare nearly anything away. Stay inside when these are lit, so they only scare away the monsters.
Wailing Lanterns make everyone who listens to them depressed and paranoid. Couldn't you just put the Smiths on instead? As usual, there's a better nonmagical solution. :p
Talking Lanterns give magic mouths a much more expressive face. Oh, the fun you can have with this one. It's pranking time.
Lantern Tallow lasts longer, maybe even up to a month without needing replacing. Shame you can't just plonk a continual light inside the pumpkin and leave it. Sticking to flavour can be a pain sometimes. But still, overall, this has been a damn cool collection, and not vastly bloated like far too many recent articles.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 6/8
Nodwick makes a second appearance. And then dies again. Hodey hum.
PC Portraits: Our 14 little pictures this month are in theme, portraying adventurers that might want to investigate ghosts and other undead. This means there's a surfeit of individuals that either look haunted or shifty. More moisturiser, less eyeliner! :p Still, do you want your adventurers paying more attention to their grooming than their combat effectiveness? And at least we're pretty chesecake free this time round.
Arcane Lore continues to cast it's net a little wider, this time heading off to Ravenloft. Another one fitting for the time of year. I guess they still have no shortage of those kinds of submissions, with White Wolf still nipping at their heels. Hopefully that'll mean the quality stays good.
The book of the Requiem is developed by Azalin's lackeys to tie in with his recent metaplot attempts to escape the dark demiplane. It has plenty of spells he knows, and three new ones he obviously can't. Mind control via blood, buffing via blood, which can be reversed at the caster's whim to ensure obedience, and a priest spell to harvest life force from worshippers for the big rituals that he's plotting. All seems to slot into established history fairly neatly.
The Tome of the Shackled Mind is a nasty little book of mind-control effects from Dementlieu. As with far too many magical tomes like this, it has it's own agenda, and will control you as much as you control others. Its two new spells are both evil variants on standard mind control, making people fuck up their lives with desire and paranoia, hopefully to your benefit.
The Revelations of the Prince of Twilight is a clerical book, produced by a maddened monk. It's another trap, that'll wind up with you getting soul-swapped with an eldrich monstrosity from who knows where. You really don't want that. So all of these are pretty inventive, but none are really player-suitable. Oh, the dilemma. Have fun with your villainous experiences.
The ecology of the ghoul: Welcome to the kingdom of the ghouls. You thought that we were merely filthy scavengers, haunting graveyards, feasting on corpses, and not afraid to make a few more corpses should you stray into the wrong area at night. You were oh so very wrong. Heavily inspired by the works of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, Wolfgang Baur gives us a lengthy and atmospheric ecology that takes a familiar monster, and makes it into oh so much more. If you follow the right rituals, you too can join the ranks of unhallowed dead with your mind intact. Oh, the forbidden things you can learn if you do! Oh, the fun we shall have, singing blasphemous chants to dead gods, and dancing for days on legs that feel no fatigue. Let me still your flesh. Let me free your mind from petty mortal concerns. Let us taste the delicious brains of those who would not understand together. Yeah, this is good stuff, if not quite as cool as the similar treatment of aboleths in issue 131. This stuff may be a bit cliche, but that's because it works. One of the big hooks about the undead is the omnipresent danger that you too can become the monster, all too easily. And once you do, the things that they do won't seem so bad, somehow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 7/8
Dragonmirth covers many different eras this time, from nearly modern to primordial.
Roleplaying reviews: This column comes to an end with a nostalgia trip, fittingly enough. The new owners of AD&D seem a lot more interested in looking back and exploiting nostalgia than the last ones, partly because they aren't embroiled in feuds with the original writers of those books, and partly because they want to do what they know worked before. If they can get back some people who haven't bought a D&D product in years, (and hopefully keep them for a while) then their efforts were not in vain.
The Villains Lorebook is essentially an extended Rogues Gallery, giving us lots of stats for characters from Forgotten Realms novels. Lots of these are illegal, and many of them still feel sketchy despite having whole novels devoted to them. The artwork is inaccurate and frequently recycled. It's all rather unsatisfying, and feels cheap. That's cash-ins for you.
Return to the tomb of horrors is more sophisticated. It tries to replicate the tone of the original in some ways, but is still noticeably fairer in it's challenges than the old school meat-grinder. If your players are high enough level to survive the challenges here, it could well last you a few months, and the illustrations can genuinely make the puzzles more interesting for the players. I think you can get through more than a few muahahas running this one.
Greyhawk players guide and Greyhawk: The adventure begins get a joint review, as they're both essential for a DM who wants to use the updated Greyhawk setting. There is quite a bit of repeated information between them though, and things have become increasingly tied into the central metaplot and iconic characters, which of course have been issues for the forgotten realms and dragonlance, and makes it trickier for new characters to get off the ground and feel they can make an impact. Still, it's cohesive, interesting, and has plenty of adventure seeds buried in it. What they really need now is a few really good adventures to match up to the old ones that made this world's reputation in the first place.
The Dungeon builders guidebook updates and builds upon the idea of dungeon geomorphs, adding in advice on how to build dungeons and put monsters and traps in them to create an interesting, but not too brutal challenge. Again, it gets a solid but not exceptional mark, showing that while useful, this nostalgia trip isn't really setting his world alight.
We also get a brief review of Usagi Yojimbo and the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana to see us out. As with the book column, and the computer game ones ending, there's no mention of the fact that this is going to be the last one within the article, suggesting it was a fairly abrupt cancellation imposed from above. That does make me curious what political stuff is going on in their offices at the moment. It can't be easy, and seniority conflicts between the WotC people, and the TSR people who might have been working in gaming longer, but are now off-balance due to the company failure and moving across the country en masse could feel weird. Who was responsible for this particular change in editorial direction?
KotDT gets into the roleplaying for a change. Players are a pain in the ass.
Dragon Magazine Issue 252: October 1998
part 8/8
Previews gets it's TSR back, and stops covering stuff by other companies again. That didn't last long. And seems rather stupid. Let it die, folks. You don't need that company name anymore. Wonder why they did this.
Anyway, back to this month's releases. Our trilogy of Illithid adventures draws to a close with Dawn of the Overmind. That sounds pretty ominous. I hope you've stocked up on your mind protecting items.
The Realms doubles up as usual. Our gaming product is a book on Calimport, and our novel is a new on by R.A Salavadore, The Silent Blade. Drizzt, Entreri, Wulfgar, and all that crew continue to service the fans in fairly familiar environments.
Dragonlance returns to AD&D, sorta. Seeds of Chaos is a dual-statted book covering the chaos wars from a gaming perspective. Because if any era is hostile to PC's, its one that makes half the classes suddenly useless. Looks like the 5th ages' days are numbered as well, as the sidebar hints at the next series of cataclysms to take place there. People barely had a chance to get over the last one. Give them a little time to catch their breath. They also continue to cover the chaos wars in the novels, with Tears of the Night Sky by Linda P. Barker and Nancy Varian Berberick. Nonlinear timelining makes for many headaches.
Greyhawk opens up another lost tomb, the Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad. Another attempt to combine old skool meatgrinder with a little modern plotting.
Planescape fucks it all up with Faction War. They just had to screw this setting up before cancelling it as well. Bastards. Hiss spit growl.
The Odyssey line also draws to a close with Jakandor: Land of Legend. Will they get a remotely satisfying ending? Well, I guess it's up to the players in your game.
Alternity also gets a supplement and a novel. The last Warhulk sounds rather 40k'ish, but the description makes it seem rather more interesting than that. Starise at Corrivale by Diane Duane, on the other hand, seems a pretty standard bit of intrigue. Isn't she a regular star trek fiction writer. Hmm.
Profiles: In another case of topicality in here, R.A. Salvadore is available to be this month's interviewee. While he puts as much effort into his work as most of our writers, his biggest success stems from a moment of mad inspiration while under pressure. Funny how that works. He dreams of creating his own world which eclipses his Forgotten Realms success, but really, it's not going to happen. People don't really want originality, they want regular fixes of junk food. So you'd better keep doing that hackwork if you want to eat. Muahahahaha!
Another issue with excellent articles overall, but the sense that they're closing in on themselves continues, with the reviews finally ending, and the brief experiment with covering the release schedules of other RPG companies abandoned. They are covering slightly more non D&D RPG'ing than they have the last couple of years, but it's still all WotC material. So I guess this is where they give up the last few pretences of not being purely a house organ. Now all that's left is for them to concentrate on being the best house organ they possibly can. The year draws to a close, and the old projects still in development when WotC took over are pretty much out now. Time for them to really work on the complete makeover they'll give both the game and the magazine soon. The power is in their hands, and they're going to apply it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Hmm. This is a nice cover. Certainly a good bit of light relief compared to the more blatant supernatural covers. It is a bit cheescakey, mind, but they've done worse (issue 114, for example) The theme this month is another look at magic, magic items in particular. Well, I suppose we've got to have something to beat the new undead they introduce every year. The arms race continues. Will the players or the DM benefit most from this issue? Guess we'll have to carry on and see.
Scan quality: Excellent colour, but no indexing. A few slightly angled pages.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Having finally got rid of book and RPG reviews, it seems a great irony that they're now thinking of starting up a minis column again. Swings and roundabouts. But I suppose they will push playing with minis more in the next edition. I wouldn't be surprised if the people responsible for that decision are already working here. So this editorial is devoted to selling readers on the idea, and asking them what they want in it. Well, this is interesting. Since I was never particularly interested in minis, it's not as welcome as the gaming reviews, but it certainly adds a bit of variety and gives me something to think about. And if there's a place they should be announcing changes to the magazine, this is it. At least they're not trying to work jokes in the whole time.
D-Mail: We start off with some praise for Ed Greenwood, and the other old greats of the company. He's stuck with the magazine through thick and thin. The others should come back too! I think many of them are earning way more working for computer game companies. And TSR did get rather stressful near the end. They may well be happier where they are.
A letter pointing out that Thulsa doom IS an original R.E.H character, but from a Kull story rather than Conan. That's egg on Justin Bacon's face. :)
Another letter, this time pointing out that while some characters have been through so many hands it's hard to say which is the right interpretation, this does not apply when the first author is still fully known and in print. Well, maybe in the case of comic books, but those were always collaborative anyway, with the artist as important as the writer in building the character.
A letter criticising Dave Gross's editorial from issue 248. He stands by his basic point though. Fun is crucial for a game. Everything else is not. Therefore it has to be the first priority. Worry too much about everything else and you'll suck out the primary reason for doing this in the first place.
A request for a bit less crunch, more general roleplaying advice. I think at this stage, they have trouble providing either without repeating themselves. But there's more different bits of crunch they can add to the game, so that's why things have slanted towards that as time went on. The stuff in the old magazines is still perfectly valid.
A letter full of ideas for who might play the Dragonlance characters in a movie. Most of them are a bit old for that now. The passage of time sucks. Mind you, we did get a Dragonlance movie in the end. And that sucked too. Sucking all round! There's plenty for everyone, and that doesn't suck!
A letter praising their artwork in recent issues, and in particular that of Rebecca Guay. They already have repeat commissions from her, rest assured. This is one area they don't intend to skimp upon.
And finally, yet another letter that asks about submissions procedure. They're more email friendly than they used to be, but they still want the damn SASE's for the manuscript itself. It's just the way they still roll, despite adding days to revision times.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 2/8
Nodwick becomes trap fodder again.
Forum:Greg Hill wants story based xp rather than killing things and taking their stuff based, like so many other games. Apart from that, his tastes are pretty old skool. The basic 4 classes and 1e style psionics and he's happy.
Patrick Seymour wants to change D&D so it's primarily a game, rather than a simulation of reality. All that historical accuracy griping is one of the biggest sources of slowdown. Another idea you'll have to wait a second edition change to see fully implemented.
Gary Sturgess doesn't want ability scores starting low, or advancing as you gain levels. PC's should be heroic right from the start and stay that way. And level drains should be largely temporary. Most things in the game, however, don't need changing.
Ben Wray defends the idea of moving quite a few Alterations elsewhere. Wish, on the other hand should possibly be moved INTO there, particularly if you take the monkey's paw interpretation of it's methods. How do you want to play that?
Sage advice: How does boosting your scores from magical books work. (You snooze, you lose. They vanish as soon as you've read them, so you'd better find the time to practice what they preached pretty sharpish, before you forget. )
Are undead immune to normal invisibility. If not, why have their own version. (No. Sometimes you want ordinary people to see you, but not the monsters. Surely you can see the use in that. )
Can you be raised after being power word killed. (Skip says yes! Yes, Skip knows Jean said no, but that was over a decade and edition ago. Skip is his own sage, and can do what Skip likes again. )
Does silence defeat power words (only if the caster is within it's area. If they're not, and you are, you're only disadvantaging yourself)
How many arrows can you fit in a quiver (20. No more. It is the law, and the quiver unions will complain if you try and get them to build a bigger one)
How many arrows can you make in a day (1d6. Not the most reliable and well-paying job for a young man to take)
How many knives fit in a bandolier (never enough. )
Do wizards have to take reading/writing or not? (Oh, Bloody 'ell, not this one again. Orl roight. Let's run through this one more toime. Ye don't have to know regular writing to understand magical script, or vice versa. Y'get me? )
What saves does the rod of seven parts have (Metal. It's well 'ard mate. )
What are the thieving modifiers for dragonskin armour (same as for any other type of scale mail. What need have I for your "logic")
Does mordenkainen's lucubrication work the way I think it does (no)
Can you dispel selectively in an area (no)
I get weird results by messing with Skills & Powers (Oh, what a surprise. Any customizable system can be broken. Anyway, I thought you rules lawyers liked doing things like that. )
If a wizard loses their spellbook, can they copy ones they already know into it (no. They're far too complicated for that. You've gotta find the damn things all over again. )
Why can't elves be priests of mystara? (ZOMG Racism! LOL!)
Can a giant eagle wear a magic ring on it's talons. (No. That's like trying to get around the 2 rings limit by wearing them on your toes)
What happens if you try and charm a mirror imaged person. (Skip will provide you with options. You pick one, any one. Ha ha. Wrong one.)
How many charges do charged rings have (How long's a piece of string after someone's cut several bits off it.)
How long does it take to build a castle with a rod of building (Work it out as if it was a solid cube. It's easier that way.)
Does vortex affect undead and golems (Undead, yes, Golems shrug it off like they do everything else)
Can you shoot melee enemies (only if you want to be attack of opportunity central. Skip likes attacks of opportunities, and will do Skip's best to ensure they become non-optional next edition)
How do I find stuff within a bag of holding quickly (Good question. Skip recommends you get the deluxe edition. That'll solve those problems.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 3/8
Spontaneous enchantments: Magical items developing not through wizards enchanting them, but by doing cool stuff with them over an extended period. That is a good idea. Wait a minute, my rehash sense is tingling. Let's have a look. Thought so! Issue 226, less than 3 years ago. That's not a suitable gap in my book. It's less crunchy than the previous one as well, which gave a properly codified system for player actions to enhance their items and become legendary. However, it is longer, and details a wider variety of methods, which all seem appropriate from a story point of view. And the artwork is superior this time around. So from a system guy's point of view, this article is inferior because it's vaguer, but if you're looking from a Storyteller PoV, it's superior, giving you a wider range of tools to tell a story the way you like it. Overall, it obviously doesn't have the impact it did first time around, but it's still a good idea well presented. So they just about get away with this one. But a third time will make me vewy vewy cwoss. :)
Random magical weapon generator: Sniff sniff. Is my rehash sense still going off? Shurely shome mishtake? Aww. sonofabich. Issue 57 already did it. Guess I get to do the compare and contrast thing two articles in a row. And hmm. I think that once again this issue manages to do it in greater detail and quality than the previous one, which was only a single pager, where this is 6. They also have slightly different focuses which means they don't step on each other's toes much anyway. Plus this one has examples that show what can come out of it, which is another plus. Once again, there are benefits to experience, and Greg Detwiler is certainly a pretty experienced writer. The 2e era may have dragged on a bit longer than it should have, but that means there is some highly polished stuff in amongst the repetition that'll be very good in actual play.
A treasure trove of tomes: We've had tons of magical books for the Realms, and Greyhawk has been trying to play catch-up. Now they try to play catch-up in the nonmagical books department as well. And don't do too badly, with 20 books packed with plot hooks and minor mechanical benefits for owning them. This is full of the kind of detail canon obsessives can have a field day with, with tons of specific dates, places and people mentioned. This is one of those cases where I don't feel quite qualified to make a judgement on their consistency with established lore, or if they get used again later, but they do make quite entertaining reading, and aren't particularly overpowering. They should probably work fine in actual play.
Working class wizards: Wizards doing mundane jobs with their magic seems to be another familiar topic, although this is more driven by the forums than the official writers. As I've said before, this is one area where being a specialist will let you earn more money, for you get to do more per day, and get a reputation for doing something in particular, instead of promising the world to people and leaving them disappointed when you can't perform miracles in any field they ask. The good thing about this article is that it picks careers that have possibilities for adventuring life, such as spy, messenger and police officer. That way, as long as the DM makes sure that the missions you face are interesting, you have a ready supply of plots to give the group direction, and they may well have to kill enemies and take their stuff in the process. There are more ways to tie adventurers into larger society and still keep their lives eventful than one. Of course, it's even easier for clerics, with gods for everything, and more emphasis on utility spells. But they aren't as glamorous, so they don't get as much attention. Oh well. That may or may not be a story for another time.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 4/8
With a twist: Avoiding monoculture with nonhuman races is one thing we've talked about quite a few times over the course of this journey. Well, now we have random tables for that too! Sometimes I love doing this. This is both useful and amusing. Not too surprised to find out it's another one from the pen of James Wyatt, who continues to come up with interesting takes on niche topics. Some of them are fairly extreme, going well beyond any real world cultural variations to the point of whole subraces. But I guess that's nothing new, especially for elves with their tendency to splinter at the drop of a terrain. You try to compensate for a problem, and you can wind up overcompensating. Still, his contributions remain a lot more interesting than the average writer. I can see why he's getting plenty of repeat work from them.
Sufficiently advanced magic: Or putting AD&D elements in Alternity. Well, they're doing another racial conversion the other way just a little later in the issue, so why not. Actually, it turns out my first impression is disingenuous, as the talk about AD&D magic is restricted to a sidebar, and it's mostly about even more advanced technology than the default setting details. Since all of these are well known from other stories, this seems to be a pretty arbitrary distinction, but I suppose the distinction between magic and technology can be, especially when psionics essentially is magic with a veneer of technobabble. So really, I'm left pretty underwhelmed by this article. The statistics of the two systems are close enough that converting stuff between them isn't hard. And it doesn't introduce new ideas or mechanical tricks. Really, it's just a bit of filler that only got through because they're trying to give consistent coverage to their new system.
Fiction: Guardian of the barrow by Nancy Varian Berberick. We had one Beowulf story fairly recently in issue 236. Here's another quite different one. Set in his twilight years when the dragon showed up, it's a rather floridly written piece that reminds us that life goes on when one person's story is over. The dragon may be slain, Beowulf may have fallen as well, but a new person has to take over the role of king, and figure out what to do with the unstable political situation and the dragon's treasure. (I think one will wind up solving the other, one way or another. ) So it occupies an uncomfortable middle between trying to pay homage to the style of the original poetry, and present a more realistic view of things, not quite succeeding at either. The fiction department may have more hits than misses, but this isn't one of them.
Planar sites design contest. Looks like they're really racking up the number of competitions. What's this in aid of?
AD&D game aliens: Here we get the AD&D conversion for the Fraal, aka the Alternity system's take on Gray aliens. Frail physically, but with tremendous mental abilities, they have unlimited advancement as psionicists, (if they can make the Con minimum) but pretty limited class abilities otherwise. Still, even the ordinary individuals among their race have substantial Wild Talents, and other bonuses to their mental powers, which they pretty much take for granted amongst their own race. This does lead to another big drawback, that of not dealing very well with being alone, but that's solvable by having more than one of them in the party. (which is a good idea anyway, given their skill at psychic synergies. ) So they're quite powerful in their own way, but their limitations mean they certainly won't take over the whole game, for a party still needs a rogue and a wizard. And they are relatively iconic for a new race. If you're playing a game which includes the odd sci-fi element like Barrier Peaks they'd fit right in.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 5/8
Wyrms of the north: In a world so full of powerful magic and active gods, it's easy for paranoia to set in. Dragons are certainly no stranger to this, as their great power and senses means they can be all too aware of those that exceed them. This is one of those cases. He's not one of those super twinked dragons or archmages that's become immortal and practically invulnerable, but he'd very much like to be. After so many of the real thing, it's amusing to meet a wannabe who tries hard, but hasn't really pulled it off yet. So this shows he's aware of his excesses in the past and if not apologising for them, is able to poke fun at them. Racking up the contingencies is something so many of his characters do, and it's no surprise that not everyone would be perfect at it, and they'd still feel unsafe after doing all they can. So this fills out the slightly lower tier of the world nicely. Surely there are enough people at the top now? At least until a few of them get killed in big metaplot events. :p
Arcane lore: A special for diviners? About frigging time! Each element has got at least one, often several themed issues, while this school remains neglected. It's no wonder they get the best deal in terms of restricted schools. It has plenty of potential, but not enough people are exploiting it. Oh well, this is a decent length and density, skipping the lengthy histories of who and why to just get into the useful crunch. Plenty of stuff here to help keep your diviner competitive and more informed than anyone else.
Detect Mineral helps you become a very profitable dowser. It'd work better if it had a longer range though. Sometimes the really good stuff is miles underground. Can't expect the world from 1st level spells.
Know Intelligence, like detect magic or evil, is one of those low level divinations that reveals a fairly limited bit of info, that you can nevertheless get plenty of use out of if you apply your own analytical skills.
Serpentine Sight helps you penetrate cover, seeing slightly around walls. Interesting. Cast on your warrior and they'll really benefit in a trench based battle.
Envision Whole lets you figure out what a broken object was. Again, reconstructing it will take higher level magic.
Insight boosts your intelligence temporarily in the same way Strength boosts your strength. Another case where I say roll on next edition, where this stuff'll be standardised and applied to all your scores equally.
Time Sense gives you a perfect internal clock. I'm sure I've seen a better variant on this with a decent duration before, so I shall yawn at this one.
Forecast Usefulness helps you figure out what spells you'll need next day. Genius. This is only as infallible as the GM's ability to predict what the players will do and encounter of course, so play nice, will you.
Know Command Word is a relatively quick and specific item identification trick that'll let you pluck an item from a hoard, and turn it against it's owner in a couple of rounds. One of those ones that could well become a staple of the cautious wizard, especially since the full identify is so expensive.
Locate Wizard Mark lets you tell where every instance of your personal sigil is. This isn't too earth-shattering on it's own, but you can bet Elminster and co can find some incredibly obscene uses for it along with other divination and sympathetic magics. Lets pull those Xanatos Gambits folks!
Teleport Track is another of the Elminster favourites. Foil those escaping fiends and make them think twice about underestimating a foolish mortal. Diviners really are the kings of antiscrewage, and they ought to get more credit for that alone.
See Backward lets you rewind and find out what happened in a place. Another no problemo plot solver for the DM to work around cleverly.
Clairsentience gives you remote sight, sound and smell, in one handy package. That's much easier than stocking up on spells for all the senses.
Reverse Scrying is yet another familiar Wizards Three favourite. Who could this be that is researching me? Perhaps I should terminally douse their curiosity.
Speak with water is another information gatherer that'll work just fine, albeit with slightly quirky focus. Yawn.
Candle of Revelation is a longlasting, multipurpose portable divination device. A whole bunch of the basics in one go. Some wizards do get lazy at higher levels.
Well of Wisdom gives you superhuman wisdom for a very short time. It's material component is a bit of a bugger to get though. This'll take quite a bit of work to take advantage of, and carry serious risks along the way. Not everyone can be Solomon.
Speak with Distant Dead lets you summon spirits without their bodies. This is surprisingly tricky and unreliable in D&D. I suppose there are worse metaphysical quirks to have to work around.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magical Charms are this month's theme. Whimsical stuff for the wearing, that'll help you through life's trials and tribulations. As is often the case these days, they include some amusing fiction at the start. It's all quite encouraging.
Gabriella's Cameo of Countenances shows the profile of anyone named, giving you a definite help identifying them. It's not unfoilable, but what is in this world.
The Locket of the Grandmother lets you talk to a deceased relative daily. Exactly how pleased they'll be about endlessly being bugged in the afterlife is not made clear. :p Guess that's up to how you roleplay it.
Eve's Bestiary Bracelet is an 8-pack of awesome animal based tricks. Like Quaal's feather tokens, each of these individually would be a perfectly valid bit of treasure. Together, it'll get you out of a whole novel's worth of jams, and permanently change your character beyond that. A truly mythic item.
Doublets of the Doppleganger let you create a duplicate, albeit a rather weedy one, to serve as a distraction or servant. We've seen better variants of this in the past.
Trousers of Timely Change always have just enough money for you help people out. Kinda takes the sacrifice part out of charity, making it a no-brainer. Still, the designer probably hoped it'd rub off on the wearer so they do it anyway after a while.
Mama's Hankie makes it all better when rubbed on a boo-boo. Just make sure you wash all that nasty mess off carefully afterwards.
Mama's Purse is a bag of holding with a slightly comical edge. What junk will you unearth as you try and get the right thing out of it's depths. Who wanted to store a stuffed giraffe in there anyway?
Irene's Mystical Ballgown makes you into a great dancer. The illustration goes straight for comedy. I hope that isn't Mordenkainen there.
Fans of Sweet Airs can cure disease for an entire community. This has it's cost to recharge, and it's quite a high one. One life for thousands, are you willing to make that oh so cliched sacrifice.
Shawls of Aging make you look decrepit, or even more so if you already are. Aka the snow white gambit. No-one suspects the sweet old lady. Which evil laugh shall I do this time? Kekekekekekeke!
Canes of Safe Passage also seem designed to facilitate the untouchability of the elderly. Any tricks you try may well be turned against you, possibly while faking obliviousness.
The Parasol of the Night Fiend lets monsters that are vulnerable to sunlight go out in the day by using it as shade. Depending on their appearance, this may look at bit incongruous. They do love their whimsy around here.
Gloves of the Butler animate and function like a particularly intelligent unseen servant, only visible. Another one with an obvious TV source.
Chaps of Riding are another basic proficiency score adder. No great surprises here.
Buttons of Repast turn into full meals when removed from your clothing. A good emergency one for if you suspect you'll be captured. After all, how often do they check your buttons? Just hope they don't completely strip you as a response.
The Left Shoe is an incredibly stupid cursed magic item. Unless you have two left feet, this is going to be rather uncomfortable. Not sure if that cycles round through idiocy and back to genius again, but it definitely works as a pain in the butt.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 7/8
Dungeon mastery: How should you begin every session? With a monologue! That's the lesson in this month's DM'ing column. Ahh, joy. That's a classic one from the storygaming school that has the potential for much parody. If you don't have enough charisma IRL, the players will ignore you and chatter or fiddle around with their electronic gadgets. And if you ham it up too much, you'll fail to get immersion as well, and open yourself up to parody. So this is a rather entertaining article because it's different, and oh so very of it's time. If your group likes the amateur dramatics side of roleplaying it could work quite well, but if they just want to move pieces around and kill stuff, it'll be a waste of time. If it works, you can even add epilogues as well, although you might find it harder to script those in advance, unless your story is pretty heavily railroaded. I guess you'll have to work on your improvisation skills as well if you want to be a great DM, and then make it seem like it was part of the plan all along. So yeah, I've used this technique before anyway, to mixed success. Try it, but don't be too surprised if it doesn't always work for you.
Dragonmirth has lots and lots of beefcake.
PC Portraits is in theme as well, with a good 14 Enchanters of various age, sex, race and gender. And honesty for that matter. I wouldn't buy a potion from half of them, especially if they were selling it from a little shop I'd never seen before despite walking past it every day. It'd be much preferable to live in a world where magic is common enough to be regulated, really.
KotDT has another attempt at switching the roles around. Guess The DM is the DM because he's the least bad at it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998
part 8/8
TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms enjoys another variant splatbook. Demihuman Deities gives you yet more gods to be speciality priests of, with all the cool power options that entails. On the novel side, Troy Denning returns after his lengthy sojourn in Athas with Faces of Deception. He adventures in the Utter east (which is of course, actually to the west of the things he was making involving the Horde back in 1991.) Sounds like it could be fun.
Dragonlance continues to fill in the gap between the original adventures and 5th age. Legacy of Steel by Mary H. Herbert sees an attempt to found a new knightly order that isn't batshit insane or with a stick up it's arse, that actually helps ordinary people. Tough order, really.
Greyhawk really brings the irony to it's lost tombs series, with The Doomgrinder. It makes more sense when they reveal it's a giant evil windmill. Now that sounds like a fun bit of adventuring.
Ravenloft goes back to another classic, with Children of the night: Werebeasts. An anthology of short adventures, you know how these things go by now.
Alternity gets The Lighthouse. Your typical inn on the borderlands where you can rest up and find clues to adventure, only Iiiin Spaaace! Once again we see how closely they're sticking to the D&D product model with this line.
Marvel super heroes enjoys a double bill featuring the Avengers. A Roster book full of stats, and Masters of Evil, an adventure anthology. Will you use the pregens for this one, or adapt it to your own ends?
Profiles: Jolly Blackburn is the writer and artist (by default, as he couldn't get anyone else to do that bit for him) of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic strip. Originating in Shadis magazine, it has since gone from strength to strength, and wound up moving to Dragon in issue 226. This is because despite being somewhat exaggerated and simplified in it's dysfunctionality, it is pretty true to life. So many people identify with it, and the people and scenarios, and frequently, they suggest storylines that he then uses. Ahh, the joys of observational humour. As long as you know how to shut up, listen, and remember what you take in, you will never want for material. Also, an excellent example that the production values of something are less important than the ideas and emotions contained within. Even if you don't have the resources to do something properly, do the best you can, get it out there, and if the fundamental ideas are good, you'll pick up people to help along the way.
Another issue of fairly high quality articles, and slow development in the format of the magazine. It looks like after cutting away some stuff, and adding a few bits and pieces to replace them, they've reached approximately the form they'll keep until the edition change comes to shake things up again. They just have to struggle with the dread spectre of rehash, which is more prevalent than ever. Maybe introducing some new regular series would help with that, as the current ones are approaching saturation, apart from the ecologies. Maybe we'll see something coming next year. After all, it's the end of the millennium. All that apocalyptic tension has to go somewhere. But first, another christmas! I never get tired of those at least.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 1/8
123 pages (missing page 89) A giant who appears to be doing rather well for himself (if you look at the quality of his boots) deals with another valiant assailant on the cover. Inside, it looks like there are quite a few Giant-centric articles as well. That's a theme for an issue they haven't done before, and has a rich vein of legendry from around the world to tap for inspiration. Maybe they can give goblins their turn in the sun (which the goblins would hate) sometime soon. Perhaps, perhaps perhaps.
Scan quality: Excellent colour, missing one page, no index.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Looks like once again, the staff of the magazine have barely found time to play all year, and when they did, it was to playtest a new module. A pretty textbook example of turning something into your job spoiling the fun. And so when they do, they get a little silly, acting deliberately stupid in the name of roleplaying. So they're still a way away from insisting people should put being a team player over creating a character. Still a way from the present and more interested in storytelling than tactical play then. Well, that's vaguely interesting to see. So it's another editorial that shows what they preach in the articles isn't exactly what they do in actual play. Obviously they can't incorporate everything. But it would be nice if they were trying out some of the custom monsters and kits before sending them our way.
D-Mail: Two letters of general praise for issue 251. Once again it seems that for many of the people still reading, the magazine's the best it's ever been. Let's hope that continues to be the case.
A letter of specific praise for PC Portraits, that also points out that in the artwork department, the amount of rehash has actually gone down. If only I could say that for the articles they're supporting as well.
Some niggling about catapults, cannons, and other ancient weapons of mass destruction. Why is is always the mass combat rules that leave people unsatisfied. Do the designers not put the same effort into them, or is it just harder to get right?
A letter from someone who quit for a while, but has been lured back by the magazine. Nostalgia will tell, as long as you don't change things too much.
A letter niggling about evolution, and criticising the comics that they've already cancelled. It seems some people actively want less continuity in the magazine where I would prefer more. How are they to please both sides?
A letter which thinks they ought to catalog and republish their back issues for ease of reference. Oh, they have a better idea. They're going to put 250 issues on computer. So they probably started planning this immediately after, or even before they reached that landmark. Someone at the company really cares, even if their editors can't always find the time to check the back-catalogue to see if they've already done something.
And finally, a second letter of praise for PC Portraits, asking if it could be done in colour. They chose to do it in B&W so you could customise it yourself. Still it's good to see it get such a strong response. You can bet they'll keep this around for a good few years.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 2/8
Nodwick is getting rather compressed. Thankfully he has his hench snax to keep him going. Remember folks, chemical augmentation is Wrong.
Forum: Ben Stiles wants rules for knockback and other effects from spectacular hits. Fighting giants and dragons definitely shouldn't be a matter of just trading blows till someone dies.
Garett Kutcher is another person who wants to see achieving story goals be the primary method of gaining xp next edition. it makes it so much easier to control the PC's when you explicitly can define all the carrots and ignore everything else they do. No levels until you follow the plot!
Derek Groen defends the need to trim down the alteration school. You can justify nearly anything as an alteration, and far too many people have. I suspect overambitious transmuters in game. :p
Justin Bacon gives another lengthy contribution, as expected by someone who's been a regular forumite for ages. He wants to see D&D move towards the majority of systems, with point buy, skill progressions, and all that. The current system is still based off a 1974 kernel with lots of clunky add-on script, to use a computer analogy.
Matt Loey wants to get rid of alignment restrictions on classes, as they mostly cause trouble and arguments. It should be a purely internal matter, and based more on intentions than actions. See you when 4e comes around.
Sage advice: If you destroy your old body and the receptacle after magic jaring, does the new body count as your natural one (no. You're still a squatter, no matter what you do. You'll get your just deserts sooner or later. )
Can you get around spell caused aging and ability drain by casting it in someone else's body. (No. Fate does not smile on that kind of jackassery)
Is passive contact still a power (yes)
How much do you pay to make it permanent (nothing above the base cost)
How many people does it take to make the new kinds of armour (Follow the formulas. Skip wonders if people read the books sometimes)
What level is a wand of wonder's power when a wild mage controls it (6th, just like most wands )
Which of your items have to save when a fireball hits you. (use table 47)
I need more info on the staff of the python (Well, you say NI! to activate it, and feed it shrubbery to recharge it. And now for something completely different. )
You still haven't properly converted all the proficiencies from old supplements to Skills & Powers. (If skip did that, skip would be at it all year. It'd be even worse than giving tome of magic spheres to all the old gods)
Can detect magic locate an invisible enemy (Man, you people never learn, do you. This is like the 4th time you've asked that. )
Can a feebleminded character maintain psionic powers (no. )
Are all PC pixies middle aged (oh, errata, errata. What does it matter. It makes books fatter. Especially if it's fried and served in batter.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 3/8
The series of competitions extends itself to monsters this month.
PC Portraits: Our giant themed stuff starts off with some pictures of giant-killers. They have more than their fair share of scars, and weapons with range or reach would be a very good idea, but otherwise are the usual motley crew of adventuring sorts. After all, giants can generally move quite quickly, so they get around the world and bother people of any race. Dwarves just get lumped with the traditional enemy role because of the rule of opposites as much as anything. So these are fresh for extracting and repurposing. After all, in a dangerous world, you might prefer to fight a certain type of monster, but you can never be sure what you'll run into on the way.
The bigger they are: And so we continue with some specific examples of giant NPC's for your game. I expect we'll see more actual races later, but they generally keep the bestiary near the end now. This is well established with horror monsters, so why not do the same for giants. After all, they may not have the same tragedy in their origins, but they are basically just people writ large, so they can have the full range of human personalities and skills, only ........ bigger? :waves hand: Roll the characters.
Armach is a hill giant thief. Not an obvious career choice, but you'd be surprised how stealthy you can be when there's plenty of tall buildings for cover, and he can climb like no-ones business with his long arms and firm grip. He can certainly play a valuable role in your oceans 11 heist team, even if he won't be the one coming up with the plans.
Tuall is a cloud giant architect who hires stone giants to help out with the gruntwork. Now that is a pretty obvious career choice, that allows a giant to make large amounts of money from smaller folk quickly. He's got a pretty sweet gig going, and he plays it by the book so as to keep a good reputation and get repeat customers. Course, he is a mercenary, so you still might find him on the opposing side. But what kind of players would kill the contractors for the evil overlord before they even finish building their base? That doesn't sound fair or fun to me.
Elhena is a storm giant hunter. She's also relatively nice, but if players are dumb enough to attack without trying to talk first, they'll be taken down without mercy, especially if they're shortarses. So once again these are characters designed to be put in positions where players will encounter them, and to be useful as both allies and enemies. Ideal DM fodder for the DM who doesn't have time to make his own.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 4/8
The harder they fall: And now it's the player's turn. We've had plenty of tactical advice for fighting dragons, along with new spells, items and kits to complement this. Actually, this is about 50/50 advice for the giants, and for people who want to fight them, thus keeping the arms race relatively equal. Still, with a good 5 pages on each, and some genuinely inventive tactics, this ought to keep you very busy indeed. The diagrams are helpful, there's plenty of scientific principles involved, and existing information from lots of giant types is tabulated for analysis and quick reference. So this is one that's both fun to read, and very helpful, whether you play D&D or not, as while specific stats may vary, many systems have some kind of giant monster, and basic things like tactical positioning will work anywhere. It's not just kobolds that should play it smart to win against the PC's. With tactics like this to punch above their weight, giants should remain viable opponents at any level. If it had come earlier in the magazine's lifespan, this could well have been hailed as a classic article. Hell, I think I shall go out on a limb and proclaim it so! After all, one of the reasons I started doing this was to dig up under appreciated gems, and I think this qualifies.
The measure of a monster: Here's another article that's very reminiscent of their october output. One about making singular monsters that are indeed very scary and monstrous. Making an existing thing really really big is an effective way of doing that, which ties neatly into the issue's theme, but that's certainly not the primary focus of the article. Really, what makes a monster monstrous is it's actions as much as it's appearance, which you can't say for things you just meet in dungeons and kill before you have a chance to find out anything about them, and certainly can't say for things that turn out to have societies pretty similar to humans, only on the opposing side. A truly terrifying monster also serves as a metaphor for some other issue, such as sexual violation for vampires, or disregard for the rules of hospitality in the case of Grendel. So if you want them to have a real impact, make them represent something with their appearance and actions. If that means scouring Debretts for an overlooked social protocol to violate, all the better. :p Once again, this is exactly the kind of alternate perspective that can help you put together a distinctive new adventure, that your players will talk about even after it's over.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 5/8
Are you Proficient?: I've expressed my dissatisfaction with both proficiency bloat and putting combat-related stuff in the nonweapon proficiency slots, thus encouraging you to create characters with no life skills but being a combat machine or fall behind other players. Well, this is one that does both of these, with dark sense and dirty fighting to make your character more hyperspecialised in kicking ass, and some seriously specific noncombat stuff like learning how to keep your food from spoiling as well. (which might come up more than you expect for adventurers, but still, who's going to take that?) Neither extremes seem particularly likely to improve your game. They try to fix this a little, by introducing broader skills as well, but since those cost 3 slots, you're unlikely to have more than one. I know I'm repeating myself, but this just gets more frustrating each time I'm confronted with it. Less than two years to go. Please don't let it go too slowly.
Life is the pits: After a bit of new stuff we return to a topic we've seen before, only done longer and with better illustrations. Pit traps! And since the last article on those was in issue 34, this definitely deserves revisiting. Comparing them, this once again shows that while a lot more verbose these days, they're actually less sadistic than they used to be, and more slanted towards catering to the new player. While that expected you were already familiar with the basics, and jumped straight to the really elaborate and sadistic stuff, this begins with the basics, and gradually ramps up the complexity, while never quite hitting the level of impossible to avoid doublethinking sadism the true old skool material managed. This makes me a little depressed, and wish I was reading the magazine backwards, so I got to see all those scrappy bits of esoterica last and could appreciate them differently. Maybe in another field, whatever I choose to take on once I finish this. So this isn't bad, and showcases very well how the magazine has improved in some ways, but got worse in others, and overall, is more competent than it used to be, but also duller. At least the degree of overlap is pretty minimal this time, so both sets of traps are useful in actual play.
Fiction: Arthur's final nom morn by J Robert King. For a second month in a row, we have someone following where Ben Bova has recently gone. And for a second time, we have an attempt to combine two different tones in a way that doesn't quite work, as we start off with tragedy, and then take an abrupt twist into whimsy. Mood whiplash, anyone? Normally it's the other way round, as things start simple and comedic, and then acquire attachments and pain as your life goes on before having everything ripped away from you. (just as in reality. ) So this sees rehash intrude into an area of the magazine that had previously been mercifully light of it. That's kinda annoying. Don't ruin another regular feature for me.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 6/8
Wyrms of the north: Ed revisits the idea of a dragon serving as a protector of a community this month. Only as a young adult crystal dragon amongst a community of dwarves, she's really no older than the people around her, and has yet to feel the tragedy of outliving her friends. She does have a few badass magical items, but her hoard isn't too huge (partly because she keeps eating stuff from it :p) So it's another case where they're not as badass as some of the entries, but gives them a few centuries and they might get there. And since they're reasonably friendly, but will put their community over a party causing trouble there, the PC's might get to be on either side of a conflict involving them. Plus there's more than a little setting detail on the dwarven community itself. So it's one that's pretty well tied into the larger history of the Realms. Dragons aren't just monsters to be killed, they actually make a big difference to the societies around them if they choose to interact with them. I'd love to go back and play join the dots with this info.
Dragon's bestiary: Another case of combining existing ideas from a regular writer this month. In this case, it's giants, undead, and Greg Detwiler. Another article that makes me beg desperately for the onset of templates so we don't have to put up with this kind of crap anymore.
Barrowe are undead hill giants. They retain all their strength, plus they have energy draining attacks. Fitting really, given the ancestry of Wights as a name.
Cairn are undead stone giants. They lurk until you get close, then bombard you with rocks. No great clever spins on the theme here.
Frostmourn are undead frost giants. They're so cold that they can ruin your equipment, and can turn into an icy cloud to escape, vampire style. That should be pretty scary for players.
Firegaunt are, can you guess? They also have the nasty habit of destroying the posessions of those they hit, this time via fire. Poor adventurers, worked so hard to get these levels and then losing their stuff.
Spectral clouds are of course undead cloud giants. Seems like we're covering all the basic 6 types and skipping the later additions here. They're the only insubstantial ones in this roster, and once again are energy drainers, making them a lot scarier than standard wraiths. You'll need to be quite high level to fight them.
Temperament are undead storm giants, as you probably figured out several pages before. Just as in life, they're easily the smartest and most powerful giant type. They too can spawn by draining your life energy to terrifying results. Thankfully, they don't still have the array of magical abilities they did in life, just lots of lightningy death. Yawn. No surprises here then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 7/8
Rogues Gallery: Only a single character detailed here this month, one Greendale Meadowfield. Interestingly, he's an actual PC, still active, who worked his way up to name level in the Raven's Bluff living campaign. That's a real change from all the novel ones. This does mean that the adventures he's had aren't that weird though, because they're all module ones, but he does have a niiiiiice selection of magical items that gives him a negative armor class and some superhuman stats. And of course, there's plenty of attention paid to his personality. So this is an interesting experiment that's good for a change, but would probably get old fast if repeated. Now let's hope they move out of the forgotten realms next time. They've been a little too heavy on Toril characters lately.
The ecology of the cyclopskin: Another unsophisticated monstrous humanoid this month. However, unlike ghouls, Cyclopskin don't have any real hidden society. They just is what they is, and does what they does, serving as a mid-range link on the dumb marauding humanoid food chain. They kick goblins, orcs, and the like around, and get kicked around in turn by the larger giant races such as hill giants and full cyclopses. And kick each other around quite a bit as well. It's a hard life when the only way you know to exert power over others is bullying. This is an amusing ecology to read, but you wouldn't want to be them, or spend time around them. Best just to kill them. There's no great insights we can use to improve our own lives here.
Aaron Williams manages to sneak in a floyd reference to dragonmirth. The KotDT crew have an attack of metagaming.
Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Christmas is busy, but no-where near as busy as a couple of years ago. The Forgotten realms reprints an old novel, and brings out a new one. Elminster takes centre stage in both Elminster in Myth Drannor and The Temptation of Elminster. Once again, you have a chance to see how he got to be the way he is.
Planescape continues to draw to a close, with The Inner Planes. At least, like Birthright, they get to go out with all the bases properly covered. Actually, they've generally been pretty good about that, unlike many other companies. Really should count my blessings.
Dragonlance bounces forward in time again, with a 5th age supplement covering Palanthas. See how this place has changed since the old magic went away.
We get two generic AD&D products this month. The monstrous compendium annual 4 continues to make it easier to get hold of all the gribleys scattered around strange supplements. The Lost Shrine of Bundushatur takes us into another old skool dungeon for some traditional tournament style play. Another opportunity to die repeatedly, yay!
Alternity gets another novel. On the Verge by Roland Green. More wild frontiering in the StarDrive setting.
Marvel Super Heroes gets A guide to Marvel Earth. More stuff they've done before, updated for the new system and developments in comic books. Ahh, the wonders of being able to recycle ideas for every new gameline.
ProFiles? Another stupid attempt to be cool. :rolleyes: Anyway, this month's profilee is another returning one. Jeff Easly, last interviewed in issue 109. Rather more sensibly dressed than last time around, he remains in much the same position, only older, greyer, balder, and more entrenched. He's still quiet, yet holds the office together with his wit and he still collects all sorts of crap and decorates his office with it. By now one of the stalwarts of D&D illustration, he's contributed to all the current corebooks, and most of the monstrous compendia. As you would expect, we get rather less info on his early life than last time. But we do get more useful info on his inspirations, and how he approaches his work. It all balances out this time.
One of those issues that starts out very strong indeed, but gradually loses steam along the way, this has both excellent articles and some very annoying formulaic rehash. Really, this hammers in that it's the regular columns, the bestiary in particular, that are really running out of ideas. They stepped up the frequency of them over the last couple of years due to demand, but that's now wearing thin. Too much of any one thing will bore people. Modules were huge in the 80's, the 90's saw settings reign supreme, while the 00's had splatbooks and new crunch for players become the most common type of supplement. Doing the same thing year in year out will eventually fail even if the actual quality remains the same simply due to the vagaries of fashion and advancements in technology. People said focussing on adventures was a foolish choice for Pathfinder, and now it seems to be outselling 4e some quarters. But they too will become subject to diminishing returns with too many adventure paths. Anyway, let's hope they have a few more changes to make next year, and the annual won't be another regularfest like the first one was.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 1/8
124 pages. Big dragon, little dragon, it's hard to tell here. What have I said before about establishing scale in extreme close-ups? And making teeth fit together so they don't lacerate when you shut your mouth is always a good idea. It's not as if dragons don't have plenty of money to pay for a decent dentist. I guess it's probably a trust issue. Actually, the question of dragon teeth is an interesting one. Do they grow slowly but constantly to ensure they aren't worn down, do they produce multiple sets over the course of their lifespans and dramatic changes in size, or are they just incredibly hard, and extra ones fill in the gaps as they increase in size? We may never know. The question of what's in this third annual, on the other hand, shouldn't be too hard to answer. Let's see if any of the potential special features really are all that.
Scan quality: Good. Page widths vary, no indexing.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: A fairly standard what's in the magazine blurb by the editor. It's time to try and cover as many settings as they can again, incorporate an adventure for the Dungeon fans, and give a little something to all their surviving systems as well. Just like the first annual (and doesn't that seem a long time ago), only without the CCG's. :p But what hasn't changed from then is the lesson that the company really needs to pay attention to it's fans, for if they don't, it could all fall apart. So there is a note of genuine humility and eagerness to please here that we've only seen a few times before. That's definitely worth noting, even if the contents don't seem that different. I wonder what the overall mood in the office is like at this point.
By dragons ruled and divided: I did suspect before that Ed had the full Wyrms of the North column series planned out, and quite possibly written even before they started publishing it. This pretty much confirms it, with full info on their territories, including the dragons 5 that have yet to be published. Which also tells us that it'll be drawing to a close sometime next year. But on his terms, not because people have been complaining in the letters page. While they may have been cutting down on the number of articles with continuity elsewhere, he continues to weave an ever larger and more tangled web with his inexhaustible supply of Realmslore, and both the public and the editors are happy to let him do so. He's already by far their biggest contributor, and his lead is only increasing as time goes on. This just makes it all the more obvious just how much he's done, and how much he still has a handle on all the information circulating around despite it's quantities. So this really serves as a capstone to this column, a testament to his talents, while vouching for his verbosity. And I'm sick of these superlatives, so let's progress to the next page.
Weaponmasters of the Flanaess: Greyhawk makes another attempt to compete with the Realms on it's own ground, that of providing new crunch that's generic enough to use anywhere, but also has details tying it into the specific setting as well. Only this time, more effort is spent on crafting the setting detail than the underlying crunch, as new fighting styles and combat tricks take up less room to describe than new spells and monsters. So really, this is two attempts at playing catch-up in one, given the frequency new combat styles turn up by comparison. :p That's not to say it's bad. The characters are well sketched out, have plenty of variety in fighting styles and are well integrated into the setting. And the new manoeuvres are useful but not overpowered, and not all of them require spending slots just to be able to use them. It's certainly better than some of the previous attempts at this. And it's well integrated with previous books that touch on the topic as well, providing options for S&P and regular characters. So it's not on the level of Ed's output, but I'm feeling fairly positive about this one. It reinforces that like the game as a whole, seeing the setting die once means some people are ironically all the more passionate about it.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 2/8
Denizens of dread: Ravenloft was a relatively late jumper on the kit bandwagon, only starting with the third core set in 1996. While the place certainly has plenty of need for heroes, the generally low population and insular nature of the natives means it's a struggle to get enough for a formalised skillset to form. Still, here's a few. Whether they'll give your character an edge against the darkness, or just tie you down and make it harder to leave still remains to be seen, of course.
Danseur are roguish sorts that specialise in dancing, obviously enough. They get some fairly substantial benefits, but can't wear armor, and need to spend at least 3 hours a day practicing, which'll slow down any adventuring party, and make wandering monsters interrupting their rest very amused. Well, I suppose spellcasters can take even longer than that to fully recharge at higher levels. Still could get frustrating if the DM tracks it strictly.
Dilettante have already appeared in issue 214. Of course, this is a rather more general application of the idea than the generalist hyperspecialist half-elf fighter/mage/rogues from that. They again get some fairly substantial benefits and penalties, and won't keep up in terms of advancement speed to the rest of the party. Let's hope their extra skills will prove to be the ace in the hole a party needs to grease their sticky wicket.
Investigators are another one that gain fairly decent benefits at the cost of having a big chunk of their daily time and encumbrance allotment ring-fenced to maintain these skills. Whether this will balance out will be completely dependent on if your DM remembers to enforce that. Of course, if the whole party picks kits like this, that time reduction becomes a little less likely to cause conflict anyway.
Psychologues are devoted to curing mental illness, which is of course particularly prevalent in Ravenloft. Their chance of doing this isn't bad at all, but it's compensated for with a flat -1 penalty to attacks. Since they're usually spellcastery sorts, this puts them firmly in the support character section of the party, hanging back so they can treat the frontline guys after the battle. This might not be glamorous enough for some players.
Stalkers are your basic brooding evildoer hunters, able to follow things anywhere, but mistrusted, and unable to settle down. Seen that before several times, don't doubt I'll see it again. Not really a hindrance, methinks.
Warders are professional bodyguards, getting substantial benefits at saving the life of others, but suffering from terrible depression if they fail despite that, and their charges get kidnapped or killed. Whether this will work in an adventuring party, I'm not sure, depending on how strict the DM is about what counts as willingly letting your charge be endangered, particularly if they're another PC. But once again they have fairly substantial benefits and penalties that'll hopefully balance out in actual play. So this collection is mostly pretty good, as long as the DM keeps track of the character's powers and needs and remember to make their benefits useful and hindrances annoying.
Planar Pestilence: Or tiny obnoxious things throughout the multiverse. Disease and the planes is a somewhat odd topic. Ok, in some places it seems very appropriate. The first layer of the grey waste has pestilience as one of it's main themes, and the everything eats everything no fairness horror of the abyss is a place where even the smallest things are against you. But in others, such as Mechanus or the seven heavens, where there is a very precise natural order, these things would be more likely to form beneficial symbioses than be harmful to their hosts. And by focussing on things like that, there is the risk of making the planes seem banal, especially if the effects of the disease is merely a bigger, badder version of existing real world ones. And unfortunately, that is the case for most of the examples here. Abyssal gangrene, limbo lockjaw, planar rabies, hive plague, these are all just quicker, deadlier, and resistant to the usual curative magic. Slightly more interesting are zombie leprosy, which is the kind of thing that causes a nice cascading apocalypse, and fading breath, which is created by dead gods, and is more likely to affect creatures of opposing alignments. On the other hand, Astral Mold seems to miss the point since metabolism doesn't function while there, so you don't eat on the plane anyway. So I think this article has a greater proportion of boring ideas than interesting ones, especially if you're already familiar with biology and the study of diseases in general. It could have been so much better.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 3/8
The home front: A lot of emphasis in the Dragonlance 5th age fiction was put upon family, and the small acts of heroism that happen on an everyday basis, and make the lives of those around you better, rather than going off and saving the world, which you may not get the credit for, and if you do, the stories'll be twisted and exaggerated. I'm not surprised that they're doing an article covering the same ground. Of course, the fact that Krynn has been taken over by giant dragons which take what they want from the population, and give nothing back, while allowing monsters to freely roam the countryside, really keeps things interesting for the average person in the worst possible way. Which means plenty of opportunity for heroes to have whole campaigns without ever venturing far from home. Really, this is applicable in any campaign where the evil overlord is an approaching menace, or wandering monsters are common enough that everyday people have to constantly take precautions against them. Even in real world hunter-gatherer societies, you'd lose quite a few people to predation over the course of a year. To keep people around, they introduce a popularity mechanic which seems easy enough to add into either AD&D or the 5th age system. So this is a good way of both continuing to give coverage to this setting, and provide advice that's applicable elsewhere. When the stakes are personal, you don't have to escalate the scale too much to keep people emotionally engaged. Just take care not to kill all their friends and family in one raid, otherwise they'll lose all the attachment they had for the place. Overall, I definitely approve of this, and can see how you could easily get a good campaign out of it.
Alternate frontiers: Star Frontiers! I was hoping we'd get a conversion of their old Sci-fi setting to their new system. Woo. At 10 pages, it's a pretty extensive one too. Dralasites, Vrusk, Yazirians and Sathar all get racial writeups making them available as PC's. And there's a dozen bits of equipment that are relatively common in Star Frontiers, but not in the Star Drive setting. Despite it's size, this feels like it's over all too soon, which is a testament to the amount of material they published in the magazine for it between 84-88, and the degree which I remember it despite it being over 2 years of real time since I was covering that period. So this doesn't leave me completely satisfied, but is generally a positive experience, with a ton of useful crunch, and enough setting that a complete newbie can understand what's going on. This is a nice boost in variety of material covered, and hopefully we'll be seeing a few more resurrections of old material in the next year, as the 25th anniversary celebrations get underway.
Super science in the marvel universe: Another rather interesting bit of crunch for their other new system. We talked about the gadgeteer issue in the old FASERIP system, and issue 180's attempt at tackling it, which didn't impress me much. Their SAGA system solution, on the other hand, is both simple and exceedingly flexible and wide-ranging, making only your imagination (and the technical competence to back it up) your limit. Which in a comic book universe is very appropriate. Also appropriate is the fairly high chance of things blowing up in your face if you overreach yourself, keeping you from just trying the same thing again until you succeed if you have the time. And it also tackles how to keep inventions from changing the world too easily, and how to keep the research process from getting in the way of adventuring. Pretty damn good, really. I suppose if there's one thing the SAGA system should do well, it's getting the rules to fit into the narrative, and this is more than simple and flexible enough for that.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 4/8
Handle with care: Our module this year hits the reset button from the story in the first two annuals, and goes back to 1st level again. Now with extra whimsy! The PC's are hired by a quirky prank playing wizard to guard his stuff on a journey. A rival wizard from the same guild summons a bunch of norkers to smash all his potions and alchemical gear, with wacky results as the PC's are hit by various chemicals in the ensuing fight. The amount of xp you get at the end is primarily based on how much of the equipment you save. Sounds like a CRPG minigame. :mad: So this is definitely a break from dungeon crawling and serious roleplaying, but not a particularly welcome one. This is exactly the kind of whimsy that makes me irritable and itching to get back to the srys bisnis of pretending to be an elf dual wielding longbows saving the world. :p I do have to praise the amount of detail gone into in terms of the adversaries tactics though. They make them a lot more interesting than their basic stats indicate, and quite a few serious monsters could learn from that. So this isn't terrible, but it is terribly whimsical and not to my tastes at all. I shall definitely pass on this one.
The ecology of the Steel Dragon: A rather philosophical ecology this month, as befits the creature covered. Even more than silver dragons, Steel dragons rather enjoy living among humanoids, assuming their shapes, and living their lives. But if they are to convincingly pass for any length of time, they must think as people, age as people, and be ready to suffer the little indignities of life as a person. And then they must leave that life behind, adopt a new one. Preferably a very different one, for how else are you to stave off the ennui of eternity and learn new things. A theme we've also seen show up recently in Kindred of the East, with the Thousand Whispers Dharma being devoted to that principle as a way of finding enlightenment. And indeed, the writer shoots hard for that air of poetry in his writing. It doesn't quite make it, becoming a little absorbed by it's own pretentiousness, and forgetting to reference other sources (what happened to the half dragons?) but it's still another interesting read. You can steal the lessons here, and apply them to all sorts of long-lived creatures.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 5/8
Arcane Lore: Hmm. Another Spell selection for Dwarven priests. We last got one of those in issue 129, which I think is a decent enough interval. As usual, I shall examine them closely for any repeats.
Dwarven Zeal enhances their bonuses against goblinoids some more. This is obviously exclusive, but not as annoyingly as the Dragon exclusive spells, and certainly isn't overpowered.
Mud in your eye is the kind of bad joke that seems more appropriate for Gnomes. I'm sure I've seen this one before, possibly with a fae origin. Do we really need another 1st level spell that's this inferior to Sleep?
Precious Affinity is a fairly direct recycle of Detect Metals and Minerals from last time, only shorter duration. Not worth the bother.
Foundation doesn't beautify you, it helps you stick to the ground better. Dwarves never were ones for vanity, were they.
Ignore light wounds is an interesting variant on Aid. Gotta love that insane toughness. Just remember to look after yourself properly after the fight.
Shatter Metal is another one we've seen before in different context. Gotta love that weapon screwage as a way of settling fights, biatch.
Stone Shell is a particularly cool looking armor class boosting spell. It'll slow you down a bit too, but dwarves never were winners of the miss lissom leg contest either, were they.
Transmute Gem lets you upgrade your gems, or just refluff them. This is not very reliable as a get rich scheme, and may piss off people if discovered. They can't make that easy in D&D, can they.
Clinging Earth is the great equalizer, slowing everything else down to dwarven rates. You laugh at our stubby legs! Who's laughing now? I'll run rings around you. Ha!
Stromp's Dwarven Cleaver is another weapon conjurer. It's actually pretty badass for it's level, making it compare favourably with Mordenkainen's Sword. Clerics are better at just hitting things instead of blasting them.
Earth Fist compares similarly well with the equivalent level Bigby's hands, making for a definite bit of power creep here. Can't say I approve of that. Basic comparison, folks. This is what the corebooks are there for.
Dungeon mastery: Keeping a journal is a pretty old trick that even the first gamers quickly discovered was a damn good idea. Similarly, creating a proper calendar for your world, with seasons, holidays, celebration days, etc, etc is one of those things that helps a world feel real. Combining the two, so your events always happen on a specific day, and even when you spend months in the wilderness, the DM can easily note the seasons changing, and the characters having their respective birthdays, is a logical leap, but not one that's you'd automatically make. This also demonstrates the substantial advantage taking your notes on the computer rather than paper has, in allowing you to edit, copy, and divide up your material, giving players selective access to it. And of course, proper timekeeping lets you easily keep track of all manner of little things that would be much harder without an established framework, (facebook really has been a godsend for my scheduling stuff and social life.) and then analyse them statistically. So this has some old ideas, but mixes them with ones that are new to me, and both are good ones. We can always do with ways to organise our work that actually save more time in the long run.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 6/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: For a second time here, they decide to eschew the usual magic for a collection of purely mundane items. They really are pushing the tolerance of their readers. Ok, it's more affordable than the magic stuff, but really, we want the shinies. It's quite a long one too, so it looks like this is going to be another tedious page-filler.
Angon are serrated, crossbarred spears that seem good against armies and large creatures. Another fairly realistic example of trying to customise existing weapons for specific situations that D&D doesn't represent too well.
Ordinary Bracers are useful too! Another slightly amusing reminder that mundane items were doing this stuff hundreds of years before D&D got in on the act.
Bronzewood Portals are reinforced doors that impose a penalty on attempts to break in. In a place full of adventurers, this is always going to attract repeat customers.
Charcloth Tin is full of really flammable paper. This makes starting fires in cold, wet miserable conditions a lot easier. Another valuable one for low level adventurers.
Dagger Sashes are one we've seen before in plenty of illustrations, but not formalised into mechanics. An array of little sheathes designed for quick throwing. Just strap it on and you're ready to make several ranged attacks per round.
Double Bows are another one we've seen before. Bloody gnomes. In fact, compared to the 6-shooter crossbow, these aren't too impressive. Screw this.
Double Mail is like katanas. Chain-mail made tougher by having two points of connection per link? Seems a bit spurious. If it was that easy, why isn't it the standard? I don't know.
Draw-Mouth Quivers are another item designed for more convenient access in case of an unexpected fight. It's amazing how often item manufacturers don't think about real world in-the-field issues when designing stuff.
Dwarven Stone Scrolls are designed to protect important information. Open them wrong, and they explode, hurting you and destroying the stuff inside. Have fun trying to solve this one.
Fineplates are a pointless portmanteau. We already know you can add cost onto practical items almost infinitely by increasing the ornateness. This is not really needed.
Galda oil works well in both lanterns and for cooking. Well, it certainly reduces stress for adventurers. A ruined meal from a wrong ingredient will have everyone cranky, especially if supplies are running low.
Gnomish Neckpurses are another faintly ridiculous but practical device by everyone's favourite irritating shortarses. This is one that could well work in reality. After all, what airport security thinks to check the hairband? Not that I plan on smuggling anything in the near future, of course. :)
Gorgetal is neck armour, to protect you against strangulation and called shots. Another one that seems like it could have it's roots in reality. Like armoured codpieces, protecting vulnerable areas is a good idea too many people forget.
Gullet Guardians do the same for your lower abdomen. Wear them under your clothing, and people will just think you're a little fat. I think I can take that without any worry.
Honey Dust is just a mundane perfume. Yawnarama. I think this goes a bit too far into pointless setting-building.
Ipp Candles drive away bugs. Like bracers, we've seen several magical variants on this, while the mundane, real version remains relatively obscure. Everyone goes for the magical solution first, despite the extra expense.
Jalzanda Oils give you a good night's sleep. Take too much, and you'll appear dead to the world. Just the thing for those tragic Romeo and Juliet style misunderstandings.
Laceleather Pantaloons try and give a reasonable explanation for why any adventurer would wear ridiculous clothing like Alias's trousers. I'm not buying it. You wear something with that many little gaps in the wilderness, and next thing you know, there's a spider setting up camp by your crotch. No thank you.
Luminous Paste is another mundane solution to a problem normally dealt with by magic. Glow-in-the dark runes? No problem. Just need the right tree extract.
Pace Beads allow you to engage in more accurate mapping without wasting too much time on tape measures. Once again with the simple useful tricks.
Padded Leather Armor is another fairly obvious bit of technological advancement. Make the leather and chain bits of your protection modular, and you have more freedom to vary your precise level of protection based on danger and temperature. Couldn't this stuff be made standard as well?
Reedmace Shafts are used to make arrows in marshy areas where proper wood is scarce and valuable. They don't work as well as regular arrows, but burn easily once properly dried. I guess you have to make the best of what you've got.
Rhizian Shield Harnesses are another twinky trick to let you both fight two-handed and still benefit from a shield. Like the Athasian Tortoiseshell blades, this'll take quite a bit of extra training, which'll hopefully pay off and let you be a smug flashy git who both has their cake and eats it.
Santal Wood Incense freshens up the foulest dungeon or your money back. I really couldn't make this shit up. I suspect a joke round the table that the writer decided to run with.
Santolin is a pretty and all round useful fabric. Another attempt to create culture for an existing world that is unlikely to be taken up and become official.
Silver Tissue is much the same, only even more so. Pretty elven-woven stuff that's tremendously rare? Before you know it, everyone'll have some. :p
Talwucs see the people of Oerth reinvent the mackintosh. Great, now they can have flashers as well :p Who's going to remember this silly name?
Tamal Leaves see them include a culturally integrated variant on chewing tobacco as well. Filthy habit. I want no part of it. :spits:
Walking Sticks also get an examination with a bunch of variants, including the usual concealed weapons and smuggling devices. You can also putt a whole bunch of triggered spells in them which can get pretty brutal. Probably cheaper than the normal way of enchanting rods and staves too. Once again, we see how you can run rings around the official methods by careful rules-lawyering and profit tremendously.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 7/8
Dragon's Bestiary: Off to the city again, for some more not particularly impressive variants on existing creatures, courtesy of our resident ecologist. Come on, surely someone else is submitting stuff. Stop bogarting this place. You aren't that interesting.
Acid pigeons exaggerate an existing creature, making them even more destructive to statues and buildings. Give 1st level adventurers the job of hunting them down and cleaning up the city if you really want them to feel small.
Pirahna ants are completely self explanatory. Um, don't we have these in real life anyway, albeit found in jungles? Oh, they're even smarter are they? Well, whoopee doo. Filler.
Polyroaches merge into one huge cockroach, taking the whole hive mind thing a bit too literally. Like the demonic sawflys of a couple of issues ago, I can see this being quite creepy.
Rat burglars are also self explanatory. Intelligent kleptomaniac rats? With a goofy backstory typical of his writing. A low level substitute for wererats, methinks. Still, you could well use them to liberate adventurers of a bit of their treasure sneakily.
Stone termites, unsurprisingly, eat stone. This means they're a lot harder to squash, and similarly more troublesome to the structural integrity of your home. Another unglamorous pain for low level adventurers to solve.
Dragon Magazine annual 1998
part 8/8
Rogues Gallery: Another Troy Denning novel conversion this month. I'm sure he's been around a lot more than he was before the changeover. This time, it's his new novel Faces of Deception that he's telling us about the characters of. Which seems to involve venturing both to the utter east and the planes, so they're also keeping their other settings supported through this. Hey ho. Gotta get what you can take.
Atreus Eleint is utterly hideous, as a combination of a childhood raised by bullying ogres, and a magical curse. He'd very much like to fix that, and I suspect much of the book involves working towards this. In the meantime, he has virtually every material thing he wants, a castle, plus a whole band of ogre mercenaries. This will not assuage his angst, of course.
Yago is his surprisingly smart and civilised ogre adoptive father. As a mercenary, he's spent a lot of time around various villainous masterminds, keeping quiet and paying attention, and he might not completely get human culture, but he knows what he's doing. He seems quite appropriate to put in a game.
Rishi Saubhari is an eastern conman with a moonshaes fashion fetish. He's high born, but ruined his family, pissed away his wealth, and now lives from one grift to the next. Superficially charming, but with poor long term planning skills and a short temper if foiled, he's pretty much the epitome of the chaotic evil wastrel. Steer well clear.
Seema Indrani is a pacifist priestess with a really crappy sphere selection, following a god that can only empower a very small number of clerics. Well, that's what you get when you're only worshipped in a remote tibet analogue. At least it proves she's genuinely faithful. But she wouldn't make a very good adventurer.
Tarch is a Barbazu slaver. His abilities are pretty standard for his race, it's merely what he does with them that's interesting. He seems more of a plot point than a fully fleshed out personality though. How long an appearance does he actually make in the book?
The Sannyasi is a deva who also has more than half of his description wasted on the powers and immunities that are common to his race, thus leaving little space for individualisation. Would it be so hard to simply refer us to the appropriate monstrous compendium? Or is he just another cookie cutter goody-good boy scout? Either way, I'm left a little disappointed by this.
Dragonmirth has an attack of the twee. Expense is relative, and value is in the eye of the beholder.
Another mixed, but generally competent collection this month. On the positive side, they had more non D&D RPG material than they've done in ages, with an article for each of their 3 other systems, and the setting specific stuff is generally pretty cool. On the negative side, their over-reliance on the same old regular columns continues, and gets a little more barrel-scraping each month. And without any extra special guests like last year's annual, I'm left feeling this is business as usual overall. If this is intended to make me feel like it's time for a change in the near future, they're succeeding. I strongly want to get to the next edition. Will the magazine ever start getting quicker to get through again? Guess I'll never know if I don't keep going.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 1/8
124 pages. Another case of the eerily similar cover subjects here. Check issue 177. Don't they look like the same person. Also, Rebecca Guay fails mind flayer anatomy 101. Sphincter mouths, not leering fanged maws. They aren't sexy vampires. Don't humanise stuff unnecessarily. But anyway. They've finally got round to doing a psionics themed issue for 2e, nearly 10 years in. About time too. I was worried you'd miss it out, and that would be a real shame. So let's see if the minds of the writers can master the minds of people who can master others with their minds, or if it'll all degenerate into paranoia where no-one's sure who's controlling who.
Scan Quality: Good, a little visible pixelation.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Another new beginning? You just can't stick at it, can you. Yes, once again, they're talking about making this a fresh start, and the new material more friendly to newbies. Have a little trust in the intelligence of your readers, please. Well, this pretty much guarantees I'm going to be bored by some of the articles, but when has that ever not been the case. :) Still, they've got regular coverage for two other systems, and two new columns planned, so it shouldn't be entirely a reset to the same old topics as if we'd never seen them before. So as usual, I am torn between pessimism and optimism, hoping for the best while fearing the worst, and aware that reality will be somewhere between the two. It's never going to be a perfect world. But just maybe, it'll be better than 95 and 96.
D-Mail: We start off with one of those long letters where someone spells out in great detail exactly what they do and don't like about the recent magazines. Once again, they think Wyrms of the North is played out. Ed maybe got a little too self-indulgent there. But it has been an interesting ride.
A letter asking for reprints. Not in the magazine. But we do have something extra special planned for you. Oh yes. :D I think you'll be very happy indeed, providing you have enough money.
Another letter saying wyrms of the north has probably run it's course. The public are pretty unanimous on this one. But Sage Advice can stay in perpetuity. People will never stop coming up with new silly rules questions for Skip to solve.
Two more letters giving sample castings for a Dragonlance movie. Kiefer Sutherland is nowhere to be found amongst them, I'm afraid.
And finally, a fairly long letter with illustrations (!) about the idea of bringing back a minis column. They've already said they were doing that! Show a little patience! There's still such a thing as lead-in times, you know.
Nodwick saves the day. But he still won't get the credit.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 2/8
Forum: Dennis R. Rose thinks wizards are weenies. It is to laugh. Course, they'll be even less so next edition. Be careful what you wish for.
Kev Smith wants monks back as a full class. If you do them right they can be properly balanced against everyone else and quite interesting. Hmm. You'll almost get your wish. Caveat emptor and all that.
Mark Burdett carries on the weapons debate. Heavy armour requires heavy weapons, and vice versa. It only went out of fashion because weapons became too good at penetrating. We've been through this many times before.
Steve Rees likes his unorthodox PC's. If 3rd ed made it easier to play nonstandard races, he wouldn't be at all unhappy. Yay for you.
Derek Groen wants the initiative and round system changed into a time taken for each action one, a la CRPG's. (and exalted 2nd ed) I think that may be another idea that's a bit too forward thinking for the designers.
Dungeoncraft: Well, here's our first new column of the year. Ray Winninger was brought on in the dying days of the review column, where he certainly didn't slow it's demise with his heavy rehashing of products already covered by previous reviewers. And this does indeed feel like a reset, not only to 1st level, but 0th, as his advice starts off being aimed at someone who hasn't even started roleplaying yet, and is feeling daunted by the idea. Well, AD&D is particularly daunting, it has to be said, with at least three books required, and thousands now available, someone just looking at it in a store just wouldn't have a clue what to do, and if they bought a random book on impulse because they liked the cover, they might well be baffled by the contents. Not that talk on where to find players, how to set up a group, and cost analysis of getting into gaming doesn't have a use. But it's not useful to me, except perhaps as a tracker of inflation. If this column continues a while it might become so later. But first it'll have to get through stuff that I've probably seen before repeatedly.
Sage advice: If you can breath underwater, can you cast spells underwater (Only if your form is suited to it. Don't even think of taking scrolls underwater, though. That would end very poorly)
What is a ghul lord's manipulation. (a special power that requires them to spend hit points. Figure out what spell they're simulating and go from there to determine the amount. They go boom if you encounter normal spells. Remember, not all magic counts as spells. )
If you use detect magic around a ghul lord, does that automatically mean you're caught in the explosion (thankfully not)
What's the point of crown of flame when most lower planar creatures are immune to fire. (It's divine damage skinned as magical fire. Sneaky. )
How do you use a protective circle (to help you summon demons. This may not be a good idea, remember)
If you cast a spell with a long duration and move, how do you determine the area affected. ( Depends if it's cast on an area or a person. If it's a buff, it moves with you. If not, it's generally fixed.)
Do you need to spend a slot to use a rod in combat (use staff, unless another would be more logical)
Can you make more than one called shot per round if you have the attacks (yes, but the penalties stack. )
Can you stack trick shots with called shots (bloody elves. no)
Can you incapacitate an enemies arm with a called shot (Only if you're using Skills & powers. Buy it now :teeth ting: :gargling sound: :spit: )
What are the stats of an elven bow (supertwinked. Just like everything else they make)
Can you two weapon attack with missiles (no)
How do you set an ambush. (Position yourself so the enemy can't see you, then jump out or shoot stuff at them. There's no magic trick to it.
And that's it for the month. Guess skip gets to clock of early this month. Wait, what's that you say, Mr Wizard from the coast? Skip's got to do Alternity questions too?Bloody 'ell; Well, only if Skip can have them in a snazzy blue font. Ok then, now we have an ...... understanding, let's bring them in.
How many skill points do you need to get cyberware ( 10. They're generally pretty user-friendly)
What happens if your gun has more actions than you do (you can't use them all. Better get a-trainin. She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes, and you'd better be prepared to shoot, because that train's bringin' lotsa trouble to stir up your peaceful little town. )
Do mindwalkers get psionics at a discount (no. We closed that loophole before you even thought of it.)
Do Thuldans really get attributes that obscene (no. You've completely misread it.)
Does a burst let you do more damage (No, it just increases the number of things you can hit. That's what spraying does. Psssshhhhhh Psssshhhhh. That and messing up the bathroom floor.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 3/8
The new Illithid arsenal: The magazine continues to have a ...... special relationship with the monster it spawned way back in the very first issue. And they got a whole book fairly recently (although that was incompatible in some ways with the ideas from issue 150) What's a few more items. Well, what really makes a difference is how many of them individual bad guys in your campaign have. And how many issues they cause players who get a hold of them. After all, they are pretty weird and smart creatures. They certainly ought to be able to make things a real bother for the average PC to utilise.
Void Spheres let illithids banish things back to their home plane and summon cranium rats. Since their biggest enemies are extraplanar, this allows them to shortcircuit a gith hunting party. (after all, plane shift is not the most precise spall at getting you to a place in the regular 3 dimensions. ) Sometimes, the simple tricks are the best.
Tessadyle Robes are tenticular fungal robes that respond to you psychically, giving you several useful psychometabolism powers. Of course, nonpsychics need not apply, and illithids will be pissed if they catch you wearing it, plus they look gross. The issues may outweigh the benefits.
Circlets of Venilkesk let illithids psychically detect undead and protect them from level drain. They're as scared of the dead as anyone, and this at least helps them feel a little safer in the dark.
Tendril rings of Illsensine teleport their wearer away automatically when their HP get low. After all, a race as smart as them would come up with contingency plans like this. Which just makes them a little harder to finish off for good. Muahahaha, etc.
Gauntlets of Tyla'zhus let them shoot laser beams from their hands and cause excruciating pain. They only have three fingers though, so unless you're playing a cartoon character, you may have problems after killing their owners.
Abductors let them do an x-files riff, and cast the illithids as the aliens inside the flying saucers, whipping things up for experimentation. Really, this shows that the writer has a sense of humour along with a twisted imagination. If you want to capture one of the players and make the others panic, this will help a lot.
Kezreth are giant preserved illithid heads, used as bizarre shock troops in mass battle. You can even pilot them by going in their mouth and up to where their brain used to be. Now why can't I be a necromancer driving a giant skull vehicle? I'm sure there's something out there, especially in Exalted.
Nyraala Golems are a particularly gross form of construct. Made from underdark fungus, and able to break themselves down into a moldy carpet or form a writhing tentacular mass, they're reasonably stealthy in an underdark environment, and capable of being given fairly complex programming. As usual, the flayers have the best plans, but may not have the resources to implement them often enough to win the war.
Tzakandi Ceremorphs are the result of fusing lizard men with illithid tadpoles. Instead of tentacles around their maw, they come out of the top of their heads. While smarter than regular lizard men, they're hardly geniuses, and so get used as enforcers and attack dogs by "proper" mind flayers. They seem happy enough with their fate.
Mozgriken Ceremorphs, on the other hand, are what happens when you implant Illithid tadpoles into gnomes. A fate worse than death for both parties, as the result is runty and doomed to eternal whipping boy status amongst flayerkin. Still, they are exceptionally good at stealth, so they have a reason to be kept alive. If their master has a sense of humour they may well call them Igor. This is a pretty fun collection. Just because they're tentacled monstrosities, doesn't mean they can't have a sense of humour.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 4/8
Psi Kits: Having given our big psionic monster a load of new stuff, now it's the players turn again. Now, we already got 13 psionic kits over the course of 1993 by various writers, so there's always the risk that they'll repeat the same ideas. But if not, that'll take our total up to 23, which is quite a substantial number for players to choose from, and certainly more than can fit in a single campaign. So let's see if this particular vein of stuff is tapped out already.
Charcoal burners are a much more specific example of psionicists hiding their powers from oppression than issue 200. They obviously get a bunch of extra fire manipulating skills to back up their cover identity, but will be kicked out of the organisation if they ever show their powers. I think this is an improvement on generic mountebanks.
Gatekeepers are all about watching and guarding over stuff. They get substantial benefits to aura sight so they can pick out troublemakers before they cause trouble, but their law enforcement training means they prefer to subdue rather than kill. In a dungeoncrawling campaign, that will probably turn out to be a net negative. But they would make good NPC's.
Janissary are your basic honorbound exotic psychic warrior sorts. They get an extra specialisation, at the cost of a few PSP's and powers, and a fairly strict behavioural code. Is this a fair trade? Depends on if you're the straight-up fighting sort. A +1 to hit and +2 to damage really adds up over the course of an adventuring career.
Militant Psionicists, like the previous kit and like their wizard counterparts, get slightly better combat capabilities at the cost of their psionic powers. But at 4 levels behind, a multi-class fighter-psionicist would be strictly better, while also having room to pick another kit, so I think I can safely say this is a suboptimal choice.
Mind Mages are yet another one that pretends to be another class to avoid oppression. As long as people believe they're casting spells, they get a +2 to all their power scores, so they have a pretty strong incentive to pick their powers and trappings carefully to keep up the facade. If they can, yeah, that's a pretty powerful benefit.
Mind Monks get minor clerical powers, at the cost of having all the behavioural restrictions of following that faith, plus another 3 hours of mandatory meditation tacked on. Not really appropriate if you worship a god of sex, drugs and flaunting your bling. But since psionicists have their own alignment restrictions, they're not likely to follow someone like that.
Paranaturalists are another familiar idea, the self-trained psionicist trying to understand their powers in a magic-heavy world. However, instead of being more self-reliant, they go the x-files route, investigating the world around them to find clues as to what they are. I think they two approaches and mechanical implementations have room to co-exist.
Pioneers get to develop brand new psionic powers every few levels on top of their regular ones, but suffer a -1 to all their power scores for their constant moving on to new things, rather than sticking with one idea. Like dilettante, their bag of tricks may well save the day, but they'll have trouble keeping up with a more focussed character.
Such as these ones. Specialist Psionicists are even more restricted than specialist wizards, only getting access to a single discipline, but getting huge boosts in all their powers as they progress. As with other specialists, this is only a drawback in a small team where you don't have another complementary member of the same class to fill the other niches, or they get taken out.
Voices are psychic ambassadors, using their telepathic skills to facilitate open and honest communication between important people of different nations. They have huge benefits using Mindlink, but of course may be sent on missions by their employer that don't suit the party. Course, you could go freelance, and negate that issue anyway. So it seems that the kits here that are most powerful, are the ones that emulate wizardy ideas, while the fighty ones end up underpowered. I think that's a pretty good indictment of the overall balance issues in the system at this point. But there's more than enough new ideas to make this worthwhile is a psionics heavy game.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 5/8
The shadow way: Psionics and Ninjas. Two great tastes that go great together. After all, when you want to be stealthy to a supernatural degree, you do not want verbal, somatic and material components giving you away. This is essentially an expansion for the Complete Ninja's handbook, which already showed you how to combine ninjas with all the core classes out there. As with those, you can go for one that's primarily a psionicist, but also gains modest thiefly abilities, or one that's primarily a ninja, but also gets pretty decent psionic powers. The power is in your mind! They're at about the same power level as the other options in that book, which means they are indeed a little on the cheesy side. An all ninja campaign looks increasingly viable. (not that it didn't work right from OA, given the range of classes they could combine with there. ) On top of that, we get 7 new psionic powers which they keep as proprietary secrets, and will probably kill to protect. And since they mostly enhance their combat abilities, this is not to be taken lightly. As with the old Genin, this feels like such an obvious one they had to include it at some point, and why not now. And it's pretty fun to read as well. Let the ninja triumph in every edition!
Candlekeep: Now this is how you do a promotional article. Candlekeep is apparently going to get a substantial part in Baldur's Gate, their upcoming FR computer game. So rather than just directly pimping out the game itself, they take screenshots from it, and use them to illustrate a whole bunch of setting material and adventure hooks that can be used for your tabletop game. It certainly doesn't hurt that they look pretty, and also provide solid layouts for your characters to explore. But the pretty visuals would mean little without the setting info, and there's also a ton of this, some of it taken from previous articles in the magazine and condensed down. It makes me quite positive about the game, as it's obvious they've read the books and tried to remain faithful to established Realmslore. And as one of their new high points in overall visual presentation, this really does feel like a greatest hits of an article, looking good, presenting a high density of information, and even managing a little fiction. Despite everything that's happened in it, the Realms still isn't played out, and this once again reignites my enthusiasm for the world. As long as they have Ed and a talented team like this building upon his ideas, and the timeline keeps advancing, there'll always be something new to do there. A+
Powers of the mind: Our Marvel Super Heroes article is in on the theme as well. After all, they have plenty of psychics there, some of which are also mutants and/or secret agents. It's mainly just a list of the common powers and issues that Marvel psychics have at their disposal to make an interesting story. This means it is more than a little predictable, and plays the tropes completely straight, not really adding to them. Which in turn means this article feels like filler material, and provokes a resounding meh in me. Been there, done that, constructed the imaginary t-shirt out of psychic energy.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 6/8
Fiction: Dark legacy by Mel Odom. Another bit of Forgotten Realms fiction from an official writer here. And here we see another obscure part of the setting get filled in, as they venture underwater to the cities of the merpeople. But they have exactly the same problems in having to balance politics, religion, and culture as anyone else, compounded by the number of different races there are in the Realms. And that means macguffin hunt adventures to solve problems, beating up people to get information along the way, and then having to deal with giant monsters along the way when they fail. Really, this feels very much like an actual adventure outline, only one where the PC's fail, and have to deal with it in the next adventure. Or maybe a prologue to the actual novel. Either way, it's a lot more D&D than most of their stories, but a bit awkward as an actual story, not feeling remotely resolved at the end. Overall, like the Dragonlance ones, it didn't really satisfy me.
PC Portraits is of course in on the issue's theme. This means a mind flayer and githzerai get in on the action. On top of that, there's an unusually large amount of tattoos and forehead adornments. Despite not needing material trappings to sustain their powers, psionicists have just the same needs as everyone else to belong to a social group and mark themselves as different and special. (which of course are inherently contradictory goals when taken to the extreme :D ) And permanent markings that they don't have to worry about losing seem to be the appropriate means of this (at least where psionics isn't illegal or otherwise suppressed. ) Course, future generations of psionicists will make their own fashion errors (crystal fetishism? What the hell's all that about? ) But that's a story for another time.
Rogues Gallery: The Forgotten Realms continues to have a lockdown on this column, with the characters from their new nautical trilogy getting their turn in the spotlight. This also means that the sahuguin get more spotlight time, continuing on from their recent book and series of adventures. Interesting. You certainly can't call them neglected anymore.
Pacys is an old, highly experienced bard who has made more than enough friends on his travels that he always has a place to stay and someone to buy him a drink in return for his stories. And he's still fit enough that he has a few more actual adventures left in him. Maybe he'll tell the story of this adventure after it's over.
Laaqueel is a classic example of an attractive woman who thinks she's ugly, Well, by Sahuguin standards, she is. :p Like many Malenti, she's all the more dedicated to the cause because she knows she'll never really be trusted. It's a hard life. Don't be dumb enough to try to take her away from it via love, because those retractable claws are not to be trifled with.
Jherek Wolf's-get is another of those naive book-smart idealists that a party needs for good drama. Whether he gets the stuffing knocked out of him over the course of the book, or remains just as annoying at the end as the beginning, we shall have to see. Either way, the cliches are in full force today.
Sabyna is a feisty young shipmage who's primary love is the sea, so no man really has much of a chance compared to that. Yeah, once again, it's a trip to trope city. This doesn't make me particularly keen to pick up the related book.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 7/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ah yes, Athasian Life-shaping. Introduced relatively late in the world's lifecycle, it never really got the treatment it needed to become a viable source of PC power like magic and psionics. Which is a definite shame really. Still, here's some more of the strange things formed by that kind of experimentation. You can still enjoy the labours of others, even if your ability to replicate them is pretty limited.
Repellers are another way of driving off bugs. Do they have an infestation in the TSR offices? This power seems to be showing up a lot recently. Wishful thinking, eh.
Mak-ebanrath are the lifeshape equivaient of an antibiotic, seeking out and hunting down rogue creatures at minimal damage to the host. You'd better hope they don't go rogue in turn, as that would suck.
Vitality rays analyse your chemical makeup and provide you with a tailored antitoxin that may well save your life. Or not, if dealing with type E poison, but that's the danger when you're still hurt even if you save.
Purifier Sponges filter out all the crap in any water you find, an invaluable aid in athas. After all, having it there but undrinkable is the worst kind of taunting really.
Injectors are basically organic syringes. They can stick to your arms and either deliver useful healing stuff at your time of need, or hold poison as a concealed weapon. Things like this are only limited by the number of cool chemicals you have on hand to use.
Serpent Lashes are another one that wrap themselves around you and respond to your wishes. They're a good deal more effective than normal whips.
Pur-aish's are adorable soothing lizards that boost your ability to rest and concentrate. Course, like any drug, your body adapts, and before you know it, you need the stuff just to function normally. Kicking the habit isn't easy either. This causes social problems if they're allowed to become regular pets.
Swiftsteps are nasty looking grafts that allow you to haste yourself via adrenal boosts. This can be pretty wearing, but isn't ageing like the spell. Still, prolonged combat is probably not a good idea.
Dark Mothers are a cursed variant of a standard storage device. One to use only if players are already becoming familiar with this life-shaping stuff. Why does everything have to go wrong at some point?
Wyrms of the north: A fourth Forgotten Realms article this month? And it's not even a themed issue. Athas didn't get that many articles in a single issue even when it was the cover topic. But anyway, this month's dragon seems to be a bit of a depressive, responding to most enquiries with an Eyore-like pessimism and a request to be left alone. This hides the fact that he's actually very interested in keeping abreast of current events via scrying and hunting down books, and is quite nice if you don't try to take advantage of him. He is well known enough that a group of PC's on a knowledge-seeking mission might well hear about him from tavern rumours, which gives the DM an instant easy way to work him into an adventure. Anyone trying to screw him over will have to deal with his custom spell that makes gems explode, which should prove particularly frustrating to opportunistic thieves. He seems like another well-rounded character who isn't exactly invincible, but certainly shouldn't be messed with by unprepared players, and it would be more profitable if they talked to him rather than killing him anyway. As this series reaches it's end, Ed continues to find a balance between cool and cheese that'll hopefully satisfy most readers who haven't lost interest already.
Dragon Magazine Issue 255: January 1999
part 8/8
Starship perks and flaws: So the Ares section is back, after 13 years. Interesting. Of course, they're not covering any outside systems this time round, so it's pretty much a single article devoted to Alternity. This feels like the kind of branding done primarily to defend IP that has gone unused for ages before it lapses. The article itself, on the other hand, is another rather good one, that really shows off their recent improvement in visuals. 12 pages of new stuff for starships, including three sample ones, each of which gets a full page illustration, this is a bit padded out, but has both plenty of crunch for your game, and is tremendously pretty in presentation. It really is a testament to their recent budget increases and improved mastery of layout software. (It's also a testament to what Alternity stole from GURPS, with the spaceships using a point-buy merit/flaw system, but that's neither here nor there. :p ) So this was good on both a skim through, and closer reading. They are doing well for themselves this issue.
Dragonmirth gives you some bad choices. The KotDT team don't manage to get out of the tavern. Maybe if they talked to the NPC's things would go differently.
TSR Previews: Regular D&D gets a new product for the first time in quite a few years. Wrath of the minotaur. A fast-play tutorial set like the one they featured in issue 251. Just the way to lure people in, they hope.
AD&D is also trying to be friendly to new players with The Shattered Circle. Another generic adventure for low level characters. Is there room for that in your game?
The Forgotten realms has 1 old, 2 new products. The Cleric Quintet gets reprinted. Even though he might not be Drizzt, Cadderly still has fairly solid name recognition. Meanwhile, the Demihumans of the Realms get a splatbook, full of kits, culture and other stuff that draws the buyers in. And Mel Odom releases Rising Tide, the start of a series about troubles in the sea of fallen stars. Round and round we go.
Dragonlance is also recycling stuff due to popular demand. The soulforge gets reprinted, while The Silver Stair by Jean Rabe tells us more about the discovery of the new magic in the 5th age. No-one's sure what it's limits are, so of course, they don't trust it. Quite right too.
Alternity gets Starships. You want to customise your space travel capabilities, might be a good idea to buy it. Seems like a probable solid seller.
The statement of ownership is a month late. Still, it looks like things finally bottomed out, then started going up again, with average sales of 50,795, but last month ones of 63,406. What could have brought on this recent spike? Was it you? In any case, overall readership may be going up again, but subscriptions are way down from even last year. People may be buying out of curiosity, but they certainly don't trust the new owners yet.
Profiles drops the experimental gimmick and gets back to just giving us the straight dope. Mel Odom is one of our Forgotten Realms writers, having plenty of fun both writing there, and playing in games there, with the aid of his kids, of course. Course, it helps that he can pull big metaplot events and have them apply to everyone's games. Writing, playing, researching, kids. That seems to be about it in terms of significant things in his life. One of our less interesting profiles.
Well, this issue certainly had an excellent themed section, showing once again that 2e did psionics better than 1e. Also very notable is just how much the visuals have improved lately, with quite a few of the articles being genuinely pretty in a way that also enhances their usability. The new column is a little frustrating, but may grow into something useful, and the Realms is being oversaturated more than ever, but these are manageable problems. Overall, I'm feeling pretty positive about this issue. Let's hope next issue doesn't go back into the safe and boring zone.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 1/8
124 pages. Ooh. 2^8 issues. If we were on an 8 bit system, things would start to overflow around this point. Good thing we're well into 32 bit days by now, and computers are getting cooler all the time. The people on the cover look pretty shifty, and it seems like they were planning on having a rogue-centric issue, but couldn't quite get the number of articles up. Maybe they got stolen. ;) Still, we have more than enough issues covering rogues already. Let's hope they're going for quality rather than quantity again.
Scan Quality: Excellent, articles indexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: This is taken by Larry Smith the art Director, as he celebrates his 100th issue. Wait a minute, that means his first issue was the much reviled Buck Rogers special. What a way to be thrown into the deep end. Fairly revealing is that the behind the scenes of the magazine has changed as much over the years as the actual product. People came and went, and of course their technology and financial situations fluctuated dramatically over the years. It might have had it's boring moments, but overall, it's been a pretty wild ride. He's quite justified in looking back upon it with wonder. It also means he's the most senior member of staff here, looking at the credits on the side of the page. I hope he's getting suitably compensated. So this is quite interesting reading, and a reminder that the people working here are much more emotionally invested in what they do than the average day job. It might not pay the most, but they're lucky to be able to do it. Long may they avoid burnout.
D-Mail: We start off with a letter reminding us that imagination is more important than rules. Despite the fact that the magazine is gradually moving away from that position, they still agree with it in principle.
A letter that's very much in favor of their improved new formatting, and also coverage of other game systems. They'll stick with them for at least the rest of this year then.
A letter that wants more Dragonlance and Dark sun material, and less Forgotten Realms stuff. Balance please! If only balanced coverage paid the bills. No, people want the Realms, and lots of it, and that's what they get.
Another letter of straight praise. Not much you can say to that, so they take a tangent, and remind us that even in heavily themed issues, they'll try and have a few non-theme articles to keep the issue useful to everyone.
A letter praising all the contests they've been running. It's a great way to get more people involved. Maybe they'll even get some new regular writers from it.
Another long letter with photos from someone who's got a whole games room for their minis. Oh to have that degree of disposable income and free time. Fewer and fewer people have that in the current economic climate. Cue envy.
An article praising the callback to Star Frontiers, and hoping Alternity has learned from the mistakes they made in the past. Maybe, but that won't stop them from making all new ones. It's a big world, and things have changed quite a bit since the 80's.
And finally, a letter from someone wondering where the reviews have gone. They aren't entirely clear why they dropped them, but they aren't coming back for the foreseeable future. They wouldn't have become unpopular if they hadn't sucked in the months coming up to their cancellation. The editors might be able to control what kinds of articles they run, but they can't always know how good they're going to be, or how well a change of direction will be received.
Nodwick makes sure he gets what's coming to him.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 2/8
Forum: Jason Sivyer thinks a 3rd ed is both inevitable and desirable. It gives them the chance to clean up stuff and incorporate the best bits into the core. Mind you, he thinks 3rd ed'll be a change on the same kind of magnitude of 1-2e. But then, I'm sure most people don't suspect just how big the alterations are going to be.
Matt Hinds tries to give some encouragement to the nervous novice DM. It's one of the most rewarding things you can do once you get the hang of it, and that's not as hard as it seems. Just remember, the only real rule is the golden rule. Everything else can be changed to make things work better.
Ian Mathers suggests something vaguely approximating the way sorcerers will turn out. As one of the more interesting and less obvious changes in the edition switch, this one'll need a little more working out.
Gary Sturgess points out how easy it is to achieve the same effect with multiple schools via different methods. Her also points out that maximum ages are not remotely a balancing factor between various races in most campaigns. So level limits are actually a bit pointless, because they aren't compensating for anything concrete. Another argument for eliminating them.
Joseph A. Hoffman doesn't want to see D&D dumbed down or made to easy just because some people are scared of a little regeneration or energy draining. Let the dice fall where they may! I think the consensus will drift away from you.
Dungeoncraft: The second column of this is vastly more useful to me than the first one, because it actually has some pertinent advice. It's not obvious stuff, either. While some of the Dungeon Mastery columns give advice that if implemented, would require shittons of bookkeeping, this actively punctures that idea, instead encouraging economy of creativity, and figuring out how to best utilise the time and energy you have. Well, spending all your time creating enormous worlds with tons of houserules is fun when you have that time, but when you're older and have a job and kids eating up most of your time, you have to learn a little more efficiency. It doesn't take that much reskinning to hide the sources of your ideas, and there is a lot of material already out there to draw upon. He also starts giving us a specific example, building up a world of his own, which he intends to continue in future columns. Yay, continuity! We could definitely do with more of that at the moment. So this becomes a good deal more promising, but has yet to follow through on that. Carry on then ......
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 3/8
Sage advice: You're wrong about holy words. They are so blocked by silence spells (No, only the deafening power. Everything else works just dandy. )
Can followers advance levels (If you take them on adventures, they earn half shares. Choose your adventures wisely, for you are name level, and they are not. Replacing them is inconvenient.)
What happens if you put moonweb on a creature (Remember, it reflects attacks both ways. Pacifism's a bitch. Your best option is to walk through your enemies ranks taunting them, and hope they don't catch on. )
How often can you cast teratism ( Once per use. Stacking is as ever awkward)
Can you cast teratism II on a creature if you've already cast teratism I (not to change the same thing. Shoulda thought of that first)
What limits does teratism have (what is this, teratism day? It was a year and a half ago, what's got into you? Just read the description)
Can you cast teratism on a person polymorphed into a duck (Can you use Mind on a vampire turned into a lawnchair? )
Can teratism be dispelled (Yes, thank god. Now let us speak no more of it.)
What are the drawbacks to Wildfire? (The same as the spell imitated. You can still use it to bypass material component costs, though)
How loosely can you define animal (Does it exist in real life? Then it's an animal. No more complicated rule to it.)
What happens if you cast wall of stone in a room full of clay golems (They'll break out eventually, and they'll be pissed. You know how unstable those things are. They're more temperamental than a goat given a nosebag full of chilli peppers. Dunno why priests bother making them. )
Do mirror images fly with their creator (yes)
Can you use phantasmal force to make the illusion you're not there. (No. You are not the zombies.)
What AC does an illusory creature have (about the same as the real thing, maybe a bit worse. )
Does an illusion keep acting once you stop concentrating (only if it's high enough level)
How does fire shield interact with fire resistance (Skip's changed Skip's mind. Skip will let heat and cold resistance negate damage from fire shields. Be grateful for Skip's benevolence. )
What does blindness, deafness and invisibility do to your combat skills (you fail at reading the book. Please try again before you pester Skip with your petty prattling)
Are elves immune to slay living because they're immune to raise dead ( Ha ha ha. That's a good one. It's a long time since Skip heard that one. Skip wasn't even Sage last time someone tried to pull that stunt. The answer is still no. Skip feels no need to gainsay Jean this time.)
Can fighters use miscellaneous magical items (yes. Why would you try and lawyer out of something so useful. )
What, does skip still have to do Alternity questions? Skip refuses, unless skip can get a nice orange box to put them in. Do you hear me, Mr Wizard from the coast? Skip doesn't need you as much as you need Skip. Skip knows how this operation works, and you don't. Skip's the private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs. Capiche? Eeeexxellent. Bow chikka wow chikka wow. Skip likes the new bosses a lot more than Lorraine.
How the hell do you do all the things you need to fly a ship single-handedly. (autopilots help a lot)
Can you use vehicle operation to do repairs (no)
Does system operations have any benefits over vehicle operations when flying (It can do. Specialization has it's uses. )
Rogue heroes: Another 10 pages of Skills & Powers stuff for thieves and bards to buy. Well, I suppose even more than fighters, they need that flexibility to adapt their array of tricks for the campaign. The standard 8 just don't cut it in every culture and situation. Want to be able to catch missiles in your hands, resist poison, call in favors, see in the dark, detect lies, and more? Well, those are just some of your new options. Seems fairly appropriate, and of course, the way the S&P system works means you aren't getting something for nothing. I think time and repeated exposure has worn away my irritation at the S&P material. That and the other articles lately that throw into sharp relief the flaws in 2e. At least these are trying to address the problem directly, even if they create other problems in the process. Plus the improved formats once again make reading more pleasant. Overall, I'm neutral on this one, which is an improvement by comparison.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 4/8
Hidden Agendas: Well, this month's Greyhawk article isn't doing something the Realms has already done more and better. Instead, it's doing something Planescape and Ravenloft have already done. Secret societies with concrete mechanical benefits and penalties. They aren't restricted to a single class like most kits, and can be stacked with them, possibly providing twinky synergies. Let's see how these compare to the Factions in their coolness.
The Society of the Serpent are your basic ancient lore hunting wizards society. This means they get excellent access to research materials, but have to share any discoveries they make with the rest of the society as well. The kind of thing that shows up in nearly every setting to some degree. Meh.
The Crescent League are rather more specific. They pretended to be a simple mercenary organisation, but were actually a secret front for the Scarlet Brotherhood. They got caught, and are now rather unpopular in most places. They are exceedingly good tacticians though, and can use weapons not normally allowed to their class. They're more likely to make good villains, really.
Fratern Milblinnis are the wizard eliminating equivalent of the Athar. They do their damndest to destroy all wizards and most magical items. This is it's own drawback in the long run, beyond making them very unpopular in your average D&D society. They do get a +2 on all saves vs magic, but really, that's not going to compensate for the awesome powers they're passing up, is it?
Telless ve Turu Decada are the obvious Harper analogue of Oerth, dedicated to fighting evil wherever it may rear it's ugly head. Again, the danger inherent in this is it's own drawback, given the number of powerful evil rulers openly operating round there.
The Azure Masks are another one that's all about gathering knowledge. They go about it in rather a different way though, pretending to be just traveling performers. They get to learn some proficiencies easier, but others are harder, and they have the usual thing where if they're caught and spill, they'll probably end up dead of mysterious causes. So I really don't see any of these breaking your game, unless PC's belong to multiple ones, and their secret agendas wind up tearing the group apart. But they're not wildly imaginative either.
The lost giants of Krynn: Dual stat 5th age articles strike again! You know, didn't we have a giant themed issue a couple of months ago? Maybe this was late, but they still liked it, and used it now. It can't be because they had too many non D&D articles in that issue already. Anyway, the name is pretty self explanatory, although as usual for these kind of articles, I doubt it'll be hard to transplant to another setting, as it's not hugely specific in flavor. Still, having SAGA stats for the monsters as well is nice, and the fact that they're crammed into little statblocks means there's more room for descriptive text in the same pagecount. There are flaws to the standard MM format, and efficiency of space is one of them.
Earth Giants are essentially Terry Pratchett trolls played straight, enormous creatures that appear to be part of the landscape when inactive, and spend centuries at a time asleep. They're surprisingly aware of everything going on around though, and make excellent sources of ancient lore. If you can rouse them in a time of crisis, I'll wager they could match Ents as a tideturner.
Cave Lords are enormous bloated goblins, dwarfing even Bugbears in mass. They have a taste for cannibalism, and avoid sunlight at all costs. They may get too fat to leave their home, but within it, they're surprisingly fast and not to be trifled with. Sounds reasonably mythic to me.
Desolation Giants are humans that have been turned into massive misshapen mutants by the power of the Desolation. This has twisted their mind as well, and now they're stereotypical chaotic evil sadists who are incapable of relating to others save via violence, trickery and betrayal, even when it might be more profitable to play it straight. Gotta love Krynns cheesy 80's cartoon morals. Put them out of your misery before they add to it if at all possible, and don't hang around anywhere that might do the same to you.
Half-Giants have a slightly easier time in Krynn than they do in Athas, but still face prejudice whichever side of their heritage they spend time with. They get reasonable capabilities as PC's, but are always going to be fighty sorts. Well, breeding with hill & stone giants is just about anatomically feasible, but having sex with a Storm Giant just isn't going to be pleasurable for either party. I suppose there's always a turkey baster if you're that desperate to have kids. All of these were fairly amusing and quite easy to write about. I think they can have my approval, even if half-giants are getting rather rehashed now. They definitely ought to have a place in the generic books, given how common they are.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 5/8
Fiction: The span by Diane Duane. Youuuuuuu. :points: Actually, no, I'm thinking of someone else, as my look back over the archive shows she's responsible for some of the better regarded Star Trek books. It's other people who were responsible for the characterisation violating, idiot ball juggling abominations we saw slated several times in the book reviews column (RIP :( ) Instead we have a rather interesting bit of writing full of nuanced social interaction, and magic involving sex as an integral part of the plot line, with all the complications and worries arising from that you'd imagine. In short, this is one that'd never have been published a few years ago, with the TSR code of conduct in full force. There's a little bit of cosmological detail and magic as science stuff, but it takes a back seat to the human element here. So this once again shows the difference in quality between the mainstream writers who contribute and the staff guys doing Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance stuff. They could do with a little more cross-promotion if they want to grow their fanbase again.
Wyrms of the north: Ah yes, Mercury Dragons. The draconic equivalent of Kender. :spits: Whizzing around the place, dazzling people, and generally being good-naturedly mischievous. Here we combine that with a pulp daredevil flyer, the kind who crashes into a scene, makes a nuisance of himself, and then takes off again and leaves other people to deal with the consequences. He also has an awesome secret hideout filled with traps and monsters that'll be the envy of every evil wizard who tries to penetrate it. Plenty of detail is also gone into his treasure, but unusually for Ed, he doesn't have any unique spells. So like a lot of these dragons, he might serve as an ally or an enemy, depending how much tolerance the PC's have for whimsy and pranks. So this really reminds us that Ed is as cheesy as ever, and that's unlikely to end when this column does. If you want to adventure in the Realms, you're going to have to live with that, or spend a lot of time cleaning out the goofier elements.
PC Portraits: This has some roguish characters. They seem to skew slightly younger-looking than the recent instalments of this series, but there's the usual wide range of races, sexes, and personality types. They might trick you, they might go unnoticed while stealing, or they might use force to get what they want. Probably the safest thing to do is to not trust anyone. But that in itself can condemn you to a lonely paranoid life. Oh, the dilemma. Best to at least try and make people think you trust them. It does help a little bit, given that most people do adhere at least a little to do as you would be done by.
Dragon's bestiary: Hmm. 4 issues ago, we got a collection of monsters based on the works of M R James. This time they're converting stuff from the computer game Heretic II. This is an interesting development. We saw plenty of characters converted in the old GitE articles, but monsters were less likely to be direct rips. I wonder if this trend will continue. In any case, it'll give us some interesting visuals, even if the monsters may occupy the same niche as existing D&D ones.
Plague sidhe are elves infected with a deadly and highly contagious disease that makes them attack all noninfected people in the vicinity. A great justification for enemies that attack on sight, and need to be taken out from a distance.
Plague spreaders are the mid level bads behind the disease, ensuring it spreads with rather more intelligence and some neat technomagical devices. Take them out and things become more manageable, but you may have to be put down after fighting them. It does add rather a tragic edge to proceedings. Looks like like many books, they're going for accurate conversions rather than fair, which I generally approve of.
Parthoris Gorgons are adorable little dinosaur like creatures that'll leap at you and get blown away. Watch out for back attacks, because that'll be rather unpleasant to say the least.
G'Grokon just look strange. Semi-bipedal bug things, they're pretty weedy, but spit acid balls with a very high RoF, so if you're standing still, your life meter'll go down fast. Another case where I can see the game tropes showing through and contrasting with the usual D&D design ones to interesting effect.
Parthoris harpys fly around and dive on you. Another one that seems like a decent challenge, but not too spectacular or imaginative in terms of abilities. Not a bad conversion, overall, and they've added a nice amount of ecological data. This is rather better than the endless rehashes lately.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 6/8
Arcane Lore: Music based magic. You seem a fairly familiar subject. Spooky music based magic? That's a pretty decent combination. Distinct enough to be unique so far, but common enough mythologically to draw upon. Has potential.
Chant of Dark Summons lets you bring forth lesser demons from the abyss. As usual, this carries pretty substantial risks. And don't even think about trying to summon cascade the buggers. That will not go to your benefit. I'd go with regular animals instead.
Chorus of Wrath buffs those who join in. The more people who join in, the more each individual is buffed. Power in numbers! I do love synergistic effects.
Danse Macabre is a lesser version of the city undeadifying ritual from recent Ravenloft adventures. Honestly, next thing you know everyone'll be using it, and then someone'll develop a planetwide variant, and then where will we be? Screwed, that's where. Sure, everyone being undead may sound neat at first, no more death, no more horrible crawling squishy ecosystem of everything eating everything else, but sooner or later your fingers are going to start coming off, and who'll replace them? Cotton to sew stuff comes from plants you know.
Haunting Melody brings the victim back as a ghost. If done without their consent, this may make them cranky. And of course, knowing ghosts, they may wind up going nuts after a while anyway.
Nocturne envelops you in gloom, so you can brood properly without being disturbed by that irritating sunlight. Perfect for vampires who need to be up and about, and don't mind making themselves conspicuous.
Eerie Piping is like Heat Metal, if you don't get away, it gradually gets ever more unpleasant. Still, it's very very unlikely to have it's full effects on most listeners.
Fiendish Fantasia twists everything into a nightmare landscape, distorted and looming. Once again I refer you to the wondrous creepiness of Watership Down.
Keening is basically a banshee wail. Had that before. In a proper sourcebook too. Run better editorial checks. The new spell compendia should make that easier too.
Melody of Madness is another one that gradually builds in unpleasantness as time goes on. This kind of thing is why you need mates around to catch you when about to fall. Keep those curative spells handy.
Nightmare Lullaby is a lower lever variant on the regular Nightmare spell. The goal is the same. Disturb their sleep, give them penalties later. Muahahahaha.
Siren Song makes people let you wander through undisturbed, and wind up surprised if you do anything nasty. Turnaround is fair play when so many monsters pull tricks like that.
Sorrel's Dirge is another angstfest. Nothing wrong with turning depression on other people to make them suffer penalties instead of you.
Swan Song brings us to a close, with a spell that may well kill the caster, but will at least let them take quite a few of the enemies with them. Sounds about right. Swans do make an awful racket if you annoy them. They're not quite as psychotic as geese though.
Edit: Was going to post a comment, but changed my mind. Ignore this post. Thanks.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 7/8
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another Rogue focussed article interspersed with the other ones this month. They're always appreciative of magical items that enhance their ability to take stuff, although sometimes not to the extent of actually paying after having them commissioned. ;)
The Harp of Screams is an interesting little alarm system. It'll make a ghastly racket if triggered, which is useful for both thieves who want a diversion, and people guarding their stuff.
Shadowgloves let you reach through containers to get at the valuables inside without disturbing things. Just don't use them on extradimensional storage devices, for the usual ugly boom happens.
Wandering Eyes give you a security network you can easily flick through. Just plonk them in strategic locations for maximum benefit. Since they can't propel themselves, this is once again probably more useful for foiling thieves than assisting them
Liar's Boots create a false trail of footprints going in a different direction to your actual destination, while leaving no actual tracks on you. Dead handy, really.
Darkdust is a very cliched name indeed. It creates a black cloud wherever it is thrown, hopefully blinding the victim and allowing for escape. Well, it's slightly less obtrusive for a burglar than the similar ones that blind by flashes of light.
Rings of Dodging let you improve your AC against one opponent. Once again we see a trick that would become standard next edition. I suspect those are going to increase over the next few months.
Ringdaggers are yet another way of concealing a weapon and then instantly calling it to hand. Yawn. As if we don't suspect everyone automatically by now.
Spider Rope stretches out and ties around things on command. No great surprises there.
Keys of Disruption completely seal a door magically. You'll have to rely on old fashioned violence to get out. Better hope you didn't make your fortress impregnable then :p
Chameleon Keys aren't as good as skeleton keys, as you have to touch them to the key you want to imitate. Still, that does seem less likely to break an entire adventure. Once again with the weaker variants for game balance's sake.
Role models: So minis are finally back. Like other systems, they've had a spotty treatment in the magazine. One of the things bumped off in the 96 "refocussing", it looks like they've decided there's enough public demand to give them another go. And once again they get a new column name. That's the fifth time. Just don't stick, do they. Lets see how long this one lasts.
As with Dungeoncraft last month, they start out with a cost analysis of getting into minis in the first place. More evidence that the staff are more money conscious now than in the TSR days. You'll need one for each PC, a modest selection of models for monsters, and preferably some paints as well. This actually probably won't cost as much as the three AD&D corebooks, but it's not a trivial expenditure either. Running parallel to that is an explanation on how you translate movement rates into scale inches. So once again they really are starting from level 0, aiming at people who don't have a clue what they're doing, and wouldn't research this kind of information proactively. Since being spoonfed isn't really to my tastes, and I remember the advanced mini painting advice in 1980, I do feel inclined to make a darn kids, gitoffa mah lawn quip. Make gratification too instant, and people won't value what you provide. Don't get insecure because the internet now offers infinite distractions. Stick to your guns.
Dragon Magazine Issue 256: February 1999
part 8/8
Blood philosophy, the world of the Weren: Another expansion of a particular Alternity race is the article that system gets this month. Honorbound warrior sorts from a harsh environment? That seems fairly familiar. Still, they're certainly not klingon rip-offs. Instead, they're huge hairy things which look like they have walrus or polar bear derivation, and come from a planet that's fairly chilly even at the equator, with enormous icecaps covering most of it's mass. They're from a fairly traditional culture, but there's now plenty of them out in space, getting assimilated and forgetting their traditional values. So while they do have a stereotype, you have plenty of leeway to play them against type if you want. They dip into ecology, sociology, religion, philosophy, language, and it's obvious some effort has been put into keeping things scientifically plausible. It's not the most entertaining to read of articles, but it does seem to be of pretty decent quality, and has enough density of ideas to support re-reading. Now, if they could just do something about the dryness to draw people in better.
The blood war makes it's way into dragonmirth. Swordplay takes a leaf out of Nodwicks book on the proper treatment of hirelings. KotDT engages in some lame horsetrading, in more ways than one.
TSR Previews: D&D gets another fast-play adventure, Eye of the Wyvern. The first introduced you to dungeoneering, now this brings the wilderness into things. Roll on the next generation.
AD&D has several bits of rehash. On the generic side, there's dungeons of despair, a collection of some of the best adventures from the magazine. While Ravenloft collects 3 of it's old books in Van Richten's monster hunter compendium. They do seem to be increasing the amount of this lately. Roll on .pdf's and the long tail.
Dragonlance bounces back and forth along it's timeline as usual. The Sylvan Veil is another dual stat adventure, covering a whole load of the elven nation's history. Just what choices will you have a chance to make here. There's also The Puppet King by Doug Niles. Looks like the elves are going to have a crappy time of things just like everyone else.
The Forgotten Realms is still concentrating on the seaside in Star of Currash by Clayton Emery. A hidden undead city? Pulp action? Plenty of fun to be had there.
And Alternity gets an adventure. Planet of Darkness. Hidden secrets and sociopolitical crap? They are still trying. Good luck with that.
Profiles: rk post is one of our more recent new artists. Signing up just before TSR crashed and burned, thankfully, the new management kept him on. He's just starting to really make an impact, having done a lot to shape the look of Alternity with his prelediction towards the weird. Sounds like he fits in here just fine. Like quite a few of the staff, he's an absolute obsessive, painting for work, and painting for entertainment in his free time as well. Suppose that's how you get really good at it. Come on, surely he has some personality quirks or something you can write about? I dunno. These profiles aren't the most insightful, are they. First Quest was way better at getting inside the heads of the writers.
Slightly more continuity in this issue than recently, but it still feels very much like a collection of articles to be judged on their individual merits, rather than as a whole. It's not exactly groundhog day, but most of the wheel-spinning is happening behind the scenes as they prepare for the edition change. Say you'll shift into a higher gear at some point. Maybe I should speed up again. Surely I can do this.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 1/8
124 pages. Roger Raupp is back again, with another Arthurian cover, which has quite a bit of similarity to the one he did 12 years ago in issue 125, only closer perspective and with more saturation on the colour. Guess time hasn't changed that interest. The issue's theme is the Dark Ages, which fits in, even if it might not be that different from the regular medieval D&D assumptions. I guess it all depends on the details, and there's certainly plenty of information to research from on this topic. How will they balance the twin demands of accuracy and fun this issue? Well, that would be telling. Fortunately, I've never been averse to spoilers.
Scan quality: Good, a little visible grain and oversaturation. No index.
In this issue:
Man, that's a lot of adverts before we even get to the first feature. Particular demerits go to lands of lore III, which just looks fugly. This is not making me want to buy these things.
The wyrms turn has much the same ideas as I do about the balancing of fantastical elements and realism. If anything, they go into rather more detail, and examine how this intersects with sci-fi as well as fantasy. When there really was something there, you can accurately judge how accurate it was. Otherwise it's just a matter of attention to detail and verisimilitude rather than actual accuracy. Makes sense to me. Talk about realistic magic is a bit silly really, when you step back. On the other hand, a magic system could indeed be better or worse for telling a compelling story with, and an author could stick to the rules they established, or wind up breaking them, and you could do some objective analysis on those grounds. So this makes me think about the nature of reality, and how different people might perceive and react to the same thing differently, and there's vast quantities of information we don't have the senses to process, but there's still an underlying reality there. (unless you're a hardcore soliptist. ) So logically, the fewer biases and preconceptions you have, the closer you come to seeing what's actually in front of you. Well, there are dumber sounding routes to enlightenment.
D-Mail: A letter telling them that they're great, and the magazine is great. They shouldn't expect to please everyone all the time, and should stick to making good articles. Don't get jittery and blow it by overthinking things.
A letter asking for them to put the map of dragon territories from the annual online. The site they reference is still up as of writing this, but I can't find the map itself. Such is the nature of progress.
A mostly positive analysis of issue 254. They do seem to have more people individually examining each article these days. Must be something in the airwaves.
A letter saying they should give more credit to their cover artists. After all, if anyone's going to bring in new blood, it's them. They take this constructive criticism on board eagerly. Let new artists make a name for themselves.
Another Dragonlance casting letter. This seems likely to carry on running until the editors lose interest. After all, it has more built up history than Scud and Allycia. :D
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 2/8
Nodwick saves the day again! What a hero! ;)
Forum: Tim Ellenbecker thinks you ought to detach combat levels from skill levels, so PC's can pick up lots of proficiencies if they can find the time, independently of if they're badass or not. I still don't think that's a bad idea.
M. Keaton thinks that the people who want tons of options collated into the corebooks are wrong. This is a definite case where things should be kept simple. We want to get new people in, after all.
Jason F. Smith is another person who believes in templates and story based experience rewards. Clap your hands if you believe and they'll be applied to your characters!
David Higgins is another person who thinks saves should be based around the ability score that resists the effects. And the probabilities ought to change less as you go up levels. If they're dithering about fort, ref & will, this'll help them decide.
Joseph F. Matons reminds us druids are awesome, despite being frequently overlooked. It's not an edition based comment, but still very appropriate since they'll be even more awesome soon.
Dungeoncraft: This month's column moves onto creating the home base. This focusses upon macro details such as size, political system, and primary economic products, rather that details that'll instantly be useful to players, like the inn layout and shopping lists. While this may lead to larger adventures, it won't be as instantly useful or easy as drawing a map, filling it with monsters, and setting the players loose to play. I guess Ray has bigger fish to fry, and we already have more dungeon crawl modules than we can use. But still, it seems like he's trying to start small, but then slipping back into top down worldbuilding. Still, the example world is coming along nicely, with an edge of civilisation fortified settlement that's heavy on wandering adventurers and rumours of stuff for them to do. Do a little more of what he's doing, not what he's saying, and you shouldn't go too far wrong.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 3/8
Sage advice: Do you know any languages if you don't spend a slot on one (yes. You cannot give that language up for an extra slot, even if you have the spells to get around it)
Does a 1 on surprise rolls always equal surprise even if you have bonuses (you decide)
What penalty do you suffer for being underwater? The DMG contradicts itself (God, have we still not cleared the errata on that out after a decade of reprints? Bit late now, I guess. +4)
How does a yo-yo of fate work (personally, and occasionally. It's not the game-breaker you seem to think it is)
How much of a person's body do you need to raise them. Raising needs all of them. Ressurection can regrow them from a tiny bit. Those extra 2 levels really come in handy.)
What happens when you wrestle someone with stoneskin on (The spell provides no protection. Betcha didn't expect that, cully. )
Can you cast spells while grappled. (No. Even verbal only spells are a bugger to get out while you're being groped.)
How does a scimitar of speed work under Players option rules (kludgily)
Can nondetection protect you from magical wards (no. Wrong school of magic)
How near do you need to be to an effect to use storm's spell thrust. (Inside it. No protection by proxy. )
How does a dimensional blade affect flesh ( Brutally, but not that brutally. All D&D characters above 1st level are superhuman, remember.)
What happens when undead use channeling ( The usual. Undead immunity to fatigue is like paladin immunity to disease. Magical stuff can get through it )
Are death knights affected by their own fireballs (yes. Just like wizards, you've gotta take account of the terrain when using your artillery. )
Can you put a low level spell in a higher level slot (Same as it ever was. Even now we remember what we used to say. Take a clean break wash that love away.)
How does a book of the planes work (Read it, go to the top layer. Not hard. )
How many spells can a draincone drain (dunno. How many did you cast? )
What's the right area of effect for a swordward (chunky slices. Better get buffing.
What, does Skip have to answer Marvel super heroes questions as well this month. Hmm. Skip'll do it, but this time, skip wants a purple box. Skip couldn't possibly do Skip's work without it. Can't go mixing the Marvel and Alternity questions up, can we? You will, Mr Wizard from the coast? Why thank you. Ha. Suckers. Skip wonders what else Skip can pressure the new management into giving him.
Has Threnody been cured of the legacy virus or not (we don't know yet. Even if we get an answer, marvel may retcon it anyway)
How much damage does a fall do. (Has a superhero ever been seriously hurt by falling? Not often. Get the Reed Richards guide to everything if you really need to know)
How strong do you need to be to throw something. (depends what you want to lift. Is comparing two figures on a chart really that hard?)
Can you use doom and have it used against you straight away. (no. You don't suffer the consequences until at least next scene. Just enough time to get cocky)
What happens if you make a contingent boxing attack. (skip has no idea, so skip will spout vaguely plausible technobabble and hope that makers you go away.)
The characters from the comics break the rules of the game! (and you are surprised why? They have tons of experience, and narrative fiat behind them. You don't. Live with it. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 4/8
Dark Ages: Whoa. A 21 page special feature. Now that's not something they do very often. In fact, wasn't the last one about this time last year, and also featuring Roger Raupp's material. He brings the old school vibe back to the magazine, or something. As befits their current editorial direction though, this is quite crunch heavy, assuming that you're at least moderately familiar with the idea of dark ages history, and showing us how to implement it in a mechanical sense, with new races and kits taking up well over half of the page count. Since this is an epic feature, I think I should break it up into subcategories to give it it's due.
The setting information includes a map and a timeline, taking us from the departure of the romans to 1066 and the arrival of the Normans. It includes details of the various kingdoms within the british isles, which generally aren't actually that big. But then, when you don't have fast communication or travel, it's a lot easier to feel like a big fish who rules all he surveys. So this is a good reminder that even at name level when you get your own domain, it doesn't have to be that big or populous by modern standards to feel like a real handful to manage. Still, you'll have to refer to the bibliography if you really want in depth information on how real world dark ages kingdoms turned out, and what life in one was like.
The races information not only covers demihumans, but also gives racial modifiers to the celts and picts, while leaving the anglo-saxons as the "base" human race. While this might be slightly dubious from a political correctness PoV, it will allow you to differentiate your characters more without relying on the supernatural elements. The new races are erkling and trow, forest goblins and dwarf-troll hybrids, both of which tend to be sneaky and rather good as thieves, but poor to mediocre at other class options. They definitely fall into the category of creatures that will be unpopular in human settlements and have to work hard to escape their heritage. So yeah, if you're not comfortable with both real world and fantasy racism and incorporating it into your game, (while preferably separating it from your own personal beliefs) you may want to think hard about this bit.
And we not only get 8 new kits, but also extensive reference to the existing complete handbook series and historical sourcebooks, ensuring that they aren't repeating material from those. Most of these are of the concrete benefits for social hindrances kind though, tying you into the setting, and making it a pain to just go off on adventures for extended periods of time. So I think this is one that put a bit more effort into research than adapting it for the game. While extensive, I don't think it counts as a classic one. But don't let that put you off trying a few more of these.
Fighting with flair: Or yet another attempt to give warriors cool things to do. Which to be fair, they are gradually getting better at, even if they continue to fall behind spellcasters by comparison. Skills and powers is good for something, and that's letting you get helping you really figure out if a particular kit is over or underpowered, and ensuring the character overall is balanced despite this. At least, that's presuming the individual powers and drawbacks are accurately priced and don't have game breaking combos that are way more than the sum of their parts. Since nearly all of these have costs in multiples of 5, fine-tuning does not appear to be on the agenda. Still, this does have a lot of detail in other respects, including referencing many books. So it looks like after several issues which I've criticised for being too disconnected, this one is going the other way, with articles that demand you have lots of supplements to fully use them. That's a pleasant change, at least until they overdo it. Still, plenty of room for the other articles to balance it out.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 5/8
101 Paladin quests: Practical example solutions to the problems paladin's unique powers and requirements sometimes present? Well, it's a much more productive contribution than bitching about them in the forum or saying they should get rid of them altogether. Yay for Johnathan M Richards again. He's at his best when examining already existing elements of the game, and expanding massively upon them while injecting a bit of humour. Split evenly between bonded mount quests, holy sword quests, and atonement quests, (ya think they should have done more atonement ones? :D ) this encompasses multiple stages of their adventuring life, and like most 101 lists, a single campaign is unlikely to use it up. Most are quite challenging, and some are amusing and inventive as well, making them good for a session or two of solo adventure. They can definitely produce a few more in this line of articles before they start to run out of topics and have to move on.
Fiction: Charger by Ben Bova. Once again Orion changes the path of history via using not only his combat skill, but also his brains. This time, it's by introducing stirrups to Arthur and co, allowing them to ride their horses in true knightly fashion centuries early and kick Saxon butt. Which of course also allow the author to show off his general knowledge of history and science in general. Even more than last time, the contrast between Orion's omnipotence in physical combat, and helplessness in the social arena is played up, with him getting plenty of mockery from the ordinary people for his odd ideas and ways. Well, that's all too realistic. It happens to almost everyone who's different or visionary. So this rings pretty true in all it's non supernatural elements, although Ben takes pretty heavy liberties with the arthurian mythos as usual. My main complaint is the amount of time it spends explaining the premise yet again to those who haven't read the previous stories. That could surely have been done in less time.
Wyrms of the north: Continuity time! In issue 236 we saw a silver dragon who was mated with a Gold dragon. Now it's time for us to get info on said gold dragon. Like most gold dragons, she holds herself to moral standards that most creatures would find a real struggle. (except when shapeshifted, where staying in character may supersede short-term good deeds. ) And she uses her power to engage in actual temporal rulership, and generally make things better for those in her domain, which is certainly unusual. With a flying mountain for a lair, and a magical artifact that gives her tons of earth and environmental control magic, she's pretty obvious, and it's testament to her number of powerful allies and the inability of evil to co-operate that she stays in charge. So this article reinforces the picture of the Realms as a magic heavy world, where the supernatural creatures and powerful wizards are the real players in geopolitics, with cards up their sleeves no fighter or thief can come close too, however high level they might be. That's the natural result of running the world on AD&D physics, and no amount of disincentivising can counteract basic logic.
The Dark Ages articles in 257 and 263 -especially the part about rune magic- is some of the most useful stuff to appear in Dragon.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 6/8
PC Portraits: Roger Raupp takes this column too this month, with some knightly characters, duh. This does mean they slant slightly more towards the white male human than the average one of these, but there are also samurai, indian and mayan looking ones in there. The real common factor is the protective headgear, which is often quite flashy. Well, when you're heavily armored, you can get away with a little peacocking. Sticks and stones will hurt your bones considerably less, so you can feel freer ignoring mocking words. And an elaborate codpiece will only provide more protection. Go on, platemail and a horse already costs tons, you can spare a little extra to look good with it.
AD&D game aliens: The T'sa get a conversion from Alternity this month. Little fast, smart lizard people, they don't fit the stereotype of reptiles, despite there being real world examples where they move at quite scary speeds, run on water and whatnot. So statistically, they're of the high dex & int, low str & con ilk that mess around with techy stuff, and skitter around the place being enthusiastic about everything. With short lifespans, but a fast learning rate, they adapt to new situations fast, and their societies go through regular upheavals as they discover new technologies. They get unlimited advancement as rogues, but aren't that great at spellcasting, oddly enough. Chalk it up to lack of focus, or maybe being from a technology based universe. They still have more technological artifacts than most races round here, which also get statted up for AD&D. So they do fill a niche that the current races don't, and could make an interesting addition to a party. And they also have obvious potential for being played in an irritating manner and disrupting the party, so um, yaaay. The kender and fishmalk crowd can feel happy too.
The ecology of the firenewt & Giant strider: Oooh. A paired ecology. Haven't seen one of those in a while. We also see the return of our protagonist from the Bird Maiden ecology. So that's three sets of recurring characters (plus Elminster of course, who gets everywhere) that this series has built up over the years. Anyway, firenewts are one of those quirky creatures that appeared first in the Fiend Folio, and haven't got a huge amount of attention since then, since low level marauding humanoid is such an overfilled ecological niche. This does it's best to differentiate them from the crowd. Obviously, they already have the distinguishing factor of their flame related powers, and using mounts a lot of the time. So we build on that, and add a load of details on their lifecycle, culture, religion, fighting tactics, and a new spell. That'll do nicely, making sure players won't take them too lightly. Another fairly good ecology that gains an extra mark for the recurring characters. This series is really building up a bit of continuity now.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 7/8
Role models: The minis column is still tackling the basics of getting everything together for a campaign. Pay extra attention to the PC's minis, because unless you're running a meatgrinder, they'll be stuck with them for a while, and the minis they choose will influence the way they perceive the characters in the long run. Meanwhile, the monsters don't need to have the same kind of attention paid to them, especially as painting takes quite a while, and you do want to have a decent variety in most campaigns. Although using unpainted ones as mooks and painted ones to represent named creatures is a clever idea, this is still pretty elementary, and the improved visuals don't really mitigate that. This once again disappoints compared to older articles on this topic.
Shop Keep: John Kovalic delivers us a new comic. Looks like running a game store is almost as exhausting and poor paying as being a professional games designer. You've got to laugh, or you'd go mad.
Battlezone: While Alternity stuff is getting converted to AD&D elsewhere in the issue, computer game stuff is getting converted to Alternity in the Ares column this issue. Since Battlezone was a game where you controlled giant mechanised vehicles, that means lots of stats for cool things that you can drive, fly or walk around the place, and the various weaponry they can be equipped with. And some images of how they appear in game, which are a bit too small for my tastes, but look pretty nice. So if you want more powerful toys for your players to pilot, this is quite a valuable little article. If not, oh well, better luck next time, I'm fully aware that giant vehicles with powerful weaponry are a niche market, although maybe more due to expense and legal restrictions than desire.
The competitions series asks you to design a 1st level character this month.
Dragonmirth can't draw proper tetrahedrons. Swordplay can't be bothered with this MTV crap. KotDT get into pedantic antagonistic playing again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999
part 8/8
TSR Previews: Greyhawk continues to resurge, courtesy of our new owners. This time, they reverse another thing that was removed in the 2nd ed changeover by bringing back Monks and Assassins. The Scarlet Brotherhood have tons of both, and they're on the rise again. Will you let them back in your country? Can you keep them out, given how sneaky they are.
The Realms continues to rehash, on the other hand. Evermeet by Elaine Cunningham gets reprinted. Meanwhile R. A. Salvadore actually writes an adventure for a change. It still involves his usual locations, but at least he's pushing himself a bit. The Accursed tower takes you to Icewind Dale to have fun with another dungeon crawl.
Dragonlance gets The Rose and the Skull. The Knights of Takhisis have to figure out their new place without their goddess. Back and forth. I hope someone is keeping track of exactly when all these different novels and short stories take place.
Ravenloft gets Spectre of the Black Rose. Lord Soth is still brooding as things suck in Ravenloft. What an unlife. Give it a rest.
The RPGA releases a compilation of their last year's adventures. More pickup meatgrinders for your delectation, along with other weirdness. Hmm. Worth considering. We could do with a few more single session adventures.
Alternity enjoys a supplement and a novel. They're really competing with the big boys at the moment. Outbound: An Explorers Guide gives you a ton of solar systems to drop into your game. Storm at Edala by Diane Duane is the second book in her trilogy here. Woo.
Marvel Super Heroes does for the fantastic 4 what they did for the avengers. Up to date descriptions and stats. Getcha up to date stats and histories heeeere. 4 for a dollar, maybe even 5!
Profiles: J Robert King is one of our fiction writers. Like a lot of people, he started reading voraciously because he was stuck at home for ages with nothing much to do, so books were a way to escape the boredom. Starting from the slightly less glamorous job of editor, he's become most well known for his Ravenloft work, but has also contributed to the Dragonlance, Planescape, First Quest, and Magic: the Gathering game worlds, and like every writer, also dreams of creating his own world, where he doesn't have to worry about line developers and continuity people interfering with your creativity. It is important to avoid getting typecast, and he certainly seems to be trying to do that. Let's hope his attempts didn't disappoint you.
Well, this issue has certainly been much higher on the continuity front than any issue in ages. Which has definitely been a pleasant change, even if as usual, not all the individual articles were great. I've now got more than enough D&D lore mastery that all the outside references were familiar to me, and everything within here is usable. I think I can return an overall positive verdict on this one. Now let's see if they've got their sense of humour back after skipping that last year.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 1/7
100 pages. This issue marks the end of the era of regular as clockwork 124 pagers. From here on out, the page count goes up and down (mostly down) from issue to issue unpredictably. Their comfortable early adulthood is over, where you can get drunk every weekend, live on Ramen for months on end and still get up and go next morning, and now it's time for all the aches and pains of middle age to set in. Still, at least that means I should be able to get through these last few years more quickly. Let's hit that accelerator.
Connecting with that is a rather amusing cover by Todd Lockwood, which features the hordes of belts, buckles & stupid adornments style that would become de rigeur throughout 3rd edition. A belly button ring, an eyebrow ring. A stud through the lip. Earrings that look like they'd slit her throat if she shook her head too hard. Lets not forget the belts. I count at least 29 on her. Really, who ever thought stuff like this was cool or practical for adventuring in? Even Alias would look askance at wearing this. At least trenchcoats are practical, weather resistant and have plenty of room for holding equipment. Of course, it could be an april fool that got taken seriously by the WotC art department. But somehow I doubt it. Welcome to D&D's first mid-life crisis. You'll never be a hip young thing again. Accept it.
Scan quality: Generally good, colours slightly faded.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Once again they get neurotic about the amount of humour they should have in their april issues. You've been doing this over 20 years now. It isn't exactly rocket science. You need at least one leftfield one that people will talk about and remember, but maybe won't get any game use out of, and then you can mix serious and funny ones around the rest of the issue how you want. How hard is that? Well, I guess if you're not getting the submissions, it might be a bit tricky, but they certainly seemed to have no shortage of them in Roger's day. Don't tell me the whole gaming population has suddenly gone boring. Or maybe they've just intimidated the interestingly weird ones away with their dogmatic submission guidelines. In any case, this says nothing they haven't done before. They could have skipped this and had another much needed page for articles.
The complete dragon ball Z boxed set on VHS?! That'll eat up a LOT of shelf space. Tenchi miyo, on the other hand, is down with modern technology. Hooray for DVD's.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 2/7
D-Mail: We start off with a request for more articles with house rules and adventure hooks. We have enough standard stuff by now. Let's present a few more easy to use options.
Another request for more Campaign Classics. It's one case where demand seems to outstrip supply. If only all creators stuck with their children like Ed does.
Yet another letter about the possibility of a dragonlance movie, although they mention that a cartoon might be a better idea. Special effects are so annoyingly expensive to do well.
And finally a letter from someone who regularly uses minis in their game and is pleased to see a column back in the magazine. As with people who are fans of settings, there's plenty of them out there, not entirely satisfied with the amount they're being catered too.
Nodwick tries to get through to his employers, only to find they're well aware of what assholes they are. Apart from Pyffany. I though clerics were supposed to have a high wisdom.
Forum: Paul D. Thomson thinks mages are one of the most powerful classes, even at low level, because of the many many noncombat things they can do. Yeah, that's going to be the rub many times throughout the next edition too.
Derek Groen wants 4 base classes, plus good rules for creating your own. Then they can sell tons of examples while having a consistent base for keeping them balanced. A boy can dream, can't he.
Neil Palmquist wants the monk back, along with all the other 1st ed classes that got dropped, including the UA & OA ones. And all the old proficiencies incorporated too. BloAT!
Peter Donis-Forster defends alignment. It has very specific effects on your game, and characters should have restrictions on how they act. It helps define them as a character rather than just an extension of you.
Ken Butler dislikes the idea of a real time based combat system, but does want psionics as core. Hey Ho. Another mixed bag, as must be where opinions contradict.
Dungeoncraft: Ah yes, religion. An integral element in worldbuilding, and one that has the most potential to go horribly wrong or just get glossed over. We've been here before. Fortunately, this is one element where Ray improves on previous articles, spelling things out in a clear, step by step fashion, with examples, and referencing the principles he established in previous columns. The specific example of a supreme nature goddess with a broad enough umbrella to cover clerics & druids, including the darker side of nature; is rather generic, but I suppose you don't want anything too leftfield here. More interesting is the continued emphasis on making sure that for everything you design, there is a secret associated with it. Of all the advice he gives, that seems most unusual, but also likely to have good long-term payoffs. And the twist at the end, that Mind flayers were created by the moon goddess and are intended to eventually replace humans and other creatures from the nature one as the dominant lifeform, is positively inspired as a long-term campaign hook. So this is one of his stronger entries, and shows the continuity of this column building up nicely. If he gets several years to do this, and continues to improve, then I should miss him when this ends, as all things must eventually do.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 3/7
Sage advice: How much holy water is in a standard vial (half a pint. Individually, they may not weigh much, but they soon add up.)
Booze is a bitch. Would you give into temptation when dying of dehydration? ( Quite possibly. It's complicated. )
Can you get rid of poison by hasting someone (no. The aging is physical strain, not actual time passing. It does not heal you. or progress any stuff that would progress in a real year's aging. Trying to work logically from that assumption in any way will just waste your time. Casting it on children is a very bad idea. This stuff'll burn you out faster than crystal meth. They don't call it adventurer's crack for nothing. )
Why the hell did you remove the subdual rules from dragons. Were you making a political statement? (No. We standardized the rules, so now they apply to everyone. No more (well, less) exception based design. That's a good thing! )
Don't the planescape rules essentially make everyone immortal (no, because petitioners lose their memories and class abilities. They're about as you as you would be if you were reincarnated. )
Can you get magic resistance, cast anti-magic shell on yourself, then resist it and cast spells through it (No. It either works or it doesn't. You can't have your cake and eat it too. )
How much does a 2x4 board cost (not much)
Is a halfling falling on someone a missile (No, it's a charge.)
How do you get your hand in a 2 inch wide pouch (turn it sideways)
What happens to the energy undead drain (off to the negative energy plane it goes. Schlorp schlorp entropy consumes a little more of the universe)
Does casting call lightning within obscurement electrify the whole cloud (no. Just apply the RAW, stop trying to use real world physics. This applies to any other spells your players try to "creatively interpret" as well. Just say no to physics, kids! )
What happens if a nymph has kids with my character (boys are your race, girls are theirs. They're like those weird amazonian fishes. No need to worry about weird half-breeds here.)
How can I improve my olde english vocabulary (LARP moar)
You said you can't catch arrows. My friend so can and he has the scars to prove it. (Skip hardly thinks stopping an arrow by having it go through the middle of your palm counts as catching. In any case, D&D isn't a martial arts game. Go play something else if you want to pull stunts like that. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 4/7
Mage vs Machine: Hmm. This might not be as long as last issue's special feature, but it is considerably more special. We've had the odd intrusion of sci-fi into D&D, but not for a while. And this has the potential to fill quite a few more sessions than Barrier Peaks, despite being only half the size. Machine life appearing from another planet or dimension and trying to take over the world may not be inherently evil, but it is going to cause substantial disruption to the natural order, and make druids and rangers in particular rather pissed off. This gives you one of two options. You can declare them anathema, and do your best to eradicate them from the world, or you can figure out how to have organic and technological things live alongside one-another, and hybridise into cyborgs and cool stuff like that. I'd obviously incline towards the cyberware option, but this gives you the option for either or both to exist in your campaign. They detail 4 different kinds of machine life, 3 low level and one massive robotic destroyer, with the intent that they form a larger hive structure and work together to explore and tactically defeat organic life. And on the player's side, we have two new wizard kits, one dedicated to destroying them, and one dedicated to understanding them, and never the twain shall share a party; 7 new nonweapon proficiencies to allow you to understand how they work and take advantage of that, 7 new spells to help you detect and interfere with them, and 9 technological artifacts for players to salvage after defeating the creatures. This is both a substantial and rather pleasing article, that does stuff they haven't done before, but still leaves room for further expansion. I think this actually counts as a classic article, that opens up new avenues for them. That definitely deserves some pretty strong praise.
Wizard societies: Didn't we just have some secret societies 2 issues ago? Well, I suppose this theme is suitable for all classes, except maybe clerics, who's loyalty to their god is supposed to supercede anything else, and unless they're a particularly strange god, they want everyone to know openly so they can get more worshippers. Still, there is the issue of diminishing returns here. There's also the issue that this isn't as mechanically robust as the previous set of examples, and most of them are obviously intended purely as NPC adversaries rather than useful for PC's. So this is one of those articles that isn't terrible, but does suffer quite a bit by contrast. I prefer the previous implementation, plus this feels like another good example of their willingness to rehash lately, so I'm not satisfied by this.
Nodwick gets a two page spread featuring the Little tomb of horrors (bop she bop, trangalang lang, look out, out out Look OUT!, etc) Can you guess who gets screwed over the most? Can you? I think you can. He really ought to switch sides. At least Acererak is a decent conversationalist.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 5/7
Wyrms of the north: Ed draws on a less common trope this month, that of identical twins who pretend to be a single person, which allows them to seem smarter, more prepared, and more omnipresent than any one creature, however active. This becomes particular scary for dragons, when combined with invisibility, trap-setting and long range communication. So this month's dragon(s) aren't the scariest Ed's ever detailed, but they are a real Gotcha! moment if played right, with each having different sets of prepared spells and magical items, and more than enough intelligence to use them tactically. In addition, plenty of effort is put into showing how their personalities contrast, but still have plenty of similarities, and how they'll likely interact with PC's. Twice the fun, hopefully more than twice the number of encounters, which also means more efficient use of page count.
The ecology of the flail snail: Last april, the monster hunters association failed to get the better of flumphs. They still haven't lived that down, or properly replenished their coffers either. This year, it's the flail snail, another oft-mocked monster, that is their target. Far more than last time, this is played for laughs, with the humour becoming increasingly broad and character based, and the monster being almost an afterthought. Even the footnotes have jokes in them. It's still just about usable, but this is a bit too far towards straight-out zaniness for my tastes. Really, if they carry on like this, their organisation'll break down completely in a few episodes. I don't approve.
Rogues gallery finally moves to another setting, giving Ravenloft a turn. They've had another fairly interesting time lately, with Lord Soth losing his hold on his domain, and eventually losing it altogether to his lieutenant. And most of this is covered in another novel by James Lowder. So let's take a look at the characters that drove this nasty conflict.
Azrael Dak is the foul-tempered werebadger dwarf that'll wind up in charge when the dust settles. With him at the reins, the elves of Sithicus are going to find their lives even more unpleasant than before. And as he has an item that lets him hear anywhere in the domain, it's not easy to conspire against him. As usual in Ravenloft, you're probably screwed, and it's the style with which you face your fate that'll determine if you live, die, or become a cursed abomination for the rest of eternity.
Inza Magdova Kulchevich is a decidedly tricksy Vistani wizard/thief who's spoiled rotten by her mum, and has no hesitation in manipulating and stealing from anyone she encounters. It's people like her that give the gypsies a bad name. She's also bad with animals, which is a real red light to anyone with any common sense. I'd definitely steer well clear of those kind of wiles.
The Bloody Cobbler slices the soles off bad people's feet, and then uses them to make shoes for those who need a little help getting back on the moral path. So he's essentially one of those mysterious supernatural beings of dubious morality responsible for Ravenloft being a place of ironic punishment for your misdeeds. This also means he isn't screwed like the Darklords are. Interesting. This adds new shades of grey to their decidedly dark worldbuilding.
The Whispering Beast is another ironic hunter, targeting liars and oathbreakers for extended psychological torture before finally taking them away. This of course helps to spread his legend in a way a quick response wouldn't. Both seem pretty true to the kinds of legends they're trying to emulate, and very suitable for use in actual play. After all, PC's are bound to screw up at some point, and if not, there's always the NPC's they're connected too. Their power levels seem about right to make them scary but not unbeatable as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 6/7
Role models decides to go sci-fi, and immediately bumps into a fairly significant issue. Since the last time they had minis coverage, they completely cut out non WotC games. And since Alternity is only recently out, and they don't have an official licenced minis line to go with it, this make it rather tricky to find appropriate minis. So you'll have to improvise, and incorporate stuff from other gamelines, or even (shock!) generic models. If anything is emblematic of their closing horizons around this point, it's that kind of attitude. They do also have some useful advice on using minis in game and representing cover without actually having terrain minis mitigates this a little, but this still feels very limited and a bit insubstantial. At this rate, they'll go the way of the reviews before too long, and then I'll have even less variety of stuff to cover. Boo.
PC Portraits: This column does sci-fi characters as well this month. Which means the standard demihuman races get eschewed for various alien types, including a grey with silly hair, a weren, two reptilian things, a guy with a cybernetic third eye, and a whole bunch of other humans with interesting fashion choices. I think this is one that would really benefit from showing their upper body as well as their heads. That's a perfectly valid portrait form. But they've made their format, and they're sticking too it. As with the editorial, I can't help but think the magazine would be better if it was a little less formulaic.
No one can hear you scream: Alternity goes horror? Well, it's a valid topic, but since they only had one joke article this month, while this is the second horror one, I feel a little put out. Are their proportions of submissions really so skewed at the moment? Thankfully, it's not all straight conversions from D&D, although the fear, horror and madness rules from Ravenloft are pretty much identical. The monsters on the other hand, are far more sci-fi appropriate, with effort made to make them horrific in an Alien or Event Horizon way, rather than a dracula and the wolfman way. Body horror is very appropriate when combined with mutations and cybernetics, while other dimensions don't stop being viscerally bizarre because you know the rules on how to get there and back. James Wyatt seems to be improving, because this was not only highly useful, but didn't tip over into being silly at all. He's sticking to his niche, while also expanding it. That's how you gradually take over.
Dragonmirth has much to regret this april. KotDT has another player revolt, even though the DM is entirely playing by the rules.
Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999
part 7/7
TSR Previews: D&D's been building up with quickstarts for the past few months. Now they get a new core boxed set. Bill Slavisek is the guy responsible this time. Once again, newbie friendliness seems to be the primary selling point. No great change there. Sigh.
AD&D, meanwhile, goes back to mining the little tidbits from the corebooks and expanding them into full adventures in an attempt to lure us in by hitting the nostalgia buttons. The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords is the latest artifact to accumulate a prefab epic plot around it.
The Realms does some planar crossovering in The Glass Prison by Monte Cook. A half-demon comes to the realms and has to fight his darker nature. Someone wants to make another fran-chise. :D
Alternity, unusually, gets 3 books this month. Tangents is a book on alternate universes. Infinite possibilities, infinite ways things could go wrong. Fun fun fun. There's also Threats from Beyond, for those of you who'd prefer alien invasion, and Starfall, a bunch of short stories. This seems pretty positive.
Marvel superheroes follows up on the Fantastic Four suppement with Fantastic Voyages, a set of adventures tailored for them. Dr Doom, the Skrulls, possibly even mole men. They do seem to be concentrating on prefab stuff a lot more than last time round here as well.
ProFiles looks stupid again. They could at least be consistent. Unsurprisingly, given his appearance on the cover, Todd Lockwood is our profilee this month. He's had a long association with D&D, first appearing in in issue 22's Mapping the Dungeons as a person looking for a gaming group. He first contributed to the magazine in issue 36, doing both the art and writing for the Krolli. He made occasional contributions since then, while pursuing a day job in general commercial illustration, but recently has started doing regular work for the D&D crew. A somewhat unusual career path, in that it's taken him this long to really become a known name. Of course there's bigger and better to come, as he comes to be if anything, the artist that really defines 3rd edition. But this shows that if you keep plugging away, and honing your craft, your career can take off at the oddest times. Just make sure you're ready to capitalize on this fact. One of our most interesting profiles ever. And he still looks pretty handsome as well. Definitely one to respect, even if his work isn't to your taste.
As with issue 142, despite the page count only being about 80% of normal, it still feels like quite a significant drop, resulting in this issue feeling pretty insubstantial, apart from the epic and classic article at the beginning. I think that's enough to make the issue worthwhile though, given how few of those we've seen in recent years. And this does feel like a bit of a landmark in terms of pacing. Let's hope I can get through the remaining hundred-odd issues without anything disastrous happening to me, and finally finish this off for good.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. The TSR logo changes this month, as they officially start their 25th anniversary celebrations. They've been boosting the amount of nostalgia in general for a good year now, but this really shifts things up a gear. Get ready for deluxe limited edition stuff, and and whole bunch of reprints and revisitings of old modules. But that's not the theme of the issue, at least not yet. Seems to be time for another rag-tag collection of articles. Let's see where their meanderings take them this month.
Scan quality: Excellent colour, indexed, but some bleedthrough from alternating pages.
In this issue:
Planescape: Torment! Fun fun fun! Now that's a game I'm delighted to see arrive.
The wyrms turn: For all that characterisation has expanded over the years, landscapes are still important. Even modern modules are more likely to be named after the place than the characters. Even dragonlance, which was one of the first to break those naming conventions, had some pretty memorable backdrops to it's plots. So this combines nostalgia with promotion for their upcoming rereleases. Now you can get a whole new generation into the good old adventures! So this is one editorial where the agenda is pretty transparent. They have product to push, and by gum, they're going to push it. Which is exactly the kind of thing I tend to skip over. Let's hope the letters aren't too sycophantic this month.
D-Mail: We start off with a letter praising them for finally getting round to a psionics special, and also asking them to do more big all-in one articles with setting, monsters, items, and spells. Since I have generally been giving those higher marks than the regular columns, I must concur.
A good ol' nitpicking letter. EVOLUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!! It's lazy and haphazard and long-term and very environment specific. It's a name slapped on an emergent principle, not a natural force in itself.
A letter asking for more Greyhawk setting info. Despite everything they've done, there's still a good deal of sketchiness to it, especially as regards to geography. Well, we mainly saw towns as a backdrop to the dungeons that were the real focus. Even Hommlet only got half a module's worth of detail.
A letter that's mostly positive, but doesn't want to see computer game conversions. Those monsters should stay where they were created. Although since many of them were obviously based on D&D monsters anyway, that's a little blurrier than you might like.
And finally, another story of someone's use of minis in their game. They really have quite a neat setup for representing the landscape in an easily erasable and redrawable fashion. It's even fairly easy to fold up and transport when not in use. All you need is a little DIY skill.
Nodwick tries to keep his employers on the straight and narrow.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 2/7
Forum: Jesse Mix thinks half the problem of people complaining about classes being underpowered is not because they actually are, but because people these days are spoiled, and want to play badasses right from the start. You need to change their crappy attitudes, not the game. Excuse me for a second. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :pfff: Might as well tell the tide to stop coming.
Leon Chang wants a skill based system, using templates to represent classes a la GURPS. Wait. Doesn't GURPS already do that? Nahh, that'd be too easy.
Jim Bobb wants the game to return to a mix of basic D&D and AD&D 1e. Modern developments mostly suck. Mostly.
Allen Mixson once again lets us know how much of a bugger an axe is to wield. You can have your toes off with a fumble. But weapons on the whole should be more balanced than they are, keep lots of options attractive to players.
Michael P. Kellam is another person who dislikes the idea of spell points, but thinks wizards do need a little more flexibility than the current system offers. In the process, we see another proto-sorcerer idea presented for review.
Daniel Bates is the token reactionary for the idea of standardising cleric & wizard spell levels. It would grossly overpower clerics, with all their other benefits. That depends how powerful the spells at each level are. Classes do not have to operate on the same scale even if they have the same degrees of granularity.
John Wade reminds us that while some classes are better than others, all are needed for a well balanced party able to handle any situation. That should be the case in theory, anyway.
Tom McGreenery thinks game balance is less important than everyone having an interesting character. Actually, which is easier, making rules that always give you balanced characters, or that always give you interesting characters. Neither is particularly easy, particularly when dealing with idiot players.
Pieter Sleijpen thinks the game ought to be strong enough that GM's don't have to change things to keep control of it. House rules are, to some degree, an admission the game isn't perfect naturally.
Dungeoncraft: Having done religion last month, it's time to tie in another topic we've seen before, but not in a while. Linguistics and naming conventions. As with previous ones, Ray tries to get us through this without putting too much effort into it. You could use existing languages, or even just give things english names based on their meanings in game, with the understanding that they aren't actually speaking english in the actual world. Basically, rip off stuff that works and sounds good, left, right and centre, but make sure your players are on the same page, and try and maintain a modicum of consistency. He then continues to go back and apply these lessons to the previous articles, filling in the names of the things he created then, tying them all together into a larger whole that rewards rereading. He also starts playing Sage as well, giving advice not on rules questions, like Skip, but on handling of players. So he's settling into a routine, and getting into a position where he has feedback to pay attention too. If he pays attention to it, he should continue to improve. I become increasingly enthusiastic about seeing how long this goes on for.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 3/7
Sage advice: Is using poison always inherently evil. (Not as much as it used to be. Regular use is still not honorable behaviour. )
Can a specialized elven archer fire two arrows before anyone gets a chance to act (Not unless you walk around bow drawn all the time. This is very inconvenient. Remember, you only have two hands. )
How many attacks does a specialized guarding 7th level fighter have (the usual)
Are Gnomes and Halflings Small creatures (Yes, with all that entails, good and bad. )
How quickly can you wake up. (It takes a full round to get your bearings. Realisticly, it should often take longer, but adventurers have to learn to roll with the punches if they don't want to die horribly.)
Can blocks counter attacks of opportunity (yes)
What adjustments do you get to saves against extra damage. (luckstones. That's your lot.)
Do monsters die from massive damage (Some of them. Skip will spell it out, and make sure it gets into the core rules next edition. )
What spells are in lesser divination. (Skip will change his mind on this one again, and strip it back to the essentials a wizard needs to function. Skip knows what Skip is doing, srysly.)
Can you cast spells on an area you can't see if you know it well enough (not if you couldn't normally.)
Does spell immunity work on magic resistant creatures (only naturally resistant creatures.)
Does tensers telling blow drain all the charges from stoneskin (no, it just penetrates it.)
Does a dual classed warrior get all the benefit from Strength spells (sometimes. Depends if you're using or not.)
What happens if you magnify time duplicate (it sticks around longer. Sorry to burst your bubble. )
How does fast healing work exactly if you take multiple hits (with minimal bookkeeping, Skip promises. )
Does efficacious monster ward affect humanoids (best not to, just in case.)
Do you need permanancy to create a magic wand (if you want it to be permanent. Is that so illogical. )
How much effect does armor have on your encumbrance ( It's complicated. It's not just weight, it's how it's distributed. Skip isn't too keen on the way it was written either. )
My player wished for the powers of a vampire and I gave him the hindrances as well. He complained. Did I do wrong? (No, padwan, you did exactly right. You have learnt Skip's lessons well. Keep it up. )
Do magical items that boost strength do anything on the astral plane (No. You'll need to get ones that boost your intelligence instead. They'll do double duty for you.)
Designer Demesnes: Our kickoff special feature this month is an attempt to do in 12 pages what took Aria thousands. Present a point-buy system for quantifying your kingdom. Of course, the thing about point-buy systems is that you need a fairly extensive list of things to spend those points on, give you freedom as a player to obsess over the choices you make, and if the ones you've done are efficient or not. And in this case, 12 pages isn't quite enough to do it justice. I'm not sure if that is made better or worse by the fact that these traits are purely descriptive in setting stuff that doesn't plug into any system or give you advantages and disadvantages when interacting with other nations. But either way, this is just too little on a subject that really needs a good mechanical implementation, and struggles to make one stick and be playable. I really ought to get round to buying REIGN at some point, see just how well that really scales up. After all, a system designed from the ground up for it ought to work better than patching and adding onto one designed for crawling dungeons and killing dragons.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 4/7
Shop keep faces another customer who never learns. As long as they keep paying, that's the important thing.
Master of the world: Villains who want to take over the world? (roll the overplayed street fighter clip) Well, if they don't want to take over or destroy at least a country at some point, you're probably underdoing it as a DM, sticking too much to monsters that just sit in their rooms, or appear randomly with no backstory and connection to the world. So here's some system free GMing advice about establishing motivation and means, how to make them believable and competent, and what to do if that actually results in them winning (playing the underdogs of the rebellion can be great fun. ) The kind of thing we have seen before, and in the case of the complete villains handbook, in far greater detail than an article like this can manage. So this is a case where the spectre of rehash rearing it's head makes this less enjoyable for me than it would a new player. You can get all these basic plot ideas by watching a good old 80's cartoon. I don't particularly need to hear them again.
Miscellaneous Mishaps: Wandering monsters getting stale? Well, we've had dozens of different wandering monster tables in different adventures, but most of them have a distinct emphasis on the monsteriness, rather than the other kinds of mishaps that can befall you as you travel from one place to another. Well, if you want too, you can roll on this instead, have them encounter some more mundane irritations like fleas, some random piece of equipment going missing, or stepping in a bear trap. The kind of thing that could create flavour, or could be taken as a red herring, and spin off into a whole new adventure. And really, isn't that one of the things a DM wants, a world sufficiently developed that it keeps on throwing up new adventure developments without having to do a huge amount of work. So this is one of those easy to use, no fuss, suitable nearly anytime articles. It's mainly notable for the fact that it has a full colour Larry Elmore piece accompanying it, that looks quite different from his 80's work, but still high quality. Has he changed his materials or something? Well, anyway, that pushes it up from a 7 to an 8 due to the high production values.
Fiction: Stolen dreams by Elaine Cunningham. Time for our resident elf-lover to serve up a little prequel to her latest novel in the magazine, showing how one of the villains became messed up and entitled. They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean too, but they do. And when you're adopted by a family of a different race, that can all too easily multiply the feeling that you don't fit into the world, and the way they treat you is unhealthy and not at all what you need. ( On that note, I seriously hope The Jungle Book doesn't get a crap grimdark remake for the emo generation. With CGI animals. ) But does that excuse becoming a kleptomaniac, feeling no remorse when your actions result in the death of your adopted parent, and upon learning you're actually the exiled child of a noble family, instantly starting to act like a haughty entitled bitch. I think not, and this makes me very interested in seeing her get her comeuppance. Which in a way, does make it good promotion. But it does also make it a story where the protagonist is unlikable and gets far more than they deserve with very little effort on their own part, which isn't very satisfying to read about. So really, this has exactly the same problems as the 5th age stories from '96. I'd hoped they'd learned their lesson from that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 5/7
Rogues Gallery: Another turn in Waterdeep, once again cementing it's place as the most detailed city in the most detailed campaign world. Many people think this is getting too much, but as Elaine Cunningham says here, people never seem to get tired of stories set in New York, so why should Waterdeep become old hat either? Maybe if we had a few more new writers, it'd help keep things fresh. But no, I guess it's another regular heavy month here. This is another column that has become far too formulaic as it's gone on.
Isabeau Thione is another sexy female thief who is fully aware of her physical attributes and exploits them to get what she wants. Seems like that's a female empowerment fantasy as much as a male sex one, as many women would love to have that kind of self-confidence and guilt-free selfishness that they can't pull off in reality. And as with last month, this makes alarm bells go off in my head. The glamour of the bad girl really isn't my thing.
Myrna Cassalanter is a professional rumor-monger. While technically a bard, she doesn't use a whole bunch of the abilities of her class. In a more technically advanced society, she'd totally be a tabloid writer. Like any hack, she's not above twisting the truth if it looks like there's more profit in it than being strictly truthful. And profit she does, having quite the mansion. It's alright for some.
Jerome Diloontier is a perfumer and occasional poisoner. Magically enforced discretion is his watchword. An oily bastard, he's not an outright villain, but he's certainly not a likeable character. His personality traits seem pretty easy to play out, and he's involved in plenty of plots, so he's one that your PC's could well run into over the course of an investigation. Muahahaha.
Dragon's bestiary: Johnathan M. Richards scours the infinite variety of the natural world once again, and manages to find a topic that isn't totally overdone for a change. Symbiotes. Despite being scarily common in reality, they've got even less coverage over the years than underwater or arctic things. This is actually one area White Wolf games do better than D&D, with so many of their supernatural types the product of unnatural symbiosis/parasitism. This could well contribute something valid to our game, even if it's ideas are straight from reality again.
Blood puddings are another transhuman metamorphosis a wizard could practice to make themselves immortal and a bugger to destroy permanently. They flow into you in gross fashion and take over your body. How pleasingly visceral and paranoia inducing.
Skullcap ivy replaces your hair with, well, ivy. On the plus side, that lets you photosynthesise. On the negative side, it looks weird and bugs will be attracted to the flowers in your hair. I doubt druids would mind that though.
Worry-warts are a pun creature that grows in you, does exactly what it says on the tin, and is near impossible to get rid of. Eww. Shoulda had this one last month.
Powerslugs supercharge your adrenalin glands, eventually making you die of a heart attack, but in the process substantially boosting your stats. One that could be a boon if cultivated carefully, and strikes a nice balance between carrot and stick. An excellent end to a collection I mostly quite like.
Wyrms of the north comes to an end, with a good old Z name. And another dragon that spends most of their time in human form, gradually doing long-term stuff to make the world a better place. (cue michael jackson song) It's a good thing the Realms has lots of powerful NPC's on both sides of the moral divide, or we'd be screwed. It's a particularly good example of how magical technology could advance in their future, if it was allowed too without countries blowing up sending things back to the dark ages. A new food source that would allow a far greater population of dragons to coexist over a the same landmass. And wouldn't that have all sorts of interesting knock-on effects on the other populations of intelligent creatures. So while this is the end of the series, it presents some very interesting new plot ideas for your long-term games, and some well sketched characters for the short term. Plus more barely disguised interracial sex. What would D&D be without that? :) There's plenty of value in this series really, and it has been pretty unique in the magazine due to it's sheer specificness. And since they're gradually cutting down on the amount of whimsy now, we may well not see it's like again. Let's down a good brew of one of Ed's fantastical drinks to it's passing.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 6/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ahh, to sleep, perchance to dream. We spend a good third of our life asleep, yet only a tiny fraction of our items are devoted to it. It's the same kind of principle that results in ocean adventures being so uncommon when the sea covers 2/3rds of the world. Still, there's usually one article every decade or so, and it seems like this is the time for bedtime to get it's own spotlight. So let's see if these are lifechangers like a CPAP machine, or fripperies like a wind-up lullaby player.
A Cover of Invisibility lets you blend into the surroundings while wrapped up and staying still. Course, it won't stop you snoring, or smelling, so it's another imperfect protection against wandering monsters at night.
Bedrolls of the Woodsman give you ranger abilities after a night spent in it outdoors. I think that'll definitely come in handy, especially for a solo adventurer.
Blankets of Security are one of those amusingly whimsical cursed items. No matter how big and bad you are, you'll need your blanky to avoid being scared of the dark. Taking it away from them without removing the curse will provoke muchos tantrums.
Blankets of Recuperation let you survive on one hour of sleep per night. Like most items of this type, they wear out if used repeatedly in short succession. You'll have to become undead if you want a long term solution to increasing productivity.
Pillows of perpetual youth are a bit of a misnomer, as they only work for 6 hours a day, and only when actually lain upon. You can bet someone'll come up with a scheme to lawyer that for actual immortality by using several of them, but they'll still have to get up to go to the toilet. Or be wealthy enough to get attendants to do everything for them. Hmm. That's a definite character concept there.
Pillows of Nightmares are another cursed one with an obvious effect. You'll never sleep comfortably again. If the curse isn't removed you'll be dead of exhaustion within a month.
Pillows of magic Restoration reduce the amount of tedious studying a wizard needs to recharge. Now that's one that will be highly valued by a party.
Pillows of Dream Travelling are another slight misnomer, but still useful. You don't actually do the astral scouting yourself, but send a magical spirit guide. Way to ruin the fun. :p
PC Portraits is interestingly progressive. Halfbreeds as a theme? That has a lot of potential, especially as you increase the number of compatible races, resulting in a quadratic increase in the number of combinations. Amusing that D&D would wind up being on the side of racial diversity (if not exactly equality) not out of altruism, but because it gives players more cool options. Along with the obvious half-elf and orc, we have a half satyr, half-giant, half cat, dog, lizard and rat people, and what looks like a half troll to me. Plus a couple where I simply can't tell what they're supposed to be crossbred with. I suppose that means the players'll have freedom to take them and make them their own then.
Dungeon mastery: Ah yes, the idea of keeping the PC's alive when defeated, but then making them suffer, thus turning what could be a game-ending event into a whole new set of opportunities. It's not unknown, but not common around here, partly because of the increasing emphasis on linear storytelling in the modules, and partly because AD&D's ruleset remains as unfriendly as ever to that happening without the DM fudging things. So this column is as system-free as ever, but this is one bit of advice that's particularly pertinent to those who like variety in their systems. There are a decent number of permutations to this idea detailed here, but none of them are unfamiliar to me. So this is pretty near the middle in terms of quality, with a good idea, but only so-so execution of that idea. Have the players lose occasionally, but not too often, otherwise they will get discouraged.
Role models: This column gets round to doing something previous ones haven't at last. Inserting cover fire into AD&D? That's probably going to work better with minis than just using your imagination. So this is mostly a little article on how to handle that, along with a little painting advice, as usual. As with last month, the well spaced writing, combined with large amounts of illustration, means this seems all too short. Still, that means it handles things in a simple and easy to remember fashion, so I guess the pudding will be in the actual play. Better get out that gridded board that they showed us how to make earlier on then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 259: May 1999
part 7/7
Armed & Dangerous: Alternity gets a second computer game conversion in a row, making me feel a little groundhog dayed. Are the writers doing this because they're genuinely fans of the games, or are they getting paid or paying for these bits of promotional material. Indeed, what is the official status of them, and why are they doing so many more suddenly? If the letters page is anything to go by, it doesn't seem to be due to reader demand. So anyway, this time they're doing Fallout 2. And mostly skipping the setting detail, instead giving us 4 pages of solid crunch on their weaponry, which is indeed pretty extensive, going from the basic spiked power fist, to the overkill of the turbo plasma rifle. What you get is very much what you pay for here. So overall, this is pretty dry, and not a huge amount of use unless you already know the game, or are just a gun fiend in general. Their promotional filler may not be quite as annoying as 5 years ago, but it's still not really what I want to see finishing off the month's articles.
This month's contest is a dungeon design one. Only 750 words to work with? Can't be a very big one then. On the plus side, the winners of the earlier competitions are starting to come in now. The CSS Nomad doesn't look bad at all, even if it makes me think of a ship from an old shoot-em-up. Their artists have done a good job representing it from above, below, and interior.
Shop keep faces the stupidity of reality. Dragonmirth should be relieved computers are still pretty stupid. Swordplay considers giving it all up. Actually, they do, since this is the last in the series. Guess these deaths are permanent for a change. KotDT make their GM give up. Again. This really is a one-joke series.
TSR Previews: Clerics get their turn at having all the spells ever produced for them compiled. Part one, anyway. Will it take 4 volumes like wizards spells and magic items did?
Dragonlance gets a double bill, partly rehashed. All the original series gets a 15th anniversary deluxe omnibus release with bonus features and conversion stuff for the Saga edition. This really is turning into the year of the rehash. There's also Reavers of the blood sea by Richard A Knaak. Yet another perspective on the chaos war, as it sweeps across the continents.
The realms gets another novel set in Waterdeep. Dream Spheres by Elaine Cunningham. Several familiar characters make an appearance. Woo.
Ravenloft continues it's Children of de niiiight series with one on Golems. 13 more named creatures with their own histories for you to build adventures around. Every monster a special experience, that's the Ravenloft way.
Alternity gets Killer Clack, a StarDrive adventure. More alien problems, leading you to explore their base, and possibly kill them all. It's the best way.
ProFiles: Sue Cook (nee Weinlein) is one of our editors. In fact she seems much happier as an editor than as a frontline writer. Of course, married to Monte, and discussing projects at home, the line between writer and editor probably gets blurred a bit. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Her current job is as head editor of Amazing Stories, as they attempt to relaunch it again. Since that flops and dies for good pretty soon, I'm not sure that's the best recommendation of her talents. She's also worked on the Dragonlance Saga game. (um, er. This isn't really making her look good, is it. ) So yeah, whatever her talents as an editor, her ability to pick the big profitable projects is definitely a bit dubious. I think I'll stop now, before the snark gets out of hand, and I say something I regret, as I do like quite a few things that she's worked on. Funny how these things can actually wind up not selling you on someone.
I enjoyed most of the regular columns in this one, but not the special features, which ironically felt like the more formulaic and tired parts this time around. I suppose that's just normal issue to issue fluctuations. It still felt like it was over noticably quicker, but not insubstantial like last time. So it leaves me reasonably positive, as the amount of continuity seems to be rising again. After a year of flailing, WotC is finally making it stick. I guess they're ready to write their own stories. At least, once the nostalgia celebrations are over. And I just bet next issue is going to be full of those.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. Welcome to their 23rd birthday. A fact that's pretty much overshadowed by the fact that it's D&D as a whole's 25th, but hey ho. We'll get those celebrations in 2 years time, and hopefully they'll have something special planned for that. In the meantime, it looks like we have a good selection of dragon themed articles, as per usual. Who wants to check them, see if they're still fresh after all this time? Well, I suppose dragons have an exceedingly long sell-by-date. The odds aren't too terrible.
Scan quality: Excellent, Indexed, slightly oversaturated.
In this issue:
Jade Coocon? Looks like a total pokemon rip-off.
The Wyrms turn: They've been swinging back towards crunch since 1996. Now we get an editorial encouraging you to embrace your inner munchkin. When I became a man, I put away childish things, and that includes the fear of being seen as childish. So this is one of the signs of the direction they're going to take next edition. Enough trying to be Serious Roleplayers, it's time to power up and kick ass again! It's also a reminder to do whatever's fun, rather than what you think you ought to be doing. Loosen up a bit, chug a drink, and don't be afraid to roll them bones. Life is too short to be uptight ( up tights, on the other hand .....) So this seems inconsequential, but is actually a decent bit of foreshadowing. This is the mood in the office as they develop 3e. Take heed of it.
Forum gets to go first for a change This time they want to know what the biggest house rules are.
Justin Bacon continues to be one of the loudest debaters on the edition change. This time, he tackles spell memorisation and forgetting. One big problem here is largely a matter of semantics. What they're doing shouldn't exactly be called memorisation. Change that, and half the flames'll be gone. What's in a name, eh?
Matthew Avery doesn't think 8 & 9th level priest spells are needed, as hardly anyone gets to those kinds of levels anyway. He would like a greater variety of low level ones though.
Jon Schmunk makes it very clear just how much more powerful clerics actually are in play, and wants that imbalance fixed next edition. He's already come up with a solution for his game though.
Brett Paulfler thinks charm person, fireball, and cure wounds are the most important spells in the game. They're certainly staples of many many groups, and really change your tactics. You may well be right.
Jade Murphy thinks dragons still aren't tough enough for their size, as high level character can still overtake them. I think someone needs reminding that HP are an abstract resource of badassery, not just physical resilience.
D-Mail: We start off with a request for more Skills & Powers material. Fear not, they have a few more of these coming before they discard 2e altogether.
A bit of nitpicking about the weapons in issue 250's alternity article. The kind of rules detail I couldn't spot because I'm not an owner of the system.
A letter of general praise for issue 256. Once again I yawn.
A request for Rangers and Bards to get their own special issues. Perfectly reasonable, since they haven't yet, and quite a few other classes have. Hopefully the freelancers will be prompt with their ideas.
Two exceedingly long letters on the historical accuracy of their Dark Ages article. It's one of those things that combines conflicting sources with people feeling passionate about it, always a recipe for a good flamewar.
And finally, another letter from someone pleased to see minis coverage again. Like Greyhawk, it didn't seem like people really cared until it was cancelled, now people are overjoyed to see it. What's the lesson here? Appreciate what you've got, or otherwise it may well go away.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 2/7
Nodwick continues to do the adventurers dirty laundry. All 5 tons of it. Shop keep deals with the creepiest gamer evar. How does he survive?
Dungeoncraft: Ray continues to put off drawing any maps with more talk about creating a home base for the PC's. You know, I've never bothered with this step, simply because the players are unlikely to stick around for long. Of course, if you detail one area more, they're more likely to get attached to it and stick around, but I think that's one of those chicken and the egg situations. So this one feels like padding, deliberately slowing his progress through the worldbuilding process so he can get more milage out of the column. The most interesting part of this is the letter, where they tackle the old issue of the thief stealing from the party, with Ray suggesting methods by which the DM and player can collude to screw over the other players and prevent metagaming. Muahahahahaha! Nice to see him encouraging a little badwrongfun in his advice. After all, it does make for interesting games, up to the point where it tears them apart. So this is a bit of a mixed bag, really. Get on with it!
Sage advice: You gave different answers to the fire shield question in issues 256 and 146. Which is right? (The new one, duh. When Skip changes Skip's mind, skip expects you to pay attention. )
What constitutes a magical trap. (Anything the spell find traps finds. Recursive, Skip knows, but true.)
Can thieves use shields (Still no. Don't go on.)
Can thieves double backstab or get attack bonuses against beholders. (No. You just don't get why it doesn't work do you. If they know you're there, it's not a backstab.)
Do you need to be able to see people to fireball them. (Its a wide range effect. You don't need to be close. )
Do dwarves get AC bonuses against all big things (oh, stop sending the same bloody questions in. No.)
How do deep gnomes get such a low AC (Armor comes as standard in the monster description. Don't think you get it for free as a PC)
Who rolls the dice (you rolls the dice. Skip rolls the dice, they rolls de dice, everybody rolls de dice. Dice are not an exclusive device. But try and keep cats off the table, otherwise they will roll de dice all over the place and lose them. )
Why are thieves sometimes better at reading unknown scrolls than wizards ( Because they're trained in winging it. Wizards always take so long worrying about the proper way to do these things.)
Can Sha'irs get their gens to fetch true dweomers (no. They have to cast them the hard way, with research and stuff )
It's unrealistic that you can only increase THAC0 through gaining levels (welcome to D&D. That's the way we roll here. )
How many martial arts styles can you specialize in (1, plus whatever they spend their later slots on)
You lose your extra attacks if you move over half your movement rate. That's so unfair! (Them's the rules. They're the rules this edition, and they'll be even stricter rules next edition. You don't get something for nothing. )
Is strength added to natural attacks for monsters or not (varies from monster to monster. Fear the arbitrary changes. )
Can an epicure detect poisoned food (possibly. Maybe not in time to avoid it though. )
What's dwarven rune magic. (A pair of neat cleric spells. Skip has a page going free, so Skip'll reprint them for you. Say thank you to Skip, now, or Skip may not be so generous next time. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 3/7
Greater drakes: So you want to ride a dragon, but your DM doesn't want something that'll overshadow the entire party, and is just maybe small enough that a Dragonlance could actually make sense as a combat implement. I think we have a perfect niche to be filled by an article. After all, they've already given us a whole load of draconic familiars, and lesser dragon variants to fight, and half-dragons for when you have sex with them, and equipment made out of their body parts. Why not adapt them to fill other niches in your life as well. Or would that just be unhealthy?
Vandalraug are the base model, bigger and tougher than most, but with no special features. If it's raw damage you want, then go for the vanilla option.
Kavainus are bony and spooky, can see ghosts, and become ethereal. This makes them amazing on a tactical level, and handy when hunting undead. You can ride them nearly anywhere, but you can't mistreat them, because they'll be able to escape any restraints. Better be good to them.
Arsalon have yellow and black scales, and form a symbiosis with a wasp or bee nest in their throat. Which means their breath weapon is bees. (my god) That's both interesting and pretty funny. I want to use these just to see the looks on people's faces.
Retchenbeast are little and toadlike, perfect for riding in swamps, and regurgitate swamp muck at their enemies. Since there are real world creatures that do similar, this makes perfect sense, and doesn't violate physics at all. And it's a better idea than trying to tame a froghemoth, that's for sure.
Silisthis are the underwater ones, long and thin and eel-like. They work like elephants or octupi, storing water in their throat sacs and then squirting it at high pressure to knock down assailants or speed their swimming. Once again, this seems grounded in real world ecological principles. Which actually isn't surprising, given it's been written by our resident ecologist. These are much better than his previous attempts at making new monsters.
Fumarandi breathe smoke formed by the chemical reactions of their toxic digestive systems. They tend to be quite cranky, and of course you might want a gas mask if you're gonna ride them, but there are worse things than adding chemical warfare to your arsenal. Have fun trying to properly train them.
Of course, these new options aren't complete without some kits to make it easier for players to get on board. In the spirit of generosity, Johnathan gives one to each class group. Air Knights are the popular heroes of the sky, inspiring the population as they protect them, and probably acquiring nicknames along the way. But if they lose their mount, they will mope. Generally, I think that's a substantial net positive.
Sky Wizards have things even better, as they don't even have that minor drawback. Like swashbucklers or dragon hunters, their only "drawback" is that they're so awesome that they're very likely to be the first target for any major trouble. Which from an adventurer PoV is just another benefit. Twinkitude!
Storm Priests, on the other hand, bear the weight of responsibility for their team on their shoulders, and suffer if they start to lose. Better make sure you're tactically prepared and on the winning side then.
Wind Scouts aren't so popular, because the public doesn't appreciate the strategic importance of knowing the terrain before a battle. They also have a tendency to be grumpy loners. After all, they're more legit than most rogues, but they're still not perfectly suited to the military life. So these are pretty fun, but do slant towards a higher-powered game by default. Having flying and substantial extra attack capabilities right from 1st level will make a huge difference.
Ahh, the silver anniversary rereleases. Now these mark the point where D&D really started feeding off it's own past rather than outside sources. Sort of an orobourus wyrm, getting more and more incestuous with each generation.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 4/7
Draconic design: Who wants to build their own unique dragon with random rolls?! Well, that's taking things a step further than Lew Pulsipher did way back in issue 50. Yes, it looks like it's back to the old skool time again, with an idea that could have been done 20 years ago, but they never got round to it. Greg Detwiler once again puts together two ideas that have been done before to create a result which hasn't. The joys of combinatoric math. The result isn't that comprehensive, you still need to do quite a bit of the mechanical work yourself, but that does make it less system specific. And it is grounded pretty well in myths from around the world. So this is workmanlike rather than inspired, but pretty useful and fun both in playing around to see what you get, and in it's potential to provide lots of encounters for your game that the PC's won't instantly know what to do with. It seems he's still quite valuable in making sure they have enough good articles to fill their issues.
Spawn of tiamat, Children of Bahamut: Tiamat and Bahamut were two of the original unique monsters from the very first Monster Manual. While there have been a few more over the years, such as the Corpse Tearer and the Steel & Grey Dragon, it hasn't caught on like doing new Demon Lords has. I think that part of this is because regular great wyrms are so incredibly scary, anything capable of reliably kicking their ass would be a real challenge for even a level 20+ party. And indeed, even a quick scan of their stats show these guys do not match up to the average great wyrm, which makes them a bit problematic when put in context.
An-Ur, the wandering death lives on the ethereal plane and gorges itself on ectoplasm and proto-matter. With the ability to semi-materialise and attack while staying near invulnerable, and send people scattering to random other planes, it'll be a real pain to fight if you don't have easy access to planeshifting powers, even if it doesn't kill you. So at lower levels it'll be more a plot device than something that gives you a TPK, and even at higher levels you'll have to play it smart to win. Interesting.
Dhrakoth the Corrupter is also rather weaker physically and magically than a good wyrm, but makes up for that with energy draining. It's curiously slow as well, so you'll be able to outrun it if outmatched. Without the versatility of spellcasting, and zombies it's only minions though I can't see it sustaining a long-term plot.
Mordukhavar the Reaver is the only one of these that matches up to a regular red wyrm in terms of general toughness, and even it may lose out in a slugfest due to the lack of damage bonuses on it's physical attacks. Still, compared to the Devils it actually hangs out with, it has more than enough magic to compete in the 9 hells political games, and the muscle to kick a pit fiend's ass no trouble. It's all about comparison.
Medrinia is the undersea emissary of Bahamut. She's almost the equal of a great wyrm bronze dragon, but not quite, and she can summon large amounts of dragon turtles to back her up if she needs to make a point. I think that'll make up for any shortcomings against an individual superpowerful monster.
Xathanon isn't hugely powerful or versatile, but can move at unlimited speed, and empower others, temporarily turning them into great wyrm gold dragon proxies to kick ass in it's stead. This is obviously a huge opportunity for the players if they play their cards right. I approve.
Vanathor the golden Harpist sees them fail music theory as well as game mechanics. 6 octave vocal range is not enough to go from subsonic to glass-shattering. Still, that means it does get 6 breath weapons, and it also has 19th level spellcasting abilities, so once again what he lacks in power he'll make up in versatility. So this article has lots of cool ideas, but doesn't back them up with the mechanical rigor and research they need to fit into AD&D's established power ranges. Rather disapointing, really.
Dragon names: As with the elven name guide, it's time to string together some long chains of syllables. A long life means plenty of time to rack up the achievements, and add on more descriptives and superlatives to bolster the ego. Keep rolling, adding on more until you have too many for a player to remember, so the dragon then has good reason to get pissed off at them when they fail to use it's full name when referring to it. Tee hee. This is very much fluffy filler to round off the themed section. Still, we've had worse.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 5/7
Van Richten's legacy: Ah yes, the Foxgrove-Weathermay sisters. Faced with the question of how to replace Van Richten after they killed him in Bleak House, they decided to give his role to two younger nieces, (well, technically not blood relations, but the daughters of one of his adventuring companions.) and continue the story. After all, it's not as if there's brand new monsters appearing regularly that his research would no longer cover. Ravenloft likes to stick to variations on the classics. But anyway, this isn't so much about them, as it is a description of Van Richten's old home. Overflowing with books, more than a few weird magical items, and the requisite secret room where the extra dangerous stuff is kept, this is filled with references to various Ravenloft modules and characters. He even has the sunsword from the original module, and isn't that going to make it a hell of a lot harder for any present day adventurers to finish Strahd off for good. Ravenloft is actually really tiny when you look at the math. I once added up the populations of all the domains, and it comes to around 1.5 million, total. That's small enough that everyone can get personal attention from the monsters that lurk pretty much everywhere, and any name level adventurers will encounter the domain lords along the way. For all they might try to draw upon the same vein as the WoD, you aren't really powerless or insignificant to them, and once you've got a few levels under your belt, you can make a real difference. So this has some moderately useful setting info, and a hell of a lot more you can read between the lines. The gameline still has a few more twists to come before they cancel it and hit the reset button.
Nodwick visits another classic dungeon, and finds it's been turned into a tourist attraction. For once, everyone is in agreement on what needs to be done.
Fiction: The honor of two swords by Kate Novak-Grubb. (what, was she not getting enough recognition writing using purely her maiden name?) We return to telling stories of Jeff & Kate's personal group, last seen in issue 247. Here, we finally find out how Ishi got dishonoured back in the east, and she gets to make up for that with some serious asskicking. And also learning that while honor is admirable, it doesn't always work, especially when you're dealing with weird supernatural beings. Sometimes you've got to play it smart, and it's ironic that the paladin would wind up being the one teaching that lesson. This is definitely one of their better bits of gaming fiction, as it bucks stereotypes, isn't yet another origin story, and has a stable romance in it that isn't consumed by drama. See, you can make that interesting if you try. Plus Wizard of Oz references. There's room for a few more stories using these characters.
Dragon! Guardian of the skies. This deluxe model can be yours for only $195. Ai Carumba. I've got guitars that are worth less than that.
The ecology of the Aspis: Aww. It wants to pretend it's people. Only it's not very good at it, unlike dopplegangers or steel dragons. Aspis are one of those intelligent hive creatures that are generally going to stick to the nest. But it's not inconceivable that one might be sent out to acquire information, rebel, or be the sole survivor of their hive, and wind up becoming an adventurer. Once again, Johnathan proves adept at constructing a distinctive voice and mindset for the creatures he's covering, making them both plausible and fairly amusing. With a nicely twisty tale, full of fucked up undertones (stockholm syndrome and love potions, hmm) and rules for making them available as PC's, this is well up to his usual standard. He's really making this series his own.
This month's competition is suitably birthdaylicious. And very specific. Design a new greater Drake. Not a new monster, not a new dragon, but a new greater drake. Hmm. I'm really not sure what to say to that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 6/7
Arcane Lore: We've had plenty of birthday issues where dragons get new toys. How about a little something for us poor schmucks who actually have to kill them? There's been plenty of people who've lost their lives to dragons, you'd think a few of them would become wizards in their relentless quest for vengance instead of going the knightly route. Yup, I think I approve. This column hasn't suffered nearly as much from topic moribundity as the Bazaar or Bestiary.
Dust Shield is a minor but useful shielding effect that'll keep the environment from messing with you, and annoying swashbucklers from throwing sand in your eye. Since flying dragons can make a mess, this is pertinent, if the least of your worries once they're about to breathe on you.
Chain Invisibility is a sneaky little trick designed to rile up a dragon or other greedy fool. Your stuff isn't really gone. But taking the time to realise that mid-combat'll make you vulnerable.
Fizzlebreath is another one that'll make them waste a few rounds, and quite possibly panic. Remember, they can often kill you in one hit, so don't even let them get that off.
Body Reunion is an interesting sympathetic magic that's useful for hunting not only dragons, but all sorts of missing creatures. A scale, a lock of hair, an old baby tooth, whatever it takes.
Lockjaw is another one to make sure they can't even attack. Now what we need is something to blunt their claws and clip their wings, and enough wizards to unleash them all at once.
Soften Scales is another pretty obvious defence reducer. After all, they do have huge negative AC's. Even an experience warrior will struggle to get hits in if you don't help them.
Earth Magnet is pretty much what I expected it to be. If you're flying, it grounds you, if you're earthbound, it sticks you there. Since Draconic mobility is underused by too many DMs, consider if you want to bother.
Temporary Youth is really mean for dragons, but pretty neat for the rest of us. A bit longer would be nicer though, as with a tiny duration, it's only good for combat, not social tricks. Maybe a higher level variant then. Still, it's good that this stuff isn't totally focussed on one monster. It's definitely more PC friendly than the last few years.
Role models: This column serves a dual purpose, as seems to have become it's formula. The majority of it is devoted to the rules disputes that are far easier to resolve when you have minis, questions of positioning and how far characters can move in a round, which lets you know if characters can attack other ones, and what ranged modifiers they're likely to be facing. This becomes especially important if you split the party, and one hears the other in trouble, or some similar inconvenience. Meanwhile, the second, shorter sidebar is about painting faces. The secret here is to imply, not overdetail, as minis are small, and you won't be able to make out details unless you get really close. When it comes to faces, the human mind has an amazing ability to extrapolate and fill in the blanks. So once again, it does two things in two pages, and doesn't go into much depth on either. Does White Dwarf still do painting advice at this point? I know they went from covering all sorts of systems into pure house organ as well, but is that still within their remit? And are they only pandering to the new kids, or do they still produce material aimed at long-term fans? If only those threads hadn't stalled in the low double digits. So anyway, while Dungeoncraft is steaming ahead adding new depths to our roleplaying design skills, this column is not keeping up with respect to minis. It all remains a bit basic.
PC Portraits: Not too surprisingly, this column goes for the dragonslayer option. As with the sci-fi one, I think showing their bodies would allow the artist more ability to accurately represent this specialisation. As it is, the main thing they share is a certain intensity of expression. Well, we have had quite a few dragonslayer kits over the years, and they don't have that much in common either, particularly the spellcasting ones. Given how smart dragons are, that's probably for the best. If they know what's coming, they will have prepared a countermeasure. So as usual, this doesn't give me a huge amount to talk about, and you could easily use the portraits for other purposes. Meh. Give it a year or so more to wear out it's welcome.
Dragon Magazine Issue 260: June 1999
part 7/7
Zero point players: The Alternity article this month is essentially a sci-fi Rogues Gallery column. They've recently released a novel for Star*Drive as to try and get the property cooking, and here's the tie in statting up some characters from it. Fairly standard promotional method these days. Let's see if the characters are cliches.
Pete Sokolov is a dual wielding badass with a cybernetic arm, and a whole bunch of general enhancements. He fits the brooding loner stereotype to a tee, is an ex secret agent, and is an expert at computer hacking and martial arts. I suspect he'll still get his ass kicked by a team who can really specialise in their various disciplines. In the meantime, it seems like he's very much stamped from the mold that produced Drizzt. Again. Give. Me. A. Break.
Geille Monashi is also a dual-wielder, and despite the description saying she wears a sensible jumpsuit, the artist just has to giver her a stripperific twist. She can psychically interface with computers, which lets her pull off amazing tricks on the net. Once again, she's a self-sufficient loner, and the two of them have to learn how to work together to get through the plot. Formula!
Karcen Borun looks like the main villain. He's bio-enhanced and plastic surgeried to the gills, and is doing his best to take over the megacorp and damn the costs to everyone else. I'm guessing he fails eventually. Selfishness is it's own reward.
Marius Grayes is a mid-level legbreaker in the Syndicate. Genetically engineered to deal with high gravity, this makes him exceedingly strong in regular environments. He's very much a blunt, direct straight-talker, which means he's unlikely to ever get to the top, but he has more than enough loyal followers to make a good fight for a group of PC's. So these characters don't step far out of their cookie-cutters, but they might be handy for use in actual play. Much mehness, really.
Dragonmirth has a really hard puzzle, and some clever tricks to show us. KodTD has a TPK. You really need to spot when the enemies aren't bluffing.
TSR Previews: The number of releases continues to decrease, while the amount of rehash stays high. Return to the keep on the borderlands takes us back to see who's moved in since it got cleared out in the early 80's. Actually, it's pretty similar, only with more plot. Hey ho. Drizzt's tales are also getting reprinted. Popular fella, for someone who broods so much.
In the new stuff, the Realms gets Skullport, Another place within spitting distance of Waterdeep for adventurers to get some XP in. Like undermountain isn't enough for an entire career already. Dragonlance sees Dezra's Quest by Chris Pierson. Looks like it's the centaur's turn in the spotlight during the chaos war. Who's next, the Irda? And finally, Alternity's novel series seems pretty busy too. Zero Point by Richard Baker. What a rubbish collection.
ProFiles: Richard Baker is one of the designers who really shaped TSR's 90's output. Somehow, he managed to get in on his first try, even without having done any gaming work beforehand. After contributing to a whole load of settings, and writing more than a few generic books as well, he was one of the lead designers for Birthright and Alternity. As ever, even the works that weren't commercial successes are presented very positively in the magazine, with him being "very happy" with the way they turned out. :rolleyes: He continues to prove his versatility, moving into novels as well. What part will he play in the next few years of products? As ever, we shall see.
Continuity continues to gradually return to the magazine, with quite a few references to previous issues and other books. The quality remains fairly constant, but I think I'm enjoying it a little more when there are a whole bunch of outside connections to spot. Obviously there'll be another new beginning fairly soon when 3rd edition comes out, but in the meantime, they ought to make the most of the longest-running, most filled in edition of them all. On we go then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. Succubus Pron, Succubus Pr0n. Classically inspired Succubus P40n. Well and truly back in fashion after being consigned to the middle pages in the 90's. If any of their covers says screw the old code of conduct, let's get some fanboys in, it's this one. So yeah, this is testament to just how much they have changed already, despite in many ways seeming to play things safe compared to TSR. It's definitely worthy of note. Of course, whether the contents'll be as daring is still up to question. Still, it should be easier to find out than forming a relationship with another real person and getting to see them naked. Let's continue pushing the bounds of geekery ever further.
Scan quality: Excellent, no indexing.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Although it's not particularly obvious in the contents page, this issue has a shadow theme. And so Dave uses this editorial to talk about moral ambiguity in your heroes. While the idea of edgy, badass anti-heroes who struggle constantly with their darker side rose to prominence in the 90's, they still have yet to really fall out of fashion. If anything, they might still be growing in popularity, despite having become a derided cliche in themselves. I suppose that's a testament to how people want to view themselves. Since the average person has more than a few moral slips in their closet, they find it easier to identify with a flawed hero than one who is utterly steadfast in their rectitude, and never even drops litter or breaks the speed limit. And without internal conflict, the writer might actually have to give their heroes a decent challenge to keep the story interesting. :p So this is an amusing little editorial that shows us some of the more interesting little quirks of human nature. We might strive for perfection, but if we achieve it, we grow bored and actively look for an excuse to leave it and do something different. What are we to do with ourselves?
Sage advice goes first for a change. Haven't had that in a while.
Can spellcasters cast spells in armor that doesn't count as armor (no. It just means thieves suffer no penalties. )
Does shield completely negate magic missiles. (Only if you have the right facing. You are keeping track of your characters facing, aren't you.)
Are Sha'ir gen improvement rituals variable in time or not (no, actually)
How the hell does a sha'ir survive the longer rituals (stamina and magic assistance. If it were easy, everyone would do it straight away.)
What happens when dimension door goes awry in sigil or ravenloft. (Say hello to Skip's friend Confusion! Who knows where you'll end up. Skip recommends it be troublesome, but not instantly fatal. )
When do you become invisible again after attacking wearing a ring of invisibility. (When you make yourself invisible again. The onus rests on you. )
What happens if you combine there/not there and invisibility ( you never know if you'll stub your toe or not. It's most inconvenient )
If you close your eyes, is an object automatically not there (no)
Does there/not there work on people (no. That could cause existential crises. )
What happens if a giant throws a boulder that isn't there for it's target. ( events will conspire so that they make sense for all observers, no matter how improbable that is.)
Does a rope of entanglement work on huge creatures (If it's long enough. Usually it will be.)
Can you recharge Nidus' wand of endless repetition. How. ( Yes. It's an item from an obscure forgotten realms book, so a spell from another obscure forgotten realms book seems appropriate. )
Can a ghost use their aging attack on the astral plane (No, for a whole number of reasons. Your cosmological knowledge is messed up.)
How much damage does an exploding staff of the magi do (A quite ridiculous amount if it's well charged. You'd have to be mad to do it. )
What's an unseen servant's movement rate (6. No, you can't dress it up in a maids uniform, you sick pervert. )
Can you memorize more than one copy of a spell (Recyled question. Yes you can)
Can you set ioun stones into things (not if you want them to actually work. It's more impressive when they're floating around you anyway.)
What happens if you kill someone wearing a hat of disguise. (They turn back. Not the best way to penetrate a disguise though. Just take their hat off.)
What happens if you affect tanar'ri with poisonous or nondamaging gas effects (Immunities trump resistances. Resistances do nothing when irrelevant. )
Can you feed someone at deaths door a goodberry (no. They'll choke. You'll accelerate the problem you were trying to prevent. )
How long does a goodberry last (see the duration of the spell, dummy.)
Having followed this from the very beginning, and actually going through each issue while reading your commentary, I just wanted to say that all your hard work has been appreciated.
Thank you.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 2/7
D-Mail: We start off with two letters of praise for issue 258, in particular Bruce Cordell's man vs machine epic. Yeah, that one's joining the hall of fame alright. Not hard to figure that out.
Of course there was also the matter of issue 258's reduced size, which does not go unnoticed either. They're not particularly happy about having to do that either. We need more advertisers! Sales wouldn't hurt either, as the more readers you have, the more advertisers are willing to pay.
Of course, there's always someone who has to complain about the slightest pushing of the envelope, and so we get another letter saying they don't want to see technology in their AD&D, or Alternity in their magazine at all. It's quite strange how little variety they want.
A bunch of talk about 256's Dungeoncraft, and how names and words form, and are appropriated and bastardised by other languages. This is a topic that whole books have been written about. A magazine article is not going to be able to give an in depth and nuanced coverage of this.
And finally, another letter from someone who thinks the magazine has improved quite a bit from the final days of TSR. They're concentrating on what they ought to be concentrating on. Well, that's certainly true, whatever subjective quality analyses might be made.
Nodwick passes on his experience to a new generation of henchpeople.
Forum: Christopher Record thinks monks and psionicists ought to be part of the same class group, as they both draw from the same power source. We are seeing a surprising number of things that they'll only get round to adopting 2 editions later in here.
James Walker reminds us that the DM isn't always right, and letting the players affect your plot in a logical way is more interesting for both sides than railroading. The game is most fun when no-one knows for sure how things are going to turn out.
Daniel Chilcott wonders what nonstandard races really means. You ought to have plenty of options for PC's, so you can choose what ones are standard for your world, instead of being stuck in tolkien rip-off land again.
Pierrr Van Rooden thinks that priests and bards are actually the most powerful classes at the moment. They're certainly the most flexible. We've had plenty of arguments about this one before.
Clyde A. Starr Jr has suggestions for the rules that would result in the books being absolutely massive. We can't compile everything good about the last edition into the corebooks.
Jack Pitsker thinks that healing ought to scale with level, otherwise characters actually take longer to get back to full health as they advance. Very good point, whether HP are a reflection of toughness or cool, it makes more sense for them to replenish in proportional amounts.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finally can't put off making a map any longer. But before he does, he takes another lesson from the old modules and brings it up to date. Rumours! After all, it's good enough for the caves of chaos. Having a good dozen or two rumours, some of them false, some true, means your players have a ton of incentive to stick around the general area of their home base until they're used up. And having red herrings and active lies being spread by people makes the world seem bigger, not just a backdrop to whatever story the DM wants to tell, that'll reveal just whitespace if you go off the path. I approve. The mapping advice, on the other hand, is fairly typical. Make it useful, visually distinctive, and give the things within it logical placements. And make sure the number of NPC's statted up correlates with the number of buildings in a sensible fashion. The kind of basic checklist that of course many published modules ignore freely, and indeed, you can probably get away with missing out several of the elements in this one, as long as you make sure the ones you do include are good. So really, despite Ray saying you shouldn't do more work than you need to, following every single step in his columns will result in a bit of overkill. Just do as much as you can in the time you have available. We are making progress, but it's obvious now Ray's in for the long haul, and'll be giving out new bits of information accordingly.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 3/7
Darkstone plays up the differences between roleplaying personas and the people playing them with withering sarcasm in it's advert. There are no girls on the internet, etc etc. I do not feel tempted to play your game as a result of this.
PC Portraits: It's dwarf time! Which means the inevitable female dwarven beard debate resurfaces. This keeps things ambiguous, as while we do have some dwarves with obvious breasts, they're all beardless, or at the most have a bit of stubble. But there are also a few male dwarves who keep their facial hair short rather than going for the full-flowing, possibly braided mane that denotes age and seniority. I blame all those adventurers being a bad influence, introducing the idea of fashion and corrupting our hardworking lads! Next thing you know they'll be using boomerangs instead of the good old-fashioned axes of their ancestors. Let the flame wars continue! Once again this little column provides me a surprisingly large amount to think about.
Wizards of dusk & gloom: The position of first feature seems a little devalued, given the number of regular columns that came before it this month. Slightly surprising really, given how popular shadow based stuff is. The article on the demiplane was quite possibly my favourite one of 1995, and there's a ton of spells and monsters based around the theme. And now it's time for three more wizard kits and related sets of new spells. After all, the list of things you can do in the shadows is too big for one archetype to fill them all.
Shadow Callers are all about the semi-real creatures and objects, mixed with monsters from the demiplane to keep you guessing so disbelieving the whole shebang won't be effective. Of course, if they do step outside their niche, they have great difficulty controlling normal creatures, and the not uncommon social penalties for messing with dark magic. They seem reasonably balanced.
Shadow Seekers have an obsession with becoming a Shade, which they seem to think ought to take them out of play. Oh come now, it's not as if the powers you get are at all game breaking at that level, and it's one of the easier transformations to make if you have 9th level spells. I suppose that's the big catch, isn't it. Spend less time researching, more time going out killing things and taking their stuff and your magical advancement will take care of itself; you'll soon outpace the geeks.
Shadow Hunters are another variant on wizards with minor rogue skills who use both to steal stuff very effectively indeed. They also get rogue weapons and proficiencies, but have the rather odd hindrance of not being able to use rods, staves & wands. This makes them even more unpopular with other wizards than the other two kits. UR not doin it rite! Ninjas never have this problem. :D But then, they have PR departments. Shadow wizards are too busy being brooding loners.
The 16 new spells are divided up neatly between the three kits, each with their own book of shadows (and a bit of ironic snark about how overused that name is. Blessed be, bitches. ) As with the kits, they are't terrible, but tend to err on the underpowered side, and some of them are of restricted availability despite this. I don't think they merit the secrecy surrounding them. But then that's the problem with secret organisations. When you don't have large numbers of people to do R&D, you don't get economies of scale and the benefits or extensive troubleshooting. So you're unlikely to come up with something as generally useful and efficient as magic missile. I don't think your wizards will mind in the long run if they don't get the option to join up with these guys.
RPG.net advertises in Dragon!! My head, I think it may explode from sheer amusement at the recursiveness. Plus they cross advertise the sailor moon RPG. I find this hilarious.
Dwarven names: Oh, this one again. Stock up on your phlegm and throat sweets, because you'll need them. Like the 101 lists, they seem to have decided to make a pattern out of this, give their writers something to aim for. Although I very much doubt they'll ever get to the poor norkers or grippli, the kind of races that actually need this kind of expansion, and you can't find in various fantasy novels anyway. But then the writers might actually have to come up with their own ideas.
So this is another column following one of their latest formulas closely, not really distinguishing itself in any way. I think the skip button would be appropriate.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 4/7
Miscellaneous mishaps: Objets d'Art. But it looks like the next scene is pretty similar. Now it's the turn of the random bits of jewellery and art objects to get a three page expansion table to keep players from getting bored. Which doesn't keep me from being bored, ironically, as it's emblematic of a lack of variety in their approaches and topics. I think they should probably have saved this one for next issue. Once again, this might be useful in actual play, but is completely forgettable to read.
Fiction: The fallen god by J. Gregory Keyes. On the other hand, the second Fool Wolf story isn't forgettable at all, and goes quite some way towards building on the interestingly animistic world established in issue 249. A city full of improbable buildings, sustained by blood sacrifices to the gods within, that gradually become warped and trapped by this homage, resulting in a dysfunctional setup all round? Well, not as dysfunctional as it could be. At least they've realised you can get more blood from a human sacrifice by taking a few pints, letting them heal, and then doing it again on a regular basis than killing them. So this is packed to the brim with moral greys and magic as a science, giving you plenty to think about as you read it, while not neglecting the action scenes and plot twists either. It works as both a story and as worldbuilding. Which is just what I want from this magazine. Specific and unique examples along with the general ideas. And there's still plenty of room for other locations and cultures in the same world. He's definitely welcome to visit again.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Shadow related stuff is a very common one in stories. And it certainly isn't neglected in the magazine either, with cool stuff like Issue 213's article on the demiplane it issues from. So It's time for the cycle to bring us another wave of themed magical items. As usual, some of them'll probably surpass their hackneyed theme, while others won't. And I have to see which is which. Roll on, roll on.
Arrows of the Dark Curtain create a wave of blackness beneath where they're shot. Another one useful for both rogues and underdark monsters.
Cloth of Shadows has a very amusing bit of history attached to it. If you can get hold of the entire suit, it'll be pretty handy. Sounds like a definite adventure in the brewing folks.
Crowns of Shadow Control is another one that seems like it could drive a whole campaign. Armies of Shadows under your command, but a very real danger of transforming into one yourself and losing it all, becoming a slave to the next fool to put it on? Sign me up for grand vizier.
Eyes of Soothing Darkness are just magically enhanced sunglasses. They're very predictable in their powers and drawbacks. Not worth getting worked up about unless you're a goblin or drow.
Shadowstealers are magic rods which do exactly that. As is often mythically the case, being shadowless is rather bad for the health and sanity. This makes it a good one to extort people with.
Shadow pins can be used to trap people by nailing their shadow to the wall. This is also a pain, but can won't last forever. Just wait for the sun to set. No shadow, no problem. Undead Shadows, being insubstantial, are completely screwed.
Shadow Puppet Gloves let you animate any shapes you make, and order them around. This is of course limited by your manual dexterity. I recommend you make the player act out the creation of the creature with a torch :D
Shadow Snares are special garrottes that can be selectively insubstantial. Another one that'll take some brains to use well. Not a bad collection, really.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 5/7
This month's competition is to design a creature from the demiplane of shadow. Now that's an idea I can get behind.
Arcane Lore is also getting dark and shadowy. Soon we'll have enough for shadow magic to be a viable specialisation in itself, like in certain other games. Muahahahaha!
Dispel Light seems a bit pointless when a Darkness spell can cancel that out too, and do other stuff. No accounting for trickery.
Shadow Lock seals a door so you can only open it by opening it's shadow. Now that is pretty ingenious as a way of keeping out the unknowing. Perfect for a group of cultists, especially as it's low enough level to be commonly used.
Dancing Shadows is kinda the reverse of dancing lights. Like it, it's not hugely powerful, but can have useful flavour effects. And if you're a Shade, it'll mean you can always be at full power in an encounter.
Obedient Shadow is another one that'll give you shade without a parasol, in less obtrusive form, and longer duration. Rest assured that when you need it, it'll keep the light off you.
Shadow Sight is a limited clairvoyance that can only see out of shadows. Makes sense as a way of cutting corners. Make the buggers paranoid and then pull out the full spell to laugh at them.
Shady Palm is yet another variant on the shade theme, making a mobile shadow of a palm tree to follow you around. Sip pina colladas on a flying carpet down in Zakhara with this one.
Hide Shadow makes your shadow into a solid object you can remove and manipulate amusingly. This is full of potential when manipulating others. Thankfully, it's only temporary, so you aren't in danger of going mad like previous versions of this power.
Shadow Weave also lets you reshape shadows to practical ends. And I don't think you'll have a trouble finding shadows to manipulate in a dungeon environment.
Shadow Warrior lets you hurt people by having your shadow attack their shadow. A gimmick monster from issue 61 gets vindicated in amusing fashion.
Shadow Replay is a nice little divination that'll help you get a retrospective on events in an area in interesting fashion. Once again, I quite approve.
Transport via Shadow is a cutdown version of shadow walk, the dimension door to that's teleport. Once again, massive paranoia and neon lights will keep them from popping out in your home.
Death Shade drains hit points permanently over a truly huge area. Nasty business that works well as a long term plot thing. Muahahaha.
Shadow Trap puts you inside your own shadow, unable to affect anything, miming to people to try and get them to break the curse. Another nicely inventive bit of work with plenty of good sources to draw upon.
The ecology of the Dark Naga: Hee. The association of monster hunters finally manages to get something done, albeit more through luck than skill. While they might be facing a serious creature, their antics are a comical as ever, and the monster responds in kind, with enough sarcasm to pickle an elephant. Mind you, with constant mind-reading, all sorts of allies, and the ability to choose their own spell lists, they're likely to be a huge pain in the butt even when played straight, for they'll be tactically one step ahead of you, and you can never be sure what tricks they have up their sleeve. Pair them up with kobolds, and even the mightiest adventurer will tremble at the thought of fighting one. Again, this is fun and useful, but maybe strays a little too far into wacky territory. There ought to be at least the feel that the characters are in real danger in situations like this, and any violence isn't just cartoon violence that'll be reset when the scene changes.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 6/7
Dragon's bestiary: Back to the computer game conversions this month it seems. Myth: The fallen Lords is a game that draws quite heavily on D&D, so converting creatures back seems a little incestuous. Still, they have some neat ideas of their own in many cases. Let's see if D&D can learn from it's descendants this time.
Ghol fill the role of semihumanoid predators. Like Krenshar, they look pretty gross, but aren't hugely powerful beyond those basic tricks anyone can use. You'd better hope you have the advantage of numbers, for they have speed and climbing capability on their side, so the terrain will more likely be in their favour.
Fetch are your basic arrogant isolationist demonic creatures from another plane. They don't have the magical versatility of most of their D&D equivalents, and so aren't hugely interesting to me.
Barrier Wights are another creature that is easy to kill, but explodes with pestilent effects when you do. Seems like that idea is on the up these days. It does liven up games where ranged attacks are the primary weapons of choice.
Trow are big clumping humanoids who kick you around the place if they get too close. Since they can move quite fast as well, you'll have to be a pretty good dodger, or split up. They certainly seem designed with cinematic battles in mind, and would fit well in an Iron Heroes style game.
Shop keep encourages the ultimate battle of the geeks.
Dungeon Mastery: Blaaah. It's another article telling us to make magic items more special by reducing their power and frequency. Been there, done that, got the magic T-shirt that protects me from douchequake once per day. As much as less is more and learn to appreciate what you've got are valid philosophies to live by, they're inherently built around compromises. And really, we have to do so much of that in reality that I really don't want to have to put up with it in my escapism at the moment. Maybe if I was a multimillionare rock star I'd be a little more secure and sanguine about this. But no. Fuck you. Gimme my lightsaber that can extend far enough to cut the world in half. This does nothing to improve my mood.
Marvel super heroes: Back to the old Marvel-phile style articles comprising largely of character stats here. Jean Grey and Rachel Summers are both home to the Phoenix, which is ridiculously powerful, but also utterly amoral, and quite happy to destroy entire solar systems to satisfy it's hunger if not kept under control. It's a deeply unsafe deus ex machina that is dangerous to tap into, but impossible to destroy, giving you a ready made source of conflict amongst the heroes and general angst. Of course, the way it's owners deal with it differs quite a bit, and they have other issues to deal with, given Marvel's twisting continuity, soap opera romances, and time travel plotlines. So this new system leaves them free to cover the big guns again for a while, before they have to go into all the obscure minor characters again. (of which there are quite a few more since last time) That's the joy of reboots. Will they last long enough for diminishing returns to set in this time round? It shouldn't be too hard to find out, really.
Role Models: This column is once again worried about finding minis suitable for Alternity games. Steal bits and pieces from Warhammer and White Wolf, and you should be able to pull it off, especially if you're willing to do some customising. It then provides a mini scenario for the game, while talking about how to paint camouflage in the sidebar. This split focus makes each of these three topics even smaller than usual, so there's no room to get bored, but not much depth either, especially with the amount of illustrations. Once again, I think this column could benefit from being a bit bigger without losing it's ability to deliver lots of stuff. It's as if the writer has too many ideas to properly use, not all of which fit easily into the remit of the column. So this is fun but unsatisfying, like a single piece of chocolate when you'd like a whole bar.
Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999
part 7/7
The twilight jungle: We've already had the spotlight on the Seshayans once, in issue 251. Now it's their turn again under their original Alternity rules and setting. This is actually surprisingly similar, as on their homeworld, they're still animistic primitives, and it's only due to the uplifting efforts of a megacorp that they've been exposed to interstellar civilisation. Of course, this isn't remotely altruistic, and they don't react well to attempts to break their contracts and leave employment, setting things up for a rather interesting campaign focussed around civil rights issues. Or you could do the usual ones of exploration and killing things and taking their stuff. They do make rather good assassins, after all. So not only do they have a fairly distinctive appearance, they also have a pretty good selection of inherent plot hooks. And with several new monsters, weapons and careers statted out, this is a pretty good mini splatbook. Roger Moore's legacy to the magazine continues.
Dragonmirth takes an innovative approach to castle defense. KotDT degenerates into player bickering again.
TSR Previews: A very busy month this time round, although I suspect some of that may be formatting errors, given the positions of various things in the surrounding issues. Oh well, it'll give me a proper workout anyway.
Three of these are CD based computer products. The digital core rules get a ton of splatbooks added to them. Enough kits, spells, races, and other goodies that you should be able to generate complex and twinked characters at high speed.
There's also the Dragon Magazine Archive. If it weren't for that, I'd never be doing this. Course, they didn't get it perfect, with a surprising number of little bits left unscanned, but hey ho, slightly less work for me. Still a ridiculous amount to go even so.
And the Realms finally get a complete atlas, with a ton of maps from the supplements compiled, plus virgin continents given an overview for your players. Now you really can go all around the world. Can you you you, you find your baby there?
The realms is pretty packed in print too. Baldur's gate by Philip Athans is a novelisation of the computer game. Ahh, still doing this a decade after Pool of Radiance. Was this one any good? And on the gaming side, we have Sea of Fallen Stars. They've already covered the cultures around it. Now they take you under the water. I do enjoy it when they do that.
Dragonlance tries another way to get some gaming stuff to sell remotely as well as the novels. The Odyssey of Gilthanias is a mixture of fiction and game stuff for both systems. Lots of new locations, oh, and probably poetry. Ho hum. They're also getting another straight fiction anthology, Heroes and Fools: Tales of the 5th age. More stuff from when the magic is gone and people have to build new lives.
Greyhawk does a double rehash. Against the giants appears both as an expanded revised module and a novel by Ru Emerson. The first modules, and for some people, still the best, it's no surprise that they're part of the silver anniversary celebrations.
Alternity gets Star Compendium: Systems of the Verge. More places for you to explore, new aliens to meet, and possibly kill and take the stuff of.
Marvel Super Heroes gets The Reed Richards Guide to Everything. A whole load of cool optional stuff presented in a humorously IC manner. Nice to see them using that approach here as well.
ProFiles: Fred Fields is not dead. He's not even gone away, as this month's cover proves. He's one of those people who started doing art young, and just kept going, improving his abilities and sending out stuff persistently until he got picked up. As ever, we are reminded that that is one of the crucial ingredients to success. But other elements can vary. In contrast to the last few artists profiled, he usually works from models, sculpting them up to then draw if needed, and drafting in the people around to pose for him. Takes all sorts, doesn't it. In any case, it's worked for the last decade, and he hopes it will continue to work. Now, if only he could get royalties from the people ripping off his work in tattoo parlors. :p Another moderately entertaining profile.
Once again, this issue seemed to go by a lot faster than the ones before they reduced the page count, even though it's only a small change really. On the other hand that was because this had a pretty high quota of insubstantial articles, as ironically befits the theme. They may have more colour in the illustrations, but they don't have as much contrast in the articles they have each month, with the same regular columns showing up nearly every time. Well, at least we still have a few non D&D ones a month at the moment. On we go, knowing that soon they'll be gone as well.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. Time for halflings and gnomes to have to share a themed issue again, just as they did their splatbook. They're just not popular enough when compare to elves & dwarves, are they? You're all a bunch of sizeists! :shakes tiny fist: Get back here so I can headbutt yer balls! Mutter grumble mutter, humans these days, no respect for an ancient fantasy archetype. And don't you dare start on the red pointy hats. Red pointy hats are cool. And you can store all kinds of stuff in them as well. Like to see you try that with a baseball cap. Let's show them the meaning of affirmative action.
Scan quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Dave decides to take to the stand in defence of cliches. The reason they became cliches is because they work. Where you really go wrong is using them in isolation, or a too familiar combination. The nature of combinatoric math means that you can easily get a unique result if you incorporate enough elements in different orders. Trust me, I've done statistical analyses based upon the number of people in the world, number of stories written, and number of archetypical tropes. It's easier than it seems, especially if you don't know the rules in the first place, so you aren't adhering to the established rules of form for whatever creative medium you're working in. It also helps to have an exceedingly strange mind, which I think we've already established I've got, for better and for worse. Don't be afraid to use the rules. If your ideas are strong enough, they'll till turn out unique despite playing within a framework.
D-Mail: We start off with a letter praising articles that tie into other ones. Those that notice it are unanimously positive. It's just when the tie-ins are too long and complicated that people get confused and pissed off. I suspect this is why Adventure paths work. A year long subscription is about the right length where taking a decade to know the whole story isn't.
Second, we have a request for them to put more old stuff out on CD. It's sold quite decently, so they fully intend to have a few more products in that vein.
Two more letters in praise of Bruce Cordell's machine work, although they both include the caveat that maybe Dragon is being a little too Wizard-centric. I think we can say that's an accurate criticism. As ever, the fact that they're the ones writing the story also means they get the greatest amount of cool new stuff.
Some nitpicking over biology terms. The usual thing that shows up whenever someone tries to bring real world elements into the fantastical universe.
And finally, a letter of generalised praise. Because they still need their ego boosts. Keeps the office running more smoothly than if they're beset by nitpicking fanboys who seem impossible to please, yet refuse to actually go away.
Nodwick stands by his principles in a world where henchmen are becoming commercialised and bastardised. They know nothing of the true spirit of henching! :D
Aaron Williams delivers another amusing illustration in quick succession. He is doing rather well at the moment.
Forum: Jennifer M. Formosa describes some cool locations from her own campaign. These are decently linked together by the story's thread. Don't see stuff like this much round here.
Kevin McMahon is one of those people who sees nothing much wrong in the system as it is. Wizards are neither over or underpowered. O_o
David R Boruch is another person who wants the custom class creation rules from the DMG (and issue 109) made into the standard method of customising your character, with the standard classes merely as examples of those maths.
Daniel Thomson points out that all the new rules for greater weapon specialisations reduce the role of magic plusses in the game. Whether that's a good or bad thing is still very much up for debate.
Rex V. Settle thinks substituting prepared for memorised would be the right terminology for spellcasting. Just don't expect any royalties for it.
Mike Walko thinks thieves are the class that most needspowering up, particularly in terms of combat prowess. They ought to be highly accurate, damage inflicting monsters. The change to strikerdom begins.
Dirk Keaton thinks monks really need a special power that reflects how much faster they can hit than someone with most weapons. You may well be in luck, depending if you think the solution they give goes far enough.
Colin Daniels thinks AC ought to start from 0 and go up. Lots of people would prefer ascending AC's it seems.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 2/7
Dungeoncraft: This month, Ray talks about making NPC's to fill your world with. This is one area where he sticks to his lesson of not doing more work than you need too. Only stat them up fully if they have a purpose in your campaign. Whether that's to create a challenge, provide plot hooks, be a source of services and equipment, or simply to look cool is up to you. Although I must warn about the dangers to excess exposition. Many players will ignore it, and wind up blundering into trouble. I guess that's another thing that's become a bit hackneyed since then, driven into the ground by huge unskippable cutscenes in computer RPG's. Of course, the fault could well be with the players as much as the DM. There's no shortage of annoying people on both sides of the screen, as both sage advice and the letters Ray gets prove. Once again, those are actually the most interesting part of the column, showing a little deranged creativity'll beat professionalism quite frequently at capturing the attention of people. I think they could do with letting a little more of that back into the magazine.
Sage advice: Do charisma modifiers apply to all NPCs! (Yes. Don't be so surprised. Characters can still blow it by doing something stupid to piss them off. Even 19 charisma won't save you when you're caught in the treasury at midnight. )
Can you only use spellslaying in combat. (if you try it on someone out of combat, it'll become combat pronto. Messing up peoples magic is not something done in polite society.
What does rain of blood do to characters with negative armor classes (not a lot)
Do you take more damage if an arrow is stuck in you (no. Abstraction strikes again!)
Is six dexterity checks to cross a single bridge too much. (if your DM thinks it's that hard, Skip's not going to stop him. )
How exactly does stone shape progress over it's round. (Up to your GM to decide on the flavor text. But you definitely can't use it to crush people. Guess you'll have to settle for a slow lingering death instead. More time to gloat in)
Can you stack a cloak of displacement and ring of blinking (oh yes. You can add on mirror image as well. Most confusing.)
What are the real morale factors for henchmen and hirelings (Skip is the real morale booster. Oh Yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh. )
What is the wisdom modifier for aleph 1 ( Your magical defense adjustment)
What do you feel when a charm wears off. (Depends how they treated them while charmed. They do not automatically know they've been magicked. )
What happens if you have both cover and concealment (use the better bonus)
Is the first movement rate for the cube of force right (no)
What level is darkening bolt (4th. Anyone using it as a 3rd level spell had better retcon sharpish)
What does (rev) mean for sphere lists (read the book you're reading it in, because different authors tend to have different opinion on this)
Can you create dimensional folding beneath someone's feet (no. It has to be an upright portal. You can create it and then push someone through though. )
Can power words be used on creatures without minds ( Yes, if applicable)
Can earth elementals be petrified (yes)
How do fatigue points work. Do all these things deduct points (Yes. If you're a busy bunny, you get tired. )
Can evil priests destroy paladins without a roll (no, thankfully. It's troublesome enough when they get turned and run away screaming. )
Skip is also going to start tackling Alternity stuff again. Lets do this while we still have a chance, and TSR cuts out the other stuff for good.
Do mechalus data filaments count as NIJacks (yes)
How do mechalus heal (normally. They may be mechanical, but they can still repair themselves. )
Can you spend a last resort point to make an enemy critically fail (no. That's just mean)
How do you determine the result of a complex skill check (it's binary. Don't worry about it)
How long does it take to use up the air in a powered down ship (quite a while. Lots of people will cut that down quickly though.)
Can an accumulator be used with a mass reactor (no)
Do you experience the time in drivespace (yes. It's pretty dull, usually.)
What effect does punching a hole in the universe have in the long run ( Good question. None yet, but you never know when monstrosities from beyond space may start eating everything. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 3/7
Half-pint heroes: Well, it seems that this issue's theme is not just being shared amongst Gnomes and Halflings, but a whole bunch of other races as well. I guess you really can fit more of them in the same space and people won't mind. Still, making more races available as PC's seems to be perennially popular, which is why they hard-code it into the next edition. In the meantime, there's certainly plenty of races left to treat in this fashion.
Buckawn, like other fae races, can only become fighters and thieves, cost extra xp to advance, and only get their more powerful spell-like abilities at higher levels. These nerfs probably don't prevent them from being rather useful to a team though, and less irritating than many of the more pranksterish fae that might attach themselves to a party. As long as you don't mind a little eco-preaching, let them stick around.
Chitine also make rather good rogues, due to their wall climbing and web spinning abilities. Plus they can fight four-handed with minimal penalties, making them engines of death compared to a normal fighter at low level. While not as flexible as thri-kreen, they could well be picked for the twinking potential. But they do have light-sensitivity issues to keep them from being over dominant, and no spellcasting abilities at all, so they can't fill every role.
Grippli also get superhuman climbing abilities in their amusing sticky froggy way, plus camouflage in their natural terrain. Their class selections are fairly typical for humanoids; despite their above average inteligence, they don't seem to have the knack for wizardry or technology. Good social skills are just as important for building a large-scale civilisation as brains.
Ravenkin are even smarter, but wings and prehensile feet don't allow for as complicated tool-using as a decent pair of hands. Plus they're originally from Ravenloft, where you're too busy trying to keep things that go bump in the night from turning whole cities into ghost towns to grow and advance as much as you'd like. Still, they do have the best class options of this lot, including lots of multiclass wizard ones. And flight. Funny that small things are actually more mobile on average.
Tasloi are another one that have exceedingly high potential as rogues, and not too much at other classes. A dexterity bonus and strength penalty'll focus the mind towards indirect solutions. Once again, climbing is a real strength of theirs, but they're not fond of bright light. Still their pack instinct means if they've ben kicked out of their home, they'll probably be loyal to a group that takes them in. And although some of these races could be a little inconvenient socially, none of them are completely game-breaking. Yet more to add to the list of useful crunch then.
Elmshire - A halfling heaven: Time for Roger Moore to give us one of his periodic returns to a topic he pioneered in the first place. Halflings in D&D worlds aren't quite the same as the hobbits in middle-earth, as many of your young becoming an adventurer is almost expected in trouble heavy places Oerth or Toril. And without powerful wizards like Gandalf looking out for them, they have to do their own hard work to make sure their homes remain places of bucolic serenity. This is of course important for actual play, because it means there can be some conflict within and around them to keep things from getting boring, and the players from leaving for good. This is certainly the case in Elmshire, which has seen a nasty plague, and had to deal with the Greyhawk wars just a few years ago. This leaves a definite undercurrent of suspicion and emotional trauma in their makeup, and more than a few problems to solve. Perfect adventure fodder, in other words. So Roger provides an example of a homebase rather faster than Ray did, and with more distinct flavour as well. Save your own shire. It'll make you feel like a big damn hero! I think this definitely qualifies as both a useful and distinctive article. How is it that the long-term writers often wind up producing the most unusual stuff?
By any other Name: No surprise that this is tackling the naming conventions of halflings & gnomes. Along with the usual syllable soup, they have a tendency to pick up nicknames based on things they've done, which you'll probably want to do in play, rather than roll on the table. Once again, this isn't very interesting, although you can get a few silly results on the nickname table if you're so inclined, so I don't have much to say here. I think this series is already running out of steam.
PC Portraits is in theme as well, with a whole bunch of short folks. Since all we see is faces here, this is represented by giving them generally rounded, child-like features, even when they also have beards and wrinkles. I think that works, but watch out for the perverts. You don't want to play with someone who seems a little too into playing up the child aspects, especially when also combined with sexualising. Nuff said.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 4/7
Fiction: To dam it where it trickles by Pete D Manison. The issue of magic being just another field of science and used accordingly is one of those issues that writers have struggled with quite a bit over the years, with various results. If it has consistent rules, they can be learned and exploited like anything else. If it doesn't, then what keeps it from being pure deus ex machina, robbing a story of tension? Well, here's one of the cleverer solutions to that. The idea of magic as fuelled by belief and force of will, and therefore impervious to scientific exploitation because the more you actually know, and the more rationally and logically you think, the less power you have. Of course, this leads to a situation where the head wizards could easily be outclassed by their pupils, and have to not only keep this a secret, but actively discourage critical thought in their students, and never let them know why, because that in itself will ruin their magical development. It's a setup filled with inherent tragedy, really. Might as well just become a scientist, as science doesn't care what you believe. So this is memorable, and more than a little sad. As speculative fiction, this definitely gets high marks.
The ecology of the jermalaine: They've had an osquip around for quite a while, and he's played a big part in some of their stories. So it's not surprise that the association of monster hunters decides to investigate the Jermalaine. So they take the shrinky pills, and it's down into the tunnels. Now, if only wizards got Bluff as a class skill. Unsurprisingly for this lot, they get found out, captured, seriously humiliated, and only get out by sheer luck. That shtick is starting to get a bit tiresome. This is what happens when you play to the crowd. Flanderisation sets in, and before you know it, you're slipping on a banana skin while a clown plays a whistle. And then the series gets cancelled. How much longer can he keep this up?
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Gnomes and halflings once again get lumped into the same section, forced to share features. Still, this does look like quite a long article, so I shouldn't complain. Otherwise next time I might have to plough my way through 10 pages of items. And that would be incredibly tedious. Looks like this one'll be long enough as it is.
Amulets of the Steinneblin let you speak with badgers and detect details of stonework like Gnomes. One of those honorary member items that also makes them tend to like you, just as elves have got recently.
Armor of melding lets you hide in the rock. In the underdark, this may well be a lifesaver. Who knows when a deep dragon is going to come slithering around the corner.
Badges of the Svirfneblin are another honorary member item that grants you a whole bunch of racial abilities. Course, since Svirfneblin have rather more impressive powers than Rock Gnomes, these are correspondingly more awesome to have.
Badgervests let you shapeshift into a badger. Gee, what a surprise. How many limited shapeshifting items do we have in the vault now?
Boots o' the Giant let a normal gnome imitate a spriggan and suddenly grow to huge size and back. Now all you need is a foul temper and lack of hygiene to match and you're ready to play infiltrator. Have fun.
Boots o' the Hills obviously let you go hiking through the roughest terrain without any danger of slipping. I'm pretty sure we've seen something like this before too. Next!
Bracers of Striking boost your strength. Unusually for these kinds of items, they're designed so they remain useful no matter how strong you are. Another sign of the edition change, where plusses will become standard, rather than boosts to a certain level.
Cloaks o' the hills are the gnomish equivalent of cloaks of elvenkind. Unsurprisingly, they work best in the environments gnomes prefer. Another one you could make variants of for all sorts of races.
Cocoon Crystals put you in stasis if there's a rockfall around you. This will save your life, but may involve waking up centuries later in a strange land if there's no-one to free you. Sounds pretty neat to me.
Diamond Badgers are Wondrous Figurines designed for digging. With big savage claws, they're not at all bad in combat either. What is it with Gnomes and Badgers? How do such an amiable race have an affinity for what is basically a giant chunky cranky weasel?
Gloves of Digging let you bypass the badger bit, and use your bare hands instead. Dig speeds are incredibly handy in giving you tactical options. Let's see what tricks you can come up with.
Stone Knives cut through stone like butter. You won't go as fast as the last two, but you get more precision, and can really mess up rock based monsters, as well as becoming a famed sculptor. Retire and become an artist. It's safer than adventuring.
A Pick of Piercing halves armor based AC bonuses and has a wide crit range. Another one that seems to have been made by making a sneaky peek at the upcoming system changes.
Pit Bags are a really nasty bit of trickery. Bags of holding that conceal their entrances and only allow living material in, leaving you naked and your stuff outside for the looting? Now that'll REALLY piss players off. A trick worthy of Garl Glittergold himself.
Barrier Shields provide better cover than normal when used in formation. This obviously means mass production is needed to get full benefits, which is always a bit tricky for permanent magical items.
Goblinslayer Swords let you go berserk attacking goblins. Seems more a dwarf idea than a gnome one. Meh.
Talismans of the Forstneblin are the third of our racial power granting honorary member items, this time focussed around forest gnomes. One wonder what abilities the tinker gnome version would grant. :p Hopefully speaking and listening at the same time would be among them.
Grandfather's Keys are a trio of useful little devices that help keep a halfling's home safe and sound without having to resort to nasty violence that might damage the furniture.
Hammock Cloaks are another device that allow you to have both comfortable daywear and a sleeping place. Comfort is a halfling specialty, so no surprise they'd recycle and customise this idea for their needs.
Restless Pillows are yet another bit of rehash. You sleep on it, you get prophetic dreams. How very obvious and recycled.
Bracers of Honesty are technically cursed, but they're very useful in dealing with criminals, so a halfling community may well have a few of them around for more humane punishment.
A Horn of Hiding can only be heard by halflings, while it also makes the blower invisible to a specific race. Interesting combination, but effective in defending the homelands. Probably not quite so useful to an adventuring group though.
A Pouch of Forgetfulness makes the original owner forget anything stolen and put in it. This may cause weird memory gaps if it's an important item.
Wish Brushes grant you a wish based on whatever you paint. Steer well clear if you're not an artist, for poor composition will produce equally twisted results. I'm sure a sadistic DM can have great fun with this one.
Flutes of Transportation take you to wherever the song played was composed. This may get a bit embarrasing, since songs are frequently written indoors. But it does make for exceedingly good plot hooks and fun hunting down of lost lore. Very neat.
Hob's Footbath lets you whizz along, but you'll need to soak your feet before and after or suffer horribly. Respect your magical items, don't just treat them like a tool.
Oil of Fake Footsteps show that once a problem's been highlighted, variants on the solution'll be along in no time. Again we fix the problem of being tracked, this time via disguise rather than misdirection.
Bully Coins are a more anvilicious variant on an idea explored over a decade ago by Gully Dwarves. Give up your treasure freely to a threatening big person and they'll soon be cut down to size, very literally. Never thought I'd be preferring the Dragonlance version to the generic one. :o
Buttons of Climbing are a bit of detachable clothing that are in theory reusable, but retrieving them from a clifface may be a problem. Maybe you can pull them up with your toes, since you are a halfling, and they generally go barefoot even in horrible conditions.
A pipe of answers helps you get in some productive serene contemplation time. Wizardly gifts can be nice, sometimes, when they don't backfire by revealing depressing information.
Chimes of the Dragon create the illusion that a Dragon is lurking in the room. Hopefully this will scare off timid intruders. Like certain famous halfings, for instance. All this time, and they're still inextricably bound to Tolkien.
Daisy Chainmail is one of those ludicrous puns that they just can't resist slipping in. It's rather fragile stuff too, needing constant infusions of fresh daisys to keep full effectiveness. I think I'll skip this one.
The Helm of the Halflings is another one that combines uses for great practicality and reduced encumbrance. Take it off, turn it upside down and use it as a bowl. It even cooks the stuff inside it. Very handy.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 5/7
Rogues Gallery: Ah yes, Baldur's Gate. There's an interesting game. So it seems that while this month's gallery is a Realms one yet again, this time it's converting the characters from one of their computer games instead of their novels. Another way in which they can keep the variety up, at least for a little while, since they don't release nearly as many games as novels. Come on, isn't Greyhawk supposed to be having a revival? Give us the characters from their new novels as well.
Abdel Adrian's portrait is obviously modelled upon Billy Ray Cyrus, complete with mullet. Way to make us hate him dude. And given he has a lot of bloodlust to deal with, courtesy of being the son of the god of murder, plus not much of a sense of humour, spending time around him doesn't seem a very safe proposition. Well, most computer game protagonists do rack up insane death counts. Why not lampshade it in setting?
Jaheira is a half-elf fighter/druid harper with a fairly interesting past, but not a particularly interesting personality. By being a whole bunch of things at once, she never really stands out as one. Well, at least it means she doesn't have any obvious weaknesses.
Tamoko is a ninja from the east. Once again, nice to see people still want to keep Kara-tur alive. She has the typical ninja trait of never fighting a fair fight if at all possible, and a heavy accent because she's not from around here. And the usual concern with honor. Yawn. Give me a bit more depth. Still, at least they're using a class from a splatbook.
Sarevok is the bad guy spawn of Bhaal, who has embraced his murderous urges and would rather like to become a god himself. His stats are predictably obscene, and he has some interesting magical items. He seems like a suitable challenge for a boss.
Arcane Lore: Ha. Now this is a long-needed solution. Spellbooks do keep on getting stolen or wet or burned. Many many wizards will sympathise with this one. You'd think more would work on solutions. Maybe they're just not sharing. Thankfully, this one wizard is, even if he chose to hide behind a pseudonym. What does he have to hide? Maybe Elminster and the cosmic balance mafia are out to get him. Well, I'll certainly assist in the dissemination of this.
Animate Drawing is one of those little flavour spells that wizards can use to impress the rubes. Animate their houses instead, that'll really get their attention.
Organize Spellbook lets you refile your spellbook so all the 1st level spells are at the beginning, or put all the elemental ones together. A lot easier than rewriting them all when you've picked them up as a grab-bag over the years.
Protection from Bookworms seems pretty obvious. Yup. Keep this one up and you'll reduce your odds of nasty crap happening quite considerably.
Ink Transfer is another way of allowing your spellbook to undergo a revamp and reorganization at considerably reduced cost. Getting a bit ratty? Pop the ink out and put it in a new one. Awesome.
Ink Luminescence lets you make your spellbook glow-in-the-dark. If you're thrown in a dungeon, and managed to hide your spellbooks, you can rememorize and get the hell out. Maybe some of the later spells will assist further with this.
Protection from Liquids another one that should be obvious in it's spellbook protecting utility, but plenty of other items could also benefit. Weapons don't want to rust, bro.
Damage Link lets you do the Dorian Grey thing, protecting one item at the expense of another. Use cheap stuff to protect the expensive things you really value. All purpose and dead useful.
Spielbuk's Pocket Spellbook lets you shrink it into a tiny replica and back with a word. This'll make it safer, but it'll still be easy to lose. Inscribe it with your personal sigil, then you'll always be able to trace it. Ahh, the joys of article synergy
Temporal Corridor is a nice little xanatos gambit one. Send an item into the future, to keep safe, or pop out just when you need it. One of those spells that gives you second perfect temporal sense would synergize well with that.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 6/7
Dragon's bestiary: A second computer game derived bestiary in a row? This is a bit worrying. I know I said quite a few times last year that you needed a change, but if you do too much of this instead it'll soon feel just as tedious and creatively moribund. Variety is important. How many ways do I have to say it?
Anyway, this month is another backconversion, even more direct than last time. For whatever reason, Planescape: Torment included quite a few monsters that weren't actually found in D&D. Since my appetite for planar creatures still isn't really sated, even after all these years, far be it from me to to complain about this one.
Gronk are big hopping rocky things that smash anything they see. Definitely a monster purely for the fighting and killing, as with so many of these computer game conversions.
Grillig have the interesting distinction of being born from 2D, and being immune to edged weapons. They use quite interesting tactics, and have a cool backstory too. These would definitely be allowed citizenship as a canon immigrant if I was in charge.
Sohmien are decidedly creepy looking horse variants. Like Bebiliths, they are evil creatures dedicated to hunting other evil creatures, in particular Nightmares. One way or another they'll end the cycle of destructiveness, quite possibly by taking out both sides. Once again, sounds pretty neat to me. The writers on Torment knew what they were doing.
Trelon also venture well into the uncanny valley thanks to their modelling. Tony DiTerlizzi would be proud. They attack wizards in large quantities, particularly illusionists, and have quite a few immunities. They're another quite interesting creature that again, I wouldn't mind using.
Role models: In some ways, minis are a tremendous boon to mass combat. They allow you to easily tell who is where and think in a tactical fashion. But as has been made very clear before, they're also a substantial expense. You can reduce this by having a single mini represent a whole troop, but that can lead to it's own issues if you want the heroes to split off and do things individually (which they might well be more effective at, given D&D scaling. Once again, this column does three things in two pages. Rules ideas, a mini scenario, and a bit of painting advice. Putting scars on your minis when they came close to death, showing the gradual development of your characters in a solid way is a pretty neat idea too. This column is becoming quite the little smorgasbord of useful tricks. Gotta love it when the writers surprise me like that.
Nodwick and co take their shot at another classic module. Many giants are humiliated.
From dungeons to drivespace: Alternity gets a conversion of Ilithids and beholders this month. Two of AD&D's most powerful, distinctive, and mechanically tricky creatures, they have an array of powers that takes a reasonable amount of work to represent elsewhere. Indeed, just these two monsters take them a full 11 pages, more than many an ecology. They also have some general talk about converting other AD&D monsters, and some thoughts about how to integrate these two terrors into the Star Drive setting. I don't think it's a co-incidence that both appeared quite a bit in Spelljammer as well, and had interesting social structures that differed substantially from their earthbound colonies. I think this was a clever choice of creatures, as it presents a challenge, and then solves it, showing you that you can get ambitious with the Alternity system and it'll hold up. That seems like it might get them a few more purchases. So this article gets a fairly positive result.
Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999
part 7/7
Marvel Superheroes: This game decides to do Spiderman's symbiote again. Now this is one character that's definitely changed in the meantime. When we last saw it in issue 94, it hadn't even bonded with Eddie Brock yet. Now it has a well established rivalry, an kid, and a grandchild on the way. Ahh, continuity. Gotta love the way it gradually adds up, despite the efforts of some writers to keep the world static. It's stats are considerably simpler under this ruleset, partly because it's been established that some of it's quirks are specific to it, while others vary depending on it's current host and their subconscious, which wasn't clear before, and partly because the new system is generally simpler. So this is fairly interesting because it not only lets me draw direct comparison, but also take a good look at what's been happening outside the magazine. But they do use exactly the same image, curiously enough. And it is only a single page long, leaving me with not a huge amount to work with. So it goes in the entertaining, but not substantial enough to be filling category.
Dragonmirth finds a new spin on the Rapunzel jokes. KotDT engage in equal opportunity ruining of adventures.
TSR Previews: As I said last issue, there does seem to be some formatting switcharound, with several of last month's new releases also here. This leaves just three actual new things for me to cover.
First up is the Silver anniversary collectors edition. A whole load of reprinted classic modules, a previously unreleased cut from that era (L3: Deep Dwarven Delve by Len Lakofka) and the usual fripperies of author commentary and pretty posters. Just the thing for both curious new players, and grognards who's old copies are getting rather ratty from regular use now.
The Realms gets Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters. Ed Greenwood does some fiction featuring all of them together for the first time, to face an epic threat. I love that they can foreshadow things like this for so long before actually doing them.
Dragonlance gets Brothers in Arms: The Raistlin chronicles volume 2. Back in time we go, to milk the biggest names they have a little longer. They might be dead at some point in the timeline, but as long as there's a few days that haven't been covered in exhaustive detail, someone'll find adventures to slot in there.
Profiles looses it's dumb capitalisation again. I suspect the editors are fighting over this. Anyway, this month's subject is Steven Schend. He's worked on the original FASERIP Marvel game, the Forgotten Realms, and now Alternity. His modus operandi is a combination of taking care of the little details, which is very important in a setting like the Realms, and looking to make things that really make you go wow. Sounds like he's one of the people who keeps Ed enthusiastic by allowing his world to surprise even him. And as we know, keeping things surprising is the hardest thing for any creative type, because as soon as it becomes a formula, it ceases to be surprising. And this profile does stick very firmly to the established formula for them. And in response, my writeup sticks closely to the formula for that. Yawn. Tell us something controversial.
Another issue full of articles that are either good or dull, but with a distinct lack of actively bad ones. Once again, it's business as usual. Which I'm sure is the way the Halflings would want it. Can't be having with surprises around here. Nice quiet life, that's what we want. Maybe a few monsters to keep the young'un's throwing arms in shape, but nothing they can't handle. Let's keep playing it safe for the time being. Let's move the count up one more number, no more, no less, save in the case of annuals, where you're essentially moving up an intermediate imaginary number. Two is too many, zero too few. Three is right out!
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. BING! After a couple of years of being a bit up in the air, shit just got real at Wizards of the Coast. 3rd edition is now officially announced to the world, and the countdown starts now. You can bet the volume of letters and forum posts will skyrocket in the next few months. And it already looks like they're going to make a bigger deal of this than they did the 2e update. Still, there are other things being announced on the cover as well, so it doesn't look like the magazine will be nothing but promotion. I can definitely say I'm interested in seeing how fast they dole out the teasers, and in what order, so this is not one issue where I'm going to hang around the contents page for long.
Scan Quality: Generally good, whitespace around pages, no index.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn doubles in size, to do some serious elaboration on the cover announcement. Just a year from now, your system will be completely renovated. And we'll do our best to incorporate your suggestions into it, to make it better. We've already been watching the forums with great interest, taking note of your suggestions. Obviously they're not revealing everything, and may still change things around, but they do slip more than enough details to get everyone talking. There's going to be a unified mechanic, the average character gets a fairly substantial power upgrade, there's more focus on action and high level stuff, and exceptional strength is scrapped like the speedbump it is, letting you get to superhuman prowess far more easily. They're practically baiting people to erupt in a fury about how 3e is going to be for powergamers and munchkins. :D This should be fun to watch. So this is quite a playful beginning, showing they're going to make some serious changes, but are fairly confident about them, having already done a whole lot of arguing and playtesting in-house. Let the flamewars commence.
D-Mail: No edition wars yet here, as they're still 2-3 months behind the new releases. Patience, my dears. In the meantime, we have the usual rollplaying vs roleplaying argument subverted. They're independent axes that you can be better or worse at, like chaos and evil. Master them both and you can WIN THE GAME!!!!!
Our second one is someone complaining about the probability of producing intelligent dragons under Greg Detwilers model. You know, many mythical dragons weren't that smart. That didn't stop them from being legends. D&D has if anything, inflated their overall competency.
A request for more specific setting based articles. Unlike in the old days, where they said they'd publish more if people sent them in, they now say screw that, we're going to concentrate on generic stuff. Well, that and the forgotten realms, which is practically generic anyway. You want more specific flavour, you need to put it in your own campaign yourself. Another big sea change that comes with the next edition, already being put into implementation.
Some serious naming niggles. Unfortunately, this is one area where reality is often weirder than fiction, partly because some parents are just plain cruel to their children, and partly because what sounds perfectly natural in one language can be rather silly when directly translated. Plus there's the problem with famous names that would actually be common, but also break immersion in game. Jesus christ that can become a headache. :p
And finally, we have someone wondering what's happened to the mini line. Ral Partha's licence has expired, and they going to do it in house from now on! Which also means they're already making minis based on the classes and races that'll be core next edition. :cool: So this response shows how much they already have finalised and moving ahead. If they'd stayed with another company, that'd add extra weak links where info could get out early. Very interesting indeed. Where else will we be able to get extra teasers that aren't simply handed out.
Nodwick is used as cover. Oh woe. Just kill him and stick him back together like you usually do.
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 2/7
As 3rd ed is now well into development, Forum stops asking directly rules related questions. They're still directing debate a lot more blatantly than they used to though. This time the question is about when the DM should actively deceive the players. Nashty. My vote is for when there's someone or something actively trying to deceive them IC.
Tanner Neilsen thinks if you can prove something, your character can too. Ah yes, the real world physics arguers. They're still a substantial force in gaming.
Oliver Brochet brings up the old rules are there to be changed if they become an obstacle to fun canard. Yawn.
Andrew Galbraith is one of many people who thinks the distinction between demihumans multiclassing, and humans dual-classing is stupid, and the game works better if you drop it. Let people choose how they advance more organically.
Lewis Anderson's most significant house rule is "You said it, your character said it" Start openly discussing if you should kill someone right in front of them, and things will go downhill rapidly. This cuts down on the idle chatter pretty damn fast. :D
Jan Lundquist paises Justin Bacon's idea of turning spell memorisation into preparation. It just makes so much more sense! Go for it!
Phil Pike, on the other hand just wants us to go back to Jack Vance and play up the effort involved in memorising spells. Mind you, calling any magic system realistic is missing the point, as usual.
Stephen E. Eldridge thinks Read Magic ought to be scrapped as a spell, and turned into a proficiency, with the difficulty of deciphering a scroll dependent on level. Not a terrible idea, if rather prone to creating obligatory dump slots.
Mike Lewis thinks knowingly embracing the cheese and powergaming can be a lot more fun than a serious campaign. It's like complaining about an over the top action movie. The violence and unrealism is the point. Michael Bay approves.
John Wright is another person who thinks dragons STILL need a serious powering up. I hope you'll be happy with yourselves when you see what you get.
Dungeoncraft: Ray continues to talk about constructing your NPC's. Now, the interesting thing here is that he generates the ability scores first, and then decides on the personality. Well, that certainly is quicker on average than thinking up a personality, and custom tailoring their stats to that, and can often throw up amusing surprises that improve your game in the long run. He also encourages you not to fully stat out everyone, just note the important stats for fighting them, and whatever else might make them unique and crucial to the plot, and leave everything else out, which also means they take less space in your notes. Somehow, I'm guessing he's not part of the 3e design and playtesting teams, with their emphasis on designing all the monsters to formulas, and making sure all the derived stats, skill points and feat slots add up. So this is business as usual, quite possibly written somewhat in advance. These columns aren't current event based, and certainly wouldn't take a month to write, so he might well have most of the planned campaign done already. And it's obvious he's not part of their big plan for the future. We shall see what happens to him when the edition ends.
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 3/7
Sage advice: Do fire elementals have mass (yes. They have to stay on the ground, and can pick up and throw stuff about. It makes them all the scarier.)
Which dex subability reduces two-weapon penalty (aim)
Are kit based AC bonuses based on dex (varies from one to another. Read the description. Swashbucklers are, Ravagers are not, for example)
Does stoneskin change your appearance (no. Having concealable protection is a definite advantage. )
What happens if you fall in water while wearing a ring of free action (normal damage, then you have to find your way out. Don't try any clever physics extrapolations.)
Do zakharan mages get extra spell points for being specialists (Elemental mages can, Sorcerers can't)
Why do paladins and rangers get costs for orisons when they can't cast them. (ahh. But they can if they choose the right skills & powers options. So there.)
Does glassteel make things transparent. How do these things save ( yes. Better of both. It's both useful and cosmetically appealing )
Is a swashbucklers AC bonus weight or performance restricted (Performance. Go for their mojo and they lose it. )
Can a pearly white ioun stone regenerate limbs lost to green slime (yes)
Are ghouls and ghasts affected by holy water (yes)
What is the definition of a humanoid. (Funny story that. Let Skip give you a history lesson. Blah blah blah bl.......................
ah. Everything clear now? )
How does the language Primeval affect 10th level spells (-5 to difficulty. Rather handy, don't you think. )
What penalties does a thief who becomes lawful good suffer (none but their own conscience. We've been through this before.)
You left out a load of detail about the new monks ( It wasn't me. )
Is a living wall undead (no, it's a construct. Albeit a semisentient, miserable insane one. )
What happens to someone stuck inside a daerns instant fortress when it shrinks (pop like a cork. Wheee! :splat: )
Can half-elf speciality priests multiclass. (maybe. The lord your god may be a jealous god, in which case no. )
Are spells only available to one god also available to allied gods if you ask nicely (no)
Can priests research wizard spells (probably not. Skip recommends conservatism in this area, for game breaking may ensue.)
Why do dwarves suck at turning undead. (because they prefer to hit them than scare them off)
Can Xothor really use ANY magical item?! (Pretty much. Still won't save them from things going horribly wrong with them)
Can priests of Eilistraee wear nonmagical elven chain (no)
Can Delvesons be multiclassed (no)
Priests of Thoth and Isis break the rules! (Special privilege. Chill, dude. The gods can do what they like to their priests. They just don't usually because they don't want to annoy other gods.)
Can a fighter dual class to paladin if they have the stats (no. Skip may allow them to switch, BD&D style if they're very very good boys though.)
Can a wizard tell what high level spells do even if they can't cast them (in general)
How do you roll a d13 (you don't. That would be very unlucky. )
What would you put as an epitaph on your tombstone ( Are you threatening Skip? You'd better not be. Skip is watching you. Try any funny business and Skip'll cap you faster than you can say collected colloidal collateral. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 4/7
Hearth & Sword: This month's main feature is a 16 page piece on the Anglo-Saxon gods. Now this is a slightly odd business, because they have quite a bit in common with the viking ones, only with different pronounciations, and substantial recontextualisation. Although we get a static picture of myths after the event, in a world lacking in fast communication and easy long-term recording and reproduction of information, it's pretty much inevitable that myths would differ even from village to village, and mutate hugely as time passed. That wouldn't work as well in fantasy campaigns where the gods are real and regularly interfere, and magic takes the place of many technological advancements. So what we have here is an alternate take on things they've already covered in Legends & Lore, but in an interesting way. Reality is under no obligation to be internally consistent, unlike fantasy worlds.
Nerthus is the chief nature goddess, all about making sure there's a bountiful harvest for people so they can be happy and healthy. This means turning serious miscreants into trees, so they can be productive by producing yummy fruit if all else fails. Her clerics are also fairly nonviolent, but with bonus sleep and charm effects, they can do nonviolent solutions quite effectively.
Eostre is the goddess of birth and spring, the new growth part of the natural style. Her priests are strict pacifists, so they're not really adventurer suitable, but they're incredibly good at midwifery, and can communicate with Hares for some reason. Choose life. Choose children. Choose not being a violent druggie.
Hred is the goddess of winter, and as this is an era where a nasty winter will kill quite a lot of people, she's not considered very nice. Her clerics don't get a great spell selection, but have access to wizards cold spells, and can enhance them quite substantially over the standard. Double damage ice storm is not to be sneezed at at high level unless you have the appropriate resistance spell.
Mannus is the ultimate big daddy of humanity, encouraging them to excel and gently weeding out the lazy and self-satisfied for the good of everyone else. His priests have a decidedly quirky restriction on their proficiency requirements, and are good at buffing, warding and cursing. Classic clerical support duties, really.
Woden is of course a younger Odin, demonstrating that Wizards taking over because knowledge of magic lets them do everyone else's job better than them at high level isn't purely a D&D conceit. Amoral and out for themselves, his priests get rune magic, but eventually lose an eye. This doesn't slow them down at all, as the other one gets super-perception. You can see why he'd wind up being considered cooler than all these mundane natural cycle goddesses in the long run.
Tir is also fairly familiar as Tyr in the Norse pantheon and Forgotten Realms, although he has yet to lose his hand. It's a hard life, being an honourable warrior god, which is why he encourages warriors to go out in a blaze of glory when age starts to get to them. Keep taking on bigger and badder challenges until something beats you, it's the only way to know just how great you really are. (albeit posthumously) His clerics get to kick ass and see through lies, illusions, etc. But not heal, because magical healing is for wusses.
Thunnor is the unnabbreviated form of Thor, and even more of an impetuous hothead who loves a fight. His clerics get to go berserk, which is always fun, and shoot lightning bolts at higher level. Pretty much what you'd expect then.
Ing is the dutiful demigod son of the pantheon heads, wandering the world, and trying to do good wherever possible. He doesn't have priests of his own, but is the guy people often swear oaths on. And to round things off is talk about christianity in the dark ages and the way it interacts with them. (and eventually takes over) They did co-exist for a couple of centuries, but it certainly wasn't a comfortable one. There's plenty of room for adventures bringing them into conflict in interesting ways. So this has been a fairly cool special feature, giving me plenty to think about in terms of taking existing things and giving them different contexts. The same people act differently in different contexts. The same idea applies to gods.
The Oerdian lesser gods: More gods? Well, I suppose we haven't seen quite as many of them as we have new kits in 2e. Although I might have to doublecheck that. Although the funny thing about that is the changes for being a specialty priest of some kind are more significant than the benefits and penalties for the average kit. This is worth thinking about. Anyway, it's Greyhawk time again, showing that this resurgence really is it's peak in terms of popular support from freelancers, and possibly the public too. Like Star Trek, absence really has made the heart fonder.
Atroa is the goddess of spring and the east wind in particular, with general nature control as secondary. This also means she's all about the fertility, celibacy is strictly forbidden amongst her priests. :D As the priests also get regeneration at higher levels, and weather control spells are pretty cool in combat, they don't work too badly as adventurers either. Chauntea could learn something from that.
Delleb is the god of sages, not to be confused with the god of magic. He has a black dog for a companion, and indeed, the weight of using knowledge responsibly can weigh on his priesthood a bit, but he remains strictly lawful good so far. His clerics get an unusually large proportion of their spheres from the Tome of Magic, and are rather good at divination. The idea of surprising your enemy with unusual spells, while avoiding those kind of surprises yourself seems a clever one.
Kurell is the god of thievery and jealousy, engaging in many similar actions to Norebo, but for very different reasons. Where Norebo is fun-loving and playful, Kurell is a petty-minded vindictive little bastard who holds a grudge like no-ones business and hates anyone better than him at something. Like most gods of thievery, his clerics get to use some rogue skills, and their granted spells make being sneaky easy. Mind you, if they're sticking to their god's tenets strictly, they're likely to tear the group apart eventually, because you can be sure someone'll get something they're jealous of, and then it'll all gradually snowball.
So I think the notable thing about these gods is that they're all more specific or alternate takes on ideas that already have a god in charge of them. Which I suppose is how it works in greek mythology, with gods that are children of other gods putting their attention to a subset of their parent's portfolio. And it demonstrates how you can approach the same basic concept, and yet have it's embodiments have very different alignments and personalities. That does give this a certain value, and it does make a pretty good read, without making the clerics particularly under or overpowered. I think this is a positive result.
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 5/7
Heaven's trump: Ooh. A tie-in article. They're also releasing a book on playing Celestials this month, so why not include one of putting them into your game. Turns out they're just as likely to be subtle while on the prime material as their hellish counterparts, albeit for different reasons. Partly due to not wanting the general public to worry, and partly due to wanting to create heroes which can stand on their own feet and fight evil, they'll pretend to be human and set up missions for wannabe heroes in true Gandalf stylee. If they have to be coddled the whole time, they'll never grow up to really appreciate how good they have it, or why virtue is beneficial. Deus ex Machina appearances with the full trumpets and flaming swords outfit are a sign that you haven't planned things through carefully enough, or the opposition is cheating. (which yeah, demons do, it has to be said) Is it dishonesty to tell a few white lies if you're so much smarter and more knowledgable that you couldn't explain the whole situation and it's context to a mortal without spending several years that would be better spent actually doing good deeds, even though they might not understand the long-term ramifications? Would YOU be able to keep straight a story spanning thousands of years and millions of outer-planar beings trying to manipulate the fate of a world, developing ever more complex relationships of favors and vendettas, doublecrosses and awkward alliances of convenience along the way? Given how long it's taking me to completely grok a magazine lasting thirty-odd years, I might well have to go for the cliff-notes version. So this is really a strong reminder that good is not a blunt instrument. They might not have to hide for the same reasons as evil, but getting the greatest good out of a complex situation requires careful on the ground involvement.
The western Wyrms: Which is not a sequel to Wyrms of the north, thankfully, contrary to my first thought. Instead it's an expansion for council of wyrms, making a whole bunch of other dragon races available as PC's. All of the other true dragons from the monster manual in fact. Now since CoW followed some fairly simple formulas in figuring out ability score modifiers, xp costs, class availability, etc, this wasn't hard to do anyway, and I did it myself for plenty of the dragon types in various supplements. However, this does use it's discretion in one aspect. Wheras the regular ones had XP tables strictly based upon how many HD the race has, this shifts things around, giving Shadow Dragons highly inflated XP costs and yellow ones a break, presumably because their spell selections and innate powers are above or below average in power respectively. Of course, putting the vast XP requirement disparities in the first level or two when you have the least amount of time to get the XP and treasure is one of the big flaws in the CoW system in the first place, and made it a real bother to get a long-term campaign going without including solo missions. But still, this is systematic flaw, rather than an issue with this article in particular. This is merely a symmetry filler, neither good or bad.
Fiction: Dux Bellorum by Ben Bova. Orion's attempts to keep Athur alive hit a fairly substantial obstacle, with an Immortal deciding to come down and involve themselves directly in the plot rather than just manipulating others. This results in a situation where he's pretty much helpless during the significant parts of this, and even when he does act, it's on the advice of others. Essentially, it's exactly the same deprotagonisation problem that Niall suffered from, way back in the day. That makes this interesting, but also frustrating. It's similar to the problem where at high levels, the spellcasters take over, and can beat the fighters without even breaking a sweat with a few buffs or a save or suck spell. So this really drives in how annoying being a pawn of cosmic beings is, and presents the kind of plot you really shouldn't subject your players too. Methinks the pendulum had better swing the other way next time if he doesn't want to bore me.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Quite a nice topic here. Items that are a mixed blessing, offering both boon and bane, often simultaneously. As I've said before, this is a trick I'm pretty keen on. When the two aspects have a nice thematic link, this is one of the coolest ways you can reward your players, as it automatically sets things up for the next adventure. And this is no exception, not only listing a bunch of items, but also a random table full of further ideas. Much better than interminable lists of mundane stuff.
Ansuit's Gauntlets make you strong but dumb. Now there's a very stereotyped combination that it may well be a no brainer to take. Just need to trust that your companions won't screw you while you're playing smashy guy.
The Uniform of Kheles gives you hallucinations, but makes you nearly immune to any illusions of an external source. One you should only wear if expecting an enemy of that nature.
Moil Bravura is a magical sword that sends you on 9 quests to fight energy draining undead before you can unlock it's full power. This may well lead to your death and/or losing lots of levels in the process. You could become quite the tortured hero as a result of this, and it'll certainly take over the campaign for a while.
Blackstone Amulets are quite nastily cursed, but if you can remove the curse, they become pretty kickass at dealing with evil influences. Another adventure in the making here.
Heramais pipes visit the symphony of the gods, and then make you obsessed with figuring out how to recreate it. If you can stick at it, and don't have the pipes taken away by friends growing worried by your obsession, you'll get there eventually. (and a lot quicker than it's taken me to write some real songs :( ) And then you'll be free to use them to play awesome music, or not as you choose.
The Armor of Torrentin has a mischievous invisible servant bound to it. Until you find out the command word, it engages in pranks upon everyone around. Still, this should only take one adventure to solve and then no more worries until the armor is passed on.
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 6/7
Rogues Gallery: The fairy court? Don't we already have stats for them in Monster Mythology? Rehash alert! Well, I suppose they aren't exactly as they were presented in Shakespeare. Still, I believe my appropriate answer is mutter mutter grumble mutter.
Oberon is higher level, and of more mundane classes than his MM incarnation, but lower ability scores. The picture is very David Bowie, complete with well-defined area. Easy there. Well, that fanservice quota won't fill itself.
Titania, on the other hand is definitely less powerful this time around, more of an equal to her husband despite still being technically superior in a hierarchical sense. Course, since the weather mirrors her mood, you really don't want to provoke her. This is the trouble with systems where you get to the top via raw magical power.
Puck wasn't in Monster Mythology, strangely enough, although there were several made-up trickster gods that filled his place, partly because they needed different ones for each race, and too many of them fill the same niche. Guess he's just too badass to be just one character in D&D. Or maybe they are all one character, only shapechanged. So this is a much straighter adaptation of a previously covered topic, that really, just makes me go meh. Where's the imagination in that?
Dungeon Mastery: Where the last column in this series was about toning down magic items to make them seem more special, this does exactly the same for resurrection. There's all kinds of complications that could be introduced to make sure that while they might come back, they'll still regret having died in the first place, and be a good deal more cautious in their adventuring next time. Or they could just say screw that and make new characters, particularly if the DM allows them to be of equivalent level to the other guys. So once again, I am left very very underwhelmed, which may or may not be intentional. As with the magic items one, this may be an artificially created problem anyway, encouraged by the system, as most other roleplaying games don't have the same ease of resurrection, and people don't expect them too. Which again, makes the solution very simple. And makes me long for the days when they covered other companies RPG's in the magazine. This era gets very wearing sometimes.
Marvel Superheroes: Ah yes, Onslaught. Haven't seen him around in a while. One of those characters that spent quite a bit of time being all mysterious and all powerful seeming, and was eventually eliminated by a reality rewrite. That sounds messy, but I guess that's standard for comics continuity. Having all the powers of two popular characters, plus more won't automatically make you as popular and long lasting as those characters put together. And they encourage you not to actually use him in game, despite giving stats. I mildly disapprove. Why bother giving him the spotlight in the first place then? Who's choosing which characters to update, the magazine writers or the company? It's not as if you're short of characters when it took you thousands of pages a decade ago. Use your time more wisely, or you'll never be as successful as last time.
Role models: Our lessons in using miniatures turns to creating your own terrain cheaply and easily. Cardboard and styrofoam are perfect for this, and if you're ordering stuff regularly, you get plenty of that as an extra. Cut it up, slap a bit of paint, stick the pieces together, and presto chango, cheap scenery. You don't need to make it perfect, just good enough for now. And once you have it, you can make your landscapes suitably dramatic for those climactic clifftop battles. Presuming you can get the minis to stand up and stay still on uneven terrain, which can really bog down a fast-paced action scene. (although not as much as kitten attack) As usual, they make it seem quicker and easier than it may be in reality, especially if you're not technically minded or don't have the raw materials lying around. Well, that's your problem, not theirs. It's simple if you know what you're doing. It's just the learnin' stage that may be tricky.
Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999
part 7/7
The world of the Tsa: Another race that's already got the spotlight in the magazine gets a second one. The Tsa's notable features are their speed, short lifespans, and large broods, which result in a fast developing society with complex social structures that can leave humans confused and worried they're going to be outcompeted. After all, they're the only race that went interstellar on their own, and can fill up a world far faster than we could. Fighting a long-term war with them would be a losing proposition. Good thing they're so skilled at making friends with other races as well. Sincere sociability'll beat being a machiavellian manipulator more than half the time. So it seems plenty of thought has gone into both making their culture fit their biology, and making sure they aren't too disruptive to a group. They don't want to make the Kender mistake again. Although maybe they should have, given the two properties respective success levels. :/ Oh well, this is a pretty good article, like most of those in this series, with several interesting bits of crunch along with the setting expansion. With plenty of planets to come from, they can avoid monoculture as well. With another year to go before they get rid of this column, they should have a few more good articles for me yet.
This months design contest is for gods. You get a full 1,500 words for this one. How generous of them.
Dragonmirth mocks the modern youth. The puzzles are particularly devilish this issue. KotDT fail their min-maxing rolls.
TSR Previews: Council of Wyrms gets rereleased. Vaguely surprised this one was popular enough to merit that. I guess new PC types are always popular. In a similar vein, our new generic release is Warriors of Heaven. Celestial PC's for those of you who find paladins aren't uptight enough. :p
The Realms gets a double helping as usual. The Wyrmskull throne takes you under the sea of fallen stars to deal with the titular dubious artifact. What unfortunate effects does owning this one have? Meanwhile, R. A. Salvadore is going pretty high up in The Spine of the World. Wulfgar and Drizzt continue to have their issues. Will they get over them, or will it be left on a cliffhanger for the end of a trilogy to resolve?
Dragonlance gets The Siege of mount Nevermind by Fergus Ryan. Dwarves and gnomes working together. An unbeatable combination, even if more than few bad jokes will be told in the process.
Alternity tries to boost it's popularity by releasing a fast-play thingy to help you get new people in. Incident at Exile gives you another simplified setup you can probably do in a single session. Anyone try this?
ProFiles: Bill Slavicsek is definitely one of our big names these days. Star wars, Torg, Council of Wyrms, Dark sun, Planescape, he's produced a lot this decade, and got his finger in all sorts of pies. He's been a writer, an editor, a designer, and now he's one of the head directors, putting him in a good position to put his stamp on the development of the next edition. Was his influence one of the things that helped draw people back into gaming? Or is it dragging things in a direction you hate? He certainly believes in what he's doing, and will continue to experiment with design and pushing the limits of what you can do with gaming. And if you don't like it, the old games are still right there. One of our more interesting interviews from one of our more notable interviewees.
So yeah, I think this definitely counts as a significant issue, and one that's going to get quite a few responses in the next few months. It can't be that huge a surprise to most people, but everyone wants something different from the next edition, and there's everything to gain or lose. And as the rest of the issue has one of the highest rehash counts ever, I think I can say that it hasn't come a moment too soon. I just hope that they can manage at least a few cool new articles before the next edition drops, and I won't be dealing with a whole extra year of boredom. Well, let's continue the countdown.
Issues 257 and 263 were great. I enjoyed the Saxon pantheon and rune magic -both of which are a permanent fixture in my campaign.
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. A sharply dressed floating bald thing with a big grin? Hang on a second. This seems very familiar. We know Joss Whedon used to play D&D, don't we. Co-incidence? Probably, since Hush only aired 2 months later, and TV turnaround times aren't that quick. Common ancestor? Well, they're certainly creepy anyway, which is exactly what you look for in an october issue. If this issue can be half as effective as that episode, it'll be well worth it. Let's draw those curtains, and shine a torch under our faces to tell a chilling story.
Scan Quality: Indexed. Colour shading set too dark and sometimes hard to make out.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Writing songs for your gaming group? Yeah, been there, done that, posted them on the internet. My geekiness truly know no limit. Writing one in the middle of the session, on the other hand, that's just crazy. Unless you have a real talent for freestyling, that'll eat up the whole session with you not doing much, as with this month's editorial story. Still, it demonstrates commitment like virtually nothing else. Songwriting is unpredictable work at the best of times, and even an experienced songwriter can produce crap songs if inspiration is not with them. Much respect for anyone who manages to pull it off, such as the subject of today's editorial. He went above and beyond the call of duty for his gaming group. The cockles of my heart, they are well and truly warmed. That's a promising start to the issue.
D-Mail: We start off with another lengthy letter and response about playing evil characters. It's hard to play one when the adventures assume you're going to act heroically. But really, it can be a tremendous amount of fun. Dave Gross thinks this privilege should be reserved for DM's, though. Consider it a reward for going to all that worldbuilding effort.
A letter on the ways someone twisted cliches in their campaign. It takes surprisingly little tweaking to make the slave lords scenario unrecognisable, for example. And then you can use it over and over again. Muahahahaha.
A request to bring back Bahamut & Tiamat, with upgrades so they're competitive with 2e monsters. They're going to be a bit mean here, and not bring them back for 2e. On the other hand, they'll be among the first to get 3e stats! You'll truly know fear when you see how high their numbers go there, especially when you're still not sure how much the PCs'll also be upgraded.
A letter from someone who keeps the players informed about the world by producing an IC newspaper. This also helps them feel like they're genuinely famous and their actions have consequences. I think that's definitely worth a little anachronism.
A request for reprints. Once again, they wind up denying that request, but in an interesting fashion. They're thinking hard about how to make more old books available electronically. That would solve so many of their current problems. Course, in the long-term it'll create others, but they would have happened anyway, because other people would scan in and put up their books. The internet will spread into all aspects of our lives, whether we want it too or not.
And finally, we have a letter from someone who was skeptical about the man vs machine article at first, but won over by it's quality. See, the water's fine once you get in. Some people have become so conservative, and they're not even actually that old yet.
Nodwick prays for the coming of 3rd edition, where you can say no to being resurrected if you want.
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 2/7
Forum's chosen can of worms this month is how you use minis. Amazing how heated people can get over the presence of little bits of lead. Or not, as we'll find out later.
Bryan Rantala thinks that accepting payment from the people that set a mission doesn't make you a bad person. Sometimes there's no treasure in it, especially when facing unintelligent monsters, and an adventurer's gotta eat to live. If you can't keep your equipment in good nick, you'll soon lose your life in a pinch.
Arnold Arenas suggests a hybrid system combining modular spell preparation and mana points. This looks simple enough, if with the potential for serious overpoweredness. Go play an Erudite.
Rob Willey wants clerical and wizardly spell lists merged into one, and consolidated in terms of minor effects, with differences in what you have based on god worshipped or what's in your spellbook. I think you'll like Arcana Evolved.
Carl Rossi quotes monty python while saying he doesn't want healing to scale. They can just keep going through ever more ridiculous injuries that will take longer to heal. That could get rather comical.
H. Andrew Thompson suggests dividing HP into dodge points and body points, to reflect the two different abilities to cope with damage. Methinks star wars d20 is the variant you desire.
Martin Rosenkrantz gives his changes to initiative. It's not fair that spellcasters action times mostly get longer as they go up in level, while fighters get faster. Really? I though that was one of the few balancing factors they had.
Michael P. Kellam tells a story of insanely improbable dice rolls. Well, they did ask. Is it their fault no-one else took them up on this one?
Dungeoncraft: Having given us the town map, Ray builds outward slowly. Your first map should be small enough that the players can cross it within a week. Now that's definitely an area where my design differs from his, as my initial maps are rarely smaller than a full country. The other stuff is pretty familiar though. Make sure there's plenty of varieties of terrain, locations to challenge the players with, and some safe places for them to go back too and rest up. Oh, and put some big scary boundaries on the edges of the map in case your players feel like wandering off into undeveloped lands. Yes, this may mean your geography looks oddly square later, once you have developed further out. Hey, if that's a problem Tolkien's maps suffered from, (the area covered by the hobbit looks rather odd once placed into LotR's larger scale map) I'm sure your gameworld can survive it. So this does illustrate the problems with bottom-up design, and the fact that you do have to put boundaries in even if you aren't railroading, just to keep players from either getting bored or killed. Realism can only go so far.
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 3/7
Sage advice: Why isn't there ecology info for mundane animals in the monster manual (because you can get plenty of that from a library)
What bonuses don't apply against a dracolich (All of them. It's the great equalizer. Strength and magic mean nothing. Only skill can help you. )
Are spell like abilities limited by normal level limits (yes)
Are weapon VS armor modifiers applied to THAC0 or armor class (THAC0)
Do saves for half damage happen before or after damage reduction (normally before. Watch out for exceptions)
Can a psionicist empower whole buildings (by the RAW, yes. Skip is skeptical if that was intended or not.)
What happens if you use psionic residue on the astral plane (nothing special. Time might not pass there for mundane effects, but psionics isn't mundane)
Can any character class learn an advanced martial art. (If they can find someone to train them. Don't make this too easy.)
What reach do big creatures have (enough to be a real pain in the ass.)
What does a symbol of spell loss do (1d4 random spells gone. Muahahaha!)
What AC do undead PC's have (Same as normal. PC's are different, blah blah blah.)
Do ravenloft domains use gunpowder or smokepowder (Smokepowder. Stay magical, little jenny. )
How do paladins tithe in foreign countries with no churches (Save it up, or give direct to the poor and needy as they encounter them)
What special benefits do saurial paladins get (Not enough. But it's not about the powerz. It's about the virtue. Don't forget it. )
Can pixies polymorph into anything? (remember the hit die limits for polymorph self. For pixies without class levels, that's a big deal )
What benefits does a suit of custom elven chain have (The normal. That's special enough, in case you'd forgotten)
How good is a bigbys grasping hand at immobilising things. (Not perfectly. It's only one hand, and therefore only has one point of grip)
What AC do Bigbys hand spells have (0 It's a good number. Took a lot of inventing, that number.)
Can you explain Duo-dimension a little better. Isn't it a little expensive. (Real life physicists spend billions on tricks that are considerably less impressive. You need to lighten up. Look! Skip's drawn you a pretty diagram! Ooooh. Pretty diagram! )
Can an unconcious character benefit from a ring of vampiric regeneration (no. No sadism, no gain. )
Can demi shadow magic duplicate permanent wall spells (no)
How much stone can stone shape shape when stone shape shapes stone (use the less generous interpretation of the formula)
Do multiclassed characters get XP bonuses for high ability scores (yes)
Where are you when using wraithform (the prime material plane. Not all incorporeal effects also make you ethereal)
Can you beat an undead creature with martial arts (Not by the RAW. Skip recommends changing that if you have a MA specialist PC. Otherwise they'll have to sit out way too many fights. See, Skip can be progressive as well as old Skool. Skip is the Sage for all Ages! )
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 4/7
Shop keep has to stop their games from being house-ruled into unrecognisability.
Countdown to 3rd edition: 10 months to go, and it's time for some serious teasers. Well, this is certainly going to ignite discussion. Which is just what they want, of course. So they start with the obvious ones, and then move to slightly more exotic quirks of the new rules. Higher number are always better. Class & level restrictions are out. Monks & Assassins are back. 4d6 drop lowest is now the default in chargen. Initiative is cyclical. Rounds are a decent length at last. Critical hits have a decent means of resolution. And clerics can now healbot almost too easily. A few details are misleading (druids don't actually get spontaneous conversion, the xp penalty on multiclassing can be bypassed in quite a few ways, and assassins are a prestige class not a core one) but this shows they're already solid on the big details of the new rules, it's merely the fine-tuning that's still subject to change as a result of playtesting. And in case you're wondering where I stand on these changes, let's go through them quickly 1: Like 2: Ambivalent 3: Like 4: Dislike. 5: Like 6: Don't care 7: Like. 8: Like 9: Like 10: Dislike. More positive than negative, but certainly not perfect. I think that's a pretty good overall summation of my opinion about the edition change in general. And with this rollout method, hopefully I'll get the chance to comment on individual rules quirks as they're revealed. That'll be a good method of clarifying my thoughts.
Harrowed heroes: As they said a few issues ago, they still have a few Skills & Powers articles to come before 3e sweeps that away, making some bits default, while abandoning others completely. And completely unsurprisingly, Ravenloft is the recipient this month. So here's another 10 pages of options, mostly repeated, but with a few quirky new ones, such as it being a real benefit for half elves if they favor their human side and can pass easily in suspicious little communities, and a whole extra set for the new classes and races - Half vistani, avengers, anchorites, arcanists, and so forth. I can only spot a couple that seem broken on their own, so this is better than the Dark Sun collection, but it does seem quite easy to create a character that is only nominally of their named class by buying lots of unorthodox options. As usual, if you're going to do that, you should probably start with a point buy system, rather than use one that's tacked on like this.
Saga of gothic earth: Two years ago we had an article on converting the SAGA system for Ravenloft. Now we have an even more specific one for converting it to Masque of the Red Death. Of course, since then, we've had a second official iteration of the SAGA system released, so they have more resources to draw upon. Ironically, this results in the system being even simpler and easier to start playing, as they recommend using a deck of regular playing cards, and Masque is considerably magic lighter than regular D&D. So they use the 5th age Sorcery/Mysticism straight, with the usual proviso that evil spells may well attract the attention of the Red Death. So as with the previous article, this seems fun and easy to do, while having a few interesting quirks that make the ruleset support the setting. There's probably other things the SAGA system could have done if it had got the sales to support further iterations. Sometimes you don't deserve the hand you're dealt.
The oerdian lesser gods: Raxivort is the god of Xvarts. Given how obscure a race they are, they're lucky to have one at all. His priests compensate for their races smallness by getting perfect stilt-using capabilities, which might seem imposing, but is really just comic. They then top that off by producing increasing amounts of smelly gas as they gain levels. Even Kurtulmak doesn't go that far to make himself an unintentional laughing stock. Greyhawk sure does have some goofy stuff in it, just like all the old D&D campaign worlds.
Sotillon is the goddess of the lazy, comfortable aspect of summer, when there's more than enough food ripening for you to lounge around and sunbathe much of the day, and then party at night. Her clerics get all the wizardly shelter creating spells as they advance in level, so they should be pretty popular despite their lack of offensive powers. So both the gods this time fall on the whimsical end of the spectrum. That's interesting to note as the overall level of seriousness increases around here.
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 5/7
Nodwick does what so many adventurers failed to do and finishes Strahd off for good.
Van Richten's Legacy: Our third Ravenloft article this month is an interesting little setting expansion, trying to make the core domains feel a little busier and more lived in. In many of the core domains, there have actually been several generations of people being born, screwed over and terrorised and then dying, and some of them actually know about the Darklords and hold serious grudges. This is of course entirely part of the Dark Powers plans, as they want them miserable and unsettled in their own domains, never able to truly achieve their goals. (The exception being those for whom loneliness is more depressing than being surrounded by schemers.) So here's a potential rival to Jacqueline Renier, and details on his followers, their lair, and unique magical items and spells. Stuff specifically designed to kick the ass of wererats is very prevalent. If they had a few more members and resources, they might even have a shot. As it is, they'll probably lose, but in an interesting way, especially if the PC's get caught in the middle, played by one side or the other. And if they win, things won't really be any better for the ordinary people in the domain. Oh well, at least it looks like we have all the ingredients for another adventure of reasonable length for low-mid level characters. That's not worthless, especially here where it can be hard to advance levels.
Fiction: Shadamehr and the old wives tale by Maragaret Weis and Don Perrin. Hmm. If I'm not mistaken, this is a sovereign stone story. Since neither the novels or the RPG have been released yet, this might be a first sighting. Very interesting. The magic system, on the other hand, is basically the same as Legend of the 5 Rings, which I find slightly suspect. And Margaret & Tracey have already done another book series with an elemental theme, which makes me wonder if they're running out of ideas. But all these are forgivable if the story is good. Unfortunately it has deeply cheesy dialogue, and is one of those stories that is merely a prelude to another one, which is a problem they've caused before in the magazine, and grows no less irritating with time. So this is again not particularly pleasant reading. They seem to cause more problems than most writers.
PC Portraits: Time for some dark brooding anti-heroes, as befits the season. They cover their eyes or faces, they wear huge shoulderpads or spikes, their expressions are grim or sardonic. This is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. For all they try to say D&D should be about heroes kicking the ass of evil, anti-heroes are too popular right now for them to resist. So here's a little blatant pandering for your pleasure. Must say I don't find any of them particularly sexy. Probably need a little more detail in the drawings for that. Learn from the Bradstreet way!
Dungeon mastery: What would October be without some advice on running horror campaigns? Although actually, this sees them recognise that horror games, particularly D&D ones, work better if they have a little light and shade. Ravenloft certainly adds both heroism and a dash of humour to the mix. So Lester Smith tries to advise us how to strike a balance between these three elements. This involves thinking about what kind of game you want to run, how far your players are comfortable going, and just how extreme you want the extreme parts of your game to be. With lots of sidebars elaborating on details, this is a fairly dry, dense serious bit of writing that belies the subject mood it wants to create. But then, that's always been Lester's style, hasn't it. He's written quite a few decent games using it, so why change now. Maybe he's a bit more playful when actually DM'ing. Certainly wouldn't be the first time a designer plays differently from the way they write. So this isn't bad, but is a bit dry. Guess it goes somewhere in the middle, as usual.
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 6/7
Rogues gallery: Another instance of their increasing use of computer game material, with some characters from Planescape: Torment getting stats. Well, it did have some of the most interesting characters and plotting D&D games have produced. In hindsight it seems a fairly sure-fire choice. And it's definitely better than another forgotten realms novel.
Morte the floating skull gets to be a 10th level bard, with hit points that are impossible for a normal character of his stats and level, and dramatically different accuracies for his bite and headbutt. That is quirky. I suppose that's emulation for you. I suppose if he's irritating, hard to hit, and tough, you have an excellent distraction while the actual protagonist does the real work. It's a classic sidekick setup, especially when you're playing a silent hero, and need something hanging around to do exposition. And let's face it, he can hardly be more annoying than Navi.
Ravel Puzzlewell is a somewhat senile night hag, who's been imprisoned by the lady of pain, but could escape all too easily if her shit was together. She's eaten a whole bunch of magic items, which I assume she gives you if you fulfil certain conditions in the game. I can see how this one plays out all too easily. That's quirky for you. It too can become predictable, especially if you keep using the same voice actors.
Pharod Wormhair is a human, but pretends to be a tiefling for the extra street cred. He sells corpses, which means you may well encounter him when you die and come back. He also has tons of junk looted from them, which seems like another obvious opportunity. Do you get to kill him if he screws you, or will you have to talk for your plot coupons?
Fall-From-Grace is a succubus who's become Lawful Neutral, ironically, and joined the sensates. This does not mean she's given up on looking sexy, of course, only actually having any. But she does collect a wide variety of other sensations, and it looks like you can sell some of your more unique experiences to her. So this lot do seem very much in keeping with the planescape tone. I could see myself stealing them for my game.
Wolverine vs The Brood Queen: We've had fast-play introductions for D&D and Alternity fairly recently. I'm not at all surprised they're doing one for the Marvel Superheroes game. It's much smaller than the others though, at only 7 pages, and comprised purely of a single combat between our infamous canadian anti-hero, and the aforementioned xenomorph expy. No room for roleplaying or exploration here, it's pure asskicking with a few tactical options to liven things up. I suppose that gives them a real chance to show off the system. Since Wolverine has regeneration, he's pretty likely to win this fight eventually, but the alien queen will take a fair bit of pounding to finish off, and even with cards, things can be pretty swingy from round to round. As with all the fast-play games, this is really simple, even moreso than the old modules they used to do in the magazine, and won't do more than whet your appetite. Not sure if it'll get people buying or not. After all, those who've been reading the magazine regularly will already know about the game, and probably made their mind up. Those who haven't won't even notice. Unless they're also putting this in the middle of actual comics as well. Did they?
What a surprise. This month's contest is for ghost stories. Lets get those horrific juices flowing.
Shop keep has another case of why do they bother?
Role Models: Once again, they both provide new rules, and give you advice on how to implement them, before finishing up with a mini-scenario taking advantage of the new crunch. They're really getting this little formula down to a tee. This time, it's vertical movement, which can be rather tricky when using minis. Their solution? Bits of wire to wrap around your minis and hold them at the appropriate heights. Not a terrible solution, but one that will get very messy if you have lots of flying things or a zero-G environment to represent, and are moving them all around on a turn-by-turn basis. Still, unless you can afford quantum-locked supercooled magnets, or can fly into orbit just to play a game, it does seem like one of the better solutions. (the really simple one, stacking pogs, runs into problems when things are directly above each other.) This is fairly thought-provoking, as it presents a problem that doesn't have an immediately obvious solution, and requires some real world engineering knowledge to deal with, not just clever rules. Which is pretty cool, really. Anyone have other solutions to the 3D problem they'd like to share?
Dragon Magazine Issue 264: October 1999
part 7/7
Legacy of the dragon: Are Vampires getting everywhere again?! Not even Alternity is safe. I'm not really surprised, their popularity shows no signs of abating. Why shouldn't they try to get a small slice of that pie. The result owes more to WoD vampires than D&D ones, oddly enough, right down to terminology like ghouls and the kiss. I suppose that shows once again how they've captured the imagination of game designers and the public in general. And when you have a point buy system for powers, and need to present lots of options which individuals might or might not have, then of course it makes sense to mine the nearest reference material. So this is pretty derivative, but since they're actively trying to be generic, that's not too surprising. It does manage to squeeze in a few quirks in their specific settings, involving vampires of different species, and how the undead in general adapt to space travel. Overall though, I think this is just too predictable to be anything other than average.
7 of 9 gets to be on the cover of Amazing Stories. Pandering!
Dragonmirth fails again. It'd be less funny if they didn't. KotDT goes full colour. Someone turned the contrast up a little too high in fact. And they're fighting amongst themselves again. What do they need a GM for anyway?
TSR Previews: D&D gets another product designed to lure newbies in. The Diablo II Adventure game. Hee. Pregens, full rules and starting adventures based on the computer game. Ahh, joy.
AD&D is fairly rehashed, with the priests spell compendium vol II. Still pretty handy, really. They do seem to be trying to make the vast amounts of things they've made over the past 10 years accessable.
Greyhawk keeps trying to stay alive by feeding off nostalgia. White plume mountain gets a novelisation by Paul Kidd. The amusing group we've seen before in this magazine bicker their way through classic locations.
Dragonlance is doing even worse, reprinting Murder in Tarsis by John Maddox Roberts. Since that's one of the more slated novels in the series, I'm very surprised it sold well enough to justify this.
The Realms do their usual trick of having novels tied in with recent adventures. Under Fallen Stars by Mel Odom lets you see how the official metaplot events of the sea of fallen stars adventures will go. Once again, the setting details'll be out of date before you know it.
Ravenloft reaches out it's misty tendrils with Carnival. Another way to bring horror into any campaign, and quite possibly turn the characters into monsters. Muahahahahaha!!!!! Just pray they don't bring you with them into the demiplane itself.
Alternity gets another last ditch attempt to bring in more players before they cancel the line. Another fast-play set, with everything you need to get things going, but probably not enough to play a long term game. So you'll then have to spend extra for the actual corebooks. The writing's on the wall.
Profiles: Brom! Yes, that is his real name. Hee. He looks like he should be in a nu-metal band. Anyway, he's one of this decade's iconic artists, doing tons of RPG stuff, and more than a few other things as well, including book covers, computer game design, CCG's, and film work. He's also writing his own novel on the side, as everyone does. ;) For someone who creates such dark illustrations, he seems pretty cheery. Guess angst worked out is no longer a problem. And as long as there's an audience for being slightly unsettled in a safe environment, he'll have plenty of work to make a living from.
Quite a few goofy bits in this issue, which i'm pretty sure was intentional. Some of them hit the mark, some of them didn't, but the quota of truly forgettable filler was fairly low at least. And the countdown definitely adds a certain frisson to the proceedings. Knowing exactly how long we have left will hopefully make people appreciate these issues all the more.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. Volcanos! Jungles! Savages! I can certainly see the thematic links there, even if they don't actually spell out the issue's theme. It's time for a journey into the rougher side of nature, the bits the druids don't talk about when they're trying to recruit newbies by talking up how awesome maintaining the balance is. Or maybe they do, because you want a certain number of people who don't mind blowing stuff up with lightning bolts, earthquakes and flame strikes. I guess you've got to tailor your spiel to your audience. Guess I should see if they've tailored this issue to my preferences.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Another double length actual play story this month, as Dave tells us a particularly entertaining tale of the DM introducing special guest star PC's who may or may not be traitors, and the effect this had on the game. Since these guys are consummate professionals, this actually went pretty well, and when taken over by dopplegangers, they took to their new roles with sadistic glee. So this shows that despite recently saying you should always play heroic characters, deep down, they want to cut loose and do horrible things when they can get away with it as much as anyone. It's also a strong reminder that you can have sex, gore and PvP in a game and have a lot of fun as long as everyone can handle it. You can't spend all your time in safe happy parental guidance land. (and even there some shows slip quite a bit past the censors) Take some risks, do something that they'll definitely remember, even if you aren't certain they'll like it. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than hang around bored.
D-Mail: We kick off with a letter about MUD gaming. It's not doing too badly for itself, although it'll never really become a huge mainstream thing, and as the internet becomes faster and more commercialised, they eventually get sidelined by more visually flashy mediums. WotC never do do one, although White Wolf had a rather busy one on their site back in the day. I do have a certain soft spot for them, although really, I do regret losing a couple of years due to MU* addiction back then. Oh well. It's not a proper vice if you don't regret it, and I always did suck at the sex, drugs and rock and roll thing.
We follow up with some general praise, with a minor criticism. While modern art looks better, it's not always as useful as functional diagrams and maps. A very important lesson. Why spend all that extra money if it doesn't benefit the player?
Then we have a letter from someone who's found Dungeoncraft very useful in their actual play experience. The kind of letter that encourages them to keep it on next year when they look at their roster and consider a revamp.
A little more cliche twisting is added to the mix, hopefully giving us some more ideas to use in our own game.
A really interesting idea to create a computer-aided module that automatically scales with your characters, with computer aid. Not too hard to implement, really, but they'll stick to regular paper ones that don't do this more than a couple of levels up or down.
And finally, we have a complaint about them cropping their cover images and plastering them with promotional gumph. Sorry, their covers are just going to get more irritatingly cluttered in the next few years. Apparently they need all that promotion.
Nodwick faces his most encumbrance-busting lift yet.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 2/7
Nodwick faces his most encumbrance-busting lift yet.
Forum: Martin Rosenkrantz tells us a story of how things went horribly wrong for him. Even with a saving throw of 3, that's a 10% chance of failure. It will come up sooner or later.
Gordon Dunne wants the house rules of maximum HP at first level and making fighters more interesting implemented. Another case of someone being in luck.
Ian Mathers reminds us that the AD&D combat round is abstracted over a whole minute. The difference between a monk's slaps, and a two handed sword swinging is pointless, as each roll still represents many individual attacks in both cases.
Garry Stahl has a pretty similar opinion to mine on the subject of deceiving your players. NPC's should lie shamelessly if it suits their personality and goals.
David L. Nelson thinks the average soldier ought to be at least a proper 1st level fighter. That'll go a long way towards keeping settlements safe from both adventurers and marauding humanoids. PC's shouldn't be so special. It might help keeping them from getting overconfident.
David Pierce thinks that the relative power levels of characters pales in contrast to their player's ingenuity in terms of impact on the game. How many times have we seen complete newbies beat mighty dragons in stories by using their brains?
Roy Greenhalgh reminds us that while clerics may be powerful, their god is a big balancing factor. Presuming they're played properly anyway. We've been through this before. Fluff penalties don't compensate very well for mechanical bonuses, because they're so often ignored.
Dungeoncraft: Ray continues to balance the pressures of verisimilitude, and filling the world with secrets to explore and monsters to kill and take the stuff of. Course, the two are not mutually exclusive, you just have to think about what effect all these monsters would logically have on the human communities and each other. This is why I wouldn't start with too small scale a map. It means you can have more things on a map without it seeming crowded, and allows the players to heal up, train, and generally advance the timeline during the days or weeks it takes to journey between significant locations, which also leads to a more realistic advancement rate. So as usual, I agree with most of Ray's advice, but not all of it. Everyone is going to run things slightly differently, and that's a good thing really. I think I'm always going to prefer doing things on a large scale wherever possible.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 3/7
Sage advice: Do planescape characters get modifiers to the new thieving abilities (yes)
Does true seeing reveal if you've been artificially aged (no. It's your true form now.)
What happens to stuff a druid is wearing while an animal when they turn back (It falls off. Nothing so spectacular as merging.)
How quickly does control temperature work (instantly and insistently.)
Does a ring of fire resistance protect against normal fire (easily. )
Can you summarize negative status penalties. (if you like)
Can animal friendship break a familiars bond (no. That's their primary loyalty, no matter what. )
Can arrows fired from a magical bow hurt creatures that need magic weapons to hit. (no. The extra force comes at the release stage. )
What does the Paralyzation spell do? (use hold person if you can't be bothered to get the compendium. They are not that different anyway)
What spheres do knights of solamnia have (Kiri-Jolith's. He's the guy responsible. )
What happens if you disjoin a cage of Zagyg (they escape unharmed)
Can invisible creatures see other invisible creatures (no. Pixies have to work something out. I'm sure they're used to it, as they've grown up not seeing each other most of the time. )
Why do duergar PC's have their spell level limited to 10. (To keep the game from breaking)
Do speciality druids count as clerics or druids for purposes of level limits. (Druids)
How fast do Trow swim. (Faster than you. Better hope you're faster than your buddies)
If you take 6 continual lighted coins into an area of continual darkness, how many of them are cancelled out (1. Basic maths, my dear.)
Can you guard with a whip (Yes. What do lion tamers do? )
Which has default in order of attacks, reach or initiative (reach. Damn useful, reach. )
What happens if two people charge each other simultaneously (they can't. The resolution system doesn't work like that. Once one of them's closed, the other can't charge. )
Can you do more than one attack of opportunity against a swooping creature (Only if it does multiple provoking actions. Probably no, in other words. )
There's 40 posts on your message boards debating exactly how wall of force works. That's huge. (Oh my. Skip must get caught up on this newfangled intartubes thing. The private sage cannot be seen to not know what Skip is talking about. )
How much room do you need to charge (15 feet)
Can a +4 defender sword hurt things that need +4 to hit (No. It's the attack bonus that counts. Same reason you can't shield bash things with your magical shield and do tons of damage. )
ProFiles: Wolfgang Baur is another of our writers who's turned his hand to all sorts of things, and come out pretty well, as much due to luck as skill. Planescape, Al-Qadim, Birthright, he's certainly contributed to quite a few books that I personally enjoyed. Currently, he's immersing himself in conspiracy theory fun as he writes for Alternity's Dark Matter setting. But not taking the things he reads too seriously, thankfully. After all, as he knows, real life is very much about luck. Vast global conspiracies that stay secret against against all the odds just wouldn't be able to hold themselves together, given human nature.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 4/7
Countdown to 3rd edition: 9 months to go. We don't get much new info about 3e itself this time. Instead they talk about the Gen Con where it was announced. And if you think they're going to put on a big show, you're damn right. They've roped in both original founders to promote it, which I suspect was a significant factor in the 3e changeover having a bigger uptake than 4e. They've also deployed vast numbers of playtesters to iron out the kinks, but of course are leery of changing things so fundamentally that the game no longer feels like D&D, which means the fighter/spellcaster divide in versatility and high level power is still all too well in place. Basically, they're pulling out all the stops, to make sure as many people know about it and think the idea is cool as possible. The only holdouts will be people who are entirely out of the loop or consciously choose to reject the new edition. We've come a long way since the last edition change, and the way the media works is very different. They are not going to mess around.
Earthstokers: They decide to take a break from putting a huge special feature at the start this month, but they're still leading with their biggest and best material, and putting extra effort into the artwork for it. And it is pretty interesting. An order of druids that specialise in monitoring and regulating seismic activity? That's a valuable niche that the Complete Druids Handbook never filled. And since volcanos and earthquakes can cause massive amounts of damage, I can see certain players drooling at the idea of wielding their powers. Of course, this is tempered by the need to not use their powers in a manner harmful to nature overall (which doesn't mean they can't wipe out the occasional uppity human settlement) or lose them. This is a pretty entertaining read, and the writer obviously has both enthusiasm for the subject and real world research, but it also has some substantial mechanical flaws that really should have been caught in editing. The kit confuses mage schools and priest spheres in a way that makes it's intentions unclear, the new dragon type fails to distinguish which of it's spell slots belong to which class, and the whole thing adds a somewhat clunky extra subsystem for tracking seismic energy onto the game. So this will definitely appeal to those who like that old skool verve, but does need a bit of errata to actually be usable in a game. Pay more attention, Dave.
Primitive PCs: They haven't mentioned the whole every monster can become a PC in 3e thing yet. That's bound to raise a few eyebrows. In the meantime, time is ticking away, and there's still a whoie ton of humanoids that never got PC stats, that would be well suited to it. I'm betting this is the kind of thing they'll step up in the last few 2e issues. Course, they might not be any good statistically. But that kind of judgement is what I do. Let's see if these guys can be tamed.
Gibberlings aren't very bright, but given their strong horde instincts, one that's separated from their companions might fall in with a group of adventurers, although they'll never really lose their simple and direct thought processes and tendency to scream their way through a problem. They have pretty standard goblinoid class options and limits, so they're not going to keep up at high levels.
Grimlocks are rather more versatile, although they'll need to develop a custom method of recording their spells if they want to be wizards. Their lack of sight and enhanced other senses will be crucial in playing them, but otherwise they're not that special statistically. I think the talking points they have are significant enough though.
Mold Men are pretty alien, and their main flaws revolve around bridging that gap enough to relate to meat-based lifeforms. They do have pretty substantial benefits though, Immunity to electricity, piercing weapons, and anything that affects animals, they could mess with quite a few standard tactics to their benefit. That can definitely be fun for a PC.
Quaggoths are fairly typical humanoids, apart from having moderate psionic talents in their spiritual guys instead of shamen. Still, they're very much of the sort that'll be good at 1st level thanks to their natural weapons and armor, and then rapidly fall behind at higher levels. It ain't easy, having a genetic tendency towards mookism.
Su-Monsters get a bit of revisioning, suggesting the author has a real soft spot for them. Their adrenalin shot when defending their family won't apply as adventurers, but their climbing, natural weapons, and psionic talents certainly will. They have some pretty decent tactical options a less mobile race would really struggle to match.
Troglodytes of course have to deal with the social issues their odor creates. (don't put them in a party with a Grimlock in particular.) Still, I'm definitely surprised they haven't been done before, since they're one of the old staple monsters that have been around forever, and have fairly decent powers. I guess the social stigma of excessive BO is more of a consideration to the average geek than you'd think. :p
Yeti also have social issues, but not as severely, and lose some of their powers outside their native climate, so they're another one that definitely won't be settling down with the other adventurers. Once gain, their level limits aren't great though, which I think fits into the general primitivism thing. While cunning, these guys just don't have the capacity for advanced learning to build a sophisticated culture on their own. So I think the rules do fit the fluff in this case, making this collection interesting, but not really able to fill out an entire party on their own. Spices and seasonings, that's the ticket. The magazine provides an epic selection for your game to choose from, but it'll never replace the corebooks.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 5/7
Marvel super heroes: Captain Marr-Vell. Not to be confused with just Captain Marvel, who ironically belongs to DC. (and that must irk Marvel comics quite a bit) Man, this opens up another can of worms when it comes to things like copyright, character histories, and comparing and contrasting. Neither are really A-listers, and have spent extended periods of time dead. And both have alter egos with which they have interesting relationships. It's a demonstration of how real world legal issues can affect what appears on the page quite a bit. There's still stories featuring Godzilla that they can't republish because the licence has expired. I do worry about what will happen if copyright keeps on being extended by big corporations, and how we'll make big new media properties if all the short snappy names are already taken. It's entirely possible to kill something through oversaturation. Will we eventually run out of room for new superheroes? Will we eventually run out of room for bands? TV shows? Movies that aren't remakes? It's a worrying thought, tempered by the knowledge that we'll probably invent a new way of entertaining ourselves at that point. I just hope I'll be able to understand and appreciate those too.
The oerdian lesser gods: Telchur completes the collection of Greyhawk seasonal gods, representing winter. He's quite different from the other winter god we had a couple of issues ago, slightly less cruel, but a good deal more unpredictable, and very keen on his worshippers exposing themselves to the cold to toughen up. This pays off big time for his clerics, who become immune to nonmagical cold and able to unleash nasty weather. As with all the seasonal gods, they seem likely to have their congregation vary quite a lot depending on the time of year, and ought to maintain ties with the clerics of the other seasons.
Rudd puts a third different spin on roguishness, being the goddess of gambling, luck, and swashbuckling sorts in general. Fighting her is a mug's game, since she's incredibly lucky, and can automatically spot attempts to cheat. Her priests also fall into the swashbuckler mold, getting tricksy spells and the ability to specialise in the rapier. They could definitely be a good way to fill out a party that wants everyone to look good and be mobile in battle. So once again, these gods aren't original, but they are interesting, and quite open to being compared and contrasted. Putting different spins on the same basic ideas is how we get the infinite variety that makes up the world. After all, it's all protons, neutrons and electrons. Just in different combinations.
Fiction: The king of winter by Mark Anthony. Another short story by an established author that's basically a teaser/promotion for their full novels in the same setting? Fuck you WotC. This is just getting tacky. I actually don't mind the video game conversions too much because at least they're interesting, and often useful in game, but this? It's an unfulfilling attempt to get us to spend more money, so we can keep track of more continuity. Orion & Fool Wolf have the right idea of it, because their stories are both entertaining and written to be self-contained for easy access to newcomers. This, on the other hand, does not, and makes me rather cross. Once again, I am reminded that the average standard of the fiction is not nearly what it was when Barbara Young ran this department.
Arcane Lore: More spells from less civilized locations. Actually, they haven't offered too many of those, so you can still say that they're underrepresented, ethnically speaking. Eh, just another day at the office really.
Tana Relatha is made of woven reeds, and is full of spells that get you close to nature. Mud, tree sap, mists and spiders. Not the parts of nature I'm really that keen on getting close too, thanks very much.
Tsanak Dorth is slightly more highbrow, being comprised of oak roots and obsidian. With four tree related powers, it does seem to be stepping on druid's toes a bit. I suppose niche protection between spellcasters is a bit of a joke now, after 12 years of articles like this. Yawn.
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 6/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another bit of so-called savagery here, rather more optimistic about the capability of shamans and the like to make magical items than it's counterpart in issue 189. They may not be as scientific about it, but they certainly don't hesitate to assign special properties to things. Some of them might even work.
Cha'chal Blowguns automatically add poison to darts, removing the danger of handling and loading nasty sticky icky substances. One of those definite convenience enhancers.
Bones of Foretelling are not so convenient, being your basic cryptic vision provider. Yawn. We don't need those when we have more specific divinations.
The Censer of Guardians summons spirit animals to kick butt for you. Make sure it doesn't go out, for as usual, that removes the assistance from your party.
Wailing Chimes are another guardian device that make an awful racket if anyone not keyed to them approaches. Meh. Even the most primitive of people have basic recognition skills.
Spirit Cloaks give you animal based powers. Another very blah overused idea.
The Council of Skulls, on the other hand, is pretty awesome, and gives a concrete benefit to having a load of ominous skulls on posts through your territory. They're watching you, and the shaman can consult them from the central circle. Like any security camera, smash them if you want to go dark.
Rending Daggers have limited charges, which is unusual for weapons. Guess 16th level spellcasters are in short supply, so fitting them with a ton of animal teeth and using the sympathetic boost is another decent cost cutting method.
Tribal Drums grant benefits to your side and penalise the other as long as they're being played. I'm sure I've seen this in the magazine before.
Gourds of Concealment are the savage equivalent of the ninja flash bomb. Throw them to the ground and they let out a brief cloud of gas so you can escape. More tedious reskinning.
Bear Gauntlets let you use claw attacks. Seen this before too. Is this going to make the record of most rehashed items in a single article?
The Headdress of Sight is a near direct rip of eyes of the eagle. I really am running out of patience with this one.
Horns of Wolf Summoning also do exactly what they say on the tin in ripped off legalese.
Masks of Fear, Necklaces of animal communication, and Powder of Eternal Slumber are all also so tedious and predictable I can't even be bothered to give them their own entries. You really really aren't missing anything.
Oil of Marking is used to make hard to erase territorial pissings. If you get it on you it's a right bitch to get off. Have fun messing up your opponents hair and watching them rage.
Curse Rattles are another one that steals from movie portrayals liberally. Unga walla boggie balla. Yawn.
Warding Skulls use the more subtle form of keeping people from coming in, that of making them believe they're going straight when actually they're going round. This obviously makes them less likely to try and see it as a challenge to penetrate just because and come back.
PC Portraits: This column is always easy to fit into the theme. It's savage hero time. Which means animal hybrids, scantily clad people of all ethnic groups, bad teeth, and interesting headgear. Political correctness? Nah, we'd much rather look cool while facing the many challenges of the unpacified wilderness. And what kind of adventurers would we be if we can't get away with wearing way more or less than the cultural norm? Barely worth the name.
Shop keep unites people the best way. In hate of others! Woo :rolleyes:
Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999
part 7/7
Role models: Ha. We have a particularly inventive bit of minis advice this month, as they advise you to make scenery out of milk cartons and cereal boxes, (after all, nearly everyone goes through plenty of those) and show us how to emulate video game style fog of war in a minis scenario using plastic cups. That's brilliant, funny and useful. Once again, this column is a font of cool ideas crammed in a small package, and is really proving it's value as part of the magazine. Get out your craft knives and scissors and turn your food waste into an opportunity for more fun. Not playing with your food is something you tell your kids, not something you have to stick too yourself. ;) Once again I approve strongly of this column, and just wish it was a bit longer, so I'd have more to talk about.
The voice: We've already had one Alternity fast-play in the magazine. But they're releasing a second setting, so here's a second, smaller one to introduce us to Dark Matter, their modern day action/conspiracy setting. Once again, it's a pretty simple plot, all about introducing the basics of both combat and various skills to that player (which is easy enough since the system uses a universal mechanic) It does railroad more than a bit, with no real choices you can make to affect the outcome of the plot beyond succeeding and advancing or failing in your dice rolls and facing further complications. So that does make this pretty unsatisfying, like most of these fast-play adventurers, because they don't include even a few token choices, which wouldn't be impossible to do even in an adventure of this size. As it is, even a computer could play this. I certainly wouldn't want to be introduced to roleplaying without being given any options on how I played. In addition, the illustrations have obviosly been traced directly from photographs of real people from around the office, which just doesn't quite look right somehow. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to fail this one both on story and presentation. You need to lead with at least one good adventure if you want to make a new system accessible, and this is not it.
Dragonmirth takes things rather too literally. KotDT figure out how to get cheaper hired help.
TSR Previews: Planescape may sorta be cancelled, but it's influence is still being strongly felt. A guide to hell sees Chris Pramas do officially what he'll do again slightly less so in the D20 era. Since we're no longer covered by the same editorial restrictions, expect all the old names to be back and ready to rock. Meanwhile, Planescape: Torment gets a novelization by Ray & Valerie Vallese. Still doing the multimedia thing to considerable success I see.
Greyhawk does much the same thing, only the other way round. Return to white plume mountain follows the book in short order. Bruce Cordell is responsible for revising, expanding and adding a load of plot to this one.
The realms rehashes too. The temptation of Elminster gets reprinted in paperback. I still don't know why they bother to tell us that. And Drizzt gives us his own Guide to the Underdark. Guess Volo called in sick for this one. Wonder if they'll manage to accurately reproduce his voice from the books, given a different writer is responsible.
Dragonlance does, yeah, yet more expanded rehash. The original trilogy get directors cuts with added material and author commentary, just like the module series. They really are trying to scrape every last inch of the barrel dry before they move onto the next edition.
Alternity, on the other hand, does get 2 new products. Dark Matter is a new campaign setting featuring modern conspiracy weirdness. Mindwalking: A guide to psionics is a general book, but seems likely to be useful to it. A likely precursor to the Agents of Psi setting for D20 modern.
What's new is Baaack! After 15 years, some of them spent dealing with CCG's, they return to the world of roleplaying, tanned, with new hair, ready to reveal the deepest truths behind the creative urge. And crack cheap gags. Well, they can't go too far from their core, or they'll lose their audience.
With several articles that fail in interesting ways, this isn't the greatest of issues, but was reasonably entertaining for me to pick apart. That's certainly preferable to bland articles that leave me with nothing to say. And as usual, there are a few articles that are genuinely enjoyable and useful amidst the dross. It does feel like they're hitting the accelerator in general as well. If that means more little details get messed up because they're concentrating on the next edition content, then so be it. That'd be an understandable flaw to take the blame for.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 1/7
116 pages. Ooh. This christmas, lycanthropes and other human/animal shapechangers get their turn at a themed issue. That's fairly welcome and probably a bit overdue, like the similar one for giants this time last year. After all they're another one that has an absolute ton of myths from around the world. This probably won't catch them up with vampires in terms of overall coverage, (and a lot of people prefer them shirtless anyway :p ) but it certainly can't hurt. Let's ravenously devour the good stuff in this issue, but leave the bad bits politely on the side of the plate.
Scan Quality: Good, some pages slightly curved, no indexing.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Our editorial this month is all about deferred gratification. Revenge is a dish best served cold, release means little without building up tension beforehand, you ought to have to work for your rewards. You know the drill. It's a good lesson to teach because otherwise you wind up with players who are shocked when they don't win every battle without any real challenge, and people who throw tantrums over something as insignificant as a game probably aren't the kind of folks you want to go to for help in a crisis. Which is exactly the kind of stuff people will complain they're causing with both upcoming edition changes, by putting more focus on empowering the player, speeding up advancement, and designating what kind of challenges are appropriate for a character of a given level. I think that's what you call irony. So yeah, we aren't out of this edition yet, and even when they do switch the changes in people's playstyles are going to be more gradual than binary. They should keep giving me something to comment on for quite a while.
D-Mail: We start off with a complaint from someone sick of the company's racism agains small people. They simply laugh it off. Oh, they'll regret that next edition, when that small size becomes a huge benefit for spellcasters, and halflings can take any class too.
We then move onto a sexism complaint. They fully intend their new minis line to be sexually and ethnically diverse, as they proved in last month's teasers. On the other hand, if you want either gender to have decent fashion sense, you'll be wishing in vain for quite a while. :p
A less weighty complaint follows. Which Greyhawk seasonal goddess is the youngest. What a question to ask a lady. Do you really expect to get a straight answer out of them?
Next, we have our first edition change complaint. Multiclassing XP penalties suck! That they do, and even though you're not working on full info, it's no surprise that a lot of d20 based games wound up leaving them out with no problems. Even the designers don't really know about the long-term emergent issues with their new system, despite the huge amounts of playtesting.
And finally we have a very long rebuttal letter by Greg Detwiler which goes quite some way towards revealing his own playstyle and design choices. Very interesting indeed. Remember, reskinning allows you to use an old challenge without the PC's instantly knowing the right tactic to foil it.
Nodwick stays on good terms with the enemy. It's just a gig. Keep saying it to yourself.
Forum wants us to ponder how technology has changed the way we game. Have you tried using email and chatrooms? Maybe you should. They can have quite decent benefits and speed play along.
Anonymous shows up for the first time in a few years, to criticise the idea of deceiving the players. 3e ought to have strict rules on what is and isn't acceptable behaviour for a DM that the players can hold them too.
Julian Neale, on the other hand, is fully in favour of decieving the players when it would make for a more fun game. Secret rolls are a very useful tool as well if there are traps and the like in the area. Muhahahaha.
Lance Goetz is our longest contributor, pointing out that thieves have the least well defined role in the party, and are thus most easily disposed of. Well, they weren't even in the very first corebook. That is technically true. And so we take another step towards redefining them as Strikers.
David Boyer averages your int and dex bonuses to determine initiative bonus. This keeps one class from blatantly outshining the others in this area.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 2/7
Dungeoncraft: The first year of this column is over, and we've pretty much finished the topic of building your first map full of monsters. So they move on to some more general advice for christmas. And here Ray falls pretty firmly on engaging the players, not just their character's statistics. Give them genuinely meaningful choices, set them puzzles that they have to use their brains to solve, not just dice rolls, and make sure they have noncombat interactions with characters to add variety. All the things last month's fast-play story lacked, in other words :p So this is a good reminder of how tabletop RPG's are not computer games, there are some things that they'll always do better than even the most wide-open sim game. And if you're going to go to the effort of getting everyone together, do you really want to put them into a linear dungeon crawl anyway? Play to the strengths of your medium. I think that's advice that's valid whatever you're doing.
Shop keep is rather festive, but doesn't realize it.
Sage advice: What planar races can become psionicists. (all of them. 10th level. See ya later. )
Does chill touch work once then discharge, or can you keep on attacking. (you can keep on bein' cooooooooool. )
Is the limited magic item use restriction based on large or small divisions. (Large. Kick those min-maxing twinks back into their place )
Can item be cast on one item and also affect anything contained within it (no)
Does demilich soul-trapping have a save. (Yes. Not easy though. )
How many spells does an amber dragon really cast (we missed a slash. )
Pls explain the sword of life stealing (Natural 20 means natural 20. Not some stupid number like vorpal sword's plus only calculation. You only get hit points if you drain someone. )
Can stone golems be affected by magic missiles (what part of immune to all spells but the specific ones mentioned don't you understand)
What proficiency do you need to get the benefits with a longtooth dagger (Dagger, even when it's a longsword. )
How many HD does a 30th level spirit of the land have (basic addition. It comes to 41d8+22. Quite a hefty number.)
What are type I-VI demons. (True Tanar'ri. Vrock to Balor. Go for the power. )
How many missiles does Snilloc's major missile make (just the one big nasty one. )
Does comprehend languages let you read pictograms and voweless arabic writing (if that's the way it's supposed to be written. If it's being done in a diliberately obscure way it might not make sense still. )
Do you get a save against heat metal (no, because it's not being cast on you. Master the art of the quick strip, and you can avoid most of the damage. )
Can you cast admantite mace on a magical mace (yes, but only use the best bonus. They're the same type of bonus, so they don't stack.)
Ohh. Alternity stuff again. Skip could do with a change. Onward we go.
What are the penalties for using a dumb GID (No shadow combat for you, matey.)
Can datalink telepathy be used to reprogram stuff. (oh yes, but only if you know computer language. )
How much do broad skills cost robots (nothing. It's the processor power that's the expensive part. Data is cheap. )
Do you use table D17 or the custom parts list for building robot PC's (both)
Do planetary thrusters harm photon sails (no. Just fold them up when you land)
How many G's can a robot take (no more than a human. )
Can you use a fusion torch engine as a weapon (oh yes. They can be ridiculously effective. )
How big is a spikespore's second form (Human size. It takes about 12 hours to turn back. )
Do heavy weapons need power cells. (No, they need actual ammo. Beams just don't have the same ....... impact, no matter how flashy they look. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 3/7
ProFiles: Mary Kirchoff is, like Sue Cook, a multiclass gaming editor/wife (married to Steve Winter). Seems surprisingly common. Unusually, though she started off more as a writer, and then gravitated more towards editing as time went on. (it's usually the other way around, if previous profiles are anything to go by. ) From Polyhedron, to Ares magazine, to Dragonlance, to being responsible for hiring R.A Salvadore, to her current job as head editor of the book department, it's certainly been an eventful ride, not all of it entirely successful. Can she bring the book department back to it's late 80's glory days? Probably not, but it won't be for lack of trying.
Silicon Sorcery: Woo. We have the release of the dragon magazine archive. More amusing recursiveness to be able to review this article. They go into plenty of detail on it's interface and searching functions, which are of course needed to sift through such a vast amount of information usefully. They also make a big deal about the fact all the adverts and other bits and pieces are in (although of course they missed a few of the games, sigh.) which I suppose is a pretty big deal really. It does make me wonder why they bothered doing ad-free scans later, when the adverts are sometimes just as interesting, and certainly as informative in retrospect about what else was going on out there. As with most of their promotional articles these days, this is a good deal prettier and less irritating than TSR's ones, and of course the sheer ambition of the product is a pretty good selling point as well. It'll take a good decade or so for the rest of the publishing industry to really catch up, and even now, it's pretty haphazard what will be in print or electronically distributed and how their price points will compare. Like the OGL, this had a significant part in changing how we think about distribution, and the ways our reading experience could be improved by making everything cross-indexed and searchable. It deserves a good deal of praise, and I wish more old magazines had something similar.
Countdown to 3rd edition: 8 months to go. Ahh, here we get into one of the really contentious parts of 3e. The Dungeonpunk artwork. "Realistic" medieval backdrops? We're bored of those and want to try something new. Which is an understandable sentiment after you've been doing this for 25 years, but still alienates a fair chunk of people. Aesthetics do matter, and how a book looks and is laid out will affect how people play it, even if the underlying rules are pretty much the same. Cuddly hobbits are out, dwarves have seriously updated their forge technology, and monks aren't all asian. While I'm not totally sold on the direction they went in, and it does seem like trying too hard to be kewl and badass in retrospect, I do think the idea of having a consistent set of iconic characters who appeared in the generic rulebooks throughout the edition and became well known names was a good one, as was the desire to make things distinct from what came before. And having a definite look for the books does make them easy to pick out on a bookshelf (although brown?! Is that really the colour you want to go with? I suppose it's slightly preferable to the orange of the 1e hardcovers) So the choices they're making aren't perfect, but they are interesting, distinctive, and deliberately counter to stereotypes. That should also count for quite a bit because it gets people talking, even if they don't like it. And let's face it, stirring up forum debate is free publicity.
Feathered friends and foes: A short but interesting article to start off our features. Swanmays and Bird Maidens have established the idea of shapeshifters caused not by genetics or infection, but as a secret society that initiates worthy people into their ranks if they have the right stuff morally and skillwise. This does technically change your race, and with that your level limits, but they're some of the less onerous ones, and in the meantime you have a quite neat extra ability. I think quite a few PC's would be willing to take that offer.
Black Swanmays serve specific Lawful Good gods rather than nature in general. This does mean they have all the more to lose if they stray from the path, as if being a paladin wasn't enough. But if you can't take the winds of fate, you shouldn't be pinning your flag to the heroic mast.
Laridians have rather more interesting symbolism, turning into gulls. This means they're noisy thieving, squabbling sorts, who use their powers to make spectacular heists and get away with them. They seem like fun sorts to have around, and their ability to take their equipment when they transform is a huge practical benefit. Plus you don't have to worry about any moral code, just be a damn good thief, which I'm sure you were going to try and do anyway.
Red Falcons are the evil counterparts of swanmays, fighters and priests dedicated to the dark, predatory side of nature. This means they have quite a lot of enemies to get through, and may have to leave their armor and weapons behind if they're being beaten. Still, that ought to bemuse the players quite a bit if they don't have the magical artillery left to take them down. And spying is always handy.
Thebestyns are wizards who follow Thoth, and turn into ibises with the help of a magical ankh, appropriately enough. That's slightly less cliche than the owl option I was expecting as well. They won't be able to access the highest level spells, and get to put all their weapon slots into nonweapon skills, which will be a bit of a hindrance at lower levels. Still easy flight combined with spellcasting should make them quite the tactical go-too, and they're full of flavour. Like the old articles on variant familiars, planar horses, and similar cool stuff, this is something they haven't done before, and is very welcome and useful for a game.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 4/7
PC Portraits gives us our third helping of hybrid creatures over the year. Popular buggers, aint they. Wolf, boar, bat, tiger and rat are all represented, obviously. But in addition, we have a druid, an imp and a mimic disguised as a door, which is a pretty unusual choice. And is that supposed to be a wereraven, or just a guy being attacked by a giant shadowy venus fly trap? And the final one is this weird optical illusion that could be a little cat sprawled on a mat, or a big horned demonface. Yeah, there's a few amusing bits here that are worthy of comment. I think I approve.
Humanimals: Hengeyokai are a bit wussy when compared to Lycanthropes, but I guess that's the kind of sacrifice you make when you want to make them PC suitable, rather than monsters, but still thematically cool. Actually, we've barely seen them around in ages, since oriental stuff fell out of fashion. But it looks like we'll be revisiting several more cool ideas before the edition ends, and another dozen animal types getting PC friendly shapeshifter races is one of them. At this rate, we'll have more than enough new races to keep any holdouts busy for years.
Badgers are exceedingly grumpy, and likely to take it out on everyone around them. They'll make fairly decent antagonists, but they're unlikely to be able to carry out a long-term scheme blowing up and ruining it. Guess that keeps them down in the thug leagues then.
Dolphins have a bit of a crap hybrid form, but their swimming abilities are pretty impressive, and sonar opens up sensory options that'll give an imaginative DM plenty of room for cool descriptions. And having someone in the team capable of dealing with alternate terrains is particularly handy at lower levels.
Falcons are loyal and honourable, but it's not easy to put one over on them, and they can be pretty vicious. Give them a cause to fight for, and you can bet they'll pursue it tenaciously. Perhaps an epic world-saving quest'll do the job.
Frogs are one of the softest and least combat capable creatures out there. They don't taste good though, which might put some monsters off. Since they're good for nothing, they don't have any favored class or alignment. Which is freeing in it's own way, I suppose.
Lizard hengeyokai have the slightly quirky benefit of being able to pass for both humans and lizard men depending on form, which may be useful in roleplaying terms. They can be surprisingly fast as well when properly warmed up. Don't be surprised if they manage to put some trick over you after all.
Lynxes have ridiculous sideburns in human form. They're a selfish, antisocial lot, probably not suitable as PC's. I'm sure someone'll want to play the badass brooding loner though. And hey, sideburns. The orient doesn't have wolverines, so that's a decent substitute.
Octopi have blue blood, even in human form, and act on the assumption that everyone is fully aware of their emotional state. This means they're probably one of the worst at concealing their nature. Still, I'm sure they can find people who'll accept them for their tentacles anyway. Just got to know where to look.
Otters are a hyperactive and playful lot, skittering around in and out of water, but maintaining immaculate grooming nonetheless. They seem like becoming a swashbucking sort would be right up their alley. Through the moat, up the castle wall, seduce the princess, and then off we go again.
Owls get a pretty substantial wisdom bonus, unsurprisingly, which means they're likely to take the cleric role. They can't fly in hybrid form, which means they won't be able to take full advantage of that trick. Oh well. It's still useful enough as it is.
Pandas are homebodies, since their diet is pretty restricted. While not completely unsuited as adventurers, as they do have decent natural weapons, and climbing skills, they'd be going against type. Still, I suppose that's what being an adventurer is all about. The same applies to hobbits, after all.
Turtles are exceedingly slow, and their AC isn't as high as you might think, so they don't even make that great a meat shield. They are decent swimmers though. They might become adventurers, but they'll still do things on their own schedule, which'll be fine for elves and treants, but may drive humans mad with impatience.
Weasels are of course cunning and vicious, the ideal traits for scheming roguish sorts. They'll probably get a bit further than Badgers in their schemes, but still, you don't trust someone who subconsciously reminds you of a weasel. That's going to get in their way sooner or later. So a big chunk of these races aren't particularly great as PC's, but nearly all should make interesting characters. That's not bad going. This issue is being pretty good at providing new options they haven't done before.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 5/7
50 Monster Maximizers: Ah yes, going back to the original mythology to give your monsters new cool powers. There's a reasonably familiar topic. After all, quirky powers and weaknesses really bring a monster to life more than adding a few more hit points and a bigger die type to damage, and will certainly make players remember them more. Most of these are pretty familiar as well, making this a fun one, but also an article that/'s more aimed at newer readers who don't have a grounding in mythological studies from reading the old folklore. Still, statistical conversions are always good, and it reminds us that there's more moral nuance than you'd think in things like nymphs, centaurs and various fae races, and even mundane animals have a whole bunch of weird myths attached to them. Now, if only they'd cover more myths from non-european cultures. That'd reduce the amount of overfamiliarity considerably.
Fiction: The innkeepers secret by Troy Denning. After a couple of issues where the fiction was merely promotion for a novel the writer had coming out, we have one that uses the same characters as their novel, but at least has the grace to make a decent standalone story. Vangerdhast and the crown princess of Cormyr are off on adventures incognito so she can level up and be a suitable ruler. Obviously the big one will appear in the novel, but this is an interesting enough little ghost story on it's own, with well sketched characters, a plot that has some combat, but doesn't rely on it to solve the problem, and a decent helping of Realmsian whimsy that tops it off, but doesn't go overboard and make it all cheesy. While not quite as good as the average standalone story, this is at least something I didn't mind reading. Still a sign they're depending too much on their regular writers though.
Arcane Lore: Another shapeshifter based article. Magic for and against lycanthropes? Haven't had that before. And not in a October issue either. Once again those damn bogarting undead are stealing the big publicity and corresponding countermeasures.
Instantaneous Shift lets you skip the round of vulnerability when shapechanging. Just like spending Rage points in W:tA, this may be well worth the resource expenditure.
Resist Silver lets poor shapeshifters take half damage from their big vulnerability. That'll weed out the amateurs from the true professionals who don't waste time with weapons, and just go for the big blasty spells.
Ripclaw & Sabertooth sound like a lycanthrope comedy duo, but are actually a pair of spells to buff your natural weaponry. Useful to anything with claws or teeth, really.
Scent lets you mark someone to be easily tracked. Since it requires a touch attack, it's not the most useful of 3rd level spells.
Full Moon is, unsurprisingly, a forced transformation spell. This is particularly helpful when they've just infected some of your buds. Get ready for chaos and fur flying. It's even reversible, which will be much in demand if found out.
Howl is just a refluffed Fear spell. Meh.
Increased Infection doubles your odds of getting your mitts on new minions. Muahahahaha!
Pack Mind is also pretty unsurprising. Buff up your buds, the more buds, the more buffed. Meh.
Invest Lycanthrope is a nasty little trick. All the powers of a full lycanthrope for a day, but a very real threat of becoming an infected one after that. Way to lure people in with false advertising.
Silverblade brings on the reverse side of the coin. Make your weapons temporarily useful against lycanthropes. Course, in Ravenloft, who knows what their vulnerability will be. It may well do sod-all.
Resist Lycanthropy is no surprise either, as are Declaw, Hold Form and Lycanthropic Immunity. Snooze time.
Wolfsbane lets you turn lycanthropes in undead style. See, that redresses the balance nicely. Until next time. The living dead are still well ahead.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 6/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A very different bazaar this month, with only 3 items, but cool and detailed ones. Wands of wonder and bags of beans are well known, but here's some potion based random items. Drink them and experience semirandom but generally useful transformations. Much hilarity may indeed ensue.
Groundshift gives you rocky transformations. From fists of stone to turning into earthworms, they all have their positive uses, but may also be a problem. Make sure you have someone on hand to dispel a bad turn.
Herbturn has plant related transformations. You could become spiky, a tree, a dryad, or a floating blossom. This is probably less useful than the last one. Plus, people eating your fruits sounds kinda kinky.
Waveschange provides water based benefits of course. Gills, scales, tentacles, or just becoming merfolk. It'll generally help, but still isn't really reliable. And if it gets contaminated, it'll be even less so. Are you going to play this mugs game?
Dragon's bestiary: Last christmas, they combined giants with undead. This year, they combine them with lycanthropes. Will wonders never cease? [/sarcasm] They are starting to use the templating idea though, with most of this article devoted to what can and can't be infected with what. Someone may have been sneaking peeks at the developers ideas for the next edition. They also introduce a couple of types of true lycanthrope, just for the hell of it, along with a decent amount of roleplaying advice, albeit stuff that feels very familiar if you've read Van Richten's guide to werebeasts. Keep cranking those formulae :sigh:
Polarweres are frost giant werebears, unsurprisingly. They're grumpy solitary things, and seem likely to die out eventually if they don't pass on their infection. It's a good thing there are regular werebears around then, isn't it.
Shadkyn are voadkyn weremobats. They're also one of those lycanthropes that has serious problems fitting into regular society, since regular voadkyn are vegetarians and they have serious bloodthirst. Guess they'll have to flap around being angsty and alienated then. Maybe they could hook up with some exiled drow. :p
The ecology of the Xixchil: Oooh. It's the body mod obsessed spacefaring mantises. Another bug race that can also become PCs. Well, they're a good deal better at fitting into humanoid society than Aspis, but that doesn't mean they'll ever think quite like us. They move wrong. They think in a highly pragmatic manner. And their sex life.... let's not go there. Amazingly, Johnathan does go there, counting on the fact that it's so different from human sex to get past the censors. He also provides a new system for body modifications, for those of you who want to get some cyberpunk in your D&D. Once again, he really seems to be pushing the limits of what you can do with the format, combining gross-outs with humour, and psychological study. A combination you wouldn't think would work, but just about does. What will he try next?
Role Models: Using a different scale for outside and inside adventures? Well, if it's good enough for the Expert set, then far be it for me to complain. Of course, you'll have to adapt your rules based on the fact that your characters aren't actually occupying the whole space their minis are on the map, and the terrain features are abstracted rather than solid to scale objects. Although I'm not too keen on drawing out the entire overland walk with multiple erasings and redrawings as you go. Save it for when there's anything actually happening. Or maybe this is the kind of thing that virtual mapaking software would really help with, so you can create the large scale map with huge mountains and forests, and zoom in and out to add individual houses and dungeons. Definitely be quicker and more consistent than regular redrawings of a big board. So this is an interesting article, but one where I can instantly see more efficient ways to handle things, especially with technology advancing as it is. Once I build my world, I'd rather it stayed built, rather than having to take it down and put it together again each session.
Dragon Magazine Issue 266: December 1999
part 7/7
Back to the future: We have two settings for Alternity now, so the floodgates are open to other ones. After space opera and modern day conspiracy, what to do next? 50's B-movies?! Well, ok then. It might be a little cheesy, but that can just make it all the more fun. So here's stats for flying saucers, bug men, rocket suits, and atomic heat rays, along with plenty of advice on how to get the right tone for the era. Sexism, nationalism, nuclear power, robots, radar, giant monsters, strong moral messages, there are some definite tells to 50's sci-fi that have become a good deal less common with time. You might not be able to get it perfect, but an entertaining pastiche for your players a la mars attacks should be entirely doable. The layout guys once again really go to work on this article, having been given an opportunity that doesn't come up very often around here, going for full pulp novel cover mode with all it's stylised drama. Overall, this is pretty neat, and of course very light on the rehash. Funny that D&D pretty much completely skips over this era. Even when they do mix modern day or sci-fi with fantasy, it's rarely of previous 20th century decades. Once again, goes to show how untapped resources can be surprisingly close if you know how to look.
Marvel Super Heroes: Mockingbird? I remember her not. Looks like she's dead anyway, and will remain so for a good few years. This means this little article becomes a running commentary on how to bring characters back, either temporarily or permanently. Even comic book writers know this is becoming a joke. They can at least make sure that if they do come back, they're suitably affected by the experience. But then, if they want to tell "classic" stories again, they can't have them too changed. Once again we're bumping up against the flaws ingrained in the system. Not very interesting overall.
Dragonmirth puts the puzzles first, and recycles another joke. The KotDT are ridiculously red this issue. They really need to pay more attention to detail.
TSR Previews: This december is pretty light on products. The overall rate of releases per month continues to drift downwards in vaguely uncool fashion. Our general AD&D product this month is Bastions of faith. Another one expanding on the way classes organize, with maps of temples so you can break in and do some asskicking. Now what you need is one on fighter companies to complete the symmetry.
Ravenloft rehashes this month, with volume 2 of van richten's compiled monster guides. Ghosts, liches and mummies. All an absolute bitch to kill for good. They just keep coming back. Sigh.
The Realms get Beyond the High Road by Troy Denning. The princess of Cormyr has daddy issues. Haven't heard that one for a while.
Dragonlance gets Chaos spawn. Another dual stat book set in the bridge between the 4th and 5th ages. Awkward backpedaling ahoy.
Aha! Here's another statement of ownership. Looks like the spike near the end of last year was just that, as once again they're flatlining around the 50k mark, although subscriptions are still creeping upward. There's a lot of disillusioned people out there that WotC hasn't won back, a lot of copies not distributed. Where is the new blood? How do you hook them and keep them? Very good question. Lets hope the new edition manages to do that.
What's new covers shapeshifters too. Oh, the wacky fun they have. And good advice in there as well. Pretty cool.
Mostly a pretty good issue, as this untapped topic still gives their writers plenty of opportunities to stretch their creative muscles. You can have a lot of fun with shapeshifting, both as a PC and a DM. The Alternity article also showed that there are some fairly significant untapped topics still out there, waiting for a good themed issue. Course, since they generally play it safe in the annuals, we're unlikely to see anything particularly unusual there. Still, let's not hang around. Anything'll seem uninspired if you stick there too long.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 1/7
148 pages. Looks like we're going to go from one millennium to the next in style, with the magazine's second biggest issue ever. Their sales may not have recovered, but they can still push the boat out for the big occasions. If they've added to the budget of the individual articles as well, this could be reasonably awesome. So let's grasp this zeitgeist, for it slips away as we speak. The party certainly won't last forever.
Scan Quality: Good, no index.
In this issue:
That wizard's beard is so blatantly fake. And is that Bill Bailey playing the DM? Iiiiinteresting. :steeples fingers:
The wyrms turn: Well, here's a special announcement to go with the special issue. WotC has just been bought by Hasbro. This means Peter Adkison is no longer the big boss, and they have to answer to corporate suits who have the bottom line as priority. On the plus side, it means more money for marketing and distribution. In the short run, that's a damn good thing. Long term, well that's very open to speculation indeed. Who can say how history would have been different if WotC had remained independent. There would likely have been just as many flamewars, albeit about slightly different topics. And 4e might well have kept the OGL. I think detailed speculation on this, like what would have happened if Gary were never forced out in the first place, is a topic for a thread of it's own.
50 years of D&D gaming: What was, what is, and what could be. Gary returns for an amusing look at the history of D&D, and makes some interesting, but completely inaccurate predictions about where the future could take it. Castle Greyhawk never did get published in it's entirety, and D&D's resurgent popularity wasn't an ongoing thing. :( And all the D&D movies so far have been both critical and commercial failures. You know, perhaps we do need another big negative publicity thing to boost sales. But anyway, the history part is more revealing, especially when it comes to the part before the game was even published. It's a good reminder that for the first few years, TSR was very much an amateur small press organisation, with Gary and his close friends doing all the work from writing to assembling and mailing out the final product, storing the boxes in their garage in the meantime. Even complete no-budget n00bs can outsource that to Print on Demand outfits these days. The period between his being forced out and WotC's takeover is completely glossed over though. Overall, this is very much an entertainment piece, rather than a serious historical study of the ups and downs of D&D, and where it might logically go next. You wouldn't expect an unbiased account when they're trying to have a celebration when there's so many awkward moments in their history.
Nods of the shop table: Welcome to another ultimate crossover of ultimate destiny. People are already joking about e-bay. Welcome to the new millennium. This one doesn't make much sense, as they try and cram too many jokes in, getting things muddled. Such is the nature of sweeps week.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 2/7
The world that wouldn't die: Looks like we're going to have little introductory blurbs for their campaign worlds, like in the first annual. Can you say padding. Why have the extra space just to spend it frivolously? Still, they take the time to deliver some very interesting information. Next edition, Greyhawk is becoming the default campaign world! It sounds like they're going to get a huge profile boost. Of course, this is one case where the theory and the practice turned out very different, with the names and gods being used by default, but the actual geography being mostly ignored, and hardly any sourcebooks or adventures outside the RPGA Living Greyhawk material. (which was fairly substantial, but of course not so commonly available) So like the retrospective material, this presents a rather optimistic picture that won't really be born out by reality. Best laid plans of mice and men.
Campaign holidays: Well, this is amusingly fitting for the issue. It's supposed to be a big celebration, so let's talk about the big days people get dressed up and party on Oerth. These of course vary from place to place quite a lot, although some take place on the same day of the year, particularly the solstices and equinoxes, which it seems nearly every deity wants to claim as their own. This is a reminder that fantasy worlds tend to have neater calendars than the real world, with the cycle of the moon precisely corresponding with the months, and no faffing around with leap years. It's also a good reminder that keeping a calendar rather than just a record of how many days pass when out adventuring helps adventurers feel the passage of time more keenly, as the seasons shift, and people back home live their lives. Plus it offers adventure hooks, especially if you design the celebration days for various humanoids. So this not only serves as an addition to a specific world (and effort has been taken to research existing days rather than just make them up wholecloth) but general worldbuilding advice as well. Which is quite nice really.
Sword & Sorcery experts needed for grand adventure: I don't think it's any secret by now that the Forgotten Realms is their biggest campaign world, handily outpacing everyone else in both gamebooks and novels. Greyhawk and Dragonlance have both already had several year fallow periods, and been brought back when they thought there was a new market for them, but the Realms doesn't even falter. The years keep on passing, the characters keep on living their lives, the history keeps building up. In 4e, they have more books than all the other settings put together now. Much of the credit has to go to Ed Greenwood, but it's the other people who've managed to work within the world and build independent followings that really makes it feel like a living, breathing place, bigger than any one person's dreams and stories, no matter how powerful they become. You have to respect that degree of unrivalled success.
Speaking tongues: You know, I'm surprised Ed never did a detailed examination of Forgotten Realms linguistics in the magazine, especially as it's something both Tolkien and Gary did a reasonable amount of work on. I guess when you also have as many different races adding an orthogonal axis to the issue, the degree of complexity becomes too much of a headache. And so it proves here, as this article decides to assert human exceptionalism by saying they're the only ones with different languages from region to region, while demihumans and humanoids don't, quite possibly thanks to their gods. Wouldn't that mean human gods dislike us more than any other race? That doesn't seem right somehow. Ironically, that breaks my sense of verisimilitude more than each race naturally developing a single language each. So this feels like old skool extra rules that will merely be a pain in the ass, rather than improving your game. Bugger that for a game of let's pretend.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 3/7
The epic fantasy campaign continues: Where a real selling point of the Realms is that it's too big for a single story, Krynn consciously goes for the opposite approach - that it's small enough for everything to be tied together. Well, that's certainly a good way to differentiate your settings. Actually, this brings up an important point. While having too many active settings simultaneously may result in diminishing returns, having two or three and encouraging a rivalry between them can result in lots of free publicity, boosting sales for all involved. And if this rivalry involves multiple properties by the same company, then they win whoever wins. It's really very clever. But anyway, this continues their highly optimistic tone, saying that Krynn has a bright future, and the SAGA system will continue onwards. Depending on how far they plan their products ahead, they may well be lying through their teeth. It seems like the more forcedly cheery they act, the more cynical I become in response. Am I just being a big party pooper, or is this entirely justified in light of factual knowledge.
The gods of krynn: Our Dragonlance article for this issue is unfortunately mostly recycled. Admittedly, the old Dragonlance boxed set where the gods got fully detailed is out of print now. But still, it's not as if it's that hard to find. However, there are some new elements here. Firstly, they've had Tome of Magic spheres added to their portfolios, making their priests a little better rounded. And secondly, we have a backconversion of the new Mystic class from the SAGA system, finally giving people in that world the option of creating their own valid faiths which no-one can say aren't legitimate, save through debate and self-examination. (although they're less mechanically differentiated than they will be in 3e. ) So this certainly isn't useless, but does feel like it was an easy target, written because they weren't feeling particularly inspired, but needed to get something out there for this annual. If they weren't also trying to make it accessible to casual readers, the new info here could have been condensed down to a couple of pages. Not satisfying.
They came from outer space: Despite their attempts at positivity, Alternity's product schedule doesn't look particularly great. Two books for each setting? Even the smaller White Wolf gamelines like Changeling and KotE are getting more than that. Plus they're dropping the price of their corebooks, which you don't normally do unless you have a ton of backstock that isn't moving, or a new edition coming out soon. Plus they're publishing another book in electronic format, which sounds like a cool move embracing the future, but is also likely because they're not sure if it's going to sell, and not too optimistic. Well, embracing new technologies and distribution methods is a positive thing anyway. It's interesting that they did so much work to promote .pdfs, only to drop it all just as the rest of gaming was catching up. I suppose that's the thing about maintaining a significant management and staff turnover. There will be sudden and radical shifts in direction as a result.
The kindness of strangers: This is promising. Looks like this year's module is going to be an Alternity one. A full 16 pager too. Of course, that isn't really enough for a fully detailed open-ended adventure, so instead we have a combination of railroady bits and small site based exploration sections where the PC's actually can make some meaningful choices. It's not completely impossible to avoid being screwed over at the end, and losing the Macguffins, but it does seem fairly likely, with quite a specific sequence of actions required and a few lucky dice rolls as well. Experienced players who stay in paranoia mode might manage it, but if they're as novice as their characters are supposed to be, I don't rate their odds. Still, even if they lose, this is an invitation to further plot developments, so it's not all bad, and much of the railroading is of the behind the scenes, this plot point will happen whichever route you choose, which a good GM can keep the players from noticing. Overall, I'd rate this as medium, It's a little too keen on it's predetermined plot bits, but not totally without opportunities for the players to create their own story. That's better than a lot of adventures these days.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 4/7
Super Heroes Destroy Manhattan in 4 Hours: While Alternity's upcoming products list doesn't look particularly great, their Marvel ones are steaming ahead, with over a dozen little adventure books in comic format planned. Seems like the kind of thing that'll suffer diminishing returns fairly soon, but at least it'll mean you'll have no shortage of prefab adventures to get a game going. Actually, did this line end because of insufficient sales, or because Marvel ended the licence so they could do their own in-house game? It's not as clear as the situation with Alternity, and googling is not helpful. Maybe I'll find out in a later issue.
Mastering the Mystic Arts: Handling magic in the Marvel universe is a topic that deserves an article of it's own. Looking back, it seems that the FASERIP system did it in issue 100, which was another extra large special one. That's a pleasing correspondence, and gives me a chance to do a good compare and contrast. And as is often the case, it shows that back then they would just give you the mechanics, wheras now they're a lot more prone to filling out the article with waffle and pretty visuals which are nice to read, but slow you down if you try to reference things in play. There are a few bits of useful rules advice in here, but they're buried in lots of descriptive setting stuff which might be handy if you don't already know about the marvel universe, but what are the odds of that. As with his Dragonlance article earlier on, Stephen Kenson really isn't bringing his A game at all here, but reusing lots of already established material and adding little bits and pieces here and there. It's a hard life being a freelancer, and sometimes you need that paycheck.
Arcane Lore: Over the years, we've developed a certain formula for our spellbooks. The vast majority of them have involved the wizard being dead, or at least mysteriously disappeared, unless the spellbook is cursed, and released deliberately upon the world as part of an Xanatos gambit. Here we have a spellbook who's owner is presented in the present tense, as if he's still around and likely to be encountered. Which begs the question of how the spells are supposed to get out there. Maybe unlike most wizards, he's actually willing to share ideas. Not that many people will be buying, as this is a collection of slime themed spells. Prejudice is a terrible thing. Still, that means they're less likely to be rehashed, which is always a good thing this far along.
Dormancy sends slimes and oozes to sleep for a bit, letting you sneak past them without killing them, and leaving them for less ecologically concerned adventurers to hack through. Who says the bad guys are the ones ruining things?
Drop of Slime is a gruesome melf's acid arrow variant. It's not good for your equipment at all. Enjoy being able to put spells like that in routinely, for next year, that's all getting nerfed.
Slippery Skin gets you out of grapples and shackles. Frankly, something that also hurts the attackers would be preferable. Oh well, can't have everything with a 1st level spell.
Resist Slime makes the stuff slide off you. It does itch a bit though. Oh well, a little discomfort is worth not dying by conversion to slime.
Spore Cone is slightly less damaging than fireball, but since it messes up resurrection, I think that's a decent trade-off. Thematics can go a long way towards ensuring coolity.
Transmute Slime to Rock is another way of temporarily making a threat not a threat, that then bounces back a bit later. It really should be reversible, but isn't for some reason.
Volhom's Minute Missiles is another gross item destroying variant blasty attack. Another thing spreading rumours about will discourage people from attacking this guy.
Slime Guardian is another, more powerful one that surrounds you with something to take the blows. This is rather obvious, so it won't be good for a dinner engagement.
Volhom's Tentacle Arms is one of the central spells, getting a rather good illustration. It has multiple effects, but of course, impedes your spellcasting while in effect. Maybe combine with one of those spells that lets you grow extra arms.
Wall of Gel is another one with fairly interesting effects. It's not the most damaging magic wall spell, but it does have the interesting distinction of being mobile, which makes it look like a corridor-blocking ooze. Players may well choose to retreat rather than fight through that.
Gelatinous Form isn't quite as useful as gaseous form, but will let you look scary and get places you couldn't before. Mind you, at this level you can teleport, so you can get places quicker anyway.
Toxic Snare does damage, but also eliminates poison. Call it kill-or-cure. I suppose straight healing is still the one area wizards struggle at.
Slime Growth temporarily makes your minions really scary, if not quite in shambling mound leagues. Where's the spell that applies the gargantua template to everything?
Last Generation sterilizes a place. Handy to deal with quite a bit of this previous crap. You know, you could just become a defiler, and then you'd get this for free on top of everything else.
Summon Handmaiden brings a Yochol and her mates along. As usual, if not serving the cause of chaos and evil, they may turn on you. Or they might just do so for the lulz. Why are slime creatures with any intelligence so unpleasant. Stupid corruptive Jubilex, ruining it for everyone. :mutter mutter: :D Anyway, this is a pretty good collection, well tied into D&D's seamy history.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Once again they go with the more everyday items over the big flashy ones, with this selection of food, drink and shelter. Is this the kind of thing you have for a big celebratory issue? I have to say I'm a little disappointed in you.
Moonwater Gourds refill themselves with water on a daily basis if treated right. As ever, I am forced to examine them in comparison to the Decanter of endless water and pronounce them lacking.
Water Seeds produce springs if planted, but also have a complicated procedure that needs to be followed to work properly. Needs moar development to make user-friendly.
Water Witching Staves are another way of getting hold of water that follows a moderately fiddly procedure.
Sweet Bladders turn water into nutritious cream that fills all your dietary needs. Use quickly and regularly, for the cream will not only go off, but ruin the bladder if left to go sour. Man, these are easy to ruin by accident.
Stone Cheese, on the other hand, can be preserved nearly forever, and is really easy to cook, like a magical pot noodle. Hell, you could probably make something much like this in reality.
Everloaves also riff off a biblical trick and take it in a different direction. As long as it's left at least half full, it regenerates. This is another one you'll probably wind up ruining by accident at some point and regretting it.
A Satchel of Nourishment is another not so fiddly one. Just make sure it doesn't get damaged and keep eating the replenishing food up.
Centurybloom Trees give you tons of fruit regardless of conditions for 100 years before dying. The kind of thing you give to your home village after adventuring rather than keeping for yourself.
Tent Ribs get off the food theme and give us shelter instead. Magical temperature stabilisation is always handy. It can be easy to take air conditioning for granted.
Haven Seeds are yet another one that requires a specific procedure to use. As the name implies, you plant them right, they grow into a good bit of temporary accommodation. Just watch out for the long term ecological damage.
Pebble Walls are another laboursaver that still doesn't completely negate your need for materials and intelligent design thoughts. Looks like they're maintaining the strongly low key air throughout the article. This magic won't be solving all your problems with a wish and a wiggle of the nose.
What if the crackpots are right: Ahh, so this is where that extra page count really went. A 32 page Alternity Fast-Play game, the size of a full old school module. I think that may be the largest article they've ever done that wasn't divided up over multiple issues. While the previous fast-play games were designed for a single player, and in many cases would work just fine without a DM, this is actually pretty near a full adventure, although much of that is filled by the pregens and explanation of how the system works. Interestingly, it's more forgiving of attempts to explore the environment and try different ways of accomplishing your goal than the other adventure this issue, and I think I prefer it for that. It's certainly worth noting for posterity that they gave such a large portion of the issue to Alternity adventures, and more evidence that they really did like it within the company and try their best to get people to play it. If only they'd released this first instead of the earlier smaller and more linear attempts, they might have had a better shot. Or maybe if they'd released the Dark Matter setting a few years ago, before the X-files went downhill and bled away it's fanbase.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 6/7
Dragon's bestiary: Hmm. This is an interesting and different one. Troy Denning provides the statistical conversions for a whole bunch of unique creations from his own latest book. Similar to the Darklords of Ravenloft, Ghazneths are unique creatures formed when someone spectacularly betrays the country of Cormyr. Course, like Darklords, they're pretty much cursed with awesome, being essentially indestructible and immune to magic, plus having several cool abilities of their own. They seem perfectly designed to serve as recurring antagonists for an extended series, until someone finally finds a macguffin that can put them down for good. Even Elminster can't solve this little problem, which is rather pleasing. This skirts at the edge of fiaty cheese, but just about manages to stay in control, producing exceptional results. These may not be too easy to incorporate into your game, but as an example of how to construct flavourful NPC's with lots of survivability, and as writing, they are very good indeed.
Suzara the scold is the wife of the founder of Cormyr, who left him with the baby because she didn't like living out in the wilderness. In return, she got to spend the past 1,300 years locked in a tomb, and has the power to blight crops, age people and wither items. And she fully in tends to take advantage of that to ruin the Cormyr of today.
Boldovar the mad is a mental ex-monarch. Not too surprisingly, his powers cause paranoia, confusion and insanity in those around him as well. Even without them, he's pretty disconcerting and unpleasant company, but at least he doesn't have any big plans beyond his own amusement.
Merendil the Bloody tried to assassinate king Azoun I. Now she's a wasp-thing which can turn people against each other and a crowd into a riot. She'd rather like to succeed on the current king where she failed with his ancestor.
Melineth the grasping sold Suzail for 500 sacks of gold. Curiously, being locked away with them for 900 years has not diminished his greed. His powers are disease based, for no apparent reason.
Luthax the firey was a court wizard who wanted to overthrow the king and form a magocracy. Now he's a gargoyle thing which can cause volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. He still has all his wizardly powers too, making him a lot scarier than his relative HD would indicate.
Xanthon the baneful is a brand new ghazneth who hasn't had time to do any atrocities against the country, but not for lack of trying. His powers are also disease based, in his case getting insects and rodents to swarm and do his bidding. He may need more practice with them though.
Dungeon Mastery goes Marvel, as Stephen Kenson gives advice on running your game like a comic book. Apart from the visual element, this means pacing is quite different to a purely written book. More things happen simultaneously rather than consecutively, as you can have lots of elements in a panel, not all immediately obvious. They also have a greater tendency to snarling continuity, retcons, alternate universe stories, flashbacks, and other such complications, much of which arises because they don't have one consistent author, and the more popular characters have multiple comics running simultaneously. Perfect excuse to switch GM'ing duties regularly, and run with the emergent weirdness that comes from this. You can even encourage players to give feedback in the form of a letter to the editor (extra XP for commitment) So this seems to encourage switching things up quite a bit in an attempt to do genre emulation, which will hopefully keep players interested. It is indeed fairly interesting. After all, when they were doing the old Marvel-Phile, they were curiously light on general GMing advice, sticking mainly to specific characters. And rulesets have diversified quite a bit since then. So this is another attempt to make your game fun and different that's a reasonable success. Variety is crucial to sustaining interest, as I've said far too many times already, and this adds a decent bit of variety to the issue.
The ecology of the grey Ooze: Back to another set of characters we've seen before in here. The last time we saw Shandrilla and Javorik, they were running from the dread black pudding. This time, it's another amorphous slime that's largely impervious to conventional weaponry. Man, they just can't catch a break. This follows pretty much the same formula as their last instalment, with the creatures actions described in the relentless utilitarian fashion that befits their nature, and the adventurers bickering and panicking their way through the adventure, barely managing to survive. Still, at least this time they kill it, so hopefully they'll manage to level up sometime. In comparison with his last few, this one feels rather conservatively written, deliberately harking back to the previous instalment. Well, it's a special issue. Gotta go with the reliable crowd pleasers. Yawn. Afraid that kind of conservatism won't keep my interest.
Dragon Magazine annual 1999
part 7/7
Rogues Gallery: Troy Denning continues to tell us about the characters in his new novel. Still, as these are the heroes, I wouldn't be surprised if they're less interesting than the monsters. They certainly wont redefine the rules in the same way.
Tanalasta Obarskyr is the crown princess, trying hard to level up so she isn't caught with her pants down when the succession comes calling again. After all, to be screwed over and manipulated in one assassination plot can be considered bad luck. To be caught in another demonstrates incompetence that will not let you hold the throne long if you do get it. Fortunately, she has Vangerdahast to help her survive CR inappropriate encounters and get that practical experience quickly.
Rowen Cormaeril is the youngest son of a disgraced minor noble. He hasn't let this make him bitter, and is now working his way up through the purple dragons, hoping to get a decent commission. Since he's now 12th level, he really ought to get it sometime soon. But when have the novels followed the game rules?
Owden Fowley is a priest of Chauntea who guards an imprisoned unspeakable evil being underneath a remote mountain monastery. Not an obvious occupation for someone serving the god of the harvest. But given Helm's recent reputation, I can see why they'd want to sort it out themselves. As a good priest should, he may act nice, but he's nobody's fool.
Queen Filfaeril actually looks younger than her daughter from the way she's drawn. And is exceedingly similar statistically. The apple does not fall far from the tree. And since her husband is renowned for his philandering, she might not be completely averse to a little payback, possibly with the court wizard. The Realms really is a hotbed of sexual intrigue these days, isn't it. So yeah, this isn't as interesting as the Ghazneths, but it's still quite entertaining, and very revealing about the plot of the book. Now, when will they kill off some major characters for real without them being resurrected or cloned later?
Nodwick gets his most epic comic yet, as his crew tackle the dragonlance chronicles. Four pages of messing with someone else's railroad. Possibly the only group who deserve it.
Roleplaying Revivus: And so we finish off the special with another teaser for what the next year and edition hold. More action, more generally focussed material, more complex rules, more minis. They're nailing their colours to the wall, and they want things big, flashy and commercially successful. Charts and tables are so 80's. Niche products can get stuffed. And who wants to waste time drawing up big maps with multiple routes and secret bits for your dungeons? So yeah, once again they're making hard stands on a whole bunch of issues, and saying things that seem likely to cause flamewars. Which in the internet age, is good publicity. And as long as you convert most of the people, or create enough new fans that the holdouts are outnumbered, you have a positive result overall. Which I seem to recall they managed. You win this time, Wizards of the Coast. Next time you may not be so lucky.
This issue does stand out reasonably from the surrounding ones, but unlike issue 200, it does feel rather padded out, and could easily have lost a good 8-16 pages and still had the same amount of useful content. The overall air of self-congratulation also grates on my nerves quite a bit, particularly where I know they won't exactly follow up on their promises next year. Still, it has both some useful articles, and does reveal a surprising amount of further info on their plans for 3e. So as a lead-in to the new millennium it isn't bad, but it loses quite a bit with hindsight. The real spectacular may well come next gen con. So let's keep going, find out exactly when these promises are fulfilled or broken.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 1/7
97 pages(116) Well, the 90's is finally over, and the world didn't end after all. The y2k bug didn't crash all our computers, Jesus didn't come back, the stars didn't fall out of the sky. We can relax, stop it with all the retrospectives, and get on with our lives. Well, you can anyway. I've still got 8 more years of this to get through before I can put it to bed. Still, the page count has started to shrink again, and I know it does so some more over the next few years, so this should take considerably less time than the last decade. I hope I'll have the energy and enthusiasm to play around a bit more as the finishing line comes into view. But not today. This month is yet another drow heavy underdark special. Surely we have enough of those for this edition. I don't seem to recall you doing a special for deserts or swamps yet, and they're pretty dangerous too. What more do you have to say on this topic?
Scan Quality: Poor. Many pages missing, and most of the interior ones are in black and white or washed out although the original ones weren't. Some pages placed out of order or repeated.
In this issue:
Stats for for santa claus. Ha. Very amusing. :rolleyes: And so very very VERY scooped. (Issue 44)
The wyrms turn: What distinguishes the underdark from a regular dungeon crawl? Dave thinks about this, and decides that it's the open-endedness and irregularity of the layout. It's not divided into neat levels, 10 foot corridors, and easily definable entrances and exits to rooms, and monsters that stay still and don't interact with anything else. It's dungeoneering with the safety wheels off. Which is a reasonable enough statement. You can meet entire cities of monsters, and there's no way you're fighting through that. Despite superficial similarities, it really does require quite different tactics. You should feel quite justified in being a bit scared. It may be a game to you, but it's a matter of life and death for your characters. I'm not going to dispute anything he says here.
D-Mail: Our first letter is from someone shocked, shocked I say at the idea of mixing horror and sci-fi. You know, some of the biggest properties in sci-fi like Alien and Terminator mix horror and sci-fi. I think you need to stop getting attached to artificial genre labels.
A request to cut down their themed stuff a bit, and give the ecologies a break, as they're oversaturating them. Reduce the things that are least likely to be repeated? That's a request I'm a bit iffy with.
Some basic little questions about the wererat cult from issue 264. James Wyatt didn't edit himself strictly enough. If you're going to detail new powers, make sure the character who's supposed to have them legally can.
And finally, we have someone scared that making Greyhawk the default campaign in 3e means the Realms is going to be neglected. Uh.... no. Not at all. If anything, they're going to get considerably more attention. It's all a bit ironic really. The planes will also get a reasonable amount of support. Other settings though? Oh boy, there's a can of worms.
Nodwick gets a chance to defuse the situation before it turns fatal. Will the party take it?
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 2/7
Forum wonders what level you actually consider the cut-off point for high level. Is name level where you peter out, or is everything below 20th purely mundane? This is one I'm sure will vary widely.
Bryan Cooper reminds us that there is a substantial distinction between players and their characters. You shouldn't lie to players, but you should lie to characters frequently. You must maintain trust OOC, otherwise the game will cease to be fun.
Jacob Schwartz shows us how evil characters can work together to great effectiveness. A little cruelty and a united front, and the world will fall at your feet. Squeeze it like an orange and drink the sweet sweet juice.
Jason F. Smith makes the point that most creatures, even chaotic evil ones, will band together to deal with a common threat. The Tanar'ri's organisations are almost entirely based on that principle. Necessity makes for unpleasant bedfellows.
Justice McPherson (awesome name) gives us his method for improving ability scores as you gain levels. A certain amount of randomness is involved. Well, it could have been taken up.
Profiles goes to allcaps this time. But you can still tell the F is even more capitalised. Mutter mutter :rolleyes: Anyway, last month we had a book editor. This month, we have a games editor, Miranda Horner. Another person who followed their dreams, and after a few diversions, including a brief stint at West End Games, managed to make it into TSR. She's tried her hand at a bit of writing, but found she prefers figuring out how to make other people's ideas the best they can be. A viewpoint that I'm coming to understand. It certainly involves a lot less pressure on you than pouring out your heart and soul, and then seeing it twisted into horrible shapes by the meddling of executives. And as long as you enjoy your job, chances are you're producing better work as well.
Up on a soapbox: Hey hey! After giving contributions to the 97 & 99 annuals, it looks like Gary's been persuaded to come back to the regular magazine. Man, with Profiles, the Bestiary and the Bazaar making regular appearances, it's just like old times. Only now he has a degree of ironic self awareness about the floridity of his prose style. Like trying to reclaim the term Fanboy from it's pejorative status. Which totally didn't work, as we know a decade later. As was often the case before, he presents a valid case, but in a hyperbolic fashion using elaborate vocabulary that makes his writing instantly identifiable even if it wasn't signed. You know, I'm surprised more people don't imitate that form of writing. It's just so much fun to write in. So this is a very welcome return, promising the return of the kind of controversy that the past few years have been pretty light on. Although he may not be wielding the same kind of power he used too, he's still got plenty of respect. When he says stuff, people will listen and take it seriously, even if he possibly didn't intend it to be serious. Let the responses come, and may they be snarky in turn!
Alternative underdarks: Or how you could make the land beneath your feet just that little bit weirder. Although the one ruled by Duergar would actually be comparatively boring and well organised, but hey, having a monolithic threat that could burrow up any time, anywhere does tend to focus the mind somewhat. This is one of those articles that has some nice ideas, but isn't long enough, and doesn't back up it's ideas with mechanical support. Although given the mechanical clunkers James Wyatt has made in previous articles, maybe that's actually a bullet dodged. So this is a pretty mediocre way to start things off.
Countdown to 3rd edition: 7 months to go. Ah yes, the enormous upgrades the cleric got in 3e. While on one hand part of their design goals was making the classes more equal, on the other, they recognised that priestly sorts were considered the least cool of the classes, so they intentionally made clerics slightly overpowered. Their spell selections and granted powers are no longer vastly variable in power from god to god, which is a good thing, but they now get to choose from pretty much their entire spell selection at will, which isn't so good, as said spell selection is now pretty much as powerful as a wizard's, plus they still have the advantages of better combat skills, better armour, and far less limited weapon selections than before. They might still be the support class, but they have no difficulties stepping out of that role and doing the wizard or fighter's job, quite possibly better than they can with the right buffs. This was probably not the perfect way to do it. Still, at least it defuses most accusations of power creep, as you can compare nearly any new base or prestige class from the supplements to a straight cleric or druid progression and find it wanting. That's pretty helpful in it's own way, and certainly a big difference from previous editions.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 3/7
By any other name: And I thought they'd run out of steam on these naming convention articles. I guess that's another demonstration of how popular the Drow are. You know the formula by now. Short descriptive blurb, and a whole load of tables to roll on to determine personal and house names. Not really anything I can get excited about, positively or negatively.
The city of sunken spires: An upside down city built within and around a massive cavern full of stalactites? Awesome! That's just the kind of thing you should be filling the underdark with. It means you're protected from monsters (and PC's) which can't climb or fly, you have spectacular views and an easy form of waste disposal. (in the short to medium turn, unless there's scavengers down there.) Course, getting around may be a challenge, but if you can train giant spiders like the drow or duergar, that's very solvable. So this is a Forgotten Realms location expansion that thinks quite a bit about how to make itself both interesting and logistically feasible, with plenty of details on population demographics, ecology, interactions with surrounding settlements, potential adventure hooks, NPC's, religion, even equipment available. It's high density, well focussed, offers plenty of challenges, and doesn't forget to keep in a bit of whimsy and humour. Ed hasn't been going it alone for a long time, and this shows again how good some of his assistants have become in their own right, able to fit stuff in that matches his tone perfectly. And so the Realms gets a little further filled in, long past the point I would have expected them to stop.
PC Portraits: Drow don't work particularly well in black and white, curiously. You need a particularly clever artist to create highlights on a basic skin colour of jet black and still allow for proper expressiveness. Which is why this one doesn't even try and instead goes for greywashing them like issue 214. Let the cries of fantasy racism continue. Actually,. let the cries of fantasy sexism continue as well, since there's 9 male ones, but only 5 female ones, and a larger variety of ages and outfits in the male ones. Still, at least we get a little shirtlessness for the fangirls, so it's not totally lacking in progressiveness. But you've got to try a bit harder if you want to genuinely walk the walk of an alien culture where many values are inverted from ours.
Denizens of the underdark: The frequency of new races in the magazine continues to be way up as we hit the final stretch of the edition. Here's some more creatures to lurk in the darkness, and possibly be persuaded to come into the light and take class levels.
Diopsids are intelligent beetle people with a whole bunch of interesting racial quirks, some of which are advantageous (including the usual multi-weapon fighting bonuses also enjoyed by thri-kreen) and some which aren't. (short lifespan, can't use many worn items, widely spaced eyestalks mean they have to walk sideways in narrow tunnels) They aren't evil, but there are some rather good reasons why they will tend to be hostile towards surface dwellers at first, and PC's will be exceptions. They definitely seem like they could be fun in the hands of the right player.
Sapromnemes are even stranger, essentially being fungi that consume the memories of the dead creature they grow from. This leads to a whole bunch of interesting plot ideas, as it allows you to bring back characters that died and got left behind in the underdark, and then have them face a whole bunch of challenges adapting to their new bodies. That definitely sounds like a fun chance to stretch your roleplaying muscles to me. They can float, and manipulate objects with their tentacles, but they have a serious lack of general body strength that once again limits their regular equipment.
Zygodacts diverge even further from earthly bioforms, with their closest literary relatives probably being Pierson's Puppeters. They have two head/hand combo limbs, with eyes on stalks, and four dextrous little appendages surrounding their mouths, and a shelled body which they can withdraw into. This means they make great wizards, as innate heavy armour + the possibility of casting two verbal only spells in a round is pretty awesome. On the other hand, they can't climb ropes, play video games, or do a lot of other things that require two hands at once. So it won't always be easy having them in your party, but at the same time, it could once again be rather cool. They would definitely be a good contribution if you were to try the weird underdark variant from earlier in the magazine.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: The knights touch by Nancy Varian Berberick. A chance to see Dalamar actually being smart and knowledgable, instead of Elminster & Mordenkainen's buttmonkey? Sign me up. Set before the Chaos Wars, this nonetheless shows him being not exactly heroic, but definitely on the side of the world as it is, and willing to put some serious work in to protect it. But still, he's only a side character, the real focus is on a mother and her son, their relationship, and the tragedies that have happened to them in the past. The desire of the young to be heroic, vs the fears of their parents, who may well have seen their siblings die for their ambitions. So this is very much designed to tug at the heartstrings, and I think it succeeds, especially the final lines. After all the bad Krynn fiction I've had to deal with, that's incredibly welcome.
Nodwick goes to white plume mountain. And all the good toys get him. This one was silly enough anyway.
Dragon's bestiary: Greg Detwiler again goes on about creating monsters that form an ecology, and make sense in a dungeon environment. We get it already! Logical extrapolation of capabilities. We can do that in our sleep by now. Cool down.
Tunnelmouth dwellers, like gelatinous cubes, are just the right size to block a typical 10x10 corridor, and advance along it swallowing everything in it. Ommity nom nom. better hope there's a side tunnel or some other way of getting around it, because it's not nearly as dangerous from the rear and has trouble turning round in tight spaces.
Stalking catfish are even bigger, and if you touch their whiskers, they will strike. Still, there's weeks of eating on one if you can catch them, so if you're stuck down there in the dark, there are worse choices for surviving on. Lots of light is handy here, for they are slow moving out of water and you could steer well clear that way.
Glitterworms can disguise themselves as a lode of precious metal to attract adventurers, then spew acid all over them. As usual, trust nothing down there. These three do seem to be rather in the gygaxian tradition, but with a more IC logical slant to their quirks. I think that counts as a modest success.
Marvel super heroes: The Beyonder is our subject this month. As with some previous characters, he's used to illustrate a point: in this case the perils of omnipotent NPC's in your campaign. While a DM theoretically has ultimate power, if no-one wants to play the game, it means nothing. And if they're not only omnipotent, but also prone to doing whimsical crap for whatever reason, players can grow to loathe them very quickly. Using them to tell an Aesop may work in cartoons, but chances are, your players won't draw the desired conclusion, and instead go into paranoia turtling mode trying to prevent further annoyances. So a valuable lesson here, which could in itself be taken in several different ways. Still, I think I'll stick to my policy of avoiding deus ex machinas, and if the players screw up my plans, rolling with it and seeing where it goes.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Yet again they prove that the writers are chasing each other's tails these days. Magical eyes? Issue 240, just over 2 years ago. Ok, most of these are worn ones, rather than actual physical replacements, but it is once again a demonstration that they are willing to return to topics much more quickly. I do not find myself optimistic.
Cats eyes give you night vision and deal with detection attempts. Very useful for a cat burglar, obviously.
The Circlet of the Bat gives you sonar. This obviously has different nuances from regular and infravision, but lets you see in the dark quite handily. Have fun reading up on the things you can perceive with it.
Evil Eyes are made by hags and let you curse people. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, as is the case far too often these days.
Eyes of Spying are little winged things that you see through and send exploring. The kind of thing you squash with great brutality if you see it flitting around, for that never bodes well.
Talisman Eyes ward off evil spirits and curses. You should never create a problem without figuring out a defence for yourself if someone else tries it on you. Superstition is entirely reasonable in a fantasy world.
Eyed Rings let the wearer see through them, essentially acting as a periscope. Now you can get that rat in the wall. Tee hee.
Eyes of Fury glow red and turn you into a berserker. This is obviously a mixed blessing, as with any fury based power. Watch you don't hurt your buds.
Eyes of Glaring make you really intimidating. A fairly nebulous benefit, but not a bad one. You can often use a little social edge, and D&D doesn't give you that too often.
Eyes of Infravision give you exactly that. A power that is getting a little overcommon. I guess the demihumans in the party are a constant reminder to people they're missing out on something cool. Funny to think we're not far off from getting rid of infravision altogether.
Eyes of Soulgazing let you know someone's alignment and important personality traits at a glance. Should save a few minutes conversation.
Hypnotic Eyes trance and suggestion you, as you would expect. Again, ssssoooo overdone. Make it a core product next time.
Ioun Eyes are an ioun stone that grants 360 degree vision from it's orbit around your head. Now that is pretty handy, especially as it's also up and down and semimobile. Motion sickness from the constant orbiting might be a problem though.
Lenses of Light Shielding are a third way of allowing darkdwelling things to come above ground, after the parasol and shades. It's so valuable, everyone's copying it! Next.
Lenses of Second Sight let you see fae creatures and occasional visions of the future. This will probably bring up more adventures than it prevents. Just remember, they'll still prank you if they know you can see them.
The ecology of the carrion crawler: Shandrilla and Javorik get to face another oogie dungeon denizen in quick succession. At least this one isn't amorphous. Hell, they aren't even able to inflict damage on a combat timescale. But it still has quite substantial screwage capabilities. Still, since they are brainless, you'd think a group of PC's would be able to outsmart them and use them to their advantage. And they do, just about. But, really, a thief and an illusionist ought to be up in the city, swindling money from noblemen and engaging in acts of swashbuckling derring-do, not down in the dungeon where more than half the enemies are immune to their powers. Still, as usual, Johnathan has put his research in, figuring out how to use real world details to fill out a decidedly alien creature. He's still more than pulling his weight around here.
The new adventures of Volo: Wyrms of the North may have ended, but Volo is inexplicably still popular enough to get a new regular column. So you'll have to get used to being called gentles, and having Elminster thumb his nose at him behind his back. Ed takes great pleasure in playing up how intolerable the little twat is, and how inaccurate his reports may well be. (all the better for you to change them, my dear) Well, it keeps them entertaining as reading, even if you don't plan to use this stuff.
We kick off with a whistlestop tour of the various elven kingdoms of the Realms. Many of them are rather hostile to humans, (or at least to Volos :p ) but most have some interesting stuff to eat, drink, buy, or wear. A surprising number of them are aquatic, once again demonstrating the breadth and depth of Ed's worldbuilding, and that there's still areas of Toril as yet uncovered by sourcebooks. It also shows up the differences between various elven cultures, with their levels of isolationism and technology varying quite a bit. He took in the monoculture lesson and made plans to fix it long ago.
Along with that, it seems his appetite for creating new spells is also undiminished. Spellshine lets you detect spells created by a particular individual, allowing you to perform more refined magical detective work. Since so many elves are spellcasters, the uses of that in their society is pretty obvious. So Ed is once again producing work with both a greater sense of fun than other writers, and stuff that would logically turn up in a magic-heavy world where people keep refining their knowledge of how to use it and counter other people's uses. I'd like to be sick of him by now, but he keeps winning me back. Amazing, isn't it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 6/7
Dungeon Mastery comes to an end, it's scattershot advice having been eclipsed by Dungeoncraft's sustained continuity heavy planning over the past year. We finish up with some advice on different kinds of rewards you can give your players beyond yet more gold and magical items. A topic I'm pretty sure we've had before. Yup, not that long ago in issue 217. And looking at them, this one comes off substantially inferior, as it's shorter, has fewer ideas for various kinds of rewards, and doesn't have the nanofiction and random tables adding flavour and increasing it's ease of use like the previous one. Even the illustrations are inferior, although there's more of them. So this definitely falls into the category of redundant rehash, which is never a good note to end a column on. I suppose that's a good reason for the cancellation though. After all, if you end on a high note, people will complain and want it back. And then you'll have to think of some more ideas to fill things up. So this is very unsatisfying. Oh well, they've already started a couple of new columns this issue, I guess someone had to end up on the chopping block. :(
Eye in the sky: Spy Satellites are controlling your mind! Get the tinfoil hats out now! You know, that doesn't actually seem too dated. Of course we know now that the government doesn't need spy satellites to access all your data. They just lean on the mobile phone companies to give them backdoor access to their servers and record all your texts and calls with no trouble save the tedious legal challenges when they forget about the paperwork. Who needs conspiracy theories when we have pretty well confirmed conspiracy facts like that. Your only real defence is that while the amount of electronic data flowing through the air has increased by orders of magnitude, the number of people to sift through and interpret it hasn't. But anyway, this is a fun little Alternity article letting you know just what they can and can't do at this point in time, and what they could do if you were running a modern day conspiracy campaign. It's pretty much system free, so it could be applied to other games such as Conspiracy X or the World of Darkness without too much trouble, and has some nicely quirky adventure hooks. It's a string to your bow that's quite useful, especially as it's not easy to get the resources to affect the satellites directly, which gives the players something to work towards.
Dungeoncraft: More advice on how to create interesting challenges for the players here, presented in an easy to digest format. And here, he once again gives advice that i strongly approve of. Make challenges that have multiple solutions. Reward them for their success. Pace your challenges, with a mix of big and little ones. Tailor your challenges to the magic they have, and don't cockblock them when they use it creatively. In fact, you should place challenges for which their spells are essential. This of course involves knowing what your PC's stats are, but what DM would be dumb enough to not keep track of that. ;) Work with the system, not against it. Absolutely no complaints here, either with the format or the message. Carry on then.
Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000
part 7/7
Sage advice: Can you use Tenser's destructive resonance to explode a dagger in a bott(ho)le full of glass shards and make a bomb. How much would it hurt (No. Just no. Skip disapproves of this kind of creativity, as you should know by now. )
What happens if multiple kender play tag team taunt on a battlerager. (they get chopped up into little pieces, one by one. Good riddance. )
Can Restoration restore damage to any ability score (yes)
The values of Gems required for spells often don't synch up with the actual value ranges for that gem type in the treasure table. ( Oh, how inconvenient. Frankly, Skip's amazed you're playing the rules that closely as written. Figure out a workaround. No-one ever said being a wizard was going to be easy. )
How easy is it to wake someone under the influence of a Nap spell (Fairly. A bit of violence should do the trick.)
Does loremasters arcane lore replace bards standard lore. Do spells still go mad if you fail your check (yes and no. It's meant to be an improvement.)
How does truthear work. (If they diliberately say an untruth, you know it. Lies of ommission work just fine. )
How does the healing proficiency interact with natural healing (they stack. Woo. Just you wait until you see what next edition does with healing. You're gonna be happy.)
What do you mean by needing both healing and herbalism to treat swallowed or touched poisons (I think this falls under plain english, do you speak it muthafucka. Skip suggests you increase your basic reading comprehension. Yes, that does mean you'll need to spend most of your proficiency slots if you want to be a doctor. )
How much does contact cost for creatures above 20 HD. (Basic extrapolation. Is that so hard? Skip thinks Skip'll cap you, just to set an example and make sure skip doesn't keep getting stupid questions. )
Is there a limit to the number of languages a druid can speak (Not really. Useful trick, that. )
Can you dispel a clone (not once it's fully grown.)
What's the difference between a mace and a morningstar. (The spikes. Pretty big difference actually.)
How long does a changestaff last. (Until destroyed. They're a selfkeyed magic item.)
How do you refuel a steam mechanical. (Lotsa gems.)
Do backstabs interact with critical hits. (Add multiples, not multiply them out. It keeps things from getting out of hand too quickly. Skip will lobby to make that standard next edition. )
The stats for familiars are different for the same animal as monsters. Which do I use. (The PHB one. We said familiars are different from normal animals. Didn't you ever wonder how. Well, the answer is staring you right in the face. )
KotDT fix their colour scheme. But unfortunately, they can't fix their bad party dynamics or metagaming. Dragonmirth falls afoul of 'elf & safety. Shop keep are still full of christmas cheer and spirit.
Coming attractions: Finally, they get rid of the TSR part in a way that sticks. As the new edition approaches, they finally start to phase out that name entirely. About time, really. But anyway. AD&D continues to sell planar stuff under the generic banner courtesy of Chris Pramas in the hopes it'll boost sales. Vortex of madness & other planar perils. A third bunch of miscellaneous adventures. 4 if you count the 1E one. All around the watchtower, strange worlds revolve.
The Realms does what Dragonlance did a little while ago. Drizzt's first trilogy gets an updated omnibus edition. Just make it available online, so you don't have to worry about stuff going OOP ever again.
Dragonlance gets Dalamar the Dark. Another prequel, as this takes us back to when he was just trying to become a wizard. See him choose the path of evil for the first time. Dear oh dear. Oh well, we wouldn't have got the Wizards Three without him.
Alternity gets a double bill. StarDrive gets a System guide to Ageis, a more zoomed in setting book, while Dark Matter gets The Killing Jar, their first adventure. Quite possibly their only adventure at this rate.
Marvel Super Heroes uses a terrible pun for their title. Spider-man: Mysterio's Ways. A one-on-one adventure book (haven't had one of those for ages) that you don't need a GM for. Interesting experiment. Wonder how it'll do.
What's new has a whole selection of familiar looking monsters, plus some cross-promotion.
The generic material is pretty hit and miss here, but the Forgotten Realms stuff is really rather good, showing that the line continues to grow and rejuvenate itself while the other worlds gradually whither away. Strange how that's worked out. Meanwhile, the preparations for the edition change continue to pick up momentum, taking up a little more of the issue, while the number of general products drops as they gear up, making the magazine a more significant part of the company's output. Interesting times, at least when they're not rehashing overdone topics. Lets hope their editors pick only the best articles from their backlog for the last half a dozen issues.
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. Ok, we've had some bad covers in our time, but I think this one wins the awards for most unintentionally hilarious, and worst compositing. The little girl in particular looks completely out of place in her supposed environment. And that skull looks like an enlarged miniature, if that makes any sense. It's all very mockable. But anyway, they shift up another gear in their edition change preparations. For the next few months, all their issues are bumper sized, as they still have plenty of 2e material that they want to get out. It's time for bargain sales, special offers, and general clearance behaviour so when the next edition hits, it'll be a clean slate. I'll wager they're not accepting freelancer submissions anymore either. So we'll have to see what's getting released, and what winds up on the cutting room floor.
Scan Quality: Excellent, no index.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: This month's editorial is on the subject of keeping the same campaign world, but trading DM's regularly. It's an excellent way to avoid burnout, and keep things fresh as long as you make sure the DM doesn't favouritise their own character while they're running. This is one that I've done personally, and I can attest to it's effectiveness, with the campaign in question lasting about 8 years with various personnel changes. Obviously it works best in episodic games, where you won't always be facing the same adversaries and plot, and PC's don't always stick together, and you do have to make a little extra effort with continuity. But like the related idea of sharing GM duties out, having the moderator and the guy running the adversaries, or having a guest star playing the villain, it takes a lot of the pressure off the role that otherwise requires the most work by far. This deserves to get a full article, not be squeezed into the editorial where many people'll skip over it. Do eeeet!
D-Mail: We start off with a letter worried about Greyhawk not getting as much coverage in the next edition. Well, see, if they're being taken over by the RPGA, then Polyhedron would be the sensible place to look. We still want to get readership up on that so we don't have to kill it off.
We follow up with one praising their recent Ravenloft articles and asking for more. It's safe to say you'll see at least one every year, and probably a whole lot more. For all that they're trying to cut down on settings, horror is such a big market they can't ignore it.
Next we have one asking for some less fighty spaceships for Alternity. Sorry, they're trying to concentrate on the shiny stuff. It's not like AD&D, where they're running out of new ideas, so they're filling in the boring setting stuff just because they need to write something.
Some questions about the Earthstokers article that settles one rules confusion, but not all of them. Still needs another editing pass.
A question about the 3e AC system from someone who's cautiously positive. Don't worry about it. After a few sessions, it'll feel pretty intuitive.
A request for moar guns! Unlike the civvie spaceships, I think it's safe to say they see the money in providing that.
A request for more Alternity articles in general. Ok. For the moment, anyway.
One I was very much expecting. Someone saying the new designs for the 3e characters are impractical and favor style over utility. You'd be surprised what can be practical and still look good if designed right. Course, that still requires pretty competent designers, and at least moderate amounts of technology.
Praise for the return of What's New. I don't think you'll see many disagreeing with that.
And finally, a pop culture reference correction. Even a simple internet search would solve this problem before it even began. You do have those now, you know. I don't know.
Piffany reveals she's not as stupid and innocent as she acts in Nodwick. Like most character development around here, we shall never speak of this again.
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 2/7
Forum: Nikki Johnson finds IRC is a far better medium to actually roleplay than MUDs. The more mechanics there are for XP and other rewards to happen independently of a DM, the less people will give a shit about getting into a character and talking for the pleasure of it.
Jack Pinckert finds computers are really speeding up his play experience, especially now there are so many D&D products on CD. rules are available at a touch of a button, far less tedious page flipping. Assuming you know what you're looking for, anyway.
John C. Campbell thinks the magic system had better get a revamp in 3e, and the artwork had better not continue it's downward slide from the revised corebooks. Well, I suppose that depends if you like belts or not. :p
Steve Rees is very much in favor of using minis, and also building terrain for them to adventure upon. He's built tons of stuff, and had great fun using it. More power to him.
Jeff Myrom also likes using minis, but not as much. They should be an aid for positioning, not a substitute for imagination. Spending hours on painting one could be better used for coming up with new scenarios.
Andrew Branstad is pleased by what he's seen of the changes to 3e so far. If the rest lives up to this, it'll be a huge improvement in his opinion. Yay! Happy customers!
Brian Libby wants a more MA based campaign, and wonders how to implement that. There's so many books, how am I to know which ones to pick? Roll on the reboot.
Patrick Curtin gets the special privilege of a sidebar all to himself, being the premier reader's response. He thinks it's important to give characters something to fight for beyond just money and fame, particularly if they're good. They really ought to be actually helping people to justify that.
Up on a soapbox: Gary continues to tackle the thorny question of how we label ourselves. We've been labelled in unflattering terms, and then taken steps to appropriate and recontextualise them. What's particularly amusing is when you simultaneously have some people within the subculture using these terms as terms of insult because they look down on them because they don't consider their particular interests as cool, while others are using it as an ironic term of endearment. The parallels with racism and religious discrimination are obvious, and show humanity's ability to subdivide to ridiculous degrees and create reasons for conflict. It's all pretty amusingly pointless, really, especially when there are more pressing concerns in the world everyone has to deal with. Why can't we all learn to get along, and just ignore each other where our interests don't intersect. But we still all agree pedophiles are bad, right? I'd hate to find that fashion suddenly changed when I wasn't paying attention and the ancient greek approach had become popular again. So anyway, this continues to be entertaining and thought-provoking, and appears to have a larger plan that'll lead somewhere interesting. Like Dungeoncraft, this definitely has the potential to stick around for a good few years without getting tiresome.
ProFiles: Bruce Cordell. Now there's a name that has yet to go on to produce their greatest work, as he would later go on to become the grand master of psionics in 3rd edition. Not that he hasn't been busy, producing stuff like the Illithiad, Killing Jar, two of our recent Return to adventures, and, unfortunately, Die, Vecna Die! :spits: He's another of our scientific types, applying logical principles to decidedly nonlogical ends, such as wrestling, and having fun in general. They also change the format this issue, adding a bunch of quickfire questions to the prose, which is definitely the kind of thing which helps you get into the minds of the interviewee. Plus it's easier to make smartass comments in and about that format. I approve.
Wizards live: Promotion time again! Only this time you can be personally involved. They're setting up a whole bunch of chatrooms and scheduled online events where you can talk to the game designers personally. The wonderful connecting power of the internet, everybody! Well, it's definitely an area where WotC always was, and still is a huge improvement over TSR. And embracing new technologies and making it possible to get to know the writers personally is pretty cool. It has been pretty interesting to be able to talk to some of the original writers over the course of this thread. So this is a topic that is worth mentioning, and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Now gitchore asses over there and get flaming! Make them work to earn their keep!
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 3/7
Countdown to 3rd edition. 6 months to go: Now, while Wizards do get some changes in 3e, they aren't on the same magnitude as Clerics. 0th level spells make them less problematic at low level, and schools are no longer arranged in an opposition diagram that I found thoroughly counterintuitive. (why would the two main combat schools be opposed? Or conjuration and divination, which are very thematically complimentary. ) The interesting changes - counterspelling, familiars and metamagic, are less significant. Familiars are still regularly ignored, and in later games, substituted for some other power, and I have never seen counterspelling come up in any game I played. Only metamagic feats really caught the public imagination, with tons of variant ones appearing in various splatbooks, and contributing to making all spellcasting classes more twinkable. So while they remain one of the most powerful classes overall, and lack the weaknesses they had at low level before, they haven't been as radically upgraded as clerics and druids. Still quite capable of stealing other people's niches though.
Ill gotten gains: The last time we got a full article on taxation was issue 95, where Arthur Collins had quite an amusing take on how adventurers and taxation relate to one-another, with others in issue 36 and 74. So this is one final visit to that bit of old skool realism before the edition change. Adventurers shouldn't simply be able to accumulate wealth unimpeded. There ought to be plenty of people trying to remove their money from them by means legitimate and devious when they get back to civilisation, and cool things for them to spend it on. Some might even turn a profit if you invest properly and don't get swindled. This falls into the useful but dry category, especially when compared to the more playful writings of over a decade ago. This really is an area where a more playful and less verbose style of writing would help the medicine go down.
What do you know?: What is the default character capable of, without spending any points on knowledge of an area? Now that's an interesting question, and one that can vary hugely from system to system based on how granular the skill lists are, and how many points you get to spend. In D&D, that means you probably need reasonable general competence that isn't covered by your proficiencies. Which is exactly what this article is about, mostly collecting stuff from obscure parts of the corebook and various supplements which describe what the odds of success an untrained person has at various basic tasks. Which is a strange little topic for an article, but not one they've done before, and one which could come in handy if you have the magazine to hand, but not a ton of books, and need to settle a rules dispute. So this might actually be worthwhile, particularly if you have it indexed on your computer. It's certainly informative as a way of testing how your default game assumptions measure up to the Rules As Written. That's interesting from an anthropological point of view.
The Armory Annex: Some more weapons? Oh, do go on. We always need a little something to keep wizards from pulling so far ahead that they're out of sight. Unfortunately, the problem here is that there just aren't as many viable weapon shapes as there are spells, so it's a lot harder to keep from repeating yourself. And indeed, I can definitely pinpoint nearly half of these as appearing in various 2e sourcebooks, and wouldn't be surprised if I'd missed more, given just how vast 2e is. So this another case where they're simply running out of ideas that haven't been used before. Sorry, but this isn't particularly great use of their remaining time.
Before the Bow: And they continue in the same vein with some more missile weapons, which again are mostly collected from existing sourcebooks. So this is something of a look back, compiling and maybe updating the info from a whole bunch of sources. That's not totally without value after all, especially when some of these are from 1e, and never appeared in 2e before. Seems like the kind of thing which deserves it's own book though, a best of 2e sourcebooks, just collecting all the useful crunch that's reasonably generic, and leaving out all the setting stuff. After all, the magazine still isn't really enjoying the sales it used too, and the monthly format makes the insights it delivers feel more transient than if they were in an actual book. Seeing a retrospective that is itself rather dated now feels doubly dated. Not the best use of their extra space.
Secret of the brotherhood of true flame: Oooh, an Al-Qadim article. The brotherhood of the true flame were one of the big villains of the setting, and were responsible for more than a few devious plots in the published adventures. So this could be quite cool. Unfortunately, it turns out to be setting light, and mainly just another collection of magical items and spells you could really use anywhere. Another case of their current editorial policy causing them to fill an already over-saturated niche further. Many of them are fire based too, which is already a disproportionately popular topic for books and articles. And on further examination, this collection tends towards the underpowered compared to similar spells of the same level. (which I now have a lot to reference. ) So again, this isn't really adding much to my options, any more than another angsty Drow rebel would. Less filler please.
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: The python king's treasure by Gregory Keyes. Fool Wolf's life is once again full of highs and lows, love, betrayal, feast, starvation, and repeated near death experiences. It's not that he can't catch a break, but something will come along sooner or later to screw it up. That's the life of the classical adventuring scoundrel, always in and out of trouble, never getting to settle down. In the meantime, we do get to find out some more interesting stuff about his world, and the way spirits and humans relate in it. It's not all one-sided deals where they bind or possess one another, there are oaths that are sworn for mutual benefit, and other long-term relationships. So this is pretty cool, especially as he solves his problems with brains, rather than unleashing raw power whenever he gets in a jam, and isn't totally a slave to the whims of fate and manipulative spellcasters. His adventures are worth a few more watches.
PC Portraits: NPC's is this month's theme. Which frankly is so vague a concept as to not be one at all. What really distinguishes PC's from NPC's in terms of appearance? If this is anything to go by, it's not being quite as attractive on average, which is a fitting indictment on the wish fulfilment fantasies of many players. The heads do have odd proportions in this one, and tend to be quite small compared to their necks. But there is a decent variety anyway. Who's to say they can't serve their intended purpose.
Arcane Lore: Back to Oerth for a named spell journal, where the history is if anything more important than the spells within. As with far too many journals, a trail of people killing each other for the stuff within is a notable feature of the overall thing. It all feels both formulaic and insubstantial. There's only a couple of spells, and they get big colourful sidebars detailing them. Truly a triumph of style over substance.
Lightning Serpent is actually quite good for a 1st level spell, as it may not be that accurate, but it keeps on attacking independently. One of these near the start of the battle'll add to your offense decently.
Kieren's Curse Ward lets you piss off gypsies and break into ancient tombs with substantially greater smugness. Shoulda had that a long time ago. Course, you can bet Ravenloft dark powers'll blow through that just like they do for all the other supposed countermeasures. Stay out of Ravenloft, kids!
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Round and round we go, with another set of items that are both boon and pain. We had this in issue 263. They aren't even trying to maintain variety now, are they. They're just burning through whatever they have in the slush pile before it's obsoleted by the edition change. Crunch crunch crunch.
Chitin Helms form an exoskeleton around you, then replace your original skin and bones, transforming you into an insectoid thing with decent armor and abilities, but severely impaired social skills. You've managed to integrate thri-kreen into your party before. Just get someone else to play the face.
Bone Wands gradually drain your life force to power their effects, and eventually come to life. Perfect for a Ravenloft style game.
Candelabra of Holding can suck you into them like the mirror. They are rather less stable though, and people in them often escape and try to kill their captor. Again, this has a very definite horror slant. Being turned into a Wax Golem does not sound like a good way to live.
Dairon's Hound is a flawed figurine. If it tastes blood, it goes berserk, and then you're screwed. It could still be useful for tracking and fetching though. It'll take a good divination spell to spot that little problem before it becomes an issue.
The Hourglass of Lost Youth can stop time, but at a serious cost to your lifespan. Even more than Haste, this is probably not worth the cost, but might be tempting in a pinch.
The Sliver of Life's Reflection lets you make a duplicate, at the cost of some permanent lifeforce. This means you'll want to take good care of them, for even a high level character won't be able to treat them as throwaway mooks. Very tempting for PC's though.
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 5/7
Dragon's bestiary: Oooh. New PC races! Shiny! This column's never done that before. The writer asks why they don't have variants on lizard men based on various lizard species. Um, they did. Mystara, remember? Shazaks, Gurrash and cay-men? Made PCable in the princess ark series? Some people, no sense of history at all. I dunno. Oh well. These don't seem too bad, even if their ability modifiers are rather more extreme than most of the humanoids made PCable previously. They should make decent counterparts to the many cat and dog variants from issues 237 & 247.
Agrutha are bigger tougher lizard men, the ogres of the reptilian world, with decidedly limited intellects and class choices. Still, they're still smart enough for basic tactics. And remember, your mobility is limited in the marsh. Their's isn't.
Crcodilians, like regular lizard men, are divided into neutral grunts and highly evil boss guys. The big difference is that the boss guys are smaller than the regular ones here. They do learn spells though, which explains why the regular crocodilians don't eat them with their substantial natural weaponry.
Varanids are based on Komodo Dragons. They're fast and tricksy, ascetic and amoral. You really don't want them as enemies, because a village isn't going to have much luck against them.
Geckonids have pretty obvious ancestry. This makes them very good at climbing, and they can see through invisibility without even trying. They have kenderesque humorous tendencies, which is a bit worrying. Just the thing to annoy players.
Iguanids are the all-rounders of the lizard people, with the widest range of classes open, skill at climbing and swimming, natural weapons and magic resistance. One would make a pretty interesting addition to an adventuring party. Looks like they're still providing useful stuff for the old edition even as the changeover draws nigh.
The new adventures of Volo: A little playful legendry from Volo this month. Ancient magitech empires, being what they were, frequently looked for ways to make the effects of spells applicable to larger groups. Teleportation gates are a good example of something that has huge logistical benefits and are relatively easy to control, as long as you have sufficient guards or a magical warding system set up around them. No surprise then, that there's more than a few of these hidden in ruins, just waiting for people who know the passwords to use. Volo has figured out some of their OS, but not nearly all, and following his advice may get you in trouble. Elminster knows a little more of course, and has no hesitation in being smug about this. These can serve as both adventures in themselves, and avenues to further adventures, which means that once mostly solved, players may well visit them repeatedly. I'm going to have to give him another A grade, aren't I, because this all seems like great storybuilding material.
Giants in the earth: Ed takes over this column as well. He's apparently decided to go the route of Margaret & Tracey and try writing in a new, non-gaming connected world. Although googling shows that it was pretty generic fantasy fare anyway, just not tied into the bloated continuity of the Realms, and got mixed reviews for being mostly high action fighty stuff with not much plot. So let's see what he has to offer in terms of characters.
Craer Delnbone is very much the swashbuckling roguish sort, slim, good-looking, and wielding light weapons with style. Dunno why he doesn't have the actual kit, since he's more than qualified ability-wise, and they've included them in these sorts of write-ups before.
Hawkril Anharu is the intentionally contrasting big stoic fighty guy, heavily armed and armored. Isn't that one of the most obvious pairings in tropesville? I hope they have a bit of nuance to transcend the cliches in the actual books.
Lady Embra Silvertree continues Ed's habit of making the wizards way more powerful than anyone else in the party, even beyond the imbalance AD&D rules naturally cause anyway. Come on, it's a new world, couldn't you try to play against type? I guess audience expectations remain the same. Still, she does have some interesting limitations, and plenty of cool backstory stuff to round her out.
Sarasper Codelmer is the cleric, although he consciously rebels against being used as a healbot, not wanting to deplete his own lifeforce prematurely. Combined with his quirky shapeshifting, and he's easily the least stereotypical of the characters here. Still, I don't think it's going to be enough to stop people from thinking of the Realms instantly when they think of Ed, just as people don't think of Mythus or Cyborg Commando when they think of Gary.
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 6/7
FX Artifacts: Aka magical items for Alternity. :) Which is a relatively easy topic for them to add stuff on even after doing a whole book on the subject, because the system is pretty close to AD&D, and they have 25+ years of materials from that to convert. And indeed, I can recognise the sources for quite a few of these powers and drawbacks. Still, they're certainly not all implemented in the same way as they were in other systems, and they are given a good sci-fi dressing. Plus the specific items are both well described, interesting and have good illustrations. So this was an easy assignment, but it didn't feel phoned in despite this. The writers really do care about Alternity, and are still hoping it'll get a continuation.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finally moves to talking about good ol' location based adventures. Even here, he has some rather interesting suggestions. This is one case where doing a little extra effort at the start will save you more in the long run. Make it big enough they can't clear it out in one go, and you can reuse it. Even more cleverly, you can design it with different entrance points, and build new expansions, put new monsters in, and it's quite possible they won't even notice the recycling. The specific adventure is pretty cool too, providing an easy way to get new PC's involved and working together, and incorporating plenty of the larger setting details rather than just being a place filled with monsters. It both makes good reading, and is useful advice. Still, it does seem specifically designed as a first adventure. I guess that'll give him room to talk about how successive ones at higher levels will differ in design later. The long game continues.
Sage advice: What can you do while gaseous (move around verrrry slowly. That's it. )
What does past life reveal if you were unconscious just before you die (sod all. Way to foil those annoying wizards )
Do invisible things cast shadows (no)
What happens if a speciality priest has a forced alignment change (they become a regular cleric until the matter is settled)
Does a wizard have to completely relearn spells drained by a magedoom. (no, just standard rememorization)
What demihumans can be elementalists (only half-elves. Demihumans aren't generally very good at picking up new variant magic disciplines. )
Dragon spellcasting level guidelines contradict themselves. (use the individual descriptions. Exception based design strikes again. )
6 seconds is way too long to cast feather fall (1 segment is not 6 seconds, and we don't even have segments anymore. You're talking rubbish.)
Can a speciality priest of Berronar Truesilver cast extra protection spells (no. Just the ones they have with greater power. )
Can you cast a spell round corners with a mirror (No. That's one of the more inventive bits of rules lawyery Skip has seen, but still no. )
Do spellsingers have to use the new nonproficiency system if they use skills & powers stuff. This totally nerfs them at low level (That's your problem, not Skip's. )
Spellsingers are too good at casting high level spells. This needs fixing (Skip agrees with you. God, Ed comes up with some overpowered crap. )
Are spellsingers limited in highest spell level by int (yes)
How does polymorphing yourself with a wand work (just like normal polymorphing)
Can smoke power hurt things that need magic weapons to hit (yes)
What does push do (See 1st ed AD&D. For whatever reason, it was never converted, but it shouldn't be a problem to use. )
Does high wisdom protect you against ghost powers (sure)
Are hold spells saved against paralyzation or spells (spells)
Do spellcasters know how long their spells will last (if they're of fixed duration, they should be able to keep track of it. )
What spells affect a deck of many things (not a lot. It's a bitchin' thing, you gotta take your knocks. )
Can you automatically memorize spells after using a candle of invocation. (yes, but you've gotta take the time. )
How long does bless last on a weapon (6 rounds. Really not long enough. )
Is bless affected by magic resistance (would you cast it on someone who wasn't willing? If so, yes.)
Does your natural dex boost the thief skills granted by gauntlets of dexterity (That makes no sense at all. Lamest twinking attempt evar.)
Do drow objects degrade inside a bag of holding (if anything's going to keep the radiation they need out, it's a bag of holding. At least it keeps the sun out as well. )
Do wizards have to research a whole new spell to customize an existing one (no. It's considerably easier than that.)
Do weapons have an alignment (Only if they're intelligent. No thinking, no morals, no alignment, no matter how they're used. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000
part 7/7
Silicon Sorcery: They've been increasing the frequency of computer game conversions over the last year. Now they get their own regular column. I think that proves pretty conclusively they're either popular with the readers, or the company is getting kickbacks for including these. So this time, we're converting some summoned monsters from Disciples: Fallen lands into something that fits the AD&D cosmology. Which since they seem to be from a fairly generic Hell, is an easy fit.
Beliarh are big humanoid coobeasties, that charge their opponents and trample them. They're quite smart, but don't have any particular spell-like powers to back that up, so they're still very much shock troops.
Infernal Avengers are mysterious cloaked beings with big swords, that can terrify people with their faces, and unleash really devastating fireballs. They're obviously all about vengeance, and actually seem to enjoy being summoned for an appropriate mission. So if you want to go hellish, but don't want to be screwed over, you could do a lot worse.
KotDT has another attempt at modern gaming. They still don't get it, I'm afraid. Dragonmirth mocks playboy readers. Shop keep mocks D&D's history. There does seem to be a lot of nostalgia around back then.
Coming attractions: A rather more substantial collection than usual for this era this month. Many are still rehashes though. Drizzt's second trilogy gets released in an omnibus edition. The first book of the cleric quintet gets reissued, with more to follow. The Dragonlance chronicles get reissued as individual books again, so now you can choose between them and the compiled omnibus versions. The best of the dragonlance short stories over the years get compiled and rereleased in a new form. It's tedious to the point of brainrot. I really can't wait for this to be over. There's also the 3rd and final part of the priest's spell compendium. So you haven't done as many as wizards got after all. No surprise there. And finally, there's Secrets of the Magister by Ed Greenwood. Exactly how much this has in common with the original Magister book from a decade ago I'm not sure, but I am not inclined to be generous at the moment.
Onto the vaguely new stuff. Dragonlance gets Rise of the Titans, another dual stat adventure. Alternity gets Beyond Science: Guide to FX. Yeah, I definitely see the influence this one had on D20 modern a few years later. It also gets the Dark Matter arms and equipment guide. More attempts to find big sellers by packing lots of crunch in. And Marvel Super Heroes does Spider-man: Marvel Team-up. Noo yoik sees things go to crap, and a whole bunch of heroes have to work together to fix things. They really are focussing a lot more on adventures using existing heroes rather than your own this time around. What is with that?
What's new introduces an old joke to a whole new generation. And It's funnier than ever, curiously enough. Growf Growf.
So it looks like they're going to use the extra size in these issues to fill us up to bloating point with generic material. Those who are fed up of 2e will be well and truly nauseous and never want to go back, while those who aren't will have enough material to keep their game going for years to come. And since the OSR does tend to focus on 1e rather than 2e, I think we can say that tactic worked all too well. So they're now busy measuring up the coffin for 2e, making sure it's suitably large and extravagant in trappings. Will there be tears at the funereal? Probably, but I'll check to be certain.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. Larry Elmore finally finishes his witches of the seasons series, started more than a hundred issues ago. Like Tom Moldvay's undead reexamination series, it's good to see it resolved, especially given the health problems he had in the interim. Fittingly, the theme of the issue is once again nature based stuff. Like the underdark, we've already had quite a few goes at this, but they want to make sure we're well and truly saturated with it before the edition changes arrive. So it's time for another feast of goods rapidly approaching their sell-by-date. Let's try and grab some nice bargains.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: In the course of exploring 25 years of roleplaying, I'd be the first to admit I've become more than a little blase about things. And I'm quite aware that losing that sense of wonder is not that great for your ability to have fun. Dave is worrying about exactly the same issue. A talking animal doesn't even make us blink. A dragon is reason for realistic caution, but no real awe or panic. A vampire or medusa sees us shrug and get out the appropriate countermeasures from our backpacks of holding. So yeah, how do you regain that sense of wonder? As with a lot of things based on advancement, the easy solution is to pace yourself, but I think that horse is well and truly out he gates. The other things are to either take a break, do something completely different to allow yourself to re-sensitise, or to focus on something specific for an extended period, so as to develop more nuance and get them emotionally involved. But even that can stop working if you do it repeatedly. Guess the battle to keep things fresh will have to continue, otherwise you're faced with the prospect of a long, slow, bored rest of your life. And I certainly don't want that.
D-Mail: We start off with someone who is generally happy with what they've seen of the 3e rules, but deeply suspicious of the artwork. The writers quickly assure him that he doesn't have to change his playstyle because of that. OR DOES HE?! (dun dun dun) Never underestimate the subliminal power of presentation.
A letter from someone who's interpreted the teasers in the worst possible way, and has sworn never to buy 3e. They try to correct him, but that probably won't help the individual, merely those observing the debate.
We get some more praise for dungeoncraft. It is turning out pretty nice, isn't it.
We then have two letters praising Alternity, and one of them wanting it eliminated from the magazine entirely. It continues to be a rather divisive subject, and one they'd like to find a permanent solution too. Whether that will be giving it it's own magazine or simply killing it is still being debated in the offices.
We then have someone telling them off for using a traitorous guest star. Now they won't trust any genuine new players, and might well kill their characters in response. All I have to say to that is muahahahaha. If you can't take a little treachery then you certainly shouldn't play in my games.
A letter pointing out errors a few issues ago. Not a rare sight, really. The grist mill continues to turn, and editors only have time to check things over a few times.
A rather interesting diversion. Apparently Gen Con is being moved from Milwaukee to Indianapolis. This is obviously good for the general public, as it continues to increase in size and needs bigger infrastructure, but bad for people living nearby.
A threat from the equal heights rights group to end the discrimination against halflings or face kneecapping. Quite right too. You do not mess with someone who's face is at groin height unless you want to feel exquisite pain.
Nodwick is in so much trouble. Imagination is more disturbing than showing the full horror.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 2/7
Forum: Thomas B. Knoedler thinks that it's not that thieves are too weak, it's that you don't know how to play them properly. Right back atcha, shifting blame like Margaret Thatcher! If ma flow is ill it's 'cause the beat was crapper.
Justin Bacon doesn't think characters should be defined purely by their combat roles. Thieves may not be great in combat, but they are invaluable out of it. They should actually be useful more of the time than fighters. After all, you only spend a tiny amount of time in combat, and what good are they out of it?
Chad Atkins wants casting spells to consume calories. Tee hee. Losing weight based on how powerful a spell you cast? That would be a damn good variant kit for Dark Sun, but seems a bit silly otherwise. Emaciatomancy? Bulimeamancy? No, I don't think I could quite take this seriously in actual play.
Gregory Rick thinks clerics shouldn't have to memorise spells, but instead call upon their deity on the fly. Sorry, it's arcane casters that are getting that option first. You'll have to wait a few years for Favored Souls to come along.
Christian Tomsey has great praise for his player's between session activities. The web is full of mails of events, background materials, artwork and even poetry. This proves exactly how invested they are in the game. Mucho envy to you guys.
Cory Herbst has a campaign where kobolds are the supreme civilisation, and humans are tribal guys raiding them. His players are having a great time as the underdogs. Don't be afraid to make your world drastically different from the norm.
James Sheppard is one of the growing number of people who wants to see energy draining sorted out. It ruins campaigns, and bears little resemblance to mythological bloodsucking. There is a reason many Ravenloft variants exchange it for some other power.
Joseph Herpler argues against increasing ability scores as standard. You ought to have to work specifically for them, independent of gaining levels. Perfectly reasonable view, if more suited to a skill based game where everything is improved independently.
ProFiles: Rob Lazzaretti is this month's profilee, with a rather wide-boyish photo not showing him at his best. He started out as a general artist, but somehow became most well known for his maps, with the planescape ones in particular being his distinctive handiwork. Stretching to two pages, this profile goes into rather more detail than most. They use this column as yet another avenue for promoting the new edition, with plenty of talk on things like his favourite new class and upcoming things he's working on. Still, the format continues to improve, with a proper list of his gaming credits as well as plenty of hints for aspiring artists. Make sure you integrate with the rests of the adventure, otherwise it becomes just pointless eye candy. This is still a valuable part of the magazine.
Up on a soapbox: Having talked about fanboys, geeks and nerds, Gary now looks at the definition of munchkin. People who play overpowered characters, and steamroller the opposition via rules lawyering and min-maxing, or simply because their DM is similarly generous with the opposition and treasure. Now, it does have to be said that there's nothing inherently wrong in system mastery, it's all about how you apply it. But that's not the real crux of his argument. No, the real danger to roleplaying is the sophisticates and one true wayers, who sneer at any other playstyle, and drive out people who don't meet their standards, making the game as a whole inaccessible. After all, the fact that people are playing is just as important as how they play, and if you don't get new players in, then roleplaying's demographics will gradually age and shrink. A statement that seems all too relevant these days. How many younger people have you recruited in recent years and how did they play when they started out? Really, this is a strong reminder of two things. If the game isn't fun, there's no point in playing, and if there's no-one to play with then roleplaying games don't work very well, because they're an inherently social hobby. Plus, playing obscene power can be very fun indeed. So once again he's asking us to think hard about our basic assumptions, and whether they'll really make for good gaming in the long term, for us and other people. After all, as the creator of roleplaying, he wants to see his hobby flourish. Now he just needs to get people to listen and put some of this stuff into practice, which is far easier said than done.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 3/7
Countdown to 3rd edition: 5 months to go. Here we get to see rogues, and the new skill system showcased. This is one area I have no hesitation in saying 3e was a substantial improvement on previous editions. Sneak attack is now clearly defined and explained in what it can and can't do, Rogue skills are integrated with the general system so you don't have to buy a particular one if it's not appropriate to your concept, and the DC system scales far better than the old percentile one. Plus taking 10 and 20 are valuable additions to the general rules. It's still not perfect, but you can easily pick a point or two in a skill that only mildly interests you without knocking down the optimisation of your character too much, which is a lot more than you can say for 2e. No complaints here, so I have less to say than the last two. Now, when we get to fighters and the new/revived classes, that should be interesting.
Animal henchmen: Looks like we're starting off our articles with another look back at the vast mountain of material 2e accumulated, with an article that doesn't introduce new creatures, but does reference a whole bunch of them, some from fairly obscure supplements. Well, that's another way to help clear out the warehouses. And lets face it, there have been a lot of stories with intelligent animal companions, talking or not. Of course, the big issue with animal companions is that they remain fairly static in power while the PC's change enormously. A problem which we now know 3e will handle considerably better. So it's a bit ironic really to see an article that tries to fix this, but doesn't really go far enough, and spends most of it's time looking backwards. This isn't going to be one I reference again once a few months has passed.
PC Portraits does druids and rangers, which is indeed pretty in theme as usual. They do tend towards a certain nobility of features, but I think that's just the artist's style rather than intentional. Hoods, animal features, leaves, feathers and other symbols of the natural cycle are of course popular adornments. Overall, I think this is one of the better composed sets in the series, with relatively detailed shading and no big proportional mishaps. They can use this guy again when they need some more faces.
Herbcraft: As is their habit around this time, they dig up at least one topic that hasn't been seen in the magazine for over a decade. Herbalism previously got articles in issues 82 and 119, both of which are for 1e. So this can avoid rehash simply by incorporating 2e rules. Which it does, expanding on what you can treat with a basic roll, and then detailing some specific magical herbs that can provide further effects beyond that. So this doesn't step on the toes of previous articles, and has enough fantastical elements that subsequent articles are unlikely to repeat it directly in turn, and makes fairly pleasant reading. Like the article last issue about what a person can do untrained, it's good for clarifying the rules, which is helpful as you finish an edition, to make things feel nicely resolved. You can't say they haven't gone to quite a bit of effort to tie up all the loose ends, with all these articles and compilation books and CD's.
Extra healing: Now, Herbalism and Healing have a lot of synergy, to the point where they're obligatory for some cleric builds. (which eats up all your slots if at least one of them isn't a bonus from the kit) Of course, there's always room for more expensive subdividing of skills, and it looks like that particular annoyance of 2e is about to get another airing before the next edition mostly puts skill bloat to bed, and 4e kills it for good. (so far) So here's 3 new healing sub-proficiencies, and 4 new herbalism ones for you, should you be obsessive enough to want a character devoting their whole life to this field of study. They then detail a whole bunch of natural herbs, most of which don't have any defined mechanical effect. Well, I suppose they want to keep it useful for next edition, because you're unlikely to be seeing something like this there. And I can't particularly say I'll miss this topic. Byebye.
Beneath the boughs: In issue 251, we got an interesting little article on Dryads in the Dragonlance 5th age setting. In a fairly obvious symmetry filler, the same writer follows up with one on satyrs. Now, they already have AD&D rules in the Complete book of Humanoids, but they don't have SAGA rules yet. And on top of that, they gain better class options in Krynn than other worlds, as is also the case with ogres, elves, gnomes, and some other races; and some slightly altered ecological information from their previous appearance in issue 155. They also have four new spells detailed for both systems. As with the previous one, this is jaunty, packs it's crunch into small packages, and fits plenty of flavour in there as well. If you want a satyr who's a bit less comic relief (after all, in krynn, they're regularly upstaged by kender and tinker gnomes) and more competent and able to work with a party for a decent length of time, this article provides a nice little upgrade for two systems.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: All too familiar by J Robert King. An intelligent animal features in this story, so it's just about in theme as well. And it is a pretty entertaining one, amusingly free of angst, but with a decent amount of whimsy and plenty of action and plot twists. Technically, if anything, the bad guy wins, but in a practical sense, his own hubris turns out to be his undoing. Which is exactly the kind of thing that makes for good reading, as it avoids the more obvious cliches and goes down it's own route, and does it with style. Just like a good cat would. You know how unpredictable they can be, even if you get them as a litter and raise them the same way. So this is pretty entertaining, and not weighed down with continuity despite being from one of their regular writers. Don't let the marketing people turn everything into a tie-in fest. You know what that did to comics.
Arcane Lore: Another one with a single new spell, and a ton of setting blurb. Murq's Mystic Missile is just another variant magic missile. How many of those do we have now? Coming near a dozen. The setting stuff is rather more interesting, with this being another long established but left vague Greyhawk character getting their lives and times (and diabolical plots) filled in. Actually that does seem to be becoming a distinction between Oerth and Toril. Even though Gary may be sorta back, he's no longer in the driving seat of his own world, and other people are working via forensic expansion rather than wholecloth creation. And that's not a distinction that flatters Oerth, really. Plus, overall, this is a continuation of the abrupt drop in usability from last year. I'm really not happy at all about this development.
Dragon's Bestiary: Demihuman pets. Now there's an odd omission considering we've seen dwarf bred spiders, gith dogs, Troll dogs, Ilithid baboons, elf enhanced squirrels, and quite a few more things created to serve other things over the years. looks like this is another last minute filling in of symmetries here, for those who'll stick with the old stuff instead of leaping straight to the new edition.
Yyllethyn are elven horses. Like most things elf, they're smarter, prettier, longer lived, and slower breeding.
Crayghe are elven hawks. Exactly the same proviso as previously apples here.
Byut are elven deer, and are too fragile and ethereal to survive in the wild. Useless things. What value is beauty without any practical use?
Pennig are halfling ponies, and like their breeders, are amiable, tough little things that can go anywhere there's decent food. No surprises here either then.
Twill are our first interesting delivery. Little marsupials domesticated by gnomes, they fill the same role as the little creatures in the moties stories. Able to carry tools in their pouches and reach places little stubby gnome hands can't, they can be a big help in creating incomprehensible and unreliable machinery. :p
Stoight are forest gnome's pet of choice, and similarly adorable and quirky. They can scare animals much bigger than them with their sheer speed and viciousness. One of these would make a great pet for an adventurer.
Brak Twan are dwarvish digger dogs. They have infravision and typically dwarven tenacity as hunters and guards. Nothing too surprising here again.
Guttar are underground oxen that graze on fungi. Don't we already have those, detailed ages ago in Drow of the Underdark. So many supplements to keep track of. Once again, I'm not surprised they've wound up repeating stuff. So I guess the gnomes are the only ones that come out particularly well from this little business. It's easier to avoid getting stale when you don't get as much attention anyway.
The ecology of the pseudodragon: Can you guess which set of regulars is most likely to deal with a creature that can become a wizard's familiar? I think you can. It's the monster hunters guild again. And once again, they find themselves at odds with one-another, as the more principled members of the group would prefer that good creatures not be captured and dissected to make magical items for profit. And at least with PvP, one side of the group actually gets to win. Their bit part cast members are also increasingly becoming recurring characters. It all ends rather comically, yet again, with them not dead, but rather humiliated. And no better off financially either. Guess they'll keep muddling along until something stops them for good.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 5/7
The new adventures of Volo: Two months ago, we looked at the various elven kingdoms of the Realms. This month, halflings and gnomes get lumped together, as they have too many times. We get a seriously broken bit of aesopping here, as he simultaneously says they're not to be underestimated, and yet makes most of the settlements here need guardianship by some powerful wizard, dragon, or similar crap to survive in the harsh world of the Realms. That's about on the same level as romance novels who say the heroine is a strong independent woman at the beginning, but she winds up bouncing from one man to another throughout the plot, defining herself by them and worrying endlessly what they think, and then ends the story happily married. Gnomes come out of this better than halflings, but really, this is a nasty case of theory and practice failing to line up. Sorry Ed, but this one is going to get a firm thumbs down.
Giants in the earth: We finally do something that would have appeared in this column's original run, AD&D stats for historical figures. In this case, from ancient egypt. Now, since they did have a habit of deifying their pharaohs, that might mean we've already seen them in Legends and Lore. Will this be rehashed? References at the ready.
Imhotep didn't appear in L&L in either his mortal or divine forms, curiously enough. Course, he played a pretty critical part in Masque of the red death, but that's not really historically accurate. In addition to being a great doctor, he's also exceedingly good at motivating a workforce. Given the difficulties involved in surgery, I'm not sure why dexterity is his lowest stat then. Well, if you've got magic to do all the heavy work, you don't need super nimble fingers.
Ramses II was pharaoh for a stonking 66 years, a pretty good run by the standards of any monarchy. He was supposedly the guy in charge in moses' time, although he obviously didn't die in a flood, and might well have set the Jews free without quite so many plagues as the bible version suggests. You obviously don't stay in charge that long without being a fairly astute politician.
Ramses III wasn't in charge as long, and was a more hands on warrior, always off pacifying the neighbours. This means troublemakers may encounter him directly. Perfect opportunity for adventurers to do a takeover. :p
Wenamon is a priest of Amon who was saved from raiders by an opportunely timed storm, which of course he thanked his god for. A good example of how what is a legendary event for a real person would be just tuesday for a D&D adventurer, with provable supernatural powers and easy access spellcasting. This is one case where reality doesn't seem stranger or more spectacular than fiction.
Urban Legends: Last month was all about putting magical item equivalents in Alternity. This one involves the monsters. The big difference here is that you probably won't be facing more than one or two types of monster per adventure, and hunting them down will be as much or more of a challenge than the actual battle. So let's get our x-files on, and go to investigate sewer alligators, hook-handed muderers, animating mexican statues, bog monsters and family murdering changelings. Unlike last month, this means they aren't all drawn from D&D, instead casting a slightly wider net of folklorish fun. Each gets a good page of writing, plus stats and illustration. The way they're framed does seem conducive to avoiding hack-and-slash play, and making the whole episode revolve around one. You could steal this format for your monster writing, and see if that would rub off on the way you run the monsters in response. Control the format, and you control the content.
Wizards Live: The online schedule once again looks pretty busy, with 14 scheduled live chats this month. Skip is once again doing Sage Advice live, which sounds like fun, Elaine Cunningham is getting a good Q&Aing about her life, and the RPGA gets two chats devoted to it. Are the logs of these saved anywhere. It seems another thing that would help us get a clearer picture of the mood in the WotC camp as 3e drew near.
Dungeoncraft: Before actually drawing the map for his first adventure, Ray pauses again, asking us to think about exactly what rooms we need in our layout, and how they should connect. After all, if you just get a blank sheet of graph paper and start drawing until you fill it, you'll wind up with a sprawling monstrosity which makes no sense, is confusing to navigate, and doesn't have nearly enough toilets for it's inhabitants to live comfortably. So he encourages you to figure out what essentials you need, and only then add the extra embellishments that make your adventure quirky and unique. Which does seem pretty sensible. As is often the case, this probably isn't how most of the classic old adventures were designed, but it'll do the job. He's once again giving us a clear step-by-step approach that'll only fail for you if you're completely devoid of creativity. It makes me rather interested in seeing what the final result will be, so it's with some irritation that I see that it'll be appearing in Dungeon rather than Dragon, presumably in an attempt to encourage more crossover between their readerships. (gotta collect 'em all! ) Ok, so it's not as if issues of Dungeon are that hard to find online (unlike Polyhedron) but it still means I won't get to properly review the final product. Sigh.
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 6/7
Sage advice: Do delvesonns lose con when they use identify (yes)
Can knock open a saddlebag (yes)
Just how immune are Yathrinshee to undead powers (only the innate ones. Learned stuff doesn't count. )
Do you have to spend points to raise your thief skills to a positive number (not if you don't want to. Not every thief has to know everything)
Can you choose high-level skills from crossover groups (no)
Is 2d6 the number of undead turned or the number of hit dice. What happens if it's a mixed group. (One roll, 2d6 HD of creatures, lowest HD get affected first. It's good for mook clearing, but bosses, not so much.
How does spell failure work for Dragon Sages. Surely they don't get more likely to fail the wiser they are (No. You're adding on in the wrong place. See the normal chance of spell failure, then add to that. )
My multiclass characters are trying to twink skills and powers by skimping on one class and using the points to buy extra proficiencies useful for the other one. (remember to strictly enforce the minimum spending limits. at each stage. Other than that, suck it up. Min-maxing is a big part of the fun of a point buy system. )
Does grand mastery with missile weapons give you another extra attack (yes indeed. Peow peow peow.)
Can non fighters use combat mastery (A little bit. Not the top levels. We have to keep some niche protection. )
What level do you need to be to get the various levels of weapon mastery (it varies. Not that high, though. This aint BD&D, where you had 36 levels to spread things over.)
Do cyclops really do 410 points of damage with their boulders (no. 4d10. Even you figured that one out pretty quick)
How do you deal with two conflicting surprise chances (turn their respective changes into modifiers to your d10 roll. This only becomes a problem if they also ask you to use different dice for the roll.)
Can heat metal actually melt metal. (no. it retains the same shape, although it may get softer. This is magic, not real world physics, etc etc. )
Can you memorize more than 9 spells per level if you have bonus stuff, or is that the limit (It is not the limit. You may continue to increase your firepower to disgusting levels. )
Does a shield of missile attraction affect all missiles on both sides (no. Only the ones aimed at you. Skip really wishes people wouldn't misinterpret the premise)
Can berserkers berserk in bear form. (no. They're scary enough already)
Can you cast spells while wearing gauntlets of ogre power (yes)
Can priests supercharge their spells under the spell point system as well (sure. This may not always be beneficial though. )
How do you decide which table is best for multiclassed characters (Oh, you. :limpwristed punch on the shoulder: You get to totally pick and mix! Whichever save is better for each category! )
Do boots of speed allow you to track faster (Absolutely)
Can you cast spells through clairvoyance (No. Not even if the area is in range. It's still not proper line of sight. Skip isn't letting you weasel around this one, no matter how many letters you send in. )
What does oil of sunlight do (What doesn't it do! Uh, yeah. Skip's not sure either. It's an important ingredient in making kickass magical items, but doesn't do much on it's own. Think what sunlight could logically do. )
How do you pronounce Flind (Windbagstandley-Nunchuckingtonarai)
What happens if you attack someone with a cloak of displacement and roll a natural 20. (if you'd miss, you still miss. No head severing if you can't find the neck. Clive Anderson is totally safe.)
What counts as the home plane for priests of philosophies (use your common sense. What plane seems the best fit. The other alternative, just letting them be at full power anywhere, is just soooo broken. Skip couldn't possibly allow that.)
Just how immobilized are entangled characters. (far less than paralyzed ones, but more than stunned ones )
Can my priest carry a plant with him so he can use entangle anywhere (It'd have to be a pretty big plant. You are remembering encumbrance, aren't you. Maybe it could be an extra long still living grass skirt or something. Much kinky nightmare fodder in that concept.)
Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000
part 7/7
Role models returns after a couple of months off, and it appears they lost their old writers abruptly, with editors Dave Gross & Chris Perkins taking on extra duties to compensate. Now that didn't turn out particularly well in the final days of the video games column, and the contrast here is fairly apparent as well. Where last year's columns often managed to fit three different ideas into a two page spread, this concentrates on a single one, and still feels like it has more trouble fitting it into the space provided. Still, much of that is because there's a lot of photos this time around, showing off their custom setup from multiple angles. And instead of encouraging you to make your own scenery on the cheap, they're engaging in product placement, advertising Master Maze scenery. It's not quite as big and obvious a step down as when Dave took over Libram X from Jeff, but it's not particularly promising, as it's putting commercialism over DIY spirit. He has improved since taking over, but I can still blame him personally for not being as good as Kim or Roger.
Silicon Sorcery: This month's computer game conversion isn't monsters or items, but random encounters. That's somewhat amusing, and not something they've done before. It also means you actually get more new creatures getting abbreviated stats than a regular bestiary entry would give you. In fact, they pack 8 encounters onto 2/3rds of a page, filling up the rest of the spread with promotion for the game, a fantasy sim game called Majesty. So this packs in quite a bit of useful information for gaming, but like the last article, still feels like they're engaging in product placement, quite possibly paid for by the companies, above and beyond the usual advertising. Well, I guess all the extra colour they've acquired in the last couple of years needs to come from somewhere. Call it a mutually beneficial arrangement. Still, it does feel like they're ramping up their count of blatant commercialism again. Sell sell sell.
KotDT engages in X-treeme rules lawyering. Dragonmirth is increasingly modern in its style of humour. Shop keep fails to respect the grognards. Course, they'll be even older now.
Coming attractions: Diablo graduates to AD&D with Diablo II: The awakening. This is really going to fuel the cries of ZOMG they're turning D&D into a computer game. :p They also start to set up things for the edition change with The Apocalypse Stone. You want to end your campaign now for the reboot, this'll help you go out with a bang.
The Realms is half rehash, as is becoming standard. The second book of the Cleric Quintet is rereleased. And the new book is Realms of the Deep. An anthology of stories around the recent aquatic invasion, this should fill in lots of little perspectives on the same big event. Let's hope the editing stays up to scratch.
Dragonlance starts to move forward again, with yet another massive cataclysm. Weis and Hickman are back together for Dragons of a Fallen Sun. Still, at least we'll get the old magic back soon now, even if it involves yet more ridiculous revelations and some deicide.
Alternity also gets into the computer game business, with a Starcraft conversion. Blizzard are already pretty big names, and they're going to have a long association with D20. Muahaha.
What's new is on a very familiar kick, in more ways than one. Growf.
This issue does very much feel like they're making an effort to round off the last edition, tie up as many loose ends as possible, leave no avenue unexplored. It really reminds us that 2e was easily the edition that had the most settings, supplements, articles, and weird bits and pieces produced for it. Many of them were pretty flawed in hindsight, but there's just so many that surely you can run the game you want by picking selectively. If you were going to play one game for the rest of your lifetime, you could do so much worse. What other games got this kind of completion and sendoff? Well, it's still not quite over. Will april see any funny surprises this time around, after the last two years of staidness? Give us something else to remember you by.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. So we're finally three quarters of the way through this journey. And as with the 2/3rds mark, this is purely a postdated landmark that doesn't feel particularly significant sandwiched between the 1999 annual and the 3e changeover issues. Still, it looks like the topic is high level and planar stuff, both of which are topics I'm quite fond of. High level stuff in particular could do with a few more articles before we wave out the old and in with the new, as material suitable for levels 20+ is pretty scarce. Hell, Dungeon hasn't even got any 2e adventures that go above 15th level. So let's see if this bumper sized issue has any suitably impressive articles.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Here we get a good reminder exactly why high level campaigns got short shrift in 2e. 1: they were too busy trying to be sensible and mature, prove they'd outgrown all that twinky nonsesnse. 2: The rapidly expanding plethora of settings and character options made people more likely to switch games regularly rather than sticking with one to high levels. So this is a series of jokes about the more silly end of obscene power, where the players run roughshod over the world, rather than finding new enemies that present a suitable challenge. If the current editors have this kind of attitude, it's no wonder you have to pretty much make it all up, or use BECMI D&D instead, which did take the whole epic deeds during the endgame thing seriously. (although not completely without whimsy) This doesn't make me confident it'll get the gravity it needs. Mind you, it is april, so maybe we'll get amusingly unbalanced instead. As long as it's not boring, anyway, that's the really important thing.
D-Mail: We kick off with some more edition change concerns that just go to show how differently people can wind up interpreting the same teasers, even though they're not particularly ambiguous. Oh, and the new format for upcoming products sucks, because it doesn't give as much info as the old one. Not disagreeing on that one.
A letter asking them to go back to the old school. While they're adding a bit more old style flavour than they did in the mid 90's, they still want to move forward, so expect mixed results on this one. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
A letter generally praising them, but also telling them where they're oversaturating the market. Rest assured, they will take a break, and then find new markets to oversaturate next edition. In fact, they have one planned already. You thought new races and kits were bad. Wait until you see how many prestige classes they put out! Muahahaha!
A letter from someone pissed off about all their expensive stuff becoming obsolete. THEY'RE NOT BUYING IT!!! Ironically, the things they're complaining about in 2e are going to be fixed in 3e. They may have to eat crow in a few months.
Another letter of general praise. Oh, and lechery. You really don't want to go out with a Drow. The drama quotient in their race is off the charts, and that's on a good day. No amount of slow-aging hotness is worth that.
Another request to bring back reviews. Sorry. They're feeling outclassed by the internet these days. It's not like they're your only avenue for communicating about RPG's in general anymore, and you can probably trust them to be more objective, and able to rant more amusingly without worrying about censorship. So on reflection, nope, not going back.
A question about the balance of new clerics from someone who's noted some have more domains than others. Already accounted for. And you wouldn't have an all cleric of a single god party, (most adventures'd be no challenge :p ) so it's unlikely to become an issue.
And finally, someone asking about book reviews. As with RPG reviews, they don't plan to bring them back, but they may be doing some more articles converting stuff from books in the future, as they have been with computer games. Gotta keep their eye on their core competencies all the time! Otherwise disastrous things might happen again!
Nodwick is really starting to find his employers predictable.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 2/7
Forum: Mark Anthony Sims thinks thieves need much better kits to make them as cool as the other classes. Their complete handbook was one of the dullest in that respect. Correct, but leaving it a bit late.
Josef McCoy thinks having something to fight against is more important than having something to fight for. Once again we see that people work together better if there's a clear and defined opposition.
Jason Bartlett thinks high level begins in the low teens, and characters ought to be able to increase proficiency scores as well as abilities through practice. Give them more room for independent change.
Matthew Avery talks about having an evil character in a mixed party. It can work, providing they have other aspects to their personality as well, and don't act like stereotypes. As ever, family can bind together bickering and disparate individuals into a common cause.
Bryan A. Morgan-Armstrong points out just how much MA sucks at the moment in D&D. Unarmed combat doesn't really work on creatures that have negative effects purely by touching you. This is why the ability to attack unarmed as if you are armed is well worth spending a feat slot.
Victor P. Archer Jr hopes that speciality priests and standard clerics are better balanced next edition. Man, the complete cleric's handbook ones sucked compared to the others. Thankfully, that will not be a concern, as they've already said a few pages ago.
ProFiles: Sean K Reynolds may look sinister, but he's a nice guy in real life. He still loves creating cool bad guys in the game, though, thinking carefully about their capabilities and psychologies, plans and methods, which make them adversaries that really challenge the players, and make them properly hate them and want to kick their ass. What better kind of person than that to handle the 3e Monster Manual. He's another of our profilees who's best work is yet to come, and even this profile seems to recognize this, talking a lot about his upcoming projects. But he has produced some cool stuff already, such as The Green Goblin's guide to Crime for the Marvel superheroes game. And since he becomes one of the driving forces behind Paizo and eventually Pathfinder, we'll be seeing lots more of him over the next decade of reviews. Another enjoyable read, that still has quite a bit missing in hindsight.
Up on a soapbox: Gary's latest target is those who decry Hack-and-Slash gaming. Fighting in your RPG's is nothing to feel ashamed of. D&D's whole experience system revolves around killing things and taking their stuff, so it's not as if you can avoid it if you want to advance your character. Plus the way levels, damage and hit points escalate, it makes it quite possible to have a nice extended fight where you mow down lots of lesser enemies. Now, if you were talking about a White Wolf game, where damage advancement generally grows faster than your ability to absorb it, death can come very quickly if you get into a serious fight, and the experience system rewards showing up and playing your character well, not fighting, then getting into a holding patten where the same guys manoeuvre socially around each other for years, politicking and pushing for an advantage makes a lot more sense. So this is really a continuation of his opinion back in 1985, where he already though the pendulum had swung too far towards roleplaying, and away from the game part of the equation. Really, both are valid choices, as long as the group is having fun, and you shouldn't look down on the other side. After all, you might want to play differently at some point if you get bored, and burning your bridges with tribal rivalries will hurt you in the long run. And as for criticising the intelligence of people who like fighting - hey, they're the ones doing more math and rules manipulation aren't they. So valid points, made in an amusing fashion, that go against current opinion and make you think. Absolutely perfect material for an april article.
The kingless land: Ed Greenwood's new novel series gets a bit more promotion, with this excerpt from the first book. And like the reviews said, this is almost pure action, which doesn't really let us get to know our protagonists well. Wait a minute, this isn't an article, this is a fricken 6 page long advert. Tor books obviously thinks Dragon readers are a prime ground for buyers. Which is probably right. Still, 6 pages! That must have been quite expensive. Still, someone's got to pay for these expanded issues, and they haven't raised prices for a few years. If they're shelling out, we might as well put up with them. I know a few pages I'll be skipping over if I read this again.
PC Portraits: Tony Diterlizzi takes on the challenge of high level characters. Now while there is a lot of positive things you can say about his artwork, they don't quite capture the gravity that you think of when someone says cosmic reality bending power. They do do otherworldly well, though, as you should know by now. Needs moar glowy things and other obvious magical adornments to signify that they're decked out to the gills and not to be messed with. Colour would definitely help too. Or maybe they've moved beyond that, and would rather avoid the attentions of every young punk looking to prove themselves. You never can tell with these really high level characters.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 3/7
Countdown to 3rd edition: 4 months to go. Having covered the other three class groups in the preceding months, now it's Fighters turn. And you can see why they put them last. While they did get upgraded compared to 2e, with substantial increases in their flexibility, they're really still falling behind compared to Clerics and Rogues, and never getting anywhere near Wizards. Plus feats are one of the more radical departures from the previous edition, so they needed to ease in the changes to skills and multiclassing first. Still, you can't say the public didn't take to them pretty enthusiastically, as they became THE primary cross-class means of customising your character, with meeting prerequisites and planning ahead to get a good build crucial if you want to maximise your power. And nowhere is that more important than for fighters, where if you build them right, they might be able to beat wizards in damage output in a busy day with multiple encounters, but they'll still suck at utility stuff. Everyone is better, but some are more better than others.
Revenge of the Sheens: We follow up on last year's Man vs Machine article with another collection of robotic creatures from Bruce Cordell. After all, with only 4 creatures detailed there, going straight from 4 HD to 16, there was a huge mid-level gap which needed filling if you want to make this plot work for a whole campaign. So this is much needed, and pretty welcome. It proved popular last year, so they made sure it got a follow-up before the edition change. Supply and demand in action.
Rollers are another tough as nails giant robot, with massive saw hands that can do quite large amounts of damage. If there were decent roads in fantasy campaigns, they could move quite fast, but over rough terrain, you can probably outrun them. Well, isn't that convenient for the PC's if they're not powerful enough to fight them, or there's lots heading towards a town, and they need to arrange an evacuation. I see the plot possibilities already.
Burrowers stay underground and attack you with their tentacle arms like groundsquid. This means they are a bit tricky to finish off, since they'll just beat a retreat and return later if you take their arms out. Better prepare those digging powers if you want to take them out for good.
Phasers are even trickier to pin down, as they shift dimensionally, grab you, and then do the cheap trick of throwing you into the ground and watching you go boom when you rematerialise. That's a means of instadeath you don't see exploited much, and seems very likely to frustrate players even more than phase spiders. I think some evil laughter is very fitting at this point.
Propagators invade your body and slowly kill you before animating your remains. Zombie Robots! Awesome! Since they're a lot tougher than regular zombies, and their infection and regeneration powers are pretty nasty, they're also one that may scare players who don't know their weaknesses.
Arcanosheen are spellcasting robots powered by the rendered brains of live wizards. They're pretty rare, but easily the smartest and most versatile of the sheens, making them the obvious choice for a big boss, after the players have got used to them being relentless, but limited in quite a few ways.
Power Trees are a bonus monster not designed by Bruce, instead being the winner of the design competition. They're gigantic, slow many-limbed things that recharge other sheens. At 36 HD and AC -8, taking one out is definitely a task for the highest level parties only. Otherwise, you'll have to take the long slow route of attacking the support structures before you can go for the core. Maybe tricking a dragon into fighting one would work.
While they concentrate on the monsters this time around, they don't neglect the player side, also giving us a very interesting new kit, and two new "magical" items. Want to be an angsty cyborg always afraid that your mechanical side is going to take over and turn you into a slave to the hive, but with damage reduction and the ability to command dumber machines? Sounds like a good premise for a trilogy at least to me! But seriously, this builds on last year's article nicely without being dependent upon it, making both of them more awesome by association. It's not quite the equal of the nine hells trilogy or the princess ark series, but it's still some pretty neat adventure building. I think this definitely marks Bruce as a developing writer to watch.
Leaders on followers: An examination of D&D's often wonky system of characters getting followers and a domain automatically when they hit Name level? That's worthy of a parody, certainly. And Robin Laws does not disappoint, taking the bickering sages thing to a new level. A whole convention of high level characters metagaming, riffing off each other and inserting anachronisms into each other? Sounds like fun to me. Absence has definitely made the heart fonder here, as this is the first pure april fool article in a good 4 years, and I do find it genuinely funny. Part of that is because it knows the rules, and the way they often turn out in practice, and does seem to have a genuine affection for them underneath the mockery. Plus despite being rules free, it does have a few cool ideas about what you could do with your minions, who can't really compete in a fight with anything that challenges you. You still need scouts, transport, someone to manage your domain, people to be arbitrarily cruel too, etc etc. So with two great articles in a row, this issue is off to a pretty good start. Will they be able to combine whimsy and usability and go for a hat trick?
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 4/7
When worlds collide: Ahh, now this is a reasonably influential little article, which got converted to 3e and appeared in Unearthed Arcana with very few changes, when I compare them. The idea of multiverse spanning campaigns where you play different incarnations of the same eternal champion is a pretty awesome one, but something that still needs work to implement well. They tried in in the Amazing System, but that was clunky as hell. They made a small step in Dark Sun, which is repeated and built upon here. But what you really need is a system which allows you to tweak both characters and world physics while remaining balanced overall, and mathematically quantifying those changes. In short, what you really need is GURPS. :D But the vast quantity of fairly compatible D20 variants that'll spring up in the wake of the OGL are also a big improvement on D&D as it is. So this is an idea who's time is about to come, but still needs a bit more network externalities to really work. Masque of the Red Death, Buck Rogers, and Alternity are all interesting in their own ways, but they do show the limits of the current system when you try and change it too much. Very worthy of note indeed. So that does indeed make a hat trick of significant and very different articles, which is something I haven't said in a long time. If this issue can keep the quality and notability up, it has a pretty good chance to get into the top 10 overall.
The hidden faces of evil: James Wyatt does a second article in quick succession. This one is somewhat less notable, as it's part of their current crop of ones looking back, collecting and summarising information from the tons of supplements the old edition has, with a few little additions. Not that it isn't a pretty compelling read, as it shows how you can get AD&D fiends to be the subtle tempters of mythology. Actually, to be honest, they're overqualified, especially the baatezu, who's array of innate powers lets them deceive and control weak-willed mortals almost casually, and they can expect the rest of the hierarchy to help fulfil and enforce any deals they make. Yugoloths and Tanar'ri don't have it quite as easy, but most of the higher-ups have at least some tricks that let them be more than a supertough engine of destruction. And if they've learned magic or psionics, which they have plenty of time to do, the sky's the limit. And when the time comes to cease being subtle, well, that's what summon cascades are for. Basically, if they focus their attention on your world in any numbers (and don't cancel out each other's machinations with endless plotting and betrayals or attract celestials to clear up the mess) your world is screwed. In the meantime, that gives adventurers plenty to do. So this is a pretty cool article, much of which is going to be invalidated next edition, but the general principles will remain valid. It deserves it's own praise, even if it is looking back more than forward.
Arcane Lore: As befits an april issue, we have a bunch of joke spells from one of our long-hated characters, Zagig Yragerne. Ok, so not all of his worst moments were actually Gary's fault, particularly WG7, but he was hardly blameless in this matter. Anyway, we're finally getting the contents of one of his spellbooks, not that we really want too. As usual, it's been passed from person to person (again, with rather less enthusiasm than usual, as they find themselves eager to get rid of it. ) before getting lost, so your players can find it. Be afraid if you do.
Zagig's Canned Laughter turns your whole life into a badly dubbed sitcom. Yup, this is very much in character with the guy who completely ripped off alice in wonderland. Damnable meta wizards.
Zagig's Amusing Alteration temporarily alters your face in cartoon fashion. Course, he might not let you know it'll be gone by next scene, which would be rather scary. Damn, don't you just want to kick his ass right now.
Zagig's Gender Shift, on the other hand, is incredibly useful. Finally, switching sex is easier than coming back to life or becoming a whole different species. If you went through the tomb of horrors, you might want to get your hands on this book temporarily just for that. At last, one of AD&D's great practical problems is sorted out, barely in time. Like a few of the demihuman pets of last issue, that is an unexpected gem amongst the vast amounts of dross.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ooh. A whole bunch of nifty planescape artifacts. For a third time in quick succession, it's a collection of decidedly mixed benefits. But when the theme is suits of ultra badass magical armour made by abyssal lords (see, now that's a good highly specific theme they're unlikely to duplicate precisely again.) expecting them not to have drawbacks, especially if you try and do good with them, is a futile task. This seems like the perfect set of items to have for your sentai team of upper-ranking bad guys, given their sadism and variety.
The Battlemonger makes you very popular with gnolls and undead, along with kickass offensive and defensive abilities. The only drawback is a little cannibalism craving that it inflicts. Well, you'll be slaughtering things anyway. Waste not, want not.
The Black Prison removes your biological needs and makes you regenerative, but can't be removed. Of course, it does nothing for the mental strain of this new lifestyle, and eventually you'll go mad. Hey, you'll still be serving the cause of chaos and evil wherever you go, perhaps even moreso, so no skin off their nose.
The Horned Casque is Baphomet's contribution. It gives you the expected minotaurish powers, plus the social benefits in dealing with them, plus gorgon breath, a terrifying bellow, and summoning powers. And all it asks in return is courage and mass slaughter of gnolls. Surely you can show a little confidence under the circumstances.
The Immolator bursts into flame when worn, and wants you to burn stuff. Ahahahahaha! Another curse that'll hardly be a curse unless you're trying to be a good guy.
The Infinite Panoply is as shifty and treacherous as it's maker, Fraz-Urb'luu. It'll disappear when you need it most, but until then it can disguise itself, shapeshift you, and reflect attacks back on the attacker.
The Juggernaut is 12' tall and essentially makes you into a mini necromecha and commander of undead armies. It'll eventually drain your lifeforce and turn you into undead yourself, but there are worse ways to go.
The Lady's Favor is zuggtmoy's fungal protection. As it instantly corrodes any weapons that touch it, it's a very effective one indeed. On the other hand, it's one of the more quickly lethal ones, as it infects you with fuzzy mold. Give to expendable minions.
The Lavashu is basically the venom symbiote, only stickier and harder to remove from the host. It'll probably take control of you, so you really don't want to touch this after beating the previous occupant.
The Pelagic Ageis is Dagon's method to offer power, and eventually turn you into his slave. Along with the expected water powers are tentacles and forcefields. Use with great caution.
The Raptor Cuirass gradually hollows out your bones, as befits it's avian theme. In the meantime, you get flight, talons, whirlwind summoning and bird control. Another position the evil overlord will cycle through regularly in their lieutenants.
The Rime Guard is freezing, both to you and those around. Fortunately, it'll turn you into a were-polar bear after a while, so problem solved. :p
The Spiderspawn is Lolth's one. Unlike the others, she's quite particular about who wears it. Boys need not apply. On the plus side, spider-powers. Which means you have to be rivals with The Lavashu's wearer. Abyssal politics is fun.
The Wizard Ward is Demogorgon's contribution. It'll gradually transform you into a giant snake, but in the meantime has both magic resistant and reptilian themed powers. Once again, there are worse ways to go and you get to have lots of fun in the meantime.
Dragon's bestiary: Some more official Greyhawk stuff here this month. Iuz may have been beaten back in recent supplements, but he's not defeated by a long way. He's already developing new monstrosities to replace his losses. Do you want to see what they are? Better prepared than not, you know.
Blackroot marauders are corrupt tree creatures. They're poisonous and resistant to plenty of stuff, so they'll rampage happily across a battlefield or just wander and cause devastation as ordered.
Dirtwraiths are an abyssal import. Like Abyss ants, they're doing worryingly well in the prime material plane, taking control of plants and turning areas into wastelands as they spread. If it was anyone other than Iuz, I'd wonder what he plans to do with lands wrecked like that, but we know he's not the most rational of planners.
Hounds of kyuss, like his regular spawn, are horrible disease ridden things that will kill you nastily and use your body to generate more of them. And they make a horrible noise too. Even if you control one, you really really don't want to stroke it.
Murdakus are bizzarely two-faced dragons created by Iuz's magics. They have a number of biological quirks, some useful, and some exploitable. They feel nicely like actual beta technology almost as much a problem as a boon for it's creators, bringing this cool little monster collection to a close. Looks like Iuz is in no danger of conquering the world any time soon if this is the best he can manage.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 6/7
The ecology of the gorbel: The immanent edition change seems to have really stepped up the pace of the ecologies. After all, any that use the old rules will have to be heavily rewritten or discarded once 3e arrives, so they want to clear as much of their slush pile as possible. Unsurprisingly for april, we have another monster hunters association one tackling a silly monster. It's also our 5th examination of something in the beholder family, counting gas spores, which Gorbel have quite a bit in common with. So this ecology has quite substantial antecedents. Fortunately, these are some of the weakest of the beholder family, with their tendency to explode when hit, and even these guys can make short work of them with the assistance of a few wands of magic missiles. There are a lot of ecological footnotes on this one, plus a big diagram, which is something we really don't see enough of around here. This is actually rather more serious than the last couple of years entries, but still winds up with lots of quirky bits strewn throughout the writing. Overall, I think he's managed to strike a balance between fun and usability this year.
Giants in the earth: Oh boy. Nodwick has been a comfortable regular for the past couple of years, appearing several times a magazine and getting into our routines in a way Floyd never quite managed, for all it's ambitions. And now he's getting properly statted out. April Fool. Since he does most of the work, Nodwick has almost as many levels as the other three put together, although the henchman class must be pretty puny, because he still couldn't take them in a fight. In fact, none of the characters really work that well ruleswise, making this purely an entertainment piece, rather than something you can actually use in your game without some more work. So this is really an old fashioned whimsy piece, which I would have groaned at in the old days, but seems more tolerable after a couple of years of excessive dryness. Plus it's something I'm sure many of the audience wanted. I think it has an entirely valid place here.
The new adventures of Volo: A very footnotes and illustration heavy entry here, as Volo's main narrative proves a little insubstantial. Ardeep is one area we've visited before in the magazine briefly. As the closest bit of woods to Waterdeep, it's packed with outlaws, elves trying to get back to nature, low level adventurers looking for a rumble, teenagers trying to find a peaceful spot to make out, harpers having secret meetings, etc etc. So in typical Realms fashion, they're all bumping into one another and somehow missing the hidden tomb in the centre of the forest. It's all a little silly. As usual, Ed has put plenty of history behind the strange creatures and things to be found here, with challenges suitable for all sorts of levels. And the snark is stepped up a notch compared to the first few columns. You really are not expected to like Volo, or take him seriously for that matter, and it really does seem like a miracle he's survived this long. In fact, he may wind up pushing it too far and resulting in me becoming more sympathetic to Volo than Elminster. The cool stuff, annoying delivery approach is delivering interestingly mixed results.
New Frontiers: Alternity takes a leaf from the old school magazine, and converts the races from the second most popular game back then. Traveller! That's a nice turnup for the books. Along with a brief explanation of the setting for complete newbies, we also get stats for Aslan, the various droyne castes, hivers, k'kree and vargr, a couple of new bits of equipment and a psionic power. So it gives you just enough to work from, and then points you in the right direction to get more info if that intrigues you. (which at the moment happens to be GURPS Traveller, oddly enough. ) It is a bit crosspromotioney, but doing that for other RPG's is far less annoying than for computer games or books, and a nice callback to the days where they often had an article or two on a game owned by another company. So there is a bit of nostalgia here as well as general education. I do like this overall, though the illustrations are a bit crap for the current age. Now what they need is a boot hill conversion to make the Alternity system a little more generic.
Wizards Live: In addition to all the various live chats, this month, they unveil the official websites for the various discontinued AD&D settings. The Kargatane was the most well known of these, but all of them stayed around for at least a few years, and gave us quite a bit of material before they too succumbed to entropy. Actually, looking at this shows just how much the net has changed in the past 12 years, and why it's a good idea to download stuff and keep real books around. Information on the net isn't eternal and unlosable, any more than any other medium, although it can seem like it in the short term. It's only the ability to copy it really easily that makes it harder to destroy for good. If not enough people care, it'll still be lost to the waves of time. And if print disappears, then civilisation collapses, it'll mean future generations will find it easier to uncover information about the 20th century than the 21st. Very worth thinking about. This is a very good reason to be suspicious of DRM, cloud computing and closed architecture OS's. The more you take control away from end users, the more things can be removed at the whim of a big company or by a single disaster. So yeah, this little article has given me a lot to think about the way our media is developing, and if it's a good or bad thing overall. Now let's see if I can still download some of these site's material from the wayback machine.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finishes off his last dungeon design article before we get to see the final product by talking about what the player's goals should be there. Go in, explore, Kill everything and take their stuff is cool the first few times, but you do need some variety. And if you have a bunch of side-quests and alternate routes that you can complete in nonlinear fashion, you make your players feel like they have meaningful choices, even if the final result will be the same once you've done all of them. In addition, you have to figure out what the rewards are, how many of them are automatic for completion, and how many are optional, and will only be found if the players look in the right places and use their brains to solve puzzles. So this really demonstrates how by knowing the formulas, you can actually wind up increasing the variability of your adventures, because you're consciously aware of all the axes that you could adjust to make things different. Let that be a lesson to all those who think that learning the formal disciplines of your craft will spoil your creativity, whatever artform you're working in. It only will if you let it remove your passion.
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 7/7
Sage advice: A wizard cut a dragons head off with his dagger via a single critical hit and advanced two levels straight away! This can't be right. (If you don't like that kind of thing happening, you shouldn't have introduced the system in the first place. There is a very good reason why we were so reluctant to put critical hits in AD&D, even optionally.)
Can crossbows be used as melee weapons any better than bows (not really)
Can a boulder deflect lightning bolts if it's thrown at just the right time (While this might be a cool visual, Skip will point out what a terrible idea this is from the game point of view. You allow the monsters to do it, next thing you know the players'll be doing it all the time. )
Can you do more damage by using larger increments of holy water (If you pay the price. This will not be as efficient in terms of damage per gold piece as small amounts. )
How much does a human bite hurt (Even less than a housecat's.)
Do you still lose stoneskin charges if you have another form of protection up that negates an attack (Yes. Skip never misses an opportunity to rule conservatively on the stoneskin question! )
Just what can the scarab of protection protect you against (Spells. That's it, albeit a pretty broad it. Don't try to make it even broader, or Skip will make jokes about how broad yo' momma is and how you're always hiding behind her.)
Can an ogre mage teach other creatures how to regenerate (No. Well, maybe younger ogre mages.)
How do you really pronounce Drow (Ten cows in a boat, rowing across a moat, to infiltrate a castle filled with stoats. Och, aye the noo, the cows are fools, the stoat's'll see through the disguise and torture them with tools.)
How do you tell what a potion is by sipping it if it doesn't have an obvious effect (Comedic experimentation. Oh yes. Skip is going to enjoy this. )
Role models: Once again, this column is used as a promotional tool for their advertising partners as much as it is game advice. This time it's the Diablo minis that are getting shoutouts and substantial amounts of photo space. ZOMG they're turning a videogame into D&D, etc etc. ;) The framing device is another mini encounter, with a whole bunch of monsters, and several environmental hazards that are facilitated by the minis chosen. Very much of a kind with the short linear dungeons that would become more common next edition. This doesn't really turn me on, so I don't want to spend much time with it.
Silicon Sorcery: Our other mostly promotional column with a bit of D&D material is drawing on Planescape: Torment. This does have a neat idea. In a lot of 3D action/fighty games, it's possible to trick bad guys into fighting each other by dodging and having them hit each other. This is an awesome idea to implement in your campaign, albeit maybe with a bit more nuance. Likewise, they represent high Charisma and knowledge skills by only having certain conversation options come up if you meet the stat requirements. Again, this is a relatively mechanistic representation, but it's still a lot better than those DM's who effectively make charisma worthless, which in turn results in players always neglecting it in a point buy option. So this does have some pretty good general advice, and shows us that for all the brouhaha about there being some things live DM's will always do better than a computer game, if the game is trying and the DM isn't, the computer game can still beat them. So don't get complacent, and don't be afraid to steal ideas from unlikely sources. Those are both lessons everyone needs reminding of from time to time.
Nodwick gets a four page special mocking star wars, the circle of 8, magic weapons in general, fighting in bars, kittens, and lots of other things. And now we know how badass he really is, he's not afraid to show it. Or something.
Coming attractions: Elaine Cunningham enjoys a triple bill of Forgotten Realms books. After Greenwood and Salvadore, she really must be one of the authors who shapes people's perceptions of the setting. The Magehound is set in Halruaa, and involves a wizard hunter in the top echelons of society. Curious business. Elfshadow sees angsty half-elf suffering from sexual tension. Elfsong is set in Waterdeep, and involves her familiar themes of elves and bards. Once again, there seems to be a strong mystery element to her plots.
Dragonlance unleashes a new collection of short stories, Rebels and Tyrants. More little perspectives on the war of souls. Take that, Dragon overlords!
Ravenloft finishes rehashing Van Richten's guides. However, this one also features new material, unearthed from the vaults, and annotations by his nieces. Why did he have to be the one to die permanently, while Elminster is still going, a hundred year timeskip later?
Greyhawk gets another adventure that returns to familiar grounds, a generation later. Slavers is of course the new version of modules A1-4. Now with more plot and less screwage. Blaaaaaaaaah.
Alternity gets two StarDrive products. Nightfall at Algernon by Diane Duane completes her trilogy set there. Alien Compendium II: The exploration of 2503 gives you lots of weird flora and fauna to kill and be killed by. Once again, they'll have a fairly complete line before they die.
What's new is unusually hard-hitting in it's humour this month. Guess the thought of religion brings that out in some people. Nice to see Phil was on the scientology is evil bandwagon before it went overground. Oh, and last month's snail hasn't even got off the page yet. So cute.
Well, this has indeed been a really awesome issue, easily the best in quite a few years. There's tons of great serious articles, a decent number of silly ones, a strong theme that hasn't been done into the ground, and lots of cool looks backward and forwards. There are quite a few bursts of odious overcommercialisation, but they certainly aren't enough to spoil the overall picture. It's definitely a good way to celebrate the 3/4 mark of my journey, and has plenty of material I might want to use in the future. Now, will I be able to say the same about the 4/5ths mark? Well, from here on out, those kind of landmarks will come quicker and quicker. I wonder what kind of psychological influence that'll have on my writing.
Well, it's now the 4th anniversary of when I first started doing this. I've now been doing this longer, and written more than you would on most degree courses. Pretty scary thought really. And it's now looking pretty certain that this will see a 5th anniversary, but not a 6th one before I finish the whole print run. Well, I guess now is still not the time to get lazy, so on we go.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 1/7
134 pages (132, plus two extra where the answers of quizzes are turned upside down and magnified for our convenience) Well, this is a particularly well composed cover, even if it is a bit puzzling. Those adventurers are acting like they can't see that dragon at all. Is it invisible or something? Well. that certainly fits the issue's theme. Puzzles and riddles. Last given serious attention in issue 175, and that was only two articles. Give several different writers this theme and they could definitely find different takes on it. Let's try and unravel the enigma of this issue.
Scan quality: Excellent, unindexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Several times, this magazine has complained about easy resurrection cheapening death. Here we demonstrate that after doing that, if you do introduce an enemy who has attacks that will mess up the body, cause energy draining, or inflict some other harm that the usual methods of recovery can't handle, it'll shake them right up. And the fun thing is that these are often save or die effects, meaning you can go from fine to out of play with a single roll. Muahahahaha. This is basically a troll piece to try and cause more forum debate, making it fairly amusing reading. Gotta keep that fanbase at least slightly enraged, because nothing but positive comments gets oh so very dull to read. I see the value in that. Ohohohoho. Ohohohoho.
Escape to cybertown? Ahh, the lameness of some MMO's. Is this one still around?
D-Mail: At this point, our letters are entirely made up of people talking about various aspects of 3e. First up, we have someone miffed that the priests spell compendium will be invalidated almost as soon as it's released. They assure him that conversion will not be particularly tricky. This of course makes it much more likely that people will convert, as it means they can continue to play the same characters in the same campaign, which you certainly couldn't say for 4e.
Secondly, we have worrying about counterspelling. Once again, there are subtitles to the new rules that they haven't explained yet, since they're concentrating on showing us the cool stuff first. Your worries are founded on assuming everything not specifically mentioned as different is the same.
Then we have someone annoyed that what's in the teasers isn't strictly accurate. That shouldn't be a problem now, as the books are likely rolling out the printers in vast quantities as we speak.
And finally, we actually have someone who really likes the new art style, and would like to see a book devoted to their sketches and design notes. Well, they've done it for Dragonlance. If they think it would sell, they might well do it.
Nodwick's party continue take the choice to kill him only once instead of dozens of times. Be thankful for small mercies.
Wizards Live: Having introduced us to the idea that we can talk to our favourite developers, this column now devotes a little more attention to the other segments of the company. The Pokemon and M:tG card games. Which are probably the more profitable parts of the company anyway, but it never hurts to get a bit more crosspromotion in. Actually, to be honest, they could have been a lot worse with that. They never did convert the M:tG gameworld to D&D, or vice versa. Still, it does seem like they're slipping into the bad habit of blatant promotion again. I wonder if I can continue to find anything new to say about this column if it continues for an extended period.
Everquest! Now there's a familiar face. Rather disconcerting to realize it's been around that long.
Boris Vallejo goes into sculpture. His subject matter remains the same. $295? Gor blimey guv, you could feed a family on that for a month.
Well, it's now the 4th anniversary of when I first started doing this. I've now been doing this longer, and written more than you would on most degree courses. Pretty scary thought really. And it's now looking pretty certain that this will see a 5th anniversary, but not a 6th one before I finish the whole print run. Well, I guess now is still not the time to get lazy, so on we go.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 1/7
134 pages (132, plus two extra where the answers of quizzes are turned upside down and magnified for our convenience) Well, this is a particularly well composed cover, even if it is a bit puzzling. Those adventurers are acting like they can't see that dragon at all. Is it invisible or something? Well. that certainly fits the issue's theme. Puzzles and riddles. Last given serious attention in issue 175, and that was only two articles. Give several different writers this theme and they could definitely find different takes on it. Let's try and unravel the enigma of this issue.
Scan quality: Excellent, unindexed.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: Several times, this magazine has complained about easy resurrection cheapening death. Here we demonstrate that after doing that, if you do introduce an enemy who has attacks that will mess up the body, cause energy draining, or inflict some other harm that the usual methods of recovery can't handle, it'll shake them right up. And the fun thing is that these are often save or die effects, meaning you can go from fine to out of play with a single roll. Muahahahaha. This is basically a troll piece to try and cause more forum debate, making it fairly amusing reading. Gotta keep that fanbase at least slightly enraged, because nothing but positive comments gets oh so very dull to read. I see the value in that. Ohohohoho. Ohohohoho.
Escape to cybertown? Ahh, the lameness of some MMO's. Is this one still around?
D-Mail: At this point, our letters are entirely made up of people talking about various aspects of 3e. First up, we have someone miffed that the priests spell compendium will be invalidated almost as soon as it's released. They assure him that conversion will not be particularly tricky. This of course makes it much more likely that people will convert, as it means they can continue to play the same characters in the same campaign, which you certainly couldn't say for 4e.
Secondly, we have worrying about counterspelling. Once again, there are subtitles to the new rules that they haven't explained yet, since they're concentrating on showing us the cool stuff first. Your worries are founded on assuming everything not specifically mentioned as different is the same.
Then we have someone annoyed that what's in the teasers isn't strictly accurate. That shouldn't be a problem now, as the books are likely rolling out the printers in vast quantities as we speak.
And finally, we actually have someone who really likes the new art style, and would like to see a book devoted to their sketches and design notes. Well, they've done it for Dragonlance. If they think it would sell, they might well do it.
Nodwick's party continue take the choice to kill him only once instead of dozens of times. Be thankful for small mercies.
Wizards Live: Having introduced us to the idea that we can talk to our favourite developers, this column now devotes a little more attention to the other segments of the company. The Pokemon and M:tG card games. Which are probably the more profitable parts of the company anyway, but it never hurts to get a bit more crosspromotion in. Actually, to be honest, they could have been a lot worse with that. They never did convert the M:tG gameworld to D&D, or vice versa. Still, it does seem like they're slipping into the bad habit of blatant promotion again. I wonder if I can continue to find anything new to say about this column if it continues for an extended period.
Everquest! Now there's a familiar face. Rather disconcerting to realize it's been around that long.
Boris Vallejo goes into sculpture. His subject matter remains the same. $295? Gor blimey guv, you could feed a family on that for a month.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 2/7
Forum: Lance Goetz praises almost everything he's seen so far about 3e apart from the new initiative system. Looks like all the talking we've done in the forum is paying off.
Brian Moran finds Co-DMing has produced a campaign better than either could have managed on their own. Healthy competition plus learning from each other is a pretty potent combination. Don't take on the weight of the universe alone.
Brian Corvello points out just how often sci-fi and fantasy actually cross over. The lines are very blurry indeed. Particularly in comic books, which mix magic, technology and aliens casually and screw the cosmology. The only real limit is the writer's imagination.
Rhian Hunt points out how much of D&D is directly derived from tolkien, but at the same time totally lacking in the same kind of depth and meaning. Hey, we're trying! Not all of us are literary geniuses able to stick to a single imaginary world over the course of decades. :(
Roger Cox put three rust monsters in a giant floating pig, and relied upon the player's curiosity to seal their own doom. Well, it was the 70's. Everything was a lot goofier back then. Only the most sadistic of wizards would do something like that IC though. I wonder if Zagyg approves.
Sneak preview: The D&D movie! It's finally on! Oh frabjulous day, that we live to see such sights. And then we gouge out our eyeballs, so we may never see such glorious horrors again. I mean, really, blue eyeshadow? A thief called Snails? The lamest beholders evar? Even Jeremy Iron's scenery chewing can't save the day. And it looks like we have at least 6 months of promotions to mock before they can even begin to give a realistic opinion of it's merits. This should be fuuun. :devil: Anyway, here we get shots of all the main characters, and several of the sets. Ironically, the outside bits look faker than the inside shots, which were filmed in cool real world eastern european buildings. Another demonstration of how practical effects date less than CGI. Most of the clothes don't look too bad at this resolution, aside from the Dwarf, and the Wayans ridiculous earflaps. And hey, at least they'e trying for a bit of racial diversity. I still wonder why they didn't include a cleric on the team though. Did they really think that would be too uncool or a hard sell to a wider audience? But those are small nitpicks compared to the ripping other people have already given this. We shall have to see if I can build up to that kind of frothing fury.
ProFiles: Steve Miller looks decidedly not amused at the thought of being profiled. He joined TSR with the intent of working on Mystara, just before it was cancelled, leaving all the stuff he was working on unpublished. Not a pleasing experience. He's persevered though, continuing to do AD&D work when he'd really rather be doing D&D stuff. And with the coming of the new edition, it looks like he's got his wish. Well, they would say that, since they're designing it. If they didn't like what they were creating, they'd change it. He certainly seems to have pretty broad tastes in reading and viewing, which the flexibility of the new edition better suits. He'd rather like to do more fiction in the future, which is interesting to note. My memory fails me as to what he gets up to over the next decade, so I'll have to do a little research, see if that wish pans out.
Up on a soapbox: Gary's latest rant is somewhat less challenging and divisive than the last few months. Roleplayers aren't all stupid and socially retarded. It's a hobby that requires both reasonable literacy and regular interaction with other people. That's obviously going to skew things towards the upper end of the intelligence spectrum. Given that he's preaching to the choir here, I don't think many people are going to want to argue with that. So I have less to comment on here than the last few. Just remember to wash regularly. It's not pleasant for your friends, it's not pleasant for strangers, and if you live in a 1st world country, very unlikely you can't afford it, even in the current economy. So no excuses.
Countdown to 3rd edition: 3 months to go. I think it's been made fairly clear for a while that Monks were coming back in 3e. After all, the Greyhawk revivalists at WotC were big fans of them. So they're back, revamped for the new rules, but with essentially the same kind of powerset. And here we have an opportunity to talk about several interesting rules issues. 3e's multiclassing system, and the linear warrior, quadratic wizard problem. Now, 3e multiclassing is probably better than the two systems used in previous editions, particularly the clunky dual-classing humans had to put up with. And for the fighty classes it works pretty well, mixing and matching levels in fighter, ranger, rogue, etc isn't a huge problem (actually, due to the front-loading of rogues and rangers, a good build in another class could often involve taking a level or two in them. ) But for the spellcasters, you just couldn't compete with a straight single class one, and the patches, such as dual advancement prestige classes, only mitigated the problem, not solved it. Still, some of the many experiments in d20 games did better, often by using completely different magic systems that don't scale in the same way, or are more linked to your character level than your class level. And didn't short-circuit the issue by stripping down your options to only a dozen or so even at high levels like 4e did. Of course, you do have to ask the question if it's possible to create a truly balanced system without removing meaningful choice, and if you want flexible multiclassing anyway, or if it's a poor compromise between having strong archetypical characters, and point buy systems which let you build exactly what you want (as long as you have enough points. ) There really is a lot to think about here, and more questions than answers. Still, it's not as if you can't have fun with any edition of D&D, so the rules can't be total failures. Let's see what elements they reveal next month.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 3/7
Power word Baffle: Well, here's this month's special feature, as advertised on the front. Time for a good 10 pages on cryptograms, crosswords, word searches, quotation puzzles, and general word games. Of course, the frustrating thing about these is that they're pretty strongly tied to the specifics of the language they're written in, and thus may not translate to a fantasy campaign, where it may be assumed that the characters aren't actually speaking english. Still, it worked in the Hobbit, so you can probably incorporate them into your game a few times. Personally, I'd prefer more practical and mathematical based puzzles that do translate universally, but that's just because I'm better at solving them. I suppose we do already have several articles on deviously sadistic traps that require pretty convoluted actions to avoid. So this is fairly well done, but as it's a subject I'm not very keen on, it leaves me feeling that this is a topic they ought to have covered for completenesses sake, but doesn't really encourage me to use it. Hopefully it'll be more use to you.
Riddles of the rhyming sphinx: Our second theme article is much shorter, presenting us with a bunch of sample riddles for creatures like sphinxes to challenge the players with. Most of them are new ones, so players won't be able to answer them purely from memory. Quite a few of them are based around D&D specific creatures and ideas. Many are word plays, with the obvious answer being wrong, and so not translating well into other languages. They get increasingly tricky as they go on, with the final one in particular requiring players to be very careful if they want to avoid being set up to fail unpleasantly. So this could cause your players more than a little amusing frustration, and will eventually drive them to just try and kill the riddlers rather than fighting them. This stuff never works for long when confronted by brutal realists, does it. Someone always pushes things too far and makes it no longer a game, spoiling it for everyone else. So much for that game.
The totem deck: How long is it since we got expanded versions of the deck of many things? Issues 26, 77 and 148? Yup, seems about the right time for a revisiting, given their current policies rounding off the edition. And this doesn't directly repeat any of them either. Instead, it selects 54 creatures mundane and supernatural, and then maps them to a basic deck of cards. If you want, you could instead cut out the supplied cards (although you'd have to photocopy them or print out the scans to really make this work, since they're on regular pages rather than blank on the back.) for something with a bit more flavour. As with any of these decks, it's an amusingly mixed bag. 28 of the effects are positive, 16 negative, and 10 could be either, depending on your point of view and cleverness. They generally aren't as extreme as the original deck of many things though, and many of them are merely temporary or one use, rather than transforming your character forever. Which if your players know this, may mean they're a little more likely to make the gamble of trying a draw. The fact that this isn't a centrepiece special feature just shows how much they're packing into these last few issues. But even if the presentation isn't as good as it could be, it's still a great article. If it appeared 15 years ago, people would still be citing it as a classic.
Lock, stock & Barrel: We had an article on magical locks fairly recently. (issue 239. ) Now here's one on mundane ones. Another fairly old school feeling article, this is all real world technical info of the sort that gives you a primer on the subject, but you would be better served by going to the library and finding a full book on the topic. As has often been the case recently, the visual aspect is a real treat, well formatted, and making a real difference to the atmosphere and ease of learning. But it doesn't stop the content from being a bit boring. If you have a rogue heavy game, you may well want to to use it to keep them feeling challenged, but I doubt you'll want to make locks and traps the focus of your entire campaign. Well, at least it fills another little niche the magazine hasn't done before.
Fiction: By the job by Paul Kidd. We've seen quite a bit on the conflict between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil over the years, but pretty few concrete examples of disputes between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good. Well, we have one here, although the goodness of the Paladin involved is questionable, falling more into the lawful dick category. There's a very interesting combination of humour and straight characters in this, and it doesn't shy away from showing violence, and asking tricky moral questions before interjecting some whimsy again. It turns out at the end that this is another prequel to a full novel that's coming out soon, but this one works as a standalone story, so it doesn't feel like it was thrown in purely as a promotional tool. I could definitely stand to see some more stories with these characters.
Colossus: Ooh, shiny! A minigame! We haven't had one of those in SO long, and for the last couple they forgot to scan in the board anyway. Once again, they're making cool and thoroughly unexpected callbacks to the old days without actually repeating themselves. It doesn't require you to cut out any pieces that you're then likely to lose anyway either. It's a pretty short and simple game where you build a monster, and then use it to fight the monsters of the other players. It has both elements of skill and luck, but given the large number of tactical choices available each turn, you'll definitely improve with repeated plays. As with many of the old games, it also introduces some optional rules to keep your game interesting and increase the complexity a bit once you've got the basics down pat. I can definitely say I'm happy to see this kind of material in the magazine again. Why did they stop doing it in the first place anyway? This is the kind of stuff people really remember.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 4/7
Arcane Lore picks itself up to get back to delivering a decent quantity of spells. Quality, of course, may be a different matter. This time the focus is on defensive magics. You know, abjurers still haven't got a special on them. And with only two of these spells being an abjuration, (and more being alterations) they're still unpleasantly underrepresented, and can even be edged out at their own job by other specialists. Diviners and necromancers have got their fixes, but it looks like Abjurers will have to stay the scrappy, overshadowed even by elementalists, wild mages and sha'irs.
Clayskin is a weakened stoneskin. Now you can annoy your DM like hell right from 1st level. Those goblins are going to be really scared if you stock up on this one.
Heat Wave surrounds you in shimmering, protecting you from missile weapons and cold. A good one for your low level fire elementalist who doesn't want to be all offence all the time.
Innocent Bearing makes people not suspect you. Another one we've had before, albeit at higher level. There does seem to be a bit of power creep going on in this article.
Shadow Shield is an illusory defence that works just fine as long as no-one disbelieves it. Or you don't get attacked by inanimate objects. Not too hard to get around, really.
Skullhelm is your typical bit of necromantic forebodingnes. It's benefits are pretty minor. Who's going to try a called shot to the head when you're wearing something like this?
Wild Swing is another way of saving a low level wizard's life by reducing damage. Well, if you want to live to 2nd level, it might be a good idea.
Vapor Guard is another one that does something similar to previous spells seen here, only better, particularly when level is taken into account. This is becoming a definite pattern.
Bone Block gives you a pair of extra skeletal arms, parrying attacks for you. Just the thing for an up-and-coming necromancer who wants to make the right impression.
Dancing Shield fairly reliably blocks the first attack on you in a round. In one-on-one battles against people, this is of course particularly effective. Poor fighters have no chance really at this stage, do they.
Protection from Curse is yet another variant on one we've seen very recently. Once again, with the sloppy editorial filtering. Throw it out, dudes.
Battle Augury yet again makes me yawn. Momentary precognition to give you AC and save bonuses? Very familiar idea.
Protection from Polymorph seems a little too specific to use a spell slot on most days. Just stock up on dispel's, that'll be more likely to be practically useful.
Iron Shirt lets a wizard give themselves all the benefits of armor without impeding spellcasting. Cheesy monkeys.
Rary's Defensive Spell Enhancer adds 1 to the protection granted by whatever other spell. Probably not worth it, like too many other current metamagic tricks. Roll on next edition where they reach maturity, and all this built up crap gets swept away.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another last burst of magic-free setting heavy frippery before edition change squeezes that stuff out of D&D for the foreseeable future. Eat, drink and be merry, for in 3 months time, there will be only war.
Cockles in Laminari are shellfish preserved in thick glutinous kelp. That's several different food groups in one package. A bit of steaming would probably be a good idea to get rid of the excess salt.
Djekul is fishy cheese that works well half-melted and with vegetables dipped in it. Damn, now you're making me hungry. Don't say I'm going to actually try a recipe from a fantasy game. Oh, the shame.
Goldenseed nuts are basically fantasy peanuts that come presalted. Mmm. You can bet they'll be pretty moreish.
Karafruit Sweetchews are little cubes of dried fruit to serve as sweet trail rations. Once again, I find myself salivating. It's really rather worrying.
Karispa is peppery watercress. That requires no stretch of the imagination at all. Basic reskinning is boring.
Molvarti is goat cheese. Ironically, it works well served with lamb, which feels a bit wrong. Oh well, can't be squeamish about exploiting things every way possible.
Pilac are dryable noodles that swell to 3 times that volume once water is added. Again, a good one for adventurers.
Tusham is a particular variety of smoked boar, made rare by Iuz's depredations. Do you want to fight to preserve ancient cultural foods? Or is that too mundane for your party?
Villosa are red mushrooms. :plays super mario bros theme: They're pretty versatile. Raw, cooked or used to make a dye. I wonder if eating too many gives you orange pee.
Wickler is marbled cheese. Once again, they include a mouth-watering recipe in the description. Looks like there'll be enough to make a whole day's meals in here.
Ambierre is apple wine with a bit of grapes. The precise formula is a secret, to keep it selling well. Do you want to make this into a plot hook?
Bejl is a herbal mix that becomes a medicinal tonic when you add boiling water. Probably smells pretty pungent. No thanks.
Frinnecre is mixed fruit cider from elven territory. The description reads like an advert from inside the setting. I mildly disapprove.
Galda fruit brandy on the other hand is for the common folk, with nobles turning their nose up at it. This is nothing to do with it's taste. Silly fashionistas.
Gauglathiir gets into full-on Jilly Goulden territory in it's description of alcohol. This is becoming almost comical. Who though publishing this stuff was a good idea?
Heathen is Dwarven berry wine. What, you thought they bought it all from humans. You can't trust them to properly age it to a dwarf's discerning standards. Down the hatch.
Iriador is an elven made wine that has a strong human market. Should make a pretty moneyspinner for them.
Kaffet is Oerth coffee. Obviously their characters just couldn't survive without it, so they had to find an excuse to insert it. Woe for the sleepless!
Mist Mash is another case of modern technology being introduces to oerth. Stronger sprits? That stuff rots your brain. Next thing you know we'll have renamed absinthe.
Shamarit is iced wine from up north. Once again, they review this one as if they were working IC.
Silaurey is from the farmlands around Greyhawk city. It seems to be a good middle of the road option.
Skyrss barely qualifies as beer, but at least it doesn't leave you with a hangover. Is this a snide commentary on stuff like budweiser? In any case, it brings us to the end of another of their most inconsequential articles ever. I'm glad to have got through it.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 5/7
Dragon's bestiary: This column has been relying a little too much on the contribution of the regular writers recently, probably to it's detriment. Not this month however, as we see the results of their recent competition. Will the contributions of amateurs be fresher than the usual suspects? They'd better be, given the number they had to choose from.
Visceraith are another form of undead created by wizardly experimentation into transhumanism. They're a bunch of semi-substantial organs that use other people's bones like a hermit crab. They can also control bones other than the ones they're occupying, to unpleasant effect. Man. Bones, blood, worms, cobwebs, there's a lot of weird transformations you can go through, but probably wouldn't want too. What other variants on this theme will they come up with?
Soul masks are greek stage masks that feed off the emotion they represent, and encourage it in those around them. Now there's something that has a short story about it somewhere, probably with people dying as a result of it. Makes me think of Vampire princess Miyu in particular, which is no bad thing.
Dvati are a variant on the bonded twin principle also employed later by Mike Mearls in Iron Heroes. They act as one, and if one dies, the other does too. They have pretty good class abilities, and are all ambidextrous, so I can see quite a few cheese monkeys wanting to play them.
So it seems I can pick out parallels for all of them, showing there can't have been any truly great original ideas amongst the entries. That is somewhat disappointing really. Still, they do all look perfectly playable. But merely average is still not quite good enough, really.
The ecology of the bag of devouring: Wait a minute. This is a magic item, not a monster! Or is it? Maybe it's both. In any case, it's well worthy of study, assuming you can survive the experience, or have magical means of tracing the path of it's extradimensional throats. For the first time in a while, we have a new writer handling things, and a story in which the protagonist grows and changes substantially as a result of his adventure. A monster, dungeon, and hugely exploitable adventure hook all in one, this shows how what seems to be a cursed item is actually a strong opportunity if done right. And it also shows just how alien alternate prime material worlds can be. Guess it's another excellent and thought provoking ecology then. We are spoiled these days.
The new adventures of Volo: More secret societies? When we're just about to get a whole book on them? I smell cut material. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in the Realms was a member of multiple simultaneously. WoDesque conspiracy exaggeration aside, this isn't about the usual subjects, but another up-and-coming new secret society, just itching to get a new branch in YOUR hometown. Another reminder or two that the Realms is a living and constantly developing world, and you can drop new things in, and take old ones out (where are the Horde or Maztican incursions now? ) as you go along to keep things interesting and it'll feel perfectly natural if you do it right. Plus they're a good adversary for players, as they're the right size that a determined group could wipe the whole lot of them out and make a real difference for the better, unlike the Red Wizards or Zhentarim. This all seems very playable with, and designed to tackle with the accusations that the Realms is hard to play in because there's too much built up canon. Looks like he's still listening to the complaints and adapting his style to compensate. I guess that's another reason for his longevity as a successful contributor.
Top Secret: A second nostalgic callback this month, as we talk about doing espionage stuff in Alternity. Another one of those things that really makes it feel like they're trying to hit as many bases they can, make what we have feel as complete as possible for years more of play before they drop it all for good. What we get is moderately unusual as well. While we do get some new skills and equipment, the majority of this is devoted to 11 new careers, to help you build and differentiate suitable characters right from the outset if you know espionage is going to be a campaign focus. It doesn't particularly stand out as good or bad after a couple of readings, so I shall shrug and call it average. It does it's job, and I guess that's enough.
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 6/7
Dungeoncraft: 16 months in, and it's only now you think about recruiting players and doing character generation? If we were running in realtime, that could definitely be called either sluggish writing or over-preparation. Actually, that raises some very important questions. Should you design the world, and then look for players, or should you get the players, and then agree on the system and setting with them? And if you do have the players first, how much time is reasonable to prepare without actually playing before they lose interest? I suppose this is the kind of thing that will be very different depending on if you're friends with them beforehand, and regularly socialise with them outside gaming or not. Still, either way, unless you're using a published campaign setting, you'll need to create some basic information about setting and character options for them to work with. Keep it to 2-3 pages though, otherwise many players might not bother to read it all. This is an area where there are multiple right ways to do it, but there are also quite a few wrong ways as well. Keeping momentum is probably a better idea than slowly crafting in meticulous detail, but one size won't fit every player anyway. So this is one area where many campaigns fall by the wayside, and some advice is rather helpful. I think he could definitely stick at this topic for a few months more before moving on.
Sage advice: Can vampires mentally command people with their charm or not (Skip recommends or not. Remember you have to see the creature for gaze attacks to work, so no charming while invisible or scrying)
Can a vampire run around with a blanket over their head to avoid frying in the sun, buffy style (no)
Van Richten's guide to vampires says oceans and seas don't count as running water (Skip disagrees with that ruling, and strongly recommends you ignore it. Skip will also completely ignore your primary question.)
Can a vampire diffuse their mist over a whole house (Only if they were as big as a house to start with. You'd better hope yo momma doesn't get turned into a vampire. )
How much can a vampire take with them when they mistify (Encumbrance limit. This still slows them down)
How much damage does violet fungus do. ( Insta-limb loss. Bet you wish you were facing vampires instead now. )
Does Con based regeneration let you regrow limbs (Recycled question. The answer's still no. )
What are Sidhe's level limits (same as elves)
What happens to an energy drained undead's equipment (Nothing. It stays right there. If they're corporeal creatures, they can still use it. Yet more reason to loot your fallen comrades)
Are dragons completely helpless while pinning creatures (Keeping things pinned takes up all their attention. They will try and escape, you know.)
Can you hurt a molydeus with holy avengers (By RAW, no. They're designed to be utter bastards who can protect the Abyss from virtually anything. )
Does having fiendish hide make you obviously fiendish looking (not necessarily. )
Do undead have strength scores (sure!)
What's the beguile spell (see the rod of beguiling. Duh.)
How many attacks does a beholder have (1 bite, plus one shot from each eye-ray. Pretty scary, huh.)
How powerful are pixie illusions (see the spell permanent illusion)
Can you destroy a tarrasque by acid or petrification (No. It may turn to stone, but that certainly won't stop it forever. It'll just set you up for a plot several years along the line where a bunch of insane cultists want to free their god.)
Can lycanthropes be hurt by natural disasters (recycled question. The answer's still yes.)
How long does it take to die without food (Depends on your Con score. It can take a while. )
If you teleport within another plane with teleport without error, do you suffer failure chances (No. It's the planar boundary crossing that makes things tricky. )
Just what do elves sleep and charm resistance protect them against (This one again? Skip is so bored right now. )
Does a thief need to be able to write to use their read languages power ( Not officially, but you are free to house rule it like that. )
Dragon Magazine Issue 271: May 2000
part 7/7
PC Portraits: Investigators are this month's theme, to fit with the puzzles of earlier. This means that you can see their hands a lot more than usual, as they examine some object, or merely rest their chin on it in contemplative fashion. There's more miscellaneous objects as well. Less variety of expressions though. Don't want emotions getting in the way of our logical deductions, do we?
Role models: The old question about illusion adjudication combined with minis? I fail to see how these two topics intersect. Well, it turns out they do have a few ideas here, but they're ones that'll only work a few times before players get savvy to them, like having the real ones painted, but the fake ones left bare. I suppose that's accurate. Anyone exposed to illusions regularly is rapidly going to become savvy to the obvious cues, especially when the illusions all come from the same source, so they have the same flaws in terms of composition and missing sensory elements. And to be honest, you don't want to use illusions too frequently, or they lose their edge. Use for one scenario, then shelve for at least a couple of years.
Silicon Sorcery: Nox is this month's game. Since this has a lot of emphasis on it's spooky atmosphere ad clever traps, it makes sense that this is what they want to help you emulate in your games. And remember, just because you're using traps doesn't mean you have to give the monsters a rest. Combine monsters with traps, and you can make both more deadly, but also open up opportunities to play one off against the other, making otherwise unsolvable challenges resolved via the hubris of the enemies. After all, that's how it works in virtually every Mario game, and an absolute ton of other ones. And along with the examples, they give us an exceedingly versatile new spell that'll let you chain together several other ones in a trap, like contingency, only on an area rather than you. The screenshots don't work particularly well in this case, but everything else is pretty fun. They chose good source material to work with this month.
Nodwick fights the slave lords series. But he's still working like a slave himself. Oh the irony.
Coming attractions: The Forgotten Realms enjoy more than half of this month's releases, with an adventure and 2 novels. Dungeon of Death sees old skool dungeoncrawling return to the realms as well, finally mapping out a place mentioned ages ago. So much for maintaining the differentiation between Toril and Oerth. R. A. Salvadore's Cleric quintet gets it's third book reprinted, so they can make some more easy money. And Mel Odom finishes off their recent trilogy involving horrors from the sea. Now, how will they handle this edition change IC?
Dragonlance gets Downfall, part one of The Dhamon Saga by Jean Rabe. He ended his last trilogy a hero. Now he's just a schmuck again. It doesn't get any easier, second time around. If only the writer were actually using D&D rules.
And we also get an idea we've seen a few times fully fleshed out. Reverse Dungeon. Muahahahaha! Ahh, turning the tables and playing the monsters. That's usually pretty fun. They are still coming out with a few cool things this late in the product cycle.
What's new covers riddles as well. And provides the answer to every one of them.
Once again, there's the definite feel that they're using up all their old material in preparation for the edition change, and this results in rather a lot of interestingly old school material, some of which they actually haven't done before. After a couple of years in which I've often felt the update couldn't come soon enough, I now find myself wanting them to hang on a few months longer. If only they could have stayed this good the whole time, then we would never have had these company problems in the first place. So 2 more months to go. Let's hope they continue to have plenty of quality articles as well as quantity.
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 1/7
130(2 pages missing) They lose the magazine again at this point, having been fluctuating for a bit. What's with that. You've had it for more than half your life now. I guess it's like middle-aged people getting rid of their tattoos or something. The cover is pretty impressive again. That is one absolutely huge dragon. And it looks like they still have quite a few more dragon based articles for 2e in the time we have remaining. Let's see if these are the finely matured wine of articles, or the absolute dregs.
Scan quality: A few pages missing, slightly faded.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: This month, Dave covers the amusing topic of people attempting to claim seniority as a gamer by saying they've been playing longer, started with an earlier edition, have had longer running characters which got to higher levels, and so forth. This is particularly funny if they claim to have started with books that are older than they are. Some people never stop jockeying for status, do they? It's a game. Can you not just concentrate on having fun, and maybe recruiting more people so it's not so hard to find a group? New players who aren't jaded, and concentrate more on playing a role than gaming the system can be more fun to play with anyway. So this is another trap for the experienced player to be aware of and avoid, for unless you're Gary, that kind of pomposity will only make you risible. What really is the value of playing the same elf for 40 years? (Well, if you're Leonard Nimoy, a good few million. :p ) Is it worthy of respect? Does anything really matter in the long run? Damnnit, I'm getting into existential crisis mode again. Let's embrace the illusion that what I'm doing matters on any level for a little longer, for quitting past the 3/4 mark would be a terrible waste that would nag at me for the rest of my life.
D-Mail: We start off with a letter from someone who's decidedly worried about the drastic changes it looks like 3e is making, and is rather leery about switching over. As usual, they do their best to convince him, and by extension, all the other readers that are still on the shelf, for their livelihoods depends on it.
We then have one from someone who wasn't particularly keen on their latest annual, but likes issues 267 & 268 a lot. They should try harder for their special issues, not get bogged down in messing around.
After that, Skip's rulings on paralysis get picked at. Any errors are because he's trying to hold two rulesets in his head at once, and may premptively put out some of the fixes the next edition makes. Trust his wisdom, for he knows where the problem areas are and wants to solve them even more than you do.
And finally, we have some grumbling about the guy from issue 268 who scared his players with a real tarantula when their characters encountered giant spiders. That's so not fair! Well, no, but life isn't fair. You still have to deal with it, one way or another.
Nodwick is still the smart one in the team. Maybe. If he was really smart, he'd have quit by now.
Forum: Scott Wylie Roberts gives his opinion on the 3e previews so far. Many of them are not positive. Iterative attacks in particular come under fire for looking like a hassle to remember and apply. He also wants the bloated Forgotten Realms killed and Greyhawk to get plenty of supplements next edition. I'm so sorry.
Krag Kadera (perfect dwarf name) wants energy drain made temporary. It annoys the players far less to do so. No shit sherlock. The big question then becomes if you want to really scare and annoy your players sometimes.
Steve Hammer thinks weapons having different damages to different size creatures is pointless and illogical. That should definitely be on the chopping block for 3e.
Keely Markham tells us about his parties draconic employer, who may also have them for dinner sometime soon. They're taking to undermountain to try and get some xp before that happens. Good luck leveling up quick enough.
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 2/7
ProFiles: Andy Collins is another one of the new recruits, who would go on to be the old guard by the time of the next edition change. He actually joined WotC shortly before they took over TSR, and so got into the biggest gaming company by the back door. He doesn't seem that interested in talking about D&D at the moment, having gone straight from working on Alternity to the new Star Wars d20 game. Still, there's plenty of time for that. Like several of our newer writers, the shock from working with industry giants hasn't quite worn off yet, and he's amazed he got this far. Well, if he were actually an egotistical twat, they'd hardly say it in this magazine, would they. Another pretty solid entry that would still turn out very different if they were writing it today.
Up on a soapbox: We've already stood up for the much maligned hack and slash playstyle here. The next logical step is doing the same for Dungeon Crawling. This is somewhat easier to excise from your game than combat. Even in the most political of games, the threat of danger and the possibility of succeeding or failing at your plans is what gives your games real excitement. On the other hand, a site based challenge that you clear out and then don't return too is very much a D&D thing. But since Gary popularised the idea, of course he's going to present it as an essential part of your roleplaying experiences that you should never entirely outgrow. Yeah, once again he's being intentionally polarising largely as a way of provoking debate. I have a sudden urge to dub the trololo song over his appearance in Futurama. Still, as with Ed's perverseness, it's a lot more interesting than most of their writers, and shows that a culture does need elder statesmen who can get away with saying stuff a lot of people are thinking, but are afraid too. And since getting back to the dungeon was one of the 3e taglines, there's still plenty of ground roots support for this playstyle. You do need to recognise when a fashion has been taken as far as it can go and switch to the next wave or wipe out.
Countdown to 3rd edition: 2 months to go. Things are really heating up now, as they cover two classes this month. Barbarians have been pretty much completely rewritten for 3e. Their old nature survival themed powers have been exchanged for RAGE and the toughness and agility to survive as a frontline fighter without heavy armor. Eventually they get damage reduction, which was an exceedingly rare power before, but many monsters and a reasonable minority of characters will now be able to shrug off an infinite number of scratches. They're definitely a lot more combat focussed than they used to be. Rangers haven't changed as much on a conceptual level, but the implementation of their powers has been remixed quite a bit. Their spell selection is slightly bigger, their favored enemy power now scales nicely, and they're no longer restricted by alignment. They're just getting the general upgrade all of the classes are. This isn't as interesting as the last few, because it doesn't reveal some big aspect of the new rules, just little details. Next month's teaser, on the other hand? Brand new class ahoy. The readers have a full month to speculate about that.
Bahamut & Tiamat: The 3e teasers escalate with our first full monster statblocks. And pretty significant they are too. After all, the big bosses of the good and evil dragons took a break for an entire edition, only showing avatars in Monster Mythology. But since 3e is pushing the player empowerment in a fairly significant way, you once again have a chance of killing gods. Not that it'll be an easy fight, even at 20th level though, for their stats are in numbers you simply didn't see in earlier editions. The players may be stronger, but the monsters are beefed up too. So this gives you a pretty good warning of just how big high level statblocks get in 3e, and how they've changed the general format for monsters. The teasers may have shown us bits and pieces, but this gives you a far more complete picture. It is indeed a pretty significant step. Shame we won't see any letter responses to it before the actual books are out, given their response time. :D
PC Portraits: Last year we had dragonslayers in this column. This time it's dragonriders. Another of those cases where you put characters from the two groups in the same party, they will probably end up fighting. They're all pretty heavily armoured, and a couple of them are protecting their eyes as well. Well, full-grown dragons are generally more than strong enough to carry a whole party without seriously reducing their speed. And if you're fighting other dragons or similar high level threats, you need all the protection you can get. You can still adorn yourself with bright colours and precious jewelery, and do spectacular stunt flying, but without some pragmatism, you won't last many fights.
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 3/7
Dragon Psionics: Ed Bonny does another intriguingly specific article for a niche setting. How does Gem Dragons having access to a source of power the other two families can't learn or really understand affect politics? Since Psionics aren't subject to magic resistance in 2e, and have lots of mind affecting powers, you can see how some dragons would get paranoid. But while there are some adventure hooks here, most of this is devoted to 8 new psionic powers, most of which are proprietary secrets of various races, and in some cases specific clans. Most of them are quite dragon specific, and wouldn't be of much use to a race without flight, breath weapons, and so forth even if they did manage to somehow steal the secret. This means that while this is pretty fun reading, it's not going to be useful to a huge number of people. Still, given their current stance of making the material they release more generic, that means I shall treasure it. If there's any campaign that really needed a few good supplements to keep you from running out of material before you even got past 1st level, it's Council of Wyrms.
How to talk with a dragon: Speak softly, and bring lots of friends with big sticks. Unless you're dealing with a dragon that's still small and young enough that they can't squash you with one claw like a bug, you need to be both obsequious and constantly on your guard. Unlike Devils, which want your soul, and will normally keep to the letter of their bargains, dragons don't consider you important enough to negotiate with seriously unless specifically proven otherwise, plus you look so very appetising, so evil or neutral ones may well eat you as soon as you're no longer useful or amusing, and even good ones will be more than a little patronising. This article takes an extreme stance, (you certainly couldn't say this about all the dragons in Ed's Wyrms of the North series) but does so with style, and more than a little humour, making it stand out from the crowd. It once again shows how interesting a writer Robin Laws is, and how taking a strong stance for an article gets more notable results than filling up your statements with conditionals and compromises. He fully deserves to be a popular and polarising writer who gets forum threads about what he does with this showing.
Sleeping dragon Inn: We finally get to see the winner of this competition from issue 251, nearly 2 years later. I do have to wonder what took them so long. And since the inn is small and rectangular, and doesn't have any huge surprises in layout, I'm not sure why they picked this one over all the other submissions they got. What do you consider good building design in a fantasy campaign anyway? I think I'd really have to see some of the competition so I could get an idea of what the bad ideas looked like, (and if they were actually more gonzo and awesome anyway) so I could judge it better.
The secret library of Vecna: Ah yes, Bahamut and Tiamat may be getting an upgrade in the edition change, but it's Vecna who's really getting a promotion, from an occasional adversary to a core god who'll appear in most campaigns which don't make up their own whole new set. Part of that is because he just has an iconic look. Anyone can draw a corpse missing a hand and an eye, and however the details differ (did they ever say if it's the right or left eye? ) anyone with a modicum of D&D lore'll be able to say "yup, that's Vecna alright" But anyway, since he's temporarily trapped in Ravenloft at the moment, this is a collection of typically double-edged magical items that he's collected recently. You'd have a hell of a time getting hold of them, and if you did, the odds of you turning into an undead creature, being possessed by a ghost, or just dying horribly when he catches you are pretty high. Basically, you're screwed, because he's the writer's darling, and trying to fight him will just send you on a railroad ride of frustration. I think i speak for many in the audience when I say fuck that noise.
Fiction: The skin witch by J Gregory Keyes. Fool Wolf continues to try and get rid of his savage bonded spirit, only to find that the only people who might be able to accomplish that have agendas of their own, and are not to be trusted in the slightest. I don't think it'll surprise you to hear he fails, the author not wanting to change the major framing device for the stories. (plus he'd have to find a sidekick or someone else to talk too to make the adventures relatable) However, he doesn't keep the world static, with the river god that was shooting to become a monotheistic overlord having been overthrown recently, leaving a big power vacuum. But that hasn't made things any nicer, and the magic-users are still getting up to some pretty fucked-up stuff in the name of power and security. He might not want to be a hero, but compared to the people he meets, he's not a bad guy at all. Like Gary's column, this is one of the few things in the magazine pushing at what the censors might allow, and is more interesting for it. Magic is probably more interesting, and definitely more balanced when it has a price, and so using it or not is a real choice. Perhaps that would be a better way of balancing D&D magic. Instead of nerfing the powers, just add a few more strange costs for them.
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 4/7
Arcane Lore: Another helping of overpowered dragon-exclusive spells for our birthday. Truly yawnaramic. This column held out for a bit, but has now well and truly fallen into the same repetitive malaise that got the bestiary and bazaar a few years ago.
Breath Control makes your breath weapon more reliable in terms of damage inflicted. Not really a great gain, overall.
Claw Aura, on the other hand, is a pretty nasty buff. Double your damage, using the energy type of your breath weapon. This'll be more useful to some dragons than others, particularly the one with interesting multiple options.
Magnify Breath Weapon gets pretty brutal at higher age categories. Fry the fuckers trying to steal your treasure with great prejudice. Woo.
Hoard Cache is another way of storing your treasure extradimensionality for security and transport reasons. Seen you before.
Breathmantle surrounds your whole body in your breath weapon. Another way to discourage the enemy getting close. Which is a good idea for dragons, for being surrounded means you can't toast them all in one breath. And that's bad tactics.
Dimension Trap lets a dragon store a breath weapon like a far more devastating fire trap, to set around their lair, or wherever. Brutal, but not too surprising.
Wing Razors are't too surprising in effect, only in degree. 12d4 points of damage? That's near vorpal in intensity. You could have a whole low-level party sliced in two without blinking. I suppose their breath weapons are usually even nastier. So yeah, yet more draconic scariness, as if you really needed it by now.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A substantially more useful bazaar this month. A few months ago, we had planar armours. This time, we have planar weapons. Not quite a big or unique as the previous time, this is still full of useful stuff for your players and their opponents. The planes retain their popularity among the writers, even if the line has been cancelled.
Arcadian Dwarven Hammers work best for dwarves, and disappear if not used regularly. You need to be proactive in your attempts to kick the butt of evil, otherwise what's the point.
Bytopian flintspears burst into flame whenever they strike a metal weapon. This does focus your optimal combat choices a bit, but hey, you can cheat by powering up with your buds just before battle. It's a neat flavour touch as much as anything.
Celestial Swords put you in contact with a celestial, and you get to make a deal with them for power, at the cost of doing good and having your soul go to them when you die. | think that's a price I'm willing to pay.
Fiendblades are also a means by which you can strike a deal with a powerful extraplanar being and get power at the cost of your soul. Course, the destination is going to be a good deal less pleasant than it would with a celestial as your boss.
The Flail of Apomps has a tryptich of nasty special effects, and a whole bunch of yugoloth true names inscribed on it. That has definite uses, but of course, summoning fiends has it's dangers. I suppose either way, someone suffers, which pleases the Gehreleths.
Modron Heartspears are made for the express purpose of fighting tanar'ri. You'd think they at least affect slaadi as well, but apparently they're not as much bother. Or maybe they have a different tool against them. Guess that's in your hands.
Dragon's bestiary: More adorable little dragonets? Well, we've had plenty of them before, but still not as many as we have full dragon types. Still, our last bestiary for this edition is once again treading very very familiar terrain. Guess they're trying to make us eager for the changeover by feeding us to bloating with stuff we don't really need.
Crows-nest dragons are draconic gull equivalents that'll follow ships and scavenge from ports. Killing them is bad luck.
Geyser dragons are adorable little amphibians with the ego of full size dragons. You'll need to be a pretty dominant personality to get one of these as a familiar. Sounds like the plucky animal sidekick from certain novels I'm familiar with. :p
Mole dragons have a face a dwarf would find cute, and gemlike scales. They're one of the smartest and most malevolent varieties of dragonet, with decent magical abilities. Give a Dao one as a pet.
Pavilion dragons live in rainforests and have psionics. They're tricky to win as a familiar, but quite good if you can manage it. Is that enough choice for you now?! Please please say it is!
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 5/7
Oh, this is a terrible advert for die, vecna, die! You really are not selling us on it by trashing the old edition, even before the new one is out.
The ecology of the hydra: Looks like the ecologies are eager to make the changeover, with this one dual-statting all it's crunchy bits. Other than that, it's business as usual, with the association of monster hunters being their impetuous and arrogant selves, and suffering rather for it. High intelligence, looooooow wisdom. And terrible at dealing with women. With social skills like this, who needs vows of celibacy? As usual, plenty of research on the creatures mythical antecedents is done, as well as extrapolation on it's capabilities as a multiheaded creature. Thankfully, like ettins, brains are not among the things it's many heads grants it, so it can be defeated more easily than say, a dragon. A fairly average ecology, this pretty much sticks to the usual formulas for this group, although it does introduce what looks like a new recurring character. Gotta keep the dynamics from getting stale somehow.
Shop keep does the pedant thing.
The new adventures of Volo: Another chance here for Ed to demonstrate his ability to whip up cool stuff in such quantity that there's no way it could all fit into a conventional book format. All those little quotes he's come up with from various characters that never got incorporated into novels, or put at the beginning of chapters of sourcebooks get offloaded here, lightening his pile of unpublished stuff a bit more. Like Oscar Wilde, it seems he has quite the supply of pithiness, and has invented a ridiculous number of fictional books written within the setting. We know by now the Realms has basic printing press technology, and a long history, so that's not too credibility stretching. A more interesting question is how many of these authors actually have histories, stats, and mentions elsewhere, and how many were just names made up on the spot. Lots of geeky fun combing other books and articles to be had here then. Not only an amusing reading, but one that looks like it'll get extra value with a bit more hindsight.
Gamma Squirrels & Mutant Moose: They're referencing the old Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG TSR did in the late 80's? They never mention that! Even more than Buck Rogers, (but not as much as the All my children RPG, which was never even mentioned in the magazine ) this is something that gets left out of a lot of histories. But they're not actually converting any setting material from the cartoon, just using it as a secondary reference while they give us gamma world material, which is a slight disappointment. Of course, rules for creating mutated anthropomorphic animals can be applied to many settings, so it's easy enough to genericise this material. This certainly looks like another article that'll help you play Alternity for a while longer, and do different things with it. My main issue is with the sudden mood whiplash between the gonzo artwork and intro, and the dry and serious contents. Methinks whimsy is not Andy Collins forte, and he was forcing the tie-in a little.
The wisdom of (Corey) Solomon: Oh dear. The guy in charge of the D&D movie is a first time director who's been trying to get it off the ground for nearly 10 years. And they're apologising for the low budget. However you spin that, and they're trying hard to be positive, it doesn't make this look like a promising prospect. Also, casting Tom Baker as an elf? That didn't really work, did it. Richard O' Brien as a master thief who sends the heroes into a maze though, that was just obvious in an amusing fashion. They're also making it obvious that there'll be a fair bit of cheese involved (which really, you should have figured out last month when they said a Wayans brother is involved. ) Already, our hopes of getting a serious treatment of the subject matter is fading. You think this will sell us on the movie? Even without the knowledge of hindsight, this would make me skeptical. This is going to be even more of a struggle for them than I thought.
Wizards live: Virtually every day apart from thursdays is packed this month, although once again, more than half of it is TCG material, which shows how much of their market share that makes up. Skip does Sage Advice live again, which must be a fairly popular one, and Monte Cook explains the new barbarians in a bit more detail. Nothing particularly surprising here, so I have nothing more to say. Just another promotional article.
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 6/7
Dungeoncraft: Ray's advice this month is stuff that even he admits is likely to be particularly subjective. What physical objects do you really need to run a session? DM Screen, Notes, Rulebooks, Character sheets, Dice, Minis, Maps, Notepads AND Props? Yeah, that's a fairly extensive list. These days, I'd condense all of them apart from the dice, minis and props down to my laptop, and possibly even use an electronic dice roller as well. And since I'm not a great user of minis and props, i'd probably skip those as well. Once again, for someone who wants to do the minimum of effort needed, he sure does put a lot of work into it. :D I suppose that's the thing isn't it. If you put in a bit more effort at the outset, you can get everything else done more efficiently. And then the temptation can be to keep working harder because you're getting more done, making a positive reinforcement loop. And aren't those just so much nicer than the negative ones? And if the result is the difference between retiring at 55 and buggering off to the spanish riviera to live comfortably, and having to keep doing a part time job at 70 to supplement your crappy pension, then I think you can say the result was worth it. But anyway, this is all YMMV. And reminds me just how much computers have taken over in the last decade, by the improvements in their form factor more than their processing power increases. I don't feel I've gained anything from this article, but I'm still interested in seeing what he has to say about making the first session of a campaign good. Onto next month then.
Sage advice: Do undead characters get the AC of their monster type ( Recycled question. No.)
Will a naga crown and rings of wizardry used together quadruple your spell slots. (Hell no. At best, they'd triple it (remember you add multipliers, not multiply them out. ) At worst, they'd go boom, and permanently disjoin your spellcasting ability for trying to be such an egregious twink.)
How long does the mantle of baravar last (One hour per level. You can split that, within limits.)
Does blocking use your base or adjusted THAC0 ( adjusted)
Does the axe of the dwarven lords transform deep dwarves into normal dwarves (Yes. If they aren't a hill dwarf, they undergo an embarrassing race change. Prepare to be treated like Michael Jackson)
How does a ring of regeneration interact with the deaths door rules (Recycled question. )
Can really big weapons nullify the automiss from a cloak of displacement (no, even if that makes no sense)
Do you get strength bonuses on bows or not (you do. Just not on crossbows, who's firing has little to do with your strength. )
Is using a ring of vampiric regeneration an evil act. (No. You're already hurting them. What does it matter that you're getting some hp back from it)
How does Antipathy/Sympathy work (flexibly. It's a high level spell. It can affect most creatures)
If you cast wall of fire on large creatures does the damage for different range categories stack (no. Use only the highest applicable)
Do bariaur get natural armour (No. The monster description is assumed to be wearing hide armour)
Does rope trick accommodate 8 characters full stop, or 7 plus the caster (you choose. )
What protects you from dragon turtle breath (fire resistance, as counterintuitive as it may seem)
How long does it take to prepare a free magick (same as a normal spell slot)
Can you use a dust devil to disperse dust of sneezing and choking (Yes. This means it doesn't work at all, not that it can affect multiple creatures.)
Stop messing me around! How do you really pronounce Flind! ( Doughnuts down your pants. Maybe that'll cheer you up. Tone poetry? JFK's death? Skip gives up. No pleasing some people. )
Maybe a bit of alternity stuff'll cheer them up.
How much does a gravity negater cost. (not much, in all contradiction of reality.)
Are there rules for repairing cyberware (Go to a surgeon. This stuff's too complicated for you to fix it in the field. We have to force you to spend money somehow.)
What good does a computer gauntlet do you (it makes you better at using computers in general. Is that so complicated?)
Dragon Issue 272: June 2000
part 7/7
Role models: The people in the staff room continue to show off their deals with various minis companies, allowing them to afford better stuff than you™. Sure the idea that you should prepare for your sessions, and buy cool new props and minis to whip out for each new setpiece is a good idea, but all this costs money and uses up storage space which is increasingly at a premium, especially in the current sucky economy. And unlike last year's material that was rather good at showing you how to use what you have creatively and making it go further, this just leaves you too it. So so disappointing, with a side order of smug. Get a dedicated writer in again!
Silicon sorcery: Colon overload this month, as we cover a game which uses two of them in it's title. Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: The Iron Plague? That's one clunky title. The result is fairly clunky too, as it involves transplanting some rather steampunk looking technology into your fantasy game. Mechanical scorpions, submarines, zombies, and bomb launchers are reasonably fun devices, and examining how a society supplies and powers it's technological advancement can lead to adventure hooks in itself. So this is a bit clunky in it's implementation, but there are some good ideas here. Well, I guess you don't want your technology too glossy, or it's harder for players to take it apart and tinker with it.
Nodwick is still battling the slave lords. Well, there are an awful lot of them around to battle.
Coming attractions: The Realms, as always, is busy busy busy this month, with 4 connected products. R A Salvadore is responsible for 2 of them. Book 4 of the cleric quintet gets it's turn this month. At this rate they'll finish them off by the time the next edition hits. Meanwhile, on the new front, he gives us The Spine of the World. Wulfgar has a crappy time for some reason, including having to induct some n00bs into playing D&D. Being a hero is a hard life. There's also a hint book for Baldur's gate II, and Cloak and Dagger, wherin they reveal some of the few remaining big secrets of the world in an attempt to beat the edition change sales slump. Amazed they still have any at all after the volume of supplements it has now.
Dragonlance mixes fiction and gaming material in More Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home. It might have more grimness, but the 5th age still has it's share of whimsy as well. The more things change, eh.
Greyhawk Decends into the depths of the Earth. Paul Kidd novelises D1-3 & Q1, with a bit of T1-4 thrown in as well. See the whacky group of weirdos who did the giants and white plume mountain romp their way through the oldest adventure path AD&D has to offer.
Vaguely connected to Greyhawk as well, but also to Ravenloft and Planescape, is Die, Vecna, Die! Another horrible railroad where canonically, the PC's fail, as Vecna not only survives, but becomes a god next edition. Way to end 11 years of 2nd edition on a sour note. Sure, it hasn't all been good, but it never deserved this.
Alternity gets a Gamma World conversion. Metamorphosis Alpha got converted to the Amazing Engine. Now this gets a short lived revival. (since they've already decided that they're killing this line) Dark apocalyptic?! Methinks the writers missed the point as well. No wonder no-one talks about this version much.
Another bit of cross-promotion from their other department as well with a M:tG book getting space here. Prophecy by Vance Moore is book 3 of the Masquerade cycle. So not only are you stealing WW's colons, you're also nicking their buzzwords. :p How lame is that?
What's new grapples with the issue of keeping very big pets. And the snail makes it a little further across the page. Oh, the continuity! :fans face: Where will it end?
They seem particularly keen to get to the next edition this month, with the two extra articles using the new mechanics standing out nicely. This is understandable, because this is a pretty filler heavy issue otherwise. There's some interestingly obscure articles, and some just plain boring ones, and not much that's really going to be generally useful. Let's see if any decent ones can duck and roll to get under that door before it closes for good in 2 months time.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. Arr! There be pirates on this cover! Don't recall them doing that before. Space pirates, (issue 217) but not regular ones. Guess they're still not completely tapped out for the final 2e issue. Inside, it looks like the theme is swashbuckling, which is another popular topic that maybe hasn't got the coverage it could have, with just a half-hearted theme in issue 219 and a few other articles through the years. We've revisited the sky and ocean recently and found new things to say, now let's blow a kiss to the audience, sweep our cloak dramatically, and leap out the window into the darkness!
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, centrepiece missing.
In this issue:
The wyrms turn: In one way, time is linear, and you can't really go back (because if you do, it causes all manner of causality problems. In others, a lot of it is cyclical, and you do the same things with minor variations on a regular basis. In a monthly magazine, those cycles are a little longer than some jobs, but they are there, and do become routine soon enough. And eventually, you have to take a break from them. Which may become a routine in itself, such as taking yearly holidays. Which establishes another new cycle you'll eventually have to break. Life is complicated. Even chaos naturally falls into certain patterns. But at least we're about to see some pretty major changes around here. Yup, we're in philosophical mode again for this editorial. After all, they're worried if they're making the right decisions, or it'll all fall apart in their face. Well, it's too late to turn back now. Even as we speak, the books are shipping to game stores across the world. All you can do now is keep looking for errata for the next printing to fix, and get to work on those first few supplements.
D-Mail: We start off with the quite valid worry of how easy 3e will be to teach to newbies. Good question. Increasing the consistency and organisation of the rules does have it's benefits. But we're still talking about hundreds of pages over 3 books just to play the core game. It's probably better than AD&D, but nowhere near as easy to pick up as the old basic sets.
We then have to deal with the old problem of specific vs general articles. They have to balance the problems of getting wide appeal with not repeating themselves, and there's plenty of people on both sides of the argument.
Next we have a letter from someone who seems to want half the regular columns cut, particularly those that don't provide more gaming stuff. You know that's a dangerous path. If you cut out everything that you think is filler to only do the most popular stuff, you may well wind up with a smaller audience, not a bigger one. Man can not live on gold alone.
Another couple of mostly positive letters with minor nitpicks follow. One wants Greyhawk to get coverage outside the RPGA, while the other wants the return of reviews in the magazine. Neither are going to get their wishes. The ways of the company are strange and inscrutable, and they don't want to pretend to objectivity anymore.
A letter from someone who loves what they've seen of 3e so far, and can't wait for it to arrive. I think most of the readers are in that boat by now, even the ones who aren't sure just want it over and done with. A year is a long time to build anticipation.
And finally some good old fashioned historical nitpicking. Will we ever know for sure what happened in ancient egypt? Would it stop the arguments if we did develop a device that let us open a window to the past and see everything? Probably not. There'd still be too much data to get an unambiguous result.
Nodwick gets examined for his serious case of nasal expansion.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 2/7
Forum: Bryan Rantala thinks people are thinking too much about the rules, and not enough about actual roleplaying. If they do that, class imbalances seem far less significant.
C. Roach points out that there's now tons of cool variant RPG stuff on the net. Oh, and B. J. Zanzibarrs :devil: People are sharing a ridiculous amount of cool stuff for free. Take advantage of it, even if the quality control might not be as high as in published books.
Steve Damon asks all the people jumping at previews to wait until they have the actual 3e books in their hands to give proper judgement. You know, that's the first time they've said that in here. That is a bit surprising.
Michael Bridges thinks a little moral ambiguity makes PC's more fun. Fafhrd and the Mouser never stopped being primarily out for themselves, even when they did wind up doing the right thing in the end. It's more interesting when you don't know exactly what the players are going to do or when.
Mike Donavon thinks people shouldn't expect every article to be tailored to their interests. That just seems selfish and self-centred. The hobby is bigger than you, cutter. And remember, even if it isn't useful now, it might be later. You never know when you might find yourself playing Traveller or Runequest again.
Heather Woodhurst has enjoyed having familiars play a big part in the game. Hers wound up getting a class and being loved by everyone. Autoscaling in the new edition comes quite welcome.
Osveldo Ortega reminds us that priests are servants of gods, and their powers come from a position of supplication, not demanding. They shouldn't expect their god to grant them miracles at a moment's notice. And 3e's playing up their medic side sucks. Cleverness will be replaced by brute force HP soaking to solve problems. Boo.
ProFiles: Fittingly for our final 2e issue, we see a profile that says goodbye to a leaving member of staff. Larry Smith has been working on the magazine's art for over 10 years, since issue 157, where the last minute decision to make it a Buck Rogers special from upper management (Roll of thunder, stab of organ music, god I've missed doing that.) resulted in much panic for him. He's had to deal with the Great Nipple Ban, legal department stupidity, mad freelancers, and the spellfire card game. But over time, you can become jaded to anything, and he really needs a change in his life, an escape from the endless roar of the dreaded deadline beast. Maybe he'll get bored after a few months and be back as a freelancer, maybe not. In any case this is a quite different profile from most of the recent ones, avoiding the blatant plugs for future products and relentless optimism, and not presenting a too rose tinted view of the past either. Which is rather refreshing, really. Even if you work in gaming, it doesn't have to be your life, and it can do you good to get out and have other interests. Advice I really ought to heed myself. Oh well, less than a quarter of this to go, and then I can leave it behind for good.
Up on a soapbox: After a whole bunch of trying to get people to look back and reevaluate behaviour often seen as immature, Gary gets to the point. If D&D is to survive long-term, it needs to be able to attract new players. And that does mean catching them young. To make that work, you need rules that start off simple, and can get you playing fast, and can then build complexity and provide supplements on myriad subjects to keep up to their spending power. And you need enough cool stuff to hook them in in the first place. This is harder than it sounds, and it was the old Moldvay and Mentzer basic sets that managed it most successfully. There's also the issue that despite Robert saying a DM should learn from a more experienced one, a group may actually have more fun if everyone starts at the same time and learns together. That way, there's no-one telling you you're doing it wrong, acting superior and driving people off before they can get up a bit of experience and investment in the game. Once again, he's questioning not only received wisdom, but the value of wisdom itself when it comes to having fun. Did you have more fun as a child or an adult? Why is that? If the answer is as a child, how can you fix that without abandoning your responsibilities? Pretty deep questions, really. And one the designers of each new edition need to solve in turn, for despite their efforts, roleplayers are still an ageing population. Whatever criticisms people may have of Gary, stupidity is not one. He's right on the mark here, and these questions are still very relevant indeed. I hope the people in charge of 5e are paying attention.
Countdown to 3rd edition: Only 1 month to go. Aren't you just bursting with excitement? And they've saved one of the best changes until last. Spontaneous Spellcasting! Sorcerers fill several valuable roles. They let you play a spellcaster without having to do so much bookkeeping, they're a good excuse to put a charisma primary class in the game, and they let you fill an important literary niche that D&D handled really badly before, the spellcaster who developed magical abilities as a twist of fate or ancestry rather than through conscious study over an extended period of time. It's an idea that wasn't obvious before it was done, but made perfect sense and was pretty popular after introduction, with more new classes being spontaneous casters than prepared ones over 3e's lifespan. Basically, they feel awesome, and it's interesting that despite this, they actually turn out slightly less powerful than wizards in long term play. Versatility trumps firepower when given time to prepare, especially once you can make magical items. Similarly, the new implementation of Bards is pretty nifty. Even if they did get criticism for being slightly underpowered in combat, their sheer versatility, able to fill any role, even the healer as a secondary character, plus being the kings of social stuff makes them pretty significant. So this is a fairly exciting teaser, that shows how they're increasing flexibility in the new edition pretty well, and will get players excited about not having to deal with spellbooks if they don't want too. That's the kind of choice I feel very positively about, even if I like quite a bit of bookkeeping myself.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 3/7
Touche: We start off our themed section with a list of source material and basic campaign ideas. Fairly dry, this feels like basic advice for the DM who would like to try this, but isn't sure where or how to start. Which means it's one of those articles that feels altogether too basic given my level of experience. Well, I guess like everyone, I'll be starting again at 1st next edition, so I should enjoy that feeling while it lasts. But still, this feels like an end of themed section filler article that was only put at the front because it was by one of their regulars. Curse you, you nepots! As much as you shouldn't neglect your basic exercises, I'm a little baffled by this.
40 Swashbuckling adventures: What, not even 50, let alone their preferred 101? :p Must have been short of sources to plunder this time around. As you'd expect, they're a lot more social than the average adventurer's fare, and those that do involve exploring far lands are all sea based. (so yay, pirates, buried treasure, and racially dubious colonial attitudes. ) There are a few supernatural elements, but the majority of the adventure hooks involve just people on different sides, trying to advance their agendas. Just the thing to keep the players morally conflicted. (but not trusting the Cardinal farther than they can throw him) So there's a pretty decent number of good ideas here, of a sort they haven't covered that much in the past. And even 40 should be enough to advance them a good few levels before the DM needs to come up with their own ideas. Swashbucklers do seem to hang with a higher class of people than dungeon crawlers, and their adventures are more likely to have long-term consequences and people seeking revenge for slights upon them and their family in the past. Hopefully you'll be able to get the drama self-sustaining by then.
Swashbuckling essentials: Now unlike Dale, Robin Laws knows how to make his writing style match his subject, and applies that skill with verve here. It's not only about the rules, it's about the implicit assumptions of the game. And you won't get very far if you try to play a swashbuckler when the DM is running the game to screw you over if you aren't paranoiacally careful with everything you say and do at all times. But changing the rules can make a pretty big difference as well. So he's pretty aggressive in house ruling D&D, particularly when it comes to experience awards, but also in giving you a lot more concrete uses for your Charisma score, making being flashy, charming and overdramatic the way to not only survive, but also prosper. This kind of willingness to reshape the fundamentals of the game is exactly what they need on the team, and it's a shame he wasn't here back when they were doing lots of settings. Seeing a full setting that altered basic things like how AC or experience work would be very interesting indeed, if probably flamewar provoking as well. This should have been twice as long and starting off the issue, then we'd really have a good sendoff for the system.
Van Richten's Legacy: The Foxgrove-Weathermay sisters unearth another piece of Van Richten's research, this time on herbalism. After all, he was a doctor before he was a hunter of monsters, so he ought to have some fairly substantial notes on the plants he's discovered in various domains and what they do. Of course, this is Ravenloft, where things rarely work as planned, and so each herb has three options for the DM to choose from, expected, with a twist, and with a horrible side-effect, or completely misleading. So once again, this is very much for the sadistic DM, particularly one with players who read the books and would otherwise metagame with their knowledge. This three options format is a pretty neat one, and I can see why they included it. The specific herbs are pretty neat too, with plenty of detail on their appearance and habitat, and powers that are handy, but not game-breaking. So this is both cool in general, and very well integrated into the specific setting. High marks here.
Something up your sleeve: Another article of mundane gadgetry isn't particularly swashbucklerish, but it does help keep rogues from being completely outclassed by spellcasters. And this stuff is a bit more high tech than medieval, so they might want it for a job. Still, I very much doubt they'll be lugging around a folding boat, or ninja climbing equipment. While there is some rehash here, there's less than I expected, which I guess is testament to how long Greg Detwiler's been around, and knows what's in the books. And since this is pretty system light, you could convert it to 3e without any trouble as well. Until the OGL gets going, there'll be a shortage of esoteric gear there that needs filling. This isn't bad at all then, and quite well timed for it's purpose.
Fiction: Shamur's wager by Richard Lee Byers. A few issues ago, we had promotion for Ed's new non D&D novel series. But upon investigation, it turned out to be mostly action scenes, with a rather insubstantial plot linking them together. Well, this is the first time a short story in the magazine has basically been one long action scene with short bits at the beginning and end to set us up. It's not a bad action scene either, a griffon race through the sky with plenty of twists and turns and treachery to keep things tense until it finishes. But it doesn't really feel like a proper story either. It feels like they came up with the cool action scene, and then bolted on a flimsy pretext for it to happen afterwards. So this is literary junk food, entertaining while it happens, but leaving you nothing much to think about afterwards. A bit won't kill you, but too much will leave your brain fat and lazy. This isn't the kind of change I'd like to see become common.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 4/7
Abandon Ship!: Another minigame in quick succession? This is an unexpected treat. Course, the big question is if they'll continue doing these in the 3e days, or this is the end for them, just as with reviews and articles on other RPG's. Anyway, this is an amusing little piracy themed card game, where you fight the other players to get as much treasure onto a lifeboat before your ship sinks. With an intended playtime of about an hour, it seems pretty easy to pick up, but has a decent amount of tactics for you to think about and the possibility of ganging up on players and other politicing. John Kovalic is responsible for the artwork, which gives it a somewhat cutesey old school feel like the work of Tom Wham. I'm a little annoyed that the board was missed out in the scan, but I still like this quite a bit. It's another amusing diversion from the huge morass of sometimes contradictory options AD&D has become filled up with. More standalone minigames would definitely help keep the casual gamer market interested in the magazine.
Rogues Gallery jumps the gun a little as well, giving this collection of characters 3e stats. Curiously, they manage to make the statblocks smaller than the old ones, despite the greater amount of crunch in them, via more efficient formatting. Which also means they can fit in slightly more character detail as well. I think that definitely counts as a win-win situation.
Thamlon Uskevren is the patriarch of a Sembian merchant house. He's fairly honest, for a merchant, and this seems to be working for him, as he now has a large and prosperous family, and tons of high class homemade wine. Seems like a pretty sweet position. I bet there's people in the family who want to take it.
Shamur Uskevern is his wife, and has an incredibly interesting history. Sent forward in time, she adopted the identity of her own relative, and since then, has been pretending to be much more boring than she actually is. Well, she can't really go back now, with all the kids she has in the modern day. But then again, who knows what tricks fate might pull in the future. It's not as if backwards time travel is unknown in the Realms, even if it isn't as common as Krynn.
Thamalon Uskevern II is the typical hedonistic wastrel son. A fighter with a 6 strength, he's pretty much useless for everything, and it's going to be a challenge for him to ever measure up to his dad. Maybe he should give the role of heir to someone else.
Such as Thazienne Uskevern. 4 years younger than her brother, she's already an accomplished rogue, and is starting to develop the business aptitude to go with it. Dad probably wouldn't completely approve if he found out how she was making money on the side, but hey, at least she's competent. The family wouldn't end up losing all it's merchant cred with her in charge.
Talbot Uskevern is the black sheep youngest brother. He's not really that bad, but he broods about the things he does wrong more, feeling he can never really live up to his parent's expectations. He actually has the makings of a pretty decent hero, if he can just get over himself and realise his potential. And hang out with the right people, instead of spending too much time in bars listening to music. Get yourself a good adventuring party.
Erevis Cale is our first non family member, and the first character to take advantage of 3e's less restrictive multiclassing as well. He of course becomes the breakout guy of this book, transforming quite radically over the next decade. But at the moment, he's a fairly straight angsty brooding fighter/rogue, ruthless, but regretting it. Someone wants fangirls. Well, why mess with a winning formula?
Larajin is a young half-elf serving girl with a Tressym pet. Her honesty means she'll probably never work her way up and become one of the more important merchants. Good thing she has the opportunity to become an adventurer instead then. Hopefully she'll get the chance to level up soon, for even in 3e, the world isn't that forgiving on 1st level characters. Good thing they haven't forgotten the ky00t factor, even if she isn't completely by the book.
The new adventures of Volo: More Realms tidbits from that most fallible of reporters, designed specifically to get you into trouble here. The House of Stone may not be as famous an adventuring location as Undermountain, but it certainly seems to chew through adventurers quite handily, with it's rearrangeable walls, and readily replenishing traps and monsters. Course, adventurers being what they are, that kind of reputation only encourages them, and so it continues to lure them in at a rate of approximately 2 parties a week. So that's a death toll of around 4-6 hundred a year. Man, they must breed fast in the nearby villages. Everyone thinks they're the ones who'll succeed where everyone else has failed. Maybe your PC's are even correct. In any case, it's rather (un?)intentionally comical, showing what happens to a world when adventurers become routine. Elminster's snark when dealing with Volo's "facts" is as strong as ever, and this looks like another fun place to drop rumours of into your campaign, see if the players bite. It's pretty much system free too, so it'll still be useful next month. This is still both entertaining, thought-provoking and useful then.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 5/7
Arcane Lore: We draw 2nd ed to a close with a 3rd druid special, this time concentrating even more specifically on plant magics. Hey, that means it'll also be useful to Rangers. A plan with relatively few drawbacks. Except the ever present danger of rehash. Still, hopefully this is the last time I'll have to say that for a while.
Hail of Thorns brings the pain, plant style. Slightly less dangerous than magic missile, as a cleric blasty spell should be, it's still both accurate and reasonably damaging.
Pinespear lets you add piercing damage to your staff without any metal assistance. Cue getting reamed with a pinecone jokes. Hey, druids can still have filthy senses of humour.
Nature's Mantilla is invisibility, plant sphere style. This is another one that doesn't work quite as well as it's straight wizardly equivalent, but that's the nature of kludges.
Leaf Ears is clairaudience via plants. Well, we do already have teleportation via plants.
Rooting lets you feed through your feet. Seen you before. Next!
Thorn Growth is the textbook antigrappler. Seen plenty of variants on you too.
Bear Fruit is a juicy variant on create food and water. Handy though, because it leaves the tree it creates behind, which may be more of an ecological benefit than the immediate one. Reforestation can be hard for druids, this makes it a lot easier.
Placate Plants satisfies their appetite, keeping them from going all Audrey II on you. A niche power, but possibly a lifesaver, like so many others.
Bronzewood Weapon is another way of making your weapon more badass, hopefully enough to hurt an annoying monster immune to mundane stuff. Not totally reliable though.
Rooted Wrath is a buffed up, damage inflicting Entangle. As usual though, there needs to be vegetation around. And this is one dungeon delving druids are unlikely to have the materials to draw upon, unless on the first level, and having the tree roots reach down out of the roof. Oh well, it's hardly terrible, is it.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Our final 2nd edition bazaar is in theme, with a whole bunch of items that are perfectly suited to the swashbuckling mentality. Fight with style, and have dramatic encounters. An idea I'm pretty positively inclined towards. Looks like a pretty decent closing sale.
Favors for the favored are charms, traditionally presented to your romantic amour, which offer minor mechanical benefits. That's a good present, not like some pack of cheap chocolates that are probably half nutty crap anyway.
The Blade of Heroic Measures lets you do called shots and disarms with much greater probability. You don't have to kill your enemies to kick ass.
The Impeccable Defender lets you parry lots of attacks. But maybe not enough. D&D still can't match up to white wolf in terms of active defence mechanics.
The Rapier of Brilliance produces flashes of light that allow you to make a quick getaway or temporarily blind your opponent. It's all very unfair. I suppose we'll always have Grimlocks.
Breath of absolute valor allows you to bring a companion back to life, but at the very real danger of giving up your own life. One perfectly designed for dramatic nerve-wracking scenarios where everything hangs in the balance.
A Bridle of the Companion Mount boosts your mount's morale and helps you perform stunts with them. Hi ho, Silver! Away we go!
Candles of Renewed Brilliance let you rest and come up with a cool idea to sort out your current problems. Since I can generally do that anyway, I'm not impressed.
Everflowing Capes billow dramatically without any wind, let you leap chasms, and produce stuff mysteriously with a flourish. Swoon. ;)
Gloves of the Gallant let you fight while seeming not to be paying attention at all. This has little mechanical effect, but is highly amusing flavourwise.
Kaldeen's Chroniclers of Questing Confessions provide a truly faithful account of your actions. This means you may be cautious about letting people read it, for all your little lies and indiscretions will be revealed.
Perfume of Wondrous Attraction are an item recycled right from the early 80's. Temporary charisma boost followed by sharp loss if you're not careful. Just the thing to really set you up for a disappointment.
Potions of Spotlessness help your grimy adventurer to become socially acceptable again in short order. If you've just got back from a big adventure and feel it's partytime, this'll get you spruced up in time for a full evening's carousing.
The Shield of the Righteous is another item that reduces the effect of undead screwage. You may still lose levels and die, but you can postpone the effects for a bit and hopefully make a real difference for the party.
The ecology of the hippocampus: Silly people, underestimating things that look like animals, when actually they're pretty smart. Still, it does make for rather good stories, so I suspect they will keep on doing it. This ecology is the work of a pair of new writers, and it shows, in comparison to the slick charactersmithery of the monster hunters stuff. It's also a little to attached to the savage nobility of it's subject, the angst of being captured and suffering, the bond between man and animal, and all that bumpf. What is it about horses that makes people go all gooey. It happened with unicorns, centaurs just about avoided it, but they're half human, and I expect it'll happen to pegasi if they ever get round to doing an ecology on them. Still, once again, the change in storytelling style breaks up the monotony. That's worth quite a bit these days.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 6/7
PC Portraits: This column always likes to join in, and swashbucklers have an easy iconic visual appearance, so they have an easy job this month. A nice smile, a stylish outfit, a flamboyant hat, and the confidence to not look like an idiot jumping around the place and cracking one-liners. Easy to describe, not always so easy to implement. Still, they're both racially and sexually inclusive, and not all of them are weilding the same old rapier/main gauche combo. I think this is a decent enough collection to choose from.
Shop keep suffers one of the more blatant breaches of gaming etiquette I've seen in a while.
Arms Race: So it's the final Alternity article. How could they possibly spend their final bit of coverage for an RPG other than D&D in a valuable way that'll stick in our memory for years to come? Well, certainly not more weapons, when we now have a full book on that already. Yes, it looks like we're going out with another load of new toys, not a mature culmination of their creative efforts. More than a little disappointing. So here are 5 new melee weapons, and 14 different guns of myriad sizes, shapes and power sources. Tons of ways to kill people, and a few that'll incapacitate them without killing them. People never stop looking for more efficient means of inflicting violence upon each other, do they. Very very disappointing, which is not the kind of note I wanted to end this on. There's so much more that you could have done with this system, and you end it on a filler episode. I guess this is goodbye then. If only there was something we could have done.
Wizards live: A couple of notable special guests this month. Lisa Stevens gets a profile, which she never did in the magazine, despite her importance to it. And the creator of Babylon 5 and other cool TV shows J Michael Straczynski pops in for a chat. Every day apart from thursdays and saturdays is once again filled with something. A lot of it is devoted to the new RPGA stuff, as they gear up Living Greyhawk for everyone to play. The logistics of that must be fairly substantial. Still, at least they can set stuff up wherever there's a decent player base without having to pay international phone rates just to talk. I wonder if they're still printing and mailing out all the modules from a central location? Economies of scale can still make that cheaper, weirdly enough. So this shows their online support as a still evolving process. The majority of the population are aware of it and participating to some degree, but it has yet to take over completely from the traditional distribution channels. And since that's still an ongoing process, 12 years later, I think we'll probably have more to say on that in later issues.
Dungeoncraft: So what does a DM actually do in play, asks Ray. Provides descriptions of the world, and resolves what happens when characters interact with it. When you put it like that, it sounds so simple. But they need to be good descriptions, while not being so verbose as to take up too much of the session time, so they players have a decent amount of information to react too, and enough time to act in. This is where all your preparation actually turns into success or failure. Give them enough information to choose a course of action, preferably one that you've prepared for, and if they do do something not covered in your notes, improvise a result that is interesting and makes sense. His big question here is if you should reveal all the info players need to make an accurate judgement of a scene upfront, or just the basics, forcing them to ask questions if they want to find all the treasure and avoid tripping any traps. With an assumption that a lot of the time, setting puzzles that test the intelligence of payers rather than their characters is a good thing. This advice won't be particularly relevant if your game is pure hack and slash, or narrativist one for whom all the conflict is interpersonal and the environment is just an unimportant backdrop. But between those extremes, they are some pretty important questions that don't have a one size fits all answer. Players will differ in their natural curiosity as much as DM's will in their innate verbosity. Hopefully this'll help you figure out what will best suit you and your players. And if you survive the first session, it should get easier from there.
Dragon Issue 273: July 2000
part 7/7
Sage advice: Does having a reversed spell take up extra space in your spellbook (no)
Can a sha'ir use a spelljamming helm (If they plug their gen into it with them. Stupid incompatible rulesystems. Needs moar fudge. )
What happens if no-one finds a secret door, but they know there must be one around and keep searching (Good question. Skip will backconvert the taking 20 rules from the next edition to get around this annoying scenario.
How do you determine the level of magical traps in a module (look for details on their creator. Simple enough.)
Can dual or multiclassed fighters have exceptional strength ( Yes, but not for much longer. Just one more month before all that crap gets jettisoned.)
Can you stack strength of stone with holy might (no)
Can you use a sunblade to backstab (Yes. Neither the back, or stab are literal. That is why we renamed it for the next edition. )
When you spend a CP to reroll do you have to do so before rolling (yes. This isn't quite as bad as it seems at first. )
Can a flametongue sword destroy enemy weapons by hitting them (only flammable ones. Other swords won't melt that easily. )
How does curse tablet work (It's very thematic, and somewhat inconvenient. Just be glad it works more reliably than real world curses. )
Do all necromancy spells require powers checks in ravenloft or not (no)
If you polymorph a shapeshifter, can they still shapeshift (Yes. They can turn back next round if they like. Or they can toy with you for a bit. Either way, your spell is mostly wasted)
What happens if you petrify a polymorphed character. ( Their new form turns to stone. It's all a bit embarassing. )
What happens if you smash a polymorphed, petrified person. (they turn into a shattered statue of their original form. This really doesn't help.)
Can dispel magic dispel flesh to stone (Recycled question. The answer's still no)
What happens to magic items while polymorphed or petrified ( They do nothing while stone, but they might work while you're shapeshifted, if that's applicable.)
What happens if an enfeared character is put in a corner (usually, they'll fight. An old adage about rats springs to mind. )
Does a crumbling wall of ice last as long as a solid one (No. Once it's gone, it's gone.)
Can you stack a ring of blinking and a cloak of displacement (Recycled question)
If you save against charming, do you know about it. How about if you're charmed and then it wears off. (More recycling. Skip is so glad about a significant edition change after 13 years doing this. That way, even if people ask the same question, Skip no longer has to give the same answer. And no more poring through hundreds of years old books.)
Does someone's alignment change while charmed (No. Even though they like you and want to help you, they'll do so in a manner appropriate to their nature. Laters, dudes. Skip's off to par-tay!)
Role models: When it comes to minis, you can't always get what you want. So if you can't make the minis fit the creature stats, change the stats to fit the creature. Like rolling stats for your character randomly, you can derive creativity from looking at the world, and then trying to make sense of it and build a story out of the parts you find, rather than crafting them custom. You could use this to ask questions about the death of the author and the validity of derivative works. Or you could just be lazy and reactive rather than working hard for your creativity. This is the kind of lesson you could take in all sorts of ways. So I think it does have some value, even if the presentation needs a bit more work, and is once again interrupted by blatant self-promotion. I think they might be improving again.
Silicon Sorcery: Nethergate gets some ideas stolen from it this month. A fantasy adventure game with a strong Celtic flavour, it's full of sinister crones, woad painted warriors, giants and fae. So as they've done before, they present 6 encounter ideas inspired by the creatures and events of the game, and give advice on how to recreate the mood of the game. Since celtic stuff has probably got less elaboration than it deserves over the years, with a big chunk of that focusing on the celt/roman conflict, this doesn't go unwelcome at all. That it's also high density, and has a decent amount of crunch in there makes this quite nice reading. This column appears to be in the hitting it's stride stage now. Hopefully it won't be suddenly taken over by someone else and take a downhill slide abruptly.
Nodwick is still fighting the slavers. And they're extra diabolical this time. They have literature and everything. Be very afraid.
Coming attractions: The releases this month are pretty much system free. You know an edition change is immanent when that happens. The Realms comes off vary nicely from that policy. As I thought, The Cleric Quintet gets it's final instalment reprinted. More money for TSR and Salvadore's coffers. We also get another computer game tie-in. Volo's guide to Baldur's gate. Just the thing for luring in those computer gaming casuals to proper roleplaying. And if that's not enough, there's The Halls of Stormweather, a set of short stories from their latest spotlighted city. It's gonna be tough for you guys, not getting any products for a while until they can get the updated corebooks out. Hope there's enough to tide you over.
Dragonlance gets The Clandestine Circle by Mary Herbert. Heavy armour and tights do not a great combination make for actual combat. Let's hope the contents are less cheesy than the cover.
Alternity may be cancelled as a gameline, but it still has a few novels working their way through the system. Two of minds and Gridrunner for StarDrive, and In hollow houses for Dark Matter. The print runs were probably pretty small, so good luck finding these ones. But at least the writers still get paid.
And finally, we have another novelised CCG conversion. The Scorpion by Stephen Sullivan is a L5R novel focussing on said clan. Looks like they've already made the deal with AEG that'll result in Rokugan being the primary setting in the 3rd edition Oriental Adventures. Not my favourite move ever. Still, at least the all D&D policy of the next magazines means I won't see so much of that.
What's new takes over. So much for those CCG's. Roleplaying will triumph again!
...... Yeah, this issue was pretty tough to finish, both in the emotional sense, and in that it was more than a bit of a grind. Up to this point, everything from the very first issue of the strategic review has been fairly compatible with everything else if you're willing to squint a bit. If you had the persistence, you could squeeze most of it into a single campaign spanning decades. That is not going to be the case anymore, thanks to both the massive rules changes and the accelerated rate of advancement in the next edition. Still, at this point, a substantial part of me welcomes that, and I know that's true for many people at the time as well. So let us not mourn the death of an edition that was long finished by the time it ended. Let us celebrate one that still has quite a bit of life in it.
Dragon: Your official dungeons and dragons magazine (yes, I think that's a bloated byline, and I'm not going to bother to put it on every title section.) Issue 274: August 2000
part 1/7
136 pages. So we've made it to the release of 3rd edition. Definitely an appropriate time for a special expanded issue, as they deliver the 5th biggest one ever. This is also an excellent time for a load of format changes. It also means a price increase by another dollar, to $5.95. They change the typeface of the logo drastically, and the colour scheme is extra red and yellow to match that of the new books. This also means the end of even token coverage of other TSR Products, let alone any other gaming stuff. They don't even get any advertising in, as that has pretty much been taken over by computer games and the odd bit of anime and various stuff. So lots of significant stuff happening then, not all of it pleasing.
In addition to the obvious 3e release material, they have a secondary theme this month. Robin Hood! That's a curiously specific theme, much more so than dragons, undead or elves. And not something they've done before, with only two brief articles in issue 11 & 55, and an editorial in issue 172. You could have done this last edition and I wouldn't have complained. So it looks like they'll have material that will remain useful even after the novelty of the new edition has worn off. That makes me a little less worried that they won't be all self promotion all the time.
Scan Quality: Generally good, but poster & bonus CD material are missing.
In this issue:
Let the games begin: So they've devoted a lot of effort to tightening up the rules, making sure they cover as many situations as possible. How do they demonstrate that first? Telling us how many creatures can fit into a Behir's belly, and how hard it is to cut your way out! Now that's the kind of situation that comes up in actual play, and needs formalising. :D This makes me giggle, but also demonstrates pretty well how they've focussed more on the universal application and reality simulation aspects of the rules. It's not that you can't just make stuff up, but you have less need too if you don't want too. Course, you've still got to remember where everything is, which will be easier than a 2e game with hundreds of supplements, but still not exactly effortless. Still, humour is a good way to get people to lower their defences. This is a pretty good start to the issue.
D-Mail gets renamed again to Scale Mail. Which is a definite improvement in my opinion. Both punnish, rhyming and hobby appropriate, it just seems to fit with everything else much better, even more than Out on a limb (gods, it's been forever since they called it that) I quite approve.
We start off with someone who's been using quite a lot of 3e's changes as house rules for years. Therefore, he wants to be hired onto their design team. ;) If you were reading the forums over the past couple of years you'll see they took a lot of ideas from there. This is why the revision worked. People felt listened too. Just don't expect to get any money from it.
On the other hand, someone wasn't paying enough attention when they put Tiamat's heads in the wrong order in issue 272, and this makes one reader very cross. It's right there in the D&D cartoon! I quite agree. Shocking sloppiness. It's the little details that make a character recognisable regardless of who draws them. Otherwise how are we to recognise her from any other 5 headed dragon goddess in a police lineup? :D
And then we have another letter which has spotted an error in Tiamat's statblock. And that's before they even got the rules. This is a problem. Because they're built on formulas, it is much easier to take the writers to task if they screw up. They're going to have to get used to that over the next few years.
A letter from Johnathan M. Richards praising the bag of devouring ecology. It's good to have competition to keep you sharp. No disagreement there.
Praise for Gary for being able to cut through the bullshit and just speak his mind in a way other writers can't. Once again, I am in full agreement. it's good to have him around again.
A letter from someone worried that with all the upgrades characters are getting, they'll steamroller monsters now. Well, that's up to the DM, isn't it. Now they have a better idea if a monster is likely to beat a group or not, but they can still put them up against creatures way too powerful for them and see if they realise they should run away.
And finally, someone who's really missed Dragonmirth's absence. That's one thing they really shouldn't get rid of. We all need a little light entertainment after digesting some heavy rules.
Up on a soapbox: Gary loses his picture, but i'm sure most of us know what he looks like by now anyway. And he stops talking about reclaiming words and high concept what is roleplaying questions, for some practical advice on how to be a good DM. Look, listen and learn. Observe your players, and see what they like, observe other DM's, see how they run things, and adjust your play based upon feedback. Really, it's the feedback loop that is the crucial part here. Learning from others helps, but if you can't learn from your own experiences, then you are forever going to be stuck in a crap position in life. And if you don't vary what you do, you won't have the wide base of experiences needed to make an informed judgement in the first place. Just don't do an Orson Welles and get it right first time, then spend the rest of your life finding new ways to do things imperfectly. :)
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 2/7
Profiles drops it's odd capitalisation, but acquires one of those odd foreign letters instead of a proper o. It also splays out over the bottom half of three pages, instead of being formatted in it's own section, so it runs parallel with the letters. This is mildly irritating, and rather gimmicky.
This month's profilee is Jonathan Tweet, designer of Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and now one of the lead designers for 3rd edition. He makes the rather unfortunate misstep of comparing the new ruleset to the pokemon game, saying both involve customizing your character build to fight in battles, and level up your characters as a primary objective. Yeah, that's gonna cause a few flamewars. His optimism about the state of gaming as a whole certainly contrasts with Gary's worries about the aging of the hobby last month. But then, even if tabletop gaming dies, there's still LARPing and computer games which are heavily drawn from TTRPG DNA. And people are still playing lets pretend in all sorts of forms. You've got to be willing to set your criteria broadly and change with the times, otherwise your expectations are bound to be disappointed.
Nodwick's team seem curiously unwilling to get in on the grimdark scene. Guess he gets to keep this magic item for himself.
Dragonmirth is back! Thank god for that. And it's all the more fresh for it's break.
Coming soon returns to being called Preview, although without the TSR, or the s, curiously. Oh well, on with the show.
First, completely obviously, is the new players handbook. No surprise there. Blah blah exhaustively playtested better than ever. That it may be true makes the copy no less tedious to read. Still, you don't have to pay any extra for the character generation software this time around.
Course, you still won't have all the tools needed to play the game. If you can't wait, or just want a more newbie friendly version, you can get the D&D Adventure game boxed set. Course, that really won't hold a candle to the old Moldvay or Mentzer versions in terms of mass market penetration, but they've gotta keep trying. They also have character record sheets, for those of you who like to buy these things instead of printing them off or just drawing them up roughly yourself (which is of course, rather trickier with the higher interlocking crunch quotient of the new edition. )
Their novel lines continue to chug along happily, despite the break in gaming products. Forgotten Realms finally kills off King Azoun IV for good, having faked us out before, in Death of the Dragon. Let the succession wars commence. Dragonlance turns up the heat on their latest conflicts with Draconians in The Citadel by Richard A. Knaak. Flying fortresses? Those never work out well for the people underneath them. I hope they aren't gnome powered.
Shop keep gets renamed Dork Tower. I think that's an improvement, don't you. It certainly allows the writer a little more freedom in the range of his jokes.
One roll to rule them all: Logically, our first proper article is explaining the core mechanic. Most games have had one for over a decade. Hell, even FASERIP did, and that was the mid 80's. But since D&D hasn't had a major revision before, they stuck with the mass of ad hoc subsystems approach long after most designers had realised how much easier a core mechanic makes a game to learn. Well, you've got your wish. Now the real complexity comes in figuring out all the modifiers to apply to your d20 roll. It's not the best of core mechanics, as the odds of success increase in a linear fashion, and very high or low numbers become a foregone conclusion, but at least it's easy to calculate your chances, which is very handy for a DM adjudicating things on the fly. Of course, having made it easy to set things with a 50% chance of succeeding, they then muck with that. Attack rolls generally increase faster than AC, to keep combats from going on forever with escalating hit points. On the other hand, your non favoured saving throws do not keep pace with monster's ability to penetrate them, which means save or suck effects actually become nastier at high levels than in previous editions. Which they'll realise, and seriously nerf them in 3.5, before fixing the math entirely in 4th edition. So this shows that they did have a good idea what they were doing in the short term, but weren't aware of all the long term consequences of their actions. That's life for you. I don't think anyone can really predict more than a few steps ahead where there's thousands of variables to consider.
Playtesting confidential: Of course, some of those problems could have been fixed if they'd playtested high level characters a little more. Despite having over 100 groups going at it for nearly 2 years, they're still going to spot and respond to the problems that come up in low level play and common situations more. Still, it's a lot more than most games manage. This is as much about the technology that enabled this process as the playtesting itself. The internet let them send the rules out to people all over the world, see what issues came up more independently, and revise the rules in response to feedback without spending a load of money printing and mailing out new versions every time. They simply couldn't have run something like this 10 years ago. And if someone broke the NDA, they could simply cut them off without worrying about socialising with them anymore. The notes from individual playtesters are pretty entertaining, with a certain amount of mischief in the parts of the rules they cover. It's a party in here, and they're the ones bringing the noise. When people want to do things for you for free, you enable them, not throw obstacles in their way. And that's one rule they're certainly following this edition. It's hard for this exuberance not to rub off on me.
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 3/7
Class acts: Ahh, now if any series defined third edition Dragon Magazine, it's this one, with it's continuous cavalcade of player character centric crunch. Prestige classes were Monte Cook's baby, and he has high hopes for them as a way of allowing players to specialise in certain things and get cool different powers at higher level, instead of following the same old patterns; and a way for DM's to flesh out their campaign world and give specific mechanical benefits to belonging to an organisation. You are strongly encouraged to invent your own, and decide carefully which ones from official books are allowed in your campaign. Ha. Your hopes are going to be cru-ushed :p We get a mention of ideas we would later see fleshed out in Ptolus, and lots of guidelines on how to make your own (mostly cribbed from the DMG, but then, most people wouldn't have that yet, and they're still trying to sell the new edition to us.) This is a pretty significant bit of historical data. And let's face it, they might not be perfect, but they're better than Kits, since they're not mutually exclusive, scale better, and there's a genuine balancing cost for taking them.
So having described prestige classes, they get straight in on the act and give us a new one in the magazine. They're certainly taking this much more seriously than they did for kits. It took them what, until 1993 before the magazine caught on to putting them in regularly. Our first new idea is The Mystic. Vanilla name, and a rather awkward implementation, as they get lots of new spells and abilities, but don't advance in spellcasting level, or gain higher level spells. They'd be neat for a one level dip, but any more than that, and you'd rapidly become horribly suboptimal. This is an excellent example of how they aren't fully experienced in how 3rd ed's rulesystem works, with all the synergies, progressions, and knock-on effects that you have to take into account when designing a character. They may seem cool, but I pity da fool who just jumps into this one, instead of shopping around for the good prestige classes. It'll be interesting to see how soon people figure out that some of these are inadvertently over or underpowered, and start refining their designs in response.
Ridley Scoffs at danger: In which Justin Whalin doesn't come off too bad, but the director of the movie once again comes off as in way over his head, trying to make things work despite a limited budget and dubious directiorial skills. It's obvious that both of them wanted it to be a success, since they were some of the first people involved in the production, and I'm not sure at what point most of the people involved will try to play this down on their CV. Googling doesn't seem very helpful with answering this. I guess that shows they didn't talk about it much after it flopped.
Steal from the rich: Robin hood, robin hood, riding through the glen. Robin hood, robin hood, with his band of men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Oh yes. This is an interesting setting for a campaign. Although maybe not one that's best suited to D&D, given that the story is notoriously magic light as myths go. Well, it is less than a millennium old, and firmly grounded in a specific period of history. And this first article fills you in on the late 12th/early 13th century period where this would have taken place, if it did happen. It turns out that there were plenty of reasons for people to be pissed off at authority at the time, and sherwood forest wouldn't be a bad place for them to hang out, as it's big enough to hide in, but close to a major trade route to rob from. This article is fairly dry, but it gets the facts across in a compact, system light form, and makes it very clear that people don't just become outlaws in a vacuum. If you want a similar figure to make sense in your campaign, you need to set up an enemy for them to rebel against, and a place it would make sense for them to hide out in. So this is a solid starter to their second theme, that'll hopefully allow them to add more crunchy or fantastical elements in the next articles.
Wolfsheads: And here we get out the shoehorn, and try and fit our topic into 3e rules. Actually, since 3e has a greater selection of martial character types, and fewer alignment restrictions, it probably handles this better than 2e without a load of house ruling and stripping away powers, at least as long as the characters are low level. The expert, commoner and aristocrat classes'll definitely get a good workout here. In addition to the class advice, which is fairly obvious, we also get 4 new feats for people who want to become kickass bowmen, DC guidelines for various trick shots, and rules for using ranged weapons as improvised melee ones. So they're showing you how easily the rules cover these eventualities, and also how feats allow you to break the regular rules, but in very specific ways. (that you quite possibly won't be able to get enough of for your character concept. ) This definitely shows off the strengths of 3e while glossing over the difficulties, which is exactly what they ought to be doing at this point. So once again, they manage to win over my skepticism with enthusiasm and cool stuff.
The great greenwood: We have our time, we have our rules, now for the place. A big sepia toned map of Nottingham, Sherwood forest, and the surrounding environment. Everything is crossreferenced on the grid and easy to find. 23 locations are described, including some that are important to the stories, but off the map. It does feel a bit strange seeing real places that you can still visit today get the mythic treatment, which just goes to show how well grounded the stories are, and likely that there were real world events which inspired them. The UK does have thousands of years of history, which is pretty well documented compared to most of the world, and every village has it's own stories and landmarks that stem from the strange things that have happened in their past. This is vast amounts of plot fodder to a knowledgable DM, and I've pulled ideas from my big book of local myths more than once. So this article is pretty interesting, and has quite a bit of worthwhile information in it, along with a look at how they handle demographics in 3e, which includes a rather higher proportion of mid level characters to go with the much easier advancement rate. For people who were picking the magazine up at the time, before the DMG and MM had been released, there's quite a lot of general information to draw from this issue, and this article plays it's part in that.
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 4/7
Rogues & Royal: Finally, we have the big list of dramatis personae. The Robin Hood legend is very much an ensemble story, with different people getting more or less prominence in different retellings, sometimes being skipped entirely. So there's a lot of ground to cover here, and I'm sure some people will disagree with these stats. Let's get cracking, show them a few more examples of how different characters can be under the new edition.
Robin of Loxley is the most probable historical source for the Robin Hood myth. A middle class small landowner siding with peasants against the upper class? We must make an example of him! Trouble is, everyone loves a good common folk against The Man story, even most of the people who are part of the 1%. Hell, even tyrannical dictators will portray themselves as common folks made good who freed the common people from out of touch aristocracy the previous regime. Anyway, he's split fairly evenly between ranger and rogue, with all his feats enhancing his longbow skills. He should be very capable of shooting you from the trees where you'll have trouble attacking back. (unless you set the forest on fire ) And what knight would do a thing like that?
Robert of Huntingdon is the other big candidate for the Robin Hood mantle. A framed nobleman trying to clear his name, he's not so good at the woodsman part of being an outlaw, but is just as good with a bow, using his fighter bonus feats for all sorts of stunt shooting. We even get an example of how both could fit into the same continuity. Very interesting indeed.
Little John has an appropriately high Str and Con, and specialisation in the quarterstaff. He might be able to beat Robin in a fight, but still follows him loyally. Which makes him very useful indeed. Even a few extra people make everyday life a lot easier in a community.
Maid Marian is rather lower level than most of the men, which means yup, she's gonna need rescuing alright. She actually seems more prone to executive meddling as well, with different authors dramatically changing her backstory and personality. Well, when you're a tacked on love interest, that's the kind of crap you have to deal with. At least you got to be the main star in one TV series.
Will Scarlet is very much the Lancer in Robin's team, capable but sometimes rebellious. Eventually, he pays for that impetuousness with his life. Lieutenants eh? Who'd have 'em. Seems like they're always trouble in stories. Someone ought to make a pill to treat grand vizier syndrome before it gets out of hand.
Friar Tuck is a multiclass cleric/rogue, which means he can keep up quite nicely with the others despite his girth, and leaven his spiritual guidance with plenty of humour. That's definitely a lesson many players of clerics need to learn. You get more worshippers with healings than smitings, and you certainly don't have to hold yourself above your flock.
Alan-a-Dale doesn't play a big part in the story, wandering in and out, and sometimes being the narrator. However much a musician may agree with the general cause, they're still going to be of more use getting the public on your side than hanging out in the forest for months at a time worried about getting caught.
The Sheriff of Nottingham is the villain everyone remembers and loves to hate. Probably because he was the one that was most successful at hunting them down, before he got killed in turn. He sure does have a lot of cross class skills. In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't add up. Tut tut. Shoulda given him a few levels of Expert so he could legally be the well rounded human being you'd like him to be.
Much the Miller's son is the nice but dim guy who pretends to be completely innocent about Robin's whereabouts, but is actually helping him out on the sly. As a perfect example of the common man they're trying to protect, he helps to ground the outlaws. I know several adventuring groups that could do with a similar reminder.
Hugo de Rainaut is the corrupt abbot who actually appears in more old stories than the Sheriff, but somehow fell out of fashion over the centuries. What's up with that? I know Disney can do a decent evil clergyman. (frololololol lololol lololo :D ) Maybe it's because the conflict's not personal for him, he's just a greedy git. Or maybe it's because abbot isn't as cool a title as sheriff. Who can say.
Sir Guy of Gisburn is the Abbot's own Starscream, an ambitious but cowardly chappie who'd like to be in charge, but to be honest isn't nearly smart enough to pull it off. Like Prince John, even if he did succeed, he wouldn't be able to hold onto that power. Such a tragedy :p
King Richard the Lionheart is generally represented as heroic, but you do have to wonder about someone who spent so much time and effort avoiding his responsibilities at home to go kill people. Well, it makes for better stories if he was a good guy, just negligent and bound by family loyalty against his own better judgement. Anyway, he's a pretty high level paladin here, so if you can find him, you can probably persuade him to come back and put things right for a while.
Prince John fit the archetype of the weaker scheming brother who'd really like to be in charge, but couldn't handle it when he did get power to a tee. After all, this is the guy who pissed off his noblemen so much they said "Screw this divine right of kings malarkey, we're going to make a treaty saying what a ruler can and cannot do." and started us down the long path to most hereditary monarchs becoming mere sinecures in the modern age. The path to freedom is over the bodies of failed tyrants. Still a battle we have to worry about today, but at least strikes, letter campaigns and DoS attacks don't kill as many people in the process.
Sir Richard of the Lee (partnered with Sir Stuart of the Herring) is a knight who's been stuck in debt to Abbot Hugo, and is sympathetic to Robin's cause. This means he needs helping out. After all, having some friends in higher places makes it much less likely you'll be caught for good.
Baron Isambart de Belame is a dark wizard who was probably tacked on afterwards by people who wanted Robin to have a more supernatural adversary. He'll pull all kinds of tricks to get to Robin and his men. Careful with deals with the devil. You know they'll bite you on the ass in the end.
Sir Roger of Doncaster is his decidedly unpleasant lackey, who almost managed to finish Robin off once. If this were a more supernatural setting, he'd probably have a few levels of blackguard. Guess we'll have to skip the spiky black platemail with glowing red eyes this time.
So this article did take quite a bit of effort to complete, but like the geography article, there was a lot of information here, quite a bit of which I didn't know before. As with arthurian myth, (hmm, playing Robin hood using Pendragon, that's an idea) there's tons of information that the average person doesn't know, and gets left out of many retellings. And since the writers have drawn on sources both old and new, it's obvious they know their stuff. I definitely feel enlightened by this.
Indispensable: In theory, the DM is supposed to be a fair and impartial adjudicator of the fantastical world. If you win you win, and if you lose, you lose. In practice, unless running a tournament module, that is rarely the case. Firstly, when the DM is the person creating the challenges anyway, they will naturally tailor them to the party they're playing with, and most DM's secretly want the PC's to win. You can encourage that by appealing to their sense of story. If they like you personally, you make yourself valuable, or they have long term plans for your character, then they're more likely to fudge to keep you alive, and throw the most interesting plot threads your way. Once again, Robin Laws examines not the rules, but the social contract that underpins these rules, and has become increasingly obvious over the course of 2e as we see more campaigns that want to tell a story, and tell the DM to break the rules to keep the players alive. Essentially what he's doing is pulling what was previously implicit into the light, so we can consciously manipulate it. Which will have all kinds of consequences over the next decade as we see narrativist games designed which include detailed rules for social interaction and the flow of a session, and make relationships more important than physics in how the game universe runs, while causing vast amounts of flamewars in the process. So he's being both exceedingly interesting and rather influential here. While this won't really make it's mark on D&D that much, with encounter based powers, healing surges and action points pacing your adventure more on a scene by scene basis than a real time one being probably the most notable effect on 4e; it's impact on the wider roleplaying world will be quite noticeable. It looks like he's really making his name at the moment, and I'm very interested to see what he contributes to future issues.
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 5/7
Plotbending: What a tweest! Yes, it's an article about throwing sudden curveballs in your story, just when the players think they know what's coming. A natural disaster, an alien invasion, an outbreak of war, anything that reminds them that it's a big complicated world out there, and both hero and villain's plans are but leaves in the winds of the universe. Or if you're really cruel, you can do the ghosts & goblins twist and have them think they've almost beaten the villain, only to find they need to go all the way back to get the macguffin, and then do the rest of the quest again, only harder. :devil: Or if you have a REALLY clever villain, they could just be spreading rumors about a secret weakness they don't have, to send would be heroes on a wild goose chase which'll hopefully get them killed or secretly advance their plans. Or would that just be too cruel, even for players that have solved the Tomb of Horrors? I think I'm willing to risk it, just for the amount of maniacal laughter I could wring from the results. All's fair in love and DM'ing, and I like this article quite a lot.
The hero with 1d1000 faces: This article too is pretty useful whatever edition you choose to play, or even if you're playing a different RPG entirely. After all, the last time they gave us a random adventure generator, it was literally a joke. This is much better, although since it only has 10 options in each section of the plot, it will get repetitive and the players will be able to predict what's likely to happen if it's overused. Still, with 7 sections, some of which you roll on multiple times, getting exactly the same plot will be less than one in a million, just like getting the same dungeon using the ancient random dungeon generator. So this is good not only as an article, but as a means of affirming they still care about their old readers, the ones who were there since the start and never entirely bought into shifting characters to point buy and making everything fit into a big neat story arc. Even with all the 3rd party stuff removed, they still have to balance the demands of people who want to play D&D, only with quite different playstyles.
Fiction: Power and glory by Ben Bova. Orion continues to defy his master and do his best to keep Arthur alive, not sure what effect this will have in the long run, but still determined not to be just a mindless attack dog. Although in the process of doing so, this means he probably kills far more people personally than if he were being a good little assassin. That's being a hero for you. Kill one person stealthily and they won't stop hunting you. Kill hundreds publicly and they give you a medal. My now terminal cynicism aside, this is a pretty good entry in this series, making Orion smart enough to make a difference without having the solution handed to him on a plate, but not enough to get out of his predicament entirely. Things are moving forward for him and arthur, but there's still room for quite a few stories before this vein of myths is tapped out, and he'll have to move onto another incarnation.
Nodwick finally stops going after slavers, and follows up on the GDQ storyline. Into the earth we go.
The bestiary loses it's dragon. Now that's a new one on me. Remember, dragons got you famous. Without them, you're nothing, just a second rate imitator. Anyway, our first bestiary under the new rules is a Greyhawk one, reinforcing that it's going to be the default setting for this edition, and it's a while before that objective gets diluted into meaninglessness. A couple of issues ago we went off to Iuz's lands. This time it's the Pomarj, last given lots of love in issue 167. And it still looks like they're trying to integrate them into the surroundings, rather than this just being a nominal home.
Grimorian are basically slightly more proactive komodo dragons. They bite you once, then let the vile stuff in their mouth do the rest. What's wrong with using the real creature if you aren't going to make any particularly large alterations?
Raknakle are creepy looking rock fae with a decent selection of powers to control their environment and make your life a misery while escaping easily if you attack back. Take out their environment to deal with them.
Skerath are another one that showcase their new poison system, that's more lenient than the old one but still no-where near as weedy as next edition's, as well as the handy concentration check mechanic. Little flying insects, they're quite suitable foes for 1st level characters. Well, the MM won't be out for 2 months. Some people'll be trying to play with just the PH and the stuff in here, so they've got to make it useful.
Skittermaw are yet another low level creature with poison effects. Leading with that many creatures with save or suffer powers certainly sends a message. Since this whole thing feels quite calculated in the changes they've made to the format, turning things full colour, playing up their actions in combat, reducing the size of statblocks while still fitting just as much info in, it does feel like an improvement, at least for now. And they're certainly not a bad collection of baddies to have your first battles under the new system against. Now, if they could just revert the name. :p
The adventures of Volo loses it's new. Reasonable, I suppose, given the amount of time it's been running. The footnotes move to the bottom of the page, and the whole thing gets ink-spattered in a slightly illegible fashion. Can't say I think this is an overall improvement.
Our topic this month dials back the snark and replaces it with a little prurience. The Stag lass is an interesting little Waterdhavian custom which has definite shades of hazing ritual to it, and involves the consumption of large quantities of alcohol by said lass and the other participants. It has slightly hazy origins, but has come to serve as both a cultural celebration, and a way for young women in a bit of trouble to gain some allies and hopefully a way out via an act of chutzpah. This has the strong air of something stolen and adapted from reality, and is yet another thing that can serve as a minor bit of flavour, or the driver for a particular plot. And as with last issue, it's completely system free, so it doesn't matter if you're planning to convert immediately or not. Is there a calendar in any of the books that marks when all these festivals are, as that would be very useful by this point.
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 6/7
Forum becomes pale green. Their new question is obviously what you think of 3e, now you have your grubby little mitts on it. I think the new look is a bit of a legibility hit compared to the last one.
Nathaniel Broyles enjoyed his historical norse campaign, but knows variety is the spice of life. Next time, the players'll be going through something quite different.
Joe Giammarco points out stories other than Tolkien that also used adventuring parties, dungeons, and elves. Yes, but Tolkien put them all together and did them better. It's like saying shakespeare stole most of his plots from older sources as well.
Rich Haton found using books as inspiration worked better when he twisted them round a bit, and let the players take the story in different directions. Without imagination, the best sources can be made dull and constricting.
Jim Castlebury pretty much got rid of resurrection, but still allows reincarnation. That way, death still involves huge changes to your character akin to Dr Who, and is not to be taken lightly. Interesting spin to put on it.
Seanchai! I didn't know our long-banned mod interrogator managed to get a letter published in here! He's purely positive in this one too, heaping praise upon the sorcerer. It's easily the best part of the new edition. You can finally play dumb spellslingers. Woo!
Eric Wessels is bewildered by Scott Wylie's attitude to the rules. It sounds to him like he's had very bad and irritating players. You probably need to fix them more than you do the rules.
PC Portraits: Weirdly enough, although this column isn't in colour, the backdrop is, and it looks like they set the filter to semitransparent when they overlaid the pictures. Since that makes them an odd grey/purple colour, that does hurt their customisability a bit. The artwork is by Todd Lockwood, and is very dungeonpunk indeed. This seems like them consciously trying to make a break, and maybe going a bit overboard. You shouldn't have to sacrifice the practical aspects of the layout just to be different. I suppose like punk sacrificing technical skill on the altar of youth disaffection, it'll only be temporary. The novelty will wear off and people will want to get back to doing practical stuff.
Role models: This column decides to take the edition neutral approach. But it is heavily promoting their new minis, which are 3e flavored (celestial eagle in the first set only makes sense if you know the rules' quirks. ) Ral Partha? Grenadier? Games Workshop? They can take care of themselves. We're doing it for ourselves now. And you still have to put them together yourself. How very Thatcherite. So this is moderately distasteful, and doesn't have nearly the fun factor of the earlier promotional material. Give us all your money, and then get to painting, peasants! Why has this column started sucking so badly? Are they trying to get it cancelled like they have so many other decent ones? Ugh! I don't want to deal with this.
Sage advice: Skip leaps onto 3rd edition without hesitation. Guess he's already been getting questions based upon the teasers. That or he's fabricated what he thought would likely be some of the first questions. No, Skip wouldn't do a thing like that. Skip is a sage with integrity. That's not going to stop him from adopting a new outfit, with all the belts, pouches and buckles a proper 3rd edition character should have though. Guess he thinks it looks cool too.
How does a multiclassed character calculate skill points. (Only multiply by 4 for your first level, not the first level of each class. Yes, that means if you take rogue first, you'll be strictly better than if you did it the other way around. Skip views this as a feature, not a bug, as it encourages twinking. )
If I have a dwarf Ftr6/Rog1 and add a level of cleric, I don't suffer a penalty, do I (no)
Why do half orcs have a net penalty to their ability scores. (because high strength is sooo much more important than int or cha. Again, feature, not bug. ;) )
What exactly does refocus do (you give up this round's action to go first next round. It's not usually worth it. )
Isn't readying an action more useful than refocusing (both have their uses. A tactically astute player should be able to figure that out. )
Do full attacks all go off at the same time (yes. It's easier that way, especially now initiative is cyclical.
How do you move away without suffering attacks of opportunity (oh, let Skip count the ways. So many tricks you can pull. Tactics are fun.)
Do you have to ready an action to disrupt a spellcaster. (No. Ahh, the wonders of attacks of opportunity. Grappling is also very effective, as most spellcasters suck at it. )
Do you need to make a concentration check if an attack against you misses (no)
How does two weapon fighting interact with iterative attacks (add one at your highest base, then subtract the two-weapon penalty from everything. )
Are natural 1's & 20's automatic misses and hits (For some rolls, but not others)
What are the new rounding rules (Down, unless specifically said otherwise, minimum of 1. )
Why don't empowered magic missiles shoot more missiles (because that's not a variable number)
Can you use detect magic or evil to detect invisible things ( Not easily, just like in previous editions. )
Can spell immunity make you immune to detect magic (no)
Can you take improved critical in unarmed strike (it would be just mean to nerf monks like that, so no)
Why doesn't your movement rate change as much when you're overloaded (Greater realism :teeth ting: We were tired of quarter speed plate fighters keeping everyone else from retreating)
Do magic weapons have to be masterwork first (yes. The spirits will turn their nose up at you otherwise)
Can you turn a normal weapon into a masterwork weapon (You can shave a pig and put it in a dress, but it's still a pig, no matter how much makeup you put on. )
What level do magic items work at (caster level, or minimum needed to cast the spells into it. Not much change from last time)
What skills can you take 10 or 20 on (The ones that don't matter too much. )
Also notable are the power play's scattered throughout this section, by Sean K Reynolds. Here we see more evidence that this time round, the designers explicitly encourage you to search for combos of powers that optimize your capabilities, where a few years ago, they would look down on this kind of rules-lawyerly behaviour. That's a definite sea-change in gaming philosophy, and fuel for people who said 3rd ed was a game for twinks and munchkins. That is interesting to note.
Dragon Issue 274: August 2000
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: This column goes black and red, making it indeed look like a dungeon where a certain amount of torture has taken place. But the writing isn't torturous at all, as this is one of those issues where he gives several subjects short essays rather than going on about one. First, there's the basic question of whether you'll run your game in 1st person or 3rd person perspective. Now that's the kind of obvious question that most people'll simply answer unconsciously, when learning to control it could make a real difference to the tone. True genius. It's something you can do instantly at virtually no effort. The other two parts, timekeeping and pacing, are more complex and connected. Coming up with a way of keeping track of time, particularly if the party splits up, is always a good idea. And keeping things moving at the right speed to engage the players is crucial. We've had articles giving advice on both of these before, sometimes quite good. Ray uses a fairly simple method of marking the amount of time each action takes as you go using a scratch pad, which works pretty well when the party is all together, but as I've said, you'll need to push the envelope a bit if the party separates for an extended period of time. Still, two simple, unambiguous and easy to implement solutions to problems in one article? That's worth the price of admission. Why waffle when you can get things done instead.
Silicon sorcery: Our topic this month is a problem that's fairly specific to D&D and the CRPG's that descend from it. Inventory bloat. Something about the structure of D&D and the way it awards treasure and XP leads players to acquire ever growing lists of stuff that many players wind up never using, and sometimes struggle to keep track of at all. You never see that in Vampire, even if the characters do have hundreds of xp. Fortunately, there are ways to manage this a little better. And computers certainly do help. When everything is automatically in one place, alphabetised and searchable, it instantly makes referencing way faster than thumbing through a whole bunch of supplements, trying to find which actually has the item and tells you what it does. This provides several other methods to speed play as well, which gives you a decent amount of choice. And then it backconverts a bunch of new magical items from the new Pool of Radiance game. Most of them are combat based, but they do have some quirks to them, based on what monsters you're likely to be facing in the game. And at the moment, we need magic items and monsters badly. So this is another article that covers a couple of topics in a small space, and that'll be handy both in the long and short term. This magazine is really proving itself valuable again.
What's new also covers robin hood. Man, it aint easy being a hero in D&D land. The snail is also back again.
I'm not that keen on the new visuals, but most of the articles this issue are very good indeed, striking a good balance between showing us the new system, and providing system free material that'll still be useful for any game. Plus the general feeling of grind that pervaded the last few years of the magazine is gone, with the writers being genuinely enthusiastic about the new edition and all the things they can do that they couldn't before. Even knowing about the flaws in 3e that only became apparent with longer play, it's hard to not be swept up by that enthusiasm. So here's me hoping that takes a few years to wear off, and heading off to the next issue with a whistle and a spring in my step.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. The price drops back, but not quite all the way, to $4.99. Sneaky. How much more are you going to get from those 4 cents an issue? 50-60,000 copies an issue, that's maybe a couple of thousand dollars, less when you consider the subscribers won't feel the raise until later. But anyway, it looks like this issue'll be show off how much better fighty types have it under the new edition. Or at least how many more options they have, which is almost the same thing. Let's enjoy our Half-Orc paladins and whatnot while they remain novel, before people slip back into the habit of sticking with classes their racial ability modifiers synergise with.
Scan quality: Good, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrm's turn: No surprise that defying cliches, and the new edition's support of this is the subject of the editorial. You have vast amounts of new shinies! Take advantage of them! But seriously, it's not just about the powergaming. 3e offers opportunities to make your characters different from other members of the same class and race and subvert stereotypes in a way previous editions simply couldn't. And they're going to keep working to make sure the visuals match that mood. Basically, they're playing up the punk aspect of dungeonpunk this month. All you prog rock dinosaurs can go off and play with your flowers, maaan. Your story has totally been told already. Well, this certainly looks like it could be either amateurish or contentious, both of which are fun for me to look at. And if they can produce good stories while avoiding stereotypes, then they'll definitely deserve praise.
Scale Mail: Our letters this month are pretty much unanimously in praise of the new edition. The first one praises pretty much everything but the reduction of ecology info in the monster statblocks, but particularly the back to the dungeon attitude. They say there'll still be plenty of ecologies in the magazine to make up for this. And the old notes continue to be useful whatever edition you're playing. It's the new players who never read them you'll have to watch out for.
The second one is all about how awesome the new rules look. They can't wait to collect ALL THE RULES! Who are we to stop them?
Next we have one looking back instead of forward, praising issue 272 and most of the articles therin. They must admit the new Bahamut & Tiamat look a bit daunting though. Muahaha. Yes, they are pretty powerful. Set a bunch of optimised 20th level PC's against them and they'll still go down in a few rounds.
And finally, we have a lengthy and verbosely written letter about the study of history. One that thinks ancient people might have been smarter than modern ones, which is a bit amusing. There is still a lot we don't know about history though. That much is true. Best thing we can do is record as much as we can now, hope future generations learn from our mistakes.
Up on a soapbox: This month Gary celebrates two things that I'm sad to say the new edition cuts down on. Low level fragility, and support for long term play. If you have it too easy from the start, you'll never learn how to play it smart and not throw tantrums when you lose like a responsible adult. And if you always win at combat you'll never learn that negotiating or running away can often be better solutions. Plus if you get rewarded too easily, you'll get bored with the game sooner and move onto another one. So this is half valid life lesson, half darn kids, gitoffa mah lawn, and very worth thinking about. Teaching your kids that the world is often hard, and you have to work for unreliable rewards is a better life lesson than handing everything to them on a plate, and then suddenly forcing them to sink or swim at some point when you can't or don't want to support them any longer. And adventures that have multiple solutions, including leaving things open for trying tricks the writers didn't think of are more engaging in play than linear ones that break if you don't follow the rails, and offer more learning opportunities that can be applied to real life. Course, you don't have to make all your play training for reality, especially after you're an adult, and deal with that crap day in day out, but still, better to use time efficiently than not. I approve of this message.
Profiles almost completely decapitalises. Monte Cook is another of the primary architects of the new system, and is obviously full of praise for it. Plenty of familiar elements are hinted at here. His desire to produce a campaign world based on The Land from Stephen Donaldson's books, which would become Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. That he runs two games a week in his own setting, which was used as one of the primary playtesting places for 3rd edition, and is of course Ptolus. And the usual stuff about his history working for I.C.E, and then on the Planescape line. Unlike some of our employees, who are too busy working to play the game they're actually working on, he's got plenty of actual play experience to help him hone his rules design skills, develop his settings in useful ways, and keep his enthusiasm going. It's a formula that works for Ed Greenwood, and it's one that works for him. There must always be time for fun, no matter how hard you're working. If there isn't, you're in the wrong job.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 2/7
Nodwick comes this close to snapping.
Once again, a huge chunk of adverts are put near the front, before we get to see any actual features. This is a rather silly development. We're just going to skip through them.
Previews: You know what's first up this month. The Dungeon Master's Guide. Essential corebook and all that. No need to go into detail on this one. Also unsurprisingly, this month's peripherals are connected to that. A DM's screen. And our first official 3rd ed adventure. The Sunless Citadel. So now it gets a little easier to actually play the game, particularly since you have at least all the monsters in there statted out. Hopefully that'll keep you from going mad 'til next month.
Our various settings also get a reasonable amount of love. Greyhawk gets reaffirmed as the core setting for this edition with the D&D Gazetteer. Course, it's done by Skip Williams, and if you've been reading this thread, you know what crap he's put in here before. No more comedy relief gargoyles, ok? The Realms and Dragonlance enjoy their usual quota of novels. The Nether Scroll by Lynn Abbey and Children of the Plains by Paul Thompson & Tonya Cook. Things continue to get set up for the rules changes in the game. Baldur's gate II also gets novelised. Surprised they haven't done a module based on it too. Probably too big and combat heavy if strictly converted.
Dork tower takes advantage of the edition change to upgrade their characters.
Unusual suspects: So all classes are open to all races now? This is a fairly substantial change, and needs some following up. So they take what used to be the most restricted classes - Barbarians, Paladins and Rangers, and give us a wide range of concepts for all the various demihuman races to show how they could fit into the classes if you so desire. They're being consciously inclusive and can-do, inviting us to try things they would have sneered at officially a few years ago, and unlike the introduction of Power Plays and character optimisation as a game in itself, this is entirely to be welcomed. It may not seem like such a big deal now, but it was resisted for quite a while, so they do need to make that extra effort to get everyone on board. Down with fantasy Racism! Up with equal opportunities! The punk aspect seems ever more appropriate here. Which means this is entertaining, and needed at the time, but not so useful in retrospect.
PC Portraits: We've already had some fighter centric portrait collections, such as issue 257. But of course it's a new edition, and new art stylings. Which means people have more asymmetrical outfits, tattoos, piercings, braids, straps, and similar interesting adornments that will make them stand out, but not necessarily be practical. So once again, this is oh so very of it's time, and reflects that they did feel the need to exaggerate the break from what came before and establish a new identity for themselves. The characters will remain useful whenever you feel the desire to add a little dungeonpunk to your setting. Only you can decide if you want that though.
How to design a feat: Ah yes, feats. One of the most contentious parts of 3e design. The point buy character design method attempted in Skills & Powers had proven not too popular, and maybe took the focus away from class archetypes too much. (as well as being an open invitation to min-max the hell out of the game. ) Yet they did want to make 3e characters more flexible customisable and balanced than old ones. So feats occupy a kind of middle ground in terms of complexity. You don't have to worry about crunching vast numbers of points or saving up to buy an expensive ability, it's always one feat per slot. And they aren't class specific, although many will be useless unless you are a particular class, like the metamagic feats. But some are almost definitely better than others, and you will have to do quite a bit of planning ahead to get hold of the ones with complex prerequisites. But those are my thoughts in hindsight. Their discussion of what you do with feats, how you create them and how you balance them has some different concerns, such as designing it with the most abusive cases in mind, not the average player, and making sure something isn't better just because it's more specific. This is very high density, and there's a lot to analyse, cite, and use as fuel for internet arguments. Plus it includes two new feats that will make it into future books. So it's a good peek into the thoughts of the official writers, and like the last two articles, valuable as a historical artifact. It's very worthy of noting for later reference.
The right tool for the job: No surprise that we have an article on exotic weapons, now the distinction has been introduced. Of course, to justify spending a whole feat slot on one, they need to be more useful in some reasonably significant way than regular simple and martial weapons. And taking a look at these, it's mixed bag. Boomerangs only come back if they miss the enemy, Sais are great at disarming, Scourges do three little attacks per round, great scimitars extra damage compared to 2 handed sword will add up quite a bit over time. They are useful, just maybe not useful enough. This illustrates another thing that would evolve over the course of 3e. Realising that 7 feats over 20 levels just isn't enough, more and more classes included bonus feat selections, and many D20 variants increased the progression to 1 per 2 levels, or even faster in the case of True20. In the meantime, we have quite a few speedbumps and newbie traps to work though, some unintentional. Quite a bit of this fits that bill, I'm afraid.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 3/7
Miscellaneous mishaps: We've delved into the intricacies of the new rules enough for one issue. Now it's time to cater to the people who want general articles suitable for any edition, or even other games. And if you guessed from the title that this is another random encounter table then you are absolutely right. This one is a fairly mundane one, giving you two tables, one for travelling along roads, and the other for rivers, and all the encounters are people of various classes or natural animals and phenomena. Probably the most interesting part is the bits to determine what's in a random barrel or crate, which can stump a DM who's otherwise well prepared for an adventure on occasion. This seems like a good one for a DM who wants a few more mundane encounters to break up the monsters, and make a place seem less deadly. After all, you can't have a sustainable civilisation when the chance of meeting man-eating monsters on the road is more than 25% per day of travel. Everyone would stick to grotty walled cities which tried to be as self sufficient as possible. Which doesn't sound like my idea of fun.
Instant heraldry: Time for another returning topic. Issues 53, 154, and 199 had articles on heraldry of various kinds. Now it's this decade's turn to shine the spotlight on a small but significant part of medieval knighthood. Hell, everyone apart from rogues enjoys having a good logo, and even they can have gang symbols they spray on a joint when they aren't being all secretive. Since it's been 7 years, we're starting off with one of those articles aimed at absolute beginners, getting them involved as quickly and easily as possible. How to accomplish this? Pregens! Yup, it's 48 basic backdrops for you to select from, and some random tables to determine what creatures and objects go on top. That'll get you in the game in just a couple of minutes, especially if the players just inherited their coat of arms from their parents, rather than getting to pick an appropriate one for themselves. Plus it'll give them extra motivation to get out and make a name for themselves. Can't go letting the family down, can we? So this is another article that'll be instantly useful for any edition of D&D, and quite a few other games (especially Pendragon or WHFRP) as well. They're definitely getting the balancing act right so far.
Historical Heraldry: Having done the quick-play article, we have a second, rather longer and more involved heraldry article. This is definitely an instance where their greater degree of colour and printing precision helps them do better than the previous articles decades ago, letting them not only explain all the various patterns, shapes and adornments, but clearly illustrate them all in full colour and quite a bit of detail. It shows how coats of arms will be altered based on your deeds, and your position in the family. I definitely found this more interesting than the previous attempts at covering this topic, quite a bit of which can be attributed to the artist, but also to the comprehensiveness of the research. Despite being a fairly long article, it still feels very densely packed indeed, trying to tell us as much as possible. (after all, they're probably trying to condense several books worth of information. ) Between the two articles, I definitely think we have a more solid grounding in the topic than we used to. And now back to the fantastical stuff.
Hooked: Robin Laws encourages you to blur the roles between player and DM a bit more. Why should the DM decide what the adventures are? Create characters who have a mission, who's desires are more specific than kill things and take their stuff, and simply by pursuing those goals, they'll make things easy for the DM because all they have to do is set suitable obstacles in the way. The main problem then comes if characters have desires which conflict with one another, or one player winds up getting most of the spotlight because their character is simply more interesting and proactive than the rest. I think this illustrates pretty well why some types of games work better with small groups, and others with large parties, possibly with players playing multiple characters. And once again, what he's saying here will be influential, with indie games (and exalted) where your character's motivations are actual stats on your character sheet and you have mechanical effects for following, fulfilling or going against them. So for several issues in a row, he's been hitting it out the park now and this continues that run of thought provoking influential articles. It's great to see how this stuff got introduced into the mainstream. (or as mainstream as roleplaying gets, anyway)
The definitive D&D soundtrack: An article combining music and roleplaying? Aww hell yeeeeah. This is relevant to my interests. I really am very surprised that for all the many mentions of music in the past, they never did one one on just using it as a background to your game. And it is no surprise at all that Led Zeppelin are right on top of the recommendation list. :) While there is a definite emphasis on music of the 70's and 80's here, which I think shows the age of the author, they do talk about both older classical music, and modern electronic music as well. With a two page colour coded list of all the artists recommended, and where their music would be most appropriate, this does feel like quite a bit of though and effort was put into it's design. The fact that they have a column just for hellish music, along with the general lighthearted tone of the article makes it entertaining as well. So this is another rather cool article that's suitable for either edition, and isn't rehashed at all. I'm starting to think they were intentionally overdoing that in the last few 2e issues so it would come as more of a relief when they stopped.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: Songbirds by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. As we've found before, the problem with powerful inscrutable supernatural creatures is that they often do have motivations other than just dicking around with humanity, and idiosyncratic weaknesses that we don't share, it's just that they aren't particularly inclined to explain themselves. And given what resourceful bastards we can be, that's quite justifiable. So it proves here, in a story when humans are entirely deserving of what's being done to them (or at least, their ancestors were, and arguing matters of collective culpability between species that have dramatically different lifespans is another interesting moral issue that has a lot of interesting stories in it.) and the fact that they don't know why this is happening means they're all the more likely to make the same mistakes again. The result is going to be a tragedy for someone, possibly everyone. And since this does go for the harsh ending, while dropping hints all through about what's been going on, I think it is pretty well written. I find myself wishing it was longer, so it had time to build the message up a bit more subtly, which is definitely a good sign.
Nodwick & co make it down to D2, the home of the drow. Things get worse from there on in. All they can do is press onwards, and hope they wind up in D3, not D02 know no limit. The abyss doesn't know what's going to hit it.
Arcane 7ore is another column suffering from the new attempts at cool, in the process looking ironically dated. The individual spells look like they've been torn out of a book, which does make them easier to distinguish, but also makes it feel more like a scrapbook than a professional product. It is a bit iffy. Since this is a new edition, it's back to the basics without shame in topic. Combat spells! Forget fashion, let's kick ass muthafunkers!
Mass Strength is bear's strength for your whole party. Seen you before, and going to see you standardised in the future. Finally, they're connecting back up to the big threads.
Weapon Shift is another updating. Slashing bad against your current enemy? Go bludgeoning instead. Simple and easy.
Rapid Strikes is a cut down version of haste. You get extra attack. That's it. A reminder that haste was only really nerfed critically in 3.5. Enjoy your revamped capabilities while you have them.
Burning Sword is one of your basic energy type damage adders that'll be so popular in neverwinter nights. More power! Bypass those annoying damage resistances!
Diamondsteel adds to your equipment's AC and Hardness. It's actually fairly unimpressive for it's level, but since it's on your stuff rather than you, it'll likely stack, which is pretty important now. For the dedicated defence specialist then
Lesser Spell Immunity is another one fairly unchanged from the old edition. ignoring one 1st or 2nd level spell? Not to be underestimated, but requires very careful choosing.
Shieldbearer makes the shield float around you, allowing you to get the full bonus of even a massive one, while still using both hands for weapons. Yeah, you really can have your cake and eat it. Wizards can cut through the knottiest impasse.
Heroics gives you a bonus fighter feat. This means they can smoke an unassisted fighter in terms of targeted versatility. Wizards might be supreme, but a party of multiple classes working together still smokes a monoculture.
Battle Hymn isn't a particularly impressive buff for it's level. Ought to have made it properly synergistic if they join in, like old versions.
Dolorous Blow gives you better crits. The making this subsystem a default opens up a whole new avenue for overlapping buffs to exploit. Yay.
Bristle gives your armor nasty spikes. This is actually scarier than last time, as they attack as well as defend. As they're pretty low level too, that's quite a nice one to add to your repertoire, especially for a multiclass fighter/mage.
Indomitability gives you a temporary reprieve of death. Make sure you have a good cleric in the team if you don't want it to be a noble sacrifice eventually.
Hurl lets you boomerang your daggers and stuff. Invaluable if you have expensive magic weapons. One that could become a staple if you use thrown weapons at higher level. Yup. I think the back to basics approach worked this time round, even if I can spot where the spells have been done before last edition.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Earlier this year, we had armour made by abyssal lords, intended for the foulest of mortal villains to wear. To redress the balance, here's some suits intended for the use of Paladins. They aren't as interesting unfortunately, but at least they don't have maddening or lethal side effects.
Drachensgaard is for those paladins who would also like to be dragonslayers. Bonus to saves vs breath weapon, climb bonuses, and the ability to speak Draconic. (which won't quite compensate the heavy armour penalty. ) All seems pretty logically themed.
Hellshield helps you resist both the temptations of fiends, and the privations of their home planes. Once again, the benefits of the new skill system are very apparent. Course, if the character hasn't put points into it, they still don't have much chance of resisting a specialist monster.
Humillianthir is a paired set of armour for you and your horse. It lets you teleport straight into the saddle. Ready for action! Brupapa pa pa dum diddydum diddydum.
Praesidum Luminata sheds magical light that buffs your buds and reveals invisible and shapeshifted creatures. As I have said many times, that's an invaluable power.
Spellcease absorbs enemy spells, although it has a fairly easy to exhaust limit. Still, you only need a few rounds, really unless they've artificially boosted their AC and hp. It'll be a lot more effective against wizards than sorcerers.
Truedeath is of course designed to kick the butts of undead. That's still one of their core competencies, so they'd be remiss if they neglected it. Still, no great surprises here. They aren't helping paladins break out of their mold much.
The adventures of Vo7o also gets 1337153d. It's all very lame. Ed gives us another quirky adventure seed for you to flesh out this month. It's pretty close to waterdeep, too, giving it yet another reason to be adventurer central, and a big city despite being miles from other civilised places. The crumbling stair is yet another abandoned place with a few monsters to kill and mysteries to plumb. The fact that many of the ghostly inhabitants are whimsical, sometimes just watching from a distance, sometimes leading you into trouble, and only occasionally attacking allows you to scale this one easily, and make revisiting it be a different experience each time. And the fact that many of the treasures encountered here are faulty or incomplete means that players may well leave behind much of what they find, keeping it a vibrant dungeon ecology. In an adventurer heavy world, the dungeons that survive and become really renowned are the ones that don't give it all away to the first schmucks who come along. Draw romance analogies as you will. Once again, despite the format change, there's no real difference in writing or usability. This could have been done any time in the past decade really.
Class acts: Our second instalment in this series drops the preamble and gets straight into the crunch, with the Duelist. Swashbuckler is always a popular archetype, and none of the base classes do it brilliantly. This is a fairly easy one to get into, with multi-classed fighter/rogue being the quickest option, but you could go single classed if you're willing to drop a load of cross-class skills to getting in, or wait a few levels longer. While not brilliant, it makes being a fast-witted mobility fighter or more combat focussed rogue a pretty viable option. It would seem a bit redundant in a campaign which included the swashbuckler or unfettered core class, but it's certainly way better than the mystic. Remember, you've got to control which classes you allow into your game to influence the tone and style of it.
The ecology of the darkmantle: Our first proper 3e ecology is a very fitting one. A creature that's new to 3rd ed, but harks back to the very first ecology in the nature of it's biology. A creature that steals liberally from many real world things. A creature that would really annoy hundreds of starting characters with their seemingly endless ambushes in region A of the Worlds Largest Dungeon. The bloody darkmantle. They fly! They stalk! They envelop! They're a hell of a lot scarier than the piercer ever was. But they're still dumb enough to make suitable foils for Javorik and Shandrilla. Johnathan takes considerable care in tying this ecology to the old stuff, showing that not everyone is throwing out all the old stuff for the new and shiny. And once again, the heroes and the monster spend quite a bit of time being described separately, only meeting up near the end. Seems like his formulas are still working in the new era. And they've improved the artwork a bit as well. Quite pleasant reading.
Vs Go6lins: This, on the other hand, is pure powergaming tactical advice completely specific to 3e. Not that goblins are that hard to fight in any edition unless the DM is playing them really smart, but they are tougher now than they used to be. This is only a single page long, and is blunt, no-nonsense stuff that's primarily aimed at fighty sorts, since they're the ones that need extra help getting used to being able to customise your character. And since even with whirlwind attack and great cleave, they won't be able to wipe them out as fast as a good fireball, I'm still a bit meh about this. Your optimum build choices will also rapidly once we have a few supplements up as well, so it's reusability is dubious. It's a sign of their shift in priorities that I'm not to keen on.
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 6/7
Dragonmirth goes from happy to angsty on the spin of a dime.
Forum isn't !££7, but is grey, which hurts the readability even more than green. Contrast is important people. Bleah.
Thomas W. Overton is hocked and shorrified at the new edition. I've been stabbed in the back by Wizard$ of the Co$t! This isn't AD&D! Well, I knew there would be some. Good to see them getting front space airtime in the magazine.
Christopher Chung, on the other hand, is all like mmm, :Drools: Third edition. As usual, they have to put opposing viewpoints next to each other to help your decision making process.
Andrew Brown hopes that most of the old material will eventually get conversions to 3rd ed. Including Chronomancer. Good luck with that.
Jeff Herrin hopes the new edition means going back to publishing great adventures like temple of elemental evil or white plume mountain. Well, technically correct, but not in spirit. ;) Splatbooks still reign supreme.
Russ Junkin isn't amused that so many players don't know how to play halflings & gnomes properly. Short ≠ comic relief, goddammnit. Give them their dignity back and stop irritating the other players.
Ro73 Mod375?! Honestly. I never expected you of all people to start writing in 1337speak. What kind of role model do you think you're being? Goblins have never been known for good literacy, and Volo has always been intentionally annoying, but you? I am disappoint. :shakes head: This is a really insubstantial article too, with the margins moved inwards to make it seem a little less so, talking about reskinning minis. You don't have to call them what the manufacturer does. That's only an issue if the manufacturer include a name and backstory with the minis anyway. Which you only just started doing with the D&D miniatures. So basically you're solving a problem you created yourself in the first place. That's the kind of thing that makes me want to not bother. They're really straining to come up with anything to fill this column that isn't just straight promotion.
Sage advice starts to have questions on the DMG slip in as well. It'll still be another month or so before the new core rules are complete. As enthusiastic as the changeover is this time, they're still held up by logistics.
Do you get strength modifiers when set against a charge (Hell yeah. Skewering something heading straight at you takes quite a bit of strength. )
Can a charging character make attacks of opportunity (sure)
Can a tripped character make attacks of opportunity (at the normal penalty)
Can you take and ready an action in the same round (only a move action. )
Can you ready an action to do a coup de grace. (No. You should be ashamed of yourself, trying cheap shots like that. )
How much temporary ability damage can you heal in a day. (Depends how many abilities you have damaged. )
Can you swim while affected by freedom of movement (Yes. Another thing that hasn't changed with editions, despite weasel rules lawyers wishing it had. )
Can you deflect arrows when surprised (no)
What skill do you roll to recognize monsters (None. You use your characters knowledge. This is 3.0, not 3.5.)
What's the difference between a craft, profession and knowledge ( Good question. Depends how theoretical or practical your knowledge is. )
Does death touch have a saving throw (no)
What's the use of quickdraw. (getting a full attack out on the first turn can make a lot of difference. You'd be amazed. )
Does it matter which class I take first if I multiclass (Not at all :stifles sniggers: Go right ahead.)
Can you raise elves (yes. They no longer get special soulular exemption. )
Can a paralyzed person hold their breath (yes)
How the hell do you use instantaneous touch based spells (hold the charge, luke)
How long does strength loss from chill touch last (same as any other temporary ability damage. No more tracking different monsters with their own arbitrary effects. Isn't 3rd edition great. :D )
What happens if you're webbed and someone attacks you. (You're in trouble. Nuff said.)
How does poison interact with magical healing (It keeps on pumping through your veins, and you just can't seem to break these chains. )
If an enemy scores a crit with a poisoned attack, do you need to make two saves (no)
Can you counterspell a spell-like ability (No, nor can you be counterspelled by one)
Can I read my own sepia snake sigil to attack someone else (What? No. That's one poorly written spell. Skip will use his new sagely powers to create Official D&D™ Errata! Tah Dah! Bow chikka wow, etc.)
Do you lose control of summoned monsters in the last round of combat (no)
Does a robe of the archmagi and holy aura's SR stack (no. Best only. Stacking rules, remember.)
Dragon Issue 275: September 2000
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: Have you been making notes on everything Ray's been telling you? It's time for your examination! A mixture of true or false, multiple choice, and open questions, this is an easy way to remind us of what he's told us over the past year and a half, and will help you get a good idea of just how much you agree or disagree with his views. Most of it is to do with playstyle rather than the rules themselves, and once again is suitable for any roleplaying game, not just D&D. As a format change, this is a nice break from the regular, and quite a few of the things here do jog my memory, so I think it still has value. When so much of the game has just changed, it's important to be reminded what remains universally applicable. And retaining and applying information is more important than just learning it for a short period. I think this was timed about right. Now let's see if he still has new information to give us next month.
Silicon Sorcery: Another D&D based video game gets it's good ideas stolen and transplanted back to the original game. Icewind Dale makes use of your race and ability scores to determine how characters react to you, limited visibility and terrain complications, and forces you to pay attention to character movement rates as a result of encumbrance and positioning in combat. All things you could do anyway, but seeing a computer game handle it automatically is a good reminder of the difference basics like that make. This doesn't give us any new crunch, so it's just a reiteration of basic DM'ing advice. Not terribly written, but rather repetitive, and in definite contrast to the large amounts of new stuff elsewhere in the issue. Well, the game is 2e as well, so I guess this is another sop to the holdouts for this month.
What's new decries the overemphasis on violence of D&D.
What's this guy's story? Hmm. D&D 3rd edition isn't even cooled down yet, and they're already releasing star wars D20. And they're still doing the whole "You'll never be as cool as the stars of the movies" thing. Hmm and hmm again.
Even more than last issue, this epitomises the Punk aspect of their new direction, combining fresh and exciting articles with strange and often impractical stylistic choices. The bouts of leetspeak are particularly amusing in retrospect, and remind me just how far internet culture has progressed in the intervening decade. So if there are some dodgy bits, much of that can be attributed to growing pains. So let's see how they do once all the corebooks are out. After all, punk was a pretty short lived movement. This air of freshness and inexperience is unlikely to last long either once people get some serious playing time in using the new rules.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 1/7
116 pages. Someone's been near death's door a few too many times. In the circumstances, paranoia is entirely advisable. Especially as it's October again, and the energy draining creepazoids'll be out in force, protesting that PC's now get saves vs their attacks. Affirmative action for monsters! Well, the Monster Manual is out this month, so they ought to have at least something that's good for the DM's playthings. But will it be enough to truly challenge the players, or will all their preparation have been a waste of time? Let's get through this issue and do some discovery. Solid knowledge is often the best way to remove fear, even if the results aren't the ones you wanted or expected, because then you can plan to deal with the problem with a bit more confidence.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, game board missing.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Using the contents of your dreams (and nightmares ) as game plots? Yup, I think that's a pretty cool idea, if rather unpredictable in effectiveness. Desperately trying to stop up all the cracks in the room because you're terrified the cold giraffes will get in and suck the life out of you makes perfect sense in dream logic, but lacks a certain something if you let the players tackle it with their rational minds. And trying to remember your dreams is also pretty unreliable as well, although like anything, you can practice and get better at it. So this is something I encourage you to try, but make sure you have a more mundane backup plan just in case your subconscious refuses to co-operate, and you get something inappropriate or irrelevant.
Scale Mail: The way the letters are stretched across lots of pages makes this seem longer than it used to be. First up, we have someone happy that humour seems to be back in the magazine. Just wait until you see next year's april issue. They have a doozy planned. I look forward to it.
Second, we have someone grumpy about the dungeronpunk stylings of the new edition. They will turn it down a bit, but D&D will never really look particularly medieval again. Unless they do decide to go purist in 5e, of course. What are the odds of that?
Thirdly, we have a no catches straight complimentary letter. Ain't nothin' worth sayin' 'bout that.
Fourthly, someone who thinks the new layout looks like a crappy webpage. I dispute that! Even the worst webpages don't have this much horizontal scrolling, you know. :p
Then we have someone who likes the look, but didn't like the content. Contrary buggers. No pleasing everyone, is there.
We follow with someone peeved that they put adverts on the other side of the sherwood forest map. You won't see them once it's stuck up. And they really needed the money, honest! It's a hard life, trying to keep the magazine profitable.
And finally, we have a complete, article by article rundown. Only not as comprehensive as mine. But more likely to influence their future direction. It's all about being timely.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 2/7
Up on a soapbox: Gary does the grognard grumbling thing again this month. We need more roleplaying of day to day life, and less epic hero saves the world stuff that removes meaningful choices beyond succeed and fail for the players. Oookay. I think this time the cantankerousness is outweighing the useful advice portion of his column. Not that there isn't something to be said for learning the ropes with smaller scale stories, and moving up as you gain experience as both a player and a character. But the experienced DM teaching a bunch of less experienced players can often be less fun than everyone learning together. I suppose it's probably different if Gary's the one doing the teaching, since he pretty much does this professionally by now. But this isn't the most coherent of his complaints. Not everything he's produced was gold, and I think this is worth ignoring, and moving onto the next article.
profiles (no capitalization at all this time): Since our first two profilees in this new era were the other two primary designers of 3e, it's no surprise that Skip Williams is the third. Starting to work in the industry way back in 1976, he's worked his way up until he's one of the most all-round experienced people in the company. He got the job of being the point man for the new monster manual, choosing who made the cut, who didn't, and who was subsumed into the nifty new template system. Finally, you can mix and match classes, races, and erm, crossbreeds with other races with wild abandon. And despite his senior position, he still finds the time to be the same badass sage he's been for 13 years now. Unfortunately, he doesn't make the time to do any actual gaming, and his fingers look kinda stubby, but I guess no-one's perfect. He still has plenty of awesomesauce to pour into the pot of gaming in the next few years.
Tim Hildebrandt gives us another collection of expensive limited edition jeweled miniatures.
Nodwick has some amusing role reversal.
Previews: Say goodbye to detailed ecology and full page spreads in the new monster manual. Instead, get ready for high intensity badassedness, scaling, templates, and tons of things ready to be used as PC races from go. Get ready to customise! If you do it right, your players'll never know what to expect from their opponents again.
Looks like the realms aren't really taking a break after all. Into the Dragons lair gives you a new adventure, and a whole load of hints as to how things will change. Another attempt to snag the impatient impulse buyer wanting to buy more stuff along with the corebooks. R. A. Salvadore also releases a new Drizzt book. Sevant of the Shard. Actually, it seems like this one features Entreri more, but hey, Drizzt'll probably make some appearances.
Dragonlance stays system free on the other hand. Bertrem's guide to the age of mortals helps fill in more setting details for novel readers and gamers alike. Like leaves from the inn of the last home, much of this is sorta IC, and may be fallible if your DM is feeling sadistic.
And it seems like Alternity still hasn't finished winding down, with Xenoforms, the Dark Matter monster manual. Hey ho. Looks like this one goes into rather more detail on each creature than it's D&D counterpart.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 3/7
Countdown to the forgotten realms: We had so much fun with the countdown over the last year that of course we have to do it again until diminishing returns mean it loses all impact. And as the most popular D&D setting by a reasonable margin, especially in the novel department, this is first on the list for updating. Now, they have a few issues that they need to tackle. First, they need to make sure the new corebook encapsulates the years of timeline developments and provides a good point for new people to jump on without feeling intimidated by what has come before. Second, they need to make the old obscenely powerful characters fit into the new system, rather than being completely exception based, which also means players have a much better chance of being able to imitate and match them in coolness. Thirdly, they need to update the artwork and move the timeline forward, but not so much as to alienate people. It's a pretty complicated balancing act, and once again, it'll be interesting seeing the changes broken down into little pieces so I can comment on how much I like them individually. And at least it keeps the promotional stuff from spilling out too much. Question is, what will come after that?
Dork tower presents a horrific case of gamer breakup. Harsh, man.
DEAD and Breakfast: Another minigame even after the edition change. I wasn't expecting this! And it's another one illustrated by John Kovalic. Schweeeeeeet. Unfortunately, I won't get to play it, because they missed out the board again. You take the role of ghosts, trying their best to scare the guests of a hotel as much as possible, while not pushing them too far and ruining the whole gig. It seems to be relatively low on tactics, about the kind of level as Monopoly or less, as you do have a bit of influence on how to move and play your cards, but everything comes down to randomness in the end. It doesn't seem like the kind of game which'll sustain too many repeated plays, but should be fun for a halloween one-shot. And hopefully by next year you'll be able to take it out and do it again. Hey, it's not great, but it's more variety than I was expecting this far in. I still hope they do a few more of these.
Black cats and broken mirrors: I'm rather surprised they haven't done an article on real world superstitions in here before. Guess this something that would be perfectly suitable for the old edition, that's only going to get the spotlight under the new rules. Mind you, it does seem pretty exception based, so chances are it was submitted months ago and converted to 3e rules by the editors. At 4 pages, it only has space to cover the fairly basic superstitions, which most people will know of to some degree anyway. So it's main value is in the good/bad luck rules it adds to them, and the way it presents them, with plenty of interesting quotations breaking up the information. And they're interesting, but not too brutal, which means they're probably going to do the job. Another fairly decent article then.
How to create a monster: The Monster Manual is out this month, so no surprise we have a promotional article connected to it. And here they go into all the formulae that you build monsters by, that are useful in the short term, and very cool for players, as it means any monster can be advanced like a PC, even the ones that just gain more hit dice and size as a default; but become a pain in the ass eventually, as they can force you into skill and feat selections that really aren't optimal for the monster's concept, and need to be compensated for with huge inherent modifiers. Plus, in contrast with the PC classes, the different monster types don't even attempt to be balanced, with Dragon and Outsider quite substantially superior to any of the others, and undead and construct suffering for their lack of Con bonus at higher levels. So this shows up the fact that while 3e might be better balanced and more flexible from a player point of view, it's quite a bit more work for a DM at higher level, and much easier for you to do it wrong if you aren't good at maths. One of their less pleasing promotional articles. Now hopefully they can cut down on them a bit, since we have all the corebooks now.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: Kang's command by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin. Draconians have received a fair amount of humanising characterisation over the years. This makes that retroactive, with a story set shortly before the war of the lance, when they were still team evil's big secret. And it is a pretty strong indicator that their unpleasant nature is a result of nurture as much as nature, since they were treated as monstrous troops right from the moment they were hatched, only educated just enough to do the job needed at the time, and encouraged to be vicious and competitive. Breaking out of that kind of abusive setup is never easy, especially since they are vicious, greedy artificially created carnivores when you get right down to it. So yeah, fantasy racism is an awkward issue, especially when there are huge actual differences in capabilities and lifecycle, but you can make fun stories out of these problems. And indeed, I do find this story fairly interesting, and very D&Dish indeed in the group interactions, with tons of bickering and a good party dynamic where everyone gets to exploit their particular talents. You can play the monsters in the new edition, and have a lot of fun doing so, without the strict class and level limits you had to face before.
Nodwick gets the last laugh at Lolth. Have they run out of classic modules to mock? We shall see.
The ecology of the sheet phantom: Ooogie boogie boo. An amusingly schlocky monster from the fiend folio gets a stab at credibility, and an update to the new edition. Just the thing for a halloween issue. Formed when someone dies in bed, but wants to carry on existing rather a lot, they're a sheet of ectoplasm that then envelops you, suffocates you, and possesses your body. Not a nice way to go. Johnathan gets brutal for a change, killing both the heroes of this little story, and leaving the monster happily at large to haunt and kill some more, which definitely helps make it seem more of a credible threat. It'll never rival vampires for sheer cool, but as long as they're really easy to do as a costume, I guess they'll never truly die. Once again they use a strong, yet largely monochromatic art style that works pretty well for the subject. Nice to see the magazine helping to polish up old stuff that could well have got lost in the cracks.
The adventures of Volo: The artwork improvements manage to penetrate in here for a change. Elminster, on the other hand, takes a break, as Volo also takes a break from exploring dungeons and weird locations, and goes intriguing and partying. An area our great sage has little interest in, so while this might still be unreliable, he isn't going to correct him. So we get to enjoy 7 not entirely flattering character sketches of people who hang around the Cormyran courts. You can bet some of those'll be out for his blood when this gets around. A reminder that this is yet a bloody nother thing he does really well (after all, the nine hells articles were chock full of this, especially issue 91's follow-up instalment) but hasn't really concentrated on in a while. Envy envy envy. Stop making everyone else look boring and one-dimensional by comparison! Goddamnnit, I know I should stop eating so much cheese, but he keeps on making me fall in love with him all over again.
Class acts: Ahh, the hunter of the dead. Another prestige class that you can fit easily into most campaigns. After all, undead are a pain in the ass, especially if you don't have a specialist. Here we run into another problem with 3rd edition. CoDzilla is far better than nearly any prestige class, especially when you consider the tradeoff between 20th level casting vs 10/10 in two different progressions. So this is a perfectly serviceable option for a paladin who wants to concentrate on undead splatting, or a fighter who dips a level in cleric to qualify. But if you want to be a primary spellcaster, this is a bad idea. Also notable is that it doesn't progress your turn undead ability at all. Still, if you're an undead hunter, you don't want to just make them run away, you want to kill them. But like the blackguard requiring stealth to gain, but not having it as a class skill, this does result in another suboptimal ability. How very irksome.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 5/7
Vs Zombies: D&D zombies really aren't scary, especially in 3e, with their fairly unique partial actions only penalty and distinct tactical deficiency. And d12 hit points don't really make undead particularly tough once you consider the lost con bonuses compared to most high level monster types. It merely makes their toughness more swingy. That said, they do have some useful advice here, on what will take them down faster and what will be a waste of time. Hit hard, hit with ranged attacks, and make sure you have a cleric around. But it is pretty obvious stuff. I think this column would be better served looking at slightly more obscure monsters that don't have so much established tactical wisdom about how to deal with them, give the writers more room to stretch their brains to figure out what works and what doesn't themselves.
The Bestiary: Our second 3rd ed bestiary follows the same formula as the first, taking us to a specific greyhawk location to invent some more monsters to fill it. Looks like we have a probable themed series on our hands. What icky stuff lurks within the wormcrawl fissure. I'm betting more kyuss related grodyness.
Avolakia are decidedly cthuloid creatures that can assume a humanoid form, and prefer undead flesh to all other delicacies (which may well involve killing you and animating you. ) Both the description and the artist really go to town, once again showing off their increased art budget
Riftjumpers look like giant fleas, and possess enormous leaping capabilities to match. With a poisonous bite that slows you down and a propensity for knocking you around, you really don't want to meet them mid climb in said rifts.
Nerephytys look like the badass big brothers of earth weirds, and have rather high SR for their CR. You'll have to fight these guys physically then.
Ulgurstasta are yet another of Kyusses foul creations. He is enjoying a resurgence of popularity lately. Giant maggot things that'll consume you whole then animate your skeleton, they seem like a good way to make an army, if they didn't have plans of their own. They get a particularly long and cool description detailing not just their powers, but also their history.
Ciruja plant ages you if it gets it's roots in you. Careful what flowers you sniff. Once again we see that they're not shying away from including permanently crippling effects on monsters in 3.0, just making it a little more likely that you can avoid them. Once again. this makes for pretty fun reading, and the creatures are far less rehashed in terms of builds and ideas than they were in the dying days of 2nd ed. They really have rejuvenated themselves pretty successfully this time.
Dragonmirth gets political. This could be a problem.
Forum: Jeffrey Gerretse has put away his house rules, and been won over by the sleek, highly playtested glory of 3e. It's for the best really. You just can't compete with that kind of resources, and the system is finally good enough to work without houserules. It's all so beautiful :tears in eyes:
Mark Anthony Sims doesn't mind the big changes, but ironically is irritated by all the little terminology shifts. What's the point of those, man? It just throws off your intuition.
Denis Tetreaut approves of trying to expand roleplaying by marketing to Diablo players. That's just the kind of thing WotC should do. And remember, you need to do your bit to make the hobby inviting to newbie too. Now more than ever, since this is a perfect time to get on board.
Joseph Larkin is not amused at the people trying to remove the shortarse races from the game. They weren't a problem in Tolkien, and they shouldn't be in your campaign either. You as a DM can fix this.
Dr Rotwang! Another familiar person known primarily by their online forum pseudonym contributes to the official D&D forums using it. This really is a new era. But saying that plots should be tailored to the players and their characters is nothing new, on the other hand. Still probably the right advice though.
David R. Boruch nitpicks about Tiamat's colour scheme. Did it wind up getting mirrored or something? In any case, gods are well known for their shapeshifting powers. Maybe we ought to add orange, yellow, purple and brown heads as well to reflect advances in dragonkind over the years.
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 6/7
Role models: The writing in this column continues to be pretty short and half-assed. Minis and terrain make it easier for you to determine how much cover bonus your character gets. Gee, you reckon? The previous writers for this column already did that in issue 259. Ok, so the bonuses you get from cover in 3e are better than in 2e, so players might be more inclined to take advantage of it, but still, this is rehashed, shorter, and less helpful. An excellent example of a writer not paying attention to what their predecessors were doing, and wasting our time as a result.
PC Portraits: This month's portraits look like they were done in charcoal. Curious. And fairly suitable for the month, since it's dark, brooding heroes again like last year. Not a smile amongst them. Chin up, it might never happen. Actually, it probably has already, given how much players of characters like these like writing up long, convoluted backstories which are more interesting than the adventures they have in play. That's one stereotype that it would definitely be good to see killed in a gruesome and messy manner. But that can only be done if the DM and players work together to make their adventures interesting and dramatic. There's a good achievable target for you to set for yourselves.
Sage advice: If you overrun and trip someone can you use improved trip to get a free attack (No. Wrong type of attack action)
What does countersong counter (magical sound based attacks of all kinds. If it has no save, it's not applicable though. )
Do you need to hear a countersong to benefit from it (no)
Do you have to roll for each shuriken when throwing them. (Exception based design strikes back! Yes, but not with the standard penalties.)
Can you sneak attack as often as you like (if you have the attacks. This is much easier than previous editions. If you can flank 'em, you can shank 'em)
Can you get sneak attack bonuses separately for multiple shuriken in a single blow(No. Insufficient precision)
Can weak characters use a mighty bow ( To their normal extent.)
Are specializations with normal & composite longbows the same (no)
Can you move, turn, take a 5 foot step, and then do a partial charge (No. You fail at understanding the new action system.)
Can you do an unarmed attack to deliver a touch spell (if you're willing to wait a turn. This may not be optimal.)
Do spellcasting levels from different classes stack (no.)
Can you fill spell slots you're not smart enough to learn spells for with metamagic spells (Yes. You can even just use lower level spells. We like flexibility here in 3rd ed land.)
If you're paralyzed do you have the same initiative when it wears off (yes. Saves dice rolls.)
Do you take buffs with you when you swap bodies (Yes. This may make the transfer obvious. )
How many hit points do you have when you bodyswap (As many as that body has. )
Why does bull's grace have a save. (Some people are just ungrateful)
Can you use a gaze attack while shapechanged (usually, no. There are some weird edge cases though. )
Your advice in issue 268 on wall of force contradicts the players handbook (That was last edition. This ......... is now. )
Do you have to decide to use the luck reroll before you know if you succeeded or not (Yes. Lady luck's a bitch. )
Does stoneskin protect you from poison. (If it negates all the damage)
Continual flame is in the wrong School! (Whatdya know. Skip'd better get errataing. )
How does locate object really work (No better than the mind using it in terms of distinguishing classifications. The magic does not have a mind of it's own, and you wouldn't be happy if it did.)
Dragon Issue 276: October 2000
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: Having finished the quiz, Ray goes back and elaborates on his second lesson, about ensuring there's always a secret or two behind your setting elements. Just be careful with messing with your players. Finding out your entire backstory is a lie, and you're actually a brainwashed assassin put in a sleeper position ready to be triggered when a secret evil organisation needs a fall guy is both overdone and very annoying indeed. I do not recommend using it. Most of the other ideas he presents are pretty sweet though. A country is a big complicated place, and finding out that it's been involved in some weird or morally dubious stuff isn't going to make most players feel betrayed, especially if they watch the news regularly and are in touch with the disappointments of reality. It's reinforcement of an existing lesson rather than a new idea, which does make me wonder if we're running out of ground to break, but it's still got some pretty entertaining tricks to liven up your game with. Give us some more depth. You've got the space and security to experiment for a bit without worrying about immediate cancellation.
Dixie goes evil in what's new. The metaplot ..... has arrived. The snail approves, incidentally.
The insane clown posse advertise on the back page in eye-hurting fashion. Make it go away. I do not want to have a seizure, or become a juggalo.
As usual, the october issue kicks ass, with the exception of several of the columns that don't really seem to be bothering. The punk aspect of the layout is already toned back a little from last issue, with signs that it'll recede further in the future. With any luck they'll be keeping the good aspects, and eliminating the bad after wildly experimenting for a bit. You'll never improve if you don't shake things up every now and then, push your limits. So let's see what's survived and what's on the chopping board next month.
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 1/7
132 pages. Steampunk! This certainly isn't your daddy's D&D. Amusing that this should turn up just as the subgenre really starts to go mainstream, 12 years later, and shows how long it's been gradually gathering fans. Once again they've come up with a topic they didn't cover under the old edition, which almost makes it seem like they were holding back over the last year or so. So I'm definitely excited to see if they've got themselves a decent collection of good articles for this one. Don't let me down now guys.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, some page curvature visible.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: They've already loosened the alignment straitjacket a little recently. Here's another invitation for people to have a good whine about the problems or opportunities alignment affords them. Even in the office, they have their disagreements about it. But these are pretty friendly ones compared to the flamewars that rage on forums. I do hope they know what they're letting themselves in for. Give people an inch and they'll take a mile, and next thing you know, they won't be using alignment at all. :p And then how will we tell who the good and bad guys are, huh? Still, a vigorous flamewar every now and then does one good. And if they don't get enough then they have to manufacture them to keep from getting bored. Should see what the results of this are fairly soon.
The contributors to this month's issue get mini-profiles. This means they're no longer putting little comments about the writers at the end of each article. Since they were often struggling to come up with new ones for the regular writers, this was probably for the best.
Nodwick has another attack of continuity. At least this time his load is a relatively light one.
Scale Mail: We start off with someone who thinks that the roleplaying advice articles in issue 274 were brilliant. They deserve reprinting to a wider audience. They're not disagreeing. They like Robin so much that they've given him his own regular column! That was quick. But will he be able to continue to come up with mindblowing insights on a production line schedule? Most writers fall into formula pretty soon.
Second we have praise for the heraldry articles. There's still a fair few people who like this magazine for the historical bits.
Then we have a long letter about the horrible things they did to the english script in issue 275. They've already backed off on the worst of them, and they promise to never ever use Helvetica. But no word on comic sans. They could still do a whole issue in it if they chose.
And one who isn't happy about the change in artwork. It is a good deal less naturalistic than the old style, it has to be said. Whether that's a good thing is very much a matter of opinion.
On a completely different note, we have someone who rather likes the idea of the cardboard markers that come with the new basic boxed set, and wants to see how the idea could be applied to other parts of the game. Until they get lost, these things can speed play along tremendously.
We then get a reminder that Michael Moorcock is not just a novelist who's been influential on roleplaying, he's also produced some very appropriate music with Hawkwind and the Blue Oyster Cult. He is pretty cool, isn't he.
And finally, we have a rather amusing controversy about the presence of the word ass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn1VGytzXus) on the cover of issue 275. Well, a few people are outraged, and the rest are nonplussed. I think this would be a case where it's best to ignore the oversensitive vocal minority, and embrace your enthusiasm. You'll get more coverage that way, and anyone who can't take the odd swearword definitely couldn't handle regularly killing things and taking their stuff as a fun pastime.
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 2/7
PROfILES? Ok, Now I know they're messing with us deliberately. The format gets another messing around, appearing on alternate vertical columns on each page. This is not an improvement. Anyway, Kim Mohan is our subject this month. Long-time editor of the magazine, he's now managing editor of the whole goddamn R&D department, getting to look over and help make every book that comes out clear, consistent, and high in quality. A position that suits him well, as he's never been the most exiting writer in his own right (I found the wilderness survival guide a right snoozefest) but he seems good at getting the best out of others. Another case where people feed off each other's talents to create a greater whole. Try and do everything yourself, it won't be as much fun, or as good.
Previews: Having finished rolling the D&D corebooks out, they get busy again, to capitalise on this. Forge of fury is this month's generic adventure. Looks like another back to basics dungeon crawl in an abandoned dwarf fortress full of squatters. A few months in, and the different approaches between editions are becoming very apparent.
The Realms harks back to one of their classic computer games with Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor seems rather more plot heavy. There's room for plenty of variety in the Realms. There's also the novelisation of said game, written by Carrie A. Bebris, and Shadow's Witness by Paul Kemp, another novel.
Greyhawk moves solidly into the clutches of the RPGA. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer helps you get even more into the setting than last month's offering, and includes lots of stuff that's been added or altered for the new edition. Whether the old fans will approve or not remains to be seen. Still, when you're going massively multiplayer, you need to make compromises for playability's sake.
Dragonlance humanizes the Draconians a little more in Draconian Measures by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin. Before you know it, they'll be no more villains than the Klingons. Oh well, as long as it makes for fun stories.
And it looks like once again, their all D&D, all the time policy gets bent a little for other d20 products. Star wars kicks off with a corebook, character record sheets, and an introductory game. Oh, and a magazine catering to Star wars gaming. I wonder how long that one'll last. In any case, it's nice to see a line start that'll actually stick around for a decent timescale for a change. See, you can have a sci-fi RPG that remains profitable, even if it is a license.
Countdown to the forgotten realms introduces a ticker. This is currently set at 7 months. Guess with the success of the last one, they wanted to get the tension up again. Before you know it, they'll be running this trick into the ground. Anyway, they have a good deal of info to impart in a single page. Once again, quite a bit of emphasis is on slicing through the vast amounts of background detail and making sure this is a good jump on point, but there's also some on how the new rules will let you build characters closer to the ones in the stories. Prestige classes certainly make more sense when they're being designed with an existing setting in mind, and guys like the Harpers and Red Wizards will have more bite now there's a definite mechanical and social path to becoming one. Plus they introduce the idea of Regional Feats here, showing they're thinking about hard-coding the mechanics into the setting on quite a few levels. The Realms has always tended towards the game rules as universe physics school of thinking, and this is plenty of fuel for the simulationists among you. This is fairly informative of where their mindset is at at the moment. Having got a generally good reception for the new system, they're confident they can push it a bit further without losing people.
Dork tower has it's enthusiasm for the game destroyed by other people's overenthusiasm.
The age of steam: We kick off our Steampunk special with a bit of basic explanation, obviously aimed at newcomers to the idea. The hallmark of Steampunk is the combination of retro and futuristic pieces of technology, often including magic, or forms of technological development that never happened in reality (which might be physically impossible, and therefore essentially magic anyway. ) D&D magic applied frequently and in an organised and logical way to a setting can definitely qualify. And indeed, this article is pretty focussed on how you would twist D&D rules and settings to add steampunk elements, rather than general advice that would be useful for any system. (it is noted that Spelljammer is a particularly good fit, since it's physics are based on outdated victorian theories about celestial mechanics) The influences cited are a combination of novels written back then, with Jules Verne being the obvious king of steampunk ideas, and more modern ones by people like Alan Moore and William Gibson. This spends a little too long getting people up to speed to really play around with the idea, plus it has a fairly easy to spot mistake in it's references that the editors should have caught, so while interesting, it doesn't make it into the classic articles list. My best hope now is that the other articles in the section will build off it to make something better.
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 3/7
Greyhawk 2000: So what lies in the steampunk future of good ol' Greyhawk? Iuz finally got beaten, but at the cost of using weapons of mass destruction that left huge chunks of land poisoned and uninhabitable. Elves have retreated from the developed world, while Dwarves have become increasingly dominant with their mastery of industrial technology. Teleporting trains are the primary method of long distant travel, while military jets are quite capable of dogfighting with dragons. This doesn't just plop real world technology into a fantasy world, or steal all it's ideas from Shadowrun, it actually goes to some effort to sketch out a setting that's both familiar and different in it's own ways. It definitely does the job, because this is one of those articles that feels way too short, and could easily be extended out to full book form covering how the whole Flanaess went through several centuries of industrial development, with adventure hooks on how to play in any of the stages of development along the way. It's a pretty cool article that could do with a follow-up or two, and I hope it gets a good enough response to get them.
Fantasy futures: Stephen Kenson rounds out the steampunk stuff with a second article. Actually, it feels rather like this and the first one were one big article split up by the editors, given that they're written and structured almost identically. This is more general than the previous one, touching on levels of technology from renaissance to postapocalyptic and giving lots of examples of books that cover each of them. Between the two of them, I can see the seeds of a great article, if they'd been edited differently, had the pacing kicked up a notch, and some decent illustrations were there to break up the text. As it is, this is just frustrating. So much wasted potential of such an awesome concept.
Elements of a hero: Now for a complete change of gears. This is essentially a Giants in the Earth article, with a novelist coming in to write a bit about their books, and then the regular staff doing D&D conversions of some of the characters. T. A. Barron has spent the past 5 years writing a series of books about the adventures of young merlin, as he grew from a boy with unexplained but powerful magic abilities to a proper hero. This very much follows the traditional hero's journey, where they have to not only overcome external obstacles, but their own limitations and personality quirks if they are to truly become legendary. As he's developing powers without tuition, they choose to represent Merlin as a Sorcerer in this incarnation, with an increased chance of random stuff happening that would probably indicate a Wild Mage if they'd bothered to put them in the new edition. So this shows that they still need to break a few rules to fit many literary characters into D&D's rules, but not quite as much as they used to, and has some useful storytelling advice mixed with the self promotion. So overall, this one's ok, and makes sure the issue isn't useless to people who want some more conventional fantasy from the magazine.
Unusual suspects: After the high requirement subclasses, Arcane spellcasters are the ones that were formerly the most restricted by race. Here's another stereotype busting article to get people trying out those halfling wizards (which rock) and half-orc bards. (which suck) Even the races that could be spellcasters anyway, like elves, now have a vastly expanded selection of specialist options, which can also be used to break stereotypes you never even realised you were bound by. You could have Urdlen worshipping gnome necromancers, elf racial isolationist abjurers, or dwarven item making specialist enchanters, all concepts that make sense in light of setting, that weren't legal before. This is pretty cool, made cooler by the fact that it includes bits and pieces of new crunch to go with the ideas, including substitute racial abilities and stats for groundhog familiars. :D That also keeps it from being useless on rereading, so it's another pretty well handled bit of agenda pushing. They want people to push the game as far as it'll go, because their playtesters didn't really, and they still think it can take anything you can throw at it. Have fun getting your wish granted. :devil:
How you play the game: Oh, Tracy Hickman. You have produced quite a few things that get on our nerves over the years. This is not a fluke at all, as he describes some of the irritating things he's done in actual play, and gives us advice on how to play like him. Leap into action, don't let the other players bog down play with lengthy preparation and paranoia. If a problem stumps you, metagame the DM into providing more clues by pretending to give up. Make sure you always have your fair share of the spotlight or more. Be dramatic, push the DM for more details on creatures and the environment, and then use those cleverly. It's a good reminder that he was one of the first people pushing us to get out of the dungeon, and into storygaming mode. On the other hand, he was also partially responsible for Kender, Tinker gnomes and Gully Dwarves. And these aspects of his personality are not in conflict, but two sides of the same coin. So if you follow this advice, you can certainly expect your game to be interesting. On the other hand, if your DM isn't the grand narrative type, you may well die as a result of it, or at the hands of the other players if that's not the case. Oh well, it's easy enough to roll up a new, even more "interesting" character, and make them wish they'd stuck with the old one, isn't it.
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 4/7
Fiction: Another name for dawn by Paul Kemp: Time for another prequel to their novels to appear in the magazine. How did Erevis Cale get his name? He made it up as a portmanteau of someone who's life he spared, and his new status after being exiled, translated into an obscure language. Makes sense to me. As this is both self-contained and full of interesting and subtle little details, it's one of the more pleasant examples of this behaviour, but it is still a reflection of an aspect of company policy I find a bit irritating. The Forgotten Realms already has enough fans that it doesn't need constant promotion, nor does it need more origin stories when the established heroes are pretty interesting. I feel oversaturated and want to go on a purge.
Dragonmirth brings back some familiar faces, and misses the point again.
VS Orcs: Orcs are another well known monster that you don't need particularly complex tactics to beat. They aren't great at anything other than frontal assaults, so you can mow through them if you have a decent amount of artillery. They might be a challenge at 1st level, but even that can be fixed if you exploit flaming oil, taunting and traps. Really, they're another monster that doesn't need an article like this on them. Stop picking the easy targets! You're wasting your page count and our time by doing so. I know we're still new to the edition, but we learn fast. Some people are already quite a few levels up and don't need hand-holding. Give us a more interesting monster. Kthnxbye.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: An old but still cool subject gets a third airing for the new edition. Named magical swords of the Forgotten Realms have been responsible for two pretty kickass articles in the past. Hopefully they'll be able to make it a hat trick, even if they're not giving a full 7 this time.
Ashram is inhabited by a spirit, which gives it a whole bunch of useful powers. Initiative bonus, extra fire damage, stunning, energy resistance, it's nicely set up to be in the hands of some bad guy you might meet.
Ellenderin is known as the weeping blade because it constantly drips holy water. This obviously makes it unpleasant to undead, but could also save your life by giving you something to drink in a pinch. And it makes for interesting visuals. I think this one counts as a success.
Galathos has a royal history, and is able to reflect spells on their casters. If you find this one, you'll have plenty of competition for it.
Malagar transforms your blood to flame on a crit. This obviously inflicts lots of extra damage. It too has an interesting history, being turned against the country of it's creation.
Sarghathuld kicks the butts of orcs, hurting and blinding them. Meh. Not too impressive. So one really cool idea and 4 so-so ones. This isn't quite up to issue 74's standards.
The adventures of Volo: Food! Given the number of jokes Elminster has made about Ed's weight over the years, and his love of worldbuilding, it's no surprise that he's thought about what kind of stuff people in the Realms eat. We've seen quite a few examples of that in books, some amusingly close attention to the specifics of snacks in The Wizards Three, and here's another 3 pages of nomables from all over the Realms. As with his work on plants, animals, musical instruments, languages, et al, there's a good mix of real world stuff, real stuff with funny names, and invented dishes using ingredients not found on earth. (which crosses over nicely with said imaginary ecosystem info. ) Elminster takes plenty of interest in this subject as well, with his usual clarifications and corrections. And we get to find out what dragon meat tastes like in the Realms, which I find very amusing. It's all a bit excessive, but since I know this kind of info is about to take a sharp nosedive in the magazine, I'm enjoying it for all it's worth. And the ornate spork just tops the whole thing off.
PC Portraits: This column helps out with the steampunk stuff as usual. The artist uses an unusually light touch with their pencil work and shading, giving everything a semitransparent feel. Most of the characters are pretty well dressed and refined looking, and slightly over half of them have some obvious technological gadget that they're wearing or doing something with. I definitely like this one, as it has plenty of room for you to take the pictures, colour them in, and scribble over them to make them your own. Plus there's a half orc with muttonchops and dwarf cabbie. How can you not love that? Dress with style. It marks you as a cut above the norm, even if you don't have much money.
Mr/Ms. Unreason please marry me, or at least have an affair with me.:D
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 5/7
Class acts: The rage mage. :giggles: Legendary. Now there's a good example of a prestige class made to make a suboptimal character build more viable. As with the undead hunter, this works best if your original class is a fighty one, particularly a barbarian, as it has it's own spell list rather than adding to your existing class. This is also a good example of how certain prestige classes can become massively more twinked when playing well selected unorthodox races, as they can bypass the usual dipping needed to meet all the criteria for the class. Also notable is that it has a skill list of 4, which can be a definite problem. I guess they don't expect a rage mage to be smart as well. Still, it's an interesting idea, and a reasonable implementation. If you're playing for flavour rather than optimisation, this could be a pretty fun one to try.
Rogues Gallery is still heavily forgotten realms focussed, despite the edition change. The character illustrations go back to being in black and white, and now we have the full rules out, the statblocks are larger than in issue 273, fully detailing all their skills, feats and spells. As with last time though, they're giving lots of attention to Sembia, showing that their light touch policy with this nation is well and truly ended. So it's time for them to face world-threatening troubles and play host to heroes that foil them in the novels.
Jak Fleet is a halfling rogue/cleric harper. He started off more roguish, but has gradually acquired responsibility as he levelled up. He still sometimes bucks the rules, as a charming rogue should, and gets in trouble with his superiors, but they've forgiven him so far. Very Captain Kirk, really.
Drasek Riven is a hard man who's had a hard life. Born into slavery, he was left for dead, lost an eye, rescued by a slaver, and eventually found a place in the Zhentarim. He's a nasty piece of work who goes out of his way to look for a fight, and has rather a deficiency of subtlety. I can't really pity him that much, given the number of abused orphans that do grow up to be heroes. He'd probably have been just as nasty a a spoiled noble child.
The Righteous Man is the lead cleric of Mask in the area. He hates the Zhentarim, and is trying to take them down, in a typical case of evil being it's own worst enemy. He's a big fan of using summoned monsters to do his bidding, and has suffered quite a bit of premature ageing as a result of this. Whether he can avoid dying and make the leap into the real big leagues of villainy will have to be seen, but I somehow doubt it.
Yrsillar is a mid-upper level demon of a new race called greater dreads (they were obviously running short on imagination in the name department. ) He's perpetually hungry, eats souls, can unleash blasts of negative energy, and rules over a blasted wasteland in The Abyss. Cliche city, in other words. The only interesting touch is that if you kill him quick, all the wounds he inflicted on you heal up, which I'm sure will be a plot point in the book. Kinda the opposite of a loadbearing boss. Seems like the kind of reward you get in a video game, especially if you have yet to face the real final boss after you beat them.
Nodwick goes mac. Very cool of him.
Forum: Daniel Gosz reminds us that all the old books are still here, and you can still play 1e or 2e if you like. As ever, the canon police are purely a joke, and will not break down your door and confiscate your books now a new edition is out. And let's face it, it's a lot easier to convert 2e stuff to 3e, with it's greater flexibility, than the other way round.
Lance R. Goetz is annoyed that PC's aren't given any advice on how to use, or not use poison. It's like they want to whitewash it out. He's also bemused that paladins are a full class, while blackguards are a prestige class. The new edition is supposed to be more consistent. What gives?
Bryan Penney isn't pleased that the new clerics get such a wide range of spells, although domains are pretty cool. No pleasing some people.
Nicholas Gregorio rubbishes the idea that the ancients were inherently more awesome or honourable than us. Look what we can do, and look what they did. Look at the modern treaties between governments and codes of war. (Ok, so we honour them in the breach as much as ancient knights did their codes. ) Why do people romanticise the past?
Philip Mitchell prefers playing evil characters, and wants some modules catering to people who do. Sorry, we're still a family friendly company.
David Jenkins tells the complainers that if they think they're so great, why aren't they working for the company? Thee could be millions of reasons for that. It does not mean they're not talented people.
John Cunningham is pleased that the new edition has really brought back the sense of wonder it used to have. It's like a whole new world. How long before the shine starts wearing off though? You know people can get used to anything.
Bryan Cooper praises prestige classes and their creator Monte. They look like a great way to liven up a party, especially if not everyone has one. Let the games begin!
Quote from: Marleycat;538999Mr/Ms. Unreason please marry me, or at least have an affair with me.:D
Watch the Issue 200 videos and call me again in the morning if you don't feel better afterwards. :p
Will do.:) (I felt I had to post just to let you know your work is appreciated and fascinating also.).
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 6/7
Role models: This column switches writers and formats again, getting a fairly substantial repurposing. Jonathan Tweet boots out Chris Pramas, and turns this into an extended Sage Advice supplement on Attacks of Opportunity. They're not wrong in thinking that quite a few people won't get the rules, and need a good set of examples clearly listing what does and doesn't provoke AoO's. Which means we scrap the photographed minis for isometric line drawings (which I think are computer generated, given how identical the pieces look. ) and the central block of writing with pictures around the edge for paragraph/visual example pairs. It's still pretty light on content, and very much self promotion, but there's a new purposefulness to this column that makes it both better to read and more useful than the last few months. It gives me hope that there is more that can be done with it after all.
Sage advice: Do you need to attack to get the benefit from expertise (no, but it'd be a waste not too, cause you still need to make an attack action. Making an attack action without attacking? That's just silly. )
Does Expertise apply the whole round, or just while you're attacking. (until your next action. You obviously have not grasped the concept of cyclical initiative yet. )
Do you have to wield a weapon of defending to get it's effects (yes)
Can you use weapon finesse while fighting two-weapon (Oh yes)
Can multiclass sorcerer/wizards trade spells between their classes (No. Each has to be tracked separately.)
Do rings of wizardry double all your arcane classes spells (Only the base, not any bonus ones for specialization and high stats. )
Why can't the ring of regeneration bring you back from the dead (Because it only works on living creatures. Once again, basic failure of logic here.)
When you're raised, can you choose which class you lose your level from. (No. Highest one. Tree too high, attract axe, ha ha.)
What happens when you lose levels in an abandoned class (You ain't getting them back, sonny jim. This may actually be an advantage, for ex paladins. )
What are the modifiers for scores above 18 (+1 per 2. This scales indefinitely, unlike AD&D's rubbish caps)
Surely if continual flame is an evocation, dancing lights should be as well (You may be right, but who's the private sage around here? Remember to show Skip a little deference. )
Isn't taking undead as your favored enemy suboptimal (yes, along with oozes, constructs and elementals. Feature, not bug. Rangers should stick to fighting natural creatures like god intended. )
When a spell gives you +X per Y levels, do you round up or down. (Down down deeper and down)
Do two weapon fighting & ambidexterity apply to fighting with double weapons (Yes)
Does combining a draw with a move let you attack after this (Yes.)
How do you make a partial charge (Look in the footnotes)
Does stacking metamagic feats increase the delay (No, thankfully.)
Do whips provoke attacks of opportunity (Yes. That's why you use them at range.)
Do characters with strength penalties only suffer half the penalty attacking off-hand (No. That's not how it works. A bonus is a bonus and a penalty is a penalty, and the two are governed by different rules. )
Can a paladin without a charisma bonus lay on hands (No. Like any spellcaster, if they don't have the stats, they can't do the magic.)
Why don't you plummet when fly is dispelled (Because we're really nice people)
Is dropping your magic resistance a free action (No. A standard one. This may cause problems in a pitched battle. Still, since it's mostly monsters that get magic resistance, see this as an opportunity.)
How do rays interact with critical hits (The damage is doubled. Nothing else. Bit of a token gesture, really. At least until you start adding feats, at least. )
What happens if you cast identify more than once ( Same result. You can't beat a good look at the books. )
Do you have to save against poison again if you succeeded first time (yes. You can never tell if it's going to bite you in the ass later.)
Are all cones as wide as they are long (They are now. Simplification for convenience strikes again! )
Can you stack cleave and whirlwind attack (Yes. It doesn't get really scary until you have great cleave though. )
Dragon Issue 277: November 2000
part 7/7
Silicon sorcery: Warlords: Battlecry is this month's game, finally getting us away from the D&D conversions. In it, they tackle the amusing topic of using livestock as siege weapons. A manky sheep corpse can do wonders to reduce an enemy's health and morale. A bag full of dire rats is even worse. Stats for using these in game are very welcome indeed. In addition, they introduce the idea of turning what would be a save or die effect into a progressive degeneration requiring multiple saves long before it would appear in 4e. That's very fascinating indeed to see. Guess you can level a few accusations of ZOMG they're turning it into a video game and not have it be completely inacurate after all. So this is one of those articles that's brief, but does have some very good ideas indeed in it, which might even be influential as well. Funny how those can slip through when you're not expecting them.
Dungeoncraft: More interesting secrets from Ray this month, with an emphasis on bigger, campaign shaking ones. From gods seriously considering scrapping the world and starting again, to a secret dream world that provides an alternate, but interlinked campaign, which will have interesting ramifications along the line, this is all about the big picture, and ideas that'll suborn the campaign to a single epic story for a substantial period of time. If that's the kind of game you want, just one or two of them will keep your campaign buzzing for quite a while. If you don't want that kind of playstyle, you'll want to skip this. So as usual, he's running this very much from 2e assumptions about story and worldbuilding, including big metaplot events that reshape the world every now and then. Let's hope he isn't too quick to jump on the next bandwagon to come along.
What's new features more outfit and hairstyle changes for evil dixie. It's progress of a sort.
The themed section is disappointing this issue, with one hit and two misses, but the regular columns are mostly pretty good. They're rapidly building up a new load of crunchy bits and pieces to insert into your campaign in a modular fashion, and these are rather more interesting on average than the often rehashed columns of the last few years. It does mean the magazine is quite handy, because there aren't enough supplements for things to become obscure yet. Give it a year or two. Anyway, let's see what we're getting for christmas this time.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 1/7
116 pages. Dwarves get their first themed issue this edition. And they're already doing something they wouldn't have last time. A topless Dwarf on the cover! I'm betting he has more than a few levels of barbarian. And I'm also hoping that they'll continue their current attempts to show how you can break out of the old stereotypes with the new, more permissive ruleset. Plus they got there's before elves did, so until that happens, we can say they're better covered in this edition. That's a fairly decent present in itself.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, Some page edge curvature visible.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: As I expected, the editorial this month is once again about either going against cliche, or adding additional layers to your character's personality that are orthogonal to their racial tendencies. Does your dwarf have a few ranks in Perform (ballet dancing) from their childhood? Maybe your halfling overcompensates for their size by collecting siege weapons. Or do all your gnomes have lisps, like one of the staff campaigns. The things that make both characters and worlds unique are the finer details. Painting in broad strokes all the time will leave your creations unfinished looking. No disagreement there, and the specific details they give are quite amusing. Good to see they're still having fun playing the game as well as writing it. We didn't see enough of that in the 2e days.
Sacrifice takes out 6 bloody pages of advertising again. Truly excessive. Do they really think they'll get returns on that expenditure?
Scale Mail: Surprisingly, the issue our first letter praises is issue 273. It kinda got lost in the changeover kerfuffle, but it too deserves it's due.
Secondly, we have someone who's not happy about the increased level of gore in the new issues. They give a flippant response to this that makes me unsure if they're going to take it on board. It would be a shame to go back to censoring everything so soon.
On the positive side again, we have someone who's taken eagerly to the idea of power plays, and sends in a whole bunch of them. The charop boards are limbering up, and soon the game will be put through it's paces far more rigorously than the playtesters ever managed.
We then see Robin Laws generating controversy, as one person finds his ideas full of insight, while another thinks they're useless, and should be cut entirely. Isn't that just a convenient microcosm of a decade of flamewars. :D
A more involved suggestion follows, that their heraldry article would be better served by putting it on a CD, and allowing you to custom build your own coats of arms quickly by selecting colours, divisions and creatures. There's a niche in the market there that could well be filled by a proper computer programming company.
Even more extreme, we have someone who thinks they should do far more, much smaller articles, with a greater emphasis on reader submitted material. You know, even in the strategic review days they broke up the tiny pieces with multi-page ones. On the other hand, they could do with tighter, more concise editing these days. Some ideas need elaboration, but others really don't, and they could be doing more to work out which is which.
And finally, we have more musical suggestions, thus putting the lie to the previous letter's statement that a smaller article would have been just as good in this case. An article on music could have been a lot bigger and more comprehensive with some more research.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 2/7
PROfILES: Julia Martin is another of the editors for the new edition, coming in to replace Kim when he was promoted to managing. She was an integral part of making the new edition a munchkin's paradise, full of tightly interlocking rules, keywords, synergies and similar kewlness. Consistency, good organization, economical use of space, all the corebooks would be rather less so without her contributions. She's happy to give out tips on how to twink your own character, and hopes that she can integrate the new rules well with the forgotten realms setting, which she's currently working on. Another profile that was fun to read, but is probably a bit too keen on promoting the new edition for it's own good.
Nodwick gets in trouble on his own steam this time.
Previews: Not a very busy month this time. The Hero Builder's Guide is probably the biggest one. More stuff to help you build characters who are both solid mechanically (or at least, as close as possible given their lack of skill at optimization at this point. ) and in terms of background. They also continue their close association with Diablo. Diablerie converts things to 3rd edition, while once again stealing V:tM buzzwords. How's that going to work out for them?
In the novels, we have a FR one and a Dragonlance one, as seems standard. The City of Ravens Bluff finally gets to have novels set in it, as it's freed up from constant RPGA metaplotting. Jack Ravenwild :rolleyes: has amusing adventures to tell, with Rich Baker the humble scribe transcribing them. Dragonlance is also in a city based roguish mood. The Thieves Guild by Jeff Crook is set in Palanthas, and shows their attempts to reestablish larceny around these parts, which isn't easy with both the good and dark knights working together. How's a working man supposed to get ahead in a mad situation like that?
This year's statement of ownership shows that the magazine has finally got it's groove back with the public. With an average of 58k and a last month run of 63, they've been gaining readers at over a thousand a month. All those teasers for the new edition have got people exited about the magazine and D&D in general. They're still probably sending out too many free copies, but that's forgivable as long as things are going well. Gotta get the reviews in other magazines for more publicity.
Countdown to the forgotten realms: 6 months to go. This is once again about selling the Realms corebook to non fans. In addition to the realms specific crunch, this is where you're going to get your first info about characters above 20th level. Plus the new items, monsters, spells, etc are eminently purloinable. Of course, for all they say that the new stuff will be balanced with core material, I'm pretty sure it wasn't, with the more restricted availability of certain feats an excuse to make them more powerful. And the rules for high level characters will differ quite a bit from their final incarnations. They might pretend they have a master plan, but really, they're still making a lot of it up as they go along. Don't forget the playtesters just because the corebooks are out.
Dork tower misses the point so badly it's painful. I LOLed.
PC Portraits: We had a set of dwarf portraits fairly recently, in issue 261, and this is one column that's pretty edition neutral, so I'm not that enthusiastic about this. Comparing the two, the new one is noticeably more simplistic looking, with broader, more exaggerated features. It's another good example of how they're stepping away from naturalism in their artwork for a bolder and more stylised look. I wonder how much of that is the magazine's own initiative, and how much comes from the rest of the company, as they try to establish an overall look and feel for 3e to set it apart from what came before. In any case, it's very worthy of noting, as a point where I can compare like for like precisely.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 3/7
A short history of dwarves: Well, that's a pretty predictable pun. And it looks like we're still in changeover territory in some respects, with a whole ton of short, system free articles coming up that were probably submitted a while ago. Our first one examines the literary origins of dwarves over the centuries, giving us a good bibliography for us to do further research on our own. As such, it's not particularly noteworthy on it's own merits, being basically a warmup article of the same sort as the last issue's leading article. I'm sorry, I definitely prefer it when they start with a big spectacular rather than trying to explain to stuff to us like we know nothing. We haven't forgotten everything just because it's a fresh start.
A dwarven lexicon: We continue with a primer in the dwarven language. It doesn't have enough K's, guttural sounds and weird dots and dashes above the vowels to make it look appropriately foreign and metal for my tastes. Dwarvish is supposed to be tricky to learn and pronounce, and this doesn't look too hard at all. Plus it's way too short to get up a decent sized lexicon, which is always a problem with magazine articles. Once again I'm not sure their letter writers have the right idea, and by trying to please the loudest complainers, they may cause other problems along the line.
Cry Havoc: A random dwarven battle cry generator? Looks like it's another goofy idea, that allows you to resolve a problem swiftly if you're devoid of inspiration. They haven't done this before, they're unlikely to do so again, and you're unlikely to repeat results with this number of options. Plus the illustration's gurning is rather amusing in itself. Death or Glory indeed. Omnomnomnom. I still love that kind of silliness.
Forge & Hammer: Our longest article this month is an 8 page general setting one by Wolf Baur, on the lifecycle of the average dwarf. Birth, education, coming of age, marriage customs, jobs, the way they relate to religion, laws, all leading up to a final piece on funereal practices. They might be a serious, practical lot most of the time, but they sure know how to have a good booze-up, and can form some pretty elaborate social rules over the centuries that may get in the way of actually accomplishing stuff. This invokes conflicting feelings in me. Once again, it's not bad, but it certainly doesn't break new ground the way Roger Moore's articles did way back in 1982. That managed to add new details that were taken up and ran with by other writers, while this just kinda slots in and tells us what we expect to hear about dwarves. Crunch-wise, the most significant thing I can find is the table that tells how much a dwarf can expect to earn in a particular profession. (generally a lot more than in a human community, given how much gold they have access too.) Somehow it just doesn't have the same impact as learning about Moradin, Berronar and the rest of them.
Lights, Camera, Dragons!: The guy who played the dwarf in the D&D movie gets interviewed this month, which I suppose is also vaguely in theme. And no surprise that makeup was a fairly substantial hassle, especially the bit where they died his eyebrows orange. They mostly used trick photography to make him look shorter than the other characters, which is one of the few things this shares with the LotR movies. This is their longest bit of promotion, coinciding with the release date, and includes a synopsis of the plot, and little profiles of all the main characters, and talk about how this both uses D&D ideas, and differs from ordinary campaigns. (a fat old elf, the distinct lack of clerics, beholders are utterly incompetent. ) They're still hoping it'll be a success, with people signed on for 2 sequels if it's profitable, but I think they're starting to realise it might not be deserved, now they've actually seen it. Just because quite a few of the people involved are actually gamers doesn't mean the resulting product will be good or faithful. Still, I suppose it's better for the brand that they promote it, compared to the treatment they gave the D&D cartoon back in the 80's.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 4/7
The old words are the best words: Robin Laws joins in on the theme this month, with some very specific character building advice. Can you judge a culture by it's proverbs? Hell yeah. They not only show you what a people considers valuable and commonsensical, but have hidden meanings that serve as lessons, and help the old pass on their values to the young. Since dwarves live a long time and tend to be quite culturally conservative, it makes perfect sense they'd have a whole boatload of sayings for common situations. And he does go to quite a bit of length to establish the depth behind these sayings, highlighting the various aspects of the dwarven personality in a show, not tell manner. I think that once again he's going to steal the show here, because this is not only cool, but suitable for any game or media where dwarves resemble their stereotypes at all.
Class combos: Now, I knew that technically the annuals came in between the november and december issues, but this is the first time there's been real consequences for doing them slightly out of order. Apparently that's where they started doing this series on making the most of your multiclass options, providing full 20 level progressions with skill and feat suggestions. As Dwarves have fighter as their favoured class, three of the four options presented here are fighter hybrids, with the final one a cleric/rogue one focussed on mobility underground and harnessing the power of the earth. I can see the use of this, especially if you're generating lots of NPC's, but don't find it very interesting, and can understand why later writers skewed back towards providing lots of new classes to fill different intermediate niches. You can only do so much with multiclassing, especially with XP penalties enforced.
Fiction: Keoland blues by Paul Kidd. The Justicar is back, and he's picked up a whole adventuring party of comedic oddballs to be the straight man too. What a life to live. Unlike the last one which had some social message mixed in with it's humour, this is pure dugeoncrawling goofiness, where they stumble into trouble, fight and puzzle their way out of it, and end up no better off than when they started, due to loadbearing boss keeping them from grabbing most of the treasure. Dont'cha just hate it when that happens. So it's entertaining in a fluffy way, but doesn't develop their characters at all, which means you can skip it without affecting what happens in the actual books at all.
Tools of the Deep: As we saw last issue, dwarves are one of the races likely to profit if technology advances. So a collection of new nonmagical, but technically sophisticated equipment is right up their alley. Torches attached to helmets and climbing aids are of tremendous benefit to a miner. And adapting the bellows used in forges to launch projectile weapons at high speed is a fairly logical bit of steampunk technology. So this is quite neat, and would have been just as suitable for the previous issue as well. Reminding the readers that not all their cool stuff has to be magical, and resourcefulness is as important as the resources you have is still an important lesson in these days of expected wealth per level, if not more so, because when you have a fixed allotment, using it efficiently becomes ever more important if you want to win against your peers.
Nodwick's team meets their monstrous doubles, and go on a big crossover adventure. Much profit is had.
The adventures of Volo: A tale of treachery and greed this month, as Ed spins another system free ancient legend about a family, and the magical items passed down amongst them. We saw at the end of last year what happens to people who betray the country of Cormyr too seriously, and it looks like there's plenty of other jackasses who ruin it's good name. Even the relatively pacified england analogue has more than it's fair share of interesting history. Ed seems to be growing tired of maintaining the dramatic conventions though, with not a single snarky comment by Elminster. He might have no shortage of unused ideas, but how many more of them will be able to be squeezed into this format?
VS Duergar: Now this is more like it. With a fairly unique set of powers and resistances, Duergar require quite specific tactics if you don't want your ass kicked in the twisting tunnels of the underdark. Basically, the really important thing is to be able to counter their invisibility, and have some bright lights to make them suffer and turn the tables. General dispelling, anti-poison effects, and movement enhancers will also come in handy. You can have the same basic stats, and have the encounter go very differently depending on the environment, and if you have the right equipment and spells prepared. They do actually have some stuff I hadn't thought of this time around. Let's hope they can get progressively more oddball in their choice of monsters.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 5/7
Class acts: A fairly stereotyped entry this time, with the stonelord, or Hyperdwarves! Another one where you have to either dip into a suboptimal class to qualify, or suck up those cross-class skills. Still, they have full BAB progression, plus a whole bunch of thematic magical skills. Although it's not mentioned, the elemental theme seems appropriate not only for dwarves, but for druids as well. Lower the BAB to 3/4, add a partial spell progression and early wildshaping into an elemental, and they'd be a great idea for druids who want to focus on the earth theme. Which is pretty neat.
Rogues Gallery: Looks like it's Raven's Bluff's turn to get a novel. They're already filled in more than any other city in the Realms, thanks to years of RPGA adventures and Polyhedron articles. And apparently the novel pays close attention to established continuity, using the same named locations and supporting characters. I'm sure someone'll be able to find something to complain about.
Jack Ravenwild sees another strong contender for most cliched badass protagonist name introduced to us. He's a charming sorcerer/rogue who much prefers tricking enemies to fighting them head-on, is impulsive, reckless, and loyal to his friends. A completely typical adventurer then. In Raven's Bluff, I'm sure there are hundreds like him (if lower level, since 3e hasn't been out long enough for them to level up in the living city campaign. ) I guess they're going for the everyman thing.
Anders Aricssen is Jack's sidekick, a barbarian with enough common sense to point out his stupider plans and pull him out of the fire. As with many sidekicks, he seems a more interesting character, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's more of a PoV character. But he's still eager to adventure, and not too good at planning himself, so I guess the two need each other. I suspect snarky IC banter will be involved though.
Zandria is a red wizard who's a little less unpleasant than most of them, but she's still a ruthless, short-tempered, arrogant pain in the ass. She just treats her friends better. Which may let her level up in the outside world, but will be a real problem once she goes back home to try and rise in the hierarchy. ;) Why bother being a good guy after all? They'll just betray you. Magically created slaves really are the way to go.
Tharzon is a dwarf fighter/rogue who uses his racial talents at mining as a way of breaking into people's houses and robbing them. Tut tut. Well, someone was going to do it sooner or later. Seems a very protagonisty thing to do. So I guess these four are going to bicker their way through some kind of adventure around the city. Will there be room for them not not hit other adventurers on the way?
The bad guys are definitely winning in this month's dragonmirth.
Forum: Adam C. Tucson is full of praise for the changes to 3e, especially the new class level and to hit system. His only little niggle is the chopping around of pronouns, witch is cool from an equality point of view, but confusing when it happens within a single example. Characters generally don't have sex changes mid-combat, you know. :D
Louis Pirozzi is the contrastic voice, saying most of the changes they've made suck. Poor poor halflings. Poor poor elemental mages. Oh don't you worry about them, elemental spellcasters'll be back in supplements before you can say shazam, and were never core anyway.
Casey DeWitt loves templates, but isn't too keen on Baatezu and Tanar'ri going back to being devils and demons. Those names just seem bland now. Hmm. Unpronouncable or bland. What a decision. I really can't come down on one side for this problem.
Rikard Fjellhaug praises D&D with all the zeal of a born again convert. Games Workshop have betrayed me, and this is awesome. I'm glad I gave it a try after many years of shunning AD&D.
Christian Walker is thoroughly amused at the idea of 20th level commoners. Still, it does give him a good guideline for giving XP for noncombat encounters. Negotiating a good deal with a 20th level expert can be even trickier than slaying a 20HD dragon. A bit of tweaking might be needed, but the basic theory is sound.
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 6/7
Role models: This column changes writers, and resets to step one yet again, with another bit of basic advice on how to paint miniatures. This is very tiresome indeed. With that comes another format change, back to photographs, and a noticeable reduction in text size, as they actually have a decent amount to say. The advice itself though is another basic list of the things you need, and the habits you should develop if you want to become a good painter. Once again I find myself somewhat irritated at the poor treatment this column is getting, being meddled with frequently and shunted around the magazine like they don't really know what to do with it. It does end on a positive note though, with a statement of what's coming up next month. Hopefully this guy'll stick around long enough to carry out his plans and get past the basics again.
Sage advice: How can clerics of Heroneous be lawful neutral when their god is lawful good (You misunderstand. When we say they can't be neutral unless their god is, we mean true neutral, not a hybrid. What a Doofus)
Surely clerics don't lose their armor and weapon proficiencies when they become ex-clerics (You are correct. )
Can true neutral clerics cast aligned spells (Yes. They can play all the sides against one-another for their own profit.)
Does extra turning also give extra rebukes (Oh yes)
Can monks make off-hand attacks (This rule is not applicable. Please reset the system and try again.)
Can monks deal subdual damage (yes, and at no penalty. Flexibility's a great thing. )
Do you still suffer AoO's if you grapple someone and have improved unarmed strike (Fraid so. It'll take another feat to do that as well)
Are monks immune to sneak attack (no)
You don't add monk's base attack to their unarmed attack, do you. (No. That would be so broken no other class could compete. )
What is monk's crit range and damage (20 x2, just like anything not specifically mentioned otherwise. The game is sooo prejudiced against nonhumanoids.)
How long does it take to use wholeness of body (Standard action)
Shocking grasp is better at hitting you if you're wearing metal armour (Feature, not bug. The designers knew what they were doing.)
Can you cast spells with somatic components if your hands are full (No. This limits the good gish builds a bit )
Can you raise a skill cross-class if you already have it as a class one (sure, if you want to be objectively sub-optimal)
We interrupt this transmission to bring you a particularly egregious powerplay, in which the deadliness of a buffed cleric is pointed out. Truly, CoDzilla is in the building. And now, back to you Skip.
Thank you, Sean. And now, the weather.
How are feats handled for multiclass characters. (Perfectly normally. We standardised this stuff so it would be easy for you. )
Can you fire two hand crossbows at once (sure)
Is true strike overpowered, virtually impossible to use, or both. Good question. Considering magic missile hits automatically at the same level, we don't think so.)
Does true strike's bonus apply to confirm crit threats (yes)
What attack bonus do you have with improved two weapon fighting (Plenty stupid question, yah. Skip answer question, you feel better. )
How many attacks do you get if you have whirlwind attack and improved two-weapon fighting ( Way too many. Way to bogart the fighting airtime dude. )
What are the rules for partial charges. (half the action, half the distance, half the cool factor. Poor zombies.)
Are bonus spells for high scores cumulative (no)
What's a double headed weapon, and why can't rangers fight two-weapon with it (Something that has nasty bits on both ends. Rangers don't get special powers with them because Drizzt never used them :p )
Does moving away and loading a crossbow provoke attacks of opportunity (yes)
Do off hand attacks lose all their strength bonus to hit or half (none, actually. Skip can see why you might think so though. Definitely a case where things aren't as standardized as they could be. We have good reason for that though.)
Dragon Issue 278: December 2000
part 7/7
Silicon Sorcery: 5 new magic items from Icewind Dale get backconverted to D&D stats this month. They all have pretty cool names, which definitely makes me more predisposed to using them. Let's see if their powers can match their names in inventiveness.
Alamion is a longsword that makes you resistant to fire, detects fire using creatures and is super effective against evil outsiders. If you're a paladin going to hell, you couldn't have a better friend in all the world.
Dead man's Faces are helms that provide a bonus against fear effects, which is moderately useful. The flavour text is more interesting than their power, being based around the funereal practices of the followers of Tempus. This is an unusual amount of depth for video game items, and well worth using in a tabletop game.
Faith Killer isn't too surprising, being an axe that dispels any divine spells when it hits someone. There's quite a few people around the multiverse who don't like the idea of gods now. I suspect that's why they'll hit back and institute the wall of the faithless to keep us in line.
The Bitch Queen's Envoy is a shield given to servants of Umberlee, that makes them invisible and untouchable to water creatures. How useful this'll be will be pretty context specific, but it's a truly awesome name, nonetheless. I hope you can get good use out of it in the game.
Black Swan Armor isn't the most powerful in terms of armor bonus, but gives you resistance to 4 energy types, a charisma enhancement, and has reduced armor penalties. Since it's designed for a female wearer, I'm left wondering if it looks chesecakey in game. How are you supposed to take a military leader seriously when they're showing great acres of cleavage? (until they prove they've got Great Cleave as well) So with plenty of effort to integrate them into the setting, and powers that aren't just more plusses, this lot can definitely have high marks.
Dungeoncraft: Ray reveals that yes, he wasn't part of the in crowd for the new edition's development, so he's only found out about it as we did. I suspected as much. And due to lead-in times and all that, he's 3 months behind in getting to talk about it. No wonder he's been running booster episodes these past few months rather than starting new topics. Still, this one is quite topical, as it asks the difficult question of when, and indeed if you should switch systems, particularly mid campaign, where the change in rules might hurt people's sense of immersion, as characters can suddenly do things they couldn't before. (or possibly the opposite, which would also annoy them.) A one-shot to try things out before you commit your main game would be a rather good idea. Still, while he doesn't leap headfirst into 3e, he does have positive things to say about it, particularly in the universal resolution system removing big chunks of the headache in winging unexpected actions. All you have to do is figure out a stat to roll against and an appropriate DC. And you can still eyeball those and not worry about it too much if you turn out to not be calculating things strictly by the RAW. Keeping the game moving is more important than adhering to the letter of the rules at all times. As with some of the other writers, he's obviously still writing with the 2e spirit, even if he's using the new rules. And I find myself fully in agreement with his observations this month. You don't want to jump in and use everything in the new system at once just because it's cool and new. That way lies making mistakes you can't easily take back before you get the hang of things.
Dixie is foiled in her latest attempt to rule the world by the wonders of chocolate. That's just cruel.
I'm afraid we have a lot of short, somewhat insubstantial articles this issue. It seems like they're still waiting for the freelancers to catch up with the new edition and start sending in stuff using the new rules, with a lot of system free ones that feel like filler. Despite dwarves being fairly popular, there's no real game-changers for them here, just lots of stuff that tells us what they think we want to hear. Looks like there's still another few mountains of rock to dig through to find the gold in this magazine. Better get a bigger pickaxe if I want to get through them faster.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 1/7
116 pages. Hmm. This half-dragon's a bit less androgynous and pretty than the one in issue 206. He'd chop you up without breaking a sweat or wasting time to angst about being caught between two worlds and belonging to neither. Well, he'll have a far easier time finding a group of companions with similarly bizarre origins these days. That takes the sting away quite a lot. But despite the edition change, the annual seems to have the same idea as before. Skip the themes for lots of regular columns, and maybe an adventure for Dungeon fans. Let's hope the articles are good ones this time, because we need a nice filling helping of extra crunch more than usual at this point.
Scan Quality: Ok, unindexed, scruffy page edges, one page out of order.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: It doesn't matter how long you've been playing, everyone's a newcomer to the new edition, and starting on an even footing. Of course, some are learning faster than others, but that's only natural. What's important is that circulation is up, and people are sending in more proposals for articles than they have in a long time. The main problem is that tons of them are ones about people's personal worlds and characters, which isn't something they're really interested in anymore. Ed got away with that because he was in on the ground floor, interesting, and insanely prolific too. You can't unless you can sell yourself in a mere couple of hundred words. So this is an attempt to herd cats, get what they want from the readerbase, instead of what they want to give us. Good luck with that guys. You'll definitely need it.
By any other name part one: The array of random system free tables to fill out issues continues. We didn't get them this frequently and consistently even in the 70's. So much for the old school. This time, it's appropriate random names for shops. If you're a regular visitor to the same settlement, you can wind up going to the same local places and making them feel like home. So you really really don't want them having names the players'll laugh at every time. If you're caught off guard, this is another one that could well save your bacon if you remember to pull it out in time. It caters well for human, dwarven and elven settlements, but everyone else is on their own. It also sounds very english. Still, there's only so much you can do in 4 pages. An ok starter, I guess.
By any other name part two: Even more than shops, pubs, inns and taverns tend to have interesting names, and be regular hangouts for adventurers. When you start a lot of your adventures being approached by some mysterious figure for a dubious job, it's important to be seen in the right places and have a reputation with the right people. This mostly works off d100 tables, so it has even greater variety than the last article, making it even less likely you'll repeat names. (unlike the real world where it seems every other town in the UK has a Queen's Head. :p ) I think I like this a little better out of these two, but it's a close thing, as neither really reaches out and grabs me by the throat.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 2/7
Fresh starts: Speaking of being approached by some guy in a pub as they way you start every adventure, screw that noise. This is definitely one area where a little more variety would be great. This is only 3 pages and has 20 hooks, so it's not as able to completely avoid repetition as the previous two articles, but they are fun ones, including multiple ones that take you away from everything you knew, and one dragging the PC's into a harem comedy gone wrong. Blackmail, being swept off course sailing, turned to stone and then back centuries later, or even the really cheesy old one of inheriting a haunted castle. If there is an issue with these, it's how many simply sweep the characters up with no chance to say no, and completely cut them off from their old connections and safety nets. Sure Dorothy and Alice got good stories out of that, but if it happens regularly to players they'll feel railroaded and lose investment. Be sure to break stories like this up with ones where they do get to exercise agency if you want a long healthy campaign.
Rays of light: We don't have an Arcane Lore in this annual, but we do have a collection of spells and new metamagic feats anyway. Quite a substantial one too, with 17 spells and 5 feats crammed into 4 pages. The theme is ray spells. They've been around for ages, but they've received a real increase in frequency in the new edition. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you have to both hit the target with a ranged touch attack, which wizards aren't the best at, and then they get a saving throw, making them more likely to be resisted than the average spell. If you want to be a specialist in using them, multiclassing with something with a high BAB like Eldrich Knight would be a very good idea. But I digress. The new metamagic feats are both the most interesting part of this, and also the smallest. You can turn a ray spell into a cone or a burst, make it shoot three things at once or two in a row. And with the spells here, you can shoot fire, cold, electricity, rust, disease, stupidity, negative energy, or a critically acclaimed madonna album. In addition to the 16 rays, they also include a counterspell that'll reflect ray spells back on anyone trying to shoot you, which makes a lot of sense in the circumstances. He who lives by the ray does not want to die by the ray. This is packed full of just the kind of crunch players'll love to use, and love to hate bad guys who also use it. Even now, you can't always rely on AoE attacks to get the job done without hurting your friends.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 3/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A grab bag of stuff this month, running the gamut of weaponry and armor. Materials, plus finished products. Not the most glamorous of descriptions, but in the new climate where character optimisation is encouraged, this is a good thing. And once again, it's not all magical stuff.
Lenaer Wood is another elven material that's Better Than Yours. Reduced weight and increased weapon ranges. That'll let you carry more arrows. It's not even that expensive too.
Mindsteel, on the other hand, offers benefits and penalties. Increased weight and reduced protection, but a big bonus to will saves. Hmm. That's actually a pretty tricky choice.
Vakar is a new material discovered by dwarves mining. Since it does extra damage against elves, this has made it rather popular in short order. Let's hope the goblins don't get their paws on it, because then there'd be a lot more trouble in the offing.
Durand's Armor is a mindsteel alloy that has the best properties of both regular and special.
Leafcutter is made of an alloy of Vakar and Silver, and also has the best properties of both. So if any elf gets infected with lycanthropy, it'll be the perfect solution. :p
Eward's Sword is made of a combination of admantine and copper. This makes it effectively as good as a full +1 sword. Perfect for your magic suspicious barbarian.
Lowri's Arrows are made from crystalized cave slug slime. Like spider silk, this works really well actually. Very cool idea.
Rejavik is a hollow-cavitied warhammer which uses clever leverage tricks to increase the damage done. Sloshing mercury around inside the cavity makes it tricky to wield but damn effective when it connects. A trick also used in real world mechanics. Now that is interesting as well. This has been more useful than the previous magic-free articles.
The bestiary: James Jacobs continues his romp through Greyhawk lore, adding on more interesting monstrosities previously unseen to scare the players. Funny that they're concentrating on making new monsters when there's so many unconverted ones from the old edition. Still, it shows there are people already making 3e into it's own beast rather than just a continuation of the old stuff. Whether that's a good thing or not is probably a matter of opinion, but I quite like these particular new additions. This time, it's not a location, but creatures connected to Tharizdun that are getting their turn in the spotlight.
Julajimus are a fairytale monster that transforms into small cute animals, to get into your room before eating you, and is rendered helpless by sunlight. A nice cautionary tale for D&D characters.
Kurge are a particularly gross form of undead that have their body parts split off and attack independently when you hit them. What a lovely visual. They're another one that's infested with nasty disease too, just to make the team regret the encounter more.
Rogue eidolon are Tharizdun's equivalent of the animating lion guardian, only creepier looking. Since their god was banished, they aren't the most sane of creatures either. Lure them into pits or traps if you can't penetrate their DR.
RotRippers are undead ogres that steal your arms and add them to their body, in another interesting fairytale touch. That does mean their deadliness may vary substantially while they still have the same HD and CR though. There are worse design flaws, I guess, and it is an exceedingly cool idea for a monster.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 4/7
Dork tower is taken over by Phil Foglio, who does a really good job of imitating John Kovalic's art style. At least, until the last frame. Muahahahahaha!
Gorgoldand's Gauntlet: This year's adventure continues the fresh start theme, with a 1st level adventure. A fairly clever, rather whimsical one designed to set the PC's up for future manipulation by a powerful NPC with their own agenda. The challenges are mostly based around puzzles, with jermalaine the most frequent adversaries, and some rather annoying wordplay in the same vein as B9. Plus a minesweeper rip-off, which reminds me how ubiquitous that was on windows computers as a free game. This actually seems quite fun, which shows how well Johnathan Richards can sell elements that would be deeply annoying in lesser hands. It's quite flexible as well, with ideas for scaling, and making it a little more action focussed. I was suspicious at first, but I do actually like this, and can see it making a fun little romp in actual play.
All over the map: We had questions about this quite a whole a go. And even now, most maps that the official D&D campaigns and adventures use start off hand drawn. They may be scanned into the computer, overlaid and digitally manipulated in all sorts of ways later, including having copies printed off so more hand-drawn revisions can be made. But if you don't have actual artistic skills, you'll never really be able to replicate what they can do. If you want to be a true pro in this field, you need both hand drawing skills and computer manipulation ones, or a partnership where individual people can really concentrate on being good at these individual parts. Of course, in the internet age, where people are increasingly expected to be all-in-one creative units, and costs are cut wherever possible, it can be pretty tricky to make a living in a highly specialised job like this. I don't think any RPG company apart from WotC has a full time graphics guy anymore. Sometimes, you do miss the old studio system. And I certainly miss having lots of companies big enough to maintain a supplement mill for their gamelines and do big pretty boxed sets with maps and stuff. :(
Dragonmirth is interestingly obscure this month:
After the Dragon: Vangerdhast is a bit of a dick, really. Making the king's corpse smile during the funereal procession? This is why wizards should be kept in support roles, not making decisions on public policy, despite their intelligence. Anyway, this spells out the changes in cormyran politics in recent novels. The old king is dead, long live the king! You can look forward to politics being pretty complicated, as he's just a baby, and there's a regent in charge for the next 17 years. (more than long enough to be corrupted by power and not want to give it up) Ed once again shows that his knack for details is what you really need if you want to create an interesting political game, as he details tons of NPC's and their basic personalities and motivations, ready for you to set the intrigues in motion. If that isn't your thing, there's also a prestige class for the higher ranking purple dragons, which gives them natural armor bonuses and resistances to poison and magic as they level up, making them rather harder to take down than a standard fighter. Being one'll tie you into a hierarchy, but since their job is often hunting down monsters and sniffing out dissension, that won't put a crimp in your adventuring lifestyle. So this is another finger licking good bit of information from Ed, keeping the world alive and growing, while also hinting at how subtly deranged his high level wizard NPC's are. Maintaining continuity is important if they want to keep the old players on board.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 5/7
Mentors: Don't tell me we haven't had an article about mentors before? Really?! Well, I suppose it's another one of those things I've never really used in my games, despite this writer thinking they're an essential part of a story. It's never something I've had personally, as I've always wound up doing most of my learning from books or original research rather than a teacher, so of course my perspective on it would be an outsiders one. And this shows that as long as you avoid the pitfall of the mentor being a deus ex machina who could easily do the jobs they're sending the PC's on themselves, there's plenty of plot options you can open up by having a mentor or two for your PC's. (having multiple particularly helps, as it gets the message through much faster that they're not infallible, and their goals probably aren't purely altruistic. ) They can run the gamut from accessible to mysterious, slightly more experienced (but possibly with age or combat based injuries that keep them from the front line anymore) to godlike, heroic to secretly malevolent and manipulative. So this article is very aware of both the upsides and downsides to including a mentor in your campaign, and does quite a bit to help you get good results out of doing so. Plus it's another good example of how they've actually reduced rehash after the revamp.
101 evil schemes: We've already had 20 adventure seeds this issue. Here's 101 more! How very generous of them. These aren't railroady either, ands many of them won't be combat heavy at all. Of course, they're just stat free synopses, so you'll still have to do all the heavy lifting yourself, and some of them are definitely aimed at higher level characters. Still, quite a few of them inspired a good old muahaha in me, and they are pretty interesting ideas, avoiding or subverting the obvious plot ideas. This issue is definitely racking up enough stuff to keep your campaign running for quite a while.
Class acts: Oh dear. Another attack of hyperstereotyping this issue with the Gnome Trickster. Once again we run into the same design flaw that Mystics suffered from. They have lots of powers that enhance their illusion magics, but no actual spell progression. This means that they'll end up with fewer, less powerful spells than an illusionist who simply sucks up the metamagic feats to enhance their spells. They really are still making the most elementary design errors. In other words, this fails from both a flavour and an optimization point of view. No way I'd take it even if I did want to play that archetype.
The royal heralds: A second prestige class in quick succession. Heralds were quite an interesting Bard Kit last edition, sacrificing skill in ancient lore for being in touch with the pulse of the streets and knowing tons of languages. I'm not surprised they were popular enough to be brought back. As with that incarnation, there's a certain emphasis on the james bond shenanigans, where they're suave and well versed in international etiquette, but also get up to behind the scenes adventures as well. They are a lot more combat focussed than before though, with full sneak attack progression, and uncanny dodge as per a rogue. They get spontaneous spellcasting of about the same level as an Assassin or Blackguard, which means a Bard moving into this will have tons of low level spells rather than progressing to mid level ones. In general, they're somewhere between rogue and bard, and will be useful if you want to concentrate on this particular subset of their powers rather than multiclassing between the two and having to pick up extra class features you might not use. So this isn't quite as flavourful as last edition, but not terrible either.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 6/7
Nodwick is taken over by John Kovalic. Not as convincingly as phil's try, though.
Class combo's: We saw the second instalment of this out of order last time round. Now I get a good look at the proper introduction. Now, there are advantages to taking certain classes at 1st level, particularly rogue and barbarian, but even they'll be offset by the fact that you're not completely specialising in whatever you want to do, which is particularly important for spellcasters. Taking a level or two in fighter or ranger later on can also offer advantages to a build, as these classes are particularly front-loaded at the moment. Even splitting, on the other hand, is one of the worst things you can do, despite it being encouraged by the xp penalty system. Despite that, nearly half of these are even splits, as they try to give us the obvious iconic multiclass options first. Champion (1/3 fighter, 2/3 cleric) Nature's Champion (1/4 ranger, 3/4 druid) Scout (1/2 ranger, 1/2 rogue) Skald (1/2 Barbarian, 1/2 Bard, another resurrection of an obvious kit from 2e) Spellfilcher (1/3 Rogue, 2/3 Wizard) Spellsword (1/3 fighter 2/3 wizard) and Tracker (1/2 Barbarian 1/2 Ranger) Note how it's already the part spellcaster builds that skew unevenly towards them. While I can see the value in trying to get people to fulfil their character concepts by working within the existing class system rather than creating their own, this series seems likely to suffer diminishing returns very quickly, as while you can create near infinite combinations, the obvious ones will disappear quite quickly. I can't see it having that long a lifespan.
The ecology of the Feyr: Paranoia. Mistrust of the enemy among us. A theme that would go up in profile quite a bit this decade. They don't know that yet, but that doesn't mean this doesn't work. This is one of those ecologies where the narrator is in cahoots with the monster, and giving out the information to stir up further trouble. Which is, of course, just what the feyr thrives upon. Once again, they also use this magazine as a way to update creatures that didn't make it into the monster manual. Is this going to become a regular thing? In any case, this is a competent but not particularly groundbreaking ecology.
Forgotten realms 2000: Here's some mechanical updates for the Realms to complement the setting ones earlier. Can't wait for the corebook to come out? Here's the spheres for the gods, conversions for 13 magical items, a spell, and all the subraces that we've come to know and love. Plus there's the new stuff. Three sample regional feats, including Luck of Heroes, which show that yes, the power creep is small, but has already started. And a relaxing of the multiclassing rules on monks and paladins, as followers of specific gods get special exemptions appropriate to their portfolios. They're not going to stay bound by the standards they established in the corebooks. The realms has always been a high power setting, and they don't see why they should stop now. I mildly disapprove. They should at least stick to their guns long enough to see where the problems are before patching them, otherwise they'll just make new ones. Let the flamewars ....... continue.
Dragon Annual 2000
part 7/7
Rogues gallery: Oh, don't tell me the Cult of the Dragon are making another doomed attempt at world domination. You're always going to be the second stringers as Realms villains go. But they try harder, and this time they're going multimedia! Yes, it's time for the stats of characters from a novel based on a computer game. If anything is going to cause conversion confusion, it's a chain of events like that. It's also likely to cause very rapid levelling up, given both the nature of computer game grinding and the new 3e advancement rules. Which means these stats are only accurate for a very short portion of the novel. Makes you wonder why they bothered, if your PC's are never going to get to encounter them in this stage of their development without screwing with the established timeline.
Kestrel is the embittered self-reliant rogue, who has to learn how to get along with her companions if they're to succeed against all the trials ahead. That's pretty predictable. Now, what kind of person would a girl like that wind up in conflict with?
Oh, surprise surprise. Corran D'arcey is a lawful dick noble-born paladin who has to learn actual compassion and understanding for those who didn't have the same opportunities and easy childhood he did. He tends to be bossy as well, which means he's also going to have to do some serious character arcing to do.
Ghleanna Stormlake is a somewhat animeish looking half-elf who contrasts quite a bit with her more rugged companions. As one of the new breed of sorcerers, she's a mystery to even Elminster. (at least, until the Simbul gets retconned into one. :p ) Like most sorcerers, she's a misfit despite her high charisma, and has turned into a mediator in an attempt to stave off further abuse. Which means she gets to be right in the middle when the previous two butt heads. Yick. This is starting to remind me of my old band. :(
Durwynn is the straight fighter of the team. This means he's the quiet one who gets along with everyone, and has a surprising number of good ideas. Every group needs a no-nonsense, no drama guy who shows up on time and gets the job done. Otherwise this group would have died long before they got to this level.
Aaron Williams completes the artistic round robin by doing What's New. In theory, anyway. Phil & Dixie are reduced to cameos in their own comic. Stick to the script, people!
This is a pretty good annual, which has a lot of information about how they're developing the new edition, plus a decent amount of system free stuff as well. Once again, the Realms gets the lions share of the attention, making Greyhawk and everyone else look a little neglected, but as long as the information itself is good, I can survive that. They just have to make sure that the setting has progressed enough that when they cover various regions again in the new edition, it doesn't just feel like a retread, without alienating people, and hopefully winning a few new fans as well. And the same applies to the generic game as well. So let's see what supplements 2001 brings, and how they're received by the readers. There's tons of space to fill, and with the d20 system coming in, more competition than ever. WotC'll have to work hard to make sure their offerings are still the best.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 1/7
116 pages. Elves get a themed issue straight after Dwarves? My degree of surprise is infinitesimal. Thought you'd get complaints if you waited even a couple of months to heighten the anticipation? Probably right too. :) Let's see if they'll be getting twinked new crunch, or just fluffy system free articles that could have been submitted any time in the past few years. Even with a life as long as theirs, you don't want to hang around getting bored.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, a few colouring glitches.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Straight away, we talk about the difficulty of accurately portraying creatures that have such long lifespans. Sometimes they suffer from ennui. Sometimes they're aloof, as they don't want to be hurt when their shorter-lived companions keep on dying. Sometimes they're perpetual kids, playful and whimsical throughout eternity no matter how much shit gets thrown at them. Sometimes they're just plain alien. Who's to say which is most accurate, given that they're purely fantasy creatures anyway. I once again wish we would hurry up and create life extension methods, so we can see how people do act when given the promise of eternity in a young healthy body as long as they don't get killed by violence or accident. Let's avoid the accusations of badwrongfun until then, shall we. It might make sense for real world genders and ethnicities, but you aren't going to get the Elf Liberation Front jumping down your throat if you portray them wrong.
Scale Mail: We start off with someone who's pleased with the quality of the articles recently, but not the layout. Yeah, they've been getting that a lot. They're still fiddling with it, trying to get something that looks distinctive without enraging people.
Second, we have someone annoyed at graphic visuals in their adverts. What a bunch of wusses. Let them spend their money. It does not mean you have to buy the stuff advertised, or even pay any attention too it.
We then have someone raging about the canon police. Do not create new climate or terrain types for your monsters to dwell in? What kind of instruction is that?! Unless the existing ones are sufficiently broad as to be all-inclusive, that's a rule that begs to be broken.
Another person joins the ranks of those who think there's too much forgotten realms stuff in the magazine. Sorry. It started there, and it's not giving up it's place without a fight. If you really want to beat it, you need to control your own means of distribution.
On the other hand, we've got some happy customers as a result of the steampunk issue. Thank god for that, given all the complaints Alternity got in it's final year.
They also seem to be happy about the introduction of prestige classes. Oh, don't worry, you'll be seeing waaaay more of those, until you're mighty sick of them. Actually, I ought to count up how many kits 2e did, so I can see when they get overtaken in the magazine by prestige classes. Gimme a few hours.
Hmm. I count 159. They need to average slightly under 2 per issue to beat that before the magazine ends. The target is set.
We then have a complaint about agism in the magazine. Since Gary's the founder of D&D, everyone else is a young'un in his eyes. :p Don't read too much into it.
An amusing letter in which they like the new edition, but feel like they're betraying the old one by switching. Love is a many splendored, and often silly thing. Don't worry, you can do both on different days.
The rage mage gets it's errata sorted out. Silly writers copy and pasting without changing things.
And finally, the German correspondent returns another positive verdict, and asks when they'll be doing some psionic stuff for the new edition. Not long, not long at all. It's always had a fairly good niche, so it's one of the first things they scheduled. Bust busy busy.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 2/7
PROfILES :sigh: Anyway, let's not dwell on the endless format stupidity. Jason Carl is our latest man in the spotlight. He's done modules for Dragonlance, the Forgotten realms, White Wolf, and various LARPing stuff. But his current job is splatbooks. Yes, he's won the enviable job of kicking off the supplement treadmill for the new edition. Which means he gets to design lots of new feats and prestige classes with which to bloat your options and upset the carefully considered balance of the game. :D He is not unaware of this danger, making sure he listens to the input of other writers and editors, making sure that while the system increases in versatility and depth, it doesn't get too far out of hand in the upwards direction. This one does get bogged down rather in the technical exploration and talk about the new edition, not giving me that much of a picture of the person behind it, outside his work. But then, many of the staff don't seem to have much of a life outside their work. The best they can manage is to choose what music they're listening too while writing. It's another thing that's a bit of a pain in the ass.
Up on a soapbox: Gary gets his act together, and returns with another plan after several months off. He's going to talk about exactly what a roleplaying game is. He's broken it up into a whole list of elements (not all of which will fit into a given campaign) and wants us to rate how important each of them are to us. This gives him well over a year's worth of material to talk about if he decompresses it as much as possible, and plenty of things for him to express interesting opinions on. And since he does have pretty interesting opinions, I'm definitely looking forward to reading future instalments in this series. Will he be be insightful, or in pontificating windbag mode?
Previews: The splatbook mill starts to really turn with Sword and Fist: A guidebook to Fighters and Monks. Lot's of new feats, prestige classes, and all that shininess. The first one I really remember, I suspect this'll sell rather more than the adventures. Speaking of adventures, this month's one is The Speaker in Dreams. They step out of the dungeon and back to the city for a little political fun. Can you get your players to play investigator properly?
Our novels this month are both rehash. Dragons of a Fallen Sun moves to paperback, or something, while Legacy of the Drow sees more of Drizzt's adventures compiled in omnibus form. Not a very interesting result really.
Nodwick becomes the bearer of puerile news. He may be shot for it, but nothing a little duct tape can't fix.
Countdown to the forgotten realms: 5 months to go. A very short article this month, giving us a bunch of little updates to the setting and timeline. The Red Wizards have set up magical shops, trying to take over via commerce rather than force. This seems to be working, making them a little less carton bad guys. The North has formed it's own league of nations to make things a little more civilised. Unther has lost it's god king and been invaded by Mulhorand. Oh, and the Simbul has always been a Sorcerer, not a wizard. :p Well, someone had to be, and of all the powerful spellcasters Ed's done over the years, she's one of the most unpredictable and primal, so it's a good fit. Any objections to these changes? No? Let's move on then.
Dork tower sends in the filk. Be afraid.
Leaf & thorn: Robin Laws decides he's got plenty to say about elves as well as dwarves. And he doesn't hesitate to contradict some of the stuff in the complete book of elves, cutting the time they spend pregnant from 7 1/2 years to a mere 12 months. But they're still very much better than you in all sorts of ways. They're in touch with nature and the cosmos, stick to the big rules but don't sweat the small stuff, can have sex without all that stupid worrying about if the other person is really attracted to you or not, and then move on easily when it's over, get to learn naturally at their own pace, and then accept death when it comes magnanimously. As pretty pure fanboyism, this is the first thing he's written I don't like. They do have problems as well, you know, not that this talks about them. Otherwise they'd completely dominate the world, which they don't seem too. Remove a good chunk of the saccharine, and call me again next month.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 3/7
Revenge of the spider queen: Well, this is different. Enough monsters, spells and magic items presented in isolation. How about a team of bad guys designed to work together, so the PC's can face them as a unit, complete with lots of tactical notes. We hardly saw any of those in 2e, and their rise is one aspect of 3rd and 4th edition that I quite approve of. They take a lot more work to build right than individual monsters, so some good examples are welcome. So let's start off with one of Lolth's personal strike forces, dispatched throughout the multiverse to fulfil missions for her. Which means you have a good reason to encounter them nearly anywhere, particularly in the underdark. The individual members are scary enough on their own too, making them suitable solo foes for lower level parties. Plenty of use for this then, and it should be a while before we reach saturation point if they do articles like this regularly.
Sierona is a succubus rogue, and sneakiness combined with demonic spell-like powers makes her very capable of getting that sneak attack bonus damage. She's very much into a little bondage and torture, which means the highest cha male of the party might be spared for a fate worse than death. Course, at the level you'll be facing them, that gives you a chance to escape and raise everyone else. That seems like an appropriately tricky second chance.
Phauman is a drow Fighter/Wizard who uses his spells primarily for buffing in combat. He thinks he's a ladies man, but with a mediocre charisma and wisdom, and no ranks in appropriate skills, he's really not. Catch him before he has time to power up and get him angry, and your chances of winning are massively improved.
Vinter is a Drider cleric, showing that Lolth can be forgiving on occasion, if it annoys someone else enough. He's very much the support character, buffing and healing the others, making them even harder to take down. A party that hasn't mastered the same kind of tactical efficiency will struggle even if they are higher level.
Krad is a half-fiend Dragonne. As he's part of a party that are vulnerable to it, his roar isn't so useful, but he will give you a good blast of horrid wilting to soften you up before melee. And as he has by far the most HP, he might well be the last monster standing, at which point that consideration goes out the window. Knowing your enemy and being prepared definitely seems like a good idea again.
Berkurt the Corrupter is a fiendish Stone Giant, and while big, is actually the weakest member of the team, with no real magic or particularly cool items. Still, a 30 strength is not to be sneezed at, especially when combined with smite good. He could still smash up a low level party all on his own.
Jaggedra Thul is easily the most powerful here, a Vampire half-dragon Drow Cleric who's stacked templates bring her up to CR 22. Monte is really enjoying exploiting the system he created here, and her statblock is as large as I'd expect for a high level character like this. More than half of her description is devoted to the buffs she'll use in combat as well. She's going to be an almighty pain in the ass to fight alright. This party could well beat even a group of 20th level PC's if they aren't careful. Monte definitely deserves some credit for doing the first 3e article really aimed at high level players.
The elven marketplace: While elves are well known for their magical skill, they can also produce quite a few notable nonmagical items too, such as lembas, and elven chain. While not as technologically minded as dwarves, they do have a long time to get good at whatever they choose to do, and so their craftworks tend to be very elegant indeed. This is another short article, and manages to squeeze in 5 new arrow types, 5 bits of general equipment, and two variant armor types made from natural materials. All are somewhat superior to regular ones, but way more expensive. Which is a way to maintain balance I suppose. No surprises here.
The myth of elves: Or here, which is another 3 page article that does exactly the same as it's counterpart last issue, recounting stories from centuries past, and how elves have changed in them. Really, they're not particularly nice a lot of the time, and even when they are, they're still inscrutable and magically capable. (except when they're reduced to comic relief) Trusting them doesn't seem like the best of ideas. But at least you have tons of quite different sources to draw upon, including quite a lot of books I've never got round to reading. Yet again, I can see the use of this, but don't find it very enthralling. I can once again say I generally prefer the longer articles to the short ones.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 4/7
An elven lexicon: As is their habit whenever they have a race themed issue these days, they do a basic language primer to fill in a few pages. This hasn't really thrilled me before, and doesn't this time either. Their usual elitism is in full force here, with other races struggling to learn it simply because it takes such a long time to truly master, and there are so many words for subtle variations in various things. Their writing uses far greater complication in it's punctuation, methods of emphasis, prefixes and suffixes than english. Which means even more than ever, it really really needs multiple books by an obsessive linguist, not a four page article in a magazine to properly convey. Come on, Klingons got their own language, and I'm pretty sure they're not as popular as Elves.
Truth or Damodar: Oh, Bruce Payne. The only guy who appeared in both D&D movies. Why did you do it? I guess it actually wasn't too bad an experience for him. He got to do some ear raping, which I'm sure was fun to act out, he got to wear a cool outfit, and his suggestions were listened too by the director. Ok, the blue lipstick didn't turn out to well, but you can't have everything, and they did get rid of it in the sequel. They're still being pretty positive about this, and since googling shows he was one of the better received parts of the movies, I guess they're justified this time. You certainly can't say this killed his career, looking at IMDB. I wonder who else they can get in to do an interview. Somehow I doubt Jeremy Irons'll be amongst them.
Unusual suspects: The final article in this little series deals with Monks and Druids, unsurprisingly. Since they have fairly strict alignment restrictions, they will be more culturally ingrained in some races than others, but James finds at least two credible sounding excuses for each of the corebook races to play each class. I think this symmetry has been filled pretty solidly, and with surprisingly little complaint from the letters and forum crowds. Now hopefully we can incorporate other non-core classes and races, (quite possibly combined) with similar lack of drama in game.
Fiction: The sleeping tide by J Gregory Keyes. Fool Wolf finally stops being involved in standalone stories, with one that brings together threads from several of his previous encounters, and doesn't resolve neatly at the end either. And the plot definitely thickens, with character development from all involved, even Fool Wolf's trapped goddess. We've had enough time to establish a little emotional investment, so this turn of events leaves me very eager to find out what happens next, if there'll be a resolution to his tales, or he'll just keep going through life being a massive liability to everyone around him. It may sound cool being a wandering adventurer, but when you don't have a choice, it gets very exhausting. Don't make me wait 6 months for the next instalment.
VS Fiends: Oh boy, if any creature is an almighty pain in the ass to defeat, it's demons, devils and their lower planar compatriots. When a creature has teleport without error at will, multiple immunities (which vary quite a bit depending on individual creature. ) an extensive selection of spell-like abilities and the brains to use them, you really do need to bring your A game if you want to win, because if they don't want to fight, they can get away any time unless you've dropped a dimensional anchor on them. Still, at least they can't summon cascade like last edition, and there are more abilities specifically designed to do extra damage to them. Plus anti-teleporting magic is in the corebook, not some obscure supplement. It's definitely a fairer fight now than it was before. Just don't ever get complacent, for they have long memories and lots of favours to call in. They can afford to wait a few decades until you're vulnerable, and then snatch you away for eternal torment. This only really covers the actual combat side of interacting with them, which is rather limited really. They can be so much more to your campaign. I'm still not very impressed with this column.
The adventures of Volo: More Cormyran legends this month. Like the Rayburtons, the Rallyhorns have some substantial treasures, much of which is valuable. Or at least they did, until they sealed it up in a tomb, which was subsequently looted, and not there when cash-strapped descendents looked for it. (Really, that's like putting up a big neon sign saying "come take my stuff!", no matter how many traps and wards you also put in there) Still, doing so without ruining everything, and then disappearing without a trace shows a little more style than most adventurers manage. The mystery remains unsolved to this day. Elminster actually bothers to put in a few minutes work this time, to heap his usual disdain on Volo's reporting methods. Still, that element feels a little forced. The rest of it's fun though. It feels as though he's getting vaguely bibilical, with all these family trees. Wonder if we'll get to see a big joined-up version like the ones in the Silmarillion any time.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 5/7
Class acts is in on this month's theme, with the Ancestral Avenger. For elves who really really hate the drow and want them exterminated. They're a fighter/ranger type which get lots of bonuses not only against drow, but against their partners in crime spiders and demons. This does mean that like clerics, they'll be less useful when their favoured enemy isn't around, but if you're playing one of these guys, you should be proactively seeking out adventures where you fight Drow anyway. They seem both fairly solid mechanically and flavourwise, with no obvious foul-ups in their design, requirements or powerset. You will have to select your skills carefully though, as they have a pretty good set, and only 2+int to choose, which may be frustrating if you're coming off from ranger. Can't have everything, as usual.
Giants in the earth: Ha. It's an article on the greek-persian war, as seen in the comic book and film 300. That's quite fitting for a fantasy magazine that's trying to up it's badass quotient. They did heroic stuff, that has since become magnified by stories until it's fairly legendary. And none of this CR equivalent opponent stuff either. Real heroes don't let impossible odds stop them from trying. Roll the dramatis personae.
Xerxes is the persian king, proud and commanding, determined to make his country into a world power. He did indeed assemble a pretty impressive army, and got quite a long way before finally being stopped. He is a straight fighter though, when as a hereditary ruler, he ought to have at least one aristocrat level for the social skills. Leadership is not all about who can kick the most ass on their own.
Miltades is the old but still badass guy who beat the persians last time, leading Xerxes to hold a grudge and come back with a bigger force years later. Things like this don't happen in a vaccum, and it can be hard to say where they truly start and end.
Leonidas does indeed look quite like he did when yelling THIS IS SPARTA! He's buff, has a badass beard, and is quite capable of inspiring loyalty in an army. Having a decent supply of smart one-liners definitely helps with this, as does being willing to die for your men. If anyone's the hero in this story, it's him.
Epilates sold out to the persians for money, and spent the rest of his life paying for it. Your basic out for himself weasel, he's no real threat physically, but don't trust him with any secrets or you'll regret it. Still, this is a good example of how being trustworthy is generally more profitable in the long run.
Megistias is the oracle that advised Leonidas & co, trying to interpret the visions of the gods as clearly as possible. He didn't survive the battle, and indeed, knew he was going to die, but went in anyway. He got pretty high posthumous praise for that bravery, which makes sense.
Artemisia is another ruthless mutha who switched sides repeatedly during the war. Somehow, she managed to keep her respect anyway. It's not easy for a woman to become a military commander full stop, so she must be a pretty smart cookie.
Themistocles is the guy who finally stopped the Persian invasion for good, although the methods he used to win made him pretty unpopular afterwards. Such is the life of a politician. If you're too clever, people won't appreciate it, even if you are acting in their long term best interests, because life is complicated, but people secretly want a leader who offers simple solutions and tells them what they want to hear. And overall, this collection reminds us that in real life, events are rarely as neat as they are in stories, despite our attempts to force a narrative on things. It's quite interesting for that.
PC Portraits: No beards on the elves this time round, and in general they look a good deal more alien, with oddly shaped faces and very noticable pointy ears. In fact, they're sufficiently uncanny valley that I'd have a hard time finding myself attracted to creatures that looked like this, which is a definite change from the fetishised sexy elves. Plus they look like they had more work in general put into them than the collection in issue 251. I think this is a case where the newcomer definitely wins against the incumbent, having a more distinctive aesthetic, while also presenting us with plenty of variety in character concepts. Not all rehash is bad.
Dragonmirth dices with death and mindfucking again. Nodwick starts revisiting dungeons. Plant things and mecha, what a curious combination. How do they get along? I couldn't say.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 6/7
Forum starts taking the supplements into consideration. Psionics are coming. What are you planning to do with them. I suppose that depends what they think of the changes. Still a bit up in the air, you know.
Scott Sloan has no problem with the dungeonpunk aesthetic. Since one of the important things about 3e is sweeping away all the built up cruft, it seems very thematically appropriate. All the more fuel for shouters of betrayal.
David Werling was a skeptic, but rapidly converted when he realised how much better the new rules were. Plus not needing all those supplements is a huge weight off your shoulders. (literally if you carried the books to the game in your backpack)
Jeff R Taylor reminds us that D&D would have died entirely if not for the new edition. The playtesters and writers are saving roleplaying, not betraying it. I'm shocked at the sheer venom of some of the people writing in.
Jeff Dern likes some changes, but confused by others. His main hope, however, is that the old campaign worlds get brought back. 2 generic ones just isn't enough really.
Randy Donahue has been away from D&D since 2e came out, as he moved on and craved new experiences. But now he's back, and thoroughly happy with the improvements. They really are bringing back more people than they're losing.
Role models: Another round of painting advice. Here we go again. Must not fall asleep and skim over. Must make effort ....... to ....... judge ........ on ....... own merits. It looks like our new writer is set up for the rest of the year at least, so he's decided to plan ahead and go for the same decompressed doling out of information as Ray. Which is already better than last year's flailing around, but less useful than the 1999 ones where they were cramming in as many ideas as they could into the small space they had. And this actually goes into quite a lot of detail on painting techniques, and getting everything ready to work on your own minis without making an awful hash of them. Taken alone, it's pretty good. There is the inevitable rehash problem, but no escaping that really. And the photos are clearer than ever. With digital camera and desktop publishing software, you cut out several layers of inconvenience and analog degradation that used to be a real pain. But writing engagingly remains as big a challenge as ever.
The play's the thing: Speaking of engaging writing, Robin Laws does a little better here, in his first regular column than earlier on in the issue. Battle cries for your character? That's a vein of characterisation that's rich in comic potential, both intentional and unintentional. It's also one where it's all too easy to overthink things, come up with one that looks good on paper, but is a mouthful that doesn't come out clearly or leaves you open in an actual battle. It's hard to be threatening when the enemy asks you to repeat yourself three times before they get it. A good standard to see if it'll stand up is if you can imagine it being chanted by thousands of football hooligans. Most of the examples here are probably a little too verbose to stand the test of time, but they are interesting, and tap a wide variety of literary sources. And the formatting is very interesting, with bloody lines breaking things up in uneven patterns that make reading this a less linear process. This is another neat little bit of characterisation you can add to your game easily enough, but probably won't have thought of.
Dragon Issue 279: January 2001
part 7/7
Sage advice: How much does it cost to scribe 0 level spells (1/2 that of first level spells)
Do you have to select your target before or after you finish casting a spell (After. A lot can change in a round, and it's good to be adaptable.)
Do sorcerer's need material components and focuses (Yes. Just because it's instinctual, don't mean they don't need the tools. )
Can spontaneous spellcasters use quicken spell(They can, but to no benefit. Congratulations, you've just wasted a feat and four spell levels. )
Do you get to control who sleep puts to sleep. (Clever positioning of the spells area of effect. Best to use it before melee starts. )
If an AoE extends beyond the spells range, it gets truncated. That's weird. (We have our reasons for making that change. Not that most of you'll remember it.)
What does 1 target per level, no two of which can be more than x feet apart mean ( Geometry, my dear boy. Tales of topographic twattery. )
Do you provoke an attack of opportunity every round you cast a lengthy spell (no, just the round you start.)
If a wizard moves away and casts a spell, will the AoO disrupt the spell. (no. The AoO is for the movement, you aren't casting the spell yet. )
Can you ready an action to follow someone and still get an AoO (yes)
Can you ready an action with multiple conditions (That seems a bit pointless to Skip. )
What's the point of the healing domain if any good cleric can spontaneously cast spells from it (You misunderstand the rules. Fortunately, Skip is a prescient sage, and has an explanation all ready for you. )
Can Diviners prepare detect magic as a bonus spell (No. Counterintuitive rules fixes strike again.)
What does Nystul's undetectable aura actually do. (Blocks detect magic. That's it. Circumstantial evidence may still allow people to deduce magic is involved. )
Does shocking grasp dissipate if you miss (What is this bollocks. Not even 6 months in, and you're already recycling questions. Didn't you understand the general answer about holding the charge on touch spells. Skip is not amused.)
Can you two-weapon fight with chill touch and a weapon in the other hand (yes. It even counts as a light weapon. Pretty neat, huh?)
Fireball's range is way longer than lightning bolt's now. What gives? (We wanted to increase their differentiation, making them very different tactical choices)
Does fireball expand to fill the area in enclosed spaces now. (We decided to get rid of that quirk. It caused way too much grief for both players and DM's. )
If silence is an illusion now, can you disbelieve it (No. If it don't say disbelief in the save, then your ego will do you no good.)
Dungeoncraft: Ray reminds us that when adopting a new edition, it's important to suspend your preconceptions about how things ought to be done. This is even more important than when playing a whole new game entirely, as subtle changes can catch you out more easily than obvious ones, and you need to relearn your reflexes accordingly. A big one is that character generation now takes quite a bit longer, so devoting a whole session to it, allowing the DM to have oversight over what supplements and combos are included in their builds becomes a more sensible idea. Another one is that positioning is more important, thanks to attacks of opportunity, so minis, or at least a way to mark position do come in handy. On the other hand, characters are a good deal less fragile now, so you can subject them to onslaughts of adversaries that would have seemed excessive last edition. So while he may have been a latecomer to the new rules, his analytical skills are fully functional, and he's already aware of the main strengths and weaknesses of 3e. So follow his advice, and make sure you're doing everything by the book for the first few sessions, not applying stuff from 2e that isn't actually there anymore. Your gaming will be more versatile for it in the long run.
What's new demonstrates how not to live eternally when you can. The snail is nearly halfway across the page, by the way.
Can't say I was very keen on the themed stuff, which felt like they did it because they were obliged too after the dwarf one. Plenty of other interesting stuff going on though, as the first supplements come out, and people react accordingly. While they are putting more emphasis on tactical play, there's still plenty of roleplaying advice and system free material that's useful for anyone reading the magazine. The whole thing definitely feels like far less of a grind than the final 2e years. Now, will halflings and gnomes be forced to share a themed issue this edition? And will orcs and half orcs ever get their turn in the sun? I'm sure we'll find out in due time. But will it be next issue?
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 1/7
116 pages. The price goes up to $5.99. Knew it couldn't last forever. Inflation is an annoying fact of life in an economic system based around perpetual expansion, and even collapse won't stop people industriously rebuilding again, making the same mistakes. The theme, on the other hand is brand new. They're giving sorcerers an issue in the spotlight, showcasing the spontaneous magic that many people dreamed of being able to do, but couldn't using AD&D rules. So let's blast our way through this issue using excessive force, and exhaust our liberal supplies of spells. After all, they all come back easily enough tomorrow. It's not like it takes longer the more spells you have to memorise anymore. :p
Scan Quality: Ok, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Unsurprisingly, the editorial apologises for having to raise prices, and encourages you to subscribe now, before they raise the prices for that as well. They will try to put more cool bits and pieces in to make up for that, but I suspect many of those won't make it to the electronic format. In addition, the plan to add d20 material to the magazine didn't go as they say here, with that being merged with Dungeon rather than Dragon. (which means I won't get to review it) This is one of those reminders that they aren't free to publish what they choose, but bound up by a larger corporate structure that can mandate big changes if they please, and make the staff go along with them. Such is the price you pay to play in the big leagues. We'll go along with it, but not without a good few grumbles.
Scale Mail: Our first letter strongly praises Tracey Hickman for his recent roleplaying advice. Sacrifice your character for the greater glory of the group! He'll be back soon.
Second, we have one Justin Carmical writing in to praise the odd fonts they've used recently. Jew Wario?! Seems quite probable, since I know he's another TGWTG gamer, even if his show is more about computer games. Googling says he was indeed part of the Star Trek fanclub chapter of Tallahassee around that time. That IS a turnup for the books, and shows how small the internet can make the world seem, and how multifarious his geeky interests are.
Our next suggestion is more mundane. Put some landscape posters of the right scale to make a good minis battleground in the magazine. That's certainly a decent idea to put in the slush pile.
Another request is for full stats for Lidda, Mialee & co. That's one they'll definitely get round too at some point. Turning their cover logo into a full font, on the other hand, they may well not have the time to do.
Completely unsurprisingly, someone praises the dwarf issue, and asks for an elf one to follow it. If you'd checked the previews you'd already have known it was right around the corner. Pay attention! It's people like you who clog up Sage Advice with questions he's already answered.
Yet another person says they like the articles, but dislike the dungeonpunk visuals that have come with them. This looks to be one complaint that'll run and run and run.
The Realms continues to have an enthusiastic fanbase who want all the articles and books from the old edition updated to the new. Steady there. We could do that for years, and we'd never have a chance to add on new stuff. We'll stick to bringing back the good bits, thank you very much.
Our next request is for them to bring back the Bladesinger. We're onto your games, sonny jim. It'll be back, but don't expect it to be overpowered like last edition. :p How dumb do you think we are?
A rather more surprising request is for them to not put spoilers for modern modules in Nodwick. The old ones are OK, as everyone ought to have read them anyway, but we might want to actually play these ones. I find this very very amusing, but I know some people take spoilers seriously. And so the editors decide to indulge that request.
Finally, (and this letters column has felt pretty long) is a letter from someone who's been wargaming for decades, but only now tried out D&D with the new edition. Guess they have made it more accessible to get into than it was for quite a while. The evidence keeps mounting up.
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 2/7
PROfILES: Looks like the many complaints in the letters have been listened too, because this is back on it's own separate pages again. An improvement, methinks. Aaron Williams (not to be confused with Aaron Allston, who has also done awesome D&D work) is the artist responsible for Floyd, Nodwick, and lots of illustrations, particularly for Dragonmirth, which would have been a lot less colourful without his sense of humour. He's another workaholic, having finally hit it big with nodwick, he's milking it for all it's worth, producing stuff faster and faster (and the amount of attention to little details is dropping in response. The early Floyd stuff looks considerably better than his current output. :\ ) Ahh, the joys of commercialism. Still, as long as he's having fun as well, and people are enjoying something he's producing, it's a lot better than being a starving artist, or having a boring day job.
Up on a soapbox: The first results are in, and Gary looks at the first 4 elements on his list in alphabetical order. Here we see a fairly substantial gulf appear straight away, with building stuff and running businesses being very much niche concerns, while character development and combat are front and centre in most campaigns. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. For all that roleplaying allows us to do things we couldn't in reality, most people still stick to human scale, rather than playing out the complexities of entire organisations or nations. Plus they seem to be harder to design simple, effective rules for. And a good battle always draws in the punters. So far, so predictable. Let's see if economics and politics stick to that trend next month.
The mailbag: Woo. Statistics. Fairly interesting ones too. Despite the new edition just being out, there are fewer questions on it than there are requests for more support of their various settings. And a quite ridiculous proportion are press releases, presumably for other RPG's and various products that they quite possibly don't even cover. Companies have to deal with spam as well, and I pity the person who gets the job dealing with that, especially when they put something they shouldn't have in the bin and get shouted at later. Still, at least now we know the approximate odds of actually getting printed if you write in. (somewhere between 1-2% Persist and you can probably make it. It's always worth noting that much of the obstacle to achieving things is in your mind, and those around you who think the social order is bigger and more inflexible than it is.
Nodwick adapts to the developments of the new edition. And gets suitably spontaneous.
Previews: The Realms continues to release gamebooks despite technically being on a countdown. The Faerun monster compendium comes along, and sticks rather closer to the old ways of ecology and setting integration than the corebook. Well, Ed did pioneer these things. He'd want it that way.
Our other big deal is the new D&D miniatures line. The first 6 sets of heroes and monsters. Hello to another big moneyspinner that we'll see plenty of bitching about over the years. ZOMG they're making D&D into a boardgame.
And this month's novel is The Messenger, by Doug Niles. The Elves of Silvanesti continue to be bitchy pains in the ass who produce adventures by social ostracism. You're just making more trouble for yourself in the long run.
Countdown to the forgotten realms: 4 months to go, and they give this column 2 pages this time to make it a bit less insubstantial. This time, we find out that there's going to be a bit of power creep in the divine department, as they more than double your selection of domains, and introduce the divine champion prestige class, which is just plain better than a regular fighter in all ways, having the same BAB and feat progression, plus good reflex saves and a decent subset of paladin's abilities. It's available to a follower of any deity, and the requirements aren't onerous at all, so you'd be a mug not to pick up those extra powers. Or just not play a fighter in the first place. :p Yeah, that seems like the better course of action. They aren't wasting time to power up the weak options, are they.
Dork tower goes off on a tangent. And probably has more fun that way anyway. So it goes.
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 3/7
Your sorcerous life: The speed and enthusiasm with which sorcerers were accepted has a good deal to do with the fact that there was a literary niche just waiting to be filled there. They've only been around a few months, but they already have a clear idea of how to make a compelling character that's different from a wizard. And if you don't, here's Robin Laws to spell it out in a clear step by step fashion with random tables. It obviously skews heavily towards them being angsty outcasts, who can't trust anyone, especially not other sorcerers. As such, it's good for people who haven't played one before, playing in standard fantasy campaign, but will rapidly lose utility the further you go from that assumption. Still, as I've said before, everyone is starting 3e on an equal footing, so this is cool for now. But 12 years in the future, it may seem a touch dated. Once you've done the obvious stereotype, you'll probably want to try something different for subsequent characters, and skip the adolescent angst.
Polymorphology: Ah yes, shapechanging. If any power gets a rough ride over the revisions of 3.5 and 4e, it's this one. First they tried nickling and diming it's versatility away and presenting lots of more limited options, before realising that wasn't going to work, and just rewrote the whole magic system without all the versatile world affecting powers. Very much a case where they were put in a no win situation though, with one contingent constantly bitching about them being overpowered, while another wouldn't want to play in a game where you can't do such a basic and common literary concept as flexible shapeshifter. I'm very interested in seeing what 5e will do to bridge this particular rift in the D&D landscape. But anyway, this is one of Johnathan M Richards more playful articles. Because who would know more about the tricks you can pull by shapechanging into various creatures than the ecologist? Even mundane ones have some fairly decent tricks for you to take advantage of and surprise your DM with. And once you get to Polymorph any object and Shapechange, the world can literally be your oyster. In addition to the copious amounts of advice on how to exploit the existing spells to your advantage, there's also a new one called Swarm Form which lets you pull some tricks regular shapeshifting can't because you're limited to being a single creature, and also errata for polymorph other, which means they now keep their mind and skills when they didn't in previous editions. It's a good example of how at this point they're encouraging people to explore the system and find exploits for their characters. After all, there is a lot of fun to be had in simply exploring all the options, especially in a system as expansive as the d20 one.
Magic in the blood: Our second sorcerer specific article covers similar ground to Robin Laws' one, but skips the random bits, and sticks to advice. Where do your sorcerers get their power from? The answer will have a fair amount of influence on how you play your character, and possibly how you build them as well. This has sample spell, skill and feat selections for 5 of the most obvious ones. This illustrates that before 3.5 introduced the Warlock, the Sorcerer has to cover a wider spectrum of power sources, including pacts with supernatural forces as well as ancestry. In fact, that's an interesting matter in general. The introduction of more classes can retrospectively force previous ones into a narrower focus. This has definitely been the case with Fighters as well, who have seen themselves squeezed from covering any primary weapon user to heavy armor melee combatants with few powers for lighter weapons or ranged combat. I think this once again illustrates one of the big differences in design philosophy between 3.0 and 3.5, along with the Class Combo articles.
Better living through alchemy: Alchemy isn't specific to wizards and sorcerers, but it's certainly more common among those classes than others. So including an article on it in this issue makes sense. And for a low-mid level wizard who doesn't have that many spells to spare, having a few alchemical concoctions on hand will increase their versatility a fair chunk. This is an extension of the same kind of thinking that results in adventurers carrying 10 foot poles and vials of oil and messing up the DM's carefully laid plans by making clever use of seemingly minor items. And since it features 19 new low key but generally useful items, along with costs and alchemy DCs for making them yourself, it's one that has quite a bit of utility. If you have a few spare GP, drop them on some of these and you won't regret it. You might well get more bang for your buck than spending the same amount of money on potions and scrolls.
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 4/7
Mastering chance: They have a random dungeon generating system in the 3e DMG? I don't remember that at all. Goes to show that it's been quite a while since I looked at the 3.0 stuff. And looking at it, it isn't nearly as random as the old one from the strategic review and 1e DMG, with the power levels of encounters pretty tightly indexed to the character's levels. And of course, the more you reduce the randomness, the more the DM has to interpret and build upon the results before you're ready to play, which will increase the time it takes quite a bit. So really this is saying that even if you do use random generation methods, you should still customise the results afterwards. It's almost as if the designers aren't that keen on them and only included it for old times sake. If you already have plenty of ideas, this is kinda redundant.
Just the facts, mage: Our second Robin Laws article this month isn't really in theme (despite it's title) but is also fairly interesting. It covers the ways and reasons NPC's might be obstructive when PC's are trying to get info out of them. A fairly quirky topic, but once again, a helpful one. after all, even those who are good at social dynamics may not have sat down and though formally about how to categorise the ways people act in response to particular behaviours. (if anything, if it comes naturally to them, they're less likely too. So once again, this is an article that may seem utterly invaluable, or completely obvious and pointless, depending on where you fall on the social spectrum. Since I'm pretty crap at the whole being human thing, but would like to be better, I'm once again going to have to say this is relevant to my interests, and I approve of him writing this stuff. No-one's covered it in this kind of depth in the magazine before, and it is of use, plus it's good for any game. It's good that they're still finding new things to write about in a roleplaying context.
A little more familiar: Articles expanding on familiars were a fairly regular occurrence last edition. Why mess with a winning formula, especially when you can put all sorts of upgrades as feats now and not worry about it breaking the game. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure how much of a benefit making your familiar undead or a construct is, and if it's worth spending a feat slot. I think that like Toughness, it might be worth it at low level, but will then rapidly become pointless, since you'll soon hit the point where you could have done it manually in play with spells anyway. On the other hand, the ability to poof them away when not needed, (don't a lot of people do that anyway :p ) automatically share your buffs with them, and have multiple familiars do seem quite worth the expenditure if you're built right. The new spells are pretty handy too. Casting spells through your familiar. Sharing HP with them in a pinch. Teleporting them back to your side. And of course the more tricks and spells you devote to them, the more their effectiveness is multiplied out, in classic quadratic wizard fashion. An excellent example of how you should pick powers that'll remain useful at higher level, not just now, especially as they haven't instituted retraining yet.
Reel Heroes: Our longest promotional article yet for the D&D movie stats out all the major characters, and has an interview with Zoe McLellan, the wizard of the party. Unsurprisingly, the PC's are completely outmatched on paper. A bunch of 3rd level characters vs a 10th level fighter and a 15th level wizard? That isn't even on the xp award tables. Similarly, there's no way they could put a price on the rod of Savrille, so that's relegated to artifact status. Game balance? CR appropriate challenges? Does that make a good movie? Good question. You almost definitely could make a better movie than this using only CR appropriate challenges, and building the heroes up for the final climax. The interview is fairly informative, particularly about her earlier life, and the fact that she's not worried if this fails, because she's signed up for a development deal with WB studios. And since she has had fairly continuous TV roles since then, I guess that confidence was justified. It must be nice being part of the in crowd. Since this actually has game information, it's obviously more useful than the previous articles, which were purely promotion, but it still feels unjustly smug, especially since the film has been out for a while now. It might be time to cut their losses and move onto the next project.
Fiction: The opal of nah by J Gregory Keyes: Fool Wolf's story continues directly where last month left off, as he tries to figure out who or what is calling him, preferably without being trapped by their manipulations. And since nearly everyone from his previous stories who survived seems to be here, it's obvious that the stakes are pretty high. In fact, we're escalating all the way to world threatening monstrosity. They're not going to be able to continue the series in the same way after this is over. And indeed, it looks like there's another instalment next issue, and then that's it, so I seriously hope there'll be a decent payoff after two issues of ratcheting up the tension.
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 5/7
Vs Sorcerers: Ooh. This column is getting in on the issue's theme for a change. And is twice as long as usual. This is interesting. Since Sorcerers are new creations as well, they have to figure out the tactics from scratch. And in the process they highlight several ways 3e differs from 2e. The most important one is that you will be more likely to fail when rolling your weaker saves against an opponent of similar level as you advance, whereas before you were always more likely to succeed. This makes save or suck spells a more viable way of taking down enemies than hit point attrition at higher level. Of course, he who lives by the save or suck dies by the save or suck, and with tons of spells but only one good save, sorcerers are both the most able to dish out spells like this repeatedly, and one of the classes most vulnerable to them. Counterspelling is also much easier when the enemy has a limited spell selection that you can learn in advance with a bit of research. The other advice, of closing fast so they can't use AoE attacks to devastate the party, grappling, and using silence to disrupt their spellcasting is really just as applicable to any spellcaster, including ones from previous editions. Really, your big advantage will likely be that you're part of a party, and one person can devote their action to locking them down while the others dish out the serious damage. So this is a definite improvement on previous instalments of this series, while also highlighting system quirks that the current crop of writers thinks are good, and encourage character building exploits and tactical play, but the subsequent ones will dislike and try to stamp out in late 3.5 and 4e. It's quite worthy of note for that.
The adventures of Volo: A third instalment of Cormyran treasures and geneaology here it seems. They'd like to hang on to this stuff, but it keeps on disappearing, with the records and stories becoming decidedly sketchy as well. I guess it's just a smaller scale version of the same process that resulted in the destruction of all those magical empires. And without that kind of stuff, the realms wouldn't be able to support a fraction of the adventuring population it does. So here's some very fallible legendry indeed, involving magical harps who's precise powers have been lost to the mists of time. Once again, this feels like casual musings Ed couldn't find a place for in any of his books, flitting between several, semi-connected subjects. I wonder what his notebooks look like, and if deciphering them gives editors headaches. Trying to find the connections between various articles he's done over the years is certainly starting to give me headaches. Not nearly as enjoyable as most of his output.
Class acts: Another slightly awkward prestige class this month in the Eldrich Master. This seems to be designed for sorcerers and bards who want to know lots more lower level spells at the cost of slowed advancement in higher level ones. A wizard could theoretically take this class as well, but it'd be rather suboptimal. Still, this is a massive improvement on earlier magical prestige classes, with full caster level advancement, and 1/3 spell level advancement meaning they won't fall too far behind. With their various extra abilities factored in, they might be able to just about hold their own against a straight primary caster at upper-mid levels, though it'd be touch and go. However, this prestige class can really be made to shine at epic levels. As so many of it's powers scale regularly, and are stacked on top of your regular spellcasting abilities, it's perfect for a 20th level sorcerer frustrated at their limitations on spells known. You effectively get the equivalent of 2-3 epic feats per level by advancing in this, plus full caster level and better skill points. You might even be able to compete with epic level wizards. ;) Of course, Monte wouldn't have known this at the time, but hey, finding and exploiting these tricks is a big part of the fun of playing 3rd ed. So if you want to play one of these guys, have a little patience.
Invaders of the barrier peaks: Oh, S3, you have become infamous over the years. Not quite as much as the GDQ series or tomb of horrors, but if you want the playful, genre bending side of old school D&D, this is one you go to again and again. And it looks like James Jacobs is continuing his policy of tying his new monsters into established places, while also making them alien and scary. Well, since these ones are literally from another world, he has pretty free rein to make them as bizarre as he likes. And as his imagination has proven pretty fertile before, I'm quite keen to see what he does with this theme.
Bonetrees destroy and consume your bones while leaving the surrounding tissues unharmed, and then use the bone to create armor and quills to deal with any still mobile companions to their victims. That's a pretty inventive bit of body horror. If D&D was a more realistic system then the harm would be rather more permanently crippling than a bit of Con damage. I can definitely see an awesomely gruesome movie being made out of these.
Ragewings are scavengers that drive other creatures into frenzies, and then feed on the losing side, whichever that may be. This means they're one you might not be fighting directly, but will nevertheless want to take out. Still, since they don't have any stealth skills and look pretty bizarre, it shouldn't be too hard to spot them flitting around the edges of the battle.
Razortails look like something from the deep sea crossed with a displacer beast, and attack with their multiple barbed tails. They can also shoot beams of radiation, which certainly doesn't sound pretty. Just be thankful it still counts as heat damage for purpose of immunities.
Treeleg Stranglers look like mangrove trees, then drop on your head and eat you when you pass underneath. If that's not enough, they release bursts of radiation to weaken everyone else around. They make good use of environmental features, and take a lot of hacking to finish off for good. Nothing good lives in swamps, except maybe flumphs, and they don't have much hope in a fight against any of these guys. They more than fill my sadism count for this issue.
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 6/7
Dragonmirth makes both ancient history and brand new developments look silly. Nodwick gets elemental. Elemental evil! :jazz hands: Just can't get the budget for good jokes these days.
Forum: Julie Ratiff jumps on the statements about gender pronouns in the new edition. The company has become much more progressive in the past 10 years, and this is to be lauded. I guess we haven't seen any sexism wars since they turned the forum into a vehicle for free edition change advice. It's almost refreshing to see this old canard back again.
Anonymous writes in, as it sometimes does, to directly contradict the last letter complaining about WotC's politically correct agenda. Looks like these'll be flaring up again now the edition change is mostly over.
Allen Cohn is furious at the lack of compatibility with the old edition. It's as if microsoft released a new version of windows that all the old programs were incompatible with. Um, that is still standard with consoles, and I don't see many people complaining about upgrading those.
Juan Calle reminds us that most people have substantial neutral tendencies. Whether good or evil, they can have some contradictory traits and get on with people very different than them. Look to both reality and literature for examples.
PC Portraits: Since Sorcerers don't have to spend nearly as much time studying as wizards do, they have more time to work on their fashion accessories. And this lot truly are dungeonpunked up TO THE MAX!!!! The sheer amount of piercings, tattoos, and high maintenance hairstyles is rather amusing, and drives home again that these are not your father's wizards. They might have long beards and wear big hats, but even if they do, they'll do so with more style and verve than most wizards can manage. They're also freer to be lazy, since they don't have to work as hard for their power, as the fat elf demonstrates. This is quite amusing, even if I can't see myself creating a character that looks like these portraits. Ah, dungeonpunk. You did make yourself easy to laugh at.
Role models: Our painting advice this month is pretty familiar. Advice on how to handle your shading better, so it looks like a real thing scaled down? Yeah. we've done that before a few times. The trick of course, is layering and planing ahead. Go for the most significant colour first, then wait for it to dry before moving on to the finer details. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it. The tricky part comes in getting into those little nooks and crannies. In cases like that you may want to add the shading first and layer the colours on top of that, doing the easy bits afterwards. If those two bits of advice seem contradictory, then you have the right idea. You'll have to use your brain to figure out which takes priority in a given situation. Once again I am reminded how tiresome advice aimed at newbies can seem to everyone else.
The play's the thing: Robin does some more amusing and very specific advice, as he talks about naming your weapon. And completely misses the idea of giving it a woman's name. (what? It seems common for ships and guitars.) He does favour short, snappy, easy to remember ones though, which makes sense (especially if you're going to use them in battle cries :p) He also favors a certain aggressiveness and descriptiveness in his naming, which may not suit warriors with a pretension towards combat as an art form like swashbucklers and samurai. This very straight presentation is punctured by a rather amusing John Kovalic illustration though, which is worth the price of entry. So while this is probably the weakest of his articles this month, it's not actively terrible, just doesn't catch as many tricks as the other ones. Funny that it would be the one in his regular column then. What's with that?
Dragon Issue 280: February 2001
part 7/7
Sage advice: How does a tower shield work (It's a movable wall. It provides the same protection and drawbacks as having an actual bit of wall in front of you. This means it isn't that great in melee unless you make a phalanax and then use polearms to attack over the shield wall. And you'll need quite a few fighters to make squad level tactics like that viable. )
Does a tower shield protect you against area effect magic (Sometimes. Depends on size and direction. )
Do you get shield bonuses when flat-footed (yes)
How does the shield spell work (Like an infinite barrier that doesn't impede you. Look. Pretty pichures.)
So does the shield spell make you immune to attacks of opportunity (From anyone on the right side, yes. Watch out for enemy rogues.)
Does shield add to armour bonuses and so forth. (Yes, as per the usual typed stacking rules. A definite step up from the previous editions. )
Can you cast two shield spells simultaneously to block in both directions (no)
Can a hasted character cast two spells in a round (For the moment. Special offer, good until the next rules revision. Take advantage of it while it lasts.)
Can sorcerers learn spells from other spell lists (No. Development errata. Ignore that statement.)
Can you fight defensively while casting as spell (Is that an attack? Skip thinks not.)
If I cast a ray into melee, do I suffer the attack penalty (Oh yes. Once again, use the artillery before you close. )
Does a quickened spell still require all it's components (unless you use yet more metamagic feats. You'll have to be ridiculously high level to do that )
Do you have to make a roll for opposite spells to negate each other (no. Special exception. Those are the rewards of being prepared specifically.)
Can you share spell-like abilities with your familiar (No. T'aint part of your class features.)
How do you compare skills and decide which is better (Higher number good. Higher number always good.)
Do Con bonuses, toughness feats, etc add to your familiars hit points (As partially as anything else.)
Do you only get one extra attack per round when hasted (Yes. In many ways, it is a step down from previous editions. Still, at least you ain't losing a year from your life every time you use it. )
Half orcs charisma penalty makes them crap at intimidating. This ain't right. (Oh, just substitute strength. It works well enough for those froofy WoDites.)
Can you cast light on someones eyes (not anymore. Oh, aren't we mean.)
When do you use sense motive ( Use your judgement. We can't completely abstract social skills inside the game, however much we'd like to.)
How hard is it to hit a figment. How likely are they to realize something's up. (Pretty easy. Depends if it reacts properly or not. )
Do monks base and unarmed bonuses stack (Didn't Skip answer this just a couple of months ago. Skip hopes this isn't going to become the new multi vs dual classing or something. Skip'd better waste this sucka just to make sure word gets around, and people don't come to skip with this question again. )
Do monks have to use their unarmed bonus when making an unarmed attack (No. As with subdual, they can be deliberately incompetent if they like. )
Dungeoncraft: Ray decides that since it's a new edition, he's going to leave behind the campaign world he was working on before, and start a new one. And where that was a pretty straight fantasy world, this one is going to be very dungeonpunk, focussing on the fall of the dinosaurs and rise of humanity, in a world where the two uneasily coexist. Yup, sounds pretty punk anyway, although we have yet to find out where the dungeons come in. This definitely has my enthusiasm, as he's already talking about such radical ideas as leaving some of the classes out, and altering others to fit the environment. Thank god we have spontaneous spellcasters allowing us to leave out the wizards without messing up the whole D&D party dynamic now. This also shows why having two or three campaign worlds active at once is better for D&D than only one. If you only have one, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a generic one (and at this point, I don't think anyone's going to unseat the forgotten realms. ) Having several allows you to intentionally contrast them with one another and win a larger overall fanbase by keeping people's natural tendency to factionalise within a larger tent where they're still supporting D&D whichever world they favour. So I'm looking forward to seeing just how unusual he makes this new world.
What's new? Dixie gets cosmic power for the price of some ruined footwear. Now that's a bargain that must be too good to be true.
Robin Laws pretty much owns this issue, contributing two strong articles and an ok one. it's been a while since I could say an individual author dominated proceedings like this, so that's worth noting. He's not as prolific as Ed yet, but he is having quite an effect on their overall output. James Jacobs is also proving himself as worth watching in the future. And the fact that they're tackling a mostly new topic makes even the more mediocre articles a little more worthwhile. So not a bad issue at all, overall.
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 1/7
116 pages. Here comes the psionic issue. It's popularity may not have been the greatest ever, but it did have more than enough fans that it was near the top of things they wanted to revive for 3e. Course, they made some pretty substantial changes in response to the many people saying psionics was unbalanced before, in the process rendering them much closer to ordinary spellcasters. As with the sorcerer special, that makes it very unlikely the contents of this issue will be rehashed, because even if they do return to topics, they'll have to implement them in very different ways. Once again I can go into this issue feeling fairly positive about the outcome. Don't let me down.
Scan Quality: Excelent, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Unsurprisingly, the editorial tries to sell you on the new psionics system by talking down the old one. It was unbalanced and didn't interface well with the rest of the system. Which is entirely true. But it was also far more distinct from magic than the new one, able to do things magic couldn't while not doing quite a few things spells handled easily. And if you don't make new classes different from the current ones, there's little incentive to buy the books they're in. Balancing acts are hard work, and sometimes a game is more fun if you don't bother with them at all. I am left suspicious again. This sales pitch is all too familiar, and I can see the strings behind it.
Scale Mail: Our first two letters see Monte Cook and Tracey Hickman pitted directly against one-another, trying to sell the case for their playstyles to the general public. They're actually in agreement about far more things than they are conflicting, but that doesn't make a good headline, does it. And in the process it definitely makes for a good story. Who will you side with? The current new hotshot, or the one who created Dragonlance and Ravenloft. Both have fairly substantial fanbases, so this could get ugly.
We have another request to convert some more stuff from the old edition, particularly old races and the siege engine rules. Yeah, we could do with some decent mass combat and domain rules for 3e, couldn't we. No arguing there.
Similarly, some generic bits of setting, like taverns, castles, shop etc would be quite handy. They may well have something in the pipeline. Got to keep variety up in the content they give us.
And finally, we have a rather interesting elaboration on the rudiments of the dwarven language they gave us. With a sufficient vocabulary, you can construct compound words that fill all your other descriptive needs, except perhaps brevity.
PROfILES: James Wyatt is a pastor turned D&D writer. Another reminder that for all the accusations of satanicness, both the founders of D&D were Christians, and plenty of it's other important writers have been over the years as well. He had a tricky job getting into the company, as he tried to join up just as TSR went tits up, but persevered, played the freelancing field until he'd built up enough respect to get in. And now he has a whole bunch of projects in the works, including the second splatbook, the FR monster book, and something top secret (although not actually Top Secret) that he can't talk about yet. He's one of those people who delights in breaking stereotypes, and is very pleased by 3e's massive increases in flexibility. And he's another person who's best work is still to come. We'll be seeing him around these parts plenty more these next few years.
Up on a soapbox: Last month, we had a fairly clear delineation between the common and rare elements in people's games. This selection muddies the issue a bit. Exploration and Intrigue both get fairly high marks, while Economics gets a low one, but Politics is somewhere in the middle. Seems to me that is't pretty difficult to do politics without including elements of intrigue and economics as well. After all, if there's nothing to gain or lose, then you're just engaging in social sniping for the hell of it, which even vampires have reservations about. Once again, it shows that going out and seeking adventures in odd locations is still the core play experience, despite all the diversification that's taken place. An adventurer might settle down temporarily, but as long as there's life in the old dog, part of them'll still itch to leave it behind see what's over the next horizon. Of course, if the country you're in tries to restrict travel, that makes adventuring inherently political. But how many DM's put their players through highly realistic problems like that? So once again, Gary's ruminations have been the spur for a fairly interesting chain of thought. It's good to have things to debate about.
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 2/7
Previews: Another big release this month. The Psionics handbook shows that once again, they still aren't quite up on the quirks of the new system, with the most MAD suffering classes evar. Still, they've managed to put in a fairly balanced point based magic system, so you have that option. Roll on the revised edition.
Diablo has been converted now. So here's the tie in adventure, To Hell and Back. They try and sell this as an epic adventure, but I suspect executive meddling was involved in it's creation. Anyone know what this license was like?
And there's the usual pair of FR & DL novels. The Summoning by Troy Denning, and Downfall by Jean Rabe. An epic tale of ancient wizards trying to take over the Realms and another step in the redemption of Dhamon. Just how many do they have now?
Countdown to the forgotten realms: 3 months to go. This month's teaser basically just recaps the secret societies of the Realms. Most of them are familiar, and I suspect the others would be too if I'd read all the supplements and novels. You can bet most of them will have custom prestige classes, feats, magical items, and other cool stuff to make you want to join. But what they might be is not revealed here, as this is another single pager. So not much else to say here. Once again, it does the job.
Piffany is still intentionally missing the point in Nodwick. Dork tower still don't want to face reality either, even when it looks pretty pleasant.
Mind lords of Talaron: Unsurprisingly, our first psionic article is a fairly big one by one of their official writers. Even more interestingly, it's one that'll be converted to 3.5 and appear in the Complete Psionic splatbook later on. The 6 noble houses of a lost world, each naturally talented at a particular psionic discipline, now living secretly amongst normal people and trying to keep mind flayers from ruining this one. Interestingly, the codified mechanical distinction isn't introduced here, making the difference between the houses and regular people purely in the class and feats they select. However, they do have more room to go into their backstory and adventure hooks for them here, which is quite interesting to see, and means the two appearances are complementary to one-another. The result is particularly interesting in hindsight, showing that they will return to ideas and improve on them over the course of 3e. And as there's plenty of adventure hooks here, this definitely qualifies as both a notable and useful article. Good show. :claps:
Calm amid the storm: Even more interestingly, Bruce Cordell follows up with an article containing two githzerai focussed prestige classes, one of which will get updated for 3.5, while the other won't. Very curious indeed. Zerth Cenobites have the same basic concept, learning to see into the near future to boost their monkly abilities. However, the implementation of the two versions is very different, with both their prerequisites and power selections substantially altered. And taking a good look at the two, it once again looks like the 3.5 version is somewhat better mechanically, having easier to use powers, plus a minor psionic progression on top of that. The Arcanopath Monk is a prestige class intended to kick the ass of spellcasters, and is also interesting, because at the 10th level, it has the power to permanently erase spells from the minds of people hit by them, which is the kind of thing they'd move away from even further in 3.5. As with any case where they try and make nonspellcasters good at taking down spellcasters, they may succeed at their job, but they'll still be far less powerful overall and certainly less flexible, which leaves them lacking if their target has a chance to prepare. So this issue is definitely turning out to be a good demonstration of how much they have to learn about fine-tuning the d20 system. Fitting really, given the book they're drawing upon.
The splintered mind: Greyhawk isn't particularly well known for it's psionics. But neither does it exclude them entirely like Krynn. And since it's the core world for this edition, they have to be inclusive of all the stuff in the generic books. So where would a psionic organisation fit in? Well, the scarlet brotherhood has potential, filled with monks as it is, but as an evil organisation, this is a problem for players. A splinter organisation dedicated to overthrowing them, so you get the angsty rebel cache to draw players in? Well, it's a pretty well proven cliche by now, so why not. So here's one of those articles that mixes setting stuff and multiple types of new crunch fairly seamlessly. Three new exotic weapons. A prestige class. Six new psionic powers, and three sample multiclass progressions for building NPC's. The weapons have fairly typical exotic weapon bonuses, 2 double bladed two weapon fighting ones, and one that's exceedingly good at disarming. The prestige class is another monk/psionic hybrid, skewing a bit more towards the psionic side, and able to share minds with other teammates for mutual benefit. (which is one thing 2e psionics did better than 3e. ) The new powers are all Telepathy or Clairsentience ones, and also feel less like reflavored spells than a lot of the powers from the new Psionics handbook. So this isn't the most high-powered of articles, but is pretty pleasing flavourwise.
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 3/7
By any other name: A bumper pack of monster races get their naming conventions explored this month. Derro, Duergar, Svirfneblin, Kuo-Toa, and particularly bizarrely, illithds as well. Since these guys are pretty different, despite living in similar conditions, their name structures are quite different as well. This particularly applies to illithids, where people are trying to vocally approximate the horrible combination of mental transmissions and writhing tentacles that is their communication. There's less to draw upon for these races, but it still seems like the author has done their research, keeping the names produced consistent with ones from previous modules and sourcebooks. Having exhausted the core races, these are rather more interesting, and I wonder if they'll consider it worth their while to do any more. I'd like to think so, but you never can tell.
101 Wondrous whereabouts: Our system-free article this month raids the mythology books to remind you to make your adventure locations cool, memorable and epic. Dungeons where all the rooms look the same and treasure is primarily measured by it's GP value are so 80's. Far better to have one big reward at the end that'll be a real game-changer like a wish or immortality. Some of these have been slightly altered to make them more gamable, or simply genericised, but most are presented straight. This does mean they might not quite fit into the D&D planar cosmology, but hey, that's not too hard for a DM to deal with, especially if you change the names for your own campaign. And really, you should be using this for inspiration rather than wholesale thievery. A lot of the time, the difference between being considered original or a copyist is how good you are at hiding your sources. As with most of the 101 articles, this is pretty handy.
Logjam busters: Robin Laws continues to deliver multiple articles of play advice this month, showing you how to get stalled sessions going again by psychoanalysing the players and DM. You've got to figure out what everybody wants, and how much they're prepared to compromise on their personal desires for the good of the group.( And if you can't come to an agreement, who needs to be kicked out to get the group into some form of harmony. :p )This will of course be very contentious for people who distrust psychiatry and being analysed. (But would you want to game with scientologists anyway? ) But does seem more likely to productively resolve a troublesome session than the Tracey Hickman method, in any case. This is a good example of how you can steal ideas from something seemingly unrelated to gaming, and apply it to good effect, and also his general love of taking the responsibility of power from the DM alone, instead sharing narrative control with the players. Just don't become a total pushover who gives them exactly what they want without working for it, or the game won't last that long anyway.
Fiction: The hounds of ash by J Gregory Keyes. Well, that's Fool Wolf's story over. He's saved the world, discovered what's really going on with that imprisoned goddess of his, accepted that he'll need to put up with her for the rest of his life, and got himself a similarly immortal and untrustworthy (but also smokin' hot) girlfriend. There's room left for further adventures here, but I guess after this climax, writing more didn't seem worth it, so it's as good a place as any to draw the curtain. He didn't manage quite as many adventures as Niall, but he did manage to get laid as often, and solved more problems using his own brains, plus the enemies he faced were smarter and less caricatured as well, so I'm going to have to give the edge to Mr Keyes for better quality writing. This is one bit of continuity in the magazine that I'm definitely going to miss.
Dragonmirth is in theme as ever, ie, just barely.
VS Psions & Psychic warriors: This is a bit of a tricky one, really, as psionic characters are almost as versatile as wizards in some ways, and considerably more in others. Grappling them or stealing their stuff will be pretty much a waste of time, for example. To prepare decent countermeasures for psionic characters, you need to know their specific powerset, since they generally have a smaller selection than spellcasters. This will also tell you what their strong ability scores are likely to be, and a decent amount about their personality. The only bit of advice that remains universally applicable is that you should always buff your will score if possible, since so many of their powers target it. Fortunately, there are quite a few spells and items that do just that. If they've read your mind, then any clever tactics you've come up with will be mostly useless anyway. Basically, this is the problem when facing anything with lots of discretionary powers to select. General advice doesn't do much. Better get your divination spells out before the adventure then, and hope they don't have anything to block those.
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Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 4/7
The adventures of Volo: Our Cormyran treasure tales finish off with a ton of additional people to add to our genealogies. And the mysterious Hullack Hawk, which sounds deeply risible, but was the cause of some nasty conflict between Cormyr and Sembia in the past. I don't think he's given his gains back to the poor, but this does have some shades of robin hood. Elminster seems to have completely lost interest, just letting Volo ramble on, mixing exposition and story in a not hugely coherent fashion. This fails to sustain my interest as well. My brain just can't seem to take the information in and assemble it into a proper structure. I do believe I need a break.
Rogues Gallery: A conversion of a Troy Denning Forgotten Realms novel? That's nothing new here. What is different, however, is the illustration style. They've returned to full colour, and adopted a soft-focus portrait style that makes them look like IC sittings of the characters rather than purely photorealistic action shots. It's interesting as a change of pace, and quite aesthetically pleasing as well. I can go with that.
Galaeron Nihmedu is an elf with a beard. And no pointy ears. Wait, what? So did the artist actually get commissioned to do this, or did they just take some stock paintings. You lose several marks again for this cock-up. He's another instance of sorcerers cropping up everywhere, fighting with the wizards they're trying to get formal training from because neither side understands the other. Suddenly we find out that it's been happening for years under the radar, just because the rules have changed in game now. I do so hate retcons.
Melegaunt Tanthul is a 20th level diviner who does actually look fairly close to his description. He's one of those mysterious, seemingly immortal wizards who just showed up one day from nowhere, and has spent ages laying inscrutable plans in motion. Not the kind of person you want to get involved with, for you never know when you'll be sacrificed for the greater good.
Takari Moonsnow is an elf who does have proper pointy ears. But they do get the eye colour wrong, it has a definite purple tinge when the description says it's merely brown. She's another one who takes the long view on things, although she can seem lighthearted. But then, elves take their extended lifespans for granted. What's a few years partying when you have centuries to do serious stuff later?
Vala Thorsdotter once again sees them completely fail to match colours with the description. This artist was totally not paying attention to the brief, despite obviously being talented. Editorial fail. So what seems promising initially winds up pissing me off by not paying attention to the bigger picture. So much for this column.
Class acts: The psi-hunter is Monte's offering this month. I think you can guess what they do. They're one of those classes you'll have to do a bit of inconvenient dipping to qualify for, as they require you to have some spellcasting ability to get in, but then give you an independent spell list that means a primary caster will rapidly become very weak by branching into this. On the other hand, for a fighter, that single level dip into wizard will pay for itself well, as they have full BAB, decent spellcasting, with a spell list that seems well suited to buffing a primary fighter and countering enemy screwage, plus a full suite of special powers against psionic opponents. They're not even that bad against enemies outside their speciality either, since their spells will still be useful, and they'll still have full primary fighting capability. There is a minor write-up error, where they confuse spells known with spells/day, and the artwork frankly sucks, especially in close-up. But overall, this is a pretty useful and well designed prestige class, with benefits commensurate with it's cost.
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another return to the Realms, and a topic they've covered before. Magical Masks. (see issue 117) Man, that cartoon has aged badly. But there's probably still some cool powersets for you to invent. And since these all also have both powers and curses, this definitely looks like their sadistic imaginations have been running actively.
Ynaerv's Mask is a skull-faced device that grants extensive necromantic powers, but has a tendency to transform you into a Curst. Ahh, yes, Ed's very first contribution ever. Good to see they got a quick updating to the new edition. Course, since they're near unkillable, this may not be such a drawback either.
Dhonas's Shroud boosts your illusionary skills, but gives you nightmares. Since it also boosts your saves against them, this will leave you wearing it all the time. The perfect way to hook someone, really.
The Mask of Aberration gives a whole bunch of alteration spells, but has the danger of turning you into a gibbering mouther. Are all of these going to be focussed around a school of magic? Well, there are worse secondary themes to deploy.
Shade's Veil breaks the pattern by focussing on shadow magic. It's curse, of course, eventually transforms you into a shadow yourself, forever semi-real. Again, you don't want to keep taking it off and putting it on. Just use an illusion if you want to interact normally with people.
The Mask of Shum is divination based, and gradually drives you mad with visions. What strange and disturbing things will you see?
The Facade makes you look like a kyton, as it's composed of a ton of chains you wrap round your face. Oddly enough, people will like you anyway, as it focusses on enchantment magic. It's curse gives you low self-esteem, ironically, which seems another good one to encourage dependency on the mask in the future.
The Master's Face is conjuration based, and eventually sabotages itself by making anything you summon hate you. Wait, don't they do that anyway :p Oh well, still a pretty good collection overall, with neat powers and histories. Like the abyssal armours, they make for a good team of named enemies.
The bestiary: More underdark monsters? Blasted subterranean radiation. Soon as you've finished cataloging them all, the ones you put in a zoo have already mutated or crossbred with something else. What are we to do? Start all over again?
Jawg are decidedly strange looking things with a humanoid head, tyrannosaur's body, and a second set of arms and head on their tail. They hunt Dragons and have quite substantial spellcasting abilities. This means they're a good example of thing that can be friend or foe, even though they might seem like just another monster to kill at first.
Genocid are another gross invention full of symbiotes. With snakes in their cheeks and slug like larvae in their stomachs, they shall make revolting wheezes wherever they go. Man, where were the guys writing this stuff last year? We could have done with some more genuinely monstrous monsters.
Verx Swarms live in stalagmites, then pour out and burrow through you instead, agonisingly noming you up while you're still alive. Cure disease is the way to go to deal with them.
Minwhelgo are another of the relatively rare good guys down there, singlehandedly trying to make the underdark a better place. Good luck, you'll need it.
Deeplings are another thing occupying the low level goblinoid niche, albeit with a few nice little quirks and magical tricks. Still, on the whole, they aren't that interesting to me.
Nodwick ends up living with zuggtmoy. This may actually be an improvement on his usual company.
Role models: We're gradually building up to some more expert advice here, as I'd hoped would happen. Some fairly detailed information on how changing the amount of water you mix with your inks alters the painting process, and the ways you can use that to your advantage, with both drybrushing and washing having their uses. As information don't remember reading about before, this is fairly interesting, and a good example of how you turn a problem into an opportunity. An amateur will make a mess by mixing too much or not enough water with their paint. A pro will use all sorts of ratios at different points with equal proficiency. All you have to do is get a good amount of experimentation time in to make the process intuitive.
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 6/7
The play's the thing: Robin Laws' second article this month is another where he reexamines a seemingly tiny part of your character background and shows it can actually be a big deal. Ancestry is a particularly big deal if you're a noble, or from a race that particularly values that kind of knowledge. But to be honest, you can't always control who your ancestors are. Interestingly, I can think of at least three games which allow you to determine your ancestry randomly, (AD&D's Oriental Adventures, Pendragon, Exalted's Dragon-blooded) with solid mechanical effects that result from this, showing it's not a new idea at all. This being modern times, Robin would rather it be placed in the hands of the players and DM, determined by OOC negotiation rather than dice rolls. This doesn't mean that the character has to be happy about what their family got up to in the past, of course, but someone ought to be actively choosing. So I guess this shows that new and old school play do tackle many of the same issues, they just solve them in different ways. And in this case, new might or might not be better than old, but is almost definitely slower and less realistic. This is one case where the insanity produced by a good random table will probably be more interesting than what a player will come up with on their own.
Sage advice: Do humans have to ignore the highest level class for multiclassing (yes. You dabble in a few things, not have two good classes plus a dip. )
Is a wishes inherent bonus added to the ability or the rolls. (The ability. Wishes are not that great at changing who you are.)
Do inherent bonuses stack (No. So much for that enhancement.)
How long does it take to make a scroll under 1,000 gp (Still a day. You can't mass produce magic items.)
How does a small character use a bastard sword (Same as anyone else. It's a bit weird. )
Can you save up skill points and feats if you can't think of anything to spend them on straight away. (If your DM likes the idea. You are, after all, just making yourself suboptimal for a while. )
How does expertise interact with two-weapon fighting (subtract from all attacks. No exceptions)
How hard is it to escape from rope bonds (Ooops. That contradiction has been fixed in the new printing. Don't say we don't do anything for you. )
Does spring attack really let you get at things with reach attacks without AoO's (only if they don't have friends. )
If you add a prestige class, do you suffer XP penalties for not keeping them balanced (No. Prestige classes are just plain cool. They worry nothing about this limitation.)
How do barbarians learn how to read, and how much does it cost (2 skill points, or a single level in another class. Way easier than last edition. )
Are cleric domain powers based on character level or class level (Character level. To do otherwise would be against general design principles.)
Can clerics turn outsiders (Not yet. Maybe some time.)
Do domain powers that turn count towards your general quota (No. Wouldn't be much of an extra if they did)
Can you apply the Sun benefit to other domain granted powers (No.)
Do undead's bodies stay when they're destroyed by turning (No. They go poof like buffyverse vampires. Very neat. )
Does extra turning add to domain granted powers (No.)
How much damage does an unarmed coup de grace do. (Probably not enough to kill someone)
Do you ever die from subdual damage. (Yes. It rolls over. Another thing stolen from WoD. )
What happens if you fight underwater. (You suck. It's a great way to take confident characters down a few pegs. )
Can my lawful good cleric cast doom (it is neither chaotic nor evil, so yes.)
Are you hurt by your own fireball (We wouldn't have invented sunfire if it didn't.)
How much can delayed blast fireball do (20d6)
Is color spray right? (No. More stuff for the next printing. )
Do stunned characters always drop what they're holding. (Yes. Another move action wasted when you recover to get battle ready again.)
Dragon Issue 281: March 2001
part 7/7
Forum: Shawn Lewis is very pleased at 3e, especially the fact that PC's and monsters now work under the same rules. Even if you stick with the old rules, there are still plenty of cool ideas to be taken from the new books.
Cob Constanz gives XP to the players for contributing to the background of the world. It keeps them invested and coming back, especially when they see how their ideas were incorporated into the larger tapestry of history
Jean-Philipe Suter has re-instituted sexist house rules in his games. i look forward for the flurry of condemnations this should provoke.
Jason Tondro thinks while feats are a cool idea, they still need some adjustment. Most irksome is than fact that you can qualify for them earlier than you can actually take them, since you only get 1 slot per 3 levels. Ever heard the saying "good things come to those who wait." You still can't expect everything to go your way.
Mike Briggs isn't pleased about the psionics previews. It looks like nothing but a spell point based magic system. Not going to argue with you there, especially with psionics/magic transparency now the standard.
Christopher Rheinherren is slightly more positive about the return of psionics, but it still looks like he's going to be disappointed. They're moving forward, not going back to 1e.
Michael Brown reminds WotC to find out how much real weapons actually weigh. God, is that still an issue. They complained enough about it last time that you'd think they'd have caught it.
John Brown loves the new rules, but thinks the presentation of them could do with a bit of cleaning up. As it is, people are still going to argue about what the rules actually mean, and wind up missing out important detail. You'd have to simplify a lot for that to be the case though.
Christian Walker points out how important high charisma is to getting a decent job. It counts more than skill, really. Oh so true. :sigh:
Jeremy A. Michelle talks about guns throughout the ages, and how they could be reintroduced to the magazine. It would take a bit of work, especially since the later ones are batter, so balance is a real issue.
PC Portraits: Psionicists get a good dungeonpunking this edition along with everyone else. They don't have as many tattoos as they use too, instead having a whole load of straps, buckles and fetishwear to make them stand out from the crowd. I think this time the older collection from issue 255 wins the day, having cleaner, less stylised artwork that's easier to apply to a broader range of character concepts. After all, as we've said before, the big difference between psionicists and wizards is that they don't need to rely on books, material components and other external aids to be awesome. Why give up that advantage just for the sake of fashion?
Dungeoncraft: Ray looks over the standard races to see how they're going to fit into his new world, and decides to exclude the gnomes and halflings. We've got no time for whimsy and mechanical inventiveness in a primitive world where it's a struggle to survive! This is serious business! Although it has to be said, Athas managed to find a decent place for halflings that wasn't comic relief at all, but I guess he doesn't want to make a carbon copy of that either in the process of avoiding generic fantasy. He doesn't pick any monster or new ones to replace them though, (maybe later) Really, this is about deciding how much you want to stick too or subvert the standard fantasy cliches. Change something too much, and you might as well not bother with the name in the first place. Not enough, and you'll be formulaic. Neither are inherently bad, and variety in the type of campaigns you run is good. Another little thing that's worth codifying, I guess.
Dixie discovers that there are always CR suitable challenges, no matter how much cosmic power you have in What's new.
Well, this wasn't a bad issue, but it did take a loooong time to do, party because of the amount of reference checking I had to do, and partly because my brain kept sliding off the last few articles, making them a real struggle to finish. Overall, it was interesting and informative, but did have more than it's fair share of mechanical issues. The core 3e rules may have been heavily playtested, but now we're getting into supplements that didn't receive that degree of attention. So i guess it's up to the playerbase to provide lots of feedback. Let's keep going, and see what they have to say about the 3.0 version when the 3.5 one rolls around.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 1/7
116 pages. Phil Foglio gets his first cover pic in ages. And quite a doozy it is too, being funny, detailed, and having a fair bit of cheesecake too. This is promising. It's been a few years since we had a properly zany april fools issue. Lets hope the contents live up to the packaging.
Scan Quality: Good, some white at page edges.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Our editorial this month tells another truly abominable actual play story where the DM used terrible jokes as integral parts of the plot, to the exasperation of the players. It's a hard life living in a world you can't take seriously, and can see the lack of verisimilitude round the edge of every wall. Still, some people love it, and after a good 5 years, they're going to really indulge them again. Good to see them catering to that segment of their audience, when they've cut out support for quite a few others over the past few years.
AEG give us a free taster of their new card game, Warlord.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who's spotted that they're already putting power creep in their supplements. Is it though, is it? Is +1 to all saves really worth more than +2 to a particular one? Magic 8-ball says probably. A bit of actual play should test that fairly easily.
Second, we have an amusing request to bring back Bards on the Run. That one is very easy to satisfy indeed. Prepare your ears.
The Forgotten Realms timeline gets picked at again. The writers must pay close attention, for the slightest continuity slip in thousands of pages will draw vocal complaints. It's nice to have such a dedicated fanbase, but it can also get a bit trying as well.
We get a letter of general praise from someone who's afraid they might be a little beaten down by the artwork haters. Not at all. Remember a few years ago when they were in the doldrums, but nearly all their letters were positive? And now sales are going up again and here comes all the interesting rants too. Funny how that works. It's no wonder many people can't handle fame. Even if you're getting more positive attention than negative, it's the bad things that wind up sticking in your mind more if you're the sensitive sort.
And finally, we have a letter of general commentary. Rebecca Guay continues to attract attention whenever she appears, and Fool Wolf is rather popular too. In both cases, their popularity may price them out of the RPG market eventually. That's another irony of success.
Nodwick made all that effort to save the world for nothing. Some things just aren't funny to anyone outside 4-chan.
PROfILES: John Kovalic is one of those artists who makes you think If he can do it professionally, anyone can. Course, it's not that simple. Like South Park, his simple art style both allows him to concentrate on the clever jokes more, and produce tons of stuff, fast. He's primarily known for his comics, Dork tower, and The unspeakable oaf. But he's been plugging away for over 20 years now, sketching stuff while in school, putting it out independently, and generally following the dream when all right minded people would quit. Mucho respect for all those 12+ hour workdays.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 2/7
Previews: The average rate of releases continues to drift downwards, as they start to try Ryan Dancy's idea of letting third party companies handle all the little stuff. One adventure, and a couple of novels. The Standing Stone widens their styles covered again, with ghostly horror. Woo. Not that it'll have the same impact as Ravenloft did. The Floodgate by Elaine Cunningham takes us back to Halruaa for some more political intrigue and mystery novel fun. Dragons of a Lost Star by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is the second book in the war of souls trilogy. Big cataclysm no 3 proceeds according to schedule.
Countdown to the forgotten realms: 2 months to go. Here they talk about the metaphysics behind magic in the Realms, with the Weave, and the Shadow Weave, and the effects they have in game. Most spellcasters draw on the regular weave, which is owned by Mystra, and if it's taken out or damaged, you get dead and wild magic zones. You can get around that by drawing on the shadow weave instead, but that's harder and has it's own drawbacks. There are other rarer types of magic as well, many of which we've already seen mentioned like spellfire, but under the new edition they'll be better differentiated mechanically. After all, shouldn't you use the rules update to make the game work a little more like the fiction? This is a good reminder of the fact that I like game rules as universe physics style thinking, and 3e is easily the best edition of D&D so far for playing like that. So this teaser is one of the better ones from my point of view, showing how they're trying to give you more fun options to play with and integrate them into the setting. I still like my shiny toys sometimes.
Up on a soapbox: This month, all the elements Gary looks at are on the upper end of the scale. Assuming a role is right at the top, beating even combat, which makes sense given the name of the game is Role-Playing. At the bottom, (but still getting a decent score) is random chance, which I suppose reflects people's increased desire to design their characters manually, and the rise of games that don't use dice or generally have far less randomisation than older ones. If he'd asked a decade ago, that's probably the one that would have changed the most. Problem solving and questing are also fairly high on most people's priorities. A few people may be satisfied creating their character, and then hanging around socialising IC, but most want to go places, have goals, face external threats and grow accordingly. Now the question is what will be right at the top and bottom of the league. Still a few more elements to go and people are still submitting. Maybe there'll be a last minute surge.
Dork tower gets some calls from the other kind of roleplayers. You really shouldn't just reject them. New players like that would be good for the hobby's image.
The outgoing goblin's guide to gaming etiquette: Our humour pieces begin with some decidedly mixed advice about how to run a good game. While there is actually a good chunk of decent advice in amongst the jokes, there's also some bits of trolling that you really shouldn't heed if you value the cohesiveness of your group. I'm not entirely certain if this is meant primarily as an entertainment piece, but I'm leaning that way. April fool. The illustrations are rather good, anyway.
Logic missiles: In issue 271, we had a whole bunch of articles on puzzles. At the time, I made the comment that it would be better to concentrate in ones that work off universal principles, than ones dependent on the quirks of the english language, which your characters wouldn't be speaking IC. Well, my desire has been fulfilled, with a nice 8 pager giving lots of example logic puzzles. While there is some humour in the writing, this is largely a serious piece, drawing upon a whole variety of different puzzle types, some with multiple solutions, which is the joy of having more open-ended challenges. So unlike the earlier article, I can see myself drawing upon this for ideas to challenge my players with, although I wouldn't lift them wholesale. A little more logic in a game rarely hurts, unless it slows everything down due to overanalysis.
Bard on the run is back! With filks based upon brand new songs, not stuff decades old even when the magazine was published. Britney Spears and N'Sync were always pretty self-aware about how cheesy and manufactured they were, so you don't have to stretch very far to make them into comedy. Similarly, ZZ Top have long since become parodies of themselves. So easy targets this year, but at least they're more in tune with fashion than they used to be. That's worth a little praise.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 3/7
Meanwhile, back in the slime pits of Karvan: Robin Law's first contribution this month is about scene changes, particularly when the players are split up. Some say you should never split the party, but this becomes very unrealistic once you get out of the dungeon and into a social environment. You probably will have to do it at some point, and there are definitely tricks you can do to make it flow better. You need to balance two main objectives. Keeping the players interested despite the fact that they might not be involved in the narrative for a while, and keeping track of what's happening where, and when. Both of these are made easier by regular, fairly fast switching of perspectives, somewhere between 5-15 minutes, which keeps players from drifting off, and one narrative from getting too far ahead of another. If it looks at all like their paths are going to cross, fudge events so it happens. This bit is pretty familiar from my own experiences as a GM. However, he also gives quite a bit of advice for players in this situation too, which I hadn't thought about so much. Once again, this is pretty useful stuff, pushing you towards a more story oriented style of gaming where the players use OOC knowledge to make their characters work together in a way that would be good for the story, rather than disrupting each other and breaking up the group for good. Take that, Tracey Hickman!
D&D personal ads: Or how to advertise for new players in a way that might not actually attract them, but will definitely get their attention. April fool! As with the guide to etiquette, there are some genuinely helpful bits of advice here, but they're hidden amongst the jokes, and it's only really helpful if you already know the right answer. I think this time the comedy part outweighs the useful advice, making this more just an entertainment piece. Still, once again, the illustrations are excellent, with one of those rare cases where the writer is also the illustrator, so the images fit with and enhance the mood of the text perfectly. I do find it interesting how they're varying the art style quite a bit from the norm for this issue, giving the comics guys more to do.
Heroes of the underdork: Last year, Nodwick & co got stats for 2nd edition as part of the april festivities. This time, Muskrats get racial stats, courtesy of John Kovalic and the Dork Tower cast. As seems appropriate, they are a bit underpowered, and quite a bit of this is comprised of jokes, but the statistics are actually legal and usable in 3e. If you were using ECL, they'd definitely deserve to be ECL -1 to balance them out with the other PCs, since they have a total of -4 to their ability scores, and their special powers are nothing much to write home about. So unless you're playing in a game world with a serious giant crayfish problem, powergamers wouldn't touch these guys with a 10 foot pole. Maybe you could get away with having one as a henchman. :p
Snack monsters: O HAI joke monsters. With plenty of stats and powers that are either mechanically nonsensical or absurdly overpowered, which means you can't really use them in game. Pizza slices, Gummi bears, Doritos, jolly ranchers and spilled pepsi get stats, scaled up to the size they would appear to be to your 25mm minis. So this is true old school silliness, of the sort that's purely for entertainment purposes, not game use unless you're willing to put quite a bit of fudge in (Although I think a toffee monster would be more dangerous. ) It's been a while since we had one of those, and they stand out in starker relief with 3e's more precise and codified rules. It's certainly interesting, anyway.
Fiction: Possessions by Elaine Cunningham. Elaine has obviously been reading the FR books in development, because she's already using the 3e magic terminology. Well, when you're setting your story in Halruua, you need to be up to date in the latest in metaphysics. Otherwise you're going to end up in the out crowd. Or alternately, you can delve into unfashionable and morally questionable fields in search of greater power, and win prestige that way. Which leads to a bad end if you get it wrong. And this definitely winds up falling into the cautionary tale category, showing an ambitious young wizard paying the price for her reckless ambition. Sure she gets immortality out of it, but it's not a very pleasant eternity. In fact, the degree of dramatic irony could almost make this a Ravenloft story. (Actually, they've never done Ravenloft fiction in the magazine, have they. ) So she can tell a good story when she puts the elf fetishism away for a bit. Who knew.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 4/7
The adventures of Volo ends abruptly this issue. Since he's been hanging around Cormyr and Sembia for the past half a year, I shall assume one of the people he's been talking about caught up with him and cut off his, um, communication channels. Occupational hazard of being a journalist with integrity. :p Here we fill in another little bit of setting. Hunting! In the real world, this was currently undergoing the protracted and tedious process that would lead to it's banning in the UK. (which is now routinely breached and has ironically even increased the number of people doing it.) Unsurprisingly, it's never generated the same kind of controversy in the Realms, given the frequency of genuinely dangerous creatures that need a good culling. But catching dangerous creatures and then using them in canned hunts for nobles who want the thrill of killing stuff without the danger does seem a bit tacky, if entirely believable. From sembia to waterdeep, there are adventurers willing to risk their lives so other people can get the XP, if they'll get a bit more money instead. This may throw the CR system out of whack a bit, but life isn't neat. Elminster participates quite a bit more in this one, and it feels like a decent way to close this up. Hopefully whatever format he chooses to deliver info to us next will liven things up for a while.
Rogues Gallery: Oh, now this is an april fool article I can get behind. The association of monster hunters have been starring in the ecologies since 1996, quite often during april, and they haven't been short of humorous touches in other months either. This is a perfect fit for an article that's wanted, funny, and still potentially useful as well.
Buntleby is the closest thing to a protagonist here, with his relatively honest and sensible attitude and Osquip companion. He's also the one that's had some actual onscreen changes, with those reflected in the description.
Dreelix the president is the foil of these stories, a pompous blowhard who deserves all the comical mishaps he suffers. He bickers with Buntleby, tries to impose his authority on the monster hunters, and is generally a driver of conflict in these stories. They wouldn't be half as interesting without him.
Grindle the coin-counter may be big, but it's certainly not all fat, as he has an 18 strength and he's not afraid to use it. He's the kind of guy who follows whoever has a good idea, and this has got him in a bit of trouble in the past. But he's taken it on the chin, unlike Dreelix, and kept on ticking. Again, every group needs a stable sidekick guy.
Zantoullios is the amusingly gangly research wizard who has a tendency to blow up his lab. He's another individual of low wisdom, who gets talked into putting his magical curiosity over his conscience. The sentai model breaks down when you're in a group comprised of wizards, but he's just about the smart guy of the team. Like most of his ilk, he may well come up with a smart solution to the problem, but you'll probably lose at least your eyebrows along the way.
Lady Ablasta is the pompous busybody conjurer, who tries to be the straight woman of the group, but is amusing enough in her own way, being very bitchy to any other women who show any interest in the association. The reasons groups like these end up being male dominated is not because they try actively to keep girls out.
Spontayne the Studious is the highest level wizard amongst them, as befits his name. Not that he actually casts spells very often, but that's neither here nor there. Every group needs a straight man, and I guess he's it for this crew.
Willowquisp the Zoophile isn't a wizard, merely an Expert with lots of useful skills. Since these include swimming, climbing and hiding, he's more than likely to pull them out of a tight spot, even if they don't always appreciate his lectures. After all, the monster hunters aren't the most practical bunch, and don't always remember their environmental protection spells.
Old Gumphrey the Alchemist is also not a spellcaster, just an adept/expert with lots of knowledge in brewing potions. He brings the wonder of mishearing gags to the table, which lets face it, never fails to be an excuse for painful punnery. He's more competent than he appears though, when he can stay awake. Don't underestimate the old guy.
Rhionda the Swordmistress is the newbie of the group, and is certainly bringing a valuable variety of skills in the last few excursions, as well as a daredevil attitude that's amusing in it's own way. She's still not completely accepted by the group, but is getting there, and will probably go further if they have another ecology this issue (which they do)
So this Gallery rocks. Not only are the characters several orders of magnitude less twinked statistically than any of the Realms novel cheesefests, but they're actually consciously balanced for characters of their level in terms of equipment. Plus as their exploits are fully familiar to me, this provides a real kick to the completist in me. It's mad that a joke article would wind up having more mechanical rigor than the serious ones. April fool indeed.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 5/7
Class acts: The orky warboyz get to kick some more ass this month with the blessed of Gruumsh. Designed largely for bad guys, you have to pluck out your own eye to get into this one, making it unlikely PC's would choose it even if they were of a more questionable moral character. They get lots of good once per day effects, further reinforcing that this class would be deadly when applied to monsters, but not such a huge benefit when a PC takes the class, due to the nova effect. Ahh, the old LA vs ECL issue that plagued 3rd ed, and was part of the reason 4th reined back what races you could have as PC's. Also notable is that they've started organizing class skills by key ability in little boxes, which does look nice and save space. So not a brilliant class, but still perfectly serviceable, and it's good to see them refining their format as well.
The ecology of the purple worm: What would an april be without the association of monster hunters making an appearance? Especially now they're statted up. They've become quite the fixture. And they're having lots of fun, traveling the world and killing things for science and profit. The addition of a warrior to the team has improved their tactical acumen, and the conversion to 3rd ed rules has even let them do a little multiclassing, it seems. But that doesn't stop battles from being frantic scrambles where no plan survives contact with the enemy. The comedy is dialled back a little this time for a genuinely cinematic battle, and most of the humour is in the dialogue and interplay between characters. The format for the footnotes is changed again, with this succumbing to the current fashion for sidebars. They also add a bit more colour to the illustrations, as befits the theme. All pretty good. This series seems to finally be maturing. Let's hope that doesn't mean it's about to be canceled. :Checks ahead: It does? Totally weak. How are we ever supposed to have any character development if we cancel things just as they're starting to genuinely change in an interesting way?
VS Elves: If it's tricky coming up with good countertactics against psychics, against prettier than thou mary sues who now have access to any class they like, it seems almost impossible. Fortunately, that only really applies to PC's. NPC elves are still the good old woodland dwelling, bow shooting, spell slingers, and that's a skillset you can anticipate and counter. Spot them coming, use protection from normal missiles to keep yourself from being turned into a pincushion, blast them with effects that require Fort saves, and then close en masse for slicing and dicing fun. In the longer term, wars of attrition are pretty effective, as most races can replenish themselves considerably faster, forcing them to retreat or negotiate even if you're suffering more casualties. Get a tribe of goblinoids, then when they get killed, animate their bodies and send a second wave of zombies to further wear down the tree-huggers. And don't forget to cut the trees down while you're at it, reduce their ability to hide and shoot from cover. Actually, it looks like if you want to win, you need to think strategics and logistics rather than tactics of an individual fight. And that's definitely something this format doesn't do enough of, focussed on an adventuring party that doesn't use hirelings and camp followers as 3e is. Once again, it's a bit of a disappointment, and I'm left feeling I could do better.
PC Portraits: April Fool comes to the portraits too this month, with Phil Foglio puncturing the format in a similar way to his april fool centrefold in issue 60. The individual images are funny, and they're laid out in an amusingly meta way as well. I think we can safely say he's still got it when it comes to funny one-liners, (well, one panel jokes) with each image managing to tell a story in itself. Bravo, dear boy, bravo indeed. :claps:
WWF: Elminster vs Raistlin. Aaron gives Nodwick a break from the spotlight, (although not from suffering horrible pain) to do a comic on this amusing rivalry. It's not really a fair fight, as by the rules Elminster outclasses Raistlin so badly it's laughable. And indeed, it looks like he's more likely to win until Raistlin pulls some dirty trickery to turn the tables (which is also pretty in character) and the whole thing is stopped due to rulesbreaking. Despite the fact that the Realms has been beating Dragonlance in popularity pretty much since it was released, they still can't show it THAT much favouritism to allow it a conclusive win. Plus it wouldn't be as funny anyway. So the debate will continue in other forums.
The play's the thing: As is becoming standard for Robin Laws, the bit of advice in his regular column is less consequential than the earlier article. In fact, it's really just a single line of advice stretched out to two pages. Instead of spending ages writing or drawing a description for your character, just cast an actor as them and everyone will be able to instantly imagine roughly what they look like. Just saying they're X, or X crossed with Y, or X if Z change was made will save you substantial amounts of time. Which you can then use on getting straight into those convoluted multiperspective plotlines. :p Simple and easy. I could have told you that, although probably not in as much style. Whether this will blow your mind or be so obvious as to not be worth mentioning will once again depend on how experienced you are and how much time you spend hanging around game forums. I suppose that once again marks it as a good invention.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 6/7
Forum: Amber Scott points out that there are actually a lot more female lumberjacks around than there are Dragons. Yet which stretches the credulity of certain ranty letter writers more? It's like unrealistic magic systems all over again.
Able DuSable (once again, i blame the parents) brings up the topic of roleplaying after retirement. Another sign that the hobby has been around for decades now, and no-one's as young as they were. Still, D&D looks a lot more fun to play in a retirement home than Bridge.
Amy Dickinson reminds us that the reason elves seem aloof is because they know we'll die all too soon and they don't want to get attached. Given that people do get pretty attached to their pets when there are similar lifespan disparities, this is a rule I can well see exceptions too.
Adam Whitehead (all the A's this time, it seems) thinks people are stupid for complaining just because things don't go all their way. They can't please all the people all the time, but they're trying damn hard. And that means they can't abandon their most popular properties.
Role models: Skin tones are this month's topic. In a fantasy game, you might have a wider selection than with regular humans, but you still need to vary the skin tone a little from place to place on their body in a realistic way, reflecting the light and shade that areas would experience. Once again, you may want to do the hard to reach areas first, and then paint over the stuff surrounding them in lighter tones, so any overspill gets covered up by subsequent layers. We get extreme close-ups of a single ogre from multiple angles to demonstrate this, which once again shows how much better modern photography and editing handles this kind of work. So while the advice isn't that much better than the ones of years past, they're once again doing a better job of presenting it too us visually, and gradually ramping up the complexity. Like Dungeoncraft before it, this column is starting to come into it's own now a regular writer has been there for a while.
Dragon Issue 282: April 2001
part 7/7
Sage advice: Yo dawg. What's the beef on the polymorph errata. (I heard you like errata so I put errors in your corrections so you need errata for your errata. )
Do repeating crosbows need two hands to use ( if you want to reload them, y'know.)
Do you get specialization bonuses for shuriken (Only at close quarters)
Can you throw three shuriken, or three per attack (three per attack, but only if you have fast reloading powers. You'd better hone your gunslinging skills.)
Are characters who are aware but flanked subject to sneak attack (Yes. It's a much more combat oriented power now. )
When do monks get their wisdom bonus to AC (Any time they can move freely. That means no armor. )
Can multiclass rogues sneak attack with non rogue weapons (Oh yes)
Can you flank with a reach weapon (yes. Skip sees definite synergy possibilities here. )
Can you attack through an occupied square with reach weapons (Yes, but they get cover bonuses)
How does firing into melee work against enemies with reach. ( Pretty good. If they're not next to your target, there are definite upsides.)
Can you make attacks of opportunity while set for a charge (Yes. Fun fun fun. )
How does painful reckoning work (Once they've beaten you down once, you get it every time you meet after that. Vengeance, sweet vengeance.)
Shouldn't ghost walkers space manipulation powers be supernatural, not extraordinary (Y'know, you're right. Skip will have to cast Create Official Errata again)
What's a stunning attack, and what good is making them nauseated as well. (You can never have too many crippling status effects.)
Pain touch has lower prerequisites than stunning fist. What's the point. (Monks get it as a virtual feat. That bypasses this.)
How does circle kick work when you have multiple attacks ( You get to go again if you hit. )
How does dirty fighting work with multiple attacks. (Not that great. It works best at street level games. )
Can rogues stack dirty fighting and sneak attack (No)
How does lightning fist work with multiple attacks ( Man. We give everyone iterative attacks and all they do is whine about interfacing. It's enough to make skip want to take them away again. )
When does expert tactician give you your partial action (Your turn. )
How often can you use snatch arrows (Only once per round. No deflecting automatic fire around here. )
Can you combine snatch arrows and throw anything (no)
How often can you use feign weakness ( As often as you like. People may get wise though. )
Which feats from sword and fist can fighters have as bonus ones (None of them. Oh what a shame.)
Can you get up for free with prone attack if you don't actually attack (If you attack the darkness.)
What classes can combine their attack bonuses with their monk BAB ( Red avenger, Weapon master and Drunken Master.)
How many 5 foot steps can you take while supreme cleaving (Just the one, Skip is afraid.)
Dragonmirth gives us a retro joke. Man, the cutoff between 2nd & 3rd was way sharper than the one between 1st & 2nd.
Dungeoncraft: Last month we found out what races Ray was going to exclude. Now we see how he's using the ones he has kept. Elves are the most technologically advanced, and the only ones with a written language, which combined with their lifespan makes them the ones with the info. Dwarves are ex-slaves who've withdrawn from the world after getting elven help to break free of their lizard masters. Half-Orcs are reskinned into half-Lizardfolk, while retaining the same stats. (and he really ought to swap out the low-light vision, since reptiles aren't very active during the night. ) The humans are divided between savage tribalists, and slightly more peaceful wanderers. Both are getting secretly manipulated by other forces, which gives you a whole load of plot hooks, and room for conflict between them. So there is a fair chunk of stereotype breaking, and the lack of written language as standard is definitely a big change from the 3e default. He could be even more adventurous, but this is a start. I'm still interested to see how much further he's willing to go.
What's new makes both it's protagonists, and all of the guest stars, suffer. But not the snail. That's just oozing along quietly.
Well, this was more wacky than recent issues, but nowhere near as odd as some of the 80's april ones. They're unable to completely shake the urge to be helpful, with only a couple of articles having no game use at all. Which I suppose from another PoV is a positive thing, as there is lots of stuff that's good for your game here. As much as they'd like to pretend otherwise, they're grown-up sensible professionals now. At least, most of the time. They'd have to pick weird stuff out of the bottom of the slush pile if they truly want to recapture the feel of the old days. And it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon. Oh well. On we go then.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 1/7
116 pages. It's clerics turn to get their first themed issue of the new edition. Everyone will get a turn eventually, since we have years of material to make up, but the order it happens in is significant. And as one of the more altered classes in the new edition, they still need the publicity, so people can realise just how utterly awesome they are. Let's see what cool stuff they'll be given this time round.
Scan Quality: Medium, small text somewhat blurry and hard to make out, oversaturated blacks, indexed.
In this issue:
Ahh, Baldur's gate. so good it got a sequel. And they're still basically using 2nd ed rules. Well, development times are getting longer and longer. Can't scrap everything just because the licence has changed beneath you.
She's back, and this time, she's legal? That's a somewhat dodgy way to advertise.
Wyrms turn: As we're dealing with clerics, Dave talks about the amusing possibilities inherent in playing characters with high wisdom but low intelligence. Your familiar may wind up smarter than you, but at least you'll have the common sense to take their advice when it's good. Yeah, this is another one of those editorials reminding you that having a low stat or two makes your character more interesting, especially when you have teammates around to shore up those weaknesses and bounce off in terms of roleplaying. When everybody is average or above at everything, it can all be rather bland by comparison. Tell it to the people who decided the default point buy system wouldn't let you have stats below 8. This is overdone and a little dated seeming now. Nothing new here.
Eric van Lustbader thinks Dragon readers will buy his novel enough to put a 6 page spread of advertising in?! Oooookay then. Man, at this rate, I see why Paizo decided to do ad free scans. There hasn't been a single actual RPG advert here in months. This is not healthy for the hobby.
Scale Mail: Having seen what's happened to the other campaign worlds, people are writing in to keep the Realms in the magazine. It continues to prove it's huge popularity, so they will continue to give it regular columns every issue, plus maybe a few extra on top of that. If only people would share the love around a little more.
A letter reminding you to enforce encumbrance when the players try to carry large impractical stuff around. Solutions to one problem create their own problems in turn. That's the way of the world, and what assures there'll always be something interesting happening somewhere.
Fool Wolf gets another letter of praise, in which they promise to get on Greg's case and try and get him to write some more. Why did this not happen again?
The Sorcerer themed issue gets two conflicting letters, one very happy with it, and the other annoyed that they're all represented as outcasts despite their high charisma. When the only social skill you have in class is Bluff, you wind up using it for all your problems, and this catches up with you sooner or later. That nail you tried to hammer will turn out to be a miniature rust monster occasionally.
Speaking of themed issues, we have requests for barbarian and drow themed ones. Both get put on the list for sometime next year, which is a good reminder just how far ahead they plan things these days.
We make the tragic discovery that they've stopped keeping back issues in stock for great lengths of time. Another lesson they've learned from the TSR days. Sometimes, warehouse costs are greater than any potential profit you may make in the future, so it's better to just pulp any leftovers.
And finally, we have some nitpicking by the greek contingent about some historical inaccuracies. Like clockwork every time they do a historical article. No escaping it. As is often the case, I wonder why they bother.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 2/7
Nodwick and dork tower get compilation books! Buy them now!
Countdown to the forgotten realms: One month to go. Oh my god, they changed the map! You Bastards! :shakes fists: Ok, so it's not as bad as they did in 4e, where they moved whole continents around, as they're merely shrinking some big areas where there's not much detail. I still don't think that's wise. Given how overcrowded the Realms can seem at times, we need those blank areas to work with. Plus given that the real world has places where there's hundreds of miles of desert or ocean with fuck-all landmarks and minimal living activity, it definitely makes a game world more realistic to have a few of those breaking up the landscape. I disapprove of this particular teaser. This is short term thinking that makes the world less real, and more like a theme park with various areas for various types of adventures. Plus it's once again ignoring Kara-tur, Al-Qadim, Maztica, and all the other expanded stuff they introduced in the early 90's, and then lost interest in. Surely they could merit one book each updating the rules and showing how the setting has evolved in the last 20 years?
Up on a soapbox: Interestingly, while having a consistent story and setting is important to most players, actually staying within character and doing actual acting to better represent them to the other PC's and DM isn't so much. I suspect that if this wasn't aimed primarily at D&D players, that part would get higher marks. Despite a long time passing, D&D still has more wargaming in it's genes than amateur dramatics, and LARPers find themselves more attracted to White Wolf. And with the settings being shut down and the books concentrating on the return to the dungeon, that will be even more the case in a few years. As with the editorial, the writers for the magazine may actually be a little behind the company trends. It'd be funny if Gary started saying we need more roleplaying in RPG's in a few years time. So the results are all in, some are expected, some aren't, and we should get a good round-up next month. This all seems to have gone fairly smoothly, although the turnout could have been better. It's important to know who your audience are.
Dork tower reveals why the new character is the Last in a long line. That's what happens when you don't play them appropriately.
Do-it-yourself Deities: While they have reduced the overall amount of rehash a fair bit since the edition change, advice on building your pantheon is one topic that's very very overdone indeed. (Issues 29, 54, 77, 140 just on a cursory search.) And the fact that Ed did a pretty definitive one early on in the magazine's history that also went on to be historically significant leaves anyone else trying their hand with exceedingly daunting shoes to fill. Still, Stephen Kenson does manage to make his attempt more logically written and clearly edited, and the improvements in layout in the past couple of decades are also very apparent. But at the same time we aren't seeing the same kind of enthusiasm and DIY inventiveness that we used too. So you can make the same kind of comparisons that you could the 1e and 3e DMG's. One spills cool ideas onto the page as they occurred to the writer, while the other is cleaner and easier to use, but also more sterile and less memorable in itself. That's progress for you.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 3/7
Champions of virtue: A whole wodge of prestige classes devoted to specific deities is our next feature. This of course means if you want to get into them, you'll need to plan right from level one, or at least your first level in cleric. So these will mainly be of use to characters created after checking your options, rather than preexisting ones. 3e can be a pain sometimes.
Shining Blades of Heronious sacrifice half their spellcasting progression for enhanced smiting ability and other weapon enhancements, and gaining the celestial template at 10th level. For Paladins, this seems no great loss. For clerics, it doesn't sound like such a great idea.
Radiant Champions of Pelor are like Loremasters, a no-brainer choice if you're playing the right kind of character, because they get full spellcasting and turning progressions, plus some extra abilities, making them strictly better than regular clerics with no drawbacks at all, and don't have particularly challenging prerequisites either. If you want to play clerics as stereotypical healbot and undead smiter, it'd be hard to do better.
Fleet Runners of Ehlonna seem like they'd be best combined with Ranger, with boosts to their mobility and ranged attacks, and one of those odd progressions that grants extra spells, but not extra spell levels.
Mighty Contenders of Kord are all about the strength boosts, but still only get 3/4 BAB, which means they won't be that great as fighters, and even the huge strength bonus at 10th level won't make up for the loss of 8th and 9th level spells. As neither fish nor fowl, they don't seem that appealing. So with two prestige classes you'd have to be dumb to take, and one you'd have to be dumb not to, this definitely isn't one of their better balanced articles.
Playing the priestly part: When you want advice about how to properly roleplay your clerics, who ya gonna call? If you guessed the ex pastor, have a cookie. Course, the interesting thing about priests that a lot of people forget is just how social a job it is. Servicing a congregation means you regularly talk to tons of people, and are perfectly positioned to know all the gossip, give a little sensible advice to troubled souls, and generally keep them happy. (or at least functional in line with your god's portfolio) Similarly, even when your god is demonstrably real, that doesn't mean your faith is always perfect and unwavering. You can wonder if you're doing the right thing by following them, if the things they're commanding are actually sensible, how much your life is controlled by their dogma or direct commands, and indeed, if you're interpreting what they're saying right anyway. It can be a life filled with introspection and philosophical thought, and a good deal of self-doubt. Or you could just be a swaggering demagogue convinced of their own righteousness while also enjoying all the luxuries of their position. (cause jesus he knows me, and he knows I'm right. ) So this is the kind of roleplaying advice that's good because it's solidly grounded in real life experience. Sure the spells part may be fantastical, but the rest isn't, and reminds us that a job can work very differently to people's perceptions of it. If you can't walk a mile in someone else's shoes, at least ask them what it feels like.
Realistic religion: While Mr Kenson is concerned with creating a coherent pantheon that'll makes for a good game, this article is more about making one that feels like a good story. A realistic mythology doesn't build up the pantheon and then create the stories around them, but the other way round, coming up with the stories, and then inventing new gods as needed. Course, in a fantasy universe, this runs into the problem that if the deities are both real and active in the world, you can't get away with the same kind of mythological inconsistency you can in reality. Plus there's the issue of small sample size. The reason many real world myths have similarities is because we all live on the same planet, and come from common stock less than a million years ago. Many things are far less universal than people think, and would not be the case on another world. I think as usual, they're putting the less good articles at the end of the themed section, as I don't agree with this approach.
Kingdoms of Kalamar! An officially licensed D&D setting by kenzerco. At last, we're starting to see RPG adverts in here again.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 4/7
The D&D player's movie marathon: A little while ago, we looked at appropriate music to soundtrack your games. We continue that new interest in multimedia by looking at fantasy movies to draw inspiration from. Of course, there's the problem that a lot of these old movies are pretty cheesy, and even the ones that looked good at the time have not all dated well. And that tastes are very subjective. So this devotes as much time to going over the bad as it does the good, with films that you'll want to laugh at, or maybe with, as well as the serious epics. The two writers disagree with each other on numerous points, especially Highlander, and use this rivalry to make the article all the more interesting, adopting a conversational style that the simple but expressive art style reinforces. If this was done now, the list would be very different, given the number of high budget fantasy films that have come out over the last decade. (although not as much as the upswing in films based on comic books) So this is a little dated, but still a very entertaining article indeed, that adds a lighthearted touch to the magazine even though April is over, and reminds us that we really do have it better than we did a few decades ago in terms of media. Now the real challenge is finding the time to watch everything good that's out there, which is hardly a tragedy at all.
My character would do that!: Once again Robin Laws encourages you to metagame to make your play experience better. Don't just decide what would be in and out of character for your character in vacuum, and then be obstructive when the plot doesn't go your way. Talk to the DM and other players, and figure out a compromise that satisfies everyone. And that doesn't mean just figuring out a reason to follow the DM's plot of the week. It means making clear what you characters would like to be doing beforehand, so they can have appropriate material prepared next week. It means knowing the other players, and what they're likely to do in a situation. And yes, it will mean accepting you can't have it all your way all the time. Basically, it's about accepting that a few OOC spoilers won't enjoy your enjoyment of the plot, and may actually enhance it, and that resolving things through rational discussion is usually preferable to being a pretentious auteur with an Artistic Vision that you're not willing to share for fear or ruining the mystique. Put that in your swine pipe and smoke it. Once again, he's got some pretty good ideas you ought to pay attention too.
Fiction: Garden of souls by Richard Lee Byers. One way the 3e realms will differ quite a bit from it's 2e incarnation will be a greater interest in what happens to people after they die. This is one of those stories, where an evil force is hijacking souls from their natural destination and trapping them in a demiplane for it's own nourishment, and the protagonist has to solve that, despite being underpowered, without equipment in an alien landscape. This means there's plenty of drama and high emotional stakes involved, cool action scenes, and a moderate amount of philosophical stuff too. So this is one of those cases where I'm suspicious of the overall design direction, knowing how much drama the wall of the faithless caused later on, but won over by the writing. Codifying what happens in the afterlife for a setting closes more plot avenues than it creates, but those ones can be more interesting than the generic ones we deal with in stories set on earth.
Class acts: Another odd duck here, with the flame steward, another primary fighter and spellcaster with their own spell list, that really requires you to dip through another spellcasting class first to get into it. (although you could theoretically avoid it if you played a ranger or paladin and sucked up the cross class skill ranks. ) Like with the psi-hunter, this is probably worth it, as not only do you get lots of thematic flame based powers, you also get to turn half your fire damage into divine damage, so your theme doesn't get ruined by the many monsters that are immune to fire based attacks. Which is an important trick, and one we'll see over and over again. Another pretty decent entry, albeit still not one that can compete with a fully buffed CoDzilla. Then again, people would probably complain if it was, so there you go.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 5/7
Rogues Gallery: At the end of last year, we got a whole family of characters detailed in this column. Of course, where there's one noble family, the laws of drama dictate there has to be at least one rival one. So say hello to the Talendars. You can bet they'll be rather more ruthless in their attempts to make a profit and get their leg up in Sembia's busy society. Can't make an omlet without breaking a few eggs.
Marance Talendar is easily the most detailed character we've seen in a while, getting not only the full attention of the intro fiction, but a two page spread to himself as well. And he merits it as well. A damned soul who's managed to win the favour of an archdevil in the hells and get back to the Realms, he's now obsessed with bringing down the Uskeverns. Well, money isn't so much of a concern once you've found out you can't take it with you, and spent years being tormented. He's quite capable of faking politeness and rationality though, and might well employ the PC's as part of his schemes. After all, how are they to know who the good and bad guys are until they've had some interaction with them?
Nuldrevyn Talendar is Marance's brother, but has become an old man during the time Marance spent in the hells, so you'd never know it from looking at them. He's mellowed a bit over the years, but he still wants to see his rival family humiliated, so he goes along with his brother's schemes. But if push comes to shove, he will put stability over personal vendetta. This will probably become an issue at some point in the books, won't it.
Ossian Talendar an an ambitious young member of the family, entirely willing to engage in underhanded methods to advance their cause. This has led him to become their underworld liaison, the kind of guy who gets out on the front line and puts his neck in danger. If he survives, he'll level up quite decently and maybe make it to the top in time. Gotta lay the seeds for the next generation, haven't we.
Avos the fisher is one of the low-life thugs that gets employed at a remove by the Talendars. He's a ruthless bullying guy who uses his fish hook as a weapon, and is highly specialised in it. He'll betray them without a second thought if the price is right though. So I guess it's back to business as usual in the column, although they have kept the new emphasis on ensuring characters are mechanically balanced. The writers are starting to really internalise the conventions of 3e, for better and for worse, and it's for the better in this case.
Vs Treants: Oooh. This isn't a monster I was expecting to see here, that has some quite interesting tactical quirks. Obviously fire is an essential part of fighting them, presuming you intend to kill, because otherwise you'll be setting yourself up for a lengthy and unpleasant vendetta. The important points are that they have long reach, but aren't that fast, so you want to have ranks in tumble and attack in groups to reduce the effects of attacks of opportunity, and remember to focus attacks on the treant itself rather than it's animated servitors. If possible, lure them out of the forest, as this will slant things in your favour quite a bit. This one has a good bit of 3e specific tactical notes that makes it clear they're really paying attention to the rules this time, and doesn't completely ignore the strategic approach either. It's definitely one of the better examples of this column.
Nodwick turns it's attention to the D&D movie. Much awesomeness occurs. And someone finally gets to see sex and D&D as well. Shame it's not us.
PC Portraits: Another round of priestly portraits, as you'd expect. They get a mild grimdarking, with heavier lines, a lot more eye makeup, and somewhat less racial diversity than the collection from issue 263. These look less like people you'd approach to talk about your problems, and more you'd cower before them for fear of being smitten or sacrificed on their altar for the greater glory. So I think the question is if you want your clerics to be friendly healbots, or bloodsoaked harbingers. Both are entirely valid, after all.
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 6/7
Forum: Elzbeth Maclain has introduced roleplaying to her kids. This has helped bring the family together, and done the usual subtle educational stuff. It's all very positive, and just the thing that needs doing if you want gaming to survive for future generations. After all, as last issue showed, we're not getting any younger.
Jason Moscatello thinks that saying WotC have some kind of sinister agenda for trying to use equal amounts of both pronoun is ridiculous. All it's doing is being inclusive. And if being inclusive is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Jim Corrigan thinks Monte is reading too much into Tracey's article. This game is supposed to be about roleplaying, and that's all Tracy was doing.
Kevin Madison sides with Monte Cook against Tracey Hickman. To be frank, Mr Hickman sounds like a self-absorbed jackass. If he tried that crap in his game, he'd be shown the door. Really, he created kender, gully dwarves, AND tinker gnomes. And Fizban. And exploding mini dragons. And poetry. Did you really think that wouldn't be reflective of his personal playstyle. That's like expecting Michael Bay not to create a racist caricature for a character if you invite him to your game. :p
Michael LeBlanc thinks an open mind is important. Far too many of the people knocking 3e seem to have decided to hate it before they even saw the rules, yet along tried playing. Give it a chance. You've seen how many skeptics have been converted after doing so.
The play's the thing: Sentimentality is the kind of thing that it's tricky to create in a one-shot. People get attached to things with no practical value, but when building a character on a limited budget, you find yourself wanting to squeeze every bit of utility out of your points. Still, if something doesn't have game value, you might be able to get a lenient GM to just let you put it on your sheet anyway. Yup, it's another little article that looks at something nearly everyone does IRL, but you often forget to apply to your characters. Unlike Ray, who improved once he got a regular groove going, Robin doesn't seem to have quite the same long-haul appeal, as he's basically saying the same thing from a different angle each time. He might have emerged impressively, but he won't be sticking around and having as much influence as Ed at this rate.
Sage advice: How do primary and secondary attacks work for monsters. (with great exceptionality. See, 3rd ed isn't all unified formulas.)
What's a slam. Can it knock things down. (Zap! Splat! Kapow! No. )
Are skeletons immune to piercing weapons, or just resistant (Common sense dude. You can break bones with a spear, just not easily.
How far do giants move with a 5 foot step (5 foot. If it was a different amount, it wouldn't be a 5 foot step, would it now?)
Is duergar enlargement limited like the spell (yes)
My DM wouldn't let me coup de grace a stunned displacer beast (and they were quite right too. You never know what you might hit with a displaced creature, even if it's staying still.)
Do magic missiles suffer miss chances against displacer beasts (No. Ahh, magic missile. The old faithful of spellcasting. )
What age do red dragons get their spell-like abilities (Read. The. Description. Oh, there's an error? Skip takes that back. Read beyond the description to see the platonic ideal of the monster. All the rules are but shadows on the cave wall reflecting the true game, the ultimate game that's out there somewhere. Devote your life to the true game. Ommm.)
If a dragon enlarges itself, does it get the new powers of the higher size (No. Just the normal spell benefits. )
Is the retriever really immune to all damage apart from holy weapons. (Skip can see why you'd think that. We'd better cast Create Official Errata, give it fast healing instead of regeneration. That'll sort out the problem. )
What inflicts normal damage on Planetars and Solars ( Oh man, Skip just used Cast Official Errata today. Skip wishes Skip had read ahead before doing this so Skip could have included these guys in the same spell. )
How about Kytons and pit fiends? There's some kinks in their damage resistance as well. (Yeeeees. Them too. Official errata all round :yawn:)
Does divine damage count as holy for the purposes of beating regeneration. (Not unless you houserule it. )
How does taking -20 to avoid the effects of grappling work ( Choose each turn if you want to suffer the penalty to gain the benefits. Are you willing to take that risk?! )
How does improved grab and damage dealing work (Grab. Inflict pain. Repeat. )
How does swallow whole work. (Bite, hold on, swallow. Quite a few rolls, but not as many as PC's would have to make in the same situation. )
Just what can and can't be brought back to life by various spells. (Honestly. One of the reasons we had the rules revision was to clean up this kind of messiness. At this rate, we'll have to do another in a few years.)
Storm and cloud giants gain extra hit dice as if they were large creatures? (This does have an effect when you advance them. Trust Skip. )
Would all the extra attacks by a vampiric monk drain levels (Bugger that for a game of soldiers. It's nerfing time. )
How many creatures should a monster with a CR of 5 be a challenge for (4. Standard party size these days. Not that there's anything wrong with a bigger party. Skip remembers the days when you had a dozen PC's plus a bunch of hirelings. Ahh, nostalgia.)
How deadly is a large ghoul (Apply the size change formulae. They aren't hard.)
Why are Vampires and Ghosts templates while Ghouls and Wraiths aren't. (One involves you keeping your basic appearance and personality. The other doesn't. You may have a few memories left over, but you can kiss your class abilities goodbye if you're killed by them. Course, since they level drain, you may have lost them even if you survive. )
How smart and aware are creatures without int scores. Can you bluff them. (Depends who programmed them and how. In any case, they'll never learn, so if a trick works once, it'll work again every time. Just don't try talking to them.)
Dragon Issue 283: May 2001
part 7/7
Role models: If getting into those little nooks and crannies on a mini is a tricky procedure involving knowing what order you're going to do stuff, faces are even more of a problem. If you don't have a fine-tipped brush and steady hands, you won't get very far. Eyes in particular are a real challenge to do right, as the black is the smallest part, with the lighter colours around the edge. So as usual, it's time to get over the nerves by going through things in a clear, step by step fashion. No task is too big or too small that it can't be broken down and made more accessible, although when you add the steps up, it can still take a LOOOOOONG time. You'll just have to hope that you have that time to get good, because it may take a fair bit of work in this case. I wonder how good I'd be at it now if I'd taken that up as a pasttime instead of this thread.
Dungeoncraft: Ray is in theme too this month, talking about the deities on his new world. Rather than mysterious otherworldly forces, he decides to makes them really ancient and powerful dinosaurs that may have withdrawn from the world a bit, but can still be found if you know the right hidden valleys to trek too. So they're alien and scary creatures that you propitiate because they're quite capable of going on a rampage with hordes of normal dinos as an army and messing your shit right up. That's pleasingly S&Sish, and makes for a setup where you probably won't be in direct danger from them at low level, but will be able to challenge them near the end of a campaign. And hey, they're still nicer than Dark Sun's Sorcerer-Kings. With some of the most solid setting detail yet, this is one of my favourite Dungeoncrafts, giving religion in this setting some real teeth, so there's a very good reason not to be an atheist. Bow down before your tyrannosaurical overlord, puny mortals! :D
Dragonmirth is once again more of a danger to their own friends. What's new has some fairly minor deities drop in.
Looks like it's another pretty good issue, with most of the flaws being little annoying things in the mechanics as they're still getting the hang of 3e. Still, as with the early issues of the magazine, the renewed sense of enthusiasm covers a multitude of small sins. Things look pretty bright for the near future. So now for the birthday issue. Will it have the same renewed sense of purpose as the april one?
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 1/7
133 pages. (132, plus an answer turned upside down and magnified) 25 years. What a number to reach. Well, things certainly look better than they did for year 20. They have a rejuvenated new edition, lots of old fans coming back, considerably better layout technology, and lots of brand new features. But I'm still not going to get to review whatever's on the bonus CD. :( Oh well, it's a big issue, it may well take a fair bit of effort to finish even so. Let's see which of these features'll be forgotten like pinsom, and which'll stick around for years to come like the bazaar and bestiary.
Scan quality: Ragged edges, unindexed, no bonus CD.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The editorial is a little look back at what the magazine was like in the past. Which reminds us just how long Kim and Roger were in charge, and that Dave took quite a while to grow to fill their shoes, what with the various problems the company was facing when he was promoted. It's also a good reminder that they covered a greater variety of stuff back then, which I definitely miss. This is the trouble with sticking too close to the middle path, because they want to please as many people as possible with every single article. And the magazine is never going to recapture that sense of openness and possibility, no matter how many cool D&D articles they produce. Looking back is only really fun if you feel that you might be able to do better still at some point. Not a great start.
Scale Mail: We start off with a letter that wonders if halflings and gnomes will have to share their themed issues again this edition. Fear not! The affirmative action continues. You'll soon find out just what they can do these days.
Phil Foglio's april cover gets both praised and picked over. Was showing so much flesh a wise move? Was trying to hide some of it after that? Oh, chill out. Your audience are big boys now, and can handle a little swearing and nudity. Just another example of how showing violence in media is a lot more acceptable than sex in america.
We get another one of those extended commentary pieces that they have to edit down substantially before printing. Short and snappy is the way to go if you want mass media to pay attention. Otherwise they'll just pick out soundbites, and you can't be sure which one they'll zero in on.
And finally, we have some amusing gordian knot solutions to the puzzles from issue 281. Killing everyone is once again the most sensible solution in many cases.
Nodwick faces the dread specter of backstory. And loses.
PROfIES: Phil Foglio! A name which didn't get profiled back in the old days, but probably ought to have. Seems like they're choosing to cover lots of artists in quick succession at the moment. He's one of those people who takes a very interesting attitude to laziness, working ridiculously hard because it's more profitable in terms of profit/effort ratio to do stuff in bulk. He's married to Kaja, who is also an artist, and the two collaborate extensively on their various comics, as well as keep each other going in general. Seems like that's a common occurrence. Monte & Sue Cook, Ethan & Aileen Skemp. Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak. Even though they may take their work home with them, they seem less prone to burnout and moving into other fields than people who remain single or married to civilians. He also stays friends with lots of other big names, which doesn't hurt his career either. After all, he's more than big enough to not be insecure about his talents. He seems pretty angst free in general. Long may he produce awesome work before the inevitable hand of entropy drags him away, kicking and screaming, as it must to all of us some day.
Previews: The Forgotten Realms never really went away, but this month it returns with a vengance, with 4 products in a go, just like the old days. The Forgotten realms Campaign Setting opens things up again, albeit with more than a few changes, the usual timeline update, and a retcon or two on top. Still, the changes are less polarising than next edition's ones. They also continue their adventure series based on the computer games. Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor lets you kick butt and get new magic items. Can you avert yet another apocalypse?
Their novels are pretty busy too. We get a novelization of the previous computer game and adventure, by Carrie A Bebris. As ever, you can expect their experiences to be taken as the canon ones for the timeline. There's also The Shattered Mask by Richard Lee Byers. More turmoil in paradise. Might as well say is it that time of week already.
Dragonlance hasn't stopped either. Betrayal by Jean Rabe sees Dhamon continue to have plenty of reasons for Aaaaaangst. Will he pull through in his companion's time of need?
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 2/7
Countdown to the forgotten realms reaches zero, but is still going. And they're reminding us that the realms was primarily born as a kitchen sink where you could place and draw elements liberally, and even if you don't play in it, there's still vast quantities of crunch and setting detail that you can steal for your own world. But this flows both ways, as they have so much stuff that they want to update from last edition that they're taking generic monsters, and detailing them in FR books. That's a bit cheeky, and feels a bit like cheating, forcing people to buy these books if they want to use them again, even if they aren't a fan of the Realms. Play nice, now. I suppose it's consistent with WotC's cancelling everything but the most popular lines. They want to try and please all the people all the time, and despite it's haters, the Realms has come closest to that. If they could get the rest of their demographic buying it, they wouldn't have to worry about the split base problem anymore. Nice try, but no dice. I still like my variety, thank you very much.
Up on a soapbox: A short one this month, as more than half the page is taken up by graphs. Character development, role assumption and story come in at the top, while building, business and economy are at the bottom. There are some mild variations due to gender and experience, but all of these are well under 10%, showing that the variation in individuals is far greater than any broad divisions of gender and race. (although roleplaying is still very predominantly a white male pastime. ) We get into this for the imaginary people, not the imaginary objects. Because really, it's the drama and relationships that are important and get us invested, everything else is just a backdrop. Even geeks can not stay engrossed with slaughtering alone. I find that very telling.
Dork tower presents the non-history of dragon magazine. Look how thing's have non-changed.
Scale & claw: So half-dragons are a lot more common than they used to be last edition, and the rules on what kinds of dragons can produce them are far less restrictive. That IS an interesting change. What do I think of it? Actually, I find myself surprisingly ambivalent. The scientific part of my brain recognises the value in having things accessible and standardised, but there's still a part of me that finds the baroque rules of the issue 206 version more interesting, where each half dragon type has individual rules, some of which vary for the same species on different worlds. Still, with the mechanics all sorted out, that means they can devote more attention to the roleplaying and characterisation side this time. Like most halfbreeds, they get plenty of leeway to favour either side of their parentage, but their charisma bonus isn't always enough to stop them from becoming viewed as freaks and outcasts. And even more than before, they're more powerful than the average character, (until you start enforcing ECL to slow their advancement appropriately) so they can be a real temptation for a PC. This is a good reminder of how much more open 3e is in terms of player options, but also how if all the PC's are special, none of them will feel special in the long run. Where the rules don't provide oversight, the DM must for the game to remain fun.
Draconian Tactics: This is an even more familiar topic, that's mainly enlivened by the fact that as their first birthday under 3e, they can go into plenty of detail on specific tactics that the new rules support or discourage, and it'll be fresh this time around. Individual races do have roughly the same sets of spell-like abilities that they used too, but these have been subtly changed by the new rules. They can also choose different feats, select more spells than they probably could under 2e, and if you're really mean, you can add templates or class levels to increase their flexibility further and keep the players on their toes. So this avoids rehash by being sufficiently specific that it's full of advice you won't have seen before, but also shows that the writers stayed sufficiently true to the dragon types as we know them as to not alienate old players. It's an article that needed to be done, so it's good that it was done well.
Dragontongue: The language primers seem to be decreasing in frequency now, but they haven't done dragons, so they can join in here this year. And since Draconic is a language commonly used by spellcasters, and many lizardy humanoids use simplified dialects as well, a solid grounding is rather handy to an adventurer. Unsurprisingly, they have a lot of different possessives, reflecting that they're greedy buggers, so they like to define exactly how they stand with respects to another person or object. The sample phrases aren't as verbose as I would expect though, usually coming in at fewer words than their english equivalents (which are weirdly colloquial in themselves, and feel like they would be tricky to directly translate. ) I have a hard time imagining a dragon saying "Totally radical dudes! Let's send out for pizza" So as usual, I'm not totally enamoured of this series.
Run for your Lives: Time for the usual kind of advice about running a dragon and keeping it scary. Build up any encounter beforehand, and don't overuse the dragon itself. Remember to play them smart and prepared, but also arrogant and maybe too paranoid for their own good. Nothing particularly new here then, unlike the previous articles. If you've read previous years, (and I know they have increased their readership lately, so there must be some new people that this is relevant too) you can skip this one and not feel like you've missed anything. Again.
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 3/7
Taste test: Robin Laws goes into psychoanalyst mode again, trying to break gamers down into useful categories, that'll then allow you to ensure they all get a chance to do the things they love. Make sure there's fighting for the hack-and-slashers, talky bits for the roleplayers, and challenges that utilise any idiosyncratic special abilities characters might have. I'm thinking if you need to think like, you aren't putting enough effort into making your setting solid and detailed enough that players can apply whatever tools they prefer to get a result anyway. While it is important to make your game fun, if the players feel you're pandering to them, and everything comes too easy or is only solvable by their specific combination of stats and equipment, the world loses verisimilitude. So yeah, this is a bit too far into the narrativist side of the GNS triangle for my tastes. Kinda losing me here.
Wise as an Ox, Strong as an Owl: An article on making the most of low ability scores right after the editorial talked about it? Must be playing on their minds then. But of course, while there may be roleplaying advantages to playing a character who has some weaknesses, they also have mechanical vulnerabilities. And in a game as tactical as 3e, that becomes more significant. So this isn't just about how to roleplay a character with a low stat, but how to play them tactically so their weaknesses have less impact on their actions, particularly in combat. (Con & Dex are the ones you really suffer for neglecting regardless of role) Another pretty good bit of evidence that their priorities have shifted quite a bit, and they're reducing rehash by exploring this new playstyle thoroughly. Iiinteresting.
Fiction: Pilgrim's test by Thomas Harlan. Fool Wolf's story has finished. Now here's the debut of another writer who'll get quite a few stories published in the next few years. This is an action high, and magic light little story, set in the time of the crusades, and focussed on the adventures of a young knight and his wise old servant. In typical adventurer style, when the DM tries to railroad him into surrendering, he proves himself quite capable of surviving a threat that has him seemingly outmatched, and causing a fair amount of collateral damage. So this rings fairly true to my own adventuring experiences, while also not being overly D&Dish, and still working as a story. I can see why they'd invite him back on this showing, especially if his rules writing is also good.
Campaign Corner: We've had a longstanding problem with some people wanting more coverage of specific game worlds, but it being a struggle to get the material, and the new owners wanting to avoid splitting the fanbase. This is their latest attempt, cramming a ton of little plot hooks into a few pages, adapted for their respective campaign worlds. They're all notes that are designed to lead players into an adventure, and have multiple options on how it could go so even if your players read this, they'll still won't be spoiled on the adventure. So this is one for if you need an initial spark to get you going, but know how to build on that under your own steam. This seems like it could stay interesting for a while.
Class acts: Monte turns his attention to a topic he would later revisit in greater depth in Arcana Evolved. The dragon kith, a person who gains draconic abilities by swearing fealty to one, and then performing rituals that bond them together. And they're not quite as good as the later incarnation, with some awkward roleplaying limitations for not particularly spectacular powers. While nearly any class can get into them, they're best optimized for fighty sorts, with their full BAB, natural armour, (which will of course stack with everything else) and smiting effect. Probably best used as NPC's, unless you want a dragon ordering you around and dragging the rest of the party on their missions.
Faiths of Faerun: Ooh. Yay. The start of a new column. Gods are an important part of the setting, and they've certainly made plenty of appearances in the magazine. But so far, that's usually been a whole pantheon to an article, which means individual deities only get a page or two at most. On the other hand, most do not credit an entire book about them. But an article going into more depth on one, ecology style, wouldn't be a bad idea, and could give them years of articles without rehashing themselves. This has definite potential.
The reality, unfortunately, is rather less glamorous. Fluff expansion is completely eschewed in favour of taking a rather anally detailed look at multiclass clerics, and how to best achieve the crunch matching the flavour of two cleric orders, Azuth's Magistrati and Helm's Watchers. As with so much of the multiclass path stuff, this all feels like discredited design that will result in suboptimal characters compared to a straight cleric. Another case where the kinks of the format definitely need ironing out. Send feedback!
Elminster's guide to the realms: This new column, on the other hand, looks really cool, with a real emphasis on the looks. Ed did this before in 1994 with Elminster's notebook, a 1-2 page adventure hook/setting expansion with extensive illustrations building the atmosphere. Only now it's in full colour, with maps, and a greater emphasis on actually detailing the meat of the encounter. Still, some things remain familiar, and one of those is that there's absolutely tons of high level spellcasters in the Realms who've achieved a degree of immortality. (as they're near impossible to kill for good once they've got their contingencies up, they just keep on accreting) Thankfully, the one detailed here is a fairly friendly sort, willing to share his knowledge to those who come in peace, and give brutal demonstrations of his custom spells to those that don't. You can get to high levels self-taught, but if you want a real breadth of options (especially important if you're a wizard) you need to be aware of other's ideas and borrow them liberally. I think this reinforces that one of the reasons for the Realms' success is that it is the closest of all the D&D worlds to the way a world that ran on D&D physics would actually turn out, so it rings true to people's experiences. And as long as that continues to be the case, it'll continue to be popular despite the overcrowding.
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 4/7
Cities for the ages: The new columns continue with one that could in theory continue for as long as the Ecologies, but in practice, it seems unlikely. While there are plenty of interesting historical cities out there, we've found these articles tend to draw more than their fair share of annoying nitpicking, which grows tiresome to the editors after a while. Scanning ahead reveals it lasts less than a year before being consigned to the scrapheap.
But anyway, they're starting off with London. We've already had a fairly substantial adventure set there in issue 100, so this shouldn't be unfamiliar to long-term readers. What's interesting is that they choose to concentrate on the way it was in the elizabethan era. It's population was only in the hundreds of thousands, but many modern land marks were already in place, and it was more than crowded enough for disease, smog, and some fairly complex industrial setups. They also stat out the major figures of the day, although I'm dubious how well they map to D&D classes. Well, many of the adventure hooks are explicitly supernatural as well, so strict realism obviously isn't on the agenda. It's more another reminder that there's tons of stuff you can plunder from historical and folklore books for a game. So so far, this is pretty interesting. Let's see if it's short run was due to a descent into moribundity, or lack of popularity.
Giants in the earth: Thomas Harlan follows up his fiction with the stats of some of the characters. Jerusalem in the time of the crusades was obviously one of the most ethnically diverse, interesting places you could live, with plenty of opportunities to both kill and be killed in the name of your principles. Pity the people who just want to live a normal life there.
Golonza di Barratti demonstrates the general low power level of the setting. At only 6th level, he's one of the most powerful spellcasters around, and his spellbook is still lacking the big blasty spells a Forgotten Realms one of the same level would take for granted. Which means he still has to worry about the church and respect of his peers. Oh, if only you could be a sorcerer instead, then they'd all pay!!!!
Sir Harold Edwinson is the young impetuous knight who was the star of the story. Despite his temper, he's still more than principled enough to keep his paladin status, and has more than enough personality quirks to not be just an engine of righteousness. Now he just needs a master he can respect, who can keep him pointed in the right direction to do the most good.
Sir Carl Zorn Zugott is older and more cynical, but has managed to retain his faith nonetheless. Spend a while dealing with the best and worst of people, and you'll learn it's not about sides, there are good and evil people of all races and religions. I think that applies anywhere.
Manwys ap Lleidd is the wise old squire who tries to keep Harold alive, both in battle and in the kitchen. :p This means he has plenty of stories to tell, and a dry sense of humour about the strange things he's seen. It's the old ones you've really got to watch out for, as they're the ones with the biggest set of tricks up their sleeves.
Jacopo Ghiarelli reinforces again that this is a magic low world, and most musicians are simply experts or rogues, not D&D style bards. Even a single level in a spellcasting class (gained due to an encounter with the fae) is a big deal, that can leave a person traumatised. He still pretends to be a happy-go-lucky rogue, but it's not easy. Still better than being burned at the stake I guess.
Fingold Torfinson also shows that there is more supernatural stuff going on outside the realms where christianity holds sway, as a half-elf who has a serious vendetta against the drow. So this leaves me interested in finding out more about his setting, and if he can manage to avoid the rapid escalation that the rules encourage. It's nice to see them still trying to integrate historical stuff into the game.
The bestiary: Johnathan M. Richards shows that not everyone is keen to leave the excesses of late 2e behind, by giving us the same birthday gift he did 2 years ago. More Greater Drakes. More little attempts to find rational biological excuses for breath weapons, and give low level characters the chances to ride dragons without it completely breaking the game. It's not as bad as getting socks, but it does seem a little played out, especially now you could add half-dragon to all manner of riding beasts and have your flying, firebreathing mounty fun that way. Yawn.
Barautha spit venom like cobras, blinding you in the same way.
Ermalkankari store stones in their gullet, then spit them at you.
Mardallond store fermenting liquid in their throat bladders, then do the fire-breather trick. Their breath must constantly smell like they're totally pissed.
Trilligarg are chameleonic, and have lots of inflatable spikes on their throat bladder. The puffer fish trick works better when it's your whole body that does the inflating.
Vallochar spit web fluid at you, and can walk in webs. Just the thing for spiderman to ride, should he ever desire a dragon mount. And let's face it, that idea should appeal to the 5 year old boy in all of us.
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 5/7
Miscellaneous Mishaps: This looks like it could be a new regular column, but actually isn't. It's one of those random D100 tables they have fairly frequently these days. Going into a pub, and the DM hasn't decided what's going on? Roll on this one. Most of the results are fairly mundane, with a few that are obvious adventure hooks, like slipping stuff into someone else's drink or a violent interrogation taking place. If you're a hero, you'll probably want to do something about that. Just make sure you have some generic NPC stats ready if they do choose to fight them, for there's nothing worse than not being able to follow up your cool plot hook and watching the adventure stall. Another brief and fairly handy system free article.
Bazaar of the Bizzarre: The bazaar gets in with the theme this birthday, as it does sometimes, but not as often as the bestiary does. More specifically, this is a bunch of unique items in a specific dragon's hoard. This implies lots and lots of setting detail.
Letrathe's skin is a set of armor made by the dragon's half-ogre daughter. It absorbs fire damage and allows you to possess people. She then tried to possess her dad and got killed for her troubles. And now he has her armour. Family eh. Who'd have them.
Scalebreaker is an axe designed to slay dragons. It obviously wasn't good enough. :p
Beguiler of Wyrms is a mandolin with hypnotic powers on dragons. It WAS good enough, but then their buds had to spoil everything by attacking, and the bard responsible left it behind during the subsequent slaughter.
Frosthaven is a magical shield which radiates cold. This is of course extra effective against red dragons in the new edition. It's user still got ripped to shreds, but this also permanently crippled our star. He's still probably badass enough to take on your party.
Houn's Grand Compendium volume VIII is a volume on the optimal tactics for fighting red dragons. It's wizardly wielder managed to survive longest of all, and inflict another crippling wound upon him. So we got to see a whole story gradually built up through this collection. A very cool idea indeed, making excellent use of fluff and crunch. Top marks.
VS Dragons: Well, we had advice on how dragons fight under 3e rules earlier. Now we have a parallel one on how to fight them. Here, the archetype of the solitary dragon-slayer is in reality one of the worst possible things you can do. They're smart, mobile, have multiple attacks, and are frequently well-prepared. So to beat them, you've got to be able to overwhelm those preparations. Even centuries of meticulously arranged traps will be worn out faster than they can be replaced if you have enough minions, and you can keep on harrying them until they run out of spells. So get as much help as possible, and attack in a spread out pattern that'll keep them from wiping out everyone with a single breath. More quirky is the revelation that since many dragon types have strong elemental connections, clerics with the appropriate domains can turn or rebuke them. (although you'll need to be pretty high level to do so reliably) And of course the fact that creatures can't move if they're taking the full attack option means you'll benefit quite a bit from hitting and running if you take the anti-AoO feats. So lots of good and very specific advice here too, that won't be applicable in other editions. That just leaves the question of how they'll keep next year's birthday features fresh. Cross that bridge when we get to it.
Nodwick also gives us some non-history of dragon magazine, and their lives and times. Lots of special guests make a non-appearance.
Forum: Jean-Phillipe Suter continues to dig himself into a hole in the sexism debate. Men deserve to not be patronised and degraded too! Consistently using the same pronoun makes for stronger writing! Me me me me.
Dorothy V. McComb reminds us that while men may be stronger, women are longer lived and generally more resistant to disease. Perhaps a bonus to Con is in order. And the lifespan tables ought to be adjusted accordingly too.
Kerry R. (what happened to the surname? ) wonders why having the ability to bear children is such a great power anyway. It's not as if you can use it in combat unless you're a deepspawn, and I think they're hermaphroditic anyway. We ought to have grown out of balancing fluff advantages with combat disadvantages and vice versa by now.
Dino Sorrele thinks that if women get a -2 to str, they ought to get a +2 to dex, int, wis and cha to compensate. After all, it's only realistic. :p
Richard Keehn wonders what Jean-Phillipe is trying to accomplish. Does he want to drive away female players? Discourage male players from playing female characters? Neither seems particularly good for the overall diversity and fun of the game.
Alexander H. Macleod IV wonders if people are still facing harassment from people who think D&D is satanic. Along with sexism complaints, that's the other big thing the forum's refocussing on edition change really killed off. Does that mean it's faded away in the wider world too?
Jason Gaddle has found his group swelling from 5 to 20 with the new edition. Thank you so much WotC! Now that's what you call a success story at bringing in new people. Shame the new edition is less friendly to actually being run with large parties.
Robert Kloeckner thinks despite the edition change, wizards are still wimps in combat. If anything, even more so, because fighters can now get tons more bonuses to damage, and keep them up all day. But they still smoke fighters in utility. And as we'll discover soon, combat lengths are usually a lot shorter than you think, especially when parties start doing the 15 minute workday thing. This is a more complicated issue than it first appears.
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 6/7
PC Portraits: Half-dragons are the subject of this month's portraits, once again showing that they're actually fairly common nowadays. The artist makes sure that there's plenty of variation in how much they take after each side, and indeed, what their humanoid side is, with dwarves, elves, halflings and orcs clearly represented. So this is a pretty strong entry, and one that's not likely to be repeated too. Pick a character, any character, and see if they can overcome prejudice to find a place in the world.
Role Models: Having put plenty of attention to painting people, now we turn our attention to monsters. The bigger ones, you'll often have to assemble yourself, which is a whole new can of worms for an amateur to screw up. So rather than just glueing fiddly bits and hoping they'll set in the right position, you can use little metal pins to fix things more securely. Scales, feathers, claws, and other things get short pieces of advice on how to paint appropriate textures, This feels like it's a case where they need to do some more expansion to really cover the topic in a satisfying manner. Otherwise it's a case of humanocentric worldview, and I'm not that keen on that. Let's see if they move on next month, or go over this some more.
The Play's the Thing: Robin gives us another bit of advice that seems completely obvious and common sense once you know it, but might not think of it independently. Don't make characters that have no connection to one-another or the DM's world. Create them in a group session, so you can trade ideas and give them good reasons to know each other and work together in game. I've gone on about the benefits of collaborative creativity over solo before, and this is an excellent example. Even if the final product isn't always better, you usually have more fun with the process in a group, and you're less likely to spend hours ground to a halt. (unless some people are having TOO much fun at the expense of concentration. ) And since with gaming, the amount of fun you have, not the quality of the final product is your real metric of success, this is definitely a medium that benefits from this kind of thinking. Simple, elegant and positive. That's the way to get people following and imitating you.
The DM's Toolbox: Another advice column primarily aimed at DM's? Interesting. They have been decreasing the frequency of their old regular columns, which shows they're aware that they've become a little played out. And since DM's are more likely than players to buy the magazine regularly, and need more help in general, they do need to make sure a fair proportion of their page count is focussed on them. In contrast with Robin's one, this starts off by examining not something to do with how you play, but the environment you play IN. Even something as simple as the seating arrangement can make a difference in how the group communicates and relates to one-another, especially when it's a large one. Course, some people may not take kindly to being told where to sit and who to sit next too, so trying to control this stuff consciously may backfire on you. Similarly, saying you should make sure any distractions are turned off or out of the room is common sense, but can be easier said than done in today's technology filled world. (one valid argument against keeping everything on your computer. ) So this has one rather interesting idea they haven't suggested before, along with several they have. It's nice when a column works straight away, instead of flailing around for a few months while the writer finds their feet. Let's hope they can keep it up.
Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
part 7/7
Sage advice: Is spell resistance affected by negative levels (On the attackers side, not the defenders. P'chau. )
Would a fireball destroy all your mirror images (No. It's gonna hit you anyway, so it's not a giveaway when it does. )
Can you choose who is affected by mass heal (Thankfully.)
Do you need to be able to see the target of a spell (If it has the target keyword. See the wisdom inherent in the system! )
What level of cover blocks line of effect (Only 100%. Note that mini's are not necessarily proper representations of their game volume. )
Do your allies block spell effects if you're shooting from the rear (Quite possibly. It's a hard life, being a wizard.)
Can multiclass spellcasters add levels together to get feat prerequisites (No. They are definitely suboptimal. Now we discover the repression inherent in the system. )
How do enlarge and empower spell affect lightning bolt. (Not as much as you think. Don't make Skip get all technical on you. Skip will use the socket wrench, if you know what I mean. )
Does desecrate penalize both the roll to turn undead and the roll determining the amount turned (no)
Can you use shocking grasp through a metal object. (No. That would be a waste. )
Does magic armour reduce your spell failure chances (no)
Can you befriend a summoned creature and make it stick around, or come find you after the spell wears off. (No. That's the kind of logical can of worms we try and avoid these days. Best to treat it as if they have no life at all when not summoned.)
What happens when you scry for a polymorphed creature (You find them. You may think you got a wrong number though.)
Can discern location overpower mind blank (no. It's too powerful. )
Does spell immunity block metamagiced spells (It's still the same old spell, (do de do do))
Are your items disintegrated with you (Not anymore. The wizards committee were tired of not being able to take complainants stuff after they killed them, so they modified it for the new edition)
Does mage armour stack with normal armour (No. Remember the type stacking rules. )
How many people can fit in a cube of force (4. How convenient that that's the number of a normal party these days.)
Does dust of appearance work the same way as dust of disappearance (No. You need far less precision to make things appear again.)
Silicon Sorcery: Asheron's Call! They've been advertising that for a while, haven't they. Looks like it has some fairly typical MMO traits, characters can't die permanently, and can switch equipment instantly even in the middle of battle. So this article does some amusing lampshading, providing feats and magical items that'll let your PC's do that, should you actually want to give your game an MMOish feel. Attune to lifestones and you'll respawn whenever you die, with no greater penalty than a temporary negative level and the loss of your most expensive single item to your killers. Take a feat which lets you absorb massive damage without complaint even more than regular D&D characters. And another one that lets you swap armour at high speed. Highly amusing, really. Of course, they're probably not quite balanced with regular feats, but when you're playing MMO style, that's part of the fun. And being brazen about these things rather than jumping through hoops to try and make them sensible appeals more to me at the moment. So this little article definitely pleases me. (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/me-gusta)
Dungeoncraft: Ray dealt with the gods last issue. Now he makes some quite interesting changes to Clerics to make them fit the world better. Turning undead is replaced by turning dinosaurs. (although I think rebuking/controlling them would make more sense even for good clerics. ) Dimension travel, undead affecting and easy food creation spells are eliminated from their spell list, keeping things local so the kitchen sink doesn't get in, but quite a few new spells get added to replace them. As before, it's not quite as radical as the changes they went through in Dark Sun, but pretty interesting, and in much the same vein, reflecting that this is a savage world where the gods are very much present, although they can be a bit hard to understand from a human perspective, which gives PC clerics some leeway in how they fulfil their remit. It definitely feels like Ray's having more fun this time around, and this willingness to change things will make the resulting campaign more memorable. The world continues to build depth and plot hooks quite nicely. Now, what will he do with the other classes?
Dragonmirth has a particularly high quality and variety of artwork.
HARN gets computer modules. Intriguing.
What's New takes a skewed look at marriages. They don't have to involve a ball and chain, you know.
The magazine has already felt rejuvenated for a while now, and this cements their renaissance with a whole load of interesting new experiments. Even the updates of old topics are once again more interesting than they've been in a while. I do think keeping next year's birthday fresh might be a little trickier though, but we'll cross that bridge when we get too it. In the meantime, let's see which new features stick around next issue, and which are already struggling to get material.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 1/7
120 pages. Hello to the halfling that sparked a thousand guilty fantasies. Yamara's bitchiness is visible from half a decade away. Yup, they're getting the themed issue all to themselves for the first time since 1982. And they're absolutely determined to degoofify them. If that means trying to sex them up, so be it. This could go so very very wrong. Will this issue get the pedobear seal of approval, or will it somehow manage to make this topic just another day at the office?
Scan Quality: Poor, fuzzy, low resolution and with marks on pages.
In this issue:
Wyrm's turn: So yeah, they're trying to sex up halflings. And they're trying to prove they're not alone in that desire by looking for reference materials. They remind us of Fineous Fingers, where the halflings might not be sexy, but they're certainly not nice or cuddly either. They then start to run out of ideas. They find one in the pregens for the A modules, and that's it. I guess it's up to the future to satisfy their desires, rather than getting stuck in the past. But this looks like it might take a fair bit of effort to get people to come along. Not a particularly good sign. Things tend to catch on if there's already a demand for them, people just don't know it yet. It doesn't look like that's the case here.
Scale Mail: Our first letter makes the rather interesting observation that many real world gods have multiple aspects, and priests may concentrate on one of them. This is a good excuse for a wide range of alignments while retaining their spells, and valid ecumenical conflicts within a broader framework. I approve.
The article on movies provokes some debate, of course, getting two letters. It's very much a matter of taste, so favourites and loathed choices will vary widely. The question is simply how many letters like this they can be bothered to publish before growing bored and moving to the next topic.
And to round things off, we have someone who likes the champions of virtue article, but recognises that it also has some fairly significant balance issues. Carefully grading their spell progression ratio to the amount of powers they get rather than just using half and full ones is the way to go there.
Nodwick resolves the whole thing without any violence. Rather a dull experience for them, really.
Previews: They realize that the splatbooks are by far the biggest sellers, and give Tome and Blood, the arcane spellcaster splatbook, a full page spread. There is a quite alarming amount of smugness from Bruce and Skip over what they've achieved. Trust us, once you've got it, it'll be an essential part of your game. Roll out the prestige classes, give everyone enough to build the character they want. There's also the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. The edition change hasn't removed their desire to capitalize upon their old properties. Monte Cook'll help us find out who's moved in since the last lot got kicked out. You've got to raze the damn place, or new monsters'll occupy it in no time. Haven't you learned that now?
Their novel lines chug along happily. Dragon's Bluff by Mary H. Herbert continues the interlocked generational saga Krynn has become. Servant of the Shard by R. A. Salvadore does much the same for Drizzt and co, only without the generational stuff. Although maybe it ought to, given the amount of time that's passed IC. Oh well, that's the advantage of elves.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 2/7
PROfILES drops back to a single page, and returns to covering writers. David Noonan is a fairly recent arrival, but has already worn the writer, designer and editor hats on various projects. His most prestigious work to date is the new manual of the planes, but really, he's just part of the big team. And he seems to prefer it that way, bouncing ideas off the other people in the office, everyone being energized by everyone else. Seems like another one where they try and promote their big
new thing, and play up how much of a big happy family the current WotC team is, at least as long as you're working 12 hour days for them. Not our most interesting profile. I think this feature is on it's way out again, as they seem to be running out of current big names to cover.
Dork tower gets back to the shop. And the useless geeks. No wonder they avoided it for so long.
The secret life of halflings: In the attempt to make halflings more exciting, it's time to completely rewrite the setting stuff. Gone are the good old tolkien style shires full of stay-at-home gossipy folks, replaced by semi-nomadic commonwealths where social class is largely irrelevant. There are still a fair amount of holdovers from the old representation, including Roger Moore's gods, and their love of riddles, so this doesn't feel like a total departure, but it does feel like changing things for the sake of change, or quite possibly a craving for greater commercial success, or just to make sure their IP is distinct from Tolkien's. Who knows for sure. But in any case, it's quite telling that I can think of more negative reasons for them to change things around than I can positive ones. And I'm reminded of the old adage that the harder you try to appear modern, the more dated you'll seem in a few years time. So I'm not sold on this at all.
Little wizards: So yeah, in 3e, halflings make really good wizards. This wasn't planned, but an emergent property of the rules governing size changes, their ability modifiers, and facility at staying out of the way. Meanwhile elves actually make better rangers than wizards, despite their default favoured class. It's a good thing we have the CharOp board to examine this stuff, so next edition's classes and races can be much more focussed on one thing. Or maybe it isn't, as it destroys the organic feel of the game if all their features are focussed towards a single goal, leaving them definitely suboptimal at everything else, at which point you might as well have the restrictive class selections of earlier editions anyway. It's definitely one of the more thorny questions the design team has to deal with. So this shows how much they've learned already since 3e was released, and how much they'll change the game in response to it in the long run. They may not release new editions as quickly as M:tG, but the era of it being years between significant new books and rules revisions is now over. Mind you don't get left behind in the moves.
Four in darkness: Ah yes, a tie-in article for their new product. Not a great surprise. The creatures of elemental evil aren't THE most iconic or expanded upon of D&D's creations, but they retain their own reasonably solid fanbase, thanks to the classic module. (and persistent eaten by a grue meme) This is definitely worth maintaining and building upon. So Monte updates their stats for the new edition, and also gives us a template for corrupted elementals, and 8 new spells giving elementalists lots of options to grief you, whatever your resistances and weaknesses are. So lots of useful material here, and a little bit of advice on how to use it. Evil creatures don't generally get along, so you can play one off against another, and maybe get a little extra profit for yourself into the bargain. A no-nonsense, well balanced article, providing some updated old stuff, some new stuff and some advice on how to use it? Sounds like a pretty decent combo to me.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 3/7
Fiction: Enchantment by Ben Bova. The reign of Arthur might have been long and impressive in most versions, but it always inevitably has to end. No matter how many times Orion wins a battle, he only has to fail once. And while he can win the straight up-fights, he can't stop Arthur from having sex with the wrong woman, and producing Mordred, who we all know will eventually be instrumental in his downfall. This advances the overall plot by a fair chunk, but isn't as standalone as the previous stories in this series. Like Fool Wolf's story, I get the impression that this tale may reach it's conclusion in just a few more instalments, and then what will replace it? Still, at least the final twists and turns are likely to be pretty dramatic.
Campaign Corner: This month, we have a Zhentil defector in the Realms, some demons trying to retrieve a magic item on Oerth, some missing Factols in Sigil, and a piece of parchment that's diagonally upside-down, and unreadable at this resolution for Birthright. So while each of the plot hooks is once again fairly specific, most of them are easily adaptable, apart from the planescape one, which really needs that detailed factional structure. Maybe you could replace it with feuding guilds or religions in a place with a different focus. These hooks are too short to write about much, so like the portraits, I worry I may run out of things to say. I guess it all depends how specific they keep them as much as anything.
Class Acts: Monte takes an interesting tack to this month's theme. The lightbearer, bringer of the comforts of home, hearth and community to the dark places adventurers roam. Their abilities are primarily defensive, with all good saves, a bit of magical healing, a bit of ability to drive away evil creatures. If you want your halflings to feel LotRish, huddled in the wilderness and driving away nazgul by words rather than swords, this is actually a surprisingly appropriate prestige class to take. Obviously, in terms of combat power they're a bit weak, but they're so thematic that I can forgive them anyway. Perfect for that wandering NPC who doesn't get involved in the fighting, but still manages to save the day.
The Bestiary: More new school Greyhawk creepies this month, courtesy of James Jacobs. This time, we head to the Gnarley forest and the temple of elemental evil. If you're at all surprised they went around creating corrupted elementals and domesticating whatever weird creatures they found, you don't know evil cultists very well.
Breathdrinkers are formed from air ripped from people's lungs, and keep on killing in this fashion to sustain their existence. Another dark fairytale monster, as is very much this writer's wont.
Rukarazyll are another SAN lowering abomination that delights in assuming a human form and tricking you into various depravities and misfortunes. And then probably laughing in a deep distorted voice that sounds like a stereotypical anime tentacle monster. :p Yes, they're finally getting a proper foothold in D&D. Bad game designers! Baka no eechi! :thwacks with hammer: :D
Firetongue frogs aren't nearly as powerful, but they're still sadistic taunting creatures with tricks far in excess of their HD. Throw them in the drink to kill them.
Orlythys are another gross monster from the oceanic depths of the abyss. Ok, you're starting to get predictable now. Randomly distributed tentacles and other organs are losing their scariness factor. Please to be finding a new gimmick.
Tralusk also have far more eyes in odd places than they ought to, but are closer to a conventional body shape otherwise. They're also another one which uses music as a luring tool. Man, the number of monsters that do that over the years, you could make a whole orchestra with them.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 4/7
Cities of the ages: Prague is their city of choice this time. And like London, it has a long and interesting history, with it's fair share of mythology grown out of it. So rather than go for historical realism, they concentrate on the fantastical side of it, painting a picture of a town filled with little folk, steampunk contraptions, towering gothic buildings, and deals with the devil. That sounds pretty cool to me, and not particularly overdone, either. I guess that once again shows the advantages organic accretion has over custom design. Everything won't be built around one stereotype or writer's vision, but living in the same place will inject some commonalities of mood and culture. Injecting a little more eastern europe into your fantasy would make a nice change from the pseudo british stuff.
Faiths of Faerun: A substantial step up from the debut for this column. Instead of trying to shoehorn this one into multiclass combinations, we get a prestige class. The silverstar of Selune. This actually seems like a very good one indeed, as they get full spellcasting, normal cleric BAB, and a new special power every single level. You may have to soak up a few cross-class skills to get into it without multiclassing, but this is a relatively minor sacrifice given the array and breadth of powers granted. I believe many people will be ready to make that sacrifice to get this stuff, particularly infected lycanthropes, which this is a huge advantage for. I think this definitely qualifies as one of the higher end prestige classes.
Elminster's guide to the realms: A shrine to Tempus gets the full visual treatment this month. While this is designed for defensibility, it also has an interesting sense of aesthetics, showing how weaponry can also be art. In the high-magic world of the Realms, any group that doesn't have an arsenal of magical protections on their base is going to be a sitting duck to a smart group of adventurers. Along with the site specific stuff, we see him attempt to standardise potion labelling, so there's fewer hassles with taste testing. I think that's one old school element most players are happy to leave behind, so you can see why that would catch on. The new corebook may be just out, but that doesn't mean the Realms is going to stop evolving and growing, even for a little while. So let the metaplot continue.
VS Pixies: What's even smaller than halflings? And more annoying too? Pixies! Invisible, flying, mind-reading, and full of magical tricks and the will to use them, until you have spellcasters able to counter their basic powers, you're likely screwed, and your best protection is being able to laugh along with the joke. The problem then becomes figuring out that they are pixies, and not some more malevolent form of hidden trickster that'll still fleece you for everything you've got if you do give up. That's the problem with things that can both hide and change shape. It's all too easy for one of them to disguise itself as another. It's no wonder they get less and less popular as the editions progress.
Nodwick uncovers the biggest conspiracy evar in D&D history. And is then paid handsomely to keep it under wraps. And we shall speak no more of it.
Chainmail: The end pages of the magazine get a visual revamp, discarding the dungeonpunk for a slightly more techno style, and introduce yet another new feature that looks like it might well become a regular. A D&D minis game? Set in Greyhawk? And featuring the same kind of over-the-top plot happenings as Warhammer Fantasy Battle? This has the potential to annoy the fanbase as much as From the Ashes. Well, probably not, as they're not changing existing things, but setting it in the uncovered continent to the west of the Flanaess, so it's still ignorable in your regular Greyhawk games.. And in typical wargame fashion, you have a whole mess of sides competing for supremacy. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Goblinoids, Undead, and Demons (plus gnolls) are the teams, further reinforcing the WFB comparisons. So yeah, they obviously want some of those sweet wargaming dollars again. And to be honest, a little more variety in the stuff they're covering is always welcome. It'll be interesting to see if this crashes and burns like TSR's CCG's, or manages to carry on for a few years getting regular articles like Alternity.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 5/7
Forum gets a new blue, slightly gridded background. This is not a bad change, and less likely to suffer legibility problems than grey on black. I approve.
Jeff Wilder thinks rangers are front-loaded, but then rapidly become the weakest class in the game. Since they got one of the biggest changes in 3.5, I'm inclined to agree with that.
Douglas Macleod wants to bring back comeliness to represent physical attractiveness and how various races perceive it in each other. No thanks. That would require tables to crossreference and you know they're trying to move away from tables in this edition.
The Cobster describes his average gaming session. 6:15 til 9, lots of roleplaying, very little dice rolling, absentees apologise in advance. It seems to work.
Kenneth G. VanSell II thinks the new psionic rules are horribly underpowered, and the psionic combat in particular is unfair and outdated. As with Rangers, their 3.5 revision pretty much vindicates this view. Guess the forum still has a substantial role to play in future edition changes too.
Silicon Sorcery: Age of Empires is their pick this month. Similar to last time, they give us four new feats, and a new monster to make your game run more like the computer game. Two of these feats make you better at mounted combat, showing how important cavalry units are in the game. The other ones give you bonuses attacking inanimate objects, and enhance your bonus for attacking from higher ground. The new monster is Living Catapults. They can both run you over, and shoot rocks at long range to take out fortifications without any personnel. Thankfully they move slowly, so you can in theory outmaneuver them. So these are general enough that you can put them in your game without it seeming obviously computer-gamey, and not unbalancingly overpowered either. Those are the kind of options that they should be giving.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 6/7
Sage advice turns it's eye on the new psionics rules. Hopefully they won't be quite as much of a hassle as the last ones.
Are psionic AC boosts effective against touch attacks (depends what type the bonus is )
Does inertial armor block disintegrate (no)
Can you stack natural armour, inertial armour, shields, and bracers of armour (Mostly no. Type stacking rules apply as usual. )
Can you spend extra points on psionic fist for even more damage (No. Maybe we should.)
Can you combine stand still and hold the line to twinky effect (Oh yes)
And can you also stack stand still and combat reflexes (Yup. You are learning well, young padwan)
Where's the rule about nonpsionic characters being mostly immune to psionic attacks (page 42!)
Can you choose to not make a defense against psionic attacks (If you like. Isn't that a nice change from last edition. And then for an encore, you can hold your hand in a fire, you silly person. )
If you spend all your PP's, can you use the nonpsionic line for defense (no)
Is there a limit to the number of points you can blow on psychofeedback (No. Skip will consider if this is another thing that should go on the nerfing list. )
Can metaphysical weapon be used on unarmed attacks (No. Poor little multiclass monks. )
Can you use float on yourself. (As long as you're not too fat)
Can you do psychic chirurgery on yourself (Physician, heal thyself. Yes. )
How does inflict pain work (Erroneously. Cast Official Errata time! )
What level is the highest level psionicist in a community (Not as high as most classes)
Can psionic creatures without PSP's use items that require them. (No)
Can you use trigger power with metapsionics (yes)
I don't get the bonus power points table (Add it together. )
What power list do the prestige classes use ( Psion)
Do psionic attacks provoke attacks of opportunity (yes)
Does inner strength count towards meeting prestige class requirements (no)
There are powers that say psychic warriors can have them, but aren't on the main list (Cast Official Errata! Skip's really starting to enjoy that. Who's da sage, Who's da sage :snoopy dance: )
Does apopsi lock or remove powers. Can you learn new ones (It's verry brutal. They're gone until you get the special healing powers to restore them.)
Why can't undead use psychometabolism when that's based on strength. How do they use psychokinesis ( Because they have no metabolisms. Substitute Cha for Con, like you do with concentration. )
The play's the thing: Robin's advice this month skews rather more towards the well duh side than the mindblowing. If a character is just a stereotype, they can be all too boring and predictable. But creating a complete personality from scratch can take quite a while. A good compromise is to start with a stereotype, or archetype if you want to sound more dignified, and then add a twist or two, until they feel like 2 dimensional characters at least, if not quite full 3D. Doesn't that sound easy. And familiar as well. Sorry, not breaking any new ground this time. Next!
PC Portraits: Halflings get a turn here, as you'd expect. They're all surprisingly skinny really, which ironically does not make them look short. Chalk that up to the way that our brains parse perspective when there aren't enough environmental cues. It doesn't dungeonpunkify them as much as some of these, but there are some attempts to make them gritty that don't quite work. Plus there's waay too much facial hair. So this is a bit awkward. You can't rewrite our conceptions as easily as that. Let's hope they do a little better when they get round to gnomes.
Dragon Issue 285: July 2001
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: Homebase time again. Having spent quite a while discussing the larger scale stuff, Ray goes back to this topic, to give us somewhere halfway safe for our PC's to come from. And he goes for the classic route of making it a casablanca in a hostile world, a place where people of all tribes and races can meet up in an uneasy peace. Gotta have one of those in your world, even if it is a few orders of magnitude smaller than Sigil or Waterdeep. And has bloody high taxes too, charged each time you enter, which is designed to keep the players from just popping in and out every time they need a healbot. So here you see him juggling the essential needs of a game, with the desire to make his new world non-stereotypical. Which means this is different from the first time around, and probably a little better. You'll be able to assemble a decent set of equipment, but even once you've got a few levels up, you'll still have to work to get in and out of here, and uncover it's secrets. And the world outside will remain big and hostile. Let's try and get that challenge rating just right in the next instalment.
Role models: Most of this column is devoted to how you paint and otherwise customise the base of your minis. After all, we've covered people and creatures, but a good base really finishes a model off. Of course, it also makes them look stupid if you put a particular terrain type on the base, and then use the mini in a different context. But that's only a problem if you have a limited supply of minis and space. That's the advantage and disadvantage of specialisation. Varnishing, on the other hand, makes your minis look cooler and last longer, so it's kinda a no-brainer. So it's the part that's more likely to be a problem that gets the most attention. Which makes sense, I guess. This column is still building on it's previous instalments nicely, but talking about finishing up makes me wonder where it's going to head next. They've introduced a lot of new columns recently. Will this one be on the chopping block or retooled again?
DM's toolbox: Ah yes, shifting the focus from adventures, worlds, or campaigns to Encounters as the basic building block of your play. I was wondering when that was going to start. Here we kick off the process that would eventually lead to D&D Encounters being one of the cornerstones of their organised play. This does have advantages in that smaller blocks are more modular and able to be inserted into an existing game. The problem becomes when those blocks are almost exclusively combat encounters, and the DM doesn't put effort into building them into part of a larger continuity in their own campaign. So this article approaches adventure building from a different perspective than we're used to here, and is notable as a historical landmark. But I also have a sense of forboding about this. They've already reduced their coverage of settings by a fair chunk. And I'm quite aware that they can do a lot more on that front.
Dragonmirth applies real world analogies to fantasy tropes again. What's new gets JRR Tolkien in. Ya Srysly. Hilarity ensues.
Not one of their better issues, as halflings prove to be a tricky subject to build an entire issue around. While they have refined their art style in recent issues, they are probably still trying too hard to be cool and modern rather than timeless and classic. No matter how you try, halflings will never be as ubiquitous as elves and dwarves. Just accept it, and give us a good few years before you do this topic again. So, what's next? O_O Broooooooooooooooksssssssssssss! :shakes fist:
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 1/7
114 (116) pages. :fingerclicks: Shananana na na na nara, shananana na na na nara. [/60's girl group] Oh yes, They're doing a themed issue on Terry Brooks' Shannara series. I wasn't expecting that. And I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. Is this born of genuine admiration, or cynical marketing synergy? Will the characters work well under D&D rules? Once again, it's looking like it'll probably be easier to model their idiosyncrasies under 3e than previous editions. And it'll certainly be different. After all, it's even more specific than Robin Hood, and the writer is still alive. Still, next thing you know, they'll be doing a whole themed section on a video game instead of just a single column. That idea doesn't appeal to me at all. So I open this issue with considerably more trepidation than usual.
Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Well, at least one of the staff is a huge Shannara fan. That makes me more optimistic that this issue was done for the right reasons. And interestingly enough the important thing he's taken from it is that the heroes are all ordinary people, or at least start off that way. They don't set out looking for adventure; like Tolkien's protagonists, it comes to them, and they have to deal with it. Which I have no problem with as a concept, but it does require that the DM put a lot of effort in to keep the players engaged, or players who are willing to metagame a little to make sure their characters do wind up on the adventure despite their supposed reluctance. What works well in a novel might not be so easy to accomplish in a game. So this already tells us more than a little about how we'll be approaching this topic. That good ol' zero to hero journey is going to play a big part. I don't think you'll be getting many players taking NPC levels as a result of this though. Maybe if you just give them one free one at the start for flavour.
Scale Mail: We start with a letter of praise for the idea of using National Geographic for inspiration. it's hardly some obscure publication that'll really surprise or baffle people if you pull it out. Now, if you were using Playboy for the articles, that might be a little more ... unique.
A good ol' errata complaint. James Wyatt still isn't the greatest crunch writer on the team, and needs a firm editorial hand to make the most of his talents.
An equally familiar bit of historical quibbling. THIIIISSS IIIS ACCURRRACY!!!!!
And let's not even get into the morality of the greek gods. The only reason Zeus gets a Good on the alignment scale is because he's enough of a bawss to bully the arbiters.
A whole bunch of gods they missed out also get statted here. Your egyptian pantheon just wouldn't be complete without them.
And the Realms proves popular, but also controversial, with one negative letter, but four positive ones filling out the end of this section with people's opinions on the new columns. If that ratio is representative of the overall volume of letters, it's no wonder they're going to keep giving Ed regular columns for years to come.
Nodwick spreads the word of his mighty and heroic deeds.
Previews: They change the format again, with another gimmicky column setup. Things are all compressed onto one page, as befits their shrinking number of releases. Heart of Nightfang Spire is this month's generic adventure. A year has passed, and it seems quite likely that more than a few groups have made it to 10th level, given the way the new XP system works. So let's get a-caterin.
The Realms continues to provide splatbooks above and beyond the generic ones, such is it's popularity. Magic of Faerun is another big load of power-creepy crunch. Sheer goob factor? What are the writers on? Well, I know Ed Greenwood is on another cocktease kick in Elminster in Hell. We know he's not going to really kill him off. You can watch him squirm for a bit though.
Dragonlance gets Brother of the Dragon by Tonya C. Cook. Off we go to see history sweep by again. Not that technology overall will advance, but at least some things change.
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 2/7
Up on a soapbox: And so Gary concludes his series on what we want in our roleplaying by talking about all the other possible elements that people have said they want. Most can be filed as subdivisions of the categories that he already suggested, while the social rewards of playing RPG's can be applied to any game with multiple players. Having a system for character advancement in game, however, is an important one that definitely deserves it's own category, since nearly all RPG's have it, and most other games with less continuity don't. Roleplaying's great strength, and weakness, is the sheer amount of depth you can create with it, and how hard that can become to keep track of. To get the payoff, you need to invest. And to get lots of people involved, you need to diversify. Really, it's not that surprising it isn't a more mainstream hobby, especially when there's so much competition. The best thing we can do to attract new people is to keep the existing fanbase from going toxic. After all, D&D grew pretty rapidly the first time around. If it weren't for the reputation of the existing fanbase, it might be able to do it again. You think that might be a good idea?
The dork tower crew go conventioneering. Will they get back alive and intact? What terrible stories will they have to tell?
The world of Shannara: To get all of us who haven't read the books started, here's a little geography and history primer. Since this series already has quite a few books, and Brooks isn't afraid of going multigenerational with his story, this takes a fair sized article. And it soon becomes apparent that while it may have started out with much the same ingredients as Tolkien: elves, dwarves, reluctant heroes, terrifying wraiths, mysterious spellcasters and dangerous magical items, it soon took it's own direction. Since there are regular skips of centuries between the books, and quite a lot of dangerous locations, there's plenty of room for a GM to create a game without the players feeling overshadowed by constant encounters with book characters, and their deeds. So it seems that this world probably is quite suited to D&D gaming, certainly moreso than Robin Hood was, and doing a special on it wasn't a bad idea at all for the magazine or the author. My skepticism is being won over, and I'm interested in seeing what the subsequent articles make of the world.
Elder druid: As we found last article, most D&D classes map into Shannara reasonably well. Druids, on the other hand, are quite different. They do have a little in common with 1st edition hierophants in that they use hibernating sleep to extend their lifespan. But other than that, their special abilities are quite distinct. Speaking all languages and perfect memory make them able to step outside their culture and become universal diplomats, while their ability to use magical fire, charge weapons to smite things, and supercharge themselves at the cost of their lifespan means they make decent straight combatants. (if not quite as effective as shapeshifted D&D druids) So this is a fairly powerful prestige class, but still not quite as good as a straight CoDzilla, and it's quirks may trip players up in an interesting way in the long run. It seems like it could be used in another game world without too many problems.
Heroes & Villains: Next we have the dramatis personae. Because of the multigenerational nature of the stories, only the villains get full-sized writeups, while the heroes only get familial ones, talking about their general personality traits, with lots of abbreviated statblocks. This means I find myself more interested in the villains and what drives them. If so much of the heroes personality traits are hereditary, then what does that say about free will around here? Are people destined to keep on going through the same challenges, and making the same mistakes? That would be terribly depressing, even if individually they generally win them. That's one of the things I found most annoying reading the bible, seeing subsequent generations forgetting the lessons God taught the previous ones, forcing him to smite them all over again. It's not really the kind of thing I want in my escapism, true to reality as it is.
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 3/7
Creatures of the four lands: Now we get to the meaty stuff that's most plunderable for use in other games. Monsters and items. Let's see if these are sufficiently different to add to your D&D game, or just reinventing the wheel with a different paintjob.
Skull Bearers are corrupted druids, although they've become outsiders rather than undead. They can fly, use a good selection of spells, generate terror, and are a bugger to detect magically. At low levels, they're big boss material, but there's also enough of them that you could wind up facing a whole team of them at higher level.
Mordwraiths seem suspiciously like ringwraith expys. They're cloaked so you can't see what's underneath, scary, can sense you without using sight, and use green fire in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Sounds fairly familiar, apart from the green fire bit. Why mess with a winning formula?
Moor Cats look suspiciously like Cringer from He-man, and can blur themselves to become even harder to spot and hit than regular cats. Like most cats in fiction, they're mysterious, smart, and may obey you if they feel like it, but can never truly be tamed. Good luck staying on their good side.
Rock Trolls fill the role of the big and tough looking, but ultimately dumb mook enemies a PC will soon be able to mow down as they level up. They're all about the honorable combat, which is pretty easy to exploit. You'd probably have better luck trying to maintain a friendly relationship with a tribe of them than you would orcs, and that's something.
Shadowen are another unpleasant supernatural beastie. They're the product of magical experimentation, possess people, drain their life-force, and are all-round unpleasant when they do take over. Since they have fast healing and incorporeality, it's near impossible to fight them without magic. So when they take over, they of course make magic illegal and promote witch-hunts against those who use it. That's a sensible evil plan if I ever heard one.
Mwellret are shapeshifting lizard men. While not stupid, they're one of those races that thinks they're inherently superior to everyone else, and this means they might not use their powers as smartly as they could. This is alway a flaw worth exploiting.
Relics and artifacts: While the monsters can fit into a D&D game and not feel out of place at all, the magical items of this series are a little trickier to incorporate. Most are artefact level by D&D standards, and even the weaker ones have dangerous side-effects. This makes it clear that it's not a place where you can just load up with an arsenal of bling and expect to solve your problems that way. Let the players beware if they encounter any of these in their game.
The Sword of Shannara is the namesake of the series, bringing truth to all around it by detecting lies, piercing illusions, and forcing people to accept themselves for what they truly are. Which is ultimately a good thing, but not particularly pleasant for those who have to go through it. As a macguffin to drive stories, it seems quite a good one, as anyone who's even slightly morally ambiguous is going to have something they don't want made public, and be wary of it's wielder.
The Black Elfstone is another exceedingly powerful device, able to detect, absorb and reflect magic fairly reliably. However, gaining all a creature's magical powers is very bad for the sanity indeed, so a sensible user will skip that part. These items all look like they're going to be balanced primarily by danger, rather than limited in power like D&D ones would in the new edition. Giving them to your players may well take them out of play before too long.
Blue Elfstones come in trios, and only work with one of each, and even then they only work for elves, with a 50% chance of working for half-elves. They also have a fair chance of burning you out with repeated use. God, magic can be finicky. I find myself longing for the reliable touch of science.
The Mirrorshroud is exactly the kind of thing the sword of Shannara is designed to deal with. A cloak that lets you shapeshift into someone the target trusts and read minds to help you keep up the facade? Very little good and a lot of unpleasantness can come of giving someone the power to do that. Even knowing it exists and people are willing to use it will be corrosive to the trust that keeps a community together.
The Stiehl is one of those lovely intelligent weapons that takes over it's wielder, using them to fulfil it's perpetual bloodlust by sharing some of the lifeforce it drains in an addictive manner. Unless you're a skilled professional assassin, this is very unlikely to end well for you. But to the weapon? No biggie. There's always another sucker who thinks they can handle it.
The Sword of Leah is very similar, only working for the other side. It's special powers are all about kicking demon ass, but it's still addictive, and with a tendency to make you go berserk. If there's no-one to talk you down, you'll probably sacrifice yourself saving the world, or wind up killing your friends when you run out of enemies. Designing intrinsically good things is a lot harder than making evil ones around here, it seems.
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 4/7
Fiction: Antrax by Terry Brooks. And so we finish off the themed section with an excerpt from the next novel in the series. Like many of the fiction pieces by WotC staff, this is primarily advertising, setting up the story and introducing you to some of the characters, but not resolving anything, so you have to spend more money if you want any satisfaction. And the writing is pretty annoying, telling rather than showing, and spending more time sketching out characters than actually having them do anything. Despite the cool stuff that the writers have plundered and converted from his world, I don't feel the desire to follow that up and read further. I'm left with rather mixed feelings about this theme.
Elminster's guide to the realms: Elminster comes up with a little something that feels like a holdover from the Wyrms of the North days this month. A dragon who schemes to control the economy of the Realms via cryptic clues and adventure hooks placed in the treasure caches she creates (while keeping the majority of her horde safely away from these plots, I presume) The map is of a good example one of them. While there is some treasure here, it's easily replaceable, and much of it is in the form of information, and magically enchanted so she can track it, and eventually retrieve and reuse it. This is another demonstration of how you can have dungeons that get visited and cleared out regularly, but still get replenished so other adventurers can use them, and why some powerful creature would go to the effort of maintaining and restocking them, while making sure that the challenges are set at a difficulty PC's have a good chance of overcoming. It illustrates how much of the adventurers life is a set-up, and how they can be tricked into fulfilling someone else's agenda without ever even speaking to them. Man, it can't be easy making a world both internally consistent, and able to sustain a high proportion of it's population being adventurers indefinitely. And Ed still does a better job of it than anyone else out there.
Cities of the ages: Venice! Now that is an interesting city. It's a great example of how humans can completely screw up their environment, yet adapt and survive to the changes. Massive subsidence as a result of industrial pumping sinking the city? We'll use canals instead of roads as our primary means of transportation. I don't think we're in any danger of extinction if we can pull tricks like that. Their history is pretty fascinating as well. The amount of adversity they faced both in building it and from their neighbours over the centuries results in more civic unity than the average town, but there's tons of room for politics, making money, and having fun here, and some spectacular architecture. It seems like another rather good choice for this column, as there's really no other city quite like it. Course, in your world, that might not be the case, particularly if the sea/land ratio is even higher than on earth, and stable building space is at a premium everywhere. Then you can have several dozen variants on the floating city theme.
Faiths of faerun gives us another prestige class, the Nightcloak of Shar. Another one that seems pretty badass. Take a single level of Rogue (preferably the 1st one, given the way 3e multiclassing rewards that) and enjoy your substantially increased powers of deception and spells that manipulate darkness. They do have one minor issue, in that like blackguards, they have some required skills that they then don't get as class skills. But still, once again, I think this will be one that turns out an overall positive compared to straight clerics, and gives you lots of flavorful abilities as well. As usual, the Realms gets the best toys to play with.
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 6/7
Sage advice: When an arcane spellcaster gets a domain, do the spells count as arcane spells (As long as you're the one casting them. Other people haven't put the work in, so they don't get that privilege. )
When you get extra spell slots from prestige domains, do you need to fill them with domain spells (well, duh. But only divine casters get that bonus.)
If you have more than one spellcasting class, can you choose which one prestige classes stack with (Maybe. Read the individual descriptions.)
If prestige classes have separate spell lists, do you have to track them separately (yes)
Are all spells sacred fists cast restricted to touch range (No, We decided that was dumb in the development process. Cast Official Errata time! )
What spell levels do sacred fists get domain spells for (The ones they can cast anyway. Meh.)
Do sacred fist's unarmed attacks stack with their monk levels (no)
Do their evasion and uncanny dodge stack? (Yes, actually)
What 0 and 5th level spells do sacred fists get. (None. Cast Official Errata!)
Do hospitalers get cleric spell levels that stack, or separate ones (Stacking ones. Cast Official Errata! )
Does hospitaler undead turning stack (yes, at -2 level. Cast Official Errata! Maybe Skip should retrain as a sorcerer. All this erattaing is sure using up Skip's high level spells.)
Just how fast do horses really go? What about when they're encumbered (What time is it? It's table time! Let's spread out the jams!)
How many vampires & ghosts can a master of shrouds summon. None. More development bumpfh we didn't erase. Unfortunately Skip has used up all Skip's erratta spells for the month, so this one will have to stay unofficial. )
What does the battle rod give bonuses too. (Saves against fear)
Can the knight of the chalice affect lower planar creatures other than demons. (No. We'd say if it did. )
Can rangers and paladins worship gods of different races and alignments (I guess)
Can a wizard/cleric's familiar deliver cleric spells by touch (Yes. This does not stretch to psionics, though. )
Can you use spells from one class to affect spells from another class (Yes unless we say no)
Can you multiclass as two different cleric classes (No more than you can specialize in more than one wizard school. Yes, we're no fun, Skip knows.)
What counts as an attack for the purposes of protection from evil (Anything that will have a direct negative effect aimed at you. Intention counts for a lot when morals are involved.)
The play's the thing: Robin's article this month is a direct riff off last month's one. Where that talked about breaking stereotypes on an individual level, this talks about individual cultures breaking with racial stereotypes. Which is very similar indeed, but on a broader scale. In this case, you'll probably want fewer traits that outright defy their racial tendencies, as we're talking about a substantial aggregation of individuals here, and more that add a twist to them, or are simply orthogonal to what we already know. Otherwise you fall into the other problem of asking why they're that race at all. This again smells like padding, saying the same thing again in a slightly different way to fill time and space until another new idea comes along. Is he working on something else as a main project now, and just dashing these off to make a little extra money? Zzzzz.
Dragon Issue 286: August 2001
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: Meanwhile, while Ray might be repeating himself, he's once again doing it better than last time round, giving us new angles on building a homebase that shows he's learnt from the last time he did it. Careful consideration of scale for the map, sketching out the mechanical details of the area, and a refinement of the taxation system introduced last time all fill out information about the world. This reveals that while 1st level characters won't have much chance against the guards, they will rapidly outpace them, and I'm pretty sure they'll be running roughshod over the security measures by 10th level. I suppose that's another thing about 3e many designers haven't picked up on. Because advancement is so much faster and there's NPC classes to choose from as well, it's easier to justify having a range of levels in your everyday folks, making them less fragile and easily exploited. If he gets to do this a third time with the benefit of a decent amount of actual play, this will probably turn out differently again. So really, this shows that some things lose impact with repetition, while others improve, and worldbuilding definitely rewards repeated practice. There's so much to learn, and so many different ways to go about it that it shouldn't get boring, even after you've made dozens of different worlds. So put the work in to get better if you want to be a great GM.
PC Portraits: This column isn't part of the theme for a change, as using named characters would kinda miss the point. Instead, they set a fairly big name free to do whatever he likes. And the result sure does have a lot of ear and nose rings. And a slightly feline looking pope. With the overall emphasis on savagery and tribal dressings, most of these would be pretty appropriate for the world Ray's developing at the moment. So it does seem pretty fitting with the overall direction of the magazine at the moment. Let's keep things punk for a little while longer before moving on entirely.
Role models: This column has a sudden attack of executive meddling, being tied into their new Chainmail minis game. And so they give you advice specifically aimed at those minis, and large scale wargaming in general. If you're going to paint 'em all in a reasonable period of time, you'll need to start practicing those mass production techniques, doing one part on each model, and then moving on to the next one while letting that bit dry. So this is somewhat more advanced advice than they've done before, but it also has very cynical motivations promoting the latest product. Guess this column continues to have a fairly unstable position in the office making it the first in line when they want to shuffle things around. I am very dubious about it's prospects for long-term survival.
DM's toolbox: This column isn't quite as obviously promotion as the last one, but it does have a commercial agenda. Making you feel that you need all sorts of physical widgets to make your game run better, so they can sell you something in the future. Aka the health & beauty mag approach to manufacturing demand. People might want something, but they don't know it yet, and you make them want it by social pressure and advertising, telling them they're incomplete without the latest style, and their friends will look down on them. Buy buy buy! Fill your room with knick-knacks! Preferably official ones, but 3rd party products are better than nothing. Whatever happened to using your memory? This isn't a direction I'm keen on.
Dragonmirth is very topical indeed. That's what happens when you assign value to intangibles. What's new rules the world. What a fun job to have. Put aside your tears and fears and go for it.
This definitely qualifies as an interestingly different issue, even if it isn't that great overall. And it does make them feel like they're more connected to the outside world again, experimenting with novels outside the company, and miniature wargaming again. If they can couple that with good writing, they can continue to avoid the repetition that plagued the late 90's quite nicely and broaden the magazine's appeal along the way.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 1/7
82 (116) pages. For a while now, since 3e started, the covers have been closer focused on the characters rather than the backdrop. But this is the first one that outright neglects it, showing nothing but the action pose. That kind of laziness hasn't been seen since the 70's. Not a pleasing development. On the other hand, the fact that this month's topic is the planes is pretty pleasing to me. I always love a good otherdimensional trip. Will they seem as fantastical under 3e as they did before?
Scan quality: Medium, unindexed, ad free scan. From this point on, the ad free scans really start becoming prevalent.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Looks like it's time for another change of editors, as Dave Gross takes a sideways jump to edit other magazines. This always fills me with trepidation. All the more so because unlike Tim, Kim or Roger, who you could tell were running out of steam before they left, Dave has slowly and steadily improved since he got the job, and this last year has easily been his best. So it seems likely there's going to be more format changes in the near future. The only true constant is change. But will it be for better ....... Or for worse? As this point it could well go either way. Better get ready to roll on that initial encounter reactions table, and hope the result is friendly, not attack on sight.
Scale Mail: Good god, the attempts to sex up halflings gets a lot of responses. They publish 5 of them, and make it clear there's a lot more where that came from. Two are negative, and three are positive, showing that this has split the fanbase right down the middle, and may run for a while. People don't like it when you meddle with the classics in a disrespectful way, even if your intentions are good. You don't have to be misunderstood to be disliked.
Speaking of the classics, we have a request for more historical period specials. That's another idea that would allow them a good few years without repeating themselves, especially if they avoided the overdone ones that already have lots of full books.
Some good old mechanical errata proves that fact checking everything on time in the fast-moving world of periodicals will never stop being a pain in the ass. It's no wonder editors burn out.
And finally, Dungeoncraft gets some praise, and some questions. Ray answers them no problem. That kind of audience interaction should keep him popular with the fans.
Previews: In conjunction with the issue, our big release this month is the Manual of the Planes. Jeff Grubb returns to not only give the planes another rejig, but encourage you to create your own cosmologies. Well, such is the nature of D20. Twisting it into all kinds of odd directions is part of the fun.
The Realms gets no sourcebooks, but a double bill of novels. Baldur's gate II: Throne of Bhaal and Temple Hill. So the crossover between computer games and game products is still proving a reliably lucrative business.
Dragonlance continues to fill in setting as the timeline advances, with Bertrem's guide to the War of Souls. Will he have time to share any cooking recipes in all this cataclysm?
Nodwick is about to go plane-hopping. Remember, this is not a tourist trip.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 2/7
Up on a soapbox: Gary's finished trying to find out exactly what a role-playing game is to all of us. Now what? Ancient actual play stories! Why, he remembers it like it was yesterday. Well, as someone who's read through all the issues from back in the day now, I can safely say that the amount of contemporary written material is way smaller both in number and size of books, which leaves obsessive old schoolers forever hungry for more information to sate their curiosity. So here we get to hear about what was possibly the very first recurring villain in a D&D game, an evil dwarf with boots of speed and a repulsion ray shooter, which allowed him to escape and have multiple encounters with the players before being finished off for good. Which of course made them hate him all the more. This is a good demonstration of how if you want monsters to survive more than a single encounter, you need to build them accordingly, because D&D does not make it easy if you play by the RAW. But it can be done, and it can be made fun. And let's face it, it's the things that were hard to pull off that we remember most. They had to step out of their comfort zones to make and publish D&D in the first place. We still ought to be doing the same in our games.
Dork tower switches genre, but the violence remains.
Dreamlands: We start our planar articles with one emphasising the toolkit elements of the new MotP. Where should the plane of dreams go in your cosmology if you have one? Jeff Grubb manages to find justifications to fit it in all 4 of their classifications, with fairly substantial differences between each of the versions. In your multiiverse, are dreams little universes you create when you sleep that end when you awake, or are you tapping into something big and universal, that may or may not have a ruler, and may or may not be that easy to visit physically. So this shows off a fairly substantial change between this and 2e. They've well and truly abandoned one true wayism and big convoluted metaplots (Forgotten Realms aside) to encourage you to build your own setting instead. So this is very cool indeed, and jam packed with ideas to steal, mix and match for D&D or another system. I think it fully deserves to be a leading article.
When celestials attack: One problem we've encountered before is trying to make many of the planes good for adventuring in. Too much conflict, such as the instant lethality of some elemental planes, and an adventure is difficult to keep going. Too little conflict, and it never starts in the first place. But still, it's not that hard to come up with reasons for conflict in the upper planes. There's tons of celestial beings of varying alignments, power levels and priorities, and I'm sure the PC's can manage to get on the bad side of one of them by doing something morally ambiguous or short-sighted. The weaker ones can be dogmatic and inflexible, while the more powerful ones have complicated sets of priorities as they try to do the most good over the long term, and sometimes sacrifices need to be made. So this looks at a broad spread of celestial beings, and what their particular triggers are likely to be. It does a pretty good job of reminding us that they're not a homogenous group at all, and your experiences should be quite different depending on where you are and who you talk too. The kind of stuff that provides plenty of non rehashed adventure hooks, and shows us what we can do with all these fantastic universes out there. Which hopefully'll get some more people using them, instead of popping off to the abyss for another slaughterfest. And I do value variety.
VS Celestials: Having come up with plenty of reasons why you could end up in a fight with celestials, it's time for the mechanical advice on how to deal with it. They assume that you'll want to stay on the side of light, and take them down without killing them, which further affects the tactics they advise. They tend to have fewer weaknesses than their evil counterparts, so this is a fairly tricky one to advise upon. Disrupting their vast array of spell-like powers does seem like a good idea though. And if you're neutral or evil, then using those spells that are super effective against good creatures will make things easier (particularly protection from good's enforced pacifism thing. ) Still, don't expect it to be easy. Best advice is to outnumber them, given how many more evil creatures there are in the monster books than good ones.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 3/7
Fractious Factions: Yay! Stronger mechanical support for Planescape Factions. Just the sort of thing 3e ought to be doing with it's ruleset. Course there's the issue that they were originally intended as minor adjustments to your character suitable for any class, and making them full 10 level prestige classes with substantial requirements to get in goes against that, making the prestige class the most important part of your build. I'd have kept them as 5 level ones at the most. But hey ho, let's see how these hold up mechanically and in faithfulness to the original flavour.
Athar have the same issue as Blackguards. The ones who get the most respect are the ones that converted from the other side, rather than just starting out ambivalent. And since the best course into them is cleric or druid, I think you can safely say that they'll be pretty effective once you get over the two dead levels at the start, and will kick the ass of other CoDzillas with ease with their resistances to divine powers.
Ciphers, on the other hand seem a bit superceded, now that everyone gets initiative modifiers, and the powers they get are basically a variant monk set - individually cool, but not hugely impressive when considered as a whole package. Still, at least they're pretty good at resisting and escaping situations. Proactivity, though? Not gonna bring it.
Sensates get enormous bonuses to their sensory skills, which is appropriate, and very useful indeed for adventurers. That +20 at 10th level should let them spot all the ambushes and secret doors a fair DM throws at the party, and scent and blindsight are just generally handy, aren't they. Sometimes the spellcasters just don't have the time to get their defences up, and you need to rely on the guys who've honed it into an innate power.
The Doomguard are another one that seem a bit underpowered, mainly because they don't get the full BAB progression that would really make their combat boosts worthwhile. Their spell list doesn't really match up to an assassin or blackguard's either. There are definitely more efficient ways of becoming an agent of entropy than this.
The Fated prestige class isn't particularly underpowered, but it does miss the point a bit by having a power that's sole purpose is to buff others. The whole point of the faction is that they don't do anything for anyone for free, or ever accept something for nothing. They do get to be highly competent skill-monkeys, with enough healing, combat and generalist skills to make a good solo character, which does seem fitting. Just trade off the dodgy ability for a couple more skill points a level.
Xaositechts are as fun as ever. Lawful creatures will find them tremendously frustrating and difficult to deal with, while other chaotic creatures will simply roll with it and do better. So while it has made some alterations, this is mostly faithful to the 2e incarnations of the factions, while leaving room for you to develop similar prestige classes for the other half of them. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll do that and submit them to the magazine or post them up online, so that gap won't go unfilled for long.
Expand your mind: Bruce Cordell continues to be lead Psionics guy, writing both OGL expansions to the system, and sending in magazine articles for it. This time, it's 16 new feats. Some, but not all of them will appear in the 3.5 psionics handbook as well, often with some further tweaks. So this is the kind of article that's significant because it shows us that they're creating new stuff, trying them out in their homebrews, and getting feedback so they can tweak them before making them official and releasing them to a wider audience. That's the way the creative process works best. And the fact that some of them didn't make it in means this is still interesting and possibly useful once you have updated, if you don't mind slight balance issues.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 4/7
Fiction: Deeper, Deeper dark. An interesting fairy-tale like story this month, telling the tale of how a greedy industrialist took over a town in search of resources, making himself rich while the population suffered, but eventually getting his comeuppance. So essentially a parable for real world industrialisation of the past few centuries, only with a happy ending instead of exploitation becoming the default, and the community being left hollow when their natural resources run out and the company moves on. So this story makes me sad because it's a good story, but also reminds me that you don't get easy resolutions and happy endings like that in the real world. If we did, would we bother to create all these fantastic otherworldly universes anyway? They say stories tell us monsters can be slain, but will capitalism ever be replaced by something better? I think we may be reaching one of those points where we're going outside my remit, so that's enough of that line of thought. Changing the world can wait.
Elminster's guide to the realms: Shadowdark? I wasn't expecting to see that particular portmanteau turn up this early. A little searching turns up earlier examples in Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, and two Volo's Guides, so it looks like we can definitely blame Ed for it's creation, if maybe not it's becoming ubiquitous next edition. The amount of cheese he's responsible for just grows and grows.
But enough digression about the wider scheme of things. This particular tidbit of realmslore concerns a magic shop, it's cranky old owner, and it's contents. While it may not be standardised, there's a fair number of people who are willing to teach young spellcasters for the right price, and this is a good example one for your low-mid level players to encounter. They've got enough wards up that a casual attempt at robbery is unlikely to work, but clever trickery might do the job. The illustration does a good job of showing that the place is actually pretty small, with tons of magical knicknacks crammed in. This gives a GM plenty of leeway to have players find odd things with unexpected powers for a bargain that may be crucial to a plot later. All seems nicely literary really. Now if he could just do something about that name before people get ideas.
The bestiary: James Jacobs steps away from Greyhawk, and heads off to the planes that are the source of so many of his cthuloid gribleys. The Chaos Spire is your basic roaming corrupted artefact, lost in the astral plane and transforming those who enter it into scary aberrations. If you can get hold of it and clean it out, you can have a hellraiseresque giant fortress that folds into a teeny little puzzle block for your convenience. I think that's a nicely epic adventure for you.
Bonespitters are the basic form you'll be transformed into if this place comes your way unexpectedly. A half alive, half dead, half cyborg, all insane mass of limbs, mouths and eyes? With a surprisingly high hide and move silently scores? It must be a tuesday.
Chaoswyrd are multiheaded tentacled gorillas, the kind of things you'd get if Demogorgon and Cryronax mated. They're prone to fishmalk behaviour, so they may suddenly lose interest or apologise mid-battle if you're lucky.
The Tetramorph is the giant amorphous blob at the middle of all this. It's surprisingly low CR, but I guess we don't have epic rules yet. Touching it'll mutate you, and it destabilises reality in general, so a good cleric is once again vital for after the battle. So the monsters are a little predictable, but the article redeems itself with the unusually good plot hooks and overarching adventure idea behind them.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 5/7
Faiths of faerun: Looks like Bane is back, because this month we get a prestige class for his speciality priests. The Dreadmaster. Man, that's a name that says taking yourself too seriously and dressing with huge spiked shoulderpads and helmets with glowing red eyes. This is a relatively tricky one to get into, requiring you to be at least a decent way down the evil overlord road before you can even start on it. The benefits seem particularly cool for evil overlords, as you get to avoid the usual leadership penalties for going through your minions like water. This means you can enjoy multiple fights with them before finishing them off for good. And with favored enemies and bonuses to fear effects, they're no slouches in direct confrontations either. They seem to achieve their design ends most satisfactorily, even if they're more likely to be NPC's than PC's.
Class acts: Having skipped a month, Monte is back with another fairly obvious theme. The fiend hunter, dark and brooding avenger who has taken on some of the traits of evil so as to better understand it and fight it. A perfect thematic choice for the fallen paladin, and monte is cool enough to add some mechanical incentives and discounts to them for doing it. (although they aren't quite as good as the benefits for ex-paladin blackguards, but then, continuing to fight evil should be harder than falling to temptation) Like the flame steward and psi-hunter, they get full BAB, and decent spellcasting that should keep them competitive even when not fighting their favored enemies. They also get a +1 bonus to armor per 3 levels, like many of monte's prestige classes. I wonder why it's always that number? Is there a game balance calculation behind it? This tendency has my attention, and I shall see if it continues.
Nodwick brings life back to a deserted kingdom. Rejoice! Apart from you, icky-bad high necromancer. You need to be punished.
Chainmail: So the gnomes have joined forces with the humans in the new wargame? I wasn't expecting that. Way to avoid the stereotypical pairing. Still, it makes sense in light of the history they're establishing. The humans handle the above ground threats, while the gnomes take the underdark, and they've got each other's backs in a pinch. They also share technology, of course, and that means the human armies have access to technological contraptions that the others don't. So there's some more fairly interesting worldbuilding going on here, making sure each of the armies isn't just a one-trick pony, and hopefully each side will both feel distinct and have proper strengths and weaknesses against the others. I do quite like these columns. Still, I do wonder how much of this information will be repeated in the products themselves. Is this bonus material, or will it be made irrelevant once you've spent the money. I guess I'll have to see if I can track a copy down.
Forum: Jeffrey Ludwig thinks that charisma is better off than it used to be, but is still a bit of a dump stat, and the designers themselves are fully aware of this. Course, you can redress the balance a little by including more social scenes in your game.
Josh Harrison is another person listing the ways in which a wizard may surpass a fighter, particularly out of combat. It's not just magic, their high int means they'll also smoke them skillswise, despite having the same base amounts.
Robert J. Schwalb thinks rangers in the new edition are balanced, and the people complaining are just too used to them being twinky from old editions. You just can't take being equal, you have to be better. Leave it out.
Mark Jackman thinks that psionics has turned out better than the preview watching naysayers said. Once again, we remind you to wait and get the full info before you deliver judgement.
Anthony Gabriel thinks St Cuthbert ought to be lawful good, not LN. The real saint certainly fits that descriptor. You know, Gary did originally make him LG with LN tendencies, rather than the other way around. It is an interesting question why the 3e writers decided to flip that.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 6/7
Silicon sorcery: A trio of amusing items from Age of Wonders get D&D conversions this month. The most notable of these is the chicken shield, which boosts your AC and reduces falling damage by animating and flapping it's wings frantically. The benefits to making your enemies laugh mid-battle should not be underestimated as well. Stones that turn into boulders when thrown, and boots that make you untrackable and generate magical darkness aren't quite so innovative or funny, but they're useful and interesting, and haven't appeared in this edition yet. Seems like there's definitely some cool ideas worth stealing here.
Sage advice: What's the base DC on spot and listen checks (There are none. This isn't like 2nd ed. You have to pay much more attention to the specifics of the situation. )
Which should you use to avoid surprise. Entirely situational, blah blah trolls blah blah, tactics, light conditions and cover blah blah, line of sight blah blah.
How does hiding work (Opposed checks strike back! )
Why are there no rules for rate of fire (None is needed. We are unified. We need not exception based rules applied only to ranged attacks. Do not try to add more pointless crunch to the system. )
Can you make multiple grapples in a round (Only if your base attack bonus permits it. This ignores bonuses and creature natural weapons. Once again we ignore exceptions in the face of realism. Ha ha!)
Can you carry things away once they're grappled (What a good idea. Skip will pioneer a system for this! Truly, you are a visionary. )
The play's the thing: People change. Characters should as well, not just get more powerful or broad in their skillsets. So Robin's advice this month is on when you should break established character because you're changing, or adding extra nuance to their personality, rather than leaving it behind. Will it be a sudden one due to a traumatic event, or a gradual one as they're repeatedly exposed to situations formerly outside their ken. Will these changes be in personality alone, or backed up by spending XP in a new way as fast as the system allows? Just watch you don't get pulled into a cycle of ever-increasing trauma and grimdark, as is happening to far too many properties as the moment, and seems to be a particularly difficult change to reverse without doing an outright reboot. So the advice here isn't quite as topical as it used to be, as grimdark is finally starting to fall out of fashion again, but it's still quite useful, and hasn't been presented in this way before. This is an above average example of his work.
Dragon Issue 287: September 2001
part 7/7
Dungeoncraft: Still filling out that homebase, Ray makes sure that there are several places to provide adventures and secrets without leaving the relatively safe confines of Janda's Valley, thus once again making room for survivable low level adventures before they venture out to face full-sized dinosaurs. It also tells us exactly what's available in the shops round here, and a big secret that you'd better hope your players haven't spoiled themselves on if they plan to play here. So there's a pretty high density of information here. Even with all these instalments, Ray only has about as much room to play around with as the village of hommlet. Like those old modules, you've got to make every bit count, keep the whole thing tight and accessible, because there's a lot of casual readers that you can convert or alienate here. Still, I think with this performance we're winning more people than we're driving away.
PC Portraits: Our theme this month is characters with a low Charisma. Which gives the artist carte blanche to make their pictures interestingly unattractive. Ugly dwarves, ugly elves, ugly halflings, a half-orc with pigtails, and plenty of acne, boils, and scars to go around. I can certainly see some players blanching about having characters that ugly, while others will love the idea. As usual, if you mix and match, the contrast may work to both sides benefit. So this is quite a fun collection really, and the dungeonpunk bits fit in well with the character's overall appearance.
Role models: Closely tied in with the Chainmail column, this also looks at the human & gnome faction, and talks about their colour scheme. Blue and white clothes, and light brown skin is the order of the day, to suit a mediterranean climate. Well, that's mildly informative as well, and gives them an easy set of things to do to fill out the next 5 months. After all, each of the factions will have their own identifying features, and they wouldn't want to be accused of favouritism. A good bit of continuity like that'll let them get a bit of depth in, even in these tiny little columns. This tie-in continues to be better handled than the ones in the past.
DM's Toolbox: This column seems to be rapidly settling into a pattern of giving us crisp, bullet-pointed advice that's easy to follow, covering similar ground to Ray's column, but in a different writing style. How do you make a villain interesting and powerful? Figure out what they're trying to do, what they've got to do it with, how they'll keep themselves from losing it, and how they intend to get more. As is often the case, it seems easy when you phrase it like that. It also concentrates quite a bit on the noncombat aspects of building an enemy. After all, even if you are evil, a sensible creature will still see the value in having allies rather than enemies where possible, and the profit to be gained by clever negotiation. As this is focussed on political thinking rather than hack and slash, and presents it in an interesting way, I rather like this. It'll give you a chance to actually roleplay your villains before they get beaten.
Dragonmirth is captionariffic. What's new is affirmatively demonic.
Well, this was a pretty kickass issue. It's not often that I give every single article a neutral or positive result, but this managed it, with even the non-themed bits coming out pretty strongly. Silly that that would happen just as they change editors, and that might make me remember Dave a bit more positively than otherwise. So once again it's time to embrace that sting of uncertainty, see how long it takes the new guy to get the hang of things, and what changes they'll make.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 1/7
114 (116) pages. Well, here we are at the 4/5th mark. Still feels like a pretty substantial time since the last landmark like this, and the big 300 and 5/6ths will also take a good few months to get too as well. Still not the time to get overconfident and try to rush for the ending. And there'll certainly be a few more horror themed octobers as well, so this issue doesn't feel particularly special from looking at the contents. Let's see what the new guy in charge does differently with a familiar idea.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed.
In this issue:
The table of contents becomes the temple of contents. Hee. You might even get some use out of that layout. Very neat.
Wyrms turn: Looks like the new guy in charge is Jesse Decker. He spent a little while as assistant editor in 1999, then moved sideways in the company, while still contributing a few articles to the magazine, and now he's been brought back to take on the heavy responsibilities of the big seat. Well, it's not as obvious a choice as promoting the current assistant upwards, but at the same time it's not a complete leftfield recruitment either. And since he was probably working in the same offices most of that time, he'll know the culture of the magazine already. We might actually get through this without the quality control slipping for a bit. His storytelling style already works better for me than Dave's did too. So far, so good.
Scale Mail: First off is another letter of praise for their cities of the ages series. It seems to be rapidly building a decent fanbase for itself.
Greyhawk also retains a fanbase that's smaller than the Realms, but just as enthusiastic. And they want MORE! Apparently, next year will bring exactly that. After all, it is supposed to be this edition's official setting. They ought to act like it.
The Shannara issue proves contentious, with one letter that really likes it, and another that's very skeptical about that kind of cross-marketing. The compromise they come too here is saying they'll only do one or two themed issues like that per year. After all, they have a busy schedule of classes, races, and the inevitable april fool, birthday and horror themes to fill out the other months. Surely they can keep from repeating themselves until the 3.5 revision at least.
The new format also gets some complaint, although not nearly as much as last year's change. Once again, it's made very obvious that you can't please everyone. Blueprint style is a bit sterile, it has to be said.
Their puzzles get erratad. Careful. Criticise these too much, they'll just take their ball and go home.
And finally, we have some nonstereotypical halflings. With millions of people playing D&D, some were bound to come up with pretty oddball ideas.
Nodwick meets his zombie clones. Quite a lot of them. Guess who's fault it is.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 2/7
Previews: And again with the format changes, to a slightly more conventional appearance. The degree of color used is still massively up though. With the current software, it really is no bother to have it on every page.
First up is Oriental Adventures, another big release. James Wyatt follows in Zeb Cook's footsteps, and manages to imbue it with the same degree of compulsive readability, (at least IMO) despite the quite substantial differences. L5R continues to make it's mark in multiple ways. There's also Enemies and Allies. More stuff to save time, in creating characters, along with all the adventures they release. Money=Convenience.
One novel for each surviving gameline this time. Greyhawk draws upon their old modules again for Queen of the Demonweb pits by Paul Kidd. I don't think they've had an original thought in their heads since they brought back this gameline in '98. The Realms also continues to do what works with Sea of Swords, the latest instalment in the adventures of Drizzt and Wulfgar. Be ready for more cool action sequences, and quite possibly brooding. And Krynn shows us the sideways perspectives on the war of souls in The Search for Magic, another collection of short stories edited by Weis and Hickman. Yup. Formula formula formula.
Up on a soapbox: Even back in the old school era, Gary wasn't averse to a little PvP, and having them develop their own goals and challenges. After all, it'll take the pressure off a bit from constantly sketching newer, deeper levels to Castle Greyhawk, and get people into the roles of their characters. And using your spells creatively is to be encouraged as well. So this is a fairly amusing little actual play story that works in favor of the sandbox playstyle. You give them open-ended options, and they'll reward you by doing surprising things with them. And hopefully that'll give you good stories to tell to other people as well. And everybody's happy except the people who lose at PvP. Hopefully they'll learn to take the joke, and give as good as they got next time.
Dork tower has an attack of squarehead stretchmouth. Oy cherubima.
Ooh. An actual RPG advert. White wolf manages to get their Sword and sorcery books in, along with some good reviews. Flying the flag for d20, and creating a new campaign setting along the way.
Four faces of death: Last month, they showed us 4 different variants of the plane of dreams. This time, they start us off with 4 very different takes on gods of death from various real world cultures. India's Yama. China's Decemvirate of judges. Persia's Ahriman, and voodoo's Baron Samedi. Another good reminder how having one true answer to a question can be restricting, and certain concepts are big enough to be examined again and again from different angles, and reveal something fresh each time. Sex, death and dreams certainly qualify for this, (and they've never done a romance themed issue yet, have they. ) and it's very interesting to see how the culture a god comes from affects it's aspects. Still, the amount of new mechanical information here is tiny, and most of this stuff has turned up before in official D&D books, as well as being easily researchable elsewhere, so this isn't a particularly innovative article. It reinforces their current toolkitty attitude, but doesn't break new ground much. Guess Jesse hasn't had the chance to change things around yet. Still, this would definitely please a new reader more than it does me.
Plots & Schemes: Ah yes, murder mysteries and other detective stories. As last covered in issue 240, where they wound up mostly giving examples rather than advice. Guess it's time to try again, and see if we can do better. This time, the answer's a pretty definite yes, with a fairly long, nicely organised, and interestingly laid out article, that looks at common plot elements and ideas, and also goes into quite a bit of detail on what not to do if you want to create a mystery story that your players can actually solve, and feel they got a fair challenge while doing so. It's all too easy to make your puzzles impossible to solve if you don't give the right kind of descriptive detail, or make the players feel like they only managed to accomplish anything due to luck/railroading. So it's full of good advice for a roleplaying game where the rules are supposed to stay consistent enough for players to understand and exploit them, and have a good idea what would be possible and impossible in world, even if it wouldn't in reality. Which I suppose fits in with the 3e style, even if it isn't the best ruleset for detective games in many other ways. Surely there's a D20 variant out there that further supports this playstyle. Hell, even d20 modern would make it much harder to take the plot breaking divinations for granted. So I'm still not sure about the wisdom of doing detective stories in D&D, but this article is a definite improvement on previous attempts to get us to try it.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 3/7
Master Villains: Confusingly, this runs on alternating columns in the same pages as the previous article, which I didn't notice on first reading. I expect that kind of mucking around on the letters pages, but not later on in the magazine. Still, it complements it's counterpart, so I can see why they did it. It provides more examples of how to create interesting villains, and has surprisingly little overlap with the similar advice last issue in the DM's toolbox. While less analytical and organised than that, this has some more inventive ideas to make the players more emotionally invested in fighting the villain, and quite possibly conflicted as well. The reasons that people become enemies can be strange sometimes, and the people you trust most can become the bitterest enemies. Watch out in particular for people who say they've redeemed themselves. Chances are, they'll backslide at some point, because the laws of drama love stuff like that. So this is a pretty good article that loses a mark for annoying formatting.
Unhallowed ground: Adventures in a graveyard? Sounds like fun to me. There's certainly room for plenty of interesting encounters in a place like that. Still, it'll differ quite a bit from a dungeon because you have tons of freedom to go off the path and explore in any direction, and the ground is uneven and packed with interesting little obstacles. Plus in the real world, graveyards are ironically one of the places most packed with natural life in a mostly urban environment. There's plenty of room for animal encounters and other people as well as the stereotypical undead, and it's easy to insert new features onto the map and say they were always there, you just didn't notice them in the last trip. So this is a damn good idea, that curiously enough, they haven't done before in the magazine despite all the stuff on the dead, undead and resurrection.
Dungeons in Disguise: Another little article on investigative games, and how to make them work. Just reskin dungeon crawls, with the walls replaced by obstructive NPC's, and keys by clues. Ok, you don't have to be that literal, but creating a good flowchart for your adventure will help you remember what the obvious options are, and what the players can do to accomplish them. That definitely makes a fair whack of sense. Just don't get hung up on it when the players come up with an idea that isn't on your list. This feels a bit fillerish really, mainly notable because we're once again seeing the idea of reskinning promoted and starting to catch on. I suppose once you've introduced a universal resolution mechanic, the idea of applying the same principles to different but analogous situations is a much smaller conceptual leap. History ticks onwards.
Tag team terror: The whole of last year, they've been doing things like the Power Plays and Class Combos, to encourage players to get into the optimisation state of mind and look for the most awesome synergies possible with a set number of resources. Well, it must have worked, because now it's time to raise the game, do the same with the monsters. What combinations of two different types of monsters wind up punching well above their CR, even if it's counterintuitive to have them working together? Well this is a fun topic to explore. This lists 20 ideas in rough order of deadliness, from a werwolf with a pet rust monster to nom the silver weapons of any attackers, right up to the red dragon with iron golem servants which'll be healed if caught in it's breath weapon (the lich with the tarrasque trapped in it's phylactery and released when you destroy it doesn't really count as you don't fight them both at the same time. ) Some have templates or class levels just to really take advantage of these synergies. So this is pretty fun and imaginative stuff, encouraging the DM to be inventive and interestingly adversarial in the challenges they throw at their players. Give them something they'll remember, something that'll make them laugh when they first see it, and cry when they get their asses kicked. The age of Encounter-centric play approaches, and like most of these waves of fashion, the first bits are fun, different and refreshing, which explains why they catch on and get driven into the ground by unimaginative bandwagon jumpers after a reliable formula for profit. So this is a really cool article, introducing a really cool idea, and I wonder how long it'll take for it to lose it's shine, like location based dungeon crawls and metaplot heavy campaign settings before it. Oh well, they won't ruin this's classic position.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 4/7
Class acts: From Lifebearer, to Lifedrinker. Or, how to make your vampire even more vampiric. Yeah, I very much doubt we'll be seeing many PC's take this one. This one would later appear in the book of vile darkness, and is incredibly easy to get into if you're a vampire. It's essentially a racial paragon class, giving them new uses for the blood they drain, and generally making them even more badass. Because it's powers are so dependent on the amount they've fed recently, it's one that is scary when facing properly prepared NPC's, but might be a problem for PC's going through multiple encounters in a day anyway. So I guess it's well designed for it's job then.
Cities of the ages: Baghdad? Now there's a city that's definitely seen better days. Time was, it was one of THE cultural centres of the world, a crossroads where east and west could exchange ideas and goods. Now? Decades of dictatorship and a poorly managed "liberation" have not been kind to it's economic position or it's ancient buildings. But of course, we're not looking at modern day baghdad, but the legendary one as shown in the 1,001 nights tales. Which is has to be said, was pretty interesting and full of room for adventures. So there's a lot of emphasis on the 8th century set of characters, their interrelations and things they got up too. Between the sultan, his vizier, his wives, guards, clerics, etc, there's a pretty headache inducing amount of politics, and since none of them have alignments listed, who exactly the good and bad guys are is up to you. The maps aren't as impressive as in previous instalments though, and I suspect accurate streetmaps that far back are pretty much nonexistent. So I guess this is one for people who prefer their roleplaying over dungeon crawling, and aren't afraid to go up against things way above their CR and win through trickery. Fairly interesting, really.
Elminsters guide to the realms: The rustic illustrations work particularly well this month, as we detail an interesting little inn full of ne'er do wells and the remnants of their contraband deals. There's a secret passage, a whole load of interesting items, and of course the magical precautions that keep PC's from just slaughtering the owner and running roughshod over the whole thing. After all, you really think a hive of scum and villainy wouldn't have had to deal with high level characters getting rowdy before? Not sure how effective a swarm of crawling claws would actually be in play, but it'd definitely make people think twice. I'm not entirely sold on the mechanical side of this, but the flavour is up to Ed's usual high standard. More mid-level characters to keep the players engaged but not overwhelmed is definitely a good thing here.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Vampire Slayers Toolbox. A pretty promising title, and a theme we haven't had before. Blame Buffy for bringing the focus back on people who hunt the undead, rather than the sexy sexy vampires themselves. Strahd'll probably still survive no matter what you throw at him, but lesser vamps have been mookified quite a bit in the new edition. So let's see what we have to help us get our stake on.
The Deitus Daggers not only burnses vampires with their radiated light, but break a master's hold on their spawn when they hit. Occasionally, they'll even bring them back to life instead of killing them. Truly a panoply of mercies. I very much likey.
The Silver Collars of Adrentius prevent vampires from turning to gas and escaping when hurt too much. You get this on them and kill them, they stay dead.
The Coffin Clamps of Aziell Moonchild have a rather less pleasant history, since they're more deadly against creatures that still need to breathe. Vampires may be trapped in or out, but you'll still have to figure out how to kill them later.
Barthon's Delving Doves are awesome returning magical arrows that are designed to take out scuttling climbing things. This of course includes vampires using spider climb. The visuals are great too.
Heart Tracker is a crossbow that naturally stakes vampires. It can immobilise several in a round no trouble if the wielder is good. Buffy would once again be proud. No way you could do that in either world of darkness.
Holy Bone Shackles (batman) trap undead and kill them with reasonable rapidity. In the meantime, you can give them a good examination. Careful you don't turn into a monster yourself in the process.
The Breastplate of Righteous Endeavours is slightly less impressive, enabling you to cast a collection of your usual buffing and shielding spells. Still, it's hardly weak, just not as cool as the previous items. Your players should still welcome it.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 5/7
Nodwick has another attack of continuity. Oughta get that looked at by a doctor, or else it could turn into a full-blown case of metaplot before you know it.
Chainmail: So how does the D&D minis game differ from regular D&D, if the statistics are pretty much interchangable? The devil's in the details, as usual. Initiative is rolled for the whole group on a per round basis rather than individually and cyclically, not all your pieces get to act every turn, and there's a whole new set of tactical options based around the leader pieces controlling the regular members of the army, and morale for all sides, reflecting that not every creature you control is actually a PC, and your role as a player is more detached. So it trades off complexity in some areas for more in others, and actually has quite a few old school elements that regular 3e got rid of. That's very interesting, and makes it almost an alternate 3.1 or 2.9th edition which is better suited to handling large groups where each player controls multiple characters. My interest grows, as morale rules were one of the things I definitely missed in 3 & 4e. This looks like it has lots of potential for plundering and mixing & matching parts to customise your regular 3e games. I wonder if it'll get many supplements before fading away.
Forum: Kraig Hausmann looks at Hades' place in greek mythology and finds that he was not a popular dude at all. Anyone who puts nearly all souls in a position of endless tedious low-grade misery regardless of how good or bad they were in life doesn't sound like a nice person to me.
Morgan Vergara thinks that while rangers may not be the most powerful class, that's no reason not to take it. Concept should be more important than min-maxing. Another very familiar statement.
Daniel Bates makes a facepalming misinterpretation of druid's wildshaping abilities when trying to justify why some people would pick ranger over druid. Sorry, another bit of fail here.
Peter Jones finds it ridiculous that people are complaining about gratuitous violence in a game where killing things and taking their stuff is integral. Particularly when the real difference is the visible blood. It's like Mortal Kombat recolouring the gore green to get around the censors. Some people are just pointlessly pedantic or don't want to confront the realities of what they're imagining doing.
Chad Riley finds it embarrassing that some people are so threatened by feminine pronouns getting equal time. You are not going to get cooties just from reading books just because of their choice of descriptors.
Geoff Davey wants to play good characters, while the rest of his group want to be bad guys. Sounds like you need to get'cha'self a new group there sonny. What we have here is a conflict of playstyles.
Matthew Stagg joined in on introducing role-playing to the younger generation. It was a resounding success. You've just gotta make sure the first adventure is fun to hook them.
The play's the thing: Robin goes into filler territory again, talking about various combinations of high and low ability scores, and how they ought to be roleplayed. That's the kind of thing we've seen before, and anyone can come up with a couple of pages of waffle on. I've done it, the editors have done it, you can do it too. Given the granularity of ability scores in D&D, and the quantity of characters people have played over the years, you could get so many takes on this that they become meaningless. And it's left incomplete so he can spread talking about various ability combos over multiple issues. This could turn into padding on an epic scale if he doesn't come up with more ideas soon. Not impressed.
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 6/7
Sage advice: Can you stack soulknife and rogue sneak attack bonuses (yes)
When do soulknifes get imbed power and mind blade (2nd level)
How does embedding psionic attacks work? (exactly as it would normally)
What effect do sever life and knife to the soul have on nonpsionic creatures (Stunning. Meh.)
How does the ability bonus from animal affinity interact with the stacking rules. (It changes your base score. Other bonuses apply to that base normally.)
Can savants find and disable magic traps (Depends on your cosmological underpinnings )
Do maximized creatures get max hit points (no)
How does body feeder work. Does it stack (It stacks with itself, but nothing else, I'm afraid.)
What psionic items require psionics to use (Ones that give points, or require you to give mental commands. No know, no show.)
How much info does druids nature sense give. Do fungi, oozes, etc count as plants. (About as much as an encyclopedia entry. No)
Can you detect evil on characters as well as creatures. (The words are interchangable. You are drawing distinctions that do not exist. )
What's mental control ( Duh. Charms and ongoing compulsions.)
Will protection from evil block mind affecting spells from other schools (no.)
Can paladins and rangers use wands of cure light wounds (yes, but not for the reason you think. Metaphysics strikes again! )
Can you memorize metamagic enhanced domain spells (Yes. Skip apologizes for the implication it is otherwise.)
What does red wizard's enhanced specialization do (See the rest of the prestige class)
If you're a multiclassed archmage, can you use the powers with both spellcasting classes (Yes. Good luck getting that high without being seriously suboptimal.)
What are the rules for clerics in the forgotten realms (Remember the one step rule. That's all folks. )
Do FR characters get all the stuff in their entries, or do they have to choose (Read the descriptions. Ed's stuff is generally pretty self-explanatory.)
Can you have multiple persistent spells up (yes)
Can you make touch spells persistent (no)
Can wizards benefit from the bloodline of fire (No. Only sorcerers. You have not grasped what bloodlines mean in 3rd ed. You'll get plenty more chances afore it's out. )
Does thunder twin really boost all your charisma based skills (yes. Looks like FR is as munchkin friendly as ever. )
What are the benefits for having an underdark region origin. (None. Does not compute. Your depth above or below ground is irrelevant in region selection.)
How long does it take to trigger a rune (A standard action. Trigger and run.)
Are the planes in the FR book the real ones? What happened to the old cosmology. ( There is no longer one true cosmology. This is the FR cosmology and always has been. Pay no attention to where this makes the old books make no sense at all. If you don't like this one, another one'll be along in a few years to always have been, making even less sense. )
Where is the equator on torill ( In the ocean between the continent maps.)
Are the map scales right (No)
Is the riding lizard's carrying capacity right. (No. What?)
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 7/7
Silicon sorcery: Baldur's Gate again? When's Neverwinter going to show up, give them some 3e based games to draw from? I guess development times are pretty extensive these days. A year just isn't enough to really polish a product. But anyway. This time, we get the template for Bhaalspawn, so you can use one in your game as either a PC or antagonist. If a PC has it, it'll push the game in a decidedly WoDish direction, as you play a creature that has to constantly struggle against it's darker nature, and gains more powers, but also more self-control problems and social issues as you level up. Monsters will just be made even more able to rip you to shreds. Since it scales up as you level, it is probably worth the LA +2 adjustment, although a level 1, CR 3 thing would be rather fragile. Balance is a precarious thing, and the LA system is a blunt tool. I guess it'll come down to your charop skills to make these powers synergise with your level and feat choices.
PC Portraits: We go for a monstrous theme this month, with most of the portraits showing visible signs of undeath. Some are well preserved, some rotting, and some skeletal, but none of them look like a model of health. That doesn't mean they don't need love, and couldn't make a valuable adventuring companion. There's a lot to be said for having someone along who doesn't breathe, eat or sleep, even if they might have issues with clerics and easily spooked peasants. So any edition other than 3e, I could accuse this column of being a bit misnamed this month. As it is, it just reinforces their current permissive tendencies. Pick an odd race, stack up on the templates, multiclass into several obscure prestige classes, we don't mind at all. It's all just part of the character building fun they want to encourage at the moment. Just don't get caught eating brains in public, as that tends to make people uncomfortable.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finishes off his map key with the essentials of life. Food sources, merchants, temples, places for ordinary people to live, and mounts. (the fact that these mounts are giant pterosaurs is irrelevant. ;) ) While there may not be decent amenities by modern standards, the basics are there, and there's enough resources to get a group of adventures decently outfitted to go out and kick ass. As with most creative works, the last bit feels like it was done on perspiration rather than inspiration. We need this stuff, but it's hard to get excited about it. Still, once again, it does a good job of showing us the logistics that underpin the setting. The degree of safety they have here is precarious and hard-won, and one rampaging horde would ruin it for everyone. Are you going to defend it, or run off to explore and leave that responsibility to other people? Hopefully there'll be decent stories to tell whichever option you pick.
Namsco? I don't remember this? Another flop?
DM's toolbox: Another very cool idea in the toolbox this month. To get your players more involved, encourage them to fill out little details of the worldbuilding connected to their characters, or possibly just in general. It helps them invest in the world and remember things in a way that infodumps don't, it makes the world less homogenous, as it isn't all the product of one brain, it gives them something to exploit, and you can further reward them with XP or other cookies for doing so, which hopefully creates a positive feedback loop and encourages them to stick with the game and do this sort of thing again in the future. This is the kind of thing that I strongly approve of, and is only a problem if the players start getting competitive OOC, and the people who can't keep up get resentful of the more creative ones. You can frequently benefit from blurring the role between player and DM, and keeping people thinking about the game between sessions. I encourage you to try it, but also to be aware of it's pitfalls. Emotional investment and sharing the load good. Overcompetitiveness, (a life without competitiveness would be like a life without explosives :p ) bitchiness and burnout bad. Take that risk, go for the big payoff. It's only a game, after all.
Sunburn's a bitch in dragonmirth. What's new goes mindlessly throughout its familiar routine. Just like me, at this stage.
Not that much horror material this year, but the issue is all the stronger for it, once again having a very high batting average indeed. This has certainly been one of the smoothest editorial changeovers the magazine has managed, and shows them really getting the hang of 3e in general. How long will this quality boost last? Let's hope it's for a while yet. Next month please, waiter!
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 1/7
132 pages. Oriental special time! One of the most popular optional books of 1e is back, and it's not doing too badly for itself this time either. Whether it'll get several more specials this edition due to the public sending in tons of submissions remains to be seen, but this is another topic that seems pretty promising, given the vast quantity of source material the writers have to draw upon. Let's hope this isn't a let-down.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Another member of staff leaving? Yup, this time it's the art director who's heading off to pastures new. They may have improved the magazine a fair bit this year, but that doesn't mean it's not still a pressure cooker to work at, that gradually burns people out. This shakes my optimism coming into this issue a little bit. Still, let's hope this is handled as smoothly as Dave's departure, and the replacement doesn't start doing annoying things with the layout and art style. As long as you stagger the staff turnovers sufficiently, the whole continues uninterrupted, like any large organism. Eventually, everything can be changed, but it's still the same thing in principle. Let's hope I'll still be able to say that with the big changes to come.
Scale Mail: Our first letter praises the part of the DMG that shows you how to change the rules. People want to houserule, because one size does not fit all. As we've found from 4e and their change of tactics for 5e, trying to standardise everything alienates a lot of people. If you want a wide tent, your system and settings need to be flexible.
The second one points out just how good value for money a magazine subscription is, especially when compared to buying supplements. In fact, it's actually gotten better over time as well. And yet people are still more likely to allow stuff from the complete books than they are Dragon Articles. Funny, that.
Next we have someone who's finding the articles they're producing perfectly anticipate the needs of their game. Co-incidence, or mind-reading? I guess it doesn't really matter as long as it keeps working.
People continue to want more stuff from the magazine put up online. Once again, this is a slow process, but we know they'll get everything up eventually. Not that this'll please everyone in itself. WotC! Y U remove print versions?!
Planescape continues to have a fanatical following who are very happy to see the planes return, and want more stuff converted to 3e. I think we can safely say you'll be seeing more of that over the years. The new halflings, on the other hand, aren't so unanimously received. I don't think you're onto a winner there.
Also onto a loser are people who want to redistribute the magazine electronically on their webpages. The OGL may allow you to make new D&D compatible stuff, and distribute it widely, but direct copying of existing material without changing the names and wording will still get you C&D'd.
This month's pair of opposing letters are one from someone who's annoyed they completely stopped covering 2e cold, and is considering leaving, and someone who's recently been brought back, after a lengthy hiatus. It's true, they didn't have to make the cutoff so abrupt, after all, last time they tapered it over 3 whole years. Still, even with that, they're still picking up more people than they're losing at the moment. Would they have done even better if they'd kept supporting 2e, and possibly other systems as well? Oh for the ability to access alternate universes, and know for sure.
Another opposing pair are bitterly divided over the merits of the Shannara series, and it's statistical conversion & quality of artwork in issue 286. That issue is proving even more problematic than the historical ones.
Still, at least Chainmail seems to be getting a generally enthusiastic reception, with people wanting to see more of the setting ASAP. That's fairly pleasing. Some people still want to try new things.
Nodwick meets the most pitiful monster of all. An economics major. Yeah, like those could ever get a proper job in a D&D universe.
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 2/7
Forum gets marginalised. No, really. Now it's just a little blue sidebar running parallel to the regular letters. This means it's getting considerably less page space and fewer contributors as well. They seem to be losing interest in debate. Or maybe it's us, not bothering to write in when we can get instant gratification on web forums. Hmm.
Brad Smith is tired of all the frickin' nitpickin'. Seems people these days want instant gratification more and more. If something's not useful to them now, they just throw it away, instead of storing it for a rainy day or looking for an unorthodox use for it. And if you can't take a picture with a little blood, you'd never cut it as a real adventurer! Get offa mah lawn!
Jon Mullenax thinks that is strength is more important than charisma or not very much depends on what kind of game you're playing. Technically true, but still a mixed message to send, which may have an underlying overall balance.
Previews is also reduced to a sidebar, and all the description is cut out. The health of this section is not particularly great. Still, I suppose we have the internet to get more info now. All it takes is a quick search.
Our big adventure is Deep Horizon. Skip Williams once again produces an utterly critically panned adventure with some bad bad joke items. Stick to sageing, ya twazzock. I don't know. :shakes head:
The Realms enjoys a supplement and a novel. Lords of Darkness helps you keep track of the all too many villainous groups spanning the Realms. With all the novels where the good guys win each time, you'd think someone'd manage to finish off at least one of them for good, but no, they keep proliferating. Speaking of novels, Black Wolf by Dave Gross takes us to Sembia, to spend a while in the life of someone infected by lycanthropy. It's a hard knock life.
Greyhawk continues making books based on old modules. Actually, this time, they don't even use a greyhawk module, but steal a Mystara one. What a load of cheek. Keep on the Borderlands is adapted by Ru Emmerson. Once again, reviews are mediocre to poor. They're scraping the bottom of this barrel now.
Dragonlance gets Chosen of the gods by Chris Pierson. Another prequel, we go back to the time of the Kingpriests. We can make this work. Or something. We know how this one ends.
Sunscale, the gryphon's legacy. Another early d20 product that sank without a trace, despite being from Wolfgang Baur, one of TSR's big writers in the 90's.
Up on a soapbox: It's important to remember that back in the old days, the rules were pretty fast and loose. This includes things like monster descriptions. Sure oozes and slimes are supposed to be mindless, but if it makes a story more fun for them to have at least animalistic learning capabilities, go for it. That's basically the moral of this month's story. What are you going to place more importance on? Strict adherence to the rules, or fudging things to make the story more interesting? Gary may have sold playing it strictly tournament style for a while in the early 80's, but I think over the course of his life, he spent more time doing what seemed cool at the time. It's always important to remember that the people who write (and repeatedly rewrite) the rules don't see them as immutable canon like some fans do. And while this may be problematic when dealing with politicians and CEO's, It may be good advice here. When the primary objective is fun, not verisimilitude or winning, flexibility is probably the way to go. Still, we maybe ought to do something about the tendency of wizards to be the stars of the show, and everyone else their entourage, which is another lesson we can take from this tale. Just because we can change the rules, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make them as good as possible. Lots to debate here, and no real answers. Hopefully this'll keep the letters and forums busy.
Zogonia: Another little strip comic starts. Well, that's one way to break up a fight. Remember, violence is serious business in D&D, not some form of entertainment.
Dork tower fails to break out of its rut.
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 3/7
The history of the ninja: Curiously enough, OA didn't include a ninja core class, instead splitting the concept up over a whole bunch of different prestige classes, just as 1e ninja were a split class that combined with all sorts of other core classes. Not that this hurts their popularity. If anything, it makes them stand out as getting special treatment all the more. But anyway, it's time to do the historical accuracy thing before we bring in the fantastical elements. If ninjas appeared these days, they'd be called dangerous terrorists, and demonised in the media, as after all, they were formed by families of poor people who couldn't use conventional means to fight the rigid established order, so they had to be sneaky and dishonorable and use whatever tricks worked to succeed. They even involved women in their fighting and information gathering. (shock horror) That they managed to become cool and popular is a testament to the power of distance and public relations. (and also how obnoxious and stompy the samurai could be when dealing with peasants) Plus there's the fact that they were notoriously low on collateral damage in their strikes, which you certainly can't say for modern terrorists. So this makes it clear how they differ from simple rogues, with a strong emphasis on family loyalty, secrecy, and doing things to fulfil a bigger agenda that they may not know all the details of. Having them in a party and keeping the fact that you are one secret from the other players makes for interesting but ultimately unstable stories. It also has some information on the various skillsets they trained in, and what feats and skills you should concentrate on for each. After all, they didn't actually have superhuman abilities, even if it might have seemed like it from the outside. Overall, this is one of those articles that's decent, but not great, and feels very much like a warm-up for the rest of the features. I doubt anyone reading this doesn't know what ninja are, but they might have seen nothing but pop culture versions. That actually might need fixing, you never know.
Silent warriors: Having got the historical stuff out the way, here's three more ninja prestige classes, concentrating on different areas of expertise. Maybe you'll get to epic levels and master all possible areas of expertise, but I doubt it. Plus they have mutually exclusive alignment requirements, which kinda puts a crimp in that plan. So let's see just how broad a church ninjing is, and what schisms are found within it's congregation.
Poison Fists are pretty self-explanatory. Their monkly powers let them poison enemies with their unarmed strikes, resist poison from others, and shapeshift into a tiny venomous creature to get into places and deliver stealthy death. While not bad in a fight, they're obviously intended to be the type of adversaries who prefer to kill without ever giving you a chance to fight back, by poisoning your food, or maybe bedclothes, hat, sword hilt, whatever would be ironically appropriate and not immediately thought of by the detectives. Honor? What kind of chump do you take me for? We're in this to win.
Ghost-faced Killers specialise in the invisibility, and eventually incorporeality business, allowing them to strike mysteriously anywhere, and also serve as a counter-squad for anyone dealing with actual ghosts and extraplanar creatures. They get full BAB, 1/3 sneak attack progression, and the full set of mundane stealth skills, which means they can also hit hard once they get wherever they're trying to sneak. Unless your place has extensive magical protections, you're probably in trouble.
Weightless Feet are of course all about going wuxia on your ass. Up walls, across water, off cliffs, and eventually full-on flight at 10th level. They get full BAB too, and are relatively easy to get into, so they can still be full frontal combat characters. They're a good deal less stealthy than the other two, and also more slanted towards being good guys, so they seem like the one PC's will most want to take. All of these seem pretty solid though, neither too strong or too weak. Individuals may stray from the path, but the balance as a whole will remain.
Levelled treasures: Bonded weapons which upgrade to keep pace with their owners aren't an exclusively oriental idea, but they have just been introduced to 3e in the OA book. Of course, the fact that unless the DM is being very stingy indeed with treasure, this actually results in Samurai being even weaker than a straight fighter of the same level is an issue. But they don't know that yet, and they have a cool idea to sell to us. So here's general mechanics for upgrading your magical weapons and armor, adding more plusses and powers at the cost of gold and xp. This means it's obviously aimed at fighty classes who couldn't make their own items anyway. And since they still won't have the same flexibility in choosing their powers, this throws into sharp relief one of the persistent balance problems in 3e, leaving me frustrated rather than excited. Definitely a case where more work is needed. Come back in a few years time, maybe, let's see how 3.5 treats you.
Palladium make an appearance in the first time in several years. I guess they've decided to go back to advertising other RPG's rather than taking the computer game dollar the whole time. Lots of new books available from these guys.
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 4/7
The fantastic world of Hong Kong cinema: In the years since OA was first published, real world asia definitely hasn't been standing still. There's a vast quantity of books, TV and movies made there, and more of it is getting translated and released in the west than ever. (and hopefully you can get fansubs of the rest these days. ) So there's a lot of material for you to draw upon for your game, that you might not know about unless you're a serious cinephile. (even researching on the internet runs into problems when the other country uses a different lettering system. ) Robin Laws does his thang of mixing example material with rules hacks to show you how to emulate it in your own game. Everyone can do super jumps and flying, everyone of any note knows everyone else on the circuit, and you've got to train hard and find the right sifu if you want to unlock the super special secret maneuvers. Oh, and watch out for Eunuchs and Crossdressers, which isn't very politically correct, but what do you expect from fantasy legends. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say you can run a very fun game indeed by emulating this genre, even if there are many base systems better suited to it than D&D. In fact, didn't Exalted just come out a couple of months ago. If you want your spectacular yet highly crunchy action, get your ass over there before the number of supplements becomes too much trouble to keep track of. Once again, I have mixed feelings about this article, but it's still vastly superior to the filler he's been cranking out for his regular column lately. I think Robin really benefits from the freedom to completely redesign things and do them his way. It's not easy to do that in just 2 pages, and isn't the best use of his skills.
Thunder and Fire: Kaiju! Fuck yeah! :throws up the horns: Since giant monsters were one of the first ever templates, way back in the D&D companion set, and appeared in the original OA as well, I'm surprised they didn't get included in the 3e version. Once again, the book's loss is the magazine's gain, with this very fun article from James Jacobs, showing you how you can construct nicely unique giant monsters by scaling up regular ones, and then adding on a few more abilities on top of that. The three sample monsters would fit right into a japanese monster movie, A giant octopus that can also survive on land for a while, a Fiendish centipede that lives in a volcano, and a giant robotic bulette. All are quite capable of being in ur city, wrecking ur buildingz. (Hmm, giant kitten. There's a thought. :D ) So this isn't a truly original article, but is both a well done and well timed revival. As characters level up, they're going to want bigger challenges, and these definitely fit the bill. Go for the classics, only bigger. Maybe you can have a giant domesticated otyugh disposing of an entire city's waste, and defending it from invaders. Or a giant flying owlbear scooping up entire houses for future consumption. The possibilities are truly enormous. :p
Playful Phoenix fist: Ah yes, the random name generators. Couldn't go without those. To go with the theme, it's random martial arts manoeuvres. This has a particularly wide array of possibilities contained within it's tables, with 20 different word constructions, and many tables with a full 100 options. I find it unlikely you'll repeat the same move no matter how long you roll, although as ever, some of the results may be silly. So this definitely looks like an above average entry of this kind, with both serious and comedic uses.
Class combo's: Since we've just introduced a bunch of new oriental classes, that means we have a chance to dig this column up again. Our obvious combinations are Martial Artist (50/50 fighter/monk), Monastic Defender (55/45 monk/sohei), and spirit warrior (40/60 fighter/shaman). Since all these combos are heavy on the martial arts, they also include two new martial arts styles that you'll want to aim for with your bonus feats. So once again, this is filler, but not useless, especially if you need to build scaled NPC's quickly and don't want to spend ages combing through hundreds of feat choices. We all need the occasional badass martial artist for our players to fight in a hurry.
Cities of the Ages isn't in theme, which seems a bit of a shame given the many oriental cities with thousands of years of continuous development to draw upon. Instead, it's covering Paris, which certainly isn't a bad choice, but is a bit disappointing, especially since the previous choices have been mostly European as well. Kenneth decides to zoom in on the mid 11th century, the era of Louis IX, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. Notre Dame isn't quite finished yet, despite having been under construction for 85 years. (and to think I complained about the channel tunnel) The crusades are just starting to get interesting, and the knights templar are building up political power. There's a fair chunk of interesting stuff going on, even if much of the stuff we think of as their big landmarks isn't up yet. The number of overtly supernatural ideas isn't as great as most of the previous instalments though. So this doesn't feel very complete, partially because there's probably so much material to use. Sticking too strictly to a format can become a hindrance after a while.
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 5/7
Rogues gallery: Sembia really is taking over around here. This is the third merchant family to get detailed, 6 months after the last one. I suspect these articles coincide with the staggered release of the books in the series. 4 so far? And more to come? Still, they're unlikely to get up to the 16 the Harper series managed. Now that would take years to cover all the characters.
Rusk the huntsmaster is a cleric of Malar who's lost his arm, and is now scared that he's lost the favor of his god. Well, if you're going to follow a savage monster who discards you as soon as you start becoming feeble, you deserve everything you get. Red in tooth and claw sounds good as long as you're doing the ripping. When you aren't compassion and helping the needy starts to look like a more sensible option.
Stannis Malveen is another guy who's died and come back, and is determined to get his revenge on the Uskevrens. Only instead of being a damned soul, he's a repulsive eel-vampire thing which wears a veil that really doesn't help. He's insane and flamboyant with it, which makes him an amusing villain to face, presuming your characters survive. Much fewer moral dilemmas than the one that appears to be polite and helpful.
Radu Malveen is the brother who provides the human face in this partnership. Actually, it seems he's the dominant one here, being an exceedingly competent fighter and focussed businessman. But he's still a creepy bugger. This'll probably let him down in the long run. Get yourself some actual friends.
Elminsters guide to the realms could theoretically have been in theme, but isn't either, as they're more interested in Rokugan than Kara-Tur this time round. They are at least a little eastern though, detailing a minor Red Wizard hideout, and the tricks and traps they use to make it hard to spot and easy to defend. Since they're wizards, most of these are magical, and they don't have any trouble getting in some high level stuff like symbols of death from the home base. Where some of these instalments have been aimed at lower level characters, this one reminds us that there are some big villainous groups that you won't be able to do more than dent at less than epic levels, and doing so may result in escalating reprisals. And if you're dumb enough to take one of their enchanted items that let them track you wherever you go, then that becomes a foregone conclusion. So kill them and take their stuff (unless you fence it fairly fast afterwards) is a rather bad idea here. People who think like stereotypical adventurers will have problems. This is what happens when the villains have years of getting beaten and become self-aware. The Realms continues to evolve, and slowly become ever less generic. Let's hope it can remain gameable despite this.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Cups? Well, we've had two whole articles on bottles before. And the holy grail is a pretty famous item. I believe we can work this. Once again, it seems that ironically, the amount of rehash has actually gone down since the new edition started.
Alchemist's Glasses allow you to perfectly combine or separate any materials, even those that can't normally be mixed. This will require a bit of intelligence to get full use out of.
Bardic Cups identify liquids poured into them by singing certain songs. The code is fairly easy to figure out. Stay well away if it starts making death metal screams.
Dwarven Rune Steins give you a whole bunch of special powers if you invoke the right runes while drinking. It's basically a whole bunch of reusable potions. Another one any party will get a lot of use out of.
Caine's Flagons of Shadows creates liquid shadow, that can be used to boost your ability to cast shadow magic, or simply make sculpted areas of shade. A low-key but valuable item for your evil wizard looking to build a stylish lair.
Chalices of true seeing give you exactly that if you drink the liquid it produces. No surprises there.
Dragon's Goblets produce flaming liquid that you can throw, or drink and then use to get a breath weapon. Mind you don't burn your throat in the process.
A Rose of Kings is a neat device for ensuring honesty in your deals. It's reciprocal, so like the round table, it's puts everyone on an equal footing and should keep everyone trustworthy. Drink away, you have nothing to fear save your own secrets.
Spy Glasses let you see through walls. A basic but effective little trick that'll give you a few more chances not to be horribly screwed over by monsters and traps in the dungeon.
Talking Cups provide you with a rather fragile walkie talkie. Fill them with water, and they can transmit messages to each other. But any spillage wrecks them. You'll have to fit a stein container to make them more durable.
Vampiric Goblets drain the bluud of the drinker. But if you know the command word, you can get back those hp later. Like a real blood bank, this becomes a lifesaving service that'll add another bit of aid on top of the cleric.
War Mugs of the Ogre Magi are incredibly useful in barroom brawls. Not only do they do as much damage as a regular sword, but they never spill, no matter how vigorously you swing them. I can think of quite a few fighters who'd make this their weapon of choice all the time. :D I once again approve.
Dragon Issue 289: November 2001
part 6/7
Nodwick attacks continuity, coherence and pokemon in the latest instalment of his double page spreads.
Chainmail: The forces of the Gnolls and Demons get their history explained to us this month, along with the obligatory new monster designed to make an interesting fight in mass combat. Neither of these creature types is noted for making disciplined forces, so they work best in irregular warfare, using hit and run tactics facilitated by exploiting the terrain and exploiting summonings to suddenly turn the tides of battle. Creatures like Abyssal Maws can gobble up enemies rapidly after taking them down. (handy when dealing with the necromantic side, I presume) And there's plenty of half-demon badass individual gnolls to wreak havoc on the lesser troops of the other sides. Just watch out for the failed morale checks, which I think should be particularly problematic for this side. Presuming the mechanics match the fluff, anyway, which I certainly hope is the case.
Role models: Continuing straight on from the Chainmail article, we move to detailing the dwarven forces. Once again, they have a distinct colour scheme, combining warm skin and hair colours with cold metallic armor with gold and bronze trims. You want someone to go out drinking with and get into a brawl, these are your boys. It's nice to see that someone in design thought long and hard about these little details, and didn't just give each side a single colour to mark them out. I do wonder how much these details will be pushed forward in the marketing though. Will only the people who buy the magazine regularly know about them, or are they pointed out in the core set and made integral? Once again, I want to hunt some of this stuff down so I can know more, so they're doing their job properly.
The play's the thing: Another three ability combos covered here. Low intelligence, High Charisma. Low Wisdom, High Charisma. And High Wisdom, Low Charisma. As with the last time, the results are snooze-inducingly predictable, painting in broad strokes and saying nothing you couldn't figure out yourself. More filler I don't really want to waste time writing about, in other words.
Sage advice is still dealing with the fallout from the updated forgotten realms
Can priests of mystra get their temple benefit to arcane spells (yes)
Can you add your bard levels to your wizard levels to improve your familiar (no)
Where are the 10th+ level spells some FR prestige classes get (You use them for really uber metamagic. They used to have spells for those, but the gods banned them. Fortunately, this is a bit of rules/setting integration that the edition change didn't ruin.)
Szass Tam isn't smart enough to have 16th level spells (No, but since there aren't any, and he's just filling them with metamagic, it's all good.)
Can you use old FR books (As long as they don't contradict the new ones. If they do, you'll have to figure out if it's a timeline advancement or outright retcon. )
What new feats can fighters take as bonus (Ones marked Fighter. You should really have been able to figure that out yourself)
What are drow abilities (The special powers in their monster entry. That and being complete wankers and still having legions of fangirls. Not that plenty of humans don't have that skill too.)
Which new abilities should liches get (As many as you like! )
Can you make time stop persistent, then sleep and memorize it again (No, because no real time passes. You can't live your whole life in a moment, no matter how long it lasts for you. )
How does spell-like ability work (same as any other spell, just easier.)
Does a familiars AC bonus stack with their regular one (no point otherwise)
Owls do no damage (Maybe not to you, but they can do some pretty mean mouse skewering)
What skills do owls have (see the monster entry if in doubt. Pay no attention to the ruling a few months ago contradicting this)
What's the point of giving familiars speech at 5th level when they can communicate with their master telepathicly anyway. (So when their master falls down the well, they don't have to resort to mime to get them rescued)
How do bladesingers learn and cast spells (Like wizards)
How many spells do prestige classes get (The usual for their base class per level. If they get new spells, read the description. If the description misses it out, come to Skip, and Skip'll cap the writer and Errata the prestige class.)
Can you use masterwork tools with ranged legerdemain (what tools)
Do prestige classes that boost spellcasting improve familiars (Only if they say so specifically. There's got to be some small downside to prestige sorcerers)
Is there an error to arcane trickster's sneak attack (yes. Toooooo Muuuuuuuuch!!!!!! Power!!!!!!)
Can you get sneak attack multiple times with lesser orbs (no)
Do spells you specialize in get the damage bonus for each shot (no)
What happens if you advance in your old class after getting a prestige class. (Keep adding. This shouldn't be a problem.)
Can you stack the same metamagic feat (If it makes sense. Remember, multiples add.)
How does the dragon disciple HD upgrade work (It just boosts the prestige class's future dice. That's it. No complicated math required.)
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 1/7
91 (132) pages. What have we in our presents this christmas? Eastern European fantasy? Nice. That's another theme they've somehow managed to miss before. We've had arthurian style chivalry, norse sagas and greco-roman pantheism done to death, but these countries between them somehow get missed out and trampled over. What interesting stories of their own do they have to tell? Let's hope it's some good ones.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, Ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Jesse's editorial this month takes the piss out of his co-players in Monte's game. Apparently, tactical astuteness is not one of their strong points, and were it not for the fact that Monte tends towards high action with hero points and stuff, they'd have a lot more silly deaths than they do. Even though an increasing proportion of the magazine is devoted to character optimisation and tactical thinking, the staff don't always play like that. Let us not forget it, or get too serious and hung up about the RAW ourselves.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is all about their death gods, both mythical and from their own campaign worlds. Should they keep them separate, or treat the two with equal weight within the same article? Now that IS a good question. Do the risks of confusing the mythologically ignorant outweigh the benefits? Definitely worth debating further.
We get another letter criticising their recent illegible fonts. This is one thing they have no problem complying with. New editor, new ideas, throw out the old ones that haven't proven themselves.
Robin Laws' often metagamey thinking gets criticised. You should solve problems from inside the box, not thing about how the GM put it together OOC. In an ideal world, maybe. Sometimes you have to put narrative conventions over solidity if you want to get things done.
Another complaint is that the maps they've been including with the magazine don't line up perfectly. That was true in the 2e days as well. It's hard being a cartographer sometimes. Shows they weren't printed as one giant map and then cut up afterwards.
Some carrying weight erratta. Size and number of limbs does make a difference, remember.
A letter from someone who loved issue 287's cover, showing that for many people, good central characters mean you don't notice an underdone background. The reverse can be true as well. After all, very few are good at everything at once.
287's contents get plenty of praise as well. As long as it doesn't contradict previously established information, people love their planar sheeeet. Just can't get enough.
Previews: Fourth splatbook in the series this month. They'll be finished before you know it, and wishing they'd covered each class individually. Song and Silence is for those of you who like a little larceny and high skill point selections. The usual array of prestige classes and stuff. Get ready for arcane tricksters to become rather popular.
Our novels also seem pretty standard. The Realms have The Siege by Troy Denning. More high power shenanigans as evil archwizards threaten the place. Dragonlance gets Conundrum by Jeff Crook. Gnomes take center stage. This is not treated with the horror I would expect.
Forum: Lisa Ohanian has get herself into the position of being an evil drow wizard in a group with 2 paladins, and is wondering how long she can keep up the charade. Until your friends read this letter, I'm thinking. :D Never give the game away in public.
Tom Chlebus thinks it's ridiculous that a single illustration or advert is managing to ruin the entire magazine for them. Some people seriously need to grow thicker skins.
Anonymous still manages to get a foot in the reduced page count, telling a story of how their group played evil characters, and took things to a degree where they were horrified with themselves. They soon stopped after that, not wanting to face the darkness that lurks in the human heart again.
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 2/7
Nodwick shows his employers how to make more profit with less effort by judicious application of economics. Presuming it works, of course. I guess when you're on a fixed wage, rampant inflation every time they bring back a big haul is not what you want.
This years statement of ownership is actually in an easily spotted place. Not surprising, as it shows that last years dramatic upswing has not only continued, but picked up even more pace this year, with average runs over the year of 72,000, but last month sales of 78,000. Not quite in the league of their 80's heyday, but certainly not too shabby. They can quite justly feel proud about themselves. Let's hope it stays that way.
Up on a soapbox: Well, this is funny. As we've already found, Gary's players didn't have it all their way. They regularly faced killer monsters, unfair traps, insoluble mysteries, and recurring challenges that may have a solution, but it hasn't been discovered yet. And here's one of them, an animate statue that appears to be made of pure gold and covered with gems. Since they used to get XP for loot, this was a huge red rag to them, and they tried all sorts of tricks to get their hands on it. But they didn't work together very well, since they didn't want to share that haul, so it's managed to give them the slip every time so far. You know, a small slice of a big cake is better than no cake at all. This is what happens when you buy into the myth of the big damn hero. A sadistic DM will punk you with amusing ease. Definitely one of those occasions where a good muahaha is in order.
Zogonia gets roped into an adventure. Hey, if you're gonna sit in a bar all day, it's bound to happen.
Dork tower is very much in favour of capitalism. As long as you're actually buying stuff, and not just acting overenthusiastic.
Tempests on the Steppes: So, let's get stuck into this theme thing. What makes eastern european fantasy different from yer basic british or french variant? Tons of feuding ethnic groups, all of which are technically white by today's standards, but the differences are srys business to them. Waves of successive immigration/invading hordes that result in complex webs of trade, relationships and grudges, which should keep you in adventure hooks indefinitely unless your players get into full-on ethnic cleansing. Paganism stick around for a little longer than in England, but was eventually superceded by the orthodox church. There's plenty of interesting undead myths, and dwarves & trolls are fairly similar to their norse counterparts, if not quite as common. This article has a fair amount in common with the dark ages and robin hood ones, with a map, a timeline, and how various classes and races do or don't fit into the milieu. And it definitely looks more permissive than the english DA one, and way more expansive than the robin hood one. The shift in flavour might be a fairly subtle one, but it's there, and hopefully it'll be enough to keep your players from becoming jaded for another campaign, or taking the same old tropes for granted. It's amazing how something like your main settlements surrounding a sea instead of being surrounded by it changes how you view the world.
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 3/7
Bright sun, mother earth: Now let's see what gods were worshipped around here before christianity came along to homogenise everything. This is a fairly messy one precisely because of all the people travelling over the region and cross-pollinating as they went. So there's a ton of overlapping portfolios, different aspects of the same idea, and retellings with the serial numbers filed off to sort through, and try to get a coherent picture out of. Let's hope they can get some good game material out of it.
Dazhbog is the slavic sun god, and like most sun gods, is considered both powerful and benevolent. After all, it's not as if you can live without him. His clerics do all the typical clericy things, healing and being judgemental and generally trying to keep a community from falling apart, or maybe going into the world to be generally do-goody. You'll have no problem playing them.
The Death Crone is one of the more unpleasant gods of death out there, killing people and collecting their souls through trickery and sadistic methods. Her clerics are very much in the scheming witchy mould, not to be trusted, but sometimes, you've just got to make that bargain. You'd better hope like hell they don't kill your mum and marry your dad, because that's almost bound to lead into a rather unpleasant fairytale situation.
Gabija is the goddess of home & hearth, which means her clerics tend to be stay at home sorts. Of course, if some horde were to come sweeping through, burning, killing and raping as they went, a good extended vengeance quest might give them an excuse to stay out for a while. I'm sure a GM could arrange something like that.
Jarilo is the god of fertility, in particular the sort that leads to people doing stupid things while pursuing sex. Yeah, I can see how that would be a perennially popular prayer niche. No atheists in foxholes and all that. :p Adventurers love a god that asks them to do the things they would have done anyway.
Jurate is the goddess of the Baltic sea. She cries amber, and lives in a palace made of it, which implies some pretty epic heartbreak in the past, and not being able to let go. Immortality can suck when you don't change with the times.
Lunt-Ater is a second sun god. As the god of the steppe nomads, he has a greater emphasis on exploration and knowledge than farming and rulership, but he's still basically one of the good guys. His symbol is the Gander, which is definitely interesting from a linguistic PoV. I never really noted geese for their curiosity, but I guess stereotypes differ in different countries.
Meness is the baltic moon god, and like most moon gods, is a roguish sort with a changable personality and a wandering eye. The sun may be relatively reliable, but the moon is always showing up in different parts of the sky and changing appearance. It doesn't have to be that way, of course. If we lived in a solar system where the moon was perfectly aligned with the solar plane, while the sun was prone to flares and power fluctuations, the opposite would be true in most myths, and there'd be a lot more eclipses.
Mokosh is a female fertility & earth god. After all, it takes two to tango. This is one of those archetypes that show up over and over again. The male sky god on top, and the female earth one underneath. It's like they've never heard of reverse cowgirl. :p
Perun is the god of thunder. He's somwewhat more responsible than Thor, but still has a terrible temper, and the tendency to smite people who piss him off from on high. You wind up letting them have positions of responsibility because it's more trouble arguing than it's worth.
Rod is the appropriately named god of fertility, IYKWIMAITYD. Unlike our previous fertility gods, he's a fairly responsible sort, with secondaries in knowledge and protection. Not all male fertility gods are deadbeat dads. Just enough to give the rest a bad reputation.
Saule is our third sun god, this time female. As she's from the northern regions, she's valued when she's around, with childbirth, weaving and music among her secondary aspects. The sun's effects differ widely based on lattitude, so it's not surprising different cultures have different perspectives.
Stribog is the god of winter, and as winters tend to be harsher in eastern europe and russia than the coastal places that enjoy the gulf stream, he's pretty cruel and domineering. His clerics similarly tend to take charge in winter, being cruel for the sake of "necessity" and then bugger off the rest of the year, which is a good setup for adventurers, as both protagonists and antagonists really.
Svantovit is the god of war, and prosperity as well, curiously enough. So clerics who take up the kill 'em and take their stuff lifestyle seem very appropriate indeed. Goes to shows how perceptions of war have changed over the years. Now it's only considered good for the economy if it's happening somewhere far far away, and you're selling the arms to other people. :p
Svarog is the god of celestial fire and the heavens, technically not quite a sun god, but in the same general area. He's still in the lawful good camp though. People tend to be well disposed towards creator gods for some reason.
Svarozic is the corresponding god of earthly fire, keeping people warm in the dark and making food much more palatable. Once again, strongly in the good guy camp, if not as inclined to go out adventuring. For all it's risks, we still keep using fire on a regular basis, because it's worth it.
Ukko is another sky creator god, but not specifically a sun god this time. He has a flaming sword, which certainly sounds familiar. It's almost as if myths might contain a grain of truth jumbled by time and successive storytellers. The question then becomes why beings capable of space travel would use souped-up swords instead of ballistic weapons? I guess you've got to conserve mass if you want to make those long flights through the cold gulfs of space.
Volos is the god of horned herd animals and crops. As these are pretty damn crucial to the average man's survival and prosperity, he's also wound up as the god of trade and wealth. You can bet he'd have some disagreement with a god who thinks wealth is best obtained by force rather than negotiation.
So this collection has plenty of interesting information, a couple of new domains, and tons of stories that you should follow up on. It really reminds us how much more complicated real world gods are than ones that are built to fit into neat little slots in a pantheon created all at once. Even the Realms doesn't have quite that level of depth despite 20+ years of building. Reality wins again.
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 4/7
Fell and forlorn bestiary: Our eastern european section finishes with a look at existing monsters suited to the milieu, and adds a few new ones as well. More than a few well known things, vampires in particular, hail from that region.
Leshii have appeared before in issues 119 and 239, making them officially the monster name with the most entirely independent stats added to it. As before, they're wild and tricksy twats more likely to engage in extended invisible vendettas than actually fighting you. I guess the stories agree then.
Rusalka are also pretty familiar. They lure you into the water and drown you because they're lonely. A well prepared party with a decent spellcaster will mop the floor with them. Be glad you don't have to be as dumb as the characters in stories.
Vila aren't one I'm familiar with, but since they seem to be just slavic valkyries, they can watch over my heroes anytime, if you know what I mean and I think you do. :hurr: With invisibility and shapeshifting, they can be a good source of subtle help.
Vodyanoi are of course not the aquatic umber hulk variants, but another straight mythological conversion. You know the drill. Competent, not thrilling. They do seem quite nasty for their CR though. I suppose fae do have a crap die type for HD, so they need a few extra.
...If you know what I mean: Robin Laws continues his pet crusade on mechanically representing social situations, so that good and bad roleplayers can contribute more equally IC because the important thing is the intent and the dice rolls. This time, it's detailed modifiers for the innuendo and sense motive skills in a wide variety of social situations, so your character can figure out what people are really saying. A lot of this revolves around applying synergy bonuses from any other skills appropriate to the situation, while others are pretty common sense, and will still require a bit of DM adjudication. Still, overall, it's another move towards putting as much as possible inside the rules, so the DM always has an authority to look to to give their rulings more weight. Whether that's a good or bad thing is very much a matter for debate, even 10 years later, with more games including rules like this as core. Once again, we see that he's right at the forefront of pushing this game style.
Life of the party: A second socially focussed article in quick succession. A couple of months ago, they showed you how to map out investigation scenarios like you would dungeons. Now they do the same with parties, talking about how to pace a whole load of little social encounters in succession so players have some choice about which ones they trigger, while still building to a climax over the course of an evening. And of course, you can easily have the party turn ugly, mix in a brawl or an assassination to keep things interesting. And the odds that you'll be able to recycle encounters are greater than in a dungeon. Once again, this seems like a good opportunity to break up the monotony of a long campaign, and ensure that all those skills you put points in will get a good workout. I'm sure the players won't complain too hard as long as they're still getting XP and don't feel railroaded by the way things turn out.
Cities of the ages catches up with the times and manages to be in theme this month, with one on Novgorod. Once again, it seems like it got big because it was on a crossroads, built next to a massive lake, and a relatively short journey away from finland and all those little eastern european states around the baltic sea. Unusually for the time, it had an elected mayor instead of a hereditary ruler, and they managed to avoid being outright conquered by the mongol hordes, making them relatively egalitarian politically, while still filled with dangers from within and without. Giants, Dragons, arsonists, who knows what monsters lurking in the forests, and way too many clergy both holy and profane to politic with. Plus it's not the obvious choice like Moscow or St Petersberg. As I'd hoped, and like the VS articles, this series gets more interesting as they go one, as the obvious choices get used up, and they have to show us more obscure options or move on for the next big score.
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 5/7
Rogues Gallery: Ahh, now here's some familiar faces. Paul Kidds new Greyhawk novels and short stories have certainly presented us with an unusual selection of PC's, and then put them in interesting situations. Of course, it helps that the source material has some pretty goofy elements, especially White Plume Mountain. So they've made sure that the results are very different from the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels. And now we get to see just how much these characters violate the rules. Some things change, others stay the same.
The Justicar is the perfect straight man in a world determined to take the piss. A grim brooding driven nameless hero without family? It's been played straight so many times as to become a joke, and Paul Kidd is very aware of this fact. Yet he remains flexible, and he never lets the piss-taking undermine his competence. He may break the rules a little, but he's just as good as most paladins, and less irritating with it.
Cinders is his trusty hellhound skin, a perfect example of how even the oddest of creatures can get a little redemption. Extra set of eyes, flame retardant jacket, and artillery, plus plenty of comic relief. A dog with 3 legs just gets on with life, and it seems like this puppy is commendably angst-free as well as long as it has a caring master.
Escalla is an 18 inch tall fairy, and like most fairies, is a whimsical pain in the butt much of the time. Still, this unpredictability works in her favor as often as not, and she has a pretty impressive array of blasty spells. It's a good thing that you're in a system where your allies can take the odd bit of collateral damage. Mind you, I wouldn't want to speculate about the love life of an 18 inch fairy and a 6 foot human, but polymorphing solves all problems, and presents some extra unique opportunities. I'm sure they find a way.
Private Henry is the eternal naive youth who hero-worships Jus, who is enough of a stoic that he actually doesn't mind this. He's utterly outclassed by the rest of the team, and he really ought to have leveled up a bit more if their DM was strictly tracking XP. I guess they keep on pulling his ass out of the fire so he doesn't really get to reap the full rewards of learning for himself.
Enid is a shy and adorable sphinx. This does not alter the fact that she has superhuman intellect and huge claws, plus a pretty substantial array of knowledge and magic powers. And since she's not spending years guarding a corridor in a dungeon repeating the same riddles, she's probably picking up more than many of her relatives. It's good to have lampshades.
Polk is a veritable supply of them, along with 10 foot poles, iron rations, and spikes. He's a grumpy mentor who actually knows far less than his pupils, with the obvious exception of Private Henry. And since he got killed and reincarnated as a badger, his whole existence is one long lampshading of D&Disms. Well, it's certainly vastly superior to Rose Estes take on Greyhawk.
Class acts: Having missed another month, someone in editing decides class acts shouldn't be Monte's private playground, and hands over the job to Edward Bolme. Will he stick at it long, or will there be a revolving door of freelancers submitting their ideas for this column? Anyway, he gives us a variant on the bounty hunter theme, the Justicar. (which they could maybe have used to good effect in the last article :) ) They're designed to be great at tracking people down, and bringing them in alive. With full BAB, good skills, and powers that enhance them, they're great at matching wits with the rogues they are most likely to be sent after. They may be slightly problematic in a regular team, especially ones who don't want to play along with the capture, not kill mentality of the class, or face lots of weird monsters rather than human opponents. But hey, they're considerably more PC friendly than our last offering. And they'd be great as NPC's as well. After all, many groups break the law and need bringing in. These guys give you a good chance of succeeding without throwing a CR inappropriate team against your players.
Faiths of faerun: Finally a prestige class that isn't pretty unambiguously a better thing than sticking with regular cleric. The Dancer of Sharess may keep full spellcasting, but they only get D6 HP and 1/2 progression BAB. So you'll have to actually consider if the granted powers are actually worth the sacrifices in raw power. That's bad new for the munchkins, but good for the rest of us. I quite approve. Still, with a familiar and limited shapeshifting, both powers that are known to have issues, they may well be worth it. They could probably do with better skills though. The cross-class sacrifices do continue to require substantial consideration in planning your advancement path. Are you willing to make them?
Living Greyhawk Journal: Well, this is interesting. To give us more Greyhawk material, they've added on a whole section within the magazine with a separate editor, just as in the days of the Ares section. The main editor gets to do a little less work, and they can ensure they have a well trained successor when it's time for a change. And as with that, I doubt this section will last more than 2-3 years before they get bored and replace it with something else, because Greyhawk's fanbase is still quite a bit smaller than the Realms'. So lets hope they can provide us with lots of interesting little setting details that can also be plundered for other games in the meantime.
Campaign News: And now the news. This is obviously aimed at explaining what the Living Greyhawk Journal is to all the people who didn't read the first 4 standalone issues, while not neglecting experienced readers either. In a living campaign, they have to constantly tweak the rules to keep people from gaming them egregiously. For example, they've just had to start counting any trained animals as part of the party for CR calculations, presumable because someone was buying tons of them and breaking the adventures by using them as cannon fodder. They've also instituted a little help for 1st level parties, to try and keep them alive in their first adventures so they don't scare n00bs away. It's a good reminder that when you're plugged into a wider network, you can't get away with the same kind of things you could in a home game, and you have to pay attention to all the rules tweaks and errata. It's the same kind of thing that you have to deal with in MMO's, only not automatically adjudicated. And it reminds me once again why I want nothing to do with that scene anymore. You never know when your character will be invalidated by the latest directive from on high, no saving throw, no appeal. And that's something I'm not keen on at all. More power to those people who can enjoy themselves in a structure like that, but I'll pass.
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 6/7
The death knights of Oerth: Not to be confused with the fiend knights from issue 206. The most famous death knight may be from Krynn, but they're also quite a few on Oerth as well. In fact, this is part 1 of a series, so it's obvious that there's plenty to put in here. So they tell the story of the first death knight created by Demogorgon. There's less emphasis on the good guy falling part, and more on the demonic dealings, and horrible things he got up too after becoming a Death Knight; while the lesser death knights created after that don't even get that much attention. Angsty fanfic? Let's keep that for the Dragonlance fans. We're just setting up villains for you to kick the ass of, and don't want you thinking you can redeem them through the power of love and all that crap. So the story part of this doesn't engage me emotionally, and this article is mainly useful for the crunchy bit, which of course makes Death Knights a template for the new edition so you can easily convert existing characters into one. I have to wonder just how different you can make their pre-fall stories and personalities to keep a series like this going. Oh well, i guess we'll find out soon.
Window on the world: PC Portraits was one of the first things on the chopping block when the new editor took over. But it looks like we're still getting some system free artwork here, with conceptual sketches from Greyhawk's most recent incarnation. Since the last time they brought greyhawk back had caused lots of flamewars and fanbase divisiveness, they had to be very cautious about how much they modernised things. Since I was never really a Greyhawk person, I don't have much of an opinion on this, but I am interested in hearing other people's opinions. Is making Iuz more similar looking in his various forms a good or bad thing? Do the circle of 8 fit the way they were originally played in gary's old games? Does it matter anyway? Anyone?
Nodwick has a new member of the team. But not for long. Some guys are too annoying for even adventurers to put up with for long. Will he be back? We shall see.
Chainmail: Well, the teasers are over, the game is out, now it's time to get into the nitty gritty of tactical options. Once again, this centres around the ways the rules differ from regular D&D. You get a greater ability to choose the terrain (or maybe less if you're used to being the DM) and you have to take into account that you won't be able to move all your figures each turn or maintain perfect control of them at all times. On the plus side, the other teams can't either. So winning hinges on understanding your limitations and planning to compensate for them, rather than just individually min-maxing your troops into the most dangerous death machines they could be. There's no DM secretly rooting for you and setting the difficulty at achievable. Your odds of winning are 1/the number of teams. At least, presuming all the sides are perfectly balanced. Anyone who's played this want to say who's good or bad against who?
Role models: The Gnoll & Demon side seems to be getting an above average amount of attention in these articles, probably because it's one of the most interesting combinations. Here we find out what their colour scheme is like. The regular gnolls combine greens, yellows and browns in an unpleasant, mangy manner. The ones with demonic aspects add reds, blacks and purples to the mix. The metallic tones that the previous sides use are largely lacking though, to make up for this greater variety of primary colours. So once again, it looks like you can manage plenty of variety within a particular side while still keeping them distinct from all the others. Modern movie makers who have a bad habit of doing everything in orange and teal could definitely learn from that. The painting tips on layering, undercoats, and other such techniques to accomplish this are also increasingly sophisticated, showing that they trust us to have been reading regularly and learning along the way. That's the kind of attitude I approve of. Trust us to learn, and do our own research to fill in the gaps if we missed a bit.
Sage advice: How can I cast a spell without suffering attacks of opportunity (5 foot steps are your friend. Shame wizards don't get acrobatics as a class skill.)
As a fighter, how do I keep wizards from stepping back and blasting me. (Reach weapons. Skewer them on your Bec-du-corbin-de-glaive-da-fauchard-halberd. Or grapple, or prepare actions, or back them in a corner. Tactics!)
Can you use a buckler while firing a crossbow (No, just stick it on your hand for later.)
Can a cleric leave a spell slot open for later in the day (yes)
How does ECL interact with feats and ability increases (It doesn't. Just use your regular level. )
How do you determine a monk's speed and damage if it isn't one of the usual ratings (Ahh yes, with all these new races, that would come up. Fear not. Skip has tables that will answer all your questions.)
How about rogues of different sizes (Same weapons, different sizes. No big deal.)
How many feats should monsters with lots of HD and class levels have ( The usual. HD from monster advancement grants different extras)
Are prestige classes requirements for ranks or skill levels (Ranks. Talent won't help you here. Gotta put the training in.)
What do armor penalties apply to (most dex and str based skills. Feel the burn. That stuff weighs a ton.)
Dragon Issue 290: December 2001
part 7/7
Silicon sorcery: Rather than converting stuff from in computer games this month, they instead show you how to use the area building system from The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind to build maps for your game. In the process they talk about it's particular strengths and limitations, and just how much you can create custom characters, monsters and objects. Obviously it'll take a fair bit of work, particularly building all-new creature models, but once that's done, it can actually be quicker clipping together blocks than drawing maps out by hand. Really, this reminds me that the multiplayer and worldbuilding options in Neverwinter Nights were a major factor in it's success, and didn't come from nowhere. There were other games doing it before, and the designers stole ideas from them. Who knows, they might even have read this article and though that sounds like a good idea. That'd be more influential than you'd expect of one of these little columns. So this continues to be both cool and more varied that you'd expect.
The play's the thing: Robin moves onto more physical combinations of ability scores. High strength, low dexterity. Low Strength, high dexterity. Low Strength, high constitution. I think I can guess what next month's are likely to be, if he continues to follow this pattern. And what he'll write with reasonable accuracy. This series continues to be too damn predictable and obvious to be even slightly interesting. Why is it eating up so much space here?
DM's toolbox: The toolbox very literally looks at the tools of the trade, examining the format you use to record your notes, and how it will affect the ease of organising them, using them, editing them, and referencing them in play. Ring binders get top marks overall, as you can easily take out and reorder pages, add new ones in the middle, and include dividers which let you easily flip to a particular section. Small notebooks or Index cards can be better in actual play, but for detailed campaign notes, you'll want a big, well organised folder that'll fit everything. Or if you're working on computer, you want something that lets you have multiple windows open, copy and paste between them easily, rename files, and make sure you put them in folders putting related material together in an easy to search manner. Overall, this article does feel rather dated (personal organisers are pretty much dead, subsumed into smartphones and general purpose tablet computers, and paper feels a bit passe in general.) but it maintains the strong quality and analytical approach that makes the column so valuable. They weren't to know what things would be like in 11 years time, were they. Hopefully next one will be more relevant to my current position.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finishes off talking about character types, and then starts on actual characters, A patron who can send them on adventures, but who isn't that powerful physically, and has some serious problems that'll make for a good adventure down the line. And a helpful and resourceful street rat who's actually secretly the son of a tribal chief. Both of these have clearly defined pigeonholes, but also a decent amount of nuance to their characters, and while intended as allies, you could well also wind up their enemy too if the players get off on the wrong foot. Neither are particularly powerful or well optimised statistically, and even a first level party could probably kill either of them if they were alone. So really, this is very much stuff for interacting with, not slaughtering your way through. Still, it retains it's quality as roleplaying advice, although I'm not sure I'd go to Ray for really dangerous CharOp designs. But then, Dungeoncraft has always been fairly system neutral, and that's what makes it invaluable, so that's not a bad thing overall.
What's new also discusses how to deal with treacherous thieves. Beating them at their own game seems a good way to go. The snail has finally made it 2/3rds of the way across the page.
The strong performance by most of the magazine continues, with more than enough little changes to keep me interested. Definitely can't say I'm amused about the removal of Dragonmirth, and Robin Laws is maybe starting to run out of steam here, but everything else is good so far. If this carries on, I'll definitely enjoy Jesse's run more than I did Dave's. Roll on next year, and whatever it may bring.
Dragon annual 2001
part 1/7
93 pages. (92, plus an answer repeated, turned the right way up and magnified )Yay! They're opening up to covering d20! This means that while the systems may be more limited than in past years, at least we're getting some coverage of 3rd party products again. Shame it's just a one-off special, and unusually small too. Still, it does mean the usual columns are completely lacking, which I appreciate, given how tiresome and repetitive they often were in the previous annuals. I guess the best thing to hope for is that they've kept the editing tight, gone for quality over quantity, and tried to strike that fine balance between being faithful to the properties and balanced within the d20 system.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Erik Mona isn't just getting to be lead guy on the Greyhawk journal, he's also the main editor of this special as well. Like Ed Greenwood, it's a good example of how you can work your way from being just a fan to having an official position in the company by regular communication and being generally helpful. And since his livelihood is still dependent on the OGL, over a decade later, I think we can safely say it was a good idea for him, whether it was or not for gaming in general. Since the adventures we remember most from the 3e era were mostly third party ones like Rappan Athuk, it's pretty likely 3e wouldn't have been nearly as popular without the OGL. There are tremendous benefits to making creativity a more collaborative process, putting different perspectives on an idea, repurposing principles for other areas, sampling them, chopping them up, taking one small part and building something unrecognisable out of it. Trying to hold on too tightly will both make you unpopular, and cause things to slip through your fingers anyway, especially now copying and worldwide distribution is so effortless. So looking back on things, it really is fairly amazing that this happened after WotC was swallowed by a big corporation like Hasbro, and the overall results were far more positive than negative, especially for us, the consumers. Just think how much we wouldn't have without it.
Dragon annual 2001
part 2/7
Unsurprisingly, our first advert is by Sword & Sorcery, White Wolf's d20 imprint. Even the number 2 guys got to benefit from this, and provide us with several interesting d20 settings along the way. A rising tide lifts all ships, or something along those lines. :)
First watch: Our previews for this special are pretty big names. Call of Cthulhu, and George R.R Martin's Wild Cards series are getting d20 conversions. Both get nice big descriptive blurbs which do their best to sell you on them. Interestingly, one is written by Monte Cook, and the other by Mike Mearls, reminding us how important they are to d20 in general, and how often they'll be showing up over the next decade. CoC gets particular attention, because people are unsure how well it's suited to the d20 system, so they obviously think it'll be a harder sell to the public. It certainly hasn't had the longevity or number of supplements of the BRP version.
In addition to this, they also promote the new incarnation of Polyhedron, now merged with Dungeon and repurposed to cover d20 games, with a different minigame in each issue. On it's own it never had the popularity of Dragon or Dungeon. How long will it survive like this? After all, I remember all too well the fate of previous mergers. It's another sign of WotC cutting down on everything but the biggest sellers, and leaving everything else to other companies. Oh well, it'll be another few years at least before it falls victim to the next big shakeup.
Dragon annual 2001
part 3/7
What the heck is a d20 system?: Ryan Dancey has been busy, hasn't he. Fresh from creating the OGL, he's already moved on from WotC, off to make his own company. Actually, it seems like moving on to the next company is something he does a lot, for various reasons. I have to wonder how long he'll stick with the pathfinder MMO's development before moving onto the next big idea. But even though his track record is pretty mixed, this is one big idea that turned out positively for a lot of people. We went from at most a dozen official D&D products a month, and usually considerably less, to hundreds of compatible bits and pieces, resulting in 3e overtaking 2e in no time flat. It's not surprising 4e's product list has felt a little ... empty compared to it's predecessors. Actually, looking back on this highlights pretty well where WotC went wrong. Part of the original plan was to take advantage of all this external design experimentation, so they could take the best bits and incorporate them into official supplements later, which they conspicuously failed to do. Then by trying to back out of the OGL, they eliminated all the goodwill they'd generated by making it in the first place, and then some on top of that, since people react worse to being given things and then having them taken away than never getting them at all. And since the original OGL had been carefully designed so they couldn't revoke it, they wound up eliminating the benefits for themselves, while other people could still take advantage of those original benefits, which is basically a cutting off your own nose situation. Shoulda stuck with the original plan.
All's fair in lovecraft and warcraft: One of the best parts of the vast quantity of d20 games that'll come out in the next few years is doing enormous genre-bending crossovers. If you want to mix Babylon 5 with Everquest, Warcraft, Call of Cthulhu and Star Wars, you can do so with minimal effort, although there may be a few balance issues. As long as there's 6 stats, level based advancement, and one d20 to roll them all and in the darkness bind them, everyone's on the same playing field, although some teams might be in different leagues. So this is advice on how to play any genre in the d20 system, by switching things around, choosing the power level and advancement rate appropriately, and figuring out what to change to better fit the roleplaying party format. It doesn't actually reference any specific d20 products, which means it's only partly connected to this issue's theme, and isn't as inclusive as it could be, but it does have a fair amount of joie de vivre to propel it onwards and cover up the technical deficiencies. If you run into rules problems, you should probably gloss over them with similar speed and ad hoc rulings.
Dragon annual 2001
part 4/7
Pattern weavers: So what's going to be the big centrepiece of this d20 material? What big names have they go in, to make this annual feel extra special? Wheel of time material with official sanction from Robert Jordan? Well, it's no worse an idea than a Terry Brooks themed issue. So to sell you on the full books, here's 6 pregens that'll let you get a good idea of both the new classes and races, and the kind of characters you're expected to play. Each of them is at level 1, built using the Standard Array, and none of the material is Open Content. There are a few new skills and feats listed, but these stick mostly to the standard ones in the 3e core books. So this gives us a fair chunk of information without actually explaining much, and will remain useful even once you've bought the books, which seems a good way to make people want to find out more. Not a bad idea, really.
Beasts of the wheel of time: The second half of the wheel of time section is strangely mundane really. It's a whole lot of ordinary animals, with talk about the minor ways they vary from earth. Bears with chevrons on their fur. Skinny pigs. Foxes that alternate between black and gray fur depending on time of year. And extra large semi-intelligent rats. Compared to D&D monsters, this is pretty boring really, and I'm surprised he went into so much detail on mundane bits of the setting like this. But then again, this is the guy with the braid-pulling fetish. I can't be too shocked, given the length of the books. Still, reprinting all the statistics from the MM for the sake of a few minor variants seems a bit of a waste of space. I'm left rather nonplussed by this article, and can't see myself getting much out of it.
First look - Dragonstar: What do you get when you combine Spelljammer, Council of Wyrms, Star wars and Shadowrun. Something like this, really. A space opera setting ruled by Dragons who in theory have a power sharing agreement between the chromatics & metallics, (but good luck getting the Reds to hand the reins back when their term is over) and filled with fantastical planets and magitech enhanced aliens/demihumans. That sounds like it allows for a pretty impressive degree of kitchen sink character design while still maintaining an overarching theme to the universe, and'll give players tons of opportunities to flex their optimisation muscles to get maximum enhancement for their buck. How well did this setting do? Looks like it managed to go a few years and get several supplements, and still has an active mailing list. Definitely sounds like the kind of thing I'd like to pick up and have a closer look at, and the new crunch in the article only heightens that feeling. This is exactly the kind of setting I wouldn't mind playing in, while recognising it maybe has too many ideas going on at once for the commercial success WotC would like. I guess this annual is going to be good for the sales of various other companies after all.
Dragon annual 2001
part 5/7
The black talon: Ecologies have always been a popular part of the magazine, so it's not too surprising that once D&D was opened up to other people, who didn't have to stick strictly to the TSR format, they'd put their own spin on the idea, sometimes extending it out to full book form, or just taking more liberties with existing creatures. And since the magazine has recently stopped doing ecologies with fiction, that comes as quite welcome. So here's an interesting alternate take on lizardfolk, with slightly altered statistics, and a highly specific history that's obviously part of a larger campaign world. They're obviously intended to be more PC-friendly than standard lizardfolk, with a smaller natural armor bonus, and more little abilities and drawbacks, and have enemies who are also theoretically usable as PC's, but rather more hostile in their design and abilities. So this looks like it would be good in actual play, and manages to be both familiar and subtly different enough to be thoroughly pleasing to read. There are definite benefits to not using the same stable of writers all the time if you want to keep the public interested.
Black riders and bone horses: Wolf Baur has wasted no time in getting his own D20 material out. Here we see something that ought to have been in Ravenloft, but wasn't. A piece on undead cavalry, and their advantages and disadvantages over regular ones. Well, I suppose there wouldn't have been any decent sized opposition for them to fight. Even Vlad Drakov's army was a bit of a paper tiger really. Nevertheless, headless horsemen on skeletal horses are cool, and adding zombie elephants is a great way of saying the stakes have suddenly gone up a notch. So this takes quite an analytical approach to the subject, thinking about the cool effects they ought to have, and how to codify that mechanically. They may spook living animals, but it shouldn't be impossible to get them back under control. Things like being able to gallop on air, and have flaming feet are detailed, and even how far and fast you can travel using one (as after all, you aren't forced to stop to rest the way living mounts would be. ) This is pretty cool, even if it looks like it's just a promotional excerpt from a larger book, that he's hoping will drive sales. But then, that could be said about most of these to one degree or another. They don't have the same kind of safety net the WotC staff do to share the success and spread the blame.
Dragon annual 2001
part 6/7
Firearms in freeport: Ah yes, Chris Pramas. Another WotC alumni that founded his own company, and enjoyed a fairly substantial amount of success over the years, with stuff like Blue Rose, Mutants & Masterminds and True20 taking the d20 system in quite an interesting, slightly rules-lighter direction. But he started off with a relatively generic adventure series, that gradually evolved into a full setting of it's own. The aptly named Freeport, a rough and tumble seaside city full of opportunities for you to make your fortune or die trying. You can easily plonk it in your campaign world, and introduce elements from any culture by saying a trading ship has just come in and their goods are the next new hot thing.
So anyway, enough exposition, let's look at guns in Freeport. Not too surprisingly, it's all a gnome's fault. And equally unsurprisingly, he wound up in freeport because the established power blocs in his old country were not amused by this destabilising new idea. So far, so cliche. Thankfully, it manages to transcend that with a rather good implementation, making firearms more powerful than regular weapons, but also requiring a exotic weapon proficiency to use, and a very real possibility of amusing misfires. On top of that, he also stats out their creator, gives the individual guns amusing names, and details their forge in a way that makes it a decent adventure location, making it less generic while not removing it's ability to be dropped into other worlds. So it looks like this is his attempt to follow in the Forgotten Realm's footsteps, creating material that can be used by anyone, but also makes a setting of it's own, with the big difference being in the personality of the writers. It's an idea that was immensely popular once, and now anyone can try it. In hands like this, we'll get good material. In not so talented hands, we'll just get people telling us about their own characters. Just got to keep our ears to the ground to figure out who's delivering the goods.
Dragon annual 2001
part 7/7
Head to head - Mini adventures: We finish up with an absolute ton of mini-reviews (not to be confused with minis reviews) of equally small adventures that AEG and FFG have been pumping out recently. 16 page, half width little things, they seem designed to scratch that itch that TSR stopped satisfying sometime in the 80's, as modules grew longer and more tied into specific worlds and complicated plots. It's an excellent case of multiple companies being able to meet demand where a single one wouldn't. However, it's also a good example of an area where a glut of poor quality material will eventually oversaturate the market again, killing off demand once people have more than they'll really use. And since they've both produced more than 16 in a year, they're probably already starting to see diminishing returns.
So the sensible thing for us to do would be to buy the best few and leave the rest. The Heart of Amun Khonshu gets top marks, with a nice egyptian themed dungeon crawl that also covers the trek too the tomb decently. Meanwhile the Dragon's wish by vocal forumite Justin Bacon (who also gets poor reviews on quite a few more of his modules) gets bottom marks, being railroady, mechanically rubbish, and nonsensically set-up. A lot of emphasis is put on if the adventures are actually appropriate for the level they say they are, with many of them being vastly over or underpowered, or easy to break by application of common D&D spells. On average, AEG's products have better writing, but FFG's have higher production values. (and cost more) So this is a very refreshing way to finish off this issue, given how long it's been since they did reviews in the magazine, and shows that they're taking the many d20 products out there with a grain of salt. Don't feel you have to spend all your money trying to keep up, just because it's there.
There is indeed some pretty high quality material here, and using different contributors to the usual issues is nicely refreshing. So my main complaint, as at the start, that this issue is way too short. Given the amount of dreck the d20 boom produced, I suppose that's laudable, and it means they're only recommending those companies they actually like. But it does leave me feeling unfulfilled, especially as I know this is all I'm getting unless I were to do that Polyhedron reading thread as well. Oh well, I guess as this is the last annual, each year will seem to go by a little quicker yet again from now on. I guess I'd better see what new material 2002 has to offer, and how much effort it'll be to read and analyse it all.
Unfortunately, my life grows increasingly hectic at the moment, so it looks like I'm not going to be getting through the next year quicker after all. So I'm forced to slow my schedule down to 3 issues/month at the moment and hope that I won't be forced to slow down any further, as I do want to finish this, not slow down to fractions so fine I never hit the target, like an arrow shot at a tortoise in a greek philosopher's mind. Ironic how the more stable and boring your life is, the more you actually get done.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 1/10
92 (116) pages. As they promised last year, gnomes finally get an issue all to themselves. Hopefully they'll get round to half-orcs sometime, and then we'll have covered all the core PHB races. In the meantime, let's see what they have to offer our short, illusion loving friends. Will they retain the whimsy of their old incarnation, or like halflings, will the writers try to modernise them to mixed success? Let's penetrate any deceptions they try to throw up and see what else this year has in store.
Scan Quality: Excellent, Indexed, Ad-free.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: A monosyllabic gnome? Well, that's certainly bucking stereotypes. but it is relatively easy to play. After all, it's easier to do less than normal than it is to do more. So this editorial is about creating interesting and consistent dialogue for your character. If you can't extemporise soliloquies in iambic pentameter, then you need to work within your limitations when roleplaying characters. Often, the simplest gimmicks for defining your character will turn out the most effective, especially if the character gets transferred to another player or has to be played by the DM because you're absent that week. So this is a reasonable enough bit of roleplaying advice, that also hints at their approach to the theme this issue. They'll be doing their best to fiddle with the stereotypes, make them a little less irritating. Whether they'll succeed or not is another matter.
Scale Mail: We start off with a short letter of praise for issue 289. It had some stuff that's both cool and amusing, and that deserves credit.
Of course, this is just a warm-up. There's always someone who's not so enchanted, and given the number of fans of Oriental material, there's bound to be some who think they've Done It Wrong. The new Samurai sucks, and how dare they not include a Ninja base class! Well, it looks like you've already found third party alternatives. Feel free to use them in your game. :p
Another thing that's making long-term readers unhappy is the lack of continuity in the comics. More multi-part stuff would indeed be welcomed by me.
And finally we have another person who's sick of the excess of Forgotten Realms material, especially the stuff that's not useful to other campaigns like the huge maps. As usual, there's a constant tension between those who want more, and those who want less that seems impossible to resolve.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 2/10
Forum: Scott Hamilton thinks that the fun in an evil campaign is setting them concrete goals and seeing how they achieve them, just as with good ones. Killing stuff just for fun soon palls. A little subtlety makes for far more interesting long-term games.
R. McGuire thinks that whether characters are selfless or selfish is a better, and certainly easier adjudicator than good and evil. Otherwise you end up with them being treated as just sides in a game far too often. And we've had plenty of talk about that before.
Nodwick isn't suffering for a change. This is very suspicious.
Previews: From a sidebar to a strip along the bottom of the page. And once again, the number of releases hits a new low. Lord of the Iron Fortress sees our official adventures reach 15th level. Course, getting characters into adventures requires fairly impressive plot hooks. And apparently, this doesn't quite have that. You're probably better off making your own. Our book this month is another anthology of short stories for Dragonlance. The Best of Tales, volume 2 keeps us in whimsy and little setting details for another few months. Man, who keeps buying this stuff? You hardly ever hear about it on gaming fora anymore.
Profiles returns one last time, after several months absent, to give us one on Robin D. Laws. He's most famed for his work on improving game design, both from a GM technique advice and experimenting with creating new, different systems such as Heroquest, Feng Shui, and Rune. But he's also created a CCG, done fiction for All flesh must be eaten, and still finds plenty of time to actually play, testing out the design experiments he creates. And he still does stuff for D&D. D20 is now a broad enough umbrella that even Swine like him are now contributing to it's rules development. Another interviewee with an impressive resume, that will get more so over the years. But will it actually make games more fun? Very good question. It's as much up to you as him, if not more so.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 3/10
Up on a soapbox: In a game where it's much easier to die than it is to lose, but survive, the players have to be lucky every time, but the DM only has to be lucky once. Given that, it's surprising how many stories of player humiliation Gary has. I suppose part of this is due to playing fast and loose with the rules. After all, there were no rules for if a black pudding can destroy magic items with their acid until he decided on them. He got to do things that stripped players of their stuff without killing them, and left them tiptoeing around certain sections of castle Greyhawk, aware that there were challenges they weren't equipped for. Once again, the victories they did win were made more triumphant by contrast with the times they failed, often in humiliating manner. It's a lesson we've had before, but certainly bears repeating. Indulge your sadistic side and let the dice fall as they may sometimes. Let your players know they can't walk all over you. They'll respect you more, and your gameworld will last longer.
Zogonia has to deal with class prejudice. I assure you sir, those behaviours are merely that of an unrepresentative minority. Carson the muskrat wonders why the cool option is not the tactically viable one.
Study & jest: So, what can they do to make gnomes interesting, but not annoying? A fair chunk, it seems. While they might engage in pranks on a regular basis, it's for good reason, and they don't take it too personally amongst each other. A fair amount of effort is gone to show how their innate magical abilities affect their society, (and how those who don't have the intelligence to develop them are definite second-class citizens) and both the positive and negative aspects of being a gnome. As fairly long-lived creatures, they will have to put up with their pets dying repeatedly, although this doesn't affect them as badly as elves. All the various gnome subraces get looked at. (apart from tinker gnomes, which are replaced with the somewhat more general and less annoying arcane gnomes) In an extra amusing touch, the author goes into plenty of details on their pointy hats, and how the sizes and colours are used to reflect education and social status. So this is easily my favorite of the new racial writeups, able to stand up with the old one by Roger Moore from 1982, and add stuff that fits with both the modern rules and old flavour. Once again James Jacobs is definitely proving to be one of their best new writers, being both imaginative and able to work within an existing framework. Let's hope they keep giving him the right assignments.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 4/10
The little-limpics: While James tried to balance the whimsical and serious sides of gnome life, Robin Laws embraces the playful, with this fluff piece on gnome athletic games. Tracking burrowing animals, boffer games, trying to pick up balls on unstable platforms while being pelted with fruit, this is amusing stuff that owes a fair debt to the Gladiator TV show that was popular in the 90's. As such, it's an entertaining read, but not likely to get as much use as the last article. If your players spend some time in a gnome community, they might try them once or twice, but otherwise, you're not going to miss not incorporating this article at all. Still, nice to see them still doing niche stuff that could never support a whole product.
Abuse your illusions: This one isn't gnome specific, but we all know what their favored class is. (at least, until 3.5 changes that) And it looks like we won't be seeing the same kind of interminable debate that surrounded illusion powers in previous editions. While there's still some ambiguity over exactly when you can justify making will saves to disbelieve an illusion, everything else is a lot clearer. Plus many illusions produce semi-real effects that make the whole disbelief thing less significant anyway. So this old problem becomes less so, but creating subtle spellcasters is somewhat harder. When you have this many options, even illusionists get to mix plenty of real with the trickery. It's another little sign of the decrease in sense of wonder as time goes on. The new spells are also very specific in their mechanical effects, leaving the GM with no worries about adjudication, but the players with little opportunity to use them cleverly. So despite this article's title, your opportunities for abusing illusions get smaller and smaller. Where's the fun in that?
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 5/10
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Gnomes finally get their own magic item collection to themselves, instead of having to share like they did in issue 262. Expect whimsy, misdirection, and small burrowing animals. Course, they could buck the stereotype, but given the previous articles this month I doubt it.
Badger Armor lets you turn into a badger. See, what did I tell you? Better get digging.
Warfox Harnesses let you turn a regular little woodland animal into a dire fox for the riding. Just the thing for fighting goblins riding wolves. Once again you get to show them who the real brains of this operation is.
Mushroom Caps let you turn into a mushroom, which has obvious stealth applications in underground situations, but may also result in you being picked and eaten. The usual risk of making yourself small to spy then.
Neuroshield helms not only shield you from illithid mind blasts, but can store them and reflect them back later. I suspect gith would pay quite highly to get their hands on some of these.
Blasting Pellets are another basic magical explosive. They seem designed to create neat chain reactions like bombs in zelda games. I'm sure this will reward clever players suitably.
Doppleganger Armor is another shapeshifting trick that has quite substantial provisos attached. T-t-t-t-t-touch me. I wanna feel dirty.
Portable breaches are basically your own personal passwall spell. Just go through, and pull it off the other side. Way to wreck nearly any dungeon's linear flow :D
Bracers of Wands are an excuse to have far too many belts on your character. Just slot a whole bunch of wands in and you can use them with but a word, without even having to waste a few seconds drawing them. Nice to see they're not neglecting the techy side of gnomes.
Reading Snuff makes obscure languages comprehensible when sprinkled over it. What happens if you apply it nasaly is not specified. I guess I'll just have to use my imagination.
Alad's Fire Extinguisher is another one that shows blatant real life imitations aren't dead. Spray it on fire elementals or down the throat of a red dragon for handy results. Yawn.
Trapfinder Armor reduces your need for a rogue. Unfortunately, it doesn't do so by setting off all the traps in a spectacular but harmless way, but that doesn't keep me from making a variant that does.
Spellfast Medallions are a nasty method of triggering spells. Slap them on an enemy, and watch them suffer. Heat, cold, speed, gravity, all can be fucked with to your pleasure.
Flash-bangs are of course perfectly normal fireworks. So a dull end for rather a mixed bag of items. I wonder if you could pick out which writer wrote which ones.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 6/10
You can pick your friends: But you can't pick your family? With random tables so the GM can determine it for you? Yeah, heard that one before. After all, we got a pretty extensive bit of Oriental Adventures devoted to randomly deciding what kind of ancestors you had, and how they've influenced your reputation. however, the world is big enough for multiple takes on an idea like that, and this manages to do so by concentrating on the forest where the other one focussed on the individual trees, as it were. A relatively small number of rolls to determine the overall size and shape of a character's family, and lots of potential adventure hooks that you can pull out easily enough make this one of those articles you can drop into your campaign pretty easily in bits and pieces. After all, many of your players will have already thought about their family when creating their character. All these articles to direct your thought are just for those who haven't thought them through already.
Water, water everywhere: Skip Williams continues to create official add-ons to the rules above and beyond Sage Advice. Such as an expansion on the rules for underwater combat, showing just how inconvenient it is for landlubbers pulled in, but also how you can prepare to mitigate these problems. There's a very good reason why fishermen use spears and harpoons rather than axes or hammers to hunt fish, and although their range still isn't great, crossbow bolts fare better than regular arrows underwater. Visibility ranges are dramatically lower than in air, especially when the water is full of muck. Fire is mostly a waste of time, unless you have a knowledge of chemistry that very few D&D characters can access. Lotsa boring realism stuff a la the old Wilderness survival guide, basically. Not the kind of thing I've seen for a while, since they went to the effort to make the new core rules more comprehensive, and the kind of thing that's always going to be a niche market. So this feels like health food, necessary, but not really that welcome. Is the real reason many sailors never learn to swim because they don't want to go to the bother of dealing with the underwater combat rules? :p
Fiction: Troupers by Neal Barrett jr. Ah, time for a good old-fashioned bit of whimsy where we find out how creatures in other dimensions live, and how hard it is to relate to them, even despite good old rule 34 coming into play. When you find yourself in a universe where all the rules are different, you can either adapt, or blunder around in perpetual befuddlement and get nowhere fast.
And so we find ourselves in a alice-in wonderland situation, only with a slightly smarter protagonist, who manages to get out and bring one of the creatures from the other world with him. Which means he can look forward to enjoying the culture shock thing from the other side as well. Could definitely be worth a follow-up.
Nodwick goes up against the internet and wins. Shock horror.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 7/10
Elminsters guide to the Realms: This column covers a slightly larger adventure location than usual, with a full cave complex full of adventuring opportunities. Most of the individual caverns have cool names as well, and each has their own interesting bits of history and adventure ideas put in. If this were doubled in size so he could put a few stats in, it'd be a great little module, and even as it is, it's another good example of just how much information you can cram into a few pages, and how good he is at whipping up cool little plot hooks. There's more here than many old modules, and each could be expanded out quite a bit. As usual, it seems like he has a mainline to amounts of inspiration that none of their other writers can come close too, and can use it on throwaway articles like this without worrying about running dry. I do envy him quite a bit.
Class acts: Yet another specialist fighter type this month, (well, I guess they do need more customization love than the spellcasters ) the Gnome Giant killer. Distinguished from the dwarf giant killer, which is an equally viable archetype, by their love of being a taunting asshole who skitters around being nearly impossible to hit. From a roleplaying perspective that seems like a good deal of fun. But I do fear these guys may be a little too specialized, with no abilities that also have some applicability to monsters outside their speciality. Still, at higher levels you generally do face lots of really big monsters, so unless the DM deliberately screws you by sending monsters your characters are weak against, they should be useful.
Campaign News: The RPGA news this month has lots of little bits of information, but the one that really stands out is an amusing bit of errata that ensures any PC's permanently crippled by a particular adventure get that problem retconned out sharpish. I'm guessing there were probably quite a few complaints about that, as this kind of screwage become much less popular when your tournament adventures aren't one-shots with pregens. Other than that, it looks like business as usual, with new adventures, incorporation of new feats & prestige classes from splatbooks, tedious little rulings about how often your character can change regions in game, and italian translations showing that they have a fanbase around the world, who are busy pushing the limits of what you can do within the framework and the designers are responding accordingly. As long as they keep on responding, the game can't get too broken.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 8/10
Demogorgon's champions: Lots more death knights detailed this month, showing just how different you can make them now they advance using the same class levels as players. Straight fighters, fighter/mages, a fighter/rogue, fighter/bard, cleric, and of course the iconic fallen paladin/blackguard choice that everyone thinks of when you say Death Knight. Of course, all of them are complete bastards, but not all of them are comfortable with that fact, not all of them have any loyalty to demogorgon, their nominal creator, and their levels of competence and sanity vary hugely. Still, none of them are really suitable challenges for a starting level party, and most have a decent amount of magic items and followers on top of that, so killing them all off for good will be the climax of a long and challenging campaign. This article looks like it could provide you with lots of adventures, and be reskinned for other campaigns fairly easily, so it's been a pretty decent ride. All you need to do is provide the locations.
Chainmail: Unfortunately, we've already covered the Gnomes story in the Chainmail wargame, so they decide to shine the spotlight on the dwarves instead. Amusingly enough, they've wound up with a communist state, after a long unpleasant stint under a tyrant king. As with most dwarves, they have a long-standing rivalry with the elves of the setting, which started through a stupid lack of communication, and now mainly carries on just because. To supplement their natural mining talents, they also have alliances with earth elementals, which gives them an excuse to put bigger, more interestingly shaped troops on their teams, just as Gnolls have their demons, and Humans have their Gnomish war machines. So this is a mix of the stereotypical with the quirky, showing once again that they put a decent amount of effort into the setting-building for this game, not all of which was just justification for more fights. There may not be an unambiguous good guy in this game, but this team comes closer than most, should that matter to you. This column is still making pretty good reading as well, even if it's not in theme.
Command points: A second Chainmail article? Well, the minis column was pretty heavy on it for the last few months, but they've decided to kill that now, so I guess this is the replacement. And while breezily written, this is basically just a promotional piece about their upcoming additions to their armies, that won't be of any use once you have them. And in depressingly traditional form for supplements, there's power creep used as a selling point, with particular units having higher ratings in certain abilities than anything from the core set. This makes me sigh a bit. It's going to be Dragon Dice all over again isn't it? A strong start, marred by lack of quality control in the follow-ups and too high expectations. Oh well, it was fun for a while.
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 9/10
Sage advice: Can you use ethereal spells on the outer planes (no. This does not affect stuff that has only peripheral effects on it.)
Can I access the astral plane from the ethereal (You can now. More cosmological chop and changing)
Can you access the astral plane on the astral plane (well duh)
Where can't I use extradimensional stuff ( Good question. Nowhere in the standard cosmology, but we wanted to keep the option open. )
Will extradimensional items still rupture a bag of holding (yes. Any combination makes the same mess.)
Does the gate created when extradimensional items rupture stay open (No. One way only. )
Can plane shift take you to any plane (Any you know about. Mind you don't get trapped.)
What happens to the equipment created while astral if you go to another plane and lose it. (The real stuff stays with your body. If you lose the projected stuff, no biggie. It goes poof when you do. )
Are ascended monks affected by banishment (Only if they're not on their home plane. Do we have the native outsider subtype yet? We ought to.)
If you leave your home plane, can you be banished (Yes)
What happens if you use holy word off your home plane. What's the point of outsiders having it. (You lose the special benefits. It's like a cosmic immune system response, clearing out things that "do not fit")
What's the difference between gate seal and seal portal (Parallel evolution.)
Do the Great wheel outer planes mirror the Faerun cosmology (Not really. Don't whine, don't try and compare them, pay no attention to any of the old books. Retcon, retcon, retty retty retcon.)
Come on, there's got to be some way to get from here to there (The plane of shadow. We've certainly given that a big upgrade in importance this edition. Grimdark, Ho!)
If I do go to the FR planes, what characteristics do they have. (A chance for Skip to make a major updated add-on to a book based on another book. Skip hasn't really done that in ages. Time for the private sage to really put the pages in the mages. Oh yeah. Kickin' it.)
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 10/10
DM's toolbox: With Dungeoncraft on vacation, this column takes up the slack with some slightly more ambiguous advice than usual. How to handle bluffing NPC's. As I've said before, when the DM is the sole source of information, presenting false info without giving the players a chance to figure out if it's false can make them pretty grumpy. Interestingly enough, this article encourages you to play it straight, act your characters exactly as they would act in game. If that means they're a good liar, let the players be convinced, only rolling sense motive checks and rolling for clues all is not what it seems if they actually ask for it. As soon as mechanics come in, you've already lost to some extent. Which isn't advice I was expecting from this source. It can be all too easy to pidgeonhole people based on a few impressions. Still, it keeps this column interesting, and makes me wonder more what they'll have for us next month.
Silicon sorcery: This month's column is another left-field turn, a study in game mechanics and how they can reflect reality, or in many cases fail too. The example used is Stronghold, a tactical wargame who's rules do not encourage you to use tactics that would work in reality. This isn't to say that it's a bad game, and indeed, it might be more fun than trying to build, maintain and defend a real castle. But it does serve as an illustration of just how different things can be in a game, and how even small inaccuracies can have cascading effects on the emergent properties of a simulation. So no crunch conversions this time, but a very interesting topic that's worth further studying. You can encourage certain playstyles in a game not by telling people they should or shouldn't do things, but setting it up so the mechanics reward or punish them as a natural consequence of following through the math, and this seems preferable to me than just saying something should be so and expecting people to do it without incentives. This applies to board and computer games as well as RPG's. Learn how to do math, and apply that skill wisely, and an imaginary universe is your oyster, or something.
What's new puts it's own distinctive spin on gnome culture. And ranger bears. Hee.
Not quite as good as the last few issues, this still has lots of useful articles, both in and out of the themed section. The demise of Dragonmirth and minis coverage is a little worrying though, and makes me wonder what they'll change next. We haven't had any ecologies in a while either, and I'm starting to miss them. Once again, the magazine is gradually getting more serious and focussed, and while that has some definite good points, it also means their vision continues to get narrower when compared to the old issues. That can only go so far before you lose people because they're not getting enough variety. So let's see what's introduced or put on the chopping block next issue.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 1/10
87 (124) pages. Raar says the giant weasel. Scowl goes the rider, and I can quite understand why. Trying to cling onto such a low-bodied creature with your legs bareback while keeping your torso upright for any length of time does not sound comfortable to me. Oh Wayne Reynolds, why must your attempts at badassery be so easy to pick apart. Still, at least it's in theme with the issue, which is barbarians and other savage nature related stuff. Let's see how savagely I feel like treating the articles.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Our editorial this month is in praise of one-shots. Not every idea you come up with merits an entire campaign, and you'll get more of them accomplished if you boil them down to just the best bits and keep their execution snappy rather than stringing them out and adding a load of filler material. Plus when it's a one-shot, you have a lot more leeway in slaughtering your way through the PC's without spoiling the game. Fully agree with all that. Extra interestingly, they recognise that zombie games make many of the best one-shot scenarios, although they don't actually mention All Flesh Must Be Eaten by name, which is a bit of a shame. Still, this is a pretty fun way to kick things off. You don't always have to start at 1st level and run things for years, and a quick break now and then to experiment with different characters and systems can actually keep a group more healthy. It's not a marriage for life, after all. :p
Scale Mail: Our readers this month are in a particularly contradictory mood. First up, it's a dueling pair on the quality of the oriental issue. While both are very much in favor of the idea in principle, they disagree on how well it was handled. I must agree that putting a piece on paris in there was a bit incongrous. They'll make up for that this issue.
Second, we have one person who was deeply disappointed by the d20 special compared to their normal annuals, while another found it even more useful than a regular one, and helpful in making purchases. Still, I think the lack of a follow-up next year shows which way the wind blew overall. That or office politics. Sometimes all it takes is one person in the right place to really hate something to bury it for decades.
Next we have one person who is generally happy with the current layout and mix of articles, while another really isn't, and says they're going to stop reading because of it. Still, they don't seem too worried. You win some, you lose some.
And finally, we have some tedious bureaucracy problems involving international shipping. Just be glad we don't have to worry about interplanetary postage costs, as that would just suck on an epic scale.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 2/10
Forum comes to an end, having been literally marginalized to the point of obsolescence. By very little coincidence at all, the vbulletin forum code that rpg.net, Enworld, and tons of other modern forums now use first came out last month. The internet has now well and truly taken over that role, so trying to continue it here would just be a waste of page count. Still, let's see what the last few people have to say.
Flavian Stellerine ends us off on a low note with another roll playing vs role playing rant. The two are not incompatible. Stop presenting them as some great dichotomy.
Mark Sims praises them for their recent MA and Gargantua articles. This too isn't very surprising. Still, at least it ends this column on a positive note.
Well, so much for that then, 18 years and 211 issues later. To bring things to a close, let's compile a list of our top forumites over the years.
In joint 7th place, with 5 posts each, are Gregory Detwiler and Eyal Teler.
In 6th place is Toby Myers , with 7 posts.
Number 5 Is David Carl Argall, with 8 posts.
At number 4 is David Howery, with 9 posts. Frequent forumite, similarly prolific article writer (which has in turn stirred up more forum action :D ), and now regular poster on these threads, he's remained involved in various capacities long after most people have drifted away. Pleasure to talk to you personally.
Ed Friedlander is at number 3 with 12 posts.
Anonymous is at number 2, with 14 posts. This comes as little surprise. Despite their general policy against publishing stuff without a name, there's always going to be a few letters that are good enough despite format errors, or who's names need to be redacted for personal reasons, be they because they're actually a part of TSR and don't want to be sacked for openly criticising them, or because their gaming group reads Dragon too, and doesn't want the drama. And they can actually wind up getting more prestige as part of the collective than they could individually. Here's to everyone who's been Anonymous over the years, here, in /b and elsewhere.
So who could be at number 1? Who has the strength to go against the massed forces of Anonymous and win? Well, If you guessed S. D. Anderson, well done. Despite not posting since 1993, he managed to be sufficiently prolific in the early years of the forum that he still has a substantial edge on anyone else, with a full 20 posts stretching from issues 82 to 200. If you're still out there somewhere, congratulations. I hope you're happy to hear that.
Nodwick gets taste classified. I guess henchmen are going to end up monster chow anyway, so why not facilitate the process.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 3/10
D&D Previews: Our final class splatbook is Masters of the Wild, covering the three remaining classes. Always a pain having an odd one out. You know the drill by now. What big releases will they provide now these slots are filled.
The Forgotten Realms get a new DM's screen. I remember when every gameline got one of these for free in the boxed set. Now this is the only world still getting the full load of products. Sigh.
Dragonlance continues to be novel only, completing the Icewall trilogy. Doug Niles is still doing this stuff, 18 years later. How much longer can old guard like him carry on?
Greyhawk also continues to self-cannibalise. The Tomb of horrors is the latest old module to get a novel. I do hope the body count is suitably excessive.
Up on a soapbox: This month, Gary switches things up by telling us a sadistic trick Rob Kuntz came up with when he was in the DM's seat. Turnaround is fair play, and he turns out to be a good sport, diving into the strange situations with gusto, and being quite willing to laugh at the results. Eating from a table full of food just set out in the middle of a dungeon sounds like an invitation to all sorts of chemical or magical trickery, but he's not here to play the game in paranoia mode. Life's too short, and besides, as long as they're regularly trading off roles, if one person gets too uppity in the viking hat, they'll just set themselves up for a more humiliating turnabout next time. Tomb of Horrors style slaughterfests were the exception, not the rule, and as we saw in the early issues, they tended to take things less seriously than later on, when they had to think about keeping the business side running, and catering to new players who didn't have a wargaming background, and were more in it for the storytelling. So this is a reminder that the original crew did play in a particular way that many later players wouldn't, and the game was tweaked around those experiences, such as large groups augmented further with hirelings, regular trading of DM's and non fixed parties depending on who turned up that week. And above all, it was just a game, and stories were what happened in play, not scripted beforehand. I should stop now, shouldn't I, because I'm sounding more soapboxy that he does this issue. Dunno why he keeps the column title. :p
Dork tower forgets the essentials of role playing games. How can you play a character without those?
Outlanders: More multiclass combinations? Still trying to keep that non-starter of a topic alive? I think we've already proven that the charop boards have a better handle on creating effective and interesting characters than the official writers. Even splits of two just don't cut it by comparison, even if they don't have to worry about XP penalties. The roleplaying advice part is also pretty basic, having a very high fantasy view of barbarians and ignoring the grimy day-to-day bits. So this all feels a bit shallow, one of those initial articles that's a warm-up rather than a big spectacular opener. I do wonder why they pick those sometimes.
Lords of the lost vale: Saurials! There's a welcome returnee, even if appearing here means they're unlikely to appear in official Forgotten Realms books this edition. But then, after their big role in one book series, they got relegated to an easily ignored background detail, since they only have a settlement in one small part of the Realms, and we never got to see their original homeworld. ( That would be a step too far into the exotic even for the TSR of the mid-90's. ) Still, they were pretty decent as PC's even back in the 2e days, and one of the most idiosyncratic races in the complete book of humanoids. I'm not surprised they still have a few big fans, and it seems very appropriate to revive them just as Dungeoncraft's lost world setting builds up to it's finale. They retain their distinctive senses, weakness to cold and difficulty communicating with regular humans, which is pleasing to see. They all have 2 racial HD and the appropriate LA adjustment, which means they'll be a bit crap at skill-heavy classes though, but for fighters & spellcasters, their natural weapons and armor boosts should keep them from being too vulnerable for those first few levels. So this is a pleasingly faithful conversion I can see myself using. Dinosaur people could fit into all sorts of games.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 4/10
Arcane lore returns after a good year away. Like the ecologies and most of the other once regular features, it looks like they're trying to cut down on them. Still, we've in theme here, with some savage dinosaur related druidic spells. That definitely sounds more exciting and idiosyncratic than 273's plant based selection. James Jacobs does come up with some of the coolest topics these days.
Dinosaur Stampede is exactly what it sounds like. Extended AoE damage over a quite a decent area, with cool visuals. Good luck having resistance to this damage type.
Dire Hunger makes the poor victim hulk out and eat everyone around them, friend or foe. Even more than Confusion, that'll make them feel awkward when it wears off, especially if one of their party die from it.
Enhance Wildshape is a quite versatile buff for a druid. You can stack the different variants too, so it can really make you scary if you have time to build up. Lets do those epic boss fights.
Essence of the Raptor lets you move scary fast and smell scary well. This will boost your jump speed too, of course. Get some decent claws from elsewhere and maybe a haste spell to really take advantage of this.
Hungry Gizzard is one of those gross tricks only James could come up with. A giant disembodied stomach materializing directly around the victim and getting all digestory? Genius. Better hope you have some buds to help cut you out.
Spirit Jaws is a less impressive attack spell. Still, it grapples as well as hurts. That has it's definite merits, if also some inconvenience.
Starvation is a fairly nasty damage inflicter and debuff. One of those ones that makes becoming undead seem quite tempting. You just want to escape this kind of crap.
Thundrous Roar is a nicely flavourful bit of sonic damage. Shout too generic? Deafening dinosaur roars'll keep the punters amused and/or running away.
Transmute Rock to Lava takes us all the way up to 9th level, ready to inflict 20d6 points of damage per round to large number of creatures for extended periods. Even the Tarrasque can be put out of action for a few centuries if you position this one right. Sounds about right. This collection certainly brings this column back with a bang.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 5/10
Stone, road, and tusk: The initial crop of prestige classes were all 10 level ones. But people soon realised that there were some concepts that simply didn't justify spending half your career on them. Here's some more interesting ideas that are designed for you to dip into, to customise your character rather than define them. All are specific to a particular demihuman race, while not being completely obvious, and all are roughly nature themed, making them a bit niche, but still appropriate for the issue.
Cave Stalkers are dwarves who get to know the ecology of the places they're mining instead of converting it all into neatly organised stripped and shored up tunnels. This lets them meld into stone to hide, and get even better darkvision than regular dwarves, plus a bit of sneak attack to take advantage of that stealth and awareness in combat. With moderate spellcasting progression as well, they seem like a good option for quite a few different class builds, if you want a competent generalist.
Fiend Binders are orcs who can create fiendish animals and keep them as pets or unleash them upon the wilderness to cause havoc. While a bit underpowered, compared to full spellcaster, they're a good diversion for orc spellcasters who don't have the primary stats to cast high level spells anyway, and want to gradually build up a menagerie of trouble for the players to face.
Prairie Runners are halflings that overcompensate for their normally low speed so they can deliver the news and make great hunters. Since they also get to share it with their buds, and haste themselves in combat, they seem like a good addition to a team that doesn't have a buffing specialist. Definitely a case where going against stereotype makes sense.
Class acts: Straight after, we have a 4th prestige class, the Darkwood Stalker. They're certainly trying to build up our selection to overtake kits this month. They're elven rangery sorts who specialise in kicking orc butt. Even more than most specialists,. this means they may well find their unique talents not being used to their full potential, especially at higher level. After all, demons and dragons both have tons of variants that scale to epic levels nicely. Orcs, not so much. While they might gain some class levels, they just don't make world-threatening forces on their own, and this skillset doesn't even extend to goblins or ogres. So it's another one I can't see many people taking, unless it's largely for flavour reasons. Sure you may hate orcs, but most adventurers have bigger fish to fry. And by the time you've got to the levels where you can take prestige classes, it's already too late really. If only they's broken out of their formula and made one you could get too by level 2-3 for a change.
Cities of the ages: A japanese city? Even if it is the obvious choice, Tokyo. (or at least Edo, which would later be renamed Tokyo) This column is stepping outside it's comfort zone a bit. And a good thing too, because the city goes against modern japanese stereotypes a fair bit. Instead of being polite and tradition-bound, it's a rowdy port city that grew up really rapidly, and was a real hassle for the samurai to keep under control. It's always the way once the merchant class starts getting out of control, surpassing the aristocracy in wealth because people are more willing to trade for amenities than they are to give up a big chunk of their crops in taxes for "protection" and be drafted into the army. Young folks lose all sense of respect, cats and dogs start living together, people start eating corn products rather than rice dishes like momma used to cook. Goes to show, what we think of as immutable ancient traditions are often less than a lifetime old, and other countries change just as rapidly, and have just as many internal variations as your own. Which is all the better for adventuring in. Given their regular problems with fires and earthquakes, you have plenty of leeway to cause massive amounts of damage, which is then industriously rebuilt in surprisingly little time, and allows you to change the layout when you feel like it. As usual, there's both fun to be had here, and lots of ideas to steal, mix and match for your own fantasy cities. The world is a huge, varied place, and you ought to make your own campaign worlds big and varied (within a theme) as well.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 6/10
Xarcallons Fane: Another collection of magical items connected not by theme, but by common history. In a story that obviously derives inspiration from the paladin in hell artwork, we have a whole bunch of magical items both holy and profane and the reason they all wound up in one epic battle on Baator, in a bloodbath which killed the heroes, but took down a hell of a lot of devils in the process. Do your heroes have what it takes to go there and bring these back to feature in your game? Would they want to anyway? Let's see if the risks are worth the rewards.
Kyptal's Black Mantlet is a magical shield that can also create a wall of stone effect on command, giving it pretty solid tactical applications for creating cover and aiding your retreat. At least, presuming you aren't facing things that can teleport without error at will. I guess you can still use it to get the drop on them while they recover from the jump.
Batons of Faith are your basic alignment linked clerical ass-kickers, that hurt most if they're in the hands of someone of exactly the right alignment, facing a creature with the diametrically opposed one. No particular flashy special abilities, but it's good to know for sure you're killing and taking the stuff of the right people.
Fiendrender is an intelligent morningstar made to kick baatezu ass. So now your cleric can keep up with the fighters when it comes to bickering with your own weapon. :p Surprising that we don't see more intelligent staves for the wizards as well. Maybe they're too egotistical to share like that.
Guardian Bracelets are designed to shield you against a particular type of creature, and automatically activate to protect you when they come near, which means they also serve as a way of detecting disguised or hidden monsters. Shame they won't let you sting back as well. Still, forewarned is forearmed.
The Staff of Banishment gets rid of extraplanar thingies. It doesn't have any other uses, so when you're not dealing with teleporting, dimension travelling monstrosities it's pretty useless. Stow it away in the bag of holding when you're not expecting to need it.
Waymaker is a magical shield that gains an extra bonus to bull rushes. Pretty obvious idea really. People will improvise this stuff, and you ought to be able to keep up with it.
The Gauntlet of the Maimed Lord is for people who think emulating vecna is a good idea. It withers the hand it's put on, and gives it lichlike abilities to terrify and drain the lifeforce of those it touches. So, um, I think you'll be masturbating with the other hand from now on. Awkward, especially as you just know that's the kind of dirty little secrets Vecna would keep track of as part of his godly duties.
Gravetongue is a sickle that turns anyone it kills into a Shadow under control of the user, without the usual HD limit of undead control in 3e. So you get a now rare opportunity to spawn cascade and TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!! if you have this. Better sleep lightly and keep a tight hold over it, because you really don't want to be in the middle of an army of thousands of shadows if you can no longer control them. So most of this collection is pretty low-key and sensible, but it has a decently spectacular plot device finish. I think you can lure players in with that.
Miscellaneous Mishaps: Our random table this month is over a hundred little flavor encounters for watery adventures. You don't always want giant monsters attacking. Maybe the odd abandoned lighthouse, mysterious bit of floating jetsam, seagulls following you hoping for scraps, or food spoilage will keep the players from feeling the world is just a static backdrop for their adventures. And hey, running low on supplies is a great reason to stop for a while before you reach your destination, and run into more adventures, so this is another decent enough little article for the DM to pull out every now and then.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 7/10
Bad seeds: We continue to make the wilderness more dangerous by updating a whole bunch of plant monsters from previous editions that they left out the monster manual. After all, when you're slimming the accretions of 11 years down to 256 pages, the less popular creature types only get a few examples each. You can only use them so often before the players get bored, especially as they don't normally gain class levels like humanoids. So what do these add to our wilderness trekking experience?
Death heads trees are a very familiar face from Ravenloft, creeping people out, then spitting their seeds into them. Fortunately, they aren't very mobile, so if you see one, bombard it from maximum range and hope you can outpace any heads that detach and float after you.
Greenvises are one I don't remember, but wouldn't be surprised if they're in some obscure old book. They emit acidic gas to weaken a party before they strike, which looks like it'd mow through a weak group. Once again, steering clear is a good option, made harder by their skill at camouflage.
Myconids are another one I'm surprised didn't get in the new monster manual. But then, they have a very complicated and interesting ecology that it takes quite a bit of space to describe, plus they're not particularly aggressive, so the back to the dungeon types wouldn't want them putting too much ambiguity into the game. Bah.
Needlemen are also familiar, and of course ranged fighting is their schtick, so the boot may be on the other foot if you get lost in alpine forests. And since they can pincushion you pretty effectively, you'd better have some good artillery or be good at using the trees as cover.
Orcworts are like yellow musk creepers, only they grow their own humanoids to attack things and turn them into fertiliser instead of taking over existing creatures. This does mean you'll face more of them at once, and they'll be in better condition, which makes them a good variant for higher level parties. After the body horror loses it's shock value, you just want to get to the fights.
Red Sundews are much more mobile than most large plant monsters, so you can't just leave behind the problem of a giant sticky tentacle monster eating up everything in it's path. So this is mostly old monsters, but they're still goodies. It's all too easy to forget plants, when they're such an important part of our environment, and you can make them into interesting challenges quite easily.
Nodwick gets shown up by the forces of nature.
Elminsters guide to the realms: Ed gives us another out of the norm minidungeon for adventurers to visit, explore, maybe find a few cool items, and then come back too later and find new secrets each time. A mysterious floating rock with several different hidden rooms in it, each with their own challenges and rewards, this is the kind of place that probably won't kill you, but may well leave you befuddled, and if you push your luck and try to destroy the whole thing, teleported hundreds of miles away without your companions. Intermittent rewards and interesting but nonfatal challenges. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing that irritates people, and makes them all the more determined to unravel the puzzle. and of course, that kind of teleportation gives the DM a great excuse to drop players in whatever other plot they have percolating in the back of their mind, until they're high enough level for easy scry/teleport solutions to get back together. Ed's writing continues to be both fun and whimsical, which will probably make for entertaining play, as long as your players don't take things too seriously.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 8/10
Campaign news: More elaboration on how they try to keep organised play fair here. While you can get more money than the recommended amount in the DMG if you get lucky in adventures, you can only spend that quantity on magical items, any excess will have to be saved until you level up again. Plus as they don't want people knowing all about the adventures from their friends, or letting them get too dated, they're putting use-by dates on them and keeping up a constant churn of scenarios for the duration of the edition. Another reminder just how much (probably poorly paid) work keeping the RPGA running is. Obviously the limits on how many scenarios a character can participate in in a year'll keep them from experiencing every adventure, but it's still very possible to stretch the limits of the system, and they have to constantly work to make sure it doesn't break. Credit to all the volunteers who are responsible for hammering out the details of that thankless task.
Blood golems of Hextor: Well, that's a title that's completely self-explanatory. And the article doesn't disappoint, with a suitably gruesome monster that unfortunately requites regular topping up, so you can't just leave it in a dungeon for centuries to guard a room. As it also has a slow speed like many golems you could probably lure it away and wear it out if the priests aren't paying attention and giving intelligent orders. So this is a decent monster to fight, but PC's wouldn't want to bother creating and maintaining one themselves when they could go for a regular stone or iron golem that'll last for lifetimes. Also in the same article is another monster, the Marodin. Pacifistic humanoid plant creatures, they seem to have been included mainly to showcase the fact that the narrator, Enchiridon the Fiend-Sage, is not a nice creature at all, and will engage in all sorts of cruel experimentation in the name of gaining knowledge. So the framing device works quite well this time, and sets them apart from Elminster and Volo's basically benevolent investigations. When an article is presented in character, it does raise the question of the reporter's agenda. And you should definitely watch out for that in a war-torn world like Oerth.
Playing Pieces: To balance out the two new monsters, we have two new half-elf characters here. A female Druid, and a male Ranger/Arcane Archer. Both have animal companions, and the typical half-elf problems fitting in, so they're more comfortable in the wilderness than social circles. Which means they're exactly the sort that you'll run into, and maybe end up fighting or needing help from. They're well integrated into specific parts of the setting, and seem to be pretty tightly done mechanically. These are a definite improvement on most of the old articles introducing new characters. If you complain enough, the writers do eventually listen, even if they don't always do what you want because of all the conflicting voices. I don't think anyone wants more errata though. Can we get a consensus on that of all things?
Chainmail: This month, it's the goblinoid horde we find out more about. Not too surprisingly, they're led by a hobgoblin, even though hobgoblins aren't the most powerful of creatures, but they're organised, and close enough to human shape that they can use all the really awesome magical gear conveniently. Indeed, their leader got to be in charge by owning a magical axe and slaughtering his way through anyone who questioned his right to wield it. As usual, they have a wide variety of stuff to field. Orc Druids particularly add to to their firepower and ability to survive in harsh terrain, and they also have trained animals such as the savage war apes to serve as shock troops. Looks like they have less self-control issues than the gnoll forces, which is very interesting to note. (although almost definitely more than the undead, which we have yet to see) Plenty of variety while still maintaining a solid theme once again seems to be the watchword, so even when you're facing a particular side, you won't always be able to predict what creatures you'll face and what tactics will be best. Which I still approve of quite a bit.
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 9/10
Command points: Speaking of offbeat creature combos, that's exactly what the second Chainmail column covers. 4 sample warbands for you to try out, with analysis of their statistical pros and cons. All are fairly small, thinking on the skirmish scale rather than large engagements, and most of them have some variant ideas so you can field almost the same team again without it being too predictable. This once again reminds me of how they handled spellfire, and the way that was responsible for introducing CharOp thinking to the TSR offices back in the day. And now it's gone from something that was looked down upon, to something that they actively encourage amongst their players, and regularly do themselves. You can get a near unlimited amount of columns from examining statistical minutinae, as the Ecologies prove. So this column has found a niche that they should be able to stick with as long as the game stays supported, especially if there's more supplements coming regularly to keep upsetting the balance. Question is if people'll get bored with twinking advice or not. Surely not. They eat that up on the forums.
Sage advice: Can you get a synergy bonus for a skill you lack (Sure. Dig that picked up peripheral maan.)
Can you get intimidate bonuses for being ugly (Never, ever, make a penalty a bonus save in a plot sense. This is absolutely against the game's design philosophy. The rules nazis will beat down your door and drag you off to our slave camps if you dare. And Skip will watch you and laugh. )
Do you have to jump the full distance you can (no)
Which modifiers stack on jump checks (Calculate Base speed first, then add other stuff onto that. Type bonuses apply as usual.)
What happens if you jump farther than your speed. (You pause in mid-air until next round. I'm sure there's an order of the stick strip riffing off that.)
How high do you go in a broad jump (1/4 the distance leapt. Basic law of parabolics. Well, it is in D&D anyway. Speak not to Skip of Realism! Watch you don't bump your head on the way out.)
If you jump in the air, do you take damage from falling. (only any extra beyond the up)
Can you do multiple tumbles in a move (sure. You still won't go as far as if you walked. )
What's a caster level check (Roll d20, and add only your appropriate caster level. Self-explanatory much?)
What's the DC for the caster level check needed to use high level scrolls (The Scrolls Caster level + 1. Essentially, 5% chance of failure per level below the one needed to cast normally. Behold our clever mathematics.)
How does a bard cast wizard spells from scrolls (If it's on their list as well, no biggie. If it's not, you'll have to get your use magic device skills out)
Can anyone use a wand of bulls strength if they know the trigger (no)
Can you use arcane legerdemain with more than one skill (Yes. Choose a new one each time. No you can't use masterwork tools with it. Skip has answered that one already.)
Do barbarians automatically become literate if they multiclass (Unless it's to totemist. Oops. Skip can't know that yet. Retcon time! )
Are mounts automatically proficient in Barding. (No. Only if they're war trained. )
Dragon Issue 292: February 2002
part 10/10
Silicon sorcery: A double bill of conversions this month, making up for the more fluffy advice last month. Monsters from Kohan Immortal Sovereigns, and feats from Evil Islands. Once again they're trying to do the genre emulation thing, and convert video game tropes to D&D, only in a more balanced fashion than some of the previous attempts. Outright save games may be more than a little silly, but the ability to carry more than your strength score would otherwise indicate, or roll to avoid the worst of a critical hit are pretty reasonable uses of a feat slot. Similarly, the new monster is a reasonable enough mid-level demon, that has some magical abilities, but not as many as a D&D demon of similar toughness. You can incorporate both into your games without any problem I can see. So this column is still a good supply of interesting and slightly leftfield ideas to add.
DM's toolbox: Creating a newszine for your campaign world? There's an idea we've seen before, sometimes taken way too seriously. It's all too easy to get into worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding, creating things that'll have no use in actual play, or that'll eat up so much time that they actually impede your ability to prepare and run good games. Fortunately, this column is back to being both snappily written, and very specific and practical indeed in it's advice. Short, consistent amounts of information delivered on a regular basis, with decent formatting that you can reuse between issues, which makes things look more professional and take less effort at the same time. Deciding whether the info is IC or OOC and sticking to that writing style appropriately is a good idea, and allows you to present fallible or incomplete information to your players as appropriate. And of course coming up with a decent brand name really helps to give your campaign a strong identity. I approve of all this advice.
Dungeoncraft: While the toolbox keeps things short and snappy, Ray is really building up the the finale of his lost world campaign setting. We finally get to see some characters that PC's couldn't beat at starting level, and big secrets that could last them the length of the campaign. Not too many though, for as Ray reminds us, you shouldn't make more work for yourself than you have to, and statting up a 17th level ghost wizard intelligently would definitely qualify here. Save the hours long optimisation fests for shortly before the fight, because if you do them a year in advance at the start of the campaign you may forget the details, or find the players are the wrong level when they do meet them, and that matters a lot more in the new edition. It's important to work smart as well as hard if you want to get many things done. Now let's finish this for good.
What's new sheds their inhibitions. Not a good place to do so. Things will eat you.
One of those issues with a decidedly lackluster themed section, but a decent set of regular articles. There's also more rehash than there has been for a while, with two of the articles devoted to providing stats to things from previous editions. After last year's clean slate, that's vaguely tiresome, but I guess there is a lot of material from back then that people do want to see. Still, hopefully they'll keep adding new ideas, and not just drown in nostalgia for a while longer. Let's see what next month has to offer.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 1/10
94 (116) pages. Worldbuilding is this month's topic, and the cover reflects that in a literal, yet nonstereotypical manner. You wouldn't want to piss off this earth goddess knowing you could be smitten with a power drill the size of Ireland. There's not a reflex save high enough to dodge that below epic levels. Still, a creation myth like that should encourage people to start developing technology early. Pierce the heavens with your mighty drill indeed. Let's se if the worlds they encourage you to make this time around are particularly generic or unusual.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Ah, the joys of canon. Keeping games up with continuity changes in books has caused more than a few arguments around a game table. But really, unless you're playing in the RPGA or the Camarilla, it shouldn't, for you can change the world at your whim as long as you maintain internal continuity with what's happened to the PC's. Canon can go to hell as long as the game remains fun. So a simple message from the editor this month, reminding us that the rules are different for the official writers and you, and you shouldn't hold yourself to the same standards they need to be kept too. Sensible. it should be a game for you, and a job for them, and not the other way around. But will this stop people from sending annoying letters in? Even a little bit? Anyone? :crickets chirp:
Scale Mail: Our first letter is praise for articles that they basically use as an excuse to point out that they misattributed the author of one of them. Who gets the credit? You won't unless you speak up.
The demise of Dragonmirth gets noted with dismay. They say it isn't gone for good, but promises are flexible things in the world of media. What was said to be originally a one-off for space reasons can become regular schedule messing around, leading to cancellation due to "declining popularity" that was caused by their own executive meddling in the first place. We've definitely heard this story before.
Another letter also involves proper crediting, this time for the cover artist of issue 290. If you get stuff like this wrong, you may well not get repeat projects. Even more than not being paid, people don't like it if they don't feel appreciated.
Completely unsurprisingly, converting only some of the planescape factions to 3e results in an immediate clamour for the rest of them. An unfilled symmetry is like a nagging pain to many people, and they will not shut up until it's sorted out. Just get on with it, will you.
On a different note, we have someone annoyed about the mechanics of leveling up magic items. Turns out they've misinterpreted them anyway. It's the maker who pays the heavy cost. Keeping it's powers appropriate with your level after that is relatively easy.
Their creative decisions in Oriental Adventures get defended. It's easier to put crossovers in afterwards than take them out if they're baked in. Any halfway decent DM can do that, especially in a fairly robust system like 3e.
Still, some people really loathe 3e. we have one writer who thinks it's totally kiddified and all the changes suck. Since their readership overall is up, I don't think they're going to be changing things back to please the holdouts.
And finally, we have someone unhappy about the reduced size of recent issues. They pass the blame onto the advertisers. I know in many magazines they actually provide more money than the customers, and wind up having more say in what gets put in. Anyone know what kind of ratio Dragon had in that area?
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 2/10
Nodwick goes vertical. That means extra pressure from the weight of objects above. That's gotta hurt.
D&D Previews: Not a lot going on again. Bastion of Broken Souls brings their adventures up to 18th level. And it looks like it'll get you to epic levels, if you can survive to the end of it. Good thing the rules for that are pretty imminent. If you do that, perhaps you've got a hope at derailing the Realms' current metaplot, as the Wizardwar reaches the end of it's trilogy. Maybe not, but it's the thought that counts.
Up on a soapbox: So why the hell did dwarves gain an ability to detect sloping passages in D&D? A general benefit to mining stuff you could understand, but why that weirdly specific power? Well, that is an interesting story, and stems directly from one of Gary's more sadistic little tricks. A dungeon complex that gradually sloped in such a way that players wound up going round in circles as they went down the stairs, round and gradually up the corridors, and then back down again. Obviously they got wise eventually, and so the arms race started. I think that's a good example of how the smaller an environment is, the more idiosyncratic the things that evolve there. The feedback from a few campaigns in the 70's is going to have far more random bits shaping the game's evolution than thousands of groups worth of playtesting in the 3e. And that's obviously why, for better and for worse, 3e is a more universal system, designed to resolve everything the players may think of trying with the same framework. Years of input from different writers will gradually expand and homogenise anything.
Profiles: Ray Winninger doesn't get a photo, but does get a longer profile than usual. He's definitely had quite an interesting career, mixing computer game design with pen & paper RPG's, and actually making a decent bit of money from both, which I think demonstrates quite handily how much bigger the RPG market was in the 80s and early 90s. His first game, Underground, still has a cult fanbase despite being put on ice by the company, and pretty much abandoned. He has a whole bunch of other campaign worlds and game mechanic ideas, many of them unpublished, which also look quite interesting. Obviously, given his interests, he sees the gap between RPG's and computer games blurring in the future, with programs to facilitate roleplaying, and games with sophisticated enough AI to allow some meaningful communication with NPC's. And as is often the case, history shows progress has been slower than you'd hope. All we can do is keep plugging on, and hope we aren't too set in out ways to appreciate them when they get there.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 3/10
Wills are tough to make. Particularly when they're not being done by the deceased, as in Zogonia.
At the table: Oooh, they actually remembered to scan in the bonus stuff this month. Nice. So here's a whole bunch of little gridded locations for your PC's to wander and have fights in, presumably scaled to the size of the current D&D minis line. That could come in handy. Course, printing it out I'd have to be careful about getting the scale right, but I think that's a solvable problem. That adds a mark or so to this issue.
Dork tower does nothing to improve the image of gamers in the eyes of their SO's.
Small gods: Animistic cosmologies are pretty common in fantasy universes. Being able to talk not just to big gods, but a whole range of smaller demigods and lesser spirits that extends all the way down to ones of individual objects that a starting PC could beat up no trouble opens up a lot of plot opportunities. It also makes the world feel literally alive, as you know there's always a ton of things surrounding you, watching. In that kind of environment, superstition can thrive, because particular gods are not omniscient or omnipresent, so you might get a result for your observances and offerings, but then again, you might not. You also have to constantly do your research to keep up with the local spirits, which means the DM may need to do more improvising to answer the players questions. So while some writers may set it as default, getting heavily into animism does take quite a lot of work. So the main value of this article is that it's one of those ones that can get you to examine your unconscious assumptions, and play with them deliberately. What will you make of this idea, and how will it differ from the standard stereotypes?
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 4/10
T.V. Structure: Designing your campaign more like a TV series than a simulation or a novel? Yup, Robin Laws is up to his usual tricks. Stuff like series bible, concept sketches, episodic stories with an overarching plot for each season and putting the spotlight on different members of the ensemble in particular episodes can all be used in an RPG, and will hopefully result in a faster-paced campaign than just setting them loose in a sandbox. Of course, there is the omnipresent danger that either the players or the dice might not play along and he warns you against making your plans too precise. You can't expect them to do a hot springs episode when there's a world that needs saving in a few months time. Nor can you make one person the star indefinitely without destabilising the game in the long run. You'll almost definitely benefit from discussing the character generation and rough season arcs collaboratively, rather than making it up on your own and expecting the players to play along when they don't know which direction you thought they'd take. As this both gives you a cool idea and warns you of it's pitfalls beforehand, I think it counts as one of his better ideas. Just don't try and model your campaign on a painting, lovingly detailed, but ultimately completely static. I don't think that would turn out so well.
Countrycraft: Meanwhile, Ray still thinks that creating a setting with a whole bunch of characters and plot hooks, and then letting stories happen organically, is preferable than trying to force players into a particular plot. Still, as he's pointed out before, creating a setting and keeping it alive can be a lot of hard work. So any mechanical help is always welcome. Such as a 3e updating of the Birthright domain management rules, taking advantage of the new skill system to improve the amount of control PC's have. There's still a fair amount of bookkeeping involved, but the character sheet for a nation is smaller than that for a PC, and the war system is pretty quick to resolve. So obviously this is less innovative than the previous article, but it still has the aim of creating a fun game. Worldbuilding is definitely one area where one size doesn't fit all. And 3e could definitely benefit from bringing back domain level play, so I approve of this.
Monsters with class: We already opened 3e monsters up to becoming PC's almost universally. And we saw LA adjustments introduced soon afterwards. Now they give us LA adjustments for nearly all the existing monsters in the MM. Of course, the problem with these is their tendency to overestimate power levels, resulting in creatures that are actually unplayably weak at their supposed LA, especially if they choose class levels that don't complement their racial abilities. Trying to create a balanced game when you have creatures with an enormous variety of capabilities is an exceedingly tricky task, especially as levels are a fairly granular measure of power. So this is a reminder that they're trying for game balance in their design at this point, but still a long way from getting it perfect. This is going to be a long rocky road, isn't it.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 5/10
The elemental planetouched: Tieflings and Aasimar were popular enough to be put in the new MM. Now we update their elemental counterparts, in one of those articles where they use the magazine to get feedback before putting them in a book and making them fully official. These are pretty straight conversions, with the same ability modifiers (albeit doubled to fit the 3e formula) and innate spells as their 2e versions. All are LA+1 to match with the existing planetouched. The main forward development is the idea of racial feats that allow you to enhance your natural abilities, which is definitely something that catches on and becomes more common before being made core next edition. So this is another article that shows their progression through history, and the magazine's integral part in that. The official books would look different if they didn't have this to test out and fill in details.
Campaigning with class: Right back at the start of 3e, we had an article on the point of prestige classes, and how the selection the DM allows should be used to define your campaign world. This is basically a repetition of that, with the benefit of a year of supplements to draw on for examples. You want a particular types of game? Here's the existing prestige classes that would be good for that, and the books where they can be found. (gotta collect em all!) So this feels like a slightly cynical bit of rehash, designed to get you using their prestige classes, albeit not all of them at once, and hopefully playing multiple D&D campaigns instead of moving to another system once you level up to 20+ and finish one. Even if they're no longer supporting tons of different campaigns at once, they recognise that players need a certain amount of variation to sustain interest. But you'll have to do some of the customising yourself. Not getting much helpful from this I'm afraid. Moving on then.
Nodwick's party help design a universe. Design by committee makes it far worse than any of them could have done individually.
Elminsters guide to the realms: Another inn that adventurers would probably rather enjoy staying in this month, as it has plenty of potential to lead to adventures both within it and elsewhere. The Missing Minotaur has Harper links, and like any place that deals with troublemakers, the innkeeper has a number of tricks to deal with patrons who get rowdy. While the notes are as interesting as ever, the map is one of the less useful ones in the series, with it's perspective not being as clear about the layout as most. It's al about picking the perspective, and side-on doesn't work quite as well as top down or isometric. Oh well, it's not as if we're short of maps of inns to steal, mix and match. Just can't get the help sometimes.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 6/10
Bestiary loses it's definite article. From three words to one. Next thing you know they'll start clipping syllables. Anyway, this month's theme is a return to wolves. Since they last showed up as a topic halloween 1991, they're well due a revisiting. As it should be, they take a different theme to the last time. Where that was horror oriented, this draws upon native american style animistic spiritualism, merging wolves with various elements. Goddammnit, didn't I say that this is exactly the kind of thing you should be using templates to cover. And I must admit the combination of wolves and animism feels more than a little played out after 10 years of W:tA. So this provokes negative amounts of enthusiasm in me. The fact that these are all aways chaotic or neutral evil further dampens my mood.
Thunder wolves appear in storms, and then go again when the weather clears. They are, of course, immune to electricity.
Mist wolves feed off your fear, and hit and run from mist, making them perfect for Ravenloft. Since they're also incorporeal, quite a few parties'll be defenceless against them.
Sea wolves are coated in matted seaweed, and fight you on the beaches. They don't seem to keen on attacking actual ships though, unlike the lycanthropic seawolves.
Shard wolves are all jagged bits of rock, and appear out of fissures after earthquakes. As usual, their digging ability means they may well disappear just as mysteriously when things turn against them
Magma wolves come from lava, and rather like burning stuff. They'll destroy the plant life if they hang around for any time, so get them away from the village before they ruin the crops.
Cloud wolves are obviously the most likely to show up anywhere. Fly down, zap you with breath weapons, blow you over. Still meh.
Class acts: Monte returns to the driving seat with one of his more interconnected creations, the Nightsong Enforcer. Taking the general idea of thieves guild that is common to fantasy settings, and giving it his own spin, this is the first of the specialist classes associated with the guild. They're combat focussed rogues, designed to work in teams to get into places and take out enemies of the guild with great prejudice. They'd be a good addition to an adventuring party, especially if there's another rogue in the team to play off. After all, it's not possible for a rogue to specialise in all their class skills, so having multiple thiefy types can be very handy and not niche stealing if they focus on different abilities.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 7/10
Places of mystery: Greyhawk gets it's counterpart to Ed's current column, describing new places for you to adventure in. Of course, they don't have the same art budget here, so it's just descriptions. A cursed castle in an area infested by orcs, and with who knows what horrors in the lower dungeon levels, and a hidden citadel full of advanced Shadows that can teleport between any shadow they choose, meaning you're never truly safe once you've aroused their ire, no matter how far you run. As with Ed's recent works, these are presented as challenges too big for a regular party to clear out in one go, so you can have multiple parties exploring the same dungeon complex, and monsters replenishing themselves regularly. (which'll certainly happen if you face Shadows and aren't properly equipped) Since they're both surrounded by hazardous terrain, you can't expect to be able to run to the surface, rest up and go shopping whenever resources start to run a little low, or for the monsters to stick in their rooms whenever you're not around, and you'll have to plan accordingly. While you'll have to fill in all the layout details yourself, these are fairly flavourful little sketches that nudge you towards making brutal old school adventures that'll take sessions to solve and kill plenty of characters in the process. If you want to make stories that your players'll talk about the way Gary did back in the day, pay attention, because they're trying to show you the way.
A splintered sun: We've had stuff aimed at the DM, now for something a bit more player-centric. A knightly prestige class that puts a specific spin on paladin style virtue, with a test for entry? You can have plenty of those, and having them makes it more likely you'll have conflicts between good creatures who've simply prioritised one virtue over another. In this case it's physical and moral fortitude beyond normal endurance, and they get a special power that boosts their constitution when they drop to 0 HP, allowing them to press onwards for a little while longer and then die, or get away to get some healing before it wears off and they collapse again. Their mental disciplines include taking 10 on skills in stressful situations, and the ability to take a partial action even if surprised. So they will play a bit differently from regular fighters or paladins, while still being front-line melee combatants. Of course, the real meat is in the setting detail, not only telling us about their history, code of conduct and initiation rites, but also providing some sample NPC's of various ranks in the organisation. So this really demonstrates the advantages of designing your prestige class for a specific campaign rather than keeping it generic, and making your own, not just allowing whatever ones from official books your players ask for. At the very least, you should adapt them a little and give them places within your world.
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 8/10
Chainmail: While the big factions in the Chainmail game stick to one or two big races, you can also choose to mix it up with the free states, with a combination of humans, demihumans and humanoids to taste. I suppose people would do it anyway, so you might as well make it canon within the setting. As with the rest of this, it looks like they've gone to a fair bit of effort to come up with setting details to justify their combinations of creatures, and there's a whole bunch of different little city states that make up this area, so they could well be fighting amongst one-another as well. Basically, it's for the same sort of people who like playing Catiff in Vampire: the Masquerade. You get more flexibility in terms of powers, but considerably less social support, as members of an outgroup don't necessarily have the support of other minority outgroups, yet alone anyone else. Course, in a wargame where everyone is balanced by point buy, and setting is merely a backdrop, that isn't really much of a disadvantage unless there's some rules details I don't know about. Once again it seems likely that this is going to go the way of Dragon Dice, diluting it's strong original ideas in the follow-ups, and players choosing mixed teams of maximum nastiness over staying in theme. It's the CCG way. That's the difference being taken over by a company that had it's big break in another field makes.
Command points: Our tactical minis advice this month is another one that encourages you to go against type. Dwarves aren't noted for their ranged attacks, and since they don't have high mobility, hit and run tactics aren't their forte. But apparently they do have one unit with a powerful one-shot ranged blast, and if you time it right it can make a real difference. So you need to make it count by spreading out so you can shoot without worrying about suffering the penalty for firing into melee, and focussing your fire on the nastiest members of the other team so you can take them down quickly, which then lets you gang up on the remaining enemies when you close into melee. Sounds like it might work. Once again it feels like they're showing the influences from also playing M:tG, creating lots of highly specific monster variants just for the Chainmail game that have unique strengths and weaknesses to exploit. So this is good if you like that kind of highly tactical play, and growing annoyingly inescapable if you don't, as the longer they run a column like this, the harder it'll be to find players who don't think like that. :p What are ya gonna do? :shrugs:
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 9/10
Sage advice goes oriental again. Ahh, Skip remembers when this ate up years of questions back in the late 80's. Sweet nostalgia.
Do objects take half damage from unarmed attacks (No, but they're often immune to subdual damage. Also, watch for bruised fists)
Does sneak attack and iajutsu focus stack. (Probably not, since they know you're there. Maybe if your second stands behind them and distracts them at the crucial moment. How dishonorable.)
How often can you use falling star strike (Once per round, up to your stunning strikes limit.)
Does improved grapple let you do more damage (Not inherently. But surviving longer certainly helps.)
What happened to the great throw feat (Oops. Create Official Errrr:pfft: Oh maaaan. This has never happened to Skip before. Guess Skip will just have to use Skip's hands and sort this out manually.)
Where's the Isawa school spell list (They can choose any of the elements. Generalists rock.)
Can hengeyokai assume big animal forms (No.)
What does a bird hengeyokai look like in hybrid form. (Hands at the end of the wings. It looks goofy, but they can still fly.)
Do hengeyokai ability boosts apply to animal form (no, only human & hybrid)
Can nezumi attack with a weapon and bite at once (If they have a hand free. Yes. this might not make complete sense.)
What AC penalties do masterwork Dastanas and Chahar-aina have (None)
Can you combine them with elven chain (no)
If they have an enhancement bonus, do they stack with regular armour (No. Only the best, as per usual stacking rules.)
Why does a kappa shell weigh more than a living Kappa (Um, Er, Um. Cumulative swamp gas! When they die, they fart lots of helium! )
Would a monk with 2 tonfas have any extra attacks (No)
Do Shugenja element foci stack with wu jen elemental powers. (no. )
Do multiclass shugenja element forbiddances also apply to other classes (no)
Can a wizard learn wu jen spells (no. Nor vice versa.)
Do maho-tsukai cast water to poison using int or taint (taint)
What good is being a eunuch warlock for sorcerers (Good question. It's probably not worth it.)
How can wu jen become blade dancers with incompatible alignment (Oh dear. It's errata time. )
Can you use ki whirlwind with iajutsu strike (Oh yes. Talk about lawnmower. )
Dragon Issue 293: March 2002
part 10/10
DM's toolbox: We've already talked about formats to build your campaign, and then record the things that happened in it. Now we talk about building a website for your campaign. This is one case where the advice already seems a little dated, despite it only being 10 years ago now. This is still before the rise of wikipedia, and the corresponsing rise in creative commons driven collaborative creation. So while the things that you want to do might not have changed, the tools you have to do them with have been radically reworked since then, and that changes the assumptions of how you go about this. The garish custom pages of geocities or myspace have mostly faded away, although you can still find a few old examples cached away if you know the url to put in. So the generalities here are still handy, but the specifics, less so. Unless you deliberately want to go retro with your webpage design, which is very much an option for flavour.
What's new tries to quit the fantasy for modern day comedy, but just can't get away. Sigh.
Looks like things are starting to go downhill again, with the amount of rehashed material rising rapidly, and some half-assed ideas and artwork rounding out the issue. Still a fair amount of interesting experimentation though, and it feels like they're actually reacting to the feedback they got from 3e's release in developing their new articles. But how much of what they're learning will be retained when it's time for the next rules revision? Well, that'll still take a while to reach anyway. In the meantime, let's see how funny the latest april issue is.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 1/10
116 pages. Beefcaaaaaaake! Yup, it's a good ol' shirtless sun deity for the female readers on this month's cover. Well, it's not as funny as Phil Foglios cheesecake last year, but you can't have everything. And at least it's appropriate, as the other theme this month is deities. So it's pretty obvious they're not going to go for full-on zaniness this issue, but they may have a few jokes slipped in. Let's see if the fun and usefulness will be segregated or integrated (or maybe diffracted) this year.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, some page foldback visible.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Another tale of the staff deliberately playing their characters stupid, and finding this actually makes the game more fun than being taking it all very seriously. Finding an obvious, easily imitable speech pattern and then using it until everyone is thoroughly sick of it. We've definitely covered that before. As a staple of 80's cartoons, I think I speak for all of us when I say that's insmurfably smurfitating, and also somewhat resmurfed. While last time I was in the mood to indulge this, this time I'm not, especially as it was an official playtest. We've all seen what happens when you let the whimsy levels get too high when creating modules. You end up with crap like WG7 or 9, and hurt the credibility and continuity of your established campaign worlds. (unless we're talking dragonlance, where another bit of comedy goofiness would be just a drop in the ocean) We all have to let off steam sometimes, but you don't want to do so in a way that messes up your future prospects.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is quite happy to have more plant monsters to throw at the enemies. I'm not objecting to that at all either.
The second is rather grumpier, being very cynical about the way they brought back the Saurials in the magazine, and suspecting they're going to try and sell them to us again in a book in a few years as well. Money for old rope. They point out how little rehashing they actually did in the past year. They only brought stuff back when there were multiple letters asking for it. But if that's what the people want, then eventually they'll have to give in.
The next letter proves that point, with someone who loved the saurials, and has read all the novels featuring them. Get Jeff Grubb to write some more!
Rather more up to date is someone asking for Chainmail tactical advice. Still probably sent a few months though, since they already started doing that. :p Smartasses.
We have two letters supporting the magazine's overall direction and mix of article types at the moment. There may be more complainers than a few years ago, but they shouldn't let that bring them down, especially with the increased readership. It just shows they haven't become an echo chamber.
A request for a Githyanki language primer. Unfortunately they've phased that regular out, and don't plan to bring it back, as they didn't feel it was popular enough. Oh well. Can't please everyone.
A rather amusing suggestion that you play a one-shot using characters from your real life, only secretly involved in secret and often outlandish schemes to take over the world. Yeah, that could definitely be fun. It'd be like playing World of Darkness in your home town turned up to 11. Just don't let the stories get back to those parodied, or you'll never hear the end of it.
And finally, we have another amusing letter afraid that Paul Kidd's novel versions of the old dungeon crawls are now the official way those happened in Greyhawk, and Lolth is dead for good. I think she's now a little too iconic for them to kill off for good, even for the most zealous of metaplotters. They only did it with Takhisis because Dragonlance wasn't selling enough to get it's game books renewed, so they didn't expect to have to keep on moving the timeline forward after that.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 2/10
Yeagar gets judged by the gods on his cruelty to nodwick. Apparently, they aren't too bothered.
D&D Previews: Another sign of gearing up for epic level, we see tons of gods statted out in Deities and Demigods. This does not work as well as in 1st ed, partly due to the general inflation of power, and partially because 3rd ed makes constructing your own legal god stats an almighty amount of mathematical work. Not one of their finest hours.
The Realms gets a double bill of books. Realms of Shadow shows us the aftermath of the archwizard's return. And another magic heavy series starts up. Spellfire: Shandril's saga by Ed Greenwood. The rules of the universe being changed IC and OOC can drive quite a few stories.
Up on a soapbox: Pit traps! Now there's something that needed inventing that you can easily overlook when it isn't there. Hell, you can easily overlook them when they are there, because the whole point is to surprise people and make them suffer. Amusingly enough, that only came afterwards, once Gary had introduced open pits and let the players get used to that idea. And after that, he rapidly progressed to increasingly sophisticated combinations of spikes, monsters and secret doors within the pits themselves, falling blocks to make sure you don't get out, and all those other devious mechanical contrivances we eventually got an article on back in the late 70's. A good reminder that the exploration part of the game was given more attention in the early days, dungeons had lots of nonlinear stuff that you might not encounter on your first pass through, and obstacles that would kill you in one fell swoop if you were careless or unlucky were a lot more common as well. Making dungeons fair or safe? What's my motivation as an evil archwizard to do that? :p Unless you actually want people to come in and get enough out of it that they tell their friends and come back as part of some longer plan, which is always a possibility, and how the big long-lasting dungeons in the Forgotten Realms are obviously set up. A strong reminder that back then play was more adversarial, and less concerned with creating a coherent world behind the challenges you created for your players. Whether that's a good or bad thing is very debatable, but it once again put the lie to recent letters who claim 3e D&D is more hack and slash oriented than the old days. More than 2e, yeah. More than OD&D and 1e? Nope, no dice.
Epic level countdown: Woo. D&D gets the top taken off it's progression. Be it 20th, 30th, 36th, or 40th, they never managed to truly escape the level caps before. But now they can. Unlimited power! Clunky little execution. Get ready for DC 100 skill checks that have effects a wizard could achieve with a 1st level spell, some epic feats that actually do cool stuff, while others merely increase your ability scores by a point, and an epic spellcasting system that causes wizards to draw even further ahead of other primary spellcasting classes the farther you push it. The bigger you make the numbers, the more obvious the drastic differences in flexibility between the classes become, and the more any mathematical trickery can open a gulf between characters of the same level in terms of actual competence. They really ought to playtest the higher level stuff at least as much as the low level stuff, because it's obviously so much harder to get right. Well, at least they tried. And if they're doing a full 6 month lead-in, we'll get plenty of time to look at the bits which were more and less effective individually. Should be a decent amount to talk about here.
Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 3/10
Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.
Beings of power: Our first article in the theme is a bunch of leftovers from their latest book. Sigh. As Iuz, Pholtus, Rao and Tharizdun weren't in the corebook, but do play fairly substantial parts in Greyhawk's history, they decided not to include them in Deities and Demigods, and give them to the magazine's readers, who are probably more likely to be aware of D&D's wider history. And there'll certainly be plenty of people still annoyed at what happened in the Greyhawk wars who'd want to kick Iuz's ass in a fair fight. Which since he's only a rank 3 demigod, is within the bounds of possibility for a non-epic party if they can catch him without his entourage or take an army along to engage them in turn. The others, not so much, unless you can pull the kind of trick that makes CR irrelevant. So this feels like an attempt at a cross-promotional article that'll alienate as many as it sells, revealing just how horrendously unwieldy deity statblocks are in 3e, so they know what they're getting into before they spend the money. In that respect, you could call it a public service announcement. :p At least that's better than a vague or misleading advert that'll only reveal the problems after you've paid the money.
Ramming speed: In a rather leftfield turn, we have an epic article that isn't part of either of their nominal themes this month. An 18 page treatise on vehicle building and combat in D&D? They ought to have put that at the front, not the cuttings from their latest book, and found a couple more articles to complement it. Marketing fail.
Even more interestingly, the rules here aren't the same as, and are quite a bit more involved than the vehicle combat rules that appear in d20 modern later this year. It covers sailing and flying, even underground diggers as well as land vehicles, and has a lot of examples, complete with construction details that show how much they cost to make and repair. (and you know that with the scrapes PC's get into, they're going to be spending a fair chunk in the chop shop if they want to keep their ride running, and even more if they want to customise it with the latest stat boosting accessories ) Which means this is the kind of article you can get quite a bit of use out of, especially if your players get into the optimisation game with their vehicles as much as their characters, and devote a load of time to making them as effective as possible with the money they have. Which makes it pretty appropriate for the 3e era really. It's always nice to see them go to the extra effort, especially it looks like they might not get the proper credit for it.
The windsinger: Following directly on from the last article is a ship based prestige class. The Windsinger is one of those highly specialised prestige classes that's pretty useful within their speciality, and a bit weak outside it. Weather manipulation is a pretty useful power, it has to be said. But considering by the early teens, wizards and druids can do all that, plus a ton of other stuff, this still isn't a particularly high tier prestige class. Still, it does get full BAB and an excellent skill selection on top of it's powers, so they aren't devoid of balancing factors, and make a decent nautical alternative to Rangers & Bards. And it does fit a common literary niche. So I'm not going to throw it overboard or make it walk the plank.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 4/10
Words to live by: Robin Laws follows up on the goofiness in the editorial with a piece on catchphrases. This is basically the same idea as his piece on proverbs in issue 278, only reskinned, showing once again he has no problem recycling ideas if there's a pagecount that needs to be filled. Only this time, it's sillier, to fit in with the april theme. So here's a whole ton of catchprases general, race, and class specific, along with advice on when to use them. (and not overuse them) Many of them are instantly recognisable from various media sources, and a lot of them are more than a little silly. If you do pick one, make sure you don't use it more than once or twice a session. As a half-serious article, there is some use to be got out of this, but there's also the real possibility of it being wrong for your campaign, and spoiling the tone if incorporated. So mixed feelings here, as befits the mixed result of this article.
Adding injury to insults: This, on the other hand, I don't have a problem with, as Robin trying to create a social combat system that works with the existing D&D rules and doesn't completely gimp characters who aren't built with it in mind is an interesting challenge. Fortunately, 3e does have a reasonable number of social skills to key it off. But unfortunately, he requires you to take a whole new subskill to become really good at skewering another's reputation, and includes a lot of feats that will be completely useless if you aren't using this new subsystem, which creates the kind of problem psionics suffered in 2e, but avoided in 3e - that of old characters winding up defenceless against new ones. Still, it does have some really neat bits as well. Making gaining and losing reputation work on a monthly scale, with a limited number of attacks allowed per month makes it fairly difficult for one person to completely ruin someone else on their own which reflects real social dynamics. You'll need to persuade others to gang up on them if you want them to become complete outcasts. Plus the penalty for doing it unprovoked discourages being generally bitchy just for the hell of it. (of course, a real social wizard can always engineer a failure to then take advantage of. ) And the death spiral means it's difficult for someone who's reputation is ruined to effectively hit back, which I think fits with modern tabloids as well. While it has it's balance issues, I'm overall inclined positively towards this one, as it has enough cool bits to interact with that it'd be pretty interesting in play, while not being overcomplicated. It's nice to have articles that are more ambitious than just more spells, monsters and prestige classes.
Nodwick has a particularly epic adventure this time, but in the end, the status quo is reset, just as ever.
Class acts: And here's the other half of the nightsong equation, the Infiltrator. While the enforcer gains better combat abilities at the expense of their skills, these guys sacrifice their backstabbing for better defensive abilities and ninja-esque enhanced skills at sneaking, breaking and entering. The two complement each other well, and are best used as part of the same guild. When Monte created prestige classes, one of his design goals was to help give campaigns more flavour by tying special groups of abilities to specific organizations, and this is a good example of him leading by example. They get reprinted in splatbooks for both 3.0 and 3.5, and fit in pretty well to Ptolus. If you're playing an underworld focussed campaign, they come recommended.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 5/10
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A huge wodge of deific items here. Not particularly funny, but still useful. Just watch out for the bad guy's stuff. If anything's going to malfunction in your hands, it's god-keyed crap.
The Adjudicator goes from bow to sword at your command, and is a +4 weapon either way. Another minor space saver that'll be handy to a follower of any religion except maybe pacifists.
The Axe of Grounding is Moradin's way of making dwarves even more stolid. It soaks up electricity with great zest, then uses it on your next victim. Course, if it was from their natural attacks, they'll probably be immune to it. Hey ho. So it goes.
Bags of Fools Gold are another gnomish invention. They do keep themselves busy. Ready money anytime, as long as you're ready to be long gone before the consequences come due. Teach people greed doesn't pay.
Boccob's dust of maximisation is also pretty obvious. Sprinkle it around while casting for metamagicy goodness. Quite neat for low level characters.
Caps of Reason don't actually make you smarter, but they do give you a bonus to diplomacy, and amusingly a bonus to AC for if the diplomacy fails. So you should make a good negotiator anyway.
Ehlonna's Orb of the Earth is a charged item that casts a bunch of earth manipulating spells. No great surprises here. Trap 'em in the mud.
Gauntlets of Grummsh give you a strength boost and protection from good. No great subtle tricks here, as befits the target audience.
Girdles of Breath Weapon Resistance are Kord's idea. Not only do they protect you, but the rest of your party too. Way to be a team player dude. That'll really save the party.
Inquisitor's Whips are a tool of Iuz's oppression. They bring the pain quite satisfactorily. That means you can get them to agree to stuff they really shouldn't. Ahh, the joys of being chaotic evil.
Wailing Stones are similarly unpleasant, being magical maces endowed with fear effects by Erythnul. Still, they should kill you much quicker, with less suffering. Small mercies maaan.
The Mask of the Dead is of course Nerull's idea. it helps undead appear human, so it won't be much use to most PC's. Next!
Meersalm Salve is supposedly derrived from Heironius' skin, and grants damage resistance like his. Celestial sweat? You really will need to be humble and unconcerned with appearances then. :p
Mirrors of Overland Travel allow you to get a birds eye view of your surroundings. Now you can be Link, rather than the usual first-person fighter, which has it's advantages.
The Necklace of Soul Switching is Vecna's method of giving his favored immortality without lichdom. It makes a decidedly poisoned gift, as your body will become occupied by someone else. Should make for nasty intrigue plots.
Necklaces of Water Mastery are for Obad-hais worshippers, showing his versatility. Obviously, they're full of tricks for the seafaring, allowing you to breathe underwater, or play jesus as you please.
Flutes of Diversion are Olidammara's new item. They produce a whole bunch of sonic based illusory effects to help you trick your way out of a crisis. Not hugely surprising.
Hextor's Skin is nasty black armour that gives you a big boost to intimidation. Perfect present for that special Blackguard in your life.
A Ring of Recall are so elves can get back to their hidden homes unobserved, keeping secrets from even their co-adventurers. Always got some secret up their sleeves, don't they.
Pelor's Wrath is a staff with his spiky holy symbol on top, this means it makes a pretty badass weapon along with the magical tricks. Buff your buds and kick butt.
Starburst Insignia are Saint Cuthbert's method of keeping the clergy orthodox. Resist those blandishments, root out those heresys. He's as unlikable as ever, I see.
The Rod of Entropy is a device by Tharizdun that can open up a rift in reality. This is instadeath if you put people through it. A wingman and high strength would probably be useful to use it to it's full potential.
Wee Jas's Symbol of True Death offers a decent amount of passive protection against undead, but can also be used as a returning Shuriken. Just another reason why she's an awesome greater goddess.
Yondalla's cape of Halflingkind gives you social benefits and boosts halfling's racial bonuses some more. And that's your lot for now, in one of the more grindy selections I've had to deal with in a while.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 6/10
Bazaar of the truly Bizarre: Man, it's been ages since we got a selection of joke items in the bazaar. A good 10 years, actually. Man I've missed that. Still, here we go again, albeit with greater attention paid to game balance. Lets see if they manage to be fun in spite of that.
Flaming Shields aren't actually magical, they just have pockets of nitroglycerine attached to the front. This means that they're potentially hazardous to you as well. Hopefully the construction of the shield will protect you, but if this was real life I certainly wouldn't trust something like this.
Ready-drink Helms are another attempt to deal with the potion access problem. With a compartment keeping them safe and a bunch of straws leading down, you'll look ridiculous, but you'll be able to drink them pretty much hands free. Watch out for big maces aimed at your head.
Extension Spears go ka-chunk outwards, once again, purely mechanically. Don't see why this is particularly comical. Like sword-canes, it's a perfectly legitimate equipment mod.
Stilt Boots, ok, I'll admit to a little amusement at them. They have soles that can extend and contract to your taste, adding up to 2' to your height. Get Sarkozy a pair for his birthday. :p
Extenders are another mechanical device, basically just hands onna stick. We have these in reality as well. I'm not impressed.
Gnome Backpacks let small characters ride medium sized ones. Most undignified for a gnome, but when have they cared about that. :p It does open up quite a few tricks, so there is some fun to be had here.
False Hooks have an interesting mechanism that means they can collapse behind you, foiling anyone trying to follow you up the rope. Again, it's not really funny, but it is useful. You'll laugh about it in the pub afterwards.
Gamers vs Girlfriends: Ah yes, the good old sexist stereotype jokes. I though the political correctness brigade killed them off for good in the 90's. Guess I was wrong. And of course, putting in jokes aimed at both sides of this argument just makes everyone feel stereotyped and demeaned. So this is a resurgence of old school material that just makes me roll my eyes. There are enough jokes out there that we really don't need to return to this particular tired old wellspring. Find some new ones. There's certainly enough interesting new references being created by the internet. Try pulling some of those out and twisting them in punny directions.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 7/10
Play with your feats: Another short joke article that takes metagame stuff and makes fun of it. Some people just have the knack of always getting the comfy chair or calling dibs on the best share of the magic items. If they had a character sheet in the 3e style, feats like Avoid Bookkeeping, Dodge Food Run or Seat Jocky would be on them. Of course that kind of thing results in complaints that once you have a feat for it, it prevents anyone from trying it, when they really ought to be able too. I think we can survive that in this case.
Dark ages: vampire! Just like vampire: the dark ages, but with extra class struggle thrown in and 100% less definite articles. ;)
Campaign news: Since the mid-90's, conventions have had to be booked and organised a good half a year in advance to ensure they're prepared for the people attending. This definitely applies to the RPGA as well. So here we hear about their big tournament adventure at Origins this year, and what you have to do to get in. There's a qualifying encounter you have to do beforehand, and the way you handle that alters the details of the adventure. If your party all gets killed, you might as well not press on, because you're probably not going to win the main event if you can't handle that. This'll make it harder to cheat, because not every team will face the same enemies in the same way, even if the overall layout remains the same. As with Ravenloft's card reading, this is the kind of idea I approve of, as it's always a battle to keep tournament adventures both interesting and fair, while not being totally closed-ended, which defeats the roleplaying aspect of the game. Anyone have any stories of how this turned out for their party?
Artifacts of Oerth: Artifacts in RPGA play? Oh, that's a huge can of worms. I do not see them putting things like that in official adventures and letting your PC's keep them beyond the end of the plot arc. So this is for those of you who are playing Greyhawk in a personal campaign, not organised play. And it reads like they're trying to update the 2e book of artifacts, with some of these familiar, if a bit nerfed from their 2e versions. They retain the same format, with plenty of history, drawbacks along with their powers, and methods of destruction at the end. So this is a fairly old school feeling article, with an amount of fiction stuff and setting integration a lot greater than most articles these days. It's another reminder that there's tons of stuff still unconverted, and after avoiding it last year, they're starting to work on that in earnest, so I'm going to have to get used to regularly seeing rehash again. Could be worse. At least they're trying to make the math all add up this time round.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 8/10
Chainmail: The western side of Oerth, on the other hand, isn't wallowing in the past, but instead eagerly trying to loot it so all the sides can get an edge in their current war. Want to go to the site of one of the main battles in the ancient gith/illithid war, or see what's inside a fallen meteor? Or would you rather strike at their homebase while they're out treasurehunting so they come back to a burned ruin and feel the whole thing was futile, and then nick anything of value while they're tired and low on supplies from the trek back? As usual, they're trying to make sure the material here is good for both players of the wargame, and people who want to try actual D&D games set in the western continent, with mechanics for fighting in the new locations that make them quite a bit more hazardous than regular solid ground. Fighting over a gaping chasm is particularly dangerous, with instadeath immanent if you're hit and fail your save. Well, it's a wargame, so you're not as invested in individual units, so they can still get away with that here. :p As before it seems that this is both more forward looking, and more willing to embrace some old D&Disms than current 3e writers, presumably because it's a smaller department and they have more freedom to experiment. And as before, I can definitely see myself using some of these ideas to fun ends, so this column remains welcome in the magazine.
Command points: Our tactical advice this month focusses on builds good for games with lots of players at once. The victory conditions have been simplified, and it's quite possible to win without defeating all of your opponents. So these groups generally have smaller numbers of more powerful creatures that'll hopefully be able to get the drop on an enemy, and kill enough for a win before everyone else can gang up to stop whoever takes the lead. So it seems a fairly significant consideration here is making sure games don't become long and unweildy as you add more players, and everyone gets round to their turn fairly quickly. This is helped by the fact that there's no really powerful monsters with abilities that can lock down the entire battlefield in one go. So this demonstrates that you can have game balance providing you bound the playing field tightly enough. The problem is then that roleplaying games by their nature encourage you to try things that don't fit into neat slots, while wargames don't. And if you try taking away too much flexibility in the name of balance you get something like 4e, which it turns out doesn't please everyone after all. Still, you can definitely get solutions for many situations, as this article shows. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking one size can fit everyone.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 9/10
The play's the thing: Robin Laws manages a third article this month. talking about the benefits of keeping a log of play. Course, the format is important. You do not want to write up an elaborate poetic account while in the middle of the action, (unless you have a big party and it takes ages to resolve every single round, in which case you might want to take notes while you wait for your character's turn to act again. ) But you don't want to forget important detail either, especially if your game only runs monthly or less. Curiously, this isn't aimed at DM's, but at players, and encourages you to write IC, and tailor your account according to their agendas and biases, with the intent that this'll make your character seem more prominent in the overall narrative, and the DM is more likely to focus future plot hooks on you, because you have more personality detail to hang them on. So there's a certain degree of competitiveness here, although he warns agains outright alienating the other players. What may seem like a healthy amount of teasing and jockeying for advantage to you might wind up being taken personally if they're too sensitive. That wasn't exactly what I was expecting from him, and is pretty interesting. I've always encouraged a certain degree of PvP competition to keep the game surprising to everyone, (and so I don't have to do so much work building plots, because they'll generate hooks themselves) but I'm surprised to see him encouraging it. I guess that's part of the reason he wants mechanically codified social conflict mechanics. It makes it easier to have IC conflict between players that gets resolved with a definite winner but doesn't turn lethal or get taken personally. There's your thought for today.
Silicon Sorcery: Two little articles for different games, and by different writers this month. This column obviously continues to be popular amongst the magazine's writers. The first is three new spells adapted from Nightcaster, giving you some more options for inflicting large amounts of typed damage on enemies plus interesting secondary effects. Jet of water, entrapping spikes of lava or stunning bolts of positive energy, these'll all make decent alternatives to fireball and lightning bolt if your spellcasters grow bored of them.
The second part is the more significant though, as it's a teaser for Neverwinter Nights. Just as the OGL is letting people publish D&D compatible material fairly freely, this creates a sandbox that you can use to build your own adventure locations and custom monsters and items, within the limits of the framework provided. This certainly showed people how to build more cost effective magical items, with stuff like a +1 weapon that also added 1d6 each of fire, electricity, acid and sonic damage each hit being considerably nastier than a straight +5 one. The sample items backconverted all fit firmly within this mould, granting bonuses to AC, specific skills, saving throws, etc, in addition to their primary bonuses. It shows how you can get a fair amount of design flexibility even within a computer game by boiling things down to a sophisticated formula. Ok, you're never going to be able to jump, ride, fly, or summon more than one or two monsters at a time, but there's still enough permutations to keep people playing and designing new scenarios for years. So this is a fairly exciting little preview, that I think accurately demonstrates what the game encourages in terms of design. And unlike the one for Deities and Demigods, what it reveals is pretty encouraging.
Dragon Issue 294: April 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Can monks mix weapon attacks and unarmed attacks. (sure)
Can monks headbutt people while using weapons. (yes)
If monks are holding an item, can they attack at full effectiveness with their other limbs. (Not quite)
Are monks assumed to have improved grapple (No. All that close quarters stuff is undignified and not part of their basic training.)
Does wearing a gauntlet make you Armed (not unless it's spiked. Spikes make everything better.)
Can a monk wear gauntlets and attack unarmed at full effectiveness (no)
Can you do a touch attack through gauntlets (yes, but not with the extra damage.)
Can you deal subdual damage with gauntlets. (At the usual penalty. Much suck. )
Does proficiency in bastard sword and katana overlap (Same thing. Of course. )
Do all shugenja spells need ofuda scrolls (yes)
Table 6-2 is messed up. (No it isn't. There are no inconsistencies at all. Do you question the wisdom of Skip! )
Can you use Karmic strike when striking defensively. ( If you're, like, dumb.)
Can anyone use sense motive to detect level (yes. Pretty cool, huh.)
What powers do you get outside duels from Iajutsu mastery (extra damage in first strikes. Handy, but not a game-breaker)
Are allies of things with gaze attacks affected (yes. It's why they're usually solo monsters. )
Do swords with special powers count the extra plusses for penetrating damage reduction (no)
Do items that give you damage reduction let you penetrate other things with the same type (no)
Can you use one cure light wounds on multiple creatures (no)
Does precise shot negate cover penalties (no)
Can you use weapon finesse to add your dex bonus to damage (no)
Do you need to use a full attack to get the benefit of cleave (no. Mmm. Skip loves the smell of negativity in the morning. Skip thinks this is a new record for consecutive no's)
When doing opposed attack rolls, do you automatically fail on a 1 (yes. Always end on a positive, kids.)
What's new splits in two. Guess Phil and dixie still aren't getting along. The snail is almost at the end of the page now. Will this joke ever end? It's cycled from being funny to not funny to funny again several times now.
Hackmaster revolutionizes the concept of game screens. Or so they say. Anyone have any comments on this one?
Splitting the issue between three big topics means it feels rather unfocussed, even though it is rather more adventurous on the rules front than most issues, and does have some pretty cool ideas for your game. But none of the humour bits really hit the mark, and Robin Laws is once again taking on more articles than he really should, hurting the quality control. I think that once again, they need to rebalance their freelancer to staff writer ratio to keep from tapping out the ideas of any one writer.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 1/10
116 pages. A man's home is his castle. If you're an adventurer, you can reasonably expect to take that literally, if you can survive enough adventures to earn a decent amount of cash and settle down. So here's a revisiting of one of the many topics they haven't updated since the edition change. Let's hope they manage to improve on the rules, just as they did with vehicle combat last month. After all, why go through the hassle of updating if at the end of it, you can actually do less?
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: This is longer than usual, and tackling an important subject they haven't done before. Roleplaying has pretty much survived and moved on from religious wingnuts calling it satanic and trying to get it banned and the books burned. But there's still one important holdout where roleplaying books are regularly banned, and playing games like that is treated with great suspicion. Prisons. Now whether you think prisoners should be allowed to read books and play games during their communal time really hinges on one thing. Do you see prison as primarily a place for punishment, or rehabilitation? If punishment, then yeah, random dickery like that is entirely justifiable. On the other hand, if you're at all serious about rehabilitation, then something that promotes reading, writing, math, problem-solving and teamwork in one entertaining package is a very good option for building life skills that might keep them out of trouble once they're released. There's always going to be a few people who act like dicks no matter what advantages they're given in life, but so much of this can be fixed by better education and social support networks, that make it easier to create jobs and find people suitable to fill them. And the fact that the US has easily the highest proportion of people in prison of any country, while also having vastly more expensive education & medical care and weaker social security programs than most developed nations is probably not a co-incidence. Goes to show, some things, you don't want opened up to private competition and profiteering, because if you do, you get poorer quality services that still wind up costing several times more, and then when they fail, they get the government to bail them out, because the idea of letting them break down entirely and starting anew seems unthinkable. So 10 years later, the problems raised here still seem incredibly relevant, maybe even worse. We should probably do something about that, because punitive punishment of people at the bottom, while letting off the guys at the top is costing us all money and making it harder to get out of this economic slump.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 2/10
Scale Mail: Our first three letters are all about ECL/LA, and how that has become an annoying mess that actually leaves most things underpowered. They admit they were maybe overconservative, and may tweak things at a future date. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Or perhaps not.
More positively, we have a comment that with good LotR, Harry Potter, spiderman, etc movies, and computers ubiquitous in everyday life, things are definitely looking up for geeks. Not arguing there. Special effects have come a long way recently, which makes maintaining immersion in a fantastical universe easier.
They're still struggling with people miffed by the edition change though. The new emphasis on tactics and crunchy bits needs to support the story, not replace it, or the people who liked 2e may desert. This definitely seems like an area where it's impossible to please everyone. Just keep the variety high, as I've said before, so even if one issue doesn't have what someone wants, they know next one likely will, so they'll keep on buying.
An easier to resolve question is why some prestige classes are 10 levels while others are 5. That's just for starters. We've already seen a couple of 15 level ones, and 2-3 level mini ones will also come into use. It all depends how significant a part of your overall career it should be.
The cavern tiles get a positive result, as that's good whatever your edition preferences, unless you're vehemently anti-minis. They hope this month's ones will get a similar amount of praise.
And finally we have another complaint about the amount of skin they show on covers these days. They make no comment on this, so who is to say what the future holds. Still, I wonder why they're complaining now. It's not as if the 90's was completely lacking in cheesecake.
Nodwick faces yet another humiliation. At least this one isn't actually painful.
D&D Previews: Having converted the brown books from last edition, they do one of the blue books instead. The Stronghold builder's Guidebook seems pretty self explanatory. How does this one compare with it's 2nd ed equivalent?
The Realms follows closely in Deities & Demigod's footsteps, with Faiths and Pantheons. Once again, huge inconvenient deity stats, plus new domains, spells, and other stuff that may be useful.
Dragonlance gets Sister of the Sword by Paul B. Thomson & Tonya Cook. Another novel from one of our long established pairings.
At the table: Another set of tiles that makes up a complete location as a special feature. As this forms a tower, with each floor having specific connections to the ones above and below, it's rather harder to take the parts and repurpose them to make a different adventure. It's also fairly cramped, so if you're using default size minis, you'll have lots of choke points where you can only fight one on one. Whether you can use this to your tactical advantage remains to be seen. Guess the DM still has free reign to choose the enemies you face in there.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 3/10
Up onna soapbox (wouldya like fries with that luv?): Co-incidence is a funny thing. You make a path intentionally difficult to discover and follow, and then suddenly, three different characters independently discover it. Goes to show, people love a challenge, and often, all it'll take is a tiny hint to have them chase it down way beyond the point of common sense. It also reminds me of the pleasure of putting down a puzzle in your game without creating a solution, just to see what the players'll try to get to the bottom of it, or remove the obstacle from their path. So Gary's contribution this month reminds us how differently he used to play the game, with a loose pool of players that all played in the same dungeon, but not always in the same parties, rather than a fixed set of people who turned up each time, except when sick or whatever. He got to see how multiple people handled the same challenge, which you can't say for most DM's, and almost definitely helped when tweaking the rules in response to playtesting. On the other hand, he didn't know how people were going to use D&D once it was taken away and played in thousands of homes around the world. I guess that this once again proves it's the bits that surprise everyone that get remembered the most, and that's one of the big reasons we roleplay in the first place. As soon as everything goes according to plan the whole time, it's not an adventure, it's normal life.
Zogonia tries to figure out the most efficient scouting policy. It still involves the substantial risk of horrible death.
Epic level countdown: The teaser on epic magic items and spells really hammers in that it's going to be mostly just lower level play, but with bigger numbers. Sure a +20 bonus to something rather than a +5 one is nice and all, but it's not exactly mind-blowing or game changing in the way adding teleportation or the ability to breathe in space is to your game. The new spell system is slightly more impressive, but it's still vastly less so than either version of Mage or ARS Magica, and your ability to construct spells to spec instead of relying on a list in those. Still, at least you don't have to worry about paradox here, just your ability to twink out your spellcraft rating to hit those hundred+ DC's. You don't get people not believing in monsters that often in D&D universes. Still, this is a good reminder that the game changed more between boxed sets back in the days of BECMI than it does between epic and regular levels in 3e. That's a bit disappointing given how hard they're working to sell it here.
Dork tower finds that perfection is short-lived. Everything must change, often for the worse.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 4/10
Fit for a king: As is often the case at the moment, they start off the themed section with a basic system light recounting of the historical details. Now that's something that's very rehashed indeed. Just a brief search reveals articles on this topic in issues 45, 80, 121 & 201 plus part of the previous full special in issue 145. Curiously, this is one area where the busier and more colourful format of the 3e issues is less useful than the old line drawings that give you a nice clean image of the various castles out there. Like the old ones, this does a good job of reminding us that castle building was very much an evolutionary process, as they were built to deal with attackers, and both sides had to change tactics along with the technology to stay competitive, until castles were made mostly pointless by explosives and artillery outpacing the ability to build stronger, thicker walls. Unlike the old ones, it covers both eastern and western fortresses, and also points out the cross-pollination between them, making it a more well-rounded introduction than the old articles, if not with the same depth. So it looks like they're quite aware that they have a whole issue to play with and are pacing things accordingly. That's always pleasing to see, and hopefully means we'll be comprehensively done by the end of this, and good to go on this topic for an edition or so.
Every home a castle: Another way this is very similar to issue 145 is this article, which gives us three sample stronghold layouts for you to use in your game. So we have a perfect opportunity to do a like for like comparison.
Instantly noticeable, of course is the fact that the newer maps are gridded, and considerably closer scale, so they can be used with minis much more easily. Combine that with the fact that the newer buildings only have 2-3 levels, while the old ones go up to 7, and the overall size difference between them is huge. Of course, this is made up for by the newer ones having greater detail, with what's in each room keyed in individually, and a lot more D&D specific setting information. Also very noticeable is that the new stuff has detailed information on how much everything costs, which definitely makes it more accessible from a players point of view, especially if they take over a place after killing the current inhabitants, and want to do some renovation. Overall, it illustrates that they're now far more interested in working out the fine details of rules and tactics, and focussed exclusively on D&D games, rather than catering to other RPG'S, and the idea of generic fantasy stuff as well. So if you want to play D&D, the new stuff is massively superior. If you want to play anything else, stick with the old issues. Pretty easy to make the decision, when you look at it like that.
Mortar & Stone: We continue to price up all the upgrades you can get for your castle. These have high costs commensurate with their scale, which means low level characters are pretty much out of the market, and higher level ones will have to think hard about if they want to upgrade their crib, or their personal gear. If you're not planning on going out anymore, then a moat filled with everlasting fire, plus walls enchanted with a fear spell (so even if they make it over the moat one way, they fall in anyway when they panic and run away) might be a worthwhile investment to get some peace and quiet. Of course, for a DM who has an unlimited budget, the sadistic tricks in this article could fill up your dungeons quite nicely. Dungeons like the tomb of horrors, where the traps outnumber the actual adversaries, may be rare and getting rarer, but that means they'll be more of a shock when you do pull them out. There's still some old school in there, amongst the careful attention to pricing and what you need to construct these things.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 5/10
Building a better rogue trap: And if the old school touch was evident in the last article, it's even more so in this one, where we have a whole bunch of sadistic traps framed by a narrative in which the salesman gets double-crossed by his would-be employer, only to be fully prepared to cross him right back. With fiction in general having nosedived this year, that kind of fun comes very welcome indeed. Still, even if they've got the flavour, the degree of lethality and inventiveness certainly isn't anywhere near those old 70's traps. The deadliest one on offer is only CR 10, and that's because teleportation requires a high level spellcaster to use rather than the ingenuity of where it teleports the victim too. Once again, their new mandate to try and keep the game balanced and fair keeps them from really cutting loose with their most sadistic ideas. The writers can make stuff that looks good, but how would they fare against an enemy who doesn't play fair at all?
The cosmo-knights get their own splatbook for rifts. Man, they've been doing a lot of power-creeping when we weren't looking.
With and without pity: Assigning an alignment to a person can be contentious enough at times. Applying one to a whole community is very much an exercise in fuzzy logic, especially when you're dealing with millions of people. Could you apply an overall alignment to New York, or possibly it's individual districts? Probably not. But Robin Laws can, because that's the kind of thing he does. Unsurprisingly, this shows how likely a community is to go along with it's ruler, particularly if they're of a dramatically different alignment to the average, and what a community of a particular alignment is likely to look and act like. Whether lawful communities are likely to also be more prosperous than chaotic ones I'm not certain, but it certainly doesn't seem impossible. Is there any data that shows the correlation between taxation percentages and crime rates? Basically, this feels like part of a continuing attempt to sneak back domain management into D&D via the magazine. Only the irony is that because the various bits and pieces are written by different writers, they interlock even more poorly than the old stuff if you were to try and use it all in one game. This is the kind of thing that really really needs a full book dedicated to it, because the magazine format just makes a mess of it.
The way of the fist: As we saw in issue 289, there's tons of different concepts you can fit under the name Ninja. Similarly, there's a wide set of different disciplines you can fit under the umbrella of unarmed fighter, not all of which a D&D monk is appropriate for. So a trio of prestige classes that boost different types of unarmed fighting is a very valid niche to fill, as trying to build an unarmed brawler from a single class fighter will result in a very weak character indeed. Let's see if they can make the concepts nicely effective, or will merely be a minor band-aid to the system.
Primal Ragers let barbarians grow claws when they rage, so they can do the Hulk Smash thing far more effectively than before. With extra damage reduction, and a quirky little power that lets them take a short break mid-rage without losing it entirely, they seem like a pretty valid diversion for a mid-level character who wants to reduce their vulnerabilities.
Fierce Grapplers get the ability to do regular damage rather than subdual a little earlier, and their pinnacle power lets them knock out creatures if they can get a firm grip on them, so they may not have the flexibility of spellcasters, but they'll be good at neutralising them if they can get close. Some ranks in stealth skills would probably be helpful there.
Brawlers are only really suited to an urban campaign, where their skill with improvised weapons and absorbing subdual & bludgeoning damage would be useful in the majority of encounters. Their other power, a substantial bonus when facing multiple opponents, is more universally applicable, but still likely to diminish in usefulness at really high levels. I don't see that many people taking them, to be honest.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 6/10
Nodwick faces a traditional adventuring challenge. Storm the castle. As ever, the techniques used are not so orthodox.
Class acts gives us a 5 level prestige class for the first time. It also gets cut down to a single page, with no illustration. Bit of a step down, really. Anyway, Andy Collins gives us the Siege Engineer. One PC's are fairly unlikely to take, because it is only useful in a specialist campaign, but if you've reached high level and decided to do the old companion set thing of settling down, building a castle, and attracting followers, having one of these as your cohort and chief of guard would be immensely useful. Similarly, if you do a lot of breaking into castles, for whatever reason, and have a high int fighter, you might find it useful to dip into this for the Disable Device skill. Just don't take it on a whim, even if it is only a 5 level class. If the DM isn't on board, you'll just end up not using half it's abilities most of the time.
Elminsters guide to the realms: As Ed has done before, but very few other writers have the space to do, he includes a false rumour in his campaign setting. In a world full of supernatural creatures, it's surprising more plot hooks aren't false, or the product of one thing pretending to be another. Amusingly, the illusions are more impressive than the real thing this time around, which is just the way the actual culprits want it. Fitting with that, the illustration is really good this month as well, being both evocative and useful, while keeping the real dangers out of sight at the edges of the image, where a casual skimmer won't spot them immediately. I think this counts as another success, and shows again that he can do cool things no-one else can get away with because of how much he's done in the past. It's good to be on top.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 7/10
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Siege weapons! We definitely haven't covered those since the edition change. And smashing things on a larger scale than your regular weapons can handle definitely counts as a good thing in my book. How will magic further enhance our capabilities in this area?
Burning and freezing metal stones unleash a AoE heat or chill metal affecting everyone around their impact point. This is a brilliant way to break formations, as everyone has to drop their weapons and scramble out of armour. Very clever idea indeed.
Defoliant stone is another brutal defence breaker, especially against elves. Hit them in the fundamentals, watch them shrivel. Muahahahaha!
Earthquake stone is also a quite self-explanatory fortification ruiner. Just make sure you keep a good distance away, because you don't want to be caught in the blast.
Quench stones can be handy used on your own side as well if things go wrong. Or they can ruin the enemies attacks handily. One to use with caution.
Softening stones penetrate Hardness. Meh.
Wall Stones create walls where they land. You really want to have a good aim with this one, for instant fortifications will wreak chaos on the battlefield. They can be made of all sorts of materials, each with their own quirks. Will you go for fire, ice, thorns, force, or boring old stone? In any case, this looks like it'll change the battlefield in quite interesting ways.
Chain launching Ballista Bolts fix onto your wall, and leave behind a long chain so the enemy can climb up and get in. It's not easy to detach either. You may have to hack away a chunk of your own wall to save the rest of the building.
Disjunction Ballista Bolts fux004 all the enemies magical warding. Keep them ready to use for your second sortie if you find your first one countered.
Needlespike Ballista Bolts are designed to AoE skewer the enemy infantry without damaging the environment too much. Nice contrast to the massive devastation surrounding them.
Reverse Gravity Ballista Bolts will completely bork nearly any standard fortification, and the people manning it. Floating in the air, they'll then be easy meat for your next shots. I love the visuals on this one.
Bellows of Blasting let you make a mini hurricane to blow people away and put out fires. Another battlefield control effect that'll hopefully keep you in the lead and the enemy literally off balance.
Fists of Grumsh protect you from bombardment while you're holding it, letting you charge openly across the battlefield to break stuff down like good warboyz. Typical Orcish thematics then.
Rams of Passage let you charge straight through walls instead of breaking them down. Should make for an amusing visual, especially if you don't know that's going to happen.
Rams of Rusting Show preserved rust monster antennae go down well in mass combat too. If your enemy has metal fortifications, they won't for much longer. Remember, go for the joints.
Siege Golems have a ballista on their back that they can fire themselves. They're pretty handy in close combat too. Ride on them and bring the pain to your enemies in style.
Dust of Returning is sprinked over your bolts, and brings them back, albeit in a rather unpleasant way. Use with caution, possibly on your enemies.
Mantlets of Warding shield you from magic on top of the usual fortification bonuses. If you have sorcerers throwing fireballs left right and centre, this'll reduce their slaughtering effectiveness.
Dwarven Stonebows have shorter range but higher accuracy than regular catapults. Racial customisation's a funny thing. Goes to show what priorities they have.
Halfling Catapults demonstrate the writer's sense of humour. They're not that different from regular catapults really, just scaled down a bit. Shrug.
Mantlets are walls with wheels attached that you push across the battlefield as cover. This looks amusing, but is pretty invaluable really. Now if only there were such things as portable trenches.
Poison Stones are just bags filled with gunk that bust on impact. Like throwing diseased maggoty carcasses, this is a rather unpleasant morale breaker, even without magic. Course, given how inflated poison prices are in D&D, this often costs more than an actual magic item.
Repeating Ballista let you shoot 6 bolts before having to reload. Since it still takes 2 rounds to do so, you may be faced with panic in the face of onrushing monsters
Suspended Cauldrons are of course for pouring unpleasant liquids on attackers. They present a bigger logistical problem than you'd think, for they are very heavy. Still, lots of burning oil is not to be sneezed at. And they are suitably inventive in thinking up other gross things to pour on people. Lots of fun to be had here amid the filler, presuming you have the cash to spend.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 8/10
Monstrous denizens of oerth: Cataboligne Demons are one of those oddities you find in a few parts of the Abyss, where for whatever reason the Tanar'ri aren't the dominant flavor of atrocity. The reason they're not more dominant isn't due to less raw power, as they're quite decent at both combat and magical trickery. But they lack the ubiquitous teleporting and telepathy that means the Tanar'ri can go anywhere and adapt to new surroundings at a whim, so they're never going to have the same kind of ubiquity. Still, they're another decent option for summoners to call up and enslave, and much less likely to bother you again once being banished.
Gingwatzim are another ancient monster from a module (C4) that have been mostly forgotten since then. But if there's one thing the Greyhawk guys like doing, it's reclaiming those weird old generic setting monsters, and giving them a home on Oerth. And these have some very odd elements indeed. They're air elementals, but are actually native to the Ethereal plane. They're often summoned and bound into inanimate objects or humanoid forms, which seems a rather roundabout way of getting decent servants, to be honest. They reproduce by splitting into multiple smaller ones, except for a few which grow to huge sizes and gain extra magical powers. Even the updating can't eliminate the oddness of the little details, which I suppose is a good thing. They really ought to get a good ecology of to expand upon their lifecycle when not summoned.
Campaign news: This follows on directly from the last issue, detailing encounters up to level 10 for their Origins qualifier. As each is an ECL+2 encounter, they should be challenging, but not lethal. Interestingly, each is completely different from the previous ones, rather than just being an upgraded version with similar but more powerful monsters. I guess that makes it more likely that your stories will also be quite different, thus keeping the adjudicators interested, and able to easily tell what level your group is. I guess that all makes sense from their point of view. Now all that remains is the results. Who will come out best from this?
Chainmail: Magical stones that change the rules of engagement in their vicinity? Muahaha. Just when you thought you were getting the hang of all the tactical permutations, they add some new ones. Since they affect both sides equally, but don't cover the whole battlefield, making them advantageous to your side will require decent control over your movement. Use missile weapons near the Stone of Vengance, and don't let the enemy close. Hem them in near the stone of sorrow or mercy and take them down. And steer clear of the stone of hatred, because it looks like a pain in the butt to to unable to stop attacking for both sides. Once again, they're adding new game options, and not forgetting about the setting info that ties them together, or making this useful to D&D players as well as wargamers. I'm once again pretty pleased with how well they're handling this line.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 9/10
Command points: The new emphasis on many player battles continues in this column with some more tactical advice, graded by ease of use and effectiveness as per last time. The first bit of advice is the most useful here. Maximise your action points so all your units can do something each round, as in a multiplayer fight, you're particularly susceptible to ganging up, so you won't get that many rounds. Setting things up so you can make enemies rout, and then take them down and win the game while they're at a disadvantage is the other big tricky one, requiring knowing your enemies stats, and good use of positioning. The other stuff seems fairly common sense, apart from the reminder that you can move over knocked down models, which is the kind of little rule you can forget in the heat of the action. It seems likely they'll be sticking with this topic for a little while longer, so I'm wondering what else they can do with it. I suppose the more variable you introduce, the more permutations you can create. What else are they discovering about their game that they didn't intend when designing it?
The play's the thing: Robin continues from last month, by showing us how different people would describe the same event with lots of examples. Of course, these are less variable than real people writing about the same event because they're all from the same perspective, and all vetted by a professional editor for comprehensibility, so it's not a perfect example. If he really wanted to illustrate this, he wouldn't have written those bits himself, but farmed them out to his players to create. I guess that shows how hard it is to truly get outside your own head. Even professional writers are limited by their own experiences and research, and it can be almost as hard to write below your current skill level as above it. If you want to become a good novelist, working on your ability to think in multiple voices and slip between them is a skill that will serve you well. Once again, Robin is writing filler for this column to make up the page count, but it's still got a fair bit of useful information that you can learn from in there.
Silicon Sorcery: Even this column is in theme, talking about using computer design applications to put together your strongholds. Be they simple overhead 2d ones, or the more sophisticated 3d designers that are gradually coming into existence, they can be quite handy in helping you get an idea of proper placement of various elements. Unfortunately, a lot of the time they can also wind up leaving out elements that would be essential in a real fortress. (The endless dilemma of finding a place to go to the toilet) So choose wisely. The eponymously named Stronghold seems to be their favourite, although they point out 5 other options as well. This is one of those articles that definitely feels it's age, with the graphics looking more mid 90's than early 2000's. Maybe there's a difference when things are in motion, but I'm not particularly impressed with how this looks. Makes me wonder what current apps are out that can do this sort of thing, as that'd probably be more useful than trying to hunt down decades old software.
Dragon Issue 295: May 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: How do you attack someone's armour (Shields are resolved like any weapon. You can't attack worn armour separately. )
How do you disarm a wizards wand (Surprisingly easily, especially at high level. Hey, dramatic cinematic scenes! How about that.)
How do 10 foot poles work when used diagonally (use the 1-2-1-2 rule. The universe is not perfectly pythagorean)
What happens if someone with quick draw and improved initiative face off (Nothing special.)
Does being flatfooted negate your strength bonus to avoid tripping (no)
Will a mighty bow's enhancement bonus stack with your strength bonus (yes)
How far can you throw improvised objects. (Don't we have rules for that? Eh, we're not the first system, and we won't be the last. (yes, you, Scion) Eh, guess it's up to skip to fix the problem again. )
Do you get an attack of opportunity if you're grappling someone and they cast a verbal only spell (yes)
If a class starts off with proficiency in an exotic weapon, do they get the full skills needed in it (yes)
How do the retrievers eye rays work (Roll to hit, then to save. Two chances to avoid it. Woo. )
What happens when rays miss (Nothing much. We don't like bothering with spill damage hitting other things. )
Do blink and displacement stack (No, they're rolled separately. Another two rolls added to every attack resolution. That's gonna slow combat down a bit.)
What's new also thinks about getting a castle. And finds that it isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when there's bills to pay. This is why you become undead first. The savings are enormous.
Well, this was a fairly strong issue, but also a frustrating one, as the emphasis on pricing everything out made it very clear that most players won't be able to afford all the cool stuff here. I guess despite some people calling for it loudly, the domain management and stronghold building side of D&D is always going to be a niche part of the game, because of the amount of effort it is to track it mathematically. We can only take so much crunch at once. So let's move onto the next issue, see if dragons can remain suitably iconic despite the amount of work handling all their powers is.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 1/10
124 pages. Year 26. Eh, it's just another number. We'll have to wait until 30 before they can really make a big deal about that again. Unless they join the 27 club, but we know in hindsight that doesn't happen. There's a dragon on the cover, but given their current trend of zooming in closer and focussing the humans, we only get to see a small part of it. Will the contents be focussing on dragon hunters more than dragons themselves as well? Would it be so terrible if they did? Let's see if they can keep the quality up.
Scan Quality: Excellent, searchable (the only non archive issue that has fully word searchable innards, actually)
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Another year, another reiteration of the things that they want in their writers. And as before, creativity comes second to the ability to fit the formats and formulas of the company in general and gameline in particular, listen and react to editors, and get your work in on time. Which explains a lot. The only real notable point this time round is their reminder that they still require physical copies of manuscripts, even though the internet is more than big and fast enough to send them over. I wonder when that'll change, before or after the magazine itself goes electronic in 5 years time? Big wheels keep on turning, and even if the company as a whole is behind the times, it will keep on changing as new people come in and old ones leave. Once again, I guess we'll keep rollin down the river, watching out for signs of change.
Scale Mail: Our first letter, not too surprisingly, is from someone who thinks the april issue this year mixed useful stuff and humour decently. Only one of the articles didn't have some usefulness to him. This unsurprisingly makes the writers happy, since april is quite stressful for them.
They don't get off completely unscathed though. The beefcake on the cover draws mixed reactions. Turnaround is fair play, and this time it's the guy's turn to feel jealous and/or exploited. Not so funny now, is it? I hope you've learned something. We should all let go of worrying about gender and nudity and just have huge bisexual orgies. (while using proper protection of course) :p
The gender issues continue with the Gamers vs Girlfriends article getting a fair number of complaints, one of which is actually funny in it's own right. Curiously, it's the letter by a man that's the most hostile. Ahh, overprotective white knights. What are we to do with them in this bold new online world where the difference in physical strength between genders is pretty irrelevant?
Wolves also have their defenders, with a letter a little peeved all the elemental wolves in issue 293 were evil. Where would we be without some good old-fashioned froofy animism?
Also, where would the magazine be without it's special features. The tiles get praised again. Hopefully this means some more physical stuff to cut out and use in your game in coming years.
The final three letters are more generalised praise, once again showing how most people have enthusiastically leapt on the new edition, even ones that lost interest at some point in 2e. The gaming population as a whole is definitely younger and less conservative than it will be in 10 years time.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 2/10
Nodwick reaches the spot on the map marked here be dragons. Thankfully, that's exactly where they want to be.
Lest we forget, Hardestadt was a dick in DA:Vampire. Seems so long ago now. :sigh:
D&D Previews is looking increasingly marginalized, literally. The D&D aspect of it is particularly so, with only 1 game product, but 4 novels. The possibility that the IP is actually more profitable as a licencing device than the actual game looks increasingly probable. The book of challenges is our gamebook. More little bits and pieces to speed along your adventure design, this probably wasn't a huge seller.
In novels, The Realms gets Crown of fire by Ed Greenwood and Heirs of Prophecy by Lisa Smedman. Dragonlance gets Dragons of a vanished moon by Weis and Hickman, and The Dawning of a New Age by Jean Rabe. Looks like one set of cataclysms is settling down, but the other is still plugging along. Now, when will we actually get to play in the new Krynn with both wizardry and sorcery coexisting?
Up on a soapbox: Gary's story this month is different, but has exactly the same lesson as last month. Put it in your dungeon, and they WILL find it, and probably overcome it too. It's just a matter of trial and error. And good mapping helps a fair bit as well, as it means they spend a lot less time just wandering aimlessly, and can often guess where something is hiding by looking at the gaps in their current drawings and having a good nose around for secret doors. This contrasts with outdoor adventures where you're not on a grid or otherwise sharply bounded borders. There, it's quite likely they can wander for months, and not come across all of the stuff you put in there. I guess that shows why you want to start your adventures small. It means less of your work will wind up being wasted in the final game, and there's less chance of the variables getting completely out of hand, resulting in something you don't know how to react too killing the game. Probably part of the reason D&D became a bigger success than general RPG systems. It's much easier to get a game started when you have a clear objective and then expand on that, than presenting a paralyzing array of options right away. So put plenty in your game, but only reveal it in bits and pieces, making them work to get all the information, and your game is more likely to last a long time.
Zogonias system fails to work first time in the field. Which is a problem, since it was a life or death situation. Lets hope they can afford the rez'ing.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 3/10
Epic level countdown: Here we have one of the definite headaches of the epic level handbooks. Monsters that have ridiculously high stats in everything, even those that aren't related to their area of expertise. As PC's have to specialise if they want to stay CR competitive, and will generally only have one or two obscenely high stats, this results in a situation where monsters don't have any significant weaknesses to capitalise on, so the only way you can beat them is through ridiculous amounts of brute force, rather than clever tricks that make for good stories. Particularly egregious are the examples which have superhuman mental stats, but still just act as basic predators, attacking with their natural weapons with no forward planning, contingencies, tools, social manipulation, or anything else that justifies those high numbers. It really does bug me tremendously how dumb that is. The stats and the description need to sync up, and this is important both at low and high levels. Frustrating Frustrating Frustrating. :grrr:
Robin's laws of good game mastering. Well, he's certainly proved himself repeatedly in the magazine. And it's certainly got plenty of good reviews. But would it exist if it weren't for the pun he could make on his own name?
Dork tower does sarcasm brilliantly. Oh yeah, that's gotta bite. Quite possibly the best punchline in the entire run.
Dragon hunters: Well, this isn't surprising at all. A collection of prestige classes devoted to dealing with dragons? I knew something like this'd turn up sooner or later. Let's see how it compares with it's 2e counterpart from issue 230, and if they're one-trick ponies who's powers'll be useless when facing other monster types.
Dragonscribes are pretty much the same idea as the Dragon Lords from issue 230. They get bonuses at understanding, communicating, and commanding dragons, and full spell progression on top, making them pretty decent. Unfortunately, they do have one of those awkward bits where they have skill requirements and bonuses for a skill they don't actually get in class, so you won't be able to just full wizard or sorcerer your way in and get a perfect build unless you find a feat that lets you take diplomacy as a class skill regardless. Do you know which supplement to mine for that little trick?
Knights of the Scale are your basic mounted frontal fighting badass, resistant to breath weapons and inflicting extra damage vs dragons. Only in a clever twist, they get the ability to summon a flying mount at higher levels so a smart dragon can't just waltz away from an encounter it doesn't feel like. Definitely a case where the 3e version plays it smarter than the 2e one.
Heartseekers obviously fill exactly the same niche as the Black Arrows from the 2e Kit collection. They too get a method of dealing with flying creatures, grounding them if they hit them with their magical arrows, before finishing them off for good. Their powers are fairly dragon specific, but with decent saves and half spell progression, they'll probably be better in a general fight than arcane archers at least.
Vengeance Sworn are the only one that doesn't have an obvious 2e analog to compare too. They require Rage and divine spellcasting to get into, so you'll have to multiclass barbarian and something else, probably ranger or druid so you can keep those wilderness skills maxed out. They do get minor spellcasting progression, but it won't be a big loss if you go Ranger to keep that full BAB with no dips. They get an interesting combo of offensive and resistance boosts, that once again target dragon's actual common powers and negate them. I think I can pretty firmly say that these guys have a better chance of successfully kicking dragon ass and chewing bubblegum than their 2e counterparts. It's good to have more writers with actual tactical acumen around.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 4/10
Wing, fang and spell: Course, having powered up dragon hunters, they now have to give a grab bag of stuff to Dragons to keep this little arms race even. And this article is very much a grab bag, seemingly composed of all the various little ideas knocking around the office that wouldn't make up a full article individually. First up is some clarification on Dragon senses, as it's the kind of thing Skip has obviously got repeated questions on over the years. Next, we have 3 new feats which allow them to do new things with their natural weapons, as if they didn't have enough tricks already. Then we have two sample dragons with personalities, combat tactics, and handy magical equipment detailed, so you have more examples of concrete clever tactics they might try with their arrays of abilities. And finally, we get a prestige class specifically for dragons who want to boost their natural spellcasting abilities (although it'd also be pretty decent for half-dragon PC's as well. ) So none of these really merit a full article in themselves, and the whole thing is useful, but rather scattershot. Not really sure what to make of this, as it's a bit of a throwback as articles go, not having the polish of most of their modern stuff. I wonder if any of it will go in future books, as can happen when the staff give us rough ideas to give feedback on.
Worshippers of the forbidden: Oooh, transformative prestige classes. That's one thing that'll definitely become more common as the edition goes on. The first wave of them were all skillsets/specialist organisations, but the idea of your character gradually physically becoming something different and powerful was an alluring one that got plenty of traction and several full d20 books dedicated to it. One of the most obvious theme, of course is becoming more like a particular type of monster. You can get nearly as many prestige classes out of that as you have types of monster. But these are all based on the big iconic options. After all, when you're one of the first, you don't have to worry about diminishing returns yet. But you might have to worry about them being mechanically unpolished and wonky, superceded by later versions. Well, enough waffling, let's take a look.
Sphere Minions are beholder fanboys. Their prestige class runs into the problem that beholders are massively powerful, with 11 attacks per round, several of them instakills, while these have to be balanced with other PC options. So they basically get 1 eye power per 2 levels usable 1/day, each with 1 use/day added to existing ones each time they gain a new one. Even so, they can get access to flesh to stone and disintegrate a level before wizards could, so they might be tempting to some twinks.
Illithidkin definitely wind up being superceded by the 3.5 heritage feats and 10 level prestige class. Telepathy and minor advancement in your psionic abilities really isn't worth the hassle you'll get socially everywhere else. Very much a trap for dumb minions who'll never get respect, just the chance to be the last one eaten.
Snake Servants are devoted to Medusae, not yuan-ti as I first assumed. They gain complete immunity to petrification, and minor resistance to poison, allowing them to safely serve them while not getting particularly impressive powers outside of that. Another one only really good for NPC's.
Wakers of the Beast are tarrasque cultists, and actually do have some rather cool bits in their design which makes them suitable for a long-term plot. Full BAB, permanent strength boosts on top of that, and natural armor, plus a strong incentive to form substantial sized cults mean they make great villains and aren't completely out of the question as PC's. After all, you never know when waking the tarrasque might wind up being the lesser of two evils, as so many Godzilla movies have shown. So this isn't as good overall as the dragon hunter collection, and the prestige classes are a bit weak and wonky in general but isn't completely useless either. You do want adversaries to be beatable, after all.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 5/10
Guild secrets: (another nearly illegible title): Straight away, we have another thing that they would work on and add too in 3.5. Rules for building organisations, and the mechanical requirements and benefits you get from joining them. Now why couldn't we have had these before they tried to update planescape factions as prestige classes in an ill-fitting way? As is often the case, these are more DM focussed than their next incarnation, with a greater emphasis on specific numbers, such as membership, who the leader is, and exactly what level they are, while the benefits are relatively flat without the codified reputation system. So this is another article that feels kinda superceded, knowing what I do in hindsight. Still, it is good to see them working out ideas and bouncing them around the office. And it helps us pinpoint who to blame as well if you don't like these kind of rules in your D&D (Andy Collins, in this case. ) That's also useful when it comes to internet flame wars as it's more interesting to accuse particular employees of being the problem and "ruining the game!1!!1" than attack the whole company. :)
Fiction: The tomb by Thomas Harlan. Our second trip to crusades era Jerusalem, filled with knights, saracens, jews, and various others either trying to gain power, or just survive and gain a little profit. Some are virtuous, some are sinister, and often it can be hard to tell which is which. One thing that no side really looks that favourably on, in sharp contrast to D&D, is grave robbing. While you can find people willing to pay for grave goods, often quite highly, you also have to watch out or get arrested and have all your gains confiscated. So in many ways, this story is an inversion of a normal D&D adventure, where the protagonist is sent on a quest by a mysterious employer to protect someone who's already dead and stop people from taking their stuff. It still manages to have a fair amount of drama and action, and a bit of bickering comedy as well, showing you can flip an idea on it's head and still keep things interesting and challenging. And it looks like this series may well build a little further, as we gain a larger cast of recurring characters. I guess time will tell if it ever gets big enough for an overarching plot to form.
Nodwick has another attack of continuity. And fails to get the dragon's hoard again.
Class acts: Monte returns to give us our first monk related prestige class, the Acolyte of the Fist. They focus on exactly that, sacrificing the more esoteric monk powers and resistances for pure offensive badassery. DR penetration, smashing through walls, even hadoukens at higher level. And the power to heal with a strike as well, curiously enough. As with primary spellcasters, the powers you get from advancing to 10th level in this really don't compete with the ones you would get as a 20th level straight monk, unfortunately. Immunity to aging and a whole bunch of effects vs +1d6 to your attack damage? Somehow, I think not. Avoid the false enlightenment, you must. ;) Unfortunately, you can't just dip into this one, as it has a unique restriction preventing you from stepping off it until you've finished it. This may frustrate certain players. Another favourful but weak prestige class, as Monte is prone to producing. He really ought to do something about that.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 6/10
Elminster's guide to the realms: Sometimes, Elminster reveals all the secrets behind these strange little locations the Realms is packed with. Sometimes not, and you just get what's needed to play, and some options for what could be behind the scenes. Here's another one of those. A dryad, a mysterious floating shield, and a pool of water which may or may not be enchanted. As usual for these, it's designed to exist in a world where adventuring parties are common, so there are pretty substantial safeguards in place to make sure a single party can't just kill everything and take all the stuff, leaving a stripmined wasteland. I guess once more it's a pretty flavour encounter that reminds us how many powerful creatures there are here, and how hard it is to make an impact. If you want to be a real hero or villain, it's going to be a lot of hard work and clever contingency building so you can survive when you get the attention of the big players. I think once again I'm feeling the oversaturation, because I can't get enthusiastic about this at all this month.
The bestiary gets it's The back. Well, it's something, anyway. This birthday has yet another variant on dragons, as you would expect. Wurms? Well, Wyrms is already used, and worms just sounds mundane. Warms is already a word, and werms and wirms would look even closer to not just scraping the barrel, but taking it apart and using the planks for firewood. Still, they're not going for the brainless rampaging monster archetype this time, but the more connected to nature one. And rather than having individual stats for every variant, they use a cross-matrix of ages and types, with Wurmlings, adults, Greater Wurms and Elder Wurms, and Forest Wurms, while the environments they favour are Tundra Wurms, Sand Wurms, Swamp Wurms, Sea Wurms, River Wurms, Grassland Wurms, Hill Wurms, Lava Wurms, Storm Wurms, Cave Wurms and Mountain Wurms. Thats a relatively elegant bit of design, which isn't too overused, so I don't mind this one after all. It can't be easy finding decent non-rehashed dragon articles every birthday for 25 years, but somehow they keep on doing it. All credit for the many writers who make that possible.
Hackmaster presents The Spellslingers guide to wurld domination. Because that's what every wizard wants, isn't it?
Living Greyhawk Gazetteer Index: This section doesn't have the usual pair of articles, instead devoting a full 12 pages to an index of Greyhawk material. Want to know who's what, where, and how high level quickly? Here's a high density alphabetical listing of page references. I strongly suspect that this is why the scanner went to the extra effort to make this issue searchable when the rest of the post-archive ones aren't. And kudos to them, as that makes this index even quicker and easier to use. This article is a good example of fan power in general, showing that the official writers are willing to take and use things that the fans do for free at the moment, which is of course a big change from the 90's and part of the same idea that produced the OGL. Let's hope it lasts a few years longer before WotC start trying to claw back control and do everything in house again.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 7/10
Chainmail: So far, the Chainmail game has been fairly low powered overall. This month, they reveal some of the more high powered stuff in it's history, an artifact built by the god of war to kill dragons. Although in a big irony, they only give D&D stats for it, not Chainmail ones. This is probably because an item that takes you over and wipes your memory to turn you into a relentless dragon-killing automaton is a serious wild card that'd make rather a mess of a tactical skirmish game. Still, it is exceedingly good at killing dragons, as it enables you to fly, dodge breath weapons, shut down their spellcasting, and generally mess up their common tactical options. So even if it's fairly risky as an artifact, at least it's good for it's stated job, so people'll actually want to seek it out, unlike too many 2e ones. Once again, Chainmail sometimes has more old school elements going on than regular D&D, and that's actually quite cool.
Command points: Another article full of builds for your units this month. The connecting factor is the commander, showcasing the Hobgoblin Adept, and the various ways their magical abilities can support their troops. With both exploitable spells and a good few command points, they can buff, blast from range, and get their followers moving when needed. So high strength things, and cross-faction monsters that are resistant to fire synergize well with them. Some of these monsters aren't even released yet, making this more sneaky teasers for their upcoming products. Another article that's interesting, but so very specific as to be useless if you're not actually playing Chainmail, unlike say, the pieces on playing Kobolds cleverly over the years that could be applied to any tool using humanoid. Still, at least they seem to have no shortage of followups coming, including whole new factions to play with. I guess it's really a question of how long people want to keep buying.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 8/10
The play's the thing: Sometimes, a game just isn't working, for whatever reason. Now, you can try to fix it on your own, but in an inherently social pastime like roleplaying, things will probably be a lot easier if you learn how to negotiate. No matter what mechanics you put in the game to mitigate it, the simple fact is that you'll have far more success roleplaying if you also develop your real life social skills, whether you measure that in fun, xp, or just the best magical doodads of this adventure's haul. Fortunately, there are plenty of books you can read to help you out with this. Yup, Robin's digging into the Dale Carnegie self-help ouvre to teach you how to get along with people and have a productive and long-running campaign. Surprise surprise, you're more likely to get what you want if you make a genuine effort to understand other people and satisfy their desires as well. Hell, even just asking people what their problems are, nodding and looking interested, and then going back to doing things exactly the same can often work, for quite a while, as often all people need is to feel listened too and appreciated. Being confrontational and aggressive, on the other hand, can turn even a minor problem into a huge argument that results in everyone being more polarised at the end than they were at the beginning. Keeping the violent conflicts strictly IC is the way to go. Yet again, Robin shows us the value in looking to outside sources, and how seemingly disparate ideas can be combined to great profit.
DM's toolbox: Johnn tackles a very similar topic to Robin, once again showing how different people can look at the same puzzle from different perspectives and come up with different solutions. Of course, as the DM, you do have rather more options at your disposal to alter the way a campaign is run if problems are cropping up, and this column assumes that you're the guy in the viking hat. This means you can introduce subplots if some of the players are stumped or feeling underutilised, have sudden unexpected encounters if they're bored or faffing around, redescribe the area with more detail or pointed clues so they're more likely to figure out a solution. Basically, while Robin is talking about the OOC methods, Johnn is about watching the signs and adjusting the pacing and details of the game to compensate. After all, stopping everything to have a detailed discussion of everyone's feelings will really break the mood of a life or death situation and cause problems in itself. Too much therapy just keeps emotional wounds open long after they would have faded away if you'd sorted out the problem and moved on. Since I spend more time DMing than playing and suck at talking about my feelings, I think I'd find these methods rather easier to implement than Robin's. Which isn't to say it's a better method. Robin's advice is certainly more applicable to social situations outside of gaming. Some tools are very good at one thing, others are harder to use but more versatile. A lot of the time you're going to need both to get the job done really well.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 9/10
Judge Dredd is back. And this time he's D20. Remember, adventurers are all lawbreaking scum and he has a big gun. Crossovers are a bitch.
Silicon Sorcery: Want to play Drizzt in an an official D&D computer game? Well now you can, thanks to Baldur's Gate: Dark alliance. All you need to do is finish the game, do a killer time trial, finish the game again in extra hard mode, and bingo bongo, your sweet scimitars are swinging low! You've got to love it when they more than double your playing time with the same material to get a few special unlockables. Still, that information only makes up a small part of this article. The real meat of it is backconversions of the 7 big bosses. Going from CR 7 to 19 for the very final one, all but two of these are unique individuals with class levels, magic item arrays, and often prestige classes as well. Since that's the kind of stats that'd take a fair amount of time to build from scratch in 3e, stealing them for your own campaign doesn't seem like a bad investment at all. Just watch out for the Blackguard at the end, who's spell selection is oh so very illegal by 3.0 rules, and was obviously expanded for the purposes of the game to make fighting them more interesting. You wouldn't want the final boss to be just a slugfest, would you? Instead, she's teleporting, climbing the walls, disappearing into mist, and generally being a pain to keep up with. I suspect in the game itself, she may be one of those delightful sorts you can only hurt at a specific point in their movement pattern. Now there's something that doesn't convert to D&D very well. Still, this article has provided me with some useful information, and made me thing about the differences between computer and P&P roleplaying. I guess they're continuing to inform and entertain then.
Dragon Issue 296: June 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Does pyro grant extra damage on all fire spells (No. Only ones that set things on fire. That's a surprisingly small portion of them. )
Can you take dash more than once (No)
Can you hamstring a creature more than once (no)
Why can't you hamstring things with lots of legs (Waste of time, really)
What does quicker than the eye actually do. (Keeps people from noticing what you're doing. Very handy, but not some magic bullet.)
Can you combine quicker than the eye and expert tactician (If you like. This can get pretty nasty. )
What's a stabilization check ( Your odds of stopping bleeding to death. )
What's a language dependent effect. (Non comprende enchante, parlez-vous. Haw de haw de haw de haw de haw.)
Do virtuoso levels combine with bardic music (yup. Same thing.)
Can you cast spells through a wall of force. (You might be able to see things, but you don't actually have line of sight. Isn't that so confusing to your poor little minds.)
Does antimagic field prevent you from casting spells within it (No, just means they don't manifest while in the field. You can use this to surprise people who don't know the finer points of their metaphysics.)
Does antimagic suppress from the point or the area (generally, just the area. It may impede progress as well.)
Does antimagic suppress magically locked and warded doors (Yes, but it doesn't go through them. It's not an emanation, to use what we in the business call a technical term.)
What happens if you cast a prismatic wall spell into an anti-magiced area. (Poofles. No go, dude.)
Are undead immune to external illusions or not. What's with invisibility to undead if they aren't (No. There's a funny story behind that. It's all to do with necromancers and the forbidden schools they had back in 2nd edition. Ha ha ha ha. Laugh? Skip nearly split Skip's sides.)
Can you hold the charge on ranged touch spells (no)
Do you suffer spell failure on scrolls when in armor ( No. This has it's uses. )
Phil is getting fed up of Dixie's evil ways in What's new. So they also have a serious attack of continuity. Guess that little editorial restriction is being relaxed at last. Phil also finds the time to illustrate an advert for Gen Con 2002. Watch out for Ted Raimi and Jonathan Frakes. Man what.
While the last few issues have seen an uptick in rehash, this one has an increase in things that are new, but will be improved upon and reprinted in future books. That's definitely a welcome change and throwback to the old issues, as it's good to see the creative process midflow. However, the themed bits are pretty lackluster, showing they don't have many new ideas for the game's actual namesake this year. I guess it's swings and roundabouts as usual then. The next issue'll probably have an entirely different mix of good and bad bits.
Ugh. Online drama time, unfortunately. My webhost (http://blip.tv/yourmusic-productions) has decided they don't want my videos on their site anymore. Unless they change their mind on appeal, all that stuff, including the issue 200 videos, will be gone in 10 days. If you don't want that to happen, send a protest to support@blip.tv. Probably won't help, but in the circumstances, it's not as if it can hurt. Anyone have any recommendations for other non youtube webhosts I could use?
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 1/10
116 pages. EPIC LEVEL KRUSK SMASH PUNY BACKDROP! Huge green thighs with improbable muscles too close together, crushing Krusk's testicles. No wonder Krusk raging all the time! Yeah, they try and paint the epic level iconics as something amazing, and the overload of badass just flows over into silly. So yeah, nearly 2 years into the edition, they give us rules for going above 20th level. Well, it is quicker than 2e, where it took them a good 6 years, and even then, only went to 30, while 1e never really dealt with the upper end of the XP scale properly, apart from the classes with hard limits like Bards and Assassins. Even with it's flaws, the 3e system still might handle really high levels better than AD&D, where wizards become masters of all, and rogues struggle to figure out how they can improve now. It's just the fact that you get to them so much quicker that makes the problems more easily noticed, and ever escalating as you get further in. I already have the book, but let's see how well this issue does in selling me on it.
Scan Quality: Some visible pixelation, indexed.
In this issue:
Amongst the format changes, Wyrms turn is seriously cut down in size. What's left is another bit of self-promotion. Their goal here was to make sure you had tons of options, and they were all balanced, valid choices. A boast which will definitely look a bit hollow a few hours after the Charop boards get their teeth into the material. This is what happens when you put all your eggs into one basket. The greater your enthusiasm beforehand, the sillier you look in hindsight. Surely someone in the company had reservations? Anyone? What was the mood in the office at the time? So many annoying questions. So few answers.
Scale Mail: First up, we have the seemingly obligatory commentary on the theme 2 issues ago. One is very happy with it, the other thinks too much of the issue was devoted too it, and it was blatant promotion of their latest book. Same old story. Depending on the theme, you're always going to appeal to a slightly different set each issue, and that has to be taken into account.
The editorial on gaming in prison gets an even more polarised response. One is strongly favorable and thinks that Wardens shouldn't abuse their power and set arbitrary regulations beyond what's needed to keep them under control. Another thinks that if they're in prison, they must have done something wrong, and deserve everything they get. And a more balanced view is provided by someone who actually works there, who illustrates how arbitrary the whole thing can be. In his particular institution, they're allowed to read RPG's, but not play them, as they put the DM in a position of power over other prisoners, and that's a strict no-no. Not saying it's right or wrong, but it is a reason, at least. Man, this stuff is a headache.
And finally we have another perspective on their rehashing old stuff. It's only a problem to people who've been following their books carefully for years. For those that haven't, it can be a pleasant discovery, and quite possibly make them a few extra sales too. They do have to cater to new readers as well as old ones, and drawing on already proven material can help with that.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 2/10
Zogonia has an attack of the false alarm. You know, that kind of thing can get people killed.
D&D Previews: First up this month is the epic level handbook. Nearly 2 years into the new edition, and hey, obviously feel enough people are making it all the way to 20th and still wanting more. Shame the results were so ...... mediocre. Yeah, it's certainly not as annoying as the god books, but the math still rapidly gets wonky, with your skill at character building soon becoming more important than level. Hell, even the order you get the levels can result in two characters of the same classes having somewhat different power levels. Oh well, they learned from their mistakes here, probably overcompensating next edition.
The realms gets a sourcebook and a novel, as is often the case. Silver Marches. A return to region based sourcebooks. The new edition means they can revisit stuff without worrying so much about rehash. If anything, they may struggle to fit in all the old info they want too, given they're releasing fewer books this time round. The Novel is Dissolution by Richard Lee Byers. More Drow-centric drama in Menzoberanzan and beyond.
Dragonlance gets Redemption, the final book in the Dhamon saga. Looks like he pulls through after all.
They also kick off a new series of generic D&D novels starring the iconic D&D characters. The Savage caves by T. H. Lain cuts away all the vast interweaving canon the other worlds suffer from now, and just does dungeon delving romps. Whether this will sell, I'm not sure. The vast soap opera is part of the attraction for many people.
At the table: This month, we get two larger maps rather than a whole load of tower levels. A cavern, and a (fairly open plan) dungeon level. They're definitely intended for people to have fights in, taking advantage of the little bits of cover around the edges for a bit of missile fire and AoE spell shielding. They recognise that it'll have a short use life if you don't reskin and reuse the layouts, so they encourage you to do exactly that. So another decent enough special feature to add to your collection, if not as impressive as the old castle you had to assemble yourself.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 3/10
Up on a soapbox: Here we get to hear about Gary's first experiences as a player. Yrag the Fighter was his PC in Rob Kuntz's game. And one of his memorable early adventures was when they introduced the Ring of Contrariness into the game. Because who doesn't love suddenly inverting the obvious aspects of their character's personality and being a pain in the ass to other players when the DM gives them a reason too? Gary certainly did, as it let him stretch his roleplaying muscles, and the others had to do some careful puzzle solving to figure out how to deal with the problem. Another reminder that those were rough and tumble times, where your character was much more likely to die or be screwed over in the course of the adventure, so you learned to roll with the punches, and make fun out of your own misfortune. But I think we already knew that. Now the main draw is the specific anecdotes for all the old school obsessives out there. I think we may be starting to get into diminishing returns territory here.
Everquest D20 Roleplaying game? Feel the circle of conversions go round and round.
Sentinels of the shoal: Time to get down to the meat of the epic level features, and hope some of it's more palatable than the skin. Here's a big feature that's not only tied in with the book, but also a parallel adventure in Dungeon magazine. Gotta collect 'em all, etc etc. From the looks of things, it involves the conflict between two epic organisations, one which is devoted to maintaining the cosmic balance and keeping undeserving people from becoming Epic, and the other comprised of assassins following the secret orders of a really powerful but imprisoned monstrosity. Classic grey vs black conflict. They give us the usual grab-bag of stuff to fill it out. Scarily high CR stats for the leaders of the two organisations. A prestige class for each group. 5 new epic spells, and 8 new epic feats. Most of these are pretty neat, and valid expansions on the stuff in the epic level handbook that improve your power in interesting ways. Seems like James Jacobs has managed to make the best of a tricky situation, and come up with appropriately epic material to tie in with the release. It may still be unwieldy, but there are good stories in there if you're willing to do the math and play with the big boys. That's a relief to see.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 4/10
Relics of myth: In the original D&D sets, magic items directly based upon real world ones were pretty light on the ground. Until the master set, where they did include stats for a whole load of real things, generally with interesting drawbacks along with their pretty impressive powers. While that has been eroded since then, with tons of articles converting real world stuff at a rather lower power level, it looks like we're having a callback here. Let's see exactly which items they've picked, and if they're ones that already have D&D versions, or are all new to the game.
The Codex Hammer isn't actually a hammer, it's Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Reading them gives you a free epic skill focus in something appropriately techy. There's 31 volumes in it, so you can build a whole campaign around collecting the set, and becoming a true renaissance man in a way normally built D&D characters can't match. 31 free extra feats is entirely worth the effort.
Crocea Mors is Julius Ceasar's sword, it's deeds suitably exaggerated by time. It's powerful in combat, and intelligent as well, helping you command armies and govern nations, but if you show weakness, it'll desert you and leave you to die. Sounds about right. These sort of legends always have a tragic ending, no matter how much awesome stuff you accomplish in the meantime.
The Crystal Skulls of Doom have yet to be associated with Indiana jones and the nuke-proof fridge, so I guess they're still cool. They have all sorts of divinatory powers, but will drive the weak willed insane, or even make their heads explode. Pretty powerful, and also exactly what you'd expect. Sometimes playing it straight just works.
The English Regalia gives the wearer +12 to a whole load of ruling appropriate stuff, plus the choice of four +7 swords so you have a good set of options against people who refuse to bend knee and acknowledge your sovereignty. It's pretty devoid of drawbacks, which makes sense, since the english monarchy has been relatively stable as these things go. Individual ones may screw up, go mad, or occasionally be overthrown, but the job continues onwards. That's their failings, not the equipment.
The First Folio is the original version of Shakespear's (nearly) full works. The performance bonus is enough to ensure people'll be plagiarising it for centuries to come. Nuff said.
The Hope Diamond doesn't have any useful powers, it just randomly fucks with it's owner. Sell it on fast, because you ain't resisting this very easily.
The Lamentation stone of the Taj Mahal is also pretty pointless, it's only powers devoted to making itself more impressive and emotionally resonant. Still, I guess that means it'll have no shortage of people hoping to own it.
Rabbi Loew's Golem is suitably epic in physical power, and just smart enough to realise it's not a real boy, and so become problematic. Still, if you can get a castle built in the meantime, you might be able to get some profit out of this.
The Rosetta Stone also gets exaggerated. If you know enough languages, you can gain the ability to understand all of them, and the more you know, the easier it becomes. Here, the only epic thing about it is that the bonus is permanent. Meh.
The Sphinx is a bit of a pain to animate, and a bit slow, but with hundreds of HD, and 300 points of damage resistance, it's pretty much invulnerable to even most epic characters. If a hecatoncheires shows up, you may have to get this to deal with it, because at least you can control and outmaneuver the sphinx, for all it's power.
The Stones of destiny are another one which grants permanent buffs, this time ones that scale with you so be you at first or epic level, the bonuses will be appropriate for the challenges you'll be facing.
Stonehenge and other standing circles let you apply a ton of metamagic feats to appropriate spells if you meet some very specific conditions. When the spells include things like elemental swarm, what's a few bees (not the bees) as a price for dealing with that pesky town that's been upsetting the balance of nature? So while not all of the items here are suitably epic, some of them are, and their powers are distinctive and fun enough that including them in your game will definitely be a memorable experience. I approve.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 5/10
Rival the GODS: And now for more prestige classes that didn't make the cut in the final book. Exactly why, other than just space in general, I guess we'll see. Sometimes there's hidden gems, and it was merely a matter of taste, class demographics, or office politics. Other times, it's pretty obvious why they were cut. Which'll it be here?
Arcane Lords are have full spellcasting progression, plus at least one extra ability enhancing their spells every level as well. They're strictly better than sticking with Sorcerer or Wizard in every respect apart from skills and familiar advancement, so the only drawback to switching to them and staying is the possibility of running out of places to put your skill points when your int gets too superhuman. And if you're a sorcerer, you won't even have to worry about that. Life can be pretty grand as an epic spellcaster.
Masters of the Order of the Bow are designed to follow on from a specific prestige class in one of their splatbooks, although you can get in other ways, it'll just take a little longer. They aren't that great, because their ranged sneak attack power, which is the main part of their build, is still only usable at 30 foot, so they won't really be epic snipers to rival the blasty powers of spellcasters. Even +20 to hit pales before stuff which works automatically.
Perfected Ones take monk's focus on upgrading their body, and build on it further. They get a whole bunch of automatically activating countermeasures that mean imprisoning them or mind controlling them is unlikely to work. A lot of their powers don't grow indefinitely, so once you get to 10th level, sticking with this one doesn't seem so smart, but if you don't want to spend ages maintaining your basic contingency suites just to stay alive in a game of epic paranoia, there are worse options.
Stalwart Wardens are basically the Epic upgrade for Dwarven Defenders, ridiculously tough, and near impossible to move via force or magical persuasion once they've decide to guard someone or something. Once again, they're survivable at epic levels, but proactively changing the world will remain tricky. Be the rock, not the storm.
Unholy Ravagers are an epic blackguard variant that are so eeevil and corrupt that they radiate an aura that spoils food, makes babies cry, and generally makes all right-thinking people deeply unhappy whenever they're near without even trying. You can kill them and take their stuff and feel absolutely zero guilt about it, for they cause trouble every second they exist and revel in it. Just watch out they don't have evil intelligent magic items that'll take you over and lead you down to the dark side in turn.
World Guardians are another variant on druidic hierophants, eschewing the extradimensional travel and elemental summoning for more nature connected innate powers, which a high level druid could replicate anyway. Once again, it's not so much an increase in magnitude as gradually adding on more of the same kind of resources. I'm completely unimpressed with this article, both in terms of power and flavour. It just doesn't do anything for me at all.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 6/10
Children of the cosmos: In issue 293, we got conversions of the Genasi to 3e. Pretty soon for a follow-up, don't you think. They must have sent this in straight after, or maybe even before that was published. Yup, it's another symmetry filler, detailing lawful and chaotic planetouched, plus 6 para and quasielemental Genasi types. (not the complete set, but I'm sure someone else'll handle the other 6 too. ) All of them are LA+1, making them approximately balanced with the existing variants, and the way their abilities are arranged is pretty similar too, with modest resistances to appropriate elemental types, a bonus to a couple of skills, and a low level spell-like power that might save your hide. So this is competently done enough to blend in seamlessly with existing material, and would be much the same as if I'd written it. Not sure if that's good or dull. Done well enough to make it look effortless is harder than putting no effort in, so I can't actually object to this. Now, will they publish letters asking for the rest before they actually finish the series?
Fiction: And all the sinners, saints by Paul Kemp. Hello again, Erevis Cale. Starting to wish you'd never got involved with this adventuring lark, because now you're going to spend your life going from one annoying mission to the next, at the behest of a god who does not have your interests at heart, and definitely doesn't have a good retirement package in his benefits. And what seems like a simple assassination job rapidly turns into a big convoluted political mess that forces former enemies to work together (with the intent of betraying each other at the end) and finishes up with Erevis choosing to be good in the face of adversity again, and just about getting away with it. So this is entertaining enough, and gains a little extra weight because all the interwoven political stuff is in the Realms, which has enough built up history that convoluted webs of scheming no-one can keep track of feel completely natural and organic, rather than just created for a single story to fit the current plot. There are good ways and bad ways to tell a story in an established universe, and this is one of the better ones.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 7/10
Class acts: Monte finally gives us a spellcasting prestige class that can stand up to a straight spellcaster. The Master of the Secret Sound. Quite a tricky one to get into, your best options are as a straight bard, or a wizard with a couple of levels of rogue, and mastering it before epic levels will require some seriously finicky character building. (bard/ur priest combo for the win again.) However, doing so will be worth it, as it lets you replicate the effects of 9th level spells without the components or costs. Daily Wishes without your XP being drained? Not to be sneezed at. The other characters'll have to do some serious optimizing to keep up with that. It's also generally useful before then because it's effects don't require somatic or material components, so if you're captured and all your stuff taken away, you'll be way more effective than a standard wizard, still able to pull plenty of tricks. So before 10th level, it's a fairly flavorful and balanced class.You'll have to consider carefully if you want to nerf that pinnacle power a bit, so it still requires you to at least pay the XP and expensive material component costs of the spells you replicate.
Guild secrets: This looks like it's going to be a regular column for a while, and gets in the themes as well, with a guild that's small because it has fairly stringent entry requirements. On top of that, their entire purpose is making sure only "worthy" people get to epic level, as if it's an in setting conceit rather than just a system one. While that can work in some settings, like the forgotten realms, where the system and setting are pretty tightly integrated, I'm not so sure I want that in my generic D&D. I think it's more the implementation than anything, as they managed to sell Druids only having limited numbers of top guys in earlier editions. But the layout here is just reams of text in not very appealing colour combinations, and the red on brown headers aren't very easy to read. There might be room in D&D for a world spanning organisation that preserves the balance and looks kickass while doing so, but this ain't it, especially as we got a better one just a few articles ago. The editor should have junked this and sent them back to come up with a different idea to prevent rehash within the same issue.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 8/10
Elminsters guide: Most of these guides are illustrated in friendly nature tones, greens, blues, yellows and browns. This month we go for a rather starker palette, a snowbound cavern in the far north. Given the hostility of the surroundings, you might well take shelter in it on the way to somewhere else, which leads to more complicated adventures. Especially if your players take the prophecies delivered by the cryptic oracle at the bottom seriously. That will only have funny results for they are very much false. Once again, the fact that Ed is the only one with enough detail in his worldbuilding to hide amusing red herrings amongst the significant parts of his world and have it feel natural is fairly significant really. What other settings have managed this kind of detail. Maybe I should look into the more obscure supplements for Glorantha or Tekumel, since it's been a long time since either of them appeared in the magazine, and I know they've had tons of development over the years. Surely someone else is managing the same kind of detail, albeit with a different flavour, and I think I'd like to sample that for the variety.
Campaign news: They continue to tweak the Living Greyhawk rules, in some ways becoming more restrictive, and in others less. The rules on living in a particular real world region to run an adventure in a particular Greyhawk one are causing problems, so they won't be strictly enforced for large conventions. However, magical items are now a bit trickier to make, requiring you to actively collect appropriate ingredients in your adventures, and the number of adventure formats is being reduced. Shows once again that they don't always get it right, and a living game needs constant adjustment to stay functional. For the moment, the overall trend is towards more rules. Will that ever reverse? Looking at most governments, it seems unlikely.
Champions of vengeance: Our other greyhawk article this month is another prestige class, along with the extra history and sample characters they can get away with thanks to it being anchored in a specific world. The Knights of the Chase are basically chaotic good rangers (although it's pretty easy for other classes to get in too) who specialise in tracking and punishing miscreants when they catch them. Basically divinely empowered bounty hunters, they gain two appropriate animal companions, enhanced throwing skills, and the ability to magically enforce their punishments. They seem decent enough, especially since their spellcasting at 10th level is equal to a 20th level paladin or ranger, giving them plenty of room to get a few levels into another prestige class before hitting epic levels. After all, every group hates it when an adversary repeatedly escapes and becomes a recurring villain, especially if they use cheaty tricks to accomplish it. I can definitely see players wanting to specialise their builds in making sure that doesn't happen again.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 9/10
Command points: Chainmail is missing this month. However, we're still getting some minis coverage, with a bunch of new scenarios, using the extra rules in their latest release. Yup, it's the usual tie-in thing. The interesting thing is that with advancement rules, and the option of troops coming into a scenario injured and fatigued, they further narrow the gap between the RPG and the minis wargame. This further increases my interest in buying it, as it shows they're pushing the boundaries of what they can do in the format, and making it even easier to blend the two. The individual scenarios are pretty sketchy though, and don't really grab my attention. Mixed feelings, but at least some of the stuff is again proving cool. Could be a lot worse, as the mid 90's showed.
Nodwick becomes a third wheel as Yeagar goes epic. At least, until Phil Foglio shows up. Now there's a real epic level character, even without his hat.
Silicon Sorcery: Ico! Now there's a distinctive game to steal from. Minimal design, stark visuals, and a small selection of monsters that nonetheless present some very interesting challenges, especially as the primary objective is not fighting them, but getting the princess to safety over various obstacles, rearranging the landscape so she can reach the door to the next area. The shadow creatures from the game are slow, but resistant to normal weapons and inflict lots of knockback. So this is another instance where converting as directly as possible from a video game results in a creature that doesn't play like any D&D monster pre 4e, which is very interesting to note indeed. Powers which cause knockback/shifting open up a whole load of interesting tactical considerations, that can definitely make for a fun game, and it's nice to see them implement the idea in an easy to understand and use form here. Whether this is actually one of the influences for the greater emphasis on powers that move you around in the next edition I'm not sure, but it is a good foreshadowing of that.
Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Can an oozemaster bring their equipment with them when they malleate ( Yes indeed. This may not be pretty. )
What can you do while in ooze mode (Normal speed, squeeze through 1 inch cracks or greater, normal senses, lack of manipulators may be a problem.)
Does going malleable provoke an attack of opportunity (no)
Can you share malleability (If you have the share spell power)
Are animal lord companion HD restrictions lifted (no)
Do tamer of beast levels stack with druid and ranger ones (oh, very much so. )
Do druid shifters get any more animal companions (no)
Can shifters change type before 10th level (no)
What abilities does greater wildshape grant (physical stats, natural and extraordinary powers. Not brilliant, but still highly abusable.)
Can you mimic a particular person with greater wildshape (not perfectly, but you can get a pretty good disguise bonus with it.)
How familiar is familiar for the purposes of shifting. (Any complex action where you get a good all over look at their body, like fighting, or the other F word. )
If I morph into an orc, do I get their standard equipment (No, but your regular gear reskins itself to fit in. If you have greater wildshape, you can get playful with what melds and what doesn't.)
If you use greater wildshape, can you lose body parts and not have them revert. Does this let you use poison (Yes and yes. This has it's limits though.)
Does faster healing actually penalize you if you take complete bed rest (No. God, Skip wishes someone hadn't nicked his Create Official Errata spell from his spellbook. )
Will infusions with long casting times take ages to take effect (No. Preparation kicks ass.)
How much money can you save by growing your own herbs (All of it. Given the money you can make adventuring in that time, this may not be a long-term saving. )
How does languor work ( Verry brutally. At high level, this is a quick path to incapacitation. )
What damage does thunderswarm really do (A total of 16d6. Probably not to everyone though.)
Can forsaker inherent bonuses stack with others or exceed 5 (no)
Does rancor work on ranged weapons (Yes, at any range. Sniper rifles ahoy! )
Can you stack foe hunters SR with other items and inherent bonuses (Yes, with some awkward restrictions. Go go mathematical weirdness. )
Can geomancers use spell versatility to help them prepare spells (No, only casting them is aided by that. Skip will have to be strict with you on this one. )
What's new shows us what changes, and what stays the same as you advance in level. Thankfully phil got reset, so he can enjoy the climb all over again.
Well, that issue was definitely a struggle, with a few good bits and cool ideas weighed down by the sheer weight of numbers. Appropriate really. It's very frustrating to see them trying really hard, and sometimes succeeding, yet still failing overall because of the flaws in the framework they're working within. And of course, the closer the problem is to the core of the system, the harder it is to fix. Guess they'll have to live with it for the next 5 years, and do what they can. Or just try and keep things below 20th level in 99% of their articles. Suppose I'd better read on, and see just how often they reference and add to the epic material in the rest of this edition.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 1/10
116 pages. The dodgy covers continue. Man, those dark elves have been whitened up even more than Beyonce. Can't a sista get a realistic positive role model these days? Yup, it's time for another themed issue on the ever-popular drow and their underdark homes. The various core demihumans have been updated to the new edition with various degrees of grimdarking. Will drow be left unchanged, since they're already fairly dark and have a full wardrobe of fetish gear, or will they try and go even further to make them interestingly eeeevil. Guess I'd better turn the pages and be thankful they can't make razor edged ones on electronic books.
Scan quality: Slightly fuzzy, unindexed,
In this issue:
Wyrms Turn: This column is still shrunk to the point of inconsequentiality, and gives us another piece on the joys of reskinning. Change the name and colour palette, and you can make even the most played out monsters seem fresh, at least for an encounter or two. This certainly applies to Drow, who have enough unusual fiddly bits that changing, say, their spell-like abilities or giving them tremorsense instead of darkvision will make an actual difference to the way they play. I guess as usual, the devil (or maybe the demon ;) ) is in the details. But there's not enough detail here to make this satisfying reading. Jesse's editorials don't seem to be improving with time at all. If anything, they're getting worse. You know, you could just skip them if you don't have anything to say a particular month. You don't have to bind yourself that tightly to formula if you aren't being forced too by upper management.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 2/10
Scale Mail: Thomas Harlan's new short story gets some attention first off, with readers curious if there's any more to come. Why absolutely, my dears. Go buy his full books and stuff, and we'll see if we can get any more little stories out of him.
Our second letter isn't so positive though, being very pissed off at the mechanics of a particular prestige class. Requiring Rage and Expertise is a suboptimal and stupid requirement, and it's too specific for the concept. They remind you that more than one prestige class can fill the same concept in different ways, and the DM is also free to houserule mechanical details. This will not stop by the RAW obsessives, of course.
Two more letters think that the people getting upset about beefcake are silly and insecure. Like putting the odd bit of swearing in, there's a few people who are outraged, while the vast majority simply don't give a damn.
Rather more annoying is yet another sign of their slowly closing horizons. It used to be that they had fiction in the magazine virtually every month. Now they're cutting out even that little bit of non D&D material, and only publishing stuff set in their own campaign worlds, or by already published authors. And so the magazine will again become that little bit harder for me to push through without getting bored. At least there's still the minis stuff ...... for the moment.
Another reminder than nearly anything could be given the chop is a request to bring back Role Models. They've moved it to the web where it's easier to find everything at once. Whether that's the real reason it was removed is another matter.
Zogonia shows at least basic competence this time. I guess they're learning.
D&D Previews: No D&D products this month, only novels. Once again, it's obvious where the company's priorities lie. Dragonlance gets two of these. The day of the Tempest by Jean Rabe and The Lioness by Nancy Varian Berberick. It may be a new age, but authors are still going to do quite a bit of prequeling in the previous ones. There's also The Living Dead, another straight D&D book, also by T. H. Lain. Is he a ridiculously fast writer, or is this a pseudonym or something?
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 3/10
At the table: Well well. So this is where Paizo are created to take over the magazines. I was wondering. This is definitely one of those cases where they try to sell as a positive something that must have been tremendously worrying and stressful for all involved. Spinning off the magazine side of WotC into it's own company, so their successes and failures are now all their own puts them in a rather more precarious financial position. Which I suspect might have been the point. Given the rise of the internet, and the way the OGL has worked out for them, the idea of wanting to licence out the risky parts of the operation, keeping only the most profitable in-house does make sense. Of course, the interesting thing is that if that was their intention, it kinda backfired, given Paizo's success with Dragon, and the way they kept the 3e fanbase afterwards when WotC didn't. If this hadn't happened we wouldn't have Pathfinder as we know it, and whatever group did try to keep 3e going wouldn't have the legitimacy gained from years of monthly content and having once been part of the official WotC umbrella. Looking back, I can definitely say that this is one of those forks in history where things could have gone very differently if a few people in the right position had made different decisions. This is one of those cases where there was almost definitely some serious behind the scenes political stuff going on, and I'd be very interested to find out about that - what led up to this decision, how long it took, who was for and who was against it. Because after all, it shouldn't just be about the articles, but how they got there as well.
Flesh for Lolth: In which Robin Laws goes completely over the top in his description of drow society, making the degree of unpleasantness in the old Drow of the Underdark book and various FR novels seem tame. They aren't just evil, they're Eeeevil from before birth, with killing and eating the other foetuses sharing their mother's womb standard procedure! They need to make sacrifices equal to 1% of their city's population a week to keep Lolth happy! (which means they're always on the lookout for new supplies of slaves and traitors) Treachery is essential to advance in their society! (but it has to be the right sort of treachery) If they do manage to live long enough to die of natural causes, this is shameful, not respected. The whole thing goes through grimdark and out the other end to become funny, and I'm not absolutely certain if he's in on the joke and trolling the other magazine staff and readers or not. Funny how the cultural differences of 10 years ago can sometimes be more jarring than those of 30 years ago, because you don't expect them.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 4/10
The bestiary: Our bestiary this month is more an article, with a few incidental monster stats tacked on. It's not just Driders that are created when people fuck up Lolth's tests, they're just the most famous stage. There's also Arachnoloths, the low level spider hybrids formed by random spot checks on your ego. And that's just the start. In order, the various tests are:
A test of ambition, which failing doesn't result in transformation, just cursing.
A test of dishonesty, which removes your ability to lie if you fail.
A test of sacrifice, which you have to do the opposite of the previous ones to pass, just to be arbitrary, and if you fail you get transformed into a giant mass of writhing spider legs.
A test of betrayal, which will end in death for one of the two chosen individuals for sure.
A test of dominance, which will see you transformed into an endlessly spawning Brood Mother queen spider if you fail.
A test of Vengeance, which once again pits Drow against Drow, TO THE DEATH!!! Only a few ever get to rule, and you will not be amongst them, starscream.
And finally, if you do all that, you get to personally fight a proxy of Lolth, once again to the death. If you pass that, and continue to be a correctly bad Drow, you might get to be a proxy yourself. It's all more than a little over the top, just like the previous article, and seems likely to send their population into terminal decline if applied strictly. Course, given her chaotic nature, that's unlikely to be the case, but it's still not really that usable unless you play scheming Drow in a city campaign, and doesn't quite work for me as worldbuilding. Needs more care in straddling the line between evil and EEEEEeeeevil.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 5/10
Sinister tools: Drow do love their poisons. With save or die mostly gone in 3e, that means they have to get a little more inventive if they want to stay as scary as they were when we first saw them. So along with new magical items, they give us a fair number of new chemical and mineral concoctions here that have various ways of making your life interesting. Some they take themselves, some they put on weapons and traps, and some they just sprinkle liberally into the environment to ruin it. As chaotic evil creatures, often short-term pleasure and destruction takes precedence despite their potential long lifespans. So the items here are entirely in keeping with their established personalities, with spider stuff, torture stuff, tentacle stuff, and vanity stuff all catered for. Unlike the previous two articles, this is both highly useful for players and DM's, and not silly at all. The harder and more interesting the challenge of killing them and taking their stuff is, the more players will value it once they have it.
VS Drow: This column gets a complete repurposing, dropping the usual terse tactical advice for fighting as and against them, and instead providing a specific organisation devoted to killing Drow, along with a bunch of prestige classes, feats, spells, and items that'll hopefully make things a little easier. Feels a bit like cheating really, compared to learning how to use your existing tools to their fullest potential. But I suppose that's the thing. Increasing the size of the pie will make you more popular than telling you you ought to carefully make the most of the slice you have. And like any race that can gain class levels fairly freely, Drow are a pretty difficult challenge to prepare for. You need a combination of being able to survive, navigate and blend into the underdark, which is a pretty big challenge in itself, and then bring the blinding light that'll put them at a disadvantage when you do find them. And since a party is only as stealthy as it's noisiest member, that means everyone in the group needs to have some skills in that area. Fortunately, even the spellcasting prestige class here gets an emphasis on silent spellcasting and blindsight, so that's covered. And spells that not only affect the visibility, but also the earth around you so you can hem them in or create pits in the ground quickly might give you an edge, as Drow wizards don't often become earth elementalists, weirdly enough. So this is another indicator of their changing direction, towards providing lots and lots of new specific crunch every month, rather than giving info and advice that could be applicable to any RPG. It's not that it's not useful, but it's only useful in a far more limited and specific situation, and I guess it's up to you to make sure those situations come up, as they're less likely to do so naturally.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 6/10
Shades of death: Another thing that gets switched around is the idea of articles on class combinations. Wheras before they were relatively simple, this article goes for complex builds with multiple prestige classes from various splatbooks over the 20 level progressions. That's a very interesting change and one I approve of, as it'll give us a much better idea of what they consider good tactics at the moment. As you may have guessed, this is about various types of necromancers, both wizard and cleric. Not all of them are evil, but very few of them are fully trusted, and let's face it, having a plentiful supply of perfectly obedient (albeit smelly) servants can turn even someone who started with good intentions into a lazy spoiled diva who can't relate to normal people at all. There are a few new feats as well, but they're pretty weedy, and serve to emphasise that animating large numbers of undead servants really ain't what it used to be. So I do have mixed feelings about this, as it shows us that while necromancy is still cool, it isn't the most optimal character choice in 3e, and can take some serious work to do tricks they could pull casually before. Conjurer seems a better choice now.
Campaign news: Whoa! The RPGA has dropped all it's membership fees! Like the creation of Paizo, that speaks of some serious restructuring going on in the WotC offices. And if they're no longer funding the RPGA from members fees, then exactly how is it being supported now? Obviously in the short run that's good for them, as they've lowered the bar to entry considerably. But it does make me wonder why. Was the membership dropping and they wanted to do something radical to turn things around. Did the ease of distributing adventures over the internet cut their overheads dramatically? Does someone in the WotC offices secretly want to kill them, so they're cutting them loose and setting them up to fail? So many ways to spin this, both positive and negative. This issue is turning out to be a real turning point in their business structures, and once again, I'd really like to know what went on behind the scenes to cause these changes.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 7/10
The vault of the drow: Our other Greyhawk feature is also bigger and more significant than usual, as well as being in theme. A 16 page return to D3, the first place many people saw them. Last time we went there was back in 1997, when Monte sent us there as one of the subplots in Dead Gods. And since we're not busy adventuring, they can give us more information on demographics, history (which includes the events from both of the previous two appearances) day to day life, and general setting detail than either of those did. It is possible to come there without instantly being attacked and enslaved, especially if you're one of the evil underdark races, but you should still watch your back at all times. There's lots of districts in the city itself, plus a reasonable sized fungus forest which they use for food, and which you can hide in and hope something doesn't make a meal of you. So this is an article that gives you a real sense of history, evolved in real time with attention to continuity. If you're looking for a nostalgia bomb, this definitely fits the bill, as both a special feature on it's own, and an expansion on past events that's system light enough to be useful if you go back and play them again. I strongly approve, which is a definite relief after first couple of articles were so risible.
Chainmail: Even this column is in theme, reminding us just how popular Drow are amongst the office as well as the fans. They even find a way to tie it into the existing metaplot from the other continent, as referenced last article. What happened to the Drow who turned to Kiaransalee after the fiasco of adventurers invading D3 and causing tons of havoc? They were eventually beaten and exiled (for as long as Lolth is the core deity, they have to give her priority in new material) and decided to GO WEST! Life is warlike there. GO WEST! In the enclosed air. GO WEST! So many foes to choose. GO WEST! You only have your lives to lose. Which neatly gives us a reason why A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS! in the Chainmail game. It's all very well tied together, and shows how much better co-ordinated the company is than TSR, hitting us with stuff in the books, wargame, and magazine all at once.
Along with the pretty neat setting stuff, there's two drow-focused prestige classes for your game. Bloodsisters are female fighters who specialise in the kind of dirty fighting that works well underground. Crossbows, poison, sneak attacks, all that good stuff that you use to hit dumb people who can't see in the dark with, and kill them quickly without putting yourself at risk. Sounds pretty unpleasant to fight, but what did you expect from the Drow? The other one, the Nightshades, are a roguish relative of Arcane Archers, requiring spellcasting to get into, but not advancing it, just getting some supernatural innate abilities that make sneaking around and playing the thief and assassin easier. With their spider themed powers, they're also pretty appropriate for their niche. These both seem pretty appropriate for your game, even if you're not playing in greyhawk. As long as the drow fill basically the same niche, there'll always be plenty of room for sneaky poison wielding bitches amongst them.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 8/10
DM's toolbox: Here's some advice we've seen before. If you want to improvise, make sure you have lots of general stuff prepared. Players are more likely to follow along and enjoy the game if you're playing the RPG equivalent of the blues, rather than atonal free jazz. This is why those old school modules have things like wandering monster encounters, rules for getting lost, and maps which extend outwards a fair way, so when the players wander a bit, they'll still run into something interesting, if not what you expected. As is the fashion, they have more specific bits of advice and directions on where to go and what to steal from than last time in issue 226, but they're also terser, and the approach here is somewhat more autocratic, seeing is the DM's responsibility to come up with stuff themselves rather than bouncing off the players. Overall, I think this is a case where multiple perspectives help you get a bigger picture, so I'm not complaining.
The play's the thing: Robin continues on from last time, with a whole bunch of specific examples of how not to do it, and why they will probably cause problems at the gaming table. Characters getting too much or too little attention is the main one, showing up in quite a few different forms. This applies to the NPC's as well, with DMPC's once again firmly warned against. Also starting to be a problem is the ability in 3e of some character builds to be better than another at what they do and more flexible as well on top of that. (although that can certainly be a problem in the likes of GURPS as well) Finally, expectation gaps are the kind of thing that you can't really predict, unlike the other things here, and can only be solved by talking things out. While system can be an issue, the amount of enjoyment you get out of RPG'ing is far more dependent on the other people than the trappings. The big lesson seems to be that sharing is caring, which we should all remember from children's programs really, but so often forget. Fun is not a zero sum game. It can be created and destroyed, sharing it can mean you wind up with more each, it does not automatically increase in entropy in a closed system. Trying to treat the social sciences like hard ones is an approach doomed to failure. Are we crystal clear yet? Now play nice with each other, it's for your own good. :p
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 9/10
Nodwick plays matchmaker to Lolth. Holy cross-company crossover!
Silicon Sorcery: Battle Realms is this month's pick for a conversion. A strategy game where you have lots of different uses for your resources, meaning there'll always be something more you want to do, and add to your holdings, if you can just find a bit more to mine, cut down or eat. The kind of thing that's really helped by the improvements in graphics, and number of sprites systems can handle at the moment. But resource management isn't the in thing here, so all we get are two more prestige classes in an issue already jam packed with them. Kabuki Warriors bring their performance skills to the battlefield, which they use to become hard to hit, taunt the enemy into doing stupid things, and generally be sneaky and flamboyant. Dragon Warriors, on the other hand, become highly resistant to damage through focusing their chi, and can rage and make their weapon burst into flame. Both have full BAB, 2 good saves, and aren't too hard to get into, so they're decent enough for fighter types, and have strong thematics that'll make players want to take them. Yet again, this column plods healthily along, as they have no shortage of things to take inspiration from.
Dork tower goes to hell. The colour scheme gets all messed up.
Dragon Issue 298: August 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Is craft (herbalist) separate from profession (herbalist) Skip's afraid so. You'll have to really split those skill points.)
Can rangers improve their animal companions like druids (Yes, siree bawb.)
Can you choose your new feat the same level you meet the prerequisites (yes)
What's the point of being able to rage multiple times if it's so exhausting (You have overestimated the recovery time. Relax, don't do it, if you wanna rage.)
How long is an encounter (Until you stop tracking time on a round by round basis)
Does awaken alter your stats (read the spell. Yes it does.)
The tamer of beast's powers don't synergize well (Oh dear. Don't worry so much. It's not a problem if you don't acknowledge it. )
Can forsakers store up power from magic destruction (No. A little every day is better than occasional binges.)
What's with the bloodhound's pacekeeping (It lets you keep up with faster things. You don't have to use it if they're slower than you anyway. How you use it is up to you.)
What's with snakelords getting a power that they already needed as a prerequisite (oop. Errata time. Better substitute something appropriate.)
What size are exotic weapon masters improvised weapons (You choose. This affects damage as normal. )
Do forsaker ability bonuses come on top of the usual level based ones (yes. Remember, these are very different mechanics.)
Do barbarian and forsaker DR's stack (no)
Do you have to be able to cast spells to become a shifter (Not neccecarily. Some races are cooler than others.)
Does shadow add to all your hiding attempts (yes)
Does spell turning also protect you from counterspells (oooh. This can get awkward. Better not be too strong a spell.)
Do you have to delay to use reactive counterspell (No. You can sacrifice next round's action instead. What a lifesaver.)
Are globes of invulnerability hollow (no. Your buffs are no good here. )
Can sorcerers use scrolls below their casting level (They can use them, no problemo. Don't make trouble for yourself.)
Can wizards scribe cure wounds spells from bard scrolls (no. It's not on their class list. Wizards are not the be all of arcane casting. )
Can sorceror/wizards transfer spells between classes by scribing them as scrolls then copying them into their spellbooks (Yes. But at the normal cost. This means you need to think about if you can really be bothered.)
Can undead use potions. (If they have a throat to swallow with. This is why it's important to take care of yourself as a lich around town.)
What's new reveals where phil got those spikes. Crossover strikes again. What is this, sweeps week? Now stop eating babies. It's unprofitable for the species as a whole.
Well, this was certainly an issue of extremes. Lots of very good articles, a couple of laughably bad ones, and some serious changes in the company, it definitely feels like another turning point in the magazine's history. As has been the case before, the turmoil makes things more interesting, but also more erratic. And once Paizo is set up and moved into their own offices, I have a feeling the dynamics of the magazine will change even more. As with the change of editors just before issue 200, it makes me wonder how well prepared they are for their next big celebration, and if we'll be seeing some more regular features introduced or on the chopping block. Better keep going, because time moves on, and we're still a fair distance away from the present.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 1/10
91 (116) pages. Ookay. They aren't even making token attempts at backdrops anymore. The perspective looks thoroughly skewed. Silver on white is damn poor contrast. And what is wrong with that guy's mouth and eyeballs!? Even the very first issue did better than this. You suck, new art director. Why are your layout choices getting worse when you've been here nearly a year now? I'm confused and irritated. Let's hope the inside format doesn't wind up dragging the contents down and making them less usable. What's the theme? Knights, you say? Is Sir-not-appearing-in-this-film finally ready to show us some action? No? Well, I guess it's good knight from me, and good knight from them then.
Scan Quality: Overexposed, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Another first character story? You know, maybe you should bring First Quest back. Seems most of the members of staff would use it, and they could do more justice to those stories than cramming them in the tiny editorial space. Unsurprisingly, it's in theme, as Matthew Sernett's first character was a knightly sort, heroic and true, despite the best attempts of the diabolical DM. He eventually become jaded and drifted into playing more morally ambiguous characters, but still has a soft spot for his old idealism. Cynicism is not an inevitable thing, so don't let the game world grind you down, even when the real world does. Sounds about right as an inspirational speech for this issue. After all, it's nearly 300 issues now. How many people have stuck with it right from the beginning, through all the ups and downs? Some, but not many. The same would apply to knights in-game. Many would have died or become fat and lazy lording it up after 26 years in the saddle. Let's keep on trying to prove we've got what it takes.
Scale Mail: We start with another person complaining because a regular feature was skipped for just a single issue. See, that's why that becomes a problem, and having a roster of regular features that show up regularly, but not every issue is preferable. When people think something should be there all the time, they take it for granted, and act all entitled when it's taken away. When they're never sure exactly what's coming next time, it's more exciting.
The cut-out special features continue to get praise. Why they stopped doing them in the 90's is beyond me, since they always add quite a bit to the memorability of an issue.
Another complaint is that they're doing too many tie-ins these days. A pretty valid one, considering more than half the issues this year have had a theme directly connected to their latest new book. They have maybe become too tied up by the day-to-day whims of WotC politics. Will that change as the new company drifts apart from their parent?
The epic level issue causes a fair amount of frustration too, partly because the stuff is hard to use, and partly because too much of the issue was devoted to it. The combination of these complaints means they are having a bit of a rethink in the office. It's a great irony that trying too obviously to be commercial can actually hurt your sales.
And finally, we have a request for more Paladin stuff. They obviously hope the current issue will satisfy that little itch.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 2/10
D&D Previews: Another indicator of how the release schedule has slowed here. More than 2 years in, and they only just release their 3rd monster book. They'd done over a dozen by this point in 2nd ed. Anyway, the MMII gives you a ton more things to kill players with. The Dangerousness to CR ratio is considerably lower than many other books, so easy XP may be a possibility.
The Realms took a break last month, and comes back with a vengeance. City of the spider queen takes you down to attack a drow city in an epic adventure that'll take quite few levels to beat. Tying to this is a set of miniatures, so you can visually represent the battles that take place. Interesting marketing strategy. They also release Hand of Fire by Ed Greenwood. Shandrill continues to find spellfire a mixed blessing. Can she get some peace at the end of the trilogy?
Dragonlance gets another coffee table artbook. Major Yawn. You haven't had a gameline in ages, and you're still making stuff like this? I don't know :shakes head:
Up on a soapbox: A lot of the time, people's decisions all boil down to money. Even adventurers can have that problem, as despite the large hauls they make, there's tons of things that can bleed it off and keep them from retiring comfortably. Paying the help is probably the biggest, although training and equipment costs can be pretty hefty too, especially in 1e, where training is a major inconvenience if strictly enforced. (although since PC's are higher level than their hirelings, they could probably make a big chunk of those wages back by keeping it in-house and charging them the RAW cost for training to level up) So Gary decided to skip dungeoneering for a while, and go take out the middle-men - all those other bandits, brigands and buccaneers that fill out the random encounter tables. Ironically, they have larger treasure selections than most monsters, so this worked quite nicely for a little while, until Mordenkainen & co started to become legendary, which kinda ruined the surprise, and they had to find new pickings elsewhere. Which is obviously a story for a later instalment. In the meantime it's another illustration of the sneaky, anything goes, including metagaming if it'll get you an advantage, adversarial type of old school play, where the goal is to gain as many levels and as much treasure as possible, and playing fair does not come into the equation. (at least on the player's side) It can be pretty fun when you aren't holding back at all, and the stories will be just as interesting as if the DM plotted something out. Question is, how many more stories does he actually have to tell? After the company took off, the amount of time they could actually spend gaming dropped dramatically. You can't spin them out forever. And then what? Will he move onto something else, or is this all he has left?
Dork tower just can't get over that marmot thing. I think a little therapy is in order.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 3/10
Campaign Components - Knights: A 22 page special feature? Well, they definitely have a lot to say about knightly stuff then. Methinks they're trying to create another special feature that'll have people talking about it for years to come. Course, there's a leeetle problem with that. The likes of the Nine Hells or Man vs Machine were packed with personal inventiveness by the writers involved. This is a historical conversion that's carefully designed to be as modular as possible, provide a bunch of tools that'll help you achieve your vision, rather than providing one for you premade. Which means it runs into the kind of problem you get contrasting a point buy system like GURPS to one heavily married to it's settings like WoD or Palladium. The mechanics may be better, but the result is far less interesting to read. This is not helped by the fact that their new Campaign components structure is trying way too hard to please everyone. Want to run a low magic medieval game? You got it! Want to put a bit of knightly stuff into your existing campaign? You got it! Want to know how to adapt the basic idea to other worlds and cultures, You got it! Want to have a more elaborate knight-centric morality system that's blatantly ripped from Pendragon? You oh so got it squire! Basically, this article is the written embodiment of the nice guy who's trying oh so hard to win a girl, buying her tons of stuff and following all the rules on how romance is supposed to work, only to see her go home with the goth bad boy at the end of the night, baffled why all his hard work didn't pay off. I know I ought to like it, and I could take it home to meet my parents with no problem, but I can't stop myself from yawning all the way through, with occasional giggles at how pathetically eager it is. It's appropriate, in a way, given the topic, but also very frustrating. Still, it is their first time. Those are often a bit messy. There's a good chance they'll do better with their next themed issue in this vein.
Oath & Order: The accusation that they're spending a lot of time on tie-ins continues to hold a fair bit of weight, with this little article detailing a couple of prestige classes from their latest novel. Turns out, Nerull has an order of monks devoted to killing shit and subtly corrupting other orders of monks. While he might not be lawful himself, the same one-step rule that clerics use applies, so it's not impossible for lawful evil monks to decide the god of death might be leading the winning team, and become zen about the concept of everything eventually becoming corrupt and decayed. And besides, there's always kidnapping someone and alternately torturing and talking to them until stockholm syndrome sets in. So there is indeed a lot of fun flavour text with this one, and the powers are a pretty good diversion from the regular monk selection, with the ability to deliver scythelike crits and possess people in a very similar way to Yak-men. Less of a departure is the Monk of the Enabled Hand, who'll trade off the higher level transformative powers for the ability to smack enemies around in more versatile ways. Since they're not too hard to get into, they may tempt at lower levels, but I don't think it's the optimal long-term path to enlightenment. So one good prestige class, one meh, that's a solid enough batting average.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 4/10
The bestiary: Having just done a greyhawk article, here's a forgotten realms one. Some new monsters that plague cormyr in particular. In contrast to the last few, the preamble is quite short though, and they seem like they're easily transferable elsewhere. Guess it's another attempt to both have their cake and eat it.
Blood horses are another creepy mount for evil overlords to look imposing upon, with bat wings and glowing red eyes. They drink blood and have a damaging screech. Evil overlords know what they like, and this seems tailor made for them. No wonder they go for a pretty penny on the open market.
Catoblepas ought to be familiar to you. They were on the official books for both 1st and 2nd ed, and the second monster to get an ecology waaaay back in issue 73. Course, since their original incarnation involved a no save instadeath gaze, it's not surprising that they weren't updated, and this new version has been substantially nerfed. Still, they didn't need to turn it into a lame ray attack with a physical manifestation as well as the obligatory save adding. Weak. Still, at least they remembered the death cheese. :D
Glamer are creatures that burst from the body of Leira after her death. Like most godspawn, they bear a definite similarly to their creator in powers and personality. Whether they have any purpose beyond generic trickery, like say, bringing the goddess back to life or getting revenge for her death is uncertain.
Shadovig are tiny obnoxious fey, likely more tricksters, but also willing to get serious and poison you in your sleep. Since they also have sneak attack and invisibility, they certainly aren't useless in combat either.
Tree Trolls read like a shout-out to the version of trolls found in Wormy. Considerably smaller than regular trolls, they still regenerate, and are good at climbing and grappling. Interesting business.
Veserab are another creepy eyeless flying thing with a huge mouth. Didn't think Yrthaks would have competition, did you. They make rather disturbing mounts, so they are once again quite good for your evil troops, and you can get lots of money for young ones.
Looks like after the conscious attempt to do new and different stuff of the first couple of years of 3e, they're starting to become more comfortable with drawing inspiration from old stuff and updating it again. Probably a good idea, if they want to draw in holdouts. We shall see how this progresses, as with all the previous trends.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 5/10
Bazaar of the Bizarre: A nicely whimsical bazaar this month, as we go back to the idea of magical toys. This rarely ends well, particularly when Ravenloft is involved, but usually produces interesting stories in the process. Let's hope that's the case here.
The Bottomless Toy box sets us up with a variant on the extradimensional space principle. You can rummage around this one for yonks and not exhaust it. Perfect for the absent-minded cartoon wizard.
Charger the Toy Pony is an animating figurine for every little girl. Ride it here there and everywhere. And maybe brush it's mane, keep it glossy and tangle free. Hi ho!
Dreamweavers are of course devices to ensure easy sleep, safe in the knowledge you won't be possessed or hag-ridden or eaten in the night. Both children and adults can benefit from that in D&D land.
Fairy Masks are adorable butterfly-winged things that make them favourably inclined towards you while mitigating their powers. Perfect for protecting stupid little girls who think everything fairy is cool.
Golden the Clockwork cat is a great example of how far people will go to save the lives of their pets. Transferring their lifeforce into a mechanical contraption is a bit icky, but when it gets you a pet that'll outlive you and not go completely mad, I think you can say It's been a success.
Gray Balls are little lumps of Limbo compressed into safe playdoughy form. Like other bits of Limbo, they respond to your will. I wouldn't let something like that anywhere near my kids. You never know when it might turn into a mini chaos beast and start transforming houses into tentacle monsters.
Splinter the Toy Sword is basically a little moraliser in stabby form. It tries to bring you up with strong values, and refuses to fight other good guys. Thunder, thunder, thundercats, HO! ;) Let's hope you grow up to be a good little paladin.
The Rose Prince is a mini Mills & Boon hero that'll keep you safe from scary monsters. I wonder if it's anatomically smoothed over like a ken doll :p
The Siren sings a soothing song to keep little kiddies from throwing tantrums. Hopefully it won't have the bad side effects filling them full of Ritalin does.
The Doll House can suck you in, to play minimised forever in an extradimensional space equivalent to it. A classic horror idea, methinks. Surprised we haven't seen it before. (Although we have had a bottle based variant. ) Anyway, it's another case where the quality of the implementation is more important than the originality of the ideas. Overall, I think it's a success.
Feats of personality: Robin Laws appears to be off this month, so it's someone else's turn to engage in amusing metagame conceits. For example, asking the question how having certain abilities might affect your personality, and whether gaining them is a chicken or egg situation of training following desire, or personality reflecting capabilities. Like the nature vs nurture debate, the answer is probably a bit of both, combined with a big chunk of OOC thinking, as you often have to pick feats and skills to get into prestige classes rather than because you really really want them. So this very much feels like a filler article, taking a fairly flimsy premise and then spreading it out over 5 pages to keep us entertained and their page count up. Just something they've gotta do between the big features and the usual columns. I must admit to yawning a bit.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 6/10
Arcane lore: Spells for Paladins? You know, that's a special they really should have had last edition, but didn't. Come to think of it, they never really did one for rangers either. I wonder if they'll get round to that this time. In any case this is one that seems both welcome and needed. I look forward to seeing what new tricks they get.
Second Wind gives you the Endurance feat. Meh.
Clear Mind boosts your save against mindfucking. Functional, but not regretted.
Energised Shields & their lesser variant give you energy resistance and bonus damage on your shield bashes. Like energy damage on your weapons, this could well turn out popular as a permanent enchantment option.
Find Temple lets a paladin get succour even in unfamiliar terrain. Course, if there are no worshippers of your god in a few miles, you really are screwed. Have to fall back on that indomitable courage again dude.
Sacred Haven is a basic protective buff spell. Plus it means the paladin can monitor them remotely and come to their aid if this isn't enough to save them. Gotta keep that do-gooding spirit up.
Holy Mount gives your mount the celestial template temporarily, assuming it doesn't have it already. That is a pretty substantial buff really. Now, what else can we stack it with? :devil:
Mass Stabilize is your basic lifesaver for when you can't run around the battlefield because you have to keep holding the front end. Compassion needs practicality to get maximum effect.
Moment of Clarity helps you break another creature's mindfucking. If they decided to be bad on their own, of course, it's another matter altogether. Nothing much you can do but smite them down :p
One Mind I-III give you progressively greater ability to synergise with your mount. Not quite as useful as doing it with the other PC's, since there are places you can't take your mount, but very appropriate to the class.
Sense Heretic is a more specific variant on detect evil. It'll only pick up the real troublemakers, those who actively follow antithetical religions. The agnostics? We can leave them for later.
Spiritual Chariot lets you carry a few people behind your mount, in a good position for ride-by-attacks
Sticky Saddle is for those silly paladins who got to high level without putting any skills in Ride, and don't want to look like a tit. You may still ride like a sack of potatoes, but at least you won't fall off.
Tiny Mount lets you turn your horse into a my little pony. Good thing your horse is pretty saintly too, for most of them would not be happy about being stuffed in your pocket for hours.
Winged Mount is another one that makes paladins that bit more versatile. We shall slay dragons in the skies! One breath and you're plummeting to the ground mate.
Word of Binding helps you with the whole mercy thing. Mustn't forget that, if you want to stay a paladin. I think this has avoided straying too far from that remit, giving us powers that are both useful and appropriate.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 7/10
Guild secrets: Here we have yet another variant on the idea of secret organisation who tries to maintain the cosmic balance, making sure neither good or evil becomes supreme, and hoping they can learn to settle their differences in a reasonable manner. How many is that now? I'm surprised they aren't always getting in each other's way and bickering over who's interpretation of balance is the most balanced. :) In any case, it probably isn't going to be this lot, as while they're morally neutral, ethically they tend quite strongly towards Law, and they lack the epic power levels of the ones a couple of issues ago. By contrast, these guys are still in the local leagues, and any attempts to right the balance aren't always going to be the subtle and long-term methods bigger and smarter groups use. Which I suppose makes them easier to use, but also makes them feel rather unimpressive as well. Overall, I think this is just another case of the magazine oversaturating a particular niche. Come up with some other excuse for people to get together to promote their agenda, because that one feels pretty overdone now.
Elminster's guide to the realms: Another article where we find out all kinds of interesting little things about the food habits of Faerun. The kind of thing Ed would probably write about even more if he didn't have editors to remind him it needs to adventure-centric. Fortunately, there's a whole load of things you can do with the distribution chain, smuggling, organised crime and so forth that does make for good adventures. Hidden compartments, dodgy deals, switched gear, and the occasional poisoning, the booze trade can be a ruthless and cutthroat business. I suppose this is why organisations like the zhents and red wizards survive, despite adventurers kicking their ass regularly. As long as they have their fingers in the kind of pies heroic dungeoneers overlook, they have plenty of regular cash flow to rebuild when there's a change of personnel. Once again he's found an uncommon adventure hook and incorporated it into his world with style, with plenty of different ways you can use the setting details here. They're likely to wind up being one of the middle links in a larger chain of events, where the adventurers have to do some investigating to get to the bottom of a larger plot. Still, it's a good link, and it's especially nice to see villainous halflings that still retain the race's general personality traits and use them to their advantage. Once again, I approve.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 8/10
Fiction: Memories by Lisa Smedman. Obliviax! Now that's a D&D monster that's never been at the centre of a story before! Which is strange, because it's a pretty interesting one with an appearance and powers that make it perfect for a mystery plot. I guess it's the same kind of thinking that makes oozes and slimes rare as well. They're not humanoid, you can't really talk to them, negotiate with them, or have sex with them, so it's harder to build a story around them. Still, I'm glad someone went to the effort, because this is a little corker of a story, mixing intrigue, romance, religion, and a cameo from Erevis Cale, showing there are gaps between his big adventures where he gets to live a relatively normal life. So this takes lots of familiar elements, and weaves them together quite nicely, showing that there's lots of things you can do with D&D setting elements that they haven't done yet. Have Thouls ever got a story in which their ability to pass as normal hobgoblins was a major plot point? What would happen if a Thoul and a Barghest met? I'm sure there's an interesting tale in there for someone to write. Maybe it's already out there, somewhere on the web.
Campaign news: Con season is ending, so it's time to look at the aftermath of those big adventures they were talking up earlier in the year. Unsurprisingly, they give a positive result, for they want people to come next year. People of all levels got to participate, and plenty of them died in the process, but that just means they can start again and play the next year's low level modules. Almost as interestingly, they've now introduced a module that follows on directly from a previous one, so players can feel their story actually has continuity. Could be pretty cool, especially as it looks like the module is also playable without that previous adventure, you merely start at a different point. As ever, there's the danger of metaplot events getting unwieldy, but since they're also adding new co-ordinators, hopefully they've got that in hand. If they're having any problems, they're small enough that you'll only hear about them on the forums, and they can keep their official announcements shiny and optimistic. Unless someone wants to talk about the behind the scenes politics of the RPGA, we will never know.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 9/10
Playing pieces: Two more characters for your Greyhawk adventures, one mid-level and the other high. Both are mysterious and hard to pin down, albeit for different reasons. But then, they live in Onnwal, which is one of the more politically unstable areas on Oerth, and are doing their best to kick out the Scarlett Brotherhood and liberate it. That means they could be killed at any time if the PC's don't get involved. So by their position, they're more likely to end up working with the players than against them, but they're both morally neutral, so the boot could end up on the other foot after Onnwal is liberated and they have a little time to be corrupted by the perks of power. Mechanically, they're not that interesting, both being straight one-class builds with a few powerful magical items, and we don't find out too much about their personalities, but plenty of effort is put into their histories. So if you're in the area, they'll be pretty easy to use. Another decent enough bit of filler for those who want to see Oerth catch up with Faerun.
All oerth's artifacts: Index time again? Funny that they went over a decade without them, and then the LGJ gives us two in quick succession. I guess that reflects just how dedicated Erik Mona is to the Greyhawk setting, unearthing and cataloguing every little bit of obscure information he can find for our benefit. Still, it only takes three pages, as Oerth isn't that huge, and many of the things here were originally presented as generic material, and then co-opted, mainly because it was stuff originally written by Gary and used in his home games. Quite a few of the others are personal possessions of various gods, and so are unlikely to show up in a treasure horde unless they have a very specific plan for you. So I think this is more aimed at obsessive collectors rather than players, letting people know how much more stuff there is in the archives to hunt down. And even if they're not directly profiting from out of print material, it's probably beneficial to keep demand up for it. It looks like this is a case where trying to examine the motivations behind the article is more interesting than the article itself. That's probably not a good sign.
Silicon sorcery: Warcraft! Time for another stop in at this series, before it goes on to become the Michael Jackson of video games: already commercially successful for a good decade, to the biggest thing in it's field by an order of magnitude with the release of Warcraft Online. Warcraft 3 continues the plot quite nicely, allowing units to level up if they survive and win battles for a while. (which means you have more incentive to look after individuals and try to keep them alive) This makes converting units to D&D prestige classes particularly easy, although they're only 5 level ones, which I presume reflects the in game ranking system. Dwarven Thanes become Thorlike stompers, able to summon lightning and cause earthquakes with their physical badassery. Orc Blademasters are also fighty sorts that cross the boundary to superhuman, able to become invisible and generate mirror images on top of being able to attack frequently, and with an expanded crit range. One of these popping up in the middle of enemy troops will cause quite the mess. With strong visual images for both of these, they definitely seem appealing to me. And with advice for tweaking them to better suit other classes and races as well, this article is pretty cool. If anything is suited to conversion between the generic fantasy of tabletop roleplaying, it's the generic fantasy of computer wargames.
Nodwick tries to introduce another member to the party. It works out about as well as the last time.
Dragon Issue 299: September 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice:Can clerics use scrolls of their domain spells (yes)
Can you use metamagic feats on spell-like powers (No)
Do barbarians get con increases on every HD when they rage, even ones from other classes (yes)
Do familiars get spell points as they advance (Mamma mia mamma mia mamma mia let me go)
Can anyone take 10 on hide and move silently checks (Not all the time. Ninja benefits goood.)
Can an evershifting shifter heal themselves at will (No. We have already erratad that one. Skip wishes Skip could claim responsibility, but eh, what are you gonna do. )
What do you factor into the damage calculation for wall of thorns (Everything but Dex and Dodge bonuses)
Can a wall of thorns provide cover (yes. It can't tear out souls though.)
Does wall of thorns hinder things movement (oh yes)
Does magic fang affect all your natural weapons (no)
Can you stack damage reduction and hardness (yes)
Do spiritual weapons only get one attack when they move (It's not the moving, it's the switching targets. )
I don't get entangle at all. Help! (Grappling is always a hassle, even when you automate it. Fear not, Skip will explain this in words of four sylables and less.)
If you have a stoneskin up and you take damage that bypasses it, does this also drain your damage buffer (no)
If you're hit by dispel magic, are your items affected (generally, yes.)
Does evasion protect you from prismatic sphere's layers (The appropriate ones, yes. )
Can diamond body protect you from the green prismatic layer. (Yes)
What's new engages in a little role reversal. And the snail finally starts to slip from the page. This interesting.
Another frustrating issue, albeit for different reasons to the last one. Where that had quite high and low extremes, this one has way too much dull stuff, and suffers from their attempts to make every article please everyone. Despite there being a fair amount of Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk stuff, they're always trying to make sure everything in those is useful in whatever campaign you might be playing as well, and the constant nagging awareness of this agenda sucks the fun out of those articles. The period of freedom they enjoyed at the start of 3e is long gone, and now they're more regimented in the kind of articles they produce and how they write them than they ever were. Let's hope they won't feel too bound by formula for the century celebrations at least.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 1/10
87 (116) pages. Well, we've made it through another hundred issues. It certainly hasn't been an easy journey, for us or them, and the magazine has lost quite lot of things along the way. Course, they've picked up some others, so it hasn't been all bad, but overall, the 200's haven't been a great time for them. Let's hope the 300's have some more auspicious moments.
Unfortunately, first signs don't appear too great. While the first two were both substantially larger than the surrounding issues, and had some special trick on their cover that made them very distinctive, this one has neither of those. In fact, the cover has a lot in common with 274, the 3e changeover issue, only it's even closer zoomed in, and slightly less impressive looking technically. There's also the fact that the theme is once again a tie-in with their latest book, which is as cynical-feeling as ever. Still, at least it's one appropriate to the month, as the book of vile darkness is pretty fitting for an october horrorfest. Like a villain who tries to take over the world every week, only to be thwarted yet again, I shall retain some optimism about the contents. But will I be laughing manically at the end, or cursing those pesky kids for not letting the writers take it all the way? At least there's no way reading it can be as damaging as the in-game book of vile darkness, anyway.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The editorial reminds us a couple of interesting, and somewhat contradictory things. The reason many people started buying dragon is because of the cool new stuff in each issue. But until 1996 when they jacked up the regularity of the regular features dramatically, you were never sure what you were going to get. New spells, monsters, magical items, each would appear in less than half the issues. The question is, is that a good thing or not? When you only saw Pages from the Mages once a year, people were writing in to praise it a lot more than they are now Elminster's Guide appears every issue. Part of that can be attributed to familiarity taking the wonder away, and part of that is because even the best writer will run out of their A material if they have to produce a constant stream of content. So this is revealing because it shows how they arrived at their current position of putting D&D specific crunchy stuff in nearly every article. Looking at what was most popular and providing only that, rather than a mixture of stuff that includes the most popular options, plus a few more to catch a wider audience. Which may work better in the short term, but also means you'll hit the point of diminishing returns on a particular thing quicker, and'll find it harder to replace that for some new coolness. This goes quite a way towards explaining why 3e and 4e had shorter edition cycles than the earlier ones as well. When it comes to creative media, if you use the same formula over and over again, it doesn't work as well over and over again, even if the technical quality is actually better on the later instalments. So yeah, they have to deal with the fact that even if they're doing the right thing now, it'll eventually become the wrong thing if they don't change sometimes. It's a big headache.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 2/10
Scale Mail: As with issue 100, they decide to skip the letters for an extended Q&A session. With the shift in management, a lot of people are asking the same things over and over again. This is a bit tiresome, so they just want to get it over with. Most things are staying the same, although they may do the occasional OGL article if they can get them, and they're thankfully bringing back sales of back issues. Fiction submissions are still all going in the bin though. They just don't want to deal with that any more, despite it's popularity amongst both readers and submitters, because their focus is now on doing D&D stuff, and doing it well, and if they're getting more fiction submissions than everything else put together, reading through them all just eats up too much work time. Once again, it underlines that their scope is a lot narrower than a decade or two ago, where even if an individual issue was all D&D, they didn't rule out doing a themed issue on another system next time if enough cool material came along, or even switching to another system entirely if another RPG came out that eclipsed D&D. Turning into their own company does not appear to have increased their creative freedom much. After the editorial, this just deepens my pessimism.
Zogonia is full of quiet wit.
D&D Previews: Our gamebook, pretty unsurprisingly for the issue's theme, is the book of vile darkness. Monte Cook confuses diabolical with gross-out, showing that while their editorial policy might not be as bad as the days of Lorraine, they still aren't really ready to tackle heavy duty philosophy of morality. And of course, he introduces the ur-priest. The problems that prestige class causes. True system mastery is still a way away.
FR & DL each get a novel. Divine Hammer by Chris Pierson and The Thousand Orcs by R. A. Salvadore. Can you guess which belongs to which world. Oh yes, belongs. Keep slaving away, long-term hacks.
Up on a soapbox: Gary takes a break from actual play stories this month, and instead tells a story that could have been, but wasn't. Wastri, the demigod of frogs and human supremacy, never did get an official adventure devoted to him. After all, he's not sexy like the Drow or grand and sprawling like the temple of elemental evil. But he could still appear in your game, and do some pretty cool stuff plotwise. This is basically a pagelong set of plot hooks for your game, showing you that vaguely innsmouth-esque frog people can be effective and scary if you write them well enough, and don't have to just lurk in their own little town gradually growing more degenerate over time. Don't wait for an official version, just take the ideas here and do something with them yourself in that good ol' DIY spirit.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 3/10
All 300 issues so far get their covers shown in miniature in this fascinating double page spread. See the lofty heights they have risen, and the depths they are currently sinking too. When shrunk down to postage stamp size, all the writing that they've sprayed over the covers in increasing density since 1996 is just illegible clutter. It really puts things into slightly depressing perspective. What also seems a bit awkward is that the historical retrospective doesn't cover the whole of Dragon, only the period since Kim Mohan joined, leaving info on the early days which people would really like to know about absent. Even if they'd lost touch with Tim Kask, surely they could get Gary to write a little extra about what it was like back in the day. Still, at least they're fairly candid about the problems they suffered in the recent past, and what they did to fix them. They do have good reasons for choosing to concentrate on D&D, given what happened to more general magazines during that period. But carrying on doing it after the crisis was over? When austerity becomes the new status quo rather than a temporary reaction to a crisis, it leaves you with far less room to manoeuvre next time things go wrong.
The bestiary: Hmm. This is an entry that I remember hearing about before. Aside from Astral Dragons, Bytopia's admantine dragons, and Acheron's rust dragons, the planes are curiously lacking in D&D's namesake. Fixing this would have definite benefits, and they've finally got round to it. Let's see if the results are suitably quirky and inventive or formulaic and predictable.
Howling Dragons are from Pandemonium, and quite quite mad. They're also quite capable of spreading it, with both their breath weapon and spell-like powers working to that end. So far, so predictable.
Pyroclastic Dragons are from Gehenna, and show the typical gehennan love of brute force over charm, as well as lots of fire based powers which far too many things from the same plane will be immune to. Still, they probably won't be immune to their sonic spells, which they also have :p
Rust Dragons are of course preexisting. Any relation to rust monsters is purely co-incidental, and will be treated as a scurrilous accusation. Unsurprisingly, they get an upgrade to the new formulae for stats, but they'll still ruin all your equipment with one foul breath. Woo. Just when you thought D&D was becoming safe and sanitised.
Styx Dragons of course, get everywhere the river flows, although they can't fly. Just as howling dragons target your wis, these drain your int with their breath, and get water and mindfucking powers.
Tarterian Dragons enjoy a relatively high level of freedom for things in their plane, but ultimately they're stuck there like most other things. And in typical fashion, they get lots of powers to make sure no-one else gets out, and those lovely cycles of bitterness and abuse continue, giving the plane even more power. Doncha just love the lower planes. Course, I doubt we'll be seeing upper planar counterparts for these guys soon. As there have been no great surprises either, I am forced to yawn. Pretty so-so, I'm afraid.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 4/10
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magical items made by hags? I suppose witchy stuff definitely fits the horror mould, and has possibly even being neglected a bit, with undead and their vanquishers stealing the spotlight. Let's take control. Nyahahahaha!
Bone Rattles mess with your mind, causing you guilt and disorientation. Ah yes. Evil can delight in using good against itself, triggering guilt for things you have no control over or responsibility for. Now that's vile and dark.
Black Hour Pillars unhallow the area as long as they burn. And look creepy, of course. Gotta set the right mood in your little crooked house.
Bramble Men are a nasty little way of setting up a delayed action spell trigger. The effect in them doesn't activate until they're broken. This makes them the perfect blackmail device.
Crone's Canes seem to magically age you. They don't actually, but they'll be both crippling and demoralising if used in combat. All the sadism with reduced long term screwage. That's progress for you.
Dead Man's Bottles let you speak with the dead if you pour a drink on their grave. Now your primary limiter is the amount of booze you can afford. Go for cheap rotgut.
The Head of the Loveless was forged in tragedy, and keeps you from being mindfucked. Given it's size and awkwardness of carrying, there are probably better items for that purpose.
Maiden's Hands let you turn into the person they were taken from by putting them on. This is obviously no-where near as good as general shapeshifting, but has it's uses. And it'll be pretty horrific if you once knew the person killed. I think there's some more good stories in here.
The Tomb of Weeds is a rather unpleasant way of putting someone into healing stasis. Evil may be able to heal it's own, but it certainly isn't nice about it. Enjoy being buried underground for a week.
Yackti Figures are just voodoo dolls, albeit somewhat nerfed for the new edition. Burn them, drown them, bury them, laugh as the person connected to them suffers. Meh.
How far should you go?: Or putting a ratings system on your game. Of course, since D&D makes it very difficult to have adventures without killing things and taking their stuff, even the mildest of the ratings is going to be the equivalent of a PG-13 rather than a U. It's merely that the violence will be glossed over, and the good guys will be firmly good, and the bad guys definitely diabolical, with any shades of grey at least soluble rather than no-win decisions. Of course, we're not talking questions of real maturity here, like the movie ratings system, but the amount of sex, guts, and other icky stuff that appears on screen. After all, Star Wars has ridiculous casualty rates, dismemberment and barely avoided incest as integral parts of the plot, yet still retains a family friendly rating; while Avatar: the last Airbender tackles complex moral questions and goes some quite dark places while never actually showing on-screen death. Meanwhile, you can have torture porn films that gleefully show the full effects of losing limbs with exaggerated bloodsprays, and hentai which grossly overexagerates the sex in the opposite direction, with a distinct lack of actual maturity in the design and writing. So this is a very complex issue, that they once again show they aren't quite equipped to handle an in-depth debate on. They do get marks for trying, especially as I remember all too well the days of Lorraine ( roll of thunder, stab of organ music, etc etc) where even the thought of nipples was an absolute no-no, let alone the thought of some mighty-thewed barbarian nibbling on them while pushing their owner up against the wall and penetrating them with his mighty :CENSORED:
Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh yes. While the editorial and letters showed how much more conservative they'd become in many ways, this at least shows they've become less so in others at the same time. Still, the overall trend isn't a positive one at the moment. So in the immortal words of Vicky Pollard, I'm forced to give an overall conclusion of yeah but nah but yeah but nah but yeah but NO!
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 5/10
Arcane Lore: Last month, we got paladin spells. This time, it's no great surprise this column is among those going vile and dark. Because after all, most of the big mastermind villains are spellcasters, or psionicists or mad scientists, which is basically the same thing, the triumph of intellect over base physical power. Damn jock culture. Or maybe it's just too tricky to take over the world when all you have is a big sword and the ability to swing it well. Anyway, let's get dirrrrty. The skinscribes have a particularly effective method of copy protection for their secret spells. Skin inscription only! Be that their living skin or taken from others, it does make copying the spells particularly tricky, and a moral dilemma in itself above and beyond what they actually do. Are you ready to load up your kitten powered gun to stop them?
Atrophy withers your limbs, causing you substantial action penalties. The pain can also be used to enhance the caster. Watch out for counterspells using that sympathetic link, sucka. How many villains have lost due to that one?
Blood Siphon also lets you draw energy from the lifeforce of others. Isn't that just, y'know, eating? We all do that. Ok, doing it while they're still alive and conscious is rather gross and morally dubious, but it's all a matter of degrees, not some great abomination.
Blood Blister gives you acne from hell to mess up your day socially. As if we didn't have enough trouble being geeky.
Bone Soften is a weird one that has both benefits and penalties. It looks deeply disturbing, but may be addictive in a sadomasochistic way. Once again, gross=evil in their minds.
Bone Spurs draws upon a rather unpleasant real world disease and accelerates it to combat time. All kinds of vile deformities will twist their way out of your skin, much to your agony and inconvenience. I think this qualifies as sadism above and beyond what's needed to achieve your goals.
Control Blood just seems like unpleasantness over practicality. You'll get better results most times just loading up the AoE blasting effects, particularly when the material component is considered. Drugging yourself up to cast a spell is bad, mmkay.
Corpsebond requires you to engage in necrophilia to get a buff. It's another one that really doesn't merit the extra casting time and components compared to standard spells, so really, it's just an excuse for already sick fucks to indulge just before battle.
Curse of Pain Eternal is one of those decidedly mixed ones. In the short term, it's definitely a penalty, but in the long-term, it's an interesting corruptive tool. Frickin' stockholm syndrome. If it weren't for that, evil would have a much tougher time of things keeping groups together. I think this one counts as a success.
Putrefaction brings you rapid aging and death, and then makes both a zombie and ghost slave out of you. Now that's efficiency. I strongly approve of this approach.
Searing Seed impregnates the victim with demon-jizz, which grows into a full-grown evil copy of them in less than 30 seconds. Lovely. That'll really ruin everybody's day. I suggest making a sharp exit after pulling a stunt like that.
Vileblade hurts, corrupts, and is generally rather nasty too. Mind you, damaging someone then making them your ally seems a bit counter-productive really. You don't want your new minion going down embarrassingly easily.
Vile Rebellion makes all your limbs split off and become servants of the caster. This isn't fatal, but is very bad for the sanity indeed. A very tricky one to deal with indeed, as Ash will attest.
Wall of Maggots is pretty self explanatory. You try pushing through this one, you get stripped to the bone. A lot harder to get through than a wall of fire.
Writhing Ruin is another way of killing people and then making their body into a further hazard for friends. Tons of bugs bursting out of them should ruin their body for raising pretty well, and make you clear the area. Yup, I think that's pretty evil. They haven't done too badly after all, even if they do get a bit silly at times.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 6/10
The minions of darkness: Well, transformative prestige classes have obviously proven both popular and easy to write, because here's another 4. After all, you just need to pick a monster, take their iconic powers and squeeze them into a roughly balanced level progression, write a few requirements and flavour bits, and presto! You could keep that running almost as long as the ecologies if you were so inclined. Let's see what gribleys they've picked this time, and if the resulting transformations are sufficiently vile and dark for the issue.
Faceless Ones are doppleganger wannabes, and tend to be even more organised and malevolent than the real thing, infiltrating and taking over places because they want to control, rather than just to survive. Since they only get mindreading a limited number of times a day, rather than at will, they'll still be more vulnerable to being caught out than the real thing, even at max level. But then, I guess that's where backup comes in handy. If you have someone pretending to be you while you pretend to be someone else, figuring out your real secret identity becomes a hell of a lot harder. And if there's a group of you controlling the government and law enforcement, it doesn't matter how much evidence they gather, they'll be the ones on the wrong side of the law, not you.
Deep Thralls are scarred by Kraken and used as their eyes and mouths on land, which means they're stuck with a close relationship with their masters that makes them particularly ill-suited as PC's. They gradually become aquatic, tentacular and able to grapple with great brutality, and also get an intelligence boost, which they'll probably need, since their powerset isn't very strategically powerful. Still, just the threat of weather manipulation powers can buy you a lot of help with a few ranks in bluff and diplomacy.
Shoal Servants are humans that worship Blibdoolpoolp, and acquire a bit of the innsmouth look along the way. They also become aquatic fairly quickly, setting us up for some nasty turf wars between the fish men and the squid men. Since Kuo-Toa have some pretty unique but not overpowering abilities, this prestige class turns out quite cool. The ability to see things in neighbouring dimensions and generate co-operative lightning bolts will certainly come in handy.
Tiger Masks are the biggest suckers of all, serving as lackeys and cannon fodder for Rakshasa. This means they actually attract bolt attacks that would seriously inconvenience their masters, and have to deal with their finger joints painfully inverting. The illustration is appropriately gruesome, and the whole package is something I'd design if I was a rakshasa. So I think this article comes as close as any to putting actual mature consequences for taking the dark path amongst the gross stuff.
Dork tower once again holds off on a punchline that is more than worth the wait.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 7/10
Class acts returns after a two month absence. They really aren't as reliable as I remember this year. Anyway, as it's his baby, Monte misses no time including a vile and dark prestige class in here. The flesheater, cannibalistic halflings who want you for dinner. Don't laugh, because they have full BAB and sneak attack progression, stealth skills, can inflict Con damage with their claws, and track you by scent. Like many of the BoVD classes, they are slightly overpowered, on the assumption that there's no way a PC should be allowed to take them. How very patronizing. It also suffers from the conflation of evil with gross that the BoVD was prone too. I really do not approve. You are failing to build something that seems genuinely realistically evil here, and instead going for cartoonish maniacal laughter instead. Not very mature.
The risen dead: Once again we see how popular templates are. Even monsters that have already been statted out as regular creatures are being redone as templates, so it's even easier to turn PC's into one, or reflect that the original source wasn't the usual one for the creature. So Mummies, Wights and Wraiths follow in the path of Vampires and Liches here, making PC's turned into one all the scarier as adversaries. In addition, they include a new one for ghostly animals, since the regular ghost template doesn't really work for them. All are designed to be pretty close to their original version, and have ECL's several levels greater than their CR boosts, which means they'll be playable, but might be a bit fragile long-term. especially since they'll also have lost all their Con bonuses. Still, D&D becoming more of a toolkit is not something I object too, so this article gets a thumb up from me.
The ecology of the mummy: God, it's been a while since we had one of these. It's been mostly VS's, and even they've been thin on the ground lately. I guess these things come in cycles, because the early 90's was pretty thin ground for ecologies as well. This is a very dry ecology, almost completely removing the fiction for a combination of dry historical stuff, and ideas aimed towards creating interesting encounters for players. Creature combos, tactical notes, treasure suggestions, a sample map, this is a big step away from the old ecology style, and one I'm not sure I like. Guess it's going to be another dry spell here then.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 8/10
Elminster's guide to the realms: Ed is naturally neither grim nor dark, with even his nine hells material operatic as much as it is harrowing, so thankfully he doesn't even try to be in theme. However, he can be pretty sneaky when he chooses too, creating characters who really know how to use their everyday surroundings to best effect. Here's another one of those, a canny old Harper who's probably a bit underpowered for her CR due to having lots of NPC class levels, but since she also has tons of potions and bits and pieces, and knows the terrain around her home, I can see unprepared PC's getting their ass handed to them. Along with the highly specific NPC and terrain info, there's also several new minor potions and oils that should come in handy in any campaign, and more info that we really want to know on how to smoke and cure meat, which is such a typically Ed bit of worldbuilding it makes me laugh. While not that great by his standards, this is still a nicely refreshing break from the overall tone of the magazine, and shows why they keep him around. He fills up page count reliably, and can still do things no-one else can get away with. When he's gone, the magazine will gain yet another few points of banality.
Campaign news: We've finished this year's big events, so this column is looking ahead to next year, and telling us about the new adventures and organisational changes in store. They're putting individual circle members in charge of particular metaregions, which'll speed along the decision making process for everyday rulings and hopefully won't make them more arbitrary. There's lots more adventures to come, including higher level ones where you might be able to make a dent in Iuz's dominion, and more options for you to travel to get involved in them. Oh, and another little bit of skill bloat, just to keep this from being purely positive. As with the last time, it feels like these changes are probably the direct result of issues encountered in play and complained about, which is a good thing to see. I do think a general knowledge (the planes) skill would make more sense than knowledge (ether creatures) at 3e's general level of skill granularity though. That just feels like it was written to punish metagamers, or by someone who preferred the haphazard way 2e did things. What was the lead up to that weirdly specific ruling?
Playing Pieces: This is in theme, as it was a couple of months ago, and follows on directly from that revisiting of the vault of the Drow. After all, they are both vile and dark, so it fits perfectly. So here's 7 new Drow NPC's, plus a good old fashioned vampire who hangs around the vault because hey, even if the company sucks, you don't have to worry about sunburn, and elvish blood is pretty sweet. All of them are pretty morally dubious, and the last three are outright unhinged, a trio of murderous mimes that'll chill the blood of anyone with a hint of clown fear. So there is some silliness here, and also a healthy dollop of darkness, sex, drugs and rock & roll to keep the grimdark from taking itself too seriously, sticking it's head up it's ass and snacking on it's own faeces. Mixed message, certainly, but still more entertaining than being one thing all the time, regardless of the situation.
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 9/10
DM's toolbox: This column changes writers, and takes on a topic that feels more like a Dungeoncraft one than a DM's toolbox one. How to recruit a new player, particularly one who hasn't played RPG's before at all. Still, it approaches the topic in the list based, step by step way that makes this column particularly useful for the socially inept. It's all about making the idea seem fun and accessible. Of course, one problem here is that like the rest of the magazine, they have to aim this towards 3e D&D, which doesn't have a really good basic set, unlike previous versions, and the three books put together are thicker than most of the old boxed sets as well. But even that's solvable as long as you guide them through character creation. After all, they only have to read the Player's handbook, and big chunks of that will be irrelevant depending on which class they pick. A one-to-one introductory session in which they're the centre of attention and all the challenges are tailored to their character is often a good way to start, especially as it gets the explaining part done without the clamour of contradictory voices that can be very offputting. Basically, start simple, and then gradually unveil all the multifold possibilities roleplaying games offer, that you simply can't manage with any other form of entertainment. Hint at the possibilities and invite them to explore them themselves, rather than shoving hundreds of supplements at once in their faces. So it seems this column has survived a writer change without being hit in quality or usefulness, although the topic is a little rehashed. Like the writer submission guidelines being reiterated every year or so, it's an important measure to keep bringing in new blood.
Silicon Sorcery: Age of Wonders 2 is another computer game that to be honest, owes a fair debt to D&D in terms of classes, spells, and monsters. Which of course, makes it all the easier to convert the few bits that are original. A couple of new elemental blast spells, hurting the enemy with geysers of steam and sticky clouds of poisonous gas. Nothing too groundbreaking, but as usual, the slightly different secondary characteristics will help you catch the enemy off guard, and hopefully bypass their resistances. Couldn't they convert utility powers instead, or isn't there many of those in computer games to convert? Overall, this is a definite meh, as we already have more than enough blasty powers. Once again, this shows the flaws in only doing the popular stuff and cutting the rest. You sacrifice the versatility that makes you adaptable to new situations, and make yourself more vulnerable to change.
Nodwick faces a time traveling enemy. Fortunately, he's no more competent than any of their other foes:
Dragon Issue 300: October 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Can I be a human cleric of bahamut (Yes, actually. He's progressive.)
Do greater deities do everything perfectly. (Almost. They still don't always crit. Small mercy though.)
How do you stat out your own deities. (Read the book, follow the formulae. )
Where do paladins of helm get their spells from (Good question. There is some definite metaphysical drama there. )
What's the point of voice of the siren (Even more bonuses. Rockaroo. )
How many domains does an oracular adept have (The usual. You lose your old ones. Don't try and double up like a twinky monkey boy.)
What happens if you get arcane domain spells (They're simply divine for you, pouffles.)
How does slime wave work on large creatures (Lots of surface area = lots of suffering. Take that tarrasque down.)
Does divine might take up an action and use up a turn attempt (no, yes)
If a domain spell boosts caster level, can you use that to make powerful magic items ( Yes, at the usual extra cost.)
Where in the roll do you apply turn resistance (All points. Break the powah!)
Can command set someone up for a coup de grace (No. Self preservation is stronger than a puny 1st level spell.)
Do you need a hand free for a divine focus. (No, you can just be wearing it. Isn't faith a wonderful thing. )
What's new has Dixie take charge, still on a heroic kick. Seems to be going pretty well for her at the moment.
This issue is very disappointing indeed, especially when compared to the breakout experimentation of issue 100, and the turn everything up to 11 extravagance of issue 200. It makes it very clear how much more limited the topics they cover have become, and how much more formulaic the ways they approach them are. Top that off with the specific theme being approached in a manner that simply doesn't give it the gravity it needs, and you have a complete damp squib. Not one I have any real desire to come back too later. Let's hope that with the pressure off, the next issue won't choke quite so badly.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 1/10
83 (116) pages. Whaaat. Are they actively trying to make their covers bad now? This one looks like someone was drawing from a claymation model. An edgy, badass claymation model, to make things even more ridiculous. And they've given up all pretence at backdrop. This is even worse than the very first issue's cover. Really, what the hell were you thinking, letting this one through. Hoo boy. The transition to the new company continues to be a rough ride, it seems.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn goes back to a full page in size, as they actually have a decent amount to say this time. While they may only cover official 3e material in the magazine these days, they do have a ton of stuff by other companies, and no problem with trying out deranged hybrids of options from different books. Once again it's clear that some of the restrictions the magazine works under are due to the management, rather than the creative staff. If they weren't constantly worrying about cross-promotion and relevancy to current product, they would put more weird stuff in. And of course, nothing's stopping you from doing that in your game. As they've said before, you do not have to worry about all the things they do, and should just concentrate on having fun. The compromises needed to make a system that works for everyone mean it may not be perfect for your particular game style, but hopefully it'll require fewer hacks to get there than one that was designed for a specific purpose only.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 2/10
Scale Mail: The first Campaign Components may have been a little too obvious to please my jaded tastes, but plenty of people did like both it's content and format, and they have several more in the pipeline, including swashbuckling this issue, and gladiators in a couple of months time. Both low magic options, interestingly enough. I wonder how much work they'll put into D&Difying them.
Amusingly, we have complaining letters about issue 300 sent even before it came out. Won't someone think of the children, especially those who are already subscribed, so their parents won't get a chance to vet it before it arrives. Since I'm pretty darn sure most of those kids are now fully capable of finding porn on the internet in seconds, even if their parents try and put controls on the computer, the horse is long gone from this barn door. And since the final result wan't even that gruesome or mature, especially compared to the stuff White Wolf is putting out around this time, this all seems pretty pointless.
The readers haven't completely lost their sense of humour though. First we have someone who's obsessing over little details of their logo design, then we have someone who wants to tattoo the No SASE Ogre on their breast. :o The only suitable reply I can think of that is a no SASE ogre filk set to the tune of "No Scrubs", and I really can't be bothered to write two full verses for a single joke response.
A rather more weighty question is why they don't do OGL articles. It basically means everything they publish is just being kept by the company, never to be built further upon. They feel that they have already been more than generous with their intellectual property. Now it's everyone else's turn to give back to them. I suspect that whatever the individual writers think, the lawyers at WotC are already having morning after regrets and trying to look for ways out of the deal. Peter Adkison & Ryan Dancey have both left the company by now, but thankfully their influence lingers.
Finally, there's the issues involved when you make too many things templates. Firstly, there's the silly combinations, and secondly there's the annoying twinked ones where one negates the weaknesses of the other, and a creature can become virtually unkillable, which means it's way more powerful than it's supposed CR. Such is the nature of a modular system. There's always going to be some breakable edge cases, no matter how tightly you design it.
Zogonia loses it's sense of perspective.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 3/10
D&D Previews comes to an odd end, with lots of stuff this month, but only one thing for next month. Guess like the forum, they felt it had become obsolete in the fast moving world of digital communication. That and the preponderance of novels over gamebooks doesn't look good here, does it.
Our only RPG product isn't even D&D. The D20 modern corebook sees them try and do generic action adventure. They hew even closer to the D&D model than they did with Alternity, with 2 of the sample settings being basically modern day D&D done as Buffy and Shadowrun, respectively. Of course, the irony is that worked, as it enjoyed a longer run than Alternity or the Amazing Engine. Still, White Wolf continues to really hold the crown for modern day supernatural roleplaying.
T. H. Lain continues to produce generic D&D novels "singlehandedly" at great speed. City of Fire gives Krusk centre stage.
The Forgotten Realms gets a ridiculous number of novels out for christmas. The Sorcerer by Troy Denning. Insurrection by Thomas M. Reid. Sands of the Soul by Voronica Whitney-Robinson. All familiar names both IC and OOC. Continuity like a thick glutinous paste envelops everything. Where is the room for PC's to make their mark?
Dragonlance is almost as busy, trying to keep up, but not quite managing as usual. Bertrem's guide to the war of souls gets a second volume, obviously the first one sold well. Jean Rabe delivers The Eve of the Maelstrom. And Steven D Sullivan starts to open up another area of Krynn next month. The Dragon Isles. Well, those horrible dragon overlords that were the primary antagonists last product cycle had to come from somewhere. They don't get that big and powerful overnight.
Up on a soapbox: Gary's reminiscences stray to an idea that was very much in fashion during the 70's, and has since slowly fallen out of it. Going to the moon. With the Apollo landings fresh in everyone's minds, it's not surprising that people wanted to put that in their RPG's. And equally unsurprisingly, Gary decided to put some amusing obstacles in their way. What is slightly surprising is that they did then let those obstacles deter them, not wanting to risk their lives to a method of getting to the moon that would only work in a warner brothers cartoon. You know, real researchers had to do decades of research, which often blew up in their faces, before they made it there. You'd think fantasy characters could stand one or two before giving up on their dreams. This is especially sad because he probably would have let them go there if they tried hard enough. (and if he had the time to prepare an adventure for them to play once they were there ) Oh well, it's not as if there weren't other chances to get to the moon, as those playing in Jim Ward's campaign found out. Oh well. Not every group of heroes has what it takes to overcome insurmountable odds, and even in the brutal days of the 70's, not everyone just shrugged and rolled up a new character when their existing one fell. If they did, things wouldn't have changed over the years in the first place.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 4/10
Campaign components: Ah yes, swashbuckling. Since that was the theme of their very final 2e issue, this is a fairly quick revisiting, and shows it remains a pretty popular game style. Unfortunately, they don't have Robin Laws providing the genre emulation ideas this time around, and a dry, point by point listing of all the core classes and races, and how you get get them to fit into a swashbuckling campaign, is not a good way to get me in the mood, as well as eating up a good 10 pages with the kind of waffle you could probably come up with yourself if you felt like it. Guess even with the cut in setting material, they still have writers padding things out because they're being paid by the word. The second half of the article is more interesting to me, with a pretty decent selection of new feats and equipment, and a few new adventure ideas involving putting D&D monsters in the swashbuckling milieu. But still, we have another case where this material is so 3e specific that it doesn't have much utility anywhere else, while the previous special has quite a lot of adventure ideas that would still be good when applied in 3e, or indeed any other system. It makes me think that I might enjoy those mammoth issues in the first half of 2000 all the more in hindsight, since they did cram so much in to make sure we had a good store of material. In the meantime, I have far less to say about this than I should for a 19 page article that eats up a good 6th of the magazine, which irritates me. That's the problem with being dry and competent, but also highly specialised. It means I can't even slate it interestingly. Let's hope Gladiators is more interesting. At least I won't have a previous themed issue to compare it too, so it'll have to have more unfamiliar material simply by necessity.
Meter and measure: Or new shiny crunch specifically for Bards, as if they weren't already one of the most flexible classes in the game. Masterpiece performances are a way for them to gain new uses for their bardic music at the cost of a fair chunk of time and money, plus a small permanent investment of skill points. As a way to balance the permanent acquisition of new powers, it makes sense. But it does mean they're never going to challenge the tier 1 classes who can get an unlimited selection of spells if they can find the time (and OOC supplements) to do the research. Still, it is a good diversion from yet another collection of new spells, and both the performances and their creators are pretty amusingly described. If it was a standard Arcane Lore I'd still like it. It's just it throws into relief another problem with their attempts at making the game more balanced.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 5/10
From Field to Cauldron: Another article of the uses of mundane alchemy? You surprise me. Yup folks, herbalism is actually getting a decent amount of attention this edition, so someone who maxes out their alchemy skill can feel like it's a valuable contribution to the party arsenal. It's certainly a lot cheaper than the stuff in the previous article, although since you'll be paying each time, it might add up over the course of an adventuring career. While more limited than actual spells, this stuff is actually pretty cool, with tricks like ice adhesive, waterproof ink, and several different types of specialised injury relief that make hunting down these herbs very worthwhile for tactically astute adventurers. They may not ever become as ubiquitous as flaming oil and 10 foot poles, but these are another solid bit of stuff to fill up your backpack with.
The ecology of the troll: The new fashion for dry, encounter-focussed ecologies continues in this issue. While there is some info on their lifecycle and mating habits, the majority of the article is once again about fighting them, just like the vs articles. Might as well not use the old name for this one. This one doesn't provide a lair, but puts quite a bit of attention on their potential class capabilities. Yes, we get it now. Nearly anything can become anything in 3e, but some things are better suited to some classes. Ho hum.
Guild secrets: Another thieves guild for this column, this time focussing on long-term scheming. This is helped by the fact that the leader is an elf with dragon blood, which gives him a pretty extended lifespan in which to gradually develop ideas, pick the right people, and groom them for greatness. Course, this kind of long term planning means they're actually pretty vulnerable to a direct application of force, and a high level party with decent divination spells might be able to get the resources together to do it. Since a group can go from 1st to 20th level in a matter of months if they're lucky in 3e, blindsiding them and leading to a dramatic ending where the villain goes "NOOOOO!!!! This can't be happening!!!" definitely sounds like fun to me. Plus since they're good investors, I'm sure the haul you can get from this adventure'll be huge. So this column is short, but pretty usable.
Dork tower fails to realise why it's contributing to the problem.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 6/10
Elminster's guide to the realms: Sometimes Ed's characters play it smart. Sometimes, though, they're just dumb, and kept alive by fiat. Such as this one. Another character that's given special powers because Ed wants a more literary feeling character than the D&D rules accommodate. Let's face it, D&D diviners are THE most badass speciality of one of the most badass classes, especially at high level, where they're the kings of xanatos gambit long plans and always having the right counter to any challenge. No, it's just a woman who has visions when she touches magical items, and any attempts to majorly inconvenience her have resulted in obnoxious feebleminding direct from Mystra herself. Really, what can you do with a setup like that. It automatically turns the character from an adventure in themselves to a mouthpiece for the DM to give you cryptic plot hooks. So yeah, this is the kind of railroading plot device character I really wish we'd outgrown by now. Sure, the Realms has a whole load of legacy ones baked in, but you don't need to keep adding more! Sigh.
Fiction: Cause and Effect by Paul Kemp. Our other bit of Realms material this month, on the other hand, is pretty good. Paul once again brings a darker, more morally ambiguous edge to the Realms. While the high wizards may be pretty much untouchable, the cities are still full of rogues and scoundrels both guild affiliated and independent, and they're constantly engaged in backstabbing power games with permanent gruesome consequences. Still, as with the Erevis Cale stories, he doesn't make the protagonist of this an outright monster. He may be sorely tested, but in the end he takes the merciful path. Of course, that may come back to bite him in the ass later, because no good deed goes unpunished, but that's a story for another time. In the meantime, it sets up another character who has a good deal of potential, and shows you how to create a good story with minimal dialogue. I object to neither of those things.
The ad free scan fails to excise everything. The complete guide to dopplegangers by goodman games gets a rather entertaining before and after picture.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 7/10
Campaign news: Still trying to maintain a degree of continuity between adventures here, despite the headaches it causes. Advancing the metaplot based on the average of the module results, while making sure that characters don't become unplayable forever if they did things out of order, and changing the rounding rules so groups wind up even closer to the correct challenge level for their size and composition. Pretty dull stuff really. The big ship requires constant small corrections, to make sure it doesn't go off course and wind up in big trouble later. Let's see what feature they've cooked up this time.
Greyhawk's beggars union: We've already had a thieves guild this month. Including a beggar's one too feels a little overspecialised. But then maybe that's the point, since swashbucklers are urban adventurers and likely to encounter both, and if the two conflict, it makes for good adventures when you're caught in the middle. And with plenty of history to draw on, the history of the City of Greyhawk beggars & thieves guilds turns out pretty interesting, with plenty of back and forth and ambitious gambits. It even includes the first canon gay Greyhawk character as far as I know, which is definitely something you wouldn't have seen in the TSR days. While this could have been longer, the fact that it's interesting, sneakily progressive, and well tied into existing history makes it pretty cool. They'll never catch up to Exalted (or even the Realms for that matter) in terms of pansexual antics, but at least it's something. Kudos to Erik Mona for doing that when he really didn't have too.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 8/10
Dungeoncraft: This column, like DM Toolbox, returns after a break and changes hands, showing that some of the staff did not go along for the ride when Paizo was formed, and probably won't be appearing in the magazine anymore. And just like the rest of the magazine, they're cutting out the fluff and larger scale setting detail to concentrate on encounters and modular parts that you can quickly slot in any fairly generic D&D world. Once again I have cause to worry about their decline in variety of material. Particularly as this is basically just Monte Cook just repeating and elaborating on his own writing in the DMG, reminding us how the scaling math works in 3e, and what exactly a balanced encounter is for various sized parties. As usual with a lineup change, it feels like a reset to square one, which is always pretty tedious for me, and the best I can hope for is that by heading in a different direction to Ray's material, it will start covering interesting new ground at some point. For now this is just another bit of filler that tells me nothing I don't know already.
What's new mocks the swashbuckling tropes, along with thievery in general.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 9/10
DM's toolbox: The advice here, on the other hand, is some quite handy stuff on pacing. Encounters of exactly your ECL all the time are BORING! You do need to switch things up with harder ones, easier ones, explorey bits, puzzles, interactions, the occasional cut scene. So far, so good. What I do find amusing is the idea that the average DM would find running published adventures goes more smoothly than their own stuff, when i've had so many experiences that are the precise opposite. Be it because they're trying to run the module without reading it first, or simply feel less free to improvise than when they've created their own adventure, I can think of quite a few experiences where the module bits have ground more than the self-created plots. (this applies even more to the WoD, where as much as I love the games, most of the modules suuuuuck.) So while the solution is perfectly decent, they're arriving at it by a road I haven't travelled down, which makes it more interesting by context. And that does raise an important point. Games get changed from edition to edition based on what problems actually get reported. And the ways a system breaks, or not, depends on how a group plays it. As we discovered over it's lifespan, 3e demonstrated problems when released into the wild that the playtesters never would have found no matter how long it was tested, because of the parameters they were set when testing. Which is why testing by people completely unconnected to the designers can be so beneficial. Once again, the lesson both IC and OOC boils down to "It's good to have variety."
Against that bloody misspelling, nodwick fights in vain.
Dragon Issue 301: November 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice: Does lightning bolt work underwater. (Does it say it doesn't. Don't you start quoting real world physics at me. Skip has no truck with that crap.)
Can you fly underwater (Generally, no. Some magic may alter this. )
Can you cast spells from inside an apparatus of kwalish (Not without opening the hatch and making yourself vulnerable. This is why mobile fortresses have high up balconies where the wizards can rain death while being out of range of mundane missiles )
Do rings need an action to activate (Standard. S-s-s-s-s-s-s standard action. Jellybean standard. )
Can you become invisible, attack, and become invisible straight away (See the last question. Or, in other words, NO!!!!! )
How many points can monks heal in battle. (As much as they want, up to their limit. Best to wait until you've taken enough damage to use it in one go, or they'll waste their actions.)
Does hide in plain sight require a standard action (Not necessarily.)
How are ability affecting enhancements affected by ability drain. ( They aren't. When your base score goes to 0, you're in the shit, no matter how many add-ons you have)
If a dragon has cleric spells, do they count as arcane spells (yes. They get it from their own power, not any devotion to someone else.)
Can you make a wand of empowered magic missiles that are still cast as if 1st level (no)
Can you counterspell spellfire (no)
Does negative energy ray allow a save (yes)
Can you make an attack of opportunity with a spell (No. But any spells already cast can still contribute. )
Do summoned red slaad implantations vanish when the spell expires (Yes. Hey, gang rape with no evidence. What a wonderfull..... Er I mean, if Skip catches any muthafucka exploiting that rule, Skip will cap that sonofabitch in the nuts to make sure they never do it again. And lo, it will be righteous! )
Can a summoned monster summon other monsters. (No. We lost several planets to fiends due to summon cascades back in the last edition. No way we're making that mistake again.)
Can I teleport a petrified companion away (Yes, but he's gonna be a lot heavier. This may cause problems.)
Can you coup de grace trolls (Only with attacks that can do normal damage to them. This doesn't help, does it.)
Can you kill a troll with phantasmal killer. (If it believes it's dead, all the regeneration in the world won't save it)
Does bigby's forceful hand trigger an AoO (No)
Can unseen servants fly, Can they run, Do they take up space (Recycled question, no, no. In a lot of ways they might as well not be there.)
Hmm. A character sheet, and a spell area template in the back. Intriguing.
After the irritating but interestingly bad stuff of last issue, this issue returns to a fairly even split of competent, and competent but dull. The combination of sticking strictly to formula, and the generally low-key nature of the new crunch means it does not evoke the atmosphere the theme demands, and the sloppy looking artwork in the issue exaggerates it further. It feels like the edition is growing staler even as we speak. It feels far less surprising in hindsight that they wound up accelerating the revision cycle. I'd get sick of it too if I was forced to stick that strictly to a formula. :v Let's see if they shake up anything more significant than a snowglobe for christmas.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 1/10
119 (120) pages. Finally, a decent cover for the first time in half a year, even if the colour scheme is a bit XTREEEME!!!!! and pretty much the opposite of christmassey. Like certain previous december issues, they've decided to go with the general theme of magic, which always gives them tons of leeway to pick articles. Hopefully that means they'll give some new freelancers a chance to prove themselves and add new ideas to the pot. The game does need regular stirring up, it seems.
Scan Quality: Colours somewhat oversaturated, indexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: To warm up for the issue, we build anticipation. Sometimes, the anticipation turns out more exciting than the main event. Jesse certainly finds that the case with D&D combat. While it can be exciting sometimes, once the battle has got underway, you soon burn through the big trump card abilities and get an idea of how the conflict is going to go. This is one area where system really matters hugely, with the amount of tactical options you have (and are readily usable without causing the user headaches) varies quite a lot. Plus there's the question of overall swinginess, how unpredictable the dice are and how much a single action can change the overall course of a battle. So there is a decent amount to think about here. Does the build-up to a battle being more exciting than the battle itself mean the system is a problem, and in need of overhaul? Or is it an inevitability when you run a game with a fair amount of actual roleplaying between fights? Opinions?
Scale Mail: Issue 300 gets four letters devoted to it, three of them negative. So with votes running a 1 positive, 2 outraged and 1 who simply found it tremendously underwhelming in it's attempts at controversy, they're left a bit unhappy. I do agree with the editors that the material wasn't actually that more gruesome than any other, it was merely hype. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM!!! Really, they deserve all the criticism they get for that issue, even if not all of it is entirely accurate, simply because it was that annoying.
The mummy ecology gets some real world historical elaboration. After all, they were so popular around this time that Mummy: the Resurrection got a players guide covering other cultures after originally being intended as a one book thing. Any mention of them will get the attention of the obsessives, who love to correct you if you get it wrong.
And finally, we have a letter that mirrors one of my observations, that the current format for covers neither looks as good on average, or has as much variety as the stuff from around 83-95. They just take things so much more seriously, and that's not always a good thing. In any case this is another case where they don't plan to change in the near future. They think giving us the hard sell on the covers, and keeping the badass gurning will work better than a larger scale clean image. This makes me a sad kitty. Apple have proved that you can still sell very well with minimalist packaging. Marketing people need to remember that elegance is more important than quantity.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 2/10
Zogonia takes the pragmatic approach to dealing with niche protection.
Up on a soapbox: Gary reminds us why enforcing encumbrance is important. It's so when the players come across hauls of thousands of coins, the adventure doesn't end smoothly there. Instead, they have to figure out how much they can carry, and how much they should leave, for while they're weighed down, they're vulnerable to further attacks and not able to run away as easily. Dragon hoards filled with copper and silver? Often not worth the hassle, especially at higher level. And if they leave them unguarded, chances are someone else'll come along and snag the leftovers. The whole thing was built so there would always be more challenges to throw at the players and make sure they didn't get complacent. And the good thing is that until they get high enough in level to teleport without error and manufacture their own bags of holding, you can always reintroduce problems like this, even if you've glossed over it in the past. They might not be ready for the tomb of horrors to be a fair challenge, but you're never too weak to not be inconvenienced by encumbrance. This is the kind of advice you won't be seeing from Robin or Johnn, and the different perspective remains very valuable.
What's new moves even further forward in the magazine. And refuses to acknowledge their past. Well, it wasn't pretty, was it.
The summoners circle: Ah yes, summoning. Now there's one of those powers that's a real headache for those who want a strictly balanced system. If you can summon any creature you like within a certain power level, then the conjurer winds up a ridiculously flexible swiss army knife, even if individual creatures are considerably lower level CR than their summoner. Older editions often balanced that by making maintaining control a risky business, with fatal consequences if disrupted, but that's been made less common in 3e. Here's another variant system that attempts to further increase balance in the summoning system by making individual spellcasters less flexible, but spellcasters as a whole more, by giving them each small customisable selections for their Summon Monster * spells that they can expand a bit with research. So you can give your spellcaster a themed selection, or more likely, a deliberately contrasting selection of monsters for maximum flexibility, with characters in the same party avoiding taking the same options, if I know my charop at all. So like the bard masterworks last issue, this is a system experiment I find interesting, but I'm also ambivalent about, because you can see them trying to gradually reduce the number of options each character has, which is one of my least favourite parts of 4e. Oh well, it's only a magazine article, which means it's easily ignored if you want to stick to the conventional selection of celestial dire badgers and whatnot.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 3/10
Dork tower takes try before you buy to quite disturbing heights.
Class acts: An exceedingly long and in depth class act for a change, as they give us what is not just a single prestige class, but a whole load of customizable ideas and plot hooks. The Tainted, people who for whatever reason, have become bonded with some kind of lower-planar creature, and must deal with their new urges and powers in whatever way they choose. This is a rich ground for roleplaying, and along with the stats, (which eat up a huge amount of space, as they detail the powers you get for bonding with 21 different types of fiends, (plus progressions for both warriors and spellcasters, which is a definite help), and encourage you to detail the effects for other monsters as well) we get plenty of advice on how you can wind up in the class from a setting point of view, especially if you want to play a character unwillingly bonded with a demon and struggling against it. See, this is the kind of thing the book of vile darkness should have had more of, instead of going Look at me! I'm so Eeeevil!!!! I eat human flesh and fuck spider-kittens with my pierced genitals and manipulate people's cancers! :rolleyes: This is definitely the most ambitious class act so far, and one that could accommodate an entire party of people, bonding them with different fiends appropriate to their personalities, (although this could turn into an 80's cartoon if done wrong) and showcasing the different ways they handle their changes. I strongly approve.
Arcane Lore: Ahh yes, cantrips. One of the things originally introduced in the magazine, way back in issue 59. Man, it's been a long time. We've had several experiments with them over the years too, including the rather good one in issue 221. Good to see people still proving that imagination is more important than raw power if you really want to be an effective spellcaster.
Zap Trap'll inflict a single point of static'y nastiness on people touching your stuff. Enough to keep the other students off your stuff, but hopefully not killing them even if they are 1st level wizards. And frankly, if they're dumb enough keep poking where they shouldn't, let cumulative applications wear them down, they don't deserve to gain any more levels.
Deftness is about as useful as aid another. +2 bonus to a skill roll may seem small, but is not to be underestimated in a pinch. You have all these cantrip slots, better to use something like this than waste them.
Perfect Pitch is another example of how a tiny spell can have huge real world benefits. A lot of musicians would kill for this, given how annoying it is training for years and then having some upstart outshine you without even trying.
Thunderhead is another one that inflicts tiny amounts of electricity damage, but in intimidating style. I think using boom boom as the punchline to this joke is actually appropriate for a change.
Coin of the Realm is a cut down fools gold, only disguising a single coin at a time. This may not let you get hold of magic items, but you should be able to manage more than your fair share of rounds at the pub.
Flag lets you send out a signal without all the bother of drawing on and stringing up your hanky. Again, the little things make life run much smoother.
Mirror similarly allows you to attend to your vanity at a whim. What use is poor faithful Jerome now? Make him do The Walk of shame.
Stench is obviously for comedy purposes. Student wizards are still students, and that means twattery. He who smelt it dealt it.
Footpad's grace means 1st level wizards may be able to beat similar level thieves. The usual problem there then.
Glittering Razors is another very weak combat spell. An extra point of damage? Well, that may be all you can afford sometimes. Direct damage really isn't the most efficient use of these slots.
Heat Water, on the other hand is both invaluable on an everyday basis, and may be a lifesaver. We can all do with a good cuppa now and then.
Resize is handy for any wizard of size or shape that makes buying clothes tricky and expensive. Now you can stuff your face with even greater impunity. The ankh-morpork guys'll be all over this.
Yell is another no brainer for a wizard who wants to get stuff done. We can't all have the natural projection of BRIAN BLESSED! I think this has been a pretty likable collection. Once again, the reasons why wizards beat sorcerers in the long run is made very clear.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 4/10
60 Magical side-effects: Ah yes, adding quirks to magical items to make them more memorable. We've seen articles on you in issues 34, 163, and probably one or two more I can't find at the moment. Roll on the table for instant fun, which may be beneficial, but more likely will simply be a minor pain in the ass, particularly since this one is focussed on potions, which are generally one-shot items, so you don't have a chance to get used to them. Overall, this one is better than the one from issue 34, with better formatting and more solid mechanics, but not as good as the ones from issue 163, which are longer, more comprehensive and broader in targeting. But still, all have plenty of fun in them, and aren't too hard to convert back and forth. This is one case where more options are still a good thing, as the topic hasn't been done to death yet.
Bestiary loses it's The again, this time for good. Darn kids these days, no respect. :shakes stick: This time we go back to golems. Last given a special in issue 209, (and the 96 april fool one as well, but we shall not speak of that. ) And hey ho, they walk straight into the trap that last time so effectively averted, that of just picking a bunch of materials, and making a golem based on them. Not every lesson of the past has been taken to heart.
Web golems pretty much force you to learn the grappling rules. :p That in itself'll probably dissuade many DM's from using them. Still, at least they're vulnerable to fire.
Alchemical golems are made from the runoff of your magical experiments over the years, making them ecologically sound to make, and rather unpleasant to hit. Waste not, want not, so collect the corpses of things they kill and use them for making undead in turn.
Mud Golems are like incredibly souped up mudmen. They make you slip, they make you drown, they're completely immune to piercing & slashing weapons. That is indeed going to be a pain to beat.
Rope golems also grapple you, and cut off your air supply. This is going to be an issue in actual play. You really aren't selling me on these things.
Puzzle Golems are one big man that can split into lots of little interlocking stone men, like a particularly elaborate transformers team. That's actually a pretty cool idea, and makes them very versatile at dealing with teams of adventurers. So this certainly hasn't been a complete waste of time. Just the usual filtering process as we deal with Sturgeon's law.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 5/10
Silicon sorcery: This column is both moved forward, and way bigger than normal, as they do a good round of backconversions from Neverwinter Nights. They have a whole range of interesting new golems for you to fight, which aren't of the "pick a new material" variety either. Let's see if they're as inventive as prime Ed material, or just more enemies for the sake of variety.
Glyph Guardians are golems further enhanced with magical runes, so they can zap enemies with energy rays and trap them in stasis for their bosses to deal with later. Their only drawback is that this limits their range of travel, you you know you can definitely run away if you're not strong enough to take them.
Old One Guardians are variant iron golems from a vanished civilisation. Instead of breathing poison gas, they produce a firey aura and elemental storms to make your life miserable. Like the regular ones, they're strong and dumb, and immune to nearly all magic, so you're going to have to bring the raw force to beat them.
Battle Horrors look like golem genies, top half the usual heavy construct, tapering off into glowing energy. Since that means they can fly with perfect maneuverability, they're a lot harder to get away from than most dumb constructs. Still, at least the glow means you can always see them coming.
Minogons are golems powered by bound minotaur spirits. This means they have extra damaging charge attacks, and can rage and stun with their roar. Still, unlike clay golems, they don't actually break free, which is a relief to their creator. All of these have pretty decent visual setups and aren't completely derivative, so I don't object to them.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Yet more magical armors. These are interesting though, as they're aimed at spellcasters. As our long-term ecologist points out, it would make more sense if they designed stuff for their own benefit, not some annoying trompy fighter. Let's see what the selfish spellcaster can do to save their own life.
Armor of Healing doesn't actually provide any AC bonus, but casts healing spells on you in quick succession. This probably won't save your life in a protracted fight against lots of bad guys, but is certainly better than nothing. Just make sure you have a cleric around to recharge it.
Flame Armor uses up lots of item slots, which makes it a lightly iffy choice. If you have nothing better to put there, a burning shield is a good deal better than nothing. Grapple the enemy to get the most of it's effects.
Fog Armor billows around you, and can grant concealment, or give you gaseous form. Since concealment scales differently from regular armor, this is valuable for both spellcasters and fighters.
Liquid Armor takes suntan lotion, adds woad, and makes it a hell of a lot more protective. A bit gross really. As it only lasts an hour too, I don't think this is really worth it.
Retractable Armor appears and dissappears with but a word. Exactly what that means ruleswise is not sufficiently specified. Obviously it would be a lot more useful if you can make it disappear and reappear again as free actions in the same round, only making yourself vulnerable while actually casting. Sloppy writing.
Retribution Armor splits damage between you and your attacker. Not as good as full on-reflection like we've seen in the past. Another one that works well fighting one-on-one, but swarming enemies'll take you down without too much trouble.
Stalagmite Armor lets you turtle, hiding you in caves with rather more safety than a mushroom cap. It'd be more useful if you could actually see out to know when to turn back. Once again the flaws of the items seem rather more significant than most articles of this kind. Here comes the slide towards the more brutal nerfings of 3.5 & 4e.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 6/10
Elminster's guide to the Realms: This month's bit of Realms trivia is a trio of card games, giving it somewhat more universal applicability than just giving us yet another location would. Guess the place got a little more able to cater to people who want something on every detail of their imaginary world, because I don't remember them doing this before, despite Ravenloft getting a fair bit of card stuff back in the 90's. All these variants can be played with a regular deck, and are simple enough to fit into a column of text, so this is very usable indeed. Like info on food, musical instruments, or wedding arrangements, you never know when it'll come up, and you'll be glad to have this to reference.
Rogues gallery: Another column that's taken a break over the past year, the Gallery looks quite different this time around. But it's still completely Realms centric. And surprise surprise, they're busy with metaplot events. Involving Drow. Not content with two successful series featuring exiled drow, they're now producing one centered on Menzoberranzan itself. Milk that cash cow! Still, this means the guys statted up are suitably chaotic evil and unburdened by angst. You can extract them to use in your games and have your players kill them guilt free.
Pharaun Mizzrym is one of the head wizards of the Sorcere academy. This of course means he has tons of enemies, and no respect from the priestesses, despite being an absolute badass. Mind you, if Drow respect you, that probably doesn't bode well in the long run either. I suspect he won't die peacefully in bed.
Jeggred is a half demon, (Glabrezu to be precise, if his characteristics are anything to go by ) borne by one of Lolth's priestesses and raised to be her personal attack dog. He's not exactly stupid, but his physical attributes are his strong point, and he knows which side his bread's buttered on. As long as he gets plenty of opportunities to shred and slaughter, he's unlikely to turn on his mum. The family that slays together stays together.
Quenthel Baenre is the second in command priestess, with only her sister standing in the way of supreme rulership. She did get killed by Drizzt once, but this hasn't stopped her. Someone powerful must be genuinely loyal to her, which is a bit unusual around here. Of course, you can only fail so many times. Whether she'll get to the top or not will probably be answered over the course of the novels.
Gromph Baenre is her brother, and right at the top of the wizardly heirarchy. Nepotism is alive and well down in Menzoberranzan. With 22 spellcaster levels, he's comfortably brushing epic capabilities, and relatively content with his lot. After all, he trained most of the people beneath him, and knows where all the bodies are buried. You'll have to work pretty hard to get one up on him. I think getting in outsiders, like say PC's would be a scheming drow's best shot. :p
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 7/10
Fiction: The hostile dark by Robert E Vardeman. Our first bit of fiction in quite a while that isn't part of a series or set in a D&D campaign world. It's a bit of a throwback, as two rogues are sent on a mission by a mysterious wizard to the end of the earth, and definitely owes a lot to Lankhmar in particular in the interplay of the characters. They call the big city their home, but venture out of it regularly in search of adventure. They even lost their first loves in very similar fashion. And they wind up facing an interesting monster, winning by wits, coming back, and getting a reward that really isn't worth it, leaving them pretty much in the same position for the next adventure in the same way as them too. So yeah, this is derivative to the point that it could be Fafhrd & Mouser fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off for publication. If you're hungry that kind of S&S story, it'll satisfy your appetite for a bit, but it's not as good as the originals.
Campaign news: Yet more changes for the next year, as they try to juggle the conflicting mandates of making the rules fun, balanced, and simple enough to be easily followed. Most of these are to the magic item purchasing system, which they're making quite a bit more restrictive if you ain't got the feats to build your own. People were apparently twinking out quite egregiously, and that had to stop. Can't say I'm too surprised. Magic Marts get pretty frequent complaints on forums from people who don't want them in their game. Of course they'd cause problems when put into large scale organised play. Course, this will result in a lot of complaints, but that's just something they'll have to deal with. This is why starting restrictive and then gradually loosening up with more options is easier to implement than adding more restrictions onto a game once it's already going.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 8/10
Masks of iron: Another organisation and associated prestige class here this month. Johydee is one of Oerth's more obscure gods, apart from one fairly famous artifact, she hasn't done much over the years. OR HAS SHE? Yup, these guys are another group of harper wannabees, secret do-gooders working behind various aliases and making the world a better place with trickery and careful information gathering. Perfect PC material, really. The prestige class is an all-rounder with a mix of roguish skills and clerical magic, going up to 5th level spells (with a fairly limited selection) at 10th level. Since they gain both magical and mundane information gathering and deception techniques, they should actually be pretty good at that, not foiled by the first high level diviner who takes an interest, and since they're pretty versatile, they seem a good choice for a solo adventure. Plus they make great mysterious mission giving mentors at lower level. I think they definitely have their uses. To make sure the truth gets out (without dying in the process), you have to know how the liars hide it.
Dungeoncraft: Monte gets into the swing of Encounter centric advice with some on the right way to run large combats. The important thing here is not to let things turn into a grind. Make sure you have the basic details down nice and tight, so you don't get bogged down by looking up rules, and then get a rollin. Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let anyone spend too much time obsessing over tactics, as after all, in a real pitched battle you don't get much time to think, and adrenalin does make people do silly things, and don't fudge rolls, because fights are more dramatic and tense when the players know they're both in real danger, and can win quickly if they pull off a clever masterstroke against the enemies. And when it becomes obvious who's winning, don't let it degenerate into a grind to the death, let people surrender, run away, or other such ideas that are more likely to result in interesting plots further along the line. Since Monte is one of those writers who still finds time to play regularly as well, I think we can be pretty sure that this approach works for him. Previous editions worked best with playing a little fast and loose with the rules because you'd find contradictory bits that locked up the game if you tried to apply everything literally, while 3e works better with a little looseness because otherwise it slows to a crawl at higher levels. Both are results you need to avoid if you want a long-running campaign. So we're starting to get some useful specific advice here, and a decent new perspective. Looks like there may be life in the old column yet.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 9/10
The play's the thing is taken over by Mike Mearls, and does the usual thing after a changeover where they deliver some blates obv's bit o' info like it's the coolest new idea EVARS! This time it's our good old friends reskinning and tweaking the descriptions of spells, to keep players from becoming too jaded and taking them for granted. Seen that before with spells, seen that before with monsters, both done larger, more playfully, and with better artwork. While not a bad idea, this is definitely a case where since I'm a long-term reader, the article is simply redundant, because it doesn't bring anything new to the table, and by reminding me of past glories like issue 200's article on exactly the same topic, also shows how much more rigid they've become, with the ideas here hewing more closely to the RAW descriptions of the spells than the old ones. Wake me up when you've burnt through the basic stuff and have some more idiosyncratic advice to offer us like Robin sometimes did.
This years statement of ownership shows that they've leveled off after the sharp rise of the last couple of years, and may be starting to decline again. With an average of just below 73k and a last month just below 74, they've obviously been having some interesting month to month fluctuations we don't get to see. Will they stay steady for the next few years, or will the transfer to paizo hurt consumer confidence and result in another sudden drop? At least the number of freebies has been cut in half, anyway.
DM's toolbox: Johnn returns, with another piece on using prefab adventures in your game. Guess they're having another push on that idea in the hope it'll boost supplement sales. Still, the worst thing you can do is just start running them blind and hope it'll all work out as they go from one room to the next. Instead, you should at least read it through beforehand and figure out how to fit it into your campaign world, and doing stuff like adjusting the stats and printing out loose-leaf handouts for the players'll help even more. I think this falls into the category of completely common sense advice that everyone ought to know, but we all sometimes forget, (presuming you use modules in the first place) because life is busy, and sometimes you don't have time to properly prepare. Efficient and clean, but not particularly interesting yet again.
Nodwick discovers the first magic ever used. The conjurers guild are going to be smug about this for years.
Dragon Issue 302: December 2002
part 10/10
Sage advice goes Epic. Does this mean it'll take ages? Certainly no shortage of problems to address with that book.
Do you improve your BAB or not after level 20 (Yes, but you don't get any more iterative attacks. )
Can you apply more than 20 points to power attack at epic levels (Yes. This can get pretty heavy.)
Does epic prowess increase your BAB. (No.)
Do epic weapon focus and specialization stack with the regular one (Yes)
Do epic save bonuses stack with regular ones (They're untyped, so yeah. )
If a bonus is untyped, does it have a type ( Divide by zero error. Please reboot skipbot 2000)
What bonuses do the great (ability) feats grant (They don't. They increase your actual rating. So confusing.)
Can a non epic character use epic skill effects (If they're munchikined enough to make the DC's. In many cases this isn't that hard. )
What's defensive roll (You have played a rogue, haven't you. )
Can you counter having your illusions detected by a DC 80 spot check (no. At this kind of level, lots of powers are useless against equal opponents )
Can epic level characters end up with different BAB's despite having the same classes and levels (Yes. Skill points too. Be a rogue first, then a ranger, then a spellcaster if you want to really make the most of your levels at epic superhigh. )
Do you get any benefits for increasing your spellcaster level above 20 (yes. Some classes get more benefit than others though.)
How do you choose feats for multiclass epic characters (MADly. )
How do you get 11+th level spells (Take improved spell capacity lots of times. It goes up and up and up.)
Do you need to be a divine spellcaster to cast epic healing spells (Skip's afraid so. At least, for the positive uses. You're free to screw things up. The gods won't get upset about that.)
What does a druid need to do to get epic spells (Same as anyone else. )
Can a bard with 9th level spells through improved spell capacity get epic spells (Yes. Even paladins and rangers can do this, if they're mad enough to burn 6 feats.)
Can you count your item bonuses to ability scores to get epic feats.(Yes, but if you lose the bonus, you lose access to the feat. Epic level characters without their loot can wind up unable to get any XP, because they can't fight things with CR's well below their level without losing. How humiliating.)
Can you use automatic quicken spell with other metamagic. (Not much. It's added after all the other calculations. )
What's the default area for epic spells ( There is none. It's all up to you. )
Isn't it too easy to make epic spells by adding tons of mitigating factors (Maybe. Worth considering. )
Can you make an epic spell as a trap (Probably. This can get pretty evil. )
Do epic psions get more PP's after 20th level or not (No. They're still way better than epic sorcerers though.)
Can you use spell stowaway with spell-like abilities (yes)
What happens if a demilich enters an antimagic field (Magic still doesn't work on them. Like Russian, two no's don't make a yes in D&D logic. )
What is greater than regular flying. ( Faster regular flying! What are you on?!)
What can an unseen servant do. (Anything it's smart and strong enough to do. Not very much, especially if you don't keep track of it and update it's orders. Remember the cautionary tale of mickey mouse. That should put a chill in any wizards apprentice round a blazing campfire. )
Another themed character sheet lurks near the back, while the dork tower crew prepare for Origins very early on the back page. They bumped What's new forward for this?
Well, it looks like this round of company shakeups is starting to settle down again, which hopefully means they can get back to producing work that's a little less derivative. Or maybe it means they'll be relying even more heavily on rehashed topics, it's still not entirely certain. Guess I'll just have to keep reading and see. Oh well. Less than 10 years to the present now. No matter how slowly I go, it can't take THAT long. Can it? .......
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 1/9
88 pages (108) Well, as they've been hinting for a couple of issues,. it's gladiator time. And while they don't have a full backdrop for this one, it's not just one character and a load of tedious whitespace. You could almost call it ...... romantic. The roar of the crowd, victory or death, glory and fortune. You can see why some people would choose that life over months of wilderness trekking to find an adventure. But can it make a whole campaign? I guess we'd better see what hidden depths lie beneath the arena, and if they can change the scenery quick enough for lots of different rounds in a day.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The good thing about the gladiatorial format is that you don't need a fixed party to show up for each session, and can run short sessions consisting of just a single combat on a regular basis while maintaining some degree of continuity and internal consistency. So it's perfect for say, a lunchtime game in the WotC offices. Which is exactly how they gave the material here a good old playtesting. And even more than a regular 3e campaign, they delighted in generating really exotic characters, for the arena thrives on novelty. Since it's obvious they actually had fun in the making of the issue, and got some playtesting in as well, that makes me more optimistic about the contents. If they had fun playing it, instead of just shovelling stuff out to meet the monthly deadlines, chances are we can have fun with it too.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 2/9
Scale Mail: They manage to find a letter that's unreservedly positive about issue 300, with their only little niggle that the forum is long-gone. Unsurprisingly, they blame the internet for that. You've got to move with the times, and enough people have that it no longer got a decent number of letters. So they definitely aren't going back on that decision.
We get a request for more tie-in adventures, so the themes in Dragon and Dungeon are even more closely co-ordinated. Be careful what you wish for. Before you know it there'll be even more pressure to catch 'em all around here.
A letter that points out that in some ways, issue 273's swashbuckling stuff was better than 301's. It was certainly better referenced. See, this is the problem with covering the same topic again too soon. You need to give it at least 5 years or so for there to be a decent amount of audience churn, otherwise everyone'll remember and compare them.
The character sheet from issue 301 gets a surprising amount of commentary. It's pretty, but maybe not the most practical design. Character sheets always wind up a mess after a year or two of weekly use, adding experience, equipment, and regularly taking damage. A pristine character sheet is like a perfectly made bed. Going to that much effort every day is a waste, but you should do it sometimes, really.
Another letter about issue 300 points out that it's actually less scary than most Stephen King novels, and those are considered entirely suitable for kids these days, despite there being a fair amount of sex and gruesome death in them. It's amazing what a difference marketing and familiarity makes.
And finally, we have an amusingly dogmatic letter from an old-school reader who isn't entirely happy with the way the magazine has gone in recent years. Gygax is the only really good thing left in it. Looking at his writing style, I can see why he thinks that. :p
Zogonia meets a foe who forgoes the usual minion system. This is actually more scary.
Dork tower suffers from selective memory loss, just like everyone else.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 3/9
Campaign components: The modular treatment of Knights and Swashbucklers turned out to be surprisingly dull. However, that is not the case for gladiators, which turn out to be very well suited to the 3e ruleset. Building characters on equal point buys, levels and amounts of money, and then seeing which is the deadliest is an entirely valid and well supported way of playing the game, with all the different fiddly parts for you to optimise. This is further helped by the fact that the real world history of gladiatorial fighting reads like a particularly gonzo fantasy campaign in itself. From humble beginnings, it became a huge sprawling commercial monstrosity, with increasingly over the top new novelties introduced on a regular basis to keep the attention of an increasingly jaded population. Lions, tigers, midgets and mini naval battles, oh my. Adding demihumans, magic and weirder monsters doesn't hurt the mood at all. So this time, they manage to sell me pretty effectively on their game model, as it allows not only for easy pickup fights with whoever is around at the time, but also a ton of roleplaying centred around the backstage politics, with plot hooks like being sent out to capture a particularly impressive monster for the arena and the usual cheating shenanigans that take place in any competitive sport. They're relatively light on the new crunch this time as well, with just a few new feats, and a system for tracking your fame in the ring. (and it amuses me to think about them having an office leaderboard. ) So this is more applicable to other games than many of their articles as well. Let's hope they can find some more alternative playstyles that actually fit the system well.
Piffany saves the day in Nodwick. And how. Why should wizards get all the inventive uses for their spells?
Class acts: Looks like the tendency for longer prestige class write-ups with more fluff attached is catching on. We have three different gladiator based 5 level prestige classes this month, each showcasing a different combat style.
The invisible blade becomes a deadly feinter and sneak attacker, taking the enemy down before they even realize they've been hit. Combine that with some stage magician-esque antics, and the audience won't be seeing your enemies for long, but they'll still love you for it.
The occult slayer is of course designed specifically to fight spellcasters. Never an easy task for a warrior in D&D. But they do have resistance to most of the common screwage effects, which will hopefully work well enough to slice them into ribbons.
The reaping mauler is the coolest of them all, a brutal grappling specialist that can lock down their opponents, rendering them vulnerable to their teammates, and really show off in the ring without having to kill their enemies. You really don't want to get in a one-on one fight with them.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 4/9
Saying the right things: A few more uses for your social skills here, showing an article doesn't have to be all new feats and spells spreading your slots thinner and thinner, or whole new subsystems like the ones Robin tries to add on this topic. If anything, this shows you how to make do without buying up the full compliment, by taking better advantage of the overlap between them. Intimidate gets the common house rule of substituting your strength for your charisma, so all those ugly fighter sorts can be realistically threatening instead of getting laughed at. The only skill that you can't really substitute for is sense motive, which is more of a passive skill than the others, if no less useful. All of these are logical, useful and not overpowered, so this is definitely the kind of article that i'd use in my game. Like the herbalism articles, these kind of mundane details still need filling in in 3e.
The Iron Path: Speaking of relatively mundane stuff, here's 15 new martial arts styles for the OA fans amongst you. Since they generally give advantages to fighters and monks in particular, they're very welcome to those who want the game a little more balanced. Each of them is specific to a particular race, with elves and dwarves getting several, and everyone else getting one, including several monster races like goblins, ogres and gnolls. Some are familiar, like elven bladesong and Drow two-weapon fighting, while others are all new. None seem particularly overpowered for their price, with even the formerly twinktastic bladesong style just offering a +4 bonus to concentration checks to avoid spell disruption. As with the previous article, this provides a good number of low key options in an area that isn't oversaturated yet, so it's entirely welcome.
The under-groves: The underdark, on the other hand is pretty heavily detailed already. However, this article manages to find some cool new ideas to fill it with anyway. One problem with the underdark is how it manages to have a sustainable food chain and ecology without the sun to provide energy for plants. Well, it turns out there are several options without resorting to generic magical radiation (ie handwaving) as your base. Thanks to water's ability to dissolve all sorts of stuff, it can serve as a transport medium both horizontally and vertically, to keep things moving and let a wide variety of organisms grow where you don't expect them. Which means there's all sorts of theoretical underground terrains that could be formed. And the ones here are pretty imaginative, filled with all sorts of new monsters and smaller environmental dangers like slipping, becoming stuck, or contracting various diseases. Since oozes, slimes, vermin and fungi are less in fashion this edition, it's very fun seeing a whole bunch of variants on the theme, ands planning to unleash them on players who are too used to adventuring being a glamorous process. As anyone who's actually been spelunking knows, while there are some incredibly pretty crystal caverns out there, you also wind up negotiating your way through a lot of wet mucky cramped spaces too. I really like this one, as it's got both plenty of solidly thought out details, and fantastical bits that couldn't happen in reality. It'll make your imaginary world feel nicely solid and visceral.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 5/9
Guild secrets: An academy of necromancers? The players are going to slaughter their way through this like a hot knife through butter, especially if they have divine spellcasters in the party. This month's guild is presented pretty unambiguously as villains who need a good asskicking before they expand to a size where they can seriously consider taking over the world. Because they don't look that threatening yet. Hell, their guildmaster doesn't even have access to 9th level spells, which means Elminster'd just pat her on the head and be lecherously patronising before teleporting away and leaving a bunch of cryptic hints that direct adventuring parties to their door. This is a pretty short article, with not quite enough info on the organisation, because it feels like they were more interested finding another place to fit in some more new feats and equipment. (which feel like they missed the bus for the book of vile darkness, and are just happy to get into the magazine at all.) Once again, they're really not bringing their A game here.
Fiction: Prying eyes by Johnny L Wilson. The gig is pretty much up for T. H. Lain as a pseudonym, as the magazine's boss can't resist claiming the credit for this particular excerpt from their new novel line. What's going on in terms of behind the scenes manoeuvring there? I'm guessing the writers aren't particularly happy about working uncredited. As an excerpt, this is one of those annoying instances where they set up the plot, but then leave it unresolved, so you have to buy the book if you want to know what happens in the end. The story seems to tread quite a bit of the same ground as Salvadore's cleric quintet, with the action scenes mixed with debate about the nature of religion, the question of if might makes right, and the value of worshipping gods when a lot of the time they don't respond to your requests, or act in mysterious and subtle ways. The kind of trope that never ceases to feel incongruous in a D&D universe where there's lots of gods, many of them highly active in the world, and most clerics should be very aware that they're servants of the gods, not masters. So really, this just serves to highlight that many of the writers in the company would like to put more philosophy, setting detail and interesting touches in their books, but they have to deal with a company that wants them to churn out populist pablum and then not even credit them properly for it on the cover, and a system that strongly encourages some media tropes while not working with others at all. It's tough being inside the big machine, and right now I don't envy the official writers one bit.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 6/9
Silicon Sorcery: For a second month in a row, this column is extended out and turned into a promotional tool for Neverwinter Nights, underscoring both how much original material appeared in the game, and how much the company has invested in it's success. A popular D&D computer game now has the potential to make them several times more money than the whole tabletop division, and boost the overall value of the IP quite a bit. A really bad run of them could make their name an embarrassment like it is in the movie industry.
Skeletal Intellect Devourers are undead versions of everyone's least favourite four-legged brains. Like their living counterparts, they can squeeze into a skull and take control of a body, but it remains obviously dead, which reduces their potential for subtlety. They still have a pretty decent selection of psionics though, so they're no slouches in a fight, if not as hard to kill as the previous edition version.
Battle Intellect Devourers are bigger and tougher, but also dumber and pretty much lacking in psionic powers. This means they're not nearly as scary in actual play. Mind-affecting powers are always a bugger to adjudicate in computer games, so I'm not really surprised they had to switch things around a bit. Still, it does mean they're less interesting and weaker than the old school version. I guess it's the same rule that applies with Beholder and Dragon variants. New writers are scared to go as hard as the originals, so they're rarely as impressive.
The Creator Race are reptilians from before the dawn of man, with a penchant for magical engineering, who put themselves in stasis because they were losing to the dragons. Now some have been thawed out, and they want to show the puny monkeys who's boss. While pretty flexible magically, they have a special knack for fire, cold and necromancy spells, able to resist and Empower them for free, so you'll probably want to use other energy types to zap them.
Spirits of the Woods are your basic nature spirits, able to assume the form of any animal, only smart and with plenty of druid spells. Another fairly generic idea that you can probably get a fair bit of use out of.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 7/9
Dork tower gets through a lot of encounters in 5 minutes. They must level up pretty fast.
DM's toolbox gets two articles this month. First up is our regular one from Johnn, talking about how to make good plot hooks in clear bullet pointed format, as is his wont. The important thing is to give them a situation where they have to do something, but have a choice of exactly what action to take, so something fun is bound to happen, but you won't be sure exactly what. And don't hesitate to take the consequences of previous adventures, and use them again, because it's less effort, and continuity gives the players more emotional involvement. Just make sure you have a few prefab ones that are easy to apply whatever the situation for when the adventure stalls to give the game another push. So this doesn't say anything new, but says it with style. Like an old pulp magazine, you can still get exciting plots out of it despite knowing the formulas.
Second, we have one on making your characters instantly distinguishable when speaking IC. As a DM, if you have a grasp of how to do voices, facial expressions, body language, and maybe manipulate a prop or two, you won't have to tell players which NPC is speaking to them, because they'll be able to tell, and that'll both save time and help with immersion. That seems slightly more challenging than learning how to whip up good plot hooks, but also well worth devoting the time too. And who knows, maybe you can apply those skills to an actual job. There are far worse things to do with your life than being a cartoon voice actor. So both of these parts turned out good this time. Not often I can say that.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 8/9
The play's the thing: Robin returns to this column, and picks up where he left off, talking about resolving OOC conflicts via psychological profiling and figuring out what everyone's expectations are, this time from the perspective of the player trying to understand their DM. In a situation like this, where you want to retain a friendly relationship with your DM so you can continue to play in an enjoyable manner, there is very definitely a wrong way to raise your problems with the game. You need to be specific and constructive in your criticism, nonconfrontational in your approach, and willing to compromise for the greater good of the group if you want the best odds of success. And if after all that, it still looks like you can't meet in the middle, it's better to leave and find a new group rather than continue to deal with the stress and drama. Once again, he's trying to condense the advice of a whole chapter of a social dynamics book, and not doing too bad a job. Let's put those stereotypes about gamers to bed for good.
Dragon Issue 303: January 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: What AC does dragon hide armor have (All sorts. It gets complicated. Still can't get better than regular full plate though. Not worth the bother really.)
What gets multiplied in a critical hit (everything but bonus dice )
Do nonproficiency penalties stack (How does that even work? You are making no sense to Skip. You'd better shape up (ohh, oohh ooh.) Cause Skip needs a man, That'll keep Skip satisfied. Er. Forget about that last bit. Skip is the Sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs! Don't you ever suggest otherwise or Skip'll blow your head off!)
What does having speak language as a class skill do for you (Lets you learn languages at half price. This is immensely useful, believe Skip.)
Can you blast things with magic missiles while ethereal (No. The ability of force effects to cross the planar boundary is one way. Keeps you from being too able to screw without retaliation. )
If you have a mighty smiting weapon and two classes with smiting, do you get an extra smite for each one (no)
How does the inability to be flanked except by people 4+ levels above stack up for multiclassed characters (Only count the classes that grant sneak attack and uncanny dodge. )
What's a corporeal source (The creature and the object. The colour and the shape, the weight and edges and the space inbetween. Don't forget the pretentiousness. That's an important quality for any object that you should take care to quantify.)
How does true strike work against invisible opponents. (Ok, if you aim for the right square in the first place. Better wait for a good hint. Keep your ears open, but not too open, otherwise your buds may pour stuff down them for a prank.)
What's new has a flashback to olden days, to go with the gladiatorial theme. Guess Phil's older than we thought. ;)
While they are quite low on variety this issue, the articles are of well above average quality, with the themed part showing the results of loving care and attention. It really shows that no matter how professional and polished you are, you still need at least a little enthusiasm for your creativity to resonate with the consumers. Let's hope that whatever next issue's theme is, at least someone on the staff will be genuinely enthusiastic about it.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 1/9
91 pages (108) Great. Not even three years in, and they're already bringing out a new edition. Well, half a new edition, anyway. This'll annoy some people. Fittingly, we're only getting half the warning time we got for the big 3.0 changeover. I guess this means they'll be filling a good few pages every issue 'till then with teasers. Goes to show, those things are addictive. You use them once for a big event, and next thing you know you're coming up with excuses to pull them out again every year until diminishing returns make people yawn at even the real spectacles. Let's keep going, see if the people writing into the magazine are impressed or cynical.
Scan Quality: Slightly dog-eared edges, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: As we already found last issue, character sheets can be a surprisingly big deal. And the longer they get used, the more they inevitably wind up reflecting the personality of the user, as they add things, remove them, protect them or let them get food stained and dog-eared, and eventually have to replace them and start the cycle all over again. Some are organised, some are chaotic, and some just look like a regular sheet from the back of the book. You could learn a lot about someone by looking at theirs. So this is certainly a fun little editorial, born out of plenty of actual play experience. It's by exposure to different people and things that we can find out how diverse the world is, and what we want to be. Becoming something else, and then keeping up those good habits, of course, is a harder matter altogether. Do you manage to keep your character sheet neat, or does it turn into a mass of pencil scribblings eventually despite your best intentions?
Scale Mail: We start off with some conspiracy theory numerology. As is often the case, it turns out the readers are overthinking things way more than the writers were. Deadlines kinda reduce your interest in mucking around with symbolism and double meanings, and motivate you to just get stuff done.
Next, we have a letter from someone who's pretty much moved all their record keeping and notes to their computer. Plenty more people will follow in their footsteps over the years, have no doubt.
A letter of general praise, paying particular attention to the recent works of Kieran Turley. I shall have to keep an eye out for his name in the future.
A letter from someone who feels that they are surrounded by idiots. They just don't seem to be learning how to become good roleplayers. Some people never will, my dear. All you can do is bear your superiority with grace, not arrogance. :p
Praise for finally allowing a gay character into D&D. They were a little nervous about it at first, but it seems to have paid off. Let's hope it won't be years until we see another.
Some rules quibbling. Some things, you just can't do with curses. They need to be aware of their suffering, otherwise what's the point?
And finally, another letter from someone who's happy with the way the magazine is going, and people shouldn't panic if not every single article is useful for them right now. Chances are, it might be sometime in the future. Unless your game is exactly the same every session, in which case, can you really call it adventuring?
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 2/9
Zogonia shows how to do a transformation curse with style. You won't be dissing this lich again in a hurry.
Up on a soapbox: Gary gives us another goofy little story of how his adventures went back in the day. He made a wish (a dicey thing to do at the best of times in D&D land) and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by goofing around and not taking the obvious route in the dungeon. This is what happens when you spend your time as a DM devising sadistic deathtraps like the tomb of horrors. You can wind up being a little TOO paranoid, and tripping up on your own cleverness as you try to outsmart the DM. It's one of those tricky to learn lessons. No matter how good you get, you should never forget how to play badly. It'll help you immensely every time you play with a new group of people, as you have to refit your assumptions to the new situation and make sure the game remains fun for everyone.
Nodwick wins by using psychological warfare. His nose is also looking extra square today. Did someone break it off-camera?
3.5 Revision update: Since 3e was released, it's got a pretty serious workout, with tons of people pushing it in different directions and then complaining loudly on internet message boards. This means even though only 2 1/2 years have passed, they have more info on it's problem areas and things that need tuning up than any other roleplaying game. They spend quite a bit of time just explaining why they're doing this, so the solid teasers are pretty sparse. The main ones are that they intend to put more attention to how various monsters turn out as PC's, as they got a lot of questions on that, and they now have a stronger idea of all the different things you can do with prestige classes, and intend to put more effort into providing examples of each and design tips in the new DMG. Both seem pretty reasonable given what I've seen. It's not just moneygrubbing, it's the fact that the internet vastly accelerates the process of interaction between readers and authors, so any problems found, even if only a small number of groups encounter them, or consider them an issue, will be disseminated around the world and widely known within weeks of a book being released. Still, let's hope the next instalments have plenty of information so I can examine in detail the changes I like, the changes I don't, and the ones that feel like they were put in because a few loud voices were complaining, but didn't really matter to most people.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 3/9
Mercenaries for hire: Our first feature this month is basically an expanded Guild Secrets detailing a fantasy Foreign Legion equivalent. That's a bit of interesting real world lore they haven't done in the magazine before. And since the idea of giving up your old name and memories to escape your dark past, and being put in a group of other random malcontents of all classes and races and sent on missions by mysterious masters is a perfect way to set up a campaign, I think this is definitely an idea that works well with the D&D ruleset. You can play a group still in the legions, or one that's recently finished their 5 year tour of duty and been released to build a new life on an unfamiliar world, and you have a good reason for the locals to tolerate creatures of different races, even if they aren't common in the area you've been posted or normally considered monsters that should be killed on sight. So like the gladiator one last issue, this shows you an effective way of organising your campaign, concentrating on the setting details, but not forgetting to include a few interesting bits of crunch at the end. Only it's not generic at all, having a clear author vision while still retaining a fair amount of flexibility in how you apply it. So this is a very strong start to the issue indeed. Well done, Mr Mearls, well done.
Monstrous magic: 46 new spells in 9 pages? I think that's a little too much for me to describe each of them for a change. That'd virtually double the length of this issue's review. The title is pretty self-explanatory. It's a whole bunch of spells that are most useful if you're a monster, or have monsters in your retinue with appropriate powers to enhance. They do things like boost your DR, SR or natural armour (which only works if you already have some) or let you do tricks with your gaze attacks, swallow power, diseases, energy draining, etc etc. Basically, this is just a more general version of those dragon specific spells we often get on birthday issues. As such, it's mostly for the DM, but some of them'll also be useful for players too, particularly if you're experimenting with the many monsters that can gain class levels. Since they're enhancing existing abilities rather than granting new ones, they also tend to be slightly more powerful than regular spells, which means this is rich grounds for the optimisers amongst you. Will you be able to make up for those ECL modifiers by deploying these spells cleverly?
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 4/9
Saddle up: Ha. Here's an amusing result of the 3e desire to make monster races available as PC's. What do you do when you have an intelligent monster you can ride, and one of the other PC's wants to do exactly that? The question becomes even more interesting when you have a huge monster that can carry everyone else at once, and everyone has missile weapons, flight, and their own ideas about what the group should be doing. So this is one of those specialist articles that'll be either damn useful, or useless depending on if your players decide to add exotic mounts and intelligent monsters to their party. Still, I like it, and it's an idea they never did last edition either, which makes it extra cool to see. Examining the logical consequences of weird premises is how you get some of the most distinctive yet real feeling alternate worlds. Let's get our spellcasters and archers on a dragon and revel in drive-by bombardment and high intensity dogfights, because this doesn't look like it'll bog the game down.
Prestige races: Yay! An advancement in rules technology, and the first OGC article in the magazine. The ability to further develop your innate racial abilities is an idea that will get quite a lot of different implementations, with level based ones in Unearthed Arcana & Arcana Evolved, heritage feats in the 3.5 splatbooks, and bloodlines (also UA). Even more interestingly, this doesn't use any of those, instead showing you how to apply a magic item style model to personal upgrades, spending XP and time to gain specific inherent bonuses rather than levelling up or making better gear for yourself. That really demonstrates just how many different ways you can accomplish the same goal in 3e, each having different cost/benefit tradeoffs. It also reminds me that real world evolution isn't a linear process either, but a series of random experiments, with only the good ones surviving and getting to develop further, and the overall trend generally being towards greater diversity and specialisation until a big disaster comes along and changes the environment, at which point whatever survives has to evolve to better fit all the new niches opened up. At the moment, the OGL is very much in the expand and experiment stage of things, only to crash when 3.5 comes along, and lots of products are rendered obsolete, leaving the companies with unsold stock and suspicious the rules could be changed on them again any time. As a result, they moved towards making their own variant corebooks that still used the d20 system, but differed substantially from D&D 3e, with all new classes and variant rules. But anyway, this is a very interesting article indeed. It looks like the benefits are sufficient that spending the XP won't result in you falling behind either, and if anything, you'll soon catch up again because you'll be getting more XP if you wind up a level behind the rest of the party, while still being able to match them in overall power. Most of these are more powerful than feats, and of course you don't have a sharply limited number of upgrades you can purchase either. It might take a little longer to get to 20th level, but you can wind up way more powerful than most nonepic characters by taking this route. Playing around with these will definitely please the CharOp lovers, especially since they also have full permission to develop their own variants on the theme. This is very definitely a positive step by the magazine's writers and i hope it won't just be a one-off experiment.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 5/9
Locked away: We've had articles on magical doors, magical locks, and magical keys before. Now we have one on magical chests. Yet more opportunities for you to fill your players with paranoia whenever they're down in the dungeon, for anything could be trapped or enchanted and turned against you. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, muahahahaha! The individual chests, both magical and mundane, are pretty devious as well. Two layers of transparent stone with green slime suspended within, so any application of force will drench both you and the contents, completely ruining your profit margin and your life. Magnetic chests that are near impossible to batter down or pick open if your equipment is ferrous, because it'll just get stuck. Gross chests made of troll flesh that regenerate if you try and break them open. This is all pretty ingenious stuff, some of which could be applied in reality as well. It's always the ones that apply scientific principles to fantastical ideas that come up with the most ingenious yet plausible tricks. As with the last article, I'd delight in introducing this one to my game, and seeing what my players made of it, what equally ingenious tricks they'd try to get into them.
Guardians of the wild: Fey time again. Always a risky business, given how annoying players find tricksters. Still, they have got a lot more serious in recent years, so who knows how this'll turn out. Let's see if there's any more whimsy juice in the kegs.
Changelings give you an ECL + 0 option if you want to play a fey-touched character who doesn't quite fit in, and has minor magical abilities and worries about their true parentage. Given what I know about players loving sexy brooding loner types, they'll eat these guys up and they'll be reappearing in any best of reprints.
Crystaline Cats are tremendously pretty, but don't let them scratch you, because they breed like Slaadi, implanting a little crystal that grows up worryingly quickly. Thankfully they're kinda hampered in stealth attempts by their nature, so steer well clear and use missile weapons and hope for the best.
Forces of Nature are draconic fey with wings made of leaves. They are indeed pretty forceful, and can kick your ass both physically and magically. If your party is powerful enough that even treants can't stop you from despoiling the forest, who ya gonna call?
Green Guardians are a good substitute for treants as well. They look like ferns, and can sing hypnotically and emit poisonous spores to deal with despoilers without excess violence. Still, at least they can't animate trees, so they can't rearrange the scenery in quite the same way.
Sparks are annoying little arsonists that can teleport from one flame to the next, so they have a strong incentive to be destructive, sneaky little gits. Sounds pretty fae-like to me. Thankfully one solid hit will snuff them out, so stock up on your water pistols and true strike spells.
Seelie Fey are pretty, but they aren't necessarily good. Joining up does get them a fair number of extra powers, at the cost of vulnerability to cold iron. If you're one of the in crowd, it seems like a pretty sweet deal, so they can afford to be exclusive.
Unseelie Fey, on the other hand, are always twisted horrors, in a depressing attack of grey and black morality. As they're also the product of mixed-race matings, that makes this incredibly racist as well. Two depressing cliches for the price of one! I don't think I'll be using much of this article.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 6/9
Fiction: Haunted by Dave Gross. Our former editor returns to the magazine with a tale revisiting characters we saw statted out during his run. A flashback heavy tale of the Malveens and how they wound up in their current situation, this is one of those stories that really takes advantage of the Realm's high magic level, and the corresponding jadedness of it's people, with vampires, ghosts, spells and magic items for sale, oh my. This really reminds me how much setting info and fiction has declined in the magazine since he left, to be replaced with yet more crunchy stuff, with decidedly mixed results. So it's definitely good to see him make a visit, even if the result is adding yet another layer of detail onto the Realms when there's tons of more needy settings out there. It might be a big convoluted mess, but it's their big convoluted mess, and it feels like home. Why shouldn't they put in the effort to keep it that way?
Elminster's guide to the realms: Speaking of mess, Ed turns his attention to the messy business of grinding grain to make your bread. While the Realms does have some water and wind mills, and even some magically powered ones there's also plenty of places that can't afford the enchanted solution, and don't have the right climate to harness the elements, so they have to rely on draft horses. This is one of those articles that reminds us that when Ed does realism, he really does his research, with this capturing the small details of life perfectly. Constantly having to save so you can replace things when they break (which is a regular and expensive occurrence with primitive industrial machinery ) and dealing with petty village politics feels completely true to reality, and Ed manages to describe even these small scale dramas in a way that keeps them interesting as well. It's nice that even after introducing so many high-powered elements to the game that he can still make little things like this full of real feeling human details too. It's good to see he's still putting the effort in to learn new stuff to introduce, not just running on autopilot.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 7/9
Silicon sorcery: We've finished promoting neverwinter nights for now, so it's time to give Asheron's Call 2 a turn. Like the first one (see issue 284) this has a lot of cool stuff worth stealing for D&D, with their skill tree system converting neatly to the 3e feat one. They aren't as amusingly metagamey as the previous selection, but they are a pretty solid collection of fighting style feats that give you more options to enhance your attacks, possibly at the cost of trading off one facet of your stats to be considerably more effective at another. Improving your pain inflicting, unpredictability, or counterattacking skills are the kind of tricks that are entirely valid in any setting, so while less quirky than last time, these are more balanced and generally applicable. I suppose that fits the overall way the magazine has gone in the past couple of years. So let your fighters have a good look through these. They're unlikely to regret it.
Campaign news: 3.5 may have surprised a lot of people, but if they'd been paying attention to the constant tweaking the RPGA has been engaged in over the past year, they'd be less so. The WotC people do feel more of a desire to tinker with the rules and fix problems that way than TSR ever did. This time, they've created a whole 40 page, 10 chapter free downloadable rulebook to detail all the things they're doing to keep the living campaign from breaking under the strain of thousands of groups, many of which are actively trying to twink their characters. Hopefully that'll keep things stable at least until the 3.5 books drop, at which point they'll pretty much have to update their house rules. Yet again, I'm left feeling they have a job I don't envy one little bit, like trying to herd cats that are constantly looking for nastier claw sheaths and grills for their teeth. Seems like the more I see of organised play, the less I want anything to do with it.
Places of mystery: The Dragonshead Barrows are a collection of tombs in the hills near Irongate. They still have a reasonable number of unlooted ones, but they're currently right in the middle of a goldrush of adventurers, so that may not last. Still, since many of them are well hidden up there, some will probably remain unfound, ready to ignite more legends in the future. Yet again, they're engaging in worldbuilding that justifies a world with large numbers of adventuring parties active simultaneously, with varying levels of success. Well, with the living campaign going on, I guess they've got too really for it to make any sense.
The Hool Beacon is the place where an old adventure took place. What happened to Baltron, and why does it no longer bear his name? I guess that's a definite mystery for your players to solve, so this column is living up to it's name. If only there were more creatures from the elemental plane of ooze for DM's to include here.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 8/9
Dork tower fails to effectively manage their time.
Dungeoncraft: Monte decided he's going to do extended multi-part bits of advice after all, starting with some info on city designing. This is another of those cases where you can wind up under or overdesigning all too easily, either making tons of detail that never gets used in actual play, or not having some crucial bit of info on hand and having to grind to a halt if you can't improvise it. So I guess the important thing to do is predict if they'll be sticking around in an area, or just passing through. Not an easy task, and one highly dependent on if you're running a plot-centric or sandbox game, and how likely players are to follow obvious plot hooks that are dangled in front of them rather than doing their own thing or coming up with unpredictable solutions to problems. Ironically, this means that the tighter the control the DM has over the party, the less extraneous worldbuilding they're likely to need to do. I never thought of it that way before. Monte obviously does have some insights to offer that Ray didn't. Good to see this column becoming useful to me again.
DM's toolbox: We had some relatively simple advice about playing NPC's last month. Now Johnn gives us the advanced course. While the advice is in his usual crisp bullet-pointed style, each of the individual steps will require a fair amount of thinking about and following them all will result in a pretty detailed and well-rounded character. So it's the kind of approach that'll be hard work, especially if you apply it to more than just the important NPC's, but that'll get good results if you do. Not all of their articles are aimed at people who've only got the core books and haven't necessarily played much, which is always pleasing for me to see. I just have to hope I won't run out of inspiration or the will to engage in self-examination, both of which never get any easier no matter how long I do them.
Dragon Issue 304: February 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice is getting vile and dark. What fun for Skip.
What CR are bone creatures (CR+1. Please do not recurse this formula. )
When do you need to make the alchemy check for liquid pain (When making it without magic. Any idiot can use it. )
Do you have to spend skill points on the dark speech ( No. Only feat senor. )
Do corrupt spells need material components or not. (Well whatdya know, one of them does. You'd better do as the spell says. Skip doesn't want to piss Monte off by pointing out his contradictions. Monte's an even bigger badass mutha:shut yo mouth: than Skip. )
The rules for corruption spells say they can't be permanent, but two are. When do you pay the price. (You'd better pay upfront. Like Skip said before, don't mess with Monte, especially when he's contradicting himself. That's when he's at his most dangerous.)
If you're immune to energy drain, can you cast corrupt spells (Sure. You'll still lose the points. If you can't lose Con, you'll lose Cha instead)
Do you have to be both undead and fiend to use flesh ripper (Just one or the other. No worries dude. )
If you suffer cha drain from using dark speech, can that prevent you from using it again (yes)
Do you need to meet the prerequisites for elixir of dark speech to work (no)
Are monks subject to the supernatural diseases in the book (Yes. )
Does detect evil detect all evil creatures (Yes, just at different intensities. Monte made another mistake. Don't tell him Skip said that though. )
Do you get iterative attacks with rapid shot (yes, afterwards.)
Just how good is regeneration at keeping things alive. (Almost infinitely. If you don't have their weakness, you're screwed. If they don't need food, you can hack at them forever and they'll just pull themselves together. )
Does fast healing work at negative HP. Does it automatically stabilize you (As long as you're not dead, and yes. )
Can you imbue people with metamagiced spells (Yes, if you can imbue spells of that adjusted level. This makes most options not feasible. )
What's new fights for the money. Make sure you pay up this time, for a military coup often offends. Still, at least would-be despots are more reliable payers than games companies.
Slightly slanty cone templates. What's up with that? I guess they're slightly harder to calculate than the straight ones.
Another fairly significant issue, all in all. Between the new edition announcement and the experiment with OGL material, we're once again moving forward, and making lasting changes to the way they operate. The fact that most of the articles are pretty good too is nice as well. Still, I doubt things'll really settle down until after 3.5 is out. Even if the company is getting into a routine now they're in new offices, the public'll have plenty to say about all these changes. Let's see how long it takes to catch up this time around.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 1/9
116 pages. Seriously skewed perspective and ridiculous scowling again. How can that guy's fist be bigger than his head? Unless you're trying to simulate a close up shot on a wide-angle lens, that simply does not happen. It's only been a couple of covers and I'm already sick of Wayne Reynolds. Still, at least it's once again appropriate to the contents. Time for another city themed issue. Ho hum. That's the kind of familiar topic where you just have to hope that they put a different spin on it, because it's a pretty big one, so they do have to come back to it again and again. Still, if you can make it good here, you can make it anywhere. Let's see if this is a new york or a detroit, or something in between.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: So it turns out the LotR movie trilogy was a success, both theatrically, and in the even more extended multidisk DVD editions. And a big part of that was due to the sheer attention to detail in things like the costumes, sets and general worldbuilding. All the things that made obsessive fans return to the books again and again, and delve into the appendices after they finished the story. And similarly, people are more likely to want to play in your world if it feels solid and real, like it exists beyond the adventures. It's no surprise at all that the Forgotten Realms is the most popular setting, and got that way by first hinting at the big picture, and then gradually adding more and more detail until all but the most obsessive are satisfied, and they keep buying anyway because now they're emotionally invested in the characters, and want to know what happens to them next. So for all that their DM advice in the magazine is encouraging economy, there is still something to be said for really extravagant worldbuilding, especially when you can reuse it between campaigns if it isn't immediately useful. Just make sure your notes are organised, so you can find things and keep them internally consistent. If you have the time, you might as well use it constructively.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 2/9
Scale Mail: We start off with someone who used to hate playing spellcasters, but was converted by the material in issue 302. Good to see the magazine making a real difference.
A request for stats for giant ferrets. Pretty similar to dire weasels really. Not hard to make the adaption.
Some pop culture reference geekery. Yes, Weezer played D&D. So did a huge number of other people in the entertainment industries. That kind of creative mindset is encouraged by playing let's pretend when you're younger.
A reminder that you can use video games for RPG inspiration, as well as the other way around. Um, we know. They already have a regular column for that. That's a well proven route to getting some more cool crunch and plots in your game.
Some fun min-maxing. Regeneration + template that makes you immune to the regeneration's weakness = near impossible to kill characters. Simple and easy.
Grognard grumbling from someone who refuses to convert to the new edition. Will the next one win them over, or will it take things ever further from what they view as REAL D&D.
And finally, another reminder that gaming can be more fun when played fast and loose. Since they are tying things down even tighter with the revision, that's always worth remembering.
Up on a Soapbox: This month, we get to find out about the first ever D&D Monk, as played by Terry Kuntz. As was often the case, the lawful alignment restriction didn't stop them from being pretty silly at times, ripping off Clint Eastwood, and using their acrobatic powers to paint an entire tower in a night. I got nuthin. That's the kind of thing that can only seem sensible when you were there where following the logical course in a fantastical world causes events to gradually spiral out of control. Still, it's certainly an entertaining little tale, and it demonstrates how rolling with the jokes other people make and then building further on them is a good idea. That's one part of the old school spirit you should never forget.
Zogonia is well and truly in continuity territory. Things can only go downhill from here.
Midnight! Even tolkienesque fantasy can be made Grimdark. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 3/9
House rules: Oooh. They're starting another regular series this month. Even within the WotC offices, not everyone plays D&D in exactly the same way. In fact as designers, they're even more likely to fiddle with stuff, see how it changes the game as a whole than regular players. One area of contention is metamagic feats. Many people find the degree of preparing ahead with the standard system unwieldy, resulting in them getting little actual benefit from taking them. So Andy Collins gives us an option that lets you use them less frequently, but with more flexibility, so you're more likely to be able to use them appropriately for the situation, but you won't have the raw power a cleverly prepared wizard using the standard system can manage. So this is for those of you who prefer sorcerers over wizards, psions or favored souls over clerics and druids. Fewer powers, but more flexibility. People who aren't patient or ruthless enough to squeeze every inch of optimisation out of their character, in other words. :p Would you rather go for the easy option anyway?
Dork tower is reminded of last year's convention transgressions.
Urban heroes: As has often been the case recently, the first feature in the theme is a little underwhelming. Basic roleplaying advice and new Class Combo builds? The first we've obviously seen before, as city based adventures is one of those topics they do pretty regularly. The Class combos, on the other hand, are very specific indeed, and involve builds with multiple prestige classes from different splatbooks. Ranger/Bard/King of the Wild/Royal Explorer? The way they write it, it seems like a logical career path for an adventurer but is it a good combination in terms of actually making an effective character. At least they've realised that Shadowdancer is a tremendously frontloaded PrC, and so the Aristocrat Thief only takes one level of that before going back to more levels of Rogue. Still, it means this doesn't have much to offer to long-term players, as they'll know the general advice already, and the class builds are more useful to DM's than players, who usually prefer to plan their own progression, and have the time to consider all the options themselves. I'm disappointed. Probably shouldn't be, considering the terrible choice of covers for the topic, but I still am.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 4/9
Cities of the Planes: Hmm. That sounds like it might be the start of another regular column. Although to be honest, I can't see it lasting longer than it's counterpart Cities of the Ages did, despite the number of places out there that could do with some filling in. Still, as usual, I live in hope. :Checks ahead: Nothing? Oh well.
Still, this is a very interesting and otherworldly place indeed, that takes full advantage of the different physics there. On the astral plane, there is no time, so creatures don't need to eat, sleep, or age. Which means any settlement there is composed of immigrants, and will remain pretty stable for long periods of time without natural births or deaths among the population. On the other hand, you do need to worry about Githyanki invaders, having decidedly limited solid materials to build with, and the gigantic corpse you're living on turning out to not be quite so dead after all. Under these conditions, an earthly economy doesn't really work, as people don't need to work just to survive. And so the main avenue of competition is for citizenship, as there's a very limited number of permanent residencies, and a fair number of temporary workers who do not have much legal protection. There's also the interesting fact that everyone who can get here is at least mid-level, often much higher, which means there'll be no slaughtering your way through the guard this time. It's all both interesting and different, which is exactly what the planes should be. I definitely wish more people were writing stuff like this.
Faith and Honor: A religion can not survive on clerics alone. Gods need worshippers if they want to have general influence on the population. Yet a lot of the time, if players aren't playing someone empowered by the gods, they're tremendously cynical about them, even when (or perhaps because ) they definitely exist and are active upon the setting in measurable ways. You know what would fix this? Feats that let even those who aren't clerics enjoy some minor measure of divine power, just like psionicists get wild talents. That's a very 3e way of looking at things. Actually, it's very 4e as well, introducing the idea of picking up minor features from other classes via feats as a general thing, which would also see plenty of use in the incarnum and martial maneuver books. Oh, and lots of roleplaying advice of various ways you can play religious faith. So this is an instance where they're trying to introduce a bit more realism to the game, and having to fight both built up expectations and the system itself to make it accommodate them better. But with interesting results that will have an impact on the game in the future, unlike most articles that try to add more realism. Guess Skip still has a fair bit of influence on the company's design philosophies.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 5/9
Fear the invincible blade: For a third time, Robin Laws tries to sell us on the fun of having catchphrases for our characters. This is becoming quite the thing from him, and I think it may be time to move on. These are times of character development and continuity in TV shows. Using the same transformation sequence every episode, hitting the reset button, and having every show end with the characters giving us a little PSA and laughing is very much on the out. This is further aggravated by the fact that he's selling this as a way to keep warrior attacks interesting. Which makes it a nice diversion, but to be honest, it's not going to make up for the far greater flexibility spellcasters have in actual play, is it. As this is both moderately silly and very rehashed, I'm afraid I cant rate it highly.
Venom and coil: This, on the other hand, is fairly decent. Robin doesn't go in for the grimdark parody he pulled on the Drow, but a proper ecology style expansion on the Yuan-ti history, psychology and social organisation. Like Githzerai, they might have a chaotic alignment and goals, but their high intelligence and natural tactical bent means they can be alarmingly disciplined and co-operative in the way they pursue them, because everyone can work out the solution to a problem and agree to play a part in it of their own free will. Plus while they may not be quite as good at mind control as illithids, their mix of magic and psionics still makes them really good at social manipulation. On top of that, there's the potential for the good old innsmouth look storyline, where a PC finds out they actually contain some yuan-ti blood, and have to decide whether to embrace their monstrous side or run from it and become one of their most dangerous enemies. So this makes them a considerably more credible threat than their old ecology in issue 151. I think this is one people might actually reference in the future.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 6/9
Bazaar of the Bizarre: We've had a few magic mirrors in the past, but this is another thing they haven't tackled since the new edition started. So many ideas to reintroduce, so little space.
Carnival Mirrors turn you into your ironically distorted image in the glass. This is rarely to your benefit. Good luck getting rid of the new form.
Makeup Mirrors give you an instant makeover of your choice, unsurprisingly. The usual cosmetic and disguise benefits ensue.
The Mirror of Answering is the snow white jobbie. As with any divination, how you ask the questions and what you do with the information revealed is up to you. Watch you don't get led into stupid paths by your own narrow visions.
The Mirror of Auras lets you see and identify magic in it. Again, seems a pretty standard bit of construction. Just reflect frequencies invisible to the human eye and shift them downwards.
The Mirror of Dreams lets you see the dreams of a person reflected in it. Unfortunately, it's not also a recording device, so you'll have to trust the person examining them. Like many a divination device, it's uses will largely be determined by DM fiat.
The Mirror of Lies marks the reflection of anyone who lies while looking in it. Thank yourself lucky it doesn't warp your real appearance too. A little combination enchantment and maybe it could.
Mirrors of Scrying are another classic they really ought to have included sooner. No complaints here. Just don't expect it to be as easily portable as a crystal ball.
The Mirror of the Ages, of course, lets you see in the time axis rather than the space one. Again, no surprises at all here.
Mirrors of Translocation are the classic paired transportation portals. Yet again I say seen it before, will see it again.
The Mirror of Truth of course penetrates illusions, invisibility and and similar visual deception crap. Man, we're seeing a lot of cliches here. The new edition sure aint so fresh and new anymore.
Salve of Mirrored eyes gives you gaze reflection and weird eyes. But not for very long. No good for if you know the medusa is somewhere in the dungeon, but haven't found it yet.
Shields of Gaze Reflection turn out to be another victim of the new edition's nerfing. Only work once a day? What's the rationale for that here? It's not as if PC's get reflectable gaze attacks.
On top of that, we steal Arcane Lore's schtick a bit by including a spellbook. A trio of basic utility spells follow. Mirror eyes, Transparency and Durability. None of them have effects even slightly surprising. Can't say I'm very impressed by this one overall.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 7/9
3.5 Revision update: They split their attention evenly this month, pointing out one thing they're going to change in each of the three corebooks. In the players handbook, they want to make the combat chapter easier to understand and reference, so fights will be faster and with fewer rules arguments. In the DMG they're including templates for your spell areas, so if you're using minis, you can quickly and easily figure out who's blasted and who's safe. And in the MM they'll be including tactical advice in monster descriptions, so you have a better idea of how to use their powers effectively, and higher level monsters won't be quite so DM dependent in the amount of challenge they offer. All of them sound reasonable enough, even if the last one does feel a bit too much like hand-holding only intended for n00bs. But since they are all solutions to actual complaints, and seem like you can ignore them easily enough, it's hard to complain too much. Just watch you don't make the book too much bigger in the process.
Guild secrets: Ha. Our theme for this column is " I was a member before they were big, and now they suck." A weaponsmith's guild that's decided to expand it's recruitment, and get people who actually fight with them regularly as well. Which leads to predictable petty bitchiness which PC's are most likely to be on the receiving end of if they sign up. That's the kind of political fun that's completely real feeling, even in a fantasy universe. How much politics caused is not because people actually disagree in position that much, but merely because our lizard brains need to compete for dominance and status? So whether you're a member or just passing through and completely ignorant of what's going on behind the scenes, there's plenty to drive adventure in this article, and both the general idea and new fighting style feats are easily taken and used in other plots. Plus it's not an idea that's totally beaten into the ground, save perhaps OOC in the letters pages. :p That also adds a few marks.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 8/9
DM's Toolbox: Time for another discussion about the benefits and problems to metagaming. A certain amount of it makes things run so much smoother, especially when players make decisions based on what would be good for the story, rather than their own characters. But the wrong sort can break the verisimilitude of the world, especially if their character uses information they couldn't possibly have. In such circumstances, you may have to engage in similarly metagame methods to encourage what you want and nip what you don't in the bud. The first option should always be to talk about the problem openly, but if that fails, they do suggest other tricks you can try to make them behave. The best idea, as usual, is to combine the carrot and the stick, making sure you reward good as well as punish bad. And if they find magical ways to pass on information at a distance IC, just let them, as it will save a fair amount of hassle in the long run. This once again seems like pretty solid advice. You can't stay completely immersed in character all the time, so it's better to prepare for those moments when you're not.
Dungeoncraft: Monte's next bit of citybuiding advice has us considering what reason the city has to exist in world. There are very good reasons why one settlement remains tiny, while another bloats to hold millions and experiences daily traffic jams as everyone tries to get from A to B and back again each day. What's the terrain and weather like, what resources are there to exploit, how high is the tech level, etc etc. The order of the questions is such that knowing the answer to the previous ones should make answering the later ones easier. After all, technology is shaped by resources, and layout is very dependent on the transportation technology and building materials. Sort out the big questions, and then move onto filling in smaller details, if you have the time. Once again, good organisation helps you get the most practical use out of your creativity. If you do things in the right order, you don't waste so much time running back and forth fixing problems you inadvertently created yourself.
Dragon Issue 305: March 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: Can you deliver a touch spell by touching an enemies weapon (Sorta. Given the nature of abstract combat, you can't control what you're touching. It could be any part of their body. Unless you hold your action and attack them when they attack you with reach. )
How often can a tiger rake (No more than once per round)
Does someone in the way of lightning bolt stop it. (People are not objects. Unless you fill the entire square and those around, it goes through you, and onto the next sucker. )
How does an undead barbarian rage (With his charisma score. Ooooh, scary.)
How real is a shadow wall of force (40% real. 40% likely to stop things from passing through it. Including you. Shoddy workmanship, really)
How does searing light work against incorporeal creatures (Normal miss chance, Skip's afraid. If it does extra damage on a hit, that just makes missing with it all the more frustrating. Real sunlight has no miss chance, however.)
Does uncanny dodge let you keep your dex bonus. (Against anything but full-on immobilization, yes. If that's still not clear enough, skip will check off all the conditions. Skip hopes that is sufficient to satisfy.)
Does armour affect your encumbrance (yes)
Gruntharg the barbarian wants to smash with lots of weapons at once! How quick Gruntharg throw one, then start using other in both hands (Blah example one blah example two blah example three blah blah bla... Gruntharg bored! Gruntharg smash boring Skip! :bang!: Skip thinks not. Skip grew up on the mean shores of lake geneva. Skip is not going to let some young punk like you outdraw Skip. Skip is the Sage and you will shut yo mouth and wait until Skip is finished. Okay, Skip's finished. See you next month folks. And remember.
When everything is so confusing that all you can do is say um.
The very best thing for you to do is come on down to Skip's emporium.
If you've got questions about magical vestments, or you're getting bored with your rules lawyers talk.
Just gimme a call, or send me a letter. You don't you're a fool, there's no-one better.
Satisfaction guaranteed, especially for the laydees :teeth ting:
Established '87, You can take it as a given, that we'll make your game run smooth as SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLK. (dubba da dum ))
Dork tower tries it's hand at D20 modern. Things go ever so slightly better than the last time they tried present day stuff.
Fiction: The arms of the Kraken by George R R Martin. 21 pages? I do believe that's the longest story they've printed in a single issue. Not quite the longest article, but certainly in the top percentile. They must have quite a bit of regard for him. This is basically just an excerpt from his upcoming book though, showing that despite getting a different author in to their usual stable, they're continuing their depressingly overcommercialised treatment of this department. Oh well. At least the story itself is pretty interestingly brutal, with sex, death and religion right up front in the plot. He's never been afraid to show the realities of a life without advanced technology. The setting building is sufficiently dense that you don't need to have read the previous ASoI&F novels to make sense of this, but it probably helps. It definitely showcases the fact that he has a very distinctive writing style, and that he isn't dealing in the sanitised fantasy where you always face foes appropriate to your CR. So while there is a good deal of cynicism here, there's also some genuinely tense plotting, as well as witty banter to break things up and make the exposition more palatable. So I have mixed, but ultimately positive feelings about him showing up here. What could this mean for the magazine as a whole?
What's new points out the prices and drawbacks flying has. Superman never had to worry about these.
Not sure what to make of this issue. it's mostly by the numbers, but has a couple of really weird bits in it, that I have no idea what to make of. Their choice of covers continues to be fugly, and their writing style has become very homogenised, but there are some nice experiments with the rules as they gear up for the edition change, and of course the big scoop in the fiction department. I guess I'll have to accept yet again that virtually no issues are going to perfect, and only come back and use the good stuff. Oh well, April again next month. Maybe they'll have something surprising in there too.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 1/9
94 pages (116) Tonight! I'm going to suuuuck......ubus. (I didn't know her mouth was that flexible :rimshot: I pity the tourists in the open-roof double deckers) From looking at the contents page It looks like this year's april issue is pretty light on the levity, but does have multiple articles with a fiendish flavour. I guess there are worse topics to tackle. There are certainly many far more overdone ones. Let's keep that serious face on as we pen another missive among many.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, Ad free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Yet again, i'm left feeling that the playstyle in the offices isn't the one they're trying to sell us in the books, as they regularly kill one another off and switch characters, trying to use as many of the new races, feats, spells etc that they're coming up with. ( which is both work and pleasure, if done right. ) Meanwhile, they're nerfing energy drain, making permanent death less likely, and encouraging you to play full 12-18 month campaigns where you go from 1st to 20th level. It is interesting to observe. I guess it's still a small disconnect compared to Palladium, where Kevin Siembida doesn't even try to use the rules in his own books. Here, they at least use the rules as written, even if they're constantly tinkering with them and adding to them because that's their job. Would the game sell more if they didn't try to retain that gap between the way they're playing, and the way they're trying to encourage us to play? I'm really not sure. But it is worth considering. Would the perfect system be one where there's no need to houserule, and the rules encourage exactly the playstyle that they say they do? Or is there no truly perfect system for everything, and the constant tinkering is part of the fun? I think that's worth a good bit of debating.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who's DM likes to keep all their magazines polybagged, thus preserving their resale value but keeping their contents from seeing much use. They quite rightly tell him to buy his own copies. Then you can do what ever you like with them, including make nuclear weapons.
Our next question is an obvious one. What does the release of 3.5 portend for their various splatbook series? Oh, they will have no hesitation repeating that, multiple times even. Once again cementing that they feel comfortable covering a narrower range of topics because they know the many D20 companies out there are taking up the slack.
Despite modern communication having advanced, it seems once again that army people are having trouble getting the magazine while stationed out in odd places. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, in this case. They're doing their best.
We also have the problem that some people think cubic cones and spheres are stupid. Doing everything to the grid could well be called stupid. You just have to decide if you want to include that degree of abstraction in your game, because you need some if you want to keep things moving along. It's only an issue if you're using minis and strictly tracking space and positioning anyway.
Even more contentious is the idea that everything WotC and Dragon publishes should be Open Content. They have to argue against that. If they did, anyone could copy their work and sell it for cheaper, putting them out of business. Trouble with that argument is the fact that even 4 years after they took down their .pdfs, it's still simplicity itself to get any D&D book for free online, even 4e ones that were never released as such. * It's still a fairly huge problem, and as we're finding as the digital economy develops, the best way to compete with free is to provide quality and convenience ( which WotC should definitely be able to do if it puts it's mind too it )and use models that get the money upfront like Kickstarter. (which even White Wolf is resorting too these days) I'm once again left feeling that Ryan Dancey knew what he was doing when he created the OGL, while these guys are too busy making their monthly deadlines to predict or plan for long term technology driven changes in the industry.
And finally, another obscure pop culture reference to roleplaying, just to lighten the mood. Not that it really competes with the zany letters of yesteryear.
* Note: this was written before they put them back up again a few days ago. Now that is an interesting development
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 2/9
Dungeon has gone monthly! That'll please a lot of people. It may still be Dragon's little brother, but I guess it has caught up over the years, especially now it's got the D20 stuff in it as well.
Up on a soapbox: Another interesting facet of old school play uncovered here. One reason for having large numbers of hirelings in your party is to get an edge in the action economy. Many monsters had multiple attacks per round, but very few PC's did (until you could cast Haste, which was enormously game-changing if you didn't enforce the aging penalty. ) Meanwhile AC did not consistently scale with HD. If you got enough of them in, you could take down even really powerful monsters (as long as they didn't require magic weapons to hit or something) before they got a chance to take many actions by unleashing a high intensity bombardment of missile weapons. This is definitely something that's consistent with my experience, where each player often had multiple characters, and they did not hesitate to buff up and get into tactical position before a fight so they could make it as short and brutal as possible for the other side. So really, this shows exactly why they tried to define the parameters of a fair challenge more tightly in later editions, and how keeping that finely tuned balance becomes increasingly difficult and tactics dependent as the party and number of enemies increases. At some point the players may well get unlucky and be killed by an enemy that on paper is way weaker than them. Perfect balance is an impossibility in an open ended game. All you can do is try your best.
House rules: Here's one house rule that they did make standard come 3.5. Druids getting to swap out spells for Summon Nature's ally, just as Clerics can swap them out for healing (and sometimes their other domains if they take the right feat) As if they weren't enough of a swiss army knife with just their own shapeshifting powers. Now the only thing keeping them from having access to a full army (including infantry, cavalry, navy and air force) any time they want at higher level is the fact that they'll also nerf the duration to 1 round/level. And I don't find that very satisfying as it hurts the noncombat applications of summoning far more than it does the combat ones, so it doesn't even solve the problem it's intended too. So this is a house rule that seems reasonable in isolation, but when you consider that it's being applied to what is already the most powerful and flexible class overall, it just looks like favouritism. If people STILL aren't playing them after all this, it's purely their own loss. I disapprove quite strongly of this, just as I disapproved of clerics getting spontaneous healing in the first place.
Betraying your evil nature: After the gross-out goofiness of issue 300, it's a real relief to see them try and tackle the question of temptation and redemption in a mature manner. In D&D, there are both creatures that tend towards evil because of their biology, and ones that are innately evil by cosmic design. The first can choose good, but will always find it a battle dealing with their instincts or appetites, while the second can only change their morality by fundamentally altering their being, which may require external intervention (not always voluntary or consensual) to pull off successfully. Is it right to transform a demon's fundamental selfhood so they have a chance to choose good, particularly if they got that way by choosing chaos and evil in their mortal life anyway? (I'll take better than most of the alternatives for 12 please Bob) So far, so good. Of course this being 3e, they then have to try and represent this mechanically, with a system for temptation and redemption based on giving moral weight to each individual act and accumulating points when you perform them. Which I don't inherently object too, but it's so hard to get systems like these to feel right and not be easily broken by rules lawyer players. Still, even if I can't call the system great, it does look more mechanically robust when applied strictly than nWoD morality (not that that's a hard bar to exceed, unfortunately) and the main way to break it is to buff your wisdom so high that you can justify anything to yourself by taking the larger-scale view. Oh well. At least they gave this a proper try, instead of farting on the page and calling it maturity. That means someone can take the ideas and refine them further. Maybe some day they'll come up with a morality system that satisfies most people.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 3/9
By evil bound: Creators of new fiends these days have a fairly stiff challenge. The existing ones have had multiple books looking at their lifecycle, psychology, chains of command, and the ways they get promoted and demoted. With demons it's not too bad, as the abyss is infinite, and you can easily have whole layers where a different set of monstrosities to the usual tanar'ri wound up more common. However, the baatezu and yugoloths have a pretty well defined hierarchy, so any new creations have to somehow be slotted into that with an explanation why we haven't seen them around much before, or stand outside it altogether. So Mike Mearls puts quite a bit of effort into the backstory of this bumper pack of new monsters.
The Devils are primarily internal enforcers. More lawful than evil, they're constructs built unable to break the laws of the nine hells, and as they can't be promoted or demoted, they can be relied upon to keep things functioning down there. The Yugoloths are more created beings like the old Guardians, build to literally serve as living weapons. This means they've been around for ages, but tend to get overlooked. Still, it's another reason to be paranoid about taking their stuff after killing them. You never know when it'll be a trap in itself. The Demons are formed by the merging of evil energy with the elements themselves, creating malevolent beings that have no tie to living souls, and thus even less incentive to trick and corrupt you rather than just torturing and killing. So far, so interesting. Let's look at the individual monsters.
Air Demons can fly faster than Vrocks, but that's their only real advantage. They're not even bright or reliable enough to make decent messengers. But then, if you've made it to abyssal lord status, you're well aware of just how flaky everyone around you is, and plan accordingly. It's just a matter of sufficient force and trickery.
Ash Demons cheese through combat by transforming into an insubstantial cloud of ash and trying to choke you. Zap them with cold spells to dampen their enthusiasm fast.
Earth Demons are dim and thuggish, but at least they're patient (or lazy) enough to sit still in one place and wait for prey, so they can be used as guardians. Just don't expect them to let you by any easier than your enemies.
Fire Demons burn you if they get too near, and set you on fire if they touch you. One trick ponies, really.
Ice Demons are the closest ones here to being civilised, able to shape ice to build all sorts of things. They like their hit and run attacks, letting the cold gradually wear you down before the final kill.
Water Demons superheat the water around them to make hunting easier. Once again, they have one trick, and that's it. Piscoloths'll make short work of them.
Coal Devils don't burn as hot as fire demons, but their constant smoking obscures vision and chokes anyone which needs to breathe. (which doesn't impede them at all. ) You'd think the Hells would have stricter health and safety regulations in the workplace, considering how big they are on bureaucracy. ;)
Glass Devils are permanently invisible, and can move fast and burrow, making them pretty decent spies. Their skillset further supports this, with plenty of move silently, escape artist, and tumble to make it hard to pin them down even if you can see them.
Lead Devils have the fairly unique quirk of being able to teleport, but only when grappling someone else. They're relatively smart for such a big heavy creature too, and really good jumpers for some reason. If one's chasing you, it'll be a pretty terminator like experience.
Obsidian Devils are another one that loves to grapple, but they won't carry you back, just grind you against their sharp edges until you're just a mass of bloody ribbons. Shame being soaked in blood doesn't give you a bonus to escape artist rolls.
Sand Devils are another sneaky one, dispersing themselves and hiding in plain sight. After all, who suspects the dirt? Even paranoid demon lords are usually too arrogant to think of that. Once again, affecting visibility and choking you is their modus operandi if forced into combat.
Spiked Devils don't play well with others, since they need plenty of elbow room, and when they shoot spikes, they go in all directions. So they're generally stuck outside important stuff, serving as guards. Sounds boring and lonely.
Arrow Battleloths are cowards, and quite rightly, since they're 1HD creatures often used in battles full of terrifying extraplanar fiends. So they rarely fight in humanoid form, preferring to be fired once, and then find a way into the enemy's quivers for some spying action. Like any Yugoloth worth their salt, they'll betray their employers and play both sides for maximum personal profit if they think they can get away with it.
Axe Battleloths hit things with their sharpened heads as their primary combat method, so they tend not to be the brightest. When used as a weapon, they bite as well as slice, so they still have incentive to work with others.
Crossbow Battleloths can generate their own ammo and fly, so they're pretty lethal on their own tactically, but they can shoot even faster with someone to reload them. As ever, they don't particularly mind who, as long as they're paying well.
Pick Battleloths like to latch onto the first thing they hit and suck their blood like a mosquito. This means subtlety and tactics are not their strong points if used in a larger melee. Maybe if you keep a whole brace of them in your backpack you can take advantage of gang tactics to lock down something more powerful. Better hope they'll shut up and keep still until then.
Spiked Chain Battleloths demonstrate that Mike is fully aware of this bit of 3e cheese. They like to hunt other battleloths for fun, which only reinforces their assholishness. Nothing like a bit of mean spirited mucking around to reinforce that these guys are neutral evil, not lawful evil.
Sword Battleloths are the straight guys of this lot, which seems appropriate. They just want to kick ass, although they still prefer paying gigs. To be honest, who doesn't.
After reading through all this, I'm struck by how much it feels like a trial run for the changes they would make to monsters in general in 4e. All of these eschew the lengthy lists of spell-like powers existing fiends of the same HD have, just having one or two neat tricks each, and that's it. Plus the demons are formed from corrupted elements, which would also become the canon 4e origin for the Abyss in general. I guess we can definitely blame Mearls for all that then. It does mean they come off as considerably less mysterious and scary than the original set, both because they're all focussed on doing one or two things rather than being versatile big bads, and because they each just take a particular element and riff of that, which is always a formulaic way of generating large numbers of monsters. (so ironically, it's the literal living weapons that have the best developed personalities of this lot ) Compare that with say, a vrock. (it's a vulture man, which does magical dances and generates spores. Those elements do not flow logically from one-another) and it's obvious which still seems more wondrous and threatening. So this is a very displeasing bit of foreshadowing indeed for me. Introducing new creatures that don't work the same way as the old ones is cool in my book. Rewriting all the old ones so they no longer overshadow your new creations is most definitely NOT.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 4/9
Power fantasy: Another attempt to better support a well-known topic mechanically. Swashbucking has already got a themed issue this edition, but it does have to be said that D&D still isn't the best system for high mobility cinematic action. This is made worse by feat bloat, as whenever they include a feat to enable a specific maneuver, it includes the implicit assumption that you'll suck at it or can't try it at all if you don't have that feat. Thankfully this is one of the few articles these days that doesn't have new feats, prestige classes or spells, just new uses for the skills you already have. Use Rope, for example, is really handy if you want to swing from chandeliers and use heavy counterweights to head up or down fast without hurting yourself. :D And it's amazing how much more damage you can do by dropping something heavy on people than hacking them with your sword. In real life, standing still and trading blows is one of the worst ways to fight a battle. Making that more true in D&D is probably a good way to move things.
Killing cousins: Ahh, the good old gith wars. The yanks and the zerths hate each other with a fiery passion, they both look down on the pirates, and all three would just pity the earthbound primitive gith if they ever ran into them. They're definitely not a big happy family, despite being united in hatred of illithids. But this does make exceedingly good plot fodder for players, especially as Githzerai are reasonably popular as a PC race. So a whole load of new feats, magical items and monsters which are good for the job of killing githyanki is good for both players and DM's. What's even more pleasing is that these are the kind of powers that aren't ONLY good for killing githyanki, just good for the job in an organic way. The power to track planeshifters wherever they may go is useful against tons of high level creatures, and toughening up your silver cord is handy whenever you're astral. Bypasing spell resistance and locking down dimension shifting powers can shift the balance at the most unexpected times. And being able to manipulate the powers of Limbo even better is just logical, considering where they live. This is a far better set of options to take than the ones aimed specifically at fighting undead or dragons, while still being full of flavour. As with the astral city last issue, you can't beat planar stuff for getting people to design interestingly different tricks which can really liven up your game.
Racial variants: Here's a second article containing ideas that they'd use again and expand upon in actual books next edition. Variant racial templates based upon terrain they live in. Not only would that make up a decent chunk of Unearthed Arcana, but they'd also do terrain books in the same vein as their class splatbooks. As with that, all of these are ECL 0, apart from the underdark one, which is +1 to reflect the tougher competition they have like Drow and Svirfneblin. While the descriptions are copypasted, this is definitely a case where they refined the mechanics the second time around, with specific variants for particular races, and greater attention to adding penalties as well as benefits. Still, this article also has a few variants they didn't update, so it's both interesting to uncover, and to compare and contrast. It's good to know they still see this as a work in progress.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 5/9
Urban Traps: Someone was la-ate submitting their material for the urban theme last issue. However, since that someone is Penny Williams (nee Petticord) one of our very long running writers and editors, they're letting it through anyway. And I'm glad they did, as this is one of those fun ones that both stretches their mechanical ingenuity and has nice framing fiction to boot. Unlike dungeons, with urban traps, you really don't want to make them lethal, as that causes no end of hassle in any normal legal system. Ironically, that means you have to be even more ingenious in setting up something that'll stop troublemakers, but won't be a problem to the owners. So lots of attention is put here no only on designing the traps, but also representing them mechanically, figuring out how much they'd cost, and most importantly, what kind of person would actually like to buy each one. Which means with old school diabolic ingenuity, 2e setting building and characterisation depth, and 3e mechanical rigour, this article is satisfying to me on every level. First time I can say that they've surpassed the very first ultra-lethal traps they included in here in coolness.
3.5 Revision Update: This month, they cover the fairly substantial reworking of damage reduction in 3.5, talking in detail about why it was a problem in previous editions, and how they think the new version has fixed it for sure, honest! Their big issue with the old version is that it created a feeling of "you must be this tall to go on this ride" and victory or failure could hinge on a single person having the right gear or power. So they've got rid of the specific plus requirements, and replaced them with generally smaller DR numbers that require specific materials to bypass, so even without their weakness a party can probably still kill them by brute force at the expected CR, it'll just be harder. Of course, if the old version didn't feel sufficiently mythic, the new one's tendency to make players carry golf bags full of different weapon types isn't a huge improvement in long-term play. It's fortunate that they decided to talk about this in the same issue Gary mentioned old school swarm tactics, because this once again illustrates exactly how they're trying to standardise the play experience over time so that challenges are always fair, everyone always gets to contribute, and players never have to run away from a fight they can't handle. Which yeah, does make things fairer, but also makes them less scary as well, which isn't what you want for monsters. So while I do think the 3.5 system is a slight improvement on the 3.0 version, I also think that standardising the DR system to this extent is a bad idea in itself. The D&D rules are flexible enough to handle a wide range of resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities too (which more monsters really ought to have in my opinion) and all three forms of weapon resistance are entirely capable of coexisting in different monsters without the system or setting breaking. Don't let your pursuit of balance keep you from going to the extreme as well. You just need to make sure you cover the extremes in all directions, not just one.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 6/9
Silicon sorcery: Another fairly long instalment from this column as they promote another D&D computer game - Icewind Dale 2. Unlike Neverwinter Nights, you get to control a whole party, and the game is more focused on on action than roleplaying elements. The game material reflects that, providing a full adventure scenario based on their tutorial system, which I find fairly amusing. Do you have what it takes to win a game of noughts and crosses FOR YOUR LIFE! (although they don't actually let you die in the actual game) You fight a battle for each square, and the first side to make a full line across the board wins. Since the monsters can be different every time, this little challenge can be scaled to any level save those so powerful they can easily bypass the entire room. (and even those could be forced to participate if it's a godly game of tic-tac-toe :D )
Ironically, this is the closest thing to a joke article in the entire issue, and it's still presented with an entirely straight face, with a load of different ideas on variants and how to integrate them into your campaign. You could even run a full campaign around it, where it's standard procedure for disputes to be settled by monstrous noughts and crosses duels. (now a cartoon with a flamboyantly hairstyled protagonist determined to find the "heart of the board" ) I really don't know how to react to that. It's definitely interesting, I'll give them that. I'm not sure if I actually want to use it, but I admire their commitment to sparkle motion. Oh well, I'm going to give this high marks, simply because it's provided me so much material to riff with.
Nodwick suffers april fools day in the traditional fashion. Zogonia must be increasing in popularity, because it gets to go full page. 4 whole pages in fact. Much hilarity is had as the lich is vanquished, and everything is put back to normal. Well, almost. Dork tower suffers from the dread sucky name syndrome. Fortunately, there is a cure available. Nodwick then gets a second strip. Exactly what the townsfolk don't want. Now, if only they'd bring back dragonmirth. Then everything would be peachy-keen here.
Campaign News finishes here, because they've decided to put it back in Polyhedron where it originally came from. And before they say goodbye, they have another round of reorganisations and nerfs to hand out to us. They've been talking about the new metaregions for quite a while, so that's no surprise, but it is nice to know the names and contact emails for each of their co-ordinators. What isn't so pleasing to see is the removal of yet another magical item that has maybe proven too powerful. They won it fair and square and have had a good year to grow attached to it. There's going to be some grumbles about that. Still, it was amusing to see the trials and aggravations of running organised play from a distance, and the articles in this section were of above average quality for the magazine, so I'm definitely sad to see regular Greyhawk coverage end in here. Now it's just generic stuff and the Realms left. :( Maybe someday I'll do this for Polyhedron too and see the other side of this migration, but that'd be years in the future even if I started immediately after finishing Dragon. (not bloody likely) For now, it's farewell, and I do indeed hope they fare well.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 7/9
Paladins of Greyhawk: Despite the many many articles we've got over the years to humanise paladins, they still get accusations that they're boring and all the same. You know what's a good way of making things less generic and stereotyped? Include a whole bunch of subdivisions, each with their own substereotypes that add too and sometimes replace the main one. It definitely works for White Wolf, and it can work for D&D too. Yup. It looks like our last regular Greyhawk article'll be devoted to the paladins of various gods, and just what flavouring this choice adds to the squeaky clean vanilla boys of team good. I can think of far worse ways to end this, so lets look at them individually, take our time on this.
Mayaheine's paladins tend to be optimists, feminists, and general champions of minorities and the downtrodden. Well, she is a new god, with a still growing following. That does tend to make people more hopeful that they can make a difference, change the world for the better where so many others have failed. Perfect adventurer material too, as they do tend to be more socially progressive than the average NPC.
Murlynd's paladins are of course gunslingers and experimenters in using technology to make people's lives better. Of course, like tinker gnomes, people may be rather afraid of their methods, which doesn't help general adoption, but that's just what you have to deal with in a world stuck in a medieval mindset. The greatest good is not achieved just by killing things, and lawful good technician is an entirely valid paladin archetype.
Pelor's paladins are pretty much the standard stereotype, giving their life for the cause and specialising in healing and turning undead. Someone has to be the straight man everyone else is compared too, and I guess they fit the bill.
Rao's followers, on the other hand, are all about the clever tactical solution to a conflict, studying the situation and then making a move that'll solve it quickly and with a minimum of risk and collateral damage. If that means avoiding combat altogether, all the better. Not that they're cowards or dishonourable. But lawful good definitely does not mean dumb or lacking in charm or humour in this case.
St Cuthbert's tend to be common sense, working class sorts, fond of a good drink and smoke when not out bashing the skulls of the unfaithful. So while closer to the vanilla stereotype than most of these, they also remind us that not all paladins are rich, and they're definitely not detached from the reality of the social problems ordinary people face. If anything, knowledge of those will just make them fight all the harder to stamp out chaos and poverty and improve the plight of the common man. Sometimes it's the subtle differences that bring a character to life, not the big ones, and this article has certainly given us plenty of different examples of that.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 8/9
DM's toolbox: Skip and Penny both have their own articles this issue, plus they team up on this column as well. Busy busy busy. This is a list of ways you can fake out your players, to make sure they're more likely to follow the plot you've created and keep the game fun. (for you, at least) They definitely tend towards the sadistic, keeping the information the players have unreliable, and letting them dig their own grave that way. While there's the usual warning not to railroad them and make their choices irrelevant, I'm strongly reminded that Skip's published adventures have tended to get pretty negative reviews, and I do have to wonder how much that bleeds into his own games (which according to his profile in issue 276 he doesn't get to run much anyway) I'm definitely dubious of this particular bit of advice. It just looks like it's more likely to blow up in your face than help.
Dungeoncraft: Monte finishes off his little series on city adventuring by talking about the adventures themselves. This is where we're really reminded that he's regularly running adventures in Ptolus at the moment, and so these observations are born from plenty of actual play experience. (unlike Skip's) There's tons of adventures you can have without ever leaving the city limits, and even those that are slightly outside will be influenced by the knowledge that healing and restocking is within easy reach if you have the money. In fact one of the problems might be that you find yourself with too many options. The secret is to make sure you build stuff one step ahead of your players, and then to keep everything you make for future use, so you don't have to do so much work later. Creating flowcharts of where the adventure is likely to go is a better idea than detailed physical maps, especially if you haven't done the research on all the various things a functional community needs. (the toilets and bedrooms in dungeons problem writ large.) Similarly, timelines of what will happen if the PC's don't interfere keep the plot rolling nicely, and make sure they can't solve the problem on 15 minute workdays and only acting when fully charged up and prepared. And if you're playing in a game with plentiful magic, make sure the NPC's prepare accordingly, so PC's can't short-circuit the whole thing with one spell. Yup, that one's probably born out of bitter experience. This all seems like advice worth heeding, formed through trial and error as it is. Hopefully that way, your own adventure building'll be slightly less of a trial.
Dragon Issue 306: April 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice has redecorated with a fetching books, vines and crystal balls motif. It's quite pretty really. I rather approve.
Can bards affect themselves with bardic music (Skip thinks it's case by case time again, as this gets fiddly. )
Which description of harmonize is correct (The big one)
Does long term care + healthful slumber = 4x healing (No. Multipliers add, remember. Don't forget your basic math again. )
Can you use endurance on a petrified character before turning them back, to increase their odds of survival (No, but for complicated reasons, not simple ones. But you don't need to worry your head over that. Just remember not to waste your time doing it. )
Will wind wall affect a sling stone (yes)
Where are the brackets on bless weapon. (Nowhere. Read it as a full sentence, don't try and get lawyery or Skip'll throw some compound predicates at you. )
Can a barbarian use a wand while raging (No. The best they can do is smash you on the head with it.)
When do you apply automatic metamagic feats (Any time you like. )
Can shambling mounds get infinitely tough from lightning bolts (Yes, but not for long. We've learned our lesson from last edition, just as we did about summoning cascades.)
Can darkmantles grab creatures much larger than them (Yes. Special exemption)
Can undead automatically be killed by arrows of slaying (No. You have completely misunderstood the no constitution rule)
Does evasion work on shadow dragon breath (yes)
Can runecasters get infinite uses of a triggered spell by making it permanent (yes, but only one at a time. This can still be very twinky.)
Can you make AoO's against someone with spring attack if you have reach. (Only if they do something other than moving to trigger them. Nothing changes unless the rules specifically say it's changed.)
What's new reveals the real reason good gets such a bad rap, and why chaotic good is a necessary alignment. AND THAT DAMN SNAIL FINALLY GETS OFF THE PAGE! Thank god for that. That was one of the most painfully dragged out jokes in history.
With a ton of information on how they're going to shake things up in 3.5, and a few hints as to what lies even further in the future, this is fairly interesting as a general issue, but a complete failure as an april one, with not even an acknowledgement of the things they usually do here. So it shows that the transition to Paizo has once again made them even more serious and focussed on just a few things than the TSR > WotC one did. Still, at least we're getting tons of easy to use and often rather good game material, so at least they're succeeding at what they're focusing on. Now they just have to deal with the fact that diminishing returns arrive so much faster when you do that. I guess that's what the revision is for. :\ Let's move another step closer to it.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 1/9
116 pages. A Game of Thrones themed issue? Very interesting, and rather more welcome to me than the Shannara one. That bit of fiction a couple of issues ago has a genuine payoff then. I suppose it's even cooler because like the steampunk issue, it shows how good ideas can still gradually build and be even more popular when revisited a decade later, which is a definite relief when you spend too much time bombarded by pop culture ephemera that vanishes unmourned once it's 15 minutes is up. You can make a sustainable career in the entertainment business, but it takes putting as much attention to promotion as actually creating stuff, and regularly releasing new material to build a fanbase, and that's two full-time jobs in one if you don't have a team behind you. Will they be able to give us an exciting encapsulation of this enormous series and make it look like a fun world to adventure in, or will this just be a load of promotional junk to leave in the trunk?
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed.
In this issue:
Neverwinter Nights, shadows of undrentide! Sweet. Computers might not be able to match real DM's, but they're definitely making progress.
Wyrms turn: Our editorial, unsurprisingly, is selling us on the idea of adventuring in Westeros. Like Middle-Earth, the world gives the impression of being far larger than any single character's story, with tons of history stretching backwards to play with. This means PC's have room to do stuff without constantly being overshadowed by the stars of the novels. In fact, in that respect, Martin is probably even better than Tolkien, because he makes it very clear there's no one viewpoint character, and anyone can die at any time via treachery or arbitrary twists of fate, but the narrative as a whole will carry on. Which is a lesson many DM's should take to heart. The party is not an inviolable perfect circle of chosen ones, that the story cannot take place without, and if you've written everything in advance so that it is, a less, shall we say, dicey medium would work better. Being willing to let the players change history from the books if they're playing in an existing fictional world isn't a bad rule to learn either. So far, so incentivising. What region and time period captures your interest?
Scale Mail: Our first letter this month, is a suggestion of how to speed along the mapping process with overlays on projection paper that fit together to make the full map without making hidden bits obvious. The main expense there'll be the projector then, unless you can "borrow" it from the office, which many people can do in their line of work.
We follow with some fencing minutinae, reminding us that even swashbucklers can be obsessive and geeky too.
Some really bad actual play story, heavily abbreviated. This really should have been in last issue, where we needed some risible letters to mock.
Continuing praise for Robin Laws and his ideas about social contracts. More articles that aren't game specific would be nice too.
And finally, linked to that, a reminder that you don't need to kill monsters to gain XP from overcoming them. Social conflict (as long as it's genuinely challenging social interaction, not just talking ) counts too. That's how all those Aristocrats and Experts get to level up. Haggling can be a cutthroat matter, and politics even moreso. Don't underestimate them because they haven't been on the front lines.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 2/9
Zogonia engages in epic fail. Guess the party hierarchy is staying the same for the time being.
Up on a soapbox: Gary brings up another benefit of having a stable of players that delves into the same megadungeon, but not in the same combination each time. If one team gets killed or captured, another one can go in and rescue them, thus preserving continuity and allowing the campaign to continue onwards despite losing an individual encounter. Plus it definitely makes for good stories where everyone gets to laugh about it later, despite it being terribly harrowing in actual play, and one character rescuing another is a very bond-forming experience. (which will hopefully lead to them returning the favour in the future, not becoming bitter and betraying them because they're sick of always living in their shadow. ) So as with the editorial, this reminds us that you can run formats other than the 4 player team which never splits up, and your game will be the richer for it due to the multiple perspectives. Keep fighting against attempts to homogenise the rules and playstyle. That way leads only to boredom and diminishing returns.
House rules: Our house rule this month is one that was pretty much canon in previous editions. Racial reaction modifiers. Like Weapon speeds, and modifiers vs specific kinds of armor, this was partly dropped because it was often ignored in actual play, and partly because they wanted to encourage greater variety in races between campaigns, and a relationship table just for all the monsters that can become PC's in the first MM would sprawl over several pages. And to be honest, not one I can see myself bothering with. I've never been a fan of monoculture, so I'd only use it when it looks like the players are going to stop in a particular area for a full adventure or more, where there is a definite set of racial demographics and regular exposure for stereotypes and conflicts to develop. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort, and I can quite understand why they didn't keep it in the 3.0 revision.
Open skies: Another chunky guild article is our first feature this month. In issue 304 we had an article on intelligent flying mounts, and how to use them in your game. Now we have a guild full of them and their riders. There's a lot of attention paid to the politics of this, with an insistence that the rider and mount are equal partners who both have things to contribute. Which also means they have to fight a constant battle against quadruped bigotry and enslavement in unenlightened regions, which is both amusing and provides an endless source of adventure hooks. The history and setting detail makes this particularly easy to insert into any campaign, and they have a solid selection of new spells and feats that are well suited to high mobility combat, plus reprints of the stats for air infused creatures, half elemental, and air genasi to keep this accessible to those without supplements. It's a good reminder that you can make life an adventure by actively trying to change the world for the better, not just hunting down and killing those who would take over the world and change it for no-one's benefit but their own. And that nearly anything can have sex with anything and produce offspring in 3e, even humans and sentient columns of air, (maybe they got the idea by watching Marilyn Monroe standing on a grate) which can also lead to tons of adventures just trying to figure out how to raise the kid properly. If any cause is worth adventuring for, it's racial equality and (fully consensual) kinky interspecies sex. I officially endorse this guild. :D
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 3/9
Monsters in the alley: Another article that feels like it was too late for the urban themed issue, making me wonder if Paizo is struggling to keep itself organised and read and edit everything submitted in good time. Even now they're throwing out all the fiction submissions unread, I still suspect they have fewer resources at their disposal than when they were a full part of the WotC offices. Still, even if it is a couple of months late, it is a James Jacobs one, and he rarely disappoints me when it comes to inventive monsters. Let's see if he can keep up his winning streak.
Dweomervores are little barbed-tailed dragons that eat magic, and reproduce asexually when there's a plentiful supply of it. Since they need to eat magical items, adventurers will likely wind up hunting them when some of their gear goes missing. At least it's a better excuse than the random mischief faerie dragons will inflict on you for kicks.
Splinterwaifs may or may not be the twisted remains of dryads who's trees were cut down and used to build stuff. Whether they are or not, they steal children and turn them into bushes before slowly eating them, which is a very interesting way to go that also makes it very hard to hunt them down, since there's no bodies. Better have your divination spells at the ready to figure this one out.
Trap Haunts are ghosts who were killed by traps, which means adventurers have way above average odds of becoming one. As if the tomb of horrors wasn't nasty enough, add a few of these and you'll never clear it out.
Wilora are shapeshifting birds that steal memories with their gaze and assume people's forms. The most mythological feeling of this collection, they don't seem to have much motivation beyond jumping into people's lives temporarily and getting up to mischief that the poor amnesiac has to deal with next morning. Well, it's a good alternative to dopplegangers or obliviax. If there's a substantial population of them in an area, people will be very superstitious about barring the doors and padding the walls at night.
Since none of these are really straight combatants, have good descriptions with some ecological thought in, and will all need some brains to deal with, I think this is another pretty good article from James. The important thing with new monsters is that they always need to be slightly different, otherwise why write them, and these fit that bill.
Risen dead II: It definitely seems like they're bringing out sequels to popular articles faster these days. Well, I suppose that fits with the overall tendency of faster edition changes and more instant communication with the public. If they're cutting months off finding out what worked and what didn't through forumwatching, and days off the process of transmitting and revising manuscripts via using email, then of course there's going to be some acceleration. Plus it helps if they're easy ones to write like this one. Yup, it's 4 more undead converted from regular monster types into templates. Bodaks, Ghouls, Ghasts and Sons of Kyuss get genericised for flexibility. The templates are exactly what you'd expect, but there are some amusing quirks in the examples. Bodak Hydra get to use the death gaze with all their heads, while kyuss infected ogre mages enjoy both regeneration and fast healing, which makes them an absolute nightmare to put down for good. So it looks like they've found another vein of easy to mine crunch to tap into, and hope it doesn't run dry too soon. Ho hum. What other monster types fit better as templates than existing creatures then?
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 4/9
Heroes of Cormyr: Greyhawk may have moved out now, but the Realms is still getting multiple articles nearly every issue. Even individual regions get more detail than most other campaign worlds. So here we go again, showing what benefits you can get by swearing loyalty to a larger organisation, rather than just wandering wherever fortune takes you. Let's see if it feels worth it given the rules you'll have to abide by.
Battlepriests get full BAB, 2 extra domains, and a load of social effects that make them good for fighting in the frontlines and keeping the troops healthy and motivated. In this case, sacrificing a couple of spellcasting levels seems entirely worth it.
Council Mages are a short one for the high level wizards who get Vangerdhast's personal approval. With the ability to cast co-operatively to raise DC's, easy access to high level spells through their connections and a bonus to dispelling checks, they're definitely strong team players who can bring the strategy to a big party. Let's hope the player is as good a planner as the character should be.
Noble Adventurers have the interesting distinction of being the only 4 level prestige class I've ever seen. While they last, they're just plain better than regular fighters in nearly every way, so you want social status and power, you'd be dumb not to go for the classy option.
Moon Drovers have the really perilous job of harvesting catoblepas herds for death cheese. Fortunately, by 2nd level, they're immune to to their death gaze, but you'll need to survive a few levels of regular cleric before you get that. Still, since they keep full spellcasting, and there's people around who can raise you, I think a few months milking the warthogs is a worthwhile way to spend your summer holidays.
Royal Scouts are for particularly patriotic rangers, hunting down any monsters that enter the royal woods and serving as messengers the rest of the time. With lots of low skill requirements, you'll probably need to multiclass to get in, but once again, they're worth it. So this is a particularly twinky collection, appropriate for those who like to multiclass a lot to squeeze every inch of optimisation out of their character. Good thing they are region specific then.
Elminster's guide to the realms: A bridge as an adventure location? Haven't had one of those since issue 131. Another underused idea when you consider how good a flashpoint for dramatic encounters they make. Be there tolls, trolls, treacherous footing or stuff hidden beneath, getting across can definitely be a challenge for low-mid level adventurers. Of course Ed wants to create a persistent world, so this particular bridge is in no danger of collapsing anytime in the next few centuries. But it does have a regular problem with bugbear bandits, a whole load of little hidden compartments, triggered magic mouths that proclaim odd stuff to people crossing, and a really nasty marsh underneath to suck down people who try to go around it. If you're high enough level to laugh at all of those, there might also be an extradimensional gate to a dragon's lair if you touch the right stones in the right order. As usual, this is aimed at characters of all levels and the idea that you can cross multiple times and still find something new to keep it from being just another flavor encounter. Still, even if it is formulaic, at least he's found another real world thing that deserves more attention in game. I'm sure billygoats everywhere will thank him for it.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 5/9
3.5 Revision update: This time, we're getting out the nerfbat for the spells people have complained most about. Harm now not only requires a touch attack to hit, but also allows a saving throw on top of that and only does 10 points of damage per level. Hold allows a saving throw every single round to escape. And Haste and Polymorph are getting thoroughly weakened, because they're just ridiculously versatile. This is one area where they really caused their own problems in the first place. Removing the aging effect from Haste and System Shock roll from polymorphing turned them from really useful but risky effects to no-brainers. Refocussing the game from large parties where each person plays multiple PC's or has a load of hirelings to 4 person teams which don't have any slack if one member is taken out makes save or suck spells have way more impact, as does changing the save system so you're more likely to fail at high levels instead of less. And whinging about Harm is just silly when finger of death is lower level and more powerful. It just shows how trying to create a tightly balanced system where everything is interlocked is really difficult, and near impossible where flexible powers that can synergise multiplicatively are involved. While 3e fixed a lot of 2e's problems, it also created a fair number of it's own, and this is where they're coming home to roost. And trying to fix the problem by cutting down power and flexibility just sucks the wonder out of things. You know, it would have been way easier to set spell and monster DC's at 10 + ability modifier + 1/3 your level/HD, instead of all this faffing around with individual spells. (and kill scaling with spell level with fire, as all that does is leave your low level spells useless against higher level monsters) So it should be pretty clear that this is one set of changes 3.5 made I'm not keen on at all. They're greasing the squeaky wheels in a way that doesn't actually make the game better once the changes are made.
Silicon Sorcery: Shadowbane is another fantasy CRPG that puts a different spin on the familiar fantasy races, two of which are converted here. Shades are humans who's fathers die while they're still in the womb. They appear half in the grave themselves, with grey skin, solid black eyes and no hair, so they're very much an oppressed minority in human communities. Still, this has it's advantages in that they can freely see and interact with ghosts, so who ya gonna call? :) Their half-elves are different as well. The magical energy coursing through them leaves them mentally unstable, and they need special tattoos to maintain a modicum of control that also leave them instantly recognisable. Once again, they suffer pretty badly from discrimination by both sides of their parentage. Both of these are sterile, which means they'll never be anything more than a rarity. Still, they both have strong incentives to become adventurers, and gain some measure of self-worth and acceptance through heroism, so they fit in nicely to D&D. And let's face it, angsty outsiders are a perpetual bestseller in media. There have been many before, there will be many in the future. There'll always be a place in my game for them, especially as long as I fit that mould in reality. :p
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 6/9
Good monsters: A second sequel in quick succession this issue. We've had two articles about transformative prestige classes based on evil monsters. Now here's one for the fans of good monsters. After all, there may not be as many as there are evil ones, but that just means we're more likely to remember the ones there are, especially as they're more intelligent and magically capable on average too. There's room for a few of these, and possibly ones focussing on lawful, chaotic and neutral monsters as well. Course, that all depends on the existing ones holding the public interest and getting follow-up submissions. Let's see if these can maintain their winning streak.
Whitehorns are devoted to unicorns, completely unsurprisingly. They get to heal by touching people with the horn that grows from their forehead, but don't get unicorn's dimension door, weirdly enough. With full BAB, they seem best aimed at rangers rather than Druids, who would gain all that healing power and more if they just progressed their spells normally.
Followers of the Skyserpent want to be Coatl. This means they get to use poison freely despite being lawful good, and the usual wings and tail you'd expect from a transformative prestige class. They're also good at social stuff too, so they've got good odds of catching the right people when hunting evildoers. The ends can only justify the means if you don't screw up in the judicial process.
Treefriends act as an information network for Dryads, keeping them in touch with each other and protecting forests as a whole. A definite case where the creature needs them as much as they need it, since staying in one place your whole life must be pretty boring for something that smart, and they can't take the fight to the big logging companies before they arrive. They're another one that can't really do anything druids can't, but make up for it with full BAB. Plus a boost to your charisma score is pretty tempting for the vain out there.
The Artists Vengeance is a secret society of Bards that venerate Lillendi, and are obsessed with eliminating any attempts to censor or destroy their work. They mostly just progress their bard abilities as normal, but also gain a tail and wings at higher level. (and I'd like to see how they explain that when making public appearances promoting their work) Let all those who give bad reviews beware their might. :p That's sufficiently funny that I can definitely give respect to this article. Good still needs to be fun, and they've got that, even if they don't have ultimate power.
The saga of Westeros: For some reason, they're putting the themed stuff near the end of the issue instead of the start. That's unusual. Do they think a big chunk of their readerbase won't be interested or something? Or is it just the amount of adverts they got and needed to structure their features around. That's caused formatting mess-ups before. in any case, this first article definitely falls into the category of unimpressive warm-up, being just a very very abridged and spoiler light synopsis of the books' plot so far. They're going to gradually build up to the epicness then? At least, I hope that's what they had in mind. Let's move on from this little bit of fluff then.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 7/9
The ice wall campaign: There's plenty of room in Westeros for D&D style roaming bands of adventurers at the edge of civilisation. If you've broken the law and want to leave your old identity behind rather than hang or rot in jail, you can sign on with the wall guards that keep barbarians and monsters from invading the southern lands. If that's still not enough excitement, from there it's a simple step to disappear into the frozen wilderness full of wolves, wights, dragons, and mysterious winter fae. And that'll probably be all the excitement you can handle without wizards and clerics to fill out the party and make things less inexplicable. There's still a fair amount left open here, presumably because it hasn't been properly detailed in the books, which means the DM has plenty of leeway to decide what else is out there, but won't be able to get away with being lazy and sticking strictly to published material. Still, like the overview of mystara in X1, it's enough to go on for now, and does contain some genuinely evocative elements. So far, so playable.
The clash of kings: Our second campaign idea is of course going right to the centre of the empire and immersing yourself in political struggle. Course, if you aren't from one of the great houses, the deck is stacked against you. Still, with 5 of them, there's plenty of room for making alliances and marrying into power that might let you claw your way up if you have something to offer. And let's face it, there's a good deal to fight for. This is organised by houses and the territories they command, with details of NPC's and adventure seeds for each. So it doesn't feel as detailed and cohesive as the icewall campaign, but it does have more scope to it. You have a much greater number of cultures and terrains to deal with, and the chance to assemble armies and amass riches in a way a band of wandering miscreants couldn't. Mind you, plenty of emphasis is put on how magic low Westeros is compared to a standard 3e campaign, so even at 20th level you won't be rocking a full regalia of +5 gear and unleashing meteor swarms on a daily basis. But if the characters are born to that world, they won't know that. And what's important to in feeling rich is that you're better off than your neighbours, not that you're objectively well off. There's plenty to fight for and win here, and the challenges will remain challenging at all levels (and don't get complacent even if you do win, because political manoeuvring never stops, and winter is coming. ) I think this article manages to successfully convey how big the world is and how easily you could run an entire campaign set there. When you've got strong material to work with, everything else looks much easier.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 8/9
A song of dice and fire: Unsurprisingly, we finish off with an interview of George R. R. Martin himself, getting some insights into his working methods. And it does have to be said that he doesn't seem to be the most efficient of writers, not keeping many notes, and sometimes having to backtrack and rewrite big chunks of story when they turn out not to fit the larger scale plot. It's a good thing he is now in a financial position where he can take more than 5 years between instalments to give attention to all the many many characters and subplots, and it would be a shame if the wheel of time got finished posthumously, but this series never does. But with the morbid stuff out of the way early, we get to find out all sorts of cool stuff about his own roleplaying experiences. His primary poison of choice is GURPS, and his main long-term campaign is a fairly realism heavy one set in ancient rome. Which isn't to say he hasn't done some pretty serious min-maxing and blowing stuff up in the past. But in general, he's a fan of keeping the wondrous elements sufficiently rare that they stay wondrous. Which does put him somewhat at odds with the current D&D writers. But then, if you're the type of person who likes to explore a single world for decades at a time, you don't want a system that causes you to level up to game-breaking degrees in less than 2 years and then start again. This is a pretty strong reminder there are a big crop of fantasy readers who aren't really catered for by what D&D does, and it'll be interesting to see how the D20 version of ASoI&F handled that. Can they strip the fantastical elements back just the right amount so they stay special when they do come up? In any case, this interview shows just how many fantasy writers are or were also gamers these days, and that that has had an influence, whether they're taking those ideas they saw in the games, or reacting against them. No escaping it these days, I'm afraid.
DM's toolbox: While they may be nerfing many spells next edition, they're still pretty big on the idea of letting you play any monster you like, especially now the ECL system causes you to probably be weaker than a regular PC unless your class complements your racial abilities. So here we go with a load of advice on how to integrate them into a campaign, and the challenges they're likely to face. In most campaigns, they will face suspicion from the public when they go into towns, and it's not impossible that they'll have problems getting into and sticking with the rest of the party. The more their body shape differs from humanity, the more frequently you'll find yourself making special allowances for them that can take over the game. While obviously shorter, I think this may actually be better than the similar advice in the complete book of humanoids, with plenty of ideas on how to make a game filled with exotic PC's work, rather than just obstacles to throw in their way make up for their racial powers. With the problems of 3e really coming out of the woodwork this issue, it's important that we take the time to remember the many things it does do better than previous editions, and this is one of them.
The play's the thing: Mike's contribution this month is a whole bunch of fun spell synergies that you can use to make the most of your powers. Never underestimate the utility of your basic flasks of oil and 10 foot poles. Also don't underestimate the power of illusion combined with a real threat. And especially don't underestimate how much dropping heavy stuff on people from a great height hurts. I find it very ironic that they're putting an article like this in the same issue which just nerfed a whole load of spells, and just shows how pointless a task it is. As long as wizards and clerics have access to hundreds of spells at higher level, there's always going to be ways you can combine them that are disproportionately effective. So individually, this article seems fun and inconsequential, but combined with the rest of the issue is a reminder of the multiple masters they're trying to serve. They actively tried to encourage charop at the beginning of 3e, and now they're starting to crack down on it again, closing up loopholes that players discovered, which means a chunk of the gaming population will once again be left behind trying to play the game the old way. It's very interesting indeed to see these shifts in the writer's attitudes, and who is first and last to change their minds.
Dragon Issue 307: May 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: What counts as too crap an ability spread. Do you have to meet both the conditions or just one (Just one. Bow before our mercy, that you should be permitted to abort unviable adventurers before they are even born. We had to face a lot of opposition to get you that right.)
When do devoted defenders get AC bonuses (Whenever actively defending someone. This means they need to stick near them or use a reach weapon to stay in range.)
Page 59 of the ELH includes the bonuses from ability scores, right (yes)
Do specialist wizards with improved spell capacity get the bonus spell at each level (Yes. Nearly double the benefit from each feat, triple if they hyperspecialise. Another way that wizards blow other spellcasters away at epic level. Clerics get domain spells as well. )
Does a tattooed monk have to take the same tattoo more than once to increase the benefits (no. It scales with level, just not directly. )
What's the difference between a knowledge check and a bardic knowledge check (different sources, different DC scale criteria, different applications. They're completely different. How could you confuse them.)
Does a loremaster add their level to all knowledge checks (No. Once again, you completely misunderstand. It's just another bardic lore variant.)
How often can a rogue sneak attack in the dark if the enemies can't see them (Constantly. Very scary indeed. )
Can a barbarian use their dex bonus while climbing or grappling. (no)
How does an arcane trickster's impromptu sneak attack work (Full attack, only one does the extra damage. Best make it the first one)
Can an assassinated character be raised (Their death attack doesn't have the Death descriptor, so no. It just kills you, it doesn't make you harder to bring back.)
Nodwick goes from facing undeath, to just facing death. This is not an improvement. At least if you become undead you get plenty of time to think.
The articles this month are mostly very good, but for some reason, the 3.5 teasers showcase my absolute least favourite parts of the changes they're going to make. This gives me an exaggerated sense of pessimism about the future as we finish this issue, especially as the themed material details a world so very different from their general direction at the moment. Once again I have to press on despite a fair amount of trepidation about the near future. Maybe they've saved the cool teasers for the next issue.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 1/9
91 (116) pages. Even dragons get the annoying fishbowl lens treatment! Sigh. That's definitely a fashion that gets old fast. Let's hope it is a short one, along with not bothering to do decent backdrops. So. Year 27. 3^3. Not nearly as mathematically significant feeling as the hundreds or the powers of 2, but not a prime number either. Let's see if the articles are as relentlessly efficient as their current fashion dictates, or if any small amount of whimsy has survived the tightening of focus.
In this issue
Wyrms turn: The editorial this month covers the not so weighty subject of people being superstitious about their dice. Do you have particular ones that always seem to get good or bad results? Is this just actual luck, confirmation bias making you remember the ones that fit the pattern in your mind, or actual trends due to the little imperfections in the sides and weighting? Could be any of them, really. People are silly, and can take a little thing and make a huge deal out of it. Not that I'm one to talk really. But however far gone I am with my obsessions, I've never lost my cynicism about the whole thing. I suppose some level of quirkiness is essential anyway. Without it, we'd be just pure profit focussed logical machines, and roleplaying wouldn't exist. And then where would we be? Best to just allow them their foibles, and hope they'll be similarly tolerant in return.
Scale Mail: We start off with a request for more epic level material. They give the old excuse that they can't get the submissions. Simple problem, complicated solutions.
Next we have someone pointing out how utterly unrealistic the 3e jumping rules are. You can wind up floating through the air for rounds on end at high levels. This is the problem with overall movement rate increases being so hard to come by in D&D. Physics can go take a back seat.
We have someone who doesn't see what the big deal is if dragon articles are OGL or not. It's not an issue for you, it's one for publishers. The solutions that are shared are the ones that can be reused and built upon. Everything else is off limits. Sharing only works if enough other people share too that everyone winds up with a net positive.
The complete lack of april frivolity is noted with annoyance. They'd better watch themselves if they want to make it to next year without being pied in the face.
And finally, we have a letter from someone who hasn't been paying attention and wonders how you play living greyhawk. If you can learn the rules for D&D, the ones for joining the RPGA and getting accredited should hopefully be fairly simple by comparison.
Zogonia demonstrates the difference in fighting styles between fighters and rogues. You've gotta play to your strengths.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 2/9
Up on a soapbox: Rob Kuntz takes this column instead of Gary for a month. But the stories of the old days remain pretty similar. In fact, we return to the story of the monk with no name, and the fun he got up too. Bored of the dungeoneering, he turned to extorting an barony ruled by another PC, thus giving Rob an easy ride as two high level characters duked it out with all the magical and temporal resources at their disposal. He got away with it too, thanks to having the forces of nature on his sides, while all the baron had was human armies. Still, as with the last time someone tried to make their fortune outside the dungeon, diminishing returns set in, and the next time they tried it, the target was better equipped. It's the nature of heists. The really hard thing isn't getting away with it once, it's not being hunted down afterwards, and not being dumb enough to try the same trick too soon or too near to the previous attempt. And when you do get the money, spend it slowly, don't blow it on shiny stuff that makes the neighbours suspicious. So this reminds us that political PvP stuff can work in D&D, and how variety is essential to keeping a game interesting. Both PC's and their enemies need to change and grow to keep the campaign from gradually winding down and ending because they're bored. This is why they invented all that high level domain stuff in the first place. Now, if only there'd been some other branching options as well. Then more people might have kept playing once they got there and didn't know what to do with one. :/
House rules: When you're living in a rules as physics game, even a small change to stats can make a big difference to how a race or class interacts with the world. For example, what happens if you change dwarves from having a charisma penalty to a dexterity penalty instead. That ± 1 to a bunch of rolls seems small, but will really add up in terms of building stereotypes. Their primary identifier goes from grumpy to clumsy, (although thankfully that doesn't affect their crafting skills) and they're even more likely to be comic relief for the group. Very interesting. And also a reminder that it's the little details that let you really make a world your own, and can make or break overall game balance. Change the nuances, and see what happens. If it turns out poorly, change it back. No harm, no foul, and hopefully you got a story out of the experiment as well.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 3/9
Dragon magic: Monte Cook hedges his bets by producing the magazine's second OGL article, thus ensuring he can use it's ideas again for Malhavoc publications. Smart move, since the idea of feats that open up particular types of magic to general casters was the big way he kept everyone from having access to everything in Arcana Evolved, after eliminating the distinction between arcane, divine and psionics. It also gives him an excuse to make these normally dragon-exclusive spells more powerful than normal ones of the same level, which might have gone unremarked last edition, but needs justifying now. So this is a 3e version of the Dragon Dweomers spells from issues 218, 230, 248 & 272. Surprisingly few of them are direct updatings of spells from the previous ones as well, which is pleasing for me to see, and speaks well of Monte's current creativity levels. Plus there's a case where an ability that was pure fiat last edition is turned into a properly codified spell. Yup, if you always wanted to teleport your entire mountain or castle home around the planes on a regular basis like Infyrana from Dragon Mountain, now you can at epic levels. (with the help of a few extend spell metamagics) This makes me happy, and the rest of the spells feel pretty dragon appropriate as well, with lots of lair based spells, some elemental blasting and enhancement, and buffs to your wings, scales, claws and general flexibility (and a justification as to how you can find them at the centre of dungeons they couldn't physically get out of :) ) This is a very strong article, and I'm glad it isn't just squirelled away into WotC's archives, and is free to be reused and expanded upon. Definitely a good way to kick off our features.
Heavy gear: While dragons have got a fair number of magical items aimed specifically for (or at) them in birthday issues, I can't actually find one that talks about mundane gear adapted for the draconic body form. So it looks like they have managed to find something new to talk about this issue. While dragons are generally quite comfortable going naked whatever the climate, they're still smart enough to recognise the value of bags and harnesses to carry stuff, enhancements for their natural weapons and armour, and all sorts of things that they might have trouble making with their huge awkward claws, but can easily pay or threaten humans into doing for them. As with the last article, many of the items are focussed at making their lair safer and better protected against adventurers, but some are handy if they should join an adventuring party and head out to enhance their fortune that way as well. This means that they are primarily DM focussed, but as with Monte's spells, less so than in previous editions. Giving PC's a concrete path to follow to access them, even if it is a challenging one, does seem very much the way to go at the moment.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 4/9
Dweomered dragon scales: The onslaught of dragon based crunchy stuff comes to an end with one that is primarily focussed at players. Dragon scales are one of the few magic item components you can extract from them while leaving them alive, so you can possibly get one by making a deal with them, or even sneaking into their lair and looking for any sheddings. Unsurprisingly, the powers they grant are heavily based on the type of dragon they come from, with one from each chromatic, metallic and lung species, plus 5 miscellaneous ones like shadow, deep and brown. I'm a bit irked by the lack of gem dragons, but the items are decent enough, if very formulaic, granting some of the resistances and spell-like abilities that the various dragons possessed. At least the various ways they're mounted for wearing shows some inventiveness. allowing you to have them in rings, shields, collars, hats, amulets, cufflinks, basically, at least one for each body slot if you were so inclined to buff yourself that way. And let's face it, there are far worse themes to pick for your character's powers, as this'll net you a broad range of resistances and not many weaknesses. So it looks like this year's presents have all fell into the high crunch, efficient, player-friendly and formulaic mould they're keen on at the moment. One or two like that is cool, but when it's every article, it gets very tedious indeed. Let's hope there's at least some variety in approach in the rest of the issue.
The ecology of the ironmaw: Skip contributes an ecology for the first time in well over a decade. Nice to see he's not completely consumed by fulfilling his regular duties. This is a fairly good example of the current ecological trends, although rather longer in it's descriptive section than the previous two, it's still entirely OOC, and focussed upon combat over the uses of the creature in general campaignery and interactions with other creatures. There's quite a bit of story potential in a plant from the abyss gradually taking over a prime material world through being nastier than the local fauna, and that could be better put across. Still, it is probably an improvement on last year's crop. Now, if they could get the frequency back as well. Are they not getting the submissions, or is this a deliberate decision to cut this kind of stuff out? Either way, this is one area 3rd ed is quite a bit worse than 2nd.
Tactical Terrors: Skip contributes a second article in quick succession, a direct sequel to one from issue 288. Yup, here's 14 more encounter ideas wherin you combine multiple monsters that complement each other in interesting ways. Be it one riding the other, a group of minions and a leader, open attack and a stealthy counterpart, or just equal partners, there's a huge number of combinations you can try, see if the challenge level is more or less than the sum of it's parts. So like transformational prestige classes and transforming existing monsters into templates, this is an idea that shows a little bit of diminishing returns in it's return, but still has plenty of room for further expansions. The main way it's inferior to the previous one is the quantity, only 14 ideas compared to the original's 20, and the formatting, which has white writing on a bright red background, not the most legible combo. Still, the content is decent enough, it's just not surprising anymore. Now they've taken the idea and made it standard in ecology articles, it's no longer new and cool.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 5/9
Armed to the tentacle: Neither is this one by Skip's wife. Lest we forget, Illithids have got multiple specials in the magazine giving them more stuff, plus a full book last edition. They're literally THE oldest creation of the magazine that still gets regular screentime. As with the draconic equipment, there's quite a mix of stuff here. New magic items, and new creatures (which are also items, since illithids are quite into their symbiotic biotech. ) The symbionts make up the majority of this article, and are the most interesting part, attaching themselves to you in somewhat gross manner, and providing various benefits in exchange for ability damage as they live off your vital energies. Most are also intelligent, many far more so than humans, so they can provide you with an extra set of eyes and opinions if you're willing to put up with the loss of privacy as well as their stated benefits. It puts an interesting alternative spin to finding intelligent magical items. Plus the Guyver fans'll love it. :p So while not totally original, this is also a solid bit of crunchy material with some entertaining ideas contained within. I'm not sure why Skip & Penny have suddenly stepped up their rate of submissions, but I don't object to it at all.
Psions of the orient: The connection between psionics and martial arts of the more high-flying kind is pretty well established. So it makes perfect sense that someone would combine the two, creating psionic styles that grant you an extra ability if you take the right feats and powers. However, unlike mundane MA styles, they set things up so you can only pick one, and then you're stuck with it, even if you could theoretically buy all the feats for two or three by 20th level. So in practice they work more like wizard school specialisations, particularly the psionic warrior ones. That means you won't get to see many of these in your game unless you use them for the NPC's. So while this is a neat idea, it's fairly limited in it's application in most campaigns. Maybe if it was included in the 3.5 psionics revision it'd gain a little traction, but no suck luck. Guess it's another throwaway then.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 6/9
Arcane weather: Magical weather is probably one area that's underrepresented in D&D compared to real world superstition. Part of that is because like shapeshifting, you have a few high level spells that basically let you do everything, which gives spellcasters either no power over it at all, or ridiculous flexibility and huge amounts of tactical and strategic control over an area. There really should be more intermediate steps between alter the temperature a few degrees and snap your fingers for instant village destroying hurricane. Still, it seems Mike Mearls isn't in a flexibility cutting mood today, just an adding new whimsical stuff one, and applying the lessons we learned out in the planes to the prime material. In an area of high magic, all sorts of weird and wonderful weather can happen, from raining frogs, to mixing raw alignment energy with the weather. And while some may be beneficial to the PC's, it's more likely that they'll be a challenge to overcome, and figure out how to make them hurt any enemies more than you. Most of this is for DM's to play around with, but as with the dragon articles, there's feats and a prestige class that lets players counteract and play around with magical weather, which will be suitably game-changing at high level. As both an unfamiliar topic, and quite a fun implementation, this is a pretty cool article. A bit of overt fantastically like this reminds players that magic is an integral part of a fantasy world, not something slapped on top of real world physics.
Dork tower substitutes science for magic. Once again, nothing changes. Arthur C Clarke would be proud.
Fiction: Theadora's ladder by Thomas Harlan. Our third trip back to the time of the crusades, and we up the magic level quite substantially, introducing vampires, and an old woman who has enough blatant magical power to stand up to them in a direct battle. (complete with a bit of wire-fu) So this isn't so much power creep as a sudden leap in stakes ( in both senses ;) ) and change in tone. It also ceases to be standalone, leaving a huge plot hook open for a follow-up story. It looks like this series is going to do what Fool Wolf and Orion have done and build up to something. Presuming it gets those future instalments anyway, which is always a gamble in this magazine. So I have very mixed feelings about this. It's nice to see stories with continuity again, but the sudden change in tone is a bit annoying, and the power escalation definitely so, since gritty low-magic stuff has been getting increasingly scarce around here. I hope he isn't going to wind up on the chopping block or finish with yet another save the world story which leaves nowhere to go but down afterwards.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 7/9
3.5 Update: The fighting classes didn't change hugely from 3.0 to 3.5. What changes they did make were pretty consistently done to deal with the problem of front-loading. Fighters are pretty much the same, but for expanded feat options, which still don't change the fact that the first 4-6 levels are the only ones you really want. Barbarians get better Rage that advances faster, once again offsetting but not removing the issue that many people were just taking one level and then going Ranger instead. And speaking of Rangers, they get expanded in nearly every way. Their HP is down a little. but they get more spells, more skills, more efficient[//i] skills, more combat styles, and those styles advance more gradually. Each is a small change, but put together they represent a pretty substantial upgrade. So pretty much all the changes are ones that grant greater power, at least on the surface. Of course, that won't stop complaints that they're still miles behind spellcasters in flexibility from piling up over the next 5 years, but what can you do? Completely changing the powers rules to fix it lost more people than it gained, and caused pathfinder to sometimes outsell 4e. In a .5 revision, they had even less leeway to change things. As with the spell nerfs, these little tweaks aren't exciting to read about, just irritating. The vast majority of people won't notice (apart from that fighters suck, which was obvious to nearly everyone. ) and those that were won't stop complaining because you've slapped a band-aid on it. I hate these no-win situations.
Silicon Sorcery: As they hinted in the letters page, they've finally got a little more epic material for us, a year on. Two prestige classes based on Morrowind: Tribunal. Both are about transcending your limitations and becoming a divine badass capable of nearly anything. But one tries to get there by sucking up to the gods, while the other believes that you make your own fate. Of course, in D&D, the one that fully progresses your clerical spellcasting as well as granting a load of extra abilities is probably going to win against the one that doesn't, at least until they gain the power to completely no-sell all connections to another plane or higher power. So essentially, it looks like the conflict here is proxies vs super-athar, and in the game you can choose to help either side. That's definitely a conflict that works well in D&D, where even if everyone accepts the gods exist, they don't always like them or want them watching and meddling with the world, and they aren't so omnipotent that you can't make a difference. I can definitely see players wanting to take either of these if they get to epic level, so this article is quite welcome, as with most of their current computer game choices.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 8/9
Dungeoncraft: Monte tackles the obvious topic in a column called Dungeoncraft. Building a dungeon! While the formatting is different, the advice here isn't too different to Ray's advice on this three years ago. The dungeon needs a reason to exist, both in and out of game, and it's design should stem logically from it's surrounding area, the creatures that live there, and the tools they had to build it with. The main difference is that while Ray was always working on a specific example while giving his advice, Monte isn't, which also means his advice is less decompressed, as he isn't looking to stretch a topic out over an entire year. Which will turn out to be more useful overall still remains up in the air, but we should get to the point faster this time, which means it'll also be more friendly to newcomers. Hopefully he'll still hit some points Ray didn't despite that, keeping this useful to me.
The play's the thing: Penny gives her perspective on a proper player-DM relationship, which unsurprisingly differs from Robin's one. Wheras he wants a negotiated social contract where everyone gets a say in how the game turns out, Penny wants you to suck up to the DM (for they have the power of life and death over you), buy snacks to reward them for their effort, and don't backtalk their rulings. I think this may be wishful thinking on her part, since she was an RPGA coordinator for years, and therefore had to put up with all the worst rules disputes and player-DM conflicts with added bureaucracy for dessert. I can see why that would lead to a degree of cynicism about player's ability to decide things sensibly for themselves and a wish that they'd just learn and follow the rules, listen to the DM and do what they say. So this article feels decidedly regressive in contrast with the advice from last year, and behind the humour is a genuine belief that the DM should be the boss of the group socially, not just in game. Which again, is a necessary attitude when involved in organised play, but not so much when you're just a group of friends meeting up at someone's house. Can't say I'm very keen on this one then, especially when contrasted with some other advice we've got over the years. It's very much the worst kind of old school.
Dragon Issue 308: June 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: Do you need two hands to reload a hand crossbow (Yes. Common sense, folks. The only way you could reload a crossbow one-handed is if you had something else to hold it still.)
Can sonic attacks hurt deaf people (Yes. You get vibbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrated to death. )
Can you hold throwing weapons in your off hand to reduce reloading times (yes)
Can you scoop up several weapons as a free action. (no. That'll take you a full round, even with quick draw.)
Can you flank someone with a reach weapon. How about a ranged weapon (Yes, no. )
Can you flank someone while invisible. (No. You may get sneak attack bonuses, but you're not splitting their attention, so you don't help anyone else get them. How selfish of you. )
Can a member of the order of the bow provide flanking bonuses with their shots (no, nor can they make attacks of opportunity with them.)
Can you regain concentration on a spell after it's broken (no)
If someone has spell resistance, spell turning, and a rod of absorption, what order do you check them in (SR first, then you choose. If one takes effect, you can't use the others.)
Can you use a Karma bead and a periapt of wisdom (No. Same item slot. Magical interference go fzzzzzt.)
Can heightened spells overcome globes of invulnerability and rakshasa SR (yes. That'll teach 'em, the smug backward-handed tosspots.)
Can you use heighten spell with improved counterspell (Yes indeed. )
Can you still get your full dex modifier against touch attacks when wearing heavy armor (No. Take the blows like a man. )
What protects you from touch attacks (Recycled question. You come to The Sage with stupid questions like this? Begone!)
What type of AC bonus do bracers of armor give you (Armor, like they say. Another person for the basic remedial reading classes.)
What's the difference between a touch attack and an incorporeal touch attack. (One lands on you, the other goes right through you. If it's incorporeal, it ignores cover, but is specially affected by force effects.)
Does concealment prevent you from using sneak attack (Yes. Even 25% will throw you off your stroke. )
What happens if you attack two grappling creatures (By RAW, you hit the one you wanted. You are free to houserule this. )
What happens if the attacker fails his grapple check mid grapple (Nothing, not applicable)
Can a sun blade inflict critical hits on undead. Does this mean you can sneak attack them using it. (No. You misunderstand the nature of it's extra damage. )
Can you sneak attack while charging. Does this double the sneak attack damage as well (yes, no. Twinkery only goes so far. )
Nodwick uses the dread art of powerpoint to explain dragons to us. If ever there was a medium that will ensure you don't remember it, this is it. What's new decides the evil thing has gotten old, and pushes the reset button. But they still have a lot of explaining to do.
And so we come to the end of the 3.0 era. It definitely went by way faster than 2e, and while it started off with a little more freedom and variety than the years preceding it, it fell into a tightly bounded pattern faster, and became more formulaic and serious by the end than the late 90's ever was. Still, at least it maintained tighter quality control through the whole thing than previous editions ever managed. But even if they are high quality, too many things that are too similar will just get boring, and that was definitely a problem this issue. With any luck the edition shift'll result in at least a brief loosening of the submission guidelines while they figure the new rules out. But I strongly suspect any window of opportunity will be even briefer than last time, since it's only a small revision. Let's see if they can learn how to manage both quality and variety at any point.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 1/9
86 (116) pages. So we've reached the 3.5 revision. We only had half the warning time we did with the full edition change, which seems appropriate. No great stylistic change here though. Wayne Reynolds is still producing dubiously proportioned characters with a ridiculous number of belts going Raar. Or maybe WAAAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!!, which is the theme of the issue. Not just any war mind you, war against the Githyanki in particular. That's a pretty unique topic, that obviously no-one else can cover. (gith are Product Identity, after all ) With any luck, this changeover might be genuinely special. On we march then, keeping up discipline despite spotty morale in the ground troops.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: In the real world, war is something the average person is increasingly detached from these days, with even soldiers able to do a lot of their work through supersonic aircraft or drones that removes a lot of the risk. Of course, the other side is still looking at a decades long cleanup process, as the messes in Iraq and Afganistan have shown all too well over the past decade. Of course, being detached from the reality of war just means we can enjoy it in our escapism all the more, without worrying about triggering someone's PTSD. And really, it is probably better for us to at least explore these ideas rather than pretending the world is a clean happy shiny place all the time. That way we won't be surprised when it all goes to shit, even if the full details don't hit you until you experience them.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 2/9
Scale Mail: We start off with a letter wishing the new spells in issue 304 would appear in the new corebook. Sorry. They might still show up in a supplement though. More than a few will.
The problem of monster CR's is brought up, particularly ones with templates. Yup, results in play can vary widely based on party composition, tactics and terrain. This is never going to be an exact science, despite serious efforts by some designers to push it into shape.
The readers continue to be in a critical mood, with someone deeply annoyed at Gary's love of adversarial play. Sssh. He secretly wants them to win, but don't let them know that or they'll get overconfident.
And we finish with a letter pointing out that one of Mearl's power plays from 307 uses an inaccurate interpretation of the rules. I am shocked that there is gambling in this establishment. Truly shocked, I tell you.
3.5 Update: Time to get into these changes big time, get them over and done with. Nerfs to spell durations I already know about. I'd rather fix them by upping the component cost than cutting the duration and effectiveness, but I can quite understand why they went down this route. The skill revisions, on the other hand, I have no problem with. Folding overly narrow skills into other ones, and generally reducing restrictions on who can take what definitely feels like a good change to me. Similarly, the minor changes to weapons, armor, and racial abilities, with the possible exception of gnomes losing their illusion speciality are all good. Giving classes better high level abilities is a definite good idea, even if it doesn't really catch the nonspellcasters up with good ol' CoDzilla. So looking through this, I'm surprised how many of these changes make perfect sense and were adopted without complaint, with only a few of them going the wrong way for my preferences. Guess it's a case of taking for granted what works and blowing the things that don't out of proportion. In any case, this leaves me feeling far happier than most of the teasers did, after being reminded of the little changes that just made things smoother. It's those ones that resulted in 3.5 mostly superseding 3.0, to the point where it's even harder to find a specifically 3.0 game than a 2e one these days, (but you can get the books really cheap) while 3.5 and pathfinder both have strong playerbases devoted to them. There are benefits to a playtester base of millions, you just need to make sure you filter out the noise correctly.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 3/9
A brief history of war: Not too surprisingly, our themed material starts off with a system-free, historically focussed warm-up to ease us in. It's an ugly business, and one that has changed a good deal over the years, but the basic rules remain the same. The pitched battles between armies are actually one of the smallest parts of the process. Far more important is applying your force to the enemy's weak points, and keeping control of supply chains, communication between units, and information about the enemy. Really, it's rather funny that over the editions, D&D became more focussed on building the game around those "fair" fights, and less on the dangers of exploring, logistics of having the right equipment vs encumbrance limits, and killing things you can't beat in a fair fight by clever use of terrain and magic. So like the ASoI&F special, this gives us a wider perspective than their usual bits of crunch, and reminds us exactly how humans got to be on top of the food chain. It wasn't by head-on battles, that's for sure. This isn't a spectacular beginning, but it does prepare you for the idea that the gloves are going to come off if you go down this path. Will your sadistic inventiveness be greater than your enemy's? If it's a full team of players vs one DM, I'll wager they can still manage it, even if they are working with substantially fewer resources. Let's hope they can keep it fun despite being horribly unfair.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 4/9
Bestiary: Our timeline of violence continues along the bottom of the page, while a whole bunch of little sidebars fill us in on the changes 3.5 has made. Swarm subtype monsters! Yay! Bonus HP for constructs. A somewhat kludgy solution, but needed. Craft Construct feat. Yawn. Sickened condition. Ok then. Clear delineation of bonus feats. Probably a wise idea. And oversimplifying & regimenting the monster size/space/reach rules. Boo. Probably more good changes than bad, but certainly not all perfect. Let's see about the monsters.
Crawling Slaughters are giant undead spiders. They smell vile, and they can still produce web fluid, curiously enough. Someone's been to the same school of battlefield control as Exalted's deathlords and the twat who wanted to put giant spiders in Superman, but had to settle for putting one in Wild Wild West.
Death Hurlers are dirty great animated siege towers with the ability to shoot up to 6 times a round if someone's got the ammo. Another one build to plough through the battlefield, spreading mass devastation as they go and crushing enemies underfoot.
Golem Swarms take a different tack to mass combat, showing that lots of little men can be a real pain to fight as well. This shows off their new material type based DR system, which is another thing that would come to be a bit of a pain. Oh well, it's only DR5, you can blow through that with two-handed power attack.
Guardian steeds also do exactly what they say on the tin. They bond obsessively with someone and stay with them until death. They have magic powers that also protect their rider too. Useful but dull.
Wardrakes are relatively small, dumb dragons, maybe a bit larger than Greater Drakes, that are also perfect for riding on. They have a sonic based breath weapon that wrecks equipment as well as hurts, so a good strafe over enemy lines'll do what it ought to.
Well, that wasn't a bad collection of monsters, but they sure do have terrible names. Looks like the people who will give things purely descriptive faux-badass names like hulking hurler and foulspawn destroyer have started working here now. There should be room for some more derision at their lack of imagination by the time this is over.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 5/9
Shut up and roll!: Most of the regular columns are off for the issue, so this little article is the only bit of general roleplaying advice. And yeah, the title is completely accurate. It's all advice aimed at speeding along combat. Learn the rules, memorise your character's stats, work out what you're going to do before your turn, and then declare it and roll it right away when your go comes around. Faffing is the bane of exciting action, particularly in large groups. Some of these ideas are very familiar, like not allowing takebacks, and instituting a timer that causes them to lose their action if they can't make their mind up in a couple of minutes or so. Others, such as rolling your attack and damage dice simultaneously (making sure you know which colour is which) and annotating your character sheet so you remember what all your powers do are newer, and mean this one is good even for experienced players. While not directly connected to the theme of the issue, it is advice that becomes increasingly important as battles get larger scale, so it does feel very relevant. If you can't keep discipline and focus amongst a group of half a dozen people around a table, you've got no hope of managing an army.
The art of D&D: The timeline returns, managing to cover the era between 1.500,1,000 BC, which reminds us just how much things changed back then, even though it's easy to think of it all as just generic pre-civilisation history. Similarly, the advice is very much a continuation of the introduction's tone, applying the advice of Sun Tzu to your roleplaying campaigns (as last seen way back in issue 154) Know yourself, know your enemy, and make sure they play to your tune rather than the other way round. Master your emotions while exploiting their's. Strike fast and beat them before they've even finished planning. Make sure you don't win the battle but lose anyway because it costs you too much. Once again, this is very much a reality check, cutting through the crap of CR's and game balance and making things all feel very ruthless, while not denying the value of human emotion either. (he specifically calls out how stupid brooding loner badasses are, and that they'll be first on the chopping block even if they are more competent than any of your regular soldiers, because they don't have any support structure. ) It highlights how Rangers and Rogues actually have more useful skillsets than Fighters for larger scale wars, so it's not completely system-free, but it is easily applied to any game. Hopefully this means that as with the 3.0 changeover, there'll be more system-free stuff over the next few months as the freelancers catch up as well. This issue continues to build up steam. Will it be unstoppable by the time it hits the enemy?
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 6/9
Unleash arcane armageddon: After seeing quite a few spells nerfed in scope and duration in this edition change, it's quite pleasing that they immediately bring back mass combat magic a la Birthright. War Spells are only slightly higher level than their normal equivalent, but they have substantially higher costs and casting times, and in return have their scope multiplied by a good few orders of magnitude. That means you won't be able to cast them in the middle of a round-by-round combat without guards, but you might well be able to use one to short-circuit an entire encounter if you get the drop on an enemy. We get 21 examples, most of them based upon a specific spell. Unsurprisingly, the direct damage dealing ones are the least impressive, being a mere doubling of effect radius, while the tactical buffs like mass magical weapons or blur are considerably more magnified in their impact. And even mass undead animation can't compete with the hordes you could raise in previous editions. Which means this is still written with an eye for game balance, and making sure the spellcasters are boosts to armies, not complete replacements. You won't be rivalling what 2e spellcasters with the Tome of Magic could do any time soon. That means that while this is a good article on it's own merits, it still makes me a little sad for the magic of old, and feel that something has been lost since then. I guess it fits with many actual settings where elder wizards had lost spells that you can't match now. Oh well, that's the price you pay for a little more game balance.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 7/9
The Ecology of the Hobgoblin: Funnily enough, the timeline picks up pace at the point, taking us from 400BC to 1,200AD. It still skips centuries at a time, showing that the modern acceleration of technological advancement has yet to arrive. I wonder how far they'll take it. The ecology also takes things further than usual, with a 9 page article including plenty of elements that'll be used in other supplements this edition. They already differentiated hobgoblins from orcs not just with an extra hit point, but also a far greater degree of military organisation. Now they expand on the psychology behind that expansionist territoriality, and how it leads to them being the lynchpin of goblinoid hordes, even though bugbears and ogres are bigger and stronger. This also means that the creature combos are particularly good this instalment. If they were a little better at the social thing, and weren't forced to stay moving due to their carnivorous tastes, they could have a much better civilisation than they do. Hell, they did pull it off for a while in Eberron. Basically, they get a lot more respect in 3.5, and here's where it starts. It's good to have enemies you respect, even if I still can't really say I'm afraid of them.
New martial arts styles: Our timeline reaches 1,500 before giving up, as renaissance technology moves away from what most people consider D&D. People put guns in, but it never really seems to catch on. On the other hand, martial arts stays resolutely in despite a small vocal minority trying to keep things eurocentric, and mastering them taking more effort than most prestige classes with fewer effects on your character. As with the changes to skills in 3.5, they've improved on this here, but by a pretty minuscule amount, giving the styles multiple tiers of mastery that mean you get a new benefit every 4-5 feats rather than just right at the end. So this is not only interesting as another load of new crunch, but also in their attempts to make overall design more balanced. And of course the bits where they power up the warriors are more welcome than the nerfs to spellcasters. If only they'd brought back things like gaining armies and castles as default, warriors wouldn't fall so far behind at higher level. And then this war special would feel even more ... martial.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 8/9
Campaign components: In any normal issue, the themed section would have run out by now, and they'd be filling up the rest with generic material that could go anywhere, and is probably stored up well in advance in a slush pile. This time, however, is very different. All this talk of war in general has been leading up to a 32 page epic on what might happen if the githyanki tried to take over a planet. Since they're relatively unified for an evil race, and can travel the planes with ease, this seems quite achievable. They more than have the numbers, and there's no cosmic rules keeping them at bay like with fiends. Only the fact that it's a big multiverse out there keeps the odds of it happening to you low. Be afraid.
While they have abandoned genericness at this point, they're still putting a lot of effort into making this modular, with advice for using it in both active campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the first thing the lich-queen will do if invading the forgotten realms is kill or magically imprison Elminster, the Simbul, etc etc, giving PC's a genuine chance to become the big damn heroes. Similarly, in Greyhawk, Iuz'll be first target of a clever scheme to shatter his power base, as she wants to conquer good and evil alike. In your campaign, who knows. In any case, it also underscores that they're using the lessons from the earlier articles. It's not some ravening horde pouring through an extraplanar gate, killing and looting everything in it's path. It's a planned assault with scouts sent beforehand to get information on the lay of the land, recruit the local red dragons into service and use their intimate knowledge of the world's history, and even when it is time for the big showy displays of power, they're in exactly the right places and times to cause maximum devastation, and force the countries to move their troops in ways that leave them vulnerable for the next move. In short, they're playing like highly intelligent and magically capable creatures who's primary powers are mobility ones, and are led by an immortal epic level spellcaster who has planned quite a few steps ahead before starting this.
After setting up the premise, and the ways you can tweak it, the rest of this article is broken up into plot ideas for low, mid, and high level characters, ensuring that this really can become a full campaign spanning 20+ levels, or start out as something else before morphing into extraplanar invasion sometime in the middle. Each tier has plenty of statblocks for example enemy groups, including the full mix of githyanki knights, warlocks, gish and special forces. Ultimately, it ends with the premise that they figure out how to take the fight to the enemy, and kill the lich-queen, which breaks their spirit and ends the ability to gate en masse everywhere. (ahh, the perils of never letting your underlings get anywhere near you in level) However, that isn't detailed here, but in a tie-in with Dungeon. (which I note is having it's 100th issue this month, and is celebrating with a 180 page monstrosity that tops even Dragon Issue 200) And since when I check there's a 44 page adventure, and 35 page player's guide to Githyanki in there, I'm left feeling that this feature, as cool and spectacular as it is, is really primarily theirs, and Dragon is the secondary partner in this epic co-ordinated tie-in. That takes my overall opinion of this from stunning to absolutely gobsmacking. One of the largest features ever that isn't spread across multiple issues, and it's still the SMALLER part of the special? Wow. This might top even the 9 hells stuff. What I've seen so far definitely gets a 10/10 for both effort and execution. I really really wish I was reviewing the other half, and this increases my desire to hunt down the remaining issues of Polyhedron, and do a second pass through the other D&D periodicals when I finish Dragon. This definitely cements that Dungeon is now an equal partner rather than just a little brother to them, and I hope I will be able to report just as positively on the other 2/3rds of this epic adventure sometime in the distant future.
Dragon Issue 309: July 2003
part 9/9
Fighting the githyanki: We finish this issue off with a fairly standard, if also slightly extended Vs article, looking at githyanki tactics, and how players should deal with them. They may be smart, mobile, and magically capable, but they aren't without weaknesses. They have a lot of enemies, presuming you want to work with githzerai or mind flayers. They don't tend to fight in co-ordinated units in battle, they have a distinct lack of divine healing, and if you have the magic to lock them down so they can't teleport or planeshift away they'll lose their big edge and may panic. They can be beaten, but if you don't have a decent number of spellcasters or psionicists on your side, it'll be a lot harder. Still, if you take the specialist feats here, you might have a chance. One that gives you a +4 bonus to AC if they use power attack or makes it way easier to disarm dual-wielders? That is interesting, and shows once again that they're thinking about the actual tactics things use instead of just creating feats that give bonuses against types of creatures, which I find a very positive step. This doesn't have the wow factor of the previous material, but it serves as a pretty decent comedown to what has been a very special issue indeed. After something this big, you need that cooldown to make sure you won't be feeling strained later.
What's New is an issue late with the dragon magic thing. Kinda missing the new part then, aren't we.
Even more than the 3.0 changeover, this issue really goes to town on the special features, taking a theme and running with it throughout the entire issue, before culminating in an epic crossover that exceeds anything I've seen from them before. While sometimes I've been annoyed with them in the past for trying too hard to get us to buy everything via tie-ins, this definitely justifies it, with a scenario that's epic, well thought out, well written, and well supported. If this is what Paizo can pull off when it puts it's mind to it, I'm not surprised they wind up surpassing the in-house WotC people when it comes to settings and adventures. Now I just wish they weren't so formulaic in the regular issues. Let's see how quickly they slip back into the same old routine after this, and how soon the next big event or shakeup comes along.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 1/9
83 pages: (108) Special update series, 1 of 3? Barbarians · Fighters · Monks · Paladins · Rangers · Rogues? So basically they're hypercompressing the class specials and getting them out of the way right at the start of this edition? That is a positive development, presuming it's because they have lots of ideas and want to skip the rehash and get to the new stuff. On the other hand, it may well mean the next three issues are annoyingly shallow, not covering any one class in enough detail to satisfy. Guess I'll have to see which way my ambivalence swings by the end of the articles.
Scan Quality: Indexed, ad-free scan, some misaligned pages.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: This editorial isn't connected with the current theme, but instead revisits the idea of changing the rules to better reflect the setting. If you follow the D&D RAW literally, you end up with something that looks nothing like the medieval fantasy it's based upon, and there's so many interacting elements it's near impossible to use them all. This is why you don't put everything in the kitchen sink at once. Stuff gets broken. Better to select a smaller number of elements, and then you can keep track of how they combine, and tweak each of them to get the results you really want. In a way, it's an argument against endless supplement bloat, and it's certainly one for picking the themes of your game before you start. Once again, it seems they're recommending that you do things in your campaign they're not allowed too, because they have to pump out a certain amount of material every month and make sure it's generic enough to have wide appeal. Funny how that's working out.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 2/9
Scale Mail: We start off with a couple more letters about dice superstitions. Yawn. Just because everyone has their quirks, doesn't mean you have to broadcast them to the world.
Also unfortunately familiar is someone who's parents chucked out their dice and character sheets. Sad to see that still happens in the new millennium.
Two people praise the westeros special. They don't plan to follow that up, but they will continue to do themed issues on other books when they get the chance. Keep sending that material in, you never know what series might hit critical mass next.
And finally we have a clever suggestion of representing battles too large scale for minis with graph paper and coloured pins. Neat, even if you will use up materials faster than with regular minis and props. But then, they're cheaper too, so it'll work out fine unless you're doing tons of mass battles, at which point you might as well invest in a dedicated games room with an extra large table anyway.
Zogonia deals with conflicted sexuality. Oh, the angst. Nowick deals with the absence of monsters. Oh, the humanity!
The roles of rage: Back to basic multiclassing advice, are we? I thought we'd got past that a year or so ago. The changes to Barbarians haven't really been that great, apart from reducing the front-loading, so you have more incentive to stick with them. So once again it's time for 8 different basic class combos to be examined with their pros and cons over sticking with the single class for 20 levels. (apart from literacy, obviously) I'm not impressed. It looks like my worst fears about a theme spread this thinly might well be realised for this issue.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 3/9
Specialist fighters: Our fighter article does exactly what it says on the tin. 11 fighter specialist options in a similar vein to wizard ones. Bodyguard, Commander, Corsair, Exoticist, Fencer, Horseman, Kensai, Knight, Pugilist, Shield Bearer and Targetteer. Each of them has a different skill and bonus feat list, plus a few special abilities exclusive to them that they can get where they would normally get a fighter bonus feat. This makes them a step up from regular fighters, but not as big a step as specialist wizards are compared to generalists. Which means they're still pretty much on the bottom of the totem pole as PC classes go, but at least they're a bit more flexible, especially if you want a party full of martial classes, and you might be able to get to a prestige class you want without sacrificing BAB. Really, as with regular fighters, that's probably the best use for them.
Variant fist: Monks have more class features to exchange, so they have an easier time with variants. We already saw the option of selecting different fighting styles and getting a different set of bonus feats and skill boost as a result, and here's 9 more examples of that. In addition, they get a whole bunch of options like switching out class features for Rage, damage reduction, undead turning, etc etc. Many of these options would later appear in Unearthed Arcana and various splatbooks, showing that this one is fairly successful, and once again, you can really use this kind of customising to twink out your character and get into prestige classes with a minimum of multiclassing. But some of these options are so much better than the others that I'm surprised they don't spot them right away, and didn't fix them when they republished them. Andy Collins seriously needs to work on his balance eyeballing skills. Having put quite a bit of effort towards increasing balance in the revision, they're immediately messing it up again. It's really not good enough.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 4/9
Champions of the divine: While the other classes just offer new subclasses and variant abilities, Paladins get a full set of new classes for each alignment, as in issue 106. Curiously, not one of them shares the same name as in the old ones, although they do bring back companion set style Avengers as the chaotic good option. Given that, it's also not surprising that they don't share abilities with them either, and are far more standardised than the old set, all having the same key ability scores, and gaining the same number of powers and spells, full BAB, armor and weapon access, and a single good save. (plus divine grace boosting them all) So while the changes are slightly more drastic than fighters or monks, they're all very recognisably paladins, making this pretty dull when compared with the old collection, but a good deal more balanced and playable. I find it strange that they missed this opportunity to throw a nostalgia bomb at us. Still, at least this gives us other options than losing your powers entirely when you change alignment. At least, if they add retraining. I wonder if that'll be tested out in the magazine before appearing in Unearthed Arcana.
Roles of the wild: After three slightly more adventurous articles, we return to multiclassing advice for Rangers. Curiously, we only get 5 options, presented in more detail than the barbarian ones. Their biggest difference now is an extra couple of skill points per level, and not having to spend one on animal empathy, making them the best fighty class for getting into prestige classes without BAB-sacrificing multiclassing. Greater choice of combat styles helps with that too. And then of course there's urban rangers, which remain pretty popular despite their role being filled almost as well by rogues. This isn't hugely insightful either, as these even splits aren't the best way to optimise your character full stop. In a whistle-stop tour of the classes like this, there really really shouldn't be this much filler. Don't make me wish I'd snoozed through three issues in a row.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 5/9
Stealth and dagger: The rogue article also has a bit of multiclassing advice, but it's done more succinctly, and then they move onto a whole bunch of 5 level prestige classes. It also remembers to think about how race interacts with class, which was oddly lacking in the barbarian and ranger articles. The prestige classes are pretty decent too, so I think I'll examine those individually.
Branch Dancers are about the obvious wuxia stuff, but also get the ability to speak with trees, and use them as improvised weapons. They're really easy to get into as well, with it being an option from 2nd level if you've got the skills. Easy come, easy go, I suppose.
Moles aren't spies, but ranger/rogues who literally specialise in digging. Not that you can't use that for getting places stealthily and then striking lethally, and they get full sneak attack progression, so combined with assassin tactically you could break the 10d6 limit and build an extra special reputation for yourself.
Jobbers are for those who want to actually nick stuff with their roguish skills and fence them on the black market. So they're good at spotting marks, getting them to trust you, fading into the background, and making sure Mr Johnson doesn't screw them over at the end of the deal. I can definitely see that being valuable for a party who's sick of the DM's bullshit and wants to hit back.
Magic Filchers are like a trial run for Spellthieves. The theme probably works better in a 5 level format too, where you can also be genuinely skilled at other things while also nicking the magical stuff of others.
Stonefaces are for if you want to specialise in being a really really good poker player. Total emotional control, and eventually the ability to resist magical divinations of all kinds. In a D&D world, you really need that. In fact, since all of these prestige classes gain explicitly supernatural abilities, it seems they think that's the way to keep them competitive in this environment. Iiiiinteresting.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 6/9
Fiction: The knells of Tancras Moor by Michael A Stackpole. The fiction this month is a good old example of those stories where the protagonist turns a deal with the devil around, and via cleverness and willpower, manages to not only get the better end of it, but hold the supernatural creatures to their deal and actively screw them over. But that doesn't mean he gets a particularly happy ending, or indeed an ending at all for that matter, as he now has to wander the world, with considerable supernatural power, but no real friends, and the burden of great responsibility and temptation always with him. This is a fairly entertaining bit of franchise bait, in other words, setting up the backstory of the kind of protagonist that could get into all sorts of scrapes and misadventures. It's also more than a little derivative of the Fool Wolf stories, but I'm not going to hold that against it too much, as it does take the idea of spirit bonded people in an animistic universe in a different direction. I wouldn't object to seeing it again.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 7/9
DM's toolbox: Johnn covers the easily overlooked topic of guides this month. They can be avoided because it's easy to put them in the GMPC camp, or because players are dumb enough to think they can muddle it all out themselves. Nevertheless, in a realistic campaign, it can make a lot of sense to hire one when exploring a new region. The key is to leave them as just guides, not someone who has all the answers and can deal with any monsters in the area better than the PC's as well (although knowing how to not rile them up and avoid starting a fight in the first place makes a lot of sense. ) And the usual stuff about building a personality for them and playing them in an interesting way, just like any character. Anyone who's used to playing in a game full of hirelings (who often have shorter lifespans than the main character) shouldn't have a problem with this. It's just the ones used to 2e style play that might be the problem. :p Don't make them more important than they need to be, but at the same time, don't just make them tools in the hands of the players. Another variation on the general theme of character building, I think this manages to have enough useful specific bits in amongst the general advice to retain it's value.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 8/9
Dungeoncraft: Monte talks about the map-first method of dungeon building. Just as with plot first, you do need to have an idea behind what you're doing, as it makes things much more coherent than just adding rooms and figuring out what goes in them afterwards. Of course, you could say that it started out as one thing, and then got repurposed, but if you're coming up with stuff like that, I think you're well on the way to building an interesting story and environment anyway. What also helps is to imagine what it looks like and then draw it, rather than just sketching, and think of it in three dimensions, rather than entirely separate levels on different sheets of graph paper. The map is not the territory, and hopefully, your environment and description of it'll be good enough that the players think of it in that way as well. As with Johnn's advice, this is fairly familiar, and the difference is mainly in the flavour of the retelling. You use this kind of article as a checklist to make sure you aren't forgetting something obvious when you build your adventures, and to see how playstyles are evolving over the years. And as we already know, their official stance is back to the dungeon, but in practice we're still keeping most of the lessons we learned in 2e about building more elaborate characters and stories. That's about the tone of it here. Let's see where it takes us next.
Dragon Issue 310: August 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice is back from the month off, and has spent the time mastering the new rules. Now Skip is Official again! Skip, aahh, the eternal sage! All praise the eternal sage. None can rival Skip. None can defeat Skip. None can go on longer, none can be more definitive. Through decades of trials, Skip has triumphed over every puzzle, and Skip will continue to triumph long after you, and all Skip's former companions are gone. Now, back to work. Skip has a rep to maintain, and the big city waits for no-one.
What's the difference between EL, ECL and CR (EL is how tough an overall group of creatures is, ECL is class level plus however much extra power a monster gets from it's racial abilities. CR is how hard an individual monster is to beat in a fight. )
Why are ECL's and CR's so different. (Because some abilities have more impact when PC's have them, and use them all the time. PCs are different starts to rear it's ugly head again after nearly vanishing in 3.0 )
When does a monster go epic (When its total HD exceed 20. This may require them to be considerably higher than 21st level.)
What levels would an ECL 15 minotaur have (You are correct. 8 racial levels, plus 7 class ones.)
What class abilities are considered special attacks (Anything which hurts or hinders someone. Heh.)
What counts as multiple attacks for monsters ECL (More than one attack. If any of them do more than 1d8, you also get another +1 to ECL. Is that so hard.)
Do anthromorph felines lose the pounce power. (Yes. Their legs aren't suited to it.)
Can a gold dragon with levels in sorcerer also learn higher level cleric spells (yes, but complicatedly. )
Does a human with the reptilian template still get their normal powers (yes. Templates do not take stuff away unless they say they do. )
How do racial HD figure in multiclass XP penalties (Ignore them. Monsters have enough problems without that crippling their advancement as well. )
Why do ogre mages get regeneration listed twice (Because they get better at it)
Does manyattack apply to full attacks as well as standard attacks (no)
What good is improved manyshot. (At epic levels, it's very useful. Endless iteration is not to be sneezed at.)
Can precise shot and rapid shot be used with manyshot (Yes, no. Look at action types for compatibility.)
Can you add your strength bonus to manyshots with a composite bow( Yes. Just call Skip Odysseus.)
What's new looks into the future. Odds of success are vague. They really should get better prophets.
As I feared, this issue rushes through a whole load of topics in a shallow and unsatisfying way, which is a particularly sharp contrast with the incredible degree of focus in the last issue. Warrior types once again don't get particularly impressive amounts of customisation when compared to spellcasters. Speaking of which, let's head to the next issue to see if they get the same treatment, or if there's obvious favouritism going on here.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 1/9
106 (108) pages. Wizards · Sorcerers · Clerics · Druids · Bards. Yup, The spellcasting classes are already getting favoritism by being less thinly spread. My worst fears about this changeover are being realised. This issue'll probably still be pretty shallow compared to normal themes, and spellcasting classes'll get better stuff than fighty ones. I want out of here. As usual though, I have to go all the way through instead of skimming lightly off the top or teleporting all the way around. Let's get through the remaining 2 parts of this update so we can get to some new ideas again.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: In an issue that's all about covering the old classes again, it's ironic that the editorial is about new directions. They do genuinely want to unearth new ideas for articles that make them feel the same kind of excitement they did when they were readers. But it's not that often a submission like that comes along, and it gets harder each time. Still, they certainly managed it with the Incursion material, so they're hopeful someone has an ace up the hole that they're willing to submit. And that they can spot the ideas that'll work if given a good polishing, not just consign them to the bin, which is always a worry. Yeah, I'm hoping that too. As usual, it seems like their heart is in the right place, it's just that the submissions aren't always what they need, so they have to fall back on formula. Now we just have to get through this month. Sigh.
Scale Mail: Our first letter, not too surprisingly, is from someone who was wowed by the githyanki incursion material. Indeed. :nods: We shall see if it sticks in people's memories 20 years later.
Second, we have a complaint that they often put the cover artwork on top of the magazine's name these days. They never used to do that, although that's probably because they couldn't before the days when the magazine was produced on computer, allowing them to manipulate everything in layers and create transparencies without physically cutting stuff up, which is a risky process with expensive cover plates. I don't have a problem with it the way I do spraying promotional stuff everywhere, but I can see why it would irritate others.
Equally amusing is someone trying to reassure them that all the bitching they see on internet message boards isn't something they need to worry about, and certainly not something they should dignify with a direct response. You do need to remember that you only see the loudest and most obsessive voices there. As long as the general public is cool, you're cool.
Not funny at all, on the other hand, is someone complaining in no uncertain terms about the many spell nerfs in 3.5. Yeah, this is one complaint that's got real legs, as plenty of people feel really strongly on both sides of the issue. And if they think 3.5 went too far in this, they'll definitely hate what 4e did. You really do need spells that stick around and are a bugger to get rid of if you want to emulate many literary sources.
And we finish off with yet more pop culture references. Ho hum. I think this topic has had it's day.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 2/9
Zogonia want to be an equal opportunities team. Yeah, they'll need to do some serious affirmative action for that to work. And then they get a second strip, where another joke is punctured. Purility sucks.
Up on a soapbox: Gary's been off for a good few months, but it's like he was never away, with another comfy old story about his adventures with his kids and friends. This time, it's Luke, aka Melf, that gets the spotlight. Being one of Gary's kids, this obviously meant he got to be one of the most frequent players, and attain some of the highest levels in the entire campaign. But he had his share of challenges and setbacks along the way, including the permanent loss of some of his best magical items. It's a reminder that a campaign shouldn't just be a constant accretion of new gear with higher and higher plusses. You should be using up scrolls and wands, spending money on hirelings and parties, and sometimes having stuff stolen and needing to deal with that. Yet again, the lesson here is not to spoil your players. Sure, they should usually win overall, but losses and casualties should be a very real threat that force them to keep their game sharp, lest they find themselves thrown back to the rookie leagues by a few spectres. And if that does happen, you shouldn't let it deter you. As long as you're alive, you can claw your way back up again. Even injuries and losses that are crippling in reality can be fixed with the right magic. Persist, and your victories will be all the sweeter.
Sneak Preview - D&D Miniatures: Chainmail ground to a halt about a year ago after only a couple of supplements. Now it looks like they're relaunching the D&D skirmish game without the setting, and with the rules even further simplified for larger scale action, plus a greater emphasis on the collectible side of things. While Chainmail might not have been a success, they obviously made enough money from selling the minis to give them another try, only with broader, more generic targeting. While they're trying to create a cool set of teasers here, there is that real elephant in the room that WotC hasn't been as good with settings as TSR, and is a lot more ruthless about dropping them when they fail to perform, even if their sales are on a level a smaller company would be absolutely ecstatic about. And since I did like what I saw of Chaimail's setting quite a lot, that's particularly disappointing here. Sure, you can probably still use the old minis with the new game and vice versa, but the romance is gone, and all that's left is the challenge of collecting 'em all, which no longer really does it for me.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 3/9
Sneak preview - Eberron: Ah, now this is something I can be more positive about. WotC's first (and for the moment, only) new D&D setting to get a full product line of support just like the good old days. Ok, so they didn't create it all themselves, instead selecting it from many many submissions in a competition, but that still means it had a lead creator with a degree of star power in a way the first 3 AD&D campaigns did, and the later ones didn't. And like Planescape, they certainly put a lot of effort into molding it's distinct visuals, even as they made sure everything D&D had at least a small place there. Those sketches make up most of this teaser article, making it pretty obvious that this is going to be a nice long buildup before the whole thing is released. They also make it obvious that the place is going to be higher tech than any previous D&D setting, yet still full of fantastical elements. Robots, railroads and dinosaur riders, oh my. I definitely want to see more of this in the last 4 years of the magazine. Hopefully it'll get it's fair share of articles after it's released as well as before.
Arcane ancestry: We start off with some stuff that will appear in future books. A whole bunch of bloodline feats for Sorcerers. Along with the expected Dragon, Fae and Fiend blood that they might have got their powers from, there's also 4 elemental bloodines, with some fairly predictable boosts if you want that kind of theme without selecting Gensai as your race. Each theme gets 2 feats, and there's a bunch of general ones like social bonuses with creatures of your bloodline or extra spells. It's all pretty formulaic. This is definitely a case where having fewer bloodline types with more feats each would work better, giving you a greater ability to build your character up and have them become increasingly inhuman as they level. I'm not really that impressed. They'll implement this better later, making this another work in progress article.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 4/9
Arcane alterations: Surprisingly, Wizards get the smallest article this month. Also surprisingly, it's an OGL one drawing upon a 3rd party product. Monte Cook's distinctive system of ceremonial feats and spell templates from Arcana Unearthed gets converted back to regular D&D. Triply surprisingly, it's not just a straight conversion, but also adds some more variant spell template ideas that you could easily use in both d20 variants, such as adding knockdown to your spells, or making them able to reliably affect incorporeal creatures. Useful stuff that probably doesn't merit adding a whole level onto your spells like normal metamagic feats. Most of them do have a gp cost though, so you won't be able to use them non-stop. So while you'll be able to get a decent amount of use out of them, this thankfully isn't power creep. It's just a shame that unlike the previous article, this one won't be appearing in official books. They might be doing a bit of borrowing, but WotC are still surprisingly loath to use the OGL to pillage the ideas of others for their own profit. Strange, really.
Faces of faith: Like Paladins last issue, Clerics get the most dramatic variants this issue, with a whole bunch of alternative/specialist classes. Ancestral Speakers get to draw on skills from their ancestors in the same way as WoD werewolves, and are really good at actually communicating with undead instead of driving them off, which seems a more productive solution. Arcane Disciples gain wizard bonus feats and spell selections, making them possibly even twinkier than druids. Aspirants try to become gods rather than serve them, and get fewer but more flexible spontaneous spell conversions. They make perfect Athar. Benevolents lose turning for even better healing and buffing powers. Crusaders get Fighter bonus feats and Paladin smiting, making both of them redundant really. Evangelists cast spells spontaneously, getting a fairly limited selection of spells known, but tons of domains. Most of these do look better, and certainly more flexible than the undead turning you sacrifice, (presuming you don't plan to take divine channeling feats) making this further power creep for people who think clerics still aren't cool or game-dominating enough. Like specialist wizards, taking them seems a very good idea indeed if optimisation is your thang.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 5/9
Changing nature's design: Druids also get a whole load of variant classes with their own names. However, since the main class feature they have to exchange or concentrate focus for in these is their wild-shaping ability, I think they probably come off a little worse from the exchange than Clerics. Wild Reapers concentrate on the deadly side of nature, only able to transform into carrion feeders, but resistant to disease and able to turn undead. Wind Walkers gain flying and the ability to talk to air creatures, but their only transformation powers are into air elementals. Metal Masters gain skills with mines akin to dwarves, and a fair bit of damage reduction, but lose out the worst of all on flexibility. And Winter Wardens get to walk on ice, ignore cold, and use extra cold-based spells at the expense of only turning into arctic creatures. Since these slightly power down druids, while the previous ones slightly power up clerics, I think they put them on approximately equal footing. It's balance .... of a sort. Hey, a party of different sorts of customised CoDzillas is an entirely valid choice for a team if that's the way you want to play.
Musical Masters: Like Rogues last issue, Bards get the selection of 5 level prestige classes, once again rubbing in how formulaic this set of updates is. They don't get the general advice though, making this more limited than that one. I suppose given their flexibility, they ironically need multiclassing less than most other classes to achieve concepts and get into prestige classes, so advice on that isn't so important.
Worldspeakers are all about the Bardic language talents, gaining first the obvious power to speak any language, then adding talking to animals, plants, the elements and the dead. Since those are normally split between the wizard, cleric and druid spell lists, this might actually be a more optimal way of getting all of those than multiclassing and then going for mystic theurge. You'll certainly get more interesting class features, at any rate.
Mourners sing undead back to the sleep of death. As is often the case, this is a definite improvement mechanically on the 2e kit with the same schtick. Spellcasters continue to get cooler stuff than nonspellcasters, even the secondary ones.
Memory Smiths are dwarven bards who enchant items with their keen craftsmanship and magic singing. That's definitely a literary niche that's served better with a prestige class than standard wizard or sorcerer. They also get full BAB and spell progression, so you won't be sacrificing in battle effectiveness if you go into them either. Will you provide the next Sting or Glamdring to your group?
Battle Howlers are the obvious Bard/Barbarian hybrid, getting full BAB, bardic music and Rage progression, plus the ability to use bardic music while raging, which means they can be inspiring while kicking ass on the front line. This synergy definitely works better than the Rage Mage.
Green Whisperers are easy to get into, and get full dual progression in Bard and Druid Spells. This makes them a good intermediate step if you want to build a really twinky Fochlucan Lyricist with near full progression in both spell lists all the way up. Not that it'll be easy to make those skill requirements even so, but every little helps. If only one of the variant druids earlier swapped something out for Evasion, so you didn't have to spend two levels on rogue that really hurt your magical might.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 6/9
Hee. Dead PC Portraits. Nodwick might not see the funny side. Once again, they make me miss dragonmirth, which reminded them every month not to take things too seriously.
Fiction: Guinevere's fate by Ben Bova. Orion's stories in the magazine come to an unsatisfying end with a piece that continues and builds on the previous instalments, but doesn't really conclude anything, which probably means he intended to write more, but never got round to it, or was put off by some policy change in the magazine. Are we going to see another editor switch sometime soon perhaps?
Anyway, as the title says, this is where we finally introduce Guinevere, and Arthur gets close to becoming high king. Which once again shows the liberties he's taking with the legend, as we've got a whole ton of stuff happening before we even get to the meat of the source material. And as usual, he wins the battles, but is left unsure if he's winning the war or not, given all the Creator politics on both sides. So this is pretty decent as a middle to a larger story, but crap as an ending, leaving all the plot threads hanging. Still, Googling shows that Orion and King Arthur eventually came out as a full book in 2011, so I presume he did eventually finish this arc of short stories in a satisfactory fashion. You'll just have to shell out for that if you want to find out where it goes after this.
The play's the thing: Of all the basic character classes, fighters are probably the most flexible?! :Jaw Drops: ............ Excuse me for a moment. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahem. So yeah, Mike Mearls engages in a bit of epic fail this month, either completely not knowing how 3e turns out in actual play, or lying through his teeth to try and convince us to keep playing fighters despite all the better alternatives. 10 bonus feats as their only special abilities, and a crap skill selection means they actually have the least amount of selectable widgets by 20th level. Even Paladins and Monks have more if you use the ability to swap out class features, and the ones they do have scale far better. And to top it off, the advice he gives about fighter archetypes is very similar to the specialist fighter ideas last issue, only with fewer of them covered, in less detail, and without the mechanical backup as well. So this article really does fail on both the writing and the editorial levels, and never should have appeared in this issue so close to the other one, where all it's failings are thrown into really sharp relief. Screw that noise.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 7/9
DM's toolbox: After looking at the specific topic of guides last issue, Johnn decides to elaborate on hirelings in general. Yet again they're trying to stem the outward flowing tide towards a small unit composed entirely of PC's by pointing out just how much more interesting the game is when you manage a full rotating cast of helpers and hangers-on, many of whom need regular paying, which forces you to regularly deliver the goods or see the gang disband. Did you take out a mortgage to get that equipment and employees, did you go round the universities and hire eager young interns for free. ( and now they've levelled up a bit they want paying or they'll head off to start their own adventuring groups which might grow up to rival yours. ) Do they all follow you on adventures, or are a big chunk of them employees that maintain your castle, run your businesses and investments, sell off your excess treasure etc etc? As with last month, this shows you just how many plot ideas you can get out of adding to your party if you run it right, and that you shouldn't let it put you off if it doesn't work all the time. If it's a challenge to the players as well as a benefit, (and the benefits exceed the costs) you're doing it right. As usual, there's plenty of solid little bits of advice on how to implement this more smoothly, and what kind of hirelings you might benefit from, but never realised you need, as well as the fluffy personality advice we've seen a thousand times before. Johnn is still one of their most reliable columnists.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 8/9
Dungeoncraft: Having given us a location, this month Monte is all about keeping the damn thing active, talking about a bunch of different models you can use to make the inhabitants seem intelligent and active with a little less effort. You can create if/then contingencies that predetermine what'll happen if the players do something. You can give monsters a schedule that determines where they are at different times of day. And then there's the full plot model where if the players don't do anything, X, Y, & Z will go off at particular points and ruin people's days. All will take more effort than just plopping a monster in a room with no idea how it survives, but should still be less stressful than just making stuff up as you go along. If you're running an extended campaign, you should probably think about employing all of them in various combinations, as that'll keep things interesting for both the players and you. As with Johnn's advice, this manages to pack in a few new things, and remind us of a whole bunch of old advice as well, which may not be the freshest, but it's still a good idea for you to follow it. Realism may get boring occasionally, but you have to keep coming back to it, otherwise your work will lose emotional resonance and be overthrown by the next generation of creative sorts who use different techniques and trappings that aren't so stale.
Dragon Issue 311: September 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: How does feeblemind interact with int enhancers. (It bypasses them. You have int 1 no matter how much they try and make you smart.)
Can you cast permanancy from a scroll. Who pays the cost (Good question. Best if you split the price. Can't be having sexist arguments these days. )
How many bolts of lightning can you call with call lightning. Can you save them up (1 per round. No. The clock keeps ticking. If you ain't smiting, you're wasting that powah. )
What kind of action is it for a cleric to spontaneously convert spells (Not an action. It's inherent in the spellcasting. )
Can you cleave when you hit mirror images. (Yes. With great cleave and whirlwind attack, you can take that pesky spellcaster DOWN! )
What squares do mirror images occupy (the same as the caster)
Can you improve your mirror images AC (only by boosting your dex, or providing miss chances. All else does nowt.)
What happens if a mirror image user goes incorporeal, blinks or goes extraplanar. (They come along for the ride. You can still disrupt them if you can see them. )
Do burst weapon powers work on things that are immune to crits (Yes. The special powers still trigger, even though they don't take extra damage. )
How do the Flaming, frost and shock powers work. Do you need to activate them every single bloody time. (Nooooooo! Juuuuuuusssssst Theeeeeee Ooooooonceeeee! )
What's new goes on vacation. Just in time, because the snail is back, and my hasn't he grown!
Once again my worst fears are realised, with a formulaic flip through the classes, with the spellcasters getting better toys out of the deal than the warriors. The only real light here is the introduction of Eberron, which hints at changes to come. I guess it's onto part 3. At least they didn't do a whole year long class themed set, which wasn't completely beyond the bounds of possibility. Let's see what they have to offer for october.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 1/9
108 pages. Assassins · Mind Controllers · Necromancers · Blackguards. This time last year, the book of vile darkness was unleashed upon us, plumbing new depths in evil, or at least badness anyway. Now they're back, only this time, they're a little classier. Hopefully they've learned something from last year's slatings, and come back with a decent selection of material that'll make the game more sadistically fun for both players and DM's. Or maybe it'll be just more bland crunchy stuff like the last couple of issues. At least the classes they've picked aren't the same old core ones, so we've got a chance they'll give us some new ideas. Let's give them a chance for redemption and hope they don't stab us in the back and laugh maniacally even when it's of no profit for them to do so.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Another editor change only 2 years after the last one? Well, I can't complain too much. While Jesse's tenure started out strong, it came with a sharp decline in setting material and increase in repetitiveness of topics that made it often a real slog to plough through. Let's hope Chris Thomasson brings us a little more flexibility instead of keeping everything all generic all the time. I guess we won't know for a few issues, if past changeovers are anything to go by. His writing style certainly doesn't illuminate much beyond what the current issue is going to contain, with no drastic change from Jesse's there. I'm sure certain subtleties will make themselves apparent in time.
Scale Mail: The first letter is a plea for help finding online D&D games. By no great co-incidence, they have an article on that this month. Is it really mind reading when they can cherry pick predictions and only use the accurate ones?
Then we have someone pleased that Larry Elmore is back on the cover. Does the new edition mean the end of ridiculous dungeonpunk outfits? Not if the next issue sidebar on the same page is any indicator. :p The surplus belt store still has plenty of stock to sell to eager young adventurers.
A request for comics with continuity. Sorry. That idea is no longer in fashion, and has not been for some time. They're not saying no categorically, but it'd have to be a pretty good submission to change their current policy.
A cautionary tale about leaving stuff on view in your car instead of in the boot. Any bag could contain a laptop, which is one of THE things thieves love to swipe. Roleplaying books may not have the same ease of fencing, but they're of a similar size, and you don't generally hang around to count your spoils if you want to stay out of prison.
And finally, we have a complaint that Spot is a class skill for so few classes, when it's invaluable for all of them. Value is created by scarcity. D&D is a game built around teams of specialists. If you want an all-rounder to be optimal, play a game with quadratic xp buyups.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 2/9
Zogonia blows their recruit paladin roll. You're better off without her anyway. They then kick the head off a gnome. What is this writer on? Something's not right here.
Up on a soapbox: Once again Rob Kuntz gets the lions share of the attention. Not only was he one of the first DM's, he was one of the most dominant players as well. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't contribute more to the actual books. Also once again, it's the funny stories that have stuck in Gary's mind all these years. Rob getting himself an awesome orc henchman was not some big quest, it was an emergent thing that built up into a story via a bunch of cool co-incidences, piled on opportunistic profit seeking, topped off with a terrible in-joke. The kind of stuff that seems perfectly reasonable at a game table, but got treated with great disdain when it appeared in official supplements like Castle Greyhawk or Gargoyles. Which really makes me wonder if those adventures are actually truer to the spirit of the original Greyhawk game as it was played around the table than any of the newer reboots of the campaign that try to recast Oerth as this serious, gritty, war-torn place. Even if Gary was no longer with the company at that point, the rest of it was still heavily comprised of people like Skip, Jim and Rob who had their formative gaming experiences in these games. Maybe it is time to reassess that period, and ask if a few more goofy plots and pun names might actually improve your campaign, make it last longer, and give the Serious Dramatic bits more impact by contrast.
BLACKGUARDS!: So as everyone noticed straight away, they only covered the non-evil paladin types in issue 310. Heeere's the rest of them. As with the previous article, they completely ignore the versions from issue 106, letting us know that those strange names and design quirks are not in style at all, and that we'll be dealing in standardised class structures with a few powers swapped out, maintaining the appearance of balance even if some of them are vastly more useful than others. Sigh. Looks like this is going to be much the same as the last two issues.
Anti-Paladins are pretty much the exact inversion of regular ones, detecting and smiting good, causing fear and disease, and getting a fiendish mount. The only real difference is that they trade off curing with a touch for a bonus to attacking creatures weaker than them, incentivising being a petty and cowardly bully. That's a considerably better idea than just inverting that to cause wounds, as they would do with the Paladin of Slaughter in UA.
Despots are obviously the lawful evil ones. They too have abilities better suited to their role & goals than the Paladin of Tyranny from UA. When you consider how many of the articles in the last two issues will be recycled and improved upon, I'm very annoyed these ones won't be. What were the UA writers thinking, missing tricks as basic as this?
Corrupters fill the neutral evil slot, and have the clear goal of subtly tempting people into depravity, as opposed to dominating or killing them. They could really do with sacrificing the full BAB for more skills and spells in that case. The powers they do get are quite suited to the cause, including a really nifty new spell which does actually subtly tempt people into doing bad things. But they could do with more of them. I guess this way, they'll still be able to give you a really good fight when found out as well. So while not as quirky as the 1e paladin types, this has been a fairly interesting article, with some actual thought put into designing new abilities. They just needed a bit more courage to break out of the existing framework to really make suitably diabolical villains.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 3/9
Among the dead: Necromancers have always been pretty popular villains, even when the mechanics didn't back up their effectiveness. In a way, that makes them the inverse of clerics, which is fitting. As with the last article, we get three variant classes, each trading the standard familiar and bonus feats for other things. Whether they'll be better than the stuff you could buy with those slots, well, that is definitely worth seeing.
Deathwalkers trade off their bonus feats for gradually becoming undead. Since there are definitely better ways to do that when you're a wizard, this is a pretty lazy move really. Once you've made it to lichdom, you'll really want that extra versatility in making magic items, as you've got eternity to build stuff, but also eternity to get bored in and regret your suboptimal choices earlier.
Fleshcrafters are rather more interesting, gaining the ability to create cheap flesh golems and disgusting hybrid creatures by sewing together limbs. They also gain the ability to perform fake doctoring so they can get more materials to work with, and perform coup de graces without leaving themselves vulnerable for a round. Not sure you want them on your side, because if you go, you know you'll be used in their experiments too. I think flavour and mechanics wise, these ones are a success.
Soul Reapers are a bit half-assed as a variant, only trading half their bonus feats and familiar for special abilities involving binding the spirits of the dead. So I guess that's one strike out of three. Not a very impressive record. I'm still more afraid of a smart transmuter or diviner than I am a necromancer.
Assassin specialty prestige classes: Unsurprisingly, Assassins get similar treatment to Rogues and Bards in the previous issues. However, they do at least get 10 level prestige classes which you can really dedicate yourselves too, instead of just dabbling in. Like Ninjas, there are many different skillsets you can develop to accomplish the same end. But will they be cross-compatible enough that you can multiclass between them without losing effectiveness, or will it be best to pick one until you max it out? Since all of them gain a die of sneak attack at 1st level, there's that possibility at least.
Oppressors eschew subtlety and fulfil all the very worst stereotypes about the police. They smash into a place, beat the crap out of people in public, and intimidate everyone watching into doing what they want. This obviously only works if you have a government system that encourages this behaviour, or organised crime strong enough to laugh at the law, so they're far more likely to be part of a group than regular assassins. I'm sure any Despot from the earlier article would love to have one as a lieutenant.
Poisoners are more regular sneaky sorts, sacrificing the general magical abilities of a regular assassin for concentrated poison creation and resistance. Since they don't need tools, and at the highest levels can kill via touch, breath or gaze, they can be pretty subtle and even locking them up naked won't save you. Just be thankful there's plenty of ways to make yourself completely immune to their schtick.
Replacement Killers are the subtlest of all, because if they do their job right, you won't even know the person is dead until quite some time afterwards. Unfortunately, in terms of actual disguising, they're not as good over 10 levels as the doppleganger fanbois from issue 300 were in 5. Still, they're no slouches at the kidnapping and killing stuff, with plenty of stealth and sneak attack. Let's see now. If you dip in the right order, I think you could get at least +13d6 by 20th level, while retaining near full skill progression. That's not to be sniffed at. Shame your BAB'll be barely better than a Wizard's. Oh well, It's not as if you were planning on a straight fight anyway.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 4/9
Thieves of will: Unlike the previous three articles, mind controllers don't have an iconic class associated with the concept. So instead of a whole bunch of variants, we get a load of talk about how well various classes fit into this mould. While Wizards specialising in Enchantment are the obvious choice, they're probably not as effective as Bards or Sorcerers with an appropriate spell selection, as they'll find it harder to get the mundane Charisma to back up their talents when their spells fail. Clerics and Druids may find it a little harder, but they can still get their claws into you if they choose the right spells and feats. Paladins and Rangers, not so much, given how small and specialised their spell selections are. As the shortest and least crunchy of the articles, this does feel like they did struggle for a bit trying to make up the theme, but it does have a decent number of new feats and spells to round off the general advice. Since mind control effects often don't work that well in pitched combat, anything which gives you an edge in speed and difficulty resisting makes a substantial difference. Not that I can escape the feeling that if it comes to that, you've already lost. On the other hand, someone is going to make their save sooner or later, and then you need to be able to defend yourself, and you can't always be surrounded by minions if you want to be a subtle controller. I'm sure you'll manage. 3.5 may have nerfed mind control a little, but It's fine compared to the absolute gutting next edition will bring.
Holier than thou: In sharp contrast with the themed material, we also have some stuff on celestial monster PC's. Asuras, Bariaurs, Holyphants, Leskylor, Moon Dogs, Quesar, and Rhek all get Savage species style racial progressions. Bariaur and Rhek are the only ones you're likely to finish in and add on additional class levels, with the others being well into the teens, with only around half the levels actually granting new HD and skill points. Ok, the skill points and BAB still aren't completely terrible, since they're outsider levels, but they're still going to be a little fragile. I remain dubious about actually playing them. Better get good at making sure those spell-like abilities and resistances remain relevant, and enemies don't target your weaknesses. I don't think many people will be picking these.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 5/9
Faiths of Faerun returns after more than a year off, with a complete change of focus. Well, I suppose the first one never really took off in the first place. Instead, it becomes a divine focussed Arcane lore, providing a whole bunch of new spells aimed at priests of Auril, but of course adaptable to any god who's portfolio includes freezing people's nuts off. And indeed, they do make an effort to ensure it's genericness, unlike the earlier articles. Which is probably a positive step overall. We've seen more than a few complaints about overly specific stuff making large chunks of the magazine unusable in the letters pages.
Auril's Flowers educates us on one of the many eskimo words for snow, with a fairly distinctive weather effect. You really don't want to be standing around when this signature move sprouts from the ground.
Cold Fire makes mundane fire burn cold. Perfect for casting on your bonfire on a sweltering summer night, ironically. Remember, contrast is good. Turning things to the x-treme just becomes noise after a while.
Cold Snap is a moderately nasty weather manipulation spell. It'll take a lot more practice before you can coat an entire country in eternal winter, but at least it's a start.
Corona of Cold both protects you from heat attacks and hurts anyone near you. Any wizard with half a brain'll step back and attack with a different energy type. Warriors may not have that luxury. It's good to have secondary options, even if you are a specialist.
Freeze combines damage and paralysis in a way that should be fairly nasty if you have buds to put them in an even more disadvantageous position once they break out. Freezing can get pretty cartoonish, but it still hurts in D&D.
Frost Breath is your basic AoE cone zappy spell. Niche protection is maintained, it isn't nearly as dangerous as similar wizard spells of the same level like fireball. Padding, really.
Frostbite is your basic single person zappy spell, notable mainly because it inflicts a mixture of regular and nonlethal damage due to it's numbing effects. So as long as there's somewhere to warm up after the battle, it'll wind up less serious than it seems.
Heat Leech isn't too deadly in terms of damage inflicted, but not only heals the caster, but keeps any excess as temporary hit points. Cast in the middle of your foes, this'll really turn the tide of battle in quite scary fashion.
Ice Axe reminds us that clerics are no longer generally restricted to bludgeoning stuff. It's a reasonable conjured weapon, nothing special, should work well for slaughtering yugoloths though. And if you haven't got a magic weapon yet, this kind of thing in your arsenal is a lifesaver.
Ice Gauntlet doesn't add too much to your damage, but should last a whole combat, even at low levels. It may result in a disadvantage if in slippery terrain and climbing, but them's the choices you make. Can't expect a 1st level spell to do everything.
Snowshoes is one of the few that actually makes things easier for players in cold climates. It even comes in a mass variant, allowing your cleric to assist their whole party like a good support character once they get a few levels under their belt. Seems a wise utility choice if you're expecting this kind of trouble.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 6/9
The ebon maw: Back to the attempts at vile darkness, with one of those all-in-one articles that tries to provide a complete package of setting material and mechanics to back it up. An all-new demon lord, plus details on their cult, servant demons, unique spells and magic items? After all, starting with hints of cultists, and then ending the campaign with a pitched battle to prevent the demon lord himself from escaping the abyss, or if he does, to defeat or banish him before he consumes the world is a classic campaign arc that could well span the full 20 levels. Complete with humanoid form and collossal "true form" (which looks more impressive, but isn't actually that much more powerful) in classic video game styleee. This is a fun article, even if it doesn't feel much like the old demon lords. But then again, you want variety from the abyss, so complaining it's not in the original gygaxian style is stupid anyway. And it does have some very unusual and cool mechanical touches like the ability to gain infinite hit points if it eats enough, which means it feels like a properly epic monster, not some nerfed for balance creature that's nothing but a combat challenge. And it is different. We could definitely stand to see a few more new creatures covered like this, essentially giving them a full Ecology's worth of info in one article, instead of more disconnected monsters that are likely to never be seen again.
The ecology of the drider: Ahh, Lolth's angstium batteries. Nice to see them getting the spotlight again. They provide lots of fun for all the family, yet are unable to ever have a family of their own. Since they are outcasts, they have to be tough and self-reliant. Since they are nearly all at least moderately skilled spellcasters, traps and treachery are the order of the day in encounters with them. And since they can climb walls easily, they can put themselves in positions where they can attack you, but you can't get them fairly easily. As is their current formula, this has lots of tactics for both the creature, and people facing them. The length of the ecologies seems to be gradually declining, as if they find it harder to fill up this format than the fiction heavy one. And similarly, I'm finding it harder to find interesting things to write about them, despite their being competently done. That's the problem with following formulas too strictly.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 7/9
Rogues gallery: Like most of the old regular columns, this has been pretty light in appearances recently. And like many articles, it's also focussing much more on the statistical side of the characters than their personalities.
Dyrr the lichdrow is a 26th level master spellcaster who's stats take up a whole page, and his items near that again. He's the very model of a hard to keep track of 3rd edition character, and probably took ages to build as well. I do not envy the DM who has to play him as intelligently as he really needs to be played.
Ryld Argith is the master of Menzoberranzan's fighting academy. He has a couple of levels in rogue as well, which probably hasn't hurt his way to the top, since social skills are as important as actual skill once you get past a certain level. Since he doesn't have a family name to add prestige, he really had to fight for this, and probably deserves it. If you fight him, don't expect him to fight fair.
Valas Hune is the kind of neutral drow who isn't exactly an angsty outcast, but does tend to keep his distance from the political aspect of menzoberranzan society. He also has quite the selection of magic items, including several unique ones. Whether you end up killing him or not will obviously depend on the circumstances in which you meet him.
Halistra Melarn is another morally ambiguous individual, reminding us that the 3e cleric rules allow evil gods to have neutral clerics. Ironically, this means she feels guilty about not being nasty enough to be a proper head of a Drow noble family. Lolth may be a cartoon villain, complete with giant robot spider base, but that certainly doesn't mean all her worshippers are.
And so this column draws to a close, one of the many phased out quietly over the last couple of years. Well, there's only so much they can tell us about their characters, and it does seem to be one of the less popular things they can do. New characters are better placed in the context of full adventures and sourcebooks which give us a clear purpose or place in the world for them.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 8/9
The play's the thing: Playing with people around the world has really evolved over the years, and here's the latest check-in. The internet has reached a form recognisable in the modern day, but the actual specific websites are very different. It's a lot harder to get someone to reveal their real identity, which means if someone drops out and disappears, it's really hard to find them again. Newsgroups and email lists are still a thing that many people use, and aren't too terrible at running games in as long as you have some form of dice roller you trust. Cartography and battlemap software are options, but they will set you back a fair amount, and require you to be a techie sort. Actually, this raises an interesting point in that the DM will also be expected to be the person who chooses and knows the ins and out of the technological platform you're using, and how this could be offputting to someone who isn't. The age of iDevices and touchscreens bringing a new leap in casual user-friendliness is still a few years away. It's the little differences that'll really catch you out. So this is one of those looks at the outside world that come less and less frequently these days. As such, it's pretty welcome.
Dungeoncraft: If you're going to be spending a lot of time in dungeons, you really need to give them plenty of variety. Here Monte gives us lots of example environments and how they'll affect the play. Caves go off the grid and slope and twist unpredictably. Ruins have irregular walls and substantial open areas. Water and Sky dungeons open up all manner of 3D possibilities. Going extradimensional lets you give the finger to Euclid, and quite possibly Newton as well. (Einstein goes without saying, since I've never seen relativity used properly in an rpg, and I'm not even sure it's possible. ) And you can combine several ideas as well, having a partly submerged ruin in a volcanic caldera on a flying island, for example. Like last issue, most of these ideas are familiar, but they haven't all been gathered in one place before. The real world on it's own is full of rarely used hostile terrains to steal, and there's plenty of others to add. Whether the players will think of them as the dungeon, or the wilderness you travel to get to the dungeon is very much a matter of presentation. And I think with this number of ingredients you can combine them to create a unique challenge or two.
5 years. I've been doing this for 5 years now. Half a decade. Seems pretty ridiculous, doesn't it. And at the rate I'm going at the moment, it still looks touch and go whether I'll be done in a year's time, especially since my old cutoff point looks increasingly outdated with another 60+ electronic issues under their belt now. I guess we'll just have to see then. Typing fingers, don't fail me now.
Dragon Issue 312: October 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: Sorcerers can't use metamagic as counterspells, because it extends the casting time. (Are you suggesting that Skip, the Ultimate Sage, is fallible?! How dare you! Skip is never wrong! Skip will cap you if you ever mention this in public! )
When do full round actions take place (In your turn, just like everything else. You'll just have to accept the abstraction inherent in this.)
Can you explain the glove of storing's effects. ( Nothing to see here. Perfectly standard passage of time and item suppression rules. Move along.)
Can you scry on locations as well as creatures. (Depends what spell you're using. Some are more versatile and useful than others. As ever, read the books. )
How does disable device work. (Abstractly. Player intelligence and ingenuity plays no part, nor should it. That would give some people an unfair advantage. It also saves the DM the trouble of figuring out exactly how a trap works.)
What happens if you don't notice a trap, trigger it, and it misses. (Exactly that. How it misses is purely flavour text. You may describe it as seems appropriate to the trap and situation. )
Does a rope really have a break DC of 23. Characters with str 16+ could break through it by taking 20 (Feature, not bug, Skip thinks. Creatures should always have a decent chance to escape when captured, otherwise the players may be stuck in unfun situations for quite a while. Note that multiple knots and loops of rope mean this may take a lot longer. )
When do you save against blade barrier (When it hits you.)
How many times a day can a cleric regain spells (Once. It's just the time that's variable.)
Can you fire a repeating crossbow with one hand or not. We've been arguing for ages about this. (A debate? Skip cannot tolerate this! Skip will settle this argument definitively! Yes, but you cannot reload it onehanded! There! It is settled!)
What order do you grapple in? How quickly can you do it? (The right order. One action per action you have. Multiple attacks are very handy. )
Can you use escape artist to escape a grapple (yes. Better max it out if you wanna go that route.)
If something with reach grapples you, how is the movement handled (They come to your space, or you go to there's with improved grab. This costs neither of you movement points, with is definitely exploitable. )
How can a creature with 0 reach flank (you can't. Nor can you gain benefits from an ally. Sorry, Mr Ratty. Guess rogue wasn't such a great class choice after all. )
Nodwick has a clip show. Well, we have been doing this for a while. You've gotta play with the format to keep it interesting:
Exalted gets to go on the back page. Guess what. They've just completed their fatsplat collection. Now that really takes me back. GUTB, where are you now?
And so for a third issue in a row, I find myself pretty damn bored. The evil classes stuff is better mechanically than the vile darkness stuff last year, but it's also very formulaic and far less mockable, which means it still isn't particularly thrilling. So I find it very strange that one of the best issues in the magazine's run is immediately followed by three of the worst, almost matching the little red triangle ones in redundancy. I seriously hope the next issue has something very different to offer us.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 1/9
114 (116) pages. Another whitespace closeup of a monster going raar. I R unconvincing badass. Those teeth can't close properly. And either part of the torso is unfinished, or that's the tightest corset a lycanthrope ever did wear, and he's currently posing at a 45 degree angle like Rhianna. Either way, I do not feel in the slightest bit threatened. Who likes this stuff? Still, it is appropriate to the theme at least. Monsters of Power? Strange way of phrasing it, but the contents make it pretty clear. Lycanthropes, mind flayers, beholders, undead, elves, dragons? The cool kids, in other word. Hmph. All of those apart from beholders have had whole themed sections to themselves before. It looks like the shallow dipping into many topics they engaged in the last three issues is continuing. Don't make me return a negative result for 4 issues in a row. They didn't manage that even in the mid 90's.
Scan Quality: Erratic page widths, unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The editorial, unsurprisingly, tries to sell covering more things in less detail in a positive way. After all, it's not as if we use the same monsters in game for an extended period of time. A few new tricks for lots of them mean you're more likely to actually use a decent proportion of them in-game. Plus certain monsters, Dragons and Beholders in particular, are so intimidating statistically that they don't actually appear much in most campaigns. Dragonlance was created specifically to big up the Dragon part of D&D over the Dungeon part, and look how that turned out in the long run. Valid points, and a strong reminder that most people don't want to examine things in the level of detail I enjoy, so covering lots of topics decreases the odds that someone will find the issue completely useless. Obsession can be very unhealthy for you. :(
Scale Mail: As usual, even when I didn't like an issue, there's a fair number of readers who did. This is certainly the case for the classes trilogy, which does have tons of easily usable crunch whether you find it a good read or not.
The endless list of D&D pop culture references continues. By the time the next issue comes out, someone'll probably have made another one. That's just how we roll now geeks have gone mainstream.
Also usual is the panic when a regular feature is skipped for a couple of issues. Afraid What's New really is gone for good though. They'll have to replace it with something that actually IS new. :p
Somewhat more usual is a request that they create a new D&D campaign world in the magazine, preferably one that actually follows D&D physics in a logical fashion. Well, they gradually built up the Realms for 6 years before releasing it properly. They could do it again if the will and ideas were there. But that would require someone with the drive and vision of Ed to come along and make a successful pitch, and the odds of that with the magazine more established and set in it's ways look increasingly slim.
And finally, we have yet another instance of someone needing help finding players. If only they had some way of finding people in the same area. You know, the internet has a whole bunch of resources for just that. Get too it.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 2/9
Zogonia has another double helping of increasing fucked-uppedness. What is going on here? This humour is getting downright mean spirited. I worry about the writer.
Up on a soapbox: Gary's already told a story about how when he was a player, his experience and paranoia proved too much for a scenario, and he missed the obvious solution. This was not a unique occurrence, and while last time it merely resulted in failing to find the best treasure, this time the whole party (bar one teleporting wizard) got squished by the classic descending ceiling trap. And the solution seemed so simple. (to him, anyway :D ) It's good to keep up your reputation as a player-killer, even if you don't actually do it that often. This all seems entirely consistent with his views from earlier stories, so we're not really learning anything new about him or the old days. And you can be fairly sure if he reuses this scenario now, the solution will be different. Or maybe it won't, just for irony's sake. Who knows, apart from the people who played with him at conventions in the final years of his life. Unless one of them weighs in, we're not going to get any definite answers here. Onward we go then.
Dork tower finally grasps the concept of the circle of life. This is less pleasing than it sounds.
Animal ancestry: Last month, Celestials got racial progressions for those of you who wanted to start them from 1st level. This time, it's Lycanthropes turn. Bear, Boar, Rat, Tiger and Wolf; all the basics, none of the many many other variants that have appeared over the years. Well, they've got to leave room for the follow-up in 6 months or so. ;) All of them have a total LA of 3 above their HD, which oddly enough will hit wererats and wolves the hardest, since being 3HD down compared to the rest of the party is far more significant at level 4-5 than level 9. Everything else is pretty predictable here. The gradually escalating modifiers to ability scores, armour, damage reduction, etc. The only notable thing I see is that the ability to pass on lycanthropy is always the absolute last power they get, reminding us how much they hate spawn cascades this edition. So yeah, stats, a few new feats, basic roleplaying advice. Meharoo.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 3/9
Shrine war: Obviously with the new D&D minis game being gutted of setting, they can't spend a load of articles expositing on the histories of the factions and the colour schemes they should be painted in. Instead, they're doing what all the other articles these days are doing and providing you with crunchy stuff you can drop straight into your game. A new scenario, and the battle tiles to go with it? That's neither a bad idea, nor particularly rehashed, which is cool. Each shrine has a map and it's own special rules appropriate to it's alignment, mostly of the "certain squares have particular effects on those in or moving through them." Each is 8x5 squares big, which means you won't be fielding particularly large warbands, but there are rules for rolling reinforcements if you want a nice long battle. Even if it's not as colourful as the Chainmail articles, it still looks like they have a fair amount of ideas to add to this game, and the diversion from regular D&D is always welcome. I hope they have other things to sell us as well as scenarios and new status and environmental conditions.
Secrets of the illithids: In 2e, melding magic and psionics to create something greater than the sum of their parts was pretty exclusively an Athasian thing, and even then you had to be epic level to make much headway. In 3e, it's much easier, although you'll have to work pretty hard at it to be better than a single-classed wizard or psion of the same total level. Case in point, the Mind Mage Prestige class detailed here. It does get more interesting special abilities, but it has higher prerequisites and less advancement (8 levels over 10 for both sides) than the Cerebromancer that will appear in a few months time in the XPH. That means they'll effectively be a 13th level spellcaster/11 level psion at 18th level. (the earliest they can max out the prestige class) The usual MAD problems will be a pain in the ass. On the other hand, at epic level, the ability to add their prestige class level to their caster/manifester level will go from just about allowing them to keep up in terms of durations and spell penetration, to punching straight through creatures that would be immune to the spells of an unoptimised character of the same level. And the ability to spend power points to offset the level increases of metamagic feats will allow them to nova to a ridiculous degree. This essentially exaggerates the weak at low level, powerful at high level curve that makes spellcasters a problem, and as such, you should think very carefully before allowing it.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 4/9
Eye Wares: Now beholders aren't overexposed like all the other races being covered here. While they did get a fair amount of love in Spelljammer, that was one of the less popular settings, and even there they tended to use a lot of variants that are actually weaker than the regular eye tyrants. So an article that actually makes them even more scary is quite interesting to see. For all their powers, they do have a fair number of limitations. No hands, and any items designed for a humanoid body shape won't be much use. On the other hand (eye?) they have plenty of slots for unique eyeglasses that modify their ray abilities, and room for feats that push their limitations. And that's exactly what this provides. Boosts to their flying, feats to enhance or substitute their eye ray powers, one that lets them develop their eystalks so they can use them in a prehensile way, and a prestige class that lets them combine multiple rays into one more powerful one. If your players are high level to handle it, this'll let you challenge them in all sorts of interesting ways that'll keep them on their toes tactically. Whether they'll beat a dragon who's also using a load of the options from the magazine I'm not sure, but I suspect you can have a good deal of fun finding out.
Born of death: We've already had two full articles on making undead into templates. Now we have one on half-undead. (which are also templates) Yup, the 3e love of letting anything breed with anything else, even if it's anatomically impossible on multiple levels continues. Saying love can conquer even death isn't just a platitude in D&D land. It might still be gross and icky and give you cooties though. Really, this seems like an excuse to have some cool undead powers and a tragic backstory in a package that won't make your character unviable due to the LA adjustment. And what's so wrong about that?
Fetch are the result of nocturnal visitations by a ghost, and with flight, telekinesis, and the ability to temporarily leave their body, are easily the most powerful of these. With both the con penalty and the +5 LA, they are indeed going to be pretty fragile and in need of being taken care of in combat though.
Gheden are the product of melding mortal essence with zombies or skeletons. (ie, basic necrophilia if you don't want to beat around the bush. Actually, is hair going to fall off before they putrefy too much for you to ...... no, that way lies madness. ) They're tough but dull-witted, and can sense mindless undead innately. If you want to raise a trusty thuggish lieutenant, this seems a marginally more reliable option than raising a half-orc.
Ghuls are the offspring of pregnant women turned into ghouls. With a perpetual hunger for the flesh of sentient beings, they're going to be anti-heroes at best, or get a job as morticians. Kill them, take their stuff, and eat them. It's the most efficient way.
Katane are also unable to resist their vampiric hungers for more than a few days. Since their bite does permanent con drain rather than just damage, this means they can't even feed a little, spread the love around, let people recover, and then come back again for another helping. I think that alone merits their la+4 modifier, and makes specialising in grappling and hit and run attacks a very good idea to wear out and kill otherwise unstoppable monsters.
Deathtouched, like Planetouched, are the result of half-undead producing their own offspring, with a bit of death left, but diluted enough that the specific ancestry is hard to tell. Like all the other planetouched, they're LA+1, and have minor ability score bonuses, resist 5 to 2 energy types and a 1st level innate spell once per day. If you don't want to deal with mechanical hassles or unsavoury appetites, they're the way to go.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 5/9
Dork tower also gets a second strip. They really need to get some new cartoonists. These ones are being overexposed.
Ghost Elves: Of all the creatures getting an article in this issue, elves seem to be the odd one out. While they can be powerful, they're way too common as a PC race to be in any way mysterious or intimidating to use. So here's an attempt to bring back a little of that. It's also a blatant imitation of the Gith backstory. Ghost Elves were created when a deal with a devil went wrong, and the whole tribe was taken to the 9 hells to serve as slaves for generations. They eventually escaped, but found themselves forever changed by the experience. And now they live on the ethereal plane, reclusive and paranoid with their sense of humour stripped away. Great, more grim, brooding, morally ambiguous heroes for players to choose from. I think we already have enough of those, don't you? Just the options from the magazine are enough to fill that niche a dozen times over. That said, they're not bad mechanically, with escalating spell-like abilities as they gain levels that keep them interesting. But yeah, description-wise, they're completely unenthralling to me. We need neither more elf variants or more brooding anti-heroes, and with Drizzt still selling hugely, we definitely don't need another combination of the two.
Dragon Psychoses: Most of the dragon articles we see show you ways to make them more powerful, or use their existing abilities more effectively. So it's with both relief and amusement that I see an article that reminds us dragons can be as fucked up as anyone, and with their longer lifespans and lack of decent social networks, they have a lot of opportunities to become traumatised or set in their ways to the point where they lose touch with reality. Characters are more interesting when they aren't all icy optimisation of their powers and every waking moment spent in lethal lair design.
Nameless Dragons compulsively try and erase all evidence of their existence from the records. They automatically sense when someone uses their name, and home in on them to kick ass. If they get past the first stage, they become very good at hiding indeed, and convincing them that y'know, an identity and social interaction might have benefits gets increasingly tricky.
Ravening Dragons let their base hungers get the better of them, and have to consume their own bodyweight in food every day. This means they're considerably harder to fight or negotiate with, but easier to trick and trap, as they don't have time for all that patient planning and weighing up their options. Better hope you can wear them down without too many losses, because each one lets them last a little longer without starving.
Riddled Dragons go the opposite way, becoming obsessed with the cerebral beyond the bounds of practicality. This means they'll put stupidly obscure clues as to their master plans in the wake of their actions, and are likely to stop and talk even if it's not in their best interests. If you want a villain that goes at things 60's batman stylee, then this gives you an excellent excuse. The curing process is a pretty cool plot hook too. They can definitely have a place in my game.
Spellhoarding Dragons get too greedy when it comes to magical gear and secrets, and neglect mundane treasure-seeking. This once again means they might let their avarice overcome their common sense, but they do get substantial magical tricks to play with, so don't underestimate them, and hope they retain enough sense to trade for new spells instead of just killing you and taking your stuff.
Wandering Dragons not only wander endlessly, they become so sleep deprived that their dreams start manifesting as illusions in the surrounding areas. This means to cure them, you have to get to the bottom of their subconscious fears, while simultaneously dealing with a very real and mobile but irrational monster. Once again, this seems like a fun plot hook seen in many shows and movies, but not so many games, that you can get some use out of. This article has definitely had an above average amount of whimsy for one of this era.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 6/9
Faiths of Faerun: Neither spells or prestige classes for this column this month. Instead, it's another template. They ought to have made that the issue's theme instead of monsters. it's also a convoluted mess of continuity, dealing with Set, one of the few gods who exists in both the Realms and the real world, and the way he and his portfolio (and name) have changed over the years. This involved the typical Realms method of deicide and portfolio stealing, persuading your new worshippers that the new boss is going to be the same or better than the old boss. But anyway, the game material is a template for making snakes into sentient, long-lived creatures with superhuman wisdom, and a whole bunch of examples, along with plenty of examples, and how they relate to Set, and his humanoid worshippers. It's a fair sized article, but still a very dense one, like it was originally even bigger, and then squashed down into it's current shape. It's also fairly unusual in the way it takes real world material and adapts it for another universe in a very specific way. I'm not entirely sure I like it, but like a surprising amount of the Realms material, it keeps me interested simply because they're able and allowed to do different things with it to a generic article. I do wish they'd cover more settings in the same way.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 7/9
Strange bedfellows: A second article on half-creature templates in the same issue?! it seems like the process of following up ideas until they're done to death and they have to move on is still accelerating. Since that won't hit it's peak (so far) until the release of Essentials as an "evergreen" product, and then announcing the next edition just a year later, I guess I have to deal with more decline in variety of topics to come. What are we to do with these imitative writers?
Half-Dopplegangers get three alternate forms, and fairly decent bonuses to their social skills. They won't be able to casually disguise themselves as a specific other person, but leading a double life, having a lot of fun with sexual experimentation, or escaping pursuit from people who don't know you seem very good options. And so there's plenty of chances for the creation of weaker doppleganger-blooded creatures as detailed in UA.
Half-Janni get to planeshift and bring people along like their parents, but only for a minute per level. It's a nice toy, but as the location is pretty random, and they don't get protection from the environment either, it seems like a poison chalice really. Still, they get enough ability score bonuses and spell-like abilities that their LA+3 modifier is probably about right. And sometimes you've just got to make that fast exit, and hope the enemy'll assume you're gone for good and wander off in the interim.
Half-Minotaurs get pretty much all the tricks their parent does, only with smaller numbers. Since a natural weapon, darkvision, tracking, and bonus to search + spot are all pretty handy for adventurers, there's not much to say here.
Half-Nymphs also get a weakened version of their parent's signature move, leaving people Shaken instead of dead with their beauty. Good thing they can switch it off, otherwise sustaining an actual relationship would be very hard indeed. Even so, I think temptation (and guys doing the medieval equivalent of texting pictures of their dicks, which isn't tempting at all) will be a constant issue. You could be driven to become an adventurer just to get some space.
Half-Ogres definitely benefit from being changed to a template, given their penchant for gently caressing whatever they can get. Now you can get some truly awful hybrids with other dungeon denizens. But not Oozes, thankfully. Being only LA+1 makes them more accessible than the regular race as well. I approve. Now, would Half-Minotaur/Half-Ogre still work without a base?
Half-Rakshasa are another one that get some minor shapeshifting, but not nearly enough to keep up with their parents. They're not likely to have easy childhoods, which makes their natural cravings for luxury and vices of the flesh all the more problematic. As a PC, that's a strong invitation to play them with large amounts of angst.
Half-Satyr could also be angsty if brought up somewhere that's big on sex being something sinful to be repressed, but they're just as likely to embrace the rock and roll lifestyle and do very well at it. It does take at least a moderate amount of discipline to show up and practice with the same people regularly, after all, and they're more likely to manage that than their dads.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 8/9
Guild secrets: A short one for this column, detailing the kind of guild that makes life a nuisance for the players without attacking them directly. Where there is conflict, there are profiteers who sell food and weapons at inflated prices, and benefit from human misery. Since adventurers cause a fair amount of death and social upheaval, it's no surprise that people like this would show an interest in them, making sure equipment prices go up before they arrive, and down again afterwards, and maybe ensuring that trouble breaks out to keep you on your toes, while keeping themselves in the background. The kind of stuff that's part boon, part bane, and not easy to detect if you don't have flexible divination spells up that let you trace stuff happening at a couple of removes, because mind-reading patsies isn't particularly helpful. Still, it's not that much of a problem unless you want to retire, but it does mean more innocents will be caught in the crossfire than otherwise. So it's a realistic, but slightly unorthodox method of generating adventure hooks, which I mostly approve of.
DM's Toolbox: The toolbox this month is on the fine art of misdirecting your players so when they do something that's unexpected and outside your prepared map/plot, you can get them back on track without them ever even noticing something went wrong. The trick here, as in a lot of cases, is having extra stuff that you can put anywhere that'll keep them occupied while you spin your wheels in the background to come up with something better. Random encounter tables are very helpful for this. Nothing like a sudden combat or getting well and truly lost to eat up a load of time and make the players worry while you can go through the motions and think simultaneously. (presuming you know the rules fairly well) And if you can get them into a big internal discussion full of roleplaying, then that's absolute gravy, because not only does it let you back off and leave them to it for a while, the ideas they come up with may well be worth stealing for future plot developments. To be a really good DM, you need to have a multitrack mind, able to juggle the immediate events at hand with your longterm plans, and work them in without slowing down midgame. Yup. That definitely sounds right to me. Always have a few tricks up your sleeve that'll make improvising easier, and you'll feel far less pressurised.
Dragon Issue 313: November 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: What's the point of a save DC against wind (Bwah?! :snigger: Oh, you're serious. That's what you've got to roll to avoid being knocked down or blown away.)
Does arcane sight reveal magical traps (yes, but it doesn't reveal they're traps. Be careful investigating. )
How long do rings last once activated. (As long as the appropriate spell. )
Does enervation remove all your high level spells, or just one at a time. (One at a time. It turned out to be easier that way.)
Do you have to choose your attacks beforehand when doing a full attack (no)
If you're making a full attack, can you take a 5 foot step in the middle of it (Yes. Very handy)
Are tieflings affected by holy effects (Only if they're actually evil. Guess there is some justice in the universe after all.)
How does the monk's new flurry of blows work. (We thought it would be less confusing this way. Guess not. So Skip will have to explain again.)
If two characters have the same initiative, who goes first. Can a meleeist close and make an AoO as the archer fires (No. Because you never act simultaneously. What do you think this is, Exalted? The only way you can do this is by delaying, then acting immediately before them. )
If you bluff someone, then use improved trip, are they still denied their dex bonus for the free attack after that (no. )
Do stat boosting items boost spellcasting power (Oh yeah! Many a spellcaster would be unable to use their most powerful magics without their bling. But not Skip. Skip is awesome enough to cast 9th level spells nekkid! )
What happens if you regain conciousness while in someone else's square (You've gotta get out of it to stand up. This will provoke AoO's)
Are there any exclusive skills in 3.5 (no)
Are druids limited by the 15HD limit of the polymorph spell (no)
Is there any way for a monk to get weapon finesse at 1st level (be another class first. )
Does mislead mean greater when it says improved (Yes. Skip finds them pretty synonymous.)
Does ride by attack prevent AoO's (yes)
Does rolling a natural 20 let you hit displaced enemies automatically (No, nor will it penetrate cover. That happens separately, afterwards.)
Nodwick suffers from an attack of author self-insertion. Well, with phil gone, someone's got to take his place. Thankfully it's not in continuity, whatever that means in this strip.
Once again, making their topics broader and shallower ironically results in the individual articles being even more similar to each other in the type of new material they provide. The overload of templates is particularly frustrating, making me start to sour on what is normally one of my favourite parts of 3e. After four consecutive issues of this grind, I seriously hope they have something special planned for christmas.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 1/9
83 (108) pages: For the 5th issue in a row, they continue to skim shallowly off the top of topics. The elements? You could have a whole issue devoted to each of the main 4, plus probably a couple more on the para and quasi ones if you asked for appropriate submissions. Will I find this smorgasboard any more satisfying than nibbling at 5-6 classes or monsters in one sitting? Or am I going to have to wait for a change in staff before things start to improve again? Let's hope, as per the usual.
Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Our editorial this month is basically them trying to figure out how best to promote the new D&D minis game. With one scrapped variant under their belt, they'd really like to do better this time. What can they give us, how can they tweak the format so we're more likely to buy the game, or at least not complain that it's a waste of space in a magazine that should be all D&D, all the time? It's another reminder that they've found themselves becoming gradually more boxed in as time goes on, and need to push back if they want to have a decent range of material to write about, and not repeat themselves in just a couple of years time, and I hope they can hold onto the minis game for at least as long as Chainmail. Wargaming was an interesting part of the magazine for a fair bit of it's history, and maybe it could be again. They just need to find something that gets a decent amount of uptake from the readers.
Scale Mail: Our first four(!) letters are all about an annoying insert right in the middle of the Blackguards article. The necessity of taking filthy lucre should not make you forget proper formatting. Since they now have a full-time advertising guy again, they hope this mistake won't be repeated any time soon.
Another irritating mistake they made, and had to own up too, is attributing the wrong name to the wrong letter. People absolutely haaaaaaaate that.
They also left a few small but crucial things out of the celestial monster progressions in issue 312. Working with material from another department that hasn't been through the full editing pass itself is a risky business, and this time, the dice rolled snake-eyes.
Rather more far reaching is a complaint that since Dungeon ate Polyhedron, the split focus means we're getting fewer adventures, and the ones we do get are smaller and of lower quality. They need to get back to their roots and do what the magazine was originally created for. Since I know that they do wind up scrapping Polyhedron for good next year, it's obvious that they're listening too and thinking very hard about this particular problem. I wonder if I'll ever get round to reviewing that process first hand, and if I'll feel the same way.
Similarly, we have a complaint that the latest issues of Dragon are shallow and full of filler, which I quite agree with. The writers are going for the easy options to meet deadlines too often.
The cavalcade of complaints continues with two more about things misplaced or delayed to the issue after. They are not having a good time at the moment, are they. Even Roger wasn't getting picked apart this viciously in his early years.
Still, they are managing to please a few people, as they end with one unreservedly positive letter. Whether they're actually part of the silent majority remains to be seen.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 2/9
Up on a soapbox: Remember, no matter how powerful you are, the DM can ALWAYS create something more powerful to deal with you. Even if you discover a game-breaking infinite loop like pun-pun, they can make a character that did it first, and has had more time to build up obscene levels of equipment and minions with it. Jim Ward told tales about stuff like this back in the old days, and Gary does so here. A 13th level Ranger is only half a dozen hits from a vampire away from being 1st level again if they get sloppy. And someone who didn't earn them the hard way is a lot more likely to be reckless and not use their powers to their full potential. Yup, it's this old canard. Ironically, I think these days the foot is more likely to be on the other boot, with plenty of people having played multiple characters to mid or high level before the game ends, and then starting a new one. Whether they've learned wisdom from this process though, and play the new low level ones smarter is another matter. But I do think this is less of an issue than 30 years ago. Course, if you're recruiting new players (which we all ought to try to do occasionally) it will come up again, and you need to balance keeping it fun for the new blood with letting them know this isn't a game where they'll always win. But still, times have changed, and Gary's experiences aren't as relevant as they were in this case.
Zogonia puts it's main character through the wringer again. Is it another trip to reztown?
Brotherhood of the burning heart: Well, it looks like our elemental features are indeed going to be pretty formulaic. Each has an organisation somehow devoted to the element serving as a framing device for various new spells, magic items, prestige classes, etc etc. If you want to put them all in your campaign as allies or rivals, this would probably work pretty well, as they're all of neutral or good alignments and friendly to being joined mid-campaign. It's not like the old campaign settings where things like fire wizards or silt priests could be hunted down for revealing their specialty.
So our fire guys are a Bard heavy bunch who are more about fanning the fires of passion than literally burning stuff down, and both their spells and prestige class reflect that. Course, they can also have synergistic effects, like making a fire burn longer or brighter because it's feeding off the emotions of the people around it as much as the physical fuel, or a template which makes your fire spells blinding on top of inflicting damage. But the primary emphasis is on making your emotions stronger, last longer, and getting various buffs from that. This makes them even more focussed on being buffers and support characters than regular bards in combat, but they'll do it in such an overdramatic way that they certainly won't feel like part of the background. If you want a character who doesn't even have to work at this, they also have the fire-souled template, a LA+3 thang that gives you a substantial cha boost, Leadership (and all the devoted followers that implies ) for free, enough surplus passion to effectively Haste themselves, and most interestingly of all, the power to make enemies temporarily forget about their most advantageous combat options. Basically, the kind of messiah who gets hailed from birth, spoilt rotten no matter how unpredictable and temperamental they are, and wins against enemies in both the physical and social arena because anyone trying to fight them inexplicably acts dumber than usual. I can see players really loving to hate an enemy like that. Well, looks like the first article has managed to put a nongeneric spin on the elemental theme. Let's see if the rest can keep up the pace.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 3/9
Dust to dust: Weirdly enough, it's the earth organisation that's most easily presented as an antagonist group here. They worship earth to the point where they're almost a genocidal apocalypse cult, trying to wake a slumbering earth god who'll bring the element to it's proper place of total cosmological supremacy, and wipe out all other elementals and anyone who doesn't give Earth it's proper respect. Very much the kind of credo that comes from someone valuing stability over genuinely making things utopian, and then attaching onto a half-baked idea to create their ideology. And thus it seems all too plausible in a fantasy universe, particularly one where we've already seen the temple of elemental evil put through it's paces several times.
Unsurprisingly, most of their new spells and items are oriented towards defence. The standard resiliency boosts and resistance to things like disarming, knockdown and bull rushes. Not that terrain control can't be turned to offensive ends too, particularly the more powerful ones like the staff with a full array of earthshaping spells. But this seems more likely to make them a bugger to finish off than actually win them the fight. If any group deserves to be the losers, it's this one.
Masters of the four winds: In 1e, Monks had highly restricted numbers of high level characters, with very particular titles, including Master of the X season or direction wind. Those were scrapped for 3e, but no idea dies completely, especially not if it was in the corebook. And so here we have a prestige class for each cardinal direction. Each is designed as a hybrid of monk and some other class, requiring you to be near 10th level and have at least 4 levels of monk to get in (which also means you'll need to plan your multiclassing points carefully) All gain full progression of their basic monk powers, some form of spellcasting, and add the Air domain to their spell lists at some point, which means they all look superficially similar. Hopefully the 4 combined will be well suited for promoting harmony throughout the world, as like the winds themselves, staying still is not their path to enlightenment.
Masters of the North Wind combine monk and druid powers, progressing their shapeshifting and spell powers, and gaining the ability to assume gaseous form, which is always a game-changer. They really can go anywhere and survive there, which makes them very independent indeed.
Masters of the South Wind mix rogue and monk, getting full sneak attack progression and 6+int skill points, plus a decent selection of stealth and air based spells that make them easily the equal of assassins in the stealthy killing stakes, only on the side of the good guys, and hopefully able to resolve problems more mercifully. Enlightenment lets you speak softly and carry a big stick.
Masters of the East Wind mix monk and wizard, predictably enough. With full spellcasting progression and 1/2 familiar progression as well, they look pretty spiffy. They will have to sacrifice 4 spellcaster levels to get in though, which more than makes up for it. Still, stick with it a few more levels into epic and take practiced spellcaster to make up the penetration, and then you can really show off the results of patience.
Masters of the West Wind are the cleric hybrids, completely unsurprisingly, and get exactly the same deal, only with partial turning progression. Since clerics get better BAB, Armor, etc than wizards, this doesn't seem like quite so good a deal. Freedom to use your monk unarmed bonuses, or wear heavy armor makes both slightly suboptimal, ironically.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 4/9
Guardians of the deepest seas: Unsurprisingly, the water based organisation has a pretty heavy emphasis on spellcasting in their prestige class too. Because when you have magic for letting you breathe underwater and ignore pressure differentials, who needs technological research? In this case, it's the need to buy up your Survival and Swimming skills that keeps this from being a no-brainer for a wizard or sorcerer, since it comes with full spellcasting, 3/4 BAB, and a bonus feat every 5 levels plus all the other handy underwater adaptability it adds on. But it still looks like a pretty good deal for a cleric or bard as well, (druid shapeshifting still pwns you, on the other hand) so it's worth going for even if you suspect the game might not be underwater focussed after all.
Also unsurprisingly, many of the spells are updates of familiar ideas we saw in the bumper water spell lists of issues 220 + 235. From basic tricks like holding your breath for longer to 9th level spectaculars like raising sunken ships and smashing areas up with tsunamis, the utility ones are completely familiar. Slightly more surprising are the killing spells that remove the water in your body, or cause it to vibrate in cripplingly unpleasant fashion, but I suppose they have precedents in the Tome of Magic and Complete Necromancers handbook. And James Jacobs can't seem to resist slipping weird and gruesome bits into articles even when they aren't needed. I suppose tentacles keep the boredom at bay, be they suckered, barbed, or comprised of your own mutated bodily fluids.
The ecology of the salamander: Fittingly for our elemental theme, we have a monster that lurks in firey places. Salamanders get a decidedly interesting ecology, with their reproductive cycle and caste distinctions being very different from humans. Being able to absorb your energy directly from the heat of fire has quite substantial benefits. Our new crunch, on the other hand is stats for their larvae, and a trio of feats that enhance their innate abilities. Of course, there's also the usual advice on fighting as them, fighting against them, and using them as PC's. So it's their usual policy of trying to please everyone. Still, a fairly decent ecology, full of usable stuff. They may not be as entertaining as they used to be, but they are more consistently useful.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 5/9
Channeling the elements: If the last 5 articles haven't given us enough prestige classes to satiate you, here's one more for each element, just to roughly keep the balance. No paraelemental stuff or experimenting with possible 5th elements like wood, void or heart then? Oh well. Maybe in a few years.
Earthshakers are all about the tremorsense, gaining an extra 5' every 2 levels, plus full spellcasting progression and bonus earthquakes and geyser blasts on top of that. Fully competitive with remaining a straight cleric, if you can finagle a way of getting into them from an arcane spellcaster, they'll be well and truly broken in power level.
Icesingers give us at least a little paraelemental fun mixed with the straight stuff. Their abilities are mostly a pun on coldheartedness, allowing them to both generate real cold, and remain socially unmoved while manipulating others. Cue Ice Queen jokes, etc etc.
Firestorm Berserkers go the opposite direction, getting full Rage and BAB progression, becoming immune to fire, and then literally bursting into flame and breathing fire when they Rage. I think that's probably worth sacrificing a little damage reduction for, and having the two in the same party makes for a good buddy team.
Purebreath Devotees aren't too hard to get into from a whole bunch of classes, and abilitywise are in the monk/cleric area, with their own spell list, and the ability to survive on air alone. (and as they advance, they need less and less of that as well.) If your adventures take you into hostile environments, that's where they'll really come in handy.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 6/9
Revised Psionics preview 1: With the 3.5 corebooks well out of the way, one of the first things on their agenda is fixing psionics. Unlike the D&D minis articles, which seem to have decided Chainmail is a failure from the past they Shall Not Speak Of Again, here Bruce Cordell freely admits that there were some serious mistakes in their mechanical design in 3.0, and so they're changing things more than they did with the core classes. They're making it bigger, giving a whole bunch of psionic races PC writeups, eliminating MAD, letting you scale powers by spending more points on them, and downplaying psionic combat. Apart from the last of those, these are all things I can be unreservedly positive about. While I haven't been that keen on the changes in approach to settings and articles around this time, I can't deny that most of the rules changes have been for the better, and that continues here. What's also pretty pleasing is that the new crunch isn't something that'll appear in the book, (although it will eventually be published again in the Complete Psionic splatbook in a few years time) adding another interesting race to the mix. This time, they've definitely learned the right lessons from their mistakes.
Under Command: The D&D minis article also takes the form of a grab bag of crunchy stuff, which makes it difficult to stir for it after forcing down 5 articles of elemental crispies. A couple of sample warbands, which can be used nicely both in the minis game, and as antagonists in a D&D one. More interestingly, a mini dungeon for them to inhabit. Hang on, isn't Monte doing one of those this issue too? Dungeon really must be getting as sloppy as the complaining letter says if Dragon is doing not just one but two of those this issue. Moving them to monthly must come with some growing pains for Paizo. They ought to move this Encountersey stuff over there. In any case, the supposed extra variety this column provides is completely negated by the fact that it's written in exactly the same formulaic manner as the rest of the articles. You should get a different writer in specifically to do stuff like this regularly, then give them the freedom to build instead of passing it between the regular staff again. That didn't work for the old minis columns either.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 7/9
Fiction: The Leper's hand by Thomas Harlan. As I suspected in the last instalment, it's time to up the stakes and set in motion a multi-part plot that'll give the characters of Crusader Earth some major development before we say farewell to them for good. Funny how that's become a pattern over the last few years. The stealing of a minor sacred relic sets in motion an action packed plot as the impetuous young paladin and the cynical old witch try to discover who took it and why, and the journey involves kings, assassins and the holy grail itself, which has who knows what powers if all the pieces are reunited. They manage to succeed in their initial goal to recover it, but now they're drawn into a bigger conspiracy, and if they don't seek it out, more waves of trouble will likely come to them anyway. Are they ready for the adventure of their lives? Given the nature of the magazine I can't see them not triumphing eventually, but one or the other might die or have to make serious sacrifices in the process. I guess we'll see in a couple of months time, as we have the usual acceleration in pace of instalments as we reach the finale. Let's hope it's a satisfying ride.
Silicon sorcery: Once, long ago, (issue 213) we had an article on items with synergistic powers, becoming more than the sum of their parts when you have more than one piece of a set. While exceedingly cool, these take a lot of work to design, both in and out of game, so you don't tend to see that many of them around. Well, it looks like Heroes of Might and Magic IV has some more of these to get players excited about the thought of an extended treasure hunt to collect them all and gain ULTIMATE POWER!!!!! Even better, this is one of those cases where they've substantially improved on the formatting of previous attempts, making it really easy to figure out how much power you gain with each addition of a new item. There are three sets detailed here, a 3 item set each for sorcerers and bards, and an extra powerful 5 item set for wizards, reinforcing as usual that they're the ones most able and inclined to make elaborate equipment that boosts their power and versatility above it's already high baseline. So while there are the usual balance issues 3e suffers from, this still manages to be an exceedingly cool article, with stuff that can really spice up your game if introduced. You've just got to make sure the other classes have similarly cool synergistic sets of items to seek out should they so desire.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 8/9
Dungeoncraft: Monte may be running his lessons on a more compressed timescale than Ray, but having completed them, he provides a sample dungeon putting them into practice in a similar way. Since he only has 3 pages to work with, it's pretty small, with only 9 areas, and all the monster stats left out, but there's still a fair number of challenges in there. He also doesn't neglect the worldbuilding side, letting us know why it was built the way it was, and what used to live there before the current selection of monsters moved in. I can't see it lasting more than a session in actual play, probably less, but once it is cleared out, the way it's set up gives you a good excuse for a new set of things to move in, so it remains interesting when revisited. And despite it's small size, it uses multiple terrains and a degree of 3D thinking in it's construction. I think he's done about as well as he can without asking for extra pages or splitting this up between multiple articles.
The play's the thing: When he was running this column, Robin was all about the quirks and catchphrases, revisiting the idea multiple times in his tenure. Mike also decides to to a filler article about the personality traits particular character builds are likely to possess, and the spells that are good for achieving their goals. The kind of thing that's only really useful if you're not that good at mechanics. Zzzzz. I think we can skip this one without consequence.
Dragon Issue 314: December 2003
part 9/9
Sage advice: Do animal companions get bigger as they gain HD (Do you? No, you don't. They're more badass from skill, not physical bulk. )
Can you do nonlethal attack with a sneak attack (Only if it would do nonlethal damage anyway. A good cosh is a great addition to a rogues arsenal, especially if you fancy a bit of kidnapping.)
Surely that means rogues ought to be proficient in the sap, despite it being a martial weapon. (Correct! We have already erratad that, so worry ye not! )
Can you sneak attack while raging (Yes, weirdly enough. )
Do prestige classes still ignore multiclassing penalties. (Oh dear. I guess that like the point buy system, we forgot to keep that in. It's still an Official Rule though. You'll just have to keep your 3.0 books around to be on the safe side, in case the incompetent updaters missed anything else important out.)
What happens if you try a coup de grace with nonlethal damage (It knocks them out if it would normally kill them. )
Many animated objects have hardness affect, if any, will an animated objec on spells used against the animated example, an animated wooden table nes wou affec fire bol arre and (I'm sorry man, you're breaking up. Skip can't answer your question now. Call back later. You will still be charged the full cost for this call.)
If you suffer a mishap using a scroll, is it used up (Yes. Talk about adding insult to injury)
Can you take 10 or 20 when casting a scroll (No, neither are applicable. This is what happens when you mess with forces beyond your ken.)
How does Rary's Mnemonic enhancer work (If you're retaining, straight away. If you're adding, you've still got to take a time out. Does anyone use retainers these days? Skip will laugh at you if you do. Retainers are soooo 80's. It's almost as bad as shoulderpads.)
Dork tower messes up and prints the same strip twice in a row. Nodwick goes oriental adventuring. Nothing changes but the names. It's the circle of life.
And so with a 5th issue of shallowly skimming formulaic crunchy stuff in a row, I'm forced to conclude 2003 has just won the title of most boring and formulaic year in the magazine's history away from 1998. Hopefully it'll hold onto it for a few years, not surrender it straight away to 2004, but I'm not making any bets. In any case, Paizo either are not enjoying any more creative freedom than they did as part of WotC, or are still too busy finding their footing running the practical aspects of a business to be properly adventurous with their article topics and stylings, and it really makes reading multiple articles in one go an absolute chore, even when individual ones are good. More Incursion, less 6 flavor in one breakfast packs please.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 1/8
100 (116) pages. Even Strahd says raar and forgets to cut his hair in 3.5. So much for all the cunning and dignity he aspired too when written by P. N. Elrod or Tracey Hickman. Plus this graveyard is ridiculously cramped. I see the art of setting things a little further back so we can get proper scale and perspective is still a lost one for the magazine art department, despite the issue's theme being the revival of old campaign settings. One that definitely inspires mixed feelings in me, as while it's more exciting than the class collections, it still makes this the 6th issue in a row where they're shallowly covering a whole load of topics that more than merit entire issues to themselves. Maybe this'll remind Paizo and WotC that just because they were never as popular as the Realms, doesn't mean plenty of people didn't love them, and still do to this day. They ought to give them a little more love if they want to avoid doing sequels to splatbooks just a year or two after the originals.
Scan Quality: Good, Unindexed.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The editorial makes it very clear just why settings got such short shrift last year. While WotC originally killed them purely on economic grounds when they took over, there's now a substantial crop of newbies (and 1st ed comebacks who missed that era) who have no real knowledge of or attachment to them. This includes our current lead editor, who is shocked just how enthusiastic people were when given a chance to write some new official material. This explains a lot about why I've been so bored since he took over. With no finer appreciation of the many weird settings their past contains, it's no wonder the material he picked for publishing got samey faster than any editor before him. Let's hope this is a turning point for them then, not some cheap updating that completely fails to capture the varied spirits of the originals.
Scale Mail is very short and homogenous this month, with every single letter apart from one being unstinting praise of issue 313. Why is it the eras I hate the most that get the most sycophantically positive letters in the magazine itself? The only critical one that gets through is an editorial double-booking they didn't follow up on. So instead they'll just cancel it for the forseeable future, reminding us again that Paizo really doesn't have the easy access to interdepartmental resources TSR or WotC did when they want to run a competition or put out a special. It's going to be a long hard fight for them to get to the point where they start challenging WotC in sales, and right now, they still aren't quite up to it.
Campaign classics: Ironically considering they're covering more settings than any other issue, including many that have never got an article in Dragon before, they start off by apologising they couldn't fit in everything. Since a good chunk of the missing settings are licensed ones that have expired like Lankhmar, Conan and Diablo, I don't think anyone's going to be sending in vitriolic letters for them. Similarly, those "settings" that were just a single boxed set or sourcebook, in many cases covering a part of some larger campaign world anyway, I find it hard to count as full campaigns, so I'm not surprised if they couldn't find anyone to write for them. The only one that feels like a big loss is Spelljammer, which apparently they did a 50 page 3e update on in Polyhedron a year and a half ago, so it's already properly catered for mechanically. Still, this is a positive start because it shows just how incredibly comprehensive they're being in their research. Now I just hope the individual articles won't be too small and shallow because they're trying to fit so many in.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 2/8
The return of Strahd: Ravenloft's problem was always the conflict between the weekend in hell style players, and the ones that wanted to make an internally consistent setting that just happened to be ruled by and filled with horror monsters who were themselves prisoners in their own way. In the first, the PC's can roll through and beat the Darklords before rolling out again. In the second, metaplot bogs everything down, and the writers wound up making many of the darklords either literally unkillable or only defeatable by complex and obtuse weak points. Funny that it's the second style that gained supremacy in the full books then. But here, they're going for the toolkit approach, giving us both I6 style stats for Strahd and souped up Lord of Barovia, second biggest and most powerful darklord in the Domain of Dread ones as well. They also provide the map for Castle Ravenloft too, which virtually lets you play the adventure. (who cares about or remembers all the other monsters in the module? :p ) So this is pretty pure rehash, giving us nothing new apart from 3e stats. Since this is one of the easiest modules to find online or second-hand, I can't really get excited about it.
Sundering Ka: The Hollow World, on the other hand gets all-new material that examines some of the assumptions of the setting. As it's essentially a preservation zoo for the destroyed cultures of Mystara, and they're magically forbidden from advancing technologically, that means newer cultures have serious tactical advantages against the older ones. If it weren't for the same immortal interference preventing them from being wiped out entirely, this static setup would not be viable at all. But that doesn't mean they can't cheat a little, as this article shows. By stealing a little bit of Immortal essence, they transform themselves into dinosaur hybrids, which offers a pretty substantial power boost while not violating their cultural restrictions. Goes to show how change is inevitable, and even gods can only do so much to prevent it in the long term. A lesson every setting designer should keep in mind. So this is a pretty interesting article, that reminds us just how weird they got in the past, and what you can do when you build on odd premises logically. Maybe this issue will be worth it after all.
Sin eaters of Eilistraee: Even in this issue, the Realms is effectively going to wind up with more than it's fair share, since they're counting the other continents as whole settings in themselves. Nice accounting trick if you can pull it off. What's the betting Earth'll do something similar if we ever get extraplanetary colonies going, since even if we do, it'll be centuries before it's population isn't bigger than everything else put together.
But anyway. Here we have an attempt to put a bit of pacifism into the Realms. The Silverhair Knights are followers of Eilistraee who try to convert other drow by being living examples of the benefits of not being a backstabbing bastard, and refusing to kill them no matter how annoying they are. This means any special powers they get which make it easier to survive and convert people are very much needed. Ironically, they still get full BAB, even if they'll be mostly using it to deal nonlethal damage. (which they get sneak attack-like boosts if they use that are not to be sneezed at.) They also get 3/5 spellcasting progression, and magic which inflicts guilt overloads on enemies, making them more amenable to alignment changes. It's fairly heavy-handed in achieving it's goals, but at least they're trying something different. Even most of the Exalted Deeds prestige classes are still all about the killing. The only problem will likely be getting the rest of the party to play along. Even Paladins will tend towards killing drow after the third betrayal. Good luck trying to overcome racism in a world where it's entirely justified.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 3/8
Defilers of athas: Drow may be unpopular, but they still have a reasonable amount of glamour as well. Defilers, on the other hand, are not glamorous, because they make a big, obvious and unsightly mess wherever they go. In 2e, their big balancing factor against preservers was lower XP costs, and a slightly easier time socially in the big cities controlled by the sorcerer-kings. In 3e, everyone has a standardised XP cost, so you need to offer them other benefits to make up for the problems they cause. The solution here? Throw out the distinction between defilers and preservers as a class, and let any arcane spellcaster get free metamagic feats if they're willing to tap the environment a little too hard. When the enemy is pulling out quickened spells every turn because they don't give a damn, the temptation to pull a little more just to keep up is pretty strong. Only the threat of turning into an undead creature if they take too much in one go now keeps a selfish sorcerer from overtapping. Which means that the results in play will be pretty different from 2e, (but then, there were two quite different systems there already, depending on if you were using defiling at the casting or memorising point. ) and probably more dramatic, making defilers very scary villains. So i think the question will be if reshaping old campaigns is a good thing, or if you should try and keep them consistent, and only make changes if they move the setting and rules closer together. In this case, I remain ambivalent, as it is a pretty drastic change.
Angry dead gnomes and sinister walking sharks: Now that's a good title. Taladas always did have some cool stuff that got overlooked because regular Dragonlance was so irritating. Death obsessed gnomes, and shark cultists who like to wear shark skins and act in an appropriately predatory and bloodthirsty way. Each get their own prestige class, with appropriate transformations taking place over the course of 10 levels, culminating in becoming undead, or being able to go into a blood frenzy on a whim. They both definitely tend towards the darker end of things, but at the same time aren't always outright evil. It's a good example of the slightly greyer morality there compared to Ansalon. I'm not even sure if this is new material or a direct updating of old stuff, unlike most of these, but the material is pretty good and it reminds me that even after all these years, my knowledge of old D&D settings isn't completely encyclopedic. This is why settings should stay alive and moving forward. If you stop, it's much harder to get going again, because people complain more if anything changes.
Bozak Draconian characters: The actual Dragonlance article is pretty self-explanatory. PC stats for said draconians. With 4 HD and an LA +3 modifier on top of that, they're pretty expensive, but since they automatically get 4 levels of sorcerer and dragon HD and skill points for their racial HD, they're definitely worth at least a level or two more than their HD, unlike many monsters. Question is what classes you should take after all your racial levels to remain competitive. I think a good bit of abjurant champion'll do the job. Surprised they didn't do the other two draconian types as well though. It's like they're inviting further submissions by leaving things open this issue.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 4/8
The exiled factions: The factions have already got a partial 3e updating in issue 288. This continues, but doesn't complete that process, with prestige classes for the Harmonium and Revolutionary League. The Harmonium Peacekeeper is a fairly straightforward 5 level paladin variant, with a particular emphasis on the mount and the smiting parts. The Anarchomancer is a somewhat stranger one that sacrifices three spellcasting levels for some extremely powerful and flexible magical rituals that do things even 9th level spells can't pull off. The nearly undetectable cover identity power at 1st level alone is very tempting, because it lets you do a "and now, I will reveal my true form!" moment with great ease and real mechanical impact. Meanwhile, the Athar, Guvners and Doomguard each get a couple of new magical items, and the Fated get stats for their current factol. As it has both updatings and new material, this is pretty cool, if very incomplete. The planes have got more attention under WotC than most of their old settings, and it's good that they're still providing new, non rehashed information as part of it. Let's hope there's some more to come.
Regional feats of Oerth: One problem Greyhawk has had ever since being brought back in 1998 is the feeling that it's trying to play catch-up with the Realms, providing the same kind of nearly generic information in similar formats, just in smaller quantities. Not for lack of trying though, since apparently these 38 feats are only half of what Erik Mona wrote for this issue. As with the Realms regional feats, the benefits from these are slightly more powerful than equivalent regular feats, many of them providing multiple semi-connected benefits around a theme. Many of them are applicable to more than one nationality, and the various demihuman races don't get ignored either. It's all pretty high density. I'm sure someone'll get a use out of this, particularly if it gets allowed in the Living Greyhawk campaign, but I somehow doubt I will.
The bloody swords: Ghostwalk? I don't even remember them mentioning that in the releases, let along getting any articles. Googling says it was only released 6 months ago, after they stopped doing previews in the magazine, and as one of the last things released for 3.0, it probably got lost in the cracks for most people. And meanwhile Savage Species was getting follow-up after follow-up ad nauseum. I am nonplussed and vaguely irritated by their promotional decisions.
The new material here is a cult of Orcus pretending to be just a regular bloodthirsty mercenary group. They aren't particularly big, but they do have a nice line in zombie servants to make up the numbers, and some custom magic that lets their undead regain hit points by cannibalising others in classic zombie movie style. Makes more sense for a chaotic evil cult than spending tons of time on preservative and enhancing spells. It also means things are less likely to spiral out of control, as you can't both eat someone and turn them into another undead creature in classic spawn cascade stylee. Oh well. It still means players have plenty of reasons to run into them, get annoyed by their antics and try to kill them. Once again, while there may be a few setting specific easter bits, this is usable pretty much anywhere there's undead and demon lords. They may be trying a little too hard to keep everything modular.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 5/8
Ancestor feats and martial arts styles: While Greyhawk is trying to put a little more emphasis on where you're from, Kara-tur remains firmly focused on who your ancestors were. And like the western Realms, the new feats are just that little bit more twinky than the generic D&D material. Rokugan? Bunch of pikers. Our courtiers are more refined, our nomads are tougher, our monks are more enlightened, and our traitors are more backstabbing. The new martial arts styles vary widely in power, with the 5 Stars one easily the most powerful, and the Southern Fist really deadly if you're willing to plough all your feats into it. So this definitely falls into the use with caution category of articles that are actually pretty rare these days. I suppose with the large number of settings they have to cover, they take what they can get.
Cinnabar, red steel and the red curse: Oriental Adventures was pretty twinky even back in the 1e days. Red Steel, on the other hand, was curiously non twinky despite offering quite substantial extra abilities to players, because the price was high, ongoing, and continued to be an issue even if you left the savage coast and lost the powers you gained while there. And since they actually double the ability score cost for powers here, so each new legacy you gain comes with a concrete reduction in mundane capabilities, that continues to be the case in 3e. While somewhat abridged, this is a pretty straight conversion, giving rules for legacies, including becoming an inheritor (which is a lot less restrictive under 3e) or afflicted, and racial stats for Tortles for good measure. This manages to put the weird aspects of the setting front and centre, so I'm pretty happy with their treatment of it this time. Obviously I'd prefer it bigger, but oh well. That's just what you've got to live with here.
Bloodlines for 3.5: Red Steel has fairly substantial balancing factors for the extra powers it gives characters. Birthright, on the other hand is very much built around the idea that some people are just better than others because of an accident of breeding, and to try and balance that out goes against the whole theme. They try though, playing up the idea that it is possible to work up your bloodline score by killing your way up the ladder, highlander style, and encouraging DM's to start everyone out at the same rating. So this is definitely one of their more frustrating update attempts, as the setting and the ruleset are even more in conflict than 2e. The highly limited list of bloodline powers also leaves me unsatisfied, with only 7 options to take, as unlike Red Steel, they have to scale each of them with bloodline strength as well. Needs more work.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 6/8
The return of the Sha'ir: Ah yes, one of THE most inconvenient classes to fit into the 3e mold. Sha'ir in 2e could only cast one spell every few turns, but could go on like that all day, and access a far wider variety of spells on the fly than regular wizards, including cleric ones if they were willing to risk it. In combat they were pretty shit, but in exploration and social situations, they were the wiz with the shiz. And actually, I expected a more severe rewriting than the one we get. Unlike psionicists, they're still very much the same as they were, only with two key differences: their total spells per day is limited in a more conventional manner, and they can "hold" more than one retrieved spell at once, allowing them to be conventionally useful in a fight if they have the chance to prepare. They still have a short list of spells they can get quickly and easily, and can then get their mitts on any other wizard spell they want with slightly more difficulty, and a small number of priest spells if they're willing to wait hours and face a high DC check. The real benefit they have over both standard wizards and sorcerers is still in being able to pull out utility spells and appropriate metamagic with just a few minutes free time. And probably in having a maxed out Diplomacy rating, since their powers key off that, so they'll also be pretty handy as a mundane face for the party. So this is actually usable, yet not completely stripped of it's old flavour. I'm fairly happy with this, even if that skill dependency feels like a bit of a tax. Better not give them an int penalty, otherwise they'll have to choose between Diplomacy or Concentration, and how viable a spellcaster will they be then?
Guardians of the Docrae: Like Ghostwalk, Blackmoor has had hardly any mentions, and no actual articles in the magazine before this. Actually, it never got properly detailed as a setting back in the old days full stop, with only 4 adventure modules and no real corebook. The d20 treatment is both bigger and mechanically more different from straight D&D, which is mildly pleasing. Also fairly pleasing is that this article decides to give halflings some love, showing how they're different from regular ones. As they haven't had comfortable lives like Tolkien hobbits, they've spent a fair bit of effort developing a combat style that works well against bigger enemies. It seems to owe a bit of a debt to capoeira, as it's a dance style as well as a martial art, and gives them much needed bonuses with trips, throws and grappling, as well as a nice instadeath strike at 10th level. It seems pretty decent for a monk prestige class, which means it still isn't the most flexible, but gets lots of neat looking tricks, and doesn't make you reliant on equipment. It's also nicely nongeneric, which counts for quite a bit in my book. I think this is another one I can give a positive result too.
Return to the lost city: Ah yes, B4. Unlike B2, this didn't get revisited in the silver anniversary nostalgia trip, and still has enough obscurity to seem fresh to me. And interestingly, Mike Mearls tries to expand on it rather than just rehashing it, despite not having much room to work with. He gives us a map of the immediate surroundings of the pyramid, and tries to add a bit more ecology to the melange of competing cults so even though the population may be drugged out and declining, regularly ravaged by sacrificing to a giant monster, there's still some degree of stability there, and it'll last a few generations more if left alone. Zargon itself is thoroughly upgraded, gaining a batch of spell-like abilities that makes it the equal of most powerful Fiends, and making the conditions to kill it permanently considerably stricter. It may be a little too sensible, but at least it gives us new material that's useful for converting back to basic D&D, which you can't say for most of these. Don't just feed off nostalgia, give something back to it as well.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 7/8
The new (fantasy) World: Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim can be transplanted to other game worlds without too many problems. Maztica, on the other hand, was heavily built around the fact that the old world discovering it was the Realms, and the metaplot of invasion and exploitation would have gone differently if it wasn't the priests of Helm leading it. Disappointingly, they decide not to progress the timeline those 20+ years forward here, but simply update the Eagle and Jaguar Knight kits to 3e prestige classes. Both have their spellcasting and shapeshifting accelerated somewhat compared to their 2e counterparts, while retaining full BAB progression and 4+int skill points, putting them on the same kind of level as Rangers, Paladins or Assassins. Since the original separated out the Knights and the specialists in hishna & pluma magic, this is one case I don't really feel they captured the spirit of the old setting. Still, at least I can't say they nerfed them this time around. :p Instead, they've turned things up.
The light in the darkness: In the late 90's, James Wyatt was the guy still submitting Red Death articles to the magazine when it seemed no-one else gave a damn. Looks like that's still the case even now. Well, at least it keeps the tone consistent. This is our shortest article, at only 2 pages, and it's another prestige class. La Lumiere were one of the cabals trying to fight the Red Death and bring peace and enlightenment to Gothic Earth. Their update takes that fairly literally, letting them inspire themselves and others to take down monsters with their intellect, despite their distaste for violence. Being a pacifist is a mugs game in D&D, as we've seen so many times before, and it's interesting that people are still trying to fight against that in-setting. So I guess the ex-pastor is still swimming against the tide here, and not making much headway. Will roleplaying as a whole ever escape the need to kill things and take their stuff?
Soldiers of the last order: As we draw to a close, a welcome surprise is that they've decided to count the Chainmail setting in the continent west of Oerth as it's own thing, like all the FR and Mystara regions that got their own independent treatments. In the process we get to find out that this was another case where the setting was originally intended to be its own independent world, but was bodged onto Oerth for marketing reasons. The days of upper management issuing orders that cause big headaches and sudden changes in direction for the creative people isn't over, and even the Realms will be subject to that dickery again next edition change. (and the one after, and who knows after that) And now it's gone, probably never to be revived at the current rate. So I'm left feeling a little disappointed that all we get is yet another prestige class in an issue that's been ridiculously heavy on them. The Boge of Nomog-Geya are leaders of a hobgoblin cult that's grown tired of sharing with those undisciplined lesser goblinoids, and wants to exterminate them so they can better conquer the world. Since the smaller goblinoids breed faster, this seems like a tall order, but at least it's a different one with interesting flavour. And since they get full cleric spellcasting plus favoured enemy bonuses and a fairly powerful social buff at high level, I wouldn't put it past them completely if they can get the help. Plus it creates a very interesting enemy of my enemy situation where the players may have to decide which side is the lesser evil to support for now. If you're going to overload us with prestige classes, better interesting ones like this that come with strong plot hooks like this.
Dragon Issue 315: January 2004
part 8/8
Countdown to Eberron: Having provided articles for so many old settings, they would seem a little remiss if they forgot to keep in the teaser for their next one. So while they have cut out most of their regular columns, this remains to keep the fires burning. They're still being pretty damnably vague about actual specific NPC's, monsters or geography, but they're very specific indeed about the tone and inspirations. The influences are largely cinematic rather than literary, with pulp and swashbuckling dominant, but not forgetting the medieval stories. After all, even if the world has advanced to this magitech place with huge cities and bullet trains connecting them, it's still built on a D&D fantasy world, with a corresponding history. In fact, that's a good encapsulation of their approach in general. It's not only everything in the house including the kitchen sink like the Realms, it's everything and the kitchen sink, and then they raided the toolshed afterwards on top of that. Mechanically, this is the case as well, with all the regular classes, spells and monsters being there, plus new stuff like action points from d20 modern, and a class devoted to handling magic item making better. Like Shadowrun, 40k or Rifts, this is going to be an expansive setting that you can fit all kinds of stories and playstyles into, rather than a tightly focussed one. The time for specialisation is over. They've got to try and please everyone or go home. Which means we leave this issue with me pretty certain they won't be returning to those days of many settings supported simultaneously, no matter how well this gets received. As long as their marketing department prizes unity over diversity, that's how they'll have to market things.
Sage advice: Can you cast beneficial spells on a golem (Not if they allow SR. They aren't smart enough to let down their immunities.)
Can you dispel Evard's black tentacles (Yes, thankfully. Always remember your safe word, kids. )
Do the tentacles have miss chances. Where are they. (Not from cover or concealment, because they're everywhere. Fear the eruption)
Can you use metamagic feats on spells from a staff (No)
Can you use high arcana powers on staff spells (Not in general. There is one little exception. Course, if you're an archmage, you can build your own custom staff with automatic inherent metamagic. Don't be lazy. Customize your build. It's so much more satisfying.)
Does damage from Harm risk the massive death rule (Skip recommends no. The whole point of the spell is to leave them barely alive and at your mercy. If they're dead, then you can't torment them further so easily. Where's the fun in that?)
Do you have to pay 5,000 xp every time you use a wish (At the very least. Wishes are like horses. Always look them in the mouth, because they do not come cheap, and a wish is a terrible thing to waste. )
Can clerics use spells in items from domains they could have chosen, but didn't (Nein. Das ist Bloody Stupid, ya. You are crap rules lawyer, ya. YOU VILL GROVEL FOR FORGIVENESS ON YOUR KNEES BEFORE SKIP, YA?! Mmmm. Das ist Gut.)
Dork tower can't switch off the gaming urge.
Well, this issue was certainly a substantial improvement on the last 5, with a considerably more interesting theme and quirky articles, but it was still very much a mixed bag, much of which was frustratingly shallow. Still, it shows both ambition and variety, both of which are very welcome indeed, and it reminds us just how many fans these settings have. Overall, it's a good start to the year. Let's see if the rest of it is also an improvement on last year.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 1/8
87 (108) pages. 6 months of shallow dipping finally comes to an end with a themed issue on spying. Since the last issue which did that was 231, the issue that got me to stop buying back in the day, I definitely think there's room for improvement here. Let's see if 3.5 is better suited to the james bond playstyle than 2e. Roll the dramatic theme music.
Scan quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: What examination of spying would be complete without mentioning James Bond? They talk about the various people who have played him, and the preferences of the people in the office. This reminds me that it's still a good year before Daniel Craig takes the role, and Bond gets hard rebooted for the first time, instead of simply playing fast and loose about if he's the same guy who gets plastic surgery and the like to stay useful, or if the name is merely a code for whoever holds the 007 job. The franchise was once again in danger of being seen as a dinosaur, but they managed to pull through by stealing from the best ideas of other recent films and capture a new audience. A lesson that D&D is currently struggling to emulate, with an aging fanbase and strong interest in older editions keeping things more static than the developers would like. Is the way to keep the game alive to pander to the fanbase, or go out looking for a new one? Is it possible to do both at once by supporting more than one edition at once? After all, they don't stop selling old films because a new one in a series came out. The new material acts as promotion for the old stuff in a way, making them more long tail money. But WotC currently seems to want to have a few high selling products rather than a wide range of moderately selling ones. It's all vey frustrating, and I wish i know what lesson to take from it.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who saw they were bringing back old campaigns, and got massively overexcited. As usual, they have to council moderation, for they do not have unlimited resources or creativity, and are always paying more attention to game balance than the old days. It's a pain having to be the sensible ones.
Second is a request for smaller, more condensed format corebooks and character sheets. Their ties to WotC prevent them from mentioning that Mongoose has done exactly that. They confirm that ironically, they have even less freedom as a separate company than they did as a WotC department. Not very helpful.
Drow have got a special this edition. But where's the Duergar love? Now this is one you, the reader could fix by sending in something good. It does have to be said that they'll never be as cool as Drow though. Elves and Vampires, there's no overtaking their popularity.
Also interesting is a letter saying that maybe you ought to restrict the types of monsters in your campaign, to create a stronger theme and give the ones you use greater depth. Curiously enough, the staff council against that, as they're all about lots of options and broad appeal at the moment. Let the players choose what monsters they face. Next thing they'll be encouraging DM's to give players whatever magic items they ask for. ;p
We had a request for more duergar love. now we have a request for more halfling variants. They remind us that with the current number of templates, you can create all the variants you'll ever need and more. Not that this'll stop them from adding to them. They have a supplement treadmill to keep up with after all.
And finally, a complaint that they've gone a bit too far towards pure crunch in their recent issues. They ought to be providing stuff we can't get from hundreds of other D20 publishers. They remind us that fluff and crunch shouldn't be opposed, but complementary. It's just that they're not currently in the business of creating whole campaign settings for you, just giving you the tools to do it yourself.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 2/8
Zogonia has another false alarm. Choose life. Choose adventuring. Choose excitement. Choose a different adventuring party, because this one is not giving you the respect you deserve.
Up on a soapbox: Rob Kuntz's story this month is about the comedy that can ensue when you have a ring of spell turning, and wind up with both sides partially charming each other. What should be a ruthless cutthroat negotiation turned into each side trying to out-nice the other, that only ended when it wore off for one of them, which they then took full advantage of. It's very much the kind of scenario that would play out in a looney tunes cartoon, only with the prospect of permanent death, and is yet another reminder how silly gaming could be back then. As usual, I am left feeling that people who want to make some kind of sacred canon out of old school play are really missing the point, and possibly have blinkers on. it doesn't have to be all silly fun, but at the same time it can't be all fantasy fucking vietnam paranoia or death either. Variety is very much the spice of life if you want to keep gaming fun.
Nodwick has a cunning plan and follows it through without anyone dying. Apart from the villain. Maybe this adventuring lark aint so bad after all.
License to kill: We start off our spying material by looking at various character concepts, and how to make them fit D&D classes. As stuff like ocean's 11 shows, there's plenty of subdivisions within the heist/espionage process that a character can specialise in, so putting together a team is a very good idea, especially if you're a government, and want to make sure no one person has too much power without oversight. You never know when one of your operatives is going to go rogue or turn out to be a double agent. They detail 9 different roles, and then go into the classes and prestige classes best suited to them. Every class apart from Paladin can find their place easily enough, and they don't neglect the obscure stuff from splatbooks and the magazine either. Whether you want to seduce your way into the hearts of high-ranking officials, or covertly blow up government buildings, you can probably find a skillset here that'll do the job. It feels like a pretty good intro, even If i can probably predict what the next articles will contain with 90% accuracy.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 3/8
Covert ops: Having given players advice on building their characters, the next logical step is DM advice on building a campaign, or inserting an espionage adventure into a previously more straightforward game. As with the previous article, this isn't generic advice, instead talking a fair bit about how D&D monsters and magic would fit in. (watch out for mind flayers, because both your secrets and loyalties are incredibly vulnerable around them. ) You'll want a good selection of organisations for the players to belong too, oppose, or maybe both at once if they're double agents. While there will be dungeons, you probably won't be striding in and killing everything indiscriminately, and should instead set the difficulty so they have to use stealth and disguise, and actually talk to (or at least stalk) the enemies to locate and retrieve the phattest loot. This is one playstyle where keeping the sides morally ambiguous and giving the players plenty of choice will produce more interesting (and probably more explosive) results than trying to tell a predetermined story. Once again, while the way they're approaching this is pretty formulaic, it still beats the 2e treatment, particularly as they can actually talk about sex this time around, which was a glaring absence in issue 231, given it's omnipresence in the genre. They can also be more inclusive thanks to 3e's more flexible class system, and talk in a more sophisticated way about genre emulation. Following this advice seems like it'd result in a more fun spy game than the 2e way.
Cloak & Dagger: If there's one thing spies and dungeoneers have in common, it's their love of gear. Both spend vast amounts of money and time on cutting edge stuff that adds cool tricks to their arsenal and may save their life in a pinch. The main difference, apart from being powered by technology rather than magic, is that spy devices are more likely to be one-shots, that solve a situation once and are used up or destroyed, so they can have a different selection of gadgets in the next mission. There's certainly a fair share of that stuff here, but also some things that might last if you take care of them, and don't let yourself get captured or fleeced. There's a wide variety of flashbangs, concealed weapons, and devices that aid breaking and entering, including plenty that are obvious lifts from recent movies and tv shows. Similarly, some of the magic items are rehashed, but since we're less than a year into the new edition, I'll forgive them that, because the way they're implemented makes them look fun to play with. Magic items which give you new tricks are much more interesting than ones that merely buff ones you already have.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 4/8
Smoke and Mirrors: Good old Scry and remote nuke or teleport. If anything will wreck espionage games, it's cheap and easy divination magic. Look what Google and cheap surveillance cameras have done to information gathering in the real world. If it weren't for the sheer volume of information and number of false positives, most people would be all too easy to monitor these days. So any D&D focussed look at spying has to deal with this problem. Fortunately, Mike Mearls decides to tackle this in a fair manner, encouraging DM's to tackle this in-game, rather than nerfing powers. (after all, that's his job :p ) After all, while there may not be as many counterspells as divinations, the ones there are tend to be broader in their application, to deal with a whole range of intrusions. The important thing if players are making intelligent use of divinations is to let the enemy have access to them too, and then fairly keep track of what each side knows about the other. Don't give the enemy an unlimited budget, but let them use what they have to it's full potential. Remember that you need to ask the right questions to get information that's actually useful. Take the sensible approach in a non sensible world, and hopefully you will still get a fun game. This all seems reasonable enough to me.
Spies like us: Weirdly enough, we finish with a second bit of basic PC focussed advice, talking about how characters of all classes except paladins can find roles to disguise themselves and use their skills to help pull off a heist. The main difference is that while that concentrated on making new characters for an espionage focussed campaign, this is for existing ones suddenly plunged into the world of intrigue and trying to figure out how to be the playas and not the suckas. There is a fair bit of overlap though, enough that I wound up with a sense of deja vu when going through it. I suppose it is an old teaching technique. Tell people what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them, and hopefully it sticks in their brain.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 5/8
Fiction: Hecate's ring by Thomas Harlan. This series is definitely building towards an end, as they put a previously on section at the beginning that tells us where all the previous instalments can be found. However, it doesn't escalate the overt magic, curiously enough, instead going into an investigation heavy story that's actually quite appropriate to the theme of the issue, as they have to figure out where in the big city their quarry is, and how to avoid all the other people who are after it too. The investigation turns into a high action chase scene at the end, leaving them in trouble, and the plot thicker than ever. With the next instalment listed for a couple of months time, it doesn't look like this story'll be left hanging, thankfully.
Elminsters guide to the realms: Dwarves may not get quite the attention of Elves overall, but Ed still makes sure there's plenty of Realms material for them. This is another of those articles that makes it very clear that he's done the real world research before adding his own embellishments, as he goes into quite a bit of detail about the grimy, backbreaking process of iron mining around Waterdeep. All those weapons and armor adventurers buy do not just spring into existence magically, there's a big supply chain behind them that can provide adventure hooks of it's own, especially since in a D&D world, any mines you make are likely to break through into underdark tunnels full of monsters at some point. Those picks aren't just for stone, you know. It's been a looooooong time since the magazine last did a feature on mining, and this is a good reminder of how important it is to adventurers, and how much fun you can have by incorporating it into your game. As usual, the fact that he's already put so much detail into the world lets him get away with things no-one else can, and that's why he's still good to have around.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 6/8
Expanded psionics preview 2: The big change they talk about this month is psionic focus, and the powers that key off it. They're hoping this will work better than feats that were dependent upon having a certain number of PSPs in reserve. It does move the tactical decision to gain benefits from holding, or benefits from unleashing your focus to a round by round thing rather than a whole day one, which will make your characters more dynamic. Along with the ability to spend PSPs to enhance your powers and go nova, this gives psionic characters a lot more options to customise their actions even before they buy a load of metapsionic feats. As with the last teaser, the new crunch won't appear in the XPH, and this time only some of them will appear in Complete Psionic in a couple of years time, which means this teaser actually retains it's utility as a standalone. With approximately half and half feats that involve holding or expending your focus, both options are decently catered for, (although since you gain all the benefits at once by holding, but only one particular one by expending, that seems like the better thing to specialise in) so this is a pretty good teaser.
Under Command: The minis gaming column is split into 2 sections this month. Mushrooms, and Archery. (and never the twain shall meet, given the number of explosive spore releasing fungi in D&D. ) They introduce a new Mushroom Tangle terrain tile, and give three sample effects it could have on people that tread on them. Shriekers and Phycomids have some new company for the first time in a few years. I approve of this. The archery section, completely unsurprisingly, talks about how to create a ranged specialist unit in the minis game. It seems like only the chaotic good side is much good at this, as they have elves. (and you don't :p ) As usual, the big advantage is being able to hit the enemies when they can't hit you, and have everyone focus fire on one monster to take them down fast. You need to make smart decisions about whether to do one shot and move, or full attack the enemy and hope they'll go down before they reach you. And Terrain without too much cover will definitely be of benefit. Much of this is applicable to D&D as well, but this definitely points out the way they've limited both the types of creatures, and the size of the terrain in the minis game, making ranged combat harder to do than in D&D. That's a little dispiriting, but hey, at least they're maintaining differentiation between the sides. Wouldn't want this to turn into WW1 style trench warfare which grinds on for hours and is no fun at all.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 7/8
Countdown to Eberron: The attempts to sell Eberron as a highly inclusive setting where any of the standard stuff can be used continues. This time, they talk about all the standard classes, (including psionic ones) and introduce the Artificer (although they only fully detail the first 5 levels) to us. Each has setting material aimed at them, and specific places they can come from. In addition, they talk about their overall philosophy on PC classes in the setting. If you belong to one, even if you're low level, you're still already a cut above the norm, with most NPC's belonging to less impressive NPC classes like expert or magewright. They've learned the lessons from bloated metaplots of the past, and newer games like exalted that let PC's feel like big players right from the get-go. Even low level D&D characters get superhuman pretty quickly. It's only the even more powerful opposition that makes them still feel small. You've just got to get your demographics right. So this is pretty interesting, because it shows once again how different their design process is these days, compared to the old ones where every single setting had to have an advancing timeline, novels, and iconic NPC's who got to do cooler stuff than you, because that was simply an automatic assumption by the writers after it worked for Dragonlance and the Realms. The setting should support the players, not overshadow them. These do seem very much like positive changes. They might not be giving the old settings much attention, but at least they're thinking carefully about what to do with the current ones.
DM's toolbox: The toolbox this month covers that old headache of character intelligence vs player intelligence. Which should take precedence when you encounter an IC puzzle? Johnn decides not to be judgemental on this matter, but instead present a whole load of hybrid options that make your intelligence score still significant, but not a carte blanche solution in itself. Keying the amount of time they have or number of clues, give them more probable possibilities for the consequences of their actions, allow for more OOC discussion with other players, and being more generous when it comes to reminding them of previous campaign events are various ideas floated that'll give mechanical weight to your stats while not allowing the players to abstract everything away. After all that's the essence of a roleplaying game, it bridges the gap between freeform let's pretend and purely mechanistic boardgames. As usual, this column has some pretty decent advice that's worth listening too.
Dragon Issue 316: February 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice: Can Bob the rudely awakened fighter grapple Grog the orc without provoking an attack of opportunity (Skip denies your request. He's prone, and unarmed. If he don't have good feats, Bob's gonna be terminally unconscious again pretty quickly. )
Do you have to pay extra again for every power you put in a cold iron weapon (No, for each time you put enhancements in. Better do them all in one go for economy's sake. )
When exactly do you start getting cover from your mount when you try and do so (Right away, any time. Let your horse take the damage, then you can have horses for courses after the battle. Fightin's hungry work, and horses are mighty tasty. )
Can you use weapons other than those on p159 for trip attacks (If it says so in their description. Buy lots of supplements, see what cool stuff you can get :teeth ting:)
Does the bane properly negate damage reduction (no. It just does extra damage. This still may not be enough. Just be a double weapon power-attacking fighter, that should enable you to blow through most DR's and not worry about the golf bag of weapons problem.)
When is a weapon a two handed weapon (When you're using it in two hands. Dumb questions make the Eternal Sage cranky)
I still don't get it, and I have lots of other questions about weapon qualities. I have good money. (Sigh. Skip guesses it's pretty table time. Time to make like Thomas Dolby and blind you with Science! )
Can you make a shield with spikes Bashing (Yes, but they're mutually exclusive. Still, if you're facing a mixed group of skeletons and zombies, being able to alternate between bludgeoning and piercing damage is pretty handy.)
Dork tower finds miniatures actually encourage roleplaying. So much for that supposed dichotomy.
This issue is definitely one case where I compare old and new and find the new preferable. The spying advice is more focussed and better organised than the stuff in issue 231, and the other articles are far less annoying. And of course they can talk about James Bond's sex life. ;) So for a nice change, I get to appreciate the things they've gained over the past few years, rather than the things they've discarded. So the question is what new things they'll take on, and if they'll be more than they cut out in the future. I guess next month is the logical place to start.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 1/8
93(108) pages. Weretigers again? I don't recall us ever getting a wereboar or bear on the cover. Also, the sheer quantity of promotional gumph on the cover makes it impossible to tell what the most important part is here. Looking at the contents doesn't make it any clearer, apart from a vague trend towards wilderness stuff. Exotic heroes? That's even less informative than monsters of power, or just magic as a theme. Could mean nearly anything in practice. Well, at least it's player focussed, so they can continue to appeal to most of their audience. Let's see if anyone has submitted anything genuinely weird and wonderful.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: Unsurprisingly, the editorial this month is a justification for adding so many new races and classes in the magazine these days. One thing they've noticed in their years of playtesting is that if people play the same splats repeatedly, they will tend to play them in the same way. They build up stereotypes and bits of received wisdom about how to best use their powers that can gradually turn into playing by rote. The introduction of new classes, races and monsters, even if they're not actually that different mechanically, breaks that pattern for a while, as they don't have the same stereotypes associated with them, so you have to actually work to figure things out. Of course, if you introduce a new monster of the week every episode, people will eventually become numb to that, and stop caring enough to explore their nuances anyway. I can't escape the feeling that the magazine has swung a little too far in that direction at the moment.
Scale Mail: The campaign revival in issue 315 gets an absolutely rapturous response, with 5 letters gushing over it, and probably plenty more like them in the slush pile. This should make it absolutely clear to the editors that they ought to publish more stuff like this. Dark Sun gets particular attention in nearly all of them as well, which I find very curious. Is this why it was the first old setting that got revived in 4e?
It's not all revivalists though, as we end with a whimsical request to do a campaign components: travelling circus article. The editor is very dubious you could make a whole campaign out of that. Maybe next april, if someone sends something really good in. It simply wouldn't fit any other month.
Zogonia settle their personal differences with sudden violence. Good to see that working for a change. Now, can they beat the dragon as well?
Up on a soapbox: Don Kaye's death in 1975 was something that had a pretty significant influence on the fledgeling development of TSR. Yet after his obituary in SR issue 2, he's hardly been mentioned in the magazine. So this is really the first time we find out anything about his playstyle and characters. Turns out he was the one who originally played Murlynd, gunslinger and general tech guy. And indeed, the story here has him using his items in a clever way to get the drop on the enemy and win easily. Of course, as we saw in previous instalments, a clever trick may work once, but word gets around, and next time, the enemies will develop a counter, so you can't just cheese your way through the game indefinitely. That kind of arms race is an integral part of the fun when you're playing adversarially. As this isn't another one involving the same cast, it retains it's interest, particularly as we also get to see that the characters that would later become Greyhawk gods and legendary heroes do actually retain personality traits and signature moves/items from when they were PC's. But will we ever get any first-hand Arneson stories, or have they all gone to the grave with him?
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 2/8
Dork tower has relationship issues. Two gamers with girlfriends in the same group? Surely not!
Countdown to Eberron: Last teaser covered the role of all the standard classes, and the new one in Eberron. Not too surprisingly, this one does exactly the same with Races. All the regular ones are there, plus some more new coolness. Curiously enough, they leave out the warforged, which were ironically the most popular once the game came out, to focus on the LA+0 doppleganger and lycanthrope variants, which are slightly less imaginative. The fact that the core idea isn't completely original doesn't stop the implementation from being both interesting, and very mechanically fine-tuned though, as they've gone to a lot of effort to integrate them into the setting, and create race-exclusive feats that (hopefully) allow you to develop your innate abilities and remain balanced for your level. Some of them scale quadratically, with the power of the feats determined by the total number of heritage feats you possess. It all shows a definite refinement in their understanding of the 3e ruleset. If they didn't have to put everything core in, maybe they could have made the setting mechanically balanced and still interesting? Nah, it wouldn't sell as well. This teaser keeps my interest, once again showing what they're doing differently from the old days. It's all about the flexibility and inclusiveness, at least when it comes to races.
Xenophilia: Our first proper article follows directly on from the teasers with another helping of new races. Let's see if they're as exotic as the issue's theme would like, or just another load of mysterious grimdark novel bait with angsty pasts.
Adu'jan are somewhere between elves and treants, human-sized plant creatures with incredibly long lifespans, although they root as they get older. They tend to be even more serious about the connection to nature thing than elves, and are good at social stuff due to their control of pheromones, but can also be naive about realpolitik, and need plenty of sunlight to stay healthy. Dungeoneering isn't the best career path for them, but a few younglings will try it anyway.
Gruwaars are evil fae that seem to be naturally disposed towards epic trolling, devoting themselves to agendas on a lark, and then dropping them just as suddenly. The important thing is the drama, not the cause. Which means they're likely to join up with an adventuring party, but trusting them will be another matter. Will you share the lulz with your party, or keep them all for yourself?
Golemoids have the same basic idea as warforged, but different specifics. Originally created by gnomes as domestic servants, they eventually got turned into real boys and girls by Garl Glittergold, and now have a regular lifespan, and ability to breed more little golemoids. How twee. They're less mechanically interesting than Warforged as well, so I think these could safely have been cut by the editor knowing what's coming soon.
T'kels were once your basic savage marauding humanoids, but now they've learned how to live in harmony with nature, and are advancing technologically pretty rapidly. This means they still have to deal with people who arre used to their old stereotype though, which is an interesting roleplaying challenge for both PC and DM. They get claws and a swim speed, which are basic enough abilities that they remain LA+0, but still useful. So while these races have quite interesting backstories, ability-wise they aren't particularly strange. I suppose they want the appearance of exoticism while not actually making them a problem to play in a group. Compromises, compromises.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 3/8
Urban druids: The memory of the update issues, where they gave us tons of class variants in quick succession is still fresh in my mind. So I can't help feeling a little relief that this time they're going to give a whole article to a single variant instead of cramming a load down to a page or two each. And indeed, urban druids also get a somewhat more radical reworking than most of those, which is pleasing. Also pleasing is that the flexibility they lose in terms of shapeshifting into animal forms is made up for by the ability to assume the shape of humanoid races and inanimate objects, which makes them slightly less powerful offensively, but even better at spying and infiltration. At 20th level, they can even turn into a house, which is both amusing and has many possibilities for an ingenious player, and their bonusses at fighting within a cramped space, affecting buildings and dealing with various races make them better suited for dungeoneering than a regular druid. So this is pretty tightly balanced with regular druids overall, making it a viable option, but not a no-brainer, and the two are sufficiently different to co-exist in a party and have wacky debates about nature unfettered vs cultivation and civilisation. I've definitely seen far worse.
Truenames and fetishes: Ah yes. Here's a literary tradition that D&D hasn't done enough with yet. Fiends may have several weaknesses that key off someone knowing their truename, but it's not a common thing for PC's to use.
Here's an article that aims to make taking a truename a cool option for PC's, that has both extensive benefits and risks, and keep it all mechanically balanced. A pretty tall order really. But one they come far closer to pulling off than I would have thought possible, with a whole bunch of little mechanical nuances like the process to change your truename being incredibly costly, but offering benefits beyond just resetting the clock on the number of people who know it. The difficulty to puzzle and research someone's truename is suitably tricky, and the benefits suitably devastating, becoming more so the higher level they are. Since on rereading this I find a bunch of design nuances that contribute to the effect, I hope this one will work out in actual play, as incorporating this stuff into a storyline will still take a fair bit of work. I'll let myself be optimistic for a change though.
Using power components: This old chessnut, on the other hand, will be pretty easy to incorporate into your campaigns, since It's quite possible you're doing it already. It's basically a list of monster parts that are good for making magical items, and how much money and XP you'll save by going out and hunting them down yourself instead of abstracting things away and just crossing the money and xp off your sheet. Since many PC's part with their stuff only slightly more readily than a tiger parts with their teeth, and going out to hunt monsters will get them even more XP and treasure, most parties will take to this with great enthusiasm. It also includes some similar components that are good for spells and nonmagical items, and plenty of advice on how to create your own, setting scaling guidelines for how much a creature of a certain CR will benefit you. This seems like one you can pull out and use again and again, far more than articles with new monsters or magic items, so It's a second one in a row I strongly approve of.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 4/8
Body of knowledge: When you're trying to get exotic, transformative prestige classes are an obvious path to take. Separate yourself from humanity, (or dwarfity, or whatever) and overcome your biological limitations, and then you're much freer to become deeply deeply weird. The previous articles haven't set the bar that high. Can this clear it?
Osteomancers gain all sorts of gruesome tricks with their own skeletons, plus the ability to paralyze and possess others by manipulating theirs. If you're a Tzimisce fan and want to bring a bit of that to your D&D experience, this is about as close as you're gonna get.
Flux Adepts are also on the gross side, gaining conscious control of their blood and glands to pull tricks like feigning death, acid blood, pheromone boosted persuasiveness and eventually full-on regeneration. They definitely feel like a good solo class, as they get stuff useful for spellcasters, fighty sorts, and social characters. The question is if they'll remain competitive in a group environment with their split focus.
Cerebrex fill out the symmetry by focussing on the brain and nervous system. They get tons of skill points, which is unusual for a spellcasting class, and get tricks like perfect memory, immunity to mindreading, and Scent & Rage too, oddly enough. Once again, these fall into the category of prestige classes that look nice, but are almost definitely weaker than the 8th and 9th level spells you're missing out on by sacrificing 5 spellcaster levels. Still, at least they can't be taken away by destroying your spellbook, which is always a fear for wizards. Will you sacrifice flexibility for baked in, undisruptable power?
Magic's high notes: New magical musical instruments, aimed primarily at Bards? That's definitely not an exotic idea. Course, some of the individual instruments might be, depending on how far they're roaming culturally. Any untapped ideas here then?
Autonomous Harps animate and both attack and keep playing on their own, making them essentially like an animal companion that adds an extra flanker and the aid another bonus to your perform checks simultaneously. As long as the enemies don't decide it's the main threat and smash it up it should be pretty handy in combat.
Shells of Amplification are basically a modern microphone and amp all in one, although they don't have the power to project to a full stadium. Not sure how you can attach one to a stand though, so you'll have to keep hold of it and work that crowd.
Drums of the march let everyone who hears it substitute the perform check for their con rolls. This ensures that the weak links don't fall behind, and should let an army go for a good few days longer than usual before they absolutely have to rest. Simple and strategically handy, this is why even fantasy armies keep marching bands around.
Ventriloquists mouthpieces let you cast your voice at will, completely unimaginatively. As with the last one, it's basic function following form material.
Chromatic Flutes produce lightshows to accompany your playing. If you're good, you can generate illusions with them, although the music might be a giveaway that not everything is on the level. I suppose there are quite a few items that summon monsters. They won't know it's a bluff the first time.
Flutes of Shrieking force you to play discordantly until you die from exhaustion or starvation. Unlike say, a ring of weakness, if you don't have someone on hand with the power to break the curse, you'll have to get out the dungeon and move fast, as you'll get the unwelcome attention of everything along the way.
Snake Charmers are another old one that simply never got put in the new books, for whatever reason. Too many exotic monsters these days for snakes to seem scary enough to specialise in.
The Horn of the Planes is one of those amusing devices that has a pretty good chance of sending you to the wrong plane if you don't do the research and play the tune just right. Good to see those haven't been chucked out with the edition changes yet.
The Organ of Souls is another gothic cliche, calling to people across the miles, and slowly drawing them to the villain's lair, where their souls will be sucked out and imprisoned forever, or at least until released, maddened, to possess bodies and wreak havoc. It really could do with a bit more versatility in what you can use trapped souls for, otherwise what incentive do you have to use it, but pure cackling villainy? Definitely a whole load of wasted potential here.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 5/8
Bestiary returns after a substantial gap, as they seem to be putting monsters under other names most of the time now. This continues their grab bag of articles this month with one on Aztec monsters. Not a region we've seen much on in a while. And indeed, the names seem pretty unfamiliar. Guess once again, we've found an unscraped barrel, hidden away in an obscure corner. Let's consume these well matured little beasties.
Cipactli are theoretically able to carry the world on their back, but you only get the 300 foot long versions. Like world snakes and turtles from other myths, they're exceedingly tough, and quite capable of biting you in half or swallowing you whole if annoyed.
Chaneque are another set of mischevious faeries who become invisible and shapeshift, luring you places and generally being a pain. Seems like they also show up everywhere. Damn parallel evolution.
Quinametin look like they were also the inspiration for Jungle giants. Tall, thin, fairly attractive humanoids who've largely forsaken civilisation to go around naked getting close to nature. Hmm. Why am I also thinking of Na'vi from Avatar. I suspect these could be quite popular if someone made a movie featuring them.
Thunders are exactly what they seem, thunder spirits who control the weather. If you can't fly, good luck fighting them. Once again, this all seems very predictable. Fewer unmined ideas than we thought.
Xilob look like badly designed people with their backwards hands and feet, foul smell and inability to properly empathise with others and respect their boundaries. This means that while not actively malicious, they are exceedingly unpleasant neighbours, and living around them will probably involve lots of stuff being broken or stolen, parties at unsociable hours, and all those mundane irritations we know from real life, only magnified. Muhahaha. So many plots opened up. I like this one.
Xtabay finish things off with another predictable entry. Just another hag variant, with blood draining, mindfucking gaze and shapeshifting. Guess their myths aren't that different from anyone else's in their archetypes, so it's more repetition and barrel scraping.
Class acts also returns after over a year off, with the ranger knight of Furyondy. Iuz is still causing huge amounts of hassle in Oerth, decades later, and war technology has evolved accordingly. With regular forces worn down by the endless hordes of monsters, guerilla forces with speed and stealth become increasingly desirable. Why should paladins get all the horsey goodness? Although billed as a ranger prestige class, any fighty class could take it as long as they're willing to sink a few cross-class skills. These guys are exceedingly dangerous at mounted combat, a speciality that may cause problems if your group engages in lots of dungeon crawls. Still, that's the standard problem of any specialist. You've got to make sure you seek out appropriate challenges for your strengths, rather than letting your enemies attack your weak spots. Despite the greyhawk fluff, this is pretty easy to reskin. Another perfectly decent prestige class.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 6/8
Silicon sorcery: This column is in self-promotional mode again, as they do an extended article for D&D Heroes, their offering on the new XBox console. The designers couldn't resist creating new spells, magic items and monsters, and now it's backconversion time. As is often the case, it's a mixed bag. The new blasty spells are higher level, same damage and smaller AoE than the standard fireball and lightning bolt, making them not particularly optimal choices. On the other hand, we get an updated version of Sticks to Snakes with better scaling, which is cool. The new magical items are more interesting, with stuff that mimics the auto resurrect and return to base trick that you see in computer games, a really neat one-shot mass heal effect, and a collect the widgets system for upgrading your key magic items that lets them scale with you through the campaign. The new monsters are fairly neat looking visually, but nothing too unusual stat-wise. An undead elven archer that peppers you with arrows, including an extra nasty vampiric arrow that lets them gain the hp you lost from an attack. A golem made of ice that can disguise itself as just a lump of ice, and shoot shards of ice at creatures too quick to engage hand to hand. And a giant spider that can emit a cloud of poison gas to weaken it's foes. Good to see they have some tactical tricks instead of just running up to you and hacking 'til they drop. This stuff all seems very usable in-game.
Faiths of Faerun has a double bill of articles this month. The first is a regular prestige class - The Battleguard of Tempus. They're another full BAB, half spellcasting progression one. Ironically, they get an extra domain they won't be able to master unless they only dip into this prestige class. (and I think mass healing and teleportation are more useful to an army than the ability to analyse magical weapons and armor) It does feel very much like just another day at the office.
The second one does something different. Not a prestige class, and new spells aren't the primary focus. No, this time, it's a whole new god. Evidently the Red Knight didn't get converted to the 3e books, probably due to lack of space. So this means that the column is finally doing what I hoped it would in the first place, providing a decent amount of descriptive detail along with the new crunch. Not that it's lacking in that either, with new feats being their primary area of concentration, providing benefits for not only clerics, but the fighters serving under them too. And there are two new spells that are quite interesting too, particularly Knight's Move, which is amusingly metagame in the way it allows short-range teleportation, but only to positions that an actual Knight could move on a chessboard. You'll need to think carefully to make best tactical use out of that. This is quite a likeable little article, balancing the various bits and pieces in it nicely. Overall, it feels like a complete package. I approve.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 7/8
Under command: Summoning already presents some interesting balance issues in regular D&D, as it screws with the action economy and gives you huge amounts of versatility with a few spells. When you're playing with minis, you have the additional problem that you need enough appropriate, or at the very least, appropriately sized minis to represent whatever you summon. And since the D&D minis game is new, and slated towards low-mid levels, there's a serious shortage of higher level monsters. So this is a big fat wodge of patches for both systems, giving us alternate summoning lists that comprise creatures they've already released, advice on how to use summoned monsters in a tactically effective way without it slowing down the game too much, and building warbands that have a summoner amongst them. It makes me feel vaguely annoyed, because it involves altering the rules not just for the sake of balance, but also marketing. And tweaking the game specifically to sell more minis, rather than make it more fun to play definitely sticks in my craw, like some of their previous blatantly commercial tie-ins. I think I'll stick to using my imagination.
Expanded psionics preview 3: Only a month before release, and unsurprisingly the drop the biggest teaser yet. While not everyone will use the new races, or go to the trouble of buying lots of feats that key off psionic focus, everyone will get use out of augmenting powers, even if it's just to keep your damage output equal to the wizards. It means that the point system actually means something significant, instead of just being a flat total of manifesting x powers per day that approximately adds up to a wizard of the same level. This can be further enhanced by taking the overchannel feat, which allows them to boost their power above their level by taking damage in the process. Of course, it also gives them an advantage in situations where you aren't expecting multiple encounters per day, as they can pour more resources into each round and then get away to recharge, further encouraging 15 minute workdays. It's a case where they definitely improved the game in the sense of making the classes more fun to play, but not necessarily in terms of balance. Oh well, that's certainly better than not improving it at all.
Nodwick's party tries to sex itself up. Nodwick ruins things for the rest of them.
The play's the thing: Over the past few years, we've had a fair number of articles that would appear in Unearthed Arcana, polished and ready to enhance the gaming experience of a wider audience. Weirdly enough, even though it was released last month, this continues here, with Mike Mearls talking about putting together a party that lacks one of the iconic elements. This would appear in the Players Handbook 2 in a couple of years time, along with a similar amount of talk on 5th members and how having 2 members of one class type affects group dynamics. It looks like this is going to be spread out over quite a few issues though, as he only talks about how to compensate for the lack of your warrior or skillmonkey here. So while this isn't actually rehashed, it's not as ambitious as the old article on single-class groups in issue 217, and does feel very familiar to me. I guess it's symptomatic of their attempts to fine-tune the game that they now feel one party member too few or many is a big thing that needs talking about. I suspect I may want to snooze through this column in the next few issues.
Dragon Issue 317: March 2004
part 8/8
Dungeoncraft: Having done several articles on dungeon design, Monte decides to go all expert set on us and re-encapsulate the advice on wilderness adventures. These can serve as both a primary adventure in themselves, especially when you're exploring a new land, or they can function as a pacing mechanism, with the DM varying the frequency of random encounters, detail of weather, and general amount of landscape description as a way to speed the story along if they just want to get the plot done, or give them a chance to think of stuff while letting them wander and throwing a few monsters and terrain obstacles in their way. This all feels pretty basic, given we've had whole themed issues on wilderness adventures before, so I can't get excited here. Unless he's going to build up to some more significant points about the adventuring lifestyle, this one's for the newbies.
Sage advice: Is sunder an attack or a special action (An attack. You can mix and match sunders with regular attacks in a full attack. This can get humiliating to enemies if you combine it with whirlwind attack)
Do you need a magic weapon of equal or higher strength to sunder a magic weapon (No. The DMG is erroneous. Skip will have a little talking too with the writers.)
What good is an admantine or mithral shield (Not really worth the extra cost. One reduces the armor check penalty by 1, while the other weighs half the usual amount. Only do this if you're an obsessive optimizer.
Are cold iron weapons resistant to being enchanted temporarily by spells (No. You must be confusing D&D with Changeling. Shoo, ya dirty narrativist.)
What does giving up all your attacks mean in the context of hiding behind a tower shield. How much does this protect you. ( You only get a move action that round. It will protect you, but only from attacks from the right side. Area effect spells may spill round the shield. There's lots of extra clauses, that Skip will give you as long as you keep paying. The Eternal Private Sage does not work for free.)
Can you use a tower shield while mounted (Yes, but it won't protect your mount as well. )
Just how big is the penalty for attacking with a tower shield while nonproficient (A whopping -12! You won't be toughing this one out any time soon. Any more questions on this subject? Oh, you're out of money. Next!)
Can ghost touch weapons ignore enemy armor (No.)
Ghost touch is worthless, isn't it (WRONG! What are you, retarded or something. I'm the goddamn Sage! It specifically says it counters the usual immunities. So it WORKS! Clear?)
What happens when a personal permanent spell is dispelled. Does it return like a magic item effect. (No. You've gotta cast the spell and pay the XP again. Skip recommends inflicting painful vengeance on whoever dispelled it, and making sure word gets around that you're not to be messed with.)
While the theme wasn't as weird as I was hoping, given my jaded tastes, they still had a couple of different and really useful articles, and the rest of the issue was pretty solid. It does seem they're improving again after last year's changeover doldrums. Now let's see if they can spare the time for a little laugh this year, or if their leash is still too tight to really relax and get off the treadmill of little generic crunchy articles for any length of time.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 1/8
87(108) pages. Whitespace strikes again! That never ceases to feel lazy of them. Not that you could see the background much even if it was there, given the quantity of promotional blurbs. And it looks like this is another issue where they split the theme between a whole bunch of things, not giving any of them the depth they deserve. Still, at least it's a funny set of themes. Ninjas · Pirates · Dinosaurs (oh, and monkeys too). It's a memetastic combo of awesome things, showing this issue is definitely going to try harder than last year's to amuse the audience. Let's see if this will be sufficiently far-out and groovy, or if it'll feel like weasels and stoats ripping my flesh to get through it.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: You don't have to be mad to work in the WotC/Paizo offices, but it helps. While their output is more sensible than it's ever been, the process by which they get there is still filled with weird little moments of creativity and inter-office riffing. And that's how we got this issue's theme. Each element is cool on it's own, but they didn't think it could carry an entire issue. Put together, on the other hand, you have something for nearly everyone. And then you replace the law-chaos and good-evil alignment axe's for pirate-ninja, and monkey-dinosaur, and let the fun begin. As usual, I wish more of this stuff would make it to the final release, instead of being filtered out to give us what they think we want. They could at least do blooper reels of stuff that's amusing, but they wouldn't want to be considered canon because it's unbalanced or breaks the feel of the setting.
Scale Mail: We kick off with a protest at the recent change in editors. It's a scary business, especially if they've been here a while. But creative sorts have to pursue their dreams. You can't expect them to churn out the same old same old year in year out.
More amusing and issue appropriate is a letter about the humour in the magazine. Should they go for lowbrow toilet humour or something a little more intellectual? They'll take the high road and you'll take the low road, and we'll be toilet-diving in glasgae by tomorrow.
Issue 315 continues to get praise, with requests for more updating of old stuff. They tell us that Castle Greyhawk will hopefully be out soon to satisfy that itch. Haha. I wish. Why can Gary's estate not get it together to publish something when there are so many people eager to give them money for this?
Another thing that gets praise is the recent Draconomicon. It's one of their few non-FR books that has any serious amount of fluff in, and they wish there was more. The editor agrees that maybe they swung too far in the direction of pure generic crunch recently, and need to head back towards a balance. Thank god for that. :breathes out heavily:
Following on from that we have praise for Council of Wyrms. Unsurprisingly, they'll have a little sumpin sumpin for those who want Dragon PC's in the birthday issue this year. Look forward to it.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 2/8
Zogonia can't even deal with a giant skunk. How do they expect to deal with a dragon? Particularly an intelligent one. They are so screwed.
Up on a soapbox: Gary has a very appropriate comedic story this month. The interplay of Gary and Rob was responsible for many things, and one of them was a whole rash of silly names in the characters. Gary started off by giving characters names that were anagrams of his, and reverses of other common names. Rob responded by incorporating Bigby, Zigby, Rigby, Sigby, Nigby and Digby into the adventuring party. And then Gary got revenge by naming his next set of apprentices after disney ducks. Silliness begets silliness, and even the people who roll their eyes at it wind up getting sucked in. Also, this is a reminder that stories have multiple threads running concurrently. These little player dramas were parallel to the dungeoneering bits, taking place over the course of quite a few sessions. Keeping your games multilayered is another way to ensure your players stay interested and stick around.
Nodwick is the only person who doesn't give up when faced with ninja pirate dinosaurs. Dork tower has more incredibly stupid relationship problems. Oh, for crying out loud. Have you no common sense at all?
The ninja: In 3.0, they steadfastly refused to make a ninja core class, saying that Rogue and various interesting prestige classes in OA allowed you to fill that skillset quite well enough. For 3.5, on the other hand, they've caved to public demand, allowing you to create a character that has supernatural ki powers boosting their stealthiness from 1st level, while not being restricted to lawful alignment like the monk. That is an interesting development. Instead of their various powers being usable a set number of times per day, they have a number of ki charges equal to half their level, and some powers cost more than one, giving them resource management similar to psionics but with fewer powers and points to spend them on. They also have nearly the skill points and sneak attack capability of a rogue (which works in all conditions but flanking, weirdly enough) So I think that puts them slightly above rogues and below bards in overall power and flexibility. Not a position where they'll be causing any balance problems. The important thing is that they'll feel different in play, and will be able to fight magical monsters even if unarmed, unlike boring old fighters and rogues. But will you be able to find them and persuade them to join the party?
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 3/8
Oriental adventures update: They nerfed the monkey! Waaah! What kind of people advertise that, only for it's actual appearance to be a single dismissive line! I'm speechless. Not that they didn't need tweaking, as we've found out a bonus to 2 mental stats is more than equal compensation for a penalty to strength. But fixing these in the dullest way possible and leaving half-orcs underpowered sticks in my craw. That said, this is another of those revisions where most of the changes seem eminently sensible, and it's only a few annoying little bits that I don't want to adopt. Damage reduction gets reworked to fit 3.5, with 2 new, more setting appropriate penetration types. Shamen, Sohei, shadow scouts, shapeshifters all get slightly powered up, while Wu Jen lose the ability to master more than one element, but are no longer built around the assumption of a limited spell list. Spells, magic items, monsters and feats also get plenty of tweaks, some upwards, and some down, and all the appropriate 3.5 subtypes added to their description. It's 16 pages long, rather dry, and I must admit to zoning out when I try to examine the minutinae of the changes. No real laughs to be had here, I'm afraid.
X marks the spot: So now it's pirates' turn. And it looks like the humor is remaining purely in the editorial combination, rather than the individual articles, as this is your basic Campaign Components treatment of pirates, looking at each of the core classes and how they fit into a historical or fantastical game, and then following up with a bunch of new magical items, many of which are updates of ones seen in previous editions. (particularly the replacement limb stuff, which we had whole Bazaars on in 2e. ) While more interesting than last article's updates, this is still a whole load of formulaic stuff with a few neat touches, (squid tentacle peglegs? that's a new and creepily amusing idea) that leaves me mostly unmoved. The enthusiasm they might have had in the offices really isn't carrying through into the actual writing, unlike 4 years ago.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 4/8
The wickedest city in the world: Our second piracy article is far more interesting to me, mainly because it's highly specific, and grounded in real world historical info. Port Royal in Jamaica was once one of the biggest hives of scum and villainy in the world, providing a place where pirates could rest up and sell their ill-gotten goods with the consent of the British government. One might well say that the internet Pirate Bay was named after it, and it demonstrates how illegal activity is often enabled by governments and corporations, whether openly or tacitly, because the potential profits are enormous, and besides, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, so you might as well do unto them before they do unto you. This is particularly the case for underdogs, who then turn around and try to go legit, then enforce their own rules when they get a decent amount of power, which we're also seeing quite a lot of on the internet at the moment. Adventurers thrive on the boundaries between wilderness and civilisation, be it venturing out to pacify untamed lands, or seeing what lurks in the cracks underneath the neat facade. Remove the boundaries and frontiers and the world becomes substantially less interesting. This article not only provides me with plenty to philosophise about, but also good adventure hooks, and a demonstration of how these kinds of places change over time. They will eventually either become settled, or be destroyed. It's the stuff that happens in between that's the exciting part, and you've got to hope you can ride the wave, and get off before it crashes.
Dungeons & Dino's: We've had the ninjas, we've had the monkey, we've had the pirates, now it's time for the dinosaurs. At this time, archaeologists were increasingly becoming aware that dinosaurs weren't just scaled creatures, they actually have closer surviving relatives in birds than lizards, and many of them probably had feathers. (which would enable them to cope with warm climates better than modern-day reptiles even if they weren't fully warm-blooded) This article has a good mix of well-known and slightly obscure dinosaur types, and gains extra points for not being afraid to make up ecological details for them too, making them feel more like fleshed out fantasy monsters than real ones we still don't know a lot about. It also includes a fair few creatures that aren't technically dinosaurs, but lived around the same time, and also make interesting encounters, whether on land, sea or air. While this obviously can't match the multiple articles from previous editions for quantity, it does pretty well for quality, not just being another collection of statistics, and including rules for making them familiars or animal companions. (which also means this article is good for both players and DM's) Yet again James Jacobs manages to produce high quality material with a distinctive voice.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 5/8
Children of Ka: A second Hollow World article after the campaign special? Cool! It's by the same writer and on a related topic to the previous one too, allowing them to get a sneaky bit of continuity into the magazine for a change. While that showed us what happened when a god's power was secretly tapped and corrupted, this sees Ka and his followers hitting back, developing a whole range of new druid spells to defend their lands and maintain the balance of nature. One of them is directly dinosaur related, giving you tricerotops horns and the thick skull to use them in a charge to keep up the theme, while most of the others are particularly useful in watery/swampy environments, which makes them highly appropriate for their Lizardfolk creators. In addition to the spells and organisation details, there's also stats for Troodons, which we believe to be one of the smartest dinosaurs back then, and a PC progression for lizardfolk, (and I don't think they really merit LA+1 on top of their HD with such low skill points and unimpressive racial powers. ) making this one of those grab-bags that tries to do it all. And since it's both entertaining, and far more specific than most of them, it does indeed please me. More solid stands on setting details instead of just saying "it's up to you" is very welcome around here.
Fiction: The kalif's coffin by Thomas Harlan. One more instalment to go, and the plot is finally all revealed. The bad guys are trying to get all these magical doodads to do a good old-fashioned raising of the dead. And while that was a miracle when Jesus did it, it's an abomination in the hands of anyone else. There's still a lot of conflict between the Christian idea that all magic-users are evil and should be summarily killed, and the more nuanced view that people who actually use magic hold. (and since this is a fantasy story, it's pretty obvious which side the author is on. ) There's a good bit of action in this, but they still have to pause for exposition now and then, and the characters retain their sense of humour despite the seriousness of the situation. It's nearly all over bar the shooting. Now it's just a matter of who lives and dies in the finale. Let's see if this series'll end on an upbeat note or a tragic one.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 6/8
Countdown to Eberron: So as they said last issue, Warforged are important enough to get a teaser all to themselves. They've obviously had a lot more thought put into their development than last issue's golemoids, with careful examination of exactly which construct traits would be game-breaking for an LA+0 race, and which can be included straight, or in a modified form. They don't need to eat, sleep or breathe, but they don't heal naturally, and magical healing aimed at organic creatures only restores half, so what you gain in logistical ability will be made up for by the need to have someone with an appropriate craft skill in the party. They can't wear armor, but automatically get the equivalent of light armor, and have two mutually exclusive feats that can only be taken at 1st level that reflect how they were built and give you the equivalent of medium or heavy armor, which means they have to choose carefully, and will be a feat behind most equivalent builds in other races. They can try to figure out how to fit in with the organic races, or take racial feats which further emphasise their mechanical side. It's all very interesting from both a mechanics and setting point of view, to the point where the PHB races seem a little dull in comparison. After all, they're not giving specific races their own Complete splatbooks this edition to really flesh them out. Oh well, you've probably played them many times before. Why not create a party entirely comprised of new classes and races, see how they do. These teasers continue to do the job of selling me on the setting.
Expanded psionics preview 4: The psionics previews continue to be interesting, but not as finely tuned as the Eberron stuff, which shows who's getting the lion's share of the development budget. This time, it's a couple of new psionic monsters that once again, won't be appearing in this book, but will a couple of years down the line. Larval Flayers are what happens to illithids that aren't implanted in someone's brain cavity soon enough, turning into their own squirmy thing, and raising very big questions about their evolution process and lifecycle. Shadow Efts are less interesting. Shadowy monsters that feed on emotion, and will therefore hang around scaring and draining victims rather than actually killing them if possible. Now there's a literary cliche that turns up again and again, although more in horror stories than fantasy ones. In addition, they've introduced a psionic subtype with which to label monsters, although it doesn't really do much. What's the point of it then? About the same as the goblinoid or native outsider subtypes. All it does is make it easier to say if a creature is resistant or vulnerable to certain special powers. Oh, the joys of codifying things that most of us got along just fine without bothering to pin down. That's what years of Sage Advice does to you.
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 7/8
Under command: After 6 months of little general expansions, they decide to risk taking about campaign play again. They might not have a setting behind the game anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't have a storyline, setting and continuity between your skirmishes. They skip the general advice, which hopefully you know by now, and go for a sample adventure arc, and lots of little bits of crunch to advance your warband with, particularly the group leader who will hopefully develop into a unique character by adding levels and magic items over the course of a campaign. This does ram home just how simplified the skirmish rules are, allowing them to fit a lot of information into just a few of pages. In that way, it's a good callback to the very early days of the magazine, where they could cram a dozen spells onto a single page and have half-page wargaming articles that contributed something meaningful. It's a positive development, and I hope they won't axe the column immediately after this. :/
The play's the thing: Unsurprisingly, this time Mike examines what a party that's missing an arcane or divine caster feels like. Equally unsurprisingly, it's the lack of a cleric that really reduces the staying power of a party. It's not that you won't feel the pinch from the lack of a wizard as well, especially if you come up against similarly magical and intelligent monsters that use their powers to no-sell straight-up attacks. But healing and magical food creation (if you track rations anyway) make a huge difference ALL the time, as they're significant in every adventure where there's any kind of physical challenge or journeying. And while magic items may replace spell-casters to a degree, the healing ones are much more likely to be limited-use, forcing you to pay for them again and again over the course of a campaign. It's ironic that the class you miss the most if it isn't there is also the one people are most likely to not play because it isn't "cool", and this really is a big flaw in the game design that they have good reason to worry about. (and made a valiant attempt to fix in 4e. ) Course, in 3e, there are tons of classes that don't fit neatly into the striker/defender/controller/leader boxes, and even more prestige classes that consciously combine roles, so you can get by if you try. You'll just have to work a bit harder when the char-op no-brainers are removed.
Quote from: bbgenderblind99;655367:huhsign::hand::idunno::enworld:
That's a nice set of emoticons. When did we get those in, and is there one for rpg.net as well?
Dragon Issue 318: April 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice: Can a monster with a disease affect other things with the same disease (No. If they've got it, they've got it. If they're already immune, you are wasting your time.)
Save DC's for disease attacks are based on con? That can't be right. Tough things are resistant to disease. ( Wrong way round! The tougher they are, the meaner the disease has to be to live in them. They're frickin typhoid marys. )
Why do afflicted lycanthropes have lower damage reduction and no chance of passing on lycanthropy. Surely some mistake (Wrong again! We want them to be weaker. Plus, did you forget all the hassle we had with summon cascades? Well it's the same principle. Monsters like that cannot be permitted in this game anymore!)
Can you use dispel magic to suppress a creature's supernatural abilities (no, and you can only deactivate spell-like ones, not stop them from casting in the first place. )
What happens when a monster uses a weapon plus it's natural attacks in the same round (Nothing much. This works just fine, albeit with the usual secondary weapon penalties. )
What happens if a monster doing this is high enough BAB to get iterative attacks (They get them with the primary weapon, as usual. Come on, give Skip a hard one. )
Does the weapon have to be the primary attack (Skip is afraid so. It takes the most concentration. Tarrasques probably shouldn't bother. )
What happens if you use a secondary weapon as your primary weapon (You can't. Even if that's your only attack, you still take the penalty. It's like fighting left handed. If you don't have ambidexterity, you'll always suffer the penalty)
Do you have to use your primary natural weapon to trip or sunder. (No way. In many cases, using a tail or something for that makes more thematic sense. You still suffer the penalties though.)
Do you have to use your primary weapon when making an AoO. No, but it's a good idea. No sense taking pointless penalties. )
How exactly does poisoning work again? (Ah, another open ended question that gives Skip a chance to pontificate for ages and make loads of money. Skip loves the dumb ones. )
Do you have to save every time a paralyzing creature hits you. What happens if they overlap (Yes. Carrion crawlers are brutal buggers. The durations run concurrently. )
How do nagas cast spells with somatic and material components. (By sinuously swaying their serpentine coils. )
Can you disjoin a Golem (No. It may be magically animated and nonintelligent, but it's still a creature, not an object. Intelligent magical swords ought to form a union and protest about this blatant bias. )
Well, in the battle between ninjas, pirates and dinosaurs, I can definitely say the fight goes to the guys with scales and millions of years of experience. I am more than a little disappointed that they didn't squeeze in at least one joke article, but hey, it's still an improvement on last year. Let's hope that they can come up with more complementary gestalt themes as well, rather than ones that just feel shallow. But for now, let's get back to the proper big themes. Next up, Dark Sun! (and psionics in general, which is an obvious complementary combination) Good to see the resurgence in settings isn't just a one-off.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 1/8
91(108) pages. While the Realms may have by far the most material, it looks like Athas is still on top in the number of specials it's got in the magazine. And for all that food is supposed to be scarce on Athas, they sure do manage to produce some serious beefcake. I suppose no matter how tough the world, the people on top will always be able to commandeer an amount of resources orders of magnitude greater than the huddled masses. Whether they use it for good or evil is another question entirely. And of course, there's the question of how much they'll focus on the gritty aspects of the setting, given that 3e is generally less interested in fine setting details and low powered NPC's. Guess it's time to brave the harshest wilderness of all again, and hope we can sniff out water before the defilers ruin the remaining oases.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: The editorial, as is often the case these days, seems to be actively going against the things they put in the articles. This time, it's giving the players fair, CR appropriate encounters. Safe to say that they sometimes get thrown into situations that are way above their power level, and are expected to actually pay attention to warnings of certain death. Another example of how they have to write 3e articles aimed at a different kind of play, and lower expected skill levels than they have themselves. Which is probably a frustrating business in general. They can't just make adventures and campaigns that they'd want to play if they were in our shoes. So we get to read about the fun they're having, and then figure out how much of the rules to ignore to get there. It's not surprising I get fed up with them having to deal with this.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who really enjoyed the Novel themed issues, and wants some more of them. They decide they'll go for greater quantity and less depth, and institute a regular column on converting book stuff to D&D in the same way Silicon Sorcery does. That way they have another easy method to get ideas and fill a few pages each month without wearing out their welcome.
Secondly, we have a letter complaining there's too much disconnected crunch in the magazine at the moment, and not enough expanding on existing things. We can only use so many prestige classes at once. They accept that yes, they may have gone too far in one direction, and will look towards swinging the other way this year. And so the wheel of creativity continues to turn.
Third, we have a generally positive letter that suggests they ought to do more fiction again. This they're slightly more cagey about. They intend to stick to stuff by established authors only from now on, so you won't be making any fresh young discoveries around here. :(
Finally, we get reminded that once upon a time, there was an AD&D Trivia Game. There were also colouring books and calendars, you know. They produced a lot of cheesy crap back in the day. Some, they still do.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 2/8
Zogonia are still not getting along after last month's adventure. Maybe they'll get along better with the hot drow chick.
Up on soapbox: Gary's delivers his final story this month, the tale of how the first dual-class character was created. As is often the case, it involved a bit of exception based design that did not follow the rules that the books would later use. Erac's Cousin was forced to switch from magic-user to fighter when he was accidentally transported to Barsoom, where his magic didn't work, but his physical capabilities were superhuman compared to the low-gravity natives. Unlike the later rules, he got to choose which class he wanted to use and gain experience in for a particular adventure, rather than being stuck with the new one until it surpassed the levels of the old one. Once again, the fact that the rules were still being created allowed characters to do things they'd never get away with these days, unless your DM also isn't playing by RAW. So I guess we'll leave this by wondering if you'll have more fun not strictly playing by the rules. Unless you're in large scale tournament play, you'll get more out of the game if you put your own ideas into it as well. Be a creator, not just a consumer.
Struggling to survive in a savage world: Let's get this show on the road, because we'll run out of water if we hang around. First up, the races. We get all the ones from the old dark sun books, plus Elan and Maenads from the new Psionics handbook detailed. Like the old Dark Sun books, they aren't the same as standard ones, with even humans being beefed up into an LA+1 race. Combine this with the default starting level being 4, and this means most PC's start with 3 class levels like in the original, and eliminates a lot of the problems higher-powered races face in regular campaigns. So this is both fairly faithful to the original, and makes some effort to make them more balanced with each other, (which is an argument for higher default starting power level as it gives you more leeway as a designer) and while it does introduce some new stuff, it integrates it into the setting and doesn't try to cram in everything from the new XPH. And Gnomes are still extinct. :) So far, definitely so good.
Heroes of a dying world: The classes, on the other hand, get treated in a way that feels pretty half-assed. In 2e, clerics and rangers had very different spell lists, Bards eschewed spellcasting for encyclopaedic poison knowledge, and wizards, hoo boy. Here, nearly all of this gets blanded out, they don't go to any effort to explain how the setting is changed by the Sorcerer/Wizard divide in 3e, Paladins are plonked back in without thought to their power source, and they don't even bother to make a separate Gladiator class. It feels like no effort was put into this article at all, which is very strange given it has the same author as last one. I guess we know where David Noonan's priorities lie then.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 3/8
Tempered by a burning world: The equipment, at least, remains much the same as in 2e. Gold and silver will go 100 times as far as in most settings, if you can find somewhere with enough decent stuff to pay for it in the first place. The weapons and armor suuuuck, which compensates for the higher starting level and ability scores. You can pretty much throw out the idea of recommended treasure per level. On the other hand, there are plenty of giant insects that you can use to make chitin armor or shields. (if you can kill them without ruining their shells) Things are generally too tough for civil liberties to gain much traction. (but if you can survive going off into the desert, who's going to chase you? ) So this is somewhere in the middle of the other two articles in quality, simply translating the setting straight, doing what's needed to update it to the new rules. I don't think it gives quite enough info to play it if you don't have the old books, and it doesn't add to the setting, unlike the better articles from 315, so I can't give this themed section hugely high marks. As is the case far too often these days, this is serviceable rather than thrilling.
The erudite: (as played by Samuel L Jackson) Now here's an interesting little bit of design experimentation. 3e psions had a lot in common with Sorcerers in that they have a more limited selection of powers than wizards, but can use them more frequently and repeatedly. What would happen if we reverse engineered that process, and created a psionic class that has a greater total selection of powers, and the ability to add more mid-level by training with or scanning the minds of other characters? How would we keep this from being completely overpowered and dominating the game in the same way well-prepared wizards can do? The whole point of psionic characters is their self-contained nature, so they can't have an expensive and losable spellbook as a balancing factor. The answer they chose was twofold. An XP cost for learning each power above the standard ones gained per level. And only being able to manifest a limited selection of the powers you know per day. As is often the case when an idea appears in the magazine and is then put in a book a few years later, there's a whole bunch of subtle mechanical differences. The big one is that they can manifest a number of powers of each level per day exactly equal to a wizard here, rather than the flat 1 +1/2 per level in Complete Psionic. This means they're more powerful here, but also require much more bookkeeping. The xp is also a flat cost here, instead of scaling with level like it does in CP. So this version is a comfortable tier 1 class, only slightly below wizards due to the XP cost becoming negligible at higher level, while the CP version is about balanced with Psions and Sorcerers, with it's initial flexibility at the start of the day nicely counterbalanced with the hard choices you'll have to make in an extended dungeon crawl. Another case where it's very nice to see their design process working.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 4/8
Countdown to Eberron: With the Dark Sun stuff out the way, it's time to get back to teasing the new arrival. While magic there is distrusted and driven underground, with good reason, here it's fairly common and well integrated into society. This despite the fact that they've had their own magical apocalypse recently, rendering a whole country into a wasteland full of weird shit. I suppose it fits the nuclear power metaphor. The benefits still outweigh the risks for normal people. A lot of the day-to-day spellcasting is handled by a new NPC class, the Magewright, which seems to mostly replace the Adept, with a limited selection of practical spells that they don't need a spellbook for. (which means killing them and taking their stuff isn't as challenging or appealing) More interesting for PC's is the fact that the gods are more detached from the setting than most D&D ones, which means Clerics don't have to worry about losing their powers for misbehaving. This makes things far more morally ambiguous, and opens things up for conflict within a single religion that you couldn't do in the Realms or Greyhawk. This would prove popular enough that they would try to spread it everywhere else in 4e, which ...... yeah, too much change for too many people. So I guess this showcases both the cool aspects of making your setting different, and the dangers of trying to export those ideas everywhere, just because they work in one place. Trying to make everything core has both it's ups and downs.
Greyhawk feats: On we trot with another setting specific article that follows up on the ones in issue 315. Here's another 22 feats from Erik Mona to help Greyhawk characters feel more attached to their homeland. These ones tend to have a more supernatural slant than the previous ones, instead of just granting slightly better bonuses to mundane abilities than a regular skill focus would. The more powerful ones in particular are restricted to being taken at 1st level, which results in the usual hard character-building choices. Some also have penalties to go along with the benefits, such as the troll-blooded one that gives you regeneration, but causes you to suffer while in sunlight. They're definitely more interesting than the previous set, and also show that they weren't just divided up by cutting alphabetically after submission, which is good of the editors. Together, they let Oerth pretty much equal the Realms in this department. Definitely hoping they keep up stuff like this this year.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 5/8
I Scry: We've had a couple of articles recently on the ramifications of scrying magic in your game. If used regularly and intelligently, it rapidly turns into an arms race that leaves less intelligent and magically capable creatures in the dust, and those that can keep up perpetually paranoid. Course, money can substitute for magical skill to an extent, especially in 3e, where you can hire wizards to make you items that shield you from screwage. So it's not surprising that we'd see an article on this topic. Give some of these out as treasure, and your players may not be as immediately ecstatic as a new blasty wand, but they will thank you later, when the evil diviner doesn't immediately know all the buttons to push to make them inadvertently advance his plans.
Amulets of Deception make you look like someone else in scrying visions, while not affecting your appearance in person. This may actually be more handy than just plain nondetection, as a smart diviner may well be able to figure out by inferrance when there's a person who's interacting with others in the scene but invisible to them, but not a more subtle alteration like this.
Circlets of Convocation let you teleport straight to someone who's scrying on you, giving them a nasty shock indeed. Course, they don't give you a way to get back, survive in hostile environments, or bring anyone else along, so this still might not turn out great for you. Hope your dungeoncrawling skills are up to scratch, because you'll probably be right in the middle of their defences.
Deathglance Lockets are slightly safer, merely inflicting large quantities of damage on peeping toms and breaking their contact. One or two shocks like that'll make them far more cautious in the future.
Golden Beholders are a decidedly inventive item that let you detach the small eyestalks and place them wherever, and then use the central body to see through any of those 10 locations at will. So they're good both as a security camera system in your lair, and to a lesser extent spying. Beware of wizards giving gifts, for they may be traceable.
Black and White Elipsoid Ioun Stones give you yer basic invisibility to scrying. As that's only step 2 in any arms race, it's not hugely impressive.
Mirrors of Captured Images let you do magical stakeouts without being glued to the crystal ball all day, recording up to 24 hours of remote images for you to play back at your leisure. Careful you don't record over the really important bits, as that storage time'll get filled up faster than you think.
Rings of Scrying Detection are another basic one that just do what they do reliably. don't get too clever and forget your basic info gathering enhancers.
Rings of the Evil Eye, on the other hand, have a superficial benefit that hides the fact that they leave you completely open to being spied upon anytime, anywhere. Still, unlike most cursed items, you just can take it off after discovering the catch. Better hope one of your companions covers your vulnerability.
Scout Goggles are another one that lets you see through the eyes of other ones in the set. Since they're obvious and this can be done reciprocally, they're better suited to party scouts than spies, hence the name.
Scryskulls bring this to a close with another very cool looking idea, a helm that lets you animate, and perceive the world through a floating skull. A good one for if you want to convince people you're a demilich, or just give quests from a safe distance in a suitably dramatic fashion, as people tend to be suspicious of skulls, which makes them not great for straight spying.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 6/8
Warriors of the animal fist: A little while ago, we had a themed monk set based around the 4 winds. One that's based around emulating animals isn't a stretch at all, as there are plenty of real world martial arts that do exactly that. So here's another set of prestige classes that have a lot in common in design and requirements, and only subtle differences in what powers they get. In fact, this compression of info allows them to fit 7 styles into as many pages. Crane, Dragon, Mantis, Monkey, Panther, Snake and Tiger. They all advance their unarmed strike and get ghost touch, uncanny dodge and evasion, and the ability to assume a hybrid form for when shit gets real and it's time to administer a blatant beatdown. And they're probably more rewarding to learn than the same animal styles as feat chains too. Seems to do the job.
Class acts: Monte returns to this column for the first time in ages to give us the Aerial Avenger. A flying warrior type, you could theoretically take this by becoming a spellcaster with flying spells, but it would not be a very optimal path. Still, given how scary flying attackers can be, they can be very dangerous against less mobile foes. And since they have plenty of skill points, including the stealth ones, they make a perfect scout type as well. Just don't try and take on the enemy all by yourself. You know by now that annoys you if you die, and your companions if you win and hog all the glory.
Salammbo: Silicon Sorcery forgets it's header this month, but the format remains much the same. An RPG conversion of a computer game. (based on a public domain novel, weirdly) Exploring the joys of having leprosy in 3rd century BC Carthage. Heavy, maaaaan, heavy. Only the computer game introduces contagious flesh-eating zombies. Very contagious indeed, as the new rules make the disease slow, really hard to get rid of, and allow you to remain mostly functional despite the constant ravenous hunger until you finally lose your mind for good. All the better to spread it far and wide, my dear. Certainly seems like a situation with plenty of potential for pathos, as adventurers try not to become the things they hunted, or cause more havoc by spreading it everywhere they go while searching for a cure. Another one that's good because it steps outside the paradigm of "fair" challenges that their native articles stick too. In a plot driven video game, the rules on what is a fair option are very different to an RPG.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 7/8
Fiction: The altar of Duzares by Thomas Harlan. And so we come to the end of the last bit of serialised fiction in Dragon. Where the previous instalments were heavily urban, emphasising the melting pot (and powder keg) nature of the big middle eastern cities, this takes them out into the desert where all that investigation and politicing is irrelevant, and it'll all come down to their physical and magical skill to stop the assassins. This follows the pretty standard climax format of the heroes getting knocked out or captured, the big evil ritual succeeding, and then the heroes pull back from the brink and use all their resources to take out the big bads. It also takes the time to reveal the big secrets of the characters, particularly the stalwart knight who turns out to have a darker past than the others expect. As the final instalment, it's more serious than the previous ones, but there are a few action movie-esque one liners slipped in there. And like an action movie, it ends as soon as the big bad is defeated, not tying up any other loose threads or showing how they got back afterwards. It's definitely not as final or satisfying an end as Fool Wolf got, but it's not bad either. Shorter series with more regular characters mean you don't get the chance to get as attached to any one of them.
Nodwick's party takes a decanter of endless water to Athas. Hilarity ensues. Dork tower get bored and decamp, and wonder how long it'll take for the GM to notice.
DM's toolbox: Johnn's column is smaller and faster paced than usual, which fits the theme of making sure things don't stall. This is less about the social aspects of keeping the game moving, as they've covered before, and more about writing your setting and adventures in such a way that one awkward decision from the players doesn't completely throw you off. Know your players, know your setting, know your NPC's, and then you won't need a strict script to stick too. Don't make challenges that only have one solution, and especially not ones that are completely dependent on a particular member of the party's powers. Essentially this seems to be another reminder to play it as a roleplaying game, in which the NPC's have independent existences and free will, and aren't simply there to deliver lines and fights to the players, because if you try and play it like a book or TV show, you will likely be surprised by what happens. Embrace the surprises, and let the story be whatever happens, rather than the other way around. I think we've heard most of this before.
Dragon Issue 319: May 2004
part 8/8
Dungeoncraft: Monte examines the logistics of making interesting wilderness adventures some more. Remember, just because it's a wilderness to the PC's, doesn't mean it is to the creatures that live there. Also, while it may be neat hexes on a map, it presumably isn't in reality, and the distance you can see will vary hugely. Also, it won't entirely be travelling, fighting monsters and living off the land. You may well have to create temporary base camps to explore particularly interesting areas in more detail. You may stop off at a village for a few weeks to recharge your supplies, and have to spend a load of time learning the basics of the language and culture. You may get hunted by a monster that's too tough to fight, which forces you to run and not have time to keep up your mapping. It's unlikely that a several hour game session will be all just one thing. (and if it is, you should probably work on your pacing. ) So yeah, options and diversion. That's what'll keep players venturing further out to see what's there. That or having no idea where they are and really needing to find a familiar landmark to navigate from. So even if you don't design the whole world beforehand, make sure there's plenty of options and diversions to throw at the characters whichever way they go.
Sage advice: Is damage reduction extraordinary or supernatural (Depends if it's magical or not.)
Do allies of a creature with gaze attacks need to save (Recycled question. What is this? Recycle city. Actually, Skip guesses there's actually fewer recycled questions than when Skip was hustling on the mean shores of lake geneva. But that still doesn't mean Skip is happy about this. The Eternal Sage needs stimulating cases. Give them to Skip!)
Why do ghosts have strength scores when they are incorporeal (because they aren't to ethereal creatures. )
How do you use armor spikes. (As a light off-hand weapon. The real kicker is that you can use them plus a two handed weapon or shield. That and grappling. They're pretty brutal for that. )
Just how much weight can a flying creature carry (No more than their light load. Any more than that, and they don't move more slowly, they just fall and go splat. There are some exceptions. Skip will have to do some more pontification.)
If you have a flying mount, do you need to take fly by attack, or can you still use ride by attack (You'll have to spend another feat. Ground and air attacks are very different disciplines.)
You've nerfed ride by attack so it's nearly useless. Blah blah blah blah worst game evar I want my money back. ( Skip will point out the special case rule that ensures it is not useless, and then Skip will sit back and look smug. The Eternal Sage will not be swayed by your filibustering. Unfortunately, you've eaten up the rest of the magazine, as you took so long, so Skip will have to cut short Skip's cutting reply. Just take it as granted that Skip said something witty, and then made a shaft-esque boast. See you next month, folks. )
With a fairly solid themed section, and the first hints that they're planning a shakeup of the magazine in the near future, this once again shows that the magazine is more interesting when it isn't too bound by a single formula. Seeing what they come out with during these transitional times is less boring, even if it's bad like the red triangle issues. And let's hope they won't be even more formulaic once the've settled down again, because that would not be a good way to end the magazine's run.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 1/8
90(116) pages. If anyone should reasonably be going raar and having deeply impractical tooth designs, it's dragons, so Wayne Reynolds is a little less irritating on the cover than usual. This year, it's the 30th aniversary of D&D. Which is a rounder number than 28 years of Dragon Magazine, so it gets higher billing. Still, the theme is once again going to be dragons, and in particular playing them. This could well get rehashalicious. Let's see if they can celebrate their past and build upon it, or whitewash it and regurgitate old ideas without adding to them.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: As we seem to be in a retrospective mood this month, it's no surprise that Matthew Sernett decides to give us his first gaming experience. But he also takes the time to point out that people won't become roleplayers unless they already have an interest in imaginative play. If their bedtime stories include dwarves, monsters, wizards, mighty heroes and explosions, they're more likely to become roleplayers than ones who's preschool media are comprised of very hungry caterpillars and daytime soaps. You shouldn't wait until they're teenagers, especially since these days there's so much competition from computer games and the internet. Pay attention to what your kids are consuming while they're still receptive and the chances of them growing up healthy and well-balanced improves quite a bit. And then they'll be able to get decent jobs while hopefully maintaining an imaginative internal life as well. Presuming we don't wind up in a world where automation leaves most of the population perpetually un or underemployed. But hey, given modern technology, if you can afford dice and a laptop, roleplaying is perfect for a group of people with tons of time but limited money. The world will change, and D&D will have to change with it, but roleplaying will survive in some form. There is very little to fear on that front as long as human nature remains the same.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 2/8
Scale Mail: Time for the opposing opinions bogaloo again in the letters section. First up is someone who was initially annoyed at having to update to 3.5 just a few years after 3e, but pleased with the changes once they did, followed with someone who's so pissed off with the edition churn that they aren't going to spend their money on it anymore. You can't afford to rush these things, as it only costs you more in the long run.
Second, we have one person who thinks fantasy staples like ninjas, pirates and dinosaurs are too niche for the magazine, and they should get rid of the comics for yet more game material, while two others love them. I think I'll go for the option that doesn't result in them running out of "suitably wide appeal" topics within a couple of years.
Next, we have someone who thinks Gary's ramblings have had their day and become repetitive, so they ought to figure out a way to gracefully retire his column. Whether they published this because they were already planning to do so, or the decision to quit was Gary's, I'm not sure, but I'm certain it's not a co-incidence.
And finally, we have one person who hates fiction in the magazine, while another loves it, but is frustrated by multi-part stories where they don't have all the pieces. These days, it shouldn't be too hard to fill them in with a quick internet search.
Zogonia strikes out. What a surprise. Seems like there's a lot of that going round.
A retrospective of the best game in history: Just 20 issues ago, we had a retrospective on the magazine. Given how tied up with D&D in general the magazine is, it's kind of inevitable that they wind up repeating themselves a bit. And yes, they do whitewash the bad bits more than they did in issue 300, acting as though even the darkest bit of the late 90's was just a brief stumble on the way to bigger and better things. However, while that was limited to the magazine editors, and not even all of them, this casts a wider net in terms of both the products it celebrates, and the people it brings back to reminisce about them, so there are some good points about this. In the end though, it's just back-patting self promotion, especially as it devotes a fair chunk at the end to promoting their current and upcoming products, including a new basic set, and a 352 page book filled with even more reminiscing stories from those who were there. Like most retrospectives of still alive properties, this now seems more dated than the things it was looking back on. And we'll probably be seeing another one in just 2 years for the magazine's 30th anniversary too. I hate it when they spend too much time looking back.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 3/8
Dragon Player Characters: As we've seen in many articles in the past couple of years, Racial level progressions are a headache to design. Some creatures may have powers that make them more impressive than a PC of equal HD, but not all of them do, and if you overcompensate, characters wind up really fragile at lower levels. Plus you can be stuck without any real character choices to make for most of your adventuring career. Fortunately, this is not a mistake this article makes. Dragon's age categories give you a good excuse to jump off midway through and take regular character levels. The approximately 1/3 of levels in which they don't gain HD, skills, etc are spread fairly evenly, and dragon's D12 HD, high skills and full BAB mean they remain solid all-round wherever they choose to develop their talents. All the basic 5 metallic types gain 20 level progressions, which take them between 3 and 4 age categories, and it shouldn't be too hard to extend them to epic levels either. So this article is far better than I feared, actually making a baby dragon in the party seem like a viable option. What a relief.
Fostered: Having just made baby dragons seem viable as PC's, an article on how to roleplay baby dragons being fostered by other races is excellent synergy in writing. You can use it both as a player and a DM, and there's plenty of scope for both drama and comedy. Unlike last article, they cover the regular set of both Chromatic and Metallic dragons, and how their natural tendencies are likely to be a pain in the ass to whoever has to raise them. Even the good ones have issues with greed and arrogance, and will rapidly become a physical match for you, so if you don't have enough knowledge and attention to keep them interested, they'll leave if they think there's a better option out there. Unsurprisingly, this is far more useful, but less whimsical than the similar article in issue 36, and completely specific to D&D dragons rather than generic fantasy ones, so it's another good example of both the good and bad changes in their policies over the years. It's another solid addition to the roster, but doesn't give me a huge amount of entertainment in and of itself. The fun will have to come from actual play, I suppose.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 4/8
Dragon kingdoms: The dragon material this year continues to be more player-friendly than previously. Council of Wyrms detailed a whole continent where dragons were the dominant species, with small clans dominating countries full of demihumans. We also saw giant dragons take over large areas of Krynn for a good few decades. Given even a young dragon can be an army-buster, with their intelligence, mobility, breath weapon and array of magical tricks, why do they not play the role of near-immortal god-king more often? Partly lack of inherent sociability, partly arrogance, and partly need for large amounts of sleep make them good at commanding, but not so great at economics and mundane day-to-day affairs of state, so even dragons will have to learn to delegate if they want to rule anything bigger than a single settlement. Some dragons are more sociable than others, and they certainly express it in different ways. (brass dragon's gossipy nature vs silver dragon's tendency to go native, for example. ) Red dragons might be more individually powerful, but it's the blue and green ones that are more likely to pull off a long-term tyranny with several of them working together to control a kingdom. This stays consistent with all the various subspecies' previous characterisation, and takes their particular powers into account, so it leaves me pretty satisfied. They come up with plenty of reasons why and how a dragon would engage politically with people, and that means lots of adventure hooks for players to get stuck into. That's very much for the positive.
Dork tower die again. This is what happens when you don't remember your CR ratings.
Fiction: New in town by Richard Lee Byers. An Avariel? Iiinteresting. They've decided to have a bit of Forgotten Realms fiction in here again. It's a swashbuckling tale of fish out of water getting tricked into being the patsy for a bigger plot, but managing to learn fast enough to turn the tables by the end. It stays pretty close to straight D&D rules, apart from exaggerating how dangerous bears are under them. It definitely feels like it wants to lead on to further stories, but then, doesn't everyone. Doesn't mean its going to happen, especially with them gradually cutting down on fiction as they are. I guess it's just another minor thread in the massive tapestry the Realms has become.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 5/8
Elminsters guide to the Realms: It can't be easy to keep coming up with fresh material for a world that has literally hundreds of sourcebooks and novels. Case in point, what we get here is yet another tavern. A rowdy place with overpriced drinks and lots of gambling, designed to keep adventurers away from "decent folks" and make sure their sudden influxes of money don't destabilise the economy. The Realms being fairly adventurer heavy means any authorities that last develop ways to keep them from causing too many problems without presenting an obvious target to overthrow. The illustration is particularly good this month, really making the place look simultaneously impressive and debauched, and detailing the various games and sports you can blow your money on. And as he has done before, Ed also provides details on the games which make the world feel like a real place where people do things other than adventure and whatever is needed to survive and make a living. Looks like he still has plenty of variants on the theme of living, breathing adapting world to give to us.
Dragonmarks, dragonshards and dynasties of power: Eberron is out now, so they drop the teaser format and go to regular articles. Last month we heard about how magic is integrated into the setting, despite PC class wizards not being hugely common. Magewrights were one part of that, letting the working man use magic routinely without the vast flexibility and offensive power being a wizard would give them. The other is Dragonmarks, which represent the advantage you have being born into a bloodline of power, and feel like an attempt to synthesize the disparate themes of Red Steel and Birthright while also making the result more robust and balanced in terms of rules. As most of the members of a particular house gain a consistent set of spell-like abilities, this means they have a natural advantage at appropriate businesses, and since they already have relatives in the field, it's easy to get in, make money and stay on top. Nice to see they're not afraid to deal with real world issues of nepotism and guild legbreaking. :) If you want to focus on these powers, you can spend feats or take a 5 level prestige class to get more, more powerful, and more frequent related powers. This is another article that feels pretty cool, showing you just how many new options the new setting gives you to build interesting characters with, while also keeping it from being a prejudice free utopia where everyone gets along regardless of species. Some people being born with a big head start in the race of life is a strong motivator for plots, whichever side your characters are on.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 6/8
Silicon sorcery: Warcraft again in this column, with The Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III. Last month, we reexamined Dark Sun's variant races and the possibility that you might do something similar for your campaign. This takes it a step further, talking about the idea of entire races being transformed mid-campaign due to magical weirdness or severe environmental pressure. This can go very wrong, (you might well get kender, for a start :p ) and leave players feeling cheated or railroaded, especially if the changes to their abilities are detrimental to their build. Still, high stakes, high risk, high potential rewards as well, and if it looks like your game is gradually losing people's interest, better to have it go out with a mindfuck twist ending than a boring one. The sample changes to the PHB races are all based around the theme of the magic going away, making the world a little darker and more desperate, which isn't the most original of themes, but it does serve to ramp up the drama. Well, this is certainly an improvement on the 2e days where they would pull big game-changers in the metaplot, but turn around and forbid us from doing the same or going off the rails in the adventures and fighting the screwage. I'm once again happy to see more heavy-duty rules experimentation in the magazine.
Under command: Ugh. One consequence of a minis heavy game is that it gives the writers even more incentive to nerf shapechanging. So here's a big attempt to distract you from regular polymorphing with a load of specific spells that transform you in only one way for a short duration. This means they're intended pretty much exclusively as combat buffs, apart from one, as you won't have the time to keep up a disguise. They do gain a few abilities that you won't get with regular polymorph self, but really, this is the kind of stuff that sucks all the wonder out of the game, and I find it consistently annoying to deal with. So much for minis providing a little variety to the magazine when they're instead using it to push an agenda that also applies to regular D&D, and isn't pleasing to me at all. Screw that noise.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 7/8
DM's Toolbox: Johnn is in the mood to cut the crap this month. Sprawling dungeons that are mostly just multiple levels of grey underground tunnels? Not this time. Take all the important rooms and themes that you would then pad out with filler, and condense them down into a best of that has all the excitement in just half a dozen rooms. Of course, putting them right together means you have to think even more about how the monsters interact, and what their body shapes and powers mean for the environment. Ironically, this seems like the kind of advice that's most useful at high level, especially in 3e, where high level monsters take a lot of work to create, and this can cause battles to really drag out, so you need to reduce the number of encounters if you don't want them to be stuck wandering around the same place for months on end. So learn how to prepare and edit before play, and you'll have to do considerably less work in the actual session. Isn't that always the way. Do your work at a time of your choosing, or you have to do it in a rush right before it's needed. As usual, Johnn's advice is solid and sensible, while also having enough of an individual spin to not be boring.
The play's the thing: Mearl's contribution this month is another one that he would reuse in an actual book in a couple of years time. Unlike the previous one, which was just fluffy filler advice, this is actually quite interesting, especially as this is another case where I get to examine the rules and see how they refined them before broadcasting them to a wider audience. So yeah, teamwork abilities. These are a cool idea, but have some serious issues, especially if they cost irreplaceable character resources and only work with a specific set of other people. And oh god does he make that mistake here, folks. You've got to have a reasonably high level leader to get in at all, and then everyone has to permanently sacrifice precious skill points to the pool and negotiate exactly what you want to spend them on. This is pretty much the worst possible way to do it, especially in a class and level based game where every level counts and if you fail to optimise at any point, you pay for it aaaall down the line. By contrast, the approach in the PHB II does require some investment in skill points, but they're investments you might well have made anyway, and you aren't bound into a single person always being considered the group leader. So this once again shows that while he might like to play with mechanical design, he really isn't actually that good at it, and needs a good editor to filter out the good ideas from the bad. Still, as both a good idea, and an interestingly bad implementation, this is very worthy of note.
Dragon Issue 320: June 2004
part 8/8
Dungeoncraft: While Johnn and Mike's advice is both interesting and different, Monte has another reset to the most basic of characterisation advice. Give your NPC's easily distinguishable physical and personality traits, and act them out, so the PC's can identify them easily if they show up more than once. I think that's one that we can pretty much recite by rote, and there's no particularly different spin to liven things up here. Zzzzzz.
Sage advice has to squeeze itself into all manner of oddly shaped pages this month. This means Skip will get through fewer questions than usual. Skip hopes this isn't going to lead to hard times. No matter. The Eternal Sage will get through this by whatever means needed, just as Skip did with the dark times under Lorraine.
How often can a monk attack using flurry of blows with a weapon. (If it's a special monk weapon, the normal amount. If it's any other weapon, you can't use it at all.)
What do you mean there's no such thing as of hand blows for unarmed monks (Exactly that. You can use whatever flavour descriptions you like, attacking with hands, feet, head, knees, elbows, even crotch, and you'll still do the same amount of damage. This is why they're forced to be celibate. Don't worry laydees. Skip won't hurt you unless you want Skip too. )
Can you use a mirror to see round a corner and cast spells (Another recycled question? Skip isn't even going to dignify this one with an insult to your intelligence.)
What AC should someone with +3 bracers of armor and +3 leather armor be. (14, unless someone uses incorporeal attacks, in which case it's 13. Just skip the armour. It'll feel much nicer.)
Will reach let you make an AoO against opponents using spring attack (not for their movement. If they get sloppy and act like a doof inside your threat range, you're free to skewer them.)
If your mount tramples someone and doesn't have hooves, can it use another attack (Whatever it has for feet, dude. Claws will help quite a bit.)
Can you wear more than 2 rings if you have more than 2 limbs. (No. The energy chakras have been biped standardized as part of the 3rd edition conventions, along with summoning cascades and all those other broken tricks from previous editions. This is what happens when humans and their gods rule the universe. If you want to escape that, you're free to go to the far realm and spend your time drinking the drool of a 100 eyed monstrosity and making magic necklaces to put on it's eyestalks in return. )
What are the rules for mounted charges (same as normal. Size is not relevant to acceleration, in another humancentric convention completely ignoring real world physics.)
When you do a mounted charge, do you have to stop when you hit the enemy (Unless you have ride-by attack, yes. Otherwise, you may fall off your mount if you try it. Remember kids, wear a safety belt, whatever vehicle or animal you're riding.)
Nodwick looks over how things have changed in 30 years. The basics are still all there.
The themed section is pretty good this year, and the fact that they're planning some changes piques my interest, but there is still some seriously formulaic and basic stuff that I wish I could just skip. As usual, I have to resign myself to the fact that they do need to repeat themselves for their not so regular readers, and wonder what theme next month will bring. Another planar one? Well, those are usually good, because the theme is too broad for rehash even if they've done the topic multiple times. I think I can muster the energy to go on for a while longer.
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 1/8
87(108) pages. When you are fighting, both combatants should not be turned to face the camera. Once again, the degree of stylisation and zooming in is to the detriment of both realism and making out what's supposed to be going on. Ironic, when the planes are supposed to be about infinite expanses that you can explore for lifetimes and only scratch the surface. Let's see if they'll take us to new weird and wonderful places, or the same old devils and angels will be getting all the publicity inside as well.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms turn: In hindsight we've found out that the D&D developers were already thinking about 4e as soon as 3.5 was released, maybe even sooner. This editorial is a good example of that, as Matthew Sernett turns out to be on the side that's unhappy with the planes as they are, and thinks they need to be torn down for something designed for the convenience of adventurers, rather than with huge areas of stuff that's incomprehensible or unsurvivable without magic. While I can accept that there is room for improvement there, replacing a highly idiosyncratic cosmology of 30-odd planes for a far more generic one comprised of only half a dozen seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and is one of my biggest peeves with 4e. This leaves me with a good deal of trepidation for the rest of this issue. Are they already going to be adding stuff that's inconsistent or revisionist to the game? I seriously hope not.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is an extremely long one that reminds us just how good a place the military can be for roleplayers. There's a lot of dead time when you're posted to inhospitable locations around the world, and roleplaying is a good way to fill that and develop camaraderie within a unit. In a regular job, you might only get to play once a week. There, they got to play nearly every day, and had large groups with irregular player lineups like the ones Gary used to run. It helped keep them sane through the violence. Definitely evidence that as a social pastime RPG's are far better for you as a hobby than many other things, and also that the culture we live in has a real effect on our opportunities.
Second, we have an amusing bit of sycophancy towards our current editor. He's way better than the last three! Ah, the joys of seeing newcomers who are way more enthusiastic than I could manage. How long will that innocence last?
The Dark Sun issue gets 5 letters published, running the gamut of opinions from gushing to grumpy. Apparently people were considerably more vicious about it on the internet, and the writer responding to this personally did not help quell the flamewars. Definitely a case where it's very hard indeed to please everyone, especially when you only have limited space to do it in. They shouldn't let that stop them though, and I hope they'll do more controversial topics in the future.
And finally, we have a request for an ecology on Succubi. Such a no-brainer you're surprised someone hasn't done it before. Can they get it past the censors without making it boring though?
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 2/8
Zogonia really need to hire a PR person and agent. Adventuring alone really really isn't cutting the mustard.
The infused: First up, we have a sequel to a previous article, which doesn't get my hopes up. While being fused with demons who provide power at the price of constant temptation is a cool idea, the similar synthesis with angelic creatures who's power is dependent on behaving yourself doesn't hold quite the same dramatic tension. (unless you're playing an evil or neutral character trying to get maximum profit for themselves while sticking to the letter of the rules) So here's another long prestige class with sample ability sets for most of the devas, archons, guardianals and eladrin. It's very much a perfect demonstration of the idea of diminishing returns. And we don't even get to find out what a relationship with Modrons or Slaadi would do to you either. If you're going to do a follow-up, it has to be bigger and better to get the same amount of praise, which I really can't give this time.
Woo. The worlds largest dungeon. Kill your characters with endless darkmantles in region A, and then beat the players with the enormous book if they dare complain. Now that's proper adventuring in the old skool spirit.
Under command: This month's minis article is a brisk little piece converting a whole load of common magical items to the game. This obviously allows you a whole load of extra options to advance and customise your character. Interestingly, the point costs of some items scales with your characters, representing that many items are force multipliers rather than adders, and having interesting implications for characters in a game where you can take enemies stuff after killing them. That really does show them thinking carefully about game balance, which is important in a wargame where you have to build armies on equal amounts of points, and something point-buy systems like GURPS might benefit from incorporating. (although it would make the mathematical aspect of character building even more of a pain in the ass) Perfect balance may be impossible, but we can still get much closer to it if we try, and it is good to see them still trying.
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 3/8
The way of the guns: One of our most frequent topics ever pops up again. Issues 28, 57, 60, 70, 124, 176, 199, 232 and the 2001 Annual not enough for you? (plus who knows how many of the Polyhedron minigames these past couple of years) Better get ready to duck, because Iiiiiiiit's firearms time again! Where the last one had lots of interesting setting material, this is on the dry historical side, providing stats for lots of different gun variants, along with a bit of information on where they come from, and of course how much they'll cost you in D&D land. The fact that they're all exotic weapons means characters who just come across them won't be able to make best use of them, which is a pretty obvious balancing factor. So this is another case where the mechanics are probably improved from previous editions, but the flavour is rather lacking, so you'll have to plunder the archives or inject it yourself. They may have more setting stuff this year than last, but there's still too much stuff that's been made consciously generic to the point of boredom.
Our second themed article is another sequel. Planar Dragons get a second article, also focussing on the neutral and upper planes. It's nice to see them filling in symmetries, but it does not fill me with confidence as to the quality of their ideas at the moment. I guess it's more stuff that's useful but not thrilling then. I wish they'd do more epic articles and get these ideas out of their system in one go.
Adamantine Dragons are the one preexisting type here, and anyone sufficiently geeky will already know they're from Bytopia, and that last edition there were only a flat 2 of them, one for each layer. So much for that, as they're given standard age categories and family setups here. Their adamantine natural weaponry makes them particularly good at penetrating DR, grappling, and sundering the weapons of others, so despite their scary appearance, they can actually go for the nonlethal option to end a fight quite easily. Which makes complete sense given their role. Gnomes can rest safely in their beds knowing these guys are nearby.
Arboreal Dragons take their cues from fey, which also makes perfect sense. They breathe thorns, and are also rather good at polymorphing. You can expect to see a good few half-dragons based on them pop up in the future then. :)
Axial Dragons are from Mechanus, and are all perfectly symmetrical, polished and exactingly focussed on whatever their goals are. Their magical abilities aren't particularly impressive, but the ones they have are pretty tightly applied, and if anyone can navigate the bureaucracy of Nirvana to get assistance in their schemes, it'll be them.
Beast Dragons are pretty much the opposite, covered in spikes and horns and lethal hunters who won't necessarily spare you just because you happen to be good as well. The circle of life has plenty of leeway in maintaining the balance, especially on the plane where nature is at it's strongest.
Concordant Dragons are also Rilmani, and like all Rilmani, they're based on a particular type of metal (which does kinda conflict with the general D&D tendency of metallic dragons to be good. ) Still, uranium is such nasty stuff that I suppose you can forgive that. Their breath weapon has no effect on true neutral characters, while being devastating to the extreme alignments, and their magical skillset is focussed on divination and antiscrewage. If the aurumachs need to bring out the big guns to protect the universe, who better to call?
In addition, they have a template for Archdragons, who devote themselves purely to a single alignment, and get quite a few extra magical tricks as a result. Once again, the stat changes follow logically on from the remit, which leaves me with little to complain about, but little to thrill to either. Now, will they fill in the other third or so outer planes sometime in the future?
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 4/8
Silicon sorcery: As usual when they have a new D&D computer game out, they have a larger than usual article in here to promote it. This time, it's a tactics focussed conversion of the Temple of Elemental Evil. While there aren't many new monsters, there's a fair few old ones that haven't been converted to 3.5 yet in here. These include giant crayfish, giant gar and giant ticks, three mundane creatures souped up to make a good fight for adventurers. I do wonder why they haven't converted them before when they use up so little space in a monster manual compared to complicated magical creatures. Somewhat more interesting are the NPC's you can hire. Some of them are loyal, while others are treacherous, and it's up to you to figure out which is worth spending money on. Between those, this game and article definitely seems aimed at those who want a truly old school dungeoncrawling experience, full of sprawling labyrinths with monsters and traps round every corner. If you don't mind the bugs, (which of course they don't mention here) it seems like a pretty interesting ride. The long history of D&D computer game continues to take it in different directions.
The limitless light: After a first half packed to the brim with sequels, rehashes and updates, we finally have something that shows a bit of invention, even if the name is rehashed. In 2e, the quasielemental plane of radiance was one of the most hostile places in the generally vicious inner planes. If the solar level heat didn't fry you, the light would still blind you before you could properly appreciate it, leaving it's spectacular colours the last thing you'd ever see. For 3.5, they're completely reimagining it, creating a kinder, gentler, more accessible plane of radiance which has a decent amount of variance for you to explore and adventure in. You can get into it without spells if you can find the end of a rainbow, which feels appropriately mythic, and once there you can follow the rainbow bridge, explore one of the many little floating islands, or step off and fly through the infinite shifting lights and weird weather. There's still the danger of becoming hypnotised by the beauty of the place and just staring into space until you starve, but the DC is low enough that in a party, one person'll probably be able to save the others and get things back on track. I'm not generally a fan of revisionism, but this is a big enough improvement in terms of actual usability and flavour that it gets my vote. Not that there shouldn't be plenty of places in the planes that you need to be epic level to visit and come back from, but the awesome eternal holiday locations are what'll tempt people out of their own little towns in the first place. Both ought to have their place in the D&D cosmology.
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 5/8
Nodwick's party are certainly getting the hang of this extraplanar thing. They must be pretty high level by now.
Creatures of brilliance: Our new/revamped rainbow universe gets filled out with some new monsters to keep adventuring there interesting, plus the obligatory template that you can apply to mundane creatures to make them glowy and equipped with appropriately scaling magical abilities. In that way, 3e is a lot more convenient than 2e. Now, if only they'd added a big list of appropriate existing monsters like the plane of shadow one did. Then it'd be even easier to build adventures and random encounters here.
Glimmerfolk are the LA+0 humanoid natives of the plane most likely to become PC's. They're pretty, come in many colours, and have glowing balls of light surrounding them that they can burn to produce spell-like abilities. This also means they have a unique penalty to stealth rolls that reduces as they use up daily resources, which creates a very interesting tactical dynamic. Like Warforged, that's cool and different, and allows their powers to be slightly more powerful than most +0 races because they also have a weakness. I approve very strongly of this.
Prismfly Swarms use their pretty lights to entrance and confuse you, and then strip the flesh from your bones with their acidic mandibles. The circle of life continues whatever universe you're in, and they use whatever tools are at their disposal to survive and propagate themselves.
Rainbow Dwellers occupy about the same niche as invisible stalkers, humanoids comprised entirely out of rainbow light that probably mean trouble, but it's not a sure bet, and they're alien enough that you can't be sure what'll work. Which is just as it should be, and makes these two articles very much a beacon of light in a sea of boredom.
Faiths of faerun: A double bill of prestige classes here this time, both intended for worshippers of Arvoreen. Wait a minute, he's a generic halfling deity, not a realms one. I presume this state of affairs is because everyone but the lead deity of each race got cut out of the core 3e products, so it was up to the realms setting-builders to stick them back in. But anyway, like Monte's Nightsong duo, this pair seem designed specifically to complement each other, which is quite neat. Arvoreen's keepers are cleric/rogue hybrids that take a decent amount of multiclassing to get into, but pay for that quite well, with full spellcasting progression, decent skills, and a moderate number of special abilities on top of that. They certainly seem like the dipping will pay for itself at higher level. Arvoreen's Warders don't get the spellcasting, but they do get full BAB, all the special abilities of the Warder, plus two free weapon focuses and specialisations on top of that, making them a good ranger/rogue hybrid. This means they synergize well, especially since an explicit part of their abilities is encouraging them too be a team player, but should be different enough that both can play a valuable role in the same team. If you're playing a halfling heavy party, see if you can tempt them.
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 6/8
Elminster's guide to the realms: The Realms has already had not one, but two specials on magical masks (issues 117 and 281. ) I guess with a god named that, they just can't get away from the idea, because here's another one. Only this time, Ed's concentrating on a person who MAKES masks (and worships the god behind them) rather than the masks themselves. This means we get another helping of character study, worldbuilding details, adventure hooks, and interesting illustrations that are open-ended enough for you to use in all sorts of ways in your own campaign. Waterdeep is a busy place, and as soon as you foil one villain, you can find the threads to half a dozen more. (who may now be profiting due to the reduced competition.) This is another article I could definitely see myself finding a use for.
Champions of fate: Al-Qadim is the setting that gets another follow-up this issue, showing how much good stuff they got when they simply asked for it. While Sha'irs are a sufficiently dramatic change from regular spellcasters they need their own core class, a lot of the other kits are better suited to prestige classes, especially as you can replicate them simply with the right skill and feat choices under the more customisable 3e rules. This is certainly the case of the ones updated here.
Barbers are only a 5 level class, and you can get into them pretty low level as a rogue, which fits their everyday nature. They lack sneak attack, but with their boosted social and alchemical skills, they can become very influential indeed, and probably pull off an assassination themselves as well if needs be. The best way to win a fight is to never let them suspect you're an enemy in the first place.
Corsairs are fighter/rogue hybrids, completely unsurprisingly. They're slightly better overall than splitting your levels between the two classes, although they don't get sneak attack, instead concentrating on the acrobatic and mobility stuff. They're a good one to choose if you want a fighty character who also has a significant amount of noncombat tricks.
Holy Slayers are quite a bit more permissive in the types of characters they let in, with even paladins being able to find some common ground in their unwavering faith. Not that it's the most optimal path for them, as multiple effects granting immunity to fear are kinda redundant, but it's nice to see religious fanaticism being treated more open-handedly than the subtle contempt it got in the original books. :p They're still pretty sneaky though, even if they are slightly more martial than regular rogues.
Mamluks concentrate on endurance and teamwork, which fits their characterisation, and will come in handy for the bureaucracy parts of their job as well as the fighting. I think these are another pretty good set of conversions then, as they keep the greater emphasis on skills and noncombat tricks the old al-qadim kits did in their updating.
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 7/8
Dungeoncraft: Monte is still talking about characterisation, but this time he's a little more specific, with advice aimed at making characters distinct when you only have a few important features for each one and have to get them across within a minute or two. It's a little more interesting than last time, but still feels very much like stuff we've heard before, and oddly enough, the formatting feels more like Johnn's work than Monte's usual. I'm not sure what to make of that. Cribbing off each other's notes? Well, I can't say I'm too surprised, even if I am a little disappointed.
DM's toolbox: Oddly enough, while Monte is busy being boring, Johnn is in a more playful mood than usual, talking about creating ironic situations to amuse yourself and your players. This means there is a fairly substantial amount of sadism and metagame thinking here, as players can collude in this, having their characters do things that they know would bad for them, but entertaining for the game. But there's also cases where the DM can laugh at the players, setting up a situation that has a simple solution if done right, but can go oh so very wrong if it isn't. There's also the ironies that arise entirely unintentionally, simply from characters being themselves, or the rules encouraging things that simply wouldn't happen in a pure narrative. After a whole load of sensible advice, encouraging us to loosen up and embrace the ridiculous parts of what we do comes as very welcome, and will make the dramatic parts seem all the more so by contrast, doncha think?
Dragon Issue 321: July 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice is cut down to 1+1/2 pages this month. Skip will definitely be complaining to the editors again. He's been putting the pages in their mages for years, so they'd damn well better put the pages back in his.
It costs more to make a cold iron longsword if you enchant it in multiple stages! Correct. You mess up, you don't make as much profit. Sucks to be you. )
Can you make slashing attacks with a rapier at a penalty (Have you seen a rapier in real life. They're pathetic bendy things with no edge at all. They really aren't designed to seriously hurt people, just look cool. You can do it, but with a -4 penalty to hit and damage. )
How does stoneskin work (You're right, your friend is wrong. It's been nerfed like hell but it's still pretty strong. It won't save you for long, and a strong fighter will have no trouble kicking your ass.)
Do synergy bonuses stack (They have no type, so yes they do)
Does the extra cost for special ammunition apply per shot or per batch (per shot. It's ridiculously pricey)
Do they still break when you shoot them (yes. See the previous question for skip's comments on this method's inefficiency. This is why you use melee weapons to deal with demons. Getting the right guns is just too expensive.)
How do you convert DR from 3.0 to 3.5 (Download the free update booklet :teeth ting: Gotta suck up to the WotC people.)
Can wizards cast spells straight from their spellbook (Recycled question. The answer is still no.)
How many times can you charge in combat (As often as you have room. This will result in you moving around the battlefield a lot. Better have stuff to stop AoO's)
Dork tower simply can't cope with the real world. This is probably why they roleplay.
The plane of radiance stuff is pretty damn cool, but other than that, this issue is once again filled with formulaic filler, rehash and sequels, leaving it my least favourite of the planar themed issues so far overall. It's definitely disappointing when you consider the number of existing planes (particularly the inner ones) that still don't have more than a few pages on them, and would really benefit from a magazine special to expand and possibly redefine them. Let's hope they make room for them before they decide to switch cosmologies altogether in a few years time.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 1/8
80(108) pages. Last issue, they chased the rainbow. This time, it's back down into the darkness, which most D&D monsters can see through, but you puny humans still have good reason to fear. That's a strong yet flexible theme, and I certainly hope they can fill it with some truly scary boogeymen. Let's see what happens when we turn out the lights tonight, and how easy it'll be to write about it.
Scan Quality: Moderate, lots of adjacent page bleedover, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Wyrms Turn: One mistake 3e definitely made was making darkvision default for entire swathes of monster types. It puts humans in a position that simply isn't borne out by our real world capabilities, especially when you include all the near-human races that do have some form of low-light sight. We have better night and distance vision than a whole swathe of animal types, even if our colour perception isn't the greatest. Of course, IRL humans are also one of THE toughest and smartest creatures in the world, rather than an average which most monsters exceed handily, but that doesn't fit the plucky underdog image we somehow still instinctively project ourselves into. I certainly haven't been afraid of the dark in a long time. Will this issue bring back any of that, or will it only demystify it further?
Scale Mail: Our first letter is a request for chromatic dragon PC progressions to mirror the metallic ones. Since they're quite keen on sequel articles these days, I can see that happening fairly soon.
Since they've been making hints about big changes for a while now, people are obviously curious, and maybe a bit worried. They're planning on moving their regulars around so Dragon is more player-oriented, while Dungeon gets the DM-specific columns, among other things. Whether that'll increase overall sales, we shall have to see.
They try to prime us for the change a little more by including another letter from a person who was pleased by the 3.5 changes. Hopefully these ones will be to the positive as well.
We also get reassurance that many people do want more unusual topics covered in the magazine. You never know when something that's currently niche is going to take off and become a huge hit spawning it's own imitators and subgenres. And even if it isn't a hit this time, at least you produced something different and interesting.
As they do every year or two, we have someone asking how they break into the RPG industry and make a living from it. Getting writing or artwork gigs isn't that hard if you're persistent and respond well to editors. Getting enough to live on as your primary job is another matter altogether. Remember, there's all sorts of other behind the scenes jobs you can take. See if your talents lie in any of those areas if you don't absolutely have to be a creator to make your life worth living.
Another fairly common request is for their best bits of art to be made into a poster. You might just get your wish this time, presuming your favourites are the same as theirs.
And finally, we have a request for a setting where monsters are common and integrated into general society. That's much harder than it seems, especially when they have superhuman mental stats and at-will mind reading/control powers that make dealing with them as equals completely impossible. Lifespans and breeding rates would also cause serious long-term instabilities and logistical problems. But that doesn't mean there can't be specific monster nations, and indeed, they're putting a fair few in Eberron. All their official settings have to have humans as the most dominant/frequent race overall because that's what people buy. If you want otherwise, you have to do it yourself.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 2/8
Zogonia has to deal with a fallen paladin. This splits the party somewhat.
Shadow's city: In issue 305, we got a city set on the astral plane, to give us both a good homebase there if you're planning an extended extraplanar campaign, and plenty of opportunity for political adventures as well as physical ones. Here, they try to repeat that trick with the plane of shadow. Of course, while the astral plane is a quiet place where you don't need to eat, and very little happens unless you actively seek it out, the plane of shadow is far more slippery and hostile to nonnative life. This is especially the case here, because instead of trying to blend in, they've chosen to fill the city with light as much as possible, shouting I to a dark uncaring universe, and having to deal with regular hordes of undead pissed off about this disturbance. It takes a fair bit of work to gain citizenship here, but not nearly as much as on the astral plane, as we aren't dealing with strictly limited living space and no breeding. I would wonder how they provide food for themselves, but since a big chunk of the population is underground races like drow and dark ones, I assume the tricks that work in the underdark also provide here. I also wonder just how they keep a stable population with 7% mind flayers, as their appetites would deplete all the other races pretty damn quickly. So the demographics and ecology don't really hold up to sustained examination, but this does look like a very adventurable place, as it's filled with dark alleys, competing organisations, opportunities to get your hands on magical items, and an obvious physical threat to disrupt the whole shebang whenever you run low on ideas. Raymond Chandler would have a field day, and hopefully you can too.
Who's afraid of the dark: When your players are stuck in an area of darkness, it's an interesting challenge describing their experiences in terms of their other senses, so they have enough information to make some choices about what to do, but not so much that it's no harder for them than it would be in a well-lit environment. There's a whole load of things that are effortless when you can see what you're doing that suddenly become very tricky indeed. Any change in the environment, like say a moving wall or pit trap can separate the party without them realising it until it's too late. Ranged attacks are pretty much pointless when you're aiming blind, and that includes non AoE spells. This is a fairly straightforward outliner of both the problems and solutions that show up when the lights go out, with plenty of attention paid to the existing 3.5 mechanics. You can dial up the difficulty based on the cleverness of the enemies and pull some very unfair tricks. This is the kind of primer that's drier than I'd prefer but has enough fun sadistic ideas for actual play that I can forgive it. After all, that's what really counts, not all the research and preparation that come before.
Ecology of the dark ones: After another pretty lengthy gap, the ecologies return with another of our interesting paired creatures. The Dark ones, like the Firenewt & Giant Striders, first appeared in the fiend folio, and have got relatively little love in modules since then compared to drow & illithids, with their limelight hogging ways. Still, as the ecology says, that's probably exactly how they like it, because it means pesky adventurers are less likely to come hunting for them specifically, and they'll be more vulnerable to their tricks and traps. Despite being physically fairly close to human, they have a rather alien mindset that leads them to extreme isolationism, and some rather interesting behaviours amongst themselves. While this illuminates some of these details, it raises just as many questions as it answers, giving GM's plenty of leeway to decide what their real origin is. Along with the now usual tactical advice and ideas for pairing them with other creatures (not in that way, although I suspect Dark Stalkers are one iconic character away from becoming a yaoi fangirl favourite. After all, they even explode when killed like anime monsters. :D ) we have Savage Species rules for making them available as PCs. This is probably the one sour note in this ecology, because as usual, they'll wind up rather underpowered, particularly the creepers, which have 5 racial levels, but only a single hit die, which as we know from pixies, results in very fragile characters. Oh well, can't fix the systematic problems. Other than that, it's a nicely atmospheric and usable ecology here.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 3/8
Collaborative campaign building: Robin Laws has moved on from the magazine, but it seems his influence continues to reverberate, with this little article on blurring the player-DM boundary. The main benefits to allowing your players to join in on the worldbuilding are that it reduces the amount of effort you have to do, and increases the amount of investment and general knowledge they have, allowing them to play off the setting straight away, rather than starting off as wandering marauders each time. Plus if they have particular talents, you can take advantage of that expertise by splitting the labor in an appropriate way. Course, if you're experimenting with stuff like this, you might well be experienced gamers who don't need that crutch to immerse yourself in character, but that won't stop you from doing it for fun. After all, it's not about need, it's about trying new things so gaming doesn't get boring, and having enough trust in your players to not ruin things by metagaming or suggesting silly ideas that'll mess up the setting if implemented. Sometimes too many cooks may spoil the broth, but better to try and see if it works than stay stuck and limited by your own creativity.
Shady characters: One thing that's notable about shadows is how gradual and insidious they can be. As the sun sets, they lengthen and deepen, and you don't notice until a sudden chill creeps across your spine. Why shouldn't transforming into a creature of shadow if you spend too long in the plane be a similar process? So this article showcases another rules experiment, breaking up templates in the same way as monster racial classes, and allowing you to develop their powers one level at a time instead of suddenly becoming overpowered and then gradually trending back towards the mean. It also gives us a better idea of exactly what they consider appropriate compensation for a level, when you aren't gaining hit points, skills, BAB, or any of the other basics, and means you can hold off taking all the levels in them until you do have enough regular levels that you don't wind up simultaneously fragile and game-breaking due to your idiosyncratic special powers. So while they may still be a mechanical problem, this makes them less so, and gives players greater freedom still to customise their character, becoming only partly shadow-tainted and maybe deciding to turn back IC as they discover the consequences. Now we just need the retraining rules to fully support that kind of character arc mechanically.
Shadows of Undrentide: Even the new computer game is in theme with the issue, which is amusing. Did they plan that well in advance, or did it just happen to turn out that way? The new material is fairly appropriate for the stealth theme, detailing a whole bunch of ways to make your poisons more effective than simply increasing the numbers. Like the disease one three months ago, this sees them recognise that maybe they nerfed this a little too much in 3.5, and there is some serious plot drama involved in having a progressive, hard to fix problem that will only get worse if you don't act fast. The tricky thing is allowing both PC's and enemies access to tricks like this without it feeling unfair or making the game too lethal, for which it would be a very good idea to enforce the cost multipliers they list here strictly. That way, the big plot point poisons can only be pulled out occasionally, rather than resulting in escalation ruining the game.
Dork tower deal with the emotional fallout of gaming infidelity. So tragic.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 4/8
Sneaky, stealthy & Stylish: Since stealth is one of the most common things characters strive for, there's always a big market for magical items that boost it. They probably didn't even have to specifically solicit for it. Still, I doubt your players will turn these goodies down if they run across them in a treasure pile.
Armor of the Woodland gives you moderate travel and stealth bonuses in forests, including teleporting from one tree to another, which is a huge boon if you're playing Robin Hood. Appear suddenly, and don't let them follow you, and your secret lair will remain undiscovered.
Bracers of Blocking make fighting defensively a little more beneficial than usual. Long-term turtling is still probably not a good tactic though.
Daggers of Torment give people hit by them hallucinations and flashbacks, which is one of those tricks that's only really useful if you plan to leave them alive for a while afterwards. Since sadism tends to get it's comeuppance, I think I'd bury that one with it's owner.
Rapiers of Disarming are pretty self-explanatory and somewhat rehashed. Swashbucking is a fun business, and good guys have their own reasons to not kill the enemy a lot of the time.
Saps of Stunning are also a one-trick nonlethal pony. Knock out those guards, and get in and out before the alarm can be raised. Meh.
Swords of Murder, on the other hand, are all about the gruesome cascade effects. The more you kill, the better you can kill. For a little while, anyway. You're bound to run out sooner or later, and the comedown'll be a bitch.
Amulets of Good Fortune are your basic boosts to saving throws. Nothing particularly in theme about these.
Brooches of Alertness let you see in the dark and get general bonuses to your perception skills, so they're most useful to sneaky sorts by a narrow margin.
Drums of the Shadow Hound are made from the skins of shadow mastiffs, and offer a wide range of shadow based powers, depending on how you play them. Have fun figuring out how to get the best use out of them.
Fey Flutes are also made out of the bodies of their namesakes, and give you appropriate magical powers when played. Careful using them around actual fey, because you know what they're like for lengthy vindictive revenge campaigns.
Lord of darkness: Looks like the demon lord format in issue 312 was neat enough to inspire another entry. Only this time, it's an evil godly native of the plane of shadow rather than the abyss who wants to destroy the world, and has minions of all power levels for you spend a campaign foiling. And he doesn't want to do it because of hunger, but because he's from the time before light and noise and tons of living creatures crawling around breeding, eating, pooping etc etc, and just wants to go back to when the universe was dark and peaceful. So basically, he's the ultimate cosmic embodiment of the grumpy old man who thinks everything sucks these days and just wants us all to gitoffa his lawn. ;) Since he's an actual god, you don't get stats to fight him with at the end of the campaign, but you do get domains, a prestige class, new spells, a new feat, and new monsters to throw at your players. I'm fairly entertained by this, and it looks open-ended enough to sustain a campaign. Shadows can come in many shades and depths, and sufficiently advanced ennui can be just as dangerous as genuine hate.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 5/8
Patterns of shadow and light: We've had a magical item collection. Now for a spell one. This is also only partially in theme, with light-based spells as well as darkness ones. I suppose we need the contrast, just to make the darkness seem a little deeper. Let's see if these are worth adding to the many existing flavours of D&D magic.
Cone of dimness makes people believe everything has gone black instead of just extinguishing the lights. Since it's way higher level than regular Light and Darkness, that seems a little pointless at first. I guess this way, your side can be prepared and attack normally by using illusion countering spells, which definitely has it's upside.
Ebon Eyes let you see in the dark, and also look obviously sinister, which may or may not be a plus depending on your character. I'm sure you can finagle at least a +2 bonus to intimidation rolls for the synergy effect with a nice DM. :D
Lightwall illuminates the area and dazzles anyone who passes through it except the caster, making it good for setting up ambushes. Still, I don't think it's as good as wall of fire, and at the same level, you'd only want to use this if you know the enemy is resistant to fire.
Lucent Lance absorbs all the light around you into a single focussed blinding blast that'll leave some serious afterimages. But if you're lost in the dark, that's no use at all. Seems like a fairly exploitable weakness, since you're already in trouble when the lights go out.
Luminous Gaze gives you eyes that glow so brightly anyone meeting them is dazzled. This is both handy for combat and seeing in the dark, but not for subtlety. A really arrogant god-king will make the effect permanent, and relish the fact that all must avert their gaze.
Radiant Assault is similar to Prismatic Spray, only not as interesting, as all it's different colours merely do different types of damage. How tedious. At levels where this comes into play, you should be able to deal with petrification or being teleported to another plane, even if it does divert the adventure for a little while.
Rainbow Beam is basically a combo of colour spray and a low level attack spell like chill touch or burning hands, both dazzling and inflicting a random type of damage. Why wait until you have 5th level spells and quickening when you can effectively deliver a 2-in-one whammy at 3rd level with this?
Rainbow Blast does a little bit of damage each from lots of energy types. If you're not sure exactly what a creature is resistant too, hedge your bets and at least you won't waste your efforts entirely.
Shadow Phase is kind of the reverse of those annoying shadow monster spells, making an existing creature slightly unreal, and thus able to ignore attacks some of the time. Like Blink or Blur, this makes them lengthy and frustrating to fight. And since it's twice their level, it shows this collection is definitely being overconservative in terms of power levels. I guess you can get twinky stacking them.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 6/8
Heroes of the war of the spider queen: In the past couple of years, the Rogues Gallery Column slowed to a trickle and was taken over by stuff from the War of the Spider Queen series. Here, we conclude that plot thread, as we are many others. Lolth has been away for a while, but they can't kill her off for good. Let's see what stories her absence has enabled.
Halisstra Melarn remains the same level, but has switched from neutral to good, from worshipping Lolth to Eillistrae, and had some changes in equipment. Being a protagonist gives you plenty of chances to consume moral fiber, even if it may take a while to pass through your system.
Danidae Yauntyrr, on the other hand, remains resolutely on the side of evil, just waiting for a chance betray her mistress. Enforcing loyalty through magic may work for centuries, but something will go wrong eventually, and it won't be pretty when it does.
Nimor Imphraezi is a half shadow dragon assassin who might be chaotic evil, but also wants to see Lolth worship shattered because it's not beneficial to him personally. Which is evil all over, isn't it, even if some good comes out of it in the long run because they're too busy backstabbing each other to take over the world. It's a perfect opportunity for adventurers to go in and make some changes by choosing their alliances wisely and betraying first.
Nodwick has to suffer friendly fire again.
Elminster's guide to the Realms: Several times in the past, we've had articles on what to do with dragon parts once you've killed them, and how much you can make by selling them to enterprising wizards. The Realms being a high magic place with plenty of wizards and dragons, it's not surprising that someone would take the job of middleman, setting up a shop which can take a dragon carcass, strip apart and preserve all the useful bits, and then sell them on at a profit when someone comes in, which is more convenient for everyone than lugging it hundreds of miles around to potential buyers. Equally unsurprisingly, a place like that needs a fair bit of magical security, both from thieves and pissed off relatives of the deceased dragons. Prices fluctuate wildly as stocks come in and deplete, and whether the owners know and trust the customers or not. As usual, Ed has plenty of fun with both the nature and personalities of the owners, and the layout of the shop, making it both useful for players and an entertaining read. It certainly doesn't seem like he's running out of ideas. Will he continue to be as frequent a contributor after this column goes, or is his 25 year reign finally at an end? Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 7/8
Faiths of Faerun finishes off as it started, with a double bill, as the revamp approaches, and evidently they don't want to waste already written material before giving it the axe. Since it was never particularly regular, nor really settled on what it wanted to actually do with itself, even though it did manage to come up with some cool stuff along the way, I suspect this is one of the less mourned of the departed columns, along with The Current Clack and Dastardly Deeds & Devices. We only have a limited page count, so it goes to those who push hard and regularly to ensure they're included. No time for the shy and reticent, even if they do often have better ideas.
Our first article is Nether hounds of Kiaransalee. Hang on, didn't she get killed by Orcus after he came back to life? Death for gods is an awkward thing, especially now the Realms is in a different cosmology, despite sharing a lot of the old gods and events. Continuity becomes such a headache once retcons come into the equation. It's too much bother for me to unpick at the moment. Our new crunch is a vicious new template, for turning things into said Nether Hounds. Slavering undead monstrosities, they're the kind of thing that relish ripping you apart with their bare hands, and with terrifying yowls, excellent senses, and high movement rates, they're well suited to hunting you down over a desolate moor or labyrinthine dungeon. Since it's a template, you could add them to anything from ghouls, to frost wights, depending on how scary you want the encounter to be. Not the most ground-breaking idea these days, but pretty well implemented.
Our second one is for another prestige class, the Deathstalker of Bhaal. Now he's definitely dead. It's a big plot point actually. Yet ironically, in some ways this has actually increased his popularity, and there's a worrying number of people who want to see him back and are willing to devote themselves to this prestige class to see it happen. It's only a 5 level one, but it culminates in them become exceedingly difficult to finish off permanently, with autoraising as standard. For a solitary villain without a party or villainous organisation to back them up, that's a huge advantage, normally only achievable by wizards with complex contingencies set up. The other abilities put them midway between cleric and assassin, which makes sense, but may require a bit of careful management for optimum power. I'm sure you're used to it by now. Ironically, it's quite an impressive end to this column, which could definitely have gone on longer if managed better. Oh cruel fate! :wipes forehead: Why must you taunt us so with unfulfilled promises, yet punish us so harshly if we fail to fulfil ours!
Dungeoncraft is off to Dungeon, appropriately, but at least Monte finishes off this particular topic here so he can start a new one there, and not confuse people who only read one magazine or the other. Having spent two issues on building personalities, he asks the question: Does a character still have a personality if they aren't interacting with anything? Which is pretty deep, really. People are very much defined by their relationships to others, and most change how they act depending on who they're with. You can spend ages designing some platonic ideal of their personality, only to have in-game events push them in a very different direction. So when you make a character, think about the other people you've already designed in the area, if they'd know them, and what their relationship with them is. A few distinctive relationships transform a cardboard cutout into a unique character with surprising speed. So having slightly fewer characters, but thinking about them more will make each more interesting, and hopefully they won't get killed off so quickly. As is too often the case, the longer a series goes on, the more distinctive it becomes, and I'm irritated that they're ending here just after telling us something new for a change.
Dragon Issue 322: August 2004
part 8/8
DM's toolbox: Our final toolbox reminds us that what players say they want isn't necessarily what they actually want, particularly in ongoing campaigns, and they might not even know what will really please them. So here's some tricks to help you read the unconscious signals they're giving off, and respond to them appropriately. Open-ended questions are far better than flat yes or no ones. Look at the character sheets, see what's emphasised on that. Let the players talk amongst themselves and pay close attention to their dynamics. And once you have an idea, don't be afraid to change your earlier plans to keep the adventure full of appropriate twists and turns. You might not be able to please everyone all the time, especially in a big group, but you'll please more people more of the time if you know how to work with human nature rather than against it.
Sage advice is back to 3 pages again. Skip is not taking any crap. The eternal sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs is on top again. So let's get back to business as usual.
How smart is someone with an intelligence of 3 (Depends if their wisdom is also seriously sub average. You'll get more latitude that you would in the real world, because of the range of intelligence in sentient races, and the lack of a standardised education system. But yeah, you can talk, but people will know you're not the sharpest pencil in the box. )
Do charisma buffing magic items improve paladins divine grace (Yes.)
How long does it take to activate trigger magic items containing spells with long casting times (A standard action, or the spell's casting time, whichever is longer. The designers really should have spelled that one out better. )
Do spell-trigger items suffer spell failure due to armour (Not in general.)
What can be prone (Anything that can stretch out on the floor. Apart from a few weird things like beholders and gelatinous cubes, that's most things. Things with no limbs aren't negatively affected by going prone )
What can be tripped (Pretty similar list, really. Anything that uses legs to move. You can perform an analogous move on things with wings, which stalls them. Try it some time, it could turn the tide of battle. )
Can you trip someone while they're getting up with your AoO (No, as AoO's take place before the action that triggers them. You'd have to ready an action to pull that nasty little trick.)
Can prone creatures move. Can they tumble (You've seen action movies, haven't you. They can pull some pretty cool tricks, and we're not going to completely forbid them. )
When fighting with two weapons, do you double the bonus from combat expertise (Hell no. You suffer the penalty to all your attacks, no matter how many different weapons you make them with.)
Can you use both power attack and weapon finesse simultaneously with spiked chains and rapiers (Why yes. How feat intensive but potentially twinky.)
How fasst can a halfling barbarian in medium armour move, preciousss (You would want to know that, shorty. And don't call Skip Precious, or Skip'll cap you. That pleasure is reserved for the laydees. And it'd better be in a sultry purr, not some awfull squeaky voice that makes your fucking teeth grind. Now about your question, lets see. Ahh here we arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhlarkhackhackguuuuuurrrrrrggggllllee :thud: )
A whole bunch of things come to an end this month, and most of them get fairly decent sendoffs. The theme isn't stuck too that strictly, but still manages to get a solid selection of articles. And since they did get pretty annoying at times with the formulaic generic stuff, I'm definitely interested to see what comes next. Let's hope player-focussed isn't a buzzword for even more contextless new spells, magic items, prestige classes, etc that you won't get a chance to use.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 1/8
102(132) pages. Raar! Dragon rip through annoying, oft-derided whitespace! Time for another format change. Well, it has been a few years. And it's fairly fitting that the final big shift before they went electronic should be at the 9/10ths point. Since they're busy just sorting out the finer details of the new setup, they've decided not to have any other theme. They've also removed a lot of the more complex colour schemes and fonts on the inside, going for a cleaner look with lots of little regular columns. Whether they'll remain regular remains to be seen, but this does look like it could become very formulaic indeed if they don't rotate them a little. Let's enjoy it while it's fresh, and see where it goes from there.
Scan Quality: Good, some page bleed, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the Editor: Even this bit gets renamed, which seems a bit redundant, as well as unnecessary verbiage. I hope we all know what an editorial is, and if not, a comprehensive dictionary is only a google away. Since they're trying to be clear about their motives and communication, this spells out exactly what's going to be in the issue, and future issues until they decide to do another format change based on more feedback. They've created regular columns which'll give us a little bit of every type of player centred crunch they can think of, plus a little more focus on the out of game community aspect of gaming than they used too, and book conversions to go with the minis and computer game stuff. Hopefully that'll mean everyone can find something to please them each issue. But it does seem like it makes them even more dependent on their regular writers, as they have to get x amount of x type of submissions per issue, and edit them down quite strictly. I shall have to see how many unfamiliar names are breaking in as we go along.
First watch: After a couple of years absence, they bring back the previews. D&D's release schedule has now long since slowed to the point where it can't satisfactorily fill a feature like this on it's own, so they bring back coverage of third party products, like they tried for a short period back in 1998. A fairly pleasing change, given how insular they've been recently. This should help keep these last few years interesting.
Unsurprisingly, our first two previews are the actual D&D releases. Frostburn sees them try a new form of splatbook, having done class, race and historical period/region ones repeatedly. Climatebooks? Sounds a little specious. Can your writers justify this one? Somewhat more likely to sell reliably is the Monster Manual 3. There's still plenty of old monsters that need converting, and it's not as if they're short of ideas for new ones either. Plenty of new options for PC races and helpful creatures as well as stuff to fight.
Another release falls heavily into the Dear god, who would want this category. The audiobooks of the wheel of time, unabridged, each book spread across dozens of CD's, and in many cases lasting more than 24 hours. A lot trickier to skip through all the braid-tugging in this format. Thanks but no thanks for this particular heads up.
Substantially more useful in your actual gaming experience is Tact-Tiles. You can draw on them, wipe it off, and they're modular, allowing you to create maps that fit your table quickly and easily, and change them as characters move around without erasing the whole thing. Pretty cool, if also fairly expensive.
And Larry Elmore gets a little help, as his new trading card series comes out. They do seem to be covering a much wider range of products this time round. I wonder what other odd third party stuff we'll see.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 2/8
Scale Mail gets a cute little illustration, and they realise that email is now the standard method of communication, so they don't list a physical address anymore. So you can spam them as much as you want and it won't cost you anything but time. I pity their filters.
Our first letter is another armed forces guy who has fond memories of gaming while posted around the world. Supervisors might not have always approved, but they found places to play anyway. Ssshhh. :)
As with virtually every other time they tried it, the gun article gets nitpicked for Historical Accuracy. I'm sure the editors find this almost as tiresome as I do.
The dragon-raising article, on the other hand, gets plenty of praise. Dragons are for life, not just high levels. It's good that they're working to enable that in actual play.
Their criticisms of the AD&D cosmology get debated and partly rebutted. It might have it's problems, but it certainly has more than enough cool stuff to not throw it out completely. Just pick the bits you want for your game, and don't worry about the rest.
We get a bulgarian who wants to see more Oriental Adventures material. This makes me smile for no good reason.
They ask after an article that was teasered, but not released. Cut for space at the last minute, unfortunately. Which means it will turn up some time, since they've probably already edited it, and hopefully paid the writer.
And finally, we have two letters on the possibility of a good D&D movie being released, hopefully one that actually draws on the existing settings. Don't get your hopes up, my dears. There are many awful tie-ins to come yet.
Player Initiative: Another all-new column, this talks about upcoming conventions and RPGA stuff in a way they haven't for a few years. It's a short one that's primarily self-promotion, trying to get us to come out to gen con and buy the cool new or exclusive stuff, and register in the tournament adventures. It seems aimed primarily at newcomers, and so isn't hugely interesting to me. Still, as long as Gen Con keeps on getting bigger, that's good for everyone apart from the people bored in queues or trying to book hotel rooms at decent prices. And if you don't have that kind of money, tough luck.
Under command: This column survives unchanged apart from the visuals, including more photos of actual minis from the game. And as is often the case, they're introducing stuff that's useful for both D&D and the minis game, bringing the two closer together mechanically. Stuff about choosing and advancing your commanders makes them closer to being well rounded individuals. And meanwhile 7 feats that replicate effects from the minis game allow you to make D&D characters that are more like them, and quite possibly convert characters between the two systems, and use both in a campaign depending on which is more convenient for the encounter. Automatically buffing all your allies gets more handy the more friends you bring along, and at some point it will get unwieldy to stick with D&D. Practicing system changes before then will let you pull them off smoothly when needed.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 3/8
A novel approach: Their new books column is another one that starts off with slightly irritating pure self-promotion. They're launching a new series of D&D novels not set in the existing settings, and oriented at a younger crowd, in the hope of sucking in a new generation. Which can't have worked brilliantly, given the still ageing roleplaying demographics, but since they continued publishing stuff in this imprint regularly until 2011 can't have been a complete flop either. Completely unsurprisingly, the new crunch is conversions of the characters and a magic item from the book. Each of them is level 1, and together they make up a fairly decent starter party, if somewhat more socially focussed than most. They obviously want to downplay the violent side of D&D for the sake of being family friendly. I can see the formulas going full force on this one, so it leaves me feeling very cynical indeed. Definitely not the best way to start off a column when there are so many more distinctive fantasy worlds out there to choose from.
Silicon sorcery, on the other hand, chooses a very big name for conversion. Chocobos from Final Fantasy! They come in a wide range of colours, are fairly cute, and a few of them can fly. They really do fit into D&D perfectly, which makes sense given the number of FF monsters that were converted from D&D in the first place. They're probably slightly easier to take into dungeons than horses, and being able to double your movement rate for extended periods of time certainly doesn't hurt. I am mildly amused by this, and definitely approve of the idea. (moogles, on the other hand...... ) People who dismiss all anime out of hand because of the visual style are missing out on a lot of cool stuff that's very appropriate for D&D. Someone ought to do an anime style conversion of the temple of elemental evil so Lareth the Beautiful can get the number of fangirls he truly deserves. :p
Zogonia mark their territory. Wandering monsters may get annoyed by this. Nodwick has a public service announcement to make. Dork tower tries to fix their group dynamics and fail again.
Samurai vs Knight: Well, this is certainly a harder fight to decide than Elminster vs Raistlin. The elite warrior classes of two very different cultures that existed at around the same time, and with tech levels not so far apart as to be obviously overpowering. There's certainly room for a good deal of debate there, because there's a ton of variables. Precise time period, environment, home team advantage, if they're fighting in melee or on horseback, if each is fighting fair by their own particular standards, you can consider them all, and never come to a solid answer. Because really, it would depend on the luck and skill of the specific individuals, and even if there were statistical trends, there would still be many exceptions to the rule. So no solid answers here, and I can't help feeling it would be a more entertaining read as an actual forum thread where people genuinely do have polarised opinions, rather than one person being even-handed and researching both meticulously. This is interesting because it's different from the usual fare they serve us, but still feels like a bit of a white elephant, as I'm really not sure what to do with it. Do they plan to do any more? What other iconic comparisons are there to make? Do they have the courage to do a wizards vs sorcerers (or wizards vs fighters, which would be even more telling) one and pick apart the problems in their own game? I guess we'll see soon enough.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 4/8
Demon Stone: A second computer game article in the same issue? Looks like they need to keep up their quota of self-promotion. Unlike Silicon Sorcery, this is pure teaser material for their latest action-focussed D&D conversion. Featuring R. A. Salvadore's Drizzt, real-time control of three characters simultaneously, and lots of cut-scenes to advance the plot! Sounds very of it's time, as they're selling mechanical elements that are now fairly mundane as if they're a big deal. Looking at reviews shows this was another decent success, but not a breakout like the Neverwinter games, in part for being just too short. If you try too hard to make it about a linear story, people won't make it their own and build upon it in interesting ways. This applies to computer games just as much as tabletop RPG's.
Seven deadly domains: The NWoD was launched last month, making Virtues and Vices an integral part of your character in the same way alignment is in D&D - an important choice, but too broad to completely define your character's nature. Given their leadup times, it's an interesting co-incidence that they do an article on the 7 deadly sins here as well. And just like there, while indulging in them may be bad from a moral point of view, it's good from a story point of view, and even many good gods have particular flaws in their personality, so there's a lot of drama to be found in incentivising being naughty mechanically. Which in a roundabout way, leads us to these 7 new themed domains for your cleric to take, most of which have at least one new spell not normally on their list, plus an appropriate granted power that'll make being bad feel a little sweeter. They add them to the domain lists of plenty of existing gods, so it's not hard for you to take them if you feel the desire, and many of the new spells are available to other classes as well. This is another interesting article that gives me plenty to talk about, so It's another success in my book.
See no evil: A second examination of the nature of sin and how it should be handled in D&D. Detect Evil can be a problem in campaigns because it can wind up as an excuse to kill people just because they must be guilty of something, even if it's not the specific crime you're thinking of, and because morality is an incredibly subjective business that can cause endless irritating debate. There is a very good reason that they flat-out stopped it from working in Ravenloft. So this article introduces a selection of interesting substitutes that you could put in your campaign. Detect Attitude lets you tell if someone is friendly or hostile to you personally, which is actually pretty handy in political situations, but not when dealing with strangers who haven't had a chance to establish an opinion yet. Detect Guilt lets you tell if someone has misdeeds eating them up inside. Of course, this means you're more likely to wind up punishing the good people who make occasional lapses than the true bastards. Detect Heresy only works on someone who follows your religion, (or is pretending they do, in which case they glow like a sore thumb. ) and detects how well they stick to it's specific strictures. This is again quite subjective, as it keys off your specific denomination, so catholics and protestants can still wind up fighting without god stopping them. Detect Violence lets you analyse how recently and often nasty stuff goes down in an area, but leaves out the whos and whys. So they're all much easier tools to adjudicate than detect evil/good, while having specific issues that mean you can't just use them to solve a plot effortlessly. You've got to select the right tool for the job, and having several at once won't be redundant in a social heavy campaign. A very interesting article indeed. Why couldn't they have had mature, thoughtful articles like this in issue 300 instead of going for the gross-outs?
The ecology of Chokers: Hmm. They don't normally use the plural in the creature title for these articles. How quirky. In any case, chokers are one of those creatures that has come off pretty well from the edition change, increasing in popularity and widespreadness of use. Amusingly, this is reflected in setting, with their being a relatively recent and spreading introduction to the underdark. In contrast to last month's ecology, they get a quite dry and utilitarian description, and since it's pretty dumb, they don't bother with the team tactics bit this time round. Not a particularly enthralling ecology, with no great surprises or new insights. The main notable point is that they start using the lists of specific knowledge DC's to determine just how much you know about the creature, that also became common in books around this time. I suppose that's a fairly decent refinement. I wonder if they'll remember to do that reliably.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 5/8
Spellcraft: Another renaming and resurrection here. Arcane Lore hasn't been around for a couple of years now, but it looks like people want their regular infusions of new spells back. Exactly why they chose to rename it I'm not sure, but better here than not. So this time, our topic is Force spells. One we haven't covered before, simply because it was only formalised as a power type with it's own specific benefits in 3e. And now it's virtually a new element, running neck and neck with sonic effects as the weapon of choice for the discerning spellcaster who wants to bypass immunities as often as possible. Already a viable option, let's exploit it a little more, encourage people to develop resistances, and so move the cycle onto a new energy source.
Chain Missiles isn't as badass as chain lightning, but that's the thing about being lower level. Same basic principle.
Emerald Planes will give you cover from physical and ethereal creatures. Weightless, near indestructible walls always come in handy for redecoration, regardless of color.
Force Chest is another rather hard to hurt bit of kit. You can even make it semi-transparent, taunt people with the contents. Frankly, you're asking for heroes to come in and kill you, take your stuff if you do that.
Force Ram is a bit weedy as an attack spell, but it is a druid one. Raw magic energy isn't really their forte, is it.
Mass Mage Armor is a pretty obvious extrapolation. Buff your whole party. Filler, really.
Shard Storm is another moderately nasty blasty effect. Relatively Small AoE and damage, but lasting lots of rounds, it'll help you keep up with the warlocks.
Tenser's Greater Floating Disk is another bit of unimaginative filler to make page count line up. That's only getting worse, if anything, despite the revamp.
Gaining Prestige: So this is the new prestige class column. What, was Class Acts not good enough for you? :p This is one where the format remains fairly similar though, apart from the all-white background making it faster to read. The Spirit Speaker is our first offering. A secondary spellcaster in the Assassin mould, with a fairly substantial selection of other tricks built around the idea of going into trances and getting spirits to buff them up, they seem designed to make an interesting play experience, but not necessarily for maximum effectiveness, since they can only apply one buff at a time, and they only last for one round per level. The do get all good saves and an excellent skill selection though, so they do have their merits compared to full spellcasters. As a generalist, they'd make a good 5th member to a team or solo character, but get outperformed by specialists in their field.
Magic Shop: Bazaar of the Bizarre actually gets it's name shortened in the clarification process, which is an improvement in one way, if not in terms of being interesting and vocabulary expanding. It's another one where you can't really change the format that much though. And the topic is dwarf-made items, which certainly isn't a new one. Is their ingenuity endless, or will the items themselves be ones seen before.
Armor of Thror gives people hitting it electric shocks. Seen that one before in the D&D companion set. Nice to see it back again.
Breastplates of Hardiness absorb damage, effectively giving you temporary hit points at the start of each fight. Low key, but I'm sure the benefit will add up over a campaign.
Gauntlets of Bashing are your basic punch enhancers. Noting to see here, move along, move along, and if you don't, the knockback'll make sure you do.
Mugs of Clear-headedness are fairly amusing, showing some self-awareness in a race that isn't always known for it. Unfortunately it only has a limited number of uses per day, so it can't sober up a whole team if trouble crops up suddenly. Being a cool head in a crisis will hopefully still count for something.
Rings of Spelunking boost your basic dungeon knowledge, and let you shrink your way out of a tight spot in a pinch. If you have this one, you can expect to wind up going first in the marching order all the time.
The Statuette of the All-Father effectively adds the Strength Domain to your spell list if you fit the criteria. Fairly banal mechanically for such an interesting description.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 6/8
Heroic feats: Feats are generally the shortest bits of crunch, so this new column is correspondingly compact at only a single page long. It crams in 8 feats associated with being from a desert or oceanic region, that'll let you deal with both the environmental and social problems, and also have combat applications as well in many cases. Whether they'll be better than more general ones will depend on what happens in the campaign, so I probably wouldn't take them very often.
Winning races: We've seen the writers put a good deal of effort into producing interesting LA+0 golems, dopplegangers and lycanthropes recently. Now they apply themselves to creating an LA+0 cyclops variant that still captures the mythological feel of the race. In the process, they highlight an aspect that previous D&D versions have pretty much ignored, the oracle part of their nature. Their depth perception may be lacking, but they compensate for that with a slightly unfocussed temporal sense. (plus the obligatory darkvision that they give nearly everything ) They come in both savage and civilised variants, each of which get plenty of cultural description. They're just ever so slightly too small to get Large size and all the mechanical stuff that comes with it, which makes sense, but also feels very artificial. Once again, this is finely tuned, putting quite a bit of effort into both mechanical design and creating an interesting yet generic backstory so you can slot them into your world easily. It succeeds in making me want to play them and make them my own, so I think they're onto a winner here. A fresh coat of paint on an old idea can make all the difference in the world.
Class Acts is radically retooled as part of this changeover. Instead of providing new prestige classes (which lets face it, we already have thousands of, more than any group could conceivably play. ) they give us an array of stuff for each of the 11 core classes. As we've discovered, putting all the cool stuff in the prestige classes annoys people because they have to wait quite a few levels to get them, and plan way in advance to meet the prerequisites. So by introducing new core classes, and variant abilities for the existing ones, they make the kewl powers more accessible to encourage people to buy the new books. Whether this is a good change or horrible lowest common denominator pandering power creep is a matter of opinion.
Fighters get the Thane: A very slight variant where you swear fealty to a lord and get a few new feats added to your bonus list. Given the plot annoyance this can present, probably a slight drawback, really.
Clerics get Heed your calling: A bunch of roleplaying advice encouraging you to make up reasons for why they chose the specific domains they did. You can deconstruct every choice, can't you. Ho hum.
Wizards get Specialist familiars: 8 new familiars, one for each school, with a special benefit of particular use to that school. Another case of wizards getting the best tricks, this is pretty useful stuff.
Rogues get Wilderness Rogues: Some mechanical build advice showing you how you can make your rogue more suited to the wilds by proper allocation of your skill points. Why should rangers and druids get all the forest walking fun?
Barbarians get The civilized Barbarian: Remember, classes are really just collections of powers, and you can refluff them if you choose. There are a bunch of other concepts that you can use for your character, from spoiled nobleman to frankenstein-esque amnesiac. Interesting.
Druids get a whole bunch of new tricks they could teach their animal companions. This is of course useful to anyone else with Handle Animal as well.
Sorcerers get Beyond Blood: As with barbarians, this is a bunch of other reasons why they could have spontaneously developed magical powers. If you've read comic books, you should be familiar with most of these.
Rangers get Gear for Greeners: A bunch of new equipment, that as with the druid's entry, seems useful for anyone with a wilderness slant to their tricks. If you have a few hundred gold to blow, these would be valuable additions to your pack.
Paladins also get a load of dull concept building advice. We know, we know, they don't all have to be knights in shining armor.
Monks are also on the concept building advice path. This is even less impressive than the last couple.
Bards get Instruments of the masters: Some instruments are better for various kinds of bardic music abilities than others. Reflecting that mechanically isn't a bad idea. It's only a minor benefit, but a nicely flavourful one.
This is definitely a case where the idea of the change is better than the execution. Most of these articles really do feel like filler ones, made to fit a hole, and fill out the page count, rather than from any real imagination or desire. And the best ones are for the classes that are already the cooler ones, pushing them even further ahead. Not a very auspicious start.
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 7/8
Player Tips: With Dungeoncraft moved out, they replace it's space with something very similar but smaller, aimed at PC's. A bit of fluff about how the culture your character comes from will affect their stats and personality? This is almost the same stuff as the NPC designing ones the last three months, only from a slightly different angle. With the really small size, it's hard for them to say something that hasn't been said before, so this is another one for the new players with the short attention spans. If they think bite sized chunks will sell better, I guess I'm going to have to live with it.
Adventurer Tricks: This second little column is also rehashing a very recent topic indeed, talking about how a group copes without a rogue. A decent ranger and wizard can cover for virtually everything a rogue brings to a table except sneak attack, and that's not that great anyway. A few well-chosen spells more than deal with the stealth and trap removal aspects, and these days a lot of traps are weak enough that a tough barbarian can just set them off and take the hit, before letting the cleric deal with the aftermath. Since this does bring a different, more lighthearted spin on the topic than Mearls' one, I'm inclined to tolerate it. It isn't that serious a problem unless the DM specifically sets out to make it one, so don't get too worked up about it. If you die because you didn't have the right set of powers, just make a new group and get on with things instead of angsting.
Sskip is no longer here to do Ssage Advice. He, err, retired to live on a farm. Thatsss right. Don't worry, Andy will take good care of you now. Yes, collins, collins, Andy will take good care of all sskip's precioussss books. How kind of Sskip to leave them behind when he left, collins collins. But Andy will get rid of those nassty plants. Getting too big, they are, collins collins. Letss rip them all down, make lotss of nice white sspace to move in, ansswer more quesstionss in, yess, collins collins. Sso, whatss your firsst quesstion?
How do you calculate your BAB when wielding two weapons and have more than one attack per round (Eassy. Just determine the penaltes for each hand, and ssubtract 5 for each attack your firsst hand makes. If you have improved two-weapon fighting, you do the same for the extra attackss your otherr hand makess. )
I have a super twinky rapier wielding fighter. Just how badass is he. (All these numberss, making Andy's head spin, collins collins. Lots and lotss of attacks, yess. But rapierss aren't a light weapon, no, so you don't get that benefit. Almosst as good as you thought, ok? )
Can you use power attack when wielding two weapons (Yess. But power attack uselesss with light weapons, so only good if you copy Drizzt, yess. )
If you use a two bladed sword, how much of your str do you add. Does it matter which end you use (Jusst like two handed weapon, yes. One and a half times strength, no matter which end.)
Can you throw weapons two handed and use rapid shot at the same time. (If you have quick draw, yess. Lots of shotss, lots of penalties, collins collins.)
Can a monk fight with two weapons. What penalties will they suffer (depends if itss a monk weapon or not, collins collins. Lotss of different ways to do this. So many choices, yess. Andy will help you work out which one hurtses your enemies most, yess.)
How much damage does an enlarged monk do. (Follow the weapon ssize change formula, yess. Easy, yess? )
Can you stack a monks damage with a soulknifes (No. Mind blade not unarmed attack. One or the other, yess.)
Can a centaur monk make hoof attacks on top of their normal unarmed attacks. (Yess. Ssecondary weapons useful, yess.)
How do I figure out if a monster gets iterative attacks with it's high BAB. (Natural attacks never get iterative, collins collins. Ssuch a sshame. Only weapons.)
Dragon Issue 323: September 2004
part 8/8
The D&D Buyers guide: As they've done a few times before, they release a big catalog of upcoming stuff for their various product lines. Another 17 pages of pure self-promotion. They haven't been this blatant about it since 1995, when that was one of the biggest criticisms they had to deal with in trying to revamp themselves. I guess the degree of turnover since then is sufficient that they're starting to forget the lessons they learned in those hard times. But then, the times themselves have changed, so maybe different rules apply now. I'm still pretty bored flipping through this though.
Coup de Grace: In a nice mirror to First Watch, we finish off with another look at the wider world surrounding the game. It's pretty safe to say that the process of creating a D&D book has changed quite a bit since WotC took over, with a greater emphasis on design and development by teams, and playtesting as much of the mechanical bits and pieces as possible, rather than letting an individual writer do their thang and then handing it off to editors, who's main priority are spelling mistakes. All of which contributes to 3e books having a very different feel even when the writers are older ones who survived from the TSR era. And that's probably small fry compared to the amount of development and playtesting new M:tG releases get. So this makes it very clear that their books these days are produced to a formula, and roughly what that formula is. Its a good thing that they did let third party publishers in so you could have compatible stuff that's less polished but more imaginative and inventive. 3e really would have been poorer if WotC was left all to it's own devices.
This has been an odd issue. Packed with tons of small articles, they've definitely changed the feel quite a bit. In fact, I'd call the changes even more drastic than the switch to 3e ones in terms of format. On the good side, there are some articles that are a genuine departure from what they've been doing recently, and the new format is far easier to read than the previous one, making even the bad articles much quicker to get through and come to a solid conclusion on. On the bad side, there's an annoying uptick in the amount of contentless self-promotion, and some of the new columns seem distinctly half-baked. Still, if they really are continuing to listen to feedback, hopefully they'll shake out those kinks and just stick with the ones that work and get regular submissions.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 1/8
108 pages. So it's time for another price increase, to $6.99. Seems like they're coming more frequently these days. Funny that they tend to happen the issue AFTER a format change. Anyway, halloween has rolled around again, and that means undead and other monsters that are billed as scary, even if mechanically they're not as nasty as some others that aren't getting the same publicity. (maybe their next april issue can combine badgers, mushrooms and snakes, since all of those have truly terrifying D&D variants) Once again, let's see if there's anything new to say on this topic.
Scan Quality: Slightly blurry, oversaturated blacks, unindexed.
In this issue:
From the editor: So the D&D movie sucked. But somehow, it's still getting a sequel. (even if the two only share one character and no actual plot threads) It's vaguely baffling to me. I suppose there's several considerations beyond short term profit at work here. One is the sheer number of D&D based books and computer games that have become bestsellers. Surely someone ought to be able to crack converting it to the big screen. Another is that as long as D&D is around, any movies based on it will enjoy a fair amount of long tail sales, even if they're known to be crap, because gamers want to rubberneck. And finally, there's doing it as a loss leader to raise the profile of gaming as a whole. D&D flourished in the 80's thanks to the people spreading negative publicity about it as much as anything. A little more of that might be just what we need to fix the ageing demographics. Well, they've got to have hope, otherwise they wouldn't be working here. :p
First watch: Our generic D&D book this month is Libris Mortis. Undead continue to be one of the most popular adversary types, and so a splatbook focussing on them, both as adversaries and PC's seems likely to sell. New monsters, new spells, new prestige classes, all those crunchy jubblies they know work.
The forgotten realms reintroduces The Shining South for the new edition. High temperatures, high magic, and airships in the sky. They point out that Eberron did not originate these tropes. Ahh, the horrors of having to fill newbies in on the past.
Speaking of which, they also release 30 years of Adventure, their latest retrospective on the history of the game. They aren't making as big a deal about it as they did for the 25th anniversary, but they're still feeding off nostalgia quite a bit. I do wonder how well things like this actually sell compared to new gamebooks. Do they get into shops that the actual rulebooks don't?
Also on the nostalgia trip, we get an odd situation where the UK is getting DVD's of old kids shows before the US. He-man and the D&D cartoon are both getting these first for a change. Bloody region coding. It really has no place in the modern world where you can order stuff from any country easily. This stuff really irritates me.
They also decide that computer games are now within their remit, promoting Dundjinni, a map making program. Another thing that's useful, but hardly essential, as they point out that drawing stuff by hand still works just fine.
In addition, along with the usual previews on what's next in Dungeon, they add Amazing Stories to the roster. Once again they try and relaunch it, make it relevant to a modern audience by putting hot celebrities on the cover. Unfortunately, this is going to prove about as effective as your granddad trying to rap. Sigh.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 2/8
Scale Mail: We start off with a goofy request for a swimsuit issue. Issue 144 sorta does what you want. :p To be honest, they're closer to doing it than they were in the 90's. But it'll still take a fair bit of fan support to get off the ground. Send in your, err, sample artwork now!
Completely unsurprisingly after last issue, we have a complaint that they're putting too many blatant tie-ins and shill pieces again. We're already customers, you do not need to push it in our faces like you're desperate, and find it off-putting. As long as they're owned by WotC, there's not much they can do about that.
In contrast, we get a short letter from someone who thinks 3.5 is a substantial improvement over 3.0, and people are right to stick with WotC through the years.
Flipping back to the negative, we have someone who is seriously cynical about the relaunch, and wishes they'd cover older editions as well. They say as long as the majority of people play the most recent edition, they're going to stick with that. They're going to have to eat those words, 10 years later.
The huge map in issue 322 gets praised. Great, another cool feature I didn't get to see. :sigh:
And finally, we have another request for Chromatic Dragon PC progressions. Probably next birthday, given their current leadup times. Oh well, 8 months will seem far shorter for me than people waiting at the time.
Player initiative: This column looks at girls in gaming again. Despite the proportion of female roleplayers remaining fairly low, there are more games aimed at a female market now, and they're getting more attention in mainstream media. And of course, they're forming relationships. They detail two geeky weddings, complete with photos, which is very amusing. Life goes on, and people raised on RPG's and video games show few signs of abandoning them as an entertainment form as adults. And if they have substantial amounts of purchasing power to make big statements of their fandom like this, that's definitely a positive sign for the future. So it looks like this column does have interesting things to say about gaming that aren't just self-promotion after all. Knowing where we are as a hobby isn't just about what's being released this month. It's about who we've become as people, and a society. (and if you don't understand that, how can you hope to sell successfully to us) :) )
Under command: Time for a good old round of power escalation here, as they release a set of monsters that can beat 100 point warbands singlehandedly, and give you the option for 200 point games as a result. Now you can incorporate things like Vrocks, Erinyes and (medium sized) Elementals into your team. Which still means you're only seeing the mid level monsters, not really impressive guys like pit fiends, great wyrm red dragons or the tarrasque. Maybe next year, if people keep on buying the game and the minis. There's a lot of D&D monsters in the books, and they could gradually add new figures for years to come without hitting diminishing returns if they pace it right. Just got to make sure you mix up the themes and power levels from one pack to the next. I wonder what's next on their agenda.
Silicon sorcery: This month's computer game conversion is the Rune Magic system from Gothic II. This is basically an enhanced version of D&D scroll creation, encoding spells into one-shot symbols that can be put on any object and used by anyone, rather than being limited to the appropriate class and anyone who stacks up on Use Magic Device. Which also means they're slightly more expensive to make, but I suppose that's an appropriate balancing factor under the 3.5 rules. (as well as the greater possibility of your enemies stealing your stuff and turning it against you. ) Since you can encode pretty much any spell you know, the tricks you can get up too with this are limited only by your imagination. I can definitely see the value in buying this one, as it'll let you give appropriate spell-like abilities to each member of your party to maximise their effectiveness. Form factor and accessibility does make a real difference, and sacrificing a few xp in the short term will let you earn more faster in the long term.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 3/8
A novel approach: American Gods! That's a pretty cool one to see covered, especially in light of the recent TV show announcement. And since gods generally have some pretty nifty tricks and gear, even if they're weak ones with not many worshippers left, there's plenty here to convert. From the prosaic stuff like Chernobog's warhammer, which is only magically enhanced at night, to weird tricks like a lapel pin that turns into a tree, there's some neat stuff here, most of which is not combat focussed for a change. Like many of the computer game conversions, this is a cut above because it doesn't stick to their usual rules, which gives it far more value than backconversions of their own games and novels. It's just a shame that the nature of the nature of these columns means they can't mine short story collections, which can have even more concentrated amounts of awesome to draw inspiration from. Then they could really get a ton of mind-blowing stuff from Neil's work.
Zogonia faces the dread snow golem. Beware it's chilling touch. Nodwick faces the paranoia of his own party. If they kill him, they're doomed. Dork tower faces whatever was in the randomised mini's set. That really isn't a good way to generate a challenge.
The shadow over D&D: H.P Lovecraft has been a perennial good seller all through the lifetime of D&D. It's not at all surprising that ideas from his works have bled through into D&D. Indeed, the very first new monster in the magazine, mindflayers, have a fairly strong cosmic horror vibe if used correctly. And it's even less surprising that James Jacobs is hugely influenced by his works, looking at the monsters he's written for the magazine over the years. What's also interesting is the parallels between the mythos and the D20 licence. Instead of suing anyone who mentioned their creatures and backgrounds, they actively worked to build up a common set of references, which gave individual books more resonance, and encouraged people to seek out works by related authors to get the whole picture. Which both makes you better liked by your peers, and contributes to the longevity of your work. (there's tons of pulp writers and characters who are long forgotten and very hard to find these days, while new cthulhu stories keep on coming, and even if they aren't all great, they still add to the stature of his legend. ) Of course, D&D had it's issues with this, as the 1st edition Deities and Demigods showed, so it's not all free sharing. But with the old stories firmly public domain now, and Cthulhu D20 out, those problems seem to be nicely in the past. This is another look at the influences surrounding gaming that feels both refreshing and very welcome after the past few years. By talking more about where we came from, and giving newer readers a sense of history, they definitely help us help ourselves more than highly specific bits of pure crunch that actually constrain creativity when delivered in large amounts. Read it, grok it, add to it, make your literary ancestors proud.
Living nightmares: Directly following the last article, Keith Baker has definitely been taking influence from Lovecraft's Dreamlands in this one. Dal Quor is Eberron's plane of dreams, inhabited by all sorts of weird creatures that can make your nights pretty nightmarish. Fortunately, most of the time, that's all they can do, merely waking you up unsettled if they kill you in the dream. But there are some things that are all too real, and want to feed off you or manipulate you into doing things in the waking world. The most dangerous are those Quori who actually possess people, who can get at you in both worlds and do some real long-term mischief. This is another article that reminds us that Eberron manages to have everything and the kitchen sink and then some, yet still manages to have a flavour of it's own, and it's easy to incorporate at any point in your campaign, or just ignore as you choose. Sometimes the scariest things can be those that are inside your own mind, and that certainly applies to adventurers who are used to fighting things head-on.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 4/8
Exorcising equipment: We've had plenty of helpings of undead related magical items over the years. Here's another helping of things to help you hunt them. Some are purely mundane but ingenious, such as blood thickeners to ruin a vampire's evening, or a reinforced weapon sheath that lets you switch from slashing to bludgeoning easily at no extra weight. Others are mildly supernatural, such as a holy candle that boosts your turning attempts, and little mites that can strip the flesh from dead things in rounds while ignoring living ones. All are cheap enough for you to buy and use in quantity after the first few levels. Similarly, they have some advice on how to get the most out of existing equipment like fire, mirrors and rotted meat, which seems pretty cogent. If you can't make the best use out of mundane tools, do you deserve to get the really cool magical goodies? I think I approve of this one.
Chilled to the bone: A helping of arctic monsters? We haven't had one of those this edition, so this might not be original, but comes as welcome. Let's see if they're appropriate to the month by being chilling in both senses rather than just one.
Black Ice Golems are infused with negative energy by gruesome sacrifices, letting them drain levels on top of their already inconvenient cold aura and immunity to most magic. You can outrun them, but you can't outclimb them, making getting away a dicey business as well. Combine that with Reach and a decent grapple score, and they can really generate the lockdown if given smart orders.
Icy Prisoners are undead created by drowning in freezing water. They lurk underneath the ice, and then break through and drag you under to join them forever. Sounds like a pretty dull unlife. At least these ones won't be able to take over the whole world with their spawn cascading, given their environmental restrictions.
Steaming Soldiers also died from the cold, but go the other way, venturing out into the world to feed off the heat of the living. They too spawn cascade, and their ability to screw with visibility makes them a pretty scary antagonist in groups. You wouldn't want to stumble across a whole converted village, that's for sure.
Winterlings are mischevious fae that like to cause avalanches, snowstorms, fog, and similar cold-based environmental fuckery to annoy travellers. With flight and very high hide scores, it'll be fairly tricky to have a straight-up fight with them. Muahaha. These lot all feel pretty iconic, which is a good thing, as it lets you get more than one use out of them before they get boring.
Get more bang for your bones: Before we get to the regular columns, we have another article that's basically a single idea stretched to just over a page. How do you get the most bang for your buck when casting animate dead, since you can only control a very limited number of them at once in 3e. The answer seems to be larger monsters with lots of multiple attacks. While they might lose intelligence and spell-like abilities, things like hydras, dragons and mariliths still retain the ability to chew through large amounts of lesser enemies in a single round. And if you add templates that boost their abilities without affecting their HD you can cheat a bit to add even more power. Now you just need to figure out how to kill them without ruining the bodies. I suppose since you can only have so many, you've got no incentive to stockpile, throwing waves of zombies at enemies and then raising their replacements as you go makes more sense than spending months gravedigging. A fairly amusing little bit of charop fun, good for both players and DM's.
The ecology of night hags: Ahh, hags. We had greenhags way back in issue 125, which touched on night hag mating habits a little. This does take a slightly different tack, making it surprisingly difficult for them to create offspring, or at least new night hags, as who could say what their children might become if they can't complete the ritual transformation described here. Still, that's probably for the best, since they are fairly powerful, and utterly selfish, with no trick too foul in their eternal struggles to get more larvae and dominate other creatures. Quite flavourful, and with plenty of ingenious tricks to help you make the most of their powers, this is a fairly good ecology, encouraging mobile scenarios full of tense negotiations, hit and run attacks, and similar evil fun. Should make for some good adventures.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 5/8
Spellcraft: Another book of illusion spells, courtesy of a gnome illusionist. I thought we'd outgrown that since 3.5 arrived. Evidently not, as no less than Rich Burlew gives us a typically mischievous bit of history design. He's managed to make a whole university the suckers with this book.
Chalkboard is another handy cantrip for making your point better, via visual ornamentation. Keep finding uses for those 0 level spells, people. I guess teaching archmages have to keep on going back and relying on their low level spells to get through their day's classes.
Delusions of Grandeur makes you complacently overconfident and smug. Seems slightly better suited to enchantment than illusion, but there's always these edge cases, aren't there.
Phantom Foe manipulates the flanking rules in a very specific manner. You might have seen spells with visuals like this before, but the mechanics are new. Another sign of their greater attention to those kinds of details these days.
Sensory Deprivation is another one that stretches the limits of the illusion school. All senses removed? That's a bit powerful for a 3rd level spell. It may only have a short duration, but this seems like the kind of brutal battle ender they're moving away from now.
Shadowy Grappler is another one that removes all the fun ambiguity of general illusions, and just goes for a very specific effect. Curious business.
Soliptism is nothing like the ToM spell of 2e of the same name. Instead of imagining stuff into existence, this makes the victim believe nothing is real, again leaving them vulnerable to whatever you want to try, in a manner that will really frustrate their mates. This is an interesting collection, both in descriptive terms and in tracking the progression of rules trends.
Magic shop: This column also gives us a previously seen theme. items that are beneficial, but have a price or drawback attached to their powers. One that always makes for interesting play, whether the players accept the price of doing business, or look for some rules exploit that'll enable them to mitigate or bypass it. Either way, it increases their investment in the character and setting more than getting cool stuff for free.
Heironius's Mercy gives your basic healing others by transferring the damage to you trick. A problem, but definitely a surmountable one, thanks to other effects like a ring of regeneration.
The Ring of the Mystical Elite gives you impromptu specialisations, boosting the number of spells you can cast per day, but giving you a random different forbidden school each time you put it on. Once you get one you don't use much anyway, best to stick with it to get the most out of this.
The Skin of Kaletor is a poorly preserved bearskin that boosts your wild-shaping abilities, but inflicts a huge social penalty against anything with a sense of smell. You can only get so close to nature before it starts to mess you up. Balance in all things.
The Fool's Plate is both a shield and a serving tray, and can confuse both you and your opponent. Better buff up your will save so the joke is more likely to be on them then.
Shadakhar's Swift Wind are cheetah-print sandals that boost your speed, but reduce your dexterity due to constantly being on edge. Well, with a tacky fashion statement like that, I'm not surprised it eats at your confidence :p
The Mantle of the Winter Witch gives you cold resistance and fire vulnerability as if you have the subtype. Better hope your wizard isn't so enamoured by the cool new force and sonic spells to forget to put fireball in their spellbook then.
Agustinius's Folly lets you give inspiring speeches, but has your basic 10% chance to backfire, and do the opposite of what it was intended too. Every performer chokes sometimes. You've just got to figure out how to survive it and try again.
The Mask of Fury requires you to smear your blood on it to activate it's powers. If you aren't already bleeding, this'll hurt a little bit. If you are, go right ahead and Rage, as you've paid your dues.
The Hammer of Skill gets more annoyed with you each time you miss, subtracting from your further chances to hit, but adding to your damage if you do connect. This either forces you to shape up fast, or it'll rapidly become too unwieldy to use at all. Definitely sounds like a frustrating one to have in the backpack.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 6/8
Heroic feats: This one also returns to a previous topic, that of feats that represent inherent traits from birth, that are slightly more powerful than other feats, but balanced by the fact that you can only take them at 1st level, which means unless you load up on Flaws or find some other cheaty exploit, you'll only ever have one. Funnily enough, most of these aren't actually specific to a particular race, instead being things like unusual fatness or thinness for your race, acute senses, or minor innate magical abilities that make sense for anyone. It's all pretty basic, and I must admit I find it a bit grating that only 2 issues into the new direction, they're already filling up the regular columns with tons of rehashed topics.
Gaining prestige: We've had several prestige classes already that are focussed around hunting a particular monster. Here we get the generic version. The Sworn Slayer, a 5 level class for those of you who feel Ranger isn't letting you slaughter your nemeses fast enough. At 5th level, you'll have an extra +8 to damage and skill checks against them, and +4 to saving throws to resist their powers, plus full BAB progression as normal. As usual with these sorts of things, whether it'll be worth specialising to that degree is very dependent indeed on the campaign and DM. But since they're a primary fighter sort that's pretty lacking in noncombat powers, I'm not that enthusiastic about taking it. You may win the battles, but you'll lack the tools to really engineer an extinction level event and finish the war. Maybe you can use your buffed bluff and gather information to infiltrate and trick them into destroying themselves, which would be pleasingly ironic.
Winning races: Grippli! There's an old race that well deserves a PC writeup. Indeed, they did get one last edition in issue 262, along with a load of other little races. As there, despite not being stupid, they aren't particularly technologically minded, and this is represented by automatic illiteracy despite class choice. As small creatures, they gain the usual bonuses to stealth and more besides, which is further enhanced by their froglike bonuses to climbing and jumping. They may not be the fastest on level ground, but in trees or mountainous terrain, they can handily outmaneuver their enemy and pepper them with missile weapons. in addition, they're mildly resistant to poison, and gain attack & AC bonuses against vermin, which were not in their old writeup, and makes them seem more similar to dwarves and gnomes. So this isn't the most faithful of conversions, but is interesting to see nonetheless. They can indeed have a valuable position in your team if they use their natural talents wisely.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 7/8
Class acts: Fighters get From battleground to background: 5 new backgrounds, each of which grants a +1 benefit to a specific roll. Power creep, but such a tiny amount that it's not really worth mentioning.
Clerics get Peace Out: Some advice on playing a pacifist cleric. You can still make a valuable support member of the team while eschewing violence. Just don't try to get the rest of the team to do so as well. ;)
Wizards get a new variant class, the Filidh. A tribal wizard variant, they sacrifice a wizard's bonus feats and familiar for slightly better weapons, bardic knowledge, and the ability to cast divination spells at a higher caster level. Once again, they're the ones getting the kickass crunch.
Rogues get A rogue of a different color: Just like last issue, this is advice on the skills and feats to select if you want your rogue to fill a slightly different role. But no actual new stuff.
Barbarians get Barbarian Culture: What kind of tribe does your barbarian come from? Once again, it's pure roleplaying advice for these guys. Meh.
Druids get 9 new Flaws. Another variant on illiteracy. (ahh, for the days of 2nd ed, where illiteracy came as standard) personality traits and origin effects. As with last month, these are useful for other classes as well.
Sorcerers get some advice on picking feats and prestige classes. If you take the right one, you're essentially getting something for nothing. Nothing new, but if you aren't the optimizing kind, it might help.
Rangers get the Wild Defender. They sacrifice favored enemies, stealth, and their weapon feats for rebuking nature, smiting evil, druid's nature travelling powers and slightly increased spell ability. Curious. Not sure if that'll be an overall increase or decrease in power, but it'll definitely be a quite different character. An excellent example of UA style feature switching.
Paladins also get a spread of 8 flaws. Most of them are pretty specific behavioural restrictions that wouldn't make much sense for other classes, and some of them encourage being an irritant to the rest of the party. Definitely ones to consider carefully before taking.
Monks get the Wild monk. They sacrifice a load of the usual monk abilities for druid wild shaping. Unlike the ranger one, I don't need to go over this to know that this is a good deal. Exchanging a load of powers from one of the most underpowered class for the most powerful class feature of the most powerful class? No brainer, really.
Bards get yet another 8 flaws. Now these are tremendously irritating. Coward. Loudmouth. Fool. Just the thing if you want to be rewarded for acting like a jackass. Put the annoying paladin and the annoying bard in the same party and you have a perfect comedy duo.
Player tips: Teamwork, muthafuckas, do you use it? Yup, it's another one of these, giving you basic advice on how to work together, and beat groups of the same individual power levels that don't have the same co-operative skill. Communicate with one-another, pick classes and character concepts that fit together, rather than making trouble or filling the same niche repeatedly, and know how the mechanics of your own and other people's powers work so you can make valid suggestions on what to do mid-combat. Completely common-sense stuff that ought to be one of the first things taught in the player's handbook. After all, can't have bickering in the middle of deadly dungeons, can we? So from one perspective this is perfectly good, if a little basic advice, from another, it denies a huge chunk of the roleplaying experience, the pleasures of interpersonal machinations and disputes. Either way, it's a bit unsatisfying.
Adventurer tricks: This column continues on from last month, talking about traps, and how best to deal with them without a rogue. First up, detect magic will show up a huge proportion of things you might want to examine closely, particularly at higher level. Then you can figure out if you're going to try a careful disarming, or buffing up and ploughing through the problem. In fact, you can use magic to help with that too. In fact, the whole thing seems designed to show just how quickly and easily spellcasters can take that job and do it better once they've got a few levels under their belt. Oh well, it's their game. If they want to point out the flaws in it, more power to them.
Dragon Issue 324: October 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice: If a cleric rolls badly, and only turns 0 HD undead, do you round up to 1. (No. Ssorry, preciouss.)
How do you know when a cleric can prepare spells. (You choosess at character generation, yess. Same time each day. No need to ssleep first.)
How do favored souls regain spells (same way as ssorcerorss, yess.
Do you have to drop your weapons to cast spells (Only has two handsess, collins collins. Needs a hand free for ssomatic componentss. Put it in your pocketsess or use a buckler.)
Can a cleric of pelor use a wand of holy smite without the good domain (No, not on your spell list, collins collins. Sstupid cleric, doesn't kmow how powers work.)
Can a sacred fist wear armor (Yes. Lose monk abilities though. You chossse if it's worth it, yess, collins collins. )
Can a multiclassed cleric/wizard use divine metamagic on their arcane spells (No. Ssorry, precious. Pleasse don't ssmite poor little Andy.)
Can you use divine metamagic to perform effects that would normally be too high level for you. (Yess. Very usefull power.)
What's the ocean domain. (Itsss from the Forgotten Realms. Editors did nassty ssloppy copypasta, didn't put it in complete divine. Andy hatses sloppy copypasta. It always flickses around and stains your shirt, collins collins. )
Does unyielding roots prevent you from turning round as well as moving, making you easy to flank. (No. Not unlesss you're using unearthed arcana, collins collins.)
Does vigor's max duration override extend spell (Yess.)
Can you use persistent spell on mass lesser vigor (Yess.)
What's a Check Toee and why does Tharzidun have it as a favored weapon (Ssilly editors didn't finish the book properly. They didn't even copypasta from the temple of elemental evil like they ssaid they were going to.)
Does exalted strike apply to grapple, sunder disarm and trip attempts (Nassty vow of poverty. We hatses it, collins collins. Mosst of them, yess.)
Are you allowed to keep class-defining stuff like holy symbols, samurai swords, that would be forbidden if you take vow of poverty. (No, teeheeheeheehee. You don't get preciouss power for nothing, collins collins. Got to sacrifice important stuff, yess. )
Can saints deal nonlethal damage with holy touch. No! It always burnses, collins collins. Poor andy. Keep nassty ssaints away from poor little andy, collins collins.)
Coup de grace: Andy Collins takes a second column in a row to elaborate on the WotC R&D process. Once the designers have turned over their first drafts, the developers are set loose on them to give the mechanics a good kicking. Every single bit of mechanics gets individually examined and tweaked for balance. A few broken things may still slip through, especially in smaller products, but even the iffy ones will be less powerful than your basic single class CoDzilla. Which I think says it all. They did introduce a few underpowered core classes in 3.5, with the Tome of Magic ones in particular not quite measuring up, but even the new primary spellcasters like erudites and spirit shamen don't have quite the same flexibility as druids, clerics or wizards. The problem is that they only introduced this process in 2003, midway through the edition, and you can see a noticeable change in flavour around that time. It shows up the problems both in making incremental changes, and throwing the whole ruleset out and starting again. In one, you have to live with all the legacy stuff, while in the other, you won't know how the system really holds up in actual play for a few years. And if you try and get rid of the broken bits without creating a whole new system, the people who rely on those exploits will be pissed off. This is why you can't please everyone. Some people want a system that has loopholes and imbalances, so they can be on top. Question is, are they an important enough part of your market that you can't survive without them? The past year or two says they may have decided that is indeed the case. I really don't know, and it's a frustrating set of questions to end an issue on.
As usual, october is one of the best months of the year, full of interesting material to make your game a little more gruesome. The irritation of the little basic columns is more than made up for by the interesting articles that look at the context of gaming and how it's developing. Let's hope they can push this new direction a little farther with some articles that really take advantage of gaming's history and surroundings.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 1/8
108 pages. An old-school wizard, with the hat and everything, and not a single belt? (although you do wonder how they hold their robes together then. ) No surprise that there's a fair amount of magic to be found in this issue. Will they offer intriguing new tricks, or just more blasty effects in different shapes and energy types? Let's crack open the books and get memorising.
Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed.
In this issue:
From the Editor: The editorial involves Matthew talking about how he got this job, and what he did before that. Working a fair share of crappy low-paid things like packing, retail and dishwashing really lets you know just how far you'll go for money, and what level of bullshit you simply can't put up with. It also illustrates that the best way to get a good job is to never stop looking, even if you already have one, because that's when you're in a better position to negotiate for a good deal. Talent matters less than persistence and learning from your mistakes. Having got this far through the magazine entirely through persistence, I'm inclined to agree with him. In the real world, waiting for your destiny to reveal itself will leave you alone and eventually dead without accomplishing anything much. You may not power up exponentially in the real world the way you do in D&D, but experience can still make a real difference. Unfortunately, you can certainly wind up not getting a job because they think you're too experienced as well, which maps roughly to not getting XP from a challenge for being too high level. Oh well, I guess that's a learning experience too, even if what you have to learn is when to lie and when to tell the truth. :(
First watch: A return to more familiar splatbook territory this month. Complete Arcane! For all your wizardly and sorcerous needs! Most notable for introducing warlocks to us, which of course would prove so popular they got to be one of the primary classes next edition. Plenty of more forgettable crunchy bits as well, as is the nature of these things.
Eberron starts filling in it's regions with Sharn: City of towers. This of course means it's set up to be the default homebase for tons of adventures, just like Waterdeep, Greyhawk City, Specularum, Huzuz and Sigil before it. Another thing that seems to work, so we'll consciously make a formula out of it. To top off the sales pitch, they remind us that it's got lots of crunch that can be extracted and used even if you aren't playing in their world. Shill shill shill.
Once again, we see them expanding their remit in odd ways here. This month, it's clothes. O_o Who's idea was this? Anyway, there are now a whole bunch of amusing t-shirts and hats for the geek who isn't afraid spend money on fashion to broadcast their geekiness. Seems slightly contradictory, really. Oh, and it's Erol OTUS, you complete hack. Whoever wrote this was obviously insufficiently geeky.
They also choose to cover a computer game, Baten Kaitos: Eternal wings. A combination of card game and RPG, where you fight battles by choosing which cards in your hand to play, and forming combos for greater power. Interesting mechanic, and one which could work in tabletop as well. Has any game tried that?
And finally, they add Undefeated to the list of magazines that they're doing previews for. My, Paizo are busy bunnies at the moment. Can they break out of their dependency on WotC licenses and the RPG market? No? So much for that plan.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 2/8
Scale Mail: Unsurprisingly, we start off with a letter from someone who's really happy with their new direction. They might even subscribe after more than 20 years as a regular reader. Do you realise how much money you'd have saved over the years if you just did it in the first place?
Another regular subscriber intends to keep it up, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. You've got to keep reaching out if you want to grow your market.
On the other hand, two people are annoyed by Samurai vs Knight, which had no solid conclusions and no gaming material in it. One person really liked it, but It still means it's touch and go if they'll do any more articles like this soon.
Another point of contention is the new title font for the magazines. Designing it for maximum readability means it loses a little of the atmosphere of previous versions. They make no apologies for that.
Similarly, they make no apologies for trying to get people buying both Dragon and Dungeon, for renaming Bazaar of the Bizarre as Magic Shop, or getting rid of the society of monster hunters. Dry, clear and packed with mechanical info are their targets at all points in the process now. It'll take some pretty serious complaining to get them to shift on that.
On the other hand, when people point out factual errors, they're still willing to take them on board. That's good to see.
In years past, it wasn't easy to get a truly anonymous letter into the magazine, and with the advent of email, it's even harder, since they always have a return address. However, not everyone gives their actual location. This is a bit of a pain for the staff. I'd send in a physical letter anyway. It's more likely to be published because it'll stand out.
And finally, we have two letters from people who are skeptical about D&D changing to modernise itself, but still interested in Eberron. D&D has always followed the fashions in fantasy. If it didn't it wouldn't have hobbits, dwarves and elves in a form that was published less than 2 decades prior. You're just noticing it now because you're not a kid any more, and new stuff is being added that isn't so familiar. This stuff never stops moving forward, even if it claims to be going backwards as part of the marketing.
Player initiative: We're reminded in here that it's the US elections this month. You may not be able to be a big damn hero and singlehandedly rid the country of tyranny and corruption, but voting is still important, and being politically active in your own community even more so if you want to live in a decent place. Don't get too engrossed in fantasy worlds because it's the easy option and forget to make a difference to reality. Also, don't get too worked up about the RPGA ranking systems. There's always going to be some obsessive who goes to more cons than you, and gets more player and DM points. The important thing is that your recreation remains fun, not beating everyone else, especially since there's no financial reward no matter how good a gamer you are.
Under command: With the power levels doubled in minis land, it's the perfect opportunity to talk again about running a campaign with character development and continuity using the system. This does mean assigning one person as the DM, and letting them dictate the rough course of the campaign, but if you've played regular D&D I'm sure you can make that concession. You also have to accept that even more than 3e, the advancement under this system will be relatively closed-ended, and should plan your campaign around this advancement rate, with the scoring of victory conditions setting the pace. Still, you will probably get to change your warbands more between battles than most PC groups, given the greater numbers of pieces and corresponding attrition rate, which'll give you a chance to experiment with different group compositions and tactics within a single campaign. Just don't expect to get any credit if you come up with a nonviolent solution to the campaigns problems, unlike in D&D.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 3/8
Silicon sorcery: Dungeon Siege introduces an interesting idea that upsets the usual D&D game assumptions. Spellbooks that you can actually share, instead of each wizard writing their own idiosyncratic variant of magical notation that takes a fair bit of effort to decode? Unheard of! Sky falling, cats and dogs living together, etc etc. Course, they only manage that by being minor artifacts in their own right, that give you additional powers if you use them heavily, which means if people know you have one, you can expect a lot of people trying to be your friend and/or kill you and take your stuff. In addition, the powers key off the number of spell levels you have memorised, which creates the same kind of dynamic as reserve feats, making you think carefully about whether to keep using your low level but consistent powers, or burn your big guns and face the next challenge weaker. This is very interesting, but does also take a fair bit of bookkeeping, which means it's for people who really like to consider their tactical and strategic options, and plan their spell selections and character build carefully. Anyone who prefers sorcerers should steer well clear.
A novel approach: This column takes on an old favourite instead of a new release for a change. The Dune series has been going for a good while, but the original book is still the best selling and most critically praised. So they convert the obvious hallmarks of the series, Spice, and Sandworms. If you want to transform into a gigantic bloated psychic monstrosity, it'll be pretty expensive, and since it's addictive, remaining an adventurer yourself doesn't seem very viable afterwards. Best to keep that for the NPC villains, really. Statistically, sandworms are simply reskinned Purple Worms with a more interesting treasure type, and the caveat that you might want to avoid killing them and just follow them around so as to get more long-term profit selling their byproducts. Which I have to say will definitely be a different challenge for most D&D adventurers, so this is another conversion that more than justifies it's appearance here, even if the spice won't be quite as invaluable (and therefore expensive) in a world where most high level spellcasters can teleport and plane shift anyway. On the other hand, putting this in d20 modern/future would probably work very well indeed. Just because they don't mention that option in the magazine, doesn't mean you can't use it.
Zogonia meets that dungeon staple, an orc in a 10x10 room with a pie. Nodwick keeps his party from making over their wizard. Beard and hat combos never go out of fashion. Dork tower tries to sell loaded dice. That's a bit worrying.
Hometown heroes: The Play's the Thing may be gone, but it's legacy remains in this article, another one that aims to get you building interesting characters more quickly and effectively by directing your thought processes and asking relevant questions. In this case it's where they came from that's the area of focus. What it was like, who lived there, Parents, siblings, teachers, local pub, first crush, local bully that they fully intend to teach a lesson once they've gained a few levels, it's these everyday things that shape a young person's character, before they're old enough to venture into the world and try to be something they chose for themselves. Not every character can be an orphan who's survived on their own wits and skill ever since they can remember, and the game is probably far more interesting for it. Plus if you say all the characters are approximately the same age and from the same place, you can do collaborative character creation and make everything more fleshed out while also providing good reasons why the characters are adventuring together. Since this isn't crammed into the 2 page regular column format, it makes for better reading than those, even if the bright yellow formatting is a bit garish. We can all do with being reminded where we came from, and that other people came from very different places all around the world.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 4/8
Arcane ancestry 2: They're not just doing sequels more frequently, they're actually putting it in the actual title of the article. I'm not sure if I should be amused or exasperated. Well, at least it's honest. As with the previous one from issue 311, they present a whole load of possible ancestries for your sorcerer, each with two feats, plus a few extra ones any of them can take. You could have powers derived from lawful, chaotic or ethereal outsiders, Illithids, Yuan-ti, undead, or plants. People really can have sex with ANYTHING in 3e with interesting consequences. Most of them are pretty standardised, offering an extra spell at each spell level, at the cost of an opposed subtype of spells being restricted. Since specialist wizards can get that for free, while this costs sorcerers a feat, it's still obvious who comes out on top in the long run due to sheer flexibility. Once again, I think covering fewer types of ancestry with more feats for each one would be the better way to go, so you can really develop your character's innate abilities in interesting ways. Trying to think of too many different power sources has just lead to sex with trees, and I don't really think my game is enhanced by including that as part of my character's backstory.
War magic: Here's another topic that they talked about just over a year ago, in issue 309. Not surprising, since blowing up large quantities of enemies in one go before they can hurt you is a very tactically sound thing to do. Instead of introducing new spells though, this is all about the parameters of the exiting ones, particularly in a party situation where you can wind up hitting other players if not careful. In that situation, fireball and other burst spells are actually the most hazardous, (although still less than previous editions where fireball distorted it's shape if confined and lightning bolt bounced off walls) while line spells allow you to fire through ranks of enemies at minimal risk to your friends. Call lightning isn't really AoE, but has the chance to catch multiple creatures above you. Meteor Swarm's big advantage is the large amount of aiming options it offers you in one go. So this is the kind of charop stuff that reminds us that they put more emphasis on playing to a grid this edition, partly because of more tightly codified rules, and partly because they want to sell more minis. All the different shapes and energy types ensure that you always have to think tactically about which spell is best for your current fight, and I'm still very aware not everyone can make the best choices on their own.
A surge of theurgy: Mystic Theurges were one of the more controversial bits of the 3.5 update, with many people complaining that they were completely broken. However, when the dust settled and the numbers had been crunched, if anything, they were often underpowered, as while they had more staying power and flexibility at high level, they didn't have the raw power a single-classed spellcaster could enjoy, and at low-mid level you had to make real sacrifices to get in. So some feats that make multiclass spellcasters a little less suboptimal isn't a bad idea. Most of them are pretty dull though, simply allowing you to add your levels in the two classes together in certain situations. There's ones for most combinations of two classes, particular types of magic, and some class features like wild empathy and paladin mounts can also benefit from this. Just think, if you were playing an Arcana Evolved character, you'd get most of these benefits automatically. Knowing that, and also the way in which 4e sidestepped this problem, this feels more like highlighting an issue than solving it. I suppose stuff like this in the magazine is a good incentive for their developers to get busy with the next big change.
The ecology of Duergar: Ahh, these gloomy buggers. Always nice to spend a little time around people even more miserable than I usually am. Still, gloom is no impediment to egocentricism, and as is often the case, they get given a creation myth that has them a the first and most important race in the world, with nothing at all to do with those other, lesser dwarven deities, or their actual history as shown in the old Monster Mythology. The story parts eat up a relatively large amount of the ecology this month, with less emphasis on the tactical advice. It's still not a patch on the old fiction heavy ecologies, but it does the job, just as it's subjects do. It also emphasizes the sneaky aspects of fighting them. Seems like they've been doing that with every ecology this year. Does nothing engage in a stand-up fight anymore? Another thing that's worth thinking about. Was this kind of tactical advice reflected in your actual plays of the time? Or was it just boring old, I hit, he hits back. All anecdotes welcome.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 5/8
Spellcraft: This month's spell selection is for the roguish sorts, with most of these available to Assassins and Bards. There is the usual attempt at setting detail, but it feels rather perfunctory these days. Ominous looming thieves guild, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get to the spells, shall we.
Appraising Touch boosts your appraise skill substantially. Well, it's less of a toe stepper than the old spells which just worked.
Dead End is essentially an urban variant of pass without trace. Yawn.
Marked Man lets you track things via sympathetic link. Seen you before too.
Serene Visage boosts your Bluff score equally substantially. This is one that ought to be a general formula.
Shock and Awe causes substantial initiative penalties for the enemy if cast just before combat. This'll hopefully let you get off two full rounds of sneak attacking before the enemy ceases to be flat-footed, which'll put a serious dent in their HP. Quite nice, really.
Spontaneous Search lets you instantly take 10 without spending the whole turn actually rooting around. Once again with the very specific, integrated mechanics. This change really is becoming standard making everything seem very pinned down and codified, not like the old days.
Magic Shop goes egyptian. We've had several articles on their gods before, but not one on their magical items. Given how long they lasted, I'm sure there's something worth plundering in those pyramids if you avoid the cursed bits.
The Belt of the Camel lets you survive without water and resist the desert heat. You might still starve to death, but pulling a 40 days and 40 nights jobbie seems quite possible if you have a high con score.
Canopic Jars of the Guardians let you turn a dead priest into an undying guardian and servant. The reward for a lifetime of loyal service? You get to carry on doing it FOREVER.
Carrion Gauntlets let you drain lifeforce by touch at will. Prey on the weak and dying and you can go a long way with all those temporary hit points. Just watch you don't drain your friends by accident.
Cartouches of Imhotep let you imitate their namesake by buffing your Craft skills. Fair enough.
A Cloak of the Desert lets you blend into sandy environments easily. Combine with the camel belt and you can really hide out from everyone for an extended period.
The Eye of Horus lets you both hunt down and hide from evil creatures. Horus is obviously smart enough not to sacrifice his followers in futile battles, which is nice to see.
The Keepers Guide helps you spot and disarm traps. whether this is put to legitimate uses by priests adding to tombs, or not so legitimate ones by grave robbers is all up to you.
River Sandals let you walk on water, and leave no tracks on land. Jesus might have turned this trick to good, but it has plenty of sneaky applications too, and you can bet followers of Set will use it to full advantage.
Robes of the Burning Serpent let bad guys turn into giant snakes, and kill horribly any good person who puts them on. You may kill Amon-Thoth, but taking his stuff remains a problem.
Sand of Set turns into snakes when sprinkled on the ground. Should put a scare into most low level adventurers.
Scarab Charms turn into a swarm of beetles that'll strip the flesh from your bones. Better make sure you have a good throwing arm to make sure it takes out an enemy and not you or your friends.
Scorpion Bracers help you resist poisons. Somehow, that doesn't seem as impressive as it did last edition.
Tiaras of Bast let you speak with cats, and maybe even get them to like you enough to herd them. Even the most arrogant feline is susceptible to bribes and flattery.
Vestments of Judgement let you bring people back from the dead ... if you're worthy, and in very limited amounts. You can't save everyone, so exercise your mercy carefully where it'll be most effective.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 6/8
Heroic feats: Not surprising that this column is in theme, with 9 feats that enhance various magic specialities. Make your shadow magic more real, your charms more charming, your protective spells tougher, and your buffs more buffy. Each of them requires that you be a specialist in the appropriate school, with enchanters getting one for each subschool, and the others getting one each. They aren't that impressive numerically, but if you've already taken spell focus, and want to squeeze a little more of an edge out of your area of concentration, they're a logical next choice.
Gaining prestige: Mounted Archery is one of those styles of combat that's particularly tricky to master, requiring you to combine two disciplines that are hard enough in their own right. A prestige class that specialises in it makes perfect sense. As mounts tend to become fragile at higher levels, they gain the ability to substitute their own saves for their mount's one, making it a little harder to ruin their day with a quick charm. They also get dodge bonuses, improved crit ranges, and the ability to ride-by attack everyone in their movement path with ease, plus their own barbarian horde at 10th level. Seems legit, and very reskinable to different races and cultures. It's just a matter of seeking out adventures that don't take you into cramped spaces too much.
Winning races: Even more than Grippli, Lupins are incredibly PC friendly, with their abilities remaining LA+0 without any effort at all. A load of smell related bonuses to things, a bit of a bonus to listen checks, and the ability to root out and savage werewolves with great brutality. As good team players with a strong sense of right and wrong, an adventuring band is a perfect environment for them. This is a pretty straight conversion, although it skips all the nuances in issue 237's larger article with tons of different breeds. It does focus on the more savage lupins rather than the civilised, french-accented ones, but I suppose that just fits their current policy of making things as generic as possible. The old mystara whimsy really isn't their style, which makes this far less exciting than it could have been. Workmanlike, not thrilling.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 7/8
Class acts: Fighters get Tools of the Trade, a bit of advice on choosing your weapon. Will you go for damage, reach, special effects, types of damage, lots of attacks? The choice is yours, and you have the feats to back it up. Yawn.
Clerics get More Faith, less Fight. A bit of roleplaying advice plus a how to on building characters that statistically match their personality. This may involve taking cross-class skills. Oh well. Them's the breaks. Real people are usually suboptimally built, for optimally statted and trained all their life for a purpose people wind up like Michael Jackson, deeply weird.
Wizards get Apprentice tricks, some advice on the clever uses of cantrips. One of those things we've seen before, done better and in greater depth in 2nd ed.
Rogues get The Multiclassed Rogue. What classes would make a good dip to complement your array of skills? A level of barbarian is easily the best choice, as speed and extra dodging makes up for the slight sacrifice of sneak attack, and you can soon bring most of your skills back to max. Fighter and bard can be pretty good too. Interesting thoughts here.
Barbarians get 7 new flaws. All but 2 revolve around their rage ability, making it more of a pain in the ass. Hulk smash indeed. Take a couple of these at 1st level and multiclass out of barbarian at 2nd for much twinkitude.
Druids get Druid Meets World. How does a druid fit in when not in the wilderness? Good question. Here's some possible answers. More fluff and tactical advice.
Sorcerers get Sorcerous Strategies. If you choose nothing but blasty spells, don't be surprised if you suck donkey balls and die. One blasty spell per spell level, making sure they're of different shapes and energy types, is more than sufficient to keep you competitive. The rest should be devoted to defense and utility. You want to get the greatest versatilty out of your limited selection, make sure you don't get caught with nothing useful. Pretty commonsensical, really.
Rangers get Tracking and Trailing. You can learn a good deal about a creature from looking at it's prints, beyond just where it's going. Another reason a few ranks in Knowledge (nature) don't go amiss.
Paladins get Dealing with friends and allies. It's important that your buds know what they can't be permitted to do without the paladin having to punish them. You want a real good guy on your side, you'd better make sure you're at least moderately righteous yourself. Another case of tackling a roleplaying issue that has been done before in much greater detail.
Monks get 4 new magic items. 3 weapons, and a magical belt, each of which has a special ability particularly useful to a monk. Pretty neat stuff to put in a treasure haul.
Bards get Skills and Knowledge. More advice on how to play them thematicly, and assign your skill points appropriately. Knowing what lies ahead is an invaluable asset, so use it and you could avoid an unwanted TPK.
Player Tips: Metagaming is one of those topics that pops up fairly regularly around here. Generally people are against it, as it reduces the verisimilitude of the world. This article takes the opposite approach. Instead of trusting yourself to not metagame, make sure your characters take appropriate knowledge skills so you can justify using your OOC knowledge. Much like saying don't create a character who's an asshole and then say you're just playing your character when it causes problems for other players, this is a solution that will work in many games, but not all of them. It's certainly not that well suited to D&D, where skill points are at a premium, and fairly specific to particular classes. I suppose it doesn't matter who has the metagame knowledge as long as at least one of the characters has the skills to back it up. It'd take a very churlish DM indeed to ban all OOC communication at the table. So this is interestingly different, but I can already see the potential problems in this approach. Still, at least they're trying new things, which is better than just churning out some old canard about building your personality.
Adventurer tricks: This column is also in a modernist mood, as it thinks about what your adventuring party can take from the organisation and tactics of real life SWAT teams. Which mainly means the joys of suppressive fire, good use of stealth and cover, and focussing on the most dangerous targets to take them down fast before they even get a chance to react. Even in 3.5e, there are substantial options which enable you to win fights without putting yourself in danger, especially if you can buff your spell DC's to the point where your save or suck effects outpace the save progressions of your enemies. Just make sure you set divinations up to prevent turnaround being fair play, because being ambushed and pincushioned while trying to sleep will let NPC's kill you despite being lower CR just as easily. Once you go paranoid, it's not easy to go back.
Dragon Issue 325: November 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice: It's too bright in here. All that white hurtses andy's eyses, collins collins. Andy hass piled up sskip's books to make niiiccce shadows. Much nicccer.
What's the difference between ethereal and incorporeal (One iss here but inssubstantial, the other is on another plane. Nassty spying thing can sse you when you can't ssee it. If Andy finds out andy will go there and wring it's nassty neck, collins collins.)
Whats the difference between a manifesting ghost and an ethereal one. (What nassty stuff they can do to you, yess.)
Can a ghost use it's abilities on other ethereal things. Can it see ethereal things while manifested (Only ssome of them. No. Other ghosts can ssneak up on it, yess. )
Can a ghost travel to other planes. (Yess, but it can't go ethereal on them. Sscary for them, teeheeheeheehee. )
Can you target an ethereal creature from the prime material plane (If you can ssee it and have force sspells. Nice force sspells. blast those nassty ghosties)
Can you hurt things on the prime material from the ethereal with force effects. (No. One way only. Have to research other special spells to do that, preciouss.)
Can ghost touch weapons hurt ethereal creatures (no)
What happens when a wall is built on the ethereal plane (Very tricky, yess. No ssolid matter there, so you have to import it all. If you do, its all ssolid, normal cover and concealment rules apply, yess.)
Does an ethereal object block force effects on the material plane. (Yess. If they can't ssee ethereal things, this could result in a nassty surprise for the holder, teeheeheeheehee.)
Can an ethereal creature grapple someone wearing bracers of armor or vice versa (No, collins collins. Not a solid hold.)
How do I keep ethereal characters from wrecking my adventure. ( Nassty sneaky adventurers. Other high level sspellcasters will make defenses, yess. And roll for random encounters that'll eat their brainsess, yess. And at low level they won't be able to do it much anyway.
How does the plane of shadow keep mimicing the prime material when people change it. (It flowss sslowly and ssneakily when you aren't looking. Nassty shadows don't look exactly like the real thing, like evil shadow puppets. They givesses Andy the creeps, collins collins.)
Coup de grace: James Wyatt finishes up this issue with a little piece praising the idea of settings in general, while also talking about what made Eberron the best option for a new D&D setting at this moment in time. It uses all the old stuff, but in interesting new ways, and also adds new things on top of those. Plus it used good ideas from other settings submitted in the search, allowing them to make it more expansive, and less built around the ideas and quirks of one person. If they can only have a couple of settings alive at any one time, they might as well make them really good ones. Once again, this column puts the tensions between the creative and commercial into sharp relief, and shows that when large amounts of money are at stake, things naturally tend to turn into work by committee, as that lets everyone involved claim credit if something is a success, while denying responsibility if it isn't. Yet again this makes it very clear why the 3rd party D20 writers had plenty of clear space to do interesting things WotC couldn't at this time, and it's not certain which actually produces the better game. Oh well, I can liberally use both sources in my own campaign. The more diverse the options, the better.
Once again, this issue is a much easier read than the ones before they changed the format, giving me huge amounts of usable material, much of it good. The novelty may be wearing off, but they're still packing the content into every issue. As usual, let's see if they've been holding anything special back for christmas, or if the new formula will start to bore me by then.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 1/8
76 (108) pages. A proper scene with stuff happening on the cover instead of one character posing! And they've scaled back on all the promotional blurbs so you can see it clearly! What there is looks pretty promising too. Wenches · Tricks · Wandering Monsters · Ale · Traps. That's a proper old school set of themes that I can instantly see the links between. Let's put a little more grime back in our dungeoneering, and see who stays heroic, and who flunks out because they just can't take fighting oozes with a hangover after a night in the local festhall.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the editor: Unsurprisingly, the editorial reminds us that going back to the dungeon was the tagline for 3rd edition, and it should be the default adventure type for most D&D parties. It's the easiest type of adventure to run, and presents the most obvious physical challenges to the players, which makes coming to a decision far easier than a city, where you can go anywhere, talk to anyone, and have no idea who the good and bad guys are. (and even if you do, you can't just barge in and kill them) D&D is not just a straight world simulator, it has a very specific and distinct slant to it's design that pushes you towards tactical site-based scenarios, thanks to it's movement, resource tracking and combat systems. The World of Darkness doesn't give costs for 10 foot poles or torches, or track exactly how much everything weighs, and so people don't worry so much about their inventory when playing it. Runequest makes even non-cleric characters take their religion and culture more seriously than D&D ones. And truly generic point buy games make people obsess over character building to the point where they can actually spend more time creating their character than playing it. :p If you don't want dungeon-crawling to play any part in your game, you have plenty of better options, instead of trying to fight the system like so many 2e settings did.
Scale Mail: No surprise that the format changes provoke tons of letters, both positive and negative. First up is someone bemoaning the departure of Gary. That was his choice they're afraid, insomuch declining health can be considered a choice. Mind you, given the sheer volume of forum posts he managed right up to a week before he died, many of which were on similar topics, it may have just been being tired of fitting his stories into the one page format instead of being free to ramble.
Similarly, the removal of a regular monthly dose of realmslore causes much distress to it's many fanatics. If it's no longer popular enough to merit an appearance every month that's because you at WotC have actively worked to downplay settings in favor of genericness. The audience has fought you every step of the way on this one, and it's only the fact that they're divided amongst themselves that let you win.
We have another letter from someone who was a reluctant convert to 3.5, but liked it when they did bite the bullet. Releasing new editions too soon is a problem even if their contents are good, it seems.
We also have a letter from someone who doesn't get to play, so they mainly buy the magazine for the fiction and setting stuff. They have to remember to cater to that crowd as well, and they do forget sometimes.
The format changes continue to attract huge amounts of controversy, with another 4 for and 3 against. What they've gained in readability, they've sacrificed in flavour, and there are plenty of people who don't like the new layout or columns at all. Still, at least this shows lots of people still care. The question is if it'll increase or decrease their readership overall, as that's the only metric that really matters in the end.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 2/8
First watch: As is often the case, January means a slump in the number of products released. In this case, not a single official WotC one. How very problematic for them. The only RPG book they decide to promote is Mike Mearls' Book of Iron Might. The precursor to Iron Heroes, and containing quite a bit of the same material, this aims to make fighting more tactical and dramatic. Now there's a thread that will definitely run through the next few years in an interesting way.
A couple of interesting gaming related products as well. Incredibly useful, especially when combined with Tact-tiles, are Dungeon stamps. These allow you to set out landmarks on your grid quickly, reusably, and most importantly, in fairly unlimited number. Much better than faffing about with little models in things like Heroquest.
They're still covering quite a bit of useless peripheral stuff though. Fuzzy dice? Cthulhu themed filks?! :eek: (double the SAN loss in one package there.) A documentary on gaming? Dear oh dear. What are they thinking. Don't they even have any novels they could be promoting. A couple of years ago they were releasing more novels than game books, but they haven't mentioned any at all since starting up the previews again. This does have some rather perplexing choices.
Player initiative: Two years into their life, Paizo finally get round to putting up their own message boards so they don't have to rely on the WotC forums or general ones like rpg.net and enworld for feedback. (and can ban people who sign up just to bitch about them :p ) Will this help them make the magazine better, or will the noise overwhelm the signal? It's a constant danger with the internet, as it lets everyone with any creative skill at all put their work up and potentially reach millions. Which means you have to be your own gatekeeper, instead of just picking a channel or two and sticking to them. This is certainly the case for our other two topics, a deluxe gaming table and a renowned filker. Whether you'll get any entertainment value out of those will be exceedingly subjective based on taste. I'm not sure they know what they want to do with this column, and it doesn't surprise me that they're dropping it when it has so much overlap with First Watch.
Under command: A second article on campaign play in a row for the minis guys. This time, they decide to go back to issue 303, and reuse their ideas on running a gladatorial campaign. This was great fun to read about under D&D, and if anything, it's even better suited to the minis game, where you can build new groups of characters for each round quickly and easily. They spice things up further by making a rule whereby the position of mad overlord (arena designer) rotates from round to round, and you spend money on bribes, equipment & healing and can bet on matches to add a strategic element to play between the actual fights. That definitely seems a good way to fill a few evenings, especially if you've gone to all the effort to build a colosseum on your gaming table and don't want to break it down again too soon. Absolutely no hesitation in trying out this one if I get the chance, like many of the old games they used to put in the magazine.
Silicon sorcery: World of Warcraft is finally out! The MMO that would dwarf all other MMO's and still dominates the landscape and makes Blizzard ridiculous amounts of money a decade later. Since WoW isn't that different from D&D in general design principles, right down to the alliterative name, the material they convert fits right in here. Two feats which boost your ability to have monstrous pets and animal companions, which most nature based characters consider taking once in a while. One that makes you inflict more damage on creatures that just hurt you, which is neat but not world-shaking. And one that increases ALL your movement speeds by 10 when wild-shaped, which is pretty awesome, given how hard it is to increase your movement rate, and how much wild-shape already increases your mobility and combat options. Like the ability to cast spells while wild-shaped, that seems like a no-brainer to an optimisation-loving druid. Be afraid.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 3/8
A novel approach: This column goes for the lazy option of promoting their own Forgotten Realms books again. Time for another metaplot event which is too big for you to make a real difference too, apart from maybe saving whatever village you're in at the time. The dragons have all woken up at once and they're swarming again, like locusts, only even more ecologically devastating. You wonder where they all go, don't you. Unsurprisingly, our mechanical conversions are two of the heroes who will actually get to solve the problem and let them get back to sleep. A Song Dragon who's halfway between age categories, and has a few other little statistical quirks to fit the books. And an embittered dragon slayer who lost limbs to one, and will probably have to go on an emotional journey along with the physical one to learn to accept them and judge them as individuals. Neither could quite be replicated using the RAW. They may have decided to skip this in Eberron, but that just leaves them freer to indulge in the Realms, because that's what people have got used too and they'd complain if they stopped. Mind you, people complain about the metaplot events as well, but I suppose that just means they still care. No matter how busy the Realms gets, they have to keep adding to it, and at least with stuff like this they can kill a few NPC's and raze a few villages in the process to make room for more developments.
Zogonia has a deeply worrying development. Giger would be amused. Nodwick reaches the very bottom floor of the deepest dungeon. There are easter eggs contained within. Dork tower ought to realize computers are a lot more expensive to replace than dice.
The dungeon delvers guide: Not too surprisingly, we kick off the theme with basic advice on the procedures of dungeoneering for those who think they can just charge in and kill stuff until a place is cleared out. (and may well have been getting away with it if the DM's an amateur as well) There's a whole bunch of stuff on marching order, equipment, mapping, making sure all your party roles are covered, tactics, dealing with traps, etc etc. It demonstrates that 3e isn't actually badly suited to this playstyle at all, even if characters are likely to level up several times in the middle if you make a dungeon complex too large. (and you can slow that by re-instituting the training to advance levels rule from 1e, or making the situation lethal enough that hirelings seem like a very good idea) It still has all the gear, nearly all the monsters, all the traps, and now you have solid skills to find out if they're screwed in a situation or not. All it needs is the right kind of DM, and hopefully this has reminded both new and old players just what D&D was originally intended to be. Many of the tricks are familiar, but a few aren't, which lets me give this a positive result overall, as it's not just for the newbies.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 4/8
Down the drain: Sewers are a perfect source of dungeons, even if they're a bit more grimy and cramped than people in plate mail would prefer, as they're full of life, and the organic way they're built up over time along with the settlements above gives you plenty of room for hidden or collapsed bits that no-one knows the layout of, regardless of what the maps in the town hall say. I'm very surprised indeed that they haven't done an article on them before, with the closest thing being a collection of sewer monsters in issue 238. So this is another one they can afford to be fairly system-light on, going into both historical detail, and how to make sewers fantastical for a D&D campaign. In a world which has plenty of ruins from magical civilisations past, you have plenty of freedom to make them both bigger than the surface town they abut, and very weird to PC's ignorant of engineering principles. (watch out for the one that feeds all the pipes to a sphere of annihilation deep beneath the city. It may seem like a good idea, but it'll ruin the ecosystem in the long-term. ) There's tons of adventuring hooks you can get from this, both the obvious ones while down there, and the less obvious ones where you travel through the sewers as a means to an end. (quite possibly using shrinking magic to come up someone's toilet at the other end) Any adventurer who's afraid of getting a little stinky is definitely missing out on a prime source of XP. Are you going to be that party who falls behind or fails the quest because they weren't willing to hold their nose in the pursuit of good deeds?
Get Lost: Labyrinths are a more classical inspiration for D&D dungeons. Unlike sewers, mines, or ruined buildings, they're intentionally created to be challenging to navigate, by tricks like making everything look the same, layouts that naturally tend to draw your movements back to the way out, subtle slopes throwing off attempts to map by actually having multiple levels, and the ancient greek method of making sure people are hopped up on drugs before they can even enter in the first place. Unlike sewers, where adventurers might balk at first, but'll soon find plenty of stuff down there to occupy their attention, they'll probably jump at the the chance to explore a labyrinth, but might well find themselves getting bored once there, particularly if the place is low on landmarks and wandering monsters. As with the Tomb of Horrors, you really do have carte blanche to be as sadistic as you like with the design of these places, as mundane considerations like living spaces and toilets don't apply, and there are some people with ridiculously huge budgets and twisted senses of humour out there, who know how to set things up so trying obvious solutions lands you deeper in trouble. If you want to make the dungeon impossible, you can do so easily. The question is, can you make it seem impossible, yet remain interesting enough that the players will press on and solve it anyway, and will you fudge things if it looks like they're having it too hard or easy, or let the dice fall as they may and watch them slowly starve to death if they can't find the way out again?
The ecology of the rakshasa: Hmm. Technically, we haven't had an ecology on this creature before. However, in all but name, we almost have, in Scott Bennie's article in issue 84. Still, this does take a quite different tack to that, leaving their origin mysterious, and engaging in the usual focus on their psychology, society and combat tactics. Seems like they have rather more societal variants than most creatures, adapting to different worlds and even planes almost as well as humans do. Since they're yet another monster for whom sneakiness is paramount, the tactical advice is once again focussed on outmaneuvering your foe on both sides of the battle, with half the war even figuring out what you're facing. This does throw into relief the fact that since the revamp, the ecologies have been increasingly metronomic in their hitting of particular beats, and very precisely bounded page count, going from one topic to the next, always in the same order. With a creature like this, which could definitely stand a more detailed examination, this is a serious flaw. If all the subsequent ecologies are like this, I'm definitely going to start struggling for new things to say about them.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 5/8
Spellcraft follows immediately after the ecology, as it has every issue since the revamp. Once again with the metronomic nature of the magazine's design. This is another selection of cantrips. Since we last had these exactly 2 years ago in issue 302, I shall glare disapprovingly. Surely you could have at least picked a topic from 2e years to rehash instead.
Fleeting Fame is another skill buffer we had a pretty much exact analogue of last time. Meh.
Groundsmoke makes smoke from a fire fail to rise normally. The kind of low key comfort and potential lifesaver cantrips should be used for.
Necrosurgery isn't the awesome Exalted stuff, but just a roundabout way of helping you resist disease. Once again with the meh. Wizards are supposed to suck at healing.
Nosy Neigbour boosts your listen skill a bit. Once again, superceded by issue 302's general skill booster cantrip.
Seeker's Chant is yet again superceded and worse than last time. Bonus on search checks? Already covered.
Shadowplay lets you do impressive looking but harmless stuff with someone's shadow. Another potential cantrip staple to frighten those with no knowledge of magic.
Vengeful Mount makes the victim unnerving to animals. You don't want to turn someone into a vampire just for that, do you. I thought not. No, this collection isn't nearly as big or good as the last cantrip collection.
Magic shop is also repeating a very familiar theme, nature based magic items. As long as two core classes key off magical connection to nature, there'll never be a shortage of people inventing variants on this theme.
Acorns of Clarity give you an instant connection to nature as long as you're holding them. Better not drop them, because it'll be a bigger finding them again in the woods without that extra skill.
Arboreal Armor grows it's own berries, letting you hide out in the wilderness as long at you like in addition to it's actual protective value. Careful how you sleep, as you don't want to wake up in a puddle of wasted jam.
Briar Staves control plants, and intriguingly, can be recharged by burying them for a few months, which is definitely a good way to teach PC's about conservation and crop rotation. Cycle your resources, and you won't be so predictable to enemies either, as they can never be sure what tactics you'll be using this time.
Deluge Rods summon acidic mist, fiendish sharks, and generally chill the area. They also make the wielder feel perpetually cold and clammy though, so many people will consider them not worth the bother. Even liches have to look after their bodies, for bits dropping off is a pain in the ass.
Eagles Cry Bows do indeed make a sound like an eagle when you use them, which makes them pretty obvious to everyone around. If you're not a friend of the elves, you can expect parties of them to come along soon to retrieve it by force. They can be even worse than githyanki at tariffs and protectionism.
Rods of the Wild let you pick from a bunch of different animal types and gain themed buffs. Choose wisely, as you can only have one at a time.
Sylvan Cloaks are updatings of your basic elven cloak as owned by every LotR reader at some point. No real surprises here, apart from the greater ones that let you teleport through trees or bring them to life to fight for you, which'll put a crimp in any orc's day.
Thornblades are another one that you can't really get by killing things and taking their stuff, as they whither away once separated from their bonded owner. So much for the adventurer's circle of life then. Hypocritical elves. ;)
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 6/8
Heroic feats: This column only gives us 4 feats this month, but they're longer than usual. We've had full books on the paragons of good, and evil, and the cool feats, prestige classes and spells they can purchase. Similar stuff for lawful and chaotic characters seems entirely logical. Of course with chaotic characters, you don't want the actual abilities they get to be too boring and logical, and unfortunately, that's exactly what we do get here. 2 feats which work like Practiced Spellcaster for Barbarian or Bard class features, the ability to always have certain skills as class ones, and a seriously nerfed version of the old Wild Mage ability to control magical items with random effects. Very disappointing and rather formulaic. Surely you can come up with something better than this for your champions of chaos.
Gaining prestige: When taking a prestige class, you always need to ask if the abilities you gain from it are better than the ones you would get from staying in your regular class. This is particularly the case with partial spellcasting progressions like this one, which cause you to give up your 9th level spells. The Shaper of Form is a specialist in shapeshifting magic, both organic and inorganic. This does give them a sufficiently different niche from the druid that both could fit into a party. They also get permanent body changes, including the ability to easily change race or gender, which is obviously a good target for people who want to play trans characters, and don't want to revert to their birth biology every time an enemy casts dispel magic on them. Overall, I think this probably comes out slightly suboptimal, since they give up 4 levels of spellcasting, but still only have an 1/2 BAB, so they won't be able to take full advantage of their physical enhancements to compensate for that.
Winning races: This column introduces another set of gradual progressions for templates, to reflect gradually picking up a connection with other worlds rather than being born with it. This time, it's the half-elemental ones. Each of those 4 CR+2 templates becomes a 3 level progression, gradually boosting the degree of elemental resistance and number of spell-like abilities you can access. Like the bloodlines in UA, these work best if you take them gradually alternating between regular levels, with the final one somewhere in your early teens, rather than all at once in a way that makes you fragile at low level. As this definitely makes it easier to take these thematic abilities while remaining balanced overall, I have to approve of this particular bit of mechanical development.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 7/8
Class acts: Fighters get Two Swords are better than One. Given their number of feats, a fighter who specializes can actually end up better at this combat style than rangers. Don't discount it just because Drizzt made it thematic for another class and everyone was dumb enough to copy him.
Clerics get 7 new flaws. Some interesting, and rather brutal flaws that really cut at the heart of their class features. I definitely approve of anyone brave enough to take these and deal with the consequences.
Wizards get The Necromancer's Primer. Unless you have supplements, there aren't nearly enough low level necromancy spells, so you have to choose carefully or wind up underpowered. Such a hassle. Here's a little advice to take the sting off it.
Rogues get 6 new special abilities to choose at higher level. Now this is more like it. Just what you need if you've played the game to epic and want some more tricks to fill out your set or surprise the players with. I particularly love Swift Kick. Great way to make your trap disarming more cinematic.
Barbarians get Strong Strategies. Hit em fast, hit em hard, and remember, you can afford to soak more damage than anyone else. Some very 4e-esque advice we have here. How curious.
Druids get The Wild Side. Ahh, the joys of wild shape letting you outclass any warrior or rogue. And who needs wizard spells anyway? Do we really need another reminder just how awesome 3e druids were?
Sorcerers get a load of advice on their equipment. Their probably low strength and need for mobility means overloading them is a bad idea. Choose carefully.
Rangers get 5 new fighting styles. Just the thing for when the fighter's just taken the 2 weapon fighting schtick. Wrestling, mounted fighting, piscator, throwing weapons, these are pretty neat, and should help you avoid getting stereotyped.
Paladins get a bit of fluff on their historical antecedents. Charlemagne's peers and the knights templar. Yet again, they are reiterating stuff tackled before in more depth. These really are dreadfully shallow a lot of the time.
Monks get A Matter of Style. Talk about martial arts styles, and real world examples of such. More shallow reiteration. I pity the people who have to write these.
Bards get Magic & Music. Bards really shine as a social and support character. So use them like that! Don't try and be the big solo combatant. Help people out, and you'll both be much happier. Another bit of advice they would code into the next edition much more strongly.
Dragon Issue 326: December 2004
part 8/8
Sage advice: How many HD does a 1st level pixie rogue have (2. He's at a big disadvantage in an ECL appropriate party, yess. You stab him, he goes splat, teeheeheehee)
If a spectre hits him, does he lose 2 ECL's, or does he die (He dies. Ssserves him right, collins collins.)
How do you deal with the LA from gaining a template mid game. (You won't gain any more levels until you pay it off. But you get to be stronger than your friendses for a while.)
Do creatures with special powers increase their DC's when they gain class levels (No. Less and less useful, collins collins. Thats why there's the buyoff option in unearthed arcana)
If you shapechange into a creature with special powers, how do you calculate the DC (Usual creatures HD, collins collins. )
Can a half celestial gain the dragon type from dragon disciple (No, its lower on the type hierarchy, collins collins. Still get all the special powers though.)
Why do things get ECLs higher than their CR. (Many abilities are more useful when PC's have them. Very annoying, collins collins)
How do CR's for traps work. Why don't they go above 10. (ssame challenge as similar monsters, yess. Hard to make traps above CR 10 without making them instantly deadly, or too easy to a prepared party. Too much swinginess bad in encounters, yesss? )
How much XP is a EL 5 encounter worth. (Depends what's in it )
Should you increase a monster's CR if it has powerful magic items (Maybe, collins collins. Not too much, though. )
Coup de grace: Player Tips and Adventurers Tricks breathed their last last issue, and this column ironically gets the coup de grace delivered to it this one, showing that they're already starting to struggle to maintain the same set of little columns every single issue. Maybe they're regretting showing what's behind the curtain, because this is one by Mike Mearls on how he became a professional writer. Basically, there's three steps. Treat it like a real job, sit down and write a certain amount every day, no matter how rubbish it is, and then clean it up in editing. (or put it in magazine articles anyway and let it cause massive nerdrage :p ) Remember to make time to actually play, as it'll stoke your creativity, and make sure the new stuff you come up with gets stress tested. And make sure you submit your work to anyone who's remotely likely to be able to use it, and then pay attention to their feedback and try again regularly even if they turn you down. As with most of the other times they've talked about this, they make it quite clear that natural writing talent is secondary to drive, persistence in the face of adversity, and ability to connect with the right people, and that getting on the first rung is probably the hardest part of getting a job. Whether that gives you hope for your chances or not is very much up to you.
Looks like things are already starting to change again around here, as they react to feedback on their new format, just as they did with the more dodgy fonts and layout choices immediately after 3e's release. That gives me hope that even if the individual columns remain hit and miss, and often very formulaic, the overall presentation of the magazine will continue to improve, so they can go out on a high. Let's see what surprises the last three years hold for me, if any.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 1/7
100 pages. Looks like we're still in general dark dungeoneering mode on the cover, with an illustration that's very similar indeed to issue 322's. There's only so much you can do with with close-ups of covered faces. Let's hope we haven't run out of new ideas to put down there, just as they're making a load of effort to reaffirm that as a playstyle.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed.
In this issue:
From the Editor: After barely a year, we once again switch editors, as the previous one promotes upwards to the R&D departments. They might start off enthusiastic, but monthly deadlines soon grind them down, particularly when the stuff they're releasing from one month to the next is so similar. You have to work to keeping it interesting for you as well as the audience. Fortunately, our new boss is made of sterner stuff. Erik Mona has shown himself willing to do this job for free for years, creating the Oerth Journal as an online magazine to keep Greyhawk alive in the dark times of the mid 90's, and then getting to go official when WotC brought it back instead of just getting threatening letters from Rob Repp. Since then he's moved through Polyhedron, the Living Greyhawk Journal, to Dungeon, and now to here. In fact, for the next couple of years, he'll be the lead editor on Dungeon and Dragon simultaneously, which is longer than Roger managed before getting burnt out. So yeah, he's a genuine enthusiast, and hopefully his obsessive attention to Greyhawk's setting detail will apply to other ones as well. This is definitely a good way to start a new year.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who found the lovecraftian material came at just the right time for his campaign. Given how popular Lovecraft is, this bit of synchronicity was almost inevitable.
Not quite so lucky is someone who forgot where the quasi-elemental genasi were. Fortunately, there are detailed records in the magazine to remind them. As long as the internet remains, none of this will be lost.
We get some old school whimsy, protesting against the atrocity that is summoning and binding elementals to serve as industrial power sources. Using them like pokemon is bad enough, but working for years with no hope of release? Inhumane! A very valid issue, and one I'm sure you could have a lot of fun with in game.
We also get reminded that while roleplaying as a whole may be male dominated, there are a fair few groups that are female only or have them as a majority. Remember, women buy far more books in general than men. It's quite possibly a fluke roleplaying evolved primarily from wargaming rather than literature and wound up male dominated.
Rather more prosaic is a basic bit of errata. Same as it ever was.
A lot of the time, getting hold of the magazine overseas has been a problem for people. However that doesn't stop it from turning up for sale in the oddest places. Even Afganistan gets a few, partially thanks to the soldiers stationed there.
Another obvious letter is nitpicking about the difference between england and great britain, and the way people from other countries can conflate the two. Yawn. I can't get worked up about this, but then I am english, so maybe it's just majority privilege speaking there.
The revamp and it's masterminder get praised again twice. Since he just left, that instantly makes me wonder if they'll like the next set of changes Erik will make.
And finally we have yet another person asking how you get into writing role-playing games. Since we had an article on that just last issue, I'm forced to sigh at the being repetitive again.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 2/7
First watch doubles in size this month, and we get to see the names of the people responsible for writing it. Guess it's got a quick and pretty positive response from the readers, despite (or maybe because of) it's sometimes odd choice of products to cover.
Our actual D&D product this month is Complete Adventurer. Rogues, bards, rangers, and anyone else who'd like to get into the skillmonkeying. This means it's focus is a bit vaguer than the previous three, especially in the prestige class area. Still, it does bring back the scout and ninja classes, which have always proved popular. They're also releasing the D&D monster calendar. Interesting. In the past, it's been the Realms or Dragonlance that get pretty add-ons like this. Guess it's another sign of their declining interest in settings. Still, at least it's being released at the right time of year for a change.
On the 3rd party D20 side, we have Firey Dragon's Battle Box. A whole array of little items to make your play smoother and more convenient. They seem to be focussing on these quite a lot. Ahh, the joys of making your game crunchy and buff-heavy. It gives you more excuses to sell even more stuff.
We also have a report on D&D online, their MMO. Much enthusiasm here, as they aim to create something that'll blow neverwinter nights and baldur's gate away. Oh well, so much for that plan.
Hybrid is not the RPG, (if that got mentioned in here, it would be very amusing) but a board game where you battle advanced super-soldiers. Hmm. Seems decent enough. And therefore a bit dull, ironically.
There's also some odd stuff, as seems to be their wont. Plush gaming gear, which it seems people are buying for their baby geeks. Excuse me while I have a biological clock moment here. :sigh: And a bunch of net videos. Dungeon Majesty? Hmm. I may have to check this out. Tee hee. This reminds me why I don't watch TV much (aside from the obvious of doing this thread for years. ) Amateur stuff is often more entertaining anyway, precisely because of the obvious flaws.
Beyond even that, there's some talk about stuff that isn't exactly products. The issues surrounding their recent attempts at getting into the .pdf market. Ah, yes, DRM and pricing issues. I remember those flamewars. And then the even bigger flamewars when they pulled their stuff again. That was not very cleverly handled. And some promotion for Winter Fantasy, and the RPGA in general. These, on the other hand are not very interesting to read about in hindsight.
Tomb Raider: In a sign of the pendulum swinging back a little bit, we start off with a system-light, historically focussed article on real world tombs that's useful for games other than 3e D&D. Egypt was the biggest draw for potential tomb robbers, with their thousands of years of spectacular pyramid building, but china probably has the biggest single one, filled with terracotta solidiers and other weirdness, including quite possibly the bodies of the architects. The trouble with these kind of dungeons is that many of them have already been cleared out, and those that aren't are either obscure or well known, and any attempts to break into them will result in trouble with the law as well as whatever monsters and traps are inside them. So unless you're in a place where people regularly make more, or discover an entire abandoned town to investigate, you will have to move on fairly soon after a few big raids. The life of an adventurer in the real world is not a stable one. Best to hope that you can make a big profit on one or two big ventures, and then invest it well if you want to ever retire.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 3/7
The spoils of war: The straightforward dungeoneering advice continues with a piece on how your group should divide it's treasure. In the real world, this is often where a perviously successful unit falls apart, as some people want equal shares, while others get greedy and think their contribution is more important than other people's (which may well be true) so they should get a bigger share, and a few simply nick choice bits from the hoard and don't tell everyone else. If you make a formal agreement about this beforehand, you'll probably save yourself a good deal of stress later on. It also reminds us that treasure hoards can be big, heavy, and a nightmare to transport and store. Even if you take encumbrance into account when initially equipping your character, it can be easy to lose track when you're going from room to room, merrily killing and looting as you go. And then there's all the hassle of storing, selling, investing and capitalising on this stuff. Some people really enjoy this, while others would rather just handwave it, and if you leave it in the hands of one person, they'll probably wind up profiting the most. Do you have what it takes to play a party splintering as their success pushes them in different directions while keeping the actual group of players solid OOC? Or would that be a little too close to reality for comfort to be escapism. Either way, this is a solid reminder of how you can vary your playstyle while still remaining within the core dungeoneering experience.
Fiction: The silverfish by Richard Lee Byers. Time for another good ol' murder mystery. The kind of thing that works very differently in the Realms due to the combination of divination magic and the lack of modern policing and judicial process. On the plus side, that does mean someone who sincerely believes in proving guilt or innocence in a case can go private investigator, and get away with causing a fair amount of havoc in the process as long as they get results, because the ends justify the means. This does very much feel like the kind of story that would happen in actual play, and as with his previous work, hews very closely to D&D rules in terms of spells, character classes and setting integration. If you want realism, this isn't the place to look, but for a fast paced adventure full of twists and emotional drama, he still provides the goods.
Paranoia has upgraded to XP edition. Be very thankful it never updated to Vista. It would be terrible to have to choose between being treasonous because you didn't upgrade, and being treasonous because the computer keeps on crashing when you try to use it.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 4/7
With friends like these: Or surviving your group turning into jackass central, and still having a functional game. Both unbendingly good characters who refuse to pay attention to the realities of a situation and compromise, and nasty ones who either engage in PVP or act like brooding loners can be a real problem. This kind of conflict is incredibly important in creating a good narrative, but not so great when you need to have all your resources working together at maximum efficiency to get through a dungeon. Trouble is, the kind of people who are good at finding exploits to create ridiculously powerful characters are also the ones likely to hog the limelight and get away with being a pain, as you need them. Unfortunately, this article isn't so much about solutions, as simply presenting the diversity within these two categories, with examples for every class to show how they could become annoying in either direction, which means people are actually more likely to create problematic characters after reading this rather than less. Oh well, it wouldn't be too terrible to go back to the 2e ways for a bit, as long as we know there's other places to go as well these days. Variety is important, after all, and it would be dull if all characters had blandly nice personalities.
Oop. I've managed to spot another statement of ownership. Looks like things have declined quite a bit in the past year, as they've dropped below 60,000 again. That's not good. No wonder they wanted to do a revamp last year.
The ecology of the grimlock: Ooh, good old sonarfaces. Not hugely smart or tricksy, their complete lack of eyes, and reliance on other senses still makes fighting them seem distinct from the other hordes of low level humanoid races. Also distinctive is that they seem less prone to the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! :shakes fist:" syndrome, regularly forming symbiotic relationships with illithids, aboleth, medusae and other oogy horrors of the underdark. And they certainly have the potential to be more, with their ability to develop art and culture with their enhanced senses that most creatures couldn't really appreciate. They can be a fun race to pit against players. Another decent but unexceptional, highly formulaic entry in this series.
Winning races: Diaboli! Now there's a turnup for the books. Also one that's never going to survive the transition to 3e unnerfed. Complete immunity to magical effects from creatures native to the normal 3 dimensions? That aint going to fly. They even take away their other signature move, the double speed cartwheeling trick, which hardly counts as gamebreaking, and nerf their poison tail. (which was already incredibly weak by BD&D standards) I think those two could easily have fit in if they were willing to make them an LA+1 race. But no, it seems they're prioritising being sensible over being unique. The setting detail survives slightly better, with the changes to the cosmology presented as gradual things rather than retcons that create more plot hooks. (even creatures from the dimension of nightmares are scared of the Far Realms' sanity destroying oogyness) So this could have been worse, but definitely isn't my favourite updating, as it makes an incredibly interesting race with tons of plot potential slightly less so. Disappointing.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre returns. Magic shop indeed. :pff: It's one of your most recognised brands, even if it was originally nicked from Lankhmar. What were you thinking trying to genericise it? Anyway, this issue's topic is magic as technology. We've had that one before, but of course computer technology has improved at such a breakneck speed that stuff now would seem like sci-fi in the 80's, so this is well worth revisiting in an ironic way. Course, even more amusingly, much of this technology has advanced quite a bit in the intervening years since this issue. This stuff already seems horribly dated.
Figurines of Delivery give you instant UPS to anyone in the world. And unlike the real thing, delivery times and costs aren't an issue. Just pay them once and get a-rocking.
Gems of Location give you a zoomable map of an area. Unfortunately, it doesn't update like google earth. If you find this in a treasure pile it may be laughably misleading.
Horns of Recording are basic all in one recording devices and gramaphones. They can store up to 2 hours, which is better than old tapes and CD's, but nowhere near modern portable players. Ho hum. Gotta draw a line somewhere.
Memory Crystals are one-shot cameras. On the plus side, that means you don't have to worry about developing and printing. On the negative side, duplication is pretty much a no-no. If they get smashed, that's your valuable crime evidence screwed.
Mirrors of communication are video phones with very very limited networks. A dozen or two people at the most. They don't even have proper split screen conference calls. I'm not impressed.
The Slate Folio is your basic PDA or e-reader. Unfortunately it can only store 100 pages in black and white, but on the plus side they can be spell formulas. Again, I'm not very impressed. Let's hope someone advances these as fast as they do real world memory sizes.
Silicon sorcery: We visit Everquest again in these pages, with the PS2 game Champions of Norrath. As with Warcraft, it's once again very obvious that they've taken inspiration from tabletop roleplaying, so taking a little back in return is no problem at all. 7 feats that make D&D dark elves more like Norrathian dark elves? They're a fairly interesting selection too. 4 which involve channeling negative energy to make the lives of enemies a misery, and maybe restore you a little in the process. Undead control for non-spellcasters. And the video-game ability to carry far more than a character of your stats should, which always amuses me. Most of these scale according to the number of racial feats you have, which gives you lots of incentive to go the whole hog with them if it fits your build. These are far better than the bloodline types that only have a couple of things attached to them in previous issues. Once again, having a good source to steal from really helps the design process.
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 6/7
A novel approach: Frankenstein! There's a classic we could do with revisiting, since ravenloft hasn't had much play for quite a while. So here's three options that you can add to your unholy experiments against nature, making them more scary at the cost of a fair amount of money and xp. Boosted control over them, or increased intelligence. And that great staple of mad scientists, adding extra limbs on. And then that's it, which is a real shame given we've had long and imaginative articles on customising your undead. This is not a good use of your frankenstein, monster or doctor. Double the size of this, and maybe we could actually get somewhere.
Under command: The last couple of times, we've been talking about campaign play with a greater degree of character building and continuity. Now they go the opposite direction, and talk about introducing old school random elements to your warband building. While they maintain overall point buy restrictions, they relax the usual alignment ones so you can wind up with quirkier combinations of creatures that may or may not work well together statistically. As usual, there's a fair few variants, from giant monsters to hordes of smaller ones, and card shuffling to auction bidding, which means this little article can get a fair amount of use before you get bored. Good to see them supporting multiple playstyles with the same basic game.
Sage advice: Can you tumble while prone.( Sskip thought so. Andy doessn't. Andy iss stricter than sskip. No pessky cinematics in Andy's game, collins collins )
Can you jump as part of a charge (Yes. Quite ussefull. )
How far do you fall in a single round (All the way, ussually. You have to be very high up to not hit the ground in a ssingle round. )
Can you overrun multiple opponents in a single round. (Only if you miss the firsst one. Once you hit someone, you've got to sstop.)
Can a hiding character with spring attack attack, then hide again (Very tricky, collins collins. Need lots of feats and powers to make that viable. Andy does not recommend it. )
Dragon Issue 327: January 2005
part 7/7
Class acts switches things around so it's all in alphabetical order, instead of the core 4 coming first. No more favouritism for you! :p
Barbarians get The canny barbarian. Go on, go against stereotype. You don't get to survive in the wilds alone for long if you don't have a certain degree of smarts. Thog smash is not the only thing you have to show. You have plenty of skills and tricks that you can use where a fighter would just do the boring thing.
Bards get Bards from History. As with last month's paladins, this covers their historical antecedents. This is rather easier, as traveling musical types show up in every culture.
Clerics get Tokens of faith. Like backgrounds, this is an excuse to squeeze out yet another minor benefit to a specific ability. Innocuous in itself, every little extra counts to the dedicated twink, so watch out.
Druids get 3 new animal companion options. Flying squirrels (not carnivorous, unfortunately. ) Moose, and giant seahorses. 3 HD creatures are CR 1 these days are they? Hmmm. This needs thinking about.
Fighters get the multiclass advice baton passed to them. Fighters really work best as a 1, 2 or 4 level dip for some other combatant class (6 at absolute most for the save symmetry), but they can't go as far as to say one of the core classes is outright crap, so this is a slightly awkward bit of advice. A few levels in ranger, rogue or paladin seem to be the best options for a primary fighter.
Monks get Ranged Monks. While it may be going against stereotypes, like two-weapon fighters and cunning barbarians, this is surprisingly effective. Shuriken, high dex, lots of speed and mobility. You can really ruin someone's day, attacking when they can't reach you, and grabbing their return shots out of the air and sending them straight back. A cool course I hadn't considered before.
Paladins also get their stereotype attacked. Awesome paragons of law and good don't have to be knights in shining armour. Yawn. Heard it all before.
Rangers get Building a better Archer. Another load of feat and equipment advice that does exactly what it says on the tin.
Rogues get Art of the sneak attack. Unlike previous editions, you really want to be doing this as often as possible, and actively creating opportunities to put the enemies at disadvantage so you can deliver the smackdown. Here's a quick checklist of the basic ways to do this. Obviously not aimed at the experienced rules lawyer.
Sorcerers get hit with the flaw bat this month, with 5 ways to make your magic less convenient. Most of these are applicable to any spellcasting class, so this is a generally useful selection others might want to browse as well.
Wizards get Survivalist spells. While wizards aren't limited in their total spells like sorcerers, they should still choose wisely. This is another one that seems curiously prescient of 4th ed thinking, playing up their controlery options. Hmm. Interesting.
Dork tower suffer from gaming withdrawal symptoms. Nodwick & co get to create a lich's tomb for one of their former associates. Nice to see them planting the seeds of adventures for future generations to face up against. Zogonia does the right thing, and is punished for it.
This one's pretty dull. Doing the same theme two issues in a row? That's a new low in repetitiveness, even if they have dropped a few of the regular columns that were already outstaying their welcome. Let's hope it's not too long before they can put together something different and interesting again, because I can only go back to the dungeon for so long at a time.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 1/7
73(100) pages. 3.0 got themed issues for each of the races individually. For 3.5 it looks like they're doing another condensed version, cramming all the demihuman races into one like they did with the classes. Since I'm generally not keen on these shallow skimming themed issues, this once again makes me sigh. Let's see if the individual articles are pleasing, despite not combining into a greater whole.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the Editor: Unlike Matthew, who spent half a year carefully examining the letters and forums to figure out what to change formatwise after he became editor, Erik wastes no time at all in spelling out his intentions. After all, who knows how long you'll have the job, better to make your mark while you can and make people remember you. So the regular columns will become decidedly less so, all the better to fit in big features with lots of cool setting material in. Of course, given their leadup times, it'll still be a few months before this policy really gets going, but still, It's good to see. As long as the magazine continues to evolve and try new things, it's much easier to find something to say about it.
Scale Mail: We start off by quibbling over the precise wording of monty python quotes, which definitely feels like missing the point to me. But then again, some people would say that humour is the only thing you should take seriously.
The next letter is from someone wondering what the reference is in the ale and wenches thing from issue 326. Which makes me realise they didn't actually have appropriate articles inside. False Advertising! Boo!
A more familiar tale is that of someone who gamed when young, stopped for a while, and has now started up again thanking them for keeping going. And it turns out she was the one who originally taught Erik to play back in the day. It is indeed a small world after all.
...... Maybe too small at times, as our next letter concerns the possibility of updating the other Forgotten Realms continents to 3e. Does the magazine have the courage to make solid timeline advancements, or will they just be left in limbo while waterdeep and menzoberranzan get supplement after supplement?
Also very much after my own heart is a letter praising them for trying to kill the overdone promotional blurbs. Unfortunately, the sales evidence shows that as long as they have to try and catch people's eyes on the newsstands, they are needed. The world is faster-paced and more competitive than the 80's, and that's really saying something. At least that's one thing that I already know definitely improves about the magazine once it goes electronic.
Another niche topic that has it's strong fans, but not enough, is mass combat. This is another one you might get a one-off on, but it definitely isn't going to make regular appearances in the magazine.
Weirdly enough, Lovecraft is more mainstream than mass combat these days, with plenty of praise for the themed issue, and more articles inspired by his works in the near future. Funny old thing, madness. It's more popular than you'd think.
The revamp continues to inspire mixed feelings, often within individual people who like some changes, but not others. Here we get two more letters like that. They will continue to tweak the format based on feedback, which seems encouraging.
One thing that's already notably changed is the return of Bazaar of the Bizarre. As we've already noted, Erik is far more of a setting buff than Matthew was, and that was one of the first things he fixed when he put on the viking hat. What's in a name? Well, memories, for a start. If you forget what you've already done, you're doomed to repeat yourself, as I've noted every time they change staff and the new ones cover the same basic topics again.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Halflings? In Races of the Wild? Specious. As. Fuck. Categorisation. Raptorians? Right up there with Shadowdark, Wilden and Razorclaw as a crap name. Skip Williams still can't do fluff to save his life, apparently. Anyway, another splatbook series winds it's way merrily onward. Seems like more than half their releases these days fit into that category.
Lost empires of faerun, of course, takes us back to all those places that went through their own personal apocalypse. As we've seen repeatedly, especially in the late 90's, they certainly do have a lot of them. I'm betting that gives plenty of room for magic items, and quite possibly unearthable prestige classes. Just the thing to give your players rope to hang themselves with.
Also getting quite a bit of attention are White Wolf's licenses of old D&D properties, Ravenloft and Gamma world. One an ok-ish continuation of the existing setting and metaplot, the other a reboot that changes lots of things and tried to make them more serious and community focussed, with painful results. It's odd to have them supported, but not appearing in the official magazine. Wonder who was responsible for that decision.
Two more handy dandy game aids this month. A bunch of markers that you can use to track status effects without scribbling on your sheet every damn time. And a line of molds, providing another solution to the problem of never having enough pieces for your big dungeons. Guess quite a few people are experimenting in this area.
Boardgames as well? Seems like every month, they're covering something new. Navia Dratp seems to be a mecha oriented variant of chess. It's certainly pretty. Can you find the time and space to give it a shot? And a card game too. Grave Robbers from Outer Space. Cheesy B-movies get affectionately lampooned. If Munchkin is losing it's shine, perhaps this will make a good replacement.
Videogames also get in on the action. Devil may cry 3 brings the bishiness and the huge swords with aplomb. And the cut-scenes. Gotta have the extensive cut scenes. And on top of that we see that computer games are experimenting with the subscription based model, rather than buying games individually. The internet really does change everything.
Paragons of the Kindred: Using Kindred as a collective term for the demihuman races? Sorry, doesn't work for me at all, since both incarnations of Vampire have so thoroughly appropriated it as a euphemism. A collection of prestige classes based upon racial stereotypes doesn't sound particularly appealing to me either. If they tried that with real world ethnicities we'd never hear the end of the flamewars.
Chimeric Champions of Garl Glittergold let gnomish clerics also become exceedingly effective illusionists, gaining more deceptive spell-like abilities and the ability to create magic items with illusionist powers so all your buds can get in on the gag. As the only one of these with full spellcasting progressions as well, they're easily the most powerful of these, presuming they don't make so many items that they never advance in level, and kick ass if extended into epic levels.
Itinerant Warders of Yondalla mix priestly spellcasting with roguish agility and halfling sociability, making them pretty flexible, but almost definitely drifting towards a support role. Many players may wind up passing them by because of that.
Justice Hammers of Moradin gain some buffs to their combat abilities and general spell-like tricks, but with only 3/4 BAB and 1/2 spellcasting progression, they won't be able to make the best use of them overall.
Mystic Keepers of Corellon Larethian also try to mix priestly progression with elvish stereotypes and general protective powers, which means they don't do any one of those particularly brilliantly. Once again, trying to be a generalist is shown to be suboptimal in 3e. Not particularly impressed with this collection.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 3/7
Dwarves at war: When you're short and stubby, you have to use somewhat different combat tactics to be effective in battle with humans and even bigger creatures. For dwarves, this is compounded by their low breeding rates, which mean they can win most of the battles against goblinoids, but still lose the war if they're not careful. It's no wonder that they have to specialise in asymmetric warfare and move underground, where small size is an advantage if they want to survive. So this justifies some of their stereotypes, like wearing heavy armor as standard, and undercuts others, like the idea of them fighting honorably. That makes it pretty cool reading, as it shows how much the 3.5 rules do and don't reflect the source material. Plus the tactics here are good for adventuring parties in general, especially in a dungeon environment. I think it manages to balance the various demands on their writers at the moment quite nicely.
Nobody's perfect: They've scrapped Heroic Feats, but this article reads like a condensation of 6 of those, with 4 flaws for each of the core demihuman races. Since they can fit 24 of them over 3 pages, this makes this article more efficient than that column, but it is another one that revels in the very worst of stereotypes, and doesn't leave me with much to say. They seem to be about equal with existing Flaws, so twinking out by taking several at 1st level won't be particularly easy, as you'll nearly always lose more than you gain. Once again, the shallow skimming leaves me pretty bored here, showing that being too general results in no-one getting a particularly great treatment.
Gaining prestige: Force Missile Mage? That's a very narrow specialisation indeed, more suited to a feat than a whole prestige class. Indeed, they can only find enough tricks enhancing it to make it a 5 level one, and since you have to be at least 6th level to get in, it'll never be the primary component of your build. You sacrifice one spellcasting level at the start, which means you can still get 9th level spells and blow stuff up with far more impressive spells. Since being known to specialise in one energy type, even one that's relatively tricky to resist like force spells is an invitation for enemies to concentrate on nullifying your best tricks, and direct damage-dealing isn't the best use of a spellcaster's valuable time anyway, I think other wizards are quite justified in looking down upon them. Basic blasty spells might be a good way to start your career, but you really ought to be thinking bigger and working on controlling the whole situation once you have a few levels under your belt.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 4/7
The ecology of the will-o-wisp: We've already had this one, way back in issue 99. And you ma'am, are no Nigel Findley, may he rest in peace. In many ways, it's the opposite of that article, matter of fact where it was dramatic, vague on their origins and history where Nigel was very specific, parthenogenic where the original gave them three genders, pessimistic about their lack of manipulative organs where the original was transcendent, it's as if the writer was deliberately trying to make it different in as many respects as possible. About the only thing that remains is the memory sharing. A very curious decision. It's not actually that bad, but it does throw into even sharper relief just how formulaic these entries have become lately. Curious. And rather displeasing. No, I don't think I'm happy with this one.
Winning Races: This column comes to the end of it's short run on a relative high, with a cool new racial variant for Eberron's Shifters. While they gain aspects of various mundane animals, Saurian Shifters gain dinosaur traits, which is inherently more awesome, but also makes them even more feared by common people. They can also purchase regular shifter feats, which means they'll be far more expandable than most races introduced in an article and then never seen again. Why should elves get all the fun when it comes to variants for every situation? They're obviously better suited to the fighty classes, since all their transformation buffs are physical ones, but since they're an ECL +0 race, their bonuses and penalties aren't too high to be crippling if you go against type. I think they deserve to be reprinted again in a proper book.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More elven magical items? No, Can't think of anything clever to say this time. Can't even muster sarcasm, I'm afraid. Elves and magic are just another day at the office by now.
Armor of the Long Journey is full plate that doesn't encumber you when walking. Combat is still a pain, but that's only a tiny part of your day. One of those nice lifechangers for an adventurer used to discomfort.
Boots of the Woodland not only help your stealth capabilities, but also protect you from the elements. Which means you can get another cloak which does something completely different. Maybe a robe of stars or something. In any case, this is pretty handy.
The Cape of the [strike]gerbil[/strike] General gives you a charisma bonus, and those around you a morale bonus. This is not as useful as it would have been last edition.
The Hand of the Creator is just an elven-blessed dagger that gives you a permanent case of faerie fire when hit. This is actually rather irritating, and'll really put a crimp in your dungeon delving. Hit each enemy once for maximum effect.
Quivers of Plenty are actually better than the previous edition's equivalents, as you don't need to keep one arrow in as a template, and they can produce all sorts of different materials. Since that'll help you penetrate annoying DR, this is pretty useful.
Rods of Revealing get rid of illusions. As charged items, they won't last as long or be as unobtrusive as the similar glasses. Meh.
Shields of Obstruction spread out into walls of thorns which'll break up the whole battlefield. Use it before they get near, then you can shoot arrows over it and bombard them while they fight through the thorns.
Thespians Masks are another one-form transformation device. What they turn you into is fairly obvious when you look at them. Another attempt to give us stuff weaker than what we can manage with basic 1st level spells.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 5/7
Silicon sorcery: God of War! If any video game character is an inspiration to D&D PC's, it's Kratos, who is the very model of a modern angsty omnicidal maniac. A conversion of his signature weapons, the Blades of Chaos, seems like the kind of thing that'd get the players either drooling or quaking, depending on which side of them they're on. With near indestructibility, the ability to bypass any kind of damage reduction, a free whirlwind attack feat, and as a neat little cherry to top things off, resistance to grappling attacks that would disable their use, they're a pretty substantial power-up to anyone who can use them, even taking into account the ability score sacrifices to attune to them. If you want to take on old school munchkin players who insist their characters have weapons like Stormbringer or Excalibur, this should let you play in the same leagues and result in much amusing fanboy bitching about which is more badass. The article is worth it for that alone.
Spellcraft has kept it's new name, unlike the Bazaar, and is still rather insubstantial compared to the old Arcane Lores. The pages seem to go by a lot quicker these days, thanks to the double-spaced lines and larger borders. This month, we get a load of bardic spells, drawing upon the more spooky, haunting side of music. That seems quite familiar from Halloween issues past, albeit not as overdone as it could have been.
Fugue of Tvash Prull is a variant on Confusion using music. Drive them mad with your organ playing, so they never get a chance to get near enough to attack, and are distracted further dealing with their companions.
Love's Lament makes you broooooooooooooood about your romantic failures. This has typically prosaic mechanical penalties in 3.5. I guess it's up to your own roleplaying skills to make it interesting.
Symphonic Nightmare is another music based variant on familiar spells. Disturb their sleep, with the usual problems to healing, spell refreshing and sanity. Well, I guess Bards have to work around their limited spell selections however they can these days.
Tvash Prull's Bonefiddle passes through your flesh and saws against your skeleton, causing hideous pain, neat visuals, and unpleasant sonic damage. Awesome, and another reminder that Sonic is really becoming one of the hot new attack types.
Undersong lets you substitute Perform for Concentration checks via soothing music. Take this as a 1st level spell straight away, and you can effectively free up a full set of skill points to max out something else interesting instead. This collection definitely increases your bard's versatility by a decent amount.
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 6/7
Under command: This column comes to an end as well, with another ambitious attempt to make it more flexible. We've had campaign play and random generation, now we have nonlethal competitions, which is also a pretty neat idea. After all, Blood Bowl did pretty well for Games Workshop in the 80's as light relief from a universe where there is only war. Sooner or later your players are going to feel the same way, and want to try something that isn't an all-or-nothing battle to the death. Competing in races, football games, and capture the flag can still be interesting, especially since you're still allowed to use your various special powers to hamper and knock out the enemies. As with the removal of Chainmail, it's definitely a shame to see this go when they're really starting to get used to it and push it's limits. I don't think we'll really notice 3 pages more D&D stuff, but the loss of minis coverage will make a real difference to the diversity of the magazine.
Sage advice: How long does it take to draw a projectile weapon (Same as melee weapons, yess)
Does drawing a wand provoke an AoO (Andy doessn't think so, especially if you have quick draw. Very useful, collins collins.)
Why does it take a full move action to switch a weapon from one hand to another. (Nassty chaotic combat, yess. Even that takes several sseconds if you don't want to drop it and have to sscrable in the dirt. Ssimple things can be very complicated. Try programming a robot to pass things from one hand to another and you'll ssee)
Can you only fire a crossbow every other round (No. Reloading iss a move action. You can sstill shoot once each round, even without special featss. )
How much effort is it to catch a boomerang. How about other things (Good question. It's Andy's firsst chance to make up some new ruless, preciouss. Andy is very happy about that, collins collins)
Can you take a standard action plus a free action as part of a readied action (no)
What happens when you do an epic tumble check to stand up as a free action and fail (It takses the normal amount of time, preciouss. Acrobatics is tricksy.)
Can doing an attack of opportunity provoke another attack of opportunity (Yes, collins collins. It can all get very confusing if theress lots of people in a fight. )
How long does it take a normal person to apply poison to a weapon (A standard action, yess?)
Dragon Issue 328: February 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Barbaric mounts. They may not have a special power enabling it, but they can still train something thematic. Snow apes! Komodo dragons! Giant vultures! This is one that's useful for any class. Who wouldn't want to have some cool animal to ride everywhere.
Bards get Heavy Metal. Take a single level dip in fighter, and take still spell as a feat, and bards can be pretty effective in full plate armour. They have lots of abilities that aren't affected by it anyway, and the extra AC will make up for the slight drop in magical power. Plus it's a great route into Blackguard ;)
Clerics get Peripheral beliefs. If you follow your god's traditions above and beyond the basics, you get a minor benefit. Essentially less stringent relatives of Exalted feats, this is a pretty neat idea. Are you willing to pay that price?
Druids get The Storm Druid. They replace their animal related special powers with weather themed ones. Since this involves giving up wild shape, this is probably a step down in power overall, but they're still exceedingly cool, and entirely competitive with all the other primary casters. I'd have no objection playing them.
Fighters get The Roman Legionnaire. This is basically an equipment list for anyone who wants to model their fighter on one of these guys. A good reminder just how ridiculously heavy soldiers packs are. Jesus H. I'm exhausted lugging around 2 stone of music equipment. How do they handle marching with packs more than half their own weight.
Monks get the multiclass advice this time. Starting off as a Fighter, paladin, or rogue before moving into the meditation business can give you valuable assets. A single level of arcane spellcasting focussed on maneuverability spells can also prove surprisingly effective. Interesting idea. Seems like it would combine well with Halfling as a race.
Paladins get Paladin domains. Sacrifice your turning ability for some other power more thematic to your god. As with the storm druid, these are probably a slight step down overall, particularly if you factor in divine channelling feats. But as undead turning is an often useless ability anyway, if you're not planning to go down that route, an ability that you can use proactively in lots of situations could be an improvement.
Rangers get advice on the best spells to pick. No great surprises here.
Rogues get Rogue Law. Rogue skills can be applied to a whole range of ends. Here's a few of the ways you could reskin this class.
Sorcerers get Not your typical spellcaster. Since they don't need to study for their powers, or owe loyalty to any cosmic force, anyone could find they have the Gift, regardless of personality. Annoyingly, the sample descriptions are still all slanted towards the mysterious arcane badass, which contradicts the previous statement. I roll my eyes. They get bluff for a good reason people. Showing off when you don't need too is not a good idea.
Wizards get wizardry 101. More explicit focus on choosing your role. Yes, tactics are a very good idea. We get that by now.
Nodwick fails his save vs flashback. Dork tower has an adventure where miniatures really don't seem a good option. Zogonia does what everyone dreams of doing to their ex.
With an exceedingly unimpressive themed section, and the demise of many of the regular columns, including ones introduced just 6 months ago, this issue manages to be both dull and worrying, which is not a good combination. It makes me hope Erik Mona knows what he's doing, because changing things up this quickly is a bit unsettling. Oh well. At least it keeps me wondering, which is better than knowing I'm going to get basically the same thing every issue. Done, Done, onto the next one.
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 1/7
107 (108) pages. Still going back to their roots this issue, but a different set of them. Instead of dungeoneering or demihumans, it's the original mythological sources of their monsters. We've certainly managed entertaining articles on that in previous editions. I hope they can repeat that feat without sucking out the sense of wonder, now that feats are a formal thing.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed.
In this issue:
From the editor: Time for Erik to do the "Let me tell you about my characters" thing that all the editors do at one point or another. (apart from Kim, who of course didn't game) And just like Matthew's editorials, the good practice and teamwork they try and preach in the articles is nothing like the drama driven, PvP loving, bad joke cracking actual play sessions in his past. It would be amusing to read about if it weren't so very consistent, and thus all the more baffling that they try to get new gamers to play in a style so different to the one that got them on board. I fully agree with him that characters should change and develop, not just get more powerful as they level up, and it's hard to do that when they're all built with a 20 level plan and work together in a team perfectly the whole time. Now perhaps you should accept some more articles based on that assumption.
Scale Mail: We kick off with another letter from someone who found the magazine delivered exactly what they wanted, when they needed it. It's good to be in tune with the secret desires of the public.
Of course, there are still quite a few old-school things they don't do. They haven't done cardboard inserts that you assemble into castles or vehicles in a long time. Since doing so again requires both approval from the WotC higher-ups, and a careful calculation of how to do so economically, it's an idea they can't do very often.
No surprise that there's already someone bored by the bite-sized, highly formulaic columns of the new format. Since they're already in the process of changing that, Erik can be fairly relaxed about this. However, the idea of bringing back Dragonmirth seems to be a rather trickier subject. Are artists really that much more expensive than writers for the amount of space they fill? Is a picture literally worth a thousand words?
Somewhat off-topic is a request for info on a long out of print book. I think internet forums would definitely answer this one more quickly and effectively, and maybe even save you the expense of paying for a physical copy from ebay.
Since the cover blurbs will be staying for the foreseeable future, they get asked to bring back the clean cover images inside. Since this saves them money coming up with more content anyway, that's one they're quite happy to grant.
Somewhat more amusing is a letter about always ensuring you have a gaming group by chaining them up in the basement. The attic will do perfectly fine too if you live in a place that doesn't have basements. ;)
And finally, we finish with two general opinion pieces. More stuff where people talk about their gaming experiences, and more horror stuff seem to be the big lessons to take from them, and seem easy enough to provide, given the number of submissions of that sort they get.
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 2/7
First watch: The climate splatbooks continue, with Sandstorm. The harsh desert produces some badass race variants and prestige classes. Just the thing for if your DM's a hardass who likes tracking rations and water.
They also give substantial promotion for various minis, including official ones based upon the recent MM3 creatures. On the third party side, Todd Mcfarlaine's representation of Conan, and a rather large dragon seem pretty decent, but it's Rackham's black paladins that get their top marks. Seems like everything comes prepainted these days.
Quite a few cool D20 books this month too. The best of Grimtooth's traps gives you another chance to get your sadist on. Now if there's one thing this magazine hasn't done enough of in terms of crunch, it's traps. Monte Cook does everything a little more refined, in Arcana Evolved. A whole new set of classes and magic, feats and worldbuilding, all fitting together a bit more neatly than regular D&D. I do rather like this. There's also another epic book. Full metal fantasy: Iron kingdoms world guide. Another world comes into the OGL fold, so you can crossover with ease.
Another game aid designed for quick ease of play. Green Dragon release not only more stamps for marking objects on your battlemaps, but little rollers as well. So cute! I can see why they picked this one to promote.
Our computer game this month is another D&D one. Dragonshard brings Eberron to the screen. Mass combat as well? Interesting. Don't remember hearing much about this one. Was it any good?
And finally, we have a movie. A Sound of Thunder. Ray Bradbury provides the inspiration for a tale of time traveling weirdness. Only spun out quite a bit. And not done very well, if reviews are to be believed. Oh well, the original story is still here.
The beasts of beowulf: Beowulf is definitely very good source material for D&D, as it showcases not only adventuring material, but also the other stages of the adventurer lifecycle, cascading plots as the consequences of your actions come back to haunt you, and settling down with a realm of your own at high level. (until an even bigger threat comes along to finish you off for good) It surprises me little to learn that this particular set of myths was dug from the archives and repopularised by none other than a certain J. R. R. Tolkien in the early 20th century. Being a teacher at a prestigious university and a cunning linguist lets you have access to rare source materials like virtually no other position, and it makes me wonder what else is lying forgotten in those dusty halls, ready to be liberally stolen from and repurposed, since it's all well in public domain by now. I certainly know there's quite a few cool stories in the bible that get neglected compared to the same old set of adam, noah, moses and jesus that get brought up again and again. But anyway. This article gives us pretty straight mechanical conversions of Beowulf, and his three biggest adversaries. Beowulf is a 15th level fighter, and they set Grendel so he's a challenge, but not an extreme one, Grendel's mum so she's a tough but achievable challenge for him, and of course the dragon so he can't really beat it by brute force on his own. That's pleasingly joined-up thinking by the writer and editor, and a huge improvement on old-school articles full of sample NPC's with illegal abilities. He would be more optimal mixing a level or two of ranger with his fighter ones so he could get those wilderness skills without going cross-class though. Oh well, can't expect miracles of charop every time, can we?
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 3/7
W:fF is out this month. I remember when they were spoiling W:tA in here. Oh how things haven't changed. There's still never been a WoD article in this magazine. And there never will be, it seems.
Mesopotamian mythos: Curiously enough, the mesopotamian pantheon wasn't one of those given stats in any edition of Deities & Demigods/Legends and Lore, even though they made a fair number of appearances in the Planescape books. You have to go all the way back to Issue 16 to find a full feature on them, and that was pretty sketchy, trying to cram as many as possible into a couple of pages. Hopefully by putting 12 of them over 11 pages, we can get more depth than 26 over 2.
Adad is your basic aggressive and unpredictable weather god, subjecting you to storms or droughts at a whim, to keep people strong and on their toes. Like Thor, this makes him both popular with adventurers and fearfully propitiated by common folk. It takes an englishman to grumble about the weather, but not be scared of it.
Anu remains the sky god, the all-father, the guy who tries to keep both the fractious other gods and mortals in order. A thankless job, but one you get to do plenty of smiting in, since there's never a shortage of monsters and criminals in D&D.
Belet-ili is the earth mother, a classic dualism that seems to repeat itself over and over again in mythology. It takes two to tango, and it take a village to raise a child. As a priest, you've got to make sure you balance those aspects, and not let your current kids get in the way of making more ;)
Ea is the god of the water, and also rules lawyers, as he was the one who inspired the creation of the Ark, letting people save themselves when the other gods technically weren't allowed too. Guess that trope is as old as the Code of Hammurabi then.
Enlil is the god of the wind and lower atmosphere, showing the mesopotamians had quite a finely tuned set of different deities for various celestial occurrences. He's another one who's all about the status quo, unlike the more flighty wind gods of other cultures. Still, if someone's flagrantly breaking the law, being able to call a tornado does make a big difference in getting them back in line.
Ereshkigal is of course the goddess of the underworld, which is always an unpopular but needed job, as you can't have ghosts and zombies wandering the earth whenever they feel like it. You might be able to rescue one or two people from her clutches, but it'll come at a cost and won't last forever, because death always comes back.
Ishtar is a lot less benevolent than her 2e interpretation, as they remind us that being obsessed with love often has nasty consequences. She might venture to the underworld to save you, but she'll also dump your ass and treat you like dirt when she gets bored. When your primary pleasure is in the chase, you're never going to be satisfied with what you've got for long.
Marduk is the guy who's job it is to actively kick the butt of chaos and evil in all it's forms, and is rather more down-to earth than the embodiments of natural forces. One for the paladins amongst us.
Nergal is one of the other well known names from this pantheon, as he's a pretty textbook example of a demon, engaging in cruelty and slaughter, sometimes as a punishment from the other gods, and sometimes just for the lulz, because life is harsh and unfair, so there. His priests can expect to be pretty unpopular if they make their job public knowledge, so they remain pretty secretive.
Ninurta is primarily the god of the plough, but all that hard physical labor and good food means he's pretty damn buff, so he has a secondary portfolio in athletics and can do some pretty impressive feats of heroism too. Marduk may volunteer for the big jobs, but it's important to have several backup heroes in case one is already on a quest.
Shamash is your basic lawful good sun god, shedding light on matters, and with a secondary portfolio of travel, given the way the sun traverses the sky every day. As with his dad the sky, you'll never lack problems to fix as a cleric of this guy.
Sin is the god of the moon, and a lot less naughty than his name would indicate in english. His job is to make sure the natural cycles of life continue as they should, which means he has quite a few druids amongst his followers. So this article does actually manage to introduce some material I haven't seen before, and make it look decently suited to D&D adventurers. That's pretty pleasing.
Warhammer gets it's new edition. This is nice. Still a gritty and grim as ever.
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 4/7
The petit tarrasque and other monsters: We finish off the themed section with a fun little system-light look at how many mythological monsters differ from their D&D incarnations. Many of these were originally singular creatures detailed in a specific source, and some were even more dangerous, particularly the basilisk, which is incredibly unfair in it's ability to take you down even if you do use tactics. They save a considerable amount of space by reusing the statistics of existing monsters with minor alterations, which lets them go into more historical detail. The whole thing is presented in the kind of lighthearted semi-IC writing style that has been conspicuously absent since 2001, which is very pleasing to see indeed. If Erik is already getting the chance to implement changes like that, then the magazine should become a lot less dry over the next year.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Hmm. Welcome to the start of another semi-regular series. As with ecologies, the various demon lords are an excellent ground for a little extra information on their nature, histories, powers, tactics, and relationships with others. This certainly has the potential to fill a few years with.
Kicking things off is the guy who might not rule the top layer outright, but certainly has more influence there than any other demon lord. Pazuzu, lord of the air. Soaring above the realms of the other princes, traveling to other planes to do a bit of tempting, he's one of the better adjusted and least bogged down in endless rivalries of the abyssal lords. This is an excellent example of the melding of fluff and crunch, as they detail powers, minions, personality traits, modus operandi, lair, and all sorts of other bits and pieces in a manner that makes them very easy to use. After all, when all it takes is saying his name three times, it's not hard at all to introduce him and his cultists into any game. And for those of you who have no objection to your games getting vile and dark, we have his Cultist prestige class, so now you too can soar the skies, and breathe swarms of locusts at your enemies. This is very definitely muahahaha! worthy material, that's useful against characters of all levels. Spanning a full 12 pages, this is indeed a rather good feature, going into the right amount of depth to make this useful reading, but not bloated. Very pleasing indeed. Lets hope subsequent entries keep up this strong standard.
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 5/7
The ecology of the kenku: Connecting to the last article, one of the other creatures that got fairly substantial changes in both the fluff and mechanics in the edition change. Kenku used to be mysterious hawk people who lived in the wilderness and stole and tricked people for some inscrutable reasons. Now they're slightly less mysterious flightless crow people who live in slums, are frequently ridden with disease, and trick and steal to survive. A definite step down in terms of glamour, but that's what you get for pissing off Pazuzu. Still, they retain their ability to cooperate well in the face of danger and pull off extra large heists. This ecology is slightly larger than their recent ones, but retains pretty much the same formula, refined slightly with a greater number of interesting sidebars and actual play ideas. Like the creature themselves, the writers are being eminently practical and listening to reader feedback. And these are still one of the best creatures for using cleverly, with their array of minor powers that can both deceive and be surprisingly effective. No great objections here.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: In theme here, with a bunch of real world mythical adaptions. One would think these would be well tapped by now, yet somehow they always seem to find a few new obscure ones. Maybe people are making them up and passing them off as ancient. Let's see which sources they favour this time.
Alatyr is a stone from Russian mythology. It gives waters near it healing powers. Since you need to bury it and dig it up again, it's probably better for a village than an adventuring party.
Canoloa's Harp can put people to sleep, which is not generally the sign of good music, but still gets it legendary status. Obviously from a time before every wizard learnt sleep as routine training.
Durandal is one we've seen many-a-time in the magazine, albeit mostly in the 80's. It kicks ass, makes you braver, and is near impossible to destroy. Another one who's legendary powers seem rather unimpressive compared to the quirky stuff good D&D items do.
The Fount of Acadne lets real things float, while fakes sink like a stone. Now that's more like it. A quirky power that's useful in everyday life and hasn't been seen here before. I approve.
Kongo is actually a trident from Japan. It may not look that impressive, but it boosts your wisdom and glows in the dark. Should help make you a better ruler.
The Shedshed is an egyptian battle standard that not only provides the usual morale boost, but also wraps you up and flies you away if you get taken down. Now that is pretty cool both conceptually and visually. I like the idea of giving my villain this.
The Teeth of the Sown Men are your basic argonauts dragon teeth jobbie. Seen them here before. Mind you, that was once again in the 80's, and the mechanics were surprisingly fiddly. This version seems much more user-friendly
The White Buffalo of Calf Pipe is another low-key sensible one. It's smoke makes everyone more reasonable, letting you pow wow happily with your enemies and come to an equitable solution. Looks like it's another mixed bag in this department, just as it usually is with the class acts.
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 6/7
A novel approach: Time for self-promotion in here again. It gets increasingly galling that they do that virtually half the time in this column. Eberron wants to get in on the lucrative novel business that the Realms and Krynn have enjoyed for decades and who can blame them. In the process they get to expand on the setting from a first person perspective, and showcase the things they think are important for adventurers there. These include ties to other people, which shows up everywhere, airships, which are slightly less common, and living spells rampaging across the landscape as a particularly unpredictable and arbitrary form of magical fallout, which is pretty original. Hopefully Matt Forbeck can put them together to make a story that couldn't be told anywhere else. At least the new crunch is fun. We can always do with more airships and weird ooze variants.
Sage advice: Are undead and constructs immune to flanking (no)
Can they be affected by flesh to stone (no)
Can they be affected by ability score penalties (yess, as long as they're not immune to it for other reasons. They're such a pain, collins collins)
Are golems immune to virtually all magic or not (Direct magic, yess. Indirect effects, no. You can sstill hurt them with nassty acid you've conjured, for example.)
Would stonebreaker acid hurt golems normally (yess. Stone golems would sssssizzzzzle away, preciouss)
What do constructs use for concentration checks (No modifier. )
Is there a save to resist energy drain from undead. (Usually, no. They're nassty. But not as nassty as older editions. Then it was nearly impossible to get your levels back. Poor Andy. Andy hatses losing levels, collins collins)
Does a sunblade destroy vampires (no)
How big is a liches phylactery (Tiny. Eassy for them to hide, yess)
Where does a destroyed lich reappear. (Ssomewhere nearby. )
What type of area does undead turning affect (60' burst.)
When a cleric has a temporary cha boost, does it affect their turning (Yess. Nasty scary clerics, collins collins. Makses for complicated bookkeeping as well. Andy hateses that. )
Can clerics turn undead while invisible (yes)
Dragon Issue 329: March 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Support your local Barbarian. A good spellcaster companion to buff you and provide backup is just what the doctor ordered. Sorcerer is particularly thematic for this.
Bards get Using the Universal Language. Communicating intent by music alone might seem incredibly cheesy, but it can work. Here's some advice on determining the difficulties. How very amusing.
Clerics get Tokens of faith II. Obviously this one's hit a seam that they can mine until they run out of portfolios, as they have more coming. So here's 8 more symbols and the minor benefits they grant.
Druids get History of the Druids. More fluff we've seen done before, better, in more detail.
Fighters get The Knifer. In a head on battle, knife fighter is a suboptimal choice. But they are very versatile, can be justified as tools, and there are lots of places you can't take bigger weapons. A fighter who specializes in them can be just about competitive in both hand to hand and missile fighting, and great in a city campaign. (I recommend combining this with the thug variant from UA. ) And there are several prestige classes to make you even more effective. A timely reminder.
Monks get Principles of of the Monastic Code. Ahh, the joys of mystical mumbo jumbo that actually works. Makes all that meditation and celibacy worth it. Not like in the real world, where virtue has to be its own reward. :sigh:
Paladins get Daydream Believers. Gnome paladin is another odd choice that can still work. Here's some advice as to the outlook of a "typical" gnome paladin. Riding a dire badger and with a ready quip as he smites evil, these guys definitely don't fall into the lawful dick category.
It's rangers turn to get half a dozen flaws. They do seem to be following quite definite formulas for these. What will they do when they've all had a turn at each one?
Rogues get The story so far. 4 more backgrounds, each with it's own minor benefit. You know the formula for this one by now as well.
Sorcerers get the multiclass advice this month. A couple of levels in paladin works rather well. Fighter, monk and rogue can provide nice boosts to your survivability with a dip as well. Not too much though, as with any primary caster.
Wizards get Swarm Familiar. What an evil idea. Instead of one pet, you can have a whole bunch of them. Fly, my prettys! Ahahahahaha! I very much like this idea.
Nodwick steals from Homer's script. Dork tower debunks some myths of their own. Zogonia fails their interaction with NPC rolls again.
Yea, verily 'twas a pleasing issue to mine eyes. The columns departed replaced with articles of greater flavour, and the return to long-abandoned topics made for most pleasant reading. Alas, next month is once again the month of tomfoolery, and I fear young master Mona may not have had time to prepare a full issue of japes and pranks with which to lighten our spirits. Shall we proceed, my history-delving compatriots?
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 1/7
78(108) pages. What time is it? Half past insanity? That means it's Flayer time again! Everyone break out the spinal fluid, and tip a toast to the monster with the most. And the artist too, who obviously paid a lot more attention to the actual description in the books than Rebecca Guay did last time. Let's see if they can similarly balance setting faithfulness and a sense of fun inside.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the Editor: Safe to say that Erik has agonised over what to do this month ever since he got the job. And thankfully, it looks like he'll be trying more than his recent predecessors to amuse, even if he hasn't had time to source a whole joke section. Now he just has to hope complaints from the readers or his superiors don't result in it getting scrapped next year. Will they be able to go to town next year, or will it be back to the serious shit? How much is it up to the readers, and how much is it up to the company? Well, at least I've got a fair amount of hope for this issue now anyway.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is one of general praise, but the things that really stand out are the return of Bazaar of the Bizarre, and a request for more big features like the giant maps. People want to feel challenged at least a bit by the things they get, otherwise they aren't really learning anything new.
Another request they seem quite likely to grant is a Class Act on swapping out mounts for other tricks for Paladins. Like Wizard's familiars, there's a lot of people who don't want to bother with a squishy and sometimes irritating animal companion.
Some schools frown on gaming. Others encourage it, especially if the teachers are also gamers. It's nice to see the good guys (and girls too, in this case) getting into positions of power.
Also very nice to see is the fact that their Campaign Classics issue did so well in sales, and got so many positive letters that they're making it a yearly thing each January, along with the april, june and october regulars. At least, as long as Paizo has it, as this cool idea does not survive the transition to electronic issues, for reasons only known to WotC upper management.
Somewhat more negative are two letters criticising them for putting articles in the previews that don't actually show up. For all their lead-up times, things can still go wrong at the last minute. The world will never be perfect, no matter how organised you are.
And finally, we have an amusing request for a Sage Advice compendium. It would certainly sell, but the question is how the hell you would organise something like that. It's a sufficiently large logistical challenge that they don't feel up to it at the moment. Wimps.
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Another return to a fairly popular series from last edition, only more general, and less detailed. Lords of madness does Aberrations, with a particular focus on the ever popular Aboleths, Beholders and Illithids. As usual these days, we also get prestige classes that make you extra good at killing them. And Races of Eberron continues the splatbooking, giving new crunch for shifters, warforged, and all the rest. Since this isn't rehash, I hope there'll be a decent amount of setting expansion.
There's also D&D for dummies. Hoo boy. Not published by WotC, but written by the big writers for the game. Designed to get on bookshelves that the regular books don't, and hopefully lure in some new, or more likely old lapsed players. Interesting business.
Another very cool D20 supplement this month. Hamunuptra. A big boxed set full of egyptian coolness. That's a nice turnup for the books. If only we had more of these. Still, it makes the ones we do get even more special. To think that in the 90's I used to take them for granted.
Two more bits of aid in your visual representation. Another set of wire radius plotters, to help you with your blasty spells and breath weapons. And if you want something a little more solid, there's Worldworks Games' Chunky Dungeons. We've got plenty of tiles, now you can go 3D for extra visual flair. They do seem rather fond of encouraging you to use these. I suppose it helps keep the support industries in business.
Our mini this month ties in with last month's product. Iron Kingdoms is another gameline spinning off in all directions, including this, putting their own spin on classic fantasy tropes and blending them with steampunk. Well, something similar worked pretty well for shadowrun, so why not.
The boardgame they've chosen to promote is Arkham Horror. Cthulhu seems to be pretty popular with the current developers, so that's hardly surprising. Can you save the day like the guy who escaped from Innsmouth, or will your sanity be destroyed and the world doomed.
Steve Jackson games continues it's conversion from a gaming company, to a more general geeky one, with Munchkin getting supplements and t-shirts. I believe this is another instance where I shrug.
And finally, along with the usual cross promotion for their other magazines, they include two competitions here as well. Another thing from a few months ago recurrs, as they give us a chance to win a Genki Gang hat. And Origins has a prestige class competition. I'm sure you have a few of those in your notepads anyway, why not try your luck with them for free stuff. Watch out for the copyright terms.
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 3/7
Enter the far Realm: Bruce Cordell has already given us one classic epic article that has the potential to really change the course of your game, in issue 258's attack of the machines. Now he repeats the trick with a 17 page spectacular on the Far Realm, the non-euclidean universe outside the commonly traveled planar cosmology where pretty much everything is alive. Since this is a Lovecraftian realm which is inherently bad for the sanity of normal creatures exposed to it, visiting and coming back unchanged is as tricky as the most hostile elemental planes, and you really don't want it to leak back into the prime material plane. Like that, there's plenty of material for both people who want to combat the threat to the status quo, and those who align themselves with it for the cool powers that are to be had. Unlike the Sheens, however, the creatures from the far realm are presented as pretty unambiguously bad, which means this isn't quite as flexible as his previous offering. However, the new spells, monsters and magical items are better designed to offer a set of challenges suitable for adventurers of every level, while the Sheens stuff was mid-scooped and needed patching the next year to fully support a full campaign. Still, despite the tradeoff of less originality/more polish, it's a very cool article indeed, and one that again offers the potential of many expansions in the future. Let's hope they can make them good too, and not dilute the theme or grind it into the ground with repetitiveness.
The Umbragen: Since Eberron tries to fit in everything that's in D&D, there was no way they could leave out the Drow. However, that just gives Keith Baker all the more incentive to recontextualise them, make sure they're different from their Realms and Greyhawk relatives in interesting ways. They're nomadic hunters rather than having huge underground cities, which means they might be more individually dangerous, but lack the high-end infrastructure and luxury a place like Menzoberranzan provides. They also favor nonstandard classes, with Warlock and Soulknife being their most common PC classes, which makes them quite distinctive to fight. And like Eberron's new races, they get a nice big chunk of racial feats that allow you to customise them in thematic ways, making them even more connected to shadow and darkness than regular drow. While it does feel like they're including stuff from other supplements to encourage Gotta Collect 'Em All!, this is a case where it feels natural rather than shoehorned in, as they're only picking a few appropriate things. Once again, the care used in designing the world and integrating it with the system is paying off for them.
Fiction: Coming home by Matt Forbeck. Their new Eberron novels get a double whammy of promotion, following on from last month, with a little story using the same characters and set immediately before them. It's not particularly substantial as a story in itself, being about half character banter, and half action scene, charting the course of a single encounter as our heroes try to clear out an area of Living Fireballs. But it does serve to establish their personalities pretty decently, and hint at what might be coming in the future for them. I think that once again, their desire for self-promotion is coming ahead of their desire to tell stories that are really good in and of themselves, which is disappointing. The magazine may be improving again in some ways, but this department is still a pale shadow of what it used to be.
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 4/7
The ecology of the Chuul: Mike Mearls takes the reins here, providing us with some fiction in the ecologies for the first time in 4 years. Nice to see them allowing a bit of that again. This is mildly in theme, tackling one of the more recent aberrations in the monster books. As with the choker, the fiction portrays it as new in the world IC as well as OOC. Sure, the explanation is basically a wizard did it, but it's done with style and finesse, putting his own distinctive spin on the idea. And now they've escaped into the wider world, and spread their depredations ever further. Strong heroes are needed to stop this, with muscles of steel, and wills of iron ;) With several bits of fun such as the random trophies table, this is a considerable improvement on most of the recent ecologies. Makes me wonder if Ed is ever going to come back to doing these articles. In any case, this demonstrates that a good writer can take this format and make it shine, which is pleasing to see.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Assassins get their turn this month. Easily the most popular prestige class, they might not get regular monthly attention like the core classes, but they still get plenty in all sorts of supplements. Once again, you can have a little more here.
Bolts of Arcane Penetration go through any cover the victim has. This is useful for nearly anyone. Unless you're trying to kill normal people, in which case you really won't need this.
The Mask of the Reaper is a big help in becoming a scary legendary killer like Jason or Leatherface, while not being recognised in everyday life. The illustration provides a pretty good example of the kind of thing it looks like.
Quiet Daggers not only grant the expected stealth bonuses, the more powerful ones give you free silent spell metamagic. Since D&D assassins are spellcasters, but not brilliant ones, this'll be a lot more worthwhile than burning a feat on this.
Requiem Jars are an easy way of disposing of a victims remains permanently, while ensuring you still have proof you killed them. Very neat and well-tailored. I like this.
The Ring of Stalking lets you track people anywhere. It isn't totally unobtrusive though. But all sorts of things glow in D&D land. How are you supposed to figure out they're a stalking assassin just from that?
The Rod of Deadly Function is a cool multipurpose device that'll be useful both for getting into places and killing things there. Like any swiss army knife, this'll save you quite a bit of space on your belt, which is important for stealth guy.
Goggles of Scrutiny reduce the time needed for you to make a death attack. Not that much though. Since this is almost purely a mechanical conceit, I can't get too worked up about it.
Wraithblades turn your soul into the eternal slave of the dagger's owner. This is subject to usual undead control limitations, preventing you from amassing an army. Still, you can kill first and ask questions later, as well as using them to scare their relatives. Perfect for the more sadistic assassin.
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 5/7
Spellcraft goes up to 4 pages, but remains just as light on actual content, with lots of extra space taken up by reiterative sidebars and illustrations. Our theme is new though. Snaky spells, courtesy of the Yuan-ti. That's an idea that has plenty of flavour and prospects for variants. So it's certainly not bad content, just inefficiently formatted and padded out.
Crushing Coils teleports a snake around the poor victim, to die unpleasantly. The victim, not the snake hopefully, although you can never be sure with adventurers.
Fang Blade is one we had a variant of ages ago in Elminster's Notebook. Still, a snake in the hand is more intimidating than a dagger, and poisonous too. That's an idea that deserves updating, even if poison ain't what it used to be.
Mershaulk's Kiss buffs your snakes. Morale bonuses, for some reason. Don't see those too often round here, so they should stack with most other buffs too.
Serpent Storm is the obligatory AoE damage spell, doing ongoing damage, plus poison and terrain obstruction. I'd like to see the monster that's specifically immune to this one.
Snake Shield is similar to the last one, only tightly focussed around you, and only affecting those who attack you. Again, you won't be immune to this one, but poison immunity (which certainly isn't rare) will help quite a bit
Spitting Cobra is a nasty one who's effects should be obvious. It can not be stated enough. Get poison immunity if you're planning on fighting Yuan-ti. Keeping your distance won't help when they have spells like this.
Venomous Volley is a good one to lead with, which makes it's position at the end of the article ironic. It does minor damage, and seriously penalizes further fort saves. That'll have nasty synergy with these other spells. One that's full of flavour, but definitely better for lurking monsters than adventurers, due to the inconvenience of moving the "material components". After all, you can't just shove a portable hole full of snakes and expect them to be ready to go when needed. Unless you use one of those ones that has automatic temporal stasis when closed, which are very expensive and rare indeed. What are the odds of that before you're 17th level and able to custom craft this stuff yourself.
Gaining prestige: Yes folks, the Jester is back. For whatever reason, they were one of the first new classes thought up for the magazine, and easily the most followed-up, getting material in issues 3, 60, 120 and 134. They pretty much skipped 2e, but here we go again. Only this time, they're actually welcome, because the world around them has grown darker and we could use a few more laughs in our lives. They can still be fairly scary though, as they gain a bonus to perform checks equal to their class level, and can substitute perform for several other skills, which means no matter how suspicious you are, you'll still wind up falling for their jokes on a regular basis unless considerably higher level. They even gain the ability to make you laugh to death as per the old version at 10th level, which is very pleasing to see. They aren't actually that great on the acrobatics front though, and have saves no better than a regular character, so if you can resist their mindfuckery and get into combat with them, they'll be easier to kill than an average character of their level. I think that helps take the sting out of them for other players who still aren't so keen on seeing them in their campaign. The writeup includes a sample character a la their later splatbooks, which is an interesting development, and further makes this column stand out from previous instalments. All in all, I think this is pretty cool. Let's hope that isn't just the mind-control talking.
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 6/7
Sage advice: Andy wass getting lonely answering your questions on hiss own. So Andy's got a pet. A nice little mousey to play with. Andy will sstroke him and ssqueeze him and feed him and teach him how to fetch bookses and call him Geraldine. Yess, precious. Now go on and fetch the books. Andy hass quesstions to answer.
Do druids lose their abilities when wielding non druid weapons (Not in 3.5. We've taken away that restriction, and made them even more twinked, yess.)
Can a druid carry prohibited armour or shields without using them and not lose their powers (Yes)
What happens when a dire animal becomes a druids companion (Nothing special)
Can a druid have an animal companion not listed in the PHB. (Yess, yess, :Skips around: Very good idea, preciouss.)
When a druid's companion animal reaches maximum HD for its race, does it stop growing (No. It doesn't go up in size anyway. )
Can you cast Awaken on a plant that isn't a tree. (No. It would be very nassty to cast it on a flower that would die in a few days anyway, collins collins. You'll make Andy cry, collins collins. )
Can you awaken an already awakened tree (Yess. Reroll its mental scores, yes?)
Are an awakened creatures additional languages based on your or it's intelligence score (Its, but only if you know enough languages to teach it.)
Can you take an awakened creature as a cohort (Yess. Need to determine its ECL though, preciouss.)
Can you turn an awakened animal's type back to animal, and use it as a animal companion or familiar (No. Nassty person, get out now! )
If a creature with DR 10/Adamantine or good enters an antimagic field, doesn't it end up even tougher than before (Yess. Tricksy abilities. Not very likely though. )
Dragon Issue 330: April 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get The Implacable. Essentially a core class Dwarven Defender, they exchange speed and irrational rage for a rigid determination to crush their enemies no matter what. A tiny crunch change, but a huge one in terms of flavor. Nice thought.
Bards get Songs of peace. If you want to play a pacifist character, they really are the best class, just as monks are most suited to twinking out via Vow of poverty. With your social skills and spells, you are well suited to settling conflicts without bloodshed. Doesn't that deserve a little kudos?
Clerics get the multiclassing advice this month. As usual, it's a few levels in the primary fighter classes that offer the greatest benefits. Work that buffed up tank build and shake your enemies bodies down to the ground.
Commoners get a little love this issue, in their other halfhearted attempt at april foolery this year. 11 joke flaws, which you probably shouldn't use in an actual game, for stupidity may result. (although I find myself curiously tempted to use Pig bond played straight as an ancestral curse on a line of peasants to keep a demon imprisoned, but that's just my twisted mind. ) Well, it's better than nothing.
Druids get Boosting your animal companion. As they generally aren't quite as powerful as you, it might be a good idea to buff them as well if you don't want them to die horribly. Here's some of the best spells to use.
Fighters get The Celtic warrior. The perfect rival to the roman legionnaire. ;) A new feat helps them with their spear fighting. But do you have the bravery to go into battle naked?
Monks get Monk styles. More real world fighting styles you could model your character's attacks off. Ho hum.
Paladins get A Paladin by Night. Sometimes, you have to stop being a shining armoured warrior to get the best long-term results, because killing everything will definitely lose you your paladinhood. You might not be able to break your code, but you can bend it a little in the name of the greater good. Maybe. Depends how your DM is feeling. Also includes a feat to allow paladins to multiclass, which is nice.
Rangers get Flights of Fancy. Arrows with style. A cool idea that offers minor statistical benefits, but is very thematic, and good fun, especially if you're playing a swashbucking sort who likes to toy with their enemies.
Rogues get Merchant rogues. With their huge range of class skills, going legit and still making good money is entirely an option for many of them. You can still have a little fun on the side, if you get bored.
Sorcerers get their own system for specializing. Instead of schools, they can specialize in descriptors. The benefits are less extreme than wizardly specialists, but it's still another neat way to customize your character.
Wizards get Verbal Components. Would you feel stupid deciding on catchphrases for particular spells, and loudly declaiming them when your character casts the spell, anime super attack style? Well, this one isn't for you then :p More amusing fluffy advice.
The nodwick crew tell each other how they really feel about each other. And then decide to never do it again. Dork tower uses Bigby's grasping purple nurple on a mind flayer. Oh, the humiliation. Zogonia needs reminding they're not high level enough to kill a whole village single-handedly yet.
For a second month in a row, I'm amazed at how quickly they're changing things around again, mostly for the better. Replacing the little columns with an epic special feature, reintroducing fiction to the ecologies, and managing to slip a proper april fools joke in are all very pleasing shifts in tone for me. The question is just how much Erik can change things with the inertia of the WotC managers and their general writing stable still in place. Still, it's nice to know one person can make a real difference if you put them in the right place.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 1/7
69(108) pages. Once again, they choose a different set of basics to go back too. Dungeoneering equipment? Polearms, flaming oil, torches, and all that jazz? Intriguing. Their delving into increasingly esoteric nonmagical equipment grew a bit tedious in the late 90's, but hopefully absence has made my heart grow fonder, just as it did with the joke articles last month. Let's hope they've had enough time to prepare, and high enough encumbrance limits to pack everything they need to get through this issue without running out of resources and resorting to padding.
Scan Quality: Medium, unindexed, Ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the editor: Last year, they had a themed issue on ninjas. They remain perennially popular, but Erik isn't that keen on them anymore, as cheesy products like ninjaerobics or the TMNT musical ground the idea into the dirt in the 90's, and his childhood love for them turned into disillusionment. The fact that other people still were was vaguely surprising. That's how breakups work. You have to go through the grieving and bitterness phases before you can look back with an objective eye, and accept the good while leaving behind the bad. And maybe then you can do better next time. His other issue with including them in a Greyhawk campaign, that there isn't a place for them, I can instantly refute. The Scarlet Brotherhood is filled with Monks and Assassins. I don't know about you, but if Martial Artist + Assassin does not = ninja then you are using a very different mathematical system to me. It doesn't matter that they're blonde and blue-eyed under the clothes, because hopefully they won't get caught and unmasked. Again, this is a case of taking things that fit, and discarding the rest that isn't so helpful, and hopefully winding up with something better. Hopefully we can apply the same philosophy to all the big old dungeoneering gear.
Scale Mail: We start off with another bit of sycophantic praise. Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.
An actual interesting request is one for Class Act articles on ones from the supplements. Warlocks and Ninjas are certainly popular enough to merit it. Maybe at some point in the future, especially if people send stuff in.
Looking back a bit, we have a question about what Dragon Annual 6 was, and where to find it. The name is synonymous with the D20 special. And since it's quite recent there are still a fair few back issues in stock.
Another request that they don't have any plans for, but don't rule out if someone sends good stuff in is more Epic level material. As with previous editions, they'd rather cover the levels people are most likely to play at more. This does create a vicious circle, as the less you support it, the more likely people are to give up when they get to 20th level instead of continuing the campaign.
More lighthearted is a haiku inspired by a brutal convention dungeon crawl. Don't let Acererak hear about that or he'll incorporate poetry into his next masterpiece of idiot slaughtering.
The sexism in gaming issues continue. Removing the forum just means it winds up spilling over here. It's very exasperating that we still can't fix it after 40 years.
Also continuing is the talk about after-school gaming groups. Roger had his Army days reminiscences. Erik has this. Doesn't have quite the street cred, but since it's gaming we're talking about, are any of us in a position to judge?
Yet another ongoing issue is with the jokes. By dropping Dragonmirth, they removed the base of artists that submitted to it, and now they can't start it up again even if they want too. It's the same thing that happened with coverage of other RPG's before it. You've got to use it or lose it, and the less variety you have, the harder it is to add or swap out elements without people complaining.
And finally, we have two cases of the subscription blues. One because they're not that keen on the magazine at the moment, but can't be bothered to actively cancel it, and the other because they don't have the money to renew at the moment. Since we're now at the stage where you can find .pdfs all too easily within a month or two on the internet, I can't work up much sympathy.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 2/7
First watch is cut this month, as whoever made the ad free scan decided this counts as adverts. While I may not totally disagree with that assessment, it's still rather annoying.
The point of pole arms: Back to this topic again huh? Although actually, articles on polearms are far less common than either guns or gods, or even Elf-made magical items for that matter. It's just that the articles we did get were so front-loaded that anyone perusing the magazines from the beginning gets a distorted picture, with ones in Strategic Reviews 2 & 4, and Dragon 22, 64 & 178. They haven't done one since the 3e edition change, so this is well worth revisiting. The real advantage of polearms in 3e isn't the high damage scores, but that most of them have Reach, so if you have a well built party, you can get in more attacks without making so many party members vulnerable, and have lots of fun with attacks of opportunity when the enemy tries to retreat. Of course, this works best with groups considerably bigger than 4, and requires working on tactics as a group, so you can see why it isn't as popular an attack method as it should be. Along with talking about existing polearms, including collecting quite a few from various supplements, there's the obligatory new feats, some of which are cool, and some which are thoroughly banal and you ought to be able to try anyway, albeit at a penalty. While you might be able to have some fun in actual play with these tricks, it doesn't make for particularly interesting reading, showing that some things haven't changed since the old days. I wonder if they'll find room to squeeze in a similar article in the 4e issues.
Alchemical Charms: Unlike polearms, holy symbols & water, wolfsbane and garlic remain fairly entrenched in the public consciousness. The idea that some monsters are vulnerable to particular things that regular humans can just shrug off is an important step in teaching children that monsters can be beaten, you just need to use your brains instead of just brute force. It makes sense to extend these kinds of vulnerabilities to other creature types. Unfortunately, they choose to go the route of padded out formulaic waffle, taking 4 pages to say what they could easily have done in one by having a whole bunch of types of charms with identical effects, only against different creatures, and repeating the full text in the description of each. If there was one old school virtue they conspicuously haven't brought back with the revamp, it's using their limited space in the most efficient manner. Which is a real shame when you're dealing with equipment, as knowledge of ergonomics is invaluable for packing as many things at once without it impeding you too much, and in a way that makes them easy to get out again when needed. It's also disappointing given the reminder of many real world mythological monster's idiosyncratic weaknesses just a couple of months ago. So yeah, they should have either cut the crap, or made the effort to make each subtype's implementation interestingly different to make this a good article.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 3/7
Fast, furious and fantastical: Vehicles may have trouble fitting into dungeons, but they're a very important part of your equipment indeed, with even one making a huge difference to the whole party and the tone of their adventures. Just the difference between trudging on foot, and using horses is significant. When you add flying, ranged magical attacks and protection, cloaking, etc, it becomes even bigger. So let's see just how awesome these are for your high level characters to save up and add to their collective collection.
Adamantine Carriages are quite heavy, which means they take a fair amount of pulling and aren't the fastest, but the important thing is that they're tough. Basically the D&D equivalent of a presidential limo, for when getting somewhere safely is more important than getting there quickly.
Beholder Globes get one of the coolest illustrations in the magazine. Hollowing out a dead beholder and then flying around going pew pew with their eye lasers is truly an epic dream for an ambitious gnome. Of course, keeping those eye beams functional is very difficult indeed, and by default, only the weaker ones stay usable in this.
Chariots of Sustarre are a permanent version of the iconic old spell, letting you fly around bombarding people with your flaming weapons, and generally making a battle very asymmetrical indeed. Course, many fiends are both fire-immune and can fly, so watch out for them.
Dragonfly Longships are primarily good for scouting, but can also fling balls of acidic goo from their tails at a pinch. It's not eating entire planets, but it'll do for now.
Dune Yachts can sail through sand courtesy of a bound efreeti. Like all bound efreeti, it's cranky and will take any chance to twist your instructions to escape or annoy. Don't take it for granted.
Juggernaut Chariots grant a minor buff to your trample attacks. Meh.
The Longship of Dread Shade has an undead crew that only appears at night, and require regular deaths to keep them happy, making them a bit of a pain to deal with, and not a saving on resources like undead servants should be. Still, at least it's good for villains.
A Palanquin of Beguilement gives you yer basic social bonuses to anyone reclining in them. No surprises there.
Smugger's Wagons are also unsurprising, projecting the illusion that there's nothing illegal stored in here, no siree bob. I think the extradimensional compartments in the 2e version were a safer bet.
Sniper's Carriages let you do drive-by shootings in safety, once again bringing up real world parallels. Will people start conspiracy theories about why they did it and who was behind the job? Do goblinoids even bother with conspiracy theories, when they know for a fact the whole world is out to get them?
Worm Rafts are an awesome variant on the same kind of magic that produces Worms that Walk, giving you squirming but surprisingly comfortable transportation on land and water, and able to disperse into their constituent bugs to escape destruction or use as a weapon. I can see this general idea being applied to all sorts of items with valid and interesting results. A mixed bag here, but more than enough good ideas that i can see myself using.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 4/7
Bedrolls, bottles and bells: Mike Mearls gives us another reminder of basic stuff that was in nearly every adventurer's backpack back in the day, and still appears on the PHB's equipment lists. Most people will immediately figure out the utility value of food,10 foot poles and flaming oil. Things like bells, chalk, mirrors, rope, pulleys and whistles are slightly less obvious, but actually make a huge difference when dealing with environmental challenges in the dungeon or wilderness. It would be a shame to have to abandon a promising lead because you reach a cliff you can't climb or run out of light too soon. And the trick of using differently pitched whistles so everyone can keep track of each other in a fog and do coded communication while still leaving the enemy somewhat confused is genuinely cool and new to me. So this is a case where including lots of tricks means they have some overlap with previous times they tried this, but it's not complete, so each article still retains value in itself. That's acceptable to me.
The plunderers handbook: We finish off the themed section with another collection of advice that is mostly familiar to me, but has a few new tricks as well. How do you get treasure out of the dungeon and make maximum profit from it? If you have unlimited time or carrying capacity, you just throw everything not nailed down in your bag of holding, including the dead bodies of your enemies, (which can be very valuable indeed, and also makes sure any survivors don't raise them) and offload it at the nearest MagicMart™ for half it's store price when you have the chance. if you're playing a grittier game, you'd better get the mules and hirelings out to strip the place and start working on your tax-avoiding tricks. Somewhere in the middle, you'll need to memorise your unseen servant and tenser's floating disc spells to lighten the load a little, and raise your fallen foes as zombies to help carry their stuff around. Basically, this is another reminder that the adventure doesn't have to end when the enemy is defeated, and the process of getting home and selling stuff can be full of interesting challenges as well. And that once you've accumulated enough stuff, you become targets for the next generation of adventurers, as you have to build castles or dungeons to hold your treasure and set up guards and traps to protect them. It's the adventurer's circle of life. Let's hope a full themed issue on name level shenanigans is in the pipeline at some point.
The ecology of the greenhag: Hmm. The third recycled monster, and it's the second time someone's decided to redo a Nigel Findley one. (issue 125) He must be spinning in his grave. And while the writer tries gamely with his florid prose, he's not even slightly as successful at evoking genuine horror. Unlike the will-o-wisp one, which did at least offer a different distinctive perspective, this has no great insights or fresh spins on the creature covered. We've seen this all before in fairy tales. Hell, it doesn't even have the race spanning cross-breed cycles that interconnected the various hag sub races in the previous one. About the only thing it does better is the combat advice and the illustrations. Fail.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another array of cursed items and mixed benefits this month. The ideal format for the sadistic DM to stretch their muscles. As usual, whether you can turn them to positive ends or not is largely up to you. Ready with those remove curse spells.
Arrows of Bursting explode in your face just before you shoot them. This is more painful and less pleasant than in the cartoons. Tee Hee.
Ghost Mantles make you into a ghost. Take them off pronto or you'll become one permanently. You probably won't enjoy this, no matter how awesome being a ghost may seem at first.
Masks of the Sun's Radiance empower you while in sunlight, but weaken you out of it, and cant be taken off. A pain, but one you could probably live with.
Rings of Breathing Water let you breathe water, but prevent you from breathing air. This will likely put a crimp in your social life. Same old story here.
Rods of Animated Dead raise 'em, but don't let you control 'em. Have fun trying to turn this to your advantage. I suggest flight and a planed escape route.
Rods of Delusions are one of those items that makes you paranoid by delivering false positives along with detecting actual enemies. You'll be attacking your buds thinking they're dopplegangers in no time. Oh the shame.
Singing Ioun Stones are near impossible to get rid of once you put them in orbit, and totally distract both your rest and spellcasting. Amusingly nasty, these are another rather likable cursed item.
A Spellbook of Dissolution not only wastes your time scribing, but also ruins other spellbooks left near it. Just the thing for if your wizard has a few too many broken options to choose from.
Walking Staves have plenty of useful movement related powers, but also give you rather high odds of being struck by lightning. This isn't too bad for experienced druids, as they'll probably have the HP to soak it up, but let the buyer beware, as usual
Spellcraft is going desert themed. Surprised they haven't done that before, particularly since Athas and Al-Qadim were so desert centric. They were too busy obsessing over the elements to really spend time on the nuances of the prime material environments. I suppose releasing environment books has alerted other writers to this exploitable niche.
Camel's Tenacity is the typical spell allowing you to survive without food/water for a bit. We've had plenty of variants on this before and deservedly so, for food is an important concern for people.
Desert Burial traps people in the ground with only their head exposed, leaving them helpless unless rescued. Not quite as nasty as the one that sucks you down to suffocate, but I guess this one prefers a lingering death. They also point out a bunch of ways it can synergise with preexisting conditions. Muahahahaha, etc.
Dust Storm is the now obligatory ongoing damage + environmental penalty inflicter. They do seem to be becoming fond of those lately. I suppose it makes for more interesting fights than when villains wipe out your party first round with quickened maximised double fireball whammys.
Crown of Dispair is the old mummy standby, paralysis via terror. With typically nerfed 3.5 duration.
Sand Spiral is another, more rapid effect AoE damage + penalty inflicter. You don't want that sand in your lungs, no siree bob.
Screen of Heat gives things on the other side concealment. You can make it one-sided, giving you a big advantage in missile bombardment. To victory! And all the enemy's beer!
Touch of the Pharaoh is another one that allows you to imitate mummies. At this level, it may well be more practical to simply become one, if you want this regularly. After all, immortality is always in vogue. Unlike the dance style, which is so out by now. This is made even more the case by an interesting bit of setting building, whereby these spells are cursed, and using them may attract the attention of their disseminator. This is an interesting trick by Mike Mearls to make magic more mysterious and dangerous that feels like it's cut from the same cloth as Iron Heroes magic items. On the whole, I think this is a particularly good, and well tied together collection.
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 6/7
A novel approach: Huh. The Spiderwick Chronicles. There's a real turnup for the books. Tony Diterlizzi may have left RPG's behind for the FAR more lucrative world of children's books, but it's good to see him keeping in touch. This means that this column is both bigger and better illustrated than usual, and includes an interview with him and Holly Black, the writer. (who it turns out is also a gamer) It also means there's room for more setting information, with only a relatively small amount of statistics at the end. (after all, D&D already has a quite copious selection of fae for you to use) It also talks quite a lot about he overall themes and how to apply them to your game. When your protagonists are kids, you have to balance a whole extra set of social challenges with the physical ones of dealing with monsters, especially in a world that doesn't even believe in them. This once again shows the benefits of not having the same columns every single issue, so the ones you do include are bigger and better. It's a definite shame that they aren't producing D20 modern material in the magazine, as this would have been a perfect opportunity to cross over a little of that. Still, even as it is, this gives you quite a few cool ideas to alter your game in ways that are common in fiction, but rare in D&D.
Sage advice: Can antimagic field be detected by detect magic (Only if a magic item goes into it and suddenly goes off your radar. Very tricksy.)
Can detect magic locate an invisible creaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghackhackslump!. (Andy remembers that sskip got asssked this loads of times. Andy wishes people would remember the answer too. )
Can detect magic detect supernatural effects (yes)
What kind of damage does a slashing or piercing wooden weapon do (You jusst answered your own question, preciouss)
Do the bonuses granted by spikes and brambles stack (Only the untyped parts, yess)
How can the DM alter the effects of entangle based on the local plants (Usse your imagination, yess?)
Is Balance needed to stand up in the area of a grease spell (no)
Does casting detect magic count as an attack and break invisibility (Yes)
Does counterspelling (yes)
Does casting flaming sphere and using it non-offensively (no)
Does sanctuary. (no)
Do clothes cleaned by prestigitation get dirty again after the duration wears off (no)
Can you ride your own tensers floating disk. (No. If you can't move, it can't follow you, preciouss)
If you tie Cause fear to an Unhallow spell, does it work every round (No, only when the nassty intruders enter, collins collins. )
Does the bonus from practiced spellcaster apply before or after other bonuses (Whichever iss most twinky, yess. They're still underpowered, so they need all the help they can get. )
How does practiced spellcaster interact with wild magic (Pretty well, yess. )
Dragon Issue 331: May 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Archaic Armaments. Because lets face it, one of the hallmarks of being a barbarian is not having as good a set of weapons. But they can make up for it with special features, and you can make up for it with sheer savagery. Not one for the pure optimizer.
Bards get the multiclass advice this time. Once again, the fighty classes combine best, with ranger being particularly good at adding new tricks without diluting your current ones. Split spellcaster, on the other hand, sucks as much as ever.
Clerics get Tokens of faith III. 7 new holy symbols for your enjoyment and optimization. Woo.
Druids get Environmental weapon lists. If they're not from a forested agricultural area, scythes, staves and scimitars may not make sense. Seafarers need nets and tridents, mountaineers need climbing and digging stuff, etc. A nice callback to the 2nd ed druids handbook.
Fighters are also venturing onto the high seas with Marine Munitions. A bunch of mundane and magical items to make a seafarers life easier. This is pretty useful stuff for any class in that situation.
Monks get The Sidewinder Monk. They emulate the snake, becoming deceptive, fast striking, and rather scary. A really rather cool variant from both fluff and crunch perspectives.
Paladins get Knightly Effects (which really should be Affects, given the context, rassenfrassen editor. ) More variant equipment that really could be pretty useful to any warrior.
Rangers get Rangers Militant. If you look at modern army tactics, the skillset of the ranger is somewhat closer than that of the fighter (although neither are really that realistic, but that's more a matter of the underlying system. ) So treating your rangers as special ops military types rather than badass wandering loners is an entirely viable character concept. Once again, they are honing their reskinning skills for the next edition.
Rogues get Be a Lover, not a Fighter. Like bards, rogues are well suited to solving problems without straight combat. And you'll probably live longer if you try it.
Sorcerers get Familiarity Breeds. Another way to upgrade your familiar and yourself by taking feats. Another pretty useful set of tricks.
Wizards get Wizard Affectations. Why do they dress in the way they do? What does it symbolize? The answer, in your campaign, is up to you.
Nodwick's team do another advert for some quick cash. They really ought to invest their money better. Dork tower comes a cropper from encumbrance. Zogonia needs to do some resurrecting again. Well, they've got a better track record than Nodwick has.
They might have chosen a very old-school topic, but the implementation wasn't quite up to old-school snuff, and fairly rehashed as well, leaving me not particularly excited through most of it. Even with an editor who's more interested in the same things I am, there's still going to be substantial month by month fluctuations in how interesting the material is. And of course, next issue is the birthday one, which is particularly tricky to find new things to say about due to the specialised topic. What more can they add to the magazine's namesake? Time to find out again.
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 1/7
75(108) pages. Look ma, I'm an adventurer! I'm just going to glance back at the camera to pose and go raar before I try to kill the monsters, because my family would never let me live it down if I didn't bring back snaps of my heroic deeds. Once again, the zoomed in nature of covers compared to the old days makes the world the adventurers live in seem less significant and threatening, even when the danger should be a pretty big one like, say, a goddamn dragon. Maybe it will beat the adventurers after all, but I'm not making any bets, especially as the articles inside seem more focussed on creatures around them, such as cultists and kobolds. Let's see just how much familiarity has bred contempt after 29 years then.
In this issue:
From the Editor: After a decidedly unimpressive cover, the editorial immediately reminds us of one of the most awesome ones of the past, the dragon vs fighter jet one from 1989. One that was obviously done before the Code of Conduct, and TSR deciding it was institutionally against LARPing in all it's forms, as the associate editor talks about the spectacular convention adventure they set up that year, with visual representation of all the rooms in the dungeon. Just the thing to really open a young gamer's eyes and make them go wow. This reminds us that in some ways things were indeed better in the old days, but it's also very much a matter of perception, as it's harder to impress adults who have a wider range of experiences to draw from. Will this year's conventions have the same kind of wow factor to a new attendee? Well, that's the hope. They're certainly bigger than back in the 80's And if they're spending a fair bit of money on promotions, they might well pull it off. Just got to make sure videogames don't draw everyone away with their even larger budgets.
Scale Mail: It turns out that it's not just the army that has tons of gamers filling in time there. The Navy is pretty good at that as well. And given the nature of these things, I'll wager the air force will be along to defend their geek cred as well in the near future.
Second, we have a letter from someone who doesn't get to play much, so more setting and less disconnected generic crunch is definitely a more interesting read to them. remember how many people bought the dragonlance novels but not the games. Can you afford to cut them loose from your marketing strategy?
Next is another person who was initially suspicious of eberron, but won over by it's coolness, and now wants an article on pirates there. It does sound like a fun combo for an article, I'll give him that, even if they did do articles on pirates already just a year ago.
Also a topic worth returning too is more Call of Cthulhu monsters. Believe me, as long as James Jacobs is in the building, you'll have no shortage of things like that coming down the pipeline, even if they aren't official conversions.
While the magazine might be doing a bit more setting stuff, that does not mean WotC as a whole has changed their policy on not fragmenting the market. Nor are they going to convert Magic: the Gathering worlds to D&D, despite the potential extra money for half the extra effort in that.
However, even if WotC isn't bringing them back, other people are. This also applies to those old Tom Wham games, which are now published by Steve Jackson Games. Nice to see someone didn't sign away all their rights to the magazine and wind up screwed for finances long-term.
Thankfully, the humour in the april issue hits the mark this year. Hopefully they won't skip it again for several years running.
And finally, we have one of those tedious little rules quibbles that pops up every now and then. No amount of perfectionism and seriousness will stop those from slipping through.
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Another sign of things to come, as they release the Dungeon Masters Guide 2. See them realize that near core books sell even better than regular splatbooks and turn that into a major part of their strategy next edition. Or just enjoy all the cool new stuff. Depends how cynical you are.
Eberron gets Five Nations. Lots of fluff and a bit of crunch on Khorvaire's various regions. Nice to see a still young and quickly growing gameline around here.
D20 stuff is also full of familiar solid sellers. Malhavoc releases the Book of Roguish Luck, courtesy of Wolfgang Baur. Like WotC's official releases, this has new core classes, new prestige classes, feats, and some interesting rules experiments. Only somehow a little less formulaic than it's official relation. Funny how that works. There's also the Monsternomicon. Hee. Will you nom them, or will they nom you? More Iron Kingdoms goodies converted to 3.5 for your enjoyment. Another thing that must have been more popular than I remember.
A ton of movies also get micropromotions. Mirrormask. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Howls Moving Castle. Rather idiosyncratic choices. Guess they've got to keep up their geek cred.
Reaper minis get kudos for another sinister cloaked and horned guy. I'll bet he has fun doing the maniacal laughter thing, with all the metallic reverb from his helmet.
Jeff Easly supplies art for a new game, Nin-Gonost. Another example of shiny new technology applied to old ideas, this uses magnetic soles to it's pieces to help them stay put.
And they also supply promotion for another of their mates. Tony Mosely now has a website up compiling his old Zogonia strips, plus extras. Unfortunately, it appears to be no longer functional, but that's life. Everything ends at some point.
Speaking of which, they also have an obituary for Andre Norton. I didn't even know she was dead until I read this. That's rather depressing. (note: this was written in september 2008, when I was first cataloging all the contents of the issues. Ahh, the confusion of holding multiple references of time in place at once.)
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 3/7
Chromatic dragons: This time last year, we got PC class progressions for the Metallic dragons. A few pestering letters later, they decided this was well worth revisiting, and so here's the basic 5 chromatic dragon ones in exactly the same formula. Despite Chromatic dragons being slightly less mentally and magically competent in general than metallic ones, they have pretty much exactly the same number of levels where they don't advance their hit dice and related stuff, which does make me wonder how much this is calculated, and how much it's just eyeballed. Why are Black dragons the only one that get 15 HD instead of 14 at 20th level, when White dragons are supposed to be the weakest overall? Which special ability did they think was so significant to bump them back up again? I guess only the writer or editor can answer that. So there is slight diminishing returns here, but they're still more playable than the powerful Celestial progressions in previous issues. Now all we need is Gem ones and 3e Council of Wyrms would be fully doable using only official rules, which would be neat. Maybe next year, maybe not. Guess we'll have to see if people still want more after this.
Touched by madness: Dragonlance may have had bigger dragons than a regular D&D campaign, but Eberron technically tops even that, as the entire planet is mythologically created out of the bodies of three gigantic dragons. And since people can get access to divine spells regardless of what they worship here, there's plenty of cultists for all of them. So this article is sort of in theme, but no dragons appear directly. Instead, it's more material for those of you who want a lovecraftian edge to your game. Since Eberron is very much a kitchen sink, and Lovecraft is very popular indeed in the WotC and Paizo offices, there's no way they weren't going to give you a chance to incorporate it. (while also making the material generic enough that you could extract it and use it in another campaign. ) Most notable is a 3 level "racial" evolution class that enables you to gain the aberration type, which is very handy for getting into those twinky feats and prestige classes a humanoid would normally miss out on. There's also the expected madness related feats, many of which have drawbacks as well as bonuses attached to them. Once again, the Eberron material is just different to be interesting, and seems to have more effort put into it's mechanical design and integration than the generic stuff. I just worry that they're getting too into the lovecraftian stuff and neglecting D&D's other influences.
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 4/7
Cutting up the dragon: Here's one that would have been just as appropriate last issue, with it's focus on equipment and how to handle and sell off your loot properly. If any creature has a ton of items that can be made from it's body parts, it's dragons. We had some stuff on this in issues 62 & 98, but they were surprisingly underpowered. Here, there's lots of options, and I'm reasonably sure they're set at a fair price commensurate with the bonuses they grant. You can turn their whole body into a boat, their skull into a helmet, their claws into weapons, their vocal chords into musical instrument strings, and use their eyes and breath weapon glands to make potions that grant you those abilities. It's all well integrated with the recent article on power components, and the visuals are great. If you've killed a dragon, don't just take the hoard and let the body go to rot, as you'll be passing up a huge amount of profit. Another occasion where the 3e implementation is better than those from previous editions.
The ecology of the kobold: Hmm. This is a nice birthday present. I'm vaguely surprised kobolds haven't appeared here before. Ok, they have, playing an extensive role in the ecology of the amphisbaena, and they've got plenty of other articles in the magazine, but not their own ecology. (ok, they almost did, but it got cancelled due to politics) Well, no more! It's a doozy of an ecology too, filling a whole 10 pages. They may be small, but they've played a big part in a lot of campaigns, and have built up quite the mythology. In issue 60 Idi Snitmin showed us what rings of feather falling can do for hit and run tactics. In issue 127, Tucker's kobolds made the adventurers terrified to leave the dungeon. In Dragon Mountain, we got a whole boxed set full of the most diabolical tricks the writers could conceive, making 1/2 hit die monsters more than a match for name level adventurers. In 3rd edition, their connection to dragons was enhanced, and they gained a new talent with spontaneous spellcasting. And that's where we are now. This ecology further reinforces that connection by presenting a myth in which Kurtulmak was created by Tiamat, and sent into the tunnels to hunt down egg thieves, particularly gnomes. (they do love a good fry-up) In addition to the usual stuff on their lifecycle, and as you'd expect, plenty of stuff on traps, (although they certainly aren't the most inventive traps ever featured in this magazine. ) they also include another mythological tale, a sample warren for you to use, which is suitably cramped and convoluted to be very confusing to inexperienced adventurers, and some promotion on the new D&D kobold miniatures. (:sigh:) That bit of slightly tasteless pimping aside, this was well worth the wait, giving these guys all the respect they deserve, and probably more. Tread softly my friends. Under the bed, even small horrors can become your worst nightmare.
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre:The bazaar continues giving us consistent (if somewhat smaller than in the old days) monthly deliveries, with some more Dragon themed stuff. No great surprise here. This time, the focus is on stuff the Dragons'll be using against YOU. Rarr.
The Amulet of Fearsome Might boosts your fear aura. This isn't dragon specific, but how many PC races get a power like that? You'd have to deliberately cheese your character build to exploit this.
Bands of Impact let you make your tail attacks more damaging. This also isn't dragon specific, but not many PC's'll be able to get much use from it. We need more tailed PC races.
Cat's Paws let you squash things as if you were a size category larger. Not sure what that has to do with the name. Doesn't matter anyway. Another one very few PC's will be able to use.
Dragonslayer Claws let dragons kick other dragon's asses. Unless you're big enough to wear them, they'll be of no use to you. Let us move on then.
Elixir of Blindsight boost's dragon's already pretty sharp senses even further. This is no use to anyone else either, save possibly a half-dragon PC. Not that those are too rare these days.
A Hidden Tooth lets you store a whole bunch of treasure inside it. Even if you slay the dragon, you may miss the best part of their hoard if you don't search the body thoroughly.
Pectorals of Obsidian Hide make your DR harder to penetrate. No admantine, no dice. Not very useful to anyone else then.
The Rod of Dragon's Blood lets you reuse your spells and spell-like abilities in quick succession. You can now be a little more spontaneous than before. Not that Dragons ever had a problem with that.
Vials of Explosive Breath let you store a breath weapon in them, giving you an extra one to use in a knockdown, drag-out dirty combat. You don't live a thousand years without knowing when to use your hard-saved limited resources.
Wand Scales allow gigantic dragons to use wands, without even occupying a hand. Like human sized wand sheaths, this lets you blast away happily until they run out.
A novel approach: This column is in theme as well, as the second part of their dragon invasion series hits the Realms. They're not just doing a big trilogy showing how it was solved, but also a slice-of-life anthology showing regular people's experiences with fire-breathing lizards being everywhere. As with Krynn under the giant dragon overlords, some people were terrified, while others saw it as an opportunity, and the dragons are primarily thematic drivers for the human level plots. This also means that the column is all about the stories, with only one little bit of new crunch that turns you into a load-bearing boss, making spells permanent until you die. Which I suppose is always a handy one for driving the story along, as it's all about a heavy price for a powerful effect. I guess even with their in-house books, the items created for the novels aren't put under the same kind of editorial scrutiny as the official rules books, so they get a bit more freedom to simply be cool.
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 6/7
Sage advice: How often can the warlock use eldritch blast (As often as they like, subject to normal action limits. Itss a standard action, before you assk. )
What type of damage do eldritch blasts do (No type, unlesss you give them one. That means nothing can be completely immune to your attacks and ruin the adventure for you, collins collins.)
What kind of action is applying an eldritch essence to your blast (None. Its all part of the ssame action. Not like those ssilly ssorcerers, sslowing themsselves down with metamagiced sspellses.)
Can you target weapons or armour with an eldritch blast (Yess)
Are golems immune to eldritch blast (Yes. Sso ssorry, pleasse don't hurt me, collins collins. Looks like andy was wrong earlier. Don't worry masster, you can take vitriolic blast to overcome that.)
Does hideous blow require separate actions to activate and use (no. It's jusst like a touch spell)
Does hideous blow provoke AoO's (yes)
Does deceive item really let you take 10 on use magic device checks all the time. (Yess. Very useful, yess?)
What use has a warlock for practiced spellcaster (Nonem sso they can't take it, masster. Ssorry)
Can a warlock qualify for Master staff and Master wand (Yess, but they can't use the powers they grant. No use, no usse, collins collins.)
How does warding work (Ssimple. Trusst andy. Andy will explain all your quesstions. )
Do feats that grant spell-like abilities have to be taken at 1st level (no. Sspecial development can come at any time in your life, collins colllins. Andy just wishes he'd get some. Poor andy.)
Does mage slayer drop all your caster levels, both arcane and divine (Yes)
YOU HAVE GOT THREE QUESTIONS WRONG, YOU MUST PAY!! (No, masster, please don't take Andy's job away! Andy's still learning, Andy will do better, andy promises! Please, collins collins. Andy begsess you! :sniff sniff sniff: )
Dragon Issue 332: June 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Vision Quests. This is actually a pretty neat idea suitable to any mystical type class. Go into a trance and seek the aid of the spirits. There are substantial risks, and you might not get the one you wanted, but the benefits are also pretty substantial for a single feat. Tempting and thematic.
Bards get Where did you go to college? 4 new backgrounds giving you some more examples of how you picked up your skills, and the minor benefits and penalties you get from doing so.
Clerics get Martial Symbolism. What kind of weapons are most appropriate for clerics of particular domains? Here's some pretty commonsensical associations. Yawn.
Druids get The Society. In previous editions, all druids were part of an overarching society by default, with their automatic limit on numbers of hierarchs in a region. This has since been played down. But it doesn't have to be this way. And if you like, you can give specific societies specific benefits. Perfect ground for prestige classes and stuff.
Fighters get Flexible Fighters. 4 new weapon style feats. New tricks to make your enemies lives miserable? Always a market for them.
Monks get Monk Lore. What benefit does Knowledge (religion) give them? Keeping tabs on the competition, of course. Not doing that would be like a musician who doesn't know who any of the other local bands are.
Paladins get Wyrmslayers. Dragons are a stereotypical knightly foe. Tweaking your skills to better fight them would be a damn smart idea. This includes an actual class variant, so it's pretty cool.
Rangers get Trophy Hunter. Consuming the body parts of your fallen foes is a little more grisly than rangers are usually portrayed. But nature is red in tooth and claw. And rangers don't have to be good anymore. This could work.
Rogues get That which does not kill, part 1. More special abilities, this time modeled off the spelltouched feats in UA. An interesting experiment in design here. Are they worth it? Very good question that I'd like to test.
Sorcerers get Claim your Birthright. Another feat allowing them to gain powers based on their draconic heritage. Unfortunately, the actual power is a pretty weedy blasty ray with secondary status effects. Not really worth is when your spells are better, and a metamagic feat would better increase your overall power.
Wizards get Alternative Spellbooks. Another topic that has been covered before, in greater detail. Any material will do, even your own body. Just the thing, if you don't want to spend that feat on Practiced Spellcaster.
Nodwick faces the consequences of his employer's reckless spending. No wonder they can't hold onto it, when they've devalued the gold standard so much. Dork tower is about to die because of a simple mishearing. Zogonia face a new uncategorized breed of polygonic slime, the yellow tetrahedron.
Another day in the office here, with some good articles, and some bad ones. It's funny that despite it being the name of the magazine, they still don't get as many Dragon related submissions as they do horror ones, so they can't be picky about the quality of the ones they publish to the same degree. They may be the big guns, but they don't have the same penetration as vampires. Funny how that's worked out. Oh well, next issue. 333, number of the ...... half-beast? Well, we could do with another lycanthrope special for the new edition. It's not? Booo. What wasted opportunity.
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 1/7
73(108) pages. They never look up, and that will be their downfall! Fraz-Urb'luu reminds us that when you have wings, and you live in a universe of chaos and evil where everything is out to get you, it makes a good deal of sense to use them, and any other advantage you can get. Will this issue grant more new tricks to the players or the DM? Well, let's see. I'll be using the 10 foot poles from a few issues ago to test the way though.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan
In this issue:
From the Editor: Up until the latest revamp, we'd had at least one Forgotten Realms article virtually every single issue for nearly a decade, and they weren't exactly uncommon before that either. It was born from the magazine, and consequently it's fanbase has always had a huge intersection with Dragon's readers. Their attempts to remove it for yet more generic material has led to a huge outpouring of letters. Thankfully, Erik's more sympathetic eye means it's time to reverse that again. So really, this is another reminder that the Realms got to be the biggest setting because it was introduced gradually, rather than with a big fanfare, and got frequent, small updates as well as full sized books to cover all sorts of minor details. People feel comfortable with it, unlike some settings that are cool, but also intimidating to get started with like Wraith or Tekumel, and also feel comfortable sending in new articles, so it's not just the property of it's original group of writers like Dragonlance or Dark Sun. You can't stop the signal. Here's to it's continued triumph through sheer popularity in the face of office politics.
Scale Mail: We start off with an amusing letter by a ninja who refers to himself in the third person. Googling shows that this guy is a Paizo board regular, so the editor is in on the joke and responds appropriately. All hail The Koga!
We continue with a whole bunch of further assessments of the last few issues. They're generally positive, but wanting more Forgotten Realms stuff is a common thread amongst them. As the editorial made clear, it's you the readers that keep the Realms alive while other settings fall by the wayside. Be ever vigilant, for they may try to kill it again.
And finally, we continue the sexism debate, with a letter pointing out that die-hard fans who lack social skills are toxic to gaining a wider audience because they drive girls off by being patronising, lecherous and elitist. Which is a self-perpetuating problem, as by driving them off, they reduce the chances of getting into a relationship with someone with the same interests. And really, what is the point of that?
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Weapons of legacy is our generic offering. A whole bunch of magic weapons building upon the ideas in Unearthed Arcana. Course, they have to balance them with fairly substantial "sacrifices" to attack bonus and hp which mean they're hardly worth the effort after all. There may be the problem that if everyone's special, no-one is, but it really doesn't work the other way around.
They also go back to Waterdeep for what, the dozenth time or so in City of Splendors. Another rules revision, another chance to make money from the same old rope with a few timeline advancements.
Meanwhile, Eberron gets it's own DM's screen. The completist in me wants to get this. The rest of me says a whole 4 page gatefold of people going Raar? I think not.
On the D20 side we see Mike Mearls' ideas for revamping martial characters bloom dramatically, with Iron Heroes. His star is very much on the ascendant, and this is where he really became a high profile designer. Our other D20 products are big glossy book conversions. Guardians of order are releasing A game of Thrones, and rereleasing tekumel using D20 as well. Green Ronin are going back to the Thieves World setting as well, which is another one that has a long healthy gaming pedigree, and has made quite a few appearances in this magazine. The names responsible for writing these are pretty familiar as well. On top of that, we see our own Paizo release the compilation for the Shackled city adventure path. Since they went on to do this again, I'm betting this was pretty successful.
Minis seem to be going strong, both official and third party. And occupying a somewhat indeterminate position between those are Darksword Miniatures conversions of old Larry Elmore paintings. Interesting idea, and one I can definitely see selling. I wonder if Alias'll get a mini :p
In novels, they prove that Harry Potter really is an impossible to ignore juggernaut around this time. The 6th book is out just then, and it's another doorstopper. Don't tell me you didn't buy it anyway. ;)
And finally, they're nice enough to give Peter Adkinson's new company and creation, Clout Fantasy, some screentime. Throw your pogs around. Sounds like it could be fun. Certainly puts a different spin on the CCG game model.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Halfway to 666, how appropriate for a demonomicon. This month, we get to see Fraz-Urb'luu, prince of deception in the spotlight. Not a position he's very happy to be in. Don't look at me, I'm hideous!! He's one of the least prestigious demon lords, having been imprisoned by a mere human for the past few centuries, playing a bit part in a bunch of adventurer's module experiences. Now he's back, and maaan is he pissed off. Demons are well known for holding grudges, and now he's got one against the entirety of humanity. Enough of that wussy misdirection shit, the hairless monkeys have gotta go! Course, he's still quite happy to have cultists with his special prestige class, use them against the rest of the world. They'll just be last on the chopping block. Another mammoth entry in this series, spanning 14 pages, and giving us stats for the big guy, his aspects, his realm, a new monster, and the prestige class. Once again, they've taken something from the very earliest days of gaming, and progressed it's timeline forward logically while remaining fairly faithful to the underlying concept, and giving you lots of stuff to help you get it into your own game quickly and easily. This once again looks like a good deal of fun could be had with it.
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 3/7
Noble born: Keith Baker gives us a non-Eberron article for a change, just to prove he can. In literature, many heroes are nobility, even if they aren't aware of their lineage at the start of the story, or have lost their title, and have to fight to regain it as a large part of the plot. The main issue with this in D&D is of course balancing it with the other characters. Starting off with substantially greater wealth and social connections without any corresponding drawbacks and getting to hog the limelight plotwise is the kind of thing which may piss off other players. And taking the Aristocrat NPC class at 1st level to represent this goes a little too far the other way, leaving you slightly underpowered. Representing it by a feat instead, or using the slightly more powerful Noble class from the Dragonlance book seems to do the job. Still, the mechanical aspect of this is pretty understated compared to the discussion of plot options, so this is suitable for any system, fantastical or grounded in realism. Will your noble blood drive you to protect the land, or send you off on mad quests to change the world. Do you have older or younger siblings, and have to worry about all the inheritance backstabbing that comes with that? Do you have any cool heirlooms that you'll hopefully pass down to your own family? A pretty pertinent set of questions, and surprisingly enough, not rehashed either, which is especially odd since you'd think Birthright would go into detail about the plot hooks inherent in being of noble blood. Goes to show what they can miss out even after covering this ground a few times in the past.
The relics of faerun: So here's the first new Realms article in a while. Not too surprisingly, it's a tie-in with their latest book, and uses the same system, forcing you to devote yourself to an appropriate deity and sacrifice a feat or spell slot to gain access to an item's powers. As a balancing mechanism, it can wind up making having these items irrelevant to your overall power level, which I'm rather iffy about. Let's see how imaginative these are, and if they keep up with the realms' long-standing tradition of items with quirky powers.
The Rod of Clenched Fists is made by followers of Bane, and lets you control minds and drain life force. As a god of tyranny, you need to be able to keep yourself on top. Curiously, they can still make them even while he's dead. Given what an ass Cyric is, keeping a little hope that your original god will return somehow seems entirely reasonable.
The Pouch of Black Essence gives Gond worshippers a steady supply of explosive material for their guns and cannons. Prosaic, but handy when you're far from home and the shops don't sell any of that unfamiliar techie stuff.
Ribbons of the Twice-Martyred bring you back to life once if you die in the course of heroism. Once you've got the benefit, pass it on to someone equally deserving, and hope you have a priest to do a conventional raising next time.
The Ashen Staff of Inevitability reminds people that to not worship gods in the Realms results in an afterlife of agony and boredom inside the wall of the faithless, so you'd better pick an allegiance and get praying before it's too late. Repent, Repent! Anything you do is a sin to some god!
Legendmaker gains plusses that scale with the user's level, and also talks. A LOT. Well, it certainly makes sure that the deeds of it's past users are remembered, even if they eventually met untimely ends. Why shouldn't the group's exposition guy be a sentient sword?
The Amulet of Perfect Night lets you create darkness, see through it, and blind people on top of that. Multilayered vision obstruction just to make absolutely certain you have the tactical advantage. Makes sense to me.
Rings of Firehair give you a pretty basic charisma & reaction roll bonus. Meh.
The War Widow lets you resist disease, poison and traps as long as you fight regularly, thus making it more likely your death will be in battle rather than via the messy logistical problems of war. You win worshippers by selling them on the glamorous bits of your portfolio, and playing down the day-to-day challenges that come with them.
Trueword Bucklers are made from pieces of his (exceedingly tough) skin, and allow users to detect lies. Somewhat grody, but I guess god callus is less unhygienic than human callus. And I must indeed conclude that constantly having balancing costs has resulted in this collection being less inventive than Ed's old efforts.
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 4/7
The ecology of the behir: Rehashed ecology number 4 (see issue 156) You haven't done real blue dragons yet, couldn't you have tackled them instead? I don't know. Curiously, this is the first rehash that is actually smaller than the original, at least in word count, as while it may be a page longer, the font size has increased since then, (55 lines per page as compared to 71 back in 1990.) So not only are issues smaller in page count than they were back then, they have less content per page as well. Very curious to realize that. They also have less crunchy advice than last time, which is very unusual given the current trends in the magazine. It's moments like this that make you realize that while not terrible, in some ways, the magazine is a hell of a lot worse than it used to be. Eh, there was plenty of crap back then as well, and the visuals are considerably better this time round. I shouldn't get false nostalgia. But this particular article is definitely worse overall than it's precursor.
Wormfood: Welcome to the start of a new Adventure Path. Shackled City got a few adverts and editorial mentions in here, but all the real action was over in our sister magazine. But to achieve maximum sales, we must make readers of one desire the other. You know what that means? Crossover material! Well, it worked so well in the 90's :p Hopefully they've learned the lessons from that unpleasant era. In any case, I shall not be looking at the parallel Dungeon sections, at least until I've finished my trek through this magazine series. So it shall be interesting to see how these articles stand up separately.
We kick off with a bit of a whimper really. An old abandoned house that might make a good base for our heroes in the low level section? That's a good bit of bonus content that doesn't require any knowledge of the main plot at all. But still, the implementation is rather mundane. No monsters in the cellar, not even rats and bats in the attic to fight. Just a lot of info on how much time and money it takes to rebuild a ruined house. Which is pretty useful in a worldbuilding sense, and also as a way of making sure players use their vast treasure hauls, but also rather dull. Curious business really. So no great spark here, but they've still got a full year to go up the gears. We shall see what they come up with next time.
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: More Gnome stuff. While they might not get as much love overall as Elves or Dwarves, they actually handily beat both dwarves and halflings in the numbers of magical items they unleash on us. Probably because despite two edition changes eroding the uniqueness of their spellcasting ability, they're still more often associated with magic AND technology. So here we go again, now in 3.5 rules!
Armbands of Prestidigitation boost your ability to be a roguish sort, adding to both mundane sleight of hand and magical trickery. If you're doing several performances a day, matinee and evening, you'll need those extra charges.
Battleplate boosts your stealth and acrobatic abilities, and eliminates the usual spell failure chances. A familiar idea, modified for the new rules' primary concerns.
Devil's Paste is icky stuff that gives you fire resistance. Remember folks, wear sunscreen. Like most pastes, be sure you don't miss a spot, and don't expect it to last too long.
Moonrat's Bane scares the crap out of rats and helps you resist disease. Nice synergy there, especially against wererats. Good luck though. +2 bonuses mean less than they used to.
Misleading Necklaces let you survive and fake your death. Ahh, villain survivability aids. A surprisingly rare niche really. People must not really want recurring enemies in D&D.
Rings of Gnomekind boost gnomish racial skills, and make any nongnome look like a gnome. So they also have social and disguise possibilities. Nice to see they haven't completely lost their sense of humour too.
Tiaras of Shadow Blending don't seem particularly gnomish. (actually, that could be said of most of this collection.) Making you into a menacing shadowy figure who's true shape is obscured? Must have been done by an embittered gnome determined not to be treated as comic relief anymore. That's about as amusing as Scrappy Doo being the villain in the Scooby Doo movies.
Spellcraft: Fear themed magic? That's exceedingly specific. Seems more appropriate to an october issue too. Oh well. Plenty of horror for the rest of the year, what with all the maddening monstrosities out there.
Glimpse of Fear gives them brief penalties to actions via subliminal messaging.
Inescapable Swarm makes you think bugs are crawling over you. Cue the standardised status effects!
Phade's Fearsome Aspect makes you scary and glowing-eyed, hard to identify. In this case, the mechanical effects also ironically make it easy for you to pretend to be someone else. Let's shift that blame and spread paranoia through the community!
Sphere of Terror is one of our increasingly popular quasi-real attacks. The things in these shadows really can hurt you. Regular illusions just don't have the same bite any more.
Vision of Fear lets you find out someone's greatest fear, so as to better play upon it. Another not particularly surprising ability given the theme. No surprises at all here actually. Just another formulaic article.
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 6/7
A novel approach: Robin Hobb. One of the most reliable doorstopper producers of the last decade. I'm really not surprised to see her here. While the magic in her books isn't as easy or flexible as D&D spellcasting, it can do some pretty cool and scary things, like creating sentient ships or completely stripping away a person's capacity for empathy in one fell swoop. Unsurprisingly, they choose to convert the one that doesn't render your character an unplayable always chaotic evil monster. Liveships may be immortal, and able to propel themselves to some degree, but they still need people around for maintenance and company, and can't go anywhere they want. Having one will be nice, but not a complete world-changer like the Princess Ark, and restrict your travels to waterways. (which actually makes it far easier for a DM to only design parts of a world without it feeling constraining) Like intelligent magical weapons, this can effectively add an extra character to the group without completely derailing proceedings, and creating or seeking one out is a suitably challenging goal for an adventure. Just try not to pad out the traveling sequences as long as she does and you can have plenty of fun with this idea.
Sage advice: Can my stonechild increase his fullblade by a size category and still use it (No, you is breaking the rulsess. Andy will report you to the canon police if you don't sstop.)
Does powerful build change the damage you do unarmed (no)
How do you determine cover if you take up more than one square (Pick a square. This can get tricky.)
How do reach weapons of a different size to the user work (If they're too ssmall, they won't exsstend your range after all)
What counts as adjacent for a large creature wielding a spiked chain (5 or 10 feet)
If you have a longspear and spiked armour, can you make two AoO's every time someone provokes one (no)
Can you get an AoO if someone provokes one, but you can't reach them (no)
Which square is a rider on when riding something (all of them. It's absstrackt, preciouss. Thiss may get ssilly if you're riding a dragon or ssome other gigantic creature.)
Can a wizard carry their familiar if it's too large to share a space (yess. That rule only applies to enemies in combat. )
Dragon Issue 333: July 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Change of Environs. Three new feats to reflect being raised in harsh climates. Could the writer have just read Iron Heroes, and wanted to imitate that in D&D? Certainly not beyond the bounds of probability.
Bards get Temple serving Bards. Or is that the other way round? Anyway, music and religion have always had plenty of connection in the real world. Why should that not be the case in D&D? Here's some ideas of how you could fit into the core faiths. It also features a new feat to make multiclassing between cleric and bard more attractive. Just the thing to help make a party more cohesive.
Clerics get The Rage Cleric. Sorry, it's just not as funny as the rage mage. Anyway, exchange your turning and domains for barbarian rage. Yer basic UAesque feature swap. As with most CoDzilla feature exchanges, it's probably a step down, as it doesn't synergize as well.
Druids get The Mounted Druid. Another syngergistic build you may not have considered. Includes stats for Elk, of all things. Don't mess with the elk. They'll mess your day right up by biting your sister. :D
Fighters get Cultured Combatants I. 4 rather interesting feats based around applying perform skills aggressively. Just the thing for your heavily armoured fighter/bards. More coming soon, obviously.
Monks get Monks in the City. Not needing weapons to be at full deadliness, they make the perfect comedic foil for the bard. Another of those cases where the rules produce fun emergent effects that are also surprisingly good for a story.
Paladins get Preferred Prayers. The usual advice on choosing the best spells from a limited selection. Needs moar supplements.
Rangers get Ranger lore. Just what does a particular roll mean in terms what you can find out about the stuff you just saw? Seems to be an idea who's time has come. Before you know it, they'll be including tables like this with every monster description.
Rogues get Unseen Sisters. Another intriguing case of reskinning, as they are turned from thieves to hidden guardians. Includes a feat to help you out in this.
Sorcerers get Knowstones. These little bunnies impart knowledge of a spell to spontaneous casters, allowing them to increase their rather limited number of spells known, but not cast any more per day. With judicious sharing (and way too much money) sorcerers could become almost as versatile as wizards. They quite rightly recommend that you use this variant with caution.
Wizards get 6 new flaws this time. Nothing hugely surprising here.
Nodwick is summoned by demons to do their bidding. No worse than a regular day at the office, really. Zogonia makes a really bad pun joke.
The pendulum continues to swing back towards setting material in this issue, with quite a few articles that integrate it well or even put it above the mechanical information. This doesn't mean it's all good, and the ecology in particular makes it clear they're still a far cry from their 90's heyday in that respect, but it is still an improvement. Let's hope they can keep building on it, as after all, settings don't really come into their own until they reach a decent size. Let's see if the next issue will have any continuity with the current one.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 1/7
80(100) pages. From cosmic horror, to the slightly more prosaic one of monsters from the deep ocean. Whether that's more or less scary to you will depend on what experiences you have with the sea, and how many pictures you've seen of of those grotesque creatures that live down there. Are we safe on land, or would it be best to make a pre-emptive strike to demonstrate our heroism? Let's see if we're equipped to take the pressure again and avoid getting the bends afterwards.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the editor: While the cover is focussed on the watery part of the issue, Erik's editorial goes completely the other way and talks about the fun to be had in city campaigns. Part of that is to promote their new series of city articles, and part of that is due to the compilation of the Shackled City adventure path that's coming out soon. With plenty of recent experience, they can safely say that it's possible to run an entire campaign from 1st to 20th level without ever leaving the city, and have plenty of fun doing so. And it's a lot easier to design a single city in high detail than it is a whole campaign world, where players will always be able to wander off the map and force you to improvise no matter how many years you slave over the details. In such a case, less may well seem like more, because it's all compressed into a smaller area and is easier to access. Just be careful you don't cram everything into too small an area and end up with a rats nest like Kowloon. (unless that's your intention of course ;) ) Going too far the other way has it's own problems too, as we've seen in recent issues.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is yet another young gamer wondering how he can start writing for the magazine. Only this one has a somewhat better chance of making it, since they're the cousin of one of the editors. No matter how big or small an industry, nepotism is a serious help in getting you started in it.
The internet continues to grow, and people want to know if they'll sell magazines and .pdfs in one convenient package for a little extra. They don't have any big objection to the idea. Can they sort out the logistics before going all-electronic makes the point moot anyway?
Two more letters on sexism continue to pound away at the problem. It's slow going, but you've just got to keep at it if you want to change people's views.
And finally, we have a letter from a girl in the UK to remind us that things aren't all bad out here. Plenty of us are just getting on with enjoying gaming and not trying to exclude people. Exactly how much the demographics of that varies from country to country could well do with a little research, as we could learn a lot about how to improve it in other places.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Stormwrack is our latest climatebook, an attempt to make sea adventuring sound as badass as it can be. Seems slightly more focussed on ship based stuff than underwater adventuring, which is a change from last time. Can you handle the ocean waves and not be swept away?
Eberron releases the Explorers Handbook. New continents, new crunch, new shiny vehicles to get you from here to there. That was quicker than most of their previous worlds managed to do this.
On the D20 side, we have Compleat Encounters. Paizo combine a whole bunch of elements to make a satsfying prefab adventure package, good for an evening. Oh, you're spoiling us, you really are. We also have the announcement of Ptolus. Ahh yes, they gave us a year's lead-in to this mammoth product, including the option of spreading your costs over that period if you preordered. That was a pretty neat move. And the final product was more than worth the cost.
Rather late arriving is another RPG product. Mage: The Awakening finishes off the core 3 of the NWoD, albeit 6 months later than they said they would. And they continue to be the most controversial gameline too, with stuff like atlantis cheese, hard to read gold leaf, and enormous tedious rote lists. Man. What is with that?
A whole bunch of card games get promoted this time. Berserker halflings from the Dungeon of Dragons, and the more prosaically named Dungeonville both turn the tables on fantasy gaming in tongue in cheek fashions. Meanwhile, Hecatomb has you bringing about the end of the world with 5 sided cards. Ew. Do you know how hard those things are to stack neatly? 6 is much neater if you're going nonstandard.
Boardgames aren't doing badly either. World of Warcraft gets adapted to a boardgame, just as it did an RPG (which is also getting updated to 3.5. ) Seems a lot of work for a tiny amount of extra money. I guess they don't know what'll work until they try. And Avalon Hill get a half-page of general promotion. Seems like they're still going with products new and old.
WotC continues to do other stuff to cash in on their properties. Both Drizzt and the Dragonlance chronicles are now getting comics based on the old books. They've become valuable IP semindependent of D&D.
And finally, on the televisual side, we have The Gamers 2: Dorkness rising. Cheap and cheesy just got a little less cheap, and a lot more connected to the world it pays homage to, with designer cameos aplenty. Another consequence of cameras and video editing software becoming ever more accessible to normal people.
Crimmor, city of Caravans: Ed Greenwood's may have been absent from the magazine over the past year, but that has evidently not stopped the flow of his creativity. In fact, it's given him time to produce some larger articles rather than the bite-sized chunks we mostly saw since 1996. 13 pages on the Amnian trading hub and the possibilities of adventure therein. Actually, a lot of the individual adventure hooks could be cut out and delivered to us independently as smaller packages, but that doesn't make them any less fun to read, although it does illuminate his work process and how he binds together little inspirations into a much larger whole. The illustrations aren't quite as good as his last regular column, but the writing continues to be top-notch, with Ed's distinct talent for names and amusing turns of phrase definitely something I've missed in these days of crap names like Wilden and Redspawn Berserkers. It's a pleasure to have him back, even if this still doesn't display the kind of ambition he did in the early days. Get your ass down there and follow up some of these threads, maybe he'll add a few more to replace them. Got to keep the world moving forward or it'll end up like all the rest.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 3/7
Dreams of Arabia: We continue with another article that could very easily have been branded an Al-Qadim one, but for whatever reason, they decide to go generic with it. So let's see what middle-eastern mythological monsters haven't been converted yet, and if they deserve to be more widely known than they are.
Asag are rocky creatures with three arms, three legs, and lots of eyes all over their body. If they attack you, they give you a disease that makes you feel like you're constantly dying of thirst. Never a nice way to go, so be careful which rocks you're climbing over.
Clockwork Eunuchs are obviously for people who have ridiculous amounts of money, and don't trust human guards not to fuck with their harem. Better hope none of the girls has any tech skills to fit them up with a vibrator function. After all, they already have automatic lubrication which would be incredibly easy to repurpose. :p
Flying Monkeys should be familiar to all of you, if not from this source. Like regular monkeys in asia, they're very well adapted indeed to becoming urban scavengers and their flight makes them a real pain to exterminate. They can also do the group grab thing to carry away creatures too large for one to lift, which should worry everybody. Muahahaha.
Humbaba are also familiar, as they're massive humanoids formed from the fused together bodies of regular people. We've already had a variant of that in the epic level handbook. These ones are intelligent, and can grow bigger by incorporating more people into their bodies, which makes them even more potentially scary than an extra big flesh golem.
Relief Golems merge into the walls and look like regular carvings or paintings when not in use. Most players are already suspicious of any statues in dungeons, this'll ramp their paranoia up a little further.
Simurgh are one of those animal hybrid creatures that I'm surprised hasn't been converted to D&D before. Actually, turns out that they were converted in the 2e Al Qadim MC, and they're not that different here. Lion claws, peacock tail, human head, genius intellect and a decent set of magical powers to take advantage of. If you can find them and get them to trust you, you can learn a hell of a lot.
The fires of alchemy: Greek fire is nasty stuff, able to cause substantial amounts of havoc, particularly in naval engagements, as it floats on water and continues to burn. However, compared to flaming oil, 10 foot poles and guns, it doesn't have quite the same cache amongst D&D adventurers. Still, it's a worthy subject for an article, having both plenty of historical detail to fill us in on, and plenty of potential variants to ruin people's days with even better if you have any imagination. Who says wizards have to be the area of effect specialists in the party? Combine it with catapults and a barrel of this stuff can literally go a long way towards devastating a group of enemies. Put it in barrels, put it in landmines, squirt it from hoses, dry it out and use it as a choking cloud of dust that then goes whomph if there's any sparks around. Muahahaha. Just a shame there's not an endothermic variant to deal with the many monsters that are resistant to fire, even though there are such things in real life. I guess there's still value in breaking out the real world chemistry and history books to further supplement this material then.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 4/7
Drunkards and flagons: Aha! I presume this is the article that was meant to be in issue 326 so the Ale and Wenches part of the byline would make sense. Although it has to be said that we seem to be rather short of wenches after all the sexism complaint letters in the last few months. (nor can I find any trulls, strumpets, harlots, trollops, tarts, doxys, or procuresses. ;) ) Oh well, that just means we can focus all the more on drowning our sorrows. Really, it does seem odd that something that tastes foul and is poisonous to us would be discovered independently in nearly all cultures and go into common use. It has it's uses though, being very much a lesser evil compared to the diseases that proliferated in unhygienic conditions back then. Plus what is self-destructive to the individual can paradoxically turn out to be strengthening for the species as a whole, weeding out the weak so the strong can breed. After all, as any roleplayers should know, the first thing we do if we don't have any immediate and solvable problems to deal with is invent new challenges just to entertain ourselves and test each other so the social order can be properly established. As with the previous article, this is heavily historically based, but also finds room to squeeze in 8 new D&D specific liquors with their own distinct mechanical effects. Be it social bonuses, mitigating the effects of ageing or reinforcing an oathbond, these are mostly enhanced versions of stuff booze is supposed to do in real life. So I do find this article amusing and thought-provoking, but it's not particularly original. And it's very late indeed. This is why it's not a good idea for dealers to sample their own wares. Stuff doesn't get done properly unless at least one person keeps a clear head.
The ecology of the kraken: Ahh, the Kraken. Plenty of real world references to draw on for this epic monstrosity. From biblical, to the now obligatory Call of Cthulhu, to Tennyson, to less famous sailor stories. They have enormous brute force, but in D&D, they're also capable of surprising subtlety, controlling both the weather, and other sea creatures and leveraging those powers into further political influence. If they could actually work with each other without constant ego battles and betrayals, they could probably manage even more. Oh well, that's what keeps evil creatures from ruling the world, so be grateful for it. Another so-so and rather predictable ecology here, mostly fluff, with the usual Knowledge DC tables and the reiteration of a neglected 2nd ed god that many of them worship. And so another little shred of my sanity is ground away by this seemingly endless journey.
Wormfood: From finding a home, we now move on to the shopping opportunities in your new location. Once again a rather mundane bit of worldbuilding, and you can see why they didn't want it cluttering up the main adventure. On the other hand, there is quite a bit of useful stuff that isn't in the corebooks. How often are you going to want to buy a canary or smelling salts? I guess this means that the linked adventure involves mining in some way. A bit of cheek really. Adventurers are supposed to be delving dungeons at low level, not carving out their own. Still, you get to find out about the local booze, drugs, and healing stuff. While certainly not as extensive as the inn of the last home or Aurora's whole realms catalogue, this exactly the kind of overdevelopment that killed gameworlds in the last decade. Once again, I'm not particularly enthralled by this. I hope the main plot is getting down to action quicker than this.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Off to equip the army again. Another topic they have yet to tackle since the 3.5 changeover. Everything old is new again. Or maybe not. I certainly can't work up as much enthusiasm as first time around.
Caltrops of the Captain explode, dealing far more damage than the normal ones. Still, at least they don't hang around for ages. We don't want anti landmine campaigns in our fantasy. That would be very tiresome.
Caltrops of the General are even nastier, covering almost as big an area as a good fireball. Once again a reminder that having a staff wizard is way cheaper than relying on prefab magical items.
Caltrops of the Scout aren't as powerful, but can still penetrate certain types of damage resistance. If you need to run away because you're outmatched, you want to be able to convincingly slow the enemy down, not die before you can report.
Captain's Standards are your basic morale booster for a group, now with drastically shortened duration and range for 3.5 game balance. Well, a +2 bonus to attacks for your whole army would make a quite significant difference. Bah. I'm really not impressed by this particular nerfing.
Cavalryman's Bridles let you navigate your horse through rough terrain like a druid. Actually, druids don't get to extend their power to their animal companion, do they? So this is handy even for them.
Cavalryman's Saddles make your horse faster, able to jump higher, and go longer. It probably won't thank you though. More backbreaking, lather generating work.
Cavalryman's Spurs give you the basic ride bonuses. Another one we've seen pretty precise analogues of before.
Earrings of the Wolf make an adventuring party into a well co-ordinated team able to communicate over a mile with a whisper. Take the metagaming out of the equation, and give yourself a good reason the party's discussions midbattle don't get overheard by the enemy.
Gauntlets of the Siegebreaker offer minor combat bonuses, but their real value is in breaking through walls and doors. Hulk Sunder! Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it.
The quiver of the North Wind is another improved arrow storage device. This one isn't unlimited, but is user locked, so you can't just nick it and turn it against the enemy. Should provide a nice bit of frustration when you kill someone and take their stuff.
Scout's Journals take the hassle out of mapping, albeit expensively. Adventurers these days, throwing vast quantities of money just to avoid a little elbow grease. Why in my day, we had a dedicated mapper and we liked it.
Sentry's Eyes give you a compass, a clock, and a bonus on your sensory skills. Pretty useful really, if easy to take for granted. Doncha just love stuff you can get in reality.
Signalling Trumpets let you communicate to all your buds while keeping the message secret from the enemy. Basic battle coordination becomes more useful the more people you have, and bards don't do well in small teams, so this is definitely more an army one than a party one.
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 6/7
Spellcraft: Tying in with their new environment book, this column pops off to the seaside too. When you combine the two sea magic articles, plus the elemental water ones, this was very well catered for indeed in 2e. As is far too often the case these days, this is both shorter than previous attempts, and a lot less developed in terms of surrounding details. Man, this reduced page count really is hitting them hard in the departments.
Curse of Spilt Water is a death effect that we saw picked over several times in the old Sage Advice. And now you don't need wishes or polymorph any object to pull it off. Transform them, drink them up, and piss them out. That's a highly amusing callback I wasn't expecting.
Float keeps you on the surface of the water despite ridiculous encumbrances. Seen you before. Basic but quite possibly lifesaving.
Geyser is a water based low level blasty effect. Just another of a million variants to pick in an attempt to bypass the most resistances.
Lash of the Kraken lets you get all tentacular. Not quite as good as Evard's black ones, it still both grapples and hurts, making it an interesting choice for the discerning wizard.
Scyllan Scream makes another conscious Stormwrack callout in an attempt to remind you that you've Gotta Collect 'em All! It's a scary scream, but not nearly as nasty as a banshee's one.
Shark Bolt is a playful little summoning effect, with very quadratic growth in overall power. More creatures, each more powerful. Pile some metamagic on to really keep up with the joneses and knock down those fighters.
Sage advice: Do astral constructs affect ethereal and incorporeal creatures normally (No. Just because ssome ectoplassmic powers can, doesn't mean all of them can.)
What's the official definition of humanoid physiology (Use your common ssensse.)
Does DR protect against spells that do slashing, bludgeoning or piercing damage (no)
What counts as a purely mental action ( Lotss of things. Andy will write a lisst for you to take home, preciouss.)
If you are affected by a condition while schismed, is your second mind as well (Yes)
Does being immune to psionics also make you immune to spells (In this edition, Yess. Remember, immune doessn't really mean Immune anymore, oh no, collins collins, just immune to anything that allows spell resistance)
How do you make a psion killer when it requires unique powers from two different disciplines (Working together, yess. Then we can desstroy the ones who threaten uss, yess?)
If you fall off a cliff, can you carry straight on with the same action when you hit the floor (No. hitting the ground hurtsess, and you have to get up again. Be glad you don't break your leggses in D&D. )
Dragon Issue 334: August 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Council of Elders. Age does have it's benefits, even in a harsh and primitive culture. They WILL respect your authoritah! Sweet.
Bards get Back to School. Four more ideas for bardic colleges, and backgrounds to go with them. Just the thing for brutal min-maxers.
Clerics get 4 new Divine channeling feats. More ways to mess with undead, sort them out quickly and efficiently so the rogue can stop feeling like a lemon.
Druids get Animal Accessories. As they've said before, you should never miss a chance to upgrade your companions, for otherwise death will come on swift ugly wings. What's a little money when you just got a haul of thousands to destabilize the economy with?
Fighters get The Janissary. We saw you in Al Qadim as a kit. Now they're back as a class variant. Same difference, really, given it's not a very big change. 3e really needs a point buy class construction system. Go go BESM to the rescue!
Monks get Worldly Styles. Three new real world fighting styles for you to kick ass in. More combat alternatives to keep players and enemies guessing.
Paladins are also getting arabian this month, with three sets of advice for arabian, egyptian and sumerian culture. Nothing a bit of independent research and common sense wouldn't have told you.
Rangers get Nowhere to Hide. Just how tricky is it for you to pick a disguised favored enemy out of the crowd? They've got to have a chance, particularly if they're higher level than you. More of their drive to rigidly codify skill DC's.
Rogues get That which does not Kill, part II. Once again, nearly dying in nasty ways is used as springboard to more impressive powers. Definitely worth considering if you went through that trouble.
Sorcerers get The Bronze Solaris. Do they really derive their powers from celestial ancestry? Given this is D&D, probably, although some of them may be faking it. Includes an organization feat that could prove rather handy in qualifying for prestige classes without multiclassing. And lets face it, we all know loremaster is just plain better than sorcerer. Very worth considering on both a fluff and crunch level.
Wizards get the multiclassing baton this month. A one level dip in another class can provide you with some much needed feats, skills, and save bonuses. Be very wary though, for any more than that, and you start becoming a suboptimal spellcaster. Only do so if aiming for a good prestige class that'll make up for this.
Nodwick catches a kraken first try. That'll have them eating seafood for weeks. Carson the muskrat tries to convert the dork tower players to a healthy diet. Vengance is swift and certain. Zogonia gets gnomified. What a downer.
A fairly sharp contrast between the articles, which showed a real resurgence in setting material that's useful for non-D&D players; and the columns, which were particularly formulaic and tedious this month. I guess that once again shows that changing the type of material they're getting is a slow process, especially if they aren't getting submissions anymore from the people who used to do fun stuff like the Monster Hunter ecologies. Let's see if the pendulum keeps on swinging, or they decide that this is the right balance of material for now and stick there.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 1/7
75(108) pages. Even though the Realms has got by far the most material in the magazine, it's never had a themed issue before, strangely. But the year's absence has built up pressure enough that it's time for a full five articles (and an appropriate cover) in one go, giving the finger to everyone who was sick of it before. I'm not sure if I should be amused by this or not. As ever, let's hope the articles actually have something new to say about it, and aren't merely content churned out for the sake of making money.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
From the editor: Just like 2 issues ago, Erik's editorial is all about how much he loves settings, and how much more setting material he wants to put in Dragon each month. But he still has to both get the submissions from writers, and deal with the WotC higher-ups who want everything to be aimed at the widest possible audience all the time. So they will still be giving preferential treatment to the three alive settings, and most articles will still be generic or easily made so. One wonders just how hard he had to argue to get the other campaigns a collective themed issue every January. This just feels like a reminder not to get complacent. This battle is far from over, and all it will take is one change at the helm to send things back to the tedium of being all generic, all the time. Freedom is a fragile thing, and must be constantly fought for. Let's hope he can get the help he needs to win that battle for the next couple of years at least.
Scale Mail: We start with another letter from someone who think's they've improved recently, and is subscribing as a result. Cut out the middlemen, follow his example today! :teeth ting:
Next we have someone who lost his car, and was most worried about the disappearance of his gaming books in the back. Yes, it's so very crucial to replace them if they go missing, particularly the out-of-print stuff.
The sexism debates continue with a list of fantastical shows that do have very strong female fanbases. Perhaps D&D could learn something from their themes and presentation. Dragonlance managed a fairly strong female fanbase, and I seem to recall that being as much due to the distinct artwork style as the stuff actually in the books.
Another letter says that no-one will complain if they put a bit more beefcake on the covers. I think they may have forgotten what happened after issue 294. How short some memories are.
Similarly, we have someone who wants another swashbuckling/naval special so soon after we've already had big articles on both swashbucklers and pirates. Once again, I'm left feeling that I might just possibly have a longer attention span and memory than the average bear.
And finally we have someone who wants to have a complete collection from the start of the 3.5 issues. Since that's only 2 years in the past, that's not a particularly hard or expensive task as these things go.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 2/7
First watch changes formats from lots of jumbly little coloured boxes to a neater thin column model. It also seems to be moving towards greater focus on actual RPG products. I think that's a positive change. Good to see them still working on that.
Magic of Incarnum is our generic release. An attempt to do something different within D&D's magic system, this doesn't do that badly at it's objective, even if it does have some silly names. The substitute magic item system is quite favourful, and the whole thing is unusually multiclass friendly for a primary caster class. A laudable attempt.
Our other two releases are a pair of little adventures. Sons of Grummsh and Fane of the Drow. Both aimed at parties of about 4th level, and designed to be compatible with their new minis line, they should keep the uninspired DM busy for a while.
We also get our latest patronising attempt to lure new players into the hobby. Afternoon adventures with Dungeons & Dragons? Dear oh dear. Even the title radiates fail. We do not want our hands held. Just make the tools look cooler. People hate reading instruction manuals, especially when they talk down to you.
D20 stuff gets it's usual boost. The Freeport trilogy gets reprinted. Green Ronin's own contribution to the worldbuilding business still seems fairly popular. Atlas games goes back to Northern Crown, their game of fantasy frontier america. Seems like you can put a fantasy spin on anything and it'll sell better than a straight historical sourcebook. And if you want something even bigger than the world's largest dungeon, order it from Mammothdungeons.com. I'm betting a certain degree of randomised formulaicness is involved.
Our boardgame this month is a glossy conversion from other media. FFG put their own spin on dungeoncrawling with Descent: Jouneys into the dark. Sounds like a more sophisticated descendent of Heroquest.
Three computer games get the spotlight this time. Dungeon Siege II. Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the earth. And Dragonshard, the Eberron D&D game they mentioned a few months ago is now out. Once again, they know what their readers are likely to be interested in, and reinforce the stereotyping.
Two comics as well. Exalted gets it's own line of them, courtesy of UDON's stalwart illustrators. Are you ready to see the stunts in action? Also with it's own share of high action is the compilation of the Conan comics. He's had a long and chequered history, here as in other media.
In minis, we have more 3D terrain coolness from Mystic Blocks. Tough little bits and pieces for your characters to wander around in. And yet more space eaten up in storage.
And finally, (whew) there's the Gamesac, a beanbag customised for gamers, with a little dice holder and footrest and stuff. I find this highly amusing. Is the geek market really that lucrative? Seriously? Of all the things. What will they come up with next?
Waterdeep, splendor of the city: Somewhat irritatingly, we start off the themed section not with an epic special feature, but a bit of celebratory back-patting. We're not covering the Realms in general, but Waterdeep in particular. It's been getting material in the magazine for over 20 years, starting with issue 64 of this magazine, and it's influence extends all over their product range, with sourcebooks, novels, adventures, short stories, and giant maps all featuring or set there. It is a pretty impressive collection, I have to say. So if you're the kind of person who likes tracking down out of print products for the sake of completeness, this article will be quite handy for you. If not, the air of self-promotional smugness may be a little grating. I just want to keep moving forward and see what new stuff they can add to the setting, not look back yet again at stuff I've mostly already gone through now.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 3/7
The music of waterdeep: A new organisation without a mechanical social ranking system or prestige class attached to it? That is unusual these days, and reminds us that Elaine Cunningham is one of their novel writers who isn't really a gamer. She is very well steeped in Realmslore though, especially since she wrote a fair chunk of it, and this is packed full of references to familiar names and places. It also has surprisingly little Harry Potter in it, when you consider it's about a Bard College, and spellcasting is an important part of their training in D&D worlds. There's a lot of politics behind it though, and plenty of opportunity for PC's to be students there and still go on adventures. They're secretly a splinter group of the Harpers, and whether their goals will remain aligned with the main group is very much in question. The whole thing is written in the IC style that was popular in the 90's, although she doesn't break the 4th wall like Ed and Jeff were so wont to do. So like last issue's features, this is an article that would never have got through last year, and is all the more interesting for it. A lot of the time, changing your playstyle is nothing to do with the actual rules, but the situation your characters are put in, and working from an academic base certainly counts for that. Can you persuade your players that it would be fun to send their characters back to school to learn some new tricks?
An interview with Ed Greenwood: Curiously enough, Ed isn't giving us any new game material this month. But then, he has always been more about the cool ideas than strict adherence to the rules of the game. Most of his highly powerful characters were technically illegal by the old rules, and weirdly enough, are underpowered for their level when converted into 3e. The more important thing has always been developing the setting and the histories of the cool people, places and magic items within it. And in the course of the interview, he does wind up answering more questions about the setting than himself. Unlike the last time he was interviewed in issue 244, he no longer gets to game quite so regularly, as his original group have fallen prey to the usual adulthood thing of jobs, families and life in general making scheduling a pain. But even if life isn't perfect, it's still pretty sweet. He has far more job security than any of the office guys in Paizo or WotC, due to the original contract that means they can't stop publishing the Realms for too long or get rid of him and his input without the rights reverting to him. (and wouldn't it be interesting to see what he would do with them if not bound to using whatever the current D&D rules system is at the moment) Having to write more novels featuring Elminster due to public demand seems a relatively mild price to pay to keep the money coming in. As usual, I remain jealous of both the sheer quantity of ideas he's able to come up with, and the way he can express them, and can't wait to see what he comes up with next.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 4/7
Fiction: Game of Change by Elaine Cunningham. The third biggest name in Realms books (after Ed & R.A. Salvadore) shows up a second time this month, giving us another story with some familiar characters. It starts off in lighthearted fashion, with a little cheating at gambling, which then progresses into a far more serious plot dealing with the nature of magic in the Realms, with a serious helping of elven racism on the side. The whole thing is surprisingly morally ambiguous, with a fair amount of cold-blooded murder committed by the protagonist and no comeuppance at the end. This reminds me that since they got rid of the TSR code of conduct, the writers are free to tell darker stories, even if they usually don't. And having recurring antiheroes and bad guys does help the Realms from seeming quite so cheery and safe. So this story does manage to hold my interest and avoid being cheesy or cliched, which I haven't always been able to say about her work. It's good to be able to look in on characters at various points in their life when they're not doing the typical hero's journey stuff.
The ecology of the lizardfolk: Another monster I'm vaguely surprised hasn't got an ecology sooner. Like kobolds, which it's quite likely they're related too, lizard men (damn you political correctness! ) are one of THE go to monsters for a certain level of adventurers, appearing in absolutely tons of modules and sourcebooks. However, unlike kobolds, which may be of average intelligence, but are portrayed as cunning, inventive, and punching above their weight by use of those characteristics, lizardfolk are generally played dumber than their statistical intelligence, preferring to rely on instinct whenever they can get away with it. As is often the case in D&D, it's largely the fault of deific intervention. Their default god is a lazy bugger only concerned with eating and mating. Curiously, although he's a well established part of D&D continuity, this ecology chooses to completely ignore the other god they commonly worship, his lizard king creations, the way they interact with normal lizardfolk, and attempts to corrupt the race. This is a very glaring omission indeed, and seems even more odd when you consider the number of supplements they do reference in this one, including some crunch which you need to have got recent books to understand. These two very black marks against it mean that I'll have to give this one a well below average mark, despite having a few cool feats and lifecycle notes. I do not approve of whitewashing.
Wormfood: Hirelings and cohorts! They really are kicking it old skool in this series! A step up from the dull worldbuilding of the previous installments as they take the time to show us their characters as they were at 4th level, and talk about how you can use them in your game.
Gar Blitzhame is a local dwarf fighter/mage. He has a bunch of personal connections to the rest of the setting, giving you an easy in to certain plot events if you meet him. We also get details on his fighting tactics, which is particularly useful for a multiclass character.
Daejin Moon is a taciturn and snide elven ranger. If you can't match up to her in skill and tactics, you'll be getting more than a few barbed comments over the course of your adventuring. Just the thing for sarcastic DM's to have fun playing out.
Tassilo Vinese is a cleric of Heironious, who tries hard to be a team player, serving as both healer and fighter as a cleric of war should. You can rely on him to give his all in a pinch to save the rest of you. Glad to have him on board. This lot should come in handy, even if you aren't playing the adventure path.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 5/7
The Charlatan: They brought back the Jester 4 months ago. now they update another old class from the pages of the magazine as a Prestige Class. Charlatans first appeared in issue 120, where they combined a reasonable selection of thief skills with the ability to fake spellcasting to a modest degree. Since multiclassing and learning magic in general is much easier in 3e, it's hard to see why a rogue wouldn't just take a few levels in wizard or bard rather than going to the considerably harder effort of learning how to fake spellcasting. They'd have to be even better than the real thing in some respects to be balanced overall. And since this is only a 5 level prestige class, but lets you fake a few spells higher than 3rd level (ignoring magic resistance, which is especially nice) I think I can say they achieve that goal. It still can't compete with just going 20 levels in Beguiler, or prestigeing into Arcane Trickster for combining rogue skills with magical versatility, but it at least holds it's own against regular rogues while offering a different set of tricks, and it's definitely better at general social stuff than the 1e version, thanks to the more codified skill system of 3e. Watch out when someone tries to sell you something rare and valuable on the cheap. It could still go horribly wrong, believe me.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Along with the lizardfolk ecology, we have a set of swamp based magic items from the same author. And some fiction too. Been quite a while since we had that around here. Despite the previous article not being great, this still seems promising.
The Baleful eye of Bad Juju is your basic curse inflicting evil eye. Duration has once again been substantially reduced compared to previous incarnations of this principle.
Black Salt Rods detect supernatural nasties and offer minor protection against undead. Once again Sting is the primary influence, and I'm not talking Don't stand so close to me here.
Capotes of Dragonfly Wings keep bugs away and give you insect like reactions. This may make you slightly creepy, but is generally a beneficial thing. A nice contrast to the generally problematic but with a few desirable features ones of recent issues.
Eggsucker Staves bring new life, and have very cool visuals. Very useful, but I wouldn't like to be the person who collects all those eggshells that make it up.
Mudwalker Rings are probably more useful against lizardfolk than for them. They can already navigate swamps faster than they move on dry land, after all.
Shaker Staves of the Quondam give all your allies guidance from their ancestors, and also look really creepy. Typical buff effect with good fluff really as before.
Star Tortoise Shields protect you from being decapitated, for some reason. Anyone know the origin of this one?
The Visard of Semuyana lets you deliberately sacrifice your intellect to get better connected to nature and your god. Since Knowledge (Nature) is an int based skill, this doesn't work too well in D&D. No wonder lizard men are a dying race.
A Vivifying Bacalo animates any corpses that may be hanging around underwater and turns them into temporary ghouls for you to send against the enemy. A surprisingly careful bit of planning. After all, undead breaking free of your control and stinking up the place is always an almighty pain in the butt.
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 6/7
Spellcraft: An interesting themed Bard collection, seemingly aimed at lovers of swashbuckling. (and we know there's still plenty of those around.) It's another one who's setting stuff is set in the Realms too, fitting the issue's theme. All your rockstar fantasies, with magic powers on top. Say hello to the Songsabers. They have some cool signature items that make them a lot more versatile than most spontaneous spellcasters. Get hold of a few of these and you'll be both cool and dangerous.
Animate Instrument lets you fly your guitar, harp or whatever, to play appropriate music while you get on with the buckling of swash. Always a fun business, adding accompaniment to a scene.
Ever Armed is your basic weapon conjuring spell, bard style. As usual, it gets more plusses as you level up.
Harmonic Void fucks up magical verbal components while still allowing regular speech. Nasty. Course, this'll be just as big a problem for Bards, as they can't get rid of those components with metamagic so easily.
Loresong is another, quite good skill booster, that really does let Bards be Jacks of all trades. With this kind of stuff, they handily beat rogues overall, despite the skill point gap.
Tune of the Dancing Weapon makes your weapon a dancing one. Combine that with the instrument playing one, and you can just sit back and relax while the whole scene gets taken care of automatically. It almost seems too easy, doesn't it. Don't let yourself get flabby. No-one likes a flabby swashbuckler, and the narrative may well kill you in response.
Sage advice: Does profciency in light armor let you use a mithral breastplate (Andy isn't ssure. Probably, becausse andy doessn't want to upssset you.)
Do all expensive special materials get charged by the piece (yes)
How much should mithral chainmail barding cost (Lotsess. 16,000 gold piecess)
How much does a nonweapon item made of thinaun cost (It doesn't matter, becausse it won't give you the sspecial benefit, collins collins)
Can magic items be enhanced again after creation (The DMG wouldn't have pricess for it if you couldn't)
How do you figure out the cost for increasing the AC on a robe of wizardry (Andy doesn't know. Making new magic items iss complicated, collins collins. Ssorry.)
Are magic items usable by only one class cheaper. (Ssometimes. More to ssell than to make, becausse there's less demand.)
Can sudden metamagic feats be used to make scrolls or wands (yes)
do you have to be high enough level to make an item anyway if you use another magic item to make it (no)
Can you make +1 gloves (No. They aren't weapons, so it's not applicable)
Can an item be both magicaly and psionically enchanted (Yess, oh yess)
If an item bonus has a fixed price, does that boost it's effective plusses (no)
Can epic level characters boost ancestral relics further (Sseems like a good idea if you don't want ssamurai to end up ssuboptimal like ssorcerers. Andy will sshow you how to do the ssums to keep thiss balanssed, yess. )
Dragon Issue 335: September 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Nasty Brutish, and Short. This is not advice about halfling and gnome barbarians, contrary to expectations. Instead, this is their turn on the background wagon. Nothing hugely surprising here, given their increasing love of reskinning.
Bards get a pair of new magic items. The Bamboo flute, and the Gypsy cloak. One basic buff item, and one flavourful one with both benefits and drawbacks. Fairly decent.
Clerics get their turn for patronizing spell choosing advice. Since they have lots of spells, this is rather harder to be certain about than rangers and paladins. Still, a dispel magic or two rarely goes amiss, I must say that.
Druids get Totem druids. Another attempt to trick you into nerfing yourself, these guys sacrifice their regular wild shaping for more frequent and powerful shaping into a single animal only. Not on your nelly mate.
Fighters get Cultured Combatants II. Four more feats based upon variants of the perform skill. What is all that about then? I must admit it has a good deal of style though.
Monks go completely the opposite direction, with Chaos Monks. Just the thing for your Githzerai frustrated by his awkward favored class conflicting with his racial alignment, and perfect for putting in a party with a wild mage.
Paladins get Paladin Lore. As a servant of both Law and Good, it's important you know how to fight corruption, who is corrupt, and which targets you have a chance of beating. Awkward business, when some appear to be upstanding pillars of the community, and you can't assemble enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing. Sometime you wish your god would just turn them all to pillars of salt, then you can sprinkle them on your fish and chips. But no. Gotta be good gotta be wise gotta be strong, gotta stay together. Love won't save the day unless you kick the ass of people standing in it's way.
Rangers get Favored Enemy Feats. 4 feats that do exactly what they say on the tin, allow you to take down your favored enemies even more brutally. Why should cleric class features get all the love.
Rogues get A Second Skin. Disguising yourself is something that needs a little thought. Methods, consequences, types. Includes a feat that lets you disguise yourself better, unsurprisingly.
Sorcerers get Aquatic Fey Kin. Of all the strange things you could get your powers from. Who'd make this one up? Still, it does have a quite substantial benefit and drawback, so it does seem tempting and amusing. It's certainly not a useless idea.
Wizards get Disposable Arcana. Just as they can have other ways of recording their spells, they can also use other kinds of single use items as alternatives to potions and scrolls. Another way to add flavour to your game, and make the players less likely to realize the value of everything they find straight away.
Nodwick shows that conning old folks gets even easier when they're millennia old. Dork tower's mini's face the wrath of cats. They're doomed. Zogonia get themselves in another fine mess through their own stupidity.
Pretty pleased by this one overall, as both the feature and the regular columns are now going back in a direction that I like, and Erik is taking steps to make sure they'll go further in the future. Let's hope that the improvements from practice outweigh the effects of diminishing returns for a while yet, and they get the chance to revisit setting ideas and expand upon them.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 1/7
83 (132) pages. Just don't make clothes like they used too. Spend a few hundred years asleep, and then when you wake up, you're inadvertently turned into fanservice. Someone is definitely going to pay for this. As ever for the october issues, it looks like they're going to try and tell us something new about the undead. Since one of those is the long-neglected spawn of Kyuss, tying in with their Dungeon adventure path, they might well manage it. Let's stake a look at this issue and see if anything in it is worth using in a game without adaption decay messing everything up.
Scan Quality: Slightly fuzzy, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial drops the extra words, because really, who needed them? A little dictionary hunting will hurt no-one. Indeed, as we've said before, a little challenge in getting hold of and understanding the books will just add to the temptation. Lure your audience with shiny forbidden stuff, then challenge them and force them to think about and debate your work if you want them to be long-term fans and spread the word to their friends. This is also why trying to forbid things can turn out to be counterproductive, as you effectively wind up creating free publicity in the form of debate and rumours. So this editorial shows that more than one person came to D&D through the same kind of process, and courting controversy remains a good way to boost your profile. And on an artistic level, if you aren't pushing the boundaries in some way, are you actually even being creative, or just going through the motions? What's the benefit in giving the world something it already has plenty of? So let's hope they actually give us something challenging in the articles.
Scale Mail: We start off with a letter grumbling about family-unfriendly covers and too much setting material. Since people complained when they went the other way as well, this definitely seems like a case where I shrug and say from my perspective, the more variety the better. Swinging from one extreme to the other will be far more interesting than following basically the same formula every issue.
Next is a letter from someone who is planning on converting the Bloodstone adventures to 3e. In this system, getting to 100th level seems a lot more reasonable, curiously enough, as you never run out of suitable challenges when you can stack templates and class levels onto monsters.
As they reintroduce more complex backgrounds to the magazine, they inevitably face the complaint of someone who finds them hard to read. Once again, it's very much about maintaining a sufficiently high degree of contrast so both text and backdrop can be easily distinguished, without making it boring. A well calibrated monitor is definitely your friend when doing design work.
And finally, the last letter tempts Erik into talking a little more about his own city-centric campaign. It might have been set over a smaller area, but it still took plenty of preparation and used published adventures to bulk things out. Even (especially?) official writers don't have the time and energy to do it all themselves.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 2/7
First watch: Heroes of Horror. A definite case where the third party D20 products covered a topic better than the official WotC attempt. Straight D&D has never done horror very well, largely due to the massive power increases characters enjoy. And this problem has only got worse over the editions. See experienced designers, including a couple of White Wolf alumni, struggle over it here.
Eberron gets Magic of Eberron. On we slouch to another proven solid seller. New magical crunch for all! Oh, and some psionics too, so you don't feel left out. Keep on buying, dudes.
And they also issue a package set of the Races splatbooks (at least, the generic ones, they decide to skip the ebberon one for whatever reason. ) in a nice slipcover. If you skipped them first time, will that tempt you? Anyone?
D20 stuff this time is mostly updates. Mutants & Masterminds gets a 2nd edition, and the old Wilderlands setting from Judges Guild gets updated to D20, which is very fitting, considering it's history. In a boxed set too. Yay for third party products!
White Wolf release their big crossover citybook, Chicago by Night. With an emphasis on the big. More than enough info for all three main gamelines here, to say the least.
Our boardgame this month is Midevil. Aka the Army of Darkness boardgame with the serial numbers filed off. Kick the ass of tons of skeletons and get back to the present. Another entertaining way to fill a few hours.
Minis this month include more official underdark monsters from WotC. Oh, and Artemis Enteri. Canon Pairing! Hot Drizzty buttsecks! Man, that never gets old. There's also Cthulhu creatures courtesy of SOTA, a limited edition gothic fortress full of mini furniture, and steampunky mecha stuff for Iron Kingdoms. Tick tock fill up your box.
WotC also chooses to sell off a whole bunch of D&D and M:tG art in limited edition, signed format. I see coffee table conversation pieces are still popular enough to justify their existence.
In play aids, we have the Flip-Mat. Another easily erasable gridded, fold-up bit of card to represent places on. Seems like there's quite a bit of competition in this market.
In video games, we have Black and White 2. God sims have a long history, and they continue to advance with new technology. And obviously given the title, being a sadistic bastard is very much an option for long term play. Muahahahaha.
Finally, we have Horrific, the card game of horror movie archetypes duking it out and terrorising a village as they do so. This also sounds pretty entertaining and replayable.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 3/7
Not for the living: We've had plenty of templates for monsters over the past 5 years, with undead definitely getting more than their fair share. After a couple of articles turning various types of undead into templates for ever greater flexibility in monster design, I have to wonder what new spin they can add on that this year. Well, it looks like they're extending their love of templates to inanimate objects. (man, they really do breed anything with anything in 3e ;) ) mechanically codifying various types of haunting so you can design even this type of encounter quickly and easily. Which is all to the good if it leads to DM's putting more noncombat challenges in the game that you solve by roleplaying and cleverness.
Bad Place is the kind of incredibly generic name that only Steven King characters can pull off without seeming silly. And indeed, the mechanics show a definite Shining influence in the way anyone who lives there gradually goes mad, and then homicidal, and also in the steps needed to clear the place out. All work and no play does indeed make Jack a dull boy, which I can quite empathise with at this point in my writings.
Dreamscapes draw on the also popular Nightmare on Elm Street stylings, giving anyone who sleeps there nightmares that you don't wake up from if you die in the dream. Again, you need to play it smart to sort out the force behind the nightmares, and don't get complacent, for they may come back again, and again, and again.
Eidolon let you use the basic principles of the Ring series in a world without videotape. Hallucinations, odd compulsions, and the ghost coming out of the bonded objects to mete out a horrible death if you don't do what they desire. Muahahahaha!
Entitys are haunted places directly bonded to a particular powerful ghost. If you can take out the ghost, the rest is relatively simple. But anyone who's ever played a Ravenloft adventure will know that what sounds simple in theory is very much not in practice as their power levels and degree of angst mounts up.
Planar Cankers are a more self-explanatory name. Intrusions from other universes are a fairly common thing in D&D, (after all, we had another set of rules for them just this april) and there's plenty of fun you can have depending on what other universe a bridge is forming between. We definitely have such sights to show you this time around.
Primeval Scars are the most powerful and hard to fix of these, causing animals and plants to be overgrown and hostile and anything unnatural to simply vanish mysteriously after a few days. if you stray into one, things will turn into survival horror of the scariest type. Good luck, you'll definitely need it. Once again James Jacobs has pulled off a winner of an idea in style.
Birth of the dead: Many undead are capable of reproducing by turning creatures they kill into minions, which then gain independence when their master dies. But that doesn't answer the question of where they came from in the first place. Just saying a god or wizard did it every time gets very tiresome indeed, especially when you don't have the specifics of what spells they used and how much it will cost as a PC to do it. So here's 26 bits of nanofiction and explanation to differentiate the many many different ways you could come back after dying in D&D land. (not one for each letter of the alphabet though, unfortunately) Some simply require you die in a particular way, some require deliberate and often very complex effort, and some are restricted to certain nonhuman races anyway, so you only have to worry about being killed BY them. The whole thing shows a combination of extensive research and making up new details to fill in the gaps that's pretty pleasing to me. If you want to build upon a setting, you have to be aware of and respect the things that came before so it makes a consistent continuity. While this might not have quite the depth on a single creature an Ecology can manage, it does make a good reference for whenever too many monsters start to blur into one and you need reminding why we have them all.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 4/7
Fiction: Bandits in the paths of Fame by James Lowder. Been a long time since we saw Mr Lowder contributing to the magazine. Given all that he went through in the TSR years, being cynical about the whole heroic adventurer thing would be quite understandable. And indeed, that's exactly what this story is about, saying that while there may be a few true heroes out there, there's a lot more self-interested bastards who are only in it for the money and fame. Any brief shining moments of hope will eventually be crushed, and things will return to banality in the end. And then we die. Depressing, but unfortunately pretty realistic. Is it possible to get old and remain idealistic, especially if you don't succeed after a few tries? I know a few people that have managed it, but it's not easy. All I know for sure is that I'm not going to give up on you guys at this point, after all we've been through together. A few depressing stories are just a drop in the ocean by now.
The ecology of the spawn of kyuss: No great surprise that they'd do an ecology for these guys when they've just started an adventure path focussing on them. One of the scariest bits of body horror in the book, these guys are even nastier than rot grubs because they go for the brain rather than the heart, so you have more time to feel things slipping away and your facilities being destroyed. And death doesn't end things, soon you'll be back up again and spreading the corruption around with great generosity. As you'd expect for an important tie-in like this, they put in lots of extra effort, both in the illustrations, descriptions and crunch. They include a new template that I expect we'll be seeing quite a bit more in this adventure path, the favored spawn of kyuss. Retaining more memories and powers than a regular kyuss zombie, and having wider and more versatile vectors of contagion, you want to take these guys out from a long range, because if they get within hand to hand distance, or even close, you are in deep danger of joining their ranks. Brr. Clerics are going to have to work overtime in this one, especially if the other players don't fight smart. I quite approve, and look forward to seeing what other tie-ins this series will spawn.
Wormfood: Things pick up some more in the tie-in department as we head from the small town to the big city. If you've done things right, you'll be approaching mid-levels, which means a whole new load of options in what your characters are capable of. This also means they have the freedom to live how they want to a greater degree. They don't have to be obsessives who spend their whole time adventuring or looking for leads to the next big haul. So let's look at some more fripperies that are irrelevant to the direct adventure, but still help you quite a bit in the worldbuilding department. You can slot them in fairly easily whatever city you set this part of the adventure in. Prices, mechanical benefits you can get from frequenting them, and owners are also detailed, which'll encourage players to use them, and hopefully not just slaughter the joint.
The Blueberry Theatre is a high class joint with a penchant for subversive political commentary in it's performances. Sound like the kinda place I'd enjoy frequenting. Gotta keep your cynicism levels up.
The Checkered Circle is an illegal fight club, moving constantly to avoid the law. If you've got the underworld moxie, you can risk your life and money, and really make a killing. At your current level, you'll be able to breeze through the early rounds, but don't get complacent. You never know when you'll wind up bareknuckle fighting with an owlbear.
Honest Axebeard's House of Dice is a nicely furnished casino, including VIP areas the players can splash out out on if they want to play playas. ;) It's another good place to go if you want to hear rumours too. You've got to speculate to accumulate.
Josiel's Bathhouse is a supremely relaxing massage parlor. So much so that it boosts your healing rate. Another one that makes it tempting for adventurers to live large on those ill-gotten gains. If you're going to go out there and save the world, you might as well do it with a straight back and pedicured feet.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Looks like we're getting icky-bad in here as well this month. But not in an undead way, curiously enough. Instead, it's a more fiendish slant again. So look forward to more stuff that the enemies can use with impunity, but PC's may regret.
Blasphemous Figurines of the Void are the eevil variant on the usual ones of wondrous power. Although they're more Ancient spirits of evil, transform this decayed form into Mumm-Ra, the everliving! Braaaaaagh! than genuinely diabolical. Spoiling food? Who bothers with that if you're not in a siege situation?
The Brush of the Fallen Master lets you paint amazing paintings, but gradually kills you in the process. Don't waste it on redecorating the house. Probably the way to profit from this would be to become the agent of the person who owns the brush and profit hugely from them posthumously while passing it onto the next sucker.
The Carnivorous Tome sucks you in and writes out your life. Pretty sure we've had this one before. The visuals are recycled from Dahlver-nar's stuff, for no apparent reason. You don't want to give yourself away if you're an evil book.
Fiendish Elixir gives you the basic benefits of being devilish or demonic, but will of course also make you ping as horribly evil even if not. Watch for awkward misunderstandings.
The Mask of Endless Laughter warps things from happiness into joker-esque horror, and kills you laughing if you take it off. Poor jack. I knew him well. Oh well, on with the show.
A Parasitic Twin helps you get ahead in evil. No thanks. I've seen how this one ends, and it sure aint a happy one. Plus the whole no privacy thing. You really don't want something like that on your neck commenting while you're having sex.
Sacrificial Knives work like a death knell spell, letting you profit even more from slaughter. Not nearly as cool as the one which let you make other people pay your item creation costs though.
A Staff of Nightmares has a whole bunch of terror related spells available for various charge costs. Another one a wizard'll get a lot of fun out of before it runs out.
The demonomicon of Iggwilv diverts itself away from looking at demons, to look at the person behind actually writing the book. Our delightful witch queen is another of the people who goes right back to the early days of the hobby. Mother of Iuz, lover of Grazzt, and quite possibly a number of other powerful demons, she's one of the few people to not only deal with archdemons, but also mix business with pleasure and still come out even or better. Along with the history, we have 7 new spells (well, mostly old spells converted to the new edition, actually ) which you use to summon, bind, manipulate and discipline extraplanar gribleys. Substantially smaller than the last couple, this also feels as though less effort has been put into advancing it forward, merely recounting history rather than advancing it. Still, if you like a bit of vile darkness in your game, there's a fair amount of usable material in here, so it's still a decent entry, if not a great one.
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 6/7
Silicon sorcery: Hmm, Shadow of the Colossus. Another game which does things a little differently to most D&D adventures, as you only face one big monster per adventure, rather than a whole dungeon full of fun. Of course, to make this work in D&D, you need to design monsters differently, with a good set of abilities and weaknesses to discover and work with. How do you climb one? How do you stay upright when they shake the earth with every step? How do you deal with their spectacular collapse when they finally die? It's an interesting set of questions, and one they're obviously thinking about quite a bit, since they did stuff like this in Iron Heroes as well. This is another of those cases where the small size of the column means they don't do an entirely satisfying job, as they provide us with stats for a generic titan rather than several of the more advanced ones in the game. It is a cool idea, but it really needs more expansion, like many high level monsters. (apart from dragons, which are doing quite well for themselves with new stuff every year) This stuff is damn hard to make both balanced and mechanically interesting, and it's the area we most need more material and advice on.
Sage advice: Hey, Geraldine! Get your lazzzy asss back to work! We've got more quessstions to answer!
Can a monk take improved natural attack for their unarmed strike (yess. Verry brutal, yess.)
Can you combine manyshot with ranged precision (no)
Does quick draw let you sheathe a weapon as a free action. (No. Putting it in needss more precission than taking it out, preciouss.)
If you have quick draw, can you change weapons mid attack. Does that include switching between melee and ranged (yess. Thatss a funny image, collins collins.)
Do you get the benefits of weapon finesse when using multiple weapons (Yess.)
Can you use whirlwind attack in heavy armour (yess)
Which version of innate spell is official (The mosst recent one, yess? Complete arcane, preciouss.)
Do you lose the benefits from exalted feats in an anti-magic field (Mosstly. But you sstill have to follow the nassty rules, collins collins. Sso much for virtue being it's own reward, teeheeheeheehee.)
Where's the ki strike (holy ) ability (Good quesstion. Andy cannot answer it.)
What's a pain effect. (Nassty powers, they hurtsess. Lots of things hurtsess.)
Can a kensai select unarmed strike as their signature weapon (yes)
Are tattoos considered material posessions. (No. You can have as many pretty drawings on you ass you like. Very usefull if you have vow of poverty, and need a holy symbol, yess?)
Dragon Issue 336: October 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get Herbal Remedies. When you don't have a magical healer around, you've gotta learn the basics of medicine yourself. If you want to play Aragorn, this is another part of the picture.
Bards get Blasphemous Utterances. Musicians can get driven mad by the far realm as easily as anyone, and when they still remain functional enough to play music, that music becomes deeply disturbing. Here's three feats that represent that. Muahahahahaha! Ia Ia! fthagn!
Clerics continue the essential spells advice, moving on to levels 4-6. Yawnaroo.
Druids get Dark Side Druids. This edition, druids can go evil too. And given real world druids faced legends of human sacrifice, why shouldn't their fantasy counterparts do so, and get some benefit from it. Mmmm, entrails. I seeeee - A gruesome death in your future! ;) Will it be from bees, or Britt Ekland?
Fighters get The Black Fist. Another organization to put into your games. They get no cool crunch or prestige class to tempt us though. Meh
Monks get Pressure Point Attacks. Take this feat to massively expand the uses you can get from your stunning fist. Like divine channeling feats, this is the kind of thing you can have lots cool of variants for. Since it seems one feat grants all these tricks, taking this is a good way to make your monk more versatile.
Paladins get Why do you Serve. Their turn to get a bunch of backgrounds. Did they choose, were they born to it, or were they chosen? What leads a man to virtue? Is it the shinies? I think not. Still, they don't hurt.
Rangers get the Mystic Ranger. They get better spells, but fewer favored enemies, no animal companion, and combat style takes longer to master. Almost bard level spellcasting and still full BAB? Sign me up! I'm sure this'll also help you cheese your way into some cool prestige class.
Rogues get Rogue Lore. Another of their attempts to codify just how useful the various knowledge skills are, encourage more people to take them. Tap that underworld info, and use it to your profit.
Sorcerers get Poltergeists. Another experiment in exchanging old class features for new. Good fluff on this one, too. The talk about sorcery being innate magic that wasn't under their control at first could do with a little more backing up.
Wizards get Dark Pacts. Three more thematic feats requiring sacrifices and other such unpleasantness for the powers they grant. Probably more suited to NPC's, really.
Nodwick does some civic service while he's dead. Eh, it's gonna happen, so why not make the most of it. Dork tower filks. Well, they've dropped the april fools articles, someone's got to take up the slack. Zogonia faces the incredulity of the big bad.
Once again, October demonstrates they have more than enough horrific material sent in to put a little fear back into our hearts, no matter how heroic we may think we are. Even if you can face death heroically, can you deal with what you might become after it? Well, it looks like we aren't leaving that topic, as we go fungal next month. Just as illithids take the brain and Grimlocks the rest of the body, there's plenty of body horror to share around here. Let's see just how different this particular gruesome fate is to actually go through.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 1/7
77 (108) pages. After last issue's desiccated cheesecake, we have some full frontal nudity on the cover! Exposure to the internet causes porn to sneak into everything. I have absolutely no desire to see Zuggtmoy's fungal labia, let alone put my penis anywhere near it. (and somehow I don't think she needs to wax to keep it that way) How the devil did they get this one past the censors? I suppose it's the same way we could have giant robots blowing each other to bits in the 80's, but humans couldn't even engage in convincing fisticuffs. Well, at least they've grabbed my attention right from the outset this issue. Now let's see if they can sustain it all the way through.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Even the magazine staff can admit after the fact that the first D&D movie blew chunks. However, that does not mean they can't have hope that the sequel will be good, or at the very least better than the first one. So here's their attempt to whip up a little anticipation in the general public and get them buying the DVD's. (for tis only a sci-fi original, not a theatrical film) It's mildly amusing, especially since it involves Erik taking the piss out of the previous editor. But it's still promotional gumph they were probably obligated to include in some form or another. Like the movie itself, I doubt I shall remember this in a few months time.
Scale Mail is pretty short this month. However, they do have a little piece on the New Orleans disaster, and their own small part in putting things back together. Because when you've lost your home and stuff, what you really need to pick yourself up is some roleplaying books and dice so you can start a new game while stuck at the shelter. We need escapism when things get bad, and a method that helps you connect with the people around you is better in the long run than going straight for the donated TV.
Our first letter is a second request to do Class Acts on some of the new classes they introduced in the Complete books. Since it would also make things easier for their writers to come up with stuff without getting repetitive, you've got yourself a deal there.
Second is one reminding people even setting specific articles can usually be adapted to other worlds, so they shouldn't worry too much about including them. Have the editors not said as much in the past as well?
And finally, we have an eulogy for a keetom who loved to join in when the family were roleplaying. Even though it might have messed up their minis, they still miss him and quite right too.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 2/7
First watch: The Forgotten Realms continues a longstanding tradition of having it's own specific incarnations of general splatbooks. Champions of Valor is their parallel to the Book of Exalted deeds. I'll bet the Harpers are involved somewhere.
Hellspike prison is another adventure that's also designed to be friendly to the D&D minis game. Gotta keep that cross-promotion going. Small, but full of extras, this looks like it should support a few dramatic fights.
They also release the Dragon Compendium. Well, paizo do, but it's still got the official D&D logo on it. A whole load of well loved stuff from old editions updated to 3rd ed. This should be the very last thing I review in this thread. Look forward to it.
In D20 Green Ronin release the Advanced Race codex. Once again, this looks more interesting than it's official D&D counterparts. There's also a reprint of the Witchfire adventures, and two new books for the Thieves World setting, filling out the main city and the lands surrounding it. And there's also Etherscope, for those of you who want something new to fill your brain with. Another victorian magical Steampunk setting? Seems to be quite the fad around this time.
In videogames, there is the Rifts Nokia N-Gage game. Bwuh? Of all the platforms to choose, you walk into this joint. How did this happen? Will we ever see a Rifts movie? Damned if I know. Two other established franchises get new instalments. Dragon Quest 8 and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. No-one defeats Dracula for long. He just keeps coming back.
Speaking of oh sweet jesus, there's also the second D&D movie - Wrath of the Dragon God. Well, it's probably better than the first one. But no scenery chewing Jeremy Irons to liven things up. In any case, I still have no desire at all to see this.
In minis, they're still promoting the same stuff they were last month, the underdark series of official stuff. Yawn. There's also some M:tG ones as well, and another collection of potential floors for all these guys to fight on. Put together your prefab stuff, and hope it's all the right scale.
Our boardgame this month is Hunting Party, another game where the roleplaying part is mostly removed from your dungeoneering and exploring, and replayability is facilitated by randomness. And you can probably mine some of the bits for your actual roleplaying too.
Finally, they expand their remit again, to promote Edhellen Armory's line of LARP gear. If you want elf (vulcan) ears, harmless but impressive looking swords, and hey nonny nonny gear, you have a place to go now. And that's probably the last we'll hear of that for another year or two.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 3/7
Monsters of the mind: Looks like Mind Flayers have still got a hold on the minds of the writers and editors, because here's another collection of monsters created by or related to them. Watch they don't get a grip on your mind too, for you never know when you'd make a better snack than you do pawn.
Brainstealer Dragons are essentially illithid dragons. They have pretty much the same range of psionic/spell like tricks, but are obviously a much bigger physical threat on top of that. If the PC's can break into an illithid city and wreck an elder brain, this is the logical next choice for the big boss that's lurking behind even their schemes.
Illithocytes are grown up illithid tadpoles who took a different evolutionary path to Neoillithids and learned to survive on psychic residue rather than actually eating brains. This does not mean they won't engulf you and eat you whole if they get the chance. Being able to survive on crap does not mean you don't crave better when offered it on a plate.
Mind Worms scry you through reflective surfaces, and then reach out of them to swallow you whole. Beating the image does not kill the real one back in the underdark, so they can cause your party much paranoia over an extended adventure and lead to them shunning any reflective surfaces they see. That is a cool idea that would have been equally appropriate last month.
Nerve Swimmers burrow into your flesh and control you by judicious application of telepathy and agonising pain, while not outright controlling your mind. If you've had to deal with Kyuss worms and rot grubs, these will get the players really worried and drag out the body horror a little longer. Muahahaha!
Ustilagor are the update to an old school monster that seems somewhat incongruous in this company. They aren't too different from what they used to be, although they actually explain their powers in the description instead of just listing them and sending you off to check the psionics book. That's one way they have definitely worked to make 3e and 4e more user-friendly over the years.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Zuggtmoy is another of our more alien demon lords. Queen of fungi, she presides over a very particular kind of horror. The prospect of having strange organic growths sprouting on and inside you, feeding off you and turning you into god knows what may be topical, and is not an appealing one. But Rule 34 trumps sanity and common sense, and so she attracts her own set of decidedly distasteful cultists, eager to receive her caress, and become freaky fungus hybrid creatures. As with most of these, we get stats for her, her cultist prestige class, her realm, lots of historical stuff, and her servants. We get another joyous revival of several old creatures which first appeared in the magazine here, with the Basidrond and Phycomid. Overall, she's probably one of the weaker demon lords, her multiple ugly defeats in modules having weakened her and reduced her abyssal prestige. But she's got lots of flavour, even if they do fall into the irritating trap of sexualising her just because she is sorta female :sigh: Still an entertaining read that manages to mix updated old stuff with a few new bits. Will there be a duff entry in this series? Guess we'll have to keep going and see.
Full frontal nerdity: Looks like Aaron Williams has decided to start a new strip. Does this mean the end of nodwick? We shall see. The annoying occurrences don't stop though, just because we're on this side of the GM's screen. Seems pretty one-joke so far, despite the fact we get six mini-strips.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 4/7
The Lords of Dust: Keith Baker once again shows how to put a very distinctive spin on pre-existing D&D creatures when incorporating them into Eberron. This time, it's Rakshasa's turn. Without the need to eat brains to survive and stay underground, they're capable of even greater subtlety than illithids in messing with your mind and carrying out really long-term, machiavellian plans. And like Sahuguin, Aboleth or real world ants, if you ask why they don't rule the world, the answer is Don't They? :evil grin: They may not have the numbers or raw power to openly command, given the sheer number and variety of other supernatural beasties in eberron, but immortality, wealth and a few identities in the right places gives you a lot of influence. So this is for those of you who want to make your Eberron game into one of intrigue and conspiracy theories. With their exceedingly high spell resistance (albeit not immunity like previous editions), conventional divination magic won't help much in rooting them out, (although keeping up your shields against mind reading is a very good idea in general anyway) and they've developed new tricks to make it even harder still. Nor will brute force suffice to solve the threat permanently, as the more powerful ones reform after being killed unless you use soul-destroying magic on them. (which again, is exceedingly high level stuff) This essentially ensures that there are threats out there big and tricky enough to challenge even epic level characters in Eberron, which becomes increasingly important the longer it's out, while still allowing low level characters to get in on the action. The mechanics are up to Eberron's usual high standard too, with plenty of effort put into making sure the big bads can no-sell your obvious solutions. Good luck, because you are seriously going to need it if your DM incorporates this one.
The ecology of the shadar-kai: Shadow and fae. Two concepts that have got substantial upgrades in 4th edition, getting their own planes in the considerably cut down cosmology. And dumb grimdark names. (wilden? Seriously?!) Here we see one of the bits of foreshadowing for this change. This also, curiously, gives us a good reason for why the plane of shadow went from a demiplane in 2nd ed, to the primary means of getting from one alternate reality to another in 3rd edition. It gives them a curiously White-wolf ish twist, making them evil, but also tragic and filled with Aaaangst. They eternally struggle against their curse, that threatens to draw them away from the material plane and deadens everything they do and feel. And their favoured weapon is the spiked chain. :D Straddling the boundary between cool and Kewl, this is pretty easy to mock, but does make interesting reading because of that. Maybe we should pair one of them with a Dark Stalker, that'll keep the fangirls happy. :p So yeah, lots to love, lots to hate, I'm rather amused by this one, and may make use of the ideas within.
Wormfood: Another bit of worldbuilding here, as they confront the issue of magic shops. Always a contentious one in D&D, here they decide to bite the bullet and embrace commercialism, ensuring that you can not only make sure you have level appropriate items of your choice, but can do so with style and flavour, making the shopping process interesting in itself. You can go to the big emporium, managed by the smart archmages and their canny salesman who won't fail to get a good price from you. You can go get nature related items direct from a dryad druid living in a ruined manor. And of course, there's all sorts of dubious bargains if you know where to look downtown. They tread a careful path between adding flavour and keeping things generic enough that you can insert them into your own campaign without too much trouble. And the result is indeed pretty well done, if a bit bland. But since that's what they were aiming for, I can't fault it too much on that front. I just wish they were taking a few more risks here.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 5/7
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Facepainting gets it's own special! Well, it hasn't had one before, has it. Are you sure you couldn't wait till april? Essentially this is like potions, only taking longer to work, and requiring a craft check to apply successfully. Can't see that becoming standard tech, but it might be able to maintain a commercial niche amongst cultists and travelling circuses. As ever, it'll be fun seeing if players can take advantage of this.
Badger Protector gives you a raging dire badger guardian. Don't laugh. Remember, they're gigantic weasels built like trucks. You can ride them through hell and high water.
Black Roses make lord Soth moon over you for eternity. :p Oh, and hurt anyone who grapples you.
Bulls Might lets you gain bull's strength by snorting like a bull once it's painted on. Tee hee. How very cartoonish
Dashing Cheetah is also inherently amusing. You need to run in place for a few seconds before you can go all speedy gonzales. There may also be sound effects.
Eagles Talons give you claw attacks. They'd have to have something like that at some point, wouldn't they.
Forestfold lets you hide in the wilderness. If you stay still. That's generally the easiest to do anyway. I'm not impressed.
Glow of the Fireflies gives you an array of pretty lights surrounding you. This is less distracting than it sounds. Enjoy the light, because it doesn't have a long duration.
Hawkeye's Sure Sight (please don't sue us Marvel) makes you a better archer, of course. It'll also help you find secret doors, amusingly enough. Gotta love those enhanced senses.
Last Man Standing gives you Bear's Endurance. I'm betting there's going to be equivalents for the other ability scores here.
The Leap of the Wild ones gives you Jump bonuses. Meh. Give me flight any day.
Leave No Sign gives you Pass without Trace. Another low-key one to get from your makeup box when needed.
Mask the Living gives you invisibility against undead. Another short duration one you'll have to know you need beforehand. Watch you don't get mistaken for undead yourself, venturing into a graveyard all made up like a skeleton.
Prowling Tiger is multipurpose. Agility and Jumping. Unfortunately, the duration is even shorter. Your prey may well outlast you and escape.
Ram Bash lets you charge people amusingly. Ba da ba ba baba! Puppy power! A winnar is you.
Shout at the Storm gives you energy resistance. Only 10 points though. A good spellcaster'll blow through that like a camel though a pint. What happened to the good old complete immunities?
Warpaint gives you both barbarian rage and haste for a combat or so. Durations really aint what they used to be either.
Webwalker makes a web instantly when triggered and lets you climb it. A good trap when combined with taunting. Muahahaha.
Whirlwind's Arrow lets you shoot a pair of magic missiles megaman style. This is of course as reliable as ever, so silly activation methods won't leave the enemy much chance to laugh.
Wolf's Wariness helps you detect traps. A low-key ending to a generally pretty low-key entry. Maybe a group of natives can use a whole lot of these. Wouldn't be such a bad idea to scale up say, the natives in the isle of dread.
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 6/7
Sage advice: Can you become an advanced version of a creature with polymorph (Only if the sneaky playerss stats it up ahead of time. We don't wants nassty timewasterss at our table, collins collins. And don't forget the HD limit.)
Can you use polymorph to turn into a creature with a template (Again, as long as you follow all the other rulsess.)
Can powerful polymorph spells make you any size (pretty much)
What happens to your clothes if you morph into another creature that wears them (Dependses. This needs lots of clausesss)
Does your gear change size when you polymorph (no)
If a goliath is polymorphed into a stone giant, can they wield huge weapons (No, you lose your normal racial abilities when you change shape. Ssorry.)
Do you lose your extra skill points and feat if you're a polymorphed human (yess. Better figure out which one it iss, otherwise this could get nassty.)
When you use two polymorphs, can you combine their abilities (no)
If you shapechange into a choker, can you cast extra spells per round with it's quickness powers (Yess. Nassty wizards become even nasstier chokers. Andy sshould try that ssometime.)
What spells work on polymorphed creatures (Ones affecting their new type, yess.)
If you change type once a spell is on you, does it stay on you (yess. Verry abussable, collins collins.)
What clauses of polymorph still apply to polymorph any object. (two of them, yess. )
Does Wild armor still work if you shapechange through another means (no)
Dragon Issue 337: November 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get The Free People. Halfling barbarians finally get a little love. Kick the ass of those big lumbering oafs with great prejudice!
Bards get Harbinger. Instead of inspiring their buds, they creep the hell out of their enemies. Just the thing when you're outnumbered. Another neat class variant.
Clerics finish off their essential spells guide. Since most people don't get this far, essential takes on a different meaning. More dullness.
Druids get druid organizations. We already have one. Here's three more for you to join or be rivals too, with the standard Background benefits and penalties. Just how wild are you really?
Fighters get Viking Raider. Mmmm. Rape, loot and pillage. And Sail. Tricky to be a fighter and a sailor. Fortunately, we have a feat that'll fix that without multiclassing. Another one that's useful to lots of classes, especially if trying to get to a wilderness based prestige class efficiently.
Monks get The Metered Style. Basing your fighting off poetic forms? Seems like a liability to me, especially if the enemy knows you're doing it and acts to break your rhythm. Still, the new crunch based on this idea is quite neat. Another one that's both flavourful and useful.
Paladins get Purification feats. Seems like these days, every class ability has feats that let you use it's uses for other purposes. Here's 5 of them for Paladin's remove disease power. If you find you're running out too often, you can also take a feat boosting the number of times you can use it. You can specialize in anything these days.
Rangers get Standing Orders. An army-esque organization based on the real world. Includes lots of sound tactical advice for any adventuring team.
Rogues get Honor among Thieves. More jobs that their diverse skillsets allow them to turn too with ease. You can't master them all, even with 18 int. The underworld needs specialists.
Sorcerors get Spell Grafts. More ways to get permanent spell-like abilities. I thought that was the warlock's schtick. Where is the non-core class love?
Wizards get a trio of halfling wizard substitute levels. These are really rather useful. You could even get healing spells if you chose right. Way to break the game, dude ;)
Nodwick is still here after all. And serving up the best in monstrous cuisine. Dork tower is mostly satisfied by the 40 year old virgin. Zogonia gets the wrong kind of worms for their new bird.
The regular features remain pretty formulaic here, but since they take up less of the magazine, I once again found it quite fun reading overall, with a nice mix of mechanical and setting related stuff. Erik's run remains far easier to get through than the last few years, so it looks like I might get to accelerate again soon. The end draws nigh, and we might get to go out on a high. But first, it's time for another christmas. Let's see if they have any extra special presents prepared for us this year.
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 1/7
72 (108) pages. Our cover star this month has been taking fashion tips from Venger, which is mildly amusing. Still, at least he's brought along some help, which are also appropriate to the contents inside. But there's no theme this issue. Guess it's another christmas grab-bag. Well, at least they aren't calling it a magic themed one, which was so broad as to be meaningless anyway. Shall we see what they've stacked in our stockings.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Whatever happened to the best ofs of yesterday? Demand for them never really went away, but when Lorraine took over, they refused to do any more, drawing as much of a line in the sand as possible to put forward their new stuff. Erik, on the other hand, loves settings from all eras, and has no problem with mining them and bringing stuff back, then adding to it, as we've seen in their Adventure Paths. So when given the chance to reprint the best material not only from recent issues, but also older articles updated to 3e rules, he leapt at it. ( And then got bogged down in endless debate with the other members of staff over what to put in and leave out. ) Given how much work good conversions are, I don't have the same cynicism about this being just money for old rope that I did in the old days, and I am vaguely irritated that they didn't get to do another one in the series with so many more good articles they could have updated. And of course, they never do something similar for 4e, since it's even more work to move stuff into that from previous editions. So basically, this editorial reinforces my frustration with rapid edition and staff turnovers. You really ought to explore ideas to their fullest before moving on, because it's much harder to go back and then recapture the same feel if everything else has changed in the meantime. And a corporate structure where everyone is disposable will not result in innovative creative leaps, as people wind up repeating the basics year in year out. You may have more ideas than you can ever use, but it's more valuable to finish one than start 100.
Scale Mail: The article on types of alcohol gets an amused reply, wondering if they're going to expand on this even further. Probably not, since they still (mostly) try to be a family friendly magazine. They have other ideas that excessive drinking would only get in the way of.
Second, we have a request for more dark sun monsters. Again, nothing planned for a while, but if people keep sending stuff in, who knows what next year will bring.
Also a repeat request is one trying to figure out exactly what stuff from the magazine is OGL. Nothing in the past year, and nothing in the near future either, for WotC want to keep as many goodies to themselves as possible from now on. Tightwads.
Yet another very familiar one is for more setting specific material. Erik is obviously trying to build up a portfolio of evidence that he can use to convince his superiors that it will be good for sales to do a little more of this.
And finally, we have a request for a serious updating of Yugoloths. They've been neglected since the 3e switch, and could definitely benefit from an epic article giving them some new coolness. Where's Shemeshka the Marauder when you need her?
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 2/7
Full frontal nerdity plays with their dice the wrong way. Consign them to the earth! They then cheat at computer games, and admit they've never read LotR. None of these are greeted with good humour.
First watch: Another edition's been around for a while, and it's getting hard to keep track of things. Let's Compile! The spell compendium does exactly what you would expect. Once again, though, I am reminded how small 3rd ed actually is compared to 2nd ed. In that wizards took 4 volumes and priests 3. Here, one is enough for everyone. And it's not even pretty faux leatherbound or anything.
That's the only official D&D product next month, but as usual, there's more than a few D20 ones out there. Green Ronin do very well for themselves, with Damnation Decade, the skewed 70's roleplaying game, and the generic True20 corebook. Both can be used alone, or combined with the vast amounts of other D20 products out there in odd combinations. Although it's a bit trickier for True20 than it is for most variants.
Our big game aid this month is Paizo's Game Mastery Item Packs. Like spell cards, this lets you add and remove stuff without endless scribblings on your character sheet.
Card games hit hard, but to limited effect this month. WotC release Three-Dragon Ante, another fun little way of using their IP for other purposes. White Wolf release Racer Knights of Falconius, a CCG that disappeared with even less fanfare than Pimp: the Backhanding. I wonder if it was any good.
Some rather interesting non gamebooks this month. Order of the stick: On the Origin of PC's cements Rich Burlew's place in gaming culture. While Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide has tons of art from Tony DiTerlizzi, someone who's managed to escape and go mainstream, but is still wearing his geeky influences on his sleeve. And producing tremendously pretty stuff along the way.
Quite a few interesting bits on the computer gaming front. Most notable is the release of the X-box 360. Technology trundles onwards, bringing us into the realms of HD games. Look at those millions of pixels and marvel at the results. Enjoy the online features. And wish you had a bigger hard drive. Oh well, maybe in a few years. Watch out for the red ring of death. They also promote D&D online, even though it isn't actually out yet, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Even with all that flexibility in customisation, they still can't match actual roleplaying in terms of choices.
Our boardgames this month are more FFG ones. They do seem to have this market sown up. Brittania, Fury of Dracula, World of Warcraft again, and Lord of the Rings: Confrontation. Yet more expensive deluxe sets for you to drool over and only get to play once or twice.
Our minis are the Crystal caste Inn, and some dragons designed by Todd McFarlaine. The story practically writes itself. Smash, burn, DESTROY!!!! Hee.
And finally, we have an adorable little dice bag, that looks like a goblin. Well, actually it looks more like a gremlin to me, but hey. D&D does not control all mythology. I might buy this sort of thing on an impulse if I saw it in a shop.
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 3/7
Schools of magic: In Unearthed Arcana wizards had the option to specialise in domains, gaining a single extra spell of each spell level rather than the choice of an entire School. However, since there were no drawbacks for doing this, it made them strictly better than generalists to do so, which is poor design when you consider that wizards are probably the third best class in the game already. This article attempts to deal with that by creating an intermediate degree of specialisation, particular curricula of magic with 2-3 spells to choose from per level for your bonus slot, and only one forbidden school, with again, a limited choice of 2 to represent the weaknesses of these particular academies' teaching methods. Since these are specific organisations rather than natural divisions of magical physics, they are free to make the lists idiosyncratic, which also means it's really easy to invent your own infinite number of variations on this idea. They list 8, giving each half a page, with one column devoted to the mechanics, and two to the setting details and important NPC's of each one. So this article could be a lot bigger, but it's already better implemented than the domain wizards in UA, and more interesting to incorporate into your campaign because the little bits of setting detail give you easy hooks on which to hang further adventures. I could definitely stand to see a sequel to this one.
Imps of ill-humor: A somewhat more whimsical article than we've seen for a while, this could easily have fit into the april articles of old. It's also an interesting White Wolf parallel, since the four bodily humours are going to play a substantial part in their next gameline as well. I wonder what inspired them both when it's such an old and underused bit of pseudoscience. So yeah, four imps, each with personality types and powers based on the stereotypes of what people are like when they have an excess of a particular bodily humour. They're all approximately the same power level as Mephits, and would fit right in amongst that grumbling lazy gaggle of extraplanar dogsbodies. I'm sure you can have a great deal of fun playing them, since they're all such blatant stereotypes.
Choleric Imps are always angry, and will pick a fight for no reason. This rage is contagious, so the party may well turn on each other after killing them, which will just be a pain in the butt. Good thing they're not smart enough to strike from concealment and then just sit back to enjoy the show.
Melancholic Imps are inherently depressed all the time, which is an even worse fate than being designed to be inherently evil. Course, they can also be vicious little backstabbers, especially if you refuse to listen to their endless whining. Steer clear, or they'll drag you down to their level.
Phlegmatic Imps are less miserable, but they're even lazier and more likely to come up with ways to skive off their job rather than just complaining. Oh well, that just gives the evil overlord an excuse to do some serious torturing. Who cares if you succeed as long as you have fun being evil.
Sanguine Imps are perpetually cheery and hyper, which makes them the odd one out here. This does not mean they don't love a good laugh at everyone else's expense, so expect some decidedly nasty trickery if you hang around them. At least you can be sure the other imps will ostracise them. No-one likes an optimist in hell.
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 4/7
Core beliefs: Boccob. At last, expanded treatments for deities that really give them the respect they deserve. Like the Demonomicon articles, which this article follows exactly the same formula as, this is a 12 page spectacular, going into plenty of detail about said god of magic, his relationships with other gods, his clerics, his rather irritating primary servant Zagyg, their holy days and myths, plus a couple of magical items and spells, and a map of a sample temple. Like the Demononicon, and very much unlike the old Faiths of Faerun stuff, this feels like they knew exactly what they wanted to do, and set out to achieve it in a logical and careful manner. If there is a flaw, it's in that they're both a little too formulaic, and a little too reverential of the original source material, but there's certainly no shortage of added on creative stuff either, most of which would be easily backconvertible to a 1 or 2e game. Its a fairly positive development, and of course, a lot more PC friendly than new crunch for demon lords. It's unlikely that they'll get anywhere near covering all the core gods before the magazine ends, but if they can keep this up, the last couple of years will have more than a few worthwhile articles within their pages.
Staffs(sic) of the magi: Like the imps, here's another topic that has parallels in recent products by other RPG companies. The Magister in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved is an alternate wizard class that puts the focus on their staff rather than their spellbook and familiar. And there are near infinite number of different ways to enhance these things if you're willing to do the research and spend large quantities of money. So if you want to give up your familiar and spend a load of feats to give your staff more special powers, and make it tougher and harder to take away from you, here's your article. It's also a good example of them putting more setting detail in again, with talk about mythological spellcasters and the importance of the staff to them. It makes me feel once again that the magazine is connected to the outside world, rather than just being all about D&D feeding on itself, and that not all wizards have updated to wearing fetish gear comprised largely of belts. Plus getting people attached to their signature gear and upgrading it with them rather than constantly looking for new shinies helps keep a character more consistent.
Ecology of the spellweaver: Yay!. These freaky fuckers appear in the magazine again. Didn't expect them to get an ecology, but glad they have. The fantasy equivalent of grey aliens, able to perform multiple simultaneous feats of magic with their 6 arms in a way humans haven't got a hope of matching, they're pretty inscrutable and impressive to face. This ecology gives them a cause: Recover their lost empire by finding the spell that will load the magical save point that they made just before trying the ritual that destroyed it. :D What a very droll twist on an old cliche. Seems very appropriate considering they're a Forgotten Realms creature, and you know how many magical apocalypses that place has had over the years. :) They also get a Dr Who inspired process of rejuvenation and reproduction, which also seems appropriate, especially since said series had just started up again. Seems like the quotient of whimsy is going up again in these articles, which is definitely a good thing. The amount of useful crunch also seems to be increasing, with several advanced monster stat blocks and a new feat, and a relaxation of the strict subdivisions that plagued the last year. Lets hope next year refines things even further.
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 5/7
Wormfood eases up to third gear at last, as we reach the middle of the adventure path. While previous instalments have been deliberately generic, this is very specific to their current adventure indeed. Say hello to the Wormhunter prestige class. Any normal sane person would avoid letting a Kyuss worm get anywhere near them. But there's always a few insane cultists who figure out how to draw power from them. And unlike many vile prestige classes, this is one the good guys can theoretically learn as well, dabbling in the dark side for greater power to fight their foes with. That's the idea anyway. In practice it all falls down a bit because the powers gained are no better than a normal class, and quite a bit worse for spellcasters, plus you have the various prices to health and sanity to contend with subtracting from your overall competence. Once you crunch the math, adopting this will make you suboptimal from nearly any entry point. A fun read, and I'd have no objection to giving it to NPC's as a DM, but there's no way I'd choose this for my primary character as a player. Just not practical at all.
Spellcraft: Having just had a spell weaver ecology, we also get to see some of their unique spells, along with the incomprehensible methods used to record them. 3 books of 4 pentagonal pages, that only make sense when assembled into a d12 in the right configuration? Not sure if that's brilliant, or just weirdness for weirdnesses sake. Either way, it works quite effectively in making this seem alien, and ties in nicely with the previous article, despite them being by different writers. Kudos to the editors too for catching this one.
Anamensis is another means of tapping into unknown lore, this time with sanity threatening alien undertones. The usual disclaimers apply.
Cynosure makes your dimension hopping way more accurate. Since some of them have substantial percentages of killing you underground and the like, this will help the paranoid spellcaster stay alive through the centuries.
Modulate allows you to do amazing things with wands, tapping their energy to cast completely different spells. That's spellweavers all over for you. Who else would be able to pull off tricks that radical. Maybe a few elder dragons, but they wouldn't share this stuff.
Siphon is another metamagic one, stealing energy to kick butt in unexpected ways. Exactly the kind of thing wizards fight over, since they aren't coming up with stuff this radical.
Spell Star is a somewhat wonky bit of counterspelling that does seem appropriate, but isn't nearly as useful. Unlike earlier spells, this is a bit of a white elephant, given it's specificity and prep time. Even spell weavers are hardly perfect. They have issues too.
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 6/7
Sage advice: What does once per day really mean. (Oh, not thiss one again! Andy never gets a break, collins collins. Andy hatses you sso much.)
What do you do if something has both resistance and vulnerability to an attack (Resistances first, then vulnerabilities )
What's the duration of a ring of invisibility (3 minutes. )
If you affix dispel magic to hallow, what type is it (Area.)
When a spell effect is affixed to hallow, do unusual durations work (yess)
Is there any way to get rid of unhallow (Cast it's reversse on it, preciouss. )
Do temporary hit points from the same effect stack. How about different effects (No. Yess, but you need to track their durations separately. Lotss of nassty bookkeeping)
What does augment healing do to lesser vigor (Lots of extra pointses, collins collins. Very usseful.)
How long does a master of many forms wild shape last (Ssame as the base class they got it from)
Can you get a familiar from summon monster spells by applying persistent spell to the spell (sssssplts. Andy hateses you. You broke the game, collins collins. Nassty persson. Glarrrrrrkhackhackhackgurglewheezegurgle. That'ss better. He won't break the game anymore.)
What kind of action is attacking with a spectral hand (Part of the casting, yess. Nice extra power.)
Can a spectral hand deliver a spell from a staff, wand or scroll (No.)
Dragon Issue 338: December 2005
part 7/7
Class acts: Barbarians get the Horselord, a new variant. They've already had a feature on how riding barbarians can be cool. Now they can really back it up. Of course, this might be a problem in many campaigns. But mounts always are. Curse you, cramped dungeons.
Bards get Focussed Performer. More feats that enable them to make even more of their class features. They can be extra awesome, stop for a beat, and just increase the power of their song. Like monk's stunning variants, these give you a lot of extra versatility for a couple of feats, and are really worth considering.
Clerics get Religious titles. If you remember old edition, you'll know that every level had it's own title. Here's lots more of them. After all, being called by your class all the time is rather metagame, is it not?
Druids get Animal magic. (Monkey magic? Animal magnetism? Monkey Magnetism? Hmm. Evil thoughts.) Two more magic items to make your companions more useful. Just the thing for our barbaric friends from earlier this issue.
Fighters get The Pikeman. A fighting style that works great in groups for mowing through enemies, at least until the artillery gets involved. Includes a rather handy feat that helps this. After all, fighting with polearm and shield is so historically common, it shouldn't be forbidden to D&D characters.
Monks get another bite at the background apple. Why did YOU become a monk?! Once more, into the backstory, my friends. Mind the purple prose. That stuff can make your eyes water.
Paladins get Solstice Knight. A pair of substitution levels with a fluff requirement, this feels like it ought to have been a prestige class, but they couldn't be bothered extending it to 5 levels. More than 1 way to achieve an effect, eh?
Rangers get The Elk King! Um, ok then. Of all the animals to choose as your archetype. :shrugs: Really not sure what to make of this one.
Rogues get a trio of dwarf rogue substitution levels. Seems they're the new in thing, despite being considerably more awkward mechanically than prestige classes. This set are concentrated on knocking down obstructive crap. Just the thing for a frustrated miner.
Sorcerers get another way to increase their spell lists. It all comes down to who you know, dawg. So you'd better get out there, fake it till you make it.
Wizards get 4 new magical books. Just the thing for if your player pulls a random one from a wizard's library shelf. A little knowledge never hurts.
Nodwick faces the anti-santa. By faces, we mean collects royalties from. Dork tower gets everything they asked for. Some are happier than others. Zogonia faces another horrible death.
Order of the stick makes it into Dragon! You'd better get a move on with your story, because you've got less than 2 years left to tell it in. That means learning the rules, instead of wasting a strip on a cheap gag.
Well, after all this, I can definitely say this was the quickest and easiest year to get through in a LONG time. While not quite up to the level of variety and setting stuff they had in the 80's and 90's, it's still much better than it has been since 2001, and Erik has settled in much faster than most new editors do. I look forward to seeing if he'll continue to improve next year.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 1/6
80 (100) pages. The lady of pain gets a boob window! I'm genuinely shocked, particularly since we just had a lengthy streak of letters complaining about sexism. The art department clearly did not get the memo that inappropriate sexualisation is bad and creates a hostile environment for our female readers. Still, at least it's appropriate to the contents, as it's time for another old campaigns special. As with the regular columns, they aren't going to cram in quite as many as they did in their first attempt, but hopefully that means the ones they do will be bigger and more useful. Here's to the power of concentration and never giving up.
Scan quality: Somewhat blurry, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik continues to demonstrate his personal attachment to the old settings, Oerth in particular. Having been a long-term fan who really felt it when they cancelled Greyhawk, he wants to reduce the suffering of everyone out there peeved WotC cancelled their favourite setting. He might not be able to bring them back to life, but by keeping them alive in our memories, it increases the chance that the next generation of people who write D&D will be inclined to revisit them in one form or another. Makes perfect sense to me. You never know what influence your actions will have on other people in the future, and in the position of a magazine editor with a circulation in the tens of thousands, you can be sure it will have some effect. Use it or lose it, because time sure aint standing still.
Scale Mail: As usual, the october issue gets plenty of praise. They already have more than enough good material for this year's one too. Anything else you send them will be just icing on the cake.
We have another request for more epic material. They have no great objection to that, but they need more submissions. They ALWAYS need more submissions. The deadline beast is ever-hungry, and they'd rather give it good-quality food if possible.
We also have another request about the old boardgames they did. You can still buy many of them, but they won't be producing more in the near future, which is a shame.
They may well be doing some more psionics material and fiction in the near future, possibly even together. Again, they want to do it, but it's all up to the writers. They have to find the sweet spot between quality, and people who don't want too much money. :p
An amusing suggestion for an april article. Remember, things going spectacularly wrong is often more interesting than them going right.
As demonstrated by the amusing bickering in Order of the Stick, which persuaded someone to renew their subscription pronto. Funny how a single page of material can make all the difference in a big magazine.
And finally, we continue the endless debate of the fluff/crunch balance in the magazine. Erik reminds us that one cannot truly exist without the other if you want to play a roieplaying game. You'll just have roleplaying, or a game. it's adding the two together that makes it more than the sum of it's parts.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Races of the Dragon. We've exhausted the core collection, but that's where things get interesting. See Kobolds get some more cool stuff so the ultimate underdogs can kick your ass a little more humiliatingly. See Dragonborn, another of the things that would prove damn popular and become core next edition. And the usual load of spells and prestige classes for those of you who want to enhance your draconic connection.
Eberron enjoys it's very own Players Guide. As with many near core supplements, it looks like a grab-bag of material, including some which come from fan suggestions. Some'll be good, some'll be filler.
D20 stuff this month seems pretty decent. The big one is the release of the Dark Legacies player and campaign guide. We've had victorian steampunk mixed with magic recently, now we have postapocalyptic steampunk mixed with magic and horror. Doesn't sound too bad. Another one incorporating dimensional horror, odd technology, and (not actually very) low magic is the Iron heroes Bestiary. See Mike Mearls cook up cool creatures that take advantage of his new combat options, and a bunch of spurious planes for the weirder ones to come from. And finally, they give a shout-out to Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics. Revenge of the rat king sees another spin on the classic PHB cover and plenty of other retro features. Ahh, the joys of there being more things to buy than you ever could. It means there's bound to be something you like out there.
Our minis this month tie in with our current adventure path. Writhing Stranglers, worm infested corpses for all your kyussy needs. Several other things in the same line should also prove useful, even if you won't find out why for a few months.
Several other play aids as well, as usual. Castle kits give you another source of minis landscapes for your visual representation needs. If you'd prefer things flat, Ocho games gives us little ceramic tiles with visual representations of monsters. Less worry of being knocked over, but still fun for cats to play with. And dice are getting their own pretty variants, courtesy of q-workshop. Just as long as it doesn't make them hard to read. :p
Conan gets a graphic novel adaption of the Jewels of Gwalhur. He continues to be a popular choice amongst games for inspiration, and maybe you can get a little more here.
The new D&D computer game, Stormreach, is finally out. Now will you stop going on about it. This is what, the third time here.
And finally, on the silly side, we have D&D themed motivational posters. This became the biggest thread series in rpg.net open, and it looks like someone is actually selling them. I find this very amusing, and more than a little :rolleyes: worthy.
Dragon Kings: In 2e dark sun, getting to become a Dragon or Avangion was theoretically possible, but would take a truly enormous game to accomplish. You needed to roll high enough stats to dual class in the first place (even if athas's alternate generation method made that slightly more probable, and then work your way through to 20th level twice, each of which will likely take years of play in itself. And then once you became one, each new level required not only hundreds of thousands of XP, but also a complex and expensive magical ritual. Safe to say that it's considerably easier in 3e. They reduce the requirements to 9th level spellcasting and 6th level psionic powers, which will still require you to be at least moderately into epic levels, but doesn't seem too gruelling if you plan your prestige classes right. Similarly, the power levels are much more balanced with a conventional character of the same total level, with their physical progression fairly similar to what it was, but their spellcasting progression substantially lower. Of course, since their original levels are pretty much bound to be 1/2 BAB, they won't be that physically threatening compared to a fighting class of the same level either. So while they remain a terrifying world-shaking threat to the common person, it's much easier for a party to challenge them and win under 3e. You'll have to give them some more class levels than the minimum if you want them to remain competitive in a world of hecatoncheires and pseudonatural paragon tarrasques.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 3/6
Races of Spelljammer: Here's an article for the one conspicuous absence last time round. Turns out they didn't convert all the cool races wildspace has to offer in polyhedron 151, so here's an article which adds to that without rehash. Once again, I'm glad that Erik got to hone his editorial talents there before moving up to the big leagues. Let's see just how well these survived the conversion to 3e.
Giff remain amusing as ever, colonial mercenary hippo people IIIIIIINNNN SPAAAAAAAACE!!!!! They're big and tough, and absolutely useless as skill monkeys thanks to their monstrous humanoid racial hit dice. Make sure you pay them properly, because those guns need regular recharging.
Insectare are elf-insect hybrids who want to take over the entire universe. They're ridiculously arrogant, and an affront to one is all of them. When in mixed race company, they usually pretend to be just regular elves. This seems custom designed to create inter-party tensions, like mixing assassins and paladins. As if regular elves weren't trouble enough.
Scro are of course orcs in space, far more disciplined than their landbound cousins due to the privations of extended voyages. They still have enough of a sense of humour to come up with really creative insults though. They're far more likely to work smoothly with an adventuring party than a kender, that's for sure. The question is merely if their con bonus will compensate for their +2 LA adjustment in resilience as warriors.
Full frontal nerdity gets topical about the new orleans disaster. Ouch. They also sing belated christmas carols.
Dead factions: Our third article updating planescape factions to 3e, this pretty much completes the process, which is pleasing to see. They even take the time to remind us of the more obscure ones from various supplements. Now all they need to do is finish off the planar dragons as well and we can move on to something else.
Godsmen get a feat which doubles the rate at which they can craft items, another which lets them use magical items at a higher caster level than normal, and a magical item that lets them tap past incarnations to summon various creatures. Seems suitably creative to fulfil their remit.
Communals gain magic items and feats which improve their co-operative abilities, sharing damage between people, boosting your aid another ability, and increasing the number of things you can affect with bardic music. All seem very handy indeed for an adventuring party, which needs to work as a unit if it's to survive dark and dangerous dungeons. Can you share all the treasure just as freely if you suceed though?
Expansionists get a bunch of obvious items that boost their physical combat abilities, letting them get what they want by force and intimidation. This also seems very appropriate for most adventurers, assuming you're strong or sneaky enough to kill them and take their stuff.
The Incanterium see their signature trick of turning a spellcaster into an immortal thaumivore updated as a 5 level prestige class. As in 2e, it's debatable whether it's worth it, as losing your natural healing is not a small sacrifice and there are plenty of other ways to immortality.
Mercykillers are also a 5 level prestige class, mixing combat and magical tricks to help them hunt down and punish lawbreakers. The smiting of chaotic creatures is new, but the other tricks involving oaths, contracts and warrants are pretty familiar. Behave when you're around them, for they will lose their powers if they have to turn a blind eye to the other party member's misdeeds.
Signers get four rather nifty magical items, reflecting their egocentricism in different ways. A mirror which summons shadowy creatures from your subconscious at midnight, which can easily get out of hand. A book which lets you bless and curse people if you know their names. A trumpet that acts as a loudspeaker, penetrating even magical silence to make sure you're the centre of attention. And the Heart of Aoskar, a minor artifact that will transfer you to a random plane if you fiddle with it. I guess from their perspective, wherever you go, you're still the centre of the universe.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 4/6
Creature Catalogue IV: More deliberate tapping of nostalgia here, as they stop using The Dragon's Bestiary altogether, and go back to a series originally used between 84-86. Instead of providing new monsters, it's focussed on converting some of the many monsters that haven't got 3rd ed statistics yet, but really should. So I guess the question becomes less one of creativity, but how well they get converted. Faithful, powered up, or horribly nerfed. A mixed bag, as is often the case.
Animus become a template, as befits undead that retain class abilities. This gives them reasonable fast healing and a grab bag of special abilities for an LA of +4. Iffy choice for PC's as usual.
Blindheim were the foglight eyed frogs from the Fiend Folio. They get an improved degree of ecological thought and rudimentary society added, with is actually quite nice. They may be weird little frogs, but they're still just about smart enough to be people, dammit.
Carrionette are that old standby of evil puppets. How could they leave these guys out? They'll wind up operating your body, and speaking through other people's mouths. Angel will foil them!
Death head's trees are also already well catered for in the 3rd party Ravenloft license by white wolf. Why they feel they have to repeat them here confuses me. Do they think that Ravenloft & Dragonlance's new incarnations don't count or something? Irksome politics aside, they're still a cool idea, decently converted.
Greyhawk Dragons were of course one of the more common sources of half-dragons last edition, given their urbanised, sociable nature. Everyone else is getting in on the act these days, but they're still holding on, albeit with a somewhat nerfed breath weapon. Maybe someone you've known for years has been one all along.
Dusanu are one I don't remember. They were originally from module X5, apparently. Still, like yellow musk zombies, they're a plant based false undead created by parasitic infection. You die from their attacks, you'll be joining them soon. They also include an advanced version, which is actually pretty tactically capable.
Goblyns always seemed like a dumb name to me first time round. Another one covered in the new Ravenloft monster book anyway. You ought to simply acknowledge the existence of that rather than waste valuable page count on this crap. And they still feel vaguely inessential in terms of abilities too. Yawn.
Maggot golems are of course the perfect minions for worms that walk. They now get fast healing and an engulf special attack that's serious nightmare fuel. No complaints here.
Suel Liches also become a template that may or may not be worth it from a PC point of view, but make for pretty nifty adversaries. They can possess anyone, and don't even need the usual tells a spellcaster has in terms of equipment. Just the thing for paranoia promotion.
Nagpa are an interesting one. They appeared in the Princess Ark series, got PC stats in Top ballista, and were an early example of the cursed with awesome, therefore I must AAAAAnnnngst principle. This conversion completely leaves out the eternal reincarnation, which seems to be missing the point a bit. Not sure it should be a template either. Hrrmm. Nahh. Not keen on this implementation.
Phanaton should be very familiar to anyone reading this from the start. One of the many awesome things created in X1, they've since got PC stats in here before and also played a part in the princess ark series. As LA 0 creatures with gliding and climbing, they're not a bad addition to a party in 3e either. Yay for that.
Xvart are one I don't feel any particular need to bring back, as they're just another low level marauding humanoid. Tiny little stat changes just aren't enough, they need their own niche to survive. Being the goblinoid equivalent of gnomes doesn't quite cut it.
Order of the stick has to deal with long casting times. But sometimes you don't need to identify things to know they're bad.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 5/6
The ecology of the draconian: A Krynn specific ecology? Not often you see those. Guess it's a fairly convenient way to kill two birds with one stone in their old campaigns special. And they do have one of the more interesting creation stories, spawned purely for conflict by the forces of evil, now the war has ended, they have to find a place in the world, and deal with the fact that they can't reproduce naturally. As is often the case with these, the article is so busy reiterating what readers of the old books already know that it doesn't really get the chance to contribute anything new, apart from the usual crunchy bits like the advanced character stats and the knowledge DC table. So mildly useful if you're playing third edition, and not at all if you're the type who mines the fluff for conversion. Not very thrilling.
Wormfood: Ooh. We shout out to the very first strategic review here, with a new magical fountain with random effects for drinking. Course, as is common, they do it better now. Or at least, far better balanced. This is where the real clever part comes in. You get both a benefit and a penalty, and they are reasonably balanced, but you get to choose one, while the other is rolled randomly. Ingenious. So will you maximise your benefit, or try and minimise your penalty? Not an easy choice. (which is the best kind of choice in dramatic terms. ) So unlike last month, this is a pretty resounding success on both the flavor and mechanics fronts. And it's pretty easy to use in other campaigns too. Two thumbs up.
Spellcraft: Ah yes, Dr Daclaud Heinfroth. Aka Dr Dominiani. One of the more impotent, but still interesting darklords. He was never a spellcaster. But desire for article fodder trumps established statistics, and so here's a collection of spells focussed on the study of the brain and sanity. As with spells that use the names of the original player's characters made by other people, and fanfic that violates established characterisation, I mildly disapprove of this appropriation of other people's creativity to legitimise your own, but am willing to overlook it if the contents are good.
Depression will have fuck-all effect on me. Waaaay ahead of you, mate. As usual these days, the mechanical penalty is spelled out, but there are no notes on how you should roleplay it.
Lobotomise causes temporary loss of an ability. Unlike the real thing, you can get pretty precise in what you rip from their mind, assuming you know the victim patient.
Shock Treatment and Submersion Treatment let you bypass the expensive and bulky equipment to just deliver the raw materials straight, and then have them disappear with no trace. Even a scientist who is suspicious of magic like Dr Mordenheim will see the value in that.
Transfusion allows you to drain ability score points from others to boost your own. One that could be very scary indeed if you could extend it's duration. Drawing obscene power from your tortured prisoners is always a good one for an evil overlord, as it gives them a catch for the players to exploit.
Dragon Issue 339: January 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Is a warforged considered to be wearing armor (Not usually. Sometimes, when it's beneficial, yess.)
Can warforged swim (Mosstly.)
Can warforged go deep underwater (Ssstil ssuffer pressure damage, collins collins. Crushing nassty.)
How long can a warforged run or hustle. (No longer than usual. They can nearly kill themself because they don't notice the fatigue, ssilly robots.)
Do warforged have scent (Yess. Andy likes the ssmell of warforged, preciouss. )
Can you salvage materials from the body of a dead warforged (No. Its all wasted, collins collins. Not even enough for a snack.)
If you attack a warforged with shocking grasp, do you get the benefit for metal (Yess)
Are warforged affected by wounding weapons (yess. Lots of things are assumed to be normal for reasons of game balance.)
Does having adamantine body enable warforged to hurt things that need adamantine to penetrate their DR (no)
How do the metal body feats affect a warforged's weight (quite a bit, preciouss.)
Can a dead warforged's body be sundered (yess)
Do warforged paladins get special mounts (no. Better choose wisely, yess? Breaking your mounts back iss probably an evil act.)
What bonus languages do warforged get for a high int (None. No sspeaky good.)
Can a changeling look like a warforged (yess)
Can a kalashtar soulknife use quori imbedded shards (no)
Can a wild elf get a dragonmark (no)
Can a duergar or drow get an abberant dragonmark (Yess. It's accepting of the strange and unloved. Not like those nassty do-gooderss. )
Class acts decides it's taken the one page for each of the 11 core classes thing as far as it can go. Instead, it gives us 4 2 page spreads, one each for adventurer, arcane, divine and warrior. This is a definite improvement, because it gives them more room for depth in their options, and allows them to include stuff for the new base classes from the splatbooks. I approve. Hopefully this'll cut down on the half-assed filler.
Adventurers get A Different Path. Rangers have already got some advice on different ways to skin their skillset. Here's 6 more of them, including that old favourite from older editions the bounty hunter. They also get 6 new feats, including Pathfinder, which would of course become the name of their product line. Now that is interesting to note. Someone on the paizo team really likes rangers.
Arcane characters get (an absolutely atrocious pic of mialee) their own bit of advice on essential spells to choose. Thanks to the new format, they can do this in a single issue instead of splitting it up over 3. An improvement, but still dull reading.
Divine characters get the Sidhe Scholar. A variant druid trained by the fae, (as was also done by Vince Garcia way back in issue 155) they are simultaneously more educated, and more alien than the standard druid. Their powers make them simultaneously alluring and disconcerting, and they get lots of skill bonuses. They're pretty much on a par with regular druids in terms of overall power, which makes them pretty scary. Don't go into the woods when the moon is ripe, my son. They'll steal you away. Or something.
Warriors get another demonstration of the new flexibility this format offers them. Hexblades have got no love at all in this magazine. Here they get 11 new feats granting them new curses, or enhancing their existing ones. Become a master debuffer. It's what they're good at, and your team will thank you for it.
Nodwick takes it's time to thank the little guys they kill so often. Without them, adventurers would never be able to defeat the high CR horrors that threaten humanity. Dork tower reflects that advances in technology do nothing to stop other people from being annoying. Zogonia actually resurrects kev for the first time. He's got a long way to go to catch up with that dwarf, but at this rate he'll get there.
Going with fewer, larger articles gives them a better batting average than two years ago, even if not all of them are great. As with many skills, it takes a few years to really get good at being an editor, and the magazine is still reaping the benefits of not having it's staff replaced so frequently. It'll be very interesting to see if their ambitions will stretch even further with this theme next year, since they're planning on keeping it regular. Let's cycle all the way through the other 11 months one last time and find out.
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 1/6
76 (100) pages. MORE cheesecake in quick succession? The magazine continues to talk the talk, but not walk the walk when it comes to combatting sexism. Maybe you could call it a homage to issue 114, since they appear to be wearing the same outfit, and in a very similar position. :p Still, at least they've found a new theme for the issue. Astrology! There's a real world topic that has plenty of mystical symbolism, and yet has been mostly passed over in D&D, due to Diviners having far more specific and accurate tools to work with. Let's see if they can sustain a whole issue on the idea, or if it should have stayed as a single article amongst a load of other stuff.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik talks about going to the moon, a topic last tackled by Gary in issue 301. This is one idea that's gradually fallen out of fashion the more we know about it, as people went to the moon, found it was an airless wasteland that went from well above boiling in the day to well below freezing at night, and decided that the profit from going there was not proportionate to the cost. I don't think it's a co-incidence that the further humanity has explored, the more distant our fantasy stories have to be set from the world we know. If we do ever get permanent interplanetary colonies up, which still seems possible within our lifetime, what kind of fiction will the people who live there write, especially the kids who grow up without ever knowing what it's like to go outside without a spacesuit and feel earthly wind, rain, gravity, etc? What tropes that are common now will they find cheesy or unbelievable? How much more state of the art can special effects get? After all, we already live in a science fiction future by many standards, even if it tends more towards cyberpunk than space opera. Here's to continued speculation, and the people who will work way too hard to bring those ideas into reality.
Scale Mail: We start off with a long letter complaining about Erik's put-downs of 80's fantasy films. Go back and rewatch them, see if you can do it without cringing. If you can, then you have a stronger suspension of disbelief than him. Or at least, you have a higher tolerance for stop-motion than orange and teal. :p
Completely the other direction, they criticise Dragon for being more expensive than Backpacker Magazine. I'm betting the reason for that is economies of scale. Not only do they have more readers, but they're more likely to get advertisers willing to spend larger quantities of money. You wouldn't think they had the time, like the ones devoted to skydiving, surfing and skateboarding, they ought to be out living the life.
Erik gets sloppy, and prints the letter about crunch vs fluff two issues in a row. Tut tut. And you'd managed exactly a hundred issues since the last time you made that particular mistake.
Also a blast from the past is someone asking about The Wizards Three. By no co-incidence at all, they're planning on bringing that back for their 30th birthday special. That'll get the nostalgia flowing like few other columns could.
Keith Baker calls in to correct a little mistake in one of his recent articles. It can be tricky to keep the small differences between 3.0 and 3.5 straight, even for the official writers.
Another very familiar request is the one for more psionics. If at some point it ever gets equal coverage to magic, pinch me to wake me up.
People continue to write into the magazine to ask where stuff is, instead of asking forums, despite the much faster turnover they could get that way. I do wonder why.
And finally, we have more praise. OotS has a lot of fans, and they're very pleased to see it get the WotC seal of approval, especially since they could have been arseholes about the use of D&D rules terms. Do comics count under the OGL anyway?
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 2/6
First watch expands to 6 pages. Given that the magazine is also shrinking, this means it's taking up a bigger proportion of it than the previews ever have before. Which means more creativity free content that won't be much use later on. Blaaah. Anyway, this month's D&D product is an epic adventure. The red hand of doom should take you from 5th to 10th level, the sweetest quarter of your adventuring life. Did you run through this one?
D20 modern gets D20 future tech, another bit of nice crunch for your enjoyment, and potential crossover fun. Spaceships, cyberwear, virtual reality, lots of other coolness.
Plenty of 3rd party D20 stuff as well. Paizo continue to give us Compleat encounters, for those of you who find Dungeon just isn't enough, or are addicted to your visual aids. Crisis in Freeport gives you another adventure set there, and probably some more incidental setting details at the same time. And Green Ronin must be a popular choice amongst the writers, because they also promote their True20 Worlds of Adventure book. Well, Chris Pramas was another WotC employee. I guess he and the Paizo gang keep in touch.
A lot of stuff on the game aids side, probably more than you'll ever want. Vector based maps that allow you to zoom in and out for the right level of detail for the situation. Another set of magnetised multicoloured disks that you can put under your minis as a quick way of tracking status effects. Vewingdale, a mapmaking computer program. A whiteboard specifically designed for tracking initiative. A coffin for your character sheets?! O_o My poor poor brain. Man, I hope you're running the game at your house, because I'd hate lugging all that stuff around.
Our new minis this month are mostly official ones. The Wardrums line is their current wave of prepainted monsters and monstrosities, including siege engines for mass combat. If you want something more specific, there's Privateer Press's Commander Coleman Stryker, a badass warmachine leader with a surprisingly cute battle standard. He's all little and stompy and spiky haired. Sephiroth would approve.
The D&D online: Stormreach game gets a full double page spread of promotion this month. God, they really will not let up on this one. Neverwinter nights never had it so good. Warhammer 40k also comes to the Nokia N-gage, amusingly. Since Rifts also did so recently, I'm not sure what to make of this fact. Definitely worth noting though.
The stars are right: We kick off with a very interesting article indeed. A D&D zodiac, comprised of 12 different iconic monsters to replace the real world set, with their own set of symbolisms and things they're supposedly good and bad at. That's specific in a way very few generic articles are these days, adding a bit of implied setting to the game in general. Unfortunately this comes at a cost. Gaining the benefits of your zodiac sign requires spending feats, and the benefit you get from each one is just plain worse than a regular skill focus or other basic feat like the saving throw boosters that anyone can buy with no prerequisites. So as a flavour piece, this is a resounding success. As a mechanical one, it's an embarrassing failure. And it's certainly been a LONG time since I could say that, so it gets an extra point for being genuinely old school. Well done. Well done indeed. I'm highly entertained by your efforts. :golf claps:
Full frontal nerdity introduces a new character. Via webcam. This is a bit dodgy. He has to resort to bribes to convince the other players he's kosher.
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 3/6
The master astrologer: We had an astrologer NPC class in issue 45, and a more general oracle in issue 53, but neither really stood up to conventional spellcasters in terms of world-affecting tricks or combat potential. This is definitely not the case for the Master Astrologer prestige class detailed here, which gets 9/10ths spelllcasting, an accelerated bonus feat progression, easy worldwide communication with all other members of their prestige class, and several pretty cool floating bonuses that they can apply to make their spells more powerful. (I'm particularly tickled by the bonuses to spell DC's and penetration if you know the star sign of your target.) Like the Loremaster, they seem entirely worth the sacrifices you'll need to make to get in, particularly for Sorcerers and Wizards. If you want to play the kind of spellcaster who uses divinations, crafting and buffs to plan ahead and completely break any enemy that doesn't have similar tricks up their sleeve, this is pretty darn good at that.
The eternal sun: Having done the stars, we continue to gaze into the sky to try and understand the sun, hopefully without being blinded by it. Fittingly, the bright orange backdrop makes this one of their harder articles to read clearly. This is very much a grab-bag of associated stuff. First up, we have a bit of talk about the symbolism of the sun in the real world. Then they talk about how that might well change if you vary the length of the year and number of suns the world has, and the cool possibilities for varying climate and illumination it offers a world. And then we get lots of little bits of crunch that you can pick and mix for your game. A new religion with their own unique domain worshipping the sun directly. Substitution levels for Paladins and Monks, making their abilities more symbolic of sun worship. (the paladin's set being more obvious and literal than the monk's one. ) And finally some feats that reflect a connection with a particular time of day. (with very similar symbolism to the same Exalted castes) Lots of things that would be disconnected single-page articles a year ago, that become slightly more than the sum of their parts when all put together. Introduce in bits and pieces over the course of a campaign to get the best effect.
Eye of the night: The sun, the stars, the ...... I'll take moon for 5 please bob. And this article follows exactly the same pattern as the last one. It's easier to have multiple moons of different cycle lengths without having to completely rethink your assumptions on day to day life though, and the set of associations are quite different. The substitution levels are for Rangers and Rogues, and the feats representing being born under a particular phase are even more blatantly cribbed from WoD werewolves. So I'm afraid to say this special is falling into formulaicness after a more original start. With so much built up symbolism around something, it's hard to drag it out again and keep it exciting.
The ecology of the mooncalf: An amusing name, but a rather scary creature, it's another ecology that is strongly influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. His influence on D&D has definitely increased in the latest edition. Huge flying tentacled masses that can consume anything physical, but their real attraction is to witnessing disasters, which they can predict, and if there's none coming in a reasonable timeframe, they're quite happy to manipulate events to cause them? You don't want to hang around when that darkens the sky. A nicely atmospheric ecology that fills out and adds to them more than enough to make them a primary driver in an entire campaign arc, this is a pretty damn good ecology. The new feats are particularly cool and suitably epic. I think I can use this. Fly! Fly, my pretties! Show them what real woe is!!! Ahahahahaha!!!!!
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 4/6
Wormfood: Style points? Tee hee hee. How very fripperous. Another thing that would merge very well with Iron Heroes, with it's social feats and wealth based special effects. Yes, folks, here we have a whole new little subsystem for determining exactly how much social benefit you get from proper grooming, fashion, accessories and having a big menacing entourage. As is usual for 3rd edition, the costs for each plus increase roughly quadratically, which should keep them from getting out of hand compared to your skill bonuses. Another one that I find quite likable, but isn't that strongly connected with the adventure path. With Dungeoncraft gone, it seems like they're using this to provide general worldbuilding and adventure running advice. And they are still trying to advance the technology they do so with. So it's not perfect, but still very useful if you're playing the right kind of game.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: This article is also made to fit into the episode's theme. Since the two articles are by different writers, I have to wonder which came first. A dozen magic animal themed items? We'll say they're the D&D zodiac. :p Well, if you have a totemist in your party, they'll probably approve. Another case of D&D eating it's own tail ever more so as the years pass.
The Basilisk's Mask protects you against gaze attacks and gives you an extra damage buffer before death. It'll only save your life a few times before breaking though.
Bracers of the Chimera let you become a hybrid of yourself and said three-headed monstrosity, making things even more confusing. Have fun unleashing fire, sonic and ramming damage on the enemy simultaneously.
Cloaks of the Dragon make you a better leader. Not too sure about that. Sure Dragons have plenty of presence, but they don't generally make great bosses. Too detached and likely to squish or eat you. Symbolic associations aren't always accurate are they.
Dryads Helms pioneer an ability that would become standard next edition. Penalties to the enemy if they attack anyone other than you. The archetypical Defender trick. Very interesting, if once again a rather tenuous connection to the actual creature.
An Ettin's Club randomly hits any one of the people in range. This makes being a team player rather tricky, but if you just wade into the middle of the foes, problem solved. Or be chaotic evil and laugh when your friends get in the way.
The Eye of the Beholder also has abilities nothing like it's namesake. Sense motive? Ignore concealment? Both useful abilities though. I guess another bad pun about differing viewpoints would be in order.
A Harpy's Cap is slightly more logical, giving you social benefits and extra bardic music. But once the feathers in your cap run out, that's it. Some zodiac signs are more transient than others.
The Kraken's Bracelet improves your general knowledge skills. This makes sense. They do get around, those kraken.
The Ring of the Hydra lets you reroll saving throws. Always a useful one, even if you're working blind. Everyone wants a chance to escape those 1's.
A Stirge's Gauntlet lets you drain an enemies blood to recharge your own HP. But only once a day, unlike a ring of vampiric regeneration. Another weaker version of existing stuff then.
A Unicorn's Shield lets you do kick-ass charge attacks. Curiously, it isn't spiked though. I guess the real unicorns would complain if you actually used one of their horns.
A Wyvern's Die gives you a random benefit when rolled. It's 12 sided too. Just the thing for if you find yourself hardly ever using it IRL. Not a bad collection overall really.
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 5/6
Spellcraft: No surprise that this department is in theme too. Astrology and magic have huge real world links. Hell, just being able to track the time of year accurately, a la stonehenge, WAS magic. Humans can be surprisingly easy to impress. Course another strong connection here is werecreatures and the moon. That's one we have had a themed collection on before. So lets hope this collection of astrological magics venture a little farther into space.
Guiding Star helps you get places, twee weather witch style. Follow the shiny light. Watch a will-o-wisp doesn't take it's place and lead you too your doom.
Lunacy drives you nuts every full moon. Dr Dominiani would be fascinated by this one. Hmm. You have too much cerebral fluid. We must drain it at once! :nom:
Moonbridge create a means of transport only good creatures can use. Perfect for getting over a river or ravine and escaping. Make them permanent and create a city out of little floating islands and you have the perfect security measure that keeps out nasty sorts unobtrusively. I quite like this idea.
Motes of Moonlight is just another low level light creating spell. Like Dancing Lights or Faerie Fire, this has it's distinct uses, but is hardly a worldchanger.
Sever ties of the Moon helps mess up lycanthropes, making remaining human the optimal thing for them to do. Handy for dealing with inflected ones, in particular. Just make sure you have the chains ready, for like many 3.5 spells, it doesn't last nearly long enough.
Shooting Star is a more firey variant on call lightning. It doesn't do as much damage, but can obviously be used whenever there's open sky, instead of needing storms to activate. No objection to that idea.
Novel Approach returns one last time, albeit without it's A, to give us a look at The Black Cauldron. Lloyd Alexander's series is one of those that continues to sell decently to this day, even if the movie didn't do too well. And completely unsurprisingly, said cauldron is the primary focus of this article, along with the horrible hordes of undead that you can create with it. You still can't create unlimited armies like you could in previous editions, but increasing the amount to (level+5)^2 skeletons at a time is certainly enough for a good skirmish game (if they were still running those :( ) And knowing that the only way to stop the cauldron for good is for someone to climb in it and sacrifice their life for the greater good definitely remains a good source of dramatic tension amongst an adventuring party. So even if this is somewhat nerfed from full mythological artifact status and you can't use it to take over a country, adding more undead to the horde with every village you conquer, it's still more than capable of creating a big challenge for a group of PC's. And I guess that's what the designers want these days. Combat challenges, but not world-changing abilities. :Sigh: And to think they usually avoided that conservatism in previous novel and computer game columns. Time to reduce the variety of stuff we're getting a little further again. :(
Dragon Issue 340: February 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Does a full round spell go off in the next round (No. Thatss a 1 round casting time, not a full action cassting time. Completely different thingses.)
If a spontaneous caster uses 2 or more metamagic feats, does the spell take even longer to cast (no)
Do empower and maximise spell affect rolls to hit with it (no)
Can silent spell be used when trying to remain quiet (Yess. Perfffect for reading in the library, preciouss.)
Can still spell be used while entangled (No. Being grabbed and pulled around is still nassty and distracting, collins collins.)
Can domain granted turning powers power divine metamagic (no)
Can you use divine metamagic when making items (yess, but it won't save you any money.)
Do you have to know the divine metamagic feat you use (Yess. You need to pay for each one separately. Nassty nassty nerfing.)
If you use twin spell do you pay twice the component and XP cost (no)
Can you combine energy admixture, maximise spell and twin spell to a single effect and they all multiply each other out (Yess. Oh, the power :drools:)
Can you use a normal fireball to counter a metamagiced fire ball (Yess. Eassy.)
Can you counter a quickened spell (Ass long as you have an action ready. It'ss still not cast so fasst you can't react to it. )
Can you apply innate spell to another metamagicked spell (No)
Does ability focus (eldrich blast still apply if you add essences to it (yes)
Does ability focus apply to spell-like abilities (only one of them at a time)
Does spell focus affect spell-like abilities (no)
Can a warlock empower or quicken his eldritch blasts (Yess. If they have enough power.)
What does innate spell-like ability mean for the purpose of supernatural transformation. (A magical power everyone in your race getses. Not a learned one.)
Class acts: Adventurers get Opportunists. A whole bunch of feats designed to make you more able to attack off guard opponents, both terms of frequency, and amount of extra effect you have on them. Take lots of them, because they synergise with each other to truly horrific extents. 1-4 levels of fighter for all the bonus feats might help this build, rather than hinder it, (go Thug if you don't want to lose so many skill points) since many of them are on their bonus list. Someone do the DPR calculations. T'would also be a perfect path for AE Unfettered. In general, this combines striker with defender tactics to lethal effect.
Arcane characters are in theme and get Starcasters. Another concept that would get a profile upgrade in 4e. Anyway, this is 8 new backgrounds that can be taken by anyone, but are probably most suited to arcane casters. Both the benefits and penalties seem to be slightly higher and more general than most backgrounds. Watch someone taking these, for they may be aiming for twinky synergies.
Divine characters get Schools of Faith. A listing of what school of magic the various spells in the corebook belong to, this is mainly useful if you're taking feats based upon boosting spells from particular schools. Not very interesting though, as it's just a compilation anyone could have done themselves.
Warriors get Ritual Markings. Tattoos, ritual scarification, piercings, and other fun and sometimes squicky body modification is a great way to individualize your character, and can offer actual mechanical benefits. While it's generally spell users that get the enchanted tattoos, warriors can also look cool from doing so. Here's how. Another one that's useful for pretty much any class.
Nodwick uses the wrong weapon for the job of killing a demon lord. Dork tower has it's stupid little superstitions challenged. Zogonia has a rather weird and unfunny punchline this month. Order of the stick, on the other hand is pretty damn funny.
Well, this issue was pretty interesting in terms of having a strong theme that they haven't covered before, but was also surprisingly weak in mechanics, with stuff that's both over and underpowered easily spotted with examination. I guess the renewed focus on setting has come at a price, as these things always do. Let's see if it was just a momentary lapse, or they'll continue to get sloppier in that respect as time goes on.
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 1/6
75 (100) pages. We get reminded that a critical part of Warforged is the being forged part. Which just like human sex, is a long, hot, messy process with plenty of waste material. And it looks like they have plenty of company in an issue full of articles about artificially created creatures. That's another theme they haven't done before. Well done to them for spotting this niche and filling it, and let's hope their brainstormings have more ideas lined up.
Scan Quality: Moderate, some mis-sized pages, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: The editorial this month is a pretty straight bit of self-promotion, with Erik talking about what's coming up, and why you should be excited about it too. Templates might be nice, but all new creatures are what really gets his juices flowing, as then the players have no idea what tricks to expect. On the other hand, big names are nice too, and they have a ton of them lined up for their 30th anniversary issue. So as an editorial of two halves, neither really has a lot to say. Guess I'd be better served putting my focus on the actual articles when they arrive.
Scale Mail: The demonomicons are the first thing praised this month, which is quite understandable. That doesn't mean they'll be increasing their frequency to every month though. They'd run out of previously established demon lords in barely a year.
Also getting unconditional praise is all the stuff in issue 339. May they do many more like it in the future.
On the other hand, the recent run of cheesecake covers gets quite rightly criticised. They'll have to do something about that.
Also getting praised is their current policy of putting fewer prestige classes, and more alternate class features and general tricks in. Of course, these too will eventually hit diminishing returns. It's all cycles and waves.
On the other hand, it seems to be the right time to bring back the old settings. People just can't get enough of them, and WotC would have to do a lot more before that became the case.
Finally, we have two people who find Class Acts their favourite part of the magazine, which once again reminds me different people are in it for different things, and it's a real challenge for them to please us all. As long as they keep trying, that's the important thing.
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Back to 4 pages. It looks like the extras for the release of stormreach were a one-off. Anyway, this month's generic product is the Tome of Magic. Quite different from the 2e ToM - where that gave the existing classes cool stuff, this provides 3 all new and strongly experimental ones, with their own unique systems. Binders, shadow mages and truenamers. Not quite as cool overall as magic of incarnum, but still fun to play with.
The Realms get their own epic level sourcebook - Power of Faerun. Last edition they let characters go to 40th level where most other worlds could only manage 30. And in 3.0 they got rough epic rules before the official handbook came out. So continuing this trend of obscene power seems fitting. Includes stuff on actually becoming a mover and shaker in the world too, which is a definite plus in my book.
Only one D20 book this month. Not too surprisingly, it's another Green Ronin one. The Masterminds Manual for Mutants & Masterminds is of course their equivalent of a DM's handbook, full of stuff to customise your game. Seems more like a WW Storytellers handbook than a DM's one, but those are useful too.
Tons of minis this month, albeit some rehashed. Once again, they promote the War Drums Minis set heavily. They're also releasing a new D&D starter game focussed around it. That is intriguing. Goodman games also tie in with their other products with minis based on their DCC line. No-one else is really doing modules in that kind of number anymore, so they have an open field to clean up in. On top of that, there's a deluxe Jareth mini to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Labyrinth, and another line of generic fantasy minis from Mega Minis. People may not be playing wargames much anymore, but there's no shortage of materials to play them with.
Drizzt gets his recent comics compiled into a graphic novel. But no new books, apparently. Are they not making any, or simply not promoting them here?
An interesting sideline this month is a bunch of books that aren't directly RPG related, but still have quite a bit of inspiration for you to try out. Cryptozooology, history books, stuff on mythology. Ahh yes, going outside the subculture for inspiration can definitely help. It's a big world out there, not everything needs statistics.
Final Fantasy 12 is our upcoming computer game. They join in on the steampunkishness, with the overall ambience renaissance, airships playing a big part, plus the usual bishis, chocobos and moogles. This franchise continues to be incredibly popular, even if it is slowing down a bit in release rates.
And finally, we have another collection of t-shirts with geeky stuff on them. Yawnarama. Can't say these grab my attention.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Another real world demon this month. Baphomet, prince of beasts. Lord of minotaurs, and served by Goristro, Bulezeau and other horned creatures, he lives in an endless maze and has a vicious never ending rivalry with Yeenoghu, demon prince of gnolls. But he's not just some dumb raging brute. He also has a strong scientific mind, creating all manner of strange things in his disturbing laboratories. Indeed, this is one of the more expansionistic Demonomicon entries, attributing the creation of whole bunch of existing monsters to him. Never trust statements like that, as demons are notorious liars and braggarts. Fairly formulaic entry here, although the blending of warrior and scientist, but not spellcaster is interesting. He might not be as bizarre looking or unique as some of the other demon lords, but being lost in an endless maze can still be pretty scary. Still, overall, this isn't as interesting as previous entries. While still thoroughly gamable, this series is starting to lose it's novelty, and doesn't seem to be improving in terms of writing and design. Ho hum.
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 3/6
Forging friends: Familiars got a fair number of articles in previous editions, but this seems to have dropped off lately, with Issue 280 being the last big one, 5 years ago. Which is funny, given how much easier it is to customise stuff in in 3e. Oh well, they're back again, with a whole bunch of variant familiars that you build, rather than summon. It may cost you more, but greater power and hopefully loyalty is probably worth the price.
Copper Asps spit good ol' con draining poison on anyone who disses their master. Which means you can act dignified and disapproving while still teaching people a serious lesson. Muahaha.
Crystal Cats take their cues from Hellcats, being so transparent they're near invisible, which makes them pretty handy as spies. It does make them even more fragile than most familiars though. All cats demand attention, I guess these are no exception.
Erudite Owls are one of the highest level of these, and get quite handy divination spell-like abilities of their own to add to yours. With a high Wisdom as well, they might well spot problems that you would miss on your own in both exploration and social situations.
Glass Dragonflys are all about the flying speed. Oh and color spray from their prismatic wings. Not as stealthy as the cats then, but still able to get away from most pursuers.
Mercurial Spiders are your own tiny T-1000, able to slip through the smallest crack or disguise themselves as any inanimate object of similar size and look really cool while changing shape. They're another poisonous one too, so they can really do some damage if they catch an enemy unawares at night.
Razor Hawks use their sharpened wings to make fly-by attacks, which'll make killing them a matter of holding your action to strike as they pass. They'll still go down pretty quickly if you do get a solid hit though, like most familiars.
Salvage Rats aren't made of a particular type of metal, the important thing is the symbolism of rescuing it from the scrapheap. They have the lovely power to rust enemy armor, which makes them stand out quite nicely. And indeed, I think all of these have enough finesse in their tricks to make up for their lack of physical power if played smartly. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are SUBTLE and quick to anger.
Full frontal nerdity gives thanks for Janet Jackson's breasts. My, they are topical quite frequently in here.
Automatons for Amateurs: Golems continue to be one of those iconic monsters everyone knows about, and has a million amusing variants. However, it is true that they tend towards high level, so it's a bit tricky to fill a whole campaign with them the way you can undead, fiends or dragons. (if you count pseudodragons, lesser drakes, etc) Since that does sound like a cool theme for an adventure path, so let's hope these guys do indeed fit the bill and let us go for achievable challenges right from 1st level.
Fungus Golems appeared in issue 255, in a rather more specific and interesting form. Oh. It's going to be one of THOSE sorts of articles is it? :Sigh:
Junk Golems are the big brothers of Salvage Rats, and are quite handy because they can self-repair by incorporating stuff from the people they fight. They also get a rusting ability, which always pisses off gearhead adventurers. Muahaha, as per standard.
Paper Golems sound only slightly more threatening than chocolate or plush golems, and indeed, they are CR1, which means they'll go down in a single hit against scissors or fire. Just don't be silly and try bludgeoning attacks, because they'll just bend around them.
Tin Golems appeared in issue 156, where they were big toy soldiers in classic april tradition. This time round, they're all serious and boring, with their most distinctive feature being greater manual dexterity than the average golem. Yawn. Another reminder of what we've lost over the years.
Wax Golems let you do the creepy animate dummy thing which has been used to great effect in TV shows like Dr Who. I doubt experienced players will be caught flat-footed though, since it's hardly an uncommon occurrence.
Wood Golems previously appeared in issue 119. This appears to be yet another case of independent evolution though, as they don't share and features statistically or fluffwise. So it goes, when it's such an obvious material to use. This article definitely isn't winning any awards for originality or inventiveness from me.
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 4/6
Arcane upgrade: We've gone from little constructs to big ones, and now we're doing the PC ones. Makes perfect sense to me. Warforged have always got unusually good treatment for a non-core race, and it looks like that's continuing here, with a whole load of magic items that they can incorporate into their form. Let's see how many of them are interesting, and how many are merely conversions of existing items.
Circlets of the Third Eye let you see invisible things and penetrate darkness. That's always a handy one for dungeoneers, and the only drawback is that it's pretty obvious when it's active, and can be attacked independently of the rest of your body. Being ogled by eyes on stalks just doesn't make you positively inclined towards someone.
Disks of Illumination turn you into a living light bulb to penetrate dungeons and dazzle anyone trying to fight you. It's not as impressive a deterrant as nymphs or medusas, but it'll do for a start.
Disks of Shadow go the other way, and let you do the mysterious shrouded stranger thing without having to bother with cloaks and hoods. Well, you're a warforged. What use are human clothes to you?
Gauntlets of the Deft Hand boost both your crafting and roguish skills, ensuring you'll always have something of value on hand to sell later. Like knives, you can't really ban things like this because they have so many legitimate uses along with the naughty ones.
Gauntlets of Excavation let you out-dig any dwarf for an hour a day. I think they might still have the edge in finesse and stamina though, as they're bred for it, while you're only made.
Iron-tooth Girdles let you turn your stomach into a giant jagged-toothed maw. Now your eyes will never ever be bigger than your belly again. That's some fascinatingly disconcerting visuals.
Jewels of Dazzling Light let you control pretty lights for both combat and social purposes. If you're in the underdark, it'll help you fake being a Drow convincingly too. Shame your body heat'll let you down in making the disguise complete.
Scorpion Brands let you sprout a nice stinging tail. That'll put the wind up anyone who's vulnerable to poison. Other warforged can relax. Species Solidarity!
Spring-heeled Boots let you go all kangaroo on us, leaping small buildings and outpacing most enemies. Just don't try to stop mid-duration, as they're designed for constant motion, or you'll fall over on us. Hit the road, jack, and don't you come back, no more no more no more no more.
Stones of Internal Fire let you heat yourself to boiling temperatures for short periods of time. This will do some damage to you, but if you're any good at grappling, more to the people around you. Just make sure you aren't wearing anything fragile when you activate it, as that would be terribly silly.
The Clone Mask is the most powerful of these, letting you split your upper body into two and gain the appropriate extra attacks and vision bonuses. Very cool looking indeed. This collection has managed to give us some decently imaginative additions to our arsenal.
The ecology of the Inevitable: Now, if Lovecraft's influence has increased in D&D, the one thing that's decreased is the kind of whimsy that resulted in the Modrons. Man, someone in the development team must really have a hate-on for them. So the formians took their aspect as teeming hive creatures spread across the plane, while Maruts got a whole family of similar creatures created, and the now genericised Inevitables took their job as the exemplars of Lawful Neutral behaviour. Course, they don't mention that, and instead make this another instance where they whitewash D&D's actual history in favour of inventing a new IC one with creatures we've never even heard of before. As with the lizard man one, this does leave a sour taste in my mouth. As they're trying to tackle a whole bunch of related creatures in the same page count, each gets considerably less depth than they would in a normal ecology. So I'm not very impressed by this one. Next!
Well, after exactly 67 months, I can finally say I've finished the writing for every single print issue of Dragon Magazine, and with a nice buffer built up by the end as well. It'll still be a few months before I can lay this to rest for good, but at least now I can say for certain that it will be done unless I die suddenly from misadventure.
In the meantime, I'm looking for a more permanent place to store these, so people can find and comment on particular issues easily. Which blogging sites let you change the dates of your posts easily, so you can set them even to dates before you signed up?
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 5/6
Wormfood: So we approach high levels in our adventure path. This of course means gamechanging powers start to have serious ramifications on your adventure design. Here we examine the effect they have on wilderness travel. Mere distance is no longer much of an obstacle, with flight and teleportation able to transport individuals easily, and whole groups with a bit of effort. On the other hand, it's still a big world out there, and magic can only find things if you know what you're looking for in the first place. You're not free from legwork and logistical hassles by a long shot. Obviously, this can't cover all the stuff from the many supplements and even more third party products, and you know how much those empower clerics and wizards in particular; but it manages to touch the bases. Still, this is one article that feels way too short. They really need to put more detail into advice for running high level games, to match up with the increased complexity and decreased experience people have in that area. Overall, I'm not satisfied with this.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another burst of magitech here. Well, it's in theme. And it gives you easy options by taking stuff from reality. A bit lazy though, given the number of times they've done it in the past. Just crank the formulas, that'll get us through another month.
Battering Balls don't need no chain. They'll break down your door and bash out your brain. Fo shizzle. Gnomes in da house again.
Clairaudience Beetles scuttle around and record stuff for their masters. Seen you before. Will squash you if I see you again.
Floating Books come when called and hover in a position convenient for reading. Now that's what you get the wizard who has everything. They'll then spend tons of time and money rebuying their existing stuff in the new format. :D Now THAT's progress.
Flying Lanterns do much the same as flying books and continual light balls, only with better decoration. It's all about the ergonomics dudes. Now sponsored by Apple.
Poison-dart Wasps are for when your spy beetles have gathered enough info to know someone needs taking out. It keeps on attacking until it hits. Send several at once and you can be pretty confident they won't swat them all.
Trick Coins let you win bets effortlessly. Ahh yes, this oldie but goodie. See how much you can make before they catch on and you have to skip town.
Spellcraft is tied in with our new book this month, in a way of giving readers a peek at the mechanics, and therefore encouraging them to buy it. Binders are the first new class, and they're also the one that time has been kindest too. It's no surprise that they're getting the attention here. Nicely though, they avoid rehash, and present us with two new vestiges, making this still useful once you've bought the book. There have been some bad tie-in articles over the years, but this is not one of them.
Kas should be pretty familiar to you, as with many vestiges. Along with his sword, this is another avenue for him to affect the world, and try to somehow get revenge on Vecna. In the meantime, he encourages you to be superficially friendly but treacherous to those around you, and his powers let you be a backstabbing bastard better, with bluff bonuses, blinding crits and the chance of negating other's crits. Pretty decent suite of powers really.
Primus is not the current one, but the one killed by Orcus during the events of The Great Modron March. It's obviously not happy about this, and encourages you to spread law across the multiverse with greater ruthlessness than the current Modron hierarchy. It's powers are actually pretty quirky though. Bonuses for repeating the same actions in successive rounds. Chaos smiting, magical commanding without them being aware of you. Again, both good powers, and cool. This has been a refreshing article, doing something a little different, and doing it well. Hopefully shadow mages and truenamers'll get some love too in future issues.
Dragon Issue 341: March 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Can a monk make disarm, sunders and trips during a flurry of blows (Yes. But not attacks you can't do with a monks weapons, like bull rushes and overuns )
If a rogue gets multiple attacks, can they sneak attack for all of them (If they meet the requirements each time. Rogues is much nasstier in battle than 2nd edition)
Do you apply all bonuses from the previous attack to the attack you get from cleave. (Unless that makes no sense, precious. )
If you have 0 HP and you cleave someone, do you drop to -1 before or after handling the extra attack ( Before. If you have great cleave you can cut down lotses before you collapse. )
Can you cleave if you drop someone with an AoO (Oh yess, preciouss)
Can you trip someone with an AoO (Yess.)
Does that let them attack you back if you fail (yess. Revenge is sssweeet.)
Does uncanny dodge let you ignore feints (No)
Can a rogue feint, then use a missile attack (no)
How many attacks does a creature with multiple natural weapons get while grappling (All of them. Beware grappling hydras. Nassty things.)
When using power attack or combat expertise, do the penalties apply to opposed attack rolls and grapple checks (yes and no. Grapples aren't attack rolls, so they don't apply.)
Can you score a crit on a grapple roll (no)
If you threaten a critical on a true striked attack, does the bonus apply to your confirmation roll (Yess. Not likely to fail, are you, preciouss. )
Can you perform a coup de grace with a ray spell (no)
Is a coup de grace an evil act. (What'sss so wrong with putting them out of their missery, huh?)
If you ready your spear, do you have to attack whoever charges you (no)
Is a double weapon considered two handed or light (Either, depending on how you usse them. Very verssatile, yess?)
Can you make a shield attack as your primary weapon. (Ass long as you're prepared to make your actual weapon the secondary attack.)
Class acts: Adventurers gives us some Soulknife love this month, with 10 new Mind blade feats. Once again their new method of organization lets them do stuff they couldn't before, and support classes from the supplements. Now you can really specialize in slicing people to shreds without worrying about it being suboptimal compared to someone with a big magic weapon. Maybe you could pick up vow of poverty as well. :p
Arcane gets familiar flavoring. 7 new familiars for your wizards and sorcerers to pick up. Nothing particularly surprising here, apart from the Dark Chanting Goshawk. (is that a real animal? Why that over any other subspecies? Strange.)
Divine does for druids and rangers what it did for clerics last month, collating the spells in the corebook by school. Which is similarly dull. Definitely filler material.
Warriors get Martial Cultures, 12 new backgrounds that show you how you can adapt rangers and barbarians to the various demihuman races. These are rather more radical than most backgrounds, including modifications to their racial abilities and class features. Once again, we see how small changes to actual abilities can be parlayed into massive fluff recontextualizations. I approve.
Nodwick is possessed by tharzidun. This is obviously not good. Dork tower tries to rules lawyer in a stupid way. Zogonia is inspired by surrealism this month. I'm not sure I approve. Order of the stick pays back their unpaid for hit points. With interest.
Not really that keen on this issue, as it has an annoying combination of churning the formulas and forgetting the past. When you're adding setting stuff, you need to pay more attention to what came before than new bits of disconnected crunch. Plus it's particularly problematic when the new things that replace the old are quite noticeably less interesting. It makes me wonder if there's any good new ideas in the world. Oh well. I'd better see if they've got any new jokes to tell next month. After all, the internet has certainly thrown up a good number of them, so all they have to do is google and convert them to a roleplaying-appropriate form.
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 1/6
74 (100) pages. As we begin the runup to the 30th anniversary, it looks like we have another run of dragons on the cover. First up, a white dragon (that's tinted purple on the cover, and blue on the inside) ensuring that any adventurers who want it's treasure can be stuck with it, permanently. It's not quite genie level of sophistication in ironic humour, but it'll do for a start. Let's see if they have any better gags inside.
Scan quality: Blurry, low res, Indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik's editorial this month is once again him wrestling with how much humour to put in this issue. And after way too much thought, he once again goes with one joke article to placate the die-hards and keeping the rest sensible. After all, it's a lot harder to make players take a joke scenario seriously than it is to add a few amusing twists to an otherwise serious adventure. Greyhawk is still trying to get people to overlook the terrible pun names and adventures like WG9, while Dragonlance has so much comic relief baked in that people still debate if it's possible or desirable to reboot it. Do we really want that to happen to the magazine? Probably not. So they will continue their trajectory of gradually becoming more focussed and serious until they can't go any farther in that direction. Maybe if they do it gradually enough, people won't notice. :( Call me again in 10 years time and we'll see.
Scale Mail: Our first letter points out that Solomon Kane used a magic staff, and he certainly wasn't a wizard. There's plenty of precedent for more physical characters to choose that as their weapon of choice, particularly in the martial arts genre.
The second one is equally nitpicky, complaining about using a lovecraftian phrase when most of the issue wasn't devoted to him. Given how many issues recently have been, I shall give a resounding :p to that.
We do have a fair number of heavily positive letters though, with two from long-standing players who are very happy with what the magazine has done, and continues to do for D&D as a whole. Since so many of their writers are now part of the WotC staff, they can hardly help taking ideas and reusing them. And this will only become more true next edition, with everything in the magazine going through exactly the same development process as the books.
Finally, they stir the pot by including a letter from someone who thinks the LotR movies were a dull and unfaithful adaptation of the books. Just because they weren't perfect, doesn't mean they aren't technically superior in many ways to the fantasy movies of the 80's and before. I think the extensive behind the scenes documentaries in the extended editions make that very clear.
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Splatbook time again. They've exhausted the core 4 roles, so now it's Psionics turn to get a Complete book adding to them. New classes make an all psionic party viable, new powers help, but still don't catch them up with spellcasters. Plus some slightly iffy errata, the joys of heritage feats, and the obligatory usual prestige classes.
Eberron gets Voyage of the Golden Dragon. An airship's maiden voyage runs into a little trouble. A combination of sourcebook and adventures, this reminds me of the princess ark series, and looks pretty cool. Giving players control of their own flying vehicle always tips the game heavily into the awesomeometer.
Another adventure plus a bunch of physical stuff this month. Fields of Ruin seems to feature a chimera, and other monsters from their new minis set, plus big maps for your minis to fight on. Tie it all together, and hopefully more people'll buy it. We've heard that line before.
Green Ronin continues to be Dragon's most popular D20 company. Mansion of Shadows and the True20 Bestiary are their latest products. Seems like they're almost as prolific as WotC, if not with quite as high production values. Also on the D20 side, oddly, is the latest Dragonlance adventure. The price of Courage. Ahh, yes. The licensing business. Funny what it did to their 2e campaign worlds in this era.
Also on a Dragonlance spin is another redoing of the original novels, this time in comic format. Didn't they already do graphic novels, back in the early 90's. Seems like people keep coming back to the beginning, in a way they don't with the Realms.
Non D20 products that have grabbed their interest this month are BESM 3rd edition, and call of cthulhu's Malleus Monstrorum. Two more gamelines that have produced awesome work in the past, but are now hanging on, and not going anywhere fast. Damn shame really.
On the minis side, we have Hordes, a new wargame from Privateer. Giant warbeasts and risk/reward tradeoff gambling. Interesting. It's all compatible with Warmachine too, so you can mix and match the creature types and their different ways of operating. Curiously, we also get Dracula minis from McFarlaine Toys, based upon the 1992 movie. What an odd conjunction. It's not as if that version was particularly popular.
Another boardgame out now is Grand Tribunal. Loosely based on Ars Magica, the goal of the game is to invent the coolest and most powerful spells and items, and then decide who did the best. You can be backbiting politics will be involved, if I know the Hermetics.
On the game aids side, we have an amusing little entry. D'oh dice. Dice, with the 1 replaced with a D'oh. A good example of how culturally ubiquitous the Simpsons has become. Amusing once, then I lose interest, so probably not worth the purchase.
For computer games, they promote Heroes of Might and Magic V, and Horizons: Empire of Istaria. Both are RPG's and have fairly substantial internet multiplayer options. No change in their priorities there then.
Another book this month is The Art of Ray Harryhausen. The old god of stop-motion gets a big coffee table book. Lots of colour stuff from the movies, plus sketches, and behind the scenes stuff. Sounds fairly neat.
And finally, there's the GOBLIN podcasting network. The new cool thing, as adding Garageband to every mac and various advancements in computer recording and compression technology have made it accessible to the average person. Which means even a market as niche as ours has dozens of people doing it themselves. Just like punk, only with less safety pins. I very much approve.
Domain power: It looks like the real theme this month is deities again, with 5 articles devoted to godly power, compared to just one joke article. Hang on a minute, didn't they do that just 4 years ago in issue 294. Repeating topics I can deal with. Rehashing exactly the same combo of topics when combinatoric theory says you should be able to pick and mix any two or three for hundreds of years without hitting exactly the same ones, that's just careless. I'm exceedingly unamused by this twist of events. My mood is not improved by reading the first article, as it's very much one of those ones where they have a single good idea (spending a feat to improve your domain powers) and then just crank the formula until it covers all the domains in the corebook. (and believe me, you'll have no trouble coming up with similar effects for the many others in supplements.) Booooooooooooooooooooring. Waiter! Next!
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 3/6
Full frontal nerdity weirds out it's players. Who is responsible? Do de do do, do de do do, etc etc. They also have tons of other strips. This is rather disconcerting. Just how popular is Aaron?
Beyond the pale: Now this is a topic that's lain fallow for a little longer. Bringing back the dead last got a big article in issue 210, which did quite a bit to look at the logical consequences of it. This is related, but far more mechanically focussed, as is their wont these days, talking about ways you can tweak resurrection in your games to make it seem more consequential. Most of them are ways to make it harder to do, but some are interesting things that could happen to you mechanically or socially after coming back to life. Overall, i don't think it's quite as good as the 210 one, but the amount of overlap is small enough that they complement each other rather than turning into a rehash, so it's still a positive result in terms of adding to the magazine as an extended body of lore.
Core beliefs: Olidammara. Ah, the laughing rogue. The perfect justification for having a cleric/rogue in the party. And also, if this stuff is read wrong, an entirely reasonable setup for having a character who plays pranks on their companions on a regular basis, for part of their duties is making sure no-one gets too bogged down in habits or takes life too seriously. Damn good thing there's no kender on Oerth, or he'd be a scary powerful deity. Of course, there are certain other pranksterish sorts, and he has a rather interesting relationship with them. Zagyg imprisoned him for a while, but he managed to turn that to his advantage, and they're now more friendly rivals than mortal enemies. And like Boccob, he has his own demigod sorta-servant, Rudd, who's all about the fine line between luck and skill, and so seems another one likely to be popular with adventurers. As with last time, there's plenty of stuff for players to use, including a rather good new spell that gives them limited access to bard spells, while avoiding the twinkery that unlimited supplement access brings, and a slaad proxy who isn't a complete dingbat. It's all rather good. It may have taken quite a bit of perusal to assemble the scraps of info from the old Greyhawk books, but there was plenty of good source material to draw upon in this case, and Sean continues to tread the fine line between reverence and expansion well. The main worry now is that like the Demonomicon, this series may lose it's shine over time through sheer predictability.
The power of faith: From feats that boost the powers of your domains, we go to feats that give you extra powers if you worship a specific deity. Clerics really are spoiled for choice when it comes to buffing themselves up and specialising in particular parts of their portfolio. Unlike the previous article, which was usable right from 1st level, these require you to be a 3rd level spellcaster or better to take, and the tricks they give you are somewhat more powerful. They still follow a pretty strict formula though. One special ability or a buff of an existing power, plus adding 3-4 spells to your regular spell list that are normally wizard ones or domain exclusive. (and in a few cases, are new spells only accessible through these initiate feats. ) Once again, this feels like it would be very easy to expand on, creating similar feats for the many other gods out there in D&D supplements, especially since so many of the spells are merely more powerful variants of existing ideas. I find it very hard indeed to be excited by this. Oh well, let's hope they work out well in actual play, like so many of these articles that don't make great reading, but have solid crunch behind them.
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 4/6
The ecology of the adventurer: Our token joke article this year is this little piece by Tony Moseley. Essentially the Scary Movie to the Ecology of the Kobold's Scream, this is a whimsical little IC one in which the kobold shaman of a tribe talks about their experience with adventurers, and the horrible deaths that likely await members of the tribe. A ridiculous scenario is set up, and then used as a way of riffing on all sorts of subjects. We see a parody of the old 1st ed players handbook cover. Morgan Ironwolf returns as a truly ridiculous multiclass character that I'm not sure whether to be scared of, or to laugh at how suboptimal she is for a 20th level character, we get feats that rival last year's commoner entry for sheer stupidity, it's all rather gonzo. While this does manage to raise a few vague smiles from me, what it really does is remind me of the association of monster hunter ecologies, and how much I miss having fiction in here regularly. Their april ones managed to be both funnier than this, and still have more stuff that you could actually use in a serious game. :sigh: You can do better than this.
Wormfood turns into a bazaar of the bizarre. The players have (hopefully) just unearthed the ruins of a secret order, which holds vital clues to the defeat of Kyuss and co. Can they capitalise on this to bring about a suitably dramatic conclusion to the adventure path? I guess that's up to you, but this list of treasures certainly can't hurt.
Amulets of light give you permanent consecration. Isn't that more a landscaping thing than personal wear? Well, if it stops undead walking all over you, you'll thank the designer. :p
Breathdrinker swords can absorb breath weapons, and then unleash them on the next creature you hit. As usual with something like this, save the effect for something that isn't immune to their own damage type.
Cloaks of the Sorcerer-King give you various dragon emulating powers. How very athasian of you. Enjoy the versatility of being able to choose your aspect and which energy type you're going to enhance today.
Corporeal Lodestones shield you from ethereal screwage. Not useful all the time, but the kind of thing the paranoid delight in packing just in case.
Doomslayer Bows let you emulate Bard the Bowman, and find the weak spot on whatever you're fighting. They're pretty neat in general combat too. Strength bonus on top of the regular enhancement bonus. Someone's been boning up on how to twink the item creation rules.
Dragonbane Scepters help you penetrate draconic SR. What spells you can bring to bear on them is of course up to you, unlike most staves. The kind of thing you only pack if you know you're going to need it.
Elixirs of Draconic Essence also give you powers based upon dragons, with general physical enhancements and a breath weapon appropriate to the colour.
Phylacterys of Protection from Evil give you a permanent spell effect as long as you wear them. Again. Just wear a cross like any good christian.
Quicksilver Cloaks let you get in and out of places with ease, and protect you from paralysis. Another good reason to strip captives before you tie them up.
Rings of Death Ward give you the effect of that spell as long as you wear them. Meh. Do we need stuff like this for every spell in the book?
The Shield of the Sun looks good and unleashes sunbeams on command. That'll make having a cleric in the team slightly less essential.
The Shroud of Undeath makes undead fail to notice you. But you do have to wear it on the outside and look stupid to any living people around. Yawn Seen stuff like this before. And really, who's going to call adventurers on their stupid outfits these days when they're all wearing them.
Skulls of Dragonform are yet another draconic transformation device. Have the PC's just been fighting dragons in the actual campaign? Are they about too? This definitely seems like a pretty pointed hint. Better watch out, given how scary dragons can get these days.
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 5/6
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Healing? We haven't had a bazaar devoted specifically to items that cure you before, curiously enough. Although we have had several Arcane Lores. But of course they're mostly for your clerics and druids, while items are often usable by any class. And many people do want to decrease their reliance on the healbot, so this is all to the good. Let's finally fill this niche.
Amulets of Preservation stop you rotting, and pause the clock on your raising time limit. Better hope you don't have too many in the party at once then.
Bolts of Healing, like the old arrows from the 80's, heal damage instead of inflicting it. Watch you don't shoot the enemy with this one by accident, as if you needed warning again.
Calming Stones are better than a slap on the face for dealing with hysteria. Course, like most items these days, they only work a few times a day, so mass panic'll be a bit of a problem. No scaling, that's the big problem with magic these days. Get offa mah lawn!
Detoxification Orbs are another one that'll save a few lives, but then give up the ghost. Still, poison is a problem, so you want to get it treated ASAP, but might not always have the appropriate spells memorized.
Gems of Poison Detection don't run out, on the other hand, and are cheap enough that most adventuring parties could afford one. They even work at range. This should help you ensure a whole banquet is safe before tucking in.
Healer's Masks help keep the doctors alive in a plague situation. And don't look as freaky as the real ones, hopefully. God, those beaked things can be nightmare fuel and a half.
Medic Hats formalize the red cross agreement that medics are not to be attacked by either side. Saving lives is important! Otherwise we would be just monsters. Yeah, it's hard to create rules of war that stick in these parts. No wonder they need magical enforcement.
Rods of Disenchantment do for people what the old ones do for magic items. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on if it gets rid of all your buffs, or removes a nasty curse. Either way, profit for the user, hopefully.
Tholveg's Final Prayer are little marbles that you smash to release the healing. Quicker and easier to use in a pinch than drinking a potion, if a bit messier. But if it's a question of my life or a bit of broken glass on the floor, I know which one I'm going to take.
Spellcraft: Another nostalgic magic collection here, including spells from deities who are now out of favor in the official books. The campaign classics stuff seems to be creeping into the other issues. Not that that's a bad thing. Many of them are cool ideas well due updating and maybe even expanding upon.
Black stench of Laogzed makes standard troglodyte stink seem somewhat anaemic. Behold the power of epic fart! You can't see through it, and it'll eat through your clothes too. Why isn't there a god of frat-boys? They'd make an absolute killing with stuff like this.
Brain slave of Illsenine lets even a non-illithid remotely extract brains for their later use. This is quite brutal, and certainly makes a decent alternative to regular death spells.
Nails of Luthic are also fairly brutal, mainly due to dex draining poison. At higher levels, this seems like a decent one for incapacitating without killing.
Throwing arm of Iallanis isn't too impressive for human spellcasters, but becomes more so for giants. I think I'll stick to the regular blasty spells.
Touch of Blibdoolpoolp gives you a big claw. This isn't too impressive damagewise, but does have reach, which does make it tactically handy after all. Think carefully before selecting and casting.
Dragon Issue 342: April 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Can you read in the dark with darkvision (yess. Not like ssilly old infravision. Andy hated using that in cold caves, collins collins. It wass still hard to tell where the walls was, because things were all nearly the ssame temperature.)
If you permanently change your type, do your BAB, saves and skills change (no)
Do monsters ability scores change with aging (Probably, but it's not worth making aging tables for every mortal race and tracking it. Ssave it for named NPC's)
Do undead apply aging effects (Andy thinkses not. They don't sseem to get any smarter when they hang around a few centuries, jusst more insssane and pretentious. )
If you're swallowed, do you treat the monster as flat-flooted (Yess. This is why you don't eat rogues. They'll ssteal your heart from inside you and cut their way out.)
Do you get XP for killing summoned monsters (Only prexisting ones, not temporary one ssummoned in the heat of battle. Stupid resource management system counts them ass part of their summoner.)
What happens if your int is damaged when you gain a level (Nothing. Only innate permanent changes affect your skill points. Otherwise things would get ssilly.)
How do you determine starting gold for a 1st level monster PC (ssee what class they're mosst suited too.)
If your familiar dies and you raise it, do you get the XP back (No. Sstupid ssentimentality. Jusst get a new one. Much cheaper and jusst as powerful.)
If you're multiclassed and raised, which class do you lose the level from. (Andy thinks the mosst recent one, yess? )
YOU HAVE MADE MISTAKES AGAIN!!! DO NOT CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT US!!!
Ssorry, collins collins. Andy promisses. Andy won't mess quick draw up again.
Class acts: Adventurers goes oriental this month, with the Art of Kuji-in for Ninjas. Learn how to channel your ki in new and devastating ways with these feats. Shatter armour, change your appearance, and make swift escapes. Once again, they become more able to specialize in their abilities, helping them keep up with the core classes. The line between being under and overpowered is a precarious thing, and every new supplement redefines it for the classes given new stuff within.
Arcane gets Subtle Spells. This is basically the same as they did for the divine classes the last couple of months, only applied to the assassin and bard class. Guess we're still gonna have some formulaic rehash in these entries.
Divine gets The Wild Hunt. The horned lord who rides abroad on nights of fog with his devil dogs. Or something. Join his priesthood! Meet new and interesting people, strip them naked and chase them through the woods at night. Fun team building exercise for all the family. Even if you don't, you can still make use of the new domains and feat introduced here. Definitely one of their more interesting new creations, even if we've seen this fluff before.
Warriors get Tribal Halflings. As anyone who's played dark sun knows, this can actually be pretty scary. Here's a trio of substitution levels for the discerning halfling barbarian, letting them overcome that size prejudice with aplomb, while still retaining the good aspects of their small size. Not that anyone with any brain would underestimate someone who's teeth are at groin level, but some people need safety warnings with everything.
Nodwick solves another problem by creatively looking at the facts. Dork tower try to protect the rights of their characters. I don't think the GM is going to sign this magna carta. Zogonia has more PvP. They really ought to get a stable of recurring NPC's.
Order of the stick once again run into the oddities of their universe.
After a year in which the formula was constantly being tweaked, this sees them settling into a routine again, and consequently, starting to become less interesting to me as well. That or they're putting most of their effort into the big birthday issue and let this one slide a bit. Once again, I guess I have to accept that they're not getting funnier anytime soon. So let's see if they can get cooler.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 1/6
81 (100) pages. A mummy dragon and lots of little baby dragons. That'll make adventurers feel a little less heroic about their brutal slayings. Once again, it looks like monster hunting is our focus this issue. And well they ought to return to it, as it still supplies the majority of our XP, as it has since 1e ended. As usual, let's see if it's advantage players, advantage DM, or all love in here.
Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik's editorial is once again about the 30th anniversary issue, and his ambitious plans for it. Twice now, his plans for landmark issues have been mired down in office politics and compromise, and now he's in the big seat, he's hoping it's third time lucky. Which is reasonable enough. If you've seen your artistic vision crushed several times as you work your way up, a little self-indulgence seems completely understandable. It shows your spirit hasn't been beaten into submission by day-to-day life. So let's hope he'll be able to reminisce positively about this time in his life, rather than with frustration. Sometimes, it would be nice to have things just work out for a change without working yourself so hard to make it happen that you don't really get to appreciate it anyway.
Scale Mail: First up, we have a request for more Realms based stuff, templates in particular. Oddly specific, but I suppose that just makes it all the easier to satisfy.
Second, we have some talk about the proportion of adverts in the magazine. Those cheap yet glossy magazines you're comparing with are often more than 50% adverts, particularly the women's beauty & gossip ones, which can go over 75% and are basically just mouthpieces for their sponsors, since they're so dependent on them financially. As the DDI shows, Dragon is quite capable of surviving without adverts from other companies. (although they wouldn't be able to pay their writers as much)
The issue from 2 months ago gets high praise, as is their habit these days.
Also praised is the dragon compendium, along with a request to do more similar stuff in the future. Since it sold out and got reprinted very quickly, they certainly intended to do more. It's just a shame the licence got pulled before they got the chance.
They reprint the Valley Elf filk at the request of a reader that barely remembers it. It's funnier than anything they've managed since 2001. I really can't see a similar request for the ecology of the adventurer to be reprinted in 20 years time, unfortunately.
And finally, we have another request for them to update not only the mechanics of old settings, but also the timelines. They might slip in a few hints, but solid geopolitical shifts? That'd be too dangerous for them. After all, metaplot is what killed Dark Sun and Planescape, and caused Greyhawk and Dragonlance huge amounts of grief when people disagreed with the changes. These days, they want to play it safe.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 2/6
First watch: After the fairly substantial success of the DMG 2, we get the Players handbook 2. 4 new core classes, a ton of new feats, including quite a lot specifically for beefing up high level fighters, plenty more bits and pieces, and yet another riff on the original PHB cover. Most. Imitated. Artwork. Evar.
D20 modern gets Critical Locations. No, not a gruesome critical hit system. Just a load of maps of likely places for you to adventure. Well, you can't use all those dungeons, can you?
Also on the D20 side, from third party companies, we have quite a bit. A players guide to Ptolus is out, teasing things a little more for the big release, while not spoiling the big secrets. Plus a bunch of miniatures representing characters from the city, and a comic series. Monte really went all out to make this his masterpiece, and it shows. They also promote DCC 30: Vault of the Dragon Kings, and Green Ronin's Dragon Fist. Plenty of small stuff to tide us through 'till the big releases.
Lots of computer stuff too. Campaign Cartographer 3 keeps this series up to date with advancing technology. Conan gets it's own MMO. And dozens of websites do things that the official products don't, including indexes that would be out of date in no time in a paper format. They're proving their value again and again. (I say, typing on my own laptop)
WotC is also happily licensing stuff out to other companies. Official D&D t-shirts, with more snappy sayings for your enjoyment. And more comic adaptions of old Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms stories. Drizzt & co continue to justify themselves even if the new stuff isn't coming as fast as it used too.
On the minis side, we have lots more bits of landscape to build your dungeons with, courtesy of Dwarven Forge. Very appropriate name, really. And a big box designed to neatly contain your minis. Nothing much to say about these.
On the other hand, Sean K Reynolds' hubby's little venture, where she puts dice inside translucent soaps, has me wanting to say a lot, but not sure where to start. It's ....... different, I'll give them that. Not sure if it's a brilliant idea, or just utterly inane. But it's certainly memorable. Wonder if it actually made much money, or it was just a whimsical art project.
Take Cover!: Huh. An article on dealing with monsters that have forms of movement the average PC lacks. Well, it certainly makes sense, as mobility and reach is one of the things that hugely changes your tactics, and enables weaker things to beat stronger without even getting hurt. Flying, swimming, and burrowing are the most well known, but climbing, jumping, web movement and extradimensional movement are also interesting options that add to an encounter, and can really scare people if used effectively. They start with the more mundane options, and then move up to finishing with monsters that can teleport at will, which are near impossible to finish off if you lack magical tricks of your own. They then detail 5 new feats which will help you counter more mobile creatures, either by enhancing you, or reducing the effectiveness of their special powers. They're probably not as good a use of your resources as learning a spell which lets you fly, climb, turn invisible, etc, though. It's all pretty interesting, as they do think of tactical tricks and considerations I haven't realised before. It's important to keep fights interesting, and this article does it's fair share.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 3/6
Creature catalog V: This time, it's not just pure nostalgia in our second expanded collection of monsters this year, but some new stuff as well. Not that they couldn't have, given the number of unconverted monsters still languishing in the OotS vault, but the creativity of the modern writers will not be denied! If it's any good, on the other hand, is a different matter, as usual.
Chupacabra haven't appeared in the magazine before, which is surprising when you consider how many vampire variants have turned up over the years. They aren't too badass in combat, but the fun is really in hunting them down before they suck too much of the livestock. Not very surprising really.
Hex Dragons are an unpleasant, magically powerful lot who are more likely to act in disguise and do the whole Xanatos gambit thing than regular dragons. Curses and cheating, they seem like a nasty one to fight.
Tome Dragons are slightly more pleasant, but still exceedingly cerebral. They do like a good cuppa though, so bring your own if you want to talk ancient lore with them. Nice to see someone still likes that kind of whimsy.
Rune Golems seem curiously familiar, but I can't remember from where. Oh well, so many golem types over the years. They're suitably intelligent and magical for their name, with several druidish powers and quite a nice look to them.
Gray Shivers are what you get when you don't clean up a lich's remains properly after killing them and smashing their phylactery. Any bug taking up residence in their skull gets bombarded with megalomaniacal memories, with hilarious results. That's both inventive and funny, and reinforces the fact that they're near impossible to get rid of. I like this one a lot.
Hellchain weavers are gigantic spiders made of chains that scare even Kytons. They'll turn a whole area into a chainy nightmare realm, and then pick you off, proving surprisingly adept at hiding despite their size. It'll take godzilla to stomp on these, and he'd probably hurt his feet.
Living Walls are one of our notable missing monsters from old editions. Despite what Skip has said in the past, they decide to make them undead now rather than constructs, which seems more intuitive. They are however an almighty pain to stat up decently now, since you have to individually detail all the things absorbed into it. Needs a more streamlined method.
Malfera are originally from the D&D Companion set, and an awesome disturbing monster I'm quite pleased to see again. They get all the powers they used to, and a few more too, like being able to enter people's dreams and turn them into nightmares. They seem like a good candidate for being made into an affably evil recurring NPC, curiously enough.
Norkers were the 1+2 humanoid variants, placing them just above hobgoblins on the pecking order. In conversion, they retain their natural armor bonus, but get substantial mental penalties to their stats. Whether they're worth it as a LA+1 race is debatable.
Nuckalavee are vastly more powerful than sahuguin, but occupy a similar niche, aquatic reptilian humanoids who are also reasonably dangerous for short periods on land. Not very similar to their previous incarnation, for some reason.
Warturtles, like warhorses, do exactly what they say on the tin, only for aquatic riders. They have spiky shells, so they can do the good old fashioned barrel rush and hurt lots of enemies at once.
White Harts are the generic version of the mary-sue leader of Blue Rose, elven connected, quite powerful magic deer that you have to be very nice indeed to ride. Don't we already have unicorns for that job? So overall this is a bit better than the last one, but still has it's daft moments. Still plenty of usable stuff though, and I guess that's what counts. Keep spoiling me with options right till the end.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 4/6
Fiction: Rivals by Richard Lee Byers. You know, this is the first bit of fiction they've had all year. I suppose that demonstrates once again how they're gradually narrowing their focus again after experimenting with new columns last year. It's another Forgotten Realms one as well, with an emphasis on action and banter over any deep philosophical insights. A grim and embittered half-golem and a not so grim dwarf cleric/ranger have to deal with a very typical case of being hired and betrayed by Mr Johnson, and learning to trust one-another in the process. It saddens me that as they're trying to bring back setting stuff in the regular articles, this department continues to become more formulaic and bound by the rules of the game. Can WotC not leave them at least this free of brand promotion?
The ecology of the ettercap: Attercop, attercop! But enough of the Tolkien references (which this ecology certainly doesn't miss. ) D&D is it's own game, honest. And this does indeed put some new spins on the creature, both in terms of history, ecology, and statistics. Just because they're evil, doesn't mean they aren't a part of nature, and a surprising number of them become druids, which makes their tricks even scarier. With rules for treating their offspring as swarms, several ingenious new traps, and a new spell, the new crunch is well above average in usability, and adaptability to other creatures. With their strong social tendencies, they're another creature that when combined with various spider allies and advanced variants, could be a decent driver for an entire adventure. So this is a pretty solid ecology that builds on the existing stuff about them nicely.
Wormfood: Oooh. A rather more unique shopping list than the usual monster, magic item, and spell lists that we have become so accustomed to over the past 30 years. A bunch of unique, and exceedingly powerful individuals for you to contact when using Gating. One of the few spells that is still more about the flavour and the potential consequences than strict mechanical balance. You can have all sorts of fun with this, and it's definitely an underused bit of the game. Looks like they do have something nice to offer as you approach epic levels after all.
Barabog is a Titan Barbarian who is even more wild and unpredictable than the average titan. As long as the task involves smashing stuff, and you can provide good catering, he'll be happy to help out.
Furnace master Gendinom is a truly massive fire elemental, who of course likes to burn stuff. But not just any old stuff. No, just as Barabog wants new food, Genidorm wants new and unique things to burn. Which means quests will never get simpler no matter how many times you summon him.
Selauff, on the other hand, just wants money and good conversation, like any Brass Dragon. She'll make sure you pay your debt to her, no matter how tedious it gets.
Syranus is a Solar Ranger, which seems like slightly overicing the cake. He'll work for free if your mission coincides with his, or just bugger off if it isn't. No wishy washy compromises here.
Walkyrie XVII is an inevitable bounty hunter. If you distract him from his current mission, he will not be amused. On the other hand, if you can offer useful info, he'll return the favor.
Xitomat is a coatl monk from Celestia. Exactly how he teaches martial arts compatible with the human form is a bit of a mystery, but teach he does, and quite effectively too. If you want him to help you out, you'd better be prepared to show off your chops or be treated to a long tedious lecture. Sounds like fun to play out.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 5/6
Spellcraft is larger than usual this month. It's also tied in with the current adventure path. As with the Binder stuff, this means they get to provide more interesting content than yet another batch of spells, half of which are tedious variants on the usual combat effects. On the other hand, it also gives them an excuse to create a load of powers that PC's are unlikely to be able to get hold of. After all, consuming Kyuss Worms is a risky and very unpleasant business. And the feat needed to survive it offers no inherent benefits beyond access to these spells. Like the worm based prestige class, I think this may be a suboptimal path to take. Still, we do get some of the unvarnished grossness that the actual Wormfood column has been surprisingly light on. That's something I approve of.
Consume the Parasite lets you get more HP, at the cost of temporarily losing access to your new spells.
Extrude Wormspawn lets you summon a swarm of worms to attack your enemies. Although even with a high level spell like that, they aren't as nasty as a regular spawn of kyuss's infection attack. I suppose it takes a 9th level spell to do once what wights and wraiths do with every single attack, and poison gets similar treatment.
Mindworms eat spell levels, which then get siphoned back to you. This'll keep your evil spellcaster going a little longer in your climactic battles.
Path of Worms is just a sanity bending variant on the standard granting bonuses by predicting the future divination. Meh.
Servant of the green Corruption is another one that grants fairly standard benefits, with a quirky side-effect. This again reinforces my perception that standard spellcasters aren't missing much by skipping these spells.
The Worm Within infects the victim as if you were an actual spawn of kyuss. This is longer range than their actual jump, but still not huge distance, so the option of peppering the spellcaster with fireballs and lightning bolts before they close remains a wise one.
We also get some gross variant magical items. Vestige worms don't look that different from regular Kyuss worms, but the nasty little things are full of forbidden knowledge on top of the usual brain-eating goodness. Spellworms give you a spell-like ability to unleash. Loreworms reveal dark and forbidden knowledge, granting a bonus on appropriate checks, and Visionworms are the grossest photographic media evar. Along with the campaign based sidebars, this makes this a strong bit of writing, well focussed yet versatile. Things look like they're on the up again.
Dragon Issue 343: May 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Geraldine is getting fat. Andy musst have been feeding him too much. Andy will teach Geraldine how to dance and use a magic wand to clean the place. Dance, dance, my pretty! Teeheeheehee!!
If a lawful good cleric of a lawful neutral god changes alignment to LN, can they choose to switch from turning to rebuking or not (No. You can't change unless you go all the way)
Do zombies get damage reduction or not (Yess, they do)
Does a weapon actually have to be +6 to bypass epic DR, or just have an effective number of plusses about that ( Real +ses only, precious.)
What are spirit creatures (Creatures with the spirit subtype. Sseveral others as well, jusst to be helpful in a nonoriental game.)
Does powerful build let you take feats only large creatures can take (no)
Can you use psychic reformation to change your class levels (no)
Does speed of thought increase all your speeds (yes)
If you augment a power, is it's effective level increased (no)
Does a scroll with multiple spells count as a single item for the purpose of creation spells (yess. No, you can't rip it into pieces after this and sell the spells sseparately.)
Do grafts count as posessions for a vow of poverty (Yes. Nassty ssurgery won't let you lawyer your way around your vows. )
If you polymorph someone into a 1st level humanoid, what class, level etc does it have (sstandard for it's race. )
What happens if your polymorph wears off while someone is still in your belly (They get ejected messily. Nassty blerk, collins collins.)
Can you use healing spells from magic items in the mournlands (no)
How about a wish to duplicate a healing spell (no)
How about fast healing (no)
How about nonlethal damage (Yess, that's not important enough to be suppressed
How about regeneration. (Only if it's natural, not magically granted. Monssters may survive, but you'll sstill die horribly, collins collins.)
Can you use identify power on magic items (If your psionics is transssparent, yess.)
Class acts: Adventurers get Urban Markers. A whole load of pictographs to help you communicate surreptitiously with other adventurers. Just watch out the monsters don't learn them, or you'll be in all kinds of trouble. White wolf does it better.
Arcane gets Magic in the Blood, some more sorcerous heritage love. Take the new feat indicating divine descent/favour, and get access to the power and spells from a single cleric domain as well as your regular ones. An exceedingly good option indeed, but of course one that's mutually exclusive with most of the other heritage feats. Such a tricky decision. Dragon, fae, demonic, illithid. They really are stacking up, and most seem pretty tempting. Just have to play more characters then.
Divine gets Pious Extension. This is a grab bag of feats for all sorts of divine classes, including ones aimed specifically at Favored Souls and Spirit Shamen. New uses for your energy resistance, spirit chastising, wild shaping, and turning abilities. I think they ought to have made turning and spirit chastising transparent with respect to divine feats, just like sneak attack and sudden strike are for prestige class requirements, as they're mechanically pretty much the same ability. Ho hum. Easy enough to houserule.
Warriors get The Tide of Battle. A whole bunch of feats designed to make you extra badass in a rip-roaring large scale melee, with enemies leaping all over the place, and make sure the rivers of blood and mountains of skulls are largely comprised of the opposing side. The exact opposite of the duelist's approach, in other words. Better hope your DM doesn't put you up against dragons, tarrasques and other big singular monsters in response then.
Nodwick is suspicious of his employers next crazy attempt to make money. Dork tower gets dollhouse creepy. Zogonia proves that these are not the heroes you want. OotS mess things up without any knowledge of the larger picture.
Aside from the fiction, which continues to be a massive disappointment compared to the old days, this issue has a nice combination of new ideas, old ideas brought back, and existing ones expanded upon. The main problem continues to be the lack of variety, with wargaming, books and computer games now a fading memory, along with all the other fun stuff they used to try. Just how much more can they lose and remain interesting reading? Do I really want to find out? Let's see if they have any new experiments next issue, or just nostalgia callouts for the long-term fanboys.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 1/6
95 (132) pages. So we've made it to 30 years. Tiamat is our cover girl that dares to bare it all, showing that Zuggtmoy's appearance 7 months ago was not a fluke at all. Not that you really know what to ogle on a 5-headed dragon goddess. Best to look on the positive side, and view it as being spoiled for choice, for being reduced to ash is not a desirable experience. :p Let's see if this issue is an embarrassment of riches, or just an embarrassment.
Scan Quality: Slightly blurry, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik's been promoting this issue hard for several months now, and he's not going to stop now. After all, they've got three long-absent big names brought back to the magazine, plenty of new draconic material, and an exclusive special edition mini to sell you. That's a pretty decent haul, even if it's nowhere near as adventurous as Dragonchess, LARPing, or the sculpted paper cover. They may have more past to celebrate now, but it's just as important that they keep on working to make the future interesting. After all, the world is not staying still, and before you know it, the whole medium of print will be going into decline. Where will they be if they don't adapt to that?
Scale Mail: Our first letter is another one that finds OotS on it's own reason enough to buy the magazine. It's fanbase is huge, and being in Dragon can only increase that further.
Next is praise for the Core Beliefs series. As with the Demononicon, they intend to keep it up until they run out of deities to cover, which would happen all too soon if they did it every month.
The domain powers article gets a little errata. People always forget the plants, even though they're everywhere. Another reason Druids can make such great spies.
And finally, we have conflicting opinions on the ecology of the adventurer, and it's technically impossible star. Remember, that means people care and are interested by them. It does not mean you should skip the humour articles altogether next year, because in the world of media, being interestingly bad is far better than being competently boring.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Hordes of the Abyss is our generic D&D product. Demon lords, and everything underneath them. Always a popular topic, especially when they try and suppress that knowledge. What power level will they be when you encounter them? Given the way of 3rd ed, it should be a level that's challenging but not insurmountable.
The Realms gets Mysteries of the Moonsea. Both sourcebook and adventure series. Well, they've got several previous books doing one or the other for the area in their back catalogue, so they can draw on those. Can you get the gloomy buggers around here to cheer up, and maybe some decent management? Tough order, since they have the power of many novels behind them.
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman prequelise again in Dragons of the Dwarven Depths. See the last few scraps of the original heroes lives get picked over for the few remaining vultures to consume. All we need now is baby heroes of the lance saving the world while still in diapers. Maybe it could be a cartoon series. On the gaming side, this line gets a new bestiary for 3rd ed. A few new monsters, a lot of updated old ones. How will they cope with the new sorcerers and mystics, and other tricks the heroes have?
On the minis side of the operation, they're warming up for their 10th wave of stuff. War of the dragon sees Tiamat doing the expansionist thing, bringing with her lots of new monster types, including the ridiculous dragonspawn humanoids. Now, draconians make sense, because you get dozens from each egg, and you're taking resources from your enemies too. But these are pretty pointless compared with actual dragons. Oh well, they're interesting opponents, they just need a little refluffing. On the third party side, there's another set of pieces for building your own castle adventures, and Ptolus gives it's villains minis as well. Not that rat like humanoids or cowled cultists are rare in other settings, so they should be transferrable to, say, WHFRP.
Out in D20 land, they pick True Sorcery for True20. Once again Green Ronin try and push the boundaries of what you can do with the D20 engine, and make magic that's balanced, but less limited than standard Adepts. No objections to this one.
Fantasy Flight Games release the Runebound boardgame for Midnight. With the movie planned as well, it looks like they're trying to make this a multimedia IP like the WotC ones. Good luck with that. Also on the game side, there's Wizkids Pirates of Davy Jones' Curse. Guess what film they're trying to capitalize on with this one. :p
They also choose to promote some music this month. Nox Arcana are a more classy ambient relative of filk, composing tracks based around classic horror themes. Ok then. :buh: I do wonder how they pick this stuff. Is one of the group mates with the Dragon writers or something?
Even more stuff to come as they promote LARPing here again. Yay for that. True Dungeon: Escape from the spider cult gives you a chance to dress up and spend a weekend pretending to delve dungeons in an entirely more visual and visceral way than usual. Great fun if you can afford it.
And finally, they celebrate the 100th anniversary of Robert E Howard's birth, and take a little time to talk about all the things currently being planned involving the Conan property. Some people are making a lot of money off that IP. Let's hope they don't dick the licensees around too much.
Planar dragons: Our third and final instalment in this series arrives. We now have planar dragons for all the outer planes apart from Arcadia, which is apparently too civilised and tidy for big stompy primal things to fit into. There's still a fair few of the more obscure para/quasielemental planes missing, but all the transitional ones are taken, so you're never more than one planar jump away from a dragon. As long as they're in the name of the game, this is kinda helpful for the DM, you know.
Astral Dragons are quite different once again, making them one of the most drastically retooled monsters every edition. Strange. Once again the degree of quirkiness is reduced substantially, which depresses me even more than their ignoring history.
Chole Dragons, on the other hand, really do bring the quirky, with a whole bunch of odd descriptive details that remind us that the abyss is a place of chaos as well as evil, and that chaos is thrown into relief by smaller scale patterns that don't connect to everything else. They're full of plot hooks to solve, or go mad trying too.
Elysian Dragons are all about the good times, making everyone around them happy in the most direct and effective way (which may produce more than a few half-dragons in the process :p ) Their breath weapon makes everyone caught in it drunk, and their ability to create food at will ensures they don't mess up the environment and steal resources from others in their pursuit of generosity. It's good to not have to compromise.
Gloom Dragons are the exact opposite, miserable, cowardly scavenging fuckers who condemn you to an eternity inside them (with a tombstone growing on their back) if they eat you. Seems appropriate for the Gray Waste. So these are fairly inventive and appropriate in their descriptions, even if they forgot the distant past to focus on more recent material.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 3/6
Gen con indy 2006 previews: You know, I noticed the decline of wargaming, books, computer games, reviews, humour, fiction, the forum and coverage of other RPG's in the magazine pretty much straight away when they happened. I'm surprised that I didn't notice just how much less they've talked about the various conventions since 1998. Before then, every year would have both articles and editorials promoting them and then describing what they were like afterwards. Afterwards, they've been sporadic at best. Another casualty of WotC being more self-centred than TSR. Well, at least they've got a fairly substantial one this year, and aren't just talking about what they're doing at it. And things have changed quite a bit since last time as well. Anime continues to grow in popularity everywhere else in the world, with multiple companies involved in subs and dubs. Meanwhile the internet and cheaper recording devices democratise media, meaning there are more independent musicians and filmmakers than ever before. (which also means more filks, unfortunately, but what are you gonna do) There's still tons of new releases, tournament games, and minis stuff, including the rather amusing sounding competitive speed painting. If you want to get in as a vendor rather than just a tourist, you have more opportunities than ever to make your mark. I suppose the really tricky thing these days is finding a market for whatever you create, given how much of the competition is free. Still, a few days meeting people face-to-face will probably make you more useful connections than months of internet spamming so go, have fun. It will be worthwhile in the long-term.
Fiction: The return of Gord by Gary Gygax & K. R. Bourgoine. Oh Gord, not again. Didn't he kinda destroy the world already? Oh well, I guess there's always room for prequels and interquels, just as with the Heroes of the Lance. And indeed, while it hints at his larger adventures in a way that you could probably use to place this in the chronology of the novels, it's a fairly basic heist plot set at ground-level in Greyhawk City. Gord sees a particularly impressive bit of treasure that he simply HAS to have, and the rest of the story details the trials and tribulations he goes through in hunting for it. Unsurprisingly, he was set up in the first place by a devious manipulator, and equally unsurprisingly, he manages to beat them anyway, and come out with a modest profit, but not the huge one he was hoping for, thus leaving him free to blow it all and be poor again for any more instalments. So yeah, all these years, and he's still deeply in thrall to Fafhrd and the Mouser, only as he's just one person, he doesn't have anyone to play off to set up really good banter. And that is why he'll always be second-rate. I'm afraid that even after all these years, I'm not particularly inclined to give Gary a pass for producing bad fiction, especially as I'm not even sure how much of this was actually written by him. And wouldn't it just be pathetic if he was relying on ghost-writers and still producing sub-par material.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 4/6
Another evening with the wizards three: Another rather interesting returnee to mark their 30th anniversary here. It's been 8 years since Elminster, Mordenkainen and Rauthene last met up for our entertainment. In that time, Greyhawk has been revived and died again, the Realms has undergone a complete retroactive cosmology shift, and Mordenkainen has lost most of his hair and had a major makeover. But they're still an immature bunch who seem to be primarily here for the food and the cheap laughs at each other's expense. It's rather like going through a time warp when you contrast it with the tone of most recent articles. And indeed, they pick up where they left off, asking about the fate of Dalamar. Which since Krynn has got it's magic back now and a new 3e gameline, really should be a soluble problem, but ho hum. Still, it's better than the last instalment, even if it isn't as good as the classic first few. Overall, it's pretty welcome.
The new spells are all combat ones. Battle Tentacles is a relative of Evard's black tentacles, with the benefit that the caster can ignore them. Fireball has had variants like this several times, why shouldn't other spells. In fact, it really ought to be a template. Raising the level by 1 to remove the possibility of the caster being harmed or impeded by their own spells seems a good trade to me.
Mailed Might lets you animate suits of armour, and have them explode when beaten. He's already pulled that trick with zombies, but giving your creations a sting in the tail does seem like the kind of thing a villain would relish doing. Particularly a load bearing boss.
Wyrmcone is a pretty decent AoE blasty spell who's energy type varies on what type of dragon scale is used to power it. Course, getting dragon scales has it's difficulties, but those are surmountable with a little negotiation or a lot of violence. Hey, more plot hooks.
The voyage of the princess ark: God. Now this is another blast from the past and then some. 14 years after it ended, Bruce Heard brings the Ark back for one more flight.
We rejoin Haldemar 6 months after the last instalment. He's returned to Alphatia with the Ark, and since then has simply been kicking his heels, being told to do nothing by the Empress. But this boredom is not to last, as the opposing factions make their move. The Ark is captured. Haldemar gets knocked out (man, it really is just like old times. ) and they have to do some sneaky stuff to find out what the hell is going on. Is the empress a traitor to the entire nation?! Or is she only taking the best of many bad options. In any case, it would be best if they set forth again, traveling new lands, and making sure they're as far away from Alphatia as possible when the shit goes down. Which is of course an invitation for the whole series to start up again, and I get the impression that Bruce would be very happy to oblige if asked to make this a recurring feature again. Alas, it is not to be.
In contrast to the original format, where all the OOC stuff was put at the end, this time, it's scattered in sidebars throughout the story. A lot of this is simply recaps of info about the original cast, setting and adventures, as obviously they have to keep the article comprehensible to people who never read the previous instalments. And if the timeline issues seemed awkward at the end of the last instalment, they're even more so now, after the massive change in setting, all the stuff that happened during the AD&D era, and then a good decade of the setting lying fallow. But they do find the space to slip in one new magical item, a cool variant on the potion of disguise. Still, it's been great to see this old girl get an airing again. Will we ever see Mystara return officially? Probably not, they have enough generic fantasy settings. But as long as people still have the old boxed sets and Cyclopedia and play with them, it'll never really die.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 5/6
Dreadhold: Eberron hasn't been around long enough to pull out any nostalgic big guns, but they're still giving us a big article full of plot hooks. Maybe they will have something to call back to on the 60th anniversary issue, you never know. I suppose that depends how well Alcatraz survives as a folk legend, with Guantanamo taking it's place in recent years as the prison of horrors that plays on people's minds, for quite different reasons. Because yeah, this is very much Eberron's equivalent of Alcatraz, an island prison that's full of both the most dangerous prisoners from around the world, and a few innocents put there for political reasons. Unsurprisingly, it's not a place that adventurers can just waltz in and out of, slaying liberally as you go, with plenty of high level guardians and magical wards to match the inmates. With plenty of interesting named NPC's, this is flexibly designed so the PC's could take all sorts of roles, both as prisoners and visitors. I can't help but wonder if it might have been more appropriate as a feature in Dungeon than here, but I'm certainly not objecting to seeing something a little different. And as always, you can easily swipe the new crunch for your own games, as magical warding tricks are always welcomed by the paranoid wizard.
The ecology of the dracolich: How very appropriate. The Dracolich was first introduced in the 10th anniversary issue of this magazine, by Ed Greenwood. Seems fitting that they should be revisited and expanded upon in the 30th. Unsurprisingly, this article is very aware of it's antecedents, and talks about them in a sidebar. Quite a bit of effort is gone into establishing the mentality that leads an already near immortal being to cheat death, and they do remind us that curiously, not only are they more powerful than regular dragons, but they're also usually more goal driven and socially connected as well. There may be more creatures that work on a similar epic level than there were 20 years ago, but that just means you can have richer and more convoluted intrigues and rivalries. Not as epic as last year's birthday gift, this is still a fairly solid ecology, with an unusual amount of campaign specific details and alternative ideas for you to try. After all, every dracolich should be a customized unique individual. Keeping them fresh is going to take a bit of effort.
Wormfood: We finish our adventure path with a column full of advice on moving into epic levels. As with the rest of 3rd ed, you have to plan your build ahead carefully if you want an optimal character. And of course, you'll want to pick differently depending on if the campaign is likely to end shortly, or continue with further plot arcs. This is another article that's nicely done and helpful, but also feels way too short, barely scraping the surface of the awesome things you can do, or the commonsense things you should do when you have that level of power. In a funny way, half doing things like this is worse than not doing them at all, because it just leaves you wanting more, knowing you're unlikely to see it anytime soon. Why they wound up both reducing the page count and increasing the font spacing when there's so much still to do this edition is still a mystery. Unfulfilled potential. It's all gone by so fast compared to the 2e days.
Dragon Issue 344: June 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Does a dragon's crush provoke attacks of opportunity (Only when it gets up again, nassty thing.)
Can you use a breath weapon as an AoO (no)
Can a dragon's breath weapon harm a golem (as long as it's not immune to their energy type.)
Do creatures other than dragons have overland travel speeds (Not at the moment, but they could. )
Are dragons immune to unconsciousness effects (no)
Can a dragon use wands and staves of cleric spells it can cast (Yess, but not scrolls. Ssilly magic type regulations.)
If a dragon takes cleric levels, can it choose one of it's racial domains (Not unless the god grants it anyway.)
Does a dragon with power attack add double the damage to tail attacks (No. It's not really a two-handed weapon.)
Can a dragon wear magic items designed for humanoids (Yess. Resizing can get verry sstupid ssometimess.)
Does a dragon use it's HD or caster level to determine how good it is at assuming alternate forms (HD. Dragons are goood at sshapechanging)
If a dragon in alternate form takes ability damage, how is it handled. (Ssubtract the same amount whatever the form. If you change into a weaker form, you're in big trouble. )
If you cast resurection on dragonhide armor, does it come back to life (yess, ass would any leather armor. Teeheeheehee. Andy likes that idea. Turn nassty stuck up-ladies coats into a pack of weasels.)
What are the rules for jumping onto a dragons back ( There aren't any. There really ought to be. )
Do you have to use leadership or dragon cohort to get a dragon mount (No, jusst a mechanically balanced, plot protected one :spits: Your DM could jusst give you one, yess.)
Are the rules for epic prestige classes different for dragons (Yess. Special exception)
Does a paladins mount share their special abilities (No. Their bond isn't as close as a familiars. That's right, Geraldine. Those pompouss sstuck up priggsses don't know what real love iss. Dance, Dance for me! )
Do goliaths have darkvision (Yess)
Can dwarves tumble in heavy armour (Yes. Pessky cannonballs. :shakes fist: They make ssuch a mess of your lair, collins collins. )
Class acts: Adventurers get Out of the Shadows. Nine more ways in which you can focus your sneak attacking skills, and turn them to uses beyond the basic dealing of more damage. Never let a rogue get the drop on you, for one hit will have you screwed for the rest of the battle, which will probably not end in your favour after that. I would say become undead, but then you have to deal with double hassle from clerics instead. Maybe putting your brain into a golem's body'll do the trick. You can even stay sexaay forever if it's a caryatid column, unlike with lichdom or worm that walksification.
Arcane gets the Anagakok. A variant wizard class for primitive cultures, they exchange the usual bonus feats and familiar for specialization in a suite of nature related spells, spontaneous conversion of spells to endure elements for those unexpected sudden changes in weather, and a special good luck power. A pretty decent trade, really, not particularly over or underpowered. (unless you were planning on using the bonus feats for some twinky synergistic build) Given the number of alternate classes for less developed lands, you should now be able to play a full party from one without sacrificing much in the way of power and versatility.
Divine gets Devotees of the Dragon. Given their power and impressive appearance, it's entirely reasonable that some people would choose to worship them. If you want to focus your devotion to a specific type of dragon, take one of these domains. Chromatic, metallic, gem or lung. Each will give you a different set of spells and granted power, as you'd expect. You could even take two, if you're that obsessive about them. Why should sorcerers and odd non core classes get all the special dragon related powers?
Warriors are also on a draconic kick with Hunting the Wyrm. A bunch of specialist equipment designed to do exactly that, making the life of any dragon dumb enough to hunt this area repeatedly likely to be cut short. They may look down on primitive monkey tools, but this will be their undoing. Compared to them, we are Tuckers Kobolds.
Nodwick engages in some inept treachery. That's gonna need some duct tape. Dork tower celebrates dragon's 30th birthday in vaguely humorous fashion. Zogonia can't remember anyone's name. Lets just use descriptions. OotS has another attack of bogging down due to rules.
Well, they certainly brought back a lot of stuff that we haven't seen in ages this time, which was pretty pleasing. It does leave me a little worried that they're playing off nostalgia a little too much, but if you can't pull the nostalgia card on a big number anniversary, when can you use it? The question is if any of these callbacks will remain, if they have any new ideas to introduce, or it'll be back to the same old formulas for the rest of the year. I could definitely stand to see a few more Wizards Three, and it's a shame they don't have an iconic Eberron wizard to add to the teamup. Let's move onto the next issue, and try and concentrate on the things that are there, not the things that are still missing.
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 1/6
80 (100) pages. The price goes up to $7.99, not even 2 years after the last increase. Yep, they are definitely increasing prices more frequently these days. Remember the 80's. They managed to go nearly a full decade without a price raise. Still, at least we have a sensibly dressed female adventurer for a change after the substantial upsurge of cheesecake on recent covers. But no real background detail again. Still, at least it's another theme they have yet to do this edition. Giants! (last seen in issue 254) Despite being the stars of the first D&D modules ever, and tons of myths, they're actually underrepresented in terms of overall screentime. Let's see just how much useful stuff they've managed to fit in this issue.
Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Back in issue 326, they tried leaving the big obvious blurbs off the cover to see if they could keep the magazine going without them, the way they did in the 80's. Turns out the answer is no. If they don't keep putting themselves out there and shouting for new readers, they get lost amongst the competition, of which there is a hell of a lot in the internet age. Roleplaying as a whole certainly isn't growing, and that means Dragon has to fight to capture as much of the remaining market as possible. Of course, even if they do have eye-catching covers, the fact that they're completely D&D specific now means it's harder for them to draw in people who have no idea what's going on, unlike when they had fiction, general advice and reviews that a newsstand browser could flick through and understand instantly. So this is a somewhat depressing editorial, even if it tries to be positive about the future. Progress steamrollers a whole bunch of things in it's path. I suppose it's just a good thing that once they went electronic and the covers were purely for people who'd already bought the product, they no longer had to worry about this, and left them off.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is the expected criticism of the april issue for not being funny enough. As they've noted many-a-time before, they just can't win on that front.
But they can do better than they are now. We get a highly amusing picture of a beholder in a bikini submitted to us, which I must admit is funnier than their attempts this year. Once again this shows the difference between using freelancers and full-time staffers for most of your articles. The freelancers are less likely to be worn down by the daily grind and afraid of losing their jobs for one little bit of silliness.
Another regular request is for prints of their artwork. They really ought to put really high-res versions of them up for print on demand. That'd be another way they could make some more long tail money for minimal effort these days.
And finally we have a request for more nonstandard classes in Class Acts, and a reminder that people should teach gaming to their kids if they want it to survive in the long-term. Both seem entirely reasonable statements to make.
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 2/6
First watch: The Monster Manual IV sees the designers try and avoid the dread spectre of diminishing returns by introducing not just new monsters, but new elements, such as various advanced versions of creatures, and lairs/prefab encounters as well. Not a bad idea, even if it did irritate some people.
Eberron gets Secrets of Xen'drik. Explore their very own Dark Continent, full of ancient ruins and savage monsters. Find out new things about eberron's history as a whole. Again, sounds pretty promising. Take an airship tour over it, and avoid a big chunk of the hassle of exploring.
A third official release this month. Rather more than usual these days. Dragondown Grotto is another Fantastic Locations adventure. Another 16 page adventure, and lots of add-on bits and pieces. Still probably not going to sell hugely compared to the first two.
A whole host of minis this month, both official and third party. D&D releases the 10th set of minis, as they've been spoiling for a bit. Goodman games releases a load of minis based on old skool monsters. And McFarlaine toys unleashes their own collection of dragons. Who will get your dollars? They also promote yet another battlemat for them to fight upon. I'm definitely getting choice fatigue in this area. How many battlemats does the average gamer need? If you want another game to play using them, there's Genesis by Dark Age games. Modelled by our very own Brom, this postapocalyptic combat game seems to be doing pretty well for itself.
No D20 books promoted this month. However, they do choose a White Wolf supplement. Mythologies for V:tR is a pretty good book, so I can understand why. The copy is a bit misleading though. Remember, all of this stuff is optional, and some explicitly contradictory. Don't believe everything you hear and read, especially in the world of darkness.
Online, we have an interesting experiment. Wolfgang Baur's Open Design project. See an adventure constructed through votes and fan feedback, and maybe join in. A definite case of the joys of the net. I very much approve, and wish I could make money doing something like that.
Also on the computer side, there's Fantasy Grounds, another attempt at simulating roleplaying, and facilitating online play. Looks pretty decent.
They also choose to promote the DVD of The Princess Bride, for some reason. Well, it isn't a bad movie, and it does have one line that's become ubiquitous in online quotes, but really, is it a classic? Really not sure what to feel about this one.
And finally, they take the time to promote the ENnies. Once again we see how much the forums now influence the official writers, and vice versa, since many of them are registered and regular contributors, talking directly to the fans. Everyone can join in, (albeit with varying success) as I've demonstrated over the past few years.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Another of our less sophisticated demon lords this month. Kostchtchie may be an ugly, bandy-legged thing with a bad temper, but ...... actually, no, he doesn't have hidden depths, he's just an ugly misogynistic thug who has a whole bunch of stupid pretensions and insecurities and acts in a decidedly sub-optimal way as a result of them. You've made it to the status of abyssal lord, get over yourself. They make a huge mechanical error in removing one of his big weaknesses of previous editions, (he should be slower moving than normal humans for a very good reason. If one of the big sources of his insecurities isn't backed up mechanically, then it's hardly a penalty. ) and the whole thing suffers from obyrith creep. They're supposed to be over, a footnote in the history of the abyss. They shouldn't be having more and more influence on the current plots and storylines. So yeah, while the quality of this article is as high as ever, I distinctively disapprove of the specific ways they've updated and advanced the character this time. Guess it's house-ruling time. Moving onwards then.
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 3/6
The giants of Xen'drik: Dark Elves and Giants have a longstanding connection in D&D, stretching back to the GDQ series. Eberron takes this, but inverts it, making them long-standing enemies who's wars ravage a continent. That's certainly a scenario that allows players a lot of adventure hooks while caught in the middle. This article works to add the personal touch to that scenario, with a specific location and NPC's there, making it really easy to run because the maps are sorted out and you can just wander in. Like Dreadhold last issue, this feels almost like one of those old school adventures that just details an area, and gives you plenty of room in how the adventure will turn out rather than trying to force you into a particular plot. And like that, it's very welcome as a kind of feature that they haven't really done before. This way of filling in a world definitely seems to be working for them so far. I hope it'll be a while before it hits diminishing returns like their other cycles before it.
Four ways to travel the world: We've had vast numbers of new monsters and spells over the years. New vehicles, on the other hand, not so much. They're mechanically much more complicated to create, and have a bigger effect on your game if you get one. It's not that there isn't the demand, but the lack of supply keeps the price too high for most. Well, someone's had the courage to submit this and get it published. Let's see if it fills this much-needed niche.
The Silver Trident is a big, (relatively) comfortable sailship with plenty of room for any treasure you pick up along the way, and a swashbuckling captain who'll be quite happy to join in your adventures. If you need to make a quick getaway, these are your guys.
The Kraken's Bane is a fantastical submarine that looks more than a little fishy. It's captained by a grizzled old salt who does not put up with fools or insubordination. Well, one puncture and you're in serious trouble. You don't have room to be forgiving in those circumstances. A stint underwater will put you in good stead for facing the tomb of horrors later.
Serella's Caravan is for those of you who are looking for a little company (and maybe protection in numbers) in your overland trips. It's run by a hard-bitten old trader who'll be cranky and suspicious of you at first, but loyal to the end if you prove yourself. It's all about long-term investment to create a viable business.
The Steambolt is a gnome-designed steam-powered Zeppelin, a combo which surprises me not at all. Couldn't you have a comfy halfling houseboat or something instead if you're going to stick with the racial stereotypes? Still, with special rules on what happens if you try to damage an airship mid-flight (not a good idea) this is a pretty decent implementation mechanically. So this article manages to be a winner in both setting detail and mechanics. It's nice that they can really combine the two again in larger chunks.
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 4/6
Sea Serpents: It's not just humanoids that can grow to enormous sizes in D&D. Snakes can do the same. Indeed, in mythology, many dragons are more serpentine than reptilian, writhing through the water or undergrowth rather than flying. So this article would have been just as appropriate last issue, as it gives us new dragon types. We can always do with new underwater creatures, especially since the last article increased our odds of going on an ocean voyage anyway. Let's see how these big beasties measure up to Kraken and Dragon Turtles in a fight.
Crested Sea Serpents produce music through the frills of their quest. This gives them both sonic blasts and hypnotic capabilities, so they're quite capable of accumulating a fair amount of political influence. Engaging one in conversation will be as tricksy as any true dragon.
Lantern Sea Serpents also have some hypnotic capability with their dangling lure, but their secondary powers are more visually based, with prismatic spray at higher level. They're exceedingly bossy, doing their best to impose order on all the inhabitants of their territory. You can be sure one will be a pain for people on the coast, especially if they have minions that can survive out of water for extended periods of time.
Spiked Sea Serpents are the least socially capable, with a combination of poison and insanity inflicting powers. They can still be pretty cunning, but are more likely to cause havoc than impose any kind of formal leadership over others. And while they might be slightly weaker physically than the other two, they're still a dragon, with all the epic level scaling that implies. I think these three manage to be as interesting as the regular dragons in the MM, rather than just being rampaging beasts good only for a physical fight, like the last few variants on the draconic theme they gave us in the magazine.
The ecology of the annis: Man, F Wesley Schneider really has a hard-on for hags, doesn't he. Hag based items in 300. Night hags in issue 324. Greenhags in issue 331. And now these girls. And it looks like he has more planned as well. Eeech. What's all that about. I find this vaguely worrying. He brings back another neglected 2nd ed deity, (man, there's a lot of them) Cegliune, the hag goddess, and draws on lots of folklorish sources to create a solid, but not particularly surprising ecology. Once again, the formulaic nature of these articles becomes a bit tiresome, making it feel like a computer could write them if you fed it the right data. How am I supposed to come up with interesting things to say under these conditions?
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 5/6
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Very much in theme here, with magical items for giants, and for fighting them. Another thing the bazaar has managed to miss all these years, despite giants getting plenty of love in other departments. So once again I rather approve of this topic.
Cloud Giant Harps are another musical item that puts you to sleep. Some of them are also intelligent and able to talk. That seems pretty familiar, if not from D&D. Weapons shouldn't bogart all the sentience, as I've said before.
Hel's Death Staff is a kickass debuff/necromantic device that is super effective against giants. And once you beat them, you can have an extra large legion of zombie giants to rip up any further enemies. Stylish and full of synergy, this is a well designed item.
Ice Armor of the Northlands radiates cold. Unless you're immune to cold, such as, say, a frost giant, it'll also freeze your nuts off inside it too. Better stack up on your endure elements spells if you take this one from it's current owner.
Rings of the Frost Giant Jarl let you summon winter wolves and breathe icy damage on people. This is obviously of little use against frost giants, but is useful to them, and they'll probably be usable as bracelets for human size wielders.
The Sword of Giant Rending is weirdly square, and has different special properties specifically targeting the weakness of whatever giant you're currently fighting. If you rip out their hearts in classic bloodstained conquerer fashion, you can keep the benefit and apply it to everything. Huzzah! A fun set all round!
Spellcraft is also in theme, with some unique giantish magic. In fact, this follows on directly from the Xen'drik article, plonking it down in there. For a third time this year, they're giving a rare form of magic from the supplements some love here. This time it's Artifact spells. They may be more powerful, but they're a real challenge to memorise, requiring giant monoliths to properly record them, and repeated spellcraft checks to understand them. Unless you have routine teleportation, you aren't going to be able to draw upon them regularly, especially as adventurers. So this should have interesting results when incorporated into your campaign.
Disjoin Posession deals with anything in the area occupying a body it shouldn't. It also keeps them out after that for a decent time, which should let you kick said spirit's asses without worries of collateral damage.
Eskella's Soul Cyclone is an AoE energy draining attack. That's definitely more impressive than regular 9th level spells, and I can quite understand people fighting over access to this one.
Hibyrntic's Curse is an ongoing icy effect that isn't completely negated by successful saves. This may well be lethal, but isn't enormously ground-breaking. It's more interesting as a reminder how much they've nerfed ongoing effects in 3.5 and 4e.
Life Spring is just a slightly more convenient resurrection, bringing you up to full power straight away. Cool, but hardly worldshaking in D&D magic terms.
Telepathic Strike is a dual action scrying and remote attack spell. Since D&D is rather conservative about extreme distance magics that allow you to attack while remaining undetectable, this is another pretty cool one from a plot perspective. An article that both stands well alone, and is a good one for encouraging you to buy their new supplements. In that respect it's actually better than the Binder one.
Dragon Issue 345: July 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Andy is teaching Geraldine how to read. Andy is sso proud. Who's a clever little mouse, collins collins. Maybe he can sstart answering questions ssome issue ssoon.
Does a barbarians fast movement stack with other speed increasing effects (Yes. It has no type, sso of coursse.)
Does a raging barbarian lose rage when they go unconcious (no)
Does uncanny dodge prevent you from losing AC due to feiiiiiinnnaaaaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhhhlark (Ssomeone already assked that one, collins collins. Hmph.)
Can a multiclassed cleric/wizard lose their wizard spells to spontaneously cast cure spells (no)
Do domain bonuses to caster levels apply to spells from other classes (yess)
Does trackless step work even when a druid is shapechanged (yess)
Can a druid walk on thin ice with trackless step (No. On the pluss side, it'll close up again after you go through, and there'll be no sign you died there. Your body can sstay one with nature forever.)
How does a favored soul ready spells (ssame ass a ssorcerer)
Do two resistances to energy stack (No. Only the besst countss)
Can a monk use a gauntlet attack as an unarmed attack (Sskip didn't think sso. Andy doess. You'll sstill ssuffer nonproficiency penaltiess though, collins collins)
If a creature with natural weapons takes monk levels, how do they interact (Itss complicated. Andy doessn't like that idea. )
Does ki strike allow monks to affect incorporeal opponents (no)
Does a monks spell resistance stack with a racial SR (no. Again, only besst countses, precious.)
Is using poison an evil act. (Andy doessn't think sso. Itss how you usse it. What iss evil anyway? )
Does a paladin use their turning level or their actual level to see if they destroy undead (Turning level, preciouss. )
Can you take 10 on use magic device with skill mastery (No Only warlockses get that sspecial power.)
Can you get sneak attack damage on burning oil (Yess indeed, teeheeheehee.)
If you gain evasion twice, do you have improved evasion (no)
Why do scouts have trapfinding, but not disable device (ssilly writerses. There iss errata for that already. )
Class acts: Adventurers get Equipment Arrays. Save on your shopping time and make sure you don't forget the essentials by picking up one of these. Perfect for quick generation of NPC's, and pretty helpful for players as well.
Divine gets Underdark animals. Since a big part of adventuring is underground, it might actually make more sense if you get a mount suited to that environment, rather than horses, which are noisy and not particularly suited to close quarters combat. A giant burrowing snake, an underground velociraptor, a large albino ape. All are definitely worth considering for your paladin or druid's animal companion. Just be careful not to overencumber them, because that greater underground flexibility does have a price.
Arcane is missing this month, but has been replaced by a Psionic feature, Psicrystal Substitutions. Like familiars, psicrystals only offer minor benefits most of the time, but if you're willing to spend a little extra on them, you can get more from them in return. Definitely worth considering, as they make your choice of psicrystal personality a good deal more significant.
Warriors get Combat strikes. A trio of tactical feats, each of which grants you three maneuvers. Another way in which the later 3.5 writers tried to rebalance fighter types with spellcasters in terms of overall power and versatility, and failed. More fighty stuff is not the key. It's all in the utility tricks.
Nodwick shows us another strange little part of their world. Dork tower reveal their terrible taste in music. Zogonia decide not to take on this particular dungeon crawl. They replenish too rapidly. OotS show how to handle monsters in a civilized fashion.
Well, this issue was pretty different from the last one, but still had plenty of interesting things to say about giants, so it comes as welcome. It's particularly good to see their attempts to seamlessly meld mechanical and setting material still improving, and more near-complete campaigns instead of little pieces that you still need to do all the assembly yourself. I wonder if that's also being mirrored by similar changes in Dungeon at the same time. Extended adventure paths definitely seem to be making a difference for them too. Let's see if next issue has any big, joined-up features that'll force people to remember them.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 1/6
78 (100) pages. Wayne Reynolds isn't going raar this time, but he continues to produce subtly non-euclidean geometry and anatomy that reveals more problems the longer you examine it. The promotional stuff is better placed than usual though. It's there but not getting in the way. And apparently we have an article on card games, which is interesting and quirky sounding. Let's hope they can get the variety of interesting stuff in the magazine going up instead of down again.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik's editorial is devoted to the educational power of roleplaying. D&D (and for that matter, white wolf, or tekumel, or many other roleplaying games) introduce young people to a rather large selection of complex technical words, many of them archaic or from other languages, while not making learning seem like a chore. This has also made him a better writer, and a better editor, as the more words you know, the more you're aware of the differences between similar things, and the common mistakes people make when it comes to spelling. You can learn so much through play. Lest we forget, the play behaviour of creatures like cats and dogs serve to prepare them for adulthood in an interesting fashion. The idea that for learning to be proper, it should also be regimented and boring is one of the most toxic ideas that permeates the school system. Making the lessons fun can actually result in people learning more, and applying the lessons more successfully in later life, as they remember them better and actively want to think about their experiences. If there's one way we can personally make the world better for our children without sacrificing anything, that's it. Spend your money on games which'll make them develop skills other than precise thumb control.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is about an advert that used a card stuck to the pages. Trying to remove it resulted in ripping of the magazine, which is a real bummer. You need to peel them off slowly. That particular type of glue does unstick cleanly if you treat it right, thankfully.
Next we have a complaint that there was too much fiction in issue 344. You know, just 10 years ago, that was standard, with one full story and several articles which were not primarily mechanics every issue. Goes to show once again how people adapt and get used to the way thing are now.
Paizo's attempts to chip in after the Katrina hurricane do not go unthanked, with two letters from people very happy for their replacement gaming books. That'll keep their reputation good for a few years.
Bringing back old characters gets praise as well as complaints, with some newcomers eager to find out more. Erik fills us in, and lets us know that more instalments of Elminster, Gord or Haldemar's adventures are not off the table if you make demand high enough.
An amusing photo. Looks like there is a Faerun in Wales in real life. Huh. I wonder how many people that live there are in on the joke.
And finally we have a complaint that by having Tiamat on the cover of issue 344, but not including an article on her, they seriously missed a trick there. Apparently there was one, but they didn't finish it in time. It's quite possible it'll show up next birthday. It's still a scramble to get all the material together every month, no matter how long they do it.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 2/6
First watch: They've experimented quite a bit with the magic system recently. Now they bring that same spirit to fighters with The Book of Nine Swords. Well ok, it's actually a fairly standard spell system with a few multiclassing refinements and no utility magic, but at least it gives them a lot more cool things to do in combat, and is quite friendly to being adopted mid-campaign.
The Realms gets Dragons of Faerun, following their usual pattern of doing a specific variant of something that already has a general book. Which does mean you'll get to see what they consider sound draconic spell collections and tactics. What use will you find for these guys?
The D20 stuff this month is particularly good. Must be trying to sell at gen con. Ptolus is out in all it's glory, of course. Good to see a big project arrive on time and still be top notch quality. Dragonlance starts converting the original module series to 3rd edition. Now more faithful to the novels, so you get more clues and spoilers from having read them. :p Still, I suspect many of the buyers will already have both read the novels and played the old versions. Rappan Athuk gets updated and compiled into a spiffy boxed set that'll chew you up and spit you out well into epic levels. I don't think you're ready to be turned into jelly. :D And Goodman Games make an odd step into 2nd ed territory, including an audio CD with DCC34: Cage of delirium. Whatever the opposite of nostalgia is, I'm currently experiencing it. You really want to remind us of THAT era of TSR products?
They pull out lots of big guns on the minis side too. WotC release a 14 inch tall red dragon, truly putting the regular minis in their place by comparison. I would love to see a fight run using that. They also release Dreamblade, another collectible miniatures game. Good luck getting it to match M:tG's success. Wizkids release Horrorclix, which seems depressingly self-explanatory. Even Cthulhu isn't safe from the collectible craze. And Dwarven Forge release another set of terrain for them to fight in - an underground lake. Don't see nearly enough of those. Where do those drow cities get their water from, actually?
Our other RPG promoted this time is Promethean: the Created. The storytelling game of just wanting to be a real boy. :p Rather a challenging game to play, but very interesting if you do it right. Just don't get caught in the angst trap.
And finally, we have an unusually large number of card sets. Vampire: the Eternal struggle continues the OWoD where the RPG's have ended, including new metaplot based card sets and all that jazz. Fantasy Mint release a set of cards representing magic items, giving you another way of avoiding actually putting stuff on your character sheet. And Green Ronin release an actual physical Deck of Many Things, which is damn cool. As an owner of Tarroka cards, I must say I'm tempted by this one, just so I can torture my players a little more.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 3/6
Core beliefs: Pelor. Every pantheon has to have a goody goody, the kind of guy who makes you sick with just how nice they are. Course, given evil propaganda, it seems that all too often, good gets twisted into "intolerant bigot who expects everyone to play by their rules, and smites things that are different with prejudice." Something Pelor has avoided in the past, but seems to be just starting to fall prey too, in response to the recent unpleasantness on Oerth. Slippery slope man. Fortunately, he too has his own ascended demigod, Mayaheine, to watch his back, and help protect the people when he doesn't have time. After all, even gods can't be truly everywhere at once. The result is an article that feels quite focussed on relationships, those he has with other deities, and those he has with his worshippers. Not such a bad idea really. It's how you treat your friends as well as how you treat your enemies that really defines you as good or evil. The new crunch isn't quite as impressive this time round, but the strong setting stuff keeps this column worthwhile. It's well worth it's place in the magazine, even if it could probably be several pages shorter if formatted more efficiently.
Three dragon readings: We've had several dozen different ways of character generation with varying degrees of randomness and average power level detailed in the magazine, but generating your character with cards? That's a new one. The process works much the same as fortune-telling with cards. You assemble a pattern by laying out 12 cards, with each one contributing a little to your ability scores, and the final result balanced with regular point-buy characters. This will probably take a little longer than rolling the dice, particularly the first time when you haven't got the hang of it, but it does add a fair bit of flavour, particularly if you plan to use Ravenloft adventures afterwards. It's the kind of idea that amuses me because it's different, even if I can't actually see myself using it very often in actual play. Here's to trying out obscure things again. After all, you never know what might become the next big breakout hit, copied by all the other games.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 4/6
Games of chance: Having used the cards to create your characters, we return to the more familiar idea of card games within a fantasy world, as last done by Ed in issue 302. While longer than that and more generic, it follows pretty much the same pattern, making sure all the games can be played with a regular deck of cards (plus cups and dice in some cases) so you won't have any trouble doing so in an average household. (even if in game, the cards look different just to confuse newbies (ahh elves, always being snobby and eliteist, no matter the world. ) 8 games are detailed, all of which have at least one small element to tie them into a fantasy campaign rather than the real world. All seem pretty easy to learn, especially if you already know how to play cards anyway and equally easy to drop into a game. Another good example of how they're putting far more flavour in articles than they were a few years ago, and one they could probably do again for specific worlds for a bit without repeating themselves.
Supporting Cast: A third old school article in a row that's primarily descriptive detail rather than new mechanics. 3e might have got rid of domains and followers as a standard thing for reaching Name level, but any character can amass a sizeable retinue if they take the Leadership feat. Will you pick lots of characters the same class as you, or go for deliberately contrasting choices that will hopefully complement you and fill in for your weaknesses. Of course, one size fits all gets tiresome, and so they offer a bunch of new feats that let you customise the number and kind of followers you get. Do you want lots of low level followers, a smaller number with more high level ones, or a particularly devoted crowd. Most of them also add 1 to your leadership score in general, making taking lots of them synergistic in the same way heritage feats are. So advice-wise, this isn't anything particularly special, but the mechanics show the effects of the gradual refinement of the rules over the years, which is definitely a positive step. It just makes me wish characters got more feats, because one every three levels still isn't nearly enough to amass a real army before epic level. That continues to be a structural annoyance with the system.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 5/6
Impilitur, the forgotten kingdom: The Realms gets another bumper sized article to make up for it's time off. Impilitur is another of the many places that hasn't been revisited in detail this edition. And at a full 15 pages, this easily feels like it could be a proper chapter in a more general regional sourcebook. And as a place that's dealt with a demonic invasion in recent history, there's plenty of reasons for adventurers to want to go there, even if the people are generally good and committed to their gods. With both a map and a timeline along with all the info on NPC's and places to go, it feels like they've gone to some effort to keep it friendly to casual readers, but it's long and detailed enough to give something new to the hardcore fans too. I must admit that I found myself skimming rather than reading properly at some points, but this is still pleasingly ambitious, and as a 5th article in a row that's light on mechanics, I think it shows them reaching the limits of what they can do in this direction again, short of doing connected multi-parters like the 9 hells or Incursion. Still hoping Erik has a few more strings to his bow he hasn't shown us yet.
The ecology of the rust monster: Rehash again? There are plenty of screwage monsters you haven't covered yet. Couldn't you do nilbogs, yellow mold or something? And since Ed did it last time, you've got some pretty big shoes to fill here. Curiously, they do try and make the coverage quite different, avoiding the complex biological/rules lawyerly questions Ed tackled for a combination of descriptive stuff, IC legends of the creature, and OOC stories from big game designers about the OOC history of the creature, including Gygax recounting the tale of how he based it off a little plastic toy he picked up on the cheap. Although it has less game useful material than the old ecology, and loses marks for being rehash in the first place, I think it just about justifies it's place, reinforcing that this is one of the more important creatures in D&D's history as a whole, as well as having a slightly different format to most of the recent ecologies. Now, if only there were some big important creature they haven't covered here before, so they could really go to town.
Dragon Issue 346: August 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: When an artificer scribes a scroll, is it arcane or divine (they can choose. They're good ssneaky imitatiorss. )
Do artificers have to use arcane material components or divine foci (No. They can use the besst of both options.)
Does making an item class specific and extraordinary artisan stack (Yes. Big bargainss allow you to undercut your competitorssss, collins collins.)
Can a half-dragon elf or elf lich gain a mark of shadows (no)
Is a warforged juggernaut affected by Quori nightmares (yess. They laugh at your puny attempts to be sscary.)
Can a warforged juggernaut become reforged or vice versa (Yess, but it would be a ssuboptimal combination. ssorry.)
Does a shifter druids beast spirit power stack with the 9th level moonspeaker power (Oh yess. Thatss very twinky.)
Can a spirit shaman chastise a quori (Yess. Naughty quori, needss a good sspanking.)
What's the difference between the polymorph spell, and the polymorph subschool (ones a spell, the other's a trick to nerf a whole bunch of existing spells retroactively. :spits: )
YOU HAVE ERRED AGAIN TWICE!!! WE ARE VERY DISPLEASED. IF YOU CONTINUE LIKE THIS WE WILL TAKE YOUR JOB AWAY FROM YOU!! No. Pleasse, collins collins. Don't take my preciouss away from me. Andy is a good sage, collins collins. Andy will never insult you like Sskip. Andy promissesss!!!
Class acts: Adventurers get Scout feats and options. Pretty self explanatory. 6 new feats, and 2 new class variants for another mostly ignored non core class. Just the thing the magazine should be doing, and some of the feats are useful to rangers, rogues, and other wilderness and stealthy types as well. Never underestimate the value of a good reconnoiter before a fight.
Arcane gives truenamers from the tome of magic some love this month. 6 new debuffs based upon turning the truename of a creature against it, plus three new feats that give you even more uses for truenames. Once again, this is primarily aimed at a single class, but can have limited use for other ones dabbling in the art.
Clerics get Sacred Enforcers. Monks devoted to a particular Lawful deity, and with various alternate sets of fighting styles and class features, these are good incentive to make monks actually religious, rather than just generalised zen badasses. Let the fluff and crunch unite, to form the ultimate food of entertainment!
Warriors get Eastern Cataphracts. Another real world variety of warrior gets it's equipment detailed for if you should choose to imitate it. Yawn.
Nodwick solves the problems, but not to the satisfaction of his employers. Dork tower once again show how utterly stuck in a rut they are, unable to even see outside the box, let alone think outside it. Zogonia come up against the lack of equipment conservation in a fantasy universe. OotS wishes what's new was still here. Intriguing to know.
Well, this has easily been the most useful issue in a while for people who aren't playing 3e D&D, with some stuff for the old schoolers, and some stuff that's just generally handy for everyone. It'd probably take a lot more effort for Erik to actually include material for other systems, but this does once again show that they're working at putting the quirky and the lengthy back in the articles. Now they just need to keep pushing for the variety as well. Onwards and outwards, not settled down!
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 1/6
82 (100) pages. Well, just a year to go before the magazine comes to an end. And it looks like they're struggling to think of new topics again. The elements? We did that less than 3 years ago in issue 314, not even half an edition gone. Well, let's hope that like horror, it's because they've been getting lots of good submissions on the topic, rather than feeling obligated to stick to a tried and tested formula. Let's open the pages, and see if I'm nicely refreshed, or left burnt and then soggy.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Oh god, the old met at a tavern cliche. I'm fairly tired of it, and after several years at the editorial helm of Dungeon, I can quite understand why Erik would be even more so. Yet at the same time, cliches become cliches because they work, so you can't completely ignore them. What you can do is go back to the source, study it, see how it varies in different cultures in the real world, and then put a fresh spin on the idea. The idea of a place to meet up, drink and socialise varies so much not just from country to country, but also on an individual basis, and even within the same place at different times of day, and the people that come there regularly might not even realise it, being so caught up in the patterns of their own little lives. As always, you can make infinite permutations out of combining a limited set of elements in different ways and proportions. Which hopefully also applies to the theme of this issue. Look closer, and find the many small variations in what seems monolithic. I've done plenty of that, and hope i can keep it up for a year longer.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is another one who thinks they swung too far towards fiction in issue 344. Erik assures them that they will swing one way, they will swing the other way. But as long as he's in charge, they don't intend to go completely straight. :p
On the other hand, the combination of setting detail and obscenely powerful stats in the Demonomicons continues to be very popular with the readers indeed. It's just a shame they aren't covering other extra-planar celebrities with the same enthusiasm.
The ecologies are also exceedingly popular with both readers and freelancers, but there's still one gripe. If using an obscure monster, tell us where it's published please. You know, that kind of info is only a google away. Expecting to be spoonfed won't win you legendary adventures.
Looks like dragon still has some goth readers, with a letter that thinks the Gloom Dragon was cute. Huh. It takes all sorts. Still makes more sense than trying for a relationship with an omnicidal antipaladin.
The equipment arrays are also a fairly niche thing that gets praised. This pleases Erik, as it shows he might be able to get away with a few more articles of that sort.
Far less surprising is a request for a demonomicon on Demogorgon. Equally unsurprising is the reply that they're already working on it. It may be a while though, because they have another 12 part adventure path to get through, and they wouldn't want to spoil things by having him show up at low level.
And finally we have two letters asking about long out-of-print material. Actually, your options on this are better than they've ever been, both legal and illegal. The internet makes matching up the supply and the demand wherever you are in the world a good deal easier.
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 2/6
First Watch: Dragon Magic. If you're looking at numbers sold and correlating it with words in the title, this seems like a perfect product to marketing androids. Still, it gives the warlock a rival in the going all day stakes, and a few new powers to virtually every power system they've added over the years, so it's not a bad book, just very inessential, and dependent on having lots of other supplements to understand everything. If anything says we're drawing to the close of an edition cycle, it's something like this.
Eberron gets Faiths of Eberron. Another setting specific application of general splatbook principles, with prestige classes, roleplaying advice, stuff on how they're integrated into the world, etc.
The Realms gets The Twilight Tomb. An adventure for 3rd level characters, this looks like the kind of thing that can be slapped down nearly anywhere and fill an evening or two. Does it have anything to make it stand out from the crowd?
And finally, they release a new D&D basic game. If you want to not even get to 3rd level, this is for you!! As with the last one of these, this holds no attraction for me. What is it that the early 80's versions had that these just can't replicate? I wish we could figure out.
On the D20 side, they try and resurrect one of their old products. Dark Matter first appeared under the Alternity system, shortly before it was cancelled. Will it do any better under D20 modern. The system's already survived longer and got rather more stuff, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility. No? Oh well then.
Our minis products this month are mostly more environments for them. WotC release some more official dungeon tiles. Dwarven Forge stop delving and let us make some buildings to adventure in. And Magnificent Egos release an 24 inch dragon that will loom over WotC's official offering from last month. Raaaaar!!!! Now that's scary.
The video game they choose is Ninety-Nine Nights. Massive battles, epic plots, multiple playable characters, choice of if you want to fight for good or evil, sounds like it could be fun. Ready for the meatgrinder?
Another interesting choice here. A few months ago, they mentioned Labyrinth. Now it seems like it's getting a Manga sequel. Well, Jareth did inspire the hairstyles of many a bishi, so it's a good meeting of format and subject. Will Toby succumb to temptation where his sister resisted?
They also promote a new competition. They've noticed that ordinary people are making geeky movies, and decide to encourage the process with their own little festival. Mind you, the deadline's a bit tight. It'll be tricky getting up a decent cast and props and editing and special effects and everything in less than a month.
And finally, on a more sobering note, we have an obituary for Tim Hildebrandt. Another person who had a longtime association with gaming checks out for good. The adventure is drawing to a close, and we'd better hope that there are people ready to take up the mantle.
Chicken Carcass Colossal dragon is amazing. So much so that it convinces the scanner to leave the ad in. I'm highly amused by this.
Off to see the Wizards: At the end of 2004, we had a bunch of little snapshots into the WotC design process for their products. They've changed their article style quite a bit since then and decide to give us a more extended look with plenty of photos. However, going into more detail also makes it very clear that the process of book design at WotC is like sausage making, and you don't really want to know about all the arguments, compromises and changes they have to make, which may make the product more solidly built, but also include changes from marketing which are purely for commercial considerations, and tradeoffs needed to hit deadlines that can put people under incredible pressure. People burn out as often as they get fired, and your best protection is having multiple manuscripts on the go at all times so they can't simply drop you without losing a ton of time or leaving those books unfinished. Even with the positive spin they try to put on it, they can't hide that it's not the most pleasant of workplaces. Still, you get to control the future of D&D, and that's more than worth it. And as long as there are tons of people trying to break in, it's not as if they'll have trouble replacing people who flag. So you'd better keep up those 12 hour workdays. Life's a bitch. Gimme another pen.
Full frontal nerdity know the rules all too well. Doesn't stop them from trying to bend them.
Well, I've finally started copying this stuff over to a more permanent and easily searchable format, http://periodicaly-mad.livejournal.com/ Each issue will be dated on the month it came out, which should make finding the entry you want really easy. If there's something you wanted to comment on, but didn't get the chance first time around, now you can.
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 3/6
Princes of elemental evil: The demonomicon has been bringing back plenty of old favourites, expanding upon them and upgrading them to fit with the new edition. Looks like they're spreading the love around a little more, with this piece on the big ugly elemental guys from the fiend folio. Let's see just how much character development they can manage to squeeze in between the big epic level statblocks this time, which is what'll keep the article useful for fans of any edition, not just 3e.
Cryronax looks less yeti-like and more alien than his old illustration. He remains the odd one out among the archomentals, with the desire to upset the natural order and turn the paraplane of ice into a full one. In doing so, he meddles with forces beyond even his power level, and who knows what might happen. You may well have to be the heroes forced into an alliance with other odd monsters that foil him this time.
Imix is still just a vaguely humanoid 18' tall firey pillar. He's the most impulsive of the archomentals, but he's hardly stupid, and you'll have trouble keeping up with him physically or mentally, or even surviving in his presence. He does have a fair few monsters under his command who can take the heat, including more than a few traitorous devils who find the plane of fire a good home from home. He just needs a little more organisation to pull off long-term schemes like them without getting distracted.
Ogremoch has definitely had a lot more work done on him since 1e, looking almost handsome instead of just a blank-eyed blob. He's the highest CR of them, and has plenty of interesting history tied into the old Rod of 7 Parts adventure. Anyone who underestimates his intelligence or malevolence just because he sometimes moves slowly is likely to regret it. Remember he can travel through the ground, so unless you can fly, you never know if he might be spying.
Olhydra is probably the closest of these to becoming an actual god, with a substantial cult of watery monsters. Unsurprisingly, this makes Imix very unhappy indeed, and they fight constantly to establish dominance. Since fire is vulnerable to water, it's obvious who would win in a direct confrontation. Which is why they put so much effort into the long-term schemes.
Yan-C-Bin remains invisible to all but the strongest magics, so an illustration is kinda irrelevant. He might be flighty and have his head in the clouds (badum-tish) but he does have some degree of honour. The many flying demons that follow him won't share that of course, so don't think you can get leverage over him unless you also have power. While it does fall into elemental stereotypes quite a bit this article does serve to give these guys more personality and history, while remaining true to what we've already seen of them in other modules. Erik's encyclopedic knowledge of D&D lore continues to be put to good use in the magazine. And it also leaves stuff open for a future article. Who are the elemental princes of good, and will we get to see their stats and story? Better submit fast, and see if they can get that through before the edition change.
Nodwick gets a half page strip in the middle again. This time, they try and teach him to fight. As if he wasn't doing enough of the work anyway. I think he should stick to henching. They'd probably have to up his rates if he learned how to fight.
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 4/6
Elemental hazards: One problem that crops up again and again when people talk about why they don't travel to other planes in their games is that of variety. To an outsider, another universe can seem like a one-note place, with the obvious feature it's named after drowning out everything else. This is not the case, as anyone who's ever studied lava flows, rock strata or the weather will tell you. And with the other elements mostly removed, the elemental planes are free to develop their dominant one into even more exotic forms. This article gives us a good dozen for each elemental plane. Some are hazardous, some are cool opportunities, and some are merely flavour encounters that spice up the visuals as you travel through, but they are mostly pretty interesting, and serve to show how other universes can still have an ecology despite the things there being very different. With three monstrous compendia devoted to the planes, I don't think we have trouble finding creatures for any but the most obscure ones, but this is still a handy niche to have filled, especially as they include random encounter tables so you can see how common each of these occurrences is by comparison to each other. Hopefully this'll put the accusations of elemental planes being boring to ground along with that of paladins all being the same, which the magazine has also done a good deal to refute.
Paraelemental paragons: Before we get to the regular columns, we round things off with a bit of boring symmetry filling. Stats for paraelemental monoliths, and parelemental templates to represent regular creatures native to those planes. Each is pretty much what you'd expect in terms of boosting stats and adding special abilities, with a scaling CR adjustment based on how many HD they have. Useful, but formulaic, this shows that not all their articles are going to include setting details, even though they have increased that quite a bit. At least the illustrations are good this time round.
The ecology of the elemental weird: Hmm. These guys have got a substantial revamp for the better in 3rd edition. Before that, they were just another lurking strangling monster, trapping you and gradually killing you. Now, their name seems appropriate to it's linguistic antecedents, with their new ties to the concepts of fate and prophecy. I really rather approve. Unlike with the inevitable one, despite technically tackling four creatures, they're closely connected enough this time that the ecology doesn't feel too thinly spread, and the new crunch is pretty decent, focussed as much on helping PC's as hindering them. And if you aren't happy with the changes made, they even give you stats for a creature closer to the old version of weirds. Win-win, really.
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 5/6
Bazaar of the Bizarre: My oh my. Don't tell me the Bazaar never got round to doing a special on elemental magic items before. They may not be producing them as frequently this year, but they are seriously cutting down on the rehash problem. That definitely deserves kudos. Hopefully the individual items will also find new niches to fill.
Boots of fire walking even let you walk on lava comfortably, rather better than advertised. Not many heroes who can do that. Take some positive steps.
Bracers of Whirlwind sound very engrish, but the ability to emulate a djinni is not to be sneezed at. Become a spellcaster and dress like one too, and pull wish scams for fun and profit.
Candles of Sweet Breezes are a way of eliminating manky air and poisonous gasses. One every dungeoneer should have, really, if the DM kicks it old skool. After all, rings of survival only save one person.
The Choker of the Sirens lets you breathe in water, sing hypnotically a la their namesake, and synergizes interestingly with a pearl of the sirens. Another pretty well designed device.
Elemental Elixir lets you turn into an elemental temporarily. I'm pretty sure this was a potion in the old edition too. Meh.
Gloves of Burrowing are another familiar power that's had several iterations in the past. Guess the good ideas couldn't keep on flowing.
Lascit's Aquatic Earring lets you talk to sea creatures both smart and dumb. Another fairly familiar idea with a slightly different specific application.
A Ring of Immolation yet again recycles an idea previously seen in the magazine. Put it on, burst into flame, enjoy the pain you get to inflict on others via physical contact.
Sling Boulders, on the other hand, I've only seen once before, in the 2e Tome of Magic. I think bringing back pebble to boulder in a more fighter friendly format is quite useful too.
Spellcraft: The bazaar may not have done elemental specials before, but our spell columns have had tons of them, both individual and collective. So I can't say I'm as excited about this as I was last article. They've combined it with another recent favourite. Eeeeevil spells. You know what that makes? Elemental Evil! Why, we've never had a whole module on that. [/innocent] Whoever came up with this rather good idea.
Blaze Bones allows you to sacrifice undead to make them temporarily more badass. Poor expendable minions. They try so hard for you and get no respect.
Burning Hate not only hurts, it brands you and makes you thoroughly dislikable. Another one for bad guys with lots of minions, given the way it works.
Caustic Disdain is pretty similar, with it's side effect making it hard for your allies to help you out. Yup, that's pretty evil alright. Good guys don't even need to try to turn the bad guys on one-another.
Cold of the Grave is essentially a souped up chill touch with range. A mixture of cold damage, negative energy damage, and strength drain, this seems very amenable to repeated uses. Probably better picked by a sorcerer then.
Liferot brings Zuggtmoy into the equation, infecting you with fungal nastiness. You know, she isn't elemental, she just likes to use them as a front.
Storm Slave gives you the option of slowly frying in electrical shackles, or becoming the willing slave of the caster. Now that is a nice dual purpose spell that combines the carrot and stick design to good effect.
Summon Avatar of Elemental Evil does exactly what it says n the tin. Big smashy thing come kill your enemies. Be careful it doesn't break control and smash you instead. Me-e-e e e-e-e eh.
Dragon Issue 347: September 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: What are the CR and ECL adjustments for awakened animals (Not that high, really, ssir.)
Does an awakened tree get skill and feats (No. Andy, thinkses not)
Do awakened undead gain any skills or feats (Only the ones indicated.)
What happens when you're dominated by multiple creatures (Opposed charisma checks whenever the orders conflict. Already taken care of, yess)
Will Evard's black tentacles attack you again if you break free (by the RAW, sseems sso)
Does evards black tentacles penetrate damage reduction (no, it ignores it, like mosst spells)
How do they work on the ethereal or astral (Not at all, unless you can find a ssolid surface for them to come from. Guessss you'll have to use ssomething else)
Can you detect explosive runes with detect magic (ass long as you don't read them, teeheeheehee)
Do you have to roll to stay balanced when you leave an area of grease (no)
Are you flat-footed in an area of grease (yess)
Do you have to check to stay balanced if you're hit in a greasy area (yess)
Can you use a full round action to move 5 foot without making a balance check (no)
Can you choose not to bring along objects you're holding when teleporting (Yess. Leave thosse chains behind.)
Can wish restore a disjoined magic item (yess, but extra expensively)
Can an intelligent magic item be disjoined (Yes. Nassty nassty Mordenkainen. We hatses him and his preciouss desstroying sspell)
Can you disjoin items in a bag of holding. (No, but you can disjoin the bag, and loose the items inside, yess.)
Does the size change from righteous might reduce your dex (no)
Palladium's crisis'll get no sympathy in here. You suck, guys.
Class acts: Adventurers get Wilderness Markers. Like the urban ones a few month ago, these might save your life, or they might be a trap set by monsters to help them get some easy meals. You never can tell.
Arcane gets Archaeologists. As I've said before, this is an important but neglected adventurer archetype. It may be a bit boring at times, but digging up ancient relics involves venturing to dangerous locations, dealing with the natives, and getting the items out safely. (and in a magical world, dealing with the items unearthed themselves. You never know when you're going to unseal a world destroying artifact and have to deal with the consequences.) This includes equipment, skill advice, and a bunch of new feats. A well rounded set of stuff to help build the character.
Divine gets Lost ones. Sometimes a character has doubts about their faith without losing it, and the powers granted by it entirely. Here's a whole bunch of alternate class features based around this idea. If you want a change, you can use the retraining rules to swap out old ones for new. You even have a good justification to swap them back after a while, if you tire of playing a conflicted grimdark wanderer. Another case where the fluff and crunch combine to good effect.
Warriors get the Ranger Guide. A quick compilation of all the tables and abilities that they regularly employ, this is another bit of filler that doesn't really add anything new. Only useful for people who can't remember a whole corebook.
Nodwick turns this into a console RPG. This disconcerts his party, quite rightly. Dork tower takes a leaf out of OotS's book and shows us the secret life of wandering monsters. Zogonia wrestle with the concept of justice in an uncaring world. OotS, yeah, has more in the secret life of wandering monsters. Yeah, this isn't quite working. You need to collapse that random pattern.
This issue also manages to balance things nicely between disconnected crunchy stuff and filling in and expanding upon D&D's default setting. That means it has stuff that's both instantly useful right now, and stuff that continuity geeks will still be referring back too decades later. You've got to think of your legacy, not just pleasing people right now at the expense of everything else, and it's interesting to see the magazine finally doing that instead of living very much in the now. Let's see what kind of mark they can make with their final year before it all gets rebooted anyway.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 1/6
81 (100) pages. Pull yourself together man! Vecna really has not been paying enough attention to his corporeal body lately. It's a wonder he can still cast spells with somatic components at all. But then, again that's the kind of thing that makes undead scary. They defy the natural order and keep on going on raw willpower when it should be impossible. I can definitely empathise with that at this point. So let's see if our final october horror issue still has what it takes to scare me, 30 years on.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: 23 years ago, they first released the Ravenloft module. 3 years later, they did a sequel. 13 years ago, they remade it, bigger and better as House of Strahd, with an entire campaign world surrounding it. Now, here they go again for 3.5. And once again, they're hoping they've improved upon it both in size and ability to support different styles of play. It's not quite the same as it used to be, but then, they wouldn't want it to be. After all, they have learned a lot about game design since then, and technology lets them edit and lay out stuff with considerably greater sophistication. The danger is that like modern remakes of movies, it'll still wind up losing spirit in the process, even if the effects are better. And given the critical reception most of WotC's original modules get, I can't be too optimistic about this. Given their more rigorous design process, it's baffling that they manage to be so much worse at making memorable adventures than TSR was. I wish I knew why, and I'm sure the writers there do as well. Well, at least we can rule out shakycam. :p Oh well, on we go, and hope that even if 4e has failed at this, they'll manage to pull it off for Next when they finally get there.
Scale Mail: We start off with another letter from someone who found recent issues anticipated what they wanted to put in their game with spooky accuracy. It's nice when the designers are naturally on the same wavelength as the fans.
Another person not only loves what they're doing but wants to see the magazine bigger, and with more supplemental gubbins each month. If they can afford it, they'll do it. Remember, they do get an order of magnitude more submissions than they actually use.
And finally, in typically contrary fashion, we have someone who'd really like more fiction and cheesecake covers on the magazine. Since it turns out they do boost sales in the short term, you can expect to see them turn up again. Sex sells, and given the choice between money and political correctness, they'll still take the cash. You want to change that, vote with your wallet next time they cheese it up.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Rehash kicks into high gear this month. Complete Mage? Didn't we already have this. Put it next to Complete Arcane and laugh at the contrast. Black guy with cat vs albino guy with ferret. Someone in marketing thought this through waaaay too hard. Come on, surely you can be a little more inspired.
Even more annoying than rehash is the reset button. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft throws away the years of character development, all the supplements, all the novels, all the stuff White Wolf did, and just goes right back to the start, albeit bigger (especially Strahd's stats) and more brutal than ever. And so we see some more foreshadowing of the next edition reboot.
Yet more official rehash to come. The original Dragonlance trilogy also proves more successful than everything Tracy and Margaret have done since, with yet another deluxe reissue. How many is that by now? They also do another Art of Dragon magazine book. There've been slightly less of those over the years, but still a few. And on top of that, the Monster Manual gets an errata filled, deluxe leatherbound book. Do you feel tempted, or will you wait for the complete corebook set with a special slipcase. :p
Also limited edition is their dragon themed chess set (not actual Dragonchess, unfortunately, which would be considerably cooler. ) See Tiamat, Bahamut, Dragotha, and a bunch of other famous dragons represented.
Their next minis set is focussed around the blood war. It's been simmering away for over a decade now, looks like it's gonna kick up a gear again. See familiar faces from the old card game, and maybe a few new ones too. Enjoy it while it lasts, before they throw this away in the reset too. Also useful is another battlemat.
On the third party side, we have new releases from some very big names. Gary Gygax's Lejendary Pantheons and Ed Greenwood's Castlemourn. Like Tracy and Margaret, they may not be able to match their 80's output in commercial success, but they're still full of ideas and have other people around them helping to make them reality. Were these any good?
If you don't want D20, then there's Anima. Anime continues to be pretty popular in geek circles, and this wants a little of that action. High action, secret conspiracies and bishis. Sounds like a good combination to me.
Also getting their art recycled is Warcraft, which is releasing a Trading Card Game. Another amusing spin-off that probably isn't going to make them much money compared to the gangbusters of their actual MMO operation, but is interesting.
Speaking of computer games, there's also stuff going the other way. Warhammer 40k becomes Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. All the diabolical and dysfunctional sides are represented. It's gonna be grim in the north quadrant.
Finally, we have a plushy Necronomicon. Just the thing to go with the plush Cthulhu. :D Tee Hee. Genius.
Core beliefs: Vecna. Our first three covered deities all had the distinction of having ascended mortals as their demigod sidekicks. But not all gods needed help from others to get up to that level. Vecna, for example. He's managed to cheese his way from fairly powerful lich to full-blown god in the face of archmages, gods, more than a few heroic parties, his own treacherous lieutenant, and even the Dark Powers of Ravenloft. Much of it in actual events, rather than backstory as well. (not that those were particularly pleasant modules to play through. ) As a result of this, his portfolio is a bit of a bodge job, made of what he could get at the time. The whole emphasis on secrets is largely a 3e invention, while he doesn't actually seem hugely interested in undead anymore. Becoming a lich was just a means to the ends of survival and power. There may well be a parable there about how your race and sexuality do not have to be the defining factors in your life, even if you are a minority of some sort. I also have a suspicion that he has no great respect for his new clergy either. If sacrificing them was a path to greater power still, he'd be decorating the altar and sharpening the knives as quickly as his one-handed form allows him too. So a quite different god this time, and though the formula might be the same, amusingly different results come out the other end. There's also several cool shout-outs. There is no Head of Vecna. If you find one, do not try to cut your head off and stick it on for more power. Ely Cromlich is back, with replacement parts to make up for his losses that make him all the more appropriate a servant for Vecna. And even the 2-3e switchover gets a joke at it's expense. It's actually rather impressive in the scope of it's slyness. I really enjoyed this one, and though it probably won't be that useful for PC's, it definitely will for DM's.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 3/6
Bestowed curses: In the old days, Bestow Curse and Cause Disease were some of the scariest spells around in the hands of an imaginative DM, for you could all too easily stretch your imagination to inflict effects that weren't lethal, but quite possibly worse than death for their victims. In 3e, of course, they're obsessed with balance, and so this is not an option. But there's still demand for inventive results than a generic penalty to ability scores, so here's a list of alternate effects you can inflict on someone with bestow curse, or it's higher level variant which they also add here. So this is a bit dull, but handy because it lets you know exactly what you can get away with under the current ruleset, which should help defuse any rules disputes on the subject. As Sage Advice's continued appearance every issue shows, they're never going to get everyone to agree perfectly on what the rules really mean, and if they're good or not, especially since WotC is so keen on radically reworking the rules for each edition, but by doing articles like this, at least they're trying.
Bloodlines: Vampires still haven't lost their popularity all these years later. In fact, thanks to Twilight, a whole new generation is just being introduced to the idea of vampire as forbidden romantic figure. So I'm not at all surprised to see another set of vampire variants. We've already had several extensive articles on weird blood-sucking undead from around the world. Can this contribute anything new to the pot?
Savage Vampires are your basic stalkers in de niiight, jumping on people, quite possibly in animal form, and ripping them to shreds to sate their appetites. Meh.
Shadow Vampires fade into the darkness and teleport through it, making them scary and mysterious, but thankfully even more vulnerable if you can turn the floodlights on them.
Terror Vampires aren't so interested in feeding on blood or life force, but fear itself. (reflected mechanically as wisdom damage) This means that unlike some other vampire variants, they'll never be able to overcome their monstrous natures. (although they might be able to turn them to good by playing batman and only scaring other things of darkness) However, the need to keep their victims alive and mess with their mind for quite a while is an exploitable weakness, especially if you remember not to split up the party. And at least they don't drain levels. So these are pretty obvious alternate archetypes, that don't come anywhere near the imaginativeness of previous articles on the topic, but they're done well mechanically. Scary and mysterious needs to be balanced with working well in game, and at least they've got that in their favor.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 4/6
Horrors of the Daelkyr: In the past we've had october issues with an undead focus, a fiendish flavour, and a sanity-imperiling lovecraftian one. Looks like they're mixing it up this time round, with both undead and Cthuloid gribleys from other universes. So let's see what unique spin Eberron puts on the idea of an invasion from another universe, and it's fallout. The Daelkyr tried to take over the world several thousand years ago. Thankfully Eberron's natives have plenty of tricks of their own, so they managed to foil this and seal the gate in the end. But the creatures left behind haven't given up, and they've created new minions by mutating and crossbreeding natives as well. This has plenty of potential to put a cool new spin on existing ideas by recombining existing ideas.
Akleu are transparent-skinned humanoid shark things from Xoriat. Excellent at stealth and climbing, they're dangerous ambush predators now they're stuck on eberron. They really ought to be doing more with their intelligence, but you know what monsters are like. Just can't seem to co-operate like humans despite their greater individual power.
Dolgrue look like bad imitations of Glabrezu. Created from bugbear stock, they spend their existence in perpetual agony, only briefly relieved by torturing others. Which means they might not be inherently chaotic evil like real demons, but only the very strongest willed of them will be able to rise above their baser natures. Polymorph them into something more pleasant, and they'll probably be eternally grateful.
Kyra look like relatives of Grell, giant brains with 8 wings replacing many of their tentacles. They're another genius, but insane creature that lives to trick and create misery for all they encounter. A shame that creatures like that can't turn over a new leaf when stuck on a less hostile plane, but have to go to so much effort to make it more like home.
Opabina are a prehistoric creature we've seen grown to giant size several times before in the magazine. (issues 176 and 204) They actually move at a decent speed this time around, and have reach, which makes them slightly scarier. They're still annoying aquatic grapplers though. A fairly faithful conversion.
Xenostelid are another attempt by the daelkyr to make themselves feel more at home by crossbreeding lots of different insects until they're gigantic freakish monstrosities, all legs and pincers and mandibles. With webbing, poison, and a deadly screech, they're pretty versatile, and make quite scary shock troops if put in a team.
Xorbeasts are the most alien-looking of these, slimy creatures that exist to trap things in their folds, and take them back to their masters for gruesome experiments. I'd certainly be scared seeing one of these sliming around trying to grab me, so I think this article is a success in twisting things to give them a new, but still scary flavour. Can't neglect your body horror as well as the more psychological sort if you want to keep players on their toes.
The ecology of the wight: Another halloween appropriate article here. Wights don't have as many literary antecedents as ghouls, and their name is a bit suspect, but if you asked parties of adventurers which they're more scared off, 9 out of 10 would say the one that drains your levels. Trying to differentiate them from the other low level undead, this sets out to tie them a bit more closely to their celtic barrow origins (making them the northern counterpart to mummies, amusingly) while still giving them some extra versatility. They already have several variants, including the terrifying epic level ones. They're also differentiated by being more warrior focussed than most undead. Mummies are usually priests, incorporeal ones pretty much have to be spellcasters, vampires do everything, zombies have no finesse at all. Seems to work. So I guess this is another decent but not exceptional ecology.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 5/6
Savage tidings: So here we are, at the third adventure path, and the second one to be extensively supplemented in Dragon. We've already faced down Kyuss and his exceedingly icky servitors. What will this one entail. I already know it involves demons, Demogorgon, people being transformed by savagery, the sea, and the isle of dread. But it's the specifics that are important. Will I enjoy them? No time like the present to find out. Note that once again, I have not read the corresponding adventures.
Our first instalment gives us more detail on the city of Sasserine. The 7 districts get a few lines each, and then we get 6 full page writeups for various affiliations that the players will either want to join, or oppose. This isn't really quite enough to play there, but I assume that more information is presented in the corresponding Dungeon issues. I do get the feeling that they're setting up a status quo, but it'll be knocked down relatively quickly into the adventure, Orpheus style. So far, it's not particularly gripping, but as we know, there's no point destroying something the players aren't attached too. Lets see how long it'll take to kick into high gear this time round.
Spellcraft is once again tied in with recent releases, with a bit of ravenlofty goodness. Now unlike Dr Dominiani in issue 339, Strahd is well established as a wizard both capable and willing to develop his own spells. If he were a little more motivated in this area, he could probably overtake Azalin given a few more decades practice. But at the moment, he's still not the most powerful darklord in Ravenloft, just the oldest and most famous. So the only real continuity error will be if this has 9th level spells in it, or stuff from his forbidden schools.
Bloodstone's Frightful Joining is from the old Tome of magic, and ironically was one spell that didn't work too great in Ravenloft, due to close exposure to undead thoughts being extra maddening around here. Strahd also developed a reverse version of this, although curiously, that isn't mentioned here. It's actually a lot safer than it used to be, with both the chances of damage and insanity eliminated. Guess someone's been doing some refining work in the intervening years.
Curse of the Gypsies doesn't seem to be from a specific source, but isn't too surprising, given the role the Vistani have in Ravenloft. It's actually less impressive than the regular bestow curse spell, so this won't be doing the epic stuff the tales have done in the past.
Rain of Terror was from the 2e box set. It has a typically reduced 3.5 style range and duration, and more defined mechanical effects, but the visuals are the same. Gross stuff keeps falling on your head. This may be a bit unnerving.
Strahd's Baneful Attractor was also introduced in the 2e box set. it gets a bit of a nerfing too, being restricted to damage dealing spells rather than messing up all the targeting in the area. They really are cutting down on the amusing unintended consequences these days.
Wraithform was originally from the 2e PHB. Not sure why it never got converted to 3e. It's surprisingly little changed, with only a bit of math conversion needed. The whole thing's a bit boring really. You're just trying to feed of nostalgia.
Dragon Issue 348: October 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: Does a dwarf barbarian wearing heavy armor retain fast movement (no)
Can a bard use bardic knowledge to substitute for any knowledge score (no)
Can a dragon shaman choose dragons not on the base list as totems (if you sstat them out, yess. Remember to keep them balanced, collins collins)
Can you use touch of vitality to restore a lost level (Only before it becomes permanent)
How does a druids animal companion advance at epic levels (It sslowly falls behind, collins collins. Ssoon it will be useless in battle.)
Can you clarify how mettle works (If it would have a partial result, it doess absolutely nothing. Very annoying, collins collins)
Do monks live forever when they reach 20th level (No. The book ssays that clearly)
Does a paladin with a special mount need to train it (not if itss intelligent, collins collins. )
How does ghost step work. Does it end when you attack (No. Ninjas are nassty killerss, yess. )
Can a soulknife create an alternate form soul blade right away (No, they have to make it, then resshape it. Ssorry.)
Does a soulknifes psychic strike apply to both blades if they're dual wielding (Yess)
When a soulknife uses bladewind, how many targets does it affect (Jusst one)
Can a warmage benefit from the extraspell feat (No. They already know all the ssplellses on their list, preciouss.
Can a wilder use wild surge while affected by timeless body (no. Both the benefits and penalties are negated )
Does practiced spellcaster help you get into prestige classes (No. Jusst like skill focuss won't help you meet skill requirements. Itss sso unfair.)
What can an assassin do while studying for death attack (anything, ass long as they keep the target in view. A good assassin sstays inconspicous)
Do children of the night become able to cast higher tier mysteries (yess. Nice shadowcassting. Andy liksess. )
Class acts: Adventurers get Mountain Ghosts. Dwarf ninjas may sound silly, but even as far back as 1st ed, Assassin was the class dwarves could gain highest level in apart from thieves (which were unlimited for nearly everyone) Don't underestimate their ability to be sneaky bastards when there's large quantities of money at stake. Exploding crossbow bolts, Repeating crossbows, Silk armor for stealth, comfort, protection and style. Noise dampening oil to apply to your equipment. More fun stuff for you to spend lots of money on.
Arcane casters gain Unfamiliar Territory. Of all their class features, familiar is the one that most often doesn't fit a particular concept and gets ignored, so here's 9 more things you can exchange that class feature for. Will you save your power and learn how to reabsorb it in the face of adversity, or put in an inanimate object instead like psions. Both seem like pretty decent options, the first particularly if you plan to go for a prestige class which doesn't advance your familiar.
Divine gets wild shape guide. A compilation of animals druids can become, and another pathetic attempt to get people to adopt the mid-edition nerf to their powers and shapeshifting in general. Ha. Good luck with that one. NOT! :p
Warriors get Marshall of Battle. An update for Marshals, including a bit of errata, and a whole bunch of new auras. Command large numbers of troops, and use them to whup enemy ass. More obscure class wuv for those of you that crave that kind of thing.
Nodwick finds undead pirates. After the past couple of issues, that seems more like a vacation. Dork tower try the healthy snacks again. This time even Carson is horrified. Honestly, have you no memory at all. He likes that stuff. Zogonia find out just how much they missed in the last dungeon. OotS suffer from too much inaction as they fight a large battle.
This one would be above average if it were any other month, but is fairly middling for an october issue, as it does have a fair amount of rehash. While they do have a few cool new ideas, there's also quite a bit of regurgitating old ones too, and blatant self-promotion for their new products. Still, it's not as if I can't look back, and as long as they're adding at least a little cool new stuff each time, the journey has not been in vain. That remains the case here.
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 1/6
74 (100) pages. Someones been playing too much Zelda recently :cough:/ripoff/:cough: Time for another elf on the cover, and another issue without a theme. We've had plenty of both of those, so it's once again time to judge individual articles on their own merits, rather than as part of a larger plan, and see if we can come up with our own schemes to combine them in cool ways.
Scan Quality: Blurry, low-res, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: This month's editorial is another reminder that in the real world, adventuring is HARD. Dealing with rough terrain, darkness and lugging around 50 pound backpacks is not glamorous, and will have pampered modern folk whinging after less than an hour of trekking. Hell, even a bit of LARPing serves as a good reminder of the realities the magazine's writers work with every day. Balanced encounters? They had trouble just keeping track of their stuff in the dark. In conclusion, they'd rather keep their fantasies fantastical, not try and make the game too gritty or go off and try to become adventurers in real life. Buncha wusses. Not impressed at all. At least Roger had his army experience to draw upon when writing. Go out, experience harsh conditions and come back. Then you might be able to write adventures that genuinely resonate with us.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who liked the Impiltur article, but found it woefully incomplete. Given how much Realmslore there is by now, they could fill a whole issue on a single country and still miss something. The same will definitely apply to the Horde one this month, since that was originally a full boxed set, plus novel and adventure trilogies.
Next, we have a letter from an eagle scout trying to earn a merit badge. This is cute and unusual enough amongst their normal selection of letters that they just can't resist helping out. Next thing they'll be printing complaints from people's mums again.
A second letter also praises the Implitur article. With demand like this, they really are thinking about bringing back a regular monthly column of realmslore. It's good that the readers made that very clear to the staff.
And once again, we finish off on some historical nitpicking. The 5th element (according to the greeks) was Cosmos, connected to the 12-sided platonic shape. Milla Jovovich and Ma-Ti can go fuck each other. ( which I can't find fanfic or art of on the internet, in blatant violation of rule 34)
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Our environment books go back to where adventures often start with Cityscape. Once again they show us that you don't even need to go anywhere, with lots of stuff useful for both players and DM's. Selective AoE spells? That's always incredibly handy anyway, given dumb players. But what races will they focus on?
Eberron gets Dragonmarked. The spotlight goes on one of the biggest sources of cool new crunch and setting associations. If you want to focus on this side of your character a little more, then now you can. Prestige classes. Getchore prestige classes here! Join the queue mate.
Following up on the new basic set, we have Scourge of the Howling Horde. An introductory adventure for 1st level characters, designed to hold a new DM's hands through the experience. Jump on board, the water's lovely.
Out in D20 land, Goodman games are going for a major nostalgia hit with Gazetteer of the Known Realms. See the adventures that came before put into context, in classic fashion harking back to old mystara and oerth. Yay for that and yay for boxed sets.
Also quite possibly nostalgia inducing is the complete D&D cartoon boxed set. Seems like they've mentioned it here recently more than they ever did back when it was actually on. Another one of those slightly baffling turnups for the book, especially as time has not been kind to it.
The Blood War minis set gets unleashed upon the public. Not just fiends, but all sorts of other planar creatures as well for you to fight. On the third party side, Magnificent Egos release a Kraken upon us. Other worlds vs the watery deeps. Pretty decent fight actually. There's also a whole range of wooden environments from Laser Crafts, including a rather nice ship to facilitate water battles. All ties together surprisingly neatly.
Our game aid this month is another easily erasable initiative board. Seen them before, may well see them again.
If you're interested in card games, there's Rise of the Shogun. Like the warmachine/beasts, this is a selfcontained game, but can combine with other games in the series to make something bigger. No great surprises here either.
Our book is slightly more interesting. The art of the Cthulhu Mythos draws from tons of products from the last few decades, including the RPG. If you're a collector, then this'll give you something to display, and quite possibly an idea of what else is still out there to track down.
Order of the stick gets The Dungeon of Dorukan. A fun little game starring all our treacherous, unstable and incompetent friends we've come to know and love over the years. Who will win this battle and get the bragging rights?
And finally, they promote a company that makes replica swords of the ones you see in movies. That's entertainment. Nothing you can't sell or buy, if you know the right people and pay the right PRIIIIIIIIIIICE!!
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 3/6
Final fantasy XII: Immediately after First Watch ends, we have another article that's just pure promotion with absolutely no usable material. I know the final fantasy series is a big deal, but you at least managed interesting conversions of stuff before in the Silicon Sorcery column, and those were usually only 2-3 pages long. Instead, this is just a basic description of the game with a bunch of artwork, with neither game material or critical reviewing involved. So this is an area in which they have definitely continued to get worse after Erik took over. A shame.
Hitting the bullseye: As they did with polearms in issue 331, here's a comprehensive guide to various ranged weapons in D&D, with their specific benefits, weaknesses, and costs detailed and a few new ones added. The kind of thing that doesn't have the same kind of glamour as new spells and magical items, but is actually less common, and oddly enough easier to use in everyday play, as the things it details are more affordable. As much attention is put on the ammo as the things firing it, with a fairly unsurprising set of trick arrows for those of you who want to play hawkeye or green arrow. The only thing missing is new feats that enhance your shooting skills, since we have plenty of those in our two rounds of splatbooks by this point. It's just a shame they don't cover slings too, because they're seriously underrepresented in the magazine, with not a single bazaar devoted to them in any edition. That seriously needs fixing. So this is decent, but not great.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Dagon. Another iconic demonic name gets a fairly substantial update this month. Their simultaneously new and shiny, and older and more primordial epic demon type continues to get love, as they retcon him into an obyrith. Which does actually make sense, considering the mythology that surrounds him. His statblock has some particularly nasty special powers that mean anyone without access to a powerful cleric will likely be permanently fucked up even if they do defeat him. His thralls also have some interesting benefits and penalties, with the expected innsmouth look stuff being supplemented with some musical tricks, and lots of nicely backed up flavour. It's back to these being tremendously fun reads, filled with all kinds of neat bits and pieces that you can use individually, or weave into an epic plot culminating in a confrontation with the demon lord himself. How very pleasing.
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 4/6
The horde: Well, this is pleasing too. They're actually updating the timeline properly in this return to a long-neglected area of the Realms. That's a positive development indeed. The Horde may have been defeated a generation ago when they tried to attack the western Realms, and been mostly forgotten, but they certainly haven't forgotten in turn. Like the gap between WW1 & WW2, there's now a new generation of angry young men who want to try their luck, while the old are still healthy enough to take part and eager to avoid the mistakes they made last time. Of course, not everything has changed, and there's a fair bit of regurgitating basic info about the geography and culture, but the big players have been updated, so this is still useful to someone who has the boxed set, and vice versa. They also update the dzalmus dragon, which curiously enough wasn't in the boxed set, but the bonus material in Dragon 163. It does seem more than enough to work with if you want to bring back a bit of that exotic flavour. Now if only they'd do a big feature on australian, south american or polynesian adventuring and myth, all of which are sadly lacking because no-one could be bothered to do the research, or the people at WotC don't think they'd have a wide enough audience appeal. (which ironically results in them having less racial and sexual diversity in their articles than the 90's) You've managed quite a few themes they missed in the old days. Don't let the magazine die without leaving out these obvious ones.
The ecology of the ogre mage: What, when you haven't done regular ogres here yet? :shrug: If you say so. I suppose they do make more interesting characters, being intelligent, magical, having a proper society and all that. Like rakshasas, they originally derive from eastern myth, and like them, they have a definite fiendish flavour without actually being extraplanar, making this extra appropriate following on from the last article. This lampshades that, by providing a creation myth that has them descending from the children of gods, and creating two new variant subspecies that make that option extra appealing. It also makes them seem more likely than most races to add to their power by taking class levels. With fairly solid ties to both D&D and real history, this is another quite decent ecology, adding quite a bit of stuff that should be useful in actual play. No objections here.
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 5/6
Savage tidings: We continue to set up the basic setting here, with a map of Sasserine's immediate environment, and a whole load of potential encounters for your players to enjoy as they explore it. Plot hooks everywhere they go, they'll certainly have no shortage of. Unfortunately, the poor scan quality makes the key illegible, so this isn't very usable to me. Still, it certainly looks like this section of the adventure has a nice little sandbox set up for the players to explore before the really heavy stuff hits. The sense that beyond the city limits, it's a pretty wild place is well put across. They also have some advice for integrating new characters into the game if starting ones die. Another hint that this definitely is not going to be a cakewalk. Another solid, but not hugely captivating instalment.
Sage advice: Can you activate magic items inside a silence spell (If they don't need a command word)
If you attack someone with a magic weapon from inside an anti-magic field, and they're outside, do you get the bonuses (no)
Can a monk get their unarmed strike enchanted (Not easily)
Do bracers of quick strike grant two extra attacks when fighting two-weapon style (No. Only one. )
Does the circlet of persuasion boost your turning checks (yess)
What bonuses does a dancing weapon get. Does it make multiple attacks (Your BAB + it's enhancement bonus, yess? If you have iterative attacks, it does too)
Can you make an eternal wand of cure light wounds (Yess. Very useful for party without cleric, yess?)
Does being glamered change an item's properties (No)
Does the ivory goat of travail have all the nightmare's special powers (no)
Can a wizard with a metamagic rod choose which spells they apply to on the fly (yess. Very usefull for wizard especially, yess)
Does a monk's belt boost a nonmonk's AC (Only if they're unarmored)
Is a pearl of power use activated (yess, sort of.)
Can a pearl of power restore a lower level spell than it's maximum (no)
is there a limit to the number of pearls of power you can have (no, they don't take up a sslot, preciouss)
Can you use a portable hole to go through a wall (no)
Does a ring of force require you to keep your hand on it (Andy thinkses so)
Do seeking weapons negate AC bonuses from cover (no, just miss chances)
Do you maintain momentum when teleporting (generally, yess. Can get nassty)
Dragon Issue 349: November 2006
part 6/6
Class acts: Adventurers get a Poisonmaking Guide. Getting hold of raw materials and brewing them up is something you often can't trust to other people, especially when it's illegal, so it might be wise to learn if you're that way inclined. Here's a whole bunch of DC's to standardize this process.
Arcane gets Psiotheurgy. Arcane and psionic powers have more in common than most of their practitioners will admit, and are deadly when combined, as Dark Sun's advanced beings demonstrate. Here's 8 more feats that you can use to make a really badass cerebromancer (as even with them, the split spellcasting progression problem will still render most other arcane/psionic builds suboptimal. )
Divine gets Animal Battle Gear. Hee. Tiger spectacles. Yet more ways to spend money on improving your companion, plus a reminder that they did this before in issue 334. Buy it now! :teeth ting: Mutter mutter mutter.
Warriors get Law and Chaos. A bunch of variant class features for Barbarians and Paladins. Yet more options for you to customize yourself with, and possibly twink out if you play your cards right. Get a pokeweapon instead of a pokemount! ;) I can definitely see the use in that.
Nodwick has another long day of dying repeatedly ahead of him. Dork tower reminds us that even the best MMORPG can't replicate a real GM. Zogonia has an attack of culture shock. OotS has an attack of very poor taste. But clever poor taste.
Another issue that takes lots of old things and builds upon them nicely, while not making it inaccessible for newbies. Which makes me happy as the magazine draws to a close, because it gives me more excuses to look back on my journey and see how the old and new things really measure up. And once again, I'm forced to conclude that while they have far less variety these days, the things that they do do, they do better on average. It's just a shame that christmas celebrations probably won't be one of those things. Let's see if they consider 350 a big and round enough number to push the boat out at all.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 1/6
77 (100) pages. They find a new way to cross-promote this issue, with one of their latest minis blown up to cover size and given a backdrop. You can see the expressions still look a little more plastic than they should. Well, at least they are usually doing backdrops again these days, even if they do still zoom in a little too much to represent a scene rather than just a character. Let's see if the contents are as plastic and unrealistic as the cover, and if they can make being unrealistic seem more exciting than low-key realism anyway.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Monte and his groups have been playing in Ptolus since before the release of 3e. Now, with the edition drawing to a close, and the official book out, things are finally being wrapped up before they move onto new adventures. And thankfully, the ending was not an anticlimax, letting Erik resolve one of the plot points that his character has been carrying around the whole time and turn it to his advantage. And the best thing is that it happened naturally, rather than being scripted in any way. Monte could never have predicted that he'd pull out a wish spell and use it creatively, and it's testament to their belief that the rules serve the story that he let the cool idea work. This is how you actually win the game, not by playing to 36th level twice. If you come up with an outcome that both pleases and surprises, then the rules have done their job in doing what straight fiction cannot. So this shows whatever crap corporate mandates in the articles, they can't stop the actual play from turning out like this. Play whatever way works for your group. There's still no canon police out to confiscate your out of print books and arrest you for having badwrongfun. And unless they're dumb enough to take down all the 4e online content when Next comes out, that will remain true in the future.
Scale Mail: Our first letter asks for more material from Gary, preferably about what inspired him to write certain parts of D&D. They'll print virtually anything he gives them. it's just a shame he doesn't have the energy to expound on matters with the same verbosity he used to.
Next we have someone disappointed they've cut down on the new core and prestige classes in favour of more joined-up material. As usual, any change will get some complainers, but no change will gradually kill things anyway due to diminishing returns. 3e has so many classes already it's not easy to come up with stuff that's new and different, but not unbalanced.
We have another young person who can't figure out how to put a group together. All it takes it enthusiasm without being creepy about it. As the editorial showed just a page ago, there's no strict rules about it, especially when you're all starting together.
And finally, we have an amusingly articulate from another person who's found roleplaying very helpful in expanding their vocabulary, which has probably helped them get good jobs as an adult. Take that, all you parents panicking over what their kids are doing for entertainment.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 2/6
First watch: Our big D&D release this month is the second Fiendish Codex. So it's the Baatezu's turn to get the spotlight. Lots more devils, plenty new prestige classes to help fight them. I wonder how much of this'll be familiar to old time planescape readers.
Two new adventures as well. The shattered gates of slaughtergarde follows on from the howling horde for 2nd level adventurers to enjoy, while Frostfell Rift is another location with big pretty battle maps to facilitate your minis. This time, they have lots of different encounters using the same locations, so it's useful to more than one range of levels. Very clever.
Speaking of minis, it looks like Anima is getting in on the act with Anima tactics, a minis game. Guess they want to be multimedia right from the outset. If that's not your thing, you can go for Dwarven Forge's latest bit of landscaping. Den of evil? Looks like it'd be pretty good for Ptolus's Jabel Shammar actually. I have no problem with that at all. And if you want something artistic, Kotobukya are your people, with large translucent figurines, including some licenced star wars ones. If you smite them down, they shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
If you don't like minis, but still want to represent positioning of characters in a literal manner, you could get some Conflict Chips instead. They have the advantage that you can put smaller creatures on top of larger creatures to represent riders. (or beneath if they have some kind of crush or swallow attack :p Once again we see how changing the technology can influence how play goes.
On the D20 side, we have Fallout D20. Another computer conversion that seems a little superfluous in the profit stakes. Maybe the people from the company are gamers and doing it for the love. Wolfgang Baur also starts on a new adventure, and you can get in on the ground floor if you'll just pay a small price. What fanboy could resist?
In other RPG news this month, Ninja Burger gets a new edition. Now with more Career options and obstacles to get in the way of a successful and timely delivery. Still a fun business.
Tony Diterlizzi's latest project gets a little love. The care and feeding of Sprites for The Spiderwick Chronicles. Ecology lovers should definitely find something to appreciate, and possibly steal from here.
And now for the weird stuff. Replicas of all the props from the recent Call of Cthulhu film. Penny Arcade's charity collecting toys and video games for sick children. And Peter Adkinson's attempts to get Stephen Colbert to come to gen con. People will keep making choices that you never even realized were an option. I guess RPG's do encourage that obliquely.
Core beliefs: Wee Jas. We've already had profiles here for the god of magic, and a god with a strong undead association here. In some respects, Wee Jas is an odd duck as a deity, having partial dominion over a whole bunch of largely unrelated areas of life. This actually makes her considerably more badass and interesting overall, rather than being some inhuman, utterly predictable exemplar of an archetype, you actually get the sense that you can negotiate with her, even if you might well wind up being denied. Her church is similarly versatile. Paladins may be rare, but they aren't unknown, they can work both with and against undead, and she has no objection to her clergy summoning and exploiting chaotic monsters and energies for their own ends. Plus death & occult = goths. :p Is it any wonder she's a PC favourite OOC, and her clergy get more action than even ones of Olidammara IC. :D This is a fairly significant one for me, as I remember reviewing her initial appearance in issue 88, a good couple of years of real time ago, and this really feels like reaching the other end of a huge journey, going from experiencing the past as if it were the present, to looking back on history as filtered through the minds of the new designers. It really is quite a rush actually. I'm also pleased to see the old issue of her relationship with Norebo canonised, despite the fact that he probably hasn't been in official publications for yonks. It feels very odd to have this level of nostalgia for something that I forced upon myself only fairly recently, and have actually found pretty gruelling during much of the process of living through it. But this really is an absolute joy. I guess It's finally hitting me that this will soon be over. Let's hope that this mood'll last.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 3/6
Magical Pollution: We've talked several times about the things high level adventurers do that essentially create dungeons for the next generation of adventurers. Some of them are intentional, like building castles full of traps to protect their wealth. Some are not, like your dumped waste products producing defiled lands and mutants that come back to make your life a misery. Of course, the thing about pollution is that you can rarely predict what long-term effects it will have, save by trial and lots of error, as it involves small amounts of lots of different waste products being thrown together and interacting. So this article is another grab-bag of stuff built around a theme. Three different templates that represent the mutations this might cause: Arcane-blooded, poisonous and stonebones. Two prefab adventure locations for you to put down anywhere, with social and research challenges as well as physical ones to deal with. And three more smaller hazards that are more obvious challenges to be avoided or suffer in the process. So this is for the people annoyed by everything having implied setting stuff, who just want their crunchy material so they can make better campaigns on their own. They're hardly going to neglect them, despite what some letter writers might think.
Creatures of corruption: Continuing directly on from the last article, even though we don't have quite enough material to make Pollution a full theme in the issue. Now there's an idea. We've had war and death themed issues. I'm sure there's more than enough article ideas to make poison, disease and famine themed issues in the future. Hell, on that note, a biblically themed one would be cool if they could get over their fear of causing controversy. But anyway, back to the monsters formed by our own despoiling of nature. Will they be suitably ironic in the deaths they inflict upon players.
Alchemical Undead are your basic shambling monstrosities in eternal torment, only with extra toxic breath and damaging explosion when killed. Pretty familiar really. I'm sure you can visualise this from any number of media properties.
Corrupted is a template that YOU could well wind up with if you fall in the wrong mutagenic slime. You might look ugly, but you also get superhuman strength and toughness, natural weapons, regeneration and poisonous bite. I'm sure you could get an adventuring party to accept you anyway, and if not, there's plenty of precedents for a heroic party composed entirely out of mutants, fighting to get a cruel world to accept them.
Toxic Oozes are as hard to kill as most of their relatives, eating away at any weapons or armor (or your flesh) that touches them. In addition, they emit toxic fumes that'll do slow con damage even if you don't touch them. You probably want to kill them with cold rather than fire if possible, as it'll be more pleasant smelling afterwards. So these monsters are once again going with the obvious and archetypical, rather than unique spins on an idea. Well, they were dealing with newbies again in the letters.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 4/6
Planetouched of Faerun: Virtually everyone knows that the forgotten realms pretty much is generic D&D, and has been for most of their lives. So branding an article like this a FR one means little, it just lets them give specific examples of how these new creatures can fit into an existing setting. And since we're dealing with new Planetouched here, it's particularly easy to get them into whatever world you want, even if they're not native to it. The important question is: would you want too?
Azerblood mix dwarves with azer, which is fairly obvious combination. Adding fire resistance and the ability to zap foes with heat metal let you be extra effective both in the forge and on the battlefield, making it easy for other dwarves to look up to them. I'm sure they'll have no problems getting hot in the bedroom either.
Celadrin are crossbreeds of Elves and Eladrin, which is such a no-brainer combo as to be amusing, especially knowing what they'll do to eladrin in 4e. They trade wizard for bard as a favored class, and get appropriate bonusses on their social skills. If all else fails, they can burn you with their eyes once a day. Also seems fairly typical for a Planetouched's power level.
D'hin are a mixture of Djinni and halflings (and god is that a terrible pun name) Their halfling skill with stealth and ranged weapons combines pretty well with the low level wind control powers from their magical side, so this makes more thematic sense than first impressions show. Shame they don't get a boost to their move speed so they can do a little better at hit and run.
Worghest are what happens when Barghest breed with regular goblins during their prime material jaunts. As LA+2 natural shapeshifters, they have some quite handy tricks that make them handy for a party, from both their goblin and barghest sides. Just preventing enemies from being resurrected alone is worth the price of admission at low levels. These four can definitely have a place in my game.
The ecology of the clockwork horror: You are imperfect. You will be assimilated. Well, your metal would be anyway. These are the ultimate army, who's sole purpose is killing everyone and taking their stuff to make more of them, so they can kill and take more stuff faster. Now that's automation. Guess even adventurers can lose their jobs through mass production doing them better. Can you be the John Henry who fights the tide, and proves that the personal touch is to be preferred by monsters, when it becomes time for them to lose their life and property? I think I like my version better than the one in here, which tries to play the unstoppable force trope straight, and doesn't really manage to build the needed atmospherics. It also makes the newly introduced variant integral to their society and more common than the existing types put together, which seems a bit of a bait and switch. So it's another solidly written ecology, but one that makes some stylistic choices I disapprove of. I can live with that.
Savage tidings: The action moves up a notch as our heroes set sail for the isle of dread. With a name like that, you know there's going to be trouble. If you have any grounding in D&D history, you also know there's going to be some serious nostalgia triggered. Originally appearing in the expert D&D set, the isle of dread was the grain of sand that the entirety of Mystara grew up around. Somehow, it has now transplanted itself to Oerth. Well, I guess they already have Blackmoor in their common history. It's not too surprising that other bits of geography are also duplicated. This'll both grab people's attentions, and up their standards for the handling of this adventure. Once again we get a whole grab bag of stuff. Histories, advice on incorporating new characters (admittedly tricky in this section since you're mostly trapped onboard a ship. ) some sample cohorts, 4 new regional feats, a new affiliation, and a bit of errata. A bit random out of context, I can certainly see how this stuff would be useful. But now my appetite is whetted, and I really want to keep moving and see how they handle the isle of dread. In it's original form, it was one of those 32 page modules that somehow contained enough cool bits and pieces to allow for months of adventuring, with loads of choice in how you tackled it. How will that translate to the 3.5 style? Hopefully all will be revealed next month.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 5/6
Bazaar of the Bizarre comes to an end with another collection of items to aid wizards in their spell research. Make stuff to help yourself, and you can do more to help others in the future. Or crush them under your high-heeled jackboots better instead, if that's the way your tastes run.
Arcane Fences are another way of setting up a guarded perimeter so you can have a good snooze. They can even play you a lullaby if that's what you need. Your adventurer friends may laugh at you, but then they'll have to deal with mr tedddikins coming to life and ripping their throats out.
Containment Cloths are instant summoning circles you can then just rub down and use as a tablecloth. Don't let the kids realise this, and don't try and summon Rilmani with them. Business as usual here.
Failsafe Rings cast a buff on you as soon as you get hurt. It might be better if they could do it just before, but we're wizards, not miracle workers. That'd take permanent foresight, which would be very expensive indeed.
Occulus are goggles with instant identify spells up to 5 times a day. And if you're getting magic items more frequently than that, your DM is probably a serious monty hauler. I think this'll save your wizard many days of tedium and expensive material components.
Researchers are little scuttling eyes on legs that act like an internet search engine for your library. Only slower and with a smaller pool of info to draw from. Sigh. Fantasy just doesn't seem very fantastical when it's doing things reality does better I'm afraid. These writers really have got to get that through their heads.
A Thaumatoscope is a spyglass with permanent detect magic. Rather more portable and unobtrusive than the old mirror which does the same thing, but still not paradigm shaking either. A bit of a limp ending after the last few columns really.
Spellcraft also comes to an end quietly as they prepare to do a few lineup reshuffles for the new year. This month's theme is Chronomancy. Given their current degree of drawing on old products, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are updates from the old 2e book of the same name, but I'm currently unable to check that supposition. I'll just have to judge the spells purely on cool & power, rather than comparisons.
Aging Touch may age you temporarily, but it wears off. You'll have to wait for the epic version to get that kind of power as a PC these days.
Skillful Moment allows you to take 20 without taking 20 times as long. This is about equal to the +10 bonus similar spells of the same level have granted in the past, but more reliable. The choice, as ever, is yours, as one method may be more advantageous than the other, given the situation.
Temporal Jolt inflicts fairly minor damage on living things,but really does a number on your items. Muahahahaha! Always love it when they do that.
Temporal Repair is the obligatory counterspell. If they kill your granddad while this is up, then you're fine. Ha. The duration isn't that long though, which means any superparanoid wizard'll be making an advanced version a priority, right after preventing teleportation, scrying and extraplanar screwage.
Time Shield halves the duration of spells within it. This is really quite brutal, assuming your fights last more than 2-3 rounds anyway, which I know some parties don't usually. I guess so much of that is up to the DM. Can't say I have a problem with this selection at all. Just wish it was longer, like so many of the articles these days. 5 spells in 3 pages still feels both slight and inefficient compared to the old days where they could sometimes put a dozen on a single page.
Dragon Issue 350: December 2006
part 6/6
Sage advice: How many ranks of tumble can I get when my multiclassed character reached 3rd level (6)
Can you delay a choice until later level (no. You can retrain now, though.)
How do you know if you can take 20 or not (Look at the criterea, masster. Itss all in the bookses. )
When you tumble, do you move at half speed for the whole move, or just the squares you're tumbling in (You can choose. Besst to be carefull. Ssilly acrobatics get you killed, collins collins.)
Does the armor check penalty for nonproficiency stack with the normal armor check penalty (No. Ssimpler that way.)
What qualifies as aware (not flat-footed. Ssimple.)
What's precision based damage (Hitting vital sspots. Ssneak attack, ssudden sstrike and sskirmissh. Lotss of sssssss's, yess.)
Class acts: Adventurers get Rogue Guide. Another of our clear-up sessions in which they pull together stuff from all over multiple books for our edification. Nothing very interesting here.
Arcane gets Beast Soulmelds. Three new Totemist soulmelds to choose, based off monsters from later monster manuals. Just the thing if you're feeling that sting, of not enough options to make the character you're wanting. The squicky brood keeper, the spectacular chaos roc, and the mischievously deadly gravorg. Which do you feel an affinity too?
Divine gets The Oversoul. An attempt to shoehorn a vaguely taoist monotheism into D&D worlds that are provably and actively pantheonistic. There could be a supreme god we're all part of. It just doesn't do anything. Ooooooh. Everybody's invited. Because it's all encompassing, you don't have to worry about losing your powers for doing something against it's tenets. Yes, yes. :waves hand: Very good dear. You just want to have your cake and eat it too godwise, don't you. You'll get your desire made standard come next edition.
Warriors get The Archers Art. 4 more feats to aid you in skewering things from a distance, plus a list of feats from their various sourcebooks, in another attempt to lure you into buying them. The more splatbooks you have, the more awesome characters you can create! Gotta collect em all!
Nodwick engages in corruption and graft in the name of dealing with icky people. Dork tower gives people what they really want for christmas. Zogonia fails to take a joke well. Order of the stick is well random, innit. Pass it on, mate.
Well, this year wasn't as dramatic a change as last year, but they still made a fair few tweaks to the formula as Erik pushed for more articles with setting material and joined-up thinking. Which makes it extra ironic that this issue moved the other way again a bit, showing he's pushing up against the limits of what the audience will accept in terms of rapid change. Oh well. 9 more months, and since they're getting rid of some more general columns for regular setting specific ones, there should be some more worthwhile material for lovers of any edition. Time to count down the last 3% of my journey, and round this off for good.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 1/6
87 (104) pages. (counting the big isle of dread map. ) Lord Soth retains all his decorum in the 3e update, unlike Strahd or the Lady of Pain. Welcome to the third and final campaign setting themed issue. There might be plenty more to say on all these worlds, but we won't be seeing much more of it in the magazine for a long time. So let's see if they can develop them a bit further, or if it'll be just another round of rules conversions.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Having done two of these already, Erik has a good idea of the problems you face covering lots of different settings in one go. Principal amongst these is making them accessible, which isn't always possible or appropriate when you already have an existing campaign going. You can solve this by making them explicitly part of a larger multiverse with canon crossovers, but this creates it's own problems when it comes to maintaining theme, and forces the writers to be extra careful when it comes to cosmology and continuity. In the 90's they tried to tie everything together to boost sales, and look where that got them. Now they're keeping their active settings well apart, with Eberron not getting even a hint of crossover with their other worlds, and the others playing down what happened in the past. (especially with Dragonlance and Ravenloft unable to mention other worlds in their 3e incarnations due to their licensing terms. ) This is another thing a setting wonk like Erik doesn't agree with, so he's once again pushing for crossover and creating a transplanar framing device for this year's articles. This makes me squee in delight, and it's certainly been a long time since I could say that. Two years of working hard at this have made a genuine impact with the rest of the staff and freelancers, and this is the big payoff. His ambition once again continues to impress.
Scale Mail: The october issue gets it's usual praise, with two letters very happy with the overall result. They just want more flavour, and maybe a non D&D article every now and then. Is that such a hard request to grant?
The Realms prove similarly beloved, with the country profiles from recent issues also getting two letters of praise. Whether they'll keep doing them now along with the new Volo's Guides remains to be seen, but you won't have a chance to build up a serious jones for it anymore.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 2/6
First watch: Complete Scoundrel. Aka Complete Adventurer II, where Complete Mage was Complete Arcane II. Rehashalicious. Once again, they eschew the new core classes of the first wave for more mechanical experiments, including more attempts to mechanically support swashbuckling high action play. Not a bad idea, really.
Also out this month is Hidden Crypts. Another set of maps for you to have fun on, although not so much on the sample adventures. They can't hold your hand the whole time.
On the minis side, we have a gigantic (16 inch long) blue dragon to serve as an official rival to the 14 inch high red one. Truly a battle of the titans. If you want something a little less awkward, Todd McFarlaine is also producing a whole range of 6 inch dragon minis, which'll still tower over the average adventurer. Nice to see them bring a bit of scale back into battles. In addition, Mega Miniatures are releasing a set of minis tied in with the new Savage Tide adventure path. These can obviously be adapted to all sorts of campaigns featuring watery stuff.
In the D20 department, they're still favouring Green Ronin strongly, with the True20 Companion. If you find the 3 class system restrictive or are annoyed at the small number of powers spellcasters have, this'll sort you right out.
After some rather awkward financial problems, BESM 3rd edition actually gets released, courtesy of White Wolf. Course, they don't support it, and it sells out pretty quickly without getting reprinted, which is a damn shame. Curse you, economics! :shakes fist:
Speaking of economics killing RPG lines, Steve Jackson Games continues to concentrate on Munchkin over GURPS, with their latest release being Munchkin Cthulhu. Seems virtually every company has lovecraftian stuff in their repertoire these days. Let's hope at least some degree of parody remains in their delivery of it.
Several very different books this month. Drizzt gets a boxed set compilation of his graphic novels, and I suspect the Dragonlance Chronicles may do so in the near future. Margaret Weis games also go back to the 80's idea of choose your own adventure books, with Paths of Doom. Choose wisely, for most paths have you losing. And on a completely different note, Paizo release a pretty campaign journal. I'd much rather keep that kind of thing on my laptop. It's just as portable, holds a lot more info, and it can be copied and edited far more easily.
Speaking of computer stuff, no shortage of that. D&D online is progressing in fits and spurts, trying to make itself into an essential part of your gaming experience. Keep trying, maybe you'll get there eventually. :p .pdf pad gives you another tool for facilitating your map design. And two computer games get the spotlight. God of war II, and Gods & heroes: Rome Rising. Two trips back to the BC era, to experience fantastical battles and mythological weirdness. In some ways, things have changed very little.
The world serpent inn: Sigil was not the first place filled with gates that you can use to get to nearly any plane. The World-Serpent Inn was originally detailed in OP1, in 1988, as a way of bridging the adventures in that anthology. If they want to encourage world-spanning games, why not reuse it? It's a classic example of neutral ground, with an indestructible proprietor, magically enforced antiviolence effects, and an infinite shifting maze of back rooms that ensures there's always a comfy room for you to sleep in, and a new gate to a different world to discover. This means it's packed with all sorts of weird creatures that would normally fight on sight, just trying to enjoy a drink, get some gossip and make deals. Some people become permanent residents, for like the Astral Plane, you don't age while here, and food is just a quick order away, and there's far worse places to spend eternity, especially if you're an exile from home and might still be hunted if you leave. So tone-wise, it's somewhere between Cheers and Casablanca, somewhere that'll probably never feel entirely like home, but can still become your local, and the framing device for a whole campaign's worth of adventures. Given the choice between here or Sigil, I know which seems more inviting and less likely to get me killed unexpectedly. A very good start to this issue indeed, that makes it very easy to get into whatever world you're playing in. I can't wait to see what they do with the various existing ones.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 3/6
Magic and intrigue in the high desert tribes: Al Qadim always was one of the most social campaign settings, successfully integrating things like haggling, storytelling and getting haircuts into your PC's adventures. Since the world-serpent inn already pushes you towards seeking social solutions to your problems within it's confines, it makes an excellent first choice for adventurers seeking new experiences and riches. So they set you down near an oasis that's in the middle of a regular trade route, where there'll always be a new set of people for you to make friends (or enemies) with. There's genies up to their usual mischief, a phoenix for you to hunt, and an undead tribe seeking deliverance from their accursed state. So they've given us a little scenario that's full of flavour, pointing out what's distinctive about playing here, and lets people sample the world using just the magazine for a little while before the DM has to go out and buy more stuff. If they can accomplish the same for all their other articles, this issue will be incredibly useful indeed.
Athas and the world serpent Inn: No-one wants to go to Athas unless they're looking for the very best psionics teachers, so it's no surprise that the gate to here is closed off in an obscure back room of the inn, and opens into a bit of desert in the middle of nowhere. If looking out at a featureless expanse doesn't put you off, you'll soon get a crash course in survival as you deal with escaped slaves, Athas's distinctly untrustworthy strain of elves, and traveling traders. So basically this gives you enough adventure hooks for a week or two of exploration before you'll have to get hold of the proper maps and books, and give the players more solid details about just what they've gotten themselves into. It also introduces a new psionic power, a new exotic weapon, and an alternate, simplified way of representing defiling and preserving magic under the 3e mechanics. It definitely does it's job in making you want more, and pointing out where it can be found. Will you survive long enough to get anything from it, or head back to more hospitable worlds after a few hours catching the rays?
Scavengers of Istar: Dragonlance's article is a little different, detailing not just a place and it's inhabitants, but a very specific adventure. Krynn has always had a fair amount of time travel, and so it's gate sends you to the city of Istar three days before the Cataclysm, trapped in an endless loop and unable to leave a la Majora's Mask unless you can find 5 special items to break the curse on a Kender who stole them a loooooong time ago. (in subjective time, and how he lost them again afterwards is not made clear.) Which is more than a little cheesy and somewhat railroady, but hey, that's definitely Krynn for you. So once again, this article does an excellent job at capturing the essence of a setting in a microcosm, giving us the stuff that you couldn't really do anywhere else. Plus the info it does give is mostly new, as we never had an adventure in Istar before, so it's also cool for long term players. What would time travellers from another era of Krynn make of adventurers from another world stuck in a time loop? I don't know, but it'd probably make for a very interesting story.
Irongate - City of stairs: Greyhawk has a fair few portals to other worlds, but unfortunately far too many of them are of the lower-planar variety, so people hopping in and out the world-serpent inn have to keep a low profile. Fortunately, the gate is underground, in another inn owned by a dwarf who's quite happy to deal with the extra clientele it sends his way. Once again, they pick a location that feels like a microcosm of the setting. Irongate is a bastion of freedom in a war-torn land, heavily guarded both on the surface and underground, because you never know what horrors might invade. Fortunately, they also have rich mines with magical metal in them that ensure they can manufacture badass weapons and armor even when besieged. This article is slightly less user-friendly than the previous ones, but I think that's because they assume greater familiarity with the setting. It still has some neat adventure hooks for both old and new players.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 4/6
Cham Fau and the white tiger monastary: Since asians in fantasy campaigns are stereotyped as being more spiritually enlightened and in touch with the universe, this is one place where the locals know about the World-Serpent Inn. They aren't particularly friendly to anyone coming out though, having dealt with more than a few Oni making trouble from that source. This is made more troublesome by the fact that the area around is regulated by a strict bureaucracy that'll be a real pain to navigate without the proper ID and papers, especially if you don't speak the language. So while the dangers here may not be as obviously lethal as Athas, or as idiosyncratic and intractable as Krynn, you will not have an easy time as blundering gajin, and your challenges will be social as often as physical. Still, if you want monk training, there are few better places to go, and plenty of monsters to slay and magical items to find. You just have to try to comport yourself with humility and learn to communicate properly if you want to stick around safely.
The Gatetown of Ecstasy: Since Planescape is constantly engaging in cross-universe shenanigans, especially Sigil and the Outlands gate-towns, this is another place that's fully aware of the world-serpent inn and ready to welcome anyone arriving through it. Ecstasy can always do with a few more mixed-alignment residents to make sure it doesn't slip into Elysium. It only got a 2 page profile in the primer to the outlands, so they can give all the old info and more without it feeling redundant as well. The map is in full colour and more detailed, there's more named NPC's, and they add a bunch of rumours and adventure hooks which are equally applicable whatever edition you're playing under. It's a good vacation spot, and you shouldn't have too much trouble getting back if you stay here a while, but there's also enough challenges that more fighty sorts won't feel like third wheels. Whether you're a clueless berk or an old hand at planewalking, there's something nice for you here.
The shadows of Sithicus: Now here's an article that entirely justifies it's place in the magazine, unlike the creature catalogs that had Ravenloft monsters that had already been printed for 3e. The White Wolf Ravenloft books couldn't mention Lord Soth by name, and so had to engage in awkward circumlocutions in their coverage of Sithicus. Here, they can just go for it, and that more than excuses adding another relatively easy way to escape Ravenloft to canon. Welcome to the only Ravenloft domain apart from Darkon with a significant demihuman population. With Soth gone, it's now ruled by a psychotic dwarf werebadger who's set up a concentration camp, and has no qualms about arbitrarily throwing anyone challenging him in it. Of course being Ravenloft, he's not really in control, having to contend with both the true darklord in the shadows, and her pervasive manipulation and guilt trips, and The Blessed Knight, a heroic reflection manifested from Lord Soth's memories, which wanders the land doing knight-erranty things and providing a ray of hope to the population. (that just makes the terror all the more horrible when shit does hit the fan) So Ravenloft being compartmentalised into lots of little pieces, each with their own distinct brand of horror makes this an easy job for the writers, able to focus on one place and not worry about PC's wandering beyond it's bounds. You can run, but you can't escape unless you play it smart.
The ecology of the isle of dread: And now for something a little different. Most ecologies here simply examine one creature in relative isolation. But the whole point of an ecology in the real world is that there is a food chain and whole complicated web of interactions between species, and if you affect one you have knock-on effects on everything else. While this doesn't go quite that far, it does cover a wide range of the islands inhabitants. That old standby from the original adventure of the Loco weed consuming berserk anklyosaur is revisited, with a new pathos. (never thought I'd say that. ) Best of all, it's nearly all IC fiction again, for the first time in ages (april fool article notwithstanding.) I think I can definitely say now that I prefer it when the ecologies interact with the creature, showing as well as telling, giving a sense of genuine danger, and not revealing everything as incontrovertible fact. So this manages to be both a cool bit of writing in it's own right, and a double nostalgia kick. Two thumbs up.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: We follow on directly from the last article, with some more talk on the creatures of the island, this time with a greater emphasis on mechanics. You could get hold of a whole range of new animal companions and familiars from the savage environment, which is definitely the kind of thing that would appeal to PC's. In addition, they continue to pay great attention to the question of how to introduce new characters to the adventure. You could recruit from the natives, or you if you're not the racist type, you could have lizardman, Aranea, or Phanaton PC's. (although probably not both of these last two at once. ) With stats for phanatons as well, this is definitely turning up the heat and hitting those nostalgia buttons. They're showing plenty of respect for the original setting, while applying subsequent developments in game technology to it that bring plenty of new perspectives. I very much approve.
Volo's guide: As part of their desire to focus more on campaign settings, it's no surprise that their still active ones get a new column. After a 6 year absence, Volo returns, as irritating as ever. 15 real years and considerably more in game, you'd think he'd have had a bit of character growth, (or at least leveling up) but no, he's as irritating and self-aggrandising as ever. Interestingly, Ed seems to have backed off from his old prolific contributions, (after all, he's currently busy trying to make another campaign setting out in D20 land) and is only writing the foreword for this column. That is interesting to note.
But enough context. Lets see if the stuff within is any good. In sharp contrast to the old stuff in this column, but fitting with their current policy, there's a lot more crunch than there used to be, and a tighter focus on material that's immediately useful to players and DM's. With the topic this issue being magical thrones, this instantly feels like one of his old articles full of themed magical items. And that definitely deserves a little yaying.
The bloodbone throne of Uruth is made of skulls, and can unleash various forms of foulness on the people around the person seated. Perfect evil overlord equipment, in other words. Muahahahahaha!
The Shining thrones of Splendarrmornn have divination and protection effects for those sitting on them, and in a pinch you can merge with them and walk around, becoming a half-golem asskicker. Once again that seems custom designed to make for a neat looking battle scene. I approve.
The Soaring throne of the Witch-Queen was made by our old friend Laeral and transforms into a gryphon for you to ride, along with the other standard defensive and offensive effects. So not only can you kick ass, you've also got a decent chance of getting away while not losing your stuff if things go south. And it can stay active long enough to be useful for adventurers too. Dungeoncrawl in style with your own mobile magical throne. Hee.
Dragonmarks: Eberron finally gets it's own regular column as well. Not that it's going to get that many outings, considering we've less than a year to go, but they don't know that yet, do they. They're just trying to give proper coverage to all the D&D worlds, active and dead. So here's some alternate abilities for Dragonmarked sorcerers. A feat, and three new variant classes that provide closer integration between the rules and setting. A perfectly valid little article in the same kind of vein as the Class Acts, only concentrating on a particular setting. Which means they have a little more freedom to write specific fluff to go with it. Nothing spectacular, but they are keeping up their strong editorial direction. Let's hope they don't wind up putting filler into it to make up the page count and satisfy contractual obligations too often.
Dragon Issue 351: January 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: What does surprise casting mean by must stay in melee (Must be adjacent, yess. Or maybe 10' with reach weapon. )
Can a duskblade use arcane channeling through ranged touches (no)
Is a duskblades channelling discharged if they miss (Andy is afraid sometimes it iss. Not ass good as regular spellses, collins collins)
How does arcane channeling interact with spells that allow multiple touches (You can only make one. Not very good at all, iss it.)
If you use arcane channelling as a full attack action, can you affect the same creature more than once (no)
If you apply a metamagic feat to a channeled spell, will it apply to each successful attack (no)
How can a duskblade cast spells without failure chances if their hands are both full (Bucklers don't count as an item, you can do somatic components with that hand, yess)
Does instant daze prevent a creature from attacking you (yess)
Can you use acrobatic strike against more than one creature in a single round (yess, but its tricky to get into the situation. You'll need to specialisse to ssurvive it)
Can you use adaptive flanker and a spiked chain to flank someone on your own (no)
Does arcane thesis reduce the spell level by one per metamagic feat, or just one overall (Just one, Andy iss afraid, masster. )
Does deadeye shot trigger on a particular ally's strike, or any of them (Any of them. Lots of friends good, yess? )
Can you hit someone with fiery ki defense with a reach weapon without being burned (no. Nassty power sstill burnssess. )
Does mad foam rager work before or after the effect it's delaying (before. It interrupts the action, whatever it is)
Does mad foam rager let you delay a saving throw (no)
Does weapon mastery stack with weapon specialization (Yess. Very good at fighting, masster.)
Can you take both types of damage mastery for a weapon that does more than one. Would they stack (yes, no)
Does a spear count as a ranged or melee weapon for mastery (Both. Again, only one at a time though.)
Does weapon supremacy require melee or ranged weapon mastery (Whichever is right for the weapon you're becoming ssupreme in.)
If you have telling blow and would get to sneak attack anyway, do you get the bonus twice (no)
Does everyone have to belong to the same team to get teamwork benefits (No. Not everyone getsess along, preciouss. )
Class acts: Adventurers get Historical Ninjas. They are getting a lot of attention around here. Why them, rather than samurai or any of the other oriental classes? In any case, first we get advice on making your ninja more "historically accurate", and then we get some more ki powers. Bit schizophrenic, that.
Arcane gets Arcane Focus. Why should psions have all the rechargeable resource managementy fun. Take these feats and your wizard will be able to pull similar tricks. Just the thing for if you're expecting to do lots of out of combat casting and want to enhance all your spells.
Divine gets The Cleric Guide. Yawn yawn yawn, rules clarification for the dumb. Are they going to do this for every class? Seems likely.
Warriors get The Clockwork Disciple. Putting cyberpunk into your D&D, courtesy of ancient fallen civilisations. :rolleyes: Perfect for the forgotten realms, and either of the worlds Blackmoor used to be in. Like soulmelds, they balance these by making them use up magic item slots. It also includes a new monk class feature that lets them take apart mechanical creatures with great prejudice. Not a hugely surprising trope, really.
Nodwick meets death again. This time he adopts the form most suited to the universe he's working in, rather than that silly old skeleton. Dork tower make new years resolutions. They'll never keep them, etc, etc. Zogonia discovers how to get into a dark elf's pants. The amount of pain involved really really isn't worth it. Order of the stick need censoring.
As an issue that picks an interesting theme, does something different with it, and maintains it all the way through, this is easily the most ambitious one since the Incursion issue, and it maintains even higher average quality in it's individual articles than that one. So I have absolutely no reservations in saying this issue is awesome. Unless they can come up with a whole brace of even better issues in the next 8 months, this'll definitely be in my final top 10 list. Let's see if the next issue is straight back to formula.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 1/6
86 (108) pages. From tons of previously covered settings, to a D&D take on a new one. This time it's China Mieville who gets the privilege of a full themed issue devoted to his works. Since he's an author who strays a fair distance from standard D&D fantasy, particularly in terms of tone and political stance, I'm definitely interested in seeing how they'll handle this one. Let's see how he compares to Robert Jordan, George Martin or Terry Brooks in treatment.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Like George R. R. Martin, it turns out Mr Mieville is also a gamer. And like George, while he has taken some influence from D&D, his novels also intentionally subvert a fair few D&D conventions, often with some sly humour in the process. Just as Tolkien was inspired by ancient mythology, but his stories turned out quite differently, people inspired by him produced works that were in some ways imperfect imitations, and in other reactions against what they saw as flaws in his writing. The tendency of humans to engage in this kind of dramatic generational shift is probably one of the reasons for our success, as it ensures we're always trying new things and expanding into places we haven't done before, and if some of them turn out to be mistakes, oh well, we have a high enough breeding rate and diversity to recover from them, which you can't say about creatures that evolved on one little island that get outcompeted to death as soon as rats arrive. So basically, this editorial points out that there's always going to be something coming along to shake up a stagnant scene, and expecting things to stay the same forever is foolish. So seek it out, don't wait for it to beat down your door. Your life will almost definitely turn out more interesting that way.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is another one from someone annoyed they're putting so much setting material in these days. As usual, Erik knows you can't please them all, so you've just got to alternate things from issue to issue to keep people from giving up on the magazine entirely.
The other two, on the other hand, are from people very keen to see regular campaign material return to the magazine. Both the Realms and Eberron have quite healthy fanbases who will lap that stuff up. The question is if doing little articles every month will get boring faster than bigger occasional ones that aren't bound so tightly to format. I certainly have my suspicions on that front after a couple of years of Class Acts.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 2/6
First watch: The environmentbook series proves that like the classbook one, it's stretching rather to think of things to do, with Dungeonscape. It's not as if we haven't had quite few books of dungeonering. Still, this one is co-written by Rich Burlew, so it might have some cool ideas and twists in it. Any opinions?
Eberron gets Secrets of Sarlona. Another entire continent, this one full of psionicists, martial artists, and other weird powers of various stripes. Eberron is a big world, and if you stretch out all the elements enough, then it looks less like a kitchen sink.
They also release another generic adventure. Barrow of the Forgotten King is the start of a trilogy. Been a while since I've seen one of those here. In the 90's you couldn't move for them. Another sign of the changing face of the hobby.
Minis Official and unofficial pour forth from company's bounteous hands. D&D's latest minis set focusses on the undead. Always a solid choice, especially now templates mean nearly anything can be made undead easily. There's also a bunch of official LotR figurines coming out, although they look like they're more for display than actual battles. If you want something a little more off the wall, there's John Kovalic's My Little Cthulhu. Another brain-breaking idea that makes the elder gods ever less scary in the long run. They really are losing all their impact lately.
Out in D20 land, Goodman games advance their nostalgia timeline to the late 90's and release a CD compilation of their early modules. Okey Dokey then. What will they recycle next?
Our other RPG release is also a very familiar face. Lankhmar has been bought out by Mongoose, which is releasing it under the Runequest system. Will that be a better fit for the books than D&D? Actually, it probably is. Wonder why WotC decided to stop holding on to this one. It's not as if it isn't still pretty popular and influential.
Several very geek appropriate DVD's picked on this time. The last Unicorn gets a special 25th anniversary rerelease, presumably with commentary, and the other special features common to DVDs these days. There's also two more geek specific movies, Gamers, and Geekin' (which works even better as a composite title) One seeks to break the world record for number of hours played, while the other just wants to keep their group together in the face of the dread s e x. :p It is a silly business. Let's not go there.
Computer games this month include LotR online, and Lair. An MMORPG drawing on the motherlode of fantasy books, and another dragon fighting sim. Both have pretty good visuals, showing how far things have come in the magazine's lifespan. Just watch out for the grinding, which can be as tedious as ever.
They promote the comic projects of Boom Studios. Two sets of Cthulhu mythos stories. And a warhammer comic, Damnation Crusade drawn by Yoshitaka Amano, and foreworded by Neil Gaiman. Once again, they know what they like, and cover what they know. I think we can be pretty sure of the writer's major tastes and influences by now.
And finally, we have some rather interesting news. White Wolf has been bought out by CCP. While not quite as dramatic as the TSR/WotC/Hasbro buyout events, this is still going to have a substantial impact on the face of gaming in a few years, as WW's RPG output drops, while many of their writers move to other departments. Sigh. More foreshadowing of the future here.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 3/6
Runagate rampant: We start off the themed section with a fairly short interview of China. Like George R. R. Martin, it turns out D&D was not his favourite RPG. However, while Martin's poison of choice was GURPS, Mieville's is BRP, with Call of Cthulhu as a favourite. And good god does it show in his creature design, which is one of the most interesting parts of his worldbuilding. Working biology up, and then thinking about how various intelligent creatures would fit into a mixed species society with their differing biological needs and drives produces fascinating results. It's certainly a step away from humans with pointy ears, and all the better for it. So this article gives me a pretty good idea of his writing priorities, and I only wish it was longer, as he has plenty of interesting thoughts on how to reflect society in his books. Oh well, onto the game material.
Bas-lag Gazetteer: As that's what the books focus on, they decide to give us lots of information on New Crobuzon, while leaving the world surrounding it fairly sketchy. Like Eberron, while it may have been a medieval fantasy world at some point, people have not stayed still, and both technology and magic have developed substantially over the years. With a full 18 pages, they can go into a fair amount of detail on both geography and history, with a map, coverage of individual neighbourhoods, (Perdito Street Station is right at the centre, unsurprisingly. ) and lots of named NPC's. It's a grimy place, full of pollution, organised crime, and neighbourhoods of various nonhuman races. It doesn't seem like a very pleasant place to live, but it is an excellent place for adventures, with tons of obvious external problems and social issues for a would-be hero to tackle. Even without reading the books, this gives me more than enough info to get started, just like the overview of the Known World in the front of the isle of dread. So it seems they've chosen well, covering a world which isn't like any of the existing D&D worlds, but has enough similarities to be smoothly converted ruleswise, and isn't so small as to only support a single story. And since he's pretty popular right now, it shouldn't be too hard to find people who want to play here.
People of Bas-lag: We've already found out a fair bit about the nonhuman races of Bas-lag, and how they fit into the setting. Now let's see what they look like mechanically. With one +0, two +1 and one +2 LA, they're fairly suitable for PC's, but haven't been nerfed to make them more D&D-friendly. That seems promising.
Cactacae are cactus-people, unsurprisingly. They're big, solid, sleep standing up, have the usual plant type immunities and can tolerate extremes of heat and dryness. They lack fine manual dexterity though, which gives them good reason to trade with the softer fleshies. One would make an excellent tank for your party as long as you aren't being pressed up against them in confined spaces.
Khepri are highly gender dimorphous cockroach people with sentient human-sized females and little mindless males. They live in hives, and are obviously completely matriarchal with the males treated as being good for one thing only. Gee, that's an obvious bit of social commentary. Still, darkvision and resistance to gaze and mind-affecting attacks seem handy enough.
Remade are people turned into half-machines, usually as punishment for some kind of crime. Even if they manage to win their freedom, they can face a lifetime of prejudice and struggling to get a proper job. Like Warforged, their precise capabilities are incredibly flexible, but they have some pretty substantial problems along with their benefits. Well, when you're treated as a literal machine, they only care about you doing the job. And if you break, oh well. There's always more troublemakers, even if you have to pass new laws to make the innocent guilty.
Vodyanoi are squat frog-people who can comfortably live in or out of water. With the ability to jump superhumanly and speak to aquatic creatures, they make perfect sailors and dockworkers, but are also pretty damn good spellcasters when they put their minds to it. So each of these has more than enough distinct flavor to keep them from being a one-note species where everyone feels the same. Any of them could replace D&D's regular elves or hobbits quite nicely.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 4/6
Monsters of Bas-lag: And now we have the more bizarre creatures. Actually, many of them seem quite PC-appropriate too, but with monster HD and higher LA adjustments, you'll have to play at higher level to include them in a party. As usual, it all depends on how much of a challenge you want as a DM, and if everyone being a special snowflake annoys you or not.
Anophelii are another heavily gender-dimorphous race that struggle to maintain a civilisation because of it. Like real world mosquitos, the females drink blood ravenously while the males are mostly vegetarians, and since the females are also far stronger and more aggressive, you have to tread carefully if you don't want to become their next meal. Understandably, they've been driven almost to extinction and confined to a single island. Maybe with a little more evolution they'll be able to create a functional society again in the future.
Garuda are freedom obsessed bird-people who soar over the coasts and deserts. They can be both deadly hunters, and just about fit into mixed species cities, although they have to deal with some discrimination. Just need to find a job that doesn't involve lots of time spent indoors at a desk, as like most other bird-people they can get claustrophobic.
Grindylow are enormous-jawed eel people who can also float slowly through the air, and like to capture people for magical experiments. They're more than scary enough to have myths grow up around them, since very few people escape if they venture into their territory.
Handlingers are basically detached hands that fuse with people and take over their bodies, eventually killing them. The right-handed ones are more physically powerful, but the left-handed ones are the bosses. They put a particularly interesting spin on an invasion of the body-snatchers scenario. If you see one scuttling around, stomp it pronto and inspect your family for any odd lumps under their clothes.
Scabmettlers are almost human, but have blood that clots almost instantaneously into incredibly hard scabs when cut. They can use this to create incredibly intricate and effective body art, and even tools, but have to regulate their diet carefully to keep their blood from clotting while still inside and killing them. This leads them to be stoic and patient, and very disciplined warriors, for those who don't take good care of themselves get weeded out pretty quickly. Another good example of how a small change in capability can massively affect both individual personalities and a society.
Slakemoths are dream-eating monstrosities that can grow to horse size, yet still squeeze into your house through tiny gaps. With hypnotic wings and considerable physical power, they take very specialised equipment to hunt involving mirrored helmets on your head and powerful ranged weaponry. Perfect X-files material.
Weavers are giant spiders from another universe that can predict the future and manipulate the threads of fate to exercise scary amounts of control over it. This perspective obviously makes them very hard to understand and communicate with from a human PoV, and trying to negotiate with one is a dicey business. Just like any oracle then. :p
Wyrmen are your basic little flying gremlin thingies, scooting around, serving as (unreliable) messengers, and generally being vulgar and mischievous. Some fantasy creatures don't need all that adaption to fit in here. So not all the ideas in here are original, but most have more than enough good spin to be interesting and distinctive in flavour.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 5/6
The ecology of the Yrthak: A fairly obscure monster here. One of the new edition's creations, they're a creature I've never actually seen used. But they are fairly interesting creatures, so bringing new light to them is just what the magazine should be doing. They do a cutaway diagram to show how this odd looking creatures' sensory organs work, which is something we saw in the very first ecology, but surprisingly few after that, and go into plenty of detail about their physiology in the text as well. So while not quite as old skool as last month's ecology, this is another quirky and intriguing one full of potential plot hooks and bits to exploit. The new statblock applies the kaiju template to the creature, which I find amusingly appropriate. A well above average entry in the series.
Savage tidings: Having made our way to the isle of dread, it looks like they're opening up the sandbox again, giving you another chance to wander around, see the sights, make friends and enemies, and amass those all-important XP. We get plenty more info on the various Olman tribes, including roleplaying advice, martial arts, weapons, tribal traits, and affiliations. Very definite temptations for you to generate new characters while here, even if you didn't lose any in the last adventure's trials. Much of this stuff is system free, and can be back-converted into the original adventure, giving it greater depth as well. They really are organising this very well, keeping it accessible as the adventure develops, giving you plenty of choices of how to accomplish your big objective, and making full use of the various cool mechanical bits introduced in recent 3.5 supplements. They have learned from their previous efforts, and are taking care to hit buttons that please all of their intended demographics. This really is going very well. Lets hope they have the rest of the adventure planned out in advance properly to keep this momentum going.
Volo's guide: Last month they effectively gave us a Bazaar of the Bizarre entry. This time, its a FR specific bestiary that they cram in this column. What's the bet a few new spells are just around the corner. The Realms already has enough undead variants to fill an entire monstrous compendium on it's own, but new ones keep showing up. Often as not, they're just variants on an already busy niche. It's enough to keep a necrologist running all round the world trying to keep up.
Charnel Custodians are another angry guardian. Forming a body out of grave-earth and bones, they can suck you under, and reform if you destroy their body. Fortunately, like most undead, they're homebodies, so steer clear of their haunt and you don't have to worry. The fluff is pretty meh, but they do have quite interesting combat abilities.
Inquisitors are torturers in the pinhead mould. Mutilated beyond human endurance,
they relish inflicting the same kind of pain on others, be it to get information out of you, turn you into some other form of necrosurgical abomination, or just for the fun of it. Losing in a fight to them is very much a fate worse than death.
Skuz are another undead variant formed by dying horribly. In this case, it's from being sucked into a swamp and slowly drowned. Their abilities should come as no surprise. Another one that tries to suck you under and turn you into one of them, thus creating the potential for exponential population expansions. Again, a fun fight, but not too surprising conceptually.
Dragonmarks: Warforged. One of Eberron's more distinctive features, as they have some very concrete features and are strongly tied into the setting. And of course, the more something differs from reality, the more they need to define it to make it accessible. So a little more roleplaying and mechanical advice rarely goes amiss. This month, they go about it in curiously old skool style, providing us with a series of random tables for generating a random warforged's appearance. Golems can have a lot of variation in shape and adornments, and this ought to help you break writers block. I'm vaguely surprised and approve. We also have some more modern crunch, in two new components and an affiliation. Pacifist robots? Next thing you know your knife'll ask if it can be a vegetarian, and only be used to cut plants and inorganic stuff. Yeah, looks like both ends of this article have managed to please me. Pretty strong showing. What will they tackle next? Shifters? The railroad tracks? Something that doesn't get talked about in the forums? Lets hope I can still be surprised after all this time.
Dragon Issue 352: February 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Andy iss giving geraldine a bath. Mussnt't be stinky around books. Gloop, gloop. Micess are funny in the water.
Do monster special abilities increase as they advance in HD (Only if the desscription says they do. Sssome Ssscale better than otherss)
When you advance a spellcasting creature, what happens to its spells (ssame ass any other featuress. Ssometimes, if they take the right class level, it sstacks with their innate powerss)
How much XP and wealth should a 4th level succubus wizard have (ssame ass any 16th level character. )
Can an animal increase it's int as it advances. Does this change it's type to magical beast (Andy ssays no. We don't want pessky animalss getting above their sstation)
Are warhorses trained in armour (Makes ssense.)
Do all tieflings, aasimars and genasai automatically have martial weapon proficiency (Yess. Makes getting into ssome prestige classes much eassier, collins collins. We hatses when they become abjurant champions without multiclassing, collins collins)
Do lawful good solars gain the lawful subtype as well(no)
Can celestial and fiendish animals speak (A bit, yess. Enough to beg for mercy, yess precious.)
How long does a beheaded troll live (It regrowss it's head, sso the point iss moot)
Can a troll reattach it's head (Not without a little hellp)
If you kill a troll with fire but there are still intact parts of it's body, do they regenerate (no. Funny metaphysicsss sstrike again)
Can a vampire create vampire animals (Not norrmaly. Don't tell Sstrahd, though.)
How do you work out EL in a group of mixed CR creatures. (Lotss of adding. Itss besst to fudge)
How should you judge EL when playing with a group bigger or smaller than standard (Be careful. Itss all too eassy to kill them, particularly in a ssmall group, where they're missing a role)
Do your HP remain unaltered when wildshaped, regardless of what effects you have on you (no)
Class acts: Adventurers get Criminal Specialists. This works similarly to speciality wizards. You focus in a bunch of skills appropriate to one larcenous role, are forbidden 2 others, and gain an additional benefit as a result. Very cool little bit of extrapolation here. Now, will they do similar variants for all the other classes too, and drive the idea into the ground?
Arcane gets sorcerers guide, this months helping of collated and rehashed filler. I shall pay no more attention to this.
Divine gets Aztec Mythos I. What, they haven't put these guys in 3rd ed already, when they were one of the pantheons detailed in the OD&D and 1st ed AD&D books? Shocking. This month, we get writeups for the big two, Quetzacoatl and Tezcatlipoca. It seems pretty likely more are coming shortly.
Warriors get the Burning Gauntlet Sisterhood. An exclusive guild of women warriors dedicated to eradicating slavery? Go go cliche city. Still it gives them the chance to use the affiliation rules here for the first time. That's worthy of some credit.
Nodwick is spoiled for adventure hooks. Dork tower invokes the Lake Geneva conventions to protect their PC's. Zogonia accidentally invokes a demon. What are the odds of that. Order of the stick are skewered by their own metagame.
Once again, this issue is pretty sweet, boosting my hopes that the magazine will go out on a high, with plenty of references to things that happened all along their timeline. It's nice to see them not only aware of their past again, but actively seeking opportunities to reference it. At this point it'll never all tie together into one big picture, but by building on existing things, they can do stuff that they couldn't with disconnected articles of pure mechanics. Lucky 7 and counting? On we go then.
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 1/6
77 (100) pages. WTF head-neck disconnect?! Am I going to have to do this every single time Wayne Reynolds gets on the cover? Still baffled by his continuing employment. Plus I know Succubi like it rough, but that tail and those talons would put a serious crimp in lots of human sexual positions. Oh well, I suppose that's what shapeshifting is for. Anyway, time for another relatively quick return to a theme, this time the Planes. (last done in issue 321, less than 3 years ago.) Since they also repeated the elemental theme in really short order just a few months ago, I'm pleased they're getting lots of submissions on the topic, but irritated they can't divide them up into more specialised themes that'd let them do greater depth without repeating themselves. Let's see what weird other worlds we're venturing too this time around.
Scan Quality: Poor, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik doesn't talk about the issue's contents here, instead going into detail on just how much playing D&D has varied from group to group. Which I suppose is a somewhat related topic, as it shows just how much diversity there is within our own world, and just how much the same things can be perceived differently by different people. You don't need to venture to different universes to have mind-blowing revelations or meet people with bizarre and alien worldviews. Hell, one person can act in quite different ways depending on the social environment and who they're talking too. One person's mortal enemy is another one's loving father. Well worth taking into account, next time you think you have to turn things up to 11 to alleviate boredom, check to see if a smaller shift will be just as effective, and leave you with more room to maneuver later. Then you can spend more time and energy on other things.
Scale Mail seems to be getting shorter and shorter. Is it going to go the same way as the forums. Since it didn't survive the transition to the electronic magazine, I'm guessing the number of physical letters they get is pretty tiny these days. All four of them are praise for issue 351, showing once again that the audience really do appreciate the campaign classics issues even more than the april ones. I am once again baffled why WotC scrapped them. The only real niggle is the lack of scales on the maps. They would make them more usable, it has to be said. Apart from the Kender one, which you really don't want to use anyway, but will have to if you want to get out of groundhog day.
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 2/6
First watch: Another sign of an edition filling up is the Magic item Compendium. Like the spell one, this collects tons of stuff from books all over the range, but is still only one book compared to the 4 of last edition. Still, they've put more effort into categorizing them according to power and use than last time. Hopefully that'll let you incorporate weird bits and pieces without it becoming unbalancing.
Meanwhile, the Realms hint at the big setting changes that'll get us from this edition to the next around here. Cormyr: The tearing of the Weave. It's been a while since we had big metaplot modules like this. Prepare to lose your entire damn magic system, bitches. Good luck figuring out the new one. If you need some help, talk to the Krynn guys. They had to put up with this crap a decade ago, they should still know the methodology.
Speaking of Dragonlance, they're still getting more graphic novels of the original series. Soon, this will draw to a close, and they'll have to move on to the second trilogy, or find yet another format to redo things in. What ones haven't they done yet?
Also on the comic front is another pretty prestigious property. The Dark Tower gets adapted, revealing new details of Roland's young life in the process. We already know the ending to this, but the fun is in the journey, so why not make it a bit richer. Zogonia gets a compilation, which isn't surprising given how long it's been going. Rich Burlew lends his support to Erfworld. Will it become as long-running and popular as his own works? And we see a reprint of Mike Mignola's old Lankhmar comics. Now that is interesting to note.
D20 support sees one straight product, and one amusingly skewed one. Privateer Press release the Monsternomicon II. More creatures presented with a little more world connection than generic ones, and an IC narrator. And Xcrawl: Dungeonbattle Brooklyn. D&D dungeoncrawl as reality show. Awesome idea. I'd quite like to play in a game like that.
Our new D&D minis set arrives, so they promote it again. I think I'll skip this one. Somewhat more interesting is that Toy Design Studios are doing something similar to Wolfgang Baur, constructing figures, and allowing people to vote at various stages of the design process. I wonder who else is doing cool projects like this.
Our boardgame this month is a reprint of Talisman. I remember when we saw the original release of this advertised in the magazine. Once again, nice to see them keeping track of history and making callbacks.
Looks like we're starting another extended piece of promotion as well, for the next D&D computer game. D&D tactics for the PSP. Even portable systems are capable of some pretty decent stuff by now. And the networking abilities are pretty good. Put your team together, and get delving.
And finally, there's Robin Law's 40 years of Gen Con, which sounds pretty self explanatory. It's older than the hobby, and may outlast it as well. Lots of stuff has happened here, and they want your photos, particularly of the old years. What crazy stories will people contribute?
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 3/6
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: From an ancient demon lord with lots of mythical antecedents, to a brand new one, both in and out of the game. Malcanthet is the queen of Succubi, a far less alien evil than any of the preceding creatures. Course, that seductiveness has only aided her rapid rise to power, and she is quite capable of holding her own in one-on-one combat with most of the other abyssal lords. And when it comes to getting cults, thralls, and all that jazz, she has a huge advantage. Among the usual bits and pieces, we get some more little references that make it very clear just how much research they've done into D&D's history, a new, quite different form of incubi focussed upon rape, (shock, horror! mature themes! :o ;) ) magic items, and an abyssal layer packed full of many quite different specific locations. The prospect of injecting a little sex into people's games seems to have boosted the writer's enthusiasm, because this is another one that has a strong sense of fun to it. The abyss is a big, complicated place, and deception and seduction definitely has a place there. Another entry I very much approve of.
Multiple Dementia: The big inner and outer planes may have remained fairly fixed since the 1e DMG, but there's always room for more demiplanes and ways to get around. So it's time for another article that collects and expands on some of the most obscure hints in previous books. Even I didn't know about all of these before! Good to see they still have the power to surprise me after all these years.
The Black Abyss (not to be confused with the infinite plane of chaos and evil) is a slowly disintegrating abandoned demiplane of caves surrounding a massive storm which none who enter return from. It's actually surprisingly peaceful in the outer reaches, and you could probably make it home for a few millennia yet before it disintegrates entirely. Plus there's plenty of hints about who used to live there. If you're an enterprising wizard who doesn't quite have the power to create your own demiplane yet, studying this place would help you learn a lot and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes in the long-term.
The demiplane of Imprisonment (not to be confused with Ravenloft, which is also a demiplane that imprisons nasty things with great efficiency) is an enormous crystal floating through the ethereal plane that contains some kind of terrifying unkillable monstrosity. Even trapped, it's dreams suck people in and drive them insane, and you may lose an entire party if they don't have any mental shielding while investigating. Not a good way to go.
Moil, The City that Waits is a relatively new addition to D&D's cosmology, mainly referenced in some necromancy related magics from Complete Arcane. Ripped from it's original world, and it's inhabitants placed into eternal slumber, it's a collection of interconnected towers who's bases simply disappear into rolling mist. Parts of it have been gutted by Acerack, and filled with deathtraps, while others still have their original inhabitants or other mysterious horrors lurking within. At 3 miles across, it's probably just about small enough for a group of epic level adventurers to clear out, especially if they have enough plane-shifting magic to jaunt in and out to heal (for being filled with negative energy impedes resting up inside a fair amount) between excursions. So this makes three cool locations adventurable, and sets a challenge to people to do the same for a bunch more. If the magazine had lasted longer, it's quite possible we would have seen them too. that's one set of sequels they could have kept interesting for a while, like the demonomicons and ecologies.
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 4/6
Princes of elemental good: Well, looks like they're filling up this symmetry at last. 6 months after updating the princes of elemental evil to 3e, they're giving us stats for their long-hinted good counterparts. Well, it's not a perfect symmetry, as there's only the 4 of them. They didn't have to be for the same one, but maybe at least one para or quasielemental extra would be nice. Oh well. Let's see how these compare statistically, and what personality quirks they have.
Ben-Hadar looks like a handsome humanoid male made of water with lobster claws, which means he probably has to deal with disturbing yet comedic advances from Blibdoolpoolp viewing him as the ideal mate. Oddly enough, he does get on with Rennbuu, the slaad lord of colours from issue 221, since he can create all sorts of prismatic prettiness. So this instantly shows that they've seriously done their research, if they're drawing on characters that obscure and thinking about their relationships to one-another. This looks like it might actually be more interesting than just a symmetry filler.
Chan, like Yan-C-Bin, is naturally invisible, as is her home, built out of purest crystal. This naturally pushes people towards meditative thought and careful examination of their environment. She's the only one who's higher CR than her evil counterpart, and has far more allies than enemies, which means she might be able to win with some heroes to make a decisive move. Well, the plane of air always was the most liveable for people, even if you have to become skilled at controlled falling. Let's make this a better universe for you and me.
Sunnis is the most powerful of them, making both the earth archomentals the bosses if they were ever to come to a full-scale straightforward battle royale. She lives in a gigantic endlessly pouring hourglass, and apparently used that time/sleep association to make the tarrasque sleep more than 90% of the time and not devastate the world. (and you don't want to find out what kind of prince is needed to kiss it to break this curse. :p ) That definitely adds to D&D's mythology, and her long list of allies and enemies gives you plenty of excuses to use her in your games.
Zaaman Rul is the weakest of these at only CR 20. Given the number of evil creatures in the plane of fire, he's pretty beleaguered in trying to promote nondestructive government there. Well, at least melting the weapons of anyone who attacks you is a good start in promoting pacifism. For all that fire may not be inherently evil, it still has the biggest alignment skew in it's inhabitants. This will definitely take more work for the PC's to figure out. Well, it's good to have a range of challenges to give the PC's requiring different skills. So this article not only gives you some more good creatures to balance you the monsters, but actually gives you plenty to do with them, which is sometimes a problem with say, celestials and the upper planes. That's handy even if you aren't a D&D lore obsessive like the writers.
The ecology of the keeper: Yay! It's the creepy guys who originated in Planescape, and seem even more appropriate now, post Men in Black and The Matrix. Gotta love that iconic trenchcoats and shades imagery. (Also gotta love the goggles doing nothing, nach) They appear, they ferret out secrets, and kill you for knowing too much. But what's the secret behind them? Where do they come from, what are they, and why do they do what they do? The answer given here isn't too unexpected. A wizard did it, and then they got out of hand and killed him because he was dumb enough to order them to eliminate everyone who knew the secret of their creation. Where have we seen that before? :) Another fairly standard ecology, although it has to stretch a bit to allow hive mind creatures enough individuality to advance in class levels separately. A bit of a wasted opportunity really, when you consider the cool things that could have been done with them. Ho hum.
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: Another change of pace here. Having done quite a bit of exploring, and probably gained quite a few levels, your characters are a good deal more badass than when they set out. However, there is an important bit of your equipment that is if anything, in worse shape than when you started. Your ship. Unless you scale it to match the players and the new challenges they're going to face, it's going to become increasingly vulnerable to being smashed up every time you have an oceanic encounter. So here's a chance to spend that money, use those craft skills and item creation feats, and turn your ship into an adamantine plated fireball firing jet powered boat with a forcefield. Man, the isle of dread sure has a lot of skilled crafts people and ex-pats for a little place in the middle of nowhere. More like Casablanca than an unexplored wilderness. You definitely wouldn't have seen stuff like this in the original module (although it'd fit right in in early 90's, skyship riding, high magic mystara.) This does stretch my suspension of belief a bit, as it is putting 3rd ed progression conventions above coherent economic setup. And I get the impression that as the central plateau is probably their next destination, upgrading the ship might be a waste of money. Still, it is full of more ideas (and pricing rules) that I can steal for my own games, so it's not a loss by any stretch of the imagination. Just the usual problems that come from trying to please multiple masters, and having to compromise to do so. Guess I'll have to see what the second half of this adventure path has to offer, and if it'll bog down just as the game does at high levels.
Volo's guide: Our planar theme continues here, with another bestiary focussed around the Realms new planar structure. Sure, you can still use most of the old monsters with the new cosmology, but then you might as well not have changed anything. (which would make crossovers easier, admittedly) Will Ed's disciples manage to match him in giving these a neat flavour?
Harmonious Choirs of the Worlds are made up of the Words of Creation. Y'know, they've got a lot more common and easier to use than they were in Orcus's day of godslaying. They're insubstantial, but love to talk. Their description is pretty wordy too, with lots of powers that require detailed explanations. Ahh, the joys of recursive emulation.
Silver Celestials are a pretty mid-level promoter of good. Closely associated with Selune, they're independent and have short tempers, quite possibly running on a monthly cycle :p With reasonable spellcasting capabilities, they seem like a good one to summon if you need a bit of celestial aid.
Death Devils serve Jerul, and have vulture heads, 4 arms, a scythe, and a whip. All familiar demonic elements, given a good REMIX! :turntable scratching: Yawn.
Umbral Glooms are indistinct tentacular monstrosities that like in the plane of shadow. Another uninspired bit of filler it seems. Next!
Dragonmarks: Eberron's planes may be less accessible than those connecting to many worlds, but that doesn't mean they don't play an important part in the setting. If you can't go to the planes, the planes will come to you, courtesy of manifest zones. So here's three more of these interesting little locations to insert into your campaign. Fantaran hot springs. Ivory mountain. The ruins of Pelmarine. They do have specific positions on the map, but you could probably transplant them elsewhere without too much trouble, or nick the mechanical changes for other purposes. Very much of a muchness with their current development policy and writing formula. Meh.
Dragon Issue 353: March 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Look out, Geraldine! That bookss about to fall on you. Poor preciousss. Nassty heavy booksess. Andy hatses them, collins collins.)
If your astral form enters the prime material, does it make a new body as normal (yess)
Can you choose the location you plane shift too (Vaguely. Lotss of walking at the other end, though.)
Does invisibility purge reveal ethereal creatures (yess)
Can an incorporeal creature enter planes unconnected to the ethereal (yess)
Is movement on the ethereal plane reduced (Dependss what power you're using, yess?)
Does blind-fight help while you're ethereal (A little bit)
Is negative energy inherently evil (no. Itss how you usse it, yess.)
Does exalted turning work on domain granted extra turning effects (no)
What counts as a demon (Mosst creatures native to the abysssss, yess. Nassty nassty place.)
How often can a planeshifter swap planar areas (As often as they like, yess.)
Can a spirit shaman chastise himself if he's the right type. (Yess. )
Can astral constructs attack incorporeal creatures (no)
Can Nightmares communicate. (Yess, but they can't speak. )
Can a half fiend become a lich (No. There are type compatibility conflictsess)
Does a dwarf still get attack bonuses against a half-celestial giant (No, ass they've changed their type, yess)
Do celestial vermin get extra skill points (Yess. Andy thinkss sso)
Do outsiders age (Not ussually. Native outssiders and half-breedss, on the other hand, do. )
Class acts: Spellthieves get this month's adventurer focus, with 5 new substitute levels. There are all sorts of ways they can mess around with the magic of others, and here's a few more. In addition they can choose to considerably increase or decrease their own spell casting power in return for other changes. This definitely widens their range quite a lot. A much needed boost for one of the weaker classes.
Arcane gets Spells without SR. A guide to taking out golems, rakshasas, and other irritants that are immune to most things. Basically another tiresome list that reminds us that the new Orb spells are incredibly annoying.
Divine gets No turning. A whole bunch of alternate class features for those who feel smiting undead isn't appropriate to them or their god. Most of them are probably reductions in power, overall, but it's the thought that counts. Like the druid shapeshifting substitutes, any excuse to surreptitiously nerf CoDzilla, I suppose. ;)
Warriors get this months rehash guide, focussed on Fighters. As ever, yawn.
Nodwick falls victim to the best adventurer scam evar. Dork tower spells out the lake geneva conventions for us. Zogonia face a not very glamorous monster. Order of the stick get the wrong monsters. Not that they're very different from the right ones.
There's some formulaic stuff and sequels here, but it's still a substantial improvement on the last planar themed issue, and manages to cover areas they've barely even hinted at before while connecting them up nicely to the existing ones. By doing so, they remind us that the planes are infinite, so there's always something new to explore, which you definitely couldn't say about last time. Once again, I hope they can keep this performance up for the rest of the year.
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 1/6
79 (100) pages. An amusingly flippant april issue cover that seems particularly appropriate in hindsight, as this is when the news of the magazine's cancellation hit the forums. And are we worried? Life will go on, and the survivors will adapt. That's how it'll be until the sun burns our entire planet to a crisp, and even then, who knows what might hang on in odd corners of the world. Let's see what this issue contains, apart from the obvious modrons.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Erik's editorial once again indicates he'll be mostly playing it straight throughout this issue, with any humour being of the dry sort that's easily excised from the articles to keep them usable. The fun ought to be something you generate in game, because if you bake the goofy into the setting, you wind up with Dragonlance or Spelljammer, and those didn't end too well. Modrons, on the other hand, might be weird, but the humour in them stems mainly from the fact that they themselves completely lack a sense of humour, and so don't give a shit that their eminently logical designs look silly to illogical humanoids. So simply including them in the game is humour enough for him. Let's see if this is the right balance to keep people from complaining the way they do every year. (Or if they'll be too busy being upset about the magazine's cancellation anyway to talk about this individual issue. :( )
Scale Mail continues to suck, with the letters just another round of the competing opinions bogaloo. One long letter pissed off at issue 352, and two short ones supporting it. Some people don't want joined-up thinking in their magazine, because it wastes a whole issue if the topic isn't to their taste. This is no fun at all. Did you not get a single silly letter to print this issue? Bring back decent letters and decent fiction, then the magazine would be even better. :sigh:
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 2/6
First watch: Another old module gets converted to 3.5. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Looks like this one got more substantially redesigned than Strahd's pad did. Still, I'm betting that it'll be considerably harder to finish Lolth off for good than in the original.
Our fantastic locations go back to the city, in City of Peril. More maps and encounter ideas for the DM of little time or imagination. Make the city safe for all of us!
Also on the rehash trail is our very own magazine, releasing a compilation of Ecology articles. Well, they are persistently popular, and that shows no signs of fading over the decades, despite several periods where they fell out of fashion with the magazine staff. With extra nostalgia fuel in the form of anecdotes from old writers about the game and the like.
Paizo also go back to a rather annoying idea. A critical hit deck, where you pick a card and enjoy the various gruesome effects that they inflict on your character. Let. It. Die. We do not need to know exactly how they've been chopped up as well.
Plenty more big pretty minis this month. SOTA get in on the rather crowded Cthulhu market, with some very squamous and spiny representations. Dwarven Forge continue to provide us with solid environments for your characters to adventure in. And Wizkids give us a Fin Fang Foom model, complete with scary Heroclix stats. My, that's a big neck he has.
Our D20 products are by the same companies as usual. Once again, they promote Wolfgang Baur's open design project. This time, we're heading off to the plane of shadow. Does that tempt you to participate? Also taking advantage of the opportunities online communication provide is EN Publishing, with their 12 part Burning Sky adventure series. Looks like several people are following Dungeon's adventure model now.
Zorcerer of Zo is our other RPG. Using the same system as Ninja Burger, but taking things into fairy tale land, and setting up the rules to emulate that kind of story, this'll allow for quite different games to D&D. Just the thing to give your gaming a little more variety.
In films, we have The Dead Matter. Mmm, undeadalicious. Another film from a self-confessed geek. Looks promising. Course, a little googling shows that this then spent ages in development hell. Money is such a pain in the ass.
Shadowrun gets another computer game. While they have produced decent licences in the past, a little more googling shows that this is a case of fail, with a distinct lack of actual roleplaying. Keep a close eye on your conversions, for things can go very wrong.
On the weird side, there's some edible dice. Chocolate, lollipops, cheese, they're made of all sorts of stuff. Looks like there's more than one website selling them, too. I guess like dice in soaps, it's fun for the people to make, and the money is secondary.
And finally, they promote the Indie RPG awards. The advancement of computers has made it easier for ordinary people to do a whole bunch of things to professional standard, and that includes creating RPG books. So people definitely deserve kudos for the ridiculous amounts of hard work involved in creating them.
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 3/6
Core beliefs: Heronious. Ah yes, the Archpaladin. Well, you've got to have a god for every alignment. And it does have to be said that he's rather easier to write about interestingly than Pelor. Goodness means more when you've got a slightly embarrassing family, and had to actively choose it rather than just being spawned as an embodiment of it. And he has quite a few interesting traits beyond that, including of course, the battleaxe/longsword favored weapon controversy. They cast old cowboy Murlynd as his particular demigod protegee. (they do seem to be making a habit of that trick) They bring back the Invulnerable coat of Arnd too. The new spells aren't very interesting, but then, you wouldn't expect that in a clergy not encouraged towards academic thought. On the other hand, the NPC's are both good and varied, making a real effort to avoid the cookie cutter paladin mold. And the legends and duties stuff help reinforce the active nature of the faith. Overall, it's pretty decent, but doesn't have the same impact on me as the last couple of these. On with the show. Let's get these last couple of numbers played out.
Return of the Modrons: Poor modrons. They're a perfect example of how perfect symmetry is actually not the best way to adapt and deal with the challenges the universe throws at you. When faced with internal dissent at the top, thanks to Orcus, and giant ants that can not only breed rapidly, but aren't limited to a set number of creatures in their hierarchy, they rapidly got outcompeted, and penned in until they only controlled a small section of Mechanus, at which point the Inevitables started taking their old jobs elsewhere in the plane. The guardianals would never have got into this kind of mess if Talisid was corrupted. So the setting material in this fits in far better with the established facts from other books than the Ecology of the Inevitable in issue 341, which is pleasing to see. It's also far more in depth than an Ecology, with plenty of room for both the description and history, and full stats for all 5 lesser modron ranks, (although I must admit I still miss the lack of hierarchs) plus PC ones for rogue modrons. And the mechanical conversions retain the quirkiness they were famed for and even build upon it. They're continuing this year's far greater awareness of and affection for settings and adventures past, and it's just ironic that they're doing this just as another edition shift approaches that will throw away all of this and relegate modrons to an even tinier place in the new multiverse. Paizo and WotC may have started off as the same company, but after 4 years of independence, their office cultures and tastes have diverged a fair bit. Articles like this really make that crystal clear.
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 4/6
Ancient PC's: Another article that has a bit of very dry humour indeed involved. D&D has had ageing rules for a long time, and yet very few campaigns run long enough to make use of them. (and even if they run for years of real time, it can often be less in game. ) This is a shame, because the longer a character has been around, the more room you have to give them an interesting backstory. Of course, you also have to worry about balancing power levels, but given the speed characters advance in 3e, that's less of a problem than you might think, and there's plenty of reasons you can give why they might have been more powerful in the past, and then lost a big chunk of it. Most of this article is devoted to playing characters that have outlived a natural human lifespan, whether through twist of fate, magical transformation, or merely belonging to a longer-lived race than humans, and there are a bunch of feats and backgrounds that reflect this mechanically in various interesting, and slightly more powerful than normal ways. (several cribbed from Dr Who) So while this still struggles to maintain game balance in the face of accurately representing their abilities, it does do a fair amount to make them interesting and accessible from a story point of view. And it's definitely something you're more likely to return to than a joke article who's mechanical bits aren't usable at all.
The ecology of the Kopru: Now this is a monster that richly deserves some more attention, as well as being linked strongly to their current adventure path. The Kopru are decidedly strange creatures that dwelled in the central caverns below the isle of dread in the original module. Merely a brief encounter at the end of the original, the hints of a fallen civilization finally get expanded out into an extensive bit of writing on their culture, religion, class and gender divides, and the decidedly unpleasant things they got up too. They'd fit right in during an ancient era when aboleths, illithids, beholders and other aberrations had massive empires and competed for dominance of the world. We finally get some decent illustrations, allowing me to get a better idea of just how different they really look from humans, and the usual advanced NPC to give us an idea of how we could customize them for our own adventures. About the only sour note is their turning the black pearl from a singular treasure to a regular class of item that's an integral part of both their food chain and magical rituals. Really, that's as dumb as some of the extrapolations of throwaway lines from the movies in the star wars expanded universe. Such is the danger of decompressing a short story to an epic series without adding enough new material. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and may transplant the setting stuff backwards as well. They are supporting their adventure path well this time around.
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: Ha. Given the last article, it's no surprise at all to discover the PC's are now up in the central plateau of the isle of dread, trying to figure out what darkness lurks there. Listen to the natives, because they've been fighting this crap for generations, and have developed a prestige class to counter these incursions. The Totemic Demonslayer. Essentially a prestige ranger focussed on fighting fiendish creatures, they get full BAB, 6+int skills, assassin/blackguard equivalent spellcasting, and a whole suite of powers, many of which they can select themselves. They do seem pretty badass. Like much of the pathfinder stuff, you could definitely level accusations of power creep at them. Still, given what I've heard of the difficulty level of the adventure, you may well need that extra power to avoid regular TPK's. Interestingly though, this is the first time they don't mention advice on incorporating new characters. They do manage to squeeze in a few more rumours however, which should spice up your game in an old skool stylee. I'd be wary about introducing the prestige class into other adventures, but this is still another solid bit of backup. Where will they go next, because they seem to be coming to the end of the isle of dread material. I'll take a wild stab and say it has something to do with the Abyss, since that's where all the trouble is coming from.
Volo's guide: Back to Myth Drannor again? Iiiinteresting. Looks like after being one of the primary adventuring locales for a while, filled with enough high level monsters to keep you busy for a campaign, it's finally been tapped out by a concerted elven attempt to retake the place. Well, sort of. They've learned from past metaplot mess-ups, and the new status quo looks pretty unstable and adventure hook friendly as well. The elven armies are hard-stretched, and there's at least 3 factions of evildoers (which don't get on with each other very well either) trying to make their lives difficult. They can't afford to be poncy stuck-up isolationists if they want to tun this place into a great city again. This does indeed look like a fun, nicely explained setup that makes you want to buy the books that lead up to this situation. The Realms is still a vibrant advancing world, even after all this time.
Dragonmarks: Halfling thief guilds. Not a laughing matter, as anyone who's been around since the days of Fineous Fingers should know. And poor Sharn is one of the cities they've got their pudgy little fingers on all the pies in, extorting, robbing, and peddling contraband, and ensuring others that try without their nod get kneecapped with great prejudice. If you plan to practice within there, you may want to sign up. So here's the rules for the affiliation, which help make it absolutely clear what behaviours they approve and disapprove of, and the mechanical and social benefits of sticking to them. That should lure in those who need a solid carrot to encourage their roleplaying. If alignment had been handled like affiliations, with a clear list of what is good, evil, lawful and chaotic, and how much specific example acts move you up and down the scale, there wouldn't be half the flamewars about it there have been. Or maybe there would, if you look at the example of WoD morality, but I can dream, can't I. Anyway, this is another pretty well handled article in this series.
Dragon Issue 354: April 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Do multiclassed martial adepts have to track maneuvers for each class separately (Yess, Jusst like spellses, preciouss)
How does a character with more than one martial adept class calculate initiator level (Add half of all their other levelses to each class. Not too hard, iss it.)
Can you save a maneuver slot for later (no. Jusst like any other classs feature.)
If you replace a maneuver that's a prerequisite for another one, what happens (You lose acesss to the other ones. Not very clever. )
Does the swordsage's AC bonus stack with the monk's (No. Itss the ssame type of effect.)
Does the swordsage's discipline focus count as a weapon focus (yes)
Can you apply insightful strike and defensive stance to powers from other classes (yess)
Can a martial adept combine a strike with a full attack (No. We iss tired of boring iterative attackses. We wantss to make you move around and do interesting sstuff in your fightses.)
Can you learn the same maneuver more than once (no)
Can you learn stances in your maneuver slots (no)
Can you ready the same maneuver twice simultaneously (no)
Can you use more than one maneuver in a turn (If you have enough actionses)
Can you use maneuvers out of combat. How often? (Yess. Ass often ass you can recharge them, yess.)
What qualifies as a special attack (Anything that does ssomething different from a normal attack )
Is a maneuvers damage multiplied on a crit (if it addss extra dice to an exissting attack, no. If it adds points or makes an attack in itself, yess.)
Do you have to activate a boost before resolving the attack (Yess)
Do you need to use a disciplines favored weapon to use it's maneuvers (Not ussually)
What happens when creatures with different body shapes use maneuvers (usse you common ssesnse)
Can you use time stands still to activate more maneuvers in turn (no)
If a maneuver has no prerequisites, can you learn it at 1st level (only if itss a first level maneuver)
Class acts: Adventurers get Elements of Surprise. More Ninja love, with three new substitution levels. Fire, earth and water, all can be turned to the arts of stealth and misdirection. Not every ninja will use ghost step. A nicely themed set of new options.
Arcane gets Power Word, Spell. A list of all the spells without somatic components, for the wizard who wants to get out of being tied down. Meh.
Divine gets Aztec Mythos II. Chalchihuitlicue and Tlaloc get writeups, along with a sidebar about playing in worlds where the gods have a complex and sometimes contradictory morality. Some things, D&D doesn't do too well, and this may be one. Oh well, as 7 years of D20 have shown, you can kitbash it to do all sorts of things.
Warriors are still on the rehash kick, with barbarians getting the focus this time. These are definitely starting to go downhill. Methinks the format may need shaking up again.
Nodwick wonders what's up with all the ancient relics being sealed away. Perhaps there is a good reason they were. Dork tower tells a joke that's not so funny when you're the butt of it. Order of the stick suffers another instance of temporarily ignored rules.
Well, this issue continues the strong showing of the past few months, but it does still remind me both of the things that they've lost and never got back, and the things they still have to lose in the near future. As such, it's a decidedly bittersweet experience, and not really funny at all. Usability is not everything. Let the countdown continue. 5.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 1/6
81 (100) pages. A good old Drow cover. Haven't had one of those in a few years. Still greywashing them for ease of artistically representing the facial features, but at least it's a colour that's good for blending in with cave walls, unlike the heavily made-up ones of issue 298. After several really cool themed issues, it's time for another random grab-bag. Well, we have been having a few letters where people complain they can't get any use out of an issue. Hopefully this'll calm them down for a bit.
Scan Quality: Poor, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: The editorial this month is another bit of self promotion, for their compilation of monster ecologies. Gotta sell sell sell before the WotC licence goes for good, and you have to rely entirely on your own stuff and whatever's in the OGL. So they get three members of staff to talk about their personal tastes in monsters and why they like them. Not too surprisingly, they go for powerful and interesting monsters that you can write a lot about, even if you don't get to include that many of them in your campaigns. Fewer, scarier monsters which take study before you fight them to have a decent chance, and are climactic every time you have to deal with them make for a more mythological feeling campaign than 13.3333333 encounters per level that are only a mild to moderate challenge each. The whole point of the ecology series was to make you think more about what monsters can do, can't do and what they DO do when you're not killing them. And even after they cut down on the lifecycle stuff with the 3e revamp, it was still about giving them greater depth. So here's to depth. It's what keeps things from getting too repetitive throughout eternity.
Scale Mail: We start off with the completely unsurprising request for the rest of the modrons. Fortunately, there are already fairly serviceable 3.0 versions out there to direct them too.
Also missing from previous editions is the Alu-fiend. This is dealt with via a quick and dirty tweak to the half-fiend template, replacing the more violent spell-like abilities with mindfucking. And now you could combine them with anything. A seductive green slime? Not impossible. Muahaha.
And finally, we have praise for the article on Wee Jas. It's all about opening people's minds to overlooked possibilities. That's what they're here for. :) Whenever you're short of new ideas, go back and do an old one better.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 2/6
First watch: More very familiar topics from the home team this month. Complete Champion retreads the ground already covered in complete divine. They take advantage of the new association rules, plus there's the usual array of spells, feats and prestige classes. Do you feel the desire for ever more stuff? I really can't say I do. Course, stopping here means it's warriors who get the shaft again in terms of overall spotlight.
Another familiar name rereleased for the new edition is Drow of the Underdark. 16 years ago, this was one of Ed Greenwood's cool bits of worldbuilding. Now it's generic, and drawing on ever more history, in and out of character. Looks like their popularity shows no signs of fading.
Another thing who's popularity seems near unkillable, despite having it's share of crappy spin-off products is Star Wars. Star Wars Saga is the latest edition of the long-running RPG. Faster and more streamlined than the last one, this was taken by many people on forums as a testing ground for the mechanics for 4e. That turned out to be not particularly true, but it's still a pretty decent game.
Another D20 product feeding heavily on nostalgia is the Castles & Crusades basic set. And it does look a little more inviting than WotC's similar recent product. Plus, you know, boxed set. Always a challenge to produce for a small company, and deserving of a little kudos.
Also coming in boxes, of course, are this month's boardgames. Stonehenge is a whole bunch of games using the same pieces and rough themes, which seems interesting. And Exalted gets it's own boardgame, War for the Throne. They may not be advancing the metaplot, but this'll let you get a quick conclusion to this business if you want one.
There's also a cardgame. Torches & Pitchforks from Green Ronin. Play a mutinous pirate crew maneuvering to overthrow the captain and get in charge. Sounds like it could be a lot of backstabbing fun.
Our minis this month are from Gale Force nine, providing extra bits of terrain for your enjoyment; Reaper, who are still going strong, with minis both blank and pre-painted, and Privateer Press, who are actually releasing rather a lot, including actual pirates. Since several recent adventures have a nautical theme, these could well come in handy.
The computer games they select this time are Mass Effect and Odin Sphere. A dark future RPG in which the galaxy is threatened, and a cutesy RPG where you have to avert armaggedon for fairyland. So both similarities and contrasts here. Quite a decent choice to make.
Paizo release another comic compilation. This time, it's the Dark Elf, Downer, and his grim yet ridiculous adventures from Dungeon Magazine that you can get to read uninterrupted. Drizzt has yet more competition to deal with.
And finally, there's another True Dungeon event, this time with official WotC sponsorship. Race beneath Greyhawk will give you another chance to dress up and delve dungeons full of dodgy props. Should be a pretty cool show.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 3/6
iDragon: Back in issue 275, while they were still low on crunchy 3e articles due to the changeover, they did a piece on music and D&D. The process of the internet undercutting the music industry had already started back then, but the intervening 7 years have really seen it go mainstream. Now anyone who's remotely computer literate can find nearly any song for free with a little searching, including many that are long out of print or never even officially released. Which means this time, they can be far more eclectic with their recommendations, knowing they're only a google away. (although they do take pains to point out there there are online stores that let you download music legally, even if that will involve annoying DRM a lot of the time. ) So instead of one master list of recommended songs, they give us four playlists for different occasions, including one designed specifically for their Savage Tide adventure path, with more emphasis on individual tracks than albums.The layout isn't as pretty as last time, and the fact that everything comes so much easier makes this feel like it has less depth and effort put into it. Oh well, that's what the internet does. Everything moves so much faster. Just got to adapt to it. We can still get comprehensive depth in other ways, if we're willing to stick at it.
Seven saintly domains: Back in issue 323, they did a piece on vice themed domains. Guess it's time to fill in another symmetry before they say goodbye, just as with the princes of elemental good. Of course, what exactly those virtues are is more argued about than the vices, so they're not exactly the same as the NWoD virtues this time. They pick Charity, Chastity, Generosity, Humility, Patience, Temperance and Zeal. Unlike the vices, which were deliberately made accessible to PC's by highlighting good god's personal failings, there's very few evil deities which can grant you access to even one of these. I suppose it's the same asymmetry that makes paladins common, and the other alignment exemplars relegated to magazine articles. Also unlike the vices, there's no new exclusive spells, which makes this article less interesting than it's precursor. So like the celestials compared with the fiends, this probably won't get as much use, simply because it doesn't have as much cool stuff in it. Oh well. That's how sequels go all too often.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 4/6
Creature catalog VI: And so we come to the final big collection of monsters new and old. Many have come, and a surprising amount are still gone from 3e. The magazine has done their fair share to keep old settings alive in our hearts and update old statistics. It's not over till the last page turns. Can they pull something awesome out of the reserves and back into play? We may be reaching the last few minutes of play, but they might still make a difference to my overall assessment. There's certainly a few familiar faces on the contents page. Let's see if they're handled properly.
Black Beasts of Bedlam are basically chaos beasts with a better name and different colour palette, plus extra malevolence and brains. Spreading insanity and chaos throughout the multiverse, one stupid adventuring party at a time. What a job to have.
Cave Fishers are one of the many weird old monsters that have fallen to the new edition's increased focus on humanoids and eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. They got an ecology in issue 135, which makes their dropping seem particularly egregious. Some writers have no respect for history. What other awesome monsters never got updated. Haven't seen Slithering Trackers around in a while.
Giant Dragonflys are a fairly natural creature that also got displaced by the trend for faster, grimmer, LOUDER! They're exceedingly manoeuvrable flyers, and can be made into mounts, so in situations requiring precision flying like giant caverns filled with poisonous spikes or lava, they might well be a better choice than most of the trainable horse size dragon types they've done over the years. Good to see them again.
Dungeon Phantoms are an amusing trope lampshader. They explain how dungeons can be delved repeatedly, and still have lots of unsprung traps, as they reset them, while rarely fighting adventurers directly. Tee hee. Good luck catching them without a good bit of divination to reveal their weakness.
Rot Giants are one I'm not particularly bothered about being brought back. They look like undead, but they're not! You really don't want to hit them close up, for infection sucks.
Cannon Golems are pretty awesome looking, and not only have missile attacks, but also selfdestruct if things are going poorly. It's good to have minions without a sense of self-preservation.
Maedar are another fallen ecology subject. So who have the medusa been mating with for the past 7 years? Given the number that have templates in supplements, some of them have obviously been settling for whatever they can get. The impossible statistics of their 2nd ed entry are sorted out, although they're still ridiculously rare. They also include the glyptar in their description, making it a two for the price of one. Nice.
Obliviax are another awesome one that really should have appeared in an official MM. The number of wonky exploits you used to be able to pull have been toned down a bit, but they're still highly amusing little things. Being a dwarven spellcaster looks increasingly appealing in this context.
Scarecrows are still another obvious one if you're at all interested in horror. But we've been through the struggles to integrate horror into D&D in great detail over the years, and it's only got trickier with the edition advances. Amusingly, they give it a mechanical benefit for being able to rotate it's head 360 degrees. Pretty cute, really. They can fill a whole bunch of roles in your adventure.
Seedroaches, like cannon golems, take an existing thing and add cannons to them. It's a winning formula, like adding marmite or ninjas. (mmm, ninjas covered in marmite. :drools: ) They ought to make it into a template. The illustration is quite amusing too.
Giant slugs are still another neglected old eco-friendly monster. Ok, so their acidic slime probably leaves trails of dead plants wherever they go, but it'll grow back. Its all part of the cycle of life in a world where apex predators are more common than plants.
Springheels are obviously a riff on jack the ripper. As befits their name, they like urban environments, and leaping out, using spring attack, then running away giggling annoyingly. What video game boss am I thinking of as well when I say that? If I can't place it, can't be too overdone. So it proves another useful little updating where most of the tweaks are for the better in my opinion.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 5/6
The ecology of the devourer: Another undead monstrosity gets it's turn in the spotlight this issue. A soulless abomination that wants to consume yours to fuel it's existence. Perfectly standard trope really. How can we make it distinctive? Tie it into D&D's planar cosmology, and have it eternally seeking it's original soul to gain some peace. That adds aaaaaaangst and pretty backdrops to the recipe. Then we give them cool visuals where the soul they're currently digesting is trapped in their chest and visible. As with wights, this makes quite a bit of an effort to differentiate these creatures from other undead in terms of behaviour patterns and personal advancement preferences, as well as talking about the creatures they're likely to associate with. Seems fairly decent, and well tied into the D&D setting and history as well. Another one I have no objection too.
Savage tidings: A bit of a side-track in this month, as we leave the central depths of the isle of dread, and head for Scuttlecove, the city of pirates. Another chance for your players to go shopping, and load up on all the gear they need to be level appropriate for the next adventure. No walk in the park though, because most of this stuff was pirated in the first place, and this town is a hive of depravity and lawlessness, where you'll get backstabbed and robbed if you don't watch out. And you'll need to get an ear to the street and cultivate some contacts if you want good gear at a reasonable price. Here's some of the stuff you can find here, and the people who sell it. Poisons, magic items, even flesh golems made from yuan-ti parts can be had if you're willing to pay the price (or kill them and take their stuff. ) This is pleasantly fucked up stuff, which makes sure that even this section remains an adventure, while having plenty of crunch you could extract and use elsewhere. This is much more interesting than simply making the pirate base another site based dungeon to attack and clear out. I quite approve.
Volo's guide: Another extraplanar entry here this month, albeit a rather short one. The abyss is one plane that connects here pretty much unchanged, with the same demon lords that plague the rest of the multiverse engaging in their usual attempts to corrupt and destroy as much as they can. They tend to be found out and destroyed eventually due to their own innate chaoticness, but as long as they survive in at home, they just take out their temper on underlings and start over again. Baphomet, Dagon and Graz'zt are given as specific examples, making people (and gods) lives a misery, often over surprisingly long timescales. Plenty of examples for maniacal laughter invoking xanatos gambits here. A nice example of just how elaborate you can make your plans in your own campaign. Not bad at all.
Dragonmarks: I totally called it! I knew shifters would be one of the things they'd want to cover in this series. But I didn't particularly expect the specifics. The way of the shackled beast is a fighting style and set of philosophical teachings aimed at them, saying that you have to chain your beast and gain control of it to become truly free. (and the video game I'm having flashbacks too this month iiiiiis - Cornell's quest in Castlevania 64! ) Mechanically, this is represented by a bunch of feats any class can gain, although fighters can get them as bonus feats; a monk fighting style, a new magical item, and shiftsilver weapons, which are so blatantly an rip-off of Exalted's moonsilver weapons it hurts. So yeah, they sure do know how to pick and mix their influences. I am amused, but do not entirely approve. This does have the air of being written by someone who has to come up with several things a day like this to make paycheck. And if there's one thing that we've learned over these past few years, it's that even doing what you love gets exhausting and sanity destroying when you do it to a production line schedule. So yeah, this is the kind of article that wouldn't get published if they didn't have a regular 4 pages a month slot devoted specifically to Eberron that they had to fill. Add up all the ups and downs, and it comes out pretty average.
Dragon Issue 355: May 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Can you make an off hand attack with armor spikes while wielding a two-handed weaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghlarkhackhackslump.
If you're carrying a shield and make an armor spike attack, can you still use the shield (yes)
When do you lose your shield bonus (Climbing and flanking and flat-footedness and touch attacks. Lots of nassty ways.)
Does shield proficiency also automatically make you proficient with shield bashes (yess)
Can you take weapon focus in shields (One type per feat, yess)
Can you make AoO's with a shield (yess)
Are there any mundane ways of damaging your enemies armour (Not really)
Does tiny armor also reduce the enhancement bonus it offers (No, jusst the magical bonus, yess?)
Does fortification protect you from touch attacks (Yess)
Does heavy fortification negate vorpal weapons (no)
Does ghost touch armor protect you against wraithstrike (no)
Can you add more properties to armor that already has an effective bonus of +10 (As long as you don't push the overall price above 200,000)
Does a barbarians DR stack with adamantine armor (no)
Can you stack a buckler with a dastana (no)
Does divine shield protect against touch attacks (no)
Does heavy armor optimisation apply to mithral armor (no)
When a warforged enhances their natural armour, does it count as already having a bonus (no)
Can armour properties be added to robes (no)
Do tieflings and aasimar automatically get armour proficiency (no. Andy just beat sskip's record for conssecutive denialss, teeheeheehee.)
Are a suit of armor's spikes counted as a single weapon (yes)
What's the cost and craft DC for special materials (Around half the sselling price, ass ussual, yess.)
Class acts: Adventurers get Strangulation. Third only to poison and flaming oil as a deadly and unfair method of fighting, if you try it in D&D, you'll frequently find it useless, and have to switch to another weapon. But here's a little stuff to make it a bit less useless. Hopefully it'll get some love in some campaigns.
Arcane gets Arcane Laboratories. Wizards in particular are at their best when they're fully equipped and in a position to spend ages building up cool stuff. Here's some advice on what these places might look like and contain. It's been a while since we had something like this, so I don't object to it.
Divine gets Druid Guide. The rehash moves ever onward. I'll be glad when it's over.
Psionic gets it's own section without displacing anything else this time. How very pleasing. The contents are not so cool, as this is just another list that sorts powers in a way the main books don't, but anyone with a few hours could do by themself, making a master list of what discipline each belongs too. Their writers are not very inspired of late. Also, eeech, those are some seriously grody knees. Someone either likes anorexic models a little too much, or is being ironic. That's just not right.
Warriors get Eldrich Warriors. 9 substitution feats that replace fighter bonus feats for specific magic powers. Supernatural protection, spelllike abilities, evasion, armour bonding. These are definite power-ups. They are trying to make the weaker classes stronger and slip in nerfs to the powerful ones. Definitely interesting to see the agenda behind this stuff.
Nodwick faces an enemy who doesn't play by the adventurers code. Dork tower plays by the action movie code of kill them all and make bad puns while doing so. Order of the stick is reminded that what may be a problem for you is an opportunity for someone else.
As an issue comprised entirely of sequels and regular columns, this feels like they knew what was coming, and have already started rearranging their schedule to complete a bunch of symmetries before it's too late. As such, not all the articles are great, but they're better here than left unpublished. The disconnected stuff can take care of itself. We're got to make the very most of the pages we have left. Let's see what they have left to give us for the birthday issue. 4.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 1/6
82 (100) pages So it's their 31st birthday. And here is where the magazine reports it's imminent demise. Not the kind of thing to put you in a celebratory mood. Since we found out on the forums in april, it once again goes to show. Lead-up times are still an issue in the electronic age, and indeed are one of the big things hurting newspapers and other print media as they struggle to compete. By going online they can sell the same amount of material for less and still make the same amount themselves, and react far faster. But in the process, they cut a load of people out of the distribution chain, leaving them literally redundant. It certainly doesn't feel like a happy ending. Still, it's not over yet. Let's see if they've been given enough time to go out with style.
Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Safe to say that Erik was just as surprised, and possibly even more shocked than the average reader to find out about the magazine's demise. After all, they'd gone to great lengths to maintain a positive relationship with WotC, while also trying as hard as possible to make the magazine a success. But then again, perhaps it was that success that made them so eager to take it back. After all, they handled the magazine in house for over 20 years without any problems. Plus the way they'd started bringing back settings they licensed out several years in advance, and dramatically cut down on the amount of new OGL material they released should have been pretty strong hints that things were changing in there, and not all in ways that were friendly to them. So now they have to figure out how to keep the company alive, when their previous attempts at independent material like Amazing Stories and Undefeated tanked. Since one thing they've consistently got more praise than WotC in since splitting is their adventures and setting material, that just might be something to focus on. You never know. So oddly enough, while this looks like bad news, it already shows them preparing for their survival, which we know in hindsight worked pretty well. That is very interesting to note. They aren't stupid. The magazine may end, but life is definitely going to go on. After a pessimistic start, I can already be a little more hopeful after reading this.
Scale Mail: The letters still aren't quite caught up with the news. Our first one is though, and wants to thank them for all the memories, while hoping there'll be plenty more in the electronic age. Since the forum response to the issues hasn't got any less dramatic throughout 4e and Next, I think we'll be able to look back on them with interest as well in the distant future.
Our next letter is a complaint that they've sent in a question to Sage Advice repeatedly and never got an answer. The Sage always got more questions than he could answer, and that's only got worse since they cut his page count. Try not to get too upset about it.
And finally, we have another request for a full 3.5 conversion of the Modron Hierarchs. They probably won't have time now, but they aren't ruling anything out. Still the possibility for a last minute saving throw, as always. We live in hope despite life repeatedly demonstrating no-one gets out alive, and no real story ends cleanly.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 2/6
First watch: Our expedition series takes us back to undermountain. Now this is the first one that might actually be smaller than it's original, given how it sprawled out over several boxed sets and a load more apocrypha in 2nd ed. Still, if they can have more concentrated action, and less empty rooms left for you to fill in, that might not be a bad thing.
Also on the adventure side of things is The Sinister Spire, part two of their new trilogy. See the horrible things that lurk in a drow city, even above and beyond the usual. Maybe you should get help from drizzt to solve this problem.
Eberron gets The Forge of War, which is obviously about the recent big conflict, and the warforged created to fight it. Still plenty of aftermath for you to use as plot hooks here.
On the D20 side we have lots of little modules in the old skool tradition. Paizo release D1: Crown of the Kobold king. Goodman games are up to number 46 in their Dungeon Crawl Classics series. And Expeditious Retreat join the fray with Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom for OSRIC. The nostalgia revolution is really heating up. I suspect these ones sell better than most adventures do at this time. We also have a rather bigger and more modern adventure. Dark wings over Freeport. Green Ronin are still full of support for this setting, and it's still growing and changing.
Our computer assistance is an updated set of character generation software from Hero Labs. Now with more customisability, and support for rulesets other than D20. Hopefully, they day will come when we can use this stuff to speed through the character generation process for most systems.
We've fought the blood war again recently. Now, the minis go back to The Night Below, another classic adventure set. Underdark monstrosities, plus some seeming non-sequiturs like Raistlin and a frost giant. (who really isn't going to fit into many underground places) Looks like this is going to be another one with extended previews. Bring it. Paizo are also contributing another location. We have bar fights often enough, now you can get a map for them.
Our dragonlance comic adaptions are now a third of the way through the final book in the first trilogy. They're also finishing off another drizzt book. No shortage of those to work on, as Salvadore releases a new one shortly as well. The story gets ever longer and more convoluted.
Gaming's strong association with the armed forces continues, to the degree that soldiers in Iraq are setting up Ziggurat Con. Now that is pretty cool, really. I wonder what the locals will make of this.
And finally, they promote Free RPG day, another attempt to make a hobby wide promotional tool. Since I've seen this celebrated in subsequent years, I know this is one that actually works out. Remember, the first hit is free. Then, you have to pay. And keep on paying, until there's nothing left and it has consumed your life. Or is that me and this thread. Moving swiftly onwards.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 3/6
Top 10 most wanted dragons in D&D: Oh joy. Top tens. The perfect way to look back and end a series. :sigh: Yup, looks like we will be having some content low nostalgia-fests to round out these last few issues along with the important stuff. Oh well, it just reminds me that at no point has the magazine ever been perfect, even in it's "classic" era, and it probably never will be, even with the digital issues offering the possibility of making corrections after release. They range from hatchlings to epic levels, and old to recent creations, and include horrors like Borys, Dragotha, Dungeon Magazine's mascot Flame, and scariest of all, Phil & Dixie's Growf. :p So for those that were there, this'll bring back some serious memories, and for those that weren't, it'll give you a whole new set of things to torrent buy. This is why you keep the old stuff available and remind people of it occasionally. It may not make you immediate money, but the long-term benefits are quite substantial.
Ferrous dragons: Here's another nostalgic callback, but one that actually has a practical use. The ferrous dragons were introduced in issue 170, more than half the lifetime of the magazine ago. They added a somewhat more organised, yet still mostly indifferent to humanity dragon group to the standard chromatic, metallic and gem dragons. Since moral ambiguities like that make things more interesting in a big campaign world, and even the evil ones are generally less destructive than the chromatics, it's good to see them included in 3e before it ended. It does look like there's going to be a fair degree of mechanical reimagining, including making them all lawful when before they covered the whole range of alignments, and adding an additional innate power common to them all. Let's see if this is an improvement that gives them a stronger collective niche or not.
Chromium Dragons are still way too similar to silver dragons in appearance, while being very different indeed in personality, sadistic in a predatory, feline way. They retain their ability to reshape ice, ensuring they have swankier lairs than the average dragon. Looks like these will be retaining most of their signature traits from the past.
Cobalt Dragons may be cruel and bossy, but they do at least have a real sense of responsibility towards their subjects, which also means they make better (if pushy) parents than most dragon types. With their love for traps and reshaping the landscape, they have an even closer bond with kobolds than most dragons. That makes a good deal of sense as an addition to their personalities.
Iron Dragons have their ability to turn you to stone given more flavour by turning you into an iron statue instead. As the bosses, they're confident enough in their strength to not be cruel, but will still take what they need to feed and breed. Talk to them rather than leaping straight into combat and it will almost definitely turn out for the better.
Nickel Dragons have their original editing snafu fixed and are actually the lowest HD this time around as well as in the hierarchy. They retain both their mobility and their amusing power to make you itch, which makes them quite effective at nonlethal fights if they choose to. That's something they never would have added if they were writing them now for the first time.
Tungsten Dragons remain the somewhat snobbish good guys who mostly stay at home and give any suspicious sorts who venture in the spontaneous combustion gaze. They'd make a perfect guardian for an old school hobbit settlement.
So while they miss out statting the dragon ruler, most of this conversion is pretty faithful, with the new tweaks they've made generally improvements. Pretty pleased with the care they've gone to in updating this particular set of obscure creatures.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 4/6
Core beliefs: Hextor. Since our last deity profiled was Heironious, it's only fair that his villainous half-brother is next on the list. It gives them a good chance to look over the same events, from a different perspective, see how the two different clergies relate and distort the same mythical events. Unsurprisingly, he'd like to present himself as equal, if not superior to his brother, and say that he chose evil from a position of strength. But since much of his power is granted by the mysterious "lords of evil", that claim seems a little specious. And that makes his Might makes Right doctrine seem slightly pathetic, and borne from inner insecurity. It'll be a pleasure to kick his ass. Evil is most competent when it isn't rooted in self-delusion, merely exploiting the delusions and desires of others. If he doesn't watch out, Vecna or Iuz may well take his place as the most proactive threats to good on Oerth. Still, he has managed to replace Erythnul and become lead god of a country, so he's hardly a slouch. But this does feel a little like one done out of obligation, and the most interesting parts have been my own ramblings. Just one more to go then. Let's hope it's a good one.
Fiction: Confession by Paul S Kemp. It's been a full year since the last bit of fiction in the magazine, easily the longest gap in their history. While they have included more setting material in their articles in the past couple of years, it still doesn't make up for actual stories. Well, for the first time in far too long we have one which isn't tied into their existing settings, although the terminology feels very Realmsian. (which makes sense given the number of novels the author's written there. ) The story structure is quite nonstandard though, a collection of somewhat contradictory vignettes that represent the diary entries of someone with distorting memories and a serious case of demonic possession. It's the sheer uncertainty that makes this a better cautionary tale than any obvious PSA, because once they start messing with your mind, you can't trust anything at all. So it's far better not to start, as you never know if you've truly escaped, or hell is watching, whispering and waiting to drag you back in. So as a sendoff to their fiction department, this is actually a pretty decent one, showing the experimentalism of the old days. It's a definite shame that this is another thing that won't survive the transition to the electronic issues. Fare thee well, the many authors of the past. You'll have to get your start somewhere else in the future.
The ecology of the linnorm: Hmm. Looks like dragon variants are just pulling ahead from beholder ones at last, thanks to another birthday appropriate ecology. Introduced in the magazine 15 years ago, our norse engines of destruction make the standard chromatic variants of dragons look decidedly like the lesser evil. Longer lived, poisonous, more randomly destructive, and decidedly less likely to negotiate in good faith for mutual benefit, It's the old conflict between tyranny and annihilation. Fun little business, having to hold your nose and deal with people who you've engaged in repeated life or death struggles with to save an entire world. Course, this is another ecology that tries to tackle a whole range of creatures, including some that haven't been converted to 3rd edition, so again, it splits it's focus a little too much. It does try to make up for that by converting the sea linnorm instead of giving an advanced statblock for a change, but like a few others, it's too busy reiterating the basics to really advance the creature much further. Even as 3rd edition is drawing to a close, there's still big chunks of the last two editions that have never really been converted. Such is the loss from releasing fewer books, and also not running for as long between changeovers.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: Welcome. Too. The. Abyss!!!!! I never tire of that. The first plane to get a module set in it, it's got plenty of attention in every edition since, and is one of the few that survived the transition to 4th ed without being too mutilated. With it's infinite layers, different writers have delighted in the chance to turn it to all sorts of different ends without worrying so much about stepping on the toes of existing canon. Anyway, we see the return of advice on how to replace lost characters once down there. Will you form alliances of convenience with demons, run across other adventuring groups and decide to team up for safety's sake, or rescue some poor sod from the horrors of the plane and wind up with them tagging along. Similarly, shopping may initially seem like a problem, but as long as we have those bloody mercanes showing up everywhere, this problem is easily handwaved away. And they have plenty of cool items you can't get on the prime material for love nor money. Finally, they show how to keep affiliations relevant in this stage of the game. They seem to have searched for potential problems, and systematically set out to solve them. As with the ship upgrades, the handling of this does hurt my suspension of belief a little, making the universe seem altogether too much like a theme park focussed around them and their adventures rather than existing as an independent thing in it's own right; but as it makes for much more fun adventures (as long as they stay on the path) I can quite understand why they made that decision, and respect the skill with which they pursue their goal. Guess it's just a symptom of the current trends in game design.
Volo's guide: For a full 3 years, Volo regularly reported upon the various dragons found in the north of faerun, going well past the point of diminishing returns and only stopping when the danger become too great and people grew bored of the tales. But his fanboyism remains undimmed by the passing of time (just how old is he IC now? ) and so they decide to have a one-off special showcasing dragons from other parts of the Realms as his birthday contribution. We only have the standard 4 pages for this column, so they don't get the depth or new spells that they used too, but since I found the old ones a gross overdetailing anyway, I'm not objecting.
Acuakvacaesin is a green dragon who's fallen in love with the elves of the moonshaes and now has a peaceful relationship with them. In fact, he secretly wants to be an elf himself. He'll be a laughing stock amongst other green dragons if they ever find out.
Rhyaexthadarsh is a white dragon with a quite distinctive hunting pattern. She's clever enough to keep from overdoing it, disguising many of her attacks as the work of wolves, and so keeping trade through her territory running rather than killing the golden goose and profiting less in the long run. Her combat tactics are described in considerable detail, and should make her quite an interesting assailant.
Svernvignarngix is a brass dragon who's trying to eliminate slavery from Calimshan by long-term political manipulation. Good luck with that one. He's typically talkative for his race, and has quite a few half-dragon kids. People who don't play nice in his oasis get turned into hamsters. How very 2nd edition of him. :D Quite a good collection, really.
Dragonmarks: This month we get some stuff for Eberron's goblins. While they might mostly be the marauding tribal scavengers you see in other worlds, things weren't always like that. Once they had a proud empire, full of martial discipline, and were true terrors to the lands beyond. And even now, they gather round the remnants of their old glories, such as the Gathering Stone. A neutral ground where they can gather, trade, debate, and settle disputes, this is full of fun little touches that combine to create a picture that is both distinctive, and entirely in keeping with their established racial character. Another one you could extract from their setting and put into your own without too much trouble, this was a pretty enjoyable read, and definitely adds some more depth to their portrayal.
Dragon Issue 356: June 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Can you choose not to inflict a crit. (no. Sssometimes you don't know your own sstrength and you hurt people, collins collins.)
Do you multiply a paladin's smite damage on a crit ( yes)
Does bonus damage from an ability score follow the same rule as extra damage from strength (no)
Do multiple bane powers stack if an enemy meets more than one criterea (no)
Does a flaming weapon deal damage on a trip attempt (no)
Can you do a sneak attack with a nonlethal natural weapon (Yess. Andy knows all about that, preciouss.)
Is fire damage dealt by a flaming sap nonlethal (Andy issnt sure. Dependss if you want the extra bookkeeping of tracking them separately, yess?)
Does damage type change when you deal nonlethal damage with a lethal weapon (Common ssense, yess?)
When does weapon focus (grapple) apply it's benefit (when you firsst grab them, preciouss)
When do you get the benefit from specializing in grappling when you actually inflict damage, yess. )
If you drop someone with a sneak attack, do you get the extra damage on cleave as well (only if you would anyway)
Do you need to make a concentration check when damaged for temporary hit points (Yess)
If you have lethal and nonlethal damage and fast healing, which gets healed first (You choose. Or if it's magical, both at once, yess.)
When do fast healing and regeneration take place (start of your turn sseems most convenient.)
If you have both fast healing and regeneration, which goes first. You decide, yess.)
Does damage reduction reduce falling damage (no)
Is there a cap on damage a falling object does (Andy recommends 20d6. Otherwisse twinky playerss can hurt more than any sspell just by dropping sstuff from on high, collins collins. Nassty nassty trick.)
How much damage do you take if you charge into a wall of force (not much.)
Class acts: Adventurers get the Bard guide. Same old same old. Couldn't they move up the good stuff in their buffer and drop this.
Arcane gets Occult Mutations. 8 new Traits that reflect odd ways you learned magic, some of them rather creepy. Three of them ( Bleached pupils, Midnight pupils, and lidless eyes) affect your eyes, and are particularly disconcerting to me. Ahh, the joys of visceral body horror. I very definitely approve. This brings the price element back into learning magic.
Divine Gets Aztec mythos III. Cihuacoatl and Huitzlopochtli. Again, they may be essential, but are also rather creepy, and like their blood sacrifices. Mmm. Human hearts. Just the thing to keep the world turning.
Warriors get Mercenary companies. Including the German landsknechts. Now there's a blast from the past, covered way back in the early years of the magazine and ignored since then. But they get Affiliation rules, so it's not just rehash. You can get variants for every level and point in your plot development these days.
Nodwick & crew are forced to make way for a younger, more relevant team of adventurers. Dork tower show us the disparity in player ability in the team. Order of the stick show us how true enlightenment and purity may be attained in a universe governed by D&D rules.
Once again, it feels like they're working hard to round off the magazine before it ends, with the result being they're picking articles which have the most legacy value rather than being the best individually. Still, being able to use the ferrous dragons and linorms again in 3e does count for a fair bit, and the adventure path is doing better than the one last year. It's been better than many of their birthdays as a celebration too. They may well actually go out on a high then if they have some even better articles saved for the last issues. Let's take the next step towards that then. 3.
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 1/6
79 (100) pages. With Demogorgon, you get double the raar, double the fun. And they don't zoom in so close on him that you can't appreciate how impressive he is compared to his surroundings. They've been building up to this one for a fair amount of time, and it looks like they've still got the chance to give us all the cool tie-ins to their adventure path. Let's hope they were worth the wait.
Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Back in issue 295, they did an editorial on roleplaying in prison, talking about both it's benefits, and the hassles the prisoners often face trying to do it. Many places ban it, or impose arbitrary regulations that make it exceedingly difficult to do, yet there are still a substantial number of inmate gaming groups out there, as after all, what else do they have to do with their vast amounts of free time with virtually no money? Knitting? And once again, this really highlights how much of a blight the american prison system has become on the country, imprisoning a far greater proportion of the population than any other country, particularly ethnic minorities, and using them as cheap labor for profit rather than making proper attempts at rehabilitation. And yet somehow there's still politicians winning votes by using tough on crime rhetoric. (which makes me wonder just how high the percentage could get before the tax base simply can't support keeping that many people imprisoned) Which leaves me once again wondering how this problem could be solved. Killing them and taking their stuff may usually be the optimal solution in D&D, but in the real world, it rarely is. And if someone did manage to figure out how to release the majority of prisoners without them reoffending or being trapped on welfare for the rest of their lives, would we thank them, or vilify them? True heroism sure is a lot more complicated than in books or movies.
Scale Mail: The letters column has now shifted into full-on Thanks for the Memories mode. All is forgiven, because to be honest, even with the complaints, they still loved it and wanted it around. Some have been reading it all it's life, while many others are younger than the magazine, and saw it as something that had always been around and always would. It's the kind of sentimentality that's sweet to see, but doesn't leave me with that much to say. I guess the next two issues will probably be pretty similar as well, so I might have to hit the snooze button on this section.
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 2/6
First watch: Another year, another Monster Manual. The 5th one, to be precise. As with the 4th one, it's not just monsters, but ways to use them, places to use them in, and info on how much you know about them if you roll your knowledge DC's. Yay for progress. Well, sometimes.
Slightly less welcome is Shadowdale: The scouring of the land. Part two of our big changeover adventure trilogy. How the devil did the Zhentarim get control of this in the first place so it needs scouring? Elminster take an extended holiday again, the lazy bugger?
On the computer game side, they announce an expansion for Neverwinter nights II - Mask of the Betrayer. Head into epic level territory with a pretty cool plotline, amusing character banter and definite parallels with Planescape: Torment. Another computer RPG out shortly is Blue Dragon. Cutesy characters, huge swords, and weird monsters mark this out as a typical JRPG. And of course, the back-end shows substantial Tabletop ancestry. Or children will inherit the earth indeed.
Not very surprisingly, we get another bit of promotion for their new minis set. The Night below does seem surprisingly unfocussed for a release so far into the product schedule. Perhaps they're just trying to fill in ones they missed in previous sets. McFarlaine Toys, on the other hand is as focussed as ever. 6 inch dragons. You buy the 6 inch dragons. Not 5 inch, not 7 inch, 6 inch. Just the right size, yes?
Out in D20 land, they promote something else long before it's released. A song of Ice and Fire is getting an RPG. Since GRRM already had Wild Cards converted, this isn't too huge a surprise. Keep those geeky connections open. Even more interesting than that is the birth of Kobold Quarterly, which is probably the spiritual successor to this magazine, and managed a good few years before folding (and passing that mantle to Gygax magazine). As the magazine draws to a close, it's good to see them providing their support to work like this.
Further RPG's this month are a new edition of Faery's Tale, and White Wolf's Scion. Two quite different products, but both allow for pretty fantastical adventures. Will you choose simple and whimsical, or epic, crunchy, and a bit clunky? Interesting choice.
A rather meta product is Green Ronin's Hobby games: the 100 best. A whole bunch of people from not just RPG's, but gaming in general, contribute to this, including Gary Gygax himself. Will model railroad games be involved? :p
Once again, ENWorld's influence on the hobby is noted, with a callout the the ENnies. Seems like they're expanding their categories for awards again. The rewards of success. Watch out for the corruption allegations.
And finally, we have another bit of promotion, this time for NASCRAG, the national society of crazed gamers. Erm, ok then. Silly tournaments? Anything to remind people that gaming shouldn't be Serious Business all the time. As is often the case, all I have to say to this is buh. The lengths people go too. :shrug:
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 3/6
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Demogorgon! Since the adventure path we've been reading about this year is based around him, it's no surprise that he shows up here just as we near it's end. And no surprise also that he's our most badass demon lord yet, at CR 33 fully deserving his title of Prince of demons. Normal demons in his presence can't even act without his permission. Course, tanar'ri being what they are, they really rankle at this, and he has many powerful enemies dividing his attention. This includes himself, as his split personalities would both rather be rid of the other one, free to be not just prince, but king of all demons. He gets a particularly epic entry in other ways as well. His history is unusually detailed, both recent and distant, he's tied in in critical fashion to tons of the big events in cosmic history, and has made appearances in lots of D&D products, including of course his cameo terrorising Tasslehoff in the magazine. They devote less space to detailing his realm, but since that's probably dealt with in more detail in Dungeon soon, that's no great loss. And we get yet another obyrith detailed, the ripping and tearing Verakia, who impart the same madness on all who look at them.( They've really racked up quite a few of those in these columns, almost as many as appeared in the actual books. )This is another one that's obviously a labour of love, and this enthusiasm is infectious, even though it does expand his influence into previously unconnected matters in a way that may not be to everyone's liking. Still, I enjoyed it, and that really says something at this point in the game. Will we get to see Orcus, Grazzt or Jubilex before this is over? Only 2 more issues to go, no way they're going to cover all of them.
Feathers & Fur: Although they've kinda scaled down the advertising due to their upcoming demise, it still looks like this is another wilderness themed issue. Well, since it's not one where they have any epic special feature, just a grab bag of stuff, it isn't really worth going all out for. And that's very much what this first article is. 8 new tricks you can train your animal companions with. 13 bits of mundane equipment that are exceedingly handy for animal owners, such as collars, bells, hoods and perches. (those talons are pretty nasty on your unprotected arm or shoulder) 6 bits of handy dandy alchemy that you may want to use on your animals, or in some cases enemy ones. 4 feats that grant you and your animal extra tricks in combat, all of which can be selected as fighter bonus feats. And four new mildly magical dog and falcon variants, three capable of blending in with rocks, plants and darkness respectively, and one mirrored one which doesn't blend in at all, but reflects rays and gaze attacks, making it perfectly suited to dealing with beholders or medusas. Even though 3e might not have run as long as previous editions, there's still more crunch in articles like this than you can ever use. And really, that's a good thing. We should always be able to go back and find some little thing we'd missed before, and is perfect for our current needs, and it's articles like this that we'll find it in.
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 4/6
Defiled monsters: We continue the nature themed section of the magazine with some good old fashioned eco-froofery. The idea that nature has some ideal natural balance that humans are ruining with pollution, and eventually it will strike back may be less fashionable than in the days of captain planet, but people still love a good ironic revenge story. So here we go again with some monsters we created ourselves, and now have to figure out how to deal with in turn. Oh well. From the adventurer's perspective that just means twice the XP. It's the Ciiiiiiircle of life. And it most definitely moves us all.
Beastwraiths are composite ghosts formed when large numbers of animals die traumatically and aren't properly eaten or buried. If the cause of the deaths was MAN, this will probably get hazardous for anyone trying to pass through the area in the future. Not sure what they'll do if it was just natural fire or disease, but it'll probably look pretty spooky too.
Bloodlances are what happens if you saw off a unicorn's horn, but leave it alive. They grow a grotesque imitation out of cartilage and scar tissue, and go quite quite mad. This will probably bite you in the ass later along the line. If you're going to go evil, you can't half-ass it. Don't let them go, Chain them up in the dungeon and keep harvesting the faux horns. I'm sure you can use them to make some spectacularly nasty magical items.
Deadwood Revenants are pissed off undead dryads. They retain the ability to control animals, and can also curse people quite effectively. Stuff like this is why D&D retains so much untouched wilderness, as you have to fight so hard and lose so many people for every acre you clear and build upon, and even the survivors may have problems for the rest of their lives. It's a good thing at least some gods are on our side, eh?
Arcane botanica: We've done animals, now for a bit of plant based material. A dozen more magical plants to add to the D&D ecology may not be a game-changer at this point in time, but it's still not unwelcome either, as there's plenty of ground to cover here with only half a dozen or so articles in the magazine's long history. (82, 108, 137, 167, 211, 292 are the ones that I can find) They're split between extraplanar ones and magically created plants, mostly done by wizards as druids tend to like things just as they are. The more powerful ones are increasingly difficult to keep alive, with the most powerful one (which grants wishes when it flowers at rare, irregular intervals) requiring DC40 gardening checks to care for and harvest properly. All of them have tricks that adventurers could definitely make use of, so this definitely isn't like the old school mundane herbalism articles they've done before. So they're still combining solid, balanced mechanics and decent setting material in their current articles, even as the magazine draws to a close. That's very pleasing to see.
The ecology of the titan: Ahh, Gods vs Titans. Now there's another thing that's definitely been on the up recently. Exalted, Scion, Scarred lands. It proved popular enough that the whole gods vs primordial thing got hard coded into one of the most important cosmological dichotomies in 4e. This is an interesting bit of foreshadowing. Only in this ecology, it's the other way round to usual. The gods created the titans, then successfully smacked them down when they tried to rebel. Not sure what lesson to take from that. Probably that temperamental spoiled brats who get every advantage handed to them on a silver plate really don't deserve to be in charge. Still, despite their defeat, there are still very few creatures that can deal with one on equal terms, so they never really learn restraint. They also tend to be fickle as a way of staving off the boredom of living eternally. Not too surprising on the fluff front then. On the crunch side though, they get some kickass stuff. Two variant titan types. And incredibly badass stats for Cronus, almost as powerful as a hecatoncheires. Now that's an epic opponent. This in itself makes this ecology worth it. We do not see nearly enough creatures on that scale, and it'd definitely be interesting, if probably rather long-winded, testing out how he actually compares to the gods as published in Deities and Demigods.
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: Gazing into the abyss. What a wonderful title. Unfortunately, we're still not quite there yet. Well, planar travel is a tricky thing to do, and not something to be taken lightly. You've got to research and prepare, find out what you're getting into if you want to have a decent chance of getting out alive. You also might want to bring them to you instead, as while that also has it's risks, they're more manageable than the ones down there, where everything, even the laws of physics are malevolent and treacherous. Indeed, most of this article is devoted to summoning and dealing with abyssal creatures. We get three new vestiges for binders, Ansitif, Astaroth (a second, different one, obviously not a lucky name for planar monstrosities to take. ) and Cabiri. And four other demons who have made their names widely available and encourage their being summoned. Really, this is a bit of a filler article, composed of a grab-bag of things only peripherally related to the actual adventure at hand. While not dull, and it's nice to see binders get some supplemental material, this certainly isn't world changing stuff, especially compared to the earlier article on demogorgon, and some of the more in depth attempts this subject has previously seen. Overall, a slightly subpar entry. Lets hope they have something bigger and better planned for the climactic final episodes, because their focus seems to be slipping a bit here.
Volo's guide: Volo makes yet another pair of powerful enemies by running an expose on them. Selemmon and Ashemi are an interesting duo who used to be part of the Zhentarim. They fell in love, and then got caught for treachery. Mindfucking and enslavement followed, but they managed to escape, and travel from place to place, trying to avoid vengeance while exacting some of their own. Course, now they'll be moved up in priority by Manshoon and co, because high profile humiliations are not to be tolerated. (If only they didn't have so many of them. :) :p ) Both are pretty powerful wizards with their fair share of magical items, but they're still not powerful enough to take down the inner circle. Good luck trying to find them, be it to make allies of them or hunt them down. A fairly amusing entry. This kind of stuff is why the bad guys just can't win in the Realms. Just so many people ready to stop them.
Dragonmarks: Living spells are one of eberron's quirkier features. While magic distilled into a solid form isn't too rare a concept, making it into oozing creatures that take on a life of their own is rather less common. And as they're interesting, but tricky to control, a prestige class devoted to them seems a pretty good idea. And that's exactly what you're getting this month. The spell sovereign gets to keep one as a familiar, rebuke and control them cleric stylee, and generally create, control and enhance them, while still getting 3/4 spellcasting progression. Not a terrible choice for an enterprising wizard in the mournlands. Another nice but unexceptional bit of crunch, well tied into the setting, as prestige classes should be. They are sticking close to their formulae these days.
Dragon Issue 357: July 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: If a multiclassed spellcaster takes automatic quicken spell, does it apply to all their classes (yess)
Does the bonus from collector of stories apply to dark knowledge (no)
Can I swap bonus damage from sudden strike to activate an ambush feat (Yess.)
Can a rogue spend extra sneak attack dice from feats on ambush feats (Yess)
Do the bonus tricks from Freerunner count against your limit (yess)
If you take freerunner and don't have enough room for both tricks, what happens (You'll have to wait until you can. Ssuch a sshame.)
Does improved buckler defense also apply to two weapon fighting (no)
Does improved turning affect Divine spell power (no)
Does martial weapon proficiency + Improved familiarity count as exotic weapon proficiency (yes)
Can you use karmic strike more than once per round (yes)
What does mage slayer mean by enemies are automatically aware that they cannot cast defensively. How? (Good Quesstion. Andy issn't much good at metaphyssics. A dissturbance in the forcce, maybe.)
Can you use monkey grip to use a two handed weapon in one hand (no)
Can a lycanthrope use natural spell while shifted (no)
Can someone with oversized two-weapon fighting still use power attack when wielding one-handed weapons in their off-hand (yes)
Can you use Quick reconnoiter to Spot the weak spot (no)
Can a changeling with Racial emulation take dragonmark feats as the emulated race (no)
Can a spirit shaman use Spontaneous Healer (yes)
Can a Stormguard Warrior use combat rhythm on their AoO's (yes)
Can a Stormguard Warrior use combat rhythm with Cornered predator or Talon shield (yess)
Can you sacrifice the dice from telling blow on an ambush feat (no. They're too unreliable, preciouss)
Class acts: Adventurers get Dirty priests, holy thieves. A kickass title and a pretty cool illustration help make the point that there are plenty of deities that don't disapprove of larceny. Have 4 new feats and 5 new skill tricks that make this flavour option a little more enticing in terms of crunch. Druids, scouts, ninjas and bards don't get neglected either. A well rounded bit of cool.
Arcane characters get Transversed arcana. More options for those of you who don't feel like having a familiar for this character. Some of them are quite powerful, and one (Eidetic spellcaster) massively game changing. These are very tempting indeed. DM's should treat players who want them with caution.
Divine characters get Plant Companions. A logical bit of class feature substitution for druids that does exactly what you would expect, only with a bit more customizability. Another cool piece of writing.
Warriors get this month's rehash, with the monk guide. And Ember gets a cup size increase compared with how she's usually drawn. Hmm. These illustrations are definitely drifting. The art directors must not have their eye on the ball now they're seriously working on a new edition.
Nodwick seems to be setting itself up for a big conclusion. Will it be a happy one? Dork tower fails to apply the lessons of adventuring to real life. OotS meets The Dragon. Yes, that one. And he is cranky. Well, we haven't had any dragonmirth for 6 years. He is quite entitled to be grumpy.
This one's for the people who like their disconnected crunch, being absolutely jam-packed with it. In march/april, they had to deal with backlash from people annoyed that too much of the issue was tied into one theme, and this feels like the corresponding attempt to swing back the other way. If the magazine had continued, it would just be another part of the never-ending cycle. Hell, it still might be. All depends on if I do the electronic issues as well and find out. But let's not jump ahead of myself. 2.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 1/6
80 (100) pages. On issue 345, we had a frost giant. Now we have a fire giant so the equal rights people don't get all worked up. They're as bad as elves and dwarves for bickering, just not as common. So yeah, let's see if they've managed to find some new topics to cover even this late in the game, or they'll be caught up in repeats and retrospectives.
Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, Ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Our editorial this month is a paean to the reliability of the magazine. With one particularly nasty exception, it's been delivered to people's doors reliably every single month since 1979. It may not have always been great, but the important thing is that it was there, when so many other things, including their other magazines, fell by the wayside. That really does count for a lot, and is why people both got so attached to it, and maybe sometimes took it for granted. For all that we crave adventure and discovery, if there isn't a consistent world behind us to return too, it ceases to be fun and becomes desperate searching for a new home instead. So it is with roleplaying. If there aren't a consistent set of rules behind your fantastical adventures, it'll soon turn back into freeform let's pretend. So here's to having a structure and rhythm to our lives, however we create it. The rhythm of my life will certainly have to change a fair bit after this is over.
From the publisher: As the announcement of the magazine's demise was fairly sudden, they have to deal with some serious loose ends with regards to subscriptions. To minimise rants about being cheated out of their money, they're offering three different ways you can exchange your remaining issues for other books of equivalent value, or a full refund if none of those suit you. Which is definitely a lot more consideration than WotC showed to their customers and other companies with informing them what was going on with the GSL terms beforehand and pulling people's .pdfs. They also show they have a clear idea what they're going to do next, putting their primary focus into monthly adventure path material that's not too dissimilar to what they were doing anyway, which also contrasts with WotC's frequent changes of direction over the past few years. Having a plan, any plan and sticking to it works better than no plan at all, or constantly changing plans due to executive meddling. Looking at this, it's not hard to see why Paizo has maintained a greater degree of public goodwill than WotC in the intervening years.
Scale Mail: Nothing surprising here. Readers old and young, long-term and recent all mourn the passing of the magazine, some despairing, some hopeful that the electronic issues will carry on it's legacy just as well as ever. If you don't have all the back issues, snap them up now, because once they go out of print, that's it. So long, and thanks for all the [strike]fish[/strike] Dragons. What more is there to say? Since it wasn't a sales thing, public protest won't do anything to stop it. Just got to look to the future, while not forgetting the past.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 2/6
First watch is a full 8 pages long this time. Half of this is a special feature devoted to the cartoon adaption of the first book in the Dragonlance Chronicles. Big names, CGI monsters, fairly faithful to the original plot. And it still wound up a flop. D&D really does not have much luck on the silver screen. Solid products just can't match our own imaginations for sheer coolness. Which is pretty annoying really. Will they ever get it right and manage something both commercially and critically acclaimed? Here's hoping.
D&D strips down another big, formerly healthy campaign to it's bare essentials, in Expedition to the ruins of Greyhawk. The castle gets a massive dungeon complex, albeit not totally detailed, plus info on Greyhawk city as well. Exactly how faithful this one is to Gygax's original vision is I'm not sure, but it does seem to contain some of the silly elements of older versions, which is vaguely :rolleyes: inducing. What are we to do with these writers?
On the D20 side, the biggest news is of course Paizo's own announcement of Pathfinder. They don't give us all the details, mainly because they don't know what WotC has planned for the next edition yet, but they do make it clear that they'll keep on producing kickass adventure paths for the D20 system. They're also releasing D2: Seven Swords of Sin. Another little 32 page adventure for those who like the old format. Still, good luck spotting it on bookshelves. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't half the reason those little adventures don't sell well. Somewhat more impressive is Monte Cook's World of Darkness. People have been making jokes about D20 WoD since the OGL was first released and now they get it. To curiously muted reception, oddly, especially since the actual book is pretty good. Guess the moment is over, people have moved on.
Our other RPG this month is Changeling: the Lost. A much darker take on the fae mythology than Changeling: the Dreaming, this proved quite the success, getting quite a few books beyond it's limited run, where the original got cancelled due to poor sales. There are still some successes, even in this period of declining overall sales.
Paizo are also exploring several other markets as they try and ensure their survival in the face of losing their big cash cow. Elements of power is a series of magical item cards, for your PC's to make use of. And they're also trying to get back into the fiction market, despite the way Amazing Stories died, with the Planet Stories imprint. Reprints of out of print stories by big authors. That doesn't seem like a bad idea. Supply and demand is a funny thing. I wonder if they'll make them available as .pdfs, which would help with the problem of them going out of print.
On the minis side, there's Helldorado. The forces of evil, conquistadores and the church fight for control of the lost city of gold. Sounds quite fun, and possibly a bit tongue in cheek. Maybe Hellboy should make a cameo.
And finally, they promote Gen Con Indiana. As usual, there's tons of fun stuff planned, including more than a bit of nongaming stuff. Gary Gygax will make one final appearance (not that they know that yet) and the whole thing will be bigger and better than ever. Or so they hope. It could all go horribly wrong.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 3/6
Core beliefs: Saint Cuthbert. Aka Vampire Hunter D in brown, which to be frank I never envisioned him as resembling. Truth comes in many forms, and it surprises me not that in the process of trying to get down wid da kidz, he would pick a fashion source that's well over a decade out of date even at the time of writing. But enough of the fashion snark, which is easily the funniest part of this article. (despite his origin as an excuse for Gary to use literal hit you over the head jokes on players when they were acting dumb. ) As another ascended mortal, like Iuz, he doesn't have a protege, and instead, his rival in intolerant lawful goodness, Pholtus, takes the B-role this time, with Iuz also getting a substantial sidebar. Still, for all that he gets a bad rep for being dumb and boring, he's smart enough to know when you're taking the piss out of him and hit back. You don't get to be a god by being incompetent. (at least, I know of no god of incompetence) and his no-nonsense common sense methods may be more suited to everyday life, but I know plenty of adventurers, even ones with supposedly superhuman Wisdom, that could benefit from a bit more common sense in their lives. So this has to balance the everyday stuff with the crunchy details PC's crave, and does a competent, rather than exceptional job. This feels more like burning through their already written articles than really bringing their A game to the final issues. It does change a few details beyond fashion choices, interestingly, switching him from LN with good tendencies to LG with LN tendencies. Another sign that with the edition drawing to a close, they feel more comfortable about altering details to their new tastes rather than sticking to tradition. Well, what have they go to lose? Nothing but their fanbases! And they'll slowly drift away anyway if you don't change anything anyway. Just gotta make them the right changes.
Master's forge: At the end of the 2e era of the magazine, they had a surprising number of Bazaars containing purely mundane items to round things off. They haven't got the time or space to do that this time around, but here's at least one article of that sort. It's a list of various Masterwork properties you can apply to your items as long as you're willing to pay a little extra, and raise the Craft DC when trying to make it. As with the article full of plants last issue, this definitely shows the effects of greater mechanical experience, with the effects seeming entirely worthwhile for their price, and not completely overshadowed by full-on enchanted items. Plus it gives PC's incentive to actually buy a Craft or Profession skill other than just background flavour. So once again, this gives us something to come back too and use repeatedly even after the edition is over, as craft stuff is something you can explore endlessly. And since 3e still has more customisability than any other D&D edition, those are the kinds of players most likely to have stuck with it, which makes it good targeting.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 4/6
Checkmate!: Huh. We've had a fair few updates from Dragon's previous edition articles lately, but this is the first definite Polyhedron one I've spotted (although you never know, since I've only really skimmed them so far.) Using chess pieces to create a themed set of monsters/magical items was done in issues 82 and 90 of Polyhedron, with different stats in each. Course, it could be independent generation, but it is very interesting that they did it twice, while Dragon never did, despite having four cool chess themed covers back in the day. Very worth noting, especially since Erik edited Polyhedron for a bit before being promoted here. Let's see how this interpretation differs from previous ones.
Pawns are of course individually weak, and can only move directly towards an enemy, which makes maintaining a tactical formation difficult. however, if they can stick together, they become quite effective, gaining more bonuses the more of them adjacent to each other there are. 8 in a row can stand fast against any mook level army all damn day, and will likely level up after such a feat of heroism.
Knights get to make odd angled moves through occupied spaces without provoking attacks of opportunity, which is very fitting. They also get the power to protect allies from harm, which seems appropriate for their name. Once again, the tactical applications of their tricks once translated to D&D play seems quite interesting, and very worth thinking about.
Bishops move diagonally as if it was straight, and straight as if it were diagonal, which only really makes sense if you're playing with minis on a grid. Lure them into a place with narrow corridors to slow them down quite a lot. They also buff all their allies automatically, and have cleric spells to do so more, so you might want to try and take them out first.
Rooks get to charge in a straight line attacking multiple opponents along the way, and fall on people to do more damage when finally defeated, leaving a permanent zone effect there until the rubble is cleared. Once again, that's an interesting mechanical development that shows attention paid to recent supplements.
Queens have immense speed and mobility, plus the ability to inflict extra damage when moving, plus 9th level sorcerer spellcasting. Sounds like they do indeed enjoy the flexibility their chess namesake has and then some. Better hope you have a high level team with plenty of diversity if you're up against this one.
Kings are powerful, but not nearly as fast or flexible, and bear the weight of knowing that if they get defeated, the whole set goes down, so they retreat rather than fight wherever possible. So this set manage to both capture the feel of a chess set individually, and have quite interesting tactical tricks that mean they're much more than the sum of their parts if played smart. They also feel very 4e in terms of overall design, making this a very forward thinking article, in contrast to the ones looking back or filling regular series surrounding it. Since it presents a different type of combat encounter to most sets of new monsters, this definitely merits it's place even this late in the game, showing some thing are timeless and can be used for inspiration any time.
The ecology of the Kaorti: Ahh, the bloody far realm. Essentially 3e's designer's way of one-upping the pretty 1-2e cosmology, and putting more Lovecraft in the game at the same time, saying there's another place out there that's bigger than everything you've seen so far put together, and there's nothing you can do about it but go mad. Still rather ambivalent about that particular add-on. Here we have another variant on the "You will be assimilated, and your whole world too" business. Still, at least this world is just as nasty and maddening to them as they are to us. The attempts at being evocative may work this time, but they come at the expense of both settling rules issues and expanding on their stats, and providing inventive tactical ideas, which used to be a real strength of the last few years' format. What crunch there is is pretty cool as well, but there isn't nearly enough of it. I really am not that keen on the directions this column has taken in recent years. Lets hope they don't stick too closely to the current formula for the final instalment, and get some big name or other in to go out with a bang.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 5/6
Savage tidings: We've made it into the abyss, and now the savage tide sweeps us along the river styx, trying desperately to find people willing to help you foil demogorgon's insane plans. Not an easy task, as while they may hate him, why should they listen to some ragtag bunch of primes who were novice adventurers less than a year ago? They're probably pawns of some other outer-planar schemer. And even if they're telling the truth, demon lords trying to take over or destroy the universe is pretty much par for the course. They rarely actually get anywhere serious. This is basically a quick tour of the lower planes, focussing on the things and people you might run across as you sail the styx. Most of them will be pretty familiar if you remember your planescape, and even the cartography is very much in the style of the old gameline. Again, this seems more focussed on people who've never bought a planar product, and need a quick primer just for this adventure rather than old hands like me who've seen the whole thing evolve through years of real time and get added to by many writers along the way. Still, it's another good example of the strong respect the paizo writers have for the old stuff, bringing it out again and developing it using modern tools and rules tricks, while trying to maintain the spirit of what made it cool in the first place. It's certainly a far more respectful treatment than they got by the official development team. Another solid entry here that I'd probably appreciate even more if I weren't so jaded by this point.
Volo's guide: Another bit of metaplot follow-up here. The Realms keeps changing, and Volo keeps following interesting stories, wherever it may take him. (preferably far away from the last people he reported on. ) Unther has been an unstable place for the last couple of decades, and Gilgeam has finally got his comeuppance for his millennia long tyranny. Course, since the new god in charge is Tiamat, this seems like a case of out the frying pan, into the fire for ordinary people. To make things even more interesting, and ensure adventurers have plenty of options, they're also having to deal with Mulhorand trying to conquer them while they're weak, Hoar and his priests being an asshole, Thay trying to make the conflict as lossy for both sides so they profit in the long term, bandits and thieves flourishing, and all the other neighbouring countries casting uneasy eyes at the whole thing. Like Myth Drannor, this feels like a conscious attempt to make sure things stay interesting for adventurers, packing in a few pages what could easily be expanded out into an entire book. Still, don't forget you can ignore this stuff too. Your players could have done the killing instead and be in the middle of this mess. Still, it's better than the way they handled this stuff in the 90's. There are definitely showing the benefit of experience here.
Dragonmarks: The Draconic prophesy gets some attention this month. It's fragments are everywhere, taking the strangest of forms, and conferring strange effects as well. Here's 5 more examples of this.
The Eldeen sections are cross-sections of a darkwood tree that have rings in the shape of a mark of warding. The poachers who discovered this must be punished and the pieces retrieved!
The marks of the obsidian flow are runes on a frozen waterfall that only appear when another fragment of the prophecy approaches, and give clues on where to find yet more fragments and tie the whole thing together.
The ant runes are formed by giant ants leaving the remains of their prey in the shape of runes. This has not been realized, as it's such an obscure method of communication, and people are trying to clear them out, thinking they're a message from the evil ones instead.
Lhesh firegems explode when you try and divine their purpose, revealing clues to the prophecy, but also presenting a serious health hazard.
The Sulerred calling tree forms runes by the twisting of it's roots, and reincarnates people placed underneath it. Very strange. But really, were the makers trying actively to be obscure? If you don't make a prophecy solvable, then you are, quite frankly, not going to get much benefit from making it. Definitely an entertaining bit of reading this month, with the join between fluff and crunch feeling more naturalistic than is sometimes the case with these. Definitely a shame that this series never really had the chance to hit it's stride.
Dragon Issue 358: August 2007
part 6/6
Sage advice: Can you take a 5 foot step when surprised or slowed (yes. It's one of the great rights you have.)
Do you have to hold your divine focus when casting spells (Sskip thought not. Andy, on the otherr hand, thinkses yess, collins collins. No cheaty tattoo's for you. )
If your initiative mod changes mid combat, does this change your place (no)
Does falling through a square provoke an AoO (Yess. Perfect for all those soldiers defending the casstle to chop you up with.)
Does a character know why their spell fails (If they have enough information)
If you have a readied action and cast as spell when someone else does, who goes first (You get to interrupt them. Verry usefull, yess?)
Can you do a swift action and a free action in the same round (yes)
Can you be two different types of psion or specialist wizard (no)
If you have two different types of DR, do they stack (no)
Can you use ranged attacks with a phantom threat (no)
Can you choose who your allies are when casting spells (yess. But you can't change your mind mid-spell.)
What does a dragon shaman's totem have to with draconic heritage feats (determining which ones are appropriate for them to take)
If you have two different breath weapons, do they stack (No. You track their uses and effects separately, yess.)
Do familiars gain feats and ability score increases when their master levels (no. They have sspecial advancement that replaces that. )
Does uncanny blow allow you to count a one-handed weapon as two-handed (no)
Can an Invisible blade use uncanny bluff to make sneak attacks with every attack (no, only once per round. )
Class acts: Adventurers get Beyond Kung-fu. Another set of alternate fighting styles for monks, based on real world traditions. Many of them would be better represented by clerics than monks, but names are important to some people. And in attempting to twist them to a class they're not suited to, it still produces cool suites of powers. And if someone makes cool characters with them, it has not been in vain, even if they wind up not being very historical.
Arcane gets Arcane Feats. Not a very imaginative name. 8 new feats intended for spellcasters of various stripes. A bit of a grab-bag really, as they raid their slush pile for the best bits (A whole bunch of writers are credited) before they get shut down.
Divine tries to finish off it's aztec series with the fourth installment. Tonatiuk and Xipetoltec, plus some more blathering about how crucial sacrifice is for them and how we shouldn't judge them too harshly for it. Sorry, you don't get moral exemptions for citing cultural reasons. There are much better ways to do things. If you must sacrifice, you should sacrifice of yourself, not of others. That's much better for karma, and also ensures only the essential sacrifices get made, not wasteful ones.
Psionics turns up again, getting Psionic Alchemy. More cool little near magical items for you to buy and use. Probably should only be available in big cities from specialist vendors.
Warriors are once again smoking the rehash, with the paladin guide. Is that all of them? Don't say the last issue will waste it's page count on stuff like this.
Nodwick meets the dread Ginger dragon Montekooque. He's getting the hell out of dodge before 4th edition hits. Maybe they should do the same. Dork tower makes one last monty python reference for luck. OotS tells an allegory of the ancient history of the magazine. It all seems rather ridiculous, when you phrase it like that.
This issue does feel a bit rushed, as once again, they make hard choices which articles are going to get in the final issues. And it's interesting that I disagree with a fair number of them this time. So despite the year starting well, I'm still left wondering if I'll enjoy what they put in the final issue. So I guess we've reached that time. Time to finish this forever, for better or for worse, after nearly 6 years. Here we go. :deep breath: 1.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 1/8
109 (132) pages. So we've finally reached the end of Dragon's print run. This requires an extra big issue to send everything off. Paizo obviously want to feather their nest for the uncertain times to come, because they increase the price a quite shocking $3 to $10.99. Mutter mutter mutter. Still, all this extra stuff doesn't come cheap. For a start, we get a cover with a proper sense of location and poise for the first time in ages. No Rarr, we're badass, spikey, harshly coloured and in your face all the time. Larry Elmore delivers a nice piece of an adventuress and her (rather familiar looking) dragon, looking back. Which is appropriate, really, harking back to those classic covers of the 80's. We also get plenty of other big names back for one last article, and some effort is made to tie up the loose ends. It's nice that they had time to prepare for this. They should go out with a bang, not a whimper. So lets see just how well they've done.
Scan Quality: Good, large white border, unindexed, ad-free scan.
In this issue:
Editorial: Even the editorial is extra large, with contributions from all four editors, (although obviously Erik gets the biggest word count.) as they try to sum up their feelings on their time here. They're all grateful for the chance to contribute to the game they loved in an official capacity, even if it was damn hard work at times. They're also careful to thank everyone else who's worked on the magazine in recent years, and most of the big names of D&D in general. After all, it's always been very much a group effort, even if much of that group only communicate through mail or computer. Each of them holds their share of the responsibility for making the magazine as good as it is. (or as bad as it is, in the case of the fiction department these days :mad: ) So here's to editing. I could certainly have done with an editor over the years, and for all the flak they get, it's important to remember that they are essentially a positive force on most creative endeavours.
Scale Mail: Our first letter is one from Larry Smith, ex-Art Director. Since his departure was where they shifted from full covers which depicted actual scenes to single person covers with often sketchy or nonexistent backgrounds, it would be easy for him to be snarky about things not being what they used too. But no, he praises both the old artists and the current staff, seeing their approach as equally valid, and reminding us that life will be ever-changing. To the future, whatever shape it may take.
Our next letter gets recursive, asking them to do a longer letters section. Since they have boosted the page count for this final issue, and they are getting tons of letters, this is a really easy one to grant. Still trying to please as many as possible, right to the last.
Our next letter is a short but sweet goodbye. Not everyone has some witticism or last request to contribute, and this is for all of them.
Some do have very specific requests through, like one for more ioun stones. They would almost definitely have got round to it if given more time. But alas, it is not to be. Maybe next edition will do a nice big one, if it's not too interesting an idea for the 4e writers. :p
The next letter is an ode to the physical experience of reading a magazine. So much of what we do is on computer, and sitting in front of a screen all day is not good for our health. It'll be a shame to lose another holdout. I hear ya on that one, I hear ya. Be it writing, music, video, playing games, communicating with each other, it's increasingly all dependent on one little box. It does worry me, making one thing the focal point for your entire life, especially when it's so very vulnerable to destruction. All it takes is a little water in the wrong place to lose everything.
Even recent arrivals are devastated by the loss of the magazine, as the next letter proves. It's definitely good to see that they were still acquiring new readers right up to the end. Proves the hobby isn't comprised entirely out of grognards, and doomed to fade away when they all die out.
And finally, we have an observation that Paizo's Pathfinder material looks like a good replacement for Dungeon, but not so much for Dragon. Trust me, they'll add a fair amount of new crunch along with the adventures and setting material, and that'll be easily used with regular 3.5. (although some of it, you may not want too) And if that's not enough, just track down some of the vast quantities of old d20 books from 3rd party publishers. There's always something new to find there.
From the publisher: This is identical to last issue. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 2/8
First watch continues to be of greater than usual size this month, as they try and cram in as much stuff as possible, including things not actually coming out for a while. Still, there are plenty of other sources for finding out what's coming next now. It's not as if the magazine is essential for tying the hobby together anymore, with the internet doing things faster and with more commentary.
First up is Exemplars of Evil. Which looks to me rather like Book of Vile Darkness II: DM advice bogaloo. Well, they are increasingly focussing on sequels to things that sell well. As with the other ones, I just have to hope they figured out how to put a different spin on the topic and introduce new ideas.
Second is the conclusion of their module trilogy, with Fortress of the Yuan-ti. This looks pretty self explanatory. A mid level adventure starring their well loved genius snake-men hybrids. They're also releasing a new set of dungeon tiles, but don't have the space to tell us about it. Oh well. It's not as if those offered any great surprises either.
Slightly more surprising, and quite possibly amusing, is A Grand History of the Realms. An attempt to weave the tangled chronology of the sourcebooks, modules and novels into a coherent tapestry, and resolve inconsistencies, this certainly looks like it has the potential to reveal more than a few things I've always wondered about, and more that I never even thought of. Still, soon this'll be out of date as well, as the realms progresses ever forward, the biggest and busiest D&D world of all. Long may it do so, for it does still have tons of cool stuff amid the silliness.
Paizo do not hesitate to promote their own projects, of course. Old Skool modules with modern production values continue to be one of their prongs of assault. U1: Gallery of evil. J1: Entombed with the Pharohs. E1: Carnival of tears. And J2: Guardians of Dragonfall. They're going to release one a month for the forseeable future, until diminishing returns force them to kill or alter the format. They're also releasing a compilation of their various Game Mastery aids, complete with some bonus extras. Will that help clear out some warehouse space for their next projects. :p
They also continue to support their long time friends. Green Ronin are still doing plenty of stuff with Freeport, with two new books, one providing lots of setting details, and the other focussing on the crunch. Guess which one'll probably sell more. They're also following up their deck of many things with a Deck of Illusions. Another classic item gets a solid representation for players to actually draw from, which adds to the fun. Goodman Games are up to their 50th Dungeon Crawl Classic, Vault of the Iron overlord. And it is indeed a doozy, with the players venturing inside a still active mechanical device who's parts move around, making mapping very tricky indeed. Sounds like the kind of thing I'd enjoy running.
On the minis side, we have a decent selection as well. Dwarven Forge return to their Cavernous Lake, filling it with all new items that can be placed in many places. Must have proved quite popular then. And Privateer Press release Hordes: Evolution, letting you do new things with your rampaging warbeasts. This ain't your kid's pokemon. :D Can you keep control of all your minis, and the things they represent?
Several other games get mentioned as well. Talisman's new edition is now out, another case of repeated spoilage around here. Key Largo is finally completed, despite the death of it's creator, thanks to a little work from familiar name Mike Selinker. Slugfest games release the Red Dragon Inn, a card game where adventurers kick back and have a little fun at the tavern, while trying to ensure they get the most spoils when they're divided up. Sounds like a good game to use as a minigame in a campaign. And Privateer Press release Infernal Contraption, where mad inventors compete to build the scariest machines, just as wizards do with spells. The gap between them isn't that great, really.
Computer games get a disproportionate amount of page space, much of which is screenshots. NWNII: Mask of the betrayer gets another piece, which doesn't actually say much more than last time. They also choose the Culdcept Saga, which looks like a cross between Yugi-oh and Mega Man:Battle network. Turn based, deck controlled combat, and grid based movement between events, it also has elements of monopoly, of all things. If you like CCG's, this could well satisfy that itch for a bit.
In movies, they promote Beowulf. Ahh, yes, the one where they use CG technology to give Ray Winstone a hypermuscled body and Grendel's mom is a sexy shapeshifter who gives birth to the dragon that kills them at the end. Not exactly a great classic film. Still, they're getting some tie-in products as well, so they have good hopes for this. Beowulf: the movie board game is one of these. Since it's basically an adaption of an existing game, this doesn't seem particularly brilliant either. If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to hear it though.
Our final topics are mainly for observing, not buying. Steel Sqwire are producing artwork made of thousands of carefully arranged dice, and are showing an exhibition at Gen Con. You could buy one of these, or even commission something specialy, but it'd be expensive. You could also visit the Mythic creatures Exhibit at the museum of natural history. Of course, that's probably long ended by now, but these things are like busses. There'll be something very similar again in a few years, possibly even now if you know where to look. And I must say I'm quite eager to look around, see what cool new things are going on once I've finally completed this trek through history.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 3/8
The top 10 issues of dragon: Whether or not you consider this the end of Dragon magazine, there's no denying it represents an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and evaluate everything that's come before. And so they surveyed the forums to find out what were people's favourite issues. The result is quite interesting. There's an even mix of ancient issues and ones from the last 5 years, but absolutely nothing from between 1987 and 2002, showing that 2e is currently very much out of fashion with the readers despite all the cool setting stuff they did in the 90's. The ones that got most remembered also trend towards the goofy, which also makes their increasing habit of being sensible all the time in recent years seem a bit dumb in hindsight. It's not at all what I would have chosen. However, the two original issues on the Nine Hells being top by a substantial margin is not surprising at all. The amount of influence those still have whenever people want to get devilish is still huge, and the writing is one of the most evocative pieces they've ever done. It was the thing that really cemented Ed as the absolute number one of their contributors, a position he has yet to be knocked from, many editorial changes later. They entirely deserve to be remembered as well as they are.
So i suppose now is the time to go through things and figure out what my personal favourites are. What has held up with the passage of time, and what should have been best forgotten. This could take a while.
20: 210. Tom Moldvay finishes his multi-part series on alternate undead with the high level stuff, and we get lots of other cool halloween articles, including a Call of Cthulhu one, and reviews of White Wolf books. One of the last issues that still feels like they were open to the rest of the hobby.
19: 270. The period between the WotC takeover and 3e's release is pretty easy to forget, with a lot of boring issues that are neither top nor bottom. However, with the dual themes of high level and planar stuff, and a decent amount of april humour, this managed to hit the spot, giving us plenty of useful new material, before we said goodbye to 2e for good.
18: 18. Most of the early issues look decidedly rough in terms of both mechanics and artwork, but the ideas still hold up, and they got away with things that they simply couldn't just a few years later. Here we see the introduction of Traveler, which will play a surprisingly large part in the magazine, and some decidedly not family friendly Lankhmar material. It's interesting to think what D&D might have become if it had become more established before the moral majority brigade got involved.
17: 166. Speaking of the Moral Majority, 1990 was probably the most problematic year for them in that department. The backlash over them removing fiends from the game was massive, and cast a shadow over the entire year. As a result, this is where they brought them back, mostly unchanged in all but name. That mixed victory aside, this issue is also full of some of the best non D&D material in their run, with really cool stuff for Cyberpunk, Battletech and Car Wars, and the Dino Wars standalone game.
16: 276. We're spoiled for choice when it comes to october issues, and this is another fun one, with the ecology of the sheet phantom and John Kovalic's minigame bringing the mischief, while Skip & co concentrate on bringing back all sorts of other monsters. Another of the early 3e issues where you really feel the sense of freedom, before they were caught up in being all serious, all the time.
15: 344. Nostalgia runs rampant in the 30th birthday issue, with not just one, but three big names from the past brought back, and an article building on something they introduced in the 10th birthday issue. Erik uses this opportunity to increase the budget and do things he couldn't normally get away with, and it pays off.
14: 189. As we went through 1993, Roger was starting to lose the thrill of being an editor. But this attempt to spice up the magazine by requesting more real world stuff based on other cultures paid off quite nicely, creating a thread that ran through the next three years. Cultural diversity is one thing that 2e did better than any other edition, and without his efforts, we wouldn't have had a lot of that.
13: 112. There's been a few times in the magazine where they've drawn a hard line and substantially altered the format in one go, instead of gradually introducing new features and cutting old ones. 323, 274, and 225, all have their good and bad points. But this one is the most effective in itself, with both the huge comprehensive index and room for several other classic articles as well. In just a few issues, Kim would be gone, Gary would be formally ejected from the company, and they'd be gearing up for 2e. If any issue marks the end of the old school, it's definitely this one.
12: 198. Roger's last issue as full editor, and Sandy Petersen's finest hour in the magazine, this is another october one that seriously brings the goods. The Dragon Project is in full swing, keeping diversity up, and Tom Moldvay gives us a highly amusing load-bearing boss. All too soon, both basic D&D and non D&D coverage would be gone, so enjoy it while you could.
11: 150. Yet another awesome October issue, this sees them doing something a little different, and turning their attention to Mind Flayers and other cosmic horror. While many of the details in here were contradicted by the later Ithilliad, I find myself actually preferring this treatment. In addition, there's stuff for Call of Cthulhu, Top Secret, Star Trek and Superheroic games in general, making this one of their highest variety issues in general. The combination of these elements makes it one you can return too and use in all sorts of situations.
10: 55. The years of 1979-1981 were dramatic ones for the magazine. It seemed that their size and budget increased on a regular basis, and their professionalism tried to keep pace with it. This issue came near the end of that process, when the excitement was at it's peak, but before they got rid of wargaming and did their first period of closing off to focus on Official D&Dtm Material. In addition, they aren't afraid to criticise themselves publicly, with several writers making their reservations about the Fiend Folio clear. Soon, the meteoric rise would be over, and they'd start to feel like a real corporation. That's what success inevitably does.
9: 97. 1985 was the first year that D&D really felt "mature", as they brought out a whole load of significant products that they'd been talking about for years. Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the Master Set. While things weren't all hunky dory behind the scenes, they still had both tons of creativity and a sense of fun, and this captures those aspects, with the articles on improvisation, taking prisoners and Pages from the Mages adding interesting elements to your play, and the fiction about MMO's spectacularly prophetic. Here's to building for the future, even while not knowing if you'll be there next year.
8: 91. The return to the nine hells doesn't have quite the same impact as the original, but the info it introduces is more advanced, so it deserves plenty of credit too. Plus it comes right at their commercial peak, so it has a certain effervescence as a whole that makes it exciting to read. If you want darkness and politics presented in a fun way, you'd better pay attention.
7: 131. The issue that made the Underdark a big thing distinct from regular dungeons, this sees Roger really hitting his stride and making a difference. With a mini adventure, and substantial expansions for Svirfneblin, Hook Horrors and Aboleths, it made the world beneath our feet seem a lot bigger and weirder. Which is just what you need when you've been doing this for a while.
6: 81. No big special feature in this one, just a whole ton of high quality articles, from the peak of the magazine's first wave. Ed adds a bit more depth to the Basilisk, we get the highest level module they did with the magazine, and lots of little setting bits that are good for any system.
5: 309. The transition from 3.0 to 3.5 was marked by this amazing bit of co-ordinated work between Dragon and Dungeon. One of the longest and most focussed themed issues they've ever done, ending with one of the best articles they've ever done. Not all the other articles in there are brilliant, particularly the ones that are merely about rules updates, but that final one lifts the whole thing up a long way. Finally, the Githyanki are as scary as they ought to be.
4: 75. While the issue as a whole isn't all perfect, the nine hells is another one where the big special feature is just so good it pulls everything else up. And since the average quality of the articles is a little higher than Incursion, with contributions from people like Gary & Katherine Kerr, and their first homegrown Ecology, it just edges it out here.
3: 171. You never forget your first time, and even after going through every issue, I still find myself going back to this one, and using it's advice. Intelligent monsters, well-organised superheroes, stupid Buck Rogers, and some of the best Known World material in the magazine's run. It's a big, strange place, and it's good to have the full perspective on it at last.
2: 287. After a long slow upward grind through the late 90's, Dave Gross finally gets things just about perfect, just as he leaves, which is very ironic really. After he goes, the amount of setting material and sense of freedom the new edition has granted nosedives at shocking speed. In the meantime, this kickass planar special does a lot to get the new edition up to speed.
1: 351. Other issues may have better individual articles, but absolutely no issue beats this one as a complete package where everything was working towards a single goal, firing on all cylinders, and drawing on history effectively while also creating cool new stuff to add to it. The previous two Campaign Classics issues were cool, but also had to deal with patchy and shallow bits as they tried to fit everything in. This one, every single article works both individually, and as part of the larger whole, and none are merely converting old material to the new edition. It's as close to perfection as they ever got, and I really wish they had tried to do more really ambitious themed issues like it and Incursion.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 4/8
And now for the hall of shame. They did manage to throw up a fair few stinkers along the way, after all, and I would be remiss if I didn't warn people away from them.
10: 3. The issue that really showcases the fact that yes, there was a lot of crap back in the old days too, and at least the modern stuff is better edited. The largest, most flimsily designed set of classes we'd ever see, and more than a few other half-baked ideas. Still, at least it's memorable.
9: 157. Buck Rogers gets forced down our throats, to massive public indifference, and considerable annoyance in the offices. The themed section is one of the most half-assed they ever did, showing that Lorraine might have been able to crack the whip, but she couldn't force them to write good, useful material. The rest is merely so-so, but that beginning drags the whole thing down.
8: 154. In which TSR bow to the satanic panic, only to have to deal with the backlash. This issue is packed full of corporate bullshit, and most of the general articles are pretty boring too. It really is annoying when the upper management are the problem, rather than the solution.
7: 64. Gary really started to lose his grip in 1982, both of the company, and in terms of adding things to the system that weren't very well thought out mechanically. This is an excellent example, with the introduction of the celestials, one of the most mechanically annoying monsters to keep track of in all D&Ddom. Meanwhile Brian Blume makes a bizarre diversion into sumo wrestling, and Giants in the Earth continues to taunt us with illegal characters. It all just leaves me irritated.
6: 151. The issue that indicated maybe they were starting to do the oriental fetishism the late 80's saw to death, with two of the worst ecologies they've done, and a whole lot of other dull stuff. Any idea, even a good one, wears out it's welcome eventually, or simply isn't applicable to the present problem, and it's stupid to stick with it in that situation.
5: 231. By the mid 90's, D&D had created so many supplements and settings that it was a real nightmare to keep track of them. This issue really brought that home to me, back in the day. At some point, you really have to take a break or let go, and that was my personal breaking point.
4: 224. The end of 1995 saw TSR realising something was very wrong, and starting to panic, realising they had to change or die. Unfortunately, this only hastened their decline. The three "little red triangle" issues were full of poor choices in both articles and formatting, and this is the worst of them. They'd removed the last bits of third party coverage, and still didn't know how to properly replace it, and weren't communicating well internally. It really shows, unfortunately.
3: 122. Aka Gary's formal resignation notice. The magazine had been going downhill for a good year before this, with Kim's resignation and Roger being forced to handle Dragon & Dungeon simultaneously really hurting their organisational capabilities. It's not until next year that he would really get the hang of things and start pulling up again. In the meantime, we get poorly organised issues like this one. Even without the shoddily redacted farewell from Gary, it wouldn't have been good, but that easily pushes it down into this not so exalted position.
2: 300. In which WotC fail pathetically at being dark and mature, to an extent which still boggles me to this day. You read it back and wonder what possessed them to collectively read and edit this stuff and think it was actually a good idea, all the way through to publication. Obviously Monte Cook has to take the lion's share of the blame, but no-one comes out of this looking good.
1: 310-14. It's cheating, I know, but it really is impossible to choose which of these 5 issues is worst to single out, because there's nothing there to choose from. The biggest dullest heap of grey, generic crap the magazine ever did in a row. Most of the other issues here were bad in more memorable ways, or less usable in actual play, but nothing beats the second half of 2003 for sheer boring. And since D&D is still supposed to be a game, that makes them the biggest failure. A game is nothing without fun.
Unsolved mysteries of D&D: We continue the system-free retrospective with a runthrough of things that still bug people to this day. There's a ton of loose ends and unexplained things from various settings and modules that people still debate about on forums, decades after they last appeared in print. Of course, if they gave concrete answers, they'd ruin the fun in a lot of cases, so this turns out to be an article that asks big questions, but doesn't really resolve much. If anything, it's likely to keep them talked about more in the future, as it makes even more people aware of these little bits of history. Essentially, trololololo suckers! :D Do what you like in your game, because you're never getting to see the complete picture. Well, that wasn't particularly helpful. They could definitely be doing more here.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 5/8
Time Dragon: Since it's still the title of the magazine (with or without it's The), they would be remiss in going out without an article on dragons, be it introducing a new type or expanding on old ones. Our first article this issue that actually has any mechanical stuff in it, this is one for the Epic level players. Anything that has time travel effects is automatically a huge problem for most groups, as it goes another step beyond scrying, mind-reading and teleportation in letting you set up a situation where you can beat an opponent without them having any chance against you at all, even if they're physically superior in a straight fight. (and since it's dragons we're talking about here, you don't even have much chance of being able to kill them with brute force before they can react) Even hatchlings start at CR 26, going up to 90 for great wyrms, making them a suitable foe for when your characters can deal with hecatoncheires without breaking a sweat. So this is very much an exercise in unfairness intended to remind people there's always a bigger fish out there, always a new adventure to challenge your players with. Which is a good note to end things on. Even after 359 issues, there's still only a handful of epic level articles, and both players and DM's have to forge their way into the unknown if they want to keep campaigns fun at that level. There's only a molehill of covered ground, so let's hope they don't keep trying to sell us what's already been sold in the electronic issues.
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: For our final entry in this series, they throw open the doors, and encourage you to make your own demon lords. After all, they aren't going to be allowed to do it any more, and there's still so many more adventures to have. Course, this being third edition, they have to be formulaic about it, providing a template you use to adapt existing creatures into demon lords. They then provide us 5 examples of this technique. Ardat the unavowed, Dwiergus the chrysalis prince, Lascer, lord of the shadow shoal, Shaktari, queen of mariliths, and Ugudenk, the squirming king. Three Tanar'ri, two Obyriths. All with rather scary tricks up their sleeves, but the stats derived from advancing some other creature, saving space here. That should be more than enough to work from. I really don't need this, having created several abyssal lords of my own, but this does read like them trying to set free a few minds while not completely taking the stabilizers off. Oh, the compromises they have to make.
They also go into detail about the divisions in the demonic phyla. The insubstantial loumaras, born from the dying dreams of a pantheon eaten by the abyss. The cthonic Obyriths, ancient and maddening, from before the days of intelligent life. The tanar'ri, our well known embodiments of every sin known to man, born from the souls of chaotic evil monsters that went to the abyss. Artificially created stuff of various stripes, including quasits, yochol, retrievers, etc. The abyssal equivalents of animals. And there's bound to be a few that don't fit into those classifications, since it is a realm of chaos. A good example of the complex built up D&D mythology that's accreted over decades, that is about to be swept away by the complete setting reboot of the next edition. Rather saddening, really. Still, this article is a reminder that when the official stuff ends, you're free to make stuff up yourself without worrying about future products contradicting them. But it is definitely a bittersweet ending. So it goes. :(
1d20 Villains: Another big list looking back on characters from adventures, novels and sourcebooks who have really stuck in people's minds over the years. Unlike the top 10 magazines, this is compiled entirely from staff preferences, which means it's slightly more even-handed in covering characters from all eras, and has a couple of odd choices at the top. Meepo and the Lord of Blades? Really? One a comedy villain and the other barely three years old. I find it difficult to call them classics. Still, questionable choices aside, this isn't just a descriptive list. Each of the 20 characters here gets a feat, magical item or other brief bit of crunch detailed to make this list actually useful for players and DM's. Many of them are pretty cool, and often quite powerful, as befits their iconic owners. So this is another one aimed at long-term players, who really need something to spice up their campaign. Don't be afraid of the Canon Police, let your player face iconic villains and have a chance to win. That's the kind of thing that'll perk them up even if they seem completely jaded. The power of celebrity can trump even the most fantastical spells.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 6/8
Treasures of Greyhawk: Greyhawk might not have had an official column for quite some time, but it's still technically an active campaign setting along with Toril and Eberron. They're hardly going to leave without giving it a little love, especially since Erik is still lead editor. So here's another collection of named items who's owners we should all be familiar with, since they appeared in all the corebooks from 1e to 3e. This also gives them another excuse to tell us more about the people behind the magic, while still providing game-useful material. Will any of these be remembered like the originals? Unlikely, but I really don't think that's the point.
Heward's Bell can summon or banish all sorts of things, depending on how you ring it. Disco dancers are not among those things, unfortunately.
Heward's Lyre of Truth ( and isn't that a terrible pun name that'd fit right into Gary's original campaign ) lets you force people to tell the truth when played, detect lies by plucking a single string, and if you detune it, it lets you do the opposite and bend the truth to your advantage. That's both useful and full of flavor in how it works. Awesome.
Keoghtom's Spidery Map lets you find nearly anything apart from it's creator. Building in back doors is a tremendously sensible thing to do for any creator, and it's good to see him keeping up that tradition.
Keoghtom's Staff of Purification is a reversed Staff of Affliction that retains it's original sinister appearance. Even evil artifacts can be redeemed if you know how, as the magazine has shown on several occasions, and isn't that so much better than simply destroying them.
Murlynd's Hat is of course a cowboy one, reminding us that Greyhawk has silly crossovers baked in from it's early days. It's abilities are relatively minor compared to it's sheer cool factor, and he regularly loses them and has to make new ones, so you never know what you'll get. But it'll probably be awesome in at least some small lifesaving way.
Murlynd's Rattlesnake Whip lets you disarm people, grapple them, climb buildings and swing on chandeliers. Anyone with a remotely swashbucklerish bent would delight in having this.
Nolzur's Orb slowly and continuously oozes his marvellous pigments, and has several other intriguing colour based effects as well. Make sure you don't just leave it in your backpack with everything else, or they're likely to wind up all sorts of odd colours and make a terrible mess.
Quaal's Cloak provides you with a full 50 feather tokens before it gets too threadbare to work, and in the meantime gives you a constant feather fall effect to save your hide. Will you go for the long or short term benefits?
Quaal's Surrependitous Armor of Expedience has 0 spell failure chance and gives you boosted movement rates and flight when you need it. Any multiclass warrior/arcane caster will be very happy indeed to be able to use both classes features to full effect.
The Robe of the Mad Archmage reminds us that other magical items beyond weapons can be sentient. It's as mischevious as it's creator, letting you unleash quickened spells at a whim and store spare spell levels for an emergency so you always have a trick up your sleeve. Just don't be boring, and don't try to wear other magical clothing, or it'll get jealous.
Tasha's Grinning Idol is surprisingly boring, simply boosting your mundane social skills and the DC of your Enchantment spells. Oh well, it's still a pretty flexible trick, even if it's not particularly inventive in itself.
Yragne's Signet has some minor protection magics for the wearer, but it's main significance is unlocking a bunch of magically sealed buildings around Greyhawk City, thus opening up new adventure locations for the party that gets their hands on it. And since no-one else has been able to get in in centuries, they're pretty likely to have interesting stuff remaining in them. Happy treasure hunting.
This is a pretty good ending to their magical item collections. Not only is the flavour far better than most, but the effects are also far more inventive and less "fair" than their recent Bazaars, with plenty of charged items and effects that aren't built around combat effectiveness or taking the obvious solution to problems. It's definitely nice that they feel they don't have to stick so closely to their usual design formulas for the final issue.
One last evening with the wizards three: Another little plot thread is tied up here, courtesy of the hard work and suffering of Edward Greenwood. He's been contributing stuff for 28 years now, seeing others come and go, and if anyone deserves the most praise for making the magazine as good as it is, it's him. The wizards three last met on the magazine's 30th anniversary, a bit over a year ago, so they're relatively fresh in regular readers minds. Now we get to see all four of them, as Dalamar manages to get day release from Krynn. And of course, the new member and the old returnee have sarcastic words to exchange to one-another. The banter is as sharp as ever, with some additional metaness as they both lampshade Elminster's persistent mischievous lechery, and these very articles. Mordenkainen finally confronts El about their persistent observer (while not letting slip that he's been aware of Ed for ages anyway. (see issues 196 and 200) It's a slightly strange ending, and does feel somewhat truncated, as they don't include any spells this time. I guess even with the expanded page count, they had lots of things they wanted to fit in, and so the editors had to do a bit of pruning on this one. Still, it is both entertaining in it's own right, and a nice bit of nostalgia fanservice for the longtime readers. There's likely to a be quite a few people picking up this issue who haven't touched one in years, and this is for them. And maybe this'll appear in the electronic issues sometime as well. Let's make a toast to shared history.
Elminster vs Raistlin: This again? Pff. Didn't issue 282 settle this one already. I guess not, since the battle was called off due to cheating. (as if anything could be called unfair in a battle of archmages. ) And once again, it's obvious that while Raistlin might just be able to pull a trick out of his sleeve and beat Elminster in an all-out fight, it's even more obvious that Elminster wins both in terms of raw power, and at life in general, as he actually gets to have friends and lovers and generally enjoy his long, interesting existence, while Raistlin's life is one trial and irritation after another. I'm definitely going to have to side with the guy who's been a huge help to adventurers everywhere with the info he shares over the one who almost destroyed the world. You should pick your role models based on what you want to be, not what you most closely resemble.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
part 7/8
The ecology of the Tarrasque: Hmm. So it's your final ecology. How do you make sure you go out with something big. Something that defines the D&D experience. Something that hasn't been done before. And then it hits you. No-ones done the tarrasque yet. The tarrasque, while not really the most badass monster in the game, has a unique position, seemingly designed specifically to serve as the capstone for an ordinary game, or the gateway monster to an epic one. A monster that you can't kill by simple application of force. A monster that spends most of it's time asleep, and can erupt into any campaign and devastate the land without warning, and then disappear again just as suddenly even if you fail to foil it. It makes for very dramatic stories indeed. And they get in not one, but two of the biggest names in ecologies to handle this one. Ed Greenwood shows up again to do the main part, with a cameo by Johnathan M Richard's association of monster hunters. Since both of these guys like their whimsy, the fiction does have some quite mischievous flourishes, including mention of how the creature has changed in the editions, and a foreshadowing of the big bit of loophole closing screwage that they would institute in 4e. Ed reminds us that he really is the king of weird little biological details and their implications, as well as useful little rules clarifications, which is something they almost totally lost in their drive for big bits of shiny new crunch.
Not that they neglect the big stuff either, with a CR30 advanced version of the tarrasque for those of you who get well into the epic levels before encountering it, and want it to stay genuinely scary. They even have a footnote, although it's a bit half-hearted. In other words, they draw from all the best parts of the ecology format from the last 25 years, and combine them in one kickass package. They really ought to have done this before the magazine was about to end. You shouldn't be afraid to try new things, but you also shouldn't be ashamed to go back to old methods if they work better than the ones you're currently trying. It's not nostalgia if it's still very much applicable to now.
Savage tidings: Welcome to the end of the adventure. If it weren't for this, the magazine would have come to an end several months sooner, and for that it definitely deserves credit. We finish off this series by looking back at what came before, and forward to what might come ahead. These recaps are actually very helpful to me, because of course I haven't read the Dungeon adventures, so this finally lets me have a better idea of what's been going on between the snapshots. Once again we have advice on how to incorporate new characters, which is of course increasingly awkward at this stage in the game. And they tackle the tricky question of what you do next. Epic levels are problematic in D&D in any edition, and especially when the entire campaign up to that point has been scripted, finishing that plot and suddenly opening things up usually results in anticlimax and grinding to a halt (see Babylon 5 for a great example of this.) You should either make plans even before it finishes, or be ready to say "and they lived happily ever after." and finish on a high. Will I live happily ever after now this is over? No chance. That's the difference between stories and reality. No matter what triumphs you make in reality, the ending is always going to be the same. Deterioration and eventual death. Still, once again, they've shown that they are aware of all the common problems, and taken steps to counter them. They've solved a good number of the problems inherent in the gameplay of 3.5. We can't expect them to solve reality as well. So lets sign off with the knowledge that at least our characters can get a happy ending, even if we don't. Peace out.
Volo's guide: This column is one of the few articles that feels like business as usual this month. Still, they probably had to choose which article from their buffer would get to go out this month. And not too surprisingly, they've picked another post metaplot event update. They warn you not to read this if you're playing the adventures and books where this stuff takes place. So let's see how Myth Drannor is coping, another 6 months after it's reclamation. Open violence has subsided quite a bit, but a definite siege mentality is developing, as both the zhents and drow enjoy hit and run attacks taking advantage of the woods and darkness. The really big monsters are pretty much gone, but there's still tons of little bits to unseal, many of which are still trapped. Surely there's only so much to uncover though. Give it 10 years, and the frontier town will become pacified and civilised, and within a century it'll be a thriving city again. What a co-incidence that they're planning a timeslip of that length over the edition change. :) They also include a full history of how we got to this point. As you'd expect, entries increase substantially in frequency once we get to the era we actually lived through. It's a good example of how things develop very differently in fiction when events happen in the present rather than as backstory. How long will the Realms enjoy that kind of attention before it dies, or at least goes on hiatus like all the other D&D settings have at some point. Being made into the living campaign world for the RPGA has pretty much assured it's survival for the duration of 4e, but what then? The novels certainly aren't coming with the frequency or sales they used to, nor are the rules books. Will even the biggest D&D setting die eventually? Or will it outlive it's creator, and still be going centuries of real time and millennia of game time in the future like Oz? Anyone going to offer odds? Lets hope for the best, because it still seems like there's room for tons of cool adventures in the Realms, even after all the cheese and crap it's had to deal with.
Dragonmarks: Keith Baker takes the reins personally for the final instalment of his campaign articles, instead of just overseeing things and writing portentous introductions. Another good example of their philosophy to get the big guns in and ensure they go out with a bang. He doesn't disappoint, with a collection of speculations and information about the Mourning. Playing on the fears of both nuclear and biological apocalypse, the city of khorvaire may be ruined, but ...... things lurk in the mist. Some of them insane, some of them incomprehensible, and others just irredeemably sociopathic, but none escaped unscathed. (and this month's influences aaare - Kingdom hearts, and Robin Hobb's Assassin series. ) Why did it happen? Will it happen again? If this was any of the old AD&D lines, these questions would be canonically answered in a few years, but thanks to eberron's frozen timeline, this may never happen. Will this change come next edition. As of writing this, I'm not sure. Still, we have more than enough plot hooks here to run a good few adventures. The rest of the story is up to you. Don't be afraid to take it in directions the original writers never intended. The canon police will not break down your door for doing so.
Dragon Issue 359: September 2007
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Sage advice is of course, getting in theme for the final issue, with the questions having a definite death theme.
If the creator of an effect dies, does the effect end. (Only if it needs concentration, yess.)
What is a death effect. Is it anything that causes instant death. (No. Special descriptor. Look for it. )
Can you use bluff to feign death when hit. How would the enemy penetrate it (Only with a readied action. Jusst the way the rules work. Spot check.)
What counts as a single attack for the massive damage rule (iff you make a single roll to attack or ssave, itss a single attack. )
What kind of action is the assassins death attack. (Whatever type of action the attack itss attached to iss.)
What happens to a familiar when its master dies (It becomeses a normal animal again. Don't worry, geraldine, Andy will protect you, yess, collins collins. )
What happens to a psicrystal when it's creator dies (Becomes inert, yess. Same principle. )
If you're killed wearing a ring of regeneration, do you lose a level when you regenerate. (If it regenerates you, you never really died. If you died, it can't regenerate you. Ssilly question.)
If you die from a disease or poison, does it keep running (it doessn't matter, because raising you will get rid of it. Unless itss a nassty magical disease, collins collins. Andy hatses them.)
If you raise a character with with negative levels, what happens (You need to roll to see if they become permanent sstraight away. Thiss might kill you again.)
What special qualities do you keep after death (Mosst of them, yess.)
What happens when you kill a summoned creature with death throes (They activate as normal, then it goes back to itss home plane, right asss rain. Very sstrange, yess. )
Does an undead creature stay undead after being defeated. No, but it's sstill hard to raise because you had to messs up the body. Undead take a lot of chopping up to sstop. Very grossss, collins collins. )
Does being undead count against your lifespan (no)
Do magic jar and trap the soul work on ghosts (No rule againsst it, even if magic jar doessn't make much ssense as written.)
Does a ghost rejuvenate even if you didn't reduce it's HP to 0 when killing it (yess. Nassty ghosties are nearly impossible to get rid of by combat.)
Does a vampire turn to gas even if you kill it without reducing it's hp to 0 (no. They do sstay down. )
How much damage can a dead body take before being destroyed (Use the destroying object rules, yess. )
NOW IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO RELINQUISH THE MANTLE OF SAGEHOOD!!
Noo, collins collins. Pleasse don't take it away. Pleassse! Look at Geraldinesss ssad eyeses. Andy wass going to give him the chance to do it next month. You wouldn't take that away from Andy, collins collins. You wouldn't take that away from Geraldine, collins collins! Andy will change, yess. Andy can go electronic, yess?
NO! YOU HAVE CONSISTENTLY PROVEN UNRELIABLE TO US! WE HAVE A DIFFERENT PLACE INTENDED FOR YOU IN THE NEW ORDER!!! GOODBYE!
:fading sobbing:
Class acts: Adventurers get Body Modifications. (and a truly miraculous avoidance of showing pubic hair, considering the pic's pose) Not quite as cyberpunk as the last time they tackled this, this is still an inventive and sometimes gross set of ideas involving implanting objects into your body. Skin pouches for contraband, subdermal armor and retractible weapons, and for the ultimate twink, the chakra mutilation to create an extra magic item slot. (just the thing a soulmeld shaper would think of. ) The lengths some adventurers go to for that little extra edge.
Arcane finishes off the series of collations with wizards getting their guide. Gotta preserve the symmetry :sigh: Even Mialee looks incredibly bored with this.
Divine ties up some more loose ends, with Forgotten Faiths. For whatever reasons, the 6 gods here never got an official D&D 3e writeup (although Ezra did appear in the 3rd ed WW Ravenloft stuff. ) Seems a bit late to convert them now, but it would be a shame to leave guys like Kanchelsis and the Queen of air and darkness to moulder in 2nd ed. Will we ever see them reemerge in some form in 4e? Time will tell.
Warriors get The Universal Key. Smashing things is a universally accepted way of gaining entry or egress from a place, but there are more subtle means. Like acid, rust cubes, hacksaws, blowtorches, etc. And if they fail you can take a feat that makes the brute force option even more effective, blowing through an object's hardness at higher level. Nothing hugely groundbreaking here.
And finally, we get a special class act from Monte Cook. As arcane stuff got a crap deal earlier, and monte does love his magic, he gives us Arcane Lore Abilities. 8 new powerful feats intended for high level spellcasters, to represent permanent alterations they've performed on themselves in the course of their magical researches. Just the thing for when you're reaching those epic levels, and really want to get some powers that make you stand out for the final part of your campaign. 3e may fall apart around these levels, but he's done far more than his fair share of work to help you go out in style, with Ptolus' adventure paths culminating in Jabel Shammar, Arcana Evolved going to 25, and now this. It's good to see him make an actual appearance at the end of things, after his parody cameo in nodwick last month. Like George Clooney in the final episode of ER, this definitely helps this series feel more resolved.
Nodwick reveals who is behind their loss of reputation. But it's still not a happy ending, really. This is what happens when you annoy the creator of the universe. You just can't win, can you.
Dork tower turns out the lights. But we've still got a few pages to go. And that joke is overused for ending shows anyway. You'll just have to turn them on again. We'll wait. Try not to trip over anything in the meantime.
Order of the stick make a desperate break for freedom. And ride off into the sunset, with a host of cameos. Shame it's out of continuity. The real adventure continues on Rich's webpage. And dragon is still electronic only. Still, we can dream, can't we?
So we've reached the final page. What's next? Who knows. But What's New is there to give us a fond farewell (my, hasn't Growf grown up handsome when we weren't looking), and yet another abortive attempt at sex in D&D. Don't say it was all a dream. Nooooooo!
And that's a wrap. Not a bad one, all things told. They had a higher budget, they managed to round off most of their current projects, and still found the time to give several old favourites one last spin. It's about as satisfying as you're going to get given the short notice. Here's to closure, even if there was still so much more they could have done. Here's to 31 years of them, and nearly 6 years of me reviewing them. And now to step out into the fresh air, and to see what tomorrow brings. Fare thee well, everybody.
Quote from: (un)reason;731901And that's a wrap. Not a bad one, all things told. They had a higher budget, they managed to round off most of their current projects, and still found the time to give several old favourites one last spin. It's about as satisfying as you're going to get given the short notice. Here's to closure, even if there was still so much more they could have done. Here's to 31 years of them, and nearly 6 years of me reviewing them. And now to step out into the fresh air, and to see what tomorrow brings. Fare thee well, everybody.
Congrats on wrapping up the project. Maybe see more of you around the rest of the forum?
Congratulations on this epic undertaking; truly an incredible project. :)
I'm lucky enough to have the Dragon Magazine Archive so I able to read along to most of these entries. I'm sorry to see that (as you noted) 2e was so out of favour by the end - I've always considered it 'my' edition despite, or maybe because I played much more 3 and 3.5. I still have a few physical copies from that era - one of these days I'm going to play a Merlane (from #237).
Well, I made it, at long last. So the big question I'm sure you're wondering is what I'm going to do next. While I could continue straight on with the electronic issues, I am loath to do so, simply because I've been so busy doing this over the past 6 years that I haven't actually got the chance to play 4e, so I don't feel I'd be a proper judge of it yet. Plus whatever the quality of the 4e issues, I do know that the page count does decline dramatically over them, so I would catch up with the present all too quickly.
Instead, I have a different target in mind. While complete collections of Dragon and Dungeon are easily found on the internet if you know how to look, this still is not the case for Polyhedron. And as easily the largest source of official D&D material that's still obscure to most people, I'm very curious about it, and would like to know more.
So here's the deal. If I can assemble a complete collection of Polyhedron Newszine, preferably physical, I'll return for another epic pass through history, starting with Polyhedron, interleaving Polyhedron and Dungeon where they run concurrently, finishing the physical issues of Dungeon, and then continuing with both halves of the DDI, at least up to the point where they went on hiatus at the end of last year, maybe more if there's another good cutoff point by the time I get that far. Any help you can offer with this would be much appreciated. Message me here, or at dimerous@hotmail.com. So this is not goodbye, but merely see you around. Until the next adventure. :salutes:
Quote from: Warthur;731905Congrats on wrapping up the project. Maybe see more of you around the rest of the forum?
If there's anything I want to comment on. I do read other threads a fair amount, even if I don't have that much to say usually. I don't intend to go anywhere.
Quote from: RossN;731928Congratulations on this epic undertaking; truly an incredible project. :)
I'm lucky enough to have the Dragon Magazine Archive so I able to read along to most of these entries. I'm sorry to see that (as you noted) 2e was so out of favour by the end - I've always considered it 'my' edition despite, or maybe because I played much more 3 and 3.5. I still have a few physical copies from that era - one of these days I'm going to play a Merlane (from #237).
There's a name I haven't seen in a LONG time. How's it going?
Quote from: (un)reason;732019There's a name I haven't seen in a LONG time. How's it going?
Oh, fine thanks. Mostly on RPOL these days - very much into PBP. As I said I've really enjoyed this project. I'd be tempted to try a Let's Read thread myself if I thought I could complete it.
I'd definitely be interested in seeing you tackle Polyhedron, which I'm not really familiar with at all.
This was an epic effort. I don't play anymore but reading your summaries brought back a lot of great memories. Thank you!
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72 pages. What? You honestly didn't think that after a performance as epic as this, I wouldn't have the energy for an encore? Think again! They did not just one, but five best of's between 1979 and 1986, back in the days when you couldn't just get back issues from the internet, so reprints actually mattered a good deal in helping new players to see the old material. And this gives me a chance to look back and see how my opinion has changed, several years and several tons of perspective later. What still holds up and deserves to be influential today, and what should have been forgotten, never to darken their printers again?
Since we're dealing with old school articles, it's instantly notable that they're a lot smaller than the ones we've got used too, cramming 39 into 68 pages. Paper costs were obviously a bigger proportion of their budget, since they put so much more effort into cramming as much info into the room they had, with smaller typefaces and less art. Looking back over my old reviews, I notice I had a good deal less to say about each article as well. Let's see if that's because there's simply less to say, or it was just lack of experience first time around.
Planes: Our first article is an excellent example of just how impenetrable Gary's prose could be. I know what the planes are, you know what the planes are, but trying to figure it out just from this article would be a far longer process than it should be for it's size. It has a particular obsession with magical weapons losing plusses as you move further away from their plane of origin, which is the kind of rule that just adds extra bookkeeping to the DM's job for the sole purpose of screwing over players. (especially since so many extraplanar monsters required certain numbers of plusses to hurt at all. ) While it may have been one of the first building blocks for the D&D cosmology, we're still a long way from a house that you can actually live in, and this bit of foundation isn't particularly exciting in itself.
How green was my Mutant: Ah yes, a good old-fashioned bit of random character generation. How I have missed ye. Both metamorphosis alpha and gamma world revelled in making your character as weird as possible, and this is one early example, letting you give your character a wide range of colours and body shapes. Curiously, it's pretty much system free, (although, logically, having different numbers of fingers and toes would make a real difference to your capabilities) so you can easily use it for other games. This one still seems both amusing and usable.
Some Ideas Missed in Metamorphosis Alpha: Jim Ward was full of cool ideas in the early days, but sometimes struggled with the mechanics, especially since he was one of the most prone to making overpowered stuff, and running monty haul campaigns. This article is a good example of that, as it provides errata for the items list, and some of it is indeed rather powerful, particularly the sensory intensifiers. It was a time before editors rose to power in the company, and it shows. Could do with more work.
Alternate Beginning for Metamorphosis Alpha: Here's another article that still has lots of general applicability today. Starting your players off as clones who have basic skills but no knowledge of the setting is a good thing to do when it's their first time, and you don't want to waste time doing infodumps. You can do similar things in other fantasy/sci-fi settings by having them start as ignorant peasants who've never left their village, or people from the real world who've gone through a portal/been frozen and woken up in the future. After all, it's worked for stories as different as Narnia and Thomas Covenant. And for all that people can hide their knowledge and try to avoid metagaming, it's never truly the same second time around. Use this trick when it most makes sense. Funnily enough, you can rebuild the 4th wall later.
Hints for D&D Judges: Joe Fischer was one of the people who never became a full writer for TSR, but still played a significant part in D&D's development. Someone was bound to introduce the ranger class eventually, but it might well have turned out very different. Similarly, being one of the first people to write about town and wilderness adventures gives him a little more influence than normal, as this three part article shows. He does put a fairly strong emphasis on mapping, wherever you are, that remained strong throughout the 80's, and has since fallen out of fashion. As with any clear step-by-step advice, this is excellent at helping you be creative when raw inspiration isn't with you, and much of this has fallen out of fashion enough that it feels fresh when reintroduced. There are good reasons to go back to the old school, and things like this are amongst them, because a clear picture of where everything is and why it's there still makes more sense than distorted close-up wide-angle shots and shakycam.
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The Play's the Thing: Ha. I'd forgotten they'd used this article title before Robin Laws so comprehensively made it his own. It's amusing because this is the kind of advice that might have seemed ground-breaking at one point, but we now take it for granted. Invest a little personality into your characters, and make them more than just avatars for fighting and exploration. Very valid when you've been wargaming for years, and view roleplaying as an evolution of that, but oddly enough, something new players are likely to do without even thinking about it. Definitely one of the stranger things about the hobby and how it originated.
Languages: Ah yes, the whole languages rigamarole in OD&D. You got a set amount based on your intelligence, plus a few extra if a demihuman, and that was it, since they had yet to introduce a skill system. Most races only had a single language that everyone spoke. And they never did entirely clear up what the hell alignment tongues were. This can lead to both frustration and amusing parody, as the whole ability to speak Were-St-Bernard indicates. Definitely don't miss this bit of clunkiness, and it definitely reminds me why many people found Runequest preferable as soon as it came out. There are just so much more elegant ways of handling the communication business.
The Development of Towns in D&D: A second, longer set of worldbuilding advice in pretty much the same vein as Joe Fischer's. Your worldbuilding needs to balance ensuring everything is there for the town to survive, and making things interesting for adventurers. Although, really, there seems to be more emphasis on the logistics side of things than making the town interesting in itself, apart from a section on tavern rumours, showing that they primarily see them as a place to go between dungeon-crawls rather than primary adventure locations in themselves. The days when the monsters come too and live among you are yet to come. So this article reminds me that those were more innocent times, and there's a lot of basic assumptions they have yet to be disabused of. So it goes. Muahahaha.
Let there be a Method to your Madness: This one is also an expansion of the same things said just a few pages ago, talking about building dungeons by considering who built them and what their purpose (and budget) was. Despite there being far less explored territory, they still wound up rehashing themselves even in the early issues. This is a bit tiresome, especially since I've seen variations on this spiel all down the line. You certainly didn't have to do it twice within the same collection, and lose a mark as editors for that.
Designing for Unique Wilderness encounters: This one is ALSO repeating and expanding on Joe Fischer's advice, which makes me think they did this deliberately. Still, at least by offering random terrain generation tables, they're giving more practical assistance than just telling you to think logically about these things, and come up with stuff based on that. But still, this is getting very tiresome, and makes me think this best of could have been even smaller and still retained it's value. NEXT!
The Total Person in Metamorphosis Alpha: We already had an article for determining your physical description randomly in MA. Now we expand that, so you can randomly determine your backstory as well. Actually seems like it's more of use to the DM, as they're more likely to need to make a whole batch of NPC's in a hurry. I suppose it demonstrates how different the default was back then, with random generation as standard. Many people took that for granted all through the 80's. It doesn't seem particularly applicable to games other than MA or Gamma World, so I don't think I'll be able to get much use out of it, but it's still interesting as a historical artifact. This is how building a well-rounded character with depth worked back in the day.
How Heavy is my Giant: The Square-Cube law is such a damper on our fantastical imaginations. It's also a problem in OD&D in particular because of the bounded ability score ranges, making the difference between human peak and giant strength seem too small, while not allowing for truly gargantuan creatures at all. So this little realism in fantasy article is a somewhat frustrating one to be reminded of, but also fascinating because it goes into a good deal of mathematical detail that the D&D rules just can't match up to. You have writers making up monster descriptions on the fly, and then you have to deal with the logical consequences, which can be rather a headache. This is really a precursor to the Ecologies, examining how a monster fits into the world, and how devastating they could really be to the environment. (including the formula for how deep their footprints would be) It's another thing they haven't done in quite a while, and I'm surprised they lost interest in, since you can go endlessly down the rabbit hole by examining the logical consequences of things. Oh well, we'll always have the ones that do exist, and there are plenty of them.
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Notes from a Semi-Successful D&D Player: Sometimes trying to apply logic to your fantasy game ruins the fun. Other times, it makes it even more fun, such as Jim Ward's twinky tricks that take advantage of existing spells and equipment, and use them to brutal effect. Polymorphing, poison, blinding, and the now ubiquitous continual light stone. Use them right and you can win a battle in a single strike. After all, when many random monsters can take out a party member every round, (or a whole bunch in the case of beholders) it's only fair. God, that really rubs in how things have changed, given how much effort they've put in since then to keep you from short-circuiting encounters. It's a whole different philosophy. And one which makes what you learn in game more applicable to real life conflicts, where things are almost never fair. I think this is a case where we could learn from the old schoolers, because if we were put in a challenge under an unfamiliar system, they would kick our asses.
Tolkien in Dungeons & Dragons: This one I definitely remember. The whole D&D is not just based on Tolkien, just because we used his demihumans rant. This is one where I'm feeling a bit more magnanimous than the first time around. Then, I definitely felt that the writer doth protest too much. Now, I can understand more why they'd be irritated that people take one element of what they did and focussed on it to the exclusion of everything else. And I can definitely understand their preference for episodic tales of adventure rather than making the whole campaign into one epic story of saving the world, as it's hard to run those when you have a large rotating pool of players who may or may not be there each session. I do still think they're overstating Middle-earth's uselessness for other adventures though. It was full of weird little magical bits that didn't fit into the larger picture, like Beorn, Tom Bombadil, talking animals (and purses), vampires, etc, and there was plenty of room for other people to make their mark beyond the stories in the Silmarillion, since there were thousands of years and several continents left uncovered. It's well worth mining some more, especially the unfinished tales and histories.
The meaning of Law and Chaos in D&D: This is one I remember very clearly too. Turning D&D from a 3 alignment system to an asymmetrical 5 alignment system, with an 8x11 set of subdivisions within each quadrant as an interim before they went for the full 9 point 3x3 grid. It's just so oddly specific, and yet different from the form they stuck with for 3 editions. (before curiously, moving back toward it in 4e. ) Like their original conception of the planes, I have to wonder where it came from, and why it's so different from the fantasy that was supposedly their inspiration. Here's to uniqueness. After all, it may be risky, but it's what we remember in the long run.
D&D is only as good as the DM: In which Gary reminds us that we shouldn't give out xp and magical items too generously, and let players progress beyond the levels the game is designed to handle. As with the Tolkien in D&D article, there's a definite feel that Gary had a personal vision of what D&D should be, and was a little pissed off that other people wound up playing it in such a different way, and tried to add rules to make the game work better for those playstyles. Sometimes you've got to set your baby free to let it reach it's full potential. This does leave me wondering what 2e would have been like if he'd remained at the helm. Obviously the classes from Unearthed Arcana would have stayed in, but would we have missed out on the huge variety of settings and sourcebooks for things like historical time periods in return. It seems quite probable, since even in 1985 he was calling for a return to the roots of gaming, rather than all this froofy obsession with character detail. Definitely stuff worth thinking about here, and a reminder that our history could have gone in a very different direction at several junctions.
Gary Gygax on Dungeons & Dragons: Another article that reminds us that Gary's view on D&D history was filled with self-aggrandisement, as he makes it absolutely clear that he was more important to the creation of D&D than Dave Arneson. Sure, it was Dave's idea to turn Chainmail into a game of dungeon delving where each player controlled a single character, but Gary did all the heavy lifting to turn it into a publishable manuscript, and most of the early promotional work, and he was proved right when he published it despite Dave not thinking it was ready. Taking responsibility gives you power, and history is written by the winners. (or at least survivors) How differently would the story have been told if someone else was doing it? Even after 30 years of building up a legend, I'm not one to believe the hype.
The Dungeons & Dragons Magic System: Still more ramblings from Gary, as he gets sick of explaining and justifying his design decisions to every new player who doesn't understand why he made it this way and thinks a spell point system would work better. It really isn't rocket science. If spellcasters used a spell point system, they could spam a single spell instead of having to think carefully about their selection and use each one cleverly. Plus if they could use their spells more frequently, the individual spells would need to be weaker for them to remain balanced with other classes. The lengthy memorisation times and rolls to learn spells at all also keep them from being able to dominate the game until they get to high level, and their higher XP costs mean they have to work harder to get to a particular level at all. Really, this serves to point out where both 3e and 4e got it wrong. 3e by removing the logistical checks and balances on wizards and CoDzilla so they no longer had to work harder offscreen to make up for their greater flexibility, and 4e by cutting down their magic selections and capabilities to the point where they were completely nonwondrous in the name of encounter level balance rather than campaign level. No edition has got it entirely right, and this still definitely needs more thinking about. How do we get suitably mythic spellcasters and not leave the warriors feeling overshadowed in out games?
Best of Dragon Magazine 1
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Monster Reference Table Addition: They didn't start doing april fools issues until the 80's. However, they didn't need too, as they had more than a few silly articles all year round. Such as this one, detailing a whole bunch of joke monsters based on gamer stereotypes. (and also riffing off the fact that many people mistook the % in lair probability for % chance they would lie to you. ) The game may change, but the personality types remain the same, and so this remains entirely applicable today. (although the hippy jokes will probably need to be replaced with appropriate hipster ones ) It's good to be able to laugh at ourselves, which is another thing that grew scarce in the last few years of the magazine.
Miscellaneous Treasure: Following directly on from the last article are the real world based joke magic items, including the ring of wedding, the various levels of magic missile (government surplus) and the dread Bi-labial fricative. More fun but non rules-legal and completely inconsequential stuff that shows just how different their standards for accepting articles were those days, let alone printing them. I find it very interesting indeed that they're putting these in the best of. I suppose as issue 359's top ten list proved, the joke articles are the ones people remember, and talk about again and again. From that perspective, it doesn't seem strange at all.
Deserted Cities of Mars: Whatever happened to the Barsoom influence on fantasy? It's pretty much been superseded by later waves of authors, to the point where the attempt at a big budget John Carter movie completely flopped because the public in general had forgotten about it, and the marketing suuuuucked. That leaves this article feeling very much like an anachronism, like the deserted cities within it, a relic of times before the water dried up and the world moved on. I suppose that means if you do use it, no-one'll see it coming, and they might find the strange architecture cool and memorable. So it goes to show how completely some things can fade from the public consciousness, even in the internet age where nearly everything is two clicks away. How many gems from centuries before have been forgotten by all but the biggest libraries and are just waiting for the right revivalist?
Monkish Combat in the Arena of Promotion: This article feels somewhat less anachronistic, as Rock/Paper/Scissors style combat remains a common thing thanks to the success of Pokemon. With 8 different attacks, and 10 other manoeuvres, it certainly offers a fair amount of tactical choice, so skill in second-guessing your opponent is critical to winning, even if there are power differences. Since it's a completely disconnected subsystem, and the ability scores that you derive your stats from have remained the same throughout the editions you could use it as a diversion in 1e, 3e or 4e if you felt like it. Funny how that kind of thing works out. Some things seem timeless, while others look terribly dated a few years later, and you can never be sure which is which.
Some Thoughts on the Speed of a Lightning Bolt: Ugh. The whole weapon speed and spellcasting time in segments rigamarole. One of the least used bits of rules in AD&D, and quite rightly so, because it slows the game down so very much. It may serve to rebalance the fighter and wizard a little if done correctly, but it's a lot of work for negative extra fun. It fully deserved to be left out of later editions, and likewise, this article can stay mouldering in the vaults to be forgotten.
What to do when the Dog eats your Dice: This lighthearted little piece, which suggested using things like mexican jumping beans as randomisers on the other hand, remains just about relevant today. The internet makes it far easier to order custom dice of all kinds, all over the world, and you no longer need to colour them in with crayons, but sometimes, they will go missing just when you need them most. The Tom Wham illustrations really add to it, bringing extra humour in a way they just can't do today, even in the april issues, because it would clash with the current art direction. It's not as if they don't have the talent either, as I'm sure Rich Burlew could pull of something with just as much flavour. I don't know. Getting serious and professional can propel you forward, but it can also become a straitjacket.
Excerpt from an Interview with a Rust Monster: Another silly article here, reminding us that adventuring could as easily turn into comedy of errors as it could badass heroics. In fact, it might actually be more common for starting groups, as stories like this continued in the editorials long after they'd vanished from the articles themselves. It also reminds us about Gary's weird love for magical fountains, which I still don't really understand. Why did they play such a big part in the early randomly generated dungeons, other than to make the players paranoid of everything and play cruel practical jokes on them? I suppose that question answers itself, given the other articles in this collection. So this is another good example of the old school spirit in practical action. Sometimes it's just good to be whimsical.
Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery: We've had some non D&D RPG stuff. Now for a little wargaming, as they show us how to cross over D&D and Tractics. An excellent example of how they didn't take genre lines or the 4th wall so seriously back in the old days, partly because they didn't have built up settings and audience expectations to upset. So it's highly amusing to go back to Monsters Vs Nazi's with fresh eyes. The monsters won the sample battle, thanks to the element of surprise, but they set the statistics so things could have gone the other way. After all, automatic weapons have pretty impressive ranges compared to D&D spells, and the heavier artillery matches up to fireballs and lightning bolts in terms of damage. Real world technology can be almost as fantastical as magic, especially in these days of internet and iphones. Still, it's probably easier to do it by combining d20 modern and 3e than kitbashing the old stuff. They might have moved away from it in official products, but the rules developments still make it easier to do it in your own game. Funny how that's worked out.
Best of Dragon Magazine 1
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Illusionists: Ah yes, the illusionist. Definitely one addition to AD&D that caused a fair few problems over the years. Part of this was that illusion spells were a pain to adjudicate, and became useless against many higher level monsters. The other was the distinction between illusionists and wizards, and what it really meant when high level wizards could do pretty much anything with the right spells, Really, if they wanted strong niche protection, they should have broken up both fighting and spellcasting classes into more specialised types straight away, so each spellcasting class had a more limited selection of tricks. Oh well, way too late to close that particular barn door. If only they could figure out some way to bring fighters and rogues up in versatility to a similar level instead of nerfing the spellcasters.
Illusionist Additions: Following on from the problems raised by the illusionist, we have the problems raised by keeping these two articles in their original formatting, instead of cleaning them up and merging them together. I guess by this point the 1e corebooks were all out, so you could get the updated and revised version of the illusionist (with all these spells and more) in there. So this makes it all the more obvious they're aiming this collection at people who want a bit of nostalgia. Not that I object to that. But it does hit the usability a little. I guess someone would complain whichever way round they did it.
Tombs and Crypts: We already have a fairly substantial random treasure table to make finding out what stuff monsters have to take after you kill them quick and easy. Why exactly Jim Ward thought we needed one specifically for crypts specifically I'm not sure. Chalk it up to a classic case of disconnected design processes. It's also very much a Jim Ward production in that it's exceedingly generous with the treasure it grants, so use with caution, especially if you're also using treasure as xp, for it looks like a relatively easy way to gain a few levels here. Gary might have wanted you to painstakingly earn each level over years of play, but he's not going to get his wish with people like this in the company. :p
Halflings, Dwarves, Clerics & Thieves in DUNGEON!: Looks like they've even managed to fit in a bit of old boardgaming stuff here. That's how you really know it's an old school collection. And you know, I've still never played the DUNGEON! boardgame, so I still can't say if these additions are balanced or not. Well, they're easy to understand, anyway, which is always important for a pick up and play game. Once again, it's definitely a relief to see the variety in content after slogging through the 3e years.
Statistics Regarding Classes: Bards: Unlike the ranger and illusionist, which were pretty clunky in their original implementations, the bard still looks surprisingly solid as a generalist who can fill in for the fighter, thief or wizard at a pinch, and also has a few tricks of their own on top of that. The charm and lore abilities are actually pretty elegantly implemented, with enemy resistances scaling with level so they don't become unstoppable or useless no matter how powerful they are. It makes Gary's decision to turn them into an exceedingly specific and somewhat clunky multi-class that didn't follow the normal multi or dual classing rules seem all the more baffling. It's a good example that progress doesn't always make things better, especially where creator ego is involved. This time, the original takes it.
The Original Ranger Class: The Ranger, on the other hand, suffers in hindsight for being introduced before the Druid, which also added a substantial suite of nature affecting spells that they really could do with as well. It's also notable for having several features that are completely based upon emulating Aragorn in particular, rather than just woodsy sorts in general, such as the alignment restriction and the ability to use magical items related to scrying. Plus the odd restrictions on followers and bonus xp at low levels instead of just rejigging the tables seem pretty odd and arbitrary these days. This is one class that definitely shows the benefit of refinement over subsequent editions.
Wizard Research Rules: Ah yes, bankruptcy time. :) The article where they decide to make spell research costs double with each increase in level, rather than the quadratic approach chosen in 3e. Well, I suppose xp costs also doubled with level, and you got most of your XP from treasure back in 1e. Still, it does mean you have to choose between developing a single 9th level spell, or building a decent wizard's tower. Actually, that doesn't seem like such a bad tradeoff after all, since it keeps wizards from getting to the do everything better than you stage so easily. Maybe they should have kept it.
Witchcraft supplement for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: All these years, and we still have no idea who originally sent this in, despite three subsequent articles building upon it. It's a strange duck, especially in this original incarnation, where they're treated very much as monsters rather than a class with an experience table and proper advancement. The spells are pretty cool though, and full of flavor, as they're powerful but specific, with no fear of inflicting permanent conditions on the players. You may beat these witches but be left shrunken, aged, polymorphed or cursed, requiring another adventure to fix things. On the plus side, you'll also get more than the usual amount of cool magical items if you beat them too. Fair and balanced encounters? Really? I think not. Stuff like this is far more memorable, and makes for better stories too.
Quote from: (un)reason;732836Best of Dragon Magazine 1
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Illusionists: Ah yes, the illusionist. Definitely one addition to AD&D that caused a fair few problems over the years. Part of this was that illusion spells were a pain to adjudicate, and became useless against many higher level monsters. The other was the distinction between illusionists and wizards, and what it really meant when high level wizards could do pretty much anything with the right spells, Really, if they wanted strong niche protection, they should have broken up both fighting and spellcasting classes into more specialised types straight away, so each spellcasting class had a more limited selection of tricks. Oh well, way too late to close that particular barn door. If only they could figure out some way to bring fighters and rogues up in versatility to a similar level instead of nerfing the spellcasters.
Illusionist Additions: Following on from the problems raised by the illusionist, we have the problems raised by keeping these two articles in their original formatting, instead of cleaning them up and merging them together. I guess by this point the 1e corebooks were all out, so you could get the updated and revised version of the illusionist (with all these spells and more) in there. So this makes it all the more obvious they're aiming this collection at people who want a bit of nostalgia. Not that I object to that. But it does hit the usability a little. I guess someone would complain whichever way round they did it.
...
Oh, my favourite class! I admit they are very DM dependent and yes the higher level monsters issue is a problem but thematically I love them.
Best of Dragon Magazine 1
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Solo DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Adventures: Now this is one article that remains pretty firmly embedded in my mind. The biggest and most interesting article from the first strategic review, I've got a fair amount of use from it over the past 5 years, and it remains useful in other editions, and even other RPG's entirely. Sometimes, you just don't have time to generate a map, and this does the job, even if the results are sometimes a little strange. And of course, sometimes you want that strangeness, as generating random results and then trying to retrofit some logic to them is a fun mental exercise. This is one article that completely deserves it's place here, quite possibly with even higher billing, because it is just so very useful and stimulating. It's just so much easier to be creative when you aren't working in vacuum, with no directions or limitations.
Lycanthropy: The Progress of the Disease: Or goddamnit, don't turn my character into an NPC just as they're getting interesting. Goes to show, right from the beginning, we had to deal with the battle between those who wanted more cool character options, and those who wanted to stick to the rules as written. Of course, in a magazine that constantly needs to deliver new stuff to remain valid, it's obvious who is going to win. Still, as characters lose as many powers as they gain, or more in the case of spellcasters, and it takes a long time to gain complete control over your transformations, I don't think this counts as overpowered. It's certainly no Werewolf: the Apocalypse, but it'll do for now.
The Japanese Mythos: Now here's a great example of the sheer density they could pack in in the old days, before they decided to have bigger typefaces and pad things out with artwork. A mix of 66 gods, monsters,. heroes and magical items in three and a half pages? That's pretty cool, actually. You know, if they'd gone the other way, and worked on communicating information even more succinctly instead of letting page counts balloon over the years, they could have increased that by a few more orders of magnitude. But that would require a strong pressure to keep page counts low, and we live in times where things like that are cheap and reproduction of information is even cheaper. Maybe if civilisation collapsed, but then we'd have more important things to do than preserving the art of roleplaying. Anyway, the density of the statblocks really makes sense here, since you can look up the finer details of japanese mythology on your own power. I approve, and many modern articles could learn from it.
Random Monsters: Even after only 5 years, D&D had already gone through a fair amount of evolution, and some players had become both experienced and genre-savvy. This certainly applies to the much-missed Paul Crabaugh, who would certainly have contributed a good deal more over the years if he'd lived. Here's one of his early contributions. While it allows a fair amount of randomness, it still shows the limitations of being an early bit of design, with the types of monsters and their capabilities being fairly bounded, rather than truly scary, alien, and open-ended. That said, things like immunity to nonmagical weapons and instadeath poison are pretty nasty, but it's nothing worse than existing monsters. So this is fairly fair by the standards of the day, and players should be able to survive even these monsters if they play smart and don't just attack everything head-on. It just about stands the test of time.
D&D Option: Demon Generation: We end with a second variation on the same theme, this time by an official writer. Curiously, this is actually less balanced, and more likely to produce gonzo overpowered results than the third party one, as demons get very substantial amounts of spell-like abilities, some of which are far better and more flexible than others. These won't be an appropriate challenge until your group is pretty high level. So like Gary's official classes compared to the other ones introduced in the magazine, this is a case where the third party stuff turns out superior, or at least more usable in actual play. Definitely worth noting.
Well, this was certainly a huge breath of fresh air after the 3e years, covering a wider range of topics, and considerably less bound to seriousness and orthodoxy of design. On the other hand, it was very much dominated by Gary and Jim Ward, and both their good and bad aspects were in full play here, unrestrained by the hands of editors. It goes to show, there are good and bad parts to both approaches. As usual, I'm just grateful at this point I can pick and choose the bast aspects of them all. Now let's see what lessons they learned from it, and how they refined the format in the next four best of's.
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
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85 Pages: 2 years later, the end of 1981, and they're still using exactly the same cover, only in a different colour. The contents are a little different though. they've already dropped their penchant for putting unnecessary Capitals in the Middle of Titles, and divided the articles into themed sections, which is a positive development. Not so positive is that they've already cut out all the non D&D material. A couple of years of meteoric sales increases has made everything else seem secondary, and they have to please their new audience. There might still be several non D&D articles a month in the regular issues, but this all seems very familiar. Oh well, that's how it goes. At least I only have to live through it in microcosm this time around.
NEW NPC'S (OLD FAVOURITES): No surprise that new classes get preferential treatment when it comes to reprints. Although they might be billed as NPC only, no-one took that prohibition seriously, and many people were eager to try out any new bit of crunch we got, since they didn't show up every month, and there were far fewer supplements in general released as well. Until they oversaturated the market, they got a lot of letters asking for more like this. So here we go, time to reap what we sowed.
The Anti-Paladin: No escaping this one, even if they're one class that's actually stuck as NPC's simply because they didn't add an experience table. And hey ho, they still get a fairly extensive suite of powers as they advance to make them look like a good big bad for a party, whatever their level, and they're still selfish assholes who have to be in charge or plotting to backstab the guy who is. I think that concept survives the test of time, even if the mechanics have been refined in later editions. Once more for good luck before we go. Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Samurai: These, on the other hand, still look extremely clunky indeed, as they're basically a bunch of extra powers bolted onto the fighter chassis with no drawbacks but the social one. That grew increasingly irksome as I saw it in kit after kit throughout 2e, and I'm not amused to be reminded that it started out this early. At least when they became a class of their own in OA, they had both serious social ties to deal with, alignment restrictions and higher XP costs, plus they lacked the low level larceny abilities Bushi enjoyed. You can't just cram in ideas willy-nilly, it just makes a mess.
Healers: Annoyingly, while healers were a fully functional, if somewhat odd class in issue 3, the reprint here leaves out their XP and spell advancement list, which means they're not usable if you own only this anthology. That makes me very grumpy indeed, as their idiosyncratic spell selection and the order in which they got access to things really made them stand out from standard clerics. The editors really aren't doing their job properly here, making this pretty disappointing so far compared to the previous best of.
Berserkers: The animal totem berserkers from issue 3 also look somewhat goofy in hindsight, with their restricted maximum intelligence being particularly amusing, but at least they're fully functional as a class, (or actually a set of 5 classes) with XP tables, followers at high levels, incentives to act appropriately, and drawbacks. I can definitely see these playing a substantial part in a campaign as NPC's, and players wanting to be one too. They may have been done better in 3e as a prestige class, but these still at least have a certain charm to them.
Scribes: These on the other hand, don't feel so much like a proper class, as a big fuck you to players, forcing them to rely on others and spend substantial amounts of money by creating an arbitrary monopoly, when they could be creating and copying spells easily enough themselves. I'm not amused at all to see that kind of thinking perpetuated here. If there's one thing the internet age has done, it's breaking down the gatekeepers, and shown nearly anyone can do it themselves and broadcast anything around the world. You don't have to pitch it to a network, get signed to a label or follow union regulations, and most so-called big secrets aren't that impressive at all once you know them. And honestly, even though it's harder to make decent money being creative, it's probably better that way. So this kind of thinking can stay in the past where it belongs.
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
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The Ninja: And these, like samurai, serve to remind us that orientophillia was common in roleplaying right from it's birth, since martial arts movies were big in the early 70's. For whatever reason, people just couldn't resist making oriental classes more powerful than their western counterparts. So it proves here, with another article that's a grab bag of cool powers in no particular order, and some seriously messy mechanics, like the strange HD progression and small chance of fooling alignment detection. Anyone who tried to play one of these in a party with other classes would be most irritating. It just rubs in once again how much their writers and editors had to learn about making rules that not only held up under examination, but were easy to read in the first place. And this is supposed to be a best of. I got nuthin.
The new, improved Ninja: And a year later, we got another load of powers, nearly all of which are simply added onto the existing class, and accessible from 1st level, making them even more powerful with no price or drawback. They're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I find it very odd just how inferior the collection of classes here is compared to the last best of, where they all made it into the official books. They really ought to have given it 3 or 4 years to get more good material, instead of rushing them out as fast as they could, and in the process bringing back lower quality stuff from the same issues as before.
FROM THE SORCERORS SCROLL: In the early years of TSR, Gary had to put in a LOT of work to keep things going. This included the magazine, where he contributed something pretty much every issue. Of course, not all of it was good. Ed Greenwood eventually came along, outmatching him in both quantity and consistency, but up to 1985, Gary's columns were one of the most talked about parts of the magazine. So like the classes, I'm really not sure if I'm going to like this, but I'm pretty sure it'll be interesting, because Gary was always forthright with his opinions. Let's see which ones they picked as worth remembering for the ages.
D&D Relationships: A whole and it's parts: Ah yes, the whole D&D vs AD&D rigamarole. That confused many people over the years until they reunited the streams for the new millennium. It's no wonder Gary had to explain it. And it's also no surprise that he keeps schtum on the real reason it happened, the disagreements between him and Dave Arneson, and desire to keep him from getting as big a share of the royalties long-term. Not that they didn't need to make a new more self-contained version of the game aimed at new players who had never wargamed, and didn't have the Chainmail booklets to draw upon, but that certainly wasn't the whole story. So this article definitely feels a bit disingenuous in hindsight. Can't let the punters know your weak points. Sigh.
Ground and spell area scales: Another old thing that is no longer relevant after several rules revisions and thankfully so. Spell and movement rates being different depending on if you were above or below ground was an awkward kludge that stemmed from D&D's wargaming roots. Even vastly scaled down to 25mm, some things, like bow ranges were still a problem to fit on a table, so they had to fudge things. This is why just using your imagination will always seem more epic. As long as you're using minis, you're bound by their limitations, and the most gargantuan, unstoppable instakilling city-threatening monster they'll ever face will be the family cat. Very glad that I never bothered with them.
Realism vs game Logic: Looks like we're going to go through these columns in chronological order, as the first two were from issues 14 & 15, and this one is from issue 16. However, while the first two seemed laughably dated, this one remains very relevant, as it is a war still fought upon internet forums daily. People claiming a supernatural being or magic system isn't "realistic" are kinda missing the point, since it's supposed to be unrealistic, and working too hard to make a game realistic sucks out the fun anyway. There's a ton of little digressions that aren't so relevant to the current situation, but the big underlying principle remains the same. Just seems to be part of human nature to tinker with the rules, try and make them what you want to do better, and often making a dreadful mess in the process when you don't understand the knock-on effects your changes will make. And as long as we have people dying off and new ones coming in, the same old mistakes will be made again.
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
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What the game is; where it's going: We skip forwards 7 months, to find things are accelerating rapidly. Gary is currently very aware that sales are skyrocketing, bringing in thousands of new players every month, more than they managed in the whole of 1975. As a result, he once again has to explain things to the newbies. This means there's some overlap with the D&D relationships one, but also a load of talk about D&D's influences, and his plans for the future, including computer games, new modules, and accessories to make things more accessible. This does make me wonder if collecting all of these was the best idea, since any repetition in the topics will be exaggerated by proximity in a way that they weren't in the original magazines. You can definitely have too much of a good thing.
Much about Melee: Straight away, my point is proven as Gary has to talk again about realism in D&D, this time as it pertains to minute long combat rounds, and how one attack per round is a representation of lots of actual attacks, only a few of which actually do serious damage. He also has to tell people again why there is no critical hit & fumble system in official AD&D rules, as he feels it would turn out more of a problem than a benefit to players in the long run. Characters at low levels are already pretty likely to die from a single hit anyway, and as they get to higher ones, part of the fun is becoming suitably superhuman. I remain skeptical, since the 10 or 6 second rounds of BD&D and 3/4e seem to work better, especially when it comes to monsters with several different types of attacks. I think this was a case where he was too close to the issue to be objective about the problems.
Character social class: Now here's one that's still both fun, and usable whatever system you're playing with. Social classes and government may vary a fair bit from country to country, but it always involves a pyramid, with relatively few people in the ruling classes, and an increasingly broad base of poorer and less influential folks in the middle and bottom. Exactly who ends up on top, and how they did it can vary widely though, and the list of sample government types, some of which don't exist in reality, give your imagination plenty of fuel. (and an idea of how to derive more) The first article this issue I'm really happy to see.
Looking back, and to the future: Back to the bullshit, as they once again try to make it very clear that D&D and AD&D are completely different games, and so whatever part Dave Arneson may have had in the creation of D&D, he had no part in the creation of AD&D, so we don't have to pay him anything for it. This is also the one where Gary goes on about AD&D being intended for Official Tournament Play, so you must adhere to the Rules As Written, while you can house-rule D&D to your heart's content. A hardline stance that also seems fairly amusing in hindsight, given how often people simply ignored the more fiddly little rules like weapon speeds. This reminds me that the reason AD&D got far more modules and other supplements than D&D up to the mid 80's was due to politics, not because it sold more, with the Moldvay & Mentzer basic sets both selling more than anything else they ever did. And it makes me wonder if D&D would have sold even more if it weren't for them muddying up their own brand in the name of power struggles between the creators. I guess it's water under the bridge now, since they're both dead. But it's still not something I'm particularly amused about being reminded of again.
Evil: Law vs Chaos: Having turned the 3 point alignment system into a 9 point grid, they now have to justify that by explaining the differences between lawful evil and chaotic evil, and what it means in actual play when you're going to try and kill them all regardless. So Gary picks the most extreme examples, the denizens of the lower planes. Basically, it all boils down to domination vs destruction. The Hells are one big ugly hierarchy, with tendrils of manipulation stretching down into many prime material worlds as they try to secure as many souls for themselves as possible. Meanwhile the abyss is an even bigger, just as ugly roiling mess, and the two do not get on at all. The blood war might have been formalised in 2e, but it's seeds are very much here in hindsight. This article works from the assumption of alignment languages, and that people are aware of what alignment they are, which does make it seem rather dated. (and also that like-minded people naturally attract and work with each other, which I certainly haven't found to be the case in real life) It reminds me that morality as "sides" in a great cosmic battle is specific to a pretty small amount of stories, with most having a more relativistic view of things. It's no wonder that many people found alignments a problem, since they only work with certain unstated assumptions. If you wanted your fantasy a little more down to earth, then D&D is not a good fit, and becomes increasingly less so as you level up.
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
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Humans and Hybrids: In which we get another example of how Gary's conservatism affected the game in the early years. While they did introduce a fair few new classes right away, they stuck with basically the same races until well into 2e, and those they did add had far lower class selections and level limits. Not until 3e would they truly open up monsters for PC play and add templates and bloodline levels that let you crossbreed racial lineages however you desire. Of course, he did have good reasons. Until they added proper balancing factors for the cool abilities nonhumans get, they couldn't make them too awesome, or no-one would want to play the standard races. Really, this just illustrates that system matters. For all that they say your imagination is the only limit, if you try to do certain things within a roleplaying game, some will work out far better than others, and what they are will vary widely. And D&D was not designed as a toolkit game, despite later writers adding on all sorts of things to try and make it so, there are still plenty of other RPG's that are far better at modular toolkit design and adapting to whatever genre you want to play. D&D was built for exploring places and killing things in tactical battles, and the farther you push from that, the more it pushes back.
Books are books, games are games: Following directly on from the last column, Gary has to deal with the new players who try to play D&D like their favourite fantasy novel, and find it doesn't do that, much to their frustration. Of course, being the iconoclastic and often grumpy bugger he was, he puts a lot of effort into trying to get them to change their playstyle to fit the game, rather than changing the game to better support that kind of story. If your characters were as cool as the heroes of the books, they'd be unmanageable! Of course you shouldn't expect to have powers as awesome and flexible as theirs! Why are you surprised by this? Now there's an attitude that would prove pretty persistent in gaming, as we had plenty of modules where all the big action was done by the NPC's, with the PC's given bullshit fetch missions or just left watching on the sidelines, because they had a metaplot they wanted to push rather than giving you the tools to tell your own story. This definitely leaves me annoyed, as this collection is turning into a lot of him telling us we're having badwrongfun for wanting to play D&D differently to the way he intended. What a thing to compile.
Make-believe magic: Returning to the realism in fantasy topic again? Blah. Gary reminds us that in most fantasy literature, most wizards are actually less powerful than high level spellcasters in D&D, with extensive preparation and ritual needed to pull off big effects. The memorisation and erasure thing was pretty much unique to Jack Vance, and his spellcasters could maybe hold half a dozen at once. It's very much a system designed to keep them interesting and balanced when compared with other classes (over the course of a campaign), rather than emulate a particular novel, especially when things vary so widely throughout the fantasy genre anyway. I think the big problem here was making all spellcasters use the same system, since it seemed to go away once we had the mixture of memorisation, spontaneous casting, spell point psionics, lower power but constantly usable warlock evocations, etc etc that 3e brought us. (that and the people dissatisfied with D&D had moved onto other systems :p) Once again this shows that the problems people initially complained about in D&D were solvable (although solving them created new ones) but the designers were too stubborn to do so for 20 years, and instead tried to tell us we were wrong for wanting something different. Looking at it from that perspective, is it any wonder TSR went out of business?
Good isn't stupid: Paladins & Rangers: We covered the evil side of the law/chaos axis a few columns ago, now for the good one. Oddly enough, Gary takes a more relativistic view here, talking about how standards of good vary widely between cultures in the real world, and how losing your powers should be judged based upon the god you follow rather than a more abstract "good". When you consider that he was advocating all Lawful Evil creatures everywhere should try and serve the devilish hierarchy a few issues ago, this seems a little inconsistent. Also notable because this is where he advocates swordpoint conversions followed by immediate death as a way to ensure your god gets souls, which really doesn't seem like Good behaviour to me. It remains very easy to see why he caused so much controversy back in the day, because this just seems so counterintuitive. Why must morality be such a headache?
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
part 5/6
MONSTERS AND MISCELLANY: Our first two chapters definitely showed the quality hit from sticking to a theme over simply picking the best articles. Since this last one is just another collection of general stuff, hopefully that won't be the case here. Still, they have only had two years to pick up more, so I'm not hugely optimistic. It may well have been just too soon for a second best of.
Theory and use of gates: Our first Ed Greenwood piece to make the cut, reminding us that he started making his mark as soon as he was published. This fun little romp certainly fits the bill, taking us through the worlds of Michael Moorcock and Philip Jose Farmer, both of which have plenty of inspiration for your fantasy campaign. Universe-spanning adventures are challenging, but they give you the widest range of options, especially as a DM, and allow for really long campaigns, as you can switch things up whenever they get boring, and put people in universes where their old tricks don't work when they get too powerful. If they're truly an incarnation of the eternal hero, they'll find a way to accomplish awesome things regardless. The whole multiverse is your oyster, get out there and grab some pearls from it the way Ed has.
Inns and taverns: Back down to the ground with a bump, with a little general setting stuff. Since PC's will have to stay in inns and taverns unless they have contacts wherever they go, the skill to live off the land, or the magical power to conjure their own lodgings, you do need some info on how to handle them as a DM. As Gary included some stuff like this, complete with price list in the Keep on the Borderlands module with the next D&D basic set, it seems that advice was taken on board as they tried to make the game more user-friendly. After all, it doesn't take too much space, and it comes in handy pretty regularly, so it makes a lot of sense to keep it in your toolkit.
Good evening: Len Lakofka was making contributions to D&D since the Strategic review days, but this was the first one under his Leomund's Tiny Hut column. Since this still feels like an extended Sage Advice piece, nerfing the vampire wherever there is any ambiguity as to the extent of their powers, I'm not very impressed by it, just as I wasn't back in the day. They could definitely have put a more constructive article in it's place.
Varieties of Vampires: The sheer number of bloodsucking monsters from myths around the world still amuses me, and this article reminds me that their popularity started before D&D came out, and has never really gone away. Vampires are no more a fad than sex, chocolate or cars. Maybe at some point in the distant future they'll fall out of fashion, but only if the world changes substantially and something else takes their niche in the public consciousness. In the meantime, this collection of 14 variants are easily adapted to other systems, given the small amount of detail each gets, so this article remains useful as inspiration even all these years later.
A look at Lycanthropy: This one also seems pretty relevant, given the wide variety of lycanthropes we've seen in fiction, and how the different degrees of transformation and self-control can be multiplied out by the number of animals you could turn into. Even if some bits of the rules are D&D specific, it's another one where the basic concepts serve as a good checklist for other systems, so you can tell the kinds of stories with infectious shapeshifters that you really want too. Course, if you want the hereditary ones, you'll still want to go with White Wolf, but that's a story for another time. We can't work miracles in a two page article.
Blueprint for a Lich: Unlike vampires and werewolves, liches are very specific to D&D, and the method for creating them especially so. As with Shades, they prevent them from gaining levels after transforming, which seems to be put there mainly to discourage PC's from becoming one, and would be rapidly thrown out in later editions. This along with all the other fiddly bits here, very much lacks iconic resonance, and it's no surprise that later methods of eternal life are a little easier and less risky. It's very much a means to an end rather than an end in itself, so there's no reasons for wizards to get hidebound about their procedures. Movin' on up.
Best of Dragon Magazine 2
part 6/6
Tesseracts: This introduction to four-dimensional thinking is still very cool and relevant to any fantastical (and many sci-fi) games. As reading Flatland reminds us, there are a whole bunch of unexamined assumptions in our lives, and by changing a few of them, we can tell very interesting stories indeed. We can also write very interesting adventures too, when you change the rules and then work logically from the new ones. We can't leave the dungeon behind entirely, and still say we're playing D&D, but the definition of dungeon can get pretty broad. A transdimensional maze certainly qualifies.
Which way is up?: Continuing directly on, we examine what happens when you not only have dungeons with dimensions beyond the normal three, making linear mapping impossible, but you can also get into the same place, but with gravity in a different direction. This makes things even more interesting, because there are a number of exploits you can pull with objects that have weight in a different plane to everything else. (although keeping hold of them may prove tricky long-term, for things flying into space as soon as you let go outdoors is a pain.) This is one case where collecting the two articles in their original format is definitely for the better, since they were by different writers, and it's good to see people building on the inspirations of others. And when you're working in four dimensions, you just know there are going to be a lot of perspectives on the same thing.
The politics of hell: This article, on the other hand, is not universal, and indeed, seems very much of it's time. Since it's intimately linked to real world history, using it in D&D worlds is a bit of a problem, even more so than the various polytheistic pantheons from Deities & Demigods, as a single supreme creator deity constrains your cosmology options substantially. It's no surprise that when Ed Greenwood did the 9 hells article, he didn't use material from this. It still remains interesting, but feels like a dead-end branch on the evolutionary tree, since the 4th wall has gradually got more solid between fantasy worlds and the real earth. Funny how that's worked out.
Poison: from AA to XX: Save or Die on every hit was never going to be sustainable game design if you want to play long-term campaigns. Even by the release of the 1e DMG, there were already some monsters that didn't just wipe you out straight off, instead paralysing you or just doing extra damage if you failed. This article continued that trend, giving us the letter system that they'd use in the 2e corebooks. (even if it's purely dedicated to dealing damage rather than other more interesting debilitations) As such, it does seem nicely influential, and very much deserves to be here in hindsight. Sometimes you want to be cruel, but you do need those other shades in between for it to have full impact.
The nomenclature of pole arms: We finish with one of Gary's other little fetishes, the many different types of historical polearms. This still seems pretty boring in hindsight, especially after the weirder dimensional stuff and monsters. As with the editorial rants, it seems that while he may have created the game, after a certain point he was holding it back as well, keeping it focused on the small-unit dungeoneering experience when other people wanted to do more with it. It's a bit of a pain really that most people don't actually want accurate information about the medieval world in their escapism, they want something that looks cool and resonates emotionally with them. And given the competition, polearms really don't cut the mustard. (to say nothing of how awkward it is to spread it on your bread afterwards with one.) When you only have limited space in your mental inventory, it's hard to find room to pack one.
Pretty disappointed with this one. With two chapters that feel like misfires, and the final one remaining pretty hit and miss, it does indeed feel like they jumped the gun releasing a second best of so soon after the first, and should have waited a bit longer to reload. It definitely makes me wonder if there'll be even more diminishing returns in the next three, or it the broadening submissions base and less reliance on the same few writers will let them pick better. Let's see what they thought was worth repeating in the next collection.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 1/6
82 pages. Well, at least they're using a different dragon for the cover this time even if it's still recycled from other products. I suppose that's the point, really. As with the last one, they have a bunch of themed chapters, and I shall have to see if there's enough good material within each for them to make sense, or they should have held back a little longer again. After all, the more best of's they do, the more esoteric the topics will have to become.
FINISHING THE RACES: Last issue, Gary got a whole chapter dedicated to his writings. This time, it's Roger Moore's turn, as his series expanding on the various demihuman races and their gods proved quite the hit. By collecting and reprinting them just a year after they first came out, they ensure that these guys would be a mainstay of the D&D cosmology for many years to come, until 3e wiped the slate again and focussed on just the head honcho of each race. Since I mostly liked these first time round, I'm definitely more optimistic now than I was going into the last best of. Let's see if they've held up with age and don't look too dated or cheesy like many childhood favourites from the 80's.
The dwarven point of view: Dwarves have appeared in a fair number of books and movies before D&D, and so while dwarves do have a racial stereotype, it's a fairly nuanced one. They might be serious and hardworking, but they also love a good drink. They might be sensible and reliable, but they can have their head turned by shiny things and corrupted by greed. They're suspicious of and resistant to magic, but also produce a quite a few really cool magical items, and more that might as well be magical to anyone else. It means you have plenty of options to choose from for your own character without it them seeming completely uncharacteristic. And fortunately, Roger had enough room to talk about them all here, as well as giving his opinion on the great women with beards debate. (he's all for it, gives you something to hang onto) This still feels both useful, and seasoned with enough lighthearted humour to make entertaining reading, and right away, I can quite understand why they wanted to reprint these.
The gods of the dwarves: The gods of the dwarves still look pretty solid too, showing us the good, neutral and evil sides of their nature. Whether they're fighters, miners or merchants, there's plenty of opportunity for them to get involved in adventures, so a priest of any of them save possibly the token female home goddess fits in pretty well with an adventuring party. Even Abbathor's servants make a pretty good addition to a group focussed on killing and taking of stuff, as long as they accept they have to share to some degree for greater long-term profit. So these remain useful as both protagonists and antagonists, even if you have a dwarf in the party, since dwarves are hardly united as a race. Definitely already happier about these than I was about last issue.
The elven point of view: While elves do have a fair amount of variety, with a load of subraces, it's all presented in a far more glowing light than dwarves. There's always been the temptation to make them into mary-sues, and Roger was no exception. Their long lifespan gives them the time to have fun, laze around and flit between lots of different projects, because they know they still have the time to get things done. They do have some sadness in their life, because they see so many thing around them die or fade away, but they're equipped to deal with it. So not only are they Better Than You, they make it look easy. It's no wonder they get a fair bit of backlash as well. It's unfortunate to be reminded that Roger is part of the problem in this case.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 2/6
The gods of the elves: You know, if you say elves have lots of gods, you're inviting people to send more in, when as we've found, people need no encouragement at all to give elves cool new stuff for free, because they're just sooooo pretty. :vomits in pot plant: Indeed, we got follow-ups for this in 155, 176, 191, 236 & 251, most of which gave their speciality priests lots of cool bonus powers. Once again, the fact that these articles were pretty influential is even more apparent now I've gone through the whole magazine and seen the long-term repercussions. For better or for worse, these guys are going to be with us for a long time.
The halfling point of view: While elves and dwarves have a ton of inspirations to draw upon, Halflings are still intimately tied to the LotR series, for better and for worse. In this era, it's probably for the worse, as Roger can't seem to stop himself from playing up their boring aspects. Yes, a large quantity of them may be homebodies, but even in LotR, there were plenty of hints that they got up to more fun than they let on, with the Tooks getting their fortunes from adventuring. (and being gossiped extensively about in the process) And it's not as if they can't be pretty deadly, as stealth and affinity with missile weapons is a great combo for beating stronger enemies without them being able to hit back. So in hindsight, the 3e refocussing towards them being roguish nomads might have been a little irritating, but it made a lot of sense when you consider what they'd had to deal with in previous decades. When you want to get back to the dungeon, you need to slay a few sacred cows for supplies, and those plumptious little ones looked mighty tasty.
The gods of the halflings: It's interesting that Halflings are the only race here that have more female deities than male, and are presented as female-dominated. And I suppose it's one way they do differ from the Tolkien portrayal, where the focus is very much on the guys. (and religion works completely differently anyway) Still, even if the women are in charge, they still have the same traditional gender roles as humans, where the men go out, and the women stay at home. We still have some serious automatic assumptions going on here. I guess fantasy is often about an imaginary past, and so parochial tendencies are to be expected. But it is funny to see just how dated these articles appear in this respect.
The gnomish point of view: Gnomes are still very much the 5th wheel as a D&D race. However, this has given the writers a freedom to change them dramatically with less complaint from players. Tricksters, animal-lovers, miners, crafters, talkaholics, bards, they have a whole bunch of hats that they can wear, and it seems quite likely more will be added in future editions if they ever go back to creating settings. Even back in the early 80's, there was plenty of nuance to their portrayal, which contrasts to the love-in of elves and the somewhat boring halflings. They can sometimes be pains in the ass, but overall, they're a valuable asset to a party, with their social skills, sharp senses and wide selection of classes. They're much better in your party than out.
The gods of the gnomes: If you were in any doubt as to how Gnomes are differentiated from Dwarves, their selection of deities makes it very clear. Aside from their greater connection to nature, the way they go bad is very different indeed, becoming skulking murderous tricksters instead of greedy drunken assholes. Plus, they often have sidekicks, which is ironic when the short races are more likely to be considered the secondary characters in stories told by humans. These guys still seen pretty interesting to me, even if the all-male nature of the pantheon seems a little more grating after three more decades of pushing gender equality. Maybe next edition, as I keep on hoping, although it seems unlikely at this particular point in time.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 3/6
The half-orc point of view: Now, if Gnomes are the 5th wheel, Half-Orcs are the red-headed stepbrother that the family keeps "forgetting" to invite to parties. They've been in and out of the corebooks from one edition to the next, and if they don't show up straight away, they often pop up later. Because you have to learn to be tenacious when you're stuck between two cultures and struggle to fit into either. The funny thing is, despite their intelligence penalty, they often learn to be cunning because it's their big advantage when compared to full-blooded orcs. But then, racial differences are always a matter of degrees and contrasts. Orcs have shorter lifespans than humans, which have shorter lifespans than halflings, then up through dwarves, gnomes and elves, which are dwarfed by treants and dragons, who in turn can't compare to the eons immortal outsiders see. Similarly, differences in intelligence, aggression, size, etc, it's your neighbours that are important. Orcs aren't that different from humans, but those differences are enough and they're common and expansionistic enough as a race that those differences get shoved in your face. And so they're stuck with the role of villains, at least until a bigger threat comes along and forces them to ally with humans against rampaging dragons, even faster-breeding and dumber gibberlings, slime molds that can only be hurt by specific damage types or extraplanar threats to the laws of physics. It's a shit life, as this makes very clear. And that's one thing that certainly hasn't changed over the years and settings. They might not be the eternal underdogs like kobolds, but they get no respect and they're never on top for long. See ya, wouldn't want to be ya.
The gods of the orcs: It's notable that while most of the good demihuman races have a token evil deity for when they turn to the dark side, monstrous races don't have a token good god, and the thing that they fear and only propitiate to keep away is even worse than their regular gods. In Orc's case, an unspeaking embodiment of disease that strikes or leaves you alone as it pleases, because they don't have the smarts to figure out hygiene. It's not as if the other gods in the pantheon are particularly united either, with plenty of room to play them off against one-another. In the end, their inability to plan ahead or co-operate for long periods of time will be their undoing, just like their followers. So this brings the chapter to a close in fairly interesting fashion, giving you plenty both to work with and think about for your games, in a far less confrontational way than Gary did.
BREATHING LIFE INTO DRAGONS: At this point, they'd formalised the three regular themes that would remain throughout most of their lifespan. April for comedy material, June for Dragon related stuff, and October for horror. Since the comedy stuff proves pretty controversial, I find it unlikely they'll be putting much more of that in their best of's, but collecting the dragon related stuff makes perfect sense, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a horror one sometime in the future, given the quality of submissions they generally got for that. Let's keep their namesake in the limelight, even if they sometimes struggled to get enough good submissions for them.
That's not in the Monster Manual: Gem Dragons have certainly more than proved their worth over the years. Someone would probably have introduced a neutral dragon type eventually, since there was an obvious symmetry there, but it might not have been as cool as our enigmatic psionic friends. Since they can be both allies and adversaries, they've done their share in many adventures. Arthur Collins can feel proud of himself for adding them to the canon, and for writing them strongly enough that despite a few mechanical tweaks as the editions progressed, their core tricks and personality traits remain the same. Good to be reminded that they got their start in the magazine.
Hatching is only the beginning: Even in the very first D&D books, they made dragons more than just combat encounters, as the rules for subduing illustrate. There were certainly plenty of precedents for them as silver-tongued roleplaying encounters. However, that doesn't add the kind of comedy that trying to raise a baby dragon adds to your game. If you think trying to raise a human baby is tricky, bringing up something that has a decent chance of disemboweling or frying you when less than a year old is fraught with pitfalls and scenes of mayhem, especially with a type naturally aspected towards chaos or evil. This article still seems very applicable to any game with supernatural monsters that breed normally, not just D&D, and full of fun variants. Had enough of killing monsters? Try running a shelter for them. (after all, we wouldn't want them to go extinct and leave the next generation of heroes nothing to do, and it's a good solution for all those paladins who balk at killing babies, no matter how likely they are to be a problem in the future) Every day will be an adventure.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 4/6
Self defense for dragons: Anything that has a lot of attention put on it tends to increase in power over the years. This definitely applies to dragons, which got tons of new spells, magic items, tricks, tactical advice and so forth. Adding wing buffets, tail lashes and rear claw kicks to their repertoire is a pretty obvious addition, and one that caught on right away, being added officially in both AD&D 2e and the D&D Companion set. Similarly, the tactical advice here is easy to implement, unlike the more esoteric long-term planning advice that would show up later. You don't need to be a genius to know when it's a bad idea to use your breath weapon, especially when you have centuries to practice, and move yourself into a position where you can't be ganged up on and taken down by weight of numbers. It's nice to reminded where the ground floor is, and that a lot of groups wouldn't even be able to win against them at that level.
The faerie dragon: Here's another one that's remained with us throughout the editions, much to the exasperation of many players. After all, prankster monsters are frustrating enough when they only have a few tricks, like Sprites. When they have a full complement of spells from two class lists, and near immunity to magic themselves at higher age categories, you're left just praying that you'll get off lightly, as it's not easy to turn things back on them. Still, it's nice to know exactly who to blame, and that it wasn't one of the usual suspects this time around. Random submitters could still contribute something that remained influential in those days.
Two tough foes: This one, on the other hand, has pretty much faded away, with the Steel dragons most players think of being the Forgotten Realms' friendly shapeshifting poison-breathers, and Gray dragons not catching on at all. (it is a boring colour, let's face it) They also suffer by comparison to the hugely upgraded stats of dragons in later edition, not being particularly impressive in terms physically, magically, or in terms of personality detail. The colour wheel dragons may have got upgraded and remained current, but these guys? Sorry, no dice. Can't get it right every time.
Evil dragons make good armor: This one, I remember being disappointingly weak and fiddly, given just how much effort it took to kill dragons. The resulting scale mail is no better than normal unless you engage in a whole load of expensive preparations to give it a fraction of the resistance that the original dragon enjoyed. When you compare that to what you got in 2e ( AC 4 worse than the dragon, which could mean a base of -8 if you killed a great wyrm) it seems pretty pointless. But then, they did upgrade the dragons themselves a good deal in each edition change as well, so if you did beat them, it really felt like a hard-won victory. This is one instance where working harder to balance things actually felt like an upgrade rather than a nerf. So this is one article that can remain discarded, outmoded technology.
PLAYING WITH CLASS: The last two best of's both had quite a few articles introducing new classes. Now they've got a fairly substantial collection, they're instead doing a chapter expanding on or revising existing classes, in a similar vein to the races collection earlier. Makes sense. They might have refined the rules a little over several editions of D&D, and the creation of AD&D, but they are still pretty clunky in many ways. It's not surprising that people would remain dissatisfied with them and continue to send stuff in.
The thief: a special look: Last best of, Len essentially did a Sage Advice for the Vampire. This time, they've decided to revive his similar piece on rogue abilities. Since rogues are somewhat less powerful than vampires, the degree of nerfing is less, but there is some. Thankfully, it's counterbalanced by Len giving them a couple of extra tricks, which comes as welcome. To be a successful thief, you really do need a fair amount of common sense to apply your powers properly, especially at low levels where you have little chance of success, which is ironic as they encourage you to use wisdom as their dump stat. Really, this reminds me what a huge improvement discretionary skill points were for Rogues in 2e, letting them choose which skills they wanted to develop, and become useful at them even at low levels, while ignoring ones they wound up not needing entirely. It just made them so much more practical while not changing their overall power level.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 5/6
The druid and the DM: Bizarrely enough, people tended to underestimate the druid in the old days, thinking that they were only useful outdoors, not for dungeoneering. This is not the case at all, even before many supplements expanded their spell list and corresponding flexibility, as they had both shapeshifting and a high charisma to take advantage of. In hindsight, this article has some irritatingly niggly specifics, but that comes with the old school territory. It also feels a little outdated as it's from before Gary added on the Hierophant levels, and all the cool wider scale stuff that came with them. I certainly don't feel the need to use all the little optional rules here, but the general advice is still good to see. Don't forget, they got called CoDzilla for a very good reason once the CharOp people got a good look at them.
It's not easy being good: Sigh. Given how many times they had to pontificate about paladin morality, I knew I wasn't getting out of here without at least one more reiteration of it. Yes, they can have a sense of humour. Yes, they can have sex and indulge a little in their off-hours, but if they do naughty things in the pursuit of it, they have to face the consequences. Yes, they can kill neutral things, especially if it's them or you and there's no better options to hand. No, they shouldn't be arrogant pricks to people of lower classes, or slaughter everything that pings evil. No, they don't have to kill themselves in the pursuit of impossible goals, as that would result in less long-term good being done. They're supposed to have a wisdom prerequisite, use it, for god's sake. How many times do we have to repeat it for it to stick? I suppose all it takes is a small minority to perpetuate the stupid stereotypes. In any case, I am so very very VERY tired of this, and look forward to leaving it behind for good.
He's got a lot to kick about: At first glance, Monks look overpowered, since they have a pretty long list of special powers, and no equipment requirements, unlike most classes. However, this is not borne out by actual play, as they only have a few tricks while spellcasters have loads and can swap them out day-to-day, and their social limitations in 1e were pretty onerous. So while this is still an unequivocal upgrade compared to the PHB version, it feels more welcome this time, giving them more room to grow before they have to get into the challenge business, and giving them exactly one new trick per level, which means there's no dead levels and you get to discover and get used to their powers gradually. Plus of course, saying there's more than one monk order, so there isn't only one grandmaster of flowers in the entire world, and having to deal with the big question of how that order communicates worldwide with D&D technology. While this doesn't solve all their problems, it is an improvement, and so it is welcome in hindsight.
Singing a new tune: Bards also proved problematic, particularly after Gary got through with them, and this redesign into a less roguish and more positively aligned order is pretty interesting. Unlike the Monk one, it isn't so much an upgrade as simply an alternative, as it sacrifices some things for others, and the different versions are capable of co-existing and each having their own niche. (and quite possibly having cross-order conflicts about the true way, which is always fun. ) It's still fairly powerful and versatile, but hey, it's in good company. Better everyone be cool than no-one.
Cantrips: minor magic: Three quarters of the way through the issue, and this is our first contribution from Gary. That really does rub in just how much he let go of the reins when he went off to LA to do the D&D cartoon. Still, the ones he has remain pretty influential, given how cantrips became incredibly handy in 2e and ubiquitous in 3e. There is something to be said for your wizard always being able to pull off minor tricks that don't really do any damage, but simply make things more convenient and help you maintain a suitably mysterious reputation, while still only having a few big guns to unleash per day. This definitely feels like a positive addition to the game, all these years later.
Best of Dragon Magazine 3
part 6/6
Cantrips for the illusionist: Even more than regular wizards, illusionists benefit from having an array of tricks that are low-key, but incredibly useful when applied cleverly. So this little symmetry filler also comes as welcome here, even if the tendency to make spell components into bad puns does date this a little. If you want to avoid them seeing through your tricks, you will need to practice the art of misdirection, or make sure you're safely offstage while an accomplice draws all the attention and looks like they're doing miracles. Just the way it should be, really.
Spell books: Gary's given us a few enhancements. Now for the counterbalance, this piece spelling out exactly how expensive and inconvenient wizard's spell books are, how much of a pain it is to lose them (and how awesome it is to get hold of an enemy's one) and how much they will charge to cast spells for hire. (which if you're playing by RAW, they'll then have to plough into training costs and the creation of new spellbooks :) ) The tiresome stuff that keeps spellcasters from getting out of hand, you don't want to go into too much detail on it, but we've seen what happens when you remove it. Just the nature of the game. Sigh.
CREATING NEW CHALLENGES: We finish the issue with a half-hearted grab-bag of one new race, and two new classes. Not really one thing or t'other, but I guess they had a fixed page count and needed to fill it. Plus most of the new classes they'd done recently were the ones Gary did, and would later put in Unearthed Arcana. He obviously had bigger plans for them than just a magazine reprint.
The winged folk: Ah yes, the winged folk. Time has not changed just how ridiculously overpowered these guys look compared to standard demihuman races, with better ability scores, more innate abilities and higher level limits than even elves. If they'd been picked up and ran with by other writers, they could have been a real problem. Thankfully, the official writers continued to be conservative about creatures with natural flight or water-breathing becoming PC's, leaving the winged folk as just an interesting footnote in the annals of gaming. It's almost a relief really, given how much harder it is to design adventures when one of the PC's has powers like that.
The alchemist: Now if the winged folk were overpowered, the alchemist still looks amusingly underpowered compared to regular wizards, although this is compensated by their equally low XP tables. Still, at least they're a proper functional NPC class, which you certainly couldn't say for Scribes, and the things they make can be pretty handy in adventures. Ironically, their smaller XP tables means they'll actually be able to take more hits than a regular wizard of the same XP, and being able to get acid and flaming oil at trade prices is not to be sneezed at. But they're still best kept in the backline, as a secondary character or hireling in a large party, just as you wouldn't want to play a single-class aristocrat or expert in 3e.
The archer: Time has mellowed me in one respect, in that the Archer no longer looks so annoying in hindsight. While still slightly cooler than regular Rangers, the greater awareness of just what regular primary spellcasters do to the game at high levels make their bag of tricks seem like just another day at the office, with the main irritation being the hinky archer-ranger setup, which would also be used in the cavalier-paladin. Go ahead, pincushion a few enemies. You have my blessing.
Well, this was certainly an improvement on the second best of, bringing in contributions from a wider range of writers, and rules that are considerably more solid than the first two best of's. Goes to show how much evolving they did in the early 80's, as they expanded and brought in new fans. So it'll be interesting to see whether the next one sees the pace of change accelerate further, or slow down again. Time for another leapfrog forward, this time to the middle of 1985 to see what they considered worth keeping that time.
Best of Dragon Magazine 4
part 1/6
82 pages. Don't remember seeing this particular dragon before. Is it recycled, or did they actually pay for a new bit of artwork this time around. For a third time, they're giving us a bunch of loosely themed chapters, so they can compile the stuff they liked from the past couple of years, and maybe a few more old ones they missed previous goes around. How have their tastes changed this time?
IT TAKES ALL KINDS: One thing remains the same for all these best of's, and that's that there's a ton of demand for new classes. At this point, it feels like virtually every one they published in the magazine gets revisited in here, regardless of quality. I wonder if there'll be any design trends I can spot compared to the previous best of's then, since these will all be fairly recent articles.
The bandit: Bandits still look decent enough as an intermediate between ranger and rogue, giving you some thieving skills, some wilderness skills, and good basic fighting ability without adding the supernatural gubbins and strict alignment restrictions that makes rangers problematic for many character concepts. They're entirely suitable as both PC's and NPC's without causing any power balance issues. Absolutely no objection to using them in game.
The bounty hunter: Funnily enough, they decide to only reprint one of the three bounty hunter classes from the original issue. Even more strangely, they pick the one that was probably my least favourite, and was certainly the least naturalistic of the classes in terms of abilities, restrictions, and having a worldwide hierarchy with limited places at the top. Really not sure what to make of that decision at all. Goes to show how subjective taste is, and how much one person becoming a regular writer can influence the editors when it comes to choosing these things. Slightly irritating, really.
The cloistered cleric: Why would someone want to create a version of a class which is simply inferior to the existing one? It baffles me. I can understand more powerful versions, especially if they're balanced out by higher XP costs and behavioural restrictions, but this stuff? Is it really needed, and is anyone going to get any use out of it? We did get a cool and fairly balanced version of the cloistered cleric in 3e, so some good did come from this article in the long run. But still, this article on it's own is just boring. I remember being regularly irritated by Len's design decisions back in the day, and it looks like that hasn't changed here.
The death master: While the cloistered cleric isn't fully functional as a PC, the Death Master is. However the combination of not getting spells until 4th level, and even then, having a quite limited and specialised selection definitely leaves them looking pretty weedy. Until they can amass an army of undead, they're not much of a threat, and even then, they'll be no match for a wizard or cleric who's used their buffing abilities wisely. Once again, it only seems like they got through because their designer was a regular writer for the magazine, and it could have done with a thorough redesigning.
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The duelist: The new fighty classes continue to come out better than the spellcasters with the duelist, which does look slightly overpowered compared to regular fighters, but in a fun way, like Paladins and Rangers, adding on a bunch of little tricks while never reaching the sheer versatility primary spellcasters can muster. I suppose that's an indictment of just how little vanilla fighters can do, which makes inventing new classes that overlap with them much easier, and needed to fulfil many people's character concepts. With wizards, people just added new spells to the existing class if they want to do something new. With fighters, they'd have to wait until kits were introduced next edition to make little changes like that easy.
The jester: Now love or hate them, I think we can agree that Jesters don't overlap much with any of the existing classes, so while you might not want them in your party, if you did, you couldn't just say "reskin a rogue" and get a satisfactory result. And while annoying, they certainly are effective with their bag of tricks in both surviving and making enemies look foolish. The trick, of course is realising you still have to work with the other members of the party, and know when to temporarily get serious. They're one that I definitely appreciate more coming back, knowing just how much more serious the magazine became over the years. Their best april contributions combined humour and usability, and this fits the bill on that count, so it's good to see it again.
The scribe: Now, if the death master is somewhat underpowered when compared to regular PC's, the scribe is downright weedy. It is substantially improved mechanically from the version in the second best of, in that it is an actual class rather than an insult to our intelligence and excuse to bilk PC's out of money. But even Ed Greenwood can't make it interesting, or desirable to include in our games in anything but the most peripheral way. Weak. I do not know why they bothered to include it.
The smith: Smiths, on the other hand, still seem quite interesting, even if they use their own system of multiclassing that breaks the rules. (but then, with bards and ninjas, they're in fine company) While not really suited as a primary adventuring character, they're useful enough that they'd work as part of an ensemble party, and save the other PC's a good deal of money in the process. After all, Scotty rarely went on away missions, but he was still both an important member of the team, and interesting in his own right. You can definitely manage that kind of dynamic, especially if each player has more than one character.
Quote from: (un)reason;735597The cloistered cleric: Why would someone want to create a version of a class which is simply inferior to the existing one? It baffles me. I can understand more powerful versions, especially if they're balanced out by higher XP costs and behavioural restrictions, but this stuff? Is it really needed, and is anyone going to get any use out of it? We did get a cool and fairly balanced version of the cloistered cleric in 3e, so some good did come from this article in the long run. But still, this article on it's own is just boring. I remember being regularly irritated by Len's design decisions back in the day, and it looks like that hasn't changed here.
Simply because the original D&D cleric was more of a warrior, not the sort of cleric that would run a church.
I mean, he literally says so in the article
QuoteThe AD&D game models its cleric after the medieval fighter cleric, a la Templar or Hospitlar. Yet we are all aware that all clerics, then and now, do not meet that standard.
And it's a way of having a divine healer high enough level to cast spells PCs might need, without having a powerful enough combatant in the area that would make the PCs redundant.
Best of Dragon Magazine 4
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PLAYERS PERSPECTIVES: Our other themes this time round are stuff aimed at the players, and stuff aimed at the DM, mirroring the division in the core book. Although I note no monster manual equivalent, and indeed, these best of's have been curiously light on reusing monsters from the magazine in general. I guess that shows just how much more dependent on the formulaic cranking out of new monsters, magical items and spells they became as they went along. So let's see what broader topics they thought would best serve the needs of adventurers everywhere.
Be aware, take care: The very first thing they thought worth repeating was advice on putting together a good group and making sure they prepare properly for the adventure at hand. This makes it very clear that combat, while important, is only a very tiny part of an adventurer's average day. Far more will be devoted to exploring, planning, supplies, keeping your gear in good nick, and possibly even communicating with monsters in a non-hostile fashion. The people coming from tactical wargames would already know that direct hack-and-slash is not the best way to actually win a fight, but they might still need a little work on customising and roleplaying individual characters, while the newbies have a lot to learn if they don't want to be stuck at 1st level dying repeatedly. At this stage, D&D played RAW is still pretty unforgiving, and this kind of advice makes perfect sense as a starter.
It's a material world: Material components, huh? Gonna do that again? Well, after one article which talks about the logistics of adventuring, another one would make sense if they're doing mini-themes within the larger categories. And as we have found all too many times, if you take away away these kind of concerns from spellcasters, they run rampant over the game, even at low levels. So this may or may not be an article you want, but it is one that we need, and one we probably deserve as well. Keep the players working and spending for their powers and they won't come to take them for granted. Good to see them not pandering to their audience.
Finish fights faster: Unarmed combat is something they seem to struggle to get the rules right for, and get lots of questions about in Sage Advice, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they'd recycle an article on it in the hope that more people will read it and stop pestering them. And since they simplified it down to three attack types, with even grappling less than a page long, it certainly still seems usable, if not enough to satisfy MA enthusiasts. Still, I think along with hit locations and criticals with specific effects, that's a level of detail best handled in a completely different system built from the ground up to cope with it. They're wise not to obsess over it, when weapons work better anyway.
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Two-fisted fighting: After unarmed combat, we have two-weapon fighting, which makes a lot of sense, since it's another thing people regularly try, so they need to work out all the edge cases for it ruleswise. This is also handled in a fairly simple and brisk fashion, without the extra complexities they would introduce next edition in the Complete Fighters handbook, letting you spend proficiency slots to remove the penalties even if you're not a Ranger or have high dexterity. Even before Drizzt, this is obviously still something many players thought about and wanted to try, as it's just cool imagery, however you slice it. (although not so many people use two bludgeoning weapons at once, funnily enough :p ) And if you can sort out the balance problems, why shouldn't the players have their fun?
The whole half-ogre: They recycled this article in the magazine, and a previous best of. Now they're recycling the recycling. Yo dawg, etc etc. Admittedly, Roger does add on some extra details compared to Gary's original treatment, but still, this is going for the easy targets at the expense of actually bothering to come up with truly inventive new material. I guess just like new classes, new races get an incredible amount of demand, so they simply had to include whatever they had in that department, even if it wasn't that impressive.
Riding high: Putting the article on aerial mounts in the players section pretty much indicates that they approve of you using this idea at higher levels, which is nice to know. Let's hope your DM will let you be as awesome as the system allows rather than nerfing things to fit prefab adventures. Even if the list of creatures here is very superseded, given the number of awesome and scary flying monsters introduced since then, this is still a pretty cool way to finish off the chapter.
CREATING CAMPAIGN(ing): If players are constantly hunting for the next new toy for their players, for DM's, it's far more of a necessity. They have to keep coming up with new challenges every week if they want a campaign to last. A little variety certainly doesn't hurt either. Let's hope this chapter isn't filled with retreads from the usual suspects at the expense of picking the best articles then.
Five keys to success: We kick off the chapter, completely unsurprisingly, with one of those basic list articles that showed up every few years. If you have these things, and follow this advice, you shouldn't have a problem coming up with exciting adventures, at least until you're tapped out of ideas and feel you're repeating yourself with everything you do. And these ideas have certainly been repeated many times, so they feel very familiar indeed. I guess that proves their value quite effectively, even if I don't find this that interesting on rereading.
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A PC and his money: If your PC's have more money than they can spend, then you probably haven't done enough worldbuilding to create things that they want. I certainly know that given unlimited resources, I'd have no problem thinking of things I wanted to do and create, that would probably involve years of work and vast sums of money that would eventually improve everyone's lives. In the meantime, you have all manner of minor expenses, taxes, regulations, unexpected delays, etc that ensure you always wind up spending more and taking longer than you budgeted for. This reminder that there's always more challenges out there even if you save the world (it's just that many of them are boring ones) should keep the DM going when they players get to the end of an adventure, and they haven't had time to think of another big one yet. (plus, they want to make sure they have incentive to go out again instead of retiring. )
The care of castles: Given how frequently she showed up and how much she was praised for a few years, it's surprising how little of Katharine Kerr's work has been referenced in the later years of the magazine. Unlike Ed, Len, or Roger, she didn't add new monsters, setting details, classes or magical items that could really be incorporated into the D&D canon, being more concerned with making real-world historical and mythological stuff work in game. Which is definitely a bit disappointing, since she was their highest-profile female writer, and later moved onto becoming a proper author in her own right. Still, this isn't the best example of her work, it still feels pretty dry and lacking in the abstractions that'll let you run this complicated logistical stuff without it eating up your entire campaign. Given that they gradually moved towards faster-paced, more combat focussed material, I can understand why stuff like this fell out of fashion.
Saintly standards: D&D clerics already have more supernatural powers than the average mythological saint, so saying there's another, NPC only class of people who get even more special powers than you can definitely feels like the kind of restrictive old-school thinking they've since done away with, letting you become nearly anything if you take the right prestige class, templates and feats. That said, the specific saints detailed are fairly interesting, and ripe for updating to later editions. This certainly isn't bad, just dated.
These are the breaks: We've already had articles on realistic finances and logistics. One on weapon breakage seems to fit with that kind of mood, and shows what their current areas of focus are. And like critical hit tables, this still feels like a load of extra work for negative fun, and I'm quite pleased that they eventually gave up on trying to put that in our D&D, settling for abstract critical hits, and weapons & armor only breaking if you actively target them. This is one bit of history I see no value in reclaiming for the modern age.
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Repair or Beware: Another obvious follow-on from the preceding article, Arthur Collins is proving to be quite the editor's favourite, since this is a pretty short one that certainly didn't stand out to me the first time around, and with a 1 in 10 chance of some kind of damage happening, seems even more of a pain in actual play than the previous one, even if it doesn't involve a table, and the breakage is a more gradual process. I'd really rather not use either of these, if it's all the same to you.
Wounds and Weeds: Kevin J. Anderson, huh? I'd forgotten he contributed here as well as doing gaming tie-in novels and terrible Dune sequels. Well, at least you can say he does his research, since herbalism is full of esoteric little details about the nature of plants, where you find them, and what they do. This still looks pretty solid mechanically, in terms of making sure they're useful, but still not more powerful than basic healing spells. The framing fiction part of this is still pretty decent as well, reminding us he can be a pretty good writer when not cranking out formula to a tight deadline. It's a shame what having to make a living can do to your creativity.
Runes: To those incapable of it, preparation can seem like magic. The same certainly applies to writing, and it has a long history of being treated as amazing and scary by the illiterate. For example, the Norse emphasis on rune magic. It was just another alphabet, albeit somewhat better suited to carving in rock or wood than modern rounded scripts, but it built up it's own fascinating set of mythology, and list of spells you could do with them. How much more could you do with the idea in a universe where they do have real power. While largely historical, there's still plenty of ideas here to steal for your games, especially as this is largely system free, so it still looks useful to this day. Make a record of the magic you use, because it would definitely be a shame if you lost it, given how hard it is to develop.
Runestones: Following straight on from the last article, Ed Greenwood's more specific take on the same topic works excellently as a way to round out this issue. The system of dwarven runes he introduces here will be used in the artwork of several Forgotten Realms supplements, sometimes with amusing easter eggs in what they're actually saying. That's very worth keeping indeed, as it forces you to reference back to here whenever you see them to figure out what's really going on. If you wind up flicking through some other articles as a result, then they've done their job well. This definitely has the historical weight to deserve it's inclusion.
Once again, the rules gradually become more solid as we go along, with the classes in particular improved substantially from a few years ago. Also notable is the far greater emphasis on worldbuilding, which also jives with my perceptions of the magazine at the time. At this point, they'd run out of things to do down in the dungeon and were seriously looking around to keep their roleplaying interesting. The result is very worth noting. So what changes will the final best of bring? Let's ring the bell and call out "TIME! LAST ORDERS PLEASE!" on this unbelievably lengthy journey.
Best of Dragon Magazine 5
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82 pages. The pace of the best of's accelerates, as this one says May 1986, a mere year after the last one. While things may still be moving forward in the outside world, here, they're going back to the old school, leaving out the themes, and just picking the best articles still unrepeated from the magazine's past. Although it is very noticeable that where the first best of crammed 39 articles into 72 pages, this has only 20 in 80, showing how word counts have expanded in the last 7 years. If this series kept up, that would probably have changed even more in the long run, especially in the last few years when lengthy articles like the demonomicons increased in frequency quite a lot. But it was not to be. Let's see what they thought worth reiterating in the days just before Gary left for good and Lorraine took over, axing a whole bunch of things in her wake, including this series.
Thrills and chills: Ice age adventuring still looks like a pretty neat idea, making everyday survival and resource accumulation a bigger challenge. One series of cheesy CGI movies certainly hasn't exhausted all the many options you have to tell stories in a world like that, and there's a wider range of fantastical monsters that fit the bill than when this was originally released. A larger campaign setting exploring the vagaries of a frigid world in the same way that Athas showed us different dry, hostile climates is very much an option. Maybe some day, I'll get to try it out.
Mind of the monster: Getting inside monster's heads and playing them as smart as their stats dictate is also a good idea, one that's both been explored thoroughly since then, and equally often blatantly breached. So this bit of advice feels very familiar, as it's been built upon, and expanded in quite a few different directions, from the brutally tactical to the humorous. Don't mind being reminded of it at all.
The oracle: They seem to be running low on classes to rehash, so they can't do a full section on them this time around, but there's still this one. The old school divination specialist, and also pretty decent secondary healer for some reason, with their lengthy list of different real world divination methods. They're weaker than regular wizards or clerics, but hardly useless, even if they're probably better suited as NPC's. Once again, the problem is that the regular spellcasting classes have such a versatile and reliable selection, so it's difficult to make new ones that use the same memorisation rules without them feeling redundant. And as we know, that's still a long way in their future. Definitely a pain the ass overall.
Firearms: Some people want to present guns as a great world-beater, making other weapons and magic redundant. Ed Greenwood was smart enough to give us a more nuanced view back in the day, showing he's certainly not all overpowered cheesiness. Medieval guns were actually rather a pain in the ass, slow to reload, and prone to misfiring. They might be able to equal a fireball in damage-dealing potential, but they certainly aren't faster or cheaper than having a wizard on team in D&D. Which I think makes sense, otherwise introducing them ruins (or at least changes) the game dramatically. This still seems to strike the right balance between cool and challenging for long-term use.
A second volley: Ed's sequel a year later does not suffer from power creep at all. If anything, the opposite, as it's focussed on smaller, handheld weapons rather than the siege weaponry of the last one. It covers fewer weapons, but can go into greater detail on each of them, reminding us that the reason Ed seems to be a neverending font of ideas is that he does his research, and knows good sources to draw from. (and being a librarian doesn't hurt with that) He may have been trapped into endless Realms expansions in later years, but in the 80's, he did plenty of other stuff as well, and this kind of article is a good reminder of how versatile he was.
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Instant adventures: I've seen quite a lot of articles over the years that help you get an adventure going quickly when you're short on ideas. In light of that, this particular one doesn't seem that impressive, as it has neither proper random tables to take the brainwork out of it, or the kind of detail that Dungeoncraft managed over the years. Sorry, but I'm afraid you've been superseded, and can remain in the archives.
Modern monsters: Ed Greenwood continues to play fast and loose with the 4th wall, as he will do for many years to come, making sure that if D&D PC's find themselves on modern day earth, they'll have plenty of suitable challenges, even at higher levels. (after all, a tank is the equal of many big ugly monsters. ) Yet again, we're reminded that a few decades ago, more fantasy stories were set on earth in the distant past/future, or had protagonists from the real world transported there, and even stories that started off with no apparent connections to present day earth would develop them. That trend is very interesting to examine.
How many coins in a coffer: Ah yes, the great hassle of encumbrance, weights and volumes. If you compare D&D coins to real world ones, they seem absurdly big and heavy. I think that falls under the category of excessive abstraction. Of course, since this stuff gets ignored a lot of the time, it's only a problem if you let it be one. I think at this point, this is best left as water under the bridge, and a vague hope that they'll pay more attention to the math in future editions. Certainly not worth obsessing over when we could be having fun instead.
What do you call a 25th level wizard: The oldest article in this collection, this still looks pretty short and goofy, as a semirandom way of generating long pretentious titles, but is also still useful for any system, and possibly not as ridiculous as some real world people's lists of titles. Meh, it fills a gap in the page count neatly. Sometimes that's the important thing when you're an editor and have some hard choices to make about what to include or leave out.
Ruins: This reminder that the adventure can start before you go underground by exploring abandoned buildings, along with an extensive list of examples still seems pretty decent, as well as being good practice for your repurposing skills. What kind of monsters would move into a ruined building, and how would they fiddle with it's original layout to make it feel more like home for them? It's not a no-brainer like the random dungeon generation tables, but you can still refer back to this one again and again and find something useful to your current situation. I think it deserves it's position here.
Libraries: This bit of random generation, giving you a random topic for a book plucked off the shelf in a library also seems like a lifesaver in the middle of a session. It is indeed the kind of thing that will show up repeatedly, so you might as well bookmark it, because you know how easily stuff like this gets lost if you don't keep up to date with your dewey decimal system sorting. Short but sweet, it could probably be made more comprehensive and applicable to games other than D&D style fantasy, but I'm not complaining too much about that.
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Keep 'em guessing: Now this is an interesting one to be reminded of. Ed Greenwood's piece on keeping all the rules behind the DM's screen, so the players can concentrate on playing their character rather than number crunching. (and the DM is completely free to fudge for the sake of story whenever they feel like it) That's not something that would have flown in the days of competitive wargaming, and shows how the influx of people who saw it more as an acting and storytelling experience than one where how much stuff you could kill and take was the primary measure of success and advancement changed things over the years. It also foreshadows his love for superpowerful characters who could do things that regular PC's simply couldn't, and trying to fight was a mug's game. So this is definitely one of his more controversial pieces, depending on if you think following the rules, or doing what's best for the story is more important in an RPG. Let the debate rage over the decades.
The real barbarians: Katharine Kerr's contributions once again seem fairly dull in hindsight, devoted to realism, maybe with a bit of rose tinted spectacles, as she talks up the merits of so-called barbarian cultures. Having less of a preserved knowledge base does not mean the people there are dumber, as if anything, they actually have to think for themselves more. Knowing violence is only one insult away leads people to actually be more polite and serious about honouring their commitments. The really important thing about wealth is not how much you have, it's what you can afford to give away. It is a fairly substantial change in mindset, but calling it better than modern day thinking is very questionable. Still, it's preferable to just giving your heroes modern morality, when that would be utterly illogical given the situations they've experienced. More detailed knowledge of reality helps you make your fantasy more fantastical.
Tarsakh showers: Ed Greenwood's final little contribution here is his most explicitly Realmsian, giving us the calendar for his world and some important days in it as an example, while encouraging you to make your own one, quite possibly even more different from the real world. After all, 365.25 days per year is not a mathematically elegant number, and there could well be more or less satellites around your world (and you could be on a large moon orbiting a gas giant, a dyson sphere, or a non-spherical world that doesn't fit real world astrophysics.) They might not have known how big it was going to get, but even before Gary left, they people in the offices would have been wondering about the Realms, and just how much more Ed had to show of it. Putting this article in the best of feels like a good bit of foreshadowing for that, so this certainly has some historical significance.
The humanoids: This article probably should have gone in the 3rd best of, along with all the demihuman expansions. Guess they underestimated it's popularity, or the tendency of readers to want symmetries completed. And since the main difference between the many low HD humanoid races was initially a matter of a few HP and AC points, giving them different racial personalities was a pretty substantial help, particularly when it comes to Orcs and Hobgoblins. As with the full profiles, there's a fair amount here that stuck, and still has influence in their portrayals today. Roger may not have stuck around quite as persistently as Ed, but his output is still pretty significant in hindsight, and the way he affected humanoids is just as important as the way he affected demihumans.
Best wishes: Wishes keep on being a pain in the ass that shows up in Sage Advice, so I'm not surprised they reused this one, even if it's not a particularly fun one to read. Still, at least it merely advises you not to make them too powerful, and able to accomplish multiple things with a single wish, not to twist the intent of the caster to screw them over. (which should be reserved for wishes granted by genies, not your own spellcasting capability) That's a lot nicer than they could have been. I'm slightly less irritated by this than I was first time around, having seen more alternatives along the way, but it's still not exactly interesting reading. I could have skipped it without feeling I'd lost anything.
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Magic for merchants: Len Lakofka disappeared from the magazine at the same time Gary did, so even if there had been more best of's, he probably wouldn't have been in them. Not that I would have missed him anyway, as this is another of his contributions that I really can't see myself using. The Merchant class wasn't particularly useful anyway, and this system to give them minor magical abilities is pretty vague, plus the basic assumptions behind it don't really work anywhere but old school D&D, so it's not useful for converting either. Probably best left in the slush pile, really.
Spell strategy: As with the random library books article, this is the kind of article that's a lifesaver in the right situations, particularly if you have random encounters in your game. It would be very boring if every wizard you encounter unleashes the same spells in the same order, especially as you never know how much of their reserves they have left, or what they might be expecting to deal with later. Roll away, and if it throws up an unexpected result, go with it, try and turn it to their best advantage as a combatant. You'll probably learn more about tactics that way than always spending hours carefully building encounters under tightly controlled circumstances, and have more fun too. Now, if only we had an updated equivalent for 3e, where the spell list can get even more cumbersome at high level.
Good hits and bad misses: Ah yes, critical hits. Surprised it took them this long to put them in the best of. But then that was the kind of thing that a vocal section of the public wanted, but the official writers really weren't that keen on, so while they may have experimented with it a bit, they tried to play it down, leave that to Rolemaster. Still, here they are, for those of you who do want the frisson of knowing you could get your skull crushed or your head lopped off at any time. Like the weapon breakage rules, I'd rather pass, but more power to you if you do. See you in the afterlife, sooner or later. Remember, this is not a case where the first to arrive is the winer. :p
The astral plane: Now this is one that totally deserves to be here, and I'm only surprised they didn't put the 9 hells ones in the best of's too, given how unanimously it was praised. I guess it probably comes down to space again, since that was a three part, 40-odd page piece that would still eat up nearly half a best of even without the artwork. They'd have to do a whole planar themed book to make that worth their while, and they already had more comprehensive plans on that front. This is another one that hasn't aged brilliantly, partly due to the fact that they left out the adventure from the original magazine, partly due to the loss of formatting in the name of space, and partly in comparison to the longer and more atmospheric portrayal in the Planescape books. Spending more than half your page count on detailing how specific spells and magical items are altered by being in another universe rather than just giving general principles definitely feels like more of a drag second time around. This is still cool as inspiration, but I wouldn't want to go back and run an astral adventure using only the information in here.
This issue doesn't have many recent articles, and feels like them going through and compiling "the best of the rest", whatever is left over after the themes of the last three best of's. As such, I can quite understand why they stopped doing them at this point, even without the management changes. If they'd done them every 4-5 years, they could have kept them up indefinitely, but they had to rush them for more short term profit, not knowing if D&D would last, or it was just a fad. Such are the follies of history. And so that's the end of that. Just one more to go. Time to skip forward 20 years, and see how the idiosyncrasies of the mid noughties have fared in hindsight.
Dragon Compendium
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264 pages. Or Dragon Compendium, volume one, as it says down the bottom, as Paizo obviously intended to do more of these before WotC shut down their licence. Still, it's more than it seems at first. Just as the 3e monster manuals were the equivalent of 2-4 2e monstrous compendia, this is 3 times the size of the old best of's, and far bigger than even the largest issue of Dragon Magazine. It would probably have taken them quite a while to put together another one while still keeping up two magazines monthly. Whether my review will be even longer than issue 200, we shall see, but I won't be actively trying to push it. After all, after nearly 6 years, I'm very much looking forward to seeing the end of this.
Into the Dragon's Lair: Erik takes the introduction, unsurprisingly enough. A new series of Best Of's was one of the first things they wanted to do when Paizo spun off from WotC, but it's taken them more than two years to finish the first one, which shows you just how much they agonised over what to include in it, and how they had to squeeze working on it between getting new issues out every month, as all of the credits are staff regulars; there was no-one assigned specifically to concentrate on this project. Still, at least that means it wasn't rushed, unlike the first set of compilations, which did often feel like they were forcing it. And after the last three years of the magazine, I'm reasonably sure Erik's tastes have enough in common with mine that I'll approve of most of his choices. Once more, unto the articles.
RACES: As I noted in the previous best of's, it wasn't until the 1996 revamp that they really made regular columns packed with new monsters, spells, magical items, etc a thing, putting several in every issue come rain or shine, and in the process, giving us more than we could ever use. Still, that's 10 years in the past at the time this was published, so they have a LOT to choose from. So it's very obvious that this will involve a lot more little bits of 3e specific crunchy stuff, and fewer general articles, many of which will be from the old school issues anyway. I'm going to be seeing ones I only just redid in the previous best of's a third time in quick succession, aren't I. :sigh: But first up, new PC races! Well, it is one of the first things you pick when making a new character. Why not put it first in the running order as well.
Diabolus still seem depressingly nerfed compared to previous editions, making me not particularly enthusiastic to see them again. And they have such cool flavour as well. What price a little immunity when it cuts both ways, and can be a pain in the ass as well as a benefit.
Diopsid are one I wasn't expecting to see again, the decidedly quirky beetle-people Jonathan M Richards gave us just before the edition change. Their oddities make them an ECL +1 race, and they do get a fair number of minor tweaks to their racial abilities. They're still different enough to be a good roleplaying challenge, even if they're a little less funny this time around.
Dvati are the bonded twin people from the same era. They may seem more superficially human, but they also take a fair bit of work to make sure the edge cases of their nature aren't too exploitable under 3e rules. That's the price of an interesting concept, it seems. Sort it out now, or deal with a bunch of questions in Sage Advice.
Lupins, on the other hand, are pretty easy to convert, with the main interesting thing being their sense of smell. It's just a shame they had to fall back to the basic cultural stereotype, when there were several different ones in mystara, making them a lot more diverse than most demihuman races.
Tibbits are the oldest of these conversions, and the only one that wasn't already a PC race. Since cat related species are perennially popular, an ECL +0 feline shapeshifter seems like it'll get plenty of use. Just watch out for the kender players looking for another race to cause trouble with, as they do have definite mischievous tendencies.
CLASSES: Funnily enough, they didn't do very many new classes in the 2e years, so there's a big gap between the old updated ones, and the all new ones. As with the last chapter, this still means we're getting new rules material, which makes this collection feel less lazy than the old school ones. Whether it's faithful and/or an improvement mechanically though, is another matter altogether.
Battle Dancers get the ethnic ties from the original portrayal stripped away from them, and in fact, their requirements and abilities bear very little resemblance to the previous edition at all. A very unfaithful conversion indeed, to the point where I'm annoyed about them using the same name.
Death Masters get powered up so they start spellcasting from 1st level, and get as many spells as regular wizards. They're still weaker than regular necromantic specialists in terms of spellcasting power and flexibility, but they do get superior HD, BAB, and familiar to wizards, so they're not a completely idiotic choice. Still, they're definitely tier 2, no competition with the top classes here.
Jesters got a prestige class treatment in issue 330. Giving them a core class treatment here as well feels somewhat strange, especially knowing they were probably created concurrently. They lack the ability to kill with a joke at higher level, but they do get a wider selection of magical abilities with which to prank you with, and the agility bonuses the prestige class lacks. Overall, they're slightly less powerful than a regular bard, simply because they don't have as many additional tricks from supplements to choose from, but fill a similar niche in a party. That makes sense to me.
Mountebanks: Now this interesting. While Gary hinted at it, we never got full official stats for the Mountebank class back in the day. So this is actually all-new material for the compendium, which is very cool to see. They differ from the Charlatan not only in being a core class, but actually having some magical power (granted by a fiendish patron) to back up their trickery, putting them somewhere between a rogue and warlock in terms of character role, and with their resources handled the same way as Ninjas. Their selection of magical abilities is fixed, and not hugely powerful, but since social manipulation tricks are pretty flexible, I think they can definitely create a niche for themselves in a party, whether the other members like it or not.
Savants are another of Gary's potential creations that finally got realised way after the fact. They're another one that gets changed hugely from the previous edition, discarding the split class sage stuff to become a generalist in a similar mould to the Factotum, only not quite as mechanically experimental. Still, you'll wind up considerably better at each class's tricks than trying to be an equal advancement multiclass fighter/wizard/cleric/rogue, so I guess it just about works out mathematically.
Sha'ir still seem like a pretty faithful conversion that also smooths out their original mechanical issues. No problem at all seeing them rehashed here.
Urban druids also seem like a popular choice that it makes sense to include, since you do have to cater to the powergamers at least a little, and they're one druid variant that isn't nerfed at all. Welcome to the urban jungle boys, it gets worse here everyday.
Dragon Compendium
part 2/10
PRESTIGE CLASSES: Unlike the races and core classes, it looks like the prestige classes are all just straight reprints from the recent years of the magazine. Well, they did do a lot of them, so they have plenty of choice without needing to do any more work digging out some old kits and figuring out how to tweak the concept to better fit 3e. Let's see if they picked ones I liked first time around then.
Aerial Avengers are very much a one-trick pony. Still, flying is an exceedingly useful and versatile trick, it has to be said, so you can see why someone would want to specialise in it, and why people would remember it. Sometimes you just want to serve the concept rather than break the game.
Arcanopath monks still feel like an attempt to make a hammer specifically designed for smashing swiss army knives, handy as far as they go, but not nearly versatile enough to really do the job when the enemy has had a chance to prepare. Short term thinking is the flaw of fighty types everywhere.
Blessed of Gruumsh still seem unusually Daily heavy for a fighting class, making them nastier as adversaries than members of the party. Sometimes, that's just what you need as a DM.
Cerebrex still feel highly suboptimal due to their requirements, and the bonusses they get from the prestige class being so very divergent, leaving them neither one thing or t'other. Definitely not a choice I would have picked for reusing.
Fleet Runners of Ehlonna are another one-trick pony. No matter how fast you can run, the teleporter will get there before you. This is why the followers of nature gods get so pissed off about violations of the natural order. It's just not fair.
Flux adepts, like Cerebrex, start off spellcastery, and then get primarily physical bonuses from the prestige class, leaving them unimpressive in both compared to someone who just stuck with a good core class. And indeed, they're from the same author and article, leaving me more than a little irritated. Not the best choice from their extensive selection.
Force Missile Mages also feel like they're here on the memorableness of their concept rather than their awesomeness in actual play. I suppose reliability counts for a lot, and they've certainly got that in spades. Consistent slightly boosted damage will annoy the DM far less than a clever save or suck spell ruining his whole encounter in one go.
Monks of the Enabled Hand are another 5 level one that feel like a diversion from the path to true power, since you're sacrificing enlightenment for the ability to hit things a little harder. Very much a trap for the unwise. Oh paizo, y u do dis to us?
Osteomancers are the third suboptimal transformational prestige class from Andrew M Scott, making me wonder what he did to get this privilege. Maybe it was the good descriptive text. I hope it wasn't blowjobs for the editors.
Shapers of Form seem rather more effective than the other three transformative classes here, since they get a better spellcasting progression, and more flexible powers too. You might still just miss out on 9th level spells, but you'll be able to do a lot of other things that might just be worth it, especially if you lost your spellbook. And if you're using epic levels, then you'll soon catch up anyway.
FEATS: They don't list the feats individually on the contents page, which is quite understandable since there are 75 feats in 22 pages, and that would make it overflow considerably. In the past, I might have simply done a general overview of them, but as this is the very last time, I shall try and find something to say for every last one. After all, it's still a drop in the ocean compared to what I've done already.
Ability enhancer is only useful if you're a specialist in buffing, as a +1 extra bonus is small individually, but adds up if you buff lots of creatures in several ways at once. It's just a pain that they nerfed the durations of most of those spells in 3.5.
Air Bloodline is the first of many bloodline feats in this collection, granting your spontaneous spellcasters a themed set of bonus spells. There's plenty of elemental spells in the books, so they have an easy job for this first one. Telekinesis, though? That doesn't fit the air theme at all. Not trying hard enough.
Anarchic Bloodline's bonus spells, on the other hand, are mostly mind-affecting. Since alignment is all in the mind, that seems appropriate. See what chaos you can cause with these extras.
Astral Tracking is another niche feat that could be very useful for the right character, but most will never miss it. After all, many people never leave their country, let along their entire universe.
Axiomatic Bloodline gives you lots of divination and a few warding spells. You can't stick to the rules unless you know what they are, and have the strength to say no to people. Otherwise you get forced into a position where there's no right answer.
Bend Spell is pretty neat. Being able to shoot round cover is definitely a good addition to your arsenal if you're at all interested in evocations.
Braced for Charge, on the other hand, seems pretty useless because it's a passive power that only comes up occasionally. Not worth spending a feat slot on unless you're a dumb fighter.
Celestial Bloodline is all about the abjurations, which is a bit boring, but fits the goody-good image. Don't want anything exploitable if they go to the dark side, do we?
Celestial Light lets you show off your glowy holiness, as if that isn't easy to fake. Also, why 5 times a day? Might as well make it at will, since it's not a single round combat power. You're just making pointless bookkeeping for us with this one.
Charming makes things marginally more susceptible to your mindfucking magic. Meh.
Circle Student & master are cascading feats that let you be extra effective against one opponent at the cost of being vulnerable to everyone else. In a duel or against one big monster, that's not a drawback at all, so you'll get a fair amount of use out of this.
Combat Charm gives you a fairly substantial bonus at mindfucking mid-fight. De-escalating may be hard, but it definitely pays off.
Commanding is another one from the mind controllers article, letting you squeeze a little better odds. It's a good thing wizards get bonus feats, really.
Cuthbert's Strike lets you zap both chaotic and evil things with one smite, making you rather less likely to waste them. It's good to be sure and steadfast in your morality.
Cutpurse lets you pick pockets mid-combat without taking AoO's. Not sure how useful that'll be. Once again, a specialist pick that won't end up in proper books.
Dragon Compendium
part 3/10
FEATS C-M:
Dead Eye lets you add dex to ranged damage. That's one that'll really add up over an extended campaign. Hawkeye certainly wouldn't miss out on this if he was built under 3e rules.
Deceptive Dodge lets you dodge in such a way they hit someone else instead. Sadistically amusing, but the odds aren't great unless you put some more feats into boosting your dodge bonus.
Divine Conduit is incredibly flexible, letting you spend channeling uses to give other people free metamagic. One person in the team with this makes everyone else way more awesome.
Divine Fervor isn't quite so impressive, but still, a floating +1 to nearly any roll may save your bacon. Hard to tell, compared to all-new abilities.
Double Team is neither the pokemon power or the porn maneuver, just letting you apply flanking bonuses a little more frequently. Only worth getting if you're a rogue, and want to make lots of use of your sneak attack.
Draconic Bloodline focusses on spells that make you glorious and scary, with a fair bit of sensory boosting too. If people can get the drop on you in terms of knowledge, they soon lose respect, and we can't be having with that.
Dragon Sight lets you see magic. Probably not worth it, since you're a sorcerer, and have plenty of options that don't involve spending a feat to do the same.
Earth Bloodline is another one that's surprisingly low on earth spells, especially at low level. Once again, the need to stick to spells from the corebook prevents them from getting the very best for the theme.
Elemental Theurgy lets you add caster levels together in very limited situations. As a patch for a suboptimal character, it's not very impressive. Better not to build multiclass spellcasters in the first place.
Enspell Familiar lets you share spells up to a mile away. I'm sure you can find ways to exploit that.
Favoured Power Attack is for Rangers who like two-handed weapons, and have tough nemeses. Three points of damage for every -1 to hit is not to be sneezed at. Giant-killers apply here.
Fell Energy Spell helps you buff your undead. Meh.
Fey Bloodline gives you a predictably tricksy set of extra spells. Right up to the 9th level, when they pull instadeath out, apropos of nothing. Whatever happened to the fey penchant for shapeshifting?
Fey's Fate is basically the same as Luck of Heroes, only from a different source. They can stack too, if you plan it right. There's always someone who wants to max out their saves.
Fiendish Bloodline starts off a bit random, but soon concentrates on spells that inflict maximum misery rather than direct damage. Evil being it's own downfall due to inefficiency is very much the case here.
Fire Bloodline is also surprisingly combat-light, with hypnotism and tongues instead of the obvious choices of burning hands and fireball. Well, they certainly make you more flexible, and given the number of monsters that are immune to fire spells, you can't expect to solve every problem by violence.
Flash Casting makes you glow when spellcasting. Forcing everyone to look away does make your spells harder to disrupt, but it's not very subtle. You may attract more trouble in the long run by this method.
Friend of the Earth gives your earth-bonded sorcerer mildly improved climbing abilities, which is probably not that useful, since it isn't a class skill for them.
Guided Spell is the higher power version of Bend Spell. It's cost in extra spell levels is similarly exaggerated. No escape here unless you have an actual counterattack.
Haft strike is one of the many polearm specific feats here that's only handy if you're a fighter specialising in that.
Hammer Fist lets you punch two-handed and get the same benefit as using a two-handed weapon. Best combined with Power Attack so you can actually inflict decent damage when you connect.
Heads Up is one of those crap feats that forbids anyone who doesn't have it from trying a trick everyone should be able to do. Screw that fun-spoiling noise.
Hibernate doubles your natural healing rate. Incredibly handy if you don't have a cleric in the team, or indeed, a team at all.
Illithid Bloodline stays very on point, adding all mind-affecting spells. Your companions might not trust you at first, but you'll soon be able to ensure their allegiance. Muahahaha.
Kin Mastery lets bloodline sorcerers turn or rebuke their relatives. If they were kicked around as kids, this is where you get to do some serious payback. Oh so worth it from a plot perspective.
Kung Fu Genius lets you substitute int for wis for all your monk powers. If you want to max out your skills or have specific long-term multiclassing plans, it could just be worth it.
Lawful Discipline helps you resist mindfucking, but only mildly more than iron will, which is far broader in it's application. Only really worth it if you've already got that and are desperate to keep your mind your own.
Long Strike extends the reach of your reach weapons that little bit further. If you have AoO boosting feats as well, this lets you be a quite nasty battlefield controller.
Mercurial Strike lets you take advantage of AoO's even when unarmed. Perfect for those barroom brawls. DON'T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME!
Mighty are Fallen helps you deal with Power Attack. Very very situational indeed, especially since they'll simply stop using it if they realise you have this.
Mind Weapon lets you imitate your illithid creators, poorly. Save up for the full-on mind blast you can get through other routes.
Dragon Compendium
part 4/10
FEATS N-Z:
Necromantic Bloodline skips the animating effects, and goes for draining life and making you scary. No spawn cascading deathtouched here, unfortunately for you.
Pack Feint lets you set up your allies for a brutal round of sneak attacks with considerably greater ease. Make sure they're built to take advantage of it too.
Pack Tactics is the basic feat that should have come first, making flanking more efficient. The pure alphabetical organisation in here is a pain sometimes.
Pebble Underfoot is for giant-fighters who like to trip up their opponents. A good visual, so it's desirable even if it might not come up enough in your campaign.
Penumbra Bloodline gives you one of the most flexible selections of spells, so it seems pretty desirable. Shadow creatures always did get glamour above and beyond their raw power levels.
Pike Hedge is another obscure polearm one that's most useful in larger formations, not PC size parties. Huh. That's how they're rolling is it?
Plant Bloodline has a broad selection of elemental effects, for those who dislike the idea of one-note planar ones. How does your garden grow when you give it the love and care it really needs. NOT LIKE THAT YOU PERVERT!
Pole Balance lets you resist tripping and stuff when wielding a polearm. As low in utility as any other highly situational resistance.
Pole Fighter lets you use a polearm as a special monk weapon, with all the attendant benefits. Slightly more useful, but once again, only if you work at it.
Power in the blood gives you an additional floating spell slot for your bloodline spells in a pinch. Having seen the selections they get, that's a good deal for any party that doesn't stick to the 15 minute workday.
Precise Strike lets you convert sneak attack dice into hit bonuses, pretty much an inverse of power attack. For all those annoyed that rogues no longer get an automatic bonus when the enemy is unaware like previous editions.
Puppet Master makes your mind-control less obvious. Always handy, as monotone slaves aren't good public relations.
Ring the Golden Bell is that old classic of highly experienced martial artists hitting things from a distance without actually touching them. Pretty handy, as you never know when you'll need ranged attacks without equipment, and you can't rely on wizards all the time.
Riposte lets you make an instant counterattack if the enemy misses while you're using combat expertise. Might as well keep a one point subtraction on all the time really.
Scalding faith of the Sun gives paladins of pelor a 2 level boost to their turning power. Meh.
Scathing Wit gives enemies a minor penalty when you taunt them. Also meh.
Seer gives you a daily power and a low key floating bonus that goes away if you use it. Very interesting indeed.
Serenity lets paladins substitute their wis for cha for class abilities, which reduces MAD quite a bit and opens up a fair few character concepts. Very handy for a min-maxer, especially if you take a social flaw in exchange for this feat.
Serpent Bloodline starts with mind affecting spells, then goes into power words for the last three levels for some reason. Maybe they're easier to pronounce when you have a forked tongue.
Shield Maiden's Grace lets you share your paladin save bonuses with others. As if your high cha didn't make you popular enough already. Now, if only you could do it reflexively in response instead of needing to ready an action. I'm sure there's a feat for that somewhere.
Shorten Grip is the other side of Long Strike, letting you use your awkward polearms at close range. The two together really mark you as an expert in the field, and let you concentrate your weapon focus/specialisation slots on a single weapon to fit all needs.
Single Blade Style helps swashbucklers compensate for their lack of armor or shield. Pretty much the same as the old Kit in benefit, so I'm not complaining.
Song of the Dead lets you use your mindfucking magic normally on intelligent undead. Perfect for the pissed off enchanter sick of the DM's nerfing.
Spinning Defence helps you deflect attacks with your polearm. Looks like all the feats from that article are in here. Well, that's one way to cater to the old school crowd.
Staggering Blow lets you do the street fighter thang and stun enemies when you crit. Make the next hit count, because you still need to finish them off.
Unorthodox Flurry is another one that adds new weapons to a monk's special list. Should have just rolled them into one, as they seem a bit redundant.
Vault lets you use your polearms to increase your jumping distance. Another thing everyone should be able to try anyway, and the feat should merely make it better.
Water Bloodline finishes us off as we started, with yet another set of elemental tricks. As usual, it's easier finding higher level elemental spells to fit the list than low ones. Funny how that's worked out over this chapter.
Dragon Compendium
part 5/10
EQUIPMENT AND MAGIC ITEMS: Similarly, the gear chapter has too many little entries for them to label them all individually in the contents page. Still, at least it has some subdivisions of type to break up the monotony. That should make it easier to feel my progress than the previous chapter.
Weapons:
Ankus are blunt hooks on the end of poles, which has a fair number of comic applications. Since they had a lot of love for polearms in the feats chapter, I'm guessing the same will apply here, including several weapons that were core in previous editions, but left out of 3e. Erik does love his old school, after all, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing this collection in the first place.
Blunt Arrows aren't from an old corebook, but they also feel very familiar, and also have interesting applications. I can see why they'd want more people to try them out.
Flight Arrows remind me that they did a whole article on alternate types of arrows, and like the polearms, they're probably going to reprint them all. Anyway, these are the long-range ones. If you have the extra money, there's no drawback to investing in them.
Signal Arrows aren't very good at combat, but still handy until you can set up telepathy between the party members. Wheeeeeeeeee.
Smoke Arrows probably get launched just before shit gets real. It's all about the right timing for every bit of equipment.
Thunder Arrows are also for causing panic and confusion as much, if not more than actual damage. Just make sure you use the ones that obscure your vision for further shots afterwards.
Awl Pikes have huge hafts to hit things 3 squares away, no more, no less. Unless you take those handy feats that let you shift that one way or the other, which seems particularly useful here, especially when combined with AoO enhancers. None shall pass!
Bardiche are another ex-core weapon turning up in your back like a jilted ex. But not wielded BY Bards, weirdly enough. Linguistics is a funny business.
Bec Du Corbin have slightly shorter hafts to hit things two squares away, no more, no less. Which will work better in an actual battle will depend how much breathing room you have.
Bladed Flails are extra good at Cleaves, trips and disarms. Another one that you'll need to take a fair few feats to really reach 100% potential with.
Bladed Staves give you a range of lethal or nonlethal attack styles to play with, plus the usual support walking. If you can make the blades retractable, even better.
Shatter Bolts are still a better idea than breaking bottles in your hand to use in a barroom brawl, but not entirely without risk. Make sure you pad your equipment bags heavily, because trekking through the wilderness is not kind to them.
Broad-bladed Shortspears really aren't worth an exotic weapon proficiency slot. Next!
Disguised Daggers are ever popular with groups who want to appear civilised, but don't want to leave themselves vulnerable. Good to see them again.
Duom are an interesting one that might hurt you if you're not careful with it, but seem a good solution to the problem of not being able to fight in close quarters with polearms.
Fauchards are another ex-core one that are inconvenient to use close-up under the new rules. Well, it certainly doesn't help their slow slide into unfashionability.
Folding Bows are another one for the folks who value surprise over raw damage. They still take a little more work to get out or hide than daggers though.
Garrotte Rings require the reprinting of a whole bunch of special rules, as strangling is a form of grappling, and therefore annoying in D&D. If you know an enemy likes wielding one of these, be very afraid indeed.
Greatspears are another long, awkward to use one. Lest we forget, there are a lot of polearms, and we're still only 7 letters through the alphabet.
Hydraflails are somewhere between singular flails and a cat o' nine tails. They're not more damaging, as you can still only apply the same amount of force, but are considerably better at disarming than most weapons. That's worth considering when you're mostly fighting other people.
Lochaber Axes are another polearm with a little extra, this time a hook for tripping as well as a blade for slicing. Sounds like fun to me, even if immobilising them for a coup de grace seems unlikely.
Longstaves are Quarterstaves big brother. They're similar enough that a specialisation in one is a specialisation in the other, and they're good at fending off sneaky rogues trying to gang up on you. Perfect for a travelling cleric.
Lucerne Hammers are another polearm with a different set of hurty things on the end. Its amazing how inventive people can be when adapting farm implements into weapons.
Modular Weapons, on the other hand, take careful creation and designing so their individual pieces look as innocuous as possible, but they can still be quickly and easily assembled and dissassembled. This requires a skilled craftsman and a lot of cash.
Panther Claws are like tiger claws, only blacker. Exactly which branding sells better and what this says about our subconscious prejudices is worth investigating.
Partisans are another reach one that help you keep the foes from getting too near, especially if used in formation. Those little side spikes make things that little extra bit trickier to get past.
Pilum are extra long, thin spears designed to punch straight through an enemy's shield and rip it out of their grip. The kind of thing you use as a secondary weapon, as it'll spend a fair amount of time out of commission.
Poison Rings are yet another one for the sneaky guy who wants to look stylish while also being practical. Cha-Ching!
Heavy Poleaxes are another long, bulky one you can set for a charge, Question then becomes how you goad enemies into charging when you have a big obvious weapon ready to deal with it. It's a puzzler.
Razor Nets are a particularly nasty and effective idea, making any attempts at escaping exceedingly painful. Of course, putting little bits of barbed metal into your net is not great for it's structural integrity, so they don't have a lot of reuseability. What you need is monowire, and a way to keep those wires from cutting each other.
Spetum are another one designed for disarming. It's a good way to win fights without fighting to the death, so why not specialise in it. You might even make some friends if you fight with honor and style, which you definitely can't say if you kill everyone you fight.
Spring Dart Boots are a particularly cool concealed weapon, and the space could also be used to hide other things once you've fired them. Another one for the rogue who wants everything they wear to be pimpin'.
Swordbreakers are pretty self-explanatory. Have fun with your sundering, and hope you don't ruin anything too valuable that you might have wanted to use yourself.
Voulge are just cleavers with a polarm haft, another one that's easily adapted from farmyard tools. You too can go from killing chickens and pigs to horrible monstrosities from other worlds.
Vulcanian Thunder Clubs are a very interesting bit of alchemy that gives fighters an explosive AoE attack once a battle. Risky, but definitely pretty cool looking.
Dwarven Warpikes have counterweights on the other end to make them easier to balance. After all, when you have stubby arms, you have to adjust your fighting style accordingly to be effective, especially when fighting giants.
Armor:
Retarius is barely armor at all, just protection on one arm & shoulder. Well, gladiatorial fights are all about the beefcake, so they have to show plenty of skin. Otherwise you won't get the groupie denarius and have to downsize colosseums, which doesn't sound good at all.
Samnite is only slightly more covering, adding a bit of protection for your head and legs, while still leaving all those important chest muscles exposed. Rawr.
Secutor at least gives you a half decent AC bonus, but still leaves a fair amount exposed, and cuts down your max dex bonus more than many heavier armours. Remember, nonprotective stuff can be awkward and inconvenient to move in too, which is why no adventurer should wear high heels on the job.
Silk Armor is the odd one out here, costing far more, yet with it's primary goal to not look particularly obtrusive or hinder movement. Once again, it's the quiet ones you've really got to watch out for, as the flashy ones are just there to distract you.
Thracian is just a helmet and leg armor. I hope that covers the groin too, because I don't want the other gladiators making cheap shots.
Dragon Compendium
part 6/10
Alchemical Items:
Alchemist's Mercy is a reliable hangover cure. You know, I'd simply not drink anyway, save twice as much money. But not all adventurers are that sensible.
Armor Soft lets you temporarily soften up your armour, which means it's likely to break, but also helps with stealth. And of course, you can use it on enemies too. It's not just weapons that can be sundered.
Blackwater eats up all the oxygen in a fair area, leaving water breathing creatures suffocating. It'll soon dilute away if used in a bigger sea, but is a good way of dealing with big fishes in small ponds without fighting them.
Catstink is one of the many ways of foiling trackers. Spray it around liberally, hope they won't be able to pick up the scent again by circling around.
Cooling Gel gives you minor fire resistance. If you don't have a spellcaster, it's better than nothing.
Courier's Ink is your basic invisible writing with a corresponding revealing solution. Once again, don't overlook the nonmagical methods of encryption if you want to keep a secret.
Firestone is your basic chemical grenade, ignited by impact rather than pulling out a pin. Not much more dangerous than a regular attack, but setting fire to things
Flash Powder is also a common one, especially where ninjas are involved. It could easily be core and no-one would be surprised.
Flashstone is basically the same thing, from a different issue. Really didn't need to recycle both of these.
Free Foot is another trickster one. Making an area slippery is always a good one, whether it's by spell or mundane means. Mind you, a lifetime of back problems doesn't seem so funny, but D&D doesn't track stuff like that anyway.
Holdfast solves the opposite problem, creating a fast drying, short-lived adhesive upon impact that's useful for climbing where a grappling hook wouldn't find purchase. Just don't take too long, or it'll fall off again and send you plummeting, which is an embarrassing way to go.
Ice Crystals keep your drink cold indefinitely, which is just neat. Every restaurant should get some, as that's as handy as continual light stones.
Insect Repellent brings us back down to earth. Although if they were being truly realistic, they'd have hundreds of them, tuned to dealing with particular species of bug.
Liquid Ice has a violent endothermic reaction when exposed to air. Another one for throwing and hoping the bottle is the right toughness to break on impact, but not on casual handling or jostling in your backpack.
Night Eyes is a chemical that boosts your low light vision when applied to the eyes. It'll probably also make your pupils disturbingly dilated, but when you're an adventurer, somehow the long term health risks don't seem so important.
Powdered Water turns a drop into a gallon. Careful you don't waste it, and good luck dehydrating it again afterwards.
Shriek Paste is a highly practical byproduct of everyone's favourite fungal sentinels. it responds to light, letting dark dwelling creatures use it against adventurers without worrying about them wandering off. Grimlocks in particular will appreciate that irony.
Slimebane breaks down oozes, so if you aren't sure what will hurt it, and what will just make it multiply, pack lots of this and throw it at them. Or get a hose, sanitise the whole dungeon before you go in. That'll make things much neater.
Slippery Oil gives you a bonus to escape artist checks. Not sure why it's different to the other oil that trips people up. Once again, this best of exposes the cracks caused by lots of people contributing similar things at different times over the course of the magazine.
Slumberweed is for the Romeo & Juliet fans amongst you. Feigning death has all sorts of dramatic uses, including the boring one of just using it as a poison in combat.
Sneezing Powder is more comical than dramatic, but still definitely has it's uses. Trouble is, many high level monsters don't breathe, so you can't puncture their dignity that way.
Softshoe Powder gets rid of all those little squeaks and creaks in your footwear, giving you a bonus to move silently checks. It probably leaves powdery residue where you walked though, given it only lasts 10 minutes, so you still have to worry about being tracked. You'll probably pay less in the long run buying elven boots.
Soupstones are another way to compress gallons of food into a tiny package for wilderness treks. Just add water, possibly water that you also dehydrated earlier, and enjoy.
Spy Buttons are yet another way to be both stylish and practical. At least, until you've used them and are trying to get away with a shirt flapping loose. Might want to change your look fast and walk away casually.
Stonecloth is for those adventurers who are sick of losing gear to fireballs, as it pretty much ignores short flashes of heat. Just don't try and go swimming in lava. Ain't no suit flameproof enough for that.
Tanglewire is another way of slowing down careless people following you, particularly in the dark. Once that stuff gets strewn around, it's a nightmare to tidy up.
Toungeloose accomplishes what you could do cheaper by getting someone drunk, only with slightly less risk of violence. Another example of spy gear costing a premium because the stuff is tricky to get hold of.
Travellers Solace is one of those chemical concoctions that keeps you going a few hours more before you have to crash. So basically, overpriced coffee. :p They just have to tart this stuff up for a fantasy game, don't they.
Truth Wine is another repeated idea from a different issue, with different mechanics. Yawn.
Vapors of Sleep is just a fantasy chloroform, knocking out people exposed to it, once again reusing an idea from earlier in this collection. They should definitely have pruned this particular section more ruthlessly.
Magic Armor:
Arboreal Armor is still fairly memorable, taking the idea of a living artifact very literally, plus saving on carrying supplies. Pretty practical really.
Armor of the Long Journey is another one where the primary benefits are out of combat. Funny how that works out.
Breastplates of Righteous Endeavours, on the other hand, are only useful in a fairly specific subset of fights - those against undead and other creatures of cosmic evil. Oh well. still better than nothing.
Drachensgaard is another specialist one, this time for dragonslayers. Yeat again, you have to ask if you're looking for trouble, or just want to be ready if it shows up on your door, which definitely influences your choice of gear.
Hellshield is not actually a shield, but the ideal platemail for the paladin from the Paladin in Hell illustration. Presuming he's smart enough to look for the best tools instead of just barreling in trying to be a big hero, which is not the case for many paladins.
Humillianthir is from the same source, and is for protecting your horse. After all, a paladin can't be losing companions left, right and centre, or they'll be forever tormented by their conscience.
Praesidium Luminata is another paladin one that's for sharing the love, helping your companions and hindering your enemies with inspiring light. I suppose it's good for the whole family.
Shields of Obstruction are another tactical one that helps the whole party, not just their user. Hold the line without having to hang around and die personally. Then you can be a hero again another day.
Spellcease continues the paladin love, allowing them to absorb evil spells. I guess it's another case where they're picking out whole articles, rather than just the very best bits of many different ones.
Truedeath completes this process, showing that while Johnathan M Richards may have left after they changed the ecology format, his work is still remembered and loved for other reasons as well.
Magic Weapons:
Suppressing weapons briefly remove your spell resistance, making them very handy for taking out big nasty monsters as a team. At least, until they have saves so high they'll only fail on a 1, sending you right back to the grind at epic levels. No easy solution fir every situation.
Barthon's Delving Doves still stand out as just about the only reusable magical arrows around, and do it in style too. Add a few to your quiver so you can spread peace in style.
Bolts of Discord are a very bad idea when you have allies in melee. Pick the time to use them carefully, or you'll have to deal with a fair few intra-party arguments as well.
Deitus Daggers still look pretty cool, if a little too vampire specific. After all, plenty of other monsters spawn cascade too, and you could definitely do with breaking their control chains if you want to save the world.
Eagle's Cry Bows are still amusing because they devote more words to it's description, and the details of how any non-elves who get hold of one will be hunted ruthlessly than it's actual powers. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Hands of the Creator are another one that's all for elves, and may be problematic for anyone else. Well, with so many elf themed selections over the years, it's not surprising this best of is a little slanted too.
Heart Trackers are both made by elves and good against vampires, making them a double whammy of overdone topics. Fight cheese with cheese, and then pray you can get the smell out afterwards.
Lashes of Torment are whips with lots of little barbs and spikes in, making them extra painful and motivating for slavedrivers. Anyone trying to turn them agains their masters will have a crap time of it, so they can casually leave them lying around and laugh at the cruelly ironic consequences.
Quarterstaves of Law have some pretty boring spell-like abilities, as you'd expect from something that exemplifies Law.
Quiet Daggers are not only good for stealth, as you would expect from their name, but the more powerful ones also give you free silent spell metamagic. Perfect for spellthieves or beguilers who want to keep their secondary talents from being too obvious.
Sais of the Hornet are an amusing variant on the common dancing sword. Handy, but is it worth the new entry?
Staves of the Crushing Breeze give you improved trip as a freebie, letting you resolve conflicts a little more peacefully. If you already have that, pass it on like a proper virtuous monk.
Thornblades are still an annoying one, both because they give poison to good aligned creatures, and because you can'y just take them from their owners and claim them for your own.
Rings:
Keeper's guide still seems like a pretty suboptimal bit of design, and I'm really not sure why it made it in here. Well, clerics can't get it right all the time.
Rings of Earths Grasp gives you a rock hard grip, which is useful for all sorts of things, IYKWIM.
Rings of Scry Detection are still one of the first things any archmage should make for themselves. Once you're at that level, you can't afford to get sloppy and leave yourself open to scry teleport smite attacks from anywhere in the multiverse.
Rings of the Evil Eye are still a crap shoot as to whether the benefit outweighs the penalty. Since I remember them clearly, they definitely deserve a place in the best of.
Rings of Stalking are a suitably creepy name for a fairly effective little gadget. This is why you don't give out your real name while adventuring. It opens you up to being followed home.
Dragon Compendium
part 7/10
Rods & Staves:
Briar Staves still hold up in terms of being distinct, and having plot hooks for owning them as well as powers. Your druid should be very happy to have one, as it means you have an excuse for extended holidays to recharge between adventures.
Deluge Rods also seem cool, thanks to their drawbacks that make their powers a little less of a no-brainer. Not a bad pick at all.
Rods of Deadly Function are sufficiently versatile and quirky to fit in with the old classics. Have fun figuring out what all the buttons do.
Rods of Revealing only have one trick, but it's a good one, eliminating invisibility and illusions just like that. Another reason why even specialists should have a few spells of other types, to make sure they can't get completely no-sold.
Rods of the Wild are another interesting multipurpose one, albeit a little lower-key. Having totem animals to play with is a good way to make fighty classes a little more flexible.
Staves of Earthen Might are just another of your themed selection of spells with limited charges. Ho hum. Easy enough to whip up a few more of those.
Miscellaneous items:
Acorns of Acuity still don't impress me that much. Using up a hand to gain their benefits, and being easily lost makes them much less useful than a ring with the same power level.
Alchemist's Glass doesn't seem too impressive, but perfect miscibility and easy separation has all sorts of interesting uses if you're a chemistry student. Maybe that's why the philosopher's stone is impossible to create normally.
Amulets of Astral Projection seem s good way to get players going extraplanar without so much risk, or breaking the game with high level spellcasters. After all, if you get killed, you just snap back. Why should demons have than benefit and not you?
Amulets of Deception are on that definitely deserve to be in a best of. Tricking scrying attempts is more useful than simply blocking them, as it gives you more control and doesn't immediately alert the people looking at you.
Autonomous Harps are still amusing looking, but fairly boring in mechanical effect. Make them intelligent and they'll be another irritating comedy sidekick to put in your game. Please don't say the wizard has fallen in the pit trap again.
Bands of the Iron Monkey let you catch arrows like a trained Monk, which doesn't seem hugely thematic unless you're talking about an oriental campaign. But then, it's not as if those are rare either.
Bardic Cups are actually fairly complex to understand, but simple to use. You just have to know what all the indicators mean. It certainly helps make magic feel more mysterious when they pull stuff like this.
Belts of the Camel are another handy but boring one. We still have to worry about food and the weather, no matter high level we get, but there are many ways of mitigating that.
Boots of the Woodland still don't impress me. I don't have much time for weaker, more specific versions of already existing items.
Caine's Flagons of Shadows on the other hand, still seems like a pretty neat way of achieving it's effect, even if it's not a hugely impressive effect in the overall scheme of things. But then, style can be more important than substance, especially for tricksters.
A Cape of the General is for all those who prefer to hang back and play tactician, with extra benefits for elves. Well, the smug gits do like to incentivise what they would do anyway.
Chalices of True Seeing are another one where they put more effort into the description than the power. But then, everyone knows what true seeing is for. You have to really work at keeping no-selling interesting.
Chromatic Flutes are another thematically cool but not too powerful one, mainly because playing an instrument to produce illusions makes it really likely people will try to disbelieve them or shoot directly at you to disrupt the effect. It's all about plausible deniability.
Circlets of Convocation still seem like an awesome idea with obvious pitfalls, and therefore very tempting to use in game. They definitely deserve to be here.
Clay of Sculpting is exceedingly flexible stuff, and so an invitation for PC's to have fun solving their problems with it. As a reusable item, this could wind up one of your real mainstays whenever you have a puzzle to deal with.
Cloaks of the Desert still seem exceedingly situational in use. Meh.
Coffin Clamps of Aziell Moonchild are even more specific, but at least they're really good at what they do, and have a cool backstory. No vampire hunter should be without them.
Deathglance Lockets are another one from the scrying screwage article. I'm completely unsurprised they remembered this one fondly and decided to recycle the whole lot of it.
Dragon's Goblets are one I don't remember from first time around, but I'm glad they did reprint them, as they have a selection of abilities and drawback that connect together quite well.
Dwarven Rune Steins are also cool, and as they have lots of powers, but you only get to use each power once, they'll really force you to look for clever solutions to your trials. (and hope they're the one the DM intended. ) Very fairytale.
Extradimensional Anchors are another one trick antiscrewage effect that will still likely be popular with wizards everywhere. Just make sure you leave a place in your tower so you can get in and out, for you never know when not being able to teleport away from danger will be a problem instead.
The Eye of Horus still has powers that are interestingly opposed to it's goals. I guess sometimes you've got to be sneaky to catch a thief, as brute force doesn't work if you don't know where to aim it.
Gauntlets of Heartfelt Blows add your cha bonus to damage. The kind of substitution effect you can reskin in a million different ways.
Girdles of Hate double your favored enemy bonuses, which is only useful if you have one anyway. Pretty sure there's a prestige class from the magazine which synergizes perfectly with that.
Goggles of Scrutiny are just another minor perception bonus. Do we really need so many of them repeated?
Golden Beholders, on the other hand, still feel pretty unique. Both weapons and spying devices, they definitely reward smart thinking. If only they were a little less bulky.
Holy Bone Shackles are still unusable unless you can resist the urge to make batman references every time they show up. It's almost as bad as monty python for breaking the mood.
Horns of the Planes are still the perfect way to plop players into whatever adventure you want to do at the time without worrying about the hassles of travel. If you want a Sliders campaign in D&D, you could do a lot worse.
Black & White Elipsoid ioun stones are another one from the antiscrewage article. Assurance that your mind isn't being read is worth a hell of a lot, especially when playing poker.
Masks of the Reaper may make you scary, but without other powers to back that up, you'll be nothing more than a scooby doo villain. One brave puppy will be your undoing.
Mirrors of Captured Images are still handy, but dwarfed by modern media in terms of storage capacity. That's still a danger with magic items these days. You never know when technology will seem more magical than magic.
The Obi of the White Lotus Master makes your monk moderately more badass, but it's another one that won't help unless there's decent raw material to work with in the first place. Search for the hero inside yourself.
Quivers of Plenty are one of those basic but effective logistics removers. Eventually, you'll save more money by buying one of these than using regular arrows, so go for it.
Requiem Jars are very specialist indeed, and more for use by enemies than PC's. Not one I would have reused.
Robes of the Burning Serpent are even more exclusively for antagonists. Still, they have style, and evil masterminds love that. But remember, turning into a giant snake never helps. Seriously, read the evil overlord's handbook please.
The Rose of Kings isn't that great for adventurers, but a perfect one for ensuring honest politicians. Which is probably why it keeps on getting lost or stolen, so heroes have to go and rescue it. :p
Sand of Set might be made by his clerics, but they're not exclusive like the robes. Anyone can sprinkle it to summon some serpent servants. So step right up folks.
Scorpion Bracers give you reasonable poison resistance. Pass them on once you've become transhuman and can completely ignore that kind of stuff anyway.
Scout Goggles are one I remember, having great utility for a party, but also more than a few risks. The kind of thing that keeps adventurers playing it smart, instead of getting soft because the magic sorts out all the everyday details.
A Shell of Amplification is still better than modern microphone systems, since it doesn't require bulky speakers, but you never know what the future will bring. This might still be superseded by reality.
Silver Collars of Adentrius are another vampire specific one that's incredibly handy as far as it goes, but how often will that be. Well, with so many horror themed issues to choose from, it's not surprising vampires wind up a bit overdone.
Snake Charmers are another one I'm surprised to see again, given how utterly banal I found them. Tastes obviously do vary in this case.
Spider Masks are still pretty decent, if nasty magical items, especially if you want to be mysterious and intimidating. Careful when looting the bodies of your enemies. Even if you can use their evil magics, do you want too?
Spy Glasses are your own portable window, which is always handy. Question is, are they two way or not, as that makes a big difference in how easy you are to catch out.
Sylvan Cloaks are still very much overdone. We already have elven clothes right from the corebook. We don't need several more variants on the idea.
Thespian's Masks are another one trick pony I'm rather bored to see repeated. A hat of disguise does all this and more and is fully core. Shoo, you amateurs.
Tiaras of Bast are another pretty limited one. But then, given the popularity of cats, they'll still be more useful than one that lets you communicate with all reptiles, for example.
Vampiric Goblets may seem cursed at first, but they're actually quite useful as a hit point storage system. That contrasts amusingly with all the items that seem cool at first, but are actually a real pain in the ass, especially once you realise the problem and want to get rid of them.
Ventriloquist's Mouthpieces are still a one-trick pony, albeit a handy one. Meh.
Vestments of Judgement still feel like they're designed to push you into hard choices, what with only working once a month, and people dying a lot more frequently than that. Oh well, just have to make more of them, then you can share the load of responsibility instead of carrying it all yourself and get more done.
War Mugs of the Ogre Magi on the other hand, are just handy everywhere, all the time, and amusing on top of that. They even make a perfect replacement for a judges gavel. :p Order in the house, or I'll beat some sense into you!
Z'hentra's Tools aren't useful at all to most PC's, since they're pretty much only good for torture. I'm not normally one for destruction of magic items, but these'll just push your Pc's into being Hard Men making Hard Choices if they keep them, which is an incredibly slippery slope.
Dragon Compendium
part 8/10
CLASSICS: While the last two chapters were all from the last few years of the magazine, this one is nearly all 1e stuff designed to tickle our nostalgia bones. Many of them are ones I've just gone over a second time in the last batch of best of's, so I may struggle to find something to say about them. Let's see how much effort they've put into improving the mechanics and visuals of these old faithful's.
Arcane Alterations: Our only recent article in this chapter is also the only OGL article in the book. Very surprised that they liked this one enough to reuse it considering that. Still, the Arcana Evolved influenced ceremonial feats and spell templates are pretty nifty, so I'm glad that they did decide to include it. Monte Cook did have some pretty cool ideas, and it's good to see them using the OGL the way it should be used, to pass them around, twist them into new shapes and build upon them.
Glyphs of Cerilon: We've certainly seen a lot of the Forgotten Realms since the early days, much of it reprinted repeatedly in multiple forms. However, it's easy to forget that once there was another freelancer sneaking bits of their personal setting into our magazine - prolific cartoon writer Larry DiTillio. Erik bringing this one back is a very good example of just how much he researches, and how much he cares. Unsurprisingly, while the conversion is fairly faithful in most ways, with all the cool flavour retained, they seriously nerf anything that would inflict permanent harm upon your character, like the ones that drain levels or wither limbs. So this serves as another reminder just how much more forgiving D&D has become over the years, with nearly all status effects temporary or easily healed with the right spell. None shall pass, even the legacy effects!
The answer is ... the Riddle!: Sigh: They had to have at least one bit of irritating cheese in here, didn't they, and revisiting the riddle themed issue certainly fits the bill. They include a nice bit of new artwork here, and tweak the formatting so there's more headers, but there's no mechanics to convert, so the text is pretty much unchanged. If you do want to use riddles and make your players groan, it's not as if anyone is going to stop you, even in games which encourage rolling mental stats to solve these problems in game. Moving swiftly on.
Runes: You again. Once again, the fact that runes are a big part of several mythologies gets them brought back for another generation. And once again, the fact that this was completely mechanics free means there's no changes in the text, apart from a bizarrely small one at the start, where they swap out the thief in the original for a wizard, to reflect their changed powers and roles in the new edition. Amazed that they bothered really, since it is such a tiny thing. I suppose that kind of attention to detail is to be commended, because otherwise I'd have even less to say about this one.
Runestones: For a second time, this article follows on directly from the last one in a best of. Unlike the previous two, this one is a little abbreviated, with the example bits of writing cut out, leaving just the text and the key to the runes. And the text is still great fun too, reminding us that even Ed eventually scaled back on breaking the 4th wall in his writings and got caught up in giving us little bits of crunch and setting detail on a regular basis rather than big ideas. He might have had more longevity than any of their other staff, but even he can't completely ignore the hands of time or the dictates of fashion.
Tesseracts: Now this is an awesome one that definitely deserves re-introducing to every new generation, since it's based off a mathematical construct that remains universally applicable regardless of time, place or culture. 4-dimensional mapping is now easier to do than it was in the 80's, thanks to home computers that are more powerful than the entirety of a big company's processing power. Games like Portal have exposed people to the fun you can have distorting space and given us systems for managing the convoluted maps that can result. So if you're struggling, google away. You don't have to hurt your head figuring this one out on your own.
Another look at Tesseracts: If maps that don't conform to the normal three dimensions take extra effort to make, ones that you can wind up in the same areas, but different orientations are even more complex. This is somewhat harder to find help with, as we still have less of an idea what gravity is and how to manipulate it than we do advanced theoretical mathematics.
Electromagnetism and the Strong & Weak nuclear forces, we have a idea how they work and the cool things you can do with electricity and chemistry. Gravity, it's just kinda there, and a real pain in the ass a lot of the time. If we could negate, invert or set gravity at right-angles to the dominant plane the way they describe in this article, the world would be a very different place, and getting into space would be a lot easier. So there's still room for quite a few more expansions on this idea, and the magazine shouldn't have stopped at the two. Maybe that would have slowed down the descent into incredibly specific bite sized chunks of info.
Toxins of Cerilon: A second updating of Larry DiTillio's old works, this is another collection of toys for the DM, and possibly players to put into their games. Unlike most of the articles here, the list of poisons is completely reorganised, removing the categorisations from the original, and putting everything into alphabetical order. The effects are also completely rewritten, with far fewer of them doing hit point damage, instead substituting all sorts of ability score damage and status effects. So while there is a little bit of nerfing going on here where they would do permanent damage before, they've also worked to make them more interesting in other ways in the process of updating. That pleases me, and makes these articles very worthwhile even if you already have the original.
Dragon Compendium
part 9/10
MONSTERS: The monsters are another mix of new ones from the 3e issues, already done conversions, and new exclusive updates for this compilation. Obviously, I'm more interested in the stuff they're updating, as that took more work, and gives me more toys to play with. Who will their favourites in this department turn out to be?
Blackroot Marauders remind us that James Jacobs started giving us awesome monsters just before the 3e changeover, and they fully deserve to be updated and used along with the many others he's given us since. His distinctive flavour can definitely liven up a campaign.
Bleeders are one of the monsters that made it to official books in 2e, but only ever got updated to 3e in the magazine, and I have no idea why, since it seems pretty arbitrary. For all Ed's prestige, a fair few of his articles still wound up on the chopping board over the years.
Bodak templates still seem like a decent enough addition to 3e's modularity, and the specific example is very cool indeed. Definitely a good pick.
Bonespitters are another James Jacobs one, a gruesome amalgamation of body parts that you too could be incorporated into if unlucky. This kind of stuff is why clerics get anti-undead powers, because they're just too squicky otherwise.
Bonetrees are similarly gruesome, yet completely different in terms of powers. They still want to eat you, though, and use your bones to plate their bark though. Fee fi foe fum indeed. (and I can't believe I nearly went the full thread without making THAT reference. )
Casaruas are a pretty cool one to update, since Tom Moldvay's alternate undead were pretty memorable in general. They're distinctive in visuals, powers and creation method, and are better faced using brains than brawn, so it's a win all round.
Chaoswyrd are another one of James Jacob's sanity threatening monsters that he can whip up in his sleep. While cool, I think they may be spoiling us with too much of a good thing again, as his style is starting to get samey.
Ciruja Plants are another one from James, but don't use the same stereotypes, instead ageing you rather than threatening your sanity. Still, it is pretty brutal, so you should still be afraid. Just a few years later they wouldn't let them make monsters like this,
Elemental Demons still piss me off, knowing that they're Mearls' trial run for rewriting the cosmology and stripping all monsters of everything but a few combat related tricks in the next edition. Also, why these rather than the Battleloths, which were far more interesting in my opinion. Strange decision.
Demonically infused elementals add to the confusion, letting you give your inner planar creatures an outer planar flavour. We already have a fiendish and half-fiend template, and several different types of fiendish bloodline. Do we really need another one?
The colour wheel dragons get fairly straight conversions to 3e, with most of their spell-like abilities remaining the same, but some alignment changes. As with the 2e conversion, I find myself increasingly pleased to see them again, as they're something exclusive to the magazine. I hope they appear at some point in the 4e issues too.
Ghastly and Ghoulish creatures are still a sensible idea when you're working from the PoV that templates are good, and you should be able to combine creature types in all sorts of ways. Not that plenty of living monsters don't want to eat your flesh anyway, but adding paralyzation to the mix definitely turns up the fear factor.
Glasspane Horrors are one I've never seen before, since I've still never managed to get hold of the Creature Catalog from issue 89. They're pretty nifty too, making me pleased to see them here, and annoyed I didn't get the chance before this, and can't compare the mechanics.
Grandfather Plaques are a somewhat goofy one to convert, but hey, we can't forget the influence of Labyrinth and the fairy tale end of fantasy on D&D. There's still plenty of strange creatures ripe for conversion there.
Bog Mummies are just tougher mummies with a vulnerability to cold instead of fire. Not hard to figure out when you know their origins. Meh.
Ragewings are yet another James Jacobs combination of gruesome appearance and annoying special powers that make them pretty dangerous to fight. Well, as one of their lead editors, he has no trouble keeping his material fresh in their minds.
Ravenous template is still a good way to get your zombies to fit the Romero mould, as well as having more esoteric uses. I just wish they'd used the version from Silicon Sorcery instead. In fact, the stuff from book and video game articles has been notably absent from this collection, despite it generally being more adventurous mechanically. Guess they didn't want to deal with licensing hassles again.
Seelie Court Fey still seem annoyingly froofy. As if most fae weren't annoying enough as it is, you had to add an in-crowd and an out-crowd to them. No desire to relive that kind of high school bullshit.
Spiritus Anime get their setting details mildly rewritten to make them more generic, but remain pretty similar mechanically. Oh well, I guess that gives DM'd more freedom to put them where they like in a dungeon.
Trap Haunts still feel like an amusing lampshading of D&D dungeons, and their impossibility in reality. Someone has to maintain this stuff if more than one adventuring party passes through, and it might as well be undead, who don't have to worry about ecology.
Fire Trolls retain their amusing, and somewhat tricky to discover weak point, making them a real pain to take down permanently. Just the thing when players get complacent and think they can rely on brute force to solve their problems.
Unseelie Fey are one I'm pretty shocked to see reprinted, given how nasty I found the anti miscegenation message there first time around. I guess drama sells, and knowing sex is forbidden between you because it produces monstrosities certainly qualifies for that.
Dragon Compendium
part 10/10
APPENDICES: A few more old school articles round this collection out. Not sure what their criteria was for dividing them between the Classics and Appendices sections, and maybe it was just because they're 1e DMG fanboys, as I can't see much of a difference in overall theme between the chapters. Let's see which I'm more likely to want to refer back too regularly.
101 Wondrous Whereabouts: The 101 lists were always handy, simply because that's too many things to memorise perfectly, so no matter how many times you've used them, you can always find something you've forgotten about to use, and keep your game fresh for you and the players. They could probably have filled a whole chapter with them if they felt like it, (and I'd love to see the bag of beans one converted to 3e) but they stick with just the one. Still, it is a pretty good one, full of atmospheric adventure locations and reasons to go there, many which draw on mythological sources D&D has only briefly touched upon. I fully approve of reusing this selection.
7-Sentence NPC's: This one is also generally handy when you have to crank out a large number of NPC's in a short amount of time, and are finding it hard to make them distinct. Breaking personality building down in the same way as statistics may make characters formulaic, but at least you can make sure they're not too shallow, and you have obvious ways to play them differently. Some people may be able to manage without using shortcuts, but even they'll feel the benefits of using them every once in a while.
Be Thy Die Ill-Wrought: The mathematics heavy chi-squared rule article is the kind of thing they stopped doing in the last years of the magazine, so this seems like a breath of fresh air. The amount of higher mathematics and statistics involved in roleplaying ballooned in the 80's, before fading away as people wanted to just get down to the gaming rather than spend forever number-crunching and consulting tables. But making sure people aren't cheating is always a concern, especially if you're concerned with game balance, so this is another thing I'm pleased to see here.
Good Hits & Bad Misses: Huh. I'm surprised to see this one a third time. I guess even though they put a basic crit system in 3e, some people STILL want more gruesome descriptive effects when they hit things. I really don't know. Still, at least the crunch here is all-new, with each injury having a mechanical effect that still usually makes sense even if the description doesn't, (due to the myriad body shapes monsters can have) letting you reskin the description. This definitely feels like they gave it some thought to improve how it works mechanically, which is a relief, even if I still don't really want to use it in my own game, as it still gives other people decent options to choose from.
Instant Adventures: This one is transferred pretty much unchanged, apart from taking up slightly more space due to the way they formatted it here. And it's still handy, but not the most impressive example of it's kind, since it only provides seeds, not a way to grow them into full adventures on it's own. Guess recompiling the dungeoncraft stuff would have taken a full chapter, and they still only had limited space to play with. If only they had brought out a second one, they would probably have done more interesting themes with it.
Not Another Magic Sword: This bit of step by step advice is also unchanged, and curiously enough, doesn't need to be changed for 3e anyway, apart from intelligent magical weapons having wis and cha scores now. Goes to show, some bits of rules didn't need a huge amount of fiddling with, especially when so many magical weapons have unique abilities anyway. Just remember, it can be applied to other magic items too, not just weapons.
Pronunciation Guide: Ha. This is a system-free one that remains very relevant today, as new people learn the game all around the world without previous teachers, and so wind up mangling the words that they've read but never heard spoken. This could probably have been expanded quite a bit in the update, since they've introduced tons of new monsters and settings since then, but no, they're sticking to what Frank already gave us. A bit of a wasted opportunity, when you consider some of the changes they've made to other articles in here.
Solo Dungeons: And so we finish right back where we started, with an updated version of the random dungeon generation tables from the Strategic Review 1 (and the first best of). It seemed pretty damn cool back then, and you know what? It still does, especially as they've cleaned it up and made it easier to understand, while only changing it the minimum needed to fit into 3e rules. This definitely feels like a good note to end things on, bringing them full circle before I head out in directions unknown.
Putting this collection next to the old best of's definitely makes it easier to contrast how their approaches changed over the years, with the far greater emphasis on specific small pieces of information rather than big ideas in the articles. However, this attention to detail is also notable in the better artwork, formatting, and rules, and as a result, this collection definitely feels less lazy than the old best of's and their direct, artless reprints. So it looks like I can end this on a positive note, even if I would have made different choices of exactly which articles to reprint, and praise Paizo for their hard work in the last few years of the magazine's life. Now, will I ever get to see what WotC did once they took it back? The answer is in your hands. For now, farewell.
This is a total thread-necro, but over at GrogHeads, we've been running a video series that also looks back at Dragon Magazine, including commentary on our time in and around the game business throughout the years :)
http://grogheads.com/category/books-movies/dragon-up-the-past
Quote from: bayonetbrant;1042233This is a total thread-necro, but over at GrogHeads, we've been running a video series that also looks back at Dragon Magazine, including commentary on our time in and around the game business throughout the years :)
http://grogheads.com/category/books-movies/dragon-up-the-past
Cool. And welcome to theRPGsite!
Quote from: bayonetbrant;1042233This is a total thread-necro, but over at GrogHeads, we've been running a video series that also looks back at Dragon Magazine, including commentary on our time in and around the game business throughout the years :)
http://grogheads.com/category/books-movies/dragon-up-the-past
Dragon #47 up today
http://grogheads.com/featured-posts/19359
would you believe Trump made an appearance in Dragon Magazine in 1990?
http://grogheads.com/featured-posts/19430
Quote from: bayonetbrant;1049882would you believe Trump made an appearance in Dragon Magazine in 1990?
http://grogheads.com/featured-posts/19430
Jesus Christ, and people complain my 11 minute videos are long. It's an hour and a half; care to give us the context, or point us to the right timestamp?!
Quote from: RPGPundit;1050129Jesus Christ, and people complain my 11 minute videos are long. It's an hour and a half; care to give us the context, or point us to the right timestamp?!
Hey, we're thorough! :)
Treat it as a video podcast, and most of our episodes of the GrogCast run around a hour, too....
The Trump reference is way toward the end when we hit DragonMirth, so probably around the 1:20 mark or so.
And what does it say?
Quote from: RPGPundit;1050539And what does it say?
The Trump reference is in the cartoons in the DragonMirth area. It's not really a "say"; it's a cartoon :)
Alrighty then...